Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Wvuafm, 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.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Hello everybody and welcome to season four, episode seven of Pulse of the Nation at the late of the week, but it's time the Post Election Analysis so Donald Trump is the president elect. Again. It does a flashback to 2016. Donald Trump gets what is a pretty shocking victory, sweeping pretty much all the swing states. He swept all the swing states, right. He got more Electoral college votes than he did in 2016 and he added a state in Nevada that he didn't get in 2016. He won all the swing states. To be fair, the most likely outcome was going to be a sweep either way. And it just seems like Donald Trump got the sweep and he got like I think 312 electoral votes or something like that. To Kamala Harris is 226, the vice president going down. And what really is a defeat for the Biden administration, what this clearly was just looking at all these states, it was a repudiation of the Biden administration, it was a repudiation of Biden nomics and really just nothing more, to be completely honest.
Just looking at where the swings were and you know, the fact that the, you know, the swings were a lot worse for Democrats in safe blue states that have since turned competitive than in the, you know, actual swing states because Democrats did all right relative to the national environment in a state like Georgia, in a state like North Carolina or even like a Wisconsin.
But severely, severely disappointing for Democrats, especially losing Nevada. But in losing Arizona, I mean, Donald Trump, I mean his final political race that he's running himself is going to be a decisive victory. It's the biggest victory he's ever going to have.
And it'll be him as president. It will be J.D. vance as Vice president. In the Senate. Republicans obviously took control of the Senate. Their big win was Dave McCormick. That race hasn't technically been called yet because it's still a very close race within half a percent. You have provisional ballots to go through, but there is not enough. Dave McCormack, the Republican nominee, is going to take down longtime Democratic Senator Bob Casey. And what has to be the upset of the night on upset of the cycle on the Senate side, Republicans have about 53 Senate seats, 52, because J.D. vance's seat is getting vacated while to see who Gov. Mike DeWine appoints to fill that, you know, to fill that term, which that term lasts until 20th till 2028, for what it's worth. So that will be up in a. The next presidential election cycle. But yeah. So obviously the flips in Montana and Ohio, I did call those. I did not expect at all that obviously Trump would win or that Dave McCormick would win in Pennsylvania. However, Republican Senate can especially down ballot, considering the environment. You had up ballot, which is going to end up around being Republican by one and a half to two points. Which what? Donald Trump is going to win the national popular vote, by which I'll get to that in a second.
The Republicans severely underperformed in most areas. The top of the ticket, Democratic incumbents in Nevada, Wisconsin won and open seats in Michigan and Arizona. Ruben Kerry Lake. Oh my God, Kerry Lake. Donald Trump won the state of Arizona very comfortably in 2024.
And we'll just look up the presidential race. I don't know how the late ballots have affected things in Tono. I haven't looked just yet. But Donald Trump is winning that state by about five and a half percent. That's a huge victory. Returning to 2016 style environment, how did Kari Lake lose?
She's gonna end up losing. Ruben Geiger is getting a majority of the vote. You know that.
How did Gary Lake. Because Donald Trump gets 52.2% and Gary Lake only gets 47.7%.
Jesus Christ on a stick. How did you blow that?
That's again what I was talking about, these down ballot races. Republican Party has blown so many races by having just low tier candidates and I'm not sure how. And then just an overview of the US House that was called, I think just, just on Thursday afternoon actually. So the day before we ended up recording this. So that House thing has been called so we can say the Republicans have a trifecta, which I remember I said was possible. I said anything was possible from Republican trifecta to a Democratic trifecta. And we got the form.
Well, I say we got the former. We'll talk about cabinet appointments in the second half of this episode. Right now I just want to talk about the election.
So what happened is really the sentiment of the Democratic Party and the feeling around the party is that they got the butts kicked. Just plain and simple. Donald Trump, the man who they've been fighting for, fighting against for nine years at this point, ever since he came down and escalated fighting against him for nine years, nine years they've been calling him fascist, they've been calling him authoritarian, a danger to American values and security and all that jazz. And what ends up happening, the conclusion of this electoral fight the last race Donald Trump runs is the biggest win Republicans have. Donald Trump won the popular vote. Like, this isn't 2016 where you can say, oh, well, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. The majority of Americans don't want this. Donald Trump might go under 50% of the vote, but combine that with RFK Jr. Who he just nominated to be the next Secretary of Health and Human Services, and I'll get into that later.
Donald Trump, I mean, clearly the majority of the American public, or at the very least the prolly of the American public, sided with Trump.
Like, that's it.
And what do you do?
I mean, like, what do you even do not. I'm not just talking about, you know, the politicians or how they're going to respond, and I'll get to that in a second.
But as far as the Democratic base is concerned, as far as the people who are tuned into this stuff, who hate Donald Trump's guts, would do anything to stop him.
