The Thanksgiving Tweet That Could Cost an Election

Ultimize. Welcome to Filtered. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me today. In the news, number one in the polls according to numerous sources, AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, number one in terms of popularity for gaining the Democratic nomination. So how people see this, I think there are a lot of people who are sort of the left wing of the Democratic Party Who look at this polling data and say, yes, that's fantastic. There are a lot of mainstream Democrats, centrist Democrats, political consultants in D.C. saying, uh oh, this could be trouble. She's too far to the left. We can't win. This is big trouble. And then there are all the Republicans out there saying, yes, this is great. This is wonderful. They're convinced. That if AOC gets the Democratic nomination, it's going to be the biggest shellacking since McGovern in 1972, and certainly as big as Walter Mondale in 1984. You youngsters will have to look that up. Those were Democrats who lost big time. Okay, where do I fit into this? I gotta tell you, I'm not sure what to think of this. There is a part of me that thinks AOC is a perfect candidate. And I'll start by saying the part that you won't hear people, respectable pundits, say on CNN or MSNBC. It's, it's this: she's really good-looking, and we live in a culture that is biased. We're biased in favor of better-looking people. She's really good-looking. It attracts attention. And as Donald Trump taught us, if he's taught us nothing else in the last 10 years, not about good looks, but attention matters in the modern political economy. If you can capture attention, it's worth billions of dollars. So AOC gets a lot of credit simply for getting attention, in part because if you were to Google hot young Latina, a face exactly like hers would show up. I mean that without any disrespect. I'm not in any way suggesting you should judge politicians or women or anybody by their looks, but I'm telling you that's how the world works. So she has that going for her. She definitely has a lot of people enthusiastic about her. I'll tell you what the problem with all these people making calculations is. There's a very distinct possibility that the Republicans who are so excited about AOC— believe me, they are They are slobbering. They they're so excited about the chances of AOC getting the Democratic nomination in 2028. All of this assuming we actually have an election in 2028, which I don't think we're going to. But assuming we do, the thinking on Republican circles is she's so extreme, she's so out there, she's so bizarre. She's Fidel Castro's love child, essentially, that it's going to be easy for J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio or Donald Trump Jr. or pick any random generic MAGA clone, one of the Proud Boys. Any of those could beat her because she will just be seen as beyond the pale to the vast majority of the electorate. That's the thinking. And I gotta tell you, I've heard that thinking before. I remember back in 2016, and so many of my Democratic friends said, oh, this is the greatest thing ever that Trump is getting the Republican nomination because he'll be the easiest person in the world to beat. He's so extreme. He's so unlikable. He's so devoid of any and all morality or accomplishment or consistency or value, anything. He's going to be so easy. Oh, I remember those days. Didn't quite work out that way, did it? So I would caution my Republican friends, be careful about what you wish for. Now, I will readily concede, based on traditional metrics, AOC is not the best general election candidate. We live in a country where, because of the Electoral College, Basically, a Democrat has to appeal to 53% of Americans, which means 3% consider themselves more conservative than average. So picking someone who identifies not with the center, not even with the liberal side of things, but on the left— yeah, if you're doing pure traditional math, it doesn't work. But these are not traditional times. We very well may be at the point where anybody the Democrats nominate after Trump is going to win. It may be that Trump has so completely, absolutely burned down our society, so destroyed our economy. We are all out chopping down firewood for, for energy to heat our homes because he has so destroyed oil supplies with his ill ill-fated wars, his needless, idiotic, imbecilic wars. It may be that people are so desperate, going out chopping down their neighbor's tree just to fuel their house, that any Democrat could win. It might be that Joe Biden, who is perhaps no longer with us in 2028— it may be at the point where the Democrats could nominate Joe Biden and they would win the 2028 election if current trends continue with Trump destroying our society, bringing not only his own brand down but the brand of the Republicans down. So that's why I don't dismiss AOC. She's good-looking. You can't dismiss that. She's really good at social media. Again, love him or hate him, when it comes to Donald Trump, He's proven that there's a tremendous value in having presidential candidates who understand social media. She arguably does better than anybody else. Yeah, yeah, Gavin Newsom's trying, but he's minor leagues compared to AOC at this stage of the game. So she's got a lot of assets. Am I ready to call up Kaushik and place a million-dollar bet that she's the next president? No. I'm not, but there's a part of me that says it could happen. Now, let's look back at history. You know, these days everyone thinks, well, you know, Barack Obama was such a great, polished, wonderful candidate. Of course he won and won reelected. No, that's revisionist history. Now, I like Barack Obama, but if you had gone back to say 2006, And asked a million strategists who would be the strongest Democratic candidate for president, they wouldn't have said, uh, let's, let's pick a guy with a couple of years experience who's named Hussein, who is a Black man, who has never really had to win any Republican vote. They would not have picked that. And yet he won. Well, why did he win? Everyone forgets this. George W. Bush and his economy was losing 750,000 jobs a month going into the election back in 2008. So yeah, Bernie Sanders could have won too. I could have won 2008. When your party in