A Nazi on Wall Street Podcast
A Nazi on Wall Street Podcast
Midterms in the Age of Turmoil
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The A Nazi on Wall Street Podcast returns for a second season! In this premier, EJ Russo and Dr. Jay Weixelbaum take on a topic on everyone’s mind these days: Midterm Elections. We’re living in a time of change and it seems like the issues we care about are culminating all at once. What can we expect in November? And what were midterms like during the 1930s and 1940s at another time when it seemed like the world had turned upside-down? We’re joined by political strategist Adam Slater to help us make sense of it all.
Hey, Jay, I'm curious. Why do we call this podcast a Nazi on wall street?
Speaker 2I'm glad you asked EJ. You know, I study history. The Nazi on wall street podcast is part of elusive films, a Nazi on wall street project, which tells the true story of how the Nazi sent a pair of spies, a German lawyer, and a beautiful diabolical bareness to recruit American corporations for the fascist cause. And only a Jewish FBI agent stood in their way.
Speaker 1<laugh> wow. How are you going to make this story? Come to
Speaker 2Life? We are raising funds to produce a short film highlighting, just one part of the Nazi and wall street, pilot script, which showcases our team's talents and writing and production.
Speaker 1Awesome. Where can someone go to learn more and help contribute to the
Speaker 2Cause? Chances are we're running a fundraiser right now, but regardless of when you hear this episode, you can go to elusive hyphen film slash donate to contribute to putting this highly relevant history on screen.
Speaker 1Great. I hear there's some cool donation incentives too, like mugs totes shirts and more for yourself, or to give as a gift.
Speaker 2That's right. Go to elusive hyphen film slash donate to learn more now onto today's show
Speaker 1Recording in progress, record progress testing. Hey, how you doing? This is EJ. I'm gonna delete this cuz it's really weird. Welcome to a Nazi on wall street podcast because every time history repeats, the price goes
Speaker 2Up. I am Dr. Jason Weichselbaum. I'm a historian and filmmaker and expert in American companies doing business with Nazi Germany
Speaker 1And I'm EJ Russo. I'm just a regular guy who has grown concerned by the recent rise of anti-democratic sentiment growing around the world and is just trying to figure out what is really happening. Jay and I created this podcast in part to help promote his project, a Nazi on wall street, but to also discuss troubling current events and give them historical context. Jay, my friend, we made it it's official. Season two has now begun George Soros and the Jewish cabal found it fit to pick us up for another season.
Speaker 2Thank you, George Soros. Uh, I'm
Speaker 1Still wait,
Speaker 2Let the, I know, I know it's, uh, he says it's in the mail really appreciate being, uh, picked up for another season. Uh, and being here with you EJ, it's been, uh, it's been an interesting break. Lots has happened. Oh my God. This been recorded last. I, I don't even know if we'll even remember all the things that have occurred. Uh,
Speaker 1I remember, I remember going back listening to some of season one episodes just to kind of refresh my, my memory of what we discussed. And I was just like, I caught myself reacting to our perspectives and what we were going through at the time and just thinking to myself like, oh, you sweet summer children.
Speaker 2<laugh> yeah, yeah. I mean, there's so much enthusiasm at the beginning of 2021 and then, uh, a lot of, uh, kind of a reality coming home or knocking on the door and reintroducing itself to us. The pandemic is still not over. Although, uh, it's here in, in the spring of 2022, there are some welcome signs, but also lots of signs for continued caution. We've not thrown the ring into Mount doom yet. There's still an evil force emanating from Margo. Uh, that is yet, yet to be extinguished and lots and lots of, um, of, uh, of, uh, energy and, uh, discussion and not always great feelings building up around these midterms that are coming up right around the corner.
Speaker 1Yeah. Yeah. Well, hopefully this isn't our sophomore slump for the second season. Hopefully we will not be disappointed in whatever is going to happen in the next two to four years. And I wanted to open up our new season with something that I feel is on everyone's minds in some capacity, which is the, the anxiety around the upcoming elections, especially elections that occurred during a paradigm shift, which is what we're experiencing right now. I wanted to kind of discuss that with you, cuz I'm curious about what are we in for?
Speaker 2I think the, uh, the sophomore slump metaphor is actually very apt, especially for managing our expectations. I think it's gone beyond the academic and political won circles. Uh, the knowledge that usually president's party does badly in midterms. And so everybody's, everybody's kind of bracing themselves in normal times, you know, say the last four or five decades, quote unquote normal times in the democratic and Republican parties at least had a general consensus on democracy as a concept. I mean to a point start talking about 2000 in the March to 2022. But anyway, so if, you know, if the party in power loses seats in that kind of paradigm, this time around, it's a much more dire situation because one of the parties has decided to use that leverage if they get it back for a coup uh, they're kind of really openly, uh, trying to subvert a democracy, not, not trying to hide it anymore. So yeah, so that's very, very worrisome because this is the, a Nazi on wall street podcast. I was thinking a lot about the period of the 1940s, you know, the new deal era and like how<laugh> seemingly indestructible, FDR, and like how, how his party fared during turbulent times like these.
Speaker 1Yeah. And I know that we bring up 1940 or the years leading up to 1940 as somewhat of an analogy of what we've been going through over the last few years. So I know what I feel like going into November of 20, 22 and just the feel of how things are leading up to it. What I'd like to know is how did Americans feel about the FDR presidency? Yeah. And, and, um, cuz I know that it was completely different. I'm assuming, because FDR, he picked up seats on his midterm now
Speaker 2He was in, uh, power for a long time. So he, he had, he had several midterm opportunities. Yeah. I mean I think the shorthand, I, you know, I don't wanna insult American audiences. I think the shorthand in American minds is that FDR is kind of this larger than life figure who had, um, this huge influence over that full era from, uh, 1932 all the way to when he passed away in 45, like everything else. The story's obviously a lot more nuanced when you start looking closer in 32, everybody kinda knows a little bit about this story. You know, things were terrible. The economy was collapsed. I think we talked about this before last season, you know, Hoover was trying to do all sorts of different things. Nothing was working and uh, the voters punished him pretty severely and, and FDR won by a landslide. And did the, you know, the famous 101st 100 days of, of legislation to kind of, um, put things back on track and kind of build some safety structures around capitalism in the United States, banking, holidays, uh, regulations, all that sort of stuff. So we kind of know that story I'm kind of interested more, especially as it relates to now is like what happens after things kind of stabilize like say like 1936 into the middle of world war II. To me that's like very transformative period.
Speaker 1Yeah. Jay, I mean, that's really something that I don't have a lot of knowledge in. So what happened, things
Speaker 2Started to really calm down in the world and stabilize in the mid thirties. I mean, not just in the United States, but in other places famously there was an Olympics in Berlin in 1936, people were feeling, uh, more, uh, hopeful, um, Germany rising and in the United States, unemployment had gotten down at least to manageable levels, still kind of stubbornly in double digits. And, and there's still a lot of suffering, uh, the amount of damage to the economy. Wasn't just gonna go away quickly. It's gonna take a lot of time.
Speaker 1What were the Nazis doing in 1936?
Speaker 2So in 1936 is really when, because things had stabilized enough, Hitler was able to kind of start really building his war machine. There was kind of a, a series of, uh, financial, uh, deals and diplomatic deals that gave Hitler some breathing room to really, uh, diplomatically and economically to be able to do that. Um, and unfortunately fascists are, are pretty good at marketing and a, there was a lot of sympathy for Germany in the world and you know, he was on the cover of a time magazine that year. If I'm not mistaken
Speaker 1On ironically on the cover of time magazine is man,
Speaker 2Let me, let me check my, he, he was definitely on the cover. I'm I'm pretty sure it was 1936. Yeah. April 13th, 1936. Yeah. So
Speaker 1Wait a second. Wait, wait, wait. Were opinions shifting for or against the Nazis around the I'm assuming like everybody was like, yay. Nazis are pretty good in 1936 in not just Germany, but in the rest of Europe and America.
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's really, it's really kind of disturbing just how much antisemitism there was, how much sympathy for kind of, um, fascism, you know, we also had Mo and Italy, you know, making the trains run on time after so much chaos and dislocation was very appealing to people.
Speaker 1How does that compare with what's going on today with what's going on with, you know, the mag G O P politicians blatantly promoting hatred towards marginalized groups like LGBTQ and immigrants and, and whatnot.
