Projecting our own reasons on the GOP election losses | Hour 3

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 the Pete calendar show.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. So I do have some more texts. From the previous topic, and I did not expect this thing to generate the kind of response, although I guess I should have. CNN contributor and progressive activist Van Jones explained on the air to Caitlin Collins how Democrats were able to pull off their blowout victory. Elizabeth Stauffer writing at legalinsurrection.com quoting Van Jones here, how did we win the narrative on affordability? Was it just these nice little Democrats out there running for office and going to, you know, going door to door? No, the Republicans never figured out what we were doing. There's something called the American Accountability Network. Tens of thousands of online humans, not bots, coordinated to make the affordability message a winning message online. He said they were Between Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, every single day they were hitting about a quarter of a billion hits with people. Jones said they couldn't get any traction, the Republicans, could not get any traction on these culture war issues anymore because the Democrats had figured out how to. Get around all that. What is he admitting here? This is why people, like the day after the election, and I've talked about this last week, how Democrats win all of these races, yet on the ballot referenda all around the country, conservative ballot questions passed. North Carolina is a perfect example. We had voter ID. We had a cap on the state income tax rate at 3.5%. And that thing got more votes than Roy Cooper did. Got 94,000 more votes for the cap on the income tax. And then the levy limit that restricts the rate of growth on property tax increases. All three of those amendments, constitutional amendments, passed. And people are like, how do these things pass? Well, you look at the survey, the exit surveys, the exit polling. And what are the things that people are talking about? Corruption. That's one of them. That's a big one. And what else? Cost of living. Tied to that, gas prices, blame the Iran war, tariffs, right? Under that heading, there are a bunch of different subcategories, right? Reasons why. But anything that you could tie to affordability, to the cost of living, right? We went over some of the demographic breakdown. What happened to Hispanic males? Hispanic voters in general, but predominantly males. They went for Trump in 24. Now they went Democrat. Why? Wasn't immigration. The exit polling shows it was the economy. Cost of living. Again, gas prices, Iran war. And I said the day. Actually, I said it the night of the election when I was sitting in this studio on election night. I said, everybody who had an opinion about what they thought Trump was doing wrong or the Republicans were doing wrong, they're going to say this proves that I was right and they were wrong. Trump was wrong. Republicans were wrong. Whatever. Whatever anybody thought going into the election was a problem. Whatever, if you thought we shouldn't be, you know, doing the action against Iran, if you thought we shouldn't have done the tariffs, if you already thought that, you look at the results and you say, aha, proof that I was right. It's just going to confirm people's prior beliefs. But the affordability question, right? Zorah Mamdani ran on that up in New York. I was making the argument during the campaign that it's absolutely illogical, if not insane, to think that the people who have passed the policies that have driven costs up, that constantly advocate for more government intervention in the free markets, which drives up the price of the sectors that they are involved in. Why would you put those people in charge if you truly want things to be more affordable? And this explains it. This is why people were not making this connection. And like, to me, this is confirmation of what, like, I couldn't understand why would you vote for Democrats for affordability? That's not their thing. They do everything opposite of that. I was going over all of the examples from Roy Cooper's tenure as governor, right? For on the, green new deal policies and utilities commission. I was going through all of these things. Like he helped drive up the price of the things that he's now promising to make cost less. And how, how can you believe that he's going to make stuff cost less when he's not telling you how he's just saying he'll do it, but his entire historical track record is not making things cost less. Well, this would explain it. That's one component of it. And I, as I said, the day after the election, it's all of the above. It's all the above, right? There were a lot of reasons. I've gone after the people on the quote, horseshoe, right? I don't know the new, right? Whatever you want to call them. Alt right. Post liberals, whatever. Or no. Yeah. Post liberal, right? Whatever you want to call them. I don't care. This is like the Tucker Carlson camp, Megan Kelly, like all these people who they all go on each other's