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All right, Welcome back to Counterpoints. Tom Ryan Grim here with Emily Dashinsky. It's my favorite time of the year, the show after an election night when the anti abortion crowd just gets completely trounced. Every come out here and do a little victory lap and weed. Also, we'd we did well. Last name, Public Power got rinsed in Maine. We're going to talk about that. So it was not complete wins across the board on ballot measures, but for
the most part, pretty triumphant night. Yeah for the center left, let's say yeah.
And some big results we're going to go through right now. And Ryan was also Keyton and some pretty interesting races that you may not have heard about from a lot of the big coverage. There were sort of down ballot races or local races that are worth paying attention to. We're also going to do some updates, of course, on Israel. Rashida Talib was formally censured by the House of Representatives last night.
We're going to get into all of that.
We're going to get into the raging debate over tying Ukraine funding to Israel that took place in the Senate yesterday and is ongoing. And then of course we're going to dive into the twenty twenty four race. Sager caught some numbers in the New York Times poll that everyone was talking about this week, that nobody was talking about. Turns out there was something in the poll pretty interesting that had a pretty interesting implications for RFK Junior's run.
We're also lest you think there's too much news happening, but wait, there's more. There's a Republican debate tonight, a little preview of.
That Republican vice presidential debate at best.
Republican state debate.
Maybe yeah, like maybe vice president. There might be a vice president on that stage, but there's no guarantee, no, not at all. All right, so let's start with Ohio.
Let's start with Ohio.
So two measures on. The two important measures were on the ballot. There one abortion and we can put this first element up here, the second one being marijuana. And so back in the summer, as you guys remember, there was an effort by Republicans to change the way that the Constitution is amended to put the threshold at sixty percent, so you would need a sixty percent vote to change
the amendment. That was happening as support for abortion rice was polling in the high fifties, and everybody thought, oh, they're trying to keep this from passing. If they had succeeded, they failed. If they had succeeded, this would have failed. Abortion would have filed because it currently it's just under
fifty seven percent support. So an over whelming vote on and we can put up weed to weed actually edged out the abortion rights So you did have, you know what, non trivial number of people go into the ballot box and say, yes, I support legal weed, No, I do not support abortion rights, but.
A really similar margin, which is interesting as well.
It's maybe thousands of people at most around the entire state. And so both of those are going to become law. You're going to have legalized and regulated marijuana sales opening up in Ohio. But also the big win there is Question one Yes. So now you've got abortion rights enshrined into the constitution in Ohio. This comes after Montana, Kentucky, obviously, California, Vermont,
not that exciting Michigan. So every Kansas, everywhere that abortion rights have been on the ballot, abortion rights have won. So what's been the response. I've seen a couple of different responses. I'm curious what you're seeing from the conservative wing, which, you know, do they want to give up on this and say like this is a huge loser for us, or like the kind of Republican Senate president are they saying, you know, let's push ahead and see if we can get this on the ballot again next year.
Well, they know they can't give up on it because Democrats now see this as such an important electoral issue because it drives turnout and it brings independent leaners.
Over to Dems.
And on the principal issue for Democrats, it accomplishes again like enshrining a right to abortion. The wording in this became some of it somewhat of an issue issue one. The wording of it opened up the door for Republicans to come in and say, potentially, this is going to lead to all kinds of issues with same sex bathrooms, different sex bathrooms, co ed bathroot right.
They tried to move away from abortion and over to other culture stuff, and I.
Think there was a real problem with the wording, to the point where even the Toledo Blade said, listen, we support abortion, but the wording here is overly broad. This is an overly broad power. Obviously that didn't make a difference. Fifty seven to forty three is roughly the margin in both the weed and abortion races.
But when it probably comes.
From Democratic squeamishness about saying the word abortion, is that right?
It might?
I mean, it actually has a broader agenda.
You know, the wording.
Yeah, the wording is pretty interesting. But Democrats were like leaning into this every step of the way, not just I shouldn't just say Democrats because obviously this is the broader left was fighting this really hard and Republicans. This is what I've heard a lot on the pro life side. Conservatives were wildly outspent.
On issue one. So it's about.
Twenty four point four million to about sixteen point three million, and pro life groups have a really hard time. Anti abortion groups have a very hard time getting money into these races, So it might be easier to fundraise for just a generic Republican race somewhere like Ohio than it is to get money for an anti abortion initiative. And that's why that ballot measure that we covered back in August was so important. Because all of the pro life groups I've talked to a bunch of them over the
last few months saw the writing on the wall. They knew that if they could get to that sixty percent threshold somewhere in Ohio, there's basically no way that this would pass. It did come close, but they knew that if they could, you say, you need sixty percent to change the Constitution, that it would be safe.
From their perspective.
Now, that fifty seven percent number I pretty much guarantee. All along, they knew it was going to be fifty five fifty seven somewhere like that, because it's an almost impossible issue for Republicans even in places like Ohio and Kansas, and next year Arizona, Florida, Nevada, Colorado, South Dakota are looking to get similar ballot initiatives together. So you know, Republicans had what Michigan, they had, other Kansas, Montana, as you mentioned, all of that told them that this was
going to happen. They just couldn't get donors interested and they still haven't figured out the messaging.
And so you have Republicans Senate President, and I just referenced Matt Huffman. He said in his statement last night, this isn't the end. It is really just the beginning of a revolving door of ballot campaigns to repeal or replace Issue one. So that's the Senate President saying that they're going to continue to try to put this in the ballot. But help me understand that they know that
they're going to lose. Like you said, they're going to be outspent because a lot of wealthy Democrats are strongly for abortion rights and they don't like I think a lot of wealthy Democrats give too Democrats because they kind of align with their politics, but they don't really like that. Democrats might raise their taxes a little bit, might mess with the carried interest loop ball, might do some regulation around private equity, which is where all their money's coming from.
But when it comes to funding abortion measures, they're fine with that no moral confliction whatsoever, like this feels good to them, it's the right thing to do. Many of them have experience with it. It's deeply personal to them. So they're always going to there's always going to be money for these ballot measures. The public is wildly on
Democrats side on this question. It brings people to the polls and hurts Republicans and we'll talk about how it hurts Republicans across the board and the rest of these elections today. So then why would you have somebody like Huffman say we're going to just keep doing this.
And they, by the way, they said something I said, I'm.
Against him doing, like go ahead, keep banging your head against the wall.
But yeah, So for the last couple of years, especially since Dobbs pass and Roe fell, Republicans, conservatives, anti abortion people have said it's time to on the messaging level,
confront this head on. That's where you saw Ron DeSantis sign the Heartbeat Bill and other people have signed Texas head Heartbeat Bill saying all right, so Roe is gone, and in the vacuum that that creates, so that you can't just sort of punt and say I support the end of row you need to have a clear stance that is honest, and it needs to confront the issue boldly, and you can't just run away from it. And so that's what a lot of these groups have been counseling
candidates to do. That's where Lindsay Graham and the Susan B. Anthony List worked on that fifteen week measure on the Senate side to give Republicans something to talk about. Glenn Youngkin was pretty clear that he said if I'm elected, yeah, I'm going to limit abortion rights. And that didn't do so well in Virginia and there were a lot of abortion ads on it. Let me read a quote from Lila Rose. This was part of her statement. She's from Live Action, a big anti abortion group. Lyla Rose said,
the pro life movement must adapt to win. We have to throw out the old playbook and dive headfirst into a strategy that can win the hearts and minds of the American people and translate into electoral victory.
So just what you're getting.
From that is increasing acknowledgment that the hearts and minds of the American people are not with pro life anti abortion people like myself on this question.
It is wildly.
Unpopular with the American people, and it's insane for conservatives over and over again to delude themselves into thinking that's not true.
Does she have a strategy? Because I agree with her that from her perspective, they should up with a strategy that loses and adopt a strategy that wins. Yeah, but what is that do they have?
Like?
No, it reminds me actually of repeal and replace, because you know, Lyla Rose knows exactly what she supports on the question of abortion. What that looks like in states like Ohio. Translating into how candidates talk about this, what policy initiatives might be on the ballot or you know, fought from getting on the ballot is a completely different question.
People felt really good about coalescing around that fifteen week built, although there was some internal grumbling among the right flank in sort of conservative circles about whether or not that was appropriate because it's still fifteen weeks and the majority of abortions are happening before that, So there's just it is similar to repeal and replace in the extent that it's like nobody quite knows where the sweet spot is and nobody can decide on a consensus position, because there's
such an intensity of thought on one side about where those guard rails should be, and such an intensity, you know, there was I thought, just quickly, a really bad headline I saw last night and the messenger that said Republicans were what was They said something that Republicans were overjoyed when Roe v. Wade fell and now it's become one of their biggest electoral problems. In paraphrasing it, but something like that, Republicans were not overjoyed when Roevy Wade fell.
Eight Republicans were like, wait a minute, what are you doing?
They were, and we were on the air when it, like literally when it happened, and I remember saying something to the extent of like the RNC is freaking out right now, like quaking in their boots. And someone who wouldn't have knowledge of that came up to me afterwards and was like, I was listening when you said that.
I was there. Basically, it is one hundred percent accurate.
