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Oct. 29, 2024 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
56:12
The Trump White Supremacy Festival and Hootenanny

Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman pull apart the disgusting rally held at Madison Square Garden by Donald Trump heading into the final week of the campaign. All manner of racist and xenophobic tropes were on display in the name of "comedy," and it remains to be seen if it ends up affecting the race in the slightest. They shift to the non endorsement of a presidential candidate by both the Washington Post and the LA Times, proving that the state of journalism in this country is on a teetering on the abyss. To support the show and gain access to the Weekender episode on Friday, as well as live shows and exclusive analysis, head over to Patreon and become a patron. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Time Text
Hey everybody, welcome to the McRae Podcast.
I'm Jerry G. Sexton.
I'm here with my friend Nick Halsman.
Nick, we are one week away from the 2024 presidential election.
You can cut the anticipation with a fork.
I would say you can cut it with like a very, very dull anything.
Yeah.
Wait, wait, time out!
No, hold on.
Let me think about this.
Is the idea that cutting the anticipation, is it that it's...
Because now I'm thinking about this actual metaphor.
Is it ready to be cut?
Is it resistant to be cut?
What's happening with it?
Oh, it has to be really thick, right?
How thick is the anticipation?
Oh, okay.
So you can cut this anticipation with a machete?
Yeah, you need something actually even harder, stronger than that.
I've always taken that saying just like without much thought.
Yeah, I take it with a grain of salt, if you ask me.
That's why you are the best co-host in the business, my friend.
Everybody, we are a week out from the presidential election.
A reminder that we are going to be broadcasting election night.
We're going to begin at 9 p.m. Eastern as we're watching a lot of these polls close and we're watching the race take shape.
Nick and I are going to be going live for a while.
We're not even sure how long we're going to go, but we want to be there as a welcome alternative in terms of analysis and reaction.
But also we want the Muckrake community to come together and share this very, very turbulent, nervous time together.
That's 9 p.m. Eastern.
You need to go over to patreon.com slash muckrake podcast to join us, hang out.
Today, Nick, we are going to do our big election preview.
That is going to be in the final segment of the show.
So you're going to want to hang out to experience that.
There are a lot of numbers, a lot of scenarios to talk about.
But we would be remiss if we did not begin.
With the Donald Trump rally on Sunday in Madison Square Garden in New York City to a massive crowd.
Trump rolled out a veritable clown car of some of the most disgusting individuals that you could ever possibly imagine.
First and foremost, the guy who sucked up so much of the oxygen in the room, this is quote-unquote comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who, man, great sense of humor on this guy.
I welcome migrants to the United States of America with open arms.
And by open arms, I mean like this.
It's wild.
And these Latinos, they love making babies too.
Just know that.
They do.
They do.
There's no pulling out.
They don't do that.
They come inside just like they did to our country.
Republicans are the party with a good sense of humor.
No way, aren't they?
Hinchcliffe would also go on to call Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage and vogue about cutting watermelons with a black attendee of the rally.
Oh, that one was the chef's kiss, I think.
Yeah, just good work.
You know, we've discussed this in the past.
Guttenberg, not Guttenberg, Gutfeld?
Gutfeld, what's his name?
Gutfeld, yes.
You have these people that, you know, try to be funny because obviously most of the great comedians are on the other side, I think, right?
It's kind of fair to say.
And so they try and do their version.
And I think Trump is probably the top of the list, right?
He's the guy who wants to do two-drink minimum and peer.
And it's like, it's just not, it's cruel.
You can't really mine comedy out of cruelty.
You're not supposed to, at least.
And even when, like, Rickles could do that, but, like, he was talented, and this guy is not.
Yeah, you're not supposed to be punching down, you know, so making fun of people who are in the crosshairs of an authoritarian movement isn't really that funny.
And what actually happens here, and sometimes comedy will do this, it will provide clarity.
It was really, really a good move by Tony Hinchcliffe to make it obvious what the Republican Party actually believes.
They don't care about, you know, conservatism.
They don't care about family values.
What they want to do is they want to hurt the people that they do not like.
This was some of the most unvarnished hate that we have seen.
And the issue here, Nick, and before we move on to other clips from this white power hootenanny to end all white power hootenannies, is to point out that while a lot of people are celebrating online as if this is somehow or another going to be a death knell towards the Trump campaign or it's going to hurt his electoral chances, it's simply not.
You can say any of this.
You can make any of these claims.
You can, you know, traffic in racist stereotypes.
It does not move the bottom line when it comes to Donald Trump, not even the beginning of a percentage point.
Okay, but it might move the needle in terms of anybody of the undecided or people who may have quite voted.
I don't know if anybody's even out there like that.
So that's what's interesting to me on that end.
But then if you look at the comments, I like to do that, right?
I like to follow what the response is to these kind of things.
And it's like so many of the people who you're talking about who are not swayed at all think it's like, it's a joke.
He's a comedian.
You guys don't have a sense of humor.
What's wrong with you?
Like, what's wrong with us for not finding humor from something like that or calling Puerto Rico a piece of trash?
For what it's worth, there's half a million Puerto Ricans that live in Pennsylvania.
And what the early returns are, it seems to be, is that that is going to have an effect.
That's what I've been seeing.
Like, you know, if we use Twitter, like if you listen to Musk, right?
That's the source of news.
There might be some Puerto Rican people of that heritage who would, you know, figure out ways to get more votes for Kamala Harris.
I don't know.
You don't think so?
No.
And I think that, like, that is a comforting idea, particularly.
I mean, we're going to do our election forecast in a while, and it is a really tense election coming up.
I mean, whatever—the truth is, Nick, like, if, you know, superstitions or sort of things like comfort people, that's totally fine.
fine.
But I think the really dire thing is to look at what happened at this rally.
And I have now watched every second of it and have been repulsed by it.
