4: Are Democrats Losing Maine?

Yeah. Look, I think Maine is very Sui generous. How do you say that? That's correct. Okay. I don't think something can be very Sui generous. I think it just has to be Sui generous. Okay. Thanks, Grammarly Gailor. Welcome to Still Counting. I'm Gail and Drake. I'm Sermolum. I'm Nate Silver. The University of Chicago. Have you watched the NFL ever where players give their affiliation? Oh, that's good. That's embarrassing. We're not going to do that. You're embarrassed of Johns Hopkins. I mean, I'm not embarrassed. I'm embarrassed to say where I want to college, not that I went to college. Gail and Drake. Johns Hopkins. Okay. That I have to do for you. Clarem alone. Georgetown. Oh, yeah. I can sing the whole Georgetown fights on. We'll, we'll spare our listeners. Okay. On today's show, the latest midterms pulling and forecast updates, which means new dolphins sounds to make Nate. And then we're going to home in on two states, Maine, where Susan Collins, Hurtiver, may actually have the upper hand according to most, the most recent time, Santa Paul and Ohio, a red state that may return Democrat Sherrod Brown back to the Senate, assuming people realize that he is not the current incumbent. That would help him, though, probably, right? We'll save that for the segment. Okay. Okay. We'll also get into the discourse surrounding Alaska Senate candidate Mary Peltola. I mean, that's going to be a good, people have to stick around for that. We're putting it in here. Dr. Peltola head will be reporting for duty. And we'll, we'll talk about the report of her alleged mistreatment of staffers. Okay. But first, let's start by checking in on the big picture horse race for the House and the Senate. We go to flipper. The fourth. I think that's maybe the first and only time I will be doing that. For those just joining us, flipper is Nate's election model. And flipper right now gives Democrats a roughly 73% chance of winning the Senate. Hillary Clinton's own. She was like 71 percent, I think, on election night. Top time. Pause for Hillary Clinton. That's up from about 67% last week. The forecast currently gives Democrats almost a 93% chance of taking the House. So that's a lot. You guys, it seems like flipper heard last week's bowl case for the Democrats. And it liked it. Nate, what's driving the model up for them? I mean, we've seen just the number going up for Democrats in terms of the generic ballot in particular to a slightly lesser extent. The state polls, you know, look, my thesis is that same as last week, gas costs 450 a gallon. I think it's part of it. Part of it is that when polls are switching over to likely voter polls, they're finding a democratic enthusiasm and turnout advantage. Part of it might be just the bottom falling out from Trump. I mean, as that democratic generic ballot number goes up, then Trump's approval rating is now lower than it was after January 6th, when he was. No, it's, you know, it's as low as it's ever been. Let's keep in mind too. Trump is 80 years old. He's in his second term. People are positioning themselves for the 2028 election already. And people are tired of this. There's been a lot of, there's been a lot of Trump. You've seen, for example, Republican podcasts aren't mentioning Trump as much. I get bored by all the fucking Trump crap on all the democratic newsletters that I subscribe to, right? But, um, 10 years of Trump and we're all already sick of him, is that? Well, I think people are, are fatigued by it, right? And I think his gimmicks, you know, now we're renaming like Ontario to like America and artificial intelligence to superintelligence and. Do you think the bat, I mean, just curious if you think the, the week of news last week where it's kind of like some of the pettier aspects of Trump, like the Kennedy Center and saying he's going to like knock it down and. No, I think that's greasy. Heather Cox, Richard's in clickbait, right? Like I think the people who care about buildings and stuff in Washington DC are a group that's going to vote 99.9% democratic anyway. Um, but I think it's more like when these core promises are failing, when gas is really expensive, when we're at war in the Middle East, exactly the kind of war he said he would avoid or promise to avoid. His stick just seems tired and kind of played out, right? The culture wars kind of work better when he's like, well, Democrats say this and that about me, but the economy is good and you have a job and you want money in your paycheck and stuff is cheap. And like it makes all of the cultural shit seem, um, seem silly. And the other thing too, I've noticed is like there has not been a lot of focus on maybe Mary, Mary Peltola aside, unlike Democrats, foibles as much. I mean, I don't think the midterm convention in Dallas mattered very much, but it was funny that that was like the kind of moment when Democrats have this takeoff in the polls and, and, you know, to center the election around around him. Yeah. Galen, did you see the news that Ken Paxton? There's, I think maybe leaked audio that Ken Paxton was telling a group of people that Trump's midterms convention had heard him might not have been helpful. I mean, that's not really Ken Paxton's issue in Texas. It's been a decade of being viewed as ultimately corrupt, even by his own party, having been impeached by his fellow Republicans. Nate said something early on there that I think is worth talking about, which is the spread between what we're seeing in registered voter polls versus likely voter polls. There's a youth economist poll out yesterday that showed Democrats leading by eight points amongst registered voters and 15 points amongst likely voters. I do think we're getting into territory here where people are going to worry about polling error. I think expectations are being set incredibly high. We might be reaching the point where if Democrats win the national popular vote in the house by eight or nine points, Democrats could be ultimately disappointed by that. And look, likely voter screens are as much art as they are science. Polsters have to make assumptions about who is going to show up based on how you answered the question. Are you likely to vote some demographic information and some voter history information? And that can be tricky. I think in a midterm, there's less of a risk of sort of missing out on less engaged voters because less engaged voters are just less likely. People who are less likely to answer polls are also less likely to vote in a midterm. So some of the same issues that plague general election polling might not plague at this time around. But when I'm seeing a seven point spread between registered voters and likely voters, I'm thinking, hmm, I mean it is fairly conservative, right? Their numbers tend to be in the middle of the distribution in any poll. So for them to be out there is interesting, maybe unexpected. I mean, I think we've seen elections like 2010, which was actually the biggest midterm swing in history because you went from, or at least since World War II because you went from this very, very blue map in '06 and '08 where Obama won basically a landslide against John McCain to kind of a landslide the other direction. So it's like a full 180 degree reversal. That election featured a very large enthusiasm gap. It was something like five or six points difference between registered voters, which at that point Democrats had a big registration advantage and the likely voter electorate that turned up. So like five or six points is actually not totally out of bounds for a midterm. I mean, look, obviously I wouldn't bet on D+15. If it's D+15, then like that's the fucking nuclear apocalypse, right? South Carolina flips and 50 house seats flip, right? That's a little bit hard to believe, but but I'm glad we're not seeing the pollsters heard. We're seeing, you know, the Harvard Harris, Mark Penpole. I don't know that Harvard universities should be, I don't really like Harvard, so fuck them. But like, if I were Harvard University, Harvard University has been showing very bold. You're saying Mark, this is directed mostly at Mark Pen, like, I believe. Yeah, I think Mark Pen is kind of a hack and like, I don't know why Harvard, just for context, right? It was new famously, the Clinton. Well, he was famously like Clinton's Polster and kind of ran Clinton's campaign in 2008, which of course, lost the Barack Obama. We're going wild. A straight. I want to ask. I just don't like, I think you mean higher ed is probably net harmful to that's a. Oh, okay. That's to take for another time, but the con make University of Chicago here. University of Chicago is kind of an exception. As an aside, for folks who are having difficulty following along at home, the reason you're talking about Harvard University's polling is that they partner with Harris X and