 It's January the 26th, 2022. It's Wednesday, 11 o'clock. That can mean only one thing. Time for What Now America? I'm Tim Apachele, your host. Today's title is State of the 2022 GOP and Democratic Party. You know, the parties have transformed. They've always transformed in the past. Both parties are evolving always. Yet, this time around, it seems like one side or the other has really transformed into something that we haven't seen or recognized for quite some time. And that's why we're here to discuss is the nature in the state of both parties. And with me today is Jay Fidel and Winston Welch. Good morning. Morning, Tim. Well, Jay, we've watched the GOP kind of transform over the last five years under the dictatorship of Donald Trump and it's his influence over the party. But it's worth asking the question, what are the attributes, either positive or negative, the attributes of the GOP today? Staying in power, increasing power. And that means, you know, self-interest, not interest for the country. It's completely irrational. I'll tell you why I've been thinking, we all been thinking about this, is that, you know, for some reason, they, and including especially including the base, think that if you ignore the norms, and if you ignore, you know, the American place in the world, global leadership, and if you ignore, you know, your neighbor, so to speak, the social network of the country, the social fabric mesh of the country, that you can get away with that, that your life continues, that it won't affect you. You can get up in the morning, you know, have breakfast, go to the dentist, I always focus on that. And it'll be the same. And that's the craziness. It's not gonna be the same. And the question, the looming question, which we have discussed many times on the show, is what happens when they succeed? I didn't say if they succeed, that's when they succeed in destroying the democracy, in destroying the social norms, in ignoring a good part of the country and the people in the country, what happens? It isn't simple, but it isn't pretty. And if we, you know, draw a line, connect the dots into that, what you have is a total disaster for everyone, including them. So this is irrational, it's cult. It's hard to understand how people can understand one side, but not the other. You know, not the consequences of what they do, but that is exactly what's happened. It's cult, it's power, it's following Trump and Trump's messaging, and it is ignoring the reality. That's what the Republican Party stands for, and it is a recipe for total disaster here, there and everywhere. All right, you know, Jay, sometimes we get comments on our show after the show's over, and a lot of them are people that were Trump followers or still are Trump followers, and the comments range from a wide variety of, you know, liked or dislike. But I'm gonna ask you to, for one second, put yourselves in the shoes, if you can, of a Trump supporter, and have those shoes filled with your feet, respond to the comments you just made, and what would a Trump supporter say to what you just said? What would be their comments? Hey, Jay, you didn't know what you're talking about. Trump was the best president the country has ever had, and he may be a nasty person, and he may be as a deficient personality, but he knows the swamp, he has drained the swamp, he has dealt with, you know, the deep state in our country. There are so many problems in our country. Would you rather have had Hillary Clinton? That's what he would say, and all of that is complete poppycock, but that's the bubble that the Trumpers live in. And so, you know, that's what they would say. It's not a response, but that is the response that you would hear. Well, the fact that you were able to transition so well quickly tells me you're an attorney of training. Winston. Consider that a tremendous insult, but it's okay. Winston, to you about the Democratic Party, list a few attributes, either positive or negative, about where we are with the Democratic Party and some of the trials and tribulations they now face. Oh boy, the trials and tribulations they face, they're not organized. They're not, don't have messaging that's really hitting to the core of what we're looking at here, which is the loss of our basic democratic institution and values, they really need a new marketing campaign, honestly, to reach the hearts and minds of the American public for the folks that Jay so eloquently just represented. They need to reach those folks and say, okay, yes, we get that, right? They had a good message, the Republicans were on point, they're unified, they're organized, they're lockstep behind their leader and they don't deviate one iota. If the Democrats showed half of that medal, then we could have a reasonable, some policy discussions and move the needle a little bit, but right now, they need to focus on saving our nation and working with those who share those values and Jay talked about the base, but I think we need to separate out and save the people that are honest, principled Republicans, conservatives, we can call them, that we would have recognized six years ago who share conservative values who are part of, who agree that the process that we have in this country, while it may have its faults and difficulties is still the best thing going and the alternative is very eloquently laid out by Jay on