'BradCast' 11/10/2025 (Election 2025 Victories for Democracy with Bolts' Alex Burness; Also: 7 Senate Dems Vote to End Shutdown)

People waiting up three hours to cast their vote to send a message to Donald Trump. No crowns, no thrones, no kings. That's what this victory represents. Wow, that's what it represented last week. But apparently, two Democrats instead have a whole other idea. I'm too scared in case I fall off my chair And I'm wondering how I'll get down with stairs From Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles, this is the broadcast as heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A., 98.7 in Santa Barbara, 93.7 in San Diego, and 99.5 FM in Ridgecrest and China Lake, California. Elsewhere in the state, in Red Bluff and Reading on KFOI and Round Mountains, KKRN, up in Oregon on the Central Coast on KYAQ, Cottage Groves, Koso, Eugene's, KEPW. Lanchester, Pennsylvania's W News, Maui, Hawaii's K-A-K-U, in Columbus, Ohio, on WGRN, Palinville, New York's WLP, Rochester, New York, WRFZ, down in New Orleans on WHIV, out in Gallup, New Mexico, on KNIZ, Concord, New Hampshire's WNHN. Fayetteville, Arkansas, KPSQ in Seattle on KODX, Richmond, Virginia's, WR, WK, Fairmont, West Virginia's, W-E-F-R, Janesville, Wisconsin's W-A-D-R, Minneapolis, St. Paul's, AM-950, K-TNF. We also stream. Coast to coast and around the globe every day on the Internet, so the Progressive Voices Channel, NetRoods Radio, Radio for Humans, Nicole Sandler.com, Radio Free Brooklyn, No Lies Radio, Detour, Talk, Del Marva FM, and most of your favorite podcast sites. Blanketing Planet Earth, I'm Brad Friedman, your friendly investigative blogger, journalist, troublemaker, muckraker, and all-around, swell fellow, says me from bradblog.com. Thank you for joining us for another thrilling edition of the broadcast. And, well, I got to say, we're not for seven pathetic Democrats and one pathetic independent who usually caucuses with them in the U.S. Senate deciding to cut the legs out from under the feet of hundreds of other Democrats in both the Senate and the House in D.C. on Sunday night. And arguably, one incredibly weak and pathetic Senate Minority Leader by the name of Chuck Schumer, if it were not for all of that, we would have spent largely today's entire show discussing the Democrats' remarkable victory in virtually every contest and initiative on the ballot last week in some 30 states.

And how it demonstrated both the weakness of Donald Trump at an all-time low in his approval ratings and his Republican Party and the strength of Democrats and the idea of them staying unified, united, to stand up to block trillions of dollars in cuts to health care by the Republicans to tens of millions of Americans via the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare and Medicaid and, yes, Medicare. I had hoped to take some of your calls on that today later in the show at 818985-5735. But whether I'll have time for those calls now, well, that remains to be seen given the caving by those seven Democrats, one independent, and the Senate's minority leader Chuck Schumer on Sunday night, about which I will also take your calls later this hour. if you'd like to ring in and if I end up having time. Now, if you weren't following the late night idiocy by those Democrats in the Senate on Sunday night and into Monday, I'll get you all caught up in a bed, but I am not going to entirely give up my planned coverage of last week's elections, particularly when it comes to the voting and democracy part of them, which voters from coast to coast stood up in favor of last week by enormous numbers. And if we've learned anything since those eight senators on Sunday night voted with Republicans, it is that, yes, elections do matter. As Desi Doyen always likes to point out, hi, Des. Hi, yes, of course they do matter. And I think we see that more and more every day. Well, not only do elections matter, but so do primary elections. Let me make that clear. Primary elections also matter. But we'll get to that in a bit. I mentioned a few times last week amid our coverage of the extraordinary results of the 2025 off-year elections that I do not recall an election night where damn near every single thing that I was looking at or following, whether it was a candidate's race or an initiative on the ballot, turned out to offer only good news in virtually every single case. Good news for Democrats and other anti-Trump voters and good news for democracy itself, which is my greatest concern. In red states, blue states, purple states, and cities and everywhere else in between. Good news all across the board. But there was, I noted last week, just one exception to that that I was able to find, even if there was so much good news worth covering over the past week that it has taken me this long to even get to the one piece of less than good news about one of the issues that I was following last week. And naturally, it comes from Desire's old home state of Texas. Some good news out of Texas. No, no. No. No. Bad news out of Texas. The only place where I could find that bad news. Wishful hearing is what that was. Wishful hearing, exactly. Sorry, it's your old home state undermining us again. When it comes to the now double gerrymandered state of Texas, you can certainly get a sense of what the Republicans who run that state actually care the most about. Actually, what they want their voters to care the most about based on the stuff that they put onto their ballots.

