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.
[00:00:23] Welcome back to Pulse of the nation. It has been so long, and I have missed each and every single one of y'all. I am Braden Vick. I am the host of the Pulse of the Nation podcast. Welcome to season three. And I would be remiss to not include everything that has happened since I last talked to y'all. So where we left off was the congressional news. So we're gonna start off from there. When we left off, I believe we were at the speakership battle between Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan. We'll start off from there. So Karfi's been vacated.
[00:01:03] Matt Gates has gotten his revenge. Yada, yada, yada. So, yeah, the Scalise versus Jordan battle. And Scalise had won that battle. He'd won that caucus vote. But what ended up happening was enough conservative republicans balked at the idea of a Scalise speakership, believing it wouldn't be conservative enough. And thus Scalise decided he was going to drop out without even facing a vote. So now you have another speakership ballot. You have to go to your third choice. Jim Jordan runs again. He runs against some random backbencher nobody's ever heard of called Austin Scott. He's a representative Republican from South Georgia. And Jim Jordan, the representative from Ohio, he wins that election, that caucus election, but it's a lot closer than people expect. But Jim Jordan, he does get a few floor votes. He fails them. He fails his floor votes, and he decides, you know what? It's not worth it. I'm dropping. So now, obviously, it's not great. Your top three candidates for speaker of the House have either failed speakership votes or were going to fail speakership votes on a vote of the full House. So now you go to your fourth option. And their fourth option, after a bunch of handwriting, was Tom Emmer. He was a House majority whip Republican from Minnesota. He suffers the same fate as Steve Scalise. Enough people say, I don't want him to be the speaker of the House. He drops out. So now who are you going to go? A bunch of people decide to run. Like everything is crazy. Business has stopped. Remember what I said last season, that the House cannot conduct any business until it has a speaker of the House. And so you have to have another speaker of the House. And so lots of people flight. There are a lot know strong candidates on the republican side, but who they end up going with was a guy in leadership, more the backbench of leadership. But he's a representative from northwest Louisiana, from Shreveport. His name is Mike Johnson. And he was a guy that the Republicans decided, okay, we don't have enough disagreements with him that we would prevent him from getting the speakership. And so the House finally got a speaker. Mike Johnson is a speaker of the House, and he will be judged for his role as speaker effectively. Now, before we get into some other news that involves another Louisiana representative or know Mike Johnson, one of the main concerns about him is that his fundraising wasn't good. Kevin McCarthy, you can say what you want about him, and I certainly have said a lot of things about him, but he's a good fundraiser. He is a really good fundraiser. He's arguably one of the reasons why Republicans even took back the House in 2022, because he rides for his fellow California Republicans. Young Kim, Michelle Steele, David Valladale, John Duarti. Just being a few examples, in competitive districts where either they flip blue districts or they hold competitive ones, and thus you have a situation in know. For all of Kevin McCarthy's faults, he was able to help win the republican party competitive races in competitive House districts. Right now, Mike Johnson has gotten nowhere close to the fundraising prowess Kevin McCarthy has and probably never will. And that's completely understandable. Kevin McCarthy is one of the strongest fundraisers on either side of the aisle. But with Mike Johnson not being able to pull in nearly as much money as Kevin McCarthy has, it's not exactly great news for a republican party that is already cash strapped. And we will get to that at the end of this episode, but we'll stick with Louisiana for now. And remember when I was talking about, you know, he was a second choice for speaker, and then enough people were bailed, so he dropped out. Well, he is sort of at the center of a congressional redraw in Louisiana because while we were gone, Louisiana courts ruled that their congressional map was a racial gerrymander where black voters were not able to elect the necessary number of candidates of their choice. There weren't enough black opportunity districts, so to speak. It's the same thing that happened with Alabama, whose map is confirmed to be on for 2024. There will be a second black opportunity district stretching from Montgomery to Mobile, but onto Louisiana. Now you have now two black opportunity districts. And the two questions here is like, okay, was Louisiana going to go the Alabama route or were they going to go a different route and they decided not to go? The Alabama route, they decided not to fight it in federal court. They decided, okay, we're just going to get this over with. We're going to draw a second black opportunity district. We have a state senator who a lot of us are friendly with, and state senator Cleo Fields from, you know, if you're speaking, know, the perspective of a Louisiana state house or state Senate Republican, like you have a good relationship with Cleo Phillips. You won't mind him getting back to the congressional seat he held a few decades ago. And so they drew a district that stretches from Shreveport all the way to Baton Rouge. And can I say a couple of things? First off, that is very similar to a congressional district that was struck down in the mid 1990s in Louisiana state corps. That district stretched from Shreveport all the way to, like, West Baton Rouge.
[00:06:50] If you're a Democrat, that gives you pause. It's like, okay, Louisiana had rejected this sort of congressional map before.
[00:06:59] You have a lawsuit that's trying to throw out this map that's going through the state court system right now. And you don't know, like, if you're a Democrat, you're thinking, okay, Republicans did draw a black opportunity district, but were they trying to get it thrown out, is the thing. But the other thing I want to mention is how they drew the other districts, which I think is a very underrated story. So why did I mention Steve Scalise's name? Well, unfortunately, it has to do with the fact that he has blood.
