Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:23]
| Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, August 10th, 2024. It is 2045 UTC as we're starting to record. I am Sam Minter. Yvonne Bo is not here today, and I had no volunteers to do it with me, so you got one of these solo shows we had had last week. Yvonne will be back next week as far as I know right now. So let me give you a little idea of the agenda. I'm going to start out with a, but first I have a movie. I'll talk about a movie. And then I think I'm going to break it into three segments. And first is going to be Harrison Waltz. Waltz. It's not Waltz. It's walls, walls, not Waltz. It's like the thing you walk into when you're not watching where you're going. It's not the dance. Anyway, Harrison Walls, and we'll talk a little bit about them and their campaign and how that's going and the VP pick and all that, because that happened since the last show. And then we'll talk about Trump Advance a little bit on the next segment, on some of the things going on on that side of the campaign world. And then finally, we'll end up with an election graphs update. I'll update you on how the polls are doing and how that's looking. As of this moment, when I'm recording, it changes every day because there are new polls coming out. But as of when I'm recording, I'll give you the update. That is the general plan.
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Sam:
[1:51]
| And yeah, it's fun. It's fun, exciting and fun and whatever I'm doing this. You know how sometimes on the, when I end up recording on the weekends, I end up doing sort of one segment at a time and then taking a long break and doing other things and then coming back to it. I have no idea. I might, I might do that. Now that we're doing the live streaming thing, which by the way, youtube.com slash at curmudgeons hyphen corner, you can see like the live streams when I do this. If you subscribe and click the bell, you'll get some sort of notification, blah, blah, blah. Or if you follow the curmudgeons corner account on Mastodon, which you can find the link to on curmudgeons hyphen corner.com, there'll be a little announcement when I go live. But like I was thinking, you know, if I do it in segments now, then the live streams will also be in segments. And I'll be like, you know, I'll do this for a little bit and then I'll come back later and I'll do it a little bit. It'll be a little weird, but whatever, you know, whatever. So anyway, that's the plan. And I guess I could just get started. The movie this time around is one I watched in February. We're that far behind at the moment. And it's The Last Temptation of Christ from 1988.
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Sam:
[3:16]
| And I can tell you, you know, to start out, I'm giving you a thumb sideways. Because really, first of all, it's long. It's 163 minutes. i felt like it really really didn't need to be that long and for i'm gonna say roughly the first half but it may have even been more than the first half i was dragging through it i was not impressed at all it was just sort of it felt like you know that you were going for anybody who doesn't know This is a, a religious drama. Obviously you could probably tell by the name back in the eighties. It was a major, like there was a major controversy around it and it being sacrilegious and blah, blah, blah. And, you know, whatever it has, William Defoe plays Jesus, I guess. And there are a few other people in it.
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Sam:
[4:19]
| And, and, and the thing is like the first part of the movie. And like I said, it may have been the first three quarters of the movie. I don't know. Basically does the standard retelling of the Gospels. You know, there are a few things because it's fictionalized, obviously. Well, I mean, all things fiction. But anyway, my personal opinion on religion, but whatever. It's the standard story. With a few little things here and there to sort of humanize Jesus a little bit and make him not seem completely like a superhuman divine creature that's perfect or whatever. So there were a few elements to humanize him. And that was fine.
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Sam:
[5:07]
| The first three quarters of the movie, maybe it was a half, maybe it was three quarters, I don't know, it was the standard biblical retelling of the story, of the standard gospel story. Jesus grows up, he discovers he's got this special relationship with God, blah, blah, blah. And honestly, I was a little bit annoyed. I said it humanizes him a little bit, but not a lot, actually. There was a lot that was sort of like, you know, oh yeah, he is talking to God. He is doing whatever. Although there was a constantly like, is he talking to God or is he mentally ill? You know, and that was very unclear. And I guess that's part of why people were upset about it.
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Sam:
[5:55]
| But I, his, just the way he spoke and sort of these, oh, I'm calm and blah, blah, blah. It just really irritated me. I was like the first half. I sort of alternated between mocking how like, Oh look, this, this guy really is troubled. Somebody should get him help. And just being annoyed by the tone he used and the way he talked and then being annoyed more when it seemed like, okay, well some of the things he's doing is are real and there's things. And, and I don't know, But it's still a fairly standard interpretation, and I felt like it was slow.
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Sam:
[6:39]
| It was boring.
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Sam:
[6:43]
| They were clearly trying to make him seem human, but he was still human in a way that was... Still seemed like, oh, he's not quite right. He's not quite relatable. He's either being super good or he's not well or something, and it just never quite gelled for me. And it just was not clicking in an entertaining way for me. It was like, oh, God, how much longer is this? Do we really have this much time left? left.
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Sam:
[7:21]
| But, and this is why I end up with a thumb sideways instead of a thumbs down. I liked the ending because the, the ending and I have spoilers here for, you know, a, what, 1988, how long ago was that? Oh God, too long. Let's not do the math. I'm trying to, it's 30 some years. Anyway, spoilers.
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Sam:
[7:45]
| The bottom line is that, and this I think is the thing that causes the title, The Last Temptation of Christ. It's the thing that caused most of the controversy. I mean, some of it was the stuff before this when he was clearly tempted by Mary Magdalene and had some human frailties that came into play. But the key here is while he's getting crucified, He's basically offered a chance at a normal human life. And it diverges into an alternate history where he walked away from the crucifixion and went and got married, had children, lived a good long life, and the history of the region played out in the background around him. And this was the last temptation. to not end up crucified and become the savior and all of this kind of stuff, but instead live a nice human life.
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Sam:
[8:52]
| And then sort of at a certain point where that has gone on for a while, he's basically given the choice of like, look how things are going wrong in the world because you didn't make the sacrifice.
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Sam:
[9:07]
| Here you go. Can you go back? And then, you know, he makes the choice to go back and have the, you know, the crucifixion play out as the Bible story had originally said. That. That's the last temptation that was being talked about. This was an adaptation of a novel as well from 1955. So I have not read the novel. I've only seen the movie. But I liked the ending. I thought that was actually creative and interesting and a nice spin that was doing something different that I had not seen before with this. And I'm, I'm sure others have, of course, but like it was actually like that part had my attention. That part had me being like, Oh, this is cool. This is a nice, like it's diverged from the Bible story. And now we're talking about something that's more interesting. It's just that to get there, You had to slog through like two hours of a not particularly great retelling of the standard Bible story.
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Sam:
[10:22]
| And, you know, I mean, there are, of course, many movies of the standard retelling of the Bible story. It's just this one didn't really do it for me for that part of the movie, which was most of the movie. Which is why I give it a thumb sideways. If it had only been the standard story of Jesus's lifetime, then I'd be like, oh, okay. It's interesting in that it's kind of gritty. They tried to make it seem a little bit like a little realistic in terms of, you know, the, the, I don't know, things are dirty, the technology of the day, you know, I don't know, not super realistic, but it has the, the gritty sort of aspect of things. Some things were still stylized, but it was long and boring, and I didn't like the affect of the characters.
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Sam:
[11:32]
| They're not quite fully cartoonish, but they're also not quite realistic, and it's sort of this uncanny valley in between. And so like that part of it just really didn't grab me and it was a slog to get through. I don't know how many different sittings it took me to get through this. Alex and I watched this together. Alex and I watch all this stuff together, you know? So, but yeah, but that last little bit, the last little bit was actually interesting and thought provoking and was like a nice twist. And, you know, so overall thumb sideways. And that's where we are.
