Welcome back to the left of Old North.
I'm your host Adrian and your other host, CJ.
And today we are coming off the heels of January 6th and also well a much more peaceful January
6th, right?
99% peaceful.
Yes, but the bar for that is in hell really.
Yeah, you're right.
Anyway, we are coming off the heels of that and also there was a Together We Rise rally
on January 5th and then the very next day it was announced that the national or that
the North Carolina Supreme Court was going to kick back or get it get a kickback to decide
on the Jefferson Griffin versus Allison Riggs race.
So we're going to talk about that.
We're also going to talk about a couple other happenings with the weather.
Let's talk the weather today, CJ.
Sure.
Why not?
Yeah.
And then we'll also talk about future skies in what could possibly be a 2026 run for the
Senate.
But you'll have to stick around for that at the end of the episode because we've got a
lot to cover in terms of what the fuck is going on in the North Carolina Supreme Court
race.
CJ, would you like to enlighten some people as to what the hell?
Yeah.
So what's going on?
Yeah.
That's a good question.
So like Adrian just said, essentially the case to decide what to do in the case of Jefferson
Griffin and Allison Riggs has been kicked back to the North Carolina State Supreme Court.
There's also two other court cases going on related to this.
But at this point, I need like a flow chart and maps and all this stuff to keep track
of what's what.
But it's absolutely insane.
Just a very, very short Reader's Digest summary.
Basically November came along and this past November came along and we voted for State
Supreme Court.
We had Allison Riggs, Democrat, and Jefferson Griffin, Republican.
Now Allison Riggs has been on the state Supreme Court for a while.
Jefferson Griffin went to take her seat.
And so naturally they have the election and he's ahead initially, then recounts and provisional
ballots and all that stuff occur.
And Riggs is ahead by about 700 votes.
And then Griffin comes along and says, well, I don't like that.
How about I try to challenge 60,000 votes?
60,000, six zero comma zero zero zero.
That's absolutely insane and unheard of.
Like this isn't even a situation like in 2020 when Trump called up Georgia and was like,
I need 11,780 something votes.
Like I think he had the exact number plus one.
This isn't that it's not Jefferson Griffin calling up his buddies in the court and saying,
I need 735 votes.
This is him and the NCGOP using their legal apparatus to try and just completely disenfranchise
60,000 voters across North Carolina, especially.
And it is weird how like it is weird how much the pendulum swings towards disenfranchising
black voters.
Yeah.
Now I'm not saying that they did that on purpose, but it is a little odd that somewhere around
half of them happen to be black voters.
Yeah.
Here's the thing.
So what they are trying, the kinds of voters that they're trying to get thrown out are
covered under UOCAVA, which is the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act.
And this is something that helps people who are in the uniformed services.
This also sometimes helps.
It's more often service members, but it also helps out people who are like stationed overseas
as contractors or are spouses of uniformed service members, things like that.
I actually have some personal experience with this because I was an FVAP representative
at several of my bases.
I helped people get registered to vote.
And let me tell you, not that easy to be an illegitimate UOCAVA voter.
You have to do this at least 45 days before federal elections.
This is not like a last minute thing.
You have to make sure that you're getting it signed by a representative over there.
They have to check it and then you have to mail it.
So we already know that mail-in voting can have delays and can have complications and
all these other things.
But throwing these voters out is not only a slap in the face to people who are overseas
that are still North Carolinians, but it's also a slap in the face to people who are
serving in the military.
And I just don't understand why.
I do understand.
It's because it's an easy group target.
They're not going to be here to come and fight for it.
But then you also have the people who are covered under HAVA, which is Help America
Vote Act.
This was an act that was passed by the United States Congress in 2002 during Bush's administration.
And this helped to allow states to meet new standards and replace voting systems, improve
election administration.
This was supposed to make the act of registering and voting easier.
And so folks 20 years ago who registered under HAVA are now being challenged as illegitimate
voters.
This is not a coincidence.
They're just trying to gunk up the system.
And here's another little tidbit that I think is interesting.
So WUNC, Rusty Jacobs on January 9th, which today is three days ago, released a story
basically saying that the attorney that made the order to the judge to block the certification
of the Supreme Court election went around to the opposing council, never talked to them,
just straight up went to the judge, said, this is our issue with this election and now
we're here.
So the way that they tell this story, right?
The ex parte motion took place on Tuesday before Judge Cynthia Sturgis in a Wake County
courtroom.
Sturgis, a registered Republican, at first granted the motion, which was then filed by
Craig Schauer, who represents Jefferson Griffin.
This is the attorney in question.
Griffin, a North Carolina court of appeals judge, keep that in mind, is the GOP candidate
seeking to unseat Democrat Alison Riggs from her associate justice post.
And after initially granting the ex parte motion, Judge Sturgis later withdrew it because the
court became concerned that neither the respondent nor the respondent's attorneys received appropriate
notice of the motion, which is required by local rules and rule 65 of the rules of civil
procedure.
And if you don't understand legalese, that means they didn't talk to the other team before
filing this suit, which is illegal.
So we shouldn't be talking about this anymore.
This should be over as far as I'm concerned, but I'm not in the legal system here in North
Carolina.
So it really doesn't matter what I think.
Wait, wait.
Everyone's doing shady shit?
No, say it ain't so.
I know.
Who could have seen this coming?
Who could have seen this?
Like, and this, this is actually huge.
It's almost like they have to use this unfair and possibly illegal mean to literally block
the will of the people in an election that was decided by, yes, a very slim margin.
Nobody's arguing that.
But hey, man, you can score 100 points in a basketball game, but if the other team scored
101, you lost.
Yeah, exactly.
And I was watching the NCDP had a little live stream tonight that was essentially the state
of the race.
So just kind of catching everyone up to speed on how we got to this point, where we go,
possible outcomes, that kind of thing.
