WEBVTT 00:00:26.460 --> 00:00:32.720 Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, October 19th, 2024. 00:00:33.500 --> 00:00:39.340 It is just before 23 UTC as I'm starting to record this. I'm Sam Minter. 00:00:39.980 --> 00:00:47.180 Yvonne Bowe is not here. So we had, you know, lately we've been doing Friday 00:00:47.180 --> 00:00:49.380 night U.S. time or Saturday during the day. 00:00:49.580 --> 00:00:54.700 So like Saturday UTC almost always recently because I now have something on 00:00:54.700 --> 00:00:56.660 Thursday evenings U.S. time. I've got to do. 00:00:56.920 --> 00:01:01.880 And so Yvonne asked me if we could do Saturday this time because he had something going on Friday. 00:01:02.600 --> 00:01:07.960 And so when we do it Saturday, it's daytime US time. And we were going to do it at 16 UTC. 00:01:08.740 --> 00:01:14.640 But just a couple hours before that, Yvonne texts me and lets me know he's not feeling well. 00:01:15.760 --> 00:01:19.660 And I don't know if he's going to want to give any more details about what's 00:01:19.660 --> 00:01:22.060 up with that next week or not. I don't know. Probably not. 00:01:22.580 --> 00:01:30.060 Long past by then. But the bottom line is he wasn't feeling up to or able to do anything. 00:01:30.360 --> 00:01:34.460 So he's like, I'm sorry, last minute cancel. I'm out. 00:01:34.820 --> 00:01:39.280 And it was close enough to the time we were scheduled to record and that I didn't 00:01:39.280 --> 00:01:44.740 attempt to get any substitute hosts in on two hours notice or whatever. 00:01:44.880 --> 00:01:51.600 But also, to be honest, I'd been up all night with some other stuff going on. I was tired. 00:01:51.960 --> 00:01:54.800 I was going to be staying up. Just, I was getting, you know, 00:01:55.220 --> 00:01:58.900 I'm like, oh, I'm not doing the podcast. 00:01:59.160 --> 00:02:01.260 That means I can sleep a couple hours. 00:02:01.600 --> 00:02:05.760 So I went back to bed and it's hours later. 00:02:05.940 --> 00:02:12.820 Now I did, you know, and agenda wise, this first segment is the rambly personal 00:02:12.820 --> 00:02:18.580 slash non-current events-y, well, non-serious news. 00:02:18.680 --> 00:02:21.120 Sometimes we can do current events that's not serious in this segment. 00:02:22.020 --> 00:02:28.340 That kind of segment. And then we will have two segments of sort of actual newsy stuff. 00:02:28.860 --> 00:02:32.240 And, you know, I guess this time they're going to both be picked by me. 00:02:32.340 --> 00:02:39.420 You can, of course, guess that, you know, hey, look, we've got so little time 00:02:39.420 --> 00:02:42.160 left before the election at this point. 00:02:42.160 --> 00:02:52.280 You know, as I am recording this, it is down to 17 days, 17 days until polls start to close. 00:02:52.780 --> 00:02:57.220 And so, of course, I'm going to be talking about the election. It is. 00:02:58.250 --> 00:03:03.850 If it's not like, I don't know, like I'm struggling to come up with anything 00:03:03.850 --> 00:03:06.510 non-election even to talk about in this initial segment. 00:03:07.330 --> 00:03:12.490 The whole damn rest of the show is probably going to be election stuff in one way, shape, or another. 00:03:13.670 --> 00:03:19.290 You know, 17 days left. What the hell do you expect, people? 00:03:20.510 --> 00:03:22.910 You know, what? I'm going to 00:03:22.910 --> 00:03:26.530 spend like the whole time talking about the Europa Clipper or something. 00:03:26.750 --> 00:03:29.770 I mean, it's on our list. Or the WordPress thing. 00:03:30.030 --> 00:03:33.950 Honestly, I don't have enough to say about those things. The WordPress thing 00:03:33.950 --> 00:03:37.730 seems like it's like an idiotic turf war thing. 00:03:37.930 --> 00:03:43.170 And, you know, people need to get a hold of themselves and, you know, 00:03:43.410 --> 00:03:48.350 just get over it and be civil and work things out and blah, blah, blah. 00:03:49.610 --> 00:03:55.930 And it seems like the automatic guy is the guy who's like nutso on this one, not the other people. 00:03:56.110 --> 00:03:59.510 But whatever, whatever. ever. And Europa Clipper, cool. 00:03:59.950 --> 00:04:04.450 They launched it. It won't actually get there for six years. 00:04:04.830 --> 00:04:09.490 And, and, and by the way, six years is 2030, 2030. 00:04:13.250 --> 00:04:20.370 For those of us who remember when the year 2000 was still like way in the future, 00:04:21.290 --> 00:04:23.990 like 2030 coming up on us 00:04:23.990 --> 00:04:27.090 very rapidly it's just it's just wrong it's just 00:04:27.090 --> 00:04:29.910 wrong anyway so what 00:04:29.910 --> 00:04:32.850 do i want to talk about on this this initial slice of 00:04:32.850 --> 00:04:35.970 show you know i actually contemplated just 00:04:35.970 --> 00:04:41.970 being like hey yvonne's not here i'll be back after this break and talk about 00:04:41.970 --> 00:04:49.390 politics but what i will mention and it it's it's relating to the politics vaguely 00:04:49.390 --> 00:04:55.030 but like because it's election graphs related like i i mentioned on a show that i am taking. 00:04:55.850 --> 00:04:58.550 The basically the rest of the time between now and the 00:04:58.550 --> 00:05:02.910 election off and a little bit of time after the election basically i'm taking 00:05:02.910 --> 00:05:09.170 the i'm not going to be back at the day job until november 11th okay so i'm 00:05:09.170 --> 00:05:14.410 taking three weeks off the first two in a little bit are pre-election and then 00:05:14.410 --> 00:05:17.450 is like a few days after the election as well. 00:05:17.950 --> 00:05:27.290 And the reason for this is because in previous years, the volume of polls by 00:05:27.290 --> 00:05:31.750 this point was already absolutely overwhelming. 00:05:32.070 --> 00:05:36.510 And I've mentioned before, I hand enter these polls. 00:05:36.890 --> 00:05:42.210 I manually, like the way election graphs is set up, like, yes, 00:05:42.470 --> 00:05:47.270 I know they're like 538 provides an API. I could do, 00:05:47.780 --> 00:05:51.300 And every four years, I consider it because there have been, 00:05:51.440 --> 00:05:53.960 whether it was 538 or other people 00:05:53.960 --> 00:05:59.580 before that, there have been ways to automatically ingest polling data. 00:06:00.680 --> 00:06:06.960 But I always say to myself, you know, first of all, I may make different decisions. 00:06:07.460 --> 00:06:10.560 Like I'm including some things that 538 doesn't. 00:06:10.560 --> 00:06:17.060 Now, most of the things that I include that 538 doesn't are included by DDHQ 00:06:17.060 --> 00:06:21.900 slash the Hills database. And they also have an automated way to get their stuff 00:06:21.900 --> 00:06:23.640 so I can combine them or something. 00:06:23.780 --> 00:06:29.740 But like I, I make different decisions about what to include the, 00:06:29.740 --> 00:06:33.960 some of the things I include aren't included by either of them. 00:06:33.960 --> 00:06:38.740 Because I'm like, when people do all kinds of variants of like, 00:06:38.920 --> 00:06:42.540 oh, okay, not just here's the registered voter, here's the likely voter, 00:06:42.580 --> 00:06:46.300 but here's the number before we press people for. 00:06:48.560 --> 00:06:55.120 First we just ask people, and then we push the undecided people to make a decision. 00:06:55.340 --> 00:06:57.480 And so that's what's called the with leans. 00:06:58.400 --> 00:07:02.220 It adds in the people who say they're not really decided, but they're kind of 00:07:02.220 --> 00:07:04.500 leaning towards one candidate or the other. 00:07:04.780 --> 00:07:08.160 And I include some of those different ways of looking at it. 00:07:08.220 --> 00:07:10.300 I just include all the variants I can find. 00:07:10.940 --> 00:07:16.580 And so not all of that information is available. And I also feel like there's, there's a value in the, 00:07:17.200 --> 00:07:24.520 having hands-on and looking at each and every data point I put in and what's its effect. 00:07:25.080 --> 00:07:29.140 I also, the way election graphs is structured right now, like it really is set 00:07:29.140 --> 00:07:32.260 to like process one new data point at a time. 00:07:32.400 --> 00:07:41.000 So like I add a data point and then I trigger updating of the site and the mechanisms 00:07:41.000 --> 00:07:45.120 I have to update right now sort of assume there's only one new data point. 00:07:45.120 --> 00:07:48.100 So like if i added five data points and 00:07:48.100 --> 00:07:51.940 then told it go it would get confused like 00:07:51.940 --> 00:07:56.000 mainly in terms of like automatic 00:07:56.000 --> 00:08:00.880 posts on mastodon and stuff like that i think the web website for the most part 00:08:00.880 --> 00:08:07.420 would eventually figure it out but it wouldn't be ideal it's not set up to do 00:08:07.420 --> 00:08:14.260 that it's not set up to sort of detect and handle a bunch of stuff at it at once. 00:08:14.380 --> 00:08:16.560 It really expects one at a time. 00:08:16.820 --> 00:08:20.380 And like, I know that's bad design and I could fix that at some point, 00:08:20.380 --> 00:08:22.700 but it hasn't been a priority for me. 00:08:22.800 --> 00:08:25.580 And I kind of, you know, enjoy doing it data point by data point. 00:08:25.700 --> 00:08:29.860 But the point of all this is I'm doing it manually and I'm not only typing in 00:08:29.860 --> 00:08:33.580 the line of data manually, but after I type in the data and I trigger the processing, 00:08:33.740 --> 00:08:38.840 it takes It takes a couple minutes for it to do everything it's going to do with the new data point. 00:08:39.880 --> 00:08:46.340 It can be, and then if it's something that triggers a tipping point change or 00:08:46.340 --> 00:08:52.900 a state crosses from one of my categories to another, it takes even longer because it waits on, 00:08:53.120 --> 00:08:56.960 like some things are processed like immediately and other things are on like 00:08:56.960 --> 00:09:00.460 a time thing where it only gets looked at every five minutes or whatever. 00:09:00.460 --> 00:09:04.060 So if it's one of those, I have to wait for it and blah, blah, blah. 00:09:04.420 --> 00:09:08.600 Anyway, the point is, it takes me on average... 00:09:09.630 --> 00:09:15.690 Maybe three or four minutes per data point. Like some of them are less and some of them are more. 00:09:16.690 --> 00:09:21.610 And so like when there are lots and lots of polls, it ends up taking me lots and lots of time. 00:09:21.770 --> 00:09:26.890 And in previous cycles, like four years ago, by the time you got to two weeks 00:09:26.890 --> 00:09:32.770 out, I mean, I was, you know, taking six plus hours a day. 00:09:32.930 --> 00:09:37.850 Like it was getting close to being a full-time job, just putting all the stuff 00:09:37.850 --> 00:09:41.130 in. there were a couple of outlets that were doing, you know, 00:09:41.390 --> 00:09:46.750 50 state tracking polls where every day they were putting out new numbers for every state. 00:09:47.170 --> 00:09:51.530 And there were, you know, and all the swing states were getting like a whole 00:09:51.530 --> 00:09:54.110 bunch every day, practically, etc. 00:09:54.470 --> 00:09:58.850 And so for the last couple of cycles, I've taken time off before election day. 00:09:58.990 --> 00:10:02.530 I think last time I also like four years ago, I think I also took three weeks. 00:10:02.670 --> 00:10:05.230 The time before that, I think I only took two weeks. 00:10:06.450 --> 00:10:09.570 But it feels slower this 00:10:09.570 --> 00:10:12.290 time like there are a bunch of 00:10:12.290 --> 00:10:15.630 polls right now like as i am recording right now there 00:10:15.630 --> 00:10:23.190 are a bunch of polls that came out friday afternoon slash evening and it's saturday 00:10:23.190 --> 00:10:29.810 afternoon right now and i haven't put them in yet because i was otherwise occupied 00:10:29.810 --> 00:10:33.850 and i'll do it after I finish this segment, probably. 00:10:34.510 --> 00:10:38.750 And it's, it's, it's probably going to be, I don't know, an hour or two of stuff 00:10:38.750 --> 00:10:42.770 to catch up, but an hour or two is not six hours. 00:10:43.090 --> 00:10:47.570 You know, it does seem slower than it was. And, and maybe it's just like, 00:10:47.570 --> 00:10:49.370 I'm not remembering properly. 00:10:49.370 --> 00:10:55.970 And it was like this, but you know, I'm, I'm hoping that I actually not only 00:10:55.970 --> 00:11:02.490 get to do all the election graph stuff, but I have time to do some other stuff. 00:11:02.670 --> 00:11:07.930 Like I want to catch up around the house. I want to, you know, 00:11:08.090 --> 00:11:09.630 I want to do some cleaning. 00:11:10.090 --> 00:11:11.750 I want to do some laundry. 00:11:12.290 --> 00:11:16.810 I want to do a little bit on some projects other than election graphs. 00:11:16.970 --> 00:11:22.130 I want to spend some time watching TV with Alex, you know, all this kind of 00:11:22.130 --> 00:11:27.070 stuff and a few other things, you know, um. 00:11:27.820 --> 00:11:32.680 But I don't know, we got two weeks left, maybe it'll like radically ramp up 00:11:32.680 --> 00:11:33.980 just for the last two weeks. 00:11:34.440 --> 00:11:40.280 And I shouldn't be saying, oh, it looks better than the other cycles. 00:11:41.280 --> 00:11:46.180 Because I'm going to end up back absolutely hammered for the next two weeks. We'll see. 00:11:46.840 --> 00:11:50.140 Hammered, not in the sense of like drinking and being drunk, 00:11:50.360 --> 00:11:52.860 but hammered in the sense of just having lots of stuff to do, you know. 00:11:52.860 --> 00:11:55.500 Anyway but i'm hoping to do 00:11:55.500 --> 00:11:59.000 other stuff and frankly like look it's it's 00:11:59.000 --> 00:12:05.540 different than a real vacation i haven't taken like a real vacation where like 00:12:05.540 --> 00:12:13.500 myself and the family or myself and my wife or whatever like go somewhere and 00:12:13.500 --> 00:12:17.870 just freaking relax by a pool or something in like, 00:12:18.010 --> 00:12:22.310 I cannot remember us doing that ever, honestly. 00:12:23.030 --> 00:12:28.950 And we really fucking should at some point, like all of my vacations are like, 00:12:29.070 --> 00:12:32.230 I'm going to take off a week to do something. 00:12:32.470 --> 00:12:36.610 The last time I took a week off was to add the, the, 00:12:36.790 --> 00:12:40.490 the with time left probabilistic models 00:12:40.490 --> 00:12:43.910 to election graph and now i'm taking time off to 00:12:43.910 --> 00:12:46.810 do election graph stuff and then one week 00:12:46.810 --> 00:12:50.170 after the election ostensibly to sort of recover and 00:12:50.170 --> 00:12:55.510 also to pick up my wife's campaign yard signs but like the yard signs aren't 00:12:55.510 --> 00:12:59.570 that much this because she was unopposed this year so like i only put out like 00:12:59.570 --> 00:13:06.510 between 20 and 30 signs whereas two years ago when she had an opponent it was 00:13:06.510 --> 00:13:08.970 between 200 and 300 signs, 00:13:09.370 --> 00:13:11.830 I think. Maybe it was about 200 signs. 00:13:12.310 --> 00:13:15.310 It might be slightly under 200. I don't know. In that ballpark, 00:13:15.350 --> 00:13:18.690 I could look it up, but it feels like it was 200 to 300 signs. 00:13:19.570 --> 00:13:24.470 A week wasn't even time to pick up all the signs and to check all the locations. 00:13:24.470 --> 00:13:30.850 I shouldn't say pick them all up because the reality is a significant fraction of them will be gone. 00:13:31.370 --> 00:13:38.170 People will have stolen them, thrown them into the woods where you can't get to them. 00:13:38.370 --> 00:13:42.410 Although we tried really hard. If we could see it in the woods, we, we would get it. 00:13:42.490 --> 00:13:49.410 Like I even bought like one of these like long 25 foot apple picker things so 00:13:49.410 --> 00:13:55.030 that I could reach one that somebody had thrown into like a thicket and try to pull it back out. 00:13:55.070 --> 00:13:58.150 And I successfully got it, but I had to like buy equipment. 