WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Social Mediators: Super Tuesday

Episode Date: March 9, 2024

This week we talk about Super Tuesday and the current trajectory of this year's presidential election. Tune in to hear Jillian know shockingly little about the election until an author from the 90s is mentioned and both Jillian and Garret weigh into the primaries when they don't really have the energy to care.   

This is the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM, where we examine the true disparity between what's on social media and what's actually true. I'm Jillian Parks. And I'm Garrett Gulesby. And today we're talking about the best Tuesday in all the land. Some might even call it a Super Tuesday. Well, that might be a little extreme. Oh, wait. It's not.

That's the perfect label for it. We're talking about Super Tuesday. We're talking about elections. We're talking about politics. Whomp, womp, I do not. I do not like talking about politics. politics, but I feel like it is my civic duty as a co-host of a podcast to bring up politics sometimes, right? It's in the rules. I think we wrote those down freshman year, and one of the rules

was must talk about politics a couple times. Must talk about Kanye West at least once a semester. Wait, is he coming up in this one? No, no, no, no. But he's just, he's part of the rules also. It just seems like we talk about Kanye, a fair amount. It's true. He's in the news. Him and Taylor Swift come up like more than most. I try to avoid. I try to, I'm going to try to, I'm going to to keep avoiding them, but it might be inevitable because they just keep doing stuff, dude. Yeah. Anyway, Trump is doing stuff too, so is Biden, and everyone's doing stuff.

It seems to be the way that the world works. Yeah, people doing things. Wow, really insightful of us. We're very good at this. Right. Okay. Super Tuesday. First thing I'm going to ask, on behalf of the listeners, not for me at all, is for you to start us off with a definition of what Super Tuesday is

and then I will feel more comfortable talking about what I found. Okay. Super Tuesday is really just a journalist term for a day typically in March that is always a Tuesday for reasons that we will get into later. There is a reason. It's actually a very interesting reason. Okay. But it's just a day when a ton of states choose to have their election primary all on the same day. Oh, okay.

So a ton of delegates are up for grabs all on the same day. It's a different conglomeration of states every election, but it's always quite a few. Yeah, it started back in the 70s and 80s where a few states at a time would all have their primary on the same day. And then it just started to be more and more. And this year it was 16 states. And this election is not so much about Democrats versus Republicans as much as like inter-party competition. Am I right in saying that? That's right.

It's a primary election, so Republicans against Republicans, Democrats against Democrats, they're not going toe to toe in any way. We're figuring out who is going to be the nominee for president from these parties. Thank you for that explanation because I'm not a girl who likes politics nor thinks about it, nor listens when people talk about it. So that was a little bit of a confusing detail for me. Let's hop into social media. First thing I want to say is that MSNBC did a hilarious. broadcast either during or like right after Super Tuesday that really just made me laugh really hard because all the clips are I mean they seem kind of like parody clips to me maybe I mean I know

they're real but they were really just talking about um the fact that the only reason people are voting for Trump is because they're racist like truly that was the crux of that broadcast and every clip I saw was this one woman saying that same thing in a million different ways. That being said, that leads into my next point from what I found in social media, is that Trump apparently swept. He did very well. Maybe better than people were expecting, and I know it's not a Trump versus Biden thing, but from the way that Twitter and TikTok have made it seem,

it seems as though Trump has performed better than we ever could have possibly. dreamed, which to me raises red flags of suspicion because this is what they did to Hillary. And they were like, wow, she's incredible. She's going to win. She's got it in the bag. And then she didn't. So that does raise a little bit of red flags to me. In terms of logistics, it seems as per Twitter that Trump has won 23 primaries so far, if that's

correct. And Nikki Haley won two before dropping out yesterday. yesterday morning. The two that she won were Vermont and the swamp, the place that I currently reside, Washington, D.C., which I don't know if that's where you'd want to win. You know what I mean? Yeah. I don't know if that would be something you would be excited about.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like that is a little bit sus. Especially if you're the Republican candidate winning in D.C., that doesn't mean a whole lot, I'd imagine. Right. That's kind of how I feel, too. But maybe that's just speculation. Anyway, I also think it's really important that there's a really interesting counter-narrative to the Trump is winning everything that says Biden's not winning right now because of the way he's handled the Israel-Hamas conflict, that there's a lot of uncommitted voters because of Biden's, I guess, allegiance to Israel, that they are just like not. committing, I guess they call them

