Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, November 15th, 2025.
Sam: It's 1946, UTC, as we're starting to record today.
Sam: I'm Sam Minter, and we did hope to have Yvonne Bowe back today,
Sam: but he let me know a few days ago that he's still recovering.
Sam: He's still not feeling great.
Sam: Specifically, he can't sit for too long at a single stretch as he recovers from his surgery.
Sam: So he's, he, he bowed out for another week and I asked for volunteers.
Sam: And so we have Todd again, Todd
Sam: joined us. What was it? A couple of months ago, a few months ago. Yeah.
Todd: I don't know.
Sam: I have a list somewhere. It was back in May. Yeah.
Todd: I was thinking April or May. It was tariff season when I joined.
Sam: Yeah. And so we, we talked about tariffs and all that, but Todd has volunteered to be with us again.
Sam: As usual, when I have a guest, the guest controls the agenda.
Sam: So I'm going to turn it over for Todd in a bit and we'll just have,
Sam: you know, have a conversation about whatever Todd wants to talk about.
Sam: And then hopefully next week, Yvonne will feel good enough to actually join
Sam: us on the show again. So here we go.
Todd: Yeah. I'm so intrigued now, though, because I don't know the nature of his surgery
Todd: and we don't need to talk about it now.
Sam: Well, he's talked about it on the show, so it's okay. He had a hernia. Ah, okay. So.
Todd: So if he cannot sit for long periods, does that mean he has to stand and walk
Todd: around or does that mean he has to lay down? I'm just, I'm curious if I ever need to have this stuff.
Sam: You know, I haven't asked all those details. He's been actively participating
Sam: in our curmudgeon's core Slack.
Sam: So he's obviously not like completely like knocked out, unable to do anything.
Sam: I think it's just, he said he couldn't sit for long periods of time.
Todd: So i think.
Sam: It's probably more like he can sit he can sit for a while but then he has to
Sam: get up and move around and do stuff i i don't think.
Todd: He's like.
Sam: Bedridden but you know yeah but clearly it's uncomfortable if he.
Todd: Stays in the.
Sam: Same position for too long and so you know these podcasts are usually like two
Sam: hours long or so and you know we could have done a short one i could have been
Sam: like yvonne we can do 15 minutes it's cool.
Todd: But uh but.
Sam: Yeah he was like dad out the you know i'm out so.
Todd: Well that's too bad but it means we.
Sam: It means we get you todd and.
Todd: You know so so.
Sam: What did you want to talk about today todd.
Todd: I i had a few things on my mind that i wrote to you and we just go in the order
Todd: that i put them in my stream of consciousness email curious because you've you
Todd: as long as i've known you even though we've been out of regular contact for decades,
Todd: you seem like a real wonk paying attention to political data and results and
Todd: polling and things like that and i don't i rely on people like you to give me
Todd: the big picture of the analysis so forth,
Todd: very encouraged by the voting results in pennsylvania where i live and even
Todd: in the county west moreland county where i live which is you know pennsylvania
Todd: has become a purple state the last few elections and my county has been a red
Todd: county for even longer than that.
Todd: But we we saw encouraging results i think
Todd: here locally and certainly statewide the statewide
Todd: results were national news you
Todd: know that we at pennsylvania has a strange way
Todd: of electing supreme court judges they
Todd: they get elected and then 10 years later there's
Todd: a vote on whether to retain them okay yep
Todd: no judge has ever been no
Todd: judge has ever not been retained they may elect to
Todd: retire you know step down whatever so the
Todd: people were worried because there was a lot of pack money
Todd: coming into the state to vote no on
Todd: retention but they wound up winning with something like 69 70
Todd: of the vote and then like here locally
Todd: i am in in my red county in my red
Todd: town and school district a democrat won one
Todd: of the school board positions that's not going to make national news
Todd: but it's unusual you know and
Todd: and i gotta say that our school board is not controversial right we don't have
Todd: people out trying to push religious instruction there's no strong pushes to
Todd: ban books or things like that they they're mostly republicans but mostly you
Todd: know good old fashioned Republicans and not the sort of MAGA brand that you see too frequently now.
Todd: And like one of the little towns here, Jeanette has been solid Republican.
Todd: One of these old manufacturing towns in decline for decades,
Todd: elected a Democrat mayor for the first time in a while as well.
Todd: So this is, this is my, you know, local and Pennsylvania view of.
Todd: I'm going on faith, Sam, that you're more aware of nationwide data or maybe
Todd: other examples like mine.
Todd: How did it look two weeks ago?
Sam: It looked very good for the Democrats. That's the one-line summary.
Sam: But let me give you some more examples.
Sam: There's a person, the account name is Tanneel.
Sam: They are even more of a wonk than I am.
Sam: They have all kinds of tracking that they do for a website called BOLTS,
Sam: B-O-L-T-S, that tracks all kinds of local races and stuff all across the country.
Sam: And so they posted a multi-part summary of the results that night.
Sam: And this was as of 3 p.m. Wednesday, so the day after the election day.
Sam: And I'll read these to you in a second. I'll also mention real quick,
Sam: before I forget, last week we didn't really talk about the election results
Sam: on the show because we had guests on last week, too, and they chose other topics.
Sam: But I will mention that this last week and next week, actually,
Sam: I was a guest on another podcast called UMSUR, which I've mentioned on the show a few times.
Sam: And in both of those episodes, one that's out right now and one that'll be out
Sam: this coming week, they released on Wednesdays.
Sam: I did talk about the local elections with the two hosts of that show.
Sam: So I encourage folks to also tune in to UMSUR and check that out.
Sam: Okay, in the meantime, here is Tanneel's summary.
Sam: And this is somewhat long, but I think the length actually makes the point.
Sam: Okay, so let me start. California's Proposition 50 wins.
Sam: Virginia Democrats flip governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general.
Sam: Democrats defend New Jersey governor. Democrats gain legislative seats in Virginia and New Jersey.
Sam: Democrats win New Jersey and Virginia trifectas.
Sam: Momdani wins in New York. Pennsylvania Democrats win state Supreme Court.
Sam: Maine anti-male voting measure loses.
Sam: Georgia Democrats flip two statewide offices.
Sam: Coloradoans fund free school meals. Larry Krasner and Bragg win DA races.
Sam: I'm not sure where those are because I don't remember the names.
Sam: Seattle GOP prosecutor down big. Democrats flip Connecticut towns such as Bristol,
Sam: Milford, New Britain, and Stratford.
Sam: Charlotte approves a transit tax.
Sam: J.D. Vance's half-brother loses.
Sam: Conservatives lose seats on large school boards in Pennsylvania, Texas, and Colorado.
Sam: Mississippi Democrats break the GOP's Senate supermajority.
Sam: Minnesota Democrats successfully defend the state Senate.
Sam: Democrats hold tough legislative districts in New York and Washington,
Sam: miss out on a New Hampshire flip.
Sam: Pennsylvania Democrats win two open statewide judge seats.
Sam: Pennsylvania Democrats flip Erie County Executive, Bucks County DA, and Sheriff.
Sam: Pennsylvania Democrats defend county executives in Lehigh and Northampton.
Sam: Democrats flip boards of New York, Onondaga, and Dutchess counties,
Sam: a first in decades, and Pennsylvania's Luzerne County.
Sam: Progressives may flip the Aurora Council and keep the Spokane Council.
Sam: Only Republican on the Orlando Council loses. Democrats sweep Tucson.
Sam: Large bond tax measures for infrastructure housing approved in Columbus, Denver, and Knoxville.
Sam: Minnesota Mayor Jacob Fry re-elected. Mary Sheffield wins Detroit Mayor.
Sam: GOP holds Columbia and Manchester Mayor. This says Seattle Mayor unknown,
Sam: but since Election Day, the more progressive candidate has actually won in Seattle.
Sam: Albuquerque and Jersey City runoffs. New York City housing measures pass. Proposition 6 does not.
Sam: And that's his long list. And then you can click through to his website and
Sam: get even more. But it's win after win after win after win for the Democrats.
Sam: And it's in some of these, the Democrats were expected to win,
Sam: but they won by larger margins than were expected as well.
Sam: So all in all, a very big, successful win for the Democrats that day,
Sam: bigger than expected in most places.
Sam: And of course, you know, the tea leaf reading is, well, what does this mean
Sam: for midterms next year or even the presidency in 2028?
Sam: And, you know,
Sam: The real answer is, who knows? Lots can happen in a year, let alone in three years.
Sam: But it's much better than the other way, as far as Democrats are concerned, for sure.
Sam: And it definitely shows that as
Sam: of right now, if you look into some of the additional reporting on this,
Sam: there's a lot where Democrats are just fired up right now and Republicans are not.
Sam: And so a lot of this may simply be Democrats bothering to turn out and Republicans not.
Sam: A part of it may also be sort of the squishy folks in the middle who were voting
Sam: Republican last year deciding that, you know, hey, this hasn't turned out quite
Sam: the way I expected it to, so maybe I'll flip.
Sam: And so there's some combination of those effects.
Sam: But, you know, So you're not wrong. Your examples in Pennsylvania were not isolated to Pennsylvania.
Sam: This was nationwide and moves in the Democratic direction all over the country.
Todd: I am not surprised by some of the things that you read. And you said that yourself already.
Todd: It's interesting. You live in Seattle. The more progressive candidate won in
Todd: Seattle, was it sort of like a Bernie Sanders running against Tim Kaine kind
Todd: of race? Was it that sort of race or was it a genuine Democrat versus Republican?
Sam: It was a centrist Democrat versus a progressive Democrat.
Todd: Yeah, interesting. And, you know, Mom Donnie, I know there was the,
Todd: how am I forgetting the former governor inserting himself as an independent candidate?
Todd: Cuomo Cuomo yeah I don't know how I forgot that name Cuomo but,
Todd: Mondani, maybe also surprising, but not terribly surprising that Cuomo,
Todd: I don't know if Cuomo thought he was actually going to win or if he was just
Todd: trying to give it to the Republican and to steal votes and give it to the Republican out of Spagano.
Sam: Honestly, I thought he was, I thought he thinks, thought he was going to win.
Sam: I thought he jumped in wanting this and figured he would actually run away with
Sam: it and was surprised when that didn't happen.
Sam: Yeah, because I think he has that kind of ego. And I thought,
Sam: I think that as well, he thought, you know, well, of course,
Sam: nobody's going to vote for this like crazy socialist over me.
Sam: You know, I think if anything, he thought Adams was the competition that we
Sam: would have to worry about. And that just turned out not to be the case.
Sam: And uh new york fairly resoundingly rejected
Sam: hey you know forget about
Sam: you know there are a lot of things that have been said positive about
Sam: mamdani and his policies and his attitude and
Sam: his social media skills and all that kind of stuff i mean there
Sam: have been negative things said about his policies as well just to
Sam: be clear but yeah but i think there's a
Sam: key element here i mean adams was
Sam: corrupt and on the take and you know
Sam: he was taking bribes and the only reason the
Sam: charges were dropped was because he made a deal with trump
Sam: to help trump you know and and get the charges dropped and meanwhile you've
Sam: got cuomo who you had a whole bunch of sexual harassment issues which is why
Sam: he was chased out of the governorship but also there was a lot of malfeasance
Sam: related to covid that people uncovered.
Sam: During that time period, he was doing things that arguably resulted in additional
Sam: deaths that should not have happened otherwise.
Sam: There's questions about how he dealt with long-term care, housing for the elderly,
Sam: and the rules that were associated with those, and all kinds of other things.
Sam: People were very unhappy with him. That's why he is not governor anymore.
Sam: So, I mean, if anything I mean I was discouraged by how well he was actually
Sam: doing but encouraged by the fact that he in fact lost I mean both Adams and
Sam: Cuomo should have been like.
Sam: Disqualified on the face of it. Like, if you didn't like Mandami, fine.
Sam: Maybe there's somebody else out there. But these two in particular,
Sam: you know, absolutely deserve to be ridden out of town on a rail.
Todd: They, they are accused, certainly, and probably guilty, right?
Sam: Yeah.
Todd: Innocent until proven guilty and benefit of the doubt and everything else.
Todd: But if they were just ordinary private citizens who did these things in a private
Todd: employer, they'd be gone and probably criminally charged.
Sam: Yeah.
Todd: So, yeah, I agree with you. That should be disqualifying. And I didn't mean
Todd: to go down the New York City rabbit hole, but I'm fascinated by your take because
Todd: I know that you pay closer attention to these political details than I do.
Todd: What I was going to say is, okay, a lot of these are unsurprising.
Todd: Seattle mayor, New York City mayor, some Democrat was going to win New York City.
Todd: But some of the other results that you ran down that I was not aware of,
Todd: Erie County, Pennsylvania, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Luzerne County,
Todd: Pennsylvania, and Onondaga, I think you were trying to say.
Todd: Onondaga, one of the Finger Lake, it's one of the Finger Lake counties in New York.
Todd: D's are rural or like small town, you know, I mean, Erie, there is a city of
Todd: Erie, but that's a pretty.
Sam: It's not a big countywide.
Todd: Yeah. Countywide. They're, they're red. These kinds of things from a Democrat
Todd: point of view are pretty encouraging.
Todd: And yeah, I also wonder, does this momentum carry through you validated one
Todd: other thing that I was wondering was part of this kind of a matter of.
Todd: Turnout and that the Democrats are just far more fired up right now than Republicans,
Todd: that you and I are old enough to remember the Tea Party movement.
Todd: This feels like a liberal sort of Tea Party movement right now.
Todd: I have gone to several, not everyone, but I've gone to several of the protests
Todd: this year at our county courthouse.
Todd: First one I went to was admittedly on a weekday on one of the coldest days of
Todd: last winter in February. So I was out at the street corner with maybe a dozen people.
Todd: The last one I went to, the second No Kings rally that I went to maybe a month ago by now,
Todd: over 3,000 people by most accounts, which is like three times bigger than the,
Todd: oh, what was the first big one this year? It wasn't a No Kings,
Todd: it was Hands Off, I think.