It's really shocking, by the way, that they decided to make their final appeal the most like pure concentrated version of their hate and ugliness.
That was what they went with because it's been working for them.
I don't think that this is necessarily going to hurt Donald Trump in some way.
It By the same fashion, for the record, that the clip we're getting ready to listen is from a preacher who at one point, Nick, grabbed a crucifix and called on God to help Donald Trump and destroy their political enemies.
Here he is giving his idea of who Kamala Harris is.
In fact, she is the devil who ever screamed that out.
She is the Antichrist.
She's the literal personification of evil who has been birthed into the world in order to destroy Christendom.
I'm so glad I watched The Omen and started watching The Omen 2 so I know what he's talking about.
Well, in case you wondered what else other people thought about the Democratic Party, here is another one of the speakers.
By the way, this thing went on for six hours.
It's incredible.
And quite frankly, it never ceases to shock.
Here is another look at what they think about the Democratic Party.
She is some sick bachelor, that Hillary Clinton, huh?
What a sick son of a bitch.
The whole fucking party, a bunch of degenerates, lowlifes, Jewel haters and lowlifes.
Every one of them.
Every one of them.
Do you ever think you'd hear a political campaign like, turn towards this, Nick?
Well, he's off script, right, Jared?
Oh, great.
Cool.
I assume he was drug off by a hook, right?
He's reading off a teleprompter, as I think they all were.
Oh, cool.
Oh, great.
Great.
Tells us that these were vetted.
These were all speeches that were okayed.
You have to imagine that the kind of control that they have means that they would not let this kind of thing happen if they didn't approve it.
But it's like what you said, so I've been saying for the last several weeks, this is...
The polls are telling them that they need to continue to do this.
It's going to get worse, right?
They're going to get even worse.
I wish I could predict this accurately to figure out exactly what they're going to go do next, right?
Because it's so bad as it is.
But they're going to.
They're going to find another way to think that they're going to get an extra half a point off of that.
There's a reason why this is in the A block of today's show.
This right here is yet another mile marker along the way to point out exactly what's happening to American politics.
You and I started our discussion eight years ago, Nick, back in 2016 when I started reporting from Trump rallies.
That's when we linked up and started talking about this thing.
And I said, you know what?
Over time, regardless of what happens in elections, this thing is going to continue to mutate and worsen as radicalization and polarization worsen.
What happens with that?
Not only does hate become the main driving force of one of the main political parties, but you start to see this embrace of conflict politics.
And it isn't going to be the same old speeches.
If this was Mitt Romney speaking a couple of days before the 2012 election, you would not be hearing this, right?
This is down a path that is encouraging this and incentivizing this.
And what you just said is completely correct.
I can only imagine within the next week we're going to hear something else that is even going to take what we saw at Madison Square Garden and honestly put that to shame or put it into new context.
Well, I wrote this down because the question hit me over the weekend.
When we're looking at sort of what Michelle Obama was trying to say or was saying in her speech, and when you hear Kamala and Wallace talk, like, how are you supposed to sell decency to people who are fueled by anger?
And hate.
You know, that's where we're at, because what they're going to think is that decency and empathy are all weakness.
And in this society, the way we've gotten to, in a way that we were going toward that more empathetic place, the pushback, probably in the same way that the pushback against, like, the counterculture movement swung us way back toward Reagan, like, this swinging back again into the toxic masculinity of which we thought had been kind of conquered, conquered is really frustrating and troubling.
So I don't know how you're supposed to sell that because empathy and decency are supposed to be like these benchmarks that we have in the society.
And you'll have even like religious people who are going to rail against something like that.
And that's the burden that the Democratic Party has yet to figure out how to overcome.
Yeah, it's about the cycle of escalation.
And what you just brought up is an important point in considering all of this.
The truth is that you can't do the whole, when they go low, we go high.
Like, because when you actually do that, what you're communicating is, well, things aren't actually as dire as they seem to be.
This other party is absolutely outside of reality, and they're fighting their own war that we're not going to participate in.
You know what people want right now, Nick?
They want somebody who is willing to get in and kick some ass.
They want somebody who's going to come in and actually take on a threat that they know is real, that they've been told for years now isn't real.
And what they want is they want someone to meet this type of anger with the type of righteous anger that it deserves.
That's actually what the electorate is dying for right now.
This is one of the reasons why you and I came on after the VP debate and we said, what the hell was Waltz doing?
Making friends with J.D. Vance?
That's not why we want you on the ticket.
That's not why we want you on that stage.
And unfortunately, what happens, Nick, and we're going to talk about the historical background of this here in just a second.
When authoritarianism reaches the doorstep of power and as they're ratcheting up the stakes, what happens is it necessitates a vigorous and angry response in opposition to it.
And that cycles and cycles and cycles until the opposition or authoritarianism wins.
It is sort of you think about the Tasmanian devil going around or like a couple of Looney Tunes characters getting in a fight and sucking everybody up into the cloud.
That is what happens.
The response that has been there has not been appropriate.
And that's the issue that allows this.
this to grow and grow and grow and allows these assholes to even hold the beginnings of a foot in terms of power.
Well, I think the problem that we've gotten to as well is that that anger that's been building for all these decades, that's also like on the Democrats.
That anger needed to be addressed a lot better and a lot more effectively as an institution of government.
And because it let those people down enough times over enough years, it became rife, I suppose, for a guy like Trump to come in.
That's right.
It's Kind of like no wonder, because it sounds like what you're describing now is it's inevitable now that authoritarianism has been, you know, let out of the box a little bit.
Even if our appropriate response is to fight back now and the vortex becomes authoritarianism.
I mean, perhaps it's no wonder that someone's willing to take him out at that point, because the only other solution would be to remove the guy that's instigating this so much.
And at this point, let's just say Trump did cease to exist at this very moment.
