 Welcome back to another episode of Teens on Topic. I am your host, Tayden Talon. Today I'm joined by three special guests, Matteo Nouve, Benjamin Skinner, and Brayden Ingram. So I just wanna start off by asking guys how you've been since our last meeting. So Matteo, just starting off with you. How have you been? I've been pretty good, you know, on quarantining and doing all the pandemic stuff, but yeah, it's been pretty decent. And Ben? Yeah, same here, going fine. I've actually been practicing meditation a lot. I highly recommend that for anybody who is looking for ways to get through this quarantine. I was just reading this book right here, The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, I highly recommend it. So that's been keeping me in there and as a result, I'm doing just fine. And Brayden, how are you doing? I'm doing all right. College applications have been somewhat stressful just with the sheer number I've had. So I've been rereading the entire Percy Jackson series from start to finish is kind of a, like, respite from all the stress. Nice. All right, well, I wanna start off, obviously the big story right now is the results of the election, which are still coming in, but there are certain things that we do know. For one, obviously the big one, presidential election has been called by all major news sources for Joe Biden. The current electoral count is 270 to 217. The two outstanding states are Georgia and North Carolina. Georgia's in the middle of a recount and Biden's leading and North Carolina hasn't been called yet what appears to be going to Trump. He has a big lead there. So I just wanna start off with Matteo. Just generally, how do you think the election went? What were you thinking like beforehand during and what do you think about the results? I thought the election was a lot more chaotic than I expected it to be, even though that a lot of news sources were saying that because of the pandemic, it was going to take a while to count votes. I didn't actually expect it to take that long. However, by the end I felt really relieved and I felt like it was a good start in a new direction for our country. All right, and Ben, I just wanna go to you. Similar question, what were you thinking broadly? Yeah, I was really hoping that the American people would kind of deliver a blowout victory for the Democratic Party and Joe Biden. I think the fact that the election number one was close and number two that Republicans actually performed quite well is kind of an indication that a lot of Americans are relatively okay with the way that Donald Trump's been running the country and as somebody who does not really approve of Donald Trump's policies or antics, I was hoping that the American people would kind of repudiate that a little bit more and that was not something that we saw while I am glad that Joe Biden did win. I was hoping it would be more of a blowout victory for him. All right, now I wanna continue talking about the national election, the House and the Senate and so forth, but Braden, I wanna kind of bring you into this. I know you've been following the local Yolo County Davis and the state of California results. So what stands out to you and what were you thinking was a good result in your opinion? Yeah, so I mean on the Yolo County level, the biggest thing that I was following was Davis Measure B which was basically this program to create like a giant, like I guess they called it an innovation and sustainability campus on the Far East side of Davis. And I was opposed to it for a variety of reasons. For one, just the amount of traffic that would build up each day, trying to get onto the causeway was the immense and I've had it a couple other problems like the kind of rejection of how it was treating environmental issues in Davis and just the lack of any real plan they had, but I was very pleased in the fact that it was ended up being voted down and Park is a lot of people in Davis are very opposed to any form of new construction, which has been kind of a trend for the past 30 years in the town. Outside of that, I wasn't particularly following any other major like problems within the Yolo County. I know that there are some people who are a little bit upset that Jim Provenza won again and I believe it was the school board or it was in like the County Supervisor. Yeah, that would be County Supervisor District 4. Yeah, it was only Park. A lot of people felt my parents in addition also kind of felt that he had been in the office long enough and it was time to let somebody else take over and see if they could fix problems that were just reoccurring within the city. On the state level, and this is something I could probably talk about more later, I just felt like California had too many propositions on the ballot this year in the sense that when you have a state like, I mean, a lot of other states had anywhere from zero to four propositions this year and California had, I forget what it is. It was like almost 12 propositions. I mean, if that many, it's really hard for each individual voter to be able to make informed decisions on all 12 because most people don't have time to do like intense amount of research on each individual one and see what harms and benefits come from them. So I