SIO263: Not The Worst Possible Outcome, But Close

Transcript

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

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only, this is episode 263, I'm Thomas, and yeah, it's the day after Election Day, I've got thoughts, I got a lot of thoughts, as usual, I'll try to remember them all, just to jumble, okay, so, I had a rough night, I have a rough day, wasn't, I was a little sleep-deprived, was able to finally take a nap, so I feel a little better, or just I'm able to do that thing where after your kind of traumatized a little bit, negative.

You go to sleep, you wake up, for no reason, you feel a little bit better. Not great, but a little bit better, but this is not good. Not good, folks, not good, I have to admit, I was in a foul mood all night, I felt like I was being gaslit a bit by people claiming they're super sure that Biden had it going away, and that it was fine, and there's no reason to be be worried. There's every reason to be worried. Here's where it sits, as of sitting right now, 4 p.m. Pacific: Biden should likely win, most likely, not a hundred percent, by the way, not a hundred percent. He, what it looks like right now to me, playing with the maps, is that there's every chance that it's a 270 to 268 victory.

0:01:57 Thomas: Now, that changes if Biden wins Pennsylvania. You know, that's something that Andrew on OA told us about, that the blue shift in Pennsylvania, especially, being very strong. And I recognize that. But it's still a question of how strong, you know? That doesn't mean that no matter how far apart the vote was, the blue shift was going to fix it. I don't know. I mean, I'm not, I, I am not both a statistician and somebody who's super confident in election results after what's happened in Florida and what's happening in some of these states.

Like, I think it'll be fine. And I'll tell you this, I'm very worried right now. If it ends up 270 to 268, we will, I'm sure we'll find out over on Opening Arguments, but there is such a thing as faithless electors, and you know, that's too, too close, 270, 268 is too close for me to be even comfortable through December. Who knows, some elector defects or something, there's a lawsuit that we sue, uh, somebody says I should, blah, blah, the Supreme Court, I know they ruled on this one way or the other, I actually forget, but who cares, they'll change their mind, they will absolutely change their might to steal this election. So I hope that we win Pennsylvania, it's still possible.

I hope we win Georgia, um, Georgia is still in the mix, it's, it's maybe slightly lean Biden. Here's, here's what I want to say overall, again, odds wise, it looks like Biden is winning right now, I, I put pretty good odds on that, you know, just internally trying to be objective as possible, I would say it's like right now, as we're sitting here, probably 90, based on, you know, like Arizona should be good, it hasn't been called yet.

0:03:41 Thomas: Nevada should be good, hasn't been called yet, um, I would say it's pretty likely, but it was absolutely not a foregone conclusion last night at any time last night, and I was incredibly worried. I'm still worried. What if it doesn't quite work out in Georgia? What if it isn't quite workout in Pennsylvania? We're talking very narrow margins here, and Nevada is a 7000 vote margin. And in an election that could be 270 to 268, all of a sudden Nevada could swing it.

0:04:19 Thomas: We're still very close, folks. I know. Look, again, as I said, it's very likely that Biden has this. We're Still Very Close. And at no point has it been overwhelmingly clear that Biden was fine. At no point. Other than before the election started, when once again, the polls showed that we were fine and we're massively off, even more so than 2016. Now, I suspect it's going to be a long time before we get to the bottom of that. There are a lot of explanations. Florida, it seems to be that Miami-Dade just was really not as... Now, it's a Biden county, but the margin was lower than it should have been. That's a heavy population center and the margin should should have been bigger, which should have given Biden more votes overall in Florida, which should have, you know, powered him to a win there.

0:05:12 Thomas: And it didn't. That's a that's a big story. But I don't know if fraud is part of this. Now, we all know that there's some level of Republicans making our lives hell and ruining this election that accounts for some level. This doesn't account for all of it. I mean, we can't blame all our problems on that. We really can't. The fact of the matter is both. This is this is absolutely true. Both Biden and Trump have just broken records for total number of votes received. They both will be breaking Obama's 2008 record. Make of that what you will. Well, I've heard a lot of analysis. I say heard. I've seen a lot of hot takes about what's going on and what causes these problems.

0:05:57 Thomas: And, you know, I suppose I'm another hot take. That's fine. I'll be another hot Take. I'll tell you why I think the things I do. But anyway, as I was saying, this is going to come down to mere tens of thousands of votes. It's going to be who knows, you know. It could end up. Now, let's say everything, these tiny margins, let's say everything goes Biden's way. And then it'll look like a very convincing electoral college vote, win. Much like, by the way, 2016. The final electoral college difference in 2016 didn't look close. And that's one of the things that Trump would, oh yeah, it was a huge victory, huge victory. Well, it wasn't a huge victor, but if you don't understand how things work and you look at an electoral college map of the 2016 victory, it does look pretty decisive.

