Chuck’s Commentary - Money Is Destroying American Politics + Illinois Primary Was Ground Zero For Dark Money

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taking control of your personal data today. Trust me, I'm constantly working on this for years myself, and here's an opportunity for you to take matters into your own hands as well. Hello thereon, Welcome to the Thursday edition of the Chuck Podcast. I have today's going to be a

bit more domestic, a bit moreocused on that obviously. Look that the most important story impacting American politics is and will continue to be the Iran War until it is not right because of the impact it has on our economy, the sort of symbolic impact it has on the economy

with gas prices, things like that, but the actual war itself, the conduct of this war will we end up escalating all these questions securing the straight of horn moves. It is going to continue to be essentially and I think if you're like I said, it's similar I said yesterday. If you're a Republican running on the ballot in twenty twenty six, you just wish this war would end in some form or another, that you could turn the page on this. But it isn't going to happen very quickly,

very easily. This is going to continue to be I think the biggest story that will impact the larger sort of perception of the direction of the country, and it will certainly impact what is campaigned on. But at the end of the day, whether the war was happening or not, the issue of the economy and democracy issues would be in some ways front and center. And my sub stack theme this week is about how the only primary and I think there's some important political follout from that that

I'll share with you in a few minutes. A huge win for Juliana Stratton number one, but number two, and maybe in the near term the bigger winner might be JB. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois. I think those of us I'm somebody who's you know, I wasn't sure. I didn't have him in my top tier of twenty twenty eight ers.

Let's just say, you know, I'm paying a lot more respect than to him now, and I see him as I think, you know, you're the governor you're able to take on You're a billionaire governor, and you're able to take on these huge super packs from the crypto industry and from the tech and AI industries, and you're able to win. Although in this case, I think it was really more of the crypto folks that he was taking

on more than anybody else. It says something, and I certainly have and I want to get to that in a minute. But I want to tackle this issue of money in politics because it's all kind of tied in together a little bit. And let's just say, for years I didn't spend a lot of time on the issue of campaign finance and money and politics, not because I didn't think it was a problem. I just never really believed it would ever really become a big issue in

American politics. Even as you hear, as I'll hear plenty of sort of you know, non professional in this space. I E. Voters, I E. Those that pay attention going, we've got to do something about money in politics, because I was a skeptic when that there was any reform that was even possible, that there was no curbing of money, and it wasn't because I thought the system was healthy, quite the opposite. I just assumed the problem was unbeatable. It was too adaptive, it was too clever, if you will,

And I had this working assumption. I used to do this all the time. I'd quote Jeff Goldbloom's character in Jurassic Park when the old man reassures the scientists that

he brings to show off his dinosaurs. Oh no, no, no, they're not going to pro create. I've been able to manipulate their DNA so that they can't pro create. And Goldblum's characters, you know, he's the guy who I guess promotes chaos theory and mathematics, and he basically says life finds a way and he turns out to be right. Well, I've always felt that way about money in politics, right, Money always finds a way. You try public financing, it

gets outgrown, you try to cap contribution. Well, then you get bundling, which sort of a work around every reform in in my adult lifetime, in franctly, my entire lifetime has been has been turned against itself. Right, you ban soft money from the major parties, then that money moves outside the parties and you say, have less of an

opportunity to keep control of your of your party. Mcain fine Gold was supposed to clean things up, and instead it helped create the modern superPAC system that is absolutely destructive to the political campaign system as we know it. Every single reform I've seen tried created a workaround that became made the problem worse. So you get to the point you're like, well, just go find your you know.

And you saw there was no neither party would ever have a permanent advantage on money, you know, because that's the way markets work, right, When one one side's up, the other side finds it finds disgruntled rich people to help them, right, And and so there was an uneasy balance that you would see in this, and so you thought, well, at least it's fair, it's ugly, it's gross, but at

least it's balanced between the two parties over time. So it was going to be messy, it was going to be imperfect, but ultimately it was probably unfixable, especially once the courts decided that money was speech, so then you had to have a constitutional moment, and what the hell would that constitutional moment look like? But I do think we missed something along the way, because when we pushed big donors out of the parties, this was a I think this, you know, I have you know, McCain fine gold.

And there were plenty of detractors of McCain fine gold because they just simply wanted more big money in politics. But there were other detractors of McCain fine gold who worried it would weaken them two political parties. And I think those folks have proven to be right. And let me explain, we didn't just move money when we got rid of money big money checks being written to political parties directly, he actually removed one of the only guard

rails in vetting candidates that we had. When you take the parties out of the candidate vetting business, and you do this when you no longer allow them to have the financial resources to help candidates win, then you had real consequences to what kinds of candidates would suddenly pop up for all of their flaws, And there were plenty with the party organizations. They did serve a kind as kind of a filter. Wasn't a perfect filter and wasn't always a fair filter, but they would ask basic questions

like is this person stable? Do they have good judgment?

