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