[00:07:42] You know, wish him well.
[00:07:45] We're all praying for him to recover from the cancer and the treatment and whatnot. But someone was spreading rumors that Steve Scalise did not have long left and that someone was Representative Garrett Graves, who represents some of the arch conservative Baton Rouge suburbs.
[00:08:03] That certainly did not fly well with Louisiana Republicans. The other thing to know with Garrett Graves is that he endorsed Governor Jeff Landry's republican opponent in the Louisiana gubernatorial jungle primary, endorsed a different Republican, Scott Wagaspak. Wagaspak obviously flopped. Jeff Landry got a majority and ends up being governor. So now Jeff Landry has two reasons to punish Garrett Graves. You endorsed another republican candidate against Governor Landry, and now people are saying, oh, you're spreading salacious rumors about what Steve Scalis is going through. So Louisiana Republicans, they are ticked off and they're going to draw you out. And that is pretty much what happened. They combined the homes of Garrett Graves and Representative Julia Letlow from the Monroe area in northeast Louisiana, combined them into one district, drew it to where Julia Letlow has more of her home base than Garrett Graves does. And Julia Letlow, I mean, now she is there because. And this is another thing about Louisiana politics that's fascinating, is that oftentimes when a politician dies, their wives come in and come in and replace them, and they get a huge sympathy bonus in the vote. And that's pretty much what happened. Julia Letlow's husband, whose name, unfortunately, I cannot remember, he was elected to the seat and unfortunately passed away due to Covid. Just a few short weeks after, Julia Letlow ends up running in the know, and she goes gangbuster. She cleans up. I'm pretty sure she won every parish in that special election against the, you know, she is in the house. She is proven to be an electorally strong representative.
[00:09:56] I think that she definitely does have a future in not just Louisiana state politics. She could be A-U-S. Senator fairly comfortably, I think, once either of the two republican senators end up residing, whether that be John Kennedy, whether it be another one whose name I also cannot remember, for the love of God. But it will probably come to me at a later time in the podcast, which, if that's reminding you of anything, it'll be next week. I understand this is coming out a couple of days after everything that went on with Biden's documents and the whole memory thing and then the press conference that happened just less than an hour before recording. I'll give all my thoughts on all that next week, so stay tuned. I have a lot of thoughts on that. You will not want to miss it. What you also won't want to miss is what's been going on at the border, because usually when you talk about the border, you talk about, okay, republicans say the border is broken. We need to build a wall. We need to shut down the border, all this good stuff. And what was interesting to me is what happened at Eagle Pass over the past month. So Governor Greg Abbot, the Republican from Texas, has an operation lone star, where he's sending Texas state troops, Texas National Guard, Texas military department, and others to go to the border and in their eyes, secure it themselves.
[00:11:32] And part of what they did was they seized control of Shelby park. That is about a 40 acre, I believe, city park in Eagle Pass, Texas. It was haunted to a lot of festivals. It was a public park, but it was seized by the Texas National Guard and TNG TMD, and they've effectively stealed it off to most of the public, and they've been using that as sort of a staging ground for some of their operations.
[00:11:59] Now, the federal government and Border patrol end up getting into a situation where you have three migrants who are drowning in the Rio Grande and the border patrol says, we need to get to them. But the Texas National Guard denies them access, essentially as far as what DHS is saying.
[00:12:25] And those three migrants unfortunately know, may God rest their souls. And DHS essentially blamed Texas for the death of those migrants.
[00:12:36] And that's where the real story sort of started. So you had this letter, here's the crux of the story that really broke a couple of weeks ago. So you had a letter by Governor Greg Abbot after a Supreme Court ruling that essentially kind of slapped down Governor Greg Abbot and sort of the board of policy in that the federal government was allowed to cut wire at Shelby park and around the area.
[00:13:09] It didn't stop Texas from putting up the wire, but it just allowed the federal government to cut it down. Essentially that concertina wire that gets put up a lot at the border to try and prevent migrants from coming into the United States.
[00:13:24] So you have this ruling and Governor Abbot responds to it, essentially saying that, oh, this migrant crisis is an invasion and that we are going to defend our borders. We're going to use the constitution.
[00:13:39] If the federal government isn't going to protect these borders, we're going to protect these borders ourselves. We're going to take responsibility for our own security and just sort of rah rah thing to sort of rile up the base and say, well, I'm not backing. I'm going to do what I think is right for Texas voters. If you're from the perspective of Governor Abbot, if you're from the perspective of a lot of Democrats, you were thinking, did he just say that he was going to basically try to do a fort Sumter? Because what they viewed that as was defying a court order, which, yeah, Democrats were accusing Governor rabbit of essentially trying to create a nullification crisis. If you know anything about history, 1830, nullification crisis in South Carolina is about terrorists. With John Calhoun and all the major players of the time, that is now seen as one of the main events that would ultimately lead to the civil war. Three decades later, you have that nullification crisis. Or was it in 1850?
