Charlotte has fallen (11-05-2025--Hour3)

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpeteclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. All right, now, I've got like thirty texts here. That's my own fault. I have all of these text messages because I can't I got thirty one now I can't keep up with It's it's like the matrix here. Let me see this all right, So I'm just gonna go with These are the ones that just came in here. I'm very curious to hear from Charlotte policemen publicly and privately about the mayor's election. I don't believe they like ender policies at all, says Alan. Susie says, what about independence? They outnumber Republicans and maybe even Democrats. They don't not inside city limits. Did they turn out for this election? Seems like they would be key to either side. Didn't they swing to Trump last election? Not in Charlotte, the independence So okay, Number one, they're unaffiliateds. I know it's a little thing, but people say, oh, I'm independent, you're not. Okay, you're unaffiliated. You're not independent, you're unaffiliated. I'm unaffiliated, but unaffiliated. When you look at how they break down, all the data shows unaffiliateds vote actually in a more partisan fashion than the registered Republicans and Democrats. So just because you're labeled unaffiliated doesn't mean you ever vote for the party that you most closely identify with Number one. Number two, unaffiliateds generally speaking, break half and half. Okay, so it's a wash, although in Charlotte, I would say it probably breaks like Democrats outnumber Republicans by like a three to one margin, so I would suspect that unaffiliated also break in a similar way two to one, three to one for Democrats. Also, again, these are the data points, and I'm only like, I hate to be the bearer of the bad news, but I have to tell you that if you are a conservative, if you are a Republican, you are not going to have representation in your local government. There isn't going to be anybody there that's going to espouse anything that you believe in from a policy standpoint, Then you don't have enough numbers. So and Democrats have drawn the districts such that only one of the seven districts can ever be won by a Republican. Let me see here. I love the show as someone who grew up in Charlotte since eighty six. We saw the writing on the wall and moved to Charleston two years ago. It's sad to say when I go back to visit friends, I don't miss it or recognize my old neighborhood in Sedgefield. Yes, Sedgefield's gone crazy. This is from Chris. It's not that people are necessarily happy with the way Democrats run things. I just believe that the Democrats do such a great job of convincing people that they are victimized, oppressed, and that everything that goes wrong in their life is because of racism. Well, look they are satisfied with You don't vote all of the incumbents back in unless you think they are doing a good job. Right, that's it. People may have some you know, Oh I want this improved. Oh I'd like to see this change, but they are satisfied with the leadership. They're satisfied with the way Charlotte is and they prefer to have the fight internally inside the Democrat Party. Waiting for you to congratulate me on the blue wave last night, says Shirley the lefty even District six. Why would I congratulate you on the blue wave? Did you do that? Did you vote in all those places? Also, I'm not sure blue states electing Democrats is signs of a wave, like Virginia's blue and New Jersey is blue. Like the last New Jersey Republican governor was Chris Christie, right like twenty years ago. It's not. Yeah again, these are the numbers. Now, the numbers change, you know, and we may see that when more people that are fleeing from those states, Republicans are fleeing from those states. I mean, look at Florida has picked up all of these seats. It's gone and it's gone redder, It's picked up a lot of congression seats because of the population growth, because Republicans are leaving states where they have no representation. Pete, you are absolutely right about Charlotte Mecklimberg going blue. The past several years. I have noticed this also. That's why we no longer live in Mecklinburg County. This is not just about Trump. People who make that charge are too obsessed with him. We live in Union County. There's a picture of a cat. Thank you that I'll continue to vote with my wallet. Charlotte didn't have much to offer my family's lifestyle to start. Now we have to stop buying sports tickets too. So I was thinking about this during the break because I live right at the county line, and so yeah, like, I will now make all of my purchases over in the next county. But does that count also for online purchases because I'm in Mecklenburg, So if I buy something, it's all Mecklenburg County. It's so I'm going to get I'm going to pay that tax for online purchases. That stakes no, sorry, Amazon, not going to be using you anymore, Mike says uh. Caller Randall from the last hour wasn't all that far off. The first step is for Republicans locally is to grow some and talk openly about what they believe in programs they support. We have to be viewed as normal and be more positive and visible. It's not safe or smart for me to put a Republican sign in my yard. There are too many consequences, including inside my house. Local organization efforts aren't good enough. Are there resources that can be shared so people can get involved? Right? So this speaks to a structural problem inside the GOP that, like the donor class, inside the GOP does not fund the things that actually work. Throwing a couple thousand dollars out of particular candidate every other year. That's that's not how you build a long lasting movement, right, you have to build the infrastructure seven oh four number. I'm a Trump voter, but I agree wholeheartedly on your views about Trump wanting to do away with the filibuster. It's not a good idea. Brian. Uh. Maybe Randall doesn't realize that ICE has to be going around cities to round up ten million people. Biden let in, he does. It's just talking points. He's just