SIO275: President Biden! (marginal happiness warranted)

Transcript

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

0:00:04 Clip: You're listening to Serious Inquiries Only.

0:00:31 Thomas: It's over. It's over. We did it. We're done. There's no more. No more Trump. That's the... We're done, guys. We're all done. Oh, my God.

0:00:44 Thomas: It's just... I just want to exhale. Just a 45-minute episode of exhaling. No, I can't do that. That would be bad content. But that's... I feel like kind of doing that. Oh, My God. Isn't it nice? Isn't it nice? It is absolutely okay to be happy today, everybody.

0:01:06 Thomas: Don't feel the need to butt in with a, but everything's not perfect, but it's Biden. He's not, just, just we can be happy for a day. It's fine. And there are so many things to be happy about with this. So many things. Oh my God. Can you imagine how we'd be feeling if Trump had won a second term? It was this close, this close. Everybody. Holy moly, Folks, I just wanted to get my math right because I knew the election was somewhat close, but I'm actually shocked. Like, I'm very stunned by what I just, I, look, I hadn't done the math myself and I hadn't really seen anyone talk about it. I've seen some, some tweets here and there about how it was a close election, but I flabbergasted.

0:01:53 Thomas: This is the first time I've decided to actually look at the numbers. Would you have known that 2020 was closer than 2016? I honestly didn't. I thought it was like, oh, maybe 100,000 votes, you know, something like that. It just, you know, obviously the popular vote, we win by a billion. We win by, you know, 7 million votes, 7,052,000 votes. That's a gigantic victory. It's, it's record-breaking popular vote totals. Wow. I cannot, I am. It is like you had a near miss of an accident of some kind and you're like, wow, that was close, and then later you're still like, wow, that was really close, maybe you see a video of it or something, you're like, oh my God, that was even closer than I thought. That's how I feel right now. Look, it's all done. Biden wins, Biden's the president. This came down to 65,000 votes. Look.

0:02:52 Thomas: It was the same, it's easy math to do, do it yourself. I can't, maybe I'll tweet this. I, again, I'm sure this has been somewhere. I mean, I know I'm not the first person to look at the numbers. I just hadn't looked at them yet. And it's hitting me pretty hard how close this was. I really did not realize it. So it's some of the same states, but the electoral college total was 306 to 232, as we all should remember. And that's the same as Trump's victory over Hillary. We all probably knew that too. So that means 38 electoral college votes swung it. 38 votes. Because you add 38 to 232, you get to 270. That's what you need to win. The other person would have 268. So that's what you needed.

0:03:38 Thomas: And to get to 38 electoral college votes... Now, we all did the thing... I know we all recited this. I recited the difference in 2016, because all the absolute, just murder we did to ourselves mentally for four years, it was what went wrong. What, what happened? Did, you know, a lot of blame to go around. Hillary blew it. She's the worst candidate, all that stuff. And then I, you know, I would try to say, and others would try to say, look, it was a very close election. Hillary won the popular vote, of course. And also it was three states. It was Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. We'd always say that Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, the total votes to swing those 77,744, that was the vote total that made the difference.

0:04:25 Thomas: Had those votes gone the other way, then Hillary was present. So we put so much meaning into those 77,744 votes. I mean, just think of it. Just think of how much the right made of it, how much Trump supported, oh, you lose, no, you can't, oh, you're unelectable, Hillary's unelectable, at all all those messages, everything, all what they are saying is because of 77,744 people that made the difference. It was that small. And I, I again, I I've already said it, but I hadn't, I was kind of scared to look at the numbers for this year, but I had assumed because we flipped Georgia and, you know, things seem to go pretty well, I was like, oh, it'll at least be 100,000.

0:05:11 Thomas: Nope. Here's the total. 11 electoral college votes from Arizona. That was the closest state. These are in order of how close they were. Arizona was closest. Biden won that by 10,457. Georgia, next closest, 16 electoral college votes. Biden won that by 11,779. And then Wisconsin, again, flipping, Biden won those 10 electoral votes by 20,682. Now, here's the funny thing. If you were keeping track along with me, that's 37. And we were this close to that. Like, so that total for 37 electoral college votes, I said we needed 38. That was 42,918. That close to Biden winning by two votes, electoral college voters.

0:06:01 Thomas: That were that close. The next closest thing was that Nebraska district, that NE2, because they have a split thingy. So one Electoral College vote, which Biden won by 22,091 votes. That altogether is exactly 38. And that swung the election. And that was 65,009 votes.