Now that you know in this election that the American people sided with Trump, what do you even do?
Like, where does, you know, where does apathy take you?
Because I don't know if it's apathy, but a lot of what I've heard just in, in person and online, you know, and online, in the online square, it's just, well, as far as really the Democratic base reaction to it, if they want Trump, they can have them. You know, there's been a lot of talk about how, you know, you know, people, you know, pretty much telling people like, hey, you voted for this guy, you're gonna vote for everything that comes along with it. And really it's just like with. And this is not my opinion. All right, Just letting you know, this is not my opinion.
I'm just relaying what I've been hearing a lot of it's like, well, it's just like, well, this country deserves what's coming to it. That's the opinion, I think, of a lot of Democrats. Like, well, country voted for them, they'll get them and we'll see what exactly that entails over the next four years. It's going to be quite the time. And by the way, Springs Messrs. I'm still doing Pulse of the Nation. So we're gonna be going through all that happens during really the first half year of the second Trump administration and all the drama that comes with that, trust me, I will keep you covered in all that because it is going to be quite the ride. And if this continues after next semester, whoever picks this up, they're gonna be in for a wild ride too. So yeah, we'll see. But as far as the Democratic Party is concerned, because obviously every four years the losing party, you know, oh, you have to do some soul searching. Oh, what happened? And that is especially true for in this hyper polarized era where you're like, we completely hate the other party and we want them to fail electorally. And we, you know, within this hyper polarized era, it's like, oh, this party is completely opposite to my goals. It's completely opposite to what I want America to look like. And when you lose, you know, especially in this age, you gotta start thinking like, well, why? And how can we make sure this never happens again? And there's been a lot of talk in the Democratic Party about that. How do we change, how do we change your branding? How do we change our messaging? What do you do going for?
I'll give just my take. I think this was a couple things, just mainly thermostatic public opinion. And I'll tell you why. That's just people hate the people in power. This has been true for two decades. So this has been true as long as I've been alive. People just hate the people in power to throw the bombs out.
And really that's just what it's been. Five straight presidential elections, 2008-2012-2016-2020 and 2024. The incumbent party has lost support in all five of those elections.
So it really is the people are dissatisfied and want change no matter what, no matter what parties in power and all that.
People are mad and they want change.
And the second part of it is related to that as far as the messaging is concerned, people are dissatisfied and want change. Well, Donald Trump tapped in more in that anger than the Democrats did. And well, if you're in a safe state, especially if you're a person of color because Democrats lost a lot, especially, especially Latino and Asian voters.
If you're going to vote on the economy, you know, you really do not like Joe Biden or his administration, especially on the economy. You want prices lowered. And a lot of them chose Trump and we'll see if that's going to be a new base that, you know, you know, Republicans can compete for or if this is just a four year blip, if this is just, oh well, we're mad at the incumbents, we're gonna vote for the anti incumbent party and whatnot. And I will say this, that Democrats do definitely, you know, assuming they're assuming worst case scenarios don't come to pass for the Democratic Party that you know, 2026 should be at least getting the House back, depending on the numbers that we are seeing that y'all go for the House in a minute. Some of the bigger losses and upsets, some races aren't called because California is California and Jesus Christ, the amount of time they take to count their ballots is honestly unacceptable in my opinion anyways. But really what it was, it was a top to bottom butt kicking. New Jersey is a competitive state now. Harris got held under a six point margin of victory by Donald Trump. Like that is indisputable. Illinois, Harris is going to win that at just over 10 points. New Hampshire, Minnesota were very competitive this time around. New Mexico somehow held up pretty well. I'm not sure how given the demographics of New Mexico. Maybe the New Mexico Republicans are uniquely incompetent, who knows?
But you know, look, you know, even all of New England except for Maine, for whatever reason, you know, Democrats lost significant ground.
You know, New York Democrats lost huge ground. It was only a few points bluer than it was in 2022, for God sakes.
You know, and what it is, is I think a reckoning is a blue state governance too, because you're attaching Joe, Bonnie, you're attaching Kamala Harris to the blue state governors that are all unpopular and what that entails, as far as, you know, the primaries that are going to happen in the cities, New York City, New York City, 2025. I'm telling you, that is going to be such a show and I swear to God, I swear to God, I'm going to put this out there right now that I think it's going to end up happening. I think Angel Cuomo is going to become the next mayor of New York City. I genuinely think that's what's going down. I genuinely think that's what's going down. Because we are in the timeline where politics is a meme. Like Donald Trump has put Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in charge of doge, the Department of Governmental Efficiency, named after a literal Internet meme. Politics is a meme and we're going to take you right through it.