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Sam:
[12:17]
| That's enough movies. Next week, I'll do Yvonne's favorite that got added to the list because he mentioned it a couple times. And coincidentally actually came up and got watched like the week after the last time you mentioned it or something, which is Howard the Duck from 1986. But we'll do that next week. Assuming no major breaking news that throws the whole agenda out the window. Okay. I'm going to take a break and yeah, so here's, here's a spot to listen to enjoy, enjoy the break. And I think I'm going to just keep going at least for now. We'll see how it goes. Boom. Here comes the thing, right? I guess I should hit, say boom after I hit the button, but then I'd step on top. Whatever. Here you go.
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Break:
[13:07]
| You're supposed to say do, do, do, do, do, do. Do alex samsula alex samsula is awesome its videos are fun and today once again we have one of our most loyal subscribers here to tell you how awesome alex samsula is i'd say on a rate from one to ten alex samsula is awesome at i don't know 37 82 he's pretty radical his videos are They are phenomenal. They're full of creativity. And they're so funny and exciting to watch. Wow, what happened to your voice then, Amy? Was that Dad pretending to be you because the audio was distorted when it really wasn't because I told him to? Yes! Good job on remembering, Dad. Do, do, do!
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Sam:
[14:06]
| Okay, we are back. And so this is now the Harrison Walls part of the show. You know, that kind of sounds like one name, Harrison Walls, like Harrison Ford, except it's Harrison Walls, but no, it's Harris and Walls. So we'll start with Harris picking Walls. Look, we talked last week with Ed. Ed had talked a little bit about Walls, pointed out some policy choices he'd made. But a lot of the speculation was still on Shapiro.
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Sam:
[14:38]
| And apparently, it really did come down. The last two real candidates were Shapiro and Walls.
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Sam:
[14:44]
| They did a final set of interviews with Kelly as well the last weekend. But apparently, he was in the number three slot anyway. The question was how number one and number two were going to go.
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Sam:
[14:57]
| And Walls had been seeing, and we already talked about this a little bit last week, had been seeing an uptick in the excitement about Walls. Or I should say, not the excitement, there'd been a lot of people pushing for Walls. And there'd been a lot of additional buzz about him and people vocally going on TV and such and saying, we want to do Walls. Walls is the right great guy, you should go with walls. And meanwhile, there was a bit of a campaign against Shapiro. There were a number of people, especially from the left and especially from folks where the main issue was Gaza, expressing all sorts of concern about Shapiro. They were bringing up his history with a sexual harassment suit. They were bringing up just how vocal he'd been in supporting Israel real since October 7th and generally saying, you know, you should go someone else, someone else, please. And after the choice, there's also been reports that the Trump campaign was actually leaning into this and doing sort of a whisper campaign against Shapiro because they really didn't want Shapiro because he would bring Pennsylvania and blah, blah, blah.
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Sam:
[16:14]
| But apparently from the reporting on this, and I forget which outlet had sort of, there's a detailed report, Here's how it went down sort of narrative of the last weekend and Harris's choice. But the leaks that came out of that said, you know, yeah, all of those things are potentially, you know, yeah, we didn't want to sort of intentionally poke people on the Gaza issue. Like, if you look substantively, I still said it wrong. If you look across the positions of like the actual policy positions against Israel of all of these candidates, they're actually pretty similar. The difference was how Shapiro went around saying it.
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Sam:
[17:02]
| And of course, maybe there's some anti-Semitism in the mix as well, because of course Shapiro is Jewish. But the Harris people said, you know, it was a factor, but it wasn't a big factor. In the end, what it came down to is those final interviews with Harris. And basically, Shapiro came in asking all sorts of detailed questions about what his exact role would be as vice president. What decisions would he get to be a part of? What would his areas of responsibility be? And basically asking, you know, trying to negotiate what the job would be to make it right for him in terms of what he wanted, his future political aspirations, all kinds of things. But in the final interview with Walls, Walls basically just kept saying, how can I help? You tell me. You tell me. I'll help however I can in whatever way you want me to tell me what you need. And when asked if he had any ambitions to run for president himself, he was like, no.
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Sam:
[18:22]
| Now, who knows what that would look like if she wins and someday, you know, eight years down the line, whatever, he may change his mind. But right now he's like, no, no, I, I, I, no, just tell me how I can help.
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Sam:
[18:38]
| And that plus like, you know, apparently, you know, Harris knew Shapiro for years and years and years and years. Personally she didn't have that kind of long-term relationship with walls but apparently they hit it off immediately they hit it off immediately they got along well they were able to laugh together and there was just you know the vibe check passed right and also there's his sort of history and the things that have come up about sort of his background since then i mean obviously Obviously people knew this beforehand, but I'll be honest. I had not spent the time to look deeply into walls until after he was picked, because until the last maybe 72 hours before he seemed like he was probably an also ran like, and then in the last week he started to get some buzz. And in the last 72 hours it started to look like, Oh yeah, he's definitely a contender here.
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Sam:
[19:42]
| But, you know, we've got this whole, you know, he's not from Pennsylvania. He's not from one of the key swing states. Minnesota was more blue than those, but he was from the Midwest. He's sort of homey. He served in the National Guard for a long time. He was a freaking teacher. He was a football coach.
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Sam:
[20:08]
| He's got a cute little family.
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Sam:
[20:11]
| He's got a wicked sense of humor. He came up with that whole weirdo attack on the Republicans, which has been working incredibly well the last couple weeks.
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Sam:
[20:23]
| Actually, he didn't say weirdo. They've started to say weird. Some other people have started to say weirdo. He just said they were weird. But all of that, and he was doing lots interviews where he was quick on his feet. I even like right on the, the, the Eve of, Harris's decision, he was on that white dudes for Harris call and like made some really pointed statements that got a lot of good attention about, you know, he just wanted to see Donald Trump's face when he realized that a black woman had kicked his ass, you know, things like that. And so yeah.
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Sam:
[21:05]
| That, so she picked him and since that pick, he's been blowing it out of the water. You know, he has been doing great. You could see like when, when they did the first event together in Philadelphia, you know, she talked first, introduced him, then he came on and talked and you could see her behind him on the stage. And when he got certain zingers off, I mean, for God's sake, he made a couch joke about Vance in such a way that, you know, if you are not terminally online and don't know all of that, then it would just be go over your head. It was like, she, he was talking about him getting off the couch and it'd be like, you know, he implying he's lazy because he doesn't want to get off the couch. But if you've been following, you know, the zeitgeist, then, you know, all about.
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Sam:
[21:59]
| The the stuff about the couch which again was just some guy made it up you know like who knows what he has or has not done with couches but some guy just made it up and yet it is a meme and they've had to respond to it and they've had to go anyway but you know he made that comment and you could see her like behind him nodding and smiling and being like yeah i made the right choice here. And it wasn't just that comment. It was several other points where you could see her being satisfied with her choice because of the way he was sort of bringing it.
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Sam:
[22:39]
| Now, Shapiro at that sort of launch announcement also gave a speech and was a very rousing speech and put his support 100% behind walls. And it's clear he's going to be part of this campaign. He may end up in the administration later, or he may end up staying governor of Pennsylvania for a long time. Who knows? But the... But Wallace has been doing great. And I've been watching like one of the things that was going around on TikTok while he was governor. I mean, he's still governor, but he's made a whole series of like social media posts with his daughter when she was a teenager. I guess she's like 22 now or something. But there's a whole like history of videos of him and his daughter from like when she was 15 up to the present where they're just doing things like father-daughter things and being funny and being relatable. And yeah and meanwhile like he's got like you know the camo hat has now become part of this and it's like one of those like the camo hat has been a signifier of right wing maga kind of orientation for a long time and there he he does his little you know they do the mocked out phone call of like we're gonna call and tell you that you're the pick and we're gonna have cameras is everywhere and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, yeah.
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Sam:
[24:07]
| Yeah, of course that's planned out, but he was wearing that hat there and now they've got camo hat merch with Harris walls on it. And it's been pointed out that that look is similar to a Midwest princess look. I think that was Chapel Roan. Was that Chapel Roan? Let me check. Yes, it was Chapel Roan. See, I'm not up on all this stuff myself. You know, I mean, I have heard some of her songs, but anyway, it was Chapel Roan had a midwest princess hat that's the same sort of camo pattern and the same color lettering so they're tying into that zeitgeist as well but like all these videos of him and his daughter are like funny they're relatable they're you know he's human and you know they're all these people talking about his sort of dad energy because you know they're jokes online about like you know, Tim Walls is the kind of guy who would tell you to make sure you wear your sweater when you go outside, things like this.
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Sam:
[25:13]
| And I think they're a good pair. I think it was the right pick. I had been predicting probably Shapiro just based on Pennsylvania. But here's the thing. I think maybe Shapiro could have sort of pulled Pennsylvania over the line and made Made sure Pennsylvania was solid, maybe, because he was really popular in Pennsylvania. But I feel like he might have lost voters elsewhere.
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Sam:
[25:41]
| Meanwhile, I feel like, and we'll see if this gets backed up by any polling or anything else. Usually VPs don't matter. But I feel like he's got the right kind of Midwestern every guy persona that could help in a whole bunch of states. And even aside from sort of like, does the vice president make a difference because they're the vice presidential candidate? He's a really great campaigner. Like watching their speeches, Harris's speeches and Walz's speeches, Walz does really well. He has like the crowd eating out of his hand all the time. And like, look, they're excited for Harris too. I'm not going to take any of that away from Harris. Harris is like the focal point of all of the excitement, but Walls does not bring that down. He pushes it up and emphasizes it, but in different areas, like they're, they're complimentary.
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Sam:
[26:42]
| And I'm sure she also feels like he would be a good person to govern with for four to eight years, you know? And so I think he was a good, also, also he's known as a progressive. He made a lot of the progressives in the democratic coalition happy with the choice because they're like, look at all of these things he's done in Minnesota. Minnesota when he was in Congress, he was more centrist. But once he was the governor in a state that gained a trifecta of Democrats, he pushed through a bunch of stuff. Now, you know, people, there were a whole bunch of sort of never Trump Republicans who expressed disappointment at the choice. They were really hoping for Shapiro Shapiro's more centrist. And this guy is progressive, he's more radical, he's going to scare away the people in the center. And look, my take on that is that it's actually about time for... Look, I've said this before. I'm going to say it again. It's time for Democrats to stop running scared from their values.
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Sam:
[28:00]
| We don't need to cater to how can we water down everything to the point that we can convince some sliver of conservatives to come over the edge. The fundamental issues at play when you pull the issues themselves, the Democratic position has 60 to 70% majorities. Overall, we're a 50-50 country. We're split right down the middle right now. There's no question about that. And there's some issues that the Democrats are behind on. Like immigration, for one, is one where the Democrats always pull a little low. And there are a few others like that. But on the sort of these key issues that are here over and over, and the economy too. For whatever reason, Democrats pull badly on the economy right now, even though economy is going great by all the empirical standards. But people don't feel like that. But on all of the social, I mean, one of the things they're pointing to when they talk about him being progressive is making sure that kids have free school breakfast and school lunch in Minnesota that need it. This is not a super controversial position.
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Sam:
[29:24]
| Most people are fine with school meals being paid for out of taxpayer dollars. Oftentimes, people are fine with that being for all kids, but certainly for the kids who are at need. He's also gotten criticism for making sure there was funding to put feminine hygiene products in the bathrooms in elementary schools. Like, well, you know, well, fourth grade, you know, it was one of being controversial. And, you know, on the one hand, you know, people are like, well, that's too early, blah, blah, blah. Well, you know, kids mature at different ages, better to have the stuff than not have it. Also, people were concerned about, you know, are you putting these things in the boy's room?
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Sam:
[30:11]
| And it's unclear to me whether they actually were, I think the law just didn't prohibit it. And in which case like okay fine like i i know there's this whole trans panic thing going on right now but like you know if they're why not how does it hurt anything like you put it in an accessible place where kids who potentially need it have access and if kids who don't need it have access who cares you know it's it's you know so anyway and this is another thing where you know All of these sorts of issues, like.
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Sam:
[30:50]
| Democrats need to just not hide from these things and be proud of their positions and say, yes, this is the morally right thing to do. If you disagree, you're the weirdo, which is what he's been doing. And I think that going with him actually makes that stronger. Now, again, you know, I was saying for a while, like, hey, we'll go with AOC. That would really push that like question to the forefront. This isn't going that far. And obviously AOC would have all kinds of other issues.
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Sam:
[31:22]
| But I think this goes like the right way in that direction. On the one hand, he has got a history of pushing those sorts of agendas. On the other hand, his persona is all sort of Midwestern every guy. You know the the camo hats the apparently he was winning congressional shooting competitions you know so he's he's a gun owner he's a hunter he's uh you know so you sort of balance off that with oh yeah but also look you know he he's not some crazy liberal that wants to take away all your guns he's a hunter but at the same time he's for reasonable restrictions on guns to make sure as much as possible you're giving them you have to show some level of responsibility and that you're not dangerous to have on etc and that maybe you don't need the super powerful guns capable of like killing many, many people quickly, you know? And so it's sort of, you have those things bouncing off of each other. Anyway, I think it was a great choice. And the more I see of him, the more I like him. And the more I see them together, the more I can see him and Harris working great together. Um.
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Sam:
[32:50]
| So the folks who are pushing waltz, thank you. Like I didn't know about this guy, but I think he's great. His personality is great. His personality works well with her and he's, he's fun to watch. Like he's a funny guy and he's personable and whatever. And I think their chemistry is obvious, like on the, on the stage as well. Like I said, they compliment each other there. It's not like he's her clone. it's also not like people hillarized hillarized people criticized hillary clinton for picking her not herman kane the other kane anyway uh tom kane tim kane who is tim kane right yes tim kane as sort of the boring white dude who would stay in the background and not rock the boat not take attention away from the top of the ticket, blah, blah, blah.
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Sam:
[33:50]
| And on the one hand, you know, Hey, walls is, you know, white dude. He's almost exactly the same age as Harris. It's like six months older, I believe, but he looks a lot older. So he sort of brings that older white guy vibe, but at the same time, he's not boring. He's not quiet. He's not staying in the background. they are clearly working together and she is lifting him up as much as she as long as much as he is pushing her up and anyway we'll see how it goes but so far very exciting and they've been going around the country having the you know the rallies in the swing states that have all been huge, sold out at large venues.
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Sam:
[34:38]
| And there were a number of comparisons of the rallies on the Trump side and the Harris side. Some of these were unfair. Look, the most recent Trump rally, he had been a while since he'd had one, was in Montana. And it was on the same day as a Harris walls rally in, in the Phoenix, Arizona area. And people pointed out like the local Phoenix metropolitan area has like five times the population of the entire state of Montana, you know? So yeah, the Montana rally is going to be smaller anyway. And so maybe that's not quite fair. And they were also comparing a few Harris walls rallies to ones that was just Vance by himself, also probably an unfair comparison.
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Sam:
[35:32]
| But there have been comparisons that were at the exact same venue. The one in Georgia, in Atlanta, is an example where the Harris Walls rally absolutely packed the stadium they were in. And they showed a comparison, one with Trump, from a little earlier. I don't know how old it was, but not like super, super old, but not like the previous day either. either, where Trump had a lot fewer people in there, whole sections empty. And also, for that matter, just the energy. Like, even of the people who were there, the Harris Walls rally was pumped. Everyone was excited. Everyone was chanting. There were people waving signs excitedly. There was just lots and lots of energy. Whereas watching the Trump one, people were just sort of sitting there, oftentimes looking bored. You occasionally get the reaction, but there was a substantial difference in the energy levels there.