Speaker 2Yeah. I mean, I think this is why historians have been sounding the alarm ever since Trump entered the scene is because we've seen some of this before. And we've talked a lot about on this show, you know, the power of right wing, populism and anger to help people who harness it to take power. The Republican party is that's basically what they do at this point. It's been what they've done for a long time. And, and before this period there was at least some policy attached to it. Now it's very clear. That's all it really is. So how do they do it? Well, you know, I mean, create misery<laugh> and then use that misery to blame others and convince people to give them power, to punish those others and then rinse and repeat. And it's getting to the point now, I mean, as we record this, uh, the Florida governors at war with Disney, the Texas governor is blocking food shipments from coming through Mexico, worsening inflation, just kind of so far over the top that, you know, it's so clear, this is about causing problems and giving them power when people are getting mad about those problems. So, you know, we always hope that people are gonna see through it, the difference here between now and, and then in 1940s is that the conditions are different in that. Well, maybe not. I mean, the conditions that there's a leader that is not a fascist in power, you know, we have Biden now we had FDR then, um, I think those are at least reasonably fair comparisons. I've been thinking a lot lately about how people dealt with it, what the moods were then and what we can learn about them today.
Speaker 1It seems like there's a, a mainline source of right wing populist rhetoric coming from social media and Fox news. What was the source of pro fascist ideology that pushed people into having a favorable perspective of the Nazi party?
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, that's why I wanted to talk about 1936, not necessarily Hitler per se or his public image as much. Although now we know he was on the cover of time. It was also man of the year, 1938 as well. If you look at the run up to the 1936 elections, you know, the, the Republicans are, are preparing to run the former, um, governor of Kansas, a Landon, not, not a very exciting candidate, but the people kind of backing him. They are just apoplectic with FDR, the business conservatives, we would call them who are the main power behind the Republican party at this point and have been until pretty recently
Speaker 1SunTrust Republicans.
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah. And, and they, they, they were almost incoherent with rage towards FDR, for transforming American capitalism enough, not really that much, but putting guardrails in enough to where the paradigm had very much shifted that there was now kind of a mood in the country that capitalism needed to be contained and regulated in some way, because the suffering was so bad during the depression and the story that big business men were behind what happened, um, was pretty clear to most people, you know, you don't need to have a PhD to understand that. So they, they all piled behind Outland, but the real energy was not with Landon. It was actually with these kind of like right wing populace types. And there was a real kind of like, I think in the internet today, we call it the horseshoe theory where there was really kind of a weird melding of populace, where there were people, um, really pushing, uh, social programs. You had Francis Towson who was kind of the, one of the people. I, I think historians credit in inventing social security. You had a, you had a guy, uh, named Huey long in Louisiana. Yes.
Speaker 1We remember that name from season one. Definitely
Speaker 2Things could have been, could have been very different for those of they're just tuning in or may not have heard before. You know, Huey long was a very charismatic politician. He influenced the population very much towards his social programs. He wanted more overt kind of socialization and safety nets, but he was also very much a populist and his grievances were always towards elites. And often these things are tinged with antisemitism. It's the bankers in New York and, uh, the money changers and, you know, pick your other dog whistles. Right. But he got assassinated. He was killed. He was staying in a hotel. There's kinda a local, uh, political campaign where he was gonna get a judge kicked out of his seat somewhere. Something like that. Historians don't beat me up too much. I'm, I'm trying to jar the memory banks. But anyway, he was shot by, uh, a relative of the judge and he died. But, uh, he was very much boosted by, uh, another person who's come up on this podcast before Charles Coghlan. You asked me how people are getting this information. The social media of the day in the thirties was radio and Polan was huge on the radio. He was, he was kind of the Russian<inaudible> of his day, which I think we've used that metaphor before. You know, and it's weird because, you know, it's like on the one hand promoting social programs and on the other promoting kind of this nationalist populous racism, or you could say perhaps national socialism<laugh>. So a lot of the energy of the right at that time, uh, was really around Coghlan and Toson and long, and they kind of fell behind the union party.
Speaker 1So then how much sympathy for Nazi Germany and the access did the American public actually have during this time
Speaker 2A lot, uh, you know, I Coghlan would regularly kind of talk about the memes, if you will, of the day, the mental shorthand we have is that, you know, Germany was treated unfairly after world war I Germany is just trying to find its quote unquote place in the sun now, um, you know, gear closer to NACI ideology, you know, Germany was stabbed in the back and probably could have done better in world war I by socialists and Jews and communists, they were betrayed. And, uh, of course it wasn't their fault that they did not win. So I mean, that trickles down into, into things Coghlan is saying, you know, right wing populism is not really about making an argument with evidence it's appeal to emotion. It's that, are you aggrieved? Well they're we have some brethren over, across the water that are aggrieved. And the other thing too, is that as things get, you know, 36 is kind of like these turning points where it's like, it's clear that Germany is now has the leverage to kind of like throw off any, uh, restrictions on them. Cause they, you know, their military was very much restricted through various treaties, which I, I was just talking about earlier, there were some weak safeguards, but as Germany got more and more powerful, it, it became clear that like nobody could really stop him or do anything. So as he is building up, he's threatening his neighbors, things are getting tense and, and at home, in, in America, Coghlan at Al uh, were basically saying we don't wanna get involved in foreign wars. We're isolationists. We shouldn't have gotten involved in world war. I keep our, keep our noses out of everybody. Else's business America first was where this term comes to light. That's why, again, it's extraordinarily disturbing that that's come back in the 21st century.
Speaker 1So was Coghlan using isolation rhetoric to appear that he was taking a Centris neutral stance. Whereas the extremist view is to want to intervene in what's happening with, uh, Nazi Germany. That kind of sounds like to me today is the rhetoric that I hear online when I see someone say, oh, both sides are at fault. You know, both sides are just as bad. The, the left. Yeah. And the right are just as bad.
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's definitely some, both sides of them going on. I mean, I think the effort to paint FDR as an extremist was definitely there. I mean the most common insult was that he's a dictator. FDR is a dictator, you know, especially this is coming from like the business people. And then of course, yeah. Um, today we would hear globalist as somebody who has an international perspective, right? So there was some of that as well, you know, um, Landon tried to, tried to hit him with that. Didn't really stick as much, but, um, clin and the union party who ran a candidate, uh, William Lemke, AKA Liberty bill, it was the nickname Coghlan gave him. This is kind of like the nascent, you know, libertarian kind of catchall that we still see existing today that catches a lot of populism. You could talk about social programs. You can talk about, say legalizing weed or something, but it's like really like it's, it's a populist enterprise and it can kind of mix a lot of incoherent things together. And, and that's where the right wing energy really is. Um, Lemke. He used the word dictator called him an upstart dictator. And in fact, Coghlan got so aggressive about going at FDR. Uh, during this time that a Catholic church, you know, that institution, his father Coghlan was Catholic. They, they actually, uh, moved to quiet him down because it was starting to look real bad, especially, you know, there are times where Coghlan would actually quote Nazis in his speeches. It's, uh, not necessarily a good look as, as Germany's ramping up a persecution and, and scaring the living daylights out of its European neighbors.
Speaker 1Forgive my misinformed, conspiracy theory brain, but weren't there ties between the Catholic church and Nazi Germany
Speaker 2That gets, that gets complicated. There's kind of a very, uh, dark moment in the Catholic church and Nazis. Yeah. The Catholic church kind of recognizes, uh, Nazi Germany right away when, when Hitler takes power and Hitler, Hitler himself is a Catholic leader of a country that is kind of majority Protestant and Germany had a long history, uh, without G kind of veering off too much of, of conflict between Protestants and Catholics. This is a big deal that the church is kind of giving political currency political cover political weight to the Nazi, the Nazi enterprise. And, uh, and of course, uh, in America, this does a very different flavor cuz it's not Nazi Germany, but one of the most prominent purveyors of Nazi, uh, ideology on the airwaves, Charles Coghlan of course, is this prominent Catholic priest doing this and mixing very much as we've heard in other episodes, uh, previously, uh, mixing kind of this Christian ideology with fascism mixing the bigotry, the kind of nationalism and, and all of that stuff together in their sermons.