And of course, Justice Riggs was on there talking for a little bit.
And she mentioned that her parents who have lived in North Carolina for decades and her
father who served his country for, I think she said about 30 years, both their votes
are being challenged.
Her parents are being challenged.
And this is absolutely insane.
And I don't think we can emphasize enough how absurd and just out of the ordinary this
sort of thing is.
Whenever you have an election, you know, election day votes are cast.
You go through the ballot cure process.
You go through the provisional ballots, absentee ballots, all that stuff.
You count those out, right?
And then you have the opportunity to ask for, you know, you have an opportunity to ask for
a couple of recounts, really.
And then that's the end of it, you know?
And it sucks to lose, but yeah, it should be.
It sucks if you lose, but you know what?
That's how it goes.
Or at least that's how it is supposed to go in a healthy democracy in a campaign where
both parties, both candidates, I should say, respect the rule of law and respect the foundations
of our democracy.
But I think it goes to show and it says a lot about who Jefferson Griffin is as a person,
as an American and possibly as a judge.
Definitely as a judge.
Yeah.
But you know, it says a lot about him that this is what he's trying to do.
Yeah.
Far be it from a, for a judge to be litigious.
I'm not saying that that's, but the fact that they are going to such extremes, just it's
not enough for them to lose by the count twice.
Yeah.
It's, it's drawing it out.
It's blocking the certification.
It's calling up his friends in the legislature to get certain things put on the docket to
take the legs out from underneath the NCDP.
To be able to challenge this because unless y'all aren't paying attention, the general
assembly is in session right now.
And so are the Supreme Court justices.
I mean, I don't know if they're hearing cases right now, but they've started their jobs.
They're, they're, they're official now.
And the thing is we only had the one, the one Supreme Court justice race this year,
but I want you all to imagine that something like this happens again, where maybe it's
a couple thousand votes even.
It's not 734, but it's a couple thousand votes.
Imagine four years down the line when we have three Supreme Court seats up for grabs, three
of them.
Imagine two years from now when we have one up for grabs with current associate justice
Anita Earls, who's going to be running for reelection.
And that's why it's so crazy that like we have these independent races that are partisan
that you say like, Oh, well I shouldn't, it's really just a candidate.
It's not necessarily a party.
No, it absolutely is the parties.
Absolutely it is.
And then a couple of days ago we saw that the Democrats almost had no teeth on this
that we were just kind of hoping and praying and making sure that like, Oh, you know, let's
talk about on social, but like ultimately she's going to win and the truth will out.
Right?
It's now January 12th.
We are over two months from the original election.
There's no certification.
There's no indication that he's going to give up anytime soon.
So what I'm glad to see is that a, the national democratic party is bringing attention to
this and is footing legal fees.
As far as I know, I don't know if that's official, but I saw something about that, that they're
making it well known, like, Hey, this is a big deal.
And Democrats across the nation need to be paying attention to this, which is a rare
bit of spotlighting from the democratic party that I think is a good thing.
They need to be waking up and like supporting some of these much further down, down, down
ballot races.
But that being said, you know, what's also good to see is that the North Carolina democratic
party is showing that they do have teeth.
Keep it up is what I say.
Keep up the pressure because they're not going to stop.
No, they're not.
They are very much Republicans that is.
As a whole.
Yeah.
They are very much a given inch, take a mile sort of group.
They again, I think it's obvious from their actions with this, their actions on just a
national level and basically everything they do really, they don't care about your vote
and allowing you to vote and express your voice.
They care about keeping themselves in power, about enriching themselves, empowering themselves,
empowering their rich friends, helping their rich friends get even richer.
They don't care about what you have to say if as long as that what you have to say goes
against what they want.
Yeah.
And far be it from for us who are on a podcast called the Left of Old North to make sweeping
generalizations about all Republicans.
But this is the party you support.
Yeah.
You know, this is this is the kind of thing that you want.
You want total domination of a state where half of the residents vote a certain way and
half the residents vote a different way.
Like this is this is a pretty purple state.
We've we've said it on pretty much every episode so far.
And actually, Chris Cooper released a book just this last year called Anatomy of a Purple
State.
Great book so far.
Which we have started reading and is is going to be on our official Left of Old North book
reading list.
I'm sure it'll have a sticker on it in bookstores anytime, any day now.
We look at things like this and we have to have a 10,000 foot view of little microcosms
of races like this because this is the same kind of tactic that is continuously used throughout
North Carolina politics that you have one party trying to state claims, little ones,
every chance that they get.
And if you give an inch, like you said, they'll take a mile.
And in North Carolina, those are some pretty long miles.
Yeah, because there's a lot of space here to play around with.
North Carolina is not the biggest state, but it is one of the states that has a large population
that is condensed in certain areas and leaves you a lot of wiggle room to play around with
gerrymandering, to play around with demographics.
Right.
North Carolina is a very diverse state, too.
It is.
I will say, I think I think we should say North Carolina, Oklahoma and Florida are.
Oklahoma is not what I was expecting.
Yeah.
Now, these are the three states where I think the national GMP loves to experiment and use
as testing grounds to see what they can get away with and what might fly on a national
level in Oklahoma.
Like the big thing right now is education out there, trying to force Bibles into classrooms,
all this stuff.
These are the testing grounds.
I see.
So Oklahoma, Oklahoma is more like the like Yucca Flats testing ground.
Yes.
And then like North Carolina is more of the chessboard.
Let's see where we can move the pieces around to try and make make things.
I see.
I see where you're going with that.
And if I because because one of the first states that came to mind for me was Missouri,
because because up until very recently, Missouri was a swing state.
Yeah, it was.
And I lived there for a time.
I lived there for four years.
And during my time, what I realized was that this is Trump country.
This isn't this like, yeah, a lot of people vote Republican here.