And in about 15 minutes, I'll go through a lot of like the cabinet positions and part of the strategical, you know, issues that I have with what Donald Trump has been doing isn't even related to any policy or anything like that. This is just based off of who they're appointing and what previous jobs they held or what jobs they have right now. But we have 15 minutes to get through before that so the Democratic Party, as I have said previously, has a lot of questions to ask itself in a lot of positions to fill. It's the Democratic National Committee. The chairman, Jamie Harris of the South Carolina is expected not to run for reelection. There's a lot of people that could be there. Thankfully, Phil Murphy, he was rumored, the governor of New Jersey was rumored there, thankfully, at least in my opinion, he is not going to be the next DNC chair. He's not expected to run because I believe personally if Phil Murphy would be the next DNC chair, we would probably, we as in the Democratic Party would probably lose New Jersey in 2025 because Phil Murphy is not that popular whatsoever. I mean he is basically you're responding to, you're responding to what was a safe blue and most safe blue states, a repudiation of blue state governance. With that era of blue state governance, that's just, that's just not going to happen. So what you want with the DNC chair is want fundraising. You want them to get off of Twitter and not argue with, you know, Twitter accounts with 100 or less followers. That's not what a DNC chair should be doing, in my opinion. And you also want them to have a 50 state strategy because clearly the Democratic Party needs a Howard Dean type of figure. He wanted to do a 50 state strategy. Guess you were 20 years too early considering the losses they took in a lot of blue states. Washington, for whatever reason, wasn't one of them. It's so funny because I was talking about the Washington primary, if you refer to some of my previous episodes, how it pointed to an environment very similar to the left of 2020 and Washington is going to be one of the states that might end up swinging to the left. Like maybe the only state and maybe D.C. that ends up swinging to the left from 2020. Because of course it did. Apparently the Washington primary is a good indicator for Washington, just not anywhere else. And I genuinely interested as to why that is. Maybe because, you know, Bob Ferguson didn't have to heart of Italy getting elected to be the next Washington governor. I mean, Democrats have held Washington's governorship for like four decades at this point. It's the longest Democratic streak of state governance in the nation. I mean, an Oregon Democrat settled up well. They flipped the House seat and Janelle Biden beat Lori Chavez De Riemann for the third time in her career. First it was in state, in state government, in the state legislature. Now it is for the federal legend legislature. Janelle Bynum beat Lori Chavez during us A flip for The Democratic Party.
So there are some good news to go around for Democrats. Jared golden somehow survived in the second district against NASCAR driver and Maine state Representative Austerio. I'm genuinely not sure how that happened. It was just, oh, Jared Gordon, I guess him completely running away from Biden, not saying, oh, he's going to vote. I guess that worked. I guess. Speaking of blue dogs that survived, Marie Gluson Camp Perez pretty much destroyed Joe Kent. What had to be a pretty substantially Trump dish. Trump won district. I mean, Marie Lucan Perez, she was going to end up winning about four points. Last time I checked over Joe Kent. Joe just needs to be blackballed from running in any election ever again because how do you lose a Trump district twice?
I mean, Alaska Republicans responded to Sarah Palin's failure by nominating Nick Bagich. And Bagich is going to probably end up winning that race over Mary Pultola. Which considering, you know, Governor Mike Dunleavy might be heading off somewhere, that could give Mary Pultola a free run at Lt. Governor Nancy Dahlstrom. So there's something to watch for 2026. But Mary Pultola likely to be out of the House. Alaska, going back to the Republican Party, it's just Donald Trump swung it like six, seven points. Right. And the national environment is too much for a lot of these candidates. It ran good races but for the Democratic Party, but the national environment was too Republican for them to win this time around.
And that's really how it was.
You know, you run a, you know, that's what happens in campaigns sometimes. Sometimes you run a good race, a lot better race than your opposition. But partisan par. But national partisanship just takes over sometimes and that will happen. Now in the state of Alabama, there was not much to report on. Marengo county did flit red by four points and Madison county stayed at about its 2020 partisanship. So both went red. But now Alabama 2nd Congressional District was a win for the Democratic Party. Montgomery county was crucial. This because I don't think it had any major shifts, maybe like a couple points to the right. And that allowed Shamari figures to defeat. You know, Caroline Dobson in the 2nd district was a pretty comfortable margin of victory too. Once Montgomery came in, this is what we were waiting for. Oh, Montgomery is going to come in and shamar figure is going to end up pulling ahead. And that's what ended up happening. Flip for the Democratic Party because of, you know, the supreme court case Allen vs. Billigan that is apparently getting relitigated next semester. So that will obviously be something to watch. But for Now, Democrats have two U.S. house representatives in the state of Alabama. They're going to have two in Louisiana as well. Cleo Fields used to represent a similar district three decades ago. He's very young then. He's a lot older now. He's a pretty popular state senator. He got over 50%. He ends up winning in the first round in Louisiana 6th congressional district stretching from Shreveport to Baton Rouge. It was there was, it was done to draw out Garrett Graves. Louisiana Republicans didn't want to incur all those legal costs as I've explained before and Clear Fields is popular with both parties. So like oh, let's just draw him a district, just let him run and get him promoted to the U.S. house. And also draw Garrett Grace because he has beef with the Louisiana state legislative Republicans and with Governor Jeff Landry. So you're essentially killing two birds with one stone there.