Speaker 1So how does this affect the political landscape? I mean, what can polls tell us about this period
Speaker 2To quote, um, people smarter than me, uh, who work in politics? You know, the best poll is an election and that can tell us a lot about where things are going, but in 36 for FD R's reelection, Landon got wrecked hard. He, uh, he, I think he won two states in the Northeast. I think that was it. What was it? Uh, Vermont and Maine, obviously the right was divided. Uh, Landon was not Liberty bill<laugh> of Coghlan Towson and the other, uh, populace. In fact, that kind of all, uh, fascists famously don't get along with each other. They need authoritarian structures to make their enterprises work typically. So there was a lot of infighting, uh, as the campaign were on Coghlan I, I think I, I had a disillusioned with William Lenke, AK Liberty bill and in Outland and, uh, yeah. Was not, was not able to Mount a serious challenge to FDR, which was good<laugh> because then FDR could kind of continue the program of stabilizing the us and providing kind of some sane leadership as things got decidedly darker in Europe. I mean, just two years later, we're at 1938, there's the famous Munich conference. We're basically, um, the prime minister of, um, great Britain at the time. Chamberlain basically appeased the Nazis, uh, Hitler's demands to kinda nibble off little pieces of its neighbors, where he claimed there were ethnic Germans that deserved to be part of this greater Germany that they needed. Layman's realm, living space, Yeah. I mean, that's, again, this current conflict with Russia and, a nd R ussia saying, oh, t hey're ethnic Russians i n t his a rea. I m ean, i t really, with t heir, y ou k now, black shirt, Z markings, it's just a little t oo on the nose,
Speaker 1But of course the Ukrainians, those are the real Nazis.
Speaker 2It's still the same kind of, uh, playbook as like call your enemy, whatever it is you're doing that, that is the program of the right. Yeah. You keep doing it because it works. Hopefully one
Speaker 1Rumors pedophiles. Oh, wait a second.
Speaker 2<laugh> yeah, yeah. The gates, I'm sorry. I mean the, yeah, well and the most, probably most prominent politician to ever be convicted of abusing children sexually was good. Old Denny. Haster a Republican speaker of the house, third in line for the president, but we seem to have forgotten all about the fact that that is our, our main example of a very powerful politician who was a Republican, not a Democrat who's involved in this kind of Atho activity that the Republicans blame everyone else for. But, uh, yeah,
Speaker 1Projection, projection, projection.
Speaker 2That's what it is. I'm happy that terms in the popular parlance now. Um, but, uh, I digres, you know, if, uh, 36 was great, 38 midterms, not so much is, is quite bad. This is where, you know, um, general history audience may not know that FDR was not larger than life or Bulletproof or anything. Uh, his, his party got their butts kicked in the 1938 midterms. And for a bunch of reasons that might sound familiar, inflation was bad. Unemployment was still, uh, stubbornly high and it looked like recession was starting to come back worldwide, which really, really freaked everyone out. You know, I, um, I spent a long time looking through the records for, um, our embassy in Germany during the thirties, cuz you know, I'm studying business and Nazis and they have like a business office, like what they call commercial at attache. So those records were very interesting to me, like what is our embassy, that particular office in our embassy, in Berlin saying about American business and Nazi Germany. And what I found in the 1938 period, which was very clear was that the Nazis themselves were really worried about the political ramifications domestically about the economy getting bad. Again, even these kind of fascist dictators that were like kind of ruling Germany with a, you know, increasingly iron grip, uh, were still very worried about public sentiment and, and people maybe turning against the Nazi regime because uh, the economy could go back into depression. So of course in the United States, obviously people are feeling those fears very much. And meanwhile, you have Coghlan on the air, you have all these kind of right wing groups, the clan of the twenties kind of fell apart, but then was reconstituted as all these little like mini kind of fascist groups, often antisemitic, they're all kind of boosting this message. The new deal is the due deal. FDR is controlled by Jews in his cabinet. I mean he dared have a few Jews, including very prominently, the, his secretary of treasury Henry Morganthal the elites who are arrogant, think they know better than everyone else.
Speaker 1I think they went so far as to suggest that Roosevelt's name was actually changed from Roosevelt or something like that. And that he was actually Jewish.
Speaker 2Yep. Any, any kind of insinuation? Um, uh, in fact, um, one thing I wanted to bring up that I think has really been lost to history too, is 1938, things started to get really bad and then we get to crystal knocked in 1938, things are getting pretty bad. Crystal knocked was really a chain of events that started with Germany, deporting lots of Jews, particularly to the Polish border where they would literally just take people in winter and just drop them off on the other side of the border, just take'em with nothing. It was pretty horrible. And of course one particular kid was really off about that. Went and shot a minister in France because in kind of retaliation, a German minister. And then of course the Nazis immediately used that as an excuse say, okay, well it's open season of Jews. Then they're shooting people in France. Uh, don't do anything terrible wink. And then of course that night, we all know what happened with crystal Knox it's yeah. Terrible, terrible things. So there was a major international conference around this time called the Aon conference to deal with the quote unquote Jewish question that, which was kind of a meme in those days. Like what do we do about the Jews? They're just a problem everywhere they go. It's really like, uh, their problem because everybody's constantly bullying them and harming them. This was tough for FDR because he's facing a tough election. He cares a lot, usually in private about the plight of Jews, but politically he's also, especially as things get harder for him politically, he has to lean more on the Southern wing of the democratic party, which is really the base of the Republican party today. So you can imagine they're not really interested in the plight of the Jews very much at all, if they, uh, maybe perhaps in the opposite direction of what they would like to see us.
Speaker 1I wonder what happened to those Democrats in the middle of the sixties with, uh, civil rights becoming more of a thing, you know, I wonder what happened to them
Speaker 2Two really interesting. I mean, I don't wanna digress too much. There's two really interesting transformations. One is kind of like the voters in the us that we have. Uh, one is the thirties where a lot of, um, uh, immigrants, black folks, um, women, uh, kind of created a democratic coalition and then kind of in response to civil rights movements where a bunch of Southern Democrats become Republicans in response to being against equality in the United States. But yeah, so, so the even conference is it's kinda a huge failure. Uh, unfortunately, uh, no country will take the Jews, Jewish refugees. They all came together and uh, the Jewish groups were, were really demoralized or like nobody was ready to actually make any commitments at all. I think it was a Dominican Republic was the one, uh, the one honorable mention out of all this, they're like, you know what, we'll take like a hundred thousand Jews. We'll do it. The rest of you won't we'll we'll do it. But, uh, even, uh, in the us, FDR was not able to make any commitments because his own Congress, I had a lot of Southern Democrats and it would not do that the best we can kind of say about that whole, sorry, affair to kind of capture the mood of, you know, pro-Nazi and anti Jew in that time is that at least, uh, the German immigration quota, German and Austrian immigration quotas, cuz Austria had been just recently annexed by Germany. So that was a big refugee question obviously. Um, uh, at least those quotas were not gonna be changed in the us. So through that system, um, you know, more than almost, I think around 150,000 Jews were able to use those, at least those conduits to get out, to get to America. Yeah, it was not, it was not good. The, the whole scene is very much not good there. That poll I mentioned earlier that jumped out at me, uh, yeah, 1938 poll that was, uh, hosted by Gallup showed that about 45% of Americans thought Jews had too much power<laugh>. So this is a, this a period of time when this conference is literally happening to like help the Jews, no one will even do it, but somehow the Jews have more, too much power, which is, which is again, like kind of a common trope where like the enemy of the right, the enemy of bigots always have simultaneously too much power and are totally weak and inferior. It's always a weird dichotomy, but you know, in reality, the Jews did not have too much power, but Americans thought so, so that this is kind of the Testament to Coghlan and all these groups we've talked about before the German American bun, the silver shirts, all, all these proto Nazi, fascist American homegrown groups, also in the poll, they thought that 26% of those in the Americans poll thought Jeremy would be better off expelling all jus not particularly, uh, comforting in this period. And again, this is 1938, this is on the Eve of war. War hasn't even started yet and worse that 26% that had doubled in two years since the, since the poll had been done in 36. So like anti-Jewish sentiment. And I think we can say to some extent pro-Nazi sentiment is growing during this time,
Speaker 1It's kind of like what's happening today with this, this festering pro Q Andon perspective. They like, I think 17% of the nation believe that, you know, the QAN non conspiracy theory has some validity, but there's a larger, larger constituency that believes some of the things that Q Andon conspiracy theorists believe in may be true.
