Sam: I can't hear you talk again are you there I.
Ivan: Got nothing I have volume set to low there.
Sam: We are I can hear you now whatever you did fixed it.
Ivan: Well mainly speaking well.
Sam: I heard I saw your mouth moving before but didn't hear anything.
Ivan: I think I may have my mouth may I doing this thing which I noticed confuses
Ivan: people which is where sometimes I am like thinking of something,
Ivan: but I'm kind of like mouthing what I'm thinking and so people keep thinking
Ivan: that I'm saying something, I'm trying to talk but I'm really going yeah, it.
Sam: Just cut out again because you weren't.
Ivan: Speaking I did cut out because I wasn't speaking because in my mind I'm like
Ivan: thinking what the fuck are these people doing but I don't want to say that out
Ivan: loud but I keep going and like thinking it and going,
Ivan: mouthing it And so I'll tell you that I keep, I regularly keep confusing people
Ivan: and they think, hey, you're on mute. I'm like, no, no, no.
Ivan: That's just me being, that is by me being frustrated and wanting to say that,
Ivan: but me not, you know, doing this.
Ivan: And I, and I just did this to myself a little bit right now.
Sam: It did say you were starting on a new track though, cause you,
Sam: you know, changed your setting or something.
Ivan: But anyway, I, I did?
Sam: I don't know.
Ivan: Heads up. New record. Yeah. New recording. Trump created due to changing your
Ivan: device. Hey, shit. The fuck is this thing?
Ivan: Well, that may have added something to it, I guess. But here we go. Do anything.
Sam: Hello. Good to see you. Yeah.
Todd: You too, fellas.
Ivan: Hello. It's been a while. Oh, my God. You got a RCT t-shirt.
Ivan: Damn it. Why didn't you say that? I think I have one there.
Ivan: Somewhere that I've saved.
Sam: Okay i i have all of my shirts a while back to make sure they didn't deteriorate any further.
Ivan: Archive yeah sorry.
Todd: I wish i wish i would have this is from last year's 75th anniversary gotcha
Todd: you guys yeah you guys must have been on the other side of the room because
Todd: i don't remember seeing you at the reception no.
Ivan: No no i way back yeah yeah we were way on the other side in a room like thousands.
Todd: Of miles away. Yes.
Ivan: No, I had, um, no, I have some, well, I'm very good at keeping my old shit as Sam knows.
Ivan: I have shirts from when I was at CMU that are still in wearable shape that are RCT shirt.
Todd: So yeah, I, I sadly don't.
Todd: I have, I have one that I grabbed, you know, I did, I did shows in the summer
Todd: right up until we started having kids.
Todd: Cause I, I'm still in the Pittsburgh area.
Todd: So I have one or two of those that are kind of hanging on by a thread.
Todd: And this and and that's about it yeah i wish i would have held on to a lot of them but uh.
Sam: Yeah at some point probably i don't know 15 years ago now or something i said
Sam: i i basically said these these are starting to deteriorate so let's let's pack
Sam: them up stick them in a box somewhere so i still have them but they're no longer
Sam: in the wearable rotation and of course.
Ivan: By sticking them in a box somewhere basically means that I.
Sam: Think I'll never see them before.
Ivan: Yeah, basically.
Ivan: Apparently Sam named me his executor to his estate.
Ivan: So basically, I will probably at some point, if I outlive Sam, will find them.
Todd: Okay.
Sam: Possibly.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Okay.
Sam: First of all, Todd, do you have a hard stop that we should respect?
Todd: No.
Sam: Okay.
Todd: No, you said you'd go for about two hours. I don't know if I'll stay for two
Todd: hours, but I don't need to stop.
Sam: Okay, gotcha. Okay.
Ivan: My 12-year-old may wander in at some point because mom is going to do something,
Ivan: so I don't know. So just be aware.
Todd: Yeah, my 18-year-old may wander in. We'll see.
Sam: Okay, and my 15-year-old has been known to participate as well. Anyway, here we go then.
Sam: Welcome to curmudgeon's corner for saturday may
Sam: 17th 2025 it's just
Sam: after 18 utc as we're starting to record i'm
Sam: sam minter yvonne bow is with us and we're
Sam: gonna do something a little bit different uh this week rather than start out
Sam: with our light and fluffy and then move on to more serious topics as we go we
Sam: have a guest today and this is uh someone who yvonne and i knew a long long time ago in college um.
Ivan: A long long time ago.
Sam: Yeah long long time ago okay yeah we don't wasn't that long yeah not not it
Sam: was like last week right yeah um anyway.
Ivan: Listen you want to know a long time the other day i told
Ivan: this person i was at the office which is not common but
Ivan: i'm at the office that we had this this person and you know i i came back from
Ivan: rally having a really really rough day visiting customer okay this was just
Ivan: a disaster okay you know i'm just she sees me that i'm blown out exhausted and
Ivan: she's like why is that I'm like well look I started doing this shit in 97,
Ivan: I mean I've been doing this for a long damn time and she says oh 97 I was I was in the,
Ivan: I was nine years old at that time.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: And I'm just like, me?
Sam: Here's one along those lines. I have been at my current employer for over 19
Sam: years now, coming up fast on 19 and a half, okay?
Sam: And that makes me realize that I am moments away from the summer interns being
Sam: born after I started at this company. oh fuck.
Ivan: Come on man yeah.
Sam: Oh fuck.
Ivan: What what what she's okay.
Sam: Anyway so we we have with us a guest who i know they posted something on social
Sam: media about tariffs and how it affected their industry so i invited them on
Sam: so i'm gonna murder your last name todd so this is todd padizanan that's it I got it right?
Todd: Yeah, yeah. Which is funny because I don't know if anyone back then ever knew my real last name.
Sam: It was like Panzan or something.
Todd: Yeah.
Sam: Yeah. So anyway, let me let me introduce it.
Sam: Let me let you introduce yourself a little bit and sort of who you are and whatever
Sam: elements of your background you feel comfortable with.
Sam: And then we're specifically going to start out this first segment talking to Todd about
Sam: Trump tariffs and how they might impact his industry, industry in general,
Sam: and just the whole tariff thing, which we've talked about a lot,
Sam: but I felt like it would be useful to get somebody who's sort of directly impacted.
Sam: And then after that, Todd may leave, Todd may stay, but we'll talk about other things after that.
Todd: Yeah, sure. Todd Padasanin. We all went to college together once upon a time, Carnegie Mellon.
Todd: So I have a civil engineering degree. I started in structural engineering, did that for a few years.
Todd: My career evolved into individual sales and then about 11 years ago into sales leadership.
Todd: And so I've been, you know, selling or leading teams selling into the utility
Todd: scale power generation industry roughly since 2010. I was doing it occasionally
Todd: before that, but really exclusively after that.
Todd: And for the last three and a half years it's been exclusively utility
Todd: scale solar photovoltaic power
Todd: generation as well this is a logistics intensive
Todd: industry there's executives i know at one of the big construction companies
Todd: that do this kind of work who said utility scale solar power is a huge logistics
Todd: operation that happens to also generate electricity whenever it's finished it
Todd: they're massive these these These projects are hundreds of megawatts.
Todd: They take up thousands of acres.
Todd: And so during construction, they're very labor intensive.
Todd: And our supply chain is very globalized.
Todd: There are many components for a variety of reasons that don't get manufactured here in the U.S.
Todd: Anymore. In some cases, because that technology never really took off,
Todd: or in other cases, because over time it became more profitable to manufacture
Todd: certain components and raw materials in lower cost countries.
Todd: And a focus more here on construction, operations, services, and so forth.
Todd: I'm talking specifically about power generation, but I think what I said probably
Todd: applies to 100 industries as well.
Todd: So that's what I've been doing for the last 34 years or so since we saw each other, guys.
Sam: Yeah. So let's jump into it.
Sam: And, you know, Yvonne's usually the econ person here, but let me start by asking,
Sam: you know, So just over the last few months since the start of the Trump presidency,
Sam: just at a very high level, how have the policy changes affected your industry?
Todd: Until this rapidly and, in my opinion, ridiculously escalating trade war with China five.
Ivan: Six weeks ago. It's not just your opinion.
Sam: Okay.
Todd: Some people's opinion. most.
Ivan: People with a brain in business okay.
Todd: I it it people
Todd: in the industry in this part of the industry were paying attention but
Todd: trump administration didn't do anything drastic to really slow our momentum
Todd: for the first month or two there's obvious concern about terrorists before he
Todd: started enacting them and there's concerns about you know what he and Congress
Todd: might try to do to the Inflation Reduction Act,
Todd: which has accelerated our industry.
Todd: We don't depend on it, but it's accelerated our industry for sure.
Todd: It's made some projects viable where they maybe would not otherwise have been.
Todd: But it was particularly, I should say from my point of view,
Todd: right, because I can't speak for the entire industry that employs hundreds of thousands of people.
Todd: But from my point of view, these rapidly escalating tariffs on China that started
Todd: about six weeks ago and then ended abruptly the beginning of this past week
Todd: were extraordinarily disruptive because what it meant was any raw materials
Todd: or finished components coming out of China in the span of a couple of weeks had to be repriced,
Todd: repriced again, repriced a third time.
Todd: And at the end of those couple of weeks, a lot of things cost 80 or 90% nearly
Todd: double what they had just a couple of weeks prior.
Todd: For projects that were just getting started,
Todd: for the major construction companies that need to purchase millions or tens
Todd: of millions of dollars worth of capital equipment or wiring systems or other
Todd: materials that go into this construction,
Todd: they had to slam on the brakes because nobody wants to pay 20 or 50 or 80% more
Todd: than they were budgeted for.
Todd: Or in fact, that would make many of these projects unviable, you know?
Todd: So I know from my own individual experience that stopped progress on numerous
Todd: projects, just almost entirely.
Todd: Some of my competitors in the industry stopped giving price quotes.
Todd: They, you know, they had to freeze
Todd: sales activity and evaluate what their alternatives were going to be.
Todd: My company happens to be fairly dependent on imports from China right now.
Todd: We were already exploring diversification into other countries because,
Todd: you know, after the election in November, everyone knew what might be coming.
Todd: And so that's only accelerated our activities.
Todd: But, you know, one of the byproducts of diversifying outside of China to countries
Todd: with lower tariff impact is that things are going to cost a little more than
Todd: they would have four months ago.
Todd: That's a lot of words, guys. I don't know if I answered the question or not.
Sam: Look, no, that's a good start. I mean, one thing that I immediately want to
Sam: ask is, you know, you mentioned how things got ratcheted to the roof and then
Sam: abruptly stopped, but it's still not back to where it was before.
Ivan: Well, yeah. What is the tariff percent that you're seeing right now on most
Ivan: of your products now with this downward change?
Todd: Yeah, we're focused mostly on Chinese imports, my company at least,
Todd: for another couple of weeks.
Todd: Okay there's even there's even more nuance to it than that there's things
Todd: that we can take orders for today that would come from other countries and
Todd: that's the way we're going to operate going forward with with alternatives
Todd: and so we'll price based on where people want to buy from and that affects lead
Todd: times to an extent price to an extent not quality or design or anything like
Todd: that thank goodness so at one point so i'm talking about incremental tariffs
Todd: i guess so there were some tariffs in place before Trump took office.
Todd: He enacted tariffs on certain imports from China. Biden never repealed them. The industry adjusted.
Todd: So let's say that's the new zero. Okay. That, that, that threshold inauguration
Todd: day, let's just call that zero.
Todd: We're right now 30% higher than where we were at on day one of Trump administration.
Todd: So 30 is better than 145, but it's worse than zero.
Ivan: So you're seeing 10.
Ivan: What you're seeing right now at the current level is 10.
Todd: No, we're seeing 30.
Ivan: 30. 30.
Todd: 30.
Sam: And you said it was 30 above where Biden was. So that's actually still higher than that.
Ivan: That's right.
Todd: That's right. But like, so the Biden tariffs, it started under the first Trump
Todd: administration and they endured.
Ivan: Yeah, they didn't. They just didn't. Yeah, they weren't Biden tariffs.
Ivan: Biden just didn't rescind them.
Todd: Right. Yeah. Yes. So let's call that zero, right? Because the industry adjusted
Todd: to that over, you know, the five or six years that they were in place.
Todd: That's zero. We're now 30% higher on imports from China than we were Inauguration Day 2025.
Todd: So we can manage that. The industry can manage that.
Sam: So let me explore that a little bit, because I think that's something that people
Sam: have been talking about a lot,
Sam: is that sort of there's a threshold where people will be like,
Sam: you know, at 30%, let's say, you said, we can handle that.
Sam: You know, maybe you absorb some of the cost, you pass some of it along to your
Sam: customers, and maybe it slows things down a little bit, but it doesn't stop them.
Sam: Whereas there's a threshold that's a little bit higher than that.
Sam: And I've heard people throw around like 50%, 60%, something like that,
Sam: where basically in a lot of industries, it would effectively be almost like
Sam: a ban because prices would be high enough that people would just completely
Sam: stop. It just wouldn't be viable to do it anymore.
Sam: And so your thought is like at 30%, you're in that first zone.
Sam: You're like, we can figure out how to make this work.
Sam: It may have some impact, but it's not going to kill you.
Todd: Yeah, I think so. This industry in particular is still evolving,
Todd: innovating, driving costs down.
Todd: And people are finding more efficient ways to construct, to deliver the solar
Todd: modules, the panels, you know.
Todd: Have become more efficient. They're economically viable in higher and higher latitudes.
Todd: You can build utility scale solar production in Canada now, and it's profitable.
Todd: So there's a lot of things going positive direction in the industry,
Todd: but this is definitely 30%.
Todd: I don't want to say 30% is manageable, even though I may have said that a minute
Todd: ago, it won't kill the industry, but it's going to slow it down a little bit until we adjust again.
Todd: But that 145 was unsustainable. And so let me make one other point about that.
Todd: We're on a 90-day pause right now. I think we're on maybe day three of the 90-day pause.
Todd: There are few things in my industry that you can order today and clear customs in 90 days.
Ivan: Exactly.
Todd: And that's the biggest.
Ivan: Problem because you don't pay the tariff until this thing has landed and.
Todd: It's cleared.
Ivan: Customs and this is the thing that people don't understand why people are well
Ivan: why won't you order anything well damn it i don't know what the hell i'm gonna
Ivan: have to pay to clear this damn thing at.
Todd: This point our our conversations yvonne
Todd: have gone from a month month and
Todd: a half ago asking our customers if they can
Todd: wait until we have stood up new production in other countries and in some cases
Todd: they can and in other cases they can't wait and there are and we have competitors
Todd: who are impacted to a lesser extent because again if you remember a month,
Todd: month and a half ago it wasn't just China there were seemingly arbitrary tariffs
Todd: supplied to nearly every country,
Todd: mysteriously not Russia,
Todd: even those are on a pod my god those are on a pod those could come back too Sure.
Todd: And the point, the only point I want to make is, and you could say this for
Todd: any sort of industrial machinery, you can say this about gas turbine generators
Todd: and steam turbine generators that are still used in nuclear and fossil power generation as well.
Todd: No one can order and deliver that stuff.
Todd: In 90 days in the case of gas turbines i don't know how closely you guys follow
Todd: the power generation industry all of oh yeah i'm on that.
Sam: Every day every.
Todd: Day i.
Ivan: Mean i'm not gonna say close but i i follow it but obviously i'm not an expert but.
Todd: I got.
Ivan: I have an idea.
Todd: You know there there is a well publicized growing demand for electricity in
Todd: the united states driven largely by new manufacturing but especially by data
Todd: centers and ai and you know so full.
Ivan: Disclosure sure what my second largest customer is a is a is a utility company.
Todd: Okay okay so there's probably
Todd: going to be new natural gas fired power generation
Todd: built but those turbines are sold out through 2029 if
Todd: you place an order to ge or siemens or mitsubishi somebody like
Todd: that today your plant's probably going to go online
Todd: in 2030 or 2031 and that's if everything else goes right with the permitting
Todd: and interconnection applications and substation equipment all the other things
Todd: that go into this all right i'm i'm really deviating from i think where the
Todd: construct the conversation is supposed to be my point about the 90-day pause
Todd: that's that's all right that's normal for our show so don't worry about it we are okay we.
Ivan: Are the tangential.
Todd: Podcast okay i'm gonna i i i for better for worse i think i'm either gonna blow
Todd: things way down or make things feel completely normal then as long as i'm on
Todd: guys sorry i i'm losing my train of thought you're talking about the 90-day So basically.
Ivan: You're showing our age.
Todd: This is swing. Now, I would love to say that this is middle age,
Todd: but I think I was kind of like this most of my life.
Todd: So this has become now a race to onshore as much as possible.
Todd: Tariffs have come down. Sale prices have come down above, but a lot closer to
Todd: where they were a month and a half ago.
Todd: And now shipping costs are spiking because people are racing to get priority
Todd: position, expedited boats.
Todd: It's still cheaper than air freight.
Todd: People are trying to get on the fastest boat front of the line so they can get over here and,
Todd: I don't know if we all did. I took econ electives, I think, my second year at
Todd: college. I've seen the supply-demand curves, right? We're creeping up.
Todd: People will pay what they're willing to pay to get stuff here because it's more
Todd: worthwhile to beat the tariffs than it is to save a few pennies on shipping
Todd: right now. So shipping costs are going up.
Todd: And just like tariffs, we pass that along to our customers then as well.
Todd: Typically, our things are delivered duty pay to the site.
Ivan: Listen, but shipping costs are significant, okay? And that's the thing.
Ivan: It's not an inconsequential thing, you know?
Ivan: When shipping a container from China goes from like $4,000 or $5,000 to $20,000,
Ivan: $25,000, $30,000 all of a sudden, and all of a sudden you've got to bring in
Ivan: 10, 20, 30 containers all of a sudden,
Ivan: you all of a sudden added like to your cost several hundred thousands of dollars.
Ivan: And especially depending on the value of the items
Ivan: that you're bringing in it could be that for some super high value items maybe
Ivan: that's significant but it depends on what you're bringing in if there are some
Ivan: relatively low cost items you're filling a container with them and all of a
Ivan: sudden your shipping costs just you know soared it becomes up it becomes material.
Todd: Yeah yeah and this is
Todd: how i passed on to the consumer whether it is a business or an individual
Todd: whether it's itemized or not you'll you'll see
Todd: it in what you pay certainly businesses are
Todd: going to try to absorb some of this because especially if you're in a very price
Todd: sensitive market you kind of don't have a choice but in many but in many cases
Todd: and for industrial machinery in certain industries and electric power generation
Todd: for sure if there's still a limited supply then the end users are,
Todd: oftentimes going to be willing to pay a little more because they have to get
Todd: this because their project is still economically viable.
Todd: Um, ultimately this gets passed on to all of us, right? Because we're electricity consumers.
Ivan: Right.
Todd: So, you know, maybe the promise of levelized or declining electric power retail
Todd: prices, you know, we're not going to see that benefit as much because these
Todd: things are driving things up.
Todd: And the point I ought to make about the pendulum swinging from tariffs to shipping
Todd: is it's a complicated, multifaceted problem.
Todd: Tariffs and shipping and imports and globalized manufacturing are all interrelated
Todd: can't simplify it the way that our president seems to try to be forcing everyone
Todd: to believe that it can be simplified.
Ivan: Well here's the thing he continues to be under the impression that like the
Ivan: chinese government pays the tariffs okay he keeps saying this china needs to
Ivan: absorb the terror i'm like What the hell does that mean?
Ivan: Look, if I have a factory, I'm Apple.
Ivan: I have a factory in China.
Ivan: It's my factory I'm shipping to me, you idiot.
Ivan: You know, who the hell do you think is paying this? The government isn't running this show.
Ivan: And by the way, he still doesn't seem to understand that the tariffs are collected
Ivan: when customs is cleared. This concept has completely evaded him, you know, to this point.
Todd: I question Trump's judgment and competency in many areas, but I think that he's
Todd: playing dumb and just lying. I think that he understands what's happening.
Ivan: I think he's a dumb fuck.
Todd: I think on many topics, you're right.
Todd: In this case, I am sure by now, if he ever misunderstood by now,
Todd: he must understand how terrorists work.
Todd: He chooses to not talk about this publicly because he's still depending on popular support.
Ivan: Well, OK, so it may be like what you're saying is that maybe when he first did
Ivan: it, he didn't understand.
Todd: Yeah.
Ivan: But but by now, now somebody explained to him how it really works.
Ivan: And so he's maintaining the bullshit lie he said before because he's not going
Ivan: to admit that he didn't know what the fuck he was talking about.
Todd: He must have, I'm sorry, he must have realized it in 2017, you know?
Todd: He chooses to present it this way because he needs his base to continue believing
Todd: it. Sam, go on, I'm sorry.
Sam: Now, I was just going to ask because the one thing though, as part of what you
Sam: talked about earlier, you mentioned, well, now there's a race to onshore.
Sam: Does that actually mean that this is having exactly the effect Donald Trump
Sam: wants? Because that's a stated goal, right?
Todd: Yes.
Sam: He fundamentally believes that any imports are by definition bad.
Sam: We are losing money by spending money on things that are made elsewhere.
Sam: And the goal is to bring it all back to the U.S. So like, is he succeeding?
Todd: You're right to call me out for using that word onshore because probably that's the wrong word.
Todd: What I mean is products, components, materials, machinery.
Todd: Is racing to clear customs here in the u.s right you cannot you cannot build
Todd: a factory to make the sort of components and materials machines that i'm talking
Todd: about you can't build a factory to do that in 90 days right so.
Sam: What so what you're talking about was just the thing that yvonne and i have
Sam: talked about before which is.
Todd: Just like.
Sam: Everybody rushing to beat the tariffs and.
Todd: Get them in.
Sam: But this is an important point. Like his ultimate goal of bringing this manufacturing
Sam: back to the United States, that's not something anybody's really thinking about at all, right?
Sam: Or if so...
Ivan: Listen, the thing is that you can't bring it all back. There's a whole bunch
Ivan: of... Here's the policy about it.
Ivan: One of the reasons why so much manufacturing is distributed is because the only
Ivan: customer isn't the United States, okay?
Ivan: You're manufacturing to sell across the world in multiple currencies.
Ivan: And one of the things that you need to do is distribute the cost of these things
Ivan: amongst those currencies you're working with.
Ivan: Whether you're selling to Europe, or you're Asian, you're selling to whatever.
Ivan: So I go and I say, hey, well, let me bring all this manufacturing to the US.
Ivan: Well, you may not be able to build.
Ivan: First of all, it takes years to do it, number one. The second thing is, is the cost that it is.
Ivan: The third thing is, that you're probably only building some manufacturing limited
Ivan: for the United States and what it's
Ivan: going to wind up doing is limiting our options in terms of what we buy.
Ivan: And why do I say this? Because I saw this is what happened in Brazil for decades
Ivan: before they opened their markets.
Ivan: In the 70s, 80s, and 90s, where Brazil was a very closed market,
Ivan: they wouldn't allow PCs or computers to be imported.
Ivan: So what wound up happening is that their options for purchasing PCs and computers
Ivan: became extremely limited.
Ivan: OK, they basically because you the tariffs are so high, you basically it was
Ivan: impossible to bring one in.
Ivan: So then what you wind up getting is a series of very,
Ivan: you know, some companies like IBM, HP and a few manufacturing a limited number
Ivan: of products just to be sold in Brazil, which were wind up being of inferior
Ivan: quality and higher price because you were only building them to sell them at this damn market.