Todd: The one theme was Hands Off maybe back in April or May or so.
Todd: That one got about 1,000. the first no kings got about 2 000 this one got about
Todd: 3 000 in my county right from those humble beginnings of a dozen people freezing
Todd: and shivering on the street corner in february that.
Todd: It takes a lot to get people out to protest like that for a couple of hours.
Todd: Even if it's on a Saturday, even if the weather is nice, it takes a lot.
Todd: Cause like I got kids, they, they have things to do. Right.
Todd: So are people who don't agree with me politically?
Todd: We'll look at that and say it was only 3000 people. There's whatever,
Todd: hundreds of thousands of people in our County. That's such a small percentage. Yeah.
Todd: But the fact that people are willing to come out and make signs and put on costumes
Todd: and, and, and, and peacefully express their concerns and their position for
Todd: a couple of hours, I think is pretty meaningful.
Todd: I said the same thing about these tea party protests. I'm like,
Todd: these guys look ridiculous. They're out on the corner. They're dressed in their costumes.
Todd: There's, you know, a few dozen or a few hundred of them, but look what happened.
Todd: Like that was, that was wave that impacted the remainder of Obama's first and
Todd: second term, as I recall. Right.
Todd: It swung in the middle of his first term, and then I don't think Democrats ever
Todd: got back majority of both houses again after that. Am I remembering that wrong?
Sam: No, no, no. I...
Sam: I'm not sure of the specifics about when Congress did what, et cetera,
Sam: but I think you're right.
Sam: But I think to the larger point that how these things can change the tone and
Sam: what's going on are important.
Sam: A few weeks back when Emily guest hosted on the show with me,
Sam: we had a little bit of a conversation about whether there's a group that's out
Sam: there saying protests like No Kings are meaningless because they don't make
Sam: a specific list of demands that have to be met that would actually result in change.
Sam: And instead, it's sort of performative because it's just a bunch of people going
Sam: out and making themselves feel better by going and having a rally and shaking
Sam: their signs or whatever. But it doesn't really do anything. It doesn't really change anything.
Sam: And I think that's misguided because
Sam: while you certainly can have the situation where you have, you have,
Sam: political actions with demands and a, you know, you're, you're trying to get
Sam: somebody to give in and give you something.
Sam: First of all, you know, and I mentioned on the show when we,
Sam: when I talked about this, the more specific you get with demands, the higher,
Sam: harder it is to get people to join you because there will always be somebody
Sam: who disagrees with, you know, you have five demands and they like four of them,
Sam: but the fifth one, oh no, that's, that's no good.
Sam: And you're getting very specific. The No Kings was a very high level.
Sam: You know, hey, democracy is good.
Sam: We're unhappy with the things that are happening that are diminishing democracy
Sam: and diminishing the rule of law.
Sam: That's what it was very high level.
Sam: That's all it was. And it is so I mentioned that time as well that,
Sam: you know, hey, at our local No Kings rally, the League of Women Voters sent somebody to speak.
Sam: They are notoriously neutral, but they were able to speak for this because it
Sam: was just promoting democracy. It wasn't an anti-Trump rally per se.
Sam: It wasn't about any specific policy. It was just, hey, we're worried that democracy
Sam: and the rule of law are threatened.
Sam: And you do get, and even without those specific demands, like,
Sam: look, if you made specific demands of the Trump administration through this
Sam: kind of protests, they're just going to dig in further.
Sam: They're not about to give in to those demands and say, oh, no,
Sam: a few million people protested.
Sam: Let's stop ICE detentions. No, not even remotely. Even if the protests got like
Sam: 10 times bigger than they were, they still wouldn't do that.
Sam: If anything, they'd be like, oh, man, we've got riots on the streets.
Sam: We need to shoot them all, you know.
Sam: So, but I think the protests of this sort still have a significant purpose.
Sam: They do let people know that they're not alone.
Sam: They show the magnitude of the people who disagree. they show even to the people
Sam: who like, let's say you're a MAGA person.
Sam: You may see the numbers on the other side in a way that you haven't before.
Sam: And because it's scattered all over the country, it's not just in a rally in D.C.
Sam: You know, the standard thing is like, you know, Fox News barely covered the No Kings rally.
Sam: Even other major media like the
Sam: New York Times famously didn't had just a small note on the front page.
Sam: Like and the rest of the front page was other stuff, you know, things like that.
Sam: But if, because they're scattered all over the country and even small towns,
Sam: even small red towns had, had these rallies, you know, just then,
Sam: then just the MAGA folks driving by like, see, oh,
Sam: there are people around me that actually think this way.
Sam: Because I've heard lots of reports, not just reports,
Sam: anecdotal stuff, but the whole thing about our information environment right
Sam: now and how things are separated geographically is that if you drop somebody
Sam: in the middle of a rural red area, they very likely...
Sam: Think, nope, this, this liberal stuff isn't real.
Sam: Like nobody I know thinks that way, you know, because they just aren't exposed
Sam: to it because they're isolated from it.
Sam: They only are around people like them. And, and honestly, there's a little bit
Sam: of that in the other direction too.
Sam: I mean, if you're, if you're in a heavy blue area, you're not going to run into
Sam: somebody wearing their mega hat all that often, you know?
Sam: And so just the, but the visibility lets you know It's out there and which it
Sam: affects the tone of the conversation anyway.
Sam: It affects the realm of what's possible. And yes, it affects enthusiasm for
Sam: elections when they come about because realistically, short of like some violent
Sam: revolution or something, that's what you got.
Sam: You've got a situation right now where nationally the Democrats lost everything
Sam: and there's not much they can actually do.
Sam: I mean, we maybe I don't know if the end of the shutdown is one of your topics
Sam: or not, but like, you know, absent like things like that, there's very little
Sam: they can actually do until they win elections again.
Sam: And so between now and then, yeah, most of it is performative.
Sam: Yeah, most of it is messaging.
Sam: Most of it is like, how do you get through to the general public what it is
Sam: you would like to be doing if you could do something so that when there's an
Sam: election, you might win, as opposed to like folks saying, well,
Sam: the rally was useless because it accomplished nothing. Trump didn't change any policies, you know?
Todd: Well, it's all true. It is performative. It does make people feel good while they're there.
Todd: It's a good feeling to be among like-minded people to realize that you're not alone.
Todd: I'm repeating a lot of the stuff that you already said. It's all true.
Todd: And also, I'm encouraged because it's representative of a larger amount of dissatisfaction
Todd: with the federal government at the moment.
Todd: And again, this is not data, this is anecdotal, but there was a surprising and
Todd: really good feeling of being out there at a major intersection in the county
Todd: seat, you know, Greensburg, Westmoreland County,
Todd: many, many more people drove by honking and waving in support than,
Todd: you know, cause you're going to, you're going to get the jeers and the laughter
Todd: and you, you know, you lost and, and that kind of stuff.
Todd: Fine. But I'm amazed at how many supporters there actually were driving by,
Todd: which tells me that there's people maybe who, if they were available or if they were aware,
Todd: would have like, you know, maybe we would have had another thousand people up
Todd: there on the courthouse plaza if people were aware.
Todd: And to me, it's just a representation of the broader dissatisfaction right now.
Todd: And it certainly showed up at the polls.
Todd: So two of, yes, shutdown was one of my topics, but I wanted to get your point
Todd: of view on a couple of other things related to, related to all of this.
Todd: One is I, I think I have heard accurately that turnout in general and among
Todd: Democrats in particular was encouragingly high this year.
Todd: I think democratic voters are notoriously absent in off year elections.
Sam: The biggest example of this. And I think, yes, there's evidence of that across the board.
Sam: But the biggest example was actually the redistricting proposition in California.
Sam: Cause that was the only thing on the ballot.
Sam: There were no candidates running. There was no presidential race,
Sam: no governor's race, no nothing.
Todd: It was, there's nothing on a local level.
Sam: No, the, the, the really, the, the only reason there was an election in California.
Sam: And please, if you're out there and there were actually some local races, please correct me.
Sam: But my understanding is the only reason this was happening was the redistricting measure. That's it.
Sam: And they had incredibly high turnout for that. And it won by much larger measure,
Sam: margin than was expected it was expected to
Sam: win so much so that both sides stopped
Sam: advertising about it several weeks before the election yeah
Sam: they they were both like it's a waste of money we know what's
Sam: going to happen but the margin was still greater than
Sam: anybody anticipated i think it won by like 60 60
Sam: 40 or something and so yeah the
Sam: the democratic enthusiasm is out there right now and whereas
Sam: it does seem like republican
Sam: turnout is depressed right now and i
Sam: think that aligns with you know if you look at you know trump approval ratings
Sam: but other but other things as well like right track wrong track you know republicans
Sam: of course are much more likely to approve of what trump trump is doing than
Sam: democrats but it's not not even the same universe However,
Sam: even that number is dropping.
Sam: It's still high among Republicans, but it's dropping and it's continued on a downtrend.
Sam: And I think what you have basically, and again, anecdotal, you hear all these
Sam: things about Republicans who are like, okay, but this isn't quite what I wanted.
Sam: You know, I wanted them to, like, round up the illegal immigrant criminals,
Sam: not the grandmother who cleans houses, you know, or, you know,
Sam: and I didn't want him to, like, tear down the White House, you know,
Sam: and what's up with all these tariffs that we talked about before?
Sam: Why are prices going up? He promised to make prices go down, you know, et cetera.
Todd: Yeah.
Sam: And to be clear, there's still lots of there's still lots of people out there
Sam: who double down on everything. And like Trump's wonderful. All this is good.
Sam: Anything where anything you hear about it being negative is actually liberal lies.
Sam: There are plenty of those people out there still, too. But the numbers are going down.
Todd: Yeah. Yeah. So the last thing I'm wondering about the elections is.
Todd: Because, you know, I've become very skeptical of Democrats' ability to win on
Todd: a platform rather than opposition, right?
Todd: I think Biden won in 2020, probably more for the opposition to Trump's first
Todd: term than for Biden's awesome campaign.
Sam: Absolutely.
Todd: I think whether he would have run for re-election or what became the Harris
Todd: campaign, you know, sort of abandoned their platform and focused on, we're not Trump.
Todd: And that wasn't, people were so unhappy about inflation in particular.
Sam: Mm-hmm.
Todd: That, you know, it wasn't strong enough. Like, well, Trump's going to come in and fix everything.
Todd: Well, sure enough, you know, inflation's been stubbornly not high, right?
Todd: It's not like, you know, 9% or whatever it was a few years ago,
Todd: but it hasn't gone below two like the Fed says they want it to be and they cut rates anyway.
Todd: But people are noticing it at the grocery store. It's unavoidable.
Todd: For crying out loud, there's some energy bar that my brother-in-law asks us
Todd: to buy because we have a Costco membership and he doesn't.
Todd: This is just my little anecdotal snapshot of, these things used to be like $21 a box.
Todd: Now they're $28.50 just since like April.
Todd: Now that's not representative of everything at the grocery store, but you know, you see it.
Todd: People are talking about the, you know, I forget which publication put out the
Todd: price of a Thanksgiving meal this year versus last year.
Todd: They say, Hey, look, the price of Thanksgiving meal from Walmart went down this year versus last year.
Todd: It went down because they switched from name brand
Todd: to generic brand and they went
Todd: from having like 20 items in the shopping cart to 15
Todd: like that's why it went down it's not a apples to apples thing we're a carnivore
Todd: family price of meat is definitely up eggs somehow became a campaign issue right
Todd: eggs are not as expensive as they were i think a year ago but they're not what
Todd: they were four years ago either and on and on and on yet i think,
Todd: People who voted for Trump are feeling this shit and we can curse on this, right?
Sam: Yeah. Oh yeah.
Todd: Okay.
Sam: Curse all the time.
Todd: And so, yes, I did want to talk about the shutdown, and maybe this is a good
Todd: segue into that, that inexplicably, Trump fought against SNAP benefits, right?
Todd: I don't understand that. And I'm bringing this up because,
Todd: again, where I live, and I think that Westmoreland County is representative
Todd: of many rural or semi-suburban counties all over the country,
Todd: whether it's a red or blue state.
Todd: I think you find a lot of counties like mine, there's a lot of people I know
Todd: voted for Trump because they had the campaign signs in their front yard and
Todd: also are getting some kind of public assistance because they have the handicapped
Todd: blackguard in their car or just because I happen to know something about.
Todd: And like, I know they're definitely getting assistance.
Todd: They're getting disability. They're probably on SNAP.
Todd: They're probably getting Medicaid or some kind of Obamacare-type subsidies.
Todd: He inexplicably went after SNAP, and Congress is going after ACA subsidies.
Todd: I don't understand how that is a winning formula for the Republican Party in
Todd: the midterms coming up next year because they rely on,
Todd: you know, the reason that Pennsylvania is purple now instead of kind of reliably
Todd: blue, which I think we were for maybe 15 or 20 years.
Todd: Instead of being reliably blue, we're now purple because I think first Trump
Todd: brought out a lot of people who ordinarily don't vote in every election or any election.
Todd: And they happen to be those sort of voters who they feel like they can't get ahead.
Todd: They blame the government.
Todd: And Trump was speaking their language, right? It is the immigrants fault.
Todd: It is the liberals fault. It is, you know, we've got to get closer to God and
Todd: all these kind of things. He's appealing to these people who also rely on ACA
Todd: subsidies and SNAP and probably other benefits as well.
Todd: I can't imagine what the Republicans are thinking to go so hard after this stuff
Todd: now, way harder than they did Trump's first term, and think that they're still
Todd: going to win Pennsylvania, Michigan,
Todd: Wisconsin, the states that have been flipping back and forth for the last 12 years.
Todd: Am i am i missing something like today because i know the doomsday i'm sorry
Todd: sam the doomsday predictions out there are well they're going to do a variety
Todd: of things to suppress the vote.
Todd: And they're going to win by cheating whether it's with the courts whether it's
Todd: with poll watching whether it's in sending in the national guard and you know
Todd: he i guess i guess he's trump allegedly sent i don't know law enforcement or
Todd: national guard or something to poll watch in california in New Jersey. I never heard anything.