their recent poll out this week showed that the generic ballot is tied between Republicans and Democrats amongst registered voters and that Democrats only lead by two percentage points with likely voters, which is a significant outlier. Uh, when looking at the wrong, we welcome Polster diversity. We, we don't want hurting. I just, if I were the University of Harvard, Harvard University, I'm not sure. I'm not sure that Mark Pen will be on my a list of people that I want my brand associated with going back to, to, to the actual, uh, problem at hand, you wrote this week or last week about democratic gains mostly being in red states. Can you break down that observation a little bit? Yeah. This might have to do with gas, some particularly diesel prices where you, all these corn producing states in the Midwest, uh, you know, states with trucking states that produce petroleum. Um, but that's where you've seen, you know, the most shocking shifts, if you believe the polls are in states like Iowa, it cancels us Nebraska where you have a quasi independent, basically a Democrat running in, in Osborne. Um, that's where you say in Texas, right? So that whole kind of like tornado alley, uh, rollo states is looking pretty twisty for, for Republicans right now, but I'll link through on that metaphor. But at the same time, I mean, we're going to be probably reminding you about this every week. Those are also the kind of states where the polling error has been concentrated in recent years. You know, the thesis the polls are showing is that all these voters that shifted to Trump so working class whites and Hispanics, especially kind of working class Hispanics, are shifting out of that coalition. Is that a plausible story? Well, it makes sense if Trump is now much more unpopular than the people that migrated toward him might be the first ones out, you know, what I think, the intersection of funny way with the, with the luckily voters, stuff too, right? Like, I kind of think one story talk gets really bad for Republicans is that these people just don't turn out, right? They're like, Trump is not really keeping his promises. I don't like James Talleriko, but I'm sure as fuck, I'm not going to vote for Ken Paxson, I'm just going to, you know, so the lack of turnout, I think is a plausible story. At the same time, like, would anyone be really shocked if there was another polling error in the direction? I wouldn't think so. Patrick Orfini, a Republican pollster, responded to your red states getting blue analysis with a chart that read, quote, the red of the state, the more the polls overstated the Democrat, Gail and Nate, do you agree with that? I feel like we're like a rhyming, the red of the state, the more the Nate or something like that, right? I feel like it needed to rhyme. I think this is an interesting suggestion. I mean, he points to actual data going back over several elections. When I look at the swings that we're seeing underneath the hood, this is how I contextualize what we're seeing. We are seeing significantly larger swings with Hispanic voters and younger voters. We are seeing significantly smaller swings with white voters and older voters. So we're going to get into this, but a place like Maine, you're not going to expect to swing all that much. A place like Texas, which is young and diverse, you're going to expect to swing a lot. Looking at a place like Texas, I actually don't think that's a prime suspect for questioning the polls as much as say Iowa or Ohio, because Iowa and Ohio as Nate said, over-represent non-college educated white voters who polls have missed. And actually, he posted some other data as well, Patrick Rafini did, saying that in echelon insights, own polling, they target places like Iowa, Ohio, and Indiana as being the most likely places to be missing strong Republican voters, which means both they prefer the Republican at the Senate or House level, and they are also going to vote, right? Because there's a lot of folks that pollsters are missing, who just as I've said, aren't going to vote. That would be why I would be looking mostly at the Midwest in that case, and not as much at a place like say Maine or Texas. Did you have a response to Rafini? Well, look, I mean, to some extent, this is why Flipper combines polls with priors and fundamentals and other kinds of data. As compared to our presidential model, it actually, like in 2020, it actually had Maine as a toss up with Susan Collins, even though Sarah Gideon led in all the polls, because it's like the prior at that point was so strong for Collins. I mean, the other thing I'd say though, if we are in like a D plus nine national environment, then through uniform swing, then like Iowa is only a R plus three state or something like that. Texas R plus three, Ohio is zero. So like it's not, it's not that crazy, but I don't know. And I asked where, I mean, you mentioned Maine a little bit like our last stop on our sort of midterms, what's new roundup. There were some interesting conflicting signals this weekend polling or last week, I guess, the time Sienna Portland press herald poll of Maine had Susan Collins leading Troy Jackson by three points, 49 to 46. What do you guys make of this outlier? I mean, it is literally outlier because if you look at the polling average right now, Troy Jackson leads by two and a half points, but this gets at something that I was just saying before, which is we are seeing sort of older, wider populations swing less. And so I think that's part of the reason that you would see perhaps like a stickier population in Maine, but also the fact that, you know, Susan Collins has a long established independent brand. And Troy Jackson is quite literally not the person that Maine voters chose. Yeah. Look, I think Maine is very silly generous. How do you say that? That's correct. Okay. I don't think something can be very silly generous. It is. I think it just has to be silly generous. Okay. Thanks, Grammarly Gailer. Maine's the weirdest, I love Maine. Maine is a top five-nate state, I would say. What it's in the top five, just sidebar for a second. New York, Michigan, Maine, Colorado is pretty good. No, but Colorado is great. Great Sands National Monument. Yeah. I mean. He's looking at the United States. Are you sure? Have you ever been to Hawaii? Once. Yeah. Okay. It's very beautiful. It's way more beautiful and we're more expensive than I was expecting. That sounds right. That sounds right. Now that Zuck has bought up half of Hawaii, right? Can I also just say something more broadly here, which is that if you look back at the last midterms in 2022 and you compare those results to the presidential results in 2020, you see a red wave in Florida and New York and a blue wave in Pennsylvania in 2022. I don't expect there to be that much divergence this time around. There were unique circumstances, especially around dogs because in states where people literally felt like abortion was on the ballot, they were more likely to turn out for Democrats, whereas in places like New York, where it wasn't really under question, there was a backlash to an unpopular Biden administration and unpopular Democrats running the state. So I think in a midterm where there is a bunch of different contests with a bunch of different people at the top of the ticket, unlike a presidential election, where basically it's a single contest fought across 50 different states, we should expect candidate quality to matter. We should expect campaign money to matter. It's a heterogeneous kind of election. Exactly. And so I think in general, broadly, we will see a shift left, but I think the shift left could be, well, first of all, we could see actually a shift right in Maine. We're likely to see a shift right in Maine. But in this shift left will vary dramatically based on the demographic makeup of a state based on the candidates that are running there. We shouldn't expect uniformity in this race. It's kind of interesting because the country in general post, you know, Biden and the second term term with all of these conflicts does feel like it is ideologically influx. And like we've talked about that, like, especially in the first show where we talked about like, are we in the middle of, are we at the beginning of this sort of epic shift in demographics? And that's kind of an interesting little, I don't know. Yeah. Remember, there was actually Democrats lost ground, couple of Harris lost ground in 24 particularly in big urban cities like New York, right? Or kind of inner city, Chicago, you know, parts of that might be kind of because people think these areas are not governed particularly well. You're going to have the abundance rebellion, right? You know, and if you're in New York, you're still very aware of what it's like to be in a state governed by Democrats. If you're in Kansas, then it'll actually