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October 20, 2024 • 43 mins
This episode looks ahead to the final two weeks of the presidential campaign including who seems to be ahead, the Musk effect, Arnold Palmer's legacy, and which olassic SNL characters would be fun to see in the context of this election.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Welcome to the More Perfect Union in the podcast that
offers real debate without the hate. Kevin Kelton and as always,
I am here with Rebecca Cushmeiter.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
I am here enjoying the beautiful foliage here in Maryland
and waiting to see if we're going to experience the
fall of the patriarchy or the fall of democracy.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Or just fall.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
Yeah, which is just fall? It might just trip. Anything
could happen.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
And also with us is DJ McGuire, Professor McGuire, that
is right, and a lifelong Yankee fan who's feeling very,
very good today. Okay, so let's talk about this alleged
presidential election that we are two weeks away from. The
first thing I want to ask you, guys. All the

(01:05):
chatter now is about who's ahead. And there's this presumption
that Harris is losing, even though all of the data
I see has her ahead nationally and in the swing states.
She needs to get to two seventy. So I'm not
going to ask you who's ahead, but I want to
ask you what do you think about this this meme

(01:28):
that seems to be in the media that somehow Donald
Trump is comfortably ahead.

Speaker 4 (01:33):
I haven't seen anything that says he's comfortably ahead. Well convidently,
will yes. I think I think it's a couple one
we're seeing. We recognize this, I think more in twenty
twenty two because the Democrats seem to overperform than they
did overform, particularly in Senate races. They overperformed polling averages,

(01:57):
and we all ask ourselves why, and we took a
look and we said, oh, well, a lot the polling
averages were sort of tilted by a bunch of Republican
polsters who mainly threw out a bunch of numbers, didn't
include any methodology behind it, and didn't have any clients,
so it didn't look like they were campaign internal polls.

(02:20):
They're doing that again this year, and in fact it's
worse than two years ago. Simon Rosenberg is a Democratic
consultant who's got the opium substack, talks about this all
the time now, but it's real. I mean Trafalgar both
ras muscins. I mean the Wall Street journalist polster is
Tony Fabrizio, who used to be a Trump pollster. There

(02:42):
just are a lot of Republican polsters that are sort
of trying to tip the polling scales. And the reason
for this is it makes it easier for Donald Trump
to say that the election was stolen. Donald Trump has
no interest in actually winning the election, and he doesn't
really have that much justine actually governing. He's just doing
this to stay out of jail and to make himself
feel better. And the last thing I'll say is there

(03:03):
are some folks who are not including these this junk
in their polling averages. Carl Allen all run threads, but
the Washington Publist has their own polling averages that does
not include this junk. And while they still have it
as a statistical tie in these states, so we should
all still be very nervous. They do have Harris on
the right side of a statistical tie in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,

(03:26):
and Nevada, where she needs to be.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
I was going to quote the same Simon Rosenberg analysis,
like literally, I was going to mention Simon Rosenberg, you know,
so I'm the value of polling averages is to be
able to see, you know, macro trends. At this point,
you don't We're not looking at macro trends anymore. You

(03:50):
want to look at the state by state because this
election comes down to these seven battleground states. And you
know what I would say, the sanity preserving thing to
do is to pick one reliable bolster and follow those bowls.

Speaker 3 (04:08):
You know, whether it's the New York Times or you know.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
A CBS News poll, you know something that has a
history of being as good as polls can be, and
just watch the trends in that one poll. The other
thing to that we're looking at now in terms of
data is the early vote numbers.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
We've got states that are you know, they have.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
Opened early voting, and you know, daily I'm checking the numbers,
and I think we're up over thirteen million votes have
been cast, and that doesn't include the ones that are
in the mail right now, arriving at whatever office they
need to arrive at. And the average is sitting at
I think it's thirty six percent of the overall votes

(04:50):
cast are cast by registered Republicans and already something cast
by registered Democrats, and then a smaller number cast by
independents are unknown. So you know, we're still sort of
if you assume that every registered Democrat is actually voting
for Kamala Harris, we are banking votes now in the

(05:11):
early vote phase in actually fairly large numbers. They're bigger
numbers than we saw at this point in early voting
in twenty twenty. And if some of those early votes
are from Republicans who switched sides, that could be very
good news for us. But again, this is a margin
of error moment in politics, and all we can do
is keep working it the way we've been working it.

