Election 2026: Why It Matters w/ Greg Ferro, EdD, U.S. History Lecturer 9/29/26

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[SPEAKER_01]: Before we begin today's episode, I want to express my deepest gratitude to Frank Barnacle.
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[SPEAKER_01]: His recent donation ensures that aging matters can continue educating families and empowering older adults.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It is because of dedicated listeners like him that we can air these important conversations.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Frank, for your incredible generosity.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In midterm elections, senior citizens, people 60 and over, turn out in much more significant numbers.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So people 60 and over have a much more significant impact on midterm elections than they do on general elections.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Estimates are that three out of every ten voters will be senior citizens, they'll be 60 and over.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And in whole numbers, that's about 25 million senior citizens.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So they always have an impact, but they have more impact on midterms than they do on presidential.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Hello and welcome to Aging Matters, a program featuring aging related topics of interest to older adults and their families.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Cheryl Beverstorf your host.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The 2026 midterm elections held this year on Tuesday, November 3rd, our general elections held exactly two years or halfway into the president's four-year term.
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[SPEAKER_01]: unlike in presidential elections, the presidency is not on the ballot.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In mid-term elections, eligible American citizens cast their vote to elect their U.S. House of Representative Member and in one-third of the states, their U.S.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Senator.
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[SPEAKER_01]: My guest today is Dr. Greg Ferrell, US History and Presidential Election Lecture.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He will provide details about midterm elections, how they differ from presidential elections, and factors likely to determine winners this year.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He'll also talk about the role older adults have played in previous midterm elections, and how they may decide who to vote for this year.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So welcome, Greg, and thank you for joining me today.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for having me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate that very much.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Let's start by talking about why our midterm elections important and what actually created midterm elections.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What do we need to know to get started?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, let's start with what created them.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What created them was our secular Bible.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's called the US Constitution.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And the U.S. Constitution laid down when elections would be held for President, the House, the Senate.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So that document, the Constitution, created these things we call midterm elections.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I guess you could call this the halftime show between the last presidential election and the next presidential election.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And if your team is in the White House, the chances are that you're not going to do so well in these midterm elections.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's been historically true.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We'll talk about the exceptions.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But that's why midterm's are important.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In a sense, they take the temperature of the country.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What's the mood of the country?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Are you satisfied?
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[SPEAKER_00]: What the way things are going?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Then probably, House and Senate members will keep their job.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If you're unsatisfied, you might vote the incumbents out.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I mentioned the role of older adults, say adults over age 65, historically what has been the boarding record of adults over 65 in midterm elections.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They have a more important significance in midterms than they do in general elections.
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[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, every time there's a presidential election, everybody turns out in votes.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So that diminishes maybe the impact of senior citizens who vote in elections like presidential.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Because everybody else's voting as well.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But in midterm elections, senior citizens, people 60 and over turn out in much more significant numbers.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So people 60 and over have a much more significant impact on midterm elections than they do on general elections.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Estimates are the three out of every ten voters will be senior citizens.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They'll be 60 and over.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And in whole numbers, that's about 25 million senior citizens.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So they always have an impact, but they have more impact on midterms than they do on presidential.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And as long as we're talking about different say cohorts of voters, do you have any statistics on say the African American vote or the Hispanic vote or the Asian vote or are there more likely to be women rather than men?
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[SPEAKER_00]: that are turning out for midterms we have eight African Americans running for governorship in the 36 states where there's governor's racist eight African Americans running for the top job the top state job in eight states in America today and there's a good chance that three of the eight at least if not more will win.
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[SPEAKER_00]: as far as women voting.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It depends on sometimes the issues.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, in the case of some elections, abortion was a major issue.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But sometimes what brings out voters is not just the general issues like climate change.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What also brings out voters is questions on the ballot, where in a sense the American people, if they're in a state that has a referendum question to the bottom of the ballot, in a sense they become a legislator for a few seconds when they vote, yeah, or nay.
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[SPEAKER_00]: and not in all your states, but in a bunch of states, there are questions concerning abortion and there are questions concerning transgender rights as well.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So in those states, which have abortion and or transgender rights on their ballot, that may cause those people where that's a special interest to them to turn out and vote.
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[SPEAKER_01]: there seem to be certain numbers that are evident when we talk about midterms.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's 435 and then there's 100, the one number, the one third of the states.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Help us understand a little bit more about what those numbers mean and why they're so significant in the midterm elections.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So we have a bicamal legislature, 435 in-house, 100 in the Senate, and the founding fathers wanted the house in a sense to be closer to the mood of the American people at that time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why traditionally, not all the time, but most of the time by far, if there's going to be changes this coming November 3rd, it's going to be Democrats taking over the house.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And this goes for any president, but once you win your presidential election, anything goes on the next two years before the first set of midterms, you're going to be blamed for.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Your party's going to be blamed for.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So it's highly probable from George Washington to Donald Trump that in the midterm elections, the party that's not in the White House is going to do well.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a good thing maybe that our Constitution was set up that way in the sense that the house, the members in the house who have to run for their job every two years, are more in tune with our mood.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So your house can be influenced by voters very easily.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But the founding fathers also did not want us to be changing everything about our government every two years.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's why only one third of your senators are up for grabs every two years.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So if you gave me a choice of being a senator or a congressman, I'm going to choose Senator every day of the week because
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, imagine having to compete with five other people to get that job every two years, what a burden that is, and yet that also brings them closer to you and either voter, whereas for the Senate, two thirds of the senators are going to be sitting back in the easy chair and watching the election returns and not have to care because their job is secure.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But one third of the senators, yes, they're going to be up for grabs, so you'll still be influencing the Senate as well.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And if you were elected to the Senate, let's just say two years ago,
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[SPEAKER_00]: Republican or Democrat doesn't make any difference.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's a six-year term.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes Americans forget that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So if I'm elected to the House, I have to keep my eye on everything because every two years I'm running.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But if I was elected to the Senate, I don't have to worry about what anybody thinks because I serve six years.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Those poor people in the House only serve two years.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Those poor people in the White House only serve four years.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a U.S. center.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I got a beautiful six years here.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You've been mentioning all of those other issues and especially for members of the House of Representatives.
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[SPEAKER_01]: My question is, there's so much going on right now in the economy, the price of gas, the price of groceries, you're even hearing from folks out west who are talking about the price of beef, the tariffs,
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[SPEAKER_01]: Are those issues going to be really significant in terms of who folks vote for in the midterms?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, one of the directors of AARP, I mean by the name of John Hissler, he said the economy drives everything.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that's from a person who's a high ranking official AARP, which has more members than any organization in the United States of America, more than the Catholic Church, more than the NRA.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So obviously you want to take something that he says like that with seriousness.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I he also reminds me of that guy who helped to run Clintons campaign in 92 James Carville, who put a poster outside the bedroom of Bill Clinton when he ran for president and it said, remember it's the economy stupid.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In the case of Bill Clinton when he ran in 1992, in the case of this guy who's a big shot at AARP, they realized that, you know, you and I could probably be multimillionaires if we had a $10 bill for every time there were affordability has come up since the last
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I can't imagine that's not going to be a driving force, but there's obviously other issues which are going to be big.
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[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things that I have interested is U.S. foreign policy.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You have 18 U.S. servicemen killed.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You have over 800 American servicemen wounded.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And the current war, which we thought going in was going to be quick, is averaging over two
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[SPEAKER_00]: So, while foreign policy has complicated, I grant you that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I would hope that Americans, just as a sense of patriotic duty, since we've lost servicemen in this war with Iran, I'd hope they've focused on more than just the price of gasoline.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But that also loops us back to the economy, and it's the economy stupid by Carville and the head of the ARP, everything's related to the economy.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So, Americans are seeing just the price of gasoline, and that's part of the affordability issue.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Don't get me wrong.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that, however, is a direct cause of the war with Iran, but I would hope that Americans will spend some time getting a little familiar with, you know, where is the straight of our moves and why is it a choke point in the world and that kind of thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So the war with Iran, affordability, there's all kinds of things that may come up as issues during the campaign.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If I can just paint the campaign in general terms, here's how I would paint it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If times were good and people were not worried about affordability and those kinds of things, Republicans would run on their record.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It would seem however that overall, not every single American, but overall Americans are not in the best of moods.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so if I'm a Republican strategist, I don't hold office, but I want to make sure that the candidate who's paying me $500,000 to run his Senatorial campaign wins, I'm going to try to paint all Democrats as being socialist, communists, and want boys on your girls high school team.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's the approach I'm going to take.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I can't take the approach that everything's wonderful and gas prices are low.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know that every time you pump your gas, I can't say that prices are leveling off now for the last two years and they're coming down.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I can't say that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You would know that's not the case.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I think Republicans are going to run a cultural war.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to be talking a lot about socialism, communism, boys on girls basketball teams, et cetera, et cetera.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Because they can't talk about the economy because again, as we just said, the economy's not that great.
