Episodes

  • One of the biggest reasons there is no left-wing Joe Rogan: Democrats lost interest in debate and persuasion

    One of the biggest reasons there is no left-wing Joe Rogan: Democrats lost interest in debate and persuasion
    Dec 19 2024
    Episode Summary Following her recent electoral defeat, many people have questioned why Kamala Harris didn't go on to the podcast of Joe Rogan, the standup comedian and sports commentator who has the number-one podcast in the world.For the record, Harris’s former advisers have said that they tried to coordinate a time with Rogan, but they very obviously did not make it a priority.The more interesting related question that other people have been asking post election is why is there no left-wing Joe Rogan?The immediate answer is that there is not a full-service Democratic ecosystem that includes media, legal, and local components. There are also some larger reasons why Rogan and other libertarian-oriented people have signed up with the Republican Party, after having hated it in the 1990s and 2000s when party was less radical.But there are some more specific reasons for why Rogan and people like him have become de facto Republicans that are especially relevant since Rogan himself once supported the presidential candidacy of Bernie Sanders—and they involve how the Democratic Party communicates, or rather, doesn’t, to the public. In recent decades, Democrats and the American left as a whole have moved to a communication strategy which focuses more on controlling the message in every possible way rather than trying to forcefully advocate and explain its ideas to people who have never heard them. On issues of science, economics, race, climate, gender, and regulation, Democrats have, by and large, resorted to blindly pointing to expert consensus rather than making the case to the uninformed.Joining me to discuss on this episode is Lisa Corrigan, she’s a professor of communications and gender studies at the University of Arkansas. She’s also the author of several different books, including Prison Power: How Prison Influenced the Movement for Black Liberation.The video of our December 9, 2024 discussion is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.Related Content—How podcasts became a key source of news and entertainment for millions of Americans—Right-wing comedy isn’t particularly funny, but it’s extremely effective at persuading low-information voters—Joe Rogan and the epidemic of pseudo-expertise—Former establishment Republican have made the Democratic party more conservative, and less electorally successful—As libertarianism has radicalized, some of Silicon Valley's biggest names are turning toward fascism—Why Christian authoritarians and atheistic libertarians decided to meet in the middle—The ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ and the long history of right-wing rebranding—How the Donald Trump fandom completely reshaped the Republican media ecosystemAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction03:24 — Democratic leaders' excessive desire to control all media encounters08:42 — Howard Stern, Joe Rogan, and the rise to dominance of casual infotainment14:05 — Democrats have lost the urge and the ability to debate23:11 — Democrats' post-graduate economic bubble27:06 — Republicans overthrew their obsolete party establishment, can Democrats?31:38 — How "The West Wing" encouraged Democrats to adopt a fictional communications strategy35:08 — Kamala Harris's initial media interview strategy and Democrats' total risk aversion39:56 — Trump targeted disengaged Americans with media appearances, Harris with advertisements42:39 — Why did Democrats lose ground with women despite the overturning of Roe v. Wade?46:49 — The Democratic Party doesn't want to talk to low-information voters54:40 — As Democrats have won more prosperous voters, they've become less interested in economic populism59:20 — The ALEC behemoth outside the Beltway01:03:19 — ConclusionAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: And joining me now is Lisa Corrigan. Welcome to Theory of Change, Lisa.LISA CORRIGAN: Thanks for having me.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. So I think one of the questions that is almost inescapable in the 2024 election post mortems is, is why is there no left wing Joe Rogan?But it's a very strange and weird question to ask because Joe Rogan was a Bernie Sanders.CORRIGAN: He certainly was. Yeah.I think there's no tolerance in the Democratic Party for class analysis, and I think that there is. a class [00:03:00] politics that really chafes at someone like Rogan's style,And also that he's not controllable. So they prefer to control, highly control their own media, such as it is. And so I think we can read that as a sort of intolerance and lack of curiosity, not just about Rogan, but also his audience.SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm. Well, okay.Democratic leaders' excessive desire to control all media encountersSHEFFIELD: So, but when you say, I think, I agree with you when you say that the, ...
