Tulsa World Opinion podcast: Making sense of Oklahoma's election results

hi everyone and welcome to a bonus podcast with my friends uh Barry Friedman and David Blatt so I'll let them introduce themselves I'm Barry Friedman I have a political blog at friedmanoftheplanes.com and a stand-up comedian and Jenny's co-host and I'm David black I'm a professor of public administration at OU Tulsa and formerly spent a whole bunch of years as director of Oklahoma policy Institute and I think David probably knows everything about Oklahoma politics because you are a senate analyst for a while even before that correct I worked uh three years for the Oklahoma State Senate as a fiscal analyst back in the 1990s when they were actually Democrats at the legislature well we will get into that why we why we don't have many Democrats there now so what we're talking about politics it's a week out almost what are the big takeaways locally and nationally I mean David I'm going to start with you when you look at the Oklahoma results what are the what are the key takeaways there sure um you know I think the big takeaway was that uh Kevin Stitt was re-elected Governor of Oklahoma by a comfortable margin and there's two ways of looking at that um there were a lot of Democrats and even some Republicans who expected this to be a much closer race we had a number of uh polls come out in the last couple of months that indicated that it would be a close race anything from Kevin's did up narrowly to several polls showing George Hofmeister up by by a few percentage points and from that perspective the results were a major disappointment to to Democrats who had once again got caught up in some irrational exuberance perhaps and had their hopes dashed uh the other way of looking at it is that uh it has been now since 2006 since any Democrat has won any Statewide race uh so we're now uh in our fourth straight election cycle where Republicans have won every race for Statewide office as well as every race for U.S Senate and uh there was really no great surprise to see that Republicans ended up winning Uh Kevin stitt's margin was actually we significantly less than some of the other Republicans or most of the other Republicans on the ballot with the exception of Brian Walters for superintendent so you know if you just had gone to sleep in June or July and woken up on Election night and looked at the results you have been not at all surprised that Kevin stit won one handily let me ask you about the irrational exuberance are voters lying to pollsters or upholsterers just getting it wrong you know I think there's there's a couple of hypotheses and we don't know for sure there was uh an article in Oklahoma watch I believe over the weekend where the reporter spoke with lieutenant governor Matt Pannell about the results and his sense was that uh the rights races because there's actually the governor's race and the state superintendent race that seems to be moving pretty much in Tandem and ended up with similar results uh but that those races may have in fact been quite tight until the final days when Republicans returned home to their natural candidates and we saw really the same thing four years ago when it was Kevin Drew Edmondson and some of your uh some of our viewers may remember that then two polls were showing a tight race it was within two to four or six points uh the Democratic governors Association put money in Republican Governors Association put money in ultimately Kevin said one handily by by 12 votes we saw the same same thing again so to what extent was it a polling error versus what extent was it that the race really was more of a toss-up going into the final days when a combination of a bunch of last minute Republican money from the governor's Association and from Kevin stitt's own Pockets apparently he put two million dollars in along with just National storylines kind of overwhelming the Republican race LED people you know when they actually went out to vote to go back and vote for their the party they support well now Bill Shepard had written an op-ed earlier that they're having trouble with Republicans participating they cannot get people to participate and then with the Democrat side it's just erratic that their voting patterns are not consistent enough to find sort of an adequate sample on either of those so he was sort of predicting that the polls he predicted every poll would be off but by how much and to what degree I don't know and he's he runs sooner poll so you know there were some polls uh particularly um internal polling apparently showed him up by 10 or more points but there was also a poll from Emerson um College in the last week that showed stood up nine points and they are a respected firm the 538 which rates all the poster rates as an A or a minus fully accompanied um Bill Shepherd's argument makes a lot of sense and there's several years of data showing that it's much harder to get Republicans to answer the phone the problem with this theory is that if you look nationally the polls actually came pretty close in fact if anything pollsters underestimated the Democrats performance this cycle with the expectation that the Republicans would have been a large majority in the house um nationally the polls you know either got a pretty close to right as in the senate or underestimate the Democrats so the problems that he's pointing to seem to have been more severe for Oklahoma than a lot of other states to cycle well if Shepard's right then why even stay in business if what he's saying is we can't get this right they won't answer the phone Democrats are erratic then what is the point of having an