podcasts and all of that, right? Like, all of those folks, they're amplifying those same kinds of messages. And there are elements of truth to their criticisms as well, but it's, it's an all of the above. I don't have to pick one. Like this is the reason. No, there were many reasons that, that were attractive or persuasive to different people. Right. Um, what is this? Gentleman, gentlemen, Jim, I still don't get it. What's today? The 10th? All right. Sorry, your statement is incorrect, although you don't have to tell the truth on the radio or the Oval Office. Gas prices during the midterm elections for Biden and Trump were 9.2% higher for Trump. I was surprised that average gas prices, gas prices topped out at like over $ 5 a gallon under Biden, dude. I don't know what you're talking about. I went over these gas price numbers adjusted for inflation. I did the historical record. It's like, again, you want this to be about the thing that you want it to be about. You want it to be all about rejection of Trump because that's what you want everybody to have done. And again, I don't deny that there are people who are sick of Trump. Absolutely. A lot of people voted for Trump because they were sick of the Biden economy. they went with Trump because they wanted to go back to the, the better economy under Trump than Biden gave us. Right. And, and the Democrats gave us in those first two years. So that was sort of the backlash to Biden. And then Trump comes in and people don't feel like things got better. There were also a whole bunch of like never Trumpers Republicans who have been uncomfortable with Trump to say the least. Right. And, They saw this as an opportunity to sort of neuter the MAGA movement. And we're going to take back our party. I covered all of this last week. I was surprised the average gas prices over the four R versus two year terms are exactly identical. And also the absolute highest price was seen during the Biden term. That's what I said. But you still don't get it. People voted against Trump at least on 60 Minutes. He admitted that ICE went rogue. He didn't say that. That's a lie. And that Iran's nuclear weapons were bombed by U.S. long before he spent $ 47 billion and sacrificed military lives and innocent Iranian lives. That's why he is despised. Again, see, this is projection, gentlemen, Jim. This is you are projecting. You believe these things. So you're saying all of this is evidence that what you believe is the truth. I'm not saying there aren't elements of truth to it. There are people that are mad about Iran. There are people that were mad about ICE. He said that it was too in-your-face, it was too aggressive. He did say that, but he's not stopping. The holidays will be here before you know it, and so now is the time to create precious and priceless family heirlooms that will last for generations. Take your old photos, slides, films, and tapes to create a video in Mint Hill. There, they'll turn those memories into the story of your lives, memories from past family events captured forever to pass down to future generations. 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The gas prices under President Obama peaked at $ 4. 55 a gallon. That was May 2011. Inflation adjusted, that would be $ 6. 78 a gallon now. Gas peaked under President Biden at $ 5. 03 in June 2022. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $ 5. 79 now. The highest spike under Trump was $ 4. 55 a gallon. So lower. But everybody kept talking about gas prices. Right. Um, back to Jim's, uh, comments here, uh, long-term Republican. He sent me a bunch of texts. He's on his, he's on a roll long-term Republican that financially supported NCSC and Georgia Democrats. All right. So gentlemen, Jim claims to be a long-term Republican who, um, sent money to Democrats in North Carolina, South Carolina, and in Georgia. Start by getting rid of the hater in chief in the White House. Look at disapproval polls. Trump is one of three lowest rated presidents led by Nixon. Yeah, there are a lot of people that disapprove of Donald Trump. His numbers started tanking immediately after he got into office. The people who were anti-tariff, they cite Liberation Day. You could see a big decline on his approval numbers after the tariffs took over. You see another drop with the start of the Iran war, right? Yeah. So like you're not, you're not. Jim, you're not arguing against anything that I haven't already said. Like that's, these are things, these are points that I have brought up because again, like, I reject the false choices that I have to say, oh, it's this one thing. That's the one thing. It's different because there were millions of people voting and people have different things that motivate them to vote. Last text. Okay, good. Finally, Trump dropped the bomb on the Iranian girls school but did not hear the seconding from you on the caller's statement. Yeah, well, I'm unclear what I'm supposed to second that. I'm supposed to be like, yeah, or something. I'm supposed to. Good Lord, Jim, you OK? Charlene says what Democrats don't realize is that the wealthy, excuse me, the wealthy that they