0:06:51 Thomas: And that's what this could look like. But that's not really, that doesn't tell us anything. What tells us something is, again, we always said in these key swing states in 2016, there was a combination of something like 80,000 votes in the three of them that delivered the election to Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. 80, 000. That was the last, You know, we've talked about it before. The numbers have been adjusted over the years, but something like 70, 80,000 in three different states combined that made the difference. We're looking at something like that again, but for Biden. So, yay. But this was not a sure thing. Now, it could be that, you know, he barely wins Pennsylvania, barely wins Georgia. And then all of sudden it looks like a convincing Biden victory.

0:07:39 Thomas: And people might say, Thomas, why were you so scared, you idiot? Why were you so nervous? It's convincing victory. This is way too fucking close. Way too fucking close. At no point last night was this obvious. I will stand by that till the day I die. This was not obvious last night once results were coming in. It was not.

0:07:59 Thomas: So anyway, I'll step aside from that. Let's get into the hot take zone. Here's what I want to say, and likely, I've titled this episode something like "Not the Worst Possible Outcome, but Close." And I'm not here, folks, I'm sorry, I'm not here trying to be negative. And I would imagine that a lot of people see the titles of my show and they just can't listen. And fine, I don't harbor any anger or anything about that. People will listen to what they want to listen to. People offer different things.

Some people in the world offer what I think is a very ill-informed optimism in times of great negative negativity and negative outcomes, and that's whatever, do what you do, do you, um, but if you're listening, this, I guess you clicked play, so I'll assume you weren't turned off by that. That answer, I have been struggling with, you know, people to some degree, and I shouldn't, I shouldn't be responding this, I get it, I should be able to ignore everything, um, and I, I'll try, but I felt quite a bit of pressure last night, sort of policing my emotional response to what was a horrible outcome. This is a horrible income.

This is a horribile outcome. This is almost as bad as it could possibly be. It is one step. I think if you were to rank the outcomes, obviously a Trump blowout, I mean that was never very plausible. I wasn't, I wasn't very worried about a Trump blowout plus, like, a Trump taking the House, you know, like that, that was almost a 0% chance. And I, even as wrong as the polls were, there still wasn't much chance of that.

0:09:39 Thomas: So among the outcomes that were possible, that were like in the realm of things I was worried about, there were several different versions. There was what I hoped for, and there was what we needed to do. The one outcome, I said it last episode, I believe there was one thing we need to do, when the White House, when the Senate, and keep the House, obviously that was it. That was our one path. We didn't do that. That was what I hoped for. That's, that was the best possible outcome. Obviously, some sort of blowout, you know, still results in in winning all three, uh, branches, but, uh, yeah, I always say that, two chambers and one branch, I suppose the, the Supreme Court is the other branch of government, whatever, you know what I mean, I said this the other day, um, not winning the Senate is almost as bad, so I think if I'm, if I'm sitting here trying to be objective, I think Trump winning and us flipping the Senate, I think, think that's worse.

0:10:33 Thomas: That's worse, yeah, okay, that's a little worse. So that's in terms of the worst possible outcomes, Trump staying in and us losing the, you know, the Senate, that's the worst, that didn't happen, okay, so that first worst outcome, second worst, I think, is Trump winning with us somehow grabbing the Senate, which would be like marginally less, that, that would be awful, because, because I think truly nothing would change. Truly nothing. The only benefit of that would have been no more court appointments. That would have been the one benefit of that, but still all the awful executive action, which is most of what's happening nowadays. So that would, I'm trying to be objective here. That's second worst.

0:11:18 Thomas: Third worst is what happened. Third worst is the world we live in. And when I say third worst, these are separated by a hair's breadth, these are awful outcomes, we did the bare minimum, I, I, I don't know what it is, why does this country, it's the polling, it's fucking 538, somebody tricks me every year, two years, or whatever it is, into hoping for something good, and and and actually feeling like we might do something good, I, I didn't think we're gonna maybe get a blowout, but I thought there was every chance that every probability said we should win the Senate, we should win the presidency, I would have taken any numbers, 50 senators, 51, 52, I thought that was reasonable, there was a, you know, the, the cluster of probabilities was around like 54, how great that would have been and it tricks me every time, and now I have to, I need to learn this lesson, do not hope for anything from this fucking country but the bare minimum, maybe bare minimum we might win 270 to, this is, this is incredible.

If you had sat here before, if we had like gotten together as a couple of math nerds or something and said, what's the least we can do mathematically as a country, what is the least? We can do and not be like completely horrible.

I would, it would have been okay, let's see the slimmest of Biden victories. So that we're, we're on track for that. Now, again, it may look better if we pull out a couple of these states, but that doesn't mean it was better. You know, if one vote goes either way is the difference, you know, a couple thousand votes is the different.

0:12:56 Thomas: That doesn't really mean that it was that much better than the end result of our electoral college may say. So we've got potentially the most narrow, the most narrow margin potentially could be 270, 268. And in which case, again, I'm still worried that's not even a victory because of some bullshit that Trump and faithless electors could pull. I, I, can you imagine if we win 270, 268, that means, and this is absolutely true, that means the Nebraska, whatever you call it, at large electoral college vote, they have that. Nebraska has one, or no, I guess they have a few, however the fuck it works, I don't know, they have like two or three votes that you can win for no reason. And Biden went one, one of them. So Nebraska has a total of five EC votes and Biden was able to win one because they have some weird system there where you can pick off one or two or three, something like that.

