Observations for 08 Sep 24

This is the Observations Podcast for Sunday, the 8th of September, 2024.

I'm Dale Franks.

Michael Wade is coming, not here quite yet, but he will be coming on in a couple of minutes.

Now, just so that you know, at some point during the podcast, I have it turned off now,

but at some point during the podcast, I might have to get the fan running because we got

up to 108 degrees today in Southern California, and so everything is a sweat box without some

air moving here.

Usually it's turned off so that we don't catch background noise or what have you.

Today, that may not be possible.

It's 5 o'clock and the temperature has come down to, I think, 99 degrees or 100 degrees

when I looked at it a few minutes ago, so it's super hot today, and normally one of

the nice things about living in Southern California is that you don't have to worry about weather

like this a lot, but you do have to worry about it in September.

There's generally a big heat wave that hits us in the first or second week of September.

We're living through it now, and even though it got up to 100 degrees, it's still a hot

day.

It's not as bad as it was a couple of years ago when it got up to 114 or 115, and it's

not as bad as it's going to be on Wednesday when our high is going to be around 80, so

when this thing breaks, we'll go back to normal, nice highs in the upper 70s and low 80s, and

everything will be a lot more comfortable for us whenever that happens.

So, I'm going to go ahead and get started.

I'm going to go ahead and get started.

So, a couple of things today.

Like I said, Michael is not here yet, so when I go to screen share, we're going to get a

double screen share, so I'll tell you what I'm going to do.

I'm going to close the Zoom window there so that we can look at this.

So, some news this week that I found pretty interesting was that Judge Merchan in New

York, he's going to have his criminal conviction on the Hush Money case from September 18th

until after the election in November.

I'm not sure entirely, even going through Judge Merchan's explanation of why he's doing

this, I'm still not sure why he's actually doing this.

There are a couple of problems, it seems, with this conviction in the wake.

There are a couple of problems, it seems, with this conviction in the wake of the Supreme

Court's decision that private acts can be prosecuted, but public acts cannot for a sitting

president.

Some of the information in Judge Merchan's case came from some of Trump's presidential

actions.

It's kind of murky there how that immunity will actually work, but what it still allows

Democrats to say right up through the election.

I would like to think, well, I'm not sure what I would like to think.

What I think is that Judge Merchan is inclined to give Donald Trump some prison time.

And it may just be six months or a year, but some prison time.

And I think it's finally dawning on him that Donald Trump is running for president in what

appears to be a necronomicon.

neck race. Since that is the case, if he were to sentence Trump to jail, that sentence would never

be carried out because Donald Trump would then become president. I don't think the state of New

York is going to be keen to drop a sitting president into Attica. So there is that reason

for the delay. He might just win this thing. In fact, well, we'll talk about that later. It is

50-50 if you believe the polls, but if you look deeper into the polls, it may not actually be a

50-50 race, but we'll talk about that in a few minutes, hopefully after Michael gets here.

So the best tactic for Judge Merchan, if he is inclined to send Donald Trump to jail,

is to wait.

Wait until after the election. After the election, if Donald Trump loses, he's free to do anything he

wants to do because Donald Trump, obviously at his age, is not going to be running for president in

another four years. So just to quickly look this over here, interestingly, the delay

did not appear to occur with any opposition.

It did not appear to occur with any opposition from Alvin Bragg's office, the district attorney's

office. So that is interesting. The district attorney isn't even super keen on having Donald

Trump sentenced before the election, apparently. And look, honestly, they've accomplished what

they wanted to accomplish. What they wanted to accomplish, as far as I can tell, based on Judge

Merchan, is...

...that they wanted to be able to go into the election saying that Donald Trump is a convicted

felon. That wasn't going to happen in any of the other cases. Several of the other cases are merely

civil cases, so Donald Trump's not going to go to jail for any sort of civil offense. The federal

offenses, the cases that are being prosecuted by Jack Smith, are pretty much on hold for a while.

And so this is their one shot.

They say Donald Trump is a convicted felon, and therefore that is one of the arguments for prosecuting him. They got that, and so they can use that all the way through the election. He's still a convicted felon, as far as they're concerned. So Donald Trump, bad guy, convicted felon, run for president on being a convicted felon, and we'll see if that changes any votes.

Which, by the way,

I should point out that Michael

is now here, and so

hello, Michael.

Let me be sure that I've got sound from you.

I'm good, and I'm here

to give my expert

legal analysis

for this...

This whatever it was.

By the way, I only see

your forehead and your eyes.

There we go. That's all of...

That's all of Michael. Hi.

Yeah, what is going on there?

Camera looks like it's a little cockeyed there.

Yeah, there we go.

Sorry about that.

I was temporizing while you were getting set up

about this

Judge Merchant's decision to

delay the

sentencing for Donald Trump, originally

set for September 18th.

Now it's after the election.

I think they've accomplished what they wanted.

Donald Trump is a convicted felon,

so

sentencing him to jail

would be

problematic

for a number of reasons.

And I think they would like to,

but I think the pressure

on the fact that we have

the election coming up

makes it a really bold move.

I'm not sure that Merchant is that bold.

But I'm interested to hear what you have to say about it.

Yeah, I think

in order to sentence him to jail

creates so many

landmines

that

they don't

this is why Merchant has

been pushing this out and pushing this out

and pushing this out.

They obviously want to

and

I don't blame them.

I mean, if I were

in their shoes, that's what I

want to do.

I mean, politically,

it's good in terms of the

election itself.

Exactly.

In terms of all of the secondary effects

it would have,

it would be a bad thing in many ways.

It leads

to no good.

You're right when you said

that what they really

wanted was to

simply tag him

as a felon.

They've got that.

Merchant made sure they got it.

And

I mean, that's

enough politically.

They don't have to have

him actually

go to jail.

They would love for him to go to jail.

So complicated.

So, so, so complicated.

My suspicion is if he doesn't

win the election, he's going to jail.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

No.

You don't think they don't meet him in jail.

Yeah. There is an argument

there is an argument to be made from the

opposite point. I think they would

just love to just out of vengeance

alone. They would love to cap

it off by throwing him in jail.

So

complicated.

Either way, it's complicated

except for the

money part of it. Where

Judge Merchant's daughter is

taking in millions.

And New York Congressman Elise Stefanik this week

actually wrote the Judicial Standards Board,

or whatever they call it in New York,

that basically her argument was,

this son of a bitch has a daughter

who's making millions of dollars off this case.

He should probably recuse himself.

Whether that'll happen or not, who knows.

It's awfully late in the game

for him to recuse himself, right?

It's very late in the game.

The damage has been done.

And you're right, as you mentioned earlier,

that the damage that's been done

is the damage that they wanted to do most of all.

Would they love to have him behind bars?

Yes.

But what they needed was

to be able to call him a felon.

That was the most important thing.

Yeah, I think there's enough...

Especially with Hunter Biden in the dock already.

And now he's pled guilty to several felonies.

And it has been, I guess, he settled the gun case.

I can't remember how that turned out, but he lost.

That's all I can remember.

So, in order to have

some sort of equity in Democrats' mind,

they needed to have Donald Trump

placed in the same space,

at least as Hunter.

Well, they have him in that space, sort of, kind of.

I think the other complicating factor

is the second that the Senate,

when the sentencing is declared,

Donald Trump's immediately going to appeal his conviction, right?

And based on, A, the nature of the case,

Alvin Bragg's theory of the crime that occurred,

and Judge Merchan's instructions to the jury,

which basically violate

almost black-letter Supreme Court rulings,

about...

That's exactly right, yes.

I think he has an excellent chance

of having that conviction completely overturned.

He does.

So, one of the other things that delaying it past the election does,

whether they want to throw him in jail or not,

whether there's that level of vindictiveness,

and there's an argument to be made that there's not,

that the whole point was to get a conviction in,

and then who cares what happens after that.

But knowing that that is going to happen,

at least by delaying it after the election,

and we're getting super,

super close now,

so it might not matter,

especially with a September 18th date,

but what it does do is prevent any possible chance

that Donald Trump could go to the New York Court of Appeals in Albany,

and say,

you have to hear this case right now

because we have a national election coming up in two weeks,

and this has to be cleared up.

You have to hear the argument now.

And that can't happen,

if we don't have a sentencing until after the election.

That's correct.

The, so,

an interlocutory appeal

only applies to certain things

that happened during the trial.

Trial's not over.

Without sentencing,

it's still not a complete trial.

Yeah, it's not appealable yet.

Exactly.

So that creates a bit of a vacuum.

And it does not allow Trump to go to the appeals court.

I mean, he could try to drag it to,

and he has tried to drag at least one of the cases

to the federal court.

But it's,

it's,

it's dicey.

And it's not,

there's no real guarantee that he could do that.

So,

yeah, it's,

it puts a lot of things in stasis,

which is good for the Democrats,

and good for,

you know,

Juan Merchan,

and his daughter,

apparently,

who's making bank,

but it's not good for Trump.

I mean, there's no guarantee that the Supreme Court

would say, yeah, okay,

drive up to Albany on Wednesday,

and we'll give you guys a listen,

and we'll figure something out.

They might do that.

They might not.

But I tell you what,

if you delay sentencing until after the election,

there's no possibility that they'll do that.

And remember, it's not the Supreme Court in New York.

I'm sorry, yes, I'm sorry.

It is the New York Court of Appeals,

which I said correctly last time.

Trump is currently in the Supreme Court,

because the Supreme Court,

has original jurisdiction.

Is the initial trial court,

which makes no fucking sense.

Yeah, thank you, New York,

for making it way more confusing

than it needs to be.

So, at this point, no sentencing,

so we're basically status quo anti, really,

where we've been for a couple of months now.

Which does not hurt Trump, either.

No, I mean, whatever damage that was going to be done,

is done, right?

Right.

And,

none of the things that have happened

have changed anybody's votes.

Right?

I mean,

everybody saw this for what it was.

And,

if anything,

this has turned,

especially,

and I've seen this,

the African-American populace

has been more,

has been turned,

more in favor of Trump,

because of all these shenanigans.

They're like,

he's getting railroaded.

We know what that looks like.

Whether they do or don't,

is not,

you know, it's beside the point.

But that's how they feel,

and that's how they've been acting.

And that's what they've been saying,

for actually,

quite a while.

Well, look,

I think the rational calculus

that they were trying to make,

was,

was that,

look,

nobody who's a Democrat

is going to vote for Trump

under any circumstances.

So,

that's 35,

36% of the electorate.

No one who is

supporting Trump now

will be turned off by this,

and they'll just accept,

true or not,

his word that it's just a witch hunt,

and that it is a

unacceptably politically motivated prosecution.

So,

there's another

35,

36% of the electorate.

So,

what you're left with

is this big third in the middle.

The undecided voter,

many of whom are also

low-information voters,

and I think the intent was

to try to push

some percentage

of those independent voters

over to the Democrat column.

Absolutely.

And in a country,

in a country,

I,

And where you're,

I don't think it's working.

Well,

maybe not,

but in a country where

we basically have had

a 50-50 split

since

2000,

um,

you know,

one or two percent

is a,

a big number,

right?

So,

if you can push

one percent

of independence

over to the Democrats,

then

you've accomplished

quite a bit,

and it doesn't really matter

whether Trump

ultimately

gets convicted

or serves a day in jail or gets the conviction overturned we don't really care the goal is to

take some small slice of independent voters and move them over into the blue column the problem

is where are they situated if they're not in north carolina virginia pennsylvania especially

michigan wisconsin minnesota um it doesn't make it it doesn't uh actually change anything

if they're all in new york or california or texas or illinois it doesn't change it

right because there are some states that are going to vote red some states that are going to vote

blue one percent is not going to move the needle in those states

right

which brings up an interesting point i'm not sure how much this changes things

but talking about being a 50 50 country uh was just looking at the um

was a couple things we have to think about first of all we have to think about just the

the actual status of the race itself at this point and granted still

the first week of september much can change but i was just looking prior to the podcast

at this is the rcp betting average where they just take all of the main betting prediction markets

political prediction markets and they come up with an average and the average is

it at this point it is so close it is well within any possible margin of error we're

you know at at just one or two points isn't that surprising

yeah it's surprising in that if you look still at real real clear politics uh even though the

betting average shows trump at a 51.3 percent probability of winning according to the betting

average if you take a look at the electoral map it looks different from that perspective

they are giving kamala harris georgia but they're giving trump pennsylvania and they're giving

trump arizona the interesting thing is if you look at the polling averages

the the biggest average on any of these polls in terms of difference is in arizona which has trump

