 us on Think Tech Hawaii. Happy November 9th. May this, the day after the 2023 elections, give us a chance to see if we can read some of the tea leaves and see what, if anything, those might mean signify or portend. And we have with us today the absolutely brilliant, intuitive, incisive, insightful, and lovely Vicki Cayetano, the wife and adult supervision for our good friend and former governor Ben Cayetano, probably the most highly spirited governor we have ever had in all the ways that really mean the most. And a man that you can tell him I said I admire, respect, and love dearly. Ben is a hero for many. He stood up for little guides in Hepticore and lots of stuff where nobody else did. And he worked with David Shetter and kept David Shetter under adult management in ways nobody else could after that, because I know Dr. Gary Levitt, Judy Hit-Pavy, all of it can't be done. But Ben did it. Ben Davis, retired professor emeritus from the University of Toledo School of Law and now visiting professor at Washington and Lee School of Law in Charlottesville, Virginia. And Ben deserves and will take full credit for Virginia going blue in yesterday's elections at a level and to an extent it has never done in its history. And Tim Apichella, the voice of wisdom and sage-ness without the parsley and rosemary, only the sage. Tim Apichella. All right, folks, Ben, you're in Virginia. What the heck happened and what does it mean? Yeah, first of all, I just think that people are very lucid about what was at stake. You know, there are some efforts, I think, gaslight people on certain issues, right? They're this whole young, 15-week abortion, compromise language and that kind of stuff. And I do think that that strong reaction to the Dobs overruling is going through the electorate and they're not just they're not buying the gaslight anymore. I mean, and so, you know, you just sort of see this effort, these changes, this kind of determination to just sort of get rid of it because it's just get rid of those kinds of candidates who are kind of following that particular party line. I think that this is something that is so deep and so powerful going through the electorate that it, you know, people are just not going to listen. I was thinking also, I mean, if you want to think about even trying to play sophisticated games, for example, in Ohio, they had the, what was it, the August, let's try to increase the threshold to 60% and people voted no and then November voted yes for putting reproductive rights in the Constitution. Well, that shows to me a level of sophistication of the voter that could understand the games that the quote unquote smart people were trying to play with them and they were not letting themselves be played. So I think that's the thing that is a high takeaway. I think also Kentucky, I understand there was this ad of a 12 year old girl who had been raped by her stepfather that was, you know, there was no answer. There was no answer under the from the candidate running who was, you know, sort of for not allowing reproductive rights and abortion. There was just no answer to that story. And because, you know, there's like people know realities and they are determined to stop the games of being played, which obviously are successful in a certain sense that the people putting these games forward are probably getting a donor, you know, donor funds and all that is working for them. But in the voting booth, absolutely people are not willing to be gaslighted. I think that's really what it is. So let me take that and say one of the things I'm hearing is and Randy Santis and Nikki and the rest of them better listen is it's not about woke or unwoke. The word is awakening. People are awakening. They're not just lucid. They are what physicians call alert and oriented times three person, place and time. It's the initial question of physicians, especially neurologists, especially after injuries, had injuries in particular. So Vicki, what do you take from it? Anything? You know, I would start my statements with two questions that I would ask you all. Okay. One is that what do you think of Senator Joe Manchin's statement that he is not going to run for reelection? Okay, how is that going to impact? Will it benefit the Democrats or will it actually hurt them? The second question I have is, while many Democrats celebrate the outcome of Tuesday's elections, next year's election is going to really involve a much larger electorate base. And I think a less informed, not as well informed base of people. Do you think that the Democrats will have as much success given all those considerations? So the first is Manchin's, you know, a statement that he's not running for reelection. Do you think it helps or hurts the Democrats or it's neutral? Well, I think there's a strategic tactical mistake that the Democrats and Manchin have made because they haven't been engaging in trade-offs. They're not getting anything for them. The trade-off should be okay. We'll have Manchin not run if you have Tuberville not run. It would be the greatest contribution to the U.S. Senate in decades to dispense with those two. Can you imagine how much that would raise the bar of communications, of dialogue, of potential bipartisan engagement without those two in the Senate? I mean, yeah, there