OA620: OA Debates Green Party Candidate Matthew Hoh

Transcript

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

0:01:17 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 620. I'm Thomas. That's Andrew Torres, the lawyer. How you doing?

0:01:23 Andrew: I'm great, Thomas. How are you?

0:01:25 Thomas: I should introduce myself as I'm the lawyer who's better than Alex Jones's lawyers, and you're also the... But that's a low bar, so it's not saying much.

0:01:29 Andrew: Uh, yeah. It is saying a thing, though, so...

0:01:37 Thomas: I do like saying things. Well, we've got a great episode planned for you. We Matthew Ho, Green Party candidate for, uh, North Carolina Senate seat. It has been kind enough, gracious enough, to accept our invitation to come on the show after, uh, probably hearing and knowing that we didn't have great things to say about his whole endeavor, so I'll give him credit for that, and that interview is coming up. Can't, Andrew, you were gonna set us up just briefly on, on the update in the situation that Matthew Ho is in, legally speaking.

0:02:09 Andrew: Yeah, updating last week, uh, on Monday, August the first, the North Carolina State Board of Education certified the Green Party as a political party. They met again and said, well, you know, notwithstanding, uh, we've looked, we still have questions, uh, we think that they've probably reached the threshold of viable ballots, uh, they have then indicated, uh, that they will, will accede to the request made by the Green Party to place Green candidates on the ballot. That ballot deadline is August the 12th, so one week from today, likely, as you're listening to this next Friday. In response, the Democratic Party filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction that says, hey, you can't do that. You have to fully evaluate all of the potentially fraudulent ballots before declaring that is a viable new party.

0:03:01 Andrew: There are five causes of action, I'm gonna give it to you super simply, um, all of the causes of actions sound in the idea that this was premature, and I think, uh, a court is going to say at minimum that the Democratic Party has not proven a substantial likelihood of success on the merits that will entitle them to injunctive relief to, to stop, right, the, Green Party from being placed on the ballot, because look, it's a, it's a viable argument to say yeah, the, the Board of Elections gets to make their determination, and so long as they're not unreasonable, we should defer to the administrative agency. That's overly simplified, but yeah, I think this has taken a turn such that it makes our conversation pretty dire, because, you know, our, our position is having. Is Matthew Ho on the ballot in what is likely to be a razor thin race, which could determine the Democratic majority, and on the upside, having a Manchin and Sinema proof majority in 2022, for 2023, that just got a tick harder. Well, you know.

0:04:03 Thomas: Right, but I mean, if they should be on the ballot, they should be on The Ballot. Like, I don't believe in stopping them for no reason, but, well,

0:04:06 Andrew: Yeah, no, I agree with that. I 100 percent. Let me be very, very clear about that. I do not think that, you know, at the moment where it's why I've said it, that the moment that the state of elections has said we're satisfied, there's 1600 votes ahead.

0:04:20 Thomas: But there was some talk of, like, they waited until after the deadline to maybe make it so they can't make the deadline. So what's the, is the court going to offer relief on that, you think?

0:04:30 Andrew: So that and that is right, deadline is July 1st. Well, the party wasn't certified as of July 1st. So The technical argument is the Green Party didn't have its candidates by July 1st. Um, you know, this from Thomas takes the bar exam, that that technical argument isn't going to go anywhere if the court's going to say, uh, hey, state board, can you print this ballot in time? And they'll be like, yeah, we can print the ballot in time. So, You Know, is the Democratic Party going to suffer irreparable harm? And the answer is, are they going to suffer harm? Yeah, but is it irreparable? Probably not, by the standards, right? Like, in in the sense that, um, I don't think they can demonstrate straight that it is improper for the state board of education to make that determination. So, uh, I don't think they're to get the injunctive relief. I think Matthew's going to be on the ballot. And I think that's why it's important, uh, to have this conversation.

0:04:37 Thomas: Yeah, right. All right, well let's get to it. And we are now joined by Matthew Ho of the Green Party up for North Carolina Senate seat. How are you doing, Matt.

0:05:25 Matthew: Good, good, guys. Thank Thank you for having me here.

0:05:27 Thomas: Thank you for coming on.

0:05:28 Matthew: My pleasure.

0:05:28 Andrew: Why don't you tell our audience why you're running for the Senate in North Carolina and what you hope to accomplish with your candidacy?

0:05:35 Matthew: Yeah, thank you. I am running as a Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate in North Carolina. I'm a former Marine, a disabled combat veteran. I'm with the Green Party because they align with my principles and values. I've worked with the Democratic and Republican parties for a number of years in Washington, D.C., and I understand them to be what they are. You know, I don't see them as parties of principle. Believe that housing, healthcare, education, jobs, or human rights, I believe in ending the wars overseas, as well as ending the war here at home, the war on drugs, as well as that crime against humanity on our borders. I believe real action on the climate, as well a host of other issues, including things like improving our democracy, strengthening, expanding, making it more inclusive through things like ranked choice voting and proportional force for representation and abolishing electoral college and getting all money out of politics.

0:06:22 Matthew: So what I advocate for, I don't see being advocated for in either the Democratic or Republican parties, certainly not in terms of the evidence of what they produce when they're in power. And finally, I'll say if I believe the two-party system is harmful, I believe it's not very Democratic or it's undemocratic. And so if I don't believe in the two party system, I have to do something about that. And I believe running as a third party or independent candidate is one of the ways to do that.

0:06:49 Andrew: Understood. That is a lot to unpack. And I want to touch on a lot of what you said. So, yeah, we got a lot to amens, I think, you

0:06:55 Matthew: Right.

0:06:57 Thomas: Oh, yeah. That entire platform is fantastic. And that's why I'm progressive Democrat is because I believe in all those things. It's a really I couldn't agree more with every single part of your your platform.

0:07:06 Andrew: So

0:07:07 Matthew: Yeah, I just going you know, a lot of times with Green, we get pinched a hole and people think we're just only about the environment. And certainly that's a big thing for us. Of course it is. But, you know, try and spell out all of what we believe in and what we're trying to change and accomplish and who we're doing that for, our constituency, we excuse see as working families. And so how do we, what do we do it's best for them, uh, is where we're always trying to head towards, no.

0:07:27 Andrew: So you mentioned you'd worked with both the Democratic and Republican parties. I imagine if you were elected, you would caucus with the Democrats in the Senate. Right.

0:07:36 Matthew: I would not, I would not yeah um yeah that

0:07:39 Thomas: Really?

0:07:37 Andrew: Okay. So for whom would you vote for majority leader in the the Senate.

0:07:43 Matthew: I'd have to get certain concessions, uh, in order to vote for a majority leader, you action on health care, say, would be one of those things.

0:07:49 Andrew: I want to make sure that this, that this plays out correctly because I really, I really want to, I was not expecting that answer. So I want to make that I understand it. Suppose the current balance of the Senate stays the same, but you're elected in North Carolina, right? Which would mean the Democrats lose one other seat somewhere else. And so that, that is then 50 Republicans, 49 Democrats, or those caucusing with the Democrats, which includes Bernie Sanders and Angus King in in Maine, um, and then one for for you. It Is it your position that you would withhold a vote from Chuck Schumer, uh, for majority leader, like, thus enabling Mitch McConnell to be majority leader if you didn't get particular concessions?

0:07:50 Matthew: Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

0:07:53 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Well,

0:08:29 Matthew: Yes, I would, um, that does not mean I'm voting for Mitch McConnell. But

0:08:32 Andrew: I get that No, no, no but The effect would be

0:08:33 Thomas: It means that you would be

0:08:33 Matthew: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The effect would be exactly it To the disruption, part of part of the campaign is, is to disrupt, right? That's part of this strategy of running third party or independent is to be a disruptor. I don't like the term spoiler, but I'm happy with the term disruptor we have people who are really suffering, you know? So my attitude is that go in there be a disruption cause problems. You know, what I like to say is nobody's getting their $15 billion aircraft carriers until our people get healthcare, you know. So that's the type of disruption I would like to produce in the Senate because the Senate is a body that can be done that way. Certainly you see what, uh, example, of course, the most famous example right now is, is Joe Manchin or right? Kyrsten Kyristen Sinema. But you know, what could be done? That would then be utilized towards working families?

0:08:34 Thomas: The decider of whether it's Mitch McConnell or.

0:08:35 Andrew: Yeah Yeah.

0:09:23 Thomas: Yeah.Yeah.

0:09:23 Matthew: What can be utilized for my constituency, the people who are enduring? Look, in my area in North Carolina in the last year, we've had a 50% increase in rent prices, 50%. What's being done to help them, right?

0:09:37 Thomas: In this Situation, which is analogous to the situation now, Bernie Sanders is also a 50th vote. And I don't know if you're a big Bernie fan. I'm pretty big Bernie fan, I love Bernie. He's voted doing the same thing, and the fact of the matter is that when you get down to practicality, when you have a 50-vote Senate, I was going to say majority, it's not really a majority, but that's your bare-bones majority with the VP, every single vote is that troublemaking, tie-breaking vote. And what happens is Bernie Sanders or you or anybody says, "OK, I'm not giving my vote unless such and such happens." And then Joe Manchin is on the other side of that is like, "Oh, well, I don't agree to that. So I also won't give my vote." And then the fact of the matter is just nothing happens. And there's a stalemate both ways. I don't really see how you could solve that by by just by not letting Mitch McConnell be majority leader. Like how does that fix that problem? Sure.

0:10:24 Matthew: Well, you have to be met someplace, right. I'm not saying that Chuck Schumer has to adopt every platform that I have, but there has to be some concessions to what I'm concerned about. Right. So it's not say I'm not saying that I'm going to, you know, and that's the whole thing. Why should I give that power to Chuck Schumer without receiving anything in return? That'd make me a pretty crappy politician, wouldn't it? You know, right. I mean, so like that's that's The Point of having someone in office who's willing to do that, just as Joe Manchin's doing that for ExxonMobil and the coal companies and everyone else right now. Right. Why can't somebody do that for the people in our society who are bearing the brunt of, you know, we describe as bipartisan economic policies of the last 50 years or so. Right. So, you Know, that that's where we come from that.

