Speaker 1: What's going on?
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Calender Here and as we do on Tuesdays at noon,
we speak with Andrew Dunn. He is the publisher of
long Leaf Politics longleafpol dot com and contributing columnist over
at the Charlotte Observer. We don't hold that against him, though, Andrew,
how are you, sir?
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm fantastic. It's great to be back with you.
Speaker 1: Yes, sir, glad to talk with you again.
Speaker 2: I read your piece and by the way, I apologize,
I did not realize I was not a subscriber to
your newsletter. I have remedied that this morning. So yeah,
I know, I was like, why am I Like? Why
can't I get access to this thing that I'm trying
to get access to? And I realized, oh, I've never
paid him, so So anyway, I was interested in the
piece that you wrote the people who stay Win, and
I guess this was prompted by a podcast that you
were listening to. And there's a young Presbyterian guy, he's
a podcaster and he's named Redeemed Zoomer, and he said
that the Liberals are the ones who kept the institutions,
the Conservatives are the ones who ran away. And he
talked about this pattern is not just in churches, and
he called it retreatism, which is a good word for it,
I think, and it reminded me of the split I
covered this, I guess last year with the United Methodist
Church as well. And it gets to something that Jordan
Peterson has talked about, where you have a storehouse of value.
If left unguarded, it will be devoured, it will be
taken over. And that's essentially what this guy and I
guess you are arguing as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and what you were describing with the United Methodist
Church is exactly what he was talking about on the
Theology podcast. But yeah, I mean when I heard that,
I immediately saw the pattern in so many other places
in my life, you know, I'm a leader in the
Boy Scouts, and we've seen a lot of the same
things happening there. As the institution has changed, a lot
of the big former partners with the Scouts have decided
to just leave and start their own thing. And I
think we see it in politics too, especially with the
rise of unaffiliated voters. I think a lot of people
are saying, oh, well, I don't you know, the Republican
Party doesn't represent me anymore, the Democratic Party doesn't represent
me anymore, and instead of actually trying to dig in
and fix things that, they just decide to heck with
it and quit.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So then, and you raise the point, what is left
when people who you know, arguably they get frustrated?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And I totally get that. I'm an unaffiliated voter and
I enjoy going into each of the party primaries and
having my pick. Based on where I live. I usually
don't get a Republican primary. So, but what's left when
people leave is the institution and all of that stored value,
the credibility, the reputation, right, the legacy, it's history, all
of that is now turned over to basically your opponents.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's exactly right. You know, the institutions aren't
built overnight, and they you know, they build up goodwill,
they build up trust, they build up name recognition, and
that doesn't leave. Even if you know, the most talented
or the most or the smartest people leave. You know
that that will not translate to a new thing that
anyone is starting. You know, some some of the name
recognition will go, but most of it, most of the
trust remains with the institution. And that's why I think
it's so important for people of goodwill, people who are
you know, civically minded, why it's so important to stick
around and to and to focus their efforts on fixing
and rebuilding institutions.
Speaker 2: You mentioned school choice as well, What what impact does
I mean people COVID prompted a lot of parents to
pull their kids out of the school system. And again
rightfully so, I think when they you know, look on
in horror and shock at what their kids are being taught,
and they go down to the school board meetings and
they try to you know, vote in new school board members,
and they just can't succeed at effectuating change, and so
they they leave. They go to charter schools, private schools,
They use the voucher system, and what's left behind, though,
is a public school system that is now shaped by
people you write, with different priorities or no real interest
in reform at all.
Speaker 1: So I guess my question though, is.
Speaker 2: Like, isn't that the only way to teach the lesson
that they have gone too far in the way they
drove education to the extreme, and how else do you, of.
Speaker 3: Course work a little bit. Yeah, that one's a little
bit trickier, especially, you know, because I don't fall individual
families for leaving the public school system if it's not
serving them, because you don't really have the time when
you're raising children to you know, slowly wait for things
to improve and work through the system. You have to
do what's right for your child in that moment because
you don't have any any time to waste. However, I
will say, you know, I think the inclination for so
many people on the conservative side is to just sale
abandoned the public school system, you know, to basically just
say this is never going to get any better and
to focus efforts on private schools, charter schools, that sort
of thing. And I think that would be a mistake.
