SIO532: People Need To Know What Democrats Can and Can't Do with a Win Today

Transcript

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

0:00:12 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. I'm Thomas Smith. Yeah, here we are, guys, it's, it's the day. This is the midterms, polling wise, obviously we should feel fantastic, we should feel sorry,, I can't keep saying that with a straight face. Yeah, but no, like polling wise, it does look good. Everything, I mean, looks about as good as it could reasonably look in a bad map, a bad Senate map, and yet it looks this good. And yet, and yet, obviously we're all worried. Obviously we don't trust polls. I will say though, that of course polls have been wrong in Trump's favor a few times in general elections. But in midterms, they've usually been wrong, while I say in someone's favor, they've usually underestimated Democrats in midterms, actually, or been kind of right on.

0:01:05 Thomas: Let alone when this is the I can't imagine a worse electoral environment for Republicans. It's amazing in a different era. This would be we'd win 70 fucking seats or whatever. I don't know if that's literally true, but in like a different era, this would be a landslide of all landslides. I mean, they're just, I don't think there's ever been a time where one side has so thoroughly disqualified itself. And yet we know where we are, partisanship being what it is, MAGA being what it is. There's still only so much that is up for grabs, unfortunately. But it also gets worse. The thing I really wanna talk to you about today is What can we even expect if we win?

0:01:52 Thomas: And I'll go through different scenarios because obviously there's different amounts we can win from, well, from losing to winning quite a bit. But what can we actually expect? I had a Facebook post somewhat recently, and forgive me, I do talk a bit about Facebook because the last place that I can see that people I know are humans are talking with me still, like people I recognize, you know, from 10, I don't know, 14 years or whatever, something like that, over a decade of kind of being on there and doing show stuff. Everywhere else, it's just anything that's anonymous, anything where I don't recognize the people's name, I don't, it's just bots. I don't even take it seriously anymore. Facebook is where I still recognize I have old friends from the show for all this time.

0:02:41 Thomas: And that's really the only place I can gauge because everything else might be fake, Might be AI, might be just nothing, who knows? And I gotta say, I posted that, you know, among the many things that I want Democrats to do if they win, I want a 9-11 commission-style report of Trump's corruption and how he's profited off the presidency and his cronies and his family, all that. And I just, the responses make me nervous, man. They just, they make me nervous because I just, I get a real sense that people don't, that even the people listening or following me, who have to be in the upper echelon of people who pay attention, you know?

0:03:28 Thomas: Cause that is the big divide. We've talked about it before on the show. The big divide is not as much right and left, that's obviously a divide, but the big divide that's really significant that we don't know what to do with in this country is engaged versus non-engaged. Because all of us following politics, all of us listening to podcasts, all of us doing all the stuff we're doing that you and I are doing, we're the weirdos. And there's a whole bunch of normies out there who don't pay attention enough to know the ins and outs of this stuff.

0:04:00 Thomas: And let's suffice to say, even the weirdos who are paying attention, apparently I just don't understand what can even be done if we win Congress back. It's it's making me nervous man. It's making me real nervous and I'll tell you why here's why before I go to the break. I had a thought that we are caught in a Really dumb cycle. I mean more than anything's just this is the dumbest era. We live in the dumbest times or maybe it was always dumb and I you know, who knows but I can say it's the dumbest time I've ever lived in and We're caught between two sides Who both? Can't do what they promised to do for different reasons. We're caught between one side whose vision of the world is that if we just are evil enough to immigrants and trans people, that will something something profit.

0:04:55 Thomas: And look, we don't have to get bogged down in it. I know there are some of these people are true believers, some of them are just wanting to be evil for evil's sake. But let's suffice to say, I think there are enough true believers in the idea that immigrants are the reason our economy's bad or jobs are bad or wages are bad. Like, there's enough people who believe that to at least treat that as their idea. I know it's not everybody, don't worry, but like, we'll take that for a moment. Especially a lot of the people who voted for Trump in this latest time. I mean, I just heard The Daily, as much as I hate it, did a really interesting show the other day with some people in Texas who, these are construction workers, these are Latino people who voted for Trump and are really pissed off.

0:05:46 Thomas: And just those kind of people where I'm like, they genuinely, they're, you know, they're not out to especially mistreat immigrants because they are immigrants or the children of immigrants. But I'm not saying there's no such thing as like those people being racist. I think they can be racist functionally by playing into the the MAGA, right? But but I let it suffice to say, I think we can all agree that that's not like the point of them, that's not the reason for their support of Trump, like, primarily, whereas for somebody like Stephen Miller, it would be. Point is, a lot of folks supported Trump under the idea they've been sold the lie that the border was wide open and too many immigrants means your jobs get taken and your wages get lowered, and also, they, you know, all the bullshit, we know it's bullshit, but that also they, they utilize all the government services and all that stuff and they drain the money, all the lies.

0:06:44 Thomas: And so that's one side, we got MAGA, that does that, that, that, that, if you could distill down a message, and I'm not saying it's their only message or even their main point of existence, I'm not, but if you, you can distill down their promise to the extent it exists and is, you know, readable. It's that if you let us do just that, if you let us enforce our nation's laws, you know, because there's not being enforced, you know, immigration laws, if you let us enforce those, your wages will go up, you get a job and your dick will get bigger, whatever, just the, it's nonsense. But you know, like that is what a lot of people believed. It really is. And if you don't believe me, that's why these, so many of these fuckers voted for Trump. So many of the people voted for Trump in 2024, because many of them were just not quite aware of how it went the first time, as hard as that is for us to believe.

0:07:38 Thomas: Like a lot of younger Latino voters, younger voters in general, they went more toward Trump than they should have. And I really think a lot of that is, Again, we have to get into the mindset of people who don't actually pay attention, and they are just aware of the gas prices, they're aware of the general zeitgeist of how things are going, and they thought back to Trump one, and they thought, you know, it wasn't so bad. You know, like the economy was pretty good, I think, and you know, things weren't so awful. That kind of thing. Like the people who don't pay attention enough to really know why things are the way they are. And so those folks believe that if you let Trump be evil enough to immigrants, then the good things will happen.

0:08:25 Thomas: And wouldn't you know it, they let Trump be pretty damn evil to immigrants. I mean, there are MAGA, believe it or not, and Stephen Miller and all those people, there are true, true racists and true believers who will think that the reason things didn't go the right way with Trump is he still wasn't allowed to be shitty enough to immigrants. Because they genuinely have this belief that if you get the illegal immigrant population to zero, that means things will be great economically.

0:08:57 Thomas: And I know that's not the – again, that's not the only motivation. I'm not saying it is. I'm not trying to whitewash, ironically enough, their motivations. But I am saying that is a faction and that is a part of their thought process. And so the issue with that is it's fucking stupid. It's obviously stupid. It's not how anything works. That would never work. It only makes things worse. Who's going to build your fucking houses? Who's going to grow your food, pick your food? Who's going to do all the stuff that... It's uncomfortable to me that immigrants do this really hard labor for not enough money, but it's also an economic reality. And especially with construction, construction work isn't It's actually all that badly paid. Some of it, I mean, you know, obviously there's gonna be people who are exploited, but a lot of it, and we really need construction work, a lot of it is decently paid, well-paid even.

0:09:50 Thomas: And who's gonna do that now? Like job sites are getting raided. This is, again, that New York Times daily podcast was pretty good on that account. Who's gonna do it? So the things they're doing make things worse. And then there's us. There's the people on the left, we'll say, broadly speaking. The Democratic Party, I guess. The only answer, the only realistic answer to this, or you're kidding yourself. And our problem is, I think folks will disagree with me, probably, some of you, who knows, but our biggest problem is that our government is designed to not allow us to do anything. And so we gain power from time to time pretty much on a schedule, honestly. We're on, we could set your watch to it.

0:10:36 Thomas: If your watch was, you know, told time every four years or whatever it is, where it's like every midterms of Trump, now I will say a Trump presidency, but of a Republican as well. I mean, it happened under second Bush term as well.

0:10:53 Thomas: People are really mad at how awful the right is because they suck and they usher in the left, and then the left doesn't get done what needs to get done in their minds. I mean, in many people's minds, it's literally that simple. They're like, ah, things didn't change. I'll let Democrats have, you know, like half a person majority in the House and a tied Senate, and they didn't fix all the world's problems. So both sides, you know, both fucking sides. And you know, we can agree or disagree on the extent to which you want to blame Democrats themselves. But I fundamentally think it's more about our system. It really is. Because in a system that doesn't allow you to do anything, that has the filibuster and has the stupid fucking Senate, people never see results.

0:11:40 Thomas: And by that, I mean people, normies, who don't pay attention that much. They don't see the results. They vote for something. They're like, hey, that person said health care. And then what? That didn't happen. Huh? Health care. I guess they were lying, those Democrats, and obviously that's a massive simplification. There may have been a few that were lying, sure, but for the most part, the system doesn't let them get done what they need to get done. And so we're going to do this ping pong thing where we go back and forth between the lying fascists, who then, once the Democrats get back into power, then the lying fascists say, ah, things aren't working because the Democrats are weak, they're incompetent, they're stupid. Everything they do is wrong, all the messages they give.

0:12:28 Thomas: When you have Democrats in power and nothing happens, those all of a sudden work on a bunch of idiots who don't pay attention. And again, when Democrats are in power, they don't see the results that they should see. And so are we just doomed to go back and forth and back and forth? All right, shit, I've gone way too long, I gotta take the first break. I'll be right back to talk about more of this.

0:13:03 Thomas: Yeah, so this ping pong thing, back and forth and back and forth we go. That's been the last, I don't know, a long time. I mean, when's the last time something real got done in government? Probably Obamacare. I mean, Biden did do some things, don't get me wrong.

0:13:21 Thomas: There was so much to distract from that. There's so much that made it not quite enough. And he mainly just couldn't communicate well about it. We don't need to retread this. But but I and I'm not blaming necessarily Biden or Democrats at the time. It's just the last time we were able to do something major was basically Obamacare and it was good. It was one of the best things governments ever done wasn't perfect. Obviously, we all know that then then, you know, it ushered in Trump essentially. I mean the racism against Obama and the and the salience of those arguments against Obama, Even though they were disguised as other things that worked because of Obama's race, I think. That ushered in the Trump era. It's like we get one thing, one imperfect thing.

