Election: Comments, analysis, and predictions
Let's talk
Speaker 2:elections. Transmitter 42. The presidential elections are upon us, and it's time for one last discussion on the campaigns as the energy dies down and the last moments of voting become history. My guests join me to share their political roots with observations of how things have changed over the decades. We consider the end of the 2024 campaign season, discuss how the approaches of each major party differ, and respond to interviews of the Pennsylvania electorate and other commentators.
Speaker 2:Join me and my guests on transmitter 42. Welcome back to the audience. This is John Huggins from Transfrooner 42. We have our guests, Kimberly Huggins and Sean Cooper. We're gonna talk about the election.
Speaker 2:We also have an audience member, Amanda. So here we are on the eve of the election. This will air tomorrow after the election. So where do you think we sit, Sean?
Speaker 3:Well, when you say we, are are you meaning Republicans or Democrats?
Speaker 2:Well, both because we have a house and the senate to consider as well, but obviously, the main factor is the presidential election, the one that's the most fun.
Speaker 4:The main horse race.
Speaker 3:I always get excited around election time because all although I wasn't in the military, my grandfather and my dad were both in the navy. So, we always tell our kids that a lot of people gave, sacrificed a lot, gave a lot to give you that right to vote so you better use it.
Speaker 4:True. I I always tell my kids that as frustrated as I get sometimes, that the one reason I do continue to vote is because I know somebody died literally. So I had the right to do that. So that is definitely important.
Speaker 2:My history is I grew up in a Democrat family and my dad was in World War 2. And I certainly have listened to them quite a bit, and they were literally depression folks. They grew up in that as kids. And to them, FDR, of course, was the savior of all things.
Speaker 4:God.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And my grandparents were, of course, Democrats and and, I think my my granddaddy said once that he would vote for a snake before he voted for Republican.
Speaker 4:Well, some people might still feel that way, but I actually grew up in a house that wasn't very political at all. My grandfather was in the military, and he didn't much like Republicans either. But my actual immediate family didn't really care. Didn't really have a lot to say about anything.
Speaker 3:So a a little background on me. I I'm from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania originally. I have on my mother's side, we have a Hungarian and English roots. My my grandmother actually came over, to Ellis Island when she was 3. So I'm 2nd generation on her side, and then my dad's family was English and Irish.
Speaker 3:I know my great grandmother on my dad's side came over from Ireland, as a young child. So being in Pittsburgh, for those that who don't know, it's a very, a lot of immigrants gathered there around the turn of the century, with the steel mills and the coal mines. And Mount Washington, which is for those that know Pittsburgh, is up on the hill that used to be called Coal Hill because they would send the coal down to the steel mines, for them to use in the in, I mean, in the steel mills for them to use in the steel mills. So almost everybody I ever grew up with was either a first generation, second generation immigrant. We had the the different communities where they all gathered.
Speaker 3:The Irish were here. The Hungarians were here. We had a place called Polish Hill, where all the all the, so all the ethnicities would would gather together and share their food and their experiences coming over, which helped make the city pretty strong at one point.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Would you say most all those people then had jobs either in the steel mill, the coal mine, the like
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, there there's there's some in the some in the food industry, but for the most part, it was either steel mill or was a career that was, adjacent or benefited from the steel mills.
Speaker 2:And we can sum up Sean with his shirt as well. He says, you can't scare me. I have 2 daughters.
Speaker 3:That that that will, that will make you strong if you if you have 2 I I don't think you even need 2. 11 would probably suffice. But as John was saying, a lot of a lot of my relatives too grew up Democrats. I really didn't follow politics as a young kid. I was I was more worried about just just playing, but, you know, I would imagine that probably 90% of the people that I knew or grew up with that lived in our neighborhood because they were, newly immigrated to America, that they were Franklin Roosevelt Democrats, John Kennedy, Democrats, and, you know, the the parties the parties, makeup both the parties makeup was a little different back then than it is than it is today, I think.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So what I think that fast forward to today, I think you make an excellent point that it's not your not your granddaddy's party anymore, I think, probably.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I would say all my relatives, which hail from North and South Carolina, they would probably be aghast the fact that someone would be challenged them on gun control. The the Democrats of old certainly never did that. Yeah.
Speaker 4:I feel like there was probably a lot of policy changes. I mean, I'm not the first person who's said, you know, I don't really think John f Kennedy would be welcome in today's Democrat party. I don't really see him fitting in in that now.
Speaker 2:So the Republicans of today well, let's let's go back 16 years to say. Reagan, of course, was an exception, but they've had their stuffiness as well. And, I I would argue that they're bought by special interests. They all are to a degree, but they don't seem to pay a whole lot of attention to individual rights as much as some others do. The libertarians, of course, have been sort of the voice of that in a way, as the minority that they are, but they're out there.
Speaker 4:Well, I think there's factions within each party. I mean, I I know they they present as just one or the other, but I think within each party, there's there is, like, a struggle within each party. So, like, I would I would argue that on the the Democrat side right now, they've really been dragged almost forcefully to the extreme left of or what you may have considered extreme left based on what you like, if you compare it to what the party of John f Kennedy was, it's to the left of that now. Does it is everybody in the Democrat party like that? No.
Speaker 4:I don't think so. But it's like who whose voice wins out?
Speaker 2:Years ago, I saw a in an election for some local office, and it was a Democrat who was running for maybe sheriff or something like that. He says, I'm a pro gun Democrat. And I was like, he won't be lasting long, I don't think. I don't know what happened. That was we're talking county level kind of thing.
Speaker 2:So who knows? I actually became a little. So we seem to have the makings of a unity party of a kind, uniquely, more so this year than when Trump first ran the first two times. In fact, I think Trump was more of a a phenomena before. Now it seems to be much different energy.