0:06:25 Thomas: Biden gets 81,268,000 votes. Apologies if someone has already gone through this somewhere. I haven't heard it. I'm sure they have. And sorry that this is like really blowing my mind right now. Like, again, I literally hadn't checked this until just now. 65,000 votes. 65,009 votes, the difference in the election. God, after winning by seven million, seven million larger than many countries, the difference in popular vote, but because of our terrible, terrible electoral college system, which favors the Republicans and red states. Wow. 60, we were 65,000 votes away for everybody.

0:07:12 Thomas: I apologize. There were a lot of people who were super duper confident and I get, get it? You know, there are a lot of people who election night were telling me and others to calm down. It's all fine. This was very, very, very close. It was very close, not close enough for Trump to steal. Fortunately, fortunately, I don't know if a more adept person than Trump could have, because this is very close, but I think part of it is it's a lot of different states. The Florida thing in 2000, we've been all through this, it's one state, it's 500 votes either way. That's very close. And George W. Bush had a result that people could say, OK, we're done here. You know, let's go home. Here's the result.

0:07:58 Thomas: So that was a very different situation. We're lucky it didn't come down to something like that. But oh, my God, I'm glad I didn't just look at this till now, till now on this day of celebration. Sorry to bring us down, everybody. So this is amazing. It is amazing that Biden is president. I'm so happy he was my last Well, okay, he was second to last. Marianne Williamson was my last choice. Well, then Bloomberg would have been behind both of them, I think. Doesn't matter. Beating Trump was so incredibly important. How good does it feel to have that POS? He's gone to Florida. We'll tune into tomorrow's opening arguments to find out. I don't want to be like a QAnon level believer. I feel like legal consequences are coming to Trump because on a state level, the wheels of justice turn or churn.

0:08:48 Thomas: Some people say churn, I don't really know why a wheel would churn, but maybe it does. I don't know if the wheels of justice make butter or ice cream or something, but they either churn and or turn, and at the state level, I mean, it really isn't something that, you know, it's one thing at the federal level for, again, we'll find out. Maybe we'll found out Trump pardoned himself in secret. I actually don't know. Again, these are questions for tomorrow's opening arguments. Andrew has already said he will answer them if you're not already a listener. It's possible to pardon people in secret, apparently. There's no requirement that it be public. So who knows? I don't, when we would find that out. It's apparently it's risky. So, you know, but anyway, regardless of the fact whether or not Trump pardoned himself, whether or not Biden, or I was going to say Biden's AG, but we know who Biden's AG is.

0:09:40 Thomas: It's Merrick Garland. Great pick. I really like that pick. We'll find out. But but even if Biden and Garland at federal level, you Know, even if they're like, forget it, unity, we need to move on those kind of things. I don't think they happen at a state level. I don't think Georgia and New York and I don't know however many other states possibly have claims against Trump. I don't know that they would make that same political calculation. That seems to me they won't, and there's no reason to. Maybe I'm being too optimistic, but doesn't it feel, do you do this where you kind of check yourself, because this morning, all I've enjoyed, I just I want to get just a full time, I don't know, podcast feed or something that's just all these.

0:10:27 Thomas: And it's not that I'm reveling so much in the suffering of others because I don't really tend to do that. It's more just I am enjoying truth be a thing. That's what it is. And so it's all these QAnon people, all these Trumpers genuinely believed that Trump had had some last minute move. And it's, it's so satisfying. Again, if you are one to enjoy the pain and suffering of QAnon Trump supporters, I don't blame you. I, you know, I, I'm not saying I don't at all. You know, that's, that's a little part of it, but that's not, that'Ts not all of it for me. I genuinely, and sometimes I can genuinely be like a little sad on the behalf of some of these poor saps who were just lied to by people who actually have power.

0:11:14 Thomas: That's not all of them. I'm just saying occasionally I'll feel bad a little bit. Uh, the fact that they were just lied to and their whole life is in tatters, but the same way I feel, you know, feel that way when any other cult, 'cause this is a cult, the same way. I feel somewhat a little bit of sympathy when a cult, uh, follower, you know, has been fleeced and the leader has made away with all the, all the money and all the style, the profit, as Trump has done, and the follower has had nothing this whole time, I have an ounce of sympathy for them. Not a ton. I have a little bit, sometimes, for some of them. Not the ones who are actively harassing people or being violent or doing anything, but occasionally. So that's almost no people. But anyway, the point stands. Sometimes I feel just a tiny little bit of tinge of pity for them. So it's not about trying to enjoy their demise for me, per se.

