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Oct. 30, 2020 - The Muckrake Political Podcast

01:05:49

The Muckrake Election Preview

With only a few days remaining in the 2020 Presidential Election, co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman break down the race, discuss the crucial swing states, make their predictions and worry over the possibility of violence and a soft coup. Also, the fate of the Senate hangs in the balance with a slate of winnable races for the Democrats. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	Hey everybody, it's J.D.
	Sexton.
	Before we get to the official muckrake presidential election preview show, I just want to remind everyone that for the election next week, Tuesday, the big night, If you go to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast and become a patron of The Muckrake Podcast, you can join me, Jared Yates-Axton, and Nick Halseman for live coverage and reactions of every result, every race.
	You can sit there with us and watch in absolute terror and nervous exhaustion But more importantly, we can do this together.
	So again, if you go to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast and become a patron in order to support the show, you can watch on election night with Nick and me and deal with this thing together as a community.
	Again, that is patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
	And hopefully the few states remaining that want to take a lot of time after November 3rd to count ballots that won't be allowed by It's not just that you're a crook, Senator.
	As you know, we're in courts on that.
	We just had a big victory yesterday in Wisconsin on that matter.
	So hopefully that won't be happening.
	It's not just that you're a crook, Senator.
	It's that you're attacking the health of the people that you represent.
	So on Monday of this week, we received from a source a collection of confidential documents related to the Biden family.
	We believe those documents are authentic, they're real, and they're damning.
	Those documents have vanished.
	As of tonight, the company has no idea and no working theory even about what happened to this trove of materials, documents that are directly relevant to the presidential campaign, just six days from now.
	Hey, everybody, welcome to the Muckery Podcast.
	I'm your co host, J.D.
	at Saxton.
	Nick Hauserman is still here and still back.
	We're all rejoiced.
	And at this point, Nick, I think you've probably recovered from your right wing propaganda only diet, which is just in time considering it has come out today that the entire Hunter Biden dossier is completely fabricated and a piece of Right-wing propaganda.
	So I'm really, really glad that you're out of that headspace at this point.
	You know, I had actually written the entire transcript of what I was going to say in this podcast and I sent it to you via the UPS.
	Did you get it?
	I have to say, for those who haven't seen it, Tucker Carlson last night.
	And by the way, real fast, we're going to do a complete rundown of Tuesday's election here in a second, but this is too spicy not to talk about.
	A lot of bat shittery has happened on the right.
	Glenn Greenwald, in his usual cantankerous self, walked away from the intercept, which he helped found because they would not run his Hunter Biden lies.
	And then basically it was like, you will not censor me as he walked out.
	And they were like, sir, this is a Wendy's.
	And then Tucker Carlson got on TV last night and claimed that the Democratic Party and Joe Biden and that entire left-wing apparatus somehow or another tracked down their blockbuster revelations and stole them, I believe from UPS.
	So if you haven't had a chance yet, it was some really amazing Tucker Carlson last night.
	It was a classic performance.
	It almost was unrecognizable because his face and his expression was a lot different than it normally is.
	I don't know if that means that's the tell that he's completely lying about everything because, you know, we have these things that are called like fax machines?
	No.
	Or maybe like scanners and you can email?
	Why?
	What I enjoy is that Tucker Carlson's usual expression is like a dog who's hearing a TV for the first time and doesn't understand where the words are coming from.
	But his expression did change.
	It was a lot.
	I have to say.
	And let's go ahead and segue into the big race here.
	The presidency of the United States of America.
	The thing we've been waiting for and dreading for so long.
	There is a desperation right now among the American right that is palpable.
	It is a madness.
	Did you see what Loeffler said about the Access Hollywood tape?
	As if she hadn't heard it and she wasn't familiar with it?
	that this race is moving further and further out of their control.
	And the more desperate that they become, the more insane the right becomes.
	Did you see what Loeffler said about the Access Hollywood tape?
	As if she hadn't heard it and she wasn't familiar with it?
	I mean, that is as probably desperate as you're going to find, I would imagine.
	It is.
	And the absolute insanity that is happening with the rights.
	So, of course, for people who haven't listened to our last episode, and I recommend that everybody does, because Nick's right-wing propaganda immersion episodes, I think, are can't-miss episodes.
	And one of the things that Nick, of course, came back from his venture into the paranoid alternate reality Is that they truly and honestly at this point have tried to convince themselves that Donald Trump might win every state.
	Right?
	That this might be the grandest landslide in the history of landslides.
	And the delusion is growing almost by the day.
	Would you agree?
	Well, without question, the central delusion here is a lot about COVID and how not only are they just super spreading these things with all these different rallies, and it's really inexcusable because it's killing people.
	This isn't like another kind of thing where they could argue, oh, the economy is going really well, which it's also doing.
	That would be one thing or not.
	You know, the third quarter, you know, GDP has been increased, whatever.
	But when we're talking about deaths, this is the kind of shit that it shows you and proves how Yeah, I thought it was really disturbing today where Trump was tweeting that, you know, we just keep hearing about COVID.
	Everybody wants to talk about COVID, but after I win the election, you're not going to hear about COVID anymore.
	Which can be taken one of two ways.
	One, that the President of the United States, and by the way, we're in the middle of a third spike.
	Yeah.
	And cases are increasing like, you know, a rapid fire pace.
	Unfortunately, deaths are going up and they're only going to increase as cases increase.
	And either it means that he really believes that this is a like a fiction of the imagination of the media to try and help Joe Biden Or after I win, you're just not going to hear about this anymore because I'm going to suppress it.
	Neither is good.
	Both are really, really bad and really troubling, no matter how you look at it.
	I agree.
	And the idea that like, you know, Biden now needs to have all part of his platform is what we're going to do if they take over.
	I also suspect that when if Biden wins and they start going through all the correspondence and the emails, whatever, you know, I don't know if they're going to release that kind of stuff, because I sense that there's going to be some batshit crazy stuff that that will be uncovered.
	In the government's communication between DHS and the White House and whatnot, that'll be so damning.
	And it's going to be a question of whether they want to even let it out just because it would just further erode everyone's confidence.
	But I have no doubt that it exists.
	I mean, you know, even from Miles, this guy, Miles, whatever his name is, who just came out as anonymous, like, you know, it's interesting to put him and they said, now we know what department he was in.
	You know, it was really clear that these things are all intentional.
	Yeah, for anyone who is listening and driving their car.
	I just want to warn you, don't veer off into another lane of traffic.
	Don't drive off into a pole when I say this.
	If Joe Biden wins and is allowed to take control of the government, I think roughly, you know, the week after that Joe Biden becomes president, there will be a story that will make all of our brains melt and explode, which is that most Trump administration officials have been using non-government email addresses in order to hide their behaviors.
