Chuck’s Commentary - American Democracy Is Clogged, But Not Beyond Repair + The Constitution Needs An Update - The Chuck ToddCast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello, They're happy Thursday, and welcome to another episode of
the Chuck Podcast. Here at Chuck podcast World Headquarters. The
Thursday recording means we are at the end of our
production week of sorts, and we say of sorts because
they've oh sixty or seventy other commitments that I feel
like I'm constantly juggling here. But these are good problems

(00:29):
to have, right you know, at the beginning of this
calendar year, there were not as many commitments, so that
is a tribute to the growth of the audience. You
guys have been out there. You guys have been terrific.
Got my newsphere show coming up later this week, Please
tune in for that. We'll have another another version of
a preview of campaign twenty twenty five. You know, it's interesting.

(00:52):
I can tell that Campaign twenty twenty five is not
grabbing folks. You know, is not the you know I
assume on too day itself, people will be fascinated with it.
You should tune in. I'm going to be doing an
election live stream along with pretty much all of my
friends in the political data geek world. We're going to
be doing it in partnership with my friend Chris Eliza

(01:14):
Decision Desk HQ, which is quickly turning into the premier
organization for counting and calling elections these days, and so
I'm looking forward to this live stream. But it was interesting.
I did my preview on substack, and you could just
sort of feel the And I think part of it
is there's actually no drama in the top tier part

(01:36):
of these races. So maybe that's why people aren't just
gobbling up every piece of information, whether it's Virginia governor,
feels like you kind of know where that's going, New
York City Mayor, and the really drama is does he
get over fifty or not? And Mom, Donnie, I am
here to tell you folks, New Jersey Governor. I think
it's got some drama to it. But for whatever reason,
I think the candidates are running. They're pretty normal politicians

(01:59):
and we're so used to crazy thanks in the Trump
era that when you have two people running relatively normal
campaigns that would have been normal in the pre Trump era,
that maybe it doesn't grab our attention, grab our attention
the way all things Donald Trump grabs our attention. But
this week you're reminded when Donald Trump is is in

(02:22):
essentially halfway around the world and therefore time zone wise
halfway around the world as well. There is a perception
of a slower news cycle in Washington, which frankly shouldn't
be the case, because we're in the middle of a
government shut down and you're sitting there going where is
the sense of urgency. We've got deadlines happening all over

(02:46):
and you know, in some states, the expiration of funding
for snap benefits for people for working poor and others
who need school assistant, school lunch assistants, things like that.
The fact that that's expiring, that that isn't creating urgency
here is frankly a bit frustrating for someone like me

(03:10):
who's sort of a considers myself a reformist and just
wants to get things working. You know, I count myself
among those who views government like your toilet. When it
doesn't work, I just want to do whatever it takes
to get it working again, and then I don't want
it to bother me that much overall, And I think

(03:30):
we're the fact that we have a clogged toilet. The
collective American government is clogged, and nobody's even willing to
pick up the plunger at this point is kind of frustrating,
But I think there is a I think it's obvious
if you sort of sit back here and understand why
we're going nowhere in shutdown negotiations at this point. Number one,

(03:52):
I've been telling you there's no Donald Trump in the
room right his inability to sort of focus on this
be dragged into the conversation. As he himself said earlier
earlier in the week, he is both the speaker and
the president, and Mike Johnson cannot do a thing without
Donald Trump. Mike Johnson is a Spino speaker in name only.
He has to get all of his you know, whatever

(04:14):
he needs to get done whenever he needs votes, he
has to get the White House involved, he has to
get Trump twisting arms. So he can't speak for the
Republicans only. Donald Trump speaks for the Republicans. So that
inability right now of him engaging being interested in this
is one of the problems. But there's a second problem here,
and that is sort of when you sort of look

(04:36):
this century in particular, but really going back to the
two you can go all the way back to the
Reagan era and note this, and that is when you
when you don't have divided. When you don't have power
divided among the two parties, the moderates in both parties
become extraordinarily weak. There are a handful of moderates a

(04:57):
lot still left in both parties. They don't really have
power within their own conferences unless there is split government.
Unless there is a divided government Republicans controlling either one
House of Congress, Democrats controlling the other House, or obviously
split between the White House and Congress. And the fact
that you know it's this is a you know, full

(05:21):
Republican control of Congress, and you need but you do
need a bipartisan vote in order to open up the
government in the Senate. In the Senate without without this
sort of split control, there is no incentive for the
moderates to sort of tiptoe out and work amongst themselves.
We don't really have the gangs of the past, even

(05:43):
of the recent past. Right, there's no cinema and mansion there.
But their empowerment either comes with when you're sitting literally
at a fifty to fifty Senate, which we are not
in this case, or you have this divided government. The
point is the lack and I think you can look
at one of two ways. They're not enough moderates who
truly see themselves as moderates, or the moderates are too

(06:06):
weak politically to sort of step out in this moment
because of the polarization issue in the country. But the
bottom line is that's why we are getting nowhere. The
moderates have no power in Congress. And whether you want
to argue, do they have a spine, I think they

(06:27):
do have a spine, but you know it's within reason, right,
it's a soft spine, if you will, and without without
the ability of sort of obvious compromise that has to
be made because of split in a situation where there
would be split party control of some form or another.
The fact that there's not. There's just at this point

(06:49):
there's I think the moderate Democrats, not enough of them
see enough to be gained. That said, I do think
we're tiptoeing to a point where Democrats, frankly, probably a
week or two too late as far as it because
of some of the damage that's going to be done,
I still think they can declare victory here. They still
have Donald Trump on the ropes with health care. He's

(07:11):
sort of rambling about, oh, you know, we've got to
do something better than Obamacare. Dude, You've had ten years
to come up with a plan. The Republicans have had
ten years to come up with a plant better than Obamacare.
They've yet to be able to agree on anything. Donald
Trump had a whole term in Congress and couldn't do it.
He had a whole exile, you know, he was exiled
for four years, didn't focus on a health care plan,

(07:32):
and now here he is again sort of begging for
help to come up with an alternative to Obamacare. It's
just not going to happen because there is a policy
laziness on the right to come up with an alternative,
because the only alternative that's affordable will deny most of
you insurance. Right. The only way you can create affordable
insurance is if you create a healthcare situation where they

(07:52):
can deny insurance coverage for people that actually need it. Right.
But as long and at this point, there is a
baseline believe here, pre existing conditions cannot be used to
decide what your premiums are and whether you get insurance
coverage or not. And because of that, this is always
going to get expensive unless there's a a tougher regulation

(08:13):
on the insurance markets in general. Number one or number
two is sort of an acceptance that medicaid is America's
catastrophic insurance coverage. Ultimately, I think that is what medicaid
is basically become. But until there's sort of an acknowledgment
that that's what it is going to be for the

(08:34):
country rather than always just based on income there, I
don't know how much stability you're ever going to have
in the insurance markets there. But the point is the
fact that Democrats orchestrated the shutdown and snap benefits are
going to expire. How do you explain that away long term?
I think that's a tough thing to explain. Democrats have

(08:56):
the power to open temporarily, open up this government, get
this money flowing to the people that really need it,
and they still have Republicans on the defensive on healthcare.
What's the why keep this shutdown? This isn't going to
make this better for better politically. And I know I
sound like a broken record here, but you're in a

(09:19):
great place at this point. Mike Johnson has completely abandoned
work here. You have a restive Republicans, there is a
divide among obamacares. You're going to win this And the
question is do you just hope that you can extract
a little more political pain and hope it doesn't punish
more Americans while you extract and ounce more of political gain.