Oklahoma poll at all well it's you know I think there's an insatiable appetite among men political junkies and uh political campaigns for for polling data I think the uh the demand is is there um but there's also you know the real possibility that as you know if you look at what a poll does it provides a snapshot it says um you know at best it can say look up at the scoreboard and say Here's what the score is at this point of the game but the game can change and I you know I think there's a good argument to be made that in the final days of this campaign that Republicans went back and voted for their candidates for Governor and superintendent none as large numbers as for the other races so you know if you look at the results for Kevin Sid and Ryan Walters they pulled um pulled at on Election Day you know among actual voters uh they won by 15 16 points all the other Republicans were winning by anywhere from 25 to over 30 points so there were Republicans and certainly Independents who did go with Joy Hofmeister and Gina Nelson uh it's not like those campaigns didn't have any value or Effectiveness um but I think the biggest aspect of Oklahoma politics which can easily be forgotten is that most voters are Republicans if you look at party registration what used to be a democratic state is now overwhelmingly Republican registration so even in 2014 when Mary Fallin won her second term in office there were more registered Democrats than there were Republicans and now Republicans enjoy a 20-point margin and that's a huge huge obstacle for any Democrat to overcome you know and for a while everybody got caught up in the sense that this election was going to be different and that there would be enough unhappy Republicans and there was enough money being spent on behalf of Hofmeister and against Kevin stit that maybe just maybe the outcome would be different but when you have a 20 when you have 51 percent of Oklahomans are registered Republicans and now less than 30 percent are registered Democrats that's really hard to overcome and you can't point to any stage in the nation this cycle where the party that has anywhere close to that sort of a registration disadvantage um was winning Statewide Statewide races well and through that to that end hey what do we take away State the power of the straight party vote the straight party option that has gone up we're only one of five states that allows it on everything and it's now 42 percent of all voters vote a straight party right and that's up from 34 in 2016. and of that 42 percent seventy percent of those were Republicans so they're either it's a party Choice over individual choice I mean to me I mean as long as you have people that are going to the polls saying I don't care who the candidates are I just want the Republican party I mean how are you going to put it in that well I think that straight party voting may be having an impact down ballot when you look at legislative races and VA races and county commissioner and county assessor races right I don't think it's having a big impact on the top of the ticket I don't think if you got rid of straight party voting people who go to vote on Election Day know who they want to support for president or Governor they want to support Donald Trump or Kevin's debt or Mary Fallon if you go back or um you do away with great party voting they're still going to go in there and vote for the candidates and for the party tickets that's fine but that but that would still Force someone to think about those down ballots I mean even even if the ballot is completely Republican I say at least make a person a voter should think about who they want or at least know what Corporation Commission is which no one seems to know so I I think anybody who wanted to vote for Joy Hofmeister was going to find her on the ballot if you voted for every other Republican I don't think that straight party voting affected the races as much as we'd like to think it did nobody who as David said who shows up at the poll is that lazy if they're lazy they don't go to the polls they don't vote at all but if they show up at the polls I think they have some idea what they want to do my question to David is if that's the case about the 20-point spread in registration then this isn't a messaging problem people are voting for The Brand correct that it is there any issue that that drove Republicans uh any issue that drove Democrats in in the state you know I think with with Republicans uh in 2018 when we saw Drew Edmondson faring well according to the polls and then Kevin Stitt who at that point was was an unknown um when based on his you know massive support in rural Oklahoma and Suburban areas I was saying it was Kavanaugh and Caravans it was those big National issues that dominated the airwaves four years ago this election I think it was the Three B's it was Biden borders and bathrooms were probably the the issues that got people thinking that they were unhappy with the Democratic brand and that they were going to continue to vote for Republicans um you know Democrats have a major long-standing problem in rural Oklahoma particularly among um voters without college education um with white Christian Evangelical voters and the reality is it's not an Oklahoman it's not an Oklahoma phenomenon if you look at the vote in Texas or Florida or for that matter Pennsylvania or New York or Michigan you will see that Republicans dominate Rural America everywhere the Democrats are associated with liberal cultural issues whether it's gun control or abortion or lgbtq rights or you know what what gets dumped clumped together as identity politics or cultural