I don't think that there's anybody else who would be charismatic enough, if that's the right word, to fill that void and continue this cycle.
Do you?
We don't know yet.
That's the problem, is we don't know yet.
There are certainly contenders who could possibly do that.
But what you just said is apt, and it's correct.
Nick, I started talking about this in 2016 precisely because I wanted to avoid this moment.
Where we are right now, watching this rally, watching Trump, watching the 2024 election, I wanted to avoid the possibility that we would arrive at this point.
I wanted to avoid the major conflict.
I wanted to diffuse it before we got there.
And unfortunately, history shows us how these cycles work.
So, for instance, historical context in all of this.
This is not the first time that we've had a fascist rally in Madison Square Garden.
In 1939, the German-American Bund held a Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden that included over 20,000 people in attendance.
For those who haven't seen footage of this or heard stories about it, it included a picture of George Washington surrounded by Nazis.
It was almost verbatim the rhetoric that was on display at this Donald Trump rally, just with some rhetorical flourishes here and there that hid the expressive fascistic ideas.
The entire point is this.
This is not something that goes away.
This is something that cycles around.
And this actually and I, Nick, I'll be honest with you.
I find it hard to believe that this rally happened, you know, what, 75 years after this rally with the German-American Bundy.
I have to imagine it's not a coincidence that this is something within the Trump campaign that recognized the historical parallels of this thing.
And if you don't believe me, here's a clip from Donald Trump who is making one of his final pushes and appeals to the American voter.
Get your husband off the couch.
The football game doesn't mean a damn thing.
You gotta get out and vote.
Get up, Harry.
Come on, Harry.
Get up, Harry.
Let's go.
You're gonna vote for the president, Harry.
We're gonna save our country.
For the past nine years, we have been fighting against the most sinister and corrupt forces on earth.
With your vote in this election, you can show them once and for all that this nation does not belong to them.
This nation belongs to you.
It belongs to you.
So to believe that all this is a coincidence is also to believe that this rhetoric, the idea that Trump is fighting sinister forces, that the press are the enemies of the people, and that they are battling an enemy from within, they just are accidentally...
Completely mirrors a fascist Nazi rhetoric.
We're supposed to believe that that's what's happening, as opposed to people within the Trump campaign and the Trump circle study these things, understand their rhetorical appeal, and understand how they can lead to electoral victory.
It's not even a contest.
It's obvious that this is a chosen, chosen display.
For sure.
And, you know, there are probably problems that we have with the Constitution and laws and issues that we would like to change.
But, you know, you have to imagine that the founders also, while it's not that explicit, the press were sort of like the fourth co-equal branch of the government.
They had protection in the Bill of Rights at the very least.
Well, time out.
I think what you just stepped on is something important because they were also the organs by which the Federalists were able to push their legislation and manufacture consent, and they were also the friends and the landowners and the compatriots in wealth.
So yes, there's a reason why they viewed the press as something that deserved to be taken care of, for sure.
Although what you're describing is what the Republicans do now to plant stories and then cite them in their arguments.
We're not wrong.
Yeah, so I suppose that's been going back for a long, long time.
But there was a moment in this country, at the very least, where it did feel like the press was such a vital part of our democracy.
And it should still be that way.
But again, when you mix democracy and you mix capitalism, eventually that's going to bleed into the press as well, where they're not going to have enough money to have enough journalistic integrity and then hire good journalists.
And then that dies, too.
And then here's what we have.
The New York Post is now the paper of record to a lot of people.
Man, you know, it's also a situation where the economic circumstances around journalism become so dire that a billionaire is able to reach into their pocket and find the funds necessary to buy one of the major press organs in the country.
Which brings us to the response to what we've been discussing with this rally in Madison Square Garden with Trump, which is one of the major stories over the last few days is that the Washington Post has announced that it is declining to endorse a presidential candidate for the first which is one of the major stories over the last few days is All right.
This is a statement by William Lewis, the chief executive officer of the Washington Post.
The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election, nor in any future presidential election.
We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.
As our editorial board wrote in 1960, the Washington Post has not endorsed either candidate in the presidential campaign that is in our tradition and accords with our action in five of the last six elections.
And a reminder, they have been endorsing candidates since 1976.
And what we have seen after a resignation from Robert Kagan of the Washington Post and critiques by other members of the Post, we have heard that Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon and the Washington Post and also just been a fact or enjoyer of a bunch of benevolent the owner of Amazon and the Washington Post and also just been a fact or enjoyer of a bunch of benevolent contracts in the United States government, was the one who This is capitulation.
It is appeasement of Donald Trump.
There's a variety of reasons for it.
But Nick, what are your initial thoughts about this before we get into the background of why this decision was made?
Oh, I think this is corruption.
I think this is Bezos trying to avoid government interference in his businesses by pretending to half support Trump.
So if he wins, they'll get rid of that investigation into Amazon.
I think that was the issue.
I'm trying to find the thread right now, but I'd seen it on Twitter where You know, he's under scrutiny by the government right now, and there's no other explanation from my mind as to the fact that he's trying to cozy up to him more and prove to him that he's on board, and then in return, they will quash any kind of regulatory investigations of his businesses.
Well, I'll say this first of all.
I think a missing component in what you just brought up is the idea that Jeff Bezos would oppose authoritarianism in the first place.
The idea that morally and ethically he's against Donald Trump, but you know, he's been compromised because of business decisions.
What we are seeing is a real bellwether situation in which the billionaires in this country, you'll notice Nick, all of the tech people, the tech industrialists who gained all this money at the turn of the century, creating this infrastructure that we're currently quote unquote enjoying.
You'll notice Elon Musk bought Donald Trump and is using him for his own purposes.
Mark Zuckerberg is suddenly very Trump-curious.
And Jeff Bezos is now...