0:14:09 Thomas: Probably saved, I don't know, how many lives, how many lives did Obamacare save? A lot? I don't know. It was a good thing. People voted on it knowing it was going to cost them their next election, famously. It's one of the few times I've gotten choked up thinking about government. You know, there were people who believed we're good enough people. Good enough people. I'm not saying these are saints or anything, but good enough people to believe in what they're doing and to believe that voting for Obamacare was the thing to do, even though they were, it resulted in them getting destroyed and, and many of them really did vote knowing that vote would cost them and it did cost them, um, you know, and think about that for Like, think about how punished Democrats are for just trying to give you fucking health care.

0:15:03 Thomas: You know? It's like, they have to become martyrs on the cross to just try to give you fucking health care, you idiots! Sorry. So, it's so hard. It's so hard. So, like I said, we're caught between the fascists who lie, and so they don't get the results they want because their whole worldview is a lie and it wouldn't work. We don't get the results we want, I think largely, in my opinion, mostly because of the system. Obviously, there's plenty of room for democratic incompetence here and there, but it's largely the system. It's so built against us, and it's so much easier to destroy than to create. So what the hell did we do about that? Well, I don't know. I don't know. The thing that my, because I'm an idiot, the thing I think is, well, if we could only get more people to understand how the fuck things actually work.

0:15:49 Thomas: Because I'm a moron, I think if more people could get information about how the world works, how the fucking government works, maybe they'd have the patience and understanding to be like, well, I know I voted for Democrats, but I didn't give them an actual majority big enough to do anything, so I can't then blame them when they can't do anything, right? Unless I gave them a super majority, or at least a majority that could get rid of a filibuster and a president, unless I gave them that, then they can't do the things that they want to do, but no, that doesn't seem to work. But I don't know what else to do because everything else doesn't fucking work. The thing where you double down, I've talked about it before but it bothers me so much, it's this irresistible move on the left to be like, no, we can't make excuses. Look, people didn't get what they wanted. They didn't get the results. We didn't follow through. We didn't deliver for the American people. We can't make excuses.

Yeah, you're always gonna say that Because that's the thing that sounds better to the voters. It's fucking bullshit. It's not real. Again, I have so many fucking critiques of the Democrats. I want Chuck Schumer gone. I want Jeffries gone. This is not a defense of every Democrat ever. But by far, the bigger problem, the bigger problem is that the system is designed to make things not happen.

0:17:22 Thomas: It really is. You know, there's... there's ways to stop the process at every turn. There's, you know, there's just the filibuster. There's... there's the Supreme Court, you know, like we do something and that gets struck down. I mean, it, that, that is the bigger problem, and if we focus in on these little things, sure, we can all kick the shit out of the asshole Democrats, fine, whatever, have at it, kick, kick the shit out of the ones who suck. There's... there's a handful of them who suck. Um, that doesn't help really, you know, what really ought to do is focus on the good ones and focus on getting Democrats in office who are good. And I think there are many, many who are going to win tomorrow or today, as you're listening to this, who are good.

0:18:07 Thomas: And it doesn't do any good to deliver those people. I say this all the time, pick your favorite lefty, whoever you are. I'm speaking to a broad audience. Whoever your favorite Democrat running tomorrow is, whoever they are, and I'm serious, this is an actual exercise and I'm encouraging you to engage in. I have a lot that I really like. There's a lot of really good Democrats. There's a lot, really love Ossoff quite a bit. I think Ossoff is great. I mean, you know, I love AOC, I love Bernie. I love, there's a lot of Democrats I love. I think El-Sayed is a really good one as well. I think there's tons, there's tons of good ones. Are there ones we don't like? Yeah, there's ones we don't like, but forget them for a second. Think about the ones you like. Do you want those folks, whoever it is, you know, let's, we'll pick as an example, pick Ossoff.

0:18:57 Thomas: A lot of people like Ossoff. Do you want Ossoff to have nobody to work with? Or a bare, bare minority to work with? Or maybe like a, you know, like a 50 Senate, 51 with one being fucking, John Fetterman? Is that who we want to hand to Ossoff? Because that's nothing. That's fucking, that's fucking nothing. The only thing you can, anything you can accomplish is determined by the most rightward tie-breaking vote, essentially. So if you have exactly 51, well, that's your most rightward senator. And that's John Fetterman, who is on the right, essentially.

0:19:42 Thomas: Uh, I think, I expect it to be John Fetterman. Maybe there'll be some weird issues where he won't be like furthest to the right, but I pretty much expect to be John Fetterman. Um, if you have 51, that's where you are. If you have, I don't know, 55, then all of a sudden, oh no, it's actually just your 51st senator. So that's like your fourth or fifth most right-wing senator, you know? And to do that, you just got to win more seats. It doesn't mean you only vote for your ideal candidate. And that goes for everybody. I mean that all around. There's moderates who cannot handle the idea of progressives winning. There's progressives who can't handle the idea of moderates winning. I just want Republicans to lose. We had the time we had in the primary to fight it out.

0:20:27 Thomas: And Haley Stevens fucking lost. That idiot who's doing the dumbest shit I've ever heard of in my life, having a tantrum, and she lost. And that's how that goes. And same goes for a bunch of progressives who lost. I can't think of any who are endorsing a MAGA opponent of the candidates. This truly is maybe a one of one, actually. I can't really think of when that's happened ever, and I think it has to do—more to do with Israel and Hailey Stevens being just fucking nuts than anything else. But anyway, the point is, the more Democrats are in office, the more that margin is, and the more leftward your tie-breaking vote goes. That's just how it is. We all... It really is a rising tide raises all boats.

