Politicus Pod

Politicus Radio

0.0 (0)
POLITICS
UPDATED DAILY

The Politicus Pod is the official PoliticusUSA podcast where we dive deep into the news that matters to you.

4 DAYS AGO

Mapping Out Why You Would Rather Be Kamala Harris Than Donald Trump

The Daily is a 100% reader-supported newsletter. We fight for democracy and freedom while discussing topics that big media often ignore. Please support our work by becoming a subscriber.Understanding Where The Presidential Election Stands Right NowThere is so much data flying around as the election is less than two months away that it is helpful to condense some of it and place it in a more understandable form.The video above is part of a series that we’ll be doing through election day titled Mapping It Out. The video contains some different points than this post, and you get to see the maps a little more easily so give it a look.Our first map shows why Pennsylvania is the key to this election. The map is not what I think will happen but what would happen if every state followed their historical pattern. Trump ends up leading in the Electoral College 262-257.That is the scenario that Trump is hoping for. (All maps done on 270toWin.com):Here is our map of the top three swing states, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Arizona. A lot of other states get lumped into this category, but these three are the ones that are consistently the closest, and both campaigns have made Pennsylvania the epicenter of the race. Michigan wasn’t included because since Harris entered the race, the state has become a bigger challenge for Trump, so his campaign is putting more time into Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, and Wisconsin.Democrats lead 257-235 and need to win any one of those states to win the White House.This is closer to the reality of where the election is now.Our third map shows what would happen if each state followed its historical voting trend. Pennsylvania goes for Harris, and Democrats win the House with 276 Electoral College Votes. Most of the current swing states are not as swingy as the media likes to suggest. North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona have voted Democratic once since 2000. Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin have voted Republican once since 2000. The nation is in the middle of a demographic shift, so things will change, but just looking strictly at history, states have been fairly consistent.Our last map is what I call our today most likely scenario, The Blue Wall of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan stays together as it has in every election since 1988. Georgia, where Trump has consistently led, and Republicans are doing everything to hand him the state, narrowly flips back to being red, but North Carolina, where there is a gubernatorial race that Democrats lead by double digits on this map, goes blue for the first time since 2008. Kari Lake and the Arizona Senate weigh Trump down a tad, and Harris narrowly keeps Arizona blue. After all of the twists and turns of the 2024 election, Democrats end up with roughly the same total of electoral college votes that they got in 2020 (303 vs 306 in 2020) and keep the White House.As new data comes in, I’ll be here to Map It Out and show you where this election is heading.What do you think of our new feature? If you have any questions, leave them in the comments, and I’ll answer them in a future episode. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

