 edition of Pacious on the News and I'm very happy that we have on the program tonight one of the most insightful people I know around here Greg Kessich who for many years was the editor of the editorial pages of the of the Portland newspapers and a friend of mine and a guy who knows a lot and I used to read his editorials all the time now he's retired and you've all missed him I know you've missed him you said what's happened to Kessich where is he I actually do know a couple people who said that one of them who's very conservative right-wing guy who Greg made sure got to tell his story occasionally on the editorial page and I'm sure he misses you Greg but anyway here we are election day was yesterday we get the results today most of them and we're here to talk about it not like those pundits do want TV they're boring you know they give you all this and analysis we're gonna just react to things and and talking about it and in discussion mode and I hope those of you who want to discuss we we used to have technology here where you could call in but I didn't like that because I spent my whole time listening to people tell me why I was wrong and you know I want you to hear that you know who wants to hear that exactly so anyway so Greg what do you think what happened here with I I wrote you a note last week produced predicting a top-to-bottom total smashing you know result in favor of the Republicans across the country top-to-bottom what happened and I didn't I didn't say you're wrong it's gonna be a stalemate we're gonna be about where we thought we would be a year ago but that's what happened is that there was an expectation that Republicans were going to there's gonna be a red wave and Republicans were gonna sweep into all the high offices you did say you didn't think Paula Page was gonna win I did not and you and you also said that the Bulldog in what's gonna lose the Senate race in New Hampshire but that was about it and what happened is we have a very rigid system right now we don't have landslides like we once had Lyndon Johnson winning what 64% of the vote in 1964 the biggest landslide of all I think in percentage yeah and then you know Reagan and Nixon both won 49 states right but that doesn't seem even possible now it's hard you couldn't even imagine anybody putting that together so there's fewer seats at play partly because it's structural partly because you know of gerrymandering and things like that so but also because of the way our politics have become so polarized and so rigid that there isn't really room for a big wave election the way we might have seen them in the past and I think that's what happened everybody kind of performed the way you would have expected them to perform if you hadn't been expecting some big transformative change election interesting taking I hadn't thought much about that but that's true it is Yankees in the Red Sox now yeah everybody's armed yeah yeah yeah right they're both winning nine you know nine games a year against each other so so it's close it was essentially a tie although I think for sure the Republicans will elect a speaker and be in control of the house I don't know how much control yeah but I found something interesting today on the Daily Beast the headline that said we still don't know who won but the Republicans lost right and there's a lot of truth to that and I think they think they lost and because I think they thought they were going to have an overwhelming victory but this reminds me this phrase we still don't know who won but the Republicans lost in 1969 a very good Yale football team with a couple guys who was very successful in the pros was playing Harvard in the game and surprisingly in the last four minutes of the game Harvard scored three touchdowns and tied the game and it ended in a tie 29-29 and the next morning in the Harvard Crimson the headline was Harvard wins 29-29 yeah this is what this situation is so so and why do we expect it to be more I think that's a that's worth looking at because Republicans I think over they said expectations very high and so it looks like they lost when when really they just made some incremental gains but it doesn't happen this way often that they in the after the first two years of a new president's presidency the party out of power that you they controls the House the Senate and the White House usually loses a lot isn't that traditional that's true Obama lost something like 60 seats the Democrats lost 60 seats in 2010 yeah when Obama had his first midterm I think in Bill Clinton's first midterm in 94 which is election that a lot of people have been talking about recently as the as the as the model for this year Clinton lost something like 50 seats in the 40s I think so why didn't that so we had that plus a lot of people the gas prices they talk about gas prices as though you know we have total control over yeah get the constant a lot of Republicans I heard not just the people doing the ads but people that I know Republicans what about the gas prices what about inflation we got to make a change in Congress to do something about that that didn't work I thought it would yeah maybe this is a good time to like give voters some credit for understanding that a lot of these things are out of the control of the people in the world certain offices the other one is crime you know there's no question crime is going up even here in Portland I think there was like 40 incidents involving guns in the in a 12 month period which is a lot you know for a city like this and but I don't think Shelly Pingry has anything to do with the crime rate in Portland not anything directly I don't think right I get Jared Golden does you know I think that that people recognize perhaps you know I think we need to talk to more voters and figure out what they were thinking but for some reason those those issues didn't