00:13:59.070 --> 00:14:06.650 To get that thing out. But anyway, so what, what I'm hoping like is I actually am, 00:14:07.330 --> 00:14:12.750 don't end up completely slammed by election graphs and signs and all this kind 00:14:12.750 --> 00:14:18.910 of stuff and actually can relax a little bit too, you know? 00:14:19.190 --> 00:14:23.230 And yeah, I mentioned like filling some of that time with housework and okay. 00:14:23.350 --> 00:14:26.870 Yeah. There's all kinds of housework and chores and things that 00:14:26.870 --> 00:14:29.870 just need to get done and it's nice to have time 00:14:29.870 --> 00:14:33.750 to do that too and to some degree that's like relaxing to 00:14:33.750 --> 00:14:38.430 me too depending on what the task is some of them i have like dread but others 00:14:38.430 --> 00:14:45.630 i'm like yeah i actually find doing laundry like like a sort of relaxing zen 00:14:45.630 --> 00:14:52.170 thing you know i have a specific method of course you know i have all my autistic tendencies i have like. 00:14:52.890 --> 00:14:59.210 A 30 step algorithm that I use that probably no one else does it anywhere near the way I do. 00:14:59.410 --> 00:15:02.290 And there are certain things that are important to me about the process that 00:15:02.290 --> 00:15:04.510 no one else would care about. And there are certain things that other people 00:15:04.510 --> 00:15:06.490 would care about that I don't even bother with at all. 00:15:06.750 --> 00:15:10.450 But the point is, you know, I can spend an hour or whatever, 00:15:10.730 --> 00:15:15.510 like sorting laundry, putting away laundry, moving laundry from place to place 00:15:15.510 --> 00:15:20.350 and putting it in a machine and blah, blah, blah, and taking it upstairs, downstairs, whatever. 00:15:20.950 --> 00:15:24.030 And, you know, while I'm doing that, I'm listening to something cool on the 00:15:24.030 --> 00:15:29.750 headphones and I'm, you know, just relaxing a little bit, but you know, 00:15:29.830 --> 00:15:33.170 it'll be nice if these three weeks actually end up with a decent amount of time 00:15:33.170 --> 00:15:34.750 for me to just be sitting on the couch, 00:15:34.930 --> 00:15:39.010 watching TV with Alex or other stuff, you know, 00:15:40.370 --> 00:15:42.370 I could deal with that. 00:15:42.850 --> 00:15:48.270 You know, relaxing is fun. And, you know, I... 00:15:49.650 --> 00:15:52.670 One of these days I should really do another, you know, the thing I should do 00:15:52.670 --> 00:15:54.510 is another one of those random vacations. 00:15:55.870 --> 00:16:00.810 Like I've the, the next on the list one has been go to go to the Yucatan in 00:16:00.810 --> 00:16:03.210 Mexico for like two decades. 00:16:03.710 --> 00:16:05.830 It's time to actually freaking do that thing. 00:16:06.350 --> 00:16:11.330 Maybe next year we can organize that. I don't know. At one point Yvonne was like, I'll go with you. 00:16:11.610 --> 00:16:15.290 So that'd be fun. Curmudgeons corner live from the Yucatan. 00:16:15.810 --> 00:16:19.490 You know, we could do that. Anybody else want to join me there? 00:16:19.650 --> 00:16:24.930 Like a random trip, Southern Yucatan, like, like right near the border of Belize 00:16:24.930 --> 00:16:30.870 is where we're talking, not like Cancun or the major tourist spots. 00:16:31.030 --> 00:16:35.790 Although I guess it's, it's the, the, the Mayan Riviera or whatever. 00:16:36.090 --> 00:16:40.830 Like, so there's, there is tourism nearby anyway. 00:16:40.830 --> 00:16:49.870 Like, so I'm on vacation on sort of a personal work project sort of vacation, which, 00:16:50.110 --> 00:16:56.430 you know, I understand I need to do the other type someday, but this is as close as I get. 00:16:56.630 --> 00:17:02.090 And I get to do things that are sort of my priorities that I figure out what 00:17:02.090 --> 00:17:06.390 I want to do and how I want to spend my time. And it's not governed by like 00:17:06.390 --> 00:17:08.970 work needs this or work needs that. 00:17:09.970 --> 00:17:14.790 And even that alone is refreshing. You know, even if it's not like you're, 00:17:14.910 --> 00:17:19.210 I'm not going somewhere on a trip and doing typical tourist stuff, 00:17:19.210 --> 00:17:23.270 but it's like actually having time that's mine. 00:17:24.050 --> 00:17:28.850 And that's, that's important. Like, I mean, yes, I have time that's mine every 00:17:28.850 --> 00:17:32.950 weekend and in the evenings, but it's not the same. 00:17:34.090 --> 00:17:37.430 Like honestly i am just 00:17:37.430 --> 00:17:43.590 like by the time i get to the end of the weekend i'm just feeling like i've 00:17:43.590 --> 00:17:47.830 started to recover and i'm ready to like you know because of course i fill the 00:17:47.830 --> 00:17:52.890 weekends with stuff like this podcast and with election graph stuff anyway and 00:17:52.890 --> 00:17:55.350 with with other things like that So, 00:17:55.730 --> 00:18:00.670 you know, I sort of complete all of that stuff, usually sometimes Sunday, 00:18:00.670 --> 00:18:05.790 and then it's already time to start thinking about Monday, you know. 00:18:06.550 --> 00:18:11.890 So anyway, I'm looking forward to the next three weeks. 00:18:12.270 --> 00:18:17.730 Well, I'm nervous about the election, and we'll talk about that soon enough. 00:18:17.730 --> 00:18:21.570 But, but just from a personal point of view, 00:18:21.930 --> 00:18:29.030 like not worrying about going into work, not worrying about what's going on there and like, 00:18:29.230 --> 00:18:34.470 you know, all of the, the, the chaos that's associated with any workplace and 00:18:34.470 --> 00:18:38.570 with my workplace in specific at the moment is nice. 00:18:39.630 --> 00:18:43.750 Do I have any more, but first stuff to do? Have I rambled long enough about 00:18:43.750 --> 00:18:47.190 how I'm enjoying like the fact that I'm on now on vacation? 00:18:47.410 --> 00:18:54.270 This is like, I'm like less than 24 hours in to not having to deal with work stuff. 00:18:54.390 --> 00:18:59.790 But, and so I, I'm not like fully into it yet. I haven't actually started any 00:18:59.790 --> 00:19:03.650 of the things I intended to do during these three weeks yet. 00:19:03.770 --> 00:19:07.270 I haven't even entered in a single data point for election graphs yet. 00:19:07.270 --> 00:19:12.110 I'll, I'll do that after. I'm just doing this normal weekend thing of recording the podcast. 00:19:13.110 --> 00:19:17.870 And I haven't done any household chores yet, you know, but I will. 00:19:18.350 --> 00:19:20.050 I will do all these things. 00:19:20.790 --> 00:19:25.030 So I'm just at the beginning. I'm still excited about it. We'll see how I feel 00:19:25.030 --> 00:19:26.930 in another week or whatever. 00:19:28.690 --> 00:19:32.990 Only other but first. Let's see. Let's, let's, let's click off the things that 00:19:32.990 --> 00:19:38.610 are not like news politics related. 00:19:39.530 --> 00:19:44.850 SpaceX catch, catched SpaceX caught their booster thing. Cool. 00:19:45.450 --> 00:19:49.190 It's still too bad. Elon is, has his name associated with that, 00:19:49.290 --> 00:19:53.970 but SpaceX does do some cool stuff and it's not cause of Elon. 00:19:54.570 --> 00:19:59.490 It's cause of all of the other good engineers who work at that company. 00:19:59.490 --> 00:20:01.770 And good management, et cetera. 00:20:02.030 --> 00:20:07.290 Like from everything I can tell, that place is doing well in part because Elon 00:20:07.290 --> 00:20:10.170 isn't fucking with it on an everyday basis. 00:20:11.290 --> 00:20:15.810 I still worry about like the amount of dependency our space program is getting 00:20:15.810 --> 00:20:20.510 on SpaceX right now because Boeing's doing so badly right now and the government 00:20:20.510 --> 00:20:25.510 itself is doing less on its own and contracting out almost everything. 00:20:25.670 --> 00:20:29.350 I mean, even when they did like Saturn V and the space shuttle and stuff, Obviously, 00:20:29.490 --> 00:20:34.910 contractors built the actual machines, but the government was much more in the 00:20:34.910 --> 00:20:41.590 driver's seat, whereas now they're sort of in a, we want private contractors to do like everything. 00:20:42.430 --> 00:20:45.670 And, you know, that's a little worrying, but it's still cool. 00:20:46.030 --> 00:20:51.390 They, the new heavy, I mean, they've been landing their rockets for a long time 00:20:51.390 --> 00:20:55.250 now, but this is the biggest one yet that they've actually managed to catch. 00:20:55.250 --> 00:20:59.730 And it's a key element in the future plan. So awesome. Good job. 00:21:00.730 --> 00:21:04.190 The WordPress press stuff. I mentioned briefly the Europa stuff. 00:21:04.350 --> 00:21:06.690 I already mentioned briefly, uh. 00:21:07.960 --> 00:21:12.400 Is that it? I think that's it. So here you go. 00:21:12.560 --> 00:21:18.220 I am going to take a thingy. 00:21:18.580 --> 00:21:20.680 Yeah, I'm going to take a break. 00:21:24.700 --> 00:21:29.140 And I'm probably going to come back and record the next segment tomorrow. 00:21:31.420 --> 00:21:36.200 Since I don't have a co-host, I'm splitting this up over probably three different 00:21:36.200 --> 00:21:38.740 sessions, And then I'll put out the actual audio version. 00:21:38.920 --> 00:21:43.720 If you were on YouTube, you can see the parts as they get done, if not live. 00:21:44.080 --> 00:21:47.340 So nobody's been watching live this time around, but that's okay. That's okay. 00:21:48.700 --> 00:21:54.260 I feel okay by that. I'm not feeling neglected. Yeah. 00:21:54.980 --> 00:22:00.320 Okay. First break. What did I say? First break. First break. It's this one. 00:22:00.960 --> 00:22:06.360 It's this one right here. And we'll be back after this. And look, 00:22:06.540 --> 00:22:13.340 the rest of the show, one way or another, is going to be related to the presidential election. 00:22:14.300 --> 00:22:18.980 Like, I mean, we maybe talk about, you know, tangentially related politics as 00:22:18.980 --> 00:22:22.220 well, but it's basically all politics and basically all election. 00:22:22.580 --> 00:22:26.460 Because, like I said, the days are ticking down. 00:22:26.900 --> 00:22:30.560 There's not much left. But first, this break. 00:22:31.440 --> 00:22:41.080 Do, do, do. This podcast is sponsored by alexemzilla.com. 00:22:41.760 --> 00:22:45.460 Alex Emzilla is great. It's on YouTube. 00:22:45.920 --> 00:22:49.980 And it has lots of fun videos. 00:22:51.350 --> 00:22:54.910 Alex Emsola is awesome and great. 00:22:55.290 --> 00:23:00.370 I love his videos, and they are obviously better than Curmudgeon's Corner. 00:23:00.790 --> 00:23:04.950 While they're funnier, they're more interesting. And frankly, 00:23:05.210 --> 00:23:10.250 he seems at least a little smarter than either of the hosts of Curmudgeon's Corner. 00:23:10.630 --> 00:23:20.350 Honestly, it's ridiculous how endlessly talented and phenomenal Alex Emsola is. 00:23:20.350 --> 00:23:34.850 That's how great his YouTube channel is A-L-E-X-M-X-E-L-A dot com Yes Do, do, do! 00:23:35.930 --> 00:23:39.470 And so we are back It is now Sunday, 00:23:39.650 --> 00:23:45.370 October 20th At just before 17 UTC As I'm starting to record this second segment 00:23:45.370 --> 00:23:50.510 So the plan here I'm going to do the election graphs update for this segment 00:23:50.510 --> 00:23:54.710 and talk about polls and polling and where things look and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 00:23:55.130 --> 00:23:59.090 Although to be honest, we're kind of in the same situation we have been, 00:23:59.270 --> 00:24:00.750 but I'll talk about it in more detail. 00:24:01.010 --> 00:24:07.310 And then in the next segment, I'll talk about everything else in terms of how 00:24:07.310 --> 00:24:11.470 things are going and what's going on in the race and all this kind of stuff. 00:24:11.810 --> 00:24:16.570 So poll wise, first of all, right after I published last week's show, 00:24:16.650 --> 00:24:17.890 I did an election graphs update. 00:24:17.890 --> 00:24:24.850 I ended up like I put in a place what I do, like I'll start the blog post and 00:24:24.850 --> 00:24:30.970 I'll put in a tentative title and then I'll actually do the blog post when I pull. 00:24:31.230 --> 00:24:34.830 And as part of that, I'm pulling all the data. I'm looking at which states moved 00:24:34.830 --> 00:24:38.330 which way since the last blog post, all of this kind of stuff. 00:24:39.160 --> 00:24:45.160 And then, and then I put it, I write sort of TLDR summary at the very top. 00:24:45.780 --> 00:24:50.760 And then, you know, which I, I, I don't write that summary until I have, 00:24:51.000 --> 00:24:54.860 after I've done the analysis in case the analysis gives me something different than my impression. 00:24:55.300 --> 00:25:04.300 And then I should go back in and change the title of the post too. But I forgot that. 00:25:06.340 --> 00:25:09.160 You know so i had put in the tentative title 00:25:09.160 --> 00:25:12.040 bad week for harris because my 00:25:12.040 --> 00:25:14.900 overall impression prior to pulling all the data 00:25:14.900 --> 00:25:20.260 is it had been kind of a bad week but in reality when i pulled the data it was 00:25:20.260 --> 00:25:25.220 very very mixed the tipping point moved by 0.1 percent and it actually moved 00:25:25.220 --> 00:25:29.560 towards harris the the things that made me think it was a bad week which were 00:25:29.560 --> 00:25:32.420 bad factors were that last week, 00:25:32.820 --> 00:25:39.620 there were a number of just barely Harris states that moved to just barely Trump. 00:25:39.940 --> 00:25:43.320 And so, yeah, that was movement away from Harris. 00:25:43.640 --> 00:25:50.480 And it left a situation with no, there were no weak Harris states left at all. 00:25:50.600 --> 00:25:55.540 There were no states, when I did that last update, that were between a tie and 00:25:55.540 --> 00:26:00.020 Harris up by 5%. Those had all been emptied out. Those had all gone to Trump. 00:26:00.140 --> 00:26:04.040 That seemed bad but when i did all of the analysis it 00:26:04.040 --> 00:26:06.860 looked well like i said the tipping point moved 00:26:06.860 --> 00:26:10.200 by 0.1 and that 0.1 was towards harris 00:26:10.200 --> 00:26:13.340 and the the the 00:26:13.340 --> 00:26:19.600 win odds were all roughly the same it ended up being kind of a flat week so 00:26:19.600 --> 00:26:24.980 i i realized i hadn't changed the title after i hit publish and at that point 00:26:24.980 --> 00:26:30.500 the permalink is set the url is set i mean there are ways to change it but you 00:26:30.500 --> 00:26:31.680 break those permalinks. 00:26:32.660 --> 00:26:36.000 And so I just added a question mark to the title of it. 00:26:36.630 --> 00:26:40.790 Bad week for Harris question mark without changing the text of the post itself, 00:26:40.970 --> 00:26:43.830 which is kind of lame because really it should have been, 00:26:44.290 --> 00:26:54.230 you know, a flat week and with everything still in the where we are right now. 00:26:54.230 --> 00:27:00.210 And I'll get to the changes in the last week momentarily, but for a long time 00:27:00.210 --> 00:27:03.530 now, it's been, hey, it's too close to call. 00:27:04.050 --> 00:27:08.710 We are within the zone where polling can't tell you the winner. 00:27:09.170 --> 00:27:13.330 It is reasonably possible that Harris will win by a decent margin. 00:27:13.510 --> 00:27:18.050 It is also reasonably possible that Trump will win by a decent margin. 00:27:18.050 --> 00:27:23.190 At the very moment, last week and also this week, 00:27:23.470 --> 00:27:31.270 if you just give every state to whoever's ahead by even the tiniest amount in 00:27:31.270 --> 00:27:35.510 my averages, it gives a slight narrow advantage to Trump. 