suggesting it's the most important stuff that these voters should care about. Last Tuesday, Texas had 17 issues on the ballot that they wanted their voters to vote on, to enshrine those things into their state constitution. 11 of those 17 had the word tax or taxes in them. 17 items on the ballot, questions for the voters, and 11 of them were about... Taxes, specifically barring them or exempting them and enshrining that into the state constitution. Some examples. Prop 2. Prohibit capital gains tax. Prop 5. Animal feed tax exemption. Prop 6, prohibit taxes on securities transactions. Prop 8, prohibit tax on estates. Prop 9, tax exemption for income-producing properties. Prop 13, increased general property tax exemption. Prop 17, tax exemption for border security infrastructure. So you'll be shocked to learn that all of the anti-tax measures that were on the ballot placed on there by Texas Republicans, all of them were adopted last Tuesday by huge margins. So is it any wonder the top Republican Texas officials always claim that they don't have enough money to actually help their actual residents with stuff that the residents actually need? We ain't got no money. We can't raise taxes. It's against the law, and now it's against the very state constitution, apparently. Funny how that works, and I bet you can draw a straight line between lobbying money and the very specific, very targeted tax cuts that were on that election bill. But ballot. Yep. The rest of the initiatives were on the ballot in Texas were largely right-wing culture war nonsense. Take away judges' discretion to deny bail, for example. Codify parental rights. etc. And of course, Prop 16 prohibit non-citizens from voting. Now, never mind that it's already against state law in Texas for non-citizens to vote in any election and that federal law already bars non-citizens from voting in federal elections in Texas and everywhere else for that matter. Texas waged a battle a war to... enshrined barring non-citizens from voting into their state constitution, even though it's already illegal, and the state was unable to show any actual evidence of any non-citizens in the state ever actually voting. But Republicans, they like to put on a good show for their angered Fox News duped viewers, and that measure passed last Tuesday, 72 to 28%. Huge margin. So, yeah, it's going to be enshrined in the Texas state constitution that non-citizens cannot vote in Texas. Little surprise there, but that was about the only thing that I could find that did not go the way I might have liked it to have gone. And in truth, it was completely performative. It's already against the law there. It was entirely for show by the Republicans there. Otherwise, democracy had a very good night.

Oh, Mr. Burness, welcome to the broadcast, sir. Thank you so much for having me. It's nice to be back. So, as noted, other than in Texas and... maybe in New York City. Voters really did stand up for democracy and voting rights, it seems to me, on the ballot in this year's off-year elections, as detailed by your excellent reporting at Bolts. So let's step through sort of each of the five states that you focused your report on, beginning with Maine. Now, along with Texas, Maine had a direct question for voters on the ballot that we discussed on this show a couple of weeks ago, essentially asking in... In Maine's case, if photo ID restrictions would be required for the polling places along with other restrictions on elections that would make voting harder to do. Tell us about what was on the ballot in Maine in that regard and what happened on Tuesday. Yeah, this is a really good one to start with because I think it might be the most interesting of the five. You know, voter ID measures. have huge impacts on people's ability to vote. If you have your driver's license updated or another form of ID and you live in a state that requires voter ID, you might not think that this is a big deal. You may underrate the number of people who... have trouble getting or updating IDs that are compliant in states that have these kinds of laws. This is really true for students or older folks who don't drive anymore. It's certainly been true for lots of folks in indigenous communities. One issue is that it's one that you really have to kind of dig into to understand how problematic it is and how potent it is as a tool of disenfranchisement. And the elevator pitch on voter ID sounds really appealing to a broad swath of voters, right? Like you need to show your ID to get a hotel room or, you know, buy a bottle of wine. Why would you not, you know... have to do that to do something as important as voting. Right. Even though I will mention, even though you don't actually have to show an ID to buy a bottle of wine, I do it all the time. They never ask me for my ID, but your point is well taken. Right. So, but yeah, I mean, so like the elevator pitch makes a lot of sense. It stands to a reason to a lot of people that, yeah, you should show your idea when you vote. The problem is, It disenfranchises people massively. I mean, we could get into this for a while, but like literally to the point that it was probably alone sufficient to swing Wisconsin for Trump in 2016. You know, when this went on the ballot in Maine, my thought was twofold. One, I kind of guess this will pass because voter ID is really popular. But two.

