yes are still in florida we're just finishing up our gonzo american pilgrimage shoot a cross-country journey into the soul of america coming to artsy in december look for stacy yes we're in florida which is the home of the swamp and we have had elections just now where we drain the swamp of one party and install some more in congress so we're going to go over some of the election results just so you know because this is a swamp people love the swamp and you might hear some noises behind us that is some people building into the swamp where they like to live with the alligators here behind us in terms of the actual polls that we saw in these midterm elections twenty eighteen the number one issue for both democrats and republican voters was indeed health care that was the number one issue both parties both voters they cared about health care they did not apparently care that much about russia but we get into that in that moment but health care was the number one issue max.

health care number one issue why because the country is sick because he is sick and the ability to mend the country and to take care of the country is waning. all parties involved in putting the government are down there gouging individuals are gouging the citizens there they're disrupting him and gallons in their institutions looking for every nickel and dime to pay the rapacious credit tours the health care companies the insurance companies that are raking it in at the expense of the country itself it's amazing because the more we spend on health care the less healthy we get the really interesting thing is like i said at the top of the show like the partisans of each party think somehow everything's miraculously going to change but it never really does on the local level is where you see some really big changes and that is especially through the south there's been a lot of activist. has changed the fabric of of how things have been operated since

the jim crow days so in florida for example we had jim crow laws essential whereby if you were a felon you could never vote again if you had a felony record you could never vote again well that left forty percent of the black male population here disenfranchised while they overturned that here in the elections and twenty eighteen so now people with a felony record if they've served their time they can vote again so forty percent of black males just got the vote here in florida. when you think of that it's a long time coming and that's one thing we've discovered on our trip across america we talked to a lot of members of the black community a lot of the native american population and really got to understand their feelings about having survived a genocide with the native americans and then an attempted genocide in the black

community and the rights they are enjoying have come extraordinary cost and anguish but slowly but surely these human rights are being restored but decades and decades and decades after they should have been and there were some other jim crow laws overturned including in louisiana where by basically they had a jim crow laws still in effect which they allowed nine unanimous jury to convict somebody and send them to jail for life that was primarily aimed at african-americans also in nashville tennessee we had some activists mostly african-american activists female activists who led the drive to get a police oversight committee installed elected by the local citizens who would be able to oversee what the national police were doing because of the extreme amount of shootings of mostly african-american men often unarmed so those were jim crow

jim crow era things i think i just saw an alligator jump out of the swamp behind some very scenic elite being alligators florida regional stain that has kept america from enjoying the fruits of its manifest destiny as its goal because as long as you keep a huge percentage of the population imprisoned or with. no one can enjoy the benefits of the constitution i want to also look at the exit polls what they showed and what that might mean for twenty twenty and this is exit polls majority of voters say russia investigation politically motivated. did a majority of voters in the house elections view the russian investigation as politically motivated according to c.n.n. exit polls while a plurality disapprove of special counsel robert muller's handling of a specifically fifty four percent of voters said the investigation into russia interference and the twenty sixteen election and possible collusion with a presidential campaign was politically motivated compared with just forty percent

who said it was mostly justified so i think looking forward to two thousand and twenty as we head into there is you could probably look toward the commander in the troll in chief donald trump to keep. kind of basically provoking the left to keep on mentioning russia because the polls consistently show that the population didn't care about it obviously a lot of the congressional candidates did know this was the truth because they themselves did not campaign on that never ran ads mentioning the investigation but i'm sure donald trump will try to provoke them to keep on saying stuff down there's a phrase down here in that no you don't hunt you know that whole russia gay hoax never got any traction as men no proof but it's great troll bait and i think trump is pleased that he increased seats in the senate. barking mansi policy

hitting the russia gate hoax button every single day which will drive ratings for rachel maddow but it will do nothing to help them in two thousand and twenty so another thing you mentioned the senate republicans have actually gained seats in the senate which is the upper house in our congress and we never an interesting headline here explaining part of that and this is from the new york times red state voters stand by republicans despite trump's trade war paint voters in red states largely shrugged off concerns about the economic effect of president on school trade or throwing their support behind republican candidates who embraced the administration's protectionist genda as a spy it sounds by democrats to turn it into a wedge issue in particular they mention the three democratic incumbent senators who lost their seats senator claire mccaskill of missouri senator heidi heitkamp of north dakota and senator john donnelly of indiana lost their seats to republican

challengers even though they had run saying. you know on donald trump's trade war harming farmers in the midwest right. as marshall on a frequent guest on this show points out in great economist and he looked at the trade warning looked at what's happening in china and america and concluded even though he's a progressive that trumps trade war is effectively genius and this is led to a remarkable spurt in employment in the us and put china defensive. as we enter what i call this era of neo mercantilist so it's going to be everyone against everyone without the coordinated efforts of central banks keeping the dollar artificially low you know i expect that we're going to see a lot more currency chaos going forward yes so they said the races were a test of whether or not trump kept telling voters in the midwest that it would be short term pain for