And certainly, yeah, I know if I was met and I was giving an opportunity to have something in return for making Chuck Schumer the majority leader, of course, I would pursue that. And I would expect Chuck Schumer would would would meet me on that, because I think neither of us want Mitch McConnell as majority leader. I don't want Chuck Schummer as

0:10:34 Thomas: Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:11:30 Matthew: Majority lead. Right. I mean, so like, you know, so but, we're not going to get, Bernie Sanders as majority leaders anytime soon. But maybe that is possible. Maybe that is then if you have a vote like mine, and maybe you get one or two others, you start to see that balance change. And you start start to have someone who's more progressive, who'd be willing to bring, you know, willing to say override the parliamentarian and have a vote on a $15 minimum wage, you know, like those kinds of things.

0:11:54 Andrew: So Ideally, then you would like to caucus with the Democrats. You'd like to stop Mitch McConnell from from being majority leader. Right. Know, if you get the concession, you're. You're basically saying I'm willing to to be serious about this. Yep.

0:12:06 Matthew: Right, you know, and the things that I'm going against are corporate subsidies, the right? Willingness to do whatever the banks and the corporations want. This latest, say, Manchin-Schumer climate bill with its dictate that the federal government has to basically double oil and gas leases over the next 10 years. You those are the things I'm going after, as well as the fact that we're not getting relief for the people who are suffering, the people who are you a society where they are increasingly drowning in debt. And we have tens of thousands of people die every year from health care and all these other things. Right. So, yeah.

0:12:06 Andrew: Right. Yeah.

0:12:38 Thomas: The trouble with this part of the conversation is that of the conversation we agree with all this because in this Scenario we're talking, I've already said, and I think Andrew probably agrees, we we agreewith I think, every policy thing you've said. Like, I can't think of a single policy thing you said that I don't agree with. And so now the question is, hey, wouldn't it be great? The The hypothetical we're dealing with is wouldn't be great to have someone like me, someone who is as progressive as I am in this in this Senate seat who is willing to say, "I'm not going to vote for your crap unless you do something that goes over toward toward my progressive end." And that's all fantastic and that would be great.

0:12:42 Matthew: Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah.

0:13:11 Thomas: But that's not the issue here. The reason that there's a big problem here is the best way to get a progressive person in that seat or anyone to the left of, you Mitch McConnell is to elect the Democrat because that's the person who has the realistic chance of winning. That's that's major problem here. If we could wave our magic wand and you or I were in that seed, that would be fantastic. But that's just not the reality we live in.

0:13:32 Matthew: How long are we going to wait for that reality to happen? Before we do something to make it happen, you

0:13:36 Andrew: I I think that's a great question, but I'm I'm really intrigued sort of at at probing kind of the degree to which, because you mentioned opposing the the Schumer Mansion compromise in inflation bill, which has significant amounts of spending on green infrastructure project. It does open up significant leases. And so I guess my question there is, you have kind of both aphorisms, right? You have the don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. And you also have, you know, sort of the need to push without compromising thing.

To what extent does legislation become something you would not agree with because it doesn't go far enough? And here, I've two specific things in mind. The two specific things in mine that I have are a public option to the Affordable Care Act. Think the three of us, if I were to ask you, what's your position on healthcare? I think that three of us on this call would say Medicare for all, right? Complete universal coverage, But right. If I were in the Senate, I would 100 percent vote to add a public option to the Affordable Care Act to move in that direction to get us

0:14:17 Matthew: Yeah.

0:14:30 Thomas: Mm hmm.

0:14:40 Andrew: There. If that's if if that came up, that that came that bill came up tomorrow and had forty nine votes. Senator Ho, Senator Torres, Senator Smith, are you going to be the 50th vote for adding the public option? Well, yeah,

0:14:40 Thomas: If that's all you could get Joe Manchin to do. Yeah.

0:14:42 Matthew: Yeah, yeah, I mean exactly. I mean it's those type of things, but we're not seeing that. How are we gonna put the pressure, right, that's I think where we agree on what we want and I think our disagreement is on how do we get to that point, how do get those things, what's the strategy we're going to utilize, right to get there, yeah?

0:15:07 Andrew: Yeah. Complete, complete agreement. So you you would vote for adding a public option to the ACA, even though it's not all the way to universal health care.

0:15:10 Matthew: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Of course. Of course. Because that would provide relief to people. Absolutely. Yeah,

0:15:18 Andrew: Cool. I love when we hit agreement. Same thing on $15 an hour minimum wage, I think right? It probably should be a little higher than that, particularly, you know, when you're talking about, you Know.

0:15:31 Thomas: I think it should be like 25 or 30 personally.

0:15:34 Andrew: But if you're the 50th vote for $15.00 an hour minimum wage to do something, I assume that would also be a yes vote from you?

0:15:41 Matthew: Of course, but then that doesn't mean that then you then stop, right? Right. Exactly. You're still, cause then you're, you're pushing for, uh, one of our things is, is that you guys probably agree, uh that minimum wage should be somehow indexed to cost of living. I believe it should be indexed to housing costs, localized housing costs. And then you also have a form of rank control in that way as well, but you know, this idea that, uh, yeah, you get to 15, the problem being is that does that then become the end, right?

0:15:44 Andrew: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right.

0:15:45 Thomas: Right. Yeah, yeah. Right? No,

0:16:07 Matthew: Is at the end of the discussion for another 12 years on the minimum wage right, yeah, so yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:16:09 Thomas: Of course not. Yeah.

0:16:07 Andrew: No, yeah. 100 percent should not. Again, we're in total agreement. So here's something that that I struggle with, you know, you probably ascertained from from the call, like, Joe Biden was like 11th on our respective list of candidates in the in the 2020 primaries.

0:16:24 Matthew: Sure

0:16:26 Thomas: Yeah, he edged out Marianne Williams. Or don't.

0:16:27 Andrew: Right. Yeah. We were big, you know, Elizabeth Warren supporters and, donated, volunteered, all of that. One of the things that Joe Biden is an unquestioned success at are Joe Biden's judicial appointments, right? That is, he's made 84 appointments. Two have been white men. They have been overwhelmingly women of color, persons, LGBTQ individuals, persons with diverse backgrounds. It's It part I was taken aback by the the sort of the first Mitch McConnell comment. In my view, that's that's one of the few things that you can do as the president, basically that you can get even a, you Know, a Joe Manchin and Joe Manchen has been a consistent vote for all of those. So long as you maintain sort of that that bare Senate majority. As And we're talking strategically, I be really troubled by having a Senate that was like the Senate in 2015 and 2016, in which Mitch McConnell held up every judicial appointment, stole a Supreme Court seat, and really put us in the position that we're in today, right?

0:16:32 Matthew: Right.

0:17:32 Andrew: Was able to shift the balance of the Supreme Court by two votes to a monster in Donald Trump, who nominated uh right-wing activists for the sole purpose of dismantling Roe v. Wade, um, so I'm concerned I about that, I

0:17:45 Matthew: No.

0:17:46 Andrew: Nope.

0:17:46 Matthew: I understand that, I, I think where, where our pushback is, uh, what's been done to change the process. What's been done to reform the nomination process to not allow for the delays, the obstruction, the interference to occur? Where is talk the of reforming how we appoint judges for life? Right. Those types of things, I think, are what many of us are looking at and saying, yeah, I've heard this my whole life. I mean, I was born in '73. I was a nerd. So I remember the Bork hearings, you mean, like, all these same types of arguments and fights about the judiciary have been going on my entire life. And I think what the result is, is that the Republicans have proved better at it than the Democrats have. Know, and that's a terrible thing. I agree with that. You, you know, certainly the loss of Roe and what could potentially come, but what are the solutions for that? What are the ways to fight? And

0:18:35 Thomas: Well, I've heard some great reform ideas from Democrats that creative. I think Bernie had a good proposal for for reform. So I'm hearing those reform ideas coming from the Democrats. The weird thing, it really feels like the core difference among us is, I think, a one of pragmatism, like, and be one of, like, what the source of the problem is, because, as you say, we agree on almost everything. It's about how to get there. And I think that the key problem I have with this idea of that running third party is going to be the way to do that is that it presupposes that the problem is that Democrats just aren't trying hard enough. And I think there are instances of that, but I don't think the solution is play spoiler in a potentially pivotal election that will actually reduce our ability to do anything.

0:19:22 Thomas: I think the resolution is get more and more progressive Democrats who we can trust in these seats. Why isn't that the solution? Why isn't that the way if a voter is looking to try to fix these problems? Why should they look to you rather than just try to get another Democratic vote in the seat so that that that gets rid of the Manchin problem? If we could put two more Democrats in, we wouldn't have to hear Manchin or Sinema's name ever again. Why isn't that the way we go?

0:19:46 Matthew: Well, because, you know, we'll say here down here in North Carolina, there are 15 Democrats running for federal office and only one supports Medicare for all. Certainly the issues that I'm running on are not issues that Cheri Beasley, the Democratic nominee, is running on, uh, there is a great degree of difference between her platform and my platform, if we know that, say, health care, if we knew that, uh, as, uh, national economy, economy science has pointed out last month or two months ago, a third of the COVID deaths came, came about because of a lack of healthcare. So 330,000 people killed because of, and the fact that you're not going to have someone on the ballot for US Senate who's advocating for healthcare, how can you see that person as a spoiler then?

0:20:16 Thomas: Yeah.

0:20:17 Andrew: Yeah. Well, No.

0:20:27 Matthew: Right? I mean, because you're advocating for something of such a massive,

0:20:27 Thomas: Oh, because you have no chance of winning.

0:20:29 Andrew: Sorry, now- Now- Now I gotta- now I Gotta cut in, because uh, because Sherry Beasley, her third listed issue is adding a public option to the Affordable Care Act, right, which was a thing that you agreed you would also vote for, so I- I think you Can say she doesn't go as far. I agree, I would like it if she were campaigning on Medicare for all, uh, but the three of us agreed adding a public option is at least a vote for health care. I think that that misrepresents her position.

0:20:29 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:20:29 Matthew: Right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I would also say Joe Biden campaigned on a public option and we've not seen that at all. Right? So at some, right.

0:20:59 Andrew: We Could Talk about That

0:21:00 Thomas: Because the 50th vote is Joe Manchin. You can't just magically snap your fingers and Joe Manchen wants to vote for your entire agenda. That's I don't know how you would do that.

