Dan Osborn is back for a record sixth appearance, and he’s walking into the final stretch of the most-watched Senate race in the country. Running as a true independent against Pete Ricketts — a sitting senator from a billionaire family that owns the Chicago Cubs — Osborn has outworked, out-hustled, and out-organized a $50 million machine. Fourteen counties left on a ninety-three county tour. More than two hundred public events. Small-dollar donations from all fifty states. And a message that is cutting through: less than two percent of Congress comes from people who punch a clock, and that is exactly why nothing gets done.
Paul and Dan dig into the mechanics of a dead-heat race, the Matthew McConaughey moment and what star power finally means for the independent movement, and the sucking chest wound of the Iran war — the USS Abraham Lincoln, the attempted suicides on board, service members paying their own way home, and a Congress of jellyfish refusing to invoke the War Powers Act. Dan also gets honest about the cost at home: Christmas on a credit card, groceries climbing, paychecks flat. Then Football Friday closes it out, because the man is a Nebraska guy and the Cornhuskers are back.
In this episode
- The ninety-three county tour: fourteen stops left and over two hundred public events in the books
- Why less than 2% of Congress comes from the working class — and how Osborn is trying to break that cycle
- The Matthew McConaughey moment and what it means for independents who have never had star power on their side
- “Ricketