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Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible.If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support.
But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody.Welcome to Spooky Points with Krystal and Sagar.I am the hidden Indian passenger of the ghost of the Titanic, Sagar and Jetty, and I have a co-host today here from Australia.
What up, everybody?Australian breakdancing phenom, Raygun, right here, right here, that's right.Took the world by storm with my iconic moves, and I thought I would join everybody this morning to show you a few of those.You ready?Yes, I'm ready.
Here we go, world.Here we go.Here we go.What up, everybody?That's right.I got a little sprinkler for you.I got a little sprinkler for you.I got a little kangaroo hop for you.I got a little kangaroo hop for you.Ready for this one?
Whoa, you were not ready for that.You were not ready for that.How about this one?You ready?You ready?Watch this. That's right.That's right.That's right.That's right.You know what?You know what?I got another one for you.Bam!That's right. Wow.
That's right.Give me the gold medal right now.
Well, I certainly didn't have that in my time at the Olympics.
I mean, she's a superstar, right?I had to go as Regan because she is such an inspiration that literally anyone could make it to the Olympics.You're absolutely right.
Mine is much less complicated.I got this for my wedding, and I just said, the only way I can justify this expense is if I wear it for Halloween every single day.So there we go.That was fun.I enjoyed it.
We thought it was a little tense around here, so we wanted to lighten the mood up.
You gotta lighten the mood.So, what has he been in the show today?
I've been too focused on my kangaroo hops to really think it through, but I know we got polls.We got Ed and Jermentum coming in to talk to us about why he thinks the polls could be underestimating Kamala.
He was right about things in the past, so we'll talk to him about that. Trump was in a garbage truck.
Yeah, Trump's in a garbage truck.
Elon is threatening a severe depression if Trump gets elected, as if that's like a positive thing.We got Bill Clinton running around really not being helpful in Michigan with Arab American voters.We got to stop the steal nonsense.
So anyway, happy Halloween, everybody.Happy Halloween.
I hope that we can raise your spirits, inspire the holidays.It doesn't always have to be tense.We can still have a good time, even, what is it, five days before the election?How long?
Something like that, yeah.
Something like that.It's five days before the election, so there we go.We're excited.Thank you to all of our premium subscribers, breakingpoints.com.You can go ahead and sign up there.
I guess we should have done a giveaway, like a first reveal, right?In terms of our Halloween costumes.That would have been smart.
Yeah, that would have been a smart idea.
at a business level, but instead we're just over here having fun.So to make up for it, go ahead and sign up Breaking Points.We've got a great election night show planned for everybody.We're genuinely really, really excited for it.So that's right.
All right, let's go ahead and start.
Let's do it.Actually, one of our premium subscribers sort of inspired this whole moment.That's true.That's true.Because we got a question in AMA about like, hey, will you guys dress up?Yeah.And I was like, I don't know.She didn't want to do it.
I mean, we are covering Israel in the show, so it's not like there's not serious things and potential severe depression.So it's not like there aren't serious things in the show.
And so you can feel sort of like, I mean, I do feel sort of ridiculous right at this moment, but what the hell?I felt most ridiculous in Nepal.What the hell?
Because the guy looked over at me and started giggling.
Yeah, when I was walking over here in the street, I was like, oh, this is embarrassing.
This is conceivably something you could ever wear, civilian attire.
Yeah, but that's actually what makes it more embarrassing.Because you feel like, oh, people think I'm actually just wearing this.Like, for real, just wearing this.So, anyway.Here we are.We've got a black spirit here.That's the whole point.
All right, let's get to what is going on in the world.Start with some polling here.
We had a little snippet from Harry Enten over at CNN talking about how if Trump does ultimately win, many signs were there indicating that that could possibly be the case.Let's take a listen to that.
a percentage of the public that thinks that the country is on the right track when the incumbent party loses.It's 25%.That 25% looks an awful bit like that 28% up there.
It doesn't look anything, anything, like this 42% doesn't look anything like this 28%.So the bottom line is Very few Americans think the country is on the right track at this particular point.
It tracks much more with when the incumbent party loses than with it wins.In fact, I went back through history.
There isn't a single time in which 28% of the American public thinks the country is going on the right track in which the incumbent party actually won.They always lose when just 28% of the country believes that the country is on the right track.
Now, we don't know if Kamala Harris is gonna succeed Joe Biden, but we know back in 2008, George W. Bush, his approval rating was down in the 20s.Did a Republican succeed George W. Bush?No.How about in 1968, Lyndon Baines Johnson?
His net approval rating was negative.Did a Democrat succeed Lyndon Baines Johnson?No.How about in 52, Harry S. Truman?His approval rating was in the 20s, if not the upper teens.Did a Democrat succeed Harry S. Truman in 52?My memory, no.
No, as Kate Baldwin says, no.Republicans have been registering voters in big, huge numbers.They have been gaining in party registration versus the Democrats in the swing states with party registration.We're talking Arizona.I think it's a five point.
They've expanded their lead from five points from where it was back in 2020.How about Nevada?Big Republican registrations there.They like the early vote. How about North Carolina?Big Republican registration gains.How about Pennsylvania?
We spoke about it before a few months ago.Big Republican party registration gains versus from where they were.
So we're definitely at the point in the election saga where there's something for everyone.Absolutely.If you want to look at those historical trends, it's totally legitimate. Wrong track numbers are horrific for Democrats.
You've got a very unpopular Democratic incumbent.
And to be honest with you, I do think if Kamala loses, as much as these, you know, factors that we talk about in terms of their, you know, totally losing the Arab American, Muslim American vote, turning off young voters like running around with Liz Cheney, all of these things are going to matter.
But I honestly do think that the unpopularity of Joe Biden is the biggest weight around her neck.
Yeah, sometimes the fundamentals are the most important and we've been looking at global trends.You've seen post incumbent parties.Matt Iglesias recently wrote about this.
Nate Silver also identified the trend, but they've lost elections across the entire globe.So sometimes that is just a precursor and a signal of what is to come. as Georgia, 51, 46 for Trump.Now in Michigan, it actually is flipped.
They have Harris, 51, Trump, 46.Nevada, this was the biggest surprise for me, Harris, 51, Trump, 47.North Carolina, 50, 48 for Trump.Pennsylvania, razor tight, 49, 48 for Kamala Harris.Texas, 51, 47.And then Wisconsin at 50 and 47.
So clearly what you can see is a slight edge for Kamala Harris. in the blue wall states, with the sunbelt states really moving away from her, which would put her around a 270, 268.
In fact, though, Nate Silver's new analysis has North Carolina as the most likely tipping point state at number two.If you do see a shock on election night, it could certainly come from there, and that'd be a very interesting map.
It really would, where we could see
If Kamala was able to flip North Carolina, but then lose all of the Sunbelt states, you would have a full-on quote-unquote realignment phenomenon where you just have this coalition of white, suburban, college-educated voters who deliver the presidency to her across these four states, even though Trump is able to run up his margins in all of the Sunbelt, and particularly with black and Latino men.
Yeah, Democrats like the gender divide that we've seen in the early voting results, and I've even seen some Republicans like Cernovich and Charlie Kirk. saying that they're concerned about that.
Now, they may just be saying that to try to make sure they're reducing their voters and not giving them a sense of overconfidence, because overconfidence is like all that the Trump campaign has been selling.
So I don't know how genuinely concerned they are.But North Carolina is one of those states where there's been a significant gender gap in terms of turnout, where there are significantly more women turning out in the early vote than men.
early vote, you really shouldn't make that much of it because who knows who's going to show up on election day and that's all that counts.Voting early versus voting on election day, your vote still only counts once.
But if you're looking to try to read the tea leaves about who's excited, who's turning out their coalition, etc., that's a sign that's positive in favor of Democrats that at least some Republicans are voicing some concern about.
Yeah, I have the early vote female number actually right in front of me.So Georgia, the early vote female share was 56 in 2020.It's 55% today.In Pennsylvania, this is where it's the most interesting. In 2020, it was 57.2024, it's 56.