Voter ID is not the only thing baked into this measure, and the proponents, who include a conservative state lawmaker who may run for governor, the proponents... added a lot more to this measure that I think on Tuesday ended up kind of being the poison pill. Essentially, this measure would have really changed the experience of voting by mail, which is super popular in Maine, and increasingly so, a little bit less than half the state votes that way now. And it's a really key convenience for folks. who have mobility issues for older folks. Maine is the most rural state in the country and has the oldest population by average age. So vote by mail means something particular there compared to other states. And it's important in other states too. But the campaign against question one, which was the voter ID measure, really centered on a lot of stuff besides just voter ID and turned out to be extremely convincing. You know, I was surprised when we saw one poll ahead of the election on this because I thought we wouldn't see any. And that poll showed this being pretty neck and neck. And the measure just ended up being completely swamped, rural and more conservative communities either. kind of supported it by five or ten points, but the bluer area is just completely swamped it. And 90% of people in Portland opposed it. I thought that was really stunning. And I would guess if you could talk to the proponents of the measure, if they could go back and do it over again, they would just try to write the cleanest voter ID measure possible because that's the kind of thing that might have had a better shot at pass. Yeah, I was really surprised because these types of voting restrictions have passed in state after state despite the fact that, you know, some 30 million Americans don't have. the type of ID that is required by some of the most draconian restrictions. But I did see there was sort of a mock election in the lead up to the real election by students, high school students in Maine, who rejected question one like by a two to one margin. And I thought to myself, well, it'll be great when those kids grow up. I was surprised. It'll be great when those kids grow up and they become the electorate. But sure enough. The Maine electorate rejected this big time, and these restrictions would have been in place for the 26 elections when, as you note, Maine will be facing a new governor and will have one of the most closely watched U.S. Senate elections as Republican Senator Susan Collins is set to face a difficult re-election battle. So good news for voters and democracy in Maine. Let's move on to, well, we covered, of course, the stunning... success of California Governor Gavin Newsom's Prop 50 out here in California last week, the ballot measure that will allow the state legislature to temporarily redistrict U.S. House seats to flip as many as five seats from red to blue here in the golden state in next year's midterms in answer to Texas's Trump-ordered legislative gerrymander of the congressional map in the Lone Star State. In fact,

As votes are still being counted in that measure, the only one on the ballot out here in California last week, it appears that some eight counties that were won by Donald Trump last year actually voted in favor of Prop 50 as a direct slight, one could argue, to Donald Trump. But Virginia is very surprising and somewhat complicated scheme to put a similar measure on the ballot for voters early next year. that would allow them as well to set aside the Commonwealth's independent redistricting commission, to allow the legislature to draw a new map, to flip as many as three U.S. House seats there. That received less notice. So how did that work out last week, even though it was not directly on the ballot? How did that effort work out? The Virginia one was quite surprising. I live and grew up not far from Virginia, and not that you have to be located here to know that this is just not the kind of aggressive move you particularly expect. from that state and it's surprising on another level which is that it is so damn hard to change the constitution in virginia the way to do it is that you have to get the legislature to pass a constitutional amendment in consecutive legislative sessions with an election in between them meaning that whoever passed the amendment in one session, it's to hope that they hold on to the legislature heading into the next one. And then even then, it's got to go to the ballot and be approved. So that's three levels, all of which are pretty big lifts. Virginia Democrats. In the run-up to the election, kind of surprised everybody, certainly surprised me by saying, you know, we're going to go for one of these California-style reactive gerrymanders. Virginia's congressional delegation right now is 6-5, and you look at certain maps. I mean, they could bring it to like 9-2 or 10-1, depending on how aggressive they want to get. So they passed this amendment. earlier this fall in order for the thing to have life moving forward they need to hold on to the legislature last week when all 100 seats in the state house were up for election uh the democrats only had a two seat lead in the house heading into last tuesday right so this was really no sure thing they end up just swamping that race i mean uh It's like, you know, you're seeing this. I guess the theme here is that Republicans lost virtually everything there was to lose last Tuesday. But then that was certainly the case in Virginia. So Democrats pick up more than a dozen seats there. And in so doing.

paved the way for themselves as soon as they get back in session of January to pass their reactive gerrymander for a second time, then they'd refer it to the ballot. There'd be an election probably in earlier mid-spring, TBD, I guess exactly on that, but something that is in the fine print a little bit different from what California is done, but in terms of its upshot. really the same thing. It would allow Virginia to redraw its maps and snatch back a bunch of seats heading into the midterms. And frankly, what was I thought most remarkable about that, Alex Burness, about what Virginia Democrats did with his move, they introduced it. I don't know, it was about a week or two before, you know, the actual election day that they reconvened and voted, announced this idea. When voters could really have rebelled against those Democrats, like you say, they had a 51-49 majority in the House of Delegates. All of those people were going to be on the ballot just, you know, days later. And as much as we were, you know, sort of condemning a few cowardly Democrats in the U.S. Senate today for caving on the shutdown, this was really an act of courage, I thought, by Democrats in Virginia. And it worked. Yeah, and I mean, easy to say now, a week later, but evidently the electorate that turned out in Virginia was extremely fired up against Trump and Trumpism. And so... I mean, who knows? I mean, if anything, they might have bought themselves a couple extra points or another seat here or there because this is the kind of thing that based on the folks who turned out in Virginia and based on the margins we saw for a whole variety of things in that state, headlined obviously by the governor's race. This was an electorate that was particularly fired up on this topic and animated against Trumpism, which... you know, in so many ways, including the fact that they want to rig the maps ahead of the midterms. But, you know, that was no sure case when the Virginia Democrats announced they were going to do this. I think voting was already underway. So we're just a couple of weeks before Election Day. I think it was a real act of courage, and I think it paid off. And then there was a double sort of even less noticed victory for democracy and voting in Virginia last week with the pickup of at least 13 seats in the state house. House of Delegates, along with the victory of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger regarding Virginia's longtime controversial felony disenfranchisement rules. Can you explain quickly what happened there and what we can now look forward to with the election of Abigail Spanberger? Yeah, I'll try to explain it quickly because it is a little bit complicated. But the long and short of it is Virginia is one of few states that gives its governors to decide whether people with past felony convictions should get their voting rights back once they are done with incarceration and or with their sentence. So that could be probation or parole, something that follows prison. This has been a whole winding road in Virginia for more than a decade now.