0:12:05 Thomas: It's not just that. It's so nice to see. It's like at the end of the Flat Earth documentary, Behind the Curve. I love the ending of that, even though those people will never change their minds, probably. Maybe some of them will here or there, but many of them won't. But when they're at the ending, they're that documentary, which is so good. If you've never watched it, a couple of years old by now, they're doing an experiment to test the curvature of the earth. And they are so sure, they are so sure that the laser is going to be, they go, you know, down a I don't know, a river or whatever they're doing and they shoot a laser and they're like, yeah, the earth is flat, so this laser will show up at exactly the same, you know, height on the other side you know?

0:12:51 Thomas: We're so sure, because the earth is flat. Let's go check the laser. And then you get a huh, weird and then the documentary ends And that is how I feel about this. Seeing the truth, the fact that Trump did not parachute down with George Soros's head, you know, and declare himself emperor of Earth and, you know, say he cleansed the capital of the pedophiles running everything. I mean, it's amazing. I'm making a joke, but I'm not making a joke. That is literally what they believe. And you're seeing it all day today. Some of them are trying to still make themselves be right in some way. They're trying to still believe in Trump.

0:13:38 Thomas: I would imagine that most of them will in some Way, but some of them aren't. And some of them are saying, well, maybe Trump betrayed us. I I'm I'm very curious to see, as someone who has looked into certain cults from time to time, there is always the way to shape your belief and to change things. We've seen this with Christianity. We see it with the Bible. We see with everything. They change whatever it is.

The Bible has always found a way, or Christians rather, Christians, Muslims, every religion. They've always found a way, no matter what the year is, no matter what science has shown, they find a way to retcon the Bible or the Quran or whatever book to have said that all along. They find a way to do it.

And I suspect that while we are seeing some nice highlights on Reddit and Twitter, we're seeing some some nice headlights of people who maybe, maybe are coming to terms with reality, maybe, or at least a tiny slice of reality, That most of them will retcon it. Most of them will find a way. And what I've been curious about is not whether or not, you know, because I was never under the illusion that they would all realize, well, Biden's president, it was all a lie. They aren't going to do that. If you're waiting for them to do that, don't hold your breath, or you will be just holding your breath for a very long time.

Don't do that, but I was curious, would they retcon it so that Trump is still their hero, or would they sort of abandon the Trump part of it and move on to something else? That's what I was curious about. I was curious if they would, because they're still going to be a cult. They still will. Cults are so powerful. They are so psychological, as Lindsay would tell us, they are so psychologically invested in it.

0:15:24 Thomas: They have a community. They have their whole being is about this belief system about Trump fighting the pedophiles and all this crap. Now, I'm just curious, will they keep the Trump part of it? And so this is a possibility, to keep the Trump part of it and move on to some other way that Trump is battling the pedophiles. Maybe he's battling the pedophile, on his own time in Florida, maybe, maybe they'll come up with a thing. I'm sure we'll see this. He's still actually president. Biden's not really the president. You know, we'll say something like that. Or do they turn on Trump, but they'll still maintain something, that maybe they would turn on him and say, well, Trump wasn't a, you know, somebody got to him or something. Think, I don't know. They'll make up some other story, but the core of the cult will carry on, I think. So anyway, that was what I was wondering about.

0:16:10 Thomas: So we'll wait to see what happens there. But back to the revelry, the celebration. I am so excited for competent human beings to be in charge. I'm so excited. It doesn't mean they're perfect. Doesn't mean they get everything right. Doesn't mean they, you know, are left enough for me, but there's so much of government that I think people took for granted. And then the worst possible, one of the worst possibly, you know, like genuinely, I mean, uh, often that's an exaggeration, but no, like one of the worst, possible things that could have happened under an incompetent person and government happened 400,000 Americans dead. The vaccine rollout seems to be completely botched.

0:16:55 Thomas: I am just looking forward to, you know, if nothing else, if anything else about Biden, if even if you think he's as centrist as they come, which I think you would be wrong about, by the way. You know, Andrew has tweeted out a lot of the priorities on the opening arguments account, and he tweeted out the fact that most of them are progressive. Most of what's happened, a lot of what's happening so far are very progressive policy aims. And again, this is not to say that it's perfect, but it is to say. That under the theory that Biden is actually just a Republican in disguise. The parties are the same probably this guy's he has all the power now. Yeah. He is not beholden to anyone.

0:17:40 Thomas: So it would be a little confusing if he truly were a Republican in disguise, or a centrist, that's so centrist that he actually is a Republican. In fact, for him to do all these progressive things, it wouldn't really make much sense. He's not, nobody's in charge of him. Like there's no, certainly there's not like progressive corporation that's like, that he's financially beholden too. It's, it must purely be. Here's my actual theory of Biden. I think he is pretty much a weather vane, but the weather vane shows that actually the country, the party has moved left. And furthermore, I think there are areas in which he genuinely wants good things to happen, wants good outcomes, has different theories of how to get there.

