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- [00:00]
A
Hey there, listeners. I hope everyone is having a nice holiday season.
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B
We've got a very special treat for.
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A
You this week, which is our quote.
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B
Unquote, Roman Empire elections. In other words, the elections that, for one reason or another, take up an inordinate amount of our mental space. We're publishing it in two parts because.
- [00:19]
A
We ended up going so long.
- [00:21]
B
And the whole thing is both funny and informative. You'll get the first part today, Monday, December 22, and. And paid subscribers will get the second part tomorrow.
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A
Tuesday, December 23rd.
- [00:32]
B
All right, here it is.
- [00:34]
A
Do we have any Green Bay packers fans on the podcast today?
- [00:39]
C
No, unfortunately not.
- [00:41]
D
I don't know. No.
- [00:42]
A
Well, that makes zero of us.
- [00:46]
C
Oh, wait, are you not a Packers fan? You just have the hat for when you were in Wisconsin.
- [00:50]
A
Yeah, I actually bought this hat at the Gap, of all places.
- [00:55]
D
Don't you get stressed out that people are going to, like, stop you and be like, hey, this season your quarterback is going to, like. And you're going to be like, oh, I don't. I don't know who that is. That's. I get really freaked out about wearing sports stuff if I don't know the ins and outs of the team.
- [01:10]
A
Leah, have you met me? I'm a pretty shameless person. I'll just be like, no, I don't. No, I don't know anything about it.
- [01:16]
B
Sorry.
- [01:28]
A
Hello, and welcome to the GD Politics podcast. I'm Galen Brook. In 2022, a Swedish influencer told her followers on Instagram to ask the men in their lives about the Roman Empire. The instinct was that men, for some.
- [01:42]
B
Reason, have plenty of thoughts about it, and that turned out to be correct. The suggestion led to a proliferation of.
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A
Videos on social media of women asking men how often they think about the Roman Empire.
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B
For some men, it was daily, for others, weekly.
- [01:58]
A
This is the part of the intro where I admit that as a teenager.
- [02:01]
B
I got a large SPQR henna tattoo.
- [02:03]
A
On my forearm, although technically those are the initials of the Roman Republic, not the Roman Empire. And with that distinction, I'm probably already telling on myself. In any case, a meme was born, and what began as a question of how often men think about the Roman.
- [02:17]
B
Empire morphed into the idea that any.
- [02:20]
A
Topic that occupies an inordinate amount of one's mental space is. Is one's own personal Roman Empire.
- [02:27]
B
For example, someone might say, my Roman Empire is 2003 era pop culture or the Titanic. You can quickly fall down a Reddit.
- [02:36]
A
Rabbit hole where people share obsessions as Wide ranging as women's Bible study groups or Chicago's alleyways. So now that I've got all of the boomers who listen to this podcast up to speed. Hi, dad. You have the context for today's episode, which is Roman Empire elections. Not elections that happened in the Roman Empire, which again, wouldn't be possible because the start of the empire marked the.
- [02:57]
B
End of representative government, but instead American.
- [03:01]
A
Elections that take up an inordinate amount of our mental space. Dear friends of the podcast, Leah Askarinom. Jacob Rubashkin and I came up with this idea while we were recording a different podcast a while back. So today we're gonna actually indulge. Here with me now is reporter at the Associated Press, Leah Askarinam. Leah, welcome to the podcast.
- [03:20]
D
Thank you so much for having me.
- [03:22]
A
It's such a pleasure. Also here with us is deputy editor at Inside Elections, Jacob Rubashkin. Jacob, welcome.
- [03:28]
C
Hi, Galen.
- [03:30]
A
So before we start with our election obsessions, does anyone want to share their own personal Roman Empire? Leah, Chicago's alleyways. Does that sort of strike a chord with you?
- [03:42]
D
No, Mine is probably. I don't. Mine is Harry Potter. But it's not the movies, it's the books. And it's the text, specifically. And I just want to make that very clear that it's the text that I am.
- [03:55]
A
Do you mean the font of the texts or do you mean the fact that it's written?
- [04:00]
D
The story, the narrative, the narrative in the books?
- [04:05]
A
Anything about it in particular?
- [04:08]
D
Oh, everything. Like, everything. It's like, really. I mean, I think about it every day. Like social interactions, politics. You want to get into like, sixth Harry Potter book and like that first chapter or second chapter with the two ministers. The two ministers. I think the other minister. There it is. I think about that a lot. I think about resistance a lot. You know, being a Hufflepuff, like, is that okay? It's something I'm okay with. I can hear people yelling at me, like, read another book. But it is what it is. I can't help it. It's my Roman Empire.