	And I think, you know, it's like the idea of, you know, it's like probably what the Russian embassy looked like right before the Cuban Missile Crisis got taken care of, you know?
	It's just going to be people burning documents and shredding documents left and right.
	So I don't know if we'll ever know the truth.
	You don't have to reference the Cuban Missile Crisis.
	This was happening when Obama kicked them out just before in 2017.
	Burning everything!
	Let me ask you this.
	Here's a statement I think I'm wondering what your reaction to it would be.
	Without COVID, Trump would be winning this election easily.
	I saw you tweet that.
	I don't know that that's entirely correct.
	So we're going to get into our official coverage and predictions here in just a minute.
	I think that Joe Biden would probably still win the election if we weren't dealing with COVID, but I think it would be a nail biter of an election.
	I think it would be Gorenbush level close.
	And when I saw that you tweeted that, it gave me some pause because I think there's some truth to it.
	Because I think the economy and the way that it was working, particularly in the way that, you know, Wall Street and the wealthiest in this country appreciate Donald Trump.
	Like they really do.
	They like that carburetor being taken off.
	They like it just going as fast as humanly possible and stripping everybody of their human dignity.
	So I think it would probably be... I think it'd be a coin flip at this point if there wasn't COVID.
	But I think a lot of people are tired as hell of Donald Trump.
	And I think a lot of people have either voted because of that or are going to vote because they are tired of Donald Trump's America.
	And remind me what happened in Gore v. Bush.
	Man, we gotta talk about that.
	Real quick recommendation for anyone who hasn't seen it.
	My buddy Billy Corbin has a new documentary out at HBO called 537 Votes.
	And if you want to go this weekend without getting much sleep, you might take a gander at 537 Votes, which is the story, of course, of how the Bush-Cheney campaign stole the election of 2000.
	And it's pretty much a roadmap of how this election could be stolen as well.
	For sure.
	There's a great Slate article.
	I think it's Slate that came out, too, that we just rehashed it again and reminded everybody, you know, now that we're 20 years out, a better perspective of what really, really happened and what the Supreme Court did to completely overstep their bounds, which I think is going to come up maybe later on this podcast.
	Yeah, I think we're getting ready to talk about that.
	So let's go ahead and jump in with both feet.
	This is, again, our official preview.
	We're going to talk about the presidential election, and then I think one of the more important things that we talk about as well is the developing race for control of the Senate, which I think it's pretty clear at this point that Democrats are going to not only retain the House of Representatives, but probably gain seats.
	The big question now is what happens in the Senate.
	So I think we should go ahead and start with the big race, Donald Trump versus Joe Biden.
	Nick, we are a few days out just without predictions, without talking about what we think is going to happen.
	How are you feeling?
	What's your state of mind with the race?
	How are you as a human being living in the United States of America in late October of 2020?
	How are you feeling right now?
	You know, I was feeling a lot better about Biden winning up until my five day deep dive into right wing media.
	It's kind of just rattled my brain a little bit here.
	And because it really it did feel like it was that close.
	But now that I've come out of that and been able to re-expose myself to Normal news I suppose we'll call it you know there is it just I know that here's the problem We're all sort of you know snake bit about what happened with Hillary in 2016 But this time with the numbers where they're pointing there just doesn't seem to be any Historical context for anybody for Trump ever coming back from this to win.
	There's just no way as an incumbent to For him to win this with the ballots being counted as long as they're counted.
	So, you know, I feel pretty good about that.
	But, you know, again, we we keep talking about how it's just you have five minutes to celebrate before we have to go back to work.
	Yeah, so first and foremost, I have to mention, and I'd be remiss if I didn't, we have to use the word misogyny.
	And misogyny, of course, played a massive role in the outcome in 2016.
	So we have to talk about the fact that Trump v. Biden is different from Trump v. Clinton in certain ways, but one of the largest is probably the idea of misogyny.
	So that is going to be one of the things that lurks in the background of this entire conversation.
	I will also say, in 2016, and I'll admit to this, I think there are a lot of people out there who are pretending like this isn't the case and they're not being honest about it.
	In 2016, I walked into the election In this mindset that there was no way the United States of America could elect Donald Trump.
	I was incredibly naive.
	I thought that he would be rejected like so much bad food.
	You know what I mean?
	The system would spit him out.
	And that of course is what eventually led to me doing the research that I did in order to write American Rule.
	Because obviously not only was I naive, but I was dangerously naive.
	And I had to educate myself about the things that I didn't know because of my own white male cis privilege.
	So I went back and looked at that.
	And I have to tell you, in 2016, and just a little personal part of this, I did not plan on being a political writer.
	I didn't plan on being a journalist.
	I didn't plan on covering politics.
	And I was ready to put that career away.
	You know, I thought that I was going to put it in a closet, like a coat that you put up at the end of winter.
	And I sort of looked at, you know, the election night.
	I went out and I bought a bottle of champagne.
	I was all ready to celebrate that the nightmare of Trumpism was over.
	Let's see what happens next.
	I don't have that feeling this time.
	And it's not only because I'm not naive, but because this is one of the more unsettling moments, I would say, of my adult life.
	Knowing it's coming.
	To me, it feels like knowing that you have a surgery upcoming.
	Do you know what I mean?
	Like, you're booked to have surgery in like three weeks or a month.
	And just in the back of your head, you're like, this is going to suck.
	And I'm not going to enjoy it and afterwards there's gonna be a lot of healing you're gonna have to do it a lot of work and rehab you're gonna have to do this to me feels so
	Oppressively anxious making is what it feels like and you know I Mentioned before the show that of course we're going to do a live coverage of the election night And all you have to do is go over to patreon.com slash muckrake podcast and become a patron and you can hang out with us and watch this With us and see it happen in real time and in part we're doing that for coverage, but in part I think we're doing it so we can lean on one another and
	And so the community can be there for one another because I really and truly believe that this is going to be a night of not just intense tension, but also societal trauma.
	I really do feel like this thing is going to be up to that level of traumatic.
	I really do.
	Yeah, I mean, it's not surprising when you see Walmart is going to remove ammunition and guns from their stores for fear of, I think what they're fearing is that people are going to riot and they're going to break in there and want to grab as much as they can.
	By the way, they're already buying guns and ammo in record numbers as it is anyway.
	So this is, yeah, it's a concern also because remember, despite the fact that if he wins convincingly, there's still going to be that section of the country that's going to be really upset.
	and won't necessarily believe that it was real and aren't going to want to take it sitting down.
	And that's a scary thing.
	And being fully encouraged by Trump to do these things.
	I hate to say this because I thought the Walmart headline was interesting and provocative.
	But I have to tell the audience as somebody who knows the type of people who are incredibly dangerous right now, they're not buying those guns this week.