think that a lot of Californians rejected propositions that I feel I could have done a lot of good. I mean, proposition 16 to repeal the ban on affirmative action. I don't think it was the perfect proposition but I was definitely in favor of it and it got voted down overwhelmingly. Same with the proposition 18 which gave 17 year olds the right to vote in the primaries if presuming they turned 18 at the general election. I was very surprised to see that one get turned on then probably the one that was the most disciplined for me was proposition 22, which was one that basically gave all app-based drivers the permission or the driving companies permission to identify all the people working for them as independent contractors instead of employees, which means in the future people working for Uber, Lyft and other ones will lose out on a lot of health benefits and protections against sexual assault. And I think that the fact that there were so many bills on the ballot meant that a lot of people just kind of went to whatever they saw the most advertisements for, whatever they thought was the most comfortable instead of doing enough research. So that's kind of my take on just the state level. Yeah. All right, so going back to the national results that the ones that people all across the country have been looking at I want to quickly mention the house. Democrats have officially won majority again, that would be 218 seats, they've been 219. There's still some left to be decided, but already Democrats were hoping and people were predicting that they would pick up a few seats already past their big majorities in the 2018 midterms. And instead the Republicans have flipped nine seats, the Democrats flipped three, so that's plus six net so far to the GOP. Ben, I just want to quickly get your opinion on like why do you think that is? Like why do you think people predicted that the Democrats would win extra seats this year? And why do you think that didn't really end up panning out? I think what's interesting is that there's definitely a pretty strong tendency in the Democratic Party now for like some people to be very progressive. Like you have the whole AOC faction, the squad, those progressives. And then you have people who are far more moderate like West Virginia's Joe Manchin. And I think the Democratic Party is really not doing a good job of unifying those messages and explaining to voters in say West Virginia, like why AOC is not somebody they should feel threatened by or vice versa. Like it just feels like there's not a whole lot of unity within the party. I think socialism has like the idea of socialism has really been percolating a lot more throughout the United States in recent years. There are still a lot of people who when they hear the word socialism, that like that's an immediate turnoff regardless of what the actual policy is. Progressives actually did quite well, but I think the party just needs to have more unity as far as messaging and to reconcile the progressive action with the more moderate faction of the party. Yeah, okay. So Mateo, I wanna talk to you about swing states in a second, but first I'm just gonna go over quickly the Senate race. It has not been decided. Basically before the election, Democrats needed to win a net of three seats in order to take back the Senate majority, which is very important for them, especially under a Biden administration. They were looking at Arizona and Colorado as some pretty safe flip states that they were hoping to pick up and then also North Carolina and Maine that would bring them even considering the fact that Alabama, Doug Jones was elected as Democrat in 2018. Of course now his opponent isn't accused of assaulting a minor. And so ultimately the Republicans was always gonna win back that state. Arizona and Colorado went to the Democrats. Those were like the two states that they were expecting then they got, but disappointingly, at least in my opinion, Maine and North Carolina. North Carolina hasn't been decided yet, but it's a, or it has been actually recently within the past few days. Cal Cunningham, the Democrat did not succeed in defeating the incumbent. And then Susan Collins, the Republican in Maine also kept her seat against the Democratic challenger, which means that at this point in the election, it's 49 to 48, the Republicans holding 49. And then although Alaska has not yet been called, that would make it 50. And Alaska, pretty Republican state probably, that seat is probably gonna stay with the Republicans. That makes it that like results in the final count of 50 to 48. And those last two seats are both in Georgia. They, in Georgia, in order for a candidate to win the election, they have to receive a majority, not just the plurality of the votes. And since there were multiple candidates and none of them received, in both of those races, none of the candidates received more than 50%, 50% plus one vote. Now, both of those are going to a runoff. Georgia, obviously, it was so close that they were recounting in terms of the presidential election. Joe Biden holding a very closely there. So in other words, a lot of money is going to be poured into Georgia within the next few months. A lot of high-profile politicians from both parties are going to be