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    1 hr and 8 mins
  • Local political ecosystems are vital to protecting democracy nationally

    Local political ecosystems are vital to protecting democracy nationally
    Dec 9 2024
    Episode Summary Kamala Harris’s loss to Donald Trump came as a huge surprise to many Democratic Party loyalists, especially since Republicans had a number of serious defeats in elections in 2018 and in 2022, and abortion rights ballot initiatives prevailed in every state where the public had voted on them since the Republican Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. So what happened? We've talked on this program at length in several episodes about how Democrats have failed enormously to invest in advocacy media to the degree that Republicans have. But a political ecosystem isn’t just about national media, it’s also about how things work at the local level as well. And in that regard, the Republican Party is also very superior to Democrats. Working together and individually in cities and towns across America, fundamentalist religious organizations and local talk radio hosts are constantly explaining Republican viewpoints to the public, taking the message to Americans who don’t follow politics closely.While they may not understand all the particulars, these citizens believe that there are people in their communities who are looking out for them. They can see and talk to people who explain the world and tell them what they can do about it.Within the Democratic Party, however, these types of local political institutions are sometimes regarded as antiquated or absurd. This was not always so. In the past, labor union halls and liberal religious communities were places where people were able to learn that progress isn’t something that happens, it’s something that’s made.The right’s huge advantage at the local level has been in place for a long time, as sociologist Theda Skocpol documented in 1995:“The Democratic party no longer has a national, locally rooted infrastructure of loyal local organizations and allied groups (such as labor unions) through which concerted grass-roots political campaigns can be run. The conservatives right now have such an infrastructure, in the form of grass-roots Christian fundamentalist groups and Rush Limbaugh-style talk radio. But Democrats depend on pollsters, media consultants, and television to get messages out to the citizenry. Yet pollsters and political consultants tend to think in terms of appealing labels (‘Health Security’) and advertising slogans (‘security that can never be taken away’) rather than in terms of explanatory discussions.”One person who understands how all of this worked in days of yore is our guest on today’s episode. His name is Eric Loomis, and he's a labor historian at the University of Rhode Island. He’s written several different books, including A History of America in Ten Strikes. And he’s also a writer at the blog Lawyers, Guns, & Money. The video of this discussion is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.Theory of Change and Flux are entirely community-supported. We need your help to keep doing this. Please subscribe to stay in touch.Related ContentHow the decline of the Black church is helping Republicans make inroads with young peopleThe middle class is being destroyed, Democrats need to stop saying everything is greatThe 2024 election was decided by people who disliked both Harris and TrumpDemocrats must do more than attack Donald Trump to winRepublicans took over the judiciary while liberals were pretending that jurisprudence was a scienceAmericans want progressive change, but to be able to deliver it, progressives will need to change firstThe science behind why Donald Trump loves the ‘poorly educated’Audio Chapters00:00 — Introduction05:58 — Democrats only talk to their voters for three months every two years10:28 — How local organizations preserve collective memory and protect democracy13:50 — The decline of unions and liberal religion has significantly hurt the Democratic party29:02 — Why reproductive freedom didn't save Democrats in 202432:38 — The rise of AOC-Trump voters36:15 — Biden's communication failures made it so no one knew about his policies41:59 — Operationally, Democrats are more conservative than Republicans45:36 — Economic and social justice need each other to succeed52:13 — Campaigns need coherent and simple narratives to win01:02:06 — Conclusion Audio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: And joining me now is Eric Loomis. Welcome to the show, Eric.ERIK LOOMIS: Very happy to be here. Thank you for having me.SHEFFIELD: So you and your co-bloggers have been tackling this idea of there's something wrong with Democrats, even before the election, you guys were kind of been edging around this point for a while, it seems [00:04:00] like.LOOMIS: Well, yeah, I mean, if you look at the election, right? In a lot of ways, and I should say...