0:13:52 Thomas: That is the difference. One elector, that, and I've seen a few Twitter threads about how like there's some activist in Nebraska that made this happen back in the day. And that's going to be a really interesting story. I'm not in a position where I can really appreciate that right now because it might not work out. But if this all goes well and let's say he wins 270-268 and that one elector is the difference, that fucking sucks. But that's an interesting story, I'll look into that later. But anyway, we are talking potentially the narrowest of narrow wins. Potentially. 270-278, that could be, can you believe it? The closest possible. Unbelievable. Okay. Back on my list of least of all things. So that's the least we can do there. Least we can fucking do there, um, we're, I would say also not winning the Senate would be the least we could do there and barely maintaining the house folks. We lost house seats.

0:14:51 Thomas: We are losing house seats, a net loss in the house. I just don't even know what to say. I never would have have predicted that. As negative as I was, I would have thought even if Trump won, we would still gain a few seats in the House or maintain it. This is a bad result. There's a tiny chance in the Senate. I made this prediction that may have even been too optimistic.

But last night, I made a prediction that the Senate could go 49-49, or sorry, 49-50, Democrats to Republicans. Republicans, and then it could be all about this Georgia runoff election, in which case I anticipate a billion dollars flowing into Georgia. This is absolutely true. If that's what it is, if we get to the point where Biden wins and it's 49-50 and we're waiting, I think a month from now is when the Georgia runoffs happens, I will phone bank every fucking day for my entire waking life to try to win that seat, as I imagine a lot of you will.

And maybe, maybe we'll squeak by with a 50-50 tie, which is the least we can fucking do. But I don't even know if it's going to go that well. I think it might just be, even with that, it might be 49-51, which ist horrible. You know know what this means? I'm sure we'll cover it on opening arguments. People who are not maybe as into this as some other people might not realize how truly bad this result is. Now, for the remainder of my talk, let's just assume the result, which is a Biden victory and a lost Senate and keeping the House.

0:16:37 Thomas: That's what every indication is looking like now. Now if I'm pleasantly surprised and we We somehow squeak out just like a tiny Senate victory. I'll take it. I'll be so fucking happy. I will be so fuckin' happy, but it's not looking likely. I'm going to talk as though that didn't happen. So right now I am talking as though the end result is Biden plus no Senate plus having the House. So starting with the obvious, obviously no bills are passed. Not a one. One. Maybe, maybe we get some, you know, maybe, maybe the Republicans don't shut down the government is the best we can hope for there, but they might, they might just shut down the government for the entire four years. Who cares? It doesn't matter. There are no consequences.

0:17:22 Thomas: There are no fucking consequences for their behavior. There isn't. So that's a minimum. So, that means no climate change legislation. That means no repealing Trump's fucking horseshit tax cuts that are ruining the economy and ruining our financial well-being in this country as a whole. No COVID relief. No fucking COVID relief now. I wasn't sure if was going to do the negatives first. I could get to the positives. I'll probably do the positives later, maybe. But like it's not for nothing that Biden is going to manage COVID better and that will make a significant difference in terms of lives saved. That's a good thing. It's a it's the slightest of good things, but it's a good thing.

0:18:10 Thomas: Okay, but I'll go to the negative. I'll try to cover the positive later. Should have maybe signpost that just in case people just rage quit this episode. I don't know. I'd like to rage quit America. Can I rage quit Amerika? No, can't. I just can't do it. Anyway, so I've covered that. No COVID relief. What other bills are we hoping to pass? Those, I mean, those are no health care. Duh. Okay. OK, so those are, I would say those are like the major things that I was hoping for out of this administration with the most tempered of, you know, optimistic dreams there. Like, this was not me thinking Bernie Sanders was going to take over the Senate, although I wish wish he could. This was just the bare minimum I was hoping for under a Biden presidency. And with the knowledge that even a Senate majority would mean we're still subject to the whims of very purple state senators who are not going to sign on to Biden's agenda probably in full.

0:19:07 Thomas: So here's what we're not getting. No health care, no COVID relief, no climate change action, no tax reform.

0:19:18 Thomas: Those are the major ones I'm thinking of now. There's plenty, plenty. So none of that, that's already fucking horrible. So we're already sitting at fucking horrible, um, now let's get to the stuff that maybe, maybe you wouldn't necessarily think of. Zero fucking court appointments. Zero. So all of that bullshit cheating that they've done. So what they, what the Republicans did is they stopped Obama from being able to appoint anybody. Um, first they did it by slowing it down when we still held the Senate. This is history that a lot of people are fuzzy on remembering. McConnell did not control the Senate until 2014, as I've covered. But before that, back when there were still kind of norms and Democrats were too slow to realize the norms were broken, that's their fault.