0:21:01 Andrew: Right, Yeah,

0:21:01 Matthew: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, you can at least make the effort or talk about it, as you talked about public option and

0:21:13 Andrew: I want to come at I wanttocometthis from, from just a slightly different direction, because you mentioned something that I think actually is the solution to you, the differences you hear which kind of are slight, uh, between you and I, and that was, you, you began by talking about rank choice voting, and I don't know if you have a preferred mechanism, um, I, I don't consider myself an expert in the differences between, uh, RCV as it's practiced in Maine or, uh, you know, some of the instant runoff provisions. Do you have like a preferred methodology, or is it more just sort of the general idea of?

0:21:15 Matthew: Yeah. Right.

0:21:42 Matthew: Are a bunch bunch of different options. For me, I really come back to the idea of proportional representation though. Rank choice voting is a way to get us there. You know, the idea of amending it so that we have proportional representation. We do not have a strictly, cause this is, again, it comes back to me for the two party system. I believe the know, we have to have a multi-party system. I believe that's a better form of democracy.

0:22:01 Andrew: So I'm not sure that I understand that answer, because my understanding of rank choice voting is, I'm a North Carolina voter, I get to go in and I would rank, I'm voting for Senate, and I would rank my candidates as one, ho to Beasley, and three, I forget even the name of the Republican at the moment. Ted Budd. That's right.

0:22:09 Matthew: Mm-hmm.

0:22:21 Matthew: Ted Budden.

0:22:22 Andrew: Yeah, I was I was right there on the tip of my tongue.

0:22:23 Matthew: Yeah.

0:22:22 Thomas: Yeah, do you have to list them or can you say like a hundred or, you know, like do you ever ring Them third? Does it let you yeah

0:22:24 Andrew: Right. Yeah. Well, different, different different methodologies give you Different choices. Right? And so then the idea is, then, you know, that sort of gets added all up. Then you start eliminating the lowest, lowest ranked candidate. Uh, and then my vote, uh, for you gets converted into a vote for my second choice candidate, uh, if no candidate achieves 50 percent, right?

0:22:30 Matthew: Yeah, yeah, yeah right.

0:22:31 Thomas: Yeah

0:22:47 Matthew: That's the instant instant runoff. Yeah.

0:22:48 Andrew: And I would, again, I supported it in Maine when it came out, we've supported that on the show a bunch of times, um, that seems to me to be kind of the thin edge of the wedge of opening up the system to third, third party candidates, because right? It deprives Thomas here of his best argument, Thomas right. Says, yeah, vote, vote for how is, you know, a strategic waste of time, because you're going to wind up electing Bud instead. And under his under the current rules, he's right. But if we implement ranked choice voting, you can say back to him, like, no, man, go out, vote for the candidate that is closest to you.

0:23:03 Thomas: Yeah.

0:23:24 Andrew: And we'll eliminate down and and so it won't get thrown away. It won't be effectively a vote for the other side, um, so I guess number one, you agree, like, that's the kind of system we ought to be moving towards, right?

0:23:24 Thomas: It's

0:23:35 Matthew: That is. And let me push back on the idea that a vote for Ho is a vote for Bud because it's not, right?

0:23:41 Thomas: Not precisely, what we said, but yeah,

0:23:42 Matthew: Yeah, exactly. But that's kind of the spirit of it, right. That's the idea of it. And what we know from exit polls is, say, in 2016, like the Jill Stein voters, 61% of them said they wouldn't have voted for anyone. 25% said they would have voted for Clinton, 15% they would have voted for Trump, so it's not a clear, every vote for Stein would have gone for Clinton. And the same with, say, Gary Johnson in 2016 for Trump, or Evan McMullin, you know, the most famous, I guess, of course, would be Ralph Nader in Florida in 2000, right? That's what people come back to, but the idea that, yeah, to improve the system. And so I would say, how do you get to rank choice voting without putting pressure on the current two-party system, them,

0:23:43 Thomas: Oh, That doesn't put any pressure on the current two-party system, what, best case, it does nothing. You know, because as you say, I mean, if the people really weren't going to vote for the Democratic candidate and were, you would only come out for you, okay, OK, great, let's be real. What are you pulling at? One percent? I mean, it's not, that's not good. That doesn't, put how does that put pressure on the two parties? I mean, Ross Perot started a whole friggin party in the 90s and got like 15 percent of the national vote. But didn't that didn't do anything to put pressure on the two party system. Doesn't it? I don't think running as a third party candidate, it's like, you need the infrastructure in there before you can actually do it. You know, that, that's the problem that think I I'm having with this. I would love, and I'll go so far as to say, Matt, if you had ranked choice voting and I were in your state, you would be my number one choice. I would go you, the Democrat, and then I would leave off the, I wouldn't put anybody else.

0:25:06 Thomas: And I'm 100 percent serious about that, but. But in the current case, which is we don't have ranked choice vote and we have to go pick who we want to represent us in a critical seat, I would absolutely vote for the Democrat who has a realistic chance of winning, because that does more good for the people who need help right now.

0:25:24 Matthew: First of all, thanks for the vote. I appreciate it. You a button when we get them made. My argument is this, is that I look at it the other way, what you're claiming is true, accept what right, you are saying that I my presence takes away from another candidate being able to beat a third candidate in a tight race, right? That's the pressure I'm talking about, right, at some point, when do the Democrats, Republicans, and Republicans say the same thing about libertarians, in 2016, the libertarian candidate for governor here in North Carolina got 100,000 votes, and that was more than what the spread was between Roy Cooper, right. I mean, so, you, but you look at that and you say, well, that libertarian, that guy was running on trans rights, gay marriage, ending the war on drugs, all things that are like our anathema to the Republicans, but somehow the Republicans feel entitled to those votes, right? So there's that. But when you have that type of pressure, and then at what point do the two main parties say, okay, if we do adopt ranked choice voting, that takes away that concern.

We don't have to try and keep other parties out or independent candidates out. We could have a multi-party democracy, but so without that pressure, though, I just don't see the system adopting it unless there is some reason for it to do so, and that reason being run multiple candidates.

0:25:27 Andrew: Well,

0:25:53 Thomas: Yeah, absolutely.

0:26:38 Thomas: Quick follow up. In that scenario that you just described, did Republicans A, adopt any of those pro-trans views that you suggested, or B, figure out some sort of rank choice in that scenario? Scenario? Did either of those things that you're trying to make happen happen in that Roy Cooper scenario?

0:26:53 Matthew: But it's not going to happen with one event, right? It has to be a continuous pressure, right? It hast to be something that they're going to see, it's going to happen again and again in order for it, uh, be acted upon. So if it's just a one-off thing, then they say, okay. Or what they'll try and do is, then they'll do things like we're dealing with here with issues with ballot access. They'll just try and keep third parties and independent candidates, grassroots campaign, whatever, off the ballot by making it difficult for them to be on the ballot in this way, right? Just in thisway. And now you have just simply a two-party structure that eliminates any choice for the voter in terms of what their preferences are, what their values are, know, right?

0:27:19 Thomas: Yeah, yeah,

0:27:30 Andrew: Well, well, let's well, but let's

0:27:32 Matthew: Yeah. So

0:27:33 Andrew: Let's talk about that. Why is that a better form of pressure than you running in the Democratic primary, for example? Because, I mean, it's not true to say that there's no pressure on Democratic candidates. Like when progressive candidates start outraising and out polling and beating crappier candidates, more conservative candidates in primaries, like that seems very clearly to push the party to the left as well. Your so thoughts on That why why is running in the primary why did you how about let's make it personal, why didn't you run in the Democratic primary? Okay.

0:28:00 Thomas: Yeah.

0:28:04 Matthew: I've never been a Democrat, um, right.

0:28:06 Andrew: Fair enough.

0:28:06 Matthew: I mean, and I must, yeah. Right.

0:28:07 Andrew: Okay. Then. Step back.

0:28:08 Matthew: I've never been right. So, um you know, I mean there's a host of reasons. I'm a socialist, you democratic party is a capitalist party, So should a socialist be running in a party that is on its principle, right mean so there's things like that, but I've also had real experiences on Capitol Hill with Democrats that have angered me, and the Republicans too. But the work I did through the think tank I was a part of, the anti-war work and everything, the conversations I've had with senior members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the House Armed Services Committee, who would say one thing to you in private about the wars and then do the opposite. And this is an age-old problem. This is something that's

0:28:08 Andrew: Got got it. Well, well,

0:28:47 Thomas: Yeah.

0:28:47 Matthew: Always existed. So why go along with a party that's like that, and the idea though, of, changing of it from the inside is I don't think possible. I think there's too much money. I Think it's, it's too, the edifice that's there is too, uh, is great to be taken down that way. And I think we've seen that say this last year, uh here in North Carolina, where we had a ton of money come in, uh to make sure the progressive candidates in the democratic democratic races were nullified, know, you were suppressed, were beaten, you know, whether it be Erica Smith up in the first district or Anita Earls in our fourth district, the hundreds, you millions of dollars that came in to ensure their loss. You know, it makes a lot of us say and going to look at it, say what people say happened with Bernie in 2016, 20, you know, It's rigged, you Know, and so do you want to try and change it from the inside? Or do you want to change your mindset.

0:28:47 Thomas: Yeah,

0:29:38 Matthew: And And obviously, we have a different opinion on this. And it's almost like we're at a DSA meeting right now, right, because you go to a DFA meeting, like half the room is one side, half the rooms the other side.

0:29:43 Andrew: And I but let's but

0:29:45 Thomas: Well, that's good.

0:29:47 Matthew: I mean, yeah,

0:29:47 Thomas: That's because we genuinely want these good things to happen. And we just we just truly disagree.

0:29:47 Matthew: Yeah. Right.

0:29:47 Andrew: Right. Right. And we're all we're all people of goodwill here. And

0:29:53 Matthew: Yeah.

0:29:53 Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. I And really meant that you'd be my top rank choice, but like 100% I'm not even being sarcastic. I would love I love it. Give me rank choice voting. I I would love it all day. But I have to point out the contradiction in saying, oh, see, here's why I can't change it from the inside. Here's why it can't win the primary. Too much money comes in and it ensures that the progressive candidates can't win. But what I can do is run as the Green Party and somehow can like win in the general election. If you can't beat Democratic candidate in a primary that is the most left wing voters, if you can't appeal and win somehow crack through that, how in the world could you say that the same forces wouldn't keep you from doing anything in the general?

