Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] WVUA FM, Tuscaloosa. Any opinions expressed in this program are those of the host and do not represent the thoughts or opinions of 90.7 WVUA or the University of Alabama.
[00:00:19] Hello, everybody, and welcome to season three, episode four of the pulse of the where, if you couldn't guess by the show's title, we take the pulse of the nation every week. I'm Braden Vick. I am your host once again, and we're going to start off in the state of Alabama. We're going to start off with something that I think hits close to home for a lot of us. It's Senate Bill 129, yes, a thing that garnered a lot, a lot of protest, not just at the University of Alabama, but in universities across the state, UAB, UAH and AUM. On Wednesday, the Senate Bill 129 would essentially prohibit certain programs related to diversity, equity and inclusion from getting public funding. It would force, potentially, the shuttering of some DEI offices in public universities. Promotion and endorsement of certain, quote, divisive concepts will be prohibited in certain public settings. There are, of course, exceptions provided to this because there are concerns from the Senate Republicans who wrote the bill that the bill might end up affecting business in the states. Of course, businesses really do love promoting DEI or ESG or whatever sort of efforts to maintain diversity and inclusion. And of course, Democrats, among other things, have also been warning of this as well. Birmingham's mayor, Randall Woodfin, said in a tweet that he would know, get football players out of state if the bill passes, even though he's a big Alabama fan. There is also a bathroom bill component to this as well, where colleges and universities would have to designate multi occupancy restrooms based on biological sex and not by gender, which that has gotten a lot of criticism as well. Now, before we go any further on Senate Bill 129, I need to go ahead and say this for posterity. I was a part of the protest at the University of Alabama. So just to be very clear where I'm coming from, so that nobody has any preconceived notions about where I personally stand on this. I think that personally, Senate Bill 129 is a bad bill. But I don't think really the purpose of this. I think the purpose of this is in this segment is to essentially just say, hey, this bill exists. It's in house committee right now. It passed the Senate by a partisan vote.
[00:02:43] Republicans voted for the bill. Democrats were in opposition. There were a few amendments that were passed by Democrats that attempted to essentially water down this bill that were accepted pretty unanimously in all four amendments that were passed by Democrats trying to water this down. One of them, I believe, by Bobby Singleton, the Senate minority leader from Greensboro.
[00:03:08] One of his amendments, essentially it struck the one divisive concept that got a lot of to the original bill wanted to ban teaching that slavery of racism were inherent in the United States founding. I don't know the exact language of it, but that part of the bill got struck thanks to an amendment. Democrats are trying to protect Dei as much as possible.
[00:03:36] I don't know what the UA Board of trustees is going to do if this bill is passed. I understand that the UA lobby board has been trying to either kill this bill or water it down as much as possible.
[00:03:50] It is also my understanding that the UA Board of trustees is nominally pro Dei, although to what extent we still don't mean this could be an instance. Know the UA Board of trustees decides to essentially carry on as normally as they can, or they might go the UT Austin route if this bill passes and try to be a bit more heavy handed to make sure they don't run afoul of state guidelines. So as far as the political aspects of this go, as I said with the you know that the Alabama Supreme Court ruled on, and this week the Alabama state legislature, both House and know, passed almost unanimously a temporary protection from civil and criminal liability for IVF patients and their doctors.
[00:04:45] This could lead to a certain backlash against Alabama Republicans in particular. When you're wading into sort of these national culture wars, I do think that there is growing opposition to this and when we will really see this on the ballot.
[00:05:06] Our first opportunity is on March 26, three weeks after Super Tuesday. It'll be a state House special election in House district ten, South Huntsville, between Teddy Powell, the Republican, and Marylands, the Democrat narrow Trump district. And if Maryland lands is able to win that, then that will be, I think, a first or real sign of a growing backlash to Alabama Republicans. There's also been a growing backlash to New York Democrats, especially online, after everything that's been going on with redistricting. So if you didn't catch it, what has essentially happened with New York conditioning? So a few months ago, the high court in New York essentially struck down the congressional map that they had as unconstitutional for gerrymandering or whatnot. They sent it back to the independent redistricting Commission to draw a new map. The independent Redistricting Commission draws a new map. What happens is that the New York assembly and state Senate Democrats they vote against know why do they do that? Quirks of New York law means state assembly, state Senate has to approve the maps. If they do not approve the maps, then it will go to the state legislature to draw the maps. So when the maps were voted down by this state legislature, Democrats, you know, online who were paying attention to the situation, very, very partisan, hacked Democrats were hoping that the New York state legislature would use this as an opportunity to further draw out a few vulnerable republican incumbents, those being Lawler, you know, and Anthony Despacito, which I don't think we really need to draw out. Despacito, I mean, he's in a bottom of 14 and a half district. He's going to lose out of red wave anyways.