0:21:12 Thomas: I mean, if you've got fucking 70 Democrats in there, but a bunch are like kind of, you know, centristy, that's great because you have 70, you know, just as a crazy example. Anyway, all this is to say that we need to be smart about what we can expect. We need to inform and educate people about what they can expect. And from the looks of it, we apparently need to inform and educate each other about what we can expect. Because if you're expecting Democrats to win, and when they win to do like, I don't know, Governance, which is what someone said. Oh, I want us to focus on good governance.

0:21:58 Thomas: Good governance? What the fuck does that even mean? Trump's president for two more years. What is it? What is governance? Like what is that? And I'm pretty serious about this because, again, if even the informed people are wrong about what we can even do if we take back Congress, I really worry about the uninformed people. We can't be, somehow it's just such a lose-lose thing because what we have to do is manage expectations, but obviously no one wants to do that. And no one wants to run on that. No one wants to run on a campaign of managed expectations. And that's why this fucking shit will never change. It's always gonna do that.

0:22:44 Thomas: But okay, I wanna talk more about what we can actually expect if we win. And I gotta take, I'll take another break. Let's take break number two and then I'll come back with some scenarios.

0:23:07 Thomas: Alright, so, scenarios. Look, uh, you probably know this, but it looks good. I mean, if we're gonna forget everything else and just listen to what the numbers say, and I'm, I'm looking at, uh, G. Eliot Morris is somebody I like quite a bit on this, um, but just looking at the models, looking at the guesses, uh, it's fucking crazy. I mean, 538 puts the odds of Democrats winning the house at 99 to one. I mean, that's pretty, that's pretty insane. Like when you think about it, this is with how much they cheated. This is taking into account the cheating. Imagine if they hadn't cheated so hard, you know, like they, what the fuck? I mean, this couldn't be a better atmosphere for Democrats or say a worse one for Trump and MAGA really is.

0:23:59 Thomas: So I'm, I'm look, I'm assuming we're taking the house. I guess scenario one, we don't take the House or the Senate. Well, we can all fucking kill ourselves, whatever. That's great. We don't, as back when I used to play code names with Eli Bosnick, it was always a fun thing to say is when you guess that like obvious one, you're like, well, it's definitely gonna be this word or we can kill ourselves, you know? And it's like the relief of like, we can, we can all, we can just pick this one. And if it's wrong, we could fucking quit, I'll say, to put it a little lighter. We can quit the game. If we don't win the house, we can just fucking quit the game. Not really, but really. That's not happening. We're winning the house. I mean, if we don't win the house, that's truly something, truly that's when I will turn conspiratorial at that point, if we don't win the house.

Like something will have had to go that level of wrong to where I will genuinely question the results. But only, again, because these odds are 99 to one, and there's literally no one fucking motivated to vote for MAGA right now. It's just, it's just, I can't imagine it. So we're assuming we win the house and that's good. That at the very least, what we can do, as I think we all know, that means we can stop things.

0:25:18 Thomas: We can stop any bills from passing. They don't get to pass bills. Now again, the margin matters. If we've got a margin of like one and there's some assholes in there who are like centristy you're trying to like, oh, I want to reach across the aisle and show America that you can still reach, blah, blah, blah, blah, Then, you know, who knows? But if the margin is like 30, then you can have all kinds of defectors and it doesn't matter. So that's why you fucking vote for all of them. Vote for every fucking one of them. I know you only get to vote for your own one, but still, everybody vote for their Democrat. And we can expect a bunch of messaging bills. And look, I'm actually a fan of messaging bills. I think you should do them. And by those, just in case anybody doesn't know what I mean, by that, I mean, there are bills that aren't gonna pass.

0:26:05 Thomas: You pass bills that aren't, well, they pass the House, but they aren't going to become law. And you do that in order to message to, and to put the blame where it should be. And the amount of effective they will be ranges from mostly zero to, I think, if we go to scenario two where we take the House and Senate, I think they can be pretty effective, because I think they will be really visible if we take both the House and the Senate and we pass legislation for Trump to veto. That, I think, will be pretty visible. I'm not gonna get all naive and think that that's gonna win a massive messaging more. But I think it could be significant. So the range of messaging bill could be from, well, we've got a small majority in the House and we pass some stuff and no one gives a fucking shit because it doesn't do anything.

0:26:58 Thomas: And the Senate just shits on it and they don't care because they're still Republicans. That's we've we've already done that. You know, it's again, we should still do it. There's no reason not to because what the fuck else are they doing besides all the other stuff I want them to do? They'll talk about. But, you know, They got a lot of time on their hands. They should still do it. It's not very effective. We've already seen this. Like this happened. Honestly, I don't even remember when. I guess after 2018, probably, there was a lot of messaging bills. Maybe there were... Man, did we have the house? Ah, who cares? I could look it up, but I remember a time when it was a bunch of messaging bills and I was actually surprised how many of them they passed. You know, you don't really hear about any of them. But it's still useful to be able to say, hey, we passed a thing that said, you know, fucking Medicare for all and they never went anywhere.