So I don't think it's a mistake for parents and
individual families to take that route. But I do think
it would be a mistake for conservatives at large to
do the same thing.
Speaker 2: Do you think that this retreatism is evident in moving patterns?
That's one of the first things I thought of was,
you know, Charlotte gets bluer and all of the surrounding
counties get redder. It's a pattern that's happening all over
the country. Do you think that's the same thing.
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, I hadn't even thought about that, but I
think you're absolutely right. You know, the geographic polarization, I
guess is the fancy way to put it, but yeah,
I mean that's exactly what we're seeing, is that people
are trying to find like minded communities and moving to
what's the values. I think that's exactly part of the
same pattern.
Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of that, you've got a piece at the
Charlotte Observer headline, North Carolina Republicans are leaning into Trump
flavored politics.
Speaker 1: Do you write the headlines or does somebody else do
that for you?
Speaker 3: I do not write that, so that that wasn't mine,
But but I don't actually don't think that one's too bad.
Speaker 2: No, No, I just just odd Trump flavored, Like I
don't even want to taste that North Carolina. North Carolina
Republicans are not just navigating national politics anymore. They're leaning
into it on purpose. And I guess like we used to.
I mean, I think we're about the same age. I
grew up hearing, you know, all politics is local, but
now it doesn't seem to be the case. And I
think that's really what you're kind of talking about here,
is that then the parties have become more and more nationalized.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly right. And you know, North Carolina has
long been a classic example of that. You know, North
Carolina Democrats in particular always had their own brands so
to speak, that was way different from the national brand.
And that really started to change in two thousand and eight,
when you know, Barack Obama carried North Carolina. I think
that was a real turning point, when the North Carolina
Democratic brand essentially became part you know, or a subset
of the national brands. And Republicans seem to be hitting
that tipping point this year. You know, I think, you know,
Trump carrying the state for the third time, you know,
his approval ratings being you know, they've been fluctuating, but
they've been pretty pretty good by Trump's standards. And I
think North Carolina Republicans are deciding, you know, now's the
time to go all in and lean into some of
the messaging and branding that the national Party's put out.
Speaker 2: So you say turning every race into a national referendum
might help with fundraising. I believe it likely does, right
because you've got so much money that comes in from
out of state to a swing state. You say, it
might clarify internal identity, but it also brings trade offs.
So what are some of the trade offs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean one of the trade offs is you
are a lot of your ability to win now becomes
tied to national trends that you don't really have any
control over. You know, there's always some sort of coat
tail effect. You know, if the top of the ticket
is doing really well or doing really poorly, that does
still over down the ballot. But you know, North Carolina
is no stranger to split ticket voting, and there's plenty
of voters in North Carolina who are willing, you know,
to thread the needle and to vote one way nationally
in another way more locally. So. But if you're tying
your brand to the national level, that your ability to nuance,
that really goes away. But you know, as a as
a life along North Carolinian, I just I worry more
so from a philosophical standpoint. You know what, we lose
our political distinctiveness, lose our you know, our barbecue battles,
all of the things that make North Carolina home kind
of get washed out and just focusing on national messaging.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sort of like franchises everywhere, no more mom and.
Speaker 1: Pop shops exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Andrew Dunn, publisher of long Leaf Politics, you can do
what I did. Become a subscriber over at long leafpol
dot com. He's also a contributing columnist to The Charlotte Observer.
Andrew always going to talk with you.
Speaker 1: Thanks for your time, man, Yeah, thank you. Take care.
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this story at the AP, not AP Dylan, but the
Associated Press, and I swear I thought this was from
North Carolina. I went right past the date line on it.
But it's out of Paintsville, Kentucky, birthplace of paint and
they're doing what they call they being the state Democrat Party.
They are doing a rural listening tour, which, as far
as I can tell, is basically just a wine fest
wh just a complain upon. But it also sounds like
what the North Carolina Democrat Party has been. I mean,
at least that's what they say they've been trying to do.
Go around the state, say y'all a lot, cuss a bunch,
and then something something we don't know, and then you
win all the Trump voters back right.
Speaker 1: Trump got eighty.
Speaker 2: Five percent of the presidential vote in Johnson County, Kentucky,
where Paintsville is the county seat. Okay, that was the
latest stop on the state party's rural listening tour. A
periodic effort, periodic effort, so it's not a constant thing.