0:18:27 Thomas: And so we will see some things that are progressive. We'll see some and things that are not progressive enough. But I don't think it really, I think the evidence should already tell you that he's not a Republican in disguise, at the very least. At the very least, the two parties are not the same. And if you think that, you are dead wrong. And furthermore, if you're emphasizing that today, of all days, you're minimizing the massive harm that Trump has done, that Biden is now reversing. I mean, on day one, he's reversing so many executive orders that were absolute hell for people, absolute hell. And I know the thing is, the counter argument I always get to is, well, when can we criticize Democrats? Oh, you do all the time already. What do you mean?

0:19:12 Thomas: You always do. You already are and you always do, you can and you will. I argue against bad faith criticisms, and what I want is perspective. That's all I want. In our criticisms of our own side, that's what I want is perspective, and to keep in mind what happens when we criticize ourselves so much that the other side gains power. That's what I want us to keep in mind. So we can, by all means, we can criticize, and we will criticize Biden going forward. That'll be the next four years. Just please, that's all I ask, is a little bit of perspective when you do. And criticize him in a way that builds rather than destroys, if you can.

0:19:58 Thomas: I know it's hard. It's a tall order, for me as well. That's going to be tough. Speaking of criticism, this is a minor point I've wanted to make for some time. There's a lot of anger at Joe Manchin that I see, and I think it's 100% a waste of time. If you take away a message from this, do not be mad at Joe Manchin. I I've been thinking about this and I, I, I said this on my stream the other day, and I twitched out TV slash series pod. It's a lot of fun. Probably stream today. You can catch the old streams if you want for a while, or on the YouTube channel. Anyway, it's a lot of fun. But I've been like kind of throwing out ideas here and there to that audience and trying stuff out. But one thing I think is interesting is people get so mad at Joe Manchin because he has a D next to his name and is likely going to prevent us from doing a lot.

0:20:50 Thomas: Don't get me wrong. I wish Joe Manchin was Bernie Sanders. Do not get me wrong. Or AOC or anybody. But I don't know if maybe the average person you see online who gets really mad at Joe Manchin, maybe they don't realize how red West Virginia is. It is truly astonishing that a Democrat is in West Virginia in this day and age. I mean, the margin in 2020 was 68.62% Trump, 29.69% Biden, 68, so about 69 to 30-ish, let's say. That is a massive margin for a Republican to win the presidency to still have a Democratic senator coming from there.

0:21:41 Thomas: And, you know, maybe you might say, well, screw it. I don't care. He's he's you know he's in a safe seat for the next or he doesn't have to run for reelection for the next, you Know, two or four years or whatever it is. So he should just go full Democrat. I don't know if that's fair to expect of him. I don't know if that's fair to expect where we should be angry and I do I say this all the time.

This is a very useful thing. I don't, we'll have to look at it'll be a different score for the the next few years. But the Trump score has been a very useful metric for me. And I brought it up again, just to say quickly, it's on 538.com. It's not perfect, obviously, but it's a good measure. It's a decent measure.

And it tells you a lot, which is it takes how often a member of Congress voted with Donald Trump for whatever Trump's position was on whatever thing he was, a bill or whatever, and then the margin in their state that went for Trump versus Hillary or now Biden, I guess, and so taking that margin, so if Joe Manchin is in a state that went plus 40 for Trump, predicting their Trump score, so what it should be, how often they should be voting with Trump based on that, and then subtracting the real score, And then you get a net score that tells you, essentially, if you're looking at it from my point of view, it tells you how much you're benefiting from this member of Congress.

Like how much more are Democrats getting than they ought to just by the sheer voting numbers? As if every state's senators from each state voted in accordance with the people's will who brought them there, essentially. And that that is very interesting because what it will tell you is Joe Manchin is at almost the top of that list, as in we should be we should thank our fucking lucky stars that we have Joe Manchin in that seat.

0:23:40 Thomas: And I mean that. And at the bottom of the list, obviously, is Republicans. But the first Democrat from the bottom, as In the person who is voting with Trump way more than they should be, is Kyrsten Sinema. So if you want to be angry at somebody, please direct your anger toward Kyrsten Sinema. The next up would be Dianne Feinstein. I voted against her in the primary a couple of years back. She shouldn't be in that seat anymore. She should retire. I'm very much not a fan. Let's see. Benjamin Cardin. I don't even know who that is. Maryland. Brian Schatz of Hawaii. You know, it's not as though these people are voting with Trump all the time. It's just that they're doing so a little bit more than you would expect based on the percentage. So if you want to direct your anger and not to mention what really went wrong in this election, the reason that everything relies on Joe Manchin, the 50th vote, we shouldn't be mad at Joe Manchin for that.