3 min
SEP 12

Taylor Swift, Unity, Joy, And Kamala Harris

The Daily is a 100% reader-supported newsletter. We are less than 100 subscribers away from our goal of 1,000 paid subscribers. If you find our work valuable, please join our community by subscribing today.Excerpts from the podcast episode:The Importance Of The Taylor Swift EndorsementA lot of media are trying to downplay the Taylor Swift endorsement. They say celebrity endorsements don't mean anything. And I think that's usually true because there isn't this action, this call to action, and that people don't have the kind of sway that Taylor Swift has. But she's this global brand. And so we already saw by 11:00 this morning the General Services Administration spokesperson told NPR that by 11:00, they had 306,422 visitors to vote.gov from Taylor Swift's URL that she shared on Instagram. Now that's 11:00. So she made that endorsement, what, 1030 11:00 last night? So 12 hours overnight and two, you know, like that's overnight. I would imagine that number is going to grow during the day today probably quite a bit. That seems like a lot of people to be signing up to register to vote. It's a lot of people. And there's an exponential factor involved, because if this if her fans go to get their friends or family members also registered to vote, it kind of there's a there's a mushroom effect and it just keeps kind of building outward. So maybe 306,000 people visited, but. Each of those people, or even a 10th of those people, get somebody else to register to vote. That number goes up a lot more. I think it matters. It matters a great deal because of, and let's be honest, who her audience is, right? It isn't old white cable news viewers. Her audience is women. They're Gen Zs. It's a lot of people. A lot of young women are turning 18. 18 to 24. Women need to have autonomy over their bodies. That is an age where, you know, unfortunately, women are targeted for rape and for, for violent offenses that this is just a really dangerous age for women, and they need to have this autonomy. So I'm really glad that she's sending them to the register to vote. And you know, she urged. I thought the whole statement was great. I mean, everybody's kind of pointed out how well she laid that out. She didn't tell people who to support. She told them, you know, go do your research. This is what I think is important.The Unity Movement Around Kamala HarrisI don't remember which piece it was, but maybe the Taylor Swift piece, but a little bit of what makes me feel really positive as a woman is the Taylor Swift endorsement. She, as we all know, is a white woman. There has been such a failure on the part of white women to stand up for black women to include them in fights for justice efforts. It felt really good to see Taylor Swift, the pop princess, endorse Kamala Harris. And to see this, there is this coalition that's coming together. I think there's a call coming up next week or the week after that, which is rural voters with black women for Kamala. I mean, this is the kind of unity that we need in this country. If we are going to come back together and be the powerful country trying to live up to our ideals that we will never achieve but should always be aspiring to. And we have been divided by this man. I've been writing about that since the Obama era, so it did feel really good for me. She brought up that when she responded to the race question, she started talking about how Donald Trump brings up race to divide this country, and people are tired of it. I have been talking about race as used to divide people since President Obama when, you know, that was obviously what Republicans use.Donald Trump was the original birther. So it felt full circle to have this coalition is coming together to say, we are not going to believe we're not going to fall for this stuff. We're not going to let you destroy this country and our respect for one another, our humanity. And while I know not everyone is going to come together, and there are a lot of people that have..

50 min
SEP 10

What Can We Expect From Kamala Harris At The Debate?

The Daily is a 100% reader-supported newsletter; if you enjoy our work, please consider becoming a subscriber.Let’s not forget that after the Biden Trump debate, voters told the media they were really turned off by Trump’s lies and behavior. But the media decided, as I knew they would, that Biden had lost the debate even though he tried to discuss policy, which they now claim is why VP Kamala Harris needs to do more interviews with *them* rather than the local radio shows and CNN interview she and Walz have been doing.But it’s been just two months since the last debate, which reshaped the entire political landscape. It’s September of an election year, and many voters don’t know much about Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump has been in 6 presidential general election debates, while Harris has been in none. The stakes are exceptionally high. Donna Brazile said the Harris-Trump debate in Philadelphia “is probably the most consequential debate in American history.”The VP has surged in public and private polling but still needs to define herself and her “new way forward” agenda to the American voters, specifically swing voters and those who don’t pay much attention to politics, before Trump can during the NBC News presidential debate. For this reason, I don’t think we should expect Harris to do a full knockout punch of Donald Trump like I’m sure many would love to watch, but more of an appeal to voters on the margins. Many of those voters don’t even watch debates or conventions but rather judge them based on short social media clips, so Harris has to do enough to be a force and go viral but not aggressively focus on Trump in a negative way.Trump is the most annoying character in politics. He knows how to steal the limelight with whining and negativity. It’s time to pivot, which is what Harris does.The truth is, as I told the BBC, at this late stage, this will be more of a vibe election (wanna keep that democratic republic and your freedoms, want competent governance?) than a deep policy election - though I’m not sure we ever actually have policy elections since the advent of the television. So her voters need to understand Harris’ principles and priorities, not a deep dive into her white papers.To that end, Harris, who is known for her dedication to preparation and has had briefing-book cram sessions while on the campaign trail in her short 7-week candidacy, had a multi-day debate camp including 90-minute mock debates at the Omni William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh with Philippe Reines playing Trump with Karen Dunn, a Democratic lawyer and Harris’ former domestic policy adviser this past weekend, while ex-president Donald trump has done “more work preparing for the 2024 debates than he ever did in 2016 and 2020” according to the NYT.Trump, who wanted to run away from this debate, and his team spent all of that time behind the scenes negotiating the debate set-up while Trump outwardly attacked the debate as unfair to him. Trump didn’t want the mics unmuted: “Mr. Trump has privately told associates, ‘I’m not going to let her do to me what she did to Mike.’ He was happy to let his advisers negotiate the muting of microphones when the candidates are not talking.” The Harris team had been preparing for those moments, which have been a viral successes, wanted to confront Trump like she did Jeff Sessions and Brett Kavanaugh as a senator. But she’s also managed to use this whole muted mic debate to paint Trump as someone whose team doesn’t trust him because he’s so out of control, someone who has to be handled carefully because he’s a child. She can do this with a simple glance to the camera and a raised eyebrow, along with her behavior serving as a direct foil to Trump’s low brow, lie-festing.I’m expecting to see threads of this throughout the debate from Harris, coupled with a dismissiveness of Trump’s behavior if he acts up like he often does. as she said

