SIO165: Blue Wave Meets Red Wall

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only, this is episode 165, I'm your host Thomas Smith, coming at you the day after the midterms, 2018, uh, yeah, I am a jumble of thoughts and emotions, I've, I have written down notes, I read a lot, I got so many thoughts, I don't know, you know, it's still early, I, I don't know how much this might change in the following weeks. I know, for example, my state of California has so many mail-in ballots and so much opportunity for voters to do mail-in ballots that we don't total up our tallies for a very long time. So if you see a very low vote total for California, just wait, because it'll go.

0:01:17 Thomas: That's happened actually last year, too, in some of those special elections where I was very shocked and appalled because the numbers were so low. I thought there was all this excitement and then took like a month and eventually the numbers were high anyway. But not just that in analysis and exit polls and all that. They have to configure all that, so a lot of thoughts, though. I mean, there's already plenty of information enough to tell you. First off, I want to just tell a little story about my night last night. If you follow me on social media, you may have seen some very frantic, disturbing posts. So here's what happened to me. I was watching along. I had MSNBC on and I had the FiveThirtyEight tracker going because I like FiveThirtyEight.

0:02:03 Thomas: I appreciate, you know, I have confidence in them. I have confidence in their models and their data. And while, of course, it's a human thing, polls are not anywhere near 100% reliable, but enough data should give you a pretty good indication. So I at least think the polling in the FiveThirtyEight model is about as good as we have, really. So, I was following along their live tracker. And there they said they would plug in data as it came and certain things that maybe you or I wouldn't be able to track very easily, like turnout and likely voter stuff, like how that would adjust their model, all this stuff. So I was looking forward to seeing, you know, maybe some incremental ticks either way. Maybe the Democrats would tick up in the House and, you know, maybe there would be a miracle there.

0:02:51 Thomas: Maybe there should be some chances is in the Senate. And so I was watching that and so far so good. It was, you know, doing about what I thought it would. It kind of, it was staying within the same margin that we've seen, you know, something like 90% for the House and 10, 12% for the Senate. You know, numbers I was prepared for. And early on, Florida started reporting. And Florida is one of the really bad sides of this election in some ways for Democrats. Of course, you'll know by now that Scott is going to win and Gillum is going to lose. And that is just not something that I had anticipated. Gillum was doing really well. I love Gillum. He was doing very well.

0:03:36 Thomas: He's doing very good, really well in the polls. He had a lead. And I guess I need, okay, pause here. I need to outline my expectation. So here's what I had been thinking going into this, and if you were not like me, that's okay. I'm just talking about my, you know, my thoughts. If you were smarter than I was or you knew exactly what was going to happen or you're not disappointed, whatever, I don't care. This is what I was thinking. Maybe some of you were thinking the same thing. I was thinking, as much as 2016 ruined my naive, white, privileged conception of what this country was, and I mean that, I really did, you know, I didn't think this country was like the greatest thing in the world, but I thought we were at least not that bad.

0:04:23 Thomas: By a slim margin, I thought we were just good enough as a people to not elect Donald Trump and to potentially not elect a bunch of Republicans in Congress, but you know, that, that was what I was thinking. And then 2016 was a real waking up. And of course the last two years have been a living nightmare. I mean, seeing what has been okay for Republicans to do and say, and what, what they've been able to get away with has been a nightmare, but the whole time here, here's, here's again, I apologize. It's such a jumble of thoughts. I'm doing my best. I have stuff written down, but it's just so many different thoughts going on. Another thing that's a huge problem with elections in general is we put so much on a binary thing.

0:05:10 Thomas: You've heard it a million times. There are three states that Hillary could have won that combine, a combined total of like 80,000 votes could have gone the other way. That's nothing. Like that's tiny amount of people really in the grand scheme of things. 80,000 people go a different way in 2016 and all of our narratives are different. Everything is different. Trump was inevitably going to lose. He was, of course, he was a disaster. He's the worst guy. He was so bad that Hillary beat him. Imagine how different everything would be narrative wise, but that didn't happen. And Trump won. And so then the narrative was so far the other way that, that everything he did, he Was a genius. Everything he did was, was brilliant. His race baiting strategies are good. He, uh, anything to trigger their libs is actually smart.

0:05:56 Thomas: It's going to work. And you know what? I actually kind of think neither of those things are really true. I'll get to that more on that later, but that's what I, and I had been thinking in the back of my mind for these two years, I thought, okay, we made a disastrous mistake in 2016. And I know, you know, I knew the odds. I knewtheodds at 90% and 12% ish.

I know the odds And I thought, okay, well, the house, that looks pretty good, but maybe, but maybe with how, how, uh, well Beto was doing and how good of a candidate he was and, and Gillum and some other people, maybe we'll, we'll roll a, whatever we need to roll a six, I guess it would be, or roll an eight on an eight sided die or something. Maybe we'll role that eight and get the Senate maybe, or, or you know, at least stem the tide and keep it to the control that it is now, which is 51 to 49, which is nice because then Republicans can only lose two votes on something. It's better than nothing. I mean, obviously, 50-50 would even be better than that. But I thought maybe we will hit that number on the die.

0:07:05 Thomas: 12%, that's not an extremely rare thing. And I thought, I'm feeling so much energy. I'm, I'm seeing so much, uh, early vote. I'm excited. And I, and I allowed myself, I suppose the slightest amount of, uh. Anticipation of, of positive thinking just, just a little bit. You know, I just thought, yeah, wouldn't it be great? You know? Like, wouldn't it be, wouldn'NT it just be such a salve, if that's the word, to the wound of the last two years, of Beto won and gave us control of the Senate somehow. Like it's, it's possible. 12%. It's not impossible. Could happen. I started hoping. Stupid me, foolish me. I know I'm such a dummy. Thomas, what are you thinking? Don't you know how dumb this country is? Yeah, I know, I'm such an idiot.