0:29:57 Andrew: You go yeah. I

0:29:58 Matthew: Now you're to get a T-shirt, man.

0:30:32 Matthew: Understand where you're coming from with that. And what I would say is that it's matter of perspective, a matter of like long-term growth, the idea that I want to build a multi-party democracy, be part of that, build an additional party, be something that is outside of the, uh, you know, we call the Republican democratic parties, the parties of war and wall street, build something outside of that build something for a constituency that otherwise is not being represented,

0:30:57 Andrew: So I hear you, you want a long-term strategy to build a multi-party democracy in the United States. I completely agree with that. I think we've agreed that ranked choice voting is uh that lever, right, you know that tire iron to wedge to open the system. And so I guess my question to you is, I when I see you say the the choices are between sort of reform from within or blow it all up, I think that's that missing a third option, right? That that is a false dichotomy that excludes build from the bottom, develop, right, genuine grassroots movement, run for local office, get ranked choice voting on the ballot, change the structural rules first. And then and yeah, like it's going to take longer. But like I look look at the Green Party I'm really curious your thoughts on this and I look at people like Jill Stein who've never held elective never been dog catcher who who want to parachute in and be president of the United States right with all the arrogance you of Donald Trump that have not gone and run for county council and mayor and the state legislature and and

0:31:32 Matthew: Well,

0:32:02 Andrew: And I look at The Green Party's website Right. They have two candidates that are officially endorsed by the Green Party of North Carolina in this election. You for the Senate. And Right. Then one candidate for for a local county council. And I'm wondering why doesn't the Green party take their donations and their efforts and the excitement of people like you. And why not start at the local level, at the grassroots level and build the foundation for rank choice voting so that instead of us you know, being, having this friction moment here, we're naturally a lot because Democrats, by and large, Democrats love, you know, Chuck Schumer might not, but like, you with the grassroots Democrats, the rank and file, we love rank choice. We're the party that wants to encourage voting. So what's what are your thoughts on that?

0:32:01 Thomas: State house. Yeah. How

0:32:45 Matthew: I, I said, look at California and look at Gavin Kevin Newsom not allowing ranked choice voting to come in, right? I mean, I think California is a good example of a state that's run by Democrats that doesn't achieve the desires of a lot of people, right, whether it be health care, whether it be just the fact that they just, the state Senate out there, continue to allow prison labor, things like that. You so, I'll push back on because I hear this a lot about how the Green Party only runs Jill Stein. It's simply not true. Green Party has won close to 1,100 races over the last two decades across the country. Almost all of those have been local races. We have about 130.

0:33:20 Andrew: Where are the local races in North Carolina

0:33:22 Matthew: Well, we're just building the party here.

0:33:23 Andrew: So so same question, why are you building the party from a Senate, because, look, again, you are articulate, you are smart, you are hanging in here with with hard questions.

0:33:32 Matthew: Oh, man. You're going to get a T-shirt as well, brother.

0:33:34 Andrew: I know. We all want one. If you were running for, you your local assembly, like you'd be a shoe in, right? Why not, if you're just building the party, why not build it at the local roots? Why start at what is very likely going to be, you a losing campaign for Senate that could be a losing campaign that has disastrous consequences for all of us? Why not start with your community and get ranked choice on the ballot, change the rules, and then, you then we're all behind you?

0:34:01 Matthew: Yeah, no, I understand what you're saying there. And I'll say one of the aspects going on down here is we are trying to get recognized as a political party. So running a statewide campaign was one of of the best methods we thought in order to have the ability to do a statewide petitioning campaign. The other thing too, is this is where my background is. You know, I went to war three times. You know, I've got the issues that I've been working on, the issues that I have been involved on. I've been involved in national media for more than 12 years now. You know, that that's where I best fit in. The issues that are affecting me personally, you let's say the war on drugs. Why is it so important to me? I have a lot of neighbors who have been affected by people in my life. As a combat veteran, I know six people who've died from opioid overdose. That's not uncommon in the combat veteran community.

0:34:49 Andrew: Yeah.

0:34:49 Matthew: So a lot of this for me is a personal thing of that the issues that have affected my life are the issues at the national level for which I've not seen the accountability. So that's where I personally like to be, but on a more tactical level, Right? The idea that for our state party to run a statewide candidate, we felt was one of the better ways to help us run a state-wide campaign to get ballot access to be recognized as a statewide political party.

0:35:01 Andrew: Yeah.

0:35:13 Andrew: Well. Hold on. The ballot access provision is North Carolina Statute 163.98, the one that you're fighting, says in the first general elections, the only time that you get as a it presumptive matter of right, following the date on which a new political party qualifies under the provisions of 0.96, which you now as of this Monday have, the right, North Carolina Board of Elections has certified the Green Party as a new candidate. It shall be entitled to have the names of its candidates for national, state, congressional and local offices printed on the official ballots. In other words, Green Party gets a ballot line. Right. So I doesn't that make it even more urgent to be fielding those local candidates in that first election? Right. To come out and be able to say to people when you are petitioning for signatures, hey, you this is going to get 100 candidates for the General Assembly on the ballot. This is going To greatly diversify the electorate. And this is really the start of building, know, a viable third party in the state.

0:35:14 Matthew: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right, right. That's the point right there, Andrew, is that that's the start of building a party? We don't have a hundred candidates to run right now. We really are building this from, digging out the foundation, so to speak, right now. You know, and so the idea of having a statewide race where people can become familiar throughout the state due to this campaign is something that we believe will help educate people about who the Green Party is, why there should be another option like the Green Party, you know, those kinds of things. I certainly understand the need to run candidates at all levels, and I support that. It's just that the state, where party is right now in terms of membership, we have to grow that, right? We have to develop that. We have have to let people know who the Green Party is, what we stand for, why we are different than the Democrats, Republicans, and the Libertarians, you is one of my personal goals is as I'm doing this, that, you next year, we've we've gotten, you know, six or eight people to run in 2024.

0:37:09 Matthew: Right. And then in 2026, we have 12 or 13 people running, right? And so building it. And so that's where we're at with that. And we really are, again, at that very beginning roots of building the party here in North Carolina.

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0:40:15 Andrew: I hear an an education, you you're going to run statewide, uh, educate people about the Green Party, uh, drive, get, make, folks enthusiastic, um. You mentioned the 2016 election, and Bill Weld was the Libertarian vice presidential candidate to Gary Johnson. And down the stretch, right, when it was clear that this was going to be a close race, I think, you most of us thought it was not going to be the the outcome that it was, Bill Weld went on Meet the Press, and essentially, almost word for word said, said, hey, if you're in a swing state, vote for Hillary Clinton. And and, right, did that on the basis of stated reasons for his campaign. Right, which was he's a moderate Republican in Massachusetts. He agreed to run with Gary Johnson because holy crap, Donald Trump.

0:41:00 Andrew: And in order to stop that from happening, he said, look, yeah, don't vote for us if it's going to cause Hillary Clinton presidency and deliver it into the hands of a monster. So so let me ask that to you. And let me not ask it as a as a hypothetical. What would whatever? Let's suppose there's reliable polling. Right. And it is October, late October. And that polling shows Bud ahead of Beasley by a percent. 48 Right, to 47. Right? And you're at 5%. Right. At that point, would you tell your voters? Would you would you do the bill weld and go, Gosh, we've run the national the national race. We've made our point. We're educated the voters. I'm not going to be senator, but I could make the difference here. I could a Democrat over the finish line, which at least would staunch the bleeding would you do that or or the structural reasons that you've talked about? Would they prevent you from doing that?

0:41:53 Matthew: Structural reasons prevent me from doing that. The importance of the issue I'm running on in terms of the lives that are affected, the houses across the street from me as I sit here, both those families have lost those homes to corporations. Both are, because

0:42:06 Thomas: Is You electing a Republican gonna help that? I don't I don't understand, I mean, we've, uh,

0:42:09 Matthew: Electing a Democrat hasn't helped either and won't. I mean, I haven't seen the evidence of that.

0:42:15 Andrew: No, no, no, wait wait, wait, you would agree that these past two years have been better, uh, than the four that preceded it, right?

0:42:22 Matthew: For who?

0:42:22 Andrew: Well, certainly for the most marginalized, right?

0:42:23 Thomas: Pretty much, much literally, everyone, yeah. Yeah.

0:42:26 Andrew: Know, for we have a huge trans contingent of listeners, and to go from an administration that forces you to use unsafe bathrooms and requires you to plot which states you can drive through when you're crossing the country to an administration that has elevated trans men and women to the bench, to upper level executive positions, to cabinet positions. I mean, no question, I life is better if you are trans in America in 2022 than in 2019. I mean, you wouldn't disagree with that, right?

0:42:26 Matthew: Well, I wouldn't disagree with that, but I would then say, what if I brought you the Haitians who've been deported? Right? Right. I mean, now we're now we are saying some groups are, I'm not, I know you're not saying this. Right. You're not saying some group is more important to others. The problem is, is that at what point do you ignore other groups that are hurting for the benefit of those right who are harmed by other groups? Right. I mean. So I'm a staunch trans supporter. So, yeah. Yeah.

0:42:56 Andrew: Yeah.

0:43:24 Andrew: I have no doubt. Look, like, again, we would not have invited you on the show if I hadn't. I read your blog. I found it moving. I find your history inspiring. Know, Thomas and I are both atheists. You know, I found your candor on inspiring. Transpiring. I will point out, you took a dig at California, California, elected a congressman who's the head of the Thought Caucus, the first of its kind out there. So I want to answer your question because you asked, do you try and do in those cases? In my mind, what I try and doing, what I put into place in 2020 is I try to swing for the fences in the the primaries right for Elizabeth Warren, for example, for, you know, what I thought was the most, uh, not just the most progressive candidate but also, uh, the president America deserve, at the smartest, best collection of ideas. If you back somebody else, you back somebody else, that's fine, but you're wrong. Um, and

0:43:25 Matthew: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

0:43:47 Matthew: Sure.