[00:07:12] What the New York House Democrats, state assembly's Democrats did, instead of drawing a brutal, like 22 to four, they also want to draw Nicola Loda as well. These hacked Democrats did. But what happened was essentially incumbent protection, except if you're Brandon Williams, was essentially, they passed a map that was relatively the same, except you're helping Democrat Tom Swatz, who just got sworn in into this Congress after winning that third congressional district special election. And they also somewhat protected Mark Molinaro, the Republican in a swing district. They hurt Brandon Williams, a Republican in Syracuse, though. So Democrats will likely gain that as a result of redistricting. But it came under fire from the Twitter paparazzi, basically. And if you're on Twitter, you will have know, vehement opposition to, you know, Hakeem Jeffries and the state assembly Democrats for essentially not putting the knife to the GOP's throats. Why is this the case? Well, you have to go to North Carolina to start explaining why. Because North Carolina Republicans, after Trisha Copam switched over from Democrat to Republican in southeast Mecklenburg county, in the state house due to, I believe, school choice, know, maybe some other petty concerns. New York Republicans did that to essentially secure themselves brutal gerrymanders in the state house, state Senate, and in Congress. They drew themselves three extra republican districts in North Carolina, drawing out Jeff Jackson. They drew, I believe they drew out Kathy Manning or the Democrat who represents the Greensboro area. They drew that congressperson, essentially, and they drew out some other person. They drew out Wiley Nicholl. And what had happened was, and they also gave Don Davis a marginal Biden district in northeast North Carolina to say, oh, we didn't try to run afoul of the Voting Rights act here because that Northeast North Carolina district is supposed to be a black opportunity district. So what many Democrats were open for is the New York Democrats would respond in kind by trying to draw out as many republican incumbents as possible. That did not happen.
[00:09:45] Thus you see the reaction online. Now. My take on it is that it's good for fair maps in New York specifically because 22 to four in a 60 40 state is nowhere near fair. Just ask Illinois, who actually did do a brutal 14 Democrat, three republican gerrymander of their congressional master. Have you seen it? Oh my God.
[00:10:10] Brutality to the extreme.
[00:10:13] But I will say that because of this, I'm pretty sure the median House district is now to the right of where it was in 2020 because of all these redrawings, of all these redistrictings, because of this mid cycle redistricting, because of this, now it's essentially null. Democrats gained a seat in Louisiana, they gained a seat in Alabama, and they probably gained a Williams seat in New York. But Republicans gained three seats in and plus, you know, just before this episode came is going to come out, the Wisconsin Supreme Court declined to take up a congressional channel map to their gerrymander congressional maps simply because the case wasn't filed on time and essentially the maps wouldn't be ready in time for the primaries.
[00:11:05] So given this, I think that it will be somewhat more difficult for Democrats to win the House. Although I will say if you're relying on brutally gerrymandering New York and a bunch of Biden by ten districts and try to help a flagging state party, that honestly, I don't think the New York Democrats under Jacobs understand what it means to win, especially in 2022. They didn't even bother to try. They left multiple Biden one seats on the table. And that is one of the primary reasons why Democrats lost a House in 2022 was because they kind of crapped Lobetta, New York. And you can't rely on essentially trying to bail them out with a bunch of Biden by eleven divided by 15 districts.
[00:11:55] You can't rely on that in order to just try and help them to help a flagging party. You can't rely on top of the ticket when a state party is as incompetent as the New York state Democrats are. And quite honestly, all the losses that the New York Democrats suffered in 2022, they brought on themselves. It wasn't just because of the red wave environment. Sure, they might explain some seats, but doesn't explain why Sean Patrick Maloney lost to Mike Lawler. Doesn't explain why you lost the fourth congressional district to Anthony Desposito. It doesn't explain why Mark Molinaro beat Josh Rowley. It does not explain why Brandon Williams was able to succeed John Catco in the 22nd. It does not explain why you allow George Santos into Congress in the first place. And it wasn't a close race in the third congressional district either against Robert Zimmerman. It was pretty convincing. Like, for God's sakes, George Santos almost won the Queen's portion of the district. That I think goes to show just how terribly New York Democrats did in 2022. And if you're having to rely on these brutally gerrymandered districts, then that says, I think, a lot more about the New York Democrats electoral competence than it does about their ability to draw or willingness to draw Gerrymander.
[00:13:20] And again, to be quite honest, if you're having to rely on gerrymanders to win a House majority, I think that says something more about the national Democrats than it does about anybody, you know, New York Democrats. So that's just sort of my two cent on it.