Speaker 4 (05:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah, I agree with everything both of you said, And
to build on that, you know, I am not a statistician,
certainly don't have DJ's understanding of polling, but it seems
to me at this point polling averages, even if they're
good polls, I don't look at polling averages anymore because
they're weighted down by old information that I think is

(05:57):
skewing the polls the wrong way. So I'm looking at
individual polls right now. I think that they're at a
better metric of where we are. DJ, does that comport
to what you think?

Speaker 4 (06:09):
I think? I mean, I'm more than willing to look
at average as long as the averages are good, as
long as the polls behind the average are good. Otherwise
you've got a lot of poll You would have a
lot of polls throwing in a call frame error, which
is basically they're not actually looking at the electorate as
it really is. I still think the New York Times
seeing a poll has an issue with that they're hiding now,

(06:31):
but that's what we thought that battle for one thing.
I would also know on the early voting the early
voting numbers two things. One, the democratic advantage that we
saw in twenty twenty was largely due to mail in voters.
So if you see early voting data that does not

(06:51):
include mail in data, you're going to see a more
republican profile of voters. Then you're going to think it
a ma surprise, don't panic, that's just their mail and
voters are not included. In addition to that, we are
expecting the mail in vote to be less democratic than
it was in twenty twenty for obvious reasons, yeah, namely COVID,

(07:11):
and therefore the election day figures, or at very least
the other early day figures, to be more democratic than
they were two four years ago. The simple fact of
the matter is, if you're trying to look at the
data as it is now and figure out what this
means for the election, you just really can't. There're too
many moving variables.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
Yeah, you're reading tea leaves, right.

Speaker 4 (07:31):
So I would just say, you know, do what you
you know, do what you can to help your candidates win.
And remember right now, just on the other side of
the border, on the other side of the country does
continent In British Columbia, the center left NDP government just
got re elected by a one seat margin, and one

(07:54):
of the seats was decided by all of twenty three
votes still counting. That could actually close it the other way.
But that gives you an idea of how much every
vote counts.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
Right, but it could become thirty votes. So yeah, we
can go both ways.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yeah, there could be a ten percent swing. We could
get that to twenty.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
Seven, right, exactly.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
So, And I want to just before we move on
to other topics about the election, I just want to
button this by saying, again, if you're listening, we probably
our listeners, probably because we tend to be a little
bit more democratic or a lot more democratic, I would
imagine that our listening base might also lean a little
bit to the left. So if you're out there and
you're one of those people who are really nervous, now,

(08:41):
you know, I can't tell you that everything's going to
work out for us. It's an election, and quite frankly,
no matter what the polls say, as we learned in
twenty sixteen, you still have to play the super Bowl,
no matter what the odds are going in. But Harris
is leading in the places she needs to be leading.
She does seem to have a two to three percent

(09:04):
or maybe even higher in some polls lead in the
national election, and she seems to be, as DJ said,
on the better side of the statistical tie in the
swing states that we know she needs to win. And
I don't know why people seem to think because Jake
Tapper was doing this this morning on CNN, I've been

(09:27):
seeing it on the cable news channels for the last
two weeks. They seem to think like it's all Trumpian
out there. And the fact of the matter is Harris
is attacking in North Carolina, She's attacking a little bit
in Georgia and Florida. And I'm not convinced that Arizona
and Nevada are sealed deals for Trump. So this idea

(09:47):
that like, oh, Trump just has to win one of
those three states and it's all over, is not factually correct. Okay,
let's talk about the ground game. Trump has been out
sourcing his outreach, his ground game to a super pack
that has been created and funded by Elon Musk. Rebecca,

(10:08):
you have some insight into this. How is that going? Well?

Speaker 2 (10:11):
You know, so I was reading this and typically when
you talk about ground game, you're talking about volunteers who
are making calls, knocking on doors, sending texts, what have you.
And they're they're doing the you know, the the face
to face, person to person campaigning, and occasionally a candidate
will employ paid canvassors to do this. I've been a

(10:31):
paid canvassor and the problem with paid canvassors is that
they aren't doing it for passion.

Speaker 3 (10:37):
They're doing it for a paycheck.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
So, you know, they they will clock their time and
not do a great job. And that appears to be
what's happening with Elon Musk's paid canvassors, because instead of
recruiting volunteers from Trump's base of support in any given region,
he's hiring people to go from door to door. And
The Guardian had a piece last night demonstrating that it

(10:58):
is possible that is much is twenty five percent of
the alleged contacts that musks paid campussers have had with
voters in Arizona may be fraudulent, Like there was evidence that,
because this is all done via app that you know,
there was a campusser sitting in a restaurant a mile
away from where they were supposed to be canvassing and
just like entering data that way. Now, is it possible

(11:19):
that they were just taking notes by hand and entering
it later. Sure, or they might have just been having
a cup of coffee and faking their timesheet, so you know,
so you know, And I was hearing on a podcast
someone saying that when Democratic campussers are going out there
asking if Republican canvassers had been in the neighborhood and
people are like.