So the House was decided it was Arizona 6th congressional district Juan Cisco Monte, first term incumbent Beats back Kristen Engel again in another close race. Siskamani held in the 50% but the green Party candidate put up enough splinter votes and Siskamai is able to win with the plurality. Can Calvert go to majority because California California's jungle primary rules and only that the top two candidates from a primary get to advance their general and Calvert once again defeats Will rollins in California's 41st district. Arizona 6 is southeast Arizona Tucson suburbs and California's 41st district is a bunch of Riverside county, you know, Palm Springs and areas out west that are really really to the west of district that are really really Republican. So those two holds were enough to give the Republicans the House majority. Still some races left to be decided. The two that I am focusing on California's 13th district. Just yesterday the Democratic nominee Adam Gray got a huge boost out of Stanislaus county for whatever reason. You know, you know John Duarte, the Republican incumbent was looking really good on the 13th. This is the Central Valley part of the district Stance Law and Merced counties if you're interested in California geography. Those are two of the major counties in there. And Adam Gray's home is Merced and he's doing pretty terribly there honestly considering you know, partisanship and considering you know, everything else he's post as sort of a home county effect that really hasn't happened. Stanislaus came in with a huge, you know, great but like 19 ballot drop that his put Duarte's lead down to 1% in that race against Adam Gray. So that race is now still too close to call. I was Getting ready to say Duarte would win that. But one race I am getting ready to say the Democrat is going to win is California's 45th congressional district. And this is almost the Republican incumbent, Michelle Steele. So get this, you are in a district with two GOP leaning swing cities and Garden Grove in West. Both have heavy, heavy Vietnamese presences. And there was a reason why the city of Westminster flipped from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump in 2020. Trump held it again in 2024. So what do you do as a Korean American representative running against a Vietnamese American politician in Derek Tran?
If you said that you are more Vietnamese than the Vietnamese guy you shamelessly slandered as a communist despite Derek Tran not being a communist, then congratulations, you're about to hand California Republicans one of the most embarrassing losses seen in the past couple of decades.
I'm not sure how, but it looks like Michelle Steele is going to end up losing that district because she is underperforming. Precisely in Garden Grove, in West Westminster, in Little Saigon, in exactly those Vietnamese American communities where Derek Train needed to have those over performances and he got them. Michelle Steele Z by like point zero eight percent right now. Like there wasn't a huge ballot drop yesterday afternoon, but by the time this thing gets released, this episode gets released, Derek Trin is probably going to be back, going to be in the lead and he's might even get called the winner there because a bunch of the rest of these drops from Orange county and the tiny part of LA county, that Senate, they're all pretty blue. These next shots are expected to be very blue. So unless Michelle still can pull out a miracle, it's probably not going to happen. For that would be a Democratic flip and would end up with the Democrats being in a slightly better position to House than they were in 2022, which is, which is. I don't know how you do that considering the national environment was so terrible. But again, candidate quality does in fact matter. Democrats also held the 47th district. That was Irvine in southern Orange County. Dave Minn, you know, AIPAC was spinning against him and he also had a dui plus Republican Army. Scott Ball is pretty popular, but Dave Min ended up holding that district and he didn't even, you know, underrun the top of the ticket, you know, all that much, which is pretty incredible for David Minn. So good win for him, good win for Orange County Democrats. Obviously the 49th, which is parts of Orange, parts of San Diego County. Mike Levin ended up holding that district against Mike Gunderson. So decent win for the Democrats. Levin's a pretty strong incumbent. That one, I don't think was too much in doubt because they're in the national environment now. You never know.
But, yeah, one of the shocking things that came out of this was in New Jersey, Nellie Poe was in New Jersey's 9th congressional district. This was usually safe Democratic district. It voted for Trump this year.
