Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| Are you lying to me?
|
Ivan:
[0:03]
| Yes, we're all lying.
|
Sam:
[0:06]
| Here we go. Let's see. Blah, blah, blah. Song. Here comes song thing. Welcome to Curmudgeons Corner for Saturday, November 16th, 2024. It is just after 18 UTC as we are starting to record. I'm Sam and Trayvon Bowes here. Hello, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[0:44]
| Hello.
|
Sam:
[0:45]
| So last time we talked was our mega six and a half hour live stream of the election night.
|
Ivan:
[0:53]
| You know, you just reminding me now that that that that was the last time that we spoke just made me feel a tinge of just just just angst.
|
Sam:
[1:09]
| Yeah. Yes. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:12]
| Apparently, it was very clear on video, as your wonderful and worried mom saw, that I was not thrilled in any way, shape, or form.
|
Sam:
[1:28]
| Yes, my mother watched the replay of the live stream, or parts of it. She skipped around, I guess. Not the whole six and a half hours. But she sent me a text after it expressing concern for Yvonne's well-being because of how depressed he sounded at the end of the evening.
|
Ivan:
[1:48]
| Not misguided concern, mind you. Not that I, you know, your mom doesn't know, has met me and knows me, but not that well. But, you know, I did not have, my following days after that were not good. But I didn't sleep that night at all. I tried. I worked the next day. But one thing is that happened that was interesting, that the next day, almost everybody, all my meetings, that my counterparty, I was like, look, I'm powering through this, whatever. I got to do meetings. I got to, you know, we got to get to work next day. It's nothing to do. They all canceled them.
|
Sam:
[2:32]
| Mm-hmm.
|
Ivan:
[2:32]
| I mean not because i even said anything or because i mean there were external meetings there weren't even internal so it's not like you know they would have any clue and they.
|
Sam:
[2:41]
| And knowing your job they they probably weren't u.s meetings either right.
|
Ivan:
[2:44]
| And well no but remember one thing they were mostly with puerto rico so it's not exactly like they're okay right right right and that day was also an election day that day in puerto rico uh, The elections are held on the same day as a presidential election. Puerto Rico only has, there are no midterms. It's only everybody. Everybody is at four-year terms. Senate, House, mayors, all elected positions of Puerto Rico are four years. So basically, it's only one big election every four years, and it's a public holiday. Okay?
|
Sam:
[3:20]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[3:21]
| So everybody's off. There's really no excuse to do that. But but there is, you know, Trump winning does have a significant impact on Puerto Rico. You know, they are not like they're isolated from this in any way, shape or form. On the contrary, they're very exposed. Now, the in Puerto Rico, the person that won the election for governor, which was actually probably one of the tightest ones in a long time.
|
Ivan:
[3:57]
| Or maybe competitive. There have been closer ones. But the thing is that there were three candidates that got over 25% of the vote, okay? So that was, you know, there were three candidates that got a lot of the electorate, okay? And coming in second place, not that distant from the winner, was somebody that has advocated for the independence of Puerto Rico. They came by 35% with 35%. Now, I do know that they allied themselves with a lot of people that are not independent supporters. And he had pledged that the status of Puerto Rico was not going to be, you know, he said, look, I'm here to govern. That's, that's a separate issue. Okay. Okay, so he was trying to say that don't take the fact that I advocate independence as something that is material besides all of you know that that's that decision is not even up to us. It's up to Congress. So, you know, it's so so he got about 35 percent. The winner got 40 percent of the vote. Now, interesting thing about the winner, who is a pro statehood person, is that how politics in Puerto Rico are weird. She had beaten out the incumbent governor in the primary in May. Okay? She is from the same party. They primaried the governor and she won. Okay?
|
Sam:
[5:25]
| Mm-hmm.
|
Ivan:
[5:27]
| The the the current governor, which, you know, his term ends pretty soon is aligned with in the U.S. with the Democrats. However, this person has been a pro Trump person that that that one. OK, so the only thing that I can say is in terms of and she's another grifter like all these people are. So she's just doing it for them, you know, for the BS. But I guess the one thing that that may be just the positive in terms of Puerto Rico is that because she has been sucking up to him so much that she could probably soften the blow of whatever might impact Puerto Rico because of all this sucking up. And I say might because, as we all know, Trump will backstab anybody, you know, for anything.
|
Sam:
[6:24]
| So before we get too much deeper.
|
Ivan:
[6:25]
| That was my thing. But listen, a lot of people that week in Puerto Rico, for whatever reasons, we started saying, well, I think Puerto Rico got a bout of electionitis.
|
Sam:
[6:37]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[6:37]
| Because people weren't showing up to work the rest of the week. Okay. They just got you. It was a holiday on Tuesday. The election results. A lot of people were very, very sorely disappointed, and they just didn't show up to work the rest of the week. I mean, I wound up with so many canceled meetings, probably until Friday, I will say. Then people started like, actually, amazingly enough, some people showed up on Friday. I'm like, Jesus Christ, now we guys are showing up so anyway.
|
Sam:
[7:04]
| Okay, so let's complete the little intro. Our agenda is, as usual, we're going to do this starting segment with a couple of less newsy things, although I think a legitimate less newsy thing, even though it's kind of newsy, is the kind of stuff you've been talking about, the sort of emotional reaction to the election results. And then we're going to have two segments, one with topics picked by Yvonne and one with topics picked by me. I'm going to go out on a limb right now and say, I am guessing we are still going to be primarily election related for this episode. And maybe one of those segments will predominantly be looking back at like what happened and the other one is going to be okay now what the fuck is donald trump doing you know now i know yvonne is sort of sick of the, retrospective what did the democrats do wrong conversation kind of stuff but i'm going to talk a little bit about that kind of stuff and how polling did and all that kind of stuff in in my segment if he doesn't pick it i will mention i'm not we have a comment i'm.
|
Ivan:
[8:10]
| Not picking that shit i i don't i i i'm gonna be blunt i have.
|
Sam:
[8:14]
| Yes you're sick of everything, Ah, well, and I think that honestly, this is, this is actually part of the part of, and I think this is okay for the, but first segment. There are a lot of people who's on the left, whose response to this has been crap. I'm out. Yeah ever i'm not gonna pay attention to the news anymore yeah i'm i like i gotta go heal myself i'm gonna like go spend time with my family i'm not paying attention to any of this shit and donald trump is gonna go wild and do whatever the hell he's gonna do and what one of one of the von suggested topics was like it's not worth getting outraged over what was completely expected right you know i forget the exact words but something along those lines right and and i was gonna to mention we have we have a comment on the live stream right now from sean who specifically says couldn't bring myself to listen to the live stream episode i've been looking forward to this one instead so because i mean yeah.
|
Ivan:
[9:18]
| Don't die yeah you know.
|
Sam:
[9:19]
| I was actually listening to the live stream episode as i published it which was shortened from the six and a half hours to under four hours simply by taking out like the silences where we were just like because We were waiting for information and results. No, I know.
|
Ivan:
[9:36]
| So that's one of the things about, you know, about that, that published a good later that, yeah, we, you know, you have to cut that out because we were like, well, you know, we've got 15 minutes until.
|
Sam:
[9:44]
| Until the point is, I was actually listening to it earlier today, listening while I was doing some stuff around the house. I was listening to bits of it and you, you can see the progression as we are going through the night of like, you know, Yvonne was sort of pessimistic from the start.
|
Ivan:
[10:04]
| I came in exactly. I said my word was glum. I was not, I was not, I was not positive at all.
|
Sam:
[10:14]
| And where I was, where I was, was, you know, election graphs had been predicting a Trump win confidently for over a year. And so, and at the end, the stats were.
|
Ivan:
[10:27]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[10:27]
| Oh God. What were my final numbers?
|
Ivan:
[10:30]
| You were like dead. You know, you were as as 60.
|
Sam:
[10:34]
| 63 and a half percent Trump win odds was my final number.
|
Ivan:
[10:40]
| And but as Vito in the movie, my cousin Vinny said, you were dead on balls accurate.
|
Sam:
[10:49]
| Yeah. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, unfortunately, yes.
|
Ivan:
[10:57]
| Unfortunately, we're dead on Balzac.
|
Sam:
[10:59]
| If anything, like the polls underestimated Trump again. And my models basically said, hey, the more often than not, over the last four election cycles, the polls have underestimated a Republican. So probably they're going to do so again. And there you go. um and we'll talk about that later but i was saying like you could see over the course of the evening yvonne started out pessimistic i started out yeah yeah election graph said 63 percent trump but i had allowed myself to buy into a lot of 37.
|
Ivan:
[11:34]
| Percent i mean you know the reality.
|
Sam:
[11:37]
| No i know 30 37 percent yeah i mean and i was like one in 2016 with yeah i mean his odds were like 14% in 2016. But my take at the beginning of the evening is I feel good about that 30-something percent because there have been all of these sorts of signs that maybe there's a lot of extra women voters. Maybe the polls are underestimating the women voters. Maybe blah, maybe blah. None of those things turned out to be true. And over the course of the evening, you could hear us, Like there's a whole section of the podcast where Yvonne and I are getting excited about Ohio.
|
Ivan:
[12:19]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[12:20]
| And like, oh, look, there's some blue numbers in Ohio. That was a mirage. It all disappeared like an hour and a half later.
|
Ivan:
[12:26]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[12:26]
| But like we were excited for a while that, oh, my God, Ohio looks like it, you know, something's happening in Ohio. And and yeah, sort of by the end, the glumness was everywhere, you know, and I mean.
|
Ivan:
[12:41]
| We listen and nobody else. I spoke to a number of people that had gone to sleep and they were like, ah, you know.
|
Sam:
[12:50]
| Harris still sort of a toss up when they went to sleep.
|
Ivan:
[12:52]
| No, no. But they were like optimistic, like, ah, in the morning, Harris will pull it out. That woke up in complete shock and texted me about their shock the next day. But, you know, we knew already before midnight. It was like, fuck. You know, this is, this is over. I mean, it was like, look, I mean, is we, we, what we kept saying consistently.
|
Sam:
[13:17]
| It looked worse and worse and worse.
|
Ivan:
[13:20]
| Why is it, you know, we kept questioning, why is it DDHQ calling it yet? They've called it before. Is there something that we're missing because we're looking at their data and this looks like it could be called already. And, you know, give credit to a DDHQ who, in recent elections, doing this, they've been the ones that have quite accurately early or than everybody have.
