September 20, 2024 • 31 mins
Join Clark Taylor and Hobart Taylor as they navigate the complex emotions surrounding the upcoming election on September 20, 2024.
The episode delves into Oprah Winfrey's recent YouTube livestream featuring Kamala Harris, analyzing the impact of the event and the involvement of Hollywood celebrities. The hosts explore the challenges of modern political advertising and group identity.
As they examine the shifting political landscape, Clark and Hobart contemplate the future of American democracy, the role of individual versus group identity in politics, and the potential for a Cheney-Harris election in 2028. Tune in for a thought-provoking discussion on the current state and future of U.S. politics.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Rambling Through the Brambles. I'm Clark Taylor. I'm Hobart Taylor.
Getting together again on today's 9-20-24. Yeah, there you go.
It never seems real to me that we're this far into the future of the world.
Well, it never seems real to me that the election is finally coming.
(00:21):
I mean, I feel like we've been talking about it since the end of the last election.
Yeah. And I'm almost afraid what's going to happen, no matter what happens in
the election, I'm almost afraid of the tremendous deflation of emotion that'll
come when there won't be an election looming there.
We're having this big day. Yeah, there must be a German word for that.
(00:44):
You probably would know it.
Heusenflug. The whole country is affected by Heusenflug.
We need a pooch.
We need to drink beer and have a festival.
(01:07):
Yeah, so I was going to say, so we'll talk about this Oprah Winfrey live stream
that she just did yesterday, which we didn't know about.
Ironically, Kathy and I were looking, we were watching Jimmy Kimmel,
who, if you haven't been watching Jimmy Kimmel,
there is nobody more fun to watch
(01:27):
if you want to have trump get castigated on a
nightly basis for whatever buffoonery he did that day he's just it's really
great stuff but he had oprah winfrey on the other night and i think she even
mentioned that she was going to do this thing and then it it's on youtube and
so it's in that nether world of our consciousness where like Like,
(01:50):
unless you're aware of the event and the place where it's taking place,
it's hard to kind of track in your mind.
I guess at our age, we're so used to saying, on ABC, on CBS, on PBS.
On YouTube, just sounds like we don't recognize it in our brains as far as what's
(02:16):
upcoming. I mean, anyway, so I watched a piece of that this morning and we'll talk about that.
But I did want to mention, you know, we've been driving around Missouri.
It could not be a redder state as far as I know. Yeah.
Well, it could be. It really could be Arkansas.
That's true. Okay, you're right. You're right. Then it could be West Virginia.
(02:41):
Yeah, and if you come up to 55, I mean, there's plenty of Trump 24 signs and
et cetera, giant billboards on farms and whatnot.
But in our neighborhood, there's a proliferation of Harris Wall signs,
which I'm kind of amazed by. and as amazing is that there are zero Trump signs.
So I don't even know if they're putting them out there. There seems to me to
(03:04):
be a sense among the Trumpy world that you just got to keep it on the down low.
You're not bragging about voting for Trump for whatever reason.
I don't know what the psychological reason for that. Maybe we can talk about that.
But there's definitely, you know, Lucas Kuntz, who's this pretty fine,
(03:24):
upstanding young man running for Senate against Josh Hawley, is making headway.
And so we're going to get a Lucas Kuntz sign. We haven't yet decided to get
a Harris-Wall sign, but we just might do that as well.
Don't know how much it matters in Missouri. Missouri's going to vote,
going to give all their votes to Donald Trump is a pretty assured reality.
(03:47):
So it's a statement of i don't know it seems like a pro it's only like a protest statement,
to see those signs you know along with the black lives matter signs that are
permanently in yards and that kind of thing we believe in science that sort
of thing that you see in yards anymore.
Oh but they're popping up all over yeah and so it's interesting i'm hoping that
(04:13):
you know for us I guess that really just says, hey, there's a groundswell out
there, and she's got a real chance of winning in spite of.
Because here you feel like, well, it's a Trump world that we live in,
and so there's something there.
Counter-revolutionary about putting Harris-Waltz signs on your yard,
(04:35):
even as Trump does what he does.
Well, the funny thing is, I mean, there's been all sorts of videos and stuff
on YouTube showing red areas with a lot of Harris-Waltz signs,
and even people making their own signs,
because there's a lack of access immediately to the signs in the area.
(04:55):
And the sense of people sort of coming out of the woodwork.
One person described it as coming out of the closet.
And there's this, you know, in the ebb and flow of politics,
there's the new thing and the old thing.
So the new thing keeps trying to assert itself over the old thing and has a
(05:18):
little bit more energy connected to it.
And it's that little bit of energy that Trump had in 2016 that made the difference,
that overwhelmed the predictions that people had.
And so the question is, maybe there's such a thing as this in other places.
(05:41):
I'm looking at the polls now for Missouri.
It's looking like Emerson has Trump plus 12, Change Research, Trump plus 9.
GQR 11, generally they're running but here's the thing the trend is down the
(06:01):
trend was in July it was Trump plus 17.
Trump plus 16 so there's definitely been some erosion,
even in what you call yeah you can feel it you can feel it for sure the people
in the Midwest are nothing if not But I like to think of him as plain-faced
(06:23):
and kind of matter-of-fact,
and there could be a certain amount of passive-aggressiveness to go along with
that and sort of where'd you go to high school, very provincial.
But you can't help but be embarrassed by this guy if you're supporting a conservative
agenda, and this is your guy.