[00:14:56] Again, sometimes dates get mixed up, but the crux of it is, again, yeah, the nullification crisis that leads to the civil war. So Democrats were getting know and some Texas Democrats. You had Julian, I think was Julian Castro. I think Joaquin Castro did his. Joaquin, was it? Yeah, Joaquin Castro, Greg Cassar and Beta Warwick in particular called on President Biden to federalize the Texas National Guard and that would be a significant escalation. Let's just talk about some of the history of federalizing a state national guard. 1957, Little Rock nine. Arkansas Governor Orbal Favis essentially uses the Arkansas national guard to try and block the little Rock nine from integrating Central High school. So President Eisenhower, he sees this, and essentially the federal government just was not going to allow that to happen, especially with the Brownby Board of Education decision that came like a couple of years before that. The federal government saw that the governor of Arkansas was openly defying supreme court order and using a state national guard in order to enforce that defiance. So what they did is use your laws, use the Insurrection act, and federalize the state National Guard. And what that does is that puts them under direct control of the federal government. They take orders from the commander in chief and his affiliates, not from the governor. And so you now have a situation in which the National Guard in 1957, instead of blocking the Little Rock nine from going to the school, is now escorting them into the school. And if you know anything about the history of the fight for school integration, racial integration in the southern United States, it was a long, arduous, and, quite frankly, bloody process.
[00:17:05] And the fact that you have some Democrats saying that Abbot's dividing a Supreme Court order, federalize the Texas National Guard, I'm not sure what would happen after that, because there are a lot of ways where that could go very know, you federalize the Texas National Guard, what if guard members just refuse to take the president's orders? What if they still side with Abbot? Do you send in the military to sort of enforce it? Which this would be if they defied the Supreme Court order.
[00:17:37] Abbot didn't defy anything. I mean, he was just signaling that he was willing to defy a court order that would order Texas to not put up any more wire. But technically speaking, if you read the case, you read the decision. Abbot wasn't really defying anything. It was just sort of red meat for the base, in my opinion. So you have that situation that was developing. It is sort of on hold, like, what with the border talks that are still developing, that will be another one of the major topics I will discuss next week is what's been going on with Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and with the border and all the political finangling that's been going around because of that. And just sort of what I believe has been some of the most embarrassing, I mean, embarrassing days to be a House know, in this congress. And good lord, there have been a lot of embarrassing days to be a House know, I would be know if I didn't know the whole kicking your speaker out of the House because Matt Gates didn't like that he was referred to the House ethics committee.
[00:18:58] Know, unsightly accusations. Let's just say not going to get into any detail on what Gates may or may not have done, but they're pretty heinous. You can look at them yourself.
[00:19:11] But yeah, now that we do know since then, that was fueled by personal animus from Matt Gates towards obviously embarrassing, not being able to impeach Alejandro Majorcas because you couldn't count votes and didn't know that Representative Al Green was going to go right from intestinal surgery to vote against it. The Democrat from Texas, not great. Failing a rules vote on Israel because you didn't get the two thirds majority because the majority of Democrats think that you were selling out Ukraine, also not a good look for Mike Johnson, but I'll get more into that next week.
[00:19:58] Speaking of Congress, I'll get into after we discuss the primaries, because there's been a lot of news regarding the primaries, things that essentially have confirmed what I've thought about the primaries for a while and what I've been saying since I think season one, that this primary was never a real contest in the first place, that it was always going to be Joe Biden versus, you know, once we get after that, I'll talk about a lot of the congressional retirements that we have been seeing and what that could mean in regards to what it means for the future, what it says about the state of the House right now, especially in regards to the House Republicans. So primaries, since we left, there have been a few primary nominated contests. So let's talk about them, even though they again, only confirm what I've been saying for a while. So Iowa, Donald Trump wins, you know, not exactly great for any of the other candidates, Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley. I mean, when Trump and Vivek Ramaswami are getting a majority of the caucus vote in all but four counties besides Dallas county, which is a toss up server in county west of Des Moines, the other three are crucial democratic counties, part of the core democratic base. You had story, which is where Ames is. That's the University of Iowa State University. Apologies. You have Des Moines, which is the major urban center of the state. You have in Polk county and Johnson county. That's where Iowa City is. That's where the University of Iowa is, Hawkeye country. And it was also the only county to vote for Nikki Haley. Nikki Haley winning Johnson county by one single vote. People never let anybody say that your vote doesn't count, because we saw it in Alabama in 2018. Walt Maddox won this county, Tuscaloosa county, the one I'm recording from, by one vote in 2018 against Governor K. Ivey. And now we see another instance of a county being won by one single vote. Just to deny Donald Trump the sweep of all of Iowa's 99 counties. He only won 98. In fact, saying he only won 98 counties just proves how absolutely dominant that win was for Donald Trump. Ron DeSantis did better in rural areas than Nikki Haley did. That's why Ron DeSantis ended up getting second place. But Ron DeSantis, that is where I'm going to focus on again. Because if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you know that I do not think highly of Ron DeSantis as a political actor when it comes to running for president. I think he is one of the most uncharismatic, awkward, and sometimes downright boring candidates that we have seen in a long, long time. And I've thought for a while he has been one of the most spectacular flops that we have seen in the 21st century when it comes to people.