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[SPEAKER_00]: because they're the out party and more importantly because things are uneasy economically they're going to run a bread and butter campaign they're going to be trying to talk about the things that we just mentioned affordability of groceries the price of gasoline almost anything other than you know those kind of cultural wars that we talked about just a little bit ago you know you're focused although you've brought your program to include all age groups not just senior citizens
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[SPEAKER_00]: But you are somewhat target audience for senior citizens, they're affected by the same thing that people in their 20s are affected by it is affordability, but it's also groceries, it's also utilities, it's also prescription drugs, it's also housing, so those are things that transcend age groups.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Well, and of course, there's so much going on now, the closer we get to election day.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you read about the midterm elections all the time, and some of the activities that are going on, one of them being political polling, should voters pay attention to these political polling that are going on at this time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, polling has a black eye because they've been wrong a few times in the last number of years.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The problem with that is I would like to know how my fellow citizens think in Alaska and Idaho and so on and so forth.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So let's go door to door and ask every single American who's going to vote on November 3rd what they say.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That should only take about five, six, seven years.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So obviously that's not an option.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So despite all of its flaws, the only way we can get an idea of the mood of the American people and how they're leaning on voting in the House Senate, Governor, Mayor, whatever the case may be, is to take polls, polls tend to be more accurate in presidential elections than midterm elections.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So, I would hope that nobody would, you know, vote for somebody based on the fact that they are a person who wants to be with the majority.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I would hope everybody would take a look at the issues, decide where they stand, and then look at your two candidates for mayor, your two candidates for governor, whatever, and then ask yourself who is most like you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So come up with a little chart, shouldn't take you more than five minutes.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Here's my big issues, here's where candidate A stands, here's where candidate B stands.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, which is more like me, is it candidate A or B?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, now you know who to vote for.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What I think needs to be said is while polling is less accurate in the midterms.
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[SPEAKER_00]: One thing that's also to keep in mind because of the age we live in is AI.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, there's all kinds of clues.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You can go on to find out how you can tell an AI produced commercial or an AI thing on the internet, which is very distorted, very vicious.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, one of the things that anybody can do of any age is look at GoogleFactCheckExplore.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's an excellent site, Google, Fact, Check, Explore.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Another one is verify this.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Another one is that snoops.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So go to those places.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They have, I think, almost a thousand batting average rather than going to your own little echo chamber to check something out.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And if you know something as garbage, you know, don't pass it on because then you become part of the problem.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Then people next time to get together in a party, they're saying, ooh, did you see that thing that Harry sent me?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Boy, wasn't that unbelievably vicious, and yet I think it's true.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You're then part of the problem if you get one of these AI-generated things on your computer, and then you pass it on to, let's say, 5, 10, 20 other friends.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you mentioned AI already, what you're describing also sounds like many of the political ads that you hear.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And he thoughts about political ads.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I hope that most people will not decide to vote for somebody because of a slick 60-second commercial out of Madison Avenue.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's not the way I approach how I'm going to decide who to vote for against.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to have to do some old-fashioned research, go to listen speakers, maybe consult different agencies, organizations, AARP, as a good source for information.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think the League of Women Voters does a nice job, and then also those fact-check places
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[SPEAKER_00]: There's also a woman who's an expert on this stuff like AI, and her name's a little bit different, but her name is Kim Camando.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I know that's crazy, but first name is Kim, and the last name is KLM, A and D.O.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And she writes all the time about deep fake videos and photos.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And she gives you all kinds of clues.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm the least person to talk about AI and computers and that kind of thing, but she's very good.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And she talks about if the person that you're watching,
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[SPEAKER_00]: turns their face a certain way and their chin goes this way she says AI has trouble sometimes spelling things and she says look at the background you know if you're talking to somebody who lives in Alaska and they just got a recent snowstorm and they're talking to the senator who's up in Alaska right now and in behind him you see palm trees that should give you an idea that something's wrong somewhere so she's very good at that and that's another source somebody could check out.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And one other activity, say, like media discussions on predictions, and I suppose that depending on what channel on TV, or maybe even, if you're listening to a podcast, do you think that those various discussions, and sometimes even predictions on what's going to happen as far as the midterm election,
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[SPEAKER_01]: do you think that's pretty legitimate or is it again just hearsay and what people want to think rather than what might actually occur?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think one of the biggest problems in America today is we can't decide on what a football is.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So if you can't decide what a football is, how can you intelligently discuss football?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think one of the other problems is that we tend to go to new sources that we agree with the most.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so what I try to do is I try to rotate.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'll watch ABC tonight.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'll watch Fox the next night.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'll watch CBS the next night.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If you find yourself getting your news, which most Americans don't anymore from television,
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[SPEAKER_00]: then you maybe want to rotate your channels, don't watch NBC every night, don't watch Fox every night, read different newspapers, you know, the Wall Street Journal is a very conservative but excellent newspaper, take a look at the Wall Street Journal, take a look at the Washington Post, take a look at the Philadelphia Empire, take a look at different sources, either online or, you know, holding him in your hand, you don't want to get into that rut and look at the history of your sources, people listening to this podcast are going to think
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[SPEAKER_00]: in U.S. history going back to the 20s when they invented radio has ever been fined close to $800 million as Fox was concerning what they were putting out during the last presidential election.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then they even got rid of Tucker Carlson, one of their premier guest hosts.
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[SPEAKER_00]: No other place wants to claim that, no other place can claim that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a big chunk of change.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I realized ABC was suit successfully for six million, but I'm gravitating to that because it's
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[SPEAKER_00]: it was just a little under $800 million.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So do not look at any TV station or any sources that that being the last word.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know the only rule of thumb works for reporters as well as consumers of news and that is you should be able to find what you thought you heard as a fact in three other sources.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And if you can't find it in three other sources, then you probably don't have the correct information.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Again, I'm going to maybe date myself.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm past 75.
18:47.549 --> 19:01.603
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you have a chance, if one all kinds of awards, there's the movie, all the presidents men with Woodward and Bernstein, and they were required by their newspaper to check whatever they had, at least with three other places before they went and printed it.
19:01.963 --> 19:03.845
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll put yourself into a report or shoes.
19:03.945 --> 19:06.008
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't just take congressman's word for it.
19:06.028 --> 19:10.973
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you find that in three other places and if you can, then you can probably maybe take that to the bank as they say.
19:12.150 --> 19:21.312
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd like to move on and begin to think about what the outcomes might be and so far as those who are up for election right now.
19:21.392 --> 19:24.933
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's first look at the House and the Senate.
19:25.573 --> 19:32.555
[SPEAKER_01]: If elected to either the House or the Senate, what powers will these Congress persons have?
19:33.015 --> 19:36.736
[SPEAKER_01]: What should we know about what might be one's election is over?
19:37.558 --> 19:40.960
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, let me take us back to where I think the original problem began.
19:41.000 --> 19:43.962
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the problem began in the 1930s with FDR.
19:44.522 --> 19:49.765
[SPEAKER_00]: It has continued with basically every president's sense, and that is we focus way too much on the presidency.
19:50.345 --> 19:53.047
[SPEAKER_00]: I would encourage your listeners to read the Constitution.
19:53.147 --> 19:54.508
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a gigantic document.
19:54.528 --> 19:55.708
[SPEAKER_00]: It's only about 8,000 words.
19:56.108 --> 19:58.310
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably take it about an hour, and it's not a big deal.
19:58.730 --> 20:00.411
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a little cumbersome, but not that much.
20:00.451 --> 20:02.092
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, it is our founding document.
20:02.512 --> 20:11.695
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think the founding fathers would be appalled that everybody knows who Trump is or Biden is or Obama is and they oftentimes don't even know who their congressman is.
20:12.315 --> 20:16.497
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that would be appalling to let's say James Madison and the founding fathers.
20:16.917 --> 20:19.878
[SPEAKER_00]: If you read the Constitution, the first article, there's seven articles to it.
20:20.098 --> 20:25.520
[SPEAKER_00]: The first article talks exclusively about congress and it's the longest one of our entire Bible.
20:26.160 --> 20:38.632
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the longest part of our secular Bible article one, which is all about the Congress, which runs the post office, improves coinage, approves justices to the US Supreme Court, declares wars, racist taxes, etc.
20:38.932 --> 20:43.797
[SPEAKER_00]: They have immense power, and I would like to see going forward regardless of who the president is.
20:43.817 --> 20:48.502
[SPEAKER_00]: We focus as much on Congress, or at least try to, because the media is part of that problem too, I think.
20:48.982 --> 20:50.142
[SPEAKER_00]: as we do on the presidency.
20:50.222 --> 20:51.983
[SPEAKER_00]: There's three people sitting at the table.
20:52.003 --> 20:53.804
[SPEAKER_00]: There's the president, the Congress, and the Supreme Court.
20:54.204 --> 20:56.565
[SPEAKER_00]: And we tend to focus 90 percent of our attention.
20:56.745 --> 20:57.945
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, there's the media as well.
20:58.325 --> 21:01.306
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's easier to follow one person, and that is on the presidency.
21:01.846 --> 21:04.868
[SPEAKER_00]: So in the case of Congress, they have immense power.
21:04.968 --> 21:06.128
[SPEAKER_00]: If they choose to use it.
21:06.708 --> 21:10.710
[SPEAKER_00]: If they have honest differences with the president, you know, they have to go against their president.
21:10.750 --> 21:11.750
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though he might be popular.
21:12.290 --> 21:13.751
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll give you a very quick example.
21:14.251 --> 21:22.215
[SPEAKER_00]: The House and the Senate passed laws that we would disengage from South Africa because they practiced what in our country called segregation.
21:22.635 --> 21:24.075
[SPEAKER_00]: They called it apartheid, same thing.
21:24.676 --> 21:27.517
[SPEAKER_00]: And we have been trying to persuade them for decades to knock it off.
21:27.857 --> 21:29.579
[SPEAKER_00]: and allow black representation.
21:29.679 --> 21:30.440
[SPEAKER_00]: They kept on stalling.
21:30.760 --> 21:36.607
[SPEAKER_00]: And finally, the house in the Senate passed a resolution getting rid of all kinds of contacts between us and South Africa.
21:37.027 --> 21:38.389
[SPEAKER_00]: It went to Ronald Reagan's desk.
21:38.709 --> 21:39.990
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a very popular president.
21:40.031 --> 21:42.253
[SPEAKER_00]: He's considered one of the 10 best presidents in Mark and History.
21:42.693 --> 21:45.236
[SPEAKER_00]: And he did as presidents can do because of our Constitution.
21:45.436 --> 21:46.097
[SPEAKER_00]: He vetoed it.
21:46.417 --> 21:46.718
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
21:47.514 --> 21:49.835
[SPEAKER_00]: If it was a good idea to veto it, it would have died there.
21:50.275 --> 21:58.859
[SPEAKER_00]: But the Congress wanted it so bad, Republicans and Democrat, both parties, they overwrote the veto and they made it law despite the fact that Reagan didn't like it.
21:59.339 --> 22:03.040
[SPEAKER_00]: Reagan thought we should keep on engaging with South Africa eventually they'll change their mind.
22:03.421 --> 22:08.643
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's an example of a popular president because down in the history books is one of the best, but that Congress,
22:09.263 --> 22:15.147
[SPEAKER_00]: And the beginning it was his Congress, the House and the Senate were Republican, said, no Mr. President, we want this to be law.
22:15.567 --> 22:17.549
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for vetoing it, but get out of our way.
22:17.569 --> 22:18.990
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to override the veto anyway.
22:19.370 --> 22:22.212
[SPEAKER_00]: So the power is there, Congress has to exercise it.
22:22.592 --> 22:26.075
[SPEAKER_00]: Right now, Republicans have been very compliant with President Trump.
22:26.295 --> 22:27.076
[SPEAKER_00]: That's their choice.
22:27.116 --> 22:31.819
[SPEAKER_00]: They may be compliant because I honestly believe that the proposals he's put forward are good ideas.
22:33.182 --> 22:43.831
[SPEAKER_01]: So speaking of the president and the fact that he isn't on the ballot, is he actually on the ballot even though you don't see it and voters won't see it when they go to the polls?
22:44.271 --> 22:45.972
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, absolutely he is on the ballot.
22:46.553 --> 22:55.180
[SPEAKER_00]: Every president in American history is on that ballot because when we get to the halftime show, this is going to determine the last two years of a president's term.
22:56.001 --> 23:06.852
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you keep your losses to a small number in the house in the Senate, or if you pull off the impossible and keep control of both houses, if you have those, that's going to make your last two years so much easier.
23:07.473 --> 23:11.657
[SPEAKER_00]: And the case of where we are right now, this moment, it's going to be...
23:12.678 --> 23:24.082
[SPEAKER_00]: a very long, arduous, disappointing two years for President Trump, if either Chamberhouse or Senate goes Democrat, which based on history is highly probable.
23:24.722 --> 23:28.764
[SPEAKER_00]: And let me give you some examples of some of the powers that the House and the Senate have.
23:28.784 --> 23:30.044
[SPEAKER_00]: They have the power to investigate.
23:30.344 --> 23:32.005
[SPEAKER_00]: They have the power to issue subpoenas.
23:32.505 --> 23:34.466
[SPEAKER_00]: So if, underline the word, if,
23:35.006 --> 23:36.986
[SPEAKER_00]: The Democrats get either house or Senate.
23:37.167 --> 23:38.507
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to most likely be the house.
23:38.987 --> 23:42.608
[SPEAKER_00]: They'll be able to look into Trump and family enrichment.
23:43.228 --> 23:45.488
[SPEAKER_00]: They'll be able to look in construction projects.
23:45.528 --> 23:49.989
[SPEAKER_00]: I just heard about that tower there in Washington, DC, the Victory Tower, whatever.
23:50.470 --> 23:53.350
[SPEAKER_00]: They'll be able to look into the specifics of the Iran War.
23:53.990 --> 23:57.191
[SPEAKER_00]: They'll be able to bring up again the Epstein files.
23:57.831 --> 24:00.392
[SPEAKER_00]: So all those things will be open season.
24:01.152 --> 24:06.158
[SPEAKER_00]: which will put a downpour on president Trump if the Democrats get control either one of those chambers.
24:06.178 --> 24:12.766
[SPEAKER_00]: They can do anything they want again a third of the powers the president a third of the power's Congress and a third of the power's United States Supreme Court.
24:13.407 --> 24:18.013
[SPEAKER_00]: However, if I can say it now and then I can say I told you so, you know, a couple years from now.
24:18.593 --> 24:33.657
[SPEAKER_00]: Democrats have to be careful because if they get in on bread and butter issues, affordability, price, gas, blah, blah, blah, and they focus so much on these incidents, you know, family enrichment, construction projects, the Iran war going on longer than it should.
24:33.717 --> 24:42.860
[SPEAKER_00]: So if they focus on that exclusively and don't improve people's daily lives, what you're going to find is the Democrats will be slapped across the face and the next presidential election.
24:43.680 --> 24:45.840
[SPEAKER_00]: So they're going to have to decide, you know,
24:49.323 --> 25:01.311
[SPEAKER_00]: President Trump who only has two more years, and then he's done, or is it to really carry through the promises you made to get elected and make things more affordable, make the world more peaceful, et cetera, et cetera?
25:01.812 --> 25:15.041
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, and you have mentioned the Supreme Court, as of course, the sort of third leg of the stool, and we are aware of what the three forms of government are, the presidency, the Congress and the Supreme Court.
25:15.781 --> 25:21.487
[SPEAKER_01]: So speaking of the Supreme Court, talk about the recent ruling about mail-in ballots.
25:21.567 --> 25:25.832
[SPEAKER_01]: That was such a big deal, and it was certainly something that disappointed the president.
25:26.212 --> 25:30.677
[SPEAKER_01]: What are your thoughts about what happened as far as the Supreme Court making that ruling?
25:31.257 --> 25:34.118
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, as you well know, this is my third podcast with you.
25:34.258 --> 25:37.439
[SPEAKER_00]: And the last time we were together with the podcast, we talked about the Supreme Court.
25:37.619 --> 25:52.302
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the things that I was surprised at was that a good friend of mine, when President Trump became the first president to attend the Supreme Court hearings on the birthright issue, a friend of mine, said, well, they better watch themselves or he will fire them.
25:53.022 --> 25:55.603
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought to myself, that is so dead wrong, it's not even funny.
25:56.203 --> 25:59.724
[SPEAKER_00]: So right or wrong, the founding fathers made those jobs lifetime.
26:00.743 --> 26:14.694
[SPEAKER_00]: And they made them lifetime as we probably talked about in the other podcast, so that unlike your congressmen, your mayors, your governors, your presidents, who kiss up to us every time they want to keep their job, once the spring court gets their job, they don't have to worry about that ever again.
26:15.375 --> 26:20.399
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it was kind of interesting that we don't know the actual vote because it was unsigned.
26:21.059 --> 26:26.821
[SPEAKER_00]: We're only sure that Alito and Thomas voted to put more restrictions on mail and ballot.