0:20:04 Thomas: You can blame them for that. You know, it's hard to be victim blamers in that. I mean, the right did the breaking of it. The right decided that the black man doesn't get any court appointments. That's what they decided. And they just gummed up the works. They slowed it down. McConnell gloats over that as though Obama just left him all these openings. Wow, that was stupid of him. It's truly sickening. I want to fucking punch McConnell in his fucking stupid turtle face. I hate him. I hope the gangrene from the curse of the goddamn ring from Harry Potter or whatever he's done, I hope that eats his body and I hope he dies. I really do. And by the way, if McConnell were to somehow die, which would be fantastic news, that'd be fucking incredible. Best news we could hope for in 2020. I believe that we would get a Democratic replacement because of the Kentucky governor being a Democrat.

0:20:54 Thomas: So there's something to hope for. I told you I was done hoping. I'm not hoping for it. If you're a hoping kind of person, just hope that McConnell drops dead. That would be the best possible thing from here. So Trump has completely obliterated the judiciary with just fundamentalists. I imagine they'll do do that all during the lame duck. They will make sure they've filled every possible opening as fast as possible. This is, and this is the federal judiciary. They've already fucked the Supreme Court. That's fucked. It's gone. That is fundamentalist controlling that. A Senate loss for Democrats here means we don't fix the Supreme Court. We don't, let me start with the federal courts. So that means four years of no, not a single appointment.

0:21:43 Thomas: Do you think that's, do you think I'm being too hyperbolic? Do you think I'm wrong? I'm not wrong. I'll tell you my evidence for that. There was not a single appointment between 2014, or sorry, January 2015 when McConnell took over and January 2017 when Trump took office. I don't believe there was a single one last I looked. If I'm wrong, it's because there was like one that somehow got through for no reason or maybe I... But look it up. I just did that the other day. It's either zero or one to two. They've all been filled by Donald Trump because of McConnell. So we will go four years with no appointments. The judiciary will not be fixed. The courts will be full of fundamentalist nut job judges.

0:22:31 Thomas: And that's just the federal courts. Obviously, the Supreme Court is fucked. So what does that mean? Well, over the next four years, we probably lose Roe v. Wade. We probably lose gay marriage. We probably lose voting rights, which will make it even harder to fix this problem in 2022 and 24 and 26 and 28. We're going to lose all kinds of things, folks. We are going to loose all kinds of things. I just can't believe it. This is such a bad outcome. I haven't even finished. Here's what else is bad. No Secretary of State. I give Andrew credit for this. He pointed this out to me a few weeks back.

0:23:11 Thomas: I wasn't even this negative, but I think it's probably accurate. I don't know that Biden will get to appoint a cabinet position. I'm not sure. I mean, maybe they do something where he appoints somebody so right wing that Republicans convince McConnell to go with it, maybe. And then you know what will happen then? All the leftists will say, Look at that. Biden appointing a Republican. He was a traitor all along because that's the next negative part. So the next negative part of this is not handed any power. Democrats have not after today, unless something changes. And again, I already covered that. I'm talking as though the results just about hold up. Still an outside chance, an outside of most outsidist of chances chances that we hang on to the Senate, it's not a good chance.

It's a tiny chance. So Here's what happens. We put Biden in so it looks like we should be able to do something to the uninitiated, to the people who barely follow politics, the people don't have time. And justifiably so. This is not an insult. There are plenty of people in this country who do not have the privilege to be able to sit around and pay attention to politics all day, like some of of us do. And so to them, they think, well, Biden got in there. Okay, well things should get better if the Democrats are worth a damn, things will get better, right? And then we give them no power. We give Democrats exactly zero fucking power. Zero.

0:24:41 Thomas: Okay. We'll undo, we'll do some stuff with executive orders, but I don't know. I don'T how many executive orders in a Biden presidency would this Supreme court even survive. Honestly, the court might not let Biden undo stuff Trump did. I would not be the least bit surprised. What if Biden tries to close the camps and the court stops him? I mean, I don't know. You know, you assume that Biden will have some amount of control over executive agencies, but maybe not. This is horrible, folks. I'm sorry that I'm a little negative, but this is fucking horrible.

0:25:25 Thomas: God damn. This sucks. I hope I'm wrong, folks, folks? I hope I'm wrong.

0:25:35 Thomas: I think that's sort of, I think I've covered the bad. I think, I've, so maybe, if you haven't realized how bad this might be, maybe that helps you realize how bad it is. This is not good. This is good. If you're happy, here, tell you what, why don't we do some positives? I'll do a few positives. Yeah, well, no, you know what? While I'm at it, not cover a few more negatives? I don't think the state races went well. We're going into, we're going to the redistricting year. We're doing to the census year. That was crucial. That's what fucked us in 2010. And maybe it fucks us again in 2020. That I, you know, we'll see how those races shape up. We'll see if we control enough state level government to put a stop to that or at least make it like slightly less bad.

