And that wraps up this rally with Democratic presidential candidate and vice president Kamala Harris in East Lansing, Michigan.
This is her last campaign stop of the day in the Wolverine state with two days to go until Election Day.
And coming up shortly at 7 p.m. Eastern, Republican Vice Presidential nominee Senator JD Vance will speak at a rally in Derry, New Hampshire two days before Election Day.
He'll be joined by Donald Trump Jr.
We'll have live coverage here on C-SPAN when the event gets underway.
Welcome back to move on a bit from some of the doom and gloom of American politics.
We are joined now by Jerry Seib, who is the former Executive Washington editor for the Wall Street Journal, now a visiting fellow at the Dole Institute of Politics.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you.
Happy to be with you.
You do have this essay in the journal, The Bright Spots in the Doom and Gloom of Our Politics.
Voter engagement is high, split ticket voting is on the rise, and legal institutions are holding both parties accountable.
You're giving us some optimism heading into the weekend.
Well, you know, somebody has to, right?
What happened really was I spent a month back in Kansas doing some work for the Dole Institute, and Kansas is my native state, and people kept asking me the same two questions.
Who's going to win?
And are we going to be okay?
And my answer to the first was and is this morning, I don't know.
But my answer to the second is, we'll be okay.
We'll get through this.
And there's a lot of anxiety and a lot of tension.
But I had to decide why would I think we'll be okay.
And as I thought about things that are going well in the system, there are some out there.
And that's what I tried to highlight.
In particular, too, I think, as you said, institutions are holding.
Our election system continues to work.
The courts have done their jobs.
They've upheld the integrity of the vote.
And there's no reason to think that's going to change.
And secondly, citizen engagement is huge.
In a healthy democracy, you want an engaged citizenry.
And we certainly have that.
Turnout in 2020 was the highest it's been in a century.
It's probably going to be bigger this year.
I was looking at the early vote numbers this morning.
72 million people have already voted.
In Georgia, 4 million people have voted.
That's 80% of the total vote from 2020 already registered and voted in Georgia.
So, you know, if you think apathy would be bad for democracy, well, we have the opposite of that.
Let's tick through some of the other things that you mentioned.
So you've talked about how citizens are very deeply engaged.
More campaign funding is coming from ordinary Americans.
Split ticket voting is coming back.
Courts and elections are still holding officials accountable, as you just mentioned.
Let's talk about those two middle ones.
More campaign funding coming from ordinary Americans and split ticket voting coming back.
Yeah, and I think the Campaign Finance One is big and underappreciated.
It's a huge change in the way our elections work, and it's because of the internet and social media.
And there's been, you know, for years and years, there were complaints that I heard and wrote about that politics are being financed by big, dark forces, big organizations, unions, corporations, big donors, and that was pushing politics in ways that regular people didn't like potentially.
Well, now you have citizens stepping up and funding campaigns on their own because of small dollar donations via the internet in particular.
And they about match big donor monies.
And as a result, I think you have another element of citizen engagement.
You know, that doesn't mean that everything is healthy in the way the money is spent.
A lot of it goes to people on the far left or the far right.
But I think citizens are figuring out that they can have a voice not just by voting, but by sending small dollar donations in as well.
And in the long run, I think that's healthy for democracy.
Split ticket voting is an interesting thing.
And we'll see whether I'm right about that or not in a couple of days.
But there have been some signs that people have started, rather than simply mindlessly casting their votes for all D or all R candidates, they're maybe more discerning.
Right now you have some Senate candidates on the Democratic side in swing states who are polling better than the national ticket, than the Harris-Walls ticket, which suggests there are some people out there who are going to go one way in the Senate race and one way in the presidential race.
In Maryland, which is my home state, you have the possibility of Larry Hogan, a Republican, winning a Senate seat in a very blue state.
We'll see the same in Montana and Ohio.
So it may be that people are going to come back home at the end and vote straight tickets because that's what you do in a country where everybody is aligned politically.
But it also may be that we see a more discerning vote.
I'm going to be watching with interest.
So obviously you wrote this piece because of these experiences you had of people wondering if they're going to be okay.
Why do you think people are emotionally feeling the toll of this election so much?
