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your support. So Roy Cooper has set a record. My
good friend Ray, he's running for US Senate now. He's
the former governor of North Carolina, and he raised three
point four million dollars in the first twenty four hours
of his Senate campaign. That is a record breaking sum
for the North Carolina former North Carolina governor in one
of the most competitive upcoming Senate races. This report by
Elena Schneider at Politico says the fundraise singh Whole shared
first with Politico includes more than two point six million
raised directly to Cooper's campaign account two point six million
to his campaign account. Ninety five percent of those donations
were one hundred dollars or less, they said. According to
his team, the former governor raised another nine hundred thousand
dollars which went into a joint fundraising committee. Was a
couple of them joint fundraising committees or jfc's, and that's
controlled by the party, which allows for bigger contributions. Now,
what they don't tell us in this political piece is
from where did the donations come? Were they predominantly out
of state or in state? North Carolina represents Democrats' best
offensive opportunity for the Senate, a battleground state that the
former governor is won twice with Trump on the ticket.
After yeah, after growing a national fundraising network during his
stint as Democratic Governor's Association Chair, Michael Watley, who was
the RNC, took over last year. He built his own
national donor relationships, raising expectations that this race will be
one of the most expensive ones in twenty twenty six,
and his first day total cracks a Senate Democratic candidate
record which was set by Amy McGrath, a fundraising juggernaut
who lost in the general election to Mitch McConnell. She
raised two and a half million dollars in her first
twenty four hours as a candidate. Cooper raised three point
four So maybe he'll have the same results as she did.
I don't know. It's not really a fair comparison there, obviously,
because you've got Mitch McConnell, you know, the incumbent known
for decades in Kentucky. You know power base that's there,
and uh, Michael Wattley is not Mitch McConnell, Thank goodness,
but he's not. He's not Mitch McConnell. Soh So that
was the first Yeah, that was the first to day
of fundraising. Wattley has not yet announced his candidacy, but
it is expected that he will. There's also this development,
this fight in Texas. I have to admit, I do
not know why a state is allowed to redistrict mid
year or mid decade, I should say, but Texas is redistricting,
and they just released their maps, which of course has
prompted all of the screams of gerrymanderin right, because the
new map that they unveiled today is a thirty to
eight Republican to Democrat map. Okay, so they have thirty
eight seats in Texas, and thirty of the thirty eight
are considered to be lean Republican or safe Republican seats.
Right now, the map is twenty five Republican thirteen Democrat,
so this would be a five seat swing for Republicans
if this map gets approved. Donald Trump has publicly said, yes,
redistrict this. Florida just did a redistricting. I don't know
if there were lawsuits or something that prompted this or not.
I'm not sure, because I thought you had to do
the redistricting after the census, and it's a once every
ten year cycle. I mean, that's the way it's been
in North Carolina except when Democrats have repeatedly sued and
then Democrat lawyers with the wardrobe change on a bench
said you have to redraw different districts and maps and stuff.
So that's why North Carolina would keep redrawing its maps
was it was always due to litigation. I'm not aware
of any any example in North Carolina where they just
started a redistricting process halfway through the decade, right because
you got to we got to wait till twenty thirty
for the next census, and then you would do another
redistricting based on that because the districts are drawn so
they are all equal in population. So obviously this has
prompted you know, great concern among Democrats that the gerrymandering
in Texas is, you know, a threat to the democracy
and that this is going to lead to the complete
downfall of the society and all. And what's always interesting
in these debates is that they never talk about the
states they control. In fact, they're saying, well, if Texas
does this and they draw five extra seats for Republicans
for the midterms, then we're going to jerry mander. Two.
You guys are jerry mannering with them, We're going to
jerry manner. It's like, yeah, but you guys already jerrymander.
Have you seen Maryland, California, Nevada, Illinois. I mean, like
the states that you guys control, you have jerry mandered
the bejeebis out of them. So, like, I don't know
how you're going to be able to jerry mander harder.
You've already gone pretty hard on that, So I'm not
sure how you can make the maps. I mean, I
guess you could just eliminate all Republicans from the legislature
from Congress. I guess. Jd Vance tweeted out earlier today,
the jerry mander in California is outrageous. Of their fifty
two congressional district nine of them are Republican, nine out
of fifty two in California. And I know we like
to poke fun at California. That's you know, they're all
crazy lefties out there, But there are actual Republicans in California.