- [04:43]
A
Okay. I think that's a great example of what a personal Roman Empire is. And now I'm just going to imagine every time you're up on the Hill reporting for the. That you're just processing everything as Harry Potter interactions.
- [04:54]
D
Like, oh, I can sort.
- [04:55]
A
Elizabeth Warren takes the podium and you're like, okay, Hermione Granger.
- [04:59]
D
I have sorted so many senators and members of the House in my head. And I just realized that right now, talking to you that I've actually done that. And I didn't realize. I swear I did not realize it.
- [05:09]
A
Okay, who's a member of Slytherin?
- [05:11]
D
Oh, I can't do that.
- [05:14]
A
She's a nonpartisan reporter, guys.
- [05:16]
D
I mean, don't you kind of have to.
- [05:17]
C
Who's the Slughorn of the Hill, right? The one good Slytherin?
- [05:20]
D
Don't you kind of have to be a Slytherin to be in politics? Like, you kind of have to be a little cutthroat and ambitious. You're probably not a great politician if you're not at least a little Slytherin.
- [05:31]
A
I have to admit, I haven't read all the books, so I can't really match you here.
- [05:34]
D
Oh, my God. Let's stop. I can't do this right now.
- [05:37]
A
Okay, Jacob, what's your personal Roman Empire?
- [05:40]
C
So one of my personal Roman empires is actually an election that we will talk about later on in the podcast.
- [05:45]
B
Oh, God.
- [05:46]
A
Two on the nose.
- [05:47]
C
Truly. Truly. One that I do think about all the time. So that's one thing. You know, I would say the Napoleonic Empire for me was always something that was hipsterish here.
- [06:01]
A
Like, it's not the Roman Empire, it's the Napoleonic Empire.
- [06:03]
C
No, no, like, truly. I never thought about the Roman Empire. Growing up. I had a little Alexander phase. I was like, very into Alexander as, like a small child. But Napoleon is always where my interests have been and kind of that turn of the century Europe. I went as Napoleon for Halloween in fourth grade. There's a great photo of me that is out there online because I put it there of me in, like, the Napoleon hat and like a full uniform that my mom made me. So that's always been a big. A big thing for me. And then, yeah, I don't know. I would say the hit early to mid 2000s NBC comedy 30 Rock, which I think is.
- [06:49]
D
Ooh, that's a great.
- [06:50]
C
Probably the best comedy ever to be on tv is got to be up there in terms of things that I think about a lot and in kind of any sort of interaction where I need a touch point.
- [07:02]
A
How often do you think about the actual Roman Empire?
- [07:07]
C
Very, very little. I don't know. It's like, I don't. I don't. I've never understood why the Roman Empire is. The Roman Empire, like, is people's Roman Empire. I don't know. It was just like. Was a thing that happened.
- [07:19]
D
I was gonna say 30 Rock is probably up there for me too, now that I think about it. 30 Rock and Parks and Rec. Like just on a day to day basis, like the number of times I want to be, like, deal breaker or something. You know, it's just.
- [07:32]
A
What about the Roman Empire? Can we get you to break down gender barriers here?
- [07:36]
D
No, I didn't care about the gender. I didn't care about the Roman Empire. I'm sorry, I just didn't. I just. I just didn't.
- [07:47]
A
I want to stipulate here that I don't think about the Roman Empire all that much, but the SPQR tattoo that I mentioned in the intro stands for Senatus populus quae Romanus, which is everywhere, all over the city of Rome.
- [08:01]
B
And I was living in Rome at the time.
- [08:03]
A
I don't even know that I was thinking that much about the Roman Empire. I think I was just. Or the Roman Republic. Excuse me. I think I was just excited about the place. So I don't necessarily identify as a man who thinks about the Roman Empire on a regular basis.
- [08:16]
D
Does it count that I had a necklace in, like, third or fourth grade that was S, P, I, C, E?