0:07:52 Thomas: Sorry, sorry that I allowed myself the slightest amount of positivity. And then, back to my story, Florida results start coming in, and I had a flashback to 2016, because at the same time, and by the way, had Gillum won, we still wouldn't have taken the Senate. So it's not as though I was basing this super rosy prediction on Gillum winning. Gillum was one of the ones where it was more of a sure thing. Like it was actually pretty certain that he was going to win. And then there'd be a bunch of other seats. You know, Beto was, was not by any means, any sort of sure thing, he was down consistently in the polls. And so it wasn't as though I had all my positivity pinned on Gillum. He was kind of, he was like at a bare minimum, even, even in the world where we lose the Senate, I thought we would still win Florida, that seat, the Gillum seat.

0:08:39 Thomas: And I love Gillum so much. I think he's such a brilliant candidate and I loved his debate performance. I just thought it was, it was so inspiring and amazing. And he's going against a racist. And I just thought, okay, well that, that should be good. And Florida starts coming in and not only is Gillum losing, but Scott is, is winning the governor. Sorry, not the governor, the other Senate seat, I suppose it is. Oh, I have it flipped. I meant Gillum is, is obviously running for governor and Scott was the governor. He was running for the Senate seat. So sorry, I might have mixed that up. And, you know, there's a lot of races, but I'm sure you all know that already. So, and both the Republicans are winning now. It's close, but both the Republicans are winning. And I flash back instantly to 2016 when this the results started coming in.

0:09:25 Thomas: And again, naive little me. I'm not I fully acknowledge I'm almost I want to say I don't know if proud is the right word, but but I might be a little bit proud of the fact that I was shocked and appalled by 2016. I don't feel bad that I thought we were better than that. You know, like I thought we were not absolute garbage people in 2016 and I was wrong. I don't feel like that was bad of me to think we weren't garbage people, you know? So anyway, 2016, I've told the story a million times, but I was at a co-work, co-workers back when I had that job on the election party, and I was instantly depressed because in my mind in 2016, we were finally going to see that there's no way this fucking joke of a candidate and Donald Trump, this racist idiot joke could possibly beat Hillary Clinton.

0:10:20 Thomas: In my mind, the idea that it was going to be even close was absurd. I proudly admit that. I'm not going back and changing the past and saying that I thought he was going to win. No, I didn't. I didn't think he was gonna win. I have no problem admitting that. I still don't. I still think he shouldn't win. Anyway, so when results started coming in that were not that, that were not Hillary, maybe, you know, not 100% Hillary or something, but a good performance, you know, beating expectations by 4% or something like that. That was what, in my mind, in 2016, that's what I expected. We were going to beat expectations because in my mind there was going to be sure, you know, Republicans are going to Republican and they're not going to allow a woman to be president, specifically Hillary Clinton.

0:11:09 Thomas: But I thought, you know Trump is bad enough that like three or 4%, you know somehow in there people wouldn't vote. Like Republicans would just be like, I can't do it. I can, I, I don't know. I don't, I mean, was that so unreasonable to think that it would be still close, but like enough people would be like, I'm not voting for Trump that I just would would be that little bit because we're talking about such close stuff. You know, like all these elections, it's kind of remarkable just how 50-50 our country tends to be once you factor in the, you know, electoral college and and the gerrymandered house map, of course. Now, Democrats are going to win the popular vote probably by like nine or 10%, something insane like that. And the idea that we barely get to take power at all because of that is really weird.

0:11:59 Thomas: Back to the story. So the similar thing happened in Florida and those Gillum and Scott results came in and I started, I flashed back, I got that panic. And I think I would have been okay though. I think I would have been able to say, okay, no big deal. We're going to be okay, we're going to win the house still. My dreams of the Senate were, yeah, they were foolish anyway. I think I would have been okay. But then the fucking 538 live tracker for reasons which I, I kind of have gotten an explanation, but I hope they explain it more. The live tracker plummeted. It went from like 90, it was in the mid nineties for Democrats to win in the house and, you know, 12, 14% for the Senate, in an instant, in one instant, it shot down to like 55% for the House and like 0%, you know 5% or something for the Senate.

0:12:53 Thomas: 55%, going from 90, sometimes it was 95%, as high as 95%. Going from that to 55% in an instance, I really started to melt down. I'll be real. I mean, some of you saw that on social media. I panicked. Can you blame me? I thought we were doing this again. I thought we were going, this, where after not only doing Trump but like two years of seeing what this guy has been, and seeing how evil and racist and shitty and sexist and anti-woman and anti-everything, like seeing all that, I thought we were again not only going to not overcome it, but also, for a split second, it looked like we were gonna disappoint. It looked like we're going to do worse than the polls said again. And, and I lost it.

0:13:38 Thomas: I couldn't, for a few minutes there. I posted some really negative stuff. Sorry about that. I mean, I was on a couple of things, but some people seem to have been pretty alarmed by it. And sorry, all I can say is I was alarmed too. I wasn't trying to alarm anybody over and above what I was. I posted the screenshot of the chances plummeting. And so shortly after, you know, someone was like, oh, well, the thing plummeted.

