Chuck’s Commentary -The Blue Wave Is Building… But How Big Will It Be? + The Five-Alarm Fire At The Pentagon

0:00This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. 30 years ago, an island off Manhattan almost brought down New York City. Who will you trust? Your friends and neighbors? Who will you trust the people five miles overseas? This is a story about neighbors turning on each other. And what happens when a forgotten place decides it's had enough. But we're not stopping, are we? Listen to revisionist history, the Staten Island problem on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode of the Chuck Toddcast is brought to you by chapter. Now almost everything you hear about Medicare is somebody quietly trying to steer you somewhere. And you're skeptical of that. And as you should be, I get it. I mean, there's a federal lawsuit going on right now over exactly this. Companies that branded themselves as unbiased while allegedly pointing people toward whatever would pay them the most as some sort of broker.

1:01So if your default is to distrust everyone in this space, honestly, I get it. I'm a bit distrustful these days myself. That's the whole reason I want to tell you about chapter. They're independent Medicare advisors whose entire model is that their advisors are not paid to push anyone plan. They're just trying to help. Yes, there's compensation that goes with it, but it's across the board is what they're trying to do. At the end of the day, they're advocating for you. They're not the insurance companies themselves. They're an actual person who actually goes through your doctors, your prescriptions, your needs, and then compares them to every single plan available to find the best one that will work for you and hopefully send it, save you a couple dollars too. And here's the part that sets chapter apart. They don't disappear once you've been enrolled. They will keep advocating for you. They're kind of like almost like a concierge service. You're just there. I need to help. You're like customer service, you know, the plan, you know, help me navigate this again. So you ever get hit with a wrongful medical bill?

2:01They'll help you fight it. They want to stay an advocate for you even after you've done this. So look, I get it. I think there's all sorts of space. You see a lot of people are throwing themselves in this healthcare space. When I like about these chapter folks, I've spent time with them. This is a very transparent organization. It is Medicare and all of its affiliated stuff can be very confusing. The whole point of this is to make this easier and less confusing. Okay, so look, take the skepticism you already have in all of this. Point it at your own plan for 20 minutes. It's free. There's no pressure. And then call chapter today at 980-734-3985. Hello there and welcome to the Thursday edition of the Chuck Todd Cast. The first September edition, we are coming to you by the time you're listening to this. We'll be somewhere either right at 60 days until the midterms or 59, depending if you delay the day.

3:08And I got a packed episode for you. We're going to hit a lot of big themes, including some new midterm analysis and a couple of deep dyes that I've gone into that I think helped give me a clearer picture of the battle for the Senate in particular. I want to share with that. We had another primary night on Tuesday. I got a few takeaways from that, but we also have more specific data on overall turnout during the primaries. It's an incredibly important tea leaf to read. I've been sharing that with you as well. We've got a crisis of five alarm fire at the Pentagon. I want to get into that. And we've got a broken house. And I'll explain that. I'll have a new top five list, hot off the presses on where things stand in the Senate. As I said, I have a pretty clear picture now. And then of course, week one, the the the trek, the University of Miami's campaign to prove to the world they are the best.

4:12The best team in college football, the best program in college football that we are building something that is sustainable and bigger and better than those two overrated conferences called the big 10 in the SEC. So I'll give you a little bit of my exclusive Miami preview. Who else is going to give you Chuck Todd's preview of the University of Miami football season. And then I have a couple words about the angels and Steve Balmer and co-I Leonard in the Clippers. But look, I know why you tune in. Let's start with the midterms because I think we now have what may be the most important political tea leaf. We've gotten all year. Bottom line is this a democratic wave is building what we don't know is how big it's going to be. And that's why I'm using the word building. I'm not telling you there's going to be a democratic wave or tsunami in November. We're still two months away. There's still things that can happen. Campaigns matter, debates matter, candidates matter, those things matter. But if you're looking for actual evidence that a wave is forming, you know, we just don't know this is this is going to be a hurricane.

5:14But is it a category one or a category five? The best piece of evidence we have right now is overall primary turnout. And it's not simply the comparison of, and this is the total number basically the Democrats won the midterm primaries. Hard stop. What do I mean by that? More Democrats showed up to vote in democratic primaries than Republicans showed up to vote in Republican primaries. It is about the most important stat you can have in your, in your pocket to try to project what's going to have in November. And it's not just what happened this cycle. It's how it compares to 2022, 2018 and 2014. So stick with me here. John Cuvillion, Republican data analytics guy and sort of one of the best modelers out there in the Republican side of the aisle. He's a frequent contributor to our election night live stream that I do with DDHQ and Chris Liza. He was on again on Tuesday night, but he's a must follow on on X if you're a political junkie.

6:15He is, you know, yes, he works on one side of the aisle. His X feed is not just part is isn't about just promoting stuff. He's just a data guy and you learn so much of it. Well, he's been tracking this very closely. The partisan primary turnout across the country state by stating updated his numbers through the Massachusetts primary from Tuesday night. And democratic turnout overall is running about according to John about 35% higher than it was for Democrats in 2022. As for Republican turnout, it's down about 4% from 2022. Overall primary turnout is up 14% but all of that rise and turnout is due to Democrats showing up in the primaries. That alone should get your attention. But then you compare it with 2018, right? Remember, 2022 was the red Mirage, right? The wedge wave that didn't form, but it was still a Republican leaning year and primary turnout told us it was going to be a Republican leaning year. But let's compare it to 2018. 2018 was a pretty decent Democratic wave.

7:16I say decent. It got 40 seats for Democrats, but they did lose two Senate seats. And democratic primary turnout this year is running 25% higher than it ran in 2018. And Republican turnout this year is also above 2018 for what it's worth 14%. So we have greater engagement overall in both parties for this midterm than before, but it is supercharged on the Democratic side. And overall turnout is 20% higher compared from 2026 through 2018. But here's one more number I'm going to come back to of the people voting in one of the two major party primaries so far this year. Democrats are accounting for about 56% of all voters, right? In 2022, they were 40% of all voters in the blue wave 2018 election. Democrats were 54% and then if you go back to 2014, Republicans were 55%. So you see, right, it is a foreshadowing mechanism.

8:19What whichever primary party is more enthusiastic in during the primary season is always usually the party that comes out ahead in November. What we don't know is how much do they come out ahead, right? But that pattern you go back to 2014 Republicans won the primary turnout game. They picked up seats. It was a base. It was a reddish wave 2018. The Democrats won the primary turnout game. They gain seats 2022 Republicans won the turnout. They were narrowly, but they won the turnout. They narrowly were able to get control of the house. So it's that trend line that should really get your attention. Now look, somebody may clip this and say Chuck Todd's already declared blue wave is here. Look, there are plenty of ways that this could both be correct and still be a tropical storm rather than a category three hurricane. Right.

9:19And I think that's a fair thing. It is a tea leaf. That's what it is. But it is better than any poll that's out there because this is measuring actual people who showed up to the polls. And if you show up in a primary, you're definitely showing up in a general. Right. And that's why this matters. So it's already Democrats are ahead of the Republicans when it comes to general election turnout. But look, I'm a huge believer in looking for election indicators that don't ask voters what they're going to do. But instead, just to you get to observe what they actually did, right. That's special elections. That's fundraising. That's voter registration. And that's turnout because it's the behavior that matters. People will tell a pollster anything, but voting is voting. And so when you compare 2026 to 2022 and then 2018 and 2014. I just think it absolutely crystallizes that, oh, a wave is blue wave is building.

10:19What we don't know is how big this sucker is going to get. But look, the ingredients for one are clearly there, right. Republicans have to worry about the next two months. And it's, you know, they're going to be playing a lot of defense. And I'm going to get more to that in a minute. Now, let's talk about Massachusetts voted this week. Next week, we've got New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Delaware. And then mercifully, we're basically done with primary season. What did we quickly learn in Massachusetts? I would just say, look, the old guards in trouble, but they hung on. You know, Massachusetts in some ways is a, it's, it almost behaves. It's politics behaves kind of machinish like. And it's still kind of an old guy. You know, it's been chipped away at. And the, and the, I think the Massachusetts Democratic Party is in the middle of a, of being remade. But it's not completely there yet, right. That's why Richie Neal survived. That's why Stephen Lynch survived. Ed Markey is sort of, you know, he's really good at sort of moving where things are.

11:20But Seth Moulton, I think Markey could have lost another type of candidate, another type of campaign. Seth Moulton just didn't run that campaign. And he was the wrong candidate. Look, there are two significant things to watch. And next week's primaries, New Hampshire and Delaware, we got the center, Senate primaries, both on the Democratic side, Republican side. This is the C. Jeanne Shaheen is vacating. Chris Papis, the likely Democratic nominee is suddenly looking over his left shoulder. There is a progressive challenger that has gotten a little bit of traction and at least one poll we've seen. But I always want to be careful. University of New Hampshire polling has been a mess. Right. They've been a mess all over. And so I don't, I would be, let's not overrate it completely. You also have two senators running against each other, two former senators, John Sonunu and Scott Brown. By the way, this is like the 18th time I think Republicans have had multiple former US senators running in primaries in New Hampshire. Bob Smith and Johnson, you know, I think ran once again. I think Bob Smith and Scott Brown ran against each other once or whatever.

12:21But Sunoon is likely to come out on top. The Sunoon who name is still gold in that state, particularly in a Republican primary. And we'll see, I think Johnson, who in any other camp year would be a formidable general election opponent. It's an uphill battle in this environment. Because of the national of the national wins. But I do want to do a little bit of a dive here in the Senate and give you a little taste of what I wrote about this week, both for my column that appears both in news fear and in substay. I spent a lot of time essentially trying to look at some different ways that the battle for the Senate could get impacted. And I'll be honest, I have one idea of where I think the Senate's going. And then I did this deep dive on gubernatorial races and their impact on Senate races over the last 20 years, over the 21st century. And I ended up coming to a different conclusion about which seats I think are more likely to flip and which ones aren't.

13:23So I want to make an argument that's going to sound that it's incorrect at first. But I believe this, control of the United States Senate may ultimately be decided not by any Senate races, but by three governors races, Michigan, Texas, and Iowa. So stick with me here. Because what I went and did is did a bunch of sort of data analysis on this. And by the time I finished, I changed my mind about which state I think might be the Democrats last legitimate path to a Senate majority if the wheels fall off in Michigan. Well, let me establish the map here for Democrats have any conversation about Senate control. You know, they already have to have a really good night on the East Coast, right? So the for the purposes of this exercise, I'm going to assume that they're going to find a way to win under this environment North Carolina main Ohio and Alaska. Now, I don't want folks to sit here and assume I've already predicted this, but I'm going to, I'm going to, because those four are heck of a lot easier for Democrats to win in this environment.

14:24Then the next couple of Senate seats that they would need if for some reason they didn't get one of those four. So, and I know particularly Ohio and Alaska and Maine, we're not going to say they're gimme's I think North Carolina. That definitely feels like that's that's going to flip to the Democrats. I'm pretty bullish about Democrats in Ohio, because I think the anti tech atmosphere that's there, I think Vivek Ramaswamy being a so closely associated with tech, let alone Elon Musk, let alone Donald Trump. I think that's a negative three for I think he's I think he is going to be a huge drag on the ticket, not a not a small drag on the ticket. And I think that's going to be the I think it's I can't believe I'm saying this. I think it's going to be a democratic sweep. You know, Ohio, because of this unusual combination of just anger at tech and literally, Ramaswamy being the exact wrong avatar Republicans could have at this moment, right? Who is just embedded in the tech community and I, you know, I don't know how he punches his way out of this, but we'll see.