26:26.881 --> 26:30.422
[SPEAKER_00]: We only know that because they said so I'll laugh, but it was unsigned, so we're not sure.
26:30.902 --> 26:42.185
[SPEAKER_00]: But it seems like we can be fairly sure that the three that Trump put on the court, Gorsuch, Kevin, on Barrett, all voted against the wishes of the President who put them on the board, which has happened numerous times.
26:42.745 --> 26:43.745
[SPEAKER_00]: This is not the first time.
26:43.785 --> 26:45.066
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, they have a job for life.
26:45.086 --> 26:46.206
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't answer to anybody.
26:46.786 --> 26:55.137
[SPEAKER_00]: Some people also found it kind of curious that you had a president who always votes by mail, having gloom and doom about mail voting.
26:55.658 --> 27:00.044
[SPEAKER_00]: Many states, I think there's a total of eight, do a lot of their voting by mail.
27:00.104 --> 27:02.828
[SPEAKER_00]: I think Washington and Oregon do it exclusively by mail.
27:03.448 --> 27:11.412
[SPEAKER_00]: And another factor was, and one of the justices alluded to that in his opinion, he said, you know, I might have voted differently, but the clock is running.
27:11.833 --> 27:14.454
[SPEAKER_00]: They had already sent out ballots to two or three other states.
27:14.894 --> 27:16.215
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, what do you do draw them back?
27:16.735 --> 27:21.078
[SPEAKER_00]: People may be have already voted, and there was a whistleblower within the post office.
27:21.538 --> 27:25.280
[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, if the barcode is just off a little bit, you could lose a million or more votes.
27:25.920 --> 27:31.103
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it would take time after the election to retrieve those, count them by hand, it would be just a mess.
27:31.343 --> 27:33.384
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think the spring court made the right decision.
27:33.845 --> 27:38.347
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was overwhelming, although we may never know the vote, but I think there's a good chance it was seven to two.
27:38.968 --> 27:42.470
[SPEAKER_00]: However, having said that, when the election is all over,
27:43.388 --> 27:55.623
[SPEAKER_00]: I think this Supreme Court and any Supreme Court going forward, and that really goes into the future, so I have a real high chance of being wrong, are going to be tempted to get involved in the election's SNF Foods after this election is over.
27:55.923 --> 27:58.626
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason I say that is just the famous election of Bush v. Gore.
27:59.327 --> 28:02.070
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the Supreme Court was burned so badly by that.
28:02.771 --> 28:18.442
[SPEAKER_00]: that from this point going forward whether it be midterms, presidential, whatever, when people start coming to the court and crying about help us out, we have this confusion, what I would argue the nine adults in Washington DC are going to say, look, it's all on you.
28:19.640 --> 28:22.322
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't tell the court what to deal with, they decide what to deal with.
28:22.582 --> 28:24.544
[SPEAKER_00]: For the nine must think it's worth their valuable time.
28:25.084 --> 28:31.309
[SPEAKER_00]: So I wouldn't be surprised if Republicans or Democrats are both go running to Supreme Court and they turn a deaf ear towards them.
28:31.690 --> 28:33.511
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they learned that from Bush v. Gore.
28:34.192 --> 28:36.413
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think they wish they had learned that from previous history.
28:36.774 --> 28:38.635
[SPEAKER_00]: We had an election in 1876, I believe it was.
28:41.217 --> 28:45.060
[SPEAKER_00]: 1876, and we had three states who sent in two sets of returns.
28:45.601 --> 28:48.043
[SPEAKER_00]: One set of returns said, A1 and the other one said, B1.
28:48.103 --> 28:49.884
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, can you imagine the confusion there?
28:50.204 --> 28:53.347
[SPEAKER_00]: Three different states, and each one sent in two sets of returns.
28:53.707 --> 29:01.694
[SPEAKER_00]: It was chaos, and eventually they went to a commission, the commission made a decision, and ever since then, courts have felt, well, we can get involved in these things.
29:02.074 --> 29:03.755
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think you're going to see that anytime soon.
29:04.196 --> 29:05.417
[SPEAKER_00]: And we might point out that
29:06.137 --> 29:07.458
[SPEAKER_00]: none of your news outlets.
29:07.618 --> 29:11.020
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't care what outlet you listen to or watch or read or whatever.
29:11.460 --> 29:16.522
[SPEAKER_00]: Support the idea there was any shenanigans when President Biden stopped Trump from having the two terms in a row.
29:17.082 --> 29:20.324
[SPEAKER_00]: The Brookings Institute, which is a conservative think tank.
29:20.764 --> 29:25.386
[SPEAKER_00]: Now you should report in 2025, there's about four cases of fraud, every 10 million death.
29:25.667 --> 29:32.310
[SPEAKER_00]: This whole thing with balloting and non-citizens voting, it reminds me of a solution in search of a problem.
29:33.339 --> 29:47.108
[SPEAKER_00]: and it's amazing how much time we've spent on this and yet when it's time to produce facts and figures and not once you're able to go Harry thinks, notice all of the Supreme Court decisions and they've been dominated by Republican appointed presidents since the 1970s.
29:47.729 --> 29:53.953
[SPEAKER_00]: Every single one I think it's up to 70s some have been turned away as preposterous, a waste of time, et cetera, et cetera.
29:54.858 --> 30:12.965
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes people not so much now because it seems like the process is underway with the mail-in ballots with actually early voting in that, but there had been some expressions of concern that there might be some way that the president could stop the elections all together.
30:13.325 --> 30:19.668
[SPEAKER_01]: Was that actually valid or is there so much going on within the states that would never have been a possibility?
30:19.948 --> 30:22.229
[SPEAKER_01]: Just want your observations about that great.
30:22.789 --> 30:27.339
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think there's a problem with both parties going to the extreme.
30:28.230 --> 30:29.431
[SPEAKER_00]: Both parties are guilty of this.
30:29.451 --> 30:32.972
[SPEAKER_00]: And those kinds of points you just made, I've heard, I've read in Sons of Earth.
30:33.532 --> 30:40.215
[SPEAKER_00]: I trust that President Trump will obey the only rule he promised to obey, which was to uphold the Constitution.
30:40.615 --> 30:42.716
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Constitution provides for free and fair elections.
30:42.997 --> 30:44.497
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't see President Trump doing that.
30:44.917 --> 30:47.398
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't see some of his major advisors doing that.
30:47.919 --> 30:54.602
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're going to use the military to enforce that, remember the military did not take a note to Trump or Abraham Lincoln or George Washington.
30:54.882 --> 30:57.443
[SPEAKER_00]: They take a note to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.
30:58.003 --> 30:59.804
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't think we're going to go down that road.
31:00.005 --> 31:02.486
[SPEAKER_00]: It would be one of the worst things in my history if we did.
31:03.027 --> 31:06.009
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not losing sleep over it because I really don't think it's going to happen.
31:06.189 --> 31:08.911
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, going back to commercials, which you asked about a little while ago.
31:09.772 --> 31:17.838
[SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, if I'm running for mayor Philadelphia or governor of South Dakota, one of the most effective ways to get people to do something is to scare them.
31:18.518 --> 31:19.339
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just a fact.
31:20.019 --> 31:24.163
[SPEAKER_00]: And so if I want to win the governor ship of South Dakota, if I want to become mayor of Houston, Texas,
31:25.023 --> 31:29.748
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things I may include in all of my commercials or some of my commercials is to scare you.
31:30.408 --> 31:37.615
[SPEAKER_00]: And that kind of talk about military or police intervention and an election in our country that to me is scare talk.
31:38.136 --> 31:43.241
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if it ends up happening in the real world, then you can say, boy, that guy furrow was so wrong on that podcast.
31:43.721 --> 31:45.103
[SPEAKER_00]: But I don't anticipate it happening.
31:45.803 --> 31:57.872
[SPEAKER_01]: You mentioned now several times about the governor and the mayor does it vary from state to state as to which races are going to be on the ballot besides those for the House of Representatives on the Senate.
31:58.653 --> 32:01.615
[SPEAKER_00]: To some extent, all 435 House members run.
32:02.295 --> 32:05.097
[SPEAKER_00]: They'll be a third of the senators that'll be off for the grabs.
32:05.898 --> 32:10.962
[SPEAKER_00]: And then as far as the governorships, I think there's 36 governorships that are at stake.
32:11.722 --> 32:13.804
[SPEAKER_00]: However, something I think is very disappointing.
32:14.962 --> 32:24.849
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is, you have a lot of elections going on where, in all three cases, the Senate, the House, and little less so with governors, they're not very competitive.
32:26.049 --> 32:30.292
[SPEAKER_00]: They're about 15 Democratic states that are highly unlikely to elect Republicans to almost any post.
32:31.033 --> 32:35.316
[SPEAKER_00]: They're so strongly Democratic, you know, Massachusetts, California, et cetera, et cetera.