But I think that's just because some of these toss up, you know, let me, let me explain for a sec. The Democrat 90% chance of taking the house was based on the fact that there were like a ton of toss-up seats, and Republicans controlled most of them. So naturally, if you flip, you know, 40 coins, and in order to keep control, Republicans have to get heads 35 times out of 40, obviously that means Democrats have a really good chance, like all we have to do is 50-50 and we win easily.

So I guess what had happened was, the way their model was configured, the live tracker was configured, because a few of those toss-ups came in Republican early on, I have to say, it still seems like bullshit to me, something must have been wrong, like a few of those came in Republican and all of a sudden it shot from 95 to 55, that can't have been right, something was wrong. So I was pretty upset with that live tracker.

Don't do a live tracker if that's what happens, if a couple, couple early results come in and it, and your chances plummet, even though that ultimately ended up being totally wrong. Like it, by the end of the night, it was back up to the 90%, even before we knew for sure that the Democrats had won.

0:15:16 Thomas: So there clearly was a glitch or an error or an oversight or something, because if, if your live tracker is going to be that volatile to a couple of early results, don't do a live tracker. I feel like that's on you. That's a lot of people, people are mad at me for saying I thought that was bullshit. But, you know, don't do a live tracker that just stick with your forecast, your final forecast. You know, if if you're going to do a life tracker, find a way to make it so that if, you know, four of the seats come in Republican, that doesn't completely change it to a landslide. The other way seems ridiculous to me. I'm sure we'll get some explanation later on and we'll see. But anyway, the whole point is that was why I was super negative combined with those Florida results. After all was said and done, skipping ahead, skip to the end now.

0:16:03 Thomas: Overall, obviously a good night. A good night for Democrats, but not a great night. Good but not great. Starting with the good, though, we got control of the house, that is huge, I, it, that, that really does matter, and I'm, I'm trying to do my best to remember how much we needed that, and how devastating it would have been, it would've been, I really would've the fucking end if we didn't win the house. I, I mean, if after all that we've been through, we can't win back one Chamber of Conger, uh, Congress, in order to kind of stem the tide of bullshit, shit, that would have been just truly awful. And it didn't happen. We did win. That is good. I need to remind myself of that. Now, according to Andrew on Opening Arguments, that means the Mueller report is safe.

0:16:53 Thomas: I am a little worried because I don't know for sure that he was factoring in Jeff Sessions being fired, and then the other person coming in and being a total hack who's anti-Mueller. I hope that Andrew had factored that in. I think we're gonna have to wait for Opening Arguments tomorrow to answer those questions. I'm obviously, I'm not an expert in that, so, but last I've heard from Andrew, this does mean the Mueller report is safe. I'm increasingly skeptical whether that makes any difference. Like I'm to the point where I don't know that politically the Mueller report is going to change a single damn thing. I really don't. I think, I think what we're seeing. Well, I'll get to that later. Put a pin in that. Let's talk about the good. OK.

0:17:39 Thomas: Controlling the house is huge. Maxine Waters being in charge of the I think it's the Finance Committee, and Schiff being in charge of the House Intelligence Committee. That's a big fucking deal. That's awesome. That is really going to be key. Investigating some of these really shady dealings. That will be really cool. We are going to have some thrilling and depressing and alarming congressional testimony, I imagine. That are what I imagine the next two years will be. It'll be like Benghazi, but imagine if Benghazi had actually been fucking anything. Imagine if like, imagine if someone actually did do something wrong in Benghzi. Now picture that.

0:18:25 Thomas: And that's what the next two years are going to be, I think, in the house. Hey, some other cool milestones, really important stuff in terms of representation, again, not enough, I thought there was going to be more, but still, first Native American congresswoman, first Muslim congresswoman, first black congresswoman from Connecticut, first black Congresswoman from Massachusetts, first openly gay man elected governor, some really positive stuff in terms of diversity, representation, and I don't want to minimize that at all, you know, hundred women elected. That number may change, but a lot of women elected, which I think is really important given everything we saw with, Kavanaugh, and hopefully that'll have other Me Too implications, you know, Congress people not being, I say people, Congressmen not being able to pay off their, you know, victims with campaign money or taxpayer money or that kind of thing.

0:19:20 Thomas: Hopefully there will be a lot of good consequences down that that we maybe can't even fully comprehend right now. But great stuff there, lot of positivity, there's a whole lot of of good. Uh, I'm really upset at how the night went for me personally, because it had me in such a negative state of mind that it, it may, it was sort of like if I mean, it was like, say I lost, well, I would say a loved one, that might be a little too extreme, but who knows, maybe not, let's say I've lost a cat, cat ran away, and I was like oh my god, I'm panicking, I lost a pet, I am sure you could relate if you lost a, that would be horrible, lost a pet, lost pet, lost pet, and then like I find him, which actually happened to Mr. Kitty a few years back, but anyway, let say I find them, it's not like then I'm super thrilled that I have a cat.

0:20:08 Thomas: You know, it's not like, Ooh, I, I'm a happy cat owner right now. It's like, Oh my God, crisis averted. Like maybe sure. In the next few years, I'll be able to get back to just a nice positive cat ownership state of mind. But, but it, that having gone to that negative place and then sort of come out of it for me psychologically was made it. So I didn't appreciate the good as much, but I'm doing my, I'm trying right now that there's very good stuff that came. There's so many cool people who are have now been elected. You probably saw the tweet going around that Mike Pence will have to swear in two new Congress people on Korans, which, yeah, there's something, there is something pretty enjoyable about that, I'll be honest, so, you know, lots of positivity, lots a good stuff.