It's just every now and again, when we remember there's
some rural areas, we'll head over there. It's a periodic
effort to visit overwhelmingly white, culturally conservative towns of the
kind where Democrats once competed and Republicans now dominate nationally.
Democrats path back to power. By the way, this is
always entertaining. These types of stories are always entertaining to
read because they're always written as sort of this like
a pep speech. You know, I buck up. You know, Democrats,
here's how you get back into the majority. Here's how
you can win again. And we're just completely impartial reporters
offering this information to you. Democrats path back to power
may start here, one small meeting at a time, because
it will be difficult, if not impossible, for the party
to regain US Senate control or win the presidency without
compete harder for rural and small town voters. I have
been talking about this since Donald Trump came down the
Golden escalator. There is a political realignment happening among both parties,
and it is bad for Democrats. I've got post mortems
or autopsies, if you will. Got one from Catalyst, You
got one from the New York Times, this one from
the AP. Some projections the Associated Press reports. Some projections
suggest Democrats would lose twelve seats in the electoral College
in the next census. That's the path they are on
right now. They've got five years right, five years before
the census, and they're on a path to lose twelve
seats in the electoral College and that will make it
virtually impossible for them to win the presidency. The gut
check this is according to Coleman Elridge, the Kentucky Democrat chair.
The gut check is we'd stopped having these conversations in
white rural America. No really, nobody noticed, except like everybody
who lives in white rural America, that you quit talking
to them. And not only that, he started saying some
pretty mean things about them. Nationally, Trump won sixty percent
of small town and rural voters in twenty twenty, and
he increased that according to AP vote cast data, he
went from sixty percent in twenty twenty up to sixty
three percent small town rural voters. So what are the
people saying at the listening tour, Well, they're saying a lot.
They're listening to like the most activated members of the
moon Back Brigade. That's who they're hearing, Which is why
I don't think this effort is going to be successful.
For example, Sandra Music, that's her last name. She is
a retired teacher. I don't know if she taught music
or not, but that would be awesome. Missus music the
music teacher, Like, how awesome would that be? Anyway, she's
a retired teacher. She calls herself a new Democrat and
she converted because of Donald Trump. Okay, so she's a
never Trumper. She was so angry at the Republican Party
and nominating him, and so then she became a Democrat.
She bemoaned conservative's success in advancing private school tuition voucher
programs and said they were threatening a public education system meant.
Speaker 1: To ensure we educate everybody.
Speaker 2: She criticized Republicans for making a caricature of Democrats, saying, quote,
they want to pull out keywords abortion, transgender, boys and
girls' sports, and that distracts from the rest of the
Republican agenda. She said, yeah, no, the reason why those
items get pulled out is because you guys have taken
a position that is not shared by like eighty percent
of the voting public. And so when you see the field,
when you retreat away from a popular position, then yes,
Republicans are going to use that issue to beat you
up with. Then there's Janet Lynn Stumbo, a former state
Supreme Court judge. She lamented what she called the right
word lurch of the state and federal courts. Yeah, that's
what's happening, she says. We're going to suffer irreparable damage
if we don't stop these conservative idiots. This is the
messaging that the listeners on the listening tour are receiving.
So I do not expect the messaging to change. This
is all that they're hearing when they go to these towns.
Choir meat preacher. All right, if you're listening to this show,
you know I try to keep up with all sorts
of current events, and I know you do too, And
you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources.
Why Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which
is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's
an app and it's a website and it combines news
from around the world in one place so you can
compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out
at check dot ground, dot news slash Pete. I put
the link in the podcast description too. I started using
ground News a few months ago and more recently chose
to work with them as an affiliate because it lets
me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom.
The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored
by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check
dot Ground, dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that link
and you'll get fit fifteen percent off any subscription. I
use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature.
Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it
also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape
more transparent. Reading from this Associated Press story about the
listening tour that Kentucky Democrats are engaged in throughout the
rural counties, and they show up and basically it's just
a bunch of like the most ardent leftists that turn
out to these little sessions and they just complain about
Donald Trump and conservatives, and Alan says it's a pet tweet.
Alan says, oh, look, a teacher and a judge are quoted.
