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- [00:00]
A
Richie Taurus is not an especially strong moderate.
- [00:02]
B
Why do you think Richie's a weak moderate?
- [00:04]
A
It's not that he's weak. It's just not that he's especially impressive. There's nothing like special electorally in his results.
- [00:11]
C
You are being too hard on him. I think he might very well be the most competent American congressman that the state of Israel has ever seen. Hey, everybody, I'm Cam Caskey.
- [00:23]
B
And I'm Tim Miller. And this is Fypod, where we talk to a wide range of zoomers to get the perspective on what is happening out there. When that sometimes includes really annoying MAGA zoomers. We've done a couple of those recently. It includes Cam's crew, like lefty protesting zoomers. And finally, at long last, we get to talk to somebody that's more my speed. A nerdy abundance pilled Centris zoomer. It's Laxrajane I've been following for a while. He started was one of the co founders. Is that right. Of Split Ticket, which you probably see out there. Yeah, Split Ticket is crushing. If you're like a really a map nerd, if you're like a politics map nerd, Split Ticket is the place to go. And good news for us. This is like the golden age of map nerds. I feel like right at this. Maybe not this moment, I guess right leading up to the midterms will be the. Will be really the peak. But now that we're in redistricting fights, do you feel like you're at the peak of your powers right now? Laksha or reaching that soon?
- [01:25]
A
I never know how to define that. The truth is I kind of just look at all of this and get sad that if people know about the type of stuff I do, they're paying way too much attention to politics. And if they're paying way too much attention to politics, it means that the times that we're living in demand that. And that's just kind of what I hate. I want to go back to the time when people weren't asking me when Clayton county was about to drop its next ballots.
- [01:54]
B
That you want to go back to a time before, to an unremembered past.
- [01:57]
A
That would be nice.
- [01:58]
C
That would be very nice, Lakshya. I got to say. So I've been a super fan of your Twitter basically since the first time I saw it. I think that you've got such great takes on a wide variety of things. Not just the nerdy stuff. It's mostly nerdy stuff, but there's also some cool stuff. But for those of us, I mean, for those not including me, who don't completely understand what split ticket is. Can you explain it?
- [02:20]
B
Cameron was quickly googling split ticket as soon as I mentioned it, just to make sure he knew what it was that you do. Anyway, go ahead.
- [02:26]
A
We're a nonpartisan election analysis group. What we do is we try and make sense of elections from a data lens. I think there's enough people giving their opinion on stuff without actually doing the legwork behind it.
- [02:39]
B
Burn Cameron.
- [02:40]
C
Okay?
- [02:41]
A
Hey, he's good. He had a lot of experience in a lot of different things in politics. That's more than most people can say, especially if you go on Twitter.
- [02:48]
C
You keep spitting, brother. So, you guys, nonpartisan election analysis. But what. What inspires a young, like a young, youthful, sprightly looking guy like you to get into what seems like it's for kind of like the 60 year olds?
- [03:05]
A
Is that a polite way of saying I look 18 even though I'm 28?
- [03:09]
B
You're 28?
- [03:10]
A
Yeah.
- [03:11]
B
What the fuck?
- [03:12]
C
I wasn't going to say 18. I thought you were like, I'm 24. I thought you were pretty much exactly my age. Dude, you look fucking great. But that doesn't answer my question.
- [03:19]
B
What kind of skin care routine are you doing? Are you moisturizing?
- [03:23]
A
It drives everyone crazy that I don't get acne anymore, but I spent the first five years of my teenage life with my face just in red splotches. So I like to say I paid off all my debts.
- [03:33]
C
Same I did Accutane, and Accutane is definitely not something that people should put in their body. For those of you who don't know, it's an acne medication that completely overwhelms your body with chemicals that just again, are probably not for humans. But you look really great and rested and supple for somebody who does election analysis, which I feel like that would give me wrinkles and some grays, although I think I might look good with those. What. What inspired young Lakshya to be like, okay, I'm going to do numbers, numbers, numbers.
- [04:07]
A
Here's the thing. I have a really hard time looking at people giving their opinion and seeing logical flaws in it. And I felt like I saw a lot of that, especially during COVID when everyone was online. And so you got the most insane people in the world just giving a lot of takes as a result. Because of that, what I decided to do was just try to do some more data analysis and just try to do more. If I was going to give my Opinion, what would set us apart? The only unique skills that I really had is that I could code and I was good at math and I followed the news a lot and I could read very fast. When you synthesize those, you realize that you can try and at least deliver information in a manner that people can understand more. You know, I teach, like that's one of the things that I used to do a lot in college. And after college I taught computer science. And so you get the muscle memory of how to break down really complex topics into bite sized pieces that audiences who may not be at your expertise level can understand. And that's what we tried to do. Knowing that, you know, we're also the farthest things from authoritative experts ourselves, we have a long way to go and a lot to learn.
- [05:15]
B
Don't sell yourself short, big guy. We, I want to get your take on, you have a lot of expertise to share with us on, you know, kind of looking into the midterms and how Gen Z's look at things. But I want to talk about the redistricting stuff, you know, because as we're taping this on Friday afternoon, Gavin Newsom was on another podcast. Name of that one. I'm forgetting. It's like Pod Save something. I forget what it's called. Anyway, he was on it yesterday and he was claiming that they could get nine seats out of California.
- [05:46]
C
Pod Save America.
- [05:48]
B
Is that it?
- [05:49]
C
Pod Save America.
- [05:50]
B
Yeah, that sounds right. Yeah. So he was on that one and he said they could get nine seats out of California. Is that like, have you, have you been like taking out your maps and your abacus and AI and figuring out whether that is possible? Do you have any insight for us?
- [06:08]
A
It's possible.
- [06:09]
B
Possible.
- [06:10]
A
But here's the caveat. Do that and the Voting Rights act goes away. You can't draw a 52.0map in California that still obeys the Voting Rights Act. So if you do that, if you do that and you want to fight that battle, the Supreme Court, even if they take your side, will say, oh, cool, the Voting Rights act doesn't apply anymore. Then what happens? You lose two seats in Alabama, you could lose seats in Louisiana, you lose a seat in Mississippi, South Carolina. So I don't think that's the way to go here. I think if Democrats are trying to maximize the gains, they could get. The actual map that they released makes a lot more sense because that is 48 Democrats and four Republicans. That still gets you a net of five seats. That basically cancels out Texas, but you're not Doing this in a way that puts Louisiana's black representation at risk, which will cost you two seats.