[00:23:17] Major candidates. Like, remember Ron DeSantis was beating Trump in one on one polls immediately after the 2022 midterms? Like, remember that people were saying that Ron DeSantis was going to be an extremely viable candidate that could win states that could pick off a lot of delegates, potentially make it a contested convention. At the very least, you had people, you had journalists saying that Trump might not win a single nominating contest because he was perceived to be responsible for the republicans blowing winnable election after winnable election in Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia. You know, the critical swing states of the election, including the five states that Joe Biden flipped from Donald Trump to win the election in 2020. And there was a time when people thought, legitimately thought Ron DeSantis would be the republican nominee in 2024. Now here we are in February of 2024, and does anybody even remember that guy exists anymore?
[00:24:33] I can't even pretend not to laugh that the utter car crash that was his presidential campaign.
[00:24:42] I knew from the moment you announced your presidential campaign on Twitter, now x now, I don't know what it's called anymore. All I know is that when you announce your campaign on a Twitter space, and the Twitter space is glitchy and has technical difficulties, you were kind of doomed from there. And Ron DeSantis knew it. He was thinking about staying in a fight until at least New Hampshire seeing where he goes. But he saw the poll numbers. We all saw. Ron DeSantis wasn't getting 10% of the vote in New Hampshire. He wasn't winning a single delegate. He saw the writing on the wall and did what any sensible person would do, and that was drop out of the race, which I can't blame him for.
[00:25:23] Know, it is something of a strategy that Nikki Haley has used. And we'll talk about this later.
[00:25:33] To where? Just trying to stay in this contest until a convention, just in case something happens to Donald Trump, whether he is convicted or whether he is incapacitated in a way that prevents him from running for president, I e dying, then you could maybe say, okay, I'm here, I won delegates. I've been competitive. Why don't you nominate me?
[00:26:03] But at the end of the day, after the Iowa thing, no mainstream media journalists took your campaign seriously.
[00:26:18] If I'm speaking to DeSantis as a candidate, no one took the candidacy seriously.
[00:26:24] A lot of outside observers, myself included, never took that candidacy seriously, especially after the Twitter space. And again, there were a lot, a lot of mishaps and mistakes and just downright idiocy that occurred under the sandisk campaign. Remember, y'all remember back when his staffers, the social media staffers, shared that groper Southern rod video? You had the know, just spinning around to seal the state of, like. Remember that?
[00:27:01] If y'all are terminally online, as I am, then think y'all will remember that. But if you don't, look it like it is emblematic of what happens when a campaign is too online for its own good. And that's what Ronda Santis is. He looks good to the online crowd, but put him in front of a group of actual people, put him in a group of, like, 30, 50 people, and he just freezes up. He just goes cold.
[00:27:30] He is Kwame Brown in the clutch. Like, absolute zero.
[00:27:36] I think Stephen A. Smith would concur with. Know everything that he said about Kwame Brown, I can say about DeSantis.
[00:27:45] Like, oh, dear God, that was one of the most, and I will repeat this because I think it bears repeating, that was one of the most heinously disastrous presidential campaigns of modern american politics.
[00:28:08] Unbelievable incompetence and hubris from top to bottom.
[00:28:15] You spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get 20% in Iowa.
[00:28:23] That is what Ronda Santis will be known for. Mr. 20% in Iowa.
[00:28:30] And you have people in DeSantis role saying, oh, he's pivoting to 2028. He's damaged goods now I understand it. He is stuck in an impossible position.
[00:28:41] If he waited until 2028, he probably would have passed up an opportunity, a successful opportunity in 2024, because he wouldn't have the same luster as he had in early 2023. Late 2022, he would be out of office potentially for a couple of years.
[00:29:03] He can't run free election again in 2026, I don't think.
[00:29:10] It's not like Ron DeSantis will be in all the national news cycles. He wouldn't be. And so he knew at the end of it that if he didn't run in 2024, he was probably going to be damaged goods in 2020 anyways.
[00:29:32] So I understand why he ran for in 2024. What I don't get are two things. One, why did he announce it so late? Because, remember, for a while, there was a lot of internal squabbling, like, should he announce? Shouldn't he announce? When do you announce? When don't you? And ultimately, I think you missed a moment. I think when Trump is in a state of weakness that he hasn't been in, I think at any point in the republican primary or the party saved for, I mean, that's an opportunity as a politician who is ambitious, you have to take it. And DeSantis just didn't take it. But the second part is, again, I honestly don't blame DeSantis for this at all, because he was stuck in a rock and a hard place. What was he on the campaign trial? Did he want to be Trump light? Did he want to be a more electable version of Donald Trump?
[00:30:34] He couldn't find his niche. And especially when you are as socially awkward as Ron DeSantis is, as I can attest to myself as someone who is socially awkward, if you can't find your niche early, if you can't define yourself early, then outside forces are going to define you. Meatball Ron Ronda, sanctimonious, were some of the nicknames used by not just Trump, but liberals as well, who were just mocking the Ron DeSantis campaign for perceived incompetences, as I'm describing. And this is just me saying that there are missteps from start to finish, and I legitimately have no idea where Ron DeSantis goes as far as national political ambitions. Maybe he wants to be a forest senator. Maybe he runs for Senate in 2026, I don't know. But it just simply was not a good campaign in the loosest of senses.