Is anybody buying the old I used to be Republican,
but Trump despite all my lefty beliefs poop, I don't
think that ever worked. It's just part of the left
fooling themselves, buying their own bs. Yeah, high on their
own supply. Well, here's another one, Michael Halfhill, who works
in healthcare information technology, and he just couldn't understand why
all of these people are voting against themselves. What comes
through in all of these comments is contempt and disdain
for people voting away that you don't want them to vote.
That's what comes through from these people that are assembling
at the rural listening tour stops. The chairman of the
Democrat Party, this guy named Elridge. He of course makes
the case that you know, racism, because obviously you got
to make that case.
Speaker 1: He says.
Speaker 2: This is where Trump and Maga excel. If somebody who
looks like me, he's black. If someone who looks like
me is your enemy, then you don't care if the
guy in the White House is paying on your leg
and telling you it's rain. See, that's the only reason
that anybody voted for Trump, even all of the black
voters and Hispanic voters that have now shifted. And that's
in one of these post mortems. Well, it's actually in
all of them. And this is what has Democrats very concerned.
Republicans say their Democrat caricature is accurate. Bill Mike Runyon,
that's his name. Bill Mike Runyon, a self described conservative
Republican who is the mayor of Paintsville. He loves Trump.
He went immediately to social and cultural commentary when asked
in an interview to explain Johnson County politics. So, in
other words, he answered your question ap AP news right.
You asked him tell me about Johnson County politics, and
he started talking about social and cultural commentary, and you
just sort of like dismissed this away, like, oh, he
immediately turned to those things because maybe that's what the
local politics is about. Democrats, he said, have to get
away from the far left radical look at the transgender message.
He says, everything got kind of racial as well. It's
not like that here in Paintsville and in Johnson County,
but I can see it as a country. It's making
people more racist against one another. He's telling you, he
is telling you why people are abandoning your party and
you're not listening on your listening tour. When asked specifically
who he was talking about, he alluded to progressive US
representatives Alexandria A Caso Cortes, a Latina from New York City,
and Jasmine Crockett, a black woman from Texas, it's the
ones you always see on TV. The mayor said, again,
what is he telling you? He is telling you that
these far left progressives are the brand ambassadors for your party.
That's what he's telling you. You don't have to listen
to him, but that's what he's telling you.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: One bright spot for the Kentucky Democrats is Andy Basher,
the governor. He's a Nepo baby, kind of like his
dad was, you know, longtime governor. I think as well.
And he seems to be the one Democrat who commands
wide respect in and around Paintsville. Multiple Republicans, including the mayor,
complimented Basher for his handling of floods and other disasters
in the region. Right competence during disaster and the recovery
efforts breeds goodwill and support across party lines. Right, just
doing your job, he said, Andy Basheer is not like
those national Democrats. This is the mayor of Paintsville. And
he said Bill Clinton wasn't like these Democrats.
Speaker 1: Today.
Speaker 2: They are telling you what you are doing to drive
them away. You are supposedly on a listening tour. Maybe
you should listen. Vox dot com piece by Eric Levittz
the latest autopsy on the Democrats loss comes courtesy of Catalyst,
a Democrat data firm with a widely coveted voter database.
The firm tracks the actual voting behavior of two hundred
and fifty six million Americans across all fifty states in Washington,
d c. In other words, they're not relying purely on
surveys of how people said they would vote, but also
they have hard data showing which party individual voters registered
with and which elections they did and did not show
up for. Catalyst boasts the longest running voter database of
any institution besides the Democrat and Republican parties. It has
tracked the electorate's behavior for over fifteen years. The three
big takeaways here from at least as reported by Vox.
Number one, Democrats did not lose because they failed to
turn out the progressive base. Number two, young voters shifted right,
and number three non white voters got redder. All right,
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video dot com. Here's a pet tweet from Moral Compass,
who says, Republicans, this is the voice of Republicans, talk
about winning issues for them. Democrats reply, stop talking about that. Yeah,
it's not the messaging, it's the message. So, according to
Catalyst and their autopsy of the twenty twenty four election
number one, Democrats did not lose because they failed to
turn out the progressive base. So the thinking on this
copium goes like this, that Trump didn't win. He didn't
prevail because he won over a decisive share of swing voters. No, no, no,
he won because Democrats didn't mobilize America's anti MAGA majority.