15:28But look, you know, we're not even talking about Senate control if they can't flip those four. So we're going to start there. And if they flip that flip all four of those, then of my three states, Michigan, Texas and Iowa, then Michigan is sort of the first big challenge, right? Because Michigan is now the firewall for the Democrats. They flipped those four North Carolina, Ohio, Maine, and Alaska, and they hold Michigan. Texas and Iowa, no matter they've got their Senate control, but if they lose Michigan, then they have to find another Republican seat. And it is that next category of of targets that Democrats have in the Republican Senate, Texas, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska. Next to another level of difficulty, a lot of those states, you can see a path, the 47% for Democrats. It gets really hard to go find those last three points in those states. A lot harder to find them there than in say Alaska, where Mary Patelo in the first round of voting already got to 49, or a place like Maine that has elected plenty of Democrats.

16:35The state Kamala Harris carried or a place like Ohio or shared Brown has recently won or a place like North Carolina where Rory Cooper has won plenty. But Michigan becomes a firewall situation, which means Democrats would have to win it. They lose Michigan. They'd have to win a Senate seat in a state they haven't even carried for president since Barack Obama or one that they haven't carried for president since Jimmy Carter. Okay, that's the map they're staring at here. But before I get to those three states, there's one of the Senate race that I don't think Republican leaders expected to be spending September thinking about in that South Carolina. Darling Graham survived a Republican runoff against Ralph Norman, lastly barely right, 5248. And remember what it took for Republicans to drag her across the finish line. Donald Trump had a personally intervene. He went to South Carolina. I think I had to spend heavily president, put his political capital behind Graham in a way that he hadn't done for anybody else on the ballot this year. And she survived. So you would think, all right, South Carolina, Republican state. All's good, right? Nope. Because Ralph Norman who lost that runoff is still pretty bitter. He got up and said we thought hard. The voters are spoken and now let's go beat the Democrats. Nope, that isn't what he did.

17:51Ralph Norman hasn't done that. He was asked this week what he would tell South Carolina voters who haven't made up their mind in November. And you know what his answer was. This is what he told the Greenville news vote for Ralph Norman. Now technically Norman is not announcing some organized writing candidacy. There are South Carolina election law issues actually involved here. They have sore loser laws. But politically, that's almost besides the point. Right. The Republican nominee just 152 48 and the guy who got 48% is not telling his voters to quote come home to the Republican. He's telling them that vote for him basically sit the race out right in somebody else. Don't vote for either grammar, any Andrews, the Democratic nominee. And then Norman continues to criticize Trump's intervention in the primary called it shocking. Look, we all get why Norman intervened. Why Norman's upset because if Trump doesn't intervene, Norman is the Republican nominee. But Ralph Norman had to know that at some point Donald Trump was going to exact revenge on him because Ralph Norman endorsed Nikki Haley in the presidential race in 2024, not Donald Trump.

18:58That said, Norman claims he's still really supportive of Trump. But he's still upset because I just don't understand why the president decided to get involved and I'm like, you really don't know how personal he takes everything. There's both a personal in the positive with the grams and a personal in the negative with you, Mr. Norman, who chose to support opponent. Now good on you for doing it. Right. You you you didn't back down. You weren't afraid, but we know how Donald Trump operates. But if you've got him going out there and you're the Democrats, do you decide to try to take advantage of this? Do you you start to maybe run some some ads and in the most conservative parts of the state, you know, sort of amplifying Ralph Norman's comments. Questioning why, you know, because there's already a bunch of conservatives in South Carolina who were never big Lindsey Graham fans. Any Andrews isn't going to be able to convince those folks to vote for any Andrews, but she might be able to convince those folks not to vote in the centerways.

20:01And Ralph Norman basically just offered up a like it's almost like a book blurb, right? He gave you the blurb to use and paid advertising to give Republican voters the permission slip to not vote for darling Graham. It's a pretty potentially powerful thing to use there. Now, so we'll see it, but I have a feeling. I think look, Lindsey Graham has a, you know, he didn't clear he hasn't cleared 55%. I think he cleared 55% and two of his last three elections. So and darling Graham's not Lindsey Graham. I'm not saying, but it's certainly another place where I think Republicans are going to have to spend a little bit of more money and a little bit more time. I don't know if the Democrats have access money. I don't know if they would bother to spend it in South Carolina, rather than in say Mississippi or rather than say Kansas.

21:01But boy Ralph Norman is just handed them an engraved invitation to start playing around here because if you just get 10% of the Norman vote to vote for a third party candidate or write in Norman's name or skip the Senate race. That's a much, but that's a much more realistic path for any Andrews to win. Hey, this episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to you by ethos. Look, let me tell you about life insurance. As you know, ethos is an incredible portal for helping you find the right life insurance policy. I'm a huge believer in life insurance. I wouldn't have gotten to college in Washington, DC without life insurance. My father had a policy buried somewhere that we discovered and it wasn't a lot of money, but it was an important bucket of money at a time that my mother newly widowed. Single mom may I'm 16. It was in of enormous, enormous help at that time. And this is why I believe in life insurance. You don't know what could happen to you on any given day.

22:10This is literally an insurance policy for that. So let me tell you a little bit about ethos. Ethos makes getting life insurance fast and easy. It's 100% online. You get a quote in seconds. You apply in minutes and you can get coverage the same day you begin this process. There's no medical exam. You just answer a few simple health questions. You can get up to $3 million in coverage. Some policies are as low as $30 a month and you'll get your lowest rate from their network of trusted carriers. Ethos is gotten 4.9 out of five stars on trust pilot with over 55 under reviews. So take 10 minutes to get covered today. Life insurance through ethos get your free quoted ethos.com slash Chuck. That is ETH OS dot com slash Chuck application times may vary. The rates may vary that trust pilot rating was as of August of 2026. Hey, it's Bobby bones. Join me and former NFL quarterback Matt Castle every Wednesday on our podcast. Lots to say with me, Bobby bones and Matt Castle.

23:12We also bring in friends and mostly match friends who are current or former NFL players. Some of the biggest names and music and entertainment. And then we have some really great conversations that can pretty much go anywhere. The great. Packed man Jones after the game of the national task force for police officers was at the stadium. Hey, buddy. Yeah, you. Come on. And one of my favorite segments we do is called situational awareness where Bobby and I give each other real life situations and figure out what we'd actually do. You're in training camp and the rookie quarterback has one good throwing session in front of the media. Suddenly everybody online says he should start over you week one. How do you handle this? You just go back out to practice the next day and wait for him to mess up. Listen to lots to say with Bobby bones and Matt Castle on the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. College football will hijack your weekend ruin your sleep and break your heart. And that's why we make the Sullivan. I'm Tom College football show I'm Ty Hildenbrand. He's Dan Rubenstein has gone every week. We preview the games that matter sort through the biggest story lines and tell you what to watch before kick off.

24:20There's a lot to keep track of who's for real. Which upset is hiding in plain sight and which storyline is about to take over your group chat. And when the games are over join us in the aftermath too. We're going to react to what happened talk about the biggest results. Of course we'll cover the playoff picture and all the little details you might have missed while flipping between like 12 games at once. Whether you know every coach and coordinator or just want to understand why everybody is yelling. We're here to help make sense of the madness. Listen to the Solid Verbal College football show on the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The NFL never stopped and neither does its newest podcast. The NFL report hosted by me Andrew Sicilyano. It is your home for everything football. Williams, drifting, sprinting for space in all kinds of trouble. We're tapping the biggest news stories giving you expert analysis fantasy previews, game picks and more.

25:31We fly around every single play. We dominate every single play. Want to hear from the league's top stars out of the biggest matchups we've got you covered. We got really good football team. We got to have all hands on deck. Join me at an all star cast of analysts for everything you need to know from around the league. Get new episodes of the NFL report Monday through Friday all season long. Listen to the NFL report podcast on the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Jay Valentine. I've spent my career on the executive side of this industry. Multi platinum songs, building artists and building business. And alongside my brother tank, the superstar R&B singer songwriter and producer, we've created something special, the R&B money podcast. This is not just a podcast. It's a safe space where artists, executives and fans of R&B music come to reminisce. Pull back the curtain and tell the stories that shaped this culture, the real history behind the hits. That was hood famous. And then real love came out and it blew up. We lived in a project.

26:33They hear them music and we had nothing. We're covering the entire spectrum from Smokey Robinson, Alicia Keys, B2K, Mary J. Blige, Legends, Current Stars and everyone who's contributed to the sound of R&B. You come out the gate with a hit and then not Michael Jackson out of number one. Come on man. I was like, hold on. I'm not going to MJ out of the number one spot. You're a super dedicated R&B fan who wants the real discovery, the real stories. This is your podcast. This is the R&B money podcast. Listen to R&B money from the Black Effect podcast network on the I Heart Radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Now it brings me back to the three governors races. I wanted to give you that a little update. I just normanded this on Monday. It's just astonishing. This is a Greenville news, which is the paper of record for the part of the state that has been the most skeptical of the grams, both Lindsey and Arlene.

27:34So we'll see it's a very Republican part of the state. Any Andrews is not going to do well there. But again, it's about splitting voters off. But I want to bring up the governor's races here a little bit because there's also another reminder here, you know, Washington consistently consistently gets one thing wrong when it comes to the midterms. At least the Washington ecosystem and I say this as somebody who has spent my entire career inside the ecosystem. We obsess over center races. We obsess over the control of house races. Who's up who's down, which seats are going to flip. And in a lot of these states, that's not necessarily what voters are talking about. Right. Usually if a race has a high profile Senate race and a governor's race, nobody, even if the Senate races super high profile, most of the time, voters are more concerned and interested in the governor's race, especially when it's an open sea. The governor's races in general usually are what I say they make the weather in the state, right. And part of that is mechanics, right. The gubernatorial campaign.

28:41First of the governor's race is usually at the top of the ticket in these midterm years in most of these ballots. And the gubernatorial nominee is usually the running the statewide political operation, right. They're usually either in charge of the state party appointed the party chair, sort of get control of it. You know, in many ways, they're sort of the the the lynch pen of the entire turnout operation and field program and things like that. And it's also a reminder that voters treat governor's races where they care about the two candidates. Senate races are usually treated as Jersey, you know, am I am I am I voting for the red jersey of the blue jersey. It's usually less about the person. There's exceptions. I think Texas and Michigan are exceptions in this case. But governor's races are much more personal. So what, but what matters here in states where there's both a governor's race in a center race, right where the governor's race is, you know, can impact turnout, but more importantly, sort of, you know, can, especially in places where you know the gubernatorial nominee is.

29:45The gubernatorial nominee is going to outrun the Senate nominee. How, you know, how much padding do they need? How much can they drag them over the finish line? So here's, here's a few facts that we already know going in Ken Paxton is going to run behind Greg Abbott in Texas. I do allow sciet is probably going to run behind Jocelyn Benson in Michigan and Josh Turek is going to run behind Rob Sand in Iowa. So the question then is what kind of number does Abbott need for Paxton to survive? What kind of number does Benson need for a dual outside to survive? And what kind of number does Rob Sand need to suddenly get Turek from the dreaded 47% zone over, you know, over over into the 48 49 or 50 territory that might just be enough to pull it off. Right. So that's what I wanted to figure out. So in order I want to give you a little taste of the research I did. So I kind of went backwards. I pulled every midterm Senate race going back to 2002, where there was also a governor's race on the ballot.