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Sam:
[36:46]
| Anyway. Okay. The other thing I wanted to talk about before leaving Harris walls and taking the next break, et cetera, is the whole complete collapse of Michelle Obama's. When they go low, we go high. And what's my, my ultimate take on that is that didn't work. I love the idea of it at the time. That was back in 2016. I love the idea of it at the time, but it did not work. So people are talking about like a, I mentioned the couch joke. People are also talking about the weird thing. Kathy on our curmudgeons corner slack this week was saying, you know, they got to cut it out with the weird thing. It was funny the first couple times, but now as they're repeating it, it's getting grating. And look, so I replied back on our Commodions Corner Slack about this.
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Sam:
[37:52]
| Well, let me read you all the comments. Like Kathy said, they need to stop with the Trump Vance weird references. It was funny and good when it popped out of his mouth the first time. And I get that it probably drives Trump crazy, but now they've run with it and they are both saying it at rallies, et cetera. I feel like it's sinking to Trump's level of name calling. And I don't think it's a good look for them. They need to show they are above all that. And and look my and then bob jumps in i feel like it connects to people in a way that calling them fascists or dangerous to democracy didn't or dangerous to much or dangerous to democracy didn't and here's the fundamental look i'm going to paraphrase what i said on the slack but, dangerous is appealing i think we might have mentioned this last week on the show but But dangerous is appealing, but people don't want to be associated with weird or creepy. Of course, your MAGA true believers are just going to dig in. They weren't going to flip anyway. That's not the target for these things. Meanwhile, it energizes those of us who felt this way for years and are having our feelings validated. dated. I mentioned before, like the Democrats have for years been in sort of this defensive crouch.
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Sam:
[39:17]
| Like whenever, like these sort of fundamental values come up, I've sort of been like, you know, maybe we are the weirdos. Maybe we're the ones who are out of touch. Maybe the Republicans really do represent sort of the real America. That's why you get all of these, He's, you know, let's go talk to people at a diner in Missouri and see what they think. You know, this kind of stuff, it validates the core constituents of the democratic party that no, you're not the one that's out of step. They are Trump and Vance. And frankly, yes. Also the people who support them. They're the ones who are out of touch. We need to get back to the area. Yvonne and I have talked about how Trump sort of gave license to all the racists and misogynists to be open about that. Whereas before, they were out there, but they were hiding. They knew that wasn't acceptable in public. But no, let's bring that back. Look, no. They're the ones who are out of touch and need to be shunned. They don't get to claim the mantle of normalcy. Not anymore. We need to be done with that. They're the ones that the modern world has left behind.
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Sam:
[40:45]
| This is the Democrats reclaiming the ground of the normal person. This whole thing that's been going on for decades with the Republicans trying to claim that they're the real Americans, they're the normal ones there, and the left-hand side of the political spectrum were the deviants and the weirdos. No, no, no more.
|
Sam:
[41:07]
| They're the freaks, and it's time to be loud about it. Especially like in this world, like where the magas have taken over, you know, it was, it was an entirely different world when we were talking about George W. Bush or George H.W. Bush or Romney or whatever. Like maybe there's some, obviously there were some of these people in the background supporting them anyway, but those people were, even when they held despicable views were somewhat more normal. You know, and like a lot of the discussion was around sort of, yeah, you know, tax rates and economics and like, is approach A or approach B better at getting this? We've moved into an area where the fundamental disagreement is not on the method to get to a future that everyone agrees on. It is instead a fundamental difference on what that future is and who is included in that future as a first-class citizen and what's left in the Republican Party that has not fled already. They're the freaks, and it's time to be loud about it. Now. Do Harris and Walls themselves have to be making couch jokes? No.
|
Sam:
[42:32]
| Both Bob and I and our Commodions Corner Slack agreed on this. There are plenty of surrogates who can do that for you. The whole internet is excited about that meme, and I don't know how long it lasts. It already shows signs of fading out. but you know you can do that wink or a nod to the conversation that's happening online, once or twice but then you don't have to push it they don't have to discourage other people they don't even have to like talk about it they just do the wink or nod a couple times, but i think the weird thing is different i think it is fundamentally i think it it triggers the people it's aimed at because it's not like the sexy sort of opposition. It's not the, oh my God, you're dangerous and we're afraid of you because that's positive. People get excited about that. They like being dangerous. They like that Trump and Vance and everybody else sort of trigger folks on the left. This flips that whole narrative and says, no, yes, you are dangerous. We're not going to say you're not.
|
Sam:
[43:48]
| But fundamentally, your positions are outside of the mainstream. Your positions are minority weird positions. Acquisitions your what you are advocating for is un is unpopular and deserves to go into the dustbin of history it's not you know no we're not going to idolize some mythical point in america's history that you guys think was perfect especially if it's not the freaking 1950s or 1890s Come on.
|
Sam:
[44:32]
| Anyway, they can evolve the weird thing. They can use other terms. I'm okay with sometimes calling them freaks. I'm okay with, you know, sometimes calling them creepy. There are other words you can use, but I like the basic theme of pounding over and over and over. No, they are not the normal ones. Their positions are not the default.
|
Sam:
[44:57]
| Ours are. They're the ones who are out of step for wanting to ban books, for wanting to keep women from getting abortions, from wanting to stop no-fault divorce for fuck's sake. They're folks on the right who are talking about getting rid of contraception. Now, some of these are clear minority positions that they wouldn't get through, but they get the time of day in that discussion. No, all of those things should just be immediately tossed out as no.
|
Sam:
[45:33]
| Like 80% of the population thinks that's stupid. 70, 80%, depending on the issue, whatever. No, you're just dumb. You're dumb and you're out of step and you're pushing for something that is unpopular and considered an oddball freak position by the majority of the country so don't give up weird okay we're going to take a break when we come back it'll be time for uh trump and vance so oh let's see what's our next break so when i roll numbers for this The next one should actually be an Apple dream, but I've decided I'll save that for when I have a co-host who can react to an Apple dream. So the next one is this instead. And I guess I'll, I'll keep going. I might as well finish the sucker up instead of splitting it up over multiple days. You know what I mean? Anyway, here we go.
|
Break:
[46:33]
| What are you doing? No, that was bad. Oh! No, that was bad. People, people, people, people, people, people. No, no, I don't like that anymore. Once upon a rainbow, You were on the floor Eating the bugs that you found, Upon my face, What? Bye.
|
Sam:
[47:15]
| Okay. I'm back. So next up the Trump and fan, the fans, fans, I should learn to talk, right? Next up the Trump and Vance part of things. And yeah, I know, look, aside from the movie, this show is all politics this time. That's what I gravitate towards. You know, if I don't have Yvonne with me, Yvonne might be like, Hey, let's go talk about the economy for a minute. There were job numbers and all that. Of course, even that would probably be spun based on the possible impact to the election and stuff. But you know, look, we are, how many days is it now? We are, I just closed the window that would tell me I was stupid. Like, you know, that way, as of when I am recording this 87.1 days left until the election, not until the election, until the polls start to close and we start getting results, people will be voting like a month from now, the very earliest of the early votes starts in like mid-September sometime. That's a small, small trickle more come later, obviously, but we're less than 90 days away. It's going to be all politics pretty much. It's straight through until the election. You know, that's just, that's just how it works.
|
Sam:
[48:34]
| But anyway, the Trump Vance folks, the big, so questions that have been coming up. First of all, now that Biden has dropped out, there's more and more discussion of Trump's age and Trump's mental ability and what's going on there. Now, I still don't think there's as much of that as was being discussed about Biden, and I think that's probably a problem one that should be fixed.