And how does it compare to the past?
I think it's, well, certainly it's more fraught.
There's more anxiety than I can remember.
I've been doing elections since 1980 and I can't remember this much anxiety, not just the weekend before the election, but I think for a prolonged period leading up to the election.
And I think there are a couple of reasons for that.
One is that the election has become not just a way to pick leaders or to vote about economic policies, but it's become kind of a referendum on cultural issues.
And those are very emotional issues.
They're gut-level issues.
And I think that the choice between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris has come to be seen as a choice between two different versions of what American culture is.
And those are very emotional issues.
And I think that's one reason why.
The second and I think obvious one is that the aftermath of the 2020 election in January 6th and all the unrest and division that that election sowed has continued.
And there is a lot of fear, not just about what will happen in the election, but will people believe the results?
Will they accept the results?
Will we have a peaceful transition of power?
These are not questions that in our lived experience we've spent a lot of time thinking about, but they're really foremost on the minds of people right now.
And that creates a lot of anxiety just on questions that didn't really matter or didn't even occur to people before.
Speaking of things that are a bit of a new trend this time around, we're seeing several major news organizations not give political endorsements when they have in the past.
You've been doing this for quite some time.
What do you make of this?
Well, first of all, the news organization I've been with for 45 years and still associated with, the Wall Street Journal has never endorsed candidates.
So there's nothing radical about choosing not to endorse a presidential candidate.
In fact, it may be a good idea because people question more than ever, if the polls are right, the objectivity and accuracy of media outlets.
And so I think you can make an argument that endorsing a candidate calls into question the objectivity of the news organization, even though the endorsement is done by an opinion section that's totally separate in all these organizations from the news department.
I think the problem, and the reason this is controversial, is that some of these organizations, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, in particular, made this decision very late in the game not to endorse a candidate, and they had endorsed previously.
And that led to an appearance that they were responding to pressure, particularly pressure from former President Trump, and that they didn't want to insert themselves in a way that would attract more controversy and more attacks from the Trump forces.
And so therefore, it looked to a lot of people as if it was a kind of a bow to the Trump forces.
And that's what made it controversial.
I think that these organizations, the Washington Post and the LA Times and the Post's owner, Dan Bezos, has said specifically that he wishes that he had made this decision much earlier so it wouldn't look like it was done in the face of pressure.
Right.
Jeff Bezos said there's he said in a statement in an op-ed he wrote for the Washington Post, no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here.
Neither campaign nor candidate was consulted or informed at any level or in any way about this decision.
It was made entirely internally.
Dave Limp, the chief executive of one of my companies, Blue Origin, met with former President Donald Trump on the day of our announcement.
I sighed when I found out because I knew it would provide ammunition to those who would like to frame this as anything other than a principled decision.
But the fact is, I don't know about, I didn't know about the meeting beforehand.
Even Limp didn't know about it in advance.
The meeting was scheduled quickly that morning.
There is no connection between it and our decision on presidential endorsements, and any suggestion otherwise is false.
Nevertheless, as David Folkenplich over at NPR reports, more than 250,000 subscribers have left the Washington Post over that withheld endorsement.
Do you see this as sort of the beginning of a broader trend of how media handles these things?
Well, first of all, I have no reason to doubt Jeff Bezos when he says that.
And he also said in the same piece, as I indicated before, that he wishes he had made this decision earlier so that it would not have been in the hot house of the last couple of weeks of the campaign.
I have no reason to doubt that he's telling us the truth on both those counts.
Is this a trend?
It's hard to know for sure.
I think the idea that news organizations both report on political activity and then endorse candidates, it may be that that's just a phenomenon that has run its course.
You certainly have two great leading indicators here.
I think the undercurrent that you suggest when people are canceling their subscriptions because of this suggests that readers have and viewers have certain expectations of their news organization in an era of polarized politics and polarized news media, and that if they're disappointed, they'll react in the marketplace.
I think in the end, news organizations that provide fair balance and objective information will still be what people want.
And I think that will be the trend that wins out in the long run.
But in the meantime, you have a lot of turbulence, let's say.
And I think this is just one more indication of that.