[00:13:43] Granted, I don't believe psychologically that when one party or two in action, if there's a two party system, I don't think that one party should stand down from doing a morally politically feasible action if the other party is already doing it. You shouldn't stand down from trying to expand your own political power if the other party is doing the same tactic just because you want to get moral victories. Personally, I don't believe in that, because politics, in my opinion, part of it is about morals, whether you're doing things for the right reasons, whether you believe in the right causes or whatnot. But in terms of actually winning elections, the only thing that's going to matter is did you win a district, did you win a city, did you win a state, did you win the electoral votes? Did you win the electoral college?
[00:14:54] Taking the high road only counts in, what's that game called?
[00:15:03] I'm going to go ahead and make up a new term. It only counts on horses and hand grains.
[00:15:09] It's not going to count for you if you're trying to win a House majority.
[00:15:16] Doing the morally right thing in politics, and a lot of politicos understand this, doing the morally right thing sometimes is not what needs to be done if you just simply want to win. Richard Nixon knew this, and the people who gerrymandered, the North Carolina Republicans, the Illinois Democrats, Florida Republicans, Georgia Republicans, you know, they know this. Texas Republicans know this, and so do Democrats. You know, I crap on them all the time. Going to crap on them all the time for the county line thing that they've been pulling and all the corruption that's been going on in the state. But it's a similar thing with potentially Massachusetts Democrats. Granted, Massachusetts is more political geography than anything else, but if they wanted to draw a marginal Biden district in central Massachusetts, they could. But they're not, because moral victories, a lot of times, aren't exactly what's going to win you the House majorities trying to tilt the playing field as much as possible is going to win you a House majority.
[00:16:32] And quite simply put, this could be a very bad missed opportunity for New York Democrats if this ends up costing the Democrats the House again.
[00:16:42] But speaking of Democrats and Republicans, we had a couple of primaries this week. We had the South Carolina republican primary, and we had the Michigan democratic primary, and they had a republican primary, too. So I'm going to first talk about South Carolina, and I could go on the same tricks that have been going on about this republican primary, that there isn't any true primary, that Donald Trump is and has always been the presumptive republican nominee, because over half the GOP base would probably lick 50 pounds of armpit sweat just to get near him.
[00:17:18] And I still believe that to be true.
[00:17:22] When you're beating Nikki Haley in her home state by over 20 points, I think that's more true than anything.
[00:17:29] However, I do have a question for the people who suggest that Donald Trump is favored to win this presidential election.
[00:17:41] Should we just ignore primary results? I don't think we should.
[00:17:47] If you see a lot of uncompetitive primaries, whether that for whatever reason, usually it's because the incumbent of a party is running, then these primaries aren't exactly useful for determining who is going to be a party's nominee. That often is predetermined. But what the primaries are useful for is essentially identifying the problem. Demographics within a certain party. And I'll get to the Democrats in Michigan in a few minutes. But as for South Carolina itself, the three counties where Nikki Haley won, which were Charleston, Beaufort, and Richland, those are the three counties with the highest rates of college education in the state.
[00:18:40] I don't think that's a coincidence. Remember, in Iowa, the only county to vote for Nikki Haley, and it only voted for by one vote, was Johnson county. That's where Iowa City is. That's where the University of Iowa is in New Hampshire. Where did Nikki Haley do best? Inevitably, these were the towns with higher college education rates than the statewide average.
[00:19:04] And where did Trump do better in lower college educated areas?
[00:19:09] And you could say, okay, it's only two states, but there's a certain trend that's starting to appear. It's only three states. At this point, we're going before Michigan. Maybe it's only three states, but there's still a trend that's happening here in that college educated voters, college educated Republicans, more specifically, are a lot more lukewarm on Donald Trump than the rest of the party base. The rest of the party base loves them. As for college educated republicans, not so much.
[00:19:44] And this is especially true when you have to consider the fact that well over half the republican base believes that Donald Trump is the duly elected president.
[00:19:58] Let me just repeat that again.
[00:20:01] For all intents and purposes, in this republican primary, Donald Trump is an incumbent because over half the republican base does not believe that Joe Biden won that election. Over half the republican base believes Trump's. Trump won 2020. Like, we have to get that through our heads when we're talking about this primary. For those Republicans, this action of voting in a primary is simply a step to put Trump back in what they believe, not just as his divine right, but as something that was stolen from him, an office to which they think he should still fairly have. This is what the majority of the republican base thinks.
[00:20:46] And we have to understand that if we're going to talk about a republican primary in 2024 in these conditions, and the fact that even in a southern state of South Carolina, yes, there is a very good Nikki Haley hometown bias effect, that is fair.