0:26:21 Thomas: We'll say maybe I don't think so. Here's one. California propositions went almost entirely the wrong way. Almost entirely from a progressive standpoint, by the way. The Uber and Lyft one, that went the wrong way. The bullshit property tax thing that I railed about on Comedy Shoe Shine the other day because it's so dumb, that Went the Wrong Way. Letting people under 18 vote in the primary in elections in which, for the general, they will be over 18, which is a no fucking brainer. I don't know who would be opposed to that. That didn't go well.

0:27:00 Thomas: Allowing, I think there was one. So what's the other one? Allowing affirmative action. That didn't even come close, I don't think. I think, again, these are all bad results. And this is part of what I will talk about in a minute, which is the fact that the U.S. population is just not very progressive, folks. We're not. We're Not Very Progressive. So every analysis that involves, oh, well, had we put up the progressive candidate, they would have won. No, sorry. There's no evidence for that. We are not in the bluest of blue states where there was incredibly high turnout, by the way, incredibly high-turnout election, record-breaking turnout election. So you cannot put this down to a lack of enthusiasm.

0:27:46 Thomas: I mean, you could construct some hypothetical, oh, my candidate, whoever I like, would have turned out an even bigger record crowd. Okay, what's your evidence? Poll numbers? The same poll numbers that showed Biden winning this easily and us taking the Senate easily? Your poll numbers about head to heads of your favorite candidate going against Donald Trump are less than nothing. They are useless. Not even the polling of the two actual candidates was useful. Let alone your polling from back in the primary of what your candidate looked like it would, they would have done against Donald trump. That's nothing. That is less than nothing. No information there.

0:28:28 Thomas: We are not a progressive country. We're barely, I would say population wise, we might be a left country, a little bit left center left. And don't get me with all "well, in the," some other country you'd be, or Nazis. I, I'm not talking about some other country. Fuck off. I don't care. I'm tired of the word games of, "Oh, in Europe." Yeah. You'd actually, Bernie is Hitler. And then Trump is double Hitler. Cause it's all shifted. I, I'm not, I're talking about in this country relative to this country's parties and the party structure, structure, uh, by population we're probably center left, by population, by structure, by Electoral College, by Senate, uh, we're right, we're, we're quite a bit right-leaning because the structural problems, the stupid fucking Constitution someone thought was a good idea. There are several good ideas in the Constitution, and then also a lot of really bad ones that we are fucking stuck with forever. Unless there's some, I don't, I, unless what, I don't know what, a revolution.

0:29:31 Thomas: Good luck. So you can't get people to vote, but you can get enough people to armed, take over the government and then, then write a government that you want. I, okay. It's about as much time as I'm going to spend on that. So here's the positive. It is a good thing that Biden beat Trump. I know I'm putting it mildly. It's a very good thing. Um, he should be able to save a lot of lives due to COVID, uh, because due to COVID response. I, that's a good thing. I would liken it to this. It's like, if you have a horrible infection taking over your whole body and the doctor stops it just before it gets to the heart and kills you, but you've lost all your limbs and your health is deeply threatened.

0:30:21 Thomas: That's about how we are. And yeah, it's objectively good that the doctors just barely stopped it before it went to the heart. Just barely. That's good. It's better than nothing. You know, especially when we're not talking about metaphors, especially where we're talking about human lives. That'S good. Um, it'S great to not have a racist piece of shit, sexist, idiot, dumbest president of all time be the president anymore. That' good. That''s good. I'm going to believe you me.

0:30:52 Thomas: I good. So cool. Ooh, that's, uh, that'S, I mean, for me, it doesn't outweigh some of the negatives, but it, you know, I'm, if, if I'm trying to be positive here, thatS good. Um, he will be able, I think, be able to undo Trump's executive orders. I think. I don't know.

0:31:13 Thomas: I dunno. Cause remember with, uh DACA, you now, uh Trump tried to undo, there was stuff that Trump tried undo that was was executive order, but he wasn't allowed to. And the court was slightly less shitty. So the court fought back a little bit on that. Now the court is an unmitigated right-wing fundamentalist Catholic haven. So I don't know if the court just says, nah, you can't undo that. Yeah, it's an executive order. But you know, here's thing. A lot of people are counting on that executive order and their rights depend on fucking who cares. They'll say whatever.

0:31:53 Thomas: It So I don't know. I, but maybe that's a positive. He might. So this is a, maybe Biden might be able to undo a few things. What are their positives? Um, that's it. I don'T know. Positives. I mean, Oh, you know what? Not for nothing. Actually we do, uh, potentially again, assuming this all holds up, we have a black woman as vice president. That's fucking awesome. That is really cool. I actually am a big fan of that. And if I'm trying to be remotely hopeful, it would be that with Biden in office, a few things will happen going forward. For one, I think that right-wing extremism will a little bit go down in certain ways.