Speaker 2:I'm sensing a whole coalition here of a variety of people. There's an ad that they just put out that'll play eventually, which really wraps it up nice. They have done a pretty good job of doing social media this time around.
Speaker 4:Well, I think they're in a different campaign this time than even last time.
Speaker 3:Had a better job getting out to you know, trying to get out to early vote vote, which Donald Trump kinda did not want, 4 years ago.
Speaker 2:Yes. Yes.
Speaker 4:Well, I mean, I don't know how you feel, but in a perfect world I mean, my perfect world would be one day, everybody gets a day off, paper ballots. I mean, I'm not saying military can't vote and all that, but, I I think, like, mail in ballots, absentee ballots, all that stuff should be, like, strictly curtailed.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I think the majority I think the majority of Americans like, voting day and not voting season.
Speaker 4:You're right. Agreed.
Speaker 3:It's it's it's almost feels like it like it doesn't end. And regardless of how many studies they do, I mean, I can it's just common sense that the longer the election lasts and the more mail in ballots you have and the more computers you use, that for and this goes for either side, it's a lot easier to compromise the election.
Speaker 4:Truth. Truth. For sure.
Speaker 2:Paper ballots make it easier on the election workers too. I have firsthand knowledge of that when I I helped out with the Warrington Presbyterian Church, the precinct that was there. We had ballots and we also had 2 machines, so that was the choices. And they only allocated 2 machines to that precinct. And, a lot of people seem to always naturally gravitate towards the machines thinking that they're faster.
Speaker 2:And I thought that as well until I watched this unfold. For one thing, paper ballots, everyone if you want one, you get one. Then, of course, they have these cardboard booths, which can be replicated in the dozens. They have all of these people doing their ballots at once, and then they feed the machine at the end to tally it up and dump it in the bucket. And that was blazing fast compared to the 2 machines, especially if you've got constitutional amendments or something like that that really slow everything down.
Speaker 2:And especially when you get some poor old person who really should be doing a paper ballot. Right. They get up there and they get stuck.
Speaker 4:You don't get a choice. You get the paper ballot.
Speaker 3:I'm also old enough to remember, Ferris Bueller hacking his school's computer and he changes grades. And I think there's more sophisticated hackers out there now.
Speaker 4:Truth.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think, there's been a lot of talk about Internet attacks on voting systems. I know that system that we had here in our county is not attached to any network. It's all internalized. And,
Speaker 4:Yeah. But so to that point, I think it's it's only as good as the state wants it to be. If you want to have an opportunity, you know, which actually leads to another conversation. Like, do you want the state like, if it's a federal election, should there be a should there be a rule? Like, it should be the same for every state?
Speaker 2:I would argue no only because it's up to the states to do election. There isn't a such thing as a federal election. There are states who elect the federal officers. Their own representatives. I mean, right down to the president, we elect electors.
Speaker 4:Well, that's true. But
Speaker 2:And so every state has their way of doing things. Some of them are a little some of them are designed, I think, for potentially morphing the results. Others are just designed to accommodate whatever the geography that they have.
Speaker 4:Yeah. But to to Coop's point, if you can what was the recent hack we had where, like, everything do, like, went to a standstill? What was that over? I can't even remember. But my point is if it can do that, you know it can hack a voter machine.
Speaker 4:I mean, come on. It can't be that hard.
Speaker 2:And if you have access to it, I believe it was access that was the question. Someone managed to get access like this computer here. If it had no Internet connection, they could plug in the thumb drive and do something with it.
Speaker 5:Yes.
Speaker 2:I believe they rooted it, which is the term of the how do you get into a Linux prompt or something like that, which is essentially hacking and getting in Yeah. Through the back door and changing whatever you want if you know where to go.
Speaker 4:Well, I still come back to, like, I can't believe we had to go to court to say that ballots with the date passed 5th won't be counted. I mean, it just, like, seems like common sense.
Speaker 3:And also, people are admitting that they can't vote being taken off the voter rolls.
Speaker 4:That that's a problem.
Speaker 3:That's a problem also. So those are the they wanna know what what, feeds into election mistrust and it's things like that, you know, that add up.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Even if they're not being conniving about it, They sure make themselves look like it. So that's not optics control.
Speaker 4:Well, to your point of optics, there was a lot of bad optics in this whole election.
Speaker 2:Yes. So A lot of people. You know, October surprises would be a topic on its own. You expect a 1 or 2 or 3. What did we get?
Speaker 2:Like, 5 or something? And every time the Democrats did something, Trump would respond.
Speaker 4:Whether he liked it or not, he had a response. I mean
Speaker 2:And completely blow it out of the news cycle, whatever they were trying to convey. And then
Speaker 4:Well,
Speaker 2:RFK Junior did it after the convention. Trump did it with McDonald's. Trump did it with a garbage truck. I'm just going, man.
Speaker 3:The the the other thing that has me really nervous about this election is when you when you have one of the candidates that say he's gonna bring somebody in to study government efficiency.
Speaker 4:There isn't any.
Speaker 3:That that person that person is also not by not by everybody on the democratic side, but he's been I can't tell you how many times I've heard that he's a fascist. I've heard the word Hitler, a lot too many times. I'm not Jewish myself, but I think it's disrespectful to people of the Jewish faith who had 6,000,000 members of their faith killed to compare that to a presidential candidate.
Speaker 6:Right. So
Speaker 3:I mean, that that just it just feeds into all the rhetoric rhetoric and Trump has his rhetoric too. I just think, you know, when when you call somebody Hitler that, what would you not do to make sure that person does not get elected?
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 3:And that your more it's your moral obligation to make sure that that person doesn't get elected. That's what scares me.