with different governors having different policies. But prior to Glenn Youngkin, there'd been this steady march by Virginia governors to say, we're going to use this power to remove our own discretion. And instead of saying, you know, when such and such person gets out of prison, we're going to decide whether they deserve to have their voting rights back. interview them or, I mean, before people were sending like essays appealing to these governors saying, please, I'm ready to vote. I deserve it. A series of governors leading up to Ralph Northam decide we're just going to standardize the thing. And when you get out of prison, by the time Northam was in office, the deal was when you get out of prison, automatically the state's going to restore your voting rights. That put the state pretty much in line with a bunch of other states around the country who already do this. Glenn Youngkin comes in and says, I'm going to use this power. to actually pick and choose who I want to get voting rights back to. And he ends up denying thousands upon thousands of people. So before I get to Abigail Spanberger and what happened on Tuesday, just know that when Virginians went to vote the other day, the electorate was literally without many thousands. I would be speculating on a number, but many thousands. of people smaller than it would otherwise have been had Glenn Youngkin done the same thing that his predecessors had been doing and just let people vote when they were done with prison. Glenn Youngkin, the outgoing termed out Republican governor who suddenly decided that he would get to choose who is and isn't allowed to vote basically based on whatever he feels like, right? Yeah, exactly. I mean, there was no clear stated criteria. So people were coming out of prison and wanting to register to vote, thinking, oh, I can register to vote because that's how Virginia's been doing this for a decade now. And, you know, going and filling out some form and then finding out they got denied for no stated reason at all. Anyway, Abigail Spanberger is going to come in and inherit the same power that Glenn Youngkin has. I asked her office, or her campaign, I should say, what are you guys going to do with this power if she wins? They didn't get back to me. This is the kind of thing that politicians, especially moderate ones, and don't like to go on record about because they view this issue as some third rail, which is a whole separate issue. But they don't get back to me, but I think if you read between the lines of some of Abigail Spambergers. previous statements on the topic. She is more inclined, clearly more inclined than Glenn Youngkin. to re-standardize the operation and make it so that people have some certainty in expectations of when I'm going to get my voting rights back. Is that a constitutional measure in Virginia? In other words, can that simply be changed now that they've got a, you know, 13-vote margin in the House of Delegates there and a Democratic governor? To do away with this nonsense so the next time a Republican comes in, he doesn't get to disenfranchise thousands of voters, or is that also a constitutional issue?

Do you know? Yeah, great question, because even though voting rights advocates are glad to see Abigail Spanberger get in on this particular topic, because she's very likely to be more permissive than Yon has been, their feeling is this shouldn't be up to any one person. Abigail Spanberger, North, and Glenn Youngkin, we need to get the discretion out of the governor's office and just have laws that say you get your voting rights back when you are done with prison. So. In the same way that Virginia Democrats had passed a constitutional amendment this year, to reactively gerrymander their state. They also, in January, so almost a year ago now, passed a measure to remove the governor's office discretion on voting rights restoration and standardize the process, automate the process for people exiting prison. In order to see that measure move forward, they needed to hold on to the House last week because this is something Democrats' support, and Republicans, by and large, do not. As we talked about a second ago, they did hold onto the House, so now they have more. more than enough votes to pass this reform when they get back into session in January. And then it would go to the ballot in 2026. I called up the Senate Majority Leader the day after the election in Virginia. And I said, you know, just checking, you guys still going to pass this thing to restore people's voting rights when they get out of prison. You're still going to pass this redistricting thing. And he said, oh, yeah, you know, it's one of the first orders of business when we're back. So I think you can expect to see movement. on both of these fronts uh maybe as soon as like I don't know, January, second or third week of January. Nice, because it seems to be the least they can do. By the way, if it was up to me, I would allow felons even in jail to be able to vote. I mean, people in jail are the most affected by the laws that are passed by our, you know, legislature, by our lawmakers and so forth. So the fact that they were being restricted, even after serving their time and being released and being restricted just on the whim. of one person in the governor's mansion. That itself is an outrage. So hopefully that too can now be corrected. Frankly, thanks to voters last Tuesday and, well, we'll see what the voters do next year. Let's move to Pennsylvania quickly. The statewide ballot in the Keystone state had three state Supreme Court justices on the ballot for retention elections, meaning they... previously ran in a partisan contest or they were appointed by the governor. But now voters had to vote yes or no as to whether each of them would stay on the court for an additional 10-year term. Those three justices were all Democrats. They were all retained by huge margins, like by 20 points. That's not usually remarkable, I don't think, as almost all such justices win their...