0:32:41 Thomas: This is a hard one. I might be wrong about this. So a lot of people have been worried about what happens with Trump wins, the violence, it's the, that and that. And I'm, I'm believe me, I am worried about it. But at the same time, if you remember back to 2016, when Trump won, one of the things we would say is look at all the rise in right-wing extremism because Trump won. And so I'm wondering which way does it go?

0:33:06 Thomas: And I think, I think here, here's what I think based on some, um, you know, a semi-educated to guess, but I'm not, you know, I'm not infallible. Um, I think that Trump losing would produce a short-term spike in violence, but not having a racist piece of shit as the leader of your country long-term should reduce a little bit, a little bit should reduce some extremism. Now I'm thinking back to Obama. Um it's, you you know, this is a hard one. I think it's unquestionably true that there was a bunch of right-wing racism under Obama, obviously, but it's, it's just a little different.

0:33:55 Thomas: You know, like there's a little, it'S little bit better when you're not being cheered on by the leader of the, well, I'm not even going to utter that dumb ass phrase anymore. That completely untrue and inane phrase. I used to utter it ironically, but IT'S not even worth that anymore. The leader of this country, I'll say. So the leader, not having the leader of this county egging you on, I think it makes, I think it makes a difference, I think Trump does radicalize more people than not having Trump, and by the way, the replacement for Trump is an old white man, which I think will quiet some of the racism, some, now they'll pick their other targets, the AOC is always a target, having Kamala, you know, be vice president, that will, that will be a target.

0:34:40 Thomas: But I just think that on net, we might see a short short-term increase, and longer term, it's going to be a little bit better to not have your president be a racist, a gigantic, proud racist. I think, I think. I don't know, folks. But I think that is a good influence on the country. I Think it makes a difference who the president is to some degree. Now, what other positives? Not having Louis DeJoy fucking the post office would be a a good thing. And there would be certain ways that Biden being in control of the executive branch would mean less election interference in 2022 and 2024. That could be a way forward. And all along the way, all along the way I can already hear it.

0:35:29 Thomas: Wow look at that. We elected Biden and nothing changed. Must be because Democrats are secretly evil. All along theway. I can't wait. Just all all fucking four years of this. It's going to be, and then, you know, it'll happen. We're going to lose everything.

0:35:44 Thomas: I mean, why not? I maybe population, maybe, you know, there's always, there'S that Democrat demographic shift just around the corner, but I've been hearing about this for 30 years. I think, boy, you know, young people support Democrats so much more that, uh, we're just a mere years away from there never being a Republican party. It'll be gone. Boy, we just, hasn't it felt like for 30 años, we've been a few years away from the end of the Republican party. And maybe somehow we are, maybe we are. Or maybe they're able to actually radicalize enough young people to keep going. Maybe they are able to reach replacement rate in terms of reproducing their horrible fucking ideas. Maybe, I don't know. Or maybe next time we turn Texas blue.

0:36:31 Thomas: Maybe. I don't know. I don't know, but I cannot imagine our chances are good in 2022. This was a prediction I made several years back, and it turns out I was too optimistic. My prediction, and I actually booked it in that website prediction book or something. I don't know. I'll share it if it matters. I think it matters at this point. My prediction was we would win everything in 2020. So already too optimistic, but still possible.

And that we would then lose in 2022 because of this very dynamic where things are hard to fix. Things are very hard to fix, they are actually impossible to fix if you don't fucking give Democrats power to do it. They're impossible, you can't do it, impossible without the power to do it. And then a bunch of people are like, why didn't things get fixed, what, I'm not showing up, my vote didn't matter. And they're not wrong, they're wrong in a way, but they're not, like, I'm saying these people are dumb, you're not dumb if you think, like, wow, shit, nothing gets fixed, you're dumb, I'm calling you dumb. You know, it's hard to keep everything thing in mind. It's like when I'm trying to think of an analogy, I know I like, I like analogies for whatever reason.

But it's, it's like if you got a bunch of people together and you're trying to move a, I don't know, a car, let's say you got to push a car. But it's really heavy, and maybe there's just this slight incline, slight inclines. So, like, it's it's a little bit falling back on on you. And you get a bunch of people together and you're like, if we all push this car up this hill, we can do it.

0:38:05 Thomas: Like if we get enough people, mathematically, I know we can't do it, it's just simple math. If we get people, we push this hill. And then it's not accurate to say, well, therefore, pushing doesn't work. It's not to say the whole idea of pushing the car is wrong. Like Like, force going that way doesn't actually lead to the car going that. Like, that's not right. But it is true that nothing happens if you are short by a person. You just didn't get the critical mass. You didn't getting what you needed to make anything happen. That does not mean that pushing doesn't work.

0:38:51 Thomas: That doesn't mean that there's no such thing as, oh, you believe in the system, voting doesn't work. No, voting does work, work, voting does work if you get the votes. I, I, I mean, there's there is a difference. There there's an cynical fatalist view of now, voting's nothing, to crash the system because it'll never work, you can't fix anything with voting. Yeah, you can, with enough votes. And I'm sorry, I said it earlier, but I do not see how your plan for armed revolution is somehow going to get enough people, people. Who the fuck is going to do an armed revolution?