A lot of people vote Democrats.
But a lot of these Democrats were yellow dogs.
Yeah.
But when Trump came around, that was a different story.
And I think you have a lot of North Carolinians that feel the same way.
Now how does that transition?
How does that translate into future wins for the Democratic Party?
You can't run against Trump the same way we did in 2024.
Right.
You just can't.
There's a lot of lessons to be learned from 2024.
There's a lot of lessons to be learned from 2016.
And they're not the same race.
A lot of people and we might go off on a bit of a tangent here, but I think a lot of people
are making the assumption that just because Hillary Clinton was a woman is alone.
She's not dead yet.
Hillary Clinton is a woman who's running a national campaign.
Kamala Harris is a woman, a black woman, well, black Indian woman that is running a national
campaign in a state that is historically not, does not have the greatest track record with
race relations.
Did that move the needle?
Probably.
Maybe a little bit, but enough to like sway it so far that she lost by as much as she
did.
No, I think that there's something deeper than that.
I think that there is a population of, and we talked a little bit about this in our last
episode, there's a population that's dying off in a few places in the counties where
we ran.
There was a large swath of Democrats that just are gone off the rolls either because
they moved away or they died.
And unfortunately, this is also coming off the heels of COVID-19.
So the latter is probably more true.
And these were, these are Democrats from rural areas that probably are a little bit more
socially conservative, but they will vote for a Democrat because of, you know, their
daddy and their daddy's daddy and their daddy's daddy's daddy voted Democrat, not Republican,
never a Republican.
And the problem is that now we have a situation where some of these older folks who are more
socially conservative, who are on the fence to begin with, may have swayed towards Trump,
especially if they go unaffiliated.
And then some of the people who were socially conservative Democrats are either dying off
or losing interest.
And now you have a huge swath of younger voters that are coming in that are disaffected, that
don't care.
What do you do?
And back to the problem that we addressed in our last episode where we need to start
attracting people who are younger because it got better marginally in this last election
that there was a slight uptick in the involvement of younger voters from like ages 18 to 35.
Not fantastic though.
Not as good as it could have been, especially for the amount of chirping that we heard on
TikTok.
And I mean, I can't say I blame, I can't say I blame them really.
I mean, a lot of, and it's probably going to go into even more of a tangent.
That's what we're here for.
I think a lot of younger voters, I'm going to include myself in that while I still can
because I'm not 35 yet.
Right.
Don't worry, we're getting there.
We're getting there.
Don't remind me.
But I think a lot of the younger voters, let's say like youngest of the Gen Z voters, they
grew up with school shootings and all that stuff, the drills, whereas like you and I,
we had like tornado drills.
They have active shooter drills.
They have a government and they have a party that to their perception has not done a damn
thing about it.
They see the party as toothless.
They see a spineless to an extent, and they see it as an organization that is just about
to maintain the status quo, take a look at Nancy Pelosi and the AOC thing a couple weeks
ago.
Sure.
Of course, why should they waste their time and their day and whatnot and go out to vote
for a party that they don't think gives a shit about them?
I can't blame them for feeling that way.
I'll do you one better.
They think that being a Democrat is cringe.
Yeah.
And that's the worst offense.
Yeah.
All their favorite streamers are decidedly not Democrats.
They think that SJWs and all these people who ascribe themselves to be for the greater
good are just cringe and not based.
But I agree with you.
I think that there is a systemic issue within the Democratic Party.
I'm hoping, I'm not super hopeful, but I'm hoping that something like I'm pretty sure
Ben Wickler is going to be the next chair.
Yeah.
He doesn't have my full throated endorsement because like, I mean, what is he going to
do differently?
Not sure.
He's promised a lot of things as they all do.
So we'll just have to see.
But I like what he's done so far with, what was it?
He's Minnesota, right?
I thought he was Wisconsin.
Wisconsin.
He's one of those, one of the cheese states as I call them.
Wisconsin, Wisconsin, yeah.
As far as I know, he's done a great job up there.
Yeah, yes.
Does that, how is that going to translate to the national stage?
Is the real question?
Because that's one thing to, I mean, Wisconsin is rust built, right?
Yeah.
So there's some value to be gained from having somebody that runs pretty successful campaigns
and candidates in a rust belt state, in a working class state, in a Midwestern state.
It's good to not have somebody from the East Coast.
I mean, I know Jamie Harrison has done what he can, but he was also somebody who kind
of got off on a bad start because he ran against Lindsey Graham and wasn't the greatest turnout
for him.
I mean, it's South Carolina, but there you go.
Yeah.
I just think that his tenure has kind of been undercut by a lot of the problems that people
are ascribing to national Democrats as a whole.
This inability to message, right?
That in and of itself has become like a flagship message against Democrats.
Democrats are bad at messaging.
Okay, well, half the time when you ask people what do you mean by that, they can't really
give you a good answer.
I've heard decent arguments for this.
I'm not saying it's not true, but a lot of the time people will just be like, oh, the
Democrats are so bad at messaging.
It's like, okay, well, what do you think they could do better?
Just, you know, more, just talking more about this.
It's like, yeah, they've talked about that.
Well, just talking more about this.
It's like, yeah, no, they've talked about that.
It's like, what do you want them to do exactly?
I think we need to get back to a position where A, I said we as in like people who are
on the left, not just Democrats, not just leftists, just everybody who is trying to
win against these Republicans, especially in this state.
We need to get to a point where we have somebody at the helm who is going to lead us into a
direction that is not going to be part of the status quo.
Because I think people are sick of it.
And as much as the Nancy Pelosi's and the Chuck Schumers are not sick of it because
it's been very lucrative for them so far.
Insider trading.
What?
Like I said, very lucrative, both politically and financially.
That shit needs to change because we're at a crossroads now.
