Democrats on their Road to Damascus (11-07-2024--Hour2)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 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 thepetekalendershow.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.

[00:00:28] So let's start the second hour off with some phone calls. We'll head on over and talk with Mary first. Hello, Mary. Welcome to the show.

[00:00:36] Hi, Pete.

[00:00:37] Hey, how are you?

[00:00:38] Just very quick.

[00:00:39] Good. How are you doing?

[00:00:40] Good.

[00:00:41] I just, very quickly, in the great television show Arrested Development, where the premise is, they've had a ton of money, an elitist, and then they've lost everything.

[00:00:51] But at one point, the mother who does not understand that they're broke says, how much could a banana possibly cost? $25?

[00:01:00] That's right.

[00:01:02] Yeah.

[00:01:04] Out of touch, completely out of touch with how the rest of us live.

[00:01:08] Right. No, it's a great point. It's a great show, too. I've got my wife to start watching it, because I watched it when it was on originally, and now you can get it on one of the apps or whatever.

[00:01:17] So we've been going back and watching that. It's a great reference, Mary. Thank you for the call. I appreciate it.

[00:01:22] I've made a terrible mistake. That was a running gag, running line, running joke in the show. I've made a terrible mistake.

[00:01:30] Excellent show. Arrested Development.

[00:01:33] Pete, welcome to the show. Hello, Pete.

[00:01:37] Hello.

[00:01:38] Hello.

[00:01:39] Am I on?

[00:01:40] Well, we'll see. No, I don't know. Yeah, you are live on the radio.

[00:01:45] I'm calling you. I mean, I listen to you daily, but I've never called you up, but I just appreciate, number one, your intelligence, and up there is your sense of humor.

[00:01:56] You crack me up.

[00:01:57] Well, thanks.

[00:01:58] I love your sense of humor, and I like your soundtrack.

[00:02:02] You like the Rockford Files and that little drum roll.

[00:02:06] I mean, you got an hilarious show.

[00:02:08] Well, thanks, Pete. I appreciate that.

[00:02:09] If I'm not mistaken, I think this is the first time you ever voted for a primary candidate like a Republican or Democrat.

[00:02:20] I guess are you pretty much—you aren't an affiliate, but are you pretty much sort of like a libertarian?

[00:02:25] You want less and less government?

[00:02:27] Right. So my first principle is limited government, you know, in the sort of the political ideology.

[00:02:35] I want—especially at the federal level, I want way less government.

[00:02:39] I want it restrained.

[00:02:41] And so, yeah, that used—I was originally a—I mean, when I was in college, I was a liberal and then registered as a Republican, then registered as a libertarian.

[00:02:52] Then we got, as a party in North Carolina, decertified, so I think that was around 2004 or so.

[00:02:58] And then—so they made me unaffiliated, and I just stayed unaffiliated.

[00:03:02] So I think—I refer to myself as a lowercase L libertarian because I'm not a member of the party.

[00:03:09] I disagree with a lot of the stuff that the party believes in.

[00:03:12] I did not like their candidate for president at all.

[00:03:15] Right.

[00:03:16] Yeah, so this was the first time that I had voted for a major party candidate in the presidential race.

[00:03:22] Yeah.

[00:03:23] And so that means you finally got a winner.

[00:03:26] That's true.

[00:03:27] That's true.

[00:03:28] This is the first time I have ever voted for a president who has won.

[00:03:32] And listen, I'm really—I mean, I love Trump, but I pray the Lord for his protection.

[00:03:39] Because I definitely believe in Butler.

[00:03:42] The Lord stepped in there.

[00:03:43] Because I think it happened like 6-11, and that's—that beginning verse is about the armor of God.

[00:03:50] And I'm going to tell you one other thing.

[00:03:53] You didn't vote for Trump the first time, right?

[00:03:55] Right.

[00:03:57] But you liked him, though, right?

[00:03:58] Even though you didn't vote for him, you liked him.

[00:04:01] Well, no, I—I agreed with some of the things that he did.

[00:04:05] I've never really liked him as a—like, as a person.