You got to think, okay, that's not who I want to support. I want to support
(06:47):
some policies, but he's not talking about them.
He's not bragging about conservative this or Republican that.
He's bragging about crowd sizes and everything.
Making up things. I mean, ultimately, it's a question for the Trump supporters.
(07:07):
Do you buy him or not? I mean, it's not about positions or about extraordinarily
crazy things he says or whatever.
It's do you think that he's going to be in your interest or not?
And is this person more likely to create a world or assist in the creation of
(07:34):
a world that matches your expectations and desires?
And here's the irony. You know, presidents don't have that much power.
They don't really create worlds. You have to get out in your own world and figure
out what's reality and what's important for you, etc.
(07:56):
And it's sort of an intellectual laziness on the part of both the left and the
right to assume that, in ultimate sense,
whoever president determines what the shape of reality will be.
It does on a very broad scope.
I mean, yes, whether we go to, in existential ways, whether we go to war,
(08:17):
whether we have policies that are more beneficial to people who are in need
or less, whether we have policies that favor one economic class over another.
Yeah, those are certainly there.
But in terms of your self-worth and your identity and your community and your day-to-day.
(08:44):
Yeah, it always speaks to the one of the failings of democracy in America is
the low percentage of people who show up for anything but these big, big ticket elections.
And so I was going to add in there that the one thing we're hoping for around
here is that there's some down ballot success that mirrors that move towards
(09:08):
the left that you're seeing and move towards,
you know, away from Trump and towards, you know, losing ground at 17 to nine or whatever.
But that, that could affect, you know, how well Lucas Kuntz does for instance,
or because he's a young guy.
I mean, he could do this again at another level.
And then Cori Bush, by the way, got bounced from St. Louis.
(09:33):
That was a pretty heavy-duty thing because that involved Ferguson.
I don't know if we never even talked about that on this show,
on our show, but that was a heady little moment there with this guy, Wesley Bell,
who stepped in and basically swept this election, this primary,
and will certainly win the general.
(09:53):
And just Cori Bush went off. I don't know if you saw any of the,
we see it locally, but she screamed at the, told the Jewish community she was
coming after their kingdom.
Oh, God. What? It was manic.
And so, because she blamed the Jews for, you know, you know,
(10:16):
supporting Wesley Bell and against her support for Palestine.
That's where a local congressional race went.
You know what I mean? So I guess I'm just referencing it off the national versus the local thing.
But people don't seem to understand that when you vote for a councilman,
(10:36):
That's the one person who can affect your lived reality. When you vote for school
board. School board, yeah.
State representatives, et cetera, and they're the least known about, the least, you know.
Anyway. Well, so you said you saw this thing, this upper wintry thing.
(10:58):
I didn't see you recall it. Yeah, I knew about it.
Can you briefly describe it and who was on it? Do you have any idea how many
people watched it and all that stuff?
Well, at this point, yes, because they show you how many views it got.
It's a YouTube event. It's a YouTube-led event.
So out there in the world of tech and Google, because Google owns YouTube,
(11:24):
there's money being spent to gather eyeballs.
And YouTube, as far as we can tell, is doing very, very well.
Well, in other words, if I could wiggle my nose and create our video reality in this house,
I would get just internet and connect to YouTube because they've just got the
best service in that regard as far as expense, if that makes sense.
(11:49):
They're probably making the greatest beneficiary of this election,
too, in terms of the amount of ad buys and attention they're getting as a result
of the election. It's probably...
She had bought YouTube stock a year ago, two years ago. Yeah,
well, they're certainly vacuuming it up, and they're becoming the streaming
(12:11):
service of choice among tech cognoscenti to some degree.
Kathy's son-in-law, David, had the opportunity to deal with her dad's video
streaming service, and he immediately just said, oh, YouTube's the best.
We always rely on David because he's a tech guy and very, very smart, savvy, et cetera.
(12:35):
I'm looking at it now because 1.4 million has been 14 hours ago as of when we were talking.
I had on the first 40 minutes.
I watched the beginning of it, and I realized it wasn't an interview.
It's an hour and 45 minutes long. So when they say 1.45 million views,
(12:58):
that doesn't necessarily mean complete viewings.
No, all that is just the click shows interest.
It's just another way of indicating. Yeah, you can just click on it.
Or click on something with that title.
Yeah, I think you have to watch it for a certain amount of time,
but it's certainly not an hour and 45 minutes.
(13:18):
I think a viewing, I think, but it's probably like five minutes or 10 minutes or something minimal.
And so I turned it on I watched the beginning of it, they had a little countdown
thing so I don't know what that even meant, there was a countdown aspect to
it as if they show the thing only at certain times of the day something like that.
(13:40):
And I'm not sure how that all works and again, this goes back to the original
I can tell you right now I'm pulling it up and I'm looking at it and you can
fast forward past the countdown,
oh you can yeah that's pretty
funny i sat there
dutifully waiting for the countdown to finish yeah okay and then and then kamala
(14:04):
harris doesn't come out on stage for the first 35 minutes of the event and so
it's a very oprah it's oprah on zoom is what it is and so,
So she's got a big, she's got about 400 people in studio and they're cheering.
I'm not sure what she's going to put under their chairs. I didn't get to that part yet.
(14:28):
Maybe a yard sign.
And then what she said, thousands of people on Zoom.
So there's these big screens over and behind the audience showing basically a giant Zoom session.
