June 16, 2025 • 43 mins
In this episode, Ryan and guest Armin Thomas analyze the challenges facing Democrats and Republicans ahead of the 2026 U.S. Senate elections. They discuss historical trends, demographic shifts, and increasing polarization, highlighting how Democrats struggle to maintain their coalition in changing states. The conversation explores the impact of candidate quality, ideological divides, and the nationalization of politics on both parties’ strategies and prospects, offering insights into the evolving dynamics of American electoral politics. It's a Numbers Game is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Monday & Thursday.
Check out Armin's Research HERE
E-Mail Your Thoughts & Questions to Ryan HERE
Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuck
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome back to a Numbers Game podcast with Ryan Gardeski,
and I'm your host. Happy Monday. I hope you all
had a wonderful weekend. Right now, in Washington, d C.
Republicans and Democrats are very busy actively recruiting candidates for
the twenty twenty six US Senate election. Democrats have to
defend two Senate seats in states that Trump won Georgia
and Michigan, as well as a handful of states that
(00:24):
we're closer than expected in places like New Hampshire, Minnesota,
New Mexico, Virginia, and New Jersey. Republicans, on the other hand,
have to only defend one incumbent in a blue state.
That's Susan Collins and Maine. The only other Republican even
running in a swing state is Tom Tillis North Carolina.
And remember that's the state that Trump won three times.
(00:46):
Every other state where Democrats have to try to compete
in is basically a long shot. Iowa, Florida, and Texas.
Democrats have a very slim road to the majority in
the Senate. And it's not just this year. See and
I want to go back in history for a second.
I want to show you how difficult it is for
Democrats to win majorities and large majorities. In twenty twenty two,
(01:09):
Republicans really screwed up and they fell a little short.
In twenty twenty four. They nominated bad candidates, They were
caught flat foot and an abortion, They were outspent and outgunned,
and voters in Arizona fell in love with the crazy
con artists named Carry Lake two too many times. In
twenty twenty two, Republicans lost Senate seats in five competitive races,
(01:30):
six if you count the special election in Georgia. Had
they won those races, it would have taken the Republican
up to fifty five Senate seats. Now, in twenty twenty four,
Republicans did do better. They happened to win four seats,
but they came within just a few points of picking
up four more in states that Trump won Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin,
(01:51):
and Michigan. Had they won those four plus the five
that they should have won in twenty twenty two in
a competitive year for Republicans, it would have given them
a filler buster proof majority, something that they have not had.
Republicans have not had a fillbustproof majority since nineteen twenty one.
Those are all states that are within reach. Those are
(02:13):
all states that Republicans compete in for the presidency. These
aren't long shot elections that they'd have to win, not
like when they won the Senate seat in Massachusetts in
two thousand and nine, for the Senate states in Illinois
or Colorado in twenty ten. Now it's been one hundred
and four years since Republicans won a Senate supermajority. That's
not the case for Democrats. Since nineteen twenty one, Democrats
(02:35):
have held the super majority in the Senate fifteen times
or thirty years. Thirty years out of one hundred a
third has not only had a Democrat majority, but a
Democrat super majority. The Senate has essentially always been a
Democrat institution because they were able to win with a
grand coalition of Democrats. They had Prairie populace, they had
Southern Conservatives, they had New Deal Democrats in the north West, East,
(02:58):
Progressives in the Northwest and in the Midwest. But as
Democrats and Republicans, to be fair, both became more ideologically rigid,
they were electoral map in the Senate and the White
House changed, and for Democrats it became smaller and smaller.
In twenty twenty four, it was the very first time
in one hundred years that Republicans controlled every Senate seat
(03:19):
in a state where the Republican presidential nominee won by
double digits. That's twenty four states, or in forty eight
Senate seats. The other five that Republicans hold four in
swing seats seats, one in Pennsylvania, one in Wisconsin, two
in North Carolina, and won the blue state of Maine
with Susan Collins. But as long as Republicans hold on
to every state that Trump won by double digits, it
(03:40):
means that their basement number is forty eight. For a
comparison to Democrats, if they just hold on to every
Senate seat in the state that Harris won by double digits,
they only have twenty six. That's why Democrats are demanding
they massively reformed the Senate because they can no longer
use the same winning playbook they've had for the last century.
(04:01):
Think about it, not many Democrats were very upset that
North and South Dakota had as many senators as California
when most of those senators from the Dakotas were Democrats,
which Democrats by the way controlled most of the US
Senate seats in the Dakotas from nineteen eighty eight to
twenty ten. Democrats are also facing a similar structure to
the electoral College in twenty thirty two going into the
(04:24):
future looking forward. Even before COVID Democrats were seeing exodus
from blue states, but the pandemic exacerbated those trends substantially.
The Brennan Center, which is a fairly left wing organizational,
oother nonpartisan, but they have a left leaning to them.
They estimate that states that voted for Kamala Harris are
set to lose ten electoral College seats, while Republicans states
(04:47):
regarded states they voted for Trump are set to gain ten.
Most of those are concentrated in the South. States like
Texas and Florida are going to gain four each, while
California and New York are going to lose six, four
from California and two from now New York. Think of this.
Had Harris won all the Blue Wall states Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,
(05:08):
she did when Minnesota, don't know why I said that,
but Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, she would have won the presidency.
Two hundred and seventy to two hundred and sixty eight
electoral College votes. Now take away the twelve electoral college votes,
ten that the Democrat states are losing, and the two
that the Midwestern states that are swing states Pennsylvania and
Wisconsin are said to lose, and even had she won
(05:29):
the Blue Wall, she would have still lost the presidency
two hundred and eighty seats to electoral College votes to
two hundred and fifty eight. That's with the entire Blue
Wall enacted. That means for the next decade, for the
twenty thirty decade, Democrats have to recapture the White House
by basically winning the entire Blue Wall plus Georgia and Nevada.
(05:50):
It becomes very very difficult. Maybe that will happen, but
it becomes much harder where essentially they can't rest in
their laurels institutional support among these historic blue states. And
it means unless the sun belts switches in any capacity,
which it's moving to the right. With the exception of Georgia,
(06:11):
everything kind of relies on Georgia. For Democrats, there's really
no path to the White House, and there's certainly no
path to a super majority in the Senate. The coalition
that every Democrat has basically count on since FDR all
the way to Obama and even Joe Biden to a
certain extent, is gone. And that speaks volumes of trouble
(06:33):
for the Democratic Party, especially now as they recruit to
claw back any chance that they have at winning the
US Senate going forward. We have a writer on the
show coming up to who talks about and writes about
how the Democrats are trying to claw back their majority
in the US Senate if they have a chance, and
what would it take for Republicans to finally break through
and win a supermajority for the first time in over
(06:53):
a century. Coming up next with me this week is
Arman Thomas. He is a writer for a great website
called split ticket dot org, a split hyphen ticket dot
org great website on electoral politics. They had a super
interesting article called the real reason Democrats can't compete for
sixty Senate seats. Arman, thank you for being here.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Thank you, Ryan, it's a pleasure to be on the
podcast with you.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
So armand now you look like a fairly young guy.
When I was growing up, Democrats would regularly have seats
in the Dakota's West Virginia. Obviously there were prairie, populous
and Midwestern Democrats that would would be winning in states
that went for Ronald Reagan and for George W. Bush.
That doesn't happen with the exception of Susan Collins, right.
(07:38):
Tell us why Democrats can't compete in places they used
to anymore.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Well, I think there's a couple of factors. The first
is simply the ideological positioning of the Democratic Party. Ever
since the you know, the decline of the New Deal
Coalition in you know, the sixty seventies, eighties, you know,
the Democrats have been searching for a solution for who
(08:05):
is someone who can bring together a winning you know,
array of voters. And in the eighties Democrats got the
clocks cleaned, you know, every election that happened. And in
the nineteen nineties, you know, Bill Clinton and the Democratic
Legislative Council made the decision to kind of triangulate and
moderate and focus on winning you know, socially liberal suburbanites
(08:28):
and you know, educated white people, and you know, you
still saw enough of that more conservative rural, you know,
Southern Dixie heritage that we used to be in the
Democratic Party. Because Bill Clinton was a Southerner from Hope, Arkansas. However,
all of this really started to take its current shape
(08:49):
in two thousand when Al Gore was the nominee. Right,
he was a Senator from Tennessee. He was Clinton's vice president,
but he very much, you know, cast off a lot
of his old southern heritage and his record that he
ran on in favor of you know, big government, you know,
Northeastern style liberalism. And that's kind of the where the
(09:10):
party has been for the past twenty odd years.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Right.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
And you know, West Virginia, which is a stal ward
of the Democratic Party, voted against Gore in two thousand.
You know, if he didn't you know, take policies that
alienated his voters, he would have been president. And you know,
every at every juncture the party has had an opportunity
to make decisions about what ideology it wants. The side
(09:36):
that has won out has always been the social cultural liberalism,
you know, based in race and identity.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Right.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Obama beat Hillary in two thousand and eight, Hillary beat
Bernie in twentyeen, Right. And so what that leads to
is just, you know, this is where the party is,
and people who have voted Democratic, their whole lives. They
were Democrats because it stood for one thing, right, whether
that's faith, a family and a country, or the unions.