want to tax to death are the same people who provide jobs and benefits for regular folks. Pushing against them would cause the same people pushing their jobs and benefits. That is asinine thinking. Well, there are a lot of people that are asinine. Oh, my gosh. Here's another person. I don't know if they're okay. 908 number from New Jersey. Oh, stop, Pete. It's not like you could talk about fraud even if you had direct knowledge of it. Okay. It's not like I could talk about fraud even if I had direct knowledge of Well, that's just stupid. If I had direct knowledge of fraud of some kind, I could talk about it. Why are you saying I couldn't talk? After every election, like clockwork, all the WBT personalities come out in unison with the bad candidates schtick. What? Wait, are you saying that there were no bad candidates? I have said this. In virtually every single election cycle for like 15 years, candidates matter. That's what I have said. Repeatedly. In every cycle. Candidates matter. Brandon Gill won re-election in Texas. Ken Paxton did not. Candidates matter. That's not to say that's the only thing. See, this is what I mean. Like these false choices. That's the only thing. I did not say that's the only thing, Jerseyite. That's not the only thing. But it does have an impact. For example, Darlene Graham. Her quality as a candidate mattered. To some degree, it mattered. The way she became a candidate also mattered. Yes. Yes. Several things can be true at the same time. You're not going to force me to pick your thing as the thing when I, being an adult, I can look at the situation and say, oh, there are a bunch of reasons. There are a whole lot of reasons. In fact, the more reasons that we can come up with would indicate that That would lead to a larger electoral wipeout for the Republicans, which is what we saw. It's not one thing, guys. There was a bunch of stuff. Republicans did not earn the votes of the voters for many reasons. Read the exit surveys. I did. All right, real quick. Every government number gets revised, right? Every projection gets walked back. Gold does not file corrections like GovCo. Revelation Gold Group helps families hold physical gold and silver, including in a tax-advantaged gold IRA. It's real, it's in your name, and 10 minutes tells you if your retirement account qualifies. If you want to learn more, go to calendarmetals.com. That's calendarmetals.com. There is a link in the podcast description. Or if you want to talk to somebody, you can call 888-465-3049. All right, I don't think this guy from Jersey or gal from Jersey, I don't know, 980 number, 908. I don't think they're doing all right. So they say every election like clockwork, all the WBT personalities come out in unison with the bad candidates schtick, and now you're pushing the affordability line won the election. Well, I mean, if you read the exit surveys that people cite the cost of living, That was the main driver. Underneath that, then you've got the Iran war, gas prices, you've got the tariffs. I'm just going by what people said. Right? But there were a whole bunch of reasons why people voted the way they did, which I have been outlining for a week. Okay. No, it wasn't that Democrats manufactured 20 more million more votes. It's cause of bad candidates and the affordability messaging on Twitter that all these boomers don't look at. Uh, Hey, first off again, like you're trying to put me into an either or trap, which I reject. It's not either or it's an all of the above number one. Um, Number two, um, it wasn't just Twitter. It was Instagram and Facebook. And you're talking a quarter of a billion hits every single day, hammering that message. And I was pointing out that this makes sense. I wasn't seeing it in this. I've talked about this before that the, uh, the algorithm that you see is not going to be the same as the algorithm that let's say your 18. Year old daughter sees there. The algorithm is programmed differently, but the algorithm takes into account the stuff that you have been looking at, people that share similar demographic profiles as you, what they're looking at. See, I don't look at the feeds that are given to me by the social media platforms. I have my own lists I use to curate my own list. I don't care what the algorithm wants to show me. I don't look at those. But most people, most people do. They look at. Their for you feed or whatever they're called on the various platforms. So, Like your attempt, New Jersey person, to minimize the impact of social media. And as I went over in the last hour, a lot of reporters use social media. They are also victims of their algorithmic feed as well. They will use social media to also get story ideas. And you may not know this if you've never worked in a newsroom. I have. I can tell you. You're responsible as a reporter for to bring story ideas every single day, three to five story ideas every single day. You have to keep feeding the beast, right? You got to make slot. You got to fill the news hole. You got a show to do at five o'clock and you're a reporter. You don't just get to not have a story in the five o'clock newscast. Okay. So