	They've been stockpiling guns and ammunition for a while.
	The people who could possibly be dangerous next week, or the week after, or the week after, depending on how this thing plays out, are people who have been mentally prepared for years, if not decades, for some sort of political crisis.
	That they truly believe is either a sign of the end times or a moment to rise up and overthrow a corrupt government or system.
	I have to ask you, and I'll speak on it after you give your take, do you think we'll see violence on election night or within a couple of days of the election?
	I mean, what I keep saying is I'm looking forward to celebrating in the streets, right?
	Aside from COVID and trying to be safe.
	But I would also be worried.
	Now, I'm not so worried being in LA of getting shot in the middle of having a celebration.
	But I would certainly be worried in a number of places in this country.
	So I guess the answer is, yeah, there are plenty of places around this country that it would be really concerning to be around, especially if you are in some sort of a celebratory
	So, results-wise, and by the way, just to give you a quick preview of what we might be talking about in the senatorial section of this preview, you have to consider that there are people in America right now who believe there's no possibility whatsoever that Donald Trump will lose this election.
	It just never even enters their mind that he could possibly lose and if he loses it's proof of corruption.
	There are also areas of this country that have not seen Democrats win races.
	In a long time.
	That could possibly see these seats flipped.
	If those things happen, and it's the right environment, and it's the right moment, and it's the right elements combined, that makes violence even more possible.
	I think we're going to see, and I hope, knock on wood, I hope it's sporadic, we're going to see intimidation at polling places.
	We're going to see groups of people who are either going to open carry their weapons or they're going to start fights with people they think look like Democrats or whatever you know that means.
	I think we're going to see at least sporadic intimidation and sporadic moments of violence.
	The question is whether or not it's less than sporadic and more widespread.
	And I think that's a possibility.
	I really do.
	And I think that we will know by noon on election day whether or not this is going to be an election that is going to be hampered by intimidation or if it's going to be an election that is more or less carried out.
	But I cannot imagine that this Republican Party and Trump lets this thing go unmolested.
	That seems impossible at this point.
	Right.
	And that's all he's been saying at the rallies as well.
	So it's concerning because a lot of the local legislatures are allowing this.
	They're somehow allowing people to be menacing with their guns out there.
	And if they do enforce some of these rules across the country, like some of these groups are just going to ignore them and dare law enforcement to enforce the rules.
	You know, I mean, we even saw Kamala Harris, you know, where there was a huge line for pre-voting.
	And, you know, she was well beyond the 100 feet distance of the actual polling place, and she was well beyond the 10 feet away from the actual line.
	Because there are rules even about that, the basic things you learn about in third grade, about electioneering.
	But there's no question.
	But you know what, from what I gather looking at all the news reports, People are not going to be intimidated.
	It seems like people are going to go to these polls and they're going to stand up for their rights to vote, independent of these menacing people, which is, you know, unfortunate, but also inspiring.
	So I want to have two conversations.
	I think it's necessary when talking about this election to have two conversations.
	We need to talk about the possibility of a free and fair election and what we think would happen in a free and fair election.
	And we need to talk about what could possibly screw up a free and fair election.
	And I want to take it in those two terms.
	Before we do, I want to say this and I want to make it very, very clear.
	I think Americans are sick as hell of Donald Trump.
	And I think that his, I think not only his incompetence, but also his just absolute cruelty and an open corruption has struck a chord with people.
	And I think this is one of the reasons why, if this election were free and fair, I would put all of my money on Joe Biden.
	I really and truly believe that.
	And I think Americans, largely, are going to meet that challenge.
	I think that's what we're seeing with turnout so far, is I think we're seeing a populace that is sick of this shit, and they want to be done with it, and they want to move on.
	What they want to happen afterwards is a different question and we need to have that conversation later.
	And do not get me wrong, beating Donald Trump in November is only the beginning of a much larger fight that we're going to be talking about and we're going to be dealing with.
	And hopefully we'll have part of the say in that.
	But I do think America is going to meet that challenge.
	So here's what I would ask you, Nick, is if this is a free and fair election, if there's not intimidation, if there's not violence in the polls, if there's not monkey business in the courts or people throwing out ballots, which we got to talk about after we talk about this, how do you see this thing playing out?
	You know it feels like and I like to default to 538 because the key thing that I've seen about them is that they are trying to factor in what happened in 2016 as well to kind of go overboard as far as you know not being so confident that like Clinton was gonna win like they kind of thought that she was based on the So just to remind listeners that 270 electoral college votes is what is necessary for someone to become President of the United States.
	538 right now is giving him 334 to Trump's 163, which is a pretty big blowout.
	And so I'm just to remind, remind listeners that 270 electoral college votes is what is necessary for someone to become president of the United States.
	It's 270.
	Right.
	And I kind of almost want to quickly look up Ronald Reagan, how many Ronald Reagan had in 1980.
	It was a lot.
	Yeah, just for an electoral map in 1984 was, wow, 525.
	Jesus, was that a blowout.
	It's not that, but it's pretty safe.
	So I feel really good about that.
	I mean, here's what we have to worry about.
	I don't know if you want to get into it right now, because we have to talk about what's going to happen with these votes, because the pivot has gone from fraudulent election because of mail-in voting to simply, we must stop the counting at 8:00 PM on Tuesday, which is the most random, ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my life.
	It's nuts.
	Okay, a couple of questions I think that we can chew on.
	First of all, do you think that Joe Biden crosses 300 electoral votes?
	I think that's safe.
	I think, yeah.
	I don't think 530 would be off by more than my 30 electoral college votes.
	I have Biden in my count at 305.
	I have Joe Biden winning in the Electoral College 305 to 233.
	So here's the thing, and I have to tell you that a lot of my forecast, it's a snakebit forecast.
	You know what I mean?
	Go ahead, sorry. - No, so here's the thing, and I have to tell you that a lot of my forecast, it's a snakebit forecast.
	You know what I mean?
	It's definitely what I would call a little bit conservative, but there's definitely parts to it that I don't think are that conservative.
	So I'm going to ask you a couple of toss-up states, and I want to get your opinion on it.
	And a couple of them I'll start with I don't believe are actually toss-up states, but these are states that, of course, played an outsized role in 2016 and more or less elected Donald Trump president.
	How do you see Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania going?
	Which, of course, led to Donald Trump becoming president.
	Yes, the Rust Belt.
	Well, you know, I'm looking at the 2016 Electoral College map side by side.
	And Minnesota was won by Clinton.
	And it is now, Minnesota is likely going towards Joe Biden.
	Well, so is Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
	They're all the same color.
	So, in my mind, if Minnesota represents, if we can use any kind of past indication of what's going on for this time, it feels like he gets, I think, two of the three.