- [08:28]
A
If I had to pick a personal Roman Empire, it is probably like early 2000s pop culture, especially these days. I watched the documentary on Netflix about the Biggest Loser, and, well, that's not exactly pop culture, but, like, early 2000s reality TV was absolutely insane. Before. Before we really go down a rabbit hole here and end up at women's Bible studies groups, I think we should talk about elections. And for our purposes, I wanted to, I don't know, maybe provide a benchmark for the kinds of elections that the world considers to be particularly consequential. So I asked the Internet, you know, like, what are the most important American? And I settled on Encyclopedia Britannicas. Speaking of defunct empires, I settled on Encyclopedia Britannica's top eight most consequential American elections as our benchmark. So you two will share your top five. I asked you to come up with five. Then we'll see how they compare to the authoritative ranking of Encyclopedia Britannica. Now, when we first recorded a podcast and came up with this idea, you each had your own Roman Empire elections that you mentioned. I think, Jacob, yours was the 2000 election, and Leah, yours was the 2018 Florida gubernatorial election. I don't know if that's where you guys want to start, but nonetheless. Jacob, why don't you kick us off?
- [09:56]
C
Yeah. So this is as advertised. This is my real Roman Empire. I think about the 2000 election in Florida all the time. I think that it hits all of the points right it was incredibly close. 537 votes separated George W. Bush and Al Gore in the state of Florida in 2000. By the final count, or whatever, the last count that they did before the Supreme Court told them to stop counting. You had the hanging chads, you had the tens of thousands of votes for Pat Buchanan. You had Ralph Nader winning 50,000 votes. So incredibly close. Lots of uncertainty. And the consequentiality of that election, I think, cannot be overstated. Right. I really think that was an incredible turning point in American politics. You look at everything that followed from the reaction to 9 11, the invasion of Iraq, the financial crisis in the early 2000s and the financial crisis in 2008, just the number of, like, if.
- [11:01]
A
Al Gore was president, we wouldn't have had a financial crisis.
- [11:04]
C
I. So perhaps, perhaps not. I'm not smart enough to, like, do the counterfactual. I think certainly if Al Gore had been president, we would not have invaded Iraq. I think that the regulatory scheme would have been different when it came to, you know, the financial world. You know, I think that the priorities of government would. Would have been different. You know, obviously, 911 probably still would have. I think the response would have been different when it involved the invasion of Afghanistan. Obviously, you can't have this conversation without talking about the Supreme Court. Right. I mean, George W. Bush appoints John Roberts to the Supreme Court, he appoints Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, cementing a conservative majority that still persists to this day. Those would have been Al Gore appointees if they had not been George W. Bush appointees. So I think after eight years of the Bill Clinton era, which not a lot happened, sorry to, like, people who grew up in the 90s, but, like, pretty calm decade as far as, like, major American events go after the end of the Cold War, you know, a lot happened in the early 2000s, and Al Gore and George W. Bush were very different people. And so that, to me, is the election that will always remain kind of as the biggest turning point. And because it was decided by so few votes under such unusual circumstances, and there's still, you know, outstanding questions about how everything went down there. You know, I think that has to be number one on the list.
- [12:40]
A
How often do you actually think about the 2000 election?
- [12:45]
C
I don't know. Several times a week.
- [12:48]
A
Several times a week. Okay.
- [12:49]
C
Not. Not every day, but, like, often. I also write about election, right. So, like, I'm always thinking about elections in general.
- [12:56]
A
Is it in the context of elections or will you be at the grocery store or at a concert and be like, hmm, I wonder if I would be here right now had the 2000 election gone a different way.
- [13:07]
C
Well, first of all, I was born before 2000, so I would. I'm not that young.
- [13:14]
A
Not born. Maybe, like, the music scene would have been slightly different in the early 2000s had Al Gore been president, and you wouldn't end up at like, a Dave Matthews Band concert or, like, you know, you know what I'm talking about. Like, have you ever seen Butterfly Effect?
- [13:31]
D
I mean, think about, like, kind of the pop culture that, like, grew out of opposition to George W. Bush. To George Bush and the Iraq war. Just, like, was it Lilia, the Dixie Chicks?
- [13:41]
A
We would still have. We would still. The Dixie Chicks probably would have been the. Still the biggest music group on the planet.
- [13:48]
C
Yeah, that's true. And that would have changed my whole trajectory. I would not be an elections reporter had the Chicks been able to, you know, maintain their meteoric rise instead of speaking out against George W. Bush. No, I don't know. I don't know if it's like, something that would have changed my personal history, but it is, you know, to me, it's. It's.
- [14:11]
A
It.
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C
I go back to it every time that there's a close election. Every time I think about, you know, every time people tell me that they don't think their vote matters or that they don't think that election.
- [14:20]
B
Why.