0:27:49 Thomas: So that's something we can do, messaging bills. We can do investigations. Now, here's the thing about investigations. I have bad news on this. For one, we should do them. This is the thing that I want to communicate. Like when I said we should do our 9-11 Commission report on the Trump corruption, I had people literally saying like, oh, we already know that it's all out there. We already know it. What the fuck are you talking about? It is not all out there. I think you're reacting to the fact that a lot of it is out there, but that's not the half of it. The amount that we don't know, the amount more that we could discover with subpoena power, and now a bunch of assholes are going to ignore subpoenas. That's gonna happen. And they're gonna get away with it because that's how our dumbass fucking system worked.

0:28:36 Thomas: The Supreme Court decided Trump's a king. They decided Bannon, this happened to Bannon. Bannon just ignored his subpoena forever. He did jail time, I want to say, but he held out long enough that it was okay. Because the bad guys always win. That's how it fucking works. And we don't have DOJ. We have no, we have absolutely no recourse if they ignore subpoenas. Which is an incredibly big problem. I mean, that's, that's underratedly like a massive sign of Our country is broken and it's gonna it's gonna happen. You know the house the same they're gonna subpoena certain people and Those people will ignore it publicly and we will be able to do nothing about it Because we you know what you can do you can refer them to fucking checks notes What's this fucking DOJ Attorney General? I almost said Dan Savage bar. Is that who I was about to say? Oh boy, those were the days, huh? Attorney General Blanche, it was a B. It's late, I'm recording this very late. Yeah, that's what we get to do with that. So that fucking sucks, but it's still worth the doing, because not everyone will.

Not everyone who is involved in that will be willing to do a Steve Bannon and have your face wrought off from leprosy and go to, I guess that's not part of it, but, and go to jail rather than comply with a subpoena. So, you will get some folks, and you also, you know, it doesn't hurt to get people on the record for not complying with subpoenas, and they will be able to investigate to a certain extent.

0:30:20 Thomas: It is really important. This is what I want some folks to realize, an underrated component of this is getting things on the record. I know it doesn't sound like a lot, but it is actually because a lot of the reporting we did, a lot of what we've covered on opening arguments on any show, it comes from these congressional records, from these investigations, from the five minutes during Trump when we've had people who are sane in control, and they do really good thorough investigations. It documents stuff. Is it going to solve all our problems? No. Is it going to functionally do much? Not much. It can do some things. There could be some consequences here and there for folks, probably minor players, but But it is important to document, because the alternative is, it's just lost.

0:31:10 Thomas: Think about how much the zone is flooded with shit all the time. The history, zone is flooded with shit all the time. I still think a lot of us have this idea that there's going to be some history book soon that tells people who was right about all this. And I don't know about that, you know? I don't know about that. I don't know how history of this era is going to be taught. I think it will depend on who ultimately wins. But I know this, if things aren't preserved for the record, that they have a way less of a chance of being taught. I think that historical record is important. By the way, still in scenario one, impeachment. Not for nothing, I think we should impeach. I think, again, my guess is that Congress is gonna have plenty of time on their hands to do all this stuff.

0:31:57 Thomas: Impeach, do it. It's the right thing to do. I think there are arguments against it that are reasonable. I think I, you know, there's thought that like impeaching Trump again and having it go nowhere only further renders impeachment useless. But like, that's, there's not, there's nothing else you're saving it for, you know, like, that's why I don't get about that argument. Like, OK, well, we don't impeach. And then. What? Then next time there's a Trump. We will impeach and it'll work or will it just be exactly the fucking same? And, in my opinion, if it's anything like a close call, anything like a close call, Ty goes to the Constitution. I think what you should do is what the fucking Constitution says, which is, if somebody has committed as many high crimes and misdemeanors as this fuck has, you impeach.

0:32:49 Thomas: That's your constitutional duty. So Ty goes to the Constitution. If it's a close call, do it. I just think that's so obvious, like, literally, your job as a member of Congress is the Constitution. That's your fucking job. And if you don't, this isn't, the impeachment thing isn't a self-acting thing. That part of the Constitution only exists if you make it exist. I know the Republicans are going to make it not exist. I get it. Don't do it for them. You do your part. Let them shit on the Constitution. Don't do it for them. And I think impeachment hearings are decent TV. I think we should impeach Hegseth. I think we should impeach Blanche. And there are good real reasons, more than a few, to impeach both those men and Trump, obviously.

0:33:39 Thomas: There are plenty, plenty of reasons. Impeach, impeach, impeach. There's no reason not to put your heart into it. Do good investigations. And I think there's good reason to just start with a framing of let's investigate first. I don't think you should, you don't have to like. Start from the premise of we're going to impeach. You can investigate, hold hearings, draw it out, impeach when it makes sense. Because again, ultimately if it's not going to go through, which it won't, there's no rush. I think you should do it, but it's not an emergency. So get it done right, take your time, get investigations, get all the facts, that kind of thing. So that's good. There are funding bills that will be interesting.

0:34:26 Thomas: Again, still in scenario one, which is the house only. Funding bills will be interesting. The debt limit crap, you know, we can look forward to a bunch of those stupid battles where it's like, well, it's the only bit of leverage. I used to be so against this debt limit weaponization by the right. And you know, it was dumb, but once the fascists have taken over the government, it's your only thing that you can do, then fuck it. Like, that's what you gotta do. And so the Democrats kind of fucked that up last time, but they didn't have a majority. So they were just doing it, you know, from the stance of a minority. And they, if you remember, they held strong for a while. It was looking good. And then they just folded for nothing. Now, I think there were, there were interesting reasons for that.