30:56Then I narrowed it down to the genuinely competitive Senate races and I ended up with 46 races total going back to 2002 of competitive Senate races that were running simultaneously with governor's races in that state. And I know 46 is not will approve statistically, etc. But there were some interesting patterns here. Right. The first one is a pattern that tells you a lot about how our politics have changed over 25 years. When you go back to 2002 and 2006, roughly half the states that were holding competitive Senate races and governor's races, they actually split between the two parties, meaning there were 22 states and 0 to that had both a governor's race and a Senate race and literally an 11 of them, I think it was 11 of them where they split, right, a Democrat one, one, the state wide while the Republican won the other. Frankly, it was something that used to happen all the time and 0 to 0 6 saw a flurry of them. But since 2010, basically since the Obama era, the start of the Obama era, only about 25% of these midterm races in 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022, only about one and four of the states that held both a governor's race and a Senate race, did we see a split decision.

32:17Tickets splitting hasn't disappeared. It's just become less common, right. We know that the polarization of America has really sort of bounded people to almost voting straight. I think 75% of partisans now vote straight ticket all the time. Right. We can't come up with that figure exactly yet. But I think there's, I think after this election, we'll be able to have a little bit more way of doing that. So that's why I think what the, that's why I think these governors races could end up becoming in some ways incredibly impactful on whether they are strong enough campaigns to essentially improve the weather for their ticket mates in the Senate race. The other part that I wanted to look at is this, how much can the Senate candidate underperform a governor before the party coalition breaks and that Senate candidate loses. And so I went back to, I used three, I had a three recent candidates to try to help me figure out what is the penalty for various sins that voters may have for a candidate.

33:28Right. Mandela Barnes was constant 2022, right. Tony Evers gets 51, just over 51% of the vote Barnes got just over 49% of the vote, which means he there was a two point penalty for being seen as sort of ideologically, you know, too far out of the mainstream. That's what Ron Johnson reign against him and all this stuff. Evers, you know, there was a two point penalty, right. There's some small slice of Evers voters decided to cross over and vote for Johnson or they skipped the Senate race. And it was obviously Evers, you know, was it strong enough, you know, had he gotten 53% of the vote, Mandela Barnes probably comes across a finish line. So I looked at that and thought ideological penalty to voters is approximately two points. Jay Jones in Virginia 2025. Do you remember Jay Jones, the scandal, you had those text messages where he fantasized about his political opponents getting killed by gunfire. It was terrible. A lot of people denounced it. Well, there was a voter penalty voters didn't like it. Right. Abigail Spamberger got nearly 58% of the vote statewide.

34:37Jones got 53% of the vote. So Jones got hit with about a four and a half point penalty, but he won. Okay. So this was scandal play guy. There's a four and a half point penalty from the top of the ticket to him. Now let's go to Herschel Walker, Georgia 2022 Brian Kemp gets 53% of the vote. Walker gets about 48.5% of the vote. So call it a five point penalty. And Herschel Walker, right. It wasn't one scandal. It was a lot of scandals. Right. It was like it was like a lot of little things. It's a if you notice there, right, four and a half for Jones, five points. So scandal, right. That was about a five point penalty in Virginia. And it was a five point penalty in in Georgia. But in this case, Walker lost. Why? Well, Jones, Jones didn't survive because voters forgave him. They did. They penalized him. And it was the same size penalty that Walker got. But Jones survived because Spanberger gave him an enormous cushion. Walker takes the same hit and Kemp wins fairly comfortably for a swing state.

35:44But he didn't have enough room to, you know, he didn't win by enough to drag a flawed candidate like Herschel Walker over the finish line. So keep that. Keep those two numbers in mind, right. Four to five point penalty. They are both in Virginia and Georgia 2022, 2025. That takes me to Texas. Right. That's of the my three examples here. He's the scandal plate candidate. So what's the Abbott number got to be to save taxed it. So Paxton takes is penalized by voters like Jones and Walker by about four to five points. And he Greg Abbott to win by a big number. Now look at Abbott's last three elections 2014. He got 59% of the vote 2018. He got 56% of the vote. And in 2022 he got just under 55% of the vote. So if you're Paxton, you look at the electoral history of Greg Abbott and you say, hmm, all right. Good news is he's he's hit the cushion. If I'm going to get the five point penalty. All right. You know, he's hit it before. So that it's possible.

36:49But there's something else those Abbott numbers show you. Abbott's never Abbott has his trajectory is going in one direction down, not up. Right. So is Abbott going to get another 55% or is Abbott going to get 54 53 52 look three months ago. I might have told you that Abbott was that that possibly of Abbott getting a 54 55 was realistic. He had a ton of money. He still has an enormous amount of money. Gina, you know, so is a very good candidate, bit underfunded arguably from the I could argue she's from the wrong part of the state. If she wants to win statewide Austin, right, the most liberal enclave. But I'd say I'm much less certain now she's been running a terrific race. Abbott has been running scared. You know, you don't flip on data centers because your polling is doing your polling is so good, right. And obviously now we know center Republicans are an entirely comfortable with the situation. You've heard, I mean, John Thunes posture toward Paxton is telling you something, right. Republican leaders don't need to, don't need to believe Texas has suddenly become a blue state. They simply understand the math problem they have.

37:59They realize that four to five point candidate penalty when your governor is probably sitting at 54% on these best day these days. Maybe it's survivable. Maybe it isn't. But what happens if the governor gets 52% you got a huge problem. And guess what I think Abbott's more likely to get 52% not 54% it is this analysis and this deep dive into here. That is suddenly making me a lot more bullish on Tolerico. I mean, I've been watching all these Texas polls. Tolerico's number rarely moves. It sits at 47, you know, and a lot of these polls. It's the Paxton number that fluctuates a lot. But ultimately, you know, I'm going to stick with with what has been a tried and true way to look at this when you look at these past results, you look at sort of trend lines. You know, it's still Abbott's race to lose. I'm not predicting that Abbott's going to lose here, but this is going to be a much closer race. He is running scared. He's got to use all his money for himself. He can't be bailing out the entire Republican ticket. And again, there's a trend line happening here. Right. Abbott's numbers have gone down, even though the fluctuation of right.

39:04He did worse in 22 than he did in 2018. The Democrats had a better year in Texas in 2018 than they did in 2022. But Abbott keeps sliding ever so slightly. One more wrinkle here in Texas, the libertarian line. Go back to there's one other candidate. I looked at very closely to try to understand how much voter penalty there is for a scandal playing candidate. Do you remember Todd Aiken? It's a Senate candidate Missouri 2012. He's the guy that claimed there was not all rape was the same legitimate rape. Go Google it. The Republican party walked away from totally abandoned. Mitt Romney was the, this was a presidential year. Mitt Romney walked away. So the entire party had to walk away. Aiken collapsed. But not every Republican voter in Missouri who abandoned Aiken went to Claire McCaskill, a bunch of them parked with the libertarian candidate. The libertarian party line got a bigger number in 2012 in Missouri than they'd gotten a long cut.

40:04And it's an important thing to think about here because it Texas Republican who cannot bring themselves to vote for Ken Paxton doesn't necessarily have to become a James Tallerico voter. There is another place to go. Texas libertarians normally get something like one to three percent in these center races. What if it's five? What if it's six? Shoot what if it's just four? They're not democratic votes. Those are votes Paxton doesn't have. So there you go. So use this Abbott scale 54 or 55 maybe Paxton can survive. Do we see any evidence that Abbott's going to get 54 or 55 this time? Or is all those evidence pointing to Abbott somewhere between losing reelectionarily or winning by less than five points with something like 52% of the vote. I have a very hard time seeing how Paxton survives under those circumstances. At 53% I have a feeling we could be in recount territory. Now let's go to Michigan. It's a slightly different problem. Right? I do all say he's not a pack. He doesn't have a Paxton problem or an aching problem.

41:14His potential penalties ideological similar. That's why I looked at the Mandela Barnes race here. And that's why I think that's the better comparison. Barnes ran about two points behind Evers. So we're going to call L. Syed's potential penalty two points. Maybe it's three. So if Jocelyn Benson gets 54% then I think L. Syed is probably okay. If Benson gets 52%, we are in total coin flip territory now aren't we? Right? And that's why I think Michigan is now basically the firewall and somebody think it it could decide to send it if you don't believe in Texas. But I think I've just made the case that Texas is much more Texas looks more like Ohio to me now than I ever thought it did. And that's on me. This is why sometimes you got to go back and do your homework. Right? I did my homework. I got a difference. I got a different attitude about Texas and I'll get to Iowa here in a minute. I got a different attitude about Iowa. So Democrats don't merely need Jocelyn Benson to win. They need to her to create enough room underneath her for L. Syed. By the way, I just want to do a quick side. I think this single best campaign of the cycle is being run by Jocelyn Benson.

42:24And she's not going to get the credit for it. And she hasn't won yet. And she, you know, stranger things have happened. So I don't want to, you know, I don't want to presume anything. But boy, when she got in first, she was, you know, she looked like it was going to be a crowded primary. She cleared the primary field. Then Mike dug in the popular mayor of Detroit chooses not to primary, but starts running as the third party candidate. And she's like Jesus, right? Then all of a sudden, you're like, could he get traction? Look, I was a huge, I was definitely dug and curious because I'm obviously very down on the duopoly these days as many of you know. But you know, she put her nose to grindstone and you know, just never gave Duggan an inch. Now, whether that was poor, you know, Duggan didn't know how to run a statewide campaign and just was running a metro Detroit race, whatever Benson, you know, she's been everywhere. And she's also not somebody who's feeling as if she's got to win the attention economy either. I, you know, it's interesting.

43:26A lot of people look at Gretchen, when we're just on Benson wins this race and is the next governor of Michigan, people need to spend a little more time getting to know her. She, her origin story is fascinating. You know, look, we're probably going to hit her. She spent a little bit of time working at the Southern Poverty Law Center and obviously the Trump administration is trying to make that. I think what they've done to them feels a little bit suspicious to I think that's a lot of merkeiness there. But I think I think I think Benson is is when you see that it's you know, sometimes campaigns don't get credit because there's not enough drama. You know, she somehow has dealt with all these hurdles and there's been very little drama. And she can end up being the candidate that saves the wins the Senate and saves out of the I'll say up here. The NFL never stops and neither does its newest podcast. The NFL report hosted by me, Andrew Sassiliano. It is your home for everything football.

44:35Williams, drifting, sprinting for space in all kinds of trouble for the next season. I'm happy, guys. For the touchdown. They've done it again. We're tapping the biggest news stories, giving you expert analysis, fantasy previews, game picks and more. We fly around every single play. We dominate every single play. Want to hear from the league's top stars out of the biggest matchups? We've got you covered. That really good football team. We got to have all hands on deck. Join me at an all-star cast of analysts for everything you need to know from around the league. Get new episodes of the NFL report Monday through Friday, all season long. Listen to the NFL report podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Bobby Bones. Join me and former NFL quarterback Matt Castle every Wednesday. On our podcast, lots to say with me, Bobby Bones and Matt Castle. We also bring in friends and mostly match friends who are current or former NFL players.

