Welcome to this week's edition of Mississippi Happening podcast.
My name is David Olds and joining me each week is my friend, my sometime antagonist and co-host, Mr.
Jim Newman.
Jim, how are you buddy?
I'm doing fine.
Looks like you got a new pair of glasses.
ah As a matter of fact, I did.
broke my other ones and look at this.
Isn't that neat?
Do you like them?
Excuse me?
You look like Mr.
Magoo.
that's right.
You're younger.
uh Sadly, I do remember Mr.
McGoo too.
But anyway, well, thank you.
ah How's the arm?
I got to ask about the arm and how I got to ask about the PT.
It's getting better, the PT's getting worse.
The more I do, the more they think I ought to do, so.
you know what that means.
It means you're giddy.
Gotcha.
Okay.
Well, there you go.
Well, good.
um Last week and the past few weeks have been extremely unsettling for all of us.
And it's been kind of scary.
the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the assassination of Minnesota Democrat leader, Melissa Hortman, her husband and yes, her dog in her home and the attempted assassination
of Senator John Hoffman and his wife also in their home.
Now that was an attempted.
assassination on the Hortmans.
So this week we want to talk about the volatile state of politics today and hopefully we can maybe come up with some answers and maybe some things that we could possibly do.
Our guest today is my friend, my buddy, and I love to talk politics.
I love his collection of everything.
political and you see it in his office, uh, is Dr.
Nathan Schrader.
Nathan, it is so good to see you.
it's good to see both of you.
I, in fact, I'm looking forward to my next uh visit to Mississippi in a few months.
Yes, come on, we got to, you know, you can stay at my house or you stay at Jim's.
Isn't that right, Jim?
There you go.
is still available.
Well, I was going to say it depends on who's got the best room and board costs.
Well, depends on what you like to drink.
There you go.
But I guarantee you, Jim is going to have better alcohol than I do.
But let me tell you guys a little bit about Dr.
Nathan Schrader.
He is a Pennsylvania native.
He serves as the associate professor of politics.
He's the co-director of the Center for Civic Engagement in New England at New England College in New Hampshire.
He spent eight years as chair of the government and political and politics department at Millsaps in Jackson.
He was also a political analyst for WJTN in Jackson, Mississippi.
He previously worked as an intern in the US Senate, the legislative aid, deputy communications director for the Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania and a legislative aid.
in the Virginia House of Delegates.
He has been very active in politics and political campaigns since the age of 14.
And I mean, you got the bug early, didn't you, buddy?
You got it early and kept it.
He has been a member of the Pennsylvania and Mississippi Democratic State Executive Committees and vice chair of the Hines County Mississippi Democratic Party.
He currently serves on the executive committee for the Manchester New Hampshire Democratic Party and also the New Hampshire Democratic Party State Committee.
So Nathan, once again, it's so good to have you with us.
This is a, and I'll just jump right in and we'll just kind of start it off.
What?
are your thoughts about what's going on in America today and the political?
Talk to me.
Tell me what your thoughts are.
Well, unfortunately, it feels as if the country is becoming uh somewhat becoming ungovernable in a way that there are individuals in charge of uh key centers of power in
the in Washington, D.C.
and the Trump administration, who seem that their objective is not to govern the country.
It is to undo the governance of the country and it's to make the country conform to sort of their
philosophies about the power of government and who should be in charge of government, which in their view is one singular person.
And that's, that's Donald Trump.
And that has made the country in my view, in the last, uh the last several months feel and, and appear to be ungovernable that, that, that it's impossible to make deals as you
could with in the traditional sense of the word.
And American politics is hard for the two parties to make deals with each other to
say keep the government funded to get uh certain types of programs passed because you don't know what this really volatile president is gonna do to gum up the works in
Washington.
we went from having a semi-functional government in Washington that was uh deeply flawed but still able to occasionally get things done to having one that is really governed by
the whim of
one individual who believes that everything is owed to him and he owes nothing back in return.
And so I'm uh normally not much in the way of being a pessimist, but I feel that I'm becoming one because right now uh there's so little pushback from the courts.
There's so little pushback from Congress.
And at times I wonder where in the heck is the Democratic Party's uh
And I don't want to say it's where's their message because I think they'll eventually find that.
it's almost like where's their courage to stand up when and not just put out press releases.
And it's kind of given me this feeling that we we've got a lot of we've got trouble in front of us now, trouble ahead.
And we all have to do our best to get through it, to save the country.
Gotcha.
When you, I'm glad you brought up, know, I'm kind of like you and I think Jim will agree.
