Lamenting the loss of liberals in NC (06-18-2024--Hour1)

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[00:00:28] So Ned Barnett at the McClatchy Papers up in Raleigh at the News and Observer. He's a columnist up there. He may have another title. I forget. Maybe like a deputy editor or something like that. But he had a piece the other day headlined.

[00:00:49] In North Carolina, where have all the Democrats gone? And and so you know me. I'm a giver. And so I figured I would help him out a little bit in explaining where all the Democrats have gone, where have all the Democrats gone? And where are all the frauds?

[00:01:08] Where are the streetwise AOCs to push the laws of Marx? Where Bonnie Tyler would like to know where. It all the Democrats gone. Well. Ned Barnett starts off by saying that Democrat candidates here in the state may do well in

[00:01:22] November, but the party itself is losing the contest for new members. Steve Harrison, the politics and government reporter for public radio station WFA in Charlotte, recently crunched the state's voter registration numbers and found that the number of Democrats is dwindling. I guess I should.

[00:01:46] Yeah, OK, I'll give you that. All right, well, since 2020, Democratic registrations have dropped by one hundred and twenty six thousand. So four years they've lost, what is that? Roughly thirty thousand a year.

[00:02:10] And that's on top of an almost equal amount that they lost the prior four year period. It was one hundred and twenty three thousand from 2016 to 2020. So during the Trump presidency. The Democrat Party lost one hundred twenty three thousand.

[00:02:25] And then since Joe Biden got into office, they've lost they've lost even more. One hundred twenty six thousand. And if you go back to I guess it would have been the second term of Barack Hussein Obama.

[00:02:40] And by the way, that's a reference to the to the public school children that were taught the song praising Obama. The teacher wrote a song in tribute to Barack Obama, Barack Hussein Obama. Mm hmm. I may actually still have the audio clip someplace.

[00:03:01] But it's not it's not an indoctrination facility. OK, ninety seven thousand. Democrats went poof off of the North Carolina voter rolls during the second term of Obama. So you stack those three four year periods up and you're you're over 300. Between 300 and 350 thousand Democrats.

[00:03:30] Are no longer on the rolls in North Carolina. Three hundred and fifty thousand. Just since 2012. That's a lot. Meanwhile, Republican registration has grown in every four year cycle going all the way back to 2004, the George W. Bush administration.

[00:03:54] So if you were to do a comparison for let's just take it from the Joe Biden term right now. When Joe Biden got in from twenty twenty well, I mean, I guess there would also be the that

[00:04:06] first year of 2020 would probably also include the last year of Donald Trump. But that's when the election cycle is. But going from twenty twenty. You had Democrats lose one hundred and twenty six thousand and you had Republicans gain one hundred fifty six thousand. That is quite the swing.

[00:04:29] Is this part of the is this still part of that thing where everybody switched parties because the Civil Rights Act? Is that still happening because the Civil Rights Act of the 60s is that I can't.

[00:04:41] I don't ever know what the parameters are for when, like all the racists left the Democrat party and became Republicans, because I'm told that's what happened. In fact, it did not happen. It's more of an economic thing.

[00:04:54] Democrat Party lost sight of its its base and what they why they were voting. By the way, North Carolina, I've been reading a book called The Paradox of North Carolina Politics by Rob Christiansen. It's good history. He's a you know, he's a former news and observer guy.

[00:05:14] McClatchy guy wrote a book going all the way back, like, you know, from the state's founding and talked about like he's talking about the political machines and all of that stuff. And so it's a good reference point.

[00:05:28] But even he acknowledges that North Carolina has always been a more conservative leaning state. The only difference was that. The Democrat Party used to be more conservative and populist, they they had these two battling factions inside the party and the populists were sort of against business, big business,

[00:05:50] especially. And so Democrats would whip up the populist fervor in order to win certain races. But it was always internally inside the Democrat Party machine which controlled the state for 150 years. And then, of course, they would also hand out jobs through patronage.

[00:06:10] You know, if you were a Republican, you would not get the job. You would have to register as a Democrat and then you would have to donate to Democrat politicians and such. And this this went on all through the modern era.

[00:06:23] I mean, Jim Hunt was you know, he fired tons of Republicans in the executive branch. But that was different because he was a Democrat. And if a Republican were to try to do that, obviously, that would be the end of the democracy.

[00:06:38] Which by the way, every time you hear Democrats lamenting the loss of the democracy, it is it's a code basically. You just swap out the word democracy for Democrat Party. All these things are threats to the Democrat Party. Republican registration has grown every four year cycle since 2004.

[00:06:59] In a state once dominated by Democrats, the parties are nearing parity with Democrats. Right now, current registration 2.4 million Democrats by registration. 2.25 million Republicans by registration. So they're only about what? 150,000 away. And so they are fixing to catch the Democrats pretty soon.