has a Democratic governor. But like, but you're maybe not as much. So, you know, like if there is dislike for incumbent parties in general, it's probably worse for Trump. I mean, Republicans have, you know, 75% of the power, I mean, the governors, there are lots of Democratic governors still, right? But if they have the House and the Senate and the presidency and the Supreme Court, 80% right and governors are kind of split, but, but, but where you have a legacy of, of questionable Democratic governance, then, you know, but that would be more efficient for Democrats, right? If their margins come down in California and New York and Illinois, they still win them by a lot, but it makes their map a bit more efficient. The Electoral College popular wrote gap, um, decreased, I mean, no one cares, right? It's a consolation prize, but like that gap actually decreased for Kamala Harris relative to what it was for Biden in 2020. Still counting is brought to you by Zip Recruiter. We are in peak back to school post-labor day, everyone's so busy, everyone's trying to save time. I mean, if I know a busy man, it's, it's, Nate, how are you trying to save time? I hate to admit it. I've kind of become open the laptop in the cab kind of guy, right? Red flag. Red flag, car sickness prevents me from doing that, but anyway, we all have our time saving hacks for everyday life, but if you're a business owner, how can you save time hiring? That's Zip Recruiter. Zip Recruiter has a new feature that quickly lets you see the most interested qualified candidates first. So you save time by meeting the right people faster. And right now you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/counting. Zip Recruiter's powerful matching technology finds qualified candidates quickly. Candidates tell you in their own words why they're interested in your job. No wonder Zip Recruiter is the number one, number one, rated hiring site based on G2. Save time and meet great candidates. Sooner, maybe you can even stop working on your laptop in the cab, you know, if you have, if you save all that time from Zip Recruiter with Zip Recruiter, four out of five employers who post on Zip Recruiter, get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/counting. That's ziprecruiter.com/counting, meet your match on Zip Recruiter. - Cut it on for it. - Hang out with the bus. - We're actually going to a Ristik County, mostly, Troy Jackson's own. The main race dominated the headlines obviously during the primaries with scandal plagued Graham Platner as one of these central characters in this sort of outside versus establishment debate. Yes, Nate, skeptical. - Skandal feels too passive. Scandal inducing Graham Platner. - Scandalist Graham Platner. - Scandal inducing. No, he's like, he's the cause of, you know, he's not afflicted with scandals, he's a fucking. - He is afflicted with scandal. He inflicted himself. - Now who's the patent? Okay, but Nate, he was one of these central characters in the outside versus establishment debate that we had going among Democrats in the primaries before he dropped out after much haranging. But I do want to talk about the dynamics of how the race has changed since then. Let's start with Troy Jackson as the candidate that replaced Platner. When he entered the race, obviously, there was some relief, I guess, because he was seen as a more generic candidate. But what's our sense now? As it's been a couple of months, people are getting to know him, do we see him as a good quality candidate? - Ooh, I sort of see him a little bit differently than generic, but I don't know, Nate, I'll go first, Nate, and then you can pick it up for me, which is, I mean, he used to be a Republican then he became an independent and then he became a Democrat. - Generic for me, and I guess, right, we should say that. And that transformation, on one hand, you could say, oh, it would make him be seen as somewhat heterodox or somewhat moderate. But I think he is now in the Bernie Sanders 2020 era, which is like when Sanders in 2016, he was like totally progressive on the economic stuff, but on the second amendment and immigration and a lot of the quote unquote woke stuff, that was left totally off of his platform. But by the time you get to 20, 20, 20, - Woke was a thing, woke wasn't a thing. I'm not gonna put woke and air quilts or scare quilts. I refuse. - I don't mean to say that it wasn't a thing. I just mean that I'm stealing other people's phrase. But anyway, so by the time you get to 2020, Bernie Sanders is more embedded in the Democratic Party and it's socially liberal policies. And one, I think that Troy Jackson is there now. I don't think he can be sort of mistaken as anything, but an out and out progressive on every single issue. And he has quite publicly and main at least jettisoned any of his heterodox views on guns or same-sex marriage or abortion or what have you. And all of those policies, being pro-abortion, being pro-same-sex marriage and to some extent being questioning second amendment rights is popular in Maine. So he did that because he wanted to be more in line with Maine, but it makes him less viewed as an independent voice or what have you. I think his biography also gives a little interesting pushback to that, like genuinely a working class candidate. I think I read somewhere that he'd be the first, he'd be the only member of the Senate with an associate's degree. So very much of his place, like a Rustic County, which I gave a shout out to at the top, is have you guys been there? I actually did. - I am not into foreigners. - I reported a piece actually for the month before the 2016 election about whether or not those voters were gonna flip for Trump. And it was, I mean, Rustic County is basically Canada, huge white open spaces. In 2016, it was one of the first places where I saw in the North Confederate flags, so that it has that kind of culture of like second amendment, right? - Yeah. - And I do think his, he obviously has progressive politics, but they're also progressive politics based in union politics. And so that adds, I think, an interesting tension to George Jackson. - You go far in the North and it kind of wraps around, and it almost becomes the salad, right? If you hear Troy Jackson, he sounds, just a little Southern and French Canadian thing, right? He's kind of, kind of plain looking little overweight, right? So he doesn't present as like an a feat, a fat, I don't even, I can't pronounce words today. Is it a feat or a fat? - A feat. I mean, I guess maybe it was the French Canadian, it would be a feat. - A theft. - I don't actually don't think it is. - Doesn't present as like, in that way, or this kind of like, cosplay, village people, working class person like Graham Platner did, right? - No, instead they have him cosplaying as a teenage girl drinking boba tea on Twitter. - Have you seen the boba tea thing? - So. - I was genuinely confused by that. I really actually wasn't sure what they were going for with that. - I mean, I think it's, well, let me, we're data platforms. - Please, yes, yes. - We're going into the data here, which is what I think they're trying to get at. If you look at the most recent New York Times to see on a college poll, Troy Jackson's net favorability, negative eight, Susan Collins, net favorability, positive three. I think what they're getting at is that Troy Jackson is not liked. He's, I don't know if you want to say he's not like a ball, but he's not particularly liked amongst main voters. And so I think they're trying to make him more relatable. - I don't think they actually did the boba tea thing. - Yeah, I think they intentionally misguided, but I think it was certainly intentional. - What happened to get all caught? I go to like a coffee now and like, half these shops, they don't even have fucking coffee. They have all types of matcha shit and everything's green, right? Coffee's supposed to be brown or black. - Oh my God. - Is this your modern version of like, "Oh, I don't eat sushi." And like, you know, that is an indicator of voting for Republicans. - I will say I am alienated by some coffee orders, but you, this officially means you've crossed odorant over into like crank territory. Like, what is all this green shit? - One of the best, one of the best indicators for whether you're going to vote for Democrats or Republicans is if you like, if you know, this is literally impoling that Joan Williams, who studies, sort of working class politics has done, is like, do you want healthy portions of home cooking or do you want diverse ethnic cuisine? And we know what Nate wants. - The AC diverse ethnic cuisine. (laughing) Okay, anyway, get us back on track, Claire. - It has been an interesting, I guess, weak for getting to know Troy Jackson. Rebecca Tracer wrote a piece on him in New York magazine and she sort of pinpointed