So Republican voters may have been overjoyed by the fall of Row, Republicans here were terrified.
Dog overjoyed. He has caught Cary. So we'll go to Virginia a second. Let's talk about Kentucky for a second. Put up this next one. So Annie Basher, popular Democratic governor in Kentucky who won a real squeaker in twenty nineteen, relatively smoked Daniel Cameron last night, a five point victory in a race that was expected to be within a
point or so. Daniel Cameron, longtime Mitch McConnell protege. This is somebody who was basically, i think since he was an intern, pretty much been destined for this gubernatorial race and kind of guided to it by Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell pushed him over the finish line to be attorney general. And everyone in Kentucky's just been waiting for this guy's turn at governor. And the question wasn't when he was going to if he was going to be governor, just when.
But Andy Basheer told him not yet. So what role do you think abortion played in that? And what role do you think Andy Basheer just kind of being a good and popular governor, particularly among Eastern Kentucky folks, made the difference, like what's your what's your read there?
Well, and I'm.
Curious for your sense of how Basher is a politician as a red state Southern Democrat, because that's a really
interesting position to be in. My big takeaway, the headline that we ran at the Federalist right away was Mitch McConnell protege gets knocked down, As you said, Sean Davis over at the Federalists tweeted right away, Given that Mitch McConnell's far and away the most unpopular national political figure in the entire country minus thirty nine and net favorability according to really Clear's average, it's not surprising that McConnell
ties have turned into a massive political liability in Kentucky. And he tweeted pictures of all these headlines tying Daniel Cameron to Mitch McConnell.
I actually think there's something to that.
Because McConnell is probably more popular in his own state than he is on a national level. When people pay attention to national media, he's a familiar figure. I think that partially helped this year. There's an incumbent advantage built into all of that. Even in a red state, he handled some storms in a way that a lot of people felt was pretty good and respectable and earned him
some good will but I mean, I don't know. When I look at that, I think, how can Mitch McConnell, who's one of the most powerful people in the country, hand pick this guy and losing his own state. It basically confirms all of the conservative arguments about Mitch McConnell's political instincts actually being terrible.
And Basher benefited from being in office during the pandemic, and he was widely kind of heralded across I mean, obviously you had a subset of people who, you know, hated the way that the government handled COVID across the board, but overwhelmingly his approval rating shot through the roof, just the way that like Cuomos did in New York and
Hogan lack of Republican governs. Every governor who was in office during COVID saw a huge boost in their approval rating because people just kind of felt like they wanted to they were so scared, they wanted to vest some kind of authority in authority figures. And I think for a lot of people on the right and the kind of the skeptical left around that that's difficult to kind of even believe because it's so counter to the way that so many other millions of people experienced the pandemic
where they turned away from authority. Yeah, there was. It created a crisis of authority and legitimacy. But that's the minority, like the Normanis were, like Basher, Andy has handled this just absolutely incredibly. And then you made a good point about the flooding and if you remember those Eastern Kentucky floods a couple of years ago, just absolutely devastated the region. We could put up this next element here from Saho Kapor.
He was widely credited as handling the floods with the same level of kind of leadership that people credit him with handling the response to the pandemic. He's on TV every night, you know, he's like he's assuring people, like the way that Bill Clinton in the nineties was like the comforter in cheap like Basher kind of had that characters. So look, right, So this is Trump, Trump and Biden
on one side. If you're listening on the podcast, it's an image of basically a sea of red except for Louisville and Lexingon and Frankfurt when it was Trump versus Biden. Now in this election, you see eastern Kentucky like thoroughly blue, like the Appalachian area, and particularly in these counties that were hardest hit by the flood, shows that, you know, if you deliver for people, you show leadership, you help a community, you know, pick itself up, you're going to be rewarded.
You win goodwill beyond partisan and actually that's a beyond partisan boundaries. And that's something Aaron Blake actually pointed out yesterday that I think also gets to the McConnell question. He said, the best performing statewide GOP candidate in Kentucky, Kentucky with Secretary of State Michael Adams, who strongly rejected stile An election talk and turned aside a primary challenge, He's at sixty one percent. The Republican AG candidate was
at fifty eight percent. So there's something about Cameron and Basher. You know, Basher was able to I think, capitalize on that built in goodwill.
As you just mentioned.
You look at the map Eastern Kentucky pretty favorable to Basher, especially comparable to Trump.
But that's also where people on the.
Trump side are going to come in and say, without Trump on the ticket and with all of these candidates running away from Trump, contra Aaron Blank, Aaron Blake, you don't get the energy that you need need to match Democrat Democratic turnout operations, mail and ballot operations, et cetera, et cetera.
So that's going to be the argument. I'm not saying that's true.
I'm just saying, you know, I think there's probably some evidence of it. Also, it's really easy, though, for that to become a cope because it's just reactions to the Trump Republican Party are all over the map, depending on
where you are, literally all over the map. So you know, it's easy to fall into that line of thinking and just blaming a lead established Republicans, which is sure, they deserve a whole lot of blame, and I think the Daniel Cameron results are part of that, but it's not the whole story.
And Democrat Republicans are in a tricky spot because the only thing worse for Republicans than having Trump on the ballot seems to be not having Trump on them.
Help, right, No, really that's true.
Well they have left and before we go to Virginia real quickly. The other thing that people in Kentucky really seem to like about Bashir's jobs job increases, like he brought a lot of jobs to the state, both kind of relocating from from elsewhere, and that was a pandemic effect as well. But also being open and kind of attractive and not getting yourself caught up in like culture war stuff where you're getting boycotted by places probably helped
as well. So all of those things combined to get lots and lots of people who support Trump to vote for Andy Basheer, who instantly becomes somebody that is going to be talked about as a presidential candidate.
Although good luck to him courting the left flank.
The left is like just beaten, so beaten down. I think it's just like whatever this point.
Well, speaking of which, we actually have some results on that to go through too.
Oh, yes we do. We'll get to those at a second. Let's throw up Virginia here. So Virginia Democrats kept can control of the Senate, and you can put up the next one here. They also they also flipped the House of Delegates.
Absolute route for Republicans who put all of their hopes in Glenn Youngkin fundraising for two years, bringing some big money to Virginia and saying we are going to.
And we're going to get a trifecta. We're going to make me a presidential candidate. We're going to restrict abortion rights. And that's where the record stopped. It's like, wait a minute, you're gonna do what in Virginia. It's how much of it was just Virginia is a more democratic state than it does a republican state, and how much of it do you think came down to the question of abortion rights? And then we're going to get to Susannah Gibson as this key race, this is the cam lady who might win.
We'll see, yeah's going to be very close.
Right, So you know, I think yes.
Of course, abortion became a big part of this, and Glenn Youngkin was using part of a strategy that the anti abortion movement and pro life people include myself by the way I think is better, which is being sort of using, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, bold colors, not pale pass stells. They'll be wishy washy on it, because then you're allowing Democrats to find you on the issue to
make voters see you as dishonest. If your position is less popular and you're honest about it, you'll probably get rewarded more so than if your position is unpopular and you look.
To everybody like you're lying about it.
And it did not work out well for Glenn Youngkin, and I think what that speaks to is just the depth of the unpopularity of the issue.
So he goes on offense.
He tries to say in perhaps the best state to do this, where you had your moderate Democrat governor Ralph Northam absolutely trashed in the state, unpopular in the state for his late term abortion policies and comments just a couple of years ago. So if there is anywhere that's sort of fertile ground for Republicans to do this message, it would have been Virginia.
And it did not go well for Glenn Younkin.
And again, I just think that speaks the depth of the unpopularity that there, especially post Row is in a completely different place on abortion than people like me and than Republicans.
And I think they mis learned the Ralph Northam lesson because as for people who forget he made some he made some weird comments about the comments that he retracted about babies like right after.
Birth, something comfortable.
And then yeah, and there was a state legislator who had who had like floated legislation that would allow like abortion like right up until birth or like even after it or something like that. Yes, and so the right really seized on this and it became a national story on the in the conservative media. But then in the in the next legislative elections, Democrats did just fine. Like they they they held their own because.
Because they were like, oh no, we can't do this, like they totally scrapped it instead of standing by it. And I mean that's a lesson for Republicans.
And some of it was just north and being like, look, I misspoke. That's not what I that's not what I meant. I think some on the right we're like, no, you didn't misspeak. That's really really is your agenda. But I think most, like almost all Democrats are like, no, no, no, that's we're going to believe he misspoke. That's not actually what our position is on this issue. And then in the in those key races where that was the focal point,
Democrats won. And so but there was so much energy that I think Republicans, particularly the pro life crowd, were like, we can go back in and we can do this, especially after Youngkin. But they couldn't so, but so Susannah Gibson. That's this is House District fifty seven. If you guys want to follow the votes as they come in. Currently Democrats have the House of Delegates, no matter what I think, it's you know that by at least by at least
a vote. If there are two uncalled races by the Associated Press, and one of them is Susannah Gibson, she's currently trailing her opponent Owens by roughly two percentage points. This is the candidate who's a nurse, who was busted by Republican Operatives and the Washington Post as doing as like doing sex with her husband online, doing set right on this website, chatterbait which the Washington Post incorrectly accused her of violating its terms of service. It was hilarious,
Like the six paragraphs of the Washington Post. It's the first six paragraphs of the Washing Post article about all about how she violated the terms of service by accepting tips. It's such a hilarious way to approach the issue because liberals, you know, they're fine with you know, consenting adults doing everything and doing anything that they want, as.