[00:04:10] Yeah, his mannerism.

[00:04:11] But I think up until recently, I think from the first term, he's changed tremendously.

[00:04:17] He seems a little bit more easy, subtle.

[00:04:21] Yeah.

[00:04:21] And I just think—I think, first of all, we've got to drill, baby, drill.

[00:04:28] We've got to lower taxes and regulations.

[00:04:32] And I'm praying.

[00:04:34] And not only that, he loves Israel.

[00:04:37] And God says to Abraham, I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.

[00:04:43] So I believe the Lord is going to continuously bless us.

[00:04:47] And I'm just happy he got in.

[00:04:50] And another thing, if Trump lost—I'm really a conservative.

[00:04:56] I registered as a Republican, but I'm really just a conservative.

[00:05:03] And Trump is definitely the closest thing to what I believe in.

[00:05:08] And I just—I think he's going to have—the only thing, he's only got four years.

[00:05:14] And I don't know how much he can do, because so much damage has happened.

[00:05:18] But we've got to close the border.

[00:05:20] We've got to drill.

[00:05:21] We've got to lower taxes.

[00:05:23] And he had a perfect record.

[00:05:26] I mean—

[00:05:27] Well, this is going to be—

[00:05:28] I never believed any of the things the Democrats said about him, because they were lying.

[00:05:32] And they relied, like you said, on the abortion issue.

[00:05:35] It was not really up there.

[00:05:36] It was like, can I put food on the table?

[00:05:39] Can I buy clothes for my kids?

[00:05:41] And I think common sense came to the top.

[00:05:45] And then that blue wall, that crumbled.

[00:05:48] That was like the walls of Jericho.

[00:05:50] It just crumbled.

[00:05:51] And they didn't have a chance.

[00:05:53] And she hired herself.

[00:05:55] How long did they hire her?

[00:05:57] For like four or five weeks?

[00:05:59] And then when she did talk, she didn't say anything.

[00:06:01] She never answered a question.

[00:06:03] And she kept on lying.

[00:06:05] I mean, it was ridiculous, but—

[00:06:07] Well, this is why I say the media gaslighting effort failed.

[00:06:11] People no longer trust the media.

[00:06:13] And so—and we went over that data that came out a couple of weeks ago about the historic

[00:06:19] low in trust among the American public for the media.

[00:06:22] And so the things that they were telling people, like you just said, people didn't believe.

[00:06:27] Pete, I appreciate the call.

[00:06:28] Good to hear from you, sir.

[00:06:30] And call back anytime.

[00:06:31] I appreciate the call.

[00:06:35] And so the things that Pete just identified are actually part of the introspection pieces

[00:06:43] that are now starting to come out.

[00:06:44] Politico had a couple of them.

[00:06:45] I've got them here in the stack of stuff.

[00:06:49] There are all sorts of explanations that are being conjured up as to why Harris lost.

[00:06:56] And Democrats have—you know, they've got their own fork in the road right now that

[00:07:01] they're going to have to decide which path to take.

[00:07:03] Bill Clinton was out there telling them, stay off of this path.

[00:07:07] You need to change course.

[00:07:08] And they didn't listen to him.

[00:07:10] So maybe they will now.

[00:07:11] I don't know.

[00:07:14] John, welcome to the show.

[00:07:16] Hey, John.

[00:07:17] Hey, thanks for taking my call.

[00:07:19] Sure.

[00:07:19] Just a commentary.

[00:07:20] I agree with your assessment on the media is learning a lesson, all the stuff you just

[00:07:29] said.

[00:07:29] One of the things I would hope, but it's going to be tough, is that they start teaching history.

[00:07:37] All this media is is just like the Politburo of Soviet Russia, and I believe Hitler had Albert

[00:07:45] Spires, but they don't teach history anymore.

[00:07:49] And they were talking to the population about how bad Jews were this and that.

[00:07:55] And then the truth came out, and it was unveiled.

[00:07:59] So they're learning a hard lesson with that, and I wish that they'd start teaching history

[00:08:05] again in schools and not the bull crap that they teach now.

[00:08:08] My mother was a world history Ph.D., and I'm conservative.

[00:08:13] But the other thing I wanted to ask you is, so they were starting, and when I heard Kamala

[00:08:21] try to use almost what Trump was saying about, we want to fix your jobs and this and that,

[00:08:27] they were lying.

[00:08:29] So do you think that in the next election cycle, they'll figure out what people really are

[00:08:35] concerned about, and they'll start singing that line, but then they'll lie, and when

[00:08:40] they get in, they'll do the same old thing?

[00:08:41] Well, always keep in mind, politicians lie, and so you can be assured that they're going

[00:08:47] to continue to do that.

[00:08:49] I don't know, because the incentives are aligned for Democrats to placate their donors and their

[00:08:58] base, and their base and donors have become far left, and they are not in touch with the

[00:09:06] working class anymore.

[00:09:09] And they're hyper-focused on things that most Americans are not.

[00:09:15] And so I don't know if they're going to be able to course-correct.

[00:09:18] I don't know.

[00:09:19] And I'm definitely not going to make any kind of predictions for 2028.

[00:09:24] Yeah.

[00:09:24] Yeah.

[00:09:24] I mean, that's way too far away.

[00:09:26] Just enjoy the moment we're in now.

[00:09:28] You know, just enjoy the moment now.

[00:09:29] No need to look forward to 2028.

[00:09:32] Democrats are going to have to do some soul-searching here, and we'll see what they come up with.

[00:09:36] You know?

[00:09:36] We'll see what gets reported.

[00:09:38] Yeah.

[00:09:38] John, I appreciate the call, buddy.

[00:09:39] Thank you.

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[00:10:45] Brian says, Pete, so I've seen a clip on YouTube from John Stossel that says tariffs are

[00:10:52] not a good thing.

[00:10:53] So what's the truth on that?

[00:10:58] They can be good and they can be bad.

[00:11:01] Generally speaking, when you slap tariffs on other countries, they slap them on you.

[00:11:08] I am, my default is towards free trade.

[00:11:12] The problem is when you are trading with countries that allow slave labor.

[00:11:18] That's a problem because you can't, you can't compete in a free market with a slave labor

[00:11:25] country like China, right?

[00:11:28] When they're imprisoning all the Uyghurs and making them make microchips and such or paying

[00:11:35] people a dollar a day and that sort of thing.

[00:11:37] Now, that being said, eventually, if you know, the idea is that, well, there's a lot of stuff here.

[00:11:45] I mean, economists disagree on this.

[00:11:47] This is why when Trump appeared at that, was it Bloomberg event?

[00:11:51] And he got into the argument with the guy who was hosting it.

[00:11:55] He said, you know, you've been wrong about everything for 30 years or whatever on tariffs.

[00:12:00] They were talking about because a lot of economists don't like tariffs because they say that you should

[00:12:06] stick to your knitting.

[00:12:07] This is called comparative advantage.

[00:12:11] I'm not an economist here, please.

[00:12:13] But my understanding is that it's you should do the thing that you do well and just that thing.

[00:12:22] Focus on that thing because you will have the comparative advantage to other countries or other societies or trading partners.

[00:12:31] So you make something really good.

[00:12:33] You have this advantage over others.

[00:12:35] Now, obviously, this doesn't work in every single sector, every industry or every product.

[00:12:41] Right.

[00:12:41] Because honestly, like we were talking about butter earlier, everybody's going to make butter.

[00:12:47] It's not really going to be.

[00:12:50] Well, except the Irish butter I hear is very, very good.

[00:12:52] But the comparative advantage is that if you're doing this thing, keep doing that thing and then trade with others for some other things.

[00:13:03] So you don't have to devote resources away from the thing that you are comparatively better at doing.

[00:13:09] You've already cornered the market on this one thing.

[00:13:12] Keep doing that.

[00:13:13] This and that makes sense to me because same thing with GovCo.

[00:13:17] When you lose sight of your core mission, you will tend to do it.

[00:13:23] You will then let things slide.

[00:13:25] You'll your quality will degrade.