Speaker 3 (11:39):
No, I haven't seen anyone.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
So you know, Democrats are covering ground that Republicans are not.
Will that make a difference in the end? Again, can't
say it's you know, but our ground game is a
little more authentic and possibly a little more comprehensive.

Speaker 4 (11:55):
I think this is one of those times where you're
never going to get your money worth with paid political cancers.
You're going to end up hiring people who are just
in it for the money. You probably open yourself up
to internal sabotage. And if you don't have someone who
has the commitment to getting you elected that you have

(12:18):
to getting yourself elected, you're going to run in proms.
And we've seen this with paid petition gatherers, where somebody says,
I'm just going to hire a bunch of people, they
get petitions to get me on the ballot, and you know,
a third to a half of the petitions get are
invalid because they're made up. This is not something Donald
Trump really understands. In his world, you get a service,

(12:40):
you hire someone, everyone else pays for it. But I'm
Donald Trump, so I don't. That's a different story.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
Or you you get the worst service possible, and then
when they mess up, as they did with his microphone
in Michigan the other day, then you just threaten to
sue them.

Speaker 4 (12:56):
But that's the thing, you know, by the time Donald try, besides,
he's going to sue Elon must go overall of this,
He's already lost the election, right, Yeah, so that would
be a great lawsuit, though, oh it will I mean,
I mean, if e.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
One has anything left after Dominion Susan, since he's bringing
that back and They've got a big payout from the
last guys they sued, so right exactly, their flush.

Speaker 4 (13:19):
The winners of the week are Dominions lawyers. They'll put
their grand kids through college with him.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah, good stuff, which has yet another good reason to
feel good about Harris's chances.

Speaker 2 (13:31):
And I wanted just to speaking of ground game, just
you know, this is this is an anecdote. This is
not anything you should take to the bank. But I
since twenty twenty, I have been an avid text banker
because it is the best way for me to get
involved in outreach. And so I'll be on a text bank.
You know, it's usually a zoom call and we're all

(13:52):
you know, texting from the same list and using the
sort of auto dialer function. In the past few weeks
when I have joined text banks, they have had to
tell experienced texters who don't need training, stop after x
number of texts so there are some left for the newbiests.
And we have been texting at such a high rate

(14:15):
that the dialer is glitching out, that it can't handle
the capacity at which these discrete groups are operating. And
that was not true in twenty twenty. It would be
twenty five people on a call, A handful of people
on a call. Now I'm seeing calls that are over
one hundred I'm getting on and I tend to go
with the same groups week after week, and I'm literally

(14:37):
seeing the same people week after week. There are people
who I recognize on these calls now from these calls,
like oh look, there's those perr Hi. So there is
a slice of America who are getting to work shift
after shift, week after week to try and make this happen.
I don't know if that's happening on the Republican side.

(14:58):
I have no way of knowing that, but there is
not complacency on the Democratic side, and that is a
very heartening data point for me.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
Rebecca, I want to ask you about texting. You've talked
about it many times, that you do text banking. That
used to be phone banking, now it's text banking. Just
describe a little bit that process. I get these texts
about five times a day from everyone.

Speaker 2 (15:24):
From only five, really, I get like a dozen yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
No, it's probably more. Yeah from Tim Wallas, from Kamala Harris,
from Joachim Jeffries. I've even gotten texts from people I
know saying if you know me. I got one from
Julia Louis Dreyfus saying, Hey, Kevin, you know if you
know me?

Speaker 4 (15:42):
I do know you?