00:27:35.510 --> 00:27:38.290 And in my probabilities it gives an 00:27:38.290 --> 00:27:42.070 even bigger advantage to trump just simply because my 00:27:42.070 --> 00:27:47.510 probabilities are based on looking at the last four election cycles and how 00:27:47.510 --> 00:27:51.770 have the polls been off in the last four election cycles and more often than 00:27:51.770 --> 00:27:57.150 not they have underestimated republicans so my odds are essentially based on 00:27:57.150 --> 00:28:01.110 okay we're probably going to underestimate the republicans again. 00:28:01.290 --> 00:28:05.330 There's a chance that we won't, but we're probably going to underestimate the 00:28:05.330 --> 00:28:10.570 Republicans again, which gives a little bit more of an advantage to Trump than, you know, 00:28:10.850 --> 00:28:14.670 other folks who give odds, give it much closer to 50-50 than I do at the moment, 00:28:14.670 --> 00:28:19.050 because I'm assuming we're going to underestimate Republicans again. 00:28:19.530 --> 00:28:24.710 If we don't underestimate Republicans again, and you know, it's more likely, 00:28:24.890 --> 00:28:29.970 like, I think a lot of the others are assuming that there's no correlation between 00:28:29.970 --> 00:28:33.930 past performance and past polling errors with current polling errors. 00:28:34.130 --> 00:28:38.490 So they assume there can be polling error, but they assume that we have absolutely 00:28:38.490 --> 00:28:41.290 no idea which way that polling error will go. 00:28:41.470 --> 00:28:47.270 Whereas I assume that it'll be like previous years and on average previous years 00:28:47.270 --> 00:28:48.830 have underestimated the Republican. 00:28:50.030 --> 00:28:53.490 We won't know who's right on that until we count things. 00:28:54.130 --> 00:29:00.370 And honestly, you know, as I've said on this show before, I personally think 00:29:00.370 --> 00:29:06.410 there are a lot of signs that the polling is actually going to underestimate Harris this time. 00:29:07.090 --> 00:29:13.050 There are a lot of reasons to think that. But I'm not going to put my thumb, 00:29:14.230 --> 00:29:16.530 on what my models are doing. 00:29:16.590 --> 00:29:20.390 I'm basing it off the data, basing it off previous elections. 00:29:20.650 --> 00:29:25.210 I'm not going to be like, oh, my gut says that this time they're going to underestimate 00:29:25.210 --> 00:29:28.350 Harris and therefore change something. 00:29:29.240 --> 00:29:33.380 Or even just assume flat, you know, so we'll see. 00:29:33.560 --> 00:29:39.560 But I actually feel like election graphs is, I don't know. I don't know. 00:29:39.740 --> 00:29:45.500 I feel like I personally am more optimistic than what election graph says. 00:29:46.520 --> 00:29:52.160 But as I keep saying over and over again, you know, I don't want to like, 00:29:52.360 --> 00:29:56.860 my gut is not something I'm necessarily going to trust here. 00:29:56.860 --> 00:30:00.740 I'm going to be like, look, if things are like previous years, 00:30:01.640 --> 00:30:07.640 to really feel confident about being ahead, Harris has to have a decent lead 00:30:07.640 --> 00:30:12.380 in all the swing states, not just be tied in all the swing states. 00:30:12.560 --> 00:30:14.280 And essentially, that's where we are. 00:30:14.480 --> 00:30:17.880 So now, since last week, we've had a bunch of polls. 00:30:18.840 --> 00:30:23.720 And as I am, let's see, what were we down to? As I'm recording now, 00:30:23.860 --> 00:30:29.760 we're down to 16.3 days between polls, days before polls start to close. 00:30:29.900 --> 00:30:35.220 And by the way, the 16.3, I also checked, like double-checked the polling close 00:30:35.220 --> 00:30:40.420 times, you know, and I'm regretting a little bit my choice of where I set this, 00:30:40.480 --> 00:30:43.840 like when I set the site up a while ago. And I've debated changing it. 00:30:44.100 --> 00:30:51.720 I have it set to, the end date is 23 UTC on election day. 00:30:52.500 --> 00:30:58.900 And the thing is, polls do start to close at 23 UTC, but no full states close 00:30:58.900 --> 00:31:01.260 until zero UTC, an hour later. 00:31:01.460 --> 00:31:05.460 So I've been like, you know, stressing over the fact that, hey, 00:31:05.560 --> 00:31:10.900 I should have had the end date set all this time to zero UTC rather than 23 00:31:10.900 --> 00:31:18.600 UTC, because that's when full states start to close as opposed to just partial states. 00:31:18.600 --> 00:31:21.720 And really if you're talking about partial states you 00:31:21.720 --> 00:31:24.420 have like a whole day earlier with like well not 00:31:24.420 --> 00:31:28.460 quite a whole day but like 18 hours earlier or something when dicksville notch 00:31:28.460 --> 00:31:33.900 and all of those little towns start to close but anyway i'm keeping it how it 00:31:33.900 --> 00:31:39.940 is like my my site again is set up stupidly like if i wanted to change that 00:31:39.940 --> 00:31:42.980 date i have to change it in like 20 or 30 different places, 00:31:43.680 --> 00:31:45.520 and it would be easy to miss one. 00:31:46.660 --> 00:31:51.440 And I don't. I don't. This is stupid. Like, it should be one place and then 00:31:51.440 --> 00:31:53.020 everything else picks it up from that place. 00:31:53.080 --> 00:31:55.600 But no, no, I had to be stupid. 00:31:56.040 --> 00:31:59.400 It's in, like, 23 different places because it's all, like, historical. 00:31:59.440 --> 00:32:03.320 It was put there when it was and I never standardized it and blah, blah, whatever. 00:32:04.740 --> 00:32:09.240 And it is when the first, like, major sections of states close. 00:32:09.240 --> 00:32:15.060 You know, it's what, what, what could I say? It is what it is. 00:32:16.240 --> 00:32:21.460 Do I still have the map? Yeah, I have the map. So here it's 23 UTC, 00:32:21.680 --> 00:32:23.260 by the way, is going to be. 00:32:23.720 --> 00:32:27.800 Oh, and also there was effective, like they changed when savings time would 00:32:27.800 --> 00:32:29.960 be, but savings time is still before election night. 00:32:30.080 --> 00:32:35.160 So it didn't actually affect this. The first things to close at 6 p.m. 00:32:35.460 --> 00:32:41.920 Eastern, which is 23 UTC, are part, well, most of Indiana, but not all of Indiana, 00:32:42.120 --> 00:32:44.080 and the eastern half of Kentucky. 00:32:44.480 --> 00:32:49.340 Those are going to be the first two things to close, but they won't give results 00:32:49.340 --> 00:32:56.740 for either of those states until the entire state closes an hour later at 7 p.m., which is zero UTC. 00:32:57.900 --> 00:33:01.100 And then at seven we've got like vermont 00:33:01.100 --> 00:33:04.180 virginia indiana kentucky south carolina georgia and 00:33:04.180 --> 00:33:09.300 florida so we'll start to get an indication for real then anyway how did i get 00:33:09.300 --> 00:33:18.500 a tangent tangent i was talking about like stuff for this week hold on yeah 00:33:18.500 --> 00:33:23.520 here we go here we go blah blah blah okay Okay, 00:33:24.160 --> 00:33:27.440 stuff for changes in the polls this week. 00:33:28.280 --> 00:33:34.700 Basically, the bottom line of what happened is some of those states that had 00:33:34.700 --> 00:33:40.360 gone over from just barely Harris to just barely Trump have now gone back. 00:33:40.740 --> 00:33:45.560 We now have Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania back on the just barely Harris, 00:33:45.680 --> 00:33:46.860 weak Harris side of things. 00:33:46.860 --> 00:33:51.180 We still have Trump favored in my averages. 00:33:52.220 --> 00:33:54.940 Just the straight averages, forget the probabilities for the moment, 00:33:55.160 --> 00:34:01.880 because Wisconsin, Trump still has a lead in Wisconsin by 0.1%. 00:34:01.880 --> 00:34:10.960 So, you know, and I, and I would suspect that it probably will go back soon, but again, 00:34:11.240 --> 00:34:18.340 like the theme that we've had all along is so many close States right now under 00:34:18.340 --> 00:34:20.440 2% margin in the poll averages. 00:34:20.440 --> 00:34:23.560 We have Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, 00:34:23.560 --> 00:34:29.300 and then we have Georgia at exactly 2% and Arizona at 2.1%. 00:34:29.300 --> 00:34:34.420 So you can generally throw those in again. So we have the same seven states, 00:34:34.720 --> 00:34:37.980 Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, 00:34:38.060 --> 00:34:43.380 and Arizona, who are all razor thin in terms of polling averages. 00:34:44.340 --> 00:34:45.540 So, like... 00:34:46.320 --> 00:34:53.920 If polling averages are just randomly wrong, then, you know, it could go either way. 00:34:54.420 --> 00:34:58.260 If polling averages are systematically underestimating Trump again, 00:34:58.720 --> 00:35:00.400 then Trump will win by a decent margin. 00:35:00.980 --> 00:35:05.460 If polls are systematically underestimating Harris this time, 00:35:05.660 --> 00:35:07.640 then she will win by a decent margin. 00:35:07.860 --> 00:35:12.300 And everything in between there is still possible at any point in time. 00:35:12.300 --> 00:35:15.200 Now one people one thing that 00:35:15.200 --> 00:35:19.460 people had asked a number of times is well 00:35:19.460 --> 00:35:26.620 what about this whole thing with the zone being flooded by conservative pollsters 00:35:26.620 --> 00:35:32.900 are they intentionally trying to manipulate these kinds of averages to make 00:35:32.900 --> 00:35:36.980 things look more republican than they would otherwise to help Trump out? 00:35:37.780 --> 00:35:41.780 And honestly, I think the answer is yes. I think they are. 00:35:42.220 --> 00:35:46.280 I did an analysis the other day. 00:35:46.680 --> 00:35:49.900 Let me see if I can find it. I should have had it. I should have had it ready. 00:35:50.040 --> 00:35:53.380 I should have had it ready. But let me get that up for you. 00:35:54.220 --> 00:36:00.980 Somebody on Mastodon asked the election graphs account, well, what about this? 00:36:01.380 --> 00:36:04.660 Specifically, they were like, what 00:36:04.660 --> 00:36:08.440 happens when you take out the red wave polls this was 00:36:08.440 --> 00:36:11.420 let's see somebody titled themselves 00:36:11.420 --> 00:36:14.920 trump chaos fatigue with handle 00:36:14.920 --> 00:36:18.500 di di x is nine on 00:36:18.500 --> 00:36:24.020 mastodon.social anyway what happens when you take the red wave polls out and 00:36:24.020 --> 00:36:29.180 so what i did as just an example and probably when i do the next blog post for 00:36:29.180 --> 00:36:33.680 election graphs i'll do this again on whatever is now of the tipping point state 00:36:33.680 --> 00:36:36.520 but But I did it on Pennsylvania, 00:36:36.520 --> 00:36:39.420 and this was like three days ago now, so the numbers would have changed. 00:36:39.620 --> 00:36:41.760 But just as an example... 00:36:43.560 --> 00:36:50.900 I looked at my polling average and the election graphs philosophy is to include fucking everything. 00:36:51.420 --> 00:36:55.960 Include everything we can find, including folks like Rasmussen, 00:36:56.220 --> 00:37:01.260 who have a known partisan agenda, including folks like Trafalgar, same thing. 00:37:01.260 --> 00:37:05.120 And then there are others that are less clear, like, you know, 00:37:05.300 --> 00:37:09.640 maybe, maybe there are Republican aligned pollsters or maybe they're not. 00:37:09.820 --> 00:37:15.200 And they just like, but they seem to historically bias towards the Republicans, whatever. 00:37:15.200 --> 00:37:20.800 So what I did is, because one of the reasons I don't take that into account 00:37:20.800 --> 00:37:27.080 is I don't want to get into the game of making judgment calls of like who to 00:37:27.080 --> 00:37:28.360 include or who not to include. 00:37:28.360 --> 00:37:31.660 Or even more complicated like try to 00:37:31.660 --> 00:37:34.660 rate them and weight them 00:37:34.660 --> 00:37:37.600 differently depending on their accuracy or do 00:37:37.600 --> 00:37:44.220 like 538 does and apply correction factors that say like this pollster usually 00:37:44.220 --> 00:37:48.260 overestimates the democrats so we're going to apply a correction factor blah 00:37:48.260 --> 00:37:54.920 blah blah i just don't want to get into that game that's like it's so much putting 00:37:54.920 --> 00:37:57.200 your you know to use the phrase Again, 00:37:57.440 --> 00:38:05.520 putting your thumb on things that, you know, you end up having so much room 00:38:05.520 --> 00:38:08.660 for judgment on what do you include? 00:38:08.760 --> 00:38:10.920 What do you not include? How do you weigh it? How do you do this? 00:38:11.000 --> 00:38:12.620 How do you do that? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 00:38:12.780 --> 00:38:16.600 And you can get completely different fucking answers depending on what you do. 00:38:17.900 --> 00:38:20.980 And I don't want to do that on election graphs. So I just include everything. 00:38:22.760 --> 00:38:28.420 But 538 does have pollster ratings. They go from a zero to three scale where 00:38:28.420 --> 00:38:31.680 they basically look at all kinds of things about the pollster, 00:38:31.980 --> 00:38:38.280 including their accuracy in terms of how the polls have done compared to the actual results. 00:38:38.380 --> 00:38:40.980 But that's not the only thing that goes into the rating. 00:38:41.180 --> 00:38:45.160 They also take into account things like how transparent are they about their 00:38:45.160 --> 00:38:48.280 methodology and a variety of other factors. 00:38:48.960 --> 00:38:53.060 But they end up giving that zero to three score on pollsters. 00:38:53.060 --> 00:38:57.380 And basically, like, if you're close to a three, you're a really good, 00:38:57.520 --> 00:39:02.940 high quality pollster that, you know, everyone should trust and pay attention to. 00:39:03.200 --> 00:39:09.340 And if you're getting down close to zero, you're kind of trash and people should mostly ignore you. 00:39:09.480 --> 00:39:12.660 And then they've got they've actually got a fourth category pollsters. 00:39:12.880 --> 00:39:18.020 They've entirely banned that don't even have a rating because they exclude them 00:39:18.020 --> 00:39:21.240 from their from their averages entirely. 00:39:21.240 --> 00:39:30.180 And so I recalculated the Pennsylvania average at that time, which right now is. 00:39:30.910 --> 00:39:36.410 Three days later, I have Pennsylvania. It rounds to 0.0. 00:39:36.630 --> 00:39:44.130 It's, it's like, I have it listed as a 0.0% Harris lead, but my system, 00:39:44.370 --> 00:39:48.370 the way my averages work, it actually can't be exactly 0.0. 00:39:48.550 --> 00:39:52.550 Like if it's, if it really is an exact high, it'll pull in older polls until 00:39:52.550 --> 00:39:58.390 it's not. So I know it's not exactly 0.00, it rounds to 0.0. 00:39:59.270 --> 00:40:05.130 Anyway, three days later, I have it at zero. But when I did this analysis, it had Harris up by 0.1%. 00:40:08.350 --> 00:40:17.770 But then if you restrict it to only pollsters who rated 1.5 or above on 538 00:40:17.770 --> 00:40:21.130 scale, it jumps to Harris by 0.4%. 00:40:22.050 --> 00:40:26.770 If you restricted it to only 2.0 and above, it's up to 0.8. 00:40:26.930 --> 00:40:31.590 And if you restrict it to 2.5 and above, it's Harris by 1.5. 00:40:32.090 --> 00:40:37.910 So for Pennsylvania at that moment in time, 00:40:38.350 --> 00:40:44.350 ignoring lower quality pollsters without trying to identify are they specifically 00:40:44.350 --> 00:40:51.210 like red wave polls or pollsters? 00:40:51.270 --> 00:40:54.110 Are clearly like trying to i shouldn't 00:40:54.110 --> 00:40:57.250 say clearly i don't want to imply you know impugn 00:40:57.250 --> 00:41:00.570 people's motives although i think there's plenty of evidence um 00:41:00.570 --> 00:41:05.930 you know if you take out the low quality pollsters harris's numbers went up 00:41:05.930 --> 00:41:12.850 by 1.4 percent in pennsylvania on that example but i think that like that's 00:41:12.850 --> 00:41:20.470 going to vary by state that's going to vary over time so like like if i do this again, 00:41:21.110 --> 00:41:25.410 you know, right now the tipping point state is Wisconsin, where Trump is up by 0.1%. 