stick in the way that the consultants believe that they would you know here's a this is from the New Yorker a few days ago and it says why Republican insiders think the GOP is poised for a blowout then it says this article the interviewed a lot of people the consensus among pollsters and consultants is this Tuesday's election will be a bloodbath for the Democratic Party so that was I mean that was their narrative their message yes and it was told totally wrong now and I think they flooded the the market with a very partisan polls that affected the the polling averages online that a lot of people like you and me read yeah and that affects the the attitudes of the people writing the stories and and and then it has an effect on the people reading the stories that they're their expectation is that that this is going to be a blowout and maybe they don't go out and vote or maybe they stay home and I don't think that's what happens there's a another very high turnout election I think we've had three in a row so today this morning I called my good friend Lou Dele Sandro who was a state senator in New Hampshire the longest serving state senator I think he's won 18 straight elections in New Hampshire legislature the Democrat and I said Lou what happened and he said one word back to me abortion yeah and then he said you know that what people talked about that a few months ago last summer after row weed row versus Wade was overturned and everybody said it's gonna help the Democrats and their turn out but now if the last couple months people haven't talked about it all it's all been about the economy and so forth and it's the economy stupid well he said let me tell you what I know about running for political office never say you are in favor of taking away something that individuals think is their right and if it's an established right and you say you're gonna take it away you will get their attention and that's what happened here huge numbers of women particularly made sure to vote and vote against Republicans I think you're right yeah I think that's right I talked to a Republican who had worked in campaigns in Maine at the beginning of the summer or maybe in June and I said you know does LePage have a chance and he said I think he did until the Dobbs decision and and this was before the debates and and LePage could never really get a message on abortion that made any sense and he didn't want he ran from it here's an interesting quote yesterday this is a quote from what he said last night yeah he said maybe it was a quote he said before last night if heating oil is not as important as abortion then I'm telling you I should have never gotten into politics right if heating oil is not as important as abortion that was last night yeah that was last night yeah so now I read maybe three months ago not long after road versus Wade was overturned that he said to a reporter I don't want to talk about abortion yeah so I my theory was what's happened with all these Republican candidates their their handlers have told them all across the country all the Republicans just don't talk about it yeah and that's he took the that advice he didn't want to talk about it he knew I would say you he knew it was a hot issue yeah and it was something to stay away from yeah I'm sure they have polling and they and they talked to people I thought one interesting thing about this campaign was how much under the radar it was for me and partly it's I retired in in July so I wasn't in the newsroom every day and living it but also when I was driving around the roads I didn't see so many signs very few people came to my door I didn't get a lot of mail and the impression I got was that the can the campaigns have gotten so sophisticated at identifying their voters and speaking directly to them through channels that aren't obvious to me you know that don't come across my desk that that's the way they're doing it now and I was wondering how they could be spending all this money and I don't have any you know I never had any interaction with LaPage campaign stuff yeah but you didn't watch enough television I did I watched the World Series and I saw a lot of commercials then constant horrible things lies about one of really unbelievable lies in these in these ads they just make up something you know Governor Mills is handing out crack pipes right do addicts yeah you think people believe that some do I guess otherwise they wouldn't be putting in on the ads it's like the way people believe in professional wrestling you know they sort of do but they but you know they on some level they know it's not true but they feel like there's something real there that that they can relate to point yeah good point well let's turn we're gonna go back and talk about some of the national results in a few minutes but let's talk a little bit about that about this election in Maine I thought and I took you asked me and I told you that I thought that make Republicans would take the main legislature yeah they didn't come close no in fact the Democrats might have a bigger margin in the Senate when it's all over then they had one last week and the house is a little smaller but we're gonna have a Democratic Speaker who will be from Portland and Rachel Talbot and we're gonna have the same Senate president who's from a Rooster County who the Republicans spent a million dollars in northern Rooster County one million dollars there's only about 30,000 voters up there and to defeat him and he won he did and he I'm told I know him pretty well that as he was campaigning up there he would see these prominent Republicans from southern Maine up there helping to organize the opposition to him so they haven't endeared themselves that's for sure but but you were ran these editorial pages you've been here in Portland a long time I did a little analysis greater Portland and just