Financial Cost of Running a Political Campaign

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Jesse Kelly Show. Let's have some fun on a Friday.
You have done it. You have conquered the week. The
weekend is here, a three day weekend, I might add,
And life is freaking good and we have an amazing

(00:24):
ass Doctor Jesse Friday plan for you tonight courtesy of
Well You. We're gonna talk some Gavin Newsom here. Someone
wants to talk about the Libs being right about so
many wars? Are we going to see another crusade in
our lifetime? Internal polling? How does it work? No, that's
not about Kamala Harris. Someone's angry about how I treat Chris.

(00:47):
Should we label Trainny's as terrorists? All that food history,
so much more coming up tonight on the world Famous
Jesse Kelly Show. I want to begin here, Jesse. How
many independents do you think UH will be won over
by Gavin Newsom's high school drama performances as he pretends

(01:11):
to be a tough guy and lie about not being
a dirty coming. All right, I know we all because
you're a political person and I'm a political person, we
get way too ahead of ourselves thinking about coming elections.
It's not because you're dumb or I'm dumb. This elections matter.

(01:32):
They're a big deal. It matters for what it means
for our country. And anybody who tries to plan ahead
or try to map things out, thinks about the midterms
that are coming up, thinks about twenty twenty eight. What's
gonna happen. We're gonna win, We're gonna lose? What what's
gonna happen? So there are a couple things I try

(01:54):
not to do. First, I try to never get too cocky,
too confident, and I try to never get too down.
No chance. Now. I do not always succeed at that,
and I'm sure you don't either. Sometimes I think to myself, Man,
these dirty Democrats are so stupid and crazy and unpopular.

(02:16):
They're never winning again. We are going, you know what,
We're gonna win. We're gonna win more seats in the
House of Representatives in the midterms, and then in twenty
twenty eight we're gonna win, and then we'll win again
in twenty thirty two. We're just gonna keep winning forever.
And of course that could happen. It absolutely could happen,
but I'm not convinced of it. And look on the

(02:38):
flip side, you look at maybe some approval numbers, or
maybe they do something dumb we don't like. You start
to get down and out. Oh my gosh, we're gonna
get We're gonna get crucified in the midterms, like the
like the ruling party always does. We're gonna lose a
bunch of seats and the midterms will lose the House.
They're gonna impeach Donald Trump every other day. Then we're
gonna lose In twenty third two Kevin new some super

(03:01):
talented It might be JB. Pritzker. Oh my gosh, the
world it's coming to an end. I don't necessarily think
that's gonna happen either, but I don't know. And there's
another thing I do, or at least try to do,
that I routinely fail at. Sometimes I succeed, but sometimes

(03:22):
lots of times I fail at, and that is trying
to understand the mind of independent swing voters who vote
for Republican one cycle, than Democrat the next, and Republican
the next, and the viviv They are almost impossible. In fact,

(03:44):
I would venture to say they are impossible to understand.
And if you want a great example of this, think
about this, Think about this. Think about what we'll make
it about presidential campaigns. Think about how much money it
takes to run for president. Now it's one to two
billion dollars for a presidential campaign. Now one to two

(04:09):
billion dollars. Where do you spend that money? Obviously, a
lot of it's gonna go to staff. You're gonna need
an office here and a chief of staff and consultant.
That a lot of it's gonna go to that. Of course,
basic campaign infrastructure stuff. You need MCCA hats and bumper stickers,
and that's obviously yeah, But your aim for that money

(04:33):
is not at you or me. All Right, I can
tell you right now. I hate to give the game away,
but I'm not voting for a Democrat in the midterms,
and I'm not voting for one in twenty twenty eight.
I'm assuming, unless you're hate listening to me, I'm assuming
you're right there with me. Maybe I'll get mad at
the Republicans, maybe I'll sit out a local election or

(04:53):
something like that, but I'm not penciling in the name
of a Democrat. I already know, and your liberal aunt, Peggy,
she knows too. She's sitting at home as we speak,
watching the view, petting her cats, snorting xanax, and she
knows exactly who she's not going to vote for in
twenty twenty eight. She knows, I know, you know, everyone knows.

(05:14):
It's those flippy floppies in the middle, the people. And
maybe you are one of these people, or used to be.
Because that does happen. You'll be a person who goes
whichever way the wind blows for a while, and then
eventually you'll be convinced that one side's evil on the
other side's good. But these people, I've talked to, many
of them. I voted for Barack Obama twice and then

(05:38):
I got super mad about that, and so I went
and voted for Trump. But I didn't like this or
that that Trump did or said. So then I went
and voted for Biden, but then I'm mad at him.
So now, but what what do you believe in? What
drives you to the polls? What are your central issue?