[00:13:27] You'll ignore certain aspects of it.

[00:13:29] You won't be trying to continually improve it.

[00:13:32] You're going to be now just distracted by doing all sorts of other things.

[00:13:36] Now, the founders, they recognize there was a debate among the founding fathers about tariffs as well.

[00:13:42] A lot of them wanted to fund the government just through tariffs.

[00:13:47] Some were against them.

[00:13:49] Some were against tariffs except for what they called, I think this was Hamilton's position, which was the infant industries.

[00:13:57] So the idea there is that you've got a brand new fledgling kind of an industry taking off and you want to protect it until it's strong enough to run on its own.

[00:14:07] And so you erect these protectionist barriers from competition.

[00:14:12] But again, as a free market guy, I don't like government trying to block competition because I believe competition drives down prices and improves quality, generally speaking.

[00:14:26] But if you've got, say, a brand new industry, some new invention, and you want to try to give it space to get stronger, then I can understand an argument for protecting it, but not in perpetuity.

[00:14:42] And therein lies a problem with the tariff structure is that once you put this stuff in place, it's hard to get rid of it.

[00:14:48] And then also you get retaliated against.

[00:14:51] And if.

[00:14:54] If Trump is correct, that creating the tariffs will bring manufacturing back home, because think about it, right?

[00:15:01] If you're making a widget, some fake product, whatever, a widget, you rely or you're making a widget and you rely on China to produce some product that goes into yours.

[00:15:15] And it's literally cheaper for you to have China make it and then ship it across the planet, put it on a truck, bring it to your place, and then you put it into your widget.

[00:15:27] Like, to me, then that sounds like a comparative advantage for China.

[00:15:33] Again, the problem is they engage in slavery.

[00:15:37] It's a communist country.

[00:15:38] I don't think that's actually fair trade.

[00:15:41] I don't think it's free trade.

[00:15:42] I think we're actually empowering communists, and I don't like doing that because it's the antithesis of freedom.

[00:15:50] So if the tariff can penalize that bad behavior and bring some manufacturing back home because now it becomes more cost effective to actually manufacture it here, right, then I can understand that argument, too.

[00:16:08] I think, so I guess the short answer is some tariffs can work in targeted situations.

[00:16:14] That's where I come down on it.

[00:16:15] I got to take them all on a case-by-case basis.

[00:16:18] According to the exit polling, voters who were focused on the economy ended up breaking hard for Trump.

[00:16:25] Those who said inflation was the most important factor for their vote were almost twice as likely to support Trump over Harris.

[00:16:33] And about 6 in 10 voters who said the economy and jobs were the most important issue facing the country were in his camp.

[00:16:41] The political divide between higher-income and lower-income Americans was stark.

[00:16:48] Also, immigration.

[00:16:51] More than 4 in 10, so over 40%, said immigrants who are in the country illegally should be deported back to their home countries.

[00:17:00] That is up from about 30% just four years ago.

[00:17:05] Voters who said they personally immigrated to the United States were more likely to support Harris over Trump.

[00:17:12] But even among this group, about 4 in 10 said that immigrants in the country without documentation should be deported.

[00:17:22] Again, those are immigrants that voted for Harris.

[00:17:26] 40% of immigrants who voted for Harris say illegal aliens should be deported.

[00:17:34] So, the gaslighting that we have been subjected to, that none of this is happening.

[00:17:40] Okay, maybe a little bit of it is happening, but here's why it's a good thing.

[00:17:48] Gaslighting, it's not working anymore.

[00:17:51] People recognize the difference between illegal and legal immigration.

[00:17:57] In Ohio, about three-quarters of voters said immigrants who come to the U.S. illegally do more to hurt their state than help it.

[00:18:07] But Congressman Tom Swasey, Democrat from New York, he told Axios, quote,

[00:18:18] Instead of saying, how can people vote for Donald Trump, we should be asking, why do people vote for Donald Trump?

[00:18:26] What did he do right?

[00:18:27] What did he do wrong?

[00:18:31] So, this is sort of a road to Damascus moment for Democrats.

