Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to the Call It Like I See it podcast. I'm James Keys, and in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to take a look back at the midterms now that we have more clear picture of how things shook out, really from a big picture perspective, and consider why these big picture results were so divergent from the historical norms that we're used to seeing, you know, with midterm elections after, you know, the two years after a president takes office.
And later on, we're going to discuss Indonesia's recent move to ban sex outside of marriage and try to figure out, have they lost their mind?
Joining me today is a man who is a member of one of the more noteworthy duos of the past 25 years, Tunde. Ogonlana Tunde. You plan to take the people on a funky ride today?
[00:01:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I thought it was a fantastic.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: Voyage, but no, no, that's a solo act.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: Okay. I was thinking of Scottie Pippen and Jordan. I was thinking about all these duos over the last 25 years, you know, Shaq and Kobe and. And it just reminded me that I never made it to the league. So, you know, now I'm depressed. But. But that's okay.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: All good now. We're recording this on December 12, 2022. And last week, we saw Senator Raphael Warnock win the final Senate seat up for grabs in this election cycle when he defeated Herschel Walker in a runoff election for the seat in Georgia, which is the seat that Warnock first won in January of 2021. But he was replacing somebody then.
At this point, we've also seen most of the other close races, particularly looking at the House of Representatives, come to an end. So the big picture can really start to come into focus with specific results. Not, oh, it's projected here, projected there, but just the results we can kind of look at, see where things were gained, what was lost and so forth. And we did see control of the U.S. house of Representatives flip to the Republicans. They on net gained around five to 10 seats, depending on where exactly you're counting it from what point in time you're counting it from, which is notable. But it's far short of the kind of gain that historically the party who's not in control of the White House sees on the first midterm that they weren't in control of the White House, that the other party took control of the White House. And even more rare, we saw the Democrats actually pick up a seat in the Senate, which hasn't happened for the White House incumbent party for almost 90 years. So Sunday, looking back on the 2022 midterm cycle, which did buck several distinct traditional indicators that would suggest the Republicans were going to make huge gains. What stood out to you?
[00:03:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I think you just said it. I mean, there were, I think we all, meaning we as in the public. Most people that are paying attention to this stuff generally expected the Republicans to have a much greater victory result, I guess, on the midterm election, I was prepared for Republicans that take the Senate and have a much wider margin in the House of Representatives. So that was the first thing that kind of stood out to me. Like, well, this wasn't the type of landslide that one might expect when the president is unpopular. And there's stats that I know we'll cite later, but there's some good data historically that if a president's approval rating is under 50% during the midterms, it's really not a pretty experience for that president's party. And in light of the things we all know about and everyone listening here, things like inflation that has hit us in the past 12 months or so, falling stock market, which means that every employee that's got a 401k balance is probably not happy this year with looking at their retirement assets.
We still have kind of the general culture wars in the country. So there's a lot of feeling of negativity kind of in this moment, I think, collectively in the country. And so that's what I guess really stuck out to me is that the results weren't as lopsided in terms of the Republican victory as I had anticipated and the fact that the Democrats seem to have gained one seat in the Senate. So that is very interesting. And that's stood out to me.
[00:04:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say for me, what stood out was the number of indicators that we're talking about here that would suggest that the Republicans are gonna do very well and the lack of indicators that would suggest in advance that, hey, the Democrats have a good shot here of making a strong going. Like all. If you look at all the historical things, you know, like you said, there's just the normal midterm bounce that the party outside of the White House gets. There's that there's. You mentioned the low popularity of the. The president in the White House, that that's something. Also that which I think you mentioned to me, he's around. He was at the time around 42%.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:05:23] Speaker A: Underwater. You know, like that's. So you have that inflation, you know, has been dominating the news. And Hurting people's, you know, wallets all year, you know, stock market. You mentioned that one as well. You mentioned the inflation as well. Crypto collapse. Like, there's no shortage of things that if you want to be mad about something to be mad about, and oftentimes we. We're very reductive. You know, we say, oh, we're mad at the guy at the top, and so we take it out on his party. And then conversely, or, you know, more further along those lines, there weren't any historical. Like, there weren't any indicators that would historically suggest that, oh, no, but this is gonna. This is gonna stem that tide. Like, for example, if. If we're in a. If we're fresh in a conflict, we got attacked or something like that, you know, where it's like, oh, no, at this point, everybody in the country is lining up behind Biden because there's this external threat that we're dealing with. And so everybody's kind of not asking, you know, we'll ask questions later. Let's just show our support. None of that kind of stuff is happening. So it really, like, if you stop there, if you just say, okay, looking at the data, so to speak, looking at the analytics, we expect a red wave or something like that. That didn't happen. There's no immediately accessible answer that explains why that didn't happen. That adequately explains it at least. And then we'll get into some. I actually want to kick it to you on the next piece, because the next question I wanted to ask you about this is like, shortly after the election, the results were rolling in and so forth. You had pointed out to me that the Republicans did, in fact, win the majority of the votes that got cast for the House of Representatives, which is notable because for Senate, only about a third of the seats are up, but for the House, every two years, every seat is up for vote. So you could look at that as kind of a where Americans voted who were voting on national elections. You know, they all had the opportunity to vote for a person in the House of Representatives. And so the Republicans won that by three points, you know, as of. As of today. And, you know, so that's. That's a significant. It's not. Again, it's not overwhelming, but it's significant. So that they made that. They gained so little in the House, and then they actually lost in the Senate. Lost. Lost ground in the Senate while still getting more votes makes it even more confounding. So what do you think are the driving factors here? You know, like, they're not obvious, but I mean, is it structural things, you know, like. Like redistricting. We just went through 2020 census and the redistricting that came after that. More personal things like, like the actual candidates that were put up or even like political things like, like the agendas that are being put forth like. Or anything. All of the above. Or what. What in that. What do you, what do you attribute this to?