(10:08):
It doesn't stand for that anymore, and you know, so
this kind of sorting is bound to happen. I think
related to it is also the rise of you know,
people just being more politically aware of what, you know,
issues are actually going on. Right in the eighties, it
was only really in the nineties that the top radio
and cable news and Fox and all of this, you know,
(10:30):
all of these things to keep people politically plugged in
really became a huge thing, right, And in the nineteen
nineties you saw the first wave of you know, working
class you know, for lack of a better word, non
cosmopolitan Democrats fall right in the South, in the interior West.
You fast forward to twenty ten, you see a lot
more of that happen. And now especially you're seeing a
(10:52):
lot of those same shifts happen with non white Americans too,
And so I think it's just a combination of people
becoming more aware of what the parties actually stand for,
right because in the old days you could vote liberally,
but because there was a lack you know, there was
an information gap. People didn't know about it as much
because people don't pay as much attention.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Well, there also used to be more. There used to
be Democrats that really fit the uniform of their state, right, Yeah,
and in a lot of ways that is rare now.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Yeah, And so that's that's what I'm going to get
into as well, which is that, you know, we talked
about the choices that the parties have made ideologically, We've
talked about the fact that people are just more aware
of what's going on. Right. You know, people like Ken
Conrad and Byron Dorgan, who were senators from the Dakotas,
we're not that conservative, you know, relative that, I mean,
(11:48):
they were more conservative, but not that conservative. It was
still well to the left of the Median Republican on
a lot of issues. It just matters now that a
lot of people realized, Hey, I can actually see that
this Democrat, even if he's a North Dakota Democrat, is
liberal and I don't like that liberalism. And then the
(12:08):
third thing is right with respect to education. Right up
until about twenty twenty, the divide was very much urban
versus rural, white versus non white. Right, that was a
pretty useful heuristic for understanding where the parties were going.
And it's why up until about twenty twenty, Democrats had
a lot of hope for places like Florida, for places
(12:31):
like Texas, you know, for you know, even the idea
that you know, the rising tide of diversity was going
to lift them up and you know, kind of cause
Republicans to go extinct in their current.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
There was the Obama coalition.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Right and well, now again because now what we're seeing
is the choices that Democrats have made coalitionally have been
to prioritize college educated white Democrats you know, over everyone else. Right,
that that's the big cleavage and democratic politics today. You're
seeing it a play out in the New York mayoral race
as well. You know, that's why you're seeing the coalitions
(13:09):
that you saw now. Right, If you went back to
twenty twelve or twenty sixteen and told someone, hey, you know,
Texas is going to go, you know, shift, you know,
eight points to the right while Ohio basically barely budgets
relative to the national environment, you'd be told, you know,
everyone would.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Think you're crazy.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Now, when you talk about Democrats who fit their state,
that was a lot more common, right, and I think
that has to do with, you know, primarily point two
of what I talked about with respect to the awareness piece.
Right people, activists, the groups, as you know everybody on
Twitter likes to talk about, they have a lot more
(13:50):
influenced in terms of shaping a national discourse. Right, A
Democrat from Alabama in the nineteen eighties or the ninety
nineties could realistically get away with, you know, being pro life,
pro gun, you know, anti abortion, anti gay, I mean,
(14:11):
transgender stuff was not really a thing back then as
a political issue. But you would assume that if it
was Alabama, Democrats that could win statewide would not support
that in any meaningful way. However, it's a combination of
the fact that the Democratic Party's organizing muscle is often
(14:32):
rented out to ideologically captured groups that do it, and
so they have an incentive in making sure that what
they want is featured.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Right, Yeah, they're not Harman. Can I can I ask
you one thing about that is you write you guys
write this on split ticket dot org. Polarization has caused
the ban of plausible outcomes to shrink for any given race.
Fourteen of the fifteen elections with candidates effects of twenty
plus points. Those are people who outran their party. Tw
points happened in twenty sixteen and twenty eighteen, and the
(15:03):
remaining one happened in twenty twenty. Since then, no election
is seen a candidate quality yield a twenty point electoral effect.
And basically, what you guys say is that candidate quality,
a candidate who really matched their state really didn't matter
where you could outrun the presidential candidate by twenty points.
You guys were in twenty sixteen that there were fifty
(15:26):
nine candidates. I'm guessing this is house on cent fifty
nine candidates that outran their They outran their party's presidentially
by fifty nine, fifty or fifty nine by ten points.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Not the presidential lean, but the expected result because oh, sorry,
expect the result. Placement score accounts for down ballot lag.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Okay, my missing fifty nine out round expected results by
ten points, twenty four by fifteen points, and eight by
twenty points. By twenty twenty four, that number had shrunk
from fifty nine to thirteen from for ten points above
twenty four to three by fifteen points, and eight to
zero for twenty points. Does counter quality really matter at all, so, I.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Think it absolutely does. I think there's two reasons why
this decline has happened. The first is just the nationalization
of everything, right in the age of the Internet, in
the age of social media, right to more extent, you know,
to a greater extent for the Democrats, but even for
Republicans too as well. You can't really run as independent
(16:28):
of a campaign anymore because everybody has the Internet. You know,
if you're a Democrat running with a D next to
your name and you're trying to flip a seat in
you know, I don't know Wyoming you're gonna have, You're
gonna still be tired with the same brush as the
insurrection rioters in Los Angeles right now. You know, I
(16:48):
don't even know if the Democrats or not, but everyone
is associating them with the Democratic Party, right, And the
same is true for Republicans, right because look at someone
like Larry Hogan, objectively a very very qualified public servant
who's won elections in Maryland before, but people associate him
(17:09):
with Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz and other Republicans, and
the median voter in Maryland has died in the world,
liberal Democrat and even if they liked his low tax policy,
they're just not going to vote for someone who will
vote for Republicans.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
He did very well, I mean he outperformed substantially, so, right.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
He still was a great candidate. The problem is if
he ran in two thousand, he probably would have won
the election because polarization was just not as vague as so.
That's the first thing, right, It is just people are
more aware of what ideology actually means, and they're much
more able to connect that to whether or not that
(17:48):
lines up or goes against their own values. That's the first.
The second is that because of the incentive structure for
the parties and who's going to fund them, the types
of people who would be able to generate those kinds
of overperformances are less likely to actually be drawn to run. Right,
I'll start with the Republicans. Right, If you look in
(18:08):
twenty sixteen on the massive overperformance side, right, it was
you know John Katko, Tom Price, you know Bob Dold. Right,
these are all very moderate Republicans whose whole shtick was,
you know, I am a Republican, but I am you know, independent,
and I have my own brand which is just you know,
(18:29):
I am not all about doing whatever Donald Trump wants, right,
you like it or not. That's what the GOP is
is whatever Donald Trump wants. This is what everyone is
going to support. Right. The only Republican today who really
still has that kind of brand around is Susan Collins.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Right, what about Thomas masseying?
Speaker 2 (18:49):
I mean, I can check, so Thomas Massey is independent
from Trump, but from the other direction.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Which yeah, is so much more right wing. Yeah, okay, yeah, no,
I agree. Susan Collins does have the brand of being
at Susan she marches the beat of her own drum,
and I think that she is unique. I think Cinema
would have been there if she could have held on,
but she couldn't.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Yeah, right, And you see it more with Democrats, just
because the nature of the way the electoral map, with
the Senate bias and all is is that Democrats have
to find more right wing people relative to the party
who run to be competitive. But still, just because of
(19:33):
how ideologically polarized everything is gone, you wouldn't be able
to get pro oil, pro gun, anti abortion, anti gay,
anti trans Democrats, you know, elected, right. I don't know
if you remember there was a guy called Charles Graham
from North Carolina. He was a Lumbee, Indian state representative
(19:55):
from North Carolina. He was a Democrat, and the Lumbies
are conservative leaning group of voters, and historically they've been very,
very Democratic, but now because of Trump, they've gone towards
the Republicans. And Graham was their state representative for a
long time. And when he was in the House, in
the state House, when they were doing all of the
(20:16):
bathroom bill stuff, I think he was one of two
Democrats to vote for that anti transgender bill. Naturally, as
you would expect, you know, when you're trying to get
national donor money, he had to repudiate a lot of
those votes that he took which were representing, you know,
the authentic beliefs of his community. And so that just
(20:37):
goes to show you that, you know, there are some
things that no matter where it is, the Democratic Party,
I mean, both parties have things that you that they
just will not compromise on. Yeah, the Republicans it's fealty
to Donald Trump and for Democrats it's you.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Know, children is I'm just kidding about that, Yeah, what
you said, But the main thing transing children.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
But the reason for being in the Democratic Party is
that Democrats view themselves as the party that will expand
civil rights right right, since nineteen sixty four and all
that when they started to lose the white vote. That's
kind of been the whole thing is we're going to
expand the moral arc of the universe bends towards right.
You taught when you see this debate now, right, whenever
(21:28):
there's people who say we need to moderate on some
social and cultural issues, the go to response is, who
do you want to throw under the bus? Right, because
the idea that you can make a strategic retreat on
anything is viewed as retreating from civil rights.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
That's a great point. That's a greeting on.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Civil rights is anathema to you know, the religion of politics.
