Dunn on the paradox of Josh Stein; the mental health gap in politics (06-10-2025--Hour2)

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, I daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpeatclendershow 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. And we usually talk to Andrew Dunn. He is a publisher of long Leave Politics and a contributing columnist to The Charlotte Observer, and we usually talked to him in the first hour, but we had to shuffle it around a little bit because he had to attend to graduation ceremony for his for his child. Was there any free Palestine speeches by the valedictorian today during the during the ceremony there, Andrew. No, Thank goodness, Cli it is a kindergarten graduate, which I didn't realize was a thing. But you know, the kids all walked in the pomp and circumstance, and so they had a good time. Nobody flashing kafias or anything. No Palestinian flags or I guess actually now it would be the Mexican flag. That's the that's the flag of the of choice now, so none of. That, Oh boy, yeah, no, no, none of that. Okay, all right, So you had several yeah, actually I guess four different pieces you wrote for both your website long leaf pol dot com long Leaf Politics, but also at the Charlotte Observer a lot to focus on Josh Stein, the governor, but also former Governor Pat McCrory. So let's start with Josh Stein, because he got three different write ups by you. The first one you don't have to like Josh Stein to appreciate this. And what is this? It is his appearance on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and kudos to you for watching it. I only watched it when I saw your post. That's the only time I watched. Yeah, Stephen Colbert is pretty much unwatchable, so you won't find me tuning into the Late Show. But you know, if the Governor of North Carolina is on there, I feel, in terms of my role that I have to watch. And you know, it was honestly a little refreshing, you know, I in the previous administration, I spent plenty of time watching TV hits that Governor Roy Cooper would do, and they were invariably combative. You know, very much anti Republican. Republicans are ruining everything. And Josh Stein, governor stein On here, he was actually talking up western North Carolina. He was making a sales pitch to come to the mountain, come spend your money. And you know, honestly, that's exactly the kind of thing that a governor should be doing. So, you know, I tried to be even handed when I can and give kudos. Where they're due well, and also it helps that credit and give credit to Stephen Colbert. He's from South Carolina, he knows western North Carolina as well, so I think he had a a personal connection and an interest in helping to promote it. And so that's obviously I think why he brought Stein on to do that very as you called it, the softest of softball interviews. Yeah, but it also you said, you say that to succeed as governor, you have to understand and be okay with the fact that the governor is a constitutionally weak position, and having all out wars with the General Assembly doesn't work out very well because the legislature will always have the upper hand. And when I read what you wrote there, I thought, isn't it odd that Cooper coming out of the legislature for as long as he was there in his tenure, that he didn't seem to understand that. Or maybe he did and he just rejected the approach that Stein seems to be taking. Yeah, I'm not sure what exactly was going on there. You would think that he'd have more of an understanding of how to work the system, but you know, he did spend twenty years as an attorney general before that. Maybe he just got used to unquestioned loyalty and then people doing what he said what he told for them to do. But you know, it's really been something I've been watching a lot since Governor Stein got sworn in in January. It's impossible to ignore how he's approached the governorship and you know, complete one eighty from how Governor Cooper did. You know, it seems that Governor Stein is trying really hard to look centrist, to look moderate, to find common grounds, which obviously raises the question, you know, is this for show his moderation or is it real? And then, you know, to be honest, does it even matter whether it is real or for show? Right, You're right about this in another post at long Leaved Politics called the Paradox of Josh Stein, And you say, we all feel in our gut that Stein is the most liberal governor North Carolina has ever elected. But that is decidedly not how he has governed so far. And then you give the example of the medical marijuana that he is or recreational marijuana legalization rather while on the other hand he's like, no, we can't have unregulated THHC products flooding convenience stores. It's like, that's essentially the example of the paradox of Josh Stein. So do you think though that that well, do you think it's all for show? And do you think that he is actually as liberal as people think he is. I think he probably is. You know, he's a chap he was raised in Chapel Hill, educated at Ivy League institutions, does not have the roots in rural North Carolina like virtually every other Democratic governor that North Carolina had, and I think he does. He is a lot more liberal than any other governor that we've had, but he has made the conscious choice to either tone that down at least so far. And I think it's a reflection that he understands what the role of a governor is more so than many other people who have held that position. And I think, you know, if he can keep it up, it's a very good thing for his legacy and for the state. But I have a feeling that, you know, especially as it gets later in the term, he's going to feel a lot more pressure from his base to actually advocate for some of the more liberal positions that he's already amenable to. Now. One of the things that came up in the Colbert interview, but also you write about it the Charlotte Observer is FEMA scrapping FEMA, and he is. Now you say, he's become sort of the cheerleader for FEMA, not to detect it as it currently is, but to reform it. You