Speaker 1 (15:45):
Do you do those kinds of texts? Is there a
script that people are given that says, Hi, this is
Kamala Harris.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Yes, well okay, So if you're getting one that's from
the candidate or from a celebrity, or from James Carville,
my god, I get more texts from James Cargil than
I've ever wanted, and that I only ever wanted zero.
So that's where that bar is. If you're getting those,
they are they are typically fundraising appeals, and they're not

(16:13):
expecting you to respond. You're either going to click the
link and donate, or you're going to ignore the text,
or you're going to ask to unsubscribe. And those are
just I assume they're being sent out as a mass text.
They're not looking for interaction. There's probably no one on
the other end who could really help you. There's also
texts that'll say something like Hi, I'm Rebecca, a campaign

(16:35):
volunteer with the Harris victory campaign for North Carolina. We're
counting on everybody's vote this year. Can we count on
your support, and that is it's a script. It's an
automated script that is in a system and I am
literally just hitting sand hundreds of times, and when people
respond to it, I then have scripted responses that I

(16:56):
plug in if they write back yes, like great, do
you have a plan to vote? Are we going to
see you early voting or election day? And the reason
for these follow up questions in this kind of relational
text banking is because we can then put in their
data file tags, you know, So if they're like, oh,
I just cast my ballot, I sent my ballot by

(17:17):
mail today, like great, I can tag already voted vote
by mail and they will not receive another contact from
that particular campaign. Now, the fundraising ones, if you also
look at the link in them, a lot of them
are from packs. They're not from the campaign itself. They're
from packs that are then giving money to the campaign.

(17:38):
I don't donate to those packs because I'm never sure
that they're actually going to do what I want with
my money, so I just ignore or unsubscribe to them.
But yeah, the ones that are coming in from I
mean Julia Louis drive Is Kevin if she's saying if
you know me, you're the only one who knows her.

Speaker 1 (17:52):
I know, I know that, I understand that.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
Yeah. If it's just like random name a volunteer for
sending the text, then it's what I'm doing, which is
data bank managing and you know, trying to rally the troops.
And there are these others that are just fundraising texts.
You know, they're like one thousand percent match, give money today,
and some George Soros person will give one thousand dollars more.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
What That's the one that we joke about, Jess and
I and amongst our friends are the matches, the ones
that say today, it's unbelievable, it's a nine hundred percent match.
And we're thinking, if there's some rich entity out there
that cares that much about Kamala Harris, just donate the money. Yeah,
just donate the money.

Speaker 2 (18:40):
Yeah. So that's what it is, and it's you know,
the responses are very scripted, but you know, occasionally I've
had these really good conversations via text, and my sister,
who's been doing a lot of phone banking recently, has
had good conversations over the phone with people. Like I
talked to somebody it was a voter in Arizona, and
I was writing on behalf of a house member for
a House candidate, and the woman said, well, I'm I'm

(19:01):
pro life. I'm like, okay, I understand, thanks for letting
me know, but you know, here's more. You know, here's
the link to his campaign if you want to learn more.
And we kept going because the person on the other
end was really interested in their proposals for bringing down
the cost of housing and other substantive policy and you know,
and I finally said, I'm like, listen, you know, as
you know, this is a complicated issue, but being pro

(19:23):
choice is more than just about abortion. We are also
in favor of, you know, helping people get healthcare and
childcare and housing and all the things that are important
for raising a healthy family. And this is why he's running.
And the prisons was like, yes, and I understand that,
and that is that is something I want to see too.
So did I did I persuade a voter? I don't know,

(19:43):
but I didn't not persuade a voter.

Speaker 1 (19:45):
That day and the more Perfect Union We'll be back
right after this. This past week also saw Harris and
Trump going as now the cliche is into the lion's den.
That's now a new, overused term in interviews with supposedly

(20:08):
adversarial media outlets. How do they manage a DJ I'll
throw to you first, and you can bring up any
one of them and give any analysis you like.

Speaker 4 (20:17):
I think the real moment in that in harris interview
with Fox News came a couple of days afterwards, when
Brett Bhaer went back on Fox News and said, yes,
I made a mistake. I aired the wrong clip that
basically said everything we needed to know about it. Anybody
outside of the Fox News universe could see that something
strange was going on and that she handled it very well,

(20:41):
which she did. I don't know a lot of Fox
News viewers who would necessarily vote for Harris over this,
but I think a lot of them are going to
look at that and go, Okay, she's not the wacko
every that I was told she is. She's not mentally
deficient as Trump says is. I think she may have

(21:02):
convinced a number of Fox viewers to maybe sit this
election out because they really don't like Trump, and now
they're much less I think they'll be less worried about
Harris than and that helps too. Every Trump voter who
stays home is effectively half of Harris.

Speaker 1 (21:19):
Yeah, and I want to build on that. You know,
I was watching Jake Tapper interview House speaker Mike Johnson
this morning, and Johnson, of course, he's very pro Trump,
said everyone has to ask themselves if they're comfortable with
Kamala Harris being the commander in chief, which, first of all,
I find to be a very sexist and possibly racist question.

