2043 FBF: David Daley - Ratf**ked, The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy, How to Effectively Manage Your Credit Score

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Welcome to one and all of our listeners from around the world. This is the Creating Wealth Show. Your host, Jason Hartman, episode number 704, 704. And today We do have a guest, but before we get to our guest today, I want to talk to you about your credit score. And of course, this is vital. I mean, this is important stuff, and you want to make sure you manage your credit score in an active manner. And there are all sorts of credit repair and credit enhancement companies and agencies out there and so forth. Some of them are very scammy. I would definitely advise you do not pay large upfront fees to any of these companies because, uh, That is where you are likely to get ripped off. With anything in life, you want to kind of pay as you go whenever possible, and that is no exception. But I'm not going to talk to you about credit enhancement or credit repair agencies out there. I want to talk to you actually about a little bit about how your score works without having anyone on the show that's selling anything. I'm not selling anything about this. I just want to talk to you about it and share with you some layman's perspective of what I know about it and how it might help you become more interested in your credit score and become more interested in actively managing it. And then our guest today will be someone from the left. Yes, a liberal in this political season, and that is David Daley, who works for or worked for, can't remember, Salon.com and the Connecticut News Project. His book entitled Rat Fucked. You can bleep that. Please do bleep that, actually. The true story behind the secret plan to steal America's democracy. And this is how the right is stealing America's democracy, according to him. I think the left steals a little bit more, but that's just my opinion. I could be wrong. I think the two-party system is an epic scam, and we really need to stop identifying with left or right because You know, Republican, Democrat, it's like watching that— as I've said before, watching that fake wrestling match on TV. This is show business, folks. It is meant to divide and conquer and distract the population from the things that really matter. Gosh, you know, with the RNC just ending and the DNC just coming up, it's, it's so interesting to see how the media just portrays this stuff. Of course, it's very important to investors as we talk about real estate investing. I mean, this political stuff, it matters. It really does matter. But, you know, they're— they, they want to— those folks on the left want to make Trump out to be this wacko, uh, dictatorial guy. You know, I bet, I bet a lot of people thought that about Winston Churchill in his day. Anybody who's strong and makes strong statements They're, oh, they're just crazy, you know. But, but anything Winston Churchill, who's historically remembered pretty favorably in my opinion, would have said back then, I bet a lot of people thought of him similarly to Donald Trump in his day. And I'm a big student of history, you know. I've been watching a lot of documentaries, which by the way, if you have not seen the documentary Poverty, Inc., you must see see it. It's one of the best. I try to watch a few documentaries every single week, and Poverty, Inc., fantastic. We're gonna get the director on the show coming up. He's already actually reached out to us and offered to come on the show, so fantastic. I never knew there was a huge poverty industry and never really understood how all the Hollywood do-gooders were really oppressing people around the world. You know, whether intentionally or unintentionally, I'm not saying it's intentional completely, but it's just really interesting. A whole different spin on the poverty industry. The past week I've been watching a CNN, you know, the Communist News Network documentary series on the '60s and the '70s on Netflix. And it's really fascinating to see everything that happened then. Of course, it's not like it's new to me, but I did gain some additional distinctions that I think were important. And now they're talking about the Carter era and the energy shortage and inflation that we always talk about and all of this stuff, which is, uh, it's just fascinating to constantly look back at this stuff because it teaches us a lot about, uh, modern day. It really does. So we will have our guest David here in a few moments. First, let's talk a little bit about credit scoring. Now here's the thing about credit scoring. You know, most people, I think, uh, not knowing anything about it would just as an offhand thing, they would think, well, what makes your FICO score, your credit score? It's your payment history. If you pay on time, you're going to have a better score, and if you don't pay on time, your score is going to be negatively impacted. And that is certainly true. This, uh, as my understanding— and again, I'm not an expert on this, but I just wanted to talk about it myself of course, we've done many shows where I've interviewed various credit enhancement companies over the years. They've been on the show, but you know, they're all selling something. So since I'm not selling anything here, I just wanted to kind of talk to you about it. But again, I am not an expert, so I just want you to understand that, kind of like the disclaimer I always give you saying I am not an expert in legal or tax stuff. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not an accountant. and I'm not a credit expert either, but a few things I've just learned that I thought would be interesting to you. So most people think the payment history is the big deal, and of course it is a big deal, but it's not the only thing. This accounts for about 35% of your score, from what I understand, is your payment history. So of course, if you have bankruptcies, tax liens, and you know, I have this tax lien myself. Itself that I paid off years ago. It was— it's $237. It's driving me nuts that it just keeps showing up and I can't get rid of this damn thing. I don't know why it keeps showing up. Uh, it was like a supplemental tax bill that I just missed in— get this— 19— I think it was 1996. That's how old it is. It's 20 freaking years ago and it keeps showing up. And every time I apply for a loan, it seems like I gotta write this dumb little explanation letter that says, you know, I don't know why this keeps showing up. I paid it off. I just missed this little piddly $237 tax payment 20 years ago. And why am I still talking about this?