32:35.896 --> 32:37.557
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the same is true for the Republicans.
32:37.577 --> 32:41.200
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's about 15 states that Republicans know they have in their bag no matter what.
32:41.960 --> 32:45.662
[SPEAKER_00]: out of 435 congressional districts, there's about 35 or 40.
32:45.682 --> 32:46.922
[SPEAKER_00]: They really are competitive.
32:47.242 --> 32:49.003
[SPEAKER_00]: The rest are pretty much a done deal.
32:49.023 --> 32:55.426
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if you can get elected to the house in a state that is predominantly Republican or Democrat, you may be there for 100 years.
32:55.826 --> 32:58.907
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a pretty secure place even though you have to run for your job every two years.
32:59.527 --> 33:08.431
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's amazing and I think disappointing how many house seats, how many Senate seats, how many governance chairs are not competitive.
33:08.991 --> 33:10.853
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can see that in presidential elections.
33:10.973 --> 33:17.178
[SPEAKER_00]: And the last presidential election, the one before that, the one before that, they don't talk about, oh my, it's California going to go for Harris or not.
33:17.659 --> 33:19.280
[SPEAKER_00]: I wonder how Texas is going to go.
33:19.460 --> 33:20.581
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it going to go for Trump or not?
33:20.822 --> 33:22.103
[SPEAKER_00]: You know how those states are going to go.
33:22.603 --> 33:25.166
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if falling politics is just a cursory kind of thing.
33:26.125 --> 33:28.986
[SPEAKER_00]: It came down in the last election in the last number of elections.
33:29.266 --> 33:33.707
[SPEAKER_00]: It comes down to seven or eight states and how they go is going to determine who's going to be president.
33:34.368 --> 33:37.028
[SPEAKER_00]: And in these midterm elections, the same is true.
33:37.048 --> 33:37.709
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry to say.
33:38.129 --> 33:40.549
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is there's a heck of a lot of house seats.
33:40.589 --> 33:42.930
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe 400 that are pretty secure.
33:42.990 --> 33:47.711
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're looking at, you know, 35, 40, 45 at the most that could be on the ropes.
33:48.192 --> 33:52.233
[SPEAKER_01]: On the same way with the United States Senate and the same way with the governor's chairs as well.
33:53.033 --> 33:57.514
[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, you're peering a lot lately about the age issue.
33:57.534 --> 34:04.296
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we've got the concern about Senator Mitch McConnell, who seemed to have disappeared for a while.
34:04.436 --> 34:19.079
[SPEAKER_01]: And then of course, who have his age as well as the age of the president, do you think that age of members of Congress are going to begin to play more of a role in future midterm elections or even during the presidential election?
34:23.120 --> 34:34.690
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe the two oldest presidents in history, Biden and Trump, we've seen a lot of older Democrat and Republican candidates for various offices go down to defeat, but there's always those exceptions.
34:34.710 --> 34:42.037
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there was that race up in Massachusetts, the sea was going to run for the Democrats, and it was some 30-year-old versus an 80-year-old in the 80-year-old one.
34:42.617 --> 34:48.342
[SPEAKER_00]: So you hate to make a statement that's going to cover every single space, you know, no matter what, there's always some uncovered spaces.
34:48.763 --> 34:50.684
[SPEAKER_00]: If I had my way, there would be term limits.
34:51.405 --> 34:53.026
[SPEAKER_00]: and then you don't get into the age issue.
34:53.306 --> 35:00.932
[SPEAKER_00]: I think, you know, two term limit for senators, that be 12 years, six terms for house members, they serve two years, that be 12 years for them.
35:01.452 --> 35:03.814
[SPEAKER_00]: We already have a term limit for the presidency.
35:04.395 --> 35:07.377
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe we need an 18 year term limit for the Supreme Court.
35:07.917 --> 35:12.098
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I've always been supportive of term limits and not get into the age thing.
35:12.358 --> 35:25.522
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason for that is, as I alluded to earlier, and I believe this is still true, that more than the Catholic Church, more than the National Rifle Social Association, more than any organization you think of, is the membership of AARP.
35:26.082 --> 35:36.345
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can't imagine that if we tried to say, you can't be a governor if you're over 72, and you can't be present if you're over 79, you know, there would be an uproar that would just not make it in the courts.
35:36.965 --> 35:41.209
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe the more practical way to go is to have term limits.
35:41.890 --> 35:50.698
[SPEAKER_00]: Another change I would maybe make if you made me dictator for a day and maybe get really electoral college, shake up the deck a little bit, those kinds of things, I think that would help.
35:50.998 --> 35:52.559
[SPEAKER_00]: But age I think is going to be a factor.
35:52.599 --> 36:02.869
[SPEAKER_00]: You have a lot of people within the Democratic Party, if we can focus on them for just a second, and I think they're frustrated over not being able to get back into the White House.
36:03.889 --> 36:06.571
[SPEAKER_00]: And there is that rebellion within the Democratic Party.
36:06.591 --> 36:09.773
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's some things going on there too in the Republican Party as well.
36:10.174 --> 36:13.736
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, JD Vance's young and Marco Rubio is young.
36:13.956 --> 36:17.179
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think there's a youth push in both parties.
36:18.219 --> 36:23.783
[SPEAKER_00]: And recently, you can see Mitch McConnell being wheeled into the house and being absent.
36:23.863 --> 36:25.785
[SPEAKER_00]: The governor of the state of Kentucky said, we're busy.
36:26.185 --> 36:27.546
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody had heard from him for months.
36:28.166 --> 36:30.568
[SPEAKER_00]: But then on the Democratic side, you had Diane Feinstein.
36:31.088 --> 36:34.449
[SPEAKER_00]: who was, you know, clearly in over her head the last couple of years.
36:35.049 --> 36:49.672
[SPEAKER_00]: So this age issue is a real problem and as the system is set up to a large extent on seniority, not only are they up there in age, not only are they not able to do their job as well, but they also have the power because they've been around longer because it's a seniority system.
36:50.072 --> 36:51.313
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's the worst of all worlds.
36:51.593 --> 36:57.614
[SPEAKER_00]: So, okay, yes, I'd like them to be younger, but, you know, the older I get, you know, I'm pushing back what old is.
37:01.715 --> 37:05.136
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, and it doesn't sound like you're going to be running for office at any time soon.
37:05.216 --> 37:21.242
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's get back to, again, the situation in terms of the members of Congress, I believe you've said that the oath of office that all U.S. House of Representative members take, as well as the Senate members take, talk a little bit about that.
37:21.802 --> 37:25.263
[SPEAKER_01]: And what the oath of office is and why that's important.
37:25.643 --> 37:37.139
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, as I may be alluded to earlier, every president, whether it be FDR, John County or Richard Nixon, whoever, they take an oath of office, they promise to do just one thing, and that's preserved protecting the Constitution.
37:37.159 --> 37:41.665
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't promise you more money in your social security check, they don't promise more money for Medicare.
37:42.085 --> 37:43.965
[SPEAKER_00]: they don't promise you there's not going to be a war.
37:44.385 --> 38:09.290
[SPEAKER_00]: The only sworn promise they make with their hand on the Bible is I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic that it will bear true faith and allegiance to the same that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I'm about to enter so help me God.
38:09.830 --> 38:16.653
[SPEAKER_00]: So, everybody who's ever served in the house has taken that, it drives, it's never been a senator's taken that, and so that's the only commitment they have.
38:16.813 --> 38:24.896
[SPEAKER_00]: It's article six, close three of the United States Constitution, and then once they're in there, of course, then there's all the other factors that play.
38:24.936 --> 38:25.916
[SPEAKER_00]: Do they start thinking about
38:26.336 --> 38:29.818
[SPEAKER_00]: what I'm going to do now to win in two years, what do I do now to win in six years?
38:30.258 --> 38:34.821
[SPEAKER_00]: Do I have three objectives that I hope to accomplish while I'm a senator from Iowa or something like that?
38:35.342 --> 38:38.263
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's the oath that everybody in the House takes it by the Senate takes.
38:38.664 --> 38:41.385
[SPEAKER_00]: The presidential oath is similar, but not identical.
38:41.865 --> 38:52.532
[SPEAKER_00]: Your listeners might be interested in the fact that I'm sure they're going to go to the Constitution and check this, but in the case of the president's oath, while the House in the Senate, their oath says it's very end, so have me got.
38:52.832 --> 38:54.133
[SPEAKER_00]: The president's oath does not.
38:56.193 --> 39:02.617
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've seen all kinds of presidents be sworn in since John Kennedy eyes and how are and they all say it.
39:03.057 --> 39:05.759
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they always will say it, but they don't have to.
