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Hey, everybody, welcome to the Buck Sexton Show. We're very pleased. On this episode, our friend Ryan Gerdski joins us. He is the guy who writes the National Populist newsletter on Substack, which you should all subscribe to. You I am a subscriber and always look forward to new Substacks as they are published there. He's also a political consultant, perhaps a political wizard on his best days.
Great to have you, Ryan, Thanks for having me.
So let's start with American voter in twenty twenty four. You crunch the numbers, you looked at the data. It's about to get real, right. We've got a Republican debate coming up soon. It's going to be the primaries before we know what people are going to be casting ballots. What O folks need to know about how twenty twenty four is shaping up by the numbers so far, Well, the.
Biggest thing is what is the demographic of the country going to look like? That's a big, big question. You know, when George Bush ran in two thousand and four, the country was almost eighty percent of the voting electorate was white. You go to some swing states like Florida, sorry of North Carolina. North Carolina was a biracial state. It was just black and whites, I mean non people who are not black, not white, were less than two percent of
the voting population. Those things aren't the same, aren't true anymore at all. And I think what happens in people's heads, specifically, is they get frozen in time. You know, the population of voters who will be millennials and zoomers will be up substantially. There were basically no zoomers in There were none at all in sixteen, and there were very few in twenty twenty. There'll be substantially millions more in twenty
twenty four. And a lot of the biggest swing states like North Carolina again, Arizona, Florida, have had population growth that exceed the margins of previous elections cycles. So just because something happened four or eighty years ago, because the net migration interstatement migration, let alone forget immigration, that's the
interstate migration is so large and so profound. The pot the fixed population and the fixed voting demographics have changed substantially, and that's what we'll forget mostly.
Now, what is the biggest up for grabs voting demographic for twenty twenty four, Like if you could, oh, I.
Mean, yeah, I make I mean there has been substantial change in the Asian.
And Hispanic vote. And I'll take an example of New York City.
For example, New York City in Bronx, which you know, the Bronx. The Bronx is a very heavily heavily Hispanic majority population with no functional Republican party. There is no Republican party in the Bronx. There might as well not be their population. People who voted Republican in that county
almost doubled from some sixteen to twenty twenty. And then in twenty twenty one there was the mayoral election and the population of people voting Republican increase, even as the Republican candidate for mayor got like twenty eight percent in the city. And then if you look at the governor's race, which was more competitive, obviously the population of Republicans voting
in that county increased. Again, Republicans did not gain any new votes from twenty twenty two from twenty twenty to twenty twenty two, but they did not lose any supporting amongst Hispanics. So one of the biggest things is that probably the Hispanic baseline level for Republicans is higher than it was just you know, six years ago, eight years ago, where the number would be in the mid twenties, it's
probably in the mid thirties. Now a great candidate, a great campaign, you could probably get into the low forties, which is good. But you have to remember a lot of Hispanics live in places that are not competitive California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey. It makes it a little it makes their vote increase important, but less so than that. And it would be with black voters if blackletters moving, which they're not moving. Asian voters similarly, and local elections
have started moving Republican. I don't know if that will carry to federal elections as different issues, but certainly on crime a number of issues, Republican voters and I take it back to New York City, Republican Asian voters move fifty points right from twenty eighteen to twenty twenty two, and especially in Chinatown, Brooklyn and Chinatown and Queens if you look at the and if you look at twenty twenty two, one of the places totally non competitive, no
functioning Republican party. A place Republicans grew a lot of support was in Hawaii, of all places, very weak Republican Party there, but the Asian vote did move right and help Republicans elect three state legislators that they didn't have before. But the biggest vote, where it matters, where the votes matter go in large portions, are the non college educated wife.
Still in twenty twenty, people have a picture in their head that the average Biden voters a college educated woman or a black woman.
That is the portry the.
Media puts out there. The biggest demographic of Biden voters were non college.
Educated white voters. Thirty two percent.
One of every three Biden voters was non college educated white people. Overall, twenty six million Americans, About twenty percent of that population supports building a border world. About thirty percent supports banning abortion after twenty four weeks twenty weeks.
Something like that.
