Speaker 1: Let's hear from some people in the audience. If you'd like to chat with me,
you can go to David Pakman dot com slash discord. We use the discord for calls,
and that is a great, great thing. Let's start today with Felix from Maryland.
Speaker 2: Felix, you're Speaker 1: on the air. What's going on?
Speaker 4: And not too much, are you? Speaker 1: I'm doing well, thank you.
Speaker 4: I wanted to ask you, excuse me, I'm a little sick. Do you think that? This day,
we're in the middle of a political realignment.
Speaker 1: Well, tell me more, a political realignment of what kind.
Speaker 4: You know, I don't know, I've I've just kind of like been watching politics from afar for
a while and I feel like I just feel like a lot has changed in like like since I really started paying
attention more back, like 2008 when Obama ran. And I feel like a lot has changed, mainly from like
the culture war. And I felt like a lot of like culture and social issues were making people who
are sort of apolitical or not really, you know, super focused on politics. It would help them
come more to the left because a lot of people have felt like we're turned off because the right was
more like a family values social conservative type of party. Yeah, I feel like that's changed a lot.
You the right and the Republicans are like now, like they've they've completely abandoned,
especially after Trump. They've abandoned the whole like family, Judeo-Christian values,
esthetic and stuff. And now just weirdly see that the cultural war started to like benefit them.
Speaker 2: Well. So let's see. Speaker 1: You're absolutely right about some
of these particulars that you're noticing. Speaker 2: I don't think it's
Speaker 1: a realignment in the Speaker 2: sense of Republicans
Speaker 1: and Democrats are switching and what it means to be in one party versus the
other. I don't think that that's changing. I think the realignment that we're seeing
is that it started under Obama and it exploded under Trump, and it's continuing now.
Republicans are no longer even pretending to be about policy. They are, as you pointed out,
they're about cultural issues, they're about owning the libs, they're about trying to win
elections by deciding which ballots do and don't count. They're not really making substantive and
meaningful political cases to their voters, saying, Here are the things we will do, and
here's why it will help you. They'll still vaguely say the Democrats are crushing us with that,
or they're crushing us with taxes or whatever. Speaker 2: But that's like,
that's not that doesn't Speaker 1: count as policy
in my mind. You're not really substantively proposing alternatives and solutions other
than we'll cut taxes and we'll pay down the debt, Speaker 2: which they don't ever do. But I think
Speaker 1: that the realignment is that they used to at least pretend to be about policy. They don't
even pretend to be about policy anymore, you know? Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's true to an extent.
Uh, but I definitely feel like they used to pretend to be about policy and
like on the like cultural issues they they used to be all about, like upholding,
you know, family values and stuff like that. Like I was saying. Yeah, but
I feel like I feel like now I don't know. I just feel like I've seen like more a little bit more
like diversity in thinking of some people who would like vote right wing. And the fact that,
like a lot of them seem to even like support drug legalization, a lot of them have kind
of like come to terms with letting, you know, allowing same sex marriage and things like that,
right? No, that's a good point. I'm curious, like where where this is going, because even like
in a few years from now, like what? What are they what? What are what's the party going
to look like and what is their vote? What are their base and their voters going to look like?
If this continues, I feel like they could win over a lot of people on some of those issues.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, what you're pointing to is that there were a bunch of people who before
Trump were never politically Speaker 2: engaged or
Speaker 1: motivated at all. And what Trump was able to do was
find people who never paid attention to Speaker 2: politics and basically say,
Speaker 1: Here are your values and vote for me and I'm a Republican. So Trump did. To his credit,
bring in people who believe themselves to be, for example, against military interventions
around the world because Trump claimed to be against that. But Trump's not really against
that. It was just a way that he was able to criticize George W. Bush. You're right
that they don't seem to be homophobic. Some of these folks, at least not outwardly so,
because Donald Trump did not make that a big part of his campaign. I think you're absolutely
Speaker 2: right, but I think the Speaker 1: bigger question is,
do those people really stay engaged in politics after Trump is gone? And we don't know the answer
to that yet. They may or they may bail. Speaker 4: OK. Yeah, well, it's just
been really interesting, it's just all the time, I say these days, if I could go back
in time and tell myself like this, be the environment would look like years from now,
I would be shocked. Yes, it would is. It would be appreciated. If you have a good day.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Have a good one. All right. There we go. There is. There is Felix.