|
Sam:
[49:05]
| But first of all, Trump essentially disappeared for a while. He, you know, after, after the Republican convention, he basically took a few weeks off and you didn't see him. You saw Vance going around and having events, but not Trump. He had like one, after the conventions i think now the charitable way to put this is okay maybe he was traumatized by the assassination attempt that would be fully understandable doesn't want to do big public events anymore because look what almost happened look what did happen but i'm not sure that's it now of course there's a whole like.
|
Sam:
[49:57]
| How would Trump react to that? Like a normal candidate who didn't have sort of Trump's issues could actually like admit that and talk about it and generate it into a plus, you know, I'm not saying like, Oh, I'm, I'm scared. So I'm going to go cower in the bank in the basement. But somebody who like, if this had happened to walls, we were just talking about walls. He could go on TV and give interviews about how, yeah, this shook him up and it changed his views of the world and he has to think a little bit different about things and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and come off as human and thoughtful and whatever. Of course, Trump can't possibly do that. His psyche would not allow that. But maybe he's hiding a little bit because of that. It also seems a little bit like it's still him just not knowing how to deal with Harris as an opponent instead of Biden because everything had been around Biden. And this is an entirely different dynamic. And so maybe they're recalibrating. Like he said, in response to some criticisms about not being around two things.
|
Sam:
[51:20]
| One, he was like, look, I am campaigning. I'm talking to a lot of people on the phone. I'm raising money. I'm, you know, I've had a few interviews, blah, blah, blah. He's just not doing the rallies and stuff. He also said that he is giving them through the democratic convention, you know, like they're going to have their convention and then he'll sort of resume after that. Well, I guess that's very nice of him. Like that doesn't sound like it is. It is sort of, in the past, has been somewhat traditional for the other campaign to lay low a little bit actually during the other party's convention, but not the time in between, especially if there's a long time in between like we have this time. Like sometimes they're only days apart, but this time we've got weeks in between. And yeah, I don't quite buy it. It's like, oh, we're giving them some polite deference. We're giving them some respectful time to do what they need does that sound like donald trump to you no but then he decided to come back from that because like apparently all of the attention that harris has been getting while he's been doing nothing and you know during this you know biden drops out harris takes over harris picks a vp there's all this massive excitement and And she's been getting all the press.
|
Sam:
[52:48]
| Nobody's been paying attention to him. And apparently that was really getting to him. And then the coverage of her big rallies and all of this kind of stuff. So he held a press conference. And at first people were talking about, is it really going to be a press conference? Is it going to take questions? He did take questions.
|
Sam:
[53:06]
| Now, there were no follow-ups. The questions weren't like hardball questions for the most part. And what it ended up being is, yeah, there was a sporadic question asked by an interviewer, but basically it was Donald Trump talking and rambling, just like he does at his events, just sort of going off prompts from the reporters. Supporters and the overall consensus of people watching it, even from his own supporters, was that it was bad. And I guess this adds to the one other event he did. It was of course that conversation with the, whatever it's called the black journalists association that went badly the week before, but this press conference was just rambling and incoherent, full of lies as usual. He told a story about being in a helicopter accident that apparently never really happened. Or I should say, people have dug into this a little bit. It appears to have conflated several different events that did happen. Like he was in a helicopter in the 90s that did have to come down quickly because of some sort of problem.
|
Sam:
[54:30]
| But he may also have been mixing that up with a helicopter ride while he was president that was to view like wildfire damage in California. And the people that he was saying were in the helicopter with him were not the people that were in either of those two helicopters. And he had stated that, well, he had stated that Willie Brown was in the helicopter, who famously was in a relationship with Kamala Harris decades ago, and that he had said all kinds of bad things about Kamala Harris. But he was not in that helicopter at all. He never has been in a helicopter ride with Donald Trump. People speculated that he was talking about a helicopter ride with Jerry Brown, who was the governor of California at the time and was on that helicopter where they were looking at wildfires. But Jerry Brown, first of all, hard to get Willie Brown and Jerry Brown mixed up other than they both have the last name Brown.
|
Sam:
[55:45]
| But he says, you know, we didn't talk about Kamala Harris at all. Meanwhile, in the 90s, apparently it was a state senator named Nate Holden who was in the helicopter with Donald Trump that actually did have issues. Another black guy like Willie Brown, but very different, very different role, very different timeframe. They have different builds, but whatever. Donald Trump could get the mixed up.
|
Sam:
[56:16]
| And he also says that they did not talk about Kamala Harris at all. So like, it seems like this particular event is a Trump conflating a bunch of things and be making up some additional embellishments that actually had nothing to do with it. that would serve his story for some reason. Now, Trump is protesting this, says he has records, says everything he said was true and blah, blah, blah. But this is a typical Trump pattern. This has happened for a long time. This is not new.
|
Sam:
[56:48]
| But the degree to which he dissembles and rambles and talks about things that bear no resemblance to the issue at hand is increasing. There was another example of a question that was asked about whether he would support banning the mail order abortion drugs or just abortion drugs in general at a national level, having FDA take action. And he went on for several minutes about stuff, but never coming anywhere near that question. Now, politicians often don't answer the question and talk about what they want to talk about, but it didn't feel quite like that. It felt more just disconnected.
|
Sam:
[57:34]
| And look, there's been more and more of that. And so the question is, are we going to do the deep dives into, is Trump competent? Is Trump up to the job? Is Trump suffering mental decline? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. of course the answer to that is twofold one yes he clearly is declining from where he was four eight or longer years ago but two and one of the reasons that people don't dig into this as much he was never competent for this stuff never not it you know so is he worse now yes but he clearly was unqualified for the position in 2016 too and people didn't give a shit.
|
Sam:
[58:21]
| So I don't know. But unlike when Biden was in the race, now that the opponent is Harris, the Democrats can make this case. They can talk about Donald Trump's age, his incoherence, his confusion at times, his general mental state, and whether he's up for it or appropriate or whatever. They can make this an issue now. They couldn't when Biden was there because everything we know about Joe Biden's age. I would argue that no matter how much, with all of the decline that we've talked about Biden potentially have, he's still miles better than Trump ever was.
|
Sam:
[59:15]
| But as long as Biden was there, the Democrats couldn't make that argument because it would just be tossed right back in their face. Now they can. Now they can talk about, you know, look at Trump appearing to be sundowning himself. And, you know, he's incoherent and he doesn't know what he's talking about and X, Y, Z. One aspect of this is going back to the absence from the campaign trail. And Trump apparently signaled he's still going to be absent for a while yet until after the Democratic convention. He's not going to be doing much. Something here, something there, but not like going at a pace.
|
Sam:
[59:57]
| And people have talked about this also as part of, you know, he was in the mindset. set, he's got this on the bag that no one's going to vote for Joe Biden. And he can basically do a low-key campaign, mostly from Mar-a-Lago, do a couple events every once in a while, do some interviews, but basically be out golfing several days a week, be hanging out at Mar-a-Lago and cruise to a win. That is no longer true. And he's having a hard time adapting to the the change in situation and some of the things he says even seem like you know while on the one hand he's denying that that's the situation he says he's surging in the polls he's not.
|
Sam:
[1:00:47]
| All of this kind of stuff, is he going into sort of a self-destructive spiral where he's just sort of curling up in a ball and letting things happen to him? I don't know. Maybe the last couple weeks have been that. Maybe he'll pull out of it and you'll see more of the old Trump, I guess. Yes. Yeah. And some of them may just be the comparison because he looks older. He looks more feeble. He looks like less competent even than before. And, and maybe I'm convinced some of that is real, but it's also just the comparison again, like stick them next to Biden. Biden, then it's a, Oh my God, we got two old men. You know, they both suck. Stick them next to Harris and he doesn't have her energy. You know, his criticism of, of Jeb Bush was low energy. Well, you know, in comparison now, who's the low energy one? Donald Trump is.