Arizona, it was 20, 20, 54.So you have majority female early vote all across the board.There's been some talk of this whole so-called cannibalizing vote phenomenon, but I'm just not sure how much to buy that.
It's very clear to me that the country just loves early voting now.I mean, you have almost 50 million ballots that have been cast across, I mean, that's almost one third of the entire electorate. You'll have even more in the coming days.
And then obviously on election day itself, you're probably going to see maybe not record turnout, but it will not be the same as it was previously.So in Nevada, I believe some 60% of the overall vote has already been cast, projected vote.
So you can really start to play with what you want for what the results are, which is what John Ralston has been looking at.But there are signs for anybody who wants the tea leaves.
And I just think the main takeaway is you can't be shocked at any outcome.
Yeah, no, that's absolutely right, including like a significant blowout for either side.Absolutely.Is in some ways almost more likely than the, you know, razor thin, like they win 270 to 268 or whatever.
It's probably more likely that all or most of the battleground states go in one or the other direction.
If you assume that there's like, let's say it's the, you know, 2016 or 2020 polling miss, then you end up with Trump sweeping all of the battleground states.If it's the 2022 polling miss, then you end up with Kamala sweeping all but one.
of the battleground states.So who knows what you're really looking at.Speaking of Pennsylvania, I could put this up on the screen.This is the latest from Monmouth.Surprise, surprise.They've got it really close.Oh, sorry.This is the CNN poll.
This is actually interesting because it's not tied.
It's not tied.Like so many of these pollsters, I really do buy into the view that many of these pollsters are very nervous about getting it blatantly wrong.And so they're
whether intentionally or not, somewhat putting their thumb on the scales to make sure that the race is close.And so, so many of the polls are 48, 47, 49, 49, etc.
CNN put out a poll that shows, you know, some significant separation between Harris and Trump.You've got in Michigan, Kamala up 48-43.In Wisconsin, Kamala up 51-45.
That's one of the states that has seemed to, in some of the polling averages, move against her a bit.So for them to find her up by six here, outside of the margin of error, is significant.But then you got Pennsylvania tied 48-48.
And obviously, if she's going to take that blue wall path, she has to sweep all of those states. you know, assuming she doesn't win the Sun Belt states, which we don't really know.Those are also very close.
But these are the states that she's been performing the best in, by and large.And they've got Pennsylvania tied.So, incredibly close.
Oh my gosh, yeah.Especially, I mean, even with PA and that tie figure, I'm just getting really sick of looking at it, just because there is no I mean, look, last time around, obviously, everything's been within one point of each other.
With Joe Biden, same thing in 2016 when Trump eked out a win over there.Monmouth gives us some similar stuff to look at.Let's put this up there on the screen.This is specifically the Pennsylvania voter poll.
So what they find here is presidential support, and this is included with third party.Harris and Trump, so among registered voters, it's 46, 47.Amongst, quote, extremely motivated voters, they have it as a tie.
Amongst 2020 voters, they actually have Trump up by 1%.Amongst 2022, they have Kamala up by 2%.And I don't know exactly what this means.High moderate propensity voters, whatever the hell that is, 48, 47 for Kamala.
I mean, basically, it's like a net tie.
A tie on all of these metrics.
In all of this.I mean, and again, you know, when you go early vote diving, you can find whatever you want.You can terms look at the female vote.You can look at You can look at rural versus urban.
But I think one of the main reasons why comparing it to 2020 is just a real crapshoot is that Republicans have dramatically changed their tune on early voting.
They have dramatically changed the way that they themselves are even looking about turnout and all of that. I mean, just for example, this morning I was looking at Georgia.
In Georgia, the highest percentage of early vote totals is in the rural counties.It's not in Fulton and in the suburban counties.
It's a lot of elderly whites who live in rural districts who have been taking advantage of early vote because that's what they were told to do by the Trump campaign.
Now, that really much could put him over the edge, considering that they lost by such a razor thin margin back in 2020.So it could very be a smart strategy.
But that's exactly my point is you could still turn out quite close and even have some sort of Democratic surge with. early voting or even later early voting and or election day voting that really comes home.
That's a big question too about the gender gap.When you've got majority female of the electorate in the early vote, does that mean that men are going to wait until day of?
That is problematic just for in general because A, you want to bank votes, but stuff happens sometimes on election day.Line is long, whatever.People don't want to do it and they just decide to go home.
So, you know, all of these things certainly matter on the margins.
Yeah, Ryan made a point on Twitter yesterday that is funny, but also like not without any, not without no backing.
He said, I love my dudes, but if there's a nationwide contest between men and women that goes to the group that manages to show up at the right place and fill out their forms on time and do all those things, the men would need to start with an advantage of several million to be competitive.
So that's Ryan Grimm's take on the gender battle here.But yeah, I mean, I think that when we look at,
all these states and the early vote in particular, number one, you have to keep in mind that in every single state, the rules are completely different.
Some states have early in-person, some states don't have early in-person, some states have, like Pennsylvania, sort of has early in-person, but then it's this weird, like you have to go and pick up an absentee ballot and then like come back and- So apparently you can do it in-person at the same time, like you can get it and then give it back.
It's not the same as like you just wait in line and do the thing like you would do on election day.Like in Virginia, I already voted and that's how it works.You go in like it's election day and you put in the machine and that's that.
It's very simple.It's very simple and easy.Pennsylvania is apparently more cumbersome.Some states have more of a tradition of mail-in balloting.A lot of the Western states seem to have more of a tradition.
of mail-in balloting, even predating the pandemic.And then you do still have some partisan differences in people's voting preferences.So even though Republicans have been consistently urging early vote, the emphasis has been on early in person.
So, for example, in Nevada, you know, which is a state that looks the best for Republicans in terms of the early vote, a preponderance of the Republican vote is that early in person, where Democrats continue to have somewhat of an edge in the mail-in balloting.
And that seems to be pretty consistent.I mean, you've got Elon Musk and you've got Trump still out there sowing, like, you know, concern about mail-in ballots.So that's been the preference for a lot of Republican voters.
And then on the Democratic side, I mean, remember 2020, that was a pandemic.
So there were people who turned in a mail-in ballot then who normally are in-person voters who are reverting back to what their previous habits are because they're no longer fearful of being around other human beings.
So you would expect to have some erosion in terms of the Democratic early vote.That's why it really is. apples to oranges in terms of comparing the 2024 early vote numbers to the 2020 numbers.So anyway, that's, that's what we can say about it.
I think we have one more like tide poll that we could show everybody for what it's worth.This is a Marquette law poll of likely Wisconsin voters.This is a five and put this up on the screen.Harris a 50 Trump at 49 within the margin of error.
So effectively tied.And you also show here a very close
Wisconsin Senate race, which there have been some indications that some, the Senate races previously, the Democrats outside of Montana have been pretty consistently, you know, with a, with a wide margin.
Wisconsin is one and Pennsylvania is another where that gap seems to have been closing in the final days.So we'll see if that ultimately pans out.I've also seen some more positive indicators for John Tester in the state of Montana.
I've seen a couple of polls that have him Tied with his opponent she he so perhaps giving Democrats some bit of hope that they may actually be able to I saw that too Yeah, I mean look the Senate ones.
There's actually not nearly enough high-quality polling I mean Montana in particular right very notoriously difficult poll a state poll They also usually don't do it at a state lab or at a national media level because they mostly leave it to the campaigns and then in terms of Ohio I've seen similar stuff where
I've seen Sherrod Brown up by like seven points, and then I've also seen it completely within the margin of error.And then Bernie Marino's campaign claiming that he is ahead in their internal polls, which they released.
So it's one of those where truly choose your own adventure.We have one more flavor of a bunch of tied states.New Fox News battleground polls.Can we put that one up there, please?What do we have?Pennsylvania, 50, 49 for Trump.Michigan, 49, 49.
North Carolina, 50-49.So the only one that's actually interesting to me there is North Carolina because that it was the closest one where they had Trump only up by one, where previously up by almost two to three in every other one that I looked at.
Considering that Joe Biden only won it or lost it by about a point or 0.5% last time. That means that Harris very much could be put over the edge in terms of some sort of shock victory.