1.6 ahead wisconsin has kamala harris 1.5 ahead and then everything else is within a percent

or in in this case georgia 0.1 percent i'm not sure how 0.1 percent translates into no toss-up in

georgia but okay fine now real clear politics does have a toss-up map uh which we should probably

look at a real click um real clear politics.com let me go back to the home page so i can get it

so their electoral map uh with

toss-ups looks like this so they are tossing up new hampshire which i think is silly but okay

but pennsylvania new hampshire is one of the ones that's what's the vote too right

yeah they do uh they they vote via them and uh nebraska iowa nebraska nebraska yeah but

they've got pennsylvania virginia north carolina georgia

michigan and wisconsin as well as if you go out west arizona and nevada as all toss-up states

and so with that it gives trump a slight advantage with the states that we are fairly sure are going

to vote for him at 219 to 208 but with 111 toss-ups i'm not sure it tells us much

on top of that if you look at the poll average and now we're going to a national poll average

so you know for for whatever that means right kamala harris is looking pretty good with a

well a two and a half point lead

here's what i find interesting about this wait till tuesday yeah the yeah well

that's on the burner i guess wednesday is better yeah we're we'll get there but here's the thing

the washington post published an article on the national poll average and they said that the

article this week now washington post is behind a paywall i can't show that article itself

it has some interesting information with it and i'm going to do something that i would prefer not

to do because there is this little website that just does some aggregation and basically they've

copied and pasted the washington post report on their website

and what is

really interesting about this is that they started to look at the actual numbers that are in the polls

and so when you look at polls that are showing kamala harris in the lead well here's suffolk

university and usa today they are sampling 37.1 percent democrats and 33.8 percent republicans

that's not too far off but yahoo

news and but here's the thing yahoo news is showing 33 percent democrats and 29 percent

as republicans when you look at their internals apparently compare and contrast however to the

2020 exit poll data which had 36 percent of voters identifying as republican so what you end up with

is 33.8 percent in suffolk university usa

today and 37.1 percent democrats and then in the yahoo yougov poll sure the number of democrats

are smaller but the number of republicans is also significantly smaller at below 30 percent and so

there's been a lot of rumblings which showed up in this washington times article that the

problem is that these polls are oversampling democrats so and that's always been the case

i mean that's nothing

Yeah, so Trafalgar has Trump at 47 and Harris at 44.

Trafalgar, it should be noted, is one of the best, at least most accurate at getting the totals right.

Yeah, it should also be noticed that they were a right-leaning pollster.

Now, whether that affects him or not.

I mean, are they? Maybe. I don't know.

I just know that they get it right pretty much well over 95% of the time.

And the last I've heard from Trafalgar is that Harris is an elite.

Well, this came out on the 3rd.

So, well...

So, we're, what, five days out of date on that particular article?

So, I'm not sure what has come up since then.

The director of Suffolk Polling says that, well, what we're doing is we are using the 2016 exit polls,

which we think is a better model than 2020,

because it was impacted.

It was impacted by the pandemic.

Is that a good argument?

I don't know.

That makes no sense.

Yeah, but that's their story, and they're sticking to it.

Sticking to it.

So, I don't know if they're oversampling or not.

And this brings us, once again, as we have been every four years since 2008,

asking...

We have so much fun on election night, though, Dale.

I know.

But we find ourselves in the position of asking, can the polls be trusted or not?

Now, look, 2008, that was a gimme.

We all knew that Barack Obama was going to be elected president, that John McCain had no chance.

Right.

2012, I can remember us talking about how, as unpopular as Obama was,

the polling seemed to be more...

Bit off.

A bit off.

More weighted in his direction than they should have been.

Then in 2016, we decided, okay, well, last cycle...

Polls are right.

We made a mistake.

Polls must be right.

They must be doing their job.

And then they were wrong, and Donald Trump got elected president.

By a lot, yeah.

2020 was all over the map because of the pandemic and because of the changes in the way the elections were handled.

The way they voted.

Yeah, right.

And that was a disaster.

As it turned out, Joe Biden did win that election.

And the polls were relatively accurate in 2020, four weeks prior to the election.

And indeed, in 2020, Donald Trump's own internal pollsters were telling him,

you're going to lose this election.

Whatever you may believe about how the election was handled is a separate topic.

But he...

He was being told contemporaneously that he was behind in the polls.

Right.

So those polls appeared to be accurate.

So now here we are, four years later, doing our quadrennial...

Are these polls working or are they not?

But I think this is the first time when we've had...

I trust no polls.

I just...

I don't trust any polls.

I think they give us a good smattering of...

An indication.

Of what people are thinking.

But I don't trust the polls.

Not out of spite or, you know, my guy's not winning.

It's just...

I don't...

I don't think they're reaching...

Nearly enough of the electorate to make an accurate...

Uh...

A call on who's ahead, who's not ahead.

I just...

I don't think they have that ability.

I know that they have tried to...

Uh...

Increase their ability to get to cell phones.

They're going through email.

They're going through texting.

Like, all...

And...

And I...

I don't...

This is not...

I...

I don't want to disparage the pollings.

The...

The polling companies.

Um...

I just think that they...

It's harder and harder to reach the populace that they want to reach.

In any kind of statistically relevant manner.

It does kind of remind me of the 19...

Was it 1948 election?

Where, you know, Dewey was supposed to have defeated Truman.

Uh...

And indeed, the New York Times, their headline was,

Dewey defeats Truman.

Oh, the famous photo of Truman holding up...

Holding up the morning edition of the Times.

That was wrong, because by that time, it was well known that he had won.

And the problem with the polling, because the polling showed him behind all the time.

That was the first time they were doing telephone polling.

And there just weren't enough.

There weren't enough Americans who owned telephones.

Nice.

To get a...

They were all in cities.

Yeah.

To get a decent sample of what that...

What that election looked like.

And that, of course, was a huge embarrassment for all the pollsters.

And in the intervening years, they've tried to come up with better methodologies.

But we're also right in the middle of this weird transition from people having landlines to having cell phones.

The number of people, like me...

Who have something like RoboKiller on their phone.

So, if you call me, I'm not going to know that you did so, unless you're on my contact list.

I'm not going to know that you did so until I, you know, look down at my phone and I see the red number...

Or the red little circle with the number that says, oh, you've received two phone calls.

And then, yeah, by that time, it's too late.

And my wife has the same thing on her phone.

So, yeah, exactly.

There are so many more blockers to those types of phone calls.

And as well, I mean, there's only so...

You can only sample so many people.

And those who don't answer, who ignore it, we have no idea.

At least in a statistical...

Or, you know, an actual survey sense, we don't have any idea where they stand.

I mean, you could say that, you know, looking at the crowds that the differing candidates draw to their rallies or whatever.

But that didn't work in 2020.

Trump always draws a huge crowd for his rallies.

And the Democrats just, yeah, meh.

That's the best they can do.

But that doesn't give you...

Apparently, we have not seen...

The best that that can indicate is possibly...

I guess...

The amount of...

Intensity.

Intensity that people want to, you know, vote.

But that's it.