[00:07:28] Now, they're not the largest party by registration or I should say affiliation. Right. They're not the largest affiliation. That's unaffiliated. Unis unaffiliated voters make up the most amount of registered voters. They're at 2.79 million.

[00:07:51] Ned Barnett says Democrats are not happy, but also not alarmed about the loss of registered Democrats. As they said, as they were surrounded by flames in the burning house, they think the shift represents younger people who still tend to vote Democratic, preferring to register as unaffiliated.

[00:08:09] Unaffiliated voters are the state's largest registered group at 2.79 million and its fastest growing block. The Democrats think that the increase in registered Republicans largely represents rural white voters switching their registration to the way they actually vote in national elections,

[00:08:26] which is Republican, which, by the way, has been going on for decades. Decades. Right. So this idea that all of a sudden, all of the radical right wing knuckle dragon racists became Republicans because the Republicans pushed through the Civil Rights Act. But a Democrat president signed it.

[00:08:46] So therefore, they were like, screw this. We're going to go with the Democrats. Like that has never made sense. Sean Trend from Real Clear Politics, he wrote a book about this. It's the big lie.

[00:09:01] It was called The Big Lie before Democrats stole the slogan to use it against Donald Trump. The big lie was that everybody became all the racists became Republicans and it was over the Civil Rights Act.

[00:09:16] He goes on to say in this piece that the shrinkage of registered Democrats may be a political mirage. Either that or they may have been in the pool. Unaffiliated voters tend to vote consistently with one party or the other. This is a key fact in North Carolina politics.

[00:09:37] Always keep in mind that just because people are registered unaffiliated, it does not mean that their votes are in play. They are unaffiliated because they oftentimes have become so disillusioned by their individual parties that they have become unaffiliated.

[00:09:53] They left their party because the party wasn't quote unquote extreme enough. They disagreed with the party moderating on something and so they left their party. They still vote for Democrats as unaffiliated voters. They still vote for Republicans as unaffiliated voters.

[00:10:09] In fact, they're even more so likely to keep voting in that partisan way. Okay, if you're listening to this podcast, you are obviously paying attention to the world around us. You also have really great taste I might add.

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[00:10:54] Carolina Readiness Supply has 2000 square feet of supplies as well as educational materials that you're going to need for any kind of emergency. Veteran owned Carolina Readiness Supply. Will you be ready when the lights go out? Talking about the shrinkage of Democrats' registration.

[00:11:16] I'm old enough to remember when the conventional wisdom was that the rural areas of the state were all getting old and dying. But now apparently, you got all these rural voters switching to Republican. So weird. And that's driving this massive increase in North Carolina voter registrations for the

[00:11:39] Republicans. Picking up 156,000 since 2020 while Democrats have been losing. Dare I say it, hemorrhaging voters in their registration rolls. They were down 126,000 and they were down 123,000 the previous four years. And they were down like 97,000 the previous four years before that. They've just lost a lot of registered Democrats.

[00:12:03] And the Democrats in this article or in this column by Ned Barnett at the McClatchy Papers, they're like, this is fine. It could just be a mirage, Barnett says. Unaffiliated voters tend to vote consistently with one party or the other.

[00:12:20] To this point, Dave says in an email to Pete at the PeteCalendarShow.com, you're absolutely right about how unaffiliated voters vote. I went unaffiliated about eight years ago but will vote Republican 99% of the time.

[00:12:34] The big difference is going unaffiliated is that I noticed I get a lot less voting ads on texts, emails, snail mail, etc. I mean, I still get them but it's less. I must have been taken off of some Republican mailing lists, right? That's possible.

[00:12:52] See, I get a bunch because I go like I voted in the last Democrat primary so I could vote against the sheriff and so I got a lot of Democrat mailers now. I don't know. But yeah, I don't, but I also block.

[00:13:05] I mean, I don't even look in my spam folder in my text messages. The last time I looked probably like half a year ago, oh, it was gross. It was just gross. Yeah, filters, big believer in the filters and the spam blocks and all that stuff.

[00:13:24] I got a message here also asking about what was it, the voter registration in Mecklenburg County. So in Mecklenburg County as of today, or sorry, as of June 15th, three days ago, 324,000 Democrats and 157,000 Republicans. So it's like a two to one margin Democrats enjoy in Mecklenburg County.

[00:13:50] Now, the unaffiliated block is 311,000. So it's almost caught up to Democrats by registration. So it's pretty close there. But Barnett says that the registration losses should give Democrats pause. And to answer his question in the headline, where have all the Democrats gone? I will give him this answer.

[00:14:13] You are losing the sane ones. That's where they're going. You are losing the sane ones. They don't want to be affiliated with your party because your party is at least perceived to be kind of crazy.