I know, I was as surprised as you so seven
but seventeen percent of the congressional seats are Republican held,
which means eighty three percent are Democrat held. Do you
know what the breakdown is of voter registrations in that state?
Or better or as Jade Vance points out, the what
they what Republican candidates usually pull is about forty percent.
So this is the argument. This is why I don't
believe Democrats on any of this gerrymandering redistricting argument. Didn't
believe their court cases, didn't believe the legal challenges, don't
believe their rulings. I don't believe any of them on
any of this anymore. Because even in California, which they
claim is like, oh, this is the way it should
be done, it's an independent redistricting commission. And I've covered
this over the years, big expose. I think it was
done by pro publica years ago that they rigged it,
and they had all the receipts, they did all. It's
like a massive expose on how they created these fake organizations,
these fake speakers in order to create areas of interest,
which then moved areas into certain precincts and precincts into districts.
And that's how they ended up with their massive over
representation of Democrats because forty percent of the vote goes
to Republicans, but they only can hold seventeen percent of
the seats. This is also the case in Nevada where
they actually won the popular vote. Republicans won the popular
vote in Nevada and they hold one out of the
four congressional seats. Right, So when they tell me they
want fair maps, I look at the maps they've drawn
and I assume that's what they're talking about. And that's
why I always say when a Democrat says they want
fair maps, it means maps that they win. That's what
they mean by it. And so Republicans are fighting back.
And I warned you you're not going to like a
Democrats when the Republicans do to you what you've been
doing to them. This is what that looks like this
is the this is the reaping phase, all right. If
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You can check it out at check dot ground, dot
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only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground News
as they make the media landscape more transparent talking about redistricting,
and it's actually super important. I think a lot more
people are now aware of this process and how important
it is. And it is also tied to Yes the census.
Steve and Charlotte wonders are the census takers going to
purposely goof up the census again? So this is very
important context to what we're seeing happen in Texas. Guy Benson,
writing at town hall dot com, he says Democrats are
growing angry and anxious about potential plans in the red
states of Texas and Ohio to engage in mid decade
redistricting in order to pad Republicans numbers in Congress. Some
experts say that adjustments in those two states alone could
add six to eight House seats into the GOP column.
There are risks in taking such action, of course, including
the mistake they call it dummymandering, where you mistakenly dilute
the advantages in too many districts and you essentially create
flip districts flippable seats. Right, people who are running for
reelection would prefer to run in a district that is
a plus ten for their party, Right, like if I'm
a Republican, I'm running in District one. I would want
that to be a R plus one or plus ten.
I want as big of a margin as possible, so
it's a safe seat for myself. When you start getting
down into like plus two plus three territory, those are
flippable seats, especially if you get like a blue wave election.
So there's the downside. Democratic leaders have indicated a willingness
to go tit for tat with Republicans. Most of the
largest blue states do not have a partisan redistricting process
like the one in Texas, though apparently the governor can
simply call in the legislature to redraw the maps. According
to Benson, so the governor always has that ability, which
is pretty amazing. So that's the reason why Texas is
doing it now. Benson goes on to say, there is
a redistricting controversy that is rather busy, rarely talked about.
I understand why Democrats would prefer not to discuss it,
but I don't know why Republicans have not raised the
issue more often and more loudly. This comes from NPR.
Of all places in the twenty twenty census, all states
were not counted equally well for population numbers used to
allocate the members of Congress and federal funding over the
next decade. This is according to a US Census Bureau report.
A follow up survey that the Bureau conducted to measure
the national tallies accuracy found significant net undercount rates in
six states Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas. So
Florida just did their redistricting and now Texas is doing it,
so they got undercounted. There were states that got overcounted.
Eight states that were overcounted Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio,
Rhode Island, and Utah. These revelations come after the population
totals from a census beset by the coronavirus pandemic and
years of interference from former President Donald Trump's administration have
already been used to divvy up seats in the House
of Representatives as well as votes in the Electoral College
for the next decade. So ten of the twelve over
and under counts the sloppy counts. Ten of the twelve
states benefited Democrats, five of the six undercounted states are
red and five of the six overcounted states are blue.