0:35:15 Thomas: There were reasons that, to varying degrees, I believe and don't believe, but with saying that aside, It's another place where we expect the world from Democrats who we handed no power to. This time, it might be handing them a modicum of power, but we still can only expect them to do what they can with the power we give them. And ultimately, if they just hold the House, it's not gonna be a whole lot. But again, we'll still try to, obviously we'll pressure them to do what they should do with all of that. So here's what doesn't happen. Well, I guess I can transition into scenario two, which is getting the House and the Senate by like one.

0:35:52 Thomas: That's, boy, that's gonna be tough. That's what I worry the most about. I worry about winning the House and getting to like, well, getting to 50 is losing, because that's nothing. Getting to 51, when again, Fetterman is the one of the 51, is interesting. That's gonna suck. You know, if you thought Joe Manchin was frustrating. And yeah, he's frustrating. He also, I missed the fuck out of him. And I said it then, I'll say it now. It was better when we had Joe Manchin. It was better. Guess who we have now? Fucking Satan McMagga Trump. That's who we have. Is it better? Is it better to have Satan McMagga Trump? I don't even know his name, doesn't matter. He's a fucking rubber stamp, whoever it is, for Trump. Is it better?

0:36:37 Thomas: Or was it better to have maybe the guy who sucks and caucuses with us and sucks, but still votes with us a bunch of the time? Which one was better everybody? Which one was better? God, that was a frustrating debate. It was better to have Manchin It was good to have him. I don't know if we could have done anything to keep him Probably not. It was good to have Manchin. It's not good to not have Manchin anyway, Fetterman's worse than that because Fetterman is Somebody who a real like we could have a real Democrat in that seat Unlike Joe Manchin's old seat, which Who knows when a Democrat will ever hold again? I'd say never. Just to give you an idea, there is a seat in West Virginia, a Senate seat up for election in this, again, the worst possible fucking environment for Republicans, and that's a 99-to-1 Republican.

0:37:25 Thomas: That's how not Democrat West Virginia was. And we had a fucking Democrat there. Ah, man, it really was, it was a lot better. It was a lot better than you folks, a lot of you folks realized. It was a whole lot better, because now we have Satan McFuckface, who have two Satan McFuckfaces, maga, McMagafuckface Trumps. And that's worthless, that's actively bad. So I wish we had Joe Manchin. Anyway, Federman's not that and he sucks. So, if we have 51, that's, I mean... It's gonna be interesting. It's gonna be, it's gonna suck. I don't want that. God, I don't, you know I don't want that. I want Federman to fade into the obscurity of losing, or not even running, in two years, I think it is, when he's up again. Uh, I just want him gone.

0:38:11 Thomas: He shouldn't be there. He shouldn't be in office. Uh, I just want him gone. If we get to, if we get to fucking 51, I swear to God, we're gonna have to hear from that fucking asshole every goddamn day. Every negotiation is gonna involve like, let's send several, you know, nukes to Israel so they can do 10 more genocides. It's gonna suck. It's gonna suck. Please, dear God, get us to at least 50 fucking two, like, yeah, please. Ideally, 54 would be nice, something like that, so, so we aren't in any danger of having to care what Federman says. That would be very nice. That would be real nice. Um, all right, let's take that last break, and then we'll talk more about the Senate, and if we actually get a good outcome in the Senate, not 51.

0:39:07 Thomas: So here's some good news. No more Supreme Court justices. And you know, I'm gonna give you some more good news that you might've missed, because I missed it. I can't believe I missed it, but I missed it.

0:39:21 Thomas: Alito is definitely not retiring. He's hired clerks through 2027, is what I've seen reported. So, and I believe it. I think he, what does Alito have if not the Supreme Court? What is he, what is he, what do you think, he has hobbies? What is he gonna do, play golf or something? No, that guy gets off on ruining our lives. There's no place else that Alito, a guy like that is important in any way, really. This is the one place he gets to be important, otherwise he's just a fucking cranky old flag-waving dipshit. So he's staying. Now, here's the thing. If we win, anyone could resign, And there's a couple who could resign and get replaced before the new Senate is sat.

0:40:13 Thomas: They did that with Amy Coney Barrett. They did Amy Coney Barrett in 30 days. That was the beginning of the end. That was the middle of the end. That was really bad. That was really, really, really bad when RBG couldn't hold out for another 30 days, unfortunately. Um, you know, we don't have to open up that can of worms again, but that, that, that cost us a lot. That cost the country enormously, enormously, uh, because it's pretty much, we're in a whole, we're in a whole, we're in a whole Supreme Court wise that we cannot get out of with normal means. We would have to win every election for 20 fucking years to maybe start to turn things around.

0:41:00 Thomas: That's just how it works. And if Democrats win the Senate, I, I worry that Thomas is going to retire. And that, that puts it just that much more out of reach, you know? And it's, God, we're so fucked on the Supreme Court. We, we, without reform or court packing, and, you know, I think it's pretty much court packing personally. I, I don't know what reform is going to really do it. And that needs, that needs a lot of votes. That needs a Senate and a President and a House, you know, so that has to wait until 2029, minimum. And yeah, I don't know. And who knows if that'll even happen. Like that's such a, that's a tall order to get reform or packing to the point where we take back control of the Supreme Court. It needs to happen. We're fucked if it doesn't happen.

