Welcome to Party of America, I'm John Feffer. I'm John Lovett. I'm Tommy Vietor on today's pod. We'll talk about how we did with our 20 20 New Year's resolutions and make some new ones for twenty, twenty one.

But before that, we're starting a new tradition here at Positive America, where we take a look back at the worst takes of the year, including our own welcome to the first annual Pondy Accountability coming back.

It's back in style pundits.

A few quick notes before we get started. A new episode of Gaining Ground, The New Georgia Drops Tuesday. Check out this episode wherever you get your podcast, catch up on the whole series. It's fantastic. New episodes come out every Tuesday.

Go listen.

And speaking of Georgia, we are just days away from the January 5th runoff that will determine control of the Senate. If you're ready for a new year and a new Georgia head over to vote, save America. Dotcom's Georgia to find something you can do in the home stretch. There will be volunteer opportunities available right up until the polls close on January 5th. Sign up for a shift today. Vote Save America, dot com Georgia. OK, gentlemen, let's get to it.

We are going to start with everyone else's bad taste and then we're going to work work our way to our own bad table.

We have Tommy if we have time. Yeah, who knows? We might be out of time before it's a it's a podcast. They don't they only give us so much time on this thing. Yeah. Tommy, you got a bad take.

Well, look, you know, we learned the hard way that predictions are not the best idea in twenty sixteen. So we tried to steer clear of them this cycle. That doesn't mean that others in the take industrial complex followed suit. So I just took some headlines. I think they were about Joe Biden that are kind of worthy. I'm not going to name names necessarily because no reason to be that mean. But, you know, The Boston Globe had an op ed that said the new rules of electability mean Joe Biden can't win.

That one felt a touch of safe candidates, loose, passionate crusader's win. When you write your checks or vote in your primary, go with your gut. Hey, I'm that last sentence. I'm all for it. But the first part, maybe not USA Today, Joe Biden can't beat Donald Trump or restore decency. You know, I guess jury's still out on half of that one.

Maybe. Was that was that the USA Today editorial board? That is an opinion contributor.

Fuck that person. OK, John Politico article from March 13th, I never Biden movement vows not to vote for Joe. On Tuesday night, Joe Biden's campaign was celebrating his latest primary night triumph. By Wednesday morning, never Biden, Wright and Bernie Demn Exit 20 20 hashtags began trending on Twitter. Oh, no. Oh, no. Not trending so much. Not so much.

You know, there's a whole cottage industry of takes that Joe Biden was in cognitive decline. I feel like all of those people should feel quite bad about those takes. Basically everything written by the Wall Street Journal editorial page about Tony Babinski and Biden didn't quite pan out. I don't know. I'll pause there. I mean, I have one more when we come back.

But you know your thoughts, I should say, by the way, to everyone like these aren't necessarily all the worst takes of the year because one group of people, I imagine we're probably going to leave out are like like Donald Trump, everyone associated with his campaign and like Fox News and Newsmax, like, obviously all of their takes are the fucking worst. But like we've been saying that all year. So we're really trying to branch out with the other takes, as Tommy has done with this.

Love it. Love it. What do you think?

So, you know, it's funny, I. I'm just also like, obviously, Joe Biden winning is was was good for a variety of reasons. I don't want to overstate it.

But one one thing you do see is that there are a lot of people who invested a lot of energy in the argument that he couldn't win for a variety of of of reasons that were important to what they would be saying right now had he lost. And I'm really glad that those arguments are not around right now. I just think it's a very good thing. Totally agree.

If you're if you're role in politics is slowly polishing your take about why the the the person who isn't quite liberal enough for you in your party didn't win and why you are right. I have very little time for you. Yeah, and I will say also it's funny, listening to those tapes about why these these you know, there's never Biden hashtags, whatever I always think about, it's just like a fact that has stuck with me my whole life, which is that there was a poll that showed a majority of primary voters would never, ever support Bill Clinton as the Democratic nominee, like weeks before he became the Democratic nominee.

And it's worth remembering for all of us that that even opinions we hold about politics that we think are immutable will change really, really fast.

Yeah. As Ted LASO says, be a goldfish. You know, we just forget that's my to watch. So watching that over the break. It's so good. We can tell you one more. Guys, I'm so glad you finally got into it. So I just want so we're going to throw to some audio because I think this might be the most accurate, but also the worst take rolled into one.

And I just I want to enjoy it with you and watch your faces.

So I feel like this is us.

I feel like this is us, ladies and gentlemen, leaders and fighters for freedom and liberty and the American Dream. The best is yet to come.

That was Kim Kilfoyle. She was right. The best is yet to come. Joe Biden won the election. Kim Guilfoile gave a good take.

Well, in the middle was Mastec. But yes, that's true. That's true.

I filmed a little video of pundit running around in the snow and she was just like throwing her face into this, like fresh white powder. OK, is it adorable? It's an unrelated what I don't know is the key thing pundits do take. Yeah, I have a bad take. There are several times over the last year, really over the last four years where journalists and pundits had an insatiable urge to believe that 74 year old Donald Trump had finally changed his ways.