Ivan: It wind up being why in Brazil, IBM bet heavily on it, which is like why one
Ivan: of the biggest markets in the world for IBM midsize mainframes, like AS400 or whatever,
Ivan: was in Brazil because they were the only people that went and invested on building
Ivan: that kind of computer there.
Ivan: So every damn company had one because they were the only ones that bet on it.
Ivan: Nobody else could see the value in it. And that's what you're creating with the United States.
Ivan: You're creating this island all of a sudden where we are only 30% of the global
Ivan: economy and to a certain extent shrinking because the rest of the world is growing.
Ivan: And so you're going to wind up with this limited amount of manufacturing.
Ivan: By the way, our manufacturing is higher cost.
Ivan: Our labor is higher cost. you know the
Ivan: the the process of building all this we don't have
Ivan: the people everybody who is manufacturing in the
Ivan: united states at this point struggles right now to get people where
Ivan: are you gonna get all these millions of employees to go and build all this shit
Ivan: when even right now we struggle to get employees to do that and oh by the way
Ivan: we're deporting a whole bunch of them they're ones that we hired before anyway
Ivan: it's that the whole the whole thing has no plan of any kind whatsoever to bring manufacturing.
Ivan: And if you're a leader of a manufacturing company and you're thinking about
Ivan: doing it, you're looking at it and it's like, look, I just got to find some
Ivan: other place to move this shit because I can maybe move some stuff here,
Ivan: but there is no way I can bring all this shit here.
Todd: I, that's a lot. And I'm trying to make notes and gather my thoughts as well.
Todd: Cause Sam, I'm trying not to forget your question either.
Todd: I can't, I can't say definitively no business is considering adding new manufacturing
Todd: here in the U S because of expected tariff policy. I can't say that.
Sam: I'm sure. I'm sure there has to be some, but
Sam: it's the logistics of it are as as
Sam: yvonne mentioned it's so long term for most things that
Sam: and you need to have confidence that the
Sam: situation is going to stay somewhat stable
Sam: like for yeah just take the absolute extreme let's say instead of the 200 tariff
Sam: or whatever it was just an outright ban you can't import from country x you
Sam: know there would have to be some adaptation over time but you would have to believe that,
Sam: okay, that's real and that's going to stay and that's going to stay for decades
Sam: to make it worth your while.
Sam: And one of the things we've seen, I mean, so far on every single one of these
Sam: things that's hit, Trump has backed down when push comes to shove so far,
Sam: there are all these pauses.
Sam: And so if fundamentally you don't really believe that this is in fact permanent,
Sam: then it doesn't make sense to make your long-term plans that won't bear fruits for a decade.
Sam: And so part of the question as well that I was going to ask anyway was with
Sam: that level of uncertainty, how are people, what are they doing to plan?
Sam: Like, are they, are you planning for the worst case that like these tariffs,
Sam: you know, the high tariffs come back at the end of the pause and they stay?
Sam: Or is everybody sort of acting like, you know, Trump's full of it,
Sam: and none of this will stay and be real on the long term.
Sam: And so we kind of act differently.
Sam: You know, there's a little bit more uncertainty, but we have to assume things
Sam: will sort of work out okay in the end and the tariffs will be low enough that we can manage.
Todd: Yeah. I, you know, I think I said it a couple of minutes ago, I got to stay in my lane.
Todd: I'll tell you what I understand about the industry that I'm in.
Todd: And I don't want to make broad generalizations.
Todd: I know people in my industry are exploring supply chain diversification,
Todd: adding capacity into countries that we hope, right?
Todd: It's a calculated risk. countries where we think
Todd: more likely than not any future trump
Todd: tariff policies will be less disruptive than china
Todd: and some other countries right but makes sense right how do you know makes sense
Todd: how do you know because on day 91 he's going to tweet something out and it becomes
Todd: policy and then we go we go back to the starting starting blocks again well and even.
Sam: On that in terms of the how do you know, right?
Todd: Yeah.
Sam: I mean, it is not out of the realm of possibility,
Sam: that if Trump hears that industry X is moving from China to pick your random
Sam: country, Thailand or something, that he says, oh, well, we don't want that to happen.
Sam: We want them to go to the US. So we'll raise the tariffs in Thailand too to
Sam: block that because the whole point of this is we don't want foreign manufacturing.
Todd: So I can tell you that that will have a very chilling effect on my industry and others as well.
Todd: If there are such extreme policies that the only viable option is to manufacture in the U.S.,
Todd: Most projects become unaffordable, right? If you, if you have to make everything
Todd: here, let me go back because I sort of make notes to answer one of your earlier questions.
Todd: You asked, you asked, is this tariff policy going to incentivize people to add
Todd: manufacturing capacity in the United States? Let's say that it did.
Todd: One of my previous employers manufactures the utility scale inverters.
Todd: These are the machines that convert DC power from the solar panels to the AC
Todd: power that connects to the grid.
Todd: So they're, they're, and they do more than that, but let's skip the details.
Todd: They're, they're critical to renewable power generation, whether it's wind or solar or battery.
Todd: This is the way those technologies interconnect to the grid and provide reliable electricity.
Todd: The Inflation Reduction Act passed, what, three years ago or more by now.
Todd: So we knew there were tax incentives coming for manufacturers to add capacity
Todd: in the US, even knowing that there was incentive and there was ability to make
Todd: that pencil out and be profitable and to still meet market price for those machines
Todd: here in the United States.
Todd: It took my old employer about two years to get to ribbon cutting on that factory.
Todd: So more complicated manufacturing. Let's say, you know, maybe his goal is to
Todd: onshore more steel, more automobiles,
Todd: more gas turbine or steam turbine
Todd: to try to shift electric power back to fossil away from renewables.
Todd: Those factories take even longer to build.
Todd: Trump won't be in office anymore when those new factories open.
Todd: That's how far out you're looking. So no, 90-day pause is,
Todd: doesn't incentivize anyone to bring manufacturing. It incentivizes everyone
Todd: like, let's wait and see what's he going to do in August.
Todd: That's where we are.
Todd: I want to address something else also. Some of this manufacturing won't create
Todd: the jobs that Trump wants his base.
Todd: Unless he takes a really remarkable turn towards authoritarianism,
Todd: Right. He's done in three and a half years.
Todd: But there are senators and congressmen and aspiring politicians who are,
Todd: you know, riding on his populist wave that, you know, they want to they want
Todd: to keep they want to sustain that Trump message.
Todd: Even when he's out of the picture, they're relying on the base,
Todd: believing that higher tariffs are going to bring manufacturing back.
Todd: And that means more factory jobs for everybody.
Todd: There's a lot of stuff that's manufactured in China nowadays.
Todd: Days i i think maybe the popular misconceptions everything they make over there
Todd: whether it's barbie dolls or whether it's complicated electrical power generating
Todd: machinery it's all manufactured by child labor forced forced leaguer like it is the.
Ivan: Most idiotic most idiotic thing ever i.
Todd: It's robotics well it's.
Ivan: Not totally robotics.
Todd: No listen.
Ivan: But but but the labor by the way they We have labor. The labor is expensive.
Ivan: Look, I had employees in China, in Shanghai and in Wuhan, okay, of all places.
Ivan: By the way, I ran an operations center in Wuhan when the pandemic started,
Ivan: okay, all right, of all the damn places, okay, all right.
Ivan: Look, my employees, the employees that I have in Shanghai basically made wages
Ivan: that were close to what we pay here.
Ivan: They weren't that far off, you know, 30,000, 40,000 a year for people,
Ivan: a manager, 60,000, 80,000.
Ivan: And so these people telling me that they think that we're using cellular,
Ivan: I'm like, what are you guys talking about? Yeah.
Todd: So I'm realizing that I have hardly stayed in touch with either of you for over
Todd: three decades. And I shouldn't presume what you may or may not know.
Todd: What I've learned about China, you could probably validate, is they've taken
Todd: a decades-long strategic approach to becoming the factory for the world.
Todd: Yes, totally. They have extraordinary manufacturing capacity that we can't touch.
Ivan: And that is the reality. And not just that.
Ivan: Listen, the one thing that you get, the incredible support that,
Ivan: listen, we as a foreign company, local government, to set up stuff, okay?
Ivan: Like subsidized buildings.
Ivan: We got, during the pandemic, nine months of free rent, okay,
Ivan: all of a sudden from the government. and we were foreigners and we were getting
Ivan: that money, for example.
Ivan: And I'm like, what the hell, man? They're supporting us this way or that way.
Ivan: So yeah, they support the manufacturing. They've got the people.
Ivan: They've got the infrastructure.
Ivan: And I think that's the one thing that they don't understand how when you set
Ivan: up a factory over there, the level of skilled labor that is available,
Ivan: the pool of people that they're trained that we just don't have. It's just really...
Todd: So I don't want to become a China apologist either, but this isn't North Korea.
Todd: This isn't Soviet Union in the 70s and 80s.
Ivan: No, no.
Todd: In terms of global economy, this is a capitalist country. They are authoritarian in other ways.
Ivan: They love their Starbucks. Let me tell you something.
Sam: And the other misconception is sort of a decades-old information.
Sam: Like people think of it as like a backwards third world country type of thing
Sam: as opposed to modern technology that in many cases is ahead of ours yeah.
Todd: Yes yeah yeah so i'm not going to take any more detours.
Sam: Sure where.
Ivan: Were we about uh the tariffs manufacturing i understand where do we stay on
Ivan: brand we are we are we are i mean our tangents you know are yeah that's no anyway so we're gonna go.
Sam: We were we were fundamentally talking about how industries you know your yours
Sam: as an example but industries in general are reacting to the uncertainty of okay
Sam: here's what things are right now.
Sam: But it could be different in 90 days.
Sam: It could be different in 30 days. You know, from what we've seen so far,
Sam: it could be different tomorrow.
Sam: Trump could wake up one day having watched some random segment on Fox News and
Sam: decide to completely change the policy tomorrow.
Sam: And so how do you deal with that?
Ivan: That's actually exactly how this happens a lot.
Todd: This is maybe not addressing what you just said sam but i
Todd: mean i could there's another fact just from things that i've been reading
Todd: and listening to to keep up with the industry at large i
Todd: talked earlier about the shortage of gas turbines there's more than one
Todd: way to generate electricity i do solar but there's other ways and there's this
Todd: well in the industry well publicized shortage of gas turbines the companies
Todd: that manufacture them are also not interested in adding capacity because you
Todd: think i talked about capitalism a second ago the you know publicly traded companies,
Todd: more often than not, are strategizing ways to maximize shareholder value and
Todd: making large capital investments, whether it's in the U.S. or anywhere else,
Todd: does not always maximize return on shareholder value, right?
Todd: So they're happy to charge premium prices and take orders that they won't deliver
Todd: for the next four or five years, as long as it keeps the shareholder happy,
Todd: as long as the board keeps the executives in place. I don't want to sound too cynical.
Todd: I mean, that's a hard job that i don't have to do but it's
Todd: not just so easy as to say look at all of these
Todd: tariffs and it's and it's you know driving demand for
Todd: manufacturing the u.s so hey you know giant global multinational companies why
Todd: don't you build new turbine or generator or substation factories here in the
Todd: united states well we're not gonna because that's a multi-billion dollar capital
Todd: investment and the shareholders won't tolerate that right now there's more to it about tariffs yeah.
Ivan: And think about this when you're talking about that multi-billion dollar investment right Because.
Todd: That takes years.
Ivan: Number one, for it to pay off. And the reality is that one of the things that
Ivan: if I'm any of these manufacturers, okay, and despite whatever the U.S.
Ivan: Is doing on energy policy, the rest of the world is moving and pushing towards
Ivan: renewables, okay, very aggressively.
Ivan: And so, therefore, you're talking about, number one, like you said,
Ivan: this president is changing in three and a half years, okay, all right, most probably, okay?