00:41:25.410 --> 00:41:31.210 If I do that same thing, do I get the same result? I don't know. 00:41:32.230 --> 00:41:34.970 Eyeballing right now the latest polls in the 00:41:34.970 --> 00:41:38.590 mix for that state are bullfinch rmg research 00:41:38.590 --> 00:41:41.830 redfield and wilton patriot polling and rasmussen 00:41:41.830 --> 00:41:47.810 those are the ones that are in my average right now which ones do i know and 00:41:47.810 --> 00:41:53.490 like that's i think rmg research patriot polling and rasmussen are probably 00:41:53.490 --> 00:42:01.230 all ones that you would potentially consider as at least in the zone of suspicion, 00:42:02.370 --> 00:42:04.330 for the effect we're talking about. 00:42:06.090 --> 00:42:10.490 And guess what? First of all, those are three out of five polls in my average. 00:42:10.610 --> 00:42:12.350 So they definitely dominate the average. 00:42:13.270 --> 00:42:17.530 Those are the three that have Trump ahead. RMG has Trump up by one. 00:42:18.210 --> 00:42:22.190 Patriot polling has Trump up by one. Rasmussen has Trump up by two. 00:42:22.370 --> 00:42:27.550 The other two in the average, Bullfinch, if you average their two results, have Harris up by 2.5. 00:42:28.490 --> 00:42:33.670 Redfield and Wilton have Harris up by one. Now, if I was actually going to do 00:42:33.670 --> 00:42:37.490 like the analysis I did before, I wouldn't just average those two. 00:42:37.810 --> 00:42:43.950 I'd find two other older ones to include in the average that were more trustworthy. 00:42:44.230 --> 00:42:46.810 Just glancing through, I think that would be morning consult, 00:42:46.990 --> 00:42:53.690 which has Trump up by one and probably insider advantage, which has Trump tied. 00:42:53.690 --> 00:42:57.390 So you would pull in a couple of Trump things, but they would be Trump things 00:42:57.390 --> 00:42:59.670 that aren't quite as strong as the ones you just excluded. 00:43:00.830 --> 00:43:06.050 But even when you put all that into place, it's a relatively small difference. 00:43:08.250 --> 00:43:11.730 It's like that Pennsylvania example where I actually did all the math. 00:43:11.850 --> 00:43:13.710 It was a 1.4% difference. 00:43:14.470 --> 00:43:24.510 1.4% is very small. However, when you've got seven fucking states that are all 00:43:24.510 --> 00:43:28.090 at a 2.1% or less margin right now, 00:43:28.230 --> 00:43:31.050 1.4% doesn't look that small anymore. 00:43:31.210 --> 00:43:38.890 It's pretty big. But the thing, and so you have to keep in mind though, that the actual, 00:43:39.250 --> 00:43:45.010 all of this is still just coming out to say it's close enough. 00:43:45.130 --> 00:43:46.450 The polls can't tell you the difference. 00:43:47.620 --> 00:43:54.100 Even, even with this. Now, could you like, if I did all my averages with only 00:43:54.100 --> 00:44:00.380 pollsters that had 2.5 or above on 538 scale, would it be different? Yes. 00:44:00.940 --> 00:44:04.140 Would it be more towards Harris? 00:44:04.620 --> 00:44:09.660 I think right now it would be. I haven't done the analysis on more than that 00:44:09.660 --> 00:44:16.360 one thing on, on Harris, on Pennsylvania, because that took me a while to do. 00:44:16.360 --> 00:44:21.180 You know, I was like going through the list of polls on my site and looking 00:44:21.180 --> 00:44:25.840 up the pollster rating on each one and then deciding whether to include it or 00:44:25.840 --> 00:44:28.500 not, and then doing the average by hand and blah, blah, blah. 00:44:28.840 --> 00:44:31.060 You know, so it took me a little while to do that. I might do, 00:44:31.460 --> 00:44:35.180 hell, for my post, I might do it on all seven swing states just to see. 00:44:35.620 --> 00:44:40.520 That will be very interesting. I think I now determined I need to do that. 00:44:42.800 --> 00:44:47.620 But yeah it's yes I think they are doing that I think they are, 00:44:48.560 --> 00:44:52.820 putting their thumbs again the thumbs and what are you supposed to put your 00:44:52.820 --> 00:44:55.700 thumb on the are you putting your thumb on the needle, 00:44:56.620 --> 00:45:00.400 as the scales you're putting your thumb on the scales that's where that comes 00:45:00.400 --> 00:45:04.780 from it's like you're you're you're weighing stuff and you're you're making 00:45:04.780 --> 00:45:10.320 it look like you have a you're selling a little bit more than you actually are whatever I've got it 00:45:10.520 --> 00:45:15.980 that that's thumb on the scales not thumb on the needle not thumb on the thing 00:45:15.980 --> 00:45:23.220 thumb on the thing sounds like a good title for the show though anyway the tipping 00:45:23.220 --> 00:45:25.040 point in the last week oh i, 00:45:25.880 --> 00:45:32.400 one more thing on the these pollsters and that may be intentionally well more 00:45:32.400 --> 00:45:36.820 than one thing that may be intentionally trying to skew averages because people 00:45:36.820 --> 00:45:39.320 have been saying they've been flooding the area. 00:45:39.520 --> 00:45:43.020 Like they've been putting out lots of results from all kinds of different right-wing 00:45:43.020 --> 00:45:46.760 pollsters all over the place in all the swing states. 00:45:47.300 --> 00:45:51.700 And so it's like, well, what's their motivation exactly? 00:45:52.900 --> 00:45:59.360 Like, because if you're trying to actually figure out what's going to happen 00:45:59.360 --> 00:46:03.820 in a state, you want to do your damn best to not be biased. 00:46:04.260 --> 00:46:11.620 You want to do your best to make assumptions that reflect reality so that you 00:46:11.620 --> 00:46:14.760 can get the best estimate you possibly can of what's going on. 00:46:15.720 --> 00:46:20.120 But there are other possible motivations. Well, 00:46:20.260 --> 00:46:25.440 and before I go to other possible motivations, it is very possible that the 00:46:25.440 --> 00:46:30.900 Republican leaning pollsters actually just honestly believe their models, 00:46:31.160 --> 00:46:36.740 honestly believe all the other pollsters are missing Trump voters. 00:46:37.120 --> 00:46:42.920 And they are doing things with their modeling to make it more likely to catch those voters. 00:46:45.060 --> 00:46:49.560 And in both 2016 and 00:46:49.560 --> 00:46:53.100 2020 including these right-wing 00:46:53.100 --> 00:46:55.860 pollsters at the very end of 00:46:55.860 --> 00:47:01.420 the election made i can't speak for the other folks anybody else doing averages 00:47:01.420 --> 00:47:09.380 but including them i am convinced made my averages closer to the actual results 00:47:09.380 --> 00:47:14.720 than they would have been otherwise because the other pollsters were missing Republicans. 00:47:15.020 --> 00:47:21.440 There were Republicans who weren't answering polls, the famed Trump shyness or whatever. 00:47:23.420 --> 00:47:31.080 And so they were, whatever their motivations, whatever their methodologies, 00:47:31.660 --> 00:47:37.520 which may or may not be valid by, you know, what pollsters say you should be 00:47:37.520 --> 00:47:39.660 doing, gave better answers. 00:47:40.420 --> 00:47:49.620 Now, maybe they were just lucky. They essentially skewed their polls to be more 00:47:49.620 --> 00:47:53.680 Republican, more Trumpy, and just happened to be right. 00:47:53.860 --> 00:47:56.060 It doesn't mean their methodology was correct. 00:47:56.460 --> 00:47:58.660 They just happened to be right. 00:47:59.850 --> 00:48:05.350 So like, this is another reason I'm reluctant to like manually make decisions 00:48:05.350 --> 00:48:09.550 to remove certain pollsters from my averages is because frankly, 00:48:09.650 --> 00:48:10.530 I don't know who's right. 00:48:10.930 --> 00:48:16.070 Even if, even if they are motivated by things other than accuracy, 00:48:16.070 --> 00:48:17.930 I don't know who's right. 00:48:17.930 --> 00:48:22.030 And and my my methodology 00:48:22.030 --> 00:48:24.830 of doing probabilities and all 00:48:24.830 --> 00:48:28.050 that takes into account the fact 00:48:28.050 --> 00:48:31.030 that the last few weeks before the 2016 and 2020 00:48:31.030 --> 00:48:36.230 elections there were lots of pollsters in the field who were redder than the 00:48:36.230 --> 00:48:40.550 others and my averages reflected that so like if i change that this time around 00:48:40.550 --> 00:48:48.870 it changes the ability to compare to those previous years anyway it does look like that's happening. 00:48:49.210 --> 00:48:54.030 So when you look at polls and polling averages, interpret accordingly. 00:48:54.270 --> 00:48:58.290 If you want to look at the election graphs ones and say, well, 00:48:58.490 --> 00:49:05.490 how would that look if you only do pollsters that aren't known to be affiliated 00:49:05.490 --> 00:49:08.770 in some way with right-wing causes? 00:49:11.430 --> 00:49:16.350 The state detail pages have the exact list of polls I include and the exact 00:49:16.350 --> 00:49:21.710 list of historical polls pull out of whichever ones you think you trust and 00:49:21.710 --> 00:49:24.170 make your own average. See where that is. 00:49:25.250 --> 00:49:29.410 Okay, having said all that, back to the national summary and where we are right now. 00:49:29.610 --> 00:49:39.470 The tipping point since last week has moved from Trump leading by 0.8% to Trump 00:49:39.470 --> 00:49:46.010 only leading by 0.1% with all of the caveats about interpreting that than I just said. 00:49:46.010 --> 00:49:51.230 If you plug that into my time left before election models, 00:49:51.590 --> 00:50:00.590 you end up with Harris's chances at between 17.8 and 34.2%, which I would be 00:50:00.590 --> 00:50:05.270 much happier if it was over 50, but it's not right now. 00:50:05.270 --> 00:50:11.290 And the main reason is what I mentioned before. 00:50:11.550 --> 00:50:17.630 I'm kind of assuming, based on the historical averages, that polls are underestimating Harris. 00:50:18.550 --> 00:50:23.990 And right now, well, first of all, right now, just with the straight poll averages, 00:50:24.150 --> 00:50:26.450 Trump wins anyway, even without putting that into effect. 00:50:26.770 --> 00:50:32.650 He's ahead by 0.1% in the tipping point state. If he actually wins Wisconsin, 00:50:32.850 --> 00:50:35.710 North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona, he wins. 00:50:35.990 --> 00:50:41.110 He wins by six electoral votes. It ends up being super close in terms of the 00:50:41.110 --> 00:50:43.030 electoral college, and he wins. 00:50:44.870 --> 00:50:52.850 But even if you give Wisconsin, let's say Wisconsin moves from 0.1% Trump to 0.1% Harris. 00:50:52.850 --> 00:50:57.310 She's still got nevada pennsylvania 00:50:57.310 --> 00:51:05.130 and wisconsin less than half a point ahead and michigan not at only 1.7 and 00:51:05.130 --> 00:51:12.510 if you and that's about how far i'm gonna have to like pull it hold on what's 00:51:12.510 --> 00:51:17.190 the exact number i think it's like 1.3 1.4 something like that, 00:51:18.440 --> 00:51:21.580 Okay, I'm going to look up the post where I said, I always forget this number. 00:51:23.100 --> 00:51:26.660 My actual, here we go, 1.3%. 00:51:27.440 --> 00:51:35.020 If you look at the curves I use for looking at an individual state and what 00:51:35.020 --> 00:51:37.920 are the odds of the Republicans or Democrats winning, 00:51:38.180 --> 00:51:44.880 the break-even point where there's a 50-50 chance is Democrats ahead by 1.3%. 00:51:44.880 --> 00:51:54.080 So basically my models say that in order for Harris to have a better than even chance in a state, 00:51:54.300 --> 00:52:02.360 you need to have her poll averages, not just on her side, but more than 1.3% on her side. 00:52:02.360 --> 00:52:05.820 And right now, you know, 00:52:05.980 --> 00:52:12.480 that means that Nevada and Pennsylvania are still more likely to go to Trump 00:52:12.480 --> 00:52:21.500 than to Harris with my model and Michigan just barely like, I lie. 00:52:21.500 --> 00:52:26.520 Even Michigan, like that I, at the moment, oh yeah, here we go. 00:52:26.660 --> 00:52:30.760 And this is where it differs from with the time left before the election versus now. 00:52:30.940 --> 00:52:37.960 In Michigan, if the election was held today, I give Harris a 57.1% with her 1.7% lead. 00:52:38.120 --> 00:52:41.780 But with 16.4 days left, I actually 00:52:41.780 --> 00:52:47.220 only give her a 49% chance because there's time for that to change. 00:52:47.360 --> 00:52:53.240 And historically things have changed in that time. so anyway. 00:52:54.840 --> 00:53:02.120 Look, all of this round and round and round on this just really in the end comes 00:53:02.120 --> 00:53:04.560 down to, we can't fucking tell. 00:53:04.780 --> 00:53:07.460 There's too many closed states. We can't tell. 00:53:07.980 --> 00:53:12.940 I'm like, you know, going from, you know, does Trump have a slight advantage 00:53:12.940 --> 00:53:14.900 to this? Harris have a slight advantage. 00:53:15.560 --> 00:53:18.560 Either way, it could go either way. 00:53:19.580 --> 00:53:23.120 Like if you look at my of i 00:53:23.120 --> 00:53:26.540 said between 17.8 and 34.2 percent according 00:53:26.540 --> 00:53:29.460 to my accounting for time left models i think 00:53:29.460 --> 00:53:34.720 the my and here's my gut that i don't put on the website directly but like i 00:53:34.720 --> 00:53:43.820 feel like between those two models reality is probably like 70 of the way towards 00:53:43.820 --> 00:53:46.900 the uniform swing model. 00:53:47.140 --> 00:53:51.140 So the two models, the independent states model, that's the one that gives 17, 00:53:51.160 --> 00:53:55.700 8% assumes that the polling error is completely unrelated in all the states. 00:53:56.100 --> 00:54:01.280 Like you could have one state underestimating Harris by 3% and another state 00:54:01.280 --> 00:54:05.640 underestimating Trump by 3% and then it can all be doing like that. 00:54:06.000 --> 00:54:09.120 Uniform swing assumes the same polling error everywhere. 00:54:09.780 --> 00:54:16.860 And so if the polls are underestimating Harris by 3%, they're underestimating 00:54:16.860 --> 00:54:18.620 Harris by 3% everywhere. 00:54:18.940 --> 00:54:23.140 Now, obviously, neither one of those two extremes is going to be correct. 00:54:23.320 --> 00:54:24.700 It's going to be somewhere in between. 00:54:24.900 --> 00:54:30.880 I think it's going to be closer to uniform swing, simply because you got the 00:54:30.880 --> 00:54:35.100 same pollsters that are producing polls in all the swing states. 00:54:35.100 --> 00:54:38.800 So if they've got some sort of methodological assumptions that produce a polling 00:54:38.800 --> 00:54:41.900 error, it's likely to be the same in all the swing states. 00:54:42.100 --> 00:54:44.460 So I think it's going to be closer to uniform swing. 00:54:44.840 --> 00:54:48.320 Anyway, so let's call it 30%. Let's say Harris has a 30% chance. 00:54:49.410 --> 00:54:53.410 30-70 does not mean Harris can't win. 00:54:54.030 --> 00:55:00.350 30-70 means that, yeah, maybe Trump would be slightly favored. 00:55:01.610 --> 00:55:11.130 But it's not – I always bring back the average odds that people gave Trump in 2016 were about 14%. 00:55:11.130 --> 00:55:18.470 So Harris has much better ads now than Trump had eight years ago. 00:55:20.890 --> 00:55:25.690 And so you should not be like 30%. Oh no, that's like nothing. 00:55:26.170 --> 00:55:31.810 And again, that's assuming that poll errors this time will be somewhat like 00:55:31.810 --> 00:55:35.990 poll errors in the last couple of years, which I think is a reasonable way to do assumptions. 00:55:36.230 --> 00:55:41.990 If you did not have that assumption though, like, you know, most of the like 00:55:41.990 --> 00:55:45.690 538 and the economist both have it really close to 50, 50. 