Trump is one of the most unpopular presidents to win reelection ever against the president
who has a what is it as a 32 percent approval rating.
And the man like people want to give Biden a lot of credit.
And I think he deserves a lot of credit.
But giving some giving your predecessor or excuse me, but giving your giving your vice
president, giving the person who's going to run after you 100 days to run a national
presidential campaign is insane.
Yeah, like just just slice me off at the knees.
Why don't you at the torso?
People want to blame Kamala Harris for a lot of things that happened in this campaign.
And I think that they did the best with what they could.
Oh, yeah.
But there was no let's be very clear about this as well.
There was basically no other option.
People wanted a full on primary.
And I was one of those people until I realized that if there was a full on primary, anybody
who wasn't Kamala Harris would not get access to any of the funds that were raised with
the Biden Harris campaign.
Yeah.
Big problem.
The policy, though, didn't really matter, did it, because price tag was pretty high
and she still didn't win.
Yeah.
Like I said, a lot of different facets to this.
This is not one one definitive problem with the twenty twenty four campaign.
This is a problem across the board in a lot of ways because a lot of really popular candidates
lost this year.
Oh, yeah.
Sherrod Brown in Ohio was one that shocked me.
Absolutely shocked me, especially against somebody like Bernie Moreno, a literal used
car salesman, Jesus, a literal con man.
Like this this isn't like, oh, Trump's a con man kind of thing.
I mean, like this guy has been to court because he was caught on fraud.
Like it boggles the mind.
Right.
Two years, two years later, we could have had Dr.
Oz in Philadelphia or in Pennsylvania.
Like, just think about that.
You know, it's right not to.
But that was another one.
Bob Casey losing in Pennsylvania.
This is the kind of thing that in twenty twenty six cannot happen.
Twenty twenty four is just an awful year for them.
It really was.
Now, on North Carolina state level, it was actually pretty good, I will say.
Yeah.
On a national level, it was we stopped the bleeding somewhat.
Yeah.
But on a national level, it was absolutely awful.
And that's why whoever is going to be DNC chair, I want them to come in with a rabid
viciousness like I want an attack dog.
I want someone who is willing to tear into every Republican they see.
I want someone who is willing to just, you know, let a nuke drop on the Republican Party,
essentially, and just leave them decimated.
I want someone who's not afraid to pick fights, who is not.
I want someone who you know what?
They might make mistakes.
They might screw up somehow.
But I want them to do that running head first, full speed into that wall.
Sure.
I want.
And we can't be afraid to make mistakes.
Yeah, exactly.
And I think that's a good thing as well.
Republicans make mistakes all the time.
Yeah.
Does that slow them down?
Hell no.
If anything, it gives them more ammunition.
Well, because then it's like, oh, look, see, they're coming after us.
They're coming after us just because we make one little mistake.
We can't be afraid to continuously put the other side on the back foot.
Yeah.
And that's what we haven't been doing.
Like we we as the left have to stop hinging.
And I know what some people will say, because I've already gotten this from a couple of
people online is, well, the Democratic Party is not really on the left.
Yeah, I know.
Ostensibly, though, nominally, let's let's stick to you.
You want to make a wider umbrella.
You want you want to you want to move toward the center.
Let's just label everybody from this side over to the left.
Yeah.
That makes it more cohesive in my mind.
Yeah.
Regardless, the Democratic Party as a whole, like you said, has to be ready to be an attack
dog.
And unfortunately, right now, we're we're at we're at a nexus where a bunch of different
people think that we should be doing one thing or another.
Yeah.
And that we should be headed in this direction.
No, no, we should be doing this thing.
We have pundits on the news that are constantly talking about how the left is too woke.
The left talked about trans issues too much.
The left did this, this, that and the other.
And we should be moving more towards the center.
They're going to make the same mistake that they did in 2016 if they go with that route.
Yeah.
And the problem is that they may think that that worked in 2020.
But part of the reason that Biden got reelected is because it was Trump.
Yeah, that's that's really it.
I think that so many people push that out, like like as if Biden had this great campaign,
he did not have a great campaign.
It was not like this stellar barn busting campaign.
It was or barn barn storming door busting campaign.
It was I mean, they even made fun of him for it that he was in the basement the whole time.
Yeah.
Now imagine if he had able he'd been able to run a fully fledged campaign.
It might have gone worse.
Yeah.
Who knows?
And then looking towards 2026, we see that there are a couple of names coming down the
pipeline that well, we'll save that a little bit more towards the end.
I'm getting ahead of myself.
But I think to close out this little section, I'm interested to see we've got some people
who are running for vice chair here in the North Carolina Democratic Party.
The current first vice chair is Jonah Garson.
I think he's done a pretty dang good job as far as I'm concerned, especially with raising
money and doing all the things the first vice chair is supposed to do.
Well, there's some other people who think that they could do a better job.
One of the more prominent names that I've seen so far is Aaron Johnson.
Spoke with him a few nights ago.
If he wins, I think we're still in good hands.
So, you know, may the best may the best person win, or at least whoever the Democratic establishment
within the North Carolina Democratic Party believes to be the best person for the job.
And I want to sorry, I'm going to take this back just a few minutes ago really quickly.
Oh, sure.
Yeah, go for it.
Going back to the Alison Ray Starrison Griffin thing for just a second while it's on my mind.
We need to get off the tangent.
You're good.
So this Tuesday, I just for anyone interested, Kate Barr.
So she ran for state Senate at this election in a very gerrymandered district.
Yeah, her handle was Kate Barr can't win.
Yeah, she fully embraced embraced it.
She now has the can't win victory fund.
So essentially, it's going to like start promoting all these different causes and whatnot.
But one thing that they that is doing is this Tuesday, starting at 6am and until every vote
of our name is read, they're going to be reading all 60,000 book names in front of the North
Carolina State Supreme Court starting at 6am.