And by the way, for the record, I don't think a Washington Post endorsement would have given the presidency to Kamala Harris.
It's the point that it was withheld that's important.
There are investigations of Amazon and Bezos' actions.
That, by the way, was activated by Donald Trump consistently posting that he was going to go after the people who helped Kamala Harris, endorsed her, gave her money, you name it.
So that right there was a legal threat.
But on top of that, Nick, Jeff Bezos, like Elon Musk, like Mark Zuckerberg, like all these other tech industrialists, where do they get their real money from besides the products and subscriptions that they sell?
They get it from their government contracts.
They get it from their multibillion-dollar contracts that they get helping the government operate their systems, including the military-industrial complex, the space agencies, and just the logistics of federalism.
So as a result, why would Jeff Bezos allow his paper to endorse somebody, right?
Like, it isn't actually in his favor to do that considering the state of play how it has changed.
Exactly.
And I'm looking at it now to remind myself, you know, the post was vehemently against Trump and had written, you know, you can argue in their coverage of him was pretty negative.
And in retaliation, Trump had the Department of Justice file this suit against Amazon, which they had tried to get dismissed because they felt there was political retribution.
So, you know, as a businessman, he's like, I don't want that again.
I don't want to do that at all.
So let's sit this one out and signal that.
Yeah.
Again, it's a petty dictator using its authoritarian powers.
From day one, they're going to be able to be a lot more effective in that.
Did you see that they're actually going to try and circumvent the FBI's vetting process for access to top secret material?
Did you see that?
Oh, that is just wonderful.
That's good news.
So there's some way, I think, that they figured out that the president can override that.
And we know that because Jerry Kushner could not get a clearance originally, right?
Because he lied on his FS-86 form so many times.
And when you fill out that form, it says, under penalty of felony, you were going to go to prison.
And nothing ever happened to him on that one.
And then Trump finally waved his magic wand and he was able to get access to all sorts of secrets.
Supposedly they're going to do that again, but this time it's a broad swath across a whole bunch of these loyalists who are going to come in from day one.
I'm trying to convince myself that it won't matter.
I'm living in my bubble in California and nothing will affect me.
I don't know, but it doesn't feel any better thinking about it that way.
Yeah, because it's not true, unfortunately.
Like, I mean, the cultural change and the political sort of sea change affects everybody.
And on top of that, you are inherently and intrinsically linked to people who are going to suffer, right?
They are just versions of you out in the world trying to live a life just like you are.
And quite frankly, like, the only people who are actually going to benefit from this are people like Jeff Bezos.
That's it.
And, you know, people have been bringing up the Los Angeles Times refusing to endorse, and it's owned, of course, by Dr.
Patrick Soon-Shiong, the doctor who's made these drugs and all that, now has billions of dollars.
A reminder to everybody that Soon-Shiong, like, asked Donald Trump to be part of his administration in 2016 and 2017.
Like, when this state of play emerges, it isn't just capitulation, Nick.
It is recognizing an opening to power and wealth.
And that is how this cycle works.
At first, everyone's like, oh, this is so disgusting.
I don't want any part of that.
This is dangerous.
And by the way, shame on the Washington Post for their democracy dies in darkness bullshit.
Which just made people feel better like they were somehow or another getting a newspaper subscription but making a real difference at the same time.
It's total charlatan bullshit.
But as the state of play and environment has changed, Nick, what we're now seeing is a willingness to embrace people like Donald Trump because there are means to an end to further enrichment and empowerment.
Now the manners don't matter.
Now it doesn't matter what he actually says.
All that rally that we talked about earlier, that stuff isn't enough to repel people.
Now it's obvious that things are changing and developing and metastasizing to the point where people like Bezos, Zuckerberg, Musk, you name it, they recognize that they have everything to gain from this.
Which, for the record, is the next step in the authoritarian cycle.
It's when they buy in, they see this as something that helps them, something that they should go ahead and put their money and their power and their weight behind, and that's when it starts gaining some serious traction and momentum.
And what's supposed to be able to balance all of that is the business aspect of it where enough people will say, I'm not going to subscribe to the Washington Post anymore.
I know I canceled my subscription as soon as I read that over the weekend.
And I saw reports where in one day they lost half as many subscriptions as they had gotten all year long across the board from the digital side.
But unfortunately, Bezos doesn't give a shit because people have become so rich.
They've allowed to accumulate so many billions that losing $1 billion doesn't mean anything to them.
And they don't care if the Washington Post has lost a whole bunch of subscriptions.
Eventually, maybe you could hurt them enough where the bottom line is something that's significant.
But again, they've become so rich at this point that they don't care, even someone like Musk as well.
Well, I think there's a couple of things to look at here which are really important.
One, canceling your subscription to the Washington Post.
He doesn't give a shit about that.
He didn't buy the Washington Post to make money.
He bought the Washington Post in order to influence the communication environment of the United States of America.
That's worth way more to him than any amount of subscriptions we would pay for.
Also, you know what would hurt more?
Canceling your subscription to Amazon Prime or buying things from Amazon.
And that right there is where a lot of his money is made.
But Nick, I want to point something out.
That still doesn't hurt him all that much.
You know why?
Because the vast majority of the money that Jeff Bezos makes is actually from his contracts with the United States government.
I don't control that.
You don't control that.
The idea that our dollars, whether it's the Washington Post or Amazon Prime, are going to make a difference isn't true.
We could boycott him all day long.
It's the fact that the government, like, it depends on him.
He is still going to get all of these different contracts.
The only way that this changes is if we have a sea change in terms of how the government does business.
And we've already seen Elon Musk has promoted some of the worst conspiracy theories and also election interference that we've ever seen.
Do you think for a second that any government contract he's up for has been affected in any way, shape, or form?
No, I guess only the invites to the events that they have about electric cars, but other than that, nothing else has been canceled.