00:55:46.610 --> 00:55:52.750 And that's where we are still. And honestly, I'd say like 70-30, 00:55:53.090 --> 00:55:58.110 30-70 is still effectively a coin toss. 00:55:58.270 --> 00:56:06.130 It's a weighted coin, but it's nowhere near like, it's still too close to call. 00:56:06.410 --> 00:56:12.630 You still would not be surprised by a Harris victory. 00:56:13.890 --> 00:56:17.190 A Harris landslide is even still within the realm of possibility. 00:56:18.170 --> 00:56:20.250 But i'd still much rather actually be ahead. 00:56:23.790 --> 00:56:27.310 I'd much rather actually be ahead but as as folks have said, 00:56:28.670 --> 00:56:32.150 if it's in within the margin of error it's when it's within, 00:56:32.850 --> 00:56:35.790 if it let me say that again without like 00:56:35.790 --> 00:56:39.330 if it's within the margin of error it's 00:56:39.330 --> 00:56:41.970 within the margin of effort and i 00:56:41.970 --> 00:56:45.570 think that's very true and that's why 00:56:45.570 --> 00:56:49.930 people are trying hard and we're 00:56:49.930 --> 00:56:52.730 going to wrap up this segment about polls and then we'll start 00:56:52.730 --> 00:56:55.650 talking about the the non-polling parts of 00:56:55.650 --> 00:56:58.730 what's going on with the election and and 00:56:58.730 --> 00:57:01.790 there we'll get into some of the reasons why you know 00:57:01.790 --> 00:57:04.650 i keep saying my gut is that polls are 00:57:04.650 --> 00:57:08.530 underestimating harris related to how 00:57:08.530 --> 00:57:15.810 the campaign is actually going right now and so yeah we'll talk about that in 00:57:15.810 --> 00:57:22.350 a minute well a minute for you for me i'm gonna go off do some household chores 00:57:22.350 --> 00:57:25.270 do some other stuff maybe get some food, 00:57:26.050 --> 00:57:32.770 i'm gonna do stuff and come back to do another segment later a few hours later 00:57:32.770 --> 00:57:35.010 later in the day tonight. I don't know. 00:57:35.450 --> 00:57:40.330 When I feel like it, I'll get back to you. But for you, for you, 00:57:40.330 --> 00:57:44.130 it is only this lovely short break. 00:57:45.290 --> 00:57:47.970 Okie dokie. Here it comes. 00:57:50.410 --> 00:57:53.490 Ugh! Ugh! Ugh! Ugh! 00:57:54.190 --> 00:58:02.650 It was just my internet being stupid. My internet being stupid is a new song we will make. 00:58:02.650 --> 00:58:30.090 The baby 00:58:30.090 --> 00:58:30.910 build a little bit more than you do Come on, 00:58:30.950 --> 00:58:35.150 come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. 00:58:36.150 --> 00:58:40.690 I'm tired. What's wrong? I'm really tired. 00:58:41.010 --> 00:58:44.550 You, you, you, it's, it's amazing. To get the show on the road. 00:58:45.290 --> 00:58:49.690 There's a road? There's a road? Oh my god, there's a road! 00:58:50.670 --> 00:58:59.450 And here I am again. So, let's see, now it is Monday, October 21st, just before 2 UTC. 00:58:59.710 --> 00:59:04.970 So that's still Sunday night, West Coast time, where I am, U.S. West Coast time. 00:59:05.330 --> 00:59:11.630 So we'll finish this sucker up, and then we'll edit it up, and then we'll send it out. 00:59:11.710 --> 00:59:16.870 And my editing at this point is very light. Like I try to do like absolute minimal, 00:59:16.870 --> 00:59:20.650 like just basically you see what you get. 00:59:20.910 --> 00:59:24.750 You see, you know, well, on the audio podcast, you see nothing on YouTube. 00:59:25.010 --> 00:59:28.250 You get to see a little bit more getting ready and stuff. And I don't know, 00:59:28.330 --> 00:59:32.330 like if, if there's lots of coughing and stuff, I'll get rid of that. 00:59:32.510 --> 00:59:36.250 If my son interrupts me, I'll get rid of that. But otherwise it's just straight on through. 00:59:36.630 --> 00:59:40.350 Like, I don't care. Like, I mean, I do care, but it takes too much time to care. 00:59:40.490 --> 00:59:44.450 So I don't care if you know what I mean. So let me start out. 00:59:45.250 --> 00:59:48.710 My voice did a little start, start thing like there. 00:59:50.130 --> 00:59:54.190 Since I did that last segment, there have been, of course, new polls. 00:59:54.390 --> 00:59:56.090 There are new polls all the time now. 00:59:56.390 --> 01:00:02.990 And so just to highlight the things that changed, basically Pennsylvania went 01:00:02.990 --> 01:00:05.410 for, I mean, there were, there were polls in a bunch of states, 01:00:05.570 --> 01:00:06.830 but these are ones that matter. 01:00:07.290 --> 01:00:11.250 Pennsylvania moved from just barely Harris back to just barely Trump. 01:00:11.770 --> 01:00:17.390 Meanwhile, Wisconsin went from just barely Trump to just barely Harris. 01:00:17.750 --> 01:00:21.810 And some others moved around a little bit. The tipping point moved from Trump 01:00:21.810 --> 01:00:24.750 by 0.1 back up to Trump by 0.9. 01:00:25.490 --> 01:00:29.770 So back sort of in Trump's direction overall is the general sense of this. 01:00:30.010 --> 01:00:37.950 And my counting for time left odds got a little bit worse for Harris now at 01:00:37.950 --> 01:00:43.250 between 17.9% and 28.3%. with all the caveats I gave before. 01:00:43.450 --> 01:00:47.590 The one thing that I forgot, I think I started down this road, 01:00:47.730 --> 01:00:54.830 but forgot was on the polling, like why would the red state pollster, 01:00:55.250 --> 01:01:01.330 or red state pollsters, why would the Trump leaning pollsters care about flooding the zone? 01:01:01.470 --> 01:01:04.650 And I sort of went off to, well, maybe they actually believe it and maybe they 01:01:04.650 --> 01:01:07.130 do. But I forgot to get back to the other reasons. 01:01:07.350 --> 01:01:09.270 Like if you think they're doing it, 01:01:09.930 --> 01:01:16.310 If you think they know that they're pushing things in the direction of their 01:01:16.310 --> 01:01:20.050 candidate beyond real life, then why would they do that? 01:01:21.010 --> 01:01:26.910 One reason is just like, hey, it'll make Trump happy. He likes to see good numbers, maybe. 01:01:27.750 --> 01:01:31.450 Another reason would be like, hey, you want to discourage the Democrats. 01:01:31.450 --> 01:01:35.750 You want to make them think that Trump is winning and it's hopeless and why 01:01:35.750 --> 01:01:38.890 bother voting just stay home? 01:01:40.110 --> 01:01:47.130 I don't know if I buy that one that much because like for that to like be an 01:01:47.130 --> 01:01:53.310 effect, you, you want to see like, I mean, yes, people will stay home because it's hopeless. 01:01:53.310 --> 01:02:00.130 If it's hopeless, like if, oh my God, Trump is winning by 18,000 points in every swing state. 01:02:01.130 --> 01:02:04.630 But even if you take these Trumpy 01:02:04.630 --> 01:02:07.410 pollsters at face value and don't even include them 01:02:07.410 --> 01:02:10.630 in an average it still shows a close race 01:02:10.630 --> 01:02:16.610 it still shows like yeah maybe Trump's ahead by a little bit but certainly within 01:02:16.610 --> 01:02:19.990 shooting distance for the Democrats most of them are showing margin of error 01:02:19.990 --> 01:02:25.590 even even the like most optimistic Trump ones are showing like within margin 01:02:25.590 --> 01:02:28.030 of error still So I don't know if I buy that. 01:02:28.170 --> 01:02:31.190 Like, if anything, that will encourage turnout. 01:02:31.490 --> 01:02:33.490 Like, oh my God, it's close. I got to vote. 01:02:34.570 --> 01:02:38.730 Or, you know, we're just barely losing. And maybe if I vote, 01:02:38.830 --> 01:02:40.250 we won't be. I don't know. 01:02:40.470 --> 01:02:44.830 Like, I don't buy that. The other thing that people are saying is they're trying 01:02:44.830 --> 01:02:47.990 to set up the narrative for contesting the votes. 01:02:48.190 --> 01:02:53.270 Like if it turns out that Donald Trump does lose these states, 01:02:53.630 --> 01:03:01.250 but narrowly, they can point to a whole bunch of posts, a whole bunch of polls 01:03:01.250 --> 01:03:04.490 showing Trump was actually ahead in those states. 01:03:04.630 --> 01:03:11.250 How could he possibly have lost? He was ahead. and just to make it more plausible 01:03:11.250 --> 01:03:16.830 for whatever things they end up deciding to contest. I don't know. 01:03:17.570 --> 01:03:19.750 I honestly, like... 01:03:20.960 --> 01:03:30.280 I feel like the most likely motivation is actually these right-leaning pollsters 01:03:30.280 --> 01:03:34.100 actually believe their polls. 01:03:35.060 --> 01:03:40.560 Are they flooding the zone to make the narrative match their own views? 01:03:41.000 --> 01:03:45.540 Sure. They're putting out a lot of polls, and I can certainly see that. 01:03:45.640 --> 01:03:48.520 And those other motivations, maybe there's some of that there. I don't know. 01:03:48.520 --> 01:03:56.320 But I feel like these pollsters are, are they constructing their models in a 01:03:56.320 --> 01:04:02.580 way such that the results match what they want to see? Probably. 01:04:03.720 --> 01:04:09.900 But I'm guessing most of them actually feel like that's the truth. 01:04:09.900 --> 01:04:18.640 Like they do a turnout model that represents what they think is going to happen 01:04:18.640 --> 01:04:23.760 which involves more Republicans turning out I don't know anyway, 01:04:23.820 --> 01:04:27.600 enough of that I said I was done with polls and it was time to talk about other stuff, 01:04:28.360 --> 01:04:36.580 this is basically all election 2024 stuff and almost all of it is going to be 01:04:36.580 --> 01:04:37.640 at the presidential level. 01:04:39.260 --> 01:04:40.900 So that's what you're getting. 01:04:41.920 --> 01:04:45.540 I guess I'll go through some of these things roughly in the order that we noted 01:04:45.540 --> 01:04:48.420 them down in our potential topics list. 01:04:48.420 --> 01:04:55.500 So over the course of the week, one is just the Trump campaign. 01:04:55.500 --> 01:05:02.240 And this is comes from both Harris and Vance is really double and tripling down on the racism. 01:05:02.720 --> 01:05:06.940 Like, and there should be no surprise to this. 01:05:07.640 --> 01:05:13.920 I mean, it's been a continuous theme of Donald Trump's presidential races since 01:05:13.920 --> 01:05:18.080 the moment he came down the escalator in 2015. 01:05:19.350 --> 01:05:28.210 And so there's no surprise here, but it's getting, it's more and more and more overt, less hiding. 01:05:29.870 --> 01:05:34.030 I mean, there hasn't been much hiding in a while, but it's like, 01:05:34.030 --> 01:05:39.070 it's getting to be so blatant. 01:05:40.830 --> 01:05:43.750 And you know all the Haitian stuff was 01:05:43.750 --> 01:05:46.950 part of it but I mean like the comments 01:05:46.950 --> 01:05:51.510 on they don't care if they're legal I you know Vance was said something along 01:05:51.510 --> 01:05:54.730 the lines the other day of like yeah well I'm still gonna call them illegal 01:05:54.730 --> 01:06:04.070 and I don't have a list of examples in front of me because I'm stupid and unprepared, 01:06:04.070 --> 01:06:10.110 but it just seems like it's been ramping up and ramping up and ramping up. 01:06:10.290 --> 01:06:13.090 And I guess this has happened the other elections too. It's like, 01:06:13.210 --> 01:06:19.250 I'm surprised there haven't been like live video covering a caravan of migrants 01:06:19.250 --> 01:06:20.930 coming up from Central America. 01:06:20.930 --> 01:06:24.710 Cause that, that seemed to happen every election for several elections in a 01:06:24.710 --> 01:06:27.150 row. Cause the reality is that's happening all the time. 01:06:27.590 --> 01:06:31.830 They just chose to highlight it during election season. 01:06:32.430 --> 01:06:40.910 But it's, it's so discouraging every time you see something new and you know, 01:06:40.930 --> 01:06:44.290 to expect it and you know, it's their thing. 01:06:44.310 --> 01:06:48.350 You know, it's, it's, it's the key. 01:06:48.610 --> 01:06:56.490 It's, it's the core of, of Trumpism, like racism and grift, basically. 01:06:56.730 --> 01:07:04.990 I mean, it's, it's like the fundamental theme is, I mean, make America great again. 01:07:04.990 --> 01:07:11.290 It's all about, let's go back to some previous America where, you know, 01:07:11.490 --> 01:07:14.950 the white male Christian ruling class 01:07:14.950 --> 01:07:17.730 was in charge and didn't 01:07:17.730 --> 01:07:21.510 have to think about anybody else so it's 01:07:21.510 --> 01:07:26.550 not surprising when there's a new comment or whatever 01:07:26.550 --> 01:07:30.130 i mean there have been ai generated 01:07:30.130 --> 01:07:33.190 images that they're sharing all 01:07:33.190 --> 01:07:40.590 over social media that are just scary looking foreigners being violent it's 01:07:40.590 --> 01:07:48.750 so annoying so discouraging and the fact that it resonates with so many people 01:07:48.750 --> 01:07:50.770 in this country is even scarier. 01:07:50.950 --> 01:07:55.790 I mean, I've said this before, but yes, Trump is scary. 01:07:56.950 --> 01:08:01.250 But the thing that's really depressing is not Trump himself. 01:08:01.890 --> 01:08:06.250 It's not even how the Republican party has capitulated to him. 01:08:06.930 --> 01:08:14.710 It's that enough of the American population likes what he's putting out that 01:08:14.710 --> 01:08:17.990 this race is within the margin of error. 01:08:18.150 --> 01:08:20.950 And we can't, like, it could go either way. 01:08:20.950 --> 01:08:23.930 Like the fact that this 01:08:23.930 --> 01:08:27.410 isn't an absolute freaking blowout 01:08:27.410 --> 01:08:30.610 on the with the democrats winning like 01:08:30.610 --> 01:08:36.750 if the republicans put up something like this is just depressing at to every 01:08:36.750 --> 01:08:43.570 level of my existence it is just and again i it's an entirely different thing 01:08:43.570 --> 01:08:48.730 like i i know some people did but i don't feel that way, 01:08:49.030 --> 01:08:56.270 you know, or I didn't feel that way about Romney or McCain or even W or, 01:08:56.270 --> 01:08:59.790 or the older Bush or Reagan, you know, 01:09:00.350 --> 01:09:07.470 like I had problems with each and every one of those Republicans I listed still do. 01:09:08.190 --> 01:09:12.710 And God knows like Clinton and Obama and Biden aren't perfect and neither is terrorists. 01:09:13.310 --> 01:09:20.510 But those other older style Republicans, I didn't automatically think, 01:09:20.770 --> 01:09:26.670 okay, if you support them, there's a problem with you too. 01:09:27.370 --> 01:09:32.670 You know, it's like, it's the difference between, 01:09:32.670 --> 01:09:35.630 you know, arguing on 01:09:35.630 --> 01:09:38.950 the margins of about policy stuff or 01:09:38.950 --> 01:09:42.450 even like yeah they sort of are really 01:09:42.450 --> 01:09:49.690 bad in certain areas to certain populations i care about but they at least i 01:09:49.690 --> 01:09:59.090 don't know trump is a whole different world i feel like i had no problems being 01:09:59.090 --> 01:10:01.970 friends with somebody who was like a Romney supporter. 01:10:03.410 --> 01:10:06.810 You know, agree to disagree kind of things. You know? You know? 01:10:08.030 --> 01:10:18.470 But given what Trump is, I can't, you know, like, I don't feel like if I know 01:10:18.470 --> 01:10:19.810 somebody's a Trump supporter, 01:10:20.130 --> 01:10:26.210 I can't have, I mean, I'm going to be civil to them in the grocery store or 01:10:26.210 --> 01:10:29.590 something, but they're certainly not somebody I'm going to like do something 01:10:29.590 --> 01:10:31.790 socially with. I'm sorry. 01:10:32.410 --> 01:10:35.350 It's beyond the pale morally. 01:10:37.230 --> 01:10:40.270 And and they're doubling down on it they're doubling 01:10:40.270 --> 01:10:46.270 tripling quadrupling down on it as we get to the end i'm gonna be a little scattered 01:10:46.270 --> 01:10:53.090 with these that's okay whatever you care next up there's been a lot of talk 01:10:53.090 --> 01:10:57.490 depending who you talk to you'll you'll hear people either. 