Let's take a listen. I think we have a clip.

He became president of the United States in that moment. Period. Eighty two percent of people who saw the speech called Mr. Trump presidential, including a majority of Democrats.

The president had a very steady tone. I didn't count a single insult.

If Trump continues with this tone and temperament, if he continues with what he was doing before, who knows where Americans will be in the next few days or weeks.

The Donald Trump that we saw today here at the Times was a different tone, sounded positive.

He seemingly recognized the power of his office.

President Trump seemed sobered by these first 40 days in office, didn't he?

Then today, another speech and a starkly different tone striking a different tone, dramatic change in tone, strikingly different tone.

Tone was markedly different, significantly changing his tone.

Stunning change in tone from just last Friday in his first White House coronaviruses briefing in months. President Trump sharply changed his tone. Now we have a significant shift in tone.

It was a totally different message and different tone. I do think this press conference will be remembered for the change in tone from the president.

I mean, first of all, thank you to Yale for putting that together. Great library has a great library, music, great music, choice, really important. Can't to share that on social media. Beyond director, there's a video component to all of that.

So we'll put that up. So I know I can recognize a lot of those voices. A lot of those people are very smart.

I don't know how you get pulled into saying this shit for years. I think that I think the new tone stuff, particularly around covid, will always get me the angriest, although it's funny because at the time that this is how he became president around striking Syria or not, Syria was the was the that was the old winner for making me the most mad about Newtown.

But the covid stuff really took the cake. But remember, after that first press conference and they were all like, oh, wow, he's very presidential now.

He's really taking this seriously. That panned out. Yeah.

I mean, just it does seem that there was like a I think that there are a mix of motivations. Obviously, every person has different motivations. I think at times it was sort of fanciful thinking, like a desire for it to be true. At times it was a desire to just say something different. And then there was also this moment where there was this sort of idea that, like, if enough reporters start rewarding Trump. Yeah. For having a better tone, it would be reinforced and might have a positive results.

But yeah, here we are from day one to the coup. Didn't work, hasn't didn't work any other you guys got any? There are some outside bad takes. I will say this is a sutler bad take because I think that there have been some incredibly frustrating Nate Silver takes and some incredibly frustrating A.. Nate Silver takes. And here is where I have landed on all of this, which is both sides in this. In fairness, I will.

I will. Absolutely. In fairness to my Mathie friends, to the modelers, I don't believe Nate Silver ever over interprets the model that he has built. But what frustrates me is that there is a kind of. There is like there is the creation of these models then then there is an argument that says don't over interpret these models, don't take these things too seriously. They can't say more than exactly what we say. They can say. But you can't lament the fact that the model is being over interpreted when the model exists and succeeds so that people who aren't as familiar with the statistics can over interpret it.

And so it's like at a certain point, like the bad take is believing assigning a percentage to an election is has value and can be interpreted broadly in a way that's helpful to anybody.

That's my that's my model take after year election. Two of the models being frustrating. Not that they were wrong. Well, I just think there's a there's a very helpful part of it where they're just sort of like compiling polls and doing statistical analysis, but then they sort of jam and a bunch of factors that are kind of impossible to quantify, like press coverage or fundraising or things that it's like how are you deciding how that's weighted?

The thing that most frustrated me is and we'll get to polls at one point, but like there's this there was a take after the polls are out this time and it's like, well, you know, the polls weren't so far off and a lot of places and they weren't so bad in comparison to history. But it's like, OK, if the tipping point state is Wisconsin and the Wisconsin polls were off by just as much, if not more than they were last time, then that's a huge fucking problem for polls.

Yeah, I don't care if the California polls were better. You know, we don't care about other polls. We care about what happens in fucking Wisconsin because that's the tipping point state.

Totally. But I also like that also this to me is I think why I think some of the critics of the models are going too far. That's not on the people using the polling as best they can to create these models.

Oh, I totally agree. I know it takes a lot of the heat and the and the modelers and the pundits for for the actual pollsters who got it wrong. Yeah.

There's you know what it is. It's like like that's the thing. I understand the frustration of people like Nate Silver because they're like attacked for all these reasons that aren't true. But it's like like it's like, how dare you attack me for my model.

You mathematical morons now carefully interpret this incredibly complicated model based on mathematical formulas and statistics that are far beyond anything.

I will explain, I would argue, to their Twitter tone does them no favors in this regard either. Here's a more cut and dry one on a North Dakota radio show, Eric Trump claimed his father literally saved Christianity.

That's a quote I got. I got a few and I just made up this game on the spot. I'm going to read the take and see if you guys can guess who I love.

This is exciting. OK, just on the spot. I just thought about doing this. I'm excited about using their voice. This this was an April column is the hint April column.

And the title of the column was America Shouldn't Have to Play by New York Rules. And maybe that might have given it away. And here's here's a quote from it. It is stunning to contemplate the extent to which the country's covid-19 crisis is a New York crisis. No wonder so much of America has dwindled.

