Full Episode - Both Parties Showing Cracks After Government Shutdown + How Democrats Can Win In Appalachia - The Chuck ToddCast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Hello there, Happy Wednesday. Welcome to another.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Episode of the Chuck Podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Were give you a quick rundown of what we have today.
I have a new candidate for you to take a
listen to. It's a first time candidate for office named
Joel Willett. He's running in Kentucky for the US Senate.
He is a former essentially career national security person, worked
in the intelligence community and sort of gotten decided to

(01:50):
get involved in politics, and within a couple of days
of that, lost his security clearance via the political purge
that was orchestrated by the current head of the department,
the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsea Gabbart, and the whole
sort of the the political retribution aspect of the Trump
administration sort of going after the intelligence community and anybody

(02:14):
that he believes somehow that that was involved in surfacing
the concerns of the intelligence community about how certain unfriendly
nations to the United States seem to have access to
Trump's inner circle. He obviously still is angry about that.

(02:42):
But what's interesting about Joe Willett is that he's not,
in some ways not a typical candidate for office, and
I think and has an interesting background that will seem
quite familiar to people who read the book. He'll billiology
by jd Vance for what it's worth. But what was
really helpful I had conversation after the deal was done

(03:02):
in the shutdown was to hear how a Senate candidate
was responding to the shutdown, and just about like every
other Senate candidate, he was pretty negative on the deal,
while he wasn't personally trashing Chuck Schumer the way other
Senate candidates seem to be wanting to flex their anti

(03:23):
Schumer muscles, as you've seen in so many Democratic primaries
just in the last twenty four hours. I think he
does give voice to at least I think he's a
good example of explaining who the voters, the candidates think
that are running for office in primaries think they're talking to.

(03:44):
And that's I think probably the best way to understand
the initial reaction by those that are running for office,
those that are running in Democratic primaries, those that want
to be leaders within the Democratic Party, versus they have
reacted the way they've reacted.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Right.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
In some ways, you are what's your electorate, you know,
you tell me you're electorate, and I'll tell you your
position on the shutdown, right. And if you're electorate, if
it's an electorate where you're more worried about the general
the swing voter, you were probably on the side of
figuring out how to do a pause in the shutdown.
And if you were somebody who's got to worry more

(04:24):
about a primary voter, then you were going to be
emphatic against cutting this steel. And I think the reaction
is a reminder that this was not about healthcare, right.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
This was about.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
Taking on finally confronting Trump on something right, and the party.
Democratic Party hadn't done any decent confrontation.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
Really.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
A few governors had in trying to fight back on
National Guard efforts and things like that, but there hadn't
been a real showdown between the party and Trump, and
the shutdown provided that and politically in the last forty days,
it energized the base of the Democratic Party and they

(05:07):
felt good about that energy and it because the elections
went well last week. It can it seemed to provide
the confirmation you know, a sort of form of confirmation bias. Hey,
this shutdown seems to be working. Look at how well
our candidates did. Why give up this this idea now
when at the end of the day, you know, you know,

(05:27):
things can turn quickly if you're not careful. And already
some polling a surfaced about how as this shutdown was
impacting more and more Americans, blame was starting to get
shared more and more between both parties. Yes, Republicans were
taking the run of the blame. Yes, Mike Johnson and
Donald Trump were actually making it easier for Democrats to

(05:49):
politically win the shutdown by their own maneuvers and their
own decision making there. But ultimately, as I've stated in
a few other places that I've spoken in the last
forty eight hours, there is a large chunk of voters
in the middle who don't pay attention to day to
day massinations, but that will pay attention when the proverbial

(06:10):
government toilet is clogged, you know, and not being able
to travel around Thanksgiving at a time when we have
almost no choice but to use their airplanes in order
to get where we want to get in a short
weekend was a way that you were suddenly going to
start impacting people that don't normally pay attention to the
day to day machinations, and that actually can become long

(06:32):
term more politically damaging than anything you think is going
for you in the short term. So that's my basic
way to explain the situation we're in.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
Now.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
What's funny here is leave it to the Democrats that
come across. As you know, they're essentially divided over tactics.
They're not divided over any issue. They all believe in
this healthcare issue. They all believe Trump needs to be confronted.
They all believe they've got to shift their messaging to
cost of living issues. Right, So this is a party

(07:04):
that is fighting over tactics. You know, do they have
the right leaders? They probably don't. Just changing leaders change
the debate on tactics. I don't know if it really does,
but I will say this, once you have lost the
trust of the people you're trying to lead, you probably
ought to leave, right, you know. And and the best
thing for the party would be if Chuck Schumer went

(07:26):
out on his own, not forcing more groups to come
out calling for his resignation and all this stuff. But ultimately,
I don't know if it changes. You know, you're still
going to have a leader that's got to be thinking about, Hey,
there's the base wants one thing, but you still got
to appeal to swing voters if you actually want to

(07:48):
win enough seats to actually be in charge of governing something.
So I think that tension would exist whether it was Schumer,
whether Brian Schatz is there, whether it's Chris Murphy, whether
it's Amy Klobashar, whether it's Patty Murray. Right, we could
come up, you know, And I think if you know,
this is one of those moments where if Schumer just
decided in the next week to sort of you know what,

(08:08):
all right, you know, I'm not wanted here, I'll take
a step back. My gut is Patty Murray would replace him,
because she'd be seen as a quote unquote caretaker majority leader.
She's at this point the senior most member of the
Democratic Senate, and nobody would cross her right, and she
really has the respect of sort of all wings of

(08:29):
the party. I think she'd be seeing the original mom
and tennis shoes, you know, as she ran as a
sort of a populist candidate of her day in nineteen
ninety two when she first came on the national scene.
I think she would be seen as somebody that would
would be less of a public face for the party.
And in some ways, I think many senators wouldn't mind

(08:52):
that and would likely embrace that. But let's be realistic,
you may not see any change in the short term.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
To me.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
The you know, while it's easy to cover this tactical
split inside the Democratic Party because it's sort of easy
to do. It's easy to create a cable news segment
on it. It's easy to find people to criticize, you know,
it's sort of an easy debate to have. It's not
really that big of a divide because it's not over

(09:22):
some sort of fundamental ideology ideological disagreement, you know, where
for instance, like things with Mamdani, those are fundamental ideological
disagreements about you know, how involved government should be in
the economy. That's that's that's a larger divide that I
think doesn't really get dealt with in the Democratic Party
until the presidential primaries take shape. But I'd tell you,

(09:45):
even as everybody's focused on the dem divide here, don't
take your eye off the ball of a growing Republican divide.
I think that is coming. I think that right now,
if you're a Republican elected official in Congress, you should
You're trying to figure out what do I do when
the leader of the party is not accepting reality. And

(10:08):
Donald Trump's inability to accept the reality that this economy
sucks for a lot of his supporters is going to
cause a much bigger problem for the Republican Party than
anything the Democratic Party is going through at the moment,
because ultimately, because they're in the minority and because they're
in the opposition, you know, I mean, they're going to
have a unity of message, They're going to have a

(10:30):
unity of focus. They may disagree on how to deal
with Trump in the moment, but they're not going to
disagree on how to court the voters in twenty twenty six.
That's a divide that I think that is not the
case on the Republican side of the aisle. As this
economy weakens for those without money and essentially with those

(10:53):
about real savings. And that's what we're seeing here right.
This is a This is the very definition of a
trickle down economy where Donald Trump is hoping that the bang,
the stock market success is going to somehow trickle down
and help everybody else. There's not a lot of evidence
that that ever works. You can just go back one
hundred years and see how that worked out. The last

(11:13):
time we sort of tried to put together an economy
where government and big business fused itself together like it
did in the early parts of the industrial and the
Industrial Age.

Speaker 2 (11:25):
That didn't end well.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
We got a great depression, and then finally government decided,
the people decided, hey, they wanted government. They wanted more
guard rails on big business, more guardrails on the economy
than what we had at the time. And I have
a feeling we're going to end up in a similar
situation where we're going to have a downturn caused by
what we're seeing, this fusion of big tech and government,

(11:51):
and that is going to awake awoke in a bunch
of people who are going to want more guardrails put
on our economy, necessarily leaving capitalism, but something more akin
to what the two Roosevelts fought for, both Teddy and
Franklin in their very different ways. But I did get

(12:13):
a lot of questions on the shutdown, so I decided
that before we get to the interview that I would
answer all the shutdown related q and as in this
part of the podcast, we'll have our individual will it
then I'll do my top five list this week. It's
where I the top five Senate seats most likely to flip.
It's let's just say the top five has changed. Just

(12:36):
like in college football, what the top five was at
the beginning of October is a lot different than what
the top five is at the beginning of November. So
goes my list of top five most likely most vulnerable
Senate seats in twenty twenty six. But before we get
to all that, and I'll do some q and as
on other topics that were not shut down related. So
we'll begin with this. This comes from Tim, and he asks,

(12:59):
I don't I understand why the Democrats are being blamed
for the shutdown. If the Speaker will not convene the House,
how can the Dems vote against it? Also, if the
Republicans control the House, why can't they just.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
Vote to pass it.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
I think too many times that reporter. Too many times
reporters assume that people know the cause of the most
basic facts about an issue, or maybe this was reported
at the beginning of the shutdown, so they don't need
to reiterate those facts. I think it has helpful to
remind people periodically of those basic facts. Thanks Tim, Tim,
You're absolutely right. This is a pet peeve of mine.
I talk about this to new journalists or those folks

(13:31):
in journalism school where I remind people because I learned
this from interacting with viewers during my time at Meet
the Press. Is how often a viewer, particularly a first
generation American, would come up to me and say that
they watch Meet the Press to sort of understand how
the American government works. And every time I would get
a response like that, it would remind me that, hey,

(13:51):
we're in the education business first. That's first and foremost
what a journalist is. They're educating the public. We shouldn't
forget that. And you know, I had a viewer one time,
I think it was somebody on social media one time
respond you know, somebody was lamenting the fact that people
didn't know that there were nine members of the Supreme Court,

(14:13):
or how all that worked? Somebody said how often do
you put it in your stories? And I thought, you know,
that person's right. We sometimes don't reiterate basic facts about
government because we go through this well, people already know that,
or the people that are paying attention to this story
are already going to know those things. And you're like, well,

(14:33):
what about the Joe Demaje. You know, there was a
great saying by Joe Demaggio. He used to say he
played hard every game because he thought that there might
be somebody in the stands who was coming to see
him for the very first time. And guess what, there's
somebody reading your story. There's somebody listening to my podcast,
there's somebody you know, reading your commentary.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
For the very first time.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
And if they don't understand it, they're not going to
to read you again, right, or they may not be
as they may not follow the topic you're trying to
get them to follow because you didn't help them understand
how it works. So I look, I believe in this,
you know, I look at my college football writers. They
spend a lot of time explaining how the college.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
Football playoff works.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
So college football fans all know how the college football
playoff works. But it's not because they went out to
look forward. It's because the new stories and the news
commentators and ESPN in particular constantly wants to remind people
how it works. Now they have an incentive, they're trying
to make a bigger deal out of it. Well, we
ought to take that same premise there. So you're asking

(15:40):
why did the Democrats get Why should the Democrats get
blames to their shutdown? Well, it was technically Democrats that
withheld just enough votes where the Continuing Resolution to keep
the government open couldn't pass the Senate. Now, in the House,
Mike Johnson got a party line vote and he passed
the continuing Resolution and in the House, so what they

(16:02):
did is he passed that bill and then they want
to This is a case where the House wanted to
jam the Senate and they didn't want to. And his
thesis was, I'm not even going to come. I'm not
going to convene the House until the Senate deals with
the bill that we gave them. And we gave them
a bill to keep the government open. It's up to
them to get that bill passed. So this is the
whole the House passed its version. So no, you're right,

(16:25):
the House didn't didn't convene while the government was shut down.
But what Johnson's thesis was they didn't need to because
there was no legislation. Now, why else did he keep
him out, Well, because he didn't want his members, you know,
board showing up on cable TV saying things that would
cause them political pain.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
Et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1 (16:47):
But it was also a tactic, and this is something
that happens. You know, there's there's always a joke in
Congress that you know that the real divide in Congress
is not Democrats versus Republicans, it's the House versus the Senate.
And so you know, the House was essentially jamming the
Senate and jamming John Thune. So it was up to
John Thune, who had fifty three Republican senators, actually fifty two,

(17:07):
because Rand Paul indicated he was going to vote against
this deal, he had to go find eight Democrats. So
in that sense, this is why in theory, because it
needed sixty votes when Democrats withheld their votes, unless the
Republicans are willing to get rid of the filibuster, which
was something Donald Trump talked about then the only way

(17:30):
the government could get reopened is if eight Democrats joined
fifty two Republicans to reopen the government. So I think
what you're right about is every time that the story
was reported that would not be explained at the top.
And I think it's a bad habit professional journalists, particularly

(17:52):
Washington journalists, have come. I always say that a lot
of times Washington reports for Washington or producers produced segments
for producers, they don't think about sort of are we
educating somebody who's tuning in for the very first time?
And you know, in that sense, I think that's something
that we all need to do better on. In this way,

(18:13):
I love the podcast format where I can feel like
I'm not I don't have some sort of time constraint
where I have to take a shortcut on something because
the main thing I need to convey needs a certain
amount of time to explain, and I don't want to
take away from that by having to explain the basics
and yet not explaining the basics all the time is

(18:37):
what makes politics inaccessible to people. And I've always said
my real goal, and I've had this goal ever since
I entered journalism is, and political journalism is. I love politics,
and my job is to explain it in such a
way that it's more accessible to people. You know, there
there was another person who used to go out of
his way to talk about the Gang of five hundred

(18:58):
and maybe politics inaccessible and would claim that politics was
an exclusive club and only those in the know understood it. Yeah,
there's people that want politics to be that way, so
that way they are not subject to what the actual
democracy wants, small d democracy wants, and so in that sense,
I'm a populous when it comes to information, and I

(19:21):
think we need to make politics more accessible, more understandable,
so more people understand how much it's impacting their lives.
I hope that helped you as to understand why in
this case democrats had skin in the gament.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
There's a reason.