Welcome to this week's edition of Flashback Friday, your opportunity to get some good review by listening to episodes from the past. That Jason has handpicked to help you today in the present and propel you into the future. Enjoy.

Mind-boggling. So the first thing to understand, even before as a global thing, understand that— and this statistic may not be exact, but I remember talking to someone about this, an expert, a true expert, not me, saying that like 79% of all All credit reports have inaccurate information, either information that is just basically fraudulent because someone else used your credit or hijacked your identity in some way, or inaccurate reporting by a creditor, or things like things that should have fallen off, like this stupid $237 little piddly tax lien that, you know, I've paid off 20 years ago and it keeps showing up. I do not know why. Uh, things that should have been taken off by now because I think they're supposed to come off in like 7 years or 10 years or something like that. Anyway, so back— so just understand that a lot of this information is wrong, wrong, wrong, and that is why you need to manage it and you need to take an activist role in managing your credit. So payment history, that's the biggie. 35% of your credit score is determined by payment history. So of course, pay bills on time, make sure you don't let any little dumb piddly bills out there go unpaid, and make sure that you pay attention to things, obviously, right? Well, what else matters? Utilization rate ratio. This is an interesting one. Your utilization ratio, this is about 30% of your score, so it's also very big. Okay, now this references the balances you owe on revolving accounts compared to the limits on those revolving accounts. So for example, if you have a $1,000 limit on a card, for example, and you owe $500 on that card, then your revolving— that's as for revolving credit, right? Not long-term credit, revolving credit. Your utilization ratio there is 50%. It's half, right? If you add up the balances on all these accounts and divide by the sum of all these accounts, you know, the limits, the overall limit, you will know your utilization ratio. And the idea being that you don't want to have a very high utilization ratio because it's good to have— now this is my understanding, again not an expert— but it's good to have high limits, but it's not good to be using a lot of them. So for example, my utilization ratio, I will just tell you, and the interesting thing is they don't ever consider on your credit report how much money you make or how many assets you have. Now, this bugs me because I make good money and I have a lot of assets, right? Or at least all of my entities have a lot of assets, I should say. And we've talked about that on many prior episodes. So this doesn't— they don't care. This isn't even considered here, right? But my utilization ratio is considered very good. It's not at the top though. It's not It's not excellent, but my utilization ratio is 19%. And so what I have started doing is one of the credit cards that I use, I started just every month I actually pay them in advance. I pay— because all of my cards, I pay them off every single month. So what I do now, when I started to understand utilization ratio, and so I'm sure if I look looked at my more recent utilization ratio, it would actually be better than this. Okay, it would be much, much better because what I do is I actually just send this credit card company $5,000 in advance. I pay $5,000 more than I owe every month. So as I start to use it during the month and they think, well gosh, this guy has racked up $5,000 in money he owes us, And, you know, we're used to having him pay it off every month, pay the full amount, because the guy probably doesn't like interest. Yes, I don't like those ridiculous interest rates that credit cards have. And, you know, this is consumer stuff, so I don't— I want to have a lot of mortgage debt, but I don't want to have any consumer debt at all. You know, don't want to have any car loans or credit card debt or anything like that. So I pay it off every month, but during the month month, it will show that I owe this money. And so if my report is run at any time and there's a balance outstanding, they will see a utilization ratio that is not as favorable as I want it to be. Okay, all right, so understand utilization ratio. All right, let's get to the next thing here. Let's talk about credit length. Now this is on my credit report, it's exceptional because it says my average credit length is 13 years and 6 months, and