0:24:36 Thomas: What we ought to be looking toward is why didn't we win other seats? And the number one being Maine. How in the world did Susan Collins win when Biden won the state handily? How in the world did that happen? What does that mean? What, what is, what do we do there? You know, like, how do we, so if you want to direct your anger productively, I'm saying you should be spending no time on, okay, let me rephrase, once these votes come around, yes, let's hound Joe Manchin all we can, especially if you are a West Virginia Democrat. Of course, that's not what I'm said, we should push, push Joe Manchin for everything. Squeeze him for every drop he's worth. But I'm just saying, like, if you're, if you're spending, if you're trying to account for, like, why we got here, you know, how do we, how do we improve on the future?

0:25:27 Thomas: How do WE not be in a position, you KNOW, in this same position? That's where I would say do not waste your time looking at Joe Manchin. Joe Manchen is a godsend. I mean, the fact that we have a Democrat in a plus 40 Trump state is a miracle. I said this on the stream. I feel like this is a human bias. Like this is a cognitive bias we have. This is loss aversion, I think. Because what if, pretend, just pretend, everybody erase everything you know right now. Just pretend. Pretend that we just fell short in the Senate, 49-51. Just pretend how shitty that would feel. 49- 51. We don't have the gavel. Mitch McConnell's decrepit hand is still on it.

0:26:12 Thomas: Blackened, evil hand. And Biden's life is now hell. He's going to get nothing done, absolutely nothing done because of this. We're not getting any judicial appointments, no judges, every single person that Biden wants to confirm for his cabinet is not happening or is running through a Republican test, you know, or he's got to manipulate the law as best as he can to get around all that. Think of how, I'm sorry to bring you down again, but think of how shitty that would feel. And then pretend that a Republican senator from West Virginia says, you know, I'm fed up with the Republican Party. I am changing seats and I am going to provide the key tie-breaking vote to get rid of McConnell, to change out the leadership.

0:27:07 Thomas: And furthermore, I am gonna vote with Democrats on a number of issues. Not every issue. I've still been a Republican all my life. I still come from a plus 40 Trump state, but it is worth it to me to caucus with Democrats, vote out McConnell, change the leadership, get Schumer in there, stop the filibustering of everything, stop not even bringing stuff up for a vote. Imagine this. If he said, I'm tired of nothing coming up for vote. I'm tied to the fact that Republicans won't even let Biden have his say, won't even let him have his cabinet. They won't ever let him appoint judges that he rightfully deserves. And I'm going to vote on all those. I'm gonna, Chuck Schumer, you are now the leader because I changed parties and I'm going to go for all this stuff. How amazing would that feel?

0:27:53 Thomas: What, what would, seriously, picture waking up in a day when we thought we didn't have the Senate for these two years and nothing was getting done. And you, you wake up, first notification on your phone is Republican Senator, Republican Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia, Trump plus 40 state, changes to the Democratic Party, hands Chuck Schumer the gavel himself. Imagine what you would feel. Would you take it? Would you spend even a minute thinking like, yeah, but he's not going to vote on like, you know, Medicare for All. Would, would you be pissed at him for that? Or would you think of it an entirely different way? I think it has everything to do with loss aversion. We are more, as humans, we're more frustrated with like what we think we should have that we've lost, than we are with things we've already gained that we aren't thinking about.

0:28:43 Thomas: So like the fact that Joe Manchin has a D next to his name makes us think we're losing all these things. When really the fact that we've gained so much by him not being a Republican, because you know how shitty a Republican he could have easily been in a plus 40 Trump state easily. We wouldn't have the Senate. So, okay, I've made my point. If you don't agree, then I don't think I can make it anymore. So we need to, you know, the problem is the Senate already favors as Republicans. We know this, you know, just by the simple fact that there are 50 states and they each get two no matter how big they are, no matter small they are. And so, you know, California's bazillion residents gets the same senators as some state called South Dakota that I've never heard of.

0:29:28 Thomas: I mean, that's the real problem. And then, of course, from there, we look at, you Know, why did we fall short in a few states? Why did we fall short? In Florida, two years ago, you know, and the governor, I mean, there's just so many heartbreakers and we got to do our best to try to fight those. I just want to point our anger in the right way. You know, what went on with Susan Collins? I still don't know. I still don't get it. I, you know we poured so much money into that. And I think one thing that we should learn going forward is not to blow tons of money on elections. We have no chance winning. I mean, so much money went into trying to unseat McConnell, trying to unseat Lindsey Graham.