- [07:05]
B
All right, everybody just bear with us. You can fast forward 90 seconds if this gets too nerdy for you, but I just want to do some district counting because you know that dude Sean trend over in real queer politics. He's more of a Gen X right wing laksha. His take was that the Supreme Court might overturn the Voting Rights act anyway. And if so, then those seats in the south you're talking about, the Republicans could then take. And if the Republicans, like went hardcore to the paint in like Missouri and Indiana and other places, they could get 20. And if we really had a race to the bottom, maybe Republicans pick up like 20 something and Democrats pick up like 10. And so then they get. In the end, the Republicans would still have the advantage, like if both sides played ultimate hardball. Does that sound right to you?
- [07:56]
A
Oh, he's completely correct. Listen, Sean and I have different political lenses on a lot of things, but he, he's smart, he knows what he's talking about. And he is correct that if the Supreme Court decided to overturn the Voting Rights act and if they went nuclear with the Republicans, they could do a lot more damage to Democrats than Democrats could do to Republicans. Some of this is because Republicans have trifectas in a lot more states.
- [08:22]
B
Trifecta means they have the state House, state Senate, and governor and the governorship.
- [08:26]
A
Yeah, right. Some of it is because Democrats have ceded some of their redistricting power to independent commissions, which necessarily limit their gains compared to if a Democrat just drew the maps. And so you don't want to get into a situation of maximal gerrymandering because the Republicans would beat us in that. But at the same time, it doesn't mean that you can't draw maps to fight back within the constraints of existing law that don't jeopardize other seats. And I think that's what Newsom is trying to do. I think that's a much more sustainable strategy, assuming that the Voting Rights act doesn't go away. But if it does, at this point, California can redraw to be 52 0. If it doesn't, California redraws. And then the Supreme Court decides in like March or April of 2026, like, hey, the Voting Rights act is toast. Well, that's too late to draw new maps for this cycle.
- [09:25]
C
So if you're in Newsom's office, do you think that they're aware of all of these nuances and they're kind of waving around the nine number in order to rile Trump up and kind of bait him into throwing some punches. Or do you think that they're just kind of tweeting?
- [09:43]
A
No, I think Gavin Newsom only does something if it's good for Gavin Newsom. That's, that's the number one principle of California politics. Gavin Newsom will do something and do it really well if it's good for Gavin Newsom. And there is nothing that is elevating any person in either party right now quite as much as Gavin Newsom saying, I am going to be the first person to fight Donald Trump. And he's riling him up. He's acting like Trump in his tweets. And it is working to get under the Republican skin. That's why Newsom is doing it. And yes, he's aware of all of these different permutations. Yes, he's trying to rile Trump up by giving him, you know, that nine, nine seats gone jibe. But functionally, what is this about? This is about two things. One, Newsom's a Democrat. He wants to see Democrats get more power and to fight back against Republican gerrymandering. And the second is that Gavin Newsom wants to run for president in 28. And he knows that by saying, I'm going to draw nine Republicans, the average person is not thinking, oh, that's going to be a Voting Rights act violation. We're going to lose four seats in Alabama and Louisiana. They're thinking, hell yeah, go Gavin Newsom. Draw out those Republicans. They're doing that to us in Tex.
- [10:49]
B
You seen the picture going around of Gav from like his 20s where he's like checking out the girl's tits?
- [10:55]
A
I haven't seen that, but it wouldn't surprise me.
- [10:57]
B
Cameron, have you seen that one?
- [10:58]
C
No. But you know who among us?
- [11:01]
B
Well, me, I guess, would be the who among us. But even still, I don't know, there was some right wing accounts sending around and I was like, they're going to negative polarize me into being for Gavin, I think, you know, just kind of like I've been negatively polarized into being for Zo run. Like it's I, I, I, I'm weak. We're all weak. We're human. We're human beings, you know?
- [11:22]
C
Well, this brings me into one of the other things I wanted to talk about, which is Lakshya Tim likes to characterize me as this sort of Molotov cocktail throwing Leninist far left, not even progressive. I mean, basically anarcho communist. And he and I. I think.
- [11:42]
B
What's part of the bit, I think.
- [11:44]
C
Yeah, I was going to say, I think something that Tim and maybe some other Bulwark subscribers aren't necessarily holding space for, to use some colloquial language, is the fact that if you actually look at Zoomers, I'm kind of a centrist. I know that you, Lakshya, are the centrist of this episode, but considering a lot of Zoomers are like, I won't vote for genocide Joe, and a lot of Zoomers are like, I'm completely Andrew Tate pilled, man. I'm progressive, friendly and stuff. But I hand it to the Biden administration on the plenty of great things they did, like the Inflation Reduction act, which shares an acronym with the Irish Republican Army. Like, I'd like to think that I'm pretty temperate and you are somebody I admire in the abundance pilled centrism world. Because when Mamdani won the nomination in New York City, instead of losing your fucking mind and acting like the world was exploding, you said, okay, well, let's take a look into why this happened and how different candidates can learn from his campaign. So what I'm interested in hearing from you is if you are looking at, I want to talk about centrist candidates a bunch, but if you have a moderate candidate somewhere, what lessons do you think they can learn from the Mamdani campaign? Because I think a lot of them are saying, oh, this means we need to do more social media and work with more influencers. But you've given a couple more nuanced takes than that.