14 min
JUL 29

The Kamala Harris Momentum Is Real

This is a free edition of The Daily. If you enjoy our newsletter and would like to support our work, please consider becoming a subscriber.Kamalot is approaching the Barbie movie zeitgeist and there are just 100 days left to go to face down the dystopian fascist threat of a Trump/Vance administration, as Viktor Orban has been demonstrating for many years, once these days are up. Autocrats get in, it's really hard to get them out. They change the law, they change the constitution so that it is legal for them to no longer hold elections and to protect their power.No matter what the media says, there are no one-day dictatorships. History teaches us this, which is one reason why Republicans are trying to control history books and education. So when we hear Trump say to his supporters that this is the last election that they need to vote in, we need to realize that his past election denial is leading to this argument for why it's best if we don't have elections anymore. The target is our pluralistic democracy, which, even the George W. Bush Presidential Center said was the lifeblood of a genuine democracy. That is what the Trump movement is against. So they're picking up where the insurrectionists on January 6th left things after their deadly assault on the 2020 election, if someone tells you who they are, Believe them.If you're not sure, look to Florida or Texas or Iowa, where conservatives are weaponizing the law in order to dictate what kids are allowed to read and even what they're allowed to say sometimes. The Heritage Foundation president, Kevin Roberts, who is the leader of the pro-Trump Project 2025, said the second revolution, which is a counter-revolution if you will.We'll be bloodless if the left allows it to be. So they're giving a lot of signals about what's intended here. JD Vance introduced himself to the American public and at his first campaign event he was introduced by a Republican who warned of a civil war if Donald Trump loses this election. They are telling us these folks are fighting to reinstate conservative dictator kings over the United States, which is the opposite of.Freedom is the opposite of democracy. They're neomonarchists—if you want to think of them that way, think plutocrats. They are seeking this structural change so that Trump never has to leave office again. And I think that really doesn't sound great. It's fair to say a bit based on that, but this election is an emergency.Like the house is on fire, grab your stuff kind of emergency. Our tornado is bearing down. Get out to vote. If you think of January 6th as this inside political coup that was supported by large numbers of House Republicans and backed up by this violent coup on the ground by Trump supporters, that this is well funded.And if you're unclear about the power of money, In our political structures in our system. We just saw political donors push President Biden out of the 2024 election race. Now, two billionaire donors, Barry Diller and Reid Hoffman, just said in interviews last week that they hope that Kamala Harris replaces the FTC chair, Lena Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission.That enforces the nation's antitrust laws, consumer protection laws, the opposite of big business. And normally, if you think about it, these positions are for seven years. The commission is headed by five commissioners. They are nominated by the president. And conferred by the Senate, then they serve seven years at a time.So when we are wondering why we can't get rid of DeJoy at the post office because of norms, you got to wonder then why. It's okay to get rid of an FTC chair because she's doing her job because the billionaires want her to get to be done with her. Republicans are running this adjudicated rapist for president who was caught on a hot mic bragging about and whose first wife accused him of rape and only retracted it when he was running for president the first time. Trump is also all over the Epstein files. So this is