0:30:15 Thomas: And it's hard because polling told us it was possible. And I don't want to, you know, I don't want to give a message of like, don't, don't ever believe something's possible. You know, I don't wanna like kill everybody's hope. I just wonder if next time we got to keep our eye on something like Georgia, you Know, like how much money now I know that we did the fundraiser after the fact for the, for the runoff for the special elections, which I never dreamed. I never got to do my positive episode on that because I got distracted by the coup and the Nazis and the white supremacists. I am still so fucking happy about Georgia. I can't say it enough. I'm so happy that we have the Senate. It is such a big deal that Ossoff and Warnock won and that Loeffler and Perdue, two Scooby-Doo villains of senators.

0:31:03 Thomas: I just, I can't believe that it's as close as it is, but that was amazing. So what I'm saying is, but before the election, you know, very few people except Stacey Abrams and other believers would have told you, well, donate all the money in the world to Georgia. You know, they wouldn't have said that. And the amount of money that went against McConnell and Lindsey Graham for races that were just not close. I mean, I know South Carolina looked like it could have been kind of close. You know, like, but I think we need to learn to distrust polls a little bit in that way. Polls told us it was way closer than it was. It really was a failure. I mean, it just wasn't close, that race, unfortunately.

0:31:50 Thomas: And so the lesson is, let's focus on the reachable, winnable elections. I don't know what the hell happened in Maine, but those are the reasons. Those things are the reason we don't have more of a margin in the Senate. Not Joe Manchin, not Joe Manchin, not being Democrat enough back to happiness for a moment. Uh, again, this is day one. What Biden has already done rejoined Paris climate accords, preserve DACA. Oh my God. That is so huge. That is such a huge, I mean, I know it's not, I want more. I want citizenship for every undocumented immigrant in this country. I would like that right now. Um, Biden can't do that. He is not allowed by law to do that.

0:32:35 Thomas: Congress has to do that. DACA already was iffy and we'll see if this survives the new court that Trump ruined. We'll see how that goes. I don't know. It may be that nothing you know this this again we're setting ourselves up for a lot of disappointment. I am hoping I'm hopeful very hopeful that if If the court is shitty enough that maybe Joe Manchin will be able to say, you forced my hand, I will agree to do some things like ending the filibuster, which would then enable us to add DC and Puerto Rico or expand the court, unfuck the court as we like to say.

0:33:21 Thomas: We'll see. I mean, again, you heard my episode where I said not the worst possible outcome, but close. Well, with Georgia, that got a little further away from the worst possible outcome. It did, meaningfully. Meaningfully so. But it still was nowhere near the best possible outcome, there's still going to be all kinds of negatives. The point is, DACA is huge, you know, not making a bunch of people who have no other country they call home, who were brought over here by no direct will of their own as children, and now call this country their home. Many of them don't know another language because they were raised here. This is their country. But they've lived in fear for four years because of Trump. Just abject fear. Many of whom have been deported.

0:34:07 Thomas: And now that ends. That's very meaningful. Very meaningful. I want, you know, maybe we will get some sort of immigration bill. I will be curious to see. You know, it's hard to be hopeful. I keep doing this. I keep trying to be helpful. I keep beating myself up. It's it's possible that with McConnell not in charge of what comes up for a vote that some number of Republicans might vote to get us to 60 on some things like immigration reform. Now what does that mean? That means that there will be some shitty trade-off that they'll do. There will be some deal that they are forced to do because we don't have the votes, and that then, then a bunch of people will blame Biden for, look at these things that he gave Republicans.

0:34:53 Thomas: Well, we didn't have any other choice. We didn't get enough votes. You know, a couple more senators might have done it. One or two more senators may have given us the breathing room to blow up the filibuster to do whatever we want. I don't know. Maybe it would take even more, though, because it just depends on, you know, a lot of people are institutionalists. A lot of senators wouldn't necessarily want to blow the filabuster. So I don't know. I don't know how close we are. I guess I can't say for sure, but at least a couple of votes away. But if we have to give up some dumb bullshit that's hopefully not that harmful in order to help immigrants not be in terror every day that they're going to be deported and lose their families, not to mention the child separation is gone. The wall building is done, ended.

0:35:41 Thomas: I mean, this is good stuff. Here, let's see. I'm looking at the list of more of today's actions. Uh, re-engage with the WHO. Gosh, I feel like that's pretty valuable right now. The World Health Organization. Rescind the Muslim travel ban. Yes, that was in place this whole time, folks. This whole time. Now it was a little bit watered down because they had to write it the correct way to get it past the court, but it still was in case. And now it is not.