Long as the boundaries of marriage within the.
Boundaries of marriage and as long as node's getting hurt. But what you violated the terms of service this website, So we looked into a term. No, they didn't. Actually, the Post and the Republican Opera have just misunderstood the terms of service.
They just didn't look closely and.
They only read like a snippet and not the rest of it. So anyway, Virginia voters, you know, stood up for people who are falsely accused of violating terms of service.
That's important. Read all the fun.
Statewide, Democrats abandoned this race like they they tossed her aside.
She probably could have won.
She absolutely would have won.
The margin right now is really close.
If she might still win. But had Democrats not abandoned her both they're they're a little super pack that they've got out there, plus the kind of state leaders, then she wins because she's only if she loses, it'll be by triple digit votes.
It was, Yeah, as we're talking, it was called that fifty one to forty eight, so by some places, by the way, Yeah, no.
Not call.
There's still a lot of absentee and kind of mail ballots still to be counted.
Yeah, and you know what, Ran. I think.
Another important thing to mention out of Virginia is that ad impact politics.
Their study of TV.
Ads, forty percent of all of those ads in Virginia state ledge and general elections were about abortion.
And again, similar to.
Other states we've talked about Kentucky, Ohio, Democratic advertisers outspent Republicans by seven point seven million dollars and Virginia, interestingly enough, I mean, it's shocking how expensive these races were. The Senate candidates raised ninety four million dollars. The House of Delegates candidates collected eighty million dollars. This is according to Open Secrets. That is a record because in Virginia there actually are no limits on the amount.
Of money corporations can give, the loosest laws in the country.
It's absolutely insane.
And that's where total fundraising by state legislative candidates, according to Open Secrets, has increased.
Fourfold over the last twenty years.
It's gone from forty four point two million dollars in two thousand and three. When ingested for inflation, you look at those numbers, that is gargantulin and honestly a total.
Waste of money.
Yes, so culture were loss in Virginia. We go to New Jersey as well. Again you saw a situation where Republicans in New Jersey were hoping that backlash to trans policies in school districts, which were driving a lot of parents to school board meetings, produced a lot of slates to run for school board it would bleed into the state legislative races. But as so far, what it looks like is that Democrats actually expanded their majorities the state
legislature in New Jersey. And by the way, there was Democrats also won some key school board elections in Virginia that were fought along these very narrow culture war arguments. And so what is going on? Why do you think the kind of Chris Rufo approach here is getting routed?
I mean, I think it always depends on the candidate. There were some weird Republican upsets to a candidate in the Bronx. This is a strange one. There's a Canada in the Bronx who a Republican woman in the in the Bronx who like set this is like history.
Usually on a pope like usually these are like that. There isn't even an opponent Republican opponent on the ballot.
Yeah, so, Christie, it was a weird race too, Christie Marmarat Marmato.
I guess I'm gonna have to learn how to say this name. It's like when.
Alexandria Cassio Cortennis. But yeah, so this is thirteen City Council district. It was a really nasty race. It covers a couple of neighborhoods in the eastern part of the Bronx. That's the district they haven't had Republicans haven't had.
Uh.
This is the New York Deiliy News. It refers to it as a Republican curse that swept the Bronx for nearly twenty years.
They say she broke that.
She had a six percent lead over the incumbent Democratic councilwoman and they were going back and forth o republic safety land use. It was just a kind of a weird race, and she was attacking the incumbent DEM for leaning to far left. There was also a weird Republican upset in New Hampshire.
Manchester right and Mayor of Manchester.
Yeah, and the Alleghany County DA right in DEM who ran as a Republican on a sort of anti Soros prosecutor line holds on there. So it was you know, it's pretty typical that you have these sort of the sort of smattering in and off your election of what things actually are. Overall, the top line is it was a bad night for Republicans, of course. And actually on that note, we have results as well from Mississippi because that was one of the bright spots for Republicans.
We can put those up.
This is eight man Tate Reeves.
Literally, your manned a lot of people if you weren't watching. Last week we debated whether or not Ryan actually looks like Kate Reeves because apparently people tell you do.
That is one good looking gentleman right there. I just want to congratulate him on his triumph over Elvis Presley's second cousin there.
Yeah, so he wins fifty about fifty two to forty seven, so fairly close for.
A deeper yeah, Press it was hoping to keep under fifty, which would have forced a run off.
Presley's kind of a wanna be basher, right, someone who's able to do the kind of populous dem thing in a red state.
Yes, and he's doing it in an even redder state. So you know, sometimes just the objective conditions that you're faced with just make it impossible for even the best politician. Because he's his track record is pretty incredible. He was a popular mayor in a Republican area. This is Brandon Pressley. And then he's been a multi term member of the Public Commission Board in Mississippi, representing a thoroughly Republican area.
And he's he defines himself as like an FDR style populist, and to get that close with a Republican Mississippi is pretty impressive. Although the state does seem to be increasingly trending blue, like are we going to see a plate a time and enough people? You know, combination of the Democratic population growth in the area plus people just moving there for cheaper cost of living. I mean, well, I think and this is makes it blue.
This is where I think Dems have you know again paraphrase the Reagan bold colors on Pale Pastel's thing. This is where I think Dems have actually seen the writing on the wall when they see Bernie Sanders sweep in twenty sixteen. You know, win places like Wisconsin, those populist left policies are incredibly popular with you know, those those kind of voters that maybe the Obama Trump person.
Or impresses from northern Mississippi, which is you know, has some Appalachian character right.
Right, and incredibly correct, worst state. I mean, there's the people there suffer a lot. And yeah, so I mean I think FDR style democratic policies as opposed to Biden's style democratic policies are probably the way to go.
So let's talk about Pennsylvania real quick. Speaking of yeah, yeah, so a huge, huge victory for Democrats in the Supreme Court race. So they had a five to two majority on the Supreme Court, which is just incredibly crue because that's the place where election challenges go. This would have made it four three, but the Democrat won very comfortably against the Republican in a race that saw a lot
of money spent on both sides. They also flipped the Superior Court, which is the court just right under the Supreme Court had been Republican controlled. Now it's Democratic controlled. And then out in talking about Philadelphia real quick, So Philadelphia has two council seats. DC has this too, that are reserved for the non majority party because it's such a blue area that it would just be all Democrats if you didn't put in some rules so that everybody
gets a trophy. And four years those have been held by Republicans. So there's like the two token Republicans on the city council. The Working Families Party last election went after those two seats. One of them won one of them with Kendrick Brooks, she won reelection and they also WFP now seize the other one. So you're going to have a city council that's Democrats and then Working Families Party. Now over in western Pennsylvania, you had two really critical races.
One was the district attorney race that you talked about. So the sixth time, six sixth term prosecutor, kind of tough on crime prosecutor, was beaten in the primary by a kind of, like you said, a criminal justice reformer. I don't know if he was stros funded or not,
but that type of challenger. He then switched like the Buffalo sheriff did, switched parties, did a right in campaign to win the Republican nomination, won the Republican nomination, and then won the general election by like two points or something. So he will be entering his seventh term now as continuing to be the tough on crime prosecutor. The real win that Republicans wanted was the Allegheny County Executive, which is more powerful than Pittsburgh. Mayerican budget of billions oversees
the elections in Pittsburgh, and Sarah Inamarado. It was a berniecrat and had been elected to the state House in twenty eighteen along with Summer Lee, with the support of DSA, won the Democratic primary. For this race, Republicans nominated this guy something Rocky. I forget Joe Rocky. Jo Rocky just classic pro business, moderate backslapping former banker.
Makeup for that character.
Jeff yass big funder, big Republican funder who spent a ton of money on the Supreme Court race, also spent a ton of money on Joe Rocky, and he tried to make the entire race about Hamas. And obviously it's an extra resident issue in Pittsburgh. The Tree of Life massacre has made anti Semitism there extraordinarily resident. And Robuster was community robust Jewish community, and Innamorato had that association
with DSA. So Rocky said, I dare you to announce Hamas, and she's like, I denounced himas He's like, oh, I dare you to denounce DSA. She's like, I left DSA in twenty nineteen. I denounced DSA too summerly left in twenty eighteen, but it was still he's still kind of hammered away at GAZA as a key issue, which was, you know, it didn't make any sense because Alleghany County Executive doesn't. But her response didn't make much sense either.
Her response was, this is actually about abortion, but the Alleghany County Executive does not also have much say politics are. What it's really about is taxes, affordable housing, walk, clean eric, clean water, Like that's what the Allegheny County Executive actually does. But the vote was over abortioning Hamas, it was much closer than you would typically have a Democrat, a generic
Democrat on generic Republic Allegany County race. She's only going to win by looks like ten thousand votes or fewer, but still now you're going to have a kind of Bernie Sanders type who and she's pledging to make affordable housing and clean and clean water and access to clean air and clean water like her major priorities.