you got to come. Every day with a story idea with three to five story ideas every single day. And so how do you get those story ideas? Go onto social media. What are people talking about? Oh, look at that. Here's the story that's trending. I'm going to do a story that's trending. I'm going to localize this national story or whatever. And then it just kind of feeds itself, you know? Um, Just like COVID, you were muzzled by WBT management. You're nothing but controlled opposition for the Democrats. Oh, goodness. Yeah, that's... Oh, you got me, Jersey. You got me. Oh, my goodness. By the way, I wasn't working at WBT during COVID. Sorry to... Is that now 4%? Points of dumbassery that you've now raised here? Yeah, I was doing my own podcast during COVID. When it hit, I launched the podcast, and then we all got locked down. So I did a lot of COVID shows, a lot of COVID-related topics and stuff. Yeah, I got to WBT like a year and a half later. So I'm not sure what that's about. And even when I got here, never muzzled. Never muzzled by management or BT or anybody about COVID or whatever. See, here's the problem with you, Jersey, is you think that me disagreeing with you must be due to some sort of nefarious reason. It can't just be that I came to a different conclusion. That can't possibly be the case. No, no, no. It must be that I'm being told to say something. I'm controlled opposition for Democrats. You're going to project upon me. You're going to accuse me of things because I don't agree with you. Now, maybe, and this is just a point here, the best way to get me to not agree with you is to do this. I'm a bit of a contrarian. Some might say, some might say that I have just a smidge of the oppositional defiance, right? I don't, if you're telling me that I have to say something and the only reason you're not saying this is blah, blah, blah, whatever, like that automatically makes me not want to agree with you really on anything. Because see, when you ascribe motive to me, Not knowing who I am, you don't know anything about me. You think you do, and I get that because you listen. I get that. I understand people feel like they know me. You don't know me. I try to explain my positions, but if you want to project upon me and describe a motive to why I came to a different conclusion than you, well, that just makes you dishonest and kind of delusional. Wait, this is the same thing. You texted the same thing. If what you're saying is true, then affordability should be number one on the Fox News voter poll. Government corruption, 54%. Cost of living, 49%. Yeah, I don't know where they got that poll. You didn't give me a source except it's just a screenshot. Don't know when that was taken, but it says crucial factor in house vote. Government corruption, 54. Cost of living, 49. So the number two reason. It's funny because I did mention government corruption when I was going over all of the different reasons why people voted. That was a big one, was government corruption. And that's the Trump administration's own doing. That's on them. 49% cost of living. Oh, so that's number two. Oh, so wait a minute. So you're showing me a poll from Fox that says cost of living was a crucial factor in the House vote. And you're citing this as proof that this whole topic of affordability and what was just disclosed by Van Jones, that somehow or another I'm controlled opposition because I'm stating the same thing? That's kind of weird. You're just repeating the line to try to make this election seem legit. Oh, there we go. So it was rigged? Is that the idea? Paid opposition or being muzzled by WBT. There you go. Another fallacy. That is called the false dichotomy is what you're doing there. Is you're giving me only two options and saying those are the only options available. One's bad, one's worse. There's no other explanation for it. While ignoring literally everything else I've said about all of the other reasons why people voted the way they did. Why are we believing people who admit they lied about messaging that their messaging won the elections? You don't have to believe them, New Jersey person. You don't have to believe them. I'm not telling you what to believe. I'm just telling you, Van Jones disclosing all of this information about the American Accountability Network, that. Seems to support why. It gives an explanation as to why Democrats focused so much on simple affordability and how they were able to amplify this message across all of these different platforms and to make it stick. And that's why I say elections are about what media make them. When Mitt Romney was running against Obama, Obama had the worst economy of any president running for re-election at the time. Media didn't cover the economy. Mitt Romney's campaign was very frustrated at the time that the media would not cover the economy. And again, media, a lot of reporters, get story leads from social media. So if you want to try to influence the story selection, which is where the real bias occurs, what stories get covered, which ones do not, well, then you want to populate people's feeds with specific stories and information