[00:21:06] What is also fair is to look at not specifically the top lines, because, again, this is an uncompetitive primary. The top lines are important, but I don't think they're as important as where each candidate is overperforming their top line or underperforming their top line. And this is especially true for presumptive nominees like Donald Trump and Joe Biden. So let's talk about South Carolina again for a moment. Let's go into the granular data. Where did Donald Trump do his worst? It was in the urban areas of the state. It was in Columbia. It was in Greenville. It was especially in Hilton head Island in Charleston. Granted, Trump did better in, you know, in Hori county, especially, than the average. That is fair. Myrtle beach is his own thing.
[00:22:02] That is one of the dream tourist towns for right wing conservatives. I'm not exactly surprised Trump did better than the statewide average there.
[00:22:12] What I think is notable about South Carolina is the breadth of the outperformance, because, remember, Nikki Haley got around 40%, like a bit under that, I believe about 39.539.6 or something like that. I think that's where it was the last time I checked.
[00:22:35] It's not just the areas where Nikki Healy won. That matter, although they matter a lot, because if you're losing in a primary, if you're losing an area, a state by 20, but you're winning certain counties, when you're outperforming a certain precinct by anywhere from like 30, 40, 50, like in Kiwa Island, Nikki Haley won it by 64%, which is, Kiwa island is where Nikki Haley lives. Were. So, again, it might be a lot more of a hometown effect for her than anything else, but still, 64 points compared to a 20 point drop, that's an over 80 point overperformance of the statewide margin in that part of Charleston county.
[00:23:17] That's not something we should overlook. We shouldn't overlook the other areas where Nikki Healy outperformed. These are urban and suburban areas of the state, by and large.
[00:23:29] And again, that shouldn't be overlooked. York county should not be overlooked, especially the eastern part of the know, Greenville should not be overlooked. The parts of northwest South Carolina that icky Healy won was around the Clemson area. Yes, she's a Clemson alum, but that's still very notable because that shows you in the areas where a presumptive nominee's primary opponent is winning in certain areas, that's where you know there are significant weaknesses that that candidate, the presumptive nominee, has to answer for. How are you going to answer for the bleeding that you are suffering amongst college educated republicans, Mr. Donald Trump? Are you going to even answer that? Are you going to try to appeal to these groups of voters, or are you going to go with what you have now? Can he appeal to most of these voters? Because I will say that, yes, some of these Nikki Haley voters are bidenistas. They are riding with Biden, but have a more moderate disposition and would vote for Nikki Haley if it meant that Donald Trump would no longer be in like Grant. That's what some of this is. That's not what most of this like. We shouldn't lie to ourselves and say the majority is Nikki Haley voters were voting for Joe Biden anyway. That's not the case at all.
[00:25:03] What is the case? And remember, and this is with exit polls, too, which, again, take exit polls with a lot of caution in America. But given the polls that we've seen, a lot of these Nikki Haley voters, some of them will come back to Donald Trump.
[00:25:21] A lot of them won't, or at least right now, they're not. And that's the huge problem for Donald Trump, because these voters vote at rates that outperform the rest of the nation. These college educated voters are the most likely to be informed about politics, they are the most likely to vote. If you're bleeding with those voters, if this has been a reliable block for you, but you're bleeding massively amongst these voters, that's going to show up more than if you swing Latinos by six to seven points to the right. Like if you're losing five points amongst college educated voters, that's going to show up massively. Because guess what, there's a lot of, in a lot of swing districts, college educated voters, guess what, there's going to be a lot of, in a state like Texas, and even in a state like Ohio, talk about Cincinnati, you talk about Columbus, talk about parts of Cleveland. Those areas, those suburbs have a lot of college educated voters that you can't really afford to lose.
[00:26:32] I mean, remember, Donald Trump's working from a handicap. Remember, he lost in 2020. It was narrow, but he lost.
[00:26:43] And the question that you have to answer when you're looking at these results and when you're looking at the Michigan results and the New Hampshire results and the Iowa results, by this time this episode comes out, we will potentially be hours away from the Missouri and Idaho caucus results.
[00:27:06] By the time this episode comes out, those results might have already happened.
[00:27:10] But the question that we need to ask, where is Donald Trump making off these losses? Because we cannot assume that any candidate will retain the entirety of their voting base of the people that voted for them and they're going to vote in 2024. You can't expect that you're going to retain all them. Donald Trump can't either. And the media cannot assume that Trump's going to retain all of his 2020 voters either.