Well, yeah, the problem is, if you have 30% of the electorate who really wants to vote for you,

and who really likes you, and who will show up at rallies at the drop of a hat,

well, that's great.

If you show up in a city like...

Well, it wouldn't happen in San Diego if you were Donald Trump.

Although, I don't know, it might.

But if you were to show up in San Diego...

San Diego, yeah, it would.

If you were to show up in San Diego...

Atlanta, it still will.

Yeah, and 30% of the electorate supports you.

Well, in San Diego, 30% is going to be nearly 600,000 people.

And if they all show up, you can have a huge rally with 50, 60, 70, 80,000 people.

That's great.

But 70% of the electorate's not going to vote for you.

And you have a lot of intensity.

And you're still not going to win.

Yeah, and you're not going to win California anyway, so it doesn't matter.

So, not in a state where Democrats upnumber Republicans in voter registration by 2 to 1,

and in the two counties where it matters, Los Angeles, 85% Democrat voter registration,

San Francisco, 92% Democrat voter registration.

So...

But where it does make a difference is in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota.

Minnesota.

Because you've got...

Well, you've got Philly, which you know is going to go solid blue.

But you've also got Pittsburgh, which is a more blue-collar community, and blue-collars...

A very blue-collar community.

And those are the two powerhouse, you know, election, voter-rich areas.

And then you've got Western Pennsylvania, largely rural, and largely red as well.

And especially on the border with Ohio, and you've got Vance on the ticket.

Which is...

Ohio being a toss-up state, that makes no sense to me.

I just...

I think that's a ridiculous...

Wait a second.

Did RCP have...

Did RCP have Ohio as a toss-up state?

One of the ones you showed had Ohio as a toss-up state.

Let me go back to the...

To the...

Electoral map with toss-up states.

Oh, that is no toss-up states, which is exactly the opposite of what we wanted.

This is toss-up states.

No, no, no.

They've got Ohio as red.

That's the first one.

There was one that you showed that had Ohio.

And even leaning red?

Come on.

This is Ohio, and Vance is on the ticket.

Well, you say that, but also...

Vance significantly underperformed Mike DeWine in 2020.

Fair enough.

I mean, Mike DeWine had an 8% larger share of the electorate voting for him than voted for him.

And Mike DeWine is...

Or was...

He's not there anymore.

Was a very squishy Republican.

Which, you know...

In Ohio, that may be a benefit.

Kind of like...

What's-his-face in Maryland.

Hogan.

Who's getting his ass kicked right now in the polls to run for senator.

It's...

Ohio is a big...

Obviously...

Union state.

Middle class.

Which, whatever that means.

It means poor, but not that poor.

As far as I can tell.

Yeah, but see, here's the thing.

One of the things that we have been watching since 2016...

Has been a major political realignment between the Democrats and the Republicans.

Absolutely, yeah.

There are a lot of blue-collar voters who, 20 years ago, would have been solid Democrat.

And that's thanks to Trump.

Yeah, who've now become...

Which is so weird.

Yeah, who've now become disaffected.

But, you know, we talk about the ideological split in America.

The ideological split in 2024 is completely different than it was 20 years ago.

Because we no longer are talking about sort of liberalism.

We're talking about liberal and traditionally liberal and traditionally conservative policies.

Where we're having these arguments about who should be taxed and how much.

And how much revenue the government takes in.

And what we should spend money on.

And where we should cut spending.

That stuff is all gone.

The argument now is largely between people who just want the government to run things.

And people who largely just want to be left alone.

And...

Blue-collar workers having...

I'm very glad that that is the dichotomy.

Yeah, well, it makes policy super confusing.

Because when you look at some of the policies that...

Well, to the extent that we know them.

That the Democrats have and the policies that Trump has.

There's a lot of interlocking policies that both parties want as the same.

Where they differ is the amount of government control that they want to impose on the average person.

And so, blue-collar people seeing the Democratic Party go off to the left in this wokest nonsense fashion.

They're becoming disenchanted with that.

Blue-collar workers tend to be moving, as far as I can tell, over to the Republican Party.

And basically, we have a statist party and a populist party.

I don't think we have a traditional conservative party.

In terms of the two main parties anymore.

I don't think we've had a traditional conservative party for probably 20-some years.

Not since 9-11.

Yeah.

And with this weird political alignment shift...

I don't know that even looking at 2020 or 2016 exit polls...

Tell us all that much about the current electorate.

Yeah, I agree.

Matter of fact, I don't think 2020 exit polls give us even slightly a clue.

We've now been through four years, essentially, of the Biden-Harris.

And there are a lot of people who are disaffected by this.

And there are a huge coterie of people amongst those who have been personally disaffected that are changing their minds.

I don't know.

And I don't think the polls are picking up.

Whether or not that...

That makes a difference electorally.

But I think it's pretty clear that as far as the popularity of these policies and the way that they're running the country are not very popular.

We've had...

We've seen lots and lots and lots of indications of that.

And it...

It's coming from traditional Democratic voters.

Blacks.

Especially Black men.

And a lot of Black women.

We're now starting to see suburban women change their minds.

Well, in smaller numbers, sure.

Very small numbers, yes.

Especially unmarried women.

Unmarried women are still 68% behind the Democratic Party.

Yeah, well, they needed...

They needed a daddy somewhere.

Or a surrogate husband.

One of the two.

Wait, that's not the same thing?

But getting back to your point on responding to polls.

I think there's also a second order effect.

Which is...

Not just the technical, I don't want, you know, junk phone calls, so I'm shutting everything down.

Right, right.

Yeah, yeah.

There's also the propensity of people in different parties to answer polling questions.

Are Democrats more likely to want to answer polls?

And on the Republican side, are the type of Republican who are answering the polls the type who are more inclined to vote for Trump or not?

I think there's a lot of mystery.

You know, it used to be so simple.

Democrat or Republican?

Republican gave you a pretty good idea of which way people were going to vote.

There obviously were some outliers.

1982, where Ronald Reagan won all but one state, Minnesota, in the presidential election.

84, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, sorry, 84.

There are certainly outliers.

But it used to be fairly reliable.

If somebody told you, yeah, I've got an R after my name, you had a pretty good idea which way they were going to vote.

Right.

And party membership was a pretty good proxy.

Right.

As good a proxy as it once was, especially given the number of people who have left both the Democrat and Republican parties.

And the huge sway the voters now, which at this point is nearing 40% who declined to identify with either party.

Right.