0:44:14 Matthew: Think

0:44:15 Andrew: Uh, and and I lost, right? Like, and it hurt to lose, and like it hurt a lot that by the time Maryland's, primary you came about, I had a significantly constrained ballot. At that point, I, voted for Birdie Sanders at that moment, but, and then soon after that it was very clear that we, uh, were going to get, the person who'd run the most conservative, uh, campaign in the Democratic primary. Um, and then at that point I said, okay, well, I, I gotta grieve, right? I keep my, uh, Warren, my bumper sticker on the car and my, uh, Billionaire Tears coffee mug and all of that stuff. Uh, but now it's time to work for Biden. And I, I haven't regretted that for a second, uh, compared to the the prior four years that we went through. And you know, when you say, uh, is the Biden administration a hundred percent of what a Warren or a Torres or a Ho administration? Of course not. And we criticize that all the time.

0:44:18 Thomas: Yeah no we deal in reality we deal and we don't know, no person that's gonna win a national election is going to be my idea of a hundred percent of everything's gonna be great and and furthermore be able to accomplish that, be able, able to actually accomplish that, because it's setting this unreal expectation that unless Democrats have fixed literally everything, that means they're evil or not trying hard enough or corrupt. And I just think things are too hard. Things are too difficult to move when you have exactly 50 votes. Exactly 50 votes! And I've just got to say, I'm so sorry, Matt, but I have to question, I mean, how much do you really want to help these people that you talk about if you are saying when you're confronted with this scenario where, let's say you're polling at 5%, you have the ability, probably the real ability in this scenario to swing the election for the Democrat versus the Republican, to say, here's how I'm going to help you, person who doesn't have healthcare.

I'm gonna a vote that we've already covered is a vote for a public option in healthcare. I'm going to take away that possibility and replace that with a Republican who would vote to take it away even more health care from people. I don't know how you can sit there with a straight face and think that's helping.

0:45:11 Andrew: I

0:46:11 Matthew: Lot of this is our experiences, where we come from. I know many, say, Palestinians, Yemenis, Egyptians. We just watched the president of the States go and kiss the rings of the Israeli, Saudi and Egyptian leaders. I think what we do is we put up lines over where are we going to allow things to happen, harm to others, and what I am coming from. Look, I compromised a lot in my life. I went to the wars. I took part in organized murder three times, and I won't compromise anymore. We can run campaigns on principles and values, and then when you get into office is where the compromise occurs. But to ask people to compromise at the ballot box, particularly when you have positions and you come from a place where you are committed to say nonviolence, whether it be what you see here in this country or what's been occurred overseas, to say that that doesn't matter.

0:47:05 Andrew: To engage with that because what I find misleading, I don't want to say dishonest, but what I found misleading about that statement is it omits the context of Trump moved the Israeli American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Right, like, I mean, that is far more provocative to Palestinians. I mean, that is, openly you it, escalated violence, right? Like it, I, again, I would put us back in the position of if, you, you were to ask our positions on the situation in the Middle East, I suspect we mostly align. I wasn't thrilled to see that either, but, but again, again, I think it's misleading to put that in a vacuum, to suggest that you it would be doing something to improve that, the baseline conditions would improve for Palestinian Americans in that situation.

0:47:05 Matthew: Yeah.

0:47:21 Thomas: Yeah.

0:47:55 Matthew: Well, I mean, both parties, I mean, under Biden, increased military assistance to Israel. I mean I think it's close to, yeah

0:48:00 Andrew: It Increases Every Year. But it's a lesser percentage than it was under Trump.

0:48:04 Matthew: But it's still, it's getting close to $6 billion a year now.

0:48:05 Andrew: I wish it was. My frustration here is, I think, borne out by the amicus briefs, the interveners your in legal case, the reality is your candidacy disadvantages the Democrats and advantages the Republicans. And that can be seen in the fact that it's the Democrats who have moved to block you from the ballot. By the way, I think their latest lawsuit that they filed yesterday is almost certainly going to lose. You're joined by briefs being filed by the Republican Party.

0:48:07 Matthew: Yeah,

0:48:35 Thomas: Talking about not compromising. It strikes me as just being stubborn for the sake of a worse outcome. I would also have been not compromizing if you entered the Democratic primary and I guess called yourself a Democrat, even if you aren't really, whatever, and tried to win there because that would actually have a chance of doing something. AOC's agenda seems pretty great to me, like Bernie's agenda. He's an independent, but he caucuses with the Democrats. The and Enter a Democratic primary. Exactly. Andrew Yang entered a Democratic primary because that is the way to accomplish it. And I'm one for for overwrought analogies. I mean, it strikes me that we're trying to get across just an absolute chasm of crap. Like we all agree on that. We're trying across the. Nobody here is a bright eyed Democratic Party lover that's, you know, like that's none of us. But we're trying to cross a chasm and we see a shitty rope bridge.

And we're like, that's the that's the thing we have. All right, we'll start trying to file across that. And then you're there and you're like no, there should be a better bridge built here. I'm going to just drive a bus full of schoolchildren right where there should be a bridge and that there should be a brick to bring attention to the fact that there's not a bridge here. And we're like, but that's just going to result in horror. Like that doesn't, you have to build the bridge first. We need a different election system before we can just have a third party.

0:49:00 Andrew: Entered a Democratic primary. Right.

0:49:48 Thomas: It's just not going to work. Your agenda is so overwhelmingly left that the only party you're going to take people from is the democratic party at all. And you're, you're not going, to build, build a viable third party, You're just going to divide the left and let Republicans win.

0:49:58 Matthew: Well, Well again, I'll, I'll punch it back to the exit polls and show that's not true. We take people, you know what I mean? We take, we take Republican voters as well. You that's what we find,

0:50:11 Thomas: OK, but you're pro-trans, you're anti-war, you've got these things that Republicans hate. You're telling me you're going to take even close to as many Republicans as you would Democrats.

0:50:21 Andrew: It's Why I didn't want to, I didn't want to play the polling game, so that's why I didn't do that. But we we could play the same ho game with Jill Stein in 2016. And that is, if she had told her voters in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan to vote for Hillary Clinton, that would have reversed the results in those three states. In other words, her margin of victory was, the number of votes for Jill Stein, in each of those three States was larger than the margin of Trump's victory. That is not to say, had Jill Stein not won, had there been a better candidate? I'm not arguing counterfactuals.

0:50:53 Andrew: I'm saying she had the power, and she's running a national campaign. She had the power to go to those three states and say, hey, I get it. Maybe swap a vote with me. Ralph Nader did that, right? But you're in Pennsylvania, man. We all know Pennsylvania's ground zero. Why don't you vote for Hillary Clinton in ground zero? That would would have been a power to sort of, you bring us together rather than, uh, poach, but

0:50:53 Matthew: But that, but hang on Andrew that, but that yeah.

0:51:15 Matthew: But that gets into what many of us reject are the lesser of two evils, right? You're continuing with this lesser of evil strategy that still produces evil, right, that still produces the war, still produces the financial hardship, still reduces the economic inequality that leads to just brutal lives for tens of millions of Americans. I

0:51:38 Andrew: I view that as a long fight, the way you view building an infrastructure as a long fight.

0:51:42 Thomas: Yeah, you'RE pointing to THE PRACTICAL RESULT of voting for Democrats is But if you're gonna get into practicality, the practical result of your race is could potentially be putting a Republican in the seat instead of a Democrat. I don't understand how that fixes anything. What Jill Stein did sticking to her guns, you as say you want to do, sticking to your principles, what did that accomplish for Jill Stein or the Green Party? The 2020 election, the Green party vote dropped like a hundred percent. Mean, it went from 1.4 million votes to 400,000 votes. So how did what she do in 2016, how did that help the Green How did that help make a Green Party more party viable, more viable? It didn't. It made things so bad that we went to Joe fucking Biden as our candidate. Things got so bad. People were like, oh, my God, we have to go to the safest appearing person we can possibly go to.

0:51:42 Andrew: Yeah, Ah,

0:52:32 Thomas: This was largely black voters, by the way, paved who the way for Joe Biden because they're so terrified by how bad things have gotten. You don't make things better by first making things way worse. I just don't see that as as how to get there.

0:52:43 Matthew: A lot of what I come back to at the 2016 election is the 12.5 million Obama 2012 voters who then voted for Trump in 2016, eight and a half million who voted for Trump and, and not 12 and a half million, but in them four or so million.

0:52:55 Andrew: Yeah, I, question those numbers I would want

0:53:00 Matthew: Well, I mean, I've seen that from a number of places, it's, you I think the numbers range from anywhere from eight to 15 million, they say. It's hard to get that right. But there was that there, you well, I'm saying why aren't, why are not the Democrats addressing the issues that drove people to switch from, yeah.

0:53:00 Andrew: To, but wait,

0:53:09 Thomas: Sorry. What point does that make? Oh, because racism drove that.

0:53:19 Matthew: No, they were telling me, so they weren't racist in 2012 when they voted for Obama, but they were in 2016 or I would say this, I would say that that number roughly corresponds with the number of millions of Americans who lost their homes from, uh, during the Great Recession.

0:53:21 Thomas: No, they're racist both times.

0:53:36 Thomas: Oh, yeah. That made them very vulnerable to racist messaging. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I've studies have shown the best predictor was racism and sexism for that. They people voted for Obama. I mean, have you not seen Get Out? They would have a vote for Obama a third time, you know, like that's the reason that's such an effective line in the movie Get Out is because racists voted for Obama, and a lot of you know, a lot them didn't, obviously, but like that voting for Obama doesn't absolve you as racism. A lot of them did that thinking like, OK, finally, we've had a black president. Now that solves all that problem. End of issue. That

0:53:36 Matthew: Right. Well,

0:54:09 Thomas: Does not preclude them from joining up with nativist campaigning later with Trump. Things resorted to be more, you race based going forward after that.

0:54:18 Matthew: I mean, there's a number of studies that argue the economics of it, right, and I'm not, I'm not discounting the nativist stuff. I'm not at all, not at all discounted white nationalists, the fact that those folks that Trump is their guy. Also too, there are a number, a study that looked at the, who did it? Harvard and the University of Minnesota, I believe, did a study on the deaths of despair. And they also did one on casualties from the wars. And what they found was that in the counties that went for Trump, that put Trump over in 2016, those counties had disproportionately high numbers of casualties from the wars.

0:54:53 Thomas: Yeah.