[00:27:38] We know that voting for Donald Trump means a lot different things, a lot of different things than voting for Mitt Romney or John McCain in the past. We understand that. But still, there are people who voted for Trump in 2016 and that voted for Joe Biden in 2020. There are going to be people that voted for Trump in 2020, but are going to vote for Biden in 2024. And where are those people going to be most prevalent? They're going to be most prevalent in areas like Charleston. They're going to be most prevalent in areas like Iowa City. They're going to be most prevalent in the sea coast of New Hampshire. There are a lot of marginal Trump towns in New Hampshire that I will be watching in November. Because if a lot of those towns start flipping to Biden, then you can call that state pretty early for like, again, remember, Trump's working from a seven and a half point handicap in, you know, and flipping to, you know, what about an area like Oakland county? What about an area like, you know, Gran Traverse, Louisiana county?
[00:28:51] What about these areas that are showing that Nikki Healy is outperforming her statewide average?
[00:29:02] I don't think that's something that can be overlooked.
[00:29:06] Like, we're going to talk about Michigan now. Yes, Trump won Michigan by 40 points.
[00:29:12] Like just snitch. Over 40 points, but very big. But over 30% of the republican primary electorate in Michigan did not vote for Trump. Trump got about just a smidge over 68% of the vote, and Nikki Haley got hundreds of thousands of Republicans.
[00:29:38] That is something that we cannot overlook. The big stories that the media wrote about the Michigan primary were about Democrats. They are about the uncommitted pro Palestine vote. We'll get to that. We'll get to my opinions on my analysis and all that.
[00:29:55] But to focus on the Republicans here for a second, are you telling me that the trends that we saw in 2020 are going to either stop or significantly slow down in 2024? Based on what I'm seeing, that's not happening.
[00:30:13] Like areas like East Grand Rapids and even Ann Arbor?
[00:30:18] Ann Arbor is already deeply democratic. Yes, it had a high uncommitted vote share, but Nikki Haley also won Ann Arbor Republicans extremely convincingly.
[00:30:28] And what about the Cherry coast, the northwest part of the mitt, where grand Traverse, where Leland all Emmett counties are, where Nikki Haley outperformed her statewide vote share?
[00:30:43] You're telling me those trends aren't going to continue?
[00:30:47] You want me, as an amateur analyst, as someone who's looking at countywide and precinct wide results, you shouldn't expect these trends to stop or even significantly slow down, because nothing's telling me that these trends are slowing down whatsoever as far as the Republicans go. And now we have quite a few states said by the time a lot of you are listening to this, we're going to have a few more republican states in. At the end of this episode, I'm going to go for a Super Tuesday preview. Where are you going to have a lot more states come in?
[00:31:31] And what are they going to show? That, yes, Trump's winning most of these states very convincingly, but where is Nikki Haley doing the best?
[00:31:44] And those quite invariably, I might add, are going to be the areas where Biden picks off a very good bit of Trump 2020 voters. And inevitably, these voters, whether they be in historically german Milwaukee suburbs, in Wisconsin, whether they be in central Oakland county, in Michigan, whether they be in eastern Kent county, or even in Ottawa county, like west of Grand Rapids that had a very high Nikki Haley vote share relative to the state. That's going to be an area where Biden is able to pick off a lot of very good bit of Trump 2016, Trump 2020 voters.
[00:32:30] What about an area like Kalamazoo? Same deal. What about the seacoasts of New Hampshire? Same deal. What about these college towns? Even again, same deal.
[00:32:45] And nothing is showing me that Donald Trump or the Republican Party at large, especially in a state like Michigan.
[00:32:56] Nothing's showing me that they know what the key is to either blunting these trends or trying to significantly slow them down.
[00:33:07] What I'm saying for them is that they think they can roll with the base, and that could work. The polls are in his favor.
[00:33:16] I'm not saying it can't work. It very well could. He's won from a money disadvantage before. Just see 2016.
[00:33:24] But you can't tell me that that's the more likely of the two options, because it's just not right now.
[00:33:32] And even with a decent chunk of progressive voters signaling a lot of discontent and anger over Palestine, even with a lot of arab american voters, a lot of muslim voters expressing disgust over Palestine, over Biden administration's actions on Palestine, you can't tell me that Donald Trump is still favored to win the election or that he's favored to win Michigan. Because let me tell some truth about Michigan. In 2020, Joe Biden won the state of Michigan by 154,000 votes, over 154,000 votes. In 2020, shifting the democratic primary, there were a smidge over 100,000 uncommitted votes.
[00:34:22] Now, the uncommitted vote was 13%. It's a smidge over 13%.
[00:34:27] And granted, it really didn't exactly do better in any particular areas. The best areas were in Ann Arbor, in Washington, Wayne counties, which Wayne has a very high american vote share, muslim american vote share, especially in East Dearborn and in Hamtramic, where there are a lot of muslim South Asians. In Hamtramic and Dearborn, there are a lot of arab american voters, a lot of muslim voters in those areas.
[00:35:01] And even if you assume that 50,000, half of those uncommitted voters are gone from Biden because of his actions on Palestine, even assume the half, just don't vote for him.