|
Sam:
[13:45]
| Made hq's specific thing is that they went into business and i i i had some back and forth exchanges with like one of the founders a few years back but their whole thing was that hey there's nobody competing with AP in the election results gathering mechanism. And we think we can be faster. We think we can get the data faster and we think we can make calls faster. And they basically built out an on-ground network of volunteers who were at the tabulation centers all over the country, running with the results as soon as they were available. And they just started beating ap on speed right and then there and then on the calls they're just more aggressive than any of the network callers or the major but they're aggressive but.
|
Ivan:
[14:36]
| They've been accurate let's.
|
Sam:
[14:38]
| Be clear about this it's not like i i i think in the entire time ddhq has been around there's been maybe once that they had to retract a call and you know but but they're very they're very good that is it's uh they it once they make a call you can be pretty sure i mean and they're not always first on every call like when when i was tracking it on election night i was like i'll count it as a call if anybody calls it yeah you know yeah but they were always first but almost a lot.
|
Ivan:
[15:08]
| Yeah they're first on most of them and let's be clear.
|
Sam:
[15:11]
| They're the.
|
Ivan:
[15:11]
| Ones that at 120 in the morning called it for trump i mean they didn't they it was like officially they they flipped it at at 120 in the morning eastern u.s it was you know yeah it's done it's over right But, you know, it was, you know, it was, I mean, they were the first ones to absolutely buy a lot, by the way.
|
Sam:
[15:31]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[15:32]
| And it was.
|
Sam:
[15:33]
| They called the house like days before other people called the house as well.
|
Ivan:
[15:37]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[15:37]
| But, yeah, so reaction wise, I'll tell you, you know, I am disappointed, but it is not the kind of shock that people felt in 2016. You know.
|
Ivan:
[15:53]
| It's different.
|
Sam:
[15:54]
| At least to me.
|
Ivan:
[15:54]
| But here's the thing, it's different. To me, it's worse. Because we know who he is. Back then, we didn't know how he was planning to govern. We know now. You know, a lot of people had this thing back in 2016, you know, they were saying, oh, now he's going to be presidential. Exactly. How quaint of that.
|
Sam:
[16:17]
| Well, you know, the thing is, even this time around, though, you hear lots of people saying, well, we didn't think he'd actually do that. Like, even with the stuff he's already done.
|
Ivan:
[16:27]
| Like in this last week. What's going to be the case?
|
Sam:
[16:32]
| I.
|
Ivan:
[16:32]
| I did that entire fucking, oh, well, I didn't think he was going to do that. I'm like, what rock have you been lying under?
|
Sam:
[16:43]
| There are all sorts of Republicans expressing dismay at his cabinet picks so far. And it's like, you're like.
|
Ivan:
[16:49]
| Really? Actually, I gotta be honest. Maybe I was more pessimistic. I actually, I expected even worse.
|
Sam:
[16:57]
| Well, yeah. Like, I mean, honestly, like, I was surprised.
|
Ivan:
[17:00]
| Why is it Steve Bannon on the cabinet already?
|
Sam:
[17:02]
| Right. Well, give him time. But like, you know, but I was surprised, like Rubio, like he's a scumbag, but he's relatively normal.
|
Ivan:
[17:14]
| Yeah, exactly. Compared to the scumbag scale of normality, he's more closer to the normal side. So I was like, wow, Rubio, damn. I mean, literally, I expected, you know, I don't know, Flynn.
|
Sam:
[17:27]
| Alex Jones.
|
Ivan:
[17:28]
| Or Alex Jones. Yeah, sure.
|
Sam:
[17:31]
| Yes, yes. but i was.
|
Ivan:
[17:33]
| Like but but also in my mind my whole thing is that it doesn't matter whoever any of these people are because he's going to disregard whatever the fuck they say anyway for the most part.
|
Sam:
[17:47]
| Yeah yeah yes there are a couple things and i i guess throw the agenda out the window we're just talking about whatever but one of the things i've noticed is you know in a couple weeks leading up to the election there was a whole lot of look how confused donald trump seems look how old he seems whatever he seems to be have been reinvigorated by winning at the very least like And sure you're seeing like.
|
Ivan:
[18:23]
| Well, let's be clear this.
|
Sam:
[18:26]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[18:27]
| The stress level on him. Forget about the fact that I think he's a loathsome asshole. I'm just talking about the fact, look, he knew it's either I win or I'm going to jail. Those were, the options were that stark.
|
Sam:
[18:44]
| Well, I think even if he'd lost, he could stretch out the appeals to when he died anyway.
|
Ivan:
[18:50]
| But he knew that the possibility of that being a reality sooner rather than later was quite high. Okay. And, you know, probably like losing money, tons of money. You know the the losing was a terrible prospect for him his only really true salvation was to win.
|
Sam:
[19:17]
| But my yeah my point is like looking forward to how donald will be i'd say like there are a few possibilities here and i don't know yet which is actually going to play out one is all donald really cared about is what you were just talking about he wanted to get out of jail and he will just sort of go to the white house and kick back and let the other people pardon them run whatever their agencies you know like he doesn't well he's never cared about policy and.
|
Ivan:
[19:50]
| He never cared about governing. I mean, look, that was very evident. It's like the whole thing about infrastructure weeks on and on and on.
|
Sam:
[19:58]
| There are a handful of things he seems to actually care about in terms of like lower taxes, hate immigrants. Okay. And basically anything else, it doesn't seem like he actually gives a fuck. Okay. And, and so I could see in a lot of areas, is him appointing these people, appointing them for their loyalty, not for any policy things, and then just letting them run wild as long as they don't embarrass him. If they embarrass him, it changes the equation.
|
Ivan:
[20:29]
| Right. He will get rid of them as soon as possible.
|
Sam:
[20:33]
| But the other possibility is that he does decide that, you know, hey, here's a set of things. I want my retribution. I want my revenge. That's another thing he cares about, aside from the other policy things. And that he's going to drive that. And that's the thing he cares about. And, you know, nobody's going to get in the way of that. And then we see where we go. I don't know. And also like if, if the, what I was trying to say is it seems like the, oh, Donald Trump is getting senile thing. He seems to be somewhat better since the election. I don't know if that'll last or whatever, but, or maybe it was all a ruse. Maybe it was like, that'll win me the election. I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[21:22]
| I do think that there is definitely a – I think that a lot of that had to do with a substantial level of exhaustion.
|
Sam:
[21:29]
| The stress.
|
Ivan:
[21:30]
| And stress. I think that that definitely had a lot to do with it.
|
Sam:
[21:35]
| He's probably sleeping pretty well now.
|
Ivan:
[21:37]
| Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. He's probably sleeping pretty well. I'm sure he was not – I'm sure he wasn't sleeping very well leading up to the election at all. Right. And so I do think that that is definitely a big factor.
|
Sam:
[21:49]
| And it certainly seemed like in the last week or so, we talked about this on the live stream a little bit. It seemed like in the live, in the live stream, in the last week before the election, Donald Trump had convinced himself that he was losing.
|
Sam:
[22:06]
| Or at least he was very discouraged by it because he was, you know, no one was showing up to his rallies. They were leaving early. And it, it seemed like at least from the coverage I was seeing that enthusiasm for Trump was really, really down. Enthusiasm for Harris seemed really, really high. She was having these big, exciting rallies and people were very positive in that last week or so. Now, I talked to my daughter, had an interesting conversation earlier this week. The online spaces she's in, she's in a bunch of political discords, including a bunch that include Trump supporters. And the online zeitgeist in that last week was exactly the opposite of what I just described from my viewpoint, where like all of your sort of Trump bros in their 20s, We're all excited and all positive and all. And she's like, they were all over the place. The meme game was strong. The Harris people were barely visible at all. And so she was like, she was like, I found it amusing that any Harris people thought they were going to win at all. Because everything I was seeing was Trump. And she was mentioning like, you know, something I had been aware of, but barely, I don't know if you heard the story. there was this famous internet squirrel. Do you know about this?
|
Ivan:
[23:32]
| No.
|
Sam:
[23:32]
| Okay. See, you don't even know. I knew about the internet squirrel and what happened and that there was, the MAGA folks were taking advantage of it. Here's the scenario. There was this family, they rescued a baby squirrel. They were keeping it as a pet. They had like TikTok and other things of like the crazy antics of this squirrel. They also ended up with a raccoon. So they had a squirrel and a raccoon and they were both internet famous and like all kinds of attention, blah, blah, blah. And some rando in a completely different state called the authorities on them because apparently wherever they lived, it was illegal to keep wild animals as pets. And so the authorities raided their house in force, like a whole bunch of armed officers came, took the squirrel, took the raccoon, and then euphemized them in order to test them for rabies.
|
Ivan:
[24:29]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[24:30]
| And so apparently the Trumpsters all over the place were memeing this squirrel, whose name was Peanut, by the way, and describing this as a massive overreach of government that's exemplary of like Democrats.
|
Ivan:
[24:48]
| What state, let me ask a question. What state were they in?
|
Sam:
[24:51]
| I think they were in New York.
|
Ivan:
[24:53]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[24:54]
| I forget. I forget. Don't trust me on that. But in any case, this squirrel that has absolutely nothing to do with presidential politics. Zero. But they were making the connection. Anyway, the point is apparently in this last week in that universe, like the, the, the, the Trumpies were all excited and all positive and the Harris folks were basically absent. And, you know, so there's this whole like division of media ecosystems is a big part of all this. Like, like the view you get of the universe is entirely different depending on where you are looking for that information. You know, and so like my view that, hey, this last week looks really positive for Harris and Trump looks depressed. Yeah, wasn't exemplary of the population.
|
Ivan:
[25:50]
| But but but look, population at large. Let's let's go. Let's go back to, you know, their results themselves.
|
Sam:
[26:00]
| Yeah. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[26:02]
| Trump basically got the same number of votes that he got the last time around. So the whole thing, I think that, you know, we kept talking about enthusiasm is that this thing about people not showing up to his rallies and doing this stuff was a fake out. I mean, these people were still very hardcore. They just didn't want to go see him at a rally. I mean, and to be fair, his rallies suck. I mean, you know, it's like, you know, I get that. But, you know, they obviously still showed up at the ballot. And not just that, but, you know, what you mentioned about young people specifically, about young men more specifically, because there was a big dichotomy between women and men.