say, the most liberal governor North Carolina has ever elected is sounding conservative. What did you mean by that? Right, So, when Josh Stein goes out in public defending FEMA, he does not talk publicly, you know, about loving big government or anything like that. The argument that he's making is fundamentally a conservative one. It's that, you know, responding to interstate disasters is a core function of federal government, and he says that state governments should do more. However, you know, it doesn't make fiscal sense to have every fate set up their own disaster recovery bureaucracy, and that it saves money and makes things more efficient to have that done at the federal level, and that they can parachute in wherever the disaster happens to strike, and that, I mean, honestly, it's a fairly compelling argument, and I think that that's one of the reasons why we've seen you know, both Republican federal legislators and Democrats kind of coalescing around that view. However, I found it fascinating that, you know, while Governor Stein is saying that publicly, if you look at his ex account, formerly Twitter account, he has a post on about FEMA saying, well, storms are worse than a due to climate change, and that's why we need FEMA. And I have to think that was a mistake or maybe not, you know, maybe it's the mass flipping. I don't know exactly what's going on there. Well, he's got to throw some red meat, you know, he's got to throw some of that to the base. I suspect, and if he pays that sort of lip service, then you know he stays in the more lefty kind of part of the Democrat coalition. I suspect. And he's not you know, he's not running around talking about climate change like you said, he's posting it on Twitter, just like he signed this letter along with the other Democrat governors against the National Guard being deployed into California. He has not promoted that. He's not sent out press releases about that, he's not doing interviews about that. So it's like, if you are on the left or you're a Democrat, you you know, you see these things and you know, okay, he's one of us, even though he's not publicly walking around saying this stuff. Again, I guess it gets to the paradox of Josh Stein. Who's the real Josh Stein. Yeah, I think you're exactly right, And I think a lot of that has to do with political reality. You know, Governor Cooper really paved the way for national donors and national interest groups to plow a whole bunch of money into North Carolina, and you know, Governor Stein has to do enough to keep that money flowing you know, especially looking at the twenty twenty six judicial race for Supreme Court, you know, Stein really wants to keep that seat, I would imagine, so he's got to throw an up red meat out, as you say, to keep the national Democrats interested. So do you think that at the rumor in the scuttle Bud is that Josh Stein might be eyeing a run for president in twenty six? Do you think there's any merit to that? Have you heard that? No? And honestly, you know, I would imagine that he will be put on some shortlists as people who could be considered, but I don't see it as realistic. Honestly, I don't think he's ready for prime time. I think it would be a very painful process for him to be thrown in there. I mean, could he be considered as a VP pick. Possibly? I mean, there's just enough other Democratic governors with more political skill that I don't think Stein will be tempted to throw his hat in the ring. Well, and also you got Roy Cooper, who's you know, hanging out at Harvard when he's not you know, dodging you know, citizen journalists with a webcam. You know, he's teaching some class up there, and so if you want a North Carolina governor who is free to run, it seems like Roy Cooper would be sort of that would be the better pick and leave Stein in the governor's mansion for another four years and then you know, let him build up his skill set and his resume a little bit more. But like you said, there are other governors that are out there that are better than Cooper, and so I don't know if I don't know if the time's ever going to be right for him either in the short term. But we'll say, I guess. Yeah, I think you're exactly right. And I think the longer that this draws out, I feel like the less likely it will be for Cooper to jump in the Senate race in twenty six. I mean, obviously, whenever he announces, he would more or less clear the field on the Democratic side. But you know, the longer it goes on, the more I think, well, maybe he doesn't have the stomach for another you know, bruising. We're all really his first bruising race, you know, I guess you could canider his two thousand run for Attorney General is a tough race, But since then, he really hasn't faced much scrutiny at all. Yeah, and the outside focus on him if he were to run, even for US Senate, would be a lot more than he's ever encountered before. I suspect so, Andrew Dunn. Yeah, yeah, I appreciate it. As always. Congratulations to your kid and to you guys for the graduation ceremony. Kind Of disappointed there wasn't Deny Freegaza stuff, but okay. You can read his work at long Leaf Politics longleafpol dot com. He's also a contributing columnist to The Charlotte Observer. Thanks, Andrew, appreciate it, Thank you, all right, take care. 