Hello and welcome to Let's Pod This. My name is Andy Moore. It's good to be with you again this week. Friends, I'll apologize off the top. I'm a little stuffy. All the wind and the dust and the wildfires has really got me a little messed up. And I'm sure, like many of you, are in the same boat. I, it feels like everyone I talk to every day is like, these allergies are killing me. And politics also slightly killing me. And like many of you, I'm sure. Happy spring break for those of you who celebrate, who have kids or jobs where you get to take a spring break. Happy sunshine week to all of you who care about government transparency. As we highlight almost every year, the Third week of March is historically sunshine week, celebrated by transparency organizations, and most notably, the press, the media. Each week even Oklahoma Attorney General Gittner Drummond had an excellent op ed in the Oklahoman about transparency. Headline states, transparency is the heart of democracy. Which is true. It's at least one of the valves, primary artery of that. In Oklahoma, the A. G. 's office is the Department or agency that is, I think, primarily responsible for enforcing the Open Records Act and Open Meeting Act. They do host trainings around the state. I think they had more than 750 people who attended their trainings this year. They often do that in conjunction with the Oklahoma Press Association and sometimes with Freedom of Information, Oklahoma. Which is a non profit that celebrates or champions transparency and the First Amendment. And in fact, FOI Oklahoma will be hosting an event about transparency, about the Open Records Act, Open Meeting Act, and its vital importance to our democracy. And just the first amendment in general and that event is going to be next week. I believe on Tuesday or Thursday, I think it's on Thursday the 28th We look at my calendar and I'll tell you it is on nope, I was wrong, it was on Tuesday the 25th, March 25th FOI Oklahoma presents Summit on Threats to First Amendment Freedoms from 6 to 8 p. m. at the Northwest Library in Oklahoma City. That's the one, Patience Ladding Northwest Library, it's at MacArthur and 122nd Northwest 122nd, from 6 to 8 in the evening. I will be there it should be an interesting conversation, a good event. I think there's going to be a number of elected officials and other community leaders there to really have a, I think a pretty honest conversation about what are the primary threats that we might be seeing to our First Amendment freedoms. There are five freedoms listed in the First Amendment. If you can name them, please send me an email at podcast at letsfixthis. org and we'll give you a sticker. Who doesn't love a sticker, right? Great. You can also find A. G. Drummond's op ed in the Oklahoman at theoklahoman. com if you feel so inclined. So I wanted to start this week with a brief note just of condolences in our hearts are with all of the victims in Oklahoma from wildfire, wildfires over the past week. Last weekend, I think in my last episode, I mentioned that I was headed to Stillwater for the Mid South Gravel Bike Race, which unfortunately was cancelled due to the wildfires as we drove up there on Friday afternoon. It was a bizarre trip, right? Just, we all remember, like, the wind was just raging. Crosswinds made it difficult to drive. The dust in the air gave everything a bit of a sepia tone. And once we turned off of 35 onto Highway 51 and were headed east into Stillwater, about halfway through there is where we hit the fires. And to see large scale wildfires just running rampant across some of those pastures out there was really striking and it wasn't long before smoke made the roads unsafe to travel in the law enforcement had his reroute and kind of take some back roads into town. And I think that first night was Friday night was really anxiety provoking for everybody in Stillwater. We knew the fires were close. We knew that they were blowing our direction and closing in. When we got to our Airbnb, us and our friends, we didn't unpack because we thought we might have to leave again. Thankfully we didn't, but as news began to trickle in as the fires passed and we saw the number of homes that were impacted that night and the next day. The event shifted from a 4, 300 person, bike race and running race on top of that, to a benefit event. I know they've raised over 10, 000 just from a couple of cyclists that did, like, really long 300 mile rides, it's like a a ride a thon almost, to raise funds. A lot of local businesses Stone Cloud Brewing, some of the event sponsors pivoted and made made some contributions towards helping those in wildfire relief into the United Way of Payne County. If you are interested in helping victims of the wildfires in Stillwater or Norman or anywhere else in the state I suggest, looking for trusted sources there, or if families directly impacted, finding ways to give to them directly. But groups like United Way, like Red Cross if you're a Norman Red Dirt Voices is a mutual aid organization, or Red Dirt Collective, excuse me, Red Dirt Collective is a mutual aid organization that is doing a lot of work directly with families. They're a great way to give there, so. Gosh what a scary weekend. I know that, the wind, even through last night, was still pretty high. I think we're experiencing some high winds coming up in a few days. And until we get some, I guess, like, April showers to dampen things again, this dry period, this windy period, means this is the new normal. We can get into a much larger conversation about climate change and how we arrived at this point, and why weather patterns have perhaps shifted the way they have, but that's an episode for another day. Let's start with some updates from last week. There were several news stories that we covered last week. That we already have updates on. I think some I mentioned we would, and indeed we do. First of all, State Superintendent