And that includes luminaries such as Ben Stiller, Chris Rock,
(14:52):
Meryl Streep, J-Lo, and a few others.
Bryan Cranston, for some reason, was like up front and the most important one
that they went to at the very beginning of it, which was kind of odd.
Well, he's known as actually being a thinker.
You know yeah yeah that might be and and
(15:14):
middle-aged white guy right which is relevant
to what we talk about so that was my take on that and
then chris rock had a thing to say it was very funny he's so smart but and they
all kind of got chimed in so that was what was happening and so i kind of faded
out on it because i'm the whole hollywood talks to america thing it It always
(15:35):
bothers me. It just isn't so cloying.
Right, right, right. And we've seen it. We've seen it our entire lives,
this telling us what to think and all that stuff from their houses on Mulholland.
So that was the first, say, half hour. And then, well, first 15, 20.
And then they went to groups of people who are X, Y, Z for Kamala.
(16:00):
So cat women for Kamala, black men for Kamala, white dudes for Kamala,
and the various and sundry groups of those political groups,
they were represented in the audience. So they'd stand up. They were standing up.
And I, I trust me. I, I, I go to, I clicked on the silent thing at that point
(16:22):
because it was at, by then you had, we had already talked about us watching it.
You know what I mean? Talking about it. So I can only say that.
Yeah, I can't watch stuff like that. I that's like getting into a boy scout
meeting and realizing not, this is the wrong room.
I'm sorry. I was going for the. Yeah.
(16:43):
I wasn't trying to, yeah. Was that 13 B?
Um, so, and, and yet, you know, Kamala had not been out yet.
So it was about 35, 40 minutes in that she introduced her and it's this giant
upwelling of applause. And then she started talking.
And so I've only seen her beginning speech, but kind of one thing I did while
(17:08):
the countdown was happening that I could have skipped past is I was reading
writing commentary because to me that's where,
you know, writing commentary. Yeah.
And so the commentary was either anti Kamala or pro Kamala.
I would say two thirds anti.
And, and what was interesting about that was that there's a thumbs up,
(17:30):
thumbs down thing on them on each comment, right? You can thumb up or thumb down.
They either had a thumb up or nothing.
That was kind of fascinating. The commentary was never thumbed down.
I've never seen that before where somebody saw a comment and thumbed down it.
There's usually a smattering of – there's usually some of both.
(17:54):
Usually there's a lot of thumbs up and a few thumbs down, but there was zero
thumbs down. That was kind of interesting. I don't know. You think this might be botched?
Ah i'm sure i'm sure i
mean you know you know they might be controlling the thumbs down on it to make
sure that no one no one doesn't watch it and have an opinion yeah the the the
(18:19):
the if if harris has a problem it's the same problem she always had which is she's light,
she's light and there's an airy fairy quality to everything and until she becomes
more and and more substantial, that's an issue.
But to go back to something you earlier said that I completely agree with and
(18:40):
thought of at the very beginning was that she's the new thing,
no matter what they try to do to say she's old, Biden, et cetera.
She is the new thing, and Americans like the new thing. All right.
So there are some things, and again, I haven't seen this, and I probably will
watch it, although I'm not guaranteed.
(19:02):
And one of the things that struck me is this whole idea,
and this is true of Trump, this is true of American advertising in general,
because that's what we're talking about,
is this whole notion that we need to find identities through group identity
(19:23):
rather than through individual identity.
And so the, you know,
white dudes for this or that or the other, whatever group it is,
means that through the subgroups that we have unity, but we have division simultaneously.
Rather than sort of coming together and recognizing that out of many one,
(19:49):
e pluribus unum, doesn't mean out of many groups one, it means out of many individuals one.
And the inability to have that sort of, again,
I think it's sort of an intellectual laziness where people are so busy associating
(20:09):
themselves with groups rather than with recognizing what their own individual values are.
Are and and so we have a situation where we got trump in the crypto bros you know i mean and and,
it's it's it's it's scary because a lot of people again the same intellectual
(20:32):
laziness you know you can you can be a crypto investor or whatever and not necessarily
buy the whole nine yards.
You don't also have to be like a bodybuilder or you don't also have to be like
a misogynist or you don't also have to be like, you know, you don't have to
like build this whole sort of.
(20:53):
Group identity in order to supplant your own individuality to the extent that
the only people who benefit from that,
the only people who benefit from people dividing themselves into these tiny
groups are advertisers because it gives them demographics,
(21:13):
it gives them marketing tools, it gives them ways in which they can message
not in a genuine and informational transformational way, but in which they can
market in an emotional and tribal way.
Focused, in a focused way. In a focused way, yeah. That's the most valuable
advertising. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(21:35):
So, yeah, so that's what struck me from what you were describing.
The light thing, you know, I think the light thing is she's got such a heavy
burden to carry because, I mean, he's nothing.
And then, you know, you're comparing her to some sort of ideal that doesn't
(22:00):
exist in American politics.
There is nobody with the exception of maybe Buttigieg or, you know,
there are very few people who have the combination of the ability to explain
things clearly and the ability to convince you of their gravitas or their deep knowledge.
(22:21):
Well said. So now we have to look at what we got.
Yeah. We knew that Biden had deep knowledge, but he was poor at communicating it.
And so now we're not sure of her knowledge, but we do know this.
We know that she has native intelligence and that she can learn and that she listens.
(22:43):
And those are qualities that, you know, people do grow in the job.
Those... And she's already demonstrated growth from the person who ran for president
to the person who's running this time.