While we're on the topic of trust in media, I want to point to a report from the International Women's Media Foundation that found journalists are under threat in the United States.
The survey data reveals high levels of harassment and physical violence against reporters nationally.
They found that 36% of respondents reported being threatened with or experiencing physical violence while working as a journalist.
Another 33% reported digital violence.
28% reported legal threats or action against them while working as a journalist.
and 24% experience sexual harassment and some even sexual violence.
What does this say about the relationship between the public and the media?
Well, certainly for starters, I think that's a very real phenomenon.
I mean, reporters who are out on the campaign trail certainly experience this.
They feel it.
They will tell you about it.
And, you know, it happens mostly at Trump events because there's been a concerted effort to basically create a backlash against the mainstream media by the Trump campaign and Trump forces, and it has some consequences.
But I also think it's kind of a broader phenomenon in which, again, people expect to hear news that makes them happy, that makes them feel better, that validates their feelings.
And when they don't, they're reacting to that much the way people are reacting to a lot of things in society, not with disappointment, but with anger.
And I think it is an outgrowth of a broader trend.
And the news media happen to find themselves right in the middle of those crosshairs.
Again, one hopes that when we get through this election that on this front and more generally in the country, people might calm down a bit.
The anger might subside, that people will decide to have conversations rather than arguments or shouting matches.
But it's a hard ask the weekend before an election that's this emotional.
Well, hopefully we will have nice, calm conversations coming up.
Republicans can call in at 202-748-8001.
Democrats at 202-748-8000.
Independents at 202-748-8002.
Before we get to the calls, I want to look at a bit more polling.
This one from the New York Times Sienna poll that found voters are deeply skeptical about the health of the American democracy.
In this, a majority, a core group, roughly one-third of voters, believe the country's problems are so bad that it's on the verge of failure.
A majority of Republicans and 16% of Democrats hold a fatalistic attitude about the future of the nation.
Another nearly half of voters are skeptical that the American experiment in self-governance is working.
45% believe the nation's democracy does not do a good job representing ordinary people.
Those are some pretty stark assessments by the American people.
They are, and there's a host of factors behind those.
I'll cite a couple.
One is that I think people do have a feeling the government hasn't worked for them well over the last 10 or 20 years.
I mean, it's failure to do things about getting its arms around the deficit, for example, or dealing with the immigration problem on the border, or managing a financial crisis in 2008, in which a lot of people feel like their interests weren't taken care of while Wall Street's and big finances' interests were taken care of.
So that's, I think, one factor that's there.
I also think, though, that there's a, I wrote a piece about this earlier this year for the journal.
One of the things that happens is if you spend billions and billions of dollars in negative political advertising that is designed to tell people the system is broken, everybody is corrupt, particularly in Washington, they don't care about you.
It turns out people start to believe that over time.
And I think that just the avalanche of negative political advertising over the last 10 to 20 years has taken a toll as well.
And I think finally you have, I think, a situation in which people also have been told, and some people think they've experienced, elections that they don't trust.
And again, that's a new phenomenon in America.
So it calls into question in some people's minds the foundations of democracy, which is an election that is free and fair and in which the outcome is decided honestly and you can believe the results.
Well, people have been told for five years now that for four years at least that that's not the case.
And so some of that seeps in.
My hope would be that we get through this election, that it goes relatively smoothly, that most people accept the results, and maybe we'll be past this phase.
Again, I'm trying to be an optimist for you here.
Well, let's get more of those optimistic takes from our callers, perhaps.
Henry is in Fort Gratchett, Michigan on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Henry.
Good morning.
Just want to piggyback a little bit off of those no endorsements of candidates.
I think a tidbit that the American people should know about is about the media and the media's ownership.
Elon Musk, he owns X. He's from South Africa.
The Murdochs, whom this Mr. Seib works for, they own the Wall Street Journal and Fox.
So I should say that Mr. Seib now works for the Dole Institute.
I'm retired from the journal, but I still write and consult with the journal.
Okay, well, let me finish my point, please.
Thanks.
Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post.
He's a South African.
Soon Xiong owns the LA Times.
He is a South African.
Elon Musk, obviously.