power is basically destroying the economy, And, you know, ignoring all the signs that we were in a bubble, laughing it off, saying, okay, let's continue to deregulate. Let's tell old people you don't need Social Security anymore. Go invest your own money. Remember when George Bush said that? Well, when all that happened, he so tarnished the brand of the Republican Party. The Republican nominee didn't stand a chance, and Obama won that. And it very well may be in 2028 again if we have elections. And I think that's a 50-50 proposition at best, given Trump's dictator-style proclivities. But we'll leave that for another day. Again, we're going to assume just for fun that there's going to be a presidential election in 2028. I don't think you can dismiss AOC. Does she have some views that might be considered too far to the left by most Americans? Sure. But again, what is your evidence that having political views outside the mainstream hurts? Donald Trump has all sorts of extremist views, idiotic views, imbecilic views. But most people in America are not in favor of invading Greenland. Now, true, he didn't run on that idea, but he has countless examples of ideas out of the mainstream and didn't seem to hurt him. How many Americans— let's look at family values. People say, oh, AOC is not married, she doesn't have children. Okay. Again, if there's one thing we can give credit to Donald Trump, it's he's abolished this whole idea that we should pick presidents based on who has the best traditional values. Because here's a guy who, when he's sick of a wife, treats her like a Kleenex that he's blown his nose in, balled it up, and thrown it in the garbage can. Here's a guy who has relished publicly humiliating wives. So the idea that somehow a Democrat is going to be discredited because they don't have traditional family values, I'm not buying that. So again, I guess we have the good Donald Trump to thank for getting rid of this silly, ridiculous standard. Of you got to have traditional family values to be president. So is AOC going to be the next president? I don't know. Anyone who tells you they don't know, you need to ask them a question. Are you a trillionaire? Because if you can really predict the future, you'd be a trillionaire by now. You would have bought Apple at the beginning. You would've bought Bitcoin at the beginning and maybe sold it a couple of years ago. So don't listen to any pundit who says they know whether she's gonna be a good candidate or not. That's the fun thing about politics. You never really know. There can be people who are screw-ups at everything they've ever touched in life, like Donald Trump, and be amazingly successful at politics. So again, you look at Donald Trump's business career, he's basically bankrupted or destroyed or looted every company he's ever touched other than properties Daddy gave him. He's been an immense business failure, and yet he's gotten the presidential nomination from a major party 3 times. He's won the presidency twice. He is a successful presidential candidate, even though arguably he's failed at everything he's ever touched in his life, with the exception of being a reality star. Okay, let's give him credit there. So this idea that, oh, AOC is not credible because she's only been a bartender. Okay, but Daddy didn't have to buy her the bar. I, I'm not buying this idea that she can't win. We will see. I don't have a favorite at this point. Who do you like? You can post in the comments below. Moving on in the news, news out of the University of Michigan struck me as odd. They are easing the pressure on their freshmen by getting rid of A, B, C, D, F grades. They're saying, oh, there's too much stress for freshmen, so it's just going to be pass/fail. Okay, I'm not saying the world is perfect with the traditional A, B, C, D, F grading system. Okay, it worked well for me. That doesn't mean anything. But what's really going on here? And folks, I'm not one of these conservatives who says, oh, anything universities do is awful. They're coddling these young kids these days. They're too woke. I don't see this as a woke thing. I see it as, okay, they're trying to do something helpful. Wow, are they going about it the wrong way? So they're trying to take the stress off of students. Maybe the thing that's causing them stress is this thing. Maybe the problem students have is instead of going out and partying and having a good time and meeting people and trying new experiences in college, they're sitting in their dorm room Huddled over their phone scrolling, looking at other people posting pictures of having a great life. Have you thought about that? How about this as an experiment, University of Michigan? Why don't you make all your students sign an honor pledge of they will not spend more than 90 minutes a day on their cell phone? Do a test. It might not work, but let's do a test. Maybe a control group, maybe half the freshmen come in. Maybe they're told, you get 30% off your tuition if you give us access to your cell phone and allow us to cut your cell phone off after 90 minutes a day, or at least for internet access and social media access and texting access. Go out and do what freshmen used to do. Go to parties. Meet people. Do irresponsible things. Consume substances, maybe food, maybe other things that you haven't in your previous 18 years of life. Live a little, blow off some steam. Because by all accounts, what the freshmen at University of Michigan are doing, or the freshmen everywhere are doing, they're staying home and staring at their phone. Well, all the research shows that's what's causing stress. Is it possible some people are nervous or worried about getting a B when they got A's their whole life? Yeah, you know, they're gonna have to deal with that. So that would be my advice to University of Michigan: go back to the old-fashioned grading system and take their phones away. How about that? Just occurred to me, that would be even a better experiment. How about they run a test and say, look, for your first semester at college, no cell phone or no smartphone. You can have a flip phone. You need to call Grandma? You want to call your best friend? Fine, here's a flip phone. So as a part of the admissions process, the enrollment day, orientation day, your first semester, you've got to turn in your phone. And