Bret Stephens. Bret Stephens. Yes. Yes. In April, Bret Stephens said that we should have no more lockdown's no more restrictions because it's only New York that's hurting from covid and the rest of the country is fine. Curves are flattening. Hospital systems haven't come close to being overwhelmed. Americans have adapted to new etiquettes of social distancing.

That's Tommy's best friend Bretzke from New York, from the mind that brought you synchronized Iran's navy. It'll be very simple to do that. No problem.

This piece is from February after the virus just began to hit, called Donald Trump the luckiest man, quote. Democrats are on the defensive after Trump's impeachment acquittal in Iowa debacle. A Democratic socialist is surging in the race. And some economists think that post coronaviruses, the recovery wave will push an economic surge closer to the election. Trump is enjoying the same lucky breaks in politics that he enjoyed in birth and business.

I have a guess. I have a guess. I guess you guessed it. Kim Strassel. No, not Hugh Hewitt. Not Kim Strassel. Much more mainstream names.

No, I don't know. It is Axios own Jim Vanderheiden. Wow, and that is so bad. Oh my God. Yeah. Wow. How about that one Strassel fella? That's not right. It was. That was fun. That was fun. There was also a lot of Trump might dump paintings, which were that was there was a whole cottage industry.

I wrote that Seiger for a little bit. I was pretty into that one for a little bit less fun.

So some people wrote that some people were were you know, Trump might dump pense curious right here. There's a quote.

This is not a prediction. It's a certainty. On Thursday, July 16th, that's the date the Democrat gives his or her acceptance address on that day. To interrupt the narrative, Donald Trump will call a press conference at Mar a Lago. He's going to dump Mike Pence and put Nikki Haley on the ticket to try to get those. I got it. I got it going on.

And I know it was very smart. Democratic strategist Paul Begala, who just like this is this is the this is the trouble with being so certain in your Twitter brain.

I would not look, pundits have been known in the past to get a hot tip and then pass it off as a prediction. Maybe it was in the works. Maybe it happened. I wouldn't look, Trump changed his mind a lot. And look, dumping Mike Pence, he couldn't have lost more. I guess, you know, it's fair.

One that we have to point out is the re-elected senator from Maine, Susan Collins, after Trump's impeachment.

And she said, I believe the president has learned from this case and will be much more cautious in the future.

Yeah, well, you know what? She left last on Ellen. She she did, she did, she left last on that one.

The people of Maine heard that and they said, you know what, six more years, I will say, you know, on impeachment, there were takes in a variety of to a variety of directions as to how important it would be. And they all turned out to not really be true. Like, it's hard to say that the election shifted at all in any direction because of impeachment. We barely remember it happened by the time we got to November.

I feel like we all were kind of exactly on board with that one.

Oh, that was kind of how we were. I always really I thought I thought impeachment to have some kind of effect and it had no effect anywhere.

So tell me, this is your best friend. I think you'll see by June, a lot of the country should be back to normal and we'll be really rocking by July. Oh Jared Cambodge. Yeah, there you go. Rocking by July as well. Got it rocking Vijaya.

What he meant was rock rock n supertight suits and vxi vests.

Because boys I can give you they did rock over the summer, they just were super spreader events. That's right. And kind of gave you a take genre that I think just has to be mentioned, which was shadowy conspiracy mongering. Remember around Iowa night, the Iowa caucus results didn't come in and it just exploded on the Internet as if this was some like conspiracy theory to take down Pete or Bernie or everybody. Right. The Intercept had a piece about the headline was New Details show how deeply Iowa Caucus app developer was embedded in Democratic establishment, as if this was some plan people were accusing Mayor Pete of, like paying for the shadow app as part of a plan to take down Bernie.

One person tweeted, honestly, this is on Obama, who spent more effort getting a rather incompetent Tom Perez to be the head of the DNC than on any other post presidential political effort. Yes, Barack Obama coated the shadow app and he sold it to the Iowa Democratic Party. Just absolute madness.

Madness we we were in because we because because we know Tara McGowan. We took a picture at a birthday party and and in the end, it was a incredibly sneaky effort by Mayor Pete to sabotage results. He ultimately was the winner of thereby denying him the momentum into future contests that I am.

I am very happy that that whole thing happened, though, because it led me to meet a ton of people that I have not thought about ever since.

Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. And my life is better.

I'm trying to think of another. Oh, there's if it ends up that Biden wins, I guarantee you the week after the election, suddenly all those Democratic governors, all those Democratic mayors will say everything's magically better. Go back to Ted Cruz, back to school. That's wrong.

And it's cynical that that's wrong. Shame on go. Yeah, I'm too cynical to test. That's fucking cynical. Can can I read you were taken. You guys guess who it was. OK, so OK. This is two party games in October. This person said why aren't they talking about deaths regarding covid? Because the number is almost nothing. Because we've gotten control of this thing. Dot, dot, dot. Fast forward a month later posted apparently I got the wrona.

Oh, shit. Some kind of a Trumper, apparently, it was absolutely a Trumper. Apparently, I've got the number think like Dungeon or Stad Energy. Yes, yes, junior. Yes, Junior. Don Junior. Don Junior. Any other ones? Are we good?