this interesting dynamic, which is going on between in-state organizers who sort of want him to be, you know, I guess it's the sort of let Troy be Troy thing, stay sort of populist, the sort of, you know, I'm just a union organizer, kind of vibe, versus the out of state establishment ofizers, like the Chuck Schumer Alice, right? Chuck Schumer is very much the boogie man of this piece. And those advisors want him to move towards the center. So I'm curious, Nate, you're making curious faces over here. - No, it means a weird state. You don't have like a typical center right suburban night voters in Maine so much. You have a year. - They're around here. - You're eclectic collections of voters. I mean, he might as a state that has voted for Paul LePage. He was a very Trump-y governor. It's voted for Olympia Snow, and could you name Olympia Snow? - It is a great, wow, honestly. - And Susan Collins, voted for a more conventional Democrat and Janet Mills, the first district, which is the more southern one by Portland, more urban-- - Vacation land? - You know, I said some more conventional progressive Democrats. It was prepared to support Graham Platner, at least as the nominee until they came through that he was a dirt bag, allegedly dirt bag. And so, but it's eclectic. I think there's less of an ideological punishment in Maine. - But what do you make of the sort of the, to caricature it, the establishment, boba tea, pushing, Washington consultants coming in and trying to push him towards the center? Does that appeal to main swing voters, do you think? Like, is that a smart strategy, broadly? - I believe in general that candidates who are more moderate, win more often, holding other factors equal. I think it's probably less true in Maine than in some states. I think, like, I think a lot of this, these stories that are being told is, 'cause if you were to lose, you're gonna have a lot of infighting. The Platner people will say, you shouldn't have kicked my guy out, right? The anti-platner people will say, well, we should have nominated Jared Golden or someone more moderate or Janet Mills even, right? And so, you have like, you know, it's, to me, I don't really see a lot of news. I mean, it's a good story, right? It's well reported. I don't know if there's a lot of like, news there. - Galen, we haven't mentioned Susan Collins very much in this segment. Maybe we should talk about her. - We will, don't worry. Galen, I actually, I was kind of thinking of this story, the Rebecca Tracer story alongside the Mary Peltulo story, 'cause it felt very much like, staffers run amok. Like, staffers talk to journalists, which by the way, I love, it's talk to journalists staffers, but I'm curious about your take on the story. - Yeah, I mean, not to fall back on the data once again, but I'll say, I'm reading from a New York Times poll here, which was an outlier, but not by a ton, and they have the best cross-tab data for me to look at, and they ask the most comprehensive questions. As I just wanna say, amongst the main likely voters, this is how folks identify very liberal or somewhat liberal, 29%, moderate, 32%, somewhat or very conservative, 37%, that means the liberal crowd in Maine is clearly a minority, right? Fewer than moderates, fewer than conservatives. And I wanna say here that I think a lot of the people who were paying a lot of attention to grand planters, campaign and got really excited about it, were younger, quite online people, even sort of parents in the Portland area or whatever, these are still people who are maybe in their 40s or something like that. Amongst the likely voter electorate in Maine, 10% of the electorate is under the age of 30. - I believe Maine is the oldest state in the country, only 29% trend is under the age of 45. So we are talking about a very old, I mean, very old, we're talking about a very old, very white state that means more moderate to conservative than liberal. And I think that people put a lot of like their progressive energy into or like hopes for sort of a progressive resurgence in Maine. Maybe that's the right state to do it in, but maybe not actually and Maine is not Vermont. It's certainly not Massachusetts. And so I think people should should be a little more thoughtful about the state that we're actually talking about. I just want to say one more thing here, which is really interesting. They asked folks, what's your opinion about A-PAC? A majority of Maynors did not even know enough about A-PAC to form an opinion about what it is. So this is where I, my biggest thoughts reading the story were, well, I also want, it's about Canada quality, basically. And I want to point out something just a little note here that Maine's current democratic governor, Janet Mills, has not yet endorsed Troy Jackson. And I think, you know, Troy Jackson has been a mainstay of state politics for years. I think, you know, there are some stories about him being, again, in fairness because we're going to talk about a female lawmaker having a bad temper later in the show. Some stories about him having being ill tempered, having a bad relationship with someone like Janet Mills. But I think to be fair, to kind of like the democratic consultants who are brought in from DC, because I think that the story was a little bit more slanted towards the side of like, let Troy be Troy, right? He is not a polished speaker. He is not a polished candidate. I mean, and I think like he actually just like while we were, while we've been recording, he has just had to apologize for this, the following comment, bringing up APEC that he made on Maine television the other night. And he said, it's unfortunate that there are people here in Maine that don't like to use that term, the term being genocide about the war in Gorangaza because, you know, they're Jewish and what that means to them with the Holocaust. Now, I bring that up because that's not a polished candidate thing to say, right? To be like, because you're Jewish, right? It's, I think his democratic consultants are probably correct in giving him and the story talks about this language to talk about these really hot button issues that don't, that speak more to the Maine voter who might not care about what APEC has to do with it. And that, that kind of like plays into the online discourse. And I found that to be sort of a perfect example of a total own goal. Yeah. I mean, I think in many ways, Troy Jackson has become a more online candidate, right? I think, I think, I think that a lot of the enthusiasm around Troy Jackson and Grant Platner was sort of more online people, the kind of highly engaged, politically inclined person who's going to turn out in a primary. And I think he's inherited that in some ways. Like, I actually think that the vast majority of Maineers really don't care about this issue at all in terms of how they're going to vote in the midterms in 2020. And I think like Tom Donney is sort of a perfect example of a high quality candidate who is also very online famously, right? Like famously his campaign was sort of his online videos, boosted him into power has the same politics, but aggressively talks about like when he's in interviews, like aggressively talks about I'm fixing pop holes or we're starting this commission to address anti-semitism. He is very conscious of the online perception of him. And in his interviews, does the very sophisticated thing of trying to, you know, frankly sort of soften those edges that people might perceive about him online. And is also a politician in New York City, ultimately. No, no, no, exactly. Where it's more of an issue. I think we should, Nate, you said we haven't talked much about Susan Collins. Susan Collins is a strong candidate here. I mean, like, if Troy Jackson were running against replacement level Republican in 2026 in Maine, as much as he might not be the best candidate that Democrats could have picked, I don't think that we would be having this conversation at all. Susan Collins, as much as once again, the online folks may meme her for saying that she's concerned a lot has a strong independent brand is seen relatively favorably in Maine, especially in an environment where Trump is deeply underwater. And when likely Maine voters were asked, would you pick Jackson or Collins on this host of issues? She led Jackson on being an effective senator, supporting American manufacturing, bringing money and resources to Maine. And so I think people see her as competent and having sort of worked for a long time. That's her ads are all about. It's like her and a suit walking around Washington. She's not running away from that. What do you think about that? And with these smaller states, being a standard is more important, because securing federal funding for various programs and special interests and parks and everything like that becomes more important. In