wellRED podcast - Evening Skews - November 24, 2020

Episode Date: November 30, 2020

Me and Smart Mark have a lovely pre-turkey Skew session with the inimitable Sarah Smarsh, author and journalist extraordinaire. We talk about the goings on in Georgia, the state of the transition, and the future of poor white people everywhere. Hope you dig it. (There was no episode on Thanksgiving, so just the one hour this week. Happy Holidays, yuns.) 

And we thank them for sponsoring the show. Well, no, I'll just go ahead. I mean, look, I'm money dumb. Y'all know that. I've been money dumb ever, since ever, my whole life. And the modern world makes it even harder to not be money dumb, in my opinion. Because used to, you, like, had to write down everything you spent or you wouldn't know nothing. But now you got apps and stuff on your phone.

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Today is Tuesday, November 24th. I'm Trey Crowder. That's Mark Aegee. What's up, Mark? What's up, Trey. Oh, and I, with us is a. always is producer Matt behind the scenes and this is evening skews got a great show for y'all tonight we're going to talk about one of my what is shaping up to be one of my very favorite stories in

american politics recently and that's what's going on with republicans in the state of georgia also we're going to talk about the transition which the trump administration has begrudgingly finally agreed to so news from the opioid crisis and i'm very excited about our conversation a little later in the show with one of my favorite people on earth, the journalist and author Sarah Smarsh from Kansas. So we got some great stuff for you, but first, as always, we begin with the Daily Dumbassery. Matt, hit that graphic. Tonight's honorary is relevant to the holiday season because our Daily Dumbass this evening is any turkey in this country who refuse to ingratiate themselves to the Trump administration.

Now, while I can certainly appreciate the more. integrity of any of the left-leaning foul out there who couldn't stomach the idea of selling their soul in an effort to curry favor with Donald Trump. At the end of the day, it's the results that matter. And while many of those socialist turkeys may find themselves basted and presented among the traditional accoutrema in 48 hours, one turkey will not. And his name is corn. Corn the turkey, who this morning received the coveted presidential post. pardon from Donald Trump himself. Matt, you said, throw that clip up there of old corn. Corn, yes, it's corn.

Corn, I here if I grant you a full pardon. Thank you, corn. All right. The idea that like Trump's, one of Trump's, like, last major public appearances as the president could be him saying, thank you, corn is just is wonderful to me. Because they brought two turkeys. The other one was named Cobb, right? And I don't know why Cobb is going to get murdered.

Maybe Vladimir Putin wants him dead or whatever. But Corn, corn got the pardon, which apparently Trump thing works like knighting someone, like the queen laying her hands on. Yeah, corn's dad is a turkey oil magnet. That's what people don't know.

Cobb, unfortunately, you know, his sister went to Turkey Oberlin College so it's a little bit different it's like how uh roger stone got a pardon but Michael Cohen didn't fucking Cobb must have crossed him somehow so speaking of pardons obviously a lot of parallels with the potential with Trump's uh probable desire to be pardoned can he pardon himself who knows but it seems like maybe he's a little jealous of corn um Matt you play the clip where he implies that that he's been waiting for this and bring him out look at that beautiful beautiful bird oh so lucky that

is a lucky bird that is one lucky bird forgiven for all his bird sands mark as of this day what a lucky bird yeah i mean i've been lots of birds before you know but not like that Yeah, so, I mean, real quick, Mark, you got turkey plans? What are you got going on? Well, we're going to have a gathering, but, you know, COVID. Yeah, gatherings are bad right now. Yeah, gatherings are a little off right now. We're in L.A. where, you know, cases are kind of exploding and they're shutting everything back down again.

So my wife's going to make way too big of a meal. Yeah, that's what I always do. Yeah. I have to eat 12 servings of stuffing on Thursday. All right. So we've got some honorable mentions for Daily Dumbass, as we often do. The first one, Mark, I want you to set up. It has to do with Q.

All right. So over on parlor, where they're having a great time, the Q and out of people are a guest. Anyway, so in the Q universe, a lot of these people, the cabal have already been arrested and tried and executed. And so they can keep all this undercover, they've replaced the people you know, you know in the spotlight like Hillary and Obama.

They have been replaced by either clones or lookalikes. So that's what you need to know to get this person's declarative sentence about what she's observed wrong with Hillary's clone. Hillary's clone is as vile as she was, all right? Now, what's funny to me about that is so Q went to the trouble of cloning Hillary Clinton. Right.

And forgot to not make this one a satanic pedophile too. Right. Yes, it kind of defeats. the purpose of executing and supplanting your enemies with clones if they're going to just end up being the same type of person in your eyes, right? It's like, we were talking off my beforehand, before the show started. It reminds me of those got like doomsday prophesiers, you know, who go out of their way to like declare the truth of the apocalypse. And then it's like, when that happens, which it never does, where does that? Where does that?

leave you and you have to pivot yet again. And this is another version of that because if you're claiming that all these people who do all these horrific things in your estimation, that all of them actually are now clones that, you know, have been replaced and they keep being the same person, how do you square that in your lunatic mind, you know? Like, what can you ever possibly do? If you can't put your own clone in their stead,

and expect better results than what hope is there? Q arrested and executed all these people, so Donald Trump will be able to win a free and fair election so it wouldn't be rigged like every other election. And then the clones got together to form the clone cabal and still rigged it where Donald Trump will lose. It's a big old Q whoopsie. Big old Q whoopsie.