(05:58):
The billions of dollars raised in a presidential campaign are
aimed always at those people, those votes, because that's what
wins elections in critical swing states. Let me give the
game away for twenty twenty eight, California is going to
vote blue, they'll vote Democrat. All those electoral college votes

(06:20):
are going to go to the Democrat. Let me go
ahead and take it one step further. Alabama's going to
vote red. They're going to vote Republican. But you know
what it is, We've talked about it. It's not just Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan.
It's the swing voters in those states, Arizona, there are others,
North Carolina, the swing voters in swing states. Billions of

(06:46):
dollars for a presidential campaign will be aimed at grabbing
not that many people. You're aimed at the person who
can be swayed by this issue or that is you,
or this attack or this billions of dollars for them.

(07:06):
And still all that research, all those polls, all that money,
all those experts, political experts, and there's not anyone on
either side who can nail down for you specifically what
wins those people over. Nobody can Gavin newsom me I

(07:30):
despise him. If I had to guess, Now this is
just a guess, and this is right now. We're in
the year twenty twenty five, it's not even September yet,
I would guess that hes inauthenticity I don't even know
if that's a word, but his lack of authenticity is
going to kill him. Trump gets away with things that

(07:55):
other people in politics don't get away with and have
never gotten away with, because it's authentically him. Trump does
things and says things. Even if you were the most
maga person in the world, he doesn't says things that
make you go, oh gosh, what are you doing? Of
course he does. Trump. Uh, remember when Trump said he

(08:20):
hated McCain and McCain hated him. And remember when Trump
said maybe the worst thing he's ever said it was captured.
I like people who weren't captured. To this day, I've
never talked to even people who hate McCain. I've never
talked to a Trump fan who loved that. All of
them were all, Oh, that's not a good thing to say,
but you forgave him and let it go because Trump

(08:43):
is authentic. Authentic. Gavin Newsom is the opposite of that.
Gavin Newsom was essentially created in a political lab to
seize power political power in California. A wealthy billionaire family

(09:04):
in California groomed and really created him. He's pretty much
a robot. Now he's actually not a communist, a born
and bred communist. He just he's been programmed to speak
like one and governed like one, because that's how you
seize political power in California. Gavin Newsom has been a
political robot for so long that I don't know, to

(09:28):
be honest with you, I don't know if Gavin Newsom
believes anything, believes in anything. He's just a robot design
to grab power and then use that power to hand
out favors to his friends and smash the enemies of
his friends. But lots of time people can see through that.

(09:51):
Sometimes they can't. Will the Independence in twenty twenty eight
reject that, I don't know. I don't know. I would say, yeah, hopefully,
but who knows. All right, let's talk about Wars. Someone
wants to talk about the Libs being right about Wars

(10:12):
Kelly Show on a Fantastic, Fantastic Friday and as Doctor
Jesse Friday. Before we go back into the questions, there's
so many and it's gonna be so much fun. I
just have to give you a little personal a little
update on me. I try to always improve myself in
various ways. I don't always succeed at that of course,

(10:36):
but always try to get a little better, a little smarter,
a little more in shape, a little eat a little better.
The Lord knows I need help with that. As you know,
I'm not a big car mechanic guy. I can change
the oh in my car, and I am unbelievably fast
at changing attire, I might point out, and I put

(10:58):
in my own windshield wash fluid. What. Don't shake your head, Chris.
I have decided, after what happened today, that I'm probably
going to begin digging into the mechanic world. Here's what happened.
For a couple weeks now. I've had this terrible rattle

(11:19):
in my car when I drive. It's doing this that
that thing. It's terrible. Today lost my temper, started punching
the dashboard. Rattle's gone. What, Chris, I feel like I
maybe have the magic touch? What, Chris? What? It's not

(11:43):
because I broke off the part that was rattling, Chris.
It's because I have the magic touch. Whatever it is,
I can't explain it. These skills are god given. I
don't want to take credit. All glory goes to Jesus,
but I'm clearly talented in this area, and I'll be
keeping you updated as I travel my mechanical journey from

(12:05):
now on. Hey, Jesse Bronco, this guy says, one glaring
flaw in the whatever someone's ideology, The Libs slash communists
have been right about all these wars since nineteen fifty six, Vietnam,
the Middle East. They've all been a crime against every
twenty year old kid we sent over there to die.