Speaker 1 (19:40):
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unless they win. All right, next question comes from Brian
in New England. Right, So, I can't help but notice

(20:46):
all of the liberal political commentators seem to think they
have lost the shutdown fight. Likewise, all of the conservative
political commentators believe they somehow won the shutdown fight, assuming
no last minute silliness by Senator Ran Paul. Yet all
of the more moderate political commentator seemed to paint a
vast different picture as to who won and lost, and
most seem to think Democrats got most out of the shutdown.
So this brings up a good question, how do you

(21:06):
win a shutdown fight? How do you know who won
the shutdown fight? Can you even win a shutdown fight?
Or is it really just a lose lose lose for
everyone involved? Or at the end of the day, is
who won or lost?

Speaker 2 (21:16):
A shutdown?

Speaker 1 (21:16):
All just vibes and fuzzy feelings anyway? To me, it
kind of feels like the old whose line is at
any way?

Speaker 2 (21:21):
TV? Show?

Speaker 1 (21:22):
Everything is made up and the points don't seem to matter. Well,
look this is you know, if you really want to
wind me up. The entire shutdown process is a manufactured
political circus. The idea that the most important government on
the face of the earth.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
Has a.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
Has a bug in it that allows for parts of
the government to just simply shut down when there is
a political dispute over funding levels is got to be
one of the dumber things anybody does. The idea that
you know, I just think that the legal interpretations and
I went through this for those of you that wanted

(22:05):
to go off, you know, I am, but let me
just tell you, I am furious that there is not
a single effing member of Congress in the center of
the House that is rallying around the idea that we
need to prevent shutdowns from ever happening again. It is
absurd that we are hiring people to be air traffic
controllers and part of the process is, hey, you know,

(22:27):
every couple of years there's going to be a political
fight and you're not going to get paid for about
a month or two. Are you okay with that? What
kind of circus are we running here? I mean, that's
just you know, deciding to run to intentionally create a
shit show government. It's stupid, it's unnecessary, and it shouldn't be.

(22:50):
It's dumb, it's it's and it all. The only people
that benefit from a shutdown are elected officials who are
trying to make a name for themselves. You asked who
wins in a shutdown? Individuals win, No party wins. Nobody
likes the result of the shutdown at the end of
the day, everybody collectively hates the process of it, right,

(23:13):
But the winners are individuals. You know, Ted Cruz, you know,
So take the twenty thirteen shutdown. Republicans quote unquote are
seen as having lost that shutdown, right, because politically they did.
If it wasn't for the shutdown, Republicans would have won
a governor seat in Virginia that year, and instead Democrats
won the governor seat. So you could look at just

(23:34):
sort of the tactics and say up, Republicans lost and
Ted Cruz was unpayable. Yet Ted Cruz built a political following.
Ted Cruz was trying to run for president in twenty
sixteen and build a national following. So it worked for
Ted Cruz. And that's who the shutdowns are for. They're
for partisan actors, pure and simple, to try to make

(23:56):
a name for themselves. That's so the only people that
have ever come outquote unquote ahead. Right, it becomes about
who can raise the most money off of the silliness
of the shutdown. And I'm sorry, I just think the
idea that it's a practice that is somehow allowed and
the only the only reason to have it is to

(24:17):
figure out a way to bring more attention to a
funding dispute. Guess what, perhaps we shouldn't put three hundred
and fifty million people in the crosshairs of a of
a political disagreement over funding levels. That seems like a

(24:39):
waste of a superpower's time. It actually makes us more
vulnerable as a nation on national security. It is certainly
a huge sign of weakness. And again there's you know,
so a responsible democracy and a responsible government wouldn't put
put us in a situation where we can just easily

(25:02):
have a couple of people decide that the government is
just going to close its doors. And then, of course
we've exempted so many aspects of the shutdown that if
the initial idea of the shutdown was to you know,
it was going to be so painful that everybody wouldn't
want it to be be for more than a day
or two. But when you take away you know, when

(25:23):
you decide, well, social security isn't going to be a
part of it, and we'll exempt military pay, and we'll
exempt this, and we'll exempt that, then it becomes easier
to do the political theater. So I have to say, I,
as a as a voter who would like to have
less dysfunction in our politics, am sorry that there's not
a single elected member of Congress Democratic Republican currently advocating

(25:44):
a no shutdowns bill. They've existed in the past. Where
are they now where are they today? Instead, everybody wants
to perform for the frickin' basis of each party because
of how stupidly we've gerrymandered everything and our partisan primaries,
all of those things, right, we have all of our
incentive struck or for politicians to only pay attention to
the base. And it's just so the people that hate

(26:07):
this shutdown stuff the most are the ones that aren't
partisan activists. And it doesn't seem like there's a single
person in the in Congress that represents the constituency that
just doesn't want the goddamn toilet clogged purposely, and instead
this is what we have. So I don't know if
I answer your question right, I don't think anybody won

(26:29):
the shutdown fight. And if you're wondering to me, you know,
it is one of those where the only time anybody
gains from it is if they're trying to if it's
somebody individually trying to build their own following for some
sort of national political purpose, you know. And the best
example of that Ted Cruise twenty thirteen. He shut down

(26:51):
I was seen as a loser, but actually gave Ted
Cruise a constituency, all right, next question comes from Kenny
from Long Islanding Rights. My question for you about the
deal that seems to have been struck. It seemed to
me that the Democrats traded their leverage for a campaign
at the Republicans will not have to take the tough vote,
but will inevitably vote down the Obamacare subsidies. And that's
about it. Snap resumes, payments resumed, no one gets fired.

(27:12):
But all that is the standard course of events for
the end of a shutdown. The only thing Senator Schumer
seems to have extracted here is a tough vote. Am
I reading this correctly? If so, why on earth would
he have fought this hard and held out this long
only to give up and walk away with nothing to
show for it. Lastly, I agree and disagree with your
assessment about President Trump entering this lame duck era. I
agree that's the biggest takeaway for the shutdown resolution. To me, though,

(27:32):
it's not because of the defiance. It's because they negotiated
a solution without them in the Senate. At least, the
President disengaged and made it easy for this to play out,
but ultimately Senator thoonstruck the deal. I love the new
format and I feel as though I'm learning so much
more about the inside game when it comes to politics.
Thank you for the scoop, all right, Kenny. I appreciate
the construction constructive critique there on that front. It's interesting.

(27:57):
I guess I could word it, you know, and again
I would word it differently. I don't think there's a
cave here. I think there is. I think Warnock said it.
He said, if you're going to say that the Democratic
Party seems to care about those on snap benefits more
than the Republican Party cares about then I think he said,

(28:20):
guilty is charged, right, that that's not a And I
think if you're you know, again, a better leader and
a better communicator would not have would not have signaled
that this is over, would signal it.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
You know what.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
I think we've we've gotten more people aware of this
healthcare issue. We're sorry that the president wants to irresponsibly
punish people that have nothing and weaponize the FAA and
all of this, and so we're not going to let
him do that. So we're going to take a pause
in this over the next two months. We're going to
make sure people can travel for the holidays and come January,

(29:00):
there's another vote to reopen the government and there's Obamacare subsidies. Okay,
so I don't think they gave away any leverage. I
think they still have leverage in January to essentially shut
down government again if they want to, if these Obamacare
subsidies don't get passed for a year. I think I
think that there's going to be a majority of the

(29:25):
US House that votes for these Obamacare subsidies. Not a
majority of Republicans, but a majority of the House. I
think you will see somewhere between thirty and forty Republicans
who do this. I think you will see ten to
fifteen Senate Republicans wanting to be for this. So I
think it's going to happen. I think the results of
the I mean, I think the biggest impact on the

(29:47):
healthcare subsidies was the twenty five election results. The fact
that it was a romp, the fact that cost the
living issues and Democrats didn't even have the healthcare issue
yet and it was working for them. We already know
how well healthcare works as an opposition issue when you're
messing with it. We just saw it in twenty eighteen.
That benefited the Democrats and back in twenty ten when

(30:09):
it benefited the Republicans. Anytime you mess with the status
quo of healthcare, the party messing with the status quo
gets punished, and in this case that's going to be
now the Republicans. And so I guess I don't accept
the premise that they got rid of.

Speaker 2 (30:29):
Any of their leverage.

Speaker 1 (30:30):
And I think this is why I could argue, this
is why Schumer should go, because he's a terrible communicator
and he couldn't communicate.

Speaker 2 (30:37):
That they won.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
They won if you want him, you know, and he's
trying now. But he just doesn't have credibility with anybody anymore.

Speaker 2 (30:46):
Right.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
It's like, like I said, I keep comparing Schumer to
Pete Carroll and Bill Belichick. They used to have credibility
with the players they coached. Now they don't anymore.

Speaker 2 (30:54):
That happens.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
It happens in every walk of life. It happens to
political leaders all the time. Time there's a moment when they
have uber leverage over the entire party, and there's moments
where nobody will listen to them.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
George W.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
Bush had so much influence over his party for a
period of time until he had no influence over his
party for a period of time. Right, it is political
capital is elusive. When you have it, you better spend
it because if you try to save it, it'll disappear.
So I guess I'm not I think they could have

(31:30):
communicated this in such a way where they could have
been seen as the adult in the room and not
giving up their fight on healthcare, because technically they've given
themselves opportunities before the State of the Union in February
to make this a showdown vote one more time. All right,

(31:55):
last question comes from David Crowder, and then we'll get
to the interview with Joe Willett. I like your work
in thoughtfulness. Thank you saw your podcast at sam First
Info and Jay Jones came out in mid October. Virginia
begins early voting mid September. You get my point. Second,
the shutdown argument pre pandemic. Some twelve millions participated in
the bill. Their subsidies remain with premium increases. It's not

(32:16):
a big deal. The big deal is the twelve million
who enrolled post pandemic who did not qualify financially for
pre pandemic for subsidies they lose the subsidies. Is that
disconnect worth shutting down the government.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (32:26):
Seems like some form of a subsidy could be agreed upon. Finally,
the tax breaks that were scheduled to expire were extended.
The differences the subsidies weren't scheduled to expire. It's all crap, David.
You've summarized the poor legislative process quite well, right. You
know the fact that we have such a dysfunctional way

(32:47):
that we make laws now, and we have such distrust
of the two parties that they there's always a weird
poison pills in different ways.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
Right.

Speaker 1 (32:56):
The subsidies, they can't you know. Did Democrats want those
subsidies in perpetuity?

Speaker 2 (33:00):
They did?

Speaker 1 (33:01):
Could they not get enough votes to get them without
putting some sort of time stamp on it. They couldn't
dinal with the tax cut, right, they couldn't. Trump couldn't
get it permanent, so instead he had an expiration date
on it, hoping that the expiration would serve as a
fear of a tax hike and then that somehow would

(33:21):
get people to renew them. The Bush tax cuts work
this way, right, these ten year increments. We do this
sort of funny business accounting when it comes to the
impact on the deficit with these funny numbers with the
Congressional Budget Office and these estimates that are all that
are all just sort of make assumptions that nobody can
assume when it comes to the actual state of the economy.