almost every show that we have, which is talked about the dentist, no worry about the dentist so much as show me your papers at every street corner or building when you go in and if you got the wrong of Facebook post up there, you know, you're, well, we're not there and we don't need to go there, but I think we need to go there so that we don't go there on some level. And I think Jay makes a much better case of it than I do because I'd like to remain a little bit Pollyannish. You know, you passed on an article I think is either yesterday or maybe it was this morning as an op ad from Rick Scott. Now, Rick Scott, of course, is the head of the Lincoln project and Rick Scott was a long time Republican. I think he still is, but not a Trumper. He started to use the F word and the F word being fascist. Is that a fair characterization of the GOP in today's environment? You know, I don't know that labels are going to help anything. It just inflames things. I think what we can do is go back and say, hey, the process is that we go towards the middle that this is a country of ideas rather than and the best idea floats to the top rather than blindly following a cult leader who has a very simple and deceptive message, which is confusion and chaos. I think an article that also hit me well this morning was in the Star Advertiser in our paper. There was an article from Will Bunch from the Philadelphia Inquirer. And he talks about how things are not going very well for Donald Trump this week from the news of Georgia that special grand jury is being convened that we had the Washington Post talking about how apparently Rudy Giuliani was an architect and organizer in sending false forms claiming that to the National Archives that these states had elected Donald Trump. We have other things about people that are being called before the House Committee and the Supreme Court saying you have to surrender these documents. So there's been a lot of, and then of course New York about with Leticia James and investigating the Trump Organization. So, but he says at the end of this thing, so what he says he's, at the end of the day is this, if we find out in possibility in real time that our president was a crook and then doing nothing, it feels like that could be the fatal blow to our American experiment. So what do we do to counter that? We continue working on better messaging to reach good decent honest Americans who have been rightly sick of a lot of the shenanigans that they see across the board. And when you have someone coming in saying only I can save you, only I can clean up this mess, I am your savior. That's an appealing simple message in a time of chaos. The Democrats don't have somebody like that. And I don't think that they're going to. We need Joe Biden to step up, send out his messengers, get better messaging. We need people on principle conservatives to also step up and join that messaging. And the article on the Lincoln Project, which you mentioned a second ago, it's an op-ed of the 24th of January. What can I do seven rules for defending our democracy? And they talked about Stalin and working with Stalin in World War II. They said he was the second worst person in the world. But they said the reason we worked with them was to defeat the first worst person in the world, the analogy not being persons, but rather systems. And so that we have to, we may not approve of Liz Cheney's policies and her stance is on certain issues, but fundamentally, she wants to come back and have proper debate in our system of government, which, so we align with the Liz Cheney's of the world who want to come back and see America still be America at the end of the day. All right, thanks Winston. Hey, Jay, Winston just mentioned the name of Liz Cheney. Do you foresee or do you think there's any possibility that between now and 2024 a Liz Cheney type of personality or persona would run for president as an independent and would another conservative like yet very interested in preserving our democracy joins up with her? I'm thinking of Adam Kinzender as a potential candidate. What's the viability or the possibility of such an independent party? We've had them before, we've had Ralph Nader and all sorts of different candidates of the Ross Perot. We've had independent parties. What's the prevent one from happening now? Sorry, but I don't see that being meaningful. So she could declare as an independent. Okay, fine. Can she win? I think her star has gone up to the top and it has started to float down. The notable thing about Liz Cheney is that it's still just Liz Cheney. She's the leader of the, what do we call it, the enlightened Republicans, but it's not a movement, sorry. It's not a whole bunch of people changing their way of doing business in the Senate or in the House for that matter. They're still in lockstep and she's still outside of that. Well, historically- Whether an independent in a world of two bubbles, whether an independent means a hill of beans in 2022, the elections this year or next year, I have yet to see. You mentioned a lot of candidates, but you didn't mention any presidents who were independent. Well, to go to that point is, yeah, there's no history of an independent party in winning the election, but they sure that has prevented one from winning. The other party that would normally draw votes, they prevented those parties from