vomiting up or he was. He kept talking about last night's elections rejecting MAGA. So then we can also say that last November is the rejection of the radical leftist. You're a saint for taking his call, but it's also very entertaining. Hey, thank you, Brian. Jeff says, thanks for calling out Edwin Peacock. When I heard him say that last night, I immediately thought blaming Trump was wrong. Yeah. I don't know how you would even know that. You're watching election returns come in and you're like, this is obviously a Trump backlash. Really, like Republicans have been coming in fifth and sixth place in a five and six member field for a decade. I don't know why this would be on Trump now, Allen says, this has nothing to do with Trump at all. There was no reasonable expectation of winning most of these races nationally in the first place. They have recovered their own fumble over there on the left and are trying to make it the play of the game. Off year elections always benefit the leftist kind of like it's by design. Well that's not always the case. It used to be the other way around. So now they have gotten a little wind in them and they can't wait to blow it out while saying something stupid, Yeah, look they're going to be They're going to be out there spiking the ball today. Absolutely, but this happens. Remember this happened, Glenn. You let me say this way, Glenn Youngkin was the anomaly, He's the outlier. Okay. Also, Democrats have kept the federal government shut down, and northern Virginia is filled with government employees, so like you put them out of work and you blame Donald Trump and they hate Trump anyway because of the DOGE cuts and all of that stuff. Also, so yeah, you've animated that base. Like I said, Virginia is blue. It's been blue for a while. It's been trending more and more and more blue for years because it has such a massive federal workforce that relies on that funding. They make a lot of money. The richest zip codes are all around DC. So no, that's not a surprise. Ellen says, it doesn't change the fact that Democrats offer nothing, no solutions, no resolutions, just emotion, protest, resistance. They have caused most of our problems. They want more, They want power and access to tax payer money. Mine as well. Renamed Charlotte little New York. Well, there was a Jeff Taylor was his name. He was an old blogger in Charlotte. He used to write the mech deck de c K and he used to call us Detroit on the Catawba, and that was twenty years ago, but he was very conservative. What do you think City and County is doing here in relationship to the increase one percent? They are stealing from someone, They're they're not stealing from anybody there. They've taxed us, they've threw it. Well, we've taxed us twenty two percent of voters decided we're going to raise It's not even twenty two percent because the sales tax actually only won by like four points. That was a very slim majority win. And I heard Pat McCrory last night with Bow and Beth on the air here and he's like, that's not really a mandate, you know, and and that I agree with him. When they put these things up to voters in the past, they won more comfortably. My recollection was they won more comfortably than what we saw last night. So like, that's that's not a lot of support for the plan. I know it's fifty four percent and you got your tax, but there's going to be a lot of eyes watching this thing now. Younger generations want others to pay for them. So do the older generations. Though the older ones, Hello, Like, what do you think this shut down in the subsidies for Obamacare all about it's for people of you know, who are older and of higher economic income brackets that are getting subsidies for their healthcare benefits, which I was told when they rammed it through on a partisan vote that Democrats told us that this was supposed to lower all of our costs, and in fact it has exploded costs exactly as Republicans said it would. So now everybody wants stuff from other people, and that's the problem. And it's amazing that anybody who comes along and says I'm not going to steal from other people and give it to you win any elections at all. I mean, it really is pretty amazing, Like I'm offering you nothing, all right, if you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. 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Still going through the reaction messages from the election, don could you comment on why Republicans don't justinform this is about the filibuster. Because Trump came out last night and this morning and is saying, well, you need to get rid of the filibuster so I can get everything done. It's like, oh, that's such a dumb idea. No, I was against it when Democrats tried to do it, and wanted to do it so they could pack the Supreme Court and they could add a bunch of states so they can get themselves a permanent majority. They could grant amnesty to illegal aliens. No, could you comment on why the Republicans don't just enforce the filibuster rules to require the Democrats that have to actually physically stand and deliver the filibuster speeches until they drop, rather than not requiring anybody other than the threat or anything other than the threat. I've been saying that for years. If you want to get rid of the legislative filibuster, then you have to make it so they actually speak. But getting rid of the filibuster as a tool then completely disarms the minority. And if you think Republicans are not going to be in the minority sometime in the very near future, you're crazy. They will be. The Senate has flipped control, the House has flipped control. Why would you think it would be any different again, unless you're going to end the filibus and then put up all sorts of walls to prevent Democrats somehow from ever winning control or blocking them preemptively from trying to do things like putting it into law that the Supreme Court is only nine seats and shall never be more than nine seats unless there is an affirmative vote in both the House and Senate of you know, seventy five percent approval or something like that. Unless you write