So leading into the first big story, I want to talk about a couple other honorable mentions for the Daily Domazs today. There are Republicans, and various places around the country right now who seem to be objecting to election results that they won or in counties where they won.

There's in Pennsylvania and Georgia, there's Republicans who will not certify election results even though it shows that Donald Trump won because what? Because they're just so dedicated to declaring that the entire election was fraudulent or what like what this is the game here this is just in Pennsylvania because George's already been officially certified so they're all done

so Pennsylvania there's these small red counties where this the the people in charge of running elections were few in the certify the results even though Trump won like by like 30 40,000 votes that first ring grab up there Mike that would that were the lieutenant governor is roasting here we go. He's pointed at the vote tolls here. See, Donald Trump won this county by 23,000 votes or whatever, and they're refusing to certify those results, saying, I don't know, that they're rigged to make it a little closer or what,

but this is a county where they run the fucking election. It doesn't make any sense. And they're like, the most comical version of this is the next one I threw in there, Matt. This one, there's a guy who won his election for House. He's a congressman. He won re-election and has filed a suit to overturned. the election he won and the court doesn't know what to do with it because you generally don't sue people for something you already have right so there where there is standing to file the lawsuit

in the first place since he already has the result he wants which is to have be in congress but this is like this is how it leads right into the story of what's going on in Georgia because this guy is like going out of his way to shoot himself in the foot in service of Donald Trump right like it's Trump above party for a lot of these people and it's not even close and that's what's happening in Georgia now I don't I don't consider myself a superstitious person generally speaking but yet at the same time when it comes to sports and things like that I'm always worried about jinxing it oh I don't want to jinx it and so I don't want to jinx this situation in Georgia but if y'all aren't tracking it right now there's something very wonderful and hilarious shaping up in the peach state

which is that a lot of Trump supporters are boycotting the runoff election that's coming up, or they are declaring that they will write in Donald Trump as the proposed senator in the runoff elections that are coming up in Georgia, and they are doing these things in protest of the clearly fraudulent presidential election results in their state. And they're claiming that until the Republicans, stand up and do something to defend Donald Trump in the state of Georgia. They refused to support them. Which like, I don't even know. You talk about what are you thankful for this week? This. I love this so much. Matt, you play that video of the guy sort of summarizing it on Fox News or wherever that was at. The two senators from Georgia trying to hang on to their

seats and preserve the GOP's majority in the Senate chamber are in a tough spot tonight. They're getting hammered from some in their own party over President Trump's election challenge. Of course, on the Jonathan Serra reports tonight from the last year. Yeah. Yeah. There was a campaign event over the weekend where David Purdue, one of the Republicans running, got accosted because he's no argument for why they should vote for him.

He has conservatives need to elect me and Kelly or whatever so that, um, to, prevent unified democratic control of the government. We've got to stop by it. And then the whole crowd's being like, but how are you going to help President Trump? Right. Yeah, people are screaming at him. What are you going to do for President Trump?

You know, like Trump is literally the only thing they care about. Yeah. So like they, his whole electoral argument is going out of the window. And now it's like he doesn't even, you can't even talk to these people. Because either he leans into this madness where they pretend somehow Trump's going to be president,

which they might just follow in and I'm doing that because the only way they're going to win. but it's like they did it just people yelling past each other and what was really funny thing happened on parlor uh so um parlor is that you know become this right-wing social media thing yeah everybody fled there because they think twitter is censoring political content and keep right free speech yeah so that but anyway so that but they do what concert is be elected so the right-in-trump and georgia hashtag has been censored by parlor to stop people from spreading that message. So they've become what they hate in record time already.

And the hashtag campaign is being pushed by a super PAC run by. You want a guest right? I mean, yeah, I have a guess. I also have it in front of me. But yeah, he's not surprising. Mr. Roger Stone, everybody, who would have thought? But I don't, okay, but like his, like, this is all hilarious, obviously, to us. But like, Roger Stone, you know, he's supposed to be this, like, evil mastermind, right?

Like, yes, he's the worst, but he's exceedingly competent at this nefarious thing that he does, you know? But I don't understand the, I understand it from like ground level Trump supporters because, you know, their brains don't work. I understand how it starts with them, but I'm saying, like, actual, you know, people pulling the strings in any kind of capacity, I don't understand the strategy here or what is supposed to happen. Like, I mean, I know that Trump just doesn't give a fuck about the Republican Party.

Like that thing is like, oh, I can't believe, I can't believe that Trump isn't putting the party before himself or literally anything else before himself. I mean, it's like Lindsey Graham said back in 2016, and obviously fuck Lindsey Graham, but he said if we if we nominate Donald Trump the party will be

destroyed and we will deserve it and then of course when Trump got elected Lindsey Graham's been licking his boots ever since but like that's the one and only time that I'll say Lindsey Graham was 100% right and I love it but for any of them to be surprised that this

is how it's going just adds to the hilarity what Roger Stone is good at is keeping himself famous and making and hustling money for himself. Right. So that's what this is. He's still doing what he's always done.

He self-aggrandizes himself and he's huge boogeyman, but he's just something like snake oil sells him like a lot of these dudes. And so it's working. It's making him relevant. It's going to generate a lot of money for his, the same was pack. I forget. Yeah.