I'm sure it's just a coincidence. The twenty twenty census
led to significant changes in congressional seats apportioned to the states.
Texas gained two seats. People were surprised, they thought they
would have gotten more. We got one, Florida got one, Montana, Colorado,
and Oregon they all got one. Losers were New York, Pennsylvania,
West Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and California. With the possible
exception of Illinois not losing a seat. The likely effects
of an accurate count would have overwhelmingly aided red states.
The error resulted in six hundred thousand over counted residents.
And remember these are just residents. These are not citizens,
These are residents. The error resulted in over six hundred
thousand overcounted residents in New York and a similar amount
undercounted in Texas. And by the way, six hundred thousand
is an important number because the congressional districts are about
eight hundred thousand at this point. That's how you divide.
You take the total population count and you divide it
by four hundred and thirty five, and every state gets
at least one House seat. But then you have to
have every district be the same amount of people, And
right now we're at about one hundred. It's like a
between eight hundred and eight hundred and fifty thousand residents
Democratic voting states would have lost nine seats net, nine
seats out of the House. That's pretty big considering how
close the House is right now. Also, think of the
impact on the electoral college. I mean, it didn't matter
because Trump ran the table on all of the swing states, right,
But what if he had not, if the inaccurate population
data effectively robbed Republicans of five to ten seats in
the House in twenty twenty, twenty twenty two, and twenty
twenty four. Part of the GOP argument for aggressive mid
decade jerrymanders could be they're rectifying the outrageous and costly
failure of a federal agency, which seems dare I say
it fair, you guys, did these lines or did the
counts rather in such a sloppy way that you penalmized
our party from having a nine seat What would be
I guess a eleven seat majority at this point, because
I think they have a two seat majority. I forget.
So we are correcting that mistake, and after the next census,
maybe it'll be better conducted, and then we'll do better maps.
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I did receive a message apparently I messed up on
some of the math earlier. It was my understanding that
there would be no math. I'm saying, yeah, all right,
so let me correct the math on that redistricting calculation.
John says, those nine seats that the census screwed up
would actually be an eighteen seat swing, right, because I
didn't subtract it away from the Democrats. Because the Republicans
would pick up nine seats, the Democrats would lose nine seats,
and so that's an eighteen seat majority now or added
to the majority. Right, that's a large swing. Yes, thank you, John,
I appreciate that. No, the last hour was a discussion
about man keeping, not manscaping. Bob Michael Wattley is expected
to formally announce tomorrow afternoon in Gaston Well he has
filed the paperwork to run for US Senate. Nick Craig,
who hosts the Carolina Journal Hour here on WBT at
five am, he's got the screenshot the receipts, as the
kids call it up on Twitter, the page has or yeah,
the filing has been submitted. He has officially filed paperwork
to run for US Senate. So that's that. Eric said,
it's critical to remember that when Democrats draw squiggily snake
districts the width of an interstate, that's democracy. When Republicans
replace the squiggly districts with compact districts, that's jerry manderin
exactly right, that's jerry mandering, which is always hilarious to
me when Democrats accuse Republicans of jerry mandering and then
you just show them the maps, like here's the last
map you guys drew, and it's like squiggly lines everywhere,
Like people don't believe this, But the district that was
drawn for mel Watt, it was the it was the
twelfth I think it was. I think it was the
twelfth district, but I don't know because the numbers changed
a bit, But yeah, I believe it was the twelfth.
That district ran from Charlotte to Greensboro, and at some
points was I eighty five. In order to connect it
up there, to get it all the way there, to
capture the precise, correct demographical breakdown of the voters that
they wanted in there, they jerrymandered it all the way
up the inner state. This and it was the subject
of litigation. And by the way, the map that first
started doing this was approved out of the Senate by
none other than Roy Cooper. It was he was the
Senate majority leader at the time. These were his maps.
He was named on like all of the litigation challenging
the constitutionality of that district. So and then they got
smacked down they had to redraw it again. In all
of this in violation of the Voting Rights Act. Yeah, yeah,
I mean, there's like all of the things that they say,
you Republicans are, you know, somehow uniquely evil in the
way you've drawn the maps in North Carolina. But you
guys had rulings against you on the exact same grounds.