Is that is that it outside? Let me give you one more rolling around in the snow.

Whatmore, March 13th hashtag coronavirus advice. Everyone should also ensure with an eye, mouth and throat are moist, never dry. Take a few sips of water every 15 minutes. Even if virus gets into your mouth, drinking water, other liquids will wash them down through your throat and into stomach or acid will kill virus.

Oh, hello.

Was that Geraldo Rivera tweeted that he was he's been special this year.

One more. This is this is this goes to your first initial your first round. It takes time. This will be decided in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. I know what will work there. Safe will not work. Biden we will lose because Biden is Hillary.

Biden is Hillary. Michael Moore, yes, good one. Yes, yes. Come on, come on. Nailed down. That was very hard to pull. I'm proud of that. I'm proud of that. Well, he also Michael Moore also told me on stage it was a moment there was a real moment of kind of I don't know, I've like good feeling about how we were all collectively going to fight. And I said I asked him, I thought I was like kind of teasing him up and I asked him about Biden.

And I thought I was like, oh, maybe he'll say. And then he just said, Biden won't be the nominee.

It's like, oh, OK. Well, I was there for a while to kids.

Yeah, well, you know, I mean, I was going to I was going to say we're not at our own bad takes yet. But if we want to tell you about the Biden thing, we we got pretty close, pretty close when we didn't go there. But we left we left ourselves a couple of exits.

You could pull a lever and get down a raft and get out. Right.

You know, if you listen to the pods of us between him, specifically between him losing Iowa and winning South Carolina, we were fairly down on his chance. Listen, I think the Biden team over a couple of beers would tell you that they were to Iowa.

The Iowa results being a wash was a weird sort of X factor. No one anticipated. Taking fifth in New Hampshire was certainly not the plan. And then that sort of that New Hampshire night event he did in South Carolina, it did not have a great feeling. And then they did an incredible job kicking ass in South Carolina, the Clyburn endorsement, and it changed everything. And then obviously covid hit. So, you know, it was complicated. But I think what everyone would admit to here.

Yeah, yeah, and Zolani there, John Anzalone is their pollster, was on was on Hack's X on top and he was talking about this and he said that they knew that I wasn't going to go well, but they didn't know was going to go that poorly.

And then they said that they both go into South Carolina and New Hampshire, like you said, and their second place finish in Nevada, even though it wasn't super close to Bernie.

The fact that it wasn't about Bernie, it was the fact that they finished ahead of everyone else in Nevada, set them up for South Carolina without much competition, aside from. Yeah, yeah. And that was sort of what, Ed?

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All right, let's do some of our own bad takes. I have this tape and I'll do the take first and then we can assign it. Do I think the Biden campaign will be actively competing and spending money in Georgia and Texas come October? No, I do not. It's probably wishful thinking.

I think soon Texas and Georgia will be battlegrounds, but I don't think yet this cycle.

Look, I'll come to that one. I say if I was 50 percent right there, OK?

I also think you can argue that you were you could argue that the take is half full time so you could well, they did compete and spend money. And yeah, I've been fairly I mean. Right. Like, I think that we were focused on the traditional battleground states and then Georgia became the real real stretch where we were actually sending the candidates or sending Barack Obama there, sending big surrogates to look once again. Stacey Abrams was right. We were wrong.

It could have been in part of our adopted state program.

And, John, I'm going to I'm going to spread this take around like a fine shit smelling mulch all around crooked media like Barack Obama to a plumber.

I'm spreading. Well, remember, I was a Joe the Plumber.

I take it back emotionally. Yeah.

Joe the plumber. I'm mad at myself for not pushing harder on Georgia, not that I thought it the whole time, although later in that thing I made the case for Georgia, but only because, like, I'm most at fault here because I sat down with Stacy for the wilderness and she made the pitch for me about Georgia. And it was a really good pitch. And then I was just like, yeah, just seems like if we're at Georgia, we've already won North Carolina or Florida.

Guess not. Right. That's what's interesting. Like, yeah, like we did six. Which state would we have swapped. I guess we would have swapped out Florida or North Carolina for Georgia if we knew.

But it's also hard to imagine not competing in Florida. North Carolina either got a trial like they were still close. Yeah, that's right. OK, what's a love it? You haven't told us you want to do your own bad because you haven't told us which Benteke you want.

I'll read number nine, all of you privately in the office saying that Elizabeth Warren was going to be the nominee. Frown face.

Now, I don't think that she was going to be then.

I don't think so either. We all liked Elizabeth Warren. That was I was certainly taken aback station.

I was very impressed by her campaign. Yes.

Jordan Waller is in the chat now saying this is a lie. Jordan, give us you have receipts. Did you record your boss? Well, we said this. No, you didn't.

So then we don't believe, you know, my ex didn't happen Instagram or it didn't happen.

But this is why we were good on predictions, because we because we were out of the predictions business.

We came close to Warren. But I don't know that we definitely we liked Warren, that's for sure.

Jordan said, I love it, saying vote for Warren from a pot at least three times.