So, no, no. It's the American sovereignty, American sovereignty, the name of his organization. But it's like there's a lot of, Georgia's one of the states like many of my beloved southern states that employ every measure of like

voter suppression. You can imagine. There was a lot of fuckery surrounding Brian Kemp's win over Stacey Abrams in the gubernatorial election there, right? They do all that shit. And so just the idea that the idea that they

will, they being the right will also suppress their own vote, right, without even really meaning to or without realizing what they're doing is just chefs kiss stuff. But again, I don't want to jinxing thing. We still got, we still got plenty of work to do. But like I said, this is like the way this is all kind of coming together right now, it's just some top shelf schadenfreude for me, or has the potential to be, at least. The way I'm thinking about it allows me to enjoy it is just assuming that they're going to win anyway and it's just going to be the most

miserable victory possible. And that's what makes it. We have no control over it. It's going to happen. Just watch them you know, hit smack themselves and the nuts with a hammer on the way to do a victory. Yep. And kind of sort of speaking

of which, moving in the next topic, finally and begrudgingly, the presidential transition has begun. The GSA chief has officially informed the Biden team that the formal transition process can begin. Because obviously, as everybody knows, with Trump refusing to concede the election, there's been no transition process, which is a standard part of the presidential turnover process in this country since the country began. But Trump has obstructed that, like he's obstructed everything

else. But that is fine. That wall is finally starting to come down, although Trump himself still has not conceded defeat. There's been these like little measures that I feel like are the closest to concession we're ever going to get from him, which is allowing the GSA to say the transition can start. And also today, uh, the White House said that Biden could start receiving the presidential daily briefings, which is standard in this process. So like, even though he's, still is saying, oh, we're going to fight it. He's still like holding his own bullshit line.

Things are actually starting to move a little bit, which I feel like, you know, is good. Yeah, they changed the fine print legal wording on the donations page to say that now 75% of the donations

to the legal fund are being skimmed off the top. And also they're not going to the camp even going to pay campaign deaths anymore. They're going to a new super PAC that Trump can dispense funds. I imagine he would just pay himself as a consultant or whatever, but you can also fund his 2024 run or by favor of some other Republican candidates

in the 2022 campaign elections. So now you might think, well, actually, no, no one watching this would think that, oh, they did it because they finally had to admit this was just the right and proper thing to do. I know none of you all thought that. But for anybody out there who might have thought that, it seems like maybe that wasn't the case because the thing that happened this week was

there were around about a hundred prominent american CEOs who sent a formal letter requesting that Donald Trump concede defeat and as part of that letter these CEOs threatened to withhold any donations from the aforementioned Georgia Republicans Senate campaign so it's like you know, once the once the real daddy show up Mark, once the real puppet masters show up and threaten, you know, the purse strings and all that, all of a sudden

shit starts happening. It's weird how that works. Yeah, it is bizarre because, I mean, Trump doesn't care about the Senate, but all the political appointees around him do because they need jobs in those offices, right? Right. They need that the party's

success is their future, or no, Trump's going back to, going to live in Mar-a-Lago or whatever. So they just started quietly doing the transition and not trying to draw his name to it. Like, like, and Emily, what's her name's letter? She didn't call Biden the President O'L Act. They're trying to, like, sneakily do a president's transition. Hope Trump doesn't notice. It's pretty funny.

Even Pompeo said he was going to cooperate with. Yeah. So, yeah, Emily Murphy, the Trump administration GSA chief, right. Like you said, they've gone out of their way to, like, take these measures without actually saying that Trump is conceding defeat or whatever. And after she took the step to allow the transition to begin, Trump tweeted about it, but it's not the typical Trump tweet for a lot of reasons.

Here's what it says. I want to thank Emily Murphy at GSA for her steadfast dedication and loyalty to our country. She has been harassed, threatened, and abused, and I do not want to see this happen to her, her families, or employees of the GSA. Our case strongly continues. We will keep up the good fight, and I believe we will prevail. Nevertheless, in the best interest of our country, I am recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols and have told my team to do the same. Has there ever been a Trump tweet that was more...

explicitly clearly written by somebody else than these tweets, right? Like, just the word nevertheless, but just the whole thing. Like, there's a zero percent chance he wrote this. No, yeah. And it's the whole thing, I mean, like, Emily Murphy's letter, like, she spent half a bit whining about how mean people have been to her and she was just doing her job, but no of that's true. And she said that people threatened her kids and her pets and don't do that people.

The kids and the pets didn't do anything. I mean, I don't know if I believe it or not, but anyway, the whole sort of thing, I'm glad it's over. I mean, like, so it was it, George, George W. Bush supposedly said it, they inaugurated. Trump's the inauguration when it was done. It's like, wow, that was some weird shit. So it turned Obama. I feel like when, when January 20th coming up, it's just going to be like, nobody's going to know what to make in the last four years. It's not going to have made any sense.

And everybody's going to go, like, Well, that was some weird shit. We all just go on into the future. Yeah, there was a tweet from earlier today where Trump held, he held like a press conference to state that the Dow was up over $30,000 for the first time in history and then pretty much said that and just left after like 60 seconds or something. And there was literal audio from journalists sitting in the crowd who literally said,

well, that was some weird shit. which I'm sure is what they've been saying the whole time. That was before the turkey partying. So it was the first time he's been seen in public since election day. He hasn't spoken since election day. And he comes out and just says, that I hit 30,000, peace and walked away.