Ryan Walters, as we discussed last week, had settled an issue with the Ethics Commission. They were also filing some new ones. They were sending some to district court. But this one in particular, they mentioned that he had already settled, but last week they had not yet released the terms of that. And this is an issue where he was using his I guess his personal Twitter account, but it made it look like it was an official account. It had Superintendent in the name, it like, it had his official headshot, all those things that you might use on an official government account. And the Ethics Commission said, hey, this is very blurry here. You are misleading the public and it is making it seem like you're using An official account for personal purposes, namely endorsing and supporting or opposing political candidates in some other, like, partisan issues. And so, in response, he settled he has to pay 5, 000 fine, which is not huge, but it's not nothing. And if it was me and I got fined 5, 000, that's a lot of money. He also had to change his profile photo and his handle, or whatever that's called, the at name. To keep using it as a personal account. And I guess he's done that. I don't know. I don't actually follow him, because I don't need that in my life. But that's the outcome of that one. But then also this week on the new side of news, a state lawmaker, Ellen Pogemiller, representative from House District 88, whom we had on the show just a few weeks ago, actually she has formally requested that the Attorney General weigh in on whether or not Ryan Walter's connection to this new professional association, which is called Teacher Freedom Alliance. A representative, Pogue Miller, asked AG Drummond to quote, clarify the legality of Walters conduct concerning this new Teacher Freedom Alliance. She also asked Drummond to investigate any financial ties and contacts between Walters and TFA. What's funny to me about this, or interesting, is that this group, Teacher Freedom Alliance, I think they say that they are a professional association or professional organization, but they really act like A union. And I think Walter's rhetoric around this, he said, like, now there's an alternative to the woke teacher unions. And anyone who has followed Oklahoma news for the last several years has seen Ryan Walters use the phrase, like, woke teacher unions, right, a number of times. He often characterizes them as being this, like, arm of the left deep state and that they're, like, indoctrinating teachers, I don't know, like, it's all kind of wild stuff. Considering that they're a labor union that just wants public employees, teachers and school employees to be appropriately paid and compensated they, to now be aligning with this group that looks like it's like a stand up organization just on the opposite side of the aisle. A lot of the rhetoric is definitely around, um, like using the term freedom in the way that, the Freedom Caucus and this far right contingent tend to use that word. So we'll see. The AG's office has reported that they've received that request and they'll be responding as appropriate. So we'll see what happens over the next few weeks with that. Of course, everything here is like a little pull, a little more political than usual because the Attorney General is running for governor. And then rumors are on Ryan Walters that he's either running for governor or running for re election as state superintendent. We don't, none of that has been formally announced yet. But there's this like, I don't know, bias, expectation, suspicion, something, right? About these two guys in the news that it makes it difficult, I think, for voters, right? For most of us. Like, you want justice to be served as necessary, right? Either people are convicted or exonerated or punished or set free or whatever. It's like the right thing to do by the letter of the law. But as we all know, when politicians get involved, it gets murky, right? Because then there are not just legal incentives, right versus wrong, there are political incentives, how does this play with my base, my supporters, um, which of these groups is going to donate to my campaign or to support me along the way. And that, I think, shifts the incentives that a lot of these leaders have, right? I for one, want our Attorney General to be incentivized by the law, by doing the right thing. I want our state superintendent to be incentivized by doing the right thing for public schools. That's his job as state superintendent of public instruction not by political wins. I also get, right, realistically, that what I personally may believe is the right thing for Oklahoma's public schools may be different than what Superintendent Walters believes to be right for Oklahoma's public schools. That, again, is a much larger conversation for another episode. I just do think it's funny, just to come back to, like, that this Teacher Freedom Alliance, like, really looks and is acting like a teacher's union, but we know that Walters hates unions, so Who are they? What are they? Are they a think tank? I saw them described as a think tank in one write up. And so, I'll be very curious. Also, whenever new groups like this pop up, especially around, like, in the close proximity to elected officials, I get a little suspicious. And it sounds like Representative Pogemiller might be a little suspicious as well. I guess we'll find out. Also last week, we discussed a law that is going through the process this year that addresses, we'll say, immigration. That's a broad term for this, but that's what it's about, and it seeks to fiddle with a a law that was passed last year that was pretty contentious, and this that deals with a, what they called, quote, impermissible occupation, right? So this law passed last year House Bill 4156, I think the number is. I don't have it written down. Basically created a new penalty for what they called impermissible occupation, which