going in and trying to flip those seats in their favor. Because with Kamala Harris's vice president, a 50-50 tie would very narrowly give the majority to the Democrats. And if the Republicans hold onto those seats, then they would keep their majority. That's something that people are going to be watching for a long time, up until January 5th, which is when the runoff will be, and after, as probably it's going to be very close. And then also, that's one thing, but Mateo, I wanted to talk to you about how the idea of swing states have been changing. Two, specifically, that were on my mind in terms of going more to the Republicans in recent years in terms of past elections were Ohio and Florida, used to be generally swing states, and now they seem to be reliably red. Meanwhile, Colorado and Arizona are getting more blue. Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin also generally tended to go to one part of the other, and now they're trending. Texas is not quite there yet, but trending towards becoming swing states. Georgia and North Carolina also usually traditionally red, but people are calling North Carolina like the New Virginia, a Southern state that due to demographic trends is becoming more democratic. So Mateo, just broadly, nothing about those specifics or if it's something that you noticed, but what are you thinking in terms of the changing demographics of the country and how do you think the political parties will change their strategies or their messages in order to either keep some states as swing states or win over some swing states? Where do you think the country is headed in that regard? Right, so I think a lot of it has to do with the last four years under the Trump presidency and kind of polarizing both political ends. However, I also think that some voters who previously are aligned with certain party aren't very inclined to change. So I think it really comes down to promoting things which will inspire people to actually go out and vote for these candidates and galvanize voters to be a part of the political process in order to change their state from either red to blue or blue to red, whichever they feel. Are there, is there anything that you think is like up in the air? Is there anything that you don't expect us to know in terms of changing demographics until like a few more elections or until we get more information? Is there anything that you still see as not decided in terms of our political landscape? I think that the next generation of voters is probably, even though they are definitely leaning more progressive, is undecided because we have yet to see how they become adults and how their perspectives change from that. And I think that's definitely gonna be a big deal in future political discussions. All right, and then Brandon, I wanna come back to you for this next question, kind of going off of the idea of the Senate as important to the Biden administration. Obviously, Democrats are facing an uphill election in Georgia, Biden is in the lead, but it's still a red state. And also in runoff elections, voting or voters tend to be older and more white. We don't know if that will stay the same, but regardless, it's gonna be very close. People tend to agree that the GOP has a slight advantage in those races. So if they hold onto the Senate and Mitch McConnell remains as Senate majority leader, that means that a lot of the Democratic platform, especially like under Biden administration is doomed to fail. Supreme Court reform, healthcare reform, environmental measures and the Green New Deal, electoral reform, looking at gerrymandering, adding DC and Puerto Rico as states, voter suppression, voter IDs, all of these different things are pretty much off the table if the Democrats don't win back the Senate majority. So if that's the case, what do you think the Biden administration is going to do to try to prove that despite the fact that they don't have that, they're still making changes and holding onto the base that elected him into office? Well, fortunately, although there's a lot of things that require a Democratic Senate in Congress in order for Biden to enact his policies, he also in part thanks to Trump in a weird way has a lot of executive power to do a variety of things in order to address stuff. So for example, most notably COVID, he's already appointed somebody who's going to be the next head of the COVID task force. He's already brought forth a number of proposals on what he's going to do. In addition, I believe he already has a list of like 128 executive orders. He's gonna like, or not exactly, 128 individual Trump policies that he's going to reverse on day one, mainly environmentally related. And fortunately, because Trump had, or in my opinion, fortunately, because Trump had such a conflicted Senate in Congress throughout most of his presidency, even when he had both the Senate and Congress on his side in 2016 and 2017, he was not able to get a lot done. I mean, we know that he had the tax plan and there were some Supreme Court nominations that he got through and was quite efficient in doing, but otherwise he didn't pass a lot of legislation. Most of what he did was by executive order and a lot of it is still in courts right now getting decided. So in terms of