45:36Some of the biggest names in music and entertainment. And then we have some really great conversations that can pretty much go anywhere. The great. Takeman Jones. After the game, the whole national task force for police officers was at the stadium. Hey, buddy. Yeah, you out of... come on. And one of my favorite segments we do is called situational awareness. Where Bobby and I give each other real life situations and figure out what we'd actually do. You're in training camp and the rookie quarterback has one good throwing session in front of the media. Suddenly, everybody online says he should start over you week one. How do you handle this? You just go back out to practice the next day and wait for him to mess up. Listen to lots to say with Bobby Bones and Matt Castle on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. College football will hijack your weekend, ruin your sleep and break your heart. And that's why we make the Sullivan-verbal college football show. I'm Ty Hildenbrand. He's Dan Rubenstein. How's it going? Every week, we preview the games that matter, sort through the biggest storylines and tell you what to watch before kickoff.

46:40There's a lot to keep track of. Who's for real? Which upset is hiding in plain sight and which storyline is about to take over your group chat? And when the games are over, join us in the aftermath too. We're going to react to what happened, talk about the biggest results. Of course, we'll cover the playoff picture. And all the little details you might have missed while flipping between like 12 games at once. Whether you know every coach and coordinator or just want to understand why everybody is yelling, we're here to help make sense of the madness. Listen to the Solid Verbal College football show on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Jay Valentine. I've spent my career on the executive side of this industry, multi-platinum songs, building artists and building business. And alongside my brother, Tank, the superstar R&B singer, songwriter and producer, we've created something special, the R&B Money Podcasts. This is not just a podcast. It's a safe space where artists, executives and fans of R&B music come to reminisce.

47:42Pull back the curtain and tell the stories that shaped this culture, the real history behind the hits. That was hood famous. And then real love came out and it blew up. We lived in a project. And they were seeing all the success. They hear them music and we had nothing. We're covering the entire spectrum from Smokey Robinson, Alicia Keys, B2K, Mary J. Blige, Legends, Current Stars and everyone who's contributed to the sound of R&B. You come out the gate with a hit. And then there's Michael Jackson out of number one. Come on man. I was like, hold on. I'm not gonna M.J. out of the number one spot. If you're a super dedicated R&B fan who wants the real discovery, the real stories, this is your podcast. This is the R&B Money Podcasts. Listen to R&B Money from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Now let me move to Iowa. I was where you could say my theory kind of fell apart and I'll explain.

48:45But it made the exercise useful because it really helped me understand Texas better. Look, I started out thinking Rob Sand might be a tow rope if you will for Josh Turck. Right? Sand wins the governor's race and pulls Turk across with him. Except Iowa has its own interesting history of producing enormous differences between candidates of the same party without splitting the ticket. Right? In 2010 Chuck Grassley ran about 11 points ahead of Terry Brainsteads winning campaign for governor. In 2014 Brainsteads run seven points ahead of Joni Ernsts, but they both win, right? Two Republicans. The gap can go in either direction. I mean, part of that is a Grassley phenomenon there, right? But the party result seems to hold. In fact, Iowa hasn't split a governor in a Senate race since 1998. It was Phil Sack and Grassley. So, you know, I think there is something here, but I don't know what the actual number is. I do think the sand number, look, I think sand's going to win the governor's race.

49:45The question is, you know, what's the realistic ceiling he could hit? Is it 53? Is it 55? Is it 57? Okay. Those are serious questions. I do think he's sort of a thermometer here. And Turk, right? Turk doesn't have any, you know, get to this a minute. So if sand wins the governor's race with 51 or 52, it just means sand running a great campaign. And it tells me Iowa has not moved back towards the center enough from its shift to the right in the Trump era. And it's probably 51 or 52 won't be enough for Turk to win. But if sand's getting 55%, then maybe something is happening here. Now, here's something to think about. No Democrat is one in Iowa governor's race with 55% since Harold Hughes in 1966. Put that in your trivia column, right? So if sand is sitting there on election night at 55, that's not simply a candidate having a good night. That is that he might be changing the weather.

50:46And even with that, I don't know if it's enough to get Turk over 50, right? Now there is a libertarian candidate on the line in Iowa. Maybe, you know, he could pull off something akin to what John Tester has done, right? Two of his three races in Montana. He got, he won with less than 50% of the vote because enough Republicans parked in the libertarian. Category, but I looked at libertarian performance in Iowa. Historically, Iowa libertarians have, have maybe gotten 1%. Montana libertarians consistently get over 2%. So it, there's not a big habit of Republicans splitting off to vote libertarian the way there is a little bit of it in Montana. So it brings me back to where I started, you know, when I began this exercise, I assumed Iowa was probably the Democrats fifth seat, right? If they need to, right now they need to flip four and hold everything. But if they lose Michigan, they need to find a fifth. And I, you know, part of that is my own habit, my own personal bias. I've spent a lot of time in Iowa. I grew up with Iowa as a swing state, right? Iowa has been a be all end all for politics.

51:51And I just assumed, oh, Iowa is finally course correcting. It's going to be back to its normal sort of Midwestern swingy self. You know, I really did. I thought if boy, if Michigan, you know, if I'll do all I had comes up short, then the emergency pickup, it's surely Iowa's going to be more plausible to Texas. Except looking at this, I'm not sure that's true. I think Texas has something Iowa doesn't. It has one, a potentially significant candidate penalty that you can identify. It has a Republican governor who remains strong, but who is vulnerable for the first time in any time is running for a fourth term on president. And there is a third party line where there are where unhappy Republicans can park without having to vote Democratic, but it sort of lowers the winning number for the Democrats. So these are the three numbers. I'm going to put on my election. I cheat sheet, right? Benson 54. If she's there, I'll do all. I had has the cushion he needs.

52:51Abbott 53 above it. Paxton has a chance below it. It's over Paxton loses and then sand is 55. Not because saying getting 55 automatically, Alex Turk, but it does tell me something is shifted. A problem means if sand's at 55, they've picked up three house seats. And then we'll see. Look, Ashley Henson is a really good candidate for the Republicans. She's from actually a Democratic part of the state. So, you know, I think it's going to be awfully tough for Turk to overcome. Henson unless sand really changes the weather. The Republican candidate for governor is very weak. The guy, the guy has is, he's going to be painted as a carpet beggar from Kansas. And there's just way too much, you know, the fact that he currently flies back and forth from Kansas, it feels like he's a sand is has the resources to be able to paint him as a part time Iowa resident. I once care about that. Be an I one's more important than being a part of just trust me and I once know this.

53:54So like I said, I started this exercise. I think an Iowa's probably the Democrats third path to the Senate majority. I finished it wondering whether Texas actually might be just part of the same group before that we've been talking about before. And, you know, wasn't we're expected to be all right. Let me move on here. I want to spend a little bit of time on something that I genuinely cannot understand why Washington isn't treating as a five alarm fire. We are at war. Our military is stretched. Senior commanders are warning that the strain from the Iran war is degrading our ability to respond to threats in other parts of the world. And simultaneously we have a secretary of defense conducting an extraordinary purge in the middle of a war of the senior leadership of the United States military. And nowhere is the damage more obvious right now than in the United States Army. Frankly, I'm starting to wonder whether the army is, you know, his anger at the army is personal for headset. Remember, headset was in the Army National Guard. He was an infantry officer.

54:56He served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He eventually made major and he has spoken and written for years about his own anger at what he believes the military became. Right. He clearly blames whatever promotion he didn't get or whatever in the army on somebody else and eats it really. He seems to be taking it out on that single branch. He titled his book The War on Warriors. So this was not somebody who believed in the military when he went in, which makes him. I do not understand how he's got this far, but I have a theory. I'll tell you in a little bit. Look, but headset is talked about an army that he believes became too politically correct, too bureaucratic, too obsessed with diversity and not obsessed enough with fighting. Okay. Clearly it's personal for him, right. He didn't get he didn't get some promotion he wished he got, but that's beside the point. Now, there's a legitimate argument to have about whether the Pentagon has become too bureaucratic. That's a fair argument. And there's a legitimate argument about whether there are too many generals. All right. And there's a legitimate argument whether the military was preparing for the wars it wanted to fight rather than the wars it actually has to fight.

55:58But that's not when headset has been focused on look what he's actually done. He fired general Randy George, the chief of staff of the army, no public explanation. He forced out general Chris Donahue, nicknamed Captain America, commander of the US Army in Europe and Africa, no meaningful public explanation. General David Haudenine, who was overseeing the army's transformation effort gone. Other senior officers associated with George and Donahue have all had their promotions blocked. Seven more officers selected for the two star rank were just targeting. And now Dan Driscoll, the secretary of the army, has resigned after repeatedly warning the White House about what Higgseth was doing. This isn't about reform folks. This is an intentional gutting of the United States Army by the Secretary of Defense. And here's what makes it almost incomprehensible. These are some of the people who were trying to change the army. In exactly the ways everybody agrees it needed to change.

57:02It needed to get smarter use of drones, artificial intelligence, counter drone warfare, learning from what happened in Ukraine, learning from Iran, figuring out how a relatively inexpensive technology can destroy enormously expensive American weapon systems. Randy George and Dan Driscoll were actually trying to accelerate the transformation. Chris Donahue's command was applying lessons learned from Ukraine. And now we're learning that the 173rd airborne brigade in Europe, a unit that had been experimenting with drone warfare and developing some of the very capabilities to do this better ourselves is being told to go back toward a more traditional airborne infantry role. Now there are members of Congress from both parties asking what the hell are you doing? And they should, but I don't think they've done it loud enough personally because this is no longer theoretical folks. Iran has been firing drones and missiles at American forces. Russia has transformed warfare with drones in Ukraine. China is watching every lesson being learned in both places.

58:08If there's one institution on earth that should be racing toward understanding this technology, it's the United States Army. And somehow this lug nut, Hegseth is just firing some of the people who were leading this transformation in the middle of a war. That's the part that gets me. We're doing this during a war. A war turns out we were not prepared for. We don't have the munitions for. There was no planning for. The Army is being asked to defend American bases from Iranian missiles. We're drawing down our munitions. We're extending deployments. Thank goodness are the guys on the USS Lincoln. They get 24 hours in Bangkok. Good luck with that gentleman. We're borrowing assets from Europe and Asia. And the Army itself doesn't even have a Senate confirmed chief. And it just lost its secretary doesn't have a confirmed commander of for Army forces in Europe where we know Putin is thinking about testing the resolve of NATO.

59:14The senior leadership of the army has been hollowed out intentionally by Hegseth. And the guy presiding over this seems increasingly interested in turning the Pentagon into some sort of personal reality show about himself. And I look, you know, I struggle sort of being, you know, a name caller. I don't like, you know, that that's supposedly what gets you to, you know, I'm not trying to go viral or whatever. But at some point, this image making for Hegseth becomes relevant to the management question. Right. He's more concerned about influencers and about what the press could say. You know, he's got his wife out there planning a campaign for president. He's campaigning in Iowa. You know, and he gets away with this because Trump is, you know, I keep I've asked folks who who are also bewildered, but have some access to this White House. And they said that, you know, I can't believe him. You won't believe what I'm up. You actually will believe what I'm about to repeat.

1:00:15Apparently they just say he's that Trump's obsessed with Hegseth look and his looks that he's, I guess got a crush on him. Right. You know, I it's sort of the same way he gets a, you know, because these people have the look. And he's just been obsessed with Hegseth and Hegseth was on TV at Fox. And whatever it is, he just, he's like, he's like mesmerized by Hegseth square jaw or whatever. And I guess Hegseth is taking advantage of it and he knows it. I mean, you know, dangerous goes no Biden holdover. Okay, dangerous goes in the oval to basically say this guy's a moron and he's gutting the United States Army and it's like, oh, but he's so dreamy. I mean, I don't get it. And I can't believe that's the explanation I got. And yet I can't. Right. It's Trump. I can. So look, I just this whole thing we're removing generals with decades of combat and command experience. We're blocking the promotion of officers selected through the Army's professional process.

