Unbeatable Jackson and Rubber Stamp Roy | Hour 1

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 of the links, become a patron, go to thepeakclendershow 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. I want to welcome back to the program, as we do every week at this time. Andrew Dunn the publisher of long Leaf Politics, the newsletter. You can find it at long leafpol dot com. He's also a contributing columnist to The Charlotte Observer and the author of the book The Change Agent, Pat McCrory's Rise, Reckoning and Legacy. Andrew Dunn now offering campaign consulting ideas, apparently to Baby Jesus aka Jeff Jackson. So what prompt sorry, what prompted this this idea to start offering some strategy tips to the Democrat Attorney general in North Carolina. Oh. I would not, I would never give campaign advice to anyone, but what I was writing about here is it was going back to the case out of del Worth outside of Paper Skyscraper where the guy was going around punching women unconscious and posting the video online. I'm sure that you've about this over the past week. So then you know, Matt, it actually made some national headlines. Matt Walsh did a whole hour long segment on it, and actually he laid the blame right at our district Attorney, Spencer Merriweather and said that he should be put in jail. And I was thinking about this. I mean, this case is just incredibly disturbing, horrifying. It almost feels like the exact same kind of case of Irena Zaruska, which we're just coming up on the one year anniversary of and yet we we find ourselves no closer to a solution to this problem. And as I thought about it, and I thought about it, I was thinking, well, I don't have the answers to how to fix this, but you know who should be coming up with these. Answers, And my mind naturally went. To the Attorney General of the State of North Carolina. And you know, I feel like it takes somebody in a position of leadership, somebody who can actually take this problem seriously, convene whoever needs to be convened to figure out what to do with it, and actually put a stop to this madness where we've got folks who have been arrested ten, twelve, fifteen times who are just out committing random, you know, random acts of violence around our state. And you know where I get to the campaign advice that you alluded to, As I said, can you imagine if the attorney general, if you know, whoever it is, Jeff Jackson or whoever ends up being in the ag spot next, if they can actually this problem, they're going to be absolutely unbeatable and an election for governor. Yeah. And Jeff Jackson a former congressman, former state lawmaker from Charlotte, And I call him Baby Jesus because his fellow Democrats called him that because he got like this huge profile after a tweet storm that he wrote during a blizzard while he was trapped in the legislature and he pretended to pass all sorts of you know, the wish list items that Democrats love, and his colleagues kind of got rubbed the wrong way on all of that because it's like, oh, this guy just arrives and he hasn't really done anything, but he gets all of this credit as the savior, but. He hasn't done anything yet. That's why they because they started calling him Baby Jesus. Oh, I am forever indebted to be able to use the name. So I on the one hand, I get what you're saying, like, there is a you know, only Nixon could go to China kind of an element here, like because as you mentioned in your piece here also at long Leave politics, that you know, a Republican has not held this seat the attorney general's post in a century and a half, so like there hasn't been a Republican to try to do something like this, So it's going to require more than likely a Democrat to do it, and that would actually give them probably a wider lane. So they're not getting. All of the blowback and political pushback from their fellow Democrats because they are a Democrat themselves. And so Jackson could he could conceivably be the kind of guy to do that. So that's the so I. Think that there is a lane there for him if he would take it. And therein lies the second observation of mind, which is I don't think he will take it because he is not going to go against the base. And the base here is you know, decarceration. It is this more radical left wing view of public safety and criminal j justice. They do not want these kinds of reforms there. They're not going to if anybody came forward with the idea and actual concrete proposal of involuntary commitments. Right, do you think the Democrats would line up in favor of such a program. That's a tough one. I don't know, is the answer. Probably not. I mean, certainly the energy in the Democratic Party is in the far less in the Democratic Socialists. However, I mean. It's it's good politics, but it's also the right thing to do to try to fix this problem. And you know, maybe I'm naively, you know, wishing upon a star here, but I do think that there are folks in North Carolina that would like to see a solution to this problem. And you know, there's there is a long history of Democrats. You know, a Democrat who you know, can speak to both rural and urban areas, who has some public safety bona fides. You know, they they tend to get elected in North Carolina. And this other thing is this just isn't a legislative problem, right, Like, I don't think that the problem is that we need one new law or that we need you know, some magic bullet's going to solve it all. And you know, we talked about it when they held the General Assembly hearing with Sheriff McFadden and that's when all this came up, and just nothing has ever come of it after that. Yeah, I mean, what's the old axiom that sometimes the right thing politically happens to be the right thing to do. So he I mean, because he could, he could lead the charge on something like this. I mean, even josh Stein recognized a political win on the clearing