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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I will be circling back like Jen Psaki would, to the LA riots and the National Guard stuff. We kind of got sidetracked in the last hour because President Trump had to go and take questions in the Oval office. So I will circle back to that, but I want to get to this first. There's a blog, Ace of Spades HQ. I've read this blog for years and the guy who runs it goes by the name Ace of Spades. Coincidentally enough, and the other day Nate Silver. Do you know who Nate Silver is? Remember this guy, Nate Silver five thirty eight dot com right it was a political data analysis blog. I want to say that was part of the New York Times operation, and then I think it split out from that or something. And Nate Silver, and I want to say he started as a I think he was like a stats guy for baseball, I want to say, or sports in general maybe, and then he started doing analysis, you know, on polling, predominantly on elections, and that's when he started five thirty eight. And I think I think the five thirty eight is the number of districts in America or no states, no, not states states plus it's senators plus representatives, five thirty. I forget what the number means. It means something like that because you've got four hundred and thirty five representatives, one hundred senators, so that gets you to five thirty five. Then get the president, the vice president and uh, I don't remember who the other one was, but yeah, so the number means something and I forget what it is anyway. Nate Silver, he is not a conservative, okay, but he posted up a blog that shows conservatives are up thirty one points among those with self described excellent mental health. Okay, people who self dine describe themselves as having excellent mental health are up or Conservatives are up thirty one points over liberals, and they are below liberals by twenty six points when describing themselves as having poor mental health. So you understand what this poll or what this analysis is that liberals have way worse mental health than conservatives self reported. Democrats have turned themselves into the party of as Charlie Kirk from Turning Point USA, they have turned themselves into the party of the neurotic, the unstable, and the miserable. Now, if you've listened to my show for an extended period of time going back years, I've been talking about this and I've mentioned it since I've returned to as well, the tendency for interpersonal victim TIV. This is a psychological profile, if you will, of people that get trapped in this victim mindset, and there are all sorts of negative things that occur, including degraded mental health. They don't feel happy, they can't sympathize with people, they treat other people poorly. They start seeing themselves as victims in everything, everywhere, all the time, and it stunts them. And I feel like the Democrat Party has built themselves into a party of victims. Because this was the intersectionality that Marxism requires, which is, you are the oppressed for one of these various reasons, and all of our oppression intersects with a single oppressor. And what that did was it incentivized and it fomented this belief that you are a victim all the time. And now we are seeing the results of that, a party that is made up of neurotic, unstable, miserable, unhappy people. And that's no way to live. It is no way to live. 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. Cabins of Asheville has the ideal spot for you where you can reconnect with your loved ones and the things that truly matter. 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And that includes so the four hundred and thirty five you know, House of Representative districts. You get two senators per state, so that that gets you to five thirty five. And then the three is for District of Columbia, right, So they got all three? Right? DC got all three? Is that right? So we still aren't given guam one. I mean, has that capsized yet? Has that tipped over? I mean it's been it's been probably fifteen years since Sank Johnson first alerted us all to that threat. But Puerto Rico did they get any No? Okay, so it's just DC. So five thirty eight dot com this was the website blog Nate Silver ran. It eventually got bought. He left. He was replaced by a guy named Nate Cohen, I think anyway. Nate Silver posted some stats about the self report self reported mental health among various you know, the Americans, broken down by their political affiliations, and what he found was that conservatives report far more. Conservatives report excellent mental health than progressives by thirty one points. That's a huge gap. And then on the other side of the scale self reported poor mental health, Progressives are way ahead of conservatives by twenty six points. They twenty six point majority report poor mental health. That is a huge gap. That's like sixty point difference. Right when you add you're putting them all on a line together, and so ace of spades at ace of spades, HQ. He writes it up thusly. Democrat poll analyst Nate Silver notices that Democrats are winning with those diagnosed with mental illness, and on the other hand, they're being trounced among the much larger group of people in good mental health. And then he uses these terms called Nate Silver does calls one it's a metaphor, one group the village, and another group the river. And so the village is used to describe people who are risk adverse, they don't like risks controlling that's the village, and the river describes risk takers and entrepreneurial explorer types. And so he uses the term village democrats, and that means basically democrat establishment and regime people. Turns out that young men are turned off by neuroticism, hysteria, weakling, grievance, mumbling, and efforts to control them. Right, this is part of the Democrats' big naval gazing operations where they're trying to figure out how they need to talk to the dudes in order to get the dudes to vote for them, and apparently tim Walls was not the solution. Meanwhile, unlike during the Bush era, moderate men might think it's those villagey Democrats who want to police their speech and their behavior and that they're just generally unchill, turning everything into a political conversation. We've seen this at every holiday. How do you talk to your mega uncle about stuff at the Thanksgiving table? Turn everything into politics? Last year, Trump fared better among voters who don't consume a lot of political news, which liberals like to read as a sign that these voters are poorly informed, but that could also indicate that Trump was winning the more apolitical normy vote. Normy is the normals, and obviously the mapping on this is far from perfect. But Ace Bads goes on to say, some of the problem that the Democrats have with young men is that they are seen as what in the poker