Speaker 4:Well and I I I think to your point, I mean, I think that's the point. I mean, there was a article. We we had a joke in our family. There was an article where and where the guy literally said, Trump was Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini altogether. And so I said, well, let's just
Speaker 2:of totalitarianism.
Speaker 4:And I'm like, so let's just add Thanos because that's the last
Speaker 3:When I hear people say that, I always like to say, you know, I always like to say, you know, I also heard that he eats babies.
Speaker 4:I mean, what else are you gonna say?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I heard that too that you probably say. Yeah.
Speaker 4:But I don't know. I think it is, it is sad because it's like, I wanna go back to, like, when we were kids. Where it, like, if you're a Democrat and you're a Republican, it didn't really no one cared. You voted however you voted and then you went on with your life, and you didn't have to hear about politics for 4 years every day till the next election. You know, you did get a a time period there where you didn't have to hear about it.
Speaker 3:And I think back then, I mean, the the debates and the and the talk was more of, fiscal responsibility, getting the budget down. Now, I mean, now we're having debates on whether boys should be in girls' bathrooms, girls should be in boys' bathrooms. Should we not have a border at all? And everybody come one, come all. I mean
Speaker 2:That this is the actual topics is a very sad statement in and of itself. Like, okay. Where did the Democrats go?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Stuff everybody used to agree on is out the door.
Speaker 4:Right. I don't know when that happened. But
Speaker 2:So I believe that extreme nonsense has triggered a variety of people who would remain otherwise very quiet. They don't even vote. More and more people are coming up to vote that I'm seeing. And because you're Pennsylvania, I have a variety of interesting clips from the Amish community up there because apparently, they are becoming far more
Speaker 4:Involved. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Let's listen to the first clip.
Speaker 7:Yeah. We're we're looking forward to bringing out a lot of, lot of Amish folk on November 5th or even earlier to vote in person, in droves this year.
Speaker 2:That was an organizer, and this is a interview of an Amish young man who's actually wearing a t shirt in the video.
Speaker 6:So the Amish historically, deep deep rooted in their ancestry is the government, the state killed the people in the 15th son in the 1500 over in Europe, Switzerland, primarily. So when they immigrated to America, they brought with them this distrust of the state. And so that's part of the resistance to getting involved in civics, like elections and so forth. There's also this non resistant pacifism rooted in woven in there as well. And so when you see the Amish community starting to get engaged in civics like voting, something as simple as voting, it means that the country has turned to a point or become the culture has become has pushed far enough left that they're, like, becoming engaged because But they may
Speaker 4:First
Speaker 6:of all, they care more about their community than their country. It sounds crazy, but they do. Because they are Americans, but they also care about their community. So if they feel like their rights to, you know, gathering as a community, as a church, if they if they see that potentially becoming violated, you will see some folks rise up and be willing to engage in voting.
Speaker 2:So their community has seen this before and now their hackles are up saying, uh-oh. We have totalitarianism knocking on our door once again.
Speaker 3:Which is which to me is just big government. And to me, if you watch what's going on, I'd say the last 3 or 4 years, especially since COVID, if you control the language, you control the narrative. So, you know, you could say reproductive freedom. I mean, to me, it's a barge. The words are always the words are always changing.
Speaker 3:Misinformation, disinformation. What one person's disinformation is somebody else's truth. And if you have the government making those decisions
Speaker 4:And who gets to decide? Like, your well, to your point. Why should anybody get to decide, really?
Speaker 2:It's interesting to me that the Supreme Court decision not too long ago about the government no longer has deference in, their the final say, so to speak, on various topics that they administrate. Chevron. Chevron. Yep. The Chevron deference case.
Speaker 2:And no. No. No. That that's actually very good news because now they'll actually have to defend themselves with more vigor than just simply being able to say what they think some situation is, what whatever it might be the government's doing.
Speaker 4:I would be interested to how to see how much the Amish community has been engaged because there have been a couple of high profile cases where they had farm products literally destroyed. Like, the government came in and, you know, threw all their stuff in the Mhmm. Street, the ground, whatever, and broke all their stuff. Perfectly good food. I mean, for whatever reason, they don't, you know, I don't know, raw milk or whatever.
Speaker 4:They didn't like it. So and I think that probably has a lot to do with it.
Speaker 3:And it's just it's, you know, it's just well, it's not funny, but it's just it's, you know, that always it's always one way. It's, oh, we didn't cover this story. We thought it wasn't true. We thought it was Russian disinformation. It always works one way.
Speaker 3:Right. It's never it's not a two way street. So that that's what makes you wonder. It's a and I I've told, Amanda this before. It's almost to me like it every democratic nowadays, I'm not saying 20, 30 years ago, but nowadays, every democratic event campaign, it's like it's spit shine for Hollywood.
Speaker 3:It's not it's not real. It's it's like it's done on a sound stage. You can't talk to the candidate. They can't give any answers. They're gonna give you the same platitudes.
Speaker 3:Right. They're hidden. They're only gonna talk to certain people. To me, if you want the greatest job in this country, you gotta answer some questions.
Speaker 4:Truth. But to your point, that's interesting what you said. I was telling somebody the other day that I feel like we are literally living in the fakest time ever. Everything I mean, I don't know if that's because we have social media now, which we didn't necessarily have. You know?
Speaker 4:It's not even 10 years ago like it is now. And you just feel like, is everything contrived? I mean, to your point, here we are just a few days before the election and Kamala has asked about some things she did in California and she literally said, I'm not going to get into that before the election.
Speaker 3:We're too
Speaker 2:close to c plus the election.
Speaker 3:To let you know my opinion.