Ivan: And the rest of the world is
Ivan: moving towards these other sources of energy why
Ivan: am i going to do a massive capital investment in this when when it comes online
Ivan: maybe because of where the market's going i'm gonna wind up with this white
Ivan: elephant manufacturer factory facility that i've got nobody to sell shit to well.
Sam: And i'll add there's no like,
Sam: If you are truly going to have an industrial policy that tried to encourage
Sam: this, you don't just put on the tariffs.
Sam: You also have an industrial policy that actually supports it.
Ivan: Which is what Biden was doing.
Sam: Which is what Biden was doing. But if you really and truly wanted this,
Sam: you would have to add massive amounts of investment to encourage industry to do this.
Sam: You would give them grants outright. You would give low-interest loans.
Sam: You would give all sorts of other benefits and things that would make it worth their while.
Sam: But this administration has zero interest in that side of the equation at all,
Sam: because they fundamentally don't believe in doing that.
Sam: And so you have the one thing, but not the other, which makes it completely ineffective.
Ivan: Yeah, I agree.
Todd: There's some political desire for nuclear power as well.
Todd: And once again, not a subject matter expert, but I try to keep up with the industry.
Todd: What I've learned about nuclear power over the years, especially ever since
Todd: Fukushima, I'm remembering the name of that plant correctly,
Todd: right? Yeah, you got it right.
Todd: Commercial banks are very, very hesitant to finance nuclear power construction.
Todd: It's virtually impossible to build new nuclear without some kind of government
Todd: guarantee whether it's a loan guarantee whether it's a direct loan the banks
Todd: don't want to take the risk insurance companies don't want to take the risk.
Ivan: Yeah so listen but but you talk about that listen just
Ivan: the yeah commercial banks of course they don't want to learn about
Ivan: this look the last nuclear the big nuclear react georgia
Ivan: power yeah that hired westinghouse to build this massive
Ivan: nuclear reactor the this new one that came online in
Ivan: georgia that took that it's not only did it take forever
Ivan: to build not only did it go you know
Ivan: the cost overruns were insane okay but it literally drove the manufacturer bankrupt
Ivan: of making the nuclear reactor okay that's how that that is the last big nuclear
Ivan: project in the united states and it literally drove almost everybody that built it bankrupt i'll.
Todd: Add a little more to that the the schedule got so far behind georgia power fired
Todd: the construction company that was running it and.
Ivan: Replaced them it.
Todd: Wound up finishing years behind schedule and this top of my head order of roughly
Todd: double what the initial budget was supposed to be. Maybe you're looking at it right now.
Ivan: No, yeah, I looked it up. $14 billion was, you know, the owner pledged that
Ivan: the units would begin producing power in 2016 at $14 billion.
Ivan: Okay. It wound up taking to 2024 last year, and it cost $35 billion.
Todd: Yeah, so a little more than double. There was another plant,
Todd: same Westinghouse Reactive Design, started around the same time in South Carolina
Todd: that was called VC Summer.
Todd: VC Summer is a half-complete nuclear power station that will probably never
Todd: be finished, and it ran that utility out of business.
Todd: They went bankrupt and were acquired by Dominion Power out of Virginia.
Todd: So now, you know, nuclear is financially risky, and so banks won't touch it, and I agree.
Todd: I'm not universally opposed.
Todd: Nuclear power. There's a lot of upside, right? Zero emissions, it's always on.
Todd: That's a terrific baseload generation technology. People are justifiably afraid of it because,
Todd: The accident rate's really low, but when there's an accident,
Todd: they're terrified. Yes.
Ivan: It's bad.
Sam: Right.
Todd: And so I understand that completely. I'm certainly not trying to become a nuclear
Todd: power advocate as well, but one of the risks is banks don't want the principals
Todd: to go bankrupt and take that risk of not being paid back,
Todd: $34 billion that they loaned out to build a plant.
Todd: So they just choose not to do it. If the government is not going to back that
Todd: with loan guarantees or things that seem to be more popular with Democratic
Todd: than Republican administrations.
Todd: Trump's never going to get the nuclear power that he claims to want unless they're
Todd: going to take on some policy positions that are traditionally more Democrat
Todd: than Republican. Anyway.
Ivan: The problem with all of these is what happened like in the first administration
Ivan: that we're living through this again.
Ivan: Trump announced infrastructure week every week for four years.
Ivan: Never did they pass an infrastructure bill and the
Ivan: problem is that everything is a shiny object which to
Ivan: talk about to get clicks you know somewhere and that's the only things that
Ivan: they're interested in actual hard work that goes behind the scenes to create
Ivan: a program build it pass it fund it you know you know get the industry on board
Ivan: to do all of that whatever who really wants that that's all boring shit. Okay.
Todd: Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I, I, I wonder how interested anyone in this administration
Todd: really is in what you said, the hard work of actually executing policy.
Todd: Even if I fundamentally disagree with policies that they want,
Todd: like they don't seem to be able to think beyond we're going to fire a bunch of people arbitrarily.
Todd: We're going to, we're going to make a bunch of inflammatory statements.
Todd: We're going to test the limits in the courts of just,
Todd: bypassing due process entirely. And now I know we're getting way,
Todd: way, way beyond tariffs.
Sam: That's okay. That's okay.
Todd: But even, even in tariffs, that seems to be, they haven't thought this out beyond,
Todd: China, your tariffs are 145% now. Okay.
Ivan: Now it's 175.
Todd: Now what? You know, so I talked about the Inflation Reduction Act earlier.
Todd: One of the big frustrations in the industry was, okay, you passed this bill
Todd: that gives very general guidelines and then it all, it has to go to committees
Todd: and organizations and departments,
Todd: you know, the people who do the day-to-day work of executing government policy
Todd: and providing government services, they had to write all the rules,
Todd: all the details of how it's going to be executed.
Todd: This shit takes time, right? It took over a year from when IRA was passed until
Todd: we actually understood how it was going to be implemented and what our business
Todd: choices really were, right?
Todd: And it was then that, for example, a previous company and many of their competitors
Todd: and many other manufacturers in the industry decided, okay, we're going to make
Todd: the business decision to build a factory here because it's economically viable.
Todd: And is it going to make a dent in the global supply chain for these pieces of
Todd: machinery and these electrical components?
Todd: Probably not. But it does provide supply chain security in my industry and a few others where.
Todd: If, let's say, another country decided to start a trade war and escalate tariffs,
Todd: now we're protected now we're becoming more
Todd: self-sufficient to provide components and
Todd: other machinery to build solar power generation which has become the least expensive
Todd: way to add new electricity generation it has an Achilles heel it doesn't work
Todd: after dark right it has an Achilles heel but then batteries come in and so there
Todd: was also incentives there's also incentives to increase and make the U.S.
Todd: More supply chain self-sufficient for batteries as well.
Todd: And for some of the other machinery that goes into electric power generation
Todd: he also did with the chips act to bring more semiconductor manufacturing
Todd: back to the u.s i admit i know far less
Todd: about that than i do about the electric power generation side but then infrastructure
Todd: week for all of the talk of infrastructure week biden actually passed the largest
Todd: i might be mixing up the infrastructure bill with the inflation reduction act
Todd: but it was perhaps the largest infrastructure bill in the history of the country and.
Todd: Hopefully, and maybe this wishful thinking, well,
Todd: so maybe I don't know the details and I'm filling in my own wishful thinking,
Todd: but hopefully learning from the mistakes of the American Recovery Act under
Todd: Obama back in what, 2009 or so,
Todd: they put a lot of money out on the street and there were not enough shovel ready
Todd: projects and for better or for worse.
Todd: And I was sort of in more of that industry at the time.
Todd: Right before I got into power generation, I was more involved in civil construction.
Todd: And what we saw was a lot of projects immediately being released to do things
Todd: like adding handicap access at, at urban crosswalks and, you know,
Todd: pedestrian bridges and things like that.
Todd: But the really big capital intensive, labor intensive, manufacturing intensive
Todd: stuff that needed to be done, like major bridge and highway reconstruction,
Todd: those designs weren't ready to go.
Todd: And maybe the industry, maybe the government learned its lesson over the last
Todd: 15 years that by the time Biden passed the infrastructure bill,
Todd: there were major multi-hundred million dollar infrastructure projects ready to go.
Todd: Like within a year, it was far more effective than the Obama plan was 14,
Todd: 15 years prior, if I'm doing that correctly.
Sam: Even then, like you mentioned, it was a lot better than the last time.
Sam: Even then there's a significant lag. And I think that's one of the things that
Sam: is, you know, a problem in general of American politics is like connecting cause
Sam: to effect for the general population.
Sam: Because there's so much time lag between policy enacted and regular human beings sees the effect of it,
Sam: that it's really, really difficult for anybody to...
Sam: Even the people who are paying close attention, but certainly the sort of low
Sam: information folks, just don't make that connection at all.
Ivan: Look at the Affordable Care Act. I mean, it was one of the things that,
Ivan: you know, it took really for everything on the Affordable Care Act to really
Ivan: be implemented. It took years.
Ivan: Okay. It took so long that people even later went and was like,
Ivan: well, I'm getting my health care through KY Connect or something,
Ivan: whatever. Hey, that's Obama.
Todd: What yes what do you mean there i
Todd: i i completely agree and so this is i
Todd: think trump's real gift is he
Todd: has this charismatic nature that the people
Todd: who want to hear the things that he says he resonates
Todd: with them so if he says as he
Todd: has these tariffs have caused immediate effect
Todd: and there are you know many many manufacturers
Todd: coming to me saying sir thank you we're building new factories in
Todd: the u.s sir it's this is the way he talks about this shit it's
Todd: not true but it is what people
Todd: want to hear they want to believe it and so
Todd: they accept it and biden for whatever
Todd: policy decisions that he made that i like is
Todd: the opposite of trump's personality right he's low-key he's boring and he doesn't
Todd: tweet about every stupid fucking thing every minute of every day for four years
Todd: straight right it's right it's nobody does and in a in one of the in.
Sam: One of the interviews after you know harris lost biden did say something like you know,
Sam: maybe I should have signed the relief checks myself like he did.
Sam: You know, because there were so many people out there who literally thought
Sam: that Donald Trump personally was sending them checks.
Todd: So I hate what politics has become because of him, but I think what we're talking
Todd: about, the fact that the real effective hard work of executing policy,
Todd: whether we think it's good or not, that real hard work of executing and of driving
Todd: the results that you promised when you announced it, 18 months earlier that
Todd: stuff needs to get advertised the way that trump advertises all of his petty grievances.
Sam: Well and you mentioned some of the smaller projects but
Sam: there's also front load with that stuff like if
Sam: there is stuff that you can do fast and easy like what one of the criticisms
Sam: of the ira like that i forget which journalist put out was like the low number
Sam: of electric car charging stations that had been added like they promised however
Sam: many and there There was like a small number that were actually implemented.
Sam: Well, you know, that's the kind of thing. Figure out how to do the easy things
Sam: faster, you know, and I don't know.
Todd: That's a great point. That is a great point. And I was sort of,
Todd: I was dismissing the handicap ramps at Urban Crosswalks earlier,
Todd: but it is something, you know, you could get cameras out there and show people,
Todd: like real people working,
Todd: you know, getting paid to do labor, pouring concrete that's,
Todd: you know, driving supply chain and so forth.
Sam: And the other thing is marketing. And back, you mentioned the things that the
Sam: Obama era version of this got wrong, but one thing they did do is they put signs
Sam: up next to every project identifying...
Ivan: Listen, can I just say something? Look, I was born and raised in Puerto Rico.
Ivan: Okay, all right. And so when I was born, you know, one of the things that I
Ivan: liked when I first came here to live in college, because I didn't live in the U.S.