0:39:31 Thomas: What's your other plan? This is the only plan. There are three things we can do. Keep trying to get enough votes. And it sucks, but that's it. That's the only one that works. Here are some things that don't work. Do nothing. Quit. So that's an option, and I think it's an action a lot of people will take. That's why this is particularly devastating. You can quit. You Can Say, Well, Nothing Works, so I quit. I'm not doing that. I might get negative. I might pay a little bit less attention to politics because I just can't do another four years of this, you know, of of hoping and hoping and then having my hopes dashed. So I might tune out a little but mark my words. I will never quit. II will always do what I can. I wil always vote blue and try to influence other people to vote blue because it's really the least we can do.

0:40:18 Thomas: It's the **** least we can do and third option is, oh no, you don't understand. We system.

0:40:27 Thomas: If I could push a button to take down the system and replace it with something that probably you and I would like, I would do it. But where is the part where you fix the problem of not having, having popular support? I'll never, it's this, it'S this constant cycle of, well, my candidate couldn't even win a primary, but they would have won in the general. How? I don't fucking know. Cause I just love my candidate and I'm sure everybody else would. You don't have evidence for You don't. Maybe it's true. Somehow, there's no evidence for that. There isn't. By all indications from this election, nothing fucking matters fact-wise. Facts are not a problem. Platform doesn't matter.

0:41:13 Thomas: We literally had a contest between the person who killed 230,000 people through criminal negligence and the person Who wanted to not do that. The person Who wanted to expand healthcare. And as extreme as that sounds, there are like 20 million more things I could say that are that level of extreme. We had a contest between those two people and it was razor thin margins.

0:41:38 Thomas: But, but all of a sudden, if you got your magical candidate, then, then everybody would see reason, I guess. I, it doesn't, I don't, doesn't there's no evidence of that. There's no evidences of that, but anyway, where is the part that you people who are take down the the system. I agree with you in spirit. I don't like our system. There isn't another option. If you cannot get enough people to even vote back a Senate, how do you get enough people for a revolution? And then let's say, let's Say hypothetically, you, you band of brothers, you plucky group of revolutionaries, you do something that like gets rid of the system, quote unquote, somehow. I don't, I do not know how that happens. I do not know the faintest idea of how that could even possibly happen. I just see people call for it. Oh yeah, you're trying to make change within the system. I want to take down the system How? How are you taking down this?

0:42:41 Thomas: God, it's all day with that. Oh yeah, yeah, Thomas, the system is racist and you want to work within it. I know. What is the other option?

0:42:51 Thomas: Tell me the other plan, god damn, I would love a new system. I would love it if it was like, "Thomas, you get to rewrite the Constitution." Oh, there's some stuff I would change, it would be fucking great. But let's say, let's see, you do the quick, you do the revolution part, you've taken out the government, you've gotten somehow you've got people to get, burn the Constitution or something, where's the part where then whoever gets to write the new system is better than who wrote the old system? You couldn't get the votes to win the senate or to even have your candidate represent the Democratic Party in the primary, which is an even lower bar, but you will have the control of this revolution to rewrite the system in a perfectly just way. It's fucking nonsense, guys, it's nonsense.

0:43:46 Thomas: It's not that I agree, it's that I disagree with what you want to be the end result. Really, I don't think I do, like, we've, I'm sure we disagree a little, but like, I would take, you know, I would take a lot of your side, you revolutionaries, over the status quo if we had the magic switch, whatever, magic button, flip a switch thing. I'm sure we could come up with an arrangement, you and I, if we get a magic button that just fixes it.

It's not that, is that it's not fucking possible, is that you're to sit there and tell everybody how bad both candidates are and they're both the same and all that, and then your plan is fucking do nothing. That's your plan. I'm sorry, I'm a little upset. I don't blame you more than Trump supporters, and I want to state this for the record, no matter how the third party numbers turn out, uh, in these senate races, and some of these, god, I cannot believe the quality of some of the House candidates who lost, to to put further lie to this stupid theory, there were some amazingly progressive House candidates who lost, disproving the idea that all you have to do is be magically populist and progressive enough and then it'll be fine. The American people, as an electorate, as a group, are not responsive to facts. It's, it, they just, they aren't, it's weird, we're stuck in this weird 50 50 thing where a lot of people, million, 70 million republicans or people who are right, right-leaning, are immune from facts.

0:45:18 Thomas: They're immune from data. And then some people are like, well, if we just had the right data, we just have the right facts. We just presented the right message. What, what evidence of that is there? Polling? The same polling that was fucking wrong again? We're just, we're the right wing disinformation ecosystem has a stranglehold on us, and we have to fix that. We have to fix that, I don't think it matters what else we do much beyond marginal stuff if we don't fix that. So, anyway, I do, I was going to state something for the record. I know, I'm sorry that I bashed the revolutionary leftists a little bit, you have no plan or you have a bad plan, that's the fact, I'm sorry, I'm not, I don't mean to go after you more than Trump supporters, I agree with you a lot, I know your hearts in the right place for the most part, so, so, yeah, but it's useless.