Speaker 6:I mean,
Speaker 3:what world are we what world are we living
Speaker 4:in? Crazy.
Speaker 2:I keep telling Kim that the the campaign manager for Bill Clinton was James Carville. We all know him. You may not like him, but the boy's a genius. K? And I've heard him a few times, like, when Kamala was over in, Hollywood, I think he said she's that she's on the West Coast wasting time in a state that she's going to get regardless.
Speaker 2:She needs to be mixing it up. I guess this is around the time of Helene.
Speaker 4:It was. The hurricane. So that was hard. Talk about poor optics.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah. She had a fundraiser.
Speaker 4:She was out in San Francisco at a Hollywood fundraiser.
Speaker 2:Money. I get it. Yeah. And and she's not doing very well with that apparently. But so, yeah, you gotta have money.
Speaker 2:But you need to manage that a little more carefully.
Speaker 4:That was just poor optics. People are, you know, dying in a mudslide in Western North Carolina, and you're at a fundraiser. That was not smart. But
Speaker 3:I can't remember if it was before we started or after, but I told you earlier I voted I voted for Obama. I voted for, Clinton, Clinton's second term. And so I voted Republican and Democrat even in congressional races. But, after after COVID in 2020 because I'm a sports guy. So when I lost my sports, I started watching politics.
Speaker 3:You can ask Amanda how much politics did I watch before 2020? It was literally none. I just wasn't engaged. We had 4 kids. We always had something going on.
Speaker 3:But something in COVID struck that and I started watching watching politics and it's it was just amazing to me The things that are done right under the American people's noses that that, you know, they they don't realize.
Speaker 4:On both sides.
Speaker 3:Yes. On both sides. And I just and I just feel like for the for the most part, and I've done a deep dive into this, not all, but more than more than the left. On the right consists of a lot of people who have built a business, who have been in the private sector, who's hired and fired people, who signed checks. And a lot on the Democratic side are career politicians that started at 20, started at 23, 24, and it's really all they're ever going to do unless they get hired as a DEI officer for a corporation.
Speaker 3:And then as an example of this, CAOC.
Speaker 4:Truth. I mean, a lot of to your point.
Speaker 3:She won't she will she won't create anything in the in the private sector. It will be government subsidies to start this nonprofit and that nonprofit and that nonprofit
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 3:That don't solve any problems. Just give us the money.
Speaker 4:Right. And she I don't think she learned anything the year she was a bartender either. So
Speaker 3:I wasn't gonna bring that up. I was trying to be nice.
Speaker 2:Let me do another clip from the, Amish community. This is actually pretty important because Pennsylvania's so tight.
Speaker 6:99%, if not a 100%, they're very conservative.
Speaker 1:What is it about the conservative values that the Amish identify with the most?
Speaker 6:That's a good question. I would say limited government. They wanna be left alone. We wanna farm, grow our own food, and we wanna sell it.
Speaker 2:To your point.
Speaker 6:That kind of thing. Too many regulations is is I mean, it's an it's it's it's antithetical to freedom. And so the Amish are a very freedom loving people when it comes to commerce, farming, raising their families. They have their own schools. They fought for their own schools in the sixties, and they won.
Speaker 6:Some of them went to prison because they didn't send their kids to public schools. That was a huge victory for us now because many families who are homeschooling do so because of the Amish resistance to sending their kids to public school. And now we see the decay of of our moral fabric, and our public schools are indoctrinated. Our kids
Speaker 2:Morals, s'mores is the new democratic mantra perhaps.
Speaker 4:Well, I think to his point, just wanna be left alone. I think there's a lot of people, not doesn't matter if you're Amish or not, but I think a lot of people just wanna be
Speaker 2:left alone.
Speaker 4:Okay? And so circling back to what you were saying now about just so seems to be so much crazy out there. That's just like a bridge too far for a lot of people, because you're just kind of like I mean, if you run a business, you I mean, I'm I I mean, I don't have any numbers, but I'm sure, like, the regulations that you have to follow are, like, so much more probably than they need to be, much less more than you want them to be. And it just seems to be I think most I think most people just wanna be left alone, and they don't they don't wanna be told necessarily by the government. But at the same time, you don't want you don't want like, if you wanna do whatever your lifestyle is, okay.
Speaker 4:Fine. Keep it in your bedroom. Keep it in your house. But you can't make me accept it, and you can't make my child do x because you want the world to turn like you want it to turn.
Speaker 2:Oh, but your children belong to us.
Speaker 4:No. Well, that's a whole another thing. If you, I mean, if you feel like do you feel like your children belong to the state? I mean, how
Speaker 2:about lettuce raise the children so that they
Speaker 4:That's a bridge too far
Speaker 3:from me. Plenty of people who the the state should take their children.
Speaker 2:Yeah. How about just let us raise our children so they can be productive citizens for the betterment of the future economy?
Speaker 4:Well, I know. To your to your point about COVID, now I got I don't know if I'd say I got red pill in a different way. I pretty much voted Republican my whole life. Although, I did vote for for I did vote 3rd party. I voted for parole back in the day.
Speaker 4:Okay?
Speaker 2:19% or so.
Speaker 4:And, and you know, I I kinda feel like, and I I know a lot of young people from talking to our oldest who he hates the 2 party political system. I know a lot of people do for various reasons, but it's what we got. So we you gotta work with what you got now. And the reason I would never vote for a 3rd party candidate right now is because it it can't work in our system. I mean, let's say they were set let's say they got enough, and there wasn't 270 for any candidate, and it goes to the house of representatives.
Speaker 4:Okay. Well, they're not voting for the 3rd party. They're gonna pick the Republican or the Democrat. So I hate to say, anybody's wasting their vote if you vote 3rd party. Okay.