means like being in Oklahoma illegally is what they're trying to say, right? I said there's some sort of permission process, but they're trying to dance around undocumented folks living in Oklahoma. And that basically, if you are caught breaking any other law and then you are found to be here. Illegally, then there's an additional consequence. The law this year would make that a felony by itself, and the reason they have a law this year is that the previous law, the one passed last year, 4156, has been on hold, right? A federal judge issued a stay last year that said, hang on, like, this is perhaps unconstitutional or illegal in some way. So it cannot be enforced while it goes through the process and that was filed by the U. S. Department of Justice last year when Joe Biden was still president. As we have a new president now, a new head of DOJ and the new DOG, excuse me, DOJ administration has dismissed that case entirely. Which means that law can go into effect as it was passed last year. Pending another sort of If there's not another legal challenge filed, or some other stay put on it. As with legal stuff, there's always something else coming. It also means that the fate of the bill this year is somewhat in question. I would expect they'll probably still go through with it, because I think they were aiming to clean up some of the language. Dealt with it before. But regardless, I wanted to update you. Don't you know that has passed? Or been dismissed, so that it's free to be enforced. The AG's office here said that they were reviewing it as well, and as far as they can tell, It just means that the federal government is okay with it being enforced. I think they'll be looking to take a look at it at the state level now, again, as well. And then for my own piece, right, this is Andy's commentary. I think this is dumb. This, not this issue necessarily, but like, this bill necessarily, but this issue more broadly, that like, the partisanship of law, which I know is a thing. And it's annoying because when we, the public, start to realize that what is considered legal or illegal varies quite widely by political winds, right, by who's in the White House or who's in the governor's mansion or like who's in power, if it means that the law does not stand on its own, and that erodes the public's trust in institutions a great deal, right? Even if we were to take something as simple as a speed limit, and let's say speed limits were 55 miles an hour when Republicans are in charge or 70 miles an hour when Democrats are in charge, it would be absurd for us to think that we have to drive a certain speed just because someone's. In charge, in a state, right? That could vary state to state, that could vary city to city. And it could also like what if they don't replace all the signs? That's a big expense if they do it. There's all these like trickle down effects of that. And that would be ridiculous. Because it would just tell us that it is not based on science or safety standards. It is based on politics. And I think most people feel like that's a dumb way to govern, right? That there should be, we understand that there's a certain amount of partisanship that is inherent in the system that might flavor priorities or some like funding decisions, and maybe even some tax policy, like there's some element of it. But now in this modern world where everything top to bottom is completely tainted in partisanship. Red or blue, there is very little room for anything that is in between or outside of that. If one party is for something, the other party necessarily feels like they must be against it. There's very little overlap where both groups are for something or both groups are opposed to something. Then it makes it really hard for all of us in the world to like find our way through. And so in this, going back to this example, right, like the idea that someone's. I think most people would agree, right? If there's, if someone is in the country and has come here not through the prescribed channels, like they are here in a undocumented or illegal way, not that they as a person are illegal, that's a whole other conversation, but like their presence here was outside the prescripted method in the law. Like, I think most Americans agree like, okay, well, that's not ideal. And that's like arguably even wrong. Or like, okay. And then you have an option of like, well, what's the problem here? Is it the fact that they are here? Is that the problem? What if they're working and paying taxes and raising a family and contributing to society? Like their presence might be great and in many cases is. The problem then is not on the individual, but on the system that forced them to end up here. In this method, right? Many, most, I don't know, I haven't started, but many immigrants, I'll say most immigrants, want to come to America to have a better life. Isn't that the whole thing? It's like inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. This is a whole thing. America is a melting pot, and we have celebrated that for 200 years. Our immigration system right now is a Messed up. And we're not alone. A bunch of countries, like most Western, civilized, industrialized countries, like, are experiencing this problem with immigration that they haven't figured out how to wrap their head around because it has become an intractable problem where neither party wants to collaborate or compromise with the other to make a solution that's workable that actually addresses the problem. Even, last year or the year before last Oklahoma Senator James Lankford like proposed an immigration reform bill that was, had bipartisan support, but went down in flames because someone who was not yet the president, Trump, was out of office and he said he didn't like it and that tanked the bill from outside the Capitol. And so When problems like this that do have bipartisan support towards solutions, not even great solutions, just