Yeah, I mean, anybody running for a County executive race should probably take heed. Those are good issues to talk about with.
Rocky said he was going to cut property taxes.
Yeah, so if we put a ten up. I think this is also just as we kind of wrap this segment, this review of everything that went down last night, I just want to put the spending up.
For you to see.
Republicans were outspent in Kentucky, they were outspent in Virginia, they were outspent in Ohio. They did outspend Dems in Mississippi by by about a million dollars. They massively overspent the Republicans in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court race.
I mean not even close.
Jeff you asked, he's a step up clearly so cheap here.
I know.
I mean, yeah, this is like a real problem for Republicans obviously getting the donor base mobilized and energized the sort of high dollar donor race.
But yeah, I mean, I just think that's.
A It's true that ten million for people that don't see a ten million for Democrats on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to six point five million. If you're Jeff, ys, why just match the ten million?
Why not?
I'll just throw it in there see what happens, because that really, I mean in local races. I don't think it's necessarily true in presidential races, if you look at Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, I mean it's not quite
the same. But in local races, when you are blitzing the airwaves with messaging that's either true or false when it comes to abortion, when it comes to women's rights, when it comes to crime, when you're able to do that and you can be louder than the other person, that does actually make a really big difference in some of these smaller down ballot races and in more localized races too. So again that isn't to say, you know,
limiting abortion is wildly popular. I think that, you know, people on the sort of pro life, anti abortion side, like myself, desperately need to realize that and.
Reckon with it.
But they were also wildly outspent, and that could have made up some of these margins.
There's no question about it.
So now Republicans need to take a long, hard look in the mirror. I already saw some comments from pundits on Twitter about whether too much money is going to Trump's legal battles, whether you know, too much money is being mismanaged by the RNC runner. Ronnie McDaniel has been ahead of that for a very long time. And you know, she's had Trump obviously to contend with as an electoral benefit and disadvantage in different places throughout her tenure.
But these are really bad.
Results for her. Not that Republicans weren't expecting bad results.
But it's still bad. Well, I think that was our longest a block in history, counterpoints history. You can even throw in rising history, and that never never been a longer a block than that one.
So you're welcome.
Let's move on now to what I think is the most morally depraved thing that Congress has done, at least in my lifetime, and that is to censure Rashida to leave the only Palestinian Americans serving in Congress while the US is supporting an ongoing massacre of Palestinians. I saw somebody point out on Twitter that the second person ever censured by Congress was censured for introducing a resolution proposing the abolition of slavery, which you weren't even allowed to
talk about in Congress. There was a literal gag rule, and so for proposing that resolution, they censured person. I think the absolute moral depravity on display in the house yesterday just leaves me kind of speechless. There was some pushback, and so you know, Mark Pokan here has been engaged in an ongoing war war of words with a pack. He was we were hoping to have him on today actually to talk about this. He's scheduling work. We're hoping
to have him next week. This was wisconstant Democrat who has kind of eagerly been taking on the slings and arrows from a pack and he's said publicly the one reason he's doing is he's If he doesn't do it, they're just going to attack mostly you know, women of color and serving in the in the in the House
for Democrats and some men of color as well. Jamal Bowman has you know, been a kind of fiery opponent of APAC, which is which is recruited, is trying to recruit, and it seems like they successfully have recruited a primary opponent to him as well. Here he is unleashing on on a PAC which is airing ads against him. He says, when little kids in my district sit down to watch a princess movie, APAC is forcing them to watch lies about the worst violence people could possibly do to each other.
As a father, it makes me sick, one of the things. And we could put some of it, put some we we'll play some of these in a second. One of the things that drove me the craziest about the debate yesterday, it's not just I think, just on a free speech issue, it's a free speech level. It's outrageous to center. A member of Congress, Jamie Raskin made kind of made the argument for Democrats on the House floor, and I thought
he made a good one. He said, if anybody is going to censure or discipline a member of Congress for their speech, it should be their voters. And he goes on and he says, there are eleven members of the Chamber who voted to say that Turkey did not commit a genocide against Armenia. Should we censure them for that vote? And he went on talked about Mike Johnson and his
views on marriage equality. Should he be censured? And Raskin was making the point that Democrats are now going to be under extreme pressure from their party's base to centerre people return to me, all they've done is just just like they've taken impeachment and made it kind of a moot power by overusing it. I think, so you get centered. Now it's gonna end up becoming a badge of honor if because what it means is that you angered the other parties. So just on a free speech level, it
was really offensive to me. But the other level was the way that they weren't even centering her for what she believed, Like they kept twisting her words and saying, we're centering her because she supports AMAS and she supports the eradication of Israel. If she did, then even if she did that, I think on a free speech level, you should not censure her like voter out of Congress if you don't like that. But that's also not what she says, Like she has condemned Tomas, she does not
support the eradication of Israel. And so you wound up with a bunch of these Republican speeches of saying, well, this is how we interpret what she's saying, regardless of the fact that she says that that's not what she's saying. Yeah, and then we're gonna condemn and censure that interpretation of it.
I think it's entirely reasonable for Jews to hear from the River to the Sea and have incredible sensitivities about it, because obviously it's appropriated and used by people who do actually really want to, you know, in some cases completely eradicate Jews and in other cases eradicate Israel in a way that it's.
Like, well, where do Jewish people go? Are they safe?
So I completely understand heightened sensitivities around from the River to the Sea.
She also actually a lot of people forget about this. Back in twenty twenty, she had to like.
Undo a retweet of from the River to the Sea, which if you are a Palestinian, a pro Palestinian activist in the United States or basically anywhere, and you are a big voice that's interacting with all these other accounts, it's such a common phrase from the river to the sea, and people can argue. Again, people with I think reason
heightened sensitivities about that can argue what that means. But in the same way, and I agree with Jamie Raskin on this, in the same way that we often talk about I talk all the time about how the House of Representatives we lose sight of the fact that it is essentially supposed to be representative. It's supposed to be where voters who have ideas across the spectrum because they live in different geographic locations, are given a voice in Congress.
And sometimes that means it feels icky to people, and that can go for Republicans and it can go for Democrats. Rashida Taleb represents a heavily Muslim district in Michigan where what she's doing on this issue is fully representative of her constituents. So don't censure her. Make this a political question. You can censure somebody if they're not representing their constituents and they're being sort of wildly hateful and bigoted in a way that's different than what they got elected on.
This is completely representative of her constituents. There's no question about it. You're going to need to beat her at the ballot box. I think essential is a waste of time, and I think it's interesting exercise and virtue signaling, right, And.
There's a couple interesting points to make there. One is that the Lecude platform that Yahu's party includes from the River to the Sea in its platform, and it says that Israeli sovereignty extends from the Israeli perspective from the yeah, so what and then Hamas and its charter would say that Israeli's Jewish people need to be pushed out, which of the entire thing.
And by the way, I think that's why there's heightened sensitivity is among pro Palestinian people about when you hear Israeli lawmakers, for example, or you hear Maxim Miller talking about turning Gaza into a parking lot, it's an eradication of the Protestinian state, and people say, where are we supposed to go? So I feel like those heightened sensitivities are completely understandable when you hear people talking about either eradicating Gaza or eradicating Israel.
Right, and what Talib says she means and what so many other people do mean by that is that everyone living from the river to the sea should have dignity, the franchise, and the same civil rights as anybody else living in there. There are some supporters of Israel who say that that would destroy Israel, and there are other people say, well, then what is Israel If the people who are under its control can't have basic civil rights?
How can you support that? So what she is standing for is basically a one state solution in which everyone in this area is a part of a democratic polity. That doesn't necessarily mean that it can't have a Jewish character in its constitution. It doesn't mean that Jewish people from around the world can't still have Israel as a refuge,
doesn't mean that Hebrew wouldn't be the national language. It would mean that a Palestinian, just by virtue of being a Palestinian, would not have lesser rights than an Israeli settler, like living right now next to them, that the settlers would not be able to just seize their seize their homes.
That if a Palestinian is committed, is accused of a crime, that the Palestinian would go to a civil court and have rights in court, rather than, as currently is the case for most is put into a military court and held an indefinite administrative detention with no rights whatsoever, or just executed.
And it's it's sort of impossible to envision the path from point A to point B to this hypothetical one state solution. And again I get why that's they're heightened sensitivities on that because it's like, well, what does that look like, is are we talking about the what did y'all think decolonized meant?
Tweet?
Because you know, there was just a civilian massacre and you know, perpetrated by essentially the de facto government of Gaza, and so I get it. I totally understand why people are have heightened sensitivities around this, and I think as a congresswoman, she is obviously sort of sensitive to those sensitivities because she I think she took the video down and she undid the retweet again. She to be clear, she's not the one who said from.
The river to the sea.
She tweeted a video of people chanting from the river to the sea, which I also think is a distinction. But either way, the point is Republicans and pro Israel Democrats want to have it both ways. They want to say there's this shocking uptick and anti Semitic sentiment, which you know, I think there's a good reason to believe that. They want to say there's this shocking anti Israel sentiment around the country, but also, we can't have this in
the House of Representatives. Well, if there's a shocking amount of it in the country, it's going to be in the House of Representatives, and you're going to have to defeat it rhetorically. You're going to have to defeat it politically. You're going to have to grapple with it. You can't just censure it and pretend that it doesn't exist and that it's outside the bounds of what normal Americans think.