(09:43):
Here just something to think about as this shutdown drags on,
as we get closer to November one, because oh, by
the way, the bill that's been on the floor would
only open up the government till November twenty first. As
it is, so we're really starting to feel the pinch.
And if this is why, I think this is an

(10:05):
easy answer. If snap benefits are about to expire, Democrats,
just vote yes on this thing. You're looking at three
weeks and then you get to force leverage one more
time and healthcare premiums are out there for all to see.
So look, no one said Chuck Schumer was really good
at tactics. He has displayed a lot of mediocrity right now.

(10:28):
I mean, I think the fairest way to describe Chuck
Schumer's leadership is kind of like Bill Belichick as coach
of North Carolina Great career Hall of Fame coach Chuck
Schumer peak. Chuck Schumer political savviness as good as anybody
for a long time. You know, knew that there was
always a little bit of baggage trying to be a

(10:49):
national Democratic leader, but being based in New York City,
always was really good at balancing it really well. You know.
I think now he's in the Bill Belichick coach of
North Carolina faith. Every once in a while he calls
a pretty decent play. The game plan may be there,
but I think in this moment where politics are today headed,

(11:10):
et cetera, et cetera, I think tactically this has passed
them by. But the fact is both Jeffreys and Schumer
seemed paralyzed in some form here, and I think some
of it has to do with what's going on in
New York City and this divide inside the party and
this fight inside the party between progressives and pragmatists, which

(11:30):
I think is certainly really what is the overhang of
this government shutdown strategy that were't in. But it leads
me to something else about Washington these days that I
thought I would share for my non Washington listeners. I
think those that live in and around here, and we'll
find what I'm saying to be quite familiar. Look, I'm

(11:52):
participating in quite a few reform projects. Many of these
meetings or conferences that I go to or all Chatham
how rules meaning you know, we're we're We're there with
unique groups of people trying to figure out, you know,
if it's on the journalism side of things, ideas and
fixing this information ecosystem, how do we reanimate local news?

(12:14):
If it's on the democracy reform side of things, you know,
it's with you know, do you break up the duopoly?
How do you open things up here? Do we there
is this the moment to call for a constitutional convention?
Things like that? And what's fascinating about Washington in this
in twenty twenty five, And I think I've discussed this before,

(12:36):
the sort of you vacillate between you know when when
you know right now in DC it's just a it's
a weird feeling, right the way Trump sort of stormed
the city this time, there's almost right he's there's there's
self segregation of the sort of political elite in Washington, right,
MAGA only hangs out with MAGA. Then there are Republicans

(13:00):
who aren't MAGA, who still want to, who still believe
that there's a Republican party, think like you know that
will exist after Donald Trump. I think the John Thune
wing of the party, right, whatever's left of there, which
is really a lion's share of Republicans in Washington or
not MAGA, right, they are sort of institutionalists Republicans, and
you know they still you know that part of the

(13:21):
political bipartisan world. You still you still see that. But
MAGA is its own separate thing, right, The MAGA elite,
you know, payoff Donald Trump Junior for his club that
he created. And then you have some of the you know,
the tech bros that have moved here, that throw their
own parties. They all just sort of mingle with each
other and all that. And there's in some ways that

(13:45):
that group of people is constantly thinking out, hey, man,
there's no security right now in government contracts, government money,
there are no rules. What can we do in this
moment before the gig is up to sort of secure
government contracts? He said secure. It's a bit of a grift, right.
They're just constantly saying, you know, hey, now that we've

(14:05):
got a president that will blow past any ethical line,
that there is a compliant Congress, a House Republicans set
in particular, that will do whatever is asked. There won't
be oversight. It is open season for a certain group
of lobbyists. And so there's basically three groups, three types
of Washington gatherings these days. Right, There's those in that

(14:30):
sort of mega lobbying world who are like, oh my god,
it's a jewelry store without security, and there's all sorts
of things we can get and everything is open season,
and you know, how do you make as much money
off of this period in time where Trump is basically
created a no rules environment. Right, So that's one group

(14:53):
of people who sort of are occupying Washington in this moment,
who go to gatherings, but who are just there trying
to figure out out, Hey, this is there's never been
at a time essentially to steal money from the government
with nobody watching anything. What kind of schemes can we
come up with, Whether it's a crypto scheme, whether it's

(15:13):
a creating a new you know, public private partnership for
screwing the government taxpayer. I think I made up that
last part, but the public private partnership I didn't. And
then there's two other sort of entities out there that meet. Right,
you have this group of of Democrats and it's two
different groups of Democrats that are constantly having various meetings. Right,

(15:36):
I think you have a progressive set is saying, okay,
this is a moment where progressives can take over the party.
The established innshment has proved that they can't deal in
the Trump era, they can't win in the Trump era. Clinton, Biden, Harris,
you know that wing of the party is atrophying, Schumer, Jeffreys.
They don't know what they're doing. This is the moment
for progressives to takeover. So there's this, you know, instead

(15:58):
of you know, sort of a lot of a lot
of gatherings that are about, you know, how can progressives
take advantage of this moment. Then you have sort of
what's left of sort of the establishment wing of the party,
or the pragmatic wing of the party, or the frustrated
Democrats who want to win first, want to want to

(16:24):
rally the base into something and say, hey, look, the
goal should be to build a broader coalition that that
has an animated progressive base but also is appealing to
swing voters. And there's you know, those types of gatherings.
You know, it's it's the abundance debate that has recline.
Matthew Iglesias Derek Thompson have been sort of talking about,

(16:48):
you know, is there better policy solutions that Democrats ought
to be standing for that would be more appealing to
a broad a broader set of the electorate. So you
have those conversations, and then there's a third group of
gathering of gatherings, And this is the group of gatherings
I'm most involved with. And one last week a trusted
with a organization that I've talked about before on this

(17:10):
podcast called Trusted Media, where it's a sort of it's
a coalition of folks who have worked in government, worked
in a national security space, including uh NSSA and CIA
and State Department, who are concerned that the information ecosystem
is untrustworthy. And it's like, this is bigger than just
a media problem, right, you know, this is this is

(17:31):
larger than that. So we did a gathering that gathered
business leaders, gathered scientific scientific experts, journalists, government of former
government officials talking about why you have if you don't
have trust, if our information ecosystem is untrustworthy, how this
suddenly essentially makes us less safe, you know, less safe

(17:54):
as a country, less safe. Uh individually, you know, when
you think about health scares and viruses and things like
that and less safe in your community. And so that's
one type of sort of gathering that I am anticipating
in because we've got to fix this information ecosystem. It's

(18:14):
not just about journalism. It's not just about you know,
what corporations have done, the legacy media, what big tech
is doing and what and the AI impact is about
whether we're going to be able to you know, scientists
can come up with something and it's trusted, and whether
a doctor prescribing a pill won't get sort of distrusted