	Pennsylvania is going to be a real question mark because of what the legislature is doing and what the Supreme Court of the United States is doing to override the state's Supreme Court, who is supposed to be in charge of their own laws and how they process these elections.
	So that's what worries me the most is Pennsylvania, primarily because of what might happen if they stop counting the votes on the day of the election.
	Yeah, so I currently have Biden winning in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
	I think there are a couple things at play there.
	You know, we can talk a lot about why Hillary Clinton didn't win, and of course misogyny was part of it, but the Democratic Party did a really piss-poor job in those states in 2016, and there's a variety of reasons.
	It has to do with how the primary system was run.
	It has to do with whether or not they were even appealed to.
	It also has to do with NAFTA.
	And I think that they all come home.
	The big question at this point is what happens in Pennsylvania because obviously there's rioting happening right now in Pennsylvania.
	A big question is always what happens in the suburbs.
	So in Philadelphia right now there's a lot of violence, there's a lot of discord.
	The question is, is that going to motivate people to be angry at systemic inequality?
	Or is it going to lead to suburban voters who are afraid of possible chaos reaching their neighborhoods?
	I think it's the former.
	I think that Pennsylvania is going to go blue, and I would actually say it's not going to be that close.
	I would say that Biden probably wins it by five to six points.
	Yeah, and I think the key there is the actual turnout.
	We were seeing a ridiculous amount of votes already cast, right?
	I don't know, are we up to 60 or 70 million at this point?
	A ton.
	Remember, we only had 123 total from 2016.
	So I would imagine a huge chunk of those are the suburban people who, you know, don't want COVID and they have the resources they're going to get their ballots in early.
	So the unrest going on in Philadelphia may not even affect those votes anyway.
	So and I think the other thing that you mentioned is as far as turnout, I think that there was a lower turnout for Hillary.
	They just didn't come out at all to vote.
	And there's no question there's a much higher energy, not necessarily for Biden, but simply we have to get Trump out.
	And that energy has driven a lot more people to vote who might not have voted at all in 2016.
	So, a couple of the bellwether states, and actually, looking at the map now, it's very, very clear that we're in a moment of, we're in a transitional moment with the American Electoral College.
	In the past, Ohio and Florida used to be the bellwether states.
	I don't think they're going to figure in all that much this year, which, you know, thank God, because I'm sick and tired of looking at Florida.
	And I swear to God, if you and I are broadcasting live on election night at 2.30am talking about Florida, I might not have any hair left.
	That might be the end.
	That might be where it ends.
	So, I have both Ohio and Florida going to Trump.
	And I think they're both pretty solidly in Trump's category.
	Well, you know, 538 has it leaning blue, which I think is a toss-up for sure.
	Ohio, they have a toss-up too, which I think if it's a toss-up, I think it goes to Trump.
	You know, I mean, Ohio of all places is not going to just flip like that overnight.
	But, you know, if I can hijack this for a second, if you look down at the bottom of the country, Texas is pink.
	which means it's leaning Republican, that is unheard of.
	So that is what I'm looking at right now because obviously if he loses Texas, then he could get to 400 electoral college votes at that point.
	So there are three states that are in play or theoretically in play.
	And by the way, a lot of this factors into what we're going to talk about next with the Senate.
	A lot of this factors in with that because we have three states.
	We have Arizona, we have Texas, and we have Georgia.
	And these are three states.
	And of course, I live in Georgia and I'm looking at it right now and I'm still absolutely flabbergasted that this state might possibly go blue, but it is a real opportunity.
	So of Arizona, Texas, and Georgia, which I'm not sure everybody would have considered those in play except for possibly Arizona where the Senate race might actually draw that state over the finish line for Biden.
	What do you think happens with those three states?
	Yeah, I think Arizona is going to go blue.
	I think that's a huge influx of people from California who have moved there.
	I really feel like that feels relatively solid, particularly because of what you said about the Senate race as well.
	Listen, Texas would have been the kind of place I would have walked around my block three times naked if you told me that the Democrats would win that state at any time in our lifetimes, basically.
	So I can't quite get there, but it's almost like a moral victory.
	It's a win anyway, because it's so damn close.
	Even despite what we all, I think, are aware of what's going on by the governor restricting voting and having one drop-off ballot place for an entire county that's bigger than several states combined.
	But I don't think Texas moves.
	And then what was the other, what was the third?
	Well, real fast on the Texas front, a couple of things that we need to say.
	First and foremost, I think Texas goes for Trump.
	I would bet money that Texas goes for Trump.
	I'd love to be wrong about this.
	We have to say a couple of things about Texas.
	Number one, the Latinx community has done incredible work organizing down in Texas.
	Another person who deserves a tip of the hat is, of course, Beto O'Rourke, who may not have won his senatorial race and may have underwhelmed in the presidential race, but he made an incredible figurehead for the Texas Democrats to get their shit together.
	And they have had a lot of people for a very, very long time.
	And they have been able to put together an operation, which, by the way, I think Beto could have won the Senate race against Cornyn this time.
	I think going against Cruz was the wrong move.
	I think running for the presidency when he did was the wrong move.
	I think he could have built up his constituency and his movement, and I think he could have beat Cornyn.
	And I think that that could have flipped the seat this time.
	But you have to give a hat tip, again, to the Latinx community and to Castro.
	Oh, Castro as well.
	I mean, you have a lot of Democrats there who have been doing a lot of work, and they've put Texas on the precipice of something.
	And by the way, the demographics show us Texas is going to go blue.
	Right.
	That's just going to happen.
	And it's a matter of when it happens.
	And I don't think it happens this election, but I think it could.
	The next state, of course, is Georgia, where I live.
	I have thoughts on it.
	I'd love to hear what you have to say.
	Okay, you want me to go first?
	Absolutely.
	All right.
	So, you know, Stacey Abrams is a real bellwether here because, you know, whether or not, however close it was, or if it was stolen, which, you know... She should be the governor of Georgia.
	Right.
	It was compelling.
	And so if you're going to be able to get the governorship to turn blue that way for a woman, a black woman, no less, in Georgia, that indicates to me that there's a big shift there.
	And so, you know, I think it might be able to go.
	I mean, listen, did you see Ossoff just destroy Purdue?
	That was amazing.
	Again, last I checked, he has no chance of winning that race, but maybe it's changed since then.
	Right?
	538 had like a 70% chance that Purdue was going to win it, like a couple weeks ago.
	I'll go ahead, and I was going to talk about this in the senatorial thing.
	I do not think that Ossoff gets there.
	Right.
	What you talked about with Ossoff in the debate, and if you haven't seen it yet, go look at it because this is how Democrats should talk to Republicans.
	This is the backbone that the Democratic Party has been missing for a very long time.