Let's. OK, that's fair. Jordan. That's fair. I didn't say that.

I let that in the world, you know where it is. And we were in Iowa. It's OK. Here's one. This is our staff really helpfully, I guess, looked back through our internal office slacks and found this one for me. I said public service announcement. The polling bots that do flashback to twenty sixteen drive me fucking insane. State polls were not weighted by education in twenty sixteen. It was the main problem with the state polls. They overestimated the number of college educated voters and underestimated the number of non college educated voters.

That's why they looked better for Hillary than they should have. Most high quality pollsters have corrected this problem very confident. I was very confident that the polls had been fixed. They had not been fixed.

It turns out that even though they changed the weighting so they had more noncollege educated white voters in the polls, those non college educated white voters that they got when they changed the weighting happened to be the thirty percent of non college educated white voters who voted for Biden. So it didn't work.

And we have a real fucking problem with polling going forward where it's just that people with low social trust who don't want to answer phones, who don't want to take surveys because they don't trust anything, don't trust any institutions, also happen to be Trump voters. And that could be a real problem with the polling industry going forward.

Yeah, it's not great, it's not it's not great, especially because these elections are all look, so many of them are so close and it's like, let's find out after the election how accurate the polls are.

Kind of does away with the value. Yeah, yeah, Travis suggested we should talk about Lovett insulting Schitt's Creek. How dare you? I love Schitt's Creek, I love shirts. I love Schitt's Creek. I will cop to having a class critique of the family that there is a I'm ticked that there is they come in to the Tom and I are just sitting here quietly.

December is a I will say, here's my issue. Here's my issue. They lose everything. They're laid low. They show up in the town pretty quickly. They're running an apothecary. The other runs a hotel. They very quickly regain some of their status. They become bosses again. Hmm. That's it. That's my critique. You know, hashtag Bernie or bust.

One of our fantastic producers, Caroline Reston, wanted to point out that Tommy compared the transitional cluster fuck to a Bravo show and that this is unfair to Bravo shows implies something negative. She added a note, this does not have to be an anonymous audition. I'm happy to slap my name to this complaint. Yeah.

So, Caroline, I'm not a I'm not a heavy Bravo watcher, but like I feel like the core kernel of a lot of Bravo reality shows is they're just messy as hell.

Am I not wrong? Or the card of the contestants like thoughtful. That's why we love Bravo show. Right? I don't even get it. I know this is not an incense. It's just such a shame that this conversation about Bravo is taking place with two straight guys in the only gay person, a crooked media that doesn't watch them constantly. Oh, God. Jordan. Jordan Walters says the Kardashians are not bravo. Whatever. I stand by my take.

Oh, tough.

Tough. Are they Bravo ish? Yeah, I think so.

Bravo. Same same shit. Same exact shit. E. Bravo. Whatever. You know what I mean?

We're going to resolutions. We're going to start our resolutions from last year, see how we did. And we actually have clips of these resolutions so we can hold ourselves accountable. Let's play let's play my resolution here.

I cannot spend all of my day and all of my night paying attention to politics or reading about politics, looking on Twitter, being on my phone. So I know everyone says things like, I want to read more. I am setting a goal for myself of one book per month.

I think that I don't know if that's a lot or not because I haven't read in years and then I'm just so anxious all the time.

I think that I have to start like meditation. I've never done any kind of meditating. It's amazing. Wow.

I've done none of zero meditate, you know. So I read I probably read three books, so that's three. I am just as anxious. I spend just as much time paying attention to politics and I am just getting through Promised Land now. Listen, John, I think, you know, hope springs eternal on the on the meditation front.

We can we can do a guided one as a as a team, as a podcast. Maybe we start every episode with a ten minute guided meditation.

I would appreciate that. As long as I can be on my phone. Let's hear.

Love it. I want to have a sustainable model for eating food such that I don't feel guilty about what I'm eating. And so for me, what has worked in the past is clean, good eating decisions most of the week and then to absolutely fucked up balls to the wall, no holds barred, no rules, no society, no cameras, no one watching dinners. Want to get the bad feelings away from the food. I want to be in work and life.

I just want to do these three things I want to always be thinking about. I want to be positive. I want to be generous and I want to be disciplined. And I just just a little more positivity, a little more generosity and a little more discipline will go a long way to making me someone other people will want to be around.

Holding yourself to take the money to take is tough in a pandemic. You know, this was tough, I will say. So I would have been a little more do, too. I think you've been much a good job on that.

So I really I really thank you for saying so. I think I've tried on the food front.

I know I didn't say anything about that.

I failed so completely. I failed so spectacularly.

We went to Vegas for the caucuses.

I mean, I didn't know about the caucuses, but I lost my last trip out of California in twenty twenty, got to Vegas, found out about the caucuses. Good coincidence. But I ate I ate two buffets there, which is obscene. It was be there for a weekend. I ate two buffets and in my mind it was a last hurrah.