[00:07:57] Speaker B: I think it's a bit of all of the above, you know, because if you look at it later, it's a good question. I mean, redistricting does play a role. I mean, you know, that would be for the audience, things like gerrymandering and drawing districts for members of the House of Representatives that would give them an edge in terms of having more voters in their district of their own party.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:25] Speaker B: And so.
[00:08:25] Speaker A: And let me just do a quick background on this. It's called gerrymandering a lot. Everybody's heard the term but gerrymandering, basically the House, each state, most states, not all states. You know, the smaller states in population don't. But most states have many different representatives in the House. Representative. And the legislatures generally of those states after each census are able to draw the map to say, okay, well, here are the districts for each of the districts that are going to be here. And so whatever party's in control oftentimes will draw the maps to benefit them. So that they'll either put all the people who support the other party into one district or in the place where gerrymandering came from. Was 100 some years ago. They were. People were drawing maps. There was a map that was drawn that looked like a salamander. And like, because of the way they did the borders and everything, it was like it was. They were just trying to put all these people in one district and distribute everybody else in other districts. So it's a political tool. Courts have kind of ebbed and flowed in terms of how much they want to stop it. Voting Rights act, the racial gerrymandering has gotten additional scrutiny historically post Voting Rights act and less so in the last 10 years or so. But that's kind of when we talk about gerrymandering. Redistrict. Redistricting can occur without gerrymandering because again, when the census happens, population may move and you have to say, okay, we have to get more people into this district or there are people of less that left this district. But then also oftentimes when you talk about redistricting, the gerrymander comes up because it's. It's it's almost like, you know, almost routine at this point. So I'm sorry, but go ahead now.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: And both parties do it, but Republicans have been much more effective in using it. So there's evidence that without gerrymandering, Republicans may have actually lost the House of Representatives this year in 2022.
[00:10:09] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: So that's one, that's one thing that I think does matter, right. That the redistricting and the way that they manipulate, you know, like I said, both parties do it, but the Republicans have been much more effective over the last 20 years in applying it to victories. Then the next question you mentioned is the candidates and kind of the candidate quality, I think. Yeah, that for sure. And this is like another, there's almost like different silos in this conversation that then can come together. Right. And form the result. So this other silo would be what I think is kind of the natural organic breakdown of the Republican Party post Trump, where you have people, let's say, into leadership. Right. People like Mitch McConnell types who openly said that the reason they didn't, the Republicans, let's say, didn't win the Senate was because of poor candidate quality.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: And he was saying that before the election.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And just the idea that those who may be attractive to primary voters and I think for the listeners, you know, there's two senators from each state and everybody in the state gets to vote for them. So unlike a gerrymandered House district which might have 80 or 90% of one party, and if that congressperson, especially if they're an incumbent and well known, they've got an easy road to success no matter what they say in their election stump, you know, their campaign rhetoric.
[00:11:41] Speaker A: Primary, though, the primary is the bigger election when you have those overwhelmingly one party districts versus. But, yeah, but in the Senate it's not the case, basically. Yeah.
[00:11:50] Speaker B: Well, my point is, is that because of their recent culture in the Republican Party, a lot of candidates are used to speaking to the right and going far to the right in primaries. And I think what happened is the quality of the candidates in the Senate races, they kind of got themselves pigeonholed into having to behave a similar way in a general election when they are trying to win over the entire state. And I think that hurt them. I think people like Mitch McConnell recognized that and said it. And other people disagree. Right. In the party.
[00:12:27] Speaker A: Yeah. To the point like, you know, like you, when, when you're running in a House district and you, you're running in a primary, that if, if that district is overwhelmingly your party Then if you win the primary, then you're going to win the general election because that district is overwhelming your party. But in a state, that's not necessarily the case. If you look at Georgia, for example, you can win the primary, but then you have to then try to appeal to a state that in recent elections has been very close to 50, 50, both parties. And so if you're able to, if you're able to, you may not be able to get sufficient support to do that. Now, you mentioned the redistricting and I wanted to add a piece to this because I found it to be fascinating. And I'll put this in the show notes. There was a piece talking about how just Trump made some changes just in his appeal and the way the direction he took the party made some changes to the coalition that makes up the Republican Party. When we have a two party system, basically it's different groups or coalitions that are, that make up the parties and they have, you know, you have the religious right or you have, you know, various different coalitions that they will say, okay, we'll be in this party or you know, and so forth. So that he changed the coalition. And one of the big changes was is that suburban voters historically had leaned Republican more and that has started. That's not happening to the same extent. He strengthened them in rural areas, though. And so one of the things that's very interesting to me about this is with the redistricting and so forth, their changing coalition made them less able to compete in so many districts that are out there, suburban and so many districts. It might have made them stronger in districts they were already winning, but as a result they can get more votes but end up possibly in a situation with less representatives because of where their votes are all concentrated and they're not distributed in as many places anymore. And, and so we see that. And so like you pointed out, the gerrymander kind of saved them because that's what happened. And without the gerrymander that they were able to pull off in several states that they may have gotten 3, 1, the overall House vote by 3% and still lost the House.
[00:14:33] Speaker B: Yeah. But just to answer the last question, you had asked if the agenda of the candidates was also part of it. And I thought as, yeah, because that's kind of candidate quality. But I would say I don't know if so much agenda of the candidates, because I do think that's relevant.
[00:14:50] Speaker A: Well, I would say it's the agenda of the party.
[00:14:52] Speaker B: That's.
[00:14:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I was gonna say.