	He destroyed David Perdue.
	And he destroyed David Perdue to the point where he couldn't even answer with the usual Republican scaremongering bullshit.
	And it's because David Perdue is a really bad politician and he's also incredibly corrupt.
	It's when you get the corruption plus the lack of talent is when things really start falling apart.
	I don't think Ossoff will get there.
	I do think, well we'll save the other Georgia race for the senatorial conversation, but I do think that Georgia will probably be a one or two point difference.
	I do think that Stacey Abrams would be the governor of Georgia had Brian Kemp not stolen the election from her.
	And I think, again, this shows us that not only are demographics changing, but that the Republican hold over the South, the hotbed of the Confederacy, it's endangered.
	It's in real, actual danger right now.
	And if the Republican Party was smart, and they're not, They would realize that they can't win if they continue down this road.
	That's one of the reasons, of course, why we have Amy Coney Barrett sitting with the Supreme Court right now and why the judicial branch is being turned into a backstop.
	But they can't win using this strategy anymore.
	And I think Georgia will probably go to Donald Trump, but I think it's going to be incredibly close.
	Yeah, it would be.
	There are the moments that are going to be exciting to us over, you know, aside from the fact that maybe Biden wins that night.
	And it's these little surprises, perhaps, that will really capture our imagination.
	So it's like if something like Georgia flips, you know what I mean?
	That's like cause for celebration because we're getting to where we're we know we're going to get to.
	And, you know, just like Texas is going to go blue, we might have to wait two more cycles before that happens.
	But who knows?
	The accelerant could happen because of what Trump has been doing the last four years.
	And that's the kind of thing we've been waiting for, to accelerate the whole process to get where we want to go and away from this corruption and this killing of people needlessly that we've seen from the Republican Party.
	I want people to remember this.
	When they're watching the election night coverage, every minute that Texas and Georgia are too close to call is an incredible victory.
	An incredible victory.
	And I think we're looking at a situation here where we're going to know pretty quickly, based on how some of these races, whether or not they're competitive or not.
	You know, I'm from Indiana, and let me tell you something.
	Indiana will probably be the first state that goes for Donald Trump, but if immediately, when the polls don't close, if Indiana isn't called immediately, and it's like too early to call instead of too close to call, right?
	If it's too early to call when Indiana closes, we might be looking at something that this map doesn't even reflect.
	Well, let's not get too excited.
	I'm just letting you know that that is like one of those moments and that's very early on in the night.
	But every minute that Texas and Georgia are too close to call is a major, major win.
	Absolutely, absolutely.
	And you know what?
	This is getting me a little bit excited.
	The more I'm studying the map, you know, and I think they all know this, too.
	This is why we see so much desperation in the Trump campaign right now, is they realize that there is simply, there's only one version of the matrix that can possibly get this done.
	And it requires so many upsets here that are leaning blue, as it is already.
	that it probably won't happen, which is, again, why we're seeing them put these things into place to stop counting ballots, because some of these states will not start counting the ballots until after the day of the election.
	So if you suddenly have a legislature coming in saying, well, you have to stop counting before you really even started counting, that's going to be a real problem, because I think it's even conservatively, it's safe to say that somewhere around 60, 65 percent of these votes, early votes, are probably Democratic, probably.
	Probably higher than that.
	But that's the sense that we're getting when you see some of these early indications.
	So you can imagine the devastation that would lead to the voting counts if they were successful in reducing any amount of those mail-in ballots from being counted.
	So one point that I have to make before we get into the big discussion, and I think it's the most important discussion that we're going to have, but a real quick point is you'll notice that the Republican Party does not push early voting at all.
	It's for whatever reason they seem allergic to it.
	And it is an incredible weapon that the Democrats have been able to wield to get people out there and make sure that the turnout goes up and up and up.
	And the Republican Party, I mean, they're not interested in getting people to vote.
	That's the entire point here.
	The Republican Party depends on low turnout for victories.
	That is the simple truth.
	It's almost become cliche at this point because it's true.
	So let's have the big giant conversation, which is the unfortunate one, because I truly believe that if this election was free and fair, I would almost guarantee a Joe Biden victory.
	But what we have seen, of course, over the past few months is that Donald Trump and the Republican Party have already created a massive disenfranchising machine.
	They've already tried to undermine confidence in the election, in mail-in votes, in all of these ballots, and on top of that, they have now created with the Supreme Court, and we have to talk about Brett Kavanaugh, we have to talk about these recent rulings, they've created a perfect type of machine where if it gets turned on, and by the way, it's going to depend on Republican legislatures around the country, which is something that we have to talk about.
	There is a possibility that the will of the American people could be subverted in this case.
	How are you feeling about that at this point?
	You know, I feel pretty terrible.
	And one of the reasons is because we saw Kavanaugh's opinion on when they were trying to strike down the Pennsylvania law to continue counting after.
	They want to stop counting at 8 p.m.
	on Tuesday the 3rd.
	And the law right now, I think, requires him to count for three more days after that.
	But to hear Kavanaugh's ruling and his reasoning, first of all, it's completely faulty on part of it because he cited Connecticut or Vermont, one of those states up in the Northeast, for not having changed any of their voting rules That's what's so scary about it.
	of COVID, which is completely a lie.
	It was totally wrong.
	He based the entire opinion off of a factually incorrect opinion, but it's right out of the Trump administration's rhetoric on his rallies.
	That's what's so scary about it.
	Kavanaugh is literally just copying and pasting Trump's speech into his opinion.
	And so I don't feel good about a lot of these different things if they're able to curtail even for a day or two counting these votes.
	And we only have to hope that we have real patriots who are in there who can count these votes quickly, you know, and not have to drag it on too long.
	And we get a real sense of the numbers early enough where even if they do cut it off, it's still extremely clear that it's Biden's race to win.
	I just want to point out that we may forget history, but history doesn't forget us.
	You know, Gore v. Bush, Bush v. Gore, however you want to call it, I think it's Bush v. Gore.
	It may have happened 20 years ago, but it set a crazy precedent.
	And it was supposed to be a one-time thing, but of course now Kavanaugh has worked incredibly hard to make sure that it's now precedent.
	They have a situation set up where if all of a sudden you start having these problems with the states, of course, because it's a federal election, all of a sudden the Supreme Court can jump in and stop a count whenever.
	There was no reason None in 2000 for the court to have stopped the recount.
	And the craziest thing about that was this push to keep votes from being counted, they did it blatantly.
	Now, my feathers have been ruffled a little bit recently because A lot of people have been pushing this narrative that all Joe Biden has to do is win the election handedly.
	And if he wins it by enough, there won't be any kind of a challenge.
	But I actually think that there's, I think there's a Goldilocks zone in this.