the law like that, then I'd like this, this is such a fool's Errand let me see here from the text line vy Lyles, Yeah, I just heard a SoundBite of her from the news where she's like, now I'm gonna be a I'm gonna be a better mayor. Like, oh my gosh, this woman just won with like seventy percent of the vote and she's like, I'm going to be a better mayor. Now that's quite that's quite the admission. You know, I deserve all five of my terms. My goodness. How's that for strong language from vy Lyles? Crime is important. We need to have a conversation, We need to be inclusive. Yeah, what could be stronger? Yeah? But the chamber likes her. I guess the establishment likes her. Everybody I know who's moved down from New York or role Republicans and vote Republican. Maybe that's just everybody down here in Union County that moved from New York. Yeah, I mean chances are well, I mean that's the thing I think. If people are moving from a state like New York and they are Republicans in New York. Chances are they move to a jurisdiction in North Carolina that is more Republican. They're like, why would you leave New York City and move to Charlotte? Right, if you're a Republican, why would you do that? You're just moving to it Like a same scenario. The people who are moving into Charlotte are moving from these other cities and they are Democrats. Democrats that can no longer afford to live under the rules that they have promoted, the policies they have endorsed, the candidates they have elected. Right, they set up those cities for the failures, and then they flee them and come to a different city and proceed to vote for the exact same thing. That's the problem. That's why we were trying to come up with a name for this phenomenon, like bluemonia, where it infects the host. It's parasitic, is what it is. It's parasitic. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina. Just a quick drive up the mountain and cabins of Asheville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal, or get family and friends together for a big old reunion. 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Alrighty, I've got all this stuff on New York City, on Virginia, on New Jersey. But all I've been talking about really is, well, we have touched on the filibuster a little bit, but mainly it's been Charlotte Mecklimber overall, though, And I think this is going to be a well, it's the redistricting fight. That's one of the one of the losses in the Virginia race is that Democrats flipped a bunch of seats. They won the governor's race, lieutenant governor's race, attorney general, right, so they are fully blue, deep blue, and they will be redistricting as well. Now, California's ballot measure that passed, and so they're going to be oh in the north or sorry. The California GOP has already filed a lawsuit over that, but it's California, so I doubt they'll win because Democrat judges, I don't even know that. I don't even know if it as any but you know, they they went to voters to basically ignore their constitution. Please let us ignore the constitutional requirement to have an independent redistricting commission draw the districts just temporarily, just this one time, or maybe two or something and led us to our maps, which will cut the number of Republican representatives in California from nine down to four. Hugh hewittt talk show host. He said GOP legislators have got to see the flare going up. Redistricting is not a choice to be debated anymore, but a necessary duty to be done if they believe in center right to conservative policy. California and Virginia are going to out jerrymander Texas. Where red states can help keep the House GOP majority, they have to act. Jerrymandering is in the Democrats genes. Look at mass Choosetts, look at Illinois. There is zero upside to losing for fear of offending coastal elites, draw districts to win seats, or prepare for Mamdani madness to take control of the House. In January twenty twenty seven, US Senator Katie Britt from Alabama said, tonight Democrats elected a communist to run the financial capital of the world and an attorney general who's on the record fantasizing about murdering children. These elections aren't a referendum on where the country is. They're a referendum on where the Democrat Party is. And I agree with both of those sentiments. The turmoil that this country is going to get put through when Democrats take back control of the House under a Trump presidency in twenty twenty six, well twenty seven, really beginning of the year, they're going to impeach again, maybe three times, you know whatever, just run up the score as much as they can, lots of subpoenas, investigations, not to mention thwarting his entire agenda. However, they can look for more government shutdowns and such which, by the way, that's now clear that the shutdown Democrats use the shutdown to mobilize their voters in Virginia Jersey, right, And that's why I call it the Hamas strategy. They were willing to starve their own people in order to in order to win the pr battle. And now we get reports that Schumer said, no, wait till after the election. Dick Durbin wanted to break ranks. He said, don't do it. We've got now Democrats senators who are reportedly now making overtures to the Republicans. Hey, let's talk now, right. No, No, you can sign the clean CR. You guys played this game. You guys did this. Sign on to the clean CR. Now you got what you wanted. You got your little blue wave, which was expected by the way, because these were all blue states. But like you got your election victories. Now it's time for you to cave. If you're not going to cave and you're not gonna support the clean CR and you're not going to work for whatever these other things are, like, run on a campaign, right, run a campaign that. Sorry, we didn't actually fix healthcare. Sorry, we actually made it worse. Sorry we didn't on the three occasions when we had the opportunity to make the subsidies permanent, we did not do so. Sorry we didn't do any of that. But we will totally do it. Now. Use that as your campaign platform. What is this? Oh Alex? Hello Alex, Welcome