We've seen that in Pennsylvania, specifically, that Republican registered voting or just

voters has surged to be twice as much as democratic voters but that again does not guarantee that

there's going to actually be uh some sort of um similar you know outcome in the in the election

it's great for republicans of the future i guess but that doesn't guarantee anything you know we

don't know how people are actually going to vote or they may identify as whatever or if they're

going to vote well and that's the other part i see a lot of this i see a lot of this on twitter

um which look we just went to you know county x in pennsylvania and i just signed up this

and their mother and their son who have never ever voted before and they've signed up as

republicans and they say they're going to vote for donald trump will they well that was the 2016 model

yeah right and that was what they they leaned on yeah they've never voted before didn't work in

2020 yeah so no matter how much at a state fair or county fair you can say get them to say oh yeah i

think i do want to vote for donald trump

three months from now or two months from now in november it's raining i don't feel like going out

it's cold today i would vote and but you know i've never ever doesn't really count and i've

never ever voted before and so i don't know how to what to make of that now it it's it's been

interesting to look at a couple of states like pennsylvania

and a couple of others where the number of democratic registrations is significantly below

and the number of republican registrations is significantly above what they have been in past

elections i does that translate out into a difference in electoral outcomes i don't know

it might we don't know that's the problem is we have no actual calculus to determine that

we're in the middle of a political

realignment and one that that sort of started with the start of the global war on terror

and the mistakes made by the gw bush administration there and then really went into high gear when

donald trump uh ran on a much more populist message and one that i think is more um more

attractive to blue collar voters than the previous messages or than the current messages of the

democratic party and the current messages of the democratic party are that they're not going to

be in the middle of a political realignment like this is that you know i i patrick henry once said i

know of no light by which to guide the path to the future than the light of experience

you know 95 of the time that's true but there's this other really weird five percent of the time

where the past is not an exceptionally good guide because you're going into uncharted territory

and i'm really wondering because like you i've seen a lot of uh black men and black women who are

just tearing stripping the hide off of kamala harris on social media is that indicative of

a switch how indicative is it actually i mean again you know anecdotes are not data

you know it's it's it's uh

it gives you perhaps a a a an insight but it it it doesn't necessarily translate into votes

is it predictable yeah you know because there is also the the the momentum of the past

well what's that uh john prine song you know uh daddy voted uh democrat because

uh lincoln won the war yeah exactly yeah the the momentum of the past still exists

and so even if you say you don't like kamala harris are you willing to go and pull the lever or

punch the chad or tap the screen for the red team i i don't know and actually you know let's add on

on top of that how much cheating is going to go on we we've seen it

um a lot and thankfully so there's some organization i can't remember what the name of it is

that has sued every county in arizona uh to kick illegals off of the voting rolls

which is state law and they have just not done anything about it and you have to wonder

um amongst a lot of people who have done anything about it and you have to wonder

amongst a lot of people who have done anything about it and you have to wonder

there's always going to be cheating and sometimes it's in the republic republicans favor there was

that uh that guy down in in north carolina uh who who benefited from republican cheating

so it's it's not a party thing every party will do whatever you know take whatever chance they

can to get their preferred candidate across the line right yeah well

that kind of reminds me of something that katherine jean-pierre said uh this week um

i have to have to do it with the appropriate that is the most respectable way i've ever

so this is the this is this is the democrat story and they're sticking to it by the way uh from chat

and i've been meaning to mention this how can kamala harris maintain any average at all

staying in the closet of the republicans favor that's the most respectable way i've ever said

that's the most respectable way i've ever said that's the most respectable way i've ever said that's

amazing yeah i mean literally but staying in the closet may be her best electoral strategy but

we'll get to that in a second uh katherine jean-pierre this week we strongly oppose this

republican stunt she is referring to republicans adding the save act to the continuing resolution

to keep the government funded you want to keep the government funded you want to

uh you want to i don't want to keep the government funded i'd be happy for

it to shut down yes however that is our libertarian streak speaking but as a practical matter what

they're trying to do is hold the save act which would require proof of american citizenship to

vote uh they're trying to hold the continuing resolution hostage to the save act okay i'm

perfectly happy with that you know what all we're already 35 trillion dollars in debt what the hell

it's it's inevitable what's coming so if in exchange for ensuring that only american citizens

can vote in elections nationwide we spend an extra three or four trillion dollars it's all

money under the bridge whatever but but here's here's here's the argument that i love i love it

because it is so galactically stupid as fact checkers across the board have made clear

it is already illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections it's already illegal yeah

so it's already illegal to vote in federal elections it's already illegal to vote in federal elections

so is murder so is kidnapping so is armed robbery and yet so is shooting someone they occur oh and

by the way and i i pointed that out it's illegal to rob liquor stores but even better is this guy

here it's also illegal to let non-citizens just cross the border without permission

and allow them into the united states well you know what that's a good point you know it is

already illegal to immigrate we've already transgressed

the illegal versus legal and that's still happening so the fact that it's illegal

does not seem to be an essential bar to its occurrence and chuck schumer just came out

and said we should make all these people legal oh yeah that happened this week well you know

that solved the argument just give them all american citizenship then they could vote right

now and matter of fact the way that that uh the biden harris administration has lowered

the number of people who vote in the united states and the number of people who vote in the

united states and the number of people who are here illegally is by giving them this

faux legal status as refugees they simply changed their status they did they didn't

lower the number of people coming in they just changed their status yeah now they're not

they're refugees right right so they they literally

changed the entire argument by just simply oh well no all those people over there i don't know

they're not illegal immigrants they're here okay we just changed their status yeah as a matter of

fact our refugees awaiting their court lowering lowering the number is to just change their status

it's like but that doesn't stop the people from coming in yeah but that's not a big deal and then

we had the jobs report

i don't know if you were going to get to this or not but we had the jobs report and it turns out

that not necessarily illegal but immigrants are the vast majority of beneficiaries

when it comes to the job gains and native born americans are losers

lost 500 or uh almost 400 000 jobs yes i mean according to the statistics and i don't know

how they come up with those so i'm not going to swear by them okay well the source for the data

is you did that no i didn't but i knew how to find it real quick um the the source for this

data is the federal reserve the number in red is the employment level of

foreign-born residents of the united states the number in blue is the number of native-born

residents of the united states both of these graphs show the amount of job growth in the

thousands of those two classes of people and whenever you look at these two numbers the curve

should tell you that for the most part the vast majority of those people are native-born residents

of all new jobs created since 2021 have largely gone and certainly since 2022 have gone almost

completely to foreign-born residents of the united states not american absolutely right

and if you look at the actual even you combine those numbers we are still six or seven million

uh jobs under

what would have been expected absent the um you know the the pandemic so if if we charted it on

on a you know a natural curve or line um we should have about seven or eight million more jobs

and more employed than we do have yes well that's the other problem with the job numbers from the