That's what really happened, That's what they're telling themselves. Many
on the left attribute that failure to Kamala Harris's centrism.
Good lord, yeah, that's what it was. She was such
a centrist. Had she not taken her party's base for granted,
she could have ridden high Democratic turnout to victory. The evidence, though,
for this view, has always been very weak. According to
vox dot com, the catalyst data makes it obviously false. Now,
one hundred and twenty six million Americans cast a ballot
in both the twenty twenty and twenty twenty four elections.
They call these repeat voters. Biden won fifty one points
six percent of repeat voters in twenty twenty. Harris only
won forty nine point four percent. Meanwhile, there were twenty
six million new voters. Democrats have historically won new voters
by very comfortable margins, largely because young Americans were overwhelmingly
left leaning in two thousand and eight, twenty twelve, twenty sixteen,
and twenty twenty. But last year Trump won new voters
by about three points. Democrats shirly saw weaker turnout than
Republicans last year, and this was partly responsible for Harris's loss.
It says later, But Democrats do need to try to
mobilize their coalition's most unreliable members. They just can't do
so at the expense of winning over swing voters. Unreliable
Democrat leaners tend to be politically disengaged and ideologically heterodox,
much like many swing voters. So that's the first thing,
the excuse that can be put to bed. It was
not a matter of turning out, not getting your progressive
base out. They came out number two. Young voters shifted right.
Like ap Vote cast and Blue Rose Research Catalyst finds
that younger voters were significantly more Republican in twenty twenty
four than they had been in twenty twenty. Biden won
sixty one percent of those under thirty years old. Harris
didn't get sixty one, she got fifty five. This decline
was driven almost entirely by dudes. Harris won sixty three
percent of women under the age of thirty. That was
still three points lower than Biden, but she only won
forty six percent of men under the age of thirty,
that is nine points worse than Biden got, so she
lost young voters young men specifically. Finally, non white voters
got redder. Harris actually won the same share of the
white vote that Barack Obama had, and her support among
America's white majority was only two points lower than Biden's.
But like previous twenty twenty four autopsies catalysts, report finds
that Democrats suffered steeper losses with non white voters, particularly
those who were young, male, and or politically disengaged. Harris
won eighty five percent of black voters, that is down
four points from Biden's eighty nine percent, and that drop
was entirely due to flagging support from black men. I've
been saying this for twenty years, folks. When the Democrat
Party no longer is able to carry ninety percent of
the black vote, they will not win the presidency again.
That's why that's why they're constantly focused on race. They're
constantly trying to keep people agitated about it. You know,
you can't trust those Republicans. They're going to put you
back in chains. To quote Joe Biden. Democrats suffered especially
large losses, with young black men winning only seventy five
percent of their ballots in twenty twenty four compared to
eighty five percent in twenty twenty. The trends among Latino
voters were similar. Between twenty twenty and twenty twenty four,
Latino support for the Democrat nominee dropped from sixty three
percent down to fifty four percent. The decline among Latino
men particularly pronounced as Trump won a fifty three percent
majority of that historically Democrat constituency. Trump won fifty three
percent of Hispanic men. Support among young Latino men fell
off a cliff, and the party lost even more ground
with men Latino men under the age of thirty. Finally,
Harris won only sixty one percent of Asian American and
Pacific Islander votes in twenty twelve. Obama over Romney. He
carried that population seventy four to twenty six percent, And
men in this group are leaving the Democrat coalition faster
than their female counterparts. You take all this together, the
figures paint a disconcerting picture for Democrats. The party has
long wagered that time was on its side, since America's
rising generations were heavily left leaning and the country was
becoming more diverse by the year. The thought was it
would become gradually easier for Democrats to assemble national majorities
even as the party bled support among non college educated
white voters. And it's true Democrats still do better with
young and non white voters than with Americans as a whole.
That's still true, but the party's advantage with those constituencies
has been narrowing rapidly. Last year's returns suggest that demographic
churn isn't quite the boon that many Democrats had hoped,
and can be easily outweighed by other factors. Also, as
blue states bleed population to red ones, Democrats are poised
to have a much harder time winning the electoral college
majorities after the twenty thirty census. Given current trends. By
twenty thirty two, a Democratic nominee who won every blue
state and added Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania would still lose
the White House. All right, that'll do it for this episode.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 2: I could not do the show without your support and
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