- [14:20]
C
Why is election administration so important? Why is ballot design so important? Which I know is, you know, a common theme that Leah and I will share in our. In our top picks here. You know, it has all of the. It has all of the components to it. And so.
- [14:37]
A
Yeah, okay, Leah, go for it.
- [14:40]
D
I think about this very differently because Jacob is thinking about this in, like, a world impact lens, which I think is right. Like, or even looking at elections that have been the biggest turning points in history. That's not my Roman Empire. Mine is how someone got to be such a big deal. And I think part of that's because I used to work at Inside Elections, and so Jacob knows his experience better than I do. But, like, you know, you interview all of these candidates for House and Senate and Governor before they get kind of their media training. And also just before, like, any knows who they are, you know, some of these people have, like, barely raised any money or are so far from household names. And it's fascinating to go from kind of having awkward small talk with them in an office to, like, seeing them at a rally or, like, seeing their names become household names or, like, to see your friends start idolizing them or hating them, it's just fascinating to me. So that's pretty much the common thread in all of mine. Or like, how do these people become such a big deal? And one of those that I think about a lot is Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin in Virginia and how, again, like, his trajectory is still in process. Like, you know, he's been mentioned as a presidential candidate. So, you know, time will tell whether this is a big impactful kind of turning point or whether this is just kind of like a funny turn of events. Though, you know, you can argue that he's already made a pretty big impact just in Virginia politics or in state policy in Virginia, especially post pandemic. So for that reason, I would say my Roman Empire election is a 2018 January state house race in Virginia where There was a 10 point lead for one candidate, followed by a recount where the race was absolutely tied with the majority on the line for the state House. The election was actually in 2017. The results came out in early 2018 because of the recount. In the end, because there was a tie, they picked names out of a hat, and the name that they picked out of a hat or a bowl, I think was the Republican name. So now Republicans are in control in 2018 of the. The House of Delegates. Right, there's the House of Delegates in Virginia. Obviously that has like its own kind of political legislative impact. But let's fast forward a little bit. One year later, I think there's a.
- [17:40]
A
Sense of where this is going.
- [17:42]
D
And a photo is unearthed showing the governor, Democratic Governor Ralph Northam, wearing blackface in medical school in 1984. He tries to kind of quiet things down, holds a press conference, admits to actually once darkening his skin for a Michael Jackson costume. And then his wife appears to stop him before he can demonstrate that he can do the moonwalk. Calls to resign came from all over Democrats. And I know like we were around for this, just a little review. Some of the calls to resign came from, like, members of Congress, Jennifer Wexton, Don Beyer and multiple Democrats who are running for president at the time, including then Senator Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and notably Terry McAuliffe, who would go on to lose the governor's race against Glenn Youngkin just a couple years later. The reason why the coin flip is the election I think about is because the line of succession was what caused Ralph Northam to stay governor. The lieutenant governor, Justin Fairfax, ended up with his own MeToo issues, things that he vehemently denied, but accusers were coming out. The Attorney general who was next in line, Mark Herring, admits that he once wore blackface as a teenager. And then the next in line is the Republican speaker of the House. And Democrats are not going to allow a Republican speaker of the House to become governor. So the calls for Northam to resign just kind of fade into the ether. Northam finishes out his term and is obviously replaced by Glenn Youngkin, a Republican. And my question is, if that other name had been called, would Ralph Northam.
- [19:44]
A
Not state House election.
- [19:44]
D
In the state House election, would Ralph Northam have resigned? And if so, would that person like what would have happened in the 2021 governor's race? Because it was a close race with Terry McAuliffe. It was less than two points margin. And I think, I think a Republican probably would have won that race anyway just because that race usually goes the opposite of the presidential race the year prior. But it was close enough and Virginia had been turning blue, where I do wonder if a different candidate had been there, if they had started with a clean slate or even if it just had been somebody who wasn't Terry McAuliffe who was seen as someone so closely tied to kind of the establishment administration. If there would have been a Republican Governor, Glenn Youngkin.
- [20:37]
A
So it went blackface, sexual misconduct, blackface Republican. If it had gone blackface, sexual misconduct, blackface Democrat, then there's a world in which Glenn Youngkin never becomes governor of.
- [20:51]
D
Virginia, theoretically, hypothetically, maybe. And I think about that a lot because Glenn Youngkin is so frequently talked about as this super talented politician whose evidence of being able to overcome the partisan, the partisanship of a state. And I don't necessarily disagree with that, it's just he also benefited from the right name being called or being pulled out of a bowl. And that is politics. That is just how it happens so often. And I think about that all the time.