we are going to be assigning you a flip phone. Yeah, I like that. That, that would reduce stress. For one thing, uh, 90% of the boys in the freshman class couldn't spend all their time gambling on games on Cauchy and other— and FanDuel and all these other nonsense things. You know what causes stress if you're 18 years old? And you just lost $5,000 betting on a college football game. That can cause stress. I didn't face that stress as a kid, but today's kids are facing that stress. And yeah, women are doing it too, but it's really a problem with boys. So that would be my suggestion to the University of Michigan. Take the phone, pry it out of the hands of your freshmen. Second semester, maybe you get a phone back. So this idea that the answer to stress for college kids or high school or anyone is to make life easier and not be judged. Again, I'm not saying this as a conservative. I just don't think it works regardless of where you are on the spectrum. Because these very same kids are going to feel stressed when they're 22 years old. They're graduating. They're applying for jobs, but they they've created absolutely zero social skills, communication skills, networking skills because they spend every second on their phone or hunched over a computer. They're going to feel stress when they think job hunting is click, click. Click submit resumes, and they never get a job because that's what's happening to kids today. They have no idea how to network, no idea how to call somebody up and say, "Hey, can we go for coffee? Let me learn more about what goes on at your company." So what's the logical conclusion here? Are we going to tell companies you can't recruit on our campus unless you guarantee every single person who applies gets a job? Because, oh, it might hurt their self-esteem if they don't get a job offer. Are we going to say that? That's absurd. No company would ever step foot on the campus again. So Michigan, you know, wonderful that you're trying to help kids deal with stress, but you're doing it in an imbecilic way. Speaking of imbecilic, Major campaign in Wisconsin this week, where apparently the woman that everybody thought would win the Democratic nomination way ahead in the polls, 10% more. She lost at the last minute, apparently because she's the worst person in the entire world. No, not exactly that, but apparently. 6 years ago, she put out a tweet that hurt the feelings of Thanksgiving. Yeah, you heard that right. She tweeted something 6 years ago about how she didn't like Thanksgiving, and that is essentially the reason why she lost. So what are we to make of this? Because Apparently, we should now judge candidates on their feelings towards holidays. Well, I'd like TJ for governor, but he didn't seem that enthusiastic about Fourth of July last year. He had a flag outside of his house, but it wasn't as big as the flag I would have liked. So we're not going to vote for him. Okay, what about this candidate? Who has all the great ideas for our local school board, who's going to revamp our schools, make our schools better. But this person in 1997 put out a tweet saying, "I can't stand Valentine's Day." Why don't we just write that person off? Because if it's one thing we can all agree on, it's not that we want a strong economy. It's not that we want a thriving middle class. It's not that most Americans deserve good healthcare or clean environment or good roads. No, no, those are all in tremendous debate. We all agree on it's important that our politicians feel the same way we do towards our favorite holidays. I'll tell you my new litmus test. I'm going to ask every candidate, what is your exact position on Festivus? Those of you who are Seinfeld fans remember that was something George Costanza's father loved. It was a very special holiday where there would be an airing of grievances. So I would suggest we all follow that pattern if we're going to discount this woman. In Wisconsin for tweeting negatively about Thanksgiving. Let's have a litmus test. Let's list every single possible holiday, and you can rank which ones are most important to you. Me, it's Festivus. For you, it might be Arbor Day or May Day or Diwali Day. And if your candidates or candidates you're considering don't have a long-established track record of saying positive things about Arbor Day and May Day and Diwali Day, well, let's just write them off. Now, I'm not saying that this woman deserved to be the next governor of this state, but the idea that Her stance on a holiday is anything anyone should either grimace at or chuckle after two seconds and forget is an absurdity. And I got to tell you, if you're a voter and you're not, you don't have the net worth you want, and your kids don't have the quality of schools you want, and your debt is bigger than you want. This is why it's it's wasting time on absolutely imbecilic nonsense like this. So congratulations, the good citizens of Wisconsin. You're not going to have someone who could unilaterally destroy banks. By the way, how would that work? Now, if you're president and you wanted to abolish Thanksgiving, I guess you could declare. That all federal workers will go to work that day. But if you're governor of the state, first of all, when is the last time anyone asked a governor, hey governor, should we celebrate Thanksgiving this year? I don't remember that. I haven't seen that. If I were the governor of Florida where I live, I might feel tempted to put my finger in all sorts of issues. But I can't remember anyone asking, or the last time anyone asked the governor of Florida, hey, Governor, you know, Thanksgiving's coming up. It's usually celebrated by the citizens of Florida. It's usually a national holiday. Other than restaurants and essential services, most businesses close. But just wondering, What do you think we should do this year? Should we kind of tell everybody, nope, there's no Thanksgiving, or do we just kind of go with the flow? I don't remember anyone asking that question. And the fact that so many people got worked up into a lather over this is exactly why, if you're not rich right now, I'm sorry, it's because of getting distracted by absolute utter nonsense like this. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for spending time with me. I hope you have a fantastic weekend. Take care. Ultimize.