(18:37):
by their patients because of what doctor Internet is telling
them or is pretending to tell them, or what you know,
the Kennedy crazies are assuming at any moment in time.
On that front, there's a reason results matter more than promises,
just like there's a reason Morgan and Morgan is America's

(18:59):
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they've recovered twenty five billion dollars for more than half
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up winning millions. In fact, in Pennsylvania, one client was
awarded twenty six million dollars, which was a staggering forty

(19:22):
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(19:43):
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And then there's also those that are in the They're
they're there that are in the how do you stop
prevent Another Trump? And that group of folks are sort

(20:06):
of the true what I call the true reformists because
they're not partisans. That doesn't mean they don't have partisan
points of view that they do, but these are gatherings
that include liberals and conservatives who have one thing in common.
They're constitutionalists and they are alarmed by the fact that

(20:28):
there are so many entities essentially not using the Constitution right.
You have Corporate America choosing not to use it to
defend their First Amendment rights. You've had other companies choosing
not to use it to to defend their their various
constitutional rights when it comes to mostly frankly due to

(20:48):
First Amendment issues in different free speech free speech issues.
So it's in this space that I'm also like to
get involved. And again, all of these are under Chathamhouse Rule,
so I'm you know, I don't want to I'm not
going to out any individuals, but I wanted to share
an experience I had recently because it was a new

(21:12):
take on how to find hope. Right, there's there's always
you know, I had somebody ask this question in the
last podcast. You keep using the expression your short term
pessimistic but long term optimistic, and you know, explain that
more if you will, And you know, I always sit
there and say, well, I'm my long term optimism is

(21:32):
mostly due to our history, our nation's history, and that
we've had moments like this before where we're at a
fork in the road and you know, we can end
up in one direction or the other, and we sort
of always end up in the right space. We meander,
you know, you know, I will reiterate what I love
to reiterate the Martin Luther King quote about the arc
of history. Well, an arc sometimes goes backwards before it

(21:55):
loops its way around to go forwards. And sometimes you
have to go backwards if you're going to if you
are going to be able to do something that actually
takes this country forward. And it's pretty obvious that we
have to update this constitution, we have to update the democracy.
I mean, what's happening now with the redistricting wars is
just a symptom of this larger problem. I mean, we

(22:18):
now have Virginia is going to try to do this,
and you have Indiana is going to try to do this,
and you're in North Carolina is going to try to
I mean, we're just it's it's getting absurd, and it's
clear that we need to do a constitutional reform, specifically
on this issue in particular, to sort of stop this madness,
because what it is doing is disenfranchising voters, pure and simple. Right.

(22:41):
It's state after state after state, partisan disenfranchising of voters.
Part stop. That's what Texas Republicans want to do to Democrats.
That's what California Republicans are doing to Republicans in California. Response,
it's what Indiana Republicans are doing to Indiana Democrats. It's
what Virginia Democrats are going to be doing Virginia. You
see run point here, right, It is depending on the

(23:02):
state that you live in. If you're in a one
party control state, there's now an incentive politically to disenfranchise
voters of the other side. This is you know, I
could argue that all of this is it should be
covered by the equal Protection Clause in the Constitution, but

(23:22):
I think we have to spell it out and spell
out exactly what is fair and what isn't on that front.
But the reason, you know, sometimes there's something that's staring
you right in the face and you're like, well, duh,
I should have of course, that's the best argument you

(23:45):
could make for why we shouldn't be afraid to ask
the voters for big change. And this person was making
the case that the second election of Donald Trump is
actually the best case you could come up with to
prove that Americans are looking for something different. They're not

(24:06):
looking for status quo and The point is is that
you can make an argument for something different, something big,
something bold. This is an electorate that if you persuade them,
if you go out there and make the case, you know,
if you say to them, look, we've got we cannot
allow ourselves to again have seventy five year old presidents.
We have our second seventy five year old president. I

(24:28):
think we now second term in a row where many
Americans have real questions about whether our president is all there. Right,
There was obvious moments during the Biden presidency where that
was an issue, and there are obvious moments pretty much
now every day with Donald Trump. Right, Donald Trump cleverly
set the bar of crazy so lower high, depending on

(24:48):
how you want to describe the metric that you know
it was. It was easier for folks to see that
something was wrong with Biden because we had seen a
competent version of Biden for so long in the public
SA square. With Trump, right, he's had his meandering, his weight, weave,
his crazy. He's been out there for so long that
only the folks that are following, that follow him super

(25:11):
closely start to notice that, hey, you know this he's using.
His vocabulary is shrinking. He seems to be harping on
the same stuff. He seems to not quite always know
who's all there. And maybe some of it's laziness. I've
always said, a big chunk of Donald Trump's misspeak and

(25:37):
all that stuff, he's just lazy. Right. He never reads
a speech before he gives it, you know, let alone
actually participates in the writing of any speeches. Right. I
don't even think he does the dictation into a into
his iPhone and then hey, transcribe this as a way
to get started on a speech for speech writers. So
there's always been an inherent laziness that weirdly has made me,

(26:03):
has given me a sense of hope, hope, hope's not
the wrong way, a sense of why I don't assume
the worst, because he's too lazy to pursue the worst course, right,
the worst course, you know, trying to consolidate power being
an authoritarian. There's actually some work that would have to
be done, right, you know, if he truly were desired

(26:24):
untiltalitarian authoritarian, you know, presidency, he'd be orchestrating a campaign
to amend the constitution to allow him to run again, right,
to come up with some sort of amendment that somehow
would allow him to run, but would bar Barack Obama
from running for a third term. Maybe it would be

(26:45):
you know, presidents can run for reelection if they don't
win reelection the first time, or some bizarre thing, right,
the non consecutive to sort of find a to create
a non consecutive term loophole. But the fact of the
matter is he's he and mag are too lazy to
pursue a constitutional option, right, So it's always at you know,

(27:06):
if they really you know, if there's an easy shortcut,
they'll try it. But if if it's a little more
legwork or if it's a little more effort, like writing
a health care plan. You know, he's always claimed he
wants to come up with a better healthcare plan, that
it would be easy, Well do it, write it. But
he's lazy, right, you know, he's not. You know, the

(27:26):
reason our democracy is, I think safer than some people think,
is because of how lazy he is. Just let's not
you know, overestimate you know something. He may have desires,
but he is too lazy to pursue some of those
some of those desires. But I want to go back

(27:48):
to this optimism and I want to go back to frankly,
a call to action. I think we've all you know,
there's one of the ways that some people have explained
Trump's success in twenty twenty four over Democrats has been
because he's on the right side of eighty twenty issues,

(28:10):
right like the border wasn't turned out to be an
eighty twenty issue. Transgender women in sports is an eighty
twenty issue, you know. So he's been on where Democrats
have had to explain exactly why they're on the side
of an issue that doesn't have popular support. And you
know the rule in politics if you're explaining you're losing.

(28:33):
Reforming this government and reforming our constitution is an eighty
twenty issue, folks. The lack of leadership in the general
common sense middle has been quite frustrating. It does not
exist in this current Congress. Nobody has stepped up to
be the leader of the common sense movement that says, hey,

(28:55):
what we've been doing these last decade is insanity. This
is crazy. This is no way to run a lemonade stand,
let alone the largest government in the on the globe.
And it's about time that we fixed the proverbial metaphorical
bridges and roads of the American democracy. Would you tell

(29:22):
folks about it? It's in eighty twelve. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah,
that makes sense that we need these things, getting rid
of partisan primaries right like it is obvious. Now you've
got to connect these issues to people's day to day lives.
It can't just be an esoteric Hey, this is what
the founders would have wanted, right that that may appeal
to someone like me, but that's not going to appeal

(29:44):
to the to the everyday American who's not a political
or civics junkie, who's simply trying to make the best
of their lives, raise their kids, build a nest egg,
and and have a good life in this country. But
if you tell them that the current system is rigged
against them and you want to unrig the system, you

(30:06):
can't trust a part of politician to do this on
their own because either they don't have the power or
they are never going to be looking out for you.
They're going to be looking out for their self interests.
We need to prevent that. We need to create a structure.
We need to update the constitution to change our incentive structures.
You know, whether it's getting rid of partisan primaries, putting
in a campaign finance reform minimum, putting in age maximums

(30:29):
for serving in federal office, whether it's an appointment to
the Supreme Court or running for the presidency. And yes,
all of those are going to have to be constitutional amendments.
If you have age minimums in the constitution, it means
you have age maximums. The US House was supposed to
expand with the population. It is stopped, but you're going
to have to force that into the constitution. There's an

(30:49):
easy metric to come up with on that point zero
zero zero one percent of the population. Boom done. You
have your baseline metric for that, and it will easily
decide how many congressional districts state. And oh, by the way,
the electoral college and the popular vote won't be as
easily split if you actually have a Congress and a
US House that fits the country. So if you already

(31:14):
have a group of voters that are willing to experiment
on the first African American president right where there was
some skepticism is this going to work? And they were
willing to do it, And then you have group of
voters that are willing to basically a failed celebrity, fake
billionaire as president and try him twice because they want
because they know the current system is broken. So this

(31:36):
is the good news. The voters already know the system
is broken. What we need is a good leader from
the common sense center that makes the case of, hey,
we can fix this. Are you tired of having to
just find a cult of personality that might be able
to be the bull in the china shop to shake

(31:56):
things up? Right? That is not how you run a country.
That may be how you run a small business. Right,
you get a better leader, and you might be able
to transform a small business. It might be a better
way to run a football team. You don't want a
democracy deciding deciding a game plan for a football game.

(32:17):
Your head coach does need to be an authoritarian of
some sorts, benevolent. I think a malevolent coach these days
doesn't work, but a benevolent authoritarian. But in this case,
just this isn't going to be a functional solution. The
functional solution to the dysfunction that we have is to

(32:40):
update the rules of our democracy, update the blueprint of
our democracy. That's the constitution, that's the leadership that is necessary.
And the fact is, and like I said, I just
wanted to channel. If you don't believe the public would
would support this, you haven't been paying attention. Right. The

(33:04):
public knows something's wrong, which is why they keep voting
against status quo. Whenever they get the chance, they keep
throwing people out. Okay, but in fairness to the general public,
they've got to live their own lives, and so you
need to If you lead them to the stream, they'll

(33:26):
drink the reform water. But someone's got to lead them
to the stream, and you've got to galvanize it. And
again we have seen it. That's why I began with
the shutdown and the lack of leadership from the Common
Sense Center here, and this is what needs to happen.
We're going to continue to sort of, you know, go

(33:47):
back and forth, like we've erected barriers in front of
the gutter. You know, they have little kids come up,
they erect the little barrier so that they don't have
to throw a gutter ball. So we always the system
does just enough to pure gutter balls presidencies, But we're
sort of our ball is slamming back and forth. If

(34:07):
we need is a bit a bit smoother set of leaders.
But we're not going to get it without an updated
structure that creates the incentives, that makes it so that
some some terrible leader doesn't take advantage of our weak system,

(34:29):
you know, whether it's for personal financial gain, or whether
it's for some other pet project that they might have
their own narcissism, or whatever it is. And right now
our system is weak enough and rickety enough where we've
allowed that to happen, and the focus needs to be

(34:50):
on preventing the next strump. In some ways, you know,
you can tie some things up with lawsuits and it
slows things down, it comes up the works, But the
real solution is going to be coming with fixing this
small d democratic infrastructure. But this lack of interest in

(35:10):
a political leader making this the platform to run for
national office to galvanize the country on this has been
disappointing to me that that somebody hasn't had the guts
to go down this road. But I actually think that
you have an electorate that is hungry for this. They

(35:32):
don't fully know what they're hungry for, they know what
they don't want to eat, but they're hungry for this.
You just have to make the case and you have
to connect it to hey, the shittiness that they feel
about how government's been and not helping them live their lives.
This better structure will create the We'll create the opportunity

(35:52):
so that government can be put to work to simply
help you live your life better. So, look, I'm often asked,
you know, sometimes I'm a bit pessimistic on here. You know,
give people something tangible to be hopeful on. The tangible
aspect is we have a hungry electorate that wants change,

(36:13):
wants reform. What we need is some leaders that have
the guts to pitch the reform in such a way
that it is not about themselves, that it is not
about Donald Trump alone. Okay, that is about you know,
how we end it up in this situation, how two
parties exploited Rickety rules to do put us in the

(36:35):
situation that we're in. Because I promise you, I know
there's some of my friends of the left and think,
stop both sidesing this, or some of my friends on
the right saying you're you're picking on Trump, You're not
doing you're not saying enough about how the left contributed
to this. The point is we're never going to get
anywhere if we just argue about who's more fault. That's

(36:56):
why we need a leader that comes from the eighty
This is an eighty twenty issue, fixing the infrastructure of
American democracy. It's an eighty twenty issue, folks. We just
need the right leader to grab this, grab this platform,
and run with him. The good news is this electorate
is hungry for it. They just haven't been given a

(37:18):
meal prepared for them in such a way that they're
ready to eat it. All right, Little Q and eight
DoD ask Chuck, this comes from Mike Salex. Uh. I

(37:45):
don't know if this is Mike P. From Salex, Iowa
or Mike P. Salex from Iowa. So as an Iowa guy,
I'm going to see if Salex it is. It's town,
So my apologies for not knowing Salex, Iowa. It's a
small city in Woodbury County near the Missouri River, so

(38:06):
the western side of the state. All right, I see
I see you there, I see you Salex, Iowa. So
it might be My apologies, little Uh. My eastern Iowa
geography is much better than my western Iowa geography. But anyway,
here's your question. Chuck Love the podcast never missed them.