Ivan: Before I went to CMU, okay, was the fact that in Puerto Rico it drove me crazy
Ivan: that every fucking politician, when they did something, had their fucking picture.
Ivan: Just put their name with their fucking picture beside it, and it was just.
Ivan: I found it just terribly disgusting, because it was very much like this fucking
Ivan: podcast of bullshit, like the Nazis do, And like authoritarians do all the time
Ivan: on, you know, with their pictures on the side of every building and this shit.
Ivan: And I actually totally love that you would come to a project in the U.S.
Ivan: And you would see, hey, we're doing this new highway.
Ivan: It didn't say who the fucking politicians or whoever the hell it was that did
Ivan: it. It just said, hey, we're working for you.
Ivan: And the problem is, and I'm telling you, the one thing that I hate is.
Ivan: That has infected this fucking country right now is that so much of the shit
Ivan: that we're living with Trump is
Ivan: shit that you're used to seeing that drove people to emigrate to the U.S.
Ivan: From places like Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, and all these places where you
Ivan: had Hugo Chavez on fucking TV all day talking nonstop gaslighting everybody about the same shit.
Ivan: Every my god i still remember when i was in
Ivan: caracas the last 2008 okay i can't
Ivan: like yeah you know he was google chavez was on every you
Ivan: would flip the tv and he was on every fucking channel okay it was ridiculous
Ivan: and he was announcing this project where they were building these homes we're
Ivan: giving homes to the poor and showing this thing or whatever and give it with
Ivan: the shovel and presenting these people in front of everybody how happy are you with your new home,
Ivan: blah, blah, blah, which, by the way, most of the project was a sham.
Ivan: They were stealing money to people that are his friends.
Ivan: Everybody's just stealing it. Listen, the whole thing about it is this entire
Ivan: crony thing where all his friends basically, you know, just stole all the money
Ivan: on all these fucking projects.
Ivan: But he's on fucking TV blasting this shit. And this is the kind of shit that
Ivan: I hate, that Trump does not stop to drive he crazy.
Ivan: And the thing is, that what you're saying is, and I get what you're saying,
Ivan: and I fucking agree that Democrats need to do this.
Todd: But it yes so sam i
Todd: don't want to lose my train of thought i don't want us to drift
Todd: any more into cronyism than we already have in the
Todd: last four months yeah however the like the genie's out of the bottle i'm not
Todd: sure what the right metaphor is here but like we can't go back so there's there's
Todd: another there's another former rct dj that i have stayed in in close touch with
Todd: over the last year i'm not going
Todd: to name because i don't know whether he would want me to name him here,
Todd: but I've stayed in touch with this guy and you guys I'm sure would remember him as well. I.
Todd: I share his opinion, although he kind of had to, he didn't take a lot to convince
Todd: me, but he has convinced me.
Todd: Democrats are playing a game that ended 10 years ago, right? It's a new game now.
Todd: The rules are different, and it has unfortunately become more vulgar.
Todd: They have to be willing to behave the same way.
Todd: I'm not advocating for cronyism at all, but you've got to be more of a...
Todd: Yes, you've got to be more of a charismatic personality.
Todd: And so, you know, the stuff that AOC and Bernie Sanders are doing around the
Todd: country right now, I'm not sure either of them are the best spokesperson for
Todd: the way the Democratic Party needs to behave and needs to be led.
Todd: But I think that's a better model than as, as, as much as I really enjoyed that
Todd: joy and positivity of the Harris campaign, it was,
Todd: it was the wrong time for that, right? We've, we've moved beyond that.
Sam: Well, I, I, I'm just going to repeat something I've said on this show that I
Sam: know you haven't heard before, but on my, I actually think the joy and positivity was working.
Sam: I have this electiongraphs.com website where i
Sam: track the polls and all this kind of stuff okay and in
Sam: the first part of the harris campaign every week
Sam: they were doing better than the week before until mid-september and roughly
Sam: in mid-september they changed tone and they moved away from the joy and positivity
Sam: and moved towards trump is dangerous and that's when they started losing ground again but.
Ivan: It wasn't just the joy on positivity it was the fact that they were mocking.
Sam: Yes. Mocking him rather than taking him seriously.
Todd: Isn't that interesting? So
Todd: maybe you're onto something that our old Richard friend is onto as well.
Todd: There's a better way to message this without sacrificing your dignity.
Sam: Yes, and I think one of the problems, and we're starting to move onto other
Sam: things. Maybe we should take a break.
Todd: Hey, first, guys. How about those?
Ivan: How about those tariffs, Todd?
Sam: But yeah, one of the things there is the existing democratic leadership.
Sam: I think you're absolutely right.
Sam: Stuck in the past, trying to emphasize normalcy, try to get back to the way things were.
Sam: And fundamentally, you have to come at this.
Ivan: That was what Biden wanted to do. That was what Biden wanted to do. And I know.
Ivan: And listen, can I be honest?
Ivan: I was, okay. I, listen, call me naive, but I really wanted that too.
Ivan: I i mean i did okay and so i wasn't i wasn't opposed to it because honestly
Ivan: i didn't want that i wanted like i wish like i could just put a freaking trump
Ivan: on top of a rock and shot him to the moon or actually i would prefer jail okay
Ivan: but we didn't do either of those yeah.
Todd: So i i i totally i think we're all kind of reaching the same conclusion or already
Todd: have reached the same conclusion we i think we all long for quietly dignified
Todd: efficient government action and you can't do that if you've lost power in all three branches right.
Ivan: Yeah they gotta.
Todd: Win a fucking election and.
Ivan: Yeah and.
Todd: And start crowing about the positive things that we're doing in this new 21st
Todd: century way or they're never going to take power back and and.
Ivan: I don't even like i don't.
Todd: Even like the way i say that they're never going to earn power back the way
Todd: the country is supposed to operate right as a representative republic they're
Todd: never going to earn that right from the voters to do it again if they can't adapt.
Ivan: To this 21st century message i mean let me tell you something the true story
Ivan: historically i know that over the years i probably have
Ivan: not gotten as far ahead in
Ivan: my career as i could have because i was
Ivan: of that biden school fight just due to hard work whatever
Ivan: and not being a big self-promoter okay i
Ivan: i i i i have not been that way you
Ivan: know historically okay but look i i have to say
Ivan: that this this month something happened and i i got remembered
Ivan: you know what i i have to stop doing that at this point but i am like i don't
Ivan: know look i'm fine in my career it's not like i'm i'm gonna be ceo of a company
Ivan: right now at this point or whatever that shot already went that that's okay
Ivan: at this point okay i already i already have my shot i got And I got torpedoed. So that's himself.
Ivan: But what did happen is that there was something that happened with a customer
Ivan: where I, behind the scenes, fixed a major problem.
Ivan: But the people that were There were a whole bunch of other people That were
Ivan: in front of the customer They made it at first kind of seem like they did it
Ivan: And they didn't do shit The guy
Ivan: that had solved it was me And it's a major customer of mine And I said,
Ivan: fuck, I can't do this I have to send a message I sent the message to the CIO Dude,
Ivan: I, by the way, just so you know That problem was fixed Because I went and escalated
Ivan: this mess and he got it fixed.
Ivan: And it was me, not anybody else. So don't buy the bullshit that anybody else solved the problem.
Ivan: I'm the fucking guy that went to the mat and fixed it. And I realized that in
Ivan: my life, I never had done that.
Ivan: And it's the same problem that you're saying with the Democrats.
Ivan: We can't go solving everybody's problems in the background, making sure you
Ivan: have the health care, making sure you have food,
Ivan: trying to help behind the scenes like you can afford a mortgage,
Ivan: trying to help behind the scenes so you can get afforded student education,
Ivan: all of this shit without being up front and saying, hey, you know what?
Ivan: Sign the, like Biden said, he was right. He should have signed the fucking checks.
Todd: Yeah.
Ivan: All of them.
Sam: Okay, wait.
Sam: I'm just going to take a quick break. It's only going to be a few seconds.
Sam: Helps us divide things up.
Sam: And then if you can stick with us a little bit longer, Todd,
Sam: we can pick up this conversation on the other side and officially say we're
Sam: not talking about tariffs anymore. We're talking about everything else.
Todd: We're not.
Sam: Okay. We'll be back right after this.
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Ivan: Okay you know it's been a while since
Ivan: we've got like reviews online for whatever reason it
Ivan: used to be for a while that i i don't even check anymore i
Ivan: haven't checked in a while but you know aside from from
Ivan: from alex's like great review of a show okay we used to for some reason you
Ivan: know we had a whole bunch of five stars but but then we had a whole bunch of
Ivan: people that just would write you know shit how you know we're two idiots you
Ivan: know get an editor i don't know we we really got
Ivan: We got a lot of like, I like the negative feedback and I got to admit,
Ivan: it was funny to read the negative feedback. I like reading that. Yeah.
Sam: So yeah, that's, that's bots eight years old now.
Todd: Wow.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: We've had that. That was my son when he was much younger than he is today.
Todd: He's got a future.
Sam: Yeah, there you go.
Todd: Yeah.
Sam: So we were, you know, I know I killed the momentum by doing the break,
Sam: but we were talking about sort of how Democrats react to all of this stuff.
Sam: Let me bring up one additional sort of part of that, that I think is a problem
Sam: that is, how do you communicate with it, right?
Sam: Like a lot of what, and I think this afflicted the Democrats during the first Trump administration.
Sam: I think it's potentially happening again now, which is a lot of the conversation
Sam: is about the worst case scenario.
Sam: Like, for instance, you know, going back to tariffs for a second,
Sam: you know, everybody's been talking about, oh, well, if the 150 plus percent
Sam: tariffs stick, here's all the bad things that would happen.
Sam: And then Trump backs off to 30 percent.
Sam: And, you know, there's some effect, but it's not all those worst case things.
Sam: Similarly, in the first Trump administration, there was, you know,
Sam: I mean, Trump goes on about how Russia, Russia, Russia was a hoax.
Sam: Well, it wasn't. There was a whole bunch of real stuff that did happen.
Sam: But the worst case scenario that was sometimes promoted by certain people turned
Sam: out not to be the case. It was less than that, but it was still bad.
Sam: And, you know, just in general on a lot of these things, when,
Sam: you know, the reaction is, oh, my God, he's doing X, Y, Z.
Sam: It's going to be awful in these ways. And the worst case scenario is painted.
Sam: And then what you end up with is even if it's 50 percent of the worst case scenario,
Sam: people end up with the impression of, you know, the boy who called wolf.
Sam: Because what you said didn't happen.
Todd: You're hitting another thing, Sam. I wonder how much of this is Trump doing
Todd: being, you know, unfocused and flighty and, you know, unable to maintain a train of thought.
Todd: I have to be careful on how I criticize people on that.
Todd: I shouldn't, shouldn't throw stones in that particular glass house,
Todd: but how much of it is deliberate because he knows he's going to get this reaction.
Todd: He's, he's going to make Democrats look like they're crying wolf maybe it's
Todd: it's impossible to say right but it's probably a little bit of both i think that he.
Sam: I think he's got a real instinct for this stuff i
Sam: think there's a combination of he is actually a bit dim and doesn't understand
Sam: a lot of stuff and doesn't want to understand that stuff but he's got an innate
Sam: instinct for how to manipulate people's emotions that tie directly into this.
Sam: That's his, that's his whole thing. That's his whole personality.
Sam: That's his entire career is how do you influence people by this sort of,
Sam: I mean, we've used the word gaslighting, but it's appropriate here, you know,
Sam: but by, you know, getting them to believe and think and do things and get excited
Sam: about this or get worked up about that.
Sam: And, you know, in some cases to get them to follow you, in some cases to get
Sam: them to fall on their face because they do something that looks stupid when
Sam: you change what you're doing later.
Sam: People have called this, what is it, the OODA loop or something? It's some loop.
Sam: Yeah, it's okay. I'm going to have to look it up.