[00:18:37] They're going to have to decide whether they want to recalibrate their messaging, their philosophy, their governance.

[00:18:48] They need to figure out whether they want to try to appeal to most Americans.

[00:18:56] That's where they are right now.

[00:18:58] Will they do so?

[00:19:01] Will they recalibrate?

[00:19:03] Or will they, as the headline says in Axios, start clawing each other's eyes out?

[00:19:12] I don't know.

[00:19:13] That's a tough call.

[00:19:14] Right now, I think they're opting for the clawing.

[00:19:17] Senator Bernie Sanders, he put out a statement, scathing statement, alleging the Democrat Party had abandoned the working class.

[00:19:27] Quote, will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democrat Party learn any real lesson from this disastrous campaign?

[00:19:35] Probably not.

[00:19:37] Sanders said.

[00:19:40] He called it a disastrous campaign.

[00:19:44] He called them the Democrat establishment.

[00:19:47] The far left is going to say that it's because Kamala Harris was a war hawk.

[00:19:55] They will try, but I think no one is buying it, said one unnamed House Democrat.

[00:20:03] Several House Democrats speaking on the condition of anonymity argued the outcome is less of a pox on an ideological branch of the Democrat Party.

[00:20:14] More so, it's on the leadership.

[00:20:16] One House Democrat took aim at the Democrat National Committee chairman, Jamie Harrison, who, if I recall correctly, took millions of dollars to lose by double digits to Lindsey Graham.

[00:20:30] And so they said, good job.

[00:20:31] You're in charge of all of it.

[00:20:35] Also, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

[00:20:40] And this one House Democrat said, is this the future of the Democrat Party?

[00:20:45] Another said they mostly blame Harris, but they are not sure Biden would have been any better.

[00:20:50] A third House Democrat said Harris didn't really engage with moderates in Congress and faulted Biden for failing to leave early enough.

[00:21:01] House Democrat leadership seems to be getting a pass, though.

[00:21:05] Very few people have popped up to blame House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries or any of his deputies, like the minority whip Catherine Clark, Democrat from Texas.

[00:21:14] Massachusetts and the Democrat caucus chair, Pete Aguilar from California.

[00:21:20] One House Democrat said that the party needs to, quote, pick and choose our battles and get past this idea they call Trump.

[00:21:28] Or sorry, that they call Trump derangement syndrome.

[00:21:33] You've got this is this is a positive development here, people.

[00:21:37] You've got one member of the Democrat caucus in the House saying we need to get past TDS.

[00:21:47] We need we need to be cured of the Trump derangement syndrome.

[00:21:55] Politico.

[00:21:56] Has a big write up.

[00:21:58] Headlined why Kamala Harris lost the election.

[00:22:02] In the final sprint to the election, Kamala Harris's campaign at her insistence.

[00:22:07] Started playing Donald Trump's most incendiary comments on jumbotrons at her rallies, displaying in technicolor his meandering, racist and sometimes violent rhetoric.

[00:22:19] This is from Politico.

[00:22:20] I'm just reading the quote.

[00:22:22] It was an emphatic reminder of the stakes of the election, and it hardly seemed to help her at all.

[00:22:28] The result Wednesday was brutal for Harris.

[00:22:31] A bloodbath.

[00:22:34] You can't say bloodbath.

[00:22:37] I've been reliably assured that if you say bloodbath, that is a call for violence.

[00:22:41] Because when Trump said it about the auto industry, that's what got put up in the jumbotrons at her rallies.

[00:22:47] So.

[00:22:49] It was a bloodbath for Democrats across the map.

[00:22:52] Harris inherited a campaign from Joe Biden over the summer that appeared to be flatlining, given the president's unpopularity and inability to carry a message.

[00:23:02] And after Democrats excised Biden from the ticket, that's one way to put it.

[00:23:08] She rapidly consolidated her moribund party, rallying women, setting TikTok and Instagram creators ablaze with supportive memes and eye popping donated sums.

[00:23:21] But the momentum advisors insisted that she had built failed to materialize.