01:10:59.210 --> 01:11:06.250 Praising Kamala Harris's strategy at this point, or the complete opposite, 01:11:06.630 --> 01:11:09.550 saying that this is guaranteeing she's going to lose, etc. 01:11:10.250 --> 01:11:17.370 And that's that she has been really spending most of her time at this point 01:11:17.370 --> 01:11:19.710 trying to nail down the center. 01:11:20.650 --> 01:11:26.970 She's been campaigning with the former Republicans that support her, 01:11:27.810 --> 01:11:30.450 Liz Cheney and all of those folks. 01:11:30.850 --> 01:11:35.690 They had some events specifically related to that, like Republicans for Harris 01:11:35.690 --> 01:11:37.490 in Pennsylvania and some other stuff. 01:11:37.850 --> 01:11:48.890 She's also been going on a variety of shows that appeal towards less political folks. 01:11:48.890 --> 01:11:51.690 And that that's not not so much a go after 01:11:51.690 --> 01:11:55.490 the center as a go after the the apathetic 01:11:55.490 --> 01:11:59.690 or the people who aren't following politics too much but 01:11:59.690 --> 01:12:06.090 also like policy wise she's been saying things like oh i'm gonna have a bipartisan 01:12:06.090 --> 01:12:11.490 council of advisors i'm gonna put a republican in my cabinet i'm gonna do this 01:12:11.490 --> 01:12:17.470 i'm gonna do that and the interpretation of that is of course that she is putting there, 01:12:17.650 --> 01:12:25.110 she is trying to set up something where disaffected Republicans who don't like 01:12:25.110 --> 01:12:30.150 Trump can feel comfortable potentially voting for her. 01:12:30.390 --> 01:12:35.890 And so she's going after that sort of audience of, you know, 01:12:36.610 --> 01:12:44.690 can I get some people who voted for Trump in 2020 or 2016 to vote for me instead? 01:12:45.700 --> 01:12:50.380 Or at least keep them from voting for Donald Trump again. 01:12:50.680 --> 01:12:57.640 Give them enough context to be like, you know, I never really thought that I 01:12:57.640 --> 01:13:02.880 would vote Democrat, but she doesn't seem that bad. Maybe I can vote for her. 01:13:04.840 --> 01:13:10.780 And there are a lot of folks who think that is absolutely 100% the right strategy 01:13:10.780 --> 01:13:12.820 and that is the audience she should be going after. 01:13:12.820 --> 01:13:19.040 But there's a vocal minority out there that I see posts from on Mastodon all 01:13:19.040 --> 01:13:26.360 the time who are basically your, I mean, it's, it's the, 01:13:26.520 --> 01:13:32.240 the successors of the Bernie or busters who are basically like, 01:13:32.240 --> 01:13:37.860 she's not saying what I want her to say on the Gaza situation. 01:13:38.520 --> 01:13:45.160 She's not liberal enough on this situation. I don't like the fact that she's 01:13:45.160 --> 01:13:50.580 talking to Republicans and therefore she hasn't turned my vote. 01:13:50.860 --> 01:13:53.200 I'm not going to vote for her, whatever. 01:13:53.520 --> 01:13:59.820 And what she should be doing is courting us leftists and, you know, 01:14:00.060 --> 01:14:03.620 going after us and coming in our direction. 01:14:03.620 --> 01:14:11.100 And look, I have said here with Yvonne a couple of weeks ago that I'm not sure 01:14:11.100 --> 01:14:16.920 there's much room to do much on the persuasion side to like actually convert 01:14:16.920 --> 01:14:19.120 Trump voters to Harris voters. 01:14:20.220 --> 01:14:24.180 And I think it should really be about get out the vote and all this kind of thing. 01:14:25.300 --> 01:14:30.900 But I think the people to go after are sort of those people who aren't paying 01:14:30.900 --> 01:14:35.300 attention or who are more apathetic or just not tuned into politics and get 01:14:35.300 --> 01:14:36.520 more of those people to vote. 01:14:37.000 --> 01:14:41.780 I don't think it's about courting the far left. 01:14:42.710 --> 01:14:46.210 You know, the far left is going to do whatever they're going to do. 01:14:46.570 --> 01:14:51.750 I have seen a number of posts by people who did withhold their votes in 2016, 01:14:51.750 --> 01:14:57.370 who either didn't vote or voted for Jill Stein or whatever. 01:14:58.350 --> 01:15:01.670 I've seen a number of posts from those kinds of people saying, 01:15:01.670 --> 01:15:04.490 I made a, I made a mistake. 01:15:04.710 --> 01:15:09.030 I made a fucking mistake. Those of you who are talking like this again in 2024. 01:15:10.270 --> 01:15:16.130 Like I know a lot of you are too young to remember 2016. 01:15:16.370 --> 01:15:20.510 And that's one of the things too, as like someone like me, who's, 01:15:20.550 --> 01:15:23.890 you know, 50 plus, I remember 2020. 01:15:24.170 --> 01:15:29.270 I remember 2016. I remember 2000 and freaking Ralph Nader. 01:15:29.570 --> 01:15:32.570 You know, I remember all these things. 01:15:33.550 --> 01:15:36.830 It's been eight years since 2016 01:15:36.830 --> 01:15:39.890 there are a lot of people 01:15:39.890 --> 01:15:43.270 who are now potential voters 01:15:43.270 --> 01:15:49.930 who tend to say things like that and and be like you know i i couldn't possibly 01:15:49.930 --> 01:15:55.230 vote for harris because she's got the wrong position on issue x even though 01:15:55.230 --> 01:16:01.850 they're on the left hand side of things and you presume don't like Donald Trump and say things like, 01:16:01.990 --> 01:16:06.430 it's the lesser of two evils and I'm not going to vote for any evil and blah, 01:16:06.530 --> 01:16:07.490 blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 01:16:07.710 --> 01:16:13.410 There are a lot of people out there who it's their first time through that rodeo 01:16:13.410 --> 01:16:15.670 and they don't remember the others. 01:16:15.850 --> 01:16:20.170 And so some of these videos of the people who did that in 2016, 01:16:20.170 --> 01:16:24.050 I think are instructive. I hope. 01:16:25.050 --> 01:16:31.310 It changes the minds of some of those people who are talking that way this time, but it probably won't. 01:16:31.450 --> 01:16:35.310 I mean, you know, at a certain point, those folks are stuck. 01:16:35.870 --> 01:16:42.830 Yeah. The bottom line is, I'm sorry, a vote is not an endorsement. 01:16:43.090 --> 01:16:48.770 A vote is, it is not a, I want to be careful with words because you can endorse 01:16:48.770 --> 01:16:51.170 somebody and say, yes, you should vote for them without actually, 01:16:51.330 --> 01:16:54.410 a vote is not saying that you 01:16:54.410 --> 01:16:58.050 agree with all that person's positions a vote 01:16:58.050 --> 01:17:01.150 for them is not saying you think that 01:17:01.150 --> 01:17:04.790 person should be a saint you know 01:17:04.790 --> 01:17:07.870 it is saying that of the available 01:17:07.870 --> 01:17:16.810 choices that it's it's a chess move and look i'll i'll admit like i remember 01:17:16.810 --> 01:17:24.790 saying that crap myself when i was in my 20s like i voted for fucking Ross Perot. 01:17:24.970 --> 01:17:28.110 I've voted for libertarians at various points in time. 01:17:28.710 --> 01:17:32.950 And I'm like, you know, you don't get bonus points for picking the winner. 01:17:33.310 --> 01:17:36.790 You should pick the person who most agrees with you. 01:17:37.730 --> 01:17:43.390 And with the wisdom of age, that is bullshit in the American system. 01:17:44.130 --> 01:17:50.810 If we had a parliament with proportional representation, okay, maybe go, go for it. 01:17:50.970 --> 01:17:54.590 Makes sense. You vote for the person who's closest to you, and then they will 01:17:54.590 --> 01:17:58.990 work in coalition with other groups to do whatever. Maybe, yeah. 01:17:59.350 --> 01:18:04.510 But we don't. We live in a system that is winner-take-all, first-past-the-post. 01:18:05.430 --> 01:18:11.790 And that means that, realistically, you got two choices. 01:18:12.770 --> 01:18:16.970 Even if they both suck, you pick the one that's better. 01:18:18.890 --> 01:18:22.030 And anyway i i think i think 01:18:22.030 --> 01:18:25.010 the right some of those folks are hopeless you're not 01:18:25.010 --> 01:18:30.490 going to convince them but i think there's very little juice left to squeeze 01:18:30.490 --> 01:18:38.350 from the people who voted for trump before and you want them not to this time 01:18:38.350 --> 01:18:42.270 maybe there's some juice there but i don't think there's a lot. 01:18:42.590 --> 01:18:52.730 I think the place where they would get the most impact is getting the center left-ish but the. 01:18:53.630 --> 01:18:59.650 Less likely to vote people, getting them out the door or getting some of the 01:18:59.650 --> 01:19:06.850 people who just haven't been paying attention and don't think politics is useful. 01:19:06.990 --> 01:19:15.350 The people who are sort of completely disaffected and believe that, 01:19:15.350 --> 01:19:18.950 you know, nothing's, their vote doesn't matter. 01:19:19.810 --> 01:19:23.490 Those are the people to get out and and 01:19:23.490 --> 01:19:28.490 speaking of that briefly i want to highlight my stepmother stepmom kathy sunshine 01:19:28.490 --> 01:19:33.870 on october 19th posted to her substack an article that i would recommend to 01:19:33.870 --> 01:19:42.210 people it's titled welcome to the hotel pennsylvania and you'll find it on thirdage.substack.com, 01:19:43.070 --> 01:19:50.150 And basically she's spending like most of the month of October doorbelling in 01:19:50.150 --> 01:19:52.490 Pennsylvania near Harrisburg. 01:19:52.930 --> 01:19:55.450 And it's a post about her experiences there. 01:19:56.590 --> 01:19:59.730 I'll give a couple quotes here. 01:20:02.830 --> 01:20:07.070 One, well, I'll give this one example. Read the whole article. 01:20:07.230 --> 01:20:09.610 It's a really good article. Plug to her. 01:20:12.210 --> 01:20:17.630 Here's one paragraph. In the poorest neighborhoods, disinformation is rife. 01:20:17.970 --> 01:20:23.470 Many people believe that the pandemic stimulus checks bearing Trump's signature 01:20:23.470 --> 01:20:25.970 came from him personally. 01:20:26.810 --> 01:20:31.730 The exact deception he intended. And hope that if he is reelected, 01:20:31.850 --> 01:20:33.870 another check will arrive. 01:20:34.570 --> 01:20:37.930 That money was approved by Congress, I told one young woman, 01:20:38.170 --> 01:20:42.690 who stared at me blankly and asked, What's Congress? 01:20:43.910 --> 01:20:50.150 And that's the kind of thing that is out there. 01:20:50.350 --> 01:20:56.610 I mean, something like 40% of eligible voters don't vote. 01:20:57.250 --> 01:21:04.670 I think getting them is hard, but that's where the biggest pool of people you 01:21:04.670 --> 01:21:06.170 could potentially get comes from. 01:21:07.800 --> 01:21:11.640 But going after some of those disaffected Republicans, okay, fine. 01:21:11.840 --> 01:21:16.280 Do some of that. But I think Harris is also doing what I was saying. 01:21:16.440 --> 01:21:20.160 She's going on shows where they usually talk about sports. 01:21:20.340 --> 01:21:24.000 She's going on shows where they usually talk about entertainment or relationship. 01:21:24.360 --> 01:21:32.460 She's going on non-political. She's going and doing interviews at non-political 01:21:32.460 --> 01:21:34.660 places. We talked about Howard Stern the other day. 01:21:34.800 --> 01:21:37.600 We talked about the She's Your Daddy. 01:21:37.800 --> 01:21:41.220 Whatever it is. I, I, her, her daddy, who's her daddy. 01:21:41.380 --> 01:21:44.800 I don't know. I forget what the name of the damn thing is, but she's been on 01:21:44.800 --> 01:21:49.120 a bunch of that and she's continuing to have been on a bunch of those kinds of shows. 01:21:49.560 --> 01:21:54.680 And I think that's the right place. And I think that people fixating on, 01:21:54.860 --> 01:21:59.860 oh, she's going after like Republicans and she's leaning to the center. 01:22:01.020 --> 01:22:04.420 I think that's the right place to lean. 01:22:04.900 --> 01:22:09.820 I mean, sorry, that's how American politics works. You run towards the center 01:22:09.820 --> 01:22:11.940 in general elections and you try to get the middle. 01:22:12.200 --> 01:22:19.800 I know people on the left want somebody to run to the left, but that ends up, 01:22:20.260 --> 01:22:25.000 there are a lot of folks that, what's the right way to put this? 01:22:25.420 --> 01:22:28.020 I think you lose more people than you gain that way. 01:22:28.960 --> 01:22:32.180 Leftists may want to think that they're a silent majority, but they're no more 01:22:32.180 --> 01:22:34.340 a silent majority than the conservatives used to be. 01:22:35.600 --> 01:22:37.540 The center has the most people. 01:22:38.460 --> 01:22:43.420 And if you go too far to the left, you lose them and you lose the election. 01:22:44.880 --> 01:22:54.460 You sort of, you, the best way to get to a lot of the results that sort of the 01:22:54.460 --> 01:23:02.360 far leftists say they want is to move incrementally in that direction more slowly. 01:23:02.360 --> 01:23:07.740 Sorry, you know, I know they want rapid change and revolution and, 01:23:07.800 --> 01:23:12.500 you know, get rid of the neoliberal capitalists and blah, blah, 01:23:12.620 --> 01:23:16.200 blah, you know, fast change. 01:23:17.140 --> 01:23:24.460 Some things need fast change. Look, I'll, of course, but more generally fast 01:23:24.460 --> 01:23:31.320 change is like more generally, hold on. I have to write, make a note. 01:23:32.360 --> 01:23:37.560 More generally, though, like, you know, you move things too fast, 01:23:37.580 --> 01:23:41.600 you get a huge backlash, you get violence, you get all kinds of bad things, 01:23:41.600 --> 01:23:43.540 you want to move more slowly. 01:23:45.820 --> 01:23:50.780 But electorally, the main thing is, even where I agree that we should go faster 01:23:50.780 --> 01:23:53.320 and the far left position is better, you end up losing. 01:23:54.960 --> 01:24:02.480 You know, there's a real politic thing here of like, figure out how to win the freaking election. 01:24:02.920 --> 01:24:06.880 Then once you're in charge, maybe you can do some stuff. 01:24:07.480 --> 01:24:12.960 But you got to win the election first. And you don't win the election by alienating people. 01:24:13.220 --> 01:24:17.380 You want to build your coalition and get it as wide as possible. 01:24:17.380 --> 01:24:23.580 And I mean, we've got the, the Harris coalition right now goes from freaking 01:24:23.580 --> 01:24:26.980 Bernie Sanders to Dick fucking Cheney. 01:24:27.400 --> 01:24:29.640 They have both endorsed him. 01:24:31.580 --> 01:24:39.040 Could you imagine anything that would get Dick Cheney and Bernie Sanders on 01:24:39.040 --> 01:24:42.700 the same page a few years back? Come on. 01:24:43.280 --> 01:24:47.880 That's a massively wide coalition. It's, will it win? 01:24:49.680 --> 01:24:56.600 We'll find out. But I think, like, concentrate on, I have no problem with her 01:24:56.600 --> 01:24:57.760 trying to convert to Republicans. 01:24:57.760 --> 01:25:02.900 And I think she's doing the right thing by going after these places where people 01:25:02.900 --> 01:25:10.220 pay less attention, congregate like there's no and she is doing some of the more mainstream media. 01:25:10.440 --> 01:25:13.700 But I mean, come on, she doesn't need to go on fucking MSNBC. 01:25:14.380 --> 01:25:20.060 Those people are already voting for her, you know, go after the other places. 01:25:20.880 --> 01:25:25.320 OK, next up, I guess I touched on this with the people like Stein. 01:25:26.520 --> 01:25:31.180 Stein specifically in the last two weeks, her campaign people, 01:25:31.600 --> 01:25:35.780 like there've been a number of them caught or people who are her supporters 01:25:35.780 --> 01:25:42.600 at Stein events have been recorded specifically saying things like, 01:25:42.780 --> 01:25:44.880 we know we can't win Michigan, 01:25:45.440 --> 01:25:48.360 but maybe we can keep Harris from winning. 