Like I said, Nate Silver's new election model now has North Carolina as the number two tipping point state behind Pennsylvania.
In some ways, this is not bad for those who are going to watch with us, and because we're on East Coast time, because we will get the returns in pretty soon from Georgia, from North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, and we won't have to wait forever.
for Arizona and the Nevada votes to come in.If we get, for example, a Trump sweep or a likely Trump sweep in all three of those states, you can pretty reliably say what's going to happen.Although, of course, a lot can.
But in other way, if we see major Democratic overperformance, back in 2022, for example, early night, things didn't look good for Democrats because Florida vote came in and it was a red blowout for Ron DeSantis.
It was looking like that red wave.Yeah, that's right.
And then Pennsylvania returns, and it was a complete shock.Of course, Fetterman ends up winning by five points, which we knew relatively quickly on election night there.So keep that in mind.
Don't base your Pennsylvania conclusion off what happens in Florida.My eyes are really on North Carolina, Georgia, and Pennsylvania in the East Coast time.By around 9.30, 10 p.m., we're gonna have
pretty good idea about like what's going on there and over performance and stuff.And by that time, the central time zone will also become to come in as well.And then we'll really see what the phenomenon is there in the blue states.
Yeah, that's right.Also, just a note for everybody programming note.So, of course, we're going to do live election night coverage, which we're super excited about.We'll have Ryan and Emily here.We'll do the whole thing.
We're going to have Logan in studio breaking down the numbers.
That was one of the areas that we were trying to improve upon from some of the last elections, making sure, because it's hard for us to talk and also really stay on top of all the data that's coming in.
So we've got Logan coming in, too, and partnering with Decision Desk HQ.They are always very quick in terms of getting the most updated results, so he's going to be. manning that and updating us throughout the night, which we're very excited about.
We're also going to do election previews tomorrow with Ryan and Emily, so you can take a look for that.And next week, we're basically like, you know, it may be that we know election night what happens, and it's really clear.That is entirely possible.
It's also entirely possible that we go for a week still looking like, oh, they're still counting and Philadelphia, they're still counting, and Phoenix, they're whatever.
So we're kind of all on standby next week to make sure that we're able to continuously update you guys and stay on top of whatever the news, so can look for all of that.
In the meantime, as I mentioned before, I don't know if you guys have seen Edingermentum on Twitter or on Substack, but his actual name is Josh.
He was correct in 2022 about saying, hey guys, this doesn't look like a red wave to me, when we and many others were wrong.He also was correct in calling the Georgia Warnock election another one that many analysts and pollsters got wrong.
Now Josh wants Kamala to win, he is a partisan, so factor that in.
But, you know, he's done some really thoughtful analysis of why it could be that the polls are underestimating the Democrats this time when previously in 2020 and 2016, they were underestimating the Republicans.
So we wanted to have Josh in to break all of those insights down for us.Let's get to it.Joining us now by phone, we have Josh, a.k.a.Edinger, Mentum.Great to have you, sir.
Yeah, it's great to be on.
Yeah, of course.So I just built you up a little bit.We can throw this up on the screen.Eight, eight guys, eight, eight.Oh, well we'll get to this in a second, but the very last element of this blocks just to give you some cred you called 2022, right?
You said, Hey, I don't think this looks like a red wave.You also called the, the Warnock race correctly.You've since started a sub stack where you've been delving into how you're looking at all of these races.But
You've been saying, hey, it's possible that actually this time, unlike 2016 and 2020, the polls could be systematically underestimating Democrats, which is what happened in 2022.
Now, I laid out for everybody, like, you're, you know, you're a partisan, you want Kamala to win, et cetera, so people can factor that in as they will.
But what is your analysis of why you think the polls could be looking more like a 2022 midterm miss that underestimated the Democrats versus the last times that Trump was on the ballot?
Yeah, well, this chart that you're seeing up here, this actually isn't mine.This is by my friend Josh Taft, who created this model I just highlighted for him yesterday.But it does illustrate something that I think is an important consideration here.
So the way this model works, you can see its past track record and its current projection is that it
It's partially based on polling, but it also adjusts that to factor in things like pre-election indicators from actual voters, specifically special elections and primaries.
And what we've seen from this model is that that has been relatively pretty predictive of whether or not the polls are massively off.
This model, when applied to the data we had in 2020, would have correctly indicated that there was something wrong with the polling.
that pre-election indicators like primaries and special elections weren't picking up, that the polls that showed Biden up by eight or seven points were probably off.It would have been correct then.
It also would have been correct in 2012 in saying that the very tied polls they saw then that underestimated Democrats were not factoring in how voters were voting on the ground through that year.
And what that model says now is that there's currently no indication that from how voters have been voting in primary elections, like the Washington primary, which is historically predictive and special elections that the polling we've seen.
With, with a slight Kamala national lead, um, is off in the way that it was in 2020, if anything, it probably may be underestimating her by a point or a point and a half.
So that's just one like sign that like these kind of canaries in the coal mine for major pro-democratic polling errors, at least at a national level are not showing up right now.
Got it.So Josh, you wrote a piece for your substack specifically about all of the signs.Could you lay out beyond the model what some of the other things that people can look at for the case for underestimating Democrats?
Yeah, of course.So, um, we, uh, I think crystal mentioned that this, and I said at the, in the tagline of the article that it would be something of a 2022 redux.
And the thing to look at, there isn't national polling, which was actually pretty accurate at 2022.
It was state polling where, um, the argument here from some people, some very, very pro-democratic people who essentially say the party can do no wrong is that this was because there was a flood of red wave Republican pollsters who were just showing the party up no matter what.
And the aggregators were too credulous to keep them out of their model.Some of these were run by, like, these firms were run by actual high schoolers.And, like, they just included them and they always showed Republicans ahead and they were wrong.
And that happened to a degree.But the larger thing that happened that year is that you had nonpartisan pollsters with no connection to Republicans.
often responding to the narratives put out by the right and in some cases showing massive swings to the right at the end of the race in response to what seems to have been just narratives and not what was actually going on in the ground.
You had in Washington, the polls prior to October that year were showing the race largely what it turned out to be.The Democrat there running for Senate won by about 15 points.
But after Republican pollsters started showing a tied race, there was some chatter about it being a sleeper flip.The nonpartisan pollsters followed their lead.
They didn't find leads like as close as what the Republican pollsters found, but they showed a pretty significant shift to the right and one that didn't happen.In reality, there was no
movement from the primary that year to the general election, the Democrats won by 15 points both times.
And this gets into a larger point that I think, um, Nate cone and the New York times, uh, kind of proved to an extent when he talked about how pollsters have changed is that pollsters are terrified of getting a miss like 2020 again.
They don't think that's something they can afford at all.
Reputationally cone even said like it has mental health like problems for them or they get really upset if they miss it that badly and they are pulling out all the stops in a lot of ways in a way in some ways that are reminiscent of past times when they've gotten to in their heads about a polling miss in a way that could end up getting them on the wrong side of things on the opposite way.
Yeah, I think, to me, one of the most compelling data points in this direction is what you just laid out, which is that we know that pollsters have actually changed their methodology because they're so fearful.
And they've effectively used this methodology of asking people to self-recall how they voted. which has in the past led to less accurate results, consistently less accurate results.
But their theory is, listen, there could be this group of infrequent, less sort of politically engaged voters that tend to go for Donald Trump that we just cannot get in touch with.We just cannot reflect them accurately within our polls.
They attribute that, potentially that was the 2016 miss, potentially that was again the 2020 miss. And that's a plausible theoretical possibility.
And so they're basically saying, we're just going to use this method to juice Trump's numbers to try to jerry-rig some way to account for this non-vote, this, like, infrequent voter that we just cannot reach and cannot model.
The other possibility, and this was also laid out by Nate Cohn, is that in 2020, in 2016 the myth was because pollsters weren't waiting by education, like college education versus non-college.Okay, they fixed that in 2020.
They have an even bigger myth.The other theory is that 2020 was obviously during the pandemic. and you had a partisan difference in the way people responded to the pandemic.