Todd: I mean, I never heard anything from either side about that. It just seemed completely inconsequential.
Todd: If it was some attempt at suppression, didn't work.
Todd: Didn't even work enough to make the liberal news that comes across my social
Todd: media feed, right? Just nothing. Nothing.
Todd: How do they think they're going to win next year? And my answer to that question,
Todd: because I'm so cynical about the Democrats, is, well, they're going to win because
Todd: the Democrats will find a way to fuck this up because they won't have a coherent message.
Sam: Yeah.
Todd: And they won't be able to get aligned. And all of these swing voters who are
Todd: out there open to persuasion right now, Democrats are just going to miss it.
Todd: All right. I don't know if I really have a question or a statement or anything,
Todd: Sam, but what do you think about all this?
Sam: So, you know, and when we, we'll take a break before we properly talk about
Sam: shutdown, but to answer your election related questions, because we're an election topic now, I think.
Sam: What are the Republicans thinking? That's a good question, because there's different
Sam: things at play right now,
Sam: and you are starting to see cracks between the Republicans right now,
Sam: because I think you've got several different kinds of things going.
Sam: One is Donald Trump himself, who frankly is completely erratic,
Sam: does not have a coherent set of ideologies or anything.
Sam: He's just doing what he thinks will help him.
Sam: And honestly, I think, you know, his mental facilities are declining rapidly at this point as well.
Sam: So even then, he might not have a good idea even of what actually would help
Sam: him. And so you've got him sort of just bouncing off the walls,
Sam: doing whatever comes to mind that day. That's thing number one.
Sam: Thing number two is you've got the Heritage Society Project 2026 plan where
Sam: they've got like their wish list of anti-government,
Sam: conservative social stuff that they've had for decades and decades and decades.
Sam: And they are rushing to implement as much of it as they humanly can as fast as they can.
Sam: And I think part of that is knowing damn well a lot of what they want to do is unpopular.
Sam: And so they want to get it in place as fast as they can and ingrain it as much as they can.
Sam: So it'll be really hard to undo even if the Democrats win again.
Sam: You know, because, you know, I mean, just to take some examples,
Sam: I mean, you know, they've shut down entire agencies and entire programs.
Sam: The international aid agency USAID, gone.
Sam: Gone. Everything they have done has been raised to the ground.
Sam: And if the Democrats came back in and wanted to restart it, it would not be an overnight thing.
Sam: It would take them a long time to get that up and running and doing the things it was doing before.
Sam: And the damage to its reputation, you may not be able to fix in any reasonable timeframe.
Sam: People won't trust it anymore that trusted it before.
Sam: Same with the CDC. They've absolutely gutted CDC from the top to the bottom.
Sam: They've, you know, most of the, you know, the reputation is gone.
Sam: Like, a lot of the prominent scientists are there have left.
Sam: Those who are still there, you know,
Sam: and, you know, a spouse of a friend of mine works there, or they were fired,
Sam: but I think they might have actually gotten their job back now that with the
Sam: deal that actually did end the shutdown.
Sam: But anyway, they're hamstrung anyway.
Sam: Even the good scientists who are still there are operating under constraints
Sam: that make life very difficult.
Sam: And make it and so like your reputationally
Sam: your democrat gets in wants to restore the cdc
Sam: again it doesn't it doesn't happen overnight i
Sam: mean and it probably needed some reforms anyway it definitely needed some
Sam: reforms anyway but raising it to the ground and destroying
Sam: its reputation wasn't the right way to do so like that so
Sam: let me finish answering your question and then we can discuss but like
Sam: so you have the second group which is the heritage folks who
Sam: really do have a specific ideological agenda and
Sam: they also like they're going
Sam: to want to do a few things to you know like the shenanigans the
Sam: redistricting things to make it more likely that they'll win in the future but
Sam: fundamentally i feel like they are making the gamble that if we make enough
Sam: of these changes and make it hard enough to change it back then it's okay if
Sam: the Democrats win next time.
Sam: Because we've made changes that'll last decades.
Sam: And then finally, the third group that is starting to wake up right now,
Sam: are the Republicans who are in Congress and elsewhere who are pure opportunists and are just there.
Sam: Like they don't really care about the ideological stuff, or maybe they have
Sam: some vague thoughts there, but ultimately their main goal is to be in power
Sam: and stay in power and to be able
Sam: to hang out with the cool kids and have influence and stuff like that.
Sam: And they are starting to see the shift because in the Republican party,
Sam: the way to do that for the last X number of years was to be all in on Trump and to be all in on MAGA.
Sam: But now when you start seeing policies actually have negative effects,
Sam: they start peeling off because they're like, wait, wait, wait a second.
Sam: This is wrong. And I guess there's a fourth group too,
Sam: the ones who are all in on the
Sam: conspiracy theories like you've got the
Sam: marjorie taylor greens of the world who are now splitting with donald trump
Sam: over the epstein stuff because they're like we thought donald trump was going
Sam: to come in here and expose all the epstein stuff which of course we believed
Sam: was just all like rich powerful democrats in the pedophile ring.
Sam: And now it looks like Donald Trump himself is doing everything he can to avoid
Sam: going in this direction. So what does that mean?
Sam: It's like their minds are being blown because their whole worldview is being
Sam: turned on its head because, oh, wait, maybe Trump was one of the bad guys after all.
Sam: And so you've got these at least four different groups in the coalition who
Sam: all have different motivations of what they're doing and whether or not they
Sam: care about winning and what's important to them and what's not.
Sam: And they had all been aligned directionally until fairly recently.
Sam: Now, when we're seeing actual negative economic and other effects of Trump policies,
Sam: and we're seeing the Epstein stuff, and we're seeing Trump's popularity plummeting,
Sam: all of a sudden, the things that were holding these groups together are disappearing
Sam: and they're starting to fray.
Sam: And of course, with Trump, despite any random talk about running again,
Sam: with Trump as a lame duck and clearly aging as well.
Sam: Maybe, maybe, crossing my fingers, that this fraying of the Republican coalition
Sam: actually becomes more real as we go forward.
Sam: Like we've had false starts before going all the way back to the Access Hollywood
Sam: tape during the the 2026,
Sam: not 2026, 2016 campaign, where for a few moments, a whole bunch of Republicans
Sam: abandoned Trump and then they came back.
Sam: And then after January 6th, a whole bunch of Republicans abandoned him and then they came back.
Sam: So we'll see. But it feels like this time is different because it's not about
Sam: like one particular thing Donald Trump did.
Sam: It's instead about the reasons all of these people had to be in this coalition.
Sam: Some of those reasons are starting to be less true.
Todd: One thought, and I know you want to take break, that just that you're reminding
Todd: me to temper my enthusiasm and let's use CDC or Department of Education as a
Todd: couple of examples, right?
Todd: Let's imagine Democrats put together or, you know, whoever the equivalent is
Todd: of the Heritage Foundation, right?
Todd: Puts together their own project 2029, how to rapidly restore what's been deconstructed.
Todd: If I'm a qualified person who worked for Department of Education or CDC and
Todd: was terminated because of Doge or the budget or RFK Jr., whatever.
Todd: Okay. In 2029, when Democratic White House and Congress comes to me and says,
Todd: we are rapidly restoring the CDC and Department of Education.
Todd: We need you to come back. If I'm that qualified person who got cut the first
Todd: time, I'm thinking about longevity.
Todd: How do I know you're not going to lose again in two years or four years and
Todd: this is going to happen all over again?
Todd: I think there's some lasting effect there that the qualified people who were
Todd: very enthusiastic about public
Todd: service until this year, they're going to leave and never come back.
Todd: They're going to find some other way to pay their bills and to raise their families
Todd: in the private sector or in some other less volatile part of government,
Todd: you know, or if they're close enough to retirement, they're just going to hang it up.
Todd: And I, so I do think he, this one lasting effect I worry about is that qualified
Todd: people who until this year would have happily been in public service,
Todd: regardless of who's sitting in the white house, they're going to think twice before they do it again.
Todd: Or I'm sure there are many right now thinking twice, whether they even want to stay in it.
Todd: You and I have a friend from college, from the old radio station works at the
Todd: department of energy right now.
Todd: I won't name him because I know he's very sensitive about speaking publicly
Todd: about this, But yeah, he's pretty concerned, you know, understandably so.
Todd: And his wife works for an agency that is, I think also, they both are luckily in branches,
Todd: departments, agencies that are, I think, far west of a political hot flashpoint, you know.
Sam: Right.
Todd: But yeah, I, but they're also these, I, I, I don't, I don't know about the guy's
Todd: wife, but you certainly would know the guy that I'm talking about who works for the DOE.
Todd: This is the kind of highly qualified, experienced person.
Todd: You don't want him to leave the DOE. You want him to stay there until he's ready to retire.
Todd: And there's tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people like that
Todd: in the government right now.
Todd: If they haven't already been terminated, they're thinking twice about sticking
Todd: with it, because who knows?
Todd: You used to be able to count on this no matter which way the political winds
Todd: were blowing, and suddenly you can't.
Sam: It was one of the, you know, generally speaking, the trade-off for government
Sam: jobs was you get paid less, but it's more secure, and you have a good pension in the end.
Sam: And you get to provide public service.
Sam: You know, that was the trade-off. And you've destroyed that trade-off.
Todd: Yeah. All right. I think you wanted to take a break.
Sam: So I figure we've had all the election stuff. Let's take a break.
Sam: And when we come back, we can talk.
Sam: You'd mentioned government shutdown specifically. So let's talk about the shutdown
Sam: and the end of the shutdown.
Sam: Back after this.
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Sam: We are back. So the government shutdown ended.
Sam: And a lot of folks were upset about this on the Democratic side.
Sam: Basically saying, and just to be clear, the way that it ended is eight Democratic,
Sam: senators defected and said, you know, okay, we'll make a deal with the Republicans.
Sam: The deal has been criticized as basically being nothing, but it did have a couple of things in it.
Sam: So the biggest one that actually had a real effect was apparently undoing some
Sam: of the reductions in force that happened during the shutdown.
Sam: So famously, the shutdown not only sent people home because the government was
Sam: shut down, but they also just started firing a bunch of people while they were
Sam: at it, saying, you know, we don't need you for the shutdown,
Sam: but you know, don't come back even after the shutdown's over.
Sam: Some of that was undone. So, so awesome. A few people were rehired that were otherwise fired.
Sam: There was also a moratorium on more reduction in forces until January,
Sam: until the end of January.
Sam: So that's not that long, but, and basically also just to put this out there
Sam: too, this deal was to kick the can down the road 90 days until January.
Sam: It was not a permanent like, hey, we've solved everything, we've got a budget, we've got whatever.
Sam: It's just another kick the can down the road. So we're going to repeat all this
Sam: drama again come January.
Sam: And so there was the moratorium on more riffs that was restoring some of those
Sam: people who were laid off.
Sam: And then there was a promise by the Republicans to have a vote on the Obamacare subsidies.
Sam: So, importantly here, this was not a promise to do anything about the Obamacare subsidies.
Sam: This was not a promise that such a vote would pass. This was just a promise to have a vote.
Sam: And in all likelihood, such a vote would fail, you know, because you'd need
Sam: a whole bunch of Republicans deciding to support it, which there are a few who've
Sam: sounded squishy, but probably not enough.
Sam: And even if it did pass, Donald Trump might veto it.
Sam: So what most of the Democrats were pushing for was we don't reopen the government
Sam: unless those Obamacare subsidy changes are part of the reopening of government.
Sam: We do it now. Not a promise of a vote sometime in the future that we'll probably
Sam: lose, but we do it right now.
Sam: And they did not get that. But yeah, go ahead. Then we can talk more.
Todd: The promise of the vote, that's the condition that I was more aware of.
Todd: I actually, I'm embarrassed to say I didn't realize there were additional permanent
Todd: terminations during the shutdown.
Todd: I knew that there were obviously furloughs or people working without pay.
Todd: I didn't know about permanent termination. That's unfortunate.
Todd: So I'm glad that, you know, one of the conditions was to bring some back.
Todd: The one that I think got a lot more media attention was the second.
Todd: The promise to have a vote on ACA. First of all,
Todd: What if Republican leadership just decides, you know what, never mind,
Todd: we changed our mind. We're not going to have that vote after all.
Sam: Nothing you can do about it.
Todd: What do you do?
Sam: What happens?
Todd: Right. So that's a very flimsy promise.
Todd: The only benefit I could see by having the vote, the only benefit to Democrats
Todd: is next September, October campaign season.
Todd: You have all of these Republicans on record voting against health care,
Todd: health insurance subsidies that people by September, October next year will have been feeling.
Todd: Because, you know, I'm fortunate. I worked for a private employer who's covering
Todd: a substantial amount of my medical insurance premiums.
Todd: And I think the company's doing well enough. I don't have to worry about anything going away.
Todd: Right. But there's a lot of people that rely on those subsidies.
Todd: And I, and you hear these, I see these, see and hear these alarming figures
Todd: of people's monthly premiums are going to double or triple.
Todd: They're going to go up by, you know, low, low four figures, which if you need
Todd: the subsidies in the first place is probably untenable.
Todd: So there's that fear that, well, people are going to just go off of health insurance
Todd: now and roll the dice by September, October next year. I think that's going
Todd: to have a political impact.
Todd: And perhaps the only benefit to Democrats, which is unfortunately at millions
Todd: of people's expense, is we're going to get these vulnerable Republicans on the
Todd: record as having voting against that.
Todd: And in September, whenever you say, hey, your health insurance used to cost
Todd: you $500, now it's $2,000.
Sam: Here's the thing. You had that anyway. The increases are because of the big,
Sam: beautiful bill that passed earlier this year. What the Democrats were trying
Sam: to do was to get them to undo those changes, but they voted through those changes already.
Sam: You already have them on record for this along with other things.
Sam: And, you know, you, you sort of, what, what.