That is how Democrats view everything.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
That's very well put. And I actually want to go
up one little history lesson before that. There was a
guy named Bob Connelly and he ran the the US
and in South Carolina against Lindsey Graham in two thousand
and eight. South Carolina was not as deep a red
state in two thousand and eight as it is today,
but Bob Connelly was a conservative Southern Democrat more right
wing than he was more right wing than Lindsey Graham,
(22:14):
and the Democratic Party of South Carolina endorsed Lindsey Graham
for reelection over the conservative Democrat. But I want to
go into the article back for one second. You mentioned
something that was really interesting. Democrats since twenty sixteen have
done a better job with quality flips. They've won more
quality flips than Republicans have. What is it about Republicans where?
(22:38):
And if you look at a map right of super
Republican states, states that Trump won by ten points are greater.
There are twenty four states. They all have two Republican senators.
For the first time in one hundred years that every
state that elected the Republican nominee for president by double
dig just has two Republican senators. That's forty eight. There's
only fifty three Republicans. So in all the swing states,
(22:58):
which there are a number, they've only elected five. Why
are Republicans and two come from North Carolina, which is
vote a regularly Republican for a long time? Now it
why do Republicans have such a hard time winning senates?
Getting the Senate seats in Nevada or Michigan or New
Hampshire or all these other places that are purple states,
(23:22):
and Democrats almost can typically rely on that.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Well, I mean, I think it comes down to a
few things. The first is incumbency, right, So a lot
of there's just a lot of Democratic incumbents, and while
candidate quality is not as much as it used to be,
it's still something. Right. So it might not get a
Democrat like John Tesla to win a state that Trump
won by sixteen points, but a state like Pennsylvania Wisconsin
(23:51):
that Trump won by two you know, if you have
an incumbent that's well like, Yeah, that is the difference
between you know, winning and low for a Democrats. That's
the first. The second is that well, I mean, you know,
Lacia has said this a little bit in stronger terms
than me, but frankly, a lot of Republican candidates come
(24:12):
across as crazy people. If you look at the war scores,
voters are practically begging what is war explans the reason
wit above replacements?
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Okay, Right, voters are.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Practically begging for Republicans to nominate people that demonstrate some
amount of independence and likeability. Right. When they do, it's
basically impossible for them to lose. Right, If you look
at John Katco in twenty.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
John Kaco is a congressman from New York by the way.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
From the Syracuse area. In twenty sixteen, he did twenty
two points better than the average Republican would have been
expected to and Democrats tried for years to beat him
and they never did.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Right.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
It's it's a similar effect with Susan Collins right on
paid it's a very blue district, right, the district state right,
and the median voter is a Democrat. But if they
like you for reasons that go beyond ideology, because at
that point you're voting against what you believe values twise,
you're saying, I think this is a good person, I'm
going to vote for them. It's very difficult. It's very
(25:19):
difficult to find someone who can break that permission structure, right,
And it's why someone like Larry Hogan did really, really,
really well. Like if you go down the list of
you know, right, Republican overperformances for war, right, there's plenty
of Republicans who are like, you know, just you know,
bog standard. I support Trump, but I'm going to be
(25:42):
kind of quiet about it. Republicans, there are plenty of
those who do well. But you would be very very
hard pressed to talk about somebody like Matt Gates or
Marjorie Taylor Green. But you know, the people that a
lot of people you know, identify as avatars of the
Republican movement who are going to get more votes because
of their you know, for lack of a better word,
(26:03):
slavish devotion to Donald Trump. And these are the types
of people that increasingly get selected for in Republican primaries.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
What about so name for a name for people, some
Democrats and some Republicans who besides Susan Collins, who are
just extraordinarily likable to the point that they can vastly
outperform their district. Someone who comes, in my mind is
like Brian Fitzpatrick, who represents Bucks County, Pennsylvania, easily overperforms
(26:32):
Frump by fifteen points in every election.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Yeah, so Fitzpatrick is a good example because Fitzpatrick is
not even particularly moderate, right.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Like, he's pretty liberal from my standards, He's very liberal.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
But okay, yeah, at the very least he's not Susan
Collins like he represents that Trump one district. Now, at
least on policy he votes mostly the same way. And
even if he hashes out some moderate versus conservative policy
differences in committee. Right, he certainly no, he's certainly know
Larry Hogan at least I write that way. And just
(27:08):
because of the fact that his whole brand, he's had
a brand in the area, which is that, you know,
I represent a historically blue leading district. I'm not gonna
just come out loud and say I support Donald Trump
on everything, you know, and he's been able to do
that in a way that's not off putting and not ideolgical.
(27:28):
That makes things very easy for you know, Democrats, especially
not you know, died in the wool on Twitter, blue
Sky Democrats right to say, oh yeah, like I'm going
to vote for Biden, but you know, I'm an independent guy.
This Fitzpatrick dude seems like he's got some smart ideas.
I'll send him back to DC. Right, So Fitzpatrick is
(27:48):
another person like that. Let's see, I actually have the
database right here, we can look.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Okay, so name like, name the top three Republicans and
top three Democrats Susan Collins and Brian Fitzpatrick.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Aside, so from the twenty twenty four cycles, let's actually
look at this because John Hoven won insanely large margins.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
He's the Senator from North Dako. Former governor then turned
senator from North Dakota.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Ilhan Omar also is terrible as candidate. For some reason,
it's unclear.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
She underperforms. Elizabeth Warren is a terrible candidate. She under
performs if they were not. You know, the funny thing is,
and this is the frustrating thing for Republicans while you
look it up. Republicans have these deep red states like Wyoming,
North Dakota where they elect these very moderate middle of
the Republicans, and then Democrats will have these blue, deep
(28:37):
blue states where they will have foaming at the mouth
progressives and will run our most right wing candidate in
swing states and lose, and they'll run moderates in swing
states and win. And that's always been the frustrational Republican
Republicans is why aren't conservatives actually representing Republicans super conservative districts?
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Well, it's fair, Okay, So I got your answer here. Okay,
So four leaving a side, Larry Hogan and ilhan Omar
and Prime Ila Japaul and all the other You're in
a really blue district, but you're you know, you're a communist,
so you're gonna underperform by like twenty points, right. Okay,
So Michael Bombgardner from Washington, Right, you know.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Her name on the on the tip of everyone's mouth,
Michael Bombard.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
I don't know much about him, but I couldn't.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
I wouldn't knowhim if they hit him in the car.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
I don't know much about him, but I remember when
he won. He was very much seen as right wing,
but not you know, like a die hard far right
pariety alg right. He did what was it, like, nine
points better than average, Brian Fitzpatrick nine points better than average? Right?
If you look at Mike Turner nine points better than average.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
He's from Ohio.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Yeah, and Mike Turner is someone who's definitely like known
for being a little bit more moderate than the Median Republic.
You know, Jamie Herrera Butler is well back when she
was in Congress Washington moderate. Dan Newhouse not a moderate.
He just decided to impeach Trump and.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
He's he's You and I have very different terms the
word moderate.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
But at the very least Dan Newhouse is what would
have been before the Trump era. He would have been
considered a.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Concert typical Republican yeah what. Okay, So who are some
Democrats who very well overperform expectations.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Okay, well let's go through this so Democrats okay, yeah,
this list? I okay, So Joe Manchin obviously obviously, yeah right, okay,
Doug Jones, Well that's because he ran against Roy Moore. Yeah,
so Colin Peterson even when he lost in twenty twenty.
There's the sugar beet farmer from Minnesota.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Then let's see in terms of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Yeah, I'm talking about the last election.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Oh yeah, Dan Osborne, right, not really a Democrat.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Oh he's in Nebraska. He ran as an independent with
the Democrats support in Nebraska.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Okay, yeah, so not really a Democrat, but everybody got
the message that he's not a Republican, he's anti immigration,
he's not exactly a woke guy, because he's basically told
the Nebraska Democratic Party that, you know, to f off right,
you know, so that that that was the highest one
for them. Then if we look here ed Case and Hawaii,
(31:25):
who aggressive really disliked. One because he's a white man
in a majority Asian district. That does not go over
well with them, but two because he's very much a
blue dog right, very he's a very old school blue
dog Democrat.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
He voted for I think the Lake and Riley Act
and other stuff. He does have some surprising votes at case.
I think he would have for that one. But he
votes for some legislation.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
He's a very moderate person relative to the area. He represents.
Brian Shatz in Hawaii, but that was twenty two.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Let's see, he's a Senator for Hawaii.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Okay, So yeah, Jill Takuda from Hawaii as well. I
don't know what's in the water in Hawaii.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
I don't. Yeah, I couldn't they Maybe it's the heat.
I don't know. So that's in. That's all very interesting stuff.
So Hawaii, you liked a lot of people that were
more moderate than than the party than they would have
represent otherwise. And for Republicans it seems like it's I mean,
Hawaii is a very blue state, although it's moved to
the right substantially.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
But to be fair, there's some more the Hawaii is
like four people, but like Steven Lynch is here right in. Yeah,
the old school Irish white guy Democrat that you know,
the progressive wing in Boston has been trying to get
rid of for years. Let's see Cleo Fields, right, you
know establishment.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
I don't even know who she is. Who is she?
He is? He is?