0:36:13 Thomas: Two parties are not the same. They're not the safe. Uh, federal lands mask mandate. This is a, this is interesting. I can't wait to see what Biden and team can accomplish on the pandemic. We're to need to give them a minute. The Trump White House was extraordinarily, extraordinarily petty and unhelpful in the transition. Extraordinarily. It's going to slow down what we're able to do. I mean, even yesterday, Republicans in Congress were not allowing because I get this confused me for a second because I thought like, oh, the Senate is seated, you know, before the president and every president in the ever has had nominees confirmed before they, well, I say they, it's been he every time I said they, you know, anticipating a better, better times from now.

0:37:01 Thomas: But anyway, every president In history has had cabinet members confirmed before he has taken office because the Senate gets sworn in first and they, uh, they like to get, get them off to a running start. Not, not this president. I'm not sure if they were able to get any in. I know that at least several were blocked by Republicans. And I was confused at that. But then, you know, someone pointed out that it's because we didn't have Kamala yet to break the tie. So while we did have the Senate seated, it's 50-50 tie with, you Know, obviously Pence is not going to come in there and help. So that's why we couldn't get that going. That sucked. I didn't think about that particular thingy. I thought it was like, well, once you have the Senate, you have to say, nope, needed that tie-breaking vote. So anyway, the point is is things are going to be a little slow going because of just the absolute abject failure of the Republican Party, the obstructionism at every turn to stop, by the way, getting people in place to save lives during a pandemic.

0:38:00 Thomas: It's absolutely sickening. So that's another one. So I bring that up because the mask mandate thing is probably not something the president can do legally. Again, Again, these are more questions for Andrew, but at the very least, on federal lands, Biden has mandated masks. I think that may be the limit. We'll see going forward what he can do with that. But setting a tone is going to be important. Coordinating, being competent, I mean, that's just going to do a lot It's important. I wish we could know. Someday, maybe they'll have a supercomputer powerful enough to tell us how many lives would have been lost under President Hillary Clinton. I don't know. Now, there's evidence to suggest that it could have been a lot different evidence to suggest.

0:38:46 Thomas: Who knows? Lots of countries have effed up during the pandemic who had competent leaders. And it might be more about geography, might be more about other factors. You know, if you have an island, a small island country is able to lock things down easier than than our country. So who knows about that? But I, if I had to bet how many lives, if we had just gone through the first term of President Hillary Clinton, I'm willing to bet that the death toll would be substantially lower due to just competence and how much of a difference that might make in stopping the spread. I don't know. Hard to say. Anyway, he has, Biden, I'm going through again, going through what he's already done today. Extended eviction, student loan repayment pause. So eviction moratorium is is extended.

0:39:33 Thomas: Student loan repayment pause. Now, this is a place where I think this will be ripe for criticism. I'm going to give Biden a minute to do what he's going to do, but I don't know legally how this works, but it seems as though Elizabeth Warren has said Biden could do massive student loan forgiveness. As of now, I'm seeing plans to do $10,000 of student loan loan forgiveness. Um, that's significant. That's amazing. I mean, if you told people years ago that a new president is going to wipe out $10,000 of their student loans, that would have been a quarter of mine. And you know, the $40,000 debt I thought was a ton. You know, I know, I know a lot of people have a lot more, but still that would've made a huge difference to me.

0:40:19 Thomas: Still, I would like that to go further. Um I think he should wipe out, I don't know, I'm not sure what the limit is, $50,000. And the reason is it would do a massive amount of good for the wealth gap, the racial wealth gap specifically. I've read that black women have a tremendous amount of student loan debt and black people in general in this country have more, I think, disproportionate student loan debts. So it would make a massive difference in the racial, uh, wealth gap. That's something that I would love to do. So this will be something that we can look at, criticize, push for more. We'll see how it goes. Okay. Cancel the Keystone Pipeline. That's good one. I feel like that's pretty good.

0:41:04 Thomas: Prevent workplace discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. Oh my God, that's huge one. Let's see what else we... Oh, the census. Oh, census. What a big deal that is. Counting undocumented people in the census, which is a fucking no-brainer, by the way, But it's levels of racist evil that, you know, we we we didn't know were possible pre-Trump. But yeah, so that's good. Begin rolling back Trump environmental actions and raising emission standards. Oh, by the way, I should I should note I'm taking this from Daniel Dale on Twitter. D. Dale 8. And he is the fact checker for CNN. That's the source. Want to make sure I give credit where it's due. Create COVID response coordinator. Yeah, that seems like a big fucking deal. Something we should have. Have.