1:01:23We're dismantling parts of the leadership team, trying to actually figure out drone warfare that clearly have us on our back feed. And we've apparently got time to bring in social media influencers into the Pentagon, because Mr. self esteem, Hegseth problem. I mean, look, the guy clearly clearly has poser complex, right. His whole workouts that he's got a show mean, I mean, anybody that's obsessed himself with looks and all this. I think they tell you about who they are. What are we doing here? This is not a freaking cable TV show. This is not boot camp cosplay. I can't even do a proper pull up, by the way. And and and and heading up the Pentagon shouldn't be a branding exercise. See, United States military. It's a last institution, American's trust. And this guy is blowing it up. The Iran war is entering its seventh month. The Navy is warning about its ability to sustain the current pace. Commanders responsible for Europe, the Pacific Latin America have formally objected to continuing some of the forced commitments there being ordered to make to the Middle East.

1:02:28Assets that we may need to deter China are being moved. China's happy about that assets. We need in Europe are being moved. Putin is happy about that. Important munitions are being depleted. And we're doing something else that deserves a hell of a lot more scrutiny. The United States has spent the last year blowing up suspected drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific. Hundreds of people have been reportedly killed. The administration claims they're narco terrorists. Okay, we'll show us who are these people. What's the evidence? What was on the boats? What intelligence established that these people were members of organizations against which they were not able to do it? What are the sanctions against which the United States can lawfully use military force? Why are we killing them instead of doing what the United States had traditionally done with suspected drug smugglers? In basically boarding the vessel, seizing the drugs, arresting the suspects, and getting the higher ups.

1:03:28Pentagon inspector general is now examining the targeting process. So we'll get a report in the next two years. Obviously, there is no way any of this is constitutional. Congress did not authorize war against every suspected narcotics trafficker traveling by boat in the Caribbean. And yet we've normalized the US military blowing up boats and killing people on board based largely on assurances from the same Pentagon leadership that refuses to show the public the evidence. What are we doing? So let's put all this together because these stories aren't separate. We have a war of the run, the depletion of our military capacity, the boat strikes, the Army purges, block promotions, this leadership vacuum, dismantling of modernization efforts, obsession with ideological conformity, and they all lead to an enormous question. Who inside the Pentagon is willing to tell Pete Higgseth he's wrong? And even a more important question, what happens to them when they do?

1:04:31It's what Bill McRaven warned about months ago. Former head of special forces. The guy that commanded, you know, basically was in charge of seal team six that got been long senior military officers have to be able to walk into the secretary defense's office and say no, not no, I won't follow your order. That's not how civilian control works, but they have to be able to say no sir, I don't recommend this. This deployment creates too much risk. We don't have enough interceptors or the Navy can't sustain this tempo. Moving that carrier will create a vulnerability in the Pacific firing that officer damages the morale of that institution, stopping program X makes us less prepared for the next war. And then you let the civilian leadership decide that's the system, but it only works if the people giving the advice believe that telling the truth won't destroy their careers. And right now I don't know how any senior officer at the Pentagon could look at what's happening and not wonder about that.

1:05:31More than 80 generals and admirals have been fired or blocked from promotion. Randy George, Kristana Hugh, CQ Brown, Lisa Franchetti, Jim Slyf, David Haudenay, JP McKee, Joe Berger, Jamie Sands many more, but I'm naming them for a reason and I'm going to get to that. I think I know these people spent three or four decades preparing for precisely the moment we're in now. Many of them have left quietly and I understand why. In fact, I respect it. Okay. The American military has always had this culture. You don't whine about civilian leadership. You don't go on television and settle scores. You don't make yourself the story. You don't politicize the uniform. When the president relieves you, you salute and your leaf. I understand it. But I'm speaking to those officers right now, just as a citizen. I think the country needs you again and I'm asking you to become political. I'm not asking you to endorse Democrats or any opponents to crazy Higgs. I'm not asking you to attack Donald Trump. And not even asking you to attack Pete Higgs.

1:06:40You need to be witnesses. Tell us what's happening. General George, tell us what happened. General Donnie, you get in front of Congress and tell us what happened. Admiral Fran Chetty, General Brown, General Haudenay, General Slyf, all of you. Oh, the American people and explanation to what the hell is happening in the Pentagon. Guess what? If we're all wrong about what's happening inside the Pentagon, then testify to that and tell us we're wrong. If headsets reforms are making the military stronger than please explain to us how they are. If these officers were removed for legitimate performance reasons that simply haven't been made public, tell us that. But if you believe the United States military has been weakened. If you believe experienced officers are being removed because of ideology and personal grievance. If you believe people are becoming afraid to give candid military advice. If you believe the Army's ability to fight a war is now damaged while we're fighting the one we're in.

1:07:41You have an obligation to warn the country. The president's not listening. He's apparently, you know, can't stop staring at Higgs. I get it. It's asking a lot. Nobody wants to become a public figure if they don't want to be one. I get it. Some of you spent your entire adult lives believing the most patriotic thing you can do is to keep your mouth shut after leaving command. 95% of the time that is the correct. That's correct. These are not normal circumstances, generals. You don't have to come on my podcast and tell me what happens though you're more than welcome open invitation to any of you go anywhere. Go before Congress, go to a newspaper, go to Fox, go to CBS, go to CNN, write an op ed, tell us what happened. Congress is clearly not doing enough. Maybe they'll do a little bit more. The Pentagon is refusing to explain itself. The American public has no way to see inside this institution.

1:08:42But you do. You were there. And this is what frightens me. We already know this is bad. We see what we know what we we already know certain things. The aren't the vacuum leadership vacuum at the Army is staring us in the face. We've seen the firings. We know about the black promotions. We know about all these readiness warnings. The strain from Iran is real. We know about the munitions problems. God knows them what we don't know. So to the people who do know the country needs you. You served America for 30 years, 40 years. America served you well too. You've got a nice retirement. You've had a nice and you know, the military does a good job of taking care of families. We need you to serve one more time. This is one more tour of duty you've got.

1:09:43Tell us what's happening inside the P.H.E.G. South Pentagon. Because right now, silence is not protecting the institution. I'm afraid silence may be helping destroy it. You must speak up. Hey, it's Bobby Bones. Join me and former NFL quarterback Matt Castle every Wednesday on our podcast. Lots to say with me, Bobby Bones and Matt Castle. We also bring in friends and mostly match friends who are current or former NFL players. Some of the biggest names in music and entertainment. And then we have some really great conversations that can pretty much go anywhere. The great. Pac-Man Jones after the game of the National Task Force for police officers was at the stadium. Hey, buddy. Yeah, you out of come on. And one of my favorite segments we do is called situational awareness where Bobby and I give each other real life situations and figure out what we'd actually do. You're in training camp and the rookie quarterback has one good throwing session in front of the media. Suddenly everybody online says he should start over you week one. How do you handle this?

1:10:48You just go back out to practice the next day and wait for him to mess up. Listen to lots to say with Bobby Bones and Matt Castle on the I Heart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. College football will hijack your weekend, ruin your sleep and break your heart. And that's why we make the Sullivan, verbal college football show. I'm Ty Hildenbrand. He's Dan Rubenstein. How's it going? Every week we preview the games that matter, sort through the biggest storylines and tell you what to watch before kickoff. There's a lot to keep track of. Who's for real? Which upset is hiding in plain sight and which storyline is about to take over your group chat? And when the games are over, join us in the aftermath too. We're going to react to what happened, talk about the biggest results. Of course we'll cover the playoff picture and all the little details you might have missed while flipping between like 12 games at once. Whether you know every coach and coordinator or just want to understand why everybody is yelling, we're here to help make sense of the madness.

1:11:52Listen to the Solid Verbal College football show on the I Heart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The NFL never stops and neither does its newest podcast. The NFL report hosted by me, Andrew Sassimliano. It is your home for everything football. We're tapping the biggest news stories, giving you expert analysis, fantasy previews, game picks and more. We fly around every single play. We dominate every single play. Want to hear from the league's top stars? Add to the biggest matchups we've got you covered. That really good football team. We got to have all hands on deck. Join me at an all star cast of analysts for everything you need to know from around the league. Get new episodes of the NFL report Monday through Friday, all season long. Listen to the NFL report podcast on the I Heart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:12:58This is J Valentine. I've spent my career on the executive side of this industry, multi platinum songs, building artists and building business. And alongside my brother, tank, the superstar R&B singer, songwriter and producer, we've created something special, the R&B money podcast. This is not just a podcast. It's a safe space for artists, executives and fans of R&B music come to reminisce, pull back the curtain and tell the stories that shaped this culture, the real history behind the hits. That was hood famous. Yeah. And then real love came out and it blew up. We lived in a project. They hear the music and we had nothing. We're covering the entire spectrum from Smokey Robinson, Alicia Keys, B2K, Mary J. Blige, Legends, Current Stars and everyone who's contributed to the sound of R&B. You come out the gate with a hit. And then not Michael Jackson out of number one. Come on, man. I was like, hold on. I'm not going to MJ out of the number one spot. If you're a super dedicated R&B fan who wants the real discovery, the real stories, this is your podcast. This is the R&B money podcast.

1:14:02Listen to R&B money from the Black Effect podcast network on the I Heart Radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. All right. I'm going to end today with what I increasingly believe. Believe is the central institutional problem in American democracy. I'm going to give you one of what what one of my one of our subscribers called a Todd talk. So I'm going to give you a little bit of a Todd talk. Because it's it's crystal clear to me now what the most damage part of our democracy is. It's not the presidency, the Senate, the Supreme Court. It is the House of Representatives. The House is the cancer in our political system. And I use that word intentionally because the damage isn't confined to the House anymore. It's spreading, but the you know, the cancer was first, you know, showed itself in the House. The presidency is sick in part because the House doesn't function properly. The Senate is sick in part because the House doesn't function. In fact, trust me, when we said, when you're worried that the Senate's becoming like the House, that's not a compliment.

1:15:12Did your decision is become too powerful and too political in part because the House doesn't function. Our political parties are sick in part because the House doesn't function. And our presidential elections have become these quad general existential crises in part because the institution that was designed to process the country's political disagreements has stopped doing its job. It turns out the House is the single most important organ of the body polity. Think about the constitutional design. This was the House was supposed to be where the country's political energy went. The good and the bad, the anger, the movements, the regional differences, ideological differences, the crazy stuff, all of it. You elect representatives closest to the people. You send them to Washington. They fight about it. They negotiate. They build coalitions. They compromise and eventually hopefully they'll turn some of those disagreements into laws. But it's a pressure release. And what happens when the pressure release valve stops working, the pressure doesn't disappear. Just go somewhere else.

1:16:15Went to the presidency, went to the Senate, right with presidents. They'd start governing through executive action. Then the next president comes in and reverses those executive actions of the last president. So policy itself is unstable thanks to the House being dysfunctional. Then the pressure goes to the courts. Congress doesn't settle abortion or immigration or trade or war powers or anything. Pick an issue. So eventually judges are being asked to settle questions that the elected branches should have settled. Now control of the courts is becoming enormously important, but it shouldn't be if the House were doing its job. Senate confirmations become existential because the House can't do its job. So it makes Senate control more existential than it should be. And because so much power is migrated to the presidency control of the presidency is existential. Every four years we win or democracy dies. We win or America dies, right? We win or everything you care about disappears. And then we wonder why the country is so polarized.