Wars or wokeness or whatever and I think you know Republicans have been very effective for a very long time in making every Democratic candidate into Teddy Kennedy or Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi or now Joe Biden and I don't know you know what the solution for that is for Democrats I don't think that there is a short-term solution um but Democrats you know have not won in rural Oklahoma for for a very long time and uh if you look whether you look at registration or voting with every election Republicans just do better and better including this one where I think Joy Hoffmeister made as good of an effort to compete in rural Oklahoma as as we've seen from a candidate in a while but since she was it was primarily education on the ballot that's what she was focused in on that's what a lot of people were focused in on vouchers are going to come back now and in a way people are looking at this takeaway as I guess Oklahomans are cool with vouchers because that was the main policy priority for Ryan Walters and certainly Kevin Stitt has beyond that he's got a chief of staff now who's all about school choice so you know is that now I mean do we read this as they're fine with that or did the identity culture wars get in the way of talking about those other policy issues I think it's more of the latter um and I think without question voters is going to be the big issue for the upcoming legislative session uh and maybe for the next two or three or four legislative sessions I think there's no question that that Kevin Stitz and Ryan Walters will claim a mandate for vouchers and we know that the last legislative session where there was a voucher bill being pushed heavily by both the governor and by the uh Senate President Pro tem great treat that uh Senator treat could not get a majority of his um of the Senate to support him the voucher bill went down in the Senate and probably would have done even worse had it made it over to the house um with with still being reelected with Walters being elected there is no question we're going to see another push for vouchers the question is what do the legislators do they've also been elected by their constituents and there was no it's not that any of these legislators were elected on Kevin stitt's coattails the party makeup in the legislature remained completely unchanged uh of the 125 seats so up for grabs there were exactly two seats that flipped a house seat that went from the Republicans to the Democrats in Midtown Tulsa and the senate seat that went from the Democrats the Republicans in North Tulsa Owasso so the legislature you have this pretty much the same legislatures you had last year where vouchers were pretty much a non-starter uh there's going to be a big fight and uh you know I think there's going to be different proposals out there um but I don't know that Kevin's did is going to get huge Traction in saying well I was re-elected this was my platform now I expect you all to fall into line I think there may be too much before I have to push back see I think that there are going to be some lawmakers out there that they're going to look at how their constituents voted and if you have you're facing a voucher Bill and your District elected Ryan Walters by 70 percent how do you not vote for that voucher because that was his primary policy platform if you're a legislator who was against vouchers and you got reelected you can say the legislative my voters knew know where I stand on this I voted against last year's voucher bill or I indicated I was against it they're also going to be hearing from a lot of constituents on this issue so even by February March April when the legislature is in session November election is going to be a little bit of ancient history so I'm not deny I'm not I'm not denying that this victory for for state and Walters will have no impact I'm just not sure that they will introduce a bill you know the same voucher bill from last session on the first day of this coming session and it'll be past without um you know three weeks later we're going to see it uh see it passed into law I wanted to ask one more thing about the Democrats going back to going back to bad messaging which I still think there is something to that because what do the Democrats stand for I know what they stand against but what do they stand for I mean is that really what is at issue with rural Oklahoma here Barry do you want to try that oh I'm I'm I that's a good question to me I I don't know how it is someone is motivated by an issue that doesn't affect them more than ever affected by an issue that does so if you say that we want to keep transgenders out of the bathroom of my child right I don't know any parent who really worries about that in the reality right there may be an abstract problem they have with it but I don't know anybody who says mom guess what happened today at school but for instance in 2021 Democrat they had the the Child Care Credit the 200 to 300 that was given to poor Americans liberals and conservatives and every Republican voted against that with Joe manchin so it went down that was a real thing that affected real people including Oklahomans who no longer had that money what I'm curious about is what messaging could Democrats have done that they didn't do that said forget about where transgenders urinate we're talking about 300 a month you no longer have because these people voted against it they voted against you that's why I don't know the messaging that messaging was pretty clear wasn't it could Democrats have done a better job messaging that I don't think so so the answer Point Jenny I don't know if messaging