[00:14:54] Speaker B: So that's where I was going. Because what I thought of was the leaked, you know, thing about Roe versus Wade and then the Supreme Court striking it down, which, you know, to fairness to the Republican Party, it's the Supreme Court. It's not a political party. However, we know that there is the cultural wars between conservatives and progressives in our country and all in moderates and all that. And right now, Republicans identify themselves as conservatives. And the court has been packed by, you know, Republican presidents and is majority.
[00:15:27] Speaker A: Go into all that. After that decision came out, they talk about codifying a nationwide ban. So they were.
[00:15:33] Speaker B: So that's where I'm going is it's not necessarily the candidate quality in this one, but what it is, is it's the kind of meme and theme of the party itself. And then you had once the, the actual decision, the Dobbs decision, which repealed Roe versus Wade was made, you know, you had some gloating and some let's stick it to the libs and the media type of thing, right? So you had people like Clarence Thomas, a prominent Supreme Court justice, kind of jokingly on a stage saying, well, now we're going to look at gay marriage and, you know, blah, blah, blah. And so what I'm saying is that's not necessarily candidate quality per se, because he's not a candidate. But what it is is it allowed Democratic voters to wake up in the midterms, which they normally don't, because usually most voters only wake up every four years for a presidential election and be motivated out of fear to say we need to go show up.
[00:16:29] Speaker A: So I do, particularly in these contested type of districts, you know, like, it wouldn't help them in rural districts, you know, where they were going to lose, you know, 80 to 20 anyway. But.
[00:16:39] Speaker B: Well, and that also goes back to us talking about the Senate. Right. It made it much more difficult for the Republicans to win over the majority of a state because a lot of the states that we saw that were like, let's say the, the Georgia Senate race that went to the extra mile, you know, the voters are taking all that into account once they get to only choose two people. And so, and I think when you're dealing with a big state, you just got more chance that people are going to be more moderate, you know, in the whole thing.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: Well, I think, and I look at the agenda thing, I think is completely different and, you know, separate from the candidate quality. The candidate quality is just kind of is this a person who's liked is considered to be, you know, reputable, honest. You know, the Georgia Senate Race was a particular one in that sense where, you know, it was every month or every week, I should say even that something coming out, this guy lying about this, or Walker lying about this, lying about that. He lives in Texas. You know, there's all this stuff and like, so it was always some story about something wrong with the candidate. Like that's candidate quality. Like, is this a, a person who you know is kind of shiny, or is this a person that has all these, these warts? The agenda piece is the party's agenda. And I think part of this is to your point, but I would say brought more broadly. A lot of the agenda that was being sold seemed to be about culture, culture wars and so forth. Not a lot of discussion or culture wars or retribution even. Remember, there are people talking before the midterms like, oh, yeah, we just gotta, we take control of this and we're just going to investigate Biden and we're going to investigate the January 6th commission. It's like, I mean, I don't know that voters by and large have a huge appetite for that. Like, there's, I'm sure there's some die hards that are looking like, yeah, let's settle some scores. But a lot of times, sometimes, if you want voters that can go either way, voters that may be these suburban voters or anything like that, things, people that have voted for both the either party at their different times, you generally want to sell something like, hey, we're going to do something to make people's lives better. I, I criticize the Democrats about this a lot of times as well. It's like, well, what are you going to do to make people's lives better? What, what's in it for me, so to speak, as a voter, and so much focus on the culture war stuff, I don't know, is going to grow your pie. It'll, it'll motivate your existing base. But if your existing base isn't widespread enough, so to speak, to make that happen, or in certain states isn't big enough, then you might be hitting a hard ceiling in terms of how, how much can you grow with this kind of a message and with the absence of any kind of message other than we're going to stick it to Joe Biden, we're going to block everything he wants to do, and we're going to put religious law in place. You know, like, if, if that's all you're selling, you have a high floor, well, you're going to get some votes, you know, and you got a high floor. You're going to perform, you probably do very well in certain primaries, but it looks like you might have a ceiling that's pretty low. And so that, to me is what, like, what's the economic agenda? What's the, what's the. Okay, here's what we need to do to make things better in this front or in that front? You don't hear a lot about that. You know, it's like. So I think that can come back to bite you.
[00:19:37] Speaker B: No, you're right. And I think, you know, one thing is, you know, look, doing just my reading and the research here, it seems like fear always motivates people more than, you know, the optimism of the future. So, you know, in the recent waves, you know, when Obama took his quote, unquote, shellacking in 2012 and the Democrats lost 63 seats, you know, it was because of the fear of all the change that he represented and the healthcare bill and all that stuff that was just changed prior to that was 06, when Bush got his thumping and it was in response to Iraq and the kind of nation being fatigued with the two wars and kind of all that motivated. And you know, you go back to 74, there was and sorry, it was 2010, was the midterm, not 2012. That was the general. Yeah, yeah. So that 2012 was general election. So I stand corrected. But and then seven, 1974 was a wave where the Democrats won a lot because of the response to Watergate. So if you look at these, there's always a response to something, and that's where this one is surprising because you would have assumed that it was a response to Biden and the poor economy, that the Republicans should have had a landslide. And I think that's what we're discussing now.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: Well, but even if there's not some huge shiny object, the historical trend is that you lose seats in the House two years after you win the presidency. Sometimes it's a big shiny object and other times it's just, you know, it's just kind of the ebb and flow of our political system. It's quite fascinating, actually, if you look back over time and how resilient that trend has been over time.
[00:21:14] Speaker B: No, I know, and that's what I'm saying, though, is that between the candidate quality on the Republican side and then things like you're saying the agenda, I mean, the Roe vs. Wade thing was a big deal for a lot of people, whether some on the right want to acknowledge it or not. And so I think that's where we had this rare moment where the party in power actually, or let's say this, the minority power party, the Republican Party, actually motivated people more to show up out of fear if they were to take a greater majority. And I think that's a way for me to go back on your point about a ceiling, that there is a ceiling in this country for just like there's a ceiling for ultra left and ultra progressive stuff. There's a ceiling for ultra right and right wing stuff and attitudes. And I think what like you're saying very well about the culture wars, there's a ceiling for that because once the Republican Party lost the trust of the American people about the democracy, I think once.