(33:45):
But we make these deficit projections in such a way
that it encourages these sort of false expiration dates. Right,
some will have them, some will don't. They're usually time
to make it politically difficult to somehow not extend the deadline,
whether it's on a on a tax rate, or whether
it's on a subsidy or whatever it is. So you know,

(34:12):
this goes to the this is what you get when
you when you don't have a functioning committee process in Congress.
And not to get really dorky here, but essentially when
we totally polarized the US Houses, which which really began
sort of late eighties, early nineties, right, and you know,

(34:36):
there's those on the right blame Jim Right and the Democrats,
those on the left blame Newt Gingridge and the Republicans.
I think I think sort of there was there was
certainly power plays that Jim Right made that new Gingridge
then emulated and took to took to an took even
further that ultimately destroyed the committee process and the destruction

(34:59):
of the congressional committee process both in the House and
the Senate. Is why we get such poorly written legislation
which used, so I think eloquently pointed out with the
way you worded your question, the fact that the question
was a bit confusing. I don't put on you, I
put on Congress because this is how they legislate now,

(35:22):
with these sort of weird expiration dates. It's all designed
to create sort of political poison, almost almost like these
sort of delayed bombs that suddenly explode and you have
no choice but to continue a policy that maybe you
were never in favor of. You know, Obama didn't want to.
Obama ran on getting rid of the Bush tax cuts.

(35:42):
Turns out he couldn't get rid of them because of
what kind of impact it would have had on a
number of people seeing their tax bills go up, and
he didn't want to politically put himself in that situation.
He had made a pledge not to raise taxes on
anybody over I think it was four hundred thousand dollars.
So the new line that they drew on that. So ultimately,

(36:07):
you know, someday we're going to have a Speaker of
the House and a Senate Majority leader that actually wants
to make the legislative branch great again. But until that
time comes, we're going to continue to have this poor,
horribly dysfunctional legislative process that we've now seen that for

(36:30):
many of you feels like the normal way Congress works,
because trust me, this was not the intent. How Congress
has worked the last thirty years is not the way
that Congress was intended to work in the previous two
hundred and twenty years. All right, So with that, there's
all the shutdown, Q and a's that I got. We're

(36:54):
going to take a pause when we come back, meet
a candidate for Kentucky Senate, basically somebody who I think
was a political independent who chose to pick a side.
Here's motivation, how he did it. I'm always intrigued by
first time candidates because I think they come they literally
come at things with a fresh set of eyes, and
I think it's always important to hear what a fresh

(37:15):
set of eyes has to say about the current political system.

Speaker 2 (37:20):
So with that, we'll take a break.

Speaker 1 (37:22):
See on the other side. This episode of the Chuck
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Speaker 2 (39:05):
Well, joining me now is a.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
I guess you could argue a new politician to the scene.
His name's Joel Willett. He's running for the US Senate
in Kentucky.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
He got on my radar.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
He's kind of out of nowhere. Where Telsea Gabbert took
away a whole bunch of people's national security clearances, even
folks who were had served in the intelligence community were
in the private sector but still had some, you know,
some clearances because that is a normal thing we've done
in our government for decades.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (39:36):
And there appeared to be some sort of connection. The
minute mister Willett agreed to think about running for office,
Suddenly it seemed as if the government decided to give
him another headline in some ways. I think they may
have even given him an assistance with getting more attention
in some ways for his candidacy. But he's all so,

(40:00):
you know, we want to highlight interesting first time candidates
who are not coming from sort of a typical place,
hard left, hard right, things like that, and Joe Willett
got on my radar and he agreed to sit down.
Mister Willett, nice to meet you. Yeah, thank you, Chuck.
So let's start with how you got into service. Look,
we're taping just before Veterans Day. You're a veteran. I'm

(40:22):
a huge advocate. That feels as if that the people
best equipped to what I call to I'm looking for
more pastors for patriotism in this country that I think
the military community and the intelligence community, where you have
to be Team America before your Team Red or Team
Blue is probably as good of a place to find

(40:43):
these pastors for patriotism as you can find. But tell
me how you got what got you into service?

Speaker 2 (40:50):
Yeah? I love that term. Atn't heard it before, so
I'm probably going to steal. Well, I'm using it over
and over.

Speaker 1 (40:55):
I'm obviously a little proud of it, so I'm going
to use it, probably too much.

Speaker 2 (40:58):
But you know, well, my grandmother took me to church
every weekend growing up and was heavily involved with my
church for a long time, so it resonates. So yeah,
thank you for the opportunity to tell my story. I
am Joel Willett running for the US and in Kentucky.
Your listeners can catch all the parts of the story
at joelfer Kentucky dot com if I missed something here.

(41:21):
But I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and my path
to service was perhaps common in some ways and uncommon
in others. My dad was a Union iron worker. He
was a Golden Gloves boxer. My mom worked in hospitals
taking care of people. But we had some Kentucky struggles
growing up. The lights didn't always come on when I
got home from school. I learned, you know, early in
my adolescence that both of my parents were struggling with

(41:43):
addictions to opioids, and I would eventually lose my father
to a fenteral overdose in twenty nineteen. It wasn't just
my family, it was you know, tens of thousands of
Kentucky families over the past couple of decades. But I
was one of the lucky ones because I had incredible
grandparents on both sides of my family. I had my
grandmother's church, but I also had the institutions of this

(42:04):
country public education, our military, our civil service, some of
these things that I believed to be some of the
greatest tools for achievement and economic mobility in the world.
And when the attacks of nine to eleven happened, I
was a senior in high school and a few months
after that, after months of begging my mom to sign
the paperwork, she relented and did and I joined the

(42:25):
Army National Guard when I was seventeen years old, and
I served in the Military Police Corps. I was able
to graduate from the University of Louisville and from the
University of Kentucky, and that launched a career. Once I
left the Army in the intelligence community, I spent some
time with the FBI working on canterterrorism and then was
recruited into the Central Intelligence Agency into the Director to Operations,

(42:46):
where I represented this country here at home and abroad
in the Balkans, Baltic, Southeast Asia, Western European capitals. I
speak Russian. Do without what you will, and you know,
finished my last year in government in the White House
Situation Room as a nonpartisan civil servant, there to provide
intelligence and crisis management support to the president who was

(43:08):
then President Obama and Vice President Biden. There to serve
the presidency, not the president, and the true spirit of
our civil service. I left government twenty fifteen in part
to be able to take care of a lot of
my family that remained in Kentucky. Went into the private
sector have since been running businesses that have put hundreds
of people to work every day. So, Chuck, I truly
got to live my American dream and have been living

(43:33):
that life as a private citizen for for some time now,
and it's been increasingly hard to set on the sidelines
and watch working families across this country, working families like
the one that I grew up in, getting steamrolled by
a political and economic system that I think continues to
treat them as acceptable losses. So, as you said, I
started exploring a run for the Senate. This administration found

(43:53):
out about it, and as it is wont to do.
Began trying to act revenge on people, no matter how
long they'd or no matter what they had served, but
because they had said mean things about Donald Trump, and
we're thinking about standing up against some of what we're
saying today, and they revoked a security clearance, and you know,
came after me the way they've come after so many others.

(44:15):
What made your democrat? Why'd you pick a party? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (44:19):
When did you pick a party? Do you remember when
you've said, you know what I think? I am a
Democrat and this is why I'm doing it. What give
me your reasoning for?

Speaker 2 (44:28):
Yeah? It was a it was a long, maybe a
short evolution out of being a conservative, which is, you know,
I would freely admit to holding some conservative views as
a as an interested teenager or even in high school.
But my journey away from that came, perhaps shockingly to
some people, through military service. The military exposed me to

(44:51):
people from all walks of life, nationalities, sexual orientations, all
of that, and I began seeing, you know, what I
have since come to believe is, you know, this source
of strength in our military and in our country, which
is the diversity that we have. But it was also
seeing the lies of the Iraq War. I, you know,

(45:13):
I could see something very different than what the George W.
Bush administration was saying publicly, you know, about this status
or the state of our military, our readiness to fight
such a war. And then you know, we we we
later come to learn that much of the rationale for
going to war in Iraq was a house of cards,
and I continue to see that, you know, some twenty

(45:35):
years later, as one of the most disastrous foreign policy
decisions we've made, certainly in my lifetime. So that began,
you know, a period of reassessment for me away from
you know, what was the Republican Party or conservative viewpoints.
And I would say that the journey into being you know,
a Democrat is something that happened much later. I you know,

(45:57):
I'm sure somebody will fact check me on this, but
if my memory serves me, the first time I registered
as a Democrat to vote was in twenty sixteen, and
it was in response to what I saw as the
clear and present danger of Donald Trump. And I have
been proudly a Democrat since that time because that is
the party that I see standing up for a strong America,

(46:18):
for an America that works for everybody and not just
the wealthiest.

Speaker 1 (46:21):
You know, hearing your story, talking about your personal story,
your parents struggles with opoioid's, the tragedy of your father,
the strength of your grandparents, I'm sure I'm not the
only person who they start to think. I wonder what
he thought of Hillbill the book Hillbilly Elegy by a
gentleman by the name of jd Vance. Some people may

(46:42):
recognize him as the current Vice President, and some people
may wonder if the same person wrote that book. And
I'll set that aside. I'm curious what you made of
that book and how much of what jd Vance shared
in that book resonated with you.

Speaker 2 (47:00):
Yeah. I first became aware of that book in twenty
nineteen when I lost my father, and then, you know,
an attempt to process my own emotions around that, because Chuck,
it was, you know, one of the most debilitating things
that had ever happened to me, because no matter how
long I had expected that phone call, nothing really prepares
you for it. And I would say, my life for
six years has been a project and trying to understand

(47:21):
how this country could you know, create my life, which
I see as a truly uniquely American life, coming from
Valley Station, Kentucky to the halls of the West Wing
in twelve years to leadership and business. If my life
is uniquely American, so too was my father's death. Because
people do not die from fentonyl overdoses in a statistically
significant way in other parts of the world, yet it's

(47:43):
the leading cause of death, I believe, in the United
States for people ages eighteen to forty four. So I
became aware of hillbili elogy during that time. And I
would say there are a lot of similarities between my
story in JD. Vance's. My heart aches for you know,
the life that he described, you know, living growing up,
and so much of it resonates with me. And I
understand that, you know, he similarly felt a need to

(48:07):
serve his country. And you know, I will have to
transition now to say that there are major differences between
my story and JD. Vance's, and that being that I
didn't turn into a giant asshole at the end of it.

Speaker 1 (48:23):
Boy, I didn't see that landing. I didn't see the
plate landing that abruptly. That was quite we may have crashed.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
It a little bit.

Speaker 1 (48:29):
I was just going to say I had one of
those landings yesterday actually, while flying back from Miami, where
it was the first I think a runway that he
wasn't used to using it.

Speaker 2 (48:37):
It was like boa, like we all hit the ground
and road. Whoa. That was an early morning flight, so
it woke me up. No.

Speaker 1 (48:45):
I mean, look, it is very hard to square jd Vance,
the author jd Vance, the conservative pundit of twenty sixteen,
right right with the person that ended up in the
United States Senate, you know, sort of making a what
appears to be a political deal, right, And look, that's yeah.

(49:08):
I've always slightly hesitant on motive, in assuming motive, because
none of us can crawl inside anybody's head right on motive.
But he just looks from the outside. O. This stuff
doesn't doesn't compute. But what does compute, frankly, is the
fact that these so many of these stories exist and

(49:29):
why politicians have had a hard time figuring out how
to use government to fix this.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
So let's talk about that.

Speaker 1 (49:36):
Like I would assume for you, if you get elected
that a priority is going to be Okay, how do
we deal with it? I mean, take the issue of fentyl.
You got a president who's manufacturing, is using the fentyl crisis,
which is real, and ascribing it to the Venezuelans, which
have nothing to do with this, right, and getting us
potentially to screw up yet another Latin American country with

(50:00):
interventions that will only cost us cause this country problems
for decades to come, and our distrust in that region
of the country. And it's like, how many times do
we have to screw up our relationships with Latin America
with this? But what is you know, you've it sounds like,

(50:20):
for the last six years in particular, you've really wanted
to understand both the struggles people have with ventanyl, how
it gets into this country. What should we be doing
differently to stop ventanyl from getting into this country? And
is it possible? You know, are we trying to like
stop the weather right?

Speaker 2 (50:40):
Like?