is the problem I think the brand is so strong the the the DNA is so strong that Republicans will vote for Republicans I mean look at the scandals around the state Administration right the only thing he didn't have was a sex scandal and I'm not sure that would have changed voters I mean what would it have taken for Democrats to make inroads in either the Walters race or the stit race I don't know what it would have been but what about on down ballot like what in the legislative races you know we JJ Dawson lost his race and he was a very strong candidate we have a lot of races that went uncontested now one of the things Republicans did when they didn't have the super majority back in the days they made sure there was a candidate in every single race even if it was a long shot there was someone there to vote you know against so you know I think that that's got to be a priority is to find someone in every race for starters on the one hand I sympathize with the Dilemma for the Democrats which is most of these districts are simply unwinnable right now there is one Democrat in the legislature from outside of the two metropolitan areas and that's Trish Ranson who represents Stillwater which is you know a little different than most of the rest of rural Oklahoma but you know we mentioned that I worked on uh Senate staff that was in the late 1990s at that time the Democrats held almost every rural seat uh outside every seat outside the metropolitan areas uh the Republicans bases were actually in Oklahoma and Tulsa counties now the Democrats have been you know essentially wiped out and people run and they may get 25 30 of the votes um if it's a good candidate and they run a good race um you're not going to win in Altus and Woodward a guy man whoever whoever you put up um but at the same time you know speaking to a Democrat who ran and lost fairly narrowly in in Oklahoma County and his plea was you know the party spent millions of dollars trying to win a Statewide race which in hindsight or maybe you know until mid-september looked unwinnable and now in hindsight it looks like it was unwinnable again but people maybe thought differently for for a brief moment but his history was let's put some money into some of the more competitive races in those metropolitan areas in and around uh Tulsa and Oklahoma City if you you know he said if I had uh two or three paid canvassers he would have won that race and he's probably right but he was doing it all in his free time after work with a small group of volunteers and maybe that's where the Democrats need to be investing money um identifying winnable local races and also you know worked really hard at the municipal level for city council races School Board races um you know we had a couple of city council races here that came down to a couple dozen or a couple hundred votes if there have been more money put into those races perhaps and less on some of the Statewide races maybe that's where Democrats can actually see see some progress on partisan although the Republican party is at the local level are certainly making those more partisan which I push back on that as well so go ahead Barry I'm sorry I cut you off but David you you've known these Republicans you've worked with them you respect a lot of them um and you've often cautioned me about toggling between the real crazies of the Republican party and the Republicans who keep their head down and do the work um I asked this every time Democrats get uh defeated the way we did in in Oklahoma is there something Beyond messaging that Democrats are failing to understand is there something out there Democrats are missing that Republicans without being cynical are hitting that we are not instance honestly I don't think there's the Magic Bullet I don't think there's the one thing or even the two things or the three things they can be doing um you know Tip O'Neill used to say that all politics is local and I think that at the time when Tip O'Neill was Speaker of the House of Representatives he was probably right we're in an error now where all politics is National and I don't think it makes that much of a difference really which candidates Democrats put forward for Statewide races which messages they run on um what their ground game looks like whether they put money into television or or digital I don't I maybe I'm just too fatalistic about it and I had you know some friends push back a little bit and saying how do you conduct politics about Hope um it's a good question and I'm not suggesting this is going to be like this be like this forever but we have two national parties with strong National Brands we have a national electorate um that is you know very set very polarized and politics has become very calcified where you know election after election we see um 48 percent are solidly Democrats 48 are solvedly Republicans and we are spending uh a hell of a lot of time money energy and and angst fighting over that last two percent in Six States that will determine who's president who has control of the Senate who has control of the House of Representatives that isn't the way it's always been in American politics there was a whole you know you had a whole lot more swing voters swing districts swing States and swing elections and now you know we're sort of we're we're right here fighting over those last contested few inches abortion referendum work in Oklahoma do you think I mean it passed it was either protected or not unprotected in States across the country and was that a positive sign that that voters were saying I agree with Republicans Republicans on on most things but this one is my issue we're taking