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    1 hr and 5 mins
  • Democrats can’t keep telling voters that everything is fine

    Democrats can’t keep telling voters that everything is fine
    Dec 2 2024
    Episode Summary Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election was a triumph of political ecosystems and how much better the right has been in the United States at creating a full-scale ecosystem to funnel people into their party, but it also took place within a larger political environment in which many Americans are unsatisfied with the way things are. For a decades, most Americans have felt that the country is headed in the wrong direction and that the economy is getting worse. But instead of realizing this and doing something about it, rhetorically and in terms of policy, many Democratic leaders have not responded to the discontent. As I’ve discussed repeatedly over the years, right-wing propaganda plays a huge role in gaslighting Americans for the benefit of Trump and his fellow Republicans, but the situation here is more than that. While Kamala Harris was able to motivate voters in the 7 main swing states through spending over a billion dollars, outside of those states, Democrats lost millions of voters compared to 2020. In many ways, the election was decided by people who stayed home. We’re going to talk about all of this and a lot more with our guest Maura Ugarte in this episode. She is a filmmaker and professor of film at George Mason University and is the co-director of a 2012 film called Divide, which told the story of a West Virginia Democrat who was campaigning for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama.Theory of Change and Flux are entirely community-supported. We need your help to keep doing this. Please subscribe on Patreon or Substack.The video of this discussion is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.Related Content— The 2024 election was decided by people who disliked both Harris and Trump— Americans want progressive change, but to be able to deliver it, progressives will need to change first— Harris’s loss has permanently discredited timid Democratic approaches to the MAGA threat— Religious fundamentalism’s intellectual collapse powers Trump’s politics of despair— Bureaucratic obsessions are ruining America’s educational system— The science behind why Donald Trump loves the ‘poorly educated’— Elon Musk and his fellow reactionary oligarchs are much more radical than people realizeAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction04:55 — Divide, Maura’s film about building left solidarity07:54 — How left elites fell for JD Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” fraud13:21 — Biden’s failure to inform the public of his popular policies16:12 — Trump’s new voters strategy and the limits of a “protect democracy” message19:56 — How Democrats missed real suffering 23:26 — The decline of public trust and Trump’s con artist pitch29:55 — How Ross Perot foreshadowed Trump’s appeal31:08 — Fascism’s critique of capitalism must be countered36:51 — The power of solidarity to beat divide and conquer45:09 — Blaming voters never works to win elections49:22 — Hopeful messages for the futureAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So in this podcast and my writing at Flux, I've been trying to focus on the idea of ecosystems a lot in the response to the election outcome. But one thing I want to make clear. That it's easy to say, and it is absolutely true that right wing media was a huge part of why Donald Trump won.And also, some people's thoughts about the economy are a huge part as well. Now whether that was because of propaganda, that's another thing. But it's a mistake. It's overly simplistic to think that it was just. Only those two things or, her failure to, do this or that smaller thing, there were some other [00:04:00] bigger dynamics and well, and one of them is that besides the fact that Democrats don't talk to the public, they also don't listen to the public or know what to say, even if they were talking.MAURA UGARTE: It's, it's funny though, like, in some ways, I felt like Harris was responding to political consultants who were telling her to message in a particular kind of way, which wasn't actually listening either, but like, it was just sort of this This very sort of bulleted point, if I talk about this and that and the other thing, and not talk about this, that, and the other thing, it's a winning message.SHEFFIELD: And your, you've been kind of thinking about how Democrats could listen and speak better irrespective of platforms to the public for a while. So with the the film that you co-directed as well, let's talk about that just a little bit before we get further into this particular election.UGARTE: It's funny because the thing came out in like 2012, but it seems to, and it's short. It's like 21 minutes long, and it seems to unfortunately continually be politically relevant. It was...
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    55 mins
  • Black Women Are a Bellwether to the Country's Anti-Democratic Trends: A Conversation with Leta McCollough Seletzky

    Black Women Are a Bellwether to the Country's Anti-Democratic Trends: A Conversation with Leta McCollough Seletzky
    Nov 21 2024