You are a potential person who could make a difference, unlike a Trump supporter. But anyway, I want to state for the record, because there was a lot of argument about this in 2016. In 2020, here is my position. Everybody who didn't vote for Biden and their Democratic candidate for Senate or the House is equally culpable, in my opinion, you. So I'm not saying all the third party voters, you're not more culpable.

0:46:48 Thomas: You're the same. I mean, if you had more opportunity, if you lived in a state where it might've made more of a difference, or if, you know, you had no barriers to voting, whereas a lot of people overcame huge barriers to voting, disenfranchisement, all that stuff. I think you're a little more morally culpable because you had more ability to make change and you didn't. But I don't, I'm not going to do the thing that a lot of people did. And maybe I accidentally did this sometime in 2016, although ultimately I don't think it was my position, but I'm not going to do the thing where I look at Joe jerk offs and votes and say, well, all of those should be Biden votes. That's not how it works. I mean, or anybody else, green party, whatever those people would split, you know, for all I know, 50, 50 or maybe they would break more for Trump if they hadn't voted third party.

0:47:34 Thomas: So I'm not going to play that game. Fuck it, I don't, don't care, but if you were somebody who is largely left-leaning but to did a protest vote, yeah, fuck you, you did the wrong thing, and everybody who could have, the the moral culpability, in my opinion, scales with how easily or how close you could have been to making the right decision. So I'm just, I know this isn't that important, otherwise, other than that a lot of people will tell me I blame third party vote, or my above, I'm not blaming specifically only third party voting, I'm saying everybody who did not vote for Biden and their Democratic candidates for lower races is equally culpable, subject to differences in how easily you could have done the right thing.

0:48:23 Thomas: So there's my position. All right. I've gone on long enough. I actually, for once, I actually feel like I got a lot of my thoughts out in a really coherent way. I normally don't feel that way, but I guess since I've been nonstop thinking about all this stuff. I mean, this was incredible. I had no notes. I went from memory and I didn't even edit and I did barely stopped. I stopped to cough a couple of times. God, that's how fucking angry I am at this and how much I had to say. And I could do another hour and I'll see if you're listening still. Thanks for listening. I'm sorry that I'm angry. I'll leave you with this. I Facebooked this.

0:49:03 Thomas: I am going to make an effort to probably try to be more positive in my life and maybe on podcasts and social media. Maybe. I'm not promising, but I might make an effort. If I do so, this is an important distinction. If I do, so it will not be by pretending things are better than they are. It will not be by. Pretending the outcome was good. Pretended Biden was fine all along. It will not by that pretending this wasn't a totally shit election that went almost as bad as it could have gone. It will be by focusing on other things.

0:49:35 Thomas: I just, I, it's a, it's clarification. I, I am not able, this is something that makes me quite depressed as a person. I battle a low grade depression. I don't have clinical depression, I don't think, but I'm pretty sad most of my life. And I think one of the reasons is I am not able to pretend the world is other than it is, as well as a lot of people are. A lot of people seem to be able to, I don't know, it's like a cognitive dissonance maybe or something, like they're able to just be like, well, no, oh, you know, yeah, things are bad here and there, but that's fine, I'll do it. And I'm jealous of that. If I had that, I would be happier. I'm not able to do that, and I'm not able to sit here and pretend this election went well. It didn't. It didn't go well, folks. It did not go well.

0:50:23 Thomas: Things are bad, but I can, what I might be able to do is try to shift my focus a little bit to things that are happier and things that are better topics, cause I'm sure you don't want me to be this mad all the time. I think, I don't know who the fuck knows what anybody wants, but I don't think it would be good for me to be this man all the time. I don't plan to be, just so you know.

0:50:47 Thomas: I'll pick my spots. I'm not gonna be happy all the time, but I may try to focus on subjects, on topics that are happier. Um, and that'll be how I do it. It won't be by pretending the world is actually better than it is. It won't be by pretending this election went better than it did. It will be by shifting focus. So I may try to do that, but all right. Thank you so much for listening. If you are a listener, I value you a lot, especially if you're the kind of person who could get through this episode. Episode. Thanks for the kind, you know, there's kind emails I've gotten, kind messages I've gotten. It's really, really nice. And I'm glad we've got a little community going, if nothing else. But thanks for listening, folks. I'll see you soon.

0:51:40 Clip: Thank you so much for listening to Serious Inquiries Only. If you like the show, the absolute best thing you can do is support us at patreon.com/seriouspod. The second best thing you can do, is please share it on social media or by word of mouth. Speaking of social media, follow me on Twitter at Serious Pod. If would like to be Facebook friends, send me a request at facebook.com Thomas podcast. If not up for that level of intimacy, that's fine. Maybe you want to join the discussion at facebook.com/groups/SIO members. Thank you again for listening. We'll see you next time.