00:30:57 · Joe Weisenthal, Skanda Amarnath
[00:30:57] S0: Don't lean on prediction markets. [00:30:59] S2: What I suspect that's important for that primary at this point is, like, the Senate map looks different. And Democrats have not been competitive in the Senate for a long time. Yes, there's one faction that's very progressive and has their political leanings that are ideologically based. That will matter. How do you excite them? There's another segment that obviously likes to be competitive and win. Winning is also itself very kind of addicting and attracting. And so I imagine for those who are governors in a lot of states, they probably will want to push it, whether it's Andy Beshear or Josh Shapiro. I think Jon Ossoff, the margins he won by are going to be very compelling. So I think Ossoff is a pretty reasonable favorite right now, but it's really early. This will ping-pong. back and forth. The field is pretty large. There's no obvious front runner. Large and flat, basically. Large and flat. It's not like Hillary Clinton going into the 2016 cycle or even the 2008 cycle where she was clearly the front runner and over time, instead of Obama and obviously John Edwards, the other one, that was the race. We don't really know what the head-to-head will be, who will be the top three. I suspect Ossoff is right now the front runner, but there are a lot of people who are the front runner coming right out of midterms. That could just change very quickly. [00:32:14] S0: All right, Skanda Amarnath, thank you so much for breaking it all down for us. [00:32:20] S2: Thanks for coming on all day. That's right.
00:32:20 · Skanda Amarnath, Joe Weisenthal, Tracy Alloway
[00:32:20] S2: Thanks for coming on all day. That's right. [00:32:33] S0: Tracy, that was a lot of fun. I think this election... was a sort of mini version of what we always talk about. It's like, wow, there's a lot of new stuff to consider. [00:32:42] S2: Yeah. [00:32:43] S0: It's just like, it's just, and no one really knows. And it's just a lot of new things. [00:32:48] S1: And it happened literally overnight. [00:32:50] S0: It's really weird. [00:32:51] S1: Yeah. [00:32:52] S0: But like now, you know, for a long time when I sort of thought about the two parties, I thought it's like, okay, they're like, you know, roughly even in the grand scheme of things, Democrats, Republicans, heavily coastal california new york new jersey etc a few big cities and then you're just like no like the democrats are a national party in a way they haven't been in ages and in some places i just do not think the republican party exists that they were dominant in that's what it feels like in texas to me.
00:32:52 · Joe Weisenthal, Tracy Alloway
[00:32:52] S0: But like now, you know, for a long time when I sort of thought about the two parties, I thought it's like, okay, they're like, you know, roughly even in the grand scheme of things, Democrats, Republicans, heavily coastal california new york new jersey etc a few big cities and then you're just like no like the democrats are a national party in a way they haven't been in ages and in some places i just do not think the republican party exists that they were dominant in that's what it feels like in texas to me. [00:33:24] S1: Yeah well i mean texas so i remember my Dad is Texan. He comes from, like, a small town outside of Dallas. I remember my aunt used to be a closeted Democrat. She wouldn't tell her friends and family because it just, like, wasn't socially acceptable, like, way up until the early 2000s, which is kind of crazy. But the one thing I'm thinking, a lot of this can change pretty fast. Like, you know, a lot has happened in the past two years. A lot could happen in the next two years. I remember after Watergate, there was a big Democratic sweep, right? And then what, like, Eight years later, Reagan was in office, something like that? [00:33:58] S0: No, people were comparing this election to the post-Watergate election. And it's actually a pretty good, like, it's both because of the scale, but because what are, like, the two things? It's, like, high inflation and a deeply unpopular president together. [00:34:15] S1: Yeah.
00:34:15 · Tracy Alloway, Joe Weisenthal, Skanda Amarnath
[00:34:15] S1: Yeah. [00:34:16] S0: And then you just get this. So maybe that is, like, the best analogy. But I really do think, like... Like, I don't know. I'm not a prediction, but things change really fast. And after the 2024 election, you know, there was a truly new map, not new map necessarily, but it looked like the sort of Trump version of the GOP had fully solidified and not only fully solidified, had like one done extremely well among various minority groups in a way that hadn't been seen before. So it's like, oh, that's all reversed. We thought we knew about the Democratic Party coalition. So it's like, uncertainty is like, you know, let's just, and epistemic humility. Unlike the tech billionaires who talk about their epistemic humility, I will actually practice it. You've updated your worldview. I'm updating my priors as we speak, and I'm going to put it, I'm going to do some practice. [00:35:07] S1: Speaking of things that are changing very fast, the stock charts. So in addition to SpaceX and Tesla, have you looked at Sterling Infrastructure? [00:35:16] S0: No, what do they do? [00:35:17] S1: They build data centers in Texas. And that looks like a dot-com chart. [00:35:23] S2: Wow. Yeah. [00:35:25] S0: These are some really ugly charts. That's pretty bad. [00:35:28] S2: Wow. [00:35:30] S0: That was a $ 1, 000 stock in June. And as of right now, it's a $ 255 stock. [00:35:35] S2: Yeah. [00:35:36] S1: Isn't that crazy? [00:35:37] S0: That's a good chart. That's a good one. [00:35:39] S2: All right. [00:35:39] S0: We'll put that in the newsletter.
00:35:39 · Joe Weisenthal, Tracy Alloway, Skanda Amarnath
[00:35:39] S0: We'll put that in the newsletter. [00:35:40] S1: Shall we leave it there? [00:35:41] S2: Let's leave it there. [00:35:42] S1: This has been another episode of the Odd Lots. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway. [00:35:48] S0: And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at The Stalwart. Follow our guest, Skanda Amarnath at Irving Swisher. Follow our producers, Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Arman, Dash O'Bennett at Dashbot, Kale Brooks at Kale Brooks, and Kevin Lozano at Kevin Lloyd Lozano. And of course, you can chat about all of these topics 24-7 in our Discord, discord.gg slash oddlots. And for more Oddlots content, check out our daily newsletter, which you can find at Bloomberg.com slash oddlots. [00:36:14] S1: And if you enjoyed this conversation, if you like it when we talk about seismic shifts in politics and what it means for the economy, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And if you're watching on video, then please like or leave a comment or better yet, subscribe. [00:36:30] S0: And remember, if you're a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad-free. All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. [00:36:40] S1: Thanks for joining. [00:36:57] S0: Thank you.