Sam: The people who are trying to spin this as good, as, you know,
Sam: okay, ending the shutdown was good, was, first of all, we got our,
Sam: quote unquote, we got our message across.
Sam: We shut down the government for longer than it's ever been shut down before,
Sam: and we talked about health care, and more people are aware of the ACA thing than were before.
Sam: We got the message across. And meanwhile, by the way, the shutdown was starting to hurt.
Sam: The airline travel specifically,
Sam: lots but not all,
Sam: the defecting senators, a good fraction of them were in places that rely on
Sam: tourism and airline travel to get there or had airline industry stuff in their
Sam: states or things like that.
Sam: A lot of them got lots of money from that industry.
Sam: So there were some of that also, by the way, is carefully coordinated.
Sam: Those eight, none of them are up next election cycle.
Sam: Some of them are retiring outright. Some of them just have a long time till
Sam: their next election, et cetera.
Sam: That was very much intentional, leading people to speculate that even though
Sam: Schumer was officially against this deal.
Sam: Maybe he orchestrated it behind the scenes to sort of enable it to happen because
Sam: the shutdown was starting to get painful.
Sam: And one of the things that, you know, an argument that's been had is do the
Sam: Democrats just throw their hands up and say Republicans are in charge,
Sam: let them do all the damage they can?
Sam: Because then the voters will see how bad this is and revert or do the Democrats
Sam: actually try to make deals to make things better?
Sam: Now, in the position they're in, they can't make many, many deals anyway.
Sam: But, you know, do they stop the Republicans in some way, shape or form from
Sam: the worst possible results of their action?
Sam: Or do they give them face saving ways out?
Sam: Like, like in this case, do you let them reopen the government or do you just,
Sam: you know, say we, we, we, we, we said we would reopen under these conditions and that's it.
Sam: But it can stay closed all the way through to the next elections if it needs to, you know?
Sam: And I think part of what, you know, and I think, and also thrown into this mix,
Sam: by the way, is that the House was staying closed until the government reopened.
Sam: Speaker Johnson made that clear, which was also holding up the Epstein stuff,
Sam: and maybe they wanted to get on with that as well.
Sam: But, you know, I feel like, you know, the Democrats want to say,
Sam: we care about the people.
Sam: And so, of course, we're going to try to fight against the Republicans' worst stuff.
Sam: But ultimately in the end you know
Sam: voters don't pay attention to the back and forth and details of you know this
Sam: week versus that week negotiation on the shutdown and who gave up this or who
Sam: gave up that you know in the end they're gonna start paying attention right
Sam: before election day and for a vast for a,
Sam: very significant chunk of voters, the entire decision is going to be,
Sam: do I like how my life personally is going right now?
Sam: If it's yes, then whoever's in office can stay.
Sam: If it's no, then vote the bums out.
Sam: Now, that's not necessarily a majority of people, but it's a key group of people in the middle.
Sam: The majority on both sides are
Sam: probably people who are going to vote party line no matter what happens.
Sam: Yeah. There's the people who will always vote Republican and people who will
Sam: always vote Democrat no matter what.
Sam: And on the two edges, those stay the same. But this, this squishy group in the
Sam: middle who votes based on, oh my God, the price of eggs are up.
Sam: So I'm going to vote against the guy in charge.
Sam: And the thought process doesn't go further than
Sam: that when things are close anyway which they
Sam: have been for the last decade or so um yeah
Sam: then those people make the difference and you
Sam: know and and so in the
Sam: end i don't know if all this back and forth matters what matter and so like
Sam: is the best thing for the democrats actually to let the republicans do all the
Sam: damage they want to do probably and if if democrats were in a position to stop
Sam: some of it, I could at least see the moral argument of like,
Sam: we can't hurt people on purpose if we can stop the Republicans we need to.
Sam: But the reality is right now they can't really stop the Republicans. So it is what it is.
Todd: As a recently converted registered Democrat, because I was registered libertarian
Todd: for almost 30 years, and I don't want to get into that.
Todd: It really made sense to me in the 90s. It has made less and less and less sense over the years.
Sam: I also went through my libertarian phase. I was never registered,
Sam: but I voted libertarian a few times.
Todd: So I, I was, I was always libertarian far more for their positions on social issues than fiscal.
Todd: Well, I think that the federal government certainly has crept rightward over the last 30 years.
Todd: The one place where it's crept leftward are the social issues,
Todd: marijuana, gay marriage, women's rights. These things are far more acceptable
Todd: now than they were in the 90s.
Todd: I think that's where we've seen more leftward creep.
Sam: That's still true, but this is a conversation I had, and I've brought this up on the show before.
Sam: I was having a conversation with a younger, a friend of my son's,
Sam: so his age, teenager now, but the conversation was several years ago, actually.
Sam: And they were talking about how bad things were now along those lines.
Sam: Specifically referring to lgbtq issues and
Sam: and i said no no they really were much worse in
Sam: the 80s and 90s than they are today but then
Sam: after the conversation after the conversation and i never circled back to to
Sam: to talk to this person again but on this topic but after the conversation i
Sam: realized that the key difference was not the absolute level of where we are
Sam: but the direction in which we're going.
Sam: And so, yes, I think you're probably right that we are still better off now
Sam: than we were, say, in the 80s. However...
Sam: Starting around, I don't know, pick a year, 2017, the trend has gone in the opposite direction.
Sam: So we peaked and it's been getting worse now for nearly a decade.
Todd: And I have to realize and correct myself.
Todd: Yes, there are significant steps backward, certainly in a couple of instances.
Todd: And in one case, you know, up until this year,
Todd: there were legal, abundant options for minors who were transitioning.
Sam: Yes.
Todd: You know, and those are gone.
Sam: And also, don't leave out the going the other direction on abortion as well.
Todd: Yeah.
Todd: I don't know how to say this without sounding like a jerk.
Todd: First of all, I'm not a woman. I never have to deal. I've never had nor never
Todd: will have to deal with becoming pregnant.
Todd: There are options for unwanted pregnancies.
Todd: If prophylactics don't work, you know, there is not yet nationwide abortion ban, right?
Todd: There's options. There's no option for a 16 year old who was born with male
Todd: genitalia, but who is a girl.
Todd: There's no good options for those people other than jumping through hoops finding
Todd: specialists spending private money because insurance and hospital networks won't
Todd: touch it anymore like that's it.
Sam: Well and you're you're absolutely right
Sam: but i'll also i'll just say this is another thing where it is now significantly
Sam: different state to state you know for both abortion and trans rights and expand
Sam: out further to social, I mean, other social issues.
Sam: And I mean, some people say, well, that's good.
Sam: That's federalism at work that, you know, but right now we really are in a place
Sam: where for all of these social issues and I'll say civil rights issues,
Sam: It is remarkably different depending on if you're in Washington state or Mississippi or Pennsylvania.
Sam: You know, it's in entirely different worlds in terms of how so many things are handled.
Sam: And, you know, and look, I'm all for federalism in all kinds of different areas.
Sam: It's good to experiment with different policies in different places.
Sam: But I start feeling like that's not the right way to go when you're talking
Sam: about like civil rights.
Todd: Yes, agreed.
Todd: Just like the last time I was on the show, I'm realizing that we've taken a
Todd: much longer tangent off of my original topic than I meant to.
Sam: It's fine.
Todd: I keep notes, so I want to try to get back to what I was, the direction I meant to go.
Sam: Yes.
Todd: But before I do that, correct me if I'm wrong, Um,
Todd: wasn't during the first Trump administration or sometime in the last 10 years,
Todd: didn't the Supreme court roll back some civil rights act protections specifically
Todd: on voting in Southern states. Am I remembering that correctly?
Sam: Look, yes, there have been lots of rollbacks, you know, on the,
Sam: on the, on the voters rights act, the Supreme court took major bites out of it a few years ago.
Sam: There is currently a case pending that potentially, and everybody expects,
Sam: will probably strip all the rest of the power out of the VRA once they rule
Sam: on it in a few months. So, yeah.
Todd: But the reason...
Todd: The reason I asked is the redistricting in Texas, would that have been allowed
Todd: before the Voting Rights Act started getting peeled back?
Sam: Oh, almost certainly not.
Todd: Would that have stood?
Sam: No, no. No.
Todd: Yeah. And for that matter, I'm not sure if the California redistricting would have stood either.
Todd: It's notable yet unsurprising that the DOJ is only going after California for
Todd: their redistricting, which was put to a statewide vote.
Todd: And not the other states, Texas, I think Missouri, maybe there's Ohio,
Todd: a couple others who have done or are trying to do.
Todd: You don't hear the DOJ going after them. It's just California,
Todd: which is unsurprising, but I think notable for its obvious political motivation.
Todd: The direction I actually wanted to go before we got into LGBT issues is,
Todd: you know, I changed my voter registration because at least now I can choose.
Todd: If I'm going to vote Democrat every time I live in Pennsylvania.
Sam: You can help you're not registered.
Todd: Exactly. I can't vote in the primaries, you know, unless there's something else
Todd: on the ballot besides picking the candidates, you know, somewhat,
Todd: I'm never going to vote for a Republican. I can't imagine that changing in the rest of my life.
Todd: So I might as well just join that party and at least be able to participate
Todd: in other, you know, in the springtime rather than just in November.
Todd: So what you were mentioning maybe 10 minutes ago by now of maybe some Democrats
Todd: are taking a look at this and deciding,
Todd: let's let the Republicans fuck everything up. My words, not yours.
Todd: And we'll run on that November next year.
Todd: That worked in 2020 and it lasted two years.
Todd: It is not sustainable. So maybe it'll work in the midterms next year and maybe
Todd: it'll even work in 2028, but it is not sustainable.
Sam: Well, and also more generally, and I think that, you know, the tendency that
Sam: I mentioned before of people who just vote for how are things going?
Sam: If they're good, leave the people in. If they're bad, throw the bums out.
Sam: Results in, you know, just this whipsaw back and forth because,
Sam: you know, okay, let's say everybody's unhappy with the Republicans and votes
Sam: Democrats in. Well, guess what?
Sam: The Democrats can't fix everything in two years or four years anyway.
Sam: So people will still be unhappy. And then they put the Republicans back in because
Sam: now the Democrats failed to fix it.
Todd: They can only slow the damage by taking back the House and the Senate.
Todd: They can't really affect anything until and if they win the White House again.
Todd: And that's the part I'm worried about.
Sam: And even then they're limited because you still have the Supreme Court and you
Sam: still have the filibuster potentially, unless they get rid of that,
Sam: which they probably won't.
Sam: And, you know, so, yeah, our system is intentionally designed to try to slow down rapid change.
Sam: Now, what Trump has figured out how to do is to bust through all those barriers
Sam: and say, I'm going to do it anyway.
Sam: Just stop it. And nobody's stopping it.
Sam: And the question is, and this is dangerous in its own way, like,
Sam: do the Democrats come in and say, well, we're going to do the same damn thing. Screw all the rules.
Sam: We're just going to do things and try to make them stop us. And if the Supreme
Sam: Court says no, we'll say screw you and we'll do whatever.
Sam: And then you basically, you've eliminated all the checks and balances that were
Sam: actually good about the American system.
Sam: And you have a dangerous situation on both sides at that point.
Sam: Or, I mean, and I think this is kind of what Biden's mindset when he came in
Sam: was we have to restore normalcy.
Sam: We have to go back to doing things the way we used to do them.
Sam: And he did that to some degree. And he got much more done than anybody thought
Sam: he would do with that approach, frankly.
Sam: But in the end, because he sort of refused to recognize that the world had changed,
Sam: he left all the doors open for Trump coming back.
Todd: I, I, the, the, my
Todd: pipe dream or fantasy or whatever is we wind up at 2028 with some sort of democratic
Todd: benevolent dictator who will come in and by the similar means as Trump undo
Todd: all the damage and then quickly pivot to Congress to say,
Todd: let's memorialize this into law that it doesn't happen so easily ever again.
Todd: I'm not sure that there's a better way to do it than that.
Todd: And then, you know, that makes me nervous because as much as I favor most Democrat
Todd: policies these days, I am equally, that's not true, not equally.
Todd: I am still a bit uncomfortable with a Democrat having authoritarian desires
Todd: as well. Anyone having authoritarian desires.
Todd: Like it's not the way it was ever supposed to work.
Sam: It's so hard to give up power once it's been taken.
Sam: It has happened in history, but it's relatively rare. And oftentimes it takes
Sam: something, you know, it really is something like,
Sam: okay, we rip apart the Constitution and start over, you know,
Sam: kind of event in order for that to happen, which, you know, has its own dangers.
Todd: Sure. One other note that I made, I don't know, 10, 15 minutes ago is about dealmaking.
Sam: Yes.
Todd: The democrats another reason
Todd: that makes me cynical about the party i and i don't know i don't know whether
Todd: this is my own uninformed bias or if this is demonstrably true my hunch about democrats is that.
Todd: Always willing to compromise when over the last 20, 30 years,
Todd: Republicans have become less and less and less willing to compromise.
Todd: So this latest shutdown, the end of the shutdown deal, I think is the latest example.
Todd: You'll see the memes on social media.
Todd: People will say, how come everyone says this is a Trump-GOP shutdown?
Todd: Why then did it require eight Democratic senators to vote to end it.
Todd: Well, when the government was threatening shutdown during,
Todd: I did shut down during Clinton's, one of Clinton's terms, as I recall now,
Todd: but like Obama and Biden,
Todd: like they were able to head it off or make it last a lot less in duration because
Todd: the Democrats were willing to make deals to say, okay, we don't want this to go on and either do you.
Todd: So we're going to concede some things as a deal to get past the filibuster and
Todd: reopen that. And the Republicans didn't.
Todd: And I don't think they ever will in the foreseeable future.
Todd: So there's no good options, man, because the longer the shutdown would have
Todd: gone on, the more painful it would have been for everyone.
Todd: And I certainly understand the political optics of.
Todd: And flights getting canceled or severely delayed because of shortages in the
Todd: air traffic control system, I understand that that is political damaging for a lot of people.