[00:31:39] And this campaign, if it isn't about Donald Trump, it is about the spectacular rise and astronomical fall of Ron DeSantis as a national figure. So then you move on to New Hampshire, and this is where the Democrats finally start to get involved. So now you have a primary that, quite frankly, on the democratic side, because let's get over this. First, it does not count. The New Hampshire primary as of right now does not count because it violated DNC bylaws by being first in the nation. The DNC calendar had New Hampshire's primary somewhere at the back of the line because it's not exactly a diverse state. It's like over 90% white or something like that. And also, Joe Biden wanted to reward the people who helped get him the democratic nomination in the first place, I. E. Jim Clyburn, the representative from South Carolina. And so South Carolina is first on the official DNC calendar. New Hampshire prides itself of being in the first nation primary. So they threw a hissy fit, a massive hissy fit, and decided, you know what, we're going to run the primary anyways. We don't care what the DNC thinks. And DNC is like, okay, well, this primary is just not going to count for any delegates and also is, you know, banned from running in this primary because, again, it's not sanctioned by the DNC. So you have this weird situation in New Hampshire where Joe Biden was down on the ballot, but a ton of, again, this war, including Marion Williamson and Dean Phillips, you had this really late, really weak ceasefire now campaign, which, you know, looked to campaign for an end to the war in Gaza, and that ends, know, underperforming Donald Trump as a write in in the democratic primary. Jesus Christ. Anyways, what happened as far as that went? Well, Joe Biden won all but like one town, and he won over well over 60% of the vote. Dean Phillips got about 20% to get beat by 40 points by a riot in candidate. I don't care if he's the president, but this is a president who has base turnout problems. He has base enthusiasm problems, with New Hampshire being one of the states where you expect higher turnout.
[00:34:18] The fact that six in ten Democrats who voted in that primary decided it was worth their time to go in and write in, I mean, I think that speaks to the unseriousness of the democratic candidates on the.
[00:34:37] And I'll go to South Carolina in a moment to speak my piece further on. But like, again, Dean Phillips and Miriam Williamson are just not serious candidates, and they never were. But let's focus on the republican primary, because this was a primary people thought, it's higher, college educated, a lot of more center leading democrats might decide to cross over and vote for, you know, same thing with independence. Don't like, know, or they either like Haley or want to send a message to Donald Trump. They want to cross over into the Republican Party itself. And so a situation where people thought, you know, Nikki Haley might actually be competitive. And then some of the polls came in, saw Trump was winning by landslide, and like, okay, yeah, no, this is not happening. But Nikki Haley did overperform the polls. Too bad she still lost by eleven points in New Hampshire, where there are probably a not insignificant amount of liberals who voted in that republican primary for Haley to stop Trump.
[00:35:47] And that, if nothing else, not only did it say, okay, Nikki Haley is not going to win a single contest and she's probably going to, outside of maybe DC, I think she still has a shot at winning DC. But outside of that, you've got no chance anywhere else saying, for the love of God, she just lost the Virgin Islands caucuses, like 74% to 26%. That's how that's gotten for the Nikki Haley campaign. We'll go into Nevada later. But to see the best chance Nikki Haley had to not to win, and Donald Trump still won that state convincingly in the like. Yeah, that means, yeah, Trump has got the nomination on lock. Unless he dies.
[00:36:35] The other thing that this showed me was that New Hampshire is not exactly going to be competitive. And if it is, Joe Biden lost the election a long time ago.
[00:36:46] You see a lot of these towns, remember, 43%, I think it was like, 43. 44% of that vote went for Nikki Haley or something along those lines.
[00:37:03] How many of those people are going to vote for Joe Biden over Donald Trump in the general election? Because the towns where Nikki Haley tended to do better in were not only more democratic towns, but also towns with higher college education rates, like you saw on the seacoast. Like, even in the towns, you're not winning these narrow Trump towns, you're still getting 404-5474, 8% in some instances. And these are the areas where now you are in a situation where it's like, okay, these people do not want Trump as a nominee.
[00:37:43] If you consult the Des Moines ridership poll that Anne Seltzer runs in Iowa, as far as the Nikki Haley voters, which comprised 19% of that caucus electorate, when she asked Nikki Haley voters who they were going to vote for, if it was between Biden and Trump, 20% picked Trump, 43% picked Biden.
[00:38:07] How high is that number in New Hampshire?
[00:38:12] Because if that is anywhere close to the Iowa numbers, then it just speaks to the sort of persuasion that Democrats have gotten against the MAGA GOP over the past couple of years in 2022, after the Dobbs decision came out and pretty much onwards until, until now.
[00:38:38] As of the time this episode is coming out, we're going to be like three days until a special election in a competitive congressional district, New York steroid congressional district. You have the former representative Thomas Dewaltzi, the Democrat running against a Nassau county legislature, Slater by the name of Mossy Billup, the Republican. And that race, as well as what I've talked about earlier in season two of the special elections and whatnot, and what they as an average can pretend to in terms of the national environment, those elections will be very illuminating and sort of seeing this persuasion effect continue, or is it stopping? And if so, why?
[00:39:21] And right now, you can't tell me that a significant chunk of those Nikki Haleyers are not going to cross over and vote for Biden. They are. They're going to cross over.