They have a number of conservative things. It's one in five, it's one in five non college educated whites. Within one of three voters is six percent of the Biden base
is movable, which is about six million voters. That is substantial in an election where the elections in the last two presidential cycles have been decided by under one hundred thousand votes in swing states, and the biggest populations of non college educated whites are the russ Belts, which is up for grabs places like New Hampshire main SEC and congressional and substantial portions in places still like North Carolina, which is a large population of non college educated whites.
I would think that is one place they could focus on substantially if there was an effort by.
The GOP to register those voters.
There's still over forty million non college educated whites we're not interested to vote as of twenty sixteen May. Let's say it's thirty five million today. It's a lot of people. Those are the places that are the easiest for grabs and the easy places Republicans can gain support because at the same time they're losing support still among college educated
white voters and that vote is receding. Remember that when people think of like the Bush years twenty five years ago, and they think or twenty years ago, and they think of an old voter in that time they're talking about the Greatest generation. That generation has died out. The generations replaced in as an old voter is the silence And people think of the Silent Generation almost as intertwined with
the Greatest Generation, very close. But there's a great book called Generations I had just read by Jeanette Twinge.
I think it is.
It's a very long book full of data, and the Silent Generation are much more left wing than the Greatest Generation were. Silent generation is the generation that did Stone Wall, that were the hippie generation. They were the one who went to Woodstock, not the baby boomers. The baby Boomers adapted to their culture changes, but the people who led the big changes culture than the sixties was the site was Joe Biden generation, not you know, not our parents,
Boomer generation. They just grew up in it. And I think that's important to realize. So you'll have an aging off of the more conservative voters, and you have a lot of more progressive voters and coming up through Generation Z and you have and you have college educated whites continuing to leave the GOP. So to make up for that in the millions, you need to make up for that the non college educated white vote is still the
largest voting demographic along with working class Hispanics. To get I know it's a very long winded answer.
No, it's important data. I want to come back and ask you how you think the Republican nominee, whoever he ends up being, probably Trump, but whoever it ends up being, can chip away at Biden's white, non college educated voter base. But we'll talk because I think that's something that Trump did in twenty sixteen clearly against Hillary. Right, So this is a central battleground politically going to the next election.
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I think well. I mean, there are certain things working their advantage. The border is a disaster and people are very well aware of that. Inflation is super high. I read a CNN headline, although I did not read the article admittedly, that average prices are up eight hundred dollars from two years ago for the average household monthly items, and that would be.
A very very big thing.
I spoke to a Biden voter who is someone I know not super well, but she started bringing politics and she said, I'll just deal with the mean tweets I'm going to vote for Trump, non college educated, white working class woman, single woman, even though she's pro choice and all the rest of so the economy is working in their favor for sure. I think a lynchpin for a lot of people who are working class that Republicans have failed to address in a meaningful way is healthcare.
I think that there's a big, big, big loophole.
I don't really know the Republican health care plan of any major candidate. I don't think that there is a way that they have addressed that succinctly that people understand. Using terms like free market, let the free market decide means, we'll see how it goes, will wing it. Things like trying to bring up accessibility, prices and costs.
Are really where the major factors are.
So if we don't want an alternative of socialized medicine and there's a lot of pitfalls to it, what are we going to do to make healthcare more affordable and a better option for people who you know they're living paycheck by paycheck. I know from my personal health insurance that I pay out of my company is like twelve hundred a month. I don't really know a lot of people who be able if they have a family of four and the company doesn't pay for all of it.
It's in the thousands of months, and I don't know a lot of people get sit there and do it. So are they either get Obamacare or crappy healthcare or they just settle for no healthcare. So I think that's a major, major focal point that the Republicans have failed to address. And I think that it's a major it's a major issue within the GOP if you.
Look at it.
Wait, I'm gonna have to jump in because otherwise you're telling us brilliant stuff. I does anyone on the GP side have a healthcare platform yet that they have articulated? Does that? Even if you ask me right now, I do this for a living, I'm not aware of it.
I don't know. I've never heard of one.
I mean, rallying against Obamacare was very effective when Obamacare was new. It's kind of settled in when people when Republicans give standard answers like the free market, that doesn't mean anything to a lot of people, and it's a very it's a scary idea is you're just not going to have healthcare and then Eventually the corporations who you kind of feel have like hurt you over the pass with healthcare, are are going to strew you over again.