(12:25):
Even Pat Tillman said so before his own army killed
him and covered it up. None of these wars has
ever kept America safe ever. Okay, all right, So I'm
not sure if you are a veteran of one of
these wars or not. You sound like you probably are.
People who drop that kind of level of bitterness about

(12:46):
these conflicts are usually ones who have had to participate
in them. And as you well know, I have participated
in one. I was in the Iraq invasion, you know,
when we were digging through those weapons of mass destruction,
that kind of thing. I am not going to sit
here and justify this war or that war. The military

(13:09):
industrial complex is very real. Also, the change in mindset
in America after World War Two is very real. People
look human beings, human beings. You will have trauma in
your life. That is part of life. There will be

(13:30):
sad things, scary things, terrible things that will happen to you,
and you are going to feel the effects of that.
It will affect your mind for a while, if not
the rest of your life, it will. That's how human
beings are. When we go through something terrible, it just

(13:50):
affects us. If you've ever been in a terrible car accident,
God forbid, or seen one, or please God forbid, lost
someone in one, you have a different view of road
safety than someone who hasn't. That's human nature. World War Two,
which every guy in half the women love, especially once

(14:11):
you cross the age of forty. We love it because
it was gigantic and horrific and fascinating, and there are
demons and angels, there are heroes and that I mean,
there's heroes, and there's Hitler, right, and it made things
so clear in so many ways. Those are the bad guys,

(14:33):
those are the good guys. And it was global and
everyone participate. It was just a wild, wild thing, and
we all talk about it. Myself, I talk about it
all the time. I do all kinds of history on it.
When I do history shows for us where we sit
now in the year twenty twenty five. For us, it's
almost like a movie, a book, a documentary. Maybe you'll

(14:57):
sit and enjoy me talk about it for two three
hours over the span of a couple of nights. But
for the people who lived through it, the globe who
live through it, it was more traumatic than you could
possibly imagine. Well, picture this, picture this, and I think
about this all the time when you look at things

(15:19):
like the Blitz or on places like Dresden, Japan, anytime
there was a civilian population a city that was bombed,
and you look at pictures or video of it and
you see families with wheelbarrows full of rubble, looking through

(15:41):
the rubble that used to be their city block or
their home, family members dead, trying to where do you
even begin? If you woke up tomorrow morning and your
entire city was rubble bombed, it's still smoking ruins, You've
lost who knows how many men members of your family, neighbors,

(16:02):
you're trying to find them. Your job, Well, I mean
that place is rubble two. Where do you start? Where
do you go? Maybe try to find a ride or
get on a horse and go see a cousin somewhere,
Lord Willing, they're homestead. Where do you even begin. Now,

(16:22):
that's one instant, that's one family we just discussed. That's you,
that's me. It is the Jesse Kelly Show. I wonderful,
fantastic Friday. I remember you can still email us. We
are live here on a Friday Jesse at Jesse kellyshow
dot com. Back to what we were talking about here,
got emailed in and said, all these wars since World

(16:43):
War Two have been unjust and wrong and a crime
against every kid who died of Okay, so we just
talked about World War Two and how collectively traumatized the
world was after World War Two, and the world decided
this can never happen again. This leads to things like

(17:03):
the United Nations and other things like that, Hey, let's
all make sure this can never happen again. This can
never happen again. This can never happen again. But you know,
I used a car wreck as an example of someone
who's been through one, and you'd be traumatized by one.

(17:23):
What happens. Let's say you've been through a horrible car
wreck and now you're nervous on the road, so you
raise a kid, say it's your daughter, You've been through
something terrible, terrible on the road, and so you don't
let her drive. You don't even let her get her
driver's license. No, not after that wreck I was in,

(17:45):
Not after the death I saw. This will never happen again,
not to anyone in my family. How does it go? Eventually?
Eventually she runs away from home, runs off with hell angels,
and you don't see her again. That happens. Our response
to trauma can oftentimes be way more damaging than the

(18:11):
same kind of trauma happening. The world deciding that there
can never be another Imperial Japan, there can never be
another Hitler, there can never be another World War has
done unbelievable amounts of damage around the globe because conflicts
prior to the Two World Wars, conflicts usually that the

(18:37):
vast majority of conflicts would involve a country fighting another country.
Eventually one of them would submit. But submission did not
mean I am conquered. It didn't mean I have nothing left.
It meant a peace deal of some kind. That's how
the vast majority of conflicts have ended. Okay, so you

(19:00):
know what, Let's use this as an example, because it's
a modern example. It's a perfect example in fact of
what I'm talking about. Russia invades Ukraine. Okay, I don't
support it, of course, I generally don't like bullying a large,
powerful country pushing around a smaller one. Not a fan.
But what would have happened if the West America? What