And then of course when Republicans are drawing them and
they're following the rules which you have to keep the
districts compact, they have like what they call clusters or
groupings of these areas for the state legislative maps and stuff,
and so they're actually complying with the law. And they're like,
you can't use race. They were told by the courts
you cannot use race, Okay, so we don't use race.
We use party labels. And then they get sued over that,
and then the Supreme Court reverses itself and says, oh,
that's obviously racism. They're but we did not use race,
we used party identification. They're like, well, when ninety percent
of African American voters vote Democrat, it's basically a proxy. Like, well,
but that's assuming that that's a static thing, that all
Democrats or that ninety percent are going to continue to
vote Democrat. And what we see now is that lo
and behold, they are not doing so so much anymore,
particularly the dudes, the men. The Washington Post out with
the story today, Republicans won young men last year. While
fifty five percent supported Democrats in twenty twenty, support dropped
to forty six percent in twenty twenty four. So that's
a nine point drop. Young Men of color in particular
swung toward Trump, which is weird because I've been told
he's a racist, a racist Orange man. Republicans also saw
noticeable gains among Latino and Black men ages eighteen to
twenty five. So what happened? Young men in swing states
say that the Democrat Party abandoned them, leaving them feeling
helpless in providing for their families as prices rose and
jobs evaporated. They felt no sympathy from the left, who
they say brushed away their legitimate economic woes by citing
their male privilege. These men. This is part of a
focus group that was done for Democrats that the Washington
Post obviously got. They acknowledge these people that participated, these
dudes that participated in the focus groups. They acknowledged historical patriarchy,
but they asserted that that doesn't make them invincible in
a job market where graduate unemployment is concentrated among men,
What does that mean graduate unemployment? It means men with
degrees are unemployed. In fact, I saw another headline yesterday
that men who have college degrees have the same unemployment
level as men without college degrees, which means, what, There's
no point in getting a college degree anymore, is there?
If if you're going to be suffering from the same
unemployment levels. The idea was, the promise was the pitch,
I should say, the sales pitch was get the degree
and then you'll be able to get into lines of
work where you'll, you know, be able to provide for
your family, make good money, pay back the student loans
which we've just jacked up, and you'll be safer from unemployment.
These are the latest findings and focused groups conducted by
the centrist pro democratic group called Third Way, along with
hit Strategies Hit Strategies. They did these focus groups with
men ages eighteen to twenty nine, and they did it
in the swing states Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and
US North Carolina. The men were lower propensity voters, which
means what means that they will vote in the presidential elections,
but they tend not to turn out in the midterm elections.
And these were voters that voted for Joe Biden in
twenty twenty but switched to Trump last year. That's who
they focus grouped or focused group focused grouped. That's who
they asked. That's who they spoke with to try to
figure out what did the Democrat Party do wrong with
this cohort, and they just told them you abandoned us.
You left us feeling helpless in providing for our families.
And when we said this stuff, we got eye rolls
from you. The Democrat Party ignored our complaints. You know,
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dot com. Men told the focus groups, these are men
that voted for Joe Biden in twenty twenty men of
all races. They voted for Biden and then they switched
for Trump. These are men in swing states, North Carolina included,
and they said that they felt left behind and that
the Democrat Party abandoned them and that the party felt
no sympathy or that the men felt that there was
no sympathy from the party when they said, hey, I
want to be able to provide for my family, they
were like patriarchy, privilege, eye roll. And that's precisely the problem.
I've talked about this in the past, when you have
political parties that are made up of coalitions of different
people right different groups. They they especially the Democrat Party
is like a very good example of this because they
you know, this intersectionality way of thinking where you're all
you know, oppressor or oppressed, and so if you can
find out like, okay, well, law group is the oppressed
because you're never the oppressor, and then you have this
intersection with these other oppressed groups, and so we can
all band together and fight the patriarch, sorry, the oppressors. Right. Well,
if any gains that are made by that political party
are not realized or felt among the different coalitions, the
ones that are that are you know, less benefited by
the coalition by being in that coalition, they will start
to look elsewhere. Right. If you think of it as
like a pyramid almost and you or you know, a ladder,
you got people down at the bottom in that coalition,
and you know, they keep voting for this stuff, but
they're not getting any of their wishes fulfilled. And in fact,
it seems like the party is working against them on things,
blaming them for things, or just not talking to them
or about them or about what they want. They will
seek to get their wishes fulfilled by the other party,
and the other party can look at them and say, oh,
they're not addressing this. I'm gonna go take it. It's
one of the biggest blind spots Democrats have had on
Donald Trump, which is that Donald Trump is basically a Democrat.