immediate suburbs yeah so I looked at the results from Freeport to Scarborough just the towns along the water Freeport Cumberland Freeport Yarmouth Cumberland Falmouth Cape Elizabeth South Portland Scarborough and I threw in Westbrook because it's so close so there's about 65,000 people voted in just those towns we're not talking about Portland 65 that's a lot of votes in the state of Maine yeah and so the results are unbelievable Mills Mills carried South Portland by 78% she got 78% almost 80% of the vote in South Portland almost four out of five people in South Portland voted for Mills just a little over 20% for LePage Cape Elizabeth same thing 78% for Mills 20% in Cape Elizabeth yeah used to be a Republican town Yarmouth 78% for Mills 21% for LePage and so it went through all of these towns you know the only one where LePage got over 30% was Scarborough and he got just 33% Mills got two-thirds of the vote so one huge numbers of votes in these towns then you look at Portland you add that in yeah the core yeah of this strip and Mills got 87% yeah 32,625 people voted in the gubernatorial election in the city of Portland 32,600 yeah she got 87% almost all of them yeah almost all of them yeah that's bigger than some counties in the second district bigger than some counties in the city four or five yeah yeah you can take two or three of those counties and it would be bigger than three of them combined yeah yeah I looked at what LePage got in raw votes in Portland was something like about 2000 and remember back in 2010 during the Republican primary Peter Mills was campaigning a lot in Portland and I ran it to him on the street it's what are you doing here you know it's just the Republicans here and he said oh no there's more Republicans in Portland than any town in the state there's there's there's more Republican votes and every year after that I've looked it up and he's right and and I think LePage in 2014 got something like 8,000 votes in the city of Portland and this time something under 3,000 you know it's exactly you know so he wasn't able to kind of put enough of a foothold down here to avoid you know what it would happen you know you look at these statistics from this election for greater Portland yeah and there are a lot of Republicans around and a lot of moderates yep and you the republics has got to have a plan because unless they have a plan on how to improve their performance in this general area greater Portland they'll never win right they can't win they got to get some votes here Susan Collins did Susan Collins could she won she won York County and she she was even in a lot of these towns and I think she won Scarborough but you wonder what LePage's plan was or the Republican parties plan plan was for this problem in Portland I think that's what the the immigrant welcome center that he opened up on Congress Street was about it wasn't about winning over immigrant votes it was about trying to convince moderates and independents that he was friendly to immigrants and and and try to hold on to some of those suburban votes so but we still have the same general blue red map in Maine immediate coast yeah just the immediate coast all the way up to Washington County before it gets to Washington County it always looks the same it always looks the same yeah goes inland a little bit around here Mills barely carried Wyndham mm-hmm she carried Raymond oh interesting yeah that was interesting by just a few votes she carried Gorham quite significantly had won that pretty easily and then she barely lost Standish but by the time you get to Standish yeah the Democrats are dead right by the time they get to Standish yeah and she won Lewiston and she won Lewiston and Auburn and Auburn break the Republican Senate candidate one but she carried Auburn one other interesting thing and this is we're going to get into demographics here but there all there is a blue spot on this map and it's around Bridgeton and Denmark and the towns on the New Hampshire border around lakes where there's a lot of well off people mm-hmm and you know up not far from North Conway right and that went for Mills yeah and just that blue area over there so you think it has something to do when we talk about demographics with with education and levels you know it was too early to say what the what the breakdowns were in this election in 2020 and and previous there's been this growing split between polarization around college education college educated people are more and more voting Democrat when you talked about Cape Elizabeth and Falmouth being formerly Republican towns back in those days people with college education tended to be Republican correct and and that there's been a real movement over to the Democratic Party and there is a not a simultaneous movement at first it was just white what they call white working class which were people without a college degree who were progressively getting more and more Republican and there was some signs in the last couple of elections cycles I don't know about yesterday but I'm in 2020 and 2018 of of black and Hispanic working class particularly men voting Republican and for some of the same reasons and that's I think the the key battleground going forward there's something like a third of the population has a college degree and in politics you don't want to be fighting over the third you want to be getting a piece of the two-thirds and there's evidence of that fight because you see a lot of these Republican candidates including the page got people fired up about elitists yeah that we're going to fight against the elitists right and and then what always interests me is that these are the same people want to fight against the elitists are the ones who tell you that they're great patriots and they read the Constitution and they and they're very interested in the Constitution and they