(21:40):
But I'm a little sensitive to that.

Speaker 4 (21:42):
I was going to ask if you thought that was
a dog whistle. I wasn't sure.

Speaker 1 (21:45):
I absolutely do, but I think a lot of things
I'm seeing about Harris or dog whistles. And then Bernie
Sanders was the next interview, and it was a softball.
It was teed up for him to say, well, the
real question is, first of all, I do think Kamala
Harris should be commander in chief at this time in history.
But to those who have any question about it, I

(22:06):
would say, is Donald Trump the person you want to
be commander in chief? When he's talking about using the
military to harass and possibly imprison his political opponents, when
he has been caught talking to putin behind everyone's back,
multiple times over the last four years, and we could

(22:28):
go on and on and on about the reasons that
he is not qualified to be commander in chief. So, yeah,
I just don't understand. I see so many interviews where
these softballs are just teed up and people don't know
how to swing at them. Rebecca, now I'm going to
throw to you, what do you think about the interviews
you've seen with either harats and or mister Trump the

(22:48):
last few days.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
Well, the value of.

Speaker 2 (22:50):
The Harris interview of her sitting down with a Fox
News anchor is that she has shown a willingness to
speak to people who are not her supporters, something up
over and over again has told us that he is
not willing to do, and also that he wants to
punish us for not being his supporters, talking about, you know,
not sending aid to California unless they been to his will,

(23:12):
not only in the past where that actually happened, but
you know, as a future policy measure. So she's not
necessarily reaching across the aisle, but she is telling the
people on the other side of the aisle, I'm here
to be your president too. You may not like that,
but I'm still thinking of you. The Trump town hall

(23:34):
with was it was it univision? I don't I was
seeing the clips. And when the gentleman asked Trump about
January sixth, then Trump went on and on about how
nobody had guns and it was very peaceful, and it
was the biggest crowd I've ever spoken to, and it
was a day of love. The expressions on those people's faces.

(23:55):
If your mom gives you that look, if your dad
gives you that look, just hand over the car keys,
hand over your phone, you're grounded for a month. Like
the skepticism and disgust that that audience was, you know,
shooting his way with their eyes was unlike anything I've
ever seen in a town hall like that that you

(24:16):
don't normally get blanket appropriation of that level when you're
attempted to campaign for voters, because candidates are putting them
best selves forward. It was really stunning to see him
just unwilling to deviate from his fantasy about that day

(24:40):
enough to try and appease people who support he needs.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
Yeah, I want to build on that. You know a
lot of people are saying there's going to be no
October surprise this year, and I'm hoping that that is
correct that there's no major scandal that throws one person
off their game. But I think that this the Day
of Love is a mini October surprise. I think that
is going to renown very poorly for the Trump campaign.

(25:06):
I don't think they realized yet how much he stepped
in it with that.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
Well I was, you know, I was making cracks about
it on social media. I'm like, yeah, January sixth was
the Day of Love and nine to eleven was a
day of national unity, and the Civil War was a
period of constructive negotiation.

Speaker 4 (25:23):
Well don't Yeah, but Rebecca, remember Lincoln should have settled.

Speaker 2 (25:27):
That right, No, before it ever happened. Yeah, we never
should have gotten to that point.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
I mean he said they should have settled the Civil War.
Settling means compromise. Settling means the South would have gotten
something and there still would have been some form of slavery.

Speaker 3 (25:44):
Or they should have been allowed to succeee.

Speaker 4 (25:46):
But what we need to what we need to remember
is that we are in a very polarized era, so
that the kind of voters would be swayed by stuff
like this is a much much smaller voting pool than
we've had before, and they're much more concentrated than they.
If this were say nineteen eighty, one in five voters

(26:09):
would be wondering what to do, and they would account
for the margin in twenty five or thirty states. We
don't live in that world anymore. We live in a
world where at least forty states already know how they're
going to vote because the people who live there. So

(26:30):
when we say these kinds of things quote have no
impact on quote, what we really mean is there are
far fewer voters for which this would have an impact.