Can they handle power? Can they handle stress? Sometimes just the basic vetting process and an HR department would have And because that's where you had to get your resources and your money, you as the candidate sort of where you kind of you had to apply to the parties, if you will, unofficially, and the parties had a stake in the long term health of the coalition and they couldn't just get behind somebody that could win now if they thought that person's reputation could end up harming the

overall reputation of the party itself. But now well, that function has been entirely outsourced, and it's been outsourced to donor networks, to ideological entrepreneurs, to outside groups, and those actors aren't asking the same questions that leaders of the two actual political parties used to ask of their candidates. They don't ask is this person fit? They're asking can this person win? And will this person be useful, useful to fund, useful to protect useful to stop something. They

have their own incentive. They're looking for somebody that aligns with them on a specific issue, specific topic of issue focus. Right, So that then Trump's character it, Trump's ethics, Trump's morals, and Trump branding. Right. It's a completely different screening mechanism and it produces a completely different kind of politics. Then you lay around Citizens United, and now the system isn't just adaptive, it's protected. Political spending becomes speech, and suddenly

meaningful restrictions are almost impossible without a constitutional fight. So for a long time I thought this is it, this is the system, until recently that is because something has changed. Are there's always a tipping point, right, there's always, you know, everything in moderation, But eventually you're not moderating your habits. You've tipped. So let me give you a moment where

I clicked for me. And I keep coming back to this and I bring it up in a lot of my appearances now and I'm going to continue to do so. When Chuck Schumer reportedly told fellow Democratic senators to ease up on their opposition to the crypto industry, not because they changed their minds and they saw that crypto was going to be this incredible. Maybe this would be a helpful tool in the financial sector. But because of the political firepower of a singular super called fair shake, these

were huge players in Illinois, and by the way, they get their ass kecked in Illinois, they did not have a good night. For what it's worth, But think about that, elected officials being told to soften their positions on a specific issue because an industry simply has too much money to challenge them. That's not influence, that's not persuasion, that's coersion.

It's policy extortion. And once you see that clearly, then all the stuff starts to look differently because what we're dealing with now is not just a lot of money in politics. It is something bigger. It's the shift from candidate centered politics to donor centered politics. And this is what was so crystal clear about all of the Illinois primaries that happened earlier this week. And it wasn't just

in the Senate race. It was also in these house races where every single candidate came with a descriptor that said the fairshake back candidate, the AI back candidate, the A packed back candidate, this back candidate. Right, it was never just about the candidate, even in Juliana Stratton's case, who didn't have one big industry behind her, she had a big billionaire governor behind her. She was Governor Pritzker's candidate, right, But it was not about the candidates. It was about

their supporters, about the donors. So now there was a specific reason why Illinois became kind of ground zero for this moment. Right. It's a very blue state, and they had a bunch of elderly members of Congress who finally decided to retire, the big one being Dick Durbin. Right,

you got elected in ninety six. You know, by the way, for what it's worth, I think if you were elected to office in the twentieth century, you probably shouldn't be seeking reelection in twenty six. And if you do, don't be surprised if you get primaried and you have a problem. But I digress. So Dick Durbin retires, there's an open seat, deep blue state, which means the primary becomes the election

and it's not just an election for six years. Dick Derbin got elected in ninety six and was there for thirty years, worked his way up in the leadership number two in leadership. So this is a very I mean, that's what you're investing in. You're not just investing in one six year term. You're potentially investing in one of the next leaders of the United States Senate over a generation. So if you're you've got interest before Congress, this is a valuable asset to acquire, i e. Having a senator

that may feel beholden to your industry. So if you're that interest group and you think you can influence this primary, you may be buying influence for a generation. So what did voters get? Though? They didn't get a traditional campaign, They didn't get a real debate between the candidates. You know, in fact, if you didn't have one of these things yet, it was really hard for the candidates. I never felt

like I got to know the candidates. I only knew them through their donors and through who their supporters were. And it turned into a proxy war. Right. You had crypto money, AI money, a pack link money, billionaire money, governor money front group, shell acts, you name it. By the end of it, voters knew what these interests wanted, perhaps, but that they really know what kind of candidate they

were getting. Now, I think in Stratton. She found a way to break through, interestingly enough, because she went viral with an ad that didn't air on mainstream television because you'd had to bleep it out too much. But it was the F Trump at and if you haven't seen it,

I encourage you to go see it. During our livestream, we aired a vision of it, but it's just a whole bunch of voters saying F Trump, and then Stratton says, I'm not saying it, but it was her way of basically virtue signaling, Hey, she's going to be a fighter. She wants to punch the bully in the nose. And

I think it mattered. It also mattered that the governor, I think is popular with rank and filed Democrats because he's been fighting Trump and he's been you know what, Gavin Newsom has gotten a lot more credit for arguably Pritzker's been doing before. Newsom thought it was a cool way to do. But we still had something odd take place this week in Illinois in that voters again I think, ended up having to to select candidates based on what

third party groups create. The character of third party groups were created by them, So they were watching messages written by people who may never actually have been on the ballot and will never be on the ballot. And here's

the part that should bother everyone. These outside groups, they often don't even campaign on the issue they actually care about. A crypto group may never mention Crypto, an AI group may never mention AI entirely. An Israel focused group may decide that's too politically complicated to lead with. So what do they do. They find another issue, immigration, crime, corruption, ideology,

and they use that as the delivery system. So voters think they're watching one debate when they're actually being moved onto another. And that's not persuasion. That becomes misdirection, right, And the candidates don't really feel accountable to it because in some ways they can't control these outside groups, and the outside groups have no accountability because none of us know who their donors are in time to cover it before the election. Having good life insurance is incredibly important.

