Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed California refugee and the creator of tennvoterguide.com, Craig Huey, in-studio to explain how the guide works and give his top picks for candidates in the even-numbered districts running for election.
Leahy: We are delighted to welcome to our microphones our very good friend, Mr. Craig Huey, who is the author of The Tennessee Voter Guide. Good morning, Craig.
Huey: Michael, it’s great to be here.
Leahy: And it’s always a delight because you always bring a lot of verve and energy. You like that?
Huey: I do like that.
Leahy: Verve and energy at 6:00 in the morning, we need verve and energy.
Huey: And for an election, you’ve got to have it because this election is really important.
Leahy: Now, you and I both live in Williamson County, and we’ve decided that the best way to do this is to take some time and talk about very specific elements. And so in this segment and in the next segment, you’re in-studio to talk about, I guess it’s what, six school board races?
Huey: Oh, yeah.
Leahy: In Williamson County. There are 12 school board districts, 12 board members representing 12 districts. And this year is the event, districts 2,4,6,8 and 10 and 12, where there are elections in two years, it will be the odd districts elected to four-year terms.
You’re going to go through each of these districts and you’re going to talk about who you endorse. Tell us about the Tennessee Voter Guide and the process by which you identify candidates.
Huey: So the Tennessee Voter Guide is something to help people have an understanding of how to vote for, not against, their values. Michael, people got in the mail their ballot information. They get five, six different sheets that are just filled with candidates. Who are these people?
They look around and they see lawn signs everywhere. You can’t vote based upon lawn signs. You get these direct mail pieces that are hit pieces and nasty, dirty little pieces. How can you tell who these candidates really are?
Leahy: This guy beats his mother.
Huey: That’s mild. And so here’s the thing. How do you tell who’s a good candidate? Judges really hide behind this judicial concept that you don’t even tell people who they are and what they believe.
And yet the judiciary is out of control, legislating from the bench. And we’ve got these judicial activists right here in Tennessee, and we have people in Tennessee that are Republicans in name only.
We have Democrats running as Independents, we have conservative Republicans running as Independents. How do you tell the difference?
Leahy: It’s very confusing. Now we both live in Williamson County. I think you got a sample ballot. It’s confusing.
Huey: It’s so confusing. It is terrible. You get this sheet trying to talk about early voting. Unless you know what they’re talking about, you can’t interpret it.
Then you get to the next page, you get a Republican ballot, it’s just this massive list of candidates. And then also you get a Democratic ballot and a massive list of candidates.
Then you get all these local elections, and who in the world are these guys and what are these races? And what’s this board regulating? And what’s this person trying to text me on? You just don’t know.
Leahy: So you are here to enlighten our listening audience.
Huey: Oh, my gosh.
Leahy: Tennvoterguide.com. Now you can click on Williamson County. And when we come back, we’ll go through these 12 races. I actually live in the 2nd district, and I see that you’ve got – we’ll talk about who you’re recommending.
Huey: Yes.
Leahy: In this race. Speaking of, the incumbent Republican is Dan Cash.
Huey: Correct.
Leahy: And when we come back, we’ll talk about the race between Dan Cash and Tiffany Echols, an Independent.
Huey: Yes.
Leahy: And I want to see who you’re endorsing in that way because my vote will be informed by your recommendation.
Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio who referenced a recent article by Byron York about the polarization in America and his take on market impact.
Leahy: We are joined now by our good friend, the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael. Crom, good morning.
Carmichael: Morning Michael.
Leahy: Crom, you know I’m taking the next week off. A week from today is Memorial Day. We will have a best of programs. And Scooter we have so many great programs it’s going to be hard for you to pick the best of? (Laughter) Like there are so many great programs.
Then on Tuesday and when Wednesday sitting in my seat, the official guest host of The Tennessee Star Report, Ben Cunningham, founder of the Nashville Tea Party. And if all goes well, Thursday and Friday, co-founder of The Tennessee Star, Christina Botteri, will be sitting in for me on Thursday and Friday. So Crom, you’ll have a guest host on Wednesday and Friday of next week. I know you’ll miss me. Yes, I’m sure you will miss me desperately.
Carmichael: Hope wherever you are it’s successful.
Leahy: So do I. Well, you are busy reading, as you always are. And you read a column by Byron York. A very good writer. Tell us about that column.
Carmichael: Well, what Byron York points out is that over the last gosh six decades and after 100 days, there are polls that are taken on the approval and disapproval or actually, it’s not even approval of disapproval. It’s the approval of the President.
Leahy: After a hundred days?
Carmichael: Yes. And they divide it by GOP and Democrat. And under Biden, the approval rate among Republicans is nine percent. The approval rate among Democrats is 90 percent. So the gap between the two is 81 percent.
Leahy: 90 percent approval of Democrats for Biden.
Carmichael: So don’t focus on that. Focus on the gap between the two because with Lyndon Johnson who was a pretty polarizing guy, the gap was 15 points. Now with Nixon had got to 39 points. Then it went back down to Gerald Ford 31.