1:17:16The House was supposed to be the organ that absorbed the conflict instead in exporting political conflict to every other institution in the country. And that's what a cancer does. It spreads. And this week, Jared Golden and Marie Glucent Camp Perez gave us almost a perfect x-ray of the disease in the House. Here's what happened. Jared Golden, Democrat from Maine's second congressional district, the more rural district in Maine. It's one of the most important industries in his district and it made overall this lobster fishing. This isn't some interest to a group that gave him a campaign check. This is actual communities, families, generational businesses. And Golden has been working for years on the fight over federal regulations designed to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale. And there is a legitimate environmental argument here. There are legitimate concerns about the survival of these whales and there are legitimate concerns about the survival of Maine's lobster fishing communities.

1:18:16And that's what legislating is supposed to be about, right? Trying to deal with the competing interests, trade-offs, etc. Figuring out, how do you do the most good while doing the least hard? Golden believes the regulations as currently envisioned could devastate the industry and the communities he represents. And so he was doing an interview after this whole kerfuffle was taking place and he explained to the journalist Natalie Furtig, what the stakes were and listen to the language he used. He said, look, I literally had fishermen telling me that they were contemplating suicide. And then he described what losing the lobster industry would mean. He said the town is decimated. No property tax base schools closed everybody moves away. It's just devastating. And he compared it to losing a mill and he talked about what happens next. The working waterfront disappears outside investors come in property gets bought up a fishing town becomes a vacation town and the people whose families have lived there for generations can't afford to live there anymore.

1:19:17So that's what Jared Golden said he was representing. It's not a national democratic constituency and it's maybe not what the D triple C worries about. And certainly they don't have a caucus in Washington. Those towns, people. So golden made him a promise and wrote a bill. And what it would do is extend the existing pause on new regulations and give researchers more time to figure out whether there's a technological solution that both protects the whales without destroying the fishing lobster fishing. And the industry and the. Look, you can agree with this bill. You can disagree with this bill. That's not what the point of the sex or size. I just wanted to give you a little bit of backstory there. My point is that Jared golden is a is a representative from the state of Maine. He happens to be a Democrat, but he's ultimately is one of the two members of Congress from the state of Maine. He decided this was important enough to the people he represents that he was going to fight for it and he promised it. So Tuesday night. His legislation is sitting in a package of bills that needs what's called a rule before the House can debate it.

1:20:19This is one of those procedural votes that normal people have absolutely no reason to understand. And frankly, that's part of the problem. Republicans currently control the House. Normally Republicans provide the votes for these rules. Democrats vote no everybody knows their role. Right, except Republicans have been having a lot of defecions on their rules committee, right. Chip Roy is no fan of leadership. Right. So suddenly the rule to get Jared Goldens bill on the floor was in trouble. And if this rule goes down, Jared Goldens lobster bill never gets a vote. So golden being one of the Democrats in the rules committee has a choice. He can vote the way Democratic leadership wants to vote and kill the Republican rule. Handing Mike Johnson as speaker and embarrassing defeating might have to send Congress home and they don't vote on anything. Right. And it would allow Democrats to avoid an uncomfortable vote that Republicans had included in the package of bills condemning socialism. But in order to do that, he would have to kill his own legislation in the process. Or he can vote for the rule.

1:21:21Give the legislation he wrote for the people he represents a chance to pass. So golden voted for the rule and Marie Glucin Camp Perez voted with them. They have a they work with each other. They're kind of ideological soulmates, you know, sort of the true blue dogs that you know have sort of been abandoned by the rest of the Democratic party and the rule passed. And then golden's lobster bill passed the house. Now listen to golden explain what the alternative would have required him to do. Here's what he said to Natalie for. In an era of ever heightening partisanship and disillusionment, I think people would be shocked if I introduced a bill to help my core constituency and then voted against a rule that would have advanced that bill. He's right. Right by the logic of Washington. He's made this promise that he's going to do this bill. And then he would have to go back and explain well, I couldn't do it because I had a vote against a rule that would have brought the bill to the floor because my leadership wants to embarrass the speaker of the house and doesn't want to vote on a bill condemning socialism.

1:22:26It's crazy, right. This is why they hate Congress. This is why we all hate him. And golden described the explanation Washington apparently expects him to give his constituencies. Constituents. Well, I wanted to help you, but party leadership wouldn't let me vote for the rule. Right. He goes, that just doesn't fly in real life. Of course, it doesn't try explaining it to the lobsterman. Sorry, I wrote a bill to protect your livelihood. I fought for it. I had a chance to get it on the house floor, but my political party wanted to embarrass the other political party. So I voted to prevent my own bill from getting a vote. Don't worry though, I maintain good standing with the House Democratic caucus. It's insane. And the idea that there are a whole bunch of Democrats wanting to punish golden and Marie Lucecai Perez for doing this is just as insane. Why did you get into politics to help people or to punish another political party? As golden put it, let me quote golden. I know who I work for. I work for the people that I represent, whether they voted for me or not.

1:23:33That should be the most boring sentence a member of Congress could possibly utter. And yet, right. Apparently it's brave these days. It sounds revolutionary doesn't it? Golden said something else that I think is worth listening to. He said, we believe in localism and being rooted in the place that you live in and represent. We're Democrats. But we have a strong loyalty to the people we represent. That's what golden thought being a Democrat. A strong loyalty to the people you represent. Imagine that. And golden's larger diagnosis of his own party is pretty brutal. He says some Democrats need to quote, adjust our thinking about certain things and certain trade offs instead of asking voters to change their thinking. And when asked about the people attacking him for doing this procedural vote, golden said, I think those people are living in a bubble of partisanship and are totally detached from reality on the street. And it's nuts.

1:24:35Right. What happened next doesn't exactly disprove his point. Democratic leadership accused golden and MGP Maria Glusa Campares and, you know, MGP, none of us want to write it out so hard of a significant breach of trust and promised a serious response. And they're telling me they broke trust by representing voters first over and above partisanship. That's a breach of trust. If that's what the leadership thinks is a breach of trust, get the hell out of politics. That house Democrats are discussing changing their caucus rules to define what it means to be a member in good standing. So maybe good standing means you can't vote with Republicans on procedural motions. Maybe D triple C dues become part of it. Okay, but think about what we're talking about. The House Democratic caucus may respond to two members who decided to put constituents ahead of their party on a procedural vote by writing new rules designed to make it harder for members to put their constituencies ahead of party. What the fuck are we doing here?

1:25:38And then Democrats wonder why they have a problem with working class voters. And you wonder why the Democratic brand is in the gutter and the only reason why this isn't a blue tsunami is because the Democratic brand is in the gutter. The Republicans are already not representing normal everyday people. Good job Democrats. Everybody in Washington says Democrats need more Jared Goldens and Marie Glusa Campares. When were all voters, when working class voters, compete in Trump districts. Stop talking like everybody who lives in Brooklyn and Bethesda great. Well, here they are. And they did just that golden represents a district Trump carried glusa camp Perez represents a district Trump carry. They built their identities around convincing voters that they're going to represent the district before they represent a party. And then when they actually behave the way they promise their party considers punishing them. And then when they vote for the Republicans, that's the disease. And again, and before Republicans enjoy my tirade too much spare me your party's been doing the same version of this ship for years.

1:26:46Ask Republicans who crossed Donald Trump. Ask the Republicans who voted for impeachment. Ask Republicans who tried to negotiate bipartisan immigration legislation. And then they got a political responsibility mattered more than whatever party wanted that afternoon. So this is not a democratic disease. This is a partisanship disease that is concentrated in the House of Representatives first and foremost. And there's some convenient historical amnesia here to ring to Democrats simply don't help Republicans pass rules. Please they have. And when it was minority leader, there were occasions when dozens of Democrats voted for Republican rules. She opposed 206. And again later that year, 2015 when Barack Obama was working with Paul Ryan on trade Democrats help Republicans adopt a rule despite Pelosi's opposition. Democratic party seem to survive, didn't it? Congress survived because that's what legislatures occasionally do. They legislate. I say occasionally, right? But here's why I think this week's episode matters beyond Jared Goldin. There's a very real possibility Democrats are going to control the House next year.

1:27:47And if the turnout numbers I talked about earlier really are signaling the beginnings of a huge wave. Perhaps a pretty good possibility. But everybody celebrating a potential Democratic House ought to think about what happens the morning after the election. Because Democrats aren't going to inherit a functioning house. They're going to inherit the cancer. And they're probably not going to have some gigantic majority where leadership can lose 20 votes and shrug. They're going to have factions. Right? They're going to have members from deep blue urban districts. They're going to have members from districts Trump carry members elected because they promised to fight Trump every waking minute and members elected because they convinced cultural conservatives and working class voters that they're not like the national party. And they're all going to be in the same caucus. What happens when five of them say no. What happens when progressive won't support something unless leadership moves left. What happens when blue dogs won't support something because leadership move left. What happens when swing district Democrats are told to take a vote that could end their careers because the caucus needs unanimity.

1:28:47Sorry, right? We've watched we've watched years of watching Republicans do this. Five members here, seven there, faction holds the speaker hostage, procedural votes become loyalty tests. Eventually business doesn't happen. So perhaps next year we'll spend our time saying, why can't Democrats govern? And two years later, why can't Republicans govern? Because changing the party controlling a broken institution does not fix the institution. The institution is broken. It's sick. And here's where I think we need to go deeper. Why has the house become this? Well, you know part of my answer. The house is too damn small. The districts are too damn big. The two parties aren't enough to represent a country that's complicated. All of that. I'm not going to go through all of my diet tribe on this. You've heard me time and again in my other Todd talks, right about the size of the house, about the two party system is a mess. It's just, you know, we've the whole thing is broken and it is forced this partisan polarization. And if we increase the size of this, what we need is a really foul again.

1:29:52Jared golden and Alexander or Casio Cortez have to function as members of the same political team. Marie, Glucin Camp Perez and some of the most progressive members from the safest urban districts are going to have to function on the same team next cycle. Look, we're probably going to have the same problem. And we've seen it because they're not parties, right. We know we need to do this. So it was unbelievable that everything comes down to party first. And and and leadership so dominates how the house runs that I don't know why we bother with 435 members, just to let that came Jeffries and Mike Johnson give them each a weighted vote based on how many seats their party one. We're getting dangerously close to that anyway. Because if a procedural vote becomes on whose team you are on, it's everything right committee assignments become leverage all this stuff. This is sick. This is terrible. Right. If your job is not to work for your constituents, but your job is to protect the majority, defeat the other team, don't get the other side of when don't give them a vote. Don't let them embarrass us.

1:31:01That's how you end up in this completely upside down situation where Jared golden successfully passes legislation for the people who elected him that he promised he would do and his party considers punishing him for the vote that allowed him to pass it. It's not a weird congressional side show that's a pathology. So if the house is a cancer, what's the treatment? Well, as you know, make it bigger, make district smaller, make politics local again. And maybe we need to talk about this whole political party. It's just a mess. This is why you need a third or fourth entity inside that is able to allow the Jared golden of the world, the Don Bacon's of the world, the Jared Moscow, it's is of the world, the Marie, glucent camp Perez, people that have promised to sort of represent all the people in their districts, not just one faction of one political party. I don't have the ability. The house was supposed to be this go read Madison, go read Federalist 10.