Speaker 2 (32:51):
He was in Congress in one of those majority black
districts in Louisiana. You know they redrew so he came
back to run. He's very much, you know, a main stream,
middle of the road, you know, black candidate with you know,
established in the area. John tested ten points better than
average this this cycle, right, Angus King is an independence,
(33:12):
so that one doesn't. It's kind of weird. Okay, Yeah,
Mary Peltol she lost, but she was nine points better
than average.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
She represented Alaska, the whole state of Alaska and the
House representatives. And wait one more, one more for the road.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Are we talking? Incumbents are just people in general?
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Just people in general?
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Oh well, then Lauren Bobert, Scott Perry, and Marjorie Taylor Greens.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
Those are all people who didn't terrible. I mean, Lauren
Bobert almost lost in twenty teen. Scott Perry, I can
I tell you. I'll tell you something really interesting. I
never said this on my podcast. I'll give you guys
a little scoop. I was in a meeting with some
NRCC and RNC people. This is a few months ago,
and there's this one congressman, I forget who it is.
In Pennsylvania. He represents like an R plus forty C,
(33:54):
like a super Republican seat, and he's allegedly considering running
for governor, so he would have to vacate the seat.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
What Dan Music?
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Yes, Dan Music is considering leaving the seat to go
run for governor.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
And I said to Dan, RCC and the RNC, ask
Perry to switch districts, ask him to run another southern
state where he won't be able to lose.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Does he live there?
Speaker 1 (34:20):
Does anyone live anywhere in Congress? They all live in Washington.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Okay, see, I would say that, but remember the last
time Republicans tried running someone in Pennsylvania who didn't live
in the place.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
He lives in the state of Pennsylvania. It's the House
of Representatives. It's not he doesn't, he's he lives in Pennsylvania. Anyway.
I pressed very heavily. Lauren Bobert moved across the state
of Colorado run for reelection. I pressed very heavily.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Like eight points worse than she should have.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
But she did. But she won because she wouldn't have won,
probably in her old district. But I insisted, like, hey,
do that and have him run in a seat that
he can't lose. I mean, any glass of water with
an R behind their name is going to win. And
hit that kind of a seat in the User seat
and the Perry seat. It's very like it's Harrisburg area.
It's getting bluer and bluer and bluer. And I said,
you know, get Scott Perry to switch seats. And he apparently.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Perry was not Scott Perry. He would not have any
problem winning it. You could put a replacement Republican and
they'd probably.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Right, but they probably would win, right, all right, But
Scott Perry's took up anyway. The point is I said
this to them. Someone relayed the message to Perry that
this was an idea, and Perry said, f off, I've
always won the seat and I always will. I think
he won by half a point last time, very very close.
We'll see. So anyway, okay, Arman, you've been a fantastic guest.
(35:41):
We have to get going. Where can you read your
stuff and read more about split ticket?
Speaker 2 (35:45):
So obviously you know we're on Twitter. I think it's
at split Ticket Underscore. Our website is split dashticket dot org.
And you know we have articles that come out in
the Washington Post. You know, we have stuff in the
New York Times, you know, so you know when.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
You're slumming it with me today. So it's really exactly no.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
I love talking honestly.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
All right, man, this has been so great. Everyone check
out split ticket for more stuff. Thank you so much
for coming on my podcast.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Of course, hope to be back soon.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
You're listening to It's a Numbers Game with Ryan Grodowsky,
We'll be right back all right now for the ask
Me Anything segment of the show. I love this segment.
I love getting questions from you guys. Email me if
you have a question for me to answer. Ryan at
Numbers Game Podcast dot com. That's Ryan at Numbers Plural
Numbers Game Podcast dot com. Okay, this one comes from Mike. Ryan,
(36:40):
I have a suggestion for a future podcast. One of
the most interesting things you have mentioned on your past
podcast is you're feeling that Elon was not in doged
to save money, but alternative motives. Playing off of this,
why not do a podcast on Doge's successes. The Real
Numbers it's future and who will lead it going forward?
For instance, what was the real deal with the VEC leaving?
What were Elon's real motives? I don't want to get
(37:03):
you banned from X. That's very nice that you, Mike.
And what about all the high level people Elon Burdon's
a Doge with big balls, continue to work for the government.
How can we get DOGE or the Doge principles integrated
in our government process permanently. Thank you, Mike for that
wonderful question. I don't know if it warrants an entire
(37:25):
show episode. So here's the thing with the numbers. The
problem with trying to figure out the numbers of how
much DOGE has saved is a lot of it is
estimates that Elon has come out with with very little
hard numbers attached to it. So he has said he
saved on one hundred and fifty billion dollars. Other estimates
(37:48):
have it to thirty nine billion dollars, and they're already
doing some other rehiring. So I don't, I can't. It's
hard for me to put an exact figure on what
they actually saved. As far as you know, pen to paper.
Let's look at the books and really see a deep
dive into you know, what the actual costs were. I
(38:09):
think the problem with DOGE has always been people are
looking for easy, painless solutions to very complex and sometimes
painful problems. And I was on the Megan McCain show
a couple of maybe a week ago, and someone came
on and his nonprofit was being cut and funding and
his wife worked for a head start, and YadA, YadA, YadA,
(38:29):
and youep was saying, these are free services they send of,
these are tax payer funded services, and should they receive
some cuts. Probably if we're concerned with our budget deficit
and our debt, as we should be, because you go
back to two thousand when I was a kid and
we had a balanced budget. They were saying we're going
to pay down the entire debt by twenty twelve. That's
(38:49):
what they said in two thousand. That's inconceivable now inconceivable.
But if we're going to have a hard conversation, which
we'll have to involve Denmark as well, because you can't
get through this with just a one party vote, and
you sit there and say, hey, how do we balance
the budget and reduce the deficit ultimately eliminate the deficit
(39:11):
over a ten year period. That will involve Medicare, Medicaid,
social Security, and the military and tax increases. Like you're
going to have to go all in on everything. Everyone
will have to hold a hand together and say, I'll
give you this if you give me that. What's something
you're willing to give in too. And maybe it won't
(39:31):
start with a ten trillion dollar cut. Maybe it starts
with a five hundred billion dollar cut. Maybe it starts
with just saving Social Security, which is really not that
hard to do. To reform Social Security, it's a fairly easy,
simple plan. Medicaid and medicare get very very difficult. The
military is very difficult. Servicing the debt is very difficult.
It's hard to work these other parts of the budget out.
(39:55):
But republic I mean, listen, Donald Trump put on and
offer a couple of times closed the carry just loophole.
Increase taxes for people who make five million dollars a year.
That's probably very and I know it's not probably that
is politically popular. Saving social Security, if they frame it
in a certain way that's bipartisan, would be probably very popular.
(40:16):
Looking into the waste for an abuse from the Pentagon
would be popular, although it's hard because a lot of
congressional districts have servicing the Pentagon as part of their economy.
But still that's very very important. Medicare and Medicaid gets
really really really tough, really really really difficult, and I
think that cutting illegal aliens off to Medicare and Medicaid
(40:39):
is a good start to saving the programs. But yeah,
I mean, you have to put everything on the table,
and we're still not willing to have that conversation. And
the only way you incorporate doge into the government is
you either change Congress or you get Congress to have
serious players, or you passing little individual bills which allow
(41:02):
a presidential linemind in Vedo, and you make a president
like Trump who is not running for reelection unless they
change the constitution, make him the bad guy because Congress
hates doing their job, and have him do line on
and vetoms to reduce spending one way or the other.
But they're not due. Congress is not taking this job seriously.
For Republicans, does was a branding issue and and that
(41:23):
was it. As far as vek Vivec is just annoying.
No one likes Veak, absolutely, no one can stand him.
He's a complete I already said Connor artist once in
the show. But allegedly con artists look up to his
look up. Look up his mother's connection to his healthcare
company and how and how she helped him make a
billion dollar business. You will be very surprised. Look out
(41:47):
how he moved his companies to Texas before announcing that
he was running for governor of Ohio. He's just oh,
he's horrible. But I mean, basically, lo and behold. What
I had heard, and this is alleged, was that the
vech was creating his own plans for doge out of Ohio.
He had his own Ohio team separate from the Elon team.
(42:10):
Elon basically caught wind of all this and was just
very dismissive over Elon over a vek and thought of
him as a joke, which is true he is, and
said to him something to the effective like, you can't
run for office. If you're using this to run for office,
then just run for office and just like get out
of our hair. And then he ran to the governor or.
(42:32):
His team ran to the governor asking for the appointment
in the US Senate, which he did not received, and
so he's now running for governor of the state. I
wish the state of Ohio best because he's very likely
the Republican nominee. Unfortunately, but that's what happened. I mean,
the Vek war on everybody that was around him, because
that's who Vivek Ramaswami is. He wears on everybody. So
(42:54):
I think that's all your questions. I hope it was.
If there's information on numbers, like a really bring you
once it comes out. But as of right now, everything
with Doge is very complicated because the numbers are a
lot of he said he said in the White House
right now. So when there's hard numbers, I'll give it
to you. And as far as wanting to reduce spending
and reduce the debt and balance the budget, it's all Congress, baby,
(43:18):
gotta get Congress get more serious about it. Anyway, thank
you again for listening to this Monday episode of my podcast.