Jimmy Carter was 27, and Reagan was 45. But then after that, it dropped back down to 39. And that was George H. Bush in ’89. So that’s three decades ago that it’s gone from 39 to 57 to 62 to 63. Trump was 77. Biden is 81.
So it shows that our country, this is the point, it shows that our country is becoming incredibly polarized. This is what is very disturbing. And this is what I talk about a lot since you had me back on the show. And that is that the Democrat Party is the party of government and those affiliated with the government.
And the Republican Party is the party of everybody else. If you perceive yourself to be affiliated with the government or benefiting from government and you don’t think you can benefit from government in a free society with less government, then you’re going to support Democrats.
But the effect of that over the last 20 years certainly is that the deficit. And the way Democrats have maintained their influence among voters is they just throw around money. And there is a limit to that. I don’t know what it is, but when we reach it, we’ll reach it in a hurry.
Leahy: Things will start really falling apart. Economically.
Carmichael: In my lifetime we’ve had at least five Black Swan event-type of things. In the ’70s there were two liquidity crises. Then you had in ’87, you had a real estate debacle. Then you had the dot com boom-bust.
Leahy: Boom then bust.
Carmichael: Boom then bust around the year 2000. Then you had 2008 to 2010 once again, real estate debacle. And when those things occur, everybody is surprised. For example, I have been asking, I have friends and then I meet people who are in the investment business.
They’re professionals with investment banking firms. And I asked them, I said, what is your firm’s position on how the market is. Where does it sit and where is it headed? And I get the same answer from every literally the same answer from everyone.
As long as the Fed is accommodating and interest rates stay low, then the market will go up. When all the professionals in the market and I’m not saying all of them, but a majority when all of them think the same thing, typically, whatever it is they think turns out to be incorrect because markets are contrary.
When the people are incredibly bullish, that means people are fully invested. So there’s not a whole lot more to drive the markets up. And as these people point out is that when you have the Fed providing liquidity, then there is a lot of money chasing assets. But if inflation pops up…
Leahy: Which it’s doing.
Carmichael: Well, if it pops up even more and it’s longer-term than one or two months, then all of a sudden the Fed will have to adjust its behavior.
Leahy: Interest rates will have to go up.
Carmichael: They’ll have to push them up and they’ll have to tighten liquidity. And when that happens, then that’s when the markets will adjust, because the investment community thinks that the Feds are going to keep interest rates down and provide liquidity.
If they do, then the markets will continue to go up when everybody thinks the same thing is going to happen. So I want to get back to what this article is, which is so interesting to me is that even Democrats invest in the stock market. Republicans invest in the stock market.
But you see this huge difference in opinion. The Democrat party is now revealing itself in that it does not look right now from where I sit, I think that Biden’s tax package is all but dead. I think that his infrastructure program is all but dead.
And if those two things are all but dead or actually are dead, then his family Bill will never even get on the runway. And so what we’ll have is we’ll be going into the midterm, where the leadership of the Democrat Party was pushing an incredibly reckless agenda.
But it was three or four Democrats in the Senate who stood their ground silently, along with Republicans who stood their ground vocally. They kept the left that controls the Democrat Party now from doing some things that would just wreak havoc on the economy.
It will be interesting to see if things don’t do well. First of all, if Biden doesn’t get his big tax package passed and doesn’t get infrastructure and doesn’t get anything done, whether or not he will remain as popular among Democrats. I think a big part of his popularity among Democrats is he’s not Trump.
Leahy: Bingo.
Carmichael: And as long as Trump exists as a political force, which is going to be…
Leahy: Unless something happens.
Carmichael: Unless something happens to him, he will, then Biden’s popularity among Democrats. There are still Independents’ out there, which probably represent among these people who are polled. I’m going to say maybe 15 to 20 percent who don’t claim they’re not either one.
In which case they don’t participate in the poll, as long as Trump is out there than Biden’s popularity, regardless of what he does. And this is to me, what’s a little bit different because when George W. Bush was President, he lost his popularity in his last two years with Republicans.
When he left office, his popularity was 29 percent. And that’s because everybody had lost confidence in him. And I was among those. And the more time passes, my sense of it is he will be as a President.
Leahy: Absolutely. His ratings are going to continue to plummet.
Carmichael: And he’ll be down in the bottom third of presidents all the time fairly soon. And I think he’ll continue to drop below that. There are some people who think the world of George Bush. He was a fine gentleman. And even when people attack him, he would respond by turning the other cheek. And some people see that as a virtue. I think it’s virtuous in some professions.
Leahy: No not at all.
Carmichael: I don’t think it’s effective as a politician, especially as President. I think if you don’t fight for what you believe in, then the public soon begins to believe that you don’t believe in anything at all. This poll with Byron York shows the polarization in the country, and we’ll talk about that more when we get back.
Leahy: I completely agree. The question is, what does this mean for the future? We’ll talk about that.
Listen to the second hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Crom Carmichael” by Crom Carmichael.