Speaker 2That is really a big part of why I wanted to have this conversation, cuz I feel like things did not just, uh, magically end with the, uh, Donald Trump's defeat to Joe Biden in, in 2020 election, the, the kind of rising tide of right wing populism bigotry is still occurring and it's still very much alive and maybe even increasing probably in, you know, in response to the fact that they're not in, they're not in power right now. I mean, there's some parallels here. So drum roll who are leading up to all of this, the stage I've said for you is that 90, 30, 8 midterms were terrible for FDR Democrats lost a ton of seats in the house, in the Senate. They happened to be fortunate enough in that they had such a big majority already from earlier elections when the tide really turned and FDR was first elected that they still had majorities. But now the coalitions that kind of controlled Congress were very much anti new deal. So all these kind of safeguards and things that had just been put in to kinda stabilize the economy, as things are starting to get worrisome back towards recession, depression, Congress starts taking those things apart, starts rolling back the new deal. And that's very worrisome to, uh, FDR administration and people who, who supported these programs or who depended on these programs. Many, many millions of Americans. This is not a good period. And then of course, 1939, as I, I would say all of this nastiness kind of peaks because you have, uh, all, all these fascist groups come together and have a big March through New York city and have a giant rally at Madison square garden. The Nazis are saying, you know, we're here deal with it kind of situation. This is now, uh, where Germany finally crosses the Rubicon, so to speak and actually starts the war. The thing that people were saying for years, oh, Germany's never actually gonna start a war. He's a lot of the businessmen in America were like, he's never actually gonna do it. And then he does, he, he actually invades Poland.
Speaker 1He'll never invade Ukraine. It's just, it's just CIA. Um, so right. Okay. You have this huge spiraling pro-Nazi sentiment within the United States. It's, it's growing and growing and growing. So I mean, I keep on bringing analogies to today, but we have Madison coor. We have mm-hmm<affirmative> Marjorie retailer green. We have Lauren Bobert. We have Matt gates. We have a whole bunch of people that are in positions of power who are promoting these anti-democratic ideals and that are attacking the institutions on a daily basis. I mean, at the time we're recording this Marjorie retailer, green is on trial for her participation in the January 6th riots. So who are those people in 1938
Speaker 2There, uh, a lot of them are outside, uh, the government, obviously you have some so far. Right? Uh, so,
Speaker 1So what you're saying is there were no actual senators and representatives that held these views publicly as the mega politicians are doing today. So that kind of scares the crap outta me.
Speaker 2Yeah. I mean, you definitely, you have some politicians from, uh, North Dakota, Idaho, you know,<laugh> places today that are still very much beds of right wing activity, you know, last candidate and 36 is from Kansas. You know, this is, these are kind of strongholds of far right views, but people that were actually pro fascists in the government, no, it wasn't really a thing. I think very much the fascists wanted to get Charles Lindbergh into power, but he was not in the government. He was kind of the face of America. First movement. This turning point in 1939 is, is really interesting because, you know, I think a lot of people were looking towards Lindberg. The good news on the FDR side and good news for America is that they knew that government spending to stimulate the economy, what they call priming the pump works. So they started doing a lot more of that at the end of 1938, beginning of 1939. And one of the ways they could do that actually is through defense spending. As we're watching all this awfulness unfold in Europe, in the late thirties, FDR was starting to build up America's, uh, military again, because really like we did not have a strong military at all. We had a lot of aging equipment. Uh, we had a small army and so that needed change. But of course the, this really off the isolation after Germany invaded Poland, FDR called with his, his allies in Congress called a special session in Congress to revisit the neutrality acts. I mean, Americans probably many have seen the movie, dun Kirk where, uh, British were, were chased out off the European continent. It's kind of like terrible, um, evacuation situation. Ultimately by the time you get into 1940, you know, a great Britain stands alone behind the scenes. You know, FDR is talking to, uh, prime minister Churchill, who is striking a to of defiance at home, but privately begging America to help. And so we've eventually amended the neutrality acts so that we could start selling some battleships through this program called lend lease to great Britain, an exchange for some BAS rights for us, which helped our Navy. These ships weren't even really that good, but it was a big moral victory. It was like, okay, there's some alliances, there's some support then, uh, there's this kind of quiet period. And then Germany invades, the Netherlands they pull in and then event. Ultimately the collapse of France is, is shocking in the spring of 1940, but literally while that's happening, Charles Lindberg is giving speeches about isolationism and how America should stay out of the wars and the business conservatives. They love him, they love this. This is like their siren song, the message they were looking for. And so, so the fascist menace in the United States is still very much there even though the economy is starting to get better. And it looks like the worst dangers of passed, cuz now we're going into an election year in 1940, where this would be unprecedented as far as FDR is concerned because we're talking about a third term, which had never happened before for us president and George Washington had set the precedent and, uh, FDR was notably kind of mom about what his plans were and he wasn't even sure if he wanted to run. I mean, dealing with all the stuff that he had dealt with as his health was also starting to deteriorate a bit was, is really, really tough and, and kind of privately. He was like, well, we'll have to see how things go in Europe. We, I may need to continue to lead here. And then ultimately he decided to do that. This was a much tougher situation because he had lost a lot of power, uh, in 1938. And you have these people like Charles Linberg and what we've now learned, this kind of my niche area is that you had Nazis funneling money into the Republican party. I wanna know so much more about that than even what I've seen. Yeah. So far, uh, because you know, it makes me think a lot about like the Russian money that was that's been coming in, uh, to Republican politician, how we learned the NRA was basically like a pass through for money. And, uh, we actually had a spy that we had prisoned Maria T for this, like, I don't know why we're not, we're not talking about that more. And of course, very interested to talk with our guests about, uh, Russian money in, in, uh, the midterms of 2022, this conditions in 1940 a feel in some ways, very familiar to what we're seeing today.
Speaker 1That's just amazing to me what was happening with the 1940 election. How did FDR ultimately decide, okay, yes, I'm going to run and then obviously he wins. Then what happens? What are the 1942 midterms looking
Speaker 2Like? Well, that's a different, I mean, so much changes between 19 38, 19 40, 19 42. I mean, this is talk about paradigm shifts. This is world war and major economic, political, cultural reconstructions going on. But the very basics are, you know, the, the Republicans run, um, this candidate, he's a, he's like a corporate leader. This guy Wendell Wilke is the G O P candidate. They're still kind of very much about FDR destroying capitalism and Marxists and socialists are, are kind of behind, behind all this. And we're all gonna be socialized. And, you know, it's, it's really quite familiar, unfortunately, to what we hear today. That's really where, where Wilkie and the G P are. There's a lot of murkiness about when FDR decides to run. And when he actually does, we'd have to dig a lot more into the archives. I, I don't think I don't even think historians really know. Uh,
Speaker 1So I guess, I guess my point was like, okay, we're leading towards a potential red wave happening in 2022 mm-hmm<affirmative> mm-hmm<affirmative> additionally 2024 is right around the corner. Joe Biden is not the youngest candidate we've ever put out there. So there's gotta be this sentiment growing in 19 38, 19 39 from the Democrats thinking, okay, well, Roosevelt lost a bunch of power in 1938. His health is probably failing right now. I mean, he's in a wheelchair. We see him in a wheelchair. Who are they thinking behind the scenes of like, who could possibly be the democratic front runner in the primary should Roosevelt not move forward with this?
Speaker 2I had a couple thoughts on that. I mean, I think FDR was very good about he, he was very good at PR too. Like you, you don't actually see him in the wheelchair that much at all. He had this, um, especially made car that he would drive around in a lot. It's actually on display and go see it at Hyde park, which is, um, not just a museum is his home, but it's also an archive. I've done research there. A lot of research was presidential papers. Are there Morgan thou famously the, the treasury secretary, uh, he, uh, wrote extensively in his diaries, which had become this really amazing historical source to understand what was going on in these D years. Um, yeah, FDR and FDR is having these fireside shots where he is using radio very effectively. So yeah, people are worried about his health. I think this becomes much more of an issue in 1944, whereas visa is very visibly ill. And in fact, this plays out famously in a, um, maybe not famously. I think some folks like, uh, Oliver stone would really try to promote this story of how democratic party bosses really, uh, disliked Henry Wallace. They were really concerned about a VP pick for FDR considering how I poor health he was. And Henry Wallace was very much kind of, he was a very like a Bernie Sanders ask type of politician. Very, very progressive, very, very vocal about it, a populist<laugh> to, and ultimately democratic party bosses. Uh, got him kicked off the ticket in favor of Harry Truman, who I think they saw much more as kind of a party man, uh, a team player and somebody who's not very different kind of ideological view as, as we learn later. So, but, but in 40, the election ended up being much more close between FDR and Wilkie for the popular vote. But in this case, you know, we, we look and get really upset about the electoral college and how, how it can really skew things for Democrats today. Well, the opposite is kind of true back in those days. The electoral college was really very much, uh, favorably biased towards the Democrat. So, um, even though, you know, they were separated, it was like 27 million to 22 million, you know, FDR. Uh, but I think he won by over like 400 electoral votes. So interesting. Just wasn't it was really lopsided in terms of, uh, victory, which is again, okay, this is like that moment where, uh, Gandolph knocks out Denethor it says, all right, prepare for battle. The troops are at the gate, the minister it, right, right. Sorry, I'm a nerd.