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about it, especially if you've got a growing family. So as a candidate, you weirdly kind of stuck because you can't coordinate with the groups, and so they get pulled into campaigns they didn't design. They just sort of participate into a campaign that was created by an outside group on terrain. They didn't choose answering for messages. They didn't right, So the whole idea of independent spending becomes part of

the problem. And this is where the loss of party control I think matters a lot, because parties used to have to think about the entire electorate, the whole coalition, long term consequences. Now we didn't just decentralize money, we

decentralized responsibility, and we hollowed out the institutions that had to care about more than one donor's obsession, which brings us to the core problem inanimity. If you want to vote in secret, you should. The secret ballot is sacred. That's a fundamental right. But if you want to spend millions influencing everyone else's vote, sorry, you don't deserve secrecy. You need to put your name on it immediately, not on some tax reform through a LLC six months later,

in real time, in plain English. No shell companies, no front groups, no hiding three layers deep, stand by your money. In fact, let me make it simple, take a page from NASCAR. If you want to spend big money in politics, but the donor on the hood every ad, every mail, or every digital buy, because that's the tradeoff. Influence comes with visibility. You want to have influence, everybody needs to know it with her democracy. It's on the ballot and

it needs to be put on the ballot now. Even if that doesn't solve the whole problem, because the deeper issue is what this system does to candidates. It doesn't just reward certain positions, it punishes others. So candidates learn, They learn what fights are too expensive, like crypto apparently, so they soften, they go quiet, they delay, or they stand down entirely not because they've been persuaded, but because they understand the cost that comes with dissent, which in

some ways is what they crypto. I mean, this is what they've done. They've amassed such a financial juggernaut and fair shape that they just want to intimidate politicians into legalizing what is a questionable what many people find questionable in its usefulness. But once that happens, the problem isn't just money in politics. It's that money is defining the boundaries of politics. What can be said, what can't be said, what gets debated, what gets avoided. And here's the thing,

this is no longer just a left wing complaint. I'm now hearing it from Republicans, free market conservatives, people with their own scars from dark money, starting to say this out loud. And that's new. And this is why I think why we might have hit a tipping point where maybe the public is ready to do something about it, and maybe the politicians are going to grow a spine and do something about it, because the scale here is undeniable. Not that long ago, billionaire money was a rounding error.

I'm not kidding. I mean you've seen it. It was barely one percent of campaign money came from billionaires pre Citizens United. Now it's approaching one out of every five dollars spent on federal campaigns comes from a billionaire. We are moving towards something new, but it looks like institutionalized billionaire politics, right, a political gilded age. Now, to be clear, this doesn't

mean every candidate backed by wealthy interest is corrupt. American politics has always had patrons, but the structure of it matters, right, And the structure we have now encourages voters to believe candidates are simply stand ins for their donors, and that perception alone is what is so corrosive, and it creates a barrier to entry that should worry all of us. We got rid of poll taxes for a reason. You can't charge people for access to a constitutional right. But

we've built something similar on the candidate side. A system we're running for office seriously requires access to wealth, patrons

or donor networks. That's a shadow tax on a candidacy. Now, candidates will tell you fairly that they didn't write these rules, and they're right, they didn't. Can be rational for the participants and still be unacceptable for the public, and this is where we're at. The reforms aren't mysterious, real time disclosure,

no anonymous money, clear donor identification. Maybe some structural fixes like runoffs or ranked choice voting won't fix everything, but it will store one basic idea that voters should know who is trying to persuade them and why, because in many cases it's not the candidates that are trying to persuade voters anymore. It's some anonymous donor who's funding that candidate.

So the danger now isn't that money influences outcomes. It's that it defines the menu of choices itself, like you don't even know there's an alternative because it doesn't have the funding to present itself on your menu of options before. It's like what happens in Iran? Right? You know, yes, it's a democracy, but the regime decides who gets to

be on the ballot. So is it really a choice in anybody that is, you know, any presential candidate that's calling for actual, small de democratic reform, they somehow don't make the ballot. That's essentially what we're seeing here, donors deciding who's viable, who's not, what's debated, and what gets dropped. That's how democracy gets reshaped into a kleptocracy quietly before

a single vote has even cast. And that's why this has finally potentially become a voting issue, not because reform is easy, but because voters are starting to see the system for what it is. In Illinois. It's not the exception. It's just a warning. And it's interesting because Illinois features a billionaire governor, a billionaire governor who's tried to fight the some of these other billionaires. And you know, this

feeds into a notion. And this is why I think that you know, hey, look we're going to look on one primary does not make a presidential candidate, but it is a data point that matters. And you know, the f Trump at it's possible that you have a group of Democrats who say, well, this system is so rigged that maybe they've got to find their billionaire to fight the other billionaires. And I'm not just making this up.