Speaker 1 (50:40):
Is this impossible? And instead we've got to go about
this another way.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
Yeah, I think we certainly have to go about it
in a different way than we've attacked this problem or
any other of the drug crises that we've had in
this country over the years. But you know, let me
start with kind of the supply side of this, where
we you know, that's where Donald Trump's conversation around it
seems to end. And unfortunately for many Americans, he's not

(51:10):
the only president that has stopped the conversation. There. We
talk about, you know, a drug war, and usually what
we mean there is attacking the supply and where the
stuff is coming from. Yes, we have to secure our borders.
Yes we have to go after and chase to the
ends of the earth the supply of this stuff, whether

(51:30):
we find it in a factory in Beijing or whether
we find it being pushed from boardrooms in some of
the largest companies and richest families in this country. And
you know, we've had many, many Kentuckians lose a father
or a brother because of unregulated capitalism and doctors who
had very perverse incentives to continue pushing highly addictive opioids

(51:52):
and poison into our community. So I think we've we've
got to pursue the supply of this in many different directions.
We've made some progress on that, but it's the demand
side of it. Why are people turning to these drugs?
Why do people want to use them? And I think
it is that that we need to that there is

(52:12):
so much more that this country could do. When I
talk to, you know, friends in Europe about, you know,
what's going on with drugs and addiction here, and they're like,
wait a minute. Drug addicts, you know, they often not
because they're terrible people, but because they're literally out of
their minds while using do some destructive things, whether they

(52:32):
steal or are a public nuisance or wrecked cars and
all these things. These are stories that are just so
vividly remembered in my life and in my family's life,
and European friends are like, wait, you send those people
to jail. Why don't you send them to the hospital,
because it sounds like that's probably what they need. In Kentucky,
we've had three years of declining overdose deaths from syntheticopioids.

(52:57):
We've got down to like fourteen hundred and ten this
past year. A lot of that progress was made because
we invested heavily in this state and medicaid expansion, and
it was access to medicaid that paid for treatment, that
helped people, paid for some NARCAN community awareness, and also
paid for treatment for addicts. And I do think that

(53:19):
is just something we have to invest more in because
we want people to have good lives and good opportunity
in this country. And you know, young men especially account
for I think eighty percent of what we call deaths
of despair, which are deaths from overdoses of some form

(53:39):
or another or from suicide. And I think this can
all be tied back to people who see their prospects demming,
who see that no matter how hard they work, they're
not going to be able to get ahead. And that's
something that has to change. And I think that once
we have a sane economic policy in this country for
the working class upon whose backs all of this prospects

(54:00):
already was built, only then we be able to truly
address these problems with addiction.

Speaker 1 (54:06):
So when you think about the things that could have
helped your father, you know, what's what's an intervention that
we're doing now? I mean, you know, I lost my
father at sixteen. I'm sorry alcoholism and hepatitis C in
the late eighties when we didn't have a pill to
take to sol hepatitis CE.

Speaker 2 (54:26):
You just died.

Speaker 1 (54:29):
So you know, I've got it's always one of for me,
the what if is, oh, my goodness, if you just
lived ten years longer than there'd have been a cure
and he would have survived. When you think about the
things that we're doing now, if they had been available
even ten years ago, do you think your father.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
Would still be alive? Well, I know that as a
civil servant, you know, living on an okay salary, but
in a very expensive city in Washington, d C. It
was very tough to get access to resources. And so
I always say, you know, we confronted my father and
checked him into you know, dollar Store Rehab and Elizabethtown, Kentucky.

(55:07):
You know it was there were professionals there were doing
the best they can, but it wasn't the most well
resourced facility, and a lot of desperate people showed up there.
But even that bought us some valuable years with my dad.
He was able to see his granddaughter, you know, grow up.
In his best moments, you know, in my in my
recollection were always when he was a heavily involved father.

(55:27):
And it was as my you know, my life and
his started going in very different directions when I was
a teenager. And this is because you know, there was
a free fall that happens in this country. You know,
you you grow up, you have some roof over your
head or some access to basics, you get good public education.
You've got some opportunities if you make just even marginally
okay choices in this country. And my dad's path, you know,

(55:51):
wound through a union and I got him jobs that
were relatively you know, well paying when he could work.
But you know, obviously there were mornings in the union
hall where he didn't have work and the earlier mid nineties,
but it was it was you know, surgeries and things
like that that started to get these pain pills into
his system. And then as his economic prospects dimmed, those
that became a way to medicate away some of what
I'm sure was existential pain for him. I was going

(56:13):
to provide for his family. I was going to provide
for his kids, for son and his daughter, my sister.
So to answer your question specifically, yeah, we are doing
a lot more today. There's a lot more awareness about
it than there was before. This is an uncomfortable thing
to talk about, is I'm sure it has been for you,
you know, opening up and and it takes Look, you're

(56:33):
never going to get over it.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
I you know, I want My wife and I both
lost parents at different times of our life, and we
always say, you know, the thing, the thing that you
learn when you lose somebody like that. No matter when
you lose it, it doesn't matter. It's always painful in it.
You never get over it. You just sort of you
live with it, right, Right, That's what we did. You
just learn to live with it, and then you wonder,

(56:55):
what can how do you learn from it?

Speaker 2 (56:57):
Right?

Speaker 1 (56:57):
How do you how do you try to try to
try to move on? You know, you brought up Medicaid.
I mean you feel your I take it your concern
that these Medicaid cuts are just going to make it
that much harder. You know, do you feel like Kentucky
needs more facilities that do rehab or they have enough facilities,
they need more resources to staff those facilities.

Speaker 2 (57:20):
I think it's both, and I'll just zoom out to
healthcare large. We need more doctors, we need more health
care facilities. Uh. This administration passed an unconscionable four trillion
dollar tax cut to put money back in the pockets
of the already ultra wealthy, like the ten billionaires that
serve in Donald Trump's cabinet. I'm fond of saying those

(57:40):
billionaires are not like the average Kentucky voter. They do
not like the average Kentucky voter. And they paid for
all of this by taking money out of healthcare programs
that as as our governor has been front and center
in the press sounding the alarm about this. These cuts
put thirty five rule hospitals pills in this state under
threat of closure for people, you know, to lose access

(58:04):
to that healthcare. Even people who maintain health insurance through
their employers are going to have to drive farther, wait longer.
These communities are going to lose you know, one of
the largest employers in their communities. So yeah, we have
a shortage of health care access in the state of
Kentucky and in many parts around the country. And I
think Republicans in this administration have shown just play in

(58:29):
simply in recent months that they do not care. So
I do think that we need to increase the supply
of health care. We need to invest in more of
what people actually need, and in Kentucky that does mean
you know, more access to addiction treatment and overdose prevention.
But again, I think the root causes of all this

(58:50):
happened way earlier in life, and I would again tie
it to increasing inequality and dimming prospects for working.

Speaker 1 (58:58):
Families having good life insurance is incredibly important. I know
from personal experience. I was sixteen when my father passed away.
We didn't have any money. He didn't leave us in
the best shape. My mother single mother, now widow, myself
sixteen trying to figure out how am I going to
pay for college and lo and behold, my dad had

(59:20):
one life insurance policy that we found wasn't a lot,
but it was important at the time, and it's why
I was able to go to college. Little did he
know how important that would be in that moment.

Speaker 2 (59:33):
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Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
So let's talk.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
You know, it's interesting, I know that the next and
perhaps you know, the fear of AI displacement for sort
of middle class white collar workers is now you know,
there's like a whole new group of folks that are
learning what blue collar workers were worrying about during audit
the rise of the initial rise of automation and robotics

(01:01:08):
right plus the global the global trade system in the
nineties and in the early odds, and that created this displacement.
Now we've got AI displacement's going to hit another chunk
of workers. This attempt to bring manufacturing back. Frankly, doesn't
involve many individuals, right, It is more of a robotics

(01:01:30):
and automated situation. So, you know, how do we You know,
we can't go backwards. We're not going to force companies
to use humans if it's cheaper to do an automated thing, Right,
That's just not how capitalism works. But what's what should
we you know, what what is what are the jobs

(01:01:51):
in the next twenty years that we ought to be
trying to get our communities prepared for, get our public
education system geared towards you know, because I think about
think about the last thirty years, and we thought all
of our kids needed to learn to code, right, And
it turns out whatever coding you've learned, it doesn't matter anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
AI is going to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:12):
And so I can tell you this as a parent.
You're petrified my kids. You know, my kid's going to
have a future and what does that look like? It
sounds like you have younger kids, both of mine are
in college. What do you think about is the jobs
of the future and how should government be thinking about it?

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
Yeah, for the record, my son is sixteen and this
is obviously a very uh.

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
Yes, you're right. At the moment conversation. Yes, I have
a freshman. I have a senior in college and a
freshman in college.

Speaker 2 (01:02:44):
Oh wow, yeah, good stuff. So look, we've always had
I mean, America is the innovation engine of the world.
We have always innovated and with every wave of you know,
innovation from you know, the industrial age too, you know,
the assembly line, to even modern management theory and efficiency
in factories and in business, there's there's always been displacement

(01:03:08):
and we've always found, uh, you know, ways to innovate
even around that, and people have always found, you know,
new ways to to to to labor and to work.
And I think there is some really, there are some
reasons to believe. And I'm someone who has spent a
lot of time, you know, running a technology company. Over
the past couple of years, I've had the chance to uh,

(01:03:30):
you know, I when I lost my security clearance, some
of the you know, the most strident and well known
right wing trolls on Twitter told me that I should
learn to code. I'm like, yeah, thanks, I did that
six years ago. You know already did that. So I
say that only to say that I've you know, spent

(01:03:50):
a lot of time uh playing around experimenting with and
understanding AI tools and you know their implications in the workplace.
I I am less bullish about the immediate, you know,
wide scale impacts of this because there are a lot
of implementation issues. There are a lot of data quality issues,
hallucination issues, and all these sorts of things that I

(01:04:12):
think even companies who have made a decision to lay
off and displaced workers thinking they're going to be replaced
with AI, are going to see and relatively short order
that that it is not the panacea that they might
think it is. Even still, I do accept the premise
that we are going to have some massive changes in
the economy, uh and in the jobs that are available
to people. And I think that there are there are

(01:04:32):
two things we need to wrestle with. Is one like, Okay,
if a business finds a more efficient way to do something, well, great,
they're going to have more profits. But now we're going
to have more people on snap benefits. Now we're going
to have more people, you know, needing Medicaid because they
don't have healthcare. Because you know, all this activity in
the economy has to come from somewhere. It has to come,
you know, from from consumers. Buying things. And what I'm

(01:04:55):
increasingly worried about is just that that the broad consumer
base in this economy is just going to be completely
left behind because the wealthy have enough at the top
to continue pumping money into these businesses and these experiments
and buying really expensive things.

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
Now we're seeing it right now, where the high end
consumer market is doing just fine. Yeah, but middle and
long people are pulling back. People are saving money. And
it's like this income and equality line is gap is
just getting bigger and bigger.

Speaker 2 (01:05:26):
Yeah, And so tax policy is I think the number
one thing that can address this. You don't have a
situation where, you know, the America's first billionaire he died
a billionaire, John Rockefeller, in nineteen thirty seven. Bill Gates
fifty years later became the fifteenth billionaire, and thirty eight
years since then, we now have seven hundred and fifty, right,

(01:05:48):
and you know, all of the gains in the economy
since the early nineties or like fifty two percent of
them have been captured by the top one percent. So
there has to be a reckoning with this growing inequality.
It's in moral but to anywhere in the world in
history where you see fascism grow. It does so in
the fertile fields of wealth inequality, and people get desperate.

(01:06:09):
They turn to strong men who say I alone can
fix it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:12):
Right, No, I mean, I look at I talked about
the fall of Turkey in Venezuela all the time to
former democracies. I guess you could take Turkey is slightly
higher on the democracy rating scale than Venezuela is, but
a right Erwan and Hugo havez before Maduro, but Ugo

(01:06:32):
shaves who sort of started this revolution. Both of them
used frustration in poor communities to go after the so
called elites, right in Istanbul or Caracas. I mean, look,
I assume this is your experience overseas that this is
there's a pattern here right where they when there's a
belief when the gap between rich and poor gets so big,

(01:06:55):
you can weaponize the poor against the elites and the
pitchforks will come. But democracy leaves.

Speaker 2 (01:07:02):
Yeah, and it's replaced with corruption and crony capitalism every
timepocrisy of some sort. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, So we do
have to reckon with our tax policy that that I
think has concentrated wealth at the top, that you know
is certainly what does that look like.

Speaker 1 (01:07:18):
Because I've heard this before and the frankly, you know
we you know, this is what we did one hundred
years ago when we had all these robber barons. We
passed the Amendment on the income tax. That was not
about taxing Americans. That was about tax making sure the
rich paid something back to this country that they were
taking from it. And that's when property taxes became mainstream

(01:07:42):
was back then? So what what is what is today's answer?
Because I agree that tax policy is probably the that's
what a small d democracy should do, and that sort
of capitalism with guardrails.

Speaker 2 (01:07:54):
What what what large.

Speaker 1 (01:07:56):
Areas are you thinking when it comes to comes to
tax policy and trying to close the income inequality gap
without it coming across this redistribution.

Speaker 2 (01:08:06):
Right, there's that fine line there, right, sure. Well, one
easy answer is something that that Ronald Reagan actually did
and then in the late part of his second term,
which is ensure that capital gains, you know, gains from
investment were taxed at the same rate as your labor.