(38:26):
I'm curious what you think would happen if Democrats took
back the House with a five to ten member advantage
and took the Senate fifty one to forty nine. You
think Dems would try and impeach Trump? Obviously they would
start huge amounts of oversight and slow down or completely
stops agenda. Just curious on your thoughts. Did that happened.
I do not think there will be a third impeachment, Okay,
I really don't. It just it is. I don't think

(38:53):
a Democrat will it will will instigate a third impeachment.
The only shot you would have at a third impeachment
of Trump is if Republicans in the Congress were the
ones to instigate it. For some reason, there's Democrats are
not going to start this because the minute it becomes partisan,
you're not going to get anywhere. You're going to get

(39:14):
a lot more. It's going to be a lot more fruitful, frankly,
to do the oversight, a lot more fruitful to force
this administration to tell to tell the country what it's doing,
whether it's on military campaigns like what's going on in Venezuela,
what they've been doing with USAID, what's been happening at
the Department of Education, what's been happening at HHS and

(39:36):
the CDC that is, you know, there's a lot of
you know, in some ways, impeachment would be a distraction
from all the work that in oversight, work that needs
to be done in a variety of other places. So
I think it would be politically it is. Look I
think Republicans in some places are going to use as

(39:58):
part of their count are messaging in the midterms that
Democrats just want control of Congress in order to impeach Trump,
because they're going to be trying to figure out how
to goose the Trump voter to show up for the midterms.
And so I do think the impeachment issue is going
to be somewhat salient in these campaigns, but mostly from

(40:22):
Republican campaigns. And you're going to have I think a
lot of Democrats running for the House and Senate saying no,
we're not going to pursue impeachment, and probably saying it
on the campaign drum. So I don't expect an impeachment.
I expect rigorous oversight. I go back to something I
hinted at in a previous episode, This is the bad

(40:44):
bet Corporate America's making this decision to essentially allow themselves
to be extorted by Trump, whether it's to give money
to the building. Again, I could make a patriotic case
for funding the building, and you know, and as the way,
presidential libraries are sort of kind of bipartisan money, people

(41:05):
will throw money at, you know, the Biden Library and
the Trump Library right to sort of claim that they're
balancing themselves out. I think all of these corporate entities,
whoever's given money to the inaugural fund, whoever's given money
to the to the building, these various crypto ventures, they're

(41:27):
all because while Trump may be able to use executive
privilege to prevent a lot of testimony from Trump appointed officials,
Corporate America is not going to be able to hide
from these subpoenas as well. And that's where I expect
there to be a lot of action and potentially a

(41:47):
lot of confessions, and where we'll find out exactly how
how Trump Trump World's extortionist tactics work, right, How does
it work? There's going to be corporate entities that, if
Democrats get control, that are going to be put in
some uncomfortable positions thanks to subpoenis that's where I expect

(42:10):
the most fruitful ways. And you may say, well, they'll
probably what gets uncovered. May say, hey, that's impeachable, of
which I would argue anything's impeachable. It's whatever a majority
of the House says, right it is. There's basically a similarity.
You know how they say grand jury's you know you
can get it. You can indict a ham sandwich. Well,

(42:32):
you can impeach a ham sandwich if a majority of
the House decides to impeach anam sandwich. So anything to
me and an impeachable offense, I think it goes into
what should be an impeachable offense on that front. All right.
Next question comes from Chris k out of South Carolina.
Chris K Jr. Don't want to leave that out. We
got it have we got it wrong when it comes

(42:54):
to how we compensate members of Congress and government officials. Lately,
I've been wondering if better pay might attract more serious,
qualified individuals but service. If term moments are the future,
who besides the wealthy can afford to pursue a short
lived political career. Would a higher salary make it more palatable?
Demanding stock trading and divesting from personal financial interests within
that helped shift the focus from personal enrichment to public service.

(43:15):
Civic duty may only go so far, go Hawkeyes. So look,
I've always been a bit more empathetic of members of
Congress and this salary. Right, I think you have to
do this one of two ways. You either have to
make it easier to be a member of Congress and

(43:38):
have essentially have two living conditions. Right, the idea that
members of Congress have decided they're going to sleep in
their office because they don't want to to pay extra
money for you know, a rental or something like this. Look,
I think we out of corporate housing for members of Congress.
So you know, we might have dormitories, right, you know,

(44:00):
high end dormitories, high in corporate housing. That was a
popular thing a decade or so ago. With remote stuff.
It's corporate housing is sort of not no, no, not
as prolific as it once was. There was used to
be quite a few corporate housing complexes here in DC.
There's still a fair number because you do get a

(44:21):
lot of temporary deployments in the government, particularly military or
defense contractors and things like that. But I think corporate
housing would be a more affordable way. You know, it's funny.
I I think congressional pensions. I I don't think members

(44:45):
of Congress should get a pension, but or if you
do get it, or it should be sort of if
you want the pension, then you've got a band stock
trading like. I think you could do something like that
for what it's worth, because once you've hit five, you
get this pension and it's you know, it's quite something.
I think staffers ought to be eligible for this stuff.

(45:07):
But I think you could have a conversation about elected
official But look if you if you could, if you
had corporate housing so that there wasn't this pressure to
have two locations, if you could have remote voting. And
I do think if we don't look the House of Representatives,

(45:28):
if we if it were, if it were right sized,
what with the ratio that it should be about, want
to say, one for every four and one thousand people,
we'd have about eight hundred somewhere between eight hundred and
fifty nine hundred members of Congress eight hundred and eighty
one if you buy one calculation that I did, but
somewhere between eight fifty and eight ninety and I do

(45:51):
think that that would diversify the pool of people. It
would sort of make it a little more accessible to
get in if if you will, but you allowed people
to still could deal with their families, remote vote every
once in a while, have remote committee meetings. I do

(46:14):
think there should be some more flexibility where your main
office is your constituent's office and maybe you really only
have a small hideaway here in Congress. You know, there's
there's very The bottom line is I think it's Congressional
salaries are awfully low for have to have two households, right,
essentially two places to live. At one hundred and seventy

(46:37):
thousand dollars a year, that's you know, that's not yes,
you get all your expenses paid, your travel expenses. You
know you're likely eating for free things like that. You know,
if you told me we were going to have hard
term limits to you know, to your terms, and I
might be all in favor of doubling or tripling the

(46:57):
salaries because it's only a finite amount of time and
then definitely no pension on that if you did term limits.
So I think it really just depends on This goes
back to the need for a constitutional convention. I think
we would rethink all this if you will, I really do,
and I think it all needs to be thought about here.

(47:17):
But corporate housing could help, and I think that would
lower the barrier or entry, the financial barrier to entry
to some. I think that would help, making a little
more ease of participating in committee meetings, remotely voting from
your congressional district. You know, I might say you have
to vote from your congressional office. You couldn't just vote
from anywhere remotely, that you'd have only either vote in

(47:38):
the four of Congress or your vote from your official
district office. But I think there's a lot of room here,
which is why we need a constitutional convention, all right.
Next question comes from Greg from Alexandria, Virginia. You've talked
a lot about political reforms, yes, I have, But what
are your thoughts on the biggest reform of them all?

(47:59):
If you could waive a magic one, would you make
the US a parliamentary system where the executive branch is
chosen by the majority party in Congress? Things raise high, Greg,
You know no, and I'll tell you why. I thought.
You know. One of the most compelling articles I've read
about the state of the American democracy was about a
month ago. I recommended it. If for some of you
may remember when I recommended this reading it. It was

(48:22):
in Politico magazine, right, and I don't even know if
they publish a hard copy, but it was under their
magazine section of their website. And it was a case
of sort of like you know, it was as a writer.
It was a political science professor was basically arguing that, hey,
you know, all we read about is all the ways
that were the democracy is eroding, but not explaining, like

(48:43):
you know, and comparing different things here with what to
happen in countries where the democracy failed. Right, Usually it's
a comparison to something that happened in Germany in the
nineteen twenties or thirties. But this person pointed out, hey,
take a look at the countries that didn't fall to
authoritarian fascism or authoritarian socialism versus the countries that did.