One of you was my substact reader, made a comment on my substack column that was on the that was similarly themed here, and I just want to read you to hand in hand here because I think it. I think it's a it's illustrative of where I think there

is a faction of the Democratic Party. And I've, like I said, I've heard other at a progressive consultant tell me I'm looking for my own Trump right anyway, let me read you to what one of my commenters too on substack said, this is the most terrifying thing I've read in a while, and I read a lot of AI doomsday articles. What do we do about it? Writing

or calling your congress person feels inadequate. I've known campaign find answer was a problem for a long time, but it feels like the only way to change it is to become a billionaire, win elections and then fight the other billionaires. What do normal citizens do short of pulling out the guillotines? This was just a simple question to him, And what I want to say to Ryan asked who wrote this in is you may need to You may

need to show your guillotine. I'm not saying you use the guillotine, but you almost need to, Like it's like you walk t you walk quietly and carry a big stick like you're guillotine. You're your stick. Or maybe you hire a billionaire to do this right, And that's I

think the JB. Pritzker pitch. Hey, I'm a billionaire. I know how these guys work, and in some ways it's the mirror image of how Trump convinced a frustrated Republican base that was tired of losing, tired of compromising, tired of the mccains and the Romneys of the world, and they wanted somebody who made them feel better and expressed what they thought they couldn't say anymore, right, and that was Donald Trump. Well that's what the Juliana Stratton f

Trump ad. I think there's a there's it's somewhat analogous, right, there's a group of Democrats who are tired of the shit, right, and they're like, screw it, give me my own billionaire and let me punch this bully in the house. And Pritzker has been playing this role for quite some time. And you know, I've been skeptical that the answer to the Trump eras for Democrats to go find their own billionaire. Right.

This is why I've been a little skeptical of the Mark Cuban idea, a little skeptical of the Pritzker idea. But watching it in action and you seeing how much

money and how big these entities are. You know, it took a rich guy named Teddy Roosevelt to take on the big rich guys, right, it took a rich guy in FDR to build the social safety net for the working class. It was a rich guy that working class America the last ten years has turned to or want to be rich guy, depending on your point of view of when Trump actually acquired actual wealth. But it doesn't matter.

Perceive Perception is reality in this case. And so I know this, like you know, I always remind people I cover politics as as it is, not as I wish it were. I'm not sure this is a good long term solution for where we're headed as a country. But

I also it's possible. This is a this is something, this is something that has to be tried first before the next thing gets tried, right, And if you you know, I always like to put my shove in the shoes of somebody fifty years from now looking back on this era we're living through, and how will they see it,

what will it look like? And you know, you know, I have a theory that we're we're going to We're probably going to have two or three more one term presidents before we have a president that's able to sort of solidify the country enough to earn a second term. And that's when you know, we'll have turned the page on this era until we get there. So we've had three in a row. You know, we didn't. We went through the entire twentieth century without three one term presidents

in a row. So I kind of think we're you got to go through these stages, right, and so you know, you could see this right if if down the road we get you know, the next Eisenhower becomes president, say in twenty thirty six, but we have a one term president in twenty eight, a one term president in thirty two, et cetera. Like okay, what you know, what what will

the explanation be? And it will be something like, well, you know, the frustrated Americans they kept they kept voting, you know, they kept looking for something different and they didn't like it, and they voted out. You know, the Democrats, they tried the conciliator candidate in Biden and that didn't work.

Then they tried you know, if they go with the A Pritzker, let's say, then it was oh, they tried the fighter, the billionaire fighter to fight back and that didn't work in the Culture War, and then you know who knows, So you know it is it's possible. We're just in a this is the next step, you know, before you get to whatever the whatever the solution is, or maybe this turns out to be the solution, or maybe a leader sort of morphs into something bigger and

is able to rise above in a moment. You know. Well, that's that's what we do. We find out sometimes after we elect these presidents whether they're actually up to the job. We never, let's be honest, we're never quite sure these folks are up to the job until after they take office. There's a lot of skepticism about Bill Clinton, and then after a while you understood why he was there. Uh did it with w did it with Obama? You know, there's always a moment where these people fill the suit, right,

and you just sort of see it, you know. I think Biden always struggled to fill the suit. I think Trump, you know, is always acting. He's always playing a role, so he struggles to fill the suit because it's never a full it's never quite quite what he is. It's always a performance of some sort. You just have to figure out what that performance is at any given time. So it's uh, I'm always careful. I don't want to

be definitive here. Right. We had one primary where the candidate who was preaching love instead of a fighter one in Texas. Now this one we got the fighter, the F Trump candidate. Right. By the way, every time I say F Trump, I'm channeling my old Chris Matthews. He'll be saying, are you saying F troop? You know some old TV show back in the sixties. So for some of my older viewers and listeners, that was a shout out for F troop. Now I'm not saying F troop

when I say the F Trump had. So you know, two data points does not make a trend, but it's an intriguing data point. It's something I'm not going to dismiss about Pritzker. And I think that Pritzker's proven to be politically savving his own state, so we should be taking him seriously as a presidential candidate. I wouldn't put him at the bottom of the top tier anymore. I'd be putting him smack dab in the in the contender

section of this. As we go forward, all right, Like I said, coming up my conversation with somebody who leads one of these super packs that I'm talking about, and we get into whether this is a healthy system and what should be and Rad Carson, longtime Oklahoma Democrat, also gives his prescription of how Democrats could to could improve their brand in red states like Oklahoma and elsewhere. So I think you'll find the conversation interesting, provocative and enlightening.