0:54:53 Matthew: And Clinton was a representation of those wars. So that's one of the things I think you have to look at too, is why are people...

0:55:02 Andrew: Hillary Clinton was the representation of those wars, that is that that what you're saying, okay, all,

0:55:04 Thomas: A

0:55:05 Matthew: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. She represents establishment, right, but represents the parties that, you know, uh, and so Trump was seen wrongly

0:55:12 Andrew: Not, I wanted to make surer because, you there were multiple Clintons to whom that might have applied, and So I just wanted to clarify the pronoun antecedent on that. I look at the situation, and I look, uh, two years of sort of near total gridlock that have, have, uh, driven Biden's approval rating down into the 30s, even uh, among uh those of us on on the left who were disappointed because, uh, there were, uh, promises of legislative action, there were attempts to get stuff done, uh, that just got derailed by, you know, one old dude from West Virginia and, uh, a flighty, uh, weirdo from Arizona.

0:55:12 Matthew: Right. Oh, yeah. Okay, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well,

0:55:47 Thomas: Sorry,

0:55:47 Andrew: And

0:55:48 Thomas: But quick comment on that, early in the in the the show, you said they need to at least try. I would just like to point out that Joe Manchin rage quit during part of this process because he was being bothered too much by the Democrats. He was being harangued too much. And that's why he quit. And they were dealing with with the emotional immaturity of a seventh grader in Joe Manch. I mean, they didn't have the option to just bash him. And anyway, sorry.

0:56:11 Andrew: So with because

0:56:12 Matthew: Mean, they have they have the option if he really is the reason behind this and has thwarted the agenda, made things worse for tens of millions of people, right, why is he still the chair of the Senate Energy Committee?

0:56:20 Thomas: Yeah, yes, because they're trying to get his vote.

0:56:23 Andrew: Because if they were to if they were to strip him of his chairmanship, he would immediately defect to the Republican Party, who would restore his chairmanship and then also, uh, take leadership of Senate, super, that's yeah, a super clear answer, but I but look at the problem, a being Mansion and Cinema as obstructionist of what is otherwise a fairly progressive agenda, again, not as far as I would like in a lot of of cases, uh, but problem is you have roadblocks saying no. Uh, mansion is, for example, the only vote against lifting the filibuster to pass, uh, the Voting Rights reform and the John L. Lewis Voting Rights Act, which is crucial if, if Democrats are ever to win again, uh, in terms of uh combating gerrymandering, um, and so my solution is, uh,

0:56:32 Thomas: Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. You

0:56:34 Matthew: But you did yeah, Mm-hmm.

0:57:03 Thomas: Mm-hmm.

0:57:03 Andrew: To elect two more Democrats who will pledge to lift the filibuster, right? And so that would be my only criteria, right, I would go out, I would say, would you lift the filibuster to pass the John L. Lewis Voting Rights Act? Would you lift the filibusters to allow for causes of action against gerrymandering? I realize it's a super narrow kind of technical question, with that in mind, even if I would rather a Democrat have different positions, what I want to do is give Joe Biden two more Democratic votes so that he can turn to Joe Manchin and do what you suggested he did, right, which is say, hey, get in line, or I'm going to strip you of your chairmanship, oh yeah, well then I'll go to the Republican Party, and then Joe Biden can laugh and be like, great, well then I only have a 51-49 lead, go knock yourself Out.

0:57:24 Matthew: Well,

0:57:45 Thomas: Yeah that would be fantastic.

0:57:46 Andrew: You know, so that's my plan. It's clearly not your plan, so I guess I want to know what would your plan be to deal with Manchin in Cinema. Well,

0:57:54 Matthew: I would. And I think maybe this is something that like, say, an LBJ would have done. You punish the guy. And then I think where I come from is that the way Manchin is humiliating Biden and thwarting his agenda, that's not going to get you votes in the midterm. And I do believe that if Biden was to remove Manchin and then Manchin quits the Democratic Party, well, now you're in a situation where the Republicans have, but nothing's occurring in the Senate anyway because of the filibuster, right?

0:58:22 Thomas: Lots of judicial appointments that are crucial. Social.

0:58:23 Matthew: Right. Well, okay. All right. Okay. All right. That's fair enough. But the idea though, for what I'm, my point about this is that would that then be an inspiration for people to vote for Biden? Showing that type of leadership, showing that type of courage to being that type of guy who like, all right, you want to mess with me? I'm going to take you down. Right. I think that's something that people are looking for. I think that would help the Democrats if they had that type of assertive leadership. So that's, that's you know, if I was Joe Biden, And that's will be my thinking on it, because he's just really been humiliated by it. And I think a lot of people it gives rise then to the idea of the rotating villain, whether or not that's true or not. I have no idea. But it populates people to make people see the Democrats as being feckless, weak. You know, I always remember 15 years or so ago when Tom DeLay was the speaker.

0:59:14 Matthew: Right. And Jon Stewart kept running clips on his show showing Tom DeMille as like Darth Vader, dictator, and making the equivalent of the Republican Party to the Evil Empire and Star Wars and everything. And then at one point, one night, he says, "You know what, but to be fair, this is the Democrats." And he shows the Ewoks, right? And they're walking across a log and one falls off and everything, and just like that type of, right, I mean, that type, they can't get out of their own way. And I think, would that be more helpful for the Democrats to have that type of assertive leadership, for Manchin to be punished and then to lose the Senate for the last year or so of this in order to try and get gains in 2022, because people now believe that you're a party that's going to do something, that's not going to let one person, a coal baron of all people, stand in the way of the progress you're trying to achieve, and it would prove people like me wrong.

1:00:07 Matthew: I think that's another thing too. If that was the case, if you guys were like, Like, well, no, he just fired Joe Manchin, you know, and put him in his place. You know, I'd have a harder time arguing when I'm arguing,

1:00:17 Thomas: Right. But everybody else would see headline after headline of Joe Biden is such a shitty president that he lost the Democratic majority that he had in the Senate. He literally gave it to Republicans. What a feckless idiot for doing that. That's what all the coverage would be because we live in a negative partisanship world. Everything is negative partismanship.

1:00:32 Matthew: Yeah. He's not getting good coverage now. I mean, I can't tell you the last time I, right? I can tell you last time.

1:00:38 Andrew: That's No, That's

1:00:38 Thomas: Yeah. No, either way, he's not. But he's getting judges. He's getting bad coverage either way.

1:00:42 Andrew: That's true.

1:00:42 Matthew: Yeah. Yeah.

1:00:45 Thomas: But he's getting uh some half decent legislation through sometimes, yeah.

1:00:48 Matthew: Yeah. You can, I mean. Every time I've gotten gas, I'm sure you guys are the same way because I'm sure there's stickers are everywhere. Every time you pull up and get gas, there's a little sticker, right, with Joe Biden pointing at the price. I did that, you know, let's um, go bring, I, I could pay. I, Hey man, I am completely on board with you. You know, I have, I mean like that's absolutely, I've not, I'm just saying the, the messaging that the negative nature, the fact at least stand up and do something like fight somebody. Right. That I think would have a big impact. And again, you guys were really arguing with, with a guy like me and I know I'm in into minority. I know I represent a party that, you we're stubborn about our principles. Again, I'm this way because of the wars and other things in my life.

And, you know, I also always come back to, and this is why I really appreciate you guys. And I appreciate people listening and giving me the time to try and explain why I'm doing this. I always come Back to what Jefferson says in his first inaugural, right? That differences of opinion do not mean differences of principle. And we three of us are in agreement in on so much, it's just on the question of how to get there,

1:01:01 Thomas: But that's stupid. He didn't do that, yeah. No, I know he's giving back coverage no matter what, yeah. Yeah.

1:01:50 Andrew: That. I love that as a, way of kind of bring the summation. What I would like to do is you bring back into the fold. And I think the way in which we do that, the way in which we become allies is if you're working to get ranked choice voting passed in North Carolina, we have you back on, we do a fundraiser, we get donations out to you. Like seriously,

1:02:04 Thomas: Yeah, we would literally raise money for you.

1:02:09 Matthew: Oh, I was one

1:02:10 Andrew: I would do do anything to to get ranked uh choice vote because I think it also produces more a more progressive electorate overall, so so.

1:02:11 Thomas: Yeah. You

1:02:18 Matthew: Of the founding members of the Ranked Choice Movement here in North Carolina two years ago. I was on the founding member of Better Ballad in North Carolina. Yeah, so I've been working on that for two years.

1:02:26 Andrew: So why not run for statewide office and and make that the priority because it just it seems to me that really the only difference between our positions are you want to to ask people on the left for their votes without that as a backstop and I'm saying hey let's put in a back stop first, yeah.

1:02:28 Matthew: Yeah.

1:02:45 Thomas: Need that first, 100.

1:02:46 Andrew: That's all, that's all it comes down to, I think, but

1:02:49 Thomas: You

1:02:47 Matthew: Yeah. Right, it's a chicken and egg discussion. And we obviously have different perspectives on the chicken and the egg, right? And I think, you know, you have to put that pressure in order to get to the point where the system will say, okay, we're going to switch to ranked choice voting because otherwise we don't have the pressure. And I know I've said this before, so I'm sorry for repeating myself, but if you don't put the pressure, then the system is not going to reform. Former.

1:03:10 Thomas: You didn't get to answer my my question along these exact lines. You keep saying this is going to somehow pressure people, pressure the system. And yet 2016 Jill Stein gets one point one percent of the vote. In 2020 the Green Party gets point three percent of vote because it doesn't do that. It just gives Republicans victories. That's all it does, us.

1:03:27 Matthew: You guys are here arguing about Jill Stein still, right? I mean, it had an effect, whether or not we agree that's the real effect or not, right. I'll argue there are other things that were more important for Clinton's loss than Stein being in the race, right, right

1:03:40 Andrew: I I just want to make clear again for for accuracy purposes, I I've not once said Jill Stein caused Hillary Clinton's loss. What I said and put it, and put to you right.

1:03:48 Matthew: Right. Right. I'm just responding to the general.

1:03:50 Andrew: Yep. No, no, because I think that's wrong because I mean you don't argue counterfactuals, what you argue is people who have an ability to influence have a moral responsibility to use it. That's what I'm saying, and I'm saying that she could have prevented Donald Trump's election and she didn't, right, and that's why I asked you the question about the Senate, man.