like a temporary partial solution had bipartisan support, and some dude who is not in office of any kind can sink it, our incentives are misaligned, right? Politicians are governing or attempting to govern, perhaps for right reasons, right? But they're being incentivized to do it for wrong ones, right? And often, those wrong ones are simply just getting re elected. Like, when a politician's primary goal is to get re elected and not to serve the people that they're currently elected to serve? This is, we've put the emphasis on the wrong syllable, right? There's something here that they are rewarding, that we are rewarding. That is not what most people want. Most people want government to function so well that we never have to think about it. And that is clearly not the way things are going right now. Speaking of changes to federal policy, the, also this week, the Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner, Glenn Mulready, who most of us forget exists as an individual, but as a position, like I forget the insurance commissioner is on a statewide elected official, they'll be on the ballot next year. It's someone we'll be electing next year. He issued a warning, or like more of a heads up this week to Oklahomans who have health insurance through the marketplace, the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, whatever you want to call it. Premiums, the part you pay each month, are very likely to increase dramatically next year if the federal enhanced advanced premium tax credits aren't extended. Okay, so let me break this down. The ACA was passed years ago, right, under Obama, and rolled out slowly across America, not without some hiccups, but it's been in effect for quite a while now, right? More than 10 years, I think. And in Oklahoma, there's like 300, 000 Oklahomans that have health insurance they buy through the marketplace, right, through the Affordable Care Act. And just like any insurance, there's a monthly premium you have to pay. During the pandemic the federal government, as part of their big stimulus aid bills, included basically a discount, right? They said, we're gonna reduce premiums for everybody on Marketplace by a substantial amount. Because there's a lot of, economic instability, a lot of uncertainty, people are losing jobs, everything was in chaos. And so the Fed said, we're going to send you some checks. We're going to like, make this big discount to make it easier to afford. So if you like, lose your job or things change, maybe you can still keep bumping along. For most Oklahomans, like if you're an average Oklahoman who has a silver plan through the marketplace, it's like gold, silver, bronze, platinum, I guess. If you have a silver plan, which is like a middle of the road, regular plan, Right now, your premium is around 58 a month. That includes this, like, extra discount. But, the pandemic ended. Things are back to normal ish. There's a new administration in town. And so, they're like, a new congress is in town. They're saying, hey, we gotta end these discounts. We've been given for several years, because it's costing a lot of money. In fact, Cumulatively, this costs, these extra discounts cost like 338 billion, which is a lot of money. But it's not going to nothing, right? Like, it's helping pay for insurance. For millions of people. Like I said, in Oklahoma there's 300, 000, just in our little state. And so if you are paying 58 bucks a month and these discounts go away, it means that next year your premium will be something like 153 dollars a month. So 100 bucks a month increase. Which is a lot, right? That's a lot for everybody. Most everybody. For sure everyone has Marketplace insurance. That's a lot of money. That might mean that people can't afford it anymore. And so they drop their plan and they don't have insurance. And that sparks a whole other problem. What I haven't heard yet is any acknowledgement that a lot of the politicians who fought against the ACA are now fighting for it because they don't want their constituents to lose insurance coverage, right? This idea suddenly that Congress might end these discounts and throw a bunch of chaos, a bunch of, and effectively throw people off insurance, right, by their own volition. Force them off by higher prices means that fewer people will have insurance. And that is the kind of thing that like, is a proper incentive, right? Politicians should be incentivized to make sure that their constituents are like healthy and have some economic security and aren't gonna go completely bankrupt if they break their arm or toe or something. So we'll see what happens. They've got until December, so we got a long time to go. But it's going to be a tough deal. Like, I mean, just financially speaking, 338 billion is a lot of money. Especially when it was like designed to be temporary. But as we know, the federal government, there's a lot of stuff that is passed in a temporary way that has a magical way of becoming permanent. So we'll see what happens with that. And I think, again, this is Andy talking, but Shouldn't we be talking about single payer insurance again? I know if you like your insurance you should be allowed to keep it, that's fine with me. But like there's a bunch of other countries, like most other countries have figured this out decades ago. That it is cheaper and more effective for everybody to have just like one nationalized system that everybody has the same Health insurance, right? Because right now with private companies in there, these are private for profit companies in many cases, and that means that they are incentivized to make a profit. Which means they have to charge you more than they pay out, so that they have a profit. And that means that we are paying money in not to get benefits back, but for shareholders somewhere to get Wealthy, right? Like this again, this changes the incentives of how the insurance company behaves. And if those insurance