01:25:49.340 --> 01:25:57.960 And you can't get more overt than that in terms of saying that the Stein campaign's 01:25:57.960 --> 01:26:01.720 objective is essentially to elect Donald Trump. 01:26:02.040 --> 01:26:06.680 That's what they're saying. If you keep Harris from winning a state like Michigan, 01:26:06.980 --> 01:26:10.240 then you're making sure Trump wins. 01:26:10.700 --> 01:26:16.840 They know that's the effect they're having, and they seem to be fine with that 01:26:16.840 --> 01:26:18.220 and be running with that. 01:26:18.220 --> 01:26:24.040 And this is the same damn thing with West. 01:26:25.280 --> 01:26:30.920 And, you know, I don't know what's up with Oliver Like, most of these folks, like At this point, 01:26:31.220 --> 01:26:34.380 the positions in the polls of 01:26:34.380 --> 01:26:40.180 all of these folks Are extremely small And Kennedy's essentially gone to zero 01:26:40.180 --> 01:26:44.800 since he dropped out He had already gotten close to there As soon as Harris 01:26:44.800 --> 01:26:49.540 took over from Biden And so the third party support right now is pretty damn 01:26:49.540 --> 01:26:52.200 small in comparison to where it sometimes is. 01:26:52.340 --> 01:26:57.260 But the problem is you've got these seven states that are super close. 01:26:58.360 --> 01:27:06.220 So in order to make a difference here, these third parties don't need to get a lot. 01:27:06.780 --> 01:27:14.280 They just need to convince a few people who might have voted for Harris to vote 01:27:14.280 --> 01:27:15.520 for the third party instead. 01:27:15.760 --> 01:27:19.580 And they can flip the election so and 01:27:19.580 --> 01:27:27.540 stein specific i mean stein specifically is such a damn grifter you know it's 01:27:27.540 --> 01:27:34.680 it's all about the scam and you know i'm sure she's making some money off it 01:27:34.680 --> 01:27:38.100 she gets some attention every once in a while you know. 01:27:39.230 --> 01:27:43.130 And, you know, I don't know that there's a direct connection, 01:27:43.370 --> 01:27:46.990 but that whole, like, I'm going to sit with Putin a few years back, 01:27:47.150 --> 01:27:48.650 that picture still keeps coming up. 01:27:49.010 --> 01:27:52.090 You know, it's just there. 01:27:53.190 --> 01:27:58.290 I've I know the argument that these sort of esoteric third parties. 01:27:58.810 --> 01:28:03.570 Well, even the big ones, like, OK, fine. You know, Stein's with the Greens. 01:28:04.390 --> 01:28:08.150 They've always been like fourth or fifth level party in the US. 01:28:08.150 --> 01:28:13.570 But even like with the libertarians, like the whole notion that this somehow 01:28:13.570 --> 01:28:18.290 gives visibility to their agenda and they're not going to win, 01:28:18.310 --> 01:28:21.250 but they're going to influence the conversation and blah, blah, blah. 01:28:21.630 --> 01:28:28.130 No, nobody, nobody's paying attention to any of that in terms of what they're actually saying. 01:28:28.130 --> 01:28:31.290 The at you know it's 01:28:31.290 --> 01:28:34.210 just at most right now a 01:28:34.210 --> 01:28:39.150 protest vote it's like it's like the place people go when they don't want to 01:28:39.150 --> 01:28:46.470 vote for either of the two main parties but it's there it's not serving sort 01:28:46.470 --> 01:28:53.010 of the the view of you know hey we'll vote for the greens or we'll campaign for the Greens, 01:28:53.250 --> 01:28:58.310 and it'll give more prominence to their positions on a whole bunch of issues. 01:28:58.730 --> 01:29:00.230 Ditto with the Libertarians. 01:29:00.710 --> 01:29:05.030 It's just, it's not working. If that's your strategy, it's a failure, 01:29:05.230 --> 01:29:08.150 because that's not what's happening with those votes. 01:29:09.110 --> 01:29:15.370 Okay. I'm going to keep going through a few more of these. We'll be done soon. I'm getting tired. 01:29:16.990 --> 01:29:18.730 I mentioned Harris. 01:29:20.950 --> 01:29:24.330 Bypassing traditional media. Trump obviously has been too. 01:29:24.810 --> 01:29:28.990 He's been going on the right-wing podcasts and a few other places. 01:29:29.610 --> 01:29:37.190 The closest thing to major media, I mean, he was on Fox the other day on their 01:29:37.190 --> 01:29:39.450 morning, Fox and Friends, their morning program. 01:29:40.150 --> 01:29:43.570 He went on that Univision thing, which was a disaster for him. 01:29:43.650 --> 01:29:49.090 He got actual real questions from real human beings and he completely failed to answer them. 01:29:50.110 --> 01:29:54.290 That audience looks so skeptical of everything he said. 01:29:54.570 --> 01:30:00.250 Because for once it wasn't like an audience full of people who were already fawning all over him. 01:30:01.570 --> 01:30:03.630 But Trump has been. 01:30:05.570 --> 01:30:10.250 People criticized Harris for avoiding traditional media, and she eventually 01:30:10.250 --> 01:30:14.870 did a few traditional media interviews and then was all over the place with 01:30:14.870 --> 01:30:16.090 non-traditional media. 01:30:17.310 --> 01:30:24.130 Trump, over the last week or two, has canceled something like three or four 01:30:24.130 --> 01:30:29.710 interviews he had scheduled with real places. 01:30:29.710 --> 01:30:33.870 Like he, he, he dropped out of one that he was going to do on CNBC. 01:30:34.350 --> 01:30:37.250 He dropped out of one that he was going to do on regular MSNBC. 01:30:37.870 --> 01:30:42.210 He dropped out of some podcast he was going to be doing that was sort of aimed 01:30:42.210 --> 01:30:45.710 at black men, but there may have been another, I don't know. 01:30:45.890 --> 01:30:47.090 Those are the three I can remember. 01:30:47.330 --> 01:30:50.330 And obviously I didn't even, I don't remember the name of that third one. 01:30:51.850 --> 01:30:57.690 And one of his staff members, and 01:30:57.690 --> 01:31:01.470 this is the kind of thing a staff member should be fired for, honestly, 01:31:01.710 --> 01:31:05.510 but one of his staff members apparently told the venue they were backing out 01:31:05.510 --> 01:31:09.670 of that the reason they were backing out was he was exhausted. 01:31:10.870 --> 01:31:17.630 And he has looked exhausted at a variety of his venues lately. 01:31:19.150 --> 01:31:23.650 But that's not the kind of thing even if it's true you don't say it I mean it 01:31:23.650 --> 01:31:29.170 looks like he's hiding it looks like his campaign is keeping him from anywhere else, 01:31:29.830 --> 01:31:35.470 where he might be exposed to a real question from somebody who is not already in the tank for him, 01:31:36.590 --> 01:31:43.610 I can't believe they let him do that Univision one I mean it was a disaster but I. 01:31:44.510 --> 01:31:47.950 It would make sense that they're trying to keep him out of these things because 01:31:47.950 --> 01:31:56.430 some of his rallies that are in front of diehard supporters are going really badly lately. 01:31:57.210 --> 01:32:02.330 I don't remember exactly when the whole like he's going to play music for 40 01:32:02.330 --> 01:32:04.010 minutes thing happened. 01:32:04.270 --> 01:32:08.650 Like, did we talk about it last week? I don't remember. But like he also had 01:32:08.650 --> 01:32:14.910 a situation where his mic stopped working and he just stood around on stage 01:32:14.910 --> 01:32:17.570 for 20 minutes until they fixed it, 01:32:17.990 --> 01:32:20.390 you know, and look. 01:32:21.110 --> 01:32:22.270 Tech issues happen. 01:32:22.550 --> 01:32:25.570 Although I'm honestly really surprised that for something like, 01:32:25.910 --> 01:32:29.930 oh, the microphone's not working. There wasn't a pretty damn quick fix. 01:32:30.150 --> 01:32:36.030 Like, why would that take 20 minutes to deal with? I mean, I don't know what 01:32:36.030 --> 01:32:40.010 was happening behind the scenes, but 20 minutes seems like a long time to like, 01:32:40.150 --> 01:32:41.530 can we get him another mic? 01:32:41.970 --> 01:32:45.950 I mean, obviously, it had to have been something more substantial wrong with 01:32:45.950 --> 01:32:48.430 that than that, right? I don't know. 01:32:48.810 --> 01:32:55.930 But like, even assuming something real technical went down and they had to deal 01:32:55.930 --> 01:32:58.230 with it, don't just stand there. 01:32:58.230 --> 01:33:01.330 Like have him go back into the green room play 01:33:01.330 --> 01:33:04.190 some music then and say he'll be back once we 01:33:04.190 --> 01:33:06.930 fix the tech problems or whatever you know 01:33:06.930 --> 01:33:09.930 the they just having him stand out there 01:33:09.930 --> 01:33:12.770 looking lost for 20 minutes is 01:33:12.770 --> 01:33:22.150 is it the right thing and all of this you know combines to the what what's up 01:33:22.150 --> 01:33:29.970 with trump's decline like i can't remember how many times yvonne and i talked over the years. 01:33:32.010 --> 01:33:35.050 About you know is trump losing it and we 01:33:35.050 --> 01:33:38.030 always agreed something along these lines of he's clearly not 01:33:38.030 --> 01:33:41.750 what he was in the 80s but he's still fine i 01:33:41.750 --> 01:33:46.130 mean the same kind of thing we said about biden honestly you 01:33:46.130 --> 01:33:50.030 know it's like he's is 01:33:50.030 --> 01:33:52.710 he much is he much different than he was in 01:33:52.710 --> 01:33:59.010 2015 we always said no it's about the same he was he he was always rambly he 01:33:59.010 --> 01:34:04.590 was always a little bit stupid he was always like not quite understanding what 01:34:04.590 --> 01:34:08.890 he was really talking about and and he was always a little off the wall and 01:34:08.890 --> 01:34:12.590 couldn't keep a coherent train of thought those things are always true, 01:34:13.690 --> 01:34:20.270 And they were to a degree, but they do seem to have gotten significantly worse 01:34:20.270 --> 01:34:22.030 just in the last few months. 01:34:22.830 --> 01:34:26.030 I mean, the latest thing is... 01:34:27.850 --> 01:34:33.650 Just within the last couple of days, he gave, at some sort of rally, 01:34:33.990 --> 01:34:40.650 he spent like the first, what, I don't know, 10, 20 minutes or whatever. I don't know how long. 01:34:41.010 --> 01:34:45.970 Even if it was one minute. He spent the beginning talking about, 01:34:46.710 --> 01:34:50.170 let me get the stupid name right. 01:34:50.170 --> 01:34:58.390 Let me make sure I want to quote the AP on this so that I don't like, 01:34:58.630 --> 01:35:02.190 here's the AP headline, AP. 01:35:03.010 --> 01:35:05.770 Like, and we've been complaining about how like the major media, 01:35:05.890 --> 01:35:08.090 like with sane washing a lot of this kind of stuff. 01:35:08.210 --> 01:35:11.570 And the New York Times kind of did that even with this event, 01:35:11.670 --> 01:35:19.270 but AP, Trump kicks off a Pennsylvania rally by talking about Arnold Palmer's genitalia. 01:35:19.910 --> 01:35:22.170 Really? Really? 01:35:24.650 --> 01:35:28.870 He has seemed to be less coherent. 01:35:28.870 --> 01:35:34.210 People pointed out that at the Fox and Friends thing, the people there, 01:35:34.350 --> 01:35:41.610 the hosts, seemed to be guiding him around like a child, just to get to his seat and stuff. 01:35:41.810 --> 01:35:46.310 And then once they were talking to him, sort of coaching and trying to lead 01:35:46.310 --> 01:35:48.250 the conversation as he rambled. 01:35:50.990 --> 01:35:57.250 It's will it it seems kind of obvious that it's getting worse and getting worse quickly, 01:35:58.650 --> 01:36:05.190 will it make any difference that that's what we always ask right like you know will. 01:36:06.590 --> 01:36:11.350 And i think the answer always comes down to do the right people see it and i 01:36:11.350 --> 01:36:18.230 think the answer for the most part is no i mean maybe some people actually at these rallies i saw one 01:36:18.370 --> 01:36:24.770 clip of someone who was videoed leaving a Trump rally. 01:36:25.050 --> 01:36:31.250 I think I saw a clip. Maybe I read a quote, whatever, but the person was like, 01:36:31.310 --> 01:36:34.070 I think he's passed his expiration date. 01:36:34.900 --> 01:36:38.060 But if you go to the places where the most Trump voters are, 01:36:38.960 --> 01:36:45.740 like conservative podcasts, conservative blogs, Fox News, especially Fox News, 01:36:46.000 --> 01:36:50.560 for the most part, you don't see the craziest stuff. 01:36:50.920 --> 01:36:55.460 They're not taking his rallies live. If they show clips from it, 01:36:55.540 --> 01:36:58.840 they're going to show clips where it isn't the crazy stuff. 01:36:59.700 --> 01:37:03.980 They're not going to be having conversations about maybe Trump's past as expiration 01:37:03.980 --> 01:37:08.040 date, what's wrong with Trump, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. 01:37:08.560 --> 01:37:11.940 Now, does it get to some of those people that I was talking about before that 01:37:11.940 --> 01:37:13.960 just aren't paying attention very much? 01:37:14.400 --> 01:37:18.100 So not the like diehard Trump partisans, 01:37:18.280 --> 01:37:22.200 but just people who aren't paying attention and blah, blah, blah. 01:37:22.280 --> 01:37:25.920 Maybe some, you know, Saturday Night Live is making fun of it. 01:37:26.160 --> 01:37:27.380 There are clips all over TikTok. 01:37:28.740 --> 01:37:34.720 The mocking kind of stuff does seem to have the power of breaking through a 01:37:34.720 --> 01:37:39.560 little bit, and people will understand the mocking. 01:37:40.100 --> 01:37:45.980 And so if people are making fun of him for him being incoherent and such, 01:37:46.140 --> 01:37:48.020 maybe that part of the narrative gets out. 01:37:48.720 --> 01:37:54.420 But there's still, honestly, I don't know how much of this stuff is going to change anything. 01:37:55.120 --> 01:37:59.240 You know, I had that whole segment on the polls and moving a little bit this 01:37:59.240 --> 01:38:00.160 way, a little bit that way. 01:38:00.320 --> 01:38:05.920 But the bottom line is things have been pretty static for months. Like, it's. 01:38:07.280 --> 01:38:11.180 The vast majority of people in this country know where they stand on this, 01:38:11.300 --> 01:38:12.820 and nothing's going to change their mind. 01:38:13.840 --> 01:38:20.700 And even with this kind of thing, I mean, kind of, look, it's the same. 01:38:20.920 --> 01:38:27.540 When we were talking about Biden and his potential limitations after the first 01:38:27.540 --> 01:38:33.080 debate, one of the things that Yvonne and I said all the time was, so what? 01:38:33.940 --> 01:38:39.840 If Biden can't make it through the four years, whatever, we got Harris. And Harris is fine. 01:38:40.520 --> 01:38:44.280 Is the same thought process going on in terms of Vance? 01:38:44.700 --> 01:38:48.820 Like if you look at Trump over the next, next. 01:38:49.160 --> 01:38:52.560 If you look at what we've seen of Trump in the last few weeks, 01:38:52.780 --> 01:38:57.760 it's getting harder and harder to imagine him actually making it through four years. 01:38:58.320 --> 01:39:04.040 Do we really end up with a scenario that, you know, he gets sworn in, 01:39:04.220 --> 01:39:11.240 assuming he wins, he gets sworn in on January 20th and on January 21st, 01:39:11.400 --> 01:39:15.580 he makes a deal with Vance to resign and be pardoned or something. 01:39:15.580 --> 01:39:24.320 Now, I don't think Trump's ego could actually handle that because he doesn't 01:39:24.320 --> 01:39:29.060 quit anything, and that's a core part of his personality. 01:39:30.020 --> 01:39:36.220 But could you see something where he doesn't want to be president? 01:39:36.300 --> 01:39:42.140 He's never wanted to be president. He wants the grift that he can get out of 01:39:42.140 --> 01:39:45.940 it, and he wants to be looked at as a winner. 