this issue out of politics out of the election was that a positive sign or would that work in Oklahoma it will I mean it was split I mean from what I mean you expect California and Vermont to destroy those those Protections in their constitution but then they got voted down in Kentucky and um Montana so if it were to come up in Oklahoma I don't think it would be that much different than that well no in Kentucky it was a reference right so right now you know in 2022 there were I think six referenda on abortion and everyone has been decided on the pro-choice or abortion rights or um reproductive Freedom side so what would happen in in Oklahoma um you know I think it would be much closer than a vote in the legislature on abortion um I think it would be closer than what we've seen in most Statewide elections you know where if you just look at the vote for U.S Senate um Mark Wayne Mullen won by 30 points I don't think that if you had a vote on abortion that it would you know I think it would be it could be close it would really depend a lot on how this was worded and um what was actually prohibited versus allowed and I think in this case messaging really would play a role I think that when you are talking about votes for candidates and offices that partisan identities just supersede everything else yeah I don't think it would have changed the outcome of the votes like I think even if abortion were on the ballot in some way we still would have had Kevin stay at Ryan Walters you know I think I think the legislative makeup would be the same because I do think people view it separately yeah I think and we've seen also other uh years where there have been votes for some Progressive policy measures criminal justice um Medicaid expansion although Medicaid expansion and marijuana were both June elections so uh harder to you know to to really see it see the contrast but I do think that there is a disconnect uh between how many voters feel on issues and which candidates they vote for and I think you know broadly speaking there is much greater support for Democratic issues than there are for Democratic politicians and you saw that uh in a whole bunch of states for example that have voted to raise the minimum wage through the initiative petition process um in 2016 18 2020 in States including you know Arkansas Nebraska North Dakota they voted to raise the minimum wage while at the same time voting quite solidly for Republicans at the top of the ticket and and all the way down so you know I think we will still see efforts to get things through initiative petition I think we will see uh Republicans try to limit uh the rights to initiative petition um over the coming years but I don't know that there's any issue we can put on the ballot that's going to have much of an impact on the candidates uh that voters support and maybe that's where the Democratic victories begin in those initiatives that you can't get a candidate elected but maybe you can get a candidate's position passed and so for many Oklahomans but you you can have your Republican Representatives but you can also have some freedom of choice and maybe that's the compromise maybe that's how a state like Oklahoma functions yeah well you know the other thing that that popped out at me is just the low voter turnout Oklahoma just we've what had 50 turnout I mean that's abysmal I mean it's probably going to be one of the lowest in the nation and particularly among the Metro areas so Tulsa Oklahoma County and Cleveland County the most populated counties only accounted for 40 of the total vote so nothing on the ballot seemed to Galvanize people in the Metro areas to just get out and vote so nobody on the ballot nobody on the ballot maybe maybe that maybe those maybe those initiative referendums and questions bring people out I don't know I mean what what do you see in that David when you look back at what has brought out more people to vote I mean regardless of how whether that would have changed the the outcome or not I don't know but just it just seems wrong that we can't seem to get more people to participate yeah we have very low voter turnout in Oklahoma uh back when I was at okay policy um I wrote a pretty extensive issue brief uh looking at this and had a whole long list of reforms that might help increase voter turnout you know um Extended early voting Oklahoma only allows early voting beginning you know over four days prior to the election a lot of states have weeks of early voting a lot of states allowed for same-day voter registration some states have uh permanent absentee voting um you know there's a number of things that we could do that would probably help with the margin and might increase voter turnout by a few percentage points uh I don't know that it's going to increase substantially the biggest thing that drives or deterred I think is more competitive elections and we just don't have many competitive elections we don't have you know during presidential elections presidential campaigns don't come to Oklahoma because we have an electoral college that says that unless you are one of those increasingly small number of competitive Battleground States your results are taken for granted doesn't matter whether Oklahoma goes to the Republican by 34 points or 42 points or 67 points it's going to be seven electoral votes for the Republican regardless that I think helps keep voter turnout low it is you know the fact that so so few legislative seats are competitive and this year I think we only had 36 um out of the 125 legislative seats that were up for grabs I think there were uh you know less than 40 where there were actually two candidates