[00:22:10] Speaker A: Which is a key thing that we haven't even mentioned yet.
[00:22:12] Speaker B: No. Yeah, because. And I'll kick it back to you in a second, but maybe. Actually, let's get on that because where I'll kick it back is out of 94 candidates nationwide, whether they running for a state House governor type of thing or, or a senator of Congress, some, someone important that could influence the outcome of a Future election, only 4, 94 of them were election deniers running in this election. Only 14. One. That tells you a lot, right? Well, tells you a lot how many split tickets there were on the Republican side where people like Brian Kemp won for governor in Georgia but Herschel Walker lost. That tells you that people were thinking about it like, hold on, I like this guy over here. And think about Brian Kempen as a much more moderate type of person. Not saying he's not conservative, he's not a true Republican. He's just not a flamethrower.
[00:23:00] Speaker A: Well, I was going to say moderate might not even be the right term because maybe he's just a regular politician. He's not more of an extremist.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:09] Speaker A: You know, just not out there, you know. Yeah. He's saying, hey, let's have elections.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: Yeah, that's got a standard.
[00:23:14] Speaker A: Like, but let me, let me jump in because I think like that's a, that's obviously a very big part of this. How much of it we don't, we can't attribute to. Because like you point out, so many of those people lost their election. Deniers lost. Some of them won, but so many of them lost. We don't know. We can't. But we can't. It's not a simulation. We can't run it back and say, okay, let's put in just a regular candidate, somebody who acknowledges and defends elections and see we play this out. Would that person have won? But it is fair to, to, to surmise from the, how poorly election deniers did around the country that that was, that's something from a candidate quality standpoint that could hurt you because a lot of these people had history where they were making a big deal about it in 2020 and 2021, where they were talking about doing all types of crazy stuff to prevent an election from being certified or after the election was certified and so forth. So they put, they got receipts out there that were easy to point to saying, look, this guy doesn't believe in democracy. And then the agenda piece as well, it plays into that as well because they're running on the fact that they need to relitigate the 2020 election, which even people who may have been on board with that in 2020, that a lot of them have moved on even. And it's like, look, you know, like we're done with this, you know, and that, that's something that it's, it's, that's one of those unknowables, like all of these, because there's so many different things that mixed into this pot. It's, it's unknowable how many or which ones were the true driving forces. And this is the point I wanted to make and which ones maybe were marginal or kind of, kind of piggybacked on with the others. But there does seem to be an overall theme in place that there was a pushback. It wasn't an overwhelming pushback because again, Republicans got 50 to 48% of the overall votes that were voted for the House of Representatives. So it wasn't some total rebuke, but there was a pushback. There was an underperformance on where they should have been looking at historical trends. And it seems to be because the Democrats weren't out here doing anything amazing. It seems to be mainly due to their own conduct that this underperformance happened. And that was the piece I really wanted to get to, you know, so I want to look, spinning it forward, you know, like, do you think, do you or do you see anything going on in either party that's a cause for optimism or concern even for as this direction we're looking at, you know, was what happened here kind of a one time deal? Or do you think we're looking at somebody doubling down? Like, do you think lessons were learned here? Or you know, just kind of what do you think you're looking forward?
[00:25:40] Speaker B: It's a good question. I mean, look, I don't think anything is static and only one time in politics. Right. So I don't think that either side, I mean, we've. These battles go on forever and they twist and turn and it's, you know, you get new blood coming in and new elected officials. So I don't think that either party can ever rest. Right. And this is ever really over. But I think, you know, I think Democrats going forward there's a little bit more positive. I see. Because they had a true leadership change.
[00:26:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:12] Speaker B: You know, Pelosi finally gave up her authority as being the leader of the Democrats in the Congress. And I think that is material. Who knows how the new leadership will do? But that's. I think anytime you have change at the top, it's probably a little bit more positive and you're gonna get, you know, just some fresh ideas and all.
[00:26:29] Speaker A: That change at the top.
[00:26:30] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:26:31] Speaker A: You know, somebody saying, hey, I'm gonna step back. You know, I want the younger people to step up. You know, like, and how that kind of went off without a hitch. The younger person who was gonna step up, Jeffries, you know, like, it wasn't a big fight over that. But. No, go ahead.
[00:26:42] Speaker B: Yeah. No. And so I'm saying is that I think for them, it's a little bit more of a positive result. And the things we've been talking about, they didn't get the shellacking that. That everybody thought. But with that said. Right. They shouldn't get complacent either. Right. So that's the thing.
And then the. Then the Republicans, though, I think we're seeing a true organic breakdown, I think, of the Republican Party over this period of time post Trump, because I think that's what we just identified in the comments. We just made a few in the last couple minutes, which is anybody who was really, or I don't say anybody, but the majority of people who were leading with their campaign rhetoric on the stolen election or beating up other Republicans. Right. I see how many people in the primary I saw blaming other Republicans of being rhinos and all this kind of stuff.
[00:27:32] Speaker A: Seems like you were talking this week to me about the guy, the guy that lost the primary that was out there having a commercial about rhino hunting.
[00:27:38] Speaker B: Yeah. And he had a shotgun and he blew a hole in the door. Yeah. On a commercial. And I think that's what I'm saying is it appears there's a ceiling on Americans appetite for that type of violence and this kind of aggressive rhetoric. And I think that's where, when we just mentioned the Georgia election specifically, where you see a guy, the governor, Brian Kemp, won and beat his Democratic opponent. But the senator, who's a Republican, lost to the Democrat. And if you look at both those guys, you would say, okay, one, Herschel Walker represents the more Trumpian wing of the party. Brian Kemp is more of the traditional Republican establishment kind of guy. So it seems like that's where I would say the Republicans is. Interesting that they're going to have to continue to.