He's like he's going to take credit for it. But immediately he said that Biden won the election, the stock market would tank, which hadn't happened yet. And in 2017, right after he took office, he said he should get credit for the stock market going back to when the election day was because the market was so excited about him he should get credit for that in before he took office so like i mean nothing trump says you didn't believe any of it but it's it's all very bizarre all right so in talking about this whole situation with uh

his supporters in georgia and what's going on and the pressure from CEOs to make the party to do something about him conceding and he doesn't concede but he takes some steps or whatever they and that lindsay graham quote i had earlier where he said like if we nominate Donald Trump, it will destroy the party and we will deserve it. Do you, I don't know, how do you rank the likelihood of that basically happening at the end of the day? That Donald Trump pretty much just carpet bombs the traditional American GOP on his way out the door and they're left to pick up the pieces. Like, is it too hopeful of me to think that that might actually happen? or like project it, Mark.

What's going to happen there? I mean, at the presidential level, like he's still mega popular with the party, but he has a pretty bad brand overall. And if he runs in 2024, he can definitely win the nomination. But when Biden has the power of incumbency and the Justice Department

and everybody's not working for Trump trying to get him elected, I don't think it's probably a presidential blowout. But the real danger is, We're not, we're more tribal than we are political. Like people vote, people just as they have an R or extra names. It's how there's a Q and a nine lady from North Georgia and in Congress. Nobody paid attention to what she said or what she's doing.

She's an R next to her name, right? So the danger is a bunch of Trumpist candidates get on the ballot because they're good in primaries. And they win generals just out of momentum. And we have a super mega far right party who no one really listens to what they're saying. Because they're so extreme that people can't process what they're arguing for. So that's like, that could be the future or it could be the people just like the fever breaks eventually and they start losing elections because they're too, you know, too crazy. And then they have to put up more moderate candidates. Or too divided amongst themselves, right?

Like this situation, like this whole thing in Georgia, that's why I'm so interested by it. It's like they're like, because the thing that I've always said about Republicans, because I felt like it had always been true has been like, look, you can say what you want about them. but they fucking stick together. Like, they, you know what I mean, no matter what scandals or whatever come up, at the end of the day, they still show up and they vote red each and every time. And we don't do that as much on the left.

And, you know, there's moral integrity and all that involved, which I appreciate, but it leads to us losing fucking elections. Because at the end of the day, they stick together and we often don't. I've always said that, and I've always believed that. But I'm saying all this shit with Trump in Georgia and everything right now, it's not really playing out that way, which I feel like is novel for my experience.

So I'm just interested in how that's all going to actually end up playing out, you know. Yeah, I mean, it's a Trump's always been willing to burn everything down to rule over the ashes. Right, exactly. It's just instead of doing it to country now, which the Republican Party didn't care. about now he's doing it to the republican party right exactly yes exactly i mean it's not it wouldn't be beyond him to be so mad um and two weeks out from an inauguration to tell people in georgia to write his name it right yeah so like he could uh he could very easily do something tremendously psychotic and wonderful yeah all right so some other news which is one of the

I'm too jaded to call this like, I mean, I guess it's better than bad. It's not bad news, but I'm not trying to hype. I think it's bad news, but go ahead. Oh, okay, all right, okay. So Oxycontin maker Purdue Pharma has pled guilty to criminal charges related to their role in the opioid crisis. This has happened today, which again, headline level seems like good news, especially if you're from like a place like I'm from or where you're from where the opioid crisis is just ravaged. everything for the past 20 years or so.

But you said you think this is bad news? Yeah, I mean, there were stories a couple weeks ago about how the DOJ was pushing prosecutors to wrap this up before inauguration because what they're trying to do is rush through a sweetheart deal where they get off without paying much of a penalty or fines before a hypothetical future Biden administration would actually punish them. And I mean, the Sacklers, they still have enough money left over to fund parlor. so there's well that's the thing that's why i was like that's why i wasn't going to straight up call it good news is because i refuse to believe there will be any actual like repudiation for

you know the people at the top like it's a good headline and whatever but they're still there's still going to be billionaires nothing's really going to fucking change and i think all that too but it's still like i don't know it's better to see some even if it's super official level of accountability, right, than none at all. It is. It is good because usually they, what usually they, instead of doing performative accountability, they do performative impunity, but they just phone everybody, how they can get away with everything.

So it's nice they feel enough pressure that they feel the need to go through the ceremony of punishing somebody. But, I mean, this reminds me, like corporations are people, except when it comes down to hold them accountable, then there's, there's nobody there. Exactly. Yep. So the corporation did this. No people were involved.

So there's no one to put in jail. It's like here in California, PG&E, because they had shitty wiring, jump started a wildfire that killed 80-some people. And the company was found convicted of, was convicted of manslaughter connection to all those people dying. And then no people were to jail.

No people were accountable. The corporation was guilty of a manslaughter. And everybody just sort of moved on. That's how we do it, America, buddy. It is. Business of America's business. business that is and now let's get into uh we've got a great guest for y'all tonight let's get her in here our guest tonight is um sarah smarsh who is a journalist who's covered class politics

and public policy for the new york times the new yorker harpers many other publications her first book heartland a memoir of working hard and being broke and the richest country on earth was a finalist for the national book award one of my favorite people everybody please welcome Sarah Smarsh. Hey, everybody. How's there? Good to see you.