|
Sam:
[1:01:55]
| And so is he quiet quitting? Is he sort of not giving it his all and sort of recognizing that he's in trouble? I don't know. I feel like, you know, his impetus for running again still was like, he doesn't really want to be president again. He wants to like get away from all the legal shit. And his best way to do that is to win. And then he can make the federal cases go away and pause the state cases because they won't want to do stuff while he's in office.
|
Sam:
[1:02:30]
| And, you know, and by the time he finishes another four years, he may be dead anyway, or they'll, they'll drop it just because, oh, look at the pitiful man. I don't know. But, or in for the federal stuff. Yeah, he'll come up with other things. But the main thing is, I don't know, but he at the moment is, is clearly struggling. At least, I don't know if he's got some sort of internal mental struggle of what to do. That's not necessarily what I'm saying. He's just not doing well. He is not responding well to the challenge of Harris taking over from Biden. And he seems to be spiraling a bit and doing things in desperation. And when he does do things, his level of incompetence and is shining through in a way that hopefully will get more attention than it has the last few years. I don't know. Again, it changes everything when you take away the Biden comparison. Harrison. Meanwhile, Vance has continued to be underwhelming. He's continued to be more the butt of jokes than an actual lift for the Donald Trump campaign.
|
Sam:
[1:03:44]
| We may be past the worst of that. It seemed like there were a couple of weeks where the hits just came on coming for Vance. It seems to have slowed down a little bit, but he's still clearly unpopular. He's not, He's not doing a lot to help, and arguably he's been hurting. When Trump was asked about the weird comments recently, he said, oh, but they're not talking about me. They're talking about J.D.
|
Sam:
[1:04:16]
| And no, sorry, they're talking about both of you. But J.D. has definitely been the lightning round, lightning rod for those criticisms. Because Donald Trump has never really cared about any of the policy issues. It's clear that he can change policy positions at a moment's notice if he thinks that will help him. J.D. actually seems to be a true believer in certain areas, especially some of the weird versions of family values that basically, you know, the purpose of a woman is to have babies, you know, and that sort of thing.
|
Sam:
[1:05:04]
| So yeah, Vance has not helped in terms of this kind of stuff, but you know, Trump clearly is struggling to figure out what to do. And again, I don't want, I don't mean to imply some sort of mental battle with inside it, with inside, within Trump's head. I don't know if he's that self-reflective to be able to do that, but he's struggling to actually be effective in this situation. And I don't know, I think it's too early to say that this will continue through to November. There are plenty of ways that Trump could sort of pick things up and reverse the trend and get back on his game, but it hasn't happened so far. And meanwhile, the Harris campaign has been running on all cylinders. So we'll see. Now that seems like a good time to take another pause and come back with a little bit about the election graphs analysis and what the polls are looking at, and what the polls have been looking like lately.
|
Sam:
[1:06:25]
| And we'll talk about that and then wrap up the show. So continuing to go right through, and this was a random pick, but it's apropos, here's the election graphs break, and then we'll be back and talk about election graphs and the polls and all that kind of stuff.
|
Break:
[1:06:47]
| Do you want to understand what is really going on with the presidential election cycle? Then go to electiongraphs.com right away. There you'll find charts and graphs covering the nomination processes in both parties and the general election race for electoral college votes. For the delegate races, we track not just delegate totals, but also the ever-important analysis of how each candidate has to do with the remaining delegates in order to actually win. For the Electoral College, we track state-by-state poll averages to categorize which states are actually in play and which are not in order to show you the range of likely electoral results and how that changes over time. Sure, you can get some of this stuff elsewhere, but not in exactly the same way. And not from me, Sam, your prime curmudgeon. I think my election trackers are better than the rest, so come look at mine, electiongraphs.com.
|
Sam:
[1:07:47]
| Okay, we are back. So, election graphs, first of all, so I'd been talking about how Harris was surging and all of that kind of stuff. Now, and on August 1st, for the first time, Harris took a narrow lead on my election graphs averages in the tipping point metric. Again, for those of you who don't remember, the tipping point is the margin in the state that would put the winning candidate over the edge to win. She took the lead on that on August 1st in my, well, distinctions most people don't care about. August 1st was the date where I, where we got the polling data that indicated she had gone over. But of course those polls were for a little bit earlier. So if you look at the date, when it looks like that happened, it was July 27th was when she actually.
|
Sam:
[1:08:46]
| Had polling averages that, you know, put her in a very, very slight lead. And that's because Pennsylvania and I, you know, first Michigan and Wisconsin, and then later Pennsylvania went on to the blue side of the line. It looks like now that we've got polls going back a little bit, uh, on my tipping point metric, Harris hit a maximum on July 29th. I think I said last week, I didn't think she'd quite hit a leveled off yet, but I was wrong at the moment. Anyway, it does look like she hit a maximum on July 29th, which of course we didn't know until a little bit later as those polls came out and then gave up the lead again on August 2nd. And so as of right now, So it went from when Biden dropped out, the tipping point in the Harris versus Trump match was Trump up by 2.9%, which was significantly better than the same thing for Biden versus Trump, which I believe Trump was up by like 4.9, maybe even 5 at the end. Man, I should check. Hold on.
|
Sam:
[1:10:04]
| It was 5%. Tipping point was Trump ahead by 5% in North Carolina as of the very last Biden polls. But it went from 2.9% in the Harris versus Trump rage, Trump up by 2.9%, to Harris up by 0.7%. And as of now, it's back to Trump up by 0.5%. That is exclusively that last movement because of Pennsylvania, essentially. Essentially, exclusively, essentially, I'm obviously hedging a little bit there, I guess I shouldn't be hedging. This is all about Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is the key state for a short period of time. Harris pulled ahead in Pennsylvania. Now she's behind in Pennsylvania again by a very small amount. The bottom line is that right now, if you just straight out to trust the polls, you.
|
Sam:
[1:10:57]
| We're, we're in a very close race. You know, it's, it's essentially neck and neck right now. Trump's up by 0.5%. A few days ago, Harris was up by 0.5% and it'll probably bounce back and forth again. That initial big push towards Harris, Harris, that initial big movement towards Harris seems to have maxed out though, at least in the short term. But I want to caveat that by saying the counter movement is all about Pennsylvania. It's just Pennsylvania is the key state. Everywhere else, she continues to look like she's getting stronger.
|
Sam:
[1:11:40]
| Michigan is still trending in her direction. Wisconsin is trending in her direction. Nevada is trending in her direction. It just went blue with the most recent set of polls. and red states have gotten less red as well. Arizona is trending towards her right now. Trump is only ahead in my poll average for Arizona by 0.2%. Georgia has been trending towards her. North Carolina has been trending towards her. So like all of these key swing states have been moving in the Harris direction except Pennsylvania, which went rapidly in the Harris direction, but then has been bouncing back. However, some of those polls have been by pollsters that traditionally have leaned red. For instance, one of the polls currently in averages Pennsylvania is Trafalgar, who has been criticized over and over and over again for.
|
Sam:
[1:12:41]
| Artificially, who knows what their methodology is, showing results that were better for the the Republicans than what anybody else was seeing. And they have Trump up by 2%. And if the Republican-leaning pollster is saying Trump's only up by 2%, then, yeah, factor that into your consideration. And again, the average ends up being only Trump by 0.5%. And so that could easily move back. Right now, of the five polls I include in my average right now, one has Harris up. It's one of these that released multiple versions, depending on whether you're looking at likely voters, registered voters, head-to-head, or with third parties attached, whatever. Whatever, range from Harris up by two to Harris up by four, depending on which of those combinations you like to look at.