[00:39:31] And you can call New Hampshire pretty early. You could what with the how towns release polls, because some towns close an hour earlier than others. You have a lot of these really narrow, Trump won towns, and you're starting from a seven point gap around that. If you're a Republican, if you're losing a lot of those Darryl Trump one towns, particularly along the seacoast, like, a lot of those towns are shifting left, but they're still lean Republican. If Biden's winning any of those or a good chunk of those or anything like, like you can call Nevada almost immediately after those polls close.
[00:40:16] And I know it sounds taboo because I know recently New Hampshire has been thought of as a competitive state, and it still is on the state level, don't get me wrong.
[00:40:25] But as far as the presidential like, I would not be surprised whatsoever if Joe Biden won New Hampshire by double digits. In fact, I'm expecting it. And that primary was the main indicator for me as like, okay, Donald Trump has a massive, massive problem with center right republicans in New Hampshire. And there's nothing that indicates that he's going to be able to win a significant chunk of like. And if he's not able to, he is cooked in that state. Absolutely cooked.
[00:40:58] Speaking of being cooked, Nikki Haley.
[00:41:02] Oh, lord.
[00:41:05] Oh, lord. Nikki Haley. Look, I get that Nevada was weird. You had a state sanctioned primary and a party sanctioned caucus. That is happening literally as I speak.
[00:41:18] And as of right now, we don't know the results of the state caucuses, but we will once this episode comes out, and Donald Trump's going to win them with well over 90% of the vote.
[00:41:34] It's not surprising. Like, the only other actual candidate he's running against is Ryan Binkley, some random megachurch passer from the Dallas Fort Worth metro.
[00:41:44] And, yeah, let's talk about this primary. The state sanctioned primary. This primary didn't count for any delegates.
[00:41:54] Nikki Haley was, I think, one of the only active candidates on that ballot. The only major candidate on the ballot.
[00:42:02] The candidate, not the option. The candidate who got the second most votes in that primary was Mike Pence.
[00:42:12] Mike Pence. Tim Scott finished third.
[00:42:18] Do you want to know what percent of the vote Nikki Healy got?
[00:42:21] She got 130 percent.
[00:42:24] 30%. You lost to none of these candidates by 32 points.
[00:42:32] Do you realize how absolutely done you have to be in a party where a majority of the vote is going to none of these candidates?
[00:42:44] Seriously, y'all, what was Nikki Haley doing in Nevada? I know they wrote it off, but Trump was running in the other.
[00:42:57] The. Clearly, the republican base does not want Nikki Haley to be the nominee. They want Trump to be the nominee. And they expressed that through protest voting in a primary, which, again, did not matter for delegate counting.
[00:43:12] It didn't matter. And Haley still lost it at 32 points.
[00:43:17] Like, I was expecting that to be competitive. I was not expecting an absolute landslide. If you all watch Nevada politics, you all remember Governor Brian Sandofal, the very popular Montreal Republican. In 2014, there was a democratic primary. There was a lot of candidates, and none of them ended up getting above 30%, and neither did none of these candidates. But none of these candidates got the most votes.
[00:43:47] And the candidate that ended up winning that primary, they ended up getting nominated, I think, lost the sand of all the. Well over 40 points or something crazy like that.
[00:43:58] That was absolutely insane.
[00:44:03] So you got to understand the levels of just. You're done. You have to be to even lose to none of these cats, let alone by over 30 points.
[00:44:16] Over 30 points.
[00:44:19] How?
[00:44:20] Just how?
[00:44:24] And another thing, this also confirms washoo where Reno and sparse are going to trend left again, because that's where Nikki Haley did the best in those know, college educated Republicans who really do not like Donald Trump.
[00:44:39] And most of them would rather vote for Joe Biden than vote for Trump. They hate Trump so much, you're willing to pull the lever from Biden.
[00:44:47] Like that scenario, you got to watch and proves, again, Donald Trump's weakness in those areas. But let's move on to the democratic primary. We're going to go a bit out of order. We're going to stay in Nevada. And Joe Biden gets 90% of the vote. Pretty much his main protest vote is in rural, lighter, more non college educated electorates, more moderate to conservative electorates. Some of those Democrats were already voting for Republicans anyways.
[00:45:19] The areas where Biden has had trouble as far as relative to the state's lien, and we're talking about the worst case scenario if you're in New Hampshire, is like Biden by 40 in the primary as a writing candidate, mind you, you have rural Nevada, which casts precisely, like ten votes, probably southwestern New Hampshire, which is again wider, more moderate, low college educated, didn't swing to Joe Biden all that much in 2020. And northwest South Carolina, which is again a wider, lower college educated.
[00:46:01] If we pivot to South Carolina for a moment, where Joe Biden, I think at like 96% of the vote, which these are margins you usually only see in dictatorships. And Joe Biden's eclipse some of those margins in the South Carolina democratic primary. Granted, these are low turnout primaries.
[00:46:22] We can't gauge everything off of just one primary, especially in an uncompetitive one, such as what we're seeing in 2024.