(49:09):
Parliamentary systems are very vulnerable to authoritarian populists. You can,
you can sort of, you can, you can you can
win with a minority. You know. The issue with a
parliamentary system and how it makes you, I think, more
vulnerable to an authoritarian is that you can win with

(49:31):
a minority, you know, with the largest minority, and then
cobble together a majority to hold power, you know, using
you know, just look at how net Nyahu has held power.
He's held power by cobbling together a majority in order
to get power in the Knesset even though none of

(49:52):
those parties have sort of majority support in the country, right,
And so you can you can sort of win small
d democratically and have a government that is immediately unpopular
with a majority of the country because it's not what
a majority of the country voted for. So, you know,

(50:19):
it's funny when I grew when I was growing up,
I grew up in a household that was I think
i've expressed this, that was, you know, somewhat divided politically.
So I grew up in a very bipartisan way, sort
of always being shown you know, well at this point
of view, that point of view, and I'm always was
very thankful of that. You know. My mother and father
in some ways were training me for this job, and

(50:40):
I don't think they fully do it, and my father
wasn't would occasionally make the argument in favor of a
parliamentary system and he was, you know, he was somebody
who was frustrated that Democrats always had control of Congress,
even though a majority of the country seemed to prefer
sort of you know, more center right politics, right, and

(51:02):
that was in an era, right we kept electing Republican
presidents because we had the assumption was, well, Democrats always
control Congress, and for like forty years it felt like
they did, right, that this was just sort of the
permanent majority, and that was the case. I mean in
the eighties, you know, we were in the thirty fifth,
thirty six, thirty seventh, thirty eight, forty, you know, a

(51:22):
year of democratic control of the House, and and the
six years that Republicans controlled the Senate in the eighties
at the time was sort of a I think the
first time that happened in a couple of decades. So,
you know, he would occasionally express interest in that. But
the older I've gotten and that that article really you know,

(51:43):
I could I could go back and forth. I mean,
there's a I think the ideal system is more I'd
like to see a four party system in presidential runoffs.
I think the top four system is probably the best
of both worlds, where it forces some coalition building right

(52:05):
where you'd have the top two party vote gethers then
meet in a runoff so that somebody wins fifty percent
of the presidency. That I think that that's the system.
I would want four major parties, top four, you know,
and frankly, no other third part you know, no other
top four political parties, you know, no independence you'd have

(52:27):
to form your own party to get on the ballot.
That might be one reform I might include in here,
but top four party nominees, you know, essentially, you know,
can get major party status in any election cycle, and
the top two vote getters meet in the runoff, and

(52:47):
then they figure out in a democratic way with the voters,
rather than in a back room smoke filled way that
would happen in a parliamentary system whose voters you go
out after to build your coalition. I think you would
get the best of what parliamentary systems give you, which
is sort of a force of compromise coalition building without

(53:10):
the vulnerability of minority authoritarianism. Next question comes from David
in Highland Park. All right, hey, check, I'm a longtime
fan of yours. Thank you love the podcast. SAW sixty
minutes interview with Dana White on Sunday, and I couldn't
help but notice this a couple of weeks ago. Now
I'm catching up. I'm trying to catch up on some questions.

(53:31):
So my apology, but couldn't help but notice the softness
of the questions as well as not asking once about
his efforts to change the Mohamad ali ak. Is this
a signal that sixty Minutes and CBS are transitioning to
a fox stout propaganda machine. Side note, I used to
be a sports reporter in Tallahassee and some of the
most intense football, baseball, and basketball rivalry games were between
Miami and FSU. Yes, sir, they are were, That's for sure.
I'd almost say the baseball games equal the intense hatred

(53:53):
between the two schools on the football field. In your mind,
who is Miami's most hated rival regardless of sport? Keep
making these podcasts. Your unique long term optimism means a
lot in these uncertain times. Kindly, David, thank you for that. Yes, look,
I think you have to realize that the Dana White
interview happened what like one week after Paramount announced a

(54:13):
massive investment in UFC rights. Right for paramount plus and
all of that. So I think, look, I think what's
fair to say is on what you're going to see
with sixty and this, And I kind of almost want
to defend the promotion. As long as sixty minutes can do,

(54:42):
it's still going to devote a segment to something hard hitting.
You know, you can sort of, you know, you can
accept the premise that, hey, corporate overlords want to promote UFC,
so here you go, and you can sort of suck
up and accept it. And by the way, I would argue,
sixty minutes is always sort of have They've always preserved

(55:06):
one of their pieces for something soft, for sort of
a cultural icon. That and and those interviews never have
heard any questions. And you can go back to the
Mike Wallace days and know that those things existed, right
there was like they would almost have three types of segments,
and I suspect that because of the sixty minutes brand,

(55:28):
you'll still have this, You'll have one that was basically
to service the football viewer, right, so they could they
you know, with the sixty minutes is mostly a ratings
juggernaut thanks to football, right, you sort of can see
the distinction between sixty minutes ratings in the spring versus
the fall. But there's always been sort of the tough,

(55:48):
hard hitting piece, the think piece, the analytical piece, and
then the soft piece, right the entertainment piece. And in sports,
they've always kind of been soft. So I understand, I'm
not I'm not disputing your observation here. I had the

(56:09):
same reaction, And I think Dana White in particular has
been a polarizing figure and probably deserves some questioning in
a in a straight news setting, and you're not. And unfortunately,
it was pretty clear that in that first week of
Paramount Control, sixty wasn't going to do that. I'm guessing

(56:29):
there's you know, it's Dana White's not the prime minister
of a country, and he's not a US senator, and
he's not a governor. So it is it is, you know.
I also don't know if you know, if you're if
we're going to totally hammer them for this. Do I
wish they did a little accountability with him. I do
with Brian Gumble and real sports mean, but there's a
reason real sports existed even in the era of sixty minutes,

(56:53):
because sixty minutes never did sports in a hard any way,
Real Sports and my friend Brian Gumble that was another story, right,
they'd have done a piece on Dana White that that
that would have that would have either included him or
not included him. But that might have been And by
the way, I miss Real Sports and Bryant. If anyone

(57:15):
gets this to you, man, just thinking about you, hang
hang in there. But that was you know, I think
Brian Gumbele is one of the last great sports journalists
on that on that on that run, if you will.
As for Miami's most hated rival, I don't hate Florida State.

(57:41):
And it's not just because I'm married to a Florida
State alum. This was true even before, Right, It's what
made my family accept the Florida State alum and why
her family accepted a Miami fan because it's a sibling.
Florida State has always been a sibling rivalry. The heated
rivalry for Miami's is basically for me and my childhood

(58:02):
is Notre Dame. But that was more of we were like,
screw Notre Dame. Right, We were not Notre Dame's biggest rival,
but we felt Notre Dame was ours. And it's the
same with Florida. So the hatred is for the Gators
and Notre Dame. But I'll even admit my hatred for
Notre Dame is softened with Marcus Freeman, as I just
think he's a stand up dude, and I think that

(58:25):
there's there's less arrogance to the team, Right, Lou Holtz
plus Notre Dame. I mean, you couldn't have come up
with an easier sort of villain to deal with. And oh,
by the way, Steve Spurrier and Florida combo platter was
a good set of villains for me. And throw an
urban Meyer and Florida was a good combo platter for that.