Nick, he has been enabling and working with dictators around the world.
He actually, if America is a supporter of Ukraine, why didn't he lose some of his contracts or be investigated after he helped Russia in their invasion of Ukraine?
On top of that, we just found out that Taiwan, that the United States of America is supposed to support in its conflict with China, we just found out that he screwed them over at the behest of Vladimir Putin.
The whole point, and again, just to bring this thing full circle, we've talked about Israel and Saudi Arabia and how they realize the United States is powerless to do anything for them because their construct of power depends on them, right?
They can do whatever they want.
The oligarchs understand that as well.
They can do anything that they want, and they're still going to get the contracts because they're basically the only game in town.
They have monopolized the functions of the United States government and all of its complexes.
And so as a result, why would you piss off a guy who might be the next president of the United States of America and also serve as your bottom line?
It will only change when our government actually changes and our environment changes.
That does start with us demanding it, but it's not going to be from boycotting Amazon Prime or canceling Washington Post subscriptions.
That's a great point.
I mean, and then to add to that, why would any of those oligarchs follow the law?
Why?
No reason.
The law is just a new system.
And to prove it at that point, it's even what's going on with Trump right now and how these lawsuits are going to end up probably being nothing.
And they weren't even going to come to fruition until he started running again.
Merrick Garland was more than happy to just let it go and forget about all that stuff and then certainly forgotten about obstruction of justice that he did 10 times while in the White House.
So Yeah, there's no reason, like, guys like Elon Musk could simply flout, you know, the laws.
They don't give a shit.
They know that there's no penalty for that.
And it would be really nice for there to be that penalty.
But you've already seen how Trump has now rallied half of the country behind him, primarily on the fact that he's convinced that these are all fake cases.
You know, everything needs to be damned.
So it's like, even if you want to try and do it, you're screwed.
Yeah, and so, speaking of the big enchilada, Nick, we turn our sights to the 2024 presidential election.
We're going to talk about, of course, the presidential showdown, but we're also going to talk about the Senate and the House and the state of play where we find it.
Just to set the table, Nick, right now, depending upon what poll, and all these polls are basically useless, Kamala Harris is either statistically tied with Donald Trump or maybe six points ahead of him.
We've talked incessantly about the fact that the Electoral College inherently favors the Republican Party as a minoritarian institution and how you basically have to have a big giant lead and have a bunch of swing states that end up in your favor.
On top of that, we've seen years of unobstructed gerrymandering and rigging in red and purple states that has been pushed forward by places like the Heritage Institute and other associated donor-based think tanks.
On top of that, they have an army of lawyers who are ready to pounce on even the appearance of a close race.
The question we have now, heading into a week from today, this presidential election, the question is whether or not Kamala Harris has enough of a lead or has the ability to win enough of these swing states to turn the election.
And we need to get into this, talk about some of these states, how things are going.
But before we do, Nick, what is your overall sense of where this race is a week out?
Oh, but just to add on to that, you know, Trump had inferred that there's some secret that him and Mike Johnson have as well.
Another level of, I mean, he's going to figure out the Speaker of the House is going to try and inject himself into this and try and change the votes.
But I don't know.
Part of me is so worried that she ends up winning the election and then it becomes a...
I guess we call it a legal mess in whatever sense we can call that because of whatever they're going to try.
There's levels to this.
So it's almost like even if she were able to be declared the winner, we know it's not going to be so easy.
I don't feel good about any of this at all.
And I recognize that...
Hillary and Biden were both up massively higher margins at this point of the election.
Massively.
But then you hear all these longclaves, like college-educated people are much higher for Kamala than they had been in the past.
This weird stuff that make you think, oh, maybe this is better for her.
But I've got to tell you, it feels like she's going to lose if she's anywhere within three points nationally, where she's 1.2 right now, maybe on the average.
And I don't see how that changes in a week anyway.
Well, I just want to point out, as you're talking about this and how so many of these races, and by my count right now, we're looking at about seven swing states that are going to determine the trajectory and outcome of this election.
Nick, we're taping this on Monday, October 28th.
By the way, happy birthday, Mom.
And, you know, one of the stories that is out there that is popping around is the fact that you have arsonists who are setting ballot boxes around Washington State on fire.
We've already lost God knows how many ballots due to that arson, and we're still a week out from the election.
We have no idea what things are going to look like on Tuesday and what kind of general fuckery is going to be taken out.
So at this point, I have to say definitively, and we'll talk about these actual states, where they're going to go, what we think is going to happen.
The game board right now is set up in Donald Trump's favor.
There is a very, very real possibility that Donald Trump will be elected as the 47th president of the United States of America.
It is an uphill battle for Kamala Harris to win this race.
That doesn't mean that it's not going to happen.
And that doesn't mean that we're not going to see her somehow or another, you know, pull victory out of the jaws of defeat.
You know, I was looking at the map myself, and we'll get into this in a second.
I think right now, like, there's a real possibility that she might end up getting 277 electoral votes.
And for anybody keeping track, that is seven votes over the total that you need to win.
That means that she would need to win a large amount of these swing states and also avoid the type of legal ramifications that could overturn results, that could rig the things and or send any case upwards to the Supreme Court.
The entire point is that going into this election, Kamala Harris is the underdog.
And I find it hard when I see a lot of people say, oh, her rallies are huge.
Oh, Beyonce is supporting her or whatever.
Like there is a lot of hope out there that the state of this election is different than it is.
But we are heading into a massive, massive battle in which it's hard to believe that Kamala Harris, who, by the way, by all accounts, is probably up in the popular vote because the Electoral College has not been challenged, that she is not in a situation where she is the underdog going into Tuesday.
Right.
And for what it's worth, I have friends who are in Arizona canvassing right now and feel a little bit more, like, upbeat.
I mean, he's up by three points, I think, in Arizona.