0:20:55 Thomas: Some bad stuff, though, some stuff that was not as good as it should have been, you know, that if we start, if we pretended we were all just unflinching robots and we just ran the numbers, there's no denying that yesterday was good for Democrats, better and bad for Republicans. It was a better night for Democrats and Republicans relative to like a robot logic baseline of who won, who lost. Yes. Yes, it was way better for Democrats than Republicans, significantly better. However, I think, and this is still my problem. Maybe it's a problem some of you have as well. Relative to getting anywhere near where we need to fucking be, where more than half the country rejects racism and bigotry and sexism and all that.

0:21:45 Thomas: We're nowhere near that. And that's my issue. That's why I personally am still pretty upset because we lost a lot of governor's races, is that, you know, we, we gained, we gained governorships and we, and we did some really good things at the state level as well. And then you're going to hear more about that in the coming weeks. I'm sure we control a lot of States, every, every level of government in several States. And that also the governorships and the state houses and all that, that has great implications for gerrymandering. And by that, I mean, we could maybe stop some amount of gerrymander, like some small portion of it, but that's important. You know, that's a, that is a big win that, that will shape politics for years to come, for another decade, really. So, high expectations, and again, actually, not even that high of expectations were that Democrats could win governorships in Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and instead, Republicans won Florida, Iowa, and Ohio.

0:22:42 Thomas: So, we did win Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. That, you know, that's good. Wins are good. But losing Florida was, was pretty frustrating. And, of course, Iowa and Ohio, those are, you you know, important states in presidential politics, to say the least. You know, I want to talk about Florida for a second because I was looking at the polling and I don't, I don't know what happened. What the f- I hope we get some explanation, some explanation that makes any sense or is satisfying as to what happened because I'm on 538, and again, I'm not just going on their model, like, they list all the polls they're using, and every poll, almost every single poll in November had Gillum up by five, six points, you know, like a pretty significant amount.

0:23:30 Thomas: And then, you know, it's interesting. There's a poll that just came out yesterday, which covered the dates of November 4th and 5th. So like right before the election. And it's a, it's a pretty, it's a real poll. It's not like one of their A plus ones or anything, but they rated as a C pollster, Trafalgar Group, who rated at the last minute, DeSantis up three, which I like. So I wonder if something happened, you know, like the last Trafalgar poll, by the way, the same pollster. So it's, you know, trying to eliminate any chance that they're just putting out whatever, the last one they did for October 29th and 30th had Gillum up two. So in like a week or less, around a week, a five point swing, and they're polling comparing apples to apples.

0:24:20 Thomas: Again, same pollster. Five point swing to the racist. Now, some people last night were suggesting this might be the Bradley effect. I'm sure you know what that is. That's this idea that there are kind of racist people who will tell pollsters they're going to vote for the black person and then don't. And okay, this may be something you might disagree with. I actually don't think that's what it is. I would find it hard to imagine that that's the issue. You know why? For several reasons. People are more than comfortable just saying, "Oh no, I'm a conservative, so I'm voting for the conservative." Picture the person who is going to vote for the Republican, but is really worried about saying they're not voting for a black guy.

0:25:11 Thomas: Most of the time, people are just out and out racist and they don't care. Or most Republicans I know, who, by the way, I think are racist on some level, but they don't think they' re racist, and they' r not going to try to say they'r voting for a black person when they' R not. They' R totally comfortable saying, "No, it's not about race. It has nothing to do with race. How dare you make this about race? This is about conservative politics." And I just think it's so easy for people to justify their vote based on partisanship and party affiliation now that the idea that, like, I can't imagine what how big that group of people would even be that would feel obliged to lie to a pollster that they're going to vote Democrat when they don't want to, you know, like, I just, I I have a hard time believing that's a significant thing. Now maybe there's some group of people, like, I I just don't know that that's going to be that big. And furthermore, this poll that I I just showed is consistent with what happened.

0:26:10 Thomas: So at the last minute, DeSantis... overtook Gillum. So, I, I think the explanation is not the Bradley effect. I think it's something happened. I, maybe it, maybe, it was the debate performance. What if it was that debate performance that we all thought the liberals, uh, applauded and thought and, again, I think, rightfully so, was brilliant. What, if the fact that that, you know, Gillum came out and said what we, what we all know is fucking true, that, uh DeSantis, you line, celebrate for it. What if, what if that did enough to motivate the white people in Florida to be like, Oh, wait a minute. He's not racist. How dare you? And now I'm not voting for the black guy. He called someone racist. Like, what If that is what happened?

0:26:57 Thomas: I don't know what the answer to that is, is the answer that you, I mean, I guess Obama kind of did this where just avoid race at all costs. You know, he, Obama did everything he could to not really talk about race yet. He had had to talk about it in the race speech that he did. And it was, it was well done, but is that the answer? Like you have to just not say the obvious truth all the time. Like you have to even though it motivated and it was incredibly compelling to liberals. And again, I think rightfully so. I really was so glad that Gillum came out and said that, or by the way, maybe it has nothing to do with this. I don't know. I Don't live in Florida. I know, you know, I don't know what was happening on the ground, but it does seem alarming that he was leading all polls, pretty much all polls again, like forever.