|
Sam:
[1:13:48]
| Meanwhile, we have Trafalgar. That was Sienna, by the way. Then we have Trafalgar with Trump up by two, Redfield and Wilton with Trump up by two, Fabrizio Lee tied, and PPP Trump up by one. Those are ones in my average right now. But it's right on the edge. But I think it is real that we had a big, big, big reaction to Harris roughly from...
|
Sam:
[1:14:20]
| Roughly from when Biden dropped out, which was, I think, the 22nd to around the 29th. So the first week or so, things moved really, really rapidly towards Harris. And in part, like this is, you know, just to be clear, where my average as of the time that Biden dropped out, Harris wasn't running. There were a smattering of polls that include Harris as a hypothetical, but they were just a hypothetical and they were over a long period of time.
|
Sam:
[1:15:00]
| Many, many states did not even have the full five polls I use in my average, so I had to use old elections brought in. And still some states don't, but like all of the really critical states at this point have at least five actual Harris versus Trump polls. And I think all of them at this point have five polls that were actually after Biden dropped out at this point. Some other states that like Iowa is still showing up as a close state on my site because nobody has polled Harris versus Trump yet in Iowa. But those things will take care of themselves. All the close states that now have, all the real close states, like not counting Iowa, have lots of polls now. So that first big move towards Harris was just the first polls that actually had Harris as a real candidate, not some hypothetical, but, oh, no, she is really the Democratic candidate. And we saw that big move.
|
Sam:
[1:15:58]
| Four or 5% move in most States. And I think we are, you know, like I said, it's mainly Pennsylvania, but I think even in the non Pennsylvania States, we've leveled out a little bit in Pennsylvania. We've are actually gone back towards Trump a little bit. And maybe some of it is because of sort of Republican leaning pollsters. We shall see, but here's the thing. I am not yet convinced that that's a, okay, we've bottomed out. And now we're at the real state of the race that we're going to have from now until November? Maybe. If so, the real state of the race is a neck biter. Is that the right word? Neck biter?
|
Sam:
[1:16:40]
| You know what I mean? Nail biter. That's what I meant. Not neck biter. Okay. Well, fine. Maybe that's the title of the show. Neck biter. Anyway, I'm not yet convinced that that's the true final state of the race. We've got a bunch of things coming up. The Democratic Convention hasn't yet happened. And Trump's bounce, if any, from his convention was immediately neutered by the Biden-Harris announcement. There's no immediate event right after the Democratic Convention that's likely to do that. So we probably will have some sort of bounce out of that. It's going to be a big, exciting party. with, if any of the rallies so far are an indication, with a lot more excitement than we got out of the Republican convention. So we'll see how that goes. Biden and Harris did actually agree to a debate now.
|
Sam:
[1:17:36]
| Trump had tried to back out of the already agreed to second debate scheduled with Biden for September 10th, I believe it is, on ABC. DC. And his backing out wasn't playing very well. So he ended up agreeing after all, basically to all the original conditions. So complete retreat. He was like, I'm not going to come after all. How about this debate on Fox? And Harris was like, well, I'll be there. Whether you're there or not, I'm going to be there. He eventually backed out and they're going to the debate. So that's going to happen. I have a feeling that's going to play differently than Biden versus Trump did as a debate. And then we've got coming right up after that is if things go as scheduled, which who knows, they may not, then we've got Trump's sentencing coming up for his New York trial. We'll see how that goes. Now, there may be ways to delay that further depending on judge rules against him on immunity stuff. He immediately appeals. It gets delayed. Who knows? So take that with a grain of of salt, but it is scheduled to happen.
|
Sam:
[1:18:47]
| So there are lots of things. And then if the current trends keep up with the highly energetic Harris campaign and the lethargic Trump campaign and the huge enthusiasm gaps we're now seeing that are very different than they were with Biden, then I could see things moving back in the Harris direction. But a thing to keep in mind as well, though, and so far I've only talked about the tipping point on election graphs. photographs. But here's the thing compared like right now we have Trump ahead by 0.5, which okay, squint a little and call it a tie. It trumps a little bit ahead, but call it a tie at this same time in, you know, what did I say? We're 87 days before the election. I said 87.1 before now it's down to 87.0, you know, cause I've been talking for a little while. I haven't been talking for a whole 10th of a day, but rounding, blah, blah, blah. But anyway, on this exact same day, 87 days before the election, we have Trump ahead by 0.5. But in 2020, Biden was ahead by 5.1% in the tipping point at this time. And in 2016, Clinton was ahead by 6.0. So right now.
|
Sam:
[1:20:12]
| Harris is still 5.5% to 6% behind where the Democrats were in the last two elections. And obviously, in 2020, Biden won, but just barely. And in 2016, Clinton lost. So, when speaking to potential differences between where people are polling 87 days ahead of the election to the actual results, in those last two cycles, obviously, the final results were a lot more Republican than where polls had things at this time. And Harris is way behind. Those paces. Still, even though she's doing significantly better than Biden was, she's still significantly behind the pace of those last two elections. And so there's a lot of excitement on the Democratic side right now, but this is by no means at the spot yet where you can say hey, Harris has got this. She has pulled ahead in national polls. She's only slightly behind on my election graphs thing based on state polls. The betting markets now have her ahead. Let me just check election betting odds right now, just real quick.
|
Sam:
[1:21:42]
| Electionbettingodds.com, by the way, is a place that aggregates a whole bunch of different betting sites to try to determine, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:21:52]
| The aggregate, they aggregate Betfair's, Smarket's, Predictit, and Polymarket, apparently, which are a bunch of like political betting sites. Anyway, right now they have Harris's chance to win at 52.9%.
|
Sam:
[1:22:07]
| And Trump at 44.8. And then a whole bunch of other random stragglers as I guess people think what would happen if the meteor hit both candidates and somebody else had to run. So, I mean, they've got Michelle Obama at 0.6%. She's not running. She doesn't want to run. She doesn't want to be president. Whatever scenario that would make her president is like way an oddball. They betters are crazy for some of this stuff. But anyway, they have Harris essentially at 53%, which is close to a toss-up. My analysis using how far election graphs averages have been from the actual results 87 days in advance of the election, depending on how correlated states are with each other, I provide both extremes of that view. I have odds somewhere between 28.9% for Harris and 38.7%. So I still have her as an underdog. And the reason for that is exactly what I just said. I take into account 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020. But on aggregate, looking at all of those, polls have underestimated the Republican.
|
Sam:
[1:23:26]
| And so I have got, I essentially assume that, okay, they're still underestimating the Republican, which would mean that Harris being behind by 0.5% might in the tipping point state may actually be behind, may actually be that she's behind by several percent in the tipping point state. Like in other words, have I said in other words, like eight times, that's fine, whatever. Bottom line is my analysis sort of says, hey, got to assume polls are underestimating the Republicans in the close states again, which means if it looks like it's neck and neck, the Democrats are actually behind. And so the Democrats, and yes, me, and Harris, et cetera, should not actually think or act like they're ahead unless they're ahead by a lot.