It appears the, and we know that Republicans just, I mean, whatever, whatever Trump says is going to happen.
But have we really seen any pushback from the Democratic
leadership.
uh Have we seen any pushback from them?
What are they doing?
So David, David and Jim, this is the part that's really uh frustrating is to see that I think there are individual rank and file members of the Democratic caucus in the House and
in the Senate in Washington.
And I think dozens and hundreds maybe of activist groups all over the country that are supporting the Democratic party and want them to.
you know, to be the alternative, but it doesn't seem as if the people leading the party right now, at least in the national level, they haven't found their voice yet in this.
It's almost as they're very timid at a time when we can't afford the timidity.
But I don't want that to be a reflection on, I want to be careful that I'm not singling out those groups of activists all over the country that are holding the protests, that are
rallying, that are registering voters.
uh And, you know, some of our state and state, county, and then city and town Democratic Party organizations, I think they're doing what they can.
But until we get the leadership of the national party in the House and the Senate and the DNC to sort of turn up the heat on the president and on the Trump administration and stop
trying to uh treat this as if it's a normal time in politics.
uh I don't think
I don't think it's going to get better, but I do want to say those individual organizations and individual members of Congress and state and county party leaders out
there, I think they're trying.
They just don't have the tools they need right now with the Republicans holding the White House, the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court.
And the thing is, the longer the Trump administration goes on, there'll be more federal judgeships at the appellate level that
Donald Trump will fill on the district courts and the court of appeals.
So the courts, whatever independence the courts have, I think will start gradually starting to slip away as he starts to appoint more of his people to the upcoming vacancy.
Jim, weigh in on this and the Democrats.
What are your thoughts, Jim?
I don't like the Democrats.
Oh, come on, Jim.
I don't like the leadership.
think personally, I think the leadership ah is gutless.
ah I know in Mississippi, I think I'm safe saying that we don't have any leadership.
but some counties are working very hard to...
get people registered to vote, but then they don't have any plan to follow up to see if they actually did vote.
So my question then is, well, why bother to register people to vote if you're not going to back it up and follow up and call them and find out, call them maybe the day before and
say, you know, tomorrow you vote and then call them the day after and say, did you vote?
Or if it's a primary.
get the primary election results and see who voted, see if people who you got signed up.
I think there's a lot of talk and not a lot of action from the national and state levels of democratic parties across the nation.
I'm glad that you guys brought up the oh smaller organizations and the grassroots oh issues.
You know, we talked to Mississippi Indivisible and that group is on fire.
Last night, I was fortunate to attend a meeting with some Democrats and I've got to say, and I've got to brag on DeSoto County Executive Committee.
They have done a tremendous job getting registered voters.
oh then recently they elected the first Democrat in Horn Lake as mayor, Reverend Jimmy Stokes.
so there's a lot of the grassroots and yes, it seems to be that there needs to be more something at the state level.
and also at the national level as well.
But it seems to me like two weeks ago at a press conference, and I can quote that so-and-so verbatim, I'm the president of the United States and I can do whatever I want.
And then yesterday on the tarmac before he took off, he referred to the left as left radicals, scumbags and worse.
and
You want to wonder why nobody wants to work with him from the Democratic side?
Yeah.
Well, and Jim, just on top of that, you know, I read a statement by Senator Schumer this morning.
I think he said it yesterday.
He's, of course, the Democratic leader in the Senate, minority leader in the Senate about how he thinks that it's possible to work with the Republicans in a bipartisan way to avoid
a government shutdown.
And I just said, well, I
I wish that was true, but this is not 1998 anymore.
It's 2025 and the country, this is not the same country it was politically as it was in the nineties when that was manageable and that could happen.
I feel like people like him are the ones who are, they're just, they're kind of whistling past the graveyard and they're looking beyond the fact that Jim, like you said, Trump
said, I'm the, I'm in, I'm, I can do whatever I want.
Remember this goes back to what he said at the.
2016 Republican convention in Cleveland when he accepted the nomination, he went through the whole list of all the problems, problems that were not real problems.
Once he created, as I remember, and only I may fix it or only I can fix it.
And this is just an extension of that.
And we, I just had a class this afternoon here at New England college where we were talking about the ramifications of what's happening right now uh in American politics
since the murder of Charlie Kirk.
on the long term of democracy.
And I was telling the students about how don't want them to think that what they're experiencing now is normal.
Because I'm afraid they're of an age right now between what 18 and 21, 22, where they're going to look back and say, this is, guess, what politics is always like or normally like.
