She wanted a name for election night and I said, "Use my name," not thinking for a second it was ever going to be a practical option. Can I ask, is your office now The House of the Rising Sun?
Yes, and for a guy I met named Will Bailey who was running the campaign and worked his ass off and never backed off and, by the way, navigated a dead liberal Democrat to a win against Chuck Webb! Five hundred races tonight, that was pretty impressive. Though it was an Aristotelian confluence of events that could only happen to me.
I don't want to intimidate you, but it turns out I'm the first Democrat in twenty years to make a clean sweep of the Plains states. And I'm not just talking about Iowa and Nebraska.
I won the Dakotas, the Badlands, the Black Hills... But let's go down, way down, to the Deep South and the humid bayou of Louisiana and its nine electoral votes. What manner of man it must take to win the state, which, by the way, is the only one operating under the Napoleonic Code of France. And I still don't know what that's all about, but back to me...
We're all impressed with how influential you were, particularly when you consider that most of us have never met you! But what I'm most grateful for is the process story, which takes attention from the debate, and focuses it where it belongs, which is the contest. This is the story everyone'll be clamoring for and I like that you're filling that need. And to show my gratitude, I'm calling all the major news outlets and letting them know that I'll be forwarding all your confidential memos to the President, logs of all your calls with him, Secret Service logs of your meetings inside the White House.
I also think you'd be a home run choice. You're going to raise a lot of money. I'm going to help you and I have a hunch the President, who just won a landslide, will be making some visits as well. You'll be the best funded Democrat ever run in 47. You're not going to win, so you can't lose.
I don't think you should do it. Energizing the state party's good. A well-funded airing of the issues is good. So is mollifying House Democrats, but you have to ask yourself, is it worth it? You're going to lose. A Democrat's always loses in the 47th. Can't just pick up and try someplace else. They have a name for that.
I don't know. I don't know. I worked in a state assembly race in Manhattan, in a district where Democrats outnumbered Republicans sixteen to one. But everywhere we went, there'd be one lone poster of a right-wing nutbar who wanted to eliminate the income tax. And he was holding up signs an canvassing everywhere and bugging the local reporters until we had to comment on it. So I introduced myself to his campaign manager and I said 'What are you doing? Your candidate doesn't have a chance. Neither do your issues.' He said 'This is what I believe. And no candidate gets to run in my district without speaking to my issues.' I came this close to voting for him. So... I don't know about what you just said.