0:41:53 Thomas: And that's not happening through normal means. I can't stress this enough. Do you think that's something the average voter knows? I don't know, this is the problem. Does the average voter know that we would have to win, I don't know, six old fucking presidential elections in a row to maybe have a chance? I don't even know if that would do it. How long are these fuckers gonna live? Let's assume Thomas retires. Alito could die by the grace of God, you know, soon-ish. Who's gonna be the next fucker to die there? That's MAGA, that's on the right. And we need, we need two. And we need no Republican president before they die, because then they get to retire under that president and get to reload to a fucking 25-year-old or something.

0:42:47 Thomas: You know, there's no path to that as things currently stand other than something drastic. So, like, do people know that, do you think? Do they know that we can elect Democrats for, I don't know, several, for like a decade, and still not change that? And still have the MAGA Supreme Court fucking ruining our lives? Who will they blame? Who will be to blame? Oh, Democrats can't do what they said they could do. You know, they pass a law and the Supreme Court strikes it down. Oh, they can't do what they promised. Yeah, why? Well, because we fucking failed for a decade plus from 2014 to yesterday and now they get to have the court the most important thing in the country forever, unless we do something.

0:43:37 Thomas: Like truly, if we keep going back and forth, and we're in a coin flip country, I mean this, if we go back and forth president to president for a hundred years, we won't get, because you're relying on someone dying by luck during the time when you're in office, and every time they're in office they can retire strategically and reload to somebody young and healthy, you know, like the odds of that, it's six to three. We have to get to five to four the other way. We're fucked on that account. But the good news again is Alito, I think isn't retiring, and we can just hope, we can hope and pray that Thomas is as miserable a person as Alito is, and this is the only thing that gives him joy.

0:44:24 Thomas: It is, he will go into complete obscurity if he retires. No one will care about him at all, because who cares? He's a black man within the Republican Party. Great, man. I'm sure you'll get a few speeches places, but who gives a fuck? People care about you now, Clarence, because you have all this power you shouldn't have. Will they care about you when you retire at all? I don't know. You should ask yourself that and you should not retire ever. Just don't retire, Clarence. Die in office in about three years, please. Please, God. Two and a half years. Please, Clarence, do it for us. But no, I mean, I think there's a chance he retires if we win.

0:45:11 Thomas: And again, that puts it even more average. So enough with the bad news, the good news, let's say we get to 52 and I, I'm again, looking at 538, 53 is like the odds on outcome by their, by their count again, you know, polls, but 54, 53, 52 are all the, the kind of the center of that, um, of that graph of that bell curve. The center of it is 52, 53, 54 for us, which is fucking insane, it's phenomenal.

0:45:43 Thomas: 51 is kind of the next most likely, and then 55 is after that, and then 50 is kind of after that, and that's bad, that's a bad time. You know, 56 is not out of the question. It's not out of the fucking question. Beyond that, it's pretty impossible. I mean, who knows? It could be 57. 57 is like the highest, I would say 57 from my view here of the map and the poles and everything. 57 is like the peak of what we could possibly hope for. 58 may, technically possible is 60. Technically, hypothetically possible is 60. That's not happening. 60 is if, you know, if the pollsters have been really grading down Democrats' chances because they seem too good and they're like, ah, this must be wrong, we're gonna control for different things here.

I that's still, it's not happening. 59 is not having, 58 not having, 57 is like, you know, that's... that's... that's See, quick math here. You know, that's not crazy, could be like 20%. It could be 20%. Now, also 20% is Republicans winning 52. So, to give you some idea, that's what we're talking about. That would, that's bad. Just so everyone knows, that's bad. Republicans winning any more than 40, again, 48 or whatever, is very, very bad. So, point is, things look good. Now, if we have, let's say 53. We'll take the center of the probability curve by this source, 50 plus 1. 53, right smack in the middle. Eh, 52, 53, but we'll say 53 to be a little optimistic. What does that mean? Well, that means we can have one Fetterman and one other fuck stick and still not care.

0:47:37 Thomas: So that's nice. Fetterman plus the next Fetterist Fetterman, the second Fetterist man, can suck all they want. And it doesn't matter, because all we need is that 51st person. And this is good. So here's what I mean. I think this is the odds-on favorite to happen, to win the House and to win the Senate, about 53. So right, you're listening this today, and things are happening, and hopefully that's what's happening. This means I think messaging bills in this scenario are useful. I think we can pass landmark legislation. Think about, I mean, there's a whole process there, the House, the Senate, the reconciliation, all that stuff, and you pass it, you know? You pass Medicare for fucking all, you pass whatever.

0:48:22 Thomas: And here's the thing that's interesting. A bunch of the shittiest Democrats who maybe wouldn't support things that, you know, we think they should support, and I don't know how many there are, there are a couple, who knows, they might be incentivized to just fucking do it because they know it's not gonna happen, Trump's gonna veto it. So we might get people voting on Medicare for all who maybe wouldn't otherwise, you know? Just for shits, and then how funny would it be?