I don't think that's accurate about the South African origin of Jeff Bezos or the owner of the LA Times.
But I do want to hear your point, Henry, and we'll give Jerry a chance to respond.
Okay, well, I think America is under the influence of a lot of foreign ownership of the media, which has done a terrible job of letting the people know just how, you know, the economy is doing very well.
President Biden and Vice President Harris have done a great job.
We have Peter Thiel, who is the benefactor of Vance and the tech bro billionaires.
Now, they support Vance, obviously, because they want to see Trump get into the office, and then they know Trump is not going to last this whole four years.
They're going to invoke the 25th, I believe, and then Vance becomes the president.
I think that's the major plan.
Now, the last point I want to make is about karma.
People talk about this immigration issue and people coming across the border.
Well, Americans, you need to think about years and years and years when American criminals commit crimes, where is the first place they head to?
They head to the border of Mexico.
As a matter of fact, we can't even go into Mexico to retrieve criminals because we don't have an extradition treaty with them.
So, Henry, you've raised a bunch of points.
I want to let Jerry respond to some of those at least.
Yeah, I mean, look, first of all, I don't think in the way big news organizations operate, I don't think owners dictate what happens in coverage of news on a day-to-day basis.
I can tell you that as a fact.
And, you know, in the end, news organizations are responsive to readers, and that's the reason they stay in business.
And I think that's important to keep in mind.
And look, I think the underlying a lot of the concerns the reader asks to be the caller raised is the question of why an economy that looks very good on the surface is not translating into more support for the economic policies of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
And I think that's one of the great mysteries of the campaign.
I think that because if you look at the unemployment rate, if you look at the current rate of inflation, if you look at the stock market, you would say this, and if you look at the U.S. economic performance compared to countries around the world, you would say this is an economy that's doing great.
Why isn't that a net plus for her?
And I think there's a simple one-word answer to that, and it's inflation.
Inflation still is being felt by people.
It's felt by, unlike other economic conditions, it's felt by everybody every day.
And it's been hard to get past that problem.
This is not a new phenomenon in American politics.
Look at what happened to Jerry Ford and Jimmy Carter in the 70s, the last time we had meaningful high inflation over a prolonged period.
It's very tough on an incumbent party.
So I think that it's not that people are being misled.
I think they feel forces that are different from some of the economic forces that suggest the economy is doing just fine.
Carol is in Elgin, Texas, on our line for independence.
Good morning, Carol.
Good morning, Kimberly, and good morning, Mr. Gerald.
How are you?
Hope y'all are having a good morning, and thank you for taking my call.
It's difficult not to be an independent here in Texas where I'm calling from.
I live in Bastrop County, and Elon Musk owns a bunch of Bastrop County.
So, you know, we're used to immigrants.
It's funny to watch people like Ted Cruz, who was born in another country, had to renounce his citizenship from that country when he ran in 2016.
It's funny to watch him hate immigrants.
I wonder if he hates himself.
But I know everybody here in Texas can't stand him.
So it's a wonder that he might win against Colin Allred because nobody here in Texas can stand him.
And we have a lot of problems in Texas with the media, which Mr. Gerald here has been a part of for a long time.
And the problem we have is we don't have any viable newspapers in central Texas.
The Austin American statesman is gone.
It's a shadow of itself.
It barely has any reporters.
You can't, I live 27 miles outside Austin.
I can't get a paper out here.
You can't get a Sunday paper out here.
They won't deliver it.
You can pay for it, and they won't deliver it.
It doesn't happen.
So we don't really have any valid news media.
And then you turn to your phone and you look at the phone, and the phone isn't run by algorithm.
So they only feed you what you click on.
They feed you more of it.
And then you turn to the news.
We have Spectrum News, which is a cable organization.
And they're, you know, this has been a Republican state for 20 years.
For 20 years, we've had nothing but Republicans.
And they'll sit there on the news and tell you, oh, there's something wrong with Texas because of Democrats.
It's just nonsense.
It's just nonsense.
There hasn't been a statewide elected Democrat in two decades.
But yet they'll sit there and say, oh, Kamala this and Kamala that.
I want to tell you all about inflation.
And this is the biggest lie I see in inflation.