[00:14:28] The question asked by Ned Barnett at the McClatchy papers, I read it in the Charlotte Observer in North Carolina, where have all the Democrats gone? Which is weird because we're growing, right? Our state is growing, has been for what, 30, 40 years, keeps adding more and more Yankees and Floridians.

[00:14:45] And I kid, I kid, they're mostly halfbacks, you know, coming halfway back up the East Coast from the North anyway. So I don't understand why you're losing these numbers in the state when the cities are growing and the cities are becoming, quote, bluer, right?

[00:15:08] Is there some reason why people don't want to be associated with the Democrat political party? They're registering as unaffiliated. Is it because they're not left wing enough? Now I know there are a lot of people that have bailed on the Republican Party because

[00:15:25] they hated Donald Trump, they changed their registration, or they thought that the party was not sufficiently for Donald Trump and so they bailed on their party affiliation. Or, by the way, this happens often.

[00:15:36] I don't know if it's enough to kind of move the needle in a recognizable way, but you also have people that get really involved in the party apparatus and then they become disillusioned or they have fights.

[00:15:47] There's always, there are always fights going on inside of these organizations and the political parties. I don't cover a lot of the intra-party warfare. It's just, unless stuff sort of boils over into the public and you've got accusations

[00:16:09] of corruption and that sort of thing, you get people getting thrown out of meetings and stuff. I covered a little bit of it when I was up in Asheville with the Madison County, or sorry, the Haywood Five, they called themselves, Haywood County.

[00:16:22] There's a constant struggle over control of the local party and that sort of thing. But sometimes people get really involved in their political parties and they have personality conflicts, petty grievances and such, and then they just walk away from the party.

[00:16:39] They get so angry and frustrated and disillusioned and they just quit the party. So that happens too. Like I said, I don't know if those numbers are enough to show in these numbers to move the needle in a large way.

[00:16:59] Chris Cooper, a Western Carolina University political science professor, he said that fewer party members means fewer party workers and fewer party potential candidates. And this is why Ned Barnett says that the registration losses should give Democrats pause and he's right about this.

[00:17:19] Chris Cooper says, quote, in the short run, it doesn't mean much. After all, unaffiliated voters can vote for Democrats as easily as can register Democrats. But in the long run, it represents something approaching a crisis for the party. Running a party takes effort and it takes people.

[00:17:38] And if you're not growing your your registration numbers, you have fewer people that are able to do that work inside the organization. Now, Democrats have long enjoyed this sort of separation of their activist wing, right?

[00:17:56] The shock troops that are employed in defense of left wing causes and policies and such. But those people are limited in what they can do inside a party structure. So yes, I think one of the reasons why Democrats are losing the voter registration numbers

[00:18:16] is because a lot of people that were lifelong Democrats believe that the party has left them. They've gone a little bit too crazy for them, a little bit too leftist. I always make this point here, right? When I talk about leftists, I'm not talking automatically about Democrats.

[00:18:30] I'm not talking about even liberals. The leftists are a different category. And that's who sort of calls the tune in a lot of these Democrat primaries, particularly in the cities. You have to run to appease that part of your base.

[00:18:53] And that is not attractive to the general population. Same thing happens, by the way, on the right where you've got radical elements and they will run and they're not attractive. And I think this is what Democrats are hoping is going to happen with Mark Robinson, right?

[00:19:11] The Republican gubernatorial candidate. They think that all of the stuff he has said on Facebook and from the pulpit at black churches and stuff, that they're going to be able to use a lot of his own words against him.

[00:19:22] And that's going to make him unappealing to the general population voter, the general election voter. They may be right on that. I don't know. I don't know. A lot of people aren't even paying attention right now. Here's another example, though.

[00:19:37] When you even have guys like my good friend Ray, the governor, Roy Cooper. He's forced to play this game too, to fall in line with leftists. And this is, by the way, why Dennis Prager, I've quoted him on this several times over the last year or so.

[00:19:58] He gave an address down at the Moms for Liberty National Convention a couple of months ago, and he outlined a longstanding belief of his, a philosophy that he has, which is that conservatives vote their principles and leftists vote their principles, but liberals do not.

[00:20:18] Liberals will vote with leftists, even though they tend to agree more with conservatives than they do with leftists. They actually live their lives more conservatively than as a leftist. So why? Why do they vote for the leftists? And in Prager's estimation, it is because they are essentially cowards.

[00:20:40] They do not want to acknowledge that they are closer to conservatives than they are to leftists, because conservatives make them feel icky. No, I'm not one of them. They care about image, reputation, that sort of thing. And so they don't want to be associated with those people.

[00:21:00] Those are the bad people. And so even though they live their lives very much closer to the conservative way of living than to a leftist way of living, they will vote for the leftists. So you can never count on liberals to join the fight against leftism.