It voted for Trump this year. Nellie Poe, I think, ended up winning about 3 or 3 to 4% of the Republican nominee, Billy Prepay. I think she's the first Latina to ever represent New Jersey and Congress. But she is in a. She's now in the Congressional Progressive Caucus. She is a Trump district progressive, kind of replacing the Matt Cartwright role. Matt CARTWRIGHT In Pennsylvania's 8th congressional district. That's northeast Pennsylvania, Scranton Wilkes Barre. He lost because the national environment was just too much for him. He lost to Rob Rushnahan. So good wins for Pennsylvania Republicans, who also held on to Scott Perry's 10th congressional district. That was close. Janelle Stelson outran the top of the ticket Democratic nominee by a lot. And she'll probably be back in 2026 when the environment's going to be a lot friendlier to Democrats. But Scott Perry holds on. And the seventh district, Scott McKenzie, held on. Like I said, his race was kind of done. I just didn't realize how hard. Right. Puerto Ricans were swinging again, even with the comments Tony Hitchcliffe made how they were effectively tied to Donald Trump.
But it didn't matter. At the end of the day, Scott McKenzie did well enough in Lehigh and Lehigh county, the Democratic core of that district, to be able to get that win because of his margins of Carbon County, Pennsylvania's seventh Congressional District. Two flips for the Republican Party and a hold. And that was really how the night went. Incredibly disappointing for Pennsylvania Democrats, the Philadelphia Democrats. Democrats are probably gonna have a civil war with, you know, Bob Brady, their chairman, and a bunch of people do not like him right now. And I'm not surprised. A couple other things. The Hillsborough County Democrats in Tampa, Florida, their chairwoman is not seeking reelection. They had a very terrible performance. They lost the county to Donald Trump, just to let you know how that went.
And in Texas, Gilberto Hinojosa, the chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, he is resigning. I think he resigned kind of effective immediately or something like that, I don't know. But he's not running for reelection. He was not running for reelection for months in advance, but what he said about potentially throwing trans people under the bus got the Texas Democratic base pretty riled up against him and he knows that it just wasn't gonna work out there. Another, you know, Democratic politician under fire for comments he made about trans people, particularly the whole boys and girls sports thing. I'm not going to get into that. But what a lot of the Democratic base, especially the activist base, is saying about that is that, you know, when you get too much into that conversation, there is a risk of potentially demonizing trans people for no reason. That's what they're accusing Seth Molten of doing. Especially the city of Salem's Democrats. They are really mad at Seth Bolton for those comments and they've affected, effectively promised to primary him. I think that's a north. That's kind of like northeast Massachusetts Essex county, but they've promised to primary him. So that will be interesting to follow. Seth Moulton hasn't been liked by Massachusetts Democratic brass for a while now. They're just openly hating him. He did try to primary Nancy Pelosi and try to challenge her in that speakership battle in 2019, early 2019. That absolutely went nowhere. So.
And Seth Moulton, remember, he tried to run for president in 2020. He ran for president and got absolutely nowhere. So we'll see. You know, maybe 2026 would be, maybe Moulton goes down for whatever reason. I think he'll probably end up winning like 65% of the vote or something. But he's definitely not making any friends within the Democratic Party, I will tell you that much. The other person, person who's not making any friends within the Democratic Party, and this is a good segue into Trump's candidate appointments, is Colorado Governor Jared Polis always has had a libertarian streak. And yesterday afternoon he tweeted to praise Donald Trump for his appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. As health and Human Services secretary.
I don't need to go into too much detail, but RFK Jr. And you know, whole anti vax thing and the whole, you know, measles controversy in American Samoa or everything that came out about him on the campaign trail. But safe to say Democrats, including Colorado Democratic Chairperson Shad Mareeb, was, let's just say, not exactly pleased that Jared, that Jared Polis, who was regarded as a future 2028 presidential contender, would say something to that effect, praising what many Democrats view would be one of the more dangerous picks of Donald Trump's cabinet.
So, yeah, can say Goodbye to your 2028 presidential hopes, Jared Polis, because they are not happening to what you said.
Speaking of Trump's cabinet disappointments, I have one major issue with them and I'M going to get a little bit closer to the mic so I can make sure they really hear this very well. Why are you picking more House members? You do realize that your House majority is going to be slimmer than it was in 2022, right? Like I don't care if you can fill all the vacancies and win all the special elections, dude, you do not need to be causing any more problems than already exists within the House. Republicans could barely get anything passed in 2022. Who for God's sakes, out of the U.S. house. And now the majority is going to be smaller than it was in 2022.
I don't get it. I really do not get it. Plus the majority makers of the Republicans are still going to be in districts that Kamala Harris won. Mike Lawler is pretty openly running for New York's governorship in 2026. He, he can't have any unpopular votes, especially regarding healthcare or anything else unpopular that Donald Trump does. He doesn't need to have those votes on his record for the love of God. So. And plus there's a bunch of other members like even like John Duarte, you know, David Valadao. Valadao went won reelection pretty easily against Rusala. So I think that was based off the top of the ticket. For what it's worth. Gabe Evans, he flipped Colorado's 8th congressional district against Yadira Caravello. He doesn't need to be having a lot of those votes on his record. Don Bacon won reelection again over Tony Vargas.