about affordability. And look, Zoran Mamdani won on that platform up in New York City. Again, I told a local Republican group a year ago, you guys need to make affordability your thing too. Like, I'm not a rocket scientist here. I just, I saw what Mamdani did and it seemed to work. You should do it too. On the text line, Gray texts in and says, do you not think now the Democrats have pushed themselves into a corner? Now we can see what they really do in two years. They talk the talk, but will they walk the walk? I say no. Yeah, this is the problem. This is the, you know, the dog that catches the car and it's going to get a taste of that bumper. Now you ran on a platform of affordability and we've seen how this plays out right in Virginia. This was my prediction after the election because I don't make predictions before elections. But I expect the states that flipped to trifectas, House, Senate, Governor, I expect those trifecta Democrat states to follow the Virginia blueprint. You know, Abigail Spanberger, the governor of Virginia, ran on a platform as a moderate Democrat. And immediately after they got the trifecta, they went as far left as possible, as quickly as possible. And like in North. Carolina here, we are like 270 votes away from losing the last seat in the Senate that would have put us on that same path. So I expect them to do that. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, I believe, was the other one that flipped. Arizona, right? So those states, I anticipate, are going to go very far left very quickly. They probably will get some backlash. Don't know what that looks like in two years from now, obviously. A lot can happen in two years. And a lot could happen up in D.C. What of all of the investigations and the subpoenas and impeachments and everything else the Democrats are going to try to do? Or do they try to do deals with Trump? Does Trump do deals with the Democrats? We don't know. But this is the challenge, is that you ran on this. Affordability issue and if people think that things have gotten better, then you should be fine. If people think things have gotten worse, then that might hurt you. Unless of course you find another buzzword and you use that as a new campaign, you blame Trump for all the things like we tried to do these things. Trump blocked us. He vetoed us. And that would have brought costs down. That's why cost didn't come down, whatever, right? That's going to be a 2028 issue, but that's like that. That's what I'll be watching. as well as the United Democracy Alliance. Lisa, so you're saying among all the hundreds of text messages, emails, printed flyers, radio spots, et cetera, this one group is what we voters focused on. No, I can't, Lisa. This is not an explanation for every single person's vote. I don't know how many times I got to say this. Like, I feel like I've said this. I feel like I've been pretty clear about this. People vote for different reasons. Things that are more important to you may not be as important to me. So we vote for different reasons. Now, maybe we end up with the same candidate. Maybe we don't, based on the main reasons you're voting. What Van Jones described and what this website shows, this group, American Accountability Network, what they're showing is that they do an influencer operation with tens of thousands of influencers. And then they, they have a hybrid model and they connect that into door knocking phone banking, right? The actual political operations of campaigns and they work with the campaigns. So they're, they're pushing the messaging out through these influencers. My question is, are they paid? That's my question is where the influencers paid. Um, And that we aren't smart enough to decide on our own what issues are of the most value when voting. Just pick affordability group's message. Not very likely, I would think. Again, the exit polling shows that a lot of people voted on the economy. And that's not new. Wouldn't work for me. Maybe lots of uncommitted, apathetic voters would follow that herd. Yes. Yeah. Again, you've got Well, remember Mitt Romney's 45% or the 48 or 47%, whatever the number was, right? Where it's like Mitt Romney laid this out. You've got one group that's hardcore Democrat. They're going to vote Democrat. You got another side. They're going to vote Republicans all the time. And then you're fighting over the quote mushy middle as Rush used to call them, right? You're fighting over that middle. And for those people, they don't pay attention to politics until like, you know, two weeks before the election. And if they're being inundated on their social media feeds and, with affordability, affordability, affordability, they're hearing it not from like a news source, but they think, well, this is what everybody is feeling like. And so that's the zeitgeist. I'm just going to go with that. So yes, that is persuadable to people. And you know who the most persuadable people are in politics? Moderate Republican women. Just keep that in mind. 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 thepeatcalinershow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.