uncommitted voters. I don't know if that means they didn't vote at all. I don't know if that means they voted for some sort of like third party or if they voted a different Democratic candidate. I'm not entirely sure there, but that's a big narrative right now is that there's a bunch of uncommitted voters. Apparently there's a lot of

uncommitted voters in Michigan specifically, but that might just be my algorithm showing me what's super relevant. I know that a lot of people are saying that by next, week, Trump will be the official nominee because there's primary elections in Georgia, Mississippi, and Washington. And with those delegates, he'll be able to get the, like, 1,215 that you need in order to be the nominee. So that's pretty key. I will say that Vecramaswamy did tweet that Biden will not be the Democratic nominee.

So I'd be interested to hear what you think about that. I don't know who else it would be. because from what I can tell, the only primary that Biden's lost, and this could be wrong, but this is the only one that's come up, is that the only primary Biden's lost is Samoa, which is just like a U.S. territory, and it was because some guy named Jason won it. So I don't really have a lot of additional information. I think it's Jason. I don't really know.

There's one really funny tweet that made me laugh really hard. that just says, guys, Joe Biden held a Galaxy Z-Fold 5 on Super Tuesday. And there's just a picture of him holding it. That tweet got 23 likes. Wow. And that came up pretty near the top. I don't really know what to say about that. A lot of people also think that Biden will be the nominee.

So I think it's just the Vec that said that. Oh, yeah. Joe Biden lost American Samoa to Jason Palmer. Who's Jason Palmer? Wait, I'm going to look this guy up because I've never heard of him in my life. He's a Democrat, but he's an entrepreneur and he won American Samoa. I don't really know if that even counts for anything. I would like you to know. Oh, never mind. Sorry. I looked up Jason Palmer and the first thing that came up was Jason Day, who is indeed a professional golfer. So I was like, huh, how many strokes is he up on the PGA? That's a little weird. That would be awesome if it was the same person, but it's not.

I feel like there's more to say. I mean, apparently Biden did really well for Super Tuesday as well, but everybody only wants to talk about Trump. I don't really know what to say about that, to be real with you, but that just is what it seems like. So feel free to fill in some gaps. You can ask me some questions if you'd like to see if there's additional information.

I'm just not pulling out of my scroll. But that's what I have to offer. For those of you who are just turning in, this is social mediators on Radio for Hillsdale, 101.1.1.7 FM. I'm Jillian Parks. And I'm Gary Gouldsby. And we're currently talking about

our favorite Tuesday, Super Tuesday. Okay, so my one big question for you is, did you see, was there anybody on social media talking about, like, just the concept of Super Tuesday and whether they liked the fact that this is done or not?

Like, I don't know. Knowing what it is makes me, suspicious that there are probably people out there on social media that are not happy with this being a way that voting is done in the U.S. And I'll explain why that is in a minute. Definitely nobody was engaging with it on that level. Okay. Because everything that's going on is really pure like love Biden, hate Biden, love Trump, hate Trump, and that, or a little bit of love Nikki Haley. There's a little bit of love for

our female politician friend there. So that's all. I have to say about that. Okay. That's kind of surprising. So I'm going to dive right into why we have Super Tuesday, why it may or may not be a good or bad thing. And then some of the results here. So term Super Tuesday first coined, I believe it was 1976. And basically one of the presidential candidates at the time had this idea where he would try to get states to hold their primary early on in the election year all on the same day in states that he thought he was going to win. So that... Wait, who?

I forget who the candidate was. They didn't wind up winning. Bummer. Funny thing, yes. Several of the people that wind up doing well on Super Tuesday do not wind up winning the election. Oh, no. This is not always the case. It's actually more often than not the winner on Super Tuesday is the winner of the election.

But sometimes it does go the other way. Wait, so did Trump win Super Tuesday? Is that a thing? Yes, he did. Oh, absolutely. And I'll get to that in a minute. I thought it wasn't Democrat versus Republican. It is.

He won it against all the other Republicans. So did Biden also win Super Tuesday? Oh, so they both won Super Tuesday? They both won. So they're both going to win the election? They're both going to compete against each other. And they're both going to be president? They're going to be co-presidents?

Oh, my gosh, that's so cute. Wouldn't that be fun? Just let him duke it out in the White House? Didn't they used to do that? Early in the American Republic, the second place winner was just the vice president? The vice president? Yes, that used to be how it was. Let's bring that back.