It's a very big difference. So there's hope here. John Kennedy was just like
Harris when he was running.
(23:05):
He was very personable. He was a new thing, et cetera.
But he wasn't an intellectual heavyweight.
But he assembled around him this incredible group of people,
this incredible brain trust.
(23:25):
Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, same thing. He was not a great intellectual.
But he recognized how to work with smart people in order to accomplish the things
we wanted to get accomplished.
So that's sort of what we put up. And so to what degree does that help?
(23:47):
I would do that group, too. Oh, okay.
Yeah, right. General. So, yeah.
So I guess, and I was going to add, of course, that she proved any naysayers
that thought she would just get blown away by the Trump wind utterly wrong in that debate.
(24:11):
That she held her ground firmly, created new ground, held that firmly,
and basically caused him to just melt down.
I mean, there was nothing you could say about that. He was obviously too easy
of a mark for someone who's an experienced prosecutor who had the ability to
bring every single checkbox point that her debate team gave her to bear.
(24:37):
I mean, she just had it all. I think I think she went through the entire list
of things they wanted her to be able to say or accuse him of or bring up.
I mean, she was like a cat with a mouse just smacking him around.
The question is then, where do we go from here?
We're talking about six weeks. And, you know, I mean, voting is actually starting, I guess.
(25:03):
And, you know, early in person voting is starting already. ready.
So where are we?
And maybe, you know, I think her whole strategy of being the underdog is right because.
Count on four or five or six point variation between what the polls say and what finally happens.
(25:30):
And that could happen either way.
That could happen either way. There could be a lot more more air support than
is being shown from people who people have assumed to be Trump voters,
but Trump voters who will abandon Trump once the curtain is closed.
(25:51):
Yeah, I think they're more likely to just not vote.
I think there might be some people who supported them in the past and who felt
that they were a little pissed.
Yeah. Well, we'll take either.
Trump voters and Trump non-voters, to me, are the same. You get an equal power.
(26:13):
Well, no, because it's a negative one to a positive one. You get more of a switching.
If she wins by a large enough margin, then we all have people like trying to
mess with what's going on.
There will be some, but mess what's going on with the certification of the election.
(26:33):
Yeah, well, it sounds, you know, from what little I'm picking up in the wires,
there's a bunch of that going on right now.
I mean, Lindsey Graham is actually in Nebraska trying to convince the Nebraska
legislature to give all their votes to Harris, I mean, to Trump.
And they'd only be giving one to Harris.
So that's literally one electoral vote that they're out traveling to Nebraska and trying to do.
(26:59):
And as this guy, there's a great article recently by a guy named Stephen Marsh,
opinion column by a Canadian guy.
And I just happened to catch it. But he said one of the problems with what they're
doing is that what they're trying to do is muddy the water and create chaos
in the system. them. They're not really trying to change the laws at this late hour.
(27:20):
They're just trying to make it chaotic and muddy so that they can say on election
day and thereafter, hey, it was just too confusing. We can't really tell.
So we're going to turn it over to the convention committee or whatever little
thing they've created in their thing that says,
(27:41):
when we can't make a decision, This group of people will go ahead and make it
for us, or this court will go ahead and do it.
That's how we ended up with Bush and 20 years of mania, was not being able to
make up our own minds, even though he lost by, I forget how much,
half a million at least votes nationally.
They can't win a popular vote, the Republicans. They know that they can't win
(28:06):
for president in the presidency.
And, you know, this is a stat that's sticking in my head.
Maybe we even mentioned it last time, but in North Carolina,
47% of the people are Democrats, but 10 out of the 13 congressmen are Republicans. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's absurd. Yeah. It's so anti-democratic, it's ridiculous.
Yeah. And so you're going into states where, what, five,
(28:33):
six, whatever the percentage is, 75% of the people, at least 80%,
they want Trump to win. Right.
Well, where you're talking about the legislature. But, you know,
again, even those folks are going to probably begin to cry because what does
the future hold beyond that?
(28:53):
What happens? What happens when Trump is gone?
And any smart Republican has to think about, you know, what will people know
about me when Trump is gone?
Will somebody be able to supplant me? And what if Trump loses?
(29:14):
And they have to think about, will I have primary challenges coming at me from
the center saying, it's time to put the Republican Party back together again?
You know yeah I thought that was you know John Stewart.
Told Dick Cheney to fuck off on his show when Cheney threw his hat in or whatever
(29:36):
it is he throws in with Harris.
And I, I thought the guy's not, he's a shark. He's, he smelled blood in the water.
He's, he's seeing the potential for his daughter to become a leader in the new Republican party.
He's seeing a potential for his daughter to become president of the United States.
Absolutely. Without a doubt. While he's still alive.
(29:57):
Right. And so, yeah, I thought there's nothing, There's nothing but cynical
of what he's doing, or at least real politic, whatever you want to call it.
If Harris wins, there's a good chance that the next election will be Cheney Harris.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Wait, Cheney Harris?
Oh, Cheney v. Harris. Yeah, yeah. Cheney versus Harris. I agree completely.
(30:19):
That's exactly what I thought.
As soon as Dick Cheney came out, I thought, oh, well, he's seeing his daughter
as a possible leader in the newly rebuilt Republican Party.
That's all i never thought oh he's being he's softened the old man has softened you know.