0:27:47 Thomas: And then at the last second, this Trafalgar group poll had a five point swing the last week and he goes on to lose by a point or two. It just seems, it seems amazing to me. Something happened. I don't know what. Let me know if you have any ideas on that. So, on to other bad news, I mean, the Senate, Republicans flipped, it's still a little unclear, we got the Georgia seat, we've got a lot of stuff going on, but they definitely flipped three seats, at least, so, I, it seems, it, it is amazing to me, again, it was a bad map, it a bad Senate map, there were a ton of Democrats up, and not very many Republicans, it was always going to be impossible to win, well, not impossible, it was always going to be a very big uphill climb to take control of the Senate, but, you know, I was hoping we'd maybe keep things where they were.

0:28:42 Thomas: But no, losing like three seats, so going from 54, maybe, going from 51, rather, Republicans, to like 54, could be 55, depending on how some of these late calls go. That sucks. That really sucks. And I think, I guess what is really bumming me out is, is after 2016, so back to the kind of the story I was telling again, I adjusted my expectations down. Believe me, I did. I wasn't, you know, it wasn't under any illusions that we were going to change the whole world, but I thought, okay, if Republicans stay the same, where they are like Republican voting, I, in my imagination and from what I actually am pretty sure I know from the data, Republicans vote way more than Democrats.

0:29:29 Thomas: And I thought Thanks a lot. And I don't think I was crazy for thinking this, I think this is actually what a lot of people thought. I think that this is what a lot of experts thought, and that's probably why I thought it, because I read, try to read experts. Anyway, I thought, if it's a big turnout, that's gotta favor Democrats, quite a bit, because Republican voting percentages are already so high relative to Democrats, like, they don't have as many, there aren't as many Republicans in the country, but they vote at such higher rates than Democrats, and I thought okay, there's gonna be way less room for Republicans to up their voting than there is for for Democrats to up ours. Plus, I mean, the early voting numbers were so massive. I mean again, I was even cautioning people like, okay, we thought early voting was really good in 2016. It turned out to be no indication whatsoever.

0:30:15 Thomas: And I thought, okay, I'm going to remember that. However, when the early-voting numbers like already surpassed other midterm numbers, like it's already more votes than the total votes of other midterms, that's when I was like, like, okay, well, I feel like that has to mean something. Like that can't mean, you know, obviously it can't end up that somehow there were a negative number of votes cast that weren't early voting and then it like becomes less. So I thought that was going to mean something, but it looks like what happened was yes, a record number of people voted in this midterm. I mean, in, in there were a lot of places, and I think Texas was one of them, from, from what I'm seeing right now, where more people voted in 2018 than in 2016, than in a presidential election, which is unheard of.

0:31:03 Thomas: I'm sure the numbers on the whole probably for the country won't be that, I'm guessing, but in some places it was. And it absolutely crushed the midterm numbers in 2014.

0:31:16 Thomas: So what I thought was that increased enthusiasm and that reckoning that Democrats have had after two years, maybe Republicans will still come out, you know, and maybe in my mind, again, this is all what I'm thinking. I'm saying, okay, Republicans are going to come out like they did in 2016. And they did come out. They came out and voted. They won. But if we up our numbers by any amount, like any statistically significant amount, it doesn't take that much. Like if Republicans stayed exactly the same in 2016 and we increased our voting numbers by like 3%. That would be a massive difference. I'm pretty sure mathematically it would make an incredible difference. I thought, okay, that's why I had been positive on the Senate stuff.

0:32:02 Thomas: I thought that could happen. It could be that, you know, maybe they make some gains, but Democrats are fired up. Now, I wasn't wrong that Democrats were fired up. Democrats came out and voted like just a shitload of them did. And I'm very proud of that. Good for you, Democrats, young Young people still don't vote much, but they voted a lot more than they did before. And that's good progress. That's hard work. That's everybody who knocked on doors and called. You guys are awesome. That's somebody who donated to certain organizations that were doing that. That's what I did, by the way, because I wasn't as good about going out and knocking doors. I donated money instead. I hope that helped hire more people.

0:32:46 Thomas: I'm proud of that. I'm proud of you guys for doing that, you know, like that, that is an accomplishment. It's amazing. But the disappointing part is not us. I'm not as disappointed in Democrats at all. I feel like I was more for 2016. For 2018, I'm more just horrified at how well Republicans were able to rally because it's landslide number, just massive ground swells of voting numbers and then it turns out the the blue wave did happen, but it ran into the red wall, like, somehow, I don't know how the fuck this works, but somehow, despite having nothing good to fight for except fear of migrants and stuff, Republicans were able to garner as much enthusiasm as Democrats were.

I, it's just, I never would have thought that, you know, like, I, again, call, call me naive, but seriously, how do they do it? How do Republicans gin up that much enthusiasm when they have fucking nothing? They don't have good candidates. They have just dog shit, awful boobs of candidates, just racist garbage people that aren't even compelling. Like they're not even good racists. They're not like well-spoken, dynamic racists, like they're just shitty racists who aren't inspiring in any way. I think they're not even inspiring to Republicans. I genuinely think that. I think Republicans just somehow, they're able to gin up so much fear of Democrats that that's all that matters. And now that is my new updated belief as a result of this.

0:34:30 Thomas: I know it's a two-year process here of updating my beliefs. Now, I am very worried about 2020 with Trump, but I have some optimism and I'm gonna tell you why in a minute. I'm very worried. And then something I realized has made me a little more optimistic, but still worried. However, that's my new updated belief. I don't, I'm to the point by the way, where I, I don't give a shit about the candidates anymore. I really don't. I think we put way too much emphasis on candidates. I think that we're, if we were all rational, if Democrats were rational, voters were rational, we would realize that we're kind of making it impossible on Democrats. Fellow Democrats, I think, and part of it is we lose our minds after we lose, and I don't blame us because it's horrible to lose, especially in 2016.