Everybody talk about inflation in the economy.
I'm still working full-time.
I'm past retirement age.
I'm still working full-time.
I'm making more money than I ever made in my life.
And yesterday, I went to the gas pump and I paid $2.35 a gallon for gas.
Everybody's sitting here and say, inflation, inflation, inflation.
Prices have come down below where the inflation started.
A lot of it is profiteering that's taken place because we've turned our food production over to big companies.
Look at how many millions of pounds of meat and stuff has had to been recalled because of all the things that Colonel Caroline- Yeah, you're raising a bunch of really interesting points about the decline of local media, about consolidation in various industries.
Go ahead, Jerry.
Well, I think it's a very perceptive call because the caller is absolutely right.
The decline of local press, particularly local newspapers, but also affiliate news organizations and network affiliates around the country is really marketed.
And I think it's had a much bigger impact than people realize.
You know, I think local media tended to be kind of more of a stabilizing influence in communities.
People knew the folks who ran their local newspaper.
They trusted them.
They provided balanced coverage by and large.
And it was a good antidote to national press, which and the national media conversation, which tends to be much more, right, in the current environment, much more partisan and much more kind of fraught, if you will.
And I think that the decline of local press has not only made people have a harder time understanding what's going on in their community, it's kind of forced them to do what the reader suggested, which is to rely on a kind of a fractured media landscape nationally, which has become much more partisan and much more polarized.
And not surprisingly, the result is people themselves are much more partisan and much more polarized than they used to be.
So I think you can draw a direct line from the decline of local news media outlets to the increased polarization in the country.
And I think it's regrettable, and I don't know how we turn that around.
I would just add that the Senate race in Texas is interesting.
Democrats have been thinking for several cycles.
Well, we're close to Texas.
We're close to breaking through in Texas.
And it's never been the case.
The Texas Senate race between Colin Allred and Ted Cruz looks to be close.
I think it would still be a huge surprise if Ted Cruz lost.
But it's interesting that we're talking about the race at this stage of the game, which tells you that maybe things have evened up some in Texas.
Rudy is in San Diego, California on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Rudy.
Hi, how are you?
Look, I am a Republican, but I'm not going to vote Republican.
It hurts me so much.
I am 71 years old, and it hurts me because I only live seven miles from the border.
I live in a Thai ranch, and I could see the border.
And it hurts me that Trump is saying the illegals are coming in, millions crossing the border.
The immigration can do anything.
They have their hands crossed.
They're just wide open.
It's a lie.
It's a lie.
And he's doing all these lies.
I ask myself, and we're in a country and he's saying all this stuff.
He's going to cause violence.
You know, I mean, so much people hate other people because of him.
He's been lying so much.
And it hurts me that he's continuing lying so much.
And it hurts me that some of these Republican people don't open their eyes.
They don't see that.
You know, I'm going to vote for Kamala Harris because she has her mindset right.
She is not ignorant and stupid like he is.
And it hurts me.
And I hope all the Republicans open their eyes and look at the reality that you are voting for this guy that is going to cause violence and hate.
He just wants to dodge the jail because he deserves to be locked up.
He has done so much breaking laws himself and he doesn't want to admit it.
He's scared to go to prison.
Well, you know, it's one of the things that's interesting about this election cycle is that a lot of the polling has actually been very stable.
And one of the things it's been very stable about is what are people's top issues.
And the top issues have been the economy and immigration and abortion not far behind.
And so I think that this is in many ways this election is turning on what people think about immigration, not just in border states like California, but I think in states where immigration wasn't an issue for years and years, but it is now.
So we'll see how that plays out.
I think there are a lot of people who are voting for Donald Trump on immigration.
You had an interesting case there of somebody who's voting against Donald Trump because of the way he's portrayed the immigration issue.
One of the other factors that's interesting is that abortion emerges as the issue in which people are most likely to say, I cannot vote for a candidate who disagrees with me on this issue.
It is the one issue in which people are most likely to say, there may be other important issues, but the one in which I can't support somebody who disagrees with me on abortion is that issue.
So the issue mix is important here, and it's pretty clear the Trump campaign thinks that immigration is the ticket that they can use to ride to victory.