So you had a lot of liberal, white-collar professionals at home dying to tell pollsters how excited they were to vote for Democrats, and that that one-off phenomenon is what led to the miss in 2020.So if that's the explanation,
then this attempt by pollsters to sort of artificially juice Trump's numbers may be correcting for something that doesn't need correcting since the pandemic was such a unique time period and had this unique partisan difference in terms of how people responded to it.
You dug into the evidence.
For each of these possibilities, the just, like, you know, infrequent voter that you just can't model and is more overwhelmingly pro-Trump than pro-Democrat versus the different pandemic response bias, what evidence did you find in favor or opposed to each of these theories?
Yeah, well, I think it's basically what you said, where there's the grand unified theory, as Cohen calls it, which is that, like, there's just something about Trump voters.They're just impossible to contact.They're too low social trust.
You'll never be able to reach them through traditional methods, and you have to find some way to represent them when you're polling. And, like, I get that idea in theory.
I think in a sense, it is kind of like a loose state understanding that kind of exoticizes Trump voters to a degree.I live in a purple state, Georgia.Trust me when I say that Trump voters are not very quiet about who they support, especially not now.
They're particularly ashamed of in the way they might have been eight years ago. And, uh, I just, it's, it, the, he calls it the patchwork theory, which I think does it a bit of a disservice, but that's more compelling to me because it makes sense.
We know that pollsters and in 2016 did not whip by education.We know that made up for most of the misses that they made.We know in 2020, there was a major. non-response bias in favor of Democrats, something we're not necessarily seeing now.
One of the most interesting data points, and I wish we could follow up on this because it could be a huge deal, was a chart by people from the Polarization Research Study looking at partisan response rates to YouGov polls.
And they found that since about the beginning of this year, the rate of Democrats responding to their polls has gone down.
And the rate of Republicans responding has gone up to the extent that they've had to actually wait Democratic respondents higher than Republican respondents.
So this phenomenon, like to the extent that it might have happened before, we may not have any proof that it's happening now.And we know that you gov has like they've shown that they've made changes to account for like this kind of. and
if they're doing that properly.
So quite ironically, and you can say whatever the reason for this might be, I think probably the funniest one is that liberals got so angry at the mainstream media after the Biden dropout saga, where they thought that they were trying to end his presidency, that they stopped responding to pollsters.
But that's what I think should be the ending of this election, because that's very fun to me.That would be genuinely hilarious.Yeah, yeah.It's like they got so pissed at Ezra Klein, they stopped picking up the phone.
And that would be incredible.
I do have a question for you, Josh, because you're in Georgia.I'm assuming, you know, beyond polling, you've been looking at early voting.Are there any trends there that could pick up on your thesis and bear that out?
Yeah, well, the early voting here is a really tough one to take.Too much stock in Georgia does not have party registration.
uh... you can't track it by like what the partisanship like you can nevada uh... they do have uh... for whatever reason this is probably for not very great reasons they do track voters by race here which can be uh... interesting heuristic for how the parties are doing because bomb in georgia debt uh... non whites vote democratic and white voters what republicans and elections here can often be just turnout battles more than they are persuasion battle so that's been different recently years where the suburbs have
really become big battlegrounds in the way that they were before.And we've been seeing the black vote here is about in line with what it was in 2020 among habitual early voters.
So among the same population that voted early in 2020, it's about the same.
The difference is, is that there are a lot of Republicans who voted on election day in 2020, a lot of white votes who are like, I think that of the voters who voted on election day in 2020,
and are voting early now, they're like over, they're like 72, 75% Republican.So we have a slightly wider, like a voting like pool right now in Georgia than we've had it like maybe in a couple cycles.
But a lot of that is because we have a more depolarized early voting electorate than we have before.There are a lot of Republicans who vote on election day and who are voting now.
There are probably some Democrats who voted early in 2020, because they didn't want to get COVID through mail. who are going to vote on election day.
And I, it, I would say generally the number it's, you're probably going to get about 26, 27% black turnout, like with the way things are going here in Georgia, which isn't like ideal for Democrats, but like it's winnable.
I think Warnock one with like, was able to go to a runoff with similar demographics in 2022.Very interesting.
I've seen some theories about a shy Kamala voter this time, and some Democratic groups seem to be buying into this idea.
I'm thinking most specifically of this ad that went viral of women secretly bucking their husband's will and voting for Kamala Harris, and these stickers that are popping up in women's restrooms that are like, your vote's secret, don't worry, you can vote for Kamala and not feel bad about it.
So clearly some parts of the Democratic coalition believe that this could be a thing of like Nikki Haley voters who are in, you know, Republican households or their husbands are Republicans who are secretly going to go and cast their ballot for Kamala Harris and may not be telling pollsters the truth about the way that their votings or the inverse of the quote-unquote shy Trump voter theory back in 2016.
Do you see any indications that that could be the case?
I don't know.I've heard people say that actually for a while.I remember people saying it in like 2016 about Hillary and it didn't end up being true.
So like it makes sense in theory, but like, I mean, there's not really evidence for it.Yeah.That's kind of a bit of a fan fiction, I'd say.
My last question for you, Josh, is how, like, what's your confidence level that your analysis is correct and that Democrats are going to end up being underestimated or in a strong position to win this election?
Yeah, well, I feel like, um, I think we have a lot of evidence right now from the modeling that my friend also Josh did to, um, like what we know these pollsters have done to, I think maybe over correct or correct their mistakes, but there shouldn't be something significantly overestimating Trump.
If that happens, it's for something we have no clue about right now, and we'll only be able to know after the election.
There's nothing we know about politics or polling right now that indicates that that should be happening to a significant degree, unless it's just a non-response thing again, in which case polling really is a little screwed.
But what is kind of compelling to me is that we do have past precedent for this exact kind of thing happening, where pollsters get really insecure. and overclock in favor of the right, not in the U.S., but actually in the United Kingdom.
In 2017, the election between Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May there, pollsters two years prior had incorrectly called a labor win or a hung parliament when the conservatives ended up winning a majority.
Two years later, they made a lot of changes to their polls, a lot of which were ad hoc changes, a lot like how pollsters are arguably making ad hoc changes.
Now, Crystal, you mentioned that they were doing recall to vote, which is something that can really only generously be called quite suspect.If applied, like Cohen showed, that if applied to past elections over the past 20 years,
all the polling in all those years less accurate people will tell you that they voted for people but people like said they voted for the winner right so an accurate sample is going to usually get you people saying they voted more for the winner and for the loser and by shifting that to the actual results you're kind of just putting your thumb on the scale uh... british pollsters did a lot of that in twenty seventeen and what ended up happening was that they ended up underestimating labor every single
forecaster at the end of the election called a conservative majority, in some cases a very large conservative majority, and it only resulted in a hung parliament.Yes.The exception was Yukov, funnily enough.
So that is like a degree of like having that actual example of this is something that has happened before makes me feel like it's something that could happen. I won't, like, make any guarantees.
I don't think anybody can, especially in a race that's this close.But the ingredients that were there in Britain in 2017 do seem to be here seven years later.Yeah.
Very interesting.Well, it is very interesting.And certainly, if she ends up winning and outperforming the Poles, I think a lot of people are going to look back at your analysis and say, you know, this guy had it right on.
So, guys, go subscribe to Ettinger Mentum's Substack.And thank you so much for joining us this morning.It's great to have you.Thank you, Josh.It's our pleasure.
Kamala Harris is now responding to Joe Biden's quote unquote garbage comment, trying to clean up his mess.Never underestimate his ability to F things up in the words of Barack Obama.And he certainly has done that.
He's created an entire news cycle around it.So here we have Kamala responding.Let's take a listen.
Listen, I think that first of all, he clarified his comments, but let me be clear.I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.You heard my speech last night and continuously throughout my career.
I believe that the work that I do is about representing all the people, whether they support me or not. And as president of the United States, I will be a president for all Americans, whether you vote for me or not.