I don't think the two forces can coexist forever, is my point. At some point, one is going to dominate the other and push the other one out. I just can't tell you which one's which.
[00:28:33] Speaker A: Well, we've seen that. I mean, that goes back even to the Never Trumpers, you know, that were Republicans that, you know, kind of got pushed to the fray or moved out. The Liz just happened to Liz Cheney.
[00:28:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:42] Speaker A: And I think the two things I was going to throw at you, the first thing I was going to throw at you was the Dem leadership, the Democratic leadership, kind of voluntary change, you know, like that. The other thing, though, that we're, we're about to see is the battle over the House speaker, you know, where McCarthy and the primary for that overwhelmingly got support. But there are members of the Republican House that are not on board with this and that the concern is they're going to submarine it and they're going to not vote for it and McCarthy's not going to be able to get it and leading to disastrous results or whatever. And so there is a tension between two coalitions or at least two coalitions or people that are kind of at least have one foot in different coalitions. The more extreme coalition, anything goes by any means necessary kind of coalition. The, the stop the steel type of people. The, the people that it doesn't matter if you have the right enemies, so to speak, it doesn't matter what your qualifications are, because Herschel Walker represents that as well. Like he had done any. Nothing that you would say, okay, yeah, that guy needs to run for Senate. You know, it was just like, okay, he's there because of force of personality, you know, and this other coalition, which is more the traditional coalition, and this battle that we're seeing, we'll see basically how it's going. I think you're going to get an indication of how things are going to play out in the next two years based on what happens with this, this battle with the Kevin McCarthy's going through as far as to become a Speaker because he's made a lot of compromises on his own integrity over the past six years. To get to this point. And so if he's made, he's made those compromises with the people in the more extreme coalition. So if those people now don't stay behind him when he's at the precipice of what he's doing, I mean, that's, I mean, that's, that's on him for making all those compliments, keywords, integrity. Yeah.
[00:30:24] Speaker B: He's going to live and die by the sword right now. You know, like he made his bet. He's going to line it if he gets the speakership. He'll have to.
[00:30:32] Speaker A: Well, he's still going to.
[00:30:33] Speaker B: He's going to have to deal with a caucus that's very divided, and he's going to deal with an ecosystem that wants him to behave a certain way, you know, the media and social media and all that. And if he gets a knife in his back and he's not the speaker, then he would have done all this stuff like you're saying the last six years, only to get a knife in his back.
[00:30:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:53] Speaker B: I don't envy his position.
[00:30:54] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, so that I think, I would say it's unknown yet as far as what to take from this, from the side of the Republican Party, but I think the Democratic Party. Yeah, I would agree with you that they didn't take such a brutal loss, but yet they still made a move like this to try to transition to younger leadership, which that's something you and I have been talking about. They need to do this for 10 years, but at least they did it, you know, like, so it's, it's like, okay, that's. So now we got to see what they're going to come up with in terms of how they're going to try to take the country to a positive direction. But this kind of messaging.
[00:31:25] Speaker B: Yeah. And this is what I see fascinating about it because what we've just described is really, I mean, forget the Democrats for this conversation.
Just the Republican Party is very interesting because there is a true tension. There's people in the party that are powerful that want to keep talking about the 2020 stolen election and the big lie. And they want to, they want to treat the rioters of January 6th like their victims.
[00:31:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:49] Speaker B: So on and so forth. Right. And we've talked about this. This is in direct contrast. Right. This isn't like we had the George Floyd summer 20 years ago, two years prior to 2022. Sorry, the 2020, that summer, let's just put it that way.
People on the right or conservative watching conservative media were told how bad. Rioters were now told how bad, you know, that people who are breaking the law and messing up federal buildings work. Which hey, I agree with that if you break the law in the protest, you should get arrested. And so.
[00:32:22] Speaker A: But to your point though, it was emphasized to them probably to a greater degree than what was actually happening.
It was put to them like this is happening all over the place 90% of the time. Put it even better.
[00:32:34] Speaker B: It was put to them that the fact that these people are assembling in the street is caused for them to be, to be arrested. So my point is, is that when you have seven months later the same thing happening, but just people from another political stripe and then that same party that spent all this time ginning up all this fear and stuff starts saying, don't look over here. What I'm saying is again, we're saying the same thing. It's a ceiling. Most Americans are looking at that and say eh, you know, that's what you're.
[00:33:01] Speaker A: Saying though is a perception game though because if you weren't watching the right wing media at the time of the George Floyd Summ, you weren't walking away with the impression that there was some overwhelming amount of trespassing and destruction. You know, like you knew that there was some, but that wasn't the, that wasn't what it was all about, so to speak. And so the perception there that you have if you're in, you know, if you're in certain ecosystems, that goes to your ecosystems piece would be that it's one way but nonetheless I think staying on that just kind of the other piece I'd say is where we'll see beyond just the McCarthy speakership is the focus on the January 6th and re litigating that because the House will now have, the Republicans now are going to have the ability to open up investigations. And so if they spend all their time looking at Hunter Biden and January 6th, you know, that's serving the wing of the party, the more extreme wing of the party, you know, like, and if they don't, if they spend their time I guess just blocking Biden's agenda, I don't know what else they'd be doing. But I mean like if they spend their time doing that but not looking back necessarily, then it may be it has been the more traditional people in the party taken more of the control again in terms of what's happening. But the problem they have though is that one approach of those two that we talk about honestly just plays better on tv. It's more compelling television. And so where they end up going a lot of times is the direction that plays better on television because that gets you on television, gets you more notoriety. And that doesn't always lead to better results politically, particularly in general elections.