And with that, let's sneak in a break and when we come back, my conversation with about AI influencer politics and the Democratic Party with Brad Carson. This episode of the Chuck Todcast is brought to you by Quints. A thoughtfully built wardrobe comes down to pieces that mix well and last. That's where Quince shines. Premium fabrics, considered design, and every day essentials that feel effortless, toware and dependable

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in Boston and he writes, Hey, Chuck, I started listening to your podcast after hearing you on Jim and Marjorie Show and have not missed an episode since. Oh I'm

glad to hear that Jim and Marjorie are fantastic. They have a terrific daily program on BPR. Up there, Boston Public Radio, and they're two of my favorite people. I just adore them and it is probably my favorite guest appearance I make on anything I do. It's just a total joy with them, So thank you for giving them a shout out. You continue. I devour the commentaries as soon as they drop and then save the interviews for

the weekend. So excellent. My niece has just graduated from journalism school and is moving to DC to start her career in the world of political journalism. I was thinking of getting our membership at the National Press Club as a graduation. Get is that still where the center of gravity is for the DC press these days? Thanks Bill, and Boston actually isn't a National Press Club? Is really

it's really a PR mechanism. Now more public relations firms are members of the Press Club than actual journalists associations.

It's still an if you're an international journalist, the Press Club is a helpful tool, but it does not play the role it once did, and it's interesting I might suggest, I know this sounds I might suggest just getting her a subscription to like punch Bowl, right, and some one of these insider newsletters that you really need to know, you know, that can really help drive you know, on Congress that's punch Bowl, and that's not a cheap publication,

but you know, the DC publication world right, whether it's your subscription, and it really is punchable for Congress. You know, this is what gets really expensive in the world of journalism, is being able to keep track of everybody else's work, whether it's the Punch Bowl, Wall Street Journal, Politico, Axios. None of this stuff is free, and in many cases it's exuberant, it's uber expensive. But I think back on what I needed as subscription to my old stomping grounds,

the Hotline. You know, if you did punch Bowl, Wall Street Journal, Politico in the Hotline, that's probably what a membership to the National Press Club would cost. And I would dare say those publications if your niece doesn't end up working at one of them, and she may end up, and yes, over time, if one of the not every

news organization, we'll spring for some of these subscriptions. So anyway that I'm just thinking out loud, but that's probably you know, where I would begin to sort of engrace, you know, to have help somebody sort of get used to the rhythms of this town, you know, from an internal cultural sense, and that's where punch Bowl and Politico

Playbook in particular come come in. And then with this particular White House axios in the Wall Street Journal, I think I have the best access to the to the west wing and have the probably the more consistent scoopages. You know, this is no disrespect to the times in the Post, but in this case, the times in the Post are a bit cheaper, and one could argue she could, she could, she could pay for those. Those other ones are a little price here, So just a thought anyway.

I hope that helps, Bill, and congratulations and you know I at some point we're going to be hiring interns here at the Check Podcast, but we haven't fully fully expanded there for now. Next up is Howard W. From Los Angeles. Any rates, when the Declaration of Independence was signed, were we a country or thirteen colonies? Didn't we actually become a country when the articles of confederation right fight

in seventeen eighty one. That is a fair point, right, We we declared our independence and then we didn't really and we sort of formed an army, and you know, there was a coalition and it was I guess you could call it a a you know, a coalition of

the willing, but it's a it's man, why do you want to mess up a good myth? Right? Are you telling us we have to put off the two hundred and fiftieth birthday for at least another six years? But it's a and we certainly have only been a constitutional republic, I guess is probably since since seventeen eighty one, so the first time we attempted a constitution. But hey, that's a that's a that's a that's a fair it's a fair argument. So I had a little fun. You'll appreciate this.

So I decided to tap. I typed your question into chat gpt to see what our AI would say, When did America become an actual country? So here's the response that chat ChiPT gave and he goes, well, that depends on what you mean by become a country, because the United States didn't flip a switch over nine. It emerged in stages and each one answers your question a little differently.

So the declaration of independence, chat chipet caused a symbolic birth the thirteen Colony simply declared themselves independent from Great Britain. So there's that. Seventeen eighty three the Treaty of Paris, So this is when the international world recognized America as a country. The Treaty of Paris officially ended the war. Britain had to formally recognize the United States as a sovereign nation, and then other countries would acknowledge the existence

of the United States. So they argue that the legal recognition recognized moment then would be seventeen eighty three, seventeen eighty nine, our Constitution takes effect, so you know, and you can then make your argument about the articles iteration and that that being so, there you go, And arguably we still have to wait until we may have to.

The two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Constitutional Republic would be the next decade, and so our two hundred and fiftieth celebration for the Constitution I assume we'll all be centered around Philadelphia in twenty thirty nine. So make your reservations now. All right, that was a fun little exercise, and I love the provocative question. See, how are these are my listeners? This is what I expect I expect this kind of this kind of nuance in details, So

thank you. Next question comes from Brad Chuck. Greetings from Grand Rapids in Michigan's third District, and thanks for the great podcast. You often say citizens should reach out to their representatives, But what if you're a member of Congress like my representative Hillary Schulton and Michigan senators already share your concerns. Is it still worthwhile to contact them just to reinforce support, encourage them to push even harder in Washington?