a long term gain and they seem to have lost that in fact the new york times says themselves mr trump's overall popularity in rural america seems to be growing and it seems to have been stoked by the tactic employed by china and other trading partners of targeting the taliban or terrorists trump friendly districts so remember we covered that that the chinese had taken out ads in the and like local iowa newspapers saying that it's trump's policies that are causing you any pain and apparently this backfired you know in this thing about. marketing is you need a good. protagonist and a good antagonist and by positioning china as the bad guy americans can relate to that because they've been trained to think politically in terms of very simple good guy bad guy narrative so we have learned this on our trip as well going across the country people are not into nuance they're not into subtlety they like clear cut bad guys so trump was able to make china the bad guy and he gained in the senate

as a result of it people voted accordingly and he turned the congress the house of representatives into useful it is nancy pelosi will be the useful idiot going into. twenty actually should also i'm not going to cover any of us three specifically on this but matt stoller who also is progressive but covers antitrust in particular and the monopolies and all of that control much of the stuff he does blame a lot of. support for democrats in the agricultural districts collapsed under obama partly because of vilsack who is now a lobbyist for big ag but he was basically a lobbyist for big ag when he was in the obama administration and what he did is one thing for dairy farmers in particular they encouraged dairy farmers to buy this insurance that the government was backing which would basically protect them in the in the case that milk prices collapsed and then milk prices did collapse and they

asked for some money based on the insurance premiums they had been paying and they never got paid and thousands of dairy farms got wiped out so this is the sort of policy that they remember it was never of course covered on m s n b c or c.n.n. or any or fox news for that matter so that a lot of people don't know why they're the anger is there they so because they don't understand the genesis of thing or they just assign you know things like racism or xenophobia or things like you know but the real reason could be some of the policies that obama had regarding farmers well the success of the democrats in the region with bill clinton remember it's so big it's the economy stupid and he dared to talk about numbers economics and finance and they did very well with that but then with hillary and bernie sanders and other democrats they've gone back to trying to convince people that economics doesn't matter as doesn't matter

mathematics doesn't matter physics doesn't matter it's just about how you feel and if you feel good then everything will be creating and they're going to lose the lead going forward and bernie sanders did try to run on the. anti-trade policy and and t.t. ip so. stole his speeches when speaking to michigan and wisconsin and pennsylvania and that helped him but i want to quickly wrap up with one headline that something that we've been covering for the past decade and this is former j.p. morgan trader pleads guilty to manipulating u.s. metals markets for years so an extra few morgan chase traders admitted to manipulating the u.s. markets of an hour or a of precious metals for about seven years and he has implicated his supervisors at the banks so he pled guilty he said that from two thousand and nine to two thousand and fifteen he manipulated prices of gold silver platinum and palladium and with the help of his supervisors he faces thirty years in prison he's pled guilty to this what do you think of this i think the non manipulated price of gold is two

thousand four hundred dollars an ounce number that's the map it to the growth of debt if you look at the growth of that chart in the price of gold chart they map each other pretty well going back a few decades then they split recently when the manipulation got out of them as a manipulation is gotten rid of and the price will snap back to its long term trend which would be twenty four hundred per round up almost a thousand dollars from the current price russia then would have a huge. party because they've been buying gold by the hundreds of john's china as well hey we've got to take a break much more coming your way right after this. after

the war. was still to rich in the nineteen seventies cretonne had as the chair of its board a man convicted of mass move and slavery. a german company develops a new to mind a drug that was promoted as completely safe even during pregnancy it turned out to have terrible side effects what has happened to my baby is anything paul you know she said she's just. minix and i don't mind victims i have to this day received no compensation they never apologized for the suffering that not only want the money i want the revenge. you know world a big part of. lot of things and conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we

need to be smart we need to stop slamming the door on the back and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now for watching closely watching the hawks. welcome back to the kaiser report i'm max guys are time now to turn to randy voller former mayor of pittsburgh north carolina and former head of the democratic party in north carolina any voter welcome back great to be here max are you know now there's a big vote we'd like to check in with you know democrats of taken control of the house they have and they are promising impeachment and other agendas that poll well with their base but not with independent voters or wavering republicans i guess what are your thoughts. well i'm sure that they're going to come into the house and

on their committees try to hold the president and the executive branch accountable and i hope they do with transparency but i'm not sure whether preachments going to be the first thing out of the box now on the state level randi the shift in twenty eighteen was decidedly progressive from overturning jim crow era laws in the south lake disenfranchisement of those with felony record here in north carolina tell us about some of the north carolina specifics well i mean they they worked really hard for the last couple years break the majority which essentially in north carolina the general assembly has been run by the republicans ever sence the great victory of two thousand and ten they had a veto proof majority so our governor could veto legislation that a vast plurality didn't like and they could override it now we've overcome that and i think we're going to add somewhere around ten seats in the house which will give democrats fifty five and six seats in the senate which means both chambers will be

