Nebraska is not a blue state. It's not even a purple state.
It is solidly a red state and an independent candidate.
The gentleman you see right next to me is running as an independent, and polling
indicates that he's doing real well.
So his name is Dan Osborne.
He's running as an independent for a Senate seat in the red state of Nebraska.
And it might be hard to believe because again, Nebraska is super Republican.
They have let's let's tell you how Republican they are.
Nebraska has voted for Republican president every year since 1964,
and a survey conducted in November shows that respondents favor
former President Donald Trump over Joe Biden by a margin of 16 points.
So it gives you a sense of where the political loyalties lie here.
But according to the poll, which was conducted by Change Research,
Nebraskan voters actually prefer Osborne to the current Republican senator,
Deb Fischer, who's actually held that seat for ten years now.
The poll shows Osborne leading Fischer by a margin of two points, despite 59%
of respondents saying they had never heard of him before, which is insane.
Now we're going to get to his platform, and I think
that has something to do with this.
But pollsters asked a series of questions regarding Osborne's policy platform,
after which 53% of respondents said they'd vote for him, compared to 30% for Fischer.
So in other words, they were told what his policy positions were and the
poll results changed to overwhelmingly supporting Osborne over Fischer.
Yeah, guys, this is an amazing story.
And, potentially very, very impactful for American politics in the future.
So there's a number of factors here.
Number one, when I first saw this story, I thought, oh, they're just getting
the Osborne's confused because Tom Osborne was the legendary football coach
of the University of Nebraska, and he was actually a Republican
congressman for a little while.
And I'm like, oh, they think they're voting for another Republican.
And one that's super popular in Nebraska.
And it turns out no. 59% of the people who, said they never even heard of him
as Anna just told you because, well, so what does that indicate?
That indicates they're saying, no, no, I don't think he's Tom Osborne.
I have no idea who he is, but I'll take him over the Republican Senate.
Yeah. It's amazing.
And and his support grew once the respondents understood what he wants
to champion as a United States senator.
Okay.
So by the way, let's talk about the breakdown, the political breakdown
of the respondents to the survey. 33% of poll respondents were Democrats,
14% independent and 53% Republican. 53% said they voted for Trump in 2020,
while 35% said that they voted for Biden.
But they still are voting against the Republican in Nebraska's Senate race
and in favor of the independent, even though they voted
in such giant margins for Trump.
And and it's not theoretical.
Those are the same people answering the same question.
So that means, yes, there. It's real.
It's real. So I'm going to tell you why in a second.
But Anna's got more.
So number one, it should be noted that he refuses to take donations
from corporate PACs.
So he is obviously strong in being against
corruption, which has become a virus in our political system.
And his policy platform looks pretty good.
Now remember, he's running as an independent in a red state,
but there are some really strong progressive stances here.
First of all, he wants to cut taxes for the middle class and small businesses
by cutting wasteful spending and closing loopholes used
by multinationals to avoid paying taxes.
That's very popular and not at all. The Republican plan.
The Republican plan is open up bigger loopholes for multinational corporations.
He wants to legalize and tax medicinal cannabis.
Honestly, at this point, that's such a no brainer that I don't
even want to give anyone credit for that.
I just think it should be a given. But good.
He's right on that issue. And wasteful government handouts.
The pharmaceutical industry, which is super yummy in my tummy.
I love that.
Over 90% of Americans agree with that, and over 90% of politicians don't.
But get a load of this.
He wants to pass the Pro act, which is a pro labor bill that would make
it far easier for people to organize their workplace and join a union.
So he's clear on being in favor of the Pro act, and he also wants to pass
congressional Terme limits.
So Osborne does support an increase to the federal minimum wage,
but it is unclear in regard to how much he would want to increase it.
The only thing he has stated on that issue is that he wants to raise
the federal minimum wage to to match that of Nebraska's.
And if you're wondering what that is, the current minimum wage in
the state of Nebraska is $10 and 15 $0.50, but that will increase to $15 an hour
by January 15th of 2026.
And Osborne also supports right to repair laws.
A competitive wage for servicemen and women, better protections for family
farms, and lower taxes on overtime wages.
And the post actually sums up his policy platform pretty well.
Let's take a look at this.
So his post on X, he says we had main streets crowded with small businesses,
an ag sector full of family farms, a heavily unionized workforce.
We had the greatest economy in the world. We can't forget that.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I mean, I really do think, look, this is a case study
for what I think we've been arguing on the show for many, many years now.
It doesn't make sense for Democrats to run as Republican lite in even
Republican districts or Republican states.
Whether you're Democrat or Republican, your economic situation matters.
And that is what most voters prioritize. It's the economy, stupid.
So what can you do to materially improve the lives of voters?
If you can show how you want to do that, if you can show that you're actually
sincere in wanting to do that, I think you're more likely to win
even in a deeply red state like Nebraska.
Okay, so.
Super important lessons for American politics out of this.
Number one, independents are now much stronger than they used to be.