Todd: Well, as you pointed out, these senators who voted to end the shutdown clearly
Todd: appear to be hand. I wasn't aware of this until you pointed it out.
Todd: But yes, of course, handpicked the vote because they're not facing reelection
Todd: next year and or they're in states that are particularly vulnerable to the most
Todd: damaging aspects of a lingering shutdown.
Todd: But man, they didn't get shit in return for those votes.
Sam: And also, it was just coming off that big election when we talked about.
Todd: Yes.
Sam: The Democrats had momentum. And thank you.
Sam: And all of the polls about the shutdown were that people were blaming the Republicans
Sam: a lot more than the Democrats.
Sam: And you could see the Republicans starting to get nervous.
Sam: You are starting to hear reports of certain Republicans being like,
Sam: OK, maybe we should give them this ACA thing.
Sam: You know, just a handful, just a little bit, just hints. But that was starting to happen.
Sam: You had Donald Trump starting to talk about maybe we should just get rid of
Sam: the filibuster to deal with this, you know, which.
Sam: You know, we've talked on this show before on multiple times about the pros
Sam: and cons of getting rid of the filibuster, but do a lot of, this would give
Sam: a way to let the Republicans do that.
Sam: And then the Democrats can take the benefits of it later, potentially.
Sam: Again, there's debates on that.
Sam: But the bottom line was the Republicans were starting to clearly get nervous
Sam: about the political effects that they were getting because of the shutdown.
Sam: And at that exact moment, that's when these eight Democrats decided,
Sam: okay, now's the time to cave.
Sam: Like, you know, even if you accept the possibility that, okay,
Sam: eventually somebody would cave and do something and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: You had this happen at the exact moment where everything was going the Democrats'
Sam: way in terms of both the elections and the shutdown politics.
Sam: So the timing seemed particularly bad.
Sam: Like, if you'd let it go another month, maybe the Democrats could have actually
Sam: extracted more, you know?
Todd: Yeah well as long as the sentiment remained you know majority people blaming gop for the shutdown,
Todd: then look my daughter's away at college right now and is supposed to fly home
Todd: for thanksgiving but all right i'll just go up and get her if her flight gets
Todd: canceled right but that would that would really ruin a lot of people's holiday
Todd: which is a huge family event across the country right,
Todd: Let the Republicans take the blame for that kind of social disruption.
Todd: Because man, people are still talking.
Todd: The social media discussion that I would see about the Supreme Court justice
Todd: retention here in Pennsylvania, a lot of it was still around COVID lockdowns five years ago.
Todd: There's a small minority of people still holding on to that because they couldn't
Todd: get a haircut or, you know, they couldn't sit at the bar whenever things started to reopen.
Todd: Or it's and right yeah people are like they weren't following the science and
Todd: that's cherry picking right we were policymakers were erring on the side of
Todd: caution because no one knew,
Todd: how the fuck to deal with covid all we knew is that it spread really quickly
Todd: and it killed old people that's all we knew.
Sam: Well and and a key element at the beginning parts
Sam: and and people also i can't i'm
Sam: dumbfounded every time people talk about like early
Sam: covid restrictions and blame them on biden when trump
Sam: was president yeah but but
Sam: but despite that like we also
Sam: we didn't have workable treatments yet we
Sam: didn't have a vaccine yet we didn't have this we didn't have that so and and
Sam: we didn't have good information yet because we were so yes we were we were erring
Sam: on the side of being cautious but also even with perfect knowledge that we have
Sam: today but we even now the knowledge isn't perfect, obviously,
Sam: but even with the better knowledge we have today,
Sam: you know, a lot of those restrictions probably should have been in place.
Sam: They may even have needed to be more stringent than they were or better targeted.
Sam: Some of the things we did were just wrong that we now know.
Sam: Like the quality of masks really does matter. We really should have been talking
Sam: about N95s from the beginning and not these like surgical masks and stuff.
Sam: And it really was truly airborne. So when people put like these plastic barriers
Sam: in between people, that did nothing and in some cases made it worse.
Sam: But we were operating under the best information we had at the time.
Todd: I think best information and even sometimes just reasonable guessing.
Todd: Like, I think if I put up a barrier, that'll reduce transmission.
Todd: I think if I put something over my face, I clear. Yes. And 95.
Todd: Okay. But surgical must be better than just everyone.
Sam: Yes, it was.
Todd: Wide open.
Sam: Flat out. The better the mask, the better. Something is better than nothing.
Sam: Even, even putting your shirt over your mouth is better than nothing.
Sam: But like it but the quality mattered
Sam: a lot to how effective it was and and also
Sam: like i hate to get back into the covet stuff but also a lot of at a certain
Sam: level it protected it it took like an n95 to protect you from other people but
Sam: lower quality masks would protect other people from you unfortunately nobody
Sam: cared about protecting other people from you yeah.
Todd: Well i i i clearly looked at it both ways, right?
Todd: I don't want to catch it, and if I have it, I don't want to give it to anybody
Todd: else. But a lot of people did not feel that way.
Sam: The key being that people were contagious before they would know they had it. Sure.
Todd: Yes.
Sam: Anyway. But your point, getting back to that, is that people still hold grudges
Sam: about those things from years ago.
Todd: Exactly. If the polling would have held and a majority of people blamed the
Todd: GOP for the shutdown and that ruined Thanksgiving for a million families,
Todd: they would fucking remember that next year. So,
Todd: I'm not advocating for, you know, extending the longest government shutdown
Todd: in history by another month plus, but it would have sent a message.
Todd: Probably, I don't know, we'll never know, but maybe a stronger message than,
Todd: okay, let's end out the safest eight Republican or the safest eight senators
Todd: to seven or eight, whatever the number was, Sam, to wrap it up.
Todd: Okay. That's the whole reason, by the way, I'm glad you circled back.
Todd: The whole reason I wanted to talk about shutdown today is the Democrats had
Todd: that momentum and a week later just threw it out the window.
Todd: Like, okay, there, we don't need it.
Sam: Yeah, I mean, it seemed like such malpractice.
Sam: I mean, I have read a few things of people arguing the opposite case,
Sam: why now this was the time. I just haven't been convinced.
Todd: No, I'm also not convinced. It's they're, they're, they're playing by the old rules.
Todd: This is, it's, I don't know. I can't, the sport I follow most closely is the NFL, right?
Todd: So I don't know. I don't know if you follow pro football at all.
Todd: Okay. Well, a couple of years ago, they changed the rules for kickoffs to reduce injuries, right?
Todd: So they don't have 22 people running towards one another full speed.
Todd: They changed the rules to, yeah, to make that one play less exciting,
Todd: but like you're not Hopefully you're, you're not sending as many men to an early
Todd: grave because of repeated head injury. Right.
Sam: Right.
Todd: Okay. Those rules changed a couple of years ago. You can't kick off the old way anymore.
Todd: And the Democrats are still trying to run towards each other at full speed when
Todd: like, that's not the way you do it. That's not the rule anymore.
Todd: Now that I'm saying it out loud, Sam, I regret my choice. This is a horrible
Todd: metaphor, but like the rules have changed and Democrats are playing by the old
Todd: rules. I don't mean the rules that are institutionalized into law.
Todd: I mean, like the traditions, the customary way of governing the country.
Todd: Trump threw it out the window the first time. Biden tried to bring it back.
Todd: Trump threw it back harder and faster the second time around.
Todd: It's like those days are gone.
Todd: They need to be more cutthroat. And the final thing, this is just more about
Todd: me than about issues, but the big thing that did it for me to switch from libertarian to Democrat.
Todd: And the reason more and more that I've been voting Democrat,
Todd: like I have nothing against billionaires whatsoever. I would love to be a billionaire.
Sam: I would love to too.
Todd: Yes. I don't think I have the combination of skills and motivation and luck
Todd: to become a billionaire at this point in my life.
Sam: Yeah.
Todd: Fine. I have nothing against people becoming billionaires. But the trouble I have now is,
Todd: one party way more than the other willing to capitulate to a very small number
Todd: of extremely wealthy people to get exactly what they want, to hoard more wealth
Todd: that they will never, ever live long enough to spend.
Todd: They could spend as much as they can and give it to their heirs for the next
Todd: three generations, and there'd still be a billion dollars left in 200 years.
Todd: And yet, their political approach is to dismantle social programs that benefit
Todd: the greater good, which in my opinion, benefit everybody.
Todd: Because if people are not worried about paying the rent, about feeding the families,
Todd: about keeping the lights on and keeping the house warm, if they're not worried
Todd: about any of that, you're taking away the desperation that leads to crime.
Sam: Right.
Todd: Well, the Republicans run on crime way more than the Democrats do,
Todd: but their solution is more policing, right? More brute force.
Todd: You want crime to come down, take away people's incentive of to do crime in the first place.
Todd: I'm not naive, Sam, that's never going to eliminate crime, but there's a lot
Todd: of crime that happens because people are at the end of the road.
Todd: They're like, I need something to eat. I need somewhere to live.
Todd: So I can't find a job or I can't hold onto a job or, you know,
Todd: because of some physical or mental illness they're incapable of and they resort to.
Todd: Crimes and they wind up addicted and who knows what else. So,
Todd: all right, let's give the least among us, take away that desperation and that
Todd: need, and let's set a bare minimum.
Todd: The country is never going to let you starve.
Todd: We're never going to let you go bankrupt because of medical bills.
Todd: We're never going to let you freeze in the wintertime or die of heat stroke
Todd: in the summertime. Let's set that floor.
Todd: Crime will go down and stay down. There's only one
Todd: party advocating for that and very poorly by the
Todd: way as well i i i
Todd: until recently i was a believer that you need those kind of centrist democrats
Todd: you need a like a bill clinton al gore kind of democrat and i really don't believe
Todd: that so much anymore and it's partly because you see people like mom donnie
Todd: and aoc and still bernie sanders today resonating,
Todd: I wonder what would have happened if Sanders won the primary instead of Clinton
Todd: in 2016. He was appealing to a lot of the same people that Trump was.
Sam: So I was doing the election analysis back then too.
Sam: And, you know, in all the matchups where they were, you know,
Sam: looking at Sanders versus Trump and comparing it to Clinton versus Trump,
Sam: Clinton did do better in the end against Donald Trump.
Todd: Is that so?
Sam: Okay. You know, and so I remember looking through that primary process because,
Sam: you know, Sanders kept making the argument that I'll do better against Trump,
Sam: but the polling just did not back that up.
Sam: Clinton did do better than Sanders in those head to head matchups with Trump
Sam: in all the critical states.
Sam: Now, that's not to say that the dynamics of it might not have changed after he got the nomination.
Sam: It might have. But it's really hard to judge those counterfactuals.
Sam: What is true along the lines that you said is there were a lot of Sanders support,
Sam: and I shouldn't say a lot, there were enough that they were measurable and made
Sam: a difference in the final result.
Sam: There were a bunch of Sanders supporters who either went over to Trump directly
Sam: for the general election because they were like, I hate Hillary so much,
Sam: I'm going to vote for Trump instead.
Sam: And there were a bunch of Sanders supporters who just stayed home and didn't
Sam: vote in the general election.
Sam: And I forget the exact numbers, but those two groups together,
Sam: Sanders supporters who stayed home and Sanders supporters who went for Trump, they added up to it.
Sam: A small but significant percentage. I remember, I remember, and I interviewed
Sam: on this show, I attended the 2016 Washington State Democratic Convention.
Sam: And one of the people I talked to there was a Sanders delegate to the state
Sam: convention, who after all the proceedings were over, like a bunch of us went
Sam: to dinner and he was at that dinner.
Sam: And I've told the show on the, I've told this story on the show before,
Sam: but not for many years now.
Sam: He, he got out of, we were at dinner after the convention.
Sam: Sanders had definitively lost. Clinton had gotten like the, the delegates from
Sam: Washington state. This was not a surprise.
Sam: Everybody knew this well in advance of the state convention.
Sam: He opened his backpack, pulled out a MAGA hat and put it on his head.
Sam: Well, since she lost, here we go.
Sam: And I'm like, what the hell, dude?
Todd: Yeah.
Sam: Like, you know, completely different from a policy point of view,
Sam: but somewhat similar attitude of like, we got to break the system kind of stuff.
Sam: But I think to your point, though, like I also was always like,
Sam: you know, hey, the centrists are the way to go.
Sam: The centrists know how to compromise. We can get like moderate support.
Sam: We can win that way. and anyway incremental change
Sam: is usually better than dramatic change anyway because
Sam: you get backlash to the dramatic change and all kinds
Sam: of things get broken and you're more likely to screw things up
Sam: with the dramatic change because you can accidentally do
Sam: something and have all kinds of unintended consequences and so I was very much
Sam: on like go for the moderates do gradual incremental change and let's just keep
Sam: making things better over time but right now and you know and I'd always said,
Sam: some of the progressive goals,
Sam: hey, those are good goals in the long term,
Sam: but trying to jump straight to that would be a disaster.
Sam: But now at this point, I'm like, look, I'm looking at where the energy is.
Sam: I'm looking at where people seem to have some fight in them.
Sam: And it's not the centrists. The centrists
Sam: are just like, look like they're directionless, look like they are,
Sam: you know, even if they got in power, like you said, they, at best,
Sam: they'd be trying to restore us to where we were a few years ago and probably
Sam: do a half-assed job at that.
Sam: And I'm being more and more convinced that, like.
Sam: The folks who want to make more radical changes, even if they don't succeed
Sam: in making the changes as radical as they would like to be, are more likely to
Sam: get directionally correct results.
Todd: Yeah.
Sam: If they can get into power. I mean, and I am not ideologically bound on any of this.
Sam: I am willing to see, like in the Sanders-Clinton example I just gave,
Sam: if you show me 2028 polls that show your centrist type person who's trying to
Sam: appeal to the middle and blah,
Sam: blah, blah is actually got a better shot at winning against whoever the Republican
Sam: nominee is than someone who I feel that I personally resonate more with their attitude and policies.
Sam: I want to, I've said this like show after show for the last few weeks,
Sam: I want to win more than I want to be right.