Don Bacon does not need to have unpopular votes on his record. Marinette Miller Meeks almost lost a district. Trump come to him and won. She almost lost to Christine Bo, Christina Bohannon. She doesn't need to have those votes on her record. Nor does Derek Van Norden or Scott Perry, although both of them will probably take those votes anyways. You don't need to have those votes on your records. And these are your majority makers in close districts in Harris 1 districts, a lot of them.
And that's something that Mike Johnson is going to have to do now. He's going to be the speaker of the House again. The mainstream, which is the more center right caucus and the Freedom Caucus, which is the far right caucus that tossed Kevin McCarthy out.
They gained their deal.
The motion to vacate. I explained all this in previous seasons. This is getting the motion, the threshold is getting put up to nine members instead of one.
So that is something to watch. And what the slim majority of the Republicans have. Don't exactly think that Mike Johnson is going to be getting booted out of the speakership anytime soon because you need nine Republicans to be dissatisfied enough to throw them out. Mike Johnson, remember, was a compromise after the first, second, third and basically fourth and fifth options didn't go out, didn't go well.
I talked about all of that drama in previous seasons, if you want to go check them out.
But here you have, you know, Elise Stefanik is going to be the next UN ambassador. So that's one the New York's 21st district. That's the North Country Florida 6th congressional district. Daytona beach is Ron DeSantis old district. If you remember, Mike Waltz is going to be Donald Trump's new national Security advisor. And also in Florida, Matt Gates. Gates is Trump's pick to be Attorney General Matt Gaetz. And this was an impulse decision, per the reporting that Matt Gaetz had a conversation with Trump, you know, I guess about that on air, on airplane or something. And that led Donald Trump to pick up. And yeah, to say there is blowback from the, from Congress and from Democrats is putting it slightly, considering how much they hate the guy. Like, if you want to look up Matt Gaetz allegations, there's a ton of them. If you just look that up. I'm not going to go through them in detail because that probably deserves its own episode. And it's not something that I've got time to discuss, but that might be one of the picks that just gets shot down. Or Donald Trump could just, for whatever, could just somehow get John, the new Senate Majority Leader and, you know, Mike Johnson, to agree to dissolve both the House, both House and Senate, and just get his candidate appointed. The recess appointments, I don't know, maybe just get them, you know, appoint them. Like he did a lot of positions the last time around, he couldn't get any confirmed. Speaking of people that might have trouble getting confirmed, Tulsi Gabbard, a former House member, former House Democrat, as the new Director of National Intelligence, she is, has become a Republican, officially registered with the Republican Party. But yeah, to say that Democrats and you know, you know, Ukraine hawks and a bunch of pro Ukraine people, a bunch of other people have been mad is another understatement. And you want to get into that. Democrats, all these people were saying, oh, well, she's in danger, selling our nation's intelligence or whatnot. And a lot of them have been called not politicians but all like base people have been saying, well, maybe, you know, these other nations shouldn't share intelligence with the US Anymore because in danger of getting told off to Syria or the Russians or whatever. Yeah, whatever accusations Democrats put out. Again, I already talked about RFK Jr that is incredibly unpopular. I think Democrats are going to raise holy hell in that confirmation fight as they are going to do with Matt Gaetz, you know, some other people. Another former House member, John Ratcliffe, I think he's no longer serving in the House. He used to be in the House. He is going to be the. He's going to be in there as well. I think he's going to be CIA director. Another House member that hasn't been confirmed, but probably will be for transport secretary is current representative Representative Glenn Thompson in rural Pennsylvania. I think he's either 14th or 15th district. I'm not sure, but somewhere not 15th, but it's definitely like in north. Like rural Pennsylvania. He's probably gonna get appointed to be Transportation Secretary to replace Pete Buttigieg. The VA secretary is going to be former Representative Doug Collins from Northeast Georgia. Yeah, but. Yeah, some form. But a lot of these current people, we're gonna have this special elections and New York's 21st is what I want to focus on because that's something where Democrats could probably get decently close.
If not if they're not gonna win, they're gonna decently close. Looking at Plattsburgh assembly member Billy Jones, he represents Plattsburgh in the New York State Assembly. He's a heavy electoral reformer. He won additional. Lee Zelda won in 2022 by several points and I think Billy Jones won it by a lot in 2022. So, you know, heavy of an over performer he is. And if the New York Republicans, for whatever reason, end up nominating Mark Molinaro, Representative Mark Molinaro, you know, he represents the 19th district, a district he already doesn't live in. He got beat by Josh Riley and I guess one of the more pathetic, you know, incumbent showings. So no. Kamala Harrison ended up winning that district by a similar margin to Josh Riley. But Mark Bolinari couldn't even get an over performance, for the love of God. But Josh Riley won. That was another flip for the Democrats. New York Democrats did relatively fine given the environment they were facing. Laura Gillen did beat Anthony Despacito. Tom Spozzi obviously survived. And Brandon Williams got destroyed.