the oldest account I have was opened in May of 1991. A long time ago. Okay, so length of credit is important, right? This category accounts for about 15% of your overall credit score, and it analyzes how long long your credit accounts have been established. Now here's the thing, one of the people I was talking to about this once noticed on my credit report that I had some old credit accounts that I wasn't using, and they said, you know what, use those accounts. Of course, pay them off every month. These were credit cards. I had a couple credit cards that I just never used. I, I forgot about them. I, I just stuck them in a drawer and I just never use them. And they said, start using these credit cards but pay them off every month. And in fact, to improve the utilization ratio, pay in advance. Okay, now they didn't tell me that, that was just my own idea on the utilization ratio, pay in advance. So that's what I do, as I mentioned before. So my credit length is exceptional according to this, right? Uh, let's look at another factor. Okay, credit mix. This is another one. Okay, see, it's not just about payment history, it's about more than that. This accounts for about 10% of your credit score. It's your mix of credit. What type of credit do you have? Here, this category, it's, it's relatively minor, but it still definitely matters. It's one piece of, of the overall score, and it should not be overlooked, right? Interestingly, the presence of certain types of installment loans, such as signature loans from finance companies, they can negatively impact your score, uh, even if you paid on time. Okay, so here is, is the FICO score and the, the overall 5 factors. We'll talk about one more in a moment. Okay. So remember, 35% of the score payment history, 30% amount you owe, 15% length of credit, 10% types of credit in use— that's the credit mix concept— and 10% new credit. Okay, so on my credit mix, it says that it's exceptional, and it says that I have, uh, 2 revolving accounts and 17 installment accounts. So they consider that to be a very— well, not very good, but an exceptional credit mix. Okay, so that's another factor to understand. Let me see if I went through all of this here. Oh, new credit. We didn't talk about new credit yet. Now this is another 10% or so. Okay, and this is where inquiries inquiries. If you have inquiries on your credit report, you can actually write to that potential creditor and ask them to remove the inquiry. Okay, so that's something you can do. I would recommend you get a book on this, just under— have a little understanding of how credit works and how important this stuff is. It's, it's a, it's an important thing. I mean, don't spend all your time on it, but it's just one thing you got to have some understanding of. And the amount of new credit you have— now let's see, what does they say? If you get a lot of new credit in a short time, that looks like you're starting to borrow a lot of money, so that's going to reduce your overall score. And by the way, I noticed this several years ago when I bought a whole bunch of properties at once. I remember my score was really high, and I acquired all these properties and then my score, it went down actually kind of significantly. And I took a breather and I just paid on those loans, and about 6 months later my score went way up. So that must have been the new credit thing because I had inquiries and I had a lot of new credit, and they thought, oh wow, this guy is borrowing a lot of money. What if he borrows a bunch of money and then disappears and doesn't pay, right? So new credit in a short spurt will negatively impact your score. But you know, it's not this big a deal because if you're buying— a lot of investors come to us and they want to buy their 10 properties, right? And the 10 is the maximum on the normal agency loans, the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac type loans. So they want to buy their 10 properties and max out, and then they want— if they're married, they want to get their spouse to buy 10 more and max out the spouse. So they have 20 properties in their portfolio. So that's okay. Just understand that if you check your credit score the month after you do this, or 2 months after you do it, it's probably going to go down. But who cares? You probably don't need to get any new credit at that point. But about 6 months later— and again, that's just what happened to me, I don't know if this same thing is going to happen to you, but that's just my anecdotal experience— I noticed my score popped way back up, and it was