Because are people chanting in defada in the streets. That's something you have to deal with as a politician.
Right, and which is not what she's doing, right, And yeah, this endless effort to kind of transform criticism of what Israel doing into anti semitism rather than address head on what Israel's doing. The idea that this is the debate that the House was happening while people are starving. People are dying not just under rubble, but you know, from disease from not having access to food and water for
more than a month at this point. So but let's play some of the debate from the House floor yesterday.
I can't believe I have to say this, but Palestinian people are not disposable.
Right, We are human beings just like anyone else my city.
My grandmother, like all Palestinians, just.
Wants to live her life with freedom, and human dignity.
We all deserve speaking enough to save lives, mister Chair, No matter faith, no matter ethnicity, should not be controversial in this chamber. The cries of the Palestinian and Palestinian and Israeli children sound no different to me. Why what I don't understand is why the cries of Palestinians.
Sound different to you all.
Seventy one percent of Michigan Democrats support a ceasefire, So you can try to censor me, but you can't silence their voices. I urge my colleagues to join with the majority of Americans and support a ceasefire now.
To save as many lives as possible.
President Biden must listen to and represent all of us, not just some of us. I urge the President to have the courage to call for a ceasefire in the end of killings.
Thank you, mister speaker.
It is glaring hypocrisy when you have Republicans on the other side of the isle trying to create definitions and say Rashida wants to annihilate people. When Max Miller himself went on TV and said, we're turning Gaza into a parking lot and we want to annihilate Palestinians, nobody condemned to him on that side of the isle. What is true here is that every single one of them has not acknowledged the fact that Palestinians are dying in the
tens of thousands. But we'll continue to say it is us who are not acknowledging humanity.
Washita will stand this true.
General Lady's time has expired movement.
We'll continue for liberation until.
Everything General Lady's time has expired. Has the right gentleman from Maryland is recognized.
And so we also have clips of trip Roy or we have video of trip Roy from the floor yesterday.
We can run that right now too.
What we're talking about is whether a member of the United States House of Representatives, whether a member of this body representing this nation, is justified in putting forward a defense of the actions of Hamas terrorists that murdered innocent Israeli citizens, is holding United States citizens in Israeli's hostage and in her own language, was defending On October eighth, they mirre twenty four hours into the brutal and barbaric
attacks in which babies were beheaded, babies were placed into ovens, literally moms were raped in a house whither babies were put in an oven, a documented account, video evidence, and this is dismissed as resistance to an apartheid state.
So I mean, I'm I think I'm with Chip Roy's Freedom Caucus colleague Thomas mass in voting against the censure thing that was. I think there was a handful of Republicans that voted with some of the Democrats to a handful of Democrats. I think twenty two Democrats that did vote to censure received Rasheeda to lead a much smaller number of Republicans who voted with Democrats not to do it.
And yeah, that obviously ended up passing last night. Ryan, you actually have your book here on the desk, which it's got the faces of some of the.
People you just heard from.
Yeah, yours hasn't showed up yet.
It's a beautiful hard copy of beautiful cover. But as somebody who's covered very closely the squad, it's a perfect book title for a long time now. It's a nice book. What did you make of their exchanges yesterday was really personal on the house floor, just among Rashida, salihan Omar. What did that tell us about some of those dynamics.
Yeah, and for people who were just listening on the podcast worrying while you hear kind of to leave choking up Illhanomark kind of comes up and puts a hand on her shoulder. You see Primila Jayapaul behind her wiping, wiping tears away. This is you know, they've they've been forged in this, in this fight with Apak, which dates back to their rise. Like the books, bizarrely half the book really focuses on this, this fight over Israel Palestine issues, when that is not at all the book that I
set out to write. But going back kind of through their trajectory in Congress, it was the case that that made up about like half of their struggle and reshaped it through the way that APAC and DMFI entered into the kind of the democratic primaries in twenty twenty two, making sure that anybody who was remotely critical of Israel
was either pushed out or reframed their position completely. And so Democratic Majority for Israel, which has been so influential, was founded in February twenty nineteen as a very direct and immediate and specific response to elan Omar and Rashida Telib being sworn into Congress, not anything they did, their presence, like the fact that they had made it into Congress
was enough to push back on them. Then you had the first six months of twenty nineteen just devoted to the question of whether or not elan Omar should be censured for various criticisms that she made, yet that famous Benjamin's tweet that she did apology that she did apologize for, And so the amount of time was consumed by this issue was shocking. But to see it's kind of climax here with this attempt at ethnic cleansing of Gaza, I think shows that what they were going through was not
just made up like this. This is a real This is a real thing kind of reshaping democratic politics. And when we talk about ethnic cleansing, I'm curious for your take on this. It's not just debating a term and whether or not this whether or not the word genocide should be used or not. It's like you have people who have studied genocide for decades, academics, you have people at the United Nations who have looked at this extremely closely, all of them saying that the question of intent is
always the hardest to prove. But what Israeli officials have been saying publicly about their intent basically to clear out Gaza, creates the predicate for out for genuine, serious allegations of genocide, which the United States and Israel are both actively participating in. And it's just it's one of the more shocking things.
You know.
It's not that it's necessarily out of character for the United States support something like this, yet seeing it unfold has just been shocking. It feels like a piece of means died, like watching this, watching this unfold, and to hear the Biden administration say we would we think that they're going overboard here, this is too much, but there's just nothing we can do. Oh and also let's make sure that they have tens of billions of dollars with
no strings attached. Is just insulting through the kind of you know, ethical and moral fiber of everybody who's just watching this unfold and feeling a sense of complicity in it.
They also want to quote blank check and no strings attached in Ukraine, that's sort of how we've run our foreign policy, you know, recently. And yeah, I completely disagree on the question of genocidal intent. That said Shadi Hamid had a really good at the Washing Post, had a really good tweet about the way that even we prosecuted a bad war and Rock with precision compared to so
if you thought that war lacked precision. You know, obviously Gaza is a difficult situation for Israel to mount any type of response without bringing civilian casualties to staggering levels. But even so, the difference in precision in Iraq and in Gaza and the way those wars have been prosecuted is serious, and that's something I think, you know, lawmakers who are talking so much about aid to Israel need to seriously consider. And actually we're gonna talk about that
in the next block. My final question for you, Ryan, just because you've covered this so closely, is they've been able to paper over these huge personal divisions between a Rashida to leave and a Hakim Jeffreys on the question of Israel, betweening ilham Omar and a Nancy Pelosi on
the question of Israel. Is this a moment where you have Democrats crossing the aisle actually to censure Rashida to leave, where perhaps the squad finally goes full freedom Caucus and totally breaks with leadership or will they still be able to work together going forward?
And I don't think so, because leadership did not break with them on that. And the leader of the kind of the democratic forces who sided with Republicans to censure to leave was Josh Gotttheimer, who had multiple chapters are dedicated to in this book, and he has been their most consistent antagonists throughout his time there, and he was kind of one of the first to jump out and say that he's going to support the center of Rashida Talib here. I do think that it is giving them.
I think it's giving people around the country something to believe in again, you know, who had lost faith that there was anybody fighting for justice in Congress, And so I do think that I do think that could be one of the developments here. But also so what I think people need to understand, we love in the US here to abstract away from the reality of the depravity of what we do around the world by talking about words and phrases and politics and horse race instead, But
that doesn't change the reality on the ground. And I think that the devastation and the death toll in Gaza that we're going to finally have to accept as real in the coming weeks and months will change the way that people see this.
I think social media is completely undercutting the BLOB's ability to talk in abstractions. And when you look at public polling on Gaza and Palstins, especially especially among the youngest people, which has been shocking to a lot of proosial folks, a lot of the Republican Party, you have to understand that these devastating images of suffering in Gaza are flooding people's social media feeds and that is really hurting I think people's ability to talk about these things and abstractions.
By the way, the same thing happened on October seventh, as some of these masters were being a live stress. The abstractions are getting much more difficult, I think for the foreign policy elite.
To carry on with.
And I think what happened on October seventh with some people who either defended what Hamas did or didn't didn't denounce it, is that they had such tightly curated kind of feeds that they didn't even know and because they didn't have the kind of curiosity or the willingness to kind of look outside their feed because they might not want to hear the answer to what had actually happened, and then they're locked into a position and pride and ego kind I won't let them back down from that.
But again, we're talking about people who are at the fringes of power, like way out, like just people who can't even get a hearing inside DSAY for the most part, rather than what we have on the other side, people like Congress and Mass, who ilhan Omar talked about in her speech yesterday, who has said I would caution my colleagues to use the phrase innocent civilians because you wouldn't use the phrase innocent Nazi civilians, And who has said that Israel ought to turn Gaza into a parking lot.
That was Max Miller.
Oh, sorry, Max Miller. What did Mass say? Oh? Mass said the first thing, that Miller said the other thing. So this is two members of two separate members of Congress. These are not anonymous people on a university chat board.