Yeah right that guy's granite crumbling
(30:40):
granite the high sign here so i'm gonna i'm gonna suggest we uh call it quits
here and leave that there's something for people to think about and chew on
okay cheney the cheney harris election of 2028 yeah imagine where this show
would be if we get to there and the two of us get to chime in on that.
(31:01):
Well, you know, you heard it here first. This is the dribbling through the brambles.
Yes, it has. See you next time. Body bang.
Music.
Welcome to Rambling Through the Brambles. I'm Clark Taylor. I'm Hobart Taylor.
Getting together again on today's 9-20-24. Yeah, there you go.
It never seems real to me that we're this far into the future of the world.
Well, it never seems real to me that the election is finally coming.
(00:21):
I mean, I feel like we've been talking about it since the end of the last election.
Yeah. And I'm almost afraid what's going to happen, no matter what happens in
the election, I'm almost afraid of the tremendous deflation of emotion that'll
come when there won't be an election looming there.
We're having this big day. Yeah, there must be a German word for that.
(00:44):
You probably would know it.
Heusenflug. The whole country is affected by Heusenflug.
We need a pooch.
We need to drink beer and have a festival.
(01:07):
Yeah, so I was going to say, so we'll talk about this Oprah Winfrey live stream
that she just did yesterday, which we didn't know about.
Ironically, Kathy and I were looking, we were watching Jimmy Kimmel,
who, if you haven't been watching Jimmy Kimmel,
there is nobody more fun to watch
(01:27):
if you want to have trump get castigated on a
nightly basis for whatever buffoonery he did that day he's just it's really
great stuff but he had oprah winfrey on the other night and i think she even
mentioned that she was going to do this thing and then it it's on youtube and
so it's in that nether world of our consciousness where like Like,
(01:50):
unless you're aware of the event and the place where it's taking place,
it's hard to kind of track in your mind.
I guess at our age, we're so used to saying, on ABC, on CBS, on PBS.
On YouTube, just sounds like we don't recognize it in our brains as far as what's
(02:16):
upcoming. I mean, anyway, so I watched a piece of that this morning and we'll talk about that.
But I did want to mention, you know, we've been driving around Missouri.
It could not be a redder state as far as I know. Yeah.
Well, it could be. It really could be Arkansas.
That's true. Okay, you're right. You're right. Then it could be West Virginia.
(02:41):
Yeah, and if you come up to 55, I mean, there's plenty of Trump 24 signs and
et cetera, giant billboards on farms and whatnot.
But in our neighborhood, there's a proliferation of Harris Wall signs,
which I'm kind of amazed by. and as amazing is that there are zero Trump signs.
So I don't even know if they're putting them out there. There seems to me to
(03:04):
be a sense among the Trumpy world that you just got to keep it on the down low.
You're not bragging about voting for Trump for whatever reason.
I don't know what the psychological reason for that. Maybe we can talk about that.
But there's definitely, you know, Lucas Kuntz, who's this pretty fine,
(03:24):
upstanding young man running for Senate against Josh Hawley, is making headway.
And so we're going to get a Lucas Kuntz sign. We haven't yet decided to get
a Harris-Wall sign, but we just might do that as well.
Don't know how much it matters in Missouri. Missouri's going to vote,
going to give all their votes to Donald Trump is a pretty assured reality.
(03:47):
So it's a statement of i don't know it seems like a pro it's only like a protest statement,
to see those signs you know along with the black lives matter signs that are
permanently in yards and that kind of thing we believe in science that sort
of thing that you see in yards anymore.
Oh but they're popping up all over yeah and so it's interesting i'm hoping that
(04:13):
you know for us I guess that really just says, hey, there's a groundswell out
there, and she's got a real chance of winning in spite of.
Because here you feel like, well, it's a Trump world that we live in,
and so there's something there.
Counter-revolutionary about putting Harris-Waltz signs on your yard,
(04:35):
even as Trump does what he does.
Well, the funny thing is, I mean, there's been all sorts of videos and stuff
on YouTube showing red areas with a lot of Harris-Waltz signs,
and even people making their own signs,
because there's a lack of access immediately to the signs in the area.
(04:55):
And the sense of people sort of coming out of the woodwork.
One person described it as coming out of the closet.
And there's this, you know, in the ebb and flow of politics,
there's the new thing and the old thing.
So the new thing keeps trying to assert itself over the old thing and has a
(05:18):
little bit more energy connected to it.
And it's that little bit of energy that Trump had in 2016 that made the difference,
that overwhelmed the predictions that people had.
And so the question is, maybe there's such a thing as this in other places.
(05:41):
I'm looking at the polls now for Missouri.
It's looking like Emerson has Trump plus 12, Change Research, Trump plus 9.
GQR 11, generally they're running but here's the thing the trend is down the
(06:01):
trend was in July it was Trump plus 17.
Trump plus 16 so there's definitely been some erosion,
even in what you call yeah you can feel it you can feel it for sure the people
in the Midwest are nothing if not But I like to think of him as plain-faced
(06:23):
and kind of matter-of-fact,
and there could be a certain amount of passive-aggressiveness to go along with
that and sort of where'd you go to high school, very provincial.
But you can't help but be embarrassed by this guy if you're supporting a conservative
agenda, and this is your guy.
You got to think, okay, that's not who I want to support. I want to support
(06:47):
some policies, but he's not talking about them.
He's not bragging about conservative this or Republican that.
He's bragging about crowd sizes and everything.
Making up things. I mean, ultimately, it's a question for the Trump supporters.