01:39:46.640 --> 01:39:53.000 He hoped that that would finally get him the respect and recognition from the 01:39:53.000 --> 01:39:55.840 elites that he always craved. It didn't. 01:39:56.910 --> 01:40:03.050 He doesn't actually like the job of being president. He just wants everything that goes with it. 01:40:03.190 --> 01:40:10.990 So would he be perfectly happy just turning over all of the policy parts to 01:40:10.990 --> 01:40:14.390 people that actually care? 01:40:15.430 --> 01:40:19.350 And then, you know, sign on the dotted line every once in a while. 01:40:19.930 --> 01:40:22.870 And then look from everything we've heard 01:40:22.870 --> 01:40:25.770 like his biggest backers right now are 01:40:25.770 --> 01:40:28.790 are the people who like set up vance as 01:40:28.790 --> 01:40:32.690 the vp choice so do they really want vance like 01:40:32.690 --> 01:40:36.070 is that is that what they're really looking for or or do 01:40:36.070 --> 01:40:39.430 they not care as long as it's someone easily controllable that's 01:40:39.430 --> 01:40:42.670 probably more like it but you know 01:40:42.670 --> 01:40:45.370 i think the argument that a trump vote is 01:40:45.370 --> 01:40:48.450 really a vote for vance is not out of 01:40:48.450 --> 01:40:51.610 the question if it like 01:40:51.610 --> 01:40:56.070 at the rate trump is deteriorating like is 01:40:56.070 --> 01:40:59.670 he actually going to be able to do the job i don't 01:40:59.670 --> 01:41:07.670 know but it's certainly something to be thinking about and and i don't know 01:41:07.670 --> 01:41:14.530 like said a long time that what happens to the republican party after trump 01:41:14.530 --> 01:41:18.590 And there are a variety of possibilities, 01:41:18.590 --> 01:41:25.890 but the worst one is essentially someone like Trump, but smarter. 01:41:26.960 --> 01:41:30.860 And is that what we get with somebody like Vance? I mean, so far, 01:41:31.060 --> 01:41:36.520 he may be smarter in some sort of academic sense, but his political instinct seems pretty bad. 01:41:37.620 --> 01:41:40.420 He's been kind of disastrous on the campaign trail. 01:41:41.680 --> 01:41:42.660 So I don't know. 01:41:44.380 --> 01:41:48.840 But, and on the curmudgeon score of Slack, I think it was Bob who asked, 01:41:48.940 --> 01:41:50.560 if we get Vance, do we really get Thiel? 01:41:51.000 --> 01:41:53.180 Maybe it was Pete. I don't know. Whatever. 01:41:54.740 --> 01:41:58.280 And yeah, maybe. Maybe that's what we get anyway. 01:41:58.480 --> 01:42:06.220 I mean, we got like Musk and Thiel and other folks like this clearly with a 01:42:06.220 --> 01:42:09.520 major influence on what's going on here. 01:42:09.640 --> 01:42:12.800 Their super PACs are going crazy, spending all kinds of money. 01:42:12.800 --> 01:42:20.020 One of the other things in the news this week was Musk apparently offering monetary 01:42:20.020 --> 01:42:22.900 rewards for people to register and stuff that, 01:42:23.120 --> 01:42:29.780 depending on what you read, is either on the verge of being illegal or definitely 01:42:29.780 --> 01:42:33.280 being illegal, depending on the exact details of how he did it. 01:42:33.280 --> 01:42:38.580 Like he's trying to exploit some sort of loophole to, to get around the requirement, 01:42:38.580 --> 01:42:45.440 but it's, yes, these billionaires are playing in this game and trying to exert 01:42:45.440 --> 01:42:47.760 their influence through choosing this person. 01:42:47.760 --> 01:42:53.660 Now, the thing with Trump in the past, and you'd think people would learn, right? 01:42:53.860 --> 01:43:03.160 Like the mainstream Republicans in 2016, when it became clear that Trump was going to be the nominee, 01:43:03.700 --> 01:43:10.480 many of them moved from fairly overtly saying that Trump would be a disaster, 01:43:10.740 --> 01:43:14.360 Trump was horrible, Trump was a racist, Trump was this, Trump was that, 01:43:14.520 --> 01:43:15.580 blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 01:43:15.580 --> 01:43:20.520 Lindsey Graham doing his if we elect Trump it will destroy us comment, 01:43:20.540 --> 01:43:23.440 all this kind of thing to getting all in behind him. 01:43:24.220 --> 01:43:31.740 Because they felt that they could still manipulate him and get what they want. And look. 01:43:32.570 --> 01:43:37.350 They did, to a large extent. I mean, what are the things that a lot of these 01:43:37.350 --> 01:43:38.690 people cared about the most? 01:43:39.310 --> 01:43:42.310 Tax cuts and Roe versus Wade. 01:43:42.690 --> 01:43:48.730 They got their tax cuts for rich people, and they got the judges in place to 01:43:48.730 --> 01:43:56.950 overrule Roe versus Wade and to push conservative viewpoints on lots of other subjects. 01:43:57.530 --> 01:44:03.110 Like we still have all the fallout, you know, on the changes to the, 01:44:03.350 --> 01:44:07.870 what can be done with regulations and stuff like that, that's gone through the Supreme court. 01:44:08.670 --> 01:44:12.330 That's going to take a while to play out, but that's going to be very significant as well. 01:44:12.970 --> 01:44:17.210 So yeah, they got most of what they want, but at the same time, 01:44:17.310 --> 01:44:21.210 they got a loose cannon that did all kinds of stuff they would rather not happen. 01:44:21.210 --> 01:44:28.970 And so do we have these folks, are folks like Musk and Thiel assuming that they 01:44:28.970 --> 01:44:31.210 can control whatever comes out of this? 01:44:31.590 --> 01:44:33.790 And I don't know. 01:44:35.270 --> 01:44:43.350 They probably can't control the whole thing, but maybe they don't need to. 01:44:43.350 --> 01:44:47.110 As long as they get a couple of key things they want, they want, 01:44:47.190 --> 01:44:51.930 you know, they want to like make sure you've got an administration that won't 01:44:51.930 --> 01:44:55.090 mess with their businesses, won't raise taxes, 01:44:55.490 --> 01:44:58.730 won't try to impose rules, et cetera, et cetera. 01:44:58.970 --> 01:45:02.950 Then, yeah, they'll get what they want out of Trump or Vance. 01:45:04.550 --> 01:45:08.990 Musk seems to be all in on the racism. He'll certainly get that from Trump. 01:45:10.150 --> 01:45:14.970 Probably from Vance, too. Like, Vance, you know... 01:45:16.400 --> 01:45:23.080 I wonder with Vance, like how much of what he says is because that's what he 01:45:23.080 --> 01:45:28.660 truly believes and how much is him positioning himself in a certain way. 01:45:29.640 --> 01:45:33.240 I think he believes most of it. Okay. 01:45:33.800 --> 01:45:37.800 It's time to wrap this sucker up. One more news thing that came out this week 01:45:37.800 --> 01:45:39.180 that I just had to laugh at. 01:45:41.020 --> 01:45:45.240 Stormy daniels and stormy daniels lawyers apparently 01:45:45.240 --> 01:45:48.100 reached out to rachel maddow from msnbc this 01:45:48.100 --> 01:45:56.680 week because they just wanted to tell an additional story like they were there 01:45:56.680 --> 01:46:01.640 was there you know not to get it all into the stormy daniels history but there 01:46:01.640 --> 01:46:07.900 was a point where Stormy Daniels sued Donald Trump for him disparaging her. 01:46:08.560 --> 01:46:10.540 She lost that lawsuit. 01:46:11.420 --> 01:46:15.780 Even though Donald Trump lost the other big lawsuit with New York, 01:46:15.940 --> 01:46:20.200 not lawsuit, the criminal trial in New York about, you know, 01:46:20.920 --> 01:46:22.700 the payoffs to Stormy Daniels and stuff. 01:46:23.260 --> 01:46:29.020 Stormy Daniels lost the lawsuit that she filed against Donald Trump and was 01:46:29.020 --> 01:46:30.560 ordered to pay all kinds of legal fees. 01:46:31.180 --> 01:46:34.720 So she owed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Donald Trump. 01:46:35.200 --> 01:46:40.500 And she had set up a GoFundMe and blah, blah, blah, and raised a whole bunch 01:46:40.500 --> 01:46:42.900 of money and was ready to pay Donald Trump. 01:46:43.080 --> 01:46:46.580 And so her lawyers and Trump's lawyers were negotiating on the amount. 01:46:46.880 --> 01:46:52.580 And they disagreed on the amount. Of course, Donald Trump's lawyers felt that she owed more. 01:46:53.360 --> 01:46:59.460 Stormy Daniels felt that she owed less. but Donald Trump's lawyers basically 01:46:59.460 --> 01:47:02.580 came back with, you know what? 01:47:03.280 --> 01:47:05.960 We'll let it go with the lower number. 01:47:07.180 --> 01:47:11.500 If you sign another NDA that you won't talk about Donald Trump anymore. 01:47:12.360 --> 01:47:19.080 And this was not years ago. This was like this summer. This summer that just ended. 01:47:19.720 --> 01:47:25.420 And they are once again trying to pay off Stormy Daniels to make her shut up. 01:47:26.740 --> 01:47:30.860 Does she have anything new to say? No, it doesn't look like she has anything 01:47:30.860 --> 01:47:33.820 new to say. Everything she has to say, she's said already. 01:47:34.460 --> 01:47:42.620 She's described everything about their encounter in multiple venues at this point. 01:47:43.280 --> 01:47:46.300 So it wasn't about not letting something new come out. 01:47:46.660 --> 01:47:49.820 At least it certainly doesn't seem that way because Stormy Daniels, 01:47:50.060 --> 01:47:55.260 by the way, laughed at this and they did not sign any new NDA or anything like that. 01:47:55.380 --> 01:47:58.120 So if there was something more, she could certainly come out and say it. 01:47:59.240 --> 01:48:03.980 No, it's just he doesn't want her saying it again. he just doesn't want her 01:48:03.980 --> 01:48:12.140 talking he just like hates what she had to say and so it's just like he just 01:48:12.140 --> 01:48:16.080 got convicted for doing this crap, 01:48:17.000 --> 01:48:24.040 for trying to get her to sign an NDA in the lead up to an election because. 01:48:25.540 --> 01:48:31.100 Of the potential influence on the election and he just did it again, 01:48:32.120 --> 01:48:36.080 the exact same thing it's just like for what's her 01:48:36.080 --> 01:48:39.220 name the the woman he raped in the department store 01:48:39.220 --> 01:48:42.220 where every time he gets 01:48:42.220 --> 01:48:45.000 a legal judgment it seemed like he went out and 01:48:45.000 --> 01:48:48.040 just defamed her again eugene carroll that's 01:48:48.040 --> 01:48:50.860 her name because he's like yeah i 01:48:50.860 --> 01:48:54.000 don't care i'm gonna do what i want to do they say 01:48:54.000 --> 01:48:57.060 i'm guilty they say i owe money for whatever 01:48:57.060 --> 01:48:59.780 i'm gonna do what i'm gonna do i mean 01:48:59.780 --> 01:49:02.680 he has seemed to be a little bit more quiet about eugene carroll 01:49:02.680 --> 01:49:05.500 lately but you know she hasn't been in the news as 01:49:05.500 --> 01:49:17.020 much lately anyway stormy again uh and with that let us say goodbye i i will 01:49:17.020 --> 01:49:24.160 say like let's let's look at the what is the time left now as i'm finishing up this recording. 01:49:25.740 --> 01:49:32.120 15.8 days until polls start to close on election night. And I talked about the 01:49:32.120 --> 01:49:33.240 beginning. That's partial states. 01:49:33.400 --> 01:49:36.220 It's one hour later for full states. Anyway, 01:49:37.460 --> 01:49:42.440 Two weeks, basically. Two weeks. We're almost done here. Well, 01:49:42.700 --> 01:49:44.620 we're almost at the election. 01:49:45.340 --> 01:49:48.120 We may or may not know the result on election night. 01:49:48.560 --> 01:49:54.660 And there may or may not be chaos like four years ago, after the election. 01:49:55.380 --> 01:50:01.080 I would assume that if it's even remotely close, we're once again going to see 01:50:01.080 --> 01:50:05.600 like 60 lawsuits from the Trump people on every single possible thing. 01:50:05.600 --> 01:50:13.700 And they certainly seem to be setting up to try to do some January 6th, this thing again, 01:50:13.900 --> 01:50:20.800 if they could, I feel like anything that like assuming they lose, 01:50:21.020 --> 01:50:24.780 like again, he could win legitimately, but assuming they lose, 01:50:25.080 --> 01:50:33.060 I feel like any attempts to try to do something like that will be less successful 01:50:33.060 --> 01:50:34.400 than they were last time. 01:50:34.400 --> 01:50:37.600 Just because you know 01:50:37.600 --> 01:50:40.280 well and this is one 01:50:40.280 --> 01:50:43.380 of the things that makes me think like harris's polls 01:50:43.380 --> 01:50:46.500 are are underestimated that they're 01:50:46.500 --> 01:50:52.080 underestimating harris like the enthusiasm gap really does seem real there's 01:50:52.080 --> 01:50:58.980 it's i don't know it's not quantified it's not whatever but there's so many 01:50:58.980 --> 01:51:04.540 anecdotes of like less enthusiasm on the Republican side. 01:51:04.840 --> 01:51:08.380 You've got his small rallies. You've got less yard signs. 01:51:08.520 --> 01:51:12.840 You've got less people, their big trunk Trump flags on their trucks. 01:51:13.360 --> 01:51:17.540 All of this stuff seems to be less than it was four years ago or eight years 01:51:17.540 --> 01:51:21.400 ago, but we'll see. Okay. 01:51:22.180 --> 01:51:27.540 Go to curmudgeons hyphen corner.com. You can find all the ways to reach us. 01:51:27.620 --> 01:51:29.840 You can find our transcripts. You can find... 01:51:31.380 --> 01:51:35.640 Our archive of shows going back to before we had, we only have transcripts for 01:51:35.640 --> 01:51:38.060 like the last year, year and a half. I forget exactly what. 01:51:38.260 --> 01:51:42.180 But before that, you can find all our archives going all the way back to 2007. 01:51:43.320 --> 01:51:46.660 And of course, you can find our Patreon if you would like to give us cash money. 01:51:48.080 --> 01:51:51.800 At various levels, we will mention you on the show. We will ring a bell. 01:51:51.920 --> 01:51:53.900 We will send you a postcard. We will send you a mug. 01:51:54.440 --> 01:52:01.460 But at $2 a month or more, or, or if you just ask, we will invite you to the 01:52:01.460 --> 01:52:07.720 Cummudgeons Corner Slack where Yvonne and I and a bunch of other folks are, 01:52:08.200 --> 01:52:13.580 chatting throughout the week, sharing links, all of that kind of stuff. 01:52:14.580 --> 01:52:17.900 It's a lot of fun. You should be there. If you were there right now, 01:52:18.100 --> 01:52:23.560 you could, you, you could have gotten all kinds of information on exactly what 01:52:23.560 --> 01:52:26.140 Yvonne's illness was that kept him from doing the show this week. 01:52:26.520 --> 01:52:33.600 I'm sure you all want to get into that detail and really understand exactly 01:52:33.600 --> 01:52:35.940 what is going wrong in Yvonne's body. 01:52:38.820 --> 01:52:41.440 Or maybe not. Let's see. 01:52:41.540 --> 01:52:47.220 What's a good highlight other than that from the from the curmudgeon's quarter slack. 01:52:48.420 --> 01:52:54.160 We've talked about return to office stuff. I don't even want to talk about it on the show. 01:52:54.840 --> 01:52:59.880 Yvonne posted something about neck restraints and motor sports. 01:53:00.120 --> 01:53:04.620 A few examples were posted about AI doing stupid things again. 01:53:05.600 --> 01:53:09.200 What else? Yeah, you know, good enough. 01:53:10.360 --> 01:53:16.640 People were talking about the DJT stock and potential manipulation were not 01:53:16.640 --> 01:53:20.620 there and also manipulation of the election betting markets. 01:53:21.880 --> 01:53:26.560 Oh, I posted a really cool article from The New Yorker on how scientists are 01:53:26.560 --> 01:53:28.500 starting to decode bird songs. 01:53:29.160 --> 01:53:33.620 Cool stuff. All kinds of stuff. Okay, we are done. 01:53:34.300 --> 01:53:39.760 Time to end this show. Hopefully, Yvonne will be feeling a lot better and be 01:53:39.760 --> 01:53:47.940 able to join us next week and the week after, and as we rush headlong into this election. 01:53:48.340 --> 01:53:51.820 But for everybody else, and for Yvonne, if you're listening, 01:53:52.420 --> 01:53:55.220 have a great week. Feel better, Yvonne. 01:53:55.900 --> 01:54:00.600 And stay safe. And we'll talk to you next time. Goodbye. 01:54:01.600 --> 01:54:03.540 Now, why isn't the song going? 01:54:05.740 --> 01:54:07.440 There we go. Thank you.