39:05.919 --> 39:14.764
[SPEAKER_00]: So you don't want to show your ignorance and call up your local newspaper and say, hey, so and so was sworn into the presidency a couple hours ago and he didn't say where she didn't say, so let me go at the end.
39:15.464 --> 39:16.985
[SPEAKER_00]: So therefore they're not president.
39:17.425 --> 39:18.026
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah, they are.
39:18.066 --> 39:19.306
[SPEAKER_00]: But he looked at your constitution.
39:19.326 --> 39:20.007
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't have to.
39:20.387 --> 39:40.857
[SPEAKER_01]: The only reason they do is because everybody likes the copycat George Washington who when he was sworn in he said it and every single one since has said it well I'm glad that you added the pronoun she so as a female myself I always keep hoping that some day before I leave this earth that there will be a female president but we'll see what happens so.
39:41.517 --> 40:00.024
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to get back to you mentioned a little earlier that the political party that usually does better in midterm elections is the one that's the opposite of whatever political party, the president represents, so I'm assuming that would mean that maybe the prediction is that the Democrats will do better.
40:00.704 --> 40:12.972
[SPEAKER_01]: But I also understand and as you and I talked about these questions before that there was something that happened in the years 1998 and 2002 that were important, tell us about that.
40:13.172 --> 40:16.995
[SPEAKER_00]: Most of the time, by far, the party not in the White House does better.
40:17.415 --> 40:18.456
[SPEAKER_00]: There's always exceptions.
40:18.556 --> 40:23.199
[SPEAKER_00]: And so two exceptions would be in Clinton running for his second term.
40:23.659 --> 40:27.922
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people thought that he would do poorly, but please remember a couple of things.
40:28.682 --> 40:35.023
[SPEAKER_00]: Even while the impeachment process was playing out in Clinton's second term, his popularity remained extremely high.
40:35.563 --> 40:37.864
[SPEAKER_00]: He was very popular after he left the presidency.
40:38.004 --> 40:40.824
[SPEAKER_00]: I think more popular than Ronald Reagan was when he left the presidency.
40:41.604 --> 40:55.387
[SPEAKER_00]: And I guess the most important thing to keep in mind as to maybe why the Democrats didn't get kicked in the teeth in the midterm elections of Clinton's second term is the fact that, and this is a fact not open to debate, that the economy under Clinton was the best
40:58.438 --> 41:13.122
[SPEAKER_00]: So when I'm giving a lecture on Bill Clinton, I bring out a $20 bill for my shirt pocket, and I say that's why he was so popular during his second term and why he left so popular and why they didn't come close to impeach him because the economy was booming.
41:13.563 --> 41:16.183
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no time in American history where he had eight years as good.
41:16.764 --> 41:24.106
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's probably why his party didn't take it on the chin as most incumbent parties do in midterm elections.
41:24.901 --> 41:32.623
[SPEAKER_00]: The other big exception in the most recent times would be Bush Jr. George W. Bush, the son, not the father.
41:33.183 --> 41:41.104
[SPEAKER_00]: And we just had the 25th commemoration for the 911 attack in the that event, 3,000 of our fellow citizens were killed.
41:41.885 --> 41:45.065
[SPEAKER_00]: And when the chips are down, countries tend to rally around the flag.
41:45.085 --> 41:46.405
[SPEAKER_00]: They tend to rally around the leader.
41:47.086 --> 41:49.506
[SPEAKER_00]: And so in that election there, that's the
41:54.287 --> 41:57.889
[SPEAKER_00]: But that was probably largely influenced by the 9-11 event.
41:58.550 --> 42:03.973
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if you remember when Bush Jr. won, he was a minority president, more people I voted for Gore.
42:05.340 --> 42:07.842
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, he knows he's going uphill here.
42:08.563 --> 42:14.147
[SPEAKER_00]: And 9-11 occurred, we rally around the flag, everybody's nicer to each other, we feel threatened.
42:14.648 --> 42:17.510
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they didn't suffer the midterm losses you would normally suffer.
42:18.010 --> 42:21.933
[SPEAKER_00]: In the case of Clinton, it's just the money in your pocket was a little bit thicker.
42:21.973 --> 42:25.957
[SPEAKER_00]: You had more money to go in a longer vacation by a bigger car, all that kind of stuff.
42:26.357 --> 42:32.382
[SPEAKER_00]: But with those exceptions in mind, most of the time, yes, the out party, the party not in the White House is gonna do better.
42:32.722 --> 42:39.127
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, let's look ahead if you have the crystal ball after the midterm elections are over.
42:39.967 --> 42:43.970
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you think we'll know which party is going to win the presidency in 2028?
42:44.090 --> 42:55.179
[SPEAKER_00]: I have no idea, but those politicians who are most mentioned for both parties that may run for the big job in two years obviously are watching these elections closely.
42:55.619 --> 43:00.322
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, if this is an election where the Democrats do real well, they're going to feel
43:02.684 --> 43:09.654
[SPEAKER_00]: And when the big job two years from now, before we even talk about two years from now, let's talk about the past.
43:09.854 --> 43:14.320
[SPEAKER_00]: So sometimes the party not in the White House does well.
43:14.741 --> 43:18.807
[SPEAKER_00]: They get all excited that they're going to win the presidential two years later and they don't.
43:20.407 --> 43:24.150
[SPEAKER_00]: So an example would be, we have the midterm elections of 1982.
43:24.790 --> 43:27.212
[SPEAKER_00]: The Democrats took 26 seats in the house.
43:27.853 --> 43:30.755
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody was all excited that Reagan was going to be a one-term president.
43:30.775 --> 43:33.257
[SPEAKER_00]: Because look at all those house seats, the Democrats won.
43:33.777 --> 43:36.960
[SPEAKER_00]: Two years later, Reagan wins by one of the biggest landslides in U.S. history.
43:37.641 --> 43:40.943
[SPEAKER_00]: And 1994, lots of Republicans did well.
43:40.963 --> 43:42.905
[SPEAKER_00]: They won 54 seats in the house.
43:43.505 --> 43:45.906
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, the talk was Clinton's going to be one term president.
43:46.406 --> 43:52.968
[SPEAKER_00]: Two years later, it's a presidential and he wins by one of the biggest landslides over Bob Dole in 1996.
43:53.968 --> 43:57.290
[SPEAKER_00]: And another example, the most recent, I think, 2010.
43:57.410 --> 43:58.430
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a midterm election.
43:58.850 --> 44:00.311
[SPEAKER_00]: who did better the Republicans.
44:00.631 --> 44:01.811
[SPEAKER_00]: My gosh did they do better.
44:01.891 --> 44:05.513
[SPEAKER_00]: They took 63 seats off the Democrats in the House of Representatives.
44:05.773 --> 44:10.495
[SPEAKER_00]: That's 2010 midterm elections Republican smear the Democrats take 63 seats.
44:10.915 --> 44:13.376
[SPEAKER_00]: Two years later, those Obama win a second term.
44:13.716 --> 44:17.117
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, he easily defeats mid-Romney when he runs for the second term.
44:17.758 --> 44:21.899
[SPEAKER_00]: So you don't want to get carried away and say, oh, well, the Democrats did well here in a couple of weeks.
44:22.280 --> 44:24.460
[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, they got a lock on the next presidential election.
44:24.861 --> 44:27.382
[SPEAKER_00]: There's three examples I just gave you shows the opposite
44:28.463 --> 44:31.806
[SPEAKER_00]: However, it does get you one of those street things they say you need in politics.
44:32.226 --> 44:33.187
[SPEAKER_00]: Number one, you need money.
44:34.068 --> 44:36.109
[SPEAKER_00]: Number two, you need the media to pay attention to you.
44:36.630 --> 44:37.991
[SPEAKER_00]: And number three, you need momentum.
44:39.102 --> 44:43.943
[SPEAKER_00]: and obviously the Democrats are gonna have that momentum if they do well in these midterm elections.
44:44.743 --> 44:53.685
[SPEAKER_00]: Having said that, you have a number of Republicans in Democrats that we could talk about who are gonna be watching the elections in 36 days very closely.
44:54.285 --> 44:59.066
[SPEAKER_00]: These are some big-name Republicans who are being mentioned, it could be somebody not even on this list.
44:59.666 --> 45:03.347
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously there's JD Vance, who seems like the air successor,
45:04.427 --> 45:11.264
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes Republican presidents, I'm not the president, Trump necessarily will do this, but they do not endorse somebody.
45:11.304 --> 45:13.810
[SPEAKER_00]: They let the Republican party figure it out for themselves.
45:14.475 --> 45:16.917
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm pretty sure Reagan did not endorse Bush senior.
45:17.297 --> 45:20.379
[SPEAKER_00]: He let Bush senior fight against all these Republicans in the primary.