|
Sam:
[26:52]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[26:53]
| But younger men.
|
Sam:
[26:54]
| For that particular age group, the gender gap was bigger than any other. The gender gap in general did not show up the people way, the way people expected it to like, cause lots of women ended up voting for Donald Trump, but in that age group specifically, like the under 30, under 25, that gap was huge, huge with men leaning towards Trump and women leaning towards Harris.
|
Ivan:
[27:19]
| And it's this, I will say that, and it's more like, I mean, very strongly with white men specifically.
|
Sam:
[27:31]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[27:32]
| You know, I had mentioned on our Slack that I had seen a few things online specifically. I didn't know anything about the squirrel, but.
|
Sam:
[27:40]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[27:41]
| But what I had observed over the last few years, and I'd seen in some postings by younger people repeatedly, was quite more affinity, especially amongst white people. Men and women, younger ones, for Trumpism.
|
Ivan:
[28:04]
| You know, it's just, it's just, and it was a little bit, I found it quite a little bit just repulsive. I'm like, okay, you guys, you young people want a future where, you know, I guess rights, the rights that we have fought for decades aren't there. And, you know, there is a lot of white male, especially younger resentment out there. And it's evident in a lot of statistics. And we've talked about this in terms of who the fuck are the damn, you know.
|
Ivan:
[28:49]
| School shooters, the educational attainment right now of young men, the fact that they're a minority versus women at that age group, the fact that once this shows that that group is not having anywhere nearly as much sex as we used to have. And that there is a lot of sexual resentment as well specifically you know like one of the phrases that i saw is like you know man that that some of these bros throughout it was just disgusting it's like women would say my body my choice and they were like throwing it back your body my choice right i mean that's that's just beyond offensive and these guys yeah apparently.
|
Sam:
[29:36]
| There was one conservative influencer who went on a rant and said that and then it got imitated all over the place and kids at middle school were saying that like little boys in middle school.
|
Ivan:
[29:46]
| Were saying that to.
|
Sam:
[29:47]
| The girls there and it's just like.
|
Ivan:
[29:49]
| I mean it's like I mean I mean these people like think it's cool, to basically that that they they should have the right to say what the fuck a woman does and with their body that that violence against them is fine especially if I get what I want Thank you. And how it's, I don't know, I guess that they feel that, you know, they're being blamed for a lot of bad conduct. And I'm like, wait a minute, they're being blamed. Because they're doing it, damn it. I mean, yeah. you guys are decided that being lazy misogynist is great and that women should just you know be you know therefore you're you know there should just well you'll know to you and.
|
Sam:
[30:51]
| There's a whole media ecosystem.
|
Ivan:
[30:53]
| That that's all about amplifying that and taking.
|
Sam:
[30:56]
| Advantage of it because there And there was one TikTok creator I saw that was like, hey, when did the geeks turn into MAGA assholes, the geeks and nerds? And they answered it with, no, that's not what happened. It's lonely people, more generally. And that getting preyed upon by grifters and influencers who identified that demographic as a demographic that they could easily manipulate, make money off of, whatever. And, you know, I don't know. There's not like... Acting in the way let's just put it this way acting in the way they are acting is not going to solve their problem with women no.
|
Ivan:
[31:49]
| Not at all no.
|
Sam:
[31:52]
| It's it's going to make it worse completely the opposite like these same people are out there talking about how we need to get the birth rates up not this way not this way you know uh but.
|
Ivan:
[32:09]
| But but look here's a reality about that that vote in grid still.
|
Sam:
[32:16]
| Relatively small yes it's.
|
Ivan:
[32:19]
| Not it's not i don't it.
|
Sam:
[32:21]
| Doesn't look like it was a decisive factor we talk about we talk about the the youth and how the youth trended red but if you overall look at all the age groups one of the things that i found extremely interesting is over 65s went blue right that hasn't happened in a long long time. Like probably since Johnson or something. I don't know. Like, you know, and, and yeah, over 65s went blue. The, the younger groups, the under 30, under 25 groups also went blue, by the way, like less blue than people would have liked, or they have been in the past, but they still went blue overall. When you add both the men and the women and the whites and the non-whites and the educated, but they went blue by a little bit. The generational chunk that went red is where Yvonne and I sit. Now, the different surveys had different actual age ranges. It doesn't exactly tie to Generation X or whatever.
|
Ivan:
[33:21]
| No, because they keep adding people that were born to 1959. And I'm like, no, guys, no, I'm sorry.
|
Sam:
[33:26]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[33:27]
| I'm sorry. Nobody born for 464 is Gen X. No.
|
Sam:
[33:31]
| But basically people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s.
|
Ivan:
[33:34]
| Went red yeah you know early early people oh yeah.
|
Sam:
[33:38]
| Early 60s and older and younger both went blue, which but again with the the youngest group less blue than expected because of you know basically the white men well not not just the white men because part you know if we're talking about these trends and things like almost every demographic group went redder than it had been before.
|
Ivan:
[34:01]
| Yeah yeah yeah but it was like that one was you know considering how the overall demographic was blue that was a pronounced that that was a that was a a something that stuck out amongst that group specifically but but again the reality is that that's not that big a group the reality is more what you talked about it was like in the middle okay between the 40 to 65 age range, where that was, that went the other way, but it goes also back to, the whole turnout thing that we talked about.
|
Sam:
[34:42]
| Yeah, we actually started, and I distracted you. Basically, the bottom line, and this is looking less dramatic than it did on the day after election as votes keep coming in from California and such. But the bottom line seems to be, like as much as everybody's talking about this big swing to the right and towards the Republicans, what really seems to have happened is Donald Trump held on to his vote from 2020.
|
Ivan:
[35:06]
| Yep.
|
Sam:
[35:06]
| Whereas the Democrats lost a bunch of people like Donald Trump's overall numbers will be slightly higher popular vote wise than they were in 2020.
|
Ivan:
[35:16]
| But not dramatically so.
|
Sam:
[35:18]
| A couple million higher is according to the most recent count, but they're still counting. But on the Democratic side, there was a huge drop off. There were lots and lots of people who voted for Joe Biden who did not vote for Kamala Harris.
|
Ivan:
[35:34]
| And I will say that a lot of the data.
|
Sam:
[35:36]
| What they show. A lot of them didn't show up to vote at all.
|
Ivan:
[35:38]
| They didn't show up to vote at all. And a lot of people.
|
Sam:
[35:42]
| It's not that they necessarily converted to Trump.
|
Ivan:
[35:43]
| If you look at the data more deeply in terms of what was the number one thing that they said was the issue was it was all related to prices and inflation. And AOC went and like asked people why they split tickets and why they voted for her and for Trump. And for whatever the hell reason, these, a lot of people, they, they believe, well, they, they were frustrated that I guess that Biden didn't do a better job with, with, with, with income and prices, even though all the data shows that the U.S. Did better than any other fucking country in the world. It was just, he had a bad hand dealt to him.
|
Sam:
[36:26]
| And well and that brings up like i was going to get to this in a little bit but, there in terms of the nitpicking sort of what could harris have potentially done better and stuff i i have a handful of things that i would have said but and i will list a couple but here's the thing i think there is compelling evidence that even if you changed all of those things all you would have done was make it closer trump still would have won yeah um for.
|
Ivan:
[36:59]
| Example the whole gaza thing.
|
Sam:
[37:01]
| Yeah there.
|
Ivan:
[37:02]
| Is nothing there was nothing that biden i think could have done that would have helped in terms of the in terms of the vote as a matter of fact.
|
Sam:
[37:12]
| It's pretty.
|
Ivan:
[37:13]
| It's pretty evident that on the Jewish side of the vote, he got 70 plus percent of Jewish voters nationally. Okay? So they basically were aligned with what the Biden administration had been doing. However, it was a big dramatic shift amongst Muslims, which they dropped their support. But... Here's a reality. Whatever the fuck Biden did. OK, say, for example, Biden cut off all armed supplies and cut off Israel completely. OK. What would happen to that Jewish vote?
|
Sam:
[37:51]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[37:51]
| I mean, there was a no that was this whole thing.
|
Sam:
[37:56]
| Electorally, it was a no win situation. Like, yeah, I mean, you can argue what was the morally right thing to do. But if you're talking from a pure, like, oral point of view.
|
Ivan:
[38:04]
| There was no winning. There was nothing to do to win. Nothing. You couldn't do anything that was a winner.
|
Ivan:
[38:16]
| And, you know, the thing that I what I what you and I had said about this was that a lot of those voters that decided to go and support Trump because they thought Biden didn't do a good job for the Palestinians. With some expectation that what that that with the idiotic expectation that somehow Trump was going to do a solid to them was insane as well, because they just couldn't accept that what Biden had done wasn't what they wanted, which I understand that they're unhappy with what the what the outcome of the policy has been. And I get it. I don't think anybody is happy with it, including Biden himself, like right now. But at the same time, voting for somebody that was going to actively make it worse wasn't a fucking good idea. Your thing was like, hey, I got shitty right now, not good, not good, or horrible. And you guys actively voted for horrible because now they've realized, oh we saw the cabinet selections that Trump did I guess he played us I'm like.
|
Ivan:
[39:35]
| No, you guys are stupid. He didn't play you. I mean, it was obvious to anybody that had the gift of breathing that that's what he was going to do. And you, you somehow deluding yourself that that was going to do what? And so that was a significant move, especially in certain areas like Michigan, for example, where it probably did matter.
|
Sam:
[40:04]
| Right. The one thing I will give sort of on this, things they could have done differently, tact, before I talk a little bit more about why it doesn't matter in the end, is I will say there was a tonal shift. And I talked about this on the show before the election too. The Harris campaign did a tonal shift in the last month or so that I think did not work out. Like if I look at my, if I look at election graphs.com and look at the charts, specifically my odds chart, it's the one who magnifies this effect and makes it easiest to see. From the moment she got in until roughly the Harris Trump debate, for the most part, Harris was improving her position week over week. There was a flat part in the middle, but so if you look at the shape of the curve, dramatic improvement, then a flat part, then some more improvement. But, you know, right after the debate, like right when the effects of the debate started impacting all the polls, I had her up to a 75.5% chance of winning. And then that started deteriorating.