[00:23:28] She never sufficiently buried Biden's ghost, severely hamstringing her ability to sell voters on the idea that hers was the turn the page candidacy.

[00:23:40] What did I call it?

[00:23:42] Same, but different.

[00:23:44] And for some reason, that didn't work.

[00:23:46] It's weird.

[00:23:47] That was another problem.

[00:23:49] The whole weird thing.

[00:23:50] Called J.D. Vance weird.

[00:23:51] He's just weird.

[00:23:52] He's weird.

[00:23:53] And then J.D. Vance sits down for a three hour interview with Joe Rogan and people are like, oh, he doesn't seem weird at all.

[00:24:00] It happened, according to Politico, simply because Harris refused to make a clean break from the last four years when voters indicated that's what they wanted.

[00:24:11] Worse, she hesitated to draw any daylight between herself and her boss on Biden's biggest vulnerability, the economy.

[00:24:19] Nor did she identify any specific way her presidency would be different from his tenure beyond naming a Republican to her cabinet.

[00:24:26] Does any of this sound familiar?

[00:24:28] Yeah.

[00:24:28] It's because this is what we've been saying.

[00:24:31] We've been like watching the Democrats in the media, but I repeat myself, elevate this woman after they had spent weeks and months talking about how crappy she was.

[00:24:40] And then it's like, oh, now she's the nominee.

[00:24:42] Oh, she's the second coming of Obama.

[00:24:45] She's she's Obama law.

[00:24:47] And we're sitting here like, oh, wait a minute.

[00:24:49] She's not answering.

[00:24:50] She's not doing interviews.

[00:24:51] She's not answering questions.

[00:24:52] She speaks in word salads.

[00:24:53] Like what?

[00:24:54] What are you talking about?

[00:24:56] She's she's pretending that she hasn't been part of the administration, but she won't say she'd do anything different.

[00:25:01] But she says she's going to be different because she's not Joe.

[00:25:04] It doesn't make any sense.

[00:25:05] And now after the election, now Politico tells us we were right.

[00:25:11] Oh, you know what?

[00:25:12] Politico did notice that, too.

[00:25:18] By the way.

[00:25:20] They're in debt.

[00:25:21] Not Politico.

[00:25:23] The campaign.

[00:25:25] They're selling off the mailing lists.

[00:25:28] They are so far in debt.

[00:25:29] They're like 20 million dollars in debt or something.

[00:25:32] Think about that.

[00:25:33] They raised over a billion dollars.

[00:25:37] And apparently they spent too much of it on Hollywood and recording artists.

[00:25:46] They spent so much money bringing in these high profile stars, Hollywood elites and stuff,

[00:25:52] doing concerts and the like.

[00:25:55] That they don't have any money left.

[00:25:57] And so now the knives are out for what's her face.

[00:26:01] O'Malley Dillon.

[00:26:02] Jennifer O'Malley Dillon, who was Biden's.

[00:26:05] I think she was Biden's campaign.

[00:26:07] And that was that's also being cited as one of the reasons is it wasn't really her campaign because she just like took over the Biden campaign staff.

[00:26:15] Like they just moved over to her.

[00:26:20] I look I don't know like where they're going to come down on all of this stuff.

[00:26:23] It's just it is just fun to watch.

[00:26:25] So.

[00:26:26] All right.

[00:26:26] Let's talk with Jim.

[00:26:28] Hello, Jim.

[00:26:29] Welcome to the show.

[00:26:31] Hey, good afternoon.

[00:26:31] Hey, great show.

[00:26:32] What's up?

[00:26:33] As always.

[00:26:36] My question is about Arizona.

[00:26:38] You have a lot of connections.

[00:26:40] Is there any way you could get maybe one of the three lunch ladies that count the votes out there on the air someday?

[00:26:50] No, no, probably not.

[00:26:52] Yeah, I Arizona.

[00:26:53] I said this on election night.

[00:26:57] After Florida counted however many ballots they ended up having, I think it was like it's like 12 million ballots or something.

[00:27:04] Right.