    In this final episode of the season, I have a casual and meaningful conversation with a friend: essayist and National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Leta McCollough Seletzky. Leta joins me to discuss the impact Black women had on this election, on Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign, and we explore how the campaign affected us personally. We also discuss how the country's treatment of marginalized people, particularly Black women, is a bellwether for anti-democratic trends. This episode was made possible with a grant from the MacArthur Foundation through URL Media. In this Episode The Kneeling Man: My Father's Life as a Black Spy Who Witnessed the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. KFF.org Report: Loneliness and Social Support Networks: Findings from the KFF Survey of Racism, Discrimination and Health Listen to All Electorette Episodes https://www.electorette.com/podcast Support the Electorette Rate & Review on iTunes: https://apple.co/2GsfQj4 Also, if you enjoy the Electorette, please subscribe and leave a 5-star review on iTunes. And please spread the word by telling your friends, family, and colleagues about The Electorette! WANT MORE ELECTORETTE? Follow the Electorette on social media. Electorette Facebook Electorette Instagram Electorette Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    41 mins
  • How the Republican political ecosystem took over America’s courts

    How the Republican political ecosystem took over America’s courts
    Nov 20 2024
    Episode SummaryThe Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson ending a national right to terminate a pregnancy came as an abrupt shock to millions of Americans. But if you had been paying attention beforehand, the verdict was no surprise at all. In fact, the repeal of Roe v. Wade was the culmination of a successful strategy that began in the 1970s to flood the American legal system with activist judges who would impose their viewpoints that were so radical that congressional Republicans didn’t even dare to try to enact them legislatively.As outrageous as the court’s recent rulings have been, what is perhaps even more outrageous is that the right-wing takeover of the judicial system took place almost entirely in full public view, as organizations like the Federalist Society and other deceptively named groups worked together to launder extremist viewpoints and disperse millions of dollars to everyone from law students to Supreme Court justices. It’s yet another instance where the sprawling Republican political ecosystem has overpowered neutral institutions with little resistance.David Brock, founder of Media Matters, is our guest in today’s episode and he lays out how this all happened in his new book, Stench: The Making of the Thomas Court and the Unmaking of America.Can anything be done about this dreadful situation? We discussed that as well. I hope you’ll enjoy. And if you get a chance, please do share this episode on social media to help spread the word. The video of this discussion is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.Related Content—Democrats failed to create an advocacy ecosystem, Kamala Harris suffered for it—Trump’s re-election has permanently discredited timid Democrats’ approach to MAGA threat—Liberal law professors created a ludicrous cult of constitutional law while far-right Republicans were seizing control of the judiciary—Former Trump lawyer John Eastman says Satan is behind legal attempts to hold him accountable—Christian supremacists openly speaking about how they’ll use Supreme Court to install theocracy—The judicial system is rigged and it’s time Democrats told the public about itAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction03:55 — The role of money in judicial campaigns04:48 — The Powell memo and its impact08:23 — The rise of false balance in media18:55 — The Christian Right legal movement's overwhelming Roman Catholic dominance26:24 — How the 1987 failed Robert Bork nomination was the catalyst for the Federalist Society33:33 — Why the current SCOTUS is “the Clarence Thomas Court”37:46 — Liberal leaders and donors have done very little to counteract the right's legal juggernaut44:47 — Brock’s personal relationship to the right-wing judicial takeover50:49 — Proposals for Supreme Court reform54:13 — The importance of media and institutions01:00:01 — ConclusionAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: I was saying before we recorded that it's a bit surreal for us to be talking [00:02:00] because the old me and the old you would have never imagined talking to evil apostates from the right that we both ended up being. But your book that we're going to be talking about here today, it is a really good illustration of how the right uses institutions to change politics, whereas the left uses institutions to make change, and the right is so focused on doing that from an institutional level and financial level. And your book just lays it all out there.DAVID BROCK: Yeah, absolutely. Beginning with a memo that Lewis Powell wrote before he went on the Supreme Court laying out what they want to achieve and then money moved.And you had a group like the Federalist Society, which was founded by three conservative law students that was founded as basically a debating society that over time became incredibly [00:03:00] powerful validator for-- essentially you needed their imprimatur to get a federal judicial nomination or in the George W. Bush administration, certainly any high-level executive branch positions. And they were able to do this having a sort of public facade of debating society, and then a kind of stealth operation where they were highly ideological, but people could be, appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee in a confirmation hearing and say that the parallel society, they didn't even know it had an ideology and so they could deny it and get away with it.And so this was a very persistent group of people that, from the outside, if you don't admire the results, you can admire the steadfastness. And the focus and the money. Money was critical. Once Citizens United came down, the Federalist [00:04:00] Society coffers on the dark money side exploded. Leonard Leo, who runs the Federalist ...