|
Ivan:
[41:16]
| Okay. I will argue that this is one thing that happened. Okay. All right. I don't think it had to do with the tonal shift. What I will say is this. The debate was a disaster. Simple. The debate was a disaster for Trump. No, no, no. The debate was a complete disaster for Trump. And what did he decide to do? Let's not have another fucking debate. Because people's memories are short. And so he decided...
|
Sam:
[41:41]
| No additional debate, plus he stopped showing up anywhere other than safe media.
|
Ivan:
[41:46]
| Exactly. Period. And, you know, by the way, this had the same... In 2016, this had the same effect, where he decided just to not show up, you know... Remember how they basically took away his phone back then? And that basically, you know, helped. It's the same thing. The lead people, you know, putting him on another national debate two weeks before the election probably would have lost them the election.
|
Sam:
[42:14]
| It probably would have. It probably would have. But now so that peak for Harris was on September 14th, according to my charge. That's when she was at the best possible position. Now, I agree with the point you made. I will say, like, I think there is a tonal difference. Like if you look before and after that, before that, there was a lot of emphasis on sort of the joyful campaign, Harris, positive aspects of Harris herself. She was talking about her own biography. She was talking about things. We had the Walls' weird thing was in that case. But it just totally, not just any one of those things, but it was a positive campaign prior to that moment. After that moment, and it's almost exactly right around that moment, I haven't looked up the exact dates, but they seem to shift to Trump is dangerous, the threat to democracy.
|
Ivan:
[43:12]
| Yeah, and that didn't work in 2016 and it didn't work again now. Nobody cares.
|
Sam:
[43:16]
| Right. And they started to shift to everything's dangerous about Trump. They started to like have all these rallies with with with Cheney and all that kind of stuff. And they started to seem to be really leaning into trying to get sort of never Trump Republicans. But I feel like that was. A bad trade-off. First of all, if any never-Trump Republican was already either not voting or was for you anyway, you weren't going to convert more people that way.
|
Sam:
[43:50]
| And you did turn off some people on the left who are like, I can't believe you're fucking on the same stage with Cheney. But more to the point is what you were saying. Not only does nobody care, A lot of that actually seems positive to people. Dangerous is something that people like. And one of the things that poll after poll after the election, like a lot of the action polls have pointed to, were fundamentally people wanted change. And if you see somebody as dangerous and a disruptor, they're the ones who are going to bring change. Whereas Harris was defending the institutions that lots of people are like, well, those institutions aren't working. Why are you even defending those? And I think that tonal change, like prior to the middle of September, I think Harris was hitting on things that were working. And then for some reason, they shifted to like these things that hadn't worked before and didn't work again in terms of trying to scare people about Donald Trump instead of make people excited about Harris. Like in in like in in august people were excited about harris and.
|
Ivan:
[45:08]
| Okay that was people were excited even towards the end but i do think that bottom line you.
|
Sam:
[45:14]
| Know what i mean though.
|
Ivan:
[45:15]
| No but it's it's just it's just what i said again about what is the one thing that that that that really when you know, Might have helped two things to, to, I think that seeing Donald Trump again in a debate showing you his lack of grasp of anything, just basically being an idiot on stage would have done two things. A, would have depressed his turnout. B, it would have pumped up Harris. Bottom line. I really think that in debates, we talk about debates don't matter. But the reality is that the stark contrast between the two of them couldn't have been bigger. And I think.
|
Sam:
[45:58]
| That- So what's the other thing? Because Trump, obviously, his team was smart. They didn't allow that.
|
Ivan:
[46:03]
| Well, I think that by not doing that- Is there something Harris.
|
Sam:
[46:07]
| Could have done?
|
Ivan:
[46:08]
| I don't think that there's much Harris could have done. Like I mentioned again, this whole thing with, you talked about the whole change thing. And when people go and say that 50% of them were worried about inflation, even though inflation has gone down and they're in their mind for some reason.
|
Sam:
[46:27]
| A number of people think that when an average person says inflation, they don't mean inflation. They mean absolute prices.
|
Ivan:
[46:34]
| Right. So they think that somehow, well, things were cheaper when Donald was here. So he will make things cheaper again.
|
Sam:
[46:44]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[46:45]
| When he has not proposed a single thing that would make anything cheaper for anybody. Not one. As a matter of fact, quite the opposite. it.
|
Sam:
[46:59]
| So, well, and this ties to the general thing that, and I mean, the Democrats have to figure out how to deal with this reality. Cause I think they just don't deal with this reality that most people have absolutely no conception how American government works. They just don't. And so everything is like, did it happen while Joe Biden was president? It's his fault. End of story.
|
Ivan:
[47:29]
| Yeah, but look, listen, the inflation thing was an issue. But I will also say that the way that Trump peeled off certain specific groups that the Democrats have no answer for, that I believe have caused why Florida and Texas also became so much redder. That is something that neither the Biden campaign or the Harris campaign have done anything good about, and I have railed about this specifically for a very long amount of time. More specifically around the whole communist thing, because I don't know what the hell he's doing. The manosphere thing, you just mentioned to me what the fuck was going on on there. I don't know, But I do know that in this community, the one thing is that the Democratic messaging has been terrible. Two things that are going on, and I do think that that also influenced a lot of the younger people that went red. Homophobia.
|
Ivan:
[48:33]
| Transphobia. And that that shifted a lot of those young men that we're talking about because they've been talking about that, but also a lot of Hispanic voters. Look, in my experience, compared to Europe, North America, Latin America is far more homophobic and transphobic. Way more. Way more. And that banging on those commercials that he was doing about all these trans shit, okay, that he was repeated over and over. I know. That had an effect. I still remember I was at a dinner table a while back where I heard three people.
|
Ivan:
[49:12]
| Basically, you know, worried about this straw man that they were talking about. Well, you know, there are these kids at school and, you know, they teach them how to be transgender. And I don't know why the hell they're doing that at the schools and blah, blah. And I'm like, these are three people that are reasonable, but they're listening to this and they're believing it. Okay. And look, that together with the whole Democrats are communists shit, okay, peeled off that group in vast numbers, okay, in many places, okay? That's why Texas went redder. That's why Latinos went redder in so many other places. It's those two fucking messages. And the Democrats have not had a good counter to that message. They have not done anything, okay, at all to counter that in that community properly.
|
Sam:
[50:06]
| I heard some people talking about this specifically in terms of, like, you mentioned all of these anti-trans ads. The Harris campaign basically ignored them, did not respond to them.
|
Ivan:
[50:19]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[50:20]
| Like, not in terms of her speeches, not in terms of counter-advertising, nothing. And I forget which podcast it was, some random political podcast. They were talking about this and saying a huge portion of Democrats when they hear about some of these things like, oh, you know, trans girls playing in girls sports. That's not a real issue. Who cares? Like and whereas and therefore dismissing it and not engaging with it at all.
|
Ivan:
[50:54]
| Not engaging it. That's right.
|
Sam:
[50:55]
| Because whereas whereas for huge numbers of people justified or not, it is an issue.
|
Ivan:
[51:02]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[51:03]
| So, yeah, you can't just say it's an issue.
|
Ivan:
[51:05]
| Exactly. They totally believe it's an issue.
|
Sam:
[51:07]
| And it's like so you can't just say, oh, that's bullshit nonsense. Like nobody can possibly actually care about that. You do so at clearly your own peril because people do care about it.
|
Ivan:
[51:22]
| They do care.
|
Sam:
[51:22]
| And if you want to convince them that it's not an issue, or they shouldn't care about it, or that they're on the wrong side of the issue, whatever, you have to engage. You can't just dismiss it and say, oh, you're stupid for even thinking.
|
Ivan:
[51:36]
| Dude, it's the same thing as the whole communist thing. I'm telling you right now, the Democrats have not engaged on that at all, on the communist tag. And they don't understand how that has, for example, why the hell with the Cubans, Venezuelans, a whole bunch of people that left regimes that were like that, where they hear the Republicans basically tag, all these communists are coming for you. And there is no, no, no, not one iota of a counter message at all.
|
Sam:
[52:09]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[52:10]
| And then, unfortunately, you know, we wind up, hey, even the fucking, listen.
|
Sam:
[52:15]
| The Republicans have fucking Mark Rubio.
|
Ivan:
[52:17]
| Even on the economy side.
|
Sam:
[52:19]
| Right? You were talking about inflation being, it's the same thing. It's the same thing. Oh, it's like, oh, come on, people, look at the numbers. The economy is good.
|
Ivan:
[52:28]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[52:29]
| And just like, if you're worried about inflation, then you're obviously not paying attention. you're obviously misguided because inflation is way down from where it was and it's back to normal and blah, blah, blah. And that's not acknowledging. Another thing I heard people.
|
Ivan:
[52:44]
| Comment on- I think you got to acknowledge it and you got to explain what the plan is and not just say, oh, whatever.
|
Sam:
[52:48]
| Well, and this is one thing, I think AOC said this in response to like, you mentioned, she had asked people who voted for both her and Trump to sort of explain themselves. And I saw an interview with her reacting to how people had responded to that question. One of the things she said is that, yes, Democrats have all of these plans that would address a lot of these concerns, but what the Democrats have not been good at. Meanwhile, the Republicans don't have plans that would address these concerns and, in fact, often have plans that would make them worse. But, she said, the Republicans are doing one thing that the Democrats just have not been doing properly. And that's the old Bill Clinton thing. I feel your pain.
|
Ivan:
[53:45]
| I feel your pain.
|
Sam:
[53:47]
| They start out with acknowledging, yes, you have a concern.
|
Ivan:
[53:52]
| Concern and this is what we're doing and this is what we're going to do and that first part it's.
|
Sam:
[53:59]
| Just the democrats reputation at this point is sort of dismissing concerns oh yeah yeah yeah you shouldn't care about that.
|
Ivan:
[54:06]
| That's stupid things.
|
Sam:
[54:07]
| Are actually fine.
|
Ivan:
[54:08]
| You're an idiot you don't get it okay which you are an idiot but you know but at the same time you know but you don't want to come off exactly exactly i i can't you know it's yeah i mean you know like i can't say that to my wife you know, doesn't work very well. You know, doesn't work very well. Don't work very well. But here's another one.
|
Sam:
[54:28]
| I once tried the line, and just for any reference, this does not work well. I said, I am not saying you are stupid. I am saying you are ignorant. Yeah, well, I'm surprised you're still alive.