	Like I think that there is, if Biden wins by too much, I think it becomes a, oh that's proof of corruption right there.
	There's no way that he could win by that much.
	And all of a sudden it turns into, where'd all those votes come from?
	How many of these are fraudulent?
	How many operations?
	So I will also say, and we'll talk about this on Tuesday's show, the day of the election, when we talk about what to expect and what to look for, we're going to hear from Trump.
	Very earlier on, I think, on Tuesday night.
	And how he approaches this is going to tell us whether or not this thing is going to be baked, or if this thing is going to go on for a while.
	And if he comes in and declares victory early, before hardly any votes are cast, there's a reason why that's happening.
	It's not just rhetoric.
	It's not just hyperbole.
	It's not just posturing.
	It's setting the stage for a much, much more massive and consequential project.
	I mean, for what it's worth, I did read some analysis that seemed relatively compelling that there's an argument that a lot of his votes might be coming in later.
	So he actually needs some of the recount, some of the extra days to factor in more Trump votes.
	It's going to flood in so blue in the very beginning.
	It's hard to tell exactly how that's going to play out.
	The thing, though, to address the Supreme Court, and I know I mentioned this in the last podcast, I believe, was when you're talking about Bush v. Gore, they, the people who were pushing the Supreme Court to stop the vote, who are they, right?
	Well, we know who they are.
	Well, the names you're going to recognize, Brett Kavanaugh, And who's creeping around in the background?
	Roger Stone.
	are all three part of the legal team for the Republicans to stop that count and basically award the presidency to, uh, to Bush.
	Very who's creeping around in the background.
	Roger Stone.
	Yes.
	Same batch of assholes constantly.
	Wait, do you think that there's a coincidence that those three people are on the Supreme court now having fought as hard as they did in, I don't think so.
	Oh Nick, I can't imagine the Republican Party would do something that underhanded.
	That just, I don't know.
	That's a bridge too far.
	Well, it's not even underhanded, it's just rewarding, you know, the loyal soldiers.
	So, you know, that's a real problem because if you're going to argue the precedent and now you have people who convinced the Supreme Court that they should have been, that they invented the frickin precedent and now they're ruling on it.
	Amy Coney Barrett should be as far away from this case as possible.
	There's no way she could do anything but recuse herself from a case like this, and she's not going to do it.
	Spoiler alert.
	That is a worry, and I don't know if I buy your opinion of that.
	If it's too big of a blowout, they're going to have any kind of – it's going to catch any traction with that argument.
	But who knows?
	I mean, listen, we know Trump is a scorched earth kind of guy, and he'll try everything in the meantime.
	And then also, if you finally – yeah, yeah, go ahead.
	Well, I just want to remind everyone that in 2012, when it became clear that Barack Obama was going to handily defeat Mitt Romney – and a reminder that Donald Trump has never cared about Mitt Romney.
	And he certainly doesn't care about Mitt Romney more than Donald Trump cares about Donald Trump.
	I want to remind everybody that when it became apparent that Barack Obama was going to win the election, that Donald Trump took to Twitter at the time and announced that there had been a coup, and that there needed to be a revolution and that Americans should march on Washington DC and demand justice.
	Now, I understand that that's absurd, but I want to point something out, which is this is not a person who looks at elections that don't turn out the way he wants them to and thinks, oh man, it just wasn't our day.
	Right.
	Gosh darn it all.
	So I have a question for you before we move to the Senate, and I have some thoughts on this.
	I'd be interested to hear what you have to say.
	Let's say the nightmare of nightmares happens.
	Let's say that Trump not only undermines democracy, we find out that there's incredible intimidation at the polls, we find out that people have been disenfranchised.
	And by the way, that stuff will just happen, right?
	That's not even theoretical.
	That happens millions every year, are just not allowed to vote.
	So let's say that Trump operates this machine.
	Somehow or another gets to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court rules on this in an obvious partisan way and tries to give the election to Donald Trump.
	What happens within the body politic of America?
	I think so too.
	I mean, COVID be damned, massive protests, like the likes we have to quote Trump, the likes we haven't seen before.
	And I would probably, you know, I would get my mask out or my whatever shield I can do and get out there as well, because it can't stand.
	That's not democracy anymore.
	And I'm sick of arguing on Twitter with people about what fascism really is, because this is it.
	But that would be the turn.
	And again, what would that do?
	I don't know.
	Would we march to the Supreme Court?
	What would you do and how would it affect?
	But when you say that doesn't do anything, then you look, there always have been lots of examples in our history of massive protests affecting change without question.
	But at the very least, that would happen.
	Then, you know, of course, what happens after that?
	Riots and looting.
	The natural byproducts of a free society exercising their rights for First Amendment speech.
	So that's where you're going to get people to open up their ears, too, because it's going to hit them, you know, the monetary side as well.
	Yeah, and I want to point this out because I've heard a lot of people who are like, well, look at 2000.
	The people weren't in the streets then.
	It's not the same thing.
	Obviously, there was no incumbent in 2000.
	There was not a despotic president in 2000 who was, you know, using his control over power in order to rig the election.
	I do think that Americans missed the call to action in 2000.
	And part of the problem was that, I mean, you know, for as right as Al Gore was about climate change, he was not a great candidate.
	He was not compelling.
	He wasn't inspiring.
	He didn't necessarily have a movement behind him.
	Any movement he had were the remnants of the Clinton coalition.
	But in this case, I truly do believe that if Trump and the Supreme Court try and steal things, I think we're going to at least see mass action.
	Whether or not it wins or prevails, that's a different question altogether.
	But I think Americans at least answer the call of that situation.
	Right, but unfortunately the way you describe Gore is how we describe Biden as well.
	I think it's beyond Biden though.
	I think that's the point is at this point I think there is a movement against Trump and forgive me for how I put this but I hope that this makes sense.
	There's a difference between having a leader who is out in front of the pack and leading them somewhere and where the pack has swallowed up the leader and the leader is in the middle of the pack.
	Right.
	And this is one of those situations with Biden.
	I don't think anybody out there, I think most people who are excited about Biden are excited about the possibility of restoring sanity to the White House.
	I don't think it's a cult of personality.
	I think it's more of a backlash movement against Trump.
	And I don't think it matters, I don't think it matters whether or not Biden feels personally damaged or not.
	I think it's more about how Americans feel about Trump.
	For sure.
	And then just one more sentence about 2000, you know, as a 28-year-old at the time, I think it was just confusion.
	I think it had never happened before.
	Before we could even process what was going on, they made, like, you know, the decision and then they stopped the count.
	It was almost like, you know, it hit us so far so quickly in the face that we just didn't know what to do.
	And it was almost like, well, OK, let's keep going.
	And, you know, the country was relatively stable.