Yeah, good to see you too. Thanks for joining us. Sarah, I think I can hear myself on your... Let me grab my headphones. One second. Live shows. Everybody's how it goes. Yeah.

I'm excited, man. I'm a big fan of Sarah for a low. Yeah. Look at that. I also like how she got the flag hanging behind her. Hey, man. I'm trying to...

I'm reclaiming it from the Republic. No, I know. I know. me and you we talked about this a little bit with your book event that we did recently the whole thing of them the other side like

co-opting or claiming patriotism as their own which is bullshit I have this I have this very Republican looking shirt because of that whole dynamic that's like it's a bald eagle's head that is made out of an American

flag and I'm I love wearing that thing because of exactly that whole situation. It's like, you don't own, you don't own patriotism or American pride or whatever. And you know what else? You don't own fucking country music. No, sir.

Damn straight. Absolutely. Not at all. Yeah, I think that if a lot of people, a lot of big time country fans knew that, knew what their, you know, the person that they were cheering for really thought about things.

they'd be very disappointed and upset. Or maybe they just turn a blind eye to it. I don't know. But yeah, that's how it is. So Sarah, Sarah Smarsh, everybody. Sarah, tell us where you're at right now, please. Yep, I'm coming at you from rural Kansas. Rural Kansas, that's right, which is where you are from.

Yes. Born and reared, they're in rural Kansas. So I want to ask you, you know, me and Mark both, we're rural Americans from Red State, America specifically. And I want to ask how you're feeling about, you know, Kansas in particular is one of the states that was talked about as being, you know, maybe up in the air a little bit.

Like there was opportunity there in Kansas. If you're a liberal, I mean. And then that's not how it ended up panning out. And I'm just wondering where you're at mentally right now, how you feel about how it all went down, how you feel about what might happen going forward and just where you're generally at. Yeah. Well, it's interesting just to give folks a little bit of context if they don't know. Kansas, of course, is infamously, as they say, Ruby Red State when we're talking about things

with that sort of dichotomy. And yet in 2018, basically on the heels of the era of Sam Brownback's governorship, which was sort of notorious in a lot of ways was a state-level economic experiment that was a model for the Trump administration and failed abysmally and bankrupted our state. On the heels of that, there was a sort of rising of moderates in response to that far-right swing that our state government had undergone. And in that shift, we were able to get some kind of centrist Democrats into office and that would include actually our female governor, Laura Kelly, as well as our third congressional district representative, Cherise Davids, who also happens to be the first openly gay rep from Kansas as well as one of the two first Native American females to

serve in the U.S. Congress. So, you know, we were all stoked about that a couple of years ago, folks on our side. And we thought perhaps there might be some openings with an open Senate seat that was up for grabs this past election. Indeed, the Republican won. He's a very Trumpian Republicans, so that doesn't bode well for that sort of move to center, let alone a shift left. But, you know, the Democratic candidate, who was also a woman Barbara Bollier, had a good run, I think had a better showing in terms of numbers than folks might have guessed. And what's been And interesting for me to reflect on, I guess, is, so I wear my politics on my sleeve. I am a progressive. I did all the same after 2018. I wrote a piece for the New York Times in which I was sort of assessing the landscape and thinking, you know, as much as I'm like team AOC, actually she and Bernie came to campaign for a progressive candidate in the fourth congressional district in 2018. He lost.

But that's all to say that like I used to be kind of in this line of thinking that like if we we're in a change moment and if we go all in on change in whichever direction it's got a better chance than the manila up the middle. And then in 2018 that kind of challenged my ideas and I thought you know maybe we've got to swing right before we can move left which would be logical in the way that a pendulum moves but then the centrist nominee for Senate lost when you know she raised it she outraised the

Republican candidate by like I think four times don't put me on that because I'm not positive on that stat but so so where I'm at is I'm just kind of you know I'm 40 years old now like I've shaken my the idealism of like you know let's just ride with what is possible and good and right like people's lives are literally at stake at a moment as crisis ridden as this one. And so I have shifted into a little bit more of pragmatic sort of thinking, whereas what's in my heart and soul might be far left, but I'm thinking like, is that really viable here right now? When will it be? What is the play right now? And I honestly like where I settle on that right now is I don't know. I know. Well, okay,

first of all, I relate very much to a lot of that because I know I get asked like similar questions about the sort of like, you know, uh, trajectory. What's the right thing to do? How do you, you know, reach these people or whatever? And the ultimate answer is like, I don't really know. I don't know, man, but what you were just talking about with how it all played out and, oh, should we really take swings or should we try to do this more centrist thing to sort of ease

people's toes into the water, you know, before moving forward in the future? I had all that going on in my head too. And I also, if I interpreted what you just said correctly, I feel. felt similarly to you that in the midterms, I mean, that like, we need, if you're in a state like Tennessee where I'm from, we probably need a more like moderate, because we, and I've talked about multiple times on here, but Phil Bredesen, right, was around for Senate in Tennessee at the time. And I thought he was like a really strong play because he had been the governor, the mayor of Nashville, and was popular in those roles. And I thought he was like the way to go

in order to get a Democrat in Tennessee. Tennessee, but he was the super moderate and ended up even like basically endorsing Brett Kavanaugh when all that was going on and everything. And then he got he got his ass wit. I mean, he got he got beat badly by Marsha Blackburn, who is a straight up lunatic Trumpian conservative. And that whole experience kind of changed the way that I feel about that whole deal going forward. You know, it's like I just don't, I don't think I believe in that anymore. I think you've got to be, you got to be one or the other. You know what I mean? No matter where you're at, you've got to shoot your shot. Yeah, yeah. I kind of feel like we don't have enough data because like one thing Democratic Party hasn't tried recently just giving people thing.