I think they said like they plugged in the chat GPT and it estimated about 17 hours.
Holy crap.
Yeah, they're live stream.
Yeah.
So if y'all are in the rally area, I'd say definitely stop by at some point, you know,
show your support.
You can also go to the can't win victory fund website, can't win victory fund dot com and
look and see if your vote is one of the ones that's being challenged.
Yeah.
Please make sure now because if you don't get in touch with the North Carolina Democratic
Party or you don't get in touch with the Board of Elections, they're not going to be able
to help you.
Exactly.
And if you do discover your names on there, I don't know what happens if you put it in
on her website and you are one of the ones I don't know if it sends you anywhere.
But if you discover your name is on there, you can either reach out to the state party
or if you don't know how to get in contact with them, you can get in contact with us.
We can help point you in the right direction.
We have contacts with state for yourselves.
Yeah.
And we are more than willing to help you out in any way we can.
Yeah.
Every vote counts.
So make sure yours does.
It should be counted.
And should be counted.
So make sure yours does.
Absolutely.
So now that we're done with small talk, let's talk about the weather.
It's pretty, pretty crazy stuff so far.
You know, it's been colder than usual.
Yeah.
And that led to an advisory that led to a lot of people on Facebook telling me not to
worry about it because it's not even going to stick to the ground.
Alas.
And then at the same time, and part of the reason why I bring the weather up is because
at the same time that all this was happening, the Palisades fire was going on in California,
which prompted thousands of Twitter and Facebook users to come out in full force and blame
Biden personally for not funding relief efforts for Hurricane Eileen.
Because if you missed it, he's going to, he did a whole order to 100% fund the relief
for the Palisades fire recovery.
So people immediately took to the online space and started saying, well, what about North
Carolina?
What about North Carolina?
Hey, idiots.
He did do that.
Yep.
In case you were so far up your own ass that you missed it.
He did do that.
He did.
And then on the back end of it, Congress approved $9 billion in funding.
You know what our state government did?
I wonder.
Not even a 10th of that.
Not even a 10th.
So put that into perspective.
Shut up for a minute.
I might be a little harsh there, but it really does grind on you after a while, I think,
to see this kind of stuff just pop up over and over and over again.
Yeah.
No.
And it goes back to a few weeks ago with the American Inland Relief Bill.
To see people particularly on the right, because that's where this whole, oh, what about North
Carolina thing?
Oh, Biden didn't do that for North Carolina.
This all originally has right-wing talking points.
Well, they knew this was going to happen.
Maybe not this, maybe not this specifically, but natural disasters occur.
Yeah.
And it pisses me off to no end, both as North Carolinian and just as a person.
It pisses me off to no end to see the right try and use these natural disasters, try to
use this hurricane, and try to use the fires out in California, where I saw like an hour
ago, I think there were up to 15 or 20 deaths.
Something like that, yeah.
Confirmed deaths, because some of these fires, they still don't have it under control at
all.
One of whom was like a child actor or something.
Yeah.
What the heck?
Yeah, child actor or a foreign child actor.
Aren't they all former child actors?
That's fair.
But to see the right use this for cheap political points is just maddening.
And it just, the basic human indecency that is shown by that is astounding.
And I'm shaking my head because it's like, yeah, at this point, don't expect it.
Right?
Because at this point, anybody who is in this space, anybody who is paying attention to
the political nature of what's going on here in the old North State, could have foreseen
this coming.
That the moment anything else happened anywhere else, they've already laid the propaganda
groundwork to make it seem like North Carolina was not getting help.
And now these liberal cities are getting help from the liberal government.
Here's the thing, man.
We had a chance to help out our state and they sold out for 200 and what was it like
$253 million.
Yep.
And that was not even new money and alongside that bill were ways to gut multiple facets
of our state government.
We had the chance to rein in an authoritarian power grab of the state and we didn't do that.
And then Biden and Congress came back in and we're like, okay, we're actually going to
help fund the relief efforts down in North Carolina.
Of course we should be doing that.
So they did that.
Cut to a month later and we're experiencing the same thing again.
It's like it never even happened because the rights messaging is so strong because it's
so simple.
It's why every time I passed one of those Trump safety, Kamala crime signs, I was like,
this is what will win him the election.
This right here, this is the messaging.
Four words, easily digestible, easily understandable and something you can't take your eyes away
from.
Right.
It's like, it's almost embarrassing to support Kamala because you're basically saying you
support crime.
You want people in Western North Carolina to be homeless.
It's like, wait, what?
No, I don't.
You're like, well, that's what you're doing.
If you vote for Democrats, what that doesn't make it.
That doesn't make any sense.
But it doesn't matter.
You're already you're already past the point because the point has already been made to
them.
So how do we get ourselves out of that hole?
How do we on the left start to message effectively against something that is like politically
incoherent as not understanding how a fucking budget works?
It's honestly a tough thing to kind of work out because how do you how do you break down
something as complicated and just incoherent at times as a budget and as different things?
You know, how do you break that down and make it digestible in four words?
You know, how do you make it digestible for a population that is used to, you know, 15
seconds hits the dopamine on TikTok?
Not to say that they're addicted or they can't pay attention or anything like that.
Not not saying that at all.
Right.
No, and definitely subscribe to us and follow us on everything.
Yeah.
We love that we can keep your attention for at least 15 seconds.
So like, you know, what I'm saying is for a population that is so busy with life, how
do you get through to them?
You know, because if I'm someone who doesn't care about politics, you know, I'm going to
scroll past that or I'm going to go do really anything else rather than think about Congress.
You know, well, because Congress is this is this nebulous blob of a 14 percent approval
rating.
So it's like individual members.
It's like, oh, Congress is bad.
But I like my congressman.
Congress is bad.
But AOC has some good ideas.
It's like, OK, well, she's part of Congress.