- [13:09]
A
I think people have tendency to fit everything to the last data point that they see. And the dominating question right now among Democrats, after years of thinking that Gen Z and young voters in general were the most liberal they'd ever been, which was true for a long time. That was true. You know, young voters before COVID were the most Democratic. You know, in the Obama to Biden era, that was the most Democratic young voters had been in a long, long time. All of a sudden you get to the situation in 2024 where Trump may have won young voters by one. And so now everyone is asking, what do we do to connect with them again? Hey, look, Zoron's a smart guy. He just won New York City in the Democratic primary. Maybe we should listen to him. Hey, look, young voters are online a lot more. Maybe we got to dominate the online space. Because it's true that if you look at content and you look at the lean, like how Republican a podcaster is versus how Democratic you're going to get a lot more Republican podcasters than Democratic podcasters, a lot more Republic friendly YouTubers and Democratic YouTubers. And so working on that. Yeah, well, that's the thing, Right? The thing that people keep asking is it must just be a problem of us reaching the voters. They haven't asked for some reason. What is it about these voters that made them go to Trump? Why were they friendly towards a Joe Rogan audience? Look, these people have interacted with the racist uncles all their lives. It didn't turn young voters Suddenly Republican in 2016 when they were talking with their racist uncles and aunts about, you know, how they thought Hillary Clinton should be locked up. They didn't turn Republican in 2020, magically, during the height of COVID and defund the police. Why did they turn Republican in 2024? And the answer is in two things. Firstly, the new generation online struggles a lot. Yes, that's true. But more importantly, when we say struggle, what do we mean? They're. They're doing badly economically. The economy sucks for new graduates. That's what drove a lot of them away from the Democrats because Biden was in power. He's an old guy. They didn't think he had the juice. They didn't think he was, like, competent or even coherent or like. And they're like, my life is getting a lot harder, and what the hell is this old guy doing? And when you do that and you think, hey, like, Trump was kind of crazy, but like, and I don't like him, but, like, when he was in office, people were getting jobs. Yeah, the COVID happened, but before COVID it was fine, and they gave him a mulligan for Covid. And all of a sudden, what happened? And one thing you got to remember, Trump has been coded as a guy who fought against Covid, saying lockdowns are bad, et cetera. Now, that's not what happened, but that's what it's been coded as, that the Republican Party was against lockdowns. So even the COVID part, that zoomers hated, they hated staying inside. So from an economic lens, from a societal lens, zoomers blame Democrats for the ills of the last four years, and that's why they've turned to the Republicans.
- [16:09]
B
So you're saying it's negative polarization all the way down like that. It's less about. And I don't want to dismiss, because there are a lot of layers to all this, and you're painting with a broad brush, obviously, that there is a big cohort of younger voters that are actively into DSA or left or whatever you want to call kind of the Zoran ideology. But like, there's another cohort that like, is really kind of being ping ponged by like who they dislike, who they feel like is fucking it up, essentially.
- [16:44]
A
I mean, I think so, right? Because young voters in general tend to have pretty strong effects based on who's in power and what the state of the world is like. And when it's chaotic and the President's in power, they're like, screw this guy. I'm going for the other side. That's why Bush, who caused people blame him for the recession, for the war in Iraq, the generation after that, was the most Democratic. Young voters had been in like a solid 30, 40, 50 years.
- [17:10]
B
What do you make of like, you see these numbers now going around that, like that the Gen Z Trump voters are the ones who have bailed on him the most. Like when you see the cross tabs of these polls, like you look at 18 to 29 or whatever, whatever they have as the youngest cohort, you know, he's losing ground with them. Like, do you think that's real or. I don't know. I saw, I forget who I saw this, a post yesterday from somebody. It's like, it's hard for me to imagine who the 23 year old Trump voter is that's answering these polls anyway. Like, do you think it's a lot of noise or do you think that it's true that we've seen movement among younger voters who voted for Trump who already have regrets?
- [17:53]
A
So I actually think there's a lot of truth to this. I think that it is true, yes, that like young voters are not happy with Trump's numbers on economics. I don't think they're liking a lot of what they're seeing. This is absolutely true. But hey, I mean, that's true. Most of America, Trump's approvals are like negative 8, negative 9. Now what is also true at the same time, the group that is extremely hard to reach in surveys, a lot of them are young Republicans. Reaching young Republicans is really difficult.
- [18:22]
B
Why? Because they're like too busy lifting.
- [18:26]
A
There's an interesting anecdote to this. If you look at people who read a book, that group is overwhelmingly Democratic. If you look at people who don't read that book is that that group is extremely Republican. Now this goes to a central point about polls, right? The types of people who engage with poll are also the types of people who consume a lot of media in like the written form. These are people that read a lot. And those types of people tend to be on panel surveys more. Those types of people tend to engage with surveys more. The act of picking up a phone to take a survey or the act of engaging with a survey is in and of itself a political act that actually shows you have an increased likelihood of voting. And that didn't used to be the case. That's why it's hard to reach young voters, because the types of people we are reaching are attitudinally different. They have different ways of looking at the world. And the fact that they're even responding to the poll says there's something slightly weird about them. And you have to be really careful to control for all of that.
- [19:32]
B
Maybe we should poll via meme, like Benny Johnson meme. You know, maybe then they would respond more. It's like you have show them two pictures and they get to pick which picture they like better.
- [19:40]
A
Didn't that guy get fired for plagiarizing?
- [19:42]
B
Yeah, well, but he's back. He's resurgence. I don't know. Karen, what do you think about the non reading Republicans? How do we reach them?
- [19:48]
C
I've kind of gotten a little bit of a temp track temp check on Trump from my, if not Trump voter, at least Trump friendly friends and the people that I know. And things have definitely turned negative and the response to him has been a lot less fuzzy than it was in 2024. But it brings to mind the quote from a Republican friend of mine that, that I cited a couple weeks ago on the show. Don't mistake my hate for Trump with any love for the Democrats. Right? So young Republicans who might be very upset with Trump, whether that's because he's on the pedophile island or because the economy is how it is right now. I don't know if disdain for Donald Trump and Donald Trump's presidency as of yet immediately translates to voting for some sort of Democrat. Which brings me to the meat of what I kind of wanted to talk about today, which is, Lakshya, you're looking at young voters. You're trying to analyze the data. Although as you said, it's pretty hard to understand the groups that you're sampling. If you're a Democrat in the midterms in 2026, how are, how do you plan on reaching young voters? What is the sauce here?
- [21:05]
A
That's the million dollar question, right? Like if you're a Democrat, there's this group that used to be very Democratic. All of a sudden it suddenly decided they hate Democrats. Like what do you do to fix this? I think two things. Number one, remember how I said young Republicans aren't as likely to like take surveys? Well, they're also not as likely to vote. Young Republicans are not as likely to vote and here's why. Young men have become much more Republican and young men are also like the flakiest group of voters in the world. And part of this is because we generally just suck at remembering things and filling out forms and whatnot. There's like a pretty funny study where like it's shown that women live longer than men and then the times is just like they quoted some expert with the guy was like, yeah, like it's just on these basic self care things and like just remembering to do things like going to the doctor. Women just do that more and it adds up.