(07:07):
Do you buy him or not? I mean, it's not about positions or about extraordinarily
crazy things he says or whatever.
It's do you think that he's going to be in your interest or not?
And is this person more likely to create a world or assist in the creation of
(07:34):
a world that matches your expectations and desires?
And here's the irony. You know, presidents don't have that much power.
They don't really create worlds. You have to get out in your own world and figure
out what's reality and what's important for you, etc.
(07:56):
And it's sort of an intellectual laziness on the part of both the left and the
right to assume that, in ultimate sense,
whoever president determines what the shape of reality will be.
It does on a very broad scope.
I mean, yes, whether we go to, in existential ways, whether we go to war,
(08:17):
whether we have policies that are more beneficial to people who are in need
or less, whether we have policies that favor one economic class over another.
Yeah, those are certainly there.
But in terms of your self-worth and your identity and your community and your day-to-day.
(08:44):
Yeah, it always speaks to the one of the failings of democracy in America is
the low percentage of people who show up for anything but these big, big ticket elections.
And so I was going to add in there that the one thing we're hoping for around
here is that there's some down ballot success that mirrors that move towards
(09:08):
the left that you're seeing and move towards,
you know, away from Trump and towards, you know, losing ground at 17 to nine or whatever.
But that, that could affect, you know, how well Lucas Kuntz does for instance,
or because he's a young guy.
I mean, he could do this again at another level.
And then Cori Bush, by the way, got bounced from St. Louis.
(09:33):
That was a pretty heavy-duty thing because that involved Ferguson.
I don't know if we never even talked about that on this show,
on our show, but that was a heady little moment there with this guy, Wesley Bell,
who stepped in and basically swept this election, this primary,
and will certainly win the general.
(09:53):
And just Cori Bush went off. I don't know if you saw any of the,
we see it locally, but she screamed at the, told the Jewish community she was
coming after their kingdom.
Oh, God. What? It was manic.
And so, because she blamed the Jews for, you know, you know,
(10:16):
supporting Wesley Bell and against her support for Palestine.
That's where a local congressional race went.
You know what I mean? So I guess I'm just referencing it off the national versus the local thing.
But people don't seem to understand that when you vote for a councilman,
(10:36):
That's the one person who can affect your lived reality. When you vote for school
board. School board, yeah.
State representatives, et cetera, and they're the least known about, the least, you know.
Anyway. Well, so you said you saw this thing, this upper wintry thing.
(10:58):
I didn't see you recall it. Yeah, I knew about it.
Can you briefly describe it and who was on it? Do you have any idea how many
people watched it and all that stuff?
Well, at this point, yes, because they show you how many views it got.
It's a YouTube event. It's a YouTube-led event.
So out there in the world of tech and Google, because Google owns YouTube,
(11:24):
there's money being spent to gather eyeballs.
And YouTube, as far as we can tell, is doing very, very well.
Well, in other words, if I could wiggle my nose and create our video reality in this house,
I would get just internet and connect to YouTube because they've just got the
best service in that regard as far as expense, if that makes sense.
(11:49):
They're probably making the greatest beneficiary of this election,
too, in terms of the amount of ad buys and attention they're getting as a result
of the election. It's probably...
She had bought YouTube stock a year ago, two years ago. Yeah,
well, they're certainly vacuuming it up, and they're becoming the streaming
(12:11):
service of choice among tech cognoscenti to some degree.
Kathy's son-in-law, David, had the opportunity to deal with her dad's video
streaming service, and he immediately just said, oh, YouTube's the best.
We always rely on David because he's a tech guy and very, very smart, savvy, et cetera.
(12:35):
I'm looking at it now because 1.4 million has been 14 hours ago as of when we were talking.
I had on the first 40 minutes.
I watched the beginning of it, and I realized it wasn't an interview.
It's an hour and 45 minutes long. So when they say 1.45 million views,
(12:58):
that doesn't necessarily mean complete viewings.
No, all that is just the click shows interest.
It's just another way of indicating. Yeah, you can just click on it.
Or click on something with that title.
Yeah, I think you have to watch it for a certain amount of time,
but it's certainly not an hour and 45 minutes.
(13:18):
I think a viewing, I think, but it's probably like five minutes or 10 minutes or something minimal.
And so I turned it on I watched the beginning of it, they had a little countdown
thing so I don't know what that even meant, there was a countdown aspect to
it as if they show the thing only at certain times of the day something like that.
(13:40):
And I'm not sure how that all works and again, this goes back to the original
I can tell you right now I'm pulling it up and I'm looking at it and you can
fast forward past the countdown,
oh you can yeah that's pretty
funny i sat there
dutifully waiting for the countdown to finish yeah okay and then and then kamala
(14:04):
harris doesn't come out on stage for the first 35 minutes of the event and so
it's a very oprah it's oprah on zoom is what it is and so,
So she's got a big, she's got about 400 people in studio and they're cheering.
I'm not sure what she's going to put under their chairs. I didn't get to that part yet.
(14:28):
Maybe a yard sign.
And then what she said, thousands of people on Zoom.
So there's these big screens over and behind the audience showing basically a giant Zoom session.
And that includes luminaries such as Ben Stiller, Chris Rock,
(14:52):
Meryl Streep, J-Lo, and a few others.
Bryan Cranston, for some reason, was like up front and the most important one
that they went to at the very beginning of it, which was kind of odd.
Well, he's known as actually being a thinker.