And so is the Senate.
There's four hundred there's five hundred thirty five members of Congress, not including
all the other like people that technically get a say like Guam, American Samoa, Washington,
D.C.
Yeah.
All these territorial pieces of this American empire that technically get a say.
We should have voting power in Congress anyway.
No, I agree.
Like honestly, this is this is a bit of a hot take.
But like this is somewhere to meet in the middle.
It's like, look, if you don't want to give these people statehood, at least make it just
this make it a territorial vote.
Yeah.
They get an electoral vote based or like a territorial vote in Congress.
It could be the deciding factor.
Yeah.
You have people in Puerto Rico.
You have people in Guam.
You have people all over millions of people, in fact, that just don't get a say.
But that's not what we're here to talk about.
So that's that's my take.
Just some kind of representation and not not just nominally.
Yeah.
But I mean, I think at the end of the day, part of it is you have to make your message
simple.
You really do.
It's the keep it simple, stupid approach.
Yeah.
Four words or less.
Yeah.
You know, don't say, oh, the General Assembly passed a hurricane relief bill that was power
grab because it transferred power from the governor.
By that point, you have scrolled past you are, you know, you put your phone down, you're
getting ready for bed.
You know, yeah.
Most people don't know what a gerrymander is.
Yeah.
They don't care to know.
And I can't blame them.
You and I and probably people listen to this.
No offense to the audience.
We're the odd ones out.
We're we're the weirdo, so to say, because we're engaged and interested in the same.
The vast population is not.
And again, I can't blame them.
This is stuff that is incredibly archaic and boring and just not high on a list of people's,
you know, list of important things.
Right.
It's nebulous sometimes by design, but not necessarily not necessarily.
It's just I mean, who's going to really tune in to their city council meetings?
Right.
You know, it's like, yeah, it's important.
But like, who's really doing that on a day to day basis?
Right.
It's only once a month, too.
It's not like it's some huge chunky.
I watched my city council meeting today.
It was literally 15 minutes long because they had like one thing and there were three people
in that audience.
But but you're right.
One of the problems, I think, amongst politicos and pundits and all these people who espouse
these high minded ideas about politics and the soul of the country and ideology and all
these things, there is a threshold that once you become a certain once you're woke, once
you are politically woke, once you have gone beyond this this thin ceiling of not understanding
what's going on, it's very hard to look back downward and understand what people who don't
know about this stuff don't know.
Right.
How do you translate?
I mean, and this is what people get paid millions of dollars a year to do is to translate back
downward through the through the film, the thin layer of understanding to the people
who A don't care, B don't understand it, and C don't want to understand it.
There are plenty of people who are they're like, yeah, but like, it's you know, they
don't want to get political.
They don't but but although Democrats like no, like, this is important.
You should probably understand this.
I understand that you're still going to vote.
But do you really know what you're voting for?
Right.
Because there are Democrats that are bad, too.
Yeah, there are.
There are people that run in primaries that you're just like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,
whoa.
Hey, I know he's a Democrat.
But this dude, I mean, okay.
Great example is Eric Adams in New York State.
Yeah, sorry, New York State, New York City.
Yeah, the man is an ex Republican, a cop, and somebody who is being indicted on charges
of corruption.
Yeah, I could have told you that when he was running.
Yeah, that he was somebody that you should not support as a Democrat.
Yep.
And the problem is that people don't understand half the time how to delineate Democrats or
how to delineate Republicans even there are Republicans who are way worse than some other
Republicans.
Yeah, like, yeah, everybody hates Mitch McConnell and with due cause, but Mitch McConnell is
not Trump.
There is a very there's a vast canyon of difference between the two of them ideologically.
Yeah.
Is he going to use Trump to gain power?
Absolutely.
Because that is McConnell's MO.
Yeah.
But Donald Trump doesn't need Mitch McConnell.
And he knows that.
So he he messes with the Senate to make it to where they are a cog running just just
enough out of step with Trump's regime that you know, they can still piggyback off of
his success and yet keep some of their autonomy that again, how do you even begin to translate
that downward?
How do you even begin to make people understand that?
Yeah, I've listened to hours of podcasts.
I've watched tons of explainer videos.
I've read hundreds of articles.
That's a lot of time.
Yeah, it is.
I mean, I think I think there are a few people out there who do it really well, who are able
to condense this information into very concise, very clear, easy to understand ways.
And now I'm thinking about basically all of them are on TikTok thinking of like under
the desk news, for example.
Sure.
What's their V?
I think they go by V. V. V. Spar maybe.
Yeah.
They are able to take very complicated stories and condense them, condense several of them
to like two, three minute video.
And you can walk away with a very good understanding.
What's your name?
Victoria Hammett, I think.
She's with like GNC for change or something like that.
Like 30 second, 45 second video stops.
And she can tell you all about how shady whatever the Republicans are doing that day is and how
to fight back against that.
How do you get that hook?
And for me, the hook was I don't understand how any of this shit works.
Back in 2016 before, really it was 2015 when Trump first started running.
I was like, I don't understand how any of this shit works.
I need to probably understand how some of it works.
I didn't understand the Electoral College at all.
And like I had watched the schoolhouse rock video.
I had government class in high school and I still didn't understand it.
So when people say, oh, well, we need more education.
We need government classes.
We need civics classes.
I'm going to tell you right now that that's not going to help.
It might help some people, but it's not going to help the vast majority of high schoolers
who are not going to care about how a bill becomes a law more than they are going to
care about what they're going to be doing after school with their friends.
I was more concerned about going home and playing Halo.
And I was hanging out with my girlfriend.
We live two different lives.
It's fine.
I was in BAND.
What did I know about a girlfriend?
Anyway, there it is.
Even then, you probably care more about BAND than you do about government.
And look what you do now.