That is my responsibility, and that's the kind of work that I've done my entire career, and I take it very seriously.
and 16.And she said Biden clarified his comments.If you wanna know why he had to quote unquote clarify it, it's because he's so cooked that he can barely issue a single coherent sentence.
So I know they played this yesterday, but we'll include it here.These are the full comments from Joe Biden.
For Puerto Rico, where I'm in my home state of Delaware, they're good, decent, honorable people.The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters. his demonization of him is unconscionable.
Okay, so I thought it was pretty clear.The only garbage I see out there is supporters, but he is also like slurring his words.
If you want to listen to the case for why he wasn't saying his supporters, he was, it hinges on an apostrophe of whether he meant Tony Hinchcliffe there. as the supporters for his rhetoric.
Regardless, it's pretty clear it didn't work out so well and that the Kamala campaign, I mean, I saw people defending it.
And one of the ways that you know that you shouldn't defend it is that Kamala herself immediately was like, I have nothing to do with that.And Josh Shapiro also went on television and immediately was like, no, we're not doing that today.
Well, listen, Kamala's been looking for a way to separate herself from Joe Biden.I guess she just handed her an opportunity to do exactly that.Yeah, they're terrified of it being another deplorables moment.
The Republicans are making as much of it as they possibly can.Trump riding around in a garbage truck.Vivek Ramaswamy also going out and picking up garbage and whatever.So they're doing with it everything that they possibly can.
But I mean, it strikes a few things. Number one, no surprise that Joe Biden has been asking to campaign with Kamala Harris apparently for weeks and weeks.And they're like, we'll get back to you on that.
Yeah, that's not going to happen because this is what you get.Number two, how many times that she had to clean up for the men, in particular, who are campaigning for her.
I mean, I think about Barack Obama going out and lecturing the brothers, you know, about how they need to vote, et cetera, et cetera.
And when she's asked about it, she didn't directly, you know, like, rebuke President Obama, but she also made it clear, like, I'm not taking anyone's vote for granted, and I have to earn the vote, and, of course, like, this is gonna be difficult.
I'm also reminded of when she was in that difficult interview with Bret Baier.He tried multiple times to try to get her to have a moment where she derided Trump supporters, and she adamantly refused to take the bait.
We're also going to show you later in the show some comments from Bill Clinton out there in Michigan, making a somewhat less than compelling case, we'll say, to Arab American, Muslim American
Voters, it's not like Kamala's been good on that topic either.She said that the main problem they have is obviously the reality of the policy that she supports and her refusal to put any distance between herself and Joe Biden on that.
But again, at a time when she's trying to say, listen, I'm concerned about Palestinian civilian death, Bill Clinton goes out there and steps all over that.
So with this Joe Biden thing, this is also not even the first time that he's stepped on her messaging.
During this particular campaign she had a big event that she wanted to get a lot of attention And he at the same time came out and gave a press conference, which he almost never does there was that issue she was in this sort of like battle with Ron DeSantis over hurricane relief and He wasn't responding to her calls and they were into this whole thing and then Joe Biden gets asked about he's like Ron
That's been great.Like, he's been very responsive to me.
So, you know, coming at this moment, when she just gave this big speech on the Ellipse, where she made a point in that speech of trying to reach her hand out to Trump supporters, obviously the campaign is not very happy about this.
How much of a difference does it make?I don't know.
I mean, it's like- Trump got a decent stunt off of it with the garbage truck.Sure.We have some of that video that we can go ahead and play for everybody.Let's take a listen.
250 million people are not garbage.I could tell you who the real garbage is, but we won't say that. How do you like my garbage truck?This truck is in honor of Kamala and Joe Biden.
He's in the garbage truck, did a little press conference.We'll get to the most consequential part of that.I mean, it's just hard for me to take the- He's recreating the McDonald's magic.
Yeah, he's definitely.And we have some polling later to show you that that McDonald's stunt got a lot of, it was like the number one story that people are aware of in the news cycle.I know where it's at.
I mean, it's one of them- Because the images are so striking.
It's one of the most indelible photos of American politics.It's up there with the tank photo.It's gonna be burned into my, like Dewey defeats Truman, the tank, the McDonald's thing.I'll never forget it.
You talking about the Dukakis tank moment?
Yeah, the Dukakis tank moment.
That's not a favorable comparison.
I didn't say it was good or bad, I just said it was burned into my memory.
It was burned into the mic, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think it's hard.
Obviously, it's hard for me to take seriously, like all of their angst and upset over it, because Trump goes out there all the time and trashes Democrats and Democratic supporters and the enemy within and whatever.
So but, you know, yeah, they're going to make of it what they can.I don't think it's.
Number one back in 2016 when Hillary said that first of all she was the one who was running and second of all there were people who Genuinely, you know potentially could have been swayed between Trump and Hillary Clinton.
That was still a theoretical possibility now Trump's face is so locked in like what person who sees himself as a Trump supporter was really considering Kamala Harris at this point is going to be like, oh, Joe Biden said that we're garbage.
Like, forget about it.I guess the best you can hope is that it helps to juice turnout on that side.And maybe that's a maybe that's a possibility.
I don't want to discount it, but like, you know, I just it doesn't have quite the magic that the deplorables moment did back in 2016.
Well, yeah, I mean, deplorables was everything.
And first of all, I mean, the main reason why Trump gets away with it and they don't is that because a huge part of the Trump base is literally animated by being pissed and shit on by elites and feeling that way.That's an entire part of it.
So in a sense, that is why it is so animating to the Trump voter and maybe not necessarily to the Democratic voter. There's a much bigger zeitgeist thing happening.Regardless, this tells us a couple of things.Why Biden is a terrible candidate.
Why Biden is cooked old and shouldn't even be in office.
And the key was that Kamala immediately distanced herself from it, but also Josh Shapiro immediately on television that night, I think maybe an hour or so after the comment was made, I mean, as forcefully distanced himself as he could from it.
Let's take a listen to that.
Governor, first off, just what's your response to that comment from President Biden, where it sounds like he's calling Trump supporters there garbage?
Yeah, look, I had not heard that until now, Caitlin, so I'm kind of giving you my fresh reaction to it.I would never insult the good people of Pennsylvania or any Americans, even if they chose to support a candidate that I didn't support.
I think the real issue here is Donald Trump and his inability to simply say comments like that are wrong, to simply stand up for his fellow Americans.He is incapable of doing that.When he had the keys to the White House before, he didn't do it.
He separated people out.He divided people.He's promised more of the same.And that's why I think he's dangerous.And that's why I'm working as hard as I can to support Kamala Harris and do everything we can to defeat Donald Trump again in Pennsylvania.
That is what a competent politician looks like.That's really what it comes down to me.I got no love for Josh Shapiro or Kamala Harris.The thing is, remember how he responded to the assassination attempt and he went and did a conference
where he read from the widow, the newly, I forget, I think it's Cori Compatore, and he gave him a great eulogy, and he was a girl dad and all that, spoke to the widow, read a statement from her, even though literally they were killed at a Trump rally.
That's what actual competent politicians look like, and then you compare that to Biden, it's just ridiculous.
I mean, I genuinely—like, I genuinely—if you look at his whole quote, like, if you read the transcript, it's incomprehensible.And so, like, I don't know what he was trying to say.
I find it believable that because it is kind of out of character for him, he's one to be more like, oh, I worked with Strom Thurmond.Like, I love Republicans.That's more of his M.O., right?
So I find it believable that he didn't really mean to say that all Trump supporters are quote-unquote garbage But like that's the thing is if you are so addled and incoherent and still occupying the office of the White House Like what are we doing here?
And Alex Thompson made that made that point effectively axios reporter CNN contributor Alex Thompson made that point of like
That's the really sad reality, is that you can parse these words and it's like, you need a decoder ring to try to figure out what the hell he's even talking about.Some of his supporters have also brought back up like, oh, he has a stutter.
Oh my, like, please, come on.What are we doing here at this point?Let's listen to the point that Alex Thompson made, though.
No one here at this table knows what Joe Biden meant, unless someone here has talked to Joe Biden, when he made those comments.And the sad reality is that
They were indecipherable because this president is no longer able to coherently and consistently articulate a message.And that's just the sad reality.That is why he's no longer the nominee, because at the debate we all saw that very clearly.