Speaker 1I know who the steward of Goor is. Okay. Back off.
Speaker 2Cause at this point it's 1940 it's this is a Casa blanket times. It's time to prepare for war and stop messing around. Pearl Harbor really shifted things because at that point, the us was in the war. Japan had through its attack, declared war in the United States. But then right, when that happened, Germany decided to declare war in the United States as well, like part of the access. And that
Speaker 1Really just, that just really changed everything at that point.
Speaker 2Yeah. Then you have full mobilization, but you asked me about the 1942 midterms. Uh, this is another situation where it's like, things are getting better. There's a lot of efforts being made and the Americans still punish the people who are doing that work, which is just so frustrating and 38, it happened and in 42 it's happening cuz you know, when the war started, there's just CA it's just chaos in America, right? There's mobilization everywhere, bureaucratic nightmare. There's also labor struggles going on that I might add, uh, because you know, workers are really feeling their oats. You know, really the depression is over, is really ending at this moment. America's going to full employment. Now this is really the end of that era. But voters punish FDR in the Democrats for this, you know, the war was not going well. Setbacks in, in north Africa took some time for that initial European campaign to get going. You know, the war in the Pacific was really not great. Initially heavy fighting. These are paradigm shifting, armed conflicts, right? But you start to get some turning points in the war after the midterms, but the midterms were not, were not great for FDR lost more seats. I think just to have this very slim majority at this point and there's, uh, or there's hearings in Congress about, uh, waste and corruption in all this bureaucracy for the, you know, military buildup. That's not great, although right. Wingers and, and others trying to prove this, they ultimately don't find it's not a blockbuster kind of situation, but it's, it creates enough noise where it upsets people. But then finally, you know, right after the midterms, there's some major turning points in Europe. The us is successful in north Africa and pushes into Italy, heavy fighting in Southern Europe and Italy. Some of the most brutal European fighting of the war up to that point and, and succeeds breakthrough there. And then also breakthroughs in the Pacific where the us really starts capturing territory that Japan held
Speaker 1How isolation was Wilkie compared to somebody like Lindberg. And the point that I'm trying to make is how things would have gone. Had Wilkie won the 1940 election and world war II.
Speaker 2There was a kind of a consensus among Democrats and Republicans writ large at this point that you can't ignore what's going on internationally. And two Republicans credit, you know, I don't think Wilkie was there. There's very much a, some daylight between where Wilkie is and where the America first Charles Lindberg folks are. Those people eventually kind of need to shut up not long after that because America enters the war. They don't fully shut up this turning point in 1940, which is why a Nazi on wall street focuses on this so much is I think there really was a turning point where Americans leaders and, and the people start to really see themselves as involved with the world, uh, in that you can't ignore the threat of fascism. I remember when I was going through like, uh, FBI records from those days, people were sending letters to the FBI saying they're Nazi spies running around, what are you doing about this? These are just like grandmas sending these in. So the people are like, people are hearing things in the news and they're plugged in and they're like, what's going on? So I feel like things are shifting. Maybe it's partially because the economy got better too. Who knows? Uh, maybe it's more like the war really got real when Germany stopped talking and started doing. And then of course, when Japan attacked us, the access is the whole thing. Then we can be mad at Germany. We can maybe ban at Japan. There are all this big dictator shift that we need to fight. You know, there's a pretty big transition. So Wilkie is kind of representative of this transition, where he is like, where FDR had to respond. I was just add is that, you know, they have these debates about the neutrality act and led lease and giving aid to great Britain. FDR would say he would kind of like, it's kind of very politics speak. He would say, you know, we're, we're not gonna send American boys over. And then in parenthesis we had like set things up and lifted embargoes and maybe preparing for war and Wilkie would hit FDR on this late in the campaign, Wilkie was really hitting FDR on this. You're gonna send our sons over to fight. And even though FDR, I don't think was too worried. I mean, he was concerned about beating Wilke. He had to respond publicly to those attacks. So just to let you know where, where he felt like he was vulnerable, he had to respond to those isolationist arguments.
Speaker 1So then using the lessons learned through what FDR had to go through during 1932 in the, the initial election, you know, with 19 36, 19 38, 19 40, what can we in 2022 prepare for in the next couple of years?
Speaker 2Well, I still hope that, you know, we are in a paradigm shift and maybe, uh, you know, the future is not set as we're recording this. We don't know what's gonna happen. November. Things may be different. Cuz you know, at this point, someone once said, you know, a history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme. And of course our motto is, uh, when it does the price goes up, are we gonna follow the same playbook as, as what's happened in the past where presidents lose in midterms, who knows things are kind of a lopsided asymmetric right now because it's a turnout battle. Democrats turn out, they outnumber Republicans by large majorities and lots of places. And unfortunately there's something that we haven't really talked about much, but what is the effect of C and especially in, in areas where people have been against health regulations and that's led to like real losses of life and in areas where voting margins may be actually very slim. And what is the role of Russian money and what is the role of, uh, corporations like say Disney who might typically give money to Republican politicians who are looking at the situation right now and saying actually, no, I don't wanna give money. You know, a bunch of corporations said they weren't gonna give money to, uh, the insurrectionists after January 6th, will that hold there's some folks tracking this stuff. And, and to some degree that has held disappointingly, not so much in other areas. So we don't know if we're gonna follow the same pattern. The, the trend is not great.<laugh> for the Democrats and very, very worrisome considering where the Republicans are. But then that still tells us nothing about what the 2024 election looks like. Even with these kind of open plans to overthrow the government using said majorities, I don't know, nobody's tested to see if that actually will work, especially now that everybody knows. And then just to add a little more flavor, meanwhile, these blockbuster hearings are supposed to start about January 6th and about people in Congress and up into the executive branch who are involved in trying to overthrow our government in 2020. So in those hearings have been pushed back, which means they're gonna be right during the height of election season. Do we have a precedent for that? I mean maybe Watergate, but this is, seems so much bigger in a lot of ways. So all that is to say, who knows?
Speaker 1Well, I mean, it just seems like more unbelievable than a movie that even Peter Jackson<laugh>, would've written, I am tentatively hopeful. I'm kind of scared, you know, because let's say Maga Republicans cause a red wave in November, 2022 and there's no repercussions and everybody is pushing harder and harder against the institutions that build our country. And let's say, you know, somebody in 2024 wins like DeSantis or somebody we've already seen him go after Disney and, and then, then they control the Supreme court. They, they control the house, they control the Senate and the presidency, like what will the country look like at that point? Like what, how does democracy survive? What will our day to day look like? I it's just something that is definitely in the back of my mind. So Jay, I, I really think that the next few months are gonna be the paradigm moment.
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah. And you know, there's three factors here, right? There's the hearings and possible arrests. There's the pandemic and there's war Ukraine and all three of those things, none of which have been decided are gonna have a big impact on this midterm and the, and the next two years. So in some ways it's like 1940, like these things that, that can all ha happen in this big change moment, any one of those major factors could turn the tide, but we don't know.
Speaker 3We don't know.
Speaker 2We are back here with Adam Slater, special guest. Thank you so much for being here. Uh, Adam, uh, works in strategic consulting campaign expertise and public opinion research and not just domestic or perhaps more focused globally to get accurate information about what people are thinking as we go into, uh, election season, not just here in the United States, but uh, all over the place. We, uh, we were just talking about a disturbing story in, in 1940 about, uh, foreign influence in an election. Uh, it's a story that sounds familiar these days and kind of trying to get a sense of just the state of play in the us and in the world about what is going on with, uh, uh, the fight to preserve democracy.
Speaker 4It's a battle that we're currently in. And I think as, as you had mentioned earlier, it's unfortunately difficult to know which way we're gonna go right now. The polling is, is really showing that within the Republican party, we have a pretty interesting split. Now we have about half of Republicans right now stating that they are more Republicans than they are Trump. And we have about half the party saying that they're more Trump than Republicans. And that's having a lot of the establishment Republicans trying to walk a fairly tight rope to be able to keep their coalition together. They know that if they look to push away some of fringe views that Trump and his acolytes have that they are going to be headed for an electoral disaster. Uh, we see that with some of what's happening with Liz Chaney. Um, we see that where she had been, uh, had agreed to be a part of the January 6th committee and had been pushed out of, had been centered by the Wyoming Republican party had been stripped of her leadership by minority leader McCarthy. So she and, and now is in a political battle for her life in Republican primary. So we have the people who are looking to stand up and, and try to say that they wholly reject the conspiracy theory wing of what, what is really taking over the Republican party right now, and they're being punished for it. And we also see establishment leaders trying to have it both ways. So you'll see, uh, Mitch McConnell try to be able to, to embrace some, but reject some and say it was good, but also say it was bad as you see those happening. Those are really just efforts to be able to try to keep that coalition together. Cause when you're in a two party system, you can't have that fractured breakaway. It's a very similar thing to what was happening in 2016 when the Democrats were really trying to have, even after the tough, uh, primary battle between Hillary and Bernie to try to keep that coalition together. Um, so that's, what's happening now in the Republican sector.