[00:34:28] Speaker B: No, I agree. I think I want to get to.
[00:34:29] Speaker A: The next point or next topic.
[00:34:31] Speaker B: Let me just finish this off because I think to, to, to just extend what you said is, I think that's what we're saying when we say a ceiling.
I think the Republican Party needs to remember that Twitter isn't the majority of Americans. Right. And I think that's what's happening is they're playing to a certain slice of the American electorate which is hyper present online.
But to your point, most Americans aren't part of that story right now, like listening and watching all the time for like you're saying about Hunter Biden. If they go after Hunter Biden, yeah, that'll feed that beast of people that want all that. But that's 20% of the country. The rest of the country is going to look at them and say, the hell are you doing? And that's one thing I was thinking is, you know, what the country is seeing is things like that the Republicans blocked the government's ability to negotiate the lowest cost for insulin. You know, there's actual legislation happening that the country is seeing. Like we talked about 21 million people every night watch CBS, NBC and ABC.
[00:35:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:32] Speaker B: Four million people watch CNN, Fox and MSNBC. Now out of that, three million watch Fox. But it's still a much smaller demographic of Americans that are getting this red meat that has to be all this culture and this personality and this heroes and villains versus the ones that are getting the stuff. So that's where finishing up is.
The Republican Party is just going to have an issue until they deal with that and want to deal with that energy and start governing again and showing Americans they have a solution for the future and not always talking about all this personality conflict stuff, you know.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: Yeah. So that's, you know, again, that's the stuff that it makes for better drama. You know, like we talk. We've said it. You and I both said it various times. C SPAN doesn't drive ratings, but I know, you know, Real Housewives does. And so Hunter Biden, that kind of stuff, that's Real Housewives, man.
[00:36:21] Speaker B: Seeing him naked with a crack pipe and a hooker in the background would have been pretty cool. I do wish Twitter would have showed that. But hey, but I want to move.
[00:36:28] Speaker A: To the next topic, though.
[00:36:29] Speaker B: Maybe I'd have changed my vote if I saw that.
[00:36:31] Speaker A: We saw a piece come across past couple of, you know, week or two, and basically a new criminal code has been enacted in Indonesia. And this has been in the works for a while. They wanted to push it through a couple years ago, and then it kind of held off, but they just pushed it through. And one of the most notable, one of the headline grabbers is that it banned sex outside of marriage as a society. You know, I was like, hey, this is something you can, you can go to jail for. You know, it's a serious business. Now, I have a lot of questions for you on this, but I'm just going to ask. I'm just going to open up the floor, man. What are your thoughts on this?
[00:37:07] Speaker B: I may not go to Indonesia for a while or I guess. No, let me say you're married. I was going to say I'm going to go with my wife.
[00:37:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:15] Speaker B: How about that? And then I got to bring my marriage certificate and the whole thing. I guess I got to prove it. But no, I mean, it's. It's interesting. First of all, of course, like you said, the headline, it just kind of makes you laugh and smile. Oh, yeah. Okay, let me read this. What I found interesting was this is not something just like instant, like just now, like, oh, somebody thought this up in the last year and decided to push it through. That. That, like, this got lost by a very slim margin, like way back in 2014, like, there's.
[00:37:43] Speaker A: When they reformed everything.
[00:37:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Then people been pushing this for a while, so it's just. It just kind of went over the edge, I guess. And it's a country of 270 million people.
[00:37:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:53] Speaker B: And so. Huge country.
[00:37:55] Speaker A: Huge country.
[00:37:55] Speaker B: Yeah. That's a huge country. And it's actually. I learned reading, too. I mean, I knew that they were majority Muslim, but it's actually the largest majority Muslim country in the world. So clearly this is more of a bend to the religious views of certain people in the majority. I'm not going to say everybody. And this then reminds me of countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia or others that we would consider theocracies, where the religious doctrine begins to encroach on the.
[00:38:26] Speaker A: Or forms the basis of.
[00:38:27] Speaker B: Of the legal system.
[00:38:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:29] Speaker B: And so now we have, you know, this. Yeah.
[00:38:33] Speaker A: I think this is. It's more shocking to see because it's 2022 and we live in a Western society. But I'll say, I actually, I think it actually says more about us that we see this and we're very shocked by it because it's not much different than for example, they're like over in Qatar right now with the World cup, you know, like there's, there's restrictions on alcohol. Like, it's a lot of restrictions on what you can do in your own time, not just even in public, you know, but like, you know, you go to something, they don't even sell alcohol, certain places or certain things like that. And so, and that's again based on religious doctrine, you know, so if you, this is where this is what liberalism is about basically is saying that you're not going to look to something like somebody being a leader because God said he was a leader or she was a leader, or somebody's religious doctrine being the foundation of what the laws are going to be, that the laws are, we're going to push back against that kind of authority. That's what liberalism is. And so I think that what's notable to me in this as well is that even in our country, the tensions never go away in any society of hey, we need to make this illegal because our religion says this, or we need to make that illegal because our religion says this. We're we in, in this country, United States, we have more pushback built in because the Constitution expressly says that people's religion isn't going to form the basis of law and the government's not going to endorse any religion and so forth. But even, even with that, we see many things being put, proposed into law or things like that or put into law that are essentially based on someone's religion and their interpretation of what their religion says is okay and what's not okay. So here is just, it's just kind of a shiny object that we in the west can be like, oh, wow, that's crazy. Ha, ha, ha. But it's not much different than a lot of other restrictions that you'll see in any type of place where religious doctrine is starting to take the place if more where it's about what the religion says is moral and what's not, based on what's, what's lawful and what's not.