of the rape kit backlog. Right that supposedly Roy Cooper cleared, but apparently he did not clear or something, because then josh Stein came in and then he did the joint press conference with the North with the General Assembly Republican leaders and signed on to that that legislation to help clear the backlog, and then and then he ran on it right for governor. So there is a political benefit to actually doing the right thing in this in this case, if it is involuntary commitment or something like that, I don't know. I mean, I think that's got to be part of the mix, because I don't know how you force people to take meds if they don't want to take them and they are not in custody to force them to take them. You know, Yeah, I mean that's way above my pay grade. And that's why I was, you know, hoping for. Our superiors in government to take this on. But the other problem is that I don't have a great solution to is just convincing. It seems like that there's a large segment of people who just don't see a problem that yeah. You know, whenever you talk about crime, you know, the. Immediate response is it's sensationalism, it's not real. Look at the stats. Crime is down, and you know, maybe, but. I think that also ignores the types of quality of life issues that don't show up in the crime's death. And it also ignores the very real difference between you know, random acts of violence on you know, in broad daylight and dilworth versus you know, the gang violence you know, in the dead of night. They're very different, right. You usually hear something along the lines of, oh, well, it's you know, if people don't feel safe, right, or there's a perception that crimes out of control. They usually like throw it back at you, like, oh, it's like to your point, like, oh, it's just media hype or something like that. Now, to be fair, you know, the media has been hyping crime for decades, like a century, right, I mean, like that's that's media bread and butter. So that hasn't changed. That's a static line, right. So so I kind of dismiss that and the idea that you know, there's a perception of the crime of crime that is a very real thing. And in fact, the Observer had a bunch of stories on it this week about centricity partner. They know that this is a problem businesses and the business leaders they know it's a problem. They've been apparently having secret task force meetings for the last year about this issue. So they're aware that this isn't a good look. When you've got now two stories that are very similar to the Carlos Brown Junior and this guy to Kwan Hunt. You got these two guys very similarly just randomly attacking white women right in broad daylight for no reason, and that sends a message that we are not a safe place, and that is bad for business, for recruitment and for retention. So yeah, I don't. I don't know. Maybe people are going to actually address this as a criminal justice issue, because that's to me where this that's the nexus point is the court systems a it's a catch and release system, I think, and until. Then agree And there's a whole nother angle of this that I haven't written about yet, but I've been kind of going down the rabbit hole on this is our sentencing guidelines. So you know, this person who's punching people in Dolworth, even if he gets convicted, you know, to the maximum sun of the law, assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury charge carries with it like one to two years in prison, next to nothing, and that just strikes me as incredibly low. I feel like we haven't had a wholesale rewrite of our sentencing guideline since the early nineties. And we probably need to do that too, all right. So let's so from offering Jeff Jackson some campaign advice, you are also offering Michael Wattley some more campaign advice, which I got it well. I will say. People they write me and they're like, I don't see any Wattley ads on TV. I'm not seeing anything from Wattley. I see Wattley ads all the time on YouTube. I feel like they're dumping a bunch of money into the digital space. That's what it seems like to me, because I'm seeing his ads against you know, you know, Roy Cooper's release of all the criminals and all of that. I see those ads all the time. But you don't think that's moving the needle in this race. So you have created pree of charge to the way campaign, a website called rubberstamproy dot com. And so this is and I think we talked about this last week because I've now started trying to highlight this as well. You know, where do you stand? Roy? The old Jesse Helms line, because nobody in the reporting crew is asking Roy Cooper some of these questions on where he stands and what would he do if elected to the US Senate. That's exactly right. You know, I wrote the column last week or a week and a half ago saying that this is, you know, for whatever reason, trying to rewrite you know, his tenure as governor does not seem to be working. I mean, I believe that he was a pretty terrible governor and was pretty radical left in his governorship, but for whatever reason, the you know, independence and unaffiliated voters just aren't buying it. So what I think may be a more prudent line of attack is to talk about, well, what is he going to do if he is actually elected senator? And so far he's been able to campaign without facing any. Of those questions on the hot button issues. I mean, nobody's even asked him. You know, would you vote to get rid of the filibusters? Yeah? You know, what is your. Position on Israel? These? I feel like these are kind of the obvious questions that you would want to ask a next senator of the state of North Carolina and just hasn't come up. Now, why do you think that is? Oh, I mean it's obvious. I mean, well, one is the media definitely wants to see him elected. The next senator. And the other one, you know, has to do with he's got a very diligent campaign apparatus around him