- [21:25]
A
Today's podcast is brought to you by GiveWell.
- [21:28]
B
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- [21:49]
A
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B
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- [22:12]
A
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B
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- [22:50]
A
Okay, so now it's time for Encyclopedia Britannica to come onto the scene. Their most influential election in American History, 1789. The one that started it all. I can hear Jacob's eyes rolling when talking about presidential elections that changed history. The only place to start is with the one that first made history. That is the first presidential election.
- [23:17]
B
George Washington was not merely the first.
- [23:19]
A
President, he was the only president to be elected to unanimously. In 1984, Ronald Reagan would win 49 out of 50 states. But even that landslide victory couldn't compare to Washington's. Under the Electoral Rules of 1789, these 69 electors were told to vote for two candidates. The candidate getting the most votes would be President. The one receiving the second most votes would be Vice President. Washington's name appeared on all 69 ballots. Hamilton fans will recall this process caused a particularly ugly election involving Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, and in 1800. The 12th Amendment passed in 1804 mandated that the president and Vice president be elected separately. One other random fact about the first presidential election. It was the one and only to be held in an odd numbered year.
- [24:04]
D
Can I just throw something out there that this is like exactly why you should use raw numbers sometimes instead of percentages. Like 100% of the vote and 69 votes out of 69 votes. What a. What a difference in impact.
- [24:20]
A
You know, good data point. Good data point. So we have Jacob with the 2000 election, Leah with the 2017 Virginia state house election, and Encyclopedia Britannica with the first American election, presidential election in 1789. Jacob, your turn.
- [24:38]
C
Okay, so in a similar vein to Leah I in terms of, you know, races that have a real domino effect on the trajectory of certain politicians, I am going to take us all the way back to the early 1990s, which is not when this election took place, but it is when CBS decided to reboot the Star Trek franchise, which had laid dormant since the 1960s. Of course, the original series, William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, such a smashing success, only ran for three seasons, left a very lasting pop culture impact in America and across the world. The rise of the Trekkies, all that. Anyways, come to the 1990s, they decide to reboot it. They want to do this show called the Next Generation. Right, Star Trek, the Next Generation. And nobody expected this show to be particularly successful. I think Patrick Stewart was.
- [25:30]
A
Hold on, Jacob, can I pause you right here? Leah, do you know what election this is gonna be?
- [25:34]
D
No.
- [25:35]
A
Okay, me either. I just wanted to. I just wanted to. No, I have no idea. I just wanted to see if you would be able to guess in advance if your brains had melded enough for you to.
- [25:44]
D
I'll raise my hand if it hits you.
- [25:46]
A
Okay? As soon as. Yeah, as soon as it hits you, raise your hand. Okay, Jacob.
- [25:50]
C
So they reboot Star Trek with the Next Generation in the early 90s. It was very uncertain how it would go. Patrick Stewart once said that, you know, he thought maybe they'd do one season, maybe two, and then he would go on and continue to do his other more distinguished things that he was doing. Sorry, sir. Patrick Stewart. And of course, it was a smashing success, right? And the show runs for like six or seven seasons, and they decide, all right, we gotta do another one. So they do Star Voyager. And they cast in Voyager, an actress named Jeri Ryan as a character named Seven of Nine, who is kind of a. She's part of the Borg, but then she escapes the Borg. And Jeri Ryan at the time was married to an investment banker named Jack Ryan. But the stress of the production schedule and the traveling for Star Voyager put a real toll on their marriage. And they ultimately ended up getting divorced in 1999. Now, their divorce records were sealed, which is important. We'll come back to this. Flash forward five years. Illinois Senator Peter Fitzgerald decides not to seek reelection. He is the incumbent Republican after one term.
- [26:59]
A
Leah's got it.