Yeah it was. You were right. Well, what I what I mean is I thought I would get back and have good eating habits and really try. I have that never happened. Every time I have felt a little guilty with every bite of food I have taken this year, every healthy meal feels like a sop to failure. Every cheat feels like an undeserved calamity. And it is horrible because I eat a couple of times every day. So I have got I have got to get this in check, not just because not just for health, not just for health, but because like I like connecting food with these bad feelings all the time is so unhealthy.

And I need to stop I mean, to stop jokes aside, like this is being recorded as well, too, right?

Yes. You need more help with this, I think. Right. For real. I think new Neum has helped. Neum will help. I also will say I as long as we're I'm in an unhealthy body image place, I will say I saw the interview I did with Matto and I look like a bloated, mummified corpse. And I realized I forgot to drink water and 20/20 and I would lie to you and say that it's because I want to be healthier.

But if I drink a glass of fucking water, I look ten years younger. It's the fountain of youth.

Oh, OK. That's great. That's easy. It's good solution. So try hydrate. Yeah, we're just dropping sluts there. So I just got to alternate water with Diet Coke and coffee and the and this tumbler has the ice from my coffee and I filled it with Diet Coke once it was empty. I've done that. It's OK. All right. Don't hurt yourself.

Let's let's hear Tommy's.

My first resolution is to not get upset when I don't follow through with any of my resolutions.

You know, that little notification that comes through on your phone on Sundays that says you've spent X number of hours on your phone this week. I need that guy to go down like what's yours at over four hours? I need that thing to go down. This is over four hours. I will not share mine, does it?

What is it. What is it definitely over for.

I want to this came up today. I want to donate if you're to donate money to candidates, I want to do it earlier and I want to do it until it hurts a little bit.

I want to go to more movies in the theater.

Great IPSC more Gatorade's movies in the theater.

Well, what a bummer that is so sad.

I did give to candidates movie theater. It did hurt. I got in trouble with Hanna at one point. But yeah, but the movies in the theater and I talked about the EPIK boy, do I miss the only two men?

God, people have been tweeting pictures from last year's shows. And it made me very sad. Also, I believe our our tour shows for 20/20 went up like mid-February, like the promotion for all the shows went up like right before. What a bummer. What a bummer. Party America is brought to you by policy genius, policy genius makes it easy for you to compare and buy life insurance in one place, Tommy so you're in luck and save over 50 percent in the process.

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All right, well, let's talk about resolutions for this year, who's got some resolutions for twenty twenty one they want to share. Tommy, sure, I mean, I did my normal thing of like a bunch of little ones, so I'll give you my bucket of work once I turn off the camera during Zoom. I miss real meetings, but I hate that every call has been replaced by a zoom. I want to end the tyranny of the zoom camera always being on because you end up looking at yourself and I hate it.

One short emails. I read one of those articles about how effective people just like reply really quickly to stuff. I want to do that. No fluff.

Who maybe that's that would be so cool. Maybe that's not doable.

And this sort of like ultra. Let's all do it. Let's do it right.

You get a reply like just the facts and then you guys, I know you guys feel the same way about this one. I want to fix my schedule. My, my my work week structure for listeners back home is basically like be as anxious as humanly possible Sunday through Tuesday when we wrap pot, save the world. And then like Thursday, Friday, sometimes I'm like, what should I do today? And I got to figure out a way to be more efficient or spread this stuff out or else I'm just going to be a nightmare.

I love it. Yeah.

I mean, I so I need to get back into a routine. I've said this every year for four years, but it continues to be true because sometimes, like, I need to get up earlier, even when I'm on the East Coast, I feel like I wake up behind Tommy. John and Dan are like air traffic controllers, making sure every tweet in the sky is monitored.

They never miss a fucking shift. I wake up at eight a.m. Eastern. Tommy's already yukking it up with Matt Negrin.

And so I just always feel a little bit behind. So I want to wake up and work out because when I do that, my mood is better, my health is better, I'm more productive. I have to do that. I have to do that. Ronon and I are prone to a late bedtime. We are gamer's at heart and it is very bad for the both of us. So we're going to work on that. And then also for next year, I want to I obviously want to read more, but I actually just want to read more about issues that I care about.

Like I want to. This is sounds silly, but I want to read a book about why infrastructure in America costs so much. It's something I care about and I don't feel like I know enough about it. Beyond the articles I read, you know, I mean, I want to go like a little bit deeper. Like, I care about corporate consolidation, but I feel like after like I feel like I've run out of thoughts about it because I haven't read enough about it lately, because we were so focused on the election.

And I want to make more things. I want to talk about Star Wars in a podcast or something. I want to like create more and spend less time creating tweets. It's good.

I'm going to just try to do baby steps on the like. I'm going to tweet less and I'm going to read books like that's obviously not going to happen, folks. It's not going to happen to me.

But this is good progress physically. Yet I do want to just like, lengthen my attention span. Let's try that. So, like, if I'm reading about news and politics, just like read longer stories, spend time doing something where I am focused only on that thing and that I'm not picking up my phone while doing that thing or talking to a bunch of other people. Like, I just so I want to I want to lengthen my attention and focus more on what I'm doing.