- [22:01]
B
Like when was your last dentist visit? Both you guys go.
- [22:10]
C
So young men are less likely to do basic.
- [22:13]
B
Nailed it, nailed it. I'm like the mentalist. You know that guy, the mentalist. They show where he like guesses your pin code. I just, I just took a wild guess that neither of you go to the dentist and nailed it because young men are aristocratic.
- [22:28]
C
I never said that I don't go to the dentist. I said that I plead a little something called the fifth.
- [22:33]
B
Okay, anyway, sorry, continue. Young men vote. They don't go to the dentists, they don't fill out their forms. Where, where were you taking us with that laksha?
- [22:40]
A
The point is they also don't vote. They don't vote that much. And especially like, especially in 2026 when there is a Republican president in office and he's a very unpopular president already, political science shows that if your president is in office, you're not going to be as likely to vote. Okay, there's like an enthusiasm factor where you express your outrage by voting. Secondly, just on the nature of like behavioral science, you can see, and just from validating this over many years, you can see Republican young men are like much less likely to vote than like women are. So already in 26 you're going to do better with young voters just by composition. The pool of people that vote in 2026 that are under 30 is going to be more Democratic by definition, almost like by composition than the group of people that showed up in 2024 who are under 30. And that's simply just because young Democrats are more likely to show up than young Republicans. What I worry is that we will look at that and say, we've solved our problems, we're going to win. Young Voters, again, look at what we did. And Cam, to your point, you can't confuse apathy with a change in identification. That's not the same thing. And I worry that we're going to get down this path where we look at groups that didn't vote and we're like ah, well they didn't vote for the Republicans. And we look at the groups that did vote, they're like, oh, they're so Democratic not realizing that the group that didn't vote in 26 will probably vote in 28 and will probably vote for the Republicans. So if you're trying to get those voters back, you have to focus on what matters to them, which is affordability, number one. Number two, number three, it's affordability. They want affordability. They're concerned about their ability to buy a house, they're concerned about rising prices, they're concerned about their ability to get a job. You have to speak to them somehow.
- [24:27]
B
So here's the million dollar question which takes, I guess we've said that twice. There's several million dollar questions here. People can make a lot of money if they answer them. Cameron, Cameron alluded to this a bit ago. So circling back to the Zoran matter, the question is was Zoran being a socialist or whatever a necessary ingredient for him reaching and exciting younger people or was it that he was really good at talking about the affordability which is the number one issue for them. He was really dynamic and charismatic and has like looks good on, on, on short form video and all that and like a really, you know, passionate as recline abundance pilled. Democrats could have done the same thing talking about affordability but more from a perspective of you know, more housing and.
- [25:17]
C
I mean Duran did say publicly that he is quote abundance pilled.
- [25:23]
B
He did, that's true but I meant from a, from a more capitalist, let's just call it. How about that? Could, could a capitalist Zoran work if they copied what Zoran did by focusing on affordability? They had charisma, whatever. Do you think it could work with young people or does the data just show the kind of young people just want lefty shit?
- [25:41]
A
If I could give you a confident answer I would, but we kind of.
- [25:46]
B
Got to test it out.
- [25:47]
A
One of the problems is that Zorron actually changed the electorate completely in New York City. Yeah, all this stuff about like, you know, how like activate new voters 99% of time. That is nonsense. Zoron actually managed to do that in New York City in a Democratic primary. Yes, but that's still very impressive. So there was something about exciting people. Now, with that said, it's, in my opinion, a little bit more complicated than that. Can you just be an Ezra Klein and say abundant stuff and get a bunch of young people to vote for you? If you could do that, why haven't they done it yet? Like, no one is.
- [26:25]
B
Have you ever been to an abundance meetup? No. Like, I saw some pictures of an abundance meetup and I don't know.
- [26:30]
C
Abundance meetup?
- [26:32]
B
Yeah. Yeah.
- [26:34]
C
I thought my trips to Comic Con were dorky.
- [26:37]
B
Dante, you've got to find this. You got to Google it. They're funny. And it's usually like 12 guys, like, sitting around a table, just, like, looking at. Anyway, sorry.
- [26:45]
C
So not so. Not. Not necessarily abundance of meetup. A meetup of a couple of people.
- [26:51]
B
To discuss abundance of women. Not an abundance of women either.
- [26:54]
C
But I'm just, I'm looking at this Zoran stuff and I'm like, I don't think it was far left communism that really wanted for him because all these polls that I see show that he was winning groups of voters that were not at DSA meetings. I mean, there was a poll I saw yesterday, I think on Fox News, that showed that while the man in the funny hat was getting 40% with Republican voters in New York City, Zoran was, I think, at 23% with Republicans in New York, while Cuomo was several points behind him and Eric Adams was at 8%. Right. Right down there at the bottom of the barrel with his friend Sneako. So it's like Zoran is second place in New York City with Republicans. That's not because he's a DSA guy. That means something else is going on that isn't just the socialism of it all.
- [27:43]
A
This is the thing that I keep trying to explain to people like Zoron. His real surge was not because he was a lefty guy. It was because he focused on affordability. He had a laser, like focus on affordability. Now, maybe you can make the argument that it's easier to focus on economics as a lefty guy because you can claim a lane and you can say, like, this is me. I want to make things cheaper. In the, in the vein of Bernie 2016, everyone should have a job. You could channel that and I would say, fair play. Go ahead and do that. Bernie 2016 was one of the most interesting, like, surges in American political support that we have ever seen, where, if you think about it, Bernie ran against the establishment. And what did Zoron do? Zoron did the same exact Thing he was like, Cuomo is the establishment. He is that guy that made all of this so hard for you. You. I think everything should be cheaper. I think you should have a job. I think he's not going to solve anything. Why would you vote for him? And so that anti establishment message is really important for young voters because there is a sense of rebelling against authority. Then how do you channel the anti establishment message into something convincing? That's where you focus on affordability. You say the people in charge have made it impossible for you to afford anything. Let me show you what I can do. That's how you do it.
- [29:10]
B
I want to offer a different idea. And Cameron's going to be so proud of me. I almost want Cameron to have to cover his face. So I don't see any facial reaction when I say this, but I think that the types of Gen Z voters that are able to be activated in the midterms who might turn out, who maybe turned out in the past and maybe didn't want to see a Democratic candidate who has moral clarity on Gaza and also talks about affordability and also has risk.