want to protect the Constitution and the founding fathers were brilliant the founding fathers were a man and I say man to a man they were elitists uh-huh right they were they were clearly the elite early America right but they were veer them uh-huh those elitists like the current elitist but yeah it's yeah yeah and and and so a lot so that same type of thing is the rural urban split too because that's partly education based there yeah it correlates right it correlates yeah yeah there's more college educated people in the suburbs than in rural areas yeah so um what is this you thought about at all what this means for president trump because he said that he expects to announce his uh run for the presidency next Tuesday the 15th you know I haven't to be honest I haven't given it a lot of thought yeah yeah and he hasn't called he hasn't called me to ask for my advice I can't see why he would not run he still has a very uh enthusiastic uh support you know it's really interesting that lapage sometimes refers to himself as trump before trump and uh it's a similar issue right I mean that lapage um has like a very loyal enthusiastic support in Maine and it's about 35 38 percent of the electorate and trump has that same kind of chunk of the republican uh no of the of the national electorate probably um more than half of republicans although I think it's it's it's going down a little bit I think it's still over 60 percent yeah the republicans win poll said love trump he's their guy and um and and then plus he's uh facing some legal troubles and he's found out that uh it's harder to uh indict somebody who's president you know he's got a lot he's got a lot of personal interest well and I think is one other thing this is a guy who um who calls around calling people names and one of his favorite names he accuses people of being losers he's always talking about that guy's a loser well now he's a loser and it's must be eating at him driving him crazy I mean when I say driving him crazy he is a politician that actually does get driven crazy by these things yeah I'm not just uh you know picking that word out of the atmosphere he's being driven crazy by being a loser so he he's going to prove that he's not a loser and that's why he said that the election was stolen because he really didn't lose that's right you can't stand the thought of it yeah even the election he won he said was um was fraud yeah because he didn't get the popular he could he get the popular but you know the thing I've always believed and and observed is that uh the worst thing in the world for a politician is to lose an election and uh everybody shuns them afterwards you know um uh you know Michael Dukakis can walk the streets of Boston and nobody knows who he is right and um uh and I've never seen this before where where people just double down and say that they're more enthusiastic about him have you ever seen that before where somebody loses an election and and they're not blamed for uh seeking a ship he he he's not blamed he's still viewed as by some elements as a heroic guy yeah uh which I was thinking it's funny they do look him in it as a hero and these are people a lot of them are macho people they love the military and so forth this guy's a draft dodger yeah you know he's a draft dodger they still love him and he because he spent his whole life as a carnival barker promoter his whole life everything he's done uh he does understand human nature and he understands the worst parts of human nature understands it very well so when he said I could go out on Fifth Avenue and kill somebody and most of my supporters would not desert me he was telling the truth it's true yeah yeah it's true so so but now so we both think he's he'll run he feel compelled to run yeah he can't walk away yeah so it's become his business right and this is what he does for a living yeah he makes money off yeah yeah makes money off he raises a lot of money so but this he's going to have primary opposition he's not going to go through without a primary because you got this guy down in Florida at least and maybe others who's got to be saying to himself strike why the iron is hot six years from now i may be nothing people will pay no attention to me this is my shot right you're talking about DeSantis yeah and uh when you said earlier we don't know who won but republicans lost i think you could say DeSantis won he has solidified the state of florida as a as a bright red state it's not a swing state anymore it's not a bunch of you know transplanted northerners it's uh it's got a it's got a very specific identity that's connected to this particular kind of right-wing politics that involves you know authoritarian rule right DeSantis was had his hands all over the redistricting process he made sure that that florida got four safe republican seats out of it he you see he's firing elected prosecutors suspending them for not enforcing the laws that he's pushed through the legislature regarding you know what people can teach in school and prosecutors said you know i'm not taking that case you know i i've got enough to do and uh which is usually the way it works right is that they're that they have some discretion and he's found a way a loophole in florida law where he can suspend them and and remove them from office and put his own people in place i mean this is a kind of um um control that we are not used to seeing and and he's got it he's figured it out and a lot of people love it love it i look good he just he just won what it's at 70 30 yeah uh and uh and he's puts in you know he's in a biggest third biggest state uh going into the republican process but you know what he doesn't have uh that trump has is this kind of charisma i like it's hard to imagine him filling a stadium the way trump can but but what's he gonna do when trump has already started yeah with him and