really good after that. So understanding credit is important. Now, again, like I've mentioned, there are a lot of disreputable groups out there offering to help people enhance their credit. Be really careful. The first thing I would say is, uh, you know, do some research. Uh, the second thing I would say is don't pay big upfront fees. Pay as you go for them to help you improve your score. But also ask your investment counselor or just ask me directly, and we can refer you to a good credit service that can help you improve your score. So just a few thoughts on that. Let me just Before we jump to our guest, I want to just give you some highlights of some of our markets. And I, I haven't done this before, and I thought we would do this. We are trying to open up some new markets and find some good teams. You know, we constantly want to be looking at new areas. We're always doing this. This is what we do every day. So we're working on some new markets for you, okay? But in terms of the markets that we've been in for a while. Let me just give you a few highlights, and of course you could see this right at JasonHartman.com as well. Chicagoland area, third largest metropolitan community, thriving affordable city, stable investment market, and, uh, you get a lot for your investment dollars. Terrific rent-to-value ratios. Little Rock, small market for us, but Kiplinger Magazine magazine rated it the number 1 place to live in the United States. That was a couple of years ago. I don't remember the exact time they did that. 4th strongest economy, one of the 10 strongest markets in the US according to Forbes, and 2nd cleanest city in the US. I bet the cleanest is my former hometown, Irvine. Irvine, California, got to be one of the cleanest cities ever. Amazing, but wouldn't work as an investment for sure. Because it's way too expensive. And low taxes, low unemployment, and of course, Little Rock is in Arkansas, and Arkansas is the most landlord-friendly state in the entire country. All right, Birmingham, Alabama. Rapid banking, telecom, and medical expansion. Alabama ranked number 2 for lowest real estate taxes. It's a hub for law, medicine, nursing, and engineering. Cost of living is lower than the US average. Atlanta, again, shortage of inventory there because it's gotten a little expensive, but according to Forbes, one of the best cities for young professionals, very favorable demographics, 6th fastest growing metro area in the US from 2012 to '13, ranks 6th economically in the nation. Average commute is 27 to 35 minutes. I'm actually not sure why we put that on there, to tell you the truth, but whatever. You know, I've talked many times before in prior episodes about the old thing in real estate: drive until you qualify. Drive until you qualify. Either qualify to rent or to buy. Indianapolis. You know, we haven't talked enough about Indianapolis lately. At our upcoming event, which by the way, I think we're going to be announcing a date change We are not sure we can get that event together quite as soon as we thought. Stay tuned, we'll have it for you really soon, probably in the next episode. One of the Forbes top 25 cities, very low cost of living, 5th best cities for teleworking, large metro area, home to major employer expansions. That's Indianapolis, the land of cash flow, we call it. Tampa, Port Richey, below replacement cost properties. Six Flags theme park breaking ground very soon, reported above average job growth, population growth. You can buy properties still below replacement cost. Orlando, get cash flow in a desirable climate, population and job growth. Buy below replacement cost there as well. Disney World is an economic machine, and boy That is so consistent, I tell you. Landlord-friendly state. Memphis, of course, almost everybody listening I'm sure has already purchased a property from us in Memphis because it feels like the whole world has. Solid income property in the Mid-South. I just bought a couple more properties there. I love it. Centrally located, top 15 US cities, emerging downtowns according to Forbes, ranked 4th by Forbes as the happiest city to work, landlord-friendly market, and we have other markets as well. But that's just a highlight. Hey, go to JasonHartman.com, check out the properties we have there, and let's get to our guest. It's my pleasure to welcome David Daley to the show. He is the CEO and publisher of the Connecticut News Project, former editor-in-chief of Salon, and author of Rat Fucked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy. David, welcome. How are you? I'm great.