And I think that's why we're probably this is not a prediction, but this is just like where the public is going. They're going to get closer and closer towards a socialized healthcare thing at least or probably emergency care.
You know. JD.
Mann's is out there as a Republican and he's talking about trying to make at least healthcare for baby deliveries free. I just think that this is going to be the natural movement of most voters over time, and I think that this is a major hiccup. But I said before.
About to ask you a question, how do we make healthcare? I mean, because I agree that's been the trajectory. How do we handle making health care free when we're setting up refugee camps for illegals in New York City and other places? You know what I mean?
How are you? Yeah, that's a great question.
You can't I mean now without bankrupting the system, and these cities and states are already going bankrupt. There was a great article, by the way, I totally sided in the City, which is a good publication at New York City, but it's a total left wing everyone's a liberal. And their article was like, because they have the city council elections this year in New York and they said city council candid sound more and more.
Like Republicans on immigration and migrants.
So it was just very very well, how you know, when it's happening in their backyard, all of a sudden, everyone is, you know, Joe Rpio, not really that much, not that extent, but they're definitely.
More hawkish on immigration than they were.
But yeah, you can, I mean everyone acknowledges you can't have a welfare system and have open borders. Joe Biden famously, which I don't know why Republicans did not pounce on greater in twenty twenty set there instead, he wanted free healthcare for illegal Alians. I mean, that's the magnet bringing them all over. I don't you know if you can
have an economic argument on migration issues. The reason that part of a big part of the reason we don't have affordable housing in this country is because everybody wants to live in the same twenty five metropolitan areas No one wants to live in the Nevada Desert just they don't want to. They don't want to live in Wyoming, they don't want to live in northern New Hampshire. They want to live in the same twenty five metro areas
that everybody else wants to live in. And even though we're building over a million homes a year, when you take in one point two one point three million people legally, and then you have a bunch of eighteen year olds turning eighteen wanting to buy homes and people living longer, it creates an immense crush when it comes to housing.
Migration is a big part of that. Healthcare is a big part of that.
I think that there is an economic argument towards migration that people are not bringing up that could definitely sway over some working class people, especially as more and more of them are seeing these migrant cities, migrants, you know, crunching the numbers. In augustuns Massachusetts declared state of emergency over migration, and they're only spending fifty million dollars I think a month. Right now, New York City is spending
twelve billion in the next two years. One in ten dollars is going to migrants in New York City's budget.
I just don't understand how anyone thinks this is sustainable. But it also it also will they're going to call for federal bailouts. They already are calling for federal bailouts, which I think is fascinating because it means the usual thing that I get when I talk about this issue, Ryan is people who live in Nebraska are like, whatever sucks for New York. Well, actually, what they're hoping to do is to bail out New York with the tax dollars that people everywhere across the country right, or at
least to run off the debt even more. But this storyline for so many years was illegals do the jobs Americans won't do. You know, you get some Cato Institute flax who will say, oh, illegals, all they do is contribute to the economy. We need them or Social Security is going to fall apart, and someone us are sitting here saying, first of all, they're coming to the country illegally. Second of all, they're lying to border patrol about why
they're coming. They're scamming the system. They overwhelmingly don't speak English, They are semi literate at best in any language. They have no discernible skills, they have no background checks that have been run, and they're going to be able to compete and be a net contributor in an increasing the information based economy.
In an economy that is happily mechanizing low skilled jobs, and it kind of is rapidly. We've gone to McDonald's recently, I mean maybe you probably haven't, but they're all robots.
I mean, and a lot of McDonald's.
There are robots taking your order, and there are robots serving you food, and there are robots. Growing up, you wanted to go from New York to New Jersey, you had to sit and wait and line to throw a quarter or give a dollar to a lady in a booth. There's no more ladies in a booth. It's all robots. We are mechanizing low skilled jobs across this country. So how do you have a twenty first century economy with a twentieth century labor force? No one, there's a way
to articulate that in a profound way. There are brilliant immigrants that come to this country. There are scientists, there are data researchers. There maybe is the next Albert Einstein sitting somewhere in some place, but the overwhelming number aren't.
And it's so my favorite like stupid libertarian argument.