Speaker 3 (26:42):
That's so depressing.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
Okay, so we still have a lot to talk about,
so we're going to hit these, but let's really be
tight with our answers. Let's talk a little bit about
social media. Rebecca, you are very active on Twitter. Dj're
I don't know what Blue Sky is. I've heard the name,
but I don't know what it is, to be honest,

(27:05):
and Rebecca, you have some issues about how Musk is
changing the block function on X. Do you want to.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
Yeah, So I've been on Twitter since it was Twitter.
I joined in twenty ten, so we're going on fifteen
years that I have been on that app. I've used
it to promote my writing. I have used it to
connect with people in my community. I've used it to
just say wacky and wild stuff. I have over thirty
thousand followers. I am part of small small groups of

(27:38):
you know, like minded users that we chat and we
support and we boost each other's posts to to amplify
our messages. I block easily a dozen trolls a day,
sometimes more. And I have blocked actual people that are
in my community and some who are not who wish

(28:03):
me harm like I've I've had an anonymous stalker leave
me creepy voicemails, and there's a there's several people in
my community who resent me deeply for my role in
some school board elections and have made kind of veiled
threats to me on social media, and I have them

(28:23):
blocked so that they have to go through a process.
If they want to see what I post, they have
to log out of their main account and go to
a different account, or get somebody to screenshot it or something.

Speaker 3 (28:32):
Elon Musk is about to change.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
The block feature so that if you block a person,
they can still see everything you post. They can't interact
with it, but they can see it. His stated reason
for this is because people are you know, blocking folks
so that they can talk smack about them.

Speaker 3 (28:45):
I don't think that's the reason.

Speaker 2 (28:46):
I think the reason is so he can guarantee advertisers
a certain number of impressions, whether or not the user
has blocked the advertiser, because people have blocked advertisers right
and left just to kind of stick it to Musks
since he bought the place. So I am going to
be leaving Twitter because of that, because it does impact
my safety and it impacts my family safety.

Speaker 3 (29:08):
I do not want to give these.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
People more visibility into my thoughts, my life where I am.
The day after the election, I will be going private
and I will never post again.

Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yeah, I will be leaving Twitter. Maybe not the day
after because I think there's going to be a lot
of activity still for days or weeks to come, but
I will be leaving Twitter soon after the election for
much the same reasons. Plus I just don't want to
support mister Musk's endeavor.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
Yeah, I figure the stuff that happens after the election,
there's nothing that I can do about it, Like I
can't canvas on behalf of pro democracy lawyers that are
trying to protect the process. So, yeah, my voice stops
to matter, stops mattering.

Speaker 4 (29:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
I use Twitter to get information, especially polling data and
voting data and things like that. And that's that's you know,
for me, it's a it's an information gathering source. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:09):
No. And it used to be great as an aggregator.
It used to be a place where you could go
and find out everything you needed to find out. Now
it's it's a little harder to do because it's so
heavy with bots and weird blue check accounts and you know, Nazis.

Speaker 4 (30:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:22):
Yeah, So moving on, so Trump, I wonder who. I
wonder whether Trump employs writers, because he keeps coming up
with stuff. You keep thinking that he's hit bottom, and
then two days later he's gone, you know, a mile deeper.
So yesterday he was talking about Arnold Palmer's penis and

(30:47):
his legendary length, and he wasn't talking about his drives,
and he spent some ten to fifteen minutes of his
rally talking about that, and then also to the vice
president of the United States as a shit vice president,
he said the word shit. Where are we now with

(31:08):
presidential or people who want to be president their behavior?

Speaker 4 (31:13):
I think this matters a lot less than you think
it matters. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this
was a liberate distraction from the nonsense that he has
been doing recently. I think he would much rather we
all clutch our pearls about Arnold Palmer's driver, then talk

(31:37):
about his swaying to music for thirty nine minutes, or
his walking back and forth for half an hour during
technical difficulties, or his enemy within comments where he basically
said anybody who disagrees with him could be met by
a firing squad.

Speaker 1 (31:53):
Including I believe it was General Millie was we talked about.

Speaker 4 (31:58):
He's talked about wanting to kill Milly for months, if
not years, but he specifically called out Adam Schiff. Is
somebody this time who might want to put in front
of a firing squad?

Speaker 1 (32:08):
Yeah? Who will be a city United States senator in January?

Speaker 4 (32:12):
Yes, most likely. So you know, those things are much
more important than Arnold Palmer in his one iron. So
I really think, honestly, I think this was a deliberate distraction.
He knew everyone would get would get all up in arms.
He knew, he knew his the one place where he

(32:32):
thinks he can gain voters. Gen Z men have no
idea who Elnor Palmer even is. So throw that out there,
you know, throw the dead cat on the table, and
distract from the fact that he is using overtly fascist
language and that Harris herself had a pretty good interview

(32:55):
on Fox News. This just wipes all of that off
the front pages for reasons that are ultimately beneficial to him.
So it's not really something I'm paying all that man
attention to. I would rather media doesn't fall for it,
but media's media, so of course they fall for it.