these smaller states, people might have more literal first-person interaction with the senator or their staves or someone's knocked in a door at some point, very different than like a big media market state, like Pennsylvania or Texas or something like that. In the governor's race, Democrats are up by 11.6 points in Maine. So clearly, there is a gap. And I think that gap is more about Collins than about Jackson, right? I mean, Jackson is a little Kamala heresy in a sense of like, so he was third place, not by much, but third place in the gubernatorial primary, better than Kamala Harris is 75th place to whatever in the, you know, 2020 Democratic nomination. But, but you know, not somebody who had electric power to excite people, almost kind of a compromise where, you know, I think that the platinum folks, not clear how much leverage they ultimately have, are like, look, we're going to have a little say in who gets picked here or else we're going to be a pain in the ass and it better be a progressive. And that was kind of the logical thing to do, but he hasn't shown himself to be some type of electoral juggernaut exactly to Collins and dobs be carrying more resonance in this race. I mean, should it, I have no idea is it clearly not, right? It's such an interesting and I fading, fading, I guess. Yeah, I mean, a few things have happened is that post dobs, we actually haven't seen any significant drop off in terms of abortions in America. There have been a lot of stories that have been concerning about medical issues in states where, you know, abortion has been banned and things like that. But I don't think particularly in a state like main women feel like they don't have access to abortion and things like that. In an environment where, you know, people are so focused on the cost of living and the like, it's just not going to, it's just not going to come to the top. Do we think that the pro public, a story had any impact or will have any impact in the race, the one sort of suggesting corruption in her circle? Like, I'm just trying to think of all the sort of October surprises for Susan Collins potentially. This is what's hard when you're tracking, you know, 35 separate Senate races and all these house races. It's, you know, what bubbles up to us, boba tees up to us in this, and here in Brooklyn, I tend to think there's not a ton of people reading that story. There's nothing kind of sticky and, and, and substantive enough. But, um, but I know, maybe we should go back and just have a, maybe we should do like a, you know, how like Bill Simmons has the rewatchables. What if we just have a episode where we're just watching campaign commercials and like narrating them in real time? I believe that's called. Yeah, that would. Yeah, about the pro public investigation. I mean, I have read the first half of it. I haven't even made my way all the way through it. And so, I would say if it's my job to read it and I've only read half of it, maybe that tells you how many, how many people paid attention to it. But I do want to say that, you know, clearly corruption matters to voters. The argument just published a slate of polling this week where they allow Americans to choose their two most important issues to that. And like a lot of people are going to choose the economy first. So maybe their second issue is becomes interesting or indicative. And this was the first poll where they saw corruption rise ahead of immigration. So something like 22, 23% of Americans said corruption is their most important issue. And there was, so it's pretty high up there. And there was no difference between college educated voters and non-college educated voters on how much they cared about corruption. Democracy was also up there. It was like 20, some percent, low 20s percent. But there was a huge gap between college educated voters and non-college educated voters, which is to say college educated voters, like 28% of them say democracy is their most important issue. And those are every single one of those people is voting for a Democrat. But non-college educated voters care less. There's something like 15%. And so I think corruption, that issue is something that ties together a lot of concerns that range from maybe in a more sort of quote-unquote down market fashion, the Epstein type stuff, and sort of Hillary Clinton has been in politics forever. And these people, Nancy Pelosi's stock trades ranges from that to all of the different stories you hear about Trump's crypto and blah, blah, blah. And so I think it could be a potential vulnerability for Susan Collins, that she has been in office for so long. In an environment where people are saying we want term limits, we don't think politicians should be sticking around forever. And this story, I mean, we haven't gotten into the specifics about it, but it's basically, you know, a suggestive of a quid pro quo, which is that someone sort of working to try to reelect allegedly, Susan Collins, was promising, you know, certain contras, to this firm if they got money. - It speaks to, I read the pro-publica story. It's a real story. It does not sort of, it's hard to directly tie it to Susan Collins being like, "I did it," or whatever, right? Which people sort of love and I think prosecutors love. But I do think it speaks to the kind of Baroque corruption that we have right now with the Trump family sort of everywhere else in politics. That a story like this is kind of like, "All right, well like, I mean, you know." And it also was, you know, when the Trump DOJ came in, they sort of decided we're not going to pursue this case. It was something that was brought during the Biden administration or sort of investigated during the Biden administration. But I still think like across the board, democratic administrations or public administrations, public corruption is a huge important thing for us to follow both as journalists and as the US government. And the DOJ just like doesn't do a lot of public corruption stuff anymore. And that's L-Problemo, right? In the age of, as I said, Baroque corruption. So maybe the pro-publica story should be more of a thing. But, you know, the fact that people, like, you know, not to call you out, but like the fact that you can't get through half of it because it's like, we live in an age, we live in an age to be fair. It is your right, but it's also, but I more mean, I mean that empathetically where it's like, we also live in the age where like, Tom Trump Jr's wedding was partially paid for by a Russian oligarch who used to be in a biker gang who has closed ties to Putin. Like, that's a better story, right? - That was impressive, Claire. - Thank you. - Thank you, yeah. - Let's talk about Ohio. And for this, I'm taking the reins back, Claire. I'm going to be asking you guys some questions because it's your home state. - Is it a top five third state? - Oh, me, oh, my, oh, Cleveland, Ohio. - I'll tell you one thing about Ohio. Cedar Point, fucking rocks. - One of my siblings goes every summer with his family to Cedar Point. - It's the best of me as an parking America. - I have never been because we went to the 13 original colonies on our summer vacations. - I mean, the lack of apart from Cedar Point, the lack of good vacation destinations to Ohio. - No, no, no, no, that is actually not true. The Lake Erie Islands are like really nice vacation spots. - I'm resting in control. Here we go. So, forward Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown is back after losing his seat in 2024. He's challenging Republican incumbent John Houston who was appointed to replace JD Vance when he became Vice President. In the polling average, Brown leads Houston by five points and Flipper gives him a 76% chance of winning. This is an interesting race because we were just talking about quite popular incumbent in Susan Collins and how that's giving her some advantage. And so maybe we can talk a little bit about incompetency here. Unlike Collins, Houston lasts real name recognition. A lot of Ohioans apparently have no idea who he is according to an article in the New York Times published Monday. And according to a bowling green state university poll, nearly a quarter of Ohioans think Sherrod Brown is the actual incumbent. In the article, Republican strategists frame this as a positive for Houston because voters are overall pissed about the status quo. Claire, is that a good take or bad take by those Republican strategists quoted in the New York Times? Well, it's like the only take they can take, right? I did, I thought it was a very funny framing and totally rings true because Sherrod Brown is such a political institution in Ohio, such a kind of like when I, he's got the voice, he's got the kind of like, he's a little bit, you know, shlumpy, like he's just a sort of long time figure on the national level in in Ohio. And John