It's the most amazing thing to have witnessed. He was
a lifelong Democrat. I'm not saying that as an insult,
although I do say Democrat as an insult a lot,
so it may be confusing, But no, I'm not saying
that I'd like to insult Trump. But Donald Trump was
a New York City a Democrat, not about liberal, but
he was a Democrat. And so the thing that he
is talking about now are things that Democrats talked about
back thirty years ago. Not a surprise they could have.
The Democratic Party has gone so far to the left
they don't even recognize themselves as they were what they
used to stand for, like ten years ago. On immigration,
for example, Lucas Holtz, a political analyst with Third Way,
which conducted the surveys, said, there is complete misconception from
Democrats and especially from progressives about young men moving away
from the party and takes it from it was all
because of inflation. To the guys that supported Trump are
in cells and sexist. In cells are it's an abbreviation
for involuntarily celibate. In other words, they can't get girls.
So that's what the Democrat Party messaging has been towards
these guys. So they're like, uh, it's just a really
terrible stereotype that has a backlash effect on Democrats. Former
President Barack Obama sounded the alarm when he was on
his wife's podcast earlier this month, saying that support for
young men is often mistaken for neglect of women's rights,
but he said it's not a zero sum game. He said, quote,
we don't think about boys and just assume that they're
going to be okay, because they've been running the world. Okay,
the boys have not been running the world. Okay, the
boys are just boys. They've only been on the planet
for like, you know, eighteen years. They're they're not controlling
all of the world. Besides, I thought, wasn't that wasn't
that Israel that did all of that? I thought that
was the Uh. I thought that's the deal. Yeah, sorry,
Oh I did play a SoundBite. Never mind, that's a joke.
It's just the joke. So he says, all of which
has historically been true in all kinds of ways. We've
made that mistake sometimes in terms of our rhetoric, where
it's like we're constantly talking about what's wrong with the
boys instead of what's right with them. This is a
breakthrough moment I think for Democrats. If true that if
you talk to people and you blame them, and you
criticize them for all sorts of stuff all the time,
they're less likely to want to help you. And if
you point out the stuff that they're doing that's good,
they are more likely to help you. If this is true, man,
he may have just changed the political calculation here. Ironically enough,
Obama was the only Democrat that the focus group participants
could name as a masculine role model from that party.
He's the only masculine role model. Barack Obama, the guy
who was struggling to lift the two pound weights in
the undercover video from that hotel. That guy, that Barack Obama. Okay,
the only masculine role model, which is ironic because he
was deemed not masculine enough. There were all sorts of people
who don't remember the Obama presidency. There were all sorts
of reporting and punditry about how he has not perceived
is tough enough and masculine enough to go into these
international negotiations and such anyway, So that's the state of
the Democrat Party. One participant in the focus group said,
I think being a masculine leader is like outlawed in
the Democratic Party right now. Trump broke through with economic
promises that appealed to many young men's desires to be
financially self suffici and to support their families once again,
almost as if there is some sort of an instinctive
need among men to be some kind of provider or something.
The focus group participants were not heavy news consumers. Largely
they were informed through social media and podcasts, but they
were still able to list off Trump's economic policy promises.
They could rattle them off no tax on tips, right,
which speaks to Trump's ability to create powerful messaging. Meanwhile,
focus group participants said Democrat messaging, especially to young black
and Latino men, felt like they were being pandered to
based on their race. Oh look, there's a perfectly rational
explanation for that, because you were That is exactly what
they were doing. Yes, people aren't stupid. They saw what
was happening, They knew what you were doing. They didn't
much appreciate it. So it's recommended by the focus group
people that the Democrats come up with something that can
be condensed into a three words slogan. That's it, aspirational
economic message, three words go all right, that'll do it
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