It seems like there's no way.
I've got him up two.
From what I've looked at, I've got him up two points in Arizona.
And that's, you know, two is a lot in a way that...
Yeah, 1.9.
It's like...
The only question now is whether or not these polls are worthy of being trusted.
Are we in a situation now where enough people simply won't give the right answer or because of cell phones?
We don't know.
Because back in the day, the way we did polls, you could poll 2,000 people out of a country of 100 million, and that supposedly gave you a really keen insight into how this election was going to go.
I know it's math.
I know it's probability and all these different things.
But at some point, it's still always kind of gnawed in the back of my brain that's like, man, that little bit of polling seems hard to believe that that would be as accurate as they think it is.
But do you think that we've gotten to that point now where it's just really hard that these polls aren't going to be accurate?
No, we don't know.
That's the entire point.
And like anybody who points at polls and says that they're definitive or airtight, they're telling you a story.
And by the way, most of the people who tell you that depend on polling.
They're strategists and consultants who are basically able to hand over polling and get their paycheck in return.
Or they're, you know, idiots like Nate Silver who have made their entire career off of pretending like any of this is scientific or actually predictable.
We don't know.
And for the record, I have said, I believe Kamala Harris is an underdog going into this election.
There's a possibility that she comes out of this thing blowing them out of the water.
And in that case, I'm happy to eat crow on that and admit that I wasn't right because I looked at a certain amount of polling and information that was put in front of me.
I don't think that that is necessarily true.
I think that this is going to be a nail-biter.
And I think it's going to really come down to a few of these states.
And Nick, here's the list of the states that I've got that I think are going to make the difference in this.
We have Pennsylvania, we have Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina.
I think out of those states, the most important are the following four.
Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, and North Carolina.
And, you know, you brought up Arizona where Trump, based on like the numbers that I have, that he's up probably two points.
There's even a hope that maybe Arizona will turn for Kamala Harris because Carrie Lake is just an absolutely abysmal Senate candidate.
You also look over at North Carolina, Mark Robinson, who is still in the race for the governorship in North Carolina.
I think he's going to lose and lose substantially.
He might drag Trump down there.
There are elements here that could very well play out in favor of Kamala Harris.
And we might even get above the 277 that I said, which is the best case scenario, I think, that the statistics show.
But it is really, really, really going to be a coin flip in a lot of these situations.
I just can't wrap my head around how Gallego would be up, you know, plus three, plus four, whatever, over Carrie Lake in Arizona, and then Trump is up over Harris by three points or whatever that is.
That just does not compute at all.
Americans love splitting their vote, man.
So, for instance, in the state of Missouri, where Josh Hawley is going to moonwalk to re-election as one of the most disgusting figures as a United States senator, I would not be shocked to find out that Missouri passes the law to protect abortion rights.
To put abortion rights in state law.
Like, I would not be shocked to see that take place.
And certainly Arizona, the state we're talking about, is one of the most sun-cooked crazy states in the union.
I would not be shocked to see Lake lose and see Donald Trump win the state.
I know.
I just worry that it's...
Is it misogyny?
You know, over anything else?
I think misogyny plays a big role into it.
Racism plays a role into it.
But also, Nick, we've talked about this.
This is a poisonous environment to be an incumbent.
Like everybody thinks that the country is going in the wrong direction.
There's a whole spate of wars going on.
The economy, despite what Democrats want everybody to believe, has been rough and precarious.
It's really, really hard to do that.
And on top of it, there is a whole slew of things that I think the Kamala Harris campaign has done wrong in this race.
I personally, I think that this has been a slapdash of a campaign that got way out over its skis.
It paid way too much attention to traditional strategists and consultants, including the old Biden campaign apparatus that was in control of it.
I think there were a lot of unforced errors in this thing, and that's one of the reasons why we're entering into a really precarious election.
You know, if we're getting existential here, it also felt to me that I mean, I understand why, you know, Biden wanted to anoint Harris, and the money was probably a big reason for that.
And also, he probably wanted to control that, have one last say of something.
But I don't know how much of a service it did for the campaign, for the race itself, by including someone who was part of the existing administration.
It just opened up all of the criticism and all the anger and hate towards the same person, the same, you know, entity.
And if it was somebody who was also Free of the burden of having been in the middle of, you know, running like, you know, the country, they wouldn't be as easily criticized.
Not that it would matter because Trump would just lie about whoever they ran against and do all that stuff.
But I just kind of wonder now about the wisdom of picking her out of that context.
Does that make sense?
It does.
But then there's another question, too, which is it goes back to what I said about Jeb Bush and the Iraq question.
Like, Kamala Harris was asked consistently, what will you do different from Joe Biden?
She has not been able to answer that.
Her one answer has been, I'll include Republicans in my cabinet.
That's not an answer that people want to hear, right?
Like, you want to hear a new direction, and they have not been able to communicate one of those different directions.
But look how we got Biden in the first place.
He was out of the race.
He was not going to win that primary in 2020.
and they had to pick the old white guy because they were so afraid that no one else would be able to beat Trump.
Barack Obama came in and said, enough is enough.
Bernie Sanders is going to win this nomination.
It's done.
Right.
And forgive me, Bernie Sanders being an old white guy, but like the socialists of them all knew that that wasn't going to work.
Right.
And that may or may not have been true, but it also, it's, you know, it put us right on a path to where we are right now.
And then, you know, so, and I, and I'm really grateful that we chose someone who wasn't the old white guy to take his place.
And it all felt really good in the very beginning.
But, you know, I feel like there was something to that as well.
And I'm ashamed to have to even wrap my head around that because, again, there's no old white guy that would have worked anyway.
But, you know, I just feel like maybe what I'm saying is that we're still in this weird time of our country where people have really horrible views about a lot of different things that are based on race and gender, and we haven't transcended that yet, it doesn't feel like to me.