Sam: Yeah, I will look it up, but it's basically a command and control loop that
Sam: says, if you change what's going on fast enough to keep your enemy, there we go, OODA loop.
Sam: It's a decision, I'm looking at the Wikipedia page, OODA loop,
Sam: decision-making model developed by U.S.
Sam: Air Force Colonel John Boyd.
Sam: He applied the concept to combat operations process at the operational level
Sam: during military campaigns.
Sam: It's basically the decision cycle. It's basically saying that there is a loop
Sam: where you get new information, you react to the new information,
Sam: then you change what you're doing and it cycles, right?
Sam: And the notion is if you can disrupt that loop,
Sam: by changing the apparent facts on the ground faster than people can react to
Sam: them, then you can end up controlling the situation.
Sam: And I think whether it's an intentional, like Trump knows what he's doing,
Sam: or whether it's just instinctual, he does this all the time.
Sam: And I think this also ties into like Bannon's flood the zone with shit comments
Sam: are exactly tied into this as well. You basically keep throwing out the chaff
Sam: and people keep reacting to it.
Sam: And in the meantime, you're pushing certain things forward and people are just
Sam: not reacting to them properly because they're reacting to all this other stuff
Sam: and not not reacting fast enough. I mean, and we talked about Democratic messaging.
Sam: You know, one of the things that is the old guard is just too, too slow.
Sam: Like Trump will do something like they're threatening Medicaid or Medicare or something.
Sam: And so the Democrats will schedule like, OK, next week's going to be Medicare
Sam: week and we're going to talk a lot about Medicare.
Sam: We're going to have some news conferences. whereas like you
Sam: know the reaction time at this point has to be measured
Sam: in minutes and maybe hours but even hours is often too slow you have to be getting
Sam: back on these comments like the instant they happen not we're going to spend
Sam: a week deliberating and then schedule an event you know and and that's i think
Sam: part of what happens with.
Todd: Are there examples in you know global history where you've had a strongman type
Todd: like Trump come to power and succeed with this sort of communication style.
Todd: What are the effective and successful countermeasures to this OODA loop?
Ivan: Effective countermeasures.
Ivan: I was going to say, are there examples? Yes. I don't know how effective the
Ivan: countermeasures have been, but look, I cited Hugo Chavez. Let me tell you something.
Ivan: He reminds me so much of how Hugo Chavez ran Venezuela.
Ivan: And it is almost textbook, okay, in many cases, in terms of the messaging,
Ivan: in terms of enabling his cronies instead of sort of attacking his opposition.
Ivan: The one thing that he was able because he was able to
Ivan: control so much of the country is that he was able to
Ivan: just completely crush the opposition okay i mean literally
Ivan: just just annihilated out of existence that it and i
Ivan: but i think that the institutions in venezuela and the
Ivan: way that the country was structured also made that made that a lot
Ivan: easier to do okay in a certain way but the
Ivan: reality is that one of the things that is an outcome of this
Ivan: okay is that in terms of effectively running
Ivan: a country it's it's terrible it's it it it really doesn't it doesn't it it it
Ivan: serves to keep someone in power that it does do but does it help running the
Ivan: country better in any way the examples i'll show no no.
Todd: But all right we just discussed earlier how the crying wolf and And,
Todd: you know, constantly advertising worst case potential scenarios are not necessarily productive.
Todd: However, if Trump really is trying to achieve the sort of country like Venezuela
Todd: under Chavez, for example,
Todd: where it becomes more difficult for opposition parties to win a majority, to earn back control.
Sam: At some point, you have to panic. At some point, you have to,
Sam: like, raise the alarm. Yeah.
Sam: And the question is what the balance is. And like what I was saying about sort
Sam: of the trajectory of the Harris campaign over time is like I would hope actually like calling out like,
Sam: oh, my God, look what he's intending to do is an effective strategy. But it appears it is not.
Sam: I mean, fundamentally, people tuned out everything of like, oh,
Sam: he's a danger to democracy. Oh, he's corrupt. Oh, he's whatever.
Ivan: Just like when Hillary did it.
Sam: Just when Hillary tried to do it. And, you know,
Sam: what are the messages that seem to—and part of your problem is we are currently
Sam: in a situation in this country where, you know, look,
Sam: 90% of the public is on one side or the other and will always vote that way no matter what, okay?
Sam: And we are polarized in that way. That middle 10% that's potentially persuadable,
Sam: is also the same group of
Sam: people who fundamentally aren't paying attention and
Sam: don't understand the details and don't want to know the details and and and
Sam: so like how do you reach those people like if the if if that if that unengaged
Sam: 10 like if one side or the other had 70 support then they wouldn't matter but.
Todd: We're in this situation so with this group.
Sam: Of people is the deciding group.
Todd: Sam i i i've gathered and
Todd: i and i do kind of remember you posting about this social
Todd: media maybe not recently or else um maybe the algorithm is
Todd: just not showing you to me the way it did years ago you seemed
Todd: you seem to be a lot more wonky about polling and and that sort of data so maybe
Todd: you can answer something that i have no idea okay was trump was trump in 2016
Todd: able to reach that same kind of voter who are not paying a lot of attention,
Todd: maybe not participating.
Sam: But his magic in both, well, in all three of elections, of his elections,
Sam: it wasn't quite enough in 2020, obviously.
Sam: But one of the key elements he had was he got voters to come out and vote who had never voted before.
Todd: Yeah.
Sam: And he reached a group of people who had felt alienated and unserved by the
Sam: existing political process and and basically convinced them that,
Sam: like, the system, you know,
Sam: Democrats, Republicans, whoever, because it worked in the Republican primaries, too.
Sam: The system is not working for you.
Sam: I will come in, I will rip everything up and I will work for you.
Sam: And he was able to bring in all of these people who just had not been engaged
Sam: before and engage them in a way that, you know, nobody else had succeeded in doing.
Sam: Or honestly, nobody had really tried.
Todd: Yeah. it's it's it's i
Todd: guess disappointing kind of sad from my point of view i grew
Todd: up near pittsburgh and kind of a somewhat rural
Todd: but also very blue collar very dependent on steel industry you know part of
Todd: the pittsburgh region and when i was a kid in the 70s and 80s most of that side
Todd: of my family that were doing you know more factory work were clearly Democratic voters.
Todd: Almost all of my cousins now vote Republican. I'm an outlier.
Todd: That I'm not a Trump voter.
Ivan: Let alone an enthusiastic Trump supporter. I'm sorry, you got conditioned,
Ivan: you know, you got brainwashed at this elite educational institution,
Ivan: you know, what the hell, you know, that's why they're battling these now.
Todd: So, okay, I know you're being facetious, but I have these- But I'm being.
Ivan: But I'm not, because that's their line.
Ivan: They're attacking elite universities right now because they think that because
Ivan: we went to a university where all of a sudden we got exposed to all this.
Ivan: Other information you know which make you realize shit you know.
Sam: Well also on a completely factual basis one of the largest predictors of the
Sam: the political divide right now is educational love yes.
Todd: Yeah 100 and and and and trump knows it and we'll talk about it in an insulting
Todd: way that isn't hurt like he'll say i love the uneducated i love the uneducated voters,
Todd: it's he's insulting the people supporting him
Todd: and they either don't realize it or just don't
Todd: care they're too stupid to know well no
Todd: no they're being insulted listen
Todd: now you're talking about my family in my old neighborhood i and i don't want
Todd: to devolve in that way either i i've been trying especially the last six months
Todd: to stop making this about the voters it's about the politicians that make impossible how to.
Sam: Reach out yeah.
Todd: Yeah well it's.
Sam: It's impossible it's impossible promises but also
Sam: and this this is a recurring theme i've had too so apologies to our long time
Sam: listeners but it's also the american system is intentionally set up with well
Sam: until donald trump is blowing them all up with checks and balances that make
Sam: it so that if you elect somebody,
Sam: there are all kinds of impediments to them actually doing stuff, even if they want to.
Sam: And people...
Sam: The vast majority of people are not government wonks who paid careful attention
Sam: during civics class in middle school and, you know, know how everything works.
Sam: One of the polls that I remember from before this last election,
Sam: and before Harris even, it was earlier than that, it was about Roe versus Wade
Sam: and the overturning of Roe versus Wade.
Sam: And they asked people who was to blame for this.
Sam: And even among Democrats.
Ivan: Something like— Biden was his fault.
Sam: Well, 15 to 20 percent of Democrats and a larger percentage of the public at
Sam: large said that the overturning of Roe versus Wade was Biden's fault because
Sam: it happened while Biden was president.
Sam: And that's as far as the thought process goes.
Todd: Yeah.
Sam: You know, and it's like, you know, did it happen while you were president? It's your fault.
Sam: And by the way, that only works for blame. It does not work for credit.
Todd: Sure. It's an interesting point. First of all, maybe too few people understand
Todd: the intended independence of the judicial branch.
Todd: For better or for worse, we have lifetime appointments on the Supreme Court
Todd: and these kinds of things can happen.
Todd: They can make a decision that affects legal precedent and policy and legal enforcement,
Todd: despite who might be in the White House or majority in Congress at the time.
Todd: And then, I don't know, I'm losing my thread here again.
Sam: I mean, the point I was...
Todd: Oh, I know what else I was going to say, Sam. What we're finding now is until, especially,
Todd: Trump's second time around, we've mostly operated in a country where presidents
Todd: ultimately abided whatever the courts tell them.
Todd: We're starting to find out what happens if the courts tell the president you
Todd: have to stop doing A, B, or C, and he chooses not to.
Todd: And then Congress also chooses to not execute their powers to check and balance, right?
Todd: This is the scary thing that, and back to the balance we were talking about
Todd: earlier, it's like you don't want to cry wolf at every little thing, But the slower moving,
Todd: larger threat is what if the president just decides I'm going to throw people
Todd: out of the country without due process and the courts can't physically stop
Todd: me. So I'm going to keep doing it.
Sam: Well, and the key to this is that, well, first of all, like all of this was
Sam: telegraphed, you know, either Trump or his supporters have said everything that
Sam: they are actually doing today.
Sam: But the question is, when the Democrats did cry wolf about it and say,
Sam: he's going to do this, he's going to do that, look, he's saying he's going to
Sam: do these things, people didn't care.
Sam: Or at least that core group of swing voters didn't care.
Sam: They were like, eggs cost too much.
Sam: And so I'm voting against Biden.
Ivan: And, and, and, and, and don't forget,
Ivan: and don't forget, our American sports are completely overrun by transsexual
Ivan: people, you know, wanting to invade, you know, the different sports in our country.
Ivan: And by the way, we laugh about it, but here's the reality.
Ivan: That shit resonated so profoundly with so many people.
Ivan: That basically drove them to say, do you see, Democrats are trying to jam down
Ivan: my throat and, you know, all these transsexual people that I hate.
Ivan: And, oh, by the way, they're going to go and, like, groom my kids at school
Ivan: into being gay and transgender.
Sam: The thing is, too, you have to be careful not to move too far based on this.
Sam: Like, obviously, there are problems that the Democrats have to fix before the
Sam: next election. And they're sort of not doing it so far.
Sam: But at the same time.
Ivan: Well, it's only been three months, Sam. I know it feels like it's been six years,
Ivan: but by the way, it's only May!
Sam: Yeah, four months. But yes. Well, and more since the election.
Sam: But the thing is, and now I'm the one losing my train of thought, but you have to...
Sam: Not like it was close.
Sam: Yeah. You know, our system of government exaggerates the difference because
Sam: look, it's winner take all.
Sam: You lost the house, you lost the Senate, you lost the presidency,
Sam: you lost the Supreme court years ago.
Sam: So you are completely and totally out of power. And that is a huge ramification,
Sam: but you only needed to flip a few votes and it would have gone the other way.
Sam: So it's not it's not like we're in a 70 30 country.