1:32:04Oh, Jared golden has the most important part of this right. He says, I know who I work for. I work for the people that I represent whether they voted free, but or not. The house doesn't work that way anymore. He he doesn't want to work for our key Jeffries, but apparently Jeffries thinks gold works for him. Marie glucent camp Perez doesn't want to work for the D triple C, but apparently they think she should work with them. Republicans don't work with Mike Johnson and they don't work for Donald Trump, but apparently Donald Trump and Johnson think they do. I tell you, thank you Jared golden. You gave a great X ray of the disease. The house is a mess. It doesn't work. It is the single. It is the cancer we have to cure before we can reform anything else. That's what's so frustrating about this and it's sort of this moment with golden crystallized it. And I know you know what? And ain't the sexiest reform. But if we don't get the house right, we're not going to get anything else.

1:33:07Everything nothing else gets fixed until we fix the disease that is impacting the house of representatives. Todd talk over. College football will hijack your weekend, ruin your sleep and break your heart. And that's why we make the Sullivan, double college football show. I'm Ty Hildenbrand. He's Dan Rubenstein. How's it going? Every week we preview the games that matter, sort through the biggest storylines and tell you what to watch before kick off. There's a lot to keep track of. Who's for real? Which upset is hiding in plain sight and which storyline is about to take over your group chat? And when the games are over, join us in the aftermath too. We're going to react to what happened, talk about the biggest results. Of course, we'll cover the playoff picture and all the little details you might have missed while flipping between like 12 games at once. Whether you know every coach and coordinator or just want to understand why everybody is yelling, we're here to help make sense of the madness.

1:34:15Listen to the Solid Verbal College football show on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Bobby Bones. Join me and former NFL quarterback Matt Castle every Wednesday on our podcast lots to say with me, Bobby Bones and Matt Castle. We also bring in friends and mostly match friends who are current or former NFL players, some of the biggest names in music and entertainment. And then we have some really great conversations that can pretty much go anywhere. The great Taikman Jones after the game to hold national task force for police officers was at the stadium. Like, hey, buddy, yeah, you out of come on. And one of my favorite segments we do is called situational awareness where Bobby and I give each other real life situations and figure out what we'd actually do. You're in training camp and the rookie quarterback has one good throwing session in front of the media. Suddenly everybody online says he should start over you week one. How do you handle this? You just go back out to practice the next day and wait for him to mess up.

1:35:16Listen to lots to say with Bobby Bones and Matt Castle on the I Heart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The NFL never stops and neither does its newest podcast. The NFL report hosted by me, Andrew Sicilyano. It is your home for everything football. Williams, drifting, sprinting for space in all kinds of trouble for you. We're tapping the biggest news stories, giving you expert analysis, fantasy previews, game picks and more. We fly around every single play. We dominate every single play. Want to hear from the league's top stars ahead of the biggest matchups? We've got you covered. That really good football team. We got to have all hands on deck. Join me at an all star cast of analysts for everything you need to know from around the league. Get new episodes of the NFL report Monday through Friday, all season long. Listen to the NFL report podcast on the I Heart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:36:21This is Jay Valentine. I've spent my career on the executive side of this industry, multi platinum songs, building artists and building business. And alongside my brother, Tank, the superstar R&B singer, songwriter and producer, we've created something special, the R&B Money Podcast. This is not just a podcast. It's a safe space where artists, executives and fans of R&B music come to reminisce. Pull back the curtain and tell the stories that shaped this culture, the real history behind the hits. That was hood famous. And then real love came out and it blew up. We lived in a project. And there's all the success. They hear them music and we had nothing. We're covering the entire spectrum from Smokey Robinson, Alicia Keys, B2K, Mary J. Blige, Legends, Current Stars and everyone who's contributed to the sound of R&B. You come out the gate with a hit and then not Michael Jackson out of number one. Come on man. I was like, hold on. I'm not going to M.J. out of the number one spot. If you're a super dedicated R&B fan who wants the real discovery, the real stories, this is your podcast. This is the R&B Money Podcast.

1:37:25Listen to R&B Money from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. The podcast. Just test up by top five. Top jazz top five. All right. As I promised all that energy I put into researching the midterms for the entire 21st century and the impact of governor's races means I have updated my top five list. And I will tell you this. I've got five slots. I've got six races and there is no number seven meaning I think there is a now a huge gap between the six races that made my top five list because I have one tie. And then the next level of race. So number one North Carolina. It is still there. Roy Cooper is got the luxury of being able to start running attack ads that really are about inoculating his weaknesses. As I saw in the the college football games that we saw in week zero, the North Carolina and North Carolina state games both featured quite a bit of anti Michael Wattley.

1:38:34Anti Michael Wattley TV ads. And there's an enormous financial gap and given how much resources Republicans now need potentially for Texas, but also with an opportunity in Michigan Ohio still winable. I think Mr. Wattley's in deep deep trouble. And so North Carolina is still number one with the bullet number two on my list now is Alaska. I'm sorry. The first round on Alaska, her getting up to 49 and Sullivan, the incumbent, not able to crack 45 let alone 43. I don't see it. I mean, you know, she is in, you know, when you start to compare Alaska to Maine to Ohio to Michigan to Texas and suddenly you're like, wait a minute. Alaska is now the second most likely flip. And I think it is. When you look at things, so Alaska and Mary Patela in the number two slot number three for me believe it or not, I'm going to say Texas.

1:39:35I think that can't I think when I when you sort of put numbers to all this and you see the scandal penalty that does exist with whether it's Todd Aiken, whether it's Herschel Walker, whether it's Jay Jones. It is a minimum of four points and it is and it could be as high as eight or nine Missouri guy is high as eight on the sort of on sort of underperforming the top of the ticket. Tossed in the fact that John Thune is basically said we don't want Paxton in our caucus. If somebody else wants them, Donald Trump can go spend the money to do it. I think you throw all those factors in I think I'm suddenly I'm suddenly at Taloriko Truth or and I was I was I was a skeptic. I made it clear I was a skeptic, but you start looking at these numbers. You start looking at the Abbott situation. I think now Texas. I had my friend Quinn McCord who does a lot of this analysis. He was he was my Senate editor back at the hotline in 2006, I think.

1:40:35But if I'm not mistaken for a left friend BC. And he kind of compared Texas to Virginia 2006 and 2006, the idea of Democrats flipping Virginia seemed like a long shot. Well, they could get close. I don't know. You know, Virginia hasn't done that. You know, it's kind of a Republican leaning state. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And now what does Virginia look like 20 years later, right? It's it's it's light blue. It's not even purple anymore. Let alone red or light red. Um, it may be what I'm thinking on Texas now. Number four, my list Ohio. Look, I think it's going to be a coin flip race. I really do believe that Rama Swami is now a huge problem for the Republican party in Ohio. And it's, you know, what I thought was a problem before his sort of he's kind of polarizing and the doge thing didn't go well connection to Elon Musk. But I think that him being such a cheerleader for the tech industry and and the anger that voters have right now, data centers, tech industry in general.

1:41:36He can't run I don't think there's I don't think he can run away from it. I think it's impossible to run away from. He's trying to, which actually I think could make things worse. I think this is going to screw up the entire Republican ticket. I think Rama Swami could be could could end up being a gigantic. And so, you know, that's just sort of drags down everybody and it's simply because he's just an avatar for the tech industry and, you know, it's inevitable to me that it's almost a it's a fairly when you see this environment and this sort of rage and tech in general data center specifically. I think it's a I think this you're not going to contain this to the governor's race. I think this whole things. You know, so I'm I am I think that is the you know sort of like shared brownies one one more little extra bit of help there. And I think oddly enough, the Rama Swami problem for Republicans in general is going to be that. And then I five I have a tie for Maine and Michigan.

1:42:38One other thing I left out of my Michigan analysis in the opening that I'll say for here. So if Benson gets 54% it's the best you know that was Gretchen Whitmer's two victories. The first time she ran she got 53 the second time she got 54 and she only got that 54 against the Republican that the party kind of abandoned in the state. Point is is that there's a pretty hard ceiling for statewide Democrats. It's in that 54 55 range. So you know I made it clear Benson needs 54 to probably drag up to a L. C. N. for sure when you get to 52 or 53 which is probably the most likely range she ends up in. It really does put it a coin flip and I'm putting Maine there. I'm more bullish and for Democrats on Maine, but I respect the fact that boy Collins always over performs the polling and all of that. But I tell you her conversation with my pal Jay Mart. This week the fact that she went down you know going after Troy Jackson for having kids with his second cousin just felt like a little beneath Susan Collins.

1:43:45And I say this because it tells me it's sort of like a talent a poker game. She's kind of showing you she's out of juice here. She doesn't have a affirmative case to for reelection. All she can do is try to disqualify Troy Jackson. That's a tough place for a 30 year incumbent being so I'm certainly think it's it's uphill for her. I'm going to put it at fifth because we do know she overperforms. There certainly was enough. Problems earlier in the summer. But I put Maine and Michigan tied for the fifth slot and I put it there and then I think there's a huge jump. I actually think I would actually put an empty slot and then you get to New Hampshire Iowa Nebraska Kansas South Carolina Mississippi. All of these will be places the winner doesn't break 55. The question is whether any of them slip into slip into accidental pickup territory. And those are Democratic seats New Hampshire is a Republican seat will a lot more about New Hampshire next week. And with that, my top five list for the week.

1:44:46Let's do some questions. The podcast top five list is brought to you by Fandall baseball fans. Do you think you know who's hitting a home or today? Well, Fandall is giving you a free chance to call your shot with what they call daily dingers joining the action is easy. You can get a free pick on who's hitting a home run in their game. And if you're right, you'll get a profit boost to use on your next bet for a chance at extra winnings. You got nothing to lose and a lot to gain and don't forget you can make a free pick every day during the MLBC's and shoot if you're a nats fan. All you got to do is decide is it going to be a CJ Abrams home run day or is it going to be a James Wood home run day? Probably you'll do okay. It's just another reason why Fandall is the home for home run. So you ready to play your game today? Join all the action at fandall.com. That's fandall.com to play daily dingers and make your free pick on who's hitting a home or play ball and swing for the fences on Fandall and official part of the MLB.

1:45:4821 plus and select states for Kansas and affiliation with the Kansas start casino. It's 18 plus in DC Kentucky Wyoming. If you have a gambling problem, call 1-800-Gamber or 1-800-My Reset or call 1-888-7897777. You can also visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. You can visit the MD gambling help.org in Maryland for help. You can visit gambling help line ma.org. You can call 803275050 and Massachusetts. You can call 1-8778-HOPNY or you can simply text HOPNY-New York in order to get some help with any gambling concerns. Finally, you can also call 1-877-770-7867 if you're in Louisiana. Alright, let's see some questions. Ah, Kelly Axe, Aubrey, Texas. Yes, member of the 5-timer club.

