cans didn't turn out because they were confident of winning? I don't feel that. I don't feel it. Yeah it's possible. I could be persuaded but that wasn't the energy I was picking up. I was picking up Republicans vote for fun and for a principle. Republicans don't vote or not vote because it's convenient. Am I right? In fact you could define Republicans as people who are going to vote no matter how hard you make it. They're gonna vote because it's important. It's a principle, right? I don't know if it's the same on both sides. It might be but I don't see Republicans staying home because it rained. Yeah maybe.

All right. The best predictors in my opinion were follow the money and persuasion of fear. The persuasion of losing something. Abortion rights, bodily autonomy, you know losing your democracy. Those were good approaches by the Democrats it turns out. And it was a little bit invisible to me because that persuasion wasn't intended for me and it didn't work on me so I was a little bit blinded by the fact it was designed for a certain demographic and it worked. It worked on that demographic I think.

And then what about the high ground maneuver? That's the fourth thing that I talk about all the time which you can never lose if you take the high ground you win every conversation. I'll give you an example. We should do A. No we should do B. And then somebody else in the meeting says can we test both of those things cheaply? And both the people go yes. And then the smart person says well why don't we just test both of them and we'll do the one that works better. That's the high ground. Once you hear it you just stop arguing because you would sound like an idiot after you heard the high ground, right? Was there any high ground? Did anybody have the high ground in this election? Well maybe a little bit. Maybe a little bit. Because I think the high ground was protect the democracy. It was. But it does sound like the bigger principle doesn't it? If I gave you a choice to get exactly the right candidates you want but you might lose democracy itself that's not a good deal for me, right? So preserving the system actually is a pretty good high ground and the Democrats have it. They actually had the high ground. Weirdly the low ground was I might get mugged on the street, right? I might get mugged on the street is real. That's like freaking real. That's a real immediate personal local fear but it's also not the high ground. It isn't. The high ground is the whole country. That's just bigger than your little problem on the street. So the Democrats have that. They have the high ground. And January 6th was probably the key to holding that. Now again I was a little bit blind to that because it didn't work on me, right? So that's the persuasion you miss when it doesn't work on you personally. It was easier to see Trump coming because his persuasion was working on me. You know what I mean? If you can feel it it's easy to call it out but I miss this completely.

Maricopa County. What went wrong? So the information we're getting is sketchy as hell which is that some of the machines were crashing some of the time because they couldn't handle the type of ink that was used on the ballots. How many questions does that raise? Question number one. You don't test the actual ballots with the actual machines before the election or do you just test a few and testing a few wouldn't have picked up these errors? Did they test the actual ballots or was there some production problem that they had to use cheaping for some of them? I don't know. So those are big questions. We'll find out. But could you game the system by giving some people ballots that had intentionally weak ink and giving the people that you knew would vote your way ballots that had the proper ink? Could somebody game the system that way? Could you take legal ballots and replace them with weak ink ballots? Could you if you were the printer? If you were the printer of these ballots could you make two batches of ballots one that you sent to predominantly Democrat areas and one to predominantly Republican areas? I don't know you could but here's the sketchiest part. I heard about it the technicians visited all the machines. It's now on election day you've got people inside the election machines. Okay there are people inside the election machines on election day. That makes you feel comfortable doesn't it? Now I'm hoping that they have systems and processes to protect that very thing becau