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    1 hr and 3 mins
  • Politics has changed drastically in the social media age, Democrats have not

    Politics has changed drastically in the social media age, Democrats have not
    Nov 12 2024
    Episode SummaryThe 2024 presidential election is over, and the results are not what many of us hoped for. Despite engaging in treason against the United States on January 6, 2021, Donald Trump will become president once again. While there are plenty of things that Kamala Harris could have done better, she was up against several larger obstacles, chief among them the price inflation that has troubled every country in the world after the Covid-19 pandemic and also the gigantic far-right media apparatus that relentlessly tells more than 100 million Americans that Democrats are controlled by Satan and falsely claims that the United States is currently in a recession. Undoubtedly, her being an Asian and Black woman was an obstacle as well.Despite all of these difficulties, however, Harris made a number of solid choices, including speaking clearly about the threat of Trump’s fascistic politics, proudly articulating why reproductive rights matter, picking populist Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, refusing to get dragged into the mud with Donald Trump’s bigotry, and running an incredible social media presence.But none of these tactical successes were sufficient to overcome Democrats’ refusal to invest in advocacy media or to ensure that social gains by one group do not negatively impact those of others. During their administration, Harris and President Joe Biden rolled out a number of policies that undeniably helped millions of regular Americans but instead of frequently and coherently explaining what these policies were and why they mattered, both seemed to think that good ideas would speak for themselves. They did not.Even if they had spoken about them earlier, whatever advantage Harris might have enjoyed from these policies was squandered, when she reoriented her campaign to prioritize outreach to Republicans over pressing the case against income inequality and social stagnation.Joining us to talk about what went wrong is Jim Carroll. He’s an associate editor at Flux and also has his own site, The Hot Screen. The video of this discussion is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.Flux is a community-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, please stay in touch.Related Content* Trump’s victory isn’t a mandate for his authoritarian agenda, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise* Democrats failed to create an advocacy ecosystem, Kamala Harris suffered for it* The science of why the ‘poorly educated’ prefer Republicans* Unlikely voters decided the 2024 election, Trump bet his campaign that he could reach them* Searchable 2024 exit poll survey results* Compare the 2016, 2020, and 2024 exit polls* The mainstream media has been ‘sanewashing’ Republicans long before Trump came along* How Republican elites created a new, politicized version of the ‘Satanic Panic’Audio Chapters00:00 — Introduction03:04 — Pro-democracy arguments and their effectiveness04:52 — Economic conditions and their influence11:08 — The role of media in shaping public opinion14:22 — Trump’s fake economic proposals sounded more ambitious than Harris's at first glance16:47 — Democrats cannot campaign on policy alone19:32 — How media shape public opinion of the economy22:24 — The right’s “regime” narrative is a powerful response to concerns about protecting democracy30:44 — Why social justice needs economic justice to survive32:39 — Kamala Harris's failed pivot toward disaffected Republicans36:26 — The impact of non-voters and younger voters38:00 — Surfing the media wave rather than trying vainly to control it42:31 — Many lessons of Obama and Clinton victories are not relevant to today46:40 — Mainstream media’s failure to tell the full truth about Republicans48:20 — Democrats cannot rely on the mainstream media53:01 — Cause for hope: There’s plenty of money to create a progressive media infrastructureAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: People are floating lots of different ideas about what happened and [00:01:00] and I think we should say perhaps at the outset that, judging the total, the complete vote totals at this point.As we're recording on the 11th of November, it's perhaps a bit premature because there are still a lot of provisional ballots and overseas ballots that haven't been counted yet. But at this point it does seem like that Donald Trump's going to have a very narrow popular vote. When the first time since 2004 for a Republican and, again, well, the totals are going to fluctuate a bit, but it looks like the Trump kept roughly the same amount of voters that he had last time in 2020, whereas Kamala Harris lost a significant percentage of the people who had voted for Joe Biden or couldn't retain them, or they ...
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    1 hr
  • As Harris and Trump head to the finish, does the VP have an edge?

    As Harris and Trump head to the finish, does the VP have an edge?