Speaker 1So what are some of the effects that you see when you see this FISURE within the Republican party? What effects do you see this having after the last round of redistricting? And do you see this as a two party system? I know that it's still capital R Republican capital D Democrat, but because there is this very succinct FISURE within the Republican party, are we not witnessing a, a three party system essentially where you see a mitosis happening within the Republican party and you see districts that are very, very Trump and you have districts that are more traditionalist Republicans.
Speaker 4I don't know if, if it'll break out that way. I think what we're gonna see is that Republicans will ultimately fall in line as they often do. We saw that after the access Hollywood tape in 2016, when there was this moral outrage that happened, and then you had Paul Ryan famously come out and say, Hey, I'm voting for the ticket where days before he was ready to they're ready to cut this guy loose as an aside, quite a departure from the Republican party of 2004, when Bush really had that really a big part of their platform to have someone who clearly has people praying to him rather than being someone who had been God fearing, like Republican candidates had been in the past, but I don't think it's gonna shake out quite that way. I think that what we will have is a slow and steady, probably at least this round that the Republicans will basically, despite their kind of intraparty fighting. There's one thing that they hate more than the traditional Republicans or the Trump Republicans, depending on what side of that fight you're on. It's the Democrats, it's the radical left and that's what they're gonna unite around.
Speaker 2Yeah. I mean, I, I think about the messaging ward, I'm super curious behind the scenes polling, when, uh, Florida governor DeSantis wages wore on Disney, you know, where, where is the line? Right. You know, this, we can see the split. Obviously there are many Republicans standing in line right now to enter, uh, the magic kingdom, right.<laugh> yes. And when the governor is insinuating that this company is led by sex criminals, the messaging and polling and subsequent action is, is real cognitive, uh, dissonance going on.
Speaker 4Yeah. I think that people, particularly after Trump, the American public right now is a little more, I wouldn't say thick skinned. I would say that they're a little more, um, accustomed to some of these kind of dust ups that happen along the way. I think the bigger news outta Florida right now is that the Santa has now sent the map. He'd vetoed the Republican legislature's redistricting map because it wasn't aggressive enough and has taken a more offensive posture to try to ensure that they maximize the amount of seats. Very different from what Texas has been doing. Texas had taken the approach of, they had a few competitive districts. I think there are probably eight competitive districts in the state. And what they've done is they've just taken those apart and pushed as many as they can into safe Republican seats and a few safe democratic seats as well. And limiting that amount. It's a really interesting tactic because I think that that signals a bit of a defensive posture that over the next 10 years, they believe that the demographics of Texas are gonna move in such a way that Republican majorities that are deeply seen, could be lost. If there are wave elections mid decade, and what they're doing right now, and what they've done with the map is basically ensure that those seats are gonna be held by Republicans all the way through the 2030 census.
Speaker 2I preemptively apologize to listeners. I saw some data, but I can't remember where I saw it, but it was a data on the political complexion of new arrivals, Texas compared to Florida. Essentially the, the headline was new arrivals in Florida, tend to be more Republican and new arrivals in Texas tend to be more Democrat. So that might explain some of this defensive versus offensive posture.
Speaker 4Yeah, it's very interesting when, uh, I had been both a, uh, you know, someone who, who studies public opinion very closely, but also had tried to do my part in 2020 and had called, uh, into Florida. I think we were given a choice between calling into Florida, calling into Georgia. Um, I felt like Florida was, was more of the uphill battle, so wanted to ticket there. And it was really interesting to try to talk to. So I think at that point in time, we were calling democratic voters. It was a lot more Trump than I had expected there
Speaker 2There's the demographic changes. And then there's this kind of nebulous thing. This is why your work is so fascinating at Adam, the messaging war, what messages are resonating and what's causing the changes in behavior. And then this kind of disturbing kind of third factors are there other influences perhaps outside the us influences that are changing some of this messaging? You know, so is it Putin said, uh, Russia's getting canceled. I'm like, it sounds like he's a Fox news funded.
Speaker 4The messaging is gonna be, it's gonna be really interesting and you can start to hear it in some of the politicians, cause they're looking at the polls and they're making judgements about it really on the democratic side, it's gonna be about the economy and it's gonna be about healthcare and it's gonna be two different arguments within that. On the economy side, it's gonna all be all about the recovery, that this is the president that led us from a cataclysm to a very strong recovery, with substantial jobs, numbers that continue to do well as we really try to build back better. And then on the Republican side, it's gonna be about crime. It's gonna be about immigration and it's gonna be about the economy, but it's gonna take a different approach where it's all about inflation, the cost of goods, gas prices that are plastered everywhere that are very easy to see. That's what it's gonna be in a nutshell over the next few months.
Speaker 1Yeah. I've been proactively tearing off those. I did this stickers off of each pump that I go try to buy gas from. So it seemed to be common belief that 2022 is going to be a slaughter for Dems. However, what have you seen with redistricting with pole numbers that you've gotten in recently that might either bolster that belief or might be, uh, antithetical to that talking point?
Speaker 4It's a mixed bag. Um, and I think at the time of this recording, it's, it's obviously too early to say, here's what we know right now. There are historical trends and historical headwinds that are in the Democrats face. Every president loses seats in up until now his first term, that first midterm is tough. So you take a look back to modern history. Trump lost seats, Clinton losts Reagan, lawsuits, Kennedy lawsuits, even Lincoln lawsuits in that first midterm, especially on the house side. So it's gonna happen. The Senate races are a little bit more about state issues. You know, people try to nationalize them back and forth, but the Senate kind of offers a little bit of a different dynamic focusing on the house. We've been in a series now where we've been in how many change elections, every single one dating back to 2012 has been a change election, 20 14, 20 16, 20 18, 20 20. So the public right now is in a bad mood and there's little that Democrats can do to, to shake them out of it. I think they're gonna try really hard by really focusing on the messages and also hopefully trying to elevate what a Republican led congressional future would look like, what that agenda would be, how that might take things away. Fear of losing things is a very powerful emotion that politicians will try to push on. But I think, I think this will be difficult. The house will follow largely national sentiment, but the redistricting, I think will be, I think Democrats have done a better job this time through, in New York, in Illinois, in California. But there are states like Ohio where it's a fairly competitive state where they could be shut out something like 13 to two statewide, which is just crazy when you're getting between 45 and 40 to 7% of the vote along the way there. So there are states like that
Speaker 2Forecasting, what could happen is, is tough in a podcast where we're gonna record this and edit it and Polish it up and put it out there. And who knows where we'll be one of the things that we haven't talked yet about at all? Well, there's kind two topics that popped in my head. One is, you know, you have power of negative partisanship. I, I think Democrats want to run on positive messages and it's, it's so much easier to galvanize people against things, right? You know, this better than on most people and what we haven't talked about yet, what we can forecast is what's gonna happen with Roe V. Wade, you know, and, and the, again, the fear of losing things is going to become a very, very, very real. Yeah. I wonder about get out the vote campaigns around those things.
Speaker 4I, I think that that is one thing that is, I know at this point in time, we know it's gonna happen. We know that Supreme court's in a six, three, um, conservative majority right now, now justice, uh, or oral justice when she takes the bench Jackson's confirmation, there won't change the ideological nature of the court. So we will be looking largely at what Roberts and Kavanaugh are gonna do on these issues. We probably know how the rest of justice are gonna are gonna decide. Um, but if, you know, Mississippi gets upheld, if there are other copycat laws that, that we know deeply Republican legislatures are gonna be enacting there, there are several states. I, I believe that they kind of an automatic law that will go into effect as soon as Roe V. Wade is struck down. So that could be a galvanizing force Jay for this. And if that did happen, and it's tough to play politics with an issue like that when women's health is, is on the line, but that's the reality of what's happening right now.
Speaker 1Speaking of galvanizing the perspectives as a result of Roe V, Wade being overturned, have you noticed any data out there that can suggest that there might be some actual force or pushback that will lead to anything moving forward?