uh what he he called him uh uh yeah he said that on on monday night trump attacked de santis right which is never typical the night before an election day it's very typical for the leader of your party to attack a candidate from your own party yeah so that is typical so he began a few weeks ago calling him ron desanctimonious yeah clever yes clever ron desanctimonious uh and then on monday night the before the election he was speaking to reporters on his plane and he threatened to release damaging information uh about de santis should he run quote this is trump quoting on monday night the election eve if he did run run this is a this is a great trumpism uh he did this all the time if he did run i will tell you things about him that won't be very flattering i know more i know more only about him than anybody other than his wife yeah all the people were he knows more about it and and he says uh i think if he runs it's a little warning he could hurt himself very badly right right so it's starting and he uh he can't do it any other way i think in that same quote he had something about how uh his wife is the one who really runs the campaign right yeah yeah yeah yeah so he's going to go at this guy yeah tooth and nail now ron desanctimonious uh he's got a problem because all these guys all these republicans have a problem no matter what they think about trump no matter how they want to go back at them you've got to be careful because the only way you can win is with trump supporters you need the trumpets because he owns the party it is the trumpets party right so if you want to be nominated in the trumpets party you got to be careful what you say about trump don't you think there's some truth to that oh absolutely yeah no and i think that's why he's been kind of uh not directly criticizing Trump and i think hoping that there's a void that he can step into but um you know here we are it's that's uh how many years in almost five almost 10 years in and nobody's really figured out a good way to uh to combat trump like no if you if you sink to his level uh you just make yourself look small and he's better at it um if you if you ignore him uh that's another set of problems yeah it's it's a conundrum for that and i don't know how how uh desanus is gonna how we can possibly handle it he needs the trumpest party uh huh trump owns it he needs it how he's gonna do it and it's and it isn't that trump is going to say something nasty about him every once in a while yeah it's going to be constant give him a name but you know um i i think one of the narratives coming out of last night is that um the really hardcore trumpist didn't do well and that um the some of the really serious election the deniers like um uh for getting general bolduck in in new yam sure um under performed compared to other republicans and i think the word is going to be out um somebody's going to try to make the case that uh he's dragging us down we can have the same policies and we don't need him we don't need his negative um force because he brings people out well that would be the thing to say and there are plenty of republicans that will say those things uh but uh if you're running for president in a republican primary in iran desantis uh how do you say something bad about trump when you need his party he does you said it earlier we talked about over 50 percent i think it's 60 some odd percent of republicans are devoted to him yeah it's his party we i don't think there's ever been a case like i've been around a long time i don't think eisenhower i don't think even reagan had that kind of you know control over his own party i know i know no democrat ever did maybe roosevelt in the beginning but uh isn't there a famous story of roosevelt going on campaigning against uh democrats who didn't who were too conservative and in the first midterm and um and maybe it was maybe it was in 1938 anyway they they they all won and they all went back to washington and uh he had to deal with them and it was uh he learned his lesson that i didn't know the yeah yeah so it was like you know he was he was running against the uh the southern um uh dixie crats who uh he needed but um he wanted to you know they weren't progressive enough so look but uh there's good there's very likely to be this battle between at least de santis and trump if not more yeah and um oh the other thing i want to say about the um you know remember the the last republican primary everybody seemed to be waiting for someone else to to knock trump out right so that they could like step in and that enabled him to go all the way coast to coast and uh that's so that's an issue right like somebody nobody wants to be the one the republicans would love it if the democrats got rid of trump yeah oh yeah no they'd like him to go to jail yeah no question about that yeah they pray for it but but look trump is going to do damage because he's going to go after he's going to call him a rhino you know he's going to call him names and the better that de santis as they get closer to the primaries the better he is in the polls the more fired up trump is going to get and the more vicious the things that are going to be that he says because he's going to panic because he cannot lose he can psychologically he cannot accept it right so he's he's really going to get wound up and people when person said to me well uh he will have to be careful about the republican party i said do you what human being who's been paying attention to the last six years can believe that trump is worried about doing damage to the republican party yeah he only worries about himself right only everybody knows it nobody watching this television show whether there's love trump or not even those that love trump uh would agree he only cares about himself yeah that's obvious to any human being who's got a brain yeah so there's going