1:03:48 Thomas: Yeah,

1:03:50 Matthew: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

1:03:59 Thomas: And and yeah well I'd like to clarify that the point I'm making there was not that Jill Stein necessarily caused Hillary to lose but that no matter what she did, she got 1.1% in 2016. That did nothing for the Green Party, they got the lowest votes in, you know, a decade in 2020 because when Republicans win, everybody gets so scared that that they have to vote for Joe Biden, who none of us wanted. That's the reality of the situation.

1:04:35 Matthew: I believe and what I want to see. Again, multi-party democracy. The idea that those of us on the left can't have a party that espouses our values. We have to be part of a big tent party, right? A capitalist party, a party, the party of Chuck Schumer, right, and his gilded chariots. Um, but certainly I don't hear the same argument being made from the Democrats about the libertarians or the constitution party or other things like that. And the Republicans make those arguments about them fine, you know? Right. So it is whether

1:04:45 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

1:05:03 Andrew: I mean that there's but there's... there's a super easy reason for that, right, and that is libertarians don't listen to my show, right. I I know I have an episode called Libertarianism Is Bad and You Should Feel Bad, can't right reach libertarians, but I can reach people on the left and I'm looking, and again hope you hear, right, I try to be open-minded, I'm trying to ask the the questions. If there's a superior way to move us to a more progressive society, I want to hear it. I want do it.

1:05:29 Thomas: I want to know it. Yeah.

1:05:30 Matthew: Again, it comes down to the ideas of, how how we think we're going to get there. And obviously, we clearly disagree. This idea of the status quo and enabling the status quo is not going to change the status quo. I don't think it's possible to reform from the inside, Democratic Party. And I understand your arguments, right? And certainly, again this is almost like a DSA meeting, right, where half the room is one way, half the room's the other way. I just was at one not long ago and that's exactly what it was, right? How do we get there to the point where we have a society? Because we agree that say healthcare, housing, education, jobs, or human rights, how did we get to that point? It, we just had a big, a big story a couple of weeks ago down here, CNBC named North Carolina as the best state for business in the country, right? And the accompanying article was like, it said something along the lines of, this is a bipartisan success story, how Democrats and Republicans put aside their differences to make North Carolina the best state for business in the U.S.

1:06:25 Matthew: A year before, Oxfam had put out a study saying Carolina was the worst state in the nation for workers. And you can see that, 52% of our school kids qualify for free lunches here, right? It's the best state for business because workers are exploited, they're Underpaid, right, and if you're telling me that well, that's that's because of a bipartisan success story, then again, this is where we differ. You say go in and take over the Democratic Party. I say no, we should have a party for workers that represents workers. It's not trying to compete with those other elements with inside the Democratic body, because just the way it's structured, you won't win, you'll lose to the money inside the party. So go outside, try and build something. Because I mean, I think what Andrew Yang is doing, even though, yeah, I disagree with probably everything that party is going to be about, except for its democracy reform stuff, I think it's a good thing he's doing that, even though I think that we'll now have that represent the same elements in a lot of ways of the corporations and the banks.

1:06:38 Thomas: Yeah.

1:07:18 Andrew: I guess I would just say by means of contrast that I think under the current rules, we have seen that the Republican Big Tent strategy has been extraordinarily successful and has enabled them to get now, you know, 100% of their agenda and rolling back with a declining minority of the population, right? And it has been ruthless and systematic. And so when I look at that, I see that under the existing rules, that certainly the things that we're describing certainly seem to work under the rules as they are. So let's change the rules.

1:07:40 Matthew: Yeah.

1:07:55 Thomas: Yeah, they didn't achieve their right-wing agenda by making another party that was more right. They had Trump take over the party. That's what they did.

1:08:01 Andrew: Yeah.

1:08:01 Matthew: Well, I would argue this goes back to the Tea Party, right? And the Tea party saying in many ways, right, exactly. But the Tea part is saying, if you don't do what we want, we're going to leave and form our own party. We're going right? To take away our votes, right? They're going, we're on strike. A lot of this, I think can be analogous to labor, right.

1:08:07 Thomas: Yeah. They voted for Republicans.

1:08:08 Andrew: Yeah lockstep okay

1:08:15 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Yeah, in primaries, but they primaried in Republican primaries and they won those primaries. That's how they became powerful.

1:08:19 Matthew: Yeah. But the threat was to with, but the threat, I believe the Tea Party have was to withhold their votes if they didn't get what they wanted to write.

1:08:33 Andrew: I really, I cannot sincerely enough express our gratitude at you coming on the show, at you being this generous with your time, uh, and again, you I hope that, folks of goodwill, uh, looking at how we, uh, how we make this country a better place, so. Thank you, for.

1:08:49 Andrew: Coming on the show, and go ahead, uh, you're, uh, give, give plugs, website, yeah. Thank.

1:08:52 Thomas: Earned it yeah give Matthew

1:08:54 Matthew: Absolutely. Well. Thank you. I again, I, the same goes to you guys. I really appreciate this. I enjoyed this. And, uh, you know, more conversations like this, I think, is one of the ways we, right, find a better society. Common to have discussions, unfortunately, right, with people you disagree with that are discussions that people want to listen to unless they're going to get emotionally excited by it. So I appreciate this very much. But yeah, no, if people want to support, like what I say, agree with me, website's matthewhofercent.org. Yeah, we're in a big legal fight down here trying to get on the the ballot, a couple of different lawsuits going on. At the very least, it's interesting to follow. But again, if you agree with me, you agree with approach to this, matthewhofercent.org. And if you could support us, I'd be very appreciative.

1:09:37 Andrew: Thank you so much.

1:09:37 Matthew: Thank you guys.

1:09:39 Clip: Thank you for being a friend, yeah, travel down the road with me, say we started from the bottom now we're here girl,

1:09:48 Thomas: And now it's time to thank our top patrons, our Hall of Famers. We're starting another quartile. So yeah It's quartile time, uh, these are our top patrons, our Hall of Famers, our all-time greats on patreon.com/law. And I'll start us off, thank you. Oh, a couple new ones to add. Annette Balgord, air, do this, Herr Doktor Professor Soldering Iron, Jason Young, Tom Paris Did Nothing Wrong, Hunter Kinsey, crap, I've got to think of something clever, Praise Be to Lamb Chop, like the lamb chop, like the puppet in the thing, because yeah, I love Lamb Chop.

1:09:52 Andrew: Is it a quartile? All.

1:10:06 Andrew: Maybe.

1:10:19 Andrew: It, it also means Chris Hayes, that used to be his nickname, so yeah.

1:10:23 Thomas: Oh. Trojan Horse News, a funny meme to share with Uncle Frank with real news snuck in the comments on Facebook as Trojan Horse News, the proper term for a division symbol is an obelis, do you know this?

1:10:24 Andrew: Oh.

1:10:38 Andrew: I. Did not know this, oh.

1:10:39 Thomas: Oh, I've. Never heard of that. Wow, wow, obelis, obelisk, that's obelisk, maybe? Sounds kind of like obelisks, though. Anyway, that's cool. LC, Voodoo Magic Swamp Lawyer, I wonder how many people at the Capitol on January 6th we're also at Woodstock 99. You know, a new documentary just came out about Woodstock 99 that I want to watch, maybe that's what that's a reference to. I just did that, I become a patron to give a shout out to Kelly, hi, Kelly, Alex Boyer, Len Bogan, Laurel Starling, turgid veiny subpoenas, everything important, you gotta fight for your right to ex parte, a new agey, new ag, a new ag, new ag, interesting, the CDC says take legal advice from a podcast, Jeremy Ashinghurst, I'm fast at sex, upped my pledge for two votes for a New Orleans Lynn's live show, Mardi Gras 2023. Oh, that's a good Yusuf patron pledge. Your turn, Andrew.

1:11:29 Andrew: And. Thank you to Michael Grossnick Loss, Heather Pake, louder milk and cheese brew curdled by corrupt coup claims, excellent pun there, Purple Purple Couch.com going through divorce, listen to assembled experts to shift your mindset from failed marriage to fresh start, oh, that's purple couch dot com without the e-p-u-r-p l-c-o-u c-h dot com, Loaf of Orange Marion the Corgi, love corgis, Jamie Comedian Aaron Trahan at Comedian Comedian AET, come to Madhouse Comedy Club in San Diego, I've never been to San Diego, OA live show, Mardi Gras 2022 in New Orleans, I think it's got to be 2023, but, but.

1:12:12 Thomas: Mm-hmm.

1:12:13 Andrew: Yeah, that's two votes now, politics from a differing but enlightening angle, the novel Vortexes is being considered for an option in screenplay, yay, all right, congratulations, Asav said, tried to claim to be a boat in our courthouse this week, I. Have no. Doubt that that's true, a streetcar named D's Nuts, but some. Of.

1:12:27 Thomas: Oh, wow. It's still funny.

1:12:33 Andrew: These are so good, inspired zombie fine, we'll make our own Supreme Court with hookers and flapjacks and precious little cinnamon buns, Homer Simpson voice.

1:12:44 Andrew: Salty Seattle Driver has 883 YouTube subscribers, which is, no, Conrad Michaels, I just want to get to a thousand, yeah, I, are we at a thousand, our YouTube is not a huge, uh, presence for us. But.

1:12:55 Thomas: It's like 8,000. We're doing well. 7,000, 7,500, yeah.

1:12:56 Andrew: Really. Oh. Okay, well then, oh. Good, well then, you know, let's, let's give a couple, let's get 117 to Salty Seattle Driver. So they can. Get to. A thousand, oh.

1:13:04 Thomas: You can subscribe to more than one YouTube channel, boomer.

1:13:07 Andrew: Really. Oh. Interesting, okay, Sarah, Sarah sitting in the shoe shine shop, she sits and shines, she shines and sits, she sits and shines, she, she shines and sits. Thank.

1:13:08 Thomas: Yeah.

1:13:22 Thomas: You got through it.

1:13:23 Andrew: You so much, let's just say some people in Washington, D.C. need a swift kick to the scrotus, at Atomic Penguin 7 on Twitter's patreon name has been scrubbed due to a scheduled patreon donation as per U.S. Secret Service protocol, excellent, excellent, James Heath, Dr. Scoop, Little Doug and Heather, Mr. and Mrs. Pusher, and listeners like you, you, thank you, and that thing in the attic.