Speaker 4:Maybe you can make a statement, but I don't know which was why it was so interesting with Kennedy in the mix this go around and then how all that played out. Because I personally think that could have gone down so differently if the Democrat party had at least had a primary with him on the stage, like, accepted him, but then they wouldn't have had the control.
Speaker 3:And see, that's the other thing I why do you have why do you have I think it's the earliest, if not is one of the earliest presidential debates in presidential debate history.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 3:Why do you agree to that?
Speaker 2:Because they were trying to get rid of Biden. It's as simple as that.
Speaker 3:That's what I believe.
Speaker 2:I mean yeah. I think most people who think about this stuff a little more than the people don't think about anything until tomorrow, understood that's exactly what happened there.
Speaker 3:So all the people that were around him did nothing, saw nothing, they said, and George Clooney puts an op ed in the LA Times, and all of a sudden, it's, oh, it's time to get rid of Joe Biden. That's what it took.
Speaker 4:Right. So what would have happened? What would have happened if Trump hadn't agreed to that debate? And if he just said, we have to wait till after your your chosen. You know, we have to wait till after the Democrat convention.
Speaker 3:I thought about that.
Speaker 4:To pick to pick you know, for me to actually debate you because then you're the candidate. And you know that the their convention was super late this year in August, I think. So you said you thought about it. What what do you think?
Speaker 3:No. I I just think it was as John said, I just think it was a everything everything is political. I really believe when Nancy Pelosi wakes up in the morning, she decides what cereal she's gonna eat by what what's the most political brand. It's all political. Every move that's made just seems political.
Speaker 3:And that's just as, you know, just as an observer. I'm kinda like the clip that John played. They just keep the government, you know, keep the government out of our lives. Our son is like your son. 1 of our sons played college athletics.
Speaker 3:He's in Pennsylvania at St. Vincent College right now. He's working very hard. And I'm sorry. I don't I don't think that, once he's 30 years old and he's sitting in a room for a job interview with somebody who doesn't have his credentials and didn't work as hard as he did, should get equity, excuse me, should get
Speaker 4:That job.
Speaker 3:Get that job based on equity. It's, you know, it's what you've done. I'm all for equality. I am not for equity because you cannot have equal outcomes. No.
Speaker 3:It's not American.
Speaker 4:It's not.
Speaker 2:Let's continue with the Amish. They have great stuff.
Speaker 1:And you guys have the small business owners just wanna be left alone
Speaker 6:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And not regulated and told that they have to hire a certain number of people and do their business a certain way. And that that all goes along with how the conservatives feel.
Speaker 6:Very much so. I think that's one of the intersections between American conservatism and the Amish community. We wanna be left alone. We wanna raise our families. We wanna send them to school.
Speaker 6:We wanna take them to church, and we wanna give them our values. And so and that and
Speaker 2:and Values. So, yeah, the Amish definitely have, I guess, been red pilled. There's more clips there that show they very much understand what's going on. And I often wonder if they because they have no electricity, so they say. If they have little crystal radio and they're listening to the AMT and the next talk radio down the road because that's that's literally what I'm hearing.
Speaker 3:So they They're they're very much know the statistics, but they they set out the 2020 election for the most part. Correct?
Speaker 4:I think they set out most elections.
Speaker 2:I just know this one, apparently, they're very much more involved.
Speaker 4:Well, I heard
Speaker 2:Go ahead.
Speaker 4:Now I heard that there was 80,000 new registrants from the Amish community in Pennsylvania just for this election.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The young guy was very happy that his parents got registered for the first time this year, this time. And they don't like to go out to vote. They don't wanna do that. So mail in balloting was made for them.
Speaker 2:That's what they did. And that allowed them to do their votes and not have to be seen, not be pictured, and all that good stuff. They they're very much, I I guess, introvert is the way to put it.
Speaker 4:Well, let's hope they don't get burned up somewhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I understand that.
Speaker 3:Well, I I if the if it's bad news for somebody if the org if the the Amish are organized because since we've been sitting here, they built 6 barns.
Speaker 2:And moved 3, probably. Right. And is there an entirety?
Speaker 4:Something that would take a year, or longer to take place in the real world because you gotta get the permit and you gotta get the EPA, designation and all that.
Speaker 3:I mean, in certain ways, when when, you know, when you're young, you think of the Amish, oh, that's that's boring. Once you're older and you have kids and stuff, you're you kinda, you know, you kinda admire that life. I mean, they're self sufficient. Now, you know, I'm not wouldn't be able to watch any Steeler games, which would be a big problem. I might have to sneak off and be Amish light and just participate Monday through Saturday.
Speaker 4:You want what is that? You get called something where you get sent away, you get shunned. That's what it is.
Speaker 6:You get shunned. Get shunned.
Speaker 3:They they may have to just shun me.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 2:Any predictions?
Speaker 3:I'm gonna be I I thought you might ask this, but I'm gonna I'm gonna be bold. I I think it's gonna be I think it's gonna be a Trump blowout. I think he's gonna get close to 300 elector votes, and I think he's gonna win the popular vote too. By how much? I don't know.
Speaker 3:But I I think he's gonna win the popular vote maybe 54, 46, which would be, you know, compared to
Speaker 2:the last few elections. Would he decisive? Blow out in the electoral college concept.
Speaker 4:I would really like for him to win the popular vote because I'm so sick of hearing we have to get rid of the electoral college and just go by the popular vote. We only wanna get rid of the electoral college when we lose, But if we were to lose the popular vote, then maybe you might think twice.