- [27:02]
C
His decision not to run for reelection kicks off wide open primaries on both sides of the aisle. There was a former governor, a former Republican governor who was very popular, who decided not to run. Carol Mosley Braun, who was the former Democratic senator who Fitzgerald had beaten six years prior. She decided not to run either. So you had big primers on both sides, right? And Jack Ryan, the investment banker, who had been married to Jerry Ryan, wins the Republican primary, spends some of his own money, and is considered this, like, young, rising hotshot in The Republican Party. Illinois still a very competitive state at this point. Democratic primary also wide open. But the front runner is a guy named Blair Hull, who is a multi millionaire, sold his business for hundreds of millions of dollars. Big Democratic donor. He pours in $30 million of his own money into this Senate primary, which in 2004 was a ridiculous amount of money. I mean, it's a ridiculous amount of money now, but it was even more ridiculous back then. However, there is a state legislator and failed congressional candidate, community organizer by the name of Barack Obama, who is also running this campaign with political maven David Axelrod by his side out of Chicago. And in the final three weeks of that race, Obama launches a statewide TV campaign that boosts him above Blair Hull in the polls despite not having as much money. And Barack Obama wins the Democratic nomination by a significant amount over Blair Holt. So now Obama is in this tough election against Jack Ryan, the investment banker Republican nominee, and they're going at it. Illinois is very competitive. Right again is still not the kind of Democratic bastion that we think of it right now. And a bunch of people go to court to get Jack Ryan's divorce records unsealed from his 1999 divorce from Jeri Ryan. And they are successful. And what they find out in those divorce records is that Jack Ryan, at several occasions, highly encouraged or pressured Jeri Ryan, his wife at the time, to go to sex clubs and to have public sex. And this played a role in the deterioration of their marriage and their eventual divorce. And it's super embarrassing for Jack Ryan. And he says, all right, I'm gonna drop out of this race. And so he drops out of the race. And the Republicans are left scrambling. They have to find someone. So they pick Alan Keyes, who is not even from Illinois. He's from Maryland. He's a perennial candidate and former diplomat from Maryland who I guess was in Illinois at the time. And he is the Republican nominee in Illinois against Barack Obama in 2004. And Obama just beats him up and down the block. It's like he wins like 70, 30. It's a massive landslide. Obama had given the speech at the DNC that year. He was already being talked about as a rising star in the party. You add on this dominant win in a thought to be competitive Senate race that year, and you get a springboard for what of course goes on to be the highly successful 08 presidential campaign. But in a way, it all has its roots in the success of Star the Next Generation and the rebooting of the Star Trek franchise 30 years after the original series.
- [30:26]
A
Wow. So Barack Obama has Star Trek to thank for his entire political career. Guys, that's crazy.
- [30:35]
D
That's amazing.
- [30:36]
A
So I just want to. I just want to stress test this a little bit. So, okay, does Jack Ryan stay married if Star Trek doesn't reboot? And if these proceedings, Divorce proceedings stay sealed? Like, what's the chance that he actually wins the 22,004 election in Illinois?
- [30:59]
C
So let's see if we have polling from the general election from before he dropped out. There are only two polls, one of which was close and one of which wasn't. There was a Rasmussen Reports poll that had Obama up 8 and a Chicago Tribune poll that had him up 22 prior to him dropping out. So that was not particularly close, but it was. Those polls were in May of the election year so much earlier than still pretty early in the process. I don't know if Jack Ryan would have won. I mean, I'm not saying that he would have won if he had remained in the race. I think Obama had a decent shot at winning regardless of what happened there. But once I'm going to choose to.
- [31:53]
A
Believe that Obama's political career was only made possible by the relaunch of Star Trek.
- [32:00]
C
By the relaunch of Star Trek.
- [32:02]
A
Okay. All right. This is gonna be a good list. Lee, you got a lot to compete against here.
- [32:07]
D
Oh, I can't. That's the best one.
- [32:09]
A
What's your number two? Roman Empire election.
- [32:13]
D
That's, like, unfair, because that was just, like, the best one ever. They should make the whole movie. Like, that's just wonderful. Okay, I'm going to go with. This is gonna sound so lame. Following up, I feel like I should go with one that's not even My Roman Empire, but just another one. That's interesting, but I'll stick with what I wrote down and what we discussed last time, which was the 2018 Florida Gubernatorial Democratic primary.
- [32:41]
C
You do talk about this race all the time. So I don't.
- [32:43]
D
Wait, do I. Do I really?
- [32:46]
A
Yes, yes.
- [32:46]
D
Wait, when do I. When do I talk about this?
- [32:49]
C
Like, every couple months. You're like, I can't believe Bill Nelson didn't run Spanish language ads until, like, two days before the election.
- [32:58]
A
So it really is after this episode. This podcast is, like, never beating the, like, spectrum accusations. And I say that with so much.