(19:23):
would have happened if we just said all right, well,
good luck Ukraine and let the Ukrainians fight. Let me
tell you what would have happened. Russia would have conquered
a bunch of territory. Eventually they would have come to
a peace steal when Ukraine said, we submit with a

(19:45):
tiny fraction of the loss of life we've had now,
with a tiny fraction of that, Ukraine would have signed
a peace steal, giving up things. There's no question that
would have had to give up territory, give up that,
I give up that, giving things. But the country of
Ukraine would have continued to exist. The people of Ukraine

(20:06):
would have been more intact, and life would have gone on.
But instead, because it can never happen again, putins Hitler.
Just like Hitler, they must be stopped at any cost.
Send money, send munitions, send the marines. Three years of
it now now Ukraine has slaughtered its entire male population,

(20:33):
gone gone. They have government agents ripping teenagers off the
street to throw them in uniform and send them to
the trenches. They have men fifty plus years old with
uniforms on because all the other men are freaking dead.

(20:57):
Is that a net good? Well, maybe it's a net
good for somebody, certainly not a net good for anybody
who's Ukrainian. What's it like right now? If you are
a young lady in Ukraine, maybe you grew up, maybe
maybe you wanted to find a husband, marry somebody, start

(21:19):
a family. All the men are dead. How many generations
are going to be negatively affected because all the young
men of Ukraine are dead. But of course this was
all done in the name of there could never be
another Hitler. And you saw this. Look, you mentioned all

(21:41):
these other wars, saw this everywhere. There can never be
We can't allow, we can't allow. We've got to go in.
We can't do it. We've got a lot. We can't
let North Vietnam just take over everything. We can't let
Saddam Hussein do what he's doing. We can't let it.
We can't let that. We can't let this. We must
step in, and we've stepped in a lot, and we

(22:05):
died a lot for it. It sucks. I'll have another way
to put it. It sucks. I still hold my head high.
If you are somebody who participated in these conflicts, you
should hold your head high and be freaking proud of yourself.
You weren't calling the shots, not a politician, not a general.

(22:26):
You're not powerful enough to adjust the way the world works.
But this mindset the world has where everybody has to
rally and jump in whenever anyone is being invaded, is
actually quite terrible. Strong countries invade smaller countries. They always have,
they always will. It doesn't turn into a world war

(22:47):
most of the time. Most of the time, it's a
little loss here, little loss there, super peace. Everybody moves
on to live and fight another day. I do not
think it's a net positive. Hey, Jesse. During the last election,
we heard a lot about internal polling. How does this
work and how does it differ from regular polling? Thanks

(23:09):
for the great show, the history lessons, and the lucid explanations.
You can use that word lucid. You looked it up
to make sure it was used correctly. Okay, Internal polling
versus external pulling. Okay, so let's talk about this because
polling is one of those things where we will use

(23:31):
all encompassing statements, especially when faced with a poll where
we don't like the results. Right. So, here's a common
phrase on the right, a very very very common phrase
whenever we find out that we are unpopular on maybe
in a particular race or on a particular issue where

(23:52):
maybe it's Donald Trump is not popular. Here's what we
automatically say. All polls lie, All these pulls, they're lying.
They're lying. Well, no, that's not always true. It is
sometimes true, it's not always true. There are many, many, many,

(24:15):
many many different polling companies out there, companies where that's
what they do. And there are super big ones and
super small ones. There are super reliable ones, super unreliable ones.
Polling itself, especially this day and age, is very very

(24:38):
very unreliable because people don't have landlines as often anymore.
In fact, they're quite rare. So now you've got to
call people on their cell phone. They're blocking your number.
People on the right are less inclined to answer questions
on the phone. Communists love to answer these questions. People
on the right generally do not wish on them. Myself included.

(25:01):
The second I hear that we're doing a survey, click
and number blocked. I do the same thing you do.
And that's how we handle these things. So polling itself
very difficult, very very complicated. Pulling companies there are legions
of them, large, small, good ones, bad ones. So let's
talk about external pulling versus internal pulling and how it works,

(25:24):
and we'll get a little we'll get a little nerdy
on this one, and then we'll move on and get
back to other things. It is the Jesse Kelly Show
on a Friday. Remember you can download any part of
the show you happen to miss. iHeart Spotify iTunes. We're
talking about polling, how does it work? Internal pulling versus
external pulling? All right, so I already went over there

(25:44):
a big pulling company, small pulling companies. There are reliable
ones and not reliable ones. Now I'm going to talk
to you about cross tabs. I swear I'm not going
to bore you to death. Just stay with me. Just
take a minute to judge, to gauge the accuracy of
a poll. It's really, really, really really important that you