Speaker 3:I think the I think the electoral college is in trouble. I think
Speaker 6:the I
Speaker 2:hope not because it I think it's a
Speaker 3:filibuster, and I think the Supreme Court has have justices at it. Now, hopefully, with the senate and house the way they are because most likely Republicans will retain the the senate. The house is kind of for grabs, but even the house looks like they may even have a, at best, an 8 to 10 seat majority.
Speaker 4:Well, they only got 5 right now. So I mean, I expect that to be tight.
Speaker 2:So Unity Party. Do you agree that that's happening right now? Strange bedfellows are in the Republican Party. I would never have seen this, but I'm seeing it. With RFK, with Kelsey Gabbard.
Speaker 2:There's a few other names that we're gonna
Speaker 4:hear Swamy.
Speaker 2:Vivek, although he's a Republican from the get go, I think. But that ad that we're gonna play near the end here, it's just perfect. And then, of course, there is libertarian component. There's a personality that I listen to a lot who's an ex satanist, of all
Speaker 3:things. What is his name?
Speaker 2:He goes his name is Tarl something.
Speaker 4:Tarl?
Speaker 2:That's his first name, but his handle is, Styx Hex and Hammer 666. But the boy is very bright, and I wanted to play for you some of his, summary on predictions. Okay.
Speaker 8:I'm seeing more energy among Trump fans. I'm seeing more organizational capacity, except maybe on the ground in the craftivistic sense. The the liberals tend to outperform there. But when I look at the early voting, especially, early voting in person, I see 2 possible explanations, technically 3, for the situation. The Republicans are outperforming where they have in the past by a double digit margin.
Speaker 8:I can assume that this is all people that would have voted on election day anyway, but they decided to early vote because Trump told them it was a good idea. Or I can assume that most of these people would not have voted and decided to vote early, or I can I can, assume that there's some mixture of the 2? I I choose the 3rd path. I think that some of these people would have voted anyway, but I think some of them wouldn't because their schedule may not allow them to go out on election. It's not a national holiday.
Speaker 8:So some hundreds of thousands of those people, I think, would not have voted at all were it not for the admonishment, hey. You know, you can vote for, like, the next couple of weeks. Just do it now and get it over with. And then on election day, you know, you don't have any problems. Some of those people, since they early voted, have died.
Speaker 8:Well, normally, they would vote Democrat, but, they already put in their votes. So, you know, the Democrats will lose some tens of thousands of votes probably in the competitive states simply because people early voted.
Speaker 3:That's that's good.
Speaker 2:Yeah. He's, he's with it, we'll say. We don't agree with him certainly on certain moral issues, but, the boy is very dug in, and he's pro Trump all the way.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I always I always say I will, at this point in my life, I'm 51, I will I don't believe I will ever cast another vote for a democrat unless the party changes and comes back toward the center a little bit. I make that caveat. I'm saying I will never vote Democrat again until after I die.
Speaker 6:That's right. Right. That's right.
Speaker 2:Like you, he predicts that the senate will go red, Don't really know about the house and that Trump wins.
Speaker 4:Well, I wanna get back to your unity party comp Sure. Concept. I'm not so, optimistic. I think this is a specific moment in time that people have come together for different reasons.
Speaker 2:Totally totally agree.
Speaker 4:I think there's every possibility if Trump wins 4 years from now, that's gonna be blowed all to kingdom come. If somebody doesn't get there, whatever they were promised or whatever they thought they were gonna get. I mean, I hope a lot of those things come to fruition, but realistically
Speaker 3:But I think the party's moved the party's moved more towards like a Tulsi Gabbard or it's just it's just to me, it's just common sense. If you believe in common sense, then come under this tent. If you if you don't want boys showering with your girls, if you don't want an open border, because as far as I'm concerned, if you don't have a border, you don't have a country. Agreed. I have a daughter that's in college in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Speaker 3:And I think quite often that something could happen to her. You know. And at that point, my life would just about be over. So that's a thought that crosses my mind. It it affects how I vote.
Speaker 4:I I just think it will be interesting. I mean, we're getting ahead of ourselves here. We're only supposed to be talking about now. But
Speaker 2:Oh, now? In the future?
Speaker 4:4 I think 4 years from now. I I do think going back to how Trump ran a different campaign this time, which he totally did. He has totally succeeded in if you were believing the concept of making a bigger tent. He totally did that this time with bringing all kinds of different people in.
Speaker 3:And some people had to go. I don't I don't think Mitt Romney has a Mitt I'm sorry. Mitt Romney has a place No. In the Republican party going forward.
Speaker 4:But what I will be interested to see in the future is at some point, they what I would call the establishment of the Republican party. People like Romney, McConnell, and, you know, whoever else is the big ones I think of. There's gonna be a pushback.
Speaker 3:Because they don't like outsiders either.
Speaker 4:No. They don't. They're they're just waiting till Trump's done, and then they're expecting to come back.
Speaker 2:And then the red wave will be done. That's unfortunately what's probably gonna happen. So we just need to enjoy that what we can. Now Whoever wins this election has a very big problem with the economy like it is on the precipice of going into the tank.
Speaker 4:The That's still gonna suck.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean And the debt the way it is, crazy high.
Speaker 3:I mean, not only government debt, credit card debt, American credit card debts at an all time high.
Speaker 2:Right. And, you know So
Speaker 3:I you can cite the you can cite the job numbers, the unemployment numbers, and everything, but you can't tell people what they're feeling. You tell people eggs cost $6, chicken cost double what it was because people just look at you like you don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 4:Right. So when you say, oh, they
Speaker 2:But they insult you and say you're not seeing that.
Speaker 4:When they when they tell you the economy is getting better, like, to your point, I was just watching before you came in. I was watching the pundit, whatever, on the news, and he's like, well, energy's still high, and groceries are still high, and housing's still high, but the economy's getting better. I mean, those are all the things that, like, real people
Speaker 2:stare at my watch swinking before your eyes.
