Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon
to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you
want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream,
my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron,
go to thepeteclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the
subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your
smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for
your support. Last hour I talked about this Yasha Monk piece,
hang on pulling the how not to resist Donald Trump.
He's a man of the left. He talked about how
you know, all of these tactics that they tried didn't
work for basically eight years. They need something new, They
need to figure it out. Okay, whatever, now the Associated Press, Yeah,
this piece is from about a week ago. Democrats crisis
of the future. The biggest states that back them are shrinking.
Texas in Florida are growing rapidly, California, Illinois, and New
York are shrinking. Remember the blue Wall. Remember that the
I mean the formidability, formidableness, the state of being formidable,
the blue Wall. These were all these blue states and
it was a wall to the point where like Democrats
didn't even have to worry about these states, they didn't
have to go campaign and stuff, much like you know
Hillary Clinton in twenty sixteen with Wisconsin. It was like, Okay,
by the way, just a peak behind the curtain. Here,
they're apparently doing a whole bunch of testing on our
generator for the building. We have no control over it.
We do not own our building, and so stuff keeps
shutting off and turning back on and shutting off and
turning back on. And I assume that's related, but with
the scent of the fuel from the generator pouring in
through the HVAC systems. But so they're doing a bunch
of tests. We have no control over the timing of it.
But so day two under siege here. So if we
cut out or something, that's going to be the reason why. Anyway,
So back to this Associated Press story. You've got Texas
in Florida growing, California, Illinois, and New York are shrinking
by population, Like the state lines are not moving here people. Okay,
Although I mean, if California is interested in doing a redraw,
I am open to that idea. I have long I
have long been supportive or at the very least curious
about the idea to cut California up into like five
different states. I would be because like that, that state's
too big. It's just too long, you know, it's just
way too long. You can't, like if you can't get
to the other end of your state in like less
than a day. Your state's too big. It's just it's
too big. But they're gonna have that. They're gonna have
that bullet train. By the that's where all the fire
fighting money went. Anyway, With America's population shifting to where,
where do you think the population is shifting to correct
It is the South, it is, yes, the shift is
going to the South. Thank you air conditioning and sweet tea.
Political influence is seeping from reliably democratic states to areas
controlled by Republicans. Coming out of the presidential election where
Democrats lost all seven swing states, Democrats are facing a
demographic challenge that could reduce their path to winning the
US House of Representatives or the White House for the
long term. So wait a minute, maybe demographics actually is destiny. No,
it's not. But right, when you reduce people to only
like immutable characteristics, it's not a healthy thing for the society.
But also that's not a strategy for winning people over right.
You can't just go to people and say, hey, like
you're white, vote for me. It's just not people don't
respond very well.
Speaker 2: I did.
Speaker 1: Hang on, let me go back because this obviously, this
piece here at the AP connects to the piece I
did in the first hour. I have some messages regarding
that this is from Chris. He says, based on what
you were stating from the piece you were referring to,
I conclude that the average American voter is far more
intelligent than the leftists think they are. That is correct.
This is the wisdom of the crowd. Right. You can
only tell people alive for so long. Eventually the truth
comes out and people recognized and like the biggest example
of this was Joe Biden's mental acuity. People could see
with their own eyes. COVID another one. People could see
with their own eyes what was going on around them.
The economy another one. And it didn't matter how much
messaging you try to fire hose into people's faces. They
have their own real life experiences. They can see stuff,
and they understand the DEI stuff. That's another one. Right.
The left never really truly understood what the quote normis
thought of these policy overreaches that were like these these
training seminars and stuff where you know, you say something,
if someone's offended, that means that you have transgressed them.
Whether your intent was to do so or not, your
intent doesn't matter. I was literally told that intent doesn't matter.
The only thing that matters is how somebody receives it.
It's like, why am I hired to do this job?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Are you aware of this is a political talk show?
Talk show? Like people had to live with this. People
lost jobs, people got canceled, people got tossed out of
the military because they didn't want to take a shot.
People suffered actual harms, and no amount of messaging that
you could do during and day after the fact to
try to retcon this, nothing you could do is going
to change their opinion. And it's why they went back
to Donald Trump. All right, back to the ap story here.