45:20.599 --> 45:24.862
[SPEAKER_00]: Then once Bush senior had won the nomination, then Reagan endorsed him 100%.
45:25.063 --> 45:26.023
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's a tendency.
45:26.103 --> 45:30.847
[SPEAKER_00]: So it would appear that the logical person for Republicans to turn to would be J.D.
45:30.887 --> 45:34.509
[SPEAKER_00]: Vance, but we'll have to see Trump has given him a lot of praise.
45:34.589 --> 45:36.191
[SPEAKER_00]: But he hasn't said, I want J.D.
45:36.231 --> 45:37.231
[SPEAKER_00]: Vance to run for president.
45:37.251 --> 45:38.252
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm behind him 100%.
45:38.552 --> 45:42.155
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not stifled any presidential primaries within the Republican Party.
45:42.735 --> 45:58.457
[SPEAKER_00]: another one would be Marco Rubio another one could be Ron DeSantis who's now finished being governor Florida and it took on Trump and the primaries that preceded the term that Trump is in right now and then some others that are mentioned that are less well-known Brian camp Donald Trump Jr.
45:59.413 --> 46:06.119
[SPEAKER_00]: Glenn Yanken, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, that's a more well-known name or Tom Cotton, Senator from Arkansas.
46:06.499 --> 46:12.745
[SPEAKER_00]: So all those names are being mentioned right now, of course, it would seem like, you know, J.D.
46:12.785 --> 46:18.911
[SPEAKER_00]: Vance is the clear person to be the nominee of the party, but what I have to wait and see, who knows what's going to happen here.
46:19.531 --> 46:30.774
[SPEAKER_00]: The same things that may cause Democrats to do well in the House and the Senate in a couple of weeks are the same kinds of things that, whoever the Democrats run for President two years, they'll hang around Vance's neck.
46:31.155 --> 46:35.796
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, if you are associated with an unpopular president, it's difficult to run away from them.
46:36.196 --> 46:38.977
[SPEAKER_00]: Kamala Harris could not run away from unpopular Joe Biden.
46:39.617 --> 46:45.539
[SPEAKER_00]: Hubert Humphrey could not run away from Lyndon Johnson who sent 500,000 U.S. soldiers to Vietnam.
46:49.771 --> 46:54.512
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm Bush Sr. and Reagan is loved by everybody and so yes, I easily beat the caucus.
46:55.093 --> 46:56.133
[SPEAKER_00]: But the opposite is true.
46:56.253 --> 47:03.775
[SPEAKER_00]: If I'm a vice president associated with a president who's not popular, then that's going to be a drag on me and it's going to cause me to be nominated but not to win.
47:04.195 --> 47:13.878
[SPEAKER_00]: The Democrats that are being mentioned and it may be none of these Andy Bashir, Governor of Kentucky, Kevin Newsom, California, Josh Shapiro here in my state of Pennsylvania,
47:14.418 --> 47:23.778
[SPEAKER_00]: The guy named Pritzker, governor of Illinois, Jared Polis, governor of Colorado, a more Kelly, the astronaut, the senator of Arizona, Romney, manual.
47:24.527 --> 47:26.228
[SPEAKER_00]: who was the former mayor of Chicago.
47:26.608 --> 47:34.351
[SPEAKER_00]: So those are some names that are being mentioned that may run for the Democrats in the next presidential election, just like the names that we called off for the Republicans.
47:34.791 --> 47:42.795
[SPEAKER_00]: One of those, to just highlight for a second, Andy Bashir has won two terms by landslides in Kentucky and Kentucky is a hard-read state.
47:43.355 --> 47:50.758
[SPEAKER_00]: And some people, I saw a big article in a newspaper, I read some of the newspapers, I don't know which one I saw it in, but they said, is Andy Bashir the next bill Clinton?
47:51.458 --> 47:56.844
[SPEAKER_00]: And people forget, and that's what historians try to do, and I'm not an historian, but I am a history teacher.
47:56.864 --> 48:00.148
[SPEAKER_00]: They try to remind you of things in history that you would like to forget.
48:00.648 --> 48:12.321
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the things that teachers need to point out is, when Bill Clinton won his two terms, he, as President, had signed the Defense of Marriage Act, saying a marriage was between one man and one woman.
48:13.023 --> 48:16.666
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, after you left the president, he said, oh, that was a mistake if I had to do it over again, I wouldn't do it.
48:16.686 --> 48:18.427
[SPEAKER_00]: But don't put that to the side.
48:18.487 --> 48:21.989
[SPEAKER_00]: When you were president, you signed it, and it maybe helped you win your second term.
48:22.990 --> 48:26.372
[SPEAKER_00]: Bill Clinton signed death warrants for people in prisons in Arkansas.
48:26.753 --> 48:28.194
[SPEAKER_00]: He was pro death penalty.
48:28.674 --> 48:30.695
[SPEAKER_00]: Bill Clinton, that's a fact, not up with the debate.
48:30.956 --> 48:33.417
[SPEAKER_00]: He was pro business, very pro business.
48:33.798 --> 48:37.100
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe that's why the eight years he was president of the best eight years in American history.
48:38.237 --> 48:42.745
[SPEAKER_00]: So those kinds of things, that's why he claimed got the moniker, you know, new Democrat.
48:43.467 --> 48:47.735
[SPEAKER_00]: And the article that I read was, it said, is Andy Bashir, the new Bill Clinton.
48:48.342 --> 48:51.546
[SPEAKER_00]: was Andy Bashir is winning in a state that is hard Republican.
48:51.966 --> 48:55.951
[SPEAKER_00]: He has won two terms by landslides in a state that Trump easily carried.
48:56.552 --> 49:02.178
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe I don't know this for sure, so don't quote me, but I believe Bashir is pro-the-death penalty.
49:02.719 --> 49:08.926
[SPEAKER_00]: He's pro-business and maybe that's why the person wrote that article said, you know, is he sort of like a clean reincarnation?
49:09.531 --> 49:16.973
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, one thing that also has come up in this election is the idea of socialism among certain Democrats.
49:17.193 --> 49:22.015
[SPEAKER_01]: So help us understand a little bit more about the definition of socialism.
49:22.435 --> 49:30.057
[SPEAKER_01]: And do you think that the Democratic Socialists who are on the ballot will help or hurt the Democratic Party?
49:30.657 --> 49:32.599
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, parties go through stages.
49:32.699 --> 49:37.644
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to go that far back before, are you here, everybody saying, well, I'm not really a Republican.
49:37.684 --> 49:40.968
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a Tea Party person, or I'm a Tea Party Republican.
49:41.348 --> 49:42.710
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody talks about that anymore.
49:42.810 --> 49:53.020
[SPEAKER_00]: It came in when, although some of the people who were big in that movement are still big now, let me make a generalization, and the generalization is this, all communist or socialist, but all socialist or not communists.
49:53.641 --> 49:59.843
[SPEAKER_00]: We have countries, some of them I've been to, the Nordic countries, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, I spent three weeks in Norway.
50:00.403 --> 50:02.524
[SPEAKER_00]: Those countries are all socialist countries.
50:02.564 --> 50:03.384
[SPEAKER_00]: They're all proud of it.
50:03.824 --> 50:07.345
[SPEAKER_00]: And having been to some of them, their streets are cleaner, their crime rate is down.
50:07.585 --> 50:12.987
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can have a socialist country and to be a democracy, and it can work very well.
50:13.932 --> 50:15.612
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no pure anything out there.
50:15.632 --> 50:17.053
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no pure communist country.
50:17.073 --> 50:18.793
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no pure socialist countries.
50:18.833 --> 50:20.414
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no pure capitalist country.
50:20.934 --> 50:27.335
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if we were a strictly purely capitalist country, there would be no such thing as this thing called social security.
50:28.035 --> 50:29.416
[SPEAKER_00]: You knew you were gonna get older.
50:29.956 --> 50:31.036
[SPEAKER_00]: You save on your own.
50:31.536 --> 50:34.957
[SPEAKER_00]: If we were a pure capitalist country, we would not have this thing called Medicare.
50:35.397 --> 50:37.678
[SPEAKER_00]: You know you might have health issues as you good older.
50:38.118 --> 50:39.378
[SPEAKER_00]: Put money to the side for that.
50:39.878 --> 50:42.179
[SPEAKER_00]: Why don't we put our postal system up to the highest bidder?
50:44.319 --> 50:47.221
[SPEAKER_00]: or take the dams on the Tennessee River and put them up to the highest bidder.
50:47.682 --> 50:48.803
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's no pure anything.
50:48.823 --> 50:49.783
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no pure communism.
50:49.803 --> 50:50.824
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no pure socialism.
50:50.844 --> 50:51.965
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no pure capitalism.