[00:35:21] Even if you assume that 10,000 of those 50,000 go to Donald Trump, you have 40,000 that are not voting.
[00:35:33] You're still working with about a 90,000 vote margin.
[00:35:40] And what about those Nikki Haley voters? If half of them go for Joe Biden, if 40 30% of them go for Joe Biden in 2024, then you've blunted that.
[00:35:57] And another thing I will say about the uncommitted vote.
[00:36:03] Yes, a significant chunk of them were over Palestine and over other progressive concerns. A lot of them, especially in more rural areas like Lewis county, were either because Biden's too old, they think he might be casino or incompetent. And for a lot of these ancestral Democrats who may still view themselves as Democrats but usually vote for, like, especially in Lewis county, this is also one of Donald Trump's strongest counties in Michigan. For some of those voters, it might just be because they're conservatives and they plan to vote Trump and they don't like any of the democratic options right now. They don't like where the party's gone.
[00:36:45] We can't assume that all of those uncommitted voters are over Palestine. That's just bad analysis.
[00:36:53] Granted, there is, I believe, a significant chunk of Michigan voters that are very dissatisfied over Palestine.
[00:37:02] I can't go up and say that a majority of them are going to get off the democratic train because of this issue.
[00:37:11] That is just bad analysis.
[00:37:15] And I will also say that if Joe Biden loses Michigan because of his pro ids stances, then he will have lost the election a long time. Like at this point, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were gone long ago. Georgia was gone long ago. Arizona is a dog fight. And if you're losing Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, that usually isn't a good sign for winning elections at all.
[00:37:45] I'm just going to point that out right now. Not a good sign to win an election when you're losing Pennsylvania, which was the state that tipped the election for Biden in 2020.
[00:37:58] So I'm going to say a couple more things about the uncommitted vote, that the pro Palestine portion of the uncommitted vote, if you're going to win most of them back, if you have a Biden campaign, you can't do messaging. That's not going to work. You have to do policy because they are angry about the policy.
[00:38:25] It's not so much that you aren't listening to them, it's the fact that they're not going to meet with you. Most of them aren't even going to meet with you until you make that policy change.
[00:38:39] The airdrops of aid that are starting to go into Gaza are going to probably be viewed as a welcome step, but it's not going to be viewed as anywhere near enough. They're going to want you to cut off military aid to Israel. Those voters are going to want you to force Israel to open humanitarian aid corridors.
[00:38:59] They're going to want you to condemn the israeli military and the israeli government, not just at the Oval Office, but at the UN. They're going to want you to stop voting in the interest of the state of Israel. They're going to want you to restore your funding for the UNRWA. They're going to want you to apologize for not taking the Gaza health ministry's death counts as accurate.
[00:39:37] You're going to have to do all these things before they even consider voting for you again. Because for a lot of them, the death toll in Gaza is simply too high for them to consider voting for Joe. You've lost some of them already, think you've lost a good bit of them already.
[00:39:54] The question that comes next is how many of them were already not going to vote for Joe in 2020 anyways? Because a lot of them didn't.
[00:40:02] How many of them were already not voting for him in 2024? And that's a question that we simply don't know. And I don't think that's a question the Joe Biden campaign wants to essentially take a risk on because there is a very good chance that a lot of the people that are loudly complaining about Biden were never going to vote for him and didn't vote for him in 2020.
[00:40:29] That's a very good chance of that happening.
[00:40:32] But I believe that there is also a significant chunk of usually reliably democratic voters who really do not want to vote for Joe Biden because of the Palestine issue.
[00:40:49] Let's not misfortune. This is a serious issue.
[00:40:53] And the Biden campaign and the Biden administration in particular are going to have to meet these concerns with real policy changes in action.
[00:41:02] What I will say is that, as I mentioned earlier, what with the Nikki Haley vote that exists, this is not a fatal fall in Michigan. And I don't think this is a fatal fall for the Biden campaign nationally because remember when I talked about uncompetitive primaries and how their true use is to identify where the Biden campaign is weakest?
[00:41:28] In the states that we have right now, the most significant protest votes against Joe Biden have been in wider, more lower college educated areas. In, you know, where Dean Phillips did the best was where there was a lot less of a rate of college education. The same thing happened in South Carolina, where the protests votes for Marion Williamson and Dean Phillips were greater, the more white a precinct was and the less college educated a precinct was in Nevada. It was a similar deal.
[00:42:12] It was a very similar deal.
[00:42:15] The greatest, none of the above votes were in areas with a lot of rural ancestral democrats. Elco county, for example, these tiny counties, Esmeralda, that's where none of the above did the best, and it did the worst where democrats actually are in Washoe and in Clark counties, and amongst the black vote in particular, which I have a lot of gripes with media about them saying the black vote is going to swing like 20 points to the right. If it was, this is going to show up inevitably in the primaries.