whether if you want a progressive like platform to be brought forth, Biden obviously is not the most progressive and even ignoring that, he may not have the Senate on his side, which restricts a lot of what he's able to do where we'll require him to negotiate much more, but he does have a lot of executive power and at least his ability to address COVID, to establish forces to like reverse a lot of the Trump policies on environmental regulation, his ability to have like a cabinet that's more competent and more able to deal with things that perhaps most importantly and not talked about enough, his ability to engage with other allies across the world and be a stabilizing presence as somebody who's maybe not the best representation of the United States, but at least somebody who is going to not cozy up to authoritarian leaders in like Turkey and in Brazil and in Russia and may be more critical of countries that really do deserve criticism given their past behavior. Yeah. Yeah, so I kind of want to talk about COVID real quick just like a few updates. And then Ben, I just want to ask you about this. Basically, in terms of the transition of power between Trump and Biden, we've gotten like new records being set with COVID and also some good news vaccines moving on a little bit. How do you think the transition will be between a Trump administration and the Biden administration in terms of COVID response? I mean, it's obviously been disappointing to see that President Trump has not really made a very good effort to make the transition between his administration and the Biden administration go smoothly. I think in the end, it's not going to be more than a minor inconvenience. Like at the end of the day, Donald Trump lost the election. He's going to have to leave the White House and Joe Biden and his entire administration will take over the executive branch. So I think Donald Trump's really just making himself look awful on his way out of office. I don't think he's actually gaining anything from it. I think it's just an immature man acting immaturely and he's not actually, it's just I'm at a loss for words because I don't think there's any real rationale behind what he's doing. I don't think Donald Trump knows what he's doing. So I think it'll just be a minor inconvenience for the Biden administration. And then after that, we're going to see Joe Biden come up with a COVID policy that's a lot more effective and a lot better at preventing Americans from dying. All right. And then before we move on, Matteo, I want to go back to you and ask Biden in his election was balancing a Democratic party that is split in a lot of ways in terms of policy between a more centrist or moderate wing and a growing progressive wing. What do you think Biden will and should do to continue to balance that when he takes office? I think one thing to consider is appointing a variety of perspectives on the cabinet. In the end, I feel like a lot of the short-term goals of both progressive Democrats and centrist Democrats align pretty closely. So I think that creating a team which could kind of create some kind of cooperation within the different factions of the Democratic party in making platforms for policies would definitely be extremely useful for him in the next four years. All right. So now moving on before we end, I just wanted to get another quick update on your guys' lives. Thanksgiving is coming up. So Brayden, I'm gonna go back to you to start off this one. What are you planning for Thanksgiving? What are you gonna be up to? So at the very beginning, my plan is to go and visit a couple of colleges up in Portland for a little while and hopefully just have a way to socially distance and get a chance to see some of the schools I'm applying to since I did cancel my trips. And then other than that, I'm just planning to have kind of a Zoom Thanksgiving with my relatives on Thursday. All right. And Mateo, what about you? I'm just having Thanksgiving at home but we're still making a turkey. So it should be fun. Thanks. And Ben, what are your plans here? You're off at college. So are you gonna come home or what are you doing? Yeah. So I'm a student at Tufts University now and the policy this year is that if you choose to go home for Thanksgiving, then you were just supposed to finish the semester at home. So you can either leave at Thanksgiving or stay during Thanksgiving and then leave like I think three weeks later or winter break. So I am staying here for Thanksgiving. I figure I'm paying money to be here so I might as well get my money's worth. I think there's a pretty even split of people who are staying and leaving. So it'll be definitely a different vibe on campus but we'll do our best to have a socially distanced Thanksgiving festivities. Nothing really planned yet. We're just college people. We don't really have our lives together. We'll figure it out as we go along. All right. Yeah. In terms of what I'm doing similar to Matteo, no big plans just staying at home, Thanksgiving with my family. So I'm looking forward to it though. I think we had a great discussion today. So well done and thank you all for joining me. This has been another episode of Teens on Topic. I have been your host, Hayden Taylor. Thank you so much for watching.