If the current trend continues, okay, and we get to
twenty thirty, which is only five years away now, right,
we are halfway to the next census, which, by the way,
we definitely need to clean that up again. Trump tried
the last time for the twenty twenty census, and you know,
lawsuits all over the place, but we have to clean
up the census because in twenty twenty. I'm sure this
is completely coincidental, but they overcounted blue state populations and
undercounted red state populations, and they have all sorts of
reasons for it, excuses for it, you know. Well, you
know those Republican Republican voters, they just you know, they
they just want to hang out with their bibles and guns,
you know, cling to their bibles and guns off in
the hinter lands. They didn't they didn't return our calls.
They didn't tell us how many people were living them. Well,
if you're just see, here's the thing. If you just
want to do account that's easy enough to do. But
if you're going to ask all sorts of invasive questions
and threaten people if they don't answer your surveys, then
they're just not ever going to take your phone calls.
And maybe that's the point, right, Maybe that was the point.
But they also counted illegal immigrants, they counted population, and
their argument was, well, they are still living in these communities.
So if you're distributing money based on population, then you
count them because they are people living in that state, right,
but they're not supposed to be here that they cannot vote.
And so when you are apportioning the votes, which is
what we're talking about here, you're doing apportionment with the redistricting.
You're allocating House of Representative members, right, congressmen, congresswomen. And
so when you're doing that, why are you counting people
who can't vote because they're not in the country. They're
not in the country lawfully. That issue, as far as
I know, has still not been settled. So anyway, fast
forward to twenty thirty. We're five years away and if
the current trends continue, this is just people moving, okay,
moving out of California, New York, Illinois moving into states
like ours. If that continues what we've seen so far,
by twenty thirty, states that voted for Vice President Harris
will lose a dozen House seats. Democrats will be down
a dozen seats in the House just by demographics electoral
college votes as well. The Democrat path to two hundred
and seventy electoral college votes, the minimum needed to win
the presidency, becomes much much narrower because it's not just
for your congressional apportionment, right, it's how many electoral votes
you get in the presidency. And so if the big
Democrat states are shrinking, they get fewer electoral votes. Now,
maybe they can pick some up, like Arizona for example.
Maybe they pick up some of the states Colorado went blue, right,
Maybe they pick up some other states and they can
cobble that together. But if you keep packing more and
more Republicans that are fleeing these blue states into states
like Texas in Florida. North Carolina is another one. Like
you keep packing them in here, we get more seats
and we get more electoral votes. Here's a great idea.
How about making an escape to a really special and
secluded getaway in western North Carolina. Just a quick drive
up the mountain and Cabins of Asheville is your connection.
Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want
to plan a memorable proposal, or get family and friends
together for a big old reunion, Cabins of Asheville has
the ideal spot for you where you can reconnect with
your loved ones and the things that truly matter, nestled
within the breath, taking fourteen thousand acres of the Pisga
National Forest. Their cabins offer a serene escape in the
heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, centrally located between Ashville
and the entrance of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.
It's the perfect balance of seclusion and proximity to all
the local attracts with hot tubs, fireplaces, air conditioning, smart TVs,
Wi Fi grills, outdoor tables and your own private covered porch.
Choose from thirteen cabins, six cottages, two villas, and a
great lodge with eleven king sized bedrooms. Cabins of Ashville
has the ideal spot for you for any occasion, and
they have pet friendly accommodations. Call or text eight two eight, three,
six seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there
is to offer at Cabins offashville dot com and make
memories that'll last a lifetime. So if the current trend
holds through twenty thirty and the next census, blue States
lose a dozen seats. These are seats that went to
uh Or These are you know, congressional seats, yes, but
also electoral votes that went to Harris And that makes
the math much more difficult for Democrats. There's a quote
here from Michael Lee Li Michael. Is he the guy
that testified on the redistricting stuff against the North Carolina legislature.
I think he is senior counsel for the Democracy Program
at the New York University School of Laws. Brennan Justice Center.
Quote at the end of the day, Ah, I hate
that saying such a crutch. Democrats have to be able
to win in the South or compete in the South.
That's a very low bar, right, They just have to compete.
You just you got to put up a fight. I'm
thinking of them, like of the meme of the guy
with a stick poking something on the floor, like move, move,
just do something. Democrats just he says, Otherwise it's a
really uphill battle every single time. The Brennan Center, which
is left leaning, that's how the AP describes left wing,
leftist liberal whatever. It's always left leaning, see because.
Speaker 3: It's it's it's it's in the middle of just leans
just in the wee bit, just a little bit. I mean,
the Brennan Center leans so far left, you know, it's
like it's leaning it you'd you'd be more accurate to
call it a leftist organization that leans a little right
because the lean is so far that way. Anyway, the
Brennan Center projects Democratic states in twenty twenty four would
lose twelve seats in the next census. The right leaning
American Redistricting Project forecasts a similar blue to red shift,
but that pegged the loss at eleven seats, not twelve.