If I'm with family, if I'm with friends, whatever I'm with. Focus on that a little bit more.

I am also I am not turning down any invitations to see people in twenty, twenty one. Once the pandemic has gone down and people are vaccinated. I am going to everything you do, I'm going to see everyone. And the other thing I want to do is like really spend the time catching up with friends and family that I have not been able to see or talk to that much in twenty twenty because of the pandemic. Because like God, if there's ever a question whether I'm like an introvert or an extrovert, this pandemic has made me realize I am an extrovert and I desperately need to see people and talk to people and have social interaction because this year is rough.

And then the last thing for me is I just want to be more grateful because it has been a tough year and a real tough year for a lot of people. And I want to be I want to remember to be grateful for for what I have and the people in my life.

So, yeah, it's a it's a funny thing about the pandemic, which is. I'm surprised how hard it is to stay in touch with people that I would have been in touch with during the pandemic. It's there's something about having less to talk about. And the things we do talk about are so depressing that like, yeah, we kind of don't have as many stories to tell each other. And the catch up is like not as satisfying. And so, like, I think everybody has given each other more space than even I would have expected.

And like I feel like even in this moment, like my circle has shrunk a bit, not that I don't like love all the people that I will very much reach out to and want to spend as much time with as humanly possible next year. But I am I do feel the same way. Like I also feel look, without my weekly dose of one hundred and fifty people applauding at the Improv, I'm barely I'm barely able to get out of bed.

We are in a good place there for a minute. But yeah.

So if we're going to if we're going to more personal ones, we're going to more personal ones.

So I had one that's holding grudges. Holding grudges is bad for you. The resentment, it just festers. It bothers you at a low boil. So twenty, twenty one is about finishing the job. I thought we were getting to something like, you know, when you hold a grudge, it's poison. You take, you know, you know something like that, you don't squash it, you win it.

That's what twenty one is about when it comes to grudges. And then this one for all of us and for our listeners, we're going to tune out Trump. We got to move on from this guy like it needs to be a collective act. You will remain in control of the Republican Party, but it's going to take discipline from all of us to not react and amplify the meaningless outrage of the day. He cannot be the country's national narrator of events for twenty twenty one, twenty to twenty three in twenty four.

We got to remind ourselves that he is a shithead from New York who is now just a former president loser. Didn't need to hear some anti New York bias in their opinion at the end. Seems unnecessary.

He's a shithead for himself. Oh yeah. Right, you apologize.

So at the risk of I don't want to predict anything because this will be played back to me next year. But like, I've gone back and forth on this for a while, I think, like he he has like a I believe he has a tight grip on the Republican Party.

And because he has such a tight grip on the Republican Party, he will be a factor in politics and news coverage for a while.

But like I've been thinking about it more the last week or so, especially since I've noticed he's even felt like in the last couple of days. And like he hasn't been at the top of every headline. He hasn't been and the front of every news story.

And I do wonder, like, if all he has is a big fucking Twitter feed, but he is not in the White House. He is not in Washington. He is not part of congressional negotiations. He is not part of, you know, foreign policy and foreign trips. Like if he's not part of all that stuff. And all he has is his Twitter feed and his like calls to Fox and friends. And he's always on Newsmax or on like maybe he really won't be that much part of the conversation.

Like there might actually be some hope for that.

I have no faith in Jeff Zucker and a bunch of fucking executives who decide these things, but. Maybe, maybe. I think it's more like I think we have to actually internalize, like Trump is important insofar as he is the leader of a dangerous right wing anti-democratic movement. And the more central he is to that movement, which is a threat and is important, the more I think he'll be covered. And I and the more I think he'll probably deserve some coverage.

But I think there can be a lot of people vying to see where this mob is going so that they might lead them.

Yep, all right. Anything else? Yeah, I mean, look, I want to dust off some classics. I just bought my first John Maharey book. All right. I want to tell him he's got a lot. I want to read them. All right.

Also, you guys talked about your book. I was roundly mocked a couple of years ago for saying I wanted to spend less time at the gym. I succeeded to joke is on you, shut them all down. You conveniently ignored the other half of that resolution, which was eat healthier so you don't have to go to the gym. But that's OK. Not everyone is understood in their time, you know what I mean? But, you know, that's the real point here is how do we get to parts like remember back in the day when exercising was fun, you played sports or you, like, screwed around with your friends and like, I want to go to a place where you're doing fun stuff.

Again, that is that happens to be exercise, like playing tennis. I don't know. Whatever tennis.

Hey, Tommy, maybe it's time for you and I to play some tennis. I'd love to play. If you love it, if you want to sub in for me, because Tommy and Hannah and Emily are all great tennis players, I am not. So maybe maybe you can sub in for me when I'd love to.

I'd love to know. Tennis, tennis. When my friend Spencer suggested that he and I play tennis during the pandemic like I bought a tennis racquet, I was so excited to have a new thing, like every new thing that comes along. It's like the most exciting thing that could happen. So, yeah. Tennis. Tennis. Twenty. Twenty one. I want to clean my clean my car. Just that a bunch of little ones that do you got going to stop you.