to the show. H How are you doing? Okay? I have a name for the spreading liberalism and Marxism that's overtaken the country. I call it blue Rot. No, that's a good one. Blue Rot. I saw what was the one? Uh it was called Gang Green. But Gang blue, I think is what somebody called it yesterday as well. That was another good one. Yeah, all right, Alex, I appreciate the call. Yeah, it's just this, it's parasitic. It comes into a city that's been built up. I went over this with Charlotte. Republicans aided and abetted it. The Chamber of Commerce aided and abetted it, made Charlotte attractive, handed out a bunch of services for free. Quick story. I was at a county commission meeting back when Republicans were in control and they were trying to trim the budget, and a guy came down there and spoke in the public hearing. He said, I'm homeless. I'm from Cincinnati. Don't cut any of the homeless services, don't cut any of my benefits. You have such a good program and safety net here for me, all of these benefits for me. That's why I told my brother, who's also homeless in Cincinnati, that he should come down to and he has. That was fifteen years ago. The writing was on the wall here, you know, Republicans kept pointing this out, like you can't, this is not sustainable, and here we are. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense. Of things to understand experiences. 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They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are. Visit creative video dot com. I just realized I didn't have any of my fully leaded coffee during the program today. That's why I feel so tired. Well, and my cat Okay, it's a Pete tweet from good Wahoo Pete. As a native, I have been warning the Charlotte Uptown booster crowd since the early nineties to be very careful what they wish for. Charlotte was a wonderful city to grow up in the seventies and eighties, but the booster crowd wasn't satid, and surely there was tons of money to be made, so they put out the big beacon. And as you said, it wasn't just the desirables with money in industry they expected to come. And eventually the parasites got wind of this wonderful store of unprotected assets, and here we are, very sad and very unnecessary. No. Look, I understand like people who are from here have memories of the way it was, but I've also been here in the area since nineteen ninety two, and Uptown Charlotte was not exactly great shakes in the nineties, okay, So we would rarely ever come to Charlotte for anything. Living in rock Hill we would like, And when I first got here, wasn't a lot happening in uptown. But that changed, that changed, and it's starting to change again. And you know, I'm of the philosophy that cities, like any kind of organism, they well, I guess mammal. They breathe, they inhale, they exhale, they grow, they shrink. It's like all things in life, almost like there's some sort of a unifying theory there of life and creation. Anyway, So I think cities kind of they expand and contract, they breathe, they die, and we see examples of it all over the place, and I think, I don't know. I'm like, I'm afraid. We saw, you know, Charlotte with the inhale, and now what they inhaled, maybe maybe choking them. Regarding the shutdown, the Senate Republicans pointing out that Democrats are solely responsible for the skyrocketing health premiums. No Republicans voted for Obamacare or the Biden COVID bonuses. We are happy to discuss why Obamacare is failing, but Democrats must reopen the government first. That's very clear, and that's true. And Democrats may be willing to do it now that they got their turnout in the election yesterday, they got past the No King's rally. They didn't want to anger that radical base. They didn't want to paint any targets on themselves, so they kept the government shut down through the No King's Rally, then through election day, and now we are getting reports now they are interested in coming to the table and ending the shutdown. And I say give them nothing. If you wanted, if you want to discuss how you broke healthcare and how it can be fixed, we can have that discussion, but it is not part of a clean cr You would be rewarding the Hamas tactics. Meanwhile, out of Kansas, the top Republican in the House says he's dropping the effort to force a redraw of the congressional districts. The announcement was made by Speaker Dan Hawkins. It ended a week's long push by GOP lawmakers to circumvent the Democrat Governor Laura Kelly and call themselves into a special session on redistricting, which could have convened on Friday. It would have targeted four term US Representative Sharise Davids. She's the only Democrat in the state's four person House delegation. Now, Republicans still could draw a map, and the state Senate president promised that it would be a top priority early next year, and they can do it early next year. The constitution allowed Republicans to bypass the governor's refusal to call for a special session if they got two thirds of the members of both chambers to sign a petition. So it seems like they're dropping that, but they are able to come back when they are in regular session and do it then, so we'll keep an eye on that. There is some good news from yesterday for Republicans and anybody who believes in voter integrity. Voters in Texas approved a ballid question that required citizenship to vote, which sounds crazy that you would actually have to put that up for a vote to only allow citizens to vote. And when North Carolina ran this same question, we heard people on the left and the media, but I repeat myself saying, well, federal election law already requires you to be a citizen, and that is true. However, there are things called local elections, and we have seen cities around the country blue cities start to implement a more lax attitude where if you are an illegal alien, you too can vote in your local races. And that's now not going to happen in Texas, so good for them all. Right. That'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to dpetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.