Thanks for having me, Jason.

Good, good. I guess this is the first time we'll be cussing on the show.

Well, good. I'm glad to make this X-rated all of a sudden.

We're breaking new ground here. Hopefully, we don't—

Gerrymandering has never been X-rated before.

There you go. Well, that's a good point. So is the book really the true story behind the secret plan to steal America's democracy? Democracy, and there's certainly no shortage of talk about this, thankfully, nowadays. I'm glad a lot of people are talking about this because it seems like the two-party system is just totally rigged. Everybody is just getting— I'll use the word screwed— left and right nowadays, except the elite class. Ratscrewed. Ratscrewed, exactly. Except the elite class, the insiders, and so forth. Is the book really about gerrymandering? Is that a lot of the focus here?

Well, I think that both parties have gerrymandered since before the dawn of the American Republic. You can trace it back to the 1780s and Patrick Henry, let alone Elbridge Gerry, who gives it its name. But what happens in 2010 is gerrymandering on steroids. It's the first time gerrymandering has been used as a serious, hardcore partisan weapon designed to govern from the minority for the next decade. What the Republicans realize between Barack Obama's election in 2008 and the election in 2010 is something that has been right in front of everybody for 220 years, but no one really figures out how to completely effectively use it. And Chris Jankowski and the Republican State Leadership Committee, along with Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, the summer of 2009 into 2010, they raised $30 million, and they recognized that if you can control statehouse elections from coast to coast, you can control the entire redistricting process. Um, we back up for a quick second. The Constitution mandates that every 10 years every legislative district in every state gets redrawn, and then most of the time those state legislatures draw new congressional maps. So the Republican plan is elegant in its beauty and its simplicity and completely inexpensive in its cost. They spend $30 million in statehouse races, local races, in, in Pennsylvania, in Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, North Carolina. $100,000 here, $100,000 there. By the end of 2010, they have won over 700 state legislative seats And they've won—

Just tell us who is they again.

In 2010, the Republicans win 700 state legislative seats, and they take control of two-thirds of all of the state legislative chambers in the country, and they have the upper hand in redistricting. And the Democrats don't see this coming because they still think gerrymandering is being played by the old rules. Nope. The Republicans have a brilliant new plan. They come in, and after 2010, the Republicans have complete authority over redrawing 193 congressional seats. The Democrats have complete power over drawing 44. You only need 218 to, uh, to have a majority. So if you can draw 193 of them, You're off to a pretty good head start.

Yeah, you sure are, you sure are. Okay, so I just gotta be curious where you're coming from. What side of the aisle do you land on, if I may ask?

I mean, I'm the former editor of Salon. Salon's a liberal site, but I mean, I'm not looking at this book as a partisan book. I look at this book as something has— that our elections are intended to have consequences one way or the other. And the problem with what happens in 2010 and the subsequent redistricting of 2011 is that the only election that has consequence is the zero-year election, because that's the redistricting one. Um, because in 2012 it goes back the other way again. Democrats have a really good year in 2012. They get 1.4 million more votes in House races across at the country, but they can't flip the chamber. It's the first time since 1972 that the party that gets the most votes does not control the chamber, and it's not even close. It's 234 to 201. Um, and I think that when our democratic institutions are not responsive to the popular vote, then they no longer cease to be effective or, or democratic in, in many ways. Um, And then 2014 is a Republican year. It should move back that way. Yeah.

Before you go to that though, I just want to ask you how— you know, when you talk about 2010, how did the Republicans gain that advantage? Did they just sort of think of something the Democrats had never thought of? I mean, how did they outsmart them?

I think it's exactly right. What they come up with And Karl Rove announced—

because, because I must say, the Republicans usually kind of suck at campaigning. I think they're pretty terrible at it. You know, the Democrats are so much better at like appealing to emotion.