1:46:50Texas 26 Congressional District. Here's the question. Poli showing the statewide races virtually tied. Do you think some version of the Bradley Effect could be in play? Republicans telling posters they'll support the GOP because they don't want to be seen as backing Democrats, but ultimately voting differently or staying home. Thanks for your insightful analysis and fins up. We'll see 9-1 season of 2020. Wow, you are smoking the hope you're on the Miami Dolphins. I do think they're going to be weirdly like the triple option NFL team like like a painting the ass to play because Malik Wallace and H aener just going to run all over teams. But I don't know if they have a defense to prevent other teams from scoring. That's an interesting thought. I thought you were going to actually go the other way are are some Republican saying they're not going to vote for Paxton, but quietly will and they're kind of embarrassed right like that. That is to me more than Brad would where I was thinking of the Bradley Effect, but all I will say is Kelly, can I point you back to my top five list and back to the intro of this episode.

1:47:50I am I'm pretty bullish on Tallerico now. I think Paxton is especially now that the NRC, the Senate Republicans don't want to help him. I think they've decided I think there's enough anger there. I think they don't want to help them. They know that Paxton himself is sort of a cancer on politics in general. He's you know he's not just unqualified to be a senator. He's unqualified to be an elected official. Arguably he's done enough he deserves some sort of legal scrutiny, whether it's whether it's criminal or not is up to somebody else, but I know where he doesn't belong in a position of trust from the public. I mean he really and he seems to also just be lazy. You know he's not trying very hard. He doesn't he really just seems to sort of think that he's got away with it like this for so long. He just assumes it's going to happen and that's usually. You know so anyway I would you first did Brad a fact I thought you know because that would be what I'd worry about that people are saying they're going to vote for Tallerico, but they don't want to tell their friends that yeah they cared about the Jersey color enough that they even voted for that crook and Paxton.

1:48:53That would be I'd be more concerned about that. All right Heather from Georgia's Fit District here at long time list and I love hearing you with more freedom on this platform. Thank you for saying that. I would tell you that I I used I used a softer words, but I would argue I was saying the same thing, but I take your point. Given the recent postal service whistleblower news shouldn't Congress be doing more to protect the mail and ballot process, especially since there's no clear evidence the mail voting inherently benefits one party the other by being too optimistic and expecting by partisan pushback against executive actions I could undermine the process. Thanks for being a voice of reason in this polarized world Heather well you probably sadly are too optimistic on that it Congress should be doing this you know and there are live stream on Tuesday night. Nathaniel Raikich he runs an organization called vote beat that and I would encourage you to take a look at it. This is all they focus on which is the administration side of elections and you know you're asking a question that Mrs Todd keeps asking me and keeps trying to find more answers herself, which is how concerned should we be about this.

1:50:01And I put that question in a thing you'll need to look the concern is real it's not clear how so hurts one part of the other in fact evidence suggests that if all of these rules were implemented it probably hurts Republicans more than it hurts Democrats and he explained you know for instance. You know if you're if you have to like suddenly drive 50 miles to drop off a ballot you know well who's more likely to be 50 miles from a ballot drop location a rural voter not an urban voter well that's somebody that leans red not somebody leans blue generally in the way we're sort of segregated. I do think the courts are going to let this get implemented this cycle and we're going to see this litigated I think that you know throughout 27 and then we'll see what happens. But that's where I think you're right Congress needs to get more involved here. And who knows maybe this attempt to sort of hijack the postal service which is really what Trump's trying to do and it really is supposed to sort of not be hijackable like this.

1:51:01This is where I think if there's a I do think Congress after this election will have a little more cuts to question things on this and maybe they'll have. Hardison motivation to this but I imagine there's a possibility I mean if I represent a rural district in Utah or Oregon two states that are all male voting or Arizona I don't want these hurdles I want to make it easier for my constituents to vote so the opera I know there's bipartisan pain from these decisions that Trump's making. So in theory there should be bipartisan support to sort of some oversight over it but I'm I'm a big skeptical. All right last question before I get to my college you know I know this is really why you're with me it's for the big college football previews that I do every week starting with week one Steve Frank a fellow two two first name Steve Frank he calls himself a fellow two first name and he's from California is 47th yes. Nothing like having two first names right people love to talk about it I you could argue that I have two last names to I have met people with the last name of Charles anyway.

1:52:07If I really want five time or status he goes I guess I need to stop asking questions only in my head and actually write in he goes I love the idea of a podcast series of political reforms and recently heard a proposal to add 12 at large senators I've heard this proposal you've made me a strong proponent of expanding the house but what do you think of the idea of reforming the Senate take care so. Here's the thing I go back to the point I made earlier on the podcast which is we got to fix the house first and then let's see how the other institutions naturally respond after the house is functional again right after the house expands and all this stuff. I do think if you're going to create at large senators and I've heard this idea that maybe you would do it maybe you would do it by you know the 10 largest states you know maybe they get you get some extra senators but you need constitutional amendments for that expanding the house you don't so that would be my push back I just think that if you have a more functioning house you'll have a Senate that behaves better I think that's a good idea.

1:53:12Better I think our 100 senators look it was never meant to be a small the democratic institution and so at the end of the day I think you make these reforms based on founders and 10 founders intended for the house to be the more democratic institution well let's make it a more democratic institution and then figure out what we need to do after that with the Senate. I wouldn't simultaneously do all of this at once right I think the house you do on its own because it does fix the electoral college and it does sort of fix a few things all at once if you do that expansion correctly. I think it just triggers a better functioning Senate if you have a house that's functioning that way so. That's my only thing with adding the at large senators. I don't know it you're again constitutional amendment and I don't know I don't know how I don't know if it would pass because you're asking 38 state you need 38 state legislatures to approve it and if you're adding 12 at large senators it's really only going to benefit maybe 10 states.

1:54:12What's in it for the other 28 states so I just think you might have a math problem adding that constitutional amendment. I am going to now rant rave for 10 minutes about sports because this is why some of you what you want to do is first my hurricanes they play Friday night. At Stanford if I didn't know it was our first game of the season I'd be petrified as hell about this game Friday night road game. Across the country all the makings of a problem except it's our first game of the season so the schedule makers at the ACC did them did Miami a huge favor by making this the first game right they could they could leave earlier they had time to acclimate they've been you know all they've been doing you know they had the fall practices so. There's no excuse and in fact Miami now is an advantage because Stanford played a game last week and week zero gets to why look pretty confident.

1:55:17So but look I pretty high expectations for this team and I think we we have a the healthiest quarterback situation we've had in three years and that includes cam ward right I mean cam ward was a bit unknown. Carson back clearly was hurt until the playoff. He certainly did a good job playing trying to build a strength back and you can tell he became the quarterback everybody thought he could be starting in the playoff just and I think we're seeing already and he's going to be the starter in Arizona before the end of the season I think that's for sure. But you know Miami got better everywhere the only question marks about Miami or the is the youth of their offensive line and the youth of their defensive line particularly on the ends on defense. But you know on paper they're loaded on paper I think they're the best team in the country. I think this you know I know I know there's a lot of skeptics about Miami still a lot of my favorite gambling podcasters have assumed Mario Christophe was going to blow a game that he shouldn't blow because he's you know every season he seems to lose a game he shouldn't whether he was at Oregon where's Miami etc.

1:56:26There's just such competency in this coaching staff and I think that credit is not given enough to coach Christophe for frankly he's evolved as a coach he's matured as a coach he gets this team is tougher it's more prepared the outside noise isn't there. And look I think Malachite Tony is the cheat code of college football. And if you're looking to make a long shot Heisman bet go grab Malachite Tony now. Because I think by week five or six it won't be as easy as easy to get. Miami's got a couple of tough games this year big one is November 7th at Notre Dame. It is I am stunned at the benefit of the doubt Notre Dame is getting in comparison to the lack of benefit of the doubt that Miami is getting Notre Dame arguably lost a more important player than Miami did. And Jeremiah love and what's the prince I think is his name I got to get to know him because I'm in the draft of my fantasy and a felix and sees the starting running back for the defending Super Bowl champion Seattle price excuse me prices his name Seattle see Hawks.

1:57:35So you know look I I want both I want Miami to beat Notre Dame and I want both Miami Notre Dame of the playoffs and I hope they get to meet again in the playoffs. On this front but I am I'm really bullish and maybe I'm making a mistake but my expectations are through the roof but I have a lot of look we bring him back both our coordinators. I think Corey have a Heatherman defense and Shannon Dawson that you know that guy is a quarterback whisper he knows that a design of an offense around the strength of a quarterback and he's done it different ways for different you know we've got Mark Flutcher might be the toughest running back in the country. Not be the fastest running back but he sure might be the toughest so I'm I am full of optimism and I think it's warranted you know look Miami is seen as sort of one of the realistic teams has the shot at one in the whole thing but the ACC appears to be weak this year and so they can't make many they can't drop two games.

1:58:35You know if you're looking for a game that Miami two games worry me the most on our schedule. One is November 14th it's the week after Notre Dame it's a home game but it's we played Duke I think Duke's going to be pissed that we took their lunch money their quarterback they're starting you know and it's a former University of Miami coach Mani Diaz many some friend I love many love coach Crystal ball it's going to be a little bit of they there's a little bit of arrival over there man he cares about this game a lot that game just that game I especially if Miami comes off beating Notre Dame at Notre Dame the entire college football world will say Miami's the best team in the country and then they go I can see them you know Duke doing trick play after trick play and somehow we lose a stupid game like that so that game scares me. And then Clemson we play at Clemson and dabbo swingy's going to be in desperation mode right and whenever you're playing a team that's desperate and you know maybe I'm a little worried about our North Carolina game now it Belly check is finally figured out how to coach football defense.

1:59:37I have one other hot take about college football Lane Kiffin there's a new vanity fair piece not good Nick Sabin saying that you had to keep him away from the college girls. I have to tell you Lane Kiffin is now the bat it's one thing to be the bad boy like Mike Leach was the bad boy of college football but you. A bad boy you kind of love like a rogue like Mike Leach was the rogue we all loved I love Mike Leach we all you know he was just sort of he was he was counterculture he was all the bite you know he was you know kind of you know there was something weird about him sometimes you may think he was kind of an a hole but but he was he was sort of a row kind of a lovable road. Lane Kiffin's not lovable and now you know between this fight over bringing in NFL players would literally the rest of the college football world including the normally acquiescing SEC is like no we got to draw light somewhere. Then you throw this beat out there I have to say here's a hot take lane Kiffin doesn't finish the season as the head of ball coach of LSU realistically do I see you.

2:00:44Realistically do I think I. Is it likely to happen no. Is it. Is it impossible no. This is not going well so far and here's what I look if he wins no LSU will accept anything but if he loses the Ole Miss. Be suddenly five and two board three and then more stories come out more crap comes out. Kiffin Kiffin I think it's the most hated man in college football right now and I don't think it's the good thing to be the most hated man in college football. Let me leave you with this if the angels are worth four billion dollars then please learn her family put the team back for sale. Let's get if the nationals are going to be where if if anaheim's team is worth four billion Washington's team is worth at least four billion you apparently didn't like the two billion valuation a couple years ago great it's now doubled please sell the team before you trade these young good done players and the fact that there is a value that you can get four billion great sell the team please let's go if you I don't want to watch an off season where we suddenly trade see trade more of our good all stars.

2:02:05In order for potential we may never see all right with that enjoy your weekend enjoy week one of college football. Hopefully I'll be in a good mood based on how Miami does on Friday and I will see you Monday morning. 30 years ago in island off Manhattan almost brought down New York City. Who will you trust your friends and neighbors who you trust the people five miles overseas. This is a story about neighbors turning on each other and what happens when a forgotten place decides it's had enough. But we're not stopping are we. Listen to revisionist history the statin island problem on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast guaranteed human.