[00:46:29] But if you're looking for protest votes, you might have to watch Michigan. Like Dearborn, hamtramic areas with high arab american, muslim american populations. They're going to probably vote a lot for uncommitted because they're angry about Biden's policies for guards to Israel, gossip, Palestine and whatnot.
[00:46:50] But besides those areas, those areas haven't voted and think the in person early voting is like, the early voting is like starting a little bit. I think know the primaries haven't concluded in Michigan, but outside of there, where have we seen protest voting? Like, I can't really find you. Like, again, Biden's problems, like, the areas where he's gotten the least amount of votes are wider areas, more lower college educated areas, areas which haven't swung as much to the left for Joe Biden, or even swung to the right in some areas, which proves a couple things. One, like primaries, uncompetitive primaries. Their main purpose is to sort of say, okay, in which areas are the major party nominees struggling with? In Donald Trump's case, it's a continuation in 2020, college educated suburban voters. In Joe Biden's case, it's non college educated rural voters, particularly non college educated, rural white voters.
[00:47:56] Because you saw in South Carolina, his best counties were usually the blackest, like areas like Williamsburg and Berg, and I think like Culliton, Jasper, Abville, and areas like that.
[00:48:11] Some of the other counties, counties like, they were given like 97, 96, 98%. It was surreal.
[00:48:22] And so if there's any problem with Biden, it's probably enthusiasm, because not a lot of people are enthusiastic about voting for Biden, but that doesn't mean they're going to pull the lever for another candidate, especially people that are as unserious as Marion Williamson and Dean Phillips. If you want to talk about how unserious the Marion Williamson campaign was, the only reason they stayed in the race till Nevada. That campaign stayed in the race till Nevada was just despite some random Twitter, anonymous twitter account called organizer memes, who had infiltrated a post New Hampshire meeting where Marion Williamson was pretty much openly saying she was going to drop out. And you had a whole online storm afterwards to where essentially what happened was organizer memes. This account, it's a democratic account, works in democratic politics. We don't know their identity.
[00:49:20] They sort of infiltrate this meeting. They sort of join in and sort of live tweet it. Marianne's people are not happy when the live tweet of her announcement gets dropped and the ensuing Twitter storm that follows, suing storm of just wild developments that goes on. Eventually, Marianne's staff pretty much convinces her to stay in the race because of this moment.
[00:49:46] But in Williamson, you know, falls behind none of these candidates. You lost none of these candidates. Marianne, for the love of.
[00:49:59] Thus, you know, the writing was on the wall and Marianne Williamson has ultimately dropped out of the race.
[00:50:06] Speaking of people who should drop out of the race, though, Dean Phillips, what is your end game here? I'm legitimately asking. It's not the fact that you're running a Kickstarter campaign against Joe Biden. It's all but doom to like, I understand why it's running. He's looking at the polls. He's terrified by them. He's like, joe Biden cannot beat. His opinion is Joe Biden cannot beat Donald Trump. And so I have to run, if nothing else to illuminate that fact. But, dude, if you're trying to show dissent within the democratic base, your best performance is 20% against a rite in, a rite in effort that was not even officially endorsed by the Biden campaign itself, mind you, and you lost by over 40 points to that.
[00:50:57] And that's the most you can show. You didn't even make it on the ballot in Nevada because, whoops, you forgot to file before the deadline, which think any major presidential candidate should be able to understand what filing deadlines are. But that's just my opinion. I mean, I'm no expert on presidential politics or finances, know how to run a campaign, but I would assume competent advisors would understand. You want to get on every state's ballot. Like Dean Phillips can't even do, like, what is going on. And again, what is your like? If you're trying to show this dissent, you're not showing anything. You finished behind Marianne Williamson in South Carolina.
[00:51:39] Think about that.
[00:51:41] You finished behind the orb lady. You are a congressman from Minnesota who won a formerly red district in 2018. Yes, you were carried by a blue wave, but still, is this what your careers come to, Dean, generally asking, was this what your careers come to? Is this what you're going to be known for?
[00:52:07] Instead of being known for having effective constituent services in suburban Minneapolis, suburban Hennepitt county? Instead of all that, instead of being known as an effective congressman, you're going to be known as someone who once ran a campaign against Joe Biden and visibly failed. Even though Joe Biden is unpopular and is having enthusiasm problems, you're clearly not giving those who aren't enthused to vote for Joe Biden Biden a reason to vote for.
[00:52:37] Like, there was this one thing that I think illuminated it. Like, he showed up to an event in South Carolina once. No one was there.
[00:52:46] Literally no one was there in New Hampshire. He was speaking to a bunch of people who were holding up riding Biden signs. You cannot make this up.
[00:53:00] It's almost tragic. It's almost a sad tale. Like he's a lone soldier charging into enemy lines, knowing that he's probably not going to make it out of battle.
[00:53:12] It is almost tragic in a way. But, Dean, you did this to yourself.
[00:53:20] I don't know if you were like, if sort of Bill Ackman's been carrying you in one direction or the other or whatever, there was this weird time. We were like, okay, I'm down with the kids. I'm with Medicare for all, $15 an hour minimum wage. And then Bill Ackman comes along, donates a million dollars to your campaign, and all of a sudden it's like, Claudine Gay should have been fired.