Speaker 4Unfortunately, polling is a pretty poor predictor of those types of things. When you're taking a look at polling, it's really about a snapshot in time. And there are two things that we really know in the polling industry. One that people are poor remembers of things that they did in the past. So when you ask them, did you vote or have you done this in the past 12 months? People aren't really thinking like that. The other thing that we know is that people are very poor predictors of what they're gonna do in the future. So pulling really comes down to a snapshot in time. And I think people can say that they might be, we can think that, oh yeah, this is gonna be the issue that really tips me the wrong way. Or in this case, in the midterm actually convinces me to come out and vote because we know that turnout is up until 2018, um, had been quite low in the midterms. So I think it's more of a, it could be an energizing factor to get those who are kind of those drop off voters who vote presidential elections, but don't vote in midterms to actually come and vote in midterm elections.
Speaker 1You just cited 2018 as a very high turnout midterm election. Are you seeing any hints that 2022 is showing the same number of people energized to go vote as they were in 2018 or not?
Speaker 4I, I haven't seen anything conclusive yet. I would say that right now Republicans are probably have the enthusiasm gap, but that hasn't really mattered in a lot of recent elections. So in 2020 Republicans had the enthusiasm edge kind of throughout the run up to the election. And I think it got, I think it narrowed once we kind of got closer and Kalo got picked and things actually started to tighten a little bit. Um, I think like the 2018 election was going to be democratic all the way. And then at the very end we had the Kavana here, as Trump said, it was, it was Kavanaugh, it was crime, it was caravan. So we had an influx in border crossings. We had this kind of made up thing that Republicans like to do to talk about all this high crime in the, in the cities to make you scared. When in fact crime has been, you know, had been, had been going down at that point in time around the country. And then we all said Kavanaugh, which is a very divisive Senate confirmation hearing, where it was as close as, as I've seen, I've watched these things pretty carefully as, as a nominee, getting derailed between Kavanaugh's speech and Lindsey Graham's rallying Republicans in the back room after Dr. Ford's testimony, it kind of came back and then it made a partisan fight and that really energized Republicans to show up. Um, whereas 2018 could have very well, been a lot more like 2006. And even though Democrats won 39 40 seats in the house, they did lose, uh, seats in the Senate, which is the first time that's happened in, in quite a while.
Speaker 2We've talked a lot about on the show about paradigm shifts, what it's like to live through interesting times, as they say, I feel bad asking a lot of these questions cuz it's like, we're in, we're in kind of this space where, uh, as I described previously, you know, it's like any little thing could change the whole landscape, uh, when you're in kind of these big change moments that last for years, you know, I think we're, we're kind of in these structural change for years and yeah, there's these big kind of wild cards. There's also, there's the pandemic, which we haven't talked about yet. There's the economy, there's the influences X us Russia and perhaps China too. And, uh, the parallels here, I I'm thinking in 1940 is, you know, how all these things are kind of connected the global fight for democracy, very real in Ukraine. It's tough to predict what's gonna happen next. What can people do to combat these things? Especially when we have already kind of established that negative partisanship, it seems to be a powerful force.
Speaker 4There's a lot going on. Right? So I think that there are all of these issues that the electorate is really thinking through or not thinking through themselves. I think we, as, as folks who are kind of looking at this from more of a macro perspective, there's a lot of things that people maybe they thought about and they don't understand how that really impacts what they're doing or, or how they're thinking, particularly when it relates to electoral politics. I would say that on the pandemic, we have a really, really impatient elector right now. And I think you have a couple of factors at play. I think one of them is you have folks on the right who are saying anything that we're doing here or anything that we did is an affront to our freedoms. I spent a lot of time out in rural Illinois and I was in a parking lot yesterday and a nice bumper sticker, something along the lines of viruses come and go, but losing our freedoms are forever. And so when you're thinking about that, you kind of have this very entrenched viewpoints that are serving as a floor for Trump and Republicans, and that are really Matic of some of the government distrust and hatred toward Democrats for even putting in any regulations and, and restrictions in the first place. So I think like Biden's probably not getting as much credit as he should be for a lot of the pandemic leading us out of the pandemic. He's just stuck at that. You know, 42 is normally a great number. Jackie Robinson is bill Clinton's presidency, but Biden seems really stuck at, at that 42 number. Um, there's some, some evidence, some polling I've seen that starts to push him that way. I think the pandemic response is that number one issue, that's his best testing one and that's, he's polling probably about five, six points better than his approval rating on that issue. And that seems to be the, you know, looking at that high forties number, I've seen things like 47 on handling the pandemic. So I think that there's stuff there that there's some Republicans there that even entrenches they are, are giving him credit for that, but not a lot. It's a really uphill battle there. And then I'd say just on like kind of the global right wing messaging, it's a much tougher nut to crack because I can talk about some of the polling quote unquote in, in Russia right now. I, I don't even think it's fair to like actually run opinion polls into totalitarian countries because it's basically like, do you support the war or do you want to be in prison? Is really what the public opinion question should be. We also see some evidence there that despite Google searches and some third party travel data that people in Russia being asked if they're moving out of Russia is like an all time low. So anything coming out of there right now are not things that, that you can trust. I don't have much to offer in terms of, in terms of how to combat some of that. But I will say that one of the big dangers I think is America and, and a lot of countries are very in individualistic. When you take that kind of approach, there are dangers to like, what, what does that mean for the outsiders, for the others as you guys have called it on the show. And I think that the more inclusive and community based people are, the more that people are able to fit in and blend in, in society, the less likelihood of scapegoating there is. I mean, I think like just to give a quick historical element, we saw a very divided recovery in 2016. I think this is one of the, this is one of the reasons for 2016 is that after the great recession, there was a very divided recovery. Georgetown had a study on this where those who were more educated, lost almost zero jobs, those who had some college drop down just a little bit, and then they recovered pretty quickly. Those with a high school degree only they lost a lot of jobs and never really got back all the way through Obama's presidency. So through that, you had the opportunity because of that economic turmoil to have people start to scapegoat other groups, we saw that with some of the immigration rhetoric that popped up. So you see that in, in a very real way through, um, what happened in 2016,
Speaker 2I'm reminded of work I did in 2018 when, when we were trying to bring everybody together and we had an administration that was pretty scary, autocratic, fascist, friendly, and I noticed that nothing makes you feel better than going out and doing grassroots, uh, organizing. It was just registering people to vote. Uh, here locally in Baltimore. And I came up with this catch phrase was, uh, community is the antidote to fascism. Most folks I'm working with, didn't go to school and get a PhD in history, take care. Before you do that. Kids there's a famous book by Hannah reads called origins of totalitarianism. She coined the term, the finality of evil. So she became famous kind of even outside academic circles, but she writes a lot about how individualism is kind of this way in, for totalitarian regimes, that people are atomized essentially separated into discrete units. And then it's very clear that kind of community based activities approaches are really like the kind of antithesis of that I really struggle with is that negative partisanship is the only thing that gets people out. And it's really hard to sell the idea of community when really that is the main, it seems like that's the main key to getting through this moment with our institutions of democracy preserved.
Speaker 4I, I forgot who it was, but there was a study done. There were two studies that I think will be really valuable for your listeners to hear one was this element of they, they ran a split sample, so they had kind of a, a control and a test group. And they had in the control group, they just had people kind of fill out their stuff on different issues on the test sample. They basically told people, you don't have to worry about anything. They kind of gave them. They conditioned them with hope in a way your family's gonna be fine. Everything's gonna be fine. Like you don't have to worry about, like, imagine you're a world where you don't have to worry about anything. And in that experiment, Republicans behaved a lot more like Democrats. So there's something there. And I think Biden really, uh, hit on this in 2020 during his election, there was this hope of fear, light over or darkness, uh, rhetoric that he was really drilling into. And part of that, it was an electoral strategy that wasn't just making people feel good about being American. It was kind of breaking down some of those walls along the way that we try to see with Republicans, scaring people. I think for the most part, you know, I think we had Trump as a real boogieman still do, but I think that there are things there that did work that will be difficult to replicate, I think, as an incumbent, rather than a challenger, but I think there's a playbook there. I really do
Speaker 2That campaign did hit the record most votes. So we had some empirical data
Speaker 4That's true. The other one was around, there's a recent study by Brookman who in September, 2020 had taken regular Fox news viewers and had them watch CNN instead. And what they found was that the extremism ended up being curtailed significantly, particularly around your shoes of race. So Biden and Democrats support for extreme racial policies, the extreme racial protest after George Floyd's murder, having that, those are the type of things that just by taking away Fox news, that these viewers were able to basically look a lot more like more mainstream Americans
Speaker 1From a counterpoint though. They can just as easily say that that is just CNN, indoctrinating them with left as perspectives. And that Fox news is the default
Speaker 2Position. You know, feels like we are at this turning point. I saw some in foreign punditry early on when the war in Ukraine started that, you know, this was gonna be bad for right-wing populism all over the globe, including the United States, ultimately all roads lead to Putin as, as it would seem, moneywise influence wise that, you know, he, he had overplayed his hand and that this was gonna push this paradigm shift against him ultimately, and hurt right-wing populace, although yeah, the recent events, uh, recent success of Victor Iran, Hungary is not great. In fact, that Lappen is still very close, is not great. I'm going to leave this on a hopeful note and especially looking back at 1940 and today reactions to atrocities, you know, that did eventually shape American public opinion. I think the Holocaust had a long effect. I, I think sadly, you know, we've, we've seen the kind of shelf life perhaps of that as we lose the witnesses from that era, but that ultimately, uh, with, with all these global issues connected that we're just as likely to see kind of a push against right wing populism that may even trickle down into some, uh, some local races<laugh> here in, in the United States. What more can we do? What more can listeners that are Nazi on wall street do to help turn the tide in their own, in their own mini messaging battles in their neck of the woods.