[00:40:37] Speaker B: Yeah, and this is, see, and this is what's interesting to me because it's like, I mean obviously they're, they're majority Muslim, but I'll, I'll just take an example of like the Ten Commandments. I always said the Ten Commandments are a great road map for a Bronze Age size society. Right? Like a society maybe of a few thousand people, maybe a few hundred, where you, you, you have the ability to kind of see everybody. Generally, people know each other and these are rules like don't sleep with your neighbor's wife. Yep, that makes sense, right? Don't steal, don't do this.
[00:41:08] Speaker A: Those are important ones all the time.
[00:41:13] Speaker B: Yeah, but even the seven deadly sins, like gluttony, like if you're in a small community, before we had grocery stores, you wouldn't want the one guy eating all the grain. Right. For. So it's like, I get it, that all that makes sense. But they're trying to apply these regulations to a country of 270 million people in the broader context of the world where everybody can travel and all that. And that's where I find these things end up becoming very hypocritical because it's kind of like the abortion debate here, where every older person I've talked to that was old enough to be an adult prior to Roe versus Wade just tells you all the wealthy people just have their kids go to Canada or Mexico. You know what I mean? And so what I'm saying is I used to go to college with kids from Saudi Arabia and certain countries where you had things like alcohol was banned because of the Sharia law and sex before marriage. These guys were all doing it here. They're having sex, premarital. They were doing drugs, drinking. My point is, is that people will look to do this stuff anyway.
No, because I'm not naming names. So if I start naming names, then I'm a snitch.
But the point is that. That's my point is that again, it's another reflection to me that our society is imperfect. But the ability to have allow people to do these things whenever they want them creates a certain level of honesty within the society. Because people can go to strip clubs here. I mean, I know you only can go do it in Nevada, prostitution, but you know, people. Now marijuana is legal, meaning people have choices. And our society. I know we just talked about culture wars in part one, but there's always a part of our culture that thinks the sky is falling all the time anyway. But in the bigger picture, it's not like these things are causing our society collapse just because people can have sex and smoke some weed legally. You know what I mean? So.
[00:43:07] Speaker A: But see, but that's because we can see that they have it. But a lot of times the fear that it would cause a society to collapse is where the people.
[00:43:15] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That.
[00:43:17] Speaker A: But what I'm saying is that we have the same tensions here, you know, we have the same tensions here, you know, like in terms like you mentioned abortion. Abortion is one of these things that a large part of the justification for making that illegal has, comes from religion. You know, and there's been, I've seen religious groups push back and say, well, that's only their religion that says that it's, you know, like that it has to be, you know, outlawed. But our religion doesn't say that. So how are you putting their religion above ours? And so it's, I think the tension exists no matter what, because it's really.
[00:43:44] Speaker B: The first human that didn't allow for.
[00:43:47] Speaker A: Theocracies, but it's really a human thing. And I mean, we did the Righteous Mind. We did that book, you know, maybe a year or some ago, and it talked about kind of the basis of morality and where morality is coming from and how in many societies, Western societies in particular, we look at morality as more of a fairness and a harm and kind of thing. But most societies around the world and in historical societies in general look at much, many more things as part of, as an ear, separable part, inseparable part of morality. And so that's what we're seeing enacted here. And so ultimately it has to be based on priority, you know, priorities of what we're going to spend our energy trying to do with our society. And a lot of times it's about these things of sanctity or about, you know, honor and so forth. And that's the way they want to do it. We see that as, okay, yeah, that's a theocracy. That's what they're doing. That's, that's what they think makes for a better society. To your point, I think that we can see that it doesn't necessarily make for a better society. It allows you to control people in a different way. But that blows up in your face sometimes. We're looking at Iran right now where Iran is having these issues because they're enforcing a religious law and they're out there killing women to show their hair and so forth. And so what I think. Well, I'll kick it back to you because I know you had something to say about. Because Iran just with all these protests they've been having for all this time now, they just supposedly outward got rid of the morality police.
[00:45:13] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I think that's where the enforcement comes in, which is the need to have a morality police. Once you set up your society to be a religious state. Right. Like that the law is based on the religious doctrine. And I think when you look in the First Amendment. And you see that there shall be no legislation of a religion in the United States. It's because they founding fathers came from having that experience. They lived it. That when you allow the passions of the religion and the doctrine to set law, you're going to have situations that are messy. Right. And that's why the legal system is secular. It's not. And the idea is that we have freedom of religion in this country where everybody is free to practice. And I think that's where a lot of people don't. You know, I think. Let me put it this way. I think some people don't recognize that even their own religion, if certain more extreme people took control and made everything about the law, that, you know, life wouldn't be as open and easy as it is now. And I think there's another set of people. And this goes back to things like the righteous mind. This isn't a knock on religion. This is about humans.
[00:46:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:26] Speaker B: There's a certain amount. There's a certain percentage of all of us in our. Any society that are authoritarian. They either want to dominate other people or they're the type that'll fall in line and follow that type of leader.
[00:46:38] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think, put another way, it's hierarchical and. Yeah, so, like, there's an appeal, an innate appeal to hierarchical situations. I mean, this, you know, this comes from primates. You know what I'm saying? So it's. Yeah, but go ahead.
[00:46:51] Speaker B: What I'm just saying is that throughout history, this isn't just something modern to, let's say, Islam in the Middle east or something. Right. Now, a lot of the versions of Islam in the Middle east are authoritarian, but one could say the Catholic Church was at one point. One can go back in deep history during Jesus time and say Orthodox Judaism might have been the one back then that was authoritarian. I'm sure the Hindus had their moment at some point. Every religion has been hijacked by some leader that says, okay, this is my conduit. And it's kind of like we've talked about in private conversations. You look at certain economic and political structures in the 20th century, like socialism under Stalin or Castro, that was more of just an authoritarian dictatorship, you know, and just masked in an economic agenda. So they didn't use.