(58:46):
You know, there's never even been a coach pairing with
Florida State that says, oh, what a jerk coach? You know.
Do I think what Jimbo did to them was a
jerky move? Yes, I don't think he was a jerk
coach on that front. So I think, Look, the ESPN
archives will tell you. I think who Miami's you know,

(59:08):
most hated rival is. For a certain generation of Miami fans,
it's those boys from South Bend, that's for sure. All Right,
I'm going to do one more question here and then
we'll just in college football. Gillian F. Frights, Hey, Chuck,
I was listening to your podcast on the treadmill this morning.
Had to write in, I share your belief that political
violence is no place in America, but I disagree that

(59:29):
it's equally fueled by all sides. I never said it
was equally fueled by all sides in reference. In fact,
that's been my frustration from my view, the rhetoric and
inaction on gun violence coming from the right epitomized by
Charlie Kirk's comments about accepting gun violence to protect the
Second Amendment, drive much of today's dangers. His racist and
homophomic remarks like saying black women lack the brain power

(59:50):
to be taken seriously make that hypocrisy even starker. As
a pre k teacher and mother of an adopted black daughter,
I find it infuriating, especially when those same voices hide
behind Christianity. I appreciate the pod Joan, I, I don't
you know, I'm not gonna First of all, you're you're
your concern. I get it, and I and I share it.

(01:00:12):
My point on all this is trying to trying to
win the debate that one side does this more than
the other is an unwinnable debate because it just it's
no way to get anything done. Like you're going to
have to if you want to get a larger focus
on this issue, you're going to have to let someone think, well,

(01:00:33):
they're going more than halfway, so I'll meet them there
and vice versa. It just you sort of have to
you have to. It doesn't matter if it's thirty sixty
or sixty thirty. If everybody's going to come to the table,
there has to almost be this sort of Okay, we're
all going to admit some fault here, but we're all

(01:00:56):
secretly going to believe the other side's more at fault.
But we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna stop that part
of the argument and accept the premise that we've got
to turn the temperature down. So that's that's, you know,
my nuanced way of trying to go about this, like
trying to say, you know, trying to own a moment
that's terrible, particularly when it you know, came from one side,

(01:01:16):
you know, did come from from you know, this person
was inspired. You know, there's enough political violence inspired by
the left and the right to say there's a problem
on both sides. Is it equal. It's never equal. There's
moments in time that that one rises more than the other.
It's never equal. But it is very reactionary and violence

(01:01:40):
always is met with more violence, and so we have
to stop. And we could probably agree that, you know,
I do. I think Donald Trump is responsible for the atmosphere.
I think he creates the political weather. That does not
mean somebody that's inspired to violence on the left while

(01:02:01):
due to the weather that Donald Trump is created, that
that person that we should blame Trump for that person
on the left's actions. No, the person on the left's
actions are who responsible for that action? Anyway? I hope
that gives a little more clarity to what the argument
I'm trying to make and why it's not about whether

(01:02:27):
I am not. And this is where people people sometimes
with this both sides stuff it is they use it
as a way to compartmentalize and ignore the times where
maybe an ally isn't behaving correctly. And I think that's
that's our problem right now in our polarized system. The
left doesn't police the left, and the right doesn't police

(01:02:47):
the right. The right only wants to police the left.
And the left only wants to police the right, and
until we get out of that cycle, we're going to
be stuck in this place that we're stuck in. I'd

(01:03:09):
be remiss if I didn't admit that I'm now two
days removed from that eighteen inning game, and I still
feel like I haven't recovered from enough sleep. I fell
asleep between innings twelve. Sort of, I sort of woke
up when Kershaw survived it got out of the inning.
I didn't see him come in. I was like, oh,

(01:03:31):
Kershaw's pitching, but he survived the inning. And then I
kept watching that game, and you know, it was interesting.
I was listening to somebody, somebody who talked about being
at that game. You know, when you're at a game
like that, you don't actually know some of the little
things that's going on. I mean, I was mesmerized in

(01:03:54):
the eighteenth by the fact that Yamamoto was warming up
to come in in the nineteenth and Shane Bieber was
stretching to get ready to warm up to come into
the nineteenth. So as a as a baseball fan, I
was sort of kind of rooting for the nineteenth inning,
But then all of a sudden, it was two forty
five e straight time, and I was like, man, I
couldn't fall asleep. But anyway, it was just a mess

(01:04:15):
on that front. But I know some of you have
known me a long time agoing, aren't you a Rabbit
Dodger fan? You know, aren't you excited about this? And
you know the rise of the Gnats. My son's love
of the Nats really has I've, you know, so the
first time I've lived in a city with a major
league team. So I'm I'm more Nats fan, you know,
the Dodgers of the team of my youth. I still

(01:04:37):
collect Dodger paraphernalia from my youth and even further back.
You know, I'm a Roy Campanella collector because that was
my dad's favorite player. I collect any cool, affordable pieces
I can get, Jackie Robinson and Don Newcomb. I just
love those, those those early Dodger players, and of course
all things Sandy Kofax. You know, as Jewish Americans, we

(01:04:59):
love our avatar in Sandy, if you will. So I
still sort of glorify the past. My greatest memory as
a Dodger fans the eighty eight World Series, watching watching
the Dodgers win that World Series with my dad on
his deathbed, but he did get to see the Dodgers

(01:05:19):
winning win that World Series from there, So it is
there is so much and so I will always root
for the Dodgers as my second team. But as I
learned during the NATS playoff run of the teams, whenever
they were matchup with the Dodgers, I wanted the Nets
to win. So I knew that the switch had been

(01:05:40):
the switch had been complete. But wow, is it so
much fun to watch Otani play baseball. I mean, it's
just unbelievable. Five walks, nine reached base nine times in
one game, four for four and it's not even the
best game that he played this postseason. It's just astonishing,
it is. It is awesome when great players are great

(01:06:03):
in big moments. It's just awesome, right, It's amazing when
they step up in great moments, right, Like it's like,
you know, I'll tell you when I finally sort of
got over my sort of denial that Brady was great
and it was the twenty eighth to three Super Bowl,
You're like, the dude did it in a Super Bowl, right,
something like that at a Super Bowl? Right? You just
when great players are great in big moments. It's there's

(01:06:26):
nothing like it. It's just a joy to watch as
a sports fan, even if it's for a team you're
not rooting for. All right, let's talk about this weekend
in college football, because guess what, I'm about to go
see my beloved Miami Hurricanes in person for the fourth
time this year. Went to the Notre Dame game, went
to the Florida game, went to the Florida State game,
going to the SMU game. Close Listeners' podcast know I

(01:06:48):
now have a divided family. I my mother, my kid's grandmother,
tried to get the tried to get a Miami SMU
half and half shirt and she but she's tried so far,
claim that they don't have the copyrights to do that.
I'd love some advice from any of you on how

(01:07:08):
to do those divided loyalty shirts, because I can tell
you I have a mother and grandmother who would both
like to be wearing Miami some sort of joint Miami SMU.
It's not the most requested dual jersey type things out there.
They're probably there are Miami Florida State divided loyalties. Those exist.