on the ballot in November so you know the fewer significant votes you have the less people are going to be paying attention and and getting out to vote um it's it's a big recurring problem but at the same time it is worth mentioning that the last several election Cycles have seen higher voter turnout than where we were 10 years ago you know in 2014 it was something like 42 or 44 of Oklahomans voted that was up quite a bit in 2018 in the aftermath of you know the big fight over education and taxes uh it's gone down a little bit um the last two presidential elections have you know been the highest turnout in years um and those were you know two very tight elections uh but also two elections where you know a lot of people felt like the whole future of the country was on the line I don't know if we want the future of the country to feel so much at stake every time we go to vote it's very very late out there David that you see who's in both camps that can speak to both parties Statewide or nationally you know you used to think about Colin Powell Walter Cronkite somebody who was trusted by both sides is there anybody that comes to mind yeah you know I think Joe Biden was an interesting example Biden was about as consensual a Democratic candidate as you can imagine um and it probably did help him win in 2020 that he was um you know not seen as militant or extreme and yet he was still stamped with the radical socialist label and you know if you ask Republicans now how they see Joe Biden he has the same level of animosity and hatred and you know he's a radical threat to the country as Barack Obama did as Bill Clinton did and I think it's the same thing on the other side I think you know right now if you ask Democrats which Republicans do you like um you know someone mentioned this chain a bit of a special case but let's see let's say Larry Horgan the governor of of Maryland um who did win twice in a majority Democratic State um well respected across the aisle if Larry Horgan became the Republican nominee tomorrow by the day after Democrats would see you know say that Larry Horgan wants to take away your social social security and your Medicare and um you can't vote for him he's he's too extreme for them so I I don't know that you know I think that we are so so polarized and partisan against these are so solidified or calcified that I don't I don't know that there is a figure out there who if they actually ran would not end up being seen as extreme and threatening by the other party's base I don't know do you guys see see yourself like the most depressing person right now it's like the polarized there's no one there I mean but there is a reality I mean a pro-choice Republican would never get out of the primaries to begin with he would never be nominated right so there's something about the closed primaries we have in Oklahoma I mean I think in the you're seeing some of the other states that have open primaries or ranked Choice voting they're getting more uh of that moderate on both sides at the state level but I think when you have primaries like we have them yeah it's I think you you're going to the extreme you know but I don't really see EX and I've said you know it hadn't even met a lot of the the candidates I can't point to Democrats in Oklahoma and go yeah that's the equivalent to AOC or that's the equivalent to it you know a bit of a stretch to call Joy Hoffmeister the same as uh AOC or Nancy Pelosi but that's it and JJ Dawson voted like a republican in everything except education and he voted against the vouchers he voted for local control but he voted for all of the anti-abortion measures a voted to keep guns you know free and open so but he still because he had the D and so I think that there is something to be said about the primaries but but I wanted to be before we get too far along you've mentioned that the national politics and I agree the Tip O'Neill days would be nice but so much of what I hear is just parroting what someone's heard on the from a national pundit and there's not a lot of understanding that sometimes you know Tucker Carlson or Rachel Maddow are not news gatherers they are editorialists and so there's a you know there's frustration on that end but right now nationally you have Donald Trump you know the future of the Republican party is what I want to talk about right now how does because nationally everyone's talking about gosh this Red Wave didn't happen in Oklahoma we don't necessarily feel that because we're Awash in Red so but how nationally is that going to play in Oklahoma is Trump going to how is that going to affect the future of the party both nationally and will that eventually affect Oklahoma politics I'm throwing it to you David Blatt all right um you know we seem to be in in one of these moments where Republicans are having second thoughts about Donald Trump and you know the evidence of how much Donald Trump is hurting Republicans in those few competitive swingable States and races you know this election it could not have been clearer that Donald Trump's support for candidates like Amendment Oz and Blake Masters and Doug mastriano and you know in state after State um where the elections really are competitive and Trump weighed in to get his candidate nominated those candidates did really poorly and likely cause the Republicans the Senate every Secretary of State yeah every one of them lost that Trump supported um you know I I think Trump still has very strong support but I think at the same time if Ron DeSantis could find a way to get himself um nominated um you know I think Oklahoma Republicans would be fine with with Juan DeSantis they're