to be trouble there's going to be trouble there's things there's going to be a dynamic here that's going to be pretty rough i i think the saint disantis is pretty smart guy but i don't know how he's going to figure out this one no or uh what about the um the likely speaker of the house um mccarthy mccarthy is going to have a uh a caucus with uh maybe 50 100 marjorie taylor green is going to be an important part of his carcass right she's got her followers she is and she's already said it they're going to pay attention to me yeah and she's nuts she is so she's not you know if that's the people with mental illness but you know it's Kevin mccarthy is not nuts he wants to be speaker he's not not he's going to have to figure out how to handle her good luck to him because it's going to be difficult she's going to be telling him what to do and he's going to have figure out how to hold her at bay her and a bunch of other crazy people that are going to be in his caucus yeah so i think look Nancy Pelosi has some people not as crazy as marjorie taylor green but she has the very liberals the so-called progressives who put the pressure on her and she's managed them she's managed them they don't run her caucus but she's had to deal with them uh they weren't the ones that uh interfered with her who was it it was the moderates of get jarred golden yeah take teamed up with some you know a guy from new jersey who wants to to get rid of the the limit on state and local tax deduction and they and they delayed a vote on a very important bill really kind of that they were the they were the bomb throwers it wasn't the the progressives yeah who went along with much smaller than they had you know proposed every step of the way so they were so much of a problem they were taking half a loaf all the way well i think uh you know historians are gonna have to look at Nancy Pelosi and say what an incredible job she did holding together a coalition that um was so diverse uh and i don't mean just like racially i mean uh uh ideologically a lot of there's a big moderate group of democrats there is and and uh and then there's a you know a very big group of progressives yeah and um and i don't know if you remember this but back in like uh 2008 i wrote a column about how maybe we don't need parties anymore because look obama was not the choice of of the traditional democrats and and he got nominated and john mccain was not the support of you know the choice of the republican base and they have their own brand that was independent of their parties and and um and you called me up and told me what was wrong with that i did you did you did and you said uh uh you know in parliamentary governments there's all these little parties and they come together uh to form a government and in american politics they come together under democrats and republicans and and uh something that would be a small party in israel is is a wing of the democratic party or the republican party and um and i've noticed uh over the years that you're right and uh that these coalitions are um we call them parties but really they are uh uh the group that puts us in position to govern you know what depending on your perspective republican or democrat and the republican party has been in i don't know the last 40 years or so very more ideologically consistent uh inside the party and the democrats have been um more complicated and you have you have everything from like true conservatives to socialists uh under the same and and they don't agree on every issue and they there's only a few issues that they all agree on you know i think that that's that's a good point i remember when i was very active in politics in uh in 1972 i was helping musky i was traveling around the country who was running for president and george mcgovern beat him and george mcgovern's campaign rested on young very liberal people posed to the war and uh they took over the party mcgovern because he was in the left wing he was a good guy but his supporters were in the real left wing of the perceived to be in the left wing of the democratic party because there were a lot of democratic moderates yeah he got nominated and he carried massachusetts and the district of columbia got slaughtered and and running in 1972 against a guy who was already defending himself against the water break the watergate break in a crook a crook i can say that he was he was a crook nixon was successful in many ways as president he was a knowledgeable president he he knew how to go about it but he was a crook and george mcgovern running against him carried just the district of columbia why because he was on a fringe he himself wasn't but his supporters were so that's a good lesson for everyone yeah and it's but actually i don't think it's gonna hurt the republicans they have these fringe although they a lot of their fringe candidates didn't make it this time did they they no no they made it through the primaries which would democratic help sometimes i know i know this is the i'm sorry to see that strategy working because it did work it did work they said we're gonna help sure we're gonna help these republicans nominate real wackos yeah and that'll help us and it did and they did nominate some wackos and some democrats were able to win because they were running against a wacko yeah yeah um well maybe but uh but you know it was where was it okay i'm blanking on the name but there was one of the um the candidates who um a house candidate who had voted for impeachment and was in a tough primary and the democrats backed his opponent who was an election denier um because they felt strategic this was in michigan and the guy's name was may or m e j e r or something like that yeah which um you know when you talk about how how are we ever gonna like get out of this this tight polarization um where you know people just go vote