bureau of labor statistics

is that the establishment survey seems certainly over the last quarter to have

substantially overestimated the number of jobs created to the point where they had to

knock back a million jobs over the last quarter a million jobs that's 300 000 jobs per quarter

that seems like a big error for the bls i can think of some people who have done that

who shouldn't have a job yeah now look the the problem is that oh and that's even worse though

but dale before before you get to that the even worse thing is that of all those jobs

the majority are government jobs that is true least useless jobs they create no wealth they

create no actual efficiency they don't create anything they're just they're

a total suck on the commonwealth yeah but here's the thing it's the headline number that gets

reported at the first of every month that gets all the attention and so the the the damage has

already been done the bls has come out and overestimated jobs by a million for the entire

quarter and now it's one quarter later we're looking back and we're looking at the revisions

so yeah so the headline number was you know the front page of the financial section of

the the newspaper the revision saying okay well we overestimated by a million jobs

now goes on page you know h24 well the stock market paid attention yeah well yes the stock

market pays attention they're professionals they better be paying attention oh they're

professionals yeah professionals

exactly

so kamala harris has been running and one of the reasons why i mentioned it a moment now it's time

to get there one of the reasons why i think she's doing so well is how well she has been managed by

her handlers her and tim waltz both to keep them out how hard is it to manage somebody doesn't show

up for anything yeah well how much is the not showing up for the public eye

for anything part of the management right oh absolutely she makes no statements she doesn't

do anything controversial she doesn't talk about what her policies are her website still has no

policy doesn't have anything right you know so it seems to me that her strategy is let's try to get

you know voter x to project whatever they think i'm supposed to she's running as the uh as as

the not trump uh well but as the what is it the generic uh democrat yeah generic democrat

right no policies no nothing just just democrat i'm just democrat that's all you need to know

i'm a democrat well there is one chance to actually see her live and well more or less

it's going to be interesting and that's coming up this week trump and harris are going to have

their first debate i believe on tuesday they are doing it according to the uh no go back to the

commercial what was it that's not a commercial that's uh that's a state fair deal right there

making the making the cream puffs at the state fair which actually look pretty good

but the the the thing is they're going to be

the same debate that was set up by the biden administration with largely the same rules

because donald trump well those rules worked out pretty well for him and he destroyed him yeah and

so therefore why would he change the rules kamala harris on the other hand is the one that wanted

to change the rules so that they she keeps whining about this yeah yeah so that they would both have

live mics and she could she could interrupt i'm speaking yeah i'm speaking and hopefully

you

would interrupt her so that she could generate one of those you know i'm speaking moments which

okay hillary clinton tried that how'd that work out yeah i i don't think that would have helped

her not with donald trump trump is is he he just doesn't give a shit and he he would

ride right over that well you're speaking but you're not saying anything

i'm constantly amazed by how willing democrats are to underestimate donald trump in a debate

because he is too witty and he is too quick and too funny to be counted out and look

and that's the thing is he combines those things so well i mean it was i can't remember who said it

um i think it was one of the

pundit or maybe pajama media uh writers who like this is the greatest vaudeville uh you know comedy

act on the road right now is donald trump and it's true i mean he he generates uh crowd enthusiasm

because he just he's plain speaking you know

i i don't want to compare him so much to uh what's his face from the 1800s but

he's kind of got that appeal i mean he is the populist candidate and he speaks to people in

their own language assuming he's damn fucking good at it assuming that he stays as sharp as

he was four years ago or well heck eight years ago now um it would not work for him to say that he's

if they had and they're not they're doing the you can't interrupt everybody gets uninterrupted

speaking time which i think does has the potential to lose him these quippy quick comebacks but i

think back to 2016 when hillary clinton with that irritatingly attitude when she says well i guess

it's a good thing that you weren't president of the united states then because you'd be in jail

that is hilarious and by the way hard for a political candidate to come back from in a debate

because you could tell from the look especially on the spot yeah yeah and in political debates

you're not used to a guy who's just being that raw and that blunt and so yeah so i don't know

who this handicaps more although i suspect that if kamala harris gets into one of the

those significance of the passage of time paragraphs that people are going to be looking

and people what else does she have and trump has to be ready as soon as she does that to come back

to be able to point out that is what the hell did she just that is nonsense she's literally

strung an entire paragraph together that means nothing or at least what he did to joe yeah

remember when he was like

i don't know what he said i don't think he knows what he said joe said we beat medicare

yeah he did beat medicare he beat it to death

so i don't think that you know if i was kamala harris i mean that's the one thing i'd be very

nervous yeah that's the one thing that she has is this this this outrage that she's being

interrupted which may or may not result in a significant movement or in terms of the

people's perception of her it might with somebody like mitt romney who was too milquetoast to come

back with a devastating riposte i'm not sure that i am speaking now i'm not sure that that works

against donald trump because i don't think he cares especially because when she did it against

mike pence he wasn't even talking she would say that it was just so ridiculous and trump's not

going to put up with that

she's actually in a better position without hot mics because this i mean he's not going to hold

back you give him mike he's going to talk and good luck come on come on i don't want yeah i'm

not even sure why she was arguing against this format other than she thinks that she but look

she's trying and she's been trying to back out of this uh debate forever i mean she knows she's

going to get to the point where she's going to get to the point where she's going to get to the

point where she's going to get to the point where she's going to get destroyed

well i mean she also knows that the media is going to uh you know shore her up and talk about

how great she did and blah blah blah but that's all she has going the only thing she is practicing

for are some sound bites i mean that's it yeah well the last time she was in a debate format

where everybody could speak tulsi gabbard savaged her oh absolutely

destroyed her

i love tulsi i just she has some ready very wrong views on things but

she's just so adorable and she is absolutely steadfast she believes what she says and she

says what she believes the problem kamala harris has is that a she knows and i'll put that in

quotes she knows a very very

few things and of those things that she knows about half of them are just plain false

well i was listening i was like what she knows something yeah she she knows she knows what

the ideological line is does she yeah i think she does uh what i don't think she does is know why

that ideological line is there how to defend it how to debate it she was a horrible debater in