(01:08:26):
I see no reason why people working forty sixty hours
a week and are subject to payroll taxes, and you know,
even if they don't make enough money to actually be
subject to income taxes. They're paying a lot into to
FIKA and into payroll taxes. And even in the you know,
Reagan years, they found a way to say, hey, no,
we're going to make sure that Okay, if you're if

(01:08:47):
you're just putting money, you're making money off of money,
well that's going to be taxed in the same way
that making money off of you know, your labor or
breaking your knees, you know, welding iron together and setting iron.
Is that we're going to tax the same And that
actually happened in this country for two years until George H. W.
Bush undid that policy. And I don't remember if it
was eighty eight or ninety, but one of those years

(01:09:07):
check up on me. I think that that is a
fairly easy place to start. And then the second thing,
you know that we just have to deal with or
you know, the strategies that the ultra wealthy use to
live off of their unrealized gains. You know, people will say,
if if I have stock and it appreciates in value,
but I haven't sold the stock, I didn't actually make

(01:09:29):
any money. That's true, except that you also collateralized that
stock and borrowed a lot of money from banks to
be able to live off of you know, you you
accessed some value from that appreciation and that gain, and
so I think even a simple policy like removing this
by borrowde wealth preservations strategy that wealthy people use could

(01:09:50):
also go some way in curing or making this a
more equitable system. Basically, if you if you obtain cash
flow from those unrealized gains in any way, at that point,
it would be subject to tax. So these are kind
of simple things. I think there's a lot of other
complicated things that I'm sure academics and tax policy experts

(01:10:12):
have a spectrum of disagreement about. But I think, you know,
to your last point about redistribution, this is where Democrats
often get in trouble because everybody sees that, oh, well,
we're going to tax, we're going to tax everybody more,
you know, hard working people, and then we're just going
to do handouts to people who don't want to work.
And this is just silliness, right. I believe that that's
a myth for the most part, that most people receiving

(01:10:35):
whether they're snap benefits or medicaid or whatever, actually do
want to work. And I think forty million people on
snap benefits, fifteen million of them do work full time.
They don't make enough to actually be able to afford groceries.
So I think we got to do away with some
of those myths about the working poor in this country.
But separately, rather than handing people you know, money to

(01:10:55):
go buy things, we as a country need to invest
some of those proceeds into building more. We don't have
enough high quality education in this country. We have an
energy grid that is increasingly falling behind for the demands
that are going to be placed on it by an
ai centric economy. We don't have enough hospitals and doctors,
as I alluded to earlier. We need to invest in

(01:11:16):
all of these things heavily and infrastructure in this country.

Speaker 1 (01:11:20):
No, and it it does seem though that there is
a collective agreement on that. And yet you've seen this.
This Congress doesn't function very well at the moment because
we're in this you know, we're in this like forever
Cold War between red and blue.

Speaker 2 (01:11:37):
Yeah, and it is very dysfunctional. And even when you
can have consensus, or even when you have you know,
broad agreement on issues, you know, progress remains elusive, and
I believe that it is just that this system has
been captured by the political and economic elites that are
entrenched interests. We have campaigns, you know, bought and paid for,

(01:11:59):
Elon Musk invests to forty something million dollars in getting
President Trump reelected, and all of these parties you know,
are looking out for their own interests and they are
the ones you know, funding politics. And we have tried
to have grassroots campaigns over the you know, the past decade,
but these relentless text messages and emails and candidates like

(01:12:20):
myself have to send two people who already probably don't
make much and know, chip in five bucks to save democracy,
and then a lot of that just goes back to,
you know, paying for campaign consultants and all. It's absolutely
fundraiser makes the money. Yeah, it's absolute nonsense. And I
think that that, you know, we have to start electing

(01:12:41):
people to the Senate who understand the struggles of the
working poor in this country. We talk about how much
representation matters, you know, especially as Democrats, and we mean
that in a variety of different ways, but one way
in which we don't explicitly talk about it is do
poor people see themselves in any of the people that
are elected to represent them, And I would say that

(01:13:03):
they do not, because you know, many people who seek
office year after year, cycle after cycle and win or lose.
I just don't think they have much in common with
the people who who they are trying to represent. And
I think that that representation matters a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:13:19):
So And I'm not like asking you to throw shade
at at potential primary opponents, but I may already have.
It's sorry, why did why does Andy Basheer succeed? And
why did an Amy McGrath fail in twenty twenty?

Speaker 2 (01:13:34):
Yeah, I mean there's there are a lot of you know,
contributing factors, and you know why you should ask a
me what her assessment of that race is. I'm sure
that she should all the money in the world, all
that money in the world.

Speaker 1 (01:13:47):
This was not a she didn't. This was not a
financial issue. So this became a you know, the you know,
an old marketing slogan was that the dog that doesn't
matter how much money you throw behind the dog food.
If the dog won't eat the dog food, you know
it's not going to work. Why didn't it work?

Speaker 2 (01:14:06):
Yeah? Again, she would probably be much more you know,
qualified to share an assessment with you on that. I
will say Amy McGrath. McGrath has an incredible life story.
She's a patriot that you know, has served her country
and she she's been in this fight. I think my
assessment is that in a place like Kentucky, it's a
state that has been you know, that has put its

(01:14:29):
faith in its trust in Donald Trump. You know, three
three times three three elections in a row, and it
you know, voters here believed the promises that he made
and believed that he was going to be looking out
for them. And when when Democrats don't actually offer an
alternative vision, when they when they sometimes speak in ways
that sound just kind of Republican but just a little

(01:14:51):
less republican, I don't think voters can really tell the difference.
And so if you got people on the fence, they're
going to just vote for the Republican. Uh and Andy,
butsheer didn't you know, do that. This is a governor
who led with his values in both of his campaigns.
He didn't shy away from talking about hard things, but
he explained his choices, his decisions and reasons for different

(01:15:11):
things and decisions he would make and policies he would
advocate for. And even people who disagreed with Andy Bushier
said that they trusted him and they thought that he
would look out for them. And then he has shown up.
We've had fourteen natural disasters or something declared in the
state of Kentucky over the past couple of years or
during his administration. This isn't a guy who hides in
the governor's mansion. He's been out, He's been present with people,

(01:15:33):
and I think that even when they disagree with them,
are in, you know, marginal things, that he has their
back on the major things. So I think that that's
probably the big difference.

Speaker 1 (01:15:44):
What do you think is the best way to win
win over somebody who voted for Donald Trump in twenty
twenty four to vote for Joel Willett in twenty twenty six.

Speaker 2 (01:15:53):
Yeah, I would just ask those voters do they see
more of themselves in Joel Willett or in Donald Trump.
Donald Trump's net worth has increased three billion dollars according
to the most recent estimates since January twentieth. How's your
bottom line doing? Kentucky? Wages are stagnant, costs are up.
You can't afford groceries. They're actively trying to take your

(01:16:15):
health care. This man went to the Supreme Court this
week to try to get permission to not give people
money to buying groceries. And this administration made sure that
Republicans in the Senate couldn't negotiate a deal with Democrats
so that Americans wouldn't be faced with this unconscionable choice
between being able to afford groceries or seeing a doctor

(01:16:36):
when they get sick. And I would just ask voters
to keep asking themselves why that is. Do you believe
that this man has your back? And I think there
is ample evidence at this point between his ballrooms, his
own increase in his wealth, and these other policies he
does not definitely.

Speaker 1 (01:16:53):
Has a gilded age feeling to it. Doesn't it like, yeah,
let them cake whatever you want to, whatever cliche you
want to pick it.

Speaker 2 (01:17:01):
It feels it like you're just like, yeah, the pictures
are jarring.

Speaker 1 (01:17:14):
Well it leads me, and look, this is by the
time this airs, the shutdown is over, it's behind us.
So we're in the we're taping when they're in the
middle of it ending. And I'm one of those who
are empathetic to I get I understand the rationale on
both sides of this argument inside the Democratic Party. One
that says, hey, they're squirming, why give up now? The

(01:17:37):
other that says, he's he's taking away snap benefits, he's
putting the travel system under duress. Somebody's got to be
the adult in the room here. And oh, by the way,
if you're trying if the whole point of this was
to bring more attention to healthcare, that's been a mission accomplished,

(01:18:02):
and then now the burden is on them to either
deal with this or watch out. In twenty twenty six,
this becomes certainly a populist issue. So obviously you could
see I can argue one side of this. I understand
the other that, hey, the shutdown's gone politically really well
for the Democrats, and Trump has made all sorts of
mistakes like advocating to not pay snap benefits even when

(01:18:24):
a judge says to do it, and the Speaker of
the House is abdicated responsibility, right Like, I can I
get the arguments and I couldn't I hear both of them.
Where do you fall on this argument? And I'm mindful
that you're in a Democratic primary in the moment.

Speaker 2 (01:18:42):
Yeah, but I'm not someone who is going to ever
play hide the ball with the people that I want
to vote for me and the people that I want
to represent. So in that spirit, I believe that the
deal that was just struck is a betrayal of working
families in this country. And I'm absolutely disgusted by this

(01:19:03):
choice with the with the eight Democrats who who broke
pretty angry about this, I am very fired up, Chuck.
I went to bed mad and angry last night. I
woke up this morning, uh, the same exact way. And
while yes, there are you know arguments there, I you know,
we're fond of, you know, saying in sports, and when
we're trying to encourage people to to you know, get

(01:19:25):
in there and and fight and play a game, we say, well, hey,
you can't win if you don't play. But I want
to quote my favorite, probably one of my favorite TV
series of all times, The Wire, And I'm sure this
was a David Simon line, but one of the characters
told the police chief, you can't lose if you don't play,
and that is I think some of the energy Democrats

(01:19:46):
needed here. If the Republicans wanted the government open, they
found ways to force through the you know, the big
bullshit bill back in July. They did that right with
with UH without getting the support that you know, they
they wanted from Democrats. They could have funded and reopened
the government the same way. Not sure there would have
been some procedural issues and delays and things like that.

(01:20:07):
They could have gotten it done if they wanted to.
Democrats did not need to go support this. And yes,
it is terrible to watch people potentially lose their SNAP
or food stamp benefits. I was on food stamps as
a kid. I know what that's like. You know, when
my parents had to make decisions between being able to
afford groceries or putting gas in the car to get
to a job so they could make money to buy

(01:20:28):
more food. I get that personally, But it is not
Democrats that have made those choices. It was not Democrats
going to the Supreme Court to try to get permission
to not pay SNAP benefits. That was Donald Trump. That
was Republican enablers in Congress. Democrats had a very radical
idea throughout this shutdown. Maybe in the most prosperous country

(01:20:50):
on earth, with thirty trillion dollars in GDP, we can
have a country where people can afford groceries and be
able to see a doctor if you get sick. That
seemed like a pretty noble fight to me. And I
don't understand, you know, when we've had millions of voters
across this country in Virginia and New Jersey, in California
and New York show up just this week, right, you know,

(01:21:11):
over the past seven days, rather to support a party
that it's a fighting for them, to just immediately turn
it out.

Speaker 1 (01:21:18):
To say why, why do you assume the fight's over?
I mean, this is a temporary opening, you know. I
could if you made me have to message it on
sort of on your I would say something like, look,
we're not gonna we're not going to make people have
to ration food because this administration is going to do it.
But we're going to keep fighting for healthcare and come January,

(01:21:40):
if they don't do this, we're shutting this place down again.
And what's wrong? What is wrong with that strategy because
you do sort of try to strike I could argue
that it strikes the balance between you know, helping in
the immediate term, and again I think, look, we're playing
with fire with what's going on with their traffic control

(01:22:02):
and not paying these folks and and all of this stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:22:05):
And I take it we had a we had a
crash here, and we don't.

Speaker 1 (01:22:09):
Know that had what's that impacted by? Right, And we
can't say for sure, but we know we've put these
people under duress, meaning they've got to work with a
promise to be paid right, which I've never met the
landlord that said that, Hey, I'm going to post date
this check just you know, I just don't know when
I have to get to post date it. Do you

(01:22:30):
not accept the premise that there's time to fight keep
fighting for this in two months?

Speaker 2 (01:22:37):
I think when you look at the eight Democrats who
voted for this, it sort of betrays the parties thinking
that they don't really buy this premise either. None of
those people are facing reelection next cycle. To my knowledge,
find me one person who wants to run on this
compromise right now next cycle. I don't think you find

(01:22:57):
that Democrat anyway.

Speaker 1 (01:22:58):
What's the run on the compromise? The question is whether
you're running. You know, you get to keep running on healthcare?
I would argue you do, oh.