Speaker 3:I mean, the the grocery thing, I think, is so easy to fix because I think it's all a lot of it's based on fossil fuels.
Speaker 4:It's all energy.
Speaker 3:Okay. So if you gotta pay more for diesel to get the lettuce from where it's going to the, you know, ships towards everything. And and the, producers aren't gonna absorb that cost. They're gonna pass it down to the consumers. So if you if you make energy more more affordable, the prices will go down.
Speaker 3:Now the tariff the tariff deal, I'm not sure.
Speaker 2:She thinks they're going to continue to gouge, but eventually competition wouldn't bring it down. Now that's Kamala's that's Kamala's inflation.
Speaker 3:The inflation that we have, because inflation's, cumulative, you know, you're not gonna get 2020 prices anymore, but maybe they can just start, you know, outpace you know, stop outpacing wages would be would be nice.
Speaker 4:Well, that would
Speaker 2:be nice. Stop the inflation. How about that?
Speaker 4:But,
Speaker 2:Better write a minute?
Speaker 4:The problem the other problem is the government, the powers that be, wanted to take care of the debt. So I don't know. And then to your point, I mean, when okay. When Reagan came in office, it took him every bit of 8 years. I mean, I don't really remember it because I was a kid.
Speaker 4:But just from looking at history, you know, it didn't get better, like, a year after he got elected. It took the whole time.
Speaker 6:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And and and even Reagan made some mistakes. I think he was a good president, but he made a lot of mistakes too.
Speaker 4:Agreed.
Speaker 3:So it goes it goes for both sides. I just Turned
Speaker 4:California blue.
Speaker 3:I tried to vote for the sides that make, make the least mistakes. And and the other the other reason I'm the border issue is a big issue for me because if if Texas turns blue, we'll never get another Republican president.
Speaker 4:That's true.
Speaker 2:Jim has said that many
Speaker 3:times. I'm on record of saying that 5 or 6 years ago.
Speaker 4:But I think I mean, all you have to do is look at the numbers. The the border situation's the worst it's ever been. And
Speaker 2:Oh, but you're not seeing that, Kim.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Well, this is the thing. Whatever is happening is what they want to happen. So there's a reason for that. It's not just because
Speaker 3:It's not it's not incompetence. I can
Speaker 4:say that. It's not because we don't know how to close it.
Speaker 3:And I'm not trying to personally disparage anybody, but if if Alejandro Mayorkas doesn't look like a Bond villain, I don't know who does.
Speaker 4:He's on the payroll inspector.
Speaker 2:You know, the w e f. Right. They they finally got a legitimate name.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 2:So,
Speaker 4:Oh, you said predictions. You said Trump.
Speaker 2:I think Trump's gonna pull it out. Barely. I think it'll be a popular vote win, but the energy is certainly there. If it's not, I don't know, man. We're in for a terrible, terrible Christmas season, I think.
Speaker 4:Well, to your point, I I do think there's gonna be let's say Trump wins. I think there's gonna be a severe mental health break moment in this country.
Speaker 3:Bored up the storefronts.
Speaker 2:That's correct. Yeah. They will riot. It was one of my, sticks topics here and, you know, they were gonna go out and they're gonna bust things up and and, look like they're doing the righteous thing. Well, well well, Amanda, what's your prediction?
Speaker 4:She's out. What's your prediction?
Speaker 2:Trump.
Speaker 4:You think Trump?
Speaker 2:I think popular and electoral college, but not the margin that you think. I think it's gonna be What was yours?
Speaker 4:I say Trump. Not gonna lie. I'm worried about the cheat. It's so close. If it if it wasn't close in the states, he's gotta win for the electoral college.
Speaker 4:I might want but if if it's close enough, he can cheat that much. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2:Defeat the cheat is the mantra.
Speaker 3:Too big too big to rig.
Speaker 4:I don't know.
Speaker 3:I just you know? And if it's not if it's not a transparent election and people are people on both sides are gonna start complaining, I just hope that it's a transparent election and that everything goes smoothly. And if if Kamala Harris wins fair and square, then she wins fair and square. If Donald Trump wins, Donald Trump wins. You know, of course, I'd rather have Donald Trump, but I'm not gonna go break into Sephora and start stealing stuff on on Wednesday.
Speaker 3:I got other things to do.
Speaker 4:Not even Sephora? No.
Speaker 3:Maybe an Apple store.
Speaker 4:That's a little higher, value.
Speaker 3:I'm not I'm I'm not good for looting. I'm not as fast as I used to be.
Speaker 4:To your point, that's good. That's the phone.
Speaker 2:Yeah. See, they're already trying to cancel us.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Maybe. We're putting out misinformation.
Speaker 2:2 more clips. This is James Carville, who we all know is smarter than he puts himself out to be. He has been interviewed, of course, lately, and this is his prediction.
Speaker 9:I would say take Harris over 270 electoral votes. Let these fools and these crypto markets do something. Let them let them drive the betting line into a favorable place and then take advantage of it. That's what I would do. I think she's gonna win.
Speaker 9:She's got more money, got more energy, got has a more united party, has better surrogates. And he's he's stone ass nuts. Okay? When you start talking about lining up a political opponent with 9 people in a firing squad, and then you you have the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times says, oh, I don't wanna get involved in this. This is dirty politics.
Speaker 4:Tell us how you really feel, James.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Spread that lie. That constant lie that's been debunked plenty of time.
Speaker 3:Russiagate, the fine people a hoax, and now we have the firing squad.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Totally. I mean, what what is he gonna say? He's at the end of the election. He's a paid political person.