companies are paying lobbyists or giving money to politicians to get them reelected, it is creating a cycle. That is just full of misaligned incentives, right? Politicians pass laws to ensure that insurance companies can stay in place and earn bigger profits, and then they use those profits to give bigger checks to politicians to get them re elected so that they can ensure that insurance companies make bigger profits, and they use those profits to pay off politicians to pass, like you see this cycle really easily. That is nuts. the kind of system that I want, right? I want people to be able to go to the doctor. It is insane to me the amount of money that we have to pay out of pocket every month for health insurance, whether you use it or not. And then if you do use it, you still have to pay out of pocket, right? We've been trying to get my daughter scheduled to have a tonsillectomy for several months. It was supposed to be last fall and then, or last winter, and she got sick, and so we had to reschedule for this year. And we rescheduled it out far enough because we needed some time to try to reach our deductible. And the and now it's been punted again, and so we're still working on it. But our decision is governed not entirely by our daughter's health, but like by financial consequences for us, like trying to afford this, which is not the way we should be thinking about our health, right? When we are constantly having to think, how bad do I need this preventative measure versus how bad do I need this money to buy eggs? And when that's the thing we're all at home worrying about, Right? Then we definitely are not, it diminishes our bandwidth to worry about big picture problems, right? Threats to the First Amendment, threats to democracy, or how elections happen, how the initial petition happens. Things that really do have a downstream consequence for our lives, but when we are forced to be distracted by the inane, unnecessary, like, budgetary concerns of fiscal policy from healthcare decisions made a decade ago, and how it affects us month to month now, it is understandable that we might feel exhausted. And in many cases, voters decide to tune out, right? I get it. Alright, you may have pickered up on the fact that this episode is like two parts news updates, one part Andy's rants about the system. Righteous rants, I will say, but rants nonetheless. Speaking of threats to the initial petition process, a bill was passed in the Senate this week. And this is spring break, they were only in session for two days ironic that they pushed through a nasty bill when no one's paying attention. And I haven't really talked about this much on the show yet. I've been trying to get some people together to discuss it, but we haven't got there yet. Senate Bill 1027 would make sweeping changes to the initiative petition or the ballot initiative process in our state. And I will begin, as I always do, by reminding you that the right of the people to petition their government is the first right that is enumerated in the Oklahoma State Constitution. And that is not by accident, that is by design, because the framers of our Constitution knew that there would be times in the history of our state where we cannot and should not rely on our elected officials to do the right thing. There are, there will be times when they will be unable or unwilling to pass the laws that our people need and demand, and we need to have a mechanism to do that on our own. Here we are. I would argue it's more necessary now than it's ever been because of how deeply divided our state is, right? That politicians who are in office are not incentivized, as we just discussed, to pass laws, in many cases, that are actually to the benefit of the public. of the public, and they are certainly not incentivized on any level to pass laws governing themselves, right? This is why the legislature, they opted themselves out of the Open Record and Open Meeting Act. This is why the legislature only seems to propose restrictions on the people's right to petition their government. They never pass laws restricting their own right to do that, right? We've seen this slide over the last, I don't know, decade or so. Ballot initiatives are relatively few and far between in Oklahoma compared to other states that have it. We might have one or two or three on a ballot, every couple of years. And sometimes, like last year, there are some that are referred by the legislature and those kind of sneak in without people being aware. When it's a campaign, when it's truly a campaign of the people, because that's a lot of work, right? There's a lot of people involved. You have to collect signatures, you have to promote it, you have to market it, you have to tell people about it, you have to do months and years of education around it. And that's what's happened with Open Primaries, which is one that's going through the process right now. I've been talking about Open Primaries since at least 2019, right? Oklahoma Academy has been talking about it for, since 2017 or longer. Oklahoma United has been talking about it for several years. Like this is not new. No one's sneaking this in anywhere. It is not even for sure on the ballot yet. We got a long way to go. Minimum wage is going to be on the ballot next year. Again, that campaign, long, arduous, lots of like headlines, lots of legal battles. It's a hard work to get a question on the ballot. Before that, we worked on one for redistricting. Of course, the pandemic happened and we weren't able to complete that process because we were all on lockdown. Before that we had Medicaid expansion, which is something that the legislature, that's a great example, the legislature spent 10 years talking about it. The legislature even passed it and enacted it into law and the governor vetoed it, right? This was not a new thing. And it finally, when the legislature was unable, first they were unwilling, and then