And I played them a clip from PBS NewsHour last night where Donald Trump
uh had said that some of these, as you said, these liberal, was it liberal, lunatic organizations, he said they're already under investigation.
They don't even know it yet.
And then uh JD Vance says, we're gonna use the power of the federal government to go after the liberal leaning organizations.
This is what the fringe has right has wanted for a long time.
Sadly, the murder of Charlie Kirk
It feels like the moment that they, the moment they've been waiting for to launch this sort of full scale uh McCarthy style assault on the liberal organizations and democratic
party leading organizations.
And it's sad that this is what it took to do it, but I think they now have their moment and they can't turn back.
It's, yeah, and it's sad that, uh you know, we have to remember and we try to remember.
Yes, he was a...
Now, none of us um agreed with anything that he said.
However, he was, you know, he was married, he had a wife, he had two kids and he had a family that loved him.
And then also at the same time, you ah know, Democrat leader, Melissa uh Hortman and her...
husband, they had a family that, that loved them.
Um, it, it, and also it's, yeah, he's, he's going after just people because he doesn't agree with them.
And, and the thing that's, that's frightening for me, uh, is, you know, he's, he's sending, you know, I live in DeSoto County.
I live in Olive branch, you know,
you know, 10 minutes away is Memphis, Tennessee.
And the national guard will be in Memphis next week.
uh We know they were in DC uh and we know how that turned out.
My fear, and there's a lot going on and also DeSoto County, uh
Sheriff's Department, they've also, oh they're going to support uh Donald Trump and the uh National Guard and everything that they can do.
But it scares me, and I oh have to ask this question, is Donald Trump, and he's targeting the black cities, he's targeting
the cities with black leadership.
But is he setting the stage for martial law if something happens in the midterms?
David, that's a difficult question because on just knowing his track record, knowing his viewpoints when it comes to race relations in America and knowing his deep desire to hold
power for as tightly as he can, I'm afraid.
I'm afraid that that's possible.
just I just can't tell if that's really what if this is more of a display him.
putting on a display of his power and a show of force or him foreshadowing what could happen should his party lose.
I will tell you there's actually something I'm I'm also rather concerned with right now is, you know, he went through this phase where he was talking about running for a third
term and you know, they're even they're still they're selling Trump 2028 merchandise, right?
And and look, I've been on some
radio programs here in New Hampshire talking about that.
And there seems to be a consensus among Democrats and Republicans up here alike that, that's just his bluster.
that's just it.
I actually am.
I believe there's a there's a real possibility that this that there could be a legal challenge brought to the Supreme Court, go all the way to the Supreme Court between now
and 2020, late 2027.
early with Donald Trump, if he's still alive and well, I think the courts could rule with him.
He's got the majority on the Supreme Court.
am actually, that has occupied more of my thinking.
It would be, the undoing of the constitution to allow for Trump to seek another term.
I've been thinking along those lines more than the, what you were describing as the possibility of martial law.
I'm not ruling that out.
It's just, it's not been really where my headspace has been on this.
But if that happens and the Supreme Court ah says it's okay, would that not require an amendment to the Constitution?
And that would require probably two or three years of the states having to vote.
And in the meantime,
Jim, yes is the answer, but the way that he has the full ownership, lock, stock and barrel of the Supreme Court.
That's what the process is supposed to do.
That's how it's supposed to work.
I'm not convinced that that's the way it would work if it meant saving Trump or allowing Trump to seek another term, that the courts would take some extraordinary action to...
uh
rule the amendment unconstitutional or illegal, not that they necessarily can do that with an amendment that's already in place.
But I'm just not convinced that the court will be there to uh save the day should the worst come to pass.
I guess the other side of that coin would be, okay, now Barack Obama, and we've all seen the memes, you know, okay, then Barack Obama gets back in a race and you know what, you
know, then everybody would go nuts and say, oh no, you know, it's okay for Trump to do it, but Obama can't, that type.
Right.
think, and you know, I think that's probably, but Trump's, I think, I've heard a Republican uh member of the House or the Senate weigh in on that same question, David, and
I forget who it was now.
This was a few months ago.
And they said, no, this, we would make sure that this only applied to Trump.
And I don't know how they would do that, but that's, but just so you know, that's the way they're thinking about this.
That, but they're not,
These aren't rational, logical thinking people.
But at the same time, I'm going to give credit where credit is due, even though I vehemently disagree with them.
They know how to work the levers of power to get what they want.
Absolutely.