Speaker 3 (33:13):
I disagree.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
The reason Trump started talking about Arnold Palmer is because
he was The event was at the Arnold Palmer Airport.

Speaker 3 (33:21):
He was free associating.

Speaker 2 (33:23):
He landed at the Arnold Palmer Airport and that got
him thinking about Arnold Palmer, and he couldn't keep his
mind on what he was supposed to be doing, so
he just talked about Arnold Palmer for a while because
he was entertaining himself. I don't think there was any
strategy behind it. I don't think there was any sense
of the big picture. He just saw the name Arnold Palmer,

(33:44):
decided to show off that he knew the guy and
talk about his dick and then he had to weave
back to whatever he was supposed to weave back to.

Speaker 1 (33:54):
Yeah, if he had been giving a rally at the
Museum of Television, he would have been talking about Uncle
Milty's big dick.

Speaker 2 (34:02):
So well, we all still are talking about that. That was.
But yeah, but who knows who Arnold Palmer is? Like,
you know, it's a beverage.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
Not well, let me tell you something about that. Because
of some of my medical issues, I have to particularly
stay hydrated, and when I go out to dinner, I
don't particularly like water, and I don't drink alcohol. My
go to beverage is an Arnold Palmer, which, if people
don't know's it's half iced tea half lemonade. I don't
know whether I could ever order it now it can

(34:32):
with a straight face. He has he has actually hurt
my health with that comment.

Speaker 2 (34:39):
He didn't even have to repeat Obama carey. Yeah, he
just rendered the ear where you're wondering what that drink
is dispensed from now and you can't can't take it seriously.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
So the Al Smith dinner was this past week nd
Trump was there. He did what he thinks is stand
up comedy, or some version of it. For twenty to
thirty minutes. Didn't get very many laughs, but people were polite.
But Kamala Harris did not go to the Al Smith
dinner as candidates traditionally do. Instead, she sent a video

(35:20):
with her and Molly Shannon, a former Saturday Night Live
cast member, and she played her Mary Catherine Gallagher character,
who is ostensibly a young Catholic schoolgirl dressed as a
Catholic schoolgirl. And I thought it was a very well
written and a very funny piece. Molly carried most of

(35:40):
the comedy, but Kamala was a very apt, very talented
straight person for her. Did you guys see that? And
what were your thoughts? Very quickly, by the way, I
don't want to blabor this very quickly, what were your
thoughts on the Al Smith dinner in general?

Speaker 3 (35:56):
I only saw that. I didn't see Trump's bit at all.

Speaker 2 (35:58):
I think I've seen some of some clips of gas again,
I thought them Bali Shannon video.

Speaker 3 (36:01):
I thought that was just charming.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
It was it was just so sweet and you know,
didn't it didn't dunk on anybody. It was you know,
it was it was it was humorous without being mean,
and that's that's always nice.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
To see in in sort of a political environment.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
Yeah, and you know, a day or two after on CNN,
you know, they've got these these Republicans on CNN that
are supposed to be there to counterbalance everything, and they're
really just shills for the Trump administration. And one of
those two guys, I forget which one it was, was
saying that not only didn't Kamala Harris show up, but
she did this bit with Molly Shannon that insulted the

(36:39):
Catholic Church. The Mary Kathlen Gallagher character in no way
insults or demeans the Catholic Church. Quite the opposite. It
was quite endearing.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Oh yeah, like all this stuff like be really, it's
okay if you make a mistake. Catholics are very forgiving
like stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (36:55):
It was, it was cute.

Speaker 4 (36:57):
It was yeah, yeah, dj any thoughts, I follow the
John I follow the Jonathan V. Last school on this,
which is Trump and I'll just quotehim directly. Trump Ism
has turned events like the Al Smith dinner, which used
to be bombs for democracy into weapons against it. He
had no business being there, they had no business inviting him.