So either way, you're looking at eleven or twelve seats,
and that's just because people are fleeing these states, that's it.
It would be the continuation of a decades long trend
of the population shifting from the northeat east and Midwest
to the south and the inland West. So from Midwest
to inland West. So would that be like Central America. No,
that's not Central America. They're all coming here. No, Middle America.
Inland West. I've never heard that term before. Have you
ever heard that term before? The inland West.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Americans and immigrants are gravitating towards warmer climates, cheaper housing,
lower taxes, and plentiful jobs. Look in the Northeast, I
get the warmer climate comparison. I will say the one
thing I do miss about the Northeast is that they
do actually have I mean not like not like it,
not like Canada, right, anything north of the Bronx is
Canada to this long island kid, but anything like they
have longer winters, but lower you know, the lower Northeast,
you know, mid Atlantic get four actual seasons, which was nice.
You get four seasons of you know, about three months,
and the weather actually comports with what the season is
versus in the South, where I think it's basically two
two and a half seasons. You know, it just goes
right to screaming hot and then just stays there for
a really long time. I'm not saying you don't get
a couple of days here and there. You may get
like a week of spring, you know, that's about it.
You get like two weeks of fall, two weeks of
winter or something like that. But anyway, I digress. But
think about the other things listed Cheaper housing, lower taxes,
plentiful jobs, all of those things. All of those things
are within the control of the governing parties. Right if
you are in charge of your state policies, and then
you can actually do something about housing, taxes and jobs.
This is a direct result of decisions that are made
the AP talks about the states that are losing the
seats aka population New York they lost Yeah, sorry, California
will lose four seats. New York will lose two. Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon, Pennsylvania,
Rhode Island, and Wisconsin would lose one seat each. Pennsylvania,
Wisconsin or Swing states. All of those states, though, have
consistently backed Democrats for president and sent Democrat majorities to
the House, except for the Swing states. But all those
other ones are blue states, the red states. The ones
that are going to pick up seats. Florida and Texas
are both projected to pick up four seats apiece. Arizona, Idaho,
North Carolina, and Utah all pick up one, and all
of them backed Trump president last year, although Arizona and
North Carolina were competitive and all have Republican majorities in
their US House delegations. Okay, so there's the plus minus
I mentioned earlier, the blue wall. All right, I hope
you had a happy holiday season. But tell me if
something like this happened at your house. Your family and
friends are gathered around, maybe y'all are in the living room,
you're laughing, swapping stories, reminiscing, and then somebody says Hey, Dad,
remember those old VHS tapes? Did you ever get them transferred?
And then the room gets all quiet. All eyes are
on Dad, who says, oh, you know, well, I've been
meaning to but I just having gotten around to it. Look,
don't let those priceless memories sit in a box for
another year, all right. Create a Video has been helping
families in the Charlotte area preserve their history since nineteen
ninety seven. Simply bring in your old camp quarter tapes
and Creative Video will transfer them to a USB flash
drive for just fourteen ninety five per tape. Do you
have a big collection, They've got a discount for you.
And next year, instead of talking about those memories, imagine
gathering the family to watch them together. Talk about a
memorable gift. So do what I did. Trust the experts
at creat a Video, conveniently located in Mint Hill right
off Io four eighty five and online at Create a
Video dot com. Email sped at the petecalnarshow dot com
regarding the attacks on Trump, Dennis said Pete. Ever since
Trump came down that escalator back in twenty fifteen, those
that have chose to try to demolish him have failed
at every attempt. Having grown up watching the Looney Tunes cartoons,
it didn't take long for me to associate that group
of individuals as the Wiley coyote avatar right, and Trump
as the Roadrunner. No matter what they have thrown at
him has resulted in a boomerang of failure. Long live
the Roadrunner, and they do. I think they do have
the same hair the road Runner, right, Doesn't he have
a plume or something on this head? So okay? So
from the Associated Press, Harris could have won last year
by keeping the blue Wall right. All she had to
do was maintain the blue Wall, which was Wisconsin, Michigan,
and Pennsylvania, along with one congressional district in Nebraska because
that state splits up its electoral votes in the next
decade so after the twenty thirty census. Though, that's not
going to be enough the Blue Wall, even if it
is maintained by Democrats, it's not going to be enough
because they're not going to have enough seats the blue
in not just some of the Blue Wall states, but
in these other states because as I mentioned before, the
states that are going to lose include Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon, Pennsylvania,
that's part of the quote blue wall Rhode Island and Wisconsin.