Like Trump, Trump just like, there's a whole article for people who were like quote after quote of people saying they voted for Trump because they got the $1,200 stimulus and $600 on employment. And he put his name on it and took credit for it. Right. And now you look at that and like Sarah, had a book come out about Dolly Parton think about how like popular Dolly Parton is all across the country and they all the philanthropy she does like she's like she created dollywood to get people jobs and she's donated for the vaccine and so like it's like people like you when you do things for him before we can do any sort of political analysis you got to sort of like try that and then you can know yeah no i mean when we look at those maps that um and you know i kind of resist the very pat

narrative about urban equals blue and rural equals red it's more complicated than that on the ground however that that is how that map shakes out ultimately with our winner take all politics in the electoral college and um it's no surprise that a group who has um not only been abandoned by and in in all sorts of policy the democratic party but but also lacks any geographic proximity to any center of power. I'm speaking now of rural America, specifically white rural America. It's not all white folks, but the white rural folks are the ones who lean conservative right now. And it's no surprise. To your point, they haven't felt any connection with government in a positive sense. Okay, federal policy was literally designed to destroy the family farm earlier in the 20th century.

successfully did so and my farm was one of them, my family's farm was one of them that went under. And we could talk also about farm subsidies and all sorts of ways that in which, you know, there are in theory sort of handouts, quote unquote, going around in that space, but by and large, there is a sort of understandable psychological unease in relationship to centers of power

and institutions of government. And the brilliance and the cynicism of the Republican party and the conservatives is that they get that so they they they feed them the line of we hate government even as we are the government and that happens to coincide perfectly with a lot of rich libertarians agendas the cook family is from kansas i'm not proud to say um and uh it it's yeah like if um if there were some sort of policy that was really in a in a bold um radical way, which is what is necessary right now to re-invigorate rural communities, which to my mind is necessary, not just for our social fabric, but our just economic wherewithal and environmental

security. That could potentially shift that demographics relationship to the concept of government and government programs and make a space for Democrats. But, you know, I don't know what kind of rural policy, Joe Biden's folks are going to come up with. But I hope it's robust and that they stop just writing that space off because it's, it's, it's, they're just giving it up. They're giving it up. Right. Yes.

I'm glad you said that because I was about to ask you about like, and look, the three of us are all, we are all biased because all of us are white rural Americans who are, you know, progressive or whatnot. But I know from, you know, things I've heard behind the scenes I've talked to people that like in Georgia right now you know I feel like the the white rural liberal vote

is still being very much like it's not worth spending time on right because like statistically two thirds of rural Democrats in the state of Georgia are black people and I know and I know that that's true but I'm saying it's just kind of treated as almost like a lost cause I think by the left, like even attempting to get white rural Americans. It's not worth the effort, you know. And I'm just like, it's just hard for me to accept that that's actually true.

But also it's just so clearly a self-fulfilling prophecy, you know, like, of course if, of course if you don't try, it's not going to happen. Like, how are you ever going to know if you don't try, right? And also you got to like get a little bit of a long game going with that where okay, maybe investing resources in one election cycle isn't going to, is it going to result in a victory in the upcoming race? However, the culture has to shift for ultimately those victories to start coming through. We're just, we're as a society, we're just, we're terrible at thinking in the long term.

and that's the electoral college of course is related to all of this in some problematic ways the way that that politicians sometimes are in national elections are forced to calculate who matters but yeah it's it's it's painful for me to watch and to my mind like there's there's so much money to go around can't I mean nothing nothing to rural America literally I mean, throw it up on dims. Yeah. I mean, they got like a huge opening, right? I mean, think about how popular FDR still is.

And like, like, you look at like, I mean, they, the Trace Home State, they tried to privatize the Tennessee Valley Authority finally. And you had Republicans, Marshall Blackburn was like, no, you can't privatize the TVA because rates will go up. And I was like, yeah, exactly. The rates will go up if you privatize utilities. Because, like, there's still good, there's were good ideas in 1935 and they're good ideas now. And, but like all the supply chain issues we have with COVID, since COVID and all of the food rotting

and farms, you couldn't get delivered to hungry people. It's like, these are huge opportunities to describe these things as a national security issues to reinvest in small towns and family farms and win votes, you know, make yourself more popular of actually helping people. Totally. Yeah. I would love to see the Green New Deal very directly. I don't know if market is the right term, but, but like, present.

to rural Americans as like, this is something that not only might benefit you in some roundabout way, but we would actually like you to be the stewards of this. And folks who balk at that and assume that folks in rural areas don't care about the environment, I think are misguided. What they might be missing is that folks in rural areas also have to, they have to think about their own survival. And if that is tied to, you know, economically tied to something that's environmentally disastrous. They're sort of, I'm just saying like, let's not blame the folks at the bottom of that industrial, you know, power structure.