- [33:08]
D
Well, because, like, okay, I won't go through the entire narrative. This is. Will be my other. My. The rest of mine don't have long narratives. This is just my only other one that has, like, some Some narrative quality to it. So for those of you who do not talk about this every few months, really, it's good to ask people what they think of you occasionally. Or like, you just ask people, like, what, what do you know me for? Like, what's something I bring up a lot because I'm learning a lot about myself, so. 2018, the governor's race in Florida. Former Congresswoman Gwen Graham, the daughter of a former senator and governor, was seen as the front runner to win the Democratic nomination. Andrew Gillum was Tallahassee mayor and kind of seen as a, you know, maybe like, interesting candidate. But, like, Gwen Graham was the front runner. She had been like, leading in public polling inside elections. Was one of those that like, mentioned Andrew Gillum and was like. But like, everybody kind of agrees that Gwen Graham is the one to beat in the end, uh, she ends up losing that primary with 31.3%, 31%, and Andrew Gillum gets 34%. Now he's about to face Ron DeSantis, who is in the House. Kind of like seen as a right wing member of Congress, but like a House member, you know, not yet the national figure that he will soon become. And Andrew Gillum becomes, you know, kind of like he's charismatic and he gets a bit of a following. Same year as like, you know, Beto Rourke was running that year, right? Like Stacey Abrams, like, he definitely had a following, but he also had all of these issues with his office, including an FBI investigation into his office with news that continued to come out all the way through, like, basically until the election, through October.
- [35:04]
A
And that continued to come out well after the election.
- [35:07]
D
This is.
- [35:08]
A
Seen those photos.
- [35:09]
D
I did have to, when I was reviewing this, I, like, had to go back and like, make my search, like, just for the six month period because there's so much that happens after. Afterward. I was like, what was actually happening in this six month period? Um, and in the end, Ron DeSantis won very narrowly. First off, it, like, was a big deal that evening, right? Or was that. I might be thinking of Bill Nelson that evening. But, like, Florida, like, seemed like it was going to be. It seemed like there wasn't going to be a blue wave because Florida is one of the first races that is usually called, one of the first that reports votes. And so it was like, oh, Republicans have won the senator's race and the governor's race in Florida. Maybe there won't be a blue wave. Then Barbara Comstock loses in Virginia 10. And then it's just like domino effect, right? Where it's definitely a blue wave. But Ron DeSantis was kind of given the credit for overcoming this blue wave in a way that again turned him into kind of like in a Glenn Youngkin way, but a completely different way from Glenn Youngkin, a figurehead for the Republican Party and an example of how to be successful in tough elections. And by the time he ran for reelection, Democrats were struggling to find a candidate, like, to recruit a candidate who could go against him and his machine. He ends up, of course, winning reelection by a bonkers margin and again, seen as the kind of Republican who can win those races. Though you could argue that Democrats after 2018 were kind of discouraged in Florida and stopped competing there, which I think is another huge reason why this is an important election, is because then you can throw in the Senate with that, too. Yes, Florida has had major demographic kind of political changes, but you could also argue that Democrats were so demoralized by Florida, they stopped prioritizing it like this perennial swing state. And all of a sudden, it's like they're talking about Texas first as a potential swing state in, you know, the last presidential election. So I think it's possible that if Gwen Graham wins that primary, she wins the general election, and Ron DeSantis does not become the figurehead who eventually goes against Donald Trump in the presidential primary. But I think probably more importantly, it was the beginning of Democrats ceding Florida, which is obviously changes their electoral map for both the Senate majority and the presidential race for. For years to come.
- [37:40]
A
Jacob, in your opinion, if Gwen Graham wins the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial primary, is Florida still in play in presidential elections today?
- [37:55]
C
I think so. I do.
- [38:01]
D
I've been indoctrinating him for years with.
- [38:03]
A
This card, apparently just like slipping it in every couple months.
- [38:08]
C
I. I really do think so, because I think. I think a couple things would have happened. I think that. So she wins. Florida's is a battleground in 2020. Right. I mean, Trump wins Florida by, like, around three points, which it's one of the few states he does better in. But it's still highly competitive. But I think that there's more Democratic investment there. I think when you get to redistricting, right, you don't get the Republican gerrymander that we saw actually play out. So you have, I don't know, probably four to six more competitive House races in Florida that Democrats are invested in. They invest in the 2022 gubernatorial race because they're defending an incumbent. The problem that Florida has is it's so expensive that once Democrats began to lose Their grip. They just cut their losses. I mean, there was no motivation to put the kind of resources into the state that would be necessary to bring it back into the fold. And if you had a governor who was a standard bearer for your party there, I think those resources would have come. I'm not saying that Gwen Graham would've been a good vice presidential nominee for Joe Biden, but I think she probably would have been if he had wanted to go that route. Biden was pretty close, I believe, with her father, Bob Graham, who was governor in the 1990s, you know.