But in another respect, it's not really about issues.
It's about attitude and culture, as I said at the outset.
So we'll see how those things all play out.
But it's interesting to have a Republican who comes out on the other side of the immigration debate.
Bob is in New York, New York, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Bob.
Yes.
Hi.
I was reading the Wall Street Journal.
This is an article that had been mentioned on Thursday, and yet Wall Street since this program never thought about it.
It was saying that the next president will inherit a remarkable economy.
Now, you did mention that most people are feeling the inflation part of it.
Now I want to ask a policy question.
What will tariffs do to the public's understanding of inflation?
Who's going to pay really for this tariffs that will be placed by the Trump administration that they are proposing, a 20% increase?
And what will that do to the economy moving forward?
Will it make it worse or is it going to be better?
And does the public realize that this is going to happen under the Trump administration?
So could you please answer who's going to pay for the tariffs and how that's going to affect the inflation in this country?
Thank you.
Well, I mean, the history of tariffs tells you that the cost of tariffs ultimately is borne by consumers.
Tariffs, if imposed as the way former President Trump suggests, would be imposed on every import that comes into the country.
The cost of the tariff is borne initially by the company that imports the product, but they pass that along to consumers.
And as Democrats are suggesting, there are a lot of economists who say that is basically an inflationary practice.
The Republican response to that is that it's only inflationary to the extent that imports continue on the same path they are now.
We think the net result in the long run will be a shift of manufacturing away from foreign manufacturers to U.S. manufacturers.
That is the real impact that we're looking for, and that's not inflationary.
I think an interesting phenomenon here is that the financial markets seem to be betting that a Trump win would actually, at least in the short term, make inflation worse, not better.
The financial markets are sometimes right and sometimes wrong.
But I think there is an expectation that his economic policies, which involve tax cuts and tariffs, might be inflationary and that there might be an overall stimulus to the economy as a result of all those things that adds to inflationary pressures.
We'll see.
I think the tariff question is one that's difficult to sort of parse out because the country's not gone down that path for 100 years or so.
Scott is in Erie, Pennsylvania, on our line for independence.
Good morning, Scott.
Good morning.
Really good show today.
I'm glad I watched your show today.
A lot of good things talked about from the beginning to this guy on here.
I'm a little nervous.
I'll just get right to the point and make it quick.
There's just so much anger, a lot of lies.
Does the truth matter?
This is a question.
Does the truth matter in politics anymore?
It really has gone far, right?
How will it go away?
How will all the anger go away no matter who gets elected?
The Republicans were angry and never gave it up that Biden wasn't the true president for four years.
Now, if Trump gets elected, the people that know the truth, are they supposed to just forget about it?
I just don't understand how it will go away.
A couple quick points.
I was watching this show on Tupperville.
He was being interviewed in his basement and what he thought about maybe the American people holding the House accountable for holding the bills up.
And he said the American people don't remember three days ago.
That's just a quick point.
Another quick point.
My brother and I are a lot alike.
I'm an independent.
He's a Republican, but we disagree on two things.
He believes it's okay to lie to the American people and his family.
And he believes it's okay to brainwash the American people and his family because the blacks and the whites or the women are going to take in over.
And then the very beginning after Trump was elected, when he's having his hate rallies, which he should have never done, he told the fans, his fans, to punch a reporter in the face in front of little kids.
And he still has terrible, terrible mouth in front of little kids now.
So Scott, I want to give Gary a chance to respond to some of these points.
I mean, the caller asks two questions that I get asked a lot.
When will the anger and the divisiveness subside?
And does truth matter?
I'll pick the second one first.
I still think truth does matter.
I think it matters more when voters are really discerning and when they make it matter.
So I think one of the things here that's necessary is for voters to hold politicians and their campaigns responsible for what they say.
And I think voters have to make clear that there is a price to be paid for dishonesty.
And until that happens, I think we probably will see more, not less.
But I also think it may be a cycle.
And I think in the end, I do believe truth matters, and I think it will win out.
We're in a very convoluted media environment right now in which it's harder to find the truth.
But I think that in the long run, it does still matter.
Secondly, when will the anger go away?