Nathan, I'm interested in what do your students think?
What are, I'm really, uh so this is something, I can say this about the students that I have taught, uh when I taught at Millsaps for eight years in Jackson, and this is the
start of my fourth year already here in New England College, and I taught as an adjunct in the Philadelphia suburbs prior to Millsaps.
I've always been blessed with very thoughtful students who don't engage in the kind of what I call,
This is what I call the Bush League tactics that we see on television sometimes, know, the shouting each other down and not willing to talk or listen to one another.
I've been very fortunate not to have that happen with my students and whether it's in the classroom or when we go to very, we go to see as little class trips, we go to see
candidates and speak and we go to debates and I've not ever, so I'm, first of all, I'm very pleased with the students I've had past and present.
who've demonstrated to me that they are more than capable of handling complicated, difficult uh issues that require maturity uh and reason to get through.
And I know that's not on every campus, but I've been very fortunate with it.
let me tell you what I'm hearing right now.
uh I'm hearing from students who are incredibly, first of all, concerned about the future.
Democrat, Republican, and independent alike, but also one who feel that they are going to have a hard time getting ahead.
That they are going to have a hard time matching the quality of life that their parents had or that their grandparents had because the economic opportunities aren't dwindling.
You know, there's not, and I had a discussion with a class the other day, couple or two weeks ago, I was talking about, we were talking about defining the American dream.
What does that mean?
And I brought in one of them had brought up about retiring and a few of them laughed and they said, we're never going to get to retire.
And then I tried to explain to my grandfather who worked for us steel for 40 years about the pension program that he was in.
they said, if one of them actually said, Dr.
Shrader, what is a pension?
And I said, that's, this is why I think they're, I mean, I feel bad.
just feel for them because I, they're, I think they're deeply concerned about whether they're going to have the same.
opportunity to achieve the American dream that prior generations have.
And they talk about that a lot.
That was one of the things that.
I think attracted Charlie Kirk to so many college students.
Yeah.
And uh...
They're very pliable when they're in their 18 to 22 age group.
They can.
listen to various, I call them pundits.
uh
They don't know what's the truth and what's not because they have not been taught in high school or in the first two years of college critical thinking.
Mm-hmm.
And this goes along with the...
ah
outlawing of DEI.
Has DEI affected you in any way?
Well, so I can tell you that it's affected again, the way some of the younger students that I'm teaching uh feel that they're there.
They say things to me like, well, will I no longer be able to take classes that study race and gender problems in America?
Those kinds of, you know, even though that's the it's not the curriculum right now that's necessarily being assailed by the federal government.
It's
It's the infrastructure, right?
The hiring processes, the support offices, know, colleges in New Hampshire, the state legislature uh enacted something, we can no longer have offices of diversity and inclusion
here.
That was a state law.
went along with the Trump administration and went further than they did.
it's, but I think that we need, we need to be, I think very, we need to be reasonable about the fact that you're right.
These are.
college students, high school students, college or young college students, they are impressionable.
And but they also, again, like I said earlier, they don't this is the only politics they've ever known, right?
Because this is when they're being socialized into politics.
And my fear is, again, they accept what's happening is inevitable in our politics today, and that this is just the way it is, and it will always be this way.
And that's what scares me a little bit is that they're not there.
They're seeing what's happening and they're saying, this is just normal.
This is just what we're have to live with.
And that's frightening.
It's interesting what you said about your students.
ah It echoes what uh Cliff Johnson, uh OBS law professor, ah he was saying pretty much the same thing.
Their fear is they're not gonna be able to buy a house.
They're not gonna be able to afford a house.
And if we can...
Get back a little bit on DEI and our listeners and viewers have heard us talk about DEI.
uh Maybe Nathan, get your take on this.
My fear with the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion, are we going back to segregation?
And that's one of my fear.
Are we going back to segregation?
Well, David, I think that's a fair question.
don't, I'm not sure if we're going back to segregation, but we're going back to a time, we're going back to a period in which race or racial issues are simply maybe ignored,
which I think is, which is a little different, right?
But although I can tell you this, this morning, because I knew I was going to be talking to you all today, I was looking over some art, current things on Mississippi Today, which
that website I still I try to keep up with that they do a really nice job with Mississippi issues.
And I saw that Attorney General Lynn Fitch is apparently trying to appeal to the federal government to eliminate the ability of organizations to represent client or plaintiffs on
civil rights violation matters.
I mean, this is that is truly astonishing that
That is up, David, that to me is closer to returning to segregation than the DEI component in education, I think has more to do with just sidestepping and ignoring issues of race
altogether, diversity altogether.