that's protecting him from actually having to answer any real questions. Yeah, absolutely right, and I think you had I think your observation is correct here, and then that the people don't want to and I think part of it is because they've elected this guy to office. So many times people don't want to acknowledge that they may have voted for somebody that now they would not vote for, right, So they it's like, no, no, no, I voted for him for attorney general four times and for governor once or twice, and so like that. Though those weren't the wrong decisions. I didn't cast the wrong vote, and so they don't want any kind of culpability for those votes that were cast. So rehashing how terrible of a governor he was may not be the most fertile ground to till there maybe, but you could read the website rubberstamproy dot com. Again. So, by the way, if Watley, if they show up and they asked to take over that site, is it available for them, would you like sell it to them? Oh? Yeah, absolutely, I'm a capitalist. That's right. Well, squad on it for a little while, so they drive it drives the price it goes to auctoradio. All right, Andrew Dunn, thanks so much for your time. Body, good to hear from you. All right, take it easy. That's Andrew Dunn. You can read his work at longleafpol dot com Longleaf Politics also over at the Charlotte Observer, where he's a contributing columnist. He is also the author of the book You Should Get One. I ordered mine today, Actually the change Agent Pat McCrory's rise, Reckoning and Legacy. All Right. 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And this is this is along the lines of what I was talking with Andrew Dunna about in the way the media treats Roy Cooper, my good friend Ray Kutamoose Cooper, rubber stamp Ray. They don't ask him like they are not treating this US Senate race as if it is a national race. It's the most amazing thing. Like I've covered politics North Carolina politics for a long time now, and I've never seen anything like this. There are no questions being asked of Roy Cooper or his campaign about his positions on the biggest issues. Would he vote to impeach Donald Trump? For example? Israel? As Andrew mentioned, that's a pretty big one too. They don't even ask him what committees would you want to serve on in the US Senate. I'm actually I'm not even aware of a single interview that Cooper has sat for, are you? I mean, well, okay, outside of the sports ball podcaster who asks him about how much he loves the Hurricanes. Right, Aside from those types of softball interviews, I'm not aware of a single interview that he has sat for when he talks about making things more affordable. How so, what are you going to do? What's your position on the Democratic Socialists of America? Right? Do you support these candidates? We never heard anything from Roy Cooper's campaign about Graham Platner until after Platner dropped out, and then he was like, oh, it's good that he's dropping out or whatever, like that's it. That's the only thing we ever heard from him. They're not asking him about anything any of the big issues. What about ending the filibuster as Andrew mentioned, how about abolishing the electoral college? Is that something you would support doing? How about statehood for Puerto Rico and for Washington DC? Are these positions that you share with your Democrat Party brethren or no? If so or if not? Why nobody's asking him anything? And that's why I believe he still has this large margin in the polls, Which brings me back to Paige Maston's column, because all she focuses on is the horse race and Michael Wattley and what does Michael Wattley need to do to become competitive with Roy Cooper. Look, if Michael Wattley is not going to be able to beat Roy Cooper, then for the love of me, ask Cooper some pertinent questions page like, if you know these polling numbers are so bad and they've persisted for so long, and you don't think Watley's going to be able to make it close, then start treating Cooper as if he is going to be the elected senator and start treating him as you would Michael Wattley if you thought he was going to be the elected senator. For the love of me, all. Right, So this column over at the Charlotte Observer by Page Maston, headline, Wattleigh's name recognition is finally improving. The polls are not again, this is a horse race focus. This is like, oh, you know what I mean when I say horse race, it's you know, it's like the call the announcer. It's not really a play by play guy, because it's not a play by play. You're just calling the race, you know. And then this horse is leading, and now this horse is leading, and now this horse is leading. That it's all that is. This is all the coverage is, and it is pointless, okay, pointless because all of that is just based on polling. And boy, do I have a story on polling for you. And then she has been doing this now for several months, which is to blame Michael Wattley for his lack of name id. He's not doing enough. And here's some free advice. Get your name out there. You need to do something different, Michael, Like as if Page Maston is offering good faith advice to Michael Wattley so he can win. So blaming Wattley for the lack of name id, name recognition, and then run at tax on Michael Wattley, Ignore all of Roy Cooper's weaknesses, don't hold him to account, don't ask him any questions, right, nothing about Cooper because you know, horse race shows that he's leading. So we have nothing bad to say about the guy who is leading the race because he's leading the race, and that's all we care about. And then rinse and repeat. That's it, over and over again. A new poll shows Michael Wattley's name recognition is improving, but the same challenges remain in North Carolina's US Senate race. Since launching his campaign, one of Wattley's biggest struggles has been his lack of familiarity with voters, since he has never held or