world we would call nets neurotic, risk averse, sticklers for the rules, and always up in everybody's business. Here's what Nate Silver wrote. Although I've seen it written about elsewhere, I was honestly surprised by how strong the relationship is. Among voters who report poor mental health, liberals outnumber conservatives forty five percent to nineteen percent. Among those who report excellent mental health, conservatives outnumber liberals fifty one to twenty. So the young men that Democrats have trouble with aren't necessarily the ones who have been captured by the conservative manisphere or who are looking for a helping hand. Rather, it's those who report relatively high mental health and see Democrats as being too neurotic and perhaps constraining their opportunity to compete and reap the rewards of their work. Ace of Spades concludes, it's almost as if people who are mentally healthy do not want mentally ill people making decisions on their behalf. Yes, when you act crazy, people don't want to be led by you. You would think this would be obvious. Now get this. Harry Enton over at CNN, he does their polling and data breakdowns and stuff. He's got some numbers today on immigrants views on Donald Trump. These are I assume legal because they are immigrant voters. Okay, So I am assuming that this data set is legal immigrants. All right. 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Located in mint Hill, just off four eighty five. Mail orders are ex to get all the details that create a video dot com. I do have your messages. I will get to your emails and such seven O four five seven zero eleven ten. Email is Pete at thepetecalnershow dot com. Harry Enton he is let me see here, is the host of CNN's Margins of Error, a podcast about statistical stories compelling and rich. He also he does the data analysis and such for CNN and so he's usually standing in front of the big, you know TV screen. He's like circling numbers and showing graphs and all of that stuff, and he's very exuberant. Anyway, he looks at the data on immigrants, lawful foreign born, you know, citizens who are voting but are from other countries, and he looks at how they have shifted on not just the immigration issue but also Donald Trump. Here's the clip. Start off on the fact that immigrant citizens, immigrant voters, foreign born voters have gone tremendously to the right on this issue in twenty twenty four and twenty twenty five versus where they were on twenty twenty. Closest to or trust more in immigration. You go back to twenty twenty, Democrats, get this, held a thirty two point lead on this issue. Immigrant voters were in the Democratic camp. Jump. So that's in twenty twenty, Democrats had a thirty two point advantage over Republicans among immigrant legal immigrant voters in twenty twenty four. Foward to twenty twenty four to twenty twenty five. Look at that. Shift, a forty point shift to the right among immigrant voters. Republicans now lead on this issue by eight points over Democrats more so than any other group that I could find. The group of voters who became more hawkish on immigration were in fact immigrants themselves, immigrants who were registered to vote in this country. The question was who are you closer to? Like? Which party are you closer to? And trust more? On immigration? A forty point swing among immigrants to the Republicans. So that's on that issue. How about how they feel about kind of traditionally historically about Donald Trump. Yeah, so you know, you see this shift, and you go, what is going on underneath the hood? Well, take a look donald Trump. You remember when he first ran back in twenty sixteen. Immigrant voters are one of his weakest bots. But look at this. Trump's vote share in presidential elections among again immigrant citizens, those who registered to vote. Look at this. Twenty sixteen, you got thirty six percent of the vote. You go to twenty twenty thirty nine percent of the vote. Look at this in twenty twenty four, all the way up to forty seven percent of the vote. Some polls I looked at had him barely losing that vote. Some polls I looked at had him barely winning that vote. Again, there is no block of voters that shifted more to the right from twenty twenty to twenty twenty four. Then immigrant voters and Donald Trump, at least in some surveys, actually won that vote. On average, it's about equal. So there may be all this. Stuff right about undocumented immigrants and Truff being harsh on them, but immigrant voters themselves have increasingly liked Donald Trump and have increasingly moved to the right on immigration into the Republican camp. Well, then on that what you're getting at how immigrant citizens voters feel about people in the country illegally. Yeah, and this is where it all kind of comes together, Cape Paul. When look at this the net favorable rating immigrants who are here illegally among immigrant citizens again, those registered to vote in twenty twenty, look at this plus twenty three points on the net favorable rating. But look at where we were in twenty twenty four minus six points underwater. So immigrant citizens have become increasingly unfavorable in their views of those immigrants who are here illegally. So I think it's so important when we're talking about this debate from a political angle, to separate those out who are undocumented immigrants versus those who are here legally, and those who are citizens, and those who are voters, because that group of voters has felt increasingly distant from those immigrants who are here legally. And so again, when we're talking about this, at least from a political angle, this is why Donald Trump feels so comfortable because in fact, amongst the group that you would think that would be most opposed to this, in fact they become increasingly favorable, not just towards Donald Trump, but towards a Republican point of view on immigration and becoming distant from those immigrants who are here illegally. Wow, who could have ever guessed? All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. 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