	Yeah, I think that's true.
	the big the big full factor i can remember at the time was just like just sort of just confusion and not knowing what that meant and then all of a sudden bush is in the white house yeah i think that's true um so let's let's talk about and i think that looking at looking at the presidential election
	also we we have to take in consideration the possibility that the democrats have a very real possibility of retaking the senate and what that would mean for a biden administration and and what that would mean going forward.
	I mean we're talking about Everything from expanding the Supreme Court, which by the way, while we're on the subject, just very, very quickly, one of the main differences between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party is if the Republican Party was in the Democrats' party in this moment with the Supreme Court, with the way that they've stolen seats, the Republican Party wouldn't be wishy-washy about expanding the court.
	They would be campaigning on expanding the court.
	That would be one of their main planks.
	Elect me and I will expand the court.
	But I will say that right now, I think that the Democrats will retake the Senate.
	How are you feeling on that front?
	I mean, this is the mountain that I never thought would be hurdled at all.
	If you go to 538, they give 80% of all outcomes fall within the Democratic winning the House 52 seats. 51.9.
	I mean, I gotta stare at this thing for an hour before I really absorb it and believe that that's what it is.
	But yeah, it certainly looks like there's enough.
	There's about four or five seats that are pretty vulnerable.
	And they look like, you know, they could, should go to Democrats.
	That's all they need.
	And they only need four of them, right?
	Four of them?
	And by the way, I think the Democrats will lose a seat but gain more in the process.
	I think Doug Jones will lose in Alabama.
	It sucks.
	I think there's still a possibility because actually Tommy Tuberville, who is the former head coach of Auburn, There are a lot of people in Alabama who hate Auburn.
	They really, really hate Auburn.
	So there's a possibility of something getting a little wonky there.
	But there's a real possibility that Doug Jones loses that election.
	But I want to throw a couple things out there that are kind of exciting, man.
	I think Sara Gideon is going to beat Susan Collins.
	I think Susan Collins needs to pack up her shit and be ready to go.
	And it couldn't happen to a nicer person.
	She deserves this loss.
	She's earned this loss.
	She's put in the work for this loss.
	I think we are going to see that happen.
	I agree.
	And yeah, it's her time.
	I've had it.
	I've had it with her bullshit and her pretending to be someone she's not.
	Susan Collins, that is.
	So she is down like, you know, three points or so, two and a half points.
	It looks clear that her time's going to come.
	I think so.
	I will say a couple of other surprising places that I think we need to keep our eye on.
	Again, if I had to say right now, I would say that David Perdue in Georgia beats Jon Ossoff.
	But if you travel back from the future and told me somehow or another that, like, Recent events have led to something different.
	I wouldn't be shocked to hear Ossoff won, but I don't think he will.
	I do think that Raphael Warnock is going to win the special election and be a senator from Georgia.
	I think we're going to have a black Democrat senator in the state of Georgia, which is pretty incredible.
	Absolutely.
	And then everything points to that overwhelmingly right now in this in that weird special election that they have.
	So this reminds us all how that works.
	Is it the top?
	How does it work?
	If you get 50% or more than you win, then you're in?
	Yeah, and then if not, there will be some sort of a runoff.
	But I really, I think he's going to win.
	I think he's going to pull this thing off and I think we're going to have split Senate seats in Georgia.
	It feels like that's almost determined at this point.
	Which, I mean, get those idiots out.
	Criminals and idiots.
	For what it's worth, by the way, on 538, even though they give Purdue a much better chance of winning, the forecasted vote share is razor thin.
	It's only .2% difference.
	I could see that thing flipping.
	I really could.
	I don't know that I would put money on it right now.
	You know, I think Ossoff, in a lot of ways, has... I think he suffered because of a lot of Purdue attack ads.
	This thing's been really ugly.
	The race between Purdue and Ossoff.
	I mean, Purdue, of course, has been guilty of multiple ethics problems.
	And has profited off the pandemic.
	I mean, he's just an absolute creep of a person.
	He has basically ran his entire campaign without saying a positive thing about himself.
	And claimed that John Ossoff is not only a secret socialist, but that he also is in bed with communist terrorists.
	So, I mean, this thing has just been as ugly as it is.
	Oh, remember, it's worse.
	They made Ossoff's nose bigger to accentuate his Jewishness.
	I mean, they've really lulled it around.
	They've been doing that for years.
	And by the way, however corrupt you want to say Perdue is, he's no more corrupt than the one across the aisle from him or next to him in Georgia.
	Loeffler is just as bad.
	Who should be ran out of town on a rail.
	And by the way, speaking of Democrats picking up seats, I think in Arizona Mark Kelly is a shoo-in over Martha McSally.
	And by the way, for those who aren't aware and need this, Mark Kelly is a badass.
	This is a veteran.
	This is an astronaut.
	This is a person who doesn't take shit.
	I think that Mark Kelly in the Senate could be a really, really influential senator.
	I think this is the type of person who could become a lion of the Senate and could possibly become maybe part of the new generation of Democrats.
	There may be changes, but that being said, I'm not a Democrat.
	I don't totally believe in the Democrats, but there is a possibility that this is somebody who could make good in that position.
	Sure.
	I mean, in the footsteps of someone like John McCain on the other side, I'm glad that he overcame the Nazi costume accusations from 1986 that were hounding him when I was in the middle of my inundation of right-wing media, and he also is perhaps going to survive the Buzz Aldrin endorsement of his rival.
	They got another astronaut to support McSally, so I suppose those things are not gonna matter.
	And yeah, we're gonna have somebody in Arizona.
	That's a great pickup. - I wanna point out real fast that Arizona has been so defined by John McCain that everybody in every one of these races has to be some sort of a veteran or some sort of like military hawk.
	Like that state has just been completely changed by McCain's presence.
	Real fast, and this is a race that we haven't talked much about Senate races, but I would be remiss if I didn't bring up in North Carolina that Cal Cunningham is probably going to beat Tom Tillis.
	And for those who haven't been paying attention, and that is a pickup for the Democrats, Calla Cunningham, in the midst of this race, was caught in a sex scandal, where he of course, you know, was having a relationship, and all of a sudden these, like, messages between him and a mistress came out, and he still looks like he's probably going to win this thing handedly.
	Yes, too bad for Jeffrey Toobin.
	He couldn't.
	He should have just been texting somebody.
	But anyway... I just love how Tuban's gone underground.
	That's probably the best for everybody.
	Another one that I think is a little bit of a toss-up now, I see it probably... You know, I actually don't have a prediction on this.
	In Iowa, we have Joni Ernst and Teresa Greenfield.
	I don't have a sense yet of where this thing is going, but I do have to say that Joni Ernst has just done an incredible job of just embarrassing herself at every single moment.