(37:21):
The entire event made it feel like this is a
normal election when this is not a normal election, and
this is just one of the unfortunate realities of American
democracy is that not only have there are there far
fewer norms out there, but there are the norms that
are left, many of them can actually be weaponized against themselves,

(37:43):
and this was an example of it. That's all I
have to say on the matter.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
Yeah, my final point on it is again the right
always looking to find something to criticize Kamala Harris for
is going, oh, she didn't show up to the Al
Smith dinner. What an insult that was to Catholics. Trump
didn't show up to see to sixty minutes or the
second debate or a second debate. So I think if

(38:07):
we're balancing those two. But I do want to follow
up on this Molly Shannon Mary Catherine Gallagher bit that
Kamala did with with Molly Shannon. We were thinking, actually
this was Rebecca's thought that it might be interesting if
other SNL characters, as we are now in the fiftieth
season of SNL, if other historic SNL characters interacted with

(38:30):
the candidates. And so Rebecca, I'm going to throw to
you first, what other classic SNL characters would you like
to see do a bit with.

Speaker 2 (38:37):
A candidate Roseanne Rosanna Danna without without a doubt, Roseanne
Rosanna Danna interviewing either of them would be I mean,
Gilda Radner could not put a foot wrong when it
came to comedy. She was just the funniest person, you know,
just creative and lovely and hilarious. But imagine Roseanne Rosanna
Dana interviewing Donald Trump, Yeah you're chuckling right now, or

(39:01):
her Emily Lttella character daring to talk to Kamala Harris.
Any of that would just be so funny and so
much fun to watch.

Speaker 4 (39:11):
DJ and he thoughts apparently nobody wants to work with
him anymore. But I want to see Chevy Chase as
the ghost of Jerald's board, just staring at the camera,
and you voted me out because I fell off the
fucking stairs.

Speaker 1 (39:27):
And the one that I came up with is I
would like to see a Conehead's piece where Bell Darr
finds out that his wife Primat was having an affair
with R.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
F K.

Speaker 1 (39:40):
Junior, and he's he's insulted and hurt until the DJ
is covering his microphone he's laughing so loud don't do that, DJ,
we want the last and and and and Bell. Darr
is hurt until he meets our FK Junior and finds
out because Beldar, if you remember, was a very weird character,

(40:02):
that he finds out that RFK Junior may be weirder
than him, and he ends up liking him and finding
him and jeering.

Speaker 3 (40:09):
That would be very good.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
You know another another you know, to put someone in
a skit situation, Wayne's World. Oh yeah, Kama Kamala Harris
on Wayne's World would be terrific. Donald Trump would not
be able to handle it. He would he would melt
down if like remember the interview scene in the Wayns
World movie where he started putting notes on the back

(40:33):
of the que cards, one that said, this man blows
goats I have. If you know, if something like that
would happen and Donald Trump would would just completely explode,
it would be pretty funny.

Speaker 4 (40:44):
Hang on, hang on, this this is not really fit
Steve Martin's Wild and Crazy Guy in the Florida Villages.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
Oh yes, that would be outstanding.

Speaker 1 (40:55):
Well yeah, so John love It, says the liar Tommy Flanagan.
Meeting Donald Oh would be a lot of fun.

Speaker 4 (41:02):
That would be good.

Speaker 3 (41:03):
Or Tommy Flanagan with jd.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
Vance, Yeah, that would be that.

Speaker 4 (41:10):
Choose Hey Trump Flanagan, that's the ticket.

Speaker 1 (41:16):
That's brilliant. DJ. And with that we want to thank
everybody for listening. If you enjoy what we do here,
please follow us on Instagram at MPU podcast and also
look for our substack page where we post opinion pieces
between shows. DJ and recently Rebecca have been very active there.
And don't forget to share our podcast link on your Facebook,

(41:38):
timeline and your other social media even on Twitter and
on threads and on that blue sky thing whatever it is,
so your friends can discover us as well. And as always,
we want to thank Alan Keeney for the theme music
that we play at the front and the back of
this show. Alan is and was a very talented man
and we we are honored to be able to feature

(41:58):
his music on our podcast. And with that, guys, I
am not going to be here next week to do
a podcast, so we may not be doing one until
either right before or right after the election. So I'm
going to ask you, now, how will you be spending
election night? Are you going to a watch party or

(42:21):
do you watch it on your own at home.

Speaker 2 (42:25):
The level of anxiety that just seized my whole body
as I thought about trying to watch the coverage on
election night. It was pretty extraordinary. And I might need
to be sedated, like I am now a Romote song.
I want to be sedated, And I.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
Don't know where I will be location wise, but I
know I will be deep into a bottle of Jack

Speaker 2 (42:45):
Daniels, swimming in it, actually just doing lapse in a
bottle of Jack Daniels
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