. there won't be a supermajority so they could sustain a gar veto by governor cooper but the key takeaway is all of these gains for the most part happen in urban areas where the districts were region on from a gerrymandered scenario to something that's more equal for the voter so the voter can actually pick their legislator and a lot of these races were very close i mean right now i think in wake county you only have one republican legislator left and the border commissioners for instance is all republicans in a mecklenburg county and other major urban county the entire county board of commissioners is now democrat all through republicans lost and i think they only have one republican left so that's a huge change before the election the goal was to say let's take the house and democrats. take the house then the morning after there's been some monday morning

quarterbacking and saying well you know the senate went more republican and on balance it seems some are arguing that actually trump did pretty well republicans did pretty well but then you had a tremendous grassroots progressives in local elections all over the country and all kinds of interesting races where one can you give us a feel for how that split would work going forward now is it is there more balance or is trump still kind of maintaining an edge there. well legislation starts on the house and certainly they have the ability to start articles of impeachment or the subpoena power for investigation so control of the house is incredibly important but i think i would push back on the notion that trump did well i mean he lost you know he lost hundreds of legislative seats you know in legislatures across the country if you look at places like nevada that used to have quite

a few moderate to center right leaning republicans you lost or senator heller and a whole bunch of other races out there as we speak right now we're still having the counting going on in arizona that looks like jeff like see it's going to probably flip over to a democrat we don't know what's happening in florida which always seems to be a fifty fifty race between nelson and governor scott we're down to somewhere around fourteen or fifteen thousand votes with county council votes in broward so i'm not really sure how he says he did well i mean the senate is set up to perform for republicans because you have two senate seats for every state so you can have states that have populations of six hundred thousand to a million with two senators or california with forty million with two senators i mean so it's obviously set up to perform against heavily urbanizing areas i mean this is how it was set up by the founders and you know i think trump is quite worried about what's going to happen out of the house what i hope happens is that

the house comes out with a strong agenda as you refer to universal health care and then stead of leading on articles of impeachment which can certainly be slow play let's see what happens with the mower investigation let's see what the report is let's lead with very strong ideas and send them over the senate and let mcconnell have to deal with it yeah ok i mean that sounds great and it sounds like a bit of a change from what we've seen the last couple years spend more of the way let's trickly get rid of this guy now and that has really worked in a lot of political capital since i have a. wasted so you're saying hey let's just focus on some policies that we can really stand behind health care is certainly one of them and one of the sum of two or three other majors well infrastructure i mean when trump first was elected there was an awful lot of bipartisan support for infrastructure it kind of went to the wayside as he's gotten very involved with building the wall and all this nonsense about you know these immigrants coming in here i mean yes we have caravans coming

up but that was certainly overplayed we do need immigration reform we do need you know coherent policy with the dreamers and i think you could probably get that now with some of the moderate republicans on the senate side and what happens with the new house but there's a lot of things that need to happen in this country we have bridges that are you know decaying we have roads that are falling apart we have water and sewer systems that need to be addressed we have the physical infrastructure of schools that need to be handled there's you know we have transit there's so many things that can be done you know we have obvious affects of these major hurricanes and storms which are pointing to a changing climate there could be real leadership coming out of the house perhaps we could get bipartisan support for nancy pelosi is she going to be leaving the house i think seems to be a scuffle there and maybe sell in austin if someone else who might it be cardwell there's various pretenders of the throne but i really don't know who's going to be the one that emerges i mean there's been an awful lot of complaint with nancy based

on her being the one that they've singled out and picked on over the years but my assumption is opposed she'll probably get the speakership there might be a reshuffling of the deck with leaders as we know you have this new congresswoman out of new york that knocked out one of the top three leaders so you know there's going to be a recycling there let's see what happens with cliburn out of south carolina but the bottom line is the country elected a lot of progressives they elected a lot of women they elected a lot of minorities we've elected the first muslim women to congress there's a change is rather happening. before our eyes and even though beta will roar didn't beat ted cruz the fact that he came within you know a point or point a half is amazing that's what people should be focusing on i mean there were there was a a real outreach on election day that showed that this country is changing you know people are looking beyond even party labels and looking toward values and ideas and i can kind of see that playing into two thousand and twenty let's talk about anita

earls ok she want to see on the north carolina supreme court she's a lady progressive understanding voting rights yet your thoughts on the new north carolina supreme court now being five two in favor of democrats well when i started as chairman of the party it was the other way and we managed to win three seats in two thousand and fourteen which made it for three because we focused on those elections and there was a lot of money that came in to beat us. you know and then of course in twenty two thousand and sixteen mike morgan became the flip seat an african-american supreme court justice and now.