Sam: We're in a 50 50 country and everything is right on the edge.
Sam: And so, you know.
Ivan: You don't necessarily like the difference is only like three house seats.
Ivan: Yeah, it's like three Senate seats. So let me and Todd.
Sam: You had mentioned earlier sort of how like AOC and Bernie are getting out there
Sam: and having attention without compromising their values.
Sam: And I think that's one thing that's actually key because you see a lot of Democrats
Sam: and you see this in some of leadership saying, OK, the way we react to this
Sam: is we're not going to talk about Donald Trump's corruption.
Sam: We're not going to talk about the risk to democracy.
Sam: We're not going to talk about trans rights and civil rights and more broadly.
Sam: You know, OK, the economy is what mattered. Then the only thing we'll talk about
Sam: is the economy. And I don't think that's the right way to do it either.
Sam: You don't, it fundamentally like one of the things that,
Sam: well, all voters, but especially this group in the middle can see through for
Sam: miles away is people being phony and compromising and all of this kind of stuff.
Sam: The fact that, you know, okay, maybe you lost some voters on the trans issue,
Sam: but the right answer to that is not avoid the trans issue.
Sam: It's defend your position on the trans issue and convince people and bring them over to your side.
Sam: It's like lay down the line on what your values are and stand by them and be
Sam: honest about them and push them and make people understand why you're right and they're wrong.
Sam: When you just say like, oh, this position is polling a little bit weaker than that one.
Sam: So we're going to sort of hide our position on that one or worse,
Sam: back off from our position on it.
Sam: People smell that from thousands of miles away and it seems phony and it seems
Sam: dishonest and oh you're just another politician whereas the people who like
Sam: stick to their guns like you know,
Sam: AOC and Bernie were getting lots of reactions in red parts of the country,
Sam: not because they were moderating their— And Buttigieg.
Ivan: By the way.
Sam: And Buttigieg, too. He's doing great. But not because they were moderating their
Sam: positions or saying, oh, okay, we can work with the Republicans on this one
Sam: and, you know, be—we're not going to worry about this part as much.
Ivan: Basically, the Schumer-Fetterman approach.
Sam: Yeah.
Todd: So I'm more and more intrigued every year by AOC.
Todd: I think that she has a truly authentic story, right? She doesn't come from wealth.
Todd: She had a very blue collar life before she got into politics.
Todd: She happens to be very talented at resonating the right message with these kind
Todd: of voters. I am also very gun shy now because we've had two other women run.
Sam: Yeah.
Todd: And I don't want to draw the wrong conclusions, but man, there's that sense
Todd: of kind of sexism both times.
Sam: Sexism and racism.
Todd: Oh my God, the sexism and racism. And I want to say that in,
Todd: in my adult lifetime and in the whole, since I've been voting,
Todd: I, I'm not sure there have been two better qualified candidates for president
Todd: than Clinton and Harris,
Todd: right? You look, they've both been in the Senate.
Todd: Uh, Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.
Todd: Um, they, uh, Harris was a DA has this long legal history and law enforcement prior to politics.
Todd: Trump sells branding to hang his name on buildings and little else has been
Todd: successful, but man, he, he makes things.
Todd: I don't want to lose the threat. The 10%, right, that we were talking about
Todd: earlier, I want to come back to the same, because I had a follow-up question
Todd: that I was going to try to get to.
Todd: And now I understand the vibe of this podcast. And I'm like,
Todd: okay, well, just give up on follow-ups, right? Let's just...
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, fuck the follow-ups. Follow, follow, what follow?
Todd: Yeah, I write the letter wherever it takes me. But there's still that set of
Todd: voters who either don't participate or the summaries of polling that I read
Todd: that probably you have more detail is there's people that just decided I'm not motivated enough.
Todd: I don't want to vote for Trump, but Harris is just not exciting me.
Todd: I'm going to stay home or I'm not going to mark anyone on my ballot.
Todd: You know, I'll vote who I want in the others and I'm just not going to check
Todd: anybody for president or whatever.
Todd: Like, aren't there still reachable people there?
Sam: I think there are. And that's, it's the thing that it's really,
Sam: really hard though, which is why people have always had trouble with that.
Sam: Because the people who don't vote are very stuck in not voting.
Sam: And so political scientists have come up years and years and years of research
Sam: saying that you're more likely to be able to swing that medium voter who does vote,
Sam: but who makes up their mind in the last 24 hours and doesn't really pay attention
Sam: in between than you are to get the person who's never voted before. However...
Sam: Even this last election shows that going after those people does matter.
Sam: And in this case, and actually Trump, all three elections has shown that.
Sam: He has managed to bring out non-voters, and that has made a significant difference to him.
Sam: There's just been recent analysis just in the last few weeks because they've
Sam: started to get access to what's called voter files, which is like who actually
Sam: voted last time. So not a poll, but who actually voted.
Sam: It doesn't say who they voted for, but you can see who voted and who didn't
Sam: and what the demographics were and all this kind of stuff.
Sam: And then you can combine that with polling data and do some analysis.
Sam: And academics have all kinds of techniques to do this that, you know,
Sam: I'm not one of them, so I don't know those details.
Sam: But they have determined that, you know, people have been trying to put like,
Sam: what was the one cause of Harris's loss?
Sam: And I think to a large degree, that's futile, because it was close enough that
Sam: any one of dozens of things could have gone differently, and it could have gone the other way.
Sam: Because even though it was like, you know, she lost all seven swing states,
Sam: yes, but she lost all seven swing states by this much, a tiny little amount, right?
Sam: But no, the recent research that I saw a couple weeks ago was that,
Sam: you know, people talked about sort of Biden voters that stayed home.
Sam: Would that have made the difference? And the answer is, it would have helped,
Sam: but it wasn't quite enough.
Sam: But the thing that was clear was first-time voters.
Sam: And that includes both young people who are eligible to vote for the first time
Sam: and also people who haven't been voters who are older but voted for the first time.
Sam: And those tilted towards
Sam: trump i i want to be careful how i say this trump
Sam: didn't necessarily win those groups like trump did not win the under 20 voters
Sam: but he did better with under 20 voters than republicans typically do by a decent
Sam: amount and and specifically that difference was all with men in that age group.
Sam: Trump has also significantly increased the gender divide in voting,
Sam: blown it open much wider than it has been before.
Sam: But it was those new voters, both the young ones and the ones that were brought in,
Sam: where even if Trump didn't win all of those groups, all of the subgroups of
Sam: new voters, in general for new voters, he did better than Republicans usually do.
Sam: And that was enough to make the difference in the election.
Todd: I, um, I, I, I, you didn't ask me anything. I've just been thinking of some
Todd: other things about, uh, on this topic.
Todd: Cause it's been on my mind a lot that I say I, I, in my own,
Todd: whatever, whatever tiny little audience that I have on social media or talking to friends or.
Sam: And this audience is tiny too, by the way.
Todd: So, but even like, you know, whenever, whenever I'm feeling comfortable enough,
Todd: even to discuss politics with colleagues, which I rarely do.
Todd: I really do try to keep personal life, professional life separate.
Sam: Separate.
Todd: Yeah. I live out in the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh these days.
Todd: And you go a little farther east, a little farther from town, it becomes more rural.
Sam: Yep.
Todd: And, you know, you can just, you could, well, you can tell by looking at the
Todd: election result maps and you can tell by the political signs that are still
Todd: out today, six months after the election, this is a very favorable Trump area. yet.
Todd: It's also lower income, higher rate of poverty.
Todd: I don't have data. This is just my anecdotal observations, higher prevalence of disability.
Todd: I think there are people who obviously have trouble getting around,
Todd: maybe are not working even though they're still working age and yet voted for him.
Todd: I think there's an opportunity there to demonstrate what the Democrats used to be.
Todd: What I talked about when I was a kid and the blue collar side of my family almost
Todd: universally voted Democrat because they were union steel workers or they were
Todd: union railroaders or iron workers or whatever trades people.
Todd: And they recognize that the Republicans want to tear down all of the gains we've
Todd: made in workers' rights and the Democrats want to protect that.
Todd: And people don't feel that way today.
Todd: If you can bring that back and let these people know the social security disability
Todd: benefits that you're depending on, even if you don't realize that's what your
Todd: disability check is, it's social security, right?
Todd: Obamacare, the slightly less expensive access you may have to medical care now,
Todd: or perhaps you're also benefiting from Medicaid because of disability or whatnot.
Todd: Maybe you don't even realize that's what it is. Maybe you don't realize that's
Todd: what's under attack, but we want to protect this because we recognize that your
Todd: quality of life gets worse without these kind of unglamorous public services.
Todd: I think the messaging to win back some of these people who would have voted
Todd: Democrat if they voted at all 20 years ago if you're going to win them back
Todd: it has to be about their quality of life and i'm convinced that trump's policies
Todd: are going to improve people like that i don't.
Sam: Policies are.
Ivan: Actively it's the worst.
Sam: Trump's policies are actively.
Ivan: Making their lives worse.
Sam: Yeah and well the and the thing is and this ties back to people addressing cause
Sam: and effect too and And, you know,
Sam: one of the problems, and this ties to calling woof as well, is that some of
Sam: the worst possibilities of what Trump could have done last time around were stopped.
Sam: Because of effective congressional resistance to implementing his policies in the first term.
Sam: But that ended up with people saying, you know, oh, well, it wasn't that bad.
Sam: But they don't get the message that it wasn't that bad because the Democrats
Sam: stopped X, Y, and Z. Not just the Democrats.
Ivan: But the people that he had in his first ministry.
Sam: Yeah, yeah. The people who, the Republicans who were the adults in the room
Sam: that stopped him. But also what we have this time around, and some Democrats
Sam: are actively encouraging this as what we do.
Sam: Like, I think James Carville explicitly said, don't do anything. Just wait.
Sam: Let him do the damage.
Sam: And because, you know, and don't try to stop it.
Sam: Like if he wants to shut down the government, shut down the government,
Sam: let him do his worst, because the only way that those kind of marginal,
Sam: not paying all that much attention voters will get the message is if you let
Sam: Donald Trump actually hurt them.
Todd: Yeah, I hate that. And I know it's probably true.
Ivan: Stay here, by the way.
Todd: But so so how how far then do you let it go again?
Sam: Well, and the problem is the further you let it go, the harder it is to come
Sam: back from it anyway, especially if some of these things are the anti-democratic
Sam: moves that make it harder to win in the future anyway.
Todd: So I'm imagining, well, I don't know, maybe it won't feel so absurd.
Todd: What feels absurd right now, I've never been politically active in my life,
Todd: not to the sense that I would go out to a demonstration and make a sign,
Todd: but I've done that a couple of times in the last month or two.
Todd: Because i i i i can't
Todd: keep like old man shouting a cloud i
Todd: can't keep ranting to like-minded friends
Todd: on facebook right it's that's not going to do anything so okay
Todd: i'll go exercise my first amendment right what if
Todd: it gets to the point where trump just decides well okay we can identify you
Todd: with facial recognition out there holding a sign at the anti-trump demonstration
Todd: so you know maybe i accidentally get deported to guatemala like is it going
Todd: to come to that And I realize that that's probably carelessly racist of me to
Todd: say, he's sending people to El Salvador and not Guatemala.
Sam: Or all kinds of other things to harass.
Ivan: By the way, I spent a lot of time the last year and a half in Guatemala.
Ivan: By the way, it's not that pretty.
Todd: Yeah so i thought it was worse i look like
Todd: does it have to get that bad and then is that
Todd: too late right so i understand i understand the
Todd: carvel idea of let your enemy bury
Todd: themselves or whatever that you know art of war phrase is but at the other hand
Todd: like if you let them go like in this case my enemy has all of the power and
Todd: i have not my political opponent let's say has all the power and i have none
Todd: so i don't know hey guys thanks for letting me hang around yeah at.
Sam: You know it's time for us to wrap up anyway.