0:35:21 Thomas: But we start going crazy about how bad Hillary was and blah, blah, and all that. And every candidate who isn't exactly perfect is like the worst, and they blew it, and they should have fucking won. And I just would invite you to try to think about it a little differently, because take Beto, for example, Beto O'Rourke. I've not seen a person anywhere on any side who thinks that he was a bad candidate. Like, I really, I mean, sure, Republicans don't agree with them and they, you know, they vote, but nobody is like, "Oh, he's a bad campaigner."

That Beto O'Rourke, that guy was the best. He's like the best person in people like it and not really, but but like especially as a white person, like, it just, it's so much easier in this racist country to appeal to more people when you're white, and he had everything going for him, he's a white male, so he's got all that privilege, and in addition to that, he's also a great guy, like, I really, I really love Beto O'Rourke, I love his speeches, I think he was incredibly inspiring, and he has a lot of people who are white, and I think that's a good thing.

So pretty much, like, the on paper and dynamically, speech wise, enthusiasm wise, the most exciting, amazing candidate ever going against the shittiest person ever, like the Ted fucking Cruz, who Republicans hate, he does not even, he doesn't have any, but there's nobody who is a fan of Ted Cruz in the world, and he can't win, and he can't win.

0:36:56 Thomas: Beto can't win. And you're saying, but Thomas, that's Texas, this. It's very, very conservative. Okay. I agree with you. I actually agree with you, but apply that thinking to most of the country. So next time we want to talk shit about Hillary or, you know, when Elizabeth Warren loses in 2020 or whatever, I don't, I think we're treating it like, Oh sure. Texas was conservative, but the country is 50 50. So a good Democrat will win and a bad Democrat will lose. I just don't think that's how it works anymore. I think that Republicans have done too good of a job. Fox News has done too good of a job radicalizing people against the evil Democrats to where I just, I don't know how much the candidate makes a difference.

0:37:41 Thomas: Now, if my Beto O'Rourke example doesn't work, let's look at Gillum because Andrew Gillum is also an incredible candidate. I fucking love this guy. I don't know, again, I don't know of anybody. I'm I'm on Twitter quite a bit, and it's really easy to find people who hate anybody on Twitter. It's like the easiest thing in the world. I don't know anybody who is saying like, oh, Gillum was actually a shitty candidate. He didn't do this well. He didn't do that well. Like in the way that, you know, Bernie supporters did of Hillary and that kind of thing. I'm not talking about just anonymous Russian trolls or that kind of thing, I'm talking left on left hatred. That's easy to find for virtually everybody. For Elizabeth Warren, for Hillary Clinton, and actually for Bernie, because there's a lot of anti-Bernie left people now. I'm not seeing any of that for Gillum or O'Rourke.

0:38:30 Thomas: I think the consensus was that Gillum was incredible, inspiring, that kind of thing, had a lead in the polls, and he is not running in Texas. He ran in Florida, which is about as 50-50 as the state gets, really, mathematically, polls-wise, and he lost. Now, why is it that we don't instantly do to him what we did to Hillary? You know, some people argue with me that it's, oh, Hillary is so corrupt and she had all these things. I don't, I don't think that's true. She's the most investigated person in the history of time, and nothing was found. It's all bullshit. And then the retort is, well, how did she lose to Donald Trump? That means she's the worst candidate ever. If she lost to Donald Trump, she's objectively the worst. But, I don't see anyone doing that with Gillum. I don't see people saying, well he lost, that must mean he was actually fucking terrible, he blew it, he had a lead in the polls, and he blew it, he was terrible. And I just think, I think, A, I actually think there's just more sexism and that kind of thing.

0:39:32 Thomas: And that's why. But also, also, I just think we need to realize that, as a country, we aren't that great, and that there's a lot of shitty people in this country, and the voters just aren't great. I mean, that, that's, that what my message for this section is: let's stop killing each other over candidates, and, like, if someone's not perfect, and then we, we get mad about it, and we argue about it and we yell at each other on the left.

Honestly, like, I just don't think it's doing anything. Again, in the primary, have at it. Vote as left as you can and as left as you want to. Or maybe you're a centrist. Vote as centrist as you want to. Whatever. Duke it out in the primaries. Once the primary's done, fuck it.

Let's just focus on trying our best to elect people to stop evil, racist, sexist pieces of shit who want to just be outraged about harmless caravans 800 miles away full of women and children, I mean, that's my, can we just stop with the the arguing about how good and how shitty these the left candidates were, that there are so many good candidates who lost, there are brilliant candidates who lost, it just, it's not enough sometimes, and I think that's what, I think a lot of the data is showing about 2016 is that the election didn't turn out that much different than just a generic Republican running against a generic Democrat.

I don't think it was the case that Hillary botched it and was evil and was horrible and not progressive enough slash too progressive, too identity politic. You know, it's all these contradictory things that she did wrong. Like, yeah, of course, I'm sure she could have done some things better, but also we're just fundamentally a divided country, and the stupid electoral college favors Republicans.

0:41:18 Thomas: I just don't, you know, so let's, I guess all I'm trying to say is let's go a little easy on ourselves. You know, like it's not doing anything anyway. That's, that's the other point. It's not even accomplishing anything. Like if Andrew Gillum can't fucking win in a split state, it's, it'S not the case that, oh, if all we do is run the perfect, perfect progressive, then it's all fine. See, you idiot, Thomas, you ran Hillary and you should have run Bernie and that would have been all fine, no, it won't be all fine because structurally things are just not that great in this country. And having said that, I am still going to be voting for the most progressive possible people I can in every, in every primary. I, I, don't worry, I'm not saying we need to be centrist, I'm just saying, the infighting is, it's, it's not getting us anywhere.