So it's this there's a crowd out there that exists that thinks there is a simple answer
to everything.
There's a blanket answer, one of which is education.
Oh, we just need more education.
Not necessarily.
I'm not saying I'm not coming out as an as an an adversary of public education or that
we need more education.
But I don't think it's the end all be all.
I think that there is a severe lack of participation.
Yeah, like we run in some small circles.
And I didn't until I was in them, I did not realize how small they were.
Yeah, it's it's a little bit jarring because you start running into the same people over
and over and over again.
And you're like, wait, you're part of this group, too.
Oh, and you're part of that group and you're elected to this office.
And you start to realize, like, oh, the fabric that's holding this whole thing together is
like a couple hundred people.
Yeah.
And a good portion of them are retirees.
I am back in about 2015, 2016, because that's when I also really started paying attention
to politics.
I mean, I thought like I thought like government was kind of interesting because I was a nerd.
We know.
Yeah.
But like I say, I'm a nerd as I'm filling with a Lego set off screen.
That's your fidget toy, huh?
Yeah.
So, you know, I was nervous.
I thought it was interesting, but I didn't really pay attention to the current events.
I didn't pay attention to the actual current political happenings until about 2015 where
I'm like, OK, you know, Trump, he's that dude from The Apprentice.
This guy's got to be a joke.
And then like the more I watched it, the more I was like, hold up.
I'm like, this guy just seems not right.
So that's when I started to get more involved.
I went to a, yeah, I was in Watauga County Democratic Party, like their monthly meeting.
And you know, it's a pretty cool way for me to get involved.
I looked around and it struck me because even in a college town, a very liberal college
town, because we're talking about Boone, North Carolina, you know, a very bright blue dot
and a sea of red.
I was one of the youngest people there.
And there were like maybe two or three other people really who were that young.
And it definitely got a lot better, I will say.
But like, you know, that was concerning.
I'm like, we need, you know, we need older people.
Yes, because we need that institutional knowledge.
We need that experience.
We need that know how.
But we also need the young blood, so to say, who have that time, who have the energy, who
have the experience with, you know, the best way to reach people their age.
Yeah.
And I think as OK, so CJ, you're 32, right?
We'll say that 33.
Oh, you're 33.
OK.
And I'm 31.
We're both dads.
We're both married.
We both have had full time jobs.
Young people, especially of North Carolina, who are in your 20s, who are unmarried, who
do not have children, you will never have as much time on your hands as you do right
now to make an effect change.
Just for the love of God, do it now before you before you get tied down by anything else.
And let me let me just say this.
I love my family.
I love my daughter.
I love that I have a job that I have liked.
I love my life.
But but there are people that have a shit ton more time on their hands to get involved,
to get engaged.
And you'll never have as much time as you do when you're not around family.
It's just true.
Yeah.
You have to make it.
Yeah.
And I think there's something about this on on TikTok, as a matter of fact, that part
of the reason that people with families tend to veer so far to the middle politically is
because they can't risk certain things, is because they can't get involved.
There's too much at stake.
And we, you and I, out of, you know, the 10 or 12 people that were campaign managers that
we know of, like in our circles, we were the only ones with kids.
Yeah.
Besides one other person.
And they were a single mom.
Yeah.
And we had time on our hands.
Just just as is.
And that's not a complaint.
It's just a fact.
Yeah.
So even now, like you and I are recording this at 10 o'clock at night on a Sunday because
we literally don't have any other time on our hands.
So this is my this is my desperate plea to all the 18 to 35 year olds out there that do
not have kids that do not have wives or husbands or partners to go to.
You're not alone.
And while you have the energy and the time, use it because you'll never have it again.
And I will say, I mean.
And that was a critical time, too.
Sorry.
I'm not trying to keep on going.
But like you, we think like, oh, it's, you know, time is going to pass us by.
What's what's there for me on the horizon?
This right here, right now, it's in front of you.
Yeah.
I get for the young folks out there.
I understand that what you see right now in D.C. and even on a state level is incredibly
frustrating and it may feel like, you know, there's not a space for you in, you know,
the Democratic Party may not feel like there is a way for you to get involved.
You may not feel like you will be welcomed or anything like that.
You know, nothing is going to change unless you change it.
Nothing is going to change unless you get involved.
There's a speech that Teddy Roosevelt gave.
I think it was I think he was in France, maybe.
Oh, yeah.
It was the the man in the arena speech or the ship in the republic.
It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how strong man stumbles or
the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who was actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust
and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again
because there is no effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive
to do the deeds, who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotions, who spends himself in
a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who
at the worst, if he fails, at least falls without daring greatly so that his place shall
never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Love that speech.
Love that section.
It's evergreen because there is never going to be a time that does not matter.
Right.
And I know that sounds weird to say it first, but like a lot of people feel as though we're
in the middle era of history.
Like things are just the way that they are.
But you affect change every day, whether you realize it or not.
We've already done a good portion of the kind of work that we'll do for the rest of our
lives.
It was a great honor for me to be a part of a campaign this year.
We did not win, but I was still there and I learned a lot and I felt like a fraud for
a good portion of it.
I'll be honest.
I think that there always exists when you first really start getting into the arena,
there always exists this part of you that is like, I don't belong here.
This is for people that are different than me or better than me or more experienced than
me.
I don't know what I'm doing, but eventually you get the rhythm of it and you start to
understand it better.
You start to understand yourself better and you start to not feel so much like a fraud.
And I can guarantee you that unless they're a freaking psycho, almost everybody in the
arena has felt that way at some point.
Yeah, absolutely.
I was campaign manager this cycle and I had been one before and there are still times
I was like, what the hell am I doing?
Why am I here?
I shouldn't even be here.
I have no business doing this stuff, even though I have worked in politics since 2016.
For almost 10 years, I've been at this in some way or another.