winning. Ralph Nader comes to mind as preventing the 2000 election from occurring in Al Gore's favor. I don't think it means that much. I think what means something is Winston's thought and our discussion earlier for the proposition the Democratic Party has got to get its act together. That's where my heart lives. And a lot of people, a lot of people like my whole world really wants to see them succeed. You wanna see Joe Biden succeed, although he seems to be stumbling and bumbling. Wanna see them come together. You look back maybe 20 years and you find that the Republicans were really well organized 20 years ago and they're much better organized today. They're the party of organization, the party of lockstep, the party of follow me this way even if you don't completely agree with me. And so what's happened is the issues have conflated thanks to social media and Fox News that if you follow one issue they put out you wind up tagging along for all their issues and you live in that bubble. On the Democratic side, you squabble about everything. It's a big tent, but everybody is fighting under the tent which is really regrettable in these times because that system doesn't work right now. But Joe Biden's gotta be the leader of the Democratic Party or if not him, someone else. My own view to sort of wrap around this whole discussion is take it one step further is the Democratic Party has gotta come up with a ticket that works and they gotta do it right away. And they gotta get behind that, they gotta agree to get behind that person and work that initiative right on through because that person can encourage a Democratic voting not only in Congress, but also in the elections 2022 and 2024. Biden himself has demonstrated that his star is not rising. He's not that popular even among the Democrats. He's not gonna be able to win an election in 2024. I really don't think so. And he's losing steam, losing mojo all the time. And this thing in Ukraine is not gonna help him. This is a recipe also for the embarrassment of the administration of Tony Blinken, of Ron Klain and the Democratic Party in general. They've gotta get their act together. It's really critical. Alrighty. Well, listening to you and Winston talk about both the GOP and the Democratic Party, I get a visual of well-disciplined ant farm versus a troop of wandering meandering cats. But let me go back to Rick Scott's point about if the GOP wins the 2022. And his point he makes is that the Democrats will be put off balance. They'll be put on the defensive because if the house is taken by the GOP, the first thing they'll do, the first order of business is not pass legislation but to do investigations. Specifically bring back Benghazi 2.0 or Hunter Biden's laptop or possibly try to create articles of impeachment against Joe Biden. Certainly trying to validate the big lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and a big investigation goes to that point accusing the Democrats and thereby keeping them off balance. What do you think about that? Rick Scott's comments in that lane. Well, I think it's a delicious possibility for the GOP and it's one of the reasons they're working so hard to stay in power and to take the house and the Senate. Can you imagine how that's gonna work? It means that Biden, whose star is falling, will be completely defruct after 2022. He just won't have any clout in the Congress at all. Secondly, aside from embarrassing him and embarrassing the Democrats to the maximum extent, they will, in order to prevent any possibility of a Democratic win in 2024 or thereafter, they will also have their way, a betcha five, they knock off the filibuster, right? And they'll control every initiative in Congress and they'll do things that you will hate. Winston talks about having your papers checked at every street corner. It'll be like that. It will be the empowerment of autocracy. And we will see the emerging intersection of this country and the autocrats in Europe in the 30s. We will see the demise of civil rights. We will see the emergence of supremacy and racism. All those initiatives will become law. It goes beyond what the Republican states are doing now for suppression. It'll be really awful if they take over in the house and there's a likelihood they will, gentlemen, there is. Yeah. Winston, the Democratic party right now is struggling between the progressives and the moderates. Joe Manchin is positioned himself as a moderate Democrat and he's the defender of sane and sane spending and things of such nature versus the progressive who came to a $6 trillion package for Build Back Better and then it was whittled down to $3 trillion and then now it's whittled down to God knows what if it's whittled down to anything. How does that get resolved in the Democratic party? How does the progressives and their agenda and their wish list coincide with Democrats who are more of the moderate flavor? It doesn't, the progressives continue to, they don't have anywhere to go. I mean, they're already on one side. This is their natural party, so they can try and move it, but they've seen in reality, I won't say complete failure of what they were hoping for, but Joe Biden wasn't elected to bring a sea change of policies or spending priorities or anything like that to America. He was elected because he wasn't Donald Trump. He was elected to bring some calm and