their party on every issue um that's not gonna help but the democrats took that seat they did the democrats got that seat because they were running against a wacko yep yep and the democrats helped get that wacko yeah yeah they said no i don't i agree with you i don't i don't uh uh approve of that remember the republicans did that here in um 2012 when angus king was running uh they ran ads for um uh synthia dill yeah and they said uh she's the real progressive in the race and they had the comparison ads between her and angus king that made him look more conservative they did that huh yeah i didn't know that yeah oh that's interesting didn't work but it didn't work no i but i i i'm a i'm not a journalist so i can say this okay uh i'm a big fan of angus king because i spent many years in washington and i grew up a lot there and in the years i was there and have great respect for for politicians who are thoughtful and intelligent and moderate in their views and angus king is all of those things and so i'm a great admirer i'm proud when people people say oh your your senator is angus king i'm proud because he he he he is the what i reviewed as the norm as a guy who belongs in the senate and not not the fellow the football player from georgia that isn't what i would call the norm uh so do you think he'll run again angus i do i'm hoping he will uh i i think i think it's important for the senate frankly because he's able to talk he has a lot of republican senators who are friends of his social friends he makes a point of keeping an apartment there and not you know sleeping in his office always right right right just so he can socialize with a a lot of them so no i think he's a very important part of uh of the senate i think mitch mcconnell is too actually i don't agree with mitch mcconnell on most anything and i think it's terrible what he did with about the supreme court justice and not letting him have a hearing and so forth i think that's just awful and you go down in history with a black mark for that on the other hand he is the type of senator in terms of wanting to protect the reputation of the senate that is you know he's not like angus king but he's normal you don't think so i can tell well i think he's done a lot of damage and um i guess i would say that the stuff with the judges not just the um maryk garland you know stiff arming obama on on maryk garland but also changing the filibuster rule for gore for gorsuch yeah um and pretty much guaranteeing forever that they were never going to be a bipartisan supreme court justice again because uh you can only get a justice confirmed under under the new rules uh if the president and the senator in control of the same party and you only need 50 votes so um i don't think we're ever going to see a consensus supreme court justice uh it's just going to be one partisan after another because of the short-term political gain that mcconnell got from um from leaving that nomination open during the election which i think really helped trump and then coming back the next spring with a very um partisan judge um that would never have gotten 60 votes uh didn't even try to find a one that would um and and that sets the pattern going forward where you know i don't know what changes that so i i think that's a that's going to be a a lot of damage also he's been one of them the main advocates for uh more money in politics like most people i talk to think there's too much money in politics not mitch mcconnell he wants more money he he has fought every campaign i think all republicans want more money in politics at least they most of them say you know they don't like it when the money it's spent against them well after citizens united there was a bill in the senate yeah to regulate it and to provide for full disclosure in all of that but we had two senators who voted against that bill and they said for procedural reasons they always say those things but they both voted against it i think it's a republican deal sure and well we don't know about mitch mcconnell is what is the behind the doors conversation he's very careful of his caucus like he doesn't want to make anybody take a bad vote right um so he doesn't do things where um he would let uh like a group of republicans vote with the democrats um and i assume the democrats are the same way that they don't want to expose any of their members to a vote that would hurt them so they end up not voting on a lot of things he has a donald trump problem too oh yeah good he deserves it yeah they both they deserve each other he brought he you know he helped donald trump uh put it be in a position to uh to torture him yeah well that's that's true oh yeah no the hypocrisy and i'm going to say this is this is uh you know people mean they say well he's a democrat because he says that he's partisan i'm not i'm a democrat but i'm not partisan a lot of democrats would disapprove of some of the things i say but uh i i'll tell you the hypocrisy um because of trumpism because of the the unbelievable control this this sickness called trumpism has in the republican party they're hypocrites they're hypocrites they say one they say if they're running against them they tell the truth but otherwise they lie for him yeah and i i think that's terrible you know the founding fathers you do know this i do i know you know this but the founding fathers in particularly madison who was the architect of the constitution felt it could only work well if you had a succession of virtuous leaders there is no virtue among these these hypocrites in washington no virtue it's dangerous so anyway thank you for coming on the show and let me make a little speech very good yeah it's a good one yeah so so what about um what about our second district uh race yeah the republican running again i i thought dude which is why the republicans let this guy run here he