- [29:46]
C
You thought I was going to go.
- [29:47]
B
Like, besides that, it could be anything. Yeah, I thought you were going to be like, fine. Yeah, Yeah. I thought you were going to try to rub it in my face because I said it. I brought it up this time. I think it's that. Is that wrong, do you think? I just think that. I feel like it's like table stakes.
- [30:03]
A
I mean, look, the. I do think that Americans in general overrate how sympathetic the public is to Israel, period.
- [30:10]
C
To Israel or to. Or to Palestinians?
- [30:13]
A
No, to Israel.
- [30:15]
C
Got it.
- [30:15]
A
I think Americans in general overrate how friendly the public is to Israel and especially young voters. Young voters are not favorably inclined towards Israel at all. So I don't think Zoran being like, you know, proudly pro Palestinian hurt him one bit with young voters. I don't think that was what drove the surge because there were a lot of other candidates who said the same types of things and none of them surged. Why? Was it Zorro?
- [30:42]
B
Sure, but I just meant, like, it was the thing that got people excited. Like, you have to do it. It's necessary but not sufficient. You know, you can't be a wet noodle. That's also like, I care about Palestine and I want to put out a white paper on it. But, like, you need to be exciting.
- [30:58]
A
Well, that's true, but I would say what excited people about Zoron was the affordability. When did his campaign surge in the Polls. It's when he got on TV and what did all of his commercials talk about? All of his commercials talked about affordability, rent, freezes, grocery stores, things like that.
- [31:13]
C
Tim loves the grocery stores, the socialist grocery stores.
- [31:18]
B
It's really going to change everything. I think the four socialist grocery stores that totally fail and have the grossest produce you've ever seen, I think are going to be the thing that make or break the future of the country.
- [31:30]
C
I've become pro socialist grocery stores with the caveat that they employ New Yorkers instead of using those fucking self checkout machines. I hate self checkout so much. I think that it is so disgusting. And I think that all of the jobs that we're giving to. I'm sure you all know the new slur for robots. Clankers. All the jobs we're giving to clankers. I also heard from my Republican buddy Spark donkeys because we were in LA and have you seen in LA those like kind of cooler shaped robot things on four wheels that just go on the sidewalk to deliver people food? Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, there's like sidewalk delivery.
- [32:14]
B
You haven't seen those in the South Bay? They haven't come to the South Bay yet?
- [32:16]
A
I don't think so.
- [32:17]
C
They're being remote control operated by people at these big depots. And it's just these robot things are so terrible for the job market. So if the communist lettuce is sold by human beings, I will completely throw my support.
- [32:34]
B
Can I tell you the thing that freaks me out? Maybe Lancasha knows about this since he's smart. The thing that freaks me out is like in the airports where you go into the store and then I get. And I just walk in and I take my M and Ms. And I leave and they, they know somehow that I got M and M's. I like the crunchy M&M's. They only sell those certain places. It's in the blue package, but they. But it just charges you that amount. How did they know? How did the machine know that I had. That I got the blue M and Ms. And not that I got Skittles.
- [33:07]
C
I think it was Amazon that was working on a store like this too, where you just go in, you fill up your fucking shopping cart and you walk out and have you not been.
- [33:16]
B
In one of those stores? I was in one at laguardia last yesterday.
- [33:20]
A
I've heard of that. I've never been to it.
- [33:22]
B
It is weird as fuck. It really makes you feel like you're in the future.
- [33:26]
C
But Lakshya, you're probably seeing this too. If you were teaching software engineering to people. There was some New York Times article that came out maybe just two days ago that was saying goodbye. $160,000 salary tech jobs, computer science degree students are now looking for jobs at Chipotle. Are the young people that you were working with having any success at all on the job market? Or are they. I hate to change the subject that much, but I just don't want to lose this thought. Do you know software engineers that are finding work, or are you just seeing everything kind of go away?
- [34:00]
A
Oh, it's difficult for sure. It's difficult for a lot of young software engineers. See, the thing is, I very much feel like my graduating class pre Covid, pre chat, GPT was like last helicopter out of Saigon type of vibes because we entered a job market that was much more positive. We entered a job market that wasn't really as polluted by AI. Now AI can do the work of a junior engineer much more quickly, and a senior will still have to have oversight. You're still going to have to fix the AI's code, but guess what? You're going to have to fix the junior's code anyways. You're going to have to fix a new grads code anyways. So now the argument for hiring a new grad goes. It's not that they're super productive now. It's not that they're going to be any faster now. It's that we want to invest in them to be better later on. But what this means is that you're going to be much more selective with what you pick because you don't have to all of a sudden hire just to fill a role. You want to now just hire to say, I want to invest in this person. And that means the middle and the bottom get hollowed out really badly.
- [35:08]
C
So yeah, I feel like one of those kind of bootstrapp things that we were hearing as we were growing up, specifically in our generation, or I guess you're just sort of technically a millennial, but let's just say our generation was learn to code. Like that was the thing that they were saying to young people. If you're trying to figure out what to do with the future, oh, you want to get a job and everything. They were even saying it during COVID I have friends who spent their COVID pandemic while they were locked at home locking the in to learn how to code. And now it's just, you know, I don't Know how many young people this affected in terms of a substantial voting block, But I do think it was just a huge hit to the morale of young people who are trying to enter the job market and sort of this open ended question of how many more jobs are going to get replaced by the clankers.
- [35:59]
B
They should have learned French using one of our sponsors. Babel.
- [36:03]
C
One of this show's sponsors or one of the other shows?
- [36:05]
B
One of my other show sponsors.
- [36:06]
C
Okay, well, then we won't talk about it.
- [36:08]
B
Well, I was just trying to give them a little freebie.
- [36:10]
C
A potential sponsor for FY podcast.
- [36:14]
A
I'm gonna tie this back to Zoran and Bernie for a sec because it's actually going to be very relevant. What you just brought up with AI. Learn to code. Learn to code, Learn to code. You get out of college and all of a sudden it's 2025 and you can't find a job as easily because, hey, you learned to code. And what does AI do better than anything right now? It writes code. So what's the problem here? It's that young people consistently feel nowadays, especially if you look at economic sentiment, if you look at the job market, they feel like every time they figure out the answers, the economy and the country change. The questions. Now, this is where Bernie and Zoran come in. Why are they so appealing? Why does Bernie Sanders have such a high popularity rating among young voters? Yes, he's authentic, but, like, what is possibly appealing about that strain that also caused some people to be friendly to Trump? It's that sometimes you're like, look, I just want a job. Maybe it's time that the government does something for us instead. Because I keep trying to answer the questions as they're written, and it turns out the exam keeps changing. And that's the appeal of someone like Zoran to go viral. That's why among disengaged voters, they can swing wildly between people like Bernie and then like Trump, because they're not paying that much attention to ideology, they're paying attention to the economy. And this is not true for most voters, but it is true for certain subsets if you're trying to win back.