|
Ivan:
[54:43]
| Look, but but also, look, here's another one where they should have, like, repeatedly hammered Trump on it. Because, OK, if you look at the top concerns that they had, the other one was, you know, the economy, the the the trans stuff and the immigration part, the immigration part. Man, you could have destroyed Trump on that one because there was a deal to solve the problem. And who blocked it? Trump.
|
Sam:
[55:08]
| They kept trying to say that. No one cared.
|
Ivan:
[55:11]
| No, but Sam, you know, just like they were running that trans ad over and over.
|
Sam:
[55:16]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[55:17]
| That's what you needed to do.
|
Sam:
[55:19]
| Wall-to-wall ads about, like, we tried to fix it.
|
Ivan:
[55:22]
| Trump blocked it. Trump blocked it.
|
Sam:
[55:26]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[55:26]
| You know, and you have the quotes from him to say it. And that's the thing. The ads, like you mentioned, you know, moved away from, like, what the hell was doing to his work or whatever. Man you know why aren't you you know counter hammering them with with that non-stop you know.
|
Sam:
[55:46]
| Well and the other thing that's been pointed out and look this has been a recurring problem we talked about it four years ago eight years ago too the democrats do a really bad job at promoting their own actual accomplishments like the biden administration actually got a shit ton done But you almost never heard them crowing about it. Like, and not just like, not just in the period right before the election, but like the whole damn four years.
|
Ivan:
[56:15]
| Look, listen, I'm going to raise my hand here and also recognize that I do the same at work. OK, you know, there is and there is I, you know, and I understand I have very difficult issue with me just crowing about how I did my job very well, which is my fucking job anyway. OK, and I just did it really well. I don't.
|
Sam:
[56:45]
| Is your problem saying this too much or not enough?
|
Ivan:
[56:47]
| Oh, no, I don't say it at all. I don't say it much at all. OK, I don't do it. OK, it wound up on multiple people, you know, taking credit for shit I did.
|
Ivan:
[56:59]
| OK, which sometimes did move me to do it. OK, but I don't I don't naturally. I don't naturally do that. I actually made a point this year that I got. Look, I got awarded club sales club at my company and not many people get it. OK, this is this is, you know, you know, it's it's a very small subset of the out of tens of thousands of people that get this award. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[57:27]
| And this year, because I know that I have not done this, I actually went and I'm like, fuck, I need to post about this because normally I don't want to post a damn thing about this, but that doesn't help me. Okay and but it but to me it's very difficult for me to want to to do that okay and i think that that's part of part of it but also i think a big part of the problem is that a lot of the things that the democrats do take time well it's not just that they take time it's just it's like hey we made it so you know the the the it's vaccines were more accessible for example and easier is this such a diluted effect thing because it's not like something or it's not like the check it's not like what donald trump did remember there's a check with my name on it exactly right and that fucker went and like added the name to it and there were people that went And people went and asked, and they thought that Donald Trump sent them a check from his own money.
|
Sam:
[58:36]
| Personally. Personally from his own money. Yes. And meanwhile, the Democrats just sort of, first of all, they can't implement everything they want to because they're stopped by the way our system works. But even when they do successfully implement something, they just quietly are like, hey, we made people's lives better. That should be enough. Meanwhile, you have all kinds of Republican senators and representatives going out claiming credit for shit that the Democrats passed and they voted against.
|
Ivan:
[59:13]
| Well, look, it's like the whole thing with the Affordable Care Act, right?
|
Ivan:
[59:19]
| What's happened with the Affordable Care Act is something that the effect is one that unfolded over many years. It wasn't like a, you know, it wasn't the check that you got signed with, you know, with Obama's name on it. The changes were profound, and they unfolded over many years. And it had significant impact on the lives of a lot, a lot of people. But the thing is that it's very difficult to explain, hey, how all of a sudden people with chronic diseases are not met with lifetime limits on how much their insurance pays, where all of a sudden their insurance says, Well, oh, there was a cap, you know, we pay only up to $2 million and okay, you run out of money. Sorry, tough shit. You know, you're fucked. We're not paying another dime. Or the whole thing with pre-existing conditions where you could be denied coverage because you had pre-existing conditions from one insurance company to another, which that was eliminated. Those are things that have profound effect on millions of people. Well and not the effect is so diluted and happens over time that even people like the other day somebody was being asked well i want him to repeal obamacare but i want him to leave the affordable care act intact and you're like you you fucking moron and you know i'm sorry yeah this is the attitude of the lose well yeah well yeah fuck you you're an idiot i was.
|
Sam:
[1:00:45]
| About to mention the name confusion there like they did try to put obama's name on it well first the Republicans put his name on it. And then Obama was like, yeah, I'll own that. That's Obamacare. But then everybody hates Obamacare because it's Obamacare.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:00]
| But they love the Affordable Care Act.
|
Sam:
[1:01:02]
| And similarly, you see regularly polls with lists. Just back to this election, there are polls listing a whole bunch of Kamala Harris policy positions versus Donald Trump policy positions. The harris policy position if they were not attached to her name yeah oh they were overwhelming great yeah they were overwhelming favorites the trump policies were not liked the harris policies were liked but once you attach their names to it that changes entirely, because it's all the sort of tribal thing i wanted to get back to one thing because i promised i'd say here's why all the like there are all kinds of criticism you could give about like harris could have done this better or that better or this better or that better. But in the end, I don't think they matter. And I wanted to get back to that and then we'll take a break.
|
Sam:
[1:01:54]
| There is a really good chart that's been going around that was from the Financial Times that shows this really well. It shows all of the elections in, major developed countries going back all the way to like world war ii okay okay and it shows how much the governing party in national elections gained or lost in each individual year so you can see for instance in i don't know let's pick a year in 1980 you know when ronald reagan won here It went from, on the one hand, nearly 10% down for the ruling party up to up by like 5% in the ruling party going nationwide. And you see this going all of these decades. And in almost every year, one trend that's true, like if you look across this entire 80-year timeframe or whatever, almost every year, ruling parties do lose ground more often than they gain ground, which is interesting. So that means that like throw the bums out is a recurring thing forever. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:03:15]
| But 2024, where the entire world was still reacting to the COVID initiated inflation crisis is the first year in that entire time span where every, every governing party anywhere in the developed world lost ground. Every single one. Regardless if they were conservative parties or liberal parties, left, right, sideways, they all lost ground. And the speculation, and again, maybe there's not direct evidence, but there's a lot of evidence to point you in this direction is it was related to people just being upset by the continued after effects of the pandemic.
|
Sam:
[1:04:11]
| Now, obviously, like the main pandemic year was a couple of years ago, but we still had inflation effects. We still have lingering economic effects of other sorts. We still have people having bad feelings about restrictions that they were under at various points. That was less so here in the US, more so in some other countries, and everywhere lost ground. But.
|
Sam:
[1:04:35]
| The Democrats in the U.S. lost less ground than any other developed country in our elections this time.
|
Sam:
[1:04:43]
| Like, you know, it is like two to three percent down in terms of how much they lost. Now, we were close enough that that made the difference between winning and losing. But we did better than any other freaking country in terms of how little the ruling party lost in elections this year. And so I think that actually speaks to how good Kamala Harris did, Kamala Harris did, in terms of running her campaign. Yeah, I can quibble about this. Yeah, I can quibble about that. Yeah. Now, especially looking back in retrospect, it's very easy to point out things that you say, maybe she could have done better. But in the end, her and her campaign did better than any governing party in the developed world at their reelection attempts this time around, in terms of how little they lost ground. Now, some of those parties had enough headroom that they stayed in power. Some did not. but she did, she did really well. Like she lost in the end. I wish she would have won. I wish she would have done a little bit better still. But the bottom line is like, you know, given the circumstances, she kind of kicked ass, even though she lost. There's, there's a phrase that goes out like, you know, sometimes you can do everything perfectly and still lose.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:09]
| I have lived through that many times, unfortunately, and I know, you know, you can, yeah, it, uh, but I, but I do think that there is one thing that the Democrats need to address, and it's the whole messaging part, specifically around like, like those core subjects and how, like you mentioned, the first 45 days of her campaign was, What was being used as a tone of communication was different. And I think that that definitely helped. The debate also helped a lot. No doubt about it. But how that's important to key on that and how it's important to key on the messaging that they're using to peel off certain specific groups. With the whole homophobia.
|
Sam:
[1:07:01]
| To counter messaging the Republicans.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:04]
| Yes. Yes, you have to, you have to, you have to have a good counter message. Well, hell, even, for example, I complained about how Democrats, you know, you keep having Republicans screaming pro-abortion, pro-abortion. No, it's not pro-abortion. That's not it. It's pro-women's rights. And how that needs to be screamed loudly in return to their face. And and that that's the thing where those are the things when you're talking about you know freedom people's rights you know that's what we're talking about lgbt rights.
|
Sam:
[1:07:45]
| This is another thing this is about this is another one of the things that changed in the first 45 days in the last 45 days was there was that big they were reclaiming freedom freedom they were reclaiming patriotism yeah they were doing all of that stuff and then they It seems like they almost ditched all of that and switched to, oh, my God, dangerous Donald Trump.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:07]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:08:08]
| And like if there's one strategic decision that I would change, that would be it. Stick with what was working the first half of the campaign. None of this fucking pivot to like Donald Trump, the dangers of Donald Trump. You were winning and doing really well when you were talking about the positive vision for how you were the defenders of freedom, you were the defenders of patriotism, and you were happy and joyful and blah, blah, blah. That shit was working. Now, having said that, and I'd said we'd get a little bit into how the polls did. I don't want to get into details, but the bottom line is that the polls did miss. Again, they underestimated Donald Trump by just under 2%. I think it was 1.8% in the end, which reminds me, I have a typo on my last election graphs blog post where I said 1.9 instead of 1.8. I have to remember to fix that. anyway the um but you know there's two things one that is like average polling error like it's not an extraordinarily high polling error yeah yeah like i looked at the last four election cycles and it's right smack in the middle in terms of now the 1.9.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:22]
| By the way is the error and the tipping point let me say one thing because i do need to make this point okay.
|
Sam:
[1:09:29]
| And then i'll.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:29]
| Finish i was It was hitting very hard on all those Atlas Intel polls that were coming out.
|
Sam:
[1:09:35]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:35]
| And how they favored Trump like the entire time. Okay. I'm going to say it flat out right now. Their polling methodology was right on the money. They had it. They had it right.