If Kamala Harris loses this election, there is a whole lot of reasons why she lost this election.
Yes, racism and misogyny are absolutely going to factor into that.
But you also have to point to the fact that she is completely capitulated on the issue of immigration.
She has ceded that battleground space to Donald Trump.
On top of that, this outreach to Republicans in the midst of all of that.
And by the way, has no answer when it comes to Gaza.
None whatsoever.
Those things have affected this entire race.
And I still think that because she's facing Donald Trump that she has a possibility of winning.
Donald Trump is unraveling in real time.
And the only thing that he has to put forward is pure, unvarnished hate.
And I think there's still an opportunity for her to win.
But if you look at the electoral map, Nick, I mean...
Right now, Michigan is tied.
There's absolutely no reason for Michigan to be tied outside of a lot of the things we've talked about.
Wisconsin, it's a one-point race.
That's crazy.
Georgia is a one-point race, which speaks more about the upcoming generation that's in Georgia.
North Carolina is one point with Mark Robinson being just an absolute disastrous candidate, the likes of which we've never seen.
Right now...
Pennsylvania, I mean, is fundamentally tied.
I mean, if I had to make my predictions right now, I would say that she wins Pennsylvania, she wins Wisconsin, Donald Trump wins Michigan, the Democrats, and Nevada might determine the election.
Weirdly enough, the state of Nevada might be the state that determines the election.
I could see her winning that.
I could see the GOP winning Arizona and Georgia and North Carolina going to the Democrats.
That's how I came to 277.
And that is a weird map that is more influenced by a lot of what's going on as opposed to the candidacies and the campaigns that have been run.
But yeah, how do you think this thing is going to shake out at this point if you had to make a projection?
Well, I just feel like right now, if she loses Pennsylvania, it's over.
So I've been saying that the whole time.
And so, you know, she has to win that.
I think she's, you know, for her to win, I think she's going to have to hold the Rust Belt line of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania.
And, uh, in, in, in my mind, if those three can go to her, there's some residual effects across the country where you get the other state that she needs, be it, you know, Nevada or Arizona or one of those can kind of fall into place.
So those are the three that I'm looking at regardless of the, all the other stuff.
Um, But it just, you know, and listen, you'd rather be up 1.2 percentage points in the national polls, and you'd rather be up by 0.3, whatever it is.
That's better than being down.
I think the one thing about the polls, I will say that it's possible that what I know they try and factor this in, but in theory, turnout isn't necessarily reflected in the polls.
Right.
Preference.
But if there's a huge turnout like we saw in 2020, then then that might actually that that would sort of affect the polls in some way.
That said, you know, Biden ended up, I think, in the end of the last few polls was up like eight or nine points, I want to say, and then he won by four.
Total, you know, and a lot of millions and millions of votes.
I think it was four percentage points.
So whatever they had tried to figure out was off, I think, overall.
And so as a result, it's like, yeah, she's not up by, you know, eight points nationally, you know, as on the average, then I don't see how she wins by that squeaky margin.
And that's the problem.
You know, a lot of people have been trying to tell me lately, they've been pushing to the numbers of people who have already cast ballots.
And they say, you know, this forecasts like a major turnout election, which they believe, you know, goes in the Democratic favor.
I don't know that that's true.
I think it very much could be that the people who are going to vote early or the people who vote early, it's not necessarily portending some sort of a large turnout.
The one thing that I will be very interested in when I look at the postmortem of this election, young people.
I want to see exactly how many people went ahead and held their nose and voted for Kamala Harris, even though they have a lot of problems when it comes to everything from Gaza to the economy to climate change.
I will be very fascinated to see where the Democratic Party and what lessons they learn.
If they lose and they turn around and say, well, the young people let us down, the ditch is going to be dug deeper.
Is the entire point, if that's what ends up happening, as opposed to some sort of a recalibration.
I don't know where that's going to go.
I don't know where that's going to show up.
And quite frankly, we're previewing the election here, and I'm throwing my thoughts out.
It's not even necessarily a prediction.
It's seeing where things are and trying to extrapolate something from it.
But this is one of the most black box elections that we have ever seen.
We have no idea where this thing is going, whatsoever.
I would prefer to be in that mind space and where I am right now.
I'll tell you that.
I'll have to get there.
So in terms of the presidential election, we don't know very, very well where this is going.
When it comes to Congress, though, Nick, there are some pretty clear things taking shape here.
It looks very likely like the Republicans will take control of the Senate.
There are only a couple of seats where it looks like there is a possibility of anything being flipped.
The two major ones, I guess there are actually three.
Sherrod Brown in Ohio is in real, real danger with Bernie Moreno.
Ted Cruz, it looks like, is at least in a little bit of danger with Allred in Texas.
And John Tester in Montana with Tim Sheehy looks like he is in real, real trouble.
It looks like the Republican Party has a chance to flip at least two seats and gain control of the Senate.
Yeah, I mean, I keep getting texts from Colin telling me that they're in the lead or whatever, and then you look and they're not...
You know, Texas is that football that Charlie Brown keeps trying to kick, and it's frustrating.
You've got to keep trying to kick the football, at least.
I mean, like, the Democratic Party has given up on Ohio and Florida, basically, writ large, which is one of the reasons we're talking about this underdog election to begin with.
Like, we're not even questioning what's going to happen in Florida and Ohio.
At least keep trying to kick that football.
And so this is the other problem is Harris wins and then she's going to face a Congress that's completely against her and won't be able to get anything done.
Well, it looks like the Senate is probably going to flip to the Republicans, and it looks like the House is leaning towards going Republican as well.
By the way, New York Democrats, thank you as always for all of your bullshit that continues to hurt everything.
If this is a razor-thin margin in the House, we're looking at the real possibility that the New York Democrats are going to screw the pooch again along the lines of what happened with George Santos.