Speaker 2 (01:23:06):
Sure, because but the problem is you've got tens of
millions of Americans who are absolutely now going to see
premium increases or they're going to go without health care.
That is now a fact that is going to happen.
And you know a lot of people are like, oh,
do you trust Republicans that they're actually going to give
you a vote on this or whatever. It's like, Okay,
I think you know. Fune has been very public that

(01:23:29):
there is going to be a vote and it's going
to happen on such and such date and all that.
So take them out the where there's going to be
a vote. What is that going to accomplish? Do you
think magically Republicans are going to extend these enhanced subsidies.
I think would be enough because I think they're petrified
of this. I think they're absolutely petrified of the impact
com mess. I think they look at for a way out. Yeah,

(01:23:50):
well right, And so I don't have that level of
faith right now because they are beholden to Donald Trump.
And this is a man who found his affordability in
the rative for a maximum of five hours one night
before he the next day said don't talk to me
about affordability. I mean they are going to do whatever
he says, and until he's out there saying the personation

(01:24:12):
is noted there, Joel, I see that. It's incredible. Check
you know you got to keep that up. What more?

Speaker 1 (01:24:20):
Is it just?

Speaker 2 (01:24:20):
Or do you have others that you're pretty good at? Oh? Well,
we'll save those for future episodes. My wife hates my impersonations,
by the way. Oh she's got to be the biggest
fat She can't do that to you. I just want
to discourage it.

Speaker 3 (01:24:33):
And I've got a shared brown impersonation that I've always
been really proud of ground to be a I just need,
you know, with the men and the working men and wave.
You know, you gotta you gotta have the dignity of work.

Speaker 2 (01:24:44):
There, Joel. That that is very good and quick aside.
I was I was able to uh see Carl Rove
and Paul Lagala do a fireside chat last last fall,
and I mean, Carl Rove hasn't uh, you know, an
incredible impersonation Donald Trump and an even better one of

(01:25:06):
George W. Bush, the president that that he serves so firstly,
and Paul Lagalla busted into a Bill Clinton, uh that
would deceive anyone. And I just thought that was very
impressive that the presidents that they had served, that they
had just kind of embodied their voice so realistically.

Speaker 1 (01:25:20):
Well, it makes you wonder did they embody their voice
or did the do the presidents embody the voices of
their chief strategists? Yeah, you know who's pulling this strength now,
I'm kidding. I'm kidding on that front. So I take
it that if there's no deal on healthcare, you'd say,
you think that this that these that shut down the
government in January again, right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:25:43):
I don't see what choice. I mean, look, I say
this as a civil servant, and and and perhaps I
should you know, lead with uh my, you know, I
understand I've lived through shutdowns. I had I was always
a you know, a an essential implay all you doing
government shutdowns and had you know, pay at risk and

(01:26:03):
got paid. Yeah, it always came back. But even if
there was like a you know, a temporary you know,
bulip in it, you you're you're not getting paid that
much anyways, right, and you you continue to show up
and it's it's work that you care about. But ultimately,
you know, you've got to be able to afford things.
And I don't want to use public servants as a
as a political football in that way. But we cannot

(01:26:25):
be the only party that cares about that one. One
side of the spectrum right now is letting Donald Trump
just run rough shot over the entire federal government, dismantling
the civil servants, civil service that we fought so hard
to build in an a political way in this country.
And uh, you know, so I get Tim Kane when
when he's trying to support federal workers, but you know

(01:26:45):
the same is true from our corner. And so I
do think this is uh, we we have to keep fighting.
But like Democrats have to read the room the do
you think Schumer should resign as party leader? H I
I think that there are very valid and open questions
about that. I want I don't know Chuck Schumer. I've

(01:27:06):
not met with Chuck Schumer. You know, I get that
you know there is a lot going on behind the scenes,
and you know, for a party that is out of power,
and so you know that's that's not something I'm prepared
to say, as we said here, but it is an
open question. In my mind.

Speaker 1 (01:27:26):
Doesn't sound like somebody, if you won, you would support
keeping Chuck Schumer as a leader.

Speaker 2 (01:27:30):
If you had a vote, it would be a difficult
vote for me to take today. I will say that
before I let you go.

Speaker 1 (01:27:37):
I'm just curious, you know. I just interviewed Governor Basheer
earlier this weekend. It's on a new sphere, which is
another sort of independent media outlet, and he said something interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:27:49):
I said, you know. I said, he was talking about tariffs.

Speaker 1 (01:27:56):
And this is a case where Andy Basheer, Mitch McConnell,
and Ran all are all on the same page.

Speaker 2 (01:28:01):
And he basically said.

Speaker 1 (01:28:02):
If all three of us are agreeing on something, maybe
there's something there.

Speaker 2 (01:28:05):
What do you make of Rand Paul? And I say
this because if you win, that's.

Speaker 1 (01:28:10):
A senator, you know, the States senators, you know, no
matter even if you're from different parties, at times you
need to work together.

Speaker 2 (01:28:16):
What do you make of him?

Speaker 1 (01:28:17):
And what do you make of his attempts at seeking
a little bit of distance from from Trump World in
a way that we haven't seen in the past.

Speaker 2 (01:28:26):
I Ran Paul is an idiosyncratic senator to say the least.
You know, his views will sometimes overlap in very weird
or align, you know, in very strange and unexpected ways.
It's a weird ven diagram, isn't it it very much
is I mean? But we have this in Kentucky with
Thomas Massey as well. You've got liberals across the state

(01:28:47):
celebrating Thomas Massey's willingness to stand up, you know, for
the release of the Epstein files, which, by the way,
this issue is not going to go away either. Those
finals I believe will see the light of day. They
have to. Voters are demanding it. But you make a
broader point just about you know how we have to
work together. No one senator can promise to get anything

(01:29:11):
done on their own. You have to build relationships. You
have to be able to work across the aisle. And
I'm not somebody who presents just to be some above
it all centrist. I am not, and I, like I said,
We'll always tell voters you know where I stand on things,
and my mind is made up on something. I'm not
going to hide from you what I believe about it.
But that doesn't absolve me, or any senator or any

(01:29:32):
congressman of a responsibility to represent all the people in
our states, because it is inevitable in a state like
Kentucky if I win, you know, there are going to
be lots of people here who did not vote for me,
and they deserve a voice and they deserve representation as well.
The problem that we have right now in this country
is that, you know, you can have seventy five million

(01:29:57):
people vote for Kamala Harris and marginally more millions vote
for Trump, and they pretend that the score was one
hundred to nothing, I know, and that all the other
people didn't exist. You don't, you didn't win.

Speaker 1 (01:30:09):
Actually not what our founders intended. They assumed it was
going to be a messy compromise constantly.

Speaker 2 (01:30:15):
Yeah, and so you know, we have to be able
to do that. So, you know, I would I would
work with you know which who would then be the
senior Senator from the state of Kentucky to take care
of working families in this state. They deserve a voice,
they deserve representation, and we need solutions minded politicians. And
that's exactly what I would be.

Speaker 1 (01:30:36):
Outside of Kentucky. Who's the US Senator that so far
you've been the most impressed with.

Speaker 2 (01:30:43):
You know, It's funny, somebody asked me, asked me that
question a few weeks so, not who I was most
impressed with. I was able to say a few, But
I'm gonna. I'm going to continue to give Chris Murphy props.
I have appreciated, you know, he's been a very level
headed senator. He speaks passionately about you know, a lot

(01:31:04):
of issues, but you know, particularly he's someone you know,
I talked about, you know, my dad dying a uniquely
American death from finandol. Well, there's another uniquely American death,
and that's to get killed atra elementary school. And you know,
when you've got senators, you know, who are completely owned
by the NRA that that aren't even looking out for
response responsible gun owners anymore. You know, I've just been

(01:31:27):
impressed with, you know, his leadership on that issue and
other things, and somebody who I think is intelligent, whose
heart's in the right place. And yeah, so I admire it,
admire that guy.

Speaker 1 (01:31:37):
And I take it that Governor Bursheer is your pick
for president in twenty twenty eight because you got you're
going to be a home state guy.

Speaker 2 (01:31:43):
Is he is he running? Is he running? I don't know.
I don't think he's.

Speaker 3 (01:31:47):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:31:47):
I don't think he said.

Speaker 1 (01:31:48):
Yeah, look at you doing doing a little bit of
blocking and tackling that.

Speaker 2 (01:31:52):
I don't know, look at twenty twenty six. Right, yeah,
of course, but and that does have to be our folks.
I will tell you this. I do not believe, and
I know Gavin Newsom has been very public in saying this.
I've been saying it privately for months, that this administration
intends to have free and fair elections in twenty twenty eight.
And so if your listeners care at all about our

(01:32:14):
two hundred and fifty year experiment with democracy here or
liberal democracy in America, it is imperative that we turn
out in massive numbers in twenty twenty six. I believe
it's one of our last chances to provide accountability for
this administration and to ensure that Americans have a free
and fair choice, whether that be for Andy Basheer or
anyone else in twenty twenty eight. So I don't think

(01:32:34):
the stakes could be any higher. And I will say
Andy Basheer has been an incredible governor of this state,
and he's shown it path to victory here for Democrats
who want to lead with their values to respect him
for that.

Speaker 1 (01:32:45):
Let me get chatting here on this. Because you worked
in the intelligence community, and I've been working with some
people former members of the intelligence community on an exercise
on trust and media. And it's not just about media
and journalists. It's more about the information ecosystem and what
happens if you have bad intelligence. Like I'm working with
people who are nervous that the information you know, we

(01:33:07):
already know there's a lot of misinformation and disinformation out there,
and that if we don't figure out clean ways to
get information, then we're going to make terrible national security decisions.
Like how bad is the flow of intelligence these days?
Do you is it in considering sort of how much
we've alienated some of our key allies, you know, in

(01:33:30):
the in the world of the Five Eyes, all the
English language allies of ours that I get the impression
that there's either concern that, you know, we've got too
many leaks in our system or all of our stuff.
There's one country in particular that gets access to intelligence
without telling them what what is? What do you feel
like is the state of America, the American the intelligence

(01:33:54):
that are are the intelligence community is getting these days?

Speaker 2 (01:34:00):
Yeah? I appreciate that question more than you know, and
you know, would would love to have an extended conversation
about it, because I think that there are a lot
of different forces that are polluting the information environment and
leading to very poor information hygiene, not just in you know,
our federal government with policymakers, but with our kids, and

(01:34:21):
with with school age kids and people in university and
and everything else. I would just turn to Russia as
an example of this. During COVID, you may recall some
of these images of Vladimir Putin setting at the end
of a you know, a thirty foot table and an
advisor you know, at the other end, and I, you know,
equipped at the time that he had entered the late

(01:34:44):
stage Howard Hughes phase of his government, his governing.

Speaker 1 (01:34:49):
Have you noticed his nails are suddenly super long?

Speaker 2 (01:34:51):
Oh no, no, right yet? Yeah, well, when he grows a beard,
we'll know that the transformation leaden beard. Yeah, yeah, but
it is it is an isolated autocrat who behaves the
way that he did during COVID, who also then makes
the decision to invade Ukraine. And when you listen to
Vladimir Putins speak about, you know, his reasons for invading Ukraine. Yes,

(01:35:14):
he has this sort of imperialistic worldview about Russia and
you know, glory of Russia and all these sorts of things.
But he also routinely just says things that are untrue,
and you don't know if that's propaganda. I believe at
this point that Vladimir Putin's information environment has become massively
polluted because everybody in the Siliviki and the intelligence community

(01:35:40):
in Russia has figured out that like, this is what
this man believes, this is what this man wants to hear,
and that's what they tell him, and he's manipulated in
those ways. So there are very real examples of the
consequences of that type of government that we see with
Russia and the atrocities that are being committed in Ukraine.
So let's go from Russia to the US intelligence community,

(01:36:03):
and then I'll just finish my response with kids. My
security clearance was revoked, as we talked about it at
the top of the show, and it was revoked because
I said something mean about Donald Trump six years ago,
and because they found out I was going to exercise
political speech by potentially, you know, by considering a run
for the US Senate.

Speaker 1 (01:36:20):
Just astablishing something you said six years ago. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's what they us. I mean, that is just like
thought police stuff. That's write out all the while. Yeah,
it truly is.

Speaker 2 (01:36:30):
And uh, you know it was right wing Twitter that
started that dug up some of this and started attacking me,
And then I guess right wing Twitter runs our intelligence community.
Now it's a very dangerous thing. Or a loomer the
CIA chief apparently, Yeah, exactly, And so what do I
think the follow on effects of something like what happened
to me? But it is since I mean James Comy
being indicted and other people who were actively serving in

(01:36:53):
the CIA being walked out by security because they ended
up on some list that nobody knows how well. So
this is going to and perhaps already has a massive
chilling effect throughout our federal government. And it's not just
the intelligence community. I mean Donald Trump went to war
with a weather forecast during his first administration. We might
recall where he modified the course of a map rather

(01:37:15):
than just saying, you know, I accidentally added an extra
state in my comment. Right, So, up and down the
civil service, you have people who know that if they
speak truth to power like they're supposed to, they're just
going to be out a job. And so that is
dangerous for national security. It's dangerous for domestic security to
not have expertise in the civil service, and.