And it's also why Kamala Harris does not want him on the trail.This is a guy that just last week
referred to former representative Gabby Giffords in the past tense, she's very much alive, as a person that last week said that he wanted to throw Donald Trump in jail and then very quickly tried to backtrack and said he just politically meant to lock him up.
And we are in this sad scenario where clearly Joe Biden and the aides around him that want to make him feel better
want him to be able to sort of be inserted into this race, that see Kamala Harris's potential election as an affirmation of his record, but that Kamala Harris does not want him to be inserted and would prefer that he basically be absent this last week of the election.
I love how you could hear a pin drop on that.
Because how can you disagree with any of that?It's all true.I agree with Nate Silver, who says there should be a lot more journalistic scrutiny of his capability to function in this job.
Because yeah, I mean, he's almost out of there, but we still got months to go.While he is still president of the United States, and he is so addled that he can't even, in the one CNN appearance that he did,
competently deliver a basic point and a basic message.The other thing that's insane to me is that you still have people out there running around like, maybe he would have been a better candidate, and I don't know why we switch.
And if you go back, especially at the time, the number of Democratic partisans who were like, no, we gotta stick with Joe, and Joe's great, and he's gonna be way more electable.These people should never be taken seriously again because,
This is not new, right?I mean, we all saw the debate, which was shocking, but even before the debate, how long have we been covering?
His rapid decline.So I think it is a tremendous journalistic fit.Look, I get it.It's the election.And so, you know, there's a lot of coverage of Kamala and Trump and what they're doing, and that's all justified.
But the fact that when Biden decided to step out of the race, that almost all the scrutiny about his age and capability went away, even though he's still the guy with the nuclear codes.
You know, I do think that that is a tremendous, a tremendous failure and dramatic inadequacy of the process.
He is the most incapacitated president in office since, like, Woodrow Wilson. And, you know, it may be, just like at that time, they didn't want to cover it, and his wife was running the White House, and all of that.
And I think we're seeing very similar dynamics to this.Five years from now, we'll get the whole inside story from Jake Sullivan and Anthony Blinken about what it was really like.
You know, he'll probably have to, like, die, you know, eventually, before you can tell the real truth about what happened.And then it's gonna be insane.Like, whenever that book comes out, it's, oh, my God.
And the worst part is, is that we won't even be surprised by any of it. All right, let's move on to Madison Square Garden, and there's been quite a lot of discussion there about MSG.The origin of Garbage Gate.Garbage Gate, that's right.I like that.
Puerto Rico Gate, you could also call Hinchcliffe Gate.You could take it back as far as you want.So we've got a couple of Republicans, actually, who came out to criticize.First was Nikki Haley, who took to Fox News to critique the Trump campaign.
They were right to denounce the comedian.They need to go and tell Puerto Ricans how much, you know, they do value them.They need to tell Latinos that, but they also need to look at how they're talking about women.
I mean, this bromance and this masculinity stuff, I mean, it borders on edgy to the point that it's gonna make women uncomfortable.
You know, you've got affiliated PACs that are doing commercials about calling Kamala the C-word, or you had speakers at Madison Square Gardens, you know, referring to her and her pimps. That is not the way to win women.
That is not the way to win people who are concerned about Trump style.This is a time to talk about the economy.This is the time to talk about immigration.This is the time to talk about national security.
And this is the time to talk about Kamala Harris.
So you could see there.I mean, my take actually, Crystal, was I think she's betting on a Trump loss.
That's my guess from this clip because, and I actually spoke to some others, people who are concerned, but who are your friend and they want to help you win, they call you behind the scenes, right?They don't want to give the other side ammunition.
But when you're betting on a loss, you take to the TV and you're like, well, they need to do a better job reaching out to women and this, this and this.But of course, I still want him to win because I'm working on policy, trying to cover her bases.
This seemed like a soft 2028 launch, just from what I could tell.She's not a commentator. She's a politician, right?
She also has not, she's been rejected by the Trump campaign effectively, will not campaign with him, it looks like, up until election day.They previously had thought that they might, but there's still quite a bit of bad blood between the two camps.
So there's quite a bit of jockeying that's also happening in this clip.
Yeah, I think the comments are accurate, but they're also motivated, because it's not just her positioning herself for what comes next, and she fancies herself potentially the next Republican contender, which I think is a little delusional, but whatever.
That's how she's thinking, and she also is bitter, because to your point about, you know, you call him behind the scenes, he's not picking up those calls. Yeah, that's right.She has made herself available to go campaign for him, and he's like, no.
And in fact, when he, and I think this is foolish, by the way, on his part, because clearly the Kamala campaign thinks, whether they're right about this or not, there's a possibility that they're right about it, that there are some of those Nikki Haley primary voters who are
potential persuadable targets for them.They have made a very concerted effort, that's like the bulk of their campaign, is a concerted effort to reach out to those voters.
And recently when Trump was asked about Nikki Haley on, I don't know, Fox and Friends or something, rather than trying to appeal to them, he trashes Nikki Haley and brags about how much he beat her by, etc., etc.
So, you know, I mean, this is just Trump and the way he operates and his ego always comes first, even when it's totally inadvisable from any sort of a rational campaign perspective.
Like, what would it hurt you to have her come and be on the stage with you?She's willing to do it, etc.It's certainly not going to be a loss and potentially it's a gain for you.But that's just not, that's just not in him to do.
So I think Yaeli is right fundamentally in her comments. We'll play the Megyn Kelly comments in a moment, which are very similar.She had a very similar take.You had Tomi Lahren earlier on critical of some of the lack of outreach to women.
And it really has, they have actually primarily turned it into a real battle of the sexes kind of a vibe.And we've done a lot of scrutiny.There's been a lot of conversation about Kamala Harris needing to do better with men.
She had that hot mic moment with Gretchen Whitmer, et cetera, et cetera.And you see them trying to make some efforts.You see her going on with, you know, Shannon Sharpe on Club Shea Shea.
You see her going on The Shade Room and some of these, like, more male-dominated podcasts.You don't really see equivalent outreach from the Trump side.
Like, he didn't go on with Brene Brown or whoever the, you know—and Kamala did, by the way—some more female-dominated spaces.Instead, they've just
consistently leaned into the like camp masculinity theme that you saw at the RNC and that you certainly saw at Madison Square Garden, Hulk Hogan, Dana White, you know, that whole sense.
And so you have a few women in the party at least saying, and now actually Cernovich and Charlie Kirk as well, saying like, eh, this might be a little bit of an issue for us.
They're talking about the vote, right?
Yeah, but that's downstream of the approach.
This is where I'm like, I don't think that she's necessarily right.Like in terms of, what did she say in terms of like, this is not the way to win women.I mean, that also presumes like, what is the correct way to quote unquote win women?
Like that just seems like a very, I don't know. Now, it doesn't seem like it's a comment that is directed at any reality.If we look at, quote unquote, women voters, they're voting on the issue of abortion.You can't win on the issue of abortion.
Your best case scenario is to win men, drive up the margin, and then just hope that married women come along, as they have in the past, I think in 2016 and in 2020, to make sure that you don't get drowned out.
That's part of the reason that, didn't you reference those ads where it's like, women, it's okay to lie to your husband or whatever, which, by the way, narcotic and weird.
If you're in a marriage where you have to lie to your husband or your wife about who you're voting for, you gotta get out, all right?Let me just tell you that right now.
I saw a tweet about this too where a woman was saying, who knows if this is even accurate, but that every four years it's hell because her husband's a big Trump supporter and she's not.
And he was like, so where are you going to move if Trump wins again?I'm like, what kind of a marriage is this?
Jesus Christ.To her, get out.To him, you're a loser.
And vice versa, if you're berating your husband or whatever, you're also a loser.
I just would say, and then we'll play the Megyn Kelly comments and get her take on this as well.Nikki Haley referenced the fact that, you know, you had multiple sort of like sexually lewd jokes made at Kamala Harris's expense.