Sam: And if evidence shows me that, you know, the approach that I prefer is not the
Sam: winning approach, I'm going to change my mind.
Todd: Yeah i i i agree with
Todd: you with the caveat that i've
Todd: come to realize opposition lasts for one election cycle yeah and i'm i mean
Todd: like a two-year you know from presidential to midterms like opposition will
Todd: get you two years if you don't have an appealing policy that you follow through
Todd: and execute well and this is.
Sam: And this is part of the problem too yeah i agree with you completely.
Sam: You need to have a positive agenda as well.
Sam: Uh, I've said on the show over and over again, you also have to have,
Sam: have strong opinions and defend them is my view.
Sam: Like you can't just shy away from immigration or LGBTQ issues because you think
Sam: something might be unpopular.
Sam: You have to like, you have to work on, you know, convince people that you are
Sam: right and the other folks are wrong, you know, and do that strongly.
Sam: But, and again, if I'm proved wrong by polls, I will change that view.
Sam: But, you know, the thing is, even if you get into power,
Sam: there are institutional obstacles, things like the filibuster,
Sam: things like the courts, where even if you come in fully intending to pass your
Sam: agenda, you may be blocked.
Sam: And so that's where we come into, do you go full Donald Trump mode with,
Sam: screw the way you're supposed to do it, I'm just going to do things and make them stop me. So...
Sam: I think we've about exhausted this topic. Let's take a quick break.
Sam: And when we come back, we'll pick one more thing to talk about through the end. Here we go.
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Sam: Okay, we are back. So, Todd, did you have a third topic in mind? If not, I got a list.
Todd: It's sort of a combination of topics, but I just wanted to add one more button
Todd: on the last topic we were discussing.
Todd: I listen to a podcast called The Dollop. Are you aware of it?
Sam: The Dollop. No, I am not. I'm going to look it up while you talk.
Todd: There are a billion podcasts.
Sam: I have something to say about that before the end, too. So go ahead.
Todd: Okay. This is, I call these book report podcasts.
Todd: The, this is one of those podcasts where the host reads kind of a historical
Todd: summary that he's done after research and he and his comedian friend sort of,
Todd: have fun joking about it as they go through.
Todd: These are very progressive liberal leaning comedians who host the dollop.
Todd: They did one in the last month or so, a two parter, maybe a three parter.
Sam: Dave anthony and gareth reynolds.
Todd: Yes okay.
Sam: I have the right one there are actually several podcasts with dollop in the name but.
Todd: Really that's the right one yeah yeah this yeah this
Todd: is dave anthony gareth reynolds they did a multi-part episode
Todd: maybe two or three-parter about bill clinton a month or so ago and it is it
Todd: was eye-opening because i remember all of this stuff happening because like
Todd: the first election i voted in was bill clinton 1992 that's the
Todd: That's the first presidential election after I turned 18.
Todd: You and I were at Carnegie Mellon. I drove home with my buddy because I never
Todd: changed my registration to whatever district that is in Oakland.
Todd: I drove home to Beaver County to vote that day.
Todd: And so I was an adult through the eight-year Bill Clinton two terms.
Todd: I had forgotten all of this stuff. Whenever you sort of put it in historical
Todd: context, the way these guys were summarizing it, Clinton was,
Todd: and like I remember his presidency, but they were going back to his early political
Todd: days and governorship and other failed campaigns.
Todd: His entire career was triangulation. He was never a liberal.
Todd: He was never a liberal. He would try to read whatever way the political winds
Todd: were blowing, and that became his stump.
Todd: And that's how he tried to win, and that became his policy. And it's how he
Todd: wound up working together with— And nevertheless.
Sam: He was painted as the most liberal, socialist, communist that could ever possibly exist.
Todd: Yeah. Well, and this is a different topic maybe for if I come on a third time someday.
Todd: The perception versus reality of what is actually leftist politics in the United
Todd: States, we've never really given it a chance, certainly not in the White House.
Todd: I think, okay, let me take that back. I don't know, FDR, perhaps.
Todd: We haven't given it a chance in my lifetime.
Todd: And everything that FDR achieved, the Republicans have been hell-bent on undoing
Todd: all of it for the last 60, 70 years. So, different topic.
Sam: I didn't mean to get on this whole thing. If you needed to summarize the Republican
Sam: agenda, it is undo the New Deal.
Sam: Well, undo the New Deal and undo the civil rights movement.
Todd: Yeah. Yeah. So I'm bringing that up just because Bill Clinton was perhaps the
Todd: most successful Democrat socialist of my lifetime.
Todd: I'm sorry, socialist. I said socialist. That's a centrist.
Sam: Yes.
Todd: The most successful Democrat centrist of my lifetime.
Todd: In the end, it didn't help us. You know,
Todd: I think that his administration capitulated and retreated for most of his eight
Todd: years to a point that it's going to take twice as long to ever recover.
Todd: You know, and like I said before, I think socially we've made a lot of gains in that.
Todd: You're right to point out that I'm not thinking about the last five or 10 years
Todd: of maybe regression on some gay rights issues and other things.
Todd: But in that, there's much better social policy today, I think, than in the 80s and 90s.
Todd: But he's a good example of what's made me more supportive of more progressive
Todd: Democrats today is we've done this at the expense of blue-collar working people.
Todd: And for different reasons, well, for some similar reasons and for some different
Todd: reasons, That's why Sanders was appealing to a lot of the same people as Trump.
Todd: And the only other button I wanted to put on that is like, sometimes small numbers
Todd: are insignificant and sometimes small numbers really fucking matter.
Todd: What was it? Like 50,000 votes spread across Pennsylvania, Michigan,
Todd: Wisconsin. That was the difference between Clinton winning and Trump winning.
Sam: Yes.
Todd: Sometimes small numbers really matter. And that's a case where they really matter.
Todd: So, like, if Bernie wasn't polling as well as Clinton in the aggregate,
Todd: but he was polling better in a handful of counties in Pennsylvania and Michigan
Todd: and Wisconsin, that's all the Democrats needed to beat Trump in 2016.
Sam: Right.
Todd: We'll never know. The last topic I wanted to talk about, because this is what
Todd: we were talking about the first time I was here, was tariffs.
Todd: And part of it is, if you want to hear, I can share a little bit of what I've
Todd: been experiencing in my professional life for the last several months.
Todd: But part of it is I really just don't know.
Todd: And I don't know whether you know or whether Yvonne would have known if he were
Todd: here today. I don't know.
Todd: Don't know what the quantifiable effects have been so far. I know what the effects
Todd: have been in my industry. So I'll start there.
Todd: I sell equipment for utility scale solar power. These are the giant,
Todd: you know, 2000, 5000 acre projects that you see more and more all over the country.
Todd: They started out, they were very common in the Southwest and California and
Todd: then in Texas, but you can build these everywhere.
Todd: Now copper aluminum semiconductors
Todd: a lot of things that impact my industry and many other industries
Todd: as well they're way up this year
Todd: and i think some of that is just commodities pricing that's
Todd: going to happen anyway but i think it's very telling that if you look at the
Todd: cost curves for those commodities the spike started happening this spring spring
Todd: of this year and hasn't come back down the one that baffles me is steel steel's
Todd: kind of where it was a year ago maybe even a little bit lower despite obvious,
Todd: well-publicized steel tariffs.
Todd: I don't know what to make of that. I also don't know what the global steel industry looks like.
Todd: Perhaps there's enough capacity in the United States to meet demand that the
Todd: tariffs have had less of an effect.
Todd: But I know part of the effect on aluminum and copper has been,
Todd: oh, well, we're shielded from competition, so American producers can afford
Todd: to raise their prices now. And they did.
Todd: But semiconductors is a different story. Almost nobody makes semiconductors in the U.S. at all.
Todd: Certainly not the consumer-grade stuff that goes into everything that you and
Todd: I are talking to each other on right now.
Todd: I don't think any of this comes from the U.S. It's all coming from South Korea,
Todd: Taiwan, China, somewhere else.
Todd: And you start to see these media reports.
Todd: I might have wrote this to you in email that people are estimating the average,
Todd: I don't know if it's the average family the average taxpayer is going to pay
Todd: somewhere between like $2,000, $3,000 more since the tariffs began through the end of next year.
Todd: That's sort of the extrapolation if tariffs don't change.
Todd: That's how much it's been affecting consumer products and groceries and whatever
Todd: else goes into these kind of calculations.
Todd: But man, I am treading water because this is not my area of expertise.
Todd: And when I'm consuming news media, this is not where I spend
Todd: a lot of time examining data i know the anecdotes
Todd: that are getting reported so i could like yeah in my industry yes it
Todd: has made things more expensive and it's made some
Todd: projects delay or cancel because they no longer pencil out there's no longer
Todd: a predictable positive return on investment for the investors and so it's cheaper
Todd: for them to fold up and cancel rather than to try to make it work thankfully
Todd: in my industry utility scale solar power,
Todd: Tariffs and even Big Beautiful Bill have been mostly inconsequential.
Sam: Okay.
Todd: And so, like tariffs, but also I want to talk about the tax credits that have
Todd: helped renewable energy grow so rapidly for the last 20 years.
Todd: Trump pitched this as a repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Todd: But that's not what it was. The Inflation Reduction Act added some additional
Todd: incentives to establish apprenticeship programs.
Todd: If you're a contractor building renewable energy projects, it set incentives,
Todd: tax credit type incentives to reshore manufacturing for all the capital equipment
Todd: and components that would go into wind and battery and solar manufacturing.
Todd: Those, by the way, haven't been touched.
Todd: If you are manufacturing inverters or solar panels or the racking,
Todd: like what my company makes, you still have those tax credits today.
Todd: They were untouched and unchanged by the big, beautiful bill.
Todd: But it wasn't a repeal of the IRA. It was a repeal of all of the investment
Todd: tax credits that go back to George W. Bush administration. These have been in
Todd: place for 20 or more than 20 years, and they're all going away.
Todd: I am grateful, personally, for my ability to make a living and for everyone
Todd: in my part of the industry.
Todd: I'm grateful that Trump didn't try to do this in 2017 because the industry wasn't
Todd: ready for the tax credit repeal back then. But I think we are now.
Todd: Um, and I can see it by the sustained demand for the stuff that we sell.
Todd: Beyond the safe harbor deadlines of the end of this year and then also July
Todd: 4th next year, which we can get into the details of that if you're curious.
Todd: But just, you know, after that, developers start losing the ability to recognize
Todd: those investment tax credits that have been around mostly since George W. Bush.
Todd: The one additional investment tax credit that the Inflation Reduction Act added
Todd: was if you could demonstrate that you crossed minimum threshold of providing
Todd: domestic content to build your project,
Todd: you would get a bonus 10% investment tax credit in addition to the 30% that
Todd: has been in place for like 20 years.
Sam: Okay.
Todd: Trump repealed all of it. Not just the 10 that came from the IRA, repealed all of it.
Todd: So after July 4th next year, if you haven't demonstrated substantial construction
Todd: work on a project, then you have to fund that project without tax credits.
Todd: And I'm happy to report that many developers are still asking us to quote projects
Todd: that won't be safe Harvard, meaning the industry is now ready to finance and
Todd: build and commission and generate power.
Sam: Without the incentive.
Todd: You know, looking out a decade, without these tax credits.
Todd: So, you know, the cynic would, and maybe I'm among them, the cynic would say,
Todd: well, you know, why do you keep getting them?
Todd: But you keep getting them for the same reason that every business everywhere
Todd: claims tax credits because they're available, right?
Todd: That's why. But this wouldn't have worked,
Todd: in 2017 because today even with
Todd: tariffs even in the united states with our labor market you can
Todd: build new solar power generation for about a dollar
Todd: a watt you couldn't do that in 2017 it was probably i don't know three or four
Todd: dollars a watt and that doesn't sound like a big deal but you know if you want
Todd: to build a 500 megawatt the 500 million watt project there's a huge difference
Todd: between half a billion and two billion dollars like one of those is not financially viable.
Todd: So now, today, it is. I mean, economies of scale and efficiencies of the equipment
Todd: and cost reductions that have come from, yes, economies of scale,
Todd: but also just greater efficiency in manufacturing and construction.
Todd: Yeah, my industry, thank goodness, is ready for all of this,
Todd: but the tariffs are baffling to me because I know the effect that they have
Todd: had to our bank account and to my industry, but I don't know.
Todd: There's a lot of preamble to what i wanted to ask and talk about sam
Todd: is like are you paying closer attention to the broader
Todd: data than i am and like what what have been the
Todd: real effect is it hasn't i have to admit hasn't been as catastrophic as i was
Todd: afraid it was going to be when i was here in may but also we he rolled back
Todd: right taco the taco acronym trump always chickens out came from trump deciding
Todd: i'm going to roll back these ridiculous tariffs that i announced in april so i think so first.
Sam: Of all a caveat, Ivan would be able to speak better to this than I am.
Sam: So maybe we can ask him to talk a little bit about tariffs again next week.
Sam: But from things that, from my understanding,
Sam: First of all, like the total amount that it would affect the average family
Sam: number that you gave, you said like $2,000 to $3,000.
Sam: The most recent I've heard is actually a little bit under $2,000.
Sam: But here's the thing. This number has kept changing.
Sam: And I've heard different numbers from different people because the uncertainty is so huge, right?
Sam: Because they have kept changing. I mean, I don't think a single week has gone
Sam: by since the big tariff announcement where there haven't been adjustments and changes to tariffs,
Sam: sometimes fairly significant ones for one country or another or global or whatever.
Sam: And so it's still changing all the time.
Sam: So that makes it really hard to assess that.
Sam: In terms of what's actually happened so far and what people are feeling,
Sam: my understanding is that in the commercial areas, lots of companies.
Sam: First of all, stocked up on inventory to try to get all loaded up before the tariffs hit.