You know yeah yeah that might be and and
(15:14):
middle-aged white guy right which is relevant
to what we talk about so that was my take on that and
then chris rock had a thing to say it was very funny he's so smart but and they
all kind of got chimed in so that was what was happening and so i kind of faded
out on it because i'm the whole hollywood talks to america thing it It always
(15:35):
bothers me. It just isn't so cloying.
Right, right, right. And we've seen it. We've seen it our entire lives,
this telling us what to think and all that stuff from their houses on Mulholland.
So that was the first, say, half hour. And then, well, first 15, 20.
And then they went to groups of people who are X, Y, Z for Kamala.
(16:00):
So cat women for Kamala, black men for Kamala, white dudes for Kamala,
and the various and sundry groups of those political groups,
they were represented in the audience. So they'd stand up. They were standing up.
And I, I trust me. I, I, I go to, I clicked on the silent thing at that point
(16:22):
because it was at, by then you had, we had already talked about us watching it.
You know what I mean? Talking about it. So I can only say that.
Yeah, I can't watch stuff like that. I that's like getting into a boy scout
meeting and realizing not, this is the wrong room.
I'm sorry. I was going for the. Yeah.
(16:43):
I wasn't trying to, yeah. Was that 13 B?
Um, so, and, and yet, you know, Kamala had not been out yet.
So it was about 35, 40 minutes in that she introduced her and it's this giant
upwelling of applause. And then she started talking.
And so I've only seen her beginning speech, but kind of one thing I did while
(17:08):
the countdown was happening that I could have skipped past is I was reading
writing commentary because to me that's where,
you know, writing commentary. Yeah.
And so the commentary was either anti Kamala or pro Kamala.
I would say two thirds anti.
And, and what was interesting about that was that there's a thumbs up,
(17:30):
thumbs down thing on them on each comment, right? You can thumb up or thumb down.
They either had a thumb up or nothing.
That was kind of fascinating. The commentary was never thumbed down.
I've never seen that before where somebody saw a comment and thumbed down it.
There's usually a smattering of – there's usually some of both.
(17:54):
Usually there's a lot of thumbs up and a few thumbs down, but there was zero
thumbs down. That was kind of interesting. I don't know. You think this might be botched?
Ah i'm sure i'm sure i
mean you know you know they might be controlling the thumbs down on it to make
sure that no one no one doesn't watch it and have an opinion yeah the the the
(18:19):
the if if harris has a problem it's the same problem she always had which is she's light,
she's light and there's an airy fairy quality to everything and until she becomes
more and and more substantial, that's an issue.
But to go back to something you earlier said that I completely agree with and
(18:40):
thought of at the very beginning was that she's the new thing,
no matter what they try to do to say she's old, Biden, et cetera.
She is the new thing, and Americans like the new thing. All right.
So there are some things, and again, I haven't seen this, and I probably will
watch it, although I'm not guaranteed.
(19:02):
And one of the things that struck me is this whole idea,
and this is true of Trump, this is true of American advertising in general,
because that's what we're talking about,
is this whole notion that we need to find identities through group identity
(19:23):
rather than through individual identity.
And so the, you know,
white dudes for this or that or the other, whatever group it is,
means that through the subgroups that we have unity, but we have division simultaneously.
Rather than sort of coming together and recognizing that out of many one,
(19:49):
e pluribus unum, doesn't mean out of many groups one, it means out of many individuals one.
And the inability to have that sort of, again,
I think it's sort of an intellectual laziness where people are so busy associating
(20:09):
themselves with groups rather than with recognizing what their own individual values are.
Are and and so we have a situation where we got trump in the crypto bros you know i mean and and,
it's it's it's it's scary because a lot of people again the same intellectual
(20:32):
laziness you know you can you can be a crypto investor or whatever and not necessarily
buy the whole nine yards.
You don't also have to be like a bodybuilder or you don't also have to be like
a misogynist or you don't also have to be like, you know, you don't have to
like build this whole sort of.
(20:53):
Group identity in order to supplant your own individuality to the extent that
the only people who benefit from that,
the only people who benefit from people dividing themselves into these tiny
groups are advertisers because it gives them demographics,
(21:13):
it gives them marketing tools, it gives them ways in which they can message
not in a genuine and informational transformational way, but in which they can
market in an emotional and tribal way.
Focused, in a focused way. In a focused way, yeah. That's the most valuable
advertising. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(21:35):
So, yeah, so that's what struck me from what you were describing.
The light thing, you know, I think the light thing is she's got such a heavy
burden to carry because, I mean, he's nothing.
And then, you know, you're comparing her to some sort of ideal that doesn't
(22:00):
exist in American politics.
There is nobody with the exception of maybe Buttigieg or, you know,
there are very few people who have the combination of the ability to explain
things clearly and the ability to convince you of their gravitas or their deep knowledge.
(22:21):
Well said. So now we have to look at what we got.
Yeah. We knew that Biden had deep knowledge, but he was poor at communicating it.
And so now we're not sure of her knowledge, but we do know this.
We know that she has native intelligence and that she can learn and that she listens.
(22:43):
And those are qualities that, you know, people do grow in the job.
Those... And she's already demonstrated growth from the person who ran for president
to the person who's running this time.
It's a very big difference. So there's hope here. John Kennedy was just like
Harris when he was running.
(23:05):
He was very personable. He was a new thing, et cetera.
But he wasn't an intellectual heavyweight.
But he assembled around him this incredible group of people,
this incredible brain trust.
(23:25):
Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, same thing. He was not a great intellectual.