Houston has kind of, he's been in Ohio politics for a long time as well, but he's sort of, he's sort of labored in the state house and sort of not really risen. I, you know, we're gonna talk about this a little bit, like there are some interesting political ads that are bubbling up in Ohio as there always are, but it mostly has to do with trying to paint the candidates. And I think it's actually a not incredibly great year for John Houston to have to get Ohio voters to know him because there are a lot of, you know, we're gonna talk about how big an issue data centers are throughout the country, but in Ohio in particular, he's running with an unpopular president. And I think, you know, you can make the argument that I think the Republicans would that like, okay, listen, we're gonna get our low propensity voters to turn out when, you know, Trump sort of gives him the high sign, but there's also really big, you know, there's excerpts outside of Columbus where they are Republican voting, but maybe they're, not maybe, they are trending a little bit more 'cause they're filled with college educated voters. They are trending increasingly a little bit more, like less and less Republican. So it's like a little bit of a, I mean, that's why it's such an interesting state, I think. - Well, let's just the point I was trying to make about vacation land. If you look at Michigan, one thing that's helped Democrats there is that Western and Northern Michigan have become this like little liberal enclave more than they were when I was growing up there. And Ohio doesn't quite have like similar areas like that. It has actually some appellation parts. You don't want Michigan, but still Brown, let's just review the history of Brown, right? 2018, he is the incumbent Senator. He wins by almost 7.6.8 if I'm doing my math right here. So 2018 is the other Trump midterm that we have to go by historically, and he wins pretty easily. 2024, he loses to Bernie Moreno by 3.6 points, 3.5 points, which is much, much, much better than Kamala Harris did in Ohio. So over-performed by 11 points. - Right, so you up from Kamala by whatever, 6.5, 7 points, you lose. But if we're in a, I mean, this one is almost like the, you know, if the math is right, then this is a pretty straightforward election. And like also the fact that he stood is not an elected incumbent means that we treat him in the model as an open seat race, right? The benefit of being an incumbent means that the voters actually voted for you before. You have that data showing that like you won before, it's not that people really like incumbents these days. They don't, it's that, it's that you have proven track record with actual voters and not just get a point into the seat. And so he doesn't have that validation from having even one primary person say. - Yeah, the other thing I think with Brown as a Democrat is that he is, he's still very much in line for decades with Ohio politics. So he's always been anti-free trade. He's always been kind of protectionist, which he could run on when Trump first came to power. He was like, well, I've had that idea for a long time too. He's an older Democrat. He doesn't have the same kind of like, he's pro-Israel, right? So there's no attack ad that you could make on that front. Like Sherrod Brown is like basically what you said we were saying earlier, he's like an online liberal. You kind of can't make that attack. So that sort of points to, again, when we're talking about candidate quality, Sherrod Brown feels very much in line with like mostly the economic politics of the state. And almost defensively, it's like, well, you can't make a totally bad attack line about it. - Yeah, this gets at this question about ease and competency, an advantage or a disadvantage. The Republican strategist in this article are saying, it's a disadvantage. And certainly if you are an unpopular incumbent, it's a disadvantage, but that maybe gets a little too cute because we're also watching an election where John Assoff, a popular incumbent who has established something of maybe an independent brand for himself in Georgia, might win Georgia by like approaching 10 points, eight to 10 points. We're talking about Susan Collins, who also strong independent brand is running significantly ahead of Republicans in Maine. And so can we try to maybe get a little more specific about this sort of cute question or framing about, oh, well, it's now bad to be an incumbent. So if we can just make Sherrod Brown seem like the incumbent, he'll be easier to be. Because we're like looking at Collins and John Assoff, I would think, well, maybe if he has a strong more independent brand, that doesn't actually work. - Yeah, I'm not sure if it's so bad to be an incumbent when you're the party not in power, right? Like Assoff is supposed to be vulnerable. He's like not at all vulnerable, at least based on the polls. There aren't a lot of other good examples because most seats are being defended by Republicans. But yeah, look, our model contains like four or five different ways to measure and come and see. There's how much you win in the last election. There's actually one for how much you defy your party, where if you are more bipartisan that helps a little bit, there are things for like the size of the state, like amnesty smaller state. You have more constituent services. So you see, you know, Maine, Alaska, Hawaii, these small remote states tend to have larger incumbent effects. But no, I think the fact that like people know what they're getting with Brown, he's been elected quite a few times. He's always over-performed, Democrats declining margins in Ohio. I think it probably helps him. - Yeah, I wouldn't, I mean, you know, you see Republicans saying like Trump's good, like Trump visiting the state, Trump campaigning for us is gonna help a lot. To be honest, I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to bet on that strategy 'cause if you're thinking about like a midterm electorate and it's maybe those more informed, higher educated voters turning out, I think those people are more likely to be turned off by Trump lately, by the war in Iran, by sort of his, the corruption to talk about it again. Like I think you're, when you're bringing him to the state, it's a little bit of a risky game and I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to be John Houston running with that necessarily. you've also even seen what six to seven percent of Ohio and voters in a general election vote for both Trump and Sherrod Brown at the same time. So people don't necessarily make that distinction either. Okay, so being in New York, this is one of those times when I like to think about one of the few privileges we actually have when it comes to electoral politics, which is that we don't get ads. You can watch Hulu or HBO maps right now and not be inundated with like so and so is going to trans your kids or like so and so is going to like make your lunch unaffordable. But that's not the case for all of the states that we're talking about right now. Claire and you have picked up on some of this. Having your nose to the ground in Ohio politics, you've picked up on some of this. Well, I just I think I do have a maybe an a slightly Ohio skewing, maybe like 15% of my algorithm is Ohio politics stuff. Well, I think we have one of these or two of these memes. So why don't we play them? Today, I'm going to teach you how to replace a bathroom sink faucet and bathroom sink drip. Sherrod Brown is picking your kids up from school and forcing them to have transgender surgery. Senator John Houston used $36,000 in campaign donations to buy Filipino hookers, Vivek Ramaswamy made billions off of his failed biotech company now. The only pump and dump schemes he does are found in the toilet bowl. Okay, what was what the fuck was that? Is that a I'm no longer a scarative? Yeah, it's some guy who's made a clear show and tell item for the week. Yeah, it's my show and tell it's some guy who's made several different versions of this. And then there's like I couldn't find it, but there's some hilarious thing of like a little kid imitating all of these attack ads, which I could totally picture myself doing when I was a little kid. It's just like it really is everywhere. I mean, I do I do remember that as being like a kid growing up in Ohio. I think there's a lot of takes about ad spending. We go that Rebecca Tracer article that you mentioned when we were talking about Troy Jackson is both saying like also some college is spending so much money on attack ads against Troy Jackson that like of course he's going to be underwater. And then the same article was also saying that Troy Jackson's campaign spends too much money on ads because all of the campaign staffers from DC make more money off of, you know, TV ads spending than they do off of other sort of