How much influence do constituents really have when they're asking leaders who already agree with them to do more. I think it's more of the tactical. You know, it's interesting. I am one of the fun pleasures I have in teaching. As many of you know, I teach a class called how Washington Works for USC and it's their DC program

USC University of Southern California, and I to be confused with my friends in Columbia, South Carolina who believe the University of South Carolina is the original USC as I like to say to them, have a more successful program and you can reclaim USC is yours. Sorry couldn't help myself, but about half the class is interning on the hill. And when you intern on the hill, what does that mean? Yeah,

answer the phones. But answering the phones in a congressional office is fascinating, especially when you're a young intern, because usually it's calls from constituents, not always, you know, sometimes they're planned campaign sometimes they're genuine locals. But here's what I can tell you I've learned from these conversations I've had with these with with people that answer phones over

the years. It's all offices want to keep track. They want to know what issues are coming up, what's being called in it because a lot of times it is an early warning system. All of a sudden, you get some there might be some local thing that's happening that the congressional office is getting a lot of calls on. It actually is something that a local mayor ought to deal with. Maybe it's something the mayor of Grand Rapids has to deal with, and they're able to say, hey,

we're getting calls about this, are you aware of this? Right? So it can be just sort of an early warning system, right, But they but the members care and it's it's I think there's more power in numbers, right, But you don't want to look like you're manufacturing and you're reading from a script. So the point is is that sometimes it's not You may your representatives may support you generally, but

are they doing something specifically? You know, you might you might want to say, how come you're not doing this? You know, I know you share the same concerns I do about X. So explain to me why you're not doing why. You know. Maybe let's say you're you're skeptical of this around war, Well, maybe you might want to encourage them. Look, don't just vote symbolically, know against funding this war. What are you going to do to actually

try to bring this to an end? You know, maybe force an answer out of them, force a response out of them. But I you know, or you can call other you know, these these these members of Congress. You won't for some of them, you won't be is impactful, but they do log complaints that come in from constituents that don't live in their district or state and just say, look, I'm and you should be honest about it, and I'm

calling you. You know, my senator's already believe in this, but I'm concerned, you know, and maybe find a way to connect with that senator. I you know, I thought Senator X really was worried about why so why aren't they also standing up on this issue? But there's all sorts of ways to I think, influence a senator that you think already shares some of your values. Maybe it's more in what are they doing about it? How are they expressing themselves? You know, it's one thing to share

your concerns. It's another things to do some action. So that'd be another way to look at it. Next question comes from David and he writes, Chuck, I'm a twenty nine year old living in California now, but previously a federal worker in DC before being cut during last year's doze terminations. You've often mentioned Mississippi as a state to watch, even though most analysts don't see it as viable for Democrats.

What can we learn from the Sippy primaries past Tuesday in terms of turnout, in enthusiasm, and do you see the same potential for competitiveness there that we've seen in southern races like Alabama in twenty seventeen, in Georgia in twenty twenty. Well, look, I've had this Mississippi conversation with quite a few people, and I'm trying to remember recently.

I feel like I can't remember if I did it in this podcast or it was a Newsfair episode, but when we talk about different states, or it may have been. It may have been a conversation I had with when

I was moderating a panel up at Harvard in Jamie Harrison, who was the former DNC chair and candidate for office in South Carolina, and it was in this you know, the whole point of pointing out of Mississippi, for one thing, is is looking at what the electoral map could look like in twenty thirty two. When we have reapportionment in the electoral college, numbers shift again and the power continues to grow in the sun Beat and in the South. So Democrats have to make inroads in the sun Belt, right,

You've got to make inroads where the people live. Texas and Florida are two obvious targets. They're big, they're huge, and they're very difficult. Georgia is a success story. It's an organizational success story. And the point is when you look at the population in Mississippi and you look at look at go look at those general election results, they're always you know, Sydney Hyde Smith versus Mike Esipe in twenty eighteen fifty four to forty six race, that's not

a blowout. That does not mean Mississippi is not competitive. Tate Reeves and the Presley cousin was also somebody that was also one of the closest governor's races in thirty years or in the last twenty years. Excuse me, but what you have is an under investment in the state part and there's a there's an under voter, there's an under there's basically a lot of unregistered African American voters in Mississippi who've kind of given up on the system.

It was a similar phenomenon in Alabama, and you had Doug Jones will tell you it was black women in particular that you know, helped organize for his campaign and that upset over Roy Moore. Now, there's nothing like having an opponent who's an accused pedophile in order to assist you in a in a very deeply religious state like Alabama. And I don't think we should we should overlook that factoid on that one success in Alabama. But Mississippi there's

more consistent. You see it, right, there's a lower ceiling for Republicans than there is in an Alabama or but it's it's not a one cycle investment, right, And I think the problem, the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans in my adult lifetime is that Republicans have always taken a longer view in trying to flip a state and Democrats are always looking for a shortcut, and they've

not take that longer. One of the few exceptions to the longer views has been Arizona in Georgia, and now that is paid necessary dividends, right, it's kept them in the game. Without Georgie and Arizona, the downfall of the Midwestern swing states and of Florida and Ohio in particular would be catastrophic for the party. But it's not because of a concerted twenty year effort to essentially get competitive