- [37:39]
B
Yeah. This is related to another stunt we wanted to throw at you that came across my radar here today from unusual whales, the share of older baby boomers. So we're talking, like, near silent. This is the silent baby boomer Cusper. You know, like, I'm an elder millennial. This is an elder boomer. Yeah, they. They made up 22% of the home buyers, whereas the Share of Gen z made up 5% more home buyers over the age of 70 than under 35. That is insane. Under 35.
- [38:15]
C
Shout out home buyer Julian Caskey. I'm proud of you, buddy. And he just started law school. Hell yeah, dude. But yeah, lock sha. We're fucked, right?
- [38:23]
A
No, listen, every time, every time someone says that we're screwed, things aren't going to get better, they forget that eventually policymakers respond to reality. Now it may take some time. In the United Kingdom's case, maybe it took a lot more time than could possibly have been tolerated, but people react. Eventually someone is going to do something about this because if they don't, the electorate kicks them out. What happens is if it does get bad, you're going to see all types of crazy electoral realignments that drive people who can actually do stuff into power. I think things will turn around because eventually the electorate always makes it clear they want to see results and if they don't get it, they're not hesitant about throwing you out.
- [39:06]
B
What do you think about garnishing homes from older boomers? Like we just, we just take their homes from them. Like if you've purchased a home after 70, we are confiscating it.
- [39:17]
A
I.
- [39:20]
C
Isn'T that just Blackrock? Isn't that just what Blackrock does except instead of under 70, it's everybody?
- [39:27]
B
I don't think so. I don't think so.
- [39:28]
C
Wait, but Lakshya, so you're talking about the electorate responding and being able to fix things like this. One of the things I hear a lot about AI is that just because of its nature as this self learning and self preserving machine that is also coded to make you addicted to it, even to the point of psychosis, is that this is sort of a genie out of the bottle situation and that Donald Trump just deregulating and allowing AI to run loose with his techno feudalist friends. Google techno feudalists, if you don't know what that is, that there's kind of going to be no coming back from this administration which would have been the time for a president to do something about this, to keep it from going too far. As someone who does computers and as somebody who does votes, do you think there is going to be an opportunity in the future to put some preventative measures in from allowing AI to cause the destruction that a lot of people are expecting to?
- [40:29]
A
I think there's an opportunity to, but my fear is that, you know, the harm that it may cause by allowing unfettered use to AI, especially at an early age and Especially with. Without checking and regulating its content. I worry that it could do some damage before it is regulated. You know, eventually, like, I think policymakers are going to do something about it. Just like now you're seeing a lot of people get very concerned about things like phones and schools. Eventually people get concerned about it and do something. But the problem is the damage has already been done from things like this. And that's my fear that. Cam, to your point, I worry that, forget the political implications, people don't understand how quickly AI is evolving. And by the time you put guardrails on it, it could be too deeply integrated into everyone's lives to properly disentangle it to a more safe position. And I worry about that a lot, especially as someone who works as an AI engineer. Like, I work in solar.
- [41:37]
B
Hell, yeah. Woke AI engineer, solar.
- [41:39]
A
No, I worry about this a lot. Like, I think people may get too reliant on AI. I worry that regulations around it are too slow. And Cam, you're right. I think this was a time for a president to come in and say, yeah, AI is good, but with limits, with regulations, with sanity.
- [41:57]
B
I want to get to Boomer Mailbag, but we need to nerd out for one more minute because it's my favorite type of material that you're putting out there. You guys did at Split Ticket to kind of an analysis of like, what types of candidates over perform and underperform as sort of a overlap with kind of advanced stats and sports, kind of bringing it to politics. And I'm just wondering. There's. There's been some chatter. You've got some competitors now out there in the marketplace. You know, there's in super nerd Twitter, there's some fighting over whose model is better. I obviously am partial to yours. Are there any trends that you were seeing as far as, like, what types of candidates have done well, particularly when it comes to like, House, House and Senate races, I think.
- [42:41]
A
Do you, either of you watch baseball?
- [42:43]
B
Cameron is currently wearing a baseball jersey. I'm gay, and so the fact that I do basketball and football is enough. Baseball takes too long and it is not friendly to homosexuals.
- [42:55]
C
Also, you know, considering where his family's from, where he grew up, where he lives right now, there's really no team for him that's necessarily worth watching. And I say this as a fan of the Milwaukee brewers, which most people, including people who watch baseball, don't even know exists.
- [43:10]
B
Yeah, that's true. The Rockies are. Rockies, I believe, are in last right now. I think that's right.
- [43:15]
C
The Rockies are having like an actually historically bad season. They are basically playing. I genuinely think I'm about as good as the Rockies at baseball. But Lakshya, I'm so excited for whatever baseball you're about to say.
- [43:29]
A
If I asked you what type of hitters generally do better, the answer that people would probably give you is hitters who can hit for power usually tend to have a higher wins above replacement. They usually tend to bring more value. Now, this is not a blanket rule. You can have people who hit for power, but who are actually pretty useless. And you can have people who don't hit for power, like Ichiro, who are very valuable. You can have people who don't hit for power and are still valuable. You can have people who hit for power and are valuable. But on balance, if you look at the full set, the people who hit for power tend to have more value. People who hit more home runs tend to have more value because hitting for power is correlated with value because you get more basis in the same way. Moderation is the type of interesting thing that we see people who are moderate, like moderate candidates, earnestly moderate candidates that are aggressive against their own party, like Jared Goldin, like Mary Peltola, like Marie Gluson Camperez, who didn't endorse Biden or Harris.
- [44:32]
B
They're the power hitters.