	You know, to go from a life where you were cutting the nuts off pigs and then end up in the Senate and embarrass yourself the way Joni Ernst has, I think is a pretty amazing achievement, I have to say.
	Yeah, I mean, is it any more embarrassing than Marsha Blackburn asking a Google employee if they fired the person that criticized her on a live Zoom?
	I mean, they're all awful people.
	And, you know, yeah, there's nothing, there's no redeeming qualities about Jodi Ernst at all.
	Iowa, man, they've elected some horrible, awful people.
	Awful.
	And it's incredible.
	I can only hope that somehow that's going to change because I know people who live in Iowa.
	They're nice people.
	I don't know how it's gotten hijacked, but they've had a really bad record over the last 20 years.
	Well, the divide in Iowa is a couple of ways.
	One is the evangelical vote, and the other is just like a barely concealed white supremacy.
	You know what I mean?
	It's really, really rough.
	But I will say that Joni Ernst, I think one of the things that could possibly sink her is the fact that she was asked the price of corn at the market in a debate and didn't know.
	And that might actually be what ends her political career, which is just one of the most quintessential Iowan things imaginable.
	And then finally, one of the most talked about and unbelievable amounts of money raised in this.
	Oh, by the way, for the record, I think Mitch McConnell is safe.
	I don't think that that is even going to be all of that competitive.
	It might be closer than past races considering he looks like he's two heartbeats away from dying and has just been an absolute chill for Donald Trump.
	But I think he wins re-election handedly.
	How about you?
	It's not going to be close.
	And you know what?
	Lady G is not going to be close either.
	That's really a bummer, South Carolina.
	Do you?
	Okay, that's what I want to talk about.
	This is the one I'm going to be watching really with a lot of interest.
	Of course I'm South Carolina Democrat Jamie Harrison against Lindsey Graham.
	I can say that Jamie Harrison has outraised Lindsey Graham to the point where he has gone on Fox News begging like a pauper.
	I think there is a possibility that Jamie Harrison beats Lindsey Graham.
	But right now, if you had a gun to my head, I would probably bet that Lindsey Graham keeps his seat.
	But there is an outside possibility that Jamie Harrison wins this election.
	I mean, 538 right now has him down by about 5 points.
	And that's a pretty big margin.
	So I don't see it.
	And then the likelihood of Lindsey Graham winning is 77%.
	But if anyone deserved more to lose their seat than someone like Collins, it's Lindsey Graham.
	And then obviously Mitch McConnell.
	We're going to have to wait that one out.
	It's going to take a little bit longer, but it'll happen.
	But man, we have to take six more years of this.
	I'll say this, if Donald Trump wins the election outright, we're probably looking at the Republicans maintaining the Senate.
	If Joe Biden wins, I think we're either looking at a seat advantage or a split Senate, which of course would be determined by Kamala Harris as the deciding vote.
	I think the Presidency and the Senate go together in this race.
	I agree.
	At this point, you talked me into it, I think Biden is going to win.
	I can't even fathom right now the White House maintained by Trump.
	To me, it feels like the Senate for sure is at least 50-50, and the White House I think for sure goes blue.
	In a sense, they control all the houses now.
	And it would be time to go to work.
	I mean, you know, the first thing you have to do is figure out what they're going to do with the Supreme Court.
	By the way, I like the idea of maybe even limiting and not having them be lifetime.
	Could be another thing that they do.
	So, a lot of things.
	By the way, they came up with nine Supreme Court justices because there were nine circuit courts at the time.
	There are now 13 circuit courts.
	So why not 13?
	It's a hell of an argument.
	It's a hell of an argument.
	And again, I just want to remind everyone that the Republican Party wouldn't even debate this if the shoe was on the other foot.
	It wouldn't even be a question that they'd be the first line in every speech that Donald Trump gave.
	That's just the truth of it.
	And you need to understand that, that.
	The Republican Party plays a different type of politics than the Democratic Party, and it's been the case for years, and it continues to be the case.
	But these are the things that have to be done.
	You have to talk about expanding the court.
	You have to talk about the possibility of bringing DC and Puerto Rico in as states, even possibly American Samoa.
	These are things to talk about, and quite frankly, we need to have the conversations.
	This is the way that you This is the way that you gain power.
	And there's nothing legal about anything I just named.
	Right.
	None of it's underhanded.
	None of it's wrong.
	All of it is legal.
	It's all prescribed.
	There's nothing wrong with any of it.
	Yeah.
	And somehow get rid of two Sanders from either North Dakota or South Dakota and give them to California.
	Somehow.
	Says the Californian!
	Alright, I think that's as good of a place to leave it as any.
	A reminder, we will be having live coverage and analysis on election night, Tuesday night, which means if you go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast and become a patron, you can hang out with Nick and me as we go through the returns.
	We don't know how long we're going to be doing it.
	We don't know if this is going to be a wake or a celebration or a combination thereof.
	But I think it's really important for all of us to be there together.
	So again, that is patreon.com slash MonkWrightPodcast.
	And besides that, you get a bunch of exclusive content.
	I mean, after the election, we're going to be doing a bunch of bonus episodes, we're going to be doing a documentary, we're going to be doing episodes about TV shows and movies and Ask Me Anythings, all of those things after the election.
	We have a Discord server as well.
	Yeah, we right now have a Discord server which is hopping with Muckrakers who are talking with one another, sharing their own stories.
	I gotta log into that.
	I haven't figured it out.
	I gotta do it tonight.
	I'm gonna do it, I promise.
	Okay, so you heard it here.
	Nick, by the time this episode drops, will be just knee-deep in the Muckrake Discord community, which again is hopping.
	This is an exclusive thing for patrons over at patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
	I have to tell you, so we're going to come back next week.
	We're going to record on Monday for an episode on Tuesday, which is where we're going to talk about what to expect, what to prepare for.
	A quick tip, by the way, this weekend if you're out getting groceries, grab some water, grab some canned goods.
	God knows what's going to happen.
	Be ready for a disaster and if no disaster happens, you've got some extra water, you've got some extra, you know, corn.
	So you win either way.
	And you'll know the price of the corn too.
	And you'll know the price of the corn, and you too can serve as a senator from the great state of Iowa.
	All right everybody, so we will be back.
	This weekend is going to be exhausting and stressful and anxious making.
	I truly and honestly believe, and I think Nick is here with me, I think we're not only going to win this thing in general, but I think that we're going to beat back fascism.
	I think there's hope, and I think we have to maintain hope.
	Take care of yourself and the people around you this weekend.
	Take a break, take a deep breath, and be ready for anything next week because we need to be prepared to possibly be in the streets, to possibly act in mass protests.
	So, if you need us until then, you can find Nick over at Can You Hear Me SMH.
	You can find me at J.Y.
	Sexton.

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