Follow me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, wherever you
get your podcast. If you like this show and the
work that I'm doing, please give me a five star
review and give me a like or a follow. It
really means a lot to get the show out there.
I appreciate you all. I'll be back on Thursday. Thank you.
Welcome back to a Numbers Game podcast with Ryan Gardeski,
and I'm your host. Happy Monday. I hope you all
had a wonderful weekend. Right now, in Washington, d C.
Republicans and Democrats are very busy actively recruiting candidates for
the twenty twenty six US Senate election. Democrats have to
defend two Senate seats in states that Trump won Georgia
and Michigan, as well as a handful of states that
(00:24):
we're closer than expected in places like New Hampshire, Minnesota,
New Mexico, Virginia, and New Jersey. Republicans, on the other hand,
have to only defend one incumbent in a blue state.
That's Susan Collins and Maine. The only other Republican even
running in a swing state is Tom Tillis North Carolina.
And remember that's the state that Trump won three times.
(00:46):
Every other state where Democrats have to try to compete
in is basically a long shot. Iowa, Florida, and Texas.
Democrats have a very slim road to the majority in
the Senate. And it's not just this year. See and
I want to go back in history for a second.
I want to show you how difficult it is for
Democrats to win majorities and large majorities. In twenty twenty two,
(01:09):
Republicans really screwed up and they fell a little short.
In twenty twenty four. They nominated bad candidates, They were
caught flat foot and an abortion, They were outspent and outgunned,
and voters in Arizona fell in love with the crazy
con artists named Carry Lake two too many times. In
twenty twenty two, Republicans lost Senate seats in five competitive races,
(01:30):
six if you count the special election in Georgia. Had
they won those races, it would have taken the Republican
up to fifty five Senate seats. Now, in twenty twenty four,
Republicans did do better. They happened to win four seats,
but they came within just a few points of picking
up four more in states that Trump won Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin,
(01:51):
and Michigan. Had they won those four plus the five
that they should have won in twenty twenty two in
a competitive year for Republicans, it would have given them
a filler buster proof majority, something that they have not had.
Republicans have not had a fillbustproof majority since nineteen twenty one.
Those are all states that are within reach. Those are
(02:13):
all states that Republicans compete in for the presidency. These
aren't long shot elections that they'd have to win, not
like when they won the Senate seat in Massachusetts in
two thousand and nine, for the Senate states in Illinois
or Colorado in twenty ten. Now it's been one hundred
and four years since Republicans won a Senate supermajority. That's
not the case for Democrats. Since nineteen twenty one, Democrats
(02:35):
have held the super majority in the Senate fifteen times
or thirty years. Thirty years out of one hundred a
third has not only had a Democrat majority, but a
Democrat super majority. The Senate has essentially always been a
Democrat institution because they were able to win with a
grand coalition of Democrats. They had Prairie populace, they had
Southern Conservatives, they had New Deal Democrats in the north West, East,
(02:58):
Progressives in the Northwest and in the Midwest. But as
Democrats and Republicans, to be fair, both became more ideologically rigid,
they were electoral map in the Senate and the White
House changed, and for Democrats it became smaller and smaller.
In twenty twenty four, it was the very first time
in one hundred years that Republicans controlled every Senate seat
(03:19):
in a state where the Republican presidential nominee won by
double digits. That's twenty four states, or in forty eight
Senate seats. The other five that Republicans hold four in
swing seats seats, one in Pennsylvania, one in Wisconsin, two
in North Carolina, and won the blue state of Maine
with Susan Collins. But as long as Republicans hold on
to every state that Trump won by double digits, it
(03:40):
means that their basement number is forty eight. For a
comparison to Democrats, if they just hold on to every
Senate seat in the state that Harris won by double digits,
they only have twenty six. That's why Democrats are demanding
they massively reformed the Senate because they can no longer
use the same winning playbook they've had for the last century.
(04:01):
Think about it, not many Democrats were very upset that
North and South Dakota had as many senators as California
when most of those senators from the Dakotas were Democrats,
which Democrats by the way controlled most of the US
Senate seats in the Dakotas from nineteen eighty eight to
twenty ten. Democrats are also facing a similar structure to
the electoral College in twenty thirty two going into the
(04:24):
future looking forward. Even before COVID Democrats were seeing exodus
from blue states, but the pandemic exacerbated those trends substantially.
The Brennan Center, which is a fairly left wing organizational,
oother nonpartisan, but they have a left leaning to them.
They estimate that states that voted for Kamala Harris are
set to lose ten electoral College seats, while Republicans states
(04:47):
regarded states they voted for Trump are set to gain ten.
Most of those are concentrated in the South. States like
Texas and Florida are going to gain four each, while
California and New York are going to lose six, four
from California and two from now New York. Think of this.
Had Harris won all the Blue Wall states Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,
(05:08):
she did when Minnesota, don't know why I said that,
but Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, she would have won the presidency.
Two hundred and seventy to two hundred and sixty eight
electoral College votes. Now take away the twelve electoral college votes,
ten that the Democrat states are losing, and the two
that the Midwestern states that are swing states Pennsylvania and
Wisconsin are said to lose, and even had she won
(05:29):
the Blue Wall, she would have still lost the presidency
two hundred and eighty seats to electoral College votes to
two hundred and fifty eight. That's with the entire Blue
Wall enacted. That means for the next decade, for the
twenty thirty decade, Democrats have to recapture the White House
by basically winning the entire Blue Wall plus Georgia and Nevada.
(05:50):
It becomes very very difficult. Maybe that will happen, but
it becomes much harder where essentially they can't rest in
their laurels institutional support among these historic blue states. And
it means unless the sun belts switches in any capacity,
which it's moving to the right. With the exception of Georgia,
(06:11):
everything kind of relies on Georgia. For Democrats, there's really
no path to the White House, and there's certainly no
path to a super majority in the Senate. The coalition
that every Democrat has basically count on since FDR all
the way to Obama and even Joe Biden to a
certain extent, is gone. And that speaks volumes of trouble
(06:33):
for the Democratic Party, especially now as they recruit to
claw back any chance that they have at winning the
US Senate going forward. We have a writer on the
show coming up to who talks about and writes about
how the Democrats are trying to claw back their majority
in the US Senate if they have a chance, and
what would it take for Republicans to finally break through
and win a supermajority for the first time in over
(06:53):
a century. Coming up next with me this week is
Arman Thomas. He is a writer for a great website
called split ticket dot org, a split hyphen ticket dot
org great website on electoral politics. They had a super
interesting article called the real reason Democrats can't compete for
sixty Senate seats. Arman, thank you for being here.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Thank you, Ryan, it's a pleasure to be on the
podcast with you.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
So armand now you look like a fairly young guy.
When I was growing up, Democrats would regularly have seats
in the Dakota's West Virginia. Obviously there were prairie, populous
and Midwestern Democrats that would would be winning in states
that went for Ronald Reagan and for George W. Bush.
That doesn't happen with the exception of Susan Collins, right.
(07:38):
Tell us why Democrats can't compete in places they used
to anymore.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Well, I think there's a couple of factors. The first
is simply the ideological positioning of the Democratic Party. Ever
since the you know, the decline of the New Deal
Coalition in you know, the sixty seventies, eighties, you know,
the Democrats have been searching for a solution for who
(08:05):
is someone who can bring together a winning you know,
array of voters. And in the eighties Democrats got the
clocks cleaned, you know, every election that happened. And in
the nineteen nineties, you know, Bill Clinton and the Democratic
Legislative Council made the decision to kind of triangulate and
moderate and focus on winning you know, socially liberal suburbanites
(08:28):
and you know, educated white people, and you know, you
still saw enough of that more conservative rural, you know,
Southern Dixie heritage that we used to be in the
Democratic Party. Because Bill Clinton was a Southerner from Hope, Arkansas. However,
all of this really started to take its current shape
(08:49):
in two thousand when Al Gore was the nominee. Right,
he was a Senator from Tennessee. He was Clinton's vice president,
but he very much, you know, cast off a lot
of his old southern heritage and his record that he
ran on in favor of you know, big government, you know,
Northeastern style liberalism. And that's kind of the where the
(09:10):
party has been for the past twenty odd years.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Right.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
And you know, West Virginia, which is a stal ward
of the Democratic Party, voted against Gore in two thousand.
You know, if he didn't you know, take policies that
alienated his voters, he would have been president. And you know,
every at every juncture the party has had an opportunity
to make decisions about what ideology it wants. The side
(09:36):
that has won out has always been the social cultural liberalism,
you know, based in race and identity.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Right.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Obama beat Hillary in two thousand and eight, Hillary beat
Bernie in twentyeen, Right. And so what that leads to
is just, you know, this is where the party is,
and people who have voted Democratic, their whole lives. They
were Democrats because it stood for one thing, right, whether
that's faith, a family and a country, or the unions.
(10:08):
It doesn't stand for that anymore, and you know, so
this kind of sorting is bound to happen. I think
related to it is also the rise of you know,
people just being more politically aware of what, you know,
issues are actually going on. Right in the eighties, it
was only really in the nineties that the top radio
and cable news and Fox and all of this, you know,
(10:30):
all of these things to keep people politically plugged in
really became a huge thing, right, And in the nineteen
nineties you saw the first wave of you know, working
class you know, for lack of a better word, non
cosmopolitan Democrats fall right in the South, in the interior West.