- [44:33]
A
Yeah, those types of people do better. And that's not to say that you can't be a progressive, right? Like, that's not to say that all progressives are underperforming. That's not to say that underperformance or over performance is everything. But it is to say that if you're looking to win, swing districts, on balance, moderate tend to do better. Now, there are strong progressives, there are weak moderates. Richie Taurus is not an especially strong moderate. Rashida Plebe is a decently strong progressive. So is Sylvia Garcia. But on balance, the moderates tend to do better. And that's just why do you think.
- [45:12]
B
Richie's a weak moderate?
- [45:14]
A
It's not that he's weak. It's just not that he's especially impressive. There's nothing like special electorally in his results. They're basically exactly what you would expect from a candidate in his district. It's not like he gets any more votes than you would expect.
- [45:27]
C
You are being too hard on him. I think he might very well be the most competent American congressman that the state of Israel has ever seen.
- [45:35]
B
Okay, Cam, do you have any other nerd questions before we go to the.
- [45:38]
C
Boomer mailbag No, I think I'm good.
- [45:40]
B
Boomer Mailbag has one harsh critique of Cam, which I'm excited to share.
- [45:43]
C
Oh, well, then we gotta get right into that.
- [45:45]
B
That'll be second now. We'll save that for last. First, Brittany, a progressive boomer asked this to the two of you. To what extent do Gen Zers think that progressive overreach played a role in Trump's election? In particular, the narrative that wokes are shrill, judgmental, unforgiving, thin skinned and self absorbed. So Laksha, you already covered the economic backlash, the backlash on Covid stuff. What about the narrative that wokes like Cameron are shrill, unforgiving and self absorbed?
- [46:21]
A
The attitude that people have had has definitely taken a shift against woke. That is true. You can look at any number of surveys and see that. But more importantly, I think is that I don't think this is something that was a driving factor behind why a lot of young men turned against the Democratic Party. Honestly, if you're looking at progressive overreach, you may just want to start with COVID because that was what closed their schools down. That was what made them go home from college. That was the type of thing where after you emerged from it into the job market at a terrible time, and that's what made them spend a lot more time online and away from interacting with other people. Right. Like young men didn't get to interact with young women all that much for a full year because of COVID compared to normal. And that had real serious consequences. And so I don't think, like the woke itself was the key driver behind why these people turned away. I think if you want to blame progressive overreach, you should probably start with COVID and then look at the governance of the Biden administration and realize that the country doesn't see as progressives, moderates, conservatives, Magaz, they see it as like liberals, conservatives, and then this group of moderates in the middle. Progressives and liberals. That distinction doesn't matter to anyone other than the people who are listening to like podcasts like this one or like on Twitter or whatever. That's not what any average person looks at and thinks. So Biden progressives, same bucket.
- [47:58]
B
Cameron, what do you think?
- [48:00]
C
I don't think it was the woke that did all of this because I don't know, like, woke up. Whether or not woke was what it is now. When Obama won, that was what the Republicans were saying was happening. The Republicans were saying, Obama is a Muslim, he is a socialist. He is. They were, they were making the same kinds of attacks as These attacks on woke. The difference to me is that Obama was proud, owned it, and said, if you want all want to characterize me this way, that's fine. I'm going to be steadfast in my values. And I think that the problem with WOKE is how the Democratic Party cowers away from the idea and is like, no, no, no, no, guys, that's not us. No, you're getting the wrong idea. I think that if the Democratic Party just owned it in a way that was audacious and boisterous and was like, yeah, this is what we do. This is how we treat people. It's called having a bit of decency. It would have worked a lot better. So I don't think that WOKE is the problem. I think that.
- [49:05]
B
What about shrill? Is shrill the problem?
- [49:07]
C
Shrill is the problem. Shrill has been around for a long time, and I'm not a big fan of shrill. No shrill from me. I, I, if I've ever been shrill, I apologize. Shrill, definitely bad. Talking down to people, definitely bad. And a lot of the young people I know who are more conservative or MAGA friendly feel like the Democratic Party is always talking down to them. But again, I think that WOKE can happen without talking down to people. It just needs to be a welcoming version of woke, not a version of WOKE that seems like it exists to exclude people at all times. And if the Democratic Party just owned it and said being woke, oh, that's what they call having a shred of decency. Come on board. I'm sure you've got it, too. It would have been a different story.
- [49:56]
A
The thing is this, politicians don't actually change opinions as much as people think they do. The net effect of, for example, a president coming out forcefully in favor of something is almost always the American public being like, no, not that. I don't, I don't think that forcefully embracing WOKE would have helped Democrats. I do think there is something to the fact that, like, Democrats generally don't have the same type of pulse on the median voter as they used to. Now, I'm not saying you need to throw people under the bus, but I am saying that there needs to be an acknowledgment when you're talking about this, that there has to be room for people in our coalition who disagree with us. And, you know, you can't just ostracize someone from the coalition, as Sarah McBride said, because they disagree with you on an issue where 70% of America also disagrees with you. I think it's fine if you want to say Like Bernie says, this is what I believe, but I think you have to make space to talk to people who don't agree.
- [51:00]
C
Well, there's a difference between not making space to talk to people who don't agree and rec. You have to recognize, no matter what the Democrats do, if they are not blatantly racist, if they are not blowing that dog whistle till people's ears pop, they're going to be characterized as woke. No matter how moderate a Democrat is. The. So the Republicans will characterize them as a socialist. Obama, socialist, Joe Biden socialist.
- [51:28]
A
Hold on.
- [51:29]
C
Any Democrat who believes that, you know, in women's equal rights and people of color having access to the same things that everybody else does, they will be considered woke. So you can either try to wriggle out of it or you can own that shit.
- [51:44]
A
No, but it's true that 40% of the electorate, the Republicans will think that. Yes, but elections aren't won by that 40% we're talking about. What exactly can you do to make the 10% of people in the middle agree with you more? And the thing is there, doesn't it say something that Obama did much better with that middle slice of voters than Harris did, that Biden did much better with that middle slice of voters and Harris did. I mean, like, I think we just have to look at the fact that two things. Number one, coming out, forcefully saying what you believe in has become synonymous with shrill in our party. It has become synonymous with saying, that's what I believe in. There is no disagreement tolerated here. That's what we do. And these two things, in practice, they may be separable, they may not be separable, is what I'm saying. Like, we don't see separation between, like, forcefully saying what you believe in and acknowledging that good, meaning people can have different opinions. And that's. That's what I keep coming back to. Right? And you say like, yes, they're going to get coded a socialist. Okay, Fox News says that. But the country doesn't just listen to Fox News. They can make distinctions between politicians. It's why Shapiro ran ahead of Fetterman by 10%. Right? They looked at Mastriano, they looked at Oz, and they said, I can tolerate.