Well, I'm not sure I know the answer to that, but I think it will go away when people decide they've had enough of this.
And frankly, when we find more leaders who are willing to soothe passions rather than stoke passions, and when they are rewarded for doing that.
Right now, I think there's too much reward on the side of stoking passions and exacerbating divisions.
And when politicians figure out that that's not a successful tactic anymore, then they won't do it.
And so I think, again, it is up to voters to make sure that the risk-reward ratio in politics tends toward truthfulness and calm rather than dishonesty and anger.
Dominique is in Nooksville, Virginia on our line for Republic.
Republicans.
Good morning, Dominique.
Hey, good morning.
I've listened to a few of the callers, and I try and listen every Sunday morning.
I have a couple of disagreements with some of your assertions.
Anger, for one.
I'm not as angry as you might believe, and I'd be considered, you know, I'm a 71-year-old heterosexual white guy, veteran, engineer retired.
And I don't think the general public understands the negative impact of what the politicians have done to the economy because of things like the focus on climate change and getting rid of energy production and then turning around and buying goods from Iran and Venezuela.
Counterproductive.
That's my opinion.
And I think if you focus on the economic decisions made by this administration, you'd find that they're pathetic.
I don't find anything coming out of Kamala Harris's mouth credible.
The fixation with this 2025 project, they continuously talk about Trump's going to do this, Trump's going to do this.
You can't get a straight fact from anybody.
And sometimes that's on both sides of the aisle and the press.
This is a bifurcated nation because of this.
And that's the hard right and the hard left.
Trump, I think, is a populist.
The recent spat of discussions juxtaposing him with Hitler, it's disgusting.
Everybody knows he's not Hitler.
I'd like to hear your comment on that, and I'll go off the air.
You know, I think the caller actually framed the election in a way I think traditionally would have been the case, and which I think, you know, more people perhaps ought to think about it, which is an actual assessment of the economic impact of the two candidates.
And there are some people making a decision based on those questions.
I think there are at least as many people who are making decisions based on the more emotional aspects of the conversation that the caller also referred to.
And I think the rhetoric has gotten out of hand and is not helpful toward a kind of a more sober decision by the American public.
I honestly think that we may, at some point, I think people will get tired of the tone of politics and will react accordingly.
I mean, certainly the caller suggests he's reacted to the tone of politics.
And I think that, you know, again, we need some leaders who will kind of project optimism rather than pessimism, and that will basically convince people that they should look, that America has more going for it in the positive sense than going against it in the negative sense.
But that's just kind of not where the national conversation is right now.
I do think it would be better if there were a more serious conversation about the actual real impact of the economy, of the economic policies of the two candidates, because that's where there could be some reasonable conversation.
Unfortunately, we only had one presidential debate and one vice presidential debate.
So there's been, I think, relatively less conversation about that than one might have hoped.
James is in Akron, Ohio on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, James.
Yes.
I'm sorry.
I was trying to jump to speak.
James, your line is breaking up.
Yeah, can you hear me now?
Yes, we can.
Go ahead.
Okay, I'm sorry I had you on speakerphone.
There's a few things.
I think Texas and Florida would be purple states if it wasn't that Texas have about 2 million people that's purged from the voting rolls, and Florida has over a million.
That's one item.
And another thing, people tend to hire like people.
You know, you say, well, this guy's not racist.
Yeah, but if everybody that you hire around you is a racist, then you're a racist because for whatever reason, you tend to hire that type of a person.
And I see it in sports teams and things like that.
If you look at the people that's employed and how they make decisions, you can find out if they're racist or if they're good business people.
And Donald Trump is not a good business person because he's bankrupt everything that he's touched.
And he stole everybody that he've dealt with, he steals from them.
And they tend to follow him for the only reason that it could be is for racism.
Thank you.
Okay.
Well, look, I think race is the great force that lurks in the background of American politics and has for years and years and years.
It's not new to this campaign.
The fact that we have a woman of color, the first woman of color ever to be a nominee of a major party, kind of brings it to the surface a little bit more.
But race relations are basically the inescapable reality of American politics.
They're there.
They're in the background, if not the forefront, every conversation, every time we have an election.