|
Sam:
[1:09:48]
| Yep.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:48]
| And, and, and, you know, I'm looking, I kept looking through to what their methodology and the thing that they're doing. I don't see that as far as I can tell, even though it's opaque, I don't see that they're like some of the others are saying that they're just putting the thumb on the scale they were right what they're doing to capture the polls was right and probably i will say that if you look at all the all the close states they were pretty close to right on the money in what they in what they they said i just the way they came out with that many polls of doing it was weird but in the but the the reality is that, Across a lot of states, they were right. I think that even they had one of those polls that showed Florida with that massive margin that nobody else saw.
|
Sam:
[1:10:36]
| Right. So let me say, if you want more details in terms of the polls and how off they were, I did do a post on electiongraphs.com on the blog section on November 7th called Preliminary Results Comparison. It talks a lot about that. But the point I was going to get out of that is the tipping point in the end was off by 1.9%. That's about typical.
|
Sam:
[1:11:01]
| Here's the thing. I'd mentioned how September 14th, I think it was, was Harris's peak, and I had her at a 75% chance or whatever. But if you look at the 1.9% difference we ended up being at and reapply that sort of like to the tipping point, that means that was pretty much the only moment. Like if you take the tipping point I actually had and basically subtract 1.8%, I keep saying 1.9% to 1.8%, it was 1.8%, subtract 1.8%, that moment immediately after the debate was the only moment where Harris was actually ahead. So like, I think there's a, if that polling error was roughly the same the whole time, you basically have a situation where at the moment Harris was at her absolute peak was the only moment where it was truly, oh my God, this is a toss up could go either way. 50 50 the rest of the time trump was decently ahead the whole time which again is like the one chart i kept going back to on election graphs is the one that compared the tipping point this time around to 2016 and 2020 and there was no well there was like she would never she.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:27]
| Never did better than than.
|
Sam:
[1:12:29]
| Hillary was during she did time maybe she did for there were a few days in the middle of september where she was comparable to where hillary was that's it the rest of the time harris was way behind clinton and way behind biden too obviously and you know and obviously you know if she was behind where clinton was and clinton lost right you kind of expect that harris losing was the right thing to expect and and you know just just looking at the chart going back as long as I had it. I mean, it's not really fair to look before Harris became the nominee, but certainly since she became the nominee, she was never, never even close to where either Biden or Clinton were in the last two elections. And so you get what you get. Yeah. Shall we take a break, Yvonne, and then maybe talk a little bit going forward since we've mostly been talking going backward?
|
Ivan:
[1:13:25]
| Yeah, let's take a break.
|
Sam:
[1:13:27]
| Okay. And freaking this one. Back after this. Okay. Play. Play, you stupid thing. If it doesn't play, I'll add it in post. But there we go.
|
Break:
[1:13:44]
| You're listening to this podcast. Do you like it? No! Do you want to support the show? No! Well, after you have subscribed to the show, followed us on Facebook, and told all your friends they should be listening to, what else can you do? I won't subscribe! You can help fund our Patreon at patreon.com slash curmudgeonscorner. Patreon is a way you can throw us a few bucks a month to help out with the expenses of the show. You know, web hosting, equipment, a little bit of advertising to promote the show, and maybe every once in a while some much-needed sedatives for Yvonne. At different contribution levels, you can get a mention on the show, our Curmudgeon's Corner postcard, or even a Curmudgeon's Corner mug. Fun stuff! Not fun! In any case, the contributions help tell us that you enjoy and appreciate the show. I really, really hate Commodity's Corner. Are we worth a buck a month? No! Five bucks a month? No! Or if you are nuts about us, maybe even more. One hundred billion!
|
Break:
[1:15:06]
| Anything to you at all, send it our way at patreon.com slash curmudgeonscorner. Alex hates, really, really hates, curmudgeonscorner! That's really mean, isn't it? I hate curmudgeonscorner, but I really do!
|
Ivan:
[1:15:24]
| We're back.
|
Sam:
[1:15:26]
| Oh, Yvonne's back. We're all back. Okay, so we kind of spent most of the last segment talking about the past. Maybe it's time to talk about the future.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:37]
| Why what's the future the future looks you know the future what i don't want to talk about the future listen what what what what do you what are we going to talk about the future now listen here here's one thing i have no idea what the hell like right now everybody is in yeah people are saying well why aren't the democrats fighting right now blah blah blah whatever i'm like dude there's nothing to do right now there's nothing not a damn thing that can be done like right now the.
|
Sam:
[1:16:06]
| Democrats not only lost the presidency they lost the senate they lost the house they had already lost the supreme court you know so.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:14]
| What what what are you what's the leverage right now i mean you know the next election is two years away yep you know like right now i don't think that it's very productive right now for people to go and like start burning their energy like into outrage about everything that trump is doing because, like I mentioned, the topics, what he's doing, exactly what the fuck we expected him to be doing. So what are you, what are you, you know?
|
Sam:
[1:16:40]
| Well, as you said, there do appear to be a bunch of Trump voters who are a little bit surprised, but...
|
Ivan:
[1:16:47]
| Well, those people are morons.
|
Sam:
[1:16:50]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:50]
| I mean, I'm sorry. If you voted for Trump and now are surprised that he's doing the shit, the bad things that he did before and that he said he was going to do, Now, you're a fucking, you know, completely irredeemable idiot. There is no, I have no sympathy for you at all. Okay? So, you know, look, one of the things is that the markets weren't sure whether Trump was going to win or not either. One of the things that happened recently also is that interest rates all of a sudden stopped going down. even though the Fed has cut rates, rates don't want to go down and go back up. And as every economist and everybody said, prior to the election, Trump is not doing anything to help with inflation or to help cut costs or to help anybody. And what he's doing is doing the opposite, which is why interest rates are going up. Interest rates go up, and one of the key factors driving that is inflation expectations.
|
Sam:
[1:17:58]
| Well, just talking market for a second, like right after the election for a few days, the market seemed to be going up, up, up, up, up, up, up.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:07]
| And then they came back down.
|
Sam:
[1:18:08]
| Well, and because the zeitgeist, you know how people always make up reasons why they think the market is moving up or down or sideways. But, you know, was people are really excited about low taxes and deregulation, and that's going to help companies and blah, blah, blah. You know, all of these companies that were worried about like Democrats being heavy handed with regulation or blocking mergers or what XYZ.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:33]
| Or that is one where definitely merger where we mergers is one where I do do think that there is going to be a lot more consolidation and mergers, which, by the way, will consolidate certain industries. And once again, it's not going to lead to lower prices. OK, right. Start off with that.
|
Sam:
[1:18:49]
| The point I was making was those first few days, people were all excited about low taxes, deregulation. It means we can do whatever the hell we want, and it's going to be great.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:58]
| Yeah, but I think that the reality is that he's nominating fucking morons.
|
Sam:
[1:19:06]
| He's nominating morons. People are starting to think through the tariff thing. What if he actually does that, and what would be the effects of that? The people he's putting in charge are clearly incompetent, etc. And now people are getting worried. The same people who were excited a few days earlier.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:23]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:19:24]
| And, but it's, and again, this comes down to, well, it's what he said he was going to do like, and, and you get all of these, you get this, there's a on, on TikTok and other places. There's a lot of this right now, but I want to be very careful because the fact that I've seen a bunch of them doesn't mean it's really big in the overall population because the algorithm is like, oh, you're going to like these things where Trump voters are realizing they voted for things against their interests. So it's showing me more of them. So I'm under no illusions that there's actually huge portions of Trump voters that regret their vote. But there are apparently a number of people at least who are suddenly discovering what the fuck a tariff actually is and that it might impact them or their company there are huge groups of people who are realizing that wait he meant it with mass deportations and wait he might mean me like oh it says i thought he was only going to deport criminals not realizing that of course the the trumpies all believe that that any illegal.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:36]
| Immigrant is a criminal.
|
Sam:
[1:20:37]
| By definition they've come in they've come in without proper papers that makes them a criminal you didn't mean like only like violent criminals or something no he thinks you're a criminal because you're here you know and so you you have a lot of these sort of stories and people talking about Google Trends and stuff, but it's all, I was at the airport on Friday.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:02]
| At Miami Airport to be specific, okay? So there were a couple of ramp workers that were like right by me as I was like trying to get a snack, talking about what Trump is doing. And one guy who seems to be a very, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:16]
| Trump, you know, Trump's going to do great things guy was talking about how Elon and Vivek, well, you see, what they're going to do is because they're going to go, we waste, you know, they take so much of our taxes. So they're going to cut our taxes, their taxes, idiots. Okay. You know, and, and because they're going to go and like cut all these all this waste that is in the government and so then that means that we're going to have more money in our pockets and everything is going to be great and and i'm just like you know first of all you fucking clowns you guys pay almost shit nothing in taxes because so much of income at at you know below one hundred thousand dollars exempt from from taxes and so those people and by the way trump is most republicans think that those people should pay more that they are that they they're freeloaders they're freeloaders they're freeloaders so therefore you guys are idiots you guys are not getting a fucking tax cut you're you're dreaming okay that's the first thing the second thing is that anybody that's looked at the u.s government budget in reality knows that the vast majority is tied to entitlements that they can't be really cut the military and interest on the debt okay those are okay come.
|
Sam:
[1:22:32]
| On come on yvonne elon and vivek are gonna like cut like trillions.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:38]
| You could fucking eliminate every fucking department that they're talking about and it's basically like removing you know flies from an elephant okay it isn't doing to do shit to anything. And you know what? I am 100% sure that no Republican is going to vote to cut neither Social Security nor Medicare, okay? Over their dead bodies. I don't care what some of these guys that have wanted to be a leadership.
|
Sam:
[1:23:11]
| You'll get some votes for that, but not enough to pass it.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:14]
| Not enough to pass it. No way on earth is that going to happen, okay? So this entire discussion about this, the problems mostly with our deficits like right now are tied to so many of these fucking tax cuts that the Republicans have repeatedly passed over the last 25 years. These assholes are talking about, oh my God, all the taxes are taking me. When in the United States, we have the lowest tax burden of any developed nation, okay? That is just fact, okay? And hell, a lot of undeveloped nations, okay? We have one of the lowest tax burdens, okay, that you can fucking have. Now, the reality is that people do pay the...