Speaker 1 (01:37:35):
What would you do if you're in that situation? You
know you have the So literally a week before the
head of Southern Command decided to resign rather than carry
out these orders on these on these Venezuela on these
boats outside of the coast of Venezuela. I'd ask Jim Stavertez,
former NATA supremat like commander, former head of Southern Command.
I said, what happens if you get an order you're

(01:37:56):
not on our pcent?

Speaker 2 (01:37:57):
Sure is legal? Right? We know we know that. You
know if if you follow an illegal order, you're going
to be held accountable to right. We have made that
clear in our in our law.

Speaker 1 (01:38:07):
And he goes, well, you would, he goes, I'd probably
resign and not go public about why I resign.

Speaker 2 (01:38:13):
I'd simply resign.

Speaker 1 (01:38:14):
Let others And you know, there's there's this sort of
there's always that that sort of a would you if
you were in a similar situation, would you simply resign?
Would you resign with a bullhorn or do you try
to keep working within the system Because it feels like
there's no there's no perfect answer here.

Speaker 2 (01:38:32):
There is not, and I just want your listeners and
American voters at large to understand that the admirals and
the generals and the private first classes, they're the privates
first class. They're not coming to save you. If you
think there is some massive resistance that's going to build
up in this way, you are mistaken. And it's because
these are gut wrenching decisions that have extreme amounts of

(01:38:55):
personal consequence to you.

Speaker 1 (01:38:56):
The culture it tells you, look, if you've got an issue,
then you go ahead and resign, but you need to
do it on your terms, right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:39:03):
And civil servants have an obligation I think, to resign
rather than you know, carry out those things. Whether they
speak about it at public or not would depend on like, well,
this is a super classified thing. What can I say?
You know, there's whistleblower things. We have ostensibly protections in
this country.

Speaker 1 (01:39:18):
For that, but you're still all of those inspectors general,
so it's not even clear who you would report violations.

Speaker 2 (01:39:24):
Of the constitution to. Yeah, exactly. In the military, you
don't have the luxury of always just being able to resign,
you know, admirals and generals and those sorts of things,
or at various stages of their you know, contractual commitments
to the country, but they can you know, resign and
make a show of it.

Speaker 1 (01:39:39):
Look, the fact that the head of Southern camp and
resign should have been a much bigger deal with the
American public.

Speaker 2 (01:39:44):
Yeah, I mean I don't think we.

Speaker 1 (01:39:45):
I don't think that whatever's left of legacy media made
a big enough deal about it.

Speaker 2 (01:39:49):
No, And the Defense Intelligence Agency, who you know, the
director there also gone because of you know, questioning the
efficacy of the military strikes that we on Iran. So
there are a lot of a lot of things there,
and there are a lot of problems. But I do
think that, you know, you do have obligations to not
carry out lawful orders. And it's easy for me to

(01:40:11):
say from the cheap seats over here at the stage
of my life, I only, you know, hope that I
would have had the courage of putting the same situation
that i'm that I am asking other people to exhibit
a day.

Speaker 1 (01:40:22):
Joe Willett, it's been a pleasure to get to know you.
I sort of you come at this with a with
a style that that is very appealing to me, I hope.
But in that you seem like you think this stuff through.
It seems like you think before you speak. There's not
many politicians that do that these days.

Speaker 2 (01:40:40):
Yeah, I try. Chuck's been watching you for years. You know,
I've only probably yelled at you through the television a
few times, but you know, really appreciate you having me
on and for having a thoughtful conversation. I am.

Speaker 1 (01:40:51):
I am a as I say. It's like, I'm as
long as you're not yelling at me the whole time.

Speaker 2 (01:40:58):
I didn't. Yeah, and my campaign, and my campaign will
fire me if I don't remind people to go to
Joelferkentucky dot com if you're at all interested in supporting
this camp.

Speaker 1 (01:41:09):
Are you concerned that the big money people in DC
won't invest in Kentucky because of what happened in twenty
twenty with all that money.

Speaker 2 (01:41:17):
Yes, I'm very concerned about that. You know, we invested
on you know, ninety four million dollars in the in
the race here and got results worse than we'd ever
gotten before, and I think that is on people's mind spot.
There's an important difference here now. Andy Basheer has shown
this path to victory, and we just have to have

(01:41:37):
the right candidate walk down that.

Speaker 1 (01:41:39):
Path, Joe Willett, We'll be watching your primary, that's for sure.
I know fairly early, right may right.

Speaker 2 (01:41:46):
Yeah, leave me soon that is that is six months
are going to fly by, so be safe for the trail.
Thank you so much, Chack, have you got it well?

Speaker 1 (01:42:01):
I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Joe Willett. I
know I'll be following his candidacy to see see how
that all works out. So, speaking of the Senate, it
is that time I said every month I would update
my top five, top five, top top top five, just

(01:42:22):
a reminder in October and the way I do this
and my ranks have been doing this since I wrote
a column called on the Trail back during my National
Journal dot com outline days, which was I like to
order these races are most likely to flip parties, so
not in the toss up Lean ar Lean d category,
but most likely to flip to least likely to flip. Obviously,

(01:42:46):
by keeping it to five, you know all of them
are going to be somewhat competitive races that crack the
top five.

Speaker 2 (01:42:52):
So to remind you, the last.

Speaker 1 (01:42:53):
Time my top five was North Carolina one, Georgia two,
Michigan three, Main four, New Hampshire five.

Speaker 2 (01:43:00):
So the idea was I.

Speaker 1 (01:43:02):
Had the assumption was the open seat in North Carolina
with the big recruit there. North Carolina, Georgia's the Democratic
health seat of John Ossoff. Michigan, of course, the open
seat Gary Peters Democrat is vacating. Maine is Susan Collins.
New Hampshire is the Gene Shaheen seat that she is vacating,

(01:43:23):
a Democratic seat there. So look my new top five.
In some ways, number one hasn't changed. The most likely
seat to flip is North Carolina. It is an open seat.
It is the one open seat, you know, one of
two open seats in the big seven battleground states. Right,
The big seven battleground states are Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina,

(01:43:45):
Nevada in sort of the sun Belt, and Wisconsin, Michigan,
and Pennsylvania. And so when you look at the competitive
Senate map these days, there's actually, you know, the last
two cycles, they all seven of those states. We had,
I think two cycles in a row. We either had
seven for seven or six of the seven with Senate
seats this time, right, we'd have nothing in Arizona, nothing

(01:44:07):
in Nevada, there's one seat in Georgia, one seat in
North Carolina, nothing in Pennsylvania, nothing in Wisconsin, and one
seat in Michigan. So it is the presidential battlegrounds. This
happens to be the one cycle where we have the
fewest amount of Senate seats in the presidential battlegrounds. But
I think you still have to put you know, I
think what I learned from the twenty twenty five elections,

(01:44:30):
and again history being a guide. Every time we've seen
a route like this by one party, we have seen
that continue in the following even numbered year. I am
looking for the time. I mean, twenty thirteen is one
of the few exceptions where Democrats did well in the

(01:44:51):
off off year, but that did not translate to twenty fourteen,
which was not a good year for Democrats in there
and again right there was there's a HEAs in twenty
thirteen is the exception to every single one of these
trend lines we've been talking about with New Jersey and Virginia,
et cetera. And you know, certain things I think that
I took away from the off off years. One, Democrats

(01:45:13):
are ready to vote, and you know, the sheer raw
number of votes that the Democratic candidate got in New
Jersey versus the Republican candidate continues to blow me away.
I think it's the single most important statistic that you
need to understand coming out of these off off year elections.

Speaker 2 (01:45:30):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:45:30):
Jack Chittarelli, the Republican nominee for governor, actually got one
hundred thousand more votes than he received in twenty twenty one.
In twenty twenty one, that vote total was good enough
to only lose by three percentage points. In twenty twenty five,
where he got more votes, he loses by thirteen percentage points.
The Democratic candidate Mikey Cheryl got four hundred thousand more

(01:45:51):
votes than Phil Murphy got in twenty twenty one. Okay,
that tells you a whole bunch of Democrats who didn't
bother to show up in twenty one decided to show
up in twenty five. I don't think I had anything
to do with Mikey Cheryl and Jeck Chodarelly, and everything
to do with the larger national environment. By the way,
we got that result on Tuesday. If you recall the

(01:46:14):
NBC News poll that came out two days earlier that
I am a big believer of because I trust those
two pollsters. They had a generic ballot lead for the
Democrats of eight points. It was the largest lead that
Democrats had going back to twenty seventeen. Twenty eighteen cycle,
another pretty good cycle for Democrats. So I throw all
that in there in that my new top five list
is skewed a bit towards the Democrats. So number one

(01:46:37):
hasn't changed. That's North Carolina. It's not going to change.
But my number two has. I had Georgia's the second
most vulnerable seat. After seeing what we saw with those
Public Service Commission races where there was no money spent
and Democrats just generically won by a lot, you've got
a growing divisive Republican primary. I highlighted an add a

(01:46:59):
couple of podcasts ago where Derek Dooley, the son of
Vince Dooley, the former football coach of the Bulldogs, that
the super pack of Brian Kemp, the sitting governor, was
running an ad that sort of lumped in the two
Republican congressmen in the primary and osof as all responsible
for the shutdown. So you now know what kind of
campaign Dooley is going to run as the outsider, the

(01:47:21):
anti Washington crowd. I think it's a smart place to
position himself at this point. Though, if Dooley is the nominee,
I think Osoff's in bigger trouble. But if Dooley is
not the nominee, and so far he's still the third
place candidate, I think Osoff is a bit safer than
I preps. Look, he's still in the top five, but

(01:47:42):
he is not number two most vulnerable. I think now
you have to put in the second most vulnerable.

Speaker 2 (01:47:48):
Susan Collins.

Speaker 1 (01:47:49):
I do move Susan Collins up into the second slot there.
I think when you see what the Democratic turnouts was
in the Northeast in general, you see the fact that
in some ways the strength of the oyster farmer Graham Platner,
the fact that his support is holding and it's not

(01:48:12):
hurting the Democrats. The fact that Jay Jones got through
what he got through in Virginia, I think is only
going to serve to reassure Platner on there. The anti
Schumer vibe, the anti establishment vibe, seems to be much
stronger than the anti character vibe inside the Democratic Party
right now. And you know Collins is going to be

(01:48:33):
defending a bunch of status quo stuff it is. You know,
do I think if Janet Mills is the Democratic nominee,
Collins has a better chance of winning. I do, believe
it or not, but I still think it's going to
be it's going to be a hard time being an
incumbent Republican running in twenty twenty six with this likely
economy that we're staring at and the way Donald Trump

(01:48:57):
is positioning the party's brand right, And while Susan Collins
is never going to be mistaken for a Trump Republican,
she's still going to have to carry around some of
that baggage, some of that baggage on tariffs, some of
that baggage on health. I mean, she's probably going to
be the loan Republican, you know, one of now she
won't be the loan Republicans. She's going to be one

(01:49:18):
of the lead Republicans trying to get these Obamacare subsidies extended,
because if they do not get extended, she's done. She's
completely done. Which is why I am bullish that you
will see a one year extension at a minimum of
these Obamacare subsidies, because I think there is no senator
that would be more vulnerable to a decision not to

(01:49:40):
do that than Susan Collins. So number one is North Carolina.
Number two is main Number three I am going to
put Georgia. I still think that there is certainly, you
know it is it is a even state. We've still
not seen, you know, a demo until these psc elections.

(01:50:02):
We hadn't see a Democrat went a down ballot statewide
contest in Georgia going back more than ten years. But
the entire political environment in Georgia. I mean, if Georgia
is indeed you know, I've been vacillating, was Georgia anti
Trump state or is Georgia simply a swing state that

(01:50:23):
demographics have been shifting over time? And I think there's
now more and more evidence that this is a This
is a realignment in Georgia. This is the growth of
the Atlanta suburbs, This is all of those things that
this is less about. And it may be what we're
seeing in the Atlanta metro areas. What we saw in

(01:50:43):
northern Virginia that went from being an important pocket of
voters for Virginia Democrats to becoming the most dominant feature
of the state and of the politics of the state.
And I think we're starting to starting to see more
and more of that in Georgia. But I'm still going
to put it. I'm still going to put it right
now in the third slot because because of the fact

(01:51:09):
that this time Osof isn't going to have be running
with Rafael Warnock or a presidential campaign, right, He's got
to do this entire turnout operation on his own.

Speaker 2 (01:51:20):
There.