[00:42:58] It's not. It is not in the two states that we have where there is a significant chunk of the black vote in the democratic electorate, South Carolina and Michigan. Joe Biden did better with the black vote than in the statewide outage.
[00:43:16] And this isn't just in Detroit, but Southfield as well, is a black suburb in Oakland County, a very majority black suburb. And Joe Biden got over 90% of the vote there when he got, I believe, like 83% statewide.
[00:43:34] And I don't know, you all think that seems pretty significant. It was an 81% statewide. Still, we got over 80% of the vote.
[00:43:45] That doesn't really seem like the black voters who are voting, who are engaged. I don't see any defections amongst them. Maybe, as the New York Times and other pollsters are suggesting, maybe the more infrequent black voters are not only going to go out to vote, they're going to vote for Donald Trump.
[00:44:06] But again, this will probably show up in the primaries, too.
[00:44:12] And again, we're not seeing any evidence of any particular strength with Donald Trump and black voters. We're not seeing any particular weakness.
[00:44:27] Know, black voters with Joe Biden right now, maybe the primary electorates are going to skew older, and maybe you're missing a lot of younger black voters who might be more against Joe Biden or know willing to cross that party line and vote for Republican.
[00:44:44] But right now, I'm looking for something to essentially shatter the narratives that I have built up regarding the trends that we're going to see in 2024. Looking for something.
[00:44:59] And maybe with the somewhat more significant pro Palestine committed vote amongst more asian american precincts in Oakland county, maybe that's a sign of something.
[00:45:11] But right now, I'm just not seeing anything that's going to suggest to me that 2020 and the trends that we saw in 2020 are going to be in any significant aberration for the trends we're going to see in 2024. And plus, if Republicans were confident that they would be winning in 2024.
[00:45:38] I really don't think that you'd have had the amount of retirements and then unretirements that we're seeing because the Republicans can't decide what they want to do. They really don't want to be in Congress.
[00:45:55] But they're essentially being forced to say essentially. And this started a long time ago. You had, you know, who was going to retire. But then November of last year, he's running for reelection. Then he had a few more stories that picked up over the past month. Victoria Spartz, granted, she's one of the most, well, she's one of the biggest characters in Congress. You never know what she's going to do, really, as far as her temperament goes. But she represents central Indiana in Congress, north of Indianapolis. It's like, oh, a year ago she said she's not going to run, but now she's going to run for reelection.
[00:46:41] I think it was Jim banks, the scheme popped up that he wasn't going to run for someone in Indiana, wasn't going to run for, you know, the sun would take their place. But then that scheme got popped up and the Indiana Republicans essentially had to run free election. Now you have Matt Rosendale, again, another case, know, extenuating, you know, you have a campaign for Senate that you probably should have announced a few months ago. Everybody knew you were running for Senate, that Trump endorsed Tim Shay because you couldn't decide whether you actually wanted to run. Why did you wait so long until days or hours before the filing deadline to announce your candidacy? Like, what is going on, Matt? So you had to suspend it and now you're running for reelection to the House. Meanwhile, you've got the former know of that know a lot of elected officials in eastern Montana want that know you're going to be in for a closer primary reason you might expect.
[00:47:52] And now Mark Green, the Republican from Tennessee, he's going to retire. He was done.
[00:48:00] It's the same thing with Katherine Morris Rogers and Mike Gallagher, these leaders that could be future leaders of the Republican Party, but they're dipping. They're gone. They don't want to be a part of this anymore. They don't want to be a part of Mike Johnson's several failed rule votes. They don't want to be part of probably the most chaotic Congress we have had in a long time. But Donald Trump gave Mark Green a call like, hey, I want you in Congress. And Mark Green's like, okay, I'm going to run for reelection now.
[00:48:31] So my question, and this is more of a question and analysis is why are so many people having commitment issues when it comes to retirement?
[00:48:42] Because when you're retiring, you're saying, you're essentially saying, I don't want to be here anymore, especially when a lot of these people, they're not of old age. They don't have really any notable health issues that would prevent them from running first another term.
[00:49:04] And none of these people think really cited term limits as a part of their decision. Maybe for Victoria Spartz it would have been. Maybe for some of these other republicans it could have been. But I'm not exactly sure that.
[00:49:26] I'm not exactly sure that you're going for any other reasons other than they think the job sucks.
[00:49:41] I don't think we really appreciate just how badly these representatives think of their jobs. Like Brian Higgins didn't resign from Congress to go lead some random regional theater company.