|
Ivan:
[1:24:04]
| Escaping paying taxes is a lot lower in the U.S. than in a lot of other countries, okay? And so, you know, there isn't a way to really cut the deficit drastically unless you, number one.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:24]
| Raise some taxes, okay? And tariffs are not going to do it, okay? Because tariffs are going to create a 60% tariff on all imports is going to be a shit show of epic proportions, okay? All right? That's just, you know, this is complete, utter nonsense, okay? There is no way that this nation can handle something like that, okay? So that's not paying for it. So either you have to, in some way, cut some entitlements and raise taxes. Otherwise, you're really not making a dent in this. Now, you can go and work, by the way, Sam. I know that you've been thinking about, at some point, making a change in your life. And I saw that if you sign up for Twitter with the checkmark thing, okay? And then you send a message, DM to Elon with your resume that they will offer you an unpaid internship, basically, an unpaid job to work 100 hours a week to help them go and cut government bureaucracy. It sounds really attractive, I must say.
|
Sam:
[1:25:39]
| Yeah, definitely. I will be right on that.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:42]
| Yeah, I'm thinking about that too. I've been very... It's just it's just the dumbest fucking discussion on earth people don't get it you know don't understand the numbers not not not a clue and they they throw all this shit out there and nobody understands what our government issues are and how the fuck it happens and yeah just throw this nonsense out there and you got here here's here's.
|
Sam:
[1:26:09]
| The thing and this is this was the playbook in the first Trump administration, and I'm sure it will be now too, is that you put people who are either flat out incompetent or directly hostile to the missions of any of these agencies. And then you basically sabotage them internally, make them less able to do their jobs. And then the public support for getting rid of them increases over time because they're not doing their jobs well, they're incompetent, they're whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:38]
| Still, the bottom line is, okay, get rid of the agency doesn't really reduce the debt it's not enough my point it's not enough my point is that you can just listen just go tomorrow and shut them all down it doesn't make a fuck it doesn't make a significant enough dent it's just not enough it's not enough you.
|
Sam:
[1:26:53]
| Could default on the debt.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:54]
| You could default on the debt yeah that that i'm sure that that's not gonna cause any problems to people's pocketbooks well.
|
Sam:
[1:27:01]
| This is this is the whole thing like even elon like before the election, one of the quotes that came out in the last week was him saying that, yeah, we want to cut this $2 trillion. And yeah, I'm sure it'll be painful for some people for a while. And, you know, they'll just have to suffer through, you know, whereas like if you actually tried to do this by cutting all sorts of government programs that actually do help people, you're going to be screwing over so many people in the process. And like this, this ties to, you know, one of the things that people have been saying in response to the election is specifically to Trump voters is I hope they get everything they voted for.
|
Sam:
[1:27:51]
| You know, because it's sort of this view of, you know, the Democrats, we're not in a position to fight it anyway. So we basically shouldn't even try. Let them do their worst. And they're just going to fuck things up so bad that people are not going to want them again at the next election. And so there are a couple of things with that. One, I sympathize with that attitude. On the other hand, it is a very, very privileged thing to say because it sort of implies that you're not one of the people who are going to get fucked because it's not just it's not like Trump doing everything he wanted to do is only going to hurt the Trump voters. And even if it was, you know, I don't know, like my sympathy is limited, but at the same time there, the radius of damage is not limited. The radius of damage from the policies we're likely to see over the next few years. and the incompetent running of things we're going to see over the next few years is massive.
|
Sam:
[1:29:01]
| You know, domestically, hell, internationally too. Like, you know, Ukraine, Gaza, NATO, relations with China, you know, all of these, everything. You know, there is not a single part of what's going on in the world that does not have the opportunity to get fucked up by this. You know and of course there are a certain group of people who would yeah i'm calling it fucked up there's a certain group of people would be like well that's actually just fixing it that's making it the way it should be but there are a lot of people that are going to get hurt in the process.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:38]
| Yeah well you know i feel bad for the people that are going to be affected that definitely didn't vote for this okay but again nothing i can do about it right now and there's just, We got, you know, they haven't done it yet. They're not in office yet. At some point, you know, groups like the ACLU and others are lining up to do something. At that point, we can start trying to do whatever it is to try to block some of this stuff and whatnot.
|
Sam:
[1:30:05]
| And hope that CODES doesn't just back it all up.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:08]
| Right. But at this point, it's like, it's not.
|
Sam:
[1:30:10]
| But they probably will.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:12]
| There's, you know, there's nothing to. I mean, I just cannot. I don't have the energy. and i don't want to.
|
Sam:
[1:30:20]
| Be in full outrage primary emotion for four straight days like for for the anybody on the democratic side of the spectrum for the most part the overwhelming feeling that i've gotten from everybody is just exhaustion like after 2016 it was fight fight fight we're going to go out and demonstrate we're going to be out in the streets we're going to do this, time it's like fuck it i'm tired i i'm tired dude it's been 10.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:50]
| Years it's almost 10 years of this shit man.
|
Sam:
[1:30:51]
| Yeah and and i don't know there there may be things that trump and his administration do that prompt people to to get out in the streets and get active what i'm.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:03]
| Saying is that it's not listen right now right now at this moment we gain nothing by spending all that energy.
|
Sam:
[1:31:12]
| Right right.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:14]
| Now we gotta save that energy for later because.
|
Sam:
[1:31:17]
| Maybe next year once he's actually president and actually starts doing things and yeah yeah but but right.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:24]
| Now it's not it's not worth spending the energy you're just being outraged at shit that we already knew he was doing.
|
Sam:
[1:31:31]
| Well and even then like the question is how do you spend the energy in a way that's actually effective because with the level of losses we have here like democrats have zero leverage in positions of actual power so what so what we're talking about is yeah we are talking about demonstrations on the street and decides to pluck boycotts and media unless.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:56]
| Unless trump decides to pluck two more people from the house to.
|
Sam:
[1:32:00]
| To to.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:01]
| Dirty administration and then we got something to talk about.
|
Sam:
[1:32:03]
| Yeah well even yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:08]
| Because right now they are at they are down to exactly 280 okay well.
|
Sam:
[1:32:16]
| There's still a few uncalled races but yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:18]
| No but but bottom line if you take the ddhp whatever basically they're at 280 okay it can't i mean you're you're really you are at the totally playing with fire number Okay. All right. It can't be any thinner than that.
|
Sam:
[1:32:34]
| They're basically going to be roughly the same level as last time around in terms of how precarious it is. Maybe more precarious, maybe a little bit less.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:44]
| No, no. It is slightly more precarious. It's tighter.
|
Sam:
[1:32:48]
| How many uncalled races do we still have?
|
Ivan:
[1:32:50]
| Well, I'm talking already including all the uncalled races.
|
Sam:
[1:32:54]
| Oh, just by like who's leading in the uncalled races.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:57]
| Yes, yes, yes, yes. They've got 218. Okay, period. That's where they're at because of all the uncalled races and then the two resignations that you've got right now, Gates and this other guy from Florida, whatever. That's the number. That's where they're at.
|
Sam:
[1:33:10]
| Well, yeah, you should keep in mind, though, that with the empty seats, the number they need for a majority probably drops to 217, but yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:19]
| Well, that's what I'm saying. That's my point. They basically, that's where they're at. They've got, they're right, one. That's what they've got.
|
Sam:
[1:33:30]
| As opposed to, what did they have this time? Four, three or four of this time?
|
Ivan:
[1:33:33]
| Some guy, yeah, some guy has a heart attack right now, okay? And they're Republicans, and they're a deep ship.
|
Sam:
[1:33:41]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:41]
| In the House. So that's how close it is right now there.
|
Sam:
[1:33:45]
| Yeah. So, okay. The one other thing that I think is worth talking about before we wrap it up for today, you mentioned, I mentioned how he is nominating a whole bunch of incompetence. There are a couple that are particularly controversial. We've got Matt Gaetz for Attorney General. And we've got, what's the name of that Fox guy, Hogarth or Hogarth or whatever for Secretary of Defense. Both of which have quote-unquote issues. We also have RFK for HNHS.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:19]
| My question is whether the Republicans are just going to rubber stamp this or they're just going to be.
|
Sam:
[1:34:23]
| You know, saved up. There are a couple of power plays here. Like, one question is, like, Donald Trump had to know that some of these would be difficult pushes even within the Republican Senate. And so the question is, what is his goal here? And I think a big part of this is just to test and exert his power. Because basically he wants to see, like, okay, there are Republican senators who are obviously queasy about Matt Gaetz. I saw one estimate of some off-the-record Republican senator or something saying that half the Republicans don't want to vote for Matt Gaetz.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:10]
| Of course, you don't need half. You don't need half. That's the reality. You don't need half. You just need a few of them.
|
Sam:
[1:35:18]
| What do you mean? Oh, to defect. Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:20]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:35:21]
| You only need a couple to defect.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:21]
| Yeah, you don't need the half. but.
|
Sam:
[1:35:23]
| So the question is like can donald trump strong arm his way through to getting these confirmed anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:32]
| Um or that's one of the other things i'm leaning towards i'm leaning towards my my belief is he'll get whatever the fuck he wants i agree but i agree but i but but i say lean, I'm not saying I guarantee you he will get what it is. My lean is you'll get whatever the fuck he wants.
|
Sam:
[1:35:53]
| I agree. I think because fundamentally, here's the thing. Do you really do you think any Republican in the Senate wants the very first thing the newly sworn in Republican senators do?
|
Ivan:
[1:36:08]
| Maybe to be to divide their president who just got. No, maybe what they'll do is they'll force him to withdraw and put somebody else who's still a stop to him, but isn't Matt Gaetz.
|
Sam:
[1:36:22]
| Yes, that's the conversation. That's how, like, if Donald Trump was to lose this, the way it would happen is the nominations would be withdrawn. It would not get to a vote. However, there are two things. I think Donald Trump wants to force it to a vote to prove he wants to make every single damn one of these Republican senators bend the fucking knee and basically show that he is in control. And if they go against him, he will try to crush them.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:53]
| But of course, here goes the other part about this. And this is what I said. One thing about since, you know, Donald Trump gets elected is that he is a lame duck, as usually anybody on a second term is starting on day one. So everybody, what they are planning on is not his presidency. They are planning on what's coming afterwards. Right. Because that's the way this shit works. And so their calculations in their head are going to be what the fuck is better for me, Is it better if I show myself as the independent, strong MAGA guy, you know, whatever, who even Trump can't bully, or do I just roll over to him? I don't know. I don't know what their calculation is.