Sam: And so there was that that slowly tapered down
Sam: but also lots of companies are trying
Sam: at least initially to eat
Sam: some of the tariffs themselves and take it out of their
Sam: profit margins to avoid hitting the end customer and there's a question of how
Sam: long that will last right like part of that is just like we're not going to
Sam: double the cost of product x overnight but maybe we'll ramp at 10 percent now
Sam: and another 10 percent in a few months and another 10 percent in a few months,
Sam: and eventually we'll get to recouping the whole cost of the tariff.
Sam: Or maybe we'll, to some degree, accept a slightly smaller profit margin for a while.
Sam: Maybe that's not forever, but maybe we'll accept that for a bit.
Sam: So basically, there have been a bunch of these things that have helped cushion
Sam: the sort of consumer level impact of a lot of these things.
Sam: Having said that, if you look at specific products, you are seeing high impacts in specific areas.
Sam: One that Yvonne has mentioned on the show more than a few times is the price
Sam: of the bag of coffee he usually gets, which is some premium brand that he gets,
Sam: of course, of beans, has like doubled.
Sam: Since the beginning of the year that's a significant
Sam: change for that product now it's
Sam: not the most expensive product in the world like you know i don't know the actual
Sam: numbers but it's like you know 20 bucks instead of 10 bucks or something which
Sam: adds up over time but it's not quite the same as you know your your rent or
Sam: mortgage doubling right in terms of how it affects your life.
Sam: There are some other areas I under, I believe toys have, have been increasing
Sam: fairly dramatically there, but it's very spotty.
Sam: It's like on a product by product basis, has it been affected and how much?
Sam: Um, so, you know, and so people talked about how they have seen effects at the
Sam: grocery stores, but that's also impacted of, you know, well,
Sam: but what about like eggs are
Sam: still down from their all-time high even though
Sam: they're up from their low right their recent low yeah
Sam: and so people remember the high price and
Sam: compare to that uh for eggs specifically on
Sam: the other hand i believe beef is up you know
Sam: so it really is like it differs on
Sam: the product differs based on how much the industry has
Sam: the ability to buffer in the first place also people
Sam: are are sort of hedging and trying to average over time because because they
Sam: have kept changing and you don't know what's going on you know you try to you
Sam: know do what you have to do but not more because it could change next week you
Sam: know and so this is another one of those things where i think you're right like.
Sam: And I believe when I was on, when you were on last, but I've mentioned other
Sam: times, there's this thing of, you know, the anchor effect they talk about in psychology.
Sam: People, when these first started coming aboard, everybody was talking about
Sam: the worst case scenario.
Sam: What happens if Donald Trump imposes these crazy high tariffs and keeps them on forever?
Sam: And so people talked about these massive scenarios where you'd have empty shelves
Sam: and the prices of the things you could get would be double and it would be like
Sam: catastrophic across the board.
Sam: Well, the worst case scenario has not happened.
Sam: You do have taco over and over and over again.
Sam: And you have the tariffs are actually more like Swiss cheese.
Sam: We talked about from the beginning, like, don't look at the raw level that's
Sam: being advertised. Look at the exceptions that get put in place,
Sam: because Donald Trump is also out here handing out exceptions for companies that give him favors.
Sam: You know, famously, like, you know, Apple gave him that little crystal thing
Sam: and a promise of more manufacturing in the U.S.
Sam: That they had probably planned anyway, but he promised a bunch of stuff.
Sam: And so they got some exceptions. So iPhone prices have not doubled.
Sam: You know, as, as one example. And so it's, there's this Swiss cheese effect
Sam: that every, every individual product is different.
Sam: Sometimes within a product category, some companies are different than other
Sam: companies because one got an exception and one did not.
Sam: And so what's actually happened is a lot less than the worst case,
Sam: but it's still not nothing.
Sam: I mean, like 2000 bucks a month average for everybody is still,
Sam: you know, that that's going to hurt a bunch of people.
Sam: And the more time goes on, the more they're going to feel it.
Sam: And yes, it's not as bad as it could have been.
Sam: And so maybe, you know, a bunch of people are like, well, you know,
Sam: they said it was going to be this and that didn't happen. Well, they're right.
Sam: You know, the worst case scenario didn't happen. But that's not to say that
Sam: what is actually going on isn't still bad and isn't unnecessary damage that
Sam: could have been avoided outright, you know?
Sam: And so I think part of the messaging case on it, I mean, again,
Sam: going back to everybody doing the thumbs up, thumbs down based on how they're
Sam: doing personally, you know, when we get to the election, we're going to see
Sam: how people are feeling, you know, do they feel bad or not?
Todd: Yeah. I, you know,
Todd: I'm clear about where I stand politically. I'm also glad that,
Todd: and I often say Trump whenever it's sort of Trump in collaboration with Congress.
Sam: Right.
Todd: In this case, you could say Trump. I am glad Trump didn't wreck the economy
Todd: with his reckless, in my opinion, horribly misguided tariff policy.
Todd: And I don't think it's overstatement to say horribly misguided.
Todd: He was imposing blanket tariffs on any import from any country.
Todd: And, okay, if the purpose of tariffs is to give protection to domestic manufacturing,
Todd: then why the hell would you tariff coffee at all? You can't grow coffee here.
Todd: Why would you tariff pineapples or diamonds?
Todd: You know, stuff that you just can't grow or dig up here. The other,
Todd: the one example that I recall, and I have to admit what you said earlier,
Todd: the tariff policy keeps changing.
Todd: So I'm not sure if this is true today, but it was true over the summer.
Todd: It was more affordable to buy a car imported from Europe or Asia that was assembled
Todd: there than a car that was assembled in the United States.
Todd: Because, yes, we're not tariffing cars assembled in the United States,
Todd: but we're tariffing the parts that are coming from Canada or Mexico or Asia or Europe.
Todd: And that made the American-made cars more expensive than just buy a fucking
Todd: Volkswagen or buy a Subaru.
Todd: And what's the benefit of a tariff policy that winds up hurting the American
Todd: manufacturing that you're allegedly protecting?
Todd: I don't know if that got fixed or rebalanced or what, But I'm like,
Todd: that kind of shit doesn't make sense. And it also doesn't get reported.
Todd: So, and, you know, not everyone is buying a car every year. So they may never
Todd: notice that impact. Or even if you're buying a car this year,
Todd: the last time you bought a car, it might have been three or five or 10 years ago.
Sam: Right.
Todd: You don't have any basis of comparison, you know.
Todd: Yeah, I guess it could have been worse. It wasn't. Part of it was taco.
Todd: Part of it was, like you say, companies, including my previous and current employer,
Todd: deciding to absorb as much of that as we could and still be a profitable business.
Todd: My last company really relied on nearly 100% Chinese supply chain.
Todd: And we were not able to pivot quickly enough when those tariffs went from 20
Todd: to 40 to 65 to 145 or wherever they landed.
Todd: We just quit importing until things changed, you know, which caused a loss of
Todd: business and a lot of disruption for some of our customers. But I don't know.
Todd: The other choice was, you know, sell at a loss or ask our customers to spend
Todd: more. Like neither one of those are very appealing to either party.
Todd: I don't mean political party I mean either party in that transaction I am finally
Todd: after two and a half two hours starting to lose my train of thought Sam but
Todd: yeah I had tariff on the agenda because I'm like okay let's follow that thread
Todd: from the first time I was on the show,
Todd: sounds good well I'm running out of steam man maybe we should go to your list.
Sam: Well we can start to wrap it up we've been going long enough I will mention
Sam: before I start the close up the show stuff. Um,
Sam: The one story we did not talk about significantly are the latest Epstein things,
Sam: which started to move again after government reopened.
Sam: And I guess that's one possible Democratic rationale for let's go ahead and
Sam: get reopened is to break that logjam.
Sam: We may talk about it next week. I'm not going to talk about it extensively now,
Sam: other than to say there's been a lot of news this week with the discharge petition
Sam: getting enough signatures and a vote scheduled for next week.
Sam: And meanwhile, the House Democrats released a handful of emails they'd gotten
Sam: from the Epstein estate.
Sam: And in response to that, the Republicans said, those are cherry-picked.
Sam: Here's 20,000 of those emails that you can go look at, see more context.
Sam: And people have been pouring through those emails and finding all kinds of interesting
Sam: stuff, not just in what the Democrats released, but in the 20,000 the Republicans released.
Sam: And, you know, and it all looks bad.
Sam: I mean, which is to be expected from, you know, anything coming out of Epstein,
Sam: but it's specifically a lot of it looks bad for Trump and he seems to be freaking out.
Sam: And, And, you know, the Republicans who voted for the discharge petition,
Sam: he pressured them really hard to rescind that and take it off.
Sam: And they seem to have just doubled down.
Sam: He's fighting with several of them. And anyway, that thing seems to be heating up.
Sam: We'll have more on that with the vote on the law to sort of compel release of
Sam: more documents next week.
Sam: Even if it passes the House, of course, it has to go through to the Senate.
Sam: It potentially has to survive a veto, all kinds of stuff. So this will play
Sam: out over a long time. But it's...
Sam: You know, it's looking messier and messier and messier for Donald Trump.
Sam: I will have to mention of all of the things, the one that's getting the most
Sam: traction in social media in
Sam: the last 24 hours is the one email where Epstein's brother asks Epstein.
Sam: Have you heard this, Todd?
Todd: I think I know where you're going.
Sam: Yes. Okay. Epstein's brother asks Epstein if he thinks that Vladimir Putin has
Sam: copies of the pictures and video of Donald Trump giving Bill Clinton a blowjob.
Sam: Now, it actually says Bubba, but everyone knows who Bubba is,
Sam: right? You know, now I am not even immediately thinking that this is real.
Sam: Like it could have been a joke. Like if you look at the context of the emails,
Sam: it could easily have been a joke. I agree.
Sam: But it's still hilarious. People are making jokes about it. People are making memes about it.
Sam: People are saying that both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump should be asked about it.
Sam: People are saying that whether it's true or not, Bill Clinton should just come
Sam: out and say it is true because that would be funny.
Todd: And you know you know,
Todd: This was on my mind. I didn't want to bring it up. I was going to maybe bring it up in a more vague way.
Todd: But since you broke the seal, it's ironic to me that the thing that might be
Todd: the most politically damaging to Trump of all of the nonsense that he's been
Todd: caught doing and supporters have forgiven him or look the other way.
Todd: The one thing might be this consensual
Todd: adult activity yes in in
Todd: a sea of pedophilia right they because
Todd: you could see some you could see some talking heads starting to
Todd: raise the the concept of well
Todd: you know 15's almost 18 they girls look
Todd: older now yes you know 15's barely legal
Todd: megan kelly said 15's barely legal which it fucking
Todd: is not i have a 16 year old it is
Todd: not barely legal it's way off
Todd: and everyone knows that right but like people are
Todd: jumping to his defense but i think there's a lot more people who will not forgive
Todd: him for number one a perceived perceptibly gay sex act and number two giving
Todd: pleasure to bill clinton of all people that's the thing that.
Todd: It will be forgiven the least that you did gay stuff to make Bill feel good.
Todd: It's like a double whammy that he's never going to win MAGA back,
Todd: if it's true. And I agree with you.
Todd: The context of that email, so you can kind of dissect it, ironically,
Todd: the way that Bill Clinton may have on the stand once upon a time.
Todd: The way it's written is not, oh, I wonder if Vladimir Putin has a photo of Trump
Todd: blowing Bubba. Does he have the photo?
Sam: Right.
Todd: There's a difference between a photo and the photo. The photo suggests to me
Todd: that there is such a photo.
Todd: And then it raises the other questions of like all of these creeps, you know,
Todd: taking advantage of these poor girls that Epstein rounded up for them must have
Todd: known that this is illegal and amoral and awful.
Todd: And you never want people to find out about how do they ever consent to photography or videography?
Todd: Well, it makes me think that they didn't consent. And this is Epstein's way of carrying favor.
Sam: That's been the rumor all along, is that he had hidden cameras everywhere and
Sam: basically was compiling blackmail on all of these people.
Sam: And that was the whole deal. And some people add to that, oh,
Sam: and he was sharing those pictures with foreign intelligence services.
Sam: There hasn't been evidence of any of this publicly but that's the speculation,
Sam: and yeah and the the whole thing is donald trump is just the way he is behaving
Sam: is not the way you behave if everything is innocuous if everything is innocuous
Sam: and you're innocent you say go ahead and release it all you'll see there's nothing there he he.
Todd: Never misses an opportunity to respond to a reporter, even if it's just some
Todd: stream of consciousness bullshit that he's making up on his feet that, you know, isn't true,
Todd: He's running away from microphones lately, which is uncharacteristic for him.
Todd: And I know I could see that. I feel that I'm smiling. This is not fun, right?
Sam: It's the underlying acts here are horrific.
Todd: They are. They are horrific.
Sam: Not necessarily the consensual Bill Clinton one, to be clear.
Sam: If they decided to do that, it is consensual. Fine.
Sam: Fine. Good on them. No, but the underage women.
Todd: What I'm worried about, Sam, is because the context of, yeah,
Todd: if that's real and if they consented to do that, they probably consented to
Todd: do it in a room with one or two children who were not there consensually.
Todd: So that's the that's the part.
Sam: Of it and another part of this that was made clear to me by some of the survivor's
Sam: statements a few weeks ago is that in addition to people who actually,
Sam: participated per se there are most likely hundreds of people who were present
Sam: and knew what was happening and did nothing.
Todd: Yeah. They were there for the networking and the food and the drink and maybe
Todd: also actual consensual sex among actual legal adults.
Sam: Maybe they were there for all that.
Todd: But they knew there were children there.
Sam: They knew there were children there. But in some of these cases that have been
Sam: reported, there was more detail on the Matt Gates one, which is entirely different
Sam: and did not involve him or whatever.
Sam: But the situation there was he was having sex with the underage girl in a room
Sam: in the middle of the party.
Sam: Like everybody was all around him. It wasn't like they went off to a bedroom.
Sam: They were right there in the middle doing it.
Sam: So there were like dozens of
Sam: witnesses, you know, of exactly what was happening. You know, it's just,
Sam: It's just Donald Trump's reaction is just oozing guilt everywhere.