Speaker 4So there are a few, a few interesting things that we can kind of glean from the data, which will help to understand who we might wanna target and how we might want to go about doing it. Think about what's the last like election and two demographic polls that are really interesting to watch are the gender gap and the education gap. We talked a bunch about kind of education and, and how those are kind of manifesting. But when you couple these, when you bring those two things together, what we do is, you know, in 2010, the Republican edge for non-college educated men was eight. Now it's 20 in the 2022 polling. When we look at college educated women, it was 10 in 2010. Now it's 38. So we basically have those two groups. Non-college educated men, college educated women as almost the base of those respective groups. And then we have college educated men. We have non college educated women, which are kind of turning into the swing groups. So I think with that, with knowing some of that targeting, we have those clues of how it might turn out. One thing Democrats are actually doing right now, which is taking a page from the 2020 playbook is they're having essentially paid organizers, go and talk to their friends about why it's so important to vote and the issues that are gonna be impacted. So there's almost a, a more local element. So I think donating money is an easy thing to do. I think what's probably gonna be more impactful in why the Democrats are adopting the strategy right now is because having conversations with people and better engaging in your community, serves those dual purposes of one, making people feel like they're a part of something. And two, it helps hearing it from a friend it's really all about the messenger and Democrats right now are struggling with messengers in their party to be able to break through a very crowded and confusing news cycle. People are, wanna rely on people that they know they like and they trust. And that's where Democrats are hopeful to, to have some of the strategies. So if you wanna help go talk to your friends and you don't even have to get paid for it.
Speaker 1What are some of the most high valued races that you see in the upcoming 2022 election that we should be focusing on more
Speaker 4When folks are reading polls? And this is a tough one because there are a lot of polls being thrown at people. People are saying, oh, the pollster's got it wrong in 2016. And they missed it again in 2020. I think that's the wrong narrative. I think in 2016, it up being a very close race. It moved quickly toward the end a week out. It changed a lot when Comey,
Speaker 1Thank you, Comey.
Speaker 4Yeah, exactly. But they actually did a poll. And during that time, I think it was something like they kind of matched back and said one week out, those who made up their mind at one week out, which was around the time that Comey had it one or two weeks out, Trump won those voters like three to one. And it was a big group of people for that late. Um, and when they made up their mind there, Trump won them all. And that was really enough to tip it. And it wasn't things that polls could pick up quite that quickly. And there was also a misinterpretation by the media there that, that, oh, Hillary's ahead. So therefore she's easily going to win because of the consistency, but it was close the entire way through and many times, um, with the exception of a few states where there was some misses national polls had it thinly, but a consistently, but those were all within the margin error in 2018, pollsters probably had their best cycle of the decade. But then we look ahead to 2020. We really have some interesting things happening where pollsters nailed Biden number on the money, 51 52, right in that number. And then again, the media misinterpreted, the results pollsters had trumpet like 42 with a fair bit of people who were undecided. And the media basically takes it and says, oh, Biden has a 10 point lead. He's golden. What they really miss? There is the margin. It's not about the margin, it's about the undecideds and how those might break. So a lot of people have offered these shy Trump theories. Uh, people are just kind of are pulling that back as a way to explain 2016 actually think there's more evidence to have a shy Trump phenomenon happen in 2020 than we do in 2016. So in anyway, when you're reading polls, look at the audience, pollsters may have an RV for registered voters, an LV for likely voters or an a for adults. Those are going to tell you who they're actually talking to. And the most after polls are going to be the likely voter poll. So you have adults, you have registered voters, a subset of that. You have likely voters, a subset of that. And you really have a small subset of that when you're talking about a midterm election, the date taken. So what else is happening during that time? In January, for instance, there was a poll that Republicans had a more favorable opinion of Putin than Biden. That made sense in January, but you can read that in March. You're like, man, that's pretty bad. The sample size. And then the margin between candidates, those are really the important ones to do. And the other thing too, is that when you look at the approval rating for an incumbent president, that is very likely either going to be his or her vote share and or the share that their party will take in a midterm election. That's why I'm really focusing on that 42 number, because right now it seems like a bit of a ceiling for the Democrats, which is getting scary. So five top Senate races to watch. There are a couple gubernatorial races, and then there are a bunch of house races, but we don't have time for all that. I will say that those top five races right now, I'd start. Number one with Pennsylvania. Pati is retiring, you know, and this is really, I think a test right now of what Bernie supporters were offering in 2016. They said, we, we need to give people a reason to come out and vote. We can't put a generic D on the ballot. And so I think we're, we're gonna see that play out here. We have Federman been the Lieutenant governor likely to emerge us, nominate over lamb and, and Malcolm Kenyata. So we have a more progressive candidate in a swing state, but a state that Democrats really should win. Um, and then we have McCormick and Dr. Oz on the other side. So it's gonna shape up to be really interesting one. So it's really shaping up to kind of be the, the Trump and Bernie acolyte type of element there. We saw a preview of this in 2018 when Gillum narrowly lost to DeSantis. So we're gonna, we're gonna see this again there, I would say number two is gonna be Ron Johnson in Wisconsin. He broke his two term promise. And then he said he would, he wants to repeal Obamacare, uh, only to try to walk that back. He's comparing Russian talking points on sewing. This information, his approval right now is really underwater. 33% approved, 45% disapproved, but there's a late primary. So Democrats aren't gonna know who the nominee is there until August. So that's one to keep an eye on and then I'll sum it up with three. But Ralph Warnock, a great candidate in Georgia, it's gonna be a tough race for him. It was a close, he had two close 20, 20 races, the original, then the runoff, uh, he's a great candidate. He's going up against first Walker. The best thing that Democrats have going for them there in Georgia is Stacy Abrams. And luckily she's on the ballot in November in a rematch. So you have a gubernatorial race in Georgia. You also have a gubernatorial race in the Illinois, which is, which is heating up to it's my adopted home state. So those I think are the top ones to watch. But as the maps are getting finalized, we're seeing that those house races are becoming less and less competitive along the way. And it's going to be fewer and fewer competitive house races as time goes on, the Senate is gonna be where it's at. Governorships are gonna be where they're at and obviously the presidency too.
Speaker 2Wow. That was a great Roundup applause sound effect. The background, there is what we need. That's great. There's a lot going on folks. And so paying close attention to these races and the polling is important. And talk to your friends, obviously as the key component to actually, uh, put the small changes that matter so greatly in a paradigm shift moment,
Speaker 4You know, I think people kind of look at how could Trump have become president and we see these realignments happen over time, and I'm really happy to come join a show that is bringing light to the fact that history does repeat itself. And we have to be watching for that very carefully because the bad things will happen again, if we don't.
Speaker 1And I think that one thing that I've learned over the last couple of years is that it takes work to maintain a liberal democracy and that it's not something that is an organic process. It's not something that just naturally occurs. It's something that needs to be worked on incrementally throughout every election. And I am one that has learned to appreciate that steadfast work that it takes to have that be established year after year. And that we've had essentially a, a liberal democracy over the last century. It's just astounding to me. And hopefully
Speaker 5A Nazi on wall street is brought to you by elusive films maker of the, a Nazi on wall Street's film and television series. It was recorded and edited by EJ Russo. Original music was written and performed by Joseph Maholin. We can't bring these stories to life on screen without your support. So please consider donated to our crowdfunding campaign@elusive-films.com. That's elusive hyphen films.com for Jason Wexel I'm EJ Russo. Thank you. And we will see you next episode.