|
Sam:
[1:37:38]
| I think they're going to roll over.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:41]
| I'm leaning towards they're all going to roll over.
|
Sam:
[1:37:42]
| Yeah. But now they might roll over. The other thing Donald Trump is pushing them to, he doesn't even want to go through the confirmation process. He wants the Senate to recess. So that he can do them all as recess appointments. Now, the new leader of the Senate, Thune, will be the new leader in January, says he doesn't want to do that. But this is another one of these tests. Donald Trump basically wants to say, I don't fucking care about your confirmation process. Recess and let me put all these people in on my own. And you know which is just another test and specifically it's a test of authoritarian power can you tell the legislature to go fuck themselves because as executive you're going to do whatever the hell you want anyway and and so i think you're going to get that scenario with this is this is trump right off the bat exerting his power like saying you know what i'm going to nominate matt Gates. I'm going to nominate RFK Jr. I'm going to nominate this fucking Fox News host with Nazi tattoos and there's not a damn fucking thing you can do about it.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:00]
| So that will be the question I have. I think that one or two of these have a shot at him just changing his mind.
|
Sam:
[1:39:11]
| Well, he is fickle like that. And he also has other things. Like if the Senate does push against him, he can say, fuck you. I'm going to make up a new position and give it authority. Just like he's doing with this sort of Elon thing, which is not a real thing. But he's making up this commission and putting them in charge. He could do the same thing oh you don't like rfk fine he doesn't have to be secretary of hhs he'll be my my health care czar which is not a confirmable thing but i'm still gonna make him in charge of all kinds of stuff right so okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:45]
| Well i'm done talking about this shit.
|
Sam:
[1:39:47]
| Okay let's wrap it up.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:49]
| I'm sorry you know it's given me a headache.
|
Sam:
[1:39:52]
| Nobody knows.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:55]
| Well if you were watching on the live stream you would have seen that i had to pop a couple of these.
|
Sam:
[1:39:58]
| What what are those the tylenine antacids tylenine tylenine no okay tylenine yeah okay well let's wrap it up then uh go to oh curmudgeons curmudgeons hyphen corner.com and you can find all the ways to contact us you can find our archives you can find transcripts you can find links to our youtube where we also live stream them. Sean was watching for a part of the show today. Thank you, Sean. We welcome other people to watch live. If you subscribe on YouTube and ring the little bell thing, then you can get notifications when we're going live. We also post on Mastodon when we're going live, all of that kind of stuff. I will also mention... That last week, I set up our Cummudgeons Corner TikTok as well. Something my son Alex has been bugging me to do for a long time.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:50]
| Wow.
|
Sam:
[1:40:52]
| Because we use Riverside. No, not yet. Yeah, it is Riverside, right? Yeah, we use Riverside to do our recordings. And one of the things they do is they have a little AI generated clips thing. It generates like a dozen clips each time we record. And I picked a couple to post. just little little one or one minute segments of the show AI AI Sam like most of most of the things it picks honestly kind of suck but usually I can find one or two that I'm like okay that's that sounds interesting I look for ones that are like somewhat entertaining with either the two of us arguing or one of us being really animated or something and I'm I'll try to post you know one or two of those each week or whatever ones I think seem good. And I said when I first posted on the TikTok, I said that, hey, maybe one of these times either Yvonne or I, I gave Yvonne the passwords too, we'll just do one of these like, hey, I have something to say in between shows and record ourselves in selfie mode on our phone for like a minute and then post that. I haven't done that yet. Nothing inspired me this week that made me feel like doing that. I don't know if anything ever will inspire me. But if I do, it'll be there. Anyway, the TikTok is not yet linked from the Curmudgeon's Corner website, but if you search TikTok for Curmudgeon's Corner, you'll find us.
|
Sam:
[1:42:15]
| And yeah, what else? Oh yeah, the Patreon is linked there too. You can give us money at various levels. We'll send you a postcard. We'll send you a mug. I was about to say, we'll send you a duck, but no, we will not send you a duck. No, that's not happening.
|
Sam:
[1:42:32]
| And yeah, so at $2 a month or more, or if you ask nicely, we will invite you to the Curmudgeon's Chorus Slack, where Yvonne and I and a bunch of listeners are chatting throughout the week. We would love to have more of you on there. It's a lot of fun. Yvonne, do you have a highlight for the Curmudgeon's Chorus Slack that is not related to the election at all?
|
Ivan:
[1:42:50]
| I do. I do. And for some reason, I went to get my mail, which I do regularly get my mail because I I do get some important things in the mail.
|
Sam:
[1:43:00]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:01]
| And there was a sharper image catalog.
|
Sam:
[1:43:05]
| I thought they went out of business years ago. They still exist.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:08]
| I posted the picture. Dude, I got a damn. This came in the mail. I'm showing it to Sam on the live stream.
|
Sam:
[1:43:15]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:15]
| A fucking sharper image catalog.
|
Sam:
[1:43:20]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:20]
| I do believe somebody bought the brand and has relaunched. But I got a catalog, Sam, a fucking catalog in the mail, you know, for the sharper image. And I'm just like, you know, what year is this again? This, this really feels like the 1980s. I mean, if there was something that you want me to feel like it's the 1980s, you know, this is, you know, this made me feel like it's the fucking 1980s.
|
Sam:
[1:43:51]
| Let me ask, like one of the things about the sharper image catalog back when it was a thing before, is it was fun to leaf through it and you'd see cool things.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:00]
| Listen, I will say this. Look, they did do a good job of putting some unique things and products on here that it's not something that you get just fine anywhere. They had a few laser combs to make your hair grow. I have heard from people that those work. They've got this thing, which is 95, 99. No, no, no. They were actually, the FDA actually certified that some of these laser combs do actually work. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:44:32]
| Well, you know, I'm sure RFK is going to be rescinding that.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:36]
| Well, that, well, yeah. There is this 95-99 thing called a premium and nominative defrosting tray, which is basically you put a piece of meat on top of this metal tray and it defrosts magically. Okay. Which I thought was quite interesting. Um, you know, they, they, they, they have like, you know, they, they have like, uh, what the heck was it? Oh, they had stuff to like convert negatives and things to digital, you know, media, for example, they had a whole bunch of those. They had one where you would put your phone down and then you put this thing in front. Okay. And it makes it look like the screen is just like, you know, 13 inches. So you could watch like a movie or video or something or whatever, or you just stuck it like right behind there and it would, it would do that. It had some, I mean, I will say that they, they went out and, and put some shit in here that, you know, wasn't just, you know, it's stuff that ordinarily you wouldn't find in other, in other places.
|
Sam:
[1:45:41]
| Let's ask the real question that matters here.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:44]
| Am I buying ordering anything? I don't think they've gotten me that anything in here, even though it looks like interesting that I would buy like right now.
|
Sam:
[1:45:53]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:54]
| Not as far as I can tell.
|
Sam:
[1:45:56]
| They have failed.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:57]
| To me, they failed. I don't know if they failed with everybody else, but, but, but, you know, to me, I'm like, I'm like, you know, they got shit for old people in here too. I saw that they've got these things that are like these like a portable, like magnifiers. So you're not carrying your like glasses. So you put this thing here and it's got this magnifier. So you don't have to like, you know, so say you're, you're sitting at a table, you're sitting in a chair and it's got this thing with a little arm extension with, with, with a big magnifying glass where you can just be sitting there reading and this thing will be magnified without you having to put on glasses. You know, old people shit in here.
|
Sam:
[1:46:34]
| Smartphones have magnifier modes in the accessibility.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:37]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but, but no, but think about it. Look, you don't, you would have to hold it. No, but it's not just that. If you put the magnifying mode, basically you are reducing the amount of stuff that you're seeing on the phone. Whereas if you have it in the compact mode and you put it there, you will see a lot more of it. Whereas you're actually, when you do that, you're reducing what, how much you're actually seeing of the page. Whereas you could be looking at, you know, the whole page. Exactly.
|
Sam:
[1:47:08]
| Because it's big.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:09]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:47:11]
| Which makes it oh so convenient to carry around. But okay, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:14]
| Of course. I'm not buying it. Like I said, I'm just saying, that's what they're selling. Okay. All right.
|
Sam:
[1:47:19]
| Okay. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:20]
| I mean, once you're 85 years old and you're not moving that much around and you got this thing that's just right beside your chair and you put it there and you're like, oh, look, I can read everything. Look at that.
|
Sam:
[1:47:30]
| I got you. I got you. Now, I presume, however, that they have at least modernized, right, so that they sent you a physical catalog, but you can go to the website to actually buy this shit, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:47:41]
| Okay. You don't have to call them 800 numbers. There is a QR code in the back that you scan and or scan here to shop.
|
Sam:
[1:47:47]
| Okay. So it's not like, you know, fill out the form and mail it in or something.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:52]
| Well, I remember those days, okay, where you actually – there was an insert where you filled out the items that you wanted and you put it into your credit card information or mailed them a check.
|
Sam:
[1:48:02]
| Okay?
|
Ivan:
[1:48:03]
| And then, you know, they would fulfill your order and send you back. But no, no, no. I just see here a QR code. I don't see – actually, there is a phone number, but I'm sure that's more for support. They really want you to scan the QR code to shop. And they have their website here, you know, stuff. So, SharperImage.com. So, yeah. So, there you go.
|
Sam:
[1:48:21]
| There you go. Free ad for Sharper Image.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:24]
| Yeah. Free ad for Sharper Image. I'm sure nobody will buy anything off of it. I'll be shocked if they do.
|
Sam:
[1:48:30]
| You should have got us a commission code.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:32]
| Yeah, exactly. Should have got, but I didn't see any of that. So anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:48:37]
| Okay. We are done here. Thanks, everybody. We will be, maybe next week won't be all election stuff. Maybe we'll have something else to talk about. Like, I don't know. Other stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:51]
| The webinar?
|
Sam:
[1:48:51]
| Yeah. And we had a few years with Biden where things were calmer. I suspect we're going to have a chaotic next four years. We'll see.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:01]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:49:02]
| Okay. Goodbye, everybody. Talk to you next time. Goodbye.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:08]
| Bye.
|
Sam:
[1:49:39]
| Okay, I'm hitting stop. Have a good week, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:42]
| All right. Stop.
|
Sam:
[1:49:43]
| Bye.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:44]
| Bye.
| |
|