Oh, my gosh. Just kidding. The one that... Shout out. TJ. Love that guy. Anyway, please continue. So anyway, the candidate decided to have like three Southern states he thought he was going to win, all have their primary on the same day, early in the election year, really just to send a political message of like, oh, he's got momentum behind him.

He won three primaries all at once. And that's really what it's all about, is trying to gain political momentum. And why some political commentators think this is a bad thing is that it really sticks the American people with a very few choices of candidates because ultimately, you know, two people are going to come out on top on Super Tuesday, which doesn't mean that they won all the primaries. But what it does mean is that they have tremendous momentum behind them. And it's very hard for a third party or another candidate from their party to make any kind of comeback after Super Tuesday.

It's possible. It's been done. But it's not super common. Has it actually been done? Yes, Ronald Reagan was behind on Super Tuesday. Gasp! Wow! That's so inspirational to me. Yes. Jimmy Carter, by a contrast, was ahead on Super Tuesday and lost. Well, I don't know how I feel about Jimmy Carter, so that's it.

But he won eventually. So anyway, different story, different election. So anyway, that's the kind of the goal behind Super Tuesday is just to get a candidate political momentum by having a bunch of elections all on the same day. just to it also tends to be a very diverse base of voters that are voting on Super Tuesday. I'm just going to read for you the states that voted this Super Tuesday and you'll kind of see what I mean. Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, and Virginia. So as you can see, a pretty good mix of... So all the ones that matter. Pretty much.

And Vermont. And Vermont. Sorry if you're from Vermont. Oops. Yes, no hate for the people from Vermont. No hate to Vermont. But yes, so those states, you know, they carry a lot of delegates. They matter a lot.

So the people that win those states tend to win the elections, but that's not always true. We'll talk a little bit about the results for this Super Tuesday. As you said, Trump pretty much swept the floor with Nikki Haley. She won one of the primaries, just Vermont, on Super Tuesday. and it wasn't close. In fact, Trump's margins of victory were usually 10 plus percent, except in a few cases. Okay. So, yes, Trump won very decidedly, which was, I think a lot of people were surprised by how much he won by, because he declined to participate in a lot of typical campaign activities this year.

Like what? Like the debates, different speeches, he just didn't go. A lot of it was because he's been in, court so much and he's like he's getting yeah like 91 indictments or something like that indictments is the right number that's pretty I did hear a lot about that yeah so just by the way we talked about this in a previous episode but he has been acquitted of chart like he's he's allowed to be on the ballot

in Colorado the Supreme Court ruled that he did not incite an insurrection and that he is is free to run in their election it is important to know there are a few justices that disagreed about the whole inciting insurrection thing, but they all agreed that he was legally allowed to run. Yeah, I saw a tweet that was like it was unanimity, but not unity or something like that. Like, they were unanimous decision that he was permitted to run.

But they didn't agree on it. Yeah, they all had different. Mm-hmm. They had different views about the whole insurrection bit. Womp, womp. So likewise, Biden smoked his competition. which I think... Who was Biden's competition?

That's what I was about to get into because when you look into who his competition was, you're like, oh. It's Jason Palmer. That's why he's winning. Well, who is Jason? You're the main Democratic contenders other than Joe Biden. Tell me if you've heard of any of them.

Excellent. I will. Dean Phillips. We have a Dean Phillips at our school. Could be anybody. But she is the dean. This Dean Phillips, he's, He's currently a representative from Minnesota and the heir to a very large liquor company.

Oh, yay. Yay. Also, fun fact about Mr. Phillips is he owns a gelato business. I'm going to vote for him. Doesn't he sound like such a wholesome lad? Yeah, he does actually. Well, the liquor estate doesn't sound as wholesome as the gelato deal. Yeah.

So it's kind of a double-edged sword, I guess. Yeah, I guess you're right. So him. Next guy, if he is listening, which he's definitely not. But if he is, I'm going to apologize for mispronouncing his name because he's from Turkey. His name is Shank Yuger. Okay. Anyway, he is born in Turkey, the host of a very progressive TV show called Young Turks TV.

Yes, I know. There are lots of people that say, hey, he can't run for president. He can't. Am I wrong? No one has actually decided whether he can run for president or not, but he's doing it. Wait, no, you can't. That's like the thing. It's like if you're not.