And they might be more open to ideas built into something like the Green New Deal than the Democrats assume if, to go back to your earlier point, it was, you know, packaged as a gift of sorts and entrusted to rural Americans. to be stewards of rural spaces. Yeah, I mean, like Texas was leading in wind and electric on solar power, and what they've done is try to like go from subsidizing, wind and solar don't really need subsidies anymore because they're more profitable. So what they're doing is they're taxing wind and solar and subsidizing oil,

so we're paying extra to keep the world dying. It's a very weird process. It seems like it'd be an easy political layup. Because there's a lot of money and, you know, when it's older. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right.

As Mark alluded to earlier, just so everybody knows, Sarah has a new book out and it's wonderful. I've read it. It's called She Come By Natural Dolly Parton and the women who loved her songs. Now, of course, like I'm a Tennessee and I'm anything Dolly related is always going to hit for me and be near and dear to my heart. But it's wonderful, whether, however much you know about, Dolly already or not educate yourself or just remind yourself of the awesomeness that is Dolly Parton.

But Sarah, you want to talk a little bit about just like the book, why you wrote it, how it came up, how people can find it, that type of thing. Sure. So in 2016, there's this great magazine about country music, roots music called No Depression. It's got a pretty niche readership. It's a print only quarterly. But I'm a big fan. they had this fellowship out asking a writer to basically dive deep on some intersection of

country and roots music and some bigger social issues, culture, and so on. And that genre so rarely is dignified and serious by serious criticism or exploration that I jumped at the opportunity to basically write about Dolly Parton as an exemplar of what I would call working-class feminism. The idea for the writing came about kind of the dawn of our current political era, pussy grabber in the White House, the women's march was nascent. And I was thinking a lot about the intersection between gender and class because as a woman who identifies as a feminist, I'm also very sensitive to the fact that a lot of very powerful women who, by my measures, are indeed feminists in the way they live their lives are nonetheless a little bit reluctant about that

term because it has been weaponized by the political factions that reach them with successfully with their messaging. So the book is in some ways kind of a love letter and a thank you even to the women who have contributed to my gender's progress, even as they maybe couldn't afford to be at the march or were somehow suspicious of a... political movement that involves theory and college campuses and academic texts that they never got to access. I think that you can still be a feminist, walk the walk, even if you aren't necessarily talking the talk. I think that describes Dolly, and you'd be hard pressed to find a woman who's done more for her gender than Dolly Parton. hell yes absolutely uh and again wonderful book um make sure you check it out sarah do you have like

i always like to ask people do you have like a preference for how people if they're interested should go about getting it you know because there's a lot of different ways you can get a book what do you think the best way to go about it i appreciate that um you know i i've got my favorite local and independent bookstores but the only thing that matters to me is that if possible folks um whether they're buying my book or somebody else's that they prioritize small and local businesses any way they can in these times. Local bookstores are in, you know, speaking of shifting the culture in red states, those sort of spaces are absolutely crucial and sacred to the spread of ideas and conversation and safe spaces for diverse groups of people. So there's a lot more reasons

than just commerce to boost your local bookstore. Yep, absolutely. So there you go. Go to your local bookstore if you can at all and check out. She come by at Natural. Dolly Parton and the women who lived her songs. Also, check out Sarah's first book,

Heartland, a memoir of working hard and being broke in the richest country on earth. Sarah, thank you so much for joining us tonight. We really appreciate it. Thank you, Ted. Nice chatting with you. Yeah, always a pleasure. Sarah Smarsh, everybody.

So, Matt, you start throwing some comments up there if we got them. See what we got, what people thinking about and whatnot. But yeah, Sarah, if you guys are not familiar with Sarah, yes, she's awesome. She actually was, if you follow me before and you know my other podcast, the well-read podcast with Corey and Drew, Sarah Smarsh was the very first guest we ever had on the well-red podcast way back. I don't know, fucking four years ago or whatever it was. Bobby Mishinsky says, Sarah impresses me. Yeah, she's one of those people.

She's just one of those impressive type of people. She has that effect. She's taken down to run a whole book trip, not once but twice. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah, she's awesome. But we talked about, she had a, she had like a virtual book event for that new Dolly Parton book. and very graciously asked me to host or emce it,

which was awesome. And we talked about a lot of things, but we were talking about a thing that I think is kind of weird while Matt's finding another comment out there is like, I, you know, I grew up in the 90s, and in the 90s to me, in my perspective, women were like very, very prevalent in popular country music, right? You had like fucking,

Riba, Shina, Twain, Leanne, Womack, Dana Carter, the Judds, the Dixie Chicks, obviously. And that's not really the case anymore.

There's only like a couple of like prominent women in country music. It just seems like country music, the, okay, popular country music, which I don't even classify as country music, just continues down this unfortunate, regressive

trajectory. Real, real, Rick Walker said, what's the name of her book? The name of her book is, her new book is she come by it natural, Dolly Parton and the women who loved her songs. I think if you just look up Sarah Smar, she'll find, you know, ways to get a hold of either of her books. I mean, dolly is just such like a, I mean, we joked about it before, but like replaced all the Civil War General statues with Dolly statues. Yeah, yeah. much better person and southern.