And a lot of the media has not caught, and a lot of the politicians
have not caught up to that fact.
When I was growing up, independents were a small group.
Republicans and Democrats were very large.
Now there are more independents than there are Republicans or Democrats,
but no one talks like that.
Like when you go watch cable news, are they talking about,
well, the biggest political factor in the country is independents.
No, they only talk about Republicans and Democrats when the country is vomiting,
Republicans and Democrats.
So here comes an independent in Nebraska and he's kicking
the Republicans asses, right?
Obviously, let alone the Democrats. So that's point number one.
Point number two is now there is a significant anti-incumbent fervor.
It has begun. It has taken for ever.
So no matter how much people hated Washington my whole life, you would
ask them in polls, do you hate Washington?
Yes. Do you hate your own senator?
They'd be like, no, my senator's only good one.
Why?
Because they got propaganda from local news and their local area saying,
oh, Senator Fischer is so great.
Oh. Senator Fischer. Oh, yeah.
Right now they're not listening to that crap anymore.
And here I'll give Republican voters credit, as I do often in situations like
this where they're more anti-incumbent than Democrats are, Democrats should
be furious at their corrupt incumbents, but they have been brainwashed
by MSNBC and mainstream media.
No, we must always support the powerful and authority figures and incumbents.
Oh they are oh, they are only help against Republicans, right?
They never win. Right on policy issues.
But but that's what people have been trained to.
But Republicans you can't talk.
You can't like the upside of them going rogue is they don't want to hear any crap
about how great politicians are.
So this fisher lady's coming in in Nebraska.
She's like, oh, I am a beloved Republican.
They're like, get the other guys in favor of family farms and family businesses
and and unions and labor.
- Yeah, that guy. - Improving people's lives.
By the way, let me just also note no Democrat is running in this race
because it's Nebraska.
So Democrat thinks like there's no chance I can win.
And quite honestly, I think Dan Osborne is running as an independent because
branding himself as a Democrat would probably be a liability in this race.
But it doesn't matter what the voters are receptive to are his policy proposals
here, which is good news, by the way, Jake, you might be right about one thing.
The voters might actually be familiar with him because he led a labor action
in the state of Nebraska that got a lot of positive attention.
So what am I referring to?
Well, he has, of course, been supportive of unions, and he actually served as the
president of the bakery, confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers
International Union Local 50 g lengthy name, but you guys get the picture.
So in 2021, he actually led his local union strike
against Kellogg's, where he works.
So the strike lasted a whopping 77 days, during which Kellogg's
threatened to replace every single one of those striking workers.
But the company eventually came to the table and according to The Intercept, the
workers won a pay raise of $1.10 per hour.
A new cost of living pay increase, and also a pathway for lower tier workers
to graduate into a higher tier of pay.
So he's actually been like walking the walk.
He doesn't just talk the talk through his policy proposals.
He's actually been on the front lines with labor.
He's part of labor, and he has fought for better pay and better working conditions
for workers in Nebraska.
He's also pointed to that.
Very experience as proof that Americans have much more in common than we realize.
So let's go to the last graphic here, he says.
When our strike preserved 500 middle class jobs at Kellogg's, we received support
from Republicans, Democrats, independents, small businesses, nonunion workers.
Maybe America isn't as divided as they say.
And I love that message because again, I really do believe
I've been saying this for a long time.
When it comes to a lot of the bread and butter issues,
there's a lot more commonality, a lot more agreement among Americans
than the media would have you believe.
Where you see the divisions is usually in, you know, culture war issues
that are further turned into wedge issues by the very politicians who do not
want you to focus on how they should be improving your financial stability.
- Let's keep it real. - Yeah.
Two more amazing trends out of this that are important.
One is, you know, he's only raised $100,000.
Amazing.
So the fissure, of course has millions upon millions of dollars.
And in the old days you just buy the election.
But these days, it's harder to control people through political ads.
One, they think the political ads are horse crap and they're right.
And number two, the message is getting out because he's doing it on Twitter,
he's doing it on social media, and he doesn't need as much money.
Oh, I love this.
And then finally, what Anna started with, look at the policy.
We told you guys the policies are incredibly popular.
He's beating a Republican in Nebraska. Why?
Because he's going with economic populism.
He's going with serve the average American, serve the middle class, serve
small businesses, not large businesses.
Stop being corrupt and it's working.
But let's be honest, there's one important factor there economic populism,
but no culture war stuff.
So if you go towards culture wars, then you start losing
the independent voters and the Republican voters, etc. you might hate that.
And you say, no, I want him to be a culture warrior for our side.
Well, sorry, he's not going to win if he does that.
So he's not going to win if he runs on that in Nebraska, correct?
- Yes. - Yeah.
So he's doing the smart and right thing, which is he's not talking
about those issues at all.
I don't even know his opinions on those issues.
Right.
But he's saying no, we're going to deliver economic populism and it is working better
than anyone expected.
We this is what we've been saying for so long on tight.
And you see it now working on almost no money at all.
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