What Lynn Fitch is proposing, I think is, looks, sounds a lot closer to returning to segregation to me.
Gotcha.
Yeah.
And now I glanced at it.
I article, but Jim, did you have something?
Well, it seems like historically what happens in Mississippi ah doesn't take long for it to start off in other states as well.
Yes.
I was, Jim, you, this is something that I was uh explaining to a friend of mine uh here in New Hampshire.
It also follows our state legislature pretty closely here.
I said, right now the Republicans in the, and people think, well, New Hampshire is in the New England States.
It's a lot different than Republican parties in other places.
Well,
The thing is, this is the most conservative politically of the New England states.
And there's a Republican, a heavy Republican majority in the House and the Senate in New Hampshire, and the governor is a Republican.
We have something called the Governor's Executive Council, which is a four to one Republican body that kind of uphold the governor's agenda.
But what I was explaining, I was trying to explain the politics of uh the Mississippi legislature to a friend here.
Haha
said, it's, and I said, it's almost as if you could take, and I, I wish this, I was kidding about this, but I'm not.
You could take the Republican caucus in the Mississippi house and put them here and trade them with the New Hampshire Republican caucus in the house in Concord, New Hampshire.
And you would get the same types of legislation coming out of them.
And it's hard.
That's to me how the Republican party has just become so homogenous, right?
That there used to be this distinct like.
New England Republican party, know, a more, slightly more moderate Republicans in this area.
That is no more.
To me, it's a homogenous party that does one thing and it's, uh it follows Trump and it demands uh absolute uh agreement on all the policy issues.
Do you have a Republican supermajority?
I believe the house is, the Democrats are down about that.
So an interesting thing about the state house here, there are 400 members in one of the here.
Yeah, so it's one of the tiniest states.
so members, we also have multi-member districts.
Believe it or not, I'm represented by five different members of the state house where I live.
I have five representatives in the house.
And you know, guess what they make a year to do this job.
And they're in session longer than the Mississippi House and Senate, $100.
So these are people who have jobs where they're fully retired, but they're expected on no pay to do this job.
And it tends to attract people, at least on the Republican side, they're very hard line partisans.
because that's there.
you know, they're more than willing to do the job because that's how they can initiate their policy agenda.
Well, they can move to Mississippi and ah in their legislative positions make 40,000 or more.
May 40 thousand...
Right.
Yeah, plus all the
why they want to stay up there.
Let me ask you, how's the maple syrup up there?
Look, it's it's uh it's it's delicious.
And in fact, I'm sitting here in my campus office uh right now, two doors down from me is our I'm in the humanities division and our building, our uh administrative assistant.
Their father taps maple syrup from the trees in there, in there, on their property.
for Christmas last year, they brought all of us who our offices are in the building, our own bottle.
So, yeah, that's the uh
Yo, it's delicious.
uh
the tariffs going to maple syrup?
Well, so there was an article in one of the, I believe it was the New Hampshire Business publication.
It's not called the New Hampshire Business Journal, but it's something along those lines talking about all of the areas in which the tariffs have already been affecting this state
and it's possible that that's going to be one of them.
The other thing is, there's another article this week that tourism, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont rely heavily on Canadian tourism.
uh Vice versa, citizens here going to Canada.
the report was that Canadian tourism over the last six months has declined about 40 some percent uh coming into Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine.
And the governor here, who is a Republican, is the only governor in New England that won't renounce Trump's policies on immigration and the tariffs.
And what they've had to do is at taxpayers' expense, send their own.
delegation of New Hampshire elected officials to Canada to try to smooth things over.
It's like all they had is their guy that's causing the problem and they're now spending tax dollars from Granite State residents here in New Hampshire to go try to uh make things
better with the Canadians that Trump has driven away.
It feels like the Twilight Zone in a lot of ways, uh
I think it is.
ah
It's, I...
I am equally concerned about where this is all headed.
I had a friend of mine, you may have known him, George Cochran, who was a law professor at Ole Miss, and came when Ole Miss integrated and had been a clerk for, I think, Justice
Black.
I may be wrong.
George used to say, change will only occur when people take to the streets.
And that reminds me of
the founding of this country.
the the British patrols.
the unauthorized arrests.
and the people formed their own little militias.
And the next thing you knew...
We had a war and the British were getting beaten.
Took a while, but they got beaten.
And what did they get beaten for?
They did not like having a king.
They did not like taxation without representation.