Is like, oh, you know x amount of billionaires have come to people who made billion dollar companies have come from as immigrants. If you ever look at the countries they come from, it's like eighty five percent Western Europe, Israel,
East Asia, and Australia or Canada. Like it doesn't match our immigration populations at all, Like the like there's four from Africa and one is Elon musk so like there's almost none from like Central America or South America, So we don't have where our immigration policy is a twentieth century immigration policy for a twenty first century county. It doesn't match up at all, and it causes other economic problems, partially in healthcare, partially in education costs, partially.
In housing costs.
Those are real working class even concerns for younger people that you have to seriously sit there and address, and maybe Seale don't want to hear. Maybe they're like, no, you know, this is against my ideas. And America's the nation immigrants, and they've been fed certain lines for so long they believe them. But there isn't a population where you're not scapegoating immigrants. You're not staying there and saying these people are the problem. You're saying if you continue
the way that you are. Had we kept the immigration numbers of nineteen ninety nine, which were six hundred and fifty thousand a year, it's not a small number. We would have had twenty five million fewer people in America today. Twenty five million fewer people is a probably a net of eight million empty homes today. Eight million empty homes would have reduced to overall prices by probably ten percent, and it wouldn't be such a huge home crunch right now.
In many places, and not just hotspots like Miami, people can't afford homes and you know, Pennsylvania, people can't afford homes in a lot of parts.
Of this country.
So I think that that's a very interesting point in one I would like to sit there and hear from and I like to sit there and hear from people from.
About like what's real, what's real needs?
In the article I wrote from The American Conservative, the number one issue people talk about is the economy. Number two is inflation and then number like four is immigration. There's a way to tie this up and connect these things while addressing the biggest concerns of housing costs, healthcare costs, and economic job growth.
I want to ask you about, uh, this RFK phenomenon to agree that it is a phenomenon and whether yeah, right, right, Well we'll talk about this in just a second. Because the only people I ever hear talking about RFK are Trump voting Republicans. That's that's just my experience. The only people I've ever heard bring him up anywhere on TV anywhere else pretty much is and might I say, bring him up like talk about him as a serious political force.
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That's ai Coin twenty twenty three dot com paid for by Palm Beach Research Group RFK Junior. Gavin Newsom is
going to take over for Biden? Where does all this stuff sayd I want to pull my hair out because I get people that not only do they think that's going to happen, they think I'm I'm silly for not recognizing that Joe Biden, I mean, it's almost twenty twenty, like we're gonna be in twenty twenty four here in the blink of an eye, is just going to allow there to be a Democrat primary at the last minute.
Because also, I mean, it's it's not like there are there's an old joke in politics that every elected official from the dogcatcher to the governor's of being president if Joe Biden was as vulnerable, there is no way in this world that Pritzker the governor of Illinois, wouldn't seriously be considting a run. Gretchen Whitmer, governor Michigan, wouldn't ben seriously be considering a run. Jared Pole Is probably governor
of Colorado is probably be consciously said a run. Not to mention like the Corey Bookers and the people who just want to be president so badly who are more of a joke also, and Bernie Sanders to appoint too, They're all not There would be no plausible way that they would all be sitting out of it and just let Gavin Newsome habit because they all want to be president. So it's not that I don't think Joe Biden is vulnerable.
I think he is vulnerable to a part to a point, but if he drops out, it's going to be a mad rush. And also Kamla. Like we it's America of twenty twenty three. We know how Democrats talk about race and identity. There is no way that they are going to just skip over the first half Asian, half black email vice president to give it to a white, straight guy from California. There's just it's just not it's not working.
I've never heard by the way, a Democrat ever talk about Gaven Newsom ever, I've never heard.
I've heard them talk.
About their fantasy people, the people they love, even Poodha Judge and people that Republicans roll their eyes at. I have never in my life for one Democrat site. You know, Gavin Newsom me be a great, great president.
So what happens there? Like, do do you just think that Biden becomes the guy going forward? And or that rather stays the guy going forward? And all this talk is just something that the pundits have because to me, why would you give up the incumbency to allow there to be some kind of a fight over this Three.