retention elections in Pennsylvania, but what made this year different about those three particular contests, Alex? Well, yeah, let's start with, you know, what's remarkable versus not. As a rule... Most everywhere in the country that has judicial retention elections, including Pennsylvania, the judge who is up for election gets retained and gets retained by huge numbers. It's been 20 years since any state judge in Pennsylvania for the Supreme Court or lower judges, lower courts, excuse me, has won a retention election by less than 22 points. So as a rule, these things are just blowouts. The reason for that is, well, on... For one, I think a lot of people just trust or want to be able to trust the judiciary, and unless they've heard of some wild scandal or some particularly high-profile case, they're just inclined to rubber stamp. Another reason is... These people are not celebrities. Even state Supreme Court justices, I mean, try as we do it, Boltz magazine and other folks do to make state Supreme Court sexy. It's just really, really hard. And people have other stuff going on in their lives. And, I mean, if you're listening to this, think to yourself and try to name one Supreme Court justice in your state. If you can do it, you are totally the exception. So... Pennsylvania's got three of these folks standing for retention this year. All three are Democrats. The current Pennsylvania Supreme Court makeup is 5-2 in favor of Democrats. This has been hugely important to a whole bunch of issues, but... particularly to democracy and voting rights. People will recall that the justices on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court joined their colleagues around the country and roundly rejecting Trump's bid to overturn election results through a whole series of lawsuits in 2020. Very importantly, this court un-jerrymandered Pennsylvania, which had a 13-5 Republican Democratic split in its... congressional delegation before democrats took the majority on this court i know that we're in a moment when gerrymandering seems very normal but if you assume that you know fairness is a good thing 13-5 in a state like Pennsylvania is completely bonkers. This is as 50-50 a state as it gets, really. So these justices un-jerrymandered Pennsylvania. They upheld the state's mail-in voting law. Like I said, they rejected a series of Trump lawsuits. So they've been really, really important to a whole bunch of issues on elections and voting. So the fact that three Democrats were up for retention this year.

was an awesome opportunity for Republicans to snatch the majority away from Democrats in time for the 2026 midterms, not to mention all the preparations going into 2028, because for very obvious reasons, that's a court. Republicans would really love to control the next time we have a presidential election. Now, they needed to have some success last week to be able to do that, to have a real path to a majority before 2028. And they failed. They failed despite millions of dollars in spending every Pennsylvania and I've talked to and I traveled throughout the state ahead of this election. People's mailboxes were overflowing with ads trying to disparage these justices. I would argue that the case against them was never... particularly coherent. Republicans started in a really tough spot to begin with. Like I mentioned, people sort of reflexively just support retention anyway. Right. But there was no particular scandal or high profile, this or that, for them to capitalize on and to turn these judges into, you know, notorious celebrities, the kind of thing you would need to do to overcome the inherent disadvantage that you've got in a retention campaign or an anti-retention campaign. Anyway, they tried. Democrats responded with actually even more money than Republicans were spending. And, you know, if the goal was to make people pay attention to retention elections, it definitely succeeded. There was a ton of energy and interest about this on the ground by the time election day rolled around, though it took a while to get going. The problem is that, for Republicans anyway, voters just overwhelmingly stood with these justices. And despite... this unprecedented campaign and the millions and millions of dollars that were spent and all the yard signs in the mailers, these justices ended up winning their race by the same margin that basically every other judge or justice in the state who runs ends up getting. They all won by like 20. So I'm not totally sure what the moral of that story is, but the takeaway for the average listener here who cares about national politics is that barring some really unforeseen. retirements or deaths um uh The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which is super important to national politics, is going to be in democratic hands, definitely through the midterms and almost definitely through 2020. Yeah, one of the justices running in that retention election, Kevin Dardy, noted while he was campaigning in Philadelphia, he said, quote, my court is the backstop of democracy. And he's not wrong. I hate judges, frankly, running for election anywhere. But if they're going to do it, you know, the point he's making is. is not wrong. It's the backstop for democracy in Pennsylvania. And arguably, for much of the country, given Pennsylvania's status as a critical presidential battleground status, state. And the fact that they won each of these three judges by more than 60% of the vote, well, I think that message was clear, despite the money that was spent to try to unseat them. It didn't even work for one of them. Finally, Alex Burness, New York City.

where we've all been talking about the progressive 34-year-old Ugandan-born Democratic Socialist and Muslim Zohran Mamdani and his remarkable rise to become New York City mayor. You picked up on a measure way down on the ballot on Tuesday in New York called Prop 60, which voters rejected 53 to 47, which I might have made the case, would have made New York City elections much more. Small D. Democratic, with more voters ringing in in the future. Explain that proposition quickly and what happened there on Tuesday. Yeah, this is one of the kind of most interesting, this gets to one of the most interesting underlying stories of American politics that I think is so underrated year in and year out. And that story is when we hold our elections. Forget who's on the ballot or what the issues are, just when elections are scheduled. And a lot of municipal elections, including in New York City, are scheduled off cycle. If you live in a big city or even a small town, I mean, chances are you probably voted for a mayor or a city council member in April or May or something, and often in an odd year. That is, these elections are intentionally not synced up with November elections in even years. The argument for that sounds... pretty good, which is, well, if we're electing a president or a U.S. senator or whatever it might be, we don't want people to get distracted. We have our own stuff going on in the city. We need a special spotlight and a special campaign season for what we're doing here, and we want people to actually pay attention and be casting informed votes when they go to pick a city council member or a mayor. And that all sounds good. The problem is at the end of the day, virtually without exception, turnout is lower if you do not sync up your municipal election, your local election, national contests. And so to give you a good example of how this works, New York City just had a phenomenally successful voter turnout in its mayoral election the other day. Two million people voted. I think, don't quote me, I think that was the highest number in at least about 50 years in New York City. That's awesome if you care about democracy. That is... 800,000 people fewer than voted just last November. So even in an incredible turnout, you're like New York City just had, people still vote in smaller numbers than they would if you just sync these things up with national contests. And so there was way down on the ballot, Prop 6 in New York this year. And that measure would have aligned mayoral elections in the city with the presidential race, in addition to rescheduling some other contests. But it would have meant that, you know, when Zohran Mamdani is up, should he run again?

You know, his next election actually might have been moved up three years. You would have had a shorter first term. You'd have to run for re-election in 2028. But take him out of it for a second. The idea would just be moving forward in 28, 32, 36, these years when people are voting any way in humongous numbers. for lots of important things, we're just going to throw municipal stuff on there, too, to make sure we get the highest turnout. Now, if you don't do that, one thing I want to add, if you don't do that, New York, wherever else, it is almost always the case that the electorate you get... in this off cycle election that you hold for your municipal offices is going to skew whiter, is going to skew more conservative, is going to skew toward really more of the diehards. And there's nothing wrong with being a diehard voter. It's a good thing for anybody to be. But the problem is that this ends up being. totally unrepresentative of who actually lives in the community and who votes. And, you know, it's hard to get a perfect snapshot of what the community is during any election, even a presidential year. A ton of people sit out. But you can guarantee yourself that you're going to get a less representative. And again, likely older, likely whiter, likely more conservative electorate if you place your local election in an off cycle, odd year ballot. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons I think why we changed it out here in Los Angeles. Angeles a few years ago. San Francisco recently changed it so that those off-year elections are now on-year elections with the major, you know, congressional elections and so forth in presidential in even numbered years. But. New York City rejected that idea on Tuesday, fairly narrowly, 53 to 47. Then again, the voters who voted on that were the voters who vote in off-year elections. So make up that what you will. By and large, however, a very good day, I would argue for... Democracy, voting, voting rights, and elections last Tuesday. Alex, I got to get out. But thank you so much for this report and all the reporting that you and Daniel Nushanian and others have been doing over there at Boltz magazine focusing on elections that much of the corporate media does not focus on. You guys do. And I find you'd be absolutely indispensable in that regard. Alex Burness is a staff reporter at Boltz magazine. their work bolts mag.org and you can find Alex on the blue skies at simply burness great speaking with you Alex look forward to chatting soon yeah thank you for having me I appreciate it you bet thank you

Okay, let's take a quick break here, and we'll come back with news on the record long government shutdown, which appears to be nearing its end after seven Democrats and one independent in the U.S. Senate on Sunday night agreed to go along with Republicans on a so-called compromise resolution that, as far as I can tell, wins neither Democrats nor the bulk of the American people a single thing. If time allows, we'll try to get some of your calls on that as well in our live listening area. 818985-5735. That's 818985. KPFK. I'm Brad Friedman, and you are listening to the Bradcast. What the public hears on the public airwaves matters. At the broadcast, we do our best to bring you accurate news and analysis on the issues that actually matter, and we do it all independently without corporate or political influence. But we can't do it without you, now more than ever. Please help us stay on your public airwaves by going to bradblog.com slash donate to help keep us going. That's bradblog.com slash donate. And thanks.

Well, if you're Chuck Schumer You're all kinds of fool, brother. I don't know what kind of fool you are other than a very big one. Welcome back to the broadcast. Brad Friedman from bradblog.com. My thanks once again to Boltz magazine's Alex Burness. Chuck Schumer is at least a big enough fool that had he prevented seven Democrats and one independent who caucus with them from voting with Republicans. On Sunday night to end the federal government shutdown, which has now run a record more than 40 days. Well, had he not done that, we'd be talking this entire hour about how Democrats were rewarded at the ballot box just last week for staying unified against Donald Trump and the Republicans. How even Republican voters are turning against Trump and the Republicans and how they are blaming Trump and the Republicans. for the cuts that they have made, to the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, to Medicaid, and yes, even to Medicare that you will begin to see in no uncertain terms as of January 1, if not, well, prior to that. Instead, well, we've got to spend time discussing how seven Democrats and one independent who caucus with them voting late on Sunday night in a procedural vote on a so-called compromise package that gives Democrats absolutely nothing for now other than a vote in the Senate maybe sometime in December on restoring the cuts to Obamacare, a vote that even if it passed in the Senate. which is unlikely. But even if it did, it has no guarantee of even being brought up for a vote in the GOP-controlled U.S. House or if it somehow managed to pass there, being signed by Donald Trump. That's what those seven Democrats had won independent gave away on Sunday night. Despite America standing behind them in huge numbers last Tuesday from coast to coast. Now, many others in the Democratic Party in both the Senate and the House are furious at what those eight did. And for the record, of those eight senators, two are retiring. None. We'll face re-election next year. Very courageous of them. And half of them come from only two states from New Hampshire and Nevada. They are, for the record, Angus King of Maine, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Dick Durbin of Illinois, he's retiring, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Catherine Cortez-Mastro of Nevada, and Jackie Rosen of Nevada. And in my opinion, each of them who stand for election.

whenever that is that they stand for election well they should be primaried out of existence the next time the Democrats have a chance that is my opinion now please note that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer he's not on that list he voted no And he pretended to be against what it was that those eight were doing. Now, maybe it's not fair of me to say that he was pretending. Maybe the leader of the Democrats in the U.S. Senate has no control whatsoever over eight members of his own caucus during the longest shutdown in U.S. history. But if that is the case, well, then yes, he deserves to be tossed out as leader, if only because he's terrible at it. Either way, he needs to be removed from leadership and primary next year, in my opinion, because he is up for reelection next year. And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, among others, are considering taking him on. At this point, I got to say, I hope she does. 818985-5735 is my number if you want to ring in on either last week's remarkable elections or this week's remarkably dumb votes, at least as I see it, by a handful of Democrats in the U.S. Senate. Now, to be fair, Here's the argument from about four of those senators. I think this is Jeanne Shaheen, Catherine Cortez-Mastro, I think, of Nevada, Angus King of Maine, Tim Kaine of Virginia, explaining their votes on Sunday night. I understand that not all of my Democratic colleagues are satisfied with this agreement. But waiting another week or another month wouldn't deliver a better outcome. It would only mean more harm for families in New Hampshire and all across the country. The Republicans weren't providing any commitment or even a willingness to vote or a willingness to discuss extending the premium tax credits. We have the opportunity to do that now and we will hold their feet to the fire. The vote that we have, there's not a guarantee for sure. It's more of a guarantee. Here's the way I would put it. As I assessed it, there was zero chance of dealing with the ACA issue as long as the shutdown continue. Now, I don't know, 50-50. But if there's a lot better chance now than there was this morning, I would take a reasonable chance against no chance every day. We were in a situation where SNAP recipients were suffering, and there was no guarantee we would ever get to an ACA solution. Now we've got robust SNAP funding and a guaranteed vote, not a guaranteed outcome, but a guaranteed vote on ACA tax credits. The ACA, of course, is the Affordable Care Act he's talking about.

Those of you who buy your insurance through the ACA, through the Obama Exchange, may have noticed that your premiums are going up starting January 1 by anywhere from 200 to 300 to 400 percent. I'm hearing from people who are saying their primaries are quadrupling beginning January. I mean they're premiums. What did I say? The primaries. They're primaries. See, I got one thing on my mind. Yeah, their premiums are quadrupling. And, well, that's why Democrats were keeping the government shut down in order to force Republicans to restore those cuts to Obamacare. Ezra Levin, the co-founder and co-executive director of Indivisible, which helped to turn out some seven million Americans just about three weeks ago for the no kings rallies in support of Democratic opposition to Trump. He released the statement in response to the Senate Democrats planning to vote for cloture on the... continuing resolution. He said he called this deal a surrender that all congressional Democrats should reject out of hand. He said it's bad policy that will raise health care prices and bad politics that gives the regime more power to do more harm. Make no mistake, he said, as some Senate Democrats consider surrender, Republicans are losing this fight. They're prolonging the shutdown, raising health care prices, going to court to starve children. He says three weeks ago we saw the largest protest in American history against this regime. Last week we saw the best Democratic election night in a decade. The polling decisively supports the Democratic position. The public is rallying to the Democrat side. Will they listen? We cannot afford a divided and weak opposition party, he says, when an authoritarian is invading our cities, terrorizing our communities, and corruptly self-enriching at the expense of the rest of us. We hope to celebrate the Democratic Party for fighting back. But if they surrender, the next step is primaries and new leadership. We get the party, we demand, and we intend to demand one that fights. 818985 5735. 1-800-8-8-8-8-8-8. Boy, 1818, thank you. 985-5735. I took so long saying the number, I have no time for calls. Let me go to Hal in Huntington Beach. Hey, Hal, welcome to the broadcast. Hey. Yeah, man. These guys are like, they blew it again. It's like Chamberlain surrendering to Hitler. Who are these guys? Who are these guys? The Democrats that voted for this bill. Right. I mean, all they had to wait was another week or two, and they would have had victory, but they let it slip through their fingers. And now, you know, they think they're going to get their more tourists to Vegas.

But, you know, because of Trump pissing off the world, all our allies, and calling them freeloaders and parasites, they're not going back to Vegas. And nobody's buying cars right now because of all of Elon Musk's. layoffs and Doge and the Trump tariffs. Nobody's going to buy cars, so they're not going to get more steel to Pennsylvania. And New Hampshire, Canadians, they're not going to come back. We already pissed them off. So they just, all this was for nothing. Thank you, Hal. I appreciate that. And it's hard to disagree that all of this was for nothing. And I know it does feel that way. But I do ask the reason I asked Hal who he was talking about is because I have heard some people say, oh, the Democrats are no good. I'm not going to vote next year. All the Democrats off with all their heads. That is not true. This was seven Democrats and one independent who caucuses with those Democrats. And yes, even though Chuck Schumer is trying to say, oh, I've voted against it. I'm against, you know, ending a debate here. He is the leader of the U.S. Senate, the Democratic leader of the U.S. Senate, the minority leader of the U.S. Senate. And if he can't keep his caucus in line to prevent something like this happening, then he deserves to go. He deserves to lose his leadership position as I see it. And he deserves to be primaried and hopefully lose next year. because of this. It's pathetic. If only, if nothing else, at least this particular unfortunate episode with these eight Senate Democrats is very clarifying for people. So hopefully they'll, in those states, we'll be able to see, hey, we need to, we need to primary these guys. The group, voters of tomorrow, a Gen Z group, say Chuck Schumer, thanks for nothing. It's clear Chuck Schumer must step down as caucus leader. While no one wants the government to shut down, the health care of millions of young Americans is worth fighting for. They cite those seven Democrats and one independent as saying they've portrayed our generation. Either through complicity or incompetence, Chuck Schumer once again proved he cannot provide the type of leadership that young Americans demand. It is clear he must step down as caucus leader. Here's Bernie Sanders on Sunday night after the vote. Tonight, eight Democrats voted with the Republicans to allow them to go forward on this continuing resolution. And to my mind, this was a very, very bad vote. What it does, first of all, is it raises health care premiums for over 20 million Americans by doubling, and in some cases tripling or quadrupling. People can't afford that when we are already paying the highest prices of the world for health care. Number two, it paves the way for 15 million people to be thrown off of Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act studies show that will mean that some 50,000 Americans will die every year unnecessarily.

And all of that was done to give a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the 1%. As everybody knows, just on Tuesday, we had an election all over this country. And what the election showed is that the American people want us to stand up to Trumpism, to his war against working class people, to his authoritarianism. That is what the American people wanted. But tonight, that is not what happened. So we've got to go forward, do the best that we can, to try to protect working class people, to make sure that the United States not only does not throw people off of health care, but ends the absurdity of being the only major country on Earth that doesn't guarantee health care to all people. We have a lot of work to do. But to be honest with you, tonight was not a good night. Thank you. Well, let's go to one more. We've got time for Morris in Long Beach. Hey, Mo, we haven't heard from you in a while. Hope you're doing okay. Welcome back to the broadcast, sir. Morris is fine, and I voted yes on 50. Listen, we're playing chess here, Bradley. Now, with this move here that was made by the senators, that means that your boy, Mike Johnson's got to reopen up the Congress, right on, and then also that Arizona Congress will now be allowed to, you know, induct it. And that means that the FST files will be released, right? Yep. And it also means that the people have lost their jobs to get their federal employees who got their jobs, they get their jobs back. And I want to remind everybody that even though the rates are going up, that's not until January. And I tell you, when that stuff come out on the Epstein file, they go do some... some executive orders giving people their subsidies on them, them Obama-captain. But am I crazy badly? Or can you see if the move that are being played here and, you know, what could come to the past and what's coming to the past that are considered benefits? You're not crazy at all, and you are highlighting the upside of what happened here, and I appreciate that as we close out at the show. Brother, thank you very much for pointing those things out. Thank you very much. Ebstein Files, bring them on. That's next, I guess. All right, thanks again to my guest today, Alex Burness of Boltz magazine, to our producer, Desi Doyen, to our soundboard operator, Wendell Handy, and all of you for spending a portion of your day or night with us. If you missed any portion of today's show, you can download it for free anytime at bradblog.com. Drop me email, I'm Bradcast at bradblog.com, and on the social medias, especially Blue Sky. I am the Bradblog. We will see it all the above. Until we see you here next time. Hopefully tomorrow, I'm Brad Friedman. Good luck world. You're listening to the Bradcast. We are 100% listener supported thanks to listeners like you who drop by Bradblog.com slash donate.