14 min
JUL 25

Joe Biden's Last Great Act May Save Democracy

The Daily is committed to democracy, freedom, and the power of independent media. To never miss a newsletter or an episode of our podcast, please consider becoming a subscriber.In this special edition of the podcast, we talk about President Biden’s Oval Office address and what it means to the country and democracy.All quotes from the podcast have been lightly edited but are transcribed as spoken.Joe Biden Is The Real Deal For a bit in this speech tonight, he was reminding me of Jimmy Stewart. I had this like Over and over again. I kept seeing Jimmy Stewart in his face. He has that shucks americana Yeah, but love of country love of just a genuineness and like uh, an authenticity and and An openness and a care for this country in a in a vulnerable way that we don't see very often I do want to highlight one thing.He said in his speech that I thought it was Well, there were a couple of points that were really touching to me. What I really liked. The great thing about America is here. Kings and dictators do not rule. The people do. History is in your hands. The power is in your hands. The idea of America lies in your hands. And that is something that we talk about all the time because it is the truth. But people need to be reminded of that at a time when corporations have so much power. And as we just saw, rich donors think they're running the world. And for voters to be reminded, you have this power, this is your country. I thought that was, and we don't go for dictators and kings here, and was that not a kick in the you know what to you know who? The Age Shoe Is On The Other FootThe guy who has been absolutely has been hammered for years, but his age was the one who sat there and made the really convincing argument that it was time for a new generation and time to pass the torch.Well, he literally made the argument for why Trump should not be elected. I mean, the same guy who just been getting blistered for weeks on end for being old, having a bad debate, sat there and just said, We need new voices, new leadership, a new generation. And that's exactly what I'm saying. Once again, that's a Joe Biden took you to the woodshed kind of moment and he delivered it with the folksy, veneer on top of it.Not that it's fake, though. A veneer is fake. So that's not really what I mean. But the presentation was, he wrapped it in folksiness. Yeah. But it was a, he took everything they were attacking him with little jiu-jitsu to move there and he just put up his shield and said, right back at you, Trump, take that and stuff it.And now Trump's and all the arguments that were used against Biden apply to Trump. Yeah. And he's like, Hey, look at this new generation of leaders that I helped. Those are it. Yeah. I mean, this is a guy again, the book ends. I keep coming back to this. Yeah. But. For me, the bookend of Joe Biden, the Violence Against Women at Women Act back in the 1990s.And now, we put first vice president female vice president, and then we have, he's hopefully ushering in the first female president. Isn't a fascinating part of his legacy and career. The fact that he was added to Barack Obama's ticket to be the experienced statesman, balancing. comforting presence because Obama was considered such an inexperienced unknown by many.And then he becomes president and he uses those same qualities to elevate Kamala Harris. And as you just said, hopefully get her elected to the next president. When you said bookends, those to me are almost two perfect bookends. Yeah, that's true too. I mean, that's a different point, but they're both true. And that's again, we're getting, we keep coming back to this, but it's his service to the country. Joe Biden: A Gift To The CountryWe keep coming back to this, but it's his service to the country. And, and I do want to bring out one more quote from him tonight because I thought this was a, I don't think the speech could have been better, frankly. The defense of democracy is more important than any