    Nov 5 2024
    TranscriptElection Day is upon us, and as you surely know, the presidential contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is looking excruciatingly close. After Harris jumped to a small lead once she became the Democratic standard-bearer, Trump has tightened things up, primarily with the assistance of crazed former Democrat Robert Kennedy Junior.How much support each candidate is receiving is truly difficult to say. Normally, public opinion surveys could provide some useful information in this regard but with pretty much every pollster showing the race within their studies’ sampling margins of error, the polls cannot be a reliable guide, especially since many of them seem to be engaging in “herding,” i.e. modifying their results to be similar to previous surveys.With Trump and Harris each getting about 48 percent of the vote, the winner is going to be determined by how many of each candidate’s solid supporters actually turn in their ballots and also by what people who currently say they are undecided end up doing. Oftentimes, these undecided people end up not voting at all or leaving the presidential line blank.Given Trump’s historically tyrannical, corrupt, and incompetent leadership, this race should not be a close one. It is nonetheless. And yet, despite some significant advantages that Trump has on the economy and the approval rating of President Joe Biden, it is my belief that Harris is poised to win a small victory tomorrow.The primary reason I believe this is that Donald Trump is facing the classic celebrity problem: He’s overexposed.After dominating the political landscape for nearly a decade, Donald Trump seems to be losing his grip on some Americans’ minds. At long last, Trump’s never-ending stream of corruption scandals, his non-stop offensive remarks, his ever-expanding retinue of controversial advisers, and his constant grifting have made some of his fans tired of it all.As it has since the beginning of his political career, Trump’s strategy hinges on mobilizing his core supporters. However, the size of his base is not sufficient to secure victory. Realizing this, Trump has focused on attracting low-propensity voters who agree with him on certain issues but lack strong enthusiasm for his candidacy.But the disgraced ex-president is likely drawing on a depleting well. That’s because Trump’s strategy this year is the exact same one that he employed in 2020. While it wasn’t sufficient to get him the victory against Joe Biden, Trump was remarkably successful. After receiving 63 million votes in 2016, Trump juiced his total to 74 million in his re-election bid.But is it possible that Trump reached his ceiling in 2020? We can’t know at this juncture, but it’s possible that he may not have any more “unlikely voters” aside from young adults who have never voted before. The biggest indicator that his might be true is that Trump’s small-dollar donations are significantly lower than they were in 2020. As the Associated Press and Bloomberg reported last month, Trump has raised $260 million in donations of less than $200 each this year compared to $476 million in 2020. After nearly a decade of spamming his followers with endless (and even fraudulent) money requests, Donald Trump may have bled MAGA dry financially.We’ll know soon whether the decrease in donations correlates to Trump receiving fewer votes, but one indication that it might is that Democratic enthusiasm to vote has been consistently higher since Kamala Harris entered the presidential race. According to Gallup, in March of 2024, 57 percent of registered Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters said they were “more enthusiastic than usual” about casting a ballot this year. That jumped to 79 percent in August after Harris jumped in and was at 77 percent in a late October survey, a number even higher than the previous record for Democrats set during the groundbreaking candidacy of Barack Obama in 2008. Republicans, meanwhile are stuck at 67 percent.There might be millions of hidden Trump voters out there who have not been brought into the fold, but if you were to judge by the final campaign rallies he’s holding, the crowds are not indicating this either. Reporters have been filling up social media with video footage showing that the disgraced ex-president is no longer able to pack an arena in swing states, and that many of his supporters are leaving well before the programs are over.While hardcore Republicans agree with the reactionary policies that Trump is promising to enact and pushed through during his single term, his appeal to nonpolitical people is based on his showmanship. He knows how to improvise, he can be funny, and he sometimes say truths that other Republicans are afraid to admit because he doesn’t fully buy into their ideology.But after 9 years, the Trump show has gotten old. He never plays anything new and yet the act keeps getting longer and more boring. If you’ve seen one Trump ...
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    13 mins
  • All Your Election Security Questions Answered: A Conversation with Pamela Smith, the President and CEO of Verified Voting

    All Your Election Security Questions Answered: A Conversation with Pamela Smith, the President and CEO of Verified Voting
    Nov 3 2024
    Pamela Smith, election security expert and President and CEO of Verified Voting, delves into the critical aspects of voting integrity, and gets into the weeds of voting equipment, voter purges, ballot audits, recount procedures, and the hand-counting process, while addressing every conceivable question on election security. We also revisit the historic 2000 Presidential Election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, exploring the notorious "hanging chad" incident. Finally, Pam offers practical advice on what to do if you encounter issues on Election Day—simply call or text 866-OUR-VOTE or visit 866OurVote.org for assistance. This episode was made possible with a grant from the MacArthur Foundation through URL Media. In this Episode Call/Text: 866-Our-Vote 866OurVote.org Verified Voting Listen to All Electorette Episodes https://www.electorette.com/podcast Support the Electorette Rate & Review on iTunes: https://apple.co/2GsfQj4 Also, if you enjoy the Electorette, please subscribe and leave a 5-star review on iTunes. And please spread the word by telling your friends, family, and colleagues about The Electorette! WANT MORE ELECTORETTE? Follow the Electorette on social media. Electorette Facebook Electorette Instagram Electorette Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    47 mins