they were unable to get it done. It went to the people and the people did it. It was at criminal justice reform, but you've also had things that have been championed by Republicans, right? Right to work. Right to farm. That was more of a corporate farming bill, not really a right, but that's how it was marketed. There were, there've been ballot initiatives led by, we'll say partisans or partisan esque people on both sides of the aisle. This is not a tool of the left. This is a tool of the people. And the legislature, in its infinite wisdom, some members, are once again taking aim at it in a way that is harmful and unnecessary. So, this bill, Senate Bill 1027, would do a number of things, and it's only halfway through, right, or we'll say a third of the way through. It's past the Senate, it's gotta go to the House, and then ultimately to the Governor's desk. Some of the things it would do is that it changes how signatures are collected. So right now you have to have a set number of signatures. You collect them wherever you can. Most campaigns go to all 77 states because that's the way to do it, right? That's the right way to do it. That's what minimum wage did. That's what Medicaid expansion did. That's, we had a really, developed field plan for redistricting to go to every county. You want that. This would limit it so that you can only have 10 percent of signatures from Oklahoma and Tulsa County. Those are, that is, counties with 400, 000 or more people. And then for all the other counties, the other 75 counties, you can't have more than 4 percent from any one county. So you could theoretically not have to go to every county to like meet this, but a good campaign is going to every county. We already do. That's how you do it. That's the right thing to do. And that's how it happens. It also adds some barriers to the process. It like Blocks any out of state donations. It also means you add some changes to the gist, which is like the language that's on the signature page when you sign. You have to have, signature collectors I think can't be out of state, that they have name tags, things that, again, we do right now. It seems pretty clear that this might be aimed at the open primaries effort that's happening. And I think that campaign is, I've seen op eds from them, they're certainly worried, right? That if you change the process midstream, that's not fair. And might, should be illegal. I don't know. So, this bill goes over to the House now, we'll see what happens. Speaker Hilbert is one of the authors over there. There are several authors in both chambers. And so we'll see what happens. It's a long road ahead, right? There's still a lot of session left. But it's, and I don't even know if it's been assigned to a House committee yet, but I would, if it's something you're interested in, right? Like, make your voice heard. This is an important issue. We'll send out some action alerts about it soon. Okay, that's it for a news roundup, with, at least on the state level. But this week in my weekly consumption of podcasts and other political media, there's been one thing that's stood out to me from the rest, and in some ways it's because it. Isn't just on one outlet, right? So there's a guy named David Shore, S H O R he is head of data science at an organization called Blue Rose Research, which is a democratic messaging firm, like the research firm. They do tons of studies and polling and all kinds of stuff. I guess they're big. I don't know. I'm not a democrat. But David Shore was on the Ezra Klein show, which I listened to a little bit. Fairly often, not every episode, sometimes Ezra drives me nuts as like a, coastal elite thing. But if you Google David Shore, S H O R, today, you'll see his Wikipedia first, and then under the top stories, there's one from Vox, the New York Times, New York Magazine Center for Economic and Policy, something. Esquire Magazine the Breakthrough Institute, just LinkedIn in general a bunch of things. And they are all about this guy and his like new publication. Young guy is like 33 which is humbling. He's like 10 years younger than me. But he has done. His firm has done a ton of research about what happened in the 2024 election, and I think it's fascinating, regardless of your party affiliation or non affiliation. But I think data about voters is fascinating. Polling surveys about who we are as Americans is fascinating. I would I encourage you to listen to it, or better yet, watch it because he has slides. And who doesn't want to sit around at home watching a YouTube video of some egghead talking about political science with slides? But the graphs are really excellent. I will admit, I listened to Ezra's podcast the other day while we were doing some painting at the, here in the Democracy Den. And I got done. I was like, shoot, I gotta watch this whole thing again. It's like an hour long because I need to see the slides. They tried to describe them, but as I've talked to other people who watched it, they said it's really compelling. And I think Ezra's voice was pretty clear that it was really compelling to see some of these numbers. And what's fascinating to me is this shift, right? So like, I'll just read you some of the headlines about Shor's article. From Vox, it says, this is why Kamala Harris really lost, subheading, TikTok is making young voters more Republican, question mark. And then New York Magazine, why non white voters and young men drifted to Trump. And then Esquire, when did we decide that democracy and improving people's lives contradicted each other? This is a. Another I think op ed piece. Maybe it's not. Anyway, that's basically the theme of all of them. And I think they're putting too much emphasis on TikTok. In some ways. But they are right to point out that the media environment is super fragmented, right? Those of you who listen to this show are a select group of people who pay attention to Oklahoma politics more closely