Sam: These things, even, I think this, honestly, I would be surprised if he wasn't
Sam: actually involved in the activities with underage girls.
Sam: I mean, there's been enough circulating that points in that direction circumstantially
Sam: that it would not be surprising in the slightest.
Sam: But even if he didn't, I think it's absolutely clear. He knew in detail what was happening.
Todd: Oh, there's, there's been so much smoke around this fire over the years.
Todd: He's talked about, you know, his friend, Jeffrey Epstein likes him young.
Todd: He, he's on record talking about the Miss teen universe or whatever,
Todd: whatever underage beauty pageant that he bought.
Todd: He's like, but you know, the nice thing about that is I can just,
Todd: I, it's my pageant. I own it. So I can just walk right into the dressing room.
Sam: Yep.
Todd: Dude dude's a creep and it's getting harder
Todd: and harder to ignore that even
Todd: if you're a supporter you know so yeah i
Todd: wouldn't be surprised either but you know he deserves his i don't
Todd: know i don't want to call it a day in court literally but i mean if there's
Todd: a lot of raw data coming out right now like the blowjob email right we we don't
Todd: know what's real what's corroborated what's provable and so forth but 20 000
Todd: emails is a pretty big set of data and i wonder what kind of patterns and trends
Todd: and collaboration you're going to find in all of that what.
Sam: They're talking about eventually releasing like.
Todd: Sure this.
Sam: This is from epstein's estate handing stuff over to a subpoena this is not even
Sam: the doj investigation stuff not even.
Todd: And they have lots.
Sam: Of other stuff.
Todd: It is unfortunate that he's going to be brought down by such a horrible,
Todd: if, if he's brought down by anything, it's going to be this horrible thing that hurt so many girls.
Todd: And he's not going to be brought down by like the 200 other shitty things that
Todd: he did to make the country worse.
Sam: Right. That sucks. Yes, it does.
Sam: Okay. Let's wrap it up. So first of all, I, as usual, go to curmudgeons-corner.com.
Sam: You can find our transcripts. You can find all the ways to contact us.
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Sam: mugs directly without having to join our Patreon and all that stuff.
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Sam: We will send you that mug, all of that kind of stuff.
Sam: It's fun. And at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask us, we will invite you
Sam: to our Curmudgeons Corner Slack where Yvonne and I and a bunch of listeners
Sam: are hanging out, chatting, sharing links, doing all that kind of stuff all week long.
Sam: It's a lot of fun. The more the merrier. Join in.
Sam: And yeah, so I usually at this point, or Yvonne usually gives a highlight from
Sam: the Curmudgeons Corner Slack.
Sam: Todd, I don't think you're in there very often, so I won't ask you for that.
Sam: But I will- It's been months. Yeah. It's been months. Yeah. It's okay.
Sam: We've got some folks who are in every day, multiple times a day.
Sam: We've got a few folks who check in, like, maybe weekly. We've got a few folks
Sam: who checked in once years ago and have never been back.
Sam: You know, we've got all kinds. But the more the merrier. It's a lot of fun in there.
Sam: But I will mention something that one of my own things I mentioned,
Sam: which is, as I've mentioned on the show the last couple weeks, I was laid off.
Sam: I am in that unemployed period.
Sam: And I haven't seriously started job hunting yet.
Sam: I'm trying to sort of relax and do some of my own things for a little while.
Sam: They gave me enough of a severance plan so I have a little bit of runway before...
Sam: You know, before I have no choice. Um, but so I've been working on some of my
Sam: personal projects and none of them are yet at the,
Sam: okay, I want to show this to everybody in the universe, but I'll give a preview
Sam: again to some of you here on the podcast.
Sam: This last week, I actually, one of the things I had been doing,
Sam: by the way, is like, I'd been sort of, I'd work on one thing for a few hours,
Sam: then another thing for a few hours, then another thing for a few hours,
Sam: sort of just to spread my time out over a bunch of things I want to get done.
Sam: Some of them like, you know, projects that I'll be able to show or talk about
Sam: here. Some of them just like things around the house or whatever.
Sam: But last weekend, I decided to let myself actually concentrate on one thing
Sam: and actually make some forward progress, which was a lot of fun.
Sam: You know, you feel a lot more satisfaction if you work at something for like
Sam: a whole day or two and actually see visible progress, as opposed to you work
Sam: an hour and then you stop,
Sam: and then you work an hour and then you stop, and progress is very,
Sam: very slow over the course of weeks.
Sam: So one of my projects, Todd mentioned earlier in the show how many billions
Sam: of podcasts there are out there.
Sam: One of my projects is for podcast discovery.
Sam: My basic thesis is that they're like
Sam: dozens and dozens of places
Sam: where you can go and see like what the
Sam: popular podcasts are you know almost every
Sam: podcast player has an add new podcast and you can go into a directory and see
Sam: like top 100 lists and a whole bunch of different categories and whatever there
Sam: there's no shortage of that but i've i've been thinking about the long tail
Sam: of podcasts because this podcast is the long tail of podcasts we're never going
Sam: to show up in a top 100 list.
Sam: So I've been working on something where the basic idea is you put in some filters
Sam: about what kind of podcasts that you're looking for,
Sam: and then it shows you a actually completely random sample of podcasts that meet that criteria.
Sam: So you can sort of surf the long tail.
Sam: And within that, I've got mechanisms for you to sample the podcast too.
Sam: So like if you just hit play on a podcast these days, 90% of podcasts start with an ad.
Sam: And or and even the podcast that don't start with an ad may start with like
Sam: five minutes of introductory nonsense that is not necessarily the best sample.
Sam: So I've got like buttons that will sample, take a random first year randomly
Sam: sampling podcasts in the in the filters you give.
Sam: Plus, I've got a mechanism to just I want a quick sample.
Sam: It'll pick a random segment from that podcast to play so that you may you may
Sam: miss those ads. or you may get unlucky and you'll hit that ad depending on how
Sam: many they have. I don't know.
Sam: Anyway, I'm not done with this thing. And I've also got a feature that will
Sam: let you, you've picked your 10 random podcasts or whatever.
Sam: Now I want to hear a sample of each of them and let you sequentially go through
Sam: and do a minute of each or whatever.
Sam: And I've got a way to like indicate that, hey, I like this one.
Sam: I want to be able to come back to it later.
Sam: Anyway, I've only built about half of the functionality I want to build and
Sam: it's a little flaky still. There's some bugs and it may go down at a random
Sam: moment if I decide to work on it again and break something.
Sam: But anyway, I'm, yeah,
Sam: To you, as a preview for Curmudgeons Corner listeners, please check it out.
Sam: It's at jukepotter.com, J-U-K-E-P-O-D-D-E-R.com.
Sam: And check it out, play with the features, send me feedback.
Sam: The address for feedback, well, you can send it to Curmudge Corner.
Sam: I think I set up a feedback address for this specifically too,
Sam: but I don't remember. So, you know, feedback at curmudgeons-corner.com will get me.
Sam: And tell me what you think. Tell me if you like it, features you would like added.
Sam: Like I said, I'm only halfway through my feature list that I want to add to this thing.
Sam: If you hate it, tell me that too. Be nice, though. Don't be too cruel.
Sam: Tell me if you'd use it or not. Anyway, it's one of my projects that I've been
Sam: thinking about for years, but I actually have time to do something with in this
Sam: short interval before I start hunting for real jobs again.
Sam: And so, yeah, so check it out, please.
Sam: And also the other one that is not as far along, but is more complicated when
Sam: I get to it is something I call Robin Letter. It's robinletter.com.
Sam: It's an alternative to social media to keep in touch with people that are not
Sam: the folks you keep in touch with every day, but maybe you still want to know
Sam: what's going on in their lives.
Sam: Like, I don't know, cousins or, you know, old folks you knew from college or whatever.
Sam: All that's there right now in public is a brochure page, but I've also been working on that.
Sam: I'm building the stuff to create
Sam: accounts and all that kind of stuff right now, and I'll be doing more.
Sam: So anyway, those are my two side projects that have gotten the most traction so far.
Sam: I've got some others that are not as far along as these two,
Sam: but take a look at both, and if you're interested, like them,
Sam: give me feedback. I'd love to hear more. So yeah.
Todd: Can I just tell you quickly,
Todd: Sorry, Sam. First, the Robin letter is very appealing because the whole reason
Todd: I still use Facebook is this is how I know what old friends and family are up to,
Todd: you know, and I hate it.
Sam: Right.
Todd: I want a Facebook alternative. I haven't found a good one.
Sam: That's the that's the inspiration for this is all the big social
Sam: media uh sites end up being about like clout
Sam: chasing and you wanting to get lots of followers and posting things
Sam: that get seen by lots and lots of people the whole idea about robin letter is
Sam: let's get back to you i want to keep keep up with what my family's up to or
Sam: my friends and and it's at robinletter.com so and i all all All that's there
Sam: right now is a brochure description of the idea,
Sam: but also a link to email me if you want to be on the list for me to contact
Sam: when I'm ready for beta users.
Todd: That's awesome. I'm going to do that. I'm going to share this with friends and
Todd: family. You could be the next Mark Zuckerberg.
Sam: Who knows? You know, that would be awesome. We did say earlier,
Sam: I wouldn't mind being a billionaire.
Sam: Somehow, I don't think this is going to do that. But, you know,
Sam: I figure right now, this is my best shot at trying some of these ideas.
Sam: Like, before I run out of cash and I'm like, okay, I need a regular day job
Sam: again, I can explore some of these ideas and try building some stuff.
Sam: And I'll be honest, the, you know, AI assistance for coding makes a difference here.
Sam: Like, I've been like, you know, I started messing with computers when I was
Sam: like seven, eight years old. and I've hacked together random stuff my entire
Sam: life, but I've never been a professional.
Sam: I don't know all the latest and greatest new technologies. I don't care to know
Sam: all the latest and greatest technologies. That's not what excites me, but with,
Sam: quote-unquote vibe coding, as they're calling it, I can whip up some requirements and have the AI.
Sam: I'm using Cursor for this, by the way, as my AI assistant.
Sam: It can whip up a prototype, put some things together, and it gets me like 80% of the way there.
Sam: And then there are usually all kinds of bugs and problems, and it looks bad,
Sam: and sometimes it does stupid things.
Sam: But then I iterate, and it gets better over
Sam: time and you know so like this juke
Sam: powder i i have mentioned it on the show again but this
Sam: is the first time i'm saying everybody come look at it because this
Sam: is the first time it's sort of reached the point where you can
Sam: actually at least do something useful with it like it
Sam: doesn't have all the features i want but like you could
Sam: actually use this to find new podcasts that you've never
Sam: heard of before that might be interesting now the problem with the long tail
Sam: is also there's lots of crap in the long tail so you might have to hit refresh
Sam: a few times before you find something that you like but i i think it's useful
Sam: to be able to explore and i i am thinking about doing something like this for
Sam: books too it's just not as far along.
Sam: It kind of replicates the experience of going into an old-fashioned dusty old used bookstore,
Sam: Where instead of going to a Barnes and Noble or an online retailer, I still shall not name,
Sam: where all the bestsellers are pushed at you and things that are specifically
Sam: recommended for you might be pushed at you.
Sam: But instead, you're just going down the aisles and you say, oh,
Sam: I feel like a mystery book.
Sam: And you see all kinds of old mystery books that may or may not have been popular.
Sam: And you pick something up that looks interesting. That's the idea here.
Sam: So anyway, and Robin Letter, I've been feeling the social media has gone past
Sam: keeping up with your friends for a long time.
Sam: Like I first had the idea for Robin Letter more than 10 years ago,
Sam: but now I actually have some time to try to actually build something.
Todd: Oh yeah. Juke Potter, I just want to say is appealing also.
Todd: And it's funny, you and I met because we participated in the college radio station,
Todd: which sort of specialized and prided itself on playing the long tail of music.
Sam: Right.
Todd: I'm sure you remember the days that there would be, I don't know how much you
Todd: were playing music versus just you and Yvonne doing your show.
Sam: I played music only the bare minimum required to get my license and I was doing
Sam: public affairs and news back then too.
Todd: Yeah.
Sam: But when I did do music, when I did do music, I used a random number generator
Sam: to pick a room in the station, to pick a shelf in the station,
Sam: and to pick a record for the station and to pick a track on the record.
Sam: And so I used this random method even back then when I did play music on WRCT Pittsburgh.
Todd: Yeah. So it's, yeah, it's going from the long tail of music.
Todd: That's how I know you to, I am kind of stuck in a rut of the same universe of podcasts.
Todd: And whenever I discover a new podcast, it's probably because I heard a guest
Todd: on one of the other podcasts mention it.
Todd: And like, oh, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to go try that out.
Todd: And over the, you're like, you know, I'll get tired of one and they'll fall
Todd: out of my feet and the other one will come in.
Todd: But it's like, I'm, I'm in the same kind of universe and it's,
Todd: I listen to podcasts for entertainment i want to laugh so i listen to stuff
Todd: mostly by comedians or comedy writers i
Todd: could use a dose of something else so i'm gonna
Todd: check this out too man because there's something i
Todd: there's there's gonna be something out there appealing so that's cool man these
Todd: are cool projects that you i don't want to say you get to work on sam because
Todd: you get to work on you know at the expense of continuing employment but that's
Todd: cool all right i didn't mean to drag this longer than you want It's okay. Yeah.
Sam: I'm pretty excited about both of those things. I get to promo my projects.
Todd: Yeah.
Sam: Nice. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Todd, for filling in. We really appreciate
Sam: it. Good to have you again. It was fun.
Sam: So everybody, have a great week. Hopefully, Yvonne will be back next time.
Sam: Stay safe. Have a good time. Not too good a time. All the stuff I usually say.
Sam: And we'll talk to you next time. Here comes the music.
Sam: Okay. Thank you again, Todd. Really appreciate it.
Todd: Yeah, my pleasure.
Sam: I'm going to hit stop in a couple seconds. And so we'll talk to you later.
Todd: Thanks, man. See you next time.