Zach Ramie says, hipsters with Southern accents. Now that's ironic. All right, Zach, God damn it. I'm going to steal some material from my tour mate, Drew Morgan, here who has a whole bit on this. And we also did a sketch on it for Comedy Central. The only reason you think that, just so you know,

is because hipsters have co-opted of the Southern. and old boy cultural tendons. You think a mustache is hipstery? No, it was a goddamn man. My papal had a mustache. His papal before him had a mustache. And I wear glasses because my eyes don't work, motherfucker.

Okay? But like, all the, fucking plaid, vinyl records, bloodied out of mason jars. Drinking out of mason jars. Farm to table. Yes, farm to table, moustaches, beards, all that. That shit was hours before it was theirs, okay? They took it and now people associate it with hipsterdom when that ain't, that ain't how it would be.

I was at a barbecue in Brooklyn once where they did they were doing, they had a pig in the ground. Everyone thought it was the coolest thing in the world. It's like, you're in New York, you have ovens. We couldn't pick the ground because all we had was a pig in the ground. Taylor May says, they came for our flannels. They did, and they took them. They took the flannels, and now they're theirs. You know, can't deny it.

I know the glasses do a lot of work against my favor in this argument, I'm aware. But again, I don't, my eyes don't hit. I can't touch my eyeball. I can't do it. Yeah. It's not that for me. I have fucking, you know, my eyes just suck. As y'all know, I had eye surgery recently.

It keeps me from wearing contacts, at least as for right now. salty cynics says Hillbilly progressives are more elusive than Bigfoot See, I think it's a good joke But people frame stuff all weird They just think it's like Everybody hates their fucking boss

Everybody knows banks or rip off Every half country songs Are about banks taking the farm And one to kill a banker I'm saying like It wasn't hipsters who marched up Bluer Mountain with shotguns just have a shootout with Pinkerton's over weekends off and getting paid in actual cash instead of company script.

So I think I just think it's like the left does a really good job, a really bad job of framing what these fights are about because they went to too much college, as we've talked about before. Another thing, it's like, yeah, I've talked about this a lot too, but it's true. I do shows all throughout the South and stuff and people will come up to me and they're from like a small town in the, you know, the general area and drove into whatever city to see the show. And they'll tell me like that they're a closet. they use the term closeted liberal.

They're like a closet liberal in their hometown. They don't want anybody to know because they'll be ostracized and whatever. And I'm not shitting on that because I understand, I mean, I understand where that mentality comes from. But what I'm saying is when they're all like that, when they're all like afraid to say that that's how they feel, of course they all each individually are going to think they are literally the only one.

Like it's anecdotal, but like my buddies from back home that I went to have, school with we graduated high school with like 60 kids tiny extremely rural and there's a group of like 10 of us or so and those guys all still live back home they work back home got families back there and everything and they are also liberals you know uh and i know 10 wow trey you know 10 other ones like you but 10 people in my age group in a town like salina tennessee is a not insignificant portion of the population Like it's not, it's nowhere near as rare as people think it is. Is it rare?

We're not, we're nowhere close to the majority. I'm not saying that. Of course we're not. But it's nowhere near as rare as people think or act like it is. Would, do you be Christmas tree farms? Yeah, Craig Hargis says, could the Green New Deal reimburse farmers for tree farms? I don't know, Mark. That's a, yeah, that's one of the, whenever we get a question like that, I always

will be like, Mark, answer it. I don't know what it's. I don't know. I mean, it's just the, it's just mostly about changing incentive. Like right now people are incentivized to, like, if you're going to be really libertarian laissez-faire, you just said the government shouldn't, should, shouldn't offer any incentive standing industry, right?

If you're, once you start meddling, you've given up the conceit that it's possible. to meddling is okay. So what you're doing is you're trying to meddling to encourage societally beneficial behavior, right? So you give tax credits to people to do certain things. But we're in a really perverse situation here where we give tax credits for

tax credits for bad behavior. For example, if you're a small business owner, you get a tax write off for a truck, right? Because you're managing plumbers buying trucks, but dentists can buy SUVs. So you should, if you're going to give a tax incentive for a dentist to buy something for his business, you should encourage him to buy Prius or something

where he's just commuting back on with the work, right? We do lots of shit like that. Matt is saying that he's talking about paying people to plant trees for carbon sinks. Yes, that's a good idea. You've got a bunch of empty land that you're not using. We better off for society. If you put trees in the land, we pay you, you plant trees. We breathe easier. You get money. You have nice trees to look at. Seems like a good use of societal resources. Yep. Trees had. Well, you. You heard it here last. Everybody, trees hit.

But that's, uh, that's, uh, you climb them. Yeah, you can climb them, chop them down, turn them into, uh, you know, houses that you put on other trees. You can do all this stuff. Yeah. But we are just about out of time for this edition of evening skews. And again, as a reminder, there will not be, uh, a Thursday edition this week, because it's Thanksgiving.

We want y'all to sit at home, get fat, watch football and nap on the couch and all that stuff and do all the things that Americans do. on Thanksgiving and reflect on what you had to be thankful for everybody but we will be back a week from today December 1st for even skew so with that said thank you I'm thankful for my buddy Trey Crowder mm I'm thankful for you too smart mark and every one of you lovely people out there and producer Matt save big on select major kitchen appliances at loaves get up to an additional three hundred dollars off when you spend one $1,996 or more on a qualifying major kitchen appliance.

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