D chess hunters going to jail? Yaha, yah, a Merrick Ireland's having. I mean, there's a lot of things that that they talk about in relation to Hunter and Merrick Garland's you know, special like a diamond hunter. Here's the bigger question, would Shoe Biden be in a petter position to help his as president or as not president? We
all know the answer is as president. So if I like the if, the if the conspiracy theory about Toronto the conspiracy, but if the opinion about Trump is he's running for president, so he doesn't go to jail, And there's an equal theory that Hunter should go to.
Jail in a just world, and maybe there's a lot of merit to that.
Would Joe Biden be in a better posient or Joe Biden we be forced to retire to Hunters going to jail, would Joe be in a better position of his son as president or not as president? The answers is president. So it makes literally no sense in my in my calculation. And once again you have I've said this to you on the radio. I think you have to December like fourteenth to qualify for the Democratic primaries. So I mean
we have a few months. Maybe they'd all rush in the barn and Joe, I mean, Joe is probably one hundred days to a side then and I want to retire.
I don't feel up to it, or you know whatever.
But you'd have one hundred days and after that point, it's the feel will be who it is. And I don't see how. I don't see how, you know how it's going to Also, DNC would have to start doing debates and stuff like that, which aren't even on the schedule r And yet it would be very, very very difficult. And the person of the highest name ID going in in that short period time is Kamala Harris.
Whether people think that she's a joke and I think that she's a.
Joke as well, Democrats genuinely like her, and she has the highest name landing.
So how do you think that all this prosecution of Trump' stuff? Do we have any indications about what this does to independent voters? Do they rally to Trump? Do they get kind of pushed away from Trump? Do we have any sense of this at all?
Do you honestly believe that there is a woman saying in the suburbs of Atlanta who voted for Trump in sixteen couldn't take him for all the mean tweets in twenty and are going to look at this and say, you now give him a second chance?
He has eighty and that's going on. I mean, and what.
Scenario does all of this pressure from the federal government make Trump act in a.
Better light to those voters? I have a hard time seeing it.
I think that you'll have a lot of people, You may have a lot of people who are in the lower tier of the ladder of the economic ladder who feel like, damn, he is like me. You know, I would not have I would get screwed to. Maybe there is even some black voters or some Hispanic voters who feel this way, that they have been on the wrong side of the law and unfairly prosecuted. But I find it to be a bit of a pripe pipe dream.
I imagine this doesn't help him substantially. And if you look at all the polls that show a tight race between Biden and Trump, the biggest thing to remember is that both have one hundred percent aim I be there's not a single person's country who doesn't know who Joe Biden or Donald Trump bart are. And if they do, I wish I was then because they are living a very happy life.
But if you don't, everyone else knows who they are. And they both are pulling generally.
Under forty five percent, which is if you're in campaign world, if it incumbent's pulling under forty five percent, you're like, oh, this is great because there's a lot of uncertainty with the electorate. That's where the election is to side. And this uncertainty who knows Biden, who knows Trump? They don't like either one of them, which is probably between fifteen and twenty percent of the country. And it's ultimately what coin losses they flipped is that I trust Trump to
fix the economy. He was not that bad of a present. Times were better, you know, four years ago? Or is the people like Trump is an unserious person. He's deranged. He's talking about things like January sixth again, and this is not who I want representing me in the country. That's really where the dividing line is. And also there'll be two issues which will be I'm sure abortion is going to be a huge issue and also the January sixth stuff. So we'll see which play a heavier hand
and move people's minds. But that's really the biggest question right now, because if it's Trump versus Biden, there will be no voter who's learning new information. It's just a matter of the people who like dislike them both. You know, who do they show for. And it's also among the base of whom I'm more inspired vote for. I think Trump will probably win that battle as far as intensity goes,
but there'll be a lot of Republicans. Probably the New York Times website at six percent of the Republican electorate who said they would not vote for him and in general, so there'll be a substantially the voting third party voting for Biden, and who knows.
Maybe we'll get into a twenty sixteenth.
Case where there'll be a third party candidate who eats up three percent of the election and throws the election either which way happened twice in the last twenty year or so, it wouldn't be shocking if it happened.
A third time.
Ryan Goraduski, everybody subscribe to the National Populist newsletter on substack, and he will be bringing you all these insights, and you can also probably email him and yell at him there for not being sufficiently supportive of Donald Trump as the nut. Anyway, Ran, thank you very much right out. I appreciate it.
Sacking Bye,