is running in this we talked about the demographics an area with education with some resentment with some anti-elitism here's a guy and over harvard and wall street rich wall street harvard grad running in that district you wouldn't if you were inventing a candidate to run there he'd be the last one you'd get i think so and and he also you know he big-footed um uh trey steward uh young state senator out of that race uh you know they there was a before polo was that the guy from fresco yeah you know young um uh second district legislator was announced he was going to run against golden and um and then there were some conversations and um and he said he was not going to run against golden you know i think they gave him the kid it's not your night uh speech right and uh and so he got out and uh i think that would have been a um a tougher race and um um i was watching uh the the commercials during the world series and i noticed that polo queen doesn't appear in any of his ads it's all these very harried people you know like oh everything's scary everything i liked it better before life has gone too complicated and uh and then at the end i proved this message and um and uh golden's ads uh i thought he was running as joe biden he doesn't mention polo queen he doesn't mention the republicans he just talks about i stood up to biden i i was the only one who voted against the uh the big uh a covid relief bill yeah um so you know i guess that's that's you you have to say what you want to get elected but um well i think the number that really jumps out of me in that race is that uh tiffani bond uh got a seven percent of the vote something like 20 000 votes yeah could that be right is that i don't know i might be off the math there but but she got she got seven percent yeah and it was solid seven percent all night long yeah because uh she'd have to because uh golden got 48 percent of the vote and um and he got 44 got 44 yeah so that figures and uh that's got to be a protest vote of some kind against uh you know against golden i would think because uh or people that can't can't well she's a democrat no she used to be a democrat and now she's an independent but she um people would say i can't as far as i know the only campaign of hers that i ever was able to get a grip on was that uh she was complaining about not getting covered in the media um and not being invited to the debates and and things like that but she still got a substantial point of the amount of the vote and she denied golden a election night victory and i think he's going to win the runoff um but uh you know i think that's he should definitely see that as a as a message that uh especially if he's thinking about running statewide someday all right then we'll ask you creature we're going to run out of time the democratic socialists were good at organizing getting the stuffs on the ballot but the people spoke they did and we were talking about this earlier they kind of spoke in a in a pretty articulate way they they they didn't just say no on everything or yes on everything um people seem to go through the ballot which is very complicated in Portland there was something like a to e on the charter and and and one to five on on the questions and and voted for some and voted against others and and the margin of victory is very similar it was about 60 40 people thought it through people thought it through and came to the same conclusions make you feel good about me feel like people because i saw that ballot i said nobody's gonna read that it's three pages long but the voters in portland the voters in portland read it and they didn't did i didn't agree on on all the outcomes but um i i don't have any doubt that people read that and took those those questions seriously you know uh democratic socialists is an interesting um thing you were talking about earlier about about you know feeling like they're they're in a fringe or a wing of a party and um uh if you talk to them they they feel like everybody really agrees with them and um uh they just as a matter of getting their message out and um i think it's uh i think great wing republicans think the same thing exactly yeah yeah and i personally think the same thing i think everybody agrees with me and except for some a few cranks but anyway you know so it's a point of like how do you build a coalition to get progress on some of these um on these plans and and they had success in the past of getting around the legislative process and putting these things on the ballot and and and then forcing the the council to city council to implement them and now i think they really need to find a way to work within the council system so what is it so so so what does it say that people didn't what is this telling us that people really don't see a big problem with the governing structure of portland yeah i think so i think that's what what it says the the um the way the charter commission came about my recollection is that the the clean elections people wanted to have a local clean elections referendum yeah and the city told them you can't do that it has to be done through the charter so they went through the trouble of putting the petitions out to get a charter review commission and then we had covid and the george floyd protests and and a lot of um street activism that latched on to the charter commission as a vehicle for a lot of big change and i don't think that's what drove this was a need for for big change and i would just one last thing before we go and in cape Elizabeth where i live they voted down a proposal for a hundred and fifteen million dollar school project too much money and they didn't like the way they went about it and the proponents would say i voted against it would say about me i don't like education i'm anti-education right and that's the absurdity of american politics thank you very much