Speaker 1 (01:51:22):
So North Carolina one Main three, Georgia Main two, Georgia three,
number four on the less, I'm gonna put Michigan, so
it drops down a slot because I've jumped started Maine there.
And look, I do think Mike Rodgers is he went
down a weird road. He decided to claim that somehow

(01:51:45):
the twenty twenty four election was rigged, that it or
he's implying he's opening the door to some conspiracy theories
as to why he lost in twenty twenty four. Boy,
that's a long way away from the Mike Rogers I
first started covering when he was in It's going to
come as a surprise, I given that he doesn't really

(01:52:05):
have any serious primary opposition, the fact that he's going
down this sort of Trump grievance road on his twenty
four election is a bit of a head scratcher. Doesn't
seem as if he needs to be catering to that
primary voter that enthusiastically. So perhaps he really believes this,
Perhaps he's going down this rabbit hole. I don't think
that's good politics for him, but you know, he's still

(01:52:30):
the reason I still give him and why I think
Michigan could be very competitive is We're going to have
a very messy Democratic primary. Who knows who gets elected?
Is that the super progressive that gets elected is that
the outsider and lsied is the progressive. McMorrow is the
sort of outsider. Stevens is the establishment candidate. They've all

(01:52:52):
scrambled to be anti Schumer now, even Stevens on that front.
So that primary could get messy, and it's an August primary,
and it means that rogers Is should be in a
strong position. But I am I do think that's a
loser to go down the conspiracy road in a swing
state like Michigan. And then I'm putting a new seat

(01:53:12):
at number five. I had New Hampshire in the top
five before. No longer am I putting New Hampshire there
because I think the political environment indicates that it's more
likely another Republican health seat is going to fall before
a Democratic health seat. And look, I think Johnson new
is a much stronger candidate than Scott Brown potentially in
an open seat. But if the wind is blowing left,

(01:53:33):
New Hampshire goes with the wind right, you know you
can still get elected as a Republican in New Hampshire,
which it needs to be in a either even or
good Republican year. I don't know if this is a
winnable race for any Republican Chris or Johnson unhu. If
the wind is blowing as strongly for the Democrats in
twenty six as it was blowing for the Democrats in

(01:53:53):
New Jersey and in Virginia in twenty five, I can
just tell you that it knew it. The odds are
it's going to look more more like a blue state
in an environment like this than it will a swing state.
So my new number five is Shared Brown and Ohio.

(01:54:16):
John Houstad is the appointed elected senator there. He's been
doing quite well in some of his union endorsements and
getting a few union endorsements at Shared Brown, and when
he was an incumbent senator would get but if you
just shift, if you believe the electorate in general is
just going to be five points better across the board

(01:54:36):
for Democrats, like it was in Virginia, that basically makes
Ohio a coin flip. And what we learned about Shared
Brown in twenty four is he can run three to
five points ahead of the Democratic of the generic Democratic number.
He can't run it eight or nine points ahead of
a Democratic presidential candidate. He's running in a midterm years.

(01:54:59):
He has had more success running in midterm years than
he has in presidential years. And he did win once
in a presidential year in twenty twelve, but he had
that Obama had a lot of wind at his back,
and that was quite helpful to him. In twenty eighteen,
he was able to win in a Trump year thanks to,

(01:55:20):
you know, a combination of a week Republican opponent, but
also just again it was a good Democratic year.

Speaker 2 (01:55:28):
So at this point I.

Speaker 1 (01:55:30):
Put Ohio there, And this means three of the five
in my five most vulnerable are Republican held seats. So
if Democrats sweep the five hold for Georgian Michigan and
flip North Carolina, Maine, in New Hampshire, they are only
one seat away from the majority. That's where this top
five list sits right now. That's this is why if
you want to mess around on the political betting markets,

(01:55:55):
one of the best early bets to make right now,
because it's a sheriff stock, and then you could sell
that share before the results actually happen. Because if Democrats
succeed in good candidate recruits in Alaska, a good candidate
in Kansas, you may see them get six or seven
Republican held seats in the competitive category.

Speaker 2 (01:56:13):
Will they win them all?

Speaker 1 (01:56:14):
No, But if they can put Texas, Iowa, Alaska, Kansas, Nebraska,
they can put three of those five in play in
addition to the three that I think they already now
have a either even or slightly better chance at flipping.
You you suddenly have.

Speaker 2 (01:56:32):
A path to the Senate majority. There you go.

Speaker 1 (01:56:35):
The top five list this week. North Carolina, Maine, Georgia, Michigan,
Ohio the five Senate states most likely to flip this month.
As far as the Chuck todcast is concerned, All right,

(01:56:56):
let's take a couple more questions, ask Chuck. None of
these will be shut down and related. This one comes
from a third generation Navy vet John B from Saint Louis,
and he writes, Hey, thanks for responding to my question
about the atomic bowl. All right, so it's not a
first time long time, but at least a second time

(01:57:16):
long time. I'm a World War Two in Cold War
history buff and I think it's crucial to keep conversations
about those times alive in our modern discourse. We live
in the shadow of those events. I'm wondering how America
might have been different during the past fifty years if
we had not ended the draft falling Vietnam. I think
we could expand that to include national service in general. Thought, John,
you are scratching an itch that I'm constantly dealing with.

(01:57:36):
I think, you know, I think not having national service.
I think national service could be a huge advancement of
trying to depolarize America, right, getting people, getting American citizens
to believe that they have to that part of your

(01:57:59):
citizenship is to give a little bit to this country
and service. And it doesn't have to be in the military.
It can be a variety of ways you can give.
It could be working, you know, in home health care
for an elderly parent without a close knit family. It
could be cleaning up rivers and streams. It could be
teaching in underserved communities that need more school teachers. It

(01:58:23):
could simply be tutoring, or it could be military service.
I think anything.

Speaker 2 (01:58:28):
It's why I.

Speaker 1 (01:58:29):
Think that in general, you know, I'm speaking on Veterans
Day here. In general, I'm a big advocate of bringing
as many veterans as you can into the workforce, into
any sort of culture because most military veterans, the experience
of being in the military exposed them to people that
grew up differently than them, people that worshiped different faiths

(01:58:51):
than they did, but they all learn how to have
a common mission and buy in some ways wearing the
same uniform. They realize when you wear the same uniform
you bleed the same red blood, that hey, they're really
the differences really are are all surface. They're not They're
not very deep at all. So not to sort of

(01:59:13):
try to like, you know, but for the good old
days kind of mindset, I'm a I'm a huge advocate
of national service, and I think it could be a again,
you know, you know, whether it's a way to pay
for college. There's all sorts of ways that you create
sort of for every year of national you know, maybe
everybody has to do one, and every extra year you

(01:59:34):
give you get that much more off of your tuition.
But I think there's a lot of ways, you know,
or to trade school, whatever you wanted to do it.
Anything that we could do to sort of get Americans
from different walks of life to have to have to
give back for a period of time only strengthens the
fabric of this country.

Speaker 2 (01:59:54):
So I'm a huge advocate, all right.

Speaker 1 (01:59:57):
Next question comes from Chase little Rock, Rockansas and response
to your uestion about staying on the thirteenth floor in
game day, if a black cat crossed my path while
I walked under a ladder on the way out of
my thirteenth floor hotel room in Fayetteville, I wouldn't have
batted an eye. This razorback football season has already used
up every ounce of luck in the entire state. Bobby
Petrino's come back to or hit all the wrong notes,
and honestly, Faydeville needs a total due over new coach,

(02:00:18):
new schemes.

Speaker 2 (02:00:18):
I knew everything.

Speaker 1 (02:00:19):
So at the college football job market heating up, which
openings do you think are the most tempting and who's
got the chops or luck to fill them go hogs eventually. Well, look,
you know, Florida is always the It's one of those
that you think it should be a bigger power than
it is. Irony is that the history of Florida football

(02:00:40):
is actually quite mediocre.

Speaker 2 (02:00:43):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:00:44):
They've really only had two brief periods of success, one
with Steve Spurrier, one with urban Meyer and Tim Tebow,
which really probably have to talk more of Tim Tebow
than urban Meyer. And they've been mediocre or port and
every other you know, at any other period. In theory,
it should be a great job to have. In theory,

(02:01:06):
it should be a place that you could become a powerhouse.
It seems to be a cesspool of micromanagers, right. It's
kind of like you know what Auburn is. It's like,
you know, it has all the ingredients, but it's impossible
to succeed because the boosters are always going to get
in your way. It just trusts me from experienced mind me.

Speaker 2 (02:01:25):
So on paper, it's Florida.

Speaker 1 (02:01:28):
But you know, I'm a huge I think Arkansas is
a hidden I think Faetteville is a is a is
a hidden gem in the South. I think it's one
of the it's you know it's it's going to be
the next Austin or Nashville. I think it's a great
place to live. I think that somebody is going to
crack that code. And when you have Tyson Chicken money

(02:01:49):
and Walmart money, the the you know, if the if
the university athletic program will invest in football, Arkansas could
be a great job. It is not clear they want
to invest in football as much as they do basketball
and baseball. That seems to be the be the biggest
problem there. I do think the Penn State job is

(02:02:11):
actually quite appealing to because there's such a loyal fan base.
You I actually think even though Franklin, you know, think
about how long he survived without succeeding at the tippy
tippy top, which means fan base has actually a lot
more patience than it gets credit for. So that would
be a good one that I think you could see

(02:02:32):
quick success at and sustained success that and be in
a community that would be pretty comforting. I mean you
could turn you could definitely turn Happy Valley into Tuscaloosa
and have a Nick Saban like run there. And that's
probably the way I look at it. Where could you
have a Nick Saban like run where you might go
a decade and just be so dominant. I think Fills

(02:02:55):
a place to do that. I think I think a
Happy Valley is a place to that. I'm less convinced
you can do that in Gainesville, and I don't you know.
I think history shows you it's pretty difficult to do.
And I don't know if Virginia Tech it can be
on that highest level right now. I don't know if
they have the financial backing to do that.

Speaker 2 (02:03:19):
On that front.

Speaker 1 (02:03:20):
All right, I'm gonna take one more question here. This
comes from john S and Millie Waukee. Of course, everything
I've learned about socialist mayors came from Wayne's World, the movie,
and Alice Cooper.

Speaker 2 (02:03:35):
But I digress.

Speaker 1 (02:03:36):
Diehard listener here, just finish your podcast with rich Tawe.

Speaker 2 (02:03:38):
Fascinating.

Speaker 1 (02:03:39):
You answered my past question about voters in Ozaki and
Sheboygan County's voting anti woman richest focus group confirmed my
hunch some voters dislike Trump, but voter form anyway likely
because of Harris. Have your thoughts on this changed at all,
even if the polling doesn't pick it up. Look, I
think it's pretty clear there was a group of voters
that you know that Harris couldn't appeal to that. I

(02:04:04):
guess what you're you know the better the question is
that that Joe Biden did appeal to in twenty twenty. Yes,
But I also think it's pretty clear, you know. I
think it's a fair question about about whether it is hard.
You know, I think I think race is less of

(02:04:26):
an issue. I think gender was more of an issue.
But it's hard to disaggregate it because you had a
poor economic environment. She was defending the history of sitting
vice presidents trying to succeed unpopular presidents is pretty stark, right,

(02:04:49):
you know, Hubert Humphrey couldn't win with LBJ, but he
came awfully close, and neither could she. So it is
I think it's hard to find isolate the specific voter itself.
You hear it in there, but you'd have a better
argument if she lost with a better economic record. And

(02:05:13):
I think that that's.

Speaker 2 (02:05:15):
You know, it is. I still think there's a.

Speaker 1 (02:05:17):
Little bit of choose your own adventure on this that
you can. You certainly hear it in there, and you
certainly hear it in those focus groups, and Rich sort
of described it. It is a hurdle, but I don't
think it's a brick wall, but it becomes a brick

(02:05:38):
wall if you know, there's like this massive economic downturn, right,
if a whole bunch of other stuff are going, it's
sort of it is a factor.

Speaker 2 (02:05:47):
Not the factor.

Speaker 1 (02:05:50):
On this front. So I think that that. I mean,
if we were seeing women struggle to win governorship in
these swing states, I'd be I would be more persuaded.
But you know, we look look at the state of Michigan.

(02:06:11):
It's elected, you know to two term women governors in
the last twenty years, uh in, Jennifer Grant Holme and
Gretchen Wetber, but they didn't support Kamala Harris.

Speaker 2 (02:06:23):
Was that, you know?

Speaker 1 (02:06:24):
So I think that that it. I think you can't
dismiss it as a factor, but I will. I am
still going to dismiss it.

Speaker 2 (02:06:35):
As the factor, if that's fair, all right.

Speaker 1 (02:06:38):
So I'm gonna leave that there because guess what. I'll
be back in twenty four hours with another episode of
the Check podcast until we upload again.

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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;}Full Episode - Both Parties Showing Cracks After Government Shutdown + How Democrats Can Win In Appalachia