[00:47:38] Speaker A: But the thing. One of the interesting things about that. And we won't go down this path, but they didn't use religion to justify their place at the top of the hierarchy. They used other. It was actually. Actually they started off at the economic side like we're going to be here to do this. But then, as you said, they just became regular old autocrats.
[00:47:54] Speaker B: Yeah. And so, and that's what I'm saying is that that's the importance of this. This, the kind of First Amendment and the separation of religion from the official position of governing a country is because religions are emotional and the religions can change and morph. And you got people even within a religion that are going to start arguing. I mean, remember again, during the founding Fathers time, because this country was so vast. Unitarians, Puritans, Quakers, Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, Protestant, regular Protestants, Catholics, I can rattle more off. And we're still just in Christianity. We haven't even gone to Judaism or Islam. So what I'm put. My point is, is that. So if you said this is a Christian nation, which one of those would win? We would end up.
[00:48:43] Speaker A: No, seriously, it's whatever. The one who. The person who said it is correct.
[00:48:47] Speaker B: Well, but see, this is why we look at some of these Middle Eastern cultures now and say, why are Sharia and Sunni fighting? Picture Shia, sorry, Shia and Sunni, kind of like a Quaker and a Protestant, a Unitarian. It's just two different branches of the same thing of the same religion. But I think one runs the show, the other's upset.
[00:49:07] Speaker A: I think there's insight actually, in looking at the, what we, the struggles we see in the Islamic world with, to comparing that to Christianity, because, you know, Islam is about 600 years younger than Christianity, you know, give or take. And I find it to be interesting that the societies, the Islamic societies right now almost in way, in many ways, are similar to the Christian societies that were around the 600, 500 years ago, you know, in terms of how they, they think that having imposing this rigidity on society will create more stability, but really what it ends up doing is stifling a society. And it tends to breed external conflict. You know, like an external conflict, meaning external whatever the chosen religion is, whatever the chosen framework for this rigidity, because it promotes and rewards that rigidity. So the people in society that are making the most moves are the most rigid people, you know, like, as opposed to the people that are more flexible and so forth. And so this is this reality. When you had the founding fathers of this country and you already kind of pointed towards this, they, they were looking at that history of the last, at their time, the last 300 years or so of Christianity, like, yo, we gotta, we gotta come up with a different way. If we, if we do this stuff based on religion, we're just gonna Be. We're gonna be in the same place we're in now in 100 years and 200 years, and we're just gonna be fighting amongst each other among little squabbles about, oh, you gotta stand this way or you gotta sit this way, or you gotta go to church on this day. You gotta. We'll be fighting about all this stuff all the time or sometimes more serious stuff. And so it was specifically crafted as a reaction to seeing what that does to society, you know, so I think that we see this now and we see it as something that it's like, wow, it's very different to the world that we in the United States live in. But you can't look at it as being completely foreign because not only is it very similar to the same thing Christians were doing when they were in control of societies in the past, there's still. People in our society would go down this direction if they get given the opportunity. They would, you know, like. And whether it's, you know, about, you know, sex or whether it's about who you can marry or is about, you know, abortion, whatever, like, it's so, you know, like, I know you. We were going to get out of here. But you have one more point, and.
[00:51:18] Speaker B: I'm just saying it's. It's an excellent point you make because, you know, one can look at the Middle east as a region prior to the late 70s, and cities like Beirut, Tehran and Iran, you know, Aleppo in Syria, these. These were seen as like, akin to big European cities. They used to call Beirut the. Like the Paris of the Middle East.
[00:51:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:42] Speaker B: And again, this is what I'm saying very clearly. I'm not knocking these religions. The majority of those countries were Muslim prior to the late 70s. What happens when you had these religious revolutions?
You had the authoritarians within the religion take over to exactly everything you just said, wanting to gain control through the religious doctrine and telling everyone else they have to live like this. And I think a more modern example would be the Taliban, you know, and the need to dominate the women and all that by using religion as an excuse. So I think you're right that Christianity was there back in the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment. I mean, that's the whole reason why they call it the Enlightenment. It was the first time in Europe.
[00:52:27] Speaker A: Where they were coming out of the Dark Ages.
[00:52:28] Speaker B: Yeah, let's have a system of government that's not based on religion and emotion and us being tribal. Let's try and have laws and things that are kind of, you know, secular ways of Controlling or managing the population. And that's what I want to say. Like, by saying that we're not bashing religion, what we're doing is saying there's people within a society that will use religion, just like some will use the economic. Different ways of organizing societies to accomplish.
[00:52:59] Speaker A: Military or, you know, use the military or use. Yeah, any. Any means of acquiring power.
[00:53:04] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And so the founders realized, let's keep the religion separate and let's keep the law and the other stuff separate so that everyone can practice how they want. But there's not going to be anything in the United States that says, this is a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or whatever.
[00:53:19] Speaker A: And then the same way that they made sure that there was civilian control over the military because they saw, hey, when you have military control on its own, then they'll decide to take over at some point. So all of those things that they.
[00:53:29] Speaker B: Were saying, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly. Yeah, these guys are pretty smart.
[00:53:32] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, they were. They were responding to what they saw, and they thought they did a good job, so. And, yeah, I mean, to your point, John, I'll say this. Just, you know, again, it's not knocking the religion. We're just pointing out the issues that come up. You know, when you combine the religion with the law and with the governing, you know, like, when you put the religion on its own does very well, but when you put it with the governing, then there's their outcomes in society that end up happening. And a lot of those are not things that necessarily in the abstract we would aspire to. So we'll get out of here from there. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call Like I see It. Subscribe to the podcast, Rate it, review us, tell us what you think, and share it with a friend. And until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:54:12] Speaker B: Tune to Egwen lineup.
[00:54:14] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