That's actually a transition, I think to the next block about how these are translating into the funding questions, because Ilhan Omar did invoke yesterday what Max Miller said on the floor and said, how dare you censure Rashida Shalib when nobody has sort of word about Max Miller claiming we're going to turn Gaza into a parking lot, and yeah, the I guess we can put We're about to play some some clips of a bitter fight that broke out on the Senate yesterday that did not get a lot
of attention, but is super instructive because Republicans are trying to separate is AID to Israel from a to Ukraine.
And the context for this is a wild statement from out of Ukraine from President Voladim Zelenski. I don't even want to set it up. Let's just play this clip from President Lenski.
If you can give us, give us some financial support, okay, Okay, Please give us a credit and we will give you back money.
Okay.
The idea is like your uncle at Thanksgiving.
Like please, like the like the idea that Ukraine would wage a stalemated war, stalemated at best war on credit, which they would then presumably pay back by selling off what maining state assets they've held onto since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yeah, sounds like the worst possible deal for regular Ukrainians that you could possibly conjure. Up absolutely, And people say, well, what's the alternative that Russia conquers the entire thing. No, that's not the alternative. The alternative
is a ceasefire and you enter into negotiations. Yeah, like, which was what should have happened, you know, in the very in the very beginning. Yeah, I was thinking for better conditions.
I was thinking this week actually about something you said a couple of years ago, or I think maybe you said it a year ago, about you know, peace negotiations that had been scuttled. And I think at the time it was enough Tolly Bennett who had broken some information about the West scuttling America, scuttling peace negotiations in Ukraine that even Zelenski had been open to. And then looking back and looking at you know, we have a hard
time knowing the death tolls. But even in that wonderful Time magazine piece, and they say wonderful because it was so insightful in a way that I don't think about what I wanted it to be.
Into the war, some.
Estimates of one hundred thous casualties at least on each side of this, how many of those could have been avoided if the peace negotiations hadn't been scuttled, and how many if we're going to talk about this a year from now and peace negotiations start in earnest, could have been avoided or could be avoided in the next year if we finally recognize that this is a stalemate. So in the Senate, Republicans tried to divorce the Ukraine Aid
from the Israel Aid. They're also trying to tie it to a border bill that in my from my perspective, we probably disagree on this. It deals a lot with asylum, it deals with funding to a wall, but I think probably the biggest thing in the bill is asylum. It was part of a bill that was passed by the House recently. That is something they're also trying to tie to the Israel funding, to Ukraine funding. They're trying to
bring it all together. This came to a head yesterday with Jeene Shaheen, Chris fin holland Democrats and the Senate freaking out and Roger Marshall and JD Vance kind of giving it back to them. So let's play this mashup of Democrats in the Senate yesterday.
We the United States must support our friends and democracies that are under attack from brutal adversaries. That means ensuring that Israel has the right to defend itself in the aftermath of the brutal October seventh attack of Hamas. It also means ensuring that the people of Ukraine can defend themselves against Putin's rank aggression. This proposal on the floor today is tantamount to surrendering to Putin's aggression. This is
waving the white flag. All of us were gathered in the old Senate Chamber, most of us recently when President Zelenski addressed the United States Senate. President Zelenski was very clear that the Ukrainians would continue to fight on no matter what, But he was equally clear that without the support of the United States and our allies, Putin has the upper hand.
The Ukrainian people are not only defending their land and freedom, they're fighting for the preservation of liberal democracies around the world. What some of my colleagues overlook in their singular campaign and support of Israel is just how closely the fate of Ukraine and Israel are tied together, and there's one country which links both of those countries together.
That country is a rant.
I'm sortain that is insane. Let's hear from Senator Vance, who is responding.
To this leagus may forget that a matter of weeks ago, a matter of months ago, there were people in this chamber, there were people in the United States of America, demanding that the State of Israel give money and weapons to the Ukrainians, money and weapons that the Israelis are now
using this very moment to defend themselves. The idea that these policies are not in tension with one another, The idea that what happens in in Russia and Ukraine is separate from what happens in Israel, is not just obvious, it is common sense, and it has been borne out by the reality of the last couple of weeks. Now, my colleagues would like to collapse these packages too. Many of my colleagues would like to collapse these packages because they would like to use Israel as a political fig
leaf for the President's Ukraine policy. But the President's Ukraine policy, just like the Israeli policy, should be debated. We should talk about it, we should discuss it, We should separate the costs and benefits and analyze them as distinct policies. Because That is what the American people deserve of their legislature.
And they know full well what they came up with as a total non starter. Instead of putting together common sense border policies that can pass in divided government, Senate Republicans basically copy and pasted large chunks of the House's radical HR two bill. And that's their asking price for hell in Ukraine. Making Ukraine funding conditional on the hard right border policies that can't ever pass Congress is a
huge mistake by our Republican colleagues. By tying Ukraine to border, Republicans are sadly making it harder, much harder for us to help Ukraine in their fight against Putin. It sends a terrible signal to both our friends and adversaries. It will be a moment that history will remember.
Okay, so you heard Truck Schumer following Jdvans there, and typically they're talking about two different things.
JD.
Vance and Roger Marshall tried to vote unanimous consent yesterday on a build a house passed last week that gives fourteen billion dollars to Israel and it's paid for by cuts to the IRS. Twelve Democrats voted for it on the House side. That was obviously going to be very difficult for any Senate Democrats to do. But what you heard wasn't so much opposition to the IRS funding cuts.
You heard from Jean Shaheen and you're hearing this also from Truck Schumer talking about the border that is a separate initiative, which says, okay, Biden, you want us to have money for both Israel and Ukraine tied together, then you're also going to make these changes to the asylum process. That argument that this is all interconnected, thus it must be funded at the same level.
Ryan, what do you make of it?
And I think the reason they didn't criticize the IRS funding portion of this is because then Republicans will say, okay, fine, we'll get rid of the IRS funding and we'll just give the money, yes, you know, to Israel, or we will find some other way to pay for Israel. Funny, because it's to your point, that's not their main objection.
I mean, it's a non starter. The IRS stuff is a non starter, But their main objection is that it's not collapsed together, that they want to move Ukraine money and Israel money at the same time.
They know Israel's popular, they know Ukraine is lose waning in popularity, so if they can tie it to Israel, they know it has a better chance of passing.
But what's interesting is that they could probably pass both. Probably like there is there is growing opposition to Ukraine funding in the Republican Party, there's not a lot of evidence that there's a lot of opposition to it among Democrats, even on the left, And so there are enough Republicans that could probably move it through. Now they're insisting on But I'd be curious for your take on that. You know the Republican Party better than me, But now they're
insisting on tying it to these border policies. And I think Democrats would actually love to be dragged, kicking and screaming towards some tough immigration policy, but not that stuff. Like there's some there are things that they would like to have done so that the political issue is taken off the table a little bit. Yeah, without their fingerprints being on it. Yeah, but that's not it.
It's like Republicans on abortion.
And do Republicans want like I think some Republicans like the issue. I think they don't want to solve it.
The White House, interestingly enough, has signaled some willingness to work on potential border policies. So that's kind of an interesting negotiating chip, especially because the House is so I mean, it's such a tight majority lead in the House of Representatives, and the White House knows that they know they desperately
want to get funding for both Israel and Ukraine. I think the real bargaining chip within the immigration bill that HR two that was basically as trick Schomers had copy and pasted, is going to be DAKA is going to be asylum for people who are brought here as children.
That's going to be I think where Republicans and Democrats might be able to find common ground if the White House actually decides to play ball on this question, which might be its best option going forward because of the way the House of Representatives is and to your point, a lot of people on the right see Ukraine funding as Mike Johnson's big litmus test. How is he going to be a speaker? That will be determined by how he handles this question of resisting blob pressures to continue
keep the spigot running with Ukraine. Even Kevin McCarthy was sort of further right on that than most of the Republican party establishments. So I mean, could they probably pass something, Yes, because even Mike Johnson and even Senate or even House Republicans, freedomc coccus people understand that there there can be room for some Ukraine funding. It's just this keeping the pigot on to the degree that it is on with these funding levels that they're resisting. So if they come to
the table, they can get something done. It might be having to come to the table on border stuff though.
Yeah, both parties love war, so don't bet against military funding making it throw never less you want, unless you want to lose money.
Ran speaking of that sort of two party consensus and the two party norm being broken, this is stunning, and Sager is the first person I actually saw a pick up on this.
Everybody actually read the poll that the New York Times did.
He decided to dig into the cross tabs, and everybody would talking about the Times Siena poll. It was rattling through the Beltway just everyone was focused on the numbers of Biden hemorrhaging support from black voters, for example, and him being down in all of these swing states. Sager looks at this and we can put the first element up on the screen and realizes it says something fascinating
about Robert F. Kennedy Junior's bid for the presidency. This New York Times poll found him running it really tight.
Margins.
Yeah, the top line has him, I don't have it in front of it. Was thirty five for Trump, thirty three for Biden was a twenty four.
Yeah.
So to repeat in case you think that you misheard me, Yeah, this is in six battleground states. Yeah, Trump at thirty five percent, Biden at thirty three percent, which is closer to Trump than Biden was without Kennedy in. And with Kennedy in, he was pulling twenty four percent of the vote. That is higher than Ross Parro ever polled.