in Georgia and Arizona. And you had look the losing Stacey Abrams campaigns did a lot, made a lot of progress for george Democrats, and that's what you need. You need somebody that sort of you know, makes progress in losing and sticks to it. And in Mississippi you've had too many examples of well funded singular campaign that have never sort of stayed engaged after they've lost, and until you do, that's that's the moment. But it's if you look at the population numbers and you look at the

voter registration numbers, that's why you see. If you ever could maximize African American voter registration in Mississippi, you suddenly are in a different place competitively in that day. Next question comes from JR. JR. Rights. Hey, second time asker, Thanks again for taking questions. Virginia's led Governor Spamberger signature bringing the electoral vote count for it's triggering up to two twenty two, still a ways off from the required two to seventy. But what do you think the odds

are that the MPV will gain momentum and get the requisite numbers to go into effect. Do you think Trump's popular vote win in twenty twenty four may jostle free some reticent red states to join. Thanks interesting in your thoughts on the MPV compact as a whole as well. Well. Look, I've i dug into the compact quite a bit about fifteen or twenty years ago when it first started up.

The guy who founded the university of Phoenix was sort of the initial brainchild of this, by the way, for what it's worth, and this goes back to two thousand and three, two thousand and four, two thousand and five, memory serves, I have this vision. I remember packing my office at the Hotline to move to NBC, and I remember this guy's the voter Compact pamphlet wasn't a pamphlet.

It was this massive if you remember the remember the old chain Kinkos, It was like a Kinko's put together book if you will, and I you know, just to

if people are going to wonder how this works. So the idea is that states, would you know, which is do the thanks to the commerce clause reveralily where states will agree that if if there are that the minute there's enough states that add up to two hundred and seventy electoral votes, then the states agree that their lectoral votes will go to the winner of the popular vote. But it doesn't trigger until there are enough states that

add up to two hundred and seventy electoral votes. And so it is, as you noted, we're up to two twenty two, so there's still there's still forty eight electoral votes away. I haven't seen the latest list of states, but I think a lot of the big states haven't done it yet, if I'm not mistaken, So I'm a skeptic that it will be accepted by the public. I

think you would have. I mean, look at all of the rage you see among Nebraska Republicans Loan the loan electoral vote that continues to nag at Republicans right with oma sort of almost no consistently voting voting against the state's interest, and the calls and demands for change, And the minute this compact has agreed to, the second estate feels as if their votes cost their guy an election,

then there's going to be right. So I'm skeptical that this will ever even when it hits the requisite number, that it will ever be implemented. That essentially, this is an easy thing to say you're willing to do before you get to the number itself. Now on once you catch the once you're the dog that catches the proverbial car, what actually happens here? What do you plan to do with this? You know? I I'm I think we need a constitutional amendment to change this if you want to

change it. My work around these days is doubling the size of the house. If you did that, then you would write and the electoral college would follow the popular vote in ninety eight percent of the circumstances, rather than in the situation we're in now, which is only about something like eighty five to ninety percent of the time, will the popular vote in the in the electoral vote be the same winner, and that that GAP's a big deal.

That's a big you know, as I like to say, you know, would you get on a plane that had a ninety percent chance of landing safely? Would you get on a plane that had a ninety nine percent chance of landing safely? Right? You do that all the time. Nothing's one hundred percent, But once you hear that it's ninety how about eighty five? Right? Right? Then it's suddenly you're like, oh, I know, plenty of one in fifteen you know, I'm fifteen percent chance things happen. There's a

ten percent chance of something happened. And wait a minute, that's that that could actually happen. So you know, I'm I'm so, I'm I'm skeptical that this would ever successfully be implemented because I think there's states that have agreed to do it. You'll see, especially since we've become so one party. I mean, look at a state like Virginia

suddenly as a one party controlled state. It's still kind of a I would argue, it's a fifty five to forty five dem lean overall, right, but it behaves like it's an eighty twenty state these days with its legislature and its democratic governance. Right, It's just like Mississippi's really like a fifty five to forty five state, but it behaves in governance if it's an eighty twenty Republican state. And so that's where I you know, So I'm I needed, like I said, I needed a better analysis of how

many which states in there. But I just have a feeling a bunch of them will chicken out when this starts, and just when it looks like they're getting to somebody, somebody will, you know, it'll be it'll be like Lucy in the football. You know, she'll pull it away. Some state will withdraw from the compact, and all of a

sudden they're short again. So you know that it's my guess, And again I go back to the the easiest way to fix this is just expanding the House, then you don't even need a constitutional amendment after that a constitutional amendment. But I do think you're not going to be able to get the constitutional amendment until you convince both parties that this will be helpful to that. And I think repealing the electoral college won't get you there, but expanding

the House in theory benefits. You can make a case that it can strengthen both parties depending on how you look at it. You know, shouldn't you have more voting power in Congress than Wyoming has? Right? Shouldn't you have more voting power in Congress than Delaware has? Right? You can make that case to a Republican state or a democratic state. So that's why I sort of lean more in that territory. But thanks for asking about that. The MPV is always I got into it until I didn't.