Another state in the quote blue wall California, New York
hemorrhage population. And so there aren't enough votes in the
electoral college for the Democrat. It's not the blue wall
will not be enough. The blue wall strategy combined with
safely Democrat states would give them two hundred and fifty
eight electoral votes, but you need to seventy to win.
So you've got to find some other states. And this
is a problem for Democrats because they don't know how
to get voters in those other states to support their
candidates because of the messaging. Yeah. Probably it's like, oh,
they're just not they're just not hearing us. Yeah, that's it.
So how the next part of the story says, how
do Democrats remain relevant? I would submit, And you can
take this advice or leave it, it doesn't matter to me.
I would submit. The way to remain relevant is to
basically change all of the planks in your platform, to
just just do the opposite of what you're doing right now.
To control the White House, the House, or Senate, Democrats
will likely need to do better in the three southern
swing states namely Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina. These three
states lean conservative but have elected Democrats at a statewide level. Okay,
so they're like, oh okay, so like in North Carolina, Oh,
look they put Josh Stein in the governor's mansion, right,
And now there are reasons for this, and this is
you know, the old axiom all politics is local. I
think that was Tip O'Neil that said that all politics
is local and there are reasons for it. I've gone
over this right after the election, and people could not
figure out, like, why are North Carolina voters you know
so so split? Why do they split their tickets? Well,
North Carolina has split tickets between president and governor for decades.
This is not a new phenomenon. This has been occurring
now that those ticket splitters are growing smaller and smaller,
like that population is shrinking. But it has a lot
to do with just the history of the Democrat Party
in this state, the machine, and it is still running.
It was defeated at the legislative level, but at the
state level, the Democrat machine does a very good job
of elevating a certain kind of candidate right over others
inside its own primary system. Roy Cooper and Josh Stein
followed the exact same path. Right Senate, attorney General, governor.
They have a pipeline, they have a system, and the
Republicans famously beat the crap out of each other in
their primaries. And the Demoocrats generally do not remember Jeff
Jackson aka Baby Jesus now the Attorney general. Remember he
was going to run for US Senate. Remember that and
what happened. He bailed the first time. That's how cal
Cunningham got it right. He said, oh, I want to
do one hundred county tour, and Chuck Schumer was like, no,
You're going to go into a windowless basement and dial
for dollars. They take the orders from the National Party.
When they're running for these national seats. They get all
this outside money that pours in from these interest groups,
these Democrat and progressive interest groups. And Roy Cooper really
solidified that when he ran against McCrory and just swamped
McCrory with the fundraising from out of state. And Josh
Stein continued with that, and Mark Robinson did not help
himself in that regard. He could have probably gotten a
lot more money from out of state had he not
had all of the other personal issues attached to him, right,
So Jeff Jackson and then remember he was going to
run again for US Senate. And then what did he do?
Speaker 2: He bailed?
Speaker 1: Why it wasn't his turn, right, So he I mean,
now for the record, okay, for the record. He said,
you know, Sherry Beasley is qualified. She should run against
Ted budd right, like she should run. She should do it.
Black female started, it's her turn as a white male.
I recognize my privilege, and he steps aside. Do you
think that's really the reason he stepped aside? Or was
it because that's where the party wanted to devote its energy.
They thought this was going to be the play. But
when it comes to the state governor's race and stuff
like that, the state party they're controlling that, the machine
in the North Carolina Democrat Party like they and the
big money donors. They know what kind of Democrat wins
pro business, right, keep the social issues to a minimum,
where the sweater vests, right. There's a certain kind of
candidate that does better in a state wide race as
a Democrat. It and it hearkens back to the days
when the Democrat machine ran this state for a century
and a half, and so that's why North Carolina voters,
especially the older ones, will split their tickets. That's again,
it's becoming way smaller of a population. I think it's
down now. It's somewhere around four percent of all the
voters now will split their tickets. So what do Democrats
do to remain relevant? According to the AP not my advice,
which was to just do the opposite of whatever you're
doing right now. But they offer some tips because you know,
the AP wants what's best for the Democrats, so they're
going to give them some helpful advice. 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 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. Let's head over and
get a comment from Ray. Hello, Ray, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Hey Pete, Hey, I'm good.