- [52:59]
B
Fetterman being unable to talk. Probably helped.
- [53:01]
A
No, that too. They're like, I can tolerate Oz, but I'm not tolerating Mastriano. And that's why Fetterman won by five and Shapiro won by 15. So they make these differences between candidates.
- [53:10]
B
It's an exciting disagreement. At the end of FYpod I like this. Do you, do you, do you have a least woke take that you want to share lecture?
- [53:19]
A
My least woke take is that I think in general the movement based around identifying which races need uplifting etc in politics and in education and whatnot had good intentions but has had much more counterproductive results than people believe. Because it turns out that the people that we thought we were doing that for did not want anything to do with it. It's why, you know, we've been clobbered on education over and over and over again. And I think like you have to understand that you may fight for a policy that you think is good for a group of people, but functionally if that group of people doesn't want anything to do with that policy, maybe listen to why they're saying that and recognize that maybe you don't have the answers and maybe, maybe you know, we were wrong. That's my spice.
- [54:15]
B
Okay, Spice from a show. Cameron, you're getting hit hard at the end of this pod. So I want to encourage everybody to send an email if you have a complaint about me. We can read it next week. Bulwark podcast the Bulwark.com My Least Woke.
- [54:26]
C
Take, by the way, is the chapel roan made lesbians arrogant. Next question.
- [54:31]
B
That's great. I agree with both of your least woke takes, which is why this is the least woke liberal Gen Z pilled podcast on the Bulwark Network. Final this is more of a comment than a question. Like I said, if you have a negative comment about me, we'll read it next week. Bulwark podcast or the bulwark.com we also are getting a lot more political questions so again please. Cameron has been giving great relationship advice. He's been giving great sex advice. So please submit those as well. Bulwark podcast@the bullork.com final comment. It's comes from Endemian Orpheus. This person must be from New Orleans. Those are both Mardi Gras Cruz and they are an incel self identified incel and they don't like maga but they really don't like the libs who make fun of incels. And in this comment they say this about Cameron. Cameron is an arch lookist that's L o o k I s t arch lookist who judges people's worth on the basis of their appearance hotness. You do not get how triggering it is for someone like me to listen to that. I feel like I do that more than Cameron. But Cameron, do you feel like you're an arch lookist? And do you have any appeal you'd like to make to the incel community that listens to fypod?
- [55:52]
C
I will say saying positive things about how somebody looks and their hotness. I have no regrets about that. I love to say positive things about people. Anyone who I have negatively spoken about their appearance. Admittedly, I don't even know what this could be referencing. I like one of my woker things is not trying to go after people for stuff like that. But when I do, it's because they.
- [56:17]
B
Started it or because they're bad on the inside. Ugly on the inside.
- [56:21]
C
When people talk about how I look, it doesn't really bother me. I'm fine with how I look. It's done quite well for me, thanks for asking. But in terms of negative comments about somebody else's appearance, it's if they're being bigoted, it's if they are demeaning somebody else or their worth or their appearance, I am firmly of the belief and we said this, we've said this a bunch of times, if you can dish it, you ought to be able to take it. So the people who I call ugly are the people who are calling a woman in politics fat or gross or something like that. And that is ugly. That is ugly of spirit. It is ugly of body. You could be the hottest person in the world and launch one of those attacks and you're still ugly. So to this incel I would like to say you probably have access to a better life than you think you do. If you try to socialize, go to the gym, shower, probably shave. A lot of incel beards are not robust and effective. They're normally kind of scraggly. There are spaces in this world that will be more welcoming to you than you might think. I think a lot of incels project and exclude themselves from spaces before even making the effort. And if the effort doesn't work, keep trying and believe in other human beings because there will be people for you who will accept you and suddenly you'll learn that there is a place for you in this world and you don't need to. Also, why are you listening to Bulwark? I'm sorry, this isn't fucking incel. Whatever.
- [57:47]
B
Everybody can have a glow up. Cameron, that's a very great answer.
- [57:49]
C
This incel I think that you're fucking.
- [57:51]
B
Hot and everyone can. A glow up is available to everyone. I've seen some unbelievable glow ups recently. One of my let's, you know, I don't want to be a lookist, but let's just Say if you're just looking at the stats, one of my friends from my heyday in my 20s, when we were going out to the gay bar and, you know, trying to find other boys to kiss, one of the ones who is, you know, not as strong in that suit, I wouldn't have called them an incel, but maybe didn't do as well. Is crushing it right now. In his 40s, massive glow up. Crushing it. It's open to everyone.
- [58:24]
C
One more thing incel that's also totally true for any older listeners of ours is there's no age at which you lose the opportunity to become more attractive there. There's an age at which it becomes an awful lot harder. And losing weight, gaining muscle, those things become a lot more challenging. But you can always improve the way. And so, so often it's. It's basic things about your appearance that are not necessarily tied to the way your body looks. That's out of your control. But one more thing for the incel incels everywhere. If you are using the term lookist to describe somebody who might be shallow and vain and unnecessarily focusing on people's appearances, you're already not going to be taken seriously if you self identify as an incel. But you will definitely not be taken seriously if you use the word locust. That sounds like some woke bullshit that somebody on Twitter who refuses to vote for Kamala Harris would say, like, oh, you're, you're being lookist. Stop it with that shit. It's dumb.
- [59:27]
B
Laksha, any final messages for the incels in the audience?
- [59:31]
A
Honestly, that was probably the funniest thing I've heard in the last week. The truth is, I think a lot of you guys really underestimate how, how much women care about stuff. That's just like, can you listen and hold a conversation without talking about yourself? And they care a lot less about looks than you might think, because what looks good to a guy does not always look good to a girl. You want proof? Take the most jacked guy you know and put him in the gym and put him on the bench press. You know who's going to surro him? Five other dudes that say, nice, bro, how much do you. I used to bench too.
- [60:07]
C
To all the locusts, centrists and Molotov cocktail throwing progressives of the Bulwark, we'd like to thank Lakshia for your time. I want to thank my friend Tim. And we'll all be seeing you soon. Thanks a lot.