26 min
JUL 22

This Isn't 1968: Democrats Have A Great Chance Of Winning

The Daily stands by democracy and freedom through thick and thin. Join the fight to save American democracy by becoming a subscriber.We thought maybe you could use a friendly on this difficult day, so here are some quotes from the edition of the podcast. The quotes are lightly edited but transcribed as spoken.Joe Biden Is An Exceptional President There, there are presidents that have really had a lasting legacy on the country. And a lot of them never get their credit for that. They had, they had accomplishments that never really get credited. Obama was the rare exception and somebody who had the personality And the charisma and had the accomplishments. That is not normal. Yeah, that's not normal. I mean, you have, you have, before Obama, everybody compares him to Reagan, which is justified because you've got to go back to Reagan, who was the previous transformational president. But then, once you get behind Reagan, you have to go back to Roosevelt. Those presidents don't happen very often. Harry Truman and Joe Biden are the kind of presidents who come in and do effective things but they don't get credit because maybe they don't look the part or they don't act the part. They're a lot more common than Trump, who is just this amalgamation of everything that's going on, which is bad about modern politics and what candidates are evaluated by. Trump is the post-fact, post-accomplishment president. I'm gonna take advantage of division and polarization, and hey, kids, let's put on a show. And so you know what's interesting about, when you're talking about younger voters, voters and they say they care about climate change, right? What The Movement To Get Rid Of Biden Was Really AboutYou remember the Bernie Sanders/Hillary Clinton primary in 2016? We remember it because we were at the convention that year. After that, the DNC, which was at the time led by Tom Perez and Keith Ellison, after the new leadership turned over, sat down with Sanders, sat down with Biden actually, and Obama and the whole crew, and they all agreed to get rid of the super delegate system who did the super delegate system benefit? Elites.The super delegates themselves were elites, and to remind everybody what the system was, Democratic voters named a percentage of the delegates, and then there was this big pot of super delegates. Who was not elected by the voters but got an equal vote as the voters as to who gets to be the nominee.That's a whole lot of power, right? And in 2018, everybody sat down and one of the good things, no matter how you feel about what Bernie did in the 2016 campaign, one of the good things that came out of his run was they reformed the primary process. So, the primary process was given to the voters. Now that seems like no big deal, but then COVID came in 2020 and everything fell into place quickly for Biden because of the new reforms. When Biden started getting momentum after South Carolina, he was able to put it away pretty quickly. Now fast forward to 2024, Biden storms through the primaries. The voters again say, we want Biden. The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.The people that in normal circumstances, which are these 40 House Democrats or 30 House Democrats and these elected leaders and all these people that were saying Biden had to step aside, they would have been superdelegates normally. They were nobody special in 2024. That's what this all is. This all comes down to controlling the party and power. This has been a power struggle. They want power back because it was taken away from them and given to the voters. And this is what I keep coming back to. And that's why you're hearing that BS. about an open process to find the new nominee. Yeah, that's BS. And I'm, that actually disgusted me. And the more people that are repeating this, people that I used to respect, it's like, we already had an this process.We already..

1h 4m
JUL 15

The Corporate Media Is Failing Democracy

The Daily is an independent newsletter prioritizing American values like democracy and freedom. Please subscribe to support our work.In this special podcast that was recorded before the Trump rally shooting, Sarah Jones and Jason Easley discuss how and why the corporate media are failing to meet this moment in our democracy.Below are some quotes from our discussion:The Corporate Media Makes The Abnormal NormalPeople just get desensitized. I would always, always, always ask people, and I, I, you do this all the time. You have to stop and ask yourself, is this normal? When we tell you, it was Donald Trump and his criminal cases. And all, you were like, this is, no one else has ever run for president or been a president and then get charged with this many criminal cases, or any criminal cases.So ask yourself, is this normal? And if the answer is, this is not normal. Then look at how people are covering it and ask yourself, why are they treating something that is not normal as normal? And don't trust them after that. That's what I have to say for right now. It's not you. It's not you. Don't let people gaslight you.Why The Corporate Media Seems So Out Of TouchTell me why are media organizations treating Trump like he is the successful president that Joe Biden actually is. And Joe Biden, like he's the criminal that Trump actually is. Because this isn't about presidencies or accomplishments. It's about corporate profits, revenue. engagement, which they think Trump will bring. The concentration of corporate ownership and our large media companies has resulted in for profit owner with for profit news, which needs and sustains narratives and storylines. It needs to sustain its own narratives and storylines. What we saw happen with the debate was the media. The big corporate media has needed a storyline for this election.We, it's not a big surprise to anyone listening that engagement with content about this election is way down, right? It's a rematch. People are not, people know who their candidates are this time. There's not many persuadable voters because the country is so polarized. So engagement for election content this year has been very low.And usually presidential elections are a cash cow for media companies. When the debate rolled around and it was the two previous candidates again, they were the media was already looking for a narrative to create drama with this election. And since they had been pushing the Biden age narrative for roughly a year previously.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Corporations Don’t Care About DemocracyThey are only interested in profit. So we use the example of the New York Times. The New York Times, the vast, vast majority of their page subscription base what was our number? Like 82 to 92 percent or something I saw? They're liberals. They're center left and they're liberals. The New York Times, though, being a corporation, thinks they already have that audience.They want that other audience. They want that Fox News audience. Because the corporation doesn't care about the politics. They don't care about democracy. They care about money, and profits, and revenue. How can they get all the readers? Not some of the readers. Not just readers that, that So fill a certain way, they assume that the people on the center and left are going to stay there so they can reach out and go to the right.And then when Joe Biden came along and gave them the gut punch of, and not just them, but basically every corporate media outlet, think about it. How many interviews is Joe Biden actually done on MSNBC during the presidency? It's not many. And that includes the morning Joe one of But, but they want everything.They're corporations. They have no feelings. They have no values. They just want profit. This goes to the, to a larger point about late stage capitalism, which is, we're now at the point, and we saw this

1h 0m
APR 16

Sarah Jones Explains Trump Trial Jury Selection

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com With democracy and freedom under attack, The Daily is fighting for our rights, and we could use your help. To support us, please consider becoming a subscriber.Explaining Trump Jury SelectionSarah was recently on BBC Five Live, where she discussed the Trump trial jury selection. Here is the lightly edited transcript of her interview:Q: This process is pretty normal in high-profile trials, isn't it? But what's interesting, from what I can gather, Donald Trump's in the court while these jurors are talking about him. Sarah Jones: Yes. He yesterday was reported to have fallen asleep and was also reported to have fallen asleep today, but kind of perked up when they were asked questions about the books that he has written that they have read.So it's weird to watch him in court and to watch a former president. This is a historic trial. This is a criminal trial that has never happened against a former American president before.Q: One of the jurors who was excused yesterday said that you'd have to have lived in a cardboard box not to have a prior opinion of Donald Trump. Is that a fair point? Sarah Jones: That really is because he was famous. He's lived in New York as his main residence his entire life and he's lived in Manhattan since 1971. And he was already famous there long before he ran for president. And in fact, during the 2016 election, there was a lot of kind of arguments about why so many people in Manhattan don't like him that he has a reputation as maybe a shyster, a little, running a little bit of a shady business.

1 min

See All (63)

The Politicus Pod is the official PoliticusUSA podcast where we dive deep into the news that matters to you.

Creator

Politicus Radio
Years Active

2022 - 2024
Episodes

63
Rating

Clean
Show Website

Politicus Pod

Politicus Pod

Episodes

Mapping Out Why You Would Rather Be Kamala Harris Than Donald Trump

Taylor Swift, Unity, Joy, And Kamala Harris

What Can We Expect From Kamala Harris At The Debate?

The Kamala Harris Momentum Is Real

Joe Biden's Last Great Act May Save Democracy

This Isn't 1968: Democrats Have A Great Chance Of Winning

The Corporate Media Is Failing Democracy

Sarah Jones Explains Trump Trial Jury Selection

About

Information