You're right. Wait, what are you talking about right now? I believe he's, I don't know if he's actively in court, but he talked about taking the issue to court and basically being like, I can run for president. Whoa, because he decided. Like, what is the legal? I have no idea what his argument is. I couldn't tell you. Couldn't begin to formulate it.

And then the last. I'm exhausted. The last heavyweight contender against Joe Biden is Miriamson, Williamson, rather. She's an author. You familiar? Yes. I've absolutely heard of her. But I don't think for presidential reasons.

Well, she failed in 2020. She tried to run 2020 and failed. Oh, my gosh. Maybe that's it. Wow. Okay. I'm like shocked. I was looking her up and this just struck me as kind of a fun little tidbit.

She was the former spiritual leader of a Michigan unity church. I don't know what that means, but that's just what it said. So she was a spiritual leader. Third party candidate. A return to love. That's her book. Yes, that is her book. You're right.

Okay. I know who she is as an author. I didn't know she was running for president. Yes. So a couple third party candidates, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. We recognize that name. Yes. He's the nephew.

He came to Hillsdale. Yes, he did. Lawyer, author, extraordinaire. Jill Stein, who's a doctor, there was very little information about Jill Stein. I like her. Her and I have the same-ish name. Cornell West is the last guy.

He has really fun hair. He's super progressive and is an activist for the People's Party. Nikki Haley, as we said, was running against Trump but has now dropped out because she was getting completely shell act. Yeah. Chris Christie was also in the running for a while. Not on Super Tuesday, but beforehand, he's dropped out since then. And he is just, he's like the anti-Trump.

He just hates the man's guts. Wow. And then Ron DeSantis, who I don't know about y'all, but everybody else that was on kind of the Republican side of the aisle, I think was kind of hoping for Ron to do a little bit better. I mean, he dropped out, though. He did drop out. So how can you do better if you're not even in the really? I mean, he still did get some votes, I'm assuming, right? Not on Super Tuesday.

He was out before Super Tuesday. But I could have sworn, well, okay, infographics are not trustworthy sources of information. But I did see some infographics that had Trump, Nikki Haley, and Ron DeSanjas on there. That might have been from previous, like cumulative primaries before that because there had been others that have happened. Potentially. So essentially, what's the same? the American people has landed with is Trump v. Biden for the presidential race. And there's been some pretty interesting polling data to show that most Americans, like

somewhere on the order of two-thirds of Americans, are just not super happy that either of them are the choice. Oh. So it's, yeah, it's kind of an interesting situation where you have these two guys that won by a lot and not a lot of people actually want them to be president. I think people are just dealing with. what they've been given. Yes.

But there's a lot of complaints about the Super Tuesday system sort of favoring these big candidates that have deep pockets and have the ability to just stage these all-out sort of campaigns for these big days and almost be in multiple places at once. Because if you can't do that, if you don't have the bandwidth to do that, there's no way that you can really compete. And also, it pretty much precludes anyone from joining the race late. There's no way you can really join the race now, between now and June, right? You'd have to.

Unless you're me, of course. I can probably do it. Yeah, Gillian, you should just do it. I'm going to hop in. Just hop in. I'm announcing my candidacy for president of the United States. Woo! It'll be great.

Will you write me in? Yeah, let's do it. Thanks, Garrett. Appreciate it. I hear it takes a while, though. I don't know. All this paperwork, you have to file in the states you want to run in and all this stuff. I won't do it.

Too bad. Well, that's what I have for you. Perfect. It is less confusing to me now. Thank you. Good. I'm glad. I hope after the election, everybody holds hands and sings. Wouldn't that be nice? Are we ready to give it our grade before signing off for the week? I think so.

All right. Three, two, one. C minus? Yeah. D, C, minus. I just don't. I didn't know what it was. That's kind of a problem.

part of that is my own like just true lack it's not that people haven't told me people have definitely tried to explain it to me before I just don't hold on to because I have other stuff I'm more interested in

like that book a return to love I forgot that that's on my reading list how crazy is that that's what I got out of this episode if you were curious okay this is good stuff well it was something yeah I actually got other stuff too but I'll probably forget it and then next time we talk about it I'll have to ask you to define it

again. Sounds good. Thanks so much for tuning into the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Julian Parks. And I'm Gerard Gelsby. We'll talk to you next week.