Yeah, Soccer pointed it out. He never broke the twenty percent threshold in polling.
I feel like I remember him breaking it before he Paro did this bizarre thing where he was doing extremely well and then he dropped out because he said that like Democrats had threatened his daughter's a wedding or something like that sounds right, And then months later he jumped back in and people were like, Okay, we knew you were a little bit weird, but now we're like really confused.
He ends up with about nineteen percent, ended up.
At nineteen percent, and a lot of people think that that helped elect Bill Clinton.
Absolutely, yeah, it's hard to Yeah, those numbers are pretty that's a pretty good.
Case because it's hard to know exactly who they would have gone for. But yeah, I think that's right. Clinton ended up with like forty three percent of the vote and won the White House. And so you already have Rfk Junior polling higher than Ross Perrot kind of ever did. And he's within nine points of Biden and eleven points
of Trump. And if he can get some like an Elon Musk, David Sacks, these other tech billionaires that love him to fund him getting on the ballot across the country costs a lot, but you know, it's dropping the
bucket for these guys. Then he's on the ballot, and if the polling shows that he's not a spoiler but could actually win, it becomes a wild contest completely because when seventy percent of the country roughly is telling you that they do not want a Biden Trump rematch, and you tell them, too bad, You're getting a Biden Trump rematch, and then you get a guy named RFK Junior on the ballot, and then you're told he's actually viable.
Huge name recognition right off the bat, automatically.
One hundred percent name recognition basically. And then you have the combination of the people who voted for Trump in twenty sixteen as a middle finger to the system because they don't like it. They just want to flip it over. Right, do those people go back to Trump or do those people flip it over again by going up RFK Junior? Now it's wild.
Well, and another thing, this is D two.
We can put this up on the screen that was pointed out when you look further at these cross tabs RFK Junior and this isn't actually really that surprising, but he beats both Trump and Biden among voters under forty five.
In these six swing states.
So if you're looking at again Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Wisconsin, he is in the lead with voters eighteen through twenty nine, so people aged eighteen to twenty nine, he has thirty four percent level of support, and then a thirty one percent level of support with thirty to forty four year olds, so from the ages of eighteen to forty four, those are great numbers. Trump with those eighteen to twenty nine year olds is at twenty nine percent,
so he's losing to RFK Junior by five points. Biden is at thirty percent, so he's losing the RFK Junior by four points. With those eighteen to twenty nine year old I mean again, even in the thirty to forty four percent range or thirty to forty four year old range, Trump and Biden are each at thirty percent. RFK Junior is at thirty one percent, so he's winning with voters in swing states up to the age of forty four years old.
And the assumption among the consultant class is always that as you get closer to the election, the third party candidate dwindles in support as people realize that they don't have any chance. So that'll be the key question, like when people go to vote, do they think he actually
has a chance. And if they think he has zero chance, then a lot of the people who are telling pollsters that they're going to support RFK Junior as they kind of protest to those pollsters, end up saying, well, okay, if it's between Biden or Trump, here's the person that I prefer out of those two. But if they go into the poles thinking that it's actually live three way rays,
you know, who knows what they end up doing. And it is fascinating that he does appear to be pulling more votes from Trump than from Biden, Like he seems to be a net benefit to Biden unless he beats Biden.
Well, that's the thing I was Yeah, the thing I was just going to say is, actually, I think that's probably one of the most interesting things about the RFK junior candidacy is that as soon as he announced he was running independent, the Republican Party started sending out like that day it was Columbus Day. In my inbox, I'm
seeing from the rnc OPO on OURFKA Junior. And obviously he'd been sort of going through the conservative talk show circuit or podcast circuit, the podcast circuit kind of in general, not just conservative shows. I don't think we've seen this
candidacy get going yet. To your point about David Sachs and other very wealthy people who we know are actually already interested, very interested in the RFK junior candidacy, either because they support him on all of the issues, or because they so despise the Trump Biden matchup that they just want to throw it all into a state of chaos.
And so that's where really curious about going forward. As Republicans start to point out that RFK Junior has a fairly statist record across the board on environmental issues, he was pretty supportive of Hillary Clinton, does that sort of start resonating with Normy Dems Because a lot of Normy Dems are so sick.
Of Biden to the point where they could be.
Persuaded if they find out that RFK Junior was close with Hillary Clinton and you know, maybe isn't quite as crazy as they were told. He was used to run in fairly establishment democratic circles. So as Republicans start to hit him as an establishment Democrat, does that make Normy Dems take another look at him and do these numbers start changing?
That?
I think is a really interesting question, especially if more money is attached to it, and especially.
If we've talked about this before.
The Woody Harrelson's of Hollywood start to get behind the campaign too, and it just becomes a more high profile bid that the media is forced to cover and.
If we can put it this third element, which is a new study finding that media confidence in the US has matched its twenty sixteen record low. What that means is that there really isn't a Walter Cronkite type, you know, who's able to come in and referee this, yes, exactly and say, you know what, the gates are closed. These two dudes are in, and nobody else can come in.
The other point is that the rules around presidential debates are that previously had been that if you're at fifteen percent or above, you're supposed to be on the debate stage. So does RFK Junior get to be on the debate stage?
A fantastic question, and he's starting to. I mean, he's in that direction right now. The Gallop poll, I think actually explains across the board.
This is my theory.
I don't think it's you know, we don't have like clear statistics on this, but I think it explains why Biden is sort of flailing across the board and why even Trump is struggling against RFK Junior among the younger voters. Because the gatekeepers lack the power. The monopoly on truth is being eroded every single election cycle, and I think we take that for granted.
Even here on our.
Show, like counterpoints and breaking points, sometimes we site of how different it is that we get to do what we do as opposed to ten years ago, where.
To do what we did would be you know.
You would have to do it at a publication, you know, sort of a different you know, news outlet or something like that, and it was read in left circles or right circles. But to be able to have audiences that we have at this level, because this has been democracized, democratized by to some extent social media, to some extent by the Internet and things like YouTube. It's incredible, by
the podcast sphere exploding. I just think people it's happened so quickly that people don't realize how much that's affecting the way. For example, black voters. Look at Joe Biden when he's dropping significantly with black voters from twenty twenty post COVID to twenty twenty four. Potentially, I do think a lot of that is because trust and media is plummeting, and the new options are coming in to replace the bad old options.
On this substance of RFK Junior He's recently been a strident supporter of Israel's war on Gaza, and has even gone so far as to applaud a bunch of universities that have say like a delisted organizations that they say or that they say are supportive of Hamas or one
of them. I think at Brandeis was planning a candlelight vigil in memory of Palestinians who had been killed and had their charter revoked, and RFK Junior has been applauding that type of thing, which on the one hand, cuts against all of the kind of anti censorship, anti cancel culture wave that he'd been riding with a lot of the podcasts that had elevated him. On the other hand, there has always been a Palestinian exception to cancel culture
embedded in it from the very beginning. The best example being like Wise like her college career was dedicated towards literally canceling Palestinian professors, and she has never kind of said that I was wrong to do that and has continued to kind of run cancel campaigns against people that she considers to have, you know, have have aired on the Israeli Palestinian question while also being the kind of one of the lead cheerleaders of the kind of anti
cancel culture campaign. So I think it probably won't hurt him because of that exception that has always been embedded in the kind of Wolke wars. But I'm curious if you think that that matters at all.
It matters a lot to young voters.
I mean, I think, of course Barry Weiss and RFK Junior would say, even the most ardent anti canceled culture people have to you know, they agree that they're aligned somewhere that you know, somebody drops the drops the N word, it's probably fine to cancel them from a job or somebody. You know that an advertiser could say, maybe you're not
the face of Loreel anymore or whatever it is. But I do think young voters are so Polling has shown there's so much on one side of the Israel Palestine divide, and if they're super interested in RFK Junior and start seeing this, I mean he has leaned into it, but isn't more powerful than his other messages with young voters. How exasperated and exhausted are they with the Trump Biden choice.
That's all going in factor into this. I think that is an interesting question, especially given how big his support is with young voters and how big their support is for Palestine, and.
A huge portion of that twenty four percent, I'm guessing are people just saying just a middle finger. It's not actually necessarily support for RFK Junior. It's rejection of the two choices being offered. And some of it is genuine support for RFK Junior because they've heard him on shows, but I think a lot of it is not because we're still a year away.
That's much easier to do when you have a name that people recognize and they're comfortable.
Yeah. Absolutely, Kennedy for example, corn Now West is like also running and getting nowhere near that kind of right.
But when you put together, actually, that's another interesting that people aren't paying attention to. If you put together Maryan Williamson, Cornell West and Robert F. Kennedy Junior, the potential for an anti Biden candidate to sweep in is so high, and media doesn't even want to talk about it. They don't want to talk about where Marianne is pulling in New Hampshire. They don't want to talk about that at all.
They're just completely erasing it. They're suddenly very interested in Dean Phillips, who we have no indication, despite having a ton of money, has any popular support. So the fact that, as Soccer pointed out, media didn't pick up on this, that the New York Times had these cross tabs and is looking into I mean, so anytime you do a pole.