Speaker 4:He's not gonna say Harris is gonna lose.
Speaker 3:And he's making the tours, I think, too because he did they just had a I haven't seen it. They just had a film come out about him. And I think, politically, I think he's brilliant. You know, he's probably 20 years past his prime and probably not in the actual loop of everything, but he's brilliant.
Speaker 4:He, I mean, I'm sure the Democrats are paying him to go on there and
Speaker 6:Perhaps. Harris
Speaker 4:is gonna win.
Speaker 2:But somebody else clearly is in charge of the campaign because that is not the Harris campaign at the moment is not a car bill campaign, period.
Speaker 4:Well, we were talking about that earlier and it's very obvious that to your point about what you're saying about DEI. So are the people running the Harris campaign, are they people who are really good at running a campaign, or did they get that job because they checked the right box? I would argue that they haven't run a great campaign at all. But if she loses, if she loses, there's gonna be the spin is gonna be, we're all racist, sexist, whatever is
Speaker 3:We can just we can just blame George Clooney.
Speaker 4:Haters, you know. Oh, America just wasn't ready for
Speaker 3:the party. Did I did I I said the exact same thing to her last night? I said, we're gonna hear America's not ready for a female president or just have too many racists in this country.
Speaker 4:Well, when it's really we're we're just not ready for Kamala, and we certainly weren't ready for Hillary.
Speaker 2:Tell you what, let's play this last ad and talk about it. It's the the party of racism.
Speaker 6:What will we do with this moment? How will we be remembered? Look at the opportunities before us.
Speaker 10:This election really isn't about the left versus the right. It's about We The People choosing our government and the choice between freedom versus tyranny.
Speaker 5:Nobody has a chronic disease burden like we have. Why are we allowing this to happen to our children? Ultimately, the only thing that will save our country is if we choose to love our kids more than we hate each other.
Speaker 11:What is going on here is deeper than politics. It is deeply spiritual. We are being called to rise above the hatred and the fear and the evil.
Speaker 12:We need to remember above and beyond that we must love our neighbors, that we must treat other people as we hope to be treated.
Speaker 6:You wanna be a rebel? You wanna be a hippie? You wanna stick it to the man? Show up on your college campus and try calling yourself
Speaker 2:a conservative.
Speaker 12:America is gonna reach heights that it has never seen before. The future is gonna be amazing.
Speaker 5:Don't you want healthy children?
Speaker 1:Don't you want a president that's gonna
Speaker 5:make America healthier than cats?
Speaker 11:I come to you today as a former Democrat. I will be a first time Trump voter tonight.
Speaker 2:For the 20 years. I think.
Speaker 4:1st and last. I mean, I think I think people will come out and vote for this election, and they probably won't vote again.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Anytime soon. That's America.
Speaker 6:The people dreamed this country, and it's the people who are making America great again.
Speaker 3:And see that and that that to me is just a great ad. I mean, it gives me goosebumps to hear it. And, you you know, the Republicans have now become the rebels. Yes.
Speaker 4:Agreed.
Speaker 3:I mean
Speaker 4:But that's
Speaker 3:There's certain and I have a I have a very you know, I'm not shy I'm not a shy person. And there are certain settings that I'm in that I will not let anyone know that I'm gonna vote for Trump just because there's so many feelings. I deal in facts. So many people deal in feelings that I just I just can't deal with it.
Speaker 2:And it was all part of that in COVID era. Feelings.
Speaker 5:Well, I
Speaker 3:feel I feel this. I feel that. Well, listen. I might feel like it's gonna rain outside. That don't mean I'm right.
Speaker 4:Right. And to your point, I mean, you can't run a society like that. I mean, you can't you you can't decide, whether you're gonna invade a country or not based on how you feel. I mean, you've got you've got to have some I don't know.
Speaker 3:And I saw this yesterday even in, where was it? It was Michigan because they have a they have a large, Arab population. It might have been Michigan and Wisconsin. In one state, the Kamala, the Harris Walls campaign was running pro Palestinian and then the other state, they're running pro Israeli ass.
Speaker 2:See, they didn't cover that actually.
Speaker 6:Yeah. They did. I mean
Speaker 2:I guess they can only go so far in their hypocrisy.
Speaker 3:Don't play you know, I have no respect if you play both sides of the fence. Take a stand and say what you believe. You either win or you'll lose.
Speaker 4:Right. I don't know. It's complicated.
Speaker 2:So I have my, we're talking about the potential for chaos. So my financial advisor had the the election chaos trade, which I went ahead and set up today. It's basically, if things go wild up or down, it makes money. If things are stable, it doesn't. I'm betting on instability.
Speaker 2:Either way. What do you think, Amanda?
Speaker 3:It's probably a smart bet.
Speaker 4:I agree. Well, I don't know. I think it's always interesting to see talking about polls. I mean, you can find a poll to support anything.
Speaker 3:I don't trust polls.
Speaker 4:But I do think it's interesting to go and look at the betting markets because that's real money. You know?
Speaker 3:That's that's where you get your accurate. As a I'm not a degenerate gambler. Let me just preface by saying that, but I do gamble. And if Vegas says something's probable, I'd go with that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, Sean. Thank you, Kimberly. Thank you, Amanda, for the cheerleading to the side. Thanks for listening, everyone. This is John.
Speaker 2:I hope you have enjoyed this show. It's our hope that the election season will pass by peaceably, and I'll let everyone to have an enjoyable holiday season. We'll catch you next week. Thanks for listening to the Transmitter 42 podcast. If you would like to send us feedback or suggestions, please email us at radioshowat t42.am or send a note via US mail to transmitter 42, LLC, PO Box 100, Remington, Virginia 22734.
Speaker 2:Transmedicine 42.
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