Welcome to the Conversations, That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. I don't know why I have these headphones on. I don't need them for the podcast. I just feel comfortable with them. I don't know what I would do without them. I don't know what it is. You know, Russell Fuller asked me, how about that for important topics to start the podcast? Russell Fuller asked me, so why do you wear those headphones, those big headphones? I thought, you know, I don't know. I just feel, they feel good. They're like earmuffs. It gets cold in New York, okay? But, all right, I'm not going to wear them. We are going to talk about some important things, though. Let me tell you, it's, it's surreal a surreal a little bit like I don't know if I'm

that surprised it's just the two states I'm the most familiar with politically that I have

done more politically in that I am connected to people involved in politics more in

that I understand the way the population dynamics

work and the demographics.

They are probably New York and Virginia.

And if you remember from a few years ago, there was a hit piece on me in, I can't even

remember what outlet it was now.

I think the Huffington Post. I was an

insurrectionist. I was a slavery apologist. Some of you remember this from 2021. And it wasn't because

I was going after Democrats. It was because in a Virginia primary, I went after Glenn Yonkin.

And it actually, it hurt him. He almost didn't make it. make it not attributing all of that to me but

probably the some of the best dirt for the Republicans on Yonkin was coming from this podcast and and so

I'll let to say I know how it works more or less in Virginia and New York more than any

other states. And I'm seeing the cope today on X especially, but on Facebook, other social

media platforms from Republicans. And I'm just kind of shaking my head at the things that they're attributing this to.

So what I want to do is I want to get into some of the polling.

I'll mix in some of my own experiences and observations from politics in both of these regions.

And then we'll draw some conclusions about what happened.

And it wasn't just one thing.

This is one of the temptations in politics is to reduce everything to one thing.

It's one issue.

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