50:52.685 --> 50:55.507
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a basic differentiation between the two.
50:56.708 --> 50:59.930
[SPEAKER_00]: In socialism, they control key industries.
51:00.671 --> 51:01.992
[SPEAKER_00]: Key and important industries.
51:02.092 --> 51:03.913
[SPEAKER_00]: Steel, coal, those kinds of things.
51:04.674 --> 51:06.835
[SPEAKER_00]: In a socialist country, they have democracy.
51:07.656 --> 51:09.777
[SPEAKER_00]: In a socialist country, they have freedom of religion.
51:10.558 --> 51:13.100
[SPEAKER_00]: In a socialist country, they do have supply and demand.
51:14.046 --> 51:19.310
[SPEAKER_00]: And in a socialist country, even though they say they're going to try to, they never really get rid of any kind of class system.
51:19.950 --> 51:21.951
[SPEAKER_00]: They control not all the industries sum.
51:21.971 --> 51:30.717
[SPEAKER_00]: The most important, their democracies, their freedom of religion, on the other side of the coin, and a communist society, they own everything.
51:31.297 --> 51:32.178
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything is own.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The little boutique shop that sells flower arrangements up to the steel mills, the school systems.
51:37.260 --> 51:38.821
[SPEAKER_00]: They plan everything.
51:39.181 --> 51:41.923
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no need for people to say, well, I think we ought to invent this.
51:42.043 --> 51:43.083
[SPEAKER_00]: We make a lot of money on it.
51:43.443 --> 51:45.004
[SPEAKER_00]: It is planned by a central committee.
51:45.785 --> 51:48.666
[SPEAKER_00]: They are also anti any kind of religion.
51:49.326 --> 51:52.368
[SPEAKER_00]: In Russia, when it exists, it has a communist country, which it isn't anymore.
51:52.888 --> 51:57.551
[SPEAKER_00]: And in China, communism and believing in any kind of God is mutually exclusive.
51:57.591 --> 51:58.351
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't be both.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Communism is your religion and in a communist system they're run by a dictator.
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[SPEAKER_00]: they own everything, not just some things, they plan everything, they don't leave it up to free businessmen in the socialist system, you can worship God as you choose, communist system is atheistic, and in a socialist system it's democratic, and in a communist system it's a dictatorship.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, if you look around the world today, communism has fallen on such ill-reput that only may be Cuba and North Korea try to practice communism in the real world.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It does not work, it does not work.
52:35.495 --> 52:42.859
[SPEAKER_00]: And Christmas Day 1991, Gorbachev came on TV, and announced the end, the absolute end of the Soviet Union.
52:43.379 --> 52:47.821
[SPEAKER_00]: From Christmas Day 1991 on, they've gone back to their old name of Russia.
52:48.838 --> 52:55.860
[SPEAKER_00]: Communism existed in the Soviet Union for a shorter time than my current age, now I'm going to be 76-year-old real soon.
52:56.441 --> 53:02.343
[SPEAKER_00]: On paper, China is communist, but you know as well as I do that they're out hustling us in so many places around the world.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The political scientists then are stuck, so how do you explain this?
53:06.084 --> 53:14.087
[SPEAKER_00]: So the expression that came up to describe Putin's Russia, because the Soviet Union has been dead since 1991, they call it an authoritarian dictatorship.
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[SPEAKER_00]: saying they noticed there's no word socialism.
53:16.368 --> 53:17.329
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no word communism.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So those are some differences.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Whether it's going to hurt the Democratic Party, I don't know.
53:21.772 --> 53:24.694
[SPEAKER_00]: They have about six socialist running around the country.
53:25.215 --> 53:28.337
[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, one thing we should keep in mind here is the numbers game.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If you look at just the numbers right now this moment, there's 45 million registered Democrats in America.
53:34.422 --> 53:37.964
[SPEAKER_00]: There's 39 million registered Republicans in America.
53:38.424 --> 53:41.727
[SPEAKER_00]: There's 35 million registered independence in America.
53:42.656 --> 53:46.677
[SPEAKER_00]: There's 25 million registered senior citizens in America.
53:47.097 --> 53:53.919
[SPEAKER_00]: There's 120,000 people who are registered with the Democratic Socialist Party of America.
53:54.039 --> 54:03.042
[SPEAKER_01]: You mentioned earlier in the interview about the issues that are really on the minds of everybody affordability, the war and Iran,
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[SPEAKER_01]: climate change, some of the others, do you think that the voters over age 65 will be watching once the election is over as to whether or not the people that get elected actually address those issues?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, absolutely.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think it goes back to what I mentioned a little while ago, and that is if the Democrats do well, which it seems like they're going to do at least in the house, and they get in
54:32.947 --> 54:40.420
[SPEAKER_00]: They're ensuring that if that's all they care about it so they talk about that's all they investigate, they're almost ensuring that their presidential candidate two years from now will lose.
54:41.479 --> 54:51.481
[SPEAKER_00]: because people will say, I put you in there, look into that a little bit, but what are you doing for me to bring down the price of gasoline, the price of utilities, the price of prescriptions, so that's a risk that they run.
54:51.621 --> 55:02.163
[SPEAKER_00]: The economy affects all ages, but certain prices of certain things might affect senior citizens more, such as maybe utilities, groceries, prescription drugs, that kind of thing.
55:02.623 --> 55:06.504
[SPEAKER_00]: But if I was running for office now, and I could choose which party to run in,
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think to increase my chances of winning, which is the reason political parties exist as to win elections, I'd be tempted to run as a Democrat because I think the field favors them this time, whereas last time, the field favorite Republicans two years ago, I would have ran as a Republican, and then to really keep the job for a hundred years, I would just keep on switching my party depending on which way the wins are blowing.
55:29.599 --> 55:33.343
[SPEAKER_01]: obviously you're not running for office Greg so you don't have to worry about that.
55:33.363 --> 55:34.384
[SPEAKER_01]: So final question.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Could you tell us again some of the resources that you think would be helpful to our listeners to learn about the midterm elections?
55:42.352 --> 55:42.632
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
55:42.952 --> 55:44.994
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a fan of the League of Women Voters.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I've addressed them in the past.
55:46.976 --> 55:50.320
[SPEAKER_00]: If any of your listeners are living at a retirement community, bring in a guest speaker.
55:50.860 --> 55:57.102
[SPEAKER_00]: maybe some profit from some university or maybe bringing in both candidates, the two candidates that are running for mayor of your town or something like that.
55:57.562 --> 56:07.364
[SPEAKER_00]: I would strongly urge not to go by things you see on the internet, the internet has no police force, anything can go on the internet, it has not been checked, you don't know if it's true, etc.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'd be tempted not to use commercials which they spend millions of dollars making to appeal to heartstrings and to fear.
56:13.745 --> 56:15.866
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we mentioned I think earlier on,
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, if you hear something and then you find out it's fake, don't send it Uncle Harry and say boy wasn't this vicious take down of candidate so and so rather check it first Google fact check explore verify this or snopes and if it doesn't pan out why share with other people I think it's going to be an interesting election I think one of the things I would encourage your listeners to do and I'm quoting Abraham Lincoln here I appeal to you again to constantly bear in mind that with you
56:43.636 --> 56:53.502
[SPEAKER_00]: Not with the politicians, not with the presidents, not with the office seekers, but with you is the question, shall the union and shall the liberties of this country be preserved?
56:54.182 --> 56:54.802
[SPEAKER_00]: Abraham Lincoln.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I would hope that all your listeners regardless of age, whatever their priorities are, you know, please go out and vote.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Well said.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I want to thank Dr. Greg Farrow, lecturer about historical topics and presidential elections.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much, Greg, for joining me again today.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It was a pleasure to have you on the show and prepare all of our listeners for the midterm elections.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We'll be thinking of you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, too.
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[SPEAKER_01]: To learn more about aging matters, of course, you can visit our website at agingmattersonline.com where you can access all aging matters radio programs that we produce, the TV show episodes that are available each month, and the podcast, which are broadcast on Apple, Spotify, Red Circle, and wherever you listen to your podcast.
57:44.319 --> 57:47.962
[SPEAKER_01]: So again, check out agingmattersonline.com.
57:48.702 --> 57:48.862
[SPEAKER_01]: H.A.G.
57:48.882 --> 57:53.544
[SPEAKER_01]: Matters is produced in association with Steve Lack audio and edited by Donald Lack.
57:53.904 --> 57:58.045
[SPEAKER_01]: So, to learn more about that company, visit SteveLackAudio.com.
57:58.605 --> 58:00.206
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for listening to H.A.
58:00.226 --> 58:05.207
[SPEAKER_01]: Matters today and remember, age is just a number, not a label.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'll be back again with you next week.