[00:53:43] Fired and sort of agreeing with them in regards to sort, know, not really anti Dei, but questioning Dei initiatives. Which, speaking of, that's one thing that's getting targeted by Alabama Republicans probably in this next legislative session, which is another thing we're going to focus on next week. We're actually starting next week on the Alabama legislative session because it is in session right now as of this moment. And lots of bills have been filed. We'll give you all a lot of the most important ones, including SB one, in regards to voting rights and absentee ballots and whatnot. But that's a conversation for another time. So to cap off this whole primary thing, this has proved again that Joe Biden is going to be the democratic nominee, Donald Trump is going to be the republican nominee. It's going to be one of the longer general election campaigns in american history, around nine months or so.
[00:54:40] And I think the sooner we internalize this, the better. The american public is starting to internalize this. But a lot of people still are, for whatever reason, holding out hope that this is not going to be the case. This is going to be the case.
[00:54:54] Sooner we accept this, the more informed citizens I think, that we will be. Speaking of being informed, is anybody trying to make sure that the door is not hitting a lot of these congresspeople on the way out?
[00:55:12] Because right now we're on a path of retirement similar to 2018 and 2020.
[00:55:22] I get the House is a miserable place.
[00:55:25] What I've discussed earlier with all this House drama, House not having a speaker for like a couple of weeks and a lot of things having to be voted on because of suspension of the rules, the House GOP caucus being in not exactly the best of order. And I understand, you know, Thursday, Kathy Morris Rogers, she's the chair of a House committee in regards to energy and commerce, and she resigned.
[00:56:00] She is not running for reelection. She didn't resign, actually. She's not running for reelection, though basically retiring. She's in her 50s. She could have a decade of or two of this.
[00:56:17] And the fact that she's willing to go now is not indicative of a healthy work environment. Patrick McHenry, he's viewed as one of the more workaholic Republicans, more policy oriented Republicans. He's retiring, like he was mentioned as actually Kevin McCorphy's first choice to succeed him as speaker. He didn't want the job. He's like, nope, I'm gone. I'm gone. I'm out.
[00:56:45] There have been a lot of other retirement, you know, to run for us Senate. Katie Porter, the Democrat from California, being a really good example of that. And she's probably not going to win because let's be honest, it's going to be Adam Schiff, another House member running for Senate in California. And Barbara Lee is in the same boat. She's House member of California running for the Democratic primary for US Senate. She's not going to win. It's going to be Adam Schiff. So you have people running for the usual things.
[00:57:16] I completely understand that.
[00:57:18] But you have, like Brian Higgins. This is the thing that caught me. Brian Higgins retiring from the House. Like resigning to take a job at a local theater company? Pretty much, yeah.
[00:57:36] The House really must be a toxic environment to work in if people are just leaving for local opportunities. Bill Johnson, the Republican from Ohio, he left to become the president of Youngstown State University. There's a lot more in between there.
[00:57:50] I don't know. It's weird. And for whatever reason, just a lot of people are retiring or resigning or not running for reelection because they just don't want to be in the House anymore. And honestly, with everything that's gone out of there, can't exactly blame them.
[00:58:07] Speaking of people getting shown the door, Rana Romney McDaniel, the RNC chair, was reported a few days ago as essentially getting forced out by Trump. She plans to step down from the RNC chair position, and in her place is probably going to be Michael Watley. He is the head of the North Carolina GOP. He has said that, falsely, that Donald Trump had somehow won the election. He didn't. Joe Biden won in 2020, and that is Trump's pick to sort of lead the RNC into 2024. So I have a few thoughts on this. First off, replacing the national committee chairperson in an election year is not exactly great, I don't think, for the continuity and competency of a party's electoral apparatus, not just for president, but Ralph Senate and everywhere below and in between. Secondly, it's not like the new North Carolina GOP is in good straits financially.
[00:59:02] It has about $280,000 cash on hand, has about $70,000 of debt. You have just over $200,000 of pure liquidity.
[00:59:13] And considering the North Carolina Democrats have nearly 4 million of dollars of that, not great when they're trying to flip state, that's not great at all. And it's also not great when you realize that the Republican National Committee, if you look at the FEC filings that were filed, I think last week, that was the weakest true fundraising period that Republicans have had in two and a half decades, adjusted for inflation. Now, I get it the year before an election year is always pretty weak in terms of donations.
[00:59:49] But still, the RNC has, I think, I think they raised like 8 million or something. And I think they have like six or so million on hand.
[01:00:03] Actually, no, they have 8 million on hand, and I think they're like 2 million in debt. So 6 million in true liquidity.
[01:00:12] Meanwhile, the Democrats have outfundraised you. They have a lot more cash on hand. I think the DNC is like three times more cash on hand than you know, considering the state of these local state parties. Michigan, Colorado, Arizona, Minnesota and some other state parties are going to North Carolina. North Carolina is usually totally competent, but they're falling on some financial hard times.
[01:00:37] Those parties are in a lot of dire straits. That is a conversation I will continue for another time. This has been pulse of the nation, episode one and season three. I am Brandon Vick and we will be back next Saturday. Thank you for watching and we are taking the pulse of the nation.
[01:01:02] 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.