than probably any of your friends, right? Each of our episodes gets about 3, 000 downloads in a month which is way more than I would ever think. And that's, I take that back. Each episode probably gets 400 downloads in the first month, but we have about 3, 000 downloads each month. So like some people listen to past episodes. That sounds like a, that's a lot to me. It's not like a murder podcast, but in the scale of like, well, we've got 3 million eligible voters, it is a fraction of 1%, right? The kind of people who vote, especially in presidential elections, are increasingly difficult to quantify, or to even to qualify? Quantify. Because there's a lot of folks who are likely voters, and then there's also an increasing number of unlikely voters. I think there's a Trump effect with this. But a lot of this conversation is about really how Democrats like lost their base and like seem to like be unable to message to even a lot of their own supporters or more broadly to the electorate in ways that they used to take for granted, right? I'm thinking back to 2008. And hope and change and Obama's first term and there was like this sentiment then that like, Oh, Democrats are going to have a majority for the next 50 years. Like we've crushed it, we really, we've unlocked the potential. And then eight years later, Trump was elected and Democrats were like, what the heck happened? I think Democ or Republicans are struggling with this in their own way as well, and that's a conversation for another day, but I would encourage you just to watch the conversation around issues like open primaries, right? Where there is a fraction or a faction of the Republican base, especially politicians who are more interested in holding on to power and appealing to a smaller group of voters than what used to be the case in the party. But Democrats, there's a trope, right, about Democrats in disarray. Even if you watch the West Wing, they make jokes about it. President Bartlett makes jokes in, I think, season six or season seven, about the media loving to write stories about Democrats being in disarray. And I would say that's probably why David Shore has been so widely publicized this week. But also, he's got good data. And it really is fascinating. I think As I've told a couple of friends this week, I think part of the issue in my mind is that a lot of the thing, this is my own term, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna coin it here on the show, that I think we think about Republicans being supportive of an American first policy, especially like in foreign policy, right? But focusing on what's good for America first, and then worry about other countries. down the road. And while I take issue with that in a number of ways, I think what Democrats miss out on is not America first, but it's like an American hedonism, right? Like a pleasure principle of what it means to be an American. And they haven't, they're like aloof in a way that makes it difficult. And I don't know if this is like the Coastal elite bias of the Democratic Party, or this like, education gap that is often discussed, including on this episode with David Shore and Ezra Klein, or what. But Republicans figuring out how to connect with regular, everyday folks in a way that is easier, or at least more successful. Sometimes it's because they're just telling them what they want to hear, and they know they're lying about it, and that's problematic. From like a truth standpoint, but if you just care about electoral outcomes, seems to be working. But then other stuff that I think the left will write off, right? Like Trump going to the Daytona 500 and going to like sporting events like that. All I heard from Democrats or I read online would be people like, Oh, this is costing so much money and oh, what a hassle for everybody. I was like, yeah, it is. But it's also pretty cool if you're at an event and the president comes. Right? It might be a hassle, sure, especially if you don't like the president, but if you do, or you're neutral about it, you don't really care, it's still cool to be in an event where the most powerful person in the world is also there, right? To be like, oh wow, they're a celebrity, I saw them, they're the president, that's cool. And I think that, like, simple explanation connects with people in ways that esoteric, complicated policy does not. To connect with what we said about healthcare earlier, a joke that I said to Scott the other day was Americans say we want universal healthcare, but what Americans really want is a Bud Light, right? Like there's like a, and I know that's reductionist and also like not accurate for everybody, but you probably also chuckled a little bit, right? Because is that solving healthcare is a huge problem, a huge Yeah. Complicated system that's very difficult, and it's much easier to be like, Hey man, let's just sit down and have a beer. And that feels relaxing, and that feels like a relief. And that is the kind of government that people want. A government that they don't have to worry about. They're just like, hey, man, this shit's hard, but he's got my back, and I got a cold one, so, that's okay. And I'm not arguing that we should all be that way, right? We should not all give up or be simple, but I do think that anyone who cares about public policy on any side of politics needs to be more intentional about how we meet people where they are, right? Maybe that's just like, and I think in many cases that is just showing up and being present and not come in. Necessary with a slide deck, not coming with a fancy, polished presentation. But it's about building real relationships, and talking to people for who they are, and accepting them for who they are, even when it's ugly. A little rough around the edges. Right? I know I say this all the time, but, again, to reference the West Wing, There's a tremendous scene, right, where Toby says that government, for all its failings