You had the other joke from Tony Hinchcliffe that we haven't even played is about like, you know, Latinos coming inside.You have Elon Musk's super PAC literally running an ad Insinuating Kamala Harris is the C word.
So, you know, certainly there are some women that are just voting on abortion, that's it, they're not gonna change their mind.It's done, it's over, there's nothing they can say about it.
But there also are some normie, and I know some of these women, normie, like previously, voter Republican women who the tone and the crassness is a problem, where they're not particularly ideologically or issue-focused.
And so when that's the entire vibe of the campaign.
In the same way, I think that Democrats at times, with like all the talk about toxic masculinity, et cetera, have put out the vibe of like, this is just not really a place for you if you're, you know, a white dude, bro.
That's the vibe that women are getting from these events of like, this is just not really, like. This is just not really a place for me.You're not putting out welcoming vibes, and I'm put off by the quote-unquote locker room talk.
It's really not for me.It's in a locker room with other men.That's the reason why it's quote-unquote locker room talk.
But he did win white women in 2016, you know.
That's why I always come back to, he actually did win.But that's one of the groups that's been edging away from him.
And there's very real, most of the polling suggests that Kamala Harris is in position to potentially win white women this time around.
And certainly she's banking on, she's betting on suburban women, which would be the type of people that Nikki Haley is most in touch with and is thinking about with these comments.
Just to show you, like, you know, also Megyn Kelly, who is also very, you know, very strong Trump supporter, certainly this time around.She also had some similar concerns about the tone of the MSG rally.Let's take a listen to what she had to say.
Trump was not well served by those around him last night. It wasn't a Nazi rally.All that's nonsense.But I'm telling you, even for me, and I voted for Donald Trump last week, it was too bro-tastic.Okay?It was.
You're trying to win an election in which you're hemorrhaging female voters.
Maybe when you present in front of hundreds, thousands at least, at Madison Square Garden, you clean up the bro talk just a little so you don't alienate women in the middle of America who are already on the fence about Republicans.
Do they have no women advising their campaign?Is there no actual woman sitting behind the scenes, coming up with the guest lineup and saying, let's just have a word with the guys who are going to be speaking about this isn't the bar.
This isn't their living room.This is a campaign.This is politics.We're trying to get him elected.We don't need to rally the base or guys anymore.
And it's not helpful, even if we do want to rally the base or guys, to go full off color insults to different racial groups and so on.I get it.Trust me.Nothing that was said offended me.I'm almost unoffendable.
But I understand how this plays, especially with women.And it was an effed up choice.
I do love how it's never Trump's fault.It's always he's he's failed by that.He can never fail.He's failed by the people around him.
I agree with her, honestly.I think the base strategy is the one that works.I mean, women are predominant, college-educated women are the Kamala base, that's who they're going after, Liz Cheney and all that.
Bros are basically the Republican base, Gen Z split amongst men, that's what you need.Now, look, Ryan's tweet- It's all on the margins, though.
But Ryan's tweet that you read- I mean, that's the thing, it's all around the margins.
Ryan's tweet that you read is accurate, and it is one where it could be scary, right?
Should I read it again since there was only one segment?Oh, yeah, sorry.Go ahead, keep talking, I'll pull it up.
Yeah, it's something about dudes don't have the capacity to show up on time.
The organizational capacity.
He says, I love my dudes, but if there is a nationwide contest between men and women that goes to the group that manages to show up at the right place, fill out their forms on time, and do all those things, the men would need to start with an advantage of several million to be competitive.
Don't come at me.Those are Ryan Grimm's words.You can take it up with him.I'm not being sexist against Ben.That's fair.
It's just one of those where I think that this is a base turnout election.I don't think that this is necessarily like, look, you're right, everything with margins, etc.
But if you run up your margin with men enough, then that actually is one that goes to the Trump campaign strategy.They just think that they're literally not winnable.And I honestly think they're probably correct at this point.
We're so bifurcated in terms of also the issue set that we look at for men and women are completely at odds, immigration and the economy way higher for men.And for women, abortion is just so sky high.
Like, what can you possibly say as a Republican to win that type of voter over?I mean, tone is really not gonna cover.Maybe I am totally wrong, okay?I really, I might be.
That said, the data tells us that if you drive up the margin with men, you will still get a substantial portion of married conservative women to come with you.That's enough to win the election.
You don't necessarily have to win, you know, like single ladies are voting for Trump at like a, or sorry, for Kamala at like a 40-something percent margin.It's crazy if you look at it.
I mean, by the way, anthropologically, none of this is good, but that's a separate story.Like if they're purely trying to win, that's what I would do.
Massive divide between college-educated women and non-college-educated men.Yes.But, you know, I mean, the numbers are what they are in terms of every election women vote more than men.
So if you're going to pick one side, you know, Ryan's comments, putting Ryan's comments aside, if you're going to pick one side of the battle of the sexes to be on, just based on the fact that women always vote at higher rates than men, you would want to be on the side of women.
So listen, how much is, I don't know.I mean, you're right.Like Trump's base is so locked in people, but we're talking about a game of inches.So if you have some people who are on the fence,
reminding them of everything that comes with Trump and you know, there are a lot of like normie women out there, normie people in general who are just like, oh, you know, this is just gross.Um, I don't know.
I, I do think her point too about, he doesn't have any, well he does, is Susie Wiles on the campaign?Yeah, she's literally the number two on
So, I mean, there are women's voices that are in there, but clearly, whereas the Kamala team has really tried to minimize their losses with men and try to keep as many, especially black and brown men, in the tent as they possibly can, there has not been similar outreach from the Trump campaign.
And you're right that it is consistent with two different strategies. The Kamala strategy, if you look at the ad campaign that's been run, if you look at the Liz Cheney outreach and all that stuff, it has really been an attempt to—at persuasion.
And the Trump campaign has been very much an attempt at, like, let's get some of these infrequent voters out, let's drive up turnout in the base.
And like I said, you see that in closing ads where the Trump campaign's going all in on these culture war issues. The Kamala campaign is featuring a lot of former Republicans who are voting for her and they're doing like more of a class war.
He's a billionaire.He's not for you, etc, etc.So, you know, I guess that's that's the bet that both campaigns are placing.We'll see.We're going to see how it works out.
Let's stick with the MSG theme.There was some more, quote, unquote, Here we have Nicky Jam.He's a reggaeton star.He's half Puerto Rican.He has now withdrawn his endorsement of Donald Trump.
He said he thought Trump would be good for the economy, but he cannot look past the disrespect that has now been shown to Puerto Rico.So I don't know.I mean, everyone thinks that this stuff will be consequential.
They're like, oh, Bad Bunny has endorsed Kamala. Again, I have no idea.
I find it very difficult to believe that if you're a Puerto Rican who is gonna vote for Trump, that because Tony Hinchcliffe at a Trump rally made a joke about Puerto Rico, that that is enough for you to switch your vote.
Maybe it's enough for Nicky Jam.It just seems a little weird to me, especially if you live in the continental U.S.You don't even live in Puerto Rico.What are you so upset about?So anyway, that's me.
I think the case for, which I don't know, but the case for it mattering is, number one, in Philly, the places in the actual city of Philadelphia that have moved the most to the right were also the most heavily Puerto Rican parts of the city.
And there's something like half a million Puerto Ricans in the state of Pennsylvania.So obviously, that's an important constituency.
the issue isn't just this comment, it reminds of the Trump Hurricane Maria response and sort of brings up those memories, et cetera.
Because, I mean, I don't know, like you, when I'm looking at this Nicky Jam thing, I'm like, really, you didn't already know who this guy was?Where have you been?Okay, fine.
To be honest, Nicky, the joke's on you, bro.You look like an idiot.I'll say it.It's like, oh, I never thought this could ever happen.Who did you think this was?What's happening here, bro?Also, if it's better for the economy, why does it matter?
So your feelings about Puerto Rico are more important than the economy?Then you're an idiot, okay?It must be nice to be a rich reggaeton star.
I mean, I feel like it's reasonable for people to feel like, oh, you just, like, hate me and the, you know, place I'm from, and whatever, like, disrespect.