We even have...
Josh Reilly, a Democrat, is in danger of losing to Mark Moloreno, who, by the way, has been revealed to wear blackface at parties, and meanwhile is in real danger of losing that.
Like, what a mess this is.
And, you know, we're looking at the 17th, Mondaire Jones and Mike Lawler—well, I'm sorry, Lawler was the one with blackface.
Molinaro is just disgusting— And, like, basically, we're now looking at the disarray of one state's Democratic Party that very well could hand over the House and complete control of the government to the Republican Party.
Congratulations, as always.
You continue to impress and amaze.
Yeah, you know, they probably thought that they could toil in obscurity knowing that nothing would ever affect anything else nationally or whatever, and now they woke up one day like, wait, what?
Like, oh, we needed to have better candidates?
We needed to run better, you know, campaigns?
Yeah, that's been a shocker, of all shockers, that New York would be so ineffectual.
And, you know, Santos is still out there.
He's got some dirt, he says, that's going to be out there.
Someone's going to release about...
I can't wait to hear what that is.
At any rate, yeah, it's not good, Bob.
And, you know, if the House continues to be under control of Republicans, it's like, you know, at the very least, they're so bad at lawmaking that, like, they won't get anything done.
Even when, you know, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, didn't Trump have the control of everything for the first two years?
Yep, and they just continually shot themselves in the foot, except for in one thing, which was passing tax cuts that benefited billionaires, because that's what the government's been reduced to.
Right.
But that's also going to be the doomsday scenario.
They're not going to waste time.
Remember, they wasted probably the first year of being in office not knowing what they're supposed to be doing.
No one's showing up, no one being replaced in all manner of job in the government.
That will not happen again.
I just want to say, Jamie Harrison should be fired.
He should be relieved of his duties as the head of the DNC. And one thing that I said, Nick, I can't even remember when I started talking about this.
It was when the campaign started to come into full focus last year.
I said the way to actually win anything is to build a national agenda and message that the Democrats could all be on board with.
And you know what they did?
They did the exact opposite.
There has been absolutely no coalescing around any idea or anything.
And by the way, they ran away from abortion in some states.
They became like pro-pro anti-immigration in other states.
You know, they threw their way behind Israel in other states.
You name it.
And then other people are saying, no, we did this.
We did this.
It's a piecemeal strategy that has always failed the Democratic Party.
And they have absolutely and utterly failed.
And they, quite frankly, they deserve to lose control of Congress for how bad of a campaign this was.
Like they really, truly do.
This was a piss-poor congressional campaign by the Democratic Party, who spent most of it, Nick, running away from Joe Biden.
That was the majority of the unifying message from the Democratic Party.
I'm an independent.
I don't actually care for Joe Biden.
Like, okay, great.
How did that serve you under Barack Obama?
It led to historic losses in Congress, and it's going to happen again.
Jamie Harrison has been an abject failure, and the Democratic Party continues to run away from the thing that actually wins elections.
Yeah.
I mean, but you add on that, that maybe there's a possibility that this notion that the more people vote, the more likely the Democrat will win.
I don't know how true that is anymore.
It's certainly how these demographics are breaking out.
I feel bad to be part of Gen X. Gen X is now voting for Trump more than they are for Harris.
Well, yeah, y'all are getting really conservative, and you're not comfortable with it, and you're in denial.
I'm not talking to you, Nick, but I'm talking to your generation.
Like, a lot of what's happening is this country is becoming more rightward-leaning because the Democratic Party hasn't given them something to coalesce around.
And so as a result, what are they worried about?
Their pocketbook.
They're worried about keeping their slice of the pie that they have at the expense of other people, including when it comes to immigration.
And this has been an utter, utter failure.
There's a possibility that the Democrats keep control of the Senate, and maybe through an act of God, they end up with control of the House.
I don't see it happening.
And you could very well see a Kamala Harris president with a completely Republican-leaning Congress.
That is a real possibility at this point.
Right.
And, you know, so not only do we have to deal with the fact that, like, maybe she eats out a win, maybe she then has to fight through whatever challenges they're going to try and do the bullshit.
And then she'll have both houses and Senate against her.
You know, it's just going to be, it's rough.
It's rough either way.
So I guess it's good that we'll all be together hanging out.
Do you?
Do you know how, and I agree with that, do you know what happens if she inherits like a completely Republican Congress?
Do you know how that works in the cycle?
What happens is that she would then moderate herself, put forward what are seen as bipartisan bills that are supported by the Democrats and the Republicans.
And what are they going to do, Nick?
Are they going to pass those bills?
No, they don't want to pass any of that.
They want to make her look good.
Okay, so what are they going to do when they don't pass those bipartisan bills?
They're going to move further and further to the right.
They're going to make more and more demands and expect the Democratic Party to follow them more and more, which is how this cycle continues down the road.
This, like, next week, I mean, it's really incumbent on Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and the entire Democratic apparatus to make a final push.
But this is also a real come-to-Jesus moment.
Like, we know what this is.
We see it, you know, with clear eyes, everything from the Trump rally to the way this country is moving and what the billionaires are doing.
Like, something needs to change course, and it needs to change course in a real damn hurry.
Yeah, I hear it.
And by the way, that's what the right says, too.
That's why they want Trump.
They think that the course will have changed.
So here we are.
All right.
Well, we are going to be back with our Weekender episode on Friday, where we'll have more thoughts on all of this and the election as we approach it.
Reminder, go to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast, good Lord, in order to listen to the Weekender episodes.
But also, you're going to want to come and hang out with us on election night.
As we go through the results, we analyze it in the way that the media simply isn't able or willing to do, and also hang out with the community and support one another.
Patreon.com slash Moncrick Podcast.
In the meantime, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me?
SMHC and find me at J. Wes Axton.
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