I don't know if Intercept ever does polling, but anytime as a news outlet you commission a pole, you are scraping that data and looking so closely for what is newsworthy, what's the hook, what's in it? And the fact that the New York Times had that in front of them, and then every other news outlet had the cross tabs to cover that pole, and nobody picked up on this or covered it until it started going.
Viral on Twitter. It's just like, what a joke.
I love that this is our last segment because it's such an afterthought, and for good reason. There's a Republican debate tonight. The candidates are down in Miami. Five of them ended up qualifying for it. By the way, in order to qualify, you had to register four percent in either two national polls polls or one national poll and
two polls from separate early voting states. Candidates also had to have reached according to CNN, at least seventy thousand unique donors with at least two hundred donors in twenty states or territories. So that means tonight we have the distinct pleasure of hearing from Chris Christy, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Hayley, Vivek Ramaswami, and Tim Scott.
Five of them.
That means no more Mike Pence who dropped out, Doug Burgham did not qualify. Asa Hutchinson didn't even make the second debate, so he doesn't even make the second debate. But we're now on the third debate. The fourth debate has already been announced. That's going to be December sixth in tusc so less than a month away. It has higher polling and donor thresholds, so this could be the last debate for maybe for Chris Christy and Tim Scott. I don't know about Vivek. I think Nikki Haley, because
she's searched in New Hampshire, is probably safe. DeSantis is safe for now as well.
I don't have a whole lot to say about this, you know what, I have a lot.
To say about one thing, which is that the Republican Party is so so stupid, and that is not news to anyone.
I think they just cancel it.
They should not be having a debate with NBC News that is going to be moderated by Kristin Welker, who I think is one of the more fair members of the so called mainstream media. But less your Hoole is on the record saying quote fairness is overrated. They added Hugh hewittt into the debate to sort of legitimize it, to be a token conservative question asker. But there's just no reason for the RNC to be cooperating anymore with
NBC News. The Blaze hosted a candidate forum in Iowa in the spring that was actually like way more helpful for Republican voters that trying to figure out sus out what the contrast is between you know, a Trump a DeSantis Haley than any debate moderated by corporate journalists has been in years. All you're going to do is have All you're going to have is corporate moderators racing to out condemn Republicans and to out gotcha Republicans. And I
think these candidates should take the toughest questions. They should subject themselves to the toughest scrutiny, but not under the false pretense of neutrality that Lester Holt and Kristen Welker claim. I have no problem with them being on the left. I have no problem with them being center left. You know, they're certainly not leftists, but being sort of center left neoliberal corporate journalists.
Have no problem with that.
They should be honest with it and stop lying to voters and saying that they're fair and neutral, and the Republican Party should stop letting them do that. There's no reason to let them do that anymore. If they ever want to have a good debate, they can come here to breaking points counterpoints, they can go to do the candidate forum at the Blaze. They can figure out another
way to do it. But nobody wants to see this anymore. So, in the absence of Ryan having not so much to say, I just had to go on my rant because it.
Makes me so mad.
It is fun to see it. I think it's useful to watch his debates just to see, like what the kind of dregs of the Republican are seeing as potential paths for Chris Christ Chris Nicky Haley trying to like hold on to some of that George W. Bush energy really fight she she seems like personally offended at the isolationism, yes, and the and the kind of selective anti war posture that has become resident within the Republican Party, and so watching her fight that and then.
But who on that stage is she gonna fight with?
I mean maybe maybe the Veak, Yeah, but I mean at this point, why.
Well, she doesn't seem to like him for one. Yeah, absolutely, So that makes it more enjoyable to watch too, because they really do seem to like not like each other. I'm very glad that both Tim Scott and Nicky Haley are on there because I want to hear more about those curtains that Tim Scott was so mad at Nikki
Haley for allegedly purchasing for her United Nations residents or whatever. Yeah, the fact that he brought that up in that debate suggests that there is a level of animosity that you can only appreciate among politicians who've known each other for decades.
South Carolina Republicans.
Just rivals, you know, and forced to be in the same rooms and on the same team for decades while not so secretly hating each other and undermining each other and knifing each other.
Or is it easy for them to fight It easier for them to fight about drapes because they know they're going to have to get along down the line, so they will do this theatrical debate about drapes. I think you're right in this case that there's actually like this simmering animosity that bring it.
She said something is so ridiculous, But that's that's the thing.
When you mentioned the point about Nimmi Hailey's neo conservatism, Donald Trump isn't on the stage. I mean we should have started this segment by saying this is a.
Stage is avatar of right?
Yeah, exactly, and that the fact that they'll all be they'll all just be arguing against Trump instead of each other because the leading candidate by a wide margin, is not even on the stage. And so again NBC News is moderating this debate, hosting this debate, putting all the money into this debate for money and credibility, and Republicans
are just giving them both of it. Despite talking constantly about how NBC News should be less powerful and is lacking incredibility without even having the leading candidate on the stage, Like there's just no reason to be doing this at this point, if you're just going to let NBC News trash a bunch of Republicans in front of the country in a way that's not productive for Republican voters. Who this is for Republican debates are for Republican voters to
decide which candidate they want to go for. And I don't think, you know, no offense Lester Holt is the most qualified to help them make that decision at this point.
And I wonder if this were a democratic debate, if NBC would be you know, how their approach on the question of Israel Palestine would differ between how they focus on Democrats how they focus on Republicans, Like will will you see the moderators try to pressure Republicans to condemn collective punishment of Palestinians, Like there's no question collective punishment is going on. They have shut the water off, they have stopped food and other supplies from getting in, Like that's happening.
By their own admission, by their own.
Emission, And they say that they have given reasons why they're doing it. It does not make it comport with international law. It is by definition collective punishment. Do you think that the moderators will push Republicans to condemn that because they would do it in any other circumstance.
I think it's a great question.
But I think that's also the problem with having Bernie Sanders be moderated by.
A Kristen Walker or Lester Hold.
I don't think it's any different between those two populist areas. I don't even think you must be a populist Republican to complain about the media, of course, but I'm actually really curious, now that you bring that up, how they handled this issue, because there isn't a lot of contrast between Republicans on it, except for maybe the veak might have a sort of outside the BI. I haven't followed closely how he's handled that question of civilians in Gaza.
But actually that's a really good point as to whether he tries to use that as a foreign policy wedge with Nikki Haley, because we've actually seen him go way beyond the tip of Republican comfort zone, because he knows that there are a lot of voters that are ready to hear that in previous debates in order to have a big moment with Nikki Haley.
So let's see if he does that this time.
And you're not allowed to express sympathy for Palestinian civilians for their own kind of unique dignity and individuality and the fact that they're a person with a soul on
this planet. What you can do, though, and what you'll see a lot of politicians do, is say it's bad because a it's going to create future terrorists that will produce blowback against us, and be it tarnishes our good name, our kind of ethical standing in the world, because we if the gap between the values that we preach and the values we practice gets too large, then Russia is gonna and China are gonna, you know, rush right through
that and do barbaric things. You can't condemn our own barbarity, and you can't stand up for the dignity of people just in their own right, but you can maybe kind of do a bank shot.
The Democratic senators we played early in the show immediately pivoted to the extrava, the abstractions of sort of Iran being the puppet master that's also tied in with Putin and by the way. I think there are serious concerning ties between all of those countries, but it's easy for them to use that to just you know, demand more money under this sort of national security blackmail, which by the way.
They're also doing with Section seven o two.
Maybe we'll cover that next week, but there the Biden administration is freaking out about the bipartisan reform efforts that Ron Wyden and Mike Lee are behind on Section seven oh two. They do this all the time with national security issues. They try to scare monger people into giving more money to Ukraine, to Israel, to UH seven oh two and giving up their privacy rights. It's just absurd. It's absurdity theater. Yeah, but the media falls for it.
To your point, but I can't can't wait to watch it. We're not doing a debate special.
Tonight and really no need again leading candidates very.
Sorry about that. We just couldn't get it.
Together for You can follow Ryan on to what though for his stream of consciousness absorbs this incredible, this incredible conversation between Republicans.
That time is eight o'clock.
It's an eight pm one.
Yeah, that's right in the middle of bedtime. So I might have to DVR and then live tweet the DVR version.
Also, by the way, it's co hosted by Salem News and the Republican Jewish Coalition. So your question about how NBC at a debate co hosted by the Republican Jewish Coalition do they give a question to the RJC? Do they ask a question on behalf of the RJC? And then how do they kind of balance that if they purport to be neutral, which obviously we know is a lie, but if they do, how do they balance that with questions about civilians in Gaza? A great thing to watch for tonight.
We'll watch for tonight because somebody's got to somebody.
Has to do it, so I guess we will. That does it for us today. I kind of like Ryan today. We had fewer blocks and we got to spend longer time on them. Maybe too much time in the amb.
Block, but I liked it.
I could have kept going for sure. Well, yeah, that does it for us on today's edition of Counterpoints. Make sure to subscribe to the premium version of the show. You get the full version, no commercials, full video to your inbox. If you don't subscribe premium, we release about three videos a week from Counterpoints. So if you want to see the full video version of the show, make sure to subscribe. Make sure to like subscribe to Premium, subscribe to the channel.
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