It's a freaking Tony Hinchcliffe thing.It's not even like Trump said.Hurricane Maria is a way more legit reason, by the way, to be upset about it.But clearly, Nikki didn't think about that. whenever he was up on the stage.
So, okay, I'll just leave it at that.
So anyway, again, it's one of these micro stories that after election day, we may look back and be like, oh, well, this didn't matter at all.Or we may look back and be like, damn, Trump lost Pennsylvania by like 5,000 votes.
And maybe this was the difference maker right there, which would be really crazy, but you just never know how it's all gonna happen.
I pray that that doesn't happen, just so I don't have to be subjected to this discourse for another three years.Let's continue with Trump.He was asked about Tony Hinchcliffe in the garbage truck.Let's take a listen.
I don't know anything about the comedian.I don't know who he is.I've never seen him.I heard he made a statement, but it was just a statement that he made.He's a comedian.What can I tell you?I know nothing about him.I don't know why he's there.
You put comedians up, and I guess he went on earlier in the show.I don't know who he is.
One of the most classic Trumps of all time.
I don't even know who this person is.I don't even know who the guy is.Well, really?Never heard of him.He was at your rally, and your team vetted his comments.
He also said that about, he continues to say that about Mark Robinson.He goes, I don't know what you're talking about.
He didn't, didn't he call him like a modern day MLK Jr.or something like that previously?
He's like, who?You're telling me for the first time?
Yeah.It's just, it's not really, it's obviously not particularly credible.
But it shows you that many people have also pointed out that like if Trump had said the same thing, he would get away with it and everyone would double down on it and no one would criticize it. only Trump can get away with those things.
And so even the campaign, obviously, you know, in similar way that Kamala's distancing herself from the Biden comments, like they realize it's a problem.
Republicans in Florida ran away from it immediately and other Republicans across the country and Trump himself is like, well, I don't even know who this guy is.Like, you know, this, uh, they clearly recognize this as a bit of a problem for them.
They did the Allentown rally.Yes. made sure to have lots of Puerto Ricans there to validate on stage, whatever.So they know it is a potential issue.Is it a reality electoral issue? We'll find out soon.
Bingo.All right, let's continue.Let's put this up on the screen.Just the last thing on this.
So in terms of these stunts, one of the reasons it's kind of interesting is Data for Progress asked about people who had seen the recent news about certain events in the campaign.
Number one was actually Trump serving fries at McDonald's in terms of the memability of that.You only had 17% of voters who said they had heard nothing at all about it. Harris calling Trump a fascist.You only had 21% who had heard nothing about it.
But actually, Madison Square Garden was number three.So I have, you know, again, Americans, you guys, you fascinate me every day.What breaks through and what doesn't?Why that one?That one really did break through.
Crystal, it broke through more than enemy from within.What? It broke through more than Trump doing on Joe Rogan, which you heard some 32% of people saying never heard about it.Harris campaigning with Liz Cheney.I mean, what?
How people consume the news, what they choose to click on and send to their friends, I, again, will never understand, but that does show you that sometimes things just break through for reasons that are far beyond our control.
Some things just take off.
See, McDonald's I get, but that's just an,
That's the one where I don't understand it.Anyway, all right, let's continue.Joe Rogan, actually Rogan recently, he was talking on his own podcast about the Tony Hinchcliffe comments.
And he actually made some interesting comments specifically about how he had warned Tony in the past that that joke was gonna get him stabbed.Let's take a listen.
I don't really blame Tony though, because Tony is what Tony is, right?Like, if you want an insult comic, Tony is the best in the world.
Literally, his great specialty is roasting.
He's the best roaster ever.
If you book Tony Hinchcliffe, Tony Hinchcliffe is going to be Tony Hinchcliffe.Exactly.So whoever fucking booked him, that's the person that's made the mistake.
Not just booked him, but apparently went over his material.Did they go over his material?No.Oh my. This is what I've read on the internet, so it must be true.In the words of Donald Trump, someone's getting fired, man.
I gotta tell you, that joke kills at comedy clubs.I don't like the joke, but it kills.And I said to him, I don't, it's just like, if you're Puerto Rican and you hear that in the audience, like, oh, but it's a funny joke.The joke does well.
But I said to him, I go, dude, that's the one's going to get you stabbed.Really?Yes.And he used to talk about it on stage saying, Joe Rogan always says, that's the one's going to get me stabbed.Like, Wow, which is so crazy.
Here's what's where that joke comes from Tony is actually obsessed with the Pacific garbage patch and Unlike the fact that we just throw like we were talking about like recycling like the recycling doesn't work They don't do it.
Most of your bottles and you throw in a recycler.They get put in landfills So there's a landfill in Puerto Rico.That's way overflowed Puerto Rico has a legitimate trash problem Because they're on an island, where are you gonna put it?
There's all these people living on that island, where are you gonna put it?And so they have landfills, their landfills are way over capacity.So that's where the joke came from.The joke came from Tony being environmentally conscious.
Maybe you should lay down a little bit of that backstory so the joke would make a little more sense.
I thought it was funny.I will say, I've seen Tony a couple times.I've never heard the Puerto Rico joke.I've seen him do his, I've seen his act quite a few times.I have not heard that one, although I guess I haven't been in Austin.
in quite a while, but it is funny that Raven Rogan himself was like, that's a joke that's gonna get you stabbed.Certainly was a warning.
Yeah, when he said, I don't like the joke, but you know, it's because he's so environmentally conscious that he doesn't, okay.This was funny, I'm gonna put this up on the screen.
Apparently, this was some of the backstory, which also indicated that he had delivered it in clubs before.He says it was not the first time Hinchcliffe had used the Puerto Rico line.
He practiced it at the Stand Comedy Club in New York City, where he made a surprise appearance Saturday night, according to an NBC News producer who happened to be there.The joke did not draw laughs. just a handful of awkward chuckles.
And you guys will recall at the rally too, it bombed.No one was like just a little bit of nervous laughter, maybe.
Hinchcliffe told the audience he would be performing at the Madison Square Garden rally the next day and said multiple times during his routine that he would get a better reaction tomorrow at the rally.
Famous last words, this person opines, I like that Tony bombed at the rally being like, this usually does better at clubs after he bombed at the club saying, this is gonna kill at the rally.
So listen, there's a lot of Puerto Ricans in New York City and maybe it's just not really the location for this line to work out for you.
He's gotta keep saying it in Austin, Texas where Mexicans are allowed to laugh at Puerto Ricans.That's what you gotta keep doing.You gotta know your demographics, Tony.
Yeah, I do have to say, I do kind of agree with It really is the fault of the Trump campaign.It really is their fault.Because look at Tony Hinchcliffe's body of work.That's correct.And they vetted.They vetted his remarks.
And reportedly, he was planning to call Kamala Harris the c-word.And they were like, that's too far.But everything else. And not just this Puerto Rico joke, they left in.
So, I mean, I do sort of agree that the blame really lies at the feet of the Trump campaign for thinking that this was a good idea, knowing, like, looking at his body of work and being like, yes, this is a great thing to have at our political rally, because of course he's going to do the thing that he does.
Yeah, I mean, I have no idea why a comedian, I think I said that too, even though I'm not, you know, whatever, I still think a lot of it is overblown.I don't know why you would have a comedian at a freaking rally, period.
Like, there's really no reason for it.It has no precedence.It's not even one of those old-timey things that people used to do to jazz up the crowd.They used to just have bands.We should bring that back, right?We should have bands.
Do you want to be edgy in that context?Wouldn't you, as a roast comedian, go after some of the, like, people that are there?Like, that's the thing that really is, like, you know.
I mean, he hit some of the core constituencies.He went after some, what, didn't he tell some Jewish jokes?And he was telling some, uh... There were some there, I think, that, again, also, a lot of it didn't land very well.
Because, like, that's the whole thing of a roast, is, like, the Tom Brady, like, Tom Brady's right there, and you're saying some wild shit to his face instead of, like, here's some demographic groups that we all hate, right?Let's go after them.
So, anyway, that's Rogan's take on it.There you go.
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