2020 now who knows maybe she's improved i doubt it but it's it's possible but i would not

underestimate donald trump's ability to savage her and this debate can go horribly wrong and look all

of her talk about well donald trump just doesn't want to have a debate no no donald trump wants

the debate he'll debate you

you

he's already agreed to the rules of this debate and he's not going to let you change it because

joe biden dropped out and when he knew this this is brooklyn rules you want to tie both hands behind

my back and put a gag on me i'm still going to debate you and i'm still going to win i mean

that's brooklyn rules right there and him coming back and saying okay well just meet me next time

next month on fox news and we'll talk yeah nope um never gonna do that why would i do that and what

we are going to end up with for the first time in living memory in a presidential election cycle

is one single debate where both major candidates are on the same stage and that's all we're going

to get and look if i was kamala harris i'd be kind of depressed that i had to do that much

because her

staying in the shadows being as you said generic republican or generic democrat that is her best

strategy yeah her best strategy is to let people see as little of her as possible that has not been

mediated through the filter of a media that is largely ideologically committed to seeing her

be elected and does not seem to

have any interest in actually getting her to talk on camera uh about anything they're not

complaining about her unavailability they seem to be perfectly fine with it if only there were

some sort of organization that was devoted to asking serious questions of political candidates

and then publishing those answers in some sort of periodic journal of current events but yeah dan

how would you think your hero edwin murrow would uh actually react to this

i i don't think it'd be favorably no but but as glenn reynolds has said for years about the press

democratic operatives with bylines yeah and so that's our best strategy just be a big blank

wall all this yeah no i don't think there's any flaw in the strategy

it's just a big blank wall and i don't think there's any flaw in the strategy

it's just that it exposes how ridiculous our media are and how coddled anybody with a d behind

their name is it's it's become ludicrous i mean to the point that it's just so obvious

blind man can see it yeah just looking back at the differences in the coverage that we looked

at a couple of weeks ago

about how the the press is characterizing the literally the same proposals from you know

vance and harris and how 250 billion dollars is going to be lost yeah oh but over 10 years

when you say it well you know what happened that uh what was that commercial where it was like

you just said the same thing i did no but you did this i did this

i think that the the best example of that is the old babylon 5 tv show

where they have a character played by tim choate who his name was zathras and he

in the story he went back in time in the first season of babylon 5 so he's gone now

and so commander ivanova goes back down to this planet where he used to live

and she runs into tim choate playing zathras

and she goes but i thought you went back and passed oh oh oh you talk about my brother zathras

you're his brother oh yes there are nine of us all named zathras

slight difference in how you pronounce zathras zathras

it's a it's the same kind of thing no no you didn't say exactly the same thing there was a

slight difference in your pronunciation that invalidates your point of view but when the

democrat says it it's fine zathras zathras zathras zathras zathras zathras zathras zathras zathras zathras

fine it it really is ridiculous it would be hilarious if it was some sort of satire written

you know 60 or 70 years ago it's an snl episode yes yeah but the the problem is we increasingly

live in a country where the media's activities are no longer parodyable no it's i mean unfortunately

despite chris eliza's uh you know admonitions otherwise they do root for a side it's been

obvious for a very long time and no you have not changed the calculus because you're younger

you all root for the same side and by the way we can see it just in whenever they do surveys of

journalists a term that i use loosely you might as well put scare

quotes around that as well uh when they talk about their political affiliations

right and i don't know if you ever read the bernie goldberg um book i did i can't remember what it's

called but he straight up said look this is how the newsrooms works um there are biased towards

a side and they don't even realize it which is understandable because who's going to call them

out

if you have no other opinion it certainly won't be anyone in the media no and and that's i think

dangerous i think it's uh and we're seeing the results of that we do not have

we have pravda is what we have and yes we can rebuild between the lines

uh the right has gotten used to this

for a very long time there is a fundamental problem which at 6 15 we clearly don't have

the time to get into although it is one we've discussed before which is that all of the sense

making institutions that we have cannot be trusted to tell us the truth and it's even worse than that

yeah and if if if you do not have a sense making institution you're not going to be able to tell us

the truth you're not going to be able to tell us the truth you're not going to be able to tell us the truth

how do you know what is true right because once everyone has squandered their credibility and you

can't trust the thing they say then why are you going to be concerned when they tell you how

harmful you know misinformation or disinformation is well then this goes when they are the biggest

purveyors of it and this this goes for right-leaning news institutions as well

there are a couple that are almost completely ignored um but there's you don't have too many

straight down the middle news organizations anymore they all lean to one side or the other

so you've got to gather information from both and then figure out i mean that that's

what that's literally what uh you did with pravda although you didn't have

you you didn't you only had the state stores you didn't have um anything other than

you know talking on the side except the sam is dot that would get you know printed out on little

mimeo machines and sent out but yeah there was a good example of that this week when tucker carlson

had that uh

what the hell was that martyr made guy who tucker carlson introduced as a historian

note it's like a famous and super like knowledgeable historian has no training in

history whatsoever he is largely self-taught and poorly so because he argues with a lot of things

yeah he argued with a straight face and tucker carlson let him get away with it because he's so

edgy and you know so counterintuitive

counterintuitive that the actual bad guy on world war ii was winston churchill

who by the way was not in the government when the war began um that's right he was a backbencher

because everybody thought he was a loon then it turned out he was right and they decided to make

him prime minister because neville chamberlain had failed but let's put that aside the the fact is

that if you don't trust any of your sense-making

apparatus then someone can come along on and it doesn't matter whether it's fox news or cbs or msnbc

all of whom are broadcasting to a specific audience to tell them what they want to hear

as met taibi pointed out well years ago at this point how do you know what is true maybe churchill

was the bad guy how do i know the only way that i can find out of course is to go back and study

world war ii and it's not true but it's true and it's true and it's true and it's true and it's true

origins and how it started and then this guy's thing well you know adolf hitler after he took

over poland he wanted peace with the brits

hey look i experienced this in real life my kids uh who are 21 almost 19 and 13 i still have to

explain to them that no the nazis were

not far right they they have nothing to do with the right there's literally no ideological

intellectual connection between what the right was thinking and what they were thinking there's

just no connection yeah well you know nationalism so therefore right but you know we talked about

that last time and i think that's a good point i think that's a good point i think that's a good

point last time and i think that's a good point about that perhaps that social class culture

i don't think the development of mitigation should be spricht back with some sort of share for

division or should react with some sort of nationalism in the

mantna

It's that without a sense-making apparatus that tells you the truth, you have no way of knowing what the truth is.

The cost of actually getting to the truth is so high that only pundits will actually get there.

Yeah, I mean, you know, unless I, it is excessively expensive to learn German so that you can go back and read the captured diplomatic archives of Nazi Germany and von Ribbentrop's personal notes when he was ambassador to Great Britain and foreign minister to figure out what Nazi policy was to answer the question,

was Adolf Hitler American?

Was he a bad guy?

That work has already been done, but, you know, whenever you, whenever the most popular historian, and we are going to put historian in scare quotes because that guy isn't, tells me that Adolf Hitler actually wanted peace.

He never wanted war with Germany or France.