Completely right.

As much as, as much as we all want to think of ourselves as logical creatures, we're all emotional creatures that use logic to rationalize things.

Absolutely. Really, what they do is they understand that it's going to be a redistricting year, and they understand that they can use that power differently than they've used it before. Chris Jankowski, who is this brilliant Republican strategist, and he runs something called the Republican State Leadership Committee— his roots are in state government and statehouse races. So he knows that, say, in Pennsylvania there's a legislature of 203 members in the House. He knows that the Democrats have a 2 or 3 seat advantage. He goes and he targets 6 seats, spends $1 million targeting 6 local statehouse races, wins 5 of them, takes control of the chamber. Republicans end up with the Senate, with the House, and with the governor, which means that when the new districts are drawn the following year in the winter of 2011, the only seats at the table are the Republicans. The Democrats have to essentially take whatever they are given. And it pays off. In 2012, you have another big year for the Democrats. In Pennsylvania. You get 100,000 more votes for Democratic House candidates. Barack Obama is reelected. But there's an 18-member congressional delegation from Pennsylvania. It's 13 Republicans and 5 Democrats. So 52% of the vote ends up with 28% of the seats. And this pattern repeats itself in all of the states where Jankowski and the RSLC pull off this genius move. Michigan, 9-5 Republican delegation despite 240,000 more votes for Democratic candidates. Ohio, essentially a 50-50 state. It's the bellwether we always wait for to come in every, every year, right? 12-4 Republican. Wisconsin, North Carolina, all of these states one after another yield bright red congressional delegations from what would otherwise be blue or purple states. Um, and for $30 million, all of this pays off, and it also creates Republican legislatures in all of these states that that, you know, in some ways are essentially blue and purple states. I mean, North Carolina is a reddish-purple state, I suppose, but I mean, Michigan, Pennsylvania, both of those haven't gone statewide for a Republican candidate since George H.W. Bush in '88. So it's a really smart way of wiring states. When you draw the lines You make the rules.

Uh-huh. Yeah, it makes sense to me. Certainly, I had to understand that. But, but both sides have gerrymandered throughout history, and it's just what you're really saying is that the last big round went to the Republicans, it sounds like, right?

Well, I, I think that, I think that it's certainly true that both sides have gerrymandered throughout history, um, and perhaps even the Democrats Democrats have been more effective at it over the years than the Republicans. But the nature of gerrymandering changes in 2010. And I think if we fail to recognize how dramatically different the 2010-2011 gerrymander is, we fail to understand the kinds of problems it poses for a democracy and a representative system of government. The technology has gotten to such a point that you can draw these lines with exact precision. I use a program called Maptitude, which now comes built in with all of the census data you could possibly imagine, so economics, demographics, religion, anything you would possibly want to know. You can then factor in voting records, so you know who voted, who didn't vote. You have the precinct level.

But, but again, both sides can do this, except both sides didn't do it.

Both sides can do it, right?

You're right, right, right, right.

Except only one side did. Um, so I mean, gerrymandering over the years has been a really effective tool of political revenge. It's been a way for a party to steal a seat here and there that maybe they didn't deserve. What the Republicans pull off in 2010 for a bargain basement price is the ability to turn blue states red and to make themselves essentially impervious to the popular will. And it's because the lines can be drawn with such precision now, and it's because they did this in a more sophisticated and determined way. Both parties have tried to use this as a tool to maximize advantage.

Yeah, and I don't want to just— I just want to get off this topic because there's some other really big stuff I want to cover with you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I just want to ask you maybe a final thing on this. So the Democrats will have the opportunity to gain that advantage in another election, right? Or is it set in stone forever and now the Republicans have gerrymandered their way into power for the next 200 years? I mean, what are you saying?