I still felt like that, but I pushed through it.
For me, part of it was, well, I wouldn't be here if people wouldn't have hired me for
this position if they didn't believe me.
And you're stepping up.
Yeah.
That's a big thing too.
And again, and I have to reiterate this because, and I see your cat now, sorry.
And I have to reiterate this because I think that people tend to believe that there is
this huge swath of talent that's just waiting to get started.
It's a much smaller pool than you think.
That's not to discourage people.
That's to say, get started now, whether it's politics, whether it's advocacy work, if you
care about something, if you're listening to us right now, if you're on TikTok and you
scroll through hours of political content and you sit on the sidelines, you don't have
to.
There's tons of resources.
There's tons of things that need to be done.
I started out just by making calls on Better It Works campaign for Senate.
That was the first thing that I did.
And I technically shouldn't have really been doing it, but I didn't use my real name in
the calls.
So it was fine.
I was part of the Air National Guard at the time.
So like it's a little gray area, but when you're active duty, you can't be doing that
stuff at all.
Right.
So I would just say I lost 10 years of my ability to do political work.
And here I am.
I had to hit the ground running immediately as soon as I got here.
And already I've met so many amazing people, including CJ, including some people who are
now in office.
And I'm proud to know those people because they are the men and women in the arena.
And they're just, most of them are just people.
Those are just regular folks.
They're like, you can talk to them.
They'll come right up to you and shake your hand.
And it's really not that big of a deal.
You know, like Alison Riggs, I know she's at the very center of this huge story, but
you can like walk up to her and just have a conversation.
She's not really a politician like that.
Right.
She's a justice of the court.
She's a lawyer.
She was a civil rights attorney.
Like these are the kinds of things that I think people get a little disillusioned with
because they see politicians and they don't want to be associated with it because it's
dirty and all these other things.
Start by talking to them.
You will be able to sniff it out pretty quick.
I can guarantee you that.
I mean, you know, the guy who's campaign I worked on earlier last year, which I looked
back at my Facebook memories, I think it was after a year ago today that I accepted the
job.
Thank you.
Rodney Pierce.
He is one of the new members of the North Carolina General Assembly.
He was a middle school teacher.
You know, he is, you can go up to him and just track up a conversation as long as you
are respectful, obviously.
I'll talk to you all day long if you want.
You know?
Yeah.
I think I think most of the people that you'll find that are like self-important, that take
their own time very, very seriously, not usually the people that are worth talking to.
Yeah, not very much.
So I mean, I when I was working on the this campaign, I got off of back in November, you
know, at one point I was talking to Robert Reeves, who if you don't know, is the House
Minority Leader in the General Assembly.
And I'm like, hey, sorry to bother you.
I know you're very busy.
I'm sure this is, you know, below your pay grade.
And I'm like, no, good.
They will shut that down really quickly.
Yeah.
A lot of them will.
Yeah.
And these the people who are in office for the right reasons, you know, people who want
to actually affect positive change and help better the lives of their constituents and
not just their constituents, North Carolinians, Americans, whatever as a whole, they will
take the time to talk to you.
Or if they don't have the time, they will have someone listen, listen to your concerns,
genuinely listen, genuinely engage with you.
Yeah.
And again, to go back a few minutes, this is going to hit me.
Oh, sure.
Yeah.
If if you are a young person who is still hesitant to get involved with politics, but
cares about something now is the time, not just because you don't have, you know, family
or commitments or whatever, but because the next four years under Trump are going to be
a mess.
You know, if his first term is any indication.
Yeah.
And I think his second term is going to be his first term on steroids.
He gets sworn in a week from tomorrow or a week from.
Yeah, a week from tomorrow.
Yeah.
And there are people who are going to be hurt.
There are people who are going to suffer immensely.
There are people who are going to die because of his policies.
And if you're someone, even if you think it's the most niche thing to care about, if you're
someone who has something that they are passionate about, who they care about or what that they
care about, and you think that a Trump administration or a Republican controlled general assembly
is going to hurt, whatever that thing is, get involved.
Because what is it from the lower acts like unless someone cares an awful lot, nothing
will change or whatever, whatever it is.
I can't rhyme.
I don't remember.
Yes.
No, I think the general ideas there are there.
Yeah.
But like fight for what you care about and what you believe in.
You don't need to be a lawyer.
You don't need to have a doctor in political science.
You don't need anything like that.
You can be whatever.
And if you care, if you have someone you're passionate about, voice that passion and get
involved defending it.
AOC, for example, she was a bartender.
And now look at her.
She is, I'd argue, the most popular member of Congress.
Probably.
We'd have to look at a poll for that.
Yeah, I would argue she's the most popular member.
Because polls are extremely reliable as far as I've seen, especially in 2024.
I have made the resolution, the New Year's resolution to not look at polls anymore.
Yeah, I am done.
I am fed up.
I am completely disillusioned with polls.
I have unsubscribed to all the pollster people on YouTube and TikTok and stuff because I'm
done.
I'm officially done.
I don't care what any of them have to say anymore.
It's like I know that was a bit of a dime turn.
No, you're good.
I'm just talking about my burning, passionate hatred, Nate Silver.
Well Nate Silver has curated an incredible career for himself by virtually just saying,
it looks like this, but it might not be.
Yeah, really, really hedging its bets there.
Pretty insightful stuff, Nate.
Appreciate the silver bullet that you always lay out for us.
But with that, I think we have gone way over time with what I originally had in mind.
And we didn't even get to talk about the Wiley Nickel revelation.
Oh God.
We might talk about that next time.
Considering that the next episode is going to be when the new president is going to be
sworn in, TikTok will likely be beheaded in the states and the next four years officially
begins.
So until then, we'll see you next time folks.
Stay safe and make sure to stay over here on the left of Old North.
Good luck to us all.
God help us.