You fast forward to twenty ten, you see a lot
more of that happen. And now especially you're seeing a
(10:52):
lot of those same shifts happen with non white Americans too,
And so I think it's just a combination of people
becoming more aware of what the parties actually stand for,
right because in the old days you could vote liberally,
but because there was a lack you know, there was
an information gap. People didn't know about it as much
because people don't pay as much attention.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Well, there also used to be more. There used to
be Democrats that really fit the uniform of their state, right, Yeah,
and in a lot of ways that is rare now.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Yeah, And so that's that's what I'm going to get
into as well, which is that, you know, we talked
about the choices that the parties have made ideologically, We've
talked about the fact that people are just more aware
of what's going on. Right. You know, people like Ken
Conrad and Byron Dorgan, who were senators from the Dakotas,
we're not that conservative, you know, relative that, I mean,
(11:48):
they were more conservative, but not that conservative. It was
still well to the left of the Median Republican on
a lot of issues. It just matters now that a
lot of people realized, Hey, I can actually see that
this Democrat, even if he's a North Dakota Democrat, is
liberal and I don't like that liberalism. And then the
(12:08):
third thing is right with respect to education. Right up
until about twenty twenty, the divide was very much urban
versus rural, white versus non white. Right, that was a
pretty useful heuristic for understanding where the parties were going.
And it's why up until about twenty twenty, Democrats had
a lot of hope for places like Florida, for places
(12:31):
like Texas, you know, for you know, even the idea
that you know, the rising tide of diversity was going
to lift them up and you know, kind of cause
Republicans to go extinct in their current.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
There was the Obama coalition.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Right and well, now again because now what we're seeing
is the choices that Democrats have made coalitionally have been
to prioritize college educated white Democrats you know, over everyone else. Right,
that that's the big cleavage and democratic politics today. You're
seeing it a play out in the New York mayoral race
as well. You know, that's why you're seeing the coalitions
(13:09):
that you saw now. Right, If you went back to
twenty twelve or twenty sixteen and told someone, hey, you know,
Texas is going to go, you know, shift, you know,
eight points to the right while Ohio basically barely budgets
relative to the national environment, you'd be told, you know,
everyone would.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Think you're crazy.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Now, when you talk about Democrats who fit their state,
that was a lot more common, right, and I think
that has to do with, you know, primarily point two
of what I talked about with respect to the awareness piece.
Right people, activists, the groups, as you know everybody on
Twitter likes to talk about, they have a lot more
(13:50):
influenced in terms of shaping a national discourse. Right, A
Democrat from Alabama in the nineteen eighties or the ninety
nineties could realistically get away with, you know, being pro life,
pro gun, you know, anti abortion, anti gay, I mean,
(14:11):
transgender stuff was not really a thing back then as
a political issue. But you would assume that if it
was Alabama, Democrats that could win statewide would not support
that in any meaningful way. However, it's a combination of
the fact that the Democratic Party's organizing muscle is often
(14:32):
rented out to ideologically captured groups that do it, and
so they have an incentive in making sure that what
they want is featured.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Right, Yeah, they're not Harman. Can I can I ask
you one thing about that is you write you guys
write this on split ticket dot org. Polarization has caused
the ban of plausible outcomes to shrink for any given race.
Fourteen of the fifteen elections with candidates effects of twenty
plus points. Those are people who outran their party. Tw
points happened in twenty sixteen and twenty eighteen, and the
(15:03):
remaining one happened in twenty twenty. Since then, no election
is seen a candidate quality yield a twenty point electoral effect.
And basically, what you guys say is that candidate quality,
a candidate who really matched their state really didn't matter
where you could outrun the presidential candidate by twenty points.
You guys were in twenty sixteen that there were fifty
(15:26):
nine candidates. I'm guessing this is house on cent fifty
nine candidates that outran their They outran their party's presidentially
by fifty nine, fifty or fifty nine by ten points.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Not the presidential lean, but the expected result because oh, sorry,
expect the result. Placement score accounts for down ballot lag.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Okay, my missing fifty nine out round expected results by
ten points, twenty four by fifteen points, and eight by
twenty points. By twenty twenty four, that number had shrunk
from fifty nine to thirteen from for ten points above
twenty four to three by fifteen points, and eight to
zero for twenty points. Does counter quality really matter at all, so, I.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Think it absolutely does. I think there's two reasons why
this decline has happened. The first is just the nationalization
of everything, right in the age of the Internet, in
the age of social media, right to more extent, you know,
to a greater extent for the Democrats, but even for
Republicans too as well. You can't really run as independent
(16:28):
of a campaign anymore because everybody has the Internet. You know,
if you're a Democrat running with a D next to
your name and you're trying to flip a seat in
you know, I don't know Wyoming you're gonna have, You're
gonna still be tired with the same brush as the
insurrection rioters in Los Angeles right now. You know, I
(16:48):
don't even know if the Democrats or not, but everyone
is associating them with the Democratic Party, right, And the
same is true for Republicans, right because look at someone
like Larry Hogan, objectively a very very qualified public servant
who's won elections in Maryland before, but people associate him
(17:09):
with Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz and other Republicans, and
the median voter in Maryland has died in the world,
liberal Democrat and even if they liked his low tax policy,
they're just not going to vote for someone who will
vote for Republicans.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
He did very well, I mean he outperformed substantially, so, right.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
He still was a great candidate. The problem is if
he ran in two thousand, he probably would have won
the election because polarization was just not as vague as so.
That's the first thing, right, It is just people are
more aware of what ideology actually means, and they're much
more able to connect that to whether or not that
(17:48):
lines up or goes against their own values. That's the first.
The second is that because of the incentive structure for
the parties and who's going to fund them, the types
of people who would be able to generate those kinds
of overperformances are less likely to actually be drawn to run. Right,
I'll start with the Republicans. Right, If you look in
(18:08):
twenty sixteen on the massive overperformance side, right, it was
you know John Katko, Tom Price, you know Bob Dold. Right,
these are all very moderate Republicans whose whole shtick was,
you know, I am a Republican, but I am you know, independent,
and I have my own brand which is just you know,
(18:29):
I am not all about doing whatever Donald Trump wants, right,
you like it or not. That's what the GOP is
is whatever Donald Trump wants. This is what everyone is
going to support. Right. The only Republican today who really
still has that kind of brand around is Susan Collins.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Right, what about Thomas masseying?
Speaker 2 (18:49):
I mean, I can check, so Thomas Massey is independent
from Trump, but from the other direction.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Which yeah, is so much more right wing. Yeah, okay, yeah, no,
I agree. Susan Collins does have the brand of being
at Susan she marches the beat of her own drum,
and I think that she is unique. I think Cinema
would have been there if she could have held on,
but she couldn't.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Yeah, right, And you see it more with Democrats, just
because the nature of the way the electoral map, with
the Senate bias and all is is that Democrats have
to find more right wing people relative to the party
who run to be competitive. But still, just because of
(19:33):
how ideologically polarized everything is gone, you wouldn't be able
to get pro oil, pro gun, anti abortion, anti gay,
anti trans Democrats, you know, elected, right. I don't know
if you remember there was a guy called Charles Graham
from North Carolina. He was a Lumbee, Indian state representative
(19:55):
from North Carolina. He was a Democrat, and the Lumbies
are conservative leaning group of voters, and historically they've been very,
very Democratic, but now because of Trump, they've gone towards
the Republicans. And Graham was their state representative for a
long time. And when he was in the House, in
the state House, when they were doing all of the
(20:16):
bathroom bill stuff, I think he was one of two
Democrats to vote for that anti transgender bill. Naturally, as
you would expect, you know, when you're trying to get
national donor money, he had to repudiate a lot of
those votes that he took which were representing, you know,
the authentic beliefs of his community. And so that just
(20:37):
goes to show you that, you know, there are some
things that no matter where it is, the Democratic Party,
I mean, both parties have things that you that they
just will not compromise on. Yeah, the Republicans it's fealty
to Donald Trump and for Democrats it's you.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Know, children is I'm just kidding about that, Yeah, what
you said, But the main thing transing children.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
But the reason for being in the Democratic Party is
that Democrats view themselves as the party that will expand
civil rights right right, since nineteen sixty four and all
that when they started to lose the white vote. That's
kind of been the whole thing is we're going to
expand the moral arc of the universe bends towards right.
You taught when you see this debate now, right, whenever
(21:28):
there's people who say we need to moderate on some
social and cultural issues, the go to response is, who
do you want to throw under the bus? Right, because
the idea that you can make a strategic retreat on
anything is viewed as retreating from civil rights.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
That's a great point. That's a greeting on.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Civil rights is anathema to you know, the religion of politics.
That is how Democrats view everything.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
That's very well put. And I actually want to go
up one little history lesson before that. There was a
guy named Bob Connelly and he ran the the US
and in South Carolina against Lindsey Graham in two thousand
and eight. South Carolina was not as deep a red
state in two thousand and eight as it is today,
but Bob Connelly was a conservative Southern Democrat more right
wing than he was more right wing than Lindsey Graham,
(22:14):
and the Democratic Party of South Carolina endorsed Lindsey Graham
for reelection over the conservative Democrat. But I want to
go into the article back for one second. You mentioned
something that was really interesting. Democrats since twenty sixteen have
done a better job with quality flips. They've won more
quality flips than Republicans have. What is it about Republicans where?