- [39:26]
A
Yeah.
- [39:27]
C
No, I think that changes the whole trajectory of Florida. You don't end up with kind of the free state of Florida. You don't have the migration to Florida of people from Democratic states looking to move to a state with a strong Republican governor and legislature. I think that's an enormously consequential election result for the trajectory of the third most populous state in the Union.
- [39:52]
A
So does everyone instead move to South Dakota and Kristi Noem becomes the governor of the free state of South Dakota? I guess everyone just moves to Texas. To Texas version of events. Okay, you guys are really gonna love what Encyclopedia Britannica has to offer now.
- [40:09]
D
Can we guess?
- [40:11]
A
Yeah, you can absolutely guess.
- [40:14]
D
Is it 18? 1860?
- [40:17]
C
I'm gonna guess 1800.
- [40:19]
A
Okay, you guys split the difference between you 2. It's 1824, they say. How exactly was the will of the people reflected?
- [40:28]
D
Trying to be interesting there. All right, 1824.
- [40:32]
A
It has happened five times in U.S. history that the candidate getting the most votes has not become president because the person did not win a majority of the electoral votes. But only once has the country wound up with a president who won neither the most popular votes nor the most electoral votes. Readers, I present to you the election of 1824 and President John Quincy Adams. In contrast with the election of 1820, in which James Monroe basically ran unopposed, the election of 1824 featured a field of four candidates. Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William Crawford, and Henry Clay.
- [41:05]
B
The result was a splintered vote in.
- [41:07]
A
Which no candidate won a majority of the popular or electoral votes. Jackson won pluralities of both, securing almost 44% of the popular vote and almost 38% of the electoral vote. As dictated by the 12th Amendment, which was enacted in 1804 in part to address an earlier election snafu, the House of Representatives actually did decide the election. Amid allegations of corrupt bargains being struck, Adams secured the presidency, winning 13 states to Jackson's seven and Crawford's four. Four years later, Jackson would exact his revenge becoming the nation's seventh president.
- [41:42]
C
Yeah, I mean, it's a good one.
- [41:44]
D
Depends on how you define consequential. You know, like.
- [41:50]
C
I mean, everything back then was consequential because the country was new. They were still figuring it out. And we've had 180 years to, you know, deal with the consequences as opposed to these elections we're talking about now where, like, you know, who knows what the ripple effects will be 180 years from now. But yeah, I don't know.
- [42:11]
A
In 180 years there's gonna be another podcast with three election nerds who are like, okay, so I really think it was like the 2024 election.
- [42:20]
D
One of those nerds will still be like Florida Governor's primary Gwen Graham.
- [42:27]
A
So back in 2016, had 538not projected that Hillary Clinton would blah, blah, blah, blah.
- [42:35]
B
And that's it for part one of the GD Roman Empire elections. Tune in tomorrow and we'll have a lot more for our paid subscribers.
- [42:44]
A
If you're not a paid subscriber, by.
- [42:45]
B
The way, head to GDPolitics.com right now to become one. You can look forward to the selection of Andrew Johnson at the Republican convention who ended up taking the oath of.
- [42:55]
A
Office blackout drunk, the story of the.
- [42:58]
B
Only dead person in US history to win a Senate race, and how the Republican Party might be different today if.
- [43:05]
A
Mitt Romney won the presidency in 2012.
- [43:08]
B
So tune in tomorrow, December 23rd for that. For now. Happy Holidays. I'm Galen Drouke. Thanks to Jacob Hrabashkin and Leah Escarnom for joining me on this episode. Remember to become a subscriber to this podcast@gdpolitics.com and wherever you get your podcasts.
- [43:25]
A
Paid subscribers get about twice the number of episodes. You can join our paid subscriber chat and pass along questions for us to discuss on the show.
- [43:32]
B
And you ensure that we can keep making a podcast that prioritizes curiosity, rigor.
- [43:37]
A
And a sense of humor.
- [43:39]
B
Also, be a friend of the POD and give us a five star rating. Wherever you listen to podcasts, maybe even tell a friend about us, you know your family.
- [43:47]
A
When you're home for the holidays, be.
- [43:48]
B
Like, hey, listen to the GD Politics podcast. In any case, thanks for listening and we'll see you soon.