unity. To what extent he's been able to do that, I don't know, but I can understand why he's frustrated certainly in his talk that he gave and Mitch McConnell sort of lambasted him for some position saying, Joe Biden says, we're the enemy now, I don't think that's what Joe Biden was saying. I think he was saying, folks, we need to wake up here and smell the coffee. And so maybe what it is, is Joe Biden needs to reach out to Republicans who are in the row but those who have the R after their name who don't wanna be held hostage as it were and say, hey, you know what, there's room here. He's supposed to be a great facilitator. There's room here for us to create this moderate middle. Maybe he calls, I don't know what it is. And he says, and if you are being primaried by forces against you because you actually believe in America and the values of having two, we are a two-party system and you believe in that, then we will help raise money for you if you're in the moderate middle. And I guarantee you, even if it's Liz Cheney and you're a progressive Democrat, you will donate money to Liz Cheney and the Liz Cheney's of the world to see them reelected because they believe in the system itself. And when the system itself collapses, then all bets are off, like Jay was saying, let's also look at that there is a possibility here for Americans to change their perception of what has happened before as new information comes out. Now, if they're only watching Fox News, it's probably not gonna happen, but let's just assume they're able to see a headline somewhere outside of the bubble. And it's hard because we're all on an algorithm. But for vaccines, just look at vaccines, we still have people who are rabid anti-vaxxers and for whatever reasons, those are from the insane to the concerned, they exist and they're going to continue to exist. But if you went a year ago and you looked at polls and you asked, are you four vaccines? You get vaccinated. You had less than half of the people say, oh yes, I'm definitely gonna get it as soon as I can. And then you had a good third of people saying, I'm just gonna wait and make sure that everyone's not dropping dead from the vaccine or sprouting two heads or whatever it is. That third has now become vaccinated to the point where we're about 75% of the population, not in Wyoming. So Liz actually, strange that she's from the, one of the least vaccinated states, I think they're like 42%, but the point being that if people can change their minds on something as being injected with a relatively new substance that's designed to save their lives, maybe their minds can be not injected but presented with information that will help them save their country and their very way of life and being and understand what's at stake here to the same point that they went out and got vaccinated and said, this is the right thing to do, not just for me, but for my nation and my neighbor as well. So I'm hopeful that in this next year as these lawsuits come about, as the drips and drabs come about, as more comes out that we will see, we are at the precipice, we need to pull back and we need to vaccinate ourselves against so much misinformation and what is fundamentally detrimental to our society. And I think you do it. Yeah, thanks, Winston. Hey, Jay, we got a question in from a viewer and we always appreciate that and it adds to the flavor of our discussion and this particular question, it's my screen's not quite getting into the way I want it to so I'm just gonna summarize it and that is the two-party system, is it tired? Is it past its benefit? Compare that to other countries where they have a multi-party system and then the second part of this question is, is it time, do we expect to get popularity of a president by their status as a celebrity? Donald Trump is a celebrity yet and he became president because everyone knew who he was. Is it time for the Democrats to start looking at celebrities that are actually have a name familiarity? Yeah, well, I think both of those are really excellent questions and suggest answers. Maybe it's more, Tim, than going with Liz Cheney and an independent party. Maybe it's encouraging lots of parties and requiring a consolidation and alliance, combination of alliances in the Congress. Maybe we should follow the European system. It's a big umbrella and somehow it works. Somehow, sometimes it doesn't work though. In any event, what's happening right now is simply not working. And what this questioner is suggesting is really appealing in the sense that you don't have to have a constitutional amendment. You don't have to throw out the baby and the bass. You can just sort of agree, including the Democrats, the right thinking Democrats and maybe some Republicans, let's have a bunch of parties here and let's try to consolidate. Well, that might be his point is that, we have the Green Party, we have the independent parties, but they're just never a candidate that's popular enough for name recognition and people to rally around. Yeah, I wanna go to that. I think the American culture has elevated certain people to celebrity status. I mean, we live in a world of Hollywood. We live in a world of familiarity with celebrity faces, names, even their histories. And if you look at the public media, you see so much time is spent, not only with celebrities in Hollywood, but celebrities in