(22:38):
And if you look at a map right of super
Republican states, states that Trump won by ten points are greater.
There are twenty four states. They all have two Republican senators.
For the first time in one hundred years that every
state that elected the Republican nominee for president by double
dig just has two Republican senators. That's forty eight. There's
only fifty three Republicans. So in all the swing states,
(22:58):
which there are a number, they've only elected five. Why
are Republicans and two come from North Carolina, which is
vote a regularly Republican for a long time? Now it
why do Republicans have such a hard time winning senates?
Getting the Senate seats in Nevada or Michigan or New
Hampshire or all these other places that are purple states,
(23:22):
and Democrats almost can typically rely on that.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Well, I mean, I think it comes down to a
few things. The first is incumbency, right, So a lot
of there's just a lot of Democratic incumbents, and while
candidate quality is not as much as it used to be,
it's still something. Right. So it might not get a
Democrat like John Tesla to win a state that Trump
won by sixteen points, but a state like Pennsylvania Wisconsin
(23:51):
that Trump won by two you know, if you have
an incumbent that's well like, Yeah, that is the difference
between you know, winning and low for a Democrats. That's
the first. The second is that well, I mean, you know,
Lacia has said this a little bit in stronger terms
than me, but frankly, a lot of Republican candidates come
(24:12):
across as crazy people. If you look at the war scores,
voters are practically begging what is war explans the reason
wit above replacements?
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Okay, Right, voters are.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Practically begging for Republicans to nominate people that demonstrate some
amount of independence and likeability. Right. When they do, it's
basically impossible for them to lose. Right, If you look
at John Katco in twenty.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
John Kaco is a congressman from New York by the way.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
From the Syracuse area. In twenty sixteen, he did twenty
two points better than the average Republican would have been
expected to and Democrats tried for years to beat him
and they never did.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Right.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
It's it's a similar effect with Susan Collins right on
paid it's a very blue district, right, the district state right,
and the median voter is a Democrat. But if they
like you for reasons that go beyond ideology, because at
that point you're voting against what you believe values twise,
you're saying, I think this is a good person, I'm
going to vote for them. It's very difficult. It's very
(25:19):
difficult to find someone who can break that permission structure, right,
And it's why someone like Larry Hogan did really, really,
really well. Like if you go down the list of
you know, right, Republican overperformances for war, right, there's plenty
of Republicans who are like, you know, just you know,
bog standard. I support Trump, but I'm going to be
(25:42):
kind of quiet about it. Republicans, there are plenty of
those who do well. But you would be very very
hard pressed to talk about somebody like Matt Gates or
Marjorie Taylor Green. But you know, the people that a
lot of people you know, identify as avatars of the
Republican movement who are going to get more votes because
of their you know, for lack of a better word,
(26:03):
slavish devotion to Donald Trump. And these are the types
of people that increasingly get selected for in Republican primaries.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
What about so name for a name for people, some
Democrats and some Republicans who besides Susan Collins, who are
just extraordinarily likable to the point that they can vastly
outperform their district. Someone who comes, in my mind is
like Brian Fitzpatrick, who represents Bucks County, Pennsylvania, easily overperforms
(26:32):
Frump by fifteen points in every election.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Yeah, so Fitzpatrick is a good example because Fitzpatrick is
not even particularly moderate, right.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Like, he's pretty liberal from my standards, He's very liberal.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
But okay, yeah, at the very least he's not Susan
Collins like he represents that Trump one district. Now, at
least on policy he votes mostly the same way. And
even if he hashes out some moderate versus conservative policy
differences in committee. Right, he certainly no, he's certainly know
Larry Hogan at least I write that way. And just
(27:08):
because of the fact that his whole brand, he's had
a brand in the area, which is that, you know,
I represent a historically blue leading district. I'm not gonna
just come out loud and say I support Donald Trump
on everything, you know, and he's been able to do
that in a way that's not off putting and not ideolgical.
(27:28):
That makes things very easy for you know, Democrats, especially
not you know, died in the wool on Twitter, blue
Sky Democrats right to say, oh yeah, like I'm going
to vote for Biden, but you know, I'm an independent guy.
This Fitzpatrick dude seems like he's got some smart ideas.
I'll send him back to DC. Right, So Fitzpatrick is
(27:48):
another person like that. Let's see, I actually have the
database right here, we can look.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Okay, so name like, name the top three Republicans and
top three Democrats Susan Collins and Brian Fitzpatrick.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Aside, so from the twenty twenty four cycles, let's actually
look at this because John Hoven won insanely large margins.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
He's the Senator from North Dako. Former governor then turned
senator from North Dakota.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Ilhan Omar also is terrible as candidate. For some reason,
it's unclear.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
She underperforms. Elizabeth Warren is a terrible candidate. She under
performs if they were not. You know, the funny thing is,
and this is the frustrating thing for Republicans while you
look it up. Republicans have these deep red states like Wyoming,
North Dakota where they elect these very moderate middle of
the Republicans, and then Democrats will have these blue, deep
(28:37):
blue states where they will have foaming at the mouth
progressives and will run our most right wing candidate in
swing states and lose, and they'll run moderates in swing
states and win. And that's always been the frustrational Republican
Republicans is why aren't conservatives actually representing Republicans super conservative districts?
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Well, it's fair, Okay, So I got your answer here. Okay,
So four leaving a side, Larry Hogan and ilhan Omar
and Prime Ila Japaul and all the other You're in
a really blue district, but you're you know, you're a communist,
so you're gonna underperform by like twenty points, right. Okay,
So Michael Bombgardner from Washington, Right, you know.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Her name on the on the tip of everyone's mouth,
Michael Bombard.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
I don't know much about him, but I couldn't.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
I wouldn't knowhim if they hit him in the car.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
I don't know much about him, but I remember when
he won. He was very much seen as right wing,
but not you know, like a die hard far right
pariety alg right. He did what was it, like, nine
points better than average, Brian Fitzpatrick nine points better than average? Right?
If you look at Mike Turner nine points better than average.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
He's from Ohio.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Yeah, and Mike Turner is someone who's definitely like known
for being a little bit more moderate than the Median Republic.
You know, Jamie Herrera Butler is well back when she
was in Congress Washington moderate. Dan Newhouse not a moderate.
He just decided to impeach Trump and.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
He's he's You and I have very different terms the
word moderate.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
But at the very least Dan Newhouse is what would
have been before the Trump era. He would have been
considered a.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Concert typical Republican yeah what. Okay, So who are some
Democrats who very well overperform expectations.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Okay, well let's go through this so Democrats okay, yeah,
this list? I okay, So Joe Manchin obviously obviously, yeah right, okay,
Doug Jones, Well that's because he ran against Roy Moore. Yeah,
so Colin Peterson even when he lost in twenty twenty.
There's the sugar beet farmer from Minnesota.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Then let's see in terms of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Yeah, I'm talking about the last election.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Oh yeah, Dan Osborne, right, not really a Democrat.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Oh he's in Nebraska. He ran as an independent with
the Democrats support in Nebraska.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Okay, yeah, so not really a Democrat, but everybody got
the message that he's not a Republican, he's anti immigration,
he's not exactly a woke guy, because he's basically told
the Nebraska Democratic Party that, you know, to f off right,
you know, so that that that was the highest one
for them. Then if we look here ed Case and Hawaii,
(31:25):
who aggressive really disliked. One because he's a white man
in a majority Asian district. That does not go over
well with them, but two because he's very much a
blue dog right, very he's a very old school blue
dog Democrat.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
He voted for I think the Lake and Riley Act
and other stuff. He does have some surprising votes at case.
I think he would have for that one. But he
votes for some legislation.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
He's a very moderate person relative to the area. He represents.
Brian Shatz in Hawaii, but that was twenty two.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Let's see, he's a Senator for Hawaii.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Okay, So yeah, Jill Takuda from Hawaii as well. I
don't know what's in the water in Hawaii.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
I don't. Yeah, I couldn't they Maybe it's the heat.
I don't know. So that's in. That's all very interesting stuff.
So Hawaii, you liked a lot of people that were
more moderate than than the party than they would have
represent otherwise. And for Republicans it seems like it's I mean,
Hawaii is a very blue state, although it's moved to
the right substantially.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
But to be fair, there's some more the Hawaii is
like four people, but like Steven Lynch is here right in. Yeah,
the old school Irish white guy Democrat that you know,
the progressive wing in Boston has been trying to get
rid of for years. Let's see Cleo Fields, right, you
know establishment.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
I don't even know who she is. Who is she?
He is? He is?
Speaker 2 (32:51):
He was in Congress in one of those majority black
districts in Louisiana. You know they redrew so he came
back to run. He's very much, you know, a main stream,
middle of the road, you know, black candidate with you know,
established in the area. John tested ten points better than
average this this cycle, right, Angus King is an independence,
(33:12):
so that one doesn't. It's kind of weird. Okay, Yeah,
Mary Peltol she lost, but she was nine points better
than average.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
She represented Alaska, the whole state of Alaska and the
House representatives. And wait one more, one more for the road.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Are we talking? Incumbents are just people in general?