1:13:46 Thomas: Thank you, Hall of Famers, all-time greats. We love you.

1:13:49 Clip: Sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes the bar will eat you.

1:13:55 Thomas: Now it's time for T3B, Thomas Takes the Bar Exam, answer time. This one, I basically folded and I, you know, I don't know what, what, all right, this is like a riddle that I should know the answer to, but I don't get it. Tell me the answer to the riddle.

1:14:09 Andrew: So, this is a hearsay question, pretty simple in terms of the fact pattern, not necessarily simple in coming up with an answer. Sure, civil action for conversion of her automobile. Conversion is when you take a property that is not yours, right? A plaintiff seeks to offer testimony that after her automobile went missing, the defendant approached plaintiff at her place of business and said, "I just stole your car, how does it feel to be stranded?" Um, I thought apropos, just, I never, I, I go methodically in order to take, uh, T3BE questions, but, you know, dovetailed rather nicely with our Alex Jones coverage. The business had security cameras that recorded the entire conversation. The defendant objects to the plaintiff's testimony regarding this statement. Is the plaintiff's testimony regarding the statement admissible? The only answer you felt confident eliminating was D, "it is hearsay not within any exception." Um, that, is a good elimination, so.

1:15:04 Thomas: At least I. Didn't really mess. That up.

1:15:05 Andrew: Yeah. So, Then The question is, is it, yes, as a declaration against interest, yes, because it is not hearsay, or no, because it ist not the best evidence? Let's start off with, uh, why it is NOT C, "no because the tape recording is not the best evidence."

1:15:07 Thomas: Okay.

1:15:22 Thomas: Tape.

1:15:23 Andrew: Okay, so you, the.

1:15:24 Thomas: Recording is the best thing, okay.

1:15:25 Andrew: Tape reporting is the best evidence, right? And that is the best that evidence rule applies to keep a statement from being admitted at trial if the original of that statement is not being offered, and the statement either, one, has legal significance, so it's in a contract or a will or something like that, or two, the witness is testifying to an event that she learned of solely from reading a writing or watching a video and has no independent knowledge of the event, right? So, yeah, if you want to say, yeah, I saw the defendant confess on the tape and the tape is available, right, you would put the tape on rather than putting the witness on. That would be the best evidence Rule. But it's a much more narrow kind of inquiry than the inquiry we have here. So we know the statement's getting in. The question is, is it getting in as a declaration against interest? That's what you picked. Or because it is not hearsay. And, uh, Thomas, here, I am sad to tell you that the answer is B, that it is not hearsay.

1:16:07 Thomas: Yeah. Damn.

1:16:27 Andrew: The way to think about It.

1:16:28 Thomas: It. Yeah.

1:16:28 Andrew: Is, right, and again, I know you know 26 different exceptions and exclusions and this and that, if a statement is not here say at all, then you don't have to meet the conditions under which many of the exceptions apply. Yep.

1:16:41 Thomas: I. Know, well.

1:16:41 Andrew: And declaration of against interest requires that that the witness be unavailable, right? So here it would not matter here, The answer is It's statement by a party opponent, so statements by party Opponent.

1:16:50 Thomas: What. Statement. Statement by A party. Oh, I knew that. Yeah, that was the thing I was trying to remember. State by, yeah. Yeah. I should have gotten this one. We just talked about this. I knew it and I couldn't quite remember.

1:16:55 Andrew: Yeah. Yep. It's Hearsay is tough, the thing to keep in mind when you're sort of trying to decipher in the future is, um, is the order of operations, right? So if something is not hearsay at all, it gets to come in with no conditions on it. If if something is an exception, then it has to meet those conditions. And if you think about it kind of from a public policy standpoint, right, if the person you have accused of committing a civil wrong against you has confessed to that civil wrong, you want that to come regardless, right? So you want to pick the most expansive reading, reading, uh, which in this case would be yes, because it is not hearsay. Um, hearsay questions are tough, uh, you uh, yeah but but there you go, well

1:17:18 Thomas: Yeah I know that.

1:17:34 Thomas: Mm hmm. No, no, I should've gotten this one. Absolutely. Absolutely We just talked about it, but I, for some reason, I still mixed it up. Yeah, it's, I should have known this is not hearsay and. Does it also matter that, like, this is a conversation that she was a part of, you, me? What hearsay, no, because if I have a conversation with somebody and then I testify about it, it would be weird to be like, well, the stuff I said is not hearsay, but your side of the conversation is hearsay. I don't know, does that matter, or is it just because it's the, uh, the opponent, the, that you're going against?

1:18:12 Andrew: Again, this 801, D2, 2, C2, A through E. So when we say these are challenging, like, yeah, you're seven nested statements in. But here are the five conditions, right, under which something is defined as not hearsay because it is an opposing party statement, right? So it's offered against the opposing party and it was either A, made by the party in an individual or representative capacity. So anything I sue Thomas Smith, anything Thomas Smith says about which I have knowledge gets to come in as an opposing party statement. If it's the company, then it has to be if I'm suing U-Haul, right, then I have to make sure that the U-hall employee said it while acting as a representative of U-Haul and not acting as an individual.

And, like, and I picked that one, know, sort of thinking through, like, that's a real contested issue in, uh, auto accident cases, right? U-Haul will say, like, yeah, when he was saying, I'm really sorry, it looks like our truck just crapped out on you, he was saying that as Steve, not saying that has Steve, the corporate representative of U-Haul. And then you debate that? So a individual or party in a representative capacity. B is one the party manifested that it adopted or believed to be true, right? So there's something corroborating. So let's go back to the Steve example.

Example, let's say you prove that, okay, uh, Steve was just kind of joking around, but later somebody sent an email that said, hey, Steve said our truck just kindof crapped out, and, and, uh, you know, the VP of operations wrote back and is like, yeah, Steve's the best guy we got, if he says our truck crapped down, it almost certainly is our truck's fault. Right? Well, that's how you can then manifest or adopt that you believe it to be true. C was made by a person whom the party authorized to to make a statement on the subject.

1:19:07 Thomas: Yeah yeah

1:20:08 Andrew: That's self-explanatory. D was made by the party's agent or employee on a matter within the scope of that relationship and while it existed. Again, you see sort of how these overlap. Or E was made by the party co-conspirator during and in furtherance of the conspiracy. So a pretty expansive rule. Those are the five ways that a statement made by an opposing party can come into evidence and is defined as not hearsay, even though it would fit the definition of hearsay, right? A person's statement, uh, not, not made, made by the declarant in the trial, uh, being offered for the truth thereof, and notice, by the way, because this is excluded from the definition of hearsay, you can offer it for the proof thereof, right? Like, yeah. Yeah, so, so there you go. So

1:20:50 Thomas: But if there is, maybe this doesn't exist, but I'm trying to think of if there's some where it was a conversation but not with the opponent, but it was still relevant in a way. I mean, are you allowed to say what you said but not what the other person said in your conversation?

1:21:06 Andrew: Yeah, I could come up with that example very easily, right? I'm suing you, but we're both talking to all three of us. You, me, and Teresa Gomez are having a conversation, right? So, Teresa Gomez, not, how could we force her to sue? You know, she's not a party to the lawsuit, but she could ask you a question. You could give an answer. And I could say, representing myself, because, you know, I'm an idiot, Mr. Smith, isn't it true that in response to a question from Teresa Gomez, you said, yes, absolutely, I did that 100 percent. There's nothing wrong with my asking you that question, that's not hearsay

1:21:22 Thomas: Yeah.

1:21:43 Thomas: But you can get in what Teresa asked me?

1:21:44 Andrew: No no, no, that's why I said in response to a question, right? I would, I would set it up that way, but not reveal

1:21:51 Thomas: Interesting. Oh, but that's important to note. You can't actually get what Team Gomes has said in there.

1:21:53 Andrew: Yeah right because she's not she's not an opposing party

1:21:58 Thomas: Right. Right. So you would you would so like legally speaking, we would want T. Gomes to come in and say what she said. OK. All right. Yeah, I bet this one I should have gotten that. But oh, well, find out who has a better memory than I do and remembered this thing we just talked about and got the answer correct because it was an easy question that I blew.

1:21:58 Andrew: Yeah yeah exactly right, yeah so it's okay and Well, Thomas, as it turns out, we got A, B, C, and D answers. So this question threw a lot of folks, A, right? Lot of people answered B, some lawyers, some people citing to the evidence. But I think the best answer from an explanatory standpoint came from Jaeger Von Kass, who writes, "The main problem with hearsay is that if the person who said the thing isn't in court, it's hard to cross-examine them and verify that they said it." Absolutely right. That isn't the case here, as, being slightly smarter than Alex Jones, the defendant is right there. So T3BE, answer B, not hearsay. Excellent, concise explanation of the exception to the hearsay rules as to why an admission by a party opponent is defined as not hearsaye. They're right there.

1:23:01 Andrew: So congratulations, Jaeger, on being this week's winner. And everyone, let's give them a follow on Twitter. That is at J-A-G-E-R-V-A-N-K-A-A-S-K-A-A-A, is how that's spelled, Jaeger Von Kass, and congratulations on being this week's winner.

1:23:19 Thomas: And that's our show. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks to Matthew Ho for coming on. And we will see you for Rapid Response Friday.

1:23:27 Clip: I move for a bad court thingy. You mean a mistrial? Yeah, that's why you're the judge and I'm the law talking guy.

1:24:01 Clip: www.openargs.com. Be sure to join the Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/Yodel Mountain and follow us on Twitter at OpenArgs. This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media LLC, all rights reserved. It is produced with the assistance of transcriptionist Heather Leverage, production assistant Ashley Smith, and additional contributions from Morgan Stringer and Debra Smith. Special thanks to Teresa Gomez, who runs our live shows and heads up the OA Wiki, follow at OA Wiki on Twitter. Additional thanks to the moderators of the Opening Arguments Facebook community, Emily Waters, Alicia Cook, Eric Brewer, Natalie Newell, Brian Ziegenhagen, and Teresa. And finally, thanks to Thomas Smith, who edits the show and created the fabulous theme music, which was used with permission.