This is why it's different. This is why it's different. People have always gerrymandered, but the gerrymanders have lasted a year or two. The technology now makes it possible to have these last for a decade at least. And the system has been knotted up in so many different places that for the Democrats to undo this, they are going to have to flip state legislative chambers state by state across the country. It's not enough, it's not enough simply to win back Congress. They are going to have to go and win back all of these legislative chambers, and they're going to have to win on these tilted maps. It's very, very hard to do.

That's in terms of those elections. Yeah, all those legislatures and so forth. But this doesn't, it doesn't affect the, the federal stuff in terms of the White House and, and so forth. It doesn't affect Supreme Court nominations. Well, I guess it would influence influence the Supreme Court ultimately. It sort of threw a trickle-up, maybe, right?

Yeah, I guess that's conceivable. I mean, I think—

Very slowly, of course, but yeah.

Yeah. Well, I think that what you get when you have a House of Representatives that's as gerrymandered as this is that it changes the nature of who represents us. We have now, out of 435 congressional seats, about 400 of them, those elections are completely noncompetitive thanks to the way the district lines have been drawn. The only elections that matter in those districts are in the party primary, where turnout is low and the biggest extreme piece of the base comes out. The politicians that get elected from these districts don't have any incentive to govern, don't have any incentive to compromise, don't want to reach across the aisle. In fact, doing that is the one thing that actually might earn them a primary challenge. Right, right, right.

Okay. So is this, is this called Operation Red Map? What you're talking about?

Operation Red Map is, is the name of the plan that Jankowski and the Republican state leadership come up with. Yes.

Okay. Tell us about the moneyball of politics. You know, that was a, that was a tremendous book and movie, and I'm not even a sports guy, but you know, it's fair if Fascinating. Tell us about Moneyball in politics though.

Sure. I think the essence of Moneyball is that Billy Beane and the Oakland A's found a way to game the system and exploit a loophole. In politics right now, it's so expensive to do anything. I mean, I'm, I'm in the state of Connecticut right now. Linda McMahon here in this small state spent $100 million to lose two Senate races in 2010 and 2012. So it is a lot of money even to lose a small Senate.

It's absurd. It's beyond absurd.

What the Republicans realize is that the one place where you can spend money and have more influence is on the state level. And that, um, so in the same way that Billy Beane realizes, hey, maybe I can't compete for the big-name free agent, I can spend my money better if I identify this one place where the money actually works. And the place they identify it working is at the state level, especially heading into a zero year and a redistricting year. By flipping these districts, they're able to leverage the one place in the system where a little bit of money still has a huge impact. Um, Jankowski and Rove, they go to their donors and they say, "Listen, if you give us this $30 million, not only can we lock in control of the House," 'for a decade, but you're already spending $110 million just in the 50 or 60 districts that are competitive.' And he's like, 'We will wipe that off of the table. We will redraw those districts, and you won't have to spend that money.' Again, though, this is available to both sides, right? Oh, yeah.

This is not a partisan thing. Yeah, okay. Yeah. All right, got it. I just wanna make sure that's understood. You know what I view, David, as the big problem here is that it's not available to a third party. That the fact that we have this two-party, that's how we're rat-fucked. That's your book title. Is that there's no, whether it be—

You're not getting any argument from me there. I would love to open up the system to more voices and greater competition.

Of course. Of course, whether it be, whether it be Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Ralph Nader, whatever side of the aisle it's on, and then a thousand other ones. It's just, there's just not an opportunity here for, for another option. You know, it's, it's a two-party rigged closed system. It's ridiculous. It's totally ridiculous. Okay, so talk to us about Trump and the GOP, you know. He's upsetting a lot of people in the party. You know, what's going on there? It seems like they're always ganging up on him. You know, it's funny, the GOP is so bad at politics that they can't gang up on Obama very effectively, but they sure can gang up on Trump really effectively. It's so ironic.