0:48:50 Thomas: Stay with me here. How funny would it be if Trump just calls their bluff and signs it? I think it's not impossible. Here's the thing about this. Here's what I love about these messaging bills. In the year of Trump, the weirdest fucking guy ever to exist, there's a weird chance that Trump sees a bill, and if it's popular, he's just like, "Yep, that's me. Trump, Medicare for all, I did it." And like, fucking, okay. I mean, I don't think there's a real risk of voters thinking Trump did it. I mean, he'll get some credit, you know, but I think it's more likely that people understand that there was this massive wave election that Democrats took over, and then this came out of that. I think that's what voters will think.

0:49:38 Thomas: And so I'm not super worried about that. I also, I don't know, I don't think this is likely. I think it's, I think it's, well, I say it's about as likely as us winning 58. You know, there's a 10% chance that Trump signed some shit just because he might not care not to in a weird way. And then that gets into some weird stuff, some weird strategy. I could imagine, now what if there's something that we wanna pass that we are worried about Trump getting credit for by signing? Let's just say hypothetically. I'm wondering, it's gonna be interesting if we put some poison pill stuff in there. Like, oh, also fucking abolish ICE. Also, the president's not a guy, you know, just whatever. Just like put other stuff in there. And then, you know, either way we win, like either he vetoes something that's incredibly popular and he loses support and we gain support.

0:50:29 Thomas: Or maybe he signs some shit and we get more stuff we want. Who knows? That might be getting a little too cute. I'm not sure. I'm not in charge. It's just the thought I had. It's kind of interesting to think about. But we can stop Senate. We can stop all nominations. That's great. That's probably the most important thing. We can stop tons of stuff. We can stop him, a lot of the acting stuff. Um, we can do investigations. We can, there's a lot we can do. I think a lot of the messaging bills will be effective. I think holding investigations in both the House and the Senate is more effective than just one. I think it can really, there's, it's just more effective. Now what can't it do? Well, a lot of the stuff that people think. We're not governing in quotes.

0:51:16 Thomas: We're not. That's not happening. If we get anything passed, it'll be a miracle or something weird. The closest thing you could call to governing will be passing the, you know, the reconciliation crap, you know, the budgety stuff we do. That's going to be an interesting fight. I'm not sure how that goes. It's going to be really weird because Trump, Trump has to sign those too, doesn't he? I mean, huh. That's, that's, that's a little above my pay grade to understand for one, there's such a weird parliamentary procedure bullshit with that. And all the incentives are be very bizarre. I think it's going to be very contingent on how this goes, how public perception of this election got. I mean, there's a lot, so I'm not going to speculate too much. I think it'll be interesting. Um, but yeah, we're not, we're not doing a whole lot.

0:52:03 Thomas: We just aren't, you know, like we don't get to pass bills. We don't get to, we don't get to do everything we want. We don't get to impeach. We don't have DOJ. We still will not have the power to really bring consequences on anybody. We may never get that power, because he could pardon everybody on his way out and then he evades consequences. So I just want people to understand that this isn't a miracle pill. This isn't a Democrats win and they fix everything. And we need to understand that, because otherwise we will ping pong back and forth in this fucking duality of idiot, which is Republicans promising the world and deporting people and being awful and it not happening, and then us promising the world and just not being able to do it because the system sucks and the Supreme Court sucks and the president still will be Trump.

0:52:52 Thomas: So it's important to manage expectations there. It really is. All right, we're gonna have a live hang. If you're listening to this again on election day, we're gonna do a live hangout opening arguments. It's kind of spontaneous. I wish I could have given you more lead time on it, but we're going to be on YouTube. That's me, Matt and Jenessa. Lydia might pop in, but not sure we couldn't get childcare. So she might handle that. So six o'clock Pacific, I think we're thinking. God, or was, yeah, six o'clock Pacific so that we have a bunch of results in to talk about, and we're gonna do a live hang. So just keep an eye out, I'll post it everywhere, especially the Patreons, because I'm not like on social media a ton these days, because it's been ruined.

0:53:37 Thomas: So keep an eye out, we'll post it places. I would love to hear from you, love to hang out with you. We can see what's going on. And again, if it's just a loser of a night, I'll just crawl in a hole. So you might not hear from me if it's already clear like we didn't win anything, but I just don't think that's gonna happen. I think that's very unlikely. But there's the scenarios folks. That's pretty much it. And it's not a whole lot. It's really not. Just keep that in mind. Please, dear God, keep that in mind. This is, this, this stops the bleeding. This isn't a miracle cure. This is a, well, we get to hold our hands on the fucking gunshot wound with a bandage, maybe the blood stops slightly. That's like them, because you think about, here's another thought I had. Everything bad Trump's done, how much of it has gone through his Congress?

0:54:33 Thomas: You know, there's the one big beautiful bullshit, and and like that's it, like a couple other things, like some, they defunded some stuff through Congress. But like, if you're thinking, "Oh great, we take Congress and then we can stop all this stuff," how much has he even done through Congress? It's minuscule. Really? Everything he's done is by breaking everything else, and us winning Congress unfortunately doesn't do a whole lot to stop that. So it's everyone, please bear that in mind. Please educate those around you. It's it's just a fucking unwinnable thing, though, the expectation management, and so I don't know. I don't know what to say other than let's let's fucking win tomorrow. I can't wait, or today, and everybody, you better voted, you fuckers, everybody vote.

0:55:19 Thomas: Vote, vote, vote, if you end vote, vote, you still, as you're hearing this, if you have time to listen to me, you got time to vote, fucking vote. Thank you.