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Sam:
[1:24:22]
| Not right on the edge, right on the edge. You treat like you're behind and maybe the polls are wrong in the opposite direction. This time I've talked on this show before about a variety of reasons why you might think that they're, you know, I've talked before about the, how midterm, how, how midterm special, special, how special elections have gone since the midterms and also have generally underestimated the Democrats or the Democratic position on referendums. And we've also talked about maybe pollsters are overcompensating for their errors in the last couple of cycles. We've talked about, look, there are a variety of other things. You can come up with all kinds of reasons why, hey, the polls are probably wrong in the opposite direction this time. But again, there's so much room there for motivated reasoning where you look for reasons why the Democrats may actually be in a better position than the polls indicate rather than in a worse position than the polls indicate. And I'm just like, you know, let's just look at the data from the previous years, use that assumption. Polls are going to be wrong and they have been wrong in the opposite direction before. It's not like they always underestimate Republicans.
|
Sam:
[1:25:40]
| They sometimes underestimate Democrats. They underestimated Obama in one of the two years. I always forget which one, but you know, so yeah. So Harris is doing a lot better than Biden, but, and it's close to a toss up even like my, my odds, like I said, I think are between 28.9 and 38.7% chance for Harris. And I think we're probably really closer to the higher end end of that range than the lower end because polling error, the same pollsters are polling all the close states. And if they get one, if they have a systematic bias, it's probably going to apply to all the close states. So I think it's closer to the uniform swing probabilities than independent states, which means it's closer to the 38.7 than it is to the 28.9. So, and round the 38.7, we're basically talking a 40-60 race right now, which is close to a toss up Trump slightly favored, but we're basically talking, this is not a race that anybody has wrapped up. Either side could easily win right now. And.
|
Sam:
[1:26:49]
| And Harris is doing great so far, but there's no letting up the gas, no letting up the gas at all. They have to keep this momentum through to November and hope that Trump stumbles some more and hope that the Democratic enthusiasm brings a lot of people out to vote who wouldn't otherwise while demoralized Republicans stay home, basically. That's the formula here. And that formula looks good right now.
|
Sam:
[1:27:27]
| I'm hearing more and more anecdotal stories of people who voted for Trump in 2016, 2020, or both, who are now at least thinking about Harris, some of which have flipped entirely, but who are at least thinking about it. That's anecdotal you know treat it for what it is but you hear a lot of that you i've seen people talking about how the overt signs of enthusiasm like people driving around with with trump flags on their truck and stuff like that is a lot less than it used to be even in the reddest of places, where you know those may still be trump voters but the enthusiasm the enthusiasm is flagging, so we'll see anyway that's the state i probably should do another election graphs post soon i don't know if i'll get to one this weekend or not i did one at the 100 day mark so it's been, that'll be two weeks tomorrow i guess can i do my math that i think that's right i don't know, maybe not i don't know sometime i i should probably do i need to be doing them more and more rapidly as the election approaches, but I don't have it in me quite yet to do it weekly or even every two weeks seems like, I don't know.
|
Sam:
[1:28:52]
| Of course, I can do them more rapidly. If I do them more frequently, I don't have to do as big a post. I can do something quick, but I'll make another post sometime. I don't know when, this weekend or next week. I don't think I'll let it go past next weekend, but we'll see. Because there have been exciting developments. Harris first took the lead, then she dropped it again, then whatever. I don't know. I expect at this point, it's going to go back and forth a few times before things stabilize more, but we'll see. Okay. That's it. You guys know the drill.
|
Sam:
[1:29:26]
| Election graph. No, I keep doing that. Election graphs.com. Yes. Look at election graphs.com. All kinds of good stuff there, but no curmudgeons hyphen corner.com. You can see our archives. You can read transcripts of recent episodes. You can find all the ways to contact myself and Yvonne and you can link to our Patreon where you can give us money. At various levels, we will mention you on the show. We will ring a bell. We will, what else will we do? Send you a postcard, send you a mug. And at $2 a month or more, we will invite you to their curmudgeons corner slack where Yvonne and I and others are talking throughout the week. It's a lot of fun. The more, the merrier. Please join us.
|
Sam:
[1:30:10]
| And, oh yeah, I said $2 a month. Did I also say, or just ask us? I usually say that if I missed it or just ask us, we'll, we'll let you. And also, I haven't yet added a link to that site, but I mentioned earlier, youtube.com slash, slash, very exciting, slash, youtube.com slash at, the at sign, very important, curmudgeons-corner.com. We'll get you to the YouTube versions of these shows, which for the last, how long has it been now? This will be the sixth, no, fifth. There was one that I split into two separate parts, I guess. Fifth episode that I have live streamed while we're recording it. So you can get the unedited with all the ums and ahs and long pauses while I look things up, pauses while the dog is barking or Alex interrupts me, etc. All coughs, all kinds of things that get edited out of the audio version usually. Yeah, go check it out. Subscribe, click the notification bell. And eventually I'll add a link to the website for that, but I haven't yet.
|
Sam:
[1:31:30]
| What else is left here? I usually do a, whatchamacallit, a thing from the Slack. Should I do a thing from the Slack before saying goodbye? I guess I should. It's tradition, although usually Yvonne does that. Oh, I know what I'll mention. I don't have a whole topic on this, but it's worth noting and making sure it's there. We have not talked about the war in Ukraine for a long, long time. This last week has had a significant development. Well, two significant developments I'll mention. Number one, the Ukrainians have invaded Russia now.
|
Sam:
[1:32:06]
| Now, for a long time, they've been sending drones into Russia proper, attacking various military installations, things along those lines with drones and missiles and all kinds of other stuff. But they have done a ground incursion into Russia and not just special forces doing random little sabotage over the border, which they've done before. But they're actually taking and holding territory.
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Sam:
[1:32:36]
| As of the last update that I saw, they'd taken about 45 square miles, including a couple settlements and villages. They've got Russian forces retreating from those areas, civilians retreating for those areas. They're taking POWs as well. And meanwhile, Russian forces have had to move from other parts of the battlefield from inside Ukraine, have had to pull out in order to go defend Russia proper from the Ukrainians. And apparently the target of this, unlike the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as far as I know, there's no intention to permanently hold any of this territory. They are specifically doing this to remove a couple of military installations that were being continuously used to attack them and to divert those troops from other places.
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Sam:
[1:33:36]
| So we'll see how that goes. The other Ukrainian news is they are starting to deploy robot dogs on the front lines. Currently, the reports so far are not that these are weaponized robot dogs. I'm sure that's coming.
|
Sam:
[1:34:04]
| The Ukrainian war has seen on both sides massive exploration of the ways that you can use drones in warfare. Drones have been used in warfare for a long time, especially the expensive ones, but even the cheaper ones. But they have really been working on taking off-the-shelf drones, adding weaponry to them, and using them as an active part of the battle on both sides in a way, to a scale that has not been seen before. And they're really iterating quickly on that technology, making it better and better, which is kind of scary, but it seems inevitable as well. Anyway, the robot dogs are apparently at least initially not going to be directly armed, but are being used essentially for spying and being able to sort of sneak up on enemy emplacements in a way that would be very risky for a human soldier to do, get some reconnaissance and return.
|
Sam:
[1:35:11]
| Potentially some mind detection, some other things like that. But, you know, come on, let's be real. Somebody is going to strap guns or explosives to these things sooner rather than later, and that will be a part of how the war continues, even if right now they're using them for surveillance and stuff. Because also, the ones I've seen of these aren't that quiet, so I'm not sure they're the best for stealth. I guess it's still like, you know, compared to sending a human in, you're not risking the human. At worst, you're risking the dog, which isn't a real dog. But these things are still kind of expensive though compared to like a lot of the other warfare they're using with off-the-shelf drones that are not that expensive these dogs these robotic dogs are still a pretty penny so they're they're probably going to be careful with them but apparently they're deploying the robot dogs so i think that's it i'm gonna say goodbye now hopefully yvonne will be back next week hope you enjoyed the show even though it was just me, And if you've been watching on video, you've seen my son doing some things in the background at various times, interrupting a couple of times. You won't notice on the audio version, hopefully.
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Sam:
[1:36:28]
| I keep him in when he contributes, but when he just interrupts me, I edit those. Anyway, we're done. Thank you very much for joining us. Stay safe. Have a good week. Enjoy. Roy and I'll be back next week. Hopefully with Yvonne. See ya. Bye. Okay. I'm going to hit stop now. Anybody who's still left. Bye.
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