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Just people in general?
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Oh well, then Lauren Bobert, Scott Perry, and Marjorie Taylor Greens.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
Those are all people who didn't terrible. I mean, Lauren
Bobert almost lost in twenty teen. Scott Perry, I can
I tell you. I'll tell you something really interesting. I
never said this on my podcast. I'll give you guys
a little scoop. I was in a meeting with some
NRCC and RNC people. This is a few months ago,
and there's this one congressman, I forget who it is.
In Pennsylvania. He represents like an R plus forty C,
(33:54):
like a super Republican seat, and he's allegedly considering running
for governor, so he would have to vacate the seat.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
What Dan Music?
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Yes, Dan Music is considering leaving the seat to go
run for governor.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
And I said to Dan, RCC and the RNC, ask
Perry to switch districts, ask him to run another southern
state where he won't be able to lose.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Does he live there?
Speaker 1 (34:20):
Does anyone live anywhere in Congress? They all live in Washington.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Okay, see, I would say that, but remember the last
time Republicans tried running someone in Pennsylvania who didn't live
in the place.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
He lives in the state of Pennsylvania. It's the House
of Representatives. It's not he doesn't, he's he lives in Pennsylvania. Anyway.
I pressed very heavily. Lauren Bobert moved across the state
of Colorado run for reelection. I pressed very heavily.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Like eight points worse than she should have.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
But she did. But she won because she wouldn't have won,
probably in her old district. But I insisted, like, hey,
do that and have him run in a seat that
he can't lose. I mean, any glass of water with
an R behind their name is going to win. And
hit that kind of a seat in the User seat
and the Perry seat. It's very like it's Harrisburg area.
It's getting bluer and bluer and bluer. And I said,
you know, get Scott Perry to switch seats. And he apparently.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Perry was not Scott Perry. He would not have any
problem winning it. You could put a replacement Republican and
they'd probably.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Right, but they probably would win, right, all right, But
Scott Perry's took up anyway. The point is I said
this to them. Someone relayed the message to Perry that
this was an idea, and Perry said, f off, I've
always won the seat and I always will. I think
he won by half a point last time, very very close.
We'll see. So anyway, okay, Arman, you've been a fantastic guest.
(35:41):
We have to get going. Where can you read your
stuff and read more about split ticket?
Speaker 2 (35:45):
So obviously you know we're on Twitter. I think it's
at split Ticket Underscore. Our website is split dashticket dot org.
And you know we have articles that come out in
the Washington Post. You know, we have stuff in the
New York Times, you know, so you know when.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
You're slumming it with me today. So it's really exactly no.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
I love talking honestly.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
All right, man, this has been so great. Everyone check
out split ticket for more stuff. Thank you so much
for coming on my podcast.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Of course, hope to be back soon.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
You're listening to It's a Numbers Game with Ryan Grodowsky,
We'll be right back all right now for the ask
Me Anything segment of the show. I love this segment.
I love getting questions from you guys. Email me if
you have a question for me to answer. Ryan at
Numbers Game Podcast dot com. That's Ryan at Numbers Plural
Numbers Game Podcast dot com. Okay, this one comes from Mike. Ryan,
(36:40):
I have a suggestion for a future podcast. One of
the most interesting things you have mentioned on your past
podcast is you're feeling that Elon was not in doged
to save money, but alternative motives. Playing off of this,
why not do a podcast on Doge's successes. The Real
Numbers it's future and who will lead it going forward?
For instance, what was the real deal with the VEC leaving?
What were Elon's real motives? I don't want to get
(37:03):
you banned from X. That's very nice that you, Mike.
And what about all the high level people Elon Burdon's
a Doge with big balls, continue to work for the government.
How can we get DOGE or the Doge principles integrated
in our government process permanently. Thank you, Mike for that
wonderful question. I don't know if it warrants an entire
(37:25):
show episode. So here's the thing with the numbers. The
problem with trying to figure out the numbers of how
much DOGE has saved is a lot of it is
estimates that Elon has come out with with very little
hard numbers attached to it. So he has said he
saved on one hundred and fifty billion dollars. Other estimates
(37:48):
have it to thirty nine billion dollars, and they're already
doing some other rehiring. So I don't, I can't. It's
hard for me to put an exact figure on what
they actually saved. As far as you know, pen to paper.
Let's look at the books and really see a deep
dive into you know, what the actual costs were. I
(38:09):
think the problem with DOGE has always been people are
looking for easy, painless solutions to very complex and sometimes
painful problems. And I was on the Megan McCain show
a couple of maybe a week ago, and someone came
on and his nonprofit was being cut and funding and
his wife worked for a head start, and YadA, YadA, YadA,
(38:29):
and youep was saying, these are free services they send of,
these are tax payer funded services, and should they receive
some cuts. Probably if we're concerned with our budget deficit
and our debt, as we should be, because you go
back to two thousand when I was a kid and
we had a balanced budget. They were saying we're going
to pay down the entire debt by twenty twelve. That's
(38:49):
what they said in two thousand. That's inconceivable now inconceivable.
But if we're going to have a hard conversation, which
we'll have to involve Denmark as well, because you can't
get through this with just a one party vote, and
you sit there and say, hey, how do we balance
the budget and reduce the deficit ultimately eliminate the deficit
(39:11):
over a ten year period. That will involve Medicare, Medicaid,
social Security, and the military and tax increases. Like you're
going to have to go all in on everything. Everyone
will have to hold a hand together and say, I'll
give you this if you give me that. What's something
you're willing to give in too. And maybe it won't
(39:31):
start with a ten trillion dollar cut. Maybe it starts
with a five hundred billion dollar cut. Maybe it starts
with just saving Social Security, which is really not that
hard to do. To reform Social Security, it's a fairly easy,
simple plan. Medicaid and medicare get very very difficult. The
military is very difficult. Servicing the debt is very difficult.
It's hard to work these other parts of the budget out.
(39:55):
But republic I mean, listen, Donald Trump put on and
offer a couple of times closed the carry just loophole.
Increase taxes for people who make five million dollars a year.
That's probably very and I know it's not probably that
is politically popular. Saving social Security, if they frame it
in a certain way that's bipartisan, would be probably very popular.
(40:16):
Looking into the waste for an abuse from the Pentagon
would be popular, although it's hard because a lot of
congressional districts have servicing the Pentagon as part of their economy.
But still that's very very important. Medicare and Medicaid gets
really really really tough, really really really difficult, and I
think that cutting illegal aliens off to Medicare and Medicaid
(40:39):
is a good start to saving the programs. But yeah,
I mean, you have to put everything on the table,
and we're still not willing to have that conversation. And
the only way you incorporate doge into the government is
you either change Congress or you get Congress to have
serious players, or you passing little individual bills which allow
(41:02):
a presidential linemind in Vedo, and you make a president
like Trump who is not running for reelection unless they
change the constitution, make him the bad guy because Congress
hates doing their job, and have him do line on
and vetoms to reduce spending one way or the other.
But they're not due. Congress is not taking this job seriously.
For Republicans, does was a branding issue and and that
(41:23):
was it. As far as vek Vivec is just annoying.
No one likes Veak, absolutely, no one can stand him.
He's a complete I already said Connor artist once in
the show. But allegedly con artists look up to his
look up. Look up his mother's connection to his healthcare
company and how and how she helped him make a
billion dollar business. You will be very surprised. Look out
(41:47):
how he moved his companies to Texas before announcing that
he was running for governor of Ohio. He's just oh,
he's horrible. But I mean, basically, lo and behold. What
I had heard, and this is alleged, was that the
vech was creating his own plans for doge out of Ohio.
He had his own Ohio team separate from the Elon team.
(42:10):
Elon basically caught wind of all this and was just
very dismissive over Elon over a vek and thought of
him as a joke, which is true he is, and
said to him something to the effective like, you can't
run for office. If you're using this to run for office,
then just run for office and just like get out
of our hair. And then he ran to the governor or.
(42:32):
His team ran to the governor asking for the appointment
in the US Senate, which he did not received, and
so he's now running for governor of the state. I
wish the state of Ohio best because he's very likely
the Republican nominee. Unfortunately, but that's what happened. I mean,
the Vek war on everybody that was around him, because
that's who Vivek Ramaswami is. He wears on everybody. So
(42:54):
I think that's all your questions. I hope it was.
If there's information on numbers, like a really bring you
once it comes out. But as of right now, everything
with Doge is very complicated because the numbers are a
lot of he said he said in the White House
right now. So when there's hard numbers, I'll give it
to you. And as far as wanting to reduce spending
and reduce the debt and balance the budget, it's all Congress, baby,
(43:18):
gotta get Congress get more serious about it. Anyway, thank
you again for listening to this Monday episode of my podcast.
Follow me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, wherever you
get your podcast. If you like this show and the
work that I'm doing, please give me a five star
review and give me a like or a follow. It
really means a lot to get the show out there.
I appreciate you all. I'll be back on Thursday. Thank you.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show News
Hosts And Creators
Clay Travis
Buck Sexton
Show Links
WebsiteNewsletterPopular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!