Speaker 1: What's up.
Speaker 2: I'll just have a question. I was a little confused
fall ago made me realize I didn't understand. But is
it the same number of electoral votes as it is
house seats or how does that work?
Speaker 1: So the yeah, so the number of house seats is
based on so you take without going, well, you take
the total population of America, you divide it up by
four hundred and thirty five. That's the house seat number, right,
So you divide that and that gives you a population
for each district okay, and so I think right now
it's somewhere around eight hundred and fifty eight hundred thousand,
something like that. And so then that tells you, based
on the state's population, how many congressional seats you get.
So in North Carolina we have now fourteen congressional seats.
So yes, each one of those seats is an electoral
college vote, so we have fourteen votes there. But you
also add in the Senate seats, which every state has
two of those, So every state has two US Senate
seats plus a minimum of one House seat. And then
after that is that that's the difference. So North Carolina
has sixteen electoral college votes if my math is correct on.
Speaker 2: That, Yeah, I'll look you up while I go. I
think there's five hundred and thirty eight electoral votes if
I'm correct. Is that correct?
Speaker 1: There may be well, so four hundred and thirty five
plus one hundred senators gets you to five thirty five
And the other three may be for maybe like Puerto
Rico and Guam if it hasn't capsized yet, maybe district
of Columbia. I forget what the other Yeah, where the
other ones come from?
Speaker 2: So the bottom line is the number of Senate seats
and House seats combined pretty much equals the number of
electoral votes right now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, yeah, I just wanted to clear that up. Yes, sir,
I appreciate it, Yes, sir, all right. Of course I
could be completely wrong on No, I'm kidding now, the
math is correct on that. I don't know what the
five thirty eight. I thought the five thirty.
Speaker 1: Eight because that was the name of Nate Silver's political
data firm. The five thirty eight I think includes president
and vice president, and I think the Grand Marshal of
the US Supreme Court. I think that anyway. So what
did Democrats have to do? According to the Associated Press,
they will likely need to do better in the three
southern swing states, as I mentioned. Alternatively, they could try
to achieve their long elusive goal of turning Texas blue
or reverse or reverse the recent trend towards Republicans in Florida. Yeah, yeah,
that could happen. Sure, why not? I guess that could happen.
To be sure, Republican dominance in the twenty thirties is
not a foregone conclusion, so let's not rest on our laurels.
Not long ago, Democrats thought they were building an insurmountable
majority due to their strength with voters of color and
of growing Latino population across the country. But that fell
apart when Trump and the GOP began making inroads with
the democrats traditional working class base. In other words, demographics
is not destiny, right. Ideas matter, Candidates matter. Let's take
a look at North Carolina. Our friend Andy Jackson at
the John Locke Foundation. He does these regular updates. He
monitors the voter registration changes when they do the list
maintenance and all of that stuff. And so the other
day he published the updated list voter registration changes. Most
counties did their biennial list maintenance this week. The Democratic
advantage shrank from eighty six thousand, so Democrats have an
eighty six thousand vote advantage and now it's down to
a forty one thousand vote advantage. Eight counties, including bunkhom County,
have not done their list maintenance yet. Depending on what
happens with them, he says, I expect Republicans to overtake
Democrats in North Carolina politics late this year or early
twenty twenty six. He has been monitoring this trend for
years and it has been steady steady Republican registration growth
and steady Democrat registration decline. You'll recall years ago, I
want to say, maybe it may even have been a
decade ago, unaffiliateds surpassed Republicans by registration. In North Carolina.
You can register Democrat, republic unaffiliated, Libertarian, Green Party, Constitution Party,
and unaffiliated surpassed the Republicans by registration and now and
then I think a year ago maybe unaffiliated surpassed Democrats.
So the number one party registration is not a party
at all. It is unaffiliated in this state. And that
means you get to vote in either Democrat or Republican primary.
When you go in for the primaries, you can pick
if you're unaffiliated. I've been doing this for twenty years.
But what he's talking about now is that the difference
between the Democrats and the Republicans for that number two slot,
the Democrats are losing tens of thousands of registration and
the Republicans are gaining, and so Republicans are soon to
overtake Democrats as the second largest registration group in the state,
probably by the end of the year. All right, that'll
do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening.
I could not do the show without your support and
the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast,
so if you'd like, please support them too and tell
them you heard it here. You can also become a
patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecleanershow dot com. Again,
thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything
while I'm gone.