real world type activities. And you'll hear sort of, well, this person has so much money. Of course, they're going to win. And then also like this person won despite the fact that so much money was used against them. Do we have a house position on how much all of this ad money campaign money matters? Like because it has become, it's gotten to the point where like your people, it seems like are just laughing about it. Well, it all depends on how effective your messaging is, right? Like you could get into a whole subset of people, democratic consultants dissecting the 2024 election where they say in the last month to six weeks of the campaign, they had totally incoherent and improper messaging for certain swing states. So like, yes, I think a lot of ad money matters. Are you doing the right thing? Like you could make the point here based on the memes, which is probably not a great way to, you know, necessarily dive into the data. But like maybe the transgender attack ads are at this point just sort of like farcical to voters who are to bring up Nate's favorite point, worried about the easel prices. Yeah, look, every now and then an ad breaks through and helps find a narrative. I think the they then ad for Trump in 24 was a good example of that. I think if you have to give them some credit for like why they ran that ad more than I think maybe literally any other ad in American political history. But for the most part, unless it really kind of tangibleizes a point that voters were having trouble articulating, it's in one ear and out the other, right? Advertising is not terribly effective. You know, advertising that's done on TV is easy to to skip. And everyone in the system has like an incentive to hype up the value of advertising because, you know, they want you to do more money and, and, you know, even, you know, news outlets make a lot of money from political ads too, right? The ad rates are very high and it's helping for like local TV stations. But like I think money in anything above the house, so Senate governor and the presidency, I think 96% of that, that's not scientific estimate, is based on earned media. You know, spending matters more for like awareness. Like if I don't know who my city council member is in New York, because I move, like probably seeing some signs, so here's a friendly looking person, right? And they had a friendly looking person heading up flyers and things like that. Like that might that might help a little bit for low name identification. But defining a narrative through through paid media is is really hard, right? Like in like the so Trump had these ads that they were running during the NFL last week. Um, that were like about his, I first of all, I think there's some scandal about like, I don't even taxpayer dollars, right? But like, I'm like, well, I don't think this adds very effective. He's like mumbling kind of about like, expel the warmongers from Washington. Um, yeah. And it's like, you know, sometimes the ad probably hurts because the politician is not very self aware about about what their message is or you have a, you know, the wrong type of campaign consultant or whatever else. But yeah, I think, I think money is overrated in high profile elections. And I give this advice every 10 shows or something, right? But like if you get a donate, donate to local candidates, donate to down ballot candidates who don't have that much money anyway, because you definitely hit the point of at the very minimum, you hit a point of diminishing returns. Another data point, self-funded candidates like Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina in, in, um, in California. Uh, you know, don't have a particularly, particularly good track record you had, um, in what was it? 2022, you had a house candidate in Oregon who was backed by then billionaire, then paper crypto billionaire. Uh, Sam McManfried and they spent like, he was kind of effective altruists adjacent. This is getting into very Nate territory. But like, they literally spent like millions, a millions of dollars on this Oregon primary. And he actually declined in the polls because people are like getting too many flyers and were, were annoyed by it. So yeah, I think, I don't know, I, I think, um, I don't think the money stuff is that big a, is that likely to save Republicans in, in the end. And they do have, you know, by the way, also, Republicans have raised most their money through super PACs and outside spending. They get less favorable ad rates than when it comes to individual donations to campaigns. So the GOP has raised somewhat more money if you aggregate great silver bulls and records on this from, I call like, Eli Becound Austin, by the way, they've raised more money in the aggregate. But in terms of like effective dollars, as it translates to ad spending, there might be a little bit of a democratic edge or at least it's close potentially because Democrats have raised so much more from like people clicking on act blue and donating to individual candidates. Yeah. Well, and let's never forget Michael Bloomberg dropping a billion dollars in winning. Was it Americans tomorrow or Guam? I forget. It's a great footnote. Yeah, money doesn't always get you there. Should we talk about Mary Paltola before we end this podcast? Let's do it. Let's do it. Okay. I'll take, I'll take the reins again here. There you go. I, I love being a passenger princess. So last week's The New York Times published the story describing the volatile working environment in Democratic Senate candidate Mary Paltola's campaign in Alaska. And in her previous congressional office, alleged incidents include Paltola shoving a staffer outbursts at staff and others and quote requiring aids to feed life crickets to her family's pet chameleon. Meatball. Meatball. Which someone did say like, well, that is what, um, chameleon eat anyway. Um, this is what staffers eat. That is what staffers eat. One example of an angry outburst, which was texted to her staff, but directed towards a woman on the board of the, of a local Planned Parenthood chapter was quote, I hope she dies of a botched abortion. Paltola's Senate campaign denied that there was a pattern of this bad behavior, but they also admitted that she struggled after the deaths of her mother and husband in 2023. Okay. We, I think we have some different opinions on the story and the discourse around it. But let's start with your initial reaction to it, Galen, as a noted Paltola head. Yeah. Paltola head. Paltola head in the sense that yes, that you are interested in the race. Think that she is. Paltolian. Paltolian. An above replacement level Democrat for Alaska, because it's a, it's a journalistic policy positions that she takes in the way she campaigns. There's so many different threads you can pull on with this. But I'll just say the place where you usually see parties and people reacting to scandals is online. And I've been struck that the online reaction to Paltola has been very campy. It's been almost like a celebration of Paltola's usage of words like "faggot" and "retarded." And I put those in quotes because there's literally the words that she uses. And there has been less focus for sure on the alleged shoving of an aid and saying that she hoped somebody from the Planned Parenthood board died of a botched abortion. But even those things, I would say fall under an umbrella of as somebody who was watched to veep five times, behavior that is so outlandish that it gets almost caricatured as campy. And as a result, I, well, if we're going to talk about the electoral realities or reaction, I don't think it's mattering at all. I don't know if it's a result of sort of the gaze of Twitter spinning this into something. But I was just about to ask you. - This is your algorithm? - We're going, this is certainly my algorithm. But, you know, I think that regardless of what the gaze of Twitter think, which is that it's hilarious or that it can't be or whatever, I think that voters in Alaska don't care. In fact, I've recorded an episode with a local Alaska journalist, an episode of GD Politics that is coming out later this week, where he also sort of followed up on the same reporting that The New York Times did, has been asking folks, even who worked on Peltola's campaign, et cetera. I mean, his impression from Juno is that this is not reshaping. - No, I'm not. - Do you think my reaction was that I want to be friends with Mary Peltola? - Okay, so you're thinking of it and speaking of it. - Do you think that we have a gay Twitter? - Yeah. Do you think that the same reaction would be happening on Twitter if she were a progressive or if she were a Republican? Like, is this algorithm of Twitter that you're on, do they have a vested interest in seeing Mary Peltola succeed and appeal to the media in the last one? - Every day in September of election year