0:41:50 Thomas: God. Rescind Trump Interior Immigration Enforcement Policy. Don't remember what that is. Dump the 1776 Commission. Oh, my God. I don't know if you all caught this. The 1776 Commission was the idiot right wing white nationalist inspired response to the 1619 Project. So just think about how fucking stupid that is already. That's, people were so offended by a newspaper project called the 1619 Project that talked about how, you know, a lot of things.

I listened to the, actually, I'm not sure if I ever read the whole thing, but I listened to every, all the podcast shows about it and they were excellent. The stuff about black farmers and how they couldn't get loans and there's all kinds of discrimination in that and they aren't able to do what they ought to be able to do in line with what any other white farmer had an easy time doing, which is get the loans to, you know, to secure the seed for next year and all that stuff. I'm not a farmer. I don't know, but it was very compelling if you missed that. Anyway, these very fragile white people in the White House and in the conservative ecosystem were so offended by the 1619 Project that they had to create a commission called called the 1776 Commission. And we may actually, Lindsay mentioned that the other day.

We might, we'll see if we want to, but we might go through it just to show how stupid it is and how shitty it is because it's a magnificent piece of crap. So anyway, dumping that, that's huge. And let's see, last one on the list here is do whole of, quote, whole of government initiative.

0:43:36 Thomas: So that's what we've got on day one already. I think there's probably more, but I haven't, you know, that's, that's what I've been able to get my hands on. Anyway, it's a big, it's a big deal. We are, Lydia and I are cracking open some champagne tonight. I mean, it is just, it IS so massive. I mean truly, if you care about human suffering and alleviating human suffering as I do, today marked a steep reversal of the awful trend of human suffering caused by the Trump administration. Now, of course, there's plenty of human suffering that wasn't caused by Trump administration, might have been exacerbated, but wasn't caused. There are wounds that go very deep. There are injustices that trace back generations and generations.

0:44:26 Thomas: We have to work and build toward healing those. This doesn't mean everything is fine. It is okay to celebrate a massive decline in human suffering without having to be worried that you're signaling that you don't care about people who might still be suffering. I think it's okay. I'll leave you with this, I guess, just as a persuasion tactic. Because I know, I know I have so many, my entire social media seems to be, and maybe again, the squeaky wheels that you hear from, it seems to be a lot of very left people who the last thing they want to do is ever enjoy a Democrat who won the presidency because it's not good enough. And I, you know, I understand it. A lot of it comes from a good place.

0:45:12 Thomas: I think some of it doesn't come from a good place personally. I mean, it's of it's from trying to signal a greater purity than other people sometimes, but some of it comes from a good place. Some of it comes from a genuine knowledge of how bad things have been long before Trump and will continue to be long after Biden that we want to work to fix. But I think if nothing else, it's in our interest as progressives to allow a little joy and to try to build, to try and build, take the happiness and the joy and the momentum, and to try to take the fact that so many people these last four years have been alerted to injustices that went back before this, you know, and it's not a net positive.

0:46:01 Thomas: I'm not, I will never say in a billion years that Trump was anything other than a gross, disgusting, horrible net negative that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. But if we can seize the tiny, tiny positive of it and try to expand on it, which is so many people got turned on to politics and to inequality that never would have seen it.

I think there is something to be said for the fact that a lot of people, when there's a Democrat in the White House, specifically when there was a black Democrat in the Whitehouse, in Obama, there was complacency and there was a feeling that that's enough, good enough, that things are fine. And what we can try to do is seize this momentum of a whole lot of new people, especially young people, by the way, who are aging into voting every day, that, no, there is plenty more work to be done than merely showing up every four years and hoping we win the presidency. There's so much more to do at every level. So try to build. That's all I'm asking. Let's try to with this and not try to kill anyone's joy. I just, I just by purely a persuasion tactic, I'm thinking it might be a better idea, but what do I know? All right. Right.

That's the end of my episode today. I'm so happy. We control a lot of things. We control both chambers and the presidency. And that's so much better than not controlling those things. And I look forward to what we can do with them. But we're going to have to fight like hell, by the way.

0:47:40 Thomas: I mean, especially with a margin as slim as it is. I mean, what I said about, by all means,, when a vote comes up, we're gonna have to harass the hell out of Joe Manchin to try to get him as far left as we can. So it's more stuff like that. And Kyrsten Sinema, by the way, if you live in Arizona, there are plenty of letters to be written. All right. Thank you so much for listening. Go have a nice, happy day. Enjoy the fact that we don't have an orange fascist piece of shit in the White House anymore. It's a good day, and I'll see you next time.

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