run for office before. According to a new poll here you Go from Elon University, fifty three percent of registered voters now say they have heard a great deal or some about Wattley. Okay, so fifty three percent have heard either a great deal or some which is quite That is quite the spread. She says. That's a sizeable jump from March when only thirty eight percent of voters said the same. It's also improved his favorability, though voters still have a negative perception of Wattley overall. Gee, I wonder why could it be the Cooper campaign ads that are attacking Michael Wattley, Yet the fundamental dynamics of the race have not changed much. Former Governor Roy Cooper still has a double digit lead over Watley according to this poll. That's because Wattley struggles with name id. His struggles are compounded by the fact that he's running against an opponent who is extremely well known and well liked by US media types. She didn't say that last part, but it's implied, and most of Whatley's gains are erased by the fact that Cooper's name recognition is increasing too. Between March and July, Roy Cooper's familiarity among registered voters increased from seventy four percent to eighty four percent Squeeze. Perhaps recognizing Wattley's lack of notoriety, the GOP has put most of its efforts into trying to change how the public perceives Roy dat Cooper. They've hammered Cooper on crime, transgender issues, COVID nineteen policies and his supposedly radical politics, often through misleading or blatantly false attacks. See that's the treatment Republicans get when they highlight Roy Cooper's record. That's the treatment that Paige Maston gives him. It's oh, it's. Misleading and blatantly false, and how dare they misrepresent the pristine King Cooper? That strategy doesn't appear to be working. Cooper's favorability among registered voters actually increased by five points from the March poll, and his again see this is horse race stuff. That's all this is. You look at the poll and you're like, oh, it went up a point, Oh, it went down a point. Oh, this went up three points his lead over while he has remained steady or has increased. Voters are looking for solutions, not just reaction, especially on kitchen table issues like the economy. By focusing on Roy Cooper's time as GOVNA and relitigating issues like COVID, let's just look. Past all of that. No need to go back and re examine whether Roy Cooper made a single wrong decision during COVID, whether he was a little bit just a teensy ween see little bit too interested in seizing a whole bunch of power as a tyrannical king. Like, let's not examine any of that. Everybody where he was moving on, just moving on. Republicans are spending a lot of time looking back when they should be looking forward. Okay, well, here's the natural follow up. Maybe you could do a column on this next page, which is what will Roy do. I know he talks about affordability kitchen table issues, Like, I know that's what he says, But what does that mean or is it just the utterance of the wor word affordability that makes you weaken the knees for him? Is that the deal? You know where he stands because he's a Democrat, and that's all you need to know. So it doesn't matter that he hasn't articulated any of these things that you don't feel the need to ask him a single question about these really important I mean, you you do something like pack the Supreme Court and eliminate the Electoral College, you start moving on that stuff, you will get civil disobedience, you will get civil unrest. I'm just telling you, like, when you start making those types of fundamental changes to the order of governance, you will get discord. Is Roy Cooper going to give you discord? Is Roy Cooper going to increase the possibility that we have violence because that's on the table, And that's not me promising anything. That's me suspecting the likely of outcomes. When you start telling people that we are going to put you in perpetual minority status so you will never be able to win another election again, We're going to alter the fundamental structure of the way we elect and govern ourselves because you were too successful. So now we're not going to let you hold any power ever. Again. If you want to inspire people to take up arms, that's the way to do it. That's one of the ways to do it. So is Roy Cooper going to participate in that way of doing so? Maybe you could focus on that in your next column. Maybe you could ask Roy Cooper these questions. Maybe his campaign refuses to answer you on the questions, print that that Cooper won't tell us what it is that he wants to do, what it is that he will agree to do as a backbencher in a Democrat majority. Whoever the Senate leader is going to be, whether that's Chuck Schumer or not, right, if they're cow towing to the most radical left wing part of their base. Is Roy Cooper a rubber stamp for that agenda? Now? I know you're like, Oh, I. Don't want a rubber stamp for Donald Trump? Okay, do you want a rubber stamp for the DSA? Those appear to be our options, and I would submit Donald Trump's gone in two years. Roy Cooper's gonna be there for six. Let me jump over to the text line here, get some messages in. T K, says Pete. I'm not sure they're asking any of those questions of Michael Wattley either, by the way, really okay, by the way, I have seen plenty of his ads, none of them about his position, just slamming Roy's crime record. Just for the record. I don't love Roy. That much either, but you do love them a little, he said, you don't love Roy that much, But that means that you do love them a little, right, But I like it better than a Trump puppet. Okay, So if Wattley is your Trump puppet, then that means Cooper is your DSA puppet, right or is it? It's different? Somehow I've seen this argument from never trumpers. They make this argument that somehow or another, we have to install Democrats in order