Cut absolutely destroyed. In New York's 22nd district, which is in Syracuse, it was shown to be a lot bluer than it previously was. But John Manning had no problem winning that. I think he'll probably hold that for as long as he wants. There's no John Catco. Save you now. New York Republicans, Syracuse, there is no John Catko to save you if you are a Syracuse Republican.
But yeah, Randon Williams is gone. Jesus Christ. Obviously McLawler survive because Mondaire Jones is a joke of a candidate and I think both boys would agree with me on that. Like Jesus Christ. You lost the Harris district by six points. And to be honest, Mondaire Jones was lucky that race was as close as it was because he is a joke, joke candidate. Good lord, you're losing that badly to six points. And the working family sporty splinter that I talked about, Anthony Rasconi didn't even matter. Mike Lawler got 52% of the vote anyways.
Unbelievable. But you know, who knows, you know, obviously for this first four to six are all safe. The all these districts are safe. Republicans, Republicans, unless they nominate Roy, more tier level candidates shouldn't have a problem holding them. It's the over performances that I'm focused on that could happen in these districts because you know these midterm and special election environments, a lot more college educated people show up and they help firm for Democrats. But Democrats couldn't get any swings with them. They lost ground with white voters. That's again you lost ground with every voter. That's something I want to mention.
It wasn't just Latinos, it wasn't just Asian voters. Apologies for what I just did earlier. It was voters of all stripes. You know, white voters trended right. College educated voters either held firm or trended slightly to the right. Like Democrats lost ground basically everywhere.
And that's the story of the election. It was a complete repudiation of the Biden administration, which Commalers was a part of, his vice president, that simple. So where you go from here? I don't know. You know, find the Democrats. I'm looking at this electorally, just take shots like Trump by 20 or 25 districts. So just going on the board, you never know what's going to happen in these environments. Whatever. Pennsylvania's 18th, but I'm kind of getting ahead of myself. I need to go back to the cabinet because it was a Segway US House. So where's it gonna go from here? So obviously a lot of it's gonna confirm to Senator Marco Rubio.
That's a big one in the Senate. He's gonna be the Secretary of State. That should have no problem getting confirmed by the Senate.
You know, I think maybe a couple more senators get picked out. So Ron Desantis is gonna have to appoint someone. I was going to say that before Matt Gaetz got tapped to be Trump's attorney general, which that's gonna be a wild ride in and of itself.
You know, I was thinking, well, maybe Ron DeSantis could appoint himself to the Senate seat or appoint someone to where to position them potentially to make sure Matt Gaetz doesn't get anywhere near the Florida governorship in 2026. Because it was pretty. It was reported that Matt Gaetz was openly considering and wanting to run for Florida's governorship in 2026. I was thinking, well, maybe DeSantis could pull a Pete Ricketts or point himself potentially, and then, you know, get Jeanette Nunez to be the governor, to take on Gates or whoever.
I was thinking that could be a possibility. Whoever does get appointed to that Senate seat, it'll be an interesting thing. It could be someone out of left field. You never know. Remember, you know, John Kyle, you know, when John McCain died, he was appointed by Governor Doug Ducey in Arizona to fill out the remainder of that term. So John Kyle was a senator for a little bit.
It's like, it's like, you never know.
You know, when Bob Andendez, you know, resigned to face, you know, his criminal charges in New Jersey, you know, Phil Murphy appointed George Helmi, I think the first Egyptian American senator, George Helmy, is going to hold that seat for only, like, a few months until Andy Kim comes in. You know, who knows? Like, really, who knows what is going to happen? And that's one of the things I've been preaching, you know, with this. No one knows what's going to happen, whether it comes like the rest of these House races, what the environment is going to be like in two years or what we're even, what the issues we're going to be discussing. Because, remember, health care was not discussed basically at all in this case. It wasn't a major issue. I know Social Security was brought up, but, like, it wasn't a major issue in 2024. And I bet you, I bet you Affordable Care act is going to be on the table again. It's going to be a major issue in the 2026 midterm terms, and you can bank on it. I know a lot of my predictions were very wrong, very wrong, because I just guessed the national environment wrong. That's all that was. That's all there was to it. I was operating under a national environment that did not exist, which, by the way, the polls had a really good cycle. And I've been saying all the polls of a lot of things. This is really, really important for the polls. And yes, they kind of underestimated Trump, but that was within the margin of error. That's just a standard polling error. Polls are really successful and literally every single other non polling indicator, you know, fundamentals, you know, previous like special election results, Washington primary, they're all bunk. Washington primarily works in Washington, apparently.