[00:49:58] It wasn't solely because of his love of theater. It's because he doesn't want to be in Congress anymore. And I completely understand that.
[00:50:06] But I have to sort of ask, what is this ambivalence about? Because it's something we usually really don't see. I think it's an underrated story of why several, especially Republicans, have announced they weren't running for election and then they've reversed their decision.
[00:50:30] It's not something I've noticed before, and I don't think that this has happened in many recent election cycles either.
[00:50:43] I don't know if the calculus has changed for them or if they got a call from Trump saying he wants them in Congress like Mark Green got.
[00:50:51] I don't know. It's something that's very interesting. It's a story that I think deserves to be followed to see if anybody else who decided they're not running for election, if they decide to get back in for whatever reason, because if they are, that could mean a couple of things. That could mean that they're more confident the Republicans win the House majority. It could be simply because someone said that we need your voice to be a stable governing voice instead of letting the House Republican caucus getting completely taken over by the marchery, Taylor Greens and Matt Gages of the world.
[00:51:29] It could be for those reasons as well. It could be simply Trump gave them a call.
[00:51:35] Who knows? But this is something I don't think we exactly have an answer to.
[00:51:40] And it's not going to be something that I think that we're going to have an answer to for a while.
[00:51:51] And as far as these congressional stories go, we're going to bring you all up to date on these retirements, on which party has more retirements, what that might mean. Just you're trying to read the tea leaves here, but I don't know, something that I think was worth mentioning to you all. But we're going to end this off with a sort of Super Tuesday preview.
[00:52:22] So Super Tuesday is going to be on Tuesday, March 5, and this will include the state of Alabama.
[00:52:32] If you're not already registered to vote in the state of Alabama, you're not going to be able to vote in Super Tuesday.
[00:52:39] So it's not just Alabama, but you'll also have Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia. They're going to hold their presidential primaries on this.
[00:53:00] I think there are also a couple of caucuses worth mentioning as well. Think Utah might have a caucus or so for Republicans? I'm not sure, but there is also a caucus in Iowa, democratic caucus in Iowa.
[00:53:16] It's a mail in caucus this time, which I think is very interesting.
[00:53:20] If you wonder why that is, just go look at the debacle that was 2020 and Super Tuesday. Why is it named Super Tuesday? This is just the day where the most delegates get awarded on both the democratic and the republican sides. Approximately 30% of the democratic delegates, 36% of the republican delegates are going to be chosen and selected on Super Tuesday.
[00:53:44] And again, what we're going to see on Super Tuesday is essentially the same things that we have been seeing for a while.
[00:53:57] First off, the top line is going to be what pops out. But more importantly, where are the opposition candidates? Outperform the top lines.
[00:54:07] Where is the general anti Biden vote? Outperform the top lines. What are those demographics? What does that mean? And the same thing for Republicans, same thing for the Nikki Haley vote itself.
[00:54:21] So it's not that these Super Tuesday primaries are going to be in any way competitive. The only primary I really see as being competitive, like actually truly competitive, is probably the DC one. On know, a couple days would be two days before Super Tuesday. Before Super Tuesday goes, the closest states might be like, what, Vermont and Virginia, maybe Utah.
[00:54:47] But it's like you're still expecting double digit chump victories and it's just sort know. The only question is when does Nikki Haley drop out? And does Nikki Haley drop out as a Super Tuesday? Because she's probably going to lose all the Super Tuesday states. But does she stay in to prove a point? Does she stay in until the convention to provide an alternative? Does she stay in until the convention in the hopes that something will happen to Trump. Either he'll have a major health event or one of his trials will come up or he gets convicted of one of them. I don't know. But as far as the republican primary goes, it will be a very good opportunity to see, not just there from the democratic primary vote, where are the presumptive nominees underperforming their statewide margins, because those will be the areas that the opposition party is going to target to see where they can pick off the most republican or democratic votes and switch them to their side.
[00:55:54] The party that is able to do that the most, in my opinion, is going to be the party that wins the presidential election.
[00:56:05] It's just sort of an old adage. A lot of people say elections, they come down to turnout. Elections also come down to persuasion. And the side that has the biggest persuasion advantage is going to win in 2024. That's it for season three, episode four of Pulse of the Nation. Catch us next week on season three, episode five, where we will be discussing the Super Tuesday primary results. Essentially, which county should you watch for swings to Donald Trump and to Joe Biden, plus, of course, the news of the week, because, of course, they will be taking the pulse of the nation. And thank you all for watching. Thank you all for listening, and we will see you all next Saturday.
[00:56:51] Our any opinions expressed in this program are those of the host and do not represent the thoughts or opinions of 90.7 WVUA or the University of Alabama. WVUA FM, Tuscaloosa.