[00:21:19] Case in point, my good friend Ray, he just vetoed a revision to the Raise the Age Law. Denny says, I'm interested to know what percent of unaffiliated voters vote for an unaffiliated candidate and has that changed over time? Have you seen that addressed? I have not.

[00:21:42] Generally speaking, if you're running in races where party affiliation is not listed, it's hard to get a read on that. And if you have candidates that are running as unaffiliated candidates against D's and R's, they usually lose and they don't usually get more than a couple of points.

[00:22:01] It's kind of like libertarians. DL says I am registered unaffiliated because I don't want anybody to assume they have my vote. Also, the candidate for sheriff always runs as a Democrat, and I want to vote for the most conservative candidate.

[00:22:15] Republicans couldn't vote in the Democrat primary, which is why we are stuck with Gary Not My Fault McFadden. That is true. That's why I've that's why I stayed unaffiliated.

[00:22:25] I want to be able to vote and I voted in the Democrat primary so I could vote against him too. All right, so the Raise the Age Law. North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper has vetoed a controversial bill that makes changes to

[00:22:45] the criminal justice system and crimes involving teenagers. By the way, I always point this out. The biases in the adjectives, right? What adjective is being used to describe a certain thing by that reporter and the editors and the outlet? Therein lies your bias.

[00:23:00] So the assumption that this is a controversial bill, it's always controversial because why? Democrats oppose it, right? When you have because this thing was was supported by every Republican and I think even a couple of Democrats.

[00:23:15] And it's just a revision to the law that got passed a couple of years back. For example, Biden's amnesty proposal that he's getting ready to roll out, not described as controversial. Just a reform, right? WBTV reports in 2019, a new law prevented 16 and 17 year olds from automatically being

[00:23:39] charged as adults. That was the Raise the Age Law. If you were 16 and 17, you could no longer be automatically charged as an adult. Doesn't mean you can't be charged. It just means you just can't be charged automatically. Somebody has to look at that and make a decision.

[00:23:56] The bill approved by lawmakers now changes that and it sends the most violent cases straight to adult superior court. Right? So if you're 16 years old and you commit a triple murder, then you're going to go right to adult court automatic.

[00:24:16] So they've just basically said, OK, we it was a little bit too expansive. We're going to make the most violent crimes still go now automatically to superior court, adult superior court. What Roy Cooper says, quote, Most violent crimes, even when committed by teenagers,

[00:24:31] should be handled in adult court. However, there are cases where sentences would be more effective and appropriate to the severity of the crime for teenagers if they were handled in juvenile court, making communities safer. Instead, he says, the legislature should invest significantly more in our juvenile justice

[00:24:52] system to ensure resources are available to help prevent crimes and appropriately deal with children who break the law. It's a 17 year old triple murderer. And Roy Cooper is like, well, I'm not so sure. How do we fail him? Maybe we the system failed.

[00:25:15] When North Carolina passed its raise the age law in 2017, it was the only state left in the nation that still automatically charged 16 year olds in adult court. And so now they're reinstating that, but only for certain. Violent crimes.

[00:25:36] And Roy Cooper, the former top law enforcement officer in the state, the former 16 year attorney general of our state says, no, you shouldn't do that. You have a 16 year old charged with rape and murder. They should really work it through the juvenile system first.

[00:25:55] And instead, we should spend a whole bunch of money, I guess, on more violence interrupters or something. Is that the idea? Because it'll stop this sort of thing. By the way, did they ever catch the the murderers from the the Beatty's Ford Road Juneteenth

[00:26:10] celebration from what was it four years ago now, three years ago? They ever catch it? No. Still still don't have any leads on that one. Yeah. Oh, and I don't know if it was a child that did that. Yeah. A young and a youth.

[00:26:26] Oh, and remember last week, a horrific series of knife attacks in Charlotte over a 24 hour period sent three people to the hospital. They did arrest the person, 19 year old Josiah Maitland. Oh, thank goodness he's not 16 or 17. Right.

[00:26:43] He's now facing several charges after attacking people all over the area. One woman got off work. She was going to her car as she's unlocking the door. He just comes up and starts stabbing her in the back. No cause, no reason.

[00:27:01] Before police could arrest Maitland, the suspect in the woman's case, he allegedly also committed two more stabbings. Aside from her, there was a man stabbed while walking his moped down the street along Old Mount Holly Road.

[00:27:15] And then a short time later, another person was attacked on a cat's bus along Freedom Drive. Maitland is charged with three counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill armed robbery and two counts of attempted murder. By the way, do you remember?

[00:27:28] I'm old enough to remember when the police chief in Charlotte was talking about the rise in youth crime and how this is a very big problem. Might it be connected to the raise the age legislation? I don't know. Could be connected.

[00:27:48] Maybe that's one of the reasons why people are leaving the Democrat Party. 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.

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