in the past and for those yet to come, Is a force for good. And I think that's what most people really want. If you really push them. They don't want it to go away. Entirely. They want it to like, get out of the way. We don't want to have to worry about saying the wrong thing all the time. Or fitting in. I think that's the problem, right? I think too often, at least right now, Democrats have made it more difficult to fit in. to their group than Republicans have. You can show up and be a hot mess, and Republicans are like, come on in. With Democrats, you gotta be a little more refined. And that is off putting to lots of people. Like, I get it. And on many cases, people are not switching to Republicans, they're switching to no party, to being independent, or they're opting out of the whole system. They're saying, gross, I don't want to have to work so hard to fit in, but I also don't want to be down here with everybody, this is like a motley crew, I'm just gonna opt out. And that, as I say almost every week, is my biggest fear, right, that a smaller and smaller percentage of the American electorate will actually participate. Thankfully, it's not, so far it's not the case, right? So far, people are actually tuning in and showing up, at least at presidential elections. But we hope that it happens in down ballot races as well, right? That we need people to be tuned in, to pay attention. And we, I argue, we need people to be smart and to be thoughtful and to do the hard thing, which is to care about how you're showing up a little bit. Or at least, like, read, you don't have to like read the whole chapter, but you gotta read the bold print vocab words before something like, you gotta know how things work a little bit. Because if we expect government to just be a, Ronco, set it and forget it kind of thing that we don't ever participate in, then we're not doing the maintenance required to make sure it's still running properly. So you gotta pay attention to some. But I do think that if you are someone listening to this and you do any kind of community organizing, and this I'm, I will acknowledge I am talking to myself right now you would be amazed at the piles of notes I have about This that we're trying to incorporate into our work, but like, we have to think about how we're showing up and how we're expecting others to show up to, and I, we're not, this is not a reality show. We're not trying to, or it's not like a production. It really is the most basic of human skills and that's connecting with one another. So. I'm going to walk around with my head thinking about what Americans think we want as universal health care, but what most Americans really want is just a Bud Light. In the moment you want to argue about the quality of Bud Light versus a local craft beer, you have lost them, right? I, that's how it goes, right? You're speaking to a select crowd, but in general, right, that's not the point. The point is, Americans want to take a deep breath. Everything is hard. Everything is hard right now. Things are expensive. People are worried about their jobs and their kids. They are worried about health care. They're worried about going broke. They're worried about the retirement accounts that are, have lost a big chunk in the last couple of weeks. There's an immense amount of uncertainty in the future. The Fed is holding the rates steady because they're uncertain about things. Like, there's a lot of stuff going on in the world right now, right? Are we going to annex Canada? Are we going to be at war with Canada? What's going to happen with the future? There's a really good episode of Freakonomics the other day talking about the the future impact of the national debt and deficit, and how that's The Wharton School of Business tried to create a financial model, like a computer model to estimate how big the national debt will be in like 30 years and the model broke because basically under our current economic status our government will fall apart before, within 30 years if we don't fix things. So like, shit is bad. Things are not good right now. We've got some real problems we need to solve. And because of that, we have to be intentional about how we approach them. And step one is like getting everybody on board. And that means we gotta be a little more accepting of who is coming in the room and just celebrate that they're there. We can work on refining things later, but we need everybody in the room. And if you're gonna, if we're gonna be at the door, Like a bouncer and keeping out a whole bunch of folks that want to be in the room really bad. We are limiting our success, like from step one, step two is educating all those people on the problem and the solutions, right? Step three is making some action plans for how we're going to implement the solutions that we've identified. That's a step. Okay. Well, that really ended up on a rosy note, right? Great. Thanks. Thanks for being here. Like, thanks for listening. Thanks for being willing to stand in uncomfortable spaces with us, to wrestle with difficult issues with us. Thanks for listening to my voice for an hour. That's not how you want to spend your week every week, I don't think. Hey, friends, regardless of what kind of beer you like to drink or don't like to drink, if you don't like beer, that's fine, right? Let's find ways to show up for one another this week, right? Decisions are made by those who show up. A great chance to get involved and to dig a little bit deeper for all of us is CivicsCon, which is coming up April 10th and 11th at Rose State College. Go to civicscon. com. Get your tickets, they're just 25. We're gonna have some big announcements coming out in the next few days with an agenda. It's gonna be rad. So if you're not on our mailing list already, please go to letsfixthis. org and sign up. And then go to civicscon. com to get your tickets. Can't wait to see you there. Until then, have a good weekend.