All he wanted was Poland and then eventually all of European Russia.

But we allied past that part of the conversation to the extent that Germany wanted peace.

Oh, he wanted peace.

He wanted peace with Great Britain.

Yeah, to the extent he wanted.

Only if they submitted to his role.

Yeah, to the extent that he wanted great peace with Britain, it was to give them a free hand to control all of Europe and all of European Russia.

That was never going to happen because Britain has had a pretty firm foreign policy for about the last 600 years.

A thousand years?

I was going to say at least a thousand.

Of not having a single.

Of not having a single massive continental power running everything because that puts Britain in existential jeopardy.

But in any event, the specifics of that dispute, while irritating to me personally as someone who has extensively studied military history, is not as important as the problem of how does the electorate who are supposed to make decisions about who runs this country, how can they make those decisions when they don't know what is true or false?

And we could actually expand that to a second order problem of what happens when chat GPT is where everybody is going to get their information.

Can you, you can get information from there?

I didn't even know that.

Sure.

I mean, there's no fidelity to it.

I think, who is, there's an astrophysicist, her name is Angela Collier, who's done a couple of videos on AI, one of which is hilarious.

But it's called AI Doesn't Exist.

And she tells a theoretical story of you're an eighth grader.

You are told to go to the library, check out some books on Pocahontas, write a book report on Pocahontas.

But because you are, you know, lazy, you don't do that.

What you do is you go home, you open up your computer, you go to chat GPT, and you just type in, write me an article about Pocahontas.

And, okay, chat GPT will write that article for you.

And then you go and you turn.

Turn that into your teacher.

And your teacher reads your paper, and she notes that Pocahontas was a Native American daughter of a chief.

And when the original Englishman came, she fell in love with one of the Englishmen who she finally married.

And, oh, by the way, her best friend was a singing raccoon.

And she could also talk to trees.

Because.

Based off the Disney.

Yeah, because chat GPT.

Chat GPT doesn't know what's true.

It's a large, there is no, artificial intelligence doesn't exist.

It is an algorithm that goes back and tries to find material on a topic and write to you about it.

And it's more or less whatever length you describe.

But there's no fidelity to it.

It doesn't know that Pocahontas did not have a singing raccoon as a friend in real life.

There's no intelligence in the actual artificial intelligence.

There's no intelligence.

It is an algorithm.

That is designed to mimic the writing style of a person.

Whether it tells you the truth or not is immaterial.

And I think we talked a year ago about these lawyers that tritty trotted into federal court with a brief that they had written in chat GPT.

And none, not one of the citations were actually real.

None of them were real cases.

So it knows what I say knows, because, again, AI doesn't exist.

So it knows what a brief looks like.

It knows that you're supposed to make case citations.

But all it is doing is saying what, basically, what is the most logical word to follow this word in this sentence?

And, oh, you need citations.

So you do it.

One of the things that I've used GPT for is I've gone in in my regular work and dealing with some of our customers who are in the life science industry.

They said, OK.

Write me a paper about a new medication.

I think one I called credozapam and the other was triflimazab.

And write me a paper showing an efficacy study on credozapam for some sort of mental disorders.

And it writes this paper as in the format in which you would submit it to nature, showing me, oh, we did a random controlled study with this many people.

And these were our conclusions.

And it provides statistics and all that.

It's all great.

It's a fake drug.

It doesn't exist.

And that is the problem with our large language models, which more and more people are actually going to to ask questions about it.

Indeed, X, formerly Twitter, now has Grok, where you can just go in and ask Grok to write you stuff.

And it'll just write you stuff.

It will have that discussion with you.

And if you want it to write a paper about something else.

I have a shoe.

All that stuff, just because of what you're describing, it's just so fake.

Right.

It's a mimicry.

It's got nothing behind it.

And it has no fidelity.

But people hear artificial intelligence and they just assume, well, it wouldn't lie to me.

Well, it's not lying to you because it doesn't know that it's lying.

Right.

It doesn't have any internal discourse.

No.

It has a body of information from which it can excerpt and rewrite certain things that are included in that information, whether they are true or not.

I mean, the information is there, right?

As long as the information is out there, it counts.

Yeah.

And by the way, that's going to become an even bigger problem as we now have generative AI to actually build video.

Yeah.

I'm using generative AI to produce the title cards that show up for most of the videos of this podcast.

So my pictures of Kamala Harris and all of that stuff, they're all just generated by AI.

Pictures of Donald Trump, the whole nine yards.

But that's okay.

But that's fine.

Because.

That's artistic.

We're Q&O.

Yeah.

You can try.

But also, I'm not trying to convince you of something or tell you something is true when

it is not true i'm just trying to find an eye-catching picture that's fine but what happens

whenever i have a video of what appears to be um jd vance cavorting sexually with a bunch of

teenage boys i mean it's video who are you going to believe somebody tells you it's false what

are you going to believe them or your own lion eyes so you know the deep fake problem exists

so we're moving ever farther away from the average person knowing the truth about anything

but you know where this heads is that nobody believes anything

yeah but if you don't think i think that's sort of the

end goal is that you can't trust anything

yeah but that puts you all this in the soviet union yeah and that puts you in a horrible position

to try to figure out whether what you're being told to do or what you're being told about the

world or whatever or what the government is doing is right or wrong because right if you remove my

ability to learn the truth about anything then i either have to believe everything which makes me

a fool or believe nothing

which still makes me a fool but just in the opposite it puts me behind the eight ball right

i mean your best bet is to believe nothing but where does that you now you don't know now you're

paralyzed with indecision because now you don't know what is true you have no way of telling what

is true that's as bad as believing everything um because no matter what you do it might be the

wrong thing i mean this is what

um and i love it that my daughter is reading um uh not 19 uh animal farm right now

this was what uh eric flair uh george orwell um predicted he he made it quite explicit

and have we learned the lesson i don't think we have i think it's been taken as a

uh a rule book by the left and it's now being visited upon us in ruthless uh exaction because

what are we supposed to believe yes well how can we believe anything that's going on

well you can't i mean we've been talking about polls the whole time we've been talking about

um you know electorate areas whatever we don't know

we haven't spoken to these any of those people no well as we have no idea i'm gonna give the

final comment to uh one of our commenters in chat who just said a post-reality society

this is going to be awesome

well it kind of reminds me of uh

what was it that uh uh i can't remember what his name is but uh he was like my favorite thing about

the uh obama years is all the racial healing that was glenn reynolds by the way instant

michael have a great week we'll uh we'll talk to you again next week buddy

and for the rest of you you've been watching the observations podcast for today sunday the 8th of

september 2024

stay safe out there we'll talk to you next time so long