0:42:03 Thomas: What, what, what we need to do is somehow get young people to vote, we need to get people educated, we need to knock doors, I that's something I need to do better, you know, I felt like I was a little busy with Phoebe and all the work and everything, so I donated money instead to ease my mind, but I could have also tried to help and I should have, and that's, that's going to be more productive than sniping each other on Twitter. Okay, so first to start with pessimism on 2020, this really scares me about 2020, I mean, what I just said, that structurally, Republicans are just great at not caring that their candidate is a piece of garbage, and despite however good our candidate might be, I think things have changed since Obama, you know, Obama was, again, Obama was a generational politician, like a once-in-a-lifetime politician.

0:42:56 Thomas: And sorry, to kind of go back to something from before, that's what the retort is. You know, well, Obama was able to win. Thomas, what are you talking about? Obama was unable to do it. He did it. So then anybody should be able to do it. And I just want to point out, all I want to point out is, yes, again, okay, we'll try to expect as much as we can from our politicians. Try to, we will.

We will do our best to get the politicians that we think we deserve. But a couple of things. First off, politics is a goddamn miserable job and it doesn't pay well, so the idea that we're gonna just always have this infinite supply of perfect candidates, I just don't think that's true. Like, it's it's, and the other thing I want to say is why this false dichotomy seems to be well either you Democrats have to have a once-in-a-lifetime gifted, amazing politician, or whoever the fuck the shitty Republican is should win. You know, like, think about how unfair that is. It's, if we, it should, stop with all that, like it should just be platform, you know, it's one thing, yeah, if you want to say that platform, a platform that a Democrat has in an election is not good enough, have at it, let's fight for a progressive platform, but like, there's so much focus on all this other stuff, like, it's not enough.

We need to start thinking in terms, honestly, we need to start thinking like Republicans. Republicans are really good at realizing that no matter the fact that they have fucking Ted Cruz in a seat, they recognize, well, that's a Senate seat that guarantees a Supreme Court justice, which guarantees all this other shit, which guarantees being able to discriminate against gay people and trans people and take rights away from women.

0:44:43 Thomas: They are so good at realising that that's how the game works, and honestly we need to be better at that, we need to realize that, forgetting the moral baseline, is that we need to get Republicans out of office. That's just the baseline. Everything else is details. You know, and, and again, if you can point to a Democrat, maybe there will be a Democrat or two in some elections who are pieces of shit who you shouldn't vote for. Maybe. That might be true. That probably shouldn't, vote for anybody then. But, that might be true. That's overwhelmingly not the case, though. There were so many good candidates in 2018. There was so many Senate candidates. And, and it didn't matter. Like, we weren't able to break through in the way that I guess I kind of hoped we should. So my point is, let's start realizing that we can hate each other a little less, Democrats.

0:45:29 Thomas: We can rage at each other a little bit less. And I'll try to play my part. And let's just realize that structurally, things are really difficult in this country. They're really difficult for Democrats. Okay, back to what I was saying. So, 2020, I started to worry. Here's what I want to see. I don't know that we can do this yet, until some of the pending races are done, but I want, as soon as I can, I want someone to draw up an electoral map of how 2018 would have gone if it was a presidential election, election. That should be easy, right?

Because it's just the popular, the state popular votes and where they would have given their electoral college vote, right? That should be I mean, sure, you can argue that, you know, people might have voted differently had they been voting for a candidate, but I think that's mostly not true. Like, I think what we're starting to see in the level of partisanship these days and division in the U.S. is that it almost doesn't matter that there wasn't a presidential election. People are pretty much going to vote the same, but you know, maybe not. We'll see. But anyway, that's what I want to see.

I want to see how that turned out. I have a sneaking suspicion that is not going to be great. Like it might be, if I don't see, I'm just doing this in my, my head here before it, like which seats we won and lost in the Senate, which governor seats. I don't know. Like, I don't know that we may, we, we might've just barely eked out an electoral college victory, you know, had the votes gone the way they went for 2018.

0:47:02 Thomas: So, but still very close and very much a bit of a wake up call for me personally, because I thought it would be a little better than this. I honestly did. I thought this blue wave would make it so that if we tallied up all the votes and plugged them into the electrical college, as Homer Simpson would say, that we'd get a good, healthy blue victory. Now I'm not so sure. Now, I'm waiting to see what those totals end up being. So I was prepared to say, I'm very worried about 2020. And then I realized something, you know what I realized? We might've been fucking saved by the brilliant activists in Florida. You know, they're amazing activism in Florida, if you were somebody who was any part of this campaign to restore voting rights to felons, pat yourself on the back, because you might've saved the fucking fucking world.

0:47:54 Thomas: I'm not even joking. What I heard, and we'll see how many of these felons end up registering to vote, but this is a voting pool of 1.5 million people who I believe will be overwhelmingly blue in that state. I hope that ends up being true, but it should be demographically because it's mostly black people. I mean, this was a Jim Crow-esque law that was struck down in Florida. Congratulations. Very, very good work done by the advocates in Florida and people who got that on the ballot and worked hard for it and got it to pass. I think it had to pass 60-40. I'm pretty sure it was the threshold that it needed. So phenomenal fucking work. By the way, it makes it all that much more surprising that Gillum lost.