the sports world as well, who are completely unqualified to serve politically. Let me say that again, completely unqualified and the same, frankly, with the celebrities out of Hollywood, they don't know anything about running a country. They don't know anything about participating in a legislature. And yet we treat them as worthy and qualified, shouldn't do that. But here's the thing, that's the reality. We've been doing that for a long time. And so if the Democrats or the Green Party or the independence or anybody wants to get in on the fray, they have to find name recognition. They have to find celebrity. But you can have a celebrity who is a little more qualified, rather than less qualified. And the point is you get behind him and you pump that sucker. You do public relations and publicity. You make them look good or her. And I think at the end of the day, although it's not a perfect system, it's not what the founders would have contemplated, at least maybe there's a chance with that kind of diversity, if you will, we can catch the middle and we can catch all those kids that were following Bernie Sanders around. Where are they now? They're the real constituency. They're the future. They must be so discouraged they can't breathe and they have no clout and they worry about their vote not being counted. And people in the African-American community, they must wonder the same thing in general. And so what I worry about is if they are so discouraged and so frustrated, we've talked about that, that they don't care about voting anymore. A, they won't vote. And B, they'll express themselves in other ways and we won't like it because it'll be in the street. And then we'll have what one commentator wrote this week, we'll have the civil war. And civil wars can be different than they were in 1861 that they can nevertheless be very destructive. And I think we're cruising for that. So all in all, the press seems to be Winston, the articles that you send us around, the links and all that. And the ones that I look at too, suggest that it's falling apart, the David Brooks approach and even Newt Gingrich and the Lincoln Project commentary on him. I mean, it's more and more of that kind of rhetoric is coming into play. And I start to believe it. I do believe it that we're falling apart. So many bad things are happening. And query, how are we gonna deal with the next generation? How are we gonna get them involved again? And really at the end of this, it's maybe a reorganization of political parties. That's the subject of our show, Tim, isn't it? Yeah, it is. Okay, Jay, we've run out of time but I'm gonna do a quick wrap up. Winston, your final comments, please. Well, Jay brings up a good thing that maybe some part of the old order is falling apart. So what's coming next and how can we shape it? How do we shape it? Do we, maybe we could do something like not entirely European thing, maybe something a little bit more like our neighbor to the North. They've got about five parties that they work with, the Bloc Quebecois and the New Independence, whatever they are, the conservatives and the liberals and the greens. So they have a little stake in there. They're able to cobble things together. But again, that presupposes that they all have a vested interest in having the system itself work and that they're competing for the best ideas among the hearts and minds of the people, not just to destroy once they get into power. So we're dealing with some fundamentally different ideas here. I'm hoping that over the course of the year that our good and great country wakes up, it does smell the coffee. It realizes the grievous danger that we're in right now and that we can do something about it. We can do something about it and we must do something about it because the alternative is simply untenable. It's horrible to think about and we need to focus on solutions now as best as we can. And so I'll just leave it with that, whether personal, statewide, civically, nationally, we need to focus on the solutions from here on out because we're very good at where the problems are. All right, Winston, well, you leave it well. Thank you. Jay, you get the final word. Hey, when I get out of this conversation is the word share. Because the parties have somehow drifted to places where they don't share power. Trump is a perfect expression of that. You just, you denigrate the other side, they denigrate you, two separate bubbles, two separate camps, you can't share powers and you can't run a democracy that way. You tell a two-year-old, look, share. Share your toys, share your stuff, share your space. And the country has forgotten to do that. And I'm not saying that the Republicans are right about this. I believe they're wrong, but the total view of it is we're not sharing. And so we have to learn within the political system to share. And we should modify the political system without a constitutional amendment. And of course, we have to teach people about the value of sharing to share power, such as this questioner who suggested we look at the European system of multiple parties. And maybe that's an answer, simple basic norm about sharing. All right, well-stated as Winston, well-stated. Thank you so much. We've run out of time. Please join us next Wednesday at 11 o'clock for What Now America. I'm Tim Apachele, your host, and we hope to see you then. Aloha.