[00:27:05] How is it that Florida is able to count all of those ballots and to do it in like an hour?

[00:27:11] And we don't have every other state going to Florida and saying, hey, tell us what you did.

[00:27:18] Let us replicate your system because it obviously is efficient and effective.

[00:27:23] The fact that we don't see that is proof that this is a choice.

[00:27:28] What is going on in Arizona is a choice.

[00:27:32] Yeah, I agree.

[00:27:33] My other question is no matter where you watch election results come in, you'll see a number that will say 70% of the vote is still out or 70% of the vote is in.

[00:27:48] And 70% of what?

[00:27:51] What's the benchmark that they use?

[00:27:53] Because this time around, I think we're going to end up with 15 to 20 million less votes in the 2020 election.

[00:28:02] So if they use that as the benchmark.

[00:28:04] Probably not.

[00:28:05] Or did they use registered voters?

[00:28:07] I just wonder, you know, what's the benchmark that they're using?

[00:28:11] So, well, it depends on what sites you're looking at.

[00:28:13] So I always go to the North Carolina State Board of Elections and what they report is precincts reporting.

[00:28:21] So that's not – it's not based on any kind of speculation.

[00:28:26] It is you've got, you know, let's say – I forget what the exact number is.

[00:28:30] Let's say 2,000 precincts across the state.

[00:28:33] And so – and then you've got like an individual county, you may have 200.

[00:28:37] And so they'll say, you know, with 75% or, you know, whatever of the precincts reporting.

[00:28:44] And so that's where that number comes from.

[00:28:46] That number is known.

[00:28:47] And so when the precinct reports the results, that's where that percentage comes from.

[00:28:52] Now, if you're talking about percentage of the votes cast, they know because of the election day when you go in and vote and all of the ballots that have been –

[00:29:05] they know how many they've gotten in and they know how many people have gone to vote when the polls close.

[00:29:10] So they have that number too.

[00:29:12] So if they're talking about the percentage of votes counted, that is based on a discrete number that they know based on the number of people that turned out.

[00:29:21] Or sent in their ballots.

[00:29:23] They'll have an – they have an idea of the percent of the votes that are still not counted.

[00:29:29] And when they can call a presidential race, but they can't call the Senate or congressional, it's the same ballot.

[00:29:39] Right.

[00:29:40] But you don't know because that's based on – so the calling of races is based on exit polls, not based on ballot counts.

[00:29:48] So –

[00:29:49] Okay.

[00:29:49] Right.

[00:29:49] So they – you know, you've got different companies and organizations that will staff outside the polls and they ask people who they voted for.

[00:29:57] And so they just start – and that's how they end up, you know, sending in those projections to call races.

[00:30:03] You also have – it's more involved than that.

[00:30:05] I'm oversimplifying it.

[00:30:07] But you've got people that are doing the exit polling.

[00:30:08] You've got people that are also monitoring precincts.

[00:30:12] They know what the bellwether precincts and counties are in all of the states.

[00:30:17] So when a particular county breaks a certain way, they can make a guess, basically.

[00:30:24] And that's why you ended up, you know, in some past elections where you had states that got called incorrectly because they got bad info or they did bad extrapolations when they made their call.

[00:30:36] And that's why they've become more hesitant to make the calls earlier now.

[00:30:40] So – and last point, Jim, and I appreciate the call.

[00:30:44] And the last point was on, like, the counting, the disparity in the total number of votes between 2020's election and this one.

[00:30:51] And that gap is going to keep closing because there are still votes that they are counting, like absentee by mail, military overseas.

[00:31:00] Those numbers are still being counted.

[00:31:02] And so the total votes cast are still going up.

[00:31:05] We have to wait for about, you know, a week to 10 days for the official certified results to be totaled.

[00:31:12] And at that point, we will know how many votes were actually cast.

[00:31:16] And if all the trends hold right now, what I'm seeing is that Trump will be pretty close to where he was in 2020.

[00:31:24] All right, that'll do it for this episode.

[00:31:26] Thank you so much for listening.

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[00:31:41] Again, thank you so much for listening.

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