Todd: Okay right.
Sam: But uh so if if we're almost at the end stick with us a couple minutes.
Todd: We'll wrap it up right now i was gonna say you guys carry on without me but it's about Yeah.
Sam: So right around this time, we switch from our real topics to,
Sam: like, saying goodbye, which takes us a few minutes, but we'll do it.
Sam: So first of all, thanks for joining us.
Sam: One personal note before we get to the end that I just want to throw in there.
Sam: I'm not going to do the whole segment on it.
Sam: Those of you on Necromedians Corner Slack know this, but for those of you who
Sam: are just listeners, my mom had a major health event this week.
Sam: And she was, she's doing well now.
Sam: On Monday night, she had a fall at home and being the stubborn person she is,
Sam: she didn't call us for help until Tuesday morning, like nine hours later.
Sam: We took her in to be seen. They did imaging.
Sam: She, from a fall a month earlier where she had hit her head,
Sam: but decided that all she needed was a couple of band-aids.
Sam: She had a bleed in between her skull and her brain that had been over the course
Sam: of a month, building up more and more and more pressure.
Ivan: That's what you want.
Sam: And so basically once we had her in the ER and they did imaging,
Sam: they're like, you're going into surgery now, you know, to relieve the pressure
Sam: and all this kind of stuff. They did emergency surgery Tuesday night.
Sam: She was out of intensive care Thursday. She's in a regular hospital room over the weekend.
Sam: They're planning to release her to a rehab facility Monday. She's already doing much, much better.
Sam: I will add one additional piece of color without getting into detail.
Sam: Additional complications were added to the surgery because she also admitted that
Sam: That about a month ago, when walking the dog with my son, she had seen a bat
Sam: on the sidewalk, decided to pick it up and put it in the grass. It bit her.
Sam: And so they had to take anti-rabies precautions as well.
Sam: All the CDC was called in. The surgeons had to wear extra PPE, all this kind of stuff.
Sam: They don't think she actually has rabies, which is good because it would be
Sam: fatal having waited this long before treating it.
Sam: But she had to get all the rabies shots, too.
Sam: So anyway, she is doing fine now. So I just wanted to throw that out there.
Sam: After we're done here later today, I'll go visit her at the hospital again.
Sam: I've been spending a lot of time just hanging out, sitting at the hospital next
Sam: to her. But she's doing well now.
Todd: Sam, I'm glad to hear that. and I'll just share that I have had similar misadventures
Todd: with elderly parents over the last 10, 11 years or so.
Ivan: Yeah, me too. They're all very stubborn. Oh, yeah, no, it's fine.
Ivan: Your face is destroyed. What do you mean? You're mine.
Sam: Yes. Yeah. Okay, with that personal note up.
Ivan: Before we continue, I am very intrigued as to what is that thing that you have
Ivan: right behind you, I see on your left side This little square with like some
Ivan: Lights on there what the heck is Oh.
Todd: That's it's it's a laptop Stand right it's got some cooling.
Ivan: Oh it's just a laptop stand Yeah yeah I've had my work.
Todd: My work docking station.
Ivan: Is behind me That's why I plug the laptop.
Todd: In So then I have the you know two monitors.
Ivan: It looks like you know what it looked like And look what are these like these
Ivan: old style Calculators because it's got a little thing On the top and it looks
Ivan: like the screen I'm like Like, wait a minute.
Ivan: Is this like, well, it's just a, damn it.
Todd: Yeah. What I thought you were going to do was ask me about my cat.
Ivan: Oh, ask me about your cat.
Sam: Because he's got a fine. Says that.
Ivan: No, well, yeah, well, no, it was not the cat. I was more enthralled by that. Yeah.
Todd: It's just a laptop stand. Nothing top secret.
Ivan: Nothing that exciting.
Sam: Okay. Okay. So let's wrap this thing up so we can all go elsewhere.
Sam: For everybody, you know where to find all the information about us.
Sam: Go to curmudgeons-corner.com.
Sam: You'll see the archive of our shows, transcripts of recent shows,
Sam: links to our social media.
Sam: I have not, I still have not yet linked to the TikTok.
Sam: I'm waiting for a final resolution on TikTok before I bother doing that. But I am.
Ivan: You'll get final resolution when you get final resolution in a tariff.
Sam: Yeah, exactly. Never. Maybe I'll go ahead and add the link at some point.
Sam: But yeah, we are posting clips on TikTok too.
Sam: There's a link to our YouTube, link to Facebook, all of the ways to contact
Sam: us, all of that. very importantly we do also link to our patreon where as you
Sam: heard in the break earlier you can give us money we love it if you give us money
Sam: we will you know right now todd,
Sam: We make a grand total. This makes a huge difference for our lives.
Ivan: It's a shocking amount.
Sam: $27 a month.
Todd: That is outstanding.
Sam: Outstanding. A shocking amount.
Todd: Is that $27 each?
Sam: No, no, no.
Ivan: $27 total.
Todd: $13.5 apiece.
Ivan: Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's part of my retirement plan. I already added it in there. Yes.
Sam: But at various levels, we will mention you on the show. We will ring a bell for you.
Sam: We will send you a postcard. We will send you a mug. All this kind of stuff
Sam: you can see on our Patreon.
Sam: And importantly, at $2 a month or more, or if you just contact us and ask us,
Sam: we will invite you to the Commudgeons Corner Slack,
Sam: where throughout the week, Yvonne and I and various listeners are chatting and
Sam: sharing links and all this kind of stuff.
Sam: We would love to have more of you on there. So, you know, let us know if you
Sam: want on the Slack and we'll send you an invite.
Sam: So, Yvonne, go ahead, Todd.
Todd: Tell me something about my business. I'm genuinely curious. What's your average
Todd: listenership each episode?
Sam: We get between right now. Let me bring up the chart. Let me bring up the chart.
Todd: Okay.
Sam: As of right now, we're averaging around 80 downloads a week.
Todd: Yeah.
Sam: So, and sometimes that dips a little bit lower. Sometimes that dips a little higher.
Sam: Our all time, our all time maximum was a few hundred, a number of years back
Sam: when we actually ran advertising for a few months and we boosted it up to like
Sam: 300 a week. And then it's, it's declined now.
Sam: So like, and a year ago it was more like 50. So we're up from a year ago.
Ivan: Yeah.
Todd: I mean, this is the podcast universe is an extremely crowded marketplace.
Todd: And but that's a pretty good number guys i gotta say because 80 is clearly beyond
Todd: now just close friends and family well.
Sam: We don't know well yeah we don't know a download does not equal a listen.
Todd: Yeah but.
Ivan: Listen but but regardless listen we listen we think not and then we keep being
Ivan: surprised all the time by some random person we have no idea who's listening.
Todd: So that sends the message and feedback so so yeah i i because we we have this
Todd: shared college radio heritage I am accustomed to speaking to very low numbers
Todd: of people who are very engaged in whatever hyper-specific things you're doing.
Sam: We did this for years. We've been going since 2007 on this podcast.
Sam: And probably the first seven or eight years of that, we never broke 20. You know?
Sam: Right, yeah. So we're doing good at 80. Now, would I have fun and be glad if it was 1,000? Sure.
Ivan: And a thousand Patreon people giving us $10 a month But listen.
Todd: If you're having fun regardless Why the hell have you been doing this since 2007?
Ivan: Because we basically have fun And it's a good thing There's a way that Sam and
Ivan: I actually keep in touch We would not otherwise,
Ivan: Yeah, probably. Well, we would, but not as frequently.
Sam: Not as much. Because we did before. Sort of. Yeah, but we do more so now than we did.
Ivan: Yes, exactly.
Sam: And we have a few listeners that are on our Slack that we talk to all the time
Sam: and keep up with what's going on in their lives as well.
Sam: And I've got one previous, and a bunch of those folks have guest hosted sometimes when Yvonne is out.
Sam: And there is one listener who finally guest hosted on the show like last year
Sam: sometime who has actually listened to every episode since 2007 and who's a former
Sam: co-worker of mine from 20 plus years ago.
Sam: And so, yeah, it's fun. It's fun. It's a way to keep up with people.
Sam: And when we get new listeners from out of the blue, that's always awesome.
Ivan: We have listeners from the – we have like one listener I know from the UK.
Ivan: We've had listeners from Columbia. Yeah, we've had listeners,
Ivan: probably some people I know.
Ivan: I know that downloads from all over the place, really. You know, like, yeah.
Todd: I mean, I enjoyed this and I don't want to make empty promises.
Todd: I have a pretty regular queue of podcasts that I try to get through each week.
Todd: But I should add you guys.
Todd: This was a hoot kind of catching up. It's truly been decades.
Sam: And you're welcome to come back anytime, too.
Todd: I'm not going to wear out my welcome, but if you ever want to talk more about
Todd: electric power industry or the terrorist effects, or if you just,
Todd: you know, you need a third voice, let me know.
Sam: So, Yvonne, what I was about to ask you before that, that we always ask.
Ivan: Yeah, I'm ready.
Sam: You got the sample of something that we've talked about on the Slack that we
Sam: have not talked about on the show.
Ivan: Yes, and it's a very important thing. Okay, all right? I shared this,
Ivan: and my caption was, these fucking morons. Okay, all right?
Ivan: Max, once known as HBO Max, is calling itself HBO Max again.
Ivan: You know, got it? Listen, the stupidest ever marketing move,
Ivan: which when it happened, I came on the show and said, what the fuck are these people thinking?
Ivan: Nobody knows the Max brand. It doesn't resonate anywhere.
Ivan: How in the hell do you take that name off the damn thing to market your fucking streaming service?
Ivan: Are you just this stupid? So apparently, it finally dawned upon them after quite a while.
Ivan: Hey, shit, we've got this great brand. What the fuck are we doing?
Ivan: And so they put it back on TV.
Ivan: To the streaming service, by the way, which got made so much fun on social media this week.
Ivan: The fact that they came to their senses and said, hmm, maybe we should call this HBO Max again.
Sam: I'll add, including themselves, their own social media put out a lot of stuff
Sam: with a lot of big-name stars making fun of the move themselves.
Ivan: Yes. So, at least they had that sense of humor about, at least they had a lot
Ivan: of sense of humor about their security. Okay.
Sam: With that, we are done. Thank you very much for Todd.
Sam: Thank you very much for Todd. Thank you very much, Todd, for joining us. It was a lot of fun.
Sam: Great to have another voice and get your insights about the industry as well.
Todd: Thanks for the invitation, Sam.
Sam: Oh, absolutely. And thanks to our listeners as well. We'll be back next week with another episode.
Ivan: Now that I realize that you're also in the Pittsburgh area because one of our
Ivan: listeners Pete Berger, who also is on our Slack, he listens.
Ivan: He's also in the Pittsburgh area.
Ivan: Damn it, Sam, now we have a reason why the hell we have to go,
Ivan: because he's been saying about us, go back to a reunion or something. Fuck.
Todd: I remember Pete. That's another guy I haven't seen probably for 20 years or more.
Ivan: Well, he listens to it. He's on our Slack as well. So, yeah,
Ivan: he's very active on our Slack. So, yeah.
Sam: Okay. So, I'm trying to say goodbye. I'm trying to say goodbye here.
Sam: All right. We'll let you say goodbye.
Sam: Stay safe have a good week all of the stuff i usually see we'll talk to you
Sam: next time now everybody say goodbye goodbye bye you too todd goodbye there we go,
Sam: Okay, I'll hit stop in just a second. And like I said in the chat earlier,
Sam: stay on until it says it's finished.
Sam: Okay, thanks again, Todd. Goodbye.
Todd: Thank you, guys.
Sam: Oh, yeah.
Ivan: All right.
Sam: Hit and stop, Sam.
Ivan: I'm hitting stop.
Sam: I'm hitting it.
Ivan: Hit it! All right. Hit it!