(26:08):
do not just look at the number you like, or
look at the number you dislike, and then say, wow,
it's a good poll, it's a bad poll. Put it
out there. Let's say it's twenty twenty eight and jd
Vance's the nominee and Gavin Newsom's denominee, and you see
jd vance is pulling at fifty four percent and Gavin
Newsom's at forty six. Nice, perfect, we're winning. Well. How

(26:34):
many people were polled? We talked about this a lot
leading up to the last election. You see all these polls,
poll here and a poll there, and then you look
down and figure out, wait a minute, it's a it's
a nationwide election, and you called six hundred people. That

(26:54):
doesn't mean anything. So the cross tabs a poll, Every
poll has cross tabs. Cross tabs are the details, and
that is everything. How many people did you call? What
was the voter registration of the people you called? Oh yes,

(27:18):
jd answers up fifty four to forty six. You look
at the cross tabs and figure out they called one
thousand people and seven hundred of them are registered Republicans.
That's not a reliable poll. The country isn't seventy percent Republicans.
That matters. It matters a lot. Look at the questions
they asked. Were they leading questions or were they real

(27:43):
actual questions? All right, so that's all the political nerdery
I'm going to do now for the internal polling. Every
campaign everyone in history, local, state and federal. Everyone. When
they put out a poll, a public poll, there's a

(28:03):
reason for it. Usually Usually it's either to whip you
into being more supportive, or to pretend as if they
have all the momentum, which will also make you more supportive.
They put out public polls for you. When you see

(28:25):
Senator idiot put out a poll, in fact, he emails
it to you and he says, I need your help now.
I'm pulling down two but I can come back for
fifty dollars. He's trying to get help from you. I'm desperate.
I can win, but we'll lose without your help. It's
a sales job. And I'm not saying it's always a lie,

(28:47):
by the way, but that's what that is. They do
the exact same thing. You'll see underdogs do this all
the time. When they're losing or expected to lose, they
put out a poll. Polls are showing that I'm up
one on Sally Communist. I need your help now and
we can defeat her. They all do it. Everybody does it.

(29:09):
It's politics. None of those none are internal polling. Campaigns
will pay for internal polling. My race. You know, I
ran for Congress twice. As I've told you before, my
very first race, because I'd never run for any office before.
I was going up against this very well established state senator.

(29:33):
He had all this money and we did not have
very much money because the establishment hated my guts. I
know you're shocked by that. We had to scratching cloth
for every dime, and we had to watch how we
spend every dime. By campaign manager was Jewish. That helped
a great deal. But what Chris, I'm just saying, No,
I'm serious. We just had to watch how we spent

(29:55):
our money. Right, so, I had not done any internal polling. Finally,
leading up to the primary, this is the primary, I
will tell you this right now, I assumed I was losing.
Everyone knew who he was. He had raised and spent
all this money. We didn't, I assumed me. I honestly,

(30:19):
I assumed we were losing. So we did an internal poll.
I wasn't surprised the night we won, because about three
weeks before the primary election, we did a poll and
I almost fell out of my chair. We found out
I was killing him, crushing him, absolutely crushing him. Everyone

(30:40):
just assumed I was far to the right of him,
which of course I was far to the right of
pretty much everybody, and we didn't release that, but I knew.
Internal polling is what campaigns do, not for fundraising purposes.
It's so they know what the who who and what

(31:01):
is They know They want to know. Am I down ten?
Is this out of reach? Am I really up one?
Or two? Is it close? Do people think I'm untrustworthy?
Do I need to grab a trustworthy photograph or do
a commercial based on trust? Do people not trust me
on crime? Do I need to run some mailers or

(31:23):
TV ads showing me, you know, hanging out with the
cops tough on crime. They do internal polling, and they
keep it to themselves to let them know where they're
at and what they have to work on. It is
always the most reliable polling, and of course it's always

(31:44):
the most secret polling. Polling you can trust generally the
most is when there are leaks. You don't want your
side to have leaks. You do want their side to
have leaks. But that's usually the most trustworthy polling. When
you see our articles said, well, the Trump campaign came
out and there are leaks that the internal polling has

(32:05):
them up five, that's generally the most accurate polling. If
you're city councilman, your senator, your president, and anybody else
sends an email with poll results that it is designed
to prompt you to action, and it most likely is
not trustworthy at all. There, that's how the polling game works,

(32:28):
all right, all right, someone's mad that I mean to Chris.
Someone wants to know about designating all these training nutballs
as terrorists terrorist organizations. Someone wants to know if I
had Bruce Jenner on, how would it go? All that
and so much more still to come on the world
famous Jesse Kelly Show.