are others, you know, Cruz and the boys and, you know, they're more than enough haters and dividers out there. But those two alone, their removal might signify something to the rest of the bunch to help them understand exactly what you and Ben have said. We are awakening, you are at risk. Tim, your thoughts. Thinking about Virginia and the success that they experienced on Tuesday, I'm thinking what if that hadn't happened, you would have had Youngston proudly say, okay, I was able to control now the legislature in my state. And that would have been a springboard to him saying I'm going to be a presidential candidate for the GOP party in 2024. Now, who has a real chance of beating Donald Trump? Maybe Youngston. I think he does. And so by the fact that not anymore. Well, that and that's the point. He now is, he's pulling his oars in off the boat, and he's not going to run. And so what's the big, what's the biggest goal or the largest goal in 2024? It has to be the defeat of Donald Trump. He's going to get the nomination. Now that Youngston is going to not run for 2024, he will be the nominee. And I was hoping that Youngston would have gotten in there and tried to wrestle that away from Donald Trump. And I think he would have had the greatest chance of success. So in some ways, there's some collateral damage here from this victory. But that is the life of politics. And that's my initial thought. So what if we follow that thought and say, okay, Youngston crashed and burned for exactly the reasons that Ben and Vicki have articulated. The awakening. Are there, is there anyone on the Republican side that might sufficiently grasp, make use of, and benefit from that to step up? Is there somebody who could be an awakening GOP candidate? Thanks. Question. I'll just give you a quick answer. No. Yeah. The bottom line is, if they're not willing to bludgeon themselves and Donald Trump at the same time, because they're scared about losing the base for support. And so they're timid. They'll throw a couple of crackpot shots out there during the debate. But other than that, they retreat back into their hermit crab shell, and that's where they stay. So we need a candidate on the GOP side that's willing to go head first, headlong into Donald Trump. Chris Christie is the closest one that comes to that. But he's not getting any traction. And that's the bottom line. If anyone's going to take the nomination, they can't do it by not taking Donald Trump right on for the headway, head toe to toe and head to head. Yeah. I'm going to play devil's advocate and raise the possibility that there may be another approach, another image, another strategy that may be even more successful than taking Trump on one to one. Because fighting with a bully is rarely productive. It's like a pissing match with a skunk. You come out with a really bad smell, right? What if instead somebody got out there, as Tim's got originally intended to do, but has proven really incapable of doing, somebody got out there and really did some serious image and strategy work to be the GOP awakening candidate. Somebody like Kasinich used to be that kind of person. What if that happened? I mean, it might not get the nomination, but if it happened, if it showed the GOP that there is a reality, there is a direction, there is a group, there are people, there is a faction that is willing to go in the awakening direction. Right. That's the question. If I could jump in on that a couple thoughts, Tim. One was that that kind of strategy I think is sort of, for presidentials at least, it's like setting up a 2028 as opposed to 2024 because of the dominance of Trump right now. I saw on the commentaries last night something that I thought was very interesting, which is well, Trump has this dominance. You still have roughly 30% of the or 32% of the Republican electorate that is split up among these other candidates, right? In a general election, looking forward to this broader vision question that Vicki pointed out, Trump needs every one of those 30%, 32% who have been watching and have decided they are not with him. And he needs them badly. And I think that that's a very telling point is that at this point in time, even though he's the quote front runner, I think that that's significant that there are a number of Republicans who are looking for something else. And the second thing I wanted to state just to try to speak to the Joe Manchin thing is my understanding was that Joe Manchin had not done a very good job or the Democratic Party had not done a very good job of creating heirs of parents in West Virginia. And so as a consequence, you know, there's kind of a vacuum behind him on the Democratic side. And so my expectation is I think the governor will probably run for the Senate seat at some point, maybe if I don't know if he's, and I think he's a Republican. So I see it going over to the Republican side, though, my sense of the Republican governor as a during the whole COVID thing was that he was tending to be sort of what I would call a reasonable person, not the Tommy Tuberville type. So you might be sort of the center right if I can talk about it that sense part of the Republican Party maybe. Now, I just want to add any another thing, you know, the flamethrowers in the House group is one of