And the polls had a really, really good night night on election night. So hey, the polls revive themselves. So at least all his pollsters can selfishly say, look, you still have an industry despite all the problems you claim to have.
You know, New York Times, Sienna especially, they can claim a very, very good night for them. So I might be trying to listen to them a little bit more. You never know. We grow, we learn as analysts as, you know, as armed as armchair quarterbacks as I am, you know, recording this podcast, the Office of Student Media, I am the definition of an armchair quarterback. So it's like, hey, even we can learn. It's like, hey, maybe we trust the polls this time around.
So I'm going to keep this episode a little bit shorter.
So but I'm gonna give you five more minutes of just pure, just straight up, what will the, what do I think the Democrats should do?
Because you lost to Donald Trump and it wasn't just an electrical college defeat. I lost the popular vote too. So where do you go from here? Well, I think more than anything you have to meet the voters emotions where you are.
He campaigned on an optimistic message with hope for America. And the voters do not want that according to these election results.
So what you do, I think is now that you're the opposition party, you're going to get that natural boost. But you also have to in your messaging, be a lot more bitter. You have to be a lot more angry about the state of affairs in the country because the voters have been angry about it for two decades. You might as well make that your message and make your message a lot more on economic populism, anti corporate, you know, railing against, you know, you know, crumbling of society in America or whatnot. Because I do need to actually talk about some of the things that have been happening at ua. The racist text messages that were sent to black students here and universities across the nation, especially in the South. Like I will editorialize here, try not to editorialize for, for last parts of these episodes. But I have to editorialize here. I have to give my own opinion here. Those text messages are absolutely disgusting.
And you know, I hope they find quickly whoever did it think they're pretty close to at least knowing they might know internally who did it. I hope if they find out who did it, you release those people's names, you shame them, you terminate them for any future employment, you blackball them. And universities have to make it very clear that this is, this behavior is not going to be tolerated. You know, messages telling people, you know, to report to this place so you can get turned into a cotton plantation and be. To be cotton picking slaves, like celebrating a return to slavery. Some of the messages I've been seeing, you know, oh, that your body might choice Nick Fuentes type of people. No. All right, like here, polls for the nation. You know, I try to give, you know, takes that. Consider the wide range of political ideologies we have in this country.
But one thing we're not going to stand for is hate. You know, just hateful messages. Just basically that your body my choice message that a message celebrating the possibility that these people think that they can get away with sexual crimes.
Right? And if you let them think that, then we've got a huge problem in American society. This doesn't just go for young men or the Fuentes people or Andrew Tates or Sneakos or whatnot. This goes for everybody. It's going to affect everybody.
You know, these next four years are going to be some of the wildest times we've had in American politics. So if you're tired of it, get some rest because it is going to get insane telling you that right now. The daily news cycle that you all remember from four years ago, it's back.
It's back and it is wow than ever. At least it will be back starting January 20th. All its executive orders, Post assigned those mass deportations that Donald Trump promised he wasn't getting about them. The first one starting in Aurora, Colorado. They already said it. They brought in Stephen Miller as the deputy chief of staff for policy.
You know, they're not kidding when they say that Tom Holman is going to be the new, you know, immigration guy. You know, Susie Wiles, chief of staff, that's a Trump campaign person. She's just getting rewarded for just getting rewarded for work. But Tom Holman and Stephen Miller, not kidding when they talk about these mass deportations, like they mean it.
They absolutely mean it when they talk about these mass deportations. Like that wasn't just that as a bluff. They're there serious about doing this.
That's just one of things that they're serious on.
So just telling you, be prepared for the wild ride and make sure, make sure that no matter your ideology, no matter if you're happy that Trump won or you're angry or bitter or you're disengaged or any or ecstatic or anything like that. One thing that we just all need to do personally is you just got to be kind to each other. No matter what goes on in Washington or Montgomery or, you know, Olympia or, you know, all these other areas or local, state, or national governance, you've got to be kind to each other. And all the things that have gone down, like the racist text messages, you know, that your body, my choice thing, that's gotta stop. All right. And I'll end this episode on that. We'll get into a lot more Trump cabinet positions and everything because more of those spots are going to be filled, filled. We're gonna have the last of the House election results and whatnot.
But that's gonna end this post election analysis episode of Pulse of the Nation. Donald Trump is the president elect and he's got four more years. He's gonna start January 20, 2025, until January 20, 2029.
And for the rest of this semester, we have a few more shows take you through what at least the first hundred days might bring as we get more news about them. So thank you for listening to the show. Thank you for listening to me. Because for the rest of this semester and for next semester, we are going to be taking the Pulse of the Nation, and I hope you join in with me. Thank you for listening.
[00:51:23] Speaker A: 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, WVUAFM, Tuscaloosa.