to teach those Trumpers a lesson, teach Donald Trump a lesson or something. And I like, I'm sorry, but like you lose me when when you pick the commie over over Trump. Sorry like that, I'm not I'm not following that logic at all. Let me see here, that's about something else to me mark that for later from Sean. This is from Tom. The public does not know any of the good things about Wattley, in part because the Observer doesn't know anything good about Watley either. So it would seem because even on their online paper, the former governor shows on the front page every day Roy Cooper for the Charlotte Observer or vice versa. Yeah, I mean this is it, like news is about or sorry. Elections are about what media make them, and the media right now is making the US Senate race about the horse race polling and about Michael Wattley not being able to. Do better in the polling. Now, you can blame the Wattley campaign if you would like, because they're not sitting down for an interview with a hostile media. But if you're the Watley campaign and you know that Cooper's not going to get the same hostile treatment that you get. Why would you do that with the observer. Wattley's doing interviews, He does interviews on BT, he does interviews on podcasts, on TV stations. I see his interviews regularly, but then again I follow him on Twitter, so I see this stuff. Ian says, it's my impression that progressive journalists quote unquote, regardless of outlet, arrogantly believe theirs is a truly objective viewpoint. For example, talking heads on I'm going to say, miss now really think they're twenty four to seven covetching about Trump? Is balanced reporting? Correct? Yeah, this is what you call audience capture, right when you know what your audience wants, and so all. You do is feed them that thing. That's it. Eight hundred eighty eight days to flatten the curve that was Cooper. If Dems won't tell me where they disagree with the DSA and far left, I am left to assume they agree with all of it. Right, So if you want to say, TK says, oh, you know, Wattley's just going to be a Trump puppet. Whalley's going to be there for four years after Trump. So what does he become after that? When Trump leaves? Then what is Wattley? Who is he a puppet for? At that point? You got four more years even if you were to be Trump's puppet. And if you're going to make that kind of an assumption, then you have to also assume Roy Cooper will be a puppet for his party and his party leadership. And what is his party doing? What is his party leadership talking about doing. They're talking about getting rid of the electoral college? Is that what you want? I do not? It's like the last bastion of federalism we've got. Like, to me, that's a really big deal. They want to pack the US Supreme Court. They don't want to pack it right now, right, they don't want Trump to pack it. No, no, no, they want to pack it after they blow up the fillip so they can start ramming things through on a fifty one vote majority. Right, So they're going to do all of these things in order to ensure that Republicans can't win back any of these seats, the presidency, Senate majority, House majority, Like, what do you think that they plan to do when they get power again? Do you think that they're ever going to allow the Republicans to take back control because they're talking like they're not. So who do you wish to be the puppet master? Right, that's the question. I guess. If this is the way you view. Wattley versus Cooper, don't forget about Cooper's giveaway program. He wants to give everything away. He wants to buy votes, says Jeff Oscar says we should pack the court now. It gets harder for me to argue against that. Can Cooper and Wattley debate? If they can, Cooper will have to answer questions. Well, it's going to depend on number one, Brenda, if they both agree to a debate, and number two it's going to depend It's going to depend on the format because if you give Roy Cooper sixty seconds or forty five seconds to answer a question, he's going to do what he has always done, which is the canned slogans, right, the euphemisms, the tap dancing. He's not going to answer the questions and he will come out unscathed because the reporters that are going to be moderating the debate, they're not going to hold his feet to the fire on this stuff. They wouldn't put me up there to moderate a debate. They wouldn't allow me on a stage to moderate a debate. Oh no, no, you would be too friendly to Michael Wattley. Which is funny because the last debate I actually moderated was the debate between Mo Davis and Madison Cawthorn. Although I wasn't really moderating the debate. I was a questioner there. There was a separate moderator. But but I drew up my own questions and the question that I had for Mo Davis, which ended up like tanking his campaign because I brought up all of his old tweets about him, you know, fantasizing about crushing the necks of his political opponents, of Republicans and Trumpers and all of this, and grinding your heel into their bones until you hear the snap against the pavement and all of that. The question I asked Madison Cawthorn was about Donald Trump's tweets because the question was for both of them about civility and politics that they both you know, paid lip service to, yet they both seemed to be engaging in the very kinds of or excusing the very kinds of incivility that they now decry. So yeah, I mean I can ask tough questions of the Republican during a debate as well. You used to do it all the time. For a decade I moderated debates, so I have no doubt that I would be able to do that. But will they ever allow me? No? In fact, the last election cycle that was told to me, so I know where I stand. So it's up to these reporters at the TV stations to do their jobs. 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 thepetecallanarshow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.