my my representative is one of the flamethrowers, one of the five, the gates five sort of thing, you know, and so I watched that and the comment that I heard someone make about those kind of settings was that you needed to have an independent run in the district, who would have Democratic basically leaning views in terms of various things, but without the the Democratic label. So you know, that's another twist that maybe could happen in West Virginia having an independent. So I just throw that one out there. So who in the Democratic Party could move to West Virginia in time to run for Senate? Pete Buttigieg? Who would you if you could go to the Democratic Party and say tell this guy or woman, better yet a woman, what woman could move to West Virginia in time to win Manchin's Senate seat? And also, don't forget, you know, when we talk about Tuberville, while Democrats could lose Manchin's seat, the Republicans could lose Tuberville's seat even in Alabama. They could conceivably lose that seat if the Democrats put up somebody who has really broad, moderate, even conservative appeal. You know, a statesperson, somebody with charisma. If either party figures out that you win by putting up the most charismatic candidates, they will clean up. Obama won by charisma and grassroots that combination. Nobody has had it since nobody had it before. Jimmy Carter developed it after his presidency. And unfortunately is not strong enough now to be able to use it to the benefit of either the party or society. But who in the Democratic Party, just hypothetical, imagining, Vicki, Tim, would you say if they moved to West Virginia, they could win? Go ahead, Vicki. Okay, I'll take one shot and then it's Vicki's turn. I'd say Governor Whitmer. It's not going to be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. No, Governor Whitmer. You know what? That's a brilliant, brilliant suggestion. Vicki? So, you know, I think she has a possibility, but here's my question and I think Ben, you probably know the politics that side better. Is this somebody who's going to move there or is that actually more of a weak point versus someone from within their state? Do they have candidates there? Yeah, I mean, I don't know West Virginia real well, but I would suspect that somebody organically local, but then, you know, is there anybody in the Democratic Party local who has really got that some stature inside West Virginia? I just don't know. I understood that Manchin had really pushed, you know, had really not developed it. Now, there is the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee where I understand the people have been very sophisticated based on the kind of results we're seeing in different types of elections in, I don't know, the Democratic leadership, I can't, I don't know which acronym it is, but they've been very sophisticated and successful in getting Democrats elected in different places. So they may be already working on somebody or have been working on for a time, somebody to come up in Manchin's background. But yeah, I do think that the person coming from out of state would be, they'd be less receptive. It's not like, what was it, Robert Kennedy moving to New York, you know, or Hillary Clinton moving to New York, sort of the flexibility that was there shown in New York towards them. I think that there's, you know, there's definitely a specificity to West Virginia that, you know, that is remarkable in a beautiful way. And maybe is there somebody from within, I would think that oftentimes when a candidate decides not to run, a lot of times they're chief of staff, someone who's already built relationships, right? It's just like Senator Inouye, there was a lot of talk about Jennifer Sabas, you know, running, because all those years they've learned, they've got the playbook down, they've been waiting. So that could be another possible, I think, somebody from within his camp. I don't know who Manchin's chief of staff is, but absolutely, that's a route that's very, very, you know, they've got all the network that's worked for Manchin up to now. And that puts them in a front spot if they're willing to take on that role, you know, so, yeah. So I would propose who I believe would be the perfect candidate for West Virginia, were he still alive, which unfortunately he is not, and who would come with the greatest theme song for a West Virginia Senate campaign of anyone ever, and that would be John Denver. John Denver, all right. If they can come up with a John Denver, you know, and I'm only half choking, because if they can get someone, you know, the West Virginia equivalent of Taylor Swift, if there were such a thing. Yeah, well, you know, it's not sad, she's a little too progressive for West Virginia, but you know, star power is not a bad thing. And I'm sorry to say that between social media's impact to politics today, it carries tremendous weight. And people today, their attention span is like this much. You're winning on sound bites, not on the depth and breadth of your experience. Those days are long gone. And that's really what's sad. But I think that if there's a candidate that people can resonate with, I think this is why Donald Trump is successful, frankly, he speaks things that people say that's what I would like to say, but don't say so they