They did not like.
They didn't like, I guess, so many wealthy people and so many ah people that didn't have the wherewithal to do anything.
Mm-hmm.
And it seems to me that we could very easily end up with riots in the streets and guns being fired.
And as much as I'm opposed to that.
I can see that happening with a large number of people to save our democracy.
Well, but I don't think this is out of the realm of possibility.
And that's why over the last few days, the rhetoric surrounding the murder of Charlie Kirk has been so alarming.
And I'm not just saying the rhetoric, I'm saying the rhetoric from the view of some uh celebrating the man's murder, which I think is abhorrent.
But then you also have the people on the right, uh like,
president and the vice president, vowing retribution uh against the left.
And we have no evidence yet that the suspect here that's in custody uh acted because of any liberal leaning political motivations.
The early stages of this thing before an arrest was made, had conservatives in the Trump administration and Trump himself alleging that this was some sort of a left wing liberal.
uh
a hit on Charlie Kirk.
it's like they're willing to ignore the facts and ignore the truth.
I believe try to stoke the to try to make to inflame the situation so that it's worse to to that may lead us to the conditions that you described.
That's that's what really worries me is seeing how the country has reacted in the last couple of days that uh the NFL uh
all but four NFL teams holding tributes to this individual.
And then the ones who didn't, they're getting uh pummeled on the internet over the fact they didn't.
It's like a man has died here and we still don't seem to be able to, as a country, have the nuance to say Charlie Kirk believed in some truly uh bigoted uh things.
uh But that means we defeat him by
debating him and proving him wrong, not by the barrel of the gun.
And I feel like we were missing the idea we get both things can be true at once, right?
He had truly despicable views about race, gender, immigration, folks who are non-Christian or uh non-people of no religious faith, right?
But at the same time,
We all can agree that what happened to him is unacceptable in a democracy But I feel like we can't people can't bring themselves to say both You know this And I and it's so it's
it's really scary to see that part
It seems to me that the young man that did the shooting.
Was
He had a roommate and it was a LGBTQ type relationship.
The young man.
in my opinion, had some grievances.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, he's that LBGTQ community has not been well treated by the Trump administration or by any of the states ah as well.
And I think the kid lost it.
I think he just decided that his lifestyle was he just couldn't live that lifestyle.
He could not face.
the treatment that he was going to receive the rest of his life.
And he wanted to do something.
tonight in DeSoto County in Hernando, which is a county seat, there is a meeting.
uh One of the aldermen has proposed that one of the main streets in Hernando be renamed Charlie Kirk Boulevard.
So there will be a lot of uh discussion there.
Sadly, I won't.
I won't be there, I have an up-prior commitment, but I would be there and I would be very opposed to that.
ah Let's get back a little bit to Mississippi.
opposed to that?
ah Number one, because of his beliefs.
because of Charlie Kirk's beliefs, what he said, it's wrong.
And once again, no, hate that he was murdered.
I hate that he left a family, but that is, that is, it's wrong.
Getting back to a little bit about in Mississippi and uh Dr.
Schrader, I'm glad you brought that up about Lynn Fitch.
In Mississippi, it's horrible ah what we are seeing.
ah
our governor, Tate Reeves.
uh He, uh well, let me ask you, Jim, what do you think about Tate Reeves sending the National Guard to DC?
ah I think he would have been better off to send him to Hattiesburg or Jackson, which have higher crime rates than DC does.
Oh, are you saying that national guards should be used as policemen and to fight crime?
No, but if you're gonna do it, the troops, send the Mississippi troops to places in Mississippi that could use the uh additional manpower.
I know a number of cities that would love to have the National Guard come in and plant flowers and do raking and clean up leaves and trash, et cetera.
So, yeah.
But it's go ahead, Dr.
Schreider.
No, no, I, that's not what I was expecting you to say on that one, Jim.
But I, I, but I, do want to say with, with governor Reeves and other Republican governors around the country who, who are, who have capitulated to the Trump administration and
sending the guardsmen, are very guardsmen from various States to do things that the guards not really structured to do.
It's all to me, part of the political performance that they have to
continuously prove over and over again that their undying loyalty to Donald J.
Trump that is not about the states or the country or the guard or the people in those places.
It's about they have to just keep, yes, Mr.
President, we're going to do whatever you say.
We want to stay on your good side.
It just feels like this continual uh effort to prove themselves sufficiently loyal to the boss.
What?
we don't have the boss.
We have the president of the people.
Why do I don't, I don't understand that.
started to enjoy blowing up boats in the Gulf of America.
Well, David, just said you don't understand.
think here's the part I struggle to understand.
Okay.
We have a president with what I looked at his approval, the latest national poll.
And I forget whose poll it was that is approval rating at 37, 38%.
Right.
His popularity is declined by like 20.
His approval rating is declined by double digits since he took office.
He's tanking the economy.
The tariffs are immensely unpopular.
uh Most of his legislative program, if you can call it that, his executive order program, I guess, and the big, beautiful, bad bill, very unpopular.
Plus, let's just go along with the idea that he's term limited.
uh He will be a lame duck very soon.
He's wasting his political capital.
Why in the world some of these Republicans continue to give him everything he wants and more when
He is in no position to demand that from them.
They're the ones who are going to be around probably in office a lot longer than he will, but they're capitulating to him.
That's the part that I struggle to comprehend.
I cannot for the life of me understand that.
What, how does he have this power over them?
What does, why and how and what power, what does he have on them?
And that just, it's, it's, it's frightening because I can't, I just can't understand it.
What does he know about them that we don't know?
And why are they acting like that?
I, I, yes.
the Epstein files.
Yeah, yeah.
yeah, that's a good point too.
But also, I think they live in fear.
em There is this now deceased political science, scientists back in the 70s, and I had to read a lot of his stuff in graduate school and David Mayhew.
And one of the things he wrote about is he described it.
And this was in the 70s, in a different era in politics.
He described members of Congress as single minded seekers of reelection, where they're the only the number one thing on their mind.
Is is how to seek reelection and that's not a knock at you know, that they want to remain in power and be influential, right?
So that's a rational thing to do but at the same time these the current republicans in congress, I think Are so afraid of being unseated in a primary by someone who runs to Not
necessarily to their right but that just runs directly with trump or alongside trump uh that that they're deathly afraid of
of opposing him on anything or at any turn because of that.
That's still, I think, his most powerful weapon is the uh unadulterated uh control of the Republican Party base.
And that's why so many members of his party in Congress, even though they should no longer be living in fear of him, uh they are, despite lame duck status, despite poor approval
rating, despite that uh very unpopular public policy.
uh
And look, and I don't mean to pick on the man's health and wellness, but I think he appears to be sickly.
And I think he's showing signs of diminished mental capacity, but they are still deathly afraid of that voting base that he controls all over the country in every Republican House
district.
And I think that is what's keeping them at his side.
I love that quote that you just said, was it?
Single-minded.
Oh, single minded seekers of reelection.
everything they do is, yes, it's sort of geared towards how do I keep my seat?
And that was evident to this late professor back in the 70s.
It's especially true now.
If it was true then, it's definitely true today.
Absolutely.
the new legislators, newly elected legislators, ah they go through a little class on protocol, et cetera.
And one of the things that they are told is that they need to spend four hours a day on the phone raising money.
Yep, call time.
Yes.
Now it's text time.
My phone just burns up with people I've never heard of, from places I've never heard of.
And they are the most well-meaning people running for whatever.
And they want anywhere from $10 to $50 or, I mean.
No, and I'm sorry.
Like you said, I used to get them just from uh candidates who were running in whatever place I was, whether it was when I was living in Mississippi, I get them from some
Mississippi candidates.
Then when I moved here, I was getting from now I'm getting them from candidates in Hawaii, California, Florida.
And it's just like, I, you can't know very few voters or even like Democratic Party supporters have the bandwidth.
financially to support all these people who are bombarding us with text messages about fundraising.
But it makes me think, Jim, to your point about the text messages, I wonder if the Republicans are using that exact same strategy or they have something that's more sort of
streamlined to, that's not like, it feels like with the democratic fundraising, it's just sort of like.
put it out there and throw it against the wall and hope it's something sticks and we get some money out of it.
But I just wonder though, if the Republicans are doing the same or if they've got a different strategy.
I don't think the Republicans have to do it because the Republican party ah is pretty strong.
And as we talked a little bit about earlier, the Democratic party ah lacks leadership and is not very strong.
And when you're trying to raise money as a candidate and you're in a party that is perceived as ah
not very strong, the potential of you winning is not very good, and why waste my money?
And I don't know how we get around that, but...
uh
but Nathan here in Mississippi, have, uh, some people who are considering running for, uh, Trent Kelly's position and they're well qualified.
Uh, one of them who's thinking about it, you may know is, uh, Cliff Johnson, former U S assistant district attorney there in Jackson.
and now at a professor at Ole Miss and heads up the MacArthur Foundation.
Extremely well qualified and.
It's going to take a lot of money if he decides to run.
It's going to take a lot of money.
And in the first CD, we've got maybe four counties, three counties that have cities of 30, 40, 40,000 or more.
And the rest of the place is a rural part of the first CD.
So anybody that's going to run is going to have to really reach out and reach out outside of the first CD.
ah
And it just makes it really difficult when the national leadership is not as strong as I would hope that it might be.
Well, and I think I've been following Scott Colom you know, in his his entry into the US center race.
I think that's another candidate where anywhere else in the country, if you took uh somebody with the bio, the professional biography and the personal abilities of Scott
Colom, he would be a, you know, a strong contender.
But you're right, because of uh
Democrats maybe not wanting to give in Mississippi because they don't think that someone could win there.
I hope he can also overcome that because he, think, will be an exceptional candidate.
Absolutely.
exceptional candidate and his dad, Will, is working, I think, full time to help him.
And actually, if there's anybody in the Democratic Party that can raise money, it's his father, Will Cologne.
Yes, yes.
Yeah.
Yeah, in Mississippi, we have our issues.
Go ahead, Jim.
Well, Nathan is familiar with those.
He lived here for a while.
Well, Jim and David, the thing that does frustrate me is that there are opportunities uh for Democrats to improve or succeed in Mississippi, but I feel that sometimes people in
other parts of the country write it right off the Mississippi Democrats just because it's Mississippi when they're but there are and David you just mentioned the
The new Democratic mayor of Horn Lake, said, is, or a new mayor of Horn Lake is a Democrat, right?
There are, think there are places that Democrats can win in Mississippi, but I think either some quality candidates feel that they'll be written off because they're Democrats
and they don't run, or potential donors or supporters feel that, oh, wait a minute, this is a, an impossible state to win.
So, or district to win.
And so we're going to find somewhere else to spend our time in capital.
But.
But I think those opportunities are, I've long believed ever since I was on the Mississippi Democratic State Executive Committee and as Hines County Democratic Vice Chair
and on that committee before as a committee member before I was vice chairman, I think those opportunities for Democrats are there in Mississippi, but it's got to take a joint
effort.
think Democrats and independents in the state have got to, they've got to come, they're the only way to come together.
For them to come together is the only way to.
I think push back on the Republicans and the Republicans can raise a ton of money as we know.
All right.
able to do it quite easily.
ah
wind this down, Jim, ah Dr.
Schrader, Nathan, it was good to see you.
Great to have you with us.
We need to get together again because this is just so much fun, you know, hearing your experience.
And I'd love to take a class.
Yeah, I'll come to New Hampshire and take a class from you.
So thank you for being with us.
Jim.
it was a pleasure.
I'm glad we finally got to do it.
Yes, Jim, talk to us.
Why just?
Good to see you.
Were you on the executive committee when Mabus was executive chairman?
No, no I wasn't.
I wasn't.
Okay.
Jim, let's talk about money.
Tell us about money.
I love to talk about money.
You gonna send me some crypto?
Well, I guess not.
Okay.
ah It's the same old spiel.
These podcasts do cost money.
And ah David and I have been footing the bill along with a couple of other people.
And we need more contributors ah to get to the breakeven point.
We're not interested in making any money out of this.
We tried to do this.
Well, OK, we do this for fun.
I do it hoping to help educate ah people in rural Mississippi that don't have access to these kind of guests.
I think when we talk to legislators and we talk to people who leak groups like ah PTA people.
ah
the Southern Poverty Leadership Conference.
I think when we talk to those people, there's an opportunity to educate people.
And I think that's important enough that David, I and a few other people are contributing.
If you would like to support this effort, ah David can tell you how it's pretty easy.
Yes, absolutely.
have cash.
Yes, Cash App, which is the dollar sign, MS Happenings, and PayPal is at MS Happenings.
And yes, we do have a website and you can make donations at the website and it is mississippihappenings.org.
So yes, we do want your donations.
We do want your subscribers.
We do want you to subscribe.
We do want sponsors.
But also we want to hear from you.
want to, you know, what we're doing good, what we're doing bad, what we're okay.
We want to know who you want us to talk to.
We want to know who you want to hear from.
So you can also reach us at mshappening1 at Gmail, which is mshappening1 at gmail.com.
So Dr.
Shrader good to see you.
Glad to have you with us, Jim.
Grumpy pants, it's good to see you again.
uh And remember, may we never become indifferent to the suffering of others.
Thanks so much.