(01:07:30):
I'm guessing the big Miami, Florida State SMU ones are
harder to come by, but if anybody has advice on
how to do that, I would love to have it.
So I will be seeing SMU in person there. I'm
not gonna lie little concerned, not as concerned as I
was going into the Louisville game. But this is Miami's
first road game out of the UH, out of the

(01:07:54):
state of Florida, believe it or not, first time they
have traveled outside the state of Florida. This is a
small stadium, but this is going to be an excited
SMU fan base. It's a good thing for Miami that
this is a day game, not a night game. I
think this would be a much tougher atmosphere if this
were at night there. But I'm looking forward just my
first in person SMU football game, if you will, so

(01:08:15):
looking forward to that. That should be fun. I do
wish SMU had won last week, because then I think
it would make this game a little bit bigger. The
game would have probably been later in the afternoon, maybe
even at night, and oh, by the way, game Day
might have been there. In fact, I think game day.
Can you imagine, like they assumed Penn State. Ohio State
would be where they would go, or maybe Miami SMU.

(01:08:36):
I think they're out west, They're doing Utah, Cincinnati. Anyway,
we shall see. But I think the most important thing
is is there any coach that gets fired this week
for performance? Or are we done with all the fired
coach games? Right? I guess the only coach that it

(01:08:58):
might be on the hot seat before the end of
the season at this point is Luke Fickle at Wisconsin,
but he has you know, been shut out and back
to back games. Frankly played a slightly better game against
Oregon than I think many people expected last week. He's
probably the only in person, the only coach left that
could get at least in the power for that could

(01:09:18):
get candled. Though what happens if Brent Benables loses two
of the next three games just something to think about
in Oklahoma. But anyway, so we got the big Miami
SMU game. Other than that, I think that you know
the playoff implication games, Mimi SMU is one of them, right.
The third loss for SMU eliminates them, right, and they're

(01:09:41):
basically they have a very narrow path at the ACC
title game. But it does seem unreal. And I'm really curious, right,
three loss teams this week who maybe had visions of
making the playoff, how do they perform? Right? How does

(01:10:01):
an lsu perform? I just just very curious on those front. So, anyway,
the playoff oflmitigation games Vanderbilt Texas. Right, if Vanderbilt beats
Texas backup quarterbacks starting this week at Texas, what happens
if backup quarterback does well? Anyway? As a gambler, Texas underdog?

(01:10:28):
Are they an underdog? I think they're going to be
a slight favored by game time and kickoff. Look, Vanderbilt
wins this one, and I think they lock a playoff spot.
Vanderbilt loses this one and they may not, I don't
you know. Then they have to win out, and I
do think if they went out, which would mean a
victory over Tennessee they attended to, Vanderbilt does get into
the playoff, but nine and three Vanderbilt doesn't at this point.

(01:10:49):
So and certainly for Texas, this is a playoff elimination game,
and they can. They have the schedule to win out.
Now they have to play Georgia and A and M.
Only anybody thinks they're going to win both those games.
But guess what, when they were preseason number one ranked
team in the country, I think there was some assumption
that they they could and so in the Texas defense
is pretty good. Point is Vanderbelt Texas. They gets a

(01:11:12):
playoff elimination game. The other playoff elimination game is probably
Oklahoma Tennessee. Certainly a third loss for either team, and
that's it, right, That's that's done. There's no I don't
think we're seeing a three loss team get into this
playoff win the first three loss team that isn't a

(01:11:32):
conference champion because we've had that with Clemson, but a
three loss team at large that gets into the playoff,
it will be an SEC team and it will be Alabama,
Notre Dame. Those are right now. I think the only
two programs that the ESPN Invitational because it is and
I know, you know, my friends at ESPN don't like

(01:11:53):
when I want I refer to that. But it's it's hard.
You know, we know that that stuff matter. Okay, that
stuff matters because if it were straight metrics, they'd tell
us it was straight metrics, and it is not right.
There's there's enough leeway there in order to find ways

(01:12:13):
to make sure you find ways to get bigger programs
into this thing. So sorry, Vanderbilt, you're not going to
be the first three loss SEC team to crack the playoffs.
So playoff elimination game there, playoff elimination game. Oklahoma Tennessee
and technically I think Cincinnati Utah, USC Nebraska are both

(01:12:35):
playoff elimination games. But you have to believe that USC
Nebraska are are somehow realistic. If the winner of this
game could win, could win out now they both could.
And that's the point. Big ten and SEC you know,
ten and two Big ten teams we're going to are
going to get strong consideration, and ten and two SEC
teams are almost all going to get in. And USC

(01:12:57):
Nebraska still technically can both become ten and two teams.
So loser, though, you know you're out. So that's why
pay attention to that. And Cincinnati Utah, right, the loser
of this game is going to not be able to
get to that Big twelve title game, but the winner
is going to. I think the winner is still going
to feel alive. So I have to say this is

(01:13:17):
where I love the addition of this playoff and I'm
all for making sixteen team shoot. I like the twenty
four and twenty eight team idea that the big ten
through a round. Actually I could get behind that idea
because I think you could actually make it a little
more metric based and keep the ESPN TV executives out
of the decision making process. But the point is this

(01:13:38):
expanded playoff means we have essentially playoff games. Look, Miami,
I would argue, sorry Miami to say this. Do I
think at ten and too Miami team should have been
invited last year? Yes, should attend into Miami Team probably
get invited this year? Yes? Will they? No? Not unless
it's Miami and Notre Dame for the last two slots,

(01:13:58):
and then they'd have to give it to my me
since might be beat Notre Day. But I think Miami
has to operate on the one loss mindset and that
every game now is a playoff game. And this is
the real test for me with Mario and this staff,
which is and this team is do you have these
team mentally prepared to realize that every game is an

(01:14:21):
elimination game going forward, there can't be any slip ups.
I was sorry to see Shannon Dawson take the bait
of some straightforward media questions about about run calls, the
play calling on the run side of things. Never let
them see your sweat, Shannon, You've been pretty smart about
that going forward. Don't do it. Don't do it. You

(01:14:43):
never win a debate with crazy fan boards, So don't
try to win the debate with fan boards simply saying, Hey,
you know, we've been pretty happy with our run game.
You could just say it. You know, we've got running
backs that know that are more comfortable running in those
small A and B gaps. You know, we are better
ways to answer that question without getting defensive on the
play calls. And you know you do try to run outside, right,

(01:15:07):
That's what jet sweeps are for, and a few other things.
But I thought the defensive nature of your response, it
strikes me that you're feeling some pressure. I get it.
This is the big time. All of you are going
to feel pressure. I understand it. But always think about

(01:15:33):
your answer before you say it, especially in this media climate.
I am happy, by the way, Coach Chris Ball, if
you would like to hire me for any media training
for any of your coaches, count me in for that.
All right, With that, I've gone ramblan long enough, by
the way, for you NFL gamblers out there, nine home dogs,
be careful out there, and with that, I'll see you

(01:15:55):
next week.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Chuck’s Commentary - American Democracy Is Clogged, But Not Beyond Repair + The Constitution Needs An Update