interpret that instead of arrogance as courage. You know, I talked to these supporters, I'm like, well, how in the world can you support someone like Donald Trump? And oftentimes that's the thing. Oh, he's, he's honest. He says things that the other candidates want to say, but they don't have the balls to say it. I mean, it's so simplistic. It's ridiculous. It's sad, it's sad, but true, Vicki. And I guess what, you know, in politics, they say, you know, an elected politician is either a show horse or a work horse. And unfortunately, the work horse is that know how to get the job done. They're not charismatic enough now in today's politics to be elected. And I, when I said it was sad, that's what I'm referring to. It's just plain sad. That's where we're at as far as who gets elected, who gets campaign dollars. And it's just, give me five work horses to 30 show horses any day. But you left out the third category, which is the by far the great, great, great majority, almost virtually all. And that's the horse's assets. The other part of the horse. We got plenty of that in the Congress. I'll tell you that. We got overpopulated with horse's assets. Oh, wow. You know, name me a work horse or a show horse that really deserves that title. I think there are none that I can think of. Horse's assets. Because they know what they're doing. And Tuberville's at the top of the list, man. Yeah. So I want to circle back to- Marjorie's right up there. You know, show for you, Chuck. This is, can you read the tea leaves for next year? So is Tuesday's results an indication of how the national election next year is going to go? Or are we going to be blindsided? Or do we not even know how next year's election results will go? Or is it an opportunity, a potential for momentum that, if properly understood and built on, can make 2024 an even better one for the Democrats? I truly believe that's what it is. It's not a direction. It's a potential. It's not an achievement it is, but it's an opportunity. If the Democratic leadership coalesces, learns to build relationships and teams, and understands what happened in 2022, what happened in 2023, and why, and how that connects which people in the party can bring that to the electorate and be the awakening candidates. So my theme, if I were a Democratic Party person, like Richard Fort, right, is I would say this 2024, our theme will be awakening. We are the awakening party. We're not woke. We're not unwoke. We're not left. We're not right. We're not socialist. We're not communist. We are awakening. We are awakening with and to the people. Well said, Chuck. Yeah. But I think I would, my closing statements would be focused around saying then the Democratic Party needs to be more unified. We have our own issues locally and nationally. There are so many segments, you know, you've got the very liberal side. So I think there needs to be strong party leadership in order to address the very thing, that strategy that I think is, you know, wisely stated by you in order to execute. But if we don't clean up and take care of our own house, I don't know that that's going to happen. So question for you is having taken all of the insights and perspectives and wisdom that Ben and Tim and you have shared and essentially giving you a potential 2024 campaign theme and platform. Are you willing to consider running for mayor? You know, I am serious. You know, I'm not a politician. Public service is something I think is very important, but as a negative, no. At this point, you never say never, but I have no aspiration. Good. I'm sorry to hear that. I want to vote for you. Jay will lead and Tim will lead. And the rest of us will support a draft Vicki campaign for mayor. There you go. Much as I like Rick Blanchieri personally, sorry, not even close. If he were a baseball pitcher, he would not have survived the inning. And I don't mean that as a personal criticism. I just mean he walked into a situation where the difficulties, the obstacles and the challenges, the opposition, the resistance, all of the things in the way of his making the progress that he wanted to have defeated him. I think he's done the best he could with what he has. I think on the other hand, it's time for the manager to walk out of the dugout and say, hand me the damn ball. Who in the bullpen, if not you, who is in the bullpen for Hawaii? Tim, Vicki? Last words. I'll let Tim have the last word. Okay. Well, getting, well, in the bullpen, nationally, I, no, no, Hawaii mayor. Oh, I defer to Vicki. Sorry, Vicki. I don't know. I really don't know. I don't know. I think you're the one. I'll help you both out. I'm running for mayor. Okay. Oh, there you go. Thank you, Ben. All right. Tim's moving to Hawaii and running for mayor. And I have my motto, vote for me. I'll set you free. There you go. There, Ben. And Ben, if you want to be an adjunct professor at the UH Law School, Richardson School of Law, it's one of the best in the country. It has probably one of the top five deans in the country, Camille Nelson, who is absolutely amazing off the freaking charts. We've run out of time. I'm so sorry. We have lots more to say and share. Come back and join us in a couple of weeks. Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha. Be well. Be safe. And awaken. Please. Aloha.