Next question comes from Kenny from Massapequa. Thank you for letting me say massive pequod approve that I can say it. Hey, Chuck, I share your dad's love of coin collecting, and while the bi centennial coins may not be worth much more than face value, sometimes the memories attached to them are priceless. My wife and I also have a question, what's the

deal with daylight saving time? With Senator Rubio no longer championing the issue in the Senate, is there anyone likely to take up the push to either keep it permanent or in the clock changes together twice a year of the timeship disrupts sleep, commuting, and families. So is there any real chance Congress funally fixes it? Kenny from Massapequa Kenny,

I hope you heard my time Machine segment earlier this week on this very issue, the initial creation of time zones, daylight saving and how often we've the problem is there is no solution because the solution for you becomes a

problem for somebody else. And I went through three different periods of time where we had sort of permanent versions of you know, temporary permanent versions of our time and the big the most recent attempt that we did this in seventy four to conserve energy during the energy crisis, where a year long daylight saving time is you basically

had a hope. You know, there's a bunch of we had actual accidents, Kids were killed at bus stops because of traffic accidents before the sun came up, So you know, I think this is one of those cases where. And this is why I enjoyed that time machine. You know, before the Railroad's you know, every town noon was slightly different and everybody used the sun to decide while it's noon in Massapequa, which means it's eleven fifty nine some in the next town over, and it's eleven fifty eight

two towns from there. Right. So anyway, I encourage you go check my last time Machine episode from the Monday episode. I'd like to think that after you listen to that, you'll be like, oh, this is why it'll never change, because it's too complicated. There's no good answer because every every you know, now, when we were in a grarian economy, we just adjust it, you know. When living in this fixed time zone, this is going to be this is

going to be the challenge here. And I think everybody has different interests, right if you're you know, I remember as a little kid, I couldn't wait for daylight saving time, and the older I've gotten, I resent daylight saving time, right, So I think that's another issue here, is that there's just not a there's no clean there's no clean answer, and in some ways, going through the motions of trying to figure out how we took control of time as

it is as a country and as a government. I now feel I feel satisfied with my unsat with this unsatisfactory, uncomfortable way that we've done this. Now, I do wish we would at least, you know, we keep we keep moving when we do daylight saving time more than the

rest of the world does. I wish we would synchronize a little bit better with other countries so that it went, all right, we're all going to move our we're all going to move up an hour early here, but we keep doing the mission creep and I think it also kind of messes things up there. All right, take one more question. No, Actually, I got to end it there. I'm going to wrap things up here. Though. It is the best weekend of one of the best sports weekends

of the year. It's the first and second round of the NCAA Tournament. I will tell you I'm such an addict about the NCAA Tournament that I instituted no hotline Fridays for in celebration of the NCAA Tournament. We would literally put everybody we stop. We made Friday a holiday. We published right before noon the twelve fifteen tip off

on Thursday and everybody scattered. It was one of my prouder managerial decisions that I made. And that's how much I love the NCAA tournament. I have a couple of fun pools that I do want my favorite, and I've been doing it with a group of friends probably almost thirty years now, where there's eight of us and we do a draft. You know, we all throw two hundred bucks in and we do a draft, and we'd do eight teams and randomized pick. So then you go through

and you know you you basically have. So I thought i'd have some fun and share with you quickly what those what those picks are. It is so I and the draft, I had the fourth pick, so I got Florida. They were the remaining number one seed, and I came really close to drafting Houston, but I didn't want to leave a one seed on board, said Florida. And then when it came back to me in the Snake draft,

I got Arkansas. Then I have Wisconsin, Miami, Saint Louis, South Florida, Wright State, and Howard you get for every win your team gets, you you get and everybody throws a pile of money into the pool. So you know, there have been years where people have gotten two Final four teams with their team, and there are years they are limited after the first weekend. Sometimes it's a bit random, but it's one of my favorite pools that I do.

But like, you end up with teams you don't necessarily want to root for, Like I'm like, really Florida, but and I wasn't gonna leave them on the board. I don't enjoy rooting for them, but at least now if they win, I might win something. But I do. I am happy, Like I went out of my way to draft Miami, and I went out of my way to draft Saint Louis An A ten team for Chocolate up

GW SO. But my in case you're wondering the final four that I read to Tony Kornheiser, my participation in their bracket challenge Arizona Duke Houston, and I have Houston beating Florida there in Arizona, I have Houston winning the whole thing over I think I've Houston beating Michigan in the final game. I believe that's what I ended up doing. So and if you're wondering what my first early round upsets are. I will say the only twelve seeds that intrigued me Akron Akron is one that I put in

my pool to go a couple of rounds. I want to believe that one of the eleven seeds will do a little something for me. That's South Florida. I have them going around or too on that front. But mostly I think this is going to be chalky, chalky, chalky chalky, lots of ones and twos in the Elite eight, with maybe only Saint John's blowing up that party and being the highest seed remaining in come the Elite eight. I

guess is the johnnies at five. If anybody over a five seed gets to the Elite eight, my guess is that it would be boy I struggle. You know two A month ago, I might have said Saint Louis, I don't buy it now. And a month ago I might have said Miami, but I don't think we're deep enough to make that type of run. But I like Miami's path. I don't hate Miami's path. I think they can knock Purdue off in the second round, and obviously they pull that off, then hey, then anything is possible. So there

you go. Enjoy the weekend, enjoy college basketball. It's a good way to distract yourself from the craziness that is the world and this country in politics. Thanks for listening, and I'll see them on that