0:48:41 Thomas: How does that pass by 60% to 40% but we can't elect Gillum and not elect Scott? How did that happen? I don't understand it. It's so mind-boggling. But anyway, fantastic work that makes Florida much more likely to go blue, which is such a huge swing state. I mean, Florida going blue in 2020 presidential politics is enormous. I mean that that's that makes things much, much better for 2020. Now, it's nothing is a lock. Nothing's a guarantee in this world, of course. But it is something that made me feel a little optimistic. You know that that's a big deal. That, that many people will get to cast their first votes in however long it's been that they've been disenfranchised.

0:49:28 Thomas: And, you know, Florida is a super close state. That's a super 50-50 state. And that this, this is going to be significant. It's gonna make a huge difference. It's got a lot of electoral college votes. So, you know, I'm excited about that. And I think it'll, it'll be really cool. Let's, let's remember this when 2020 comes, it will be pretty fucking amazing if that's what does it. If Florida swings the 2020 election because of felons getting the right to vote again, and by that I mean pretty much black people who have been systematically disenfranchised get the chance to vote, that's going to be some major poetic justice, some major just regular justice as well, and something to be proud of.

0:50:14 Thomas: So congratulations to the activists. And I know there, there's a lot of congratulations to go around, uh, for yesterday, you know, so much good activism, so much enthusiasm. We really did produce a blue wave. We did it just somehow the fucking Republicans. There's nothing we can do to make Republicans not vote is the thing. And, and nor should we, you know, like that, that shouldn't be what we do. We shouldn't be trying to restrict voting and we didn't, but it just sucks that that's what happens. Like we, we get all this brilliant enthusiasm and activism going, and somehow a bunch of racists are able to do the same thing. They're able to plaster footage of a harmless migrant caravan. I'm looking forward to some analysis of what actually did motivate people to come out and vote Republican.

0:51:04 Thomas: That's analysis that I think will take a while, but I very much look forward to. All right. I think that's my preliminary thoughts. I'm, who knows, you know, this, this is subject to change if we get better data about stuff, but that's what I think right now. So I'm overall, there's a lot of good that can come from Democrats controlling the House. Oh, final thought that I want to leave you with. I said this on the live Cognizant video thing I did last night too.

This is something I'm really worried about. All that can happen now, like the best case scenario for Democrats now is that we stop, stop, um, somebody from killing us, like that's really like what we earned last night. What Democrats earned last night, uh, in terms of Congress and all that, was the ability to stop Trump from passing more shit. You know, to stop him from passing another massive tax cut for the rich, or to stop them from repealing, from taking away our health care. That's what we did. It's a big thing. It's great. It is fantastic. It's better than not doing that. However, here is what I am worried about. Here is where the worry comes in. I am very worried that a bunch of people who came out and voted yesterday and said, oh, it is high time, finally, I am going to vote for Democrats.

Maybe I did not vote before. Maybe I didn't care enough, but I am gonna do it. I voted. I got a a Democrat into the house and then I'm very worried that they're going to see the fact, then they're not going to exactly understand what they were doing, you know, like, because it'll be very easy in two years for

0:52:47 Thomas: People to start complaining that the left didn't get anything done. You know, we put Democrats in the house in 2018, nothing happened. Like we didn't, we didn't accomplish anything. Where's the, where's health care for all? Where's Medicare for all? Where's all that stuff you're talking about, you know? Where's, where's, uh, where's taxes on the rich? Where's economic equality? Where's all that stuff you promised? Not realizing that we don't have the power to do that. We need, we would need all three branches of government to do that in this day and age. You're not gonna, there's gonna be no bipartisan bill to do any of those things. And so I hope that this doesn't set us up for a bunch of people who thought they were, were delivering Medicare for all with their vote, being completely unenthused in 2020 because we didn't get it done.

0:53:35 Thomas: That's my worry. And I think we can all do our best messaging wise and just communication wise with people we talk to, to hopefully recognize, hey, we stopped Republicans from taking away our health care. That is what we did. We had just enough power, just enough power to stop stuff. We don't, we have nowhere near the power you would need to make stuff happen. So that's some, that's a worry I have. I hope people don't, weren't under the impression that this was going to fix anything. It's not fixing anything. It's stopping the fire. It's, it's, it's, you know, your house is on fire. You're not repairing it. You're just maybe finally calling the fire department and maybe putting out the fire, but, but you know you're, you're not, there's no, no contractors been called in to fix stuff, build a new house, maybe put some additions on or something.

0:54:26 Thomas: That's not happening. You've got a smoldering ruin, but it's still kind of there. You stopped it from completely burning down. That's the best we can hope for. So that was the thought I had. I really hope that we can do our best messaging and communication to make sure people aren't disappointed that we didn't deliver fucking single payer healthcare by just having a majority in the house. That is just not how it works. All right. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for, again, all the hard work. I think there's a lot to be proud of, especially, you know, just so many cool people elected, groups that have never gotten representation, getting some amount of representation. Really cool stuff. You know, the future is female and the future is not white, hopefully.

0:55:13 Thomas: Not so overwhelmingly white, because if you look at the voting numbers, white people are the ones who did this to us in terms of Trump and Ted Cruz and all that. But anyway, very exciting. Thank you for listening. And now let's go be stressed for another two years until we can do something about it again. Can't believe it. Two years of waiting. I just had hoped for a little bit better, but it's okay. No, it was good. It's good. That's good, it's pretty positive. Nowhere near as good as I think the country should be, but we got to keep working. All right. Talk to you guys soon. Thank you.