is going to be interpreted through a partisan lens, right? And kind of what stories metastasize and which don't into real scandals is hard to know. The problem for the AIDS is that they seem so fucking whiney about, you know, so she actually pushed a staffer that's the most serious allegation in here. But like, you know, you have a fucking job. If she wants you to feed her pet millions, she's a fucking US standard, you know what I mean? - If you don't want it in the house then. - The house then. - I mean, the house never secrete their own communions. That's for sure. - And so, we're actually low on her consensus. - Can I answer the chat now? - Please, please do. - Yeah. - But like yet, you know, so I. - You didn't take that, though. - No, well, look, even the shoving incident, because these fucking snowflakes are whining, sometimes she jumped up and down and stomped her feet. - You have just, you have the snowflake usage that you have on Twitter is so irritating to me. First of all, that word is so overused. It's like, everyone talking about gas-lating in 20s, whatever it was. - What's the good word for it? - I mean, just describe what you're talking about. So first of all, I think my baseline is, and I want to pull a couple of different threads here because there were people online who were saying, like, would this kind of reporting be done on a man, right? And I. - 100% gas. - And I have, my answer to this is mostly as a journalist, which is one of my, and I'm sure there are some of you out there listening to this podcast, one of my least favorite things that political flags do when you write about a female candidate is say that you're sexist for writing about the female candidate if it's at all unflattering to the female candidate. And it's not my job as a journalist to listen to that. On the other hand, sexism is real. And I think people should have high standards for people in elected office. So I think we talked about earlier Troy Jackson, throwing water bottles in the middle of a meeting in the Senate. We've talked about Katie Porter has had some viral videos. Who else has behaved badly? Amy Klobuchar had like a couple stories written about her. Kamala Harris had these stories written about her. There are probably more of these stories written because frankly, women are more palatable socially than men in general. But I think that all elected officials, male and female, should if they are shitty employers have these stories written about them because people should elect these officials to be serious people. And serious people do not use language like that. I think it's offensive for her to use the F word. I think it's offensive for her to use the R word. I think like, I don't think that makes me a snowflake. I think that makes me a person who has an ethical and moral standard for people who hold higher office. And I think politicians across the board, like one of my pet peeves, and I would include JD Vance in this, is the filthy language that politicians use. I hate it. I genuinely have found the biggest divide on this positive. It is contributing to the core. It is contributing to the coarsening of the discourse. And I don't care. You can put me up on this cross. I will not come down. - I will say one thing, which is that I think if a male lawmaker, especially a male Republican lawmaker, sub-distaffer, or said that he hoped a member of the Board of Planned Parenthood died from a botched abortion, it would be an enormous story. And especially if it was a Republican, as much as progressors are maybe making excuses for Peltola right now, it's because they feel ultimately like she's on their side when it comes to these issues. If they didn't feel that way, you would never hear the, I mean, you would never hear the end of it. This story coming from a man or a Republican would be taken very differently, and I think much more negatively. - Sure, it should be. - It's what I call slay diva privilege. - No, I wish it's so irritating. It's like when women commit crime and then become more glamorized, like Elizabeth Holmes or Anna Delvey, Martha Stewart. - I find all of them. - The whole cast of the real housewives. - Well, people committing crimes is very different, and there's a lot of stuff going on there. I should mention that those people, like Jen Shaw defrauded elderly people. - And became more famous. - Which is one of the more despicable financial crimes you can do. - Look, here's the thing. There's like kind of a certain layer of common sense that I think people read these kind of stories through that's hard to talk about without getting someone upset, but like, you know, you can catch me if you want, right? Because men are more violent than women, I think signs of violent temper from men should be taken more seriously, right? I don't know if that's woke or unwoke or what, right? But like, that seems like a contextual difference to me. But I do, I'm a with Gail, and I honestly disagree that like, I don't fucking care kind of what language you use. I'm not deeply offended by those terms. - Well, we have different standards around language than I guess, but the one last thing I will say about the Troy Jackson and the Mary Peltola story with like very leaky staffers. I do actually think like if you were a member of the Democratic Party, you know, staffing class, it's not a good look, right? To being to be, and that's me sort of saying like, I'm not in habit, I'm inhabiting that as like a journalist sort of 'cause I like it when people leak. But it's, it does make them look whiny, right? But on the other hand, I do think it speaks to maybe they're younger staffers who have different like workplace expectations. I think that's like a real thing that happens. I just think it's like, it probably won't be a huge thing. And my take on this has nothing to do with electoral. It has everything to do with like my very earnest irritation at lower standards in American life for lots of things, including ethics and communication. - I mean, look, there's also the context that she is one of the more, or would be one of the more moderate members of the Senate. She was one of the more moderate members of the house. One of the staffer classes is very progressive on lots of things. And that might be a vehicle for some of this too, right? That they're channeling those ideological tensions. Again, I just look at how thin some of this stuff is. And I contrast it with the Grand Platinum story where like a lot of the reporting is how a Grand Platinum is an outsider. So you have to excuse them if he's not as polished, which I'm kind of actually sympathetic toward. But there was a lot, lot, lot, lot of like meat on the Grand Platinum stories, right? In fact, the New York Times on their outlets kind of downplayed certain allegations that later were made more pointed because people didn't want to, you know, accuse them of like felonious crimes without, you know, so that was very careful. And this is like, this story, I mean, the other context here too is like, people are looking because things are going well for Democrats and the polls and badly for Trump and the polls in real life. People are looking for stories to balance that a little bit. I think that critique is overdone, but like, but this seemed like a story where it's like, there's enough reporting there. You know, I don't blame the Times for doing this, just like I don't blame them when they do it for progressive kind of like, well, you know, Zora M. Donnie, what was the thing about, you know, he identified his African American on his Columbia application but like the Times shouldn't report. It's like, sure they should report on this, right? He's running for mayor of the city the New York Times is in. You don't have to think it's important. I don't think it's important, right? But like, they can report on it. And I think this is in the same category. It's fine for them to report on it, but like, yeah. - It's like a style section story versus like, the grand plan or stuff, which is about an alleged crime, a rape. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Very different classes of stories. - And now that we're no longer in the year 2017, we can talk about the gradations between those things. - Yes. - That's it for today's episode of Still Counting. Listen wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe on youtube.com at Still Counting Podcast. We'll be back next Wednesday evening for another episode. (upbeat music) Still Counting is a crooked media production. Our team includes Saul Rubin, Emily Four, Claudia Shang, Charlotte Landis, Reed Churlin, Johanna Case, Ben Heskot, Matt DeGro, Katie Long, and Adrian Hill. Our music is by breakmaster cylinder. Our production staff is probably unionized with the writer's guild of America East. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)