You just pause for a sec. I just I have no more.

I have to clean my car and in over a year. And it makes Hannah very annoyed. It looks like it used to be black and now it's just sort of a gray. And I think that she doesn't she doesn't love that. Last thing I have, I I had a period during quarantine where I was playing a lot of guitar, like in playing almost every night. And I got so much better so quickly. And I want to figure out almost a curriculum for myself and sort of a reasonable schedule that's like three times a week.

You play for 20 minutes and just commit to that and then I'll be happy.

Even though we've been in quarantine for almost a year now, the last month I've started like really playing piano again. And it does feel like, wow, an activity, something new, something different, something to, like, have my mind work a different way. So I actually want to do the same thing with piano.

I just on the car front, I'm hoping this is repaired by the time this episode is coming out. So like every morning I've been borrowing Ronan's mom's car. So as Mia Farrow's car and driving to McDonald's, Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks to the drive there, and I get myself a coffee, I get what a variety of places they pretend to.

It's well, it's very variety is the spice of life. John and I transfer, I get what I do is I get the Dunkin Donuts. I transferred into a tumbler and then I press my hands and then I can have it. And it's like a routine I put on my mask when I go to drive through that. A lot of people don't.

The problem is so I fill the I pour out the plastic cup. Then I closed the plastic cup and I throw it into the bottom, right?

And when I say the well of meens car is filled with garbage, just throw it away. Plastic cups crumpled up. Breakfast sandwich. Hey, I hate cars like that.

Like, literally, literally like you couldn't get in. If you open that door, they will fall out the side. It's my dirty secret job. Nobody knows but me.

John, you remember, would love its car. I guess the same car you have now when he the side mirror was literally taped on and then he lost the keys. So we had literally a clothes hanger inside that the thing where you turn it on. Does that still the case? Yeah. No, no, no.

I was right about a car, but I think no, I still have that car. But I gave I fix that. I fix that.

And the other day, as I was one of the reasons I wouldn't get in the car with him on the highway, then what he gave me, I asked to ask where the keys were because she was going to go go get the mail and drop off, drop off some books at Goodwill.

And I was like, no, no, I'll do it, I'll do it. I'll take care of it. I'll take care of it for you. No, no, no. I'll do it because I don't want her to see what's going on in there.

Hopefully now this this will fix it hurt. You're hurt. Listening to this is good. It's a good it's a good cleansing of cleansing of the takes, cleansing of the resolutions, cleansing of the car. Last one before we go then, you know, I said I want to be more grateful, like I am very, very grateful. And I know you guys are, too. For all of you, for our listeners, because grateful for you guys not just listening, but, you know, telling us what you think, whether it's praise or criticism, tweeting at us, reaching out to us.

And most importantly, you know, three hundred thousand of you adopted a state and did volunteering sometimes for the first time. You donated you made calls. You did text banks all during a pandemic when a lot of shit was going on. And it was a really tough year. So many of you stepped up to work really, really hard in this election. And I don't know, like the best part of this job is having a community of people like I like all of you who are so engaged and so committed.

So we we love all of you guys. Yeah. Thank you. And and our amazing team here, Comedia Media, who enables everything that we are able to do despite being like the little engine that could not not nearly enough folks to do all the things that we try to take on this year. But everybody did it with just enormous optimism, despite being all the fun parts of work and all the time we get to hang out just being ripped away from us by this virus.

You know, we're still just incredibly successful and just so grateful to them and to all the listeners and. Yeah. Yeah, I think about I think about the fact that this has been like a four year fight, you know, and I think if we had been able to be together more celebrate more not just, you know, a few gatherings outside in front of the White House, but like the joy of having been in this fight together for so long and been through something so hard and so awful and the promise of something better, I feel like I do.

I am so proud of what we were denied by this pandemic and the failed response.

But like I really do. Go into twenty twenty one, so hopeful, so excited about the possibility of a better year, it really is in front of us. And as hard as this has been and as sad as I've been and depressed as I have been, that light at the end of the tunnel has mattered. And so and I'm so glad we can say that we won this election because imagine how we'd feel if we hadn't. Oh, my God.

Well. Happy New Year, everyone, happy new year. We'll see you in twenty twenty one. And here is to a much better year in spicy takes.

Potsie of America is a crooked media production, the executive producer is Michael Martinez, our associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Kyle Soglin is our sound engineer, thanks to Tanya. So commentator Katie Lang, Roman, Papadimitriou Quinn Lewis, Caroline Reston and Justin Howe for production support into our digital team, Elijah Konar Melkonian, Elfriede and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.

In November, Georgia voters shocked the nation, flipping our state blue for the first time in almost three decades. Now the world watches as our January 5th Senate runoffs will decide the future of our democracy. Tenderfoot TV and cricket media bring you a new podcast, Gaining Ground. The new Georgia written and hosted by two of Atlanta's own journalists, Robert Brown and myself, Joel Wicker. Gaining ground brings you stories from organizers, politicians and voters on the front lines of this political fight.

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