Well, you know, it's fascinating to me to watch the relationship between Paul Ryan in Donald Trump. And I mean, I think a lot of this does come back to what the Republicans hope to do by red mapping Congress in this way, was to govern from the House of Representatives. In 2012, Grover Norquist goes before the Conservative Political Action Committee and, and tells the Republicans who don't think Mitt Romney is conservative enough in that campaign, hey, Don't worry about it, guys. We've got the Congress. We're gonna govern from here. All we need from the president is to have enough working digits to handle a pen. That's all they want out of a president, is enough working digits to handle a pen. And I think that they don't know that Trump shares their agenda. I think on a lot of things, Trump and Ryan diverge on immigration, on on trade, on big business. There's a lot of policies that they don't share. If your plan is to govern from the House, and suddenly you have a Republican president who doesn't necessarily share that vision, that's not a recipe that you're especially interested in if you're Paul Ryan.

Interesting. It is an interesting year to to be sure. I mean, I don't know if politics have ever been this interesting.

It's been an amazing year.

What do you— I gotta ask you, you know, is Donald Trump like the best thing to ever happen to Hillary? Because you look at Hillary and the fact that she is not gonna get indicted, she's just gonna get away with everything. It's mind-boggling to me.

I mean, Donald Trump is the most unpopular presumptive nominee of either party in modern times, but Hillary is second. I mean, if the Republicans had simply nominated someone with enough working digits to handle a pen, they would be up against the most unpopular presumptive nominee of all time. And they would probably be looking at a pretty open, clear path to the White House, and instead they are probably staring down a really long fall. I mean, it's really impressive how Donald Trump is able to take a couple of days that are as bad as Hillary Clinton, as that James Comey non-indictment was. He didn't indict her, but he certainly indicted her judgment and her character and her honesty.

Yeah, but the problem is nobody's gonna remember that in November.

Trump turns around and spends all those days talking about Frozen and the Star of David. I mean, it's unbelievable.

It's unexplainable. Really, it's unexplainable.

Yeah, I mean, it's unbelievably bad politics. And to think that there is a path for Trump if he can figure out how to mobilize Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, if he can win these sort of industrial states on an anti-trade agreement message. But there's a conceivable path, but he's not organized and he's not disciplined and he's not staffed and he's going to lose badly if he does not get better fast.

It is an interesting year, that's for sure. What would you like to see in terms of a third party, you know, or any, any other options? I mean, how do we open this system up regardless of what side of the aisle anybody's on? You know, maybe we can just kind of wrap up with this topic. Are we ever going to get America back regardless of, you know, which, which party? Why does it have to be two parties? This— you know what it's like, David? It's like this. It's like watching a wrestling match on TV. It's a— a lot of this stuff is a fake debate. Yeah, it's just a big false flag, you know.

You're completely right. I mean, I think that we need some kind of radical electoral reform. We have to rethink the way we think about elections. I mean, if you could do something like ranked choice voting, which a lot of cities have embraced and has, has worked really, really well— I mean, one of the big problems that you have as soon as a third or fourth party begins to emerge is that people start talking about, "You're wasting your vote," or, "You're actually voting for the person you don't want to have in." If you can do something like a ranked choice and you can say, "Well, my number one choice is the Libertarian, my second choice is the Green, my third choice is the Republican, my fourth choice is the Democrat," it, you know, it it goes through and it automatically, you know, ranks that for you. And you don't have to fear that your vote for the Libertarian is going to elect Hillary Clinton. And if you had, you know, something like a ranked choice system, that might work very, very well. I mean, if you had multi-member districts instead of these single-seat districts. Say a state that had 9 seats is divided up into a district of 3. So you have 3 districts of 3 seats. That would elect a wider range of people. You would suddenly only need 25%, 26% of the vote to qualify, and you just might then see a wider option of voices open up to you.

Yeah, give out your website, David, and tell people where they can find out more.

Sure, I tweet @davedaly3, and you can find the book on Amazon or any of your bookstores. Rat Fucked, ask for it by name.

That's awesome. Good stuff. David Daley, thank you so much for joining us today.

I appreciate it, Jason. Thanks for having me.

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