But he recognized how to work with smart people in order to accomplish the things
we wanted to get accomplished.
So that's sort of what we put up. And so to what degree does that help?
(23:47):
I would do that group, too. Oh, okay.
Yeah, right. General. So, yeah.
So I guess, and I was going to add, of course, that she proved any naysayers
that thought she would just get blown away by the Trump wind utterly wrong in that debate.
(24:11):
That she held her ground firmly, created new ground, held that firmly,
and basically caused him to just melt down.
I mean, there was nothing you could say about that. He was obviously too easy
of a mark for someone who's an experienced prosecutor who had the ability to
bring every single checkbox point that her debate team gave her to bear.
(24:37):
I mean, she just had it all. I think I think she went through the entire list
of things they wanted her to be able to say or accuse him of or bring up.
I mean, she was like a cat with a mouse just smacking him around.
The question is then, where do we go from here?
We're talking about six weeks. And, you know, I mean, voting is actually starting, I guess.
(25:03):
And, you know, early in person voting is starting already. ready.
So where are we?
And maybe, you know, I think her whole strategy of being the underdog is right because.
Count on four or five or six point variation between what the polls say and what finally happens.
(25:30):
And that could happen either way.
That could happen either way. There could be a lot more more air support than
is being shown from people who people have assumed to be Trump voters,
but Trump voters who will abandon Trump once the curtain is closed.
(25:51):
Yeah, I think they're more likely to just not vote.
I think there might be some people who supported them in the past and who felt
that they were a little pissed.
Yeah. Well, we'll take either.
Trump voters and Trump non-voters, to me, are the same. You get an equal power.
(26:13):
Well, no, because it's a negative one to a positive one. You get more of a switching.
If she wins by a large enough margin, then we all have people like trying to
mess with what's going on.
There will be some, but mess what's going on with the certification of the election.
(26:33):
Yeah, well, it sounds, you know, from what little I'm picking up in the wires,
there's a bunch of that going on right now.
I mean, Lindsey Graham is actually in Nebraska trying to convince the Nebraska
legislature to give all their votes to Harris, I mean, to Trump.
And they'd only be giving one to Harris.
So that's literally one electoral vote that they're out traveling to Nebraska and trying to do.
(26:59):
And as this guy, there's a great article recently by a guy named Stephen Marsh,
opinion column by a Canadian guy.
And I just happened to catch it. But he said one of the problems with what they're
doing is that what they're trying to do is muddy the water and create chaos
in the system. them. They're not really trying to change the laws at this late hour.
(27:20):
They're just trying to make it chaotic and muddy so that they can say on election
day and thereafter, hey, it was just too confusing. We can't really tell.
So we're going to turn it over to the convention committee or whatever little
thing they've created in their thing that says,
(27:41):
when we can't make a decision, This group of people will go ahead and make it
for us, or this court will go ahead and do it.
That's how we ended up with Bush and 20 years of mania, was not being able to
make up our own minds, even though he lost by, I forget how much,
half a million at least votes nationally.
They can't win a popular vote, the Republicans. They know that they can't win
(28:06):
for president in the presidency.
And, you know, this is a stat that's sticking in my head.
Maybe we even mentioned it last time, but in North Carolina,
47% of the people are Democrats, but 10 out of the 13 congressmen are Republicans. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's absurd. Yeah. It's so anti-democratic, it's ridiculous.
Yeah. And so you're going into states where, what, five,
(28:33):
six, whatever the percentage is, 75% of the people, at least 80%,
they want Trump to win. Right.
Well, where you're talking about the legislature. But, you know,
again, even those folks are going to probably begin to cry because what does
the future hold beyond that?
(28:53):
What happens? What happens when Trump is gone?
And any smart Republican has to think about, you know, what will people know
about me when Trump is gone?
Will somebody be able to supplant me? And what if Trump loses?
(29:14):
And they have to think about, will I have primary challenges coming at me from
the center saying, it's time to put the Republican Party back together again?
You know yeah I thought that was you know John Stewart.
Told Dick Cheney to fuck off on his show when Cheney threw his hat in or whatever
(29:36):
it is he throws in with Harris.
And I, I thought the guy's not, he's a shark. He's, he smelled blood in the water.
He's, he's seeing the potential for his daughter to become a leader in the new Republican party.
He's seeing a potential for his daughter to become president of the United States.
Absolutely. Without a doubt. While he's still alive.
(29:57):
Right. And so, yeah, I thought there's nothing, There's nothing but cynical
of what he's doing, or at least real politic, whatever you want to call it.
If Harris wins, there's a good chance that the next election will be Cheney Harris.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Wait, Cheney Harris?
Oh, Cheney v. Harris. Yeah, yeah. Cheney versus Harris. I agree completely.
(30:19):
That's exactly what I thought.
As soon as Dick Cheney came out, I thought, oh, well, he's seeing his daughter
as a possible leader in the newly rebuilt Republican Party.
That's all i never thought oh he's being he's softened the old man has softened you know.
Yeah right that guy's granite crumbling
(30:40):
granite the high sign here so i'm gonna i'm gonna suggest we uh call it quits
here and leave that there's something for people to think about and chew on
okay cheney the cheney harris election of 2028 yeah imagine where this show
would be if we get to there and the two of us get to chime in on that.
(31:01):
Well, you know, you heard it here first. This is the dribbling through the brambles.
Yes, it has. See you next time. Body bang.
Music.
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