probably they probably would be fine with Nikki Haley or Mike Trump Jr right so I don't know that at this point that Oklahoma's Republicans are more sent on Trump than voters in other states uh I just don't think anybody has quite figured out you know we're talking Monday afternoon things may look um a little different after Trump's announcement tomorrow and how that how that shakes out well we've seen time and time again is Republicans have a moment of doubt about Donald Trump and he tweets at them and shows at them and threatens them and they all fall back into line even though they know that it's not working out for them you know and this time they lost an election that by every metric they should have won the President's party after you know the first midterm election historically loses 40 seats inflation's at 40 or high there are major issues at the border etc etc it should have been a spectacularly good year for the Republicans it wasn't and you know to oversimplify things only a little bit the problem was Donald Trump but how you get him out of there I don't know and glad that that one is not my problem it is my problem it's just not my default is is there a a uh we keep changing the definition of moderate and and extremist I mean it seems now that we a moderate Republican is one who accepts the election results and 10 15 years ago that would have been an absurd statement that we'd say look Masters accepted his defeat and there was no doubt you and I were talking about it earlier that had Joy Hofmeister beat and stick he would have accepted the results it seems like we we keep narrowing the definition of what it is that a moderate Republican uh should be and I'm just wondering are we getting to the point where where those moderate Republicans are just extremists with a couple of sane positions which we would otherwise uh infuriators I'm not so sure about that I think you know if we look at in Oklahoma I think if you look at Statewide elected officials like Matt Pannell Andrew Drummond Leslie Osborne Cindy bird Glenn Moretti Kim David these are all Republicans who have shown themselves to be willing to engage in the give and take of of you know regular politics um could have been who are willing to work across the aisle and compromise if you look at you know most of the Republicans in the legislature um you know don't forget that only four years ago that a super majority of Republicans voted to raise taxes including on oil and gas companies to give teachers a raise I think that you can say that there is still a there's a faction within the Republican party that is very much consumed by um hysteria over the bathrooms we've been talking about and are we going to still have a country and you know this is democracy is is under threat from the social and there's certainly a discourse there and and we heard it in some of the races I think we've particularly heard it in the superintendent race um probably uh incoming State superintendent but I don't think that that applies to to most of the Republicans and I think most of the Republicans in Oklahoma and even more so than nationally but even nationally if you look at the last two years there were Republicans most Republicans voted for some of Joe Biden's nominees and for some of the Democrats legislative agenda there you go Jenny positive positive light from David blood that is right he's just a ray of sunshine that David bled so but we are sort of at the end of our conversation and I like to give our guests the last word so David what do you want to say that you haven't already said well I feel like I've just gone on and on and on um you know I I do think that um somebody had asked I think you asked me I I had um um after the election you said what what would be the soundtrack um for post-election and um I came up with a couple of choices including should I stay or should I go but for Oklahoma Democrats I think I think the song to keep in their minds is we won't get fools again because you know every every four years uh and again you know I I love hope and and I greatly admire the candidates who put themselves out there and who try and you know who text me to say that the polls show that the race is tightening and you know uh we're within 10 and so on um but it's it's gonna be a long time I think before Democrats are competitive at the state level I do think maybe it's time to really start uh focusing more at the local level if if they're going to have a chance um focus on initiative petitions and put some of that money into some um State question campaigns and you know and just realize um that there are good people and bad people in the Republican party and and do what you can to uh try to lift up lift up the better ones I like the idea of having a playlist we'll have a a political playlist from David Blatt available soon on Spotify or wherever you get your music so um and then you can you know you know open for Barry at the next uh Comedy Hour at the Press Club so we'll do that that would be the depressed Club [Laughter] good one there you go I just want to say that if there was any doubt in Joe Biden's mind whether or not he should run again in 2024 Tuesday's election emboldened him and there's no way he's not running in 2024 that's my prediction he's going to run because he knows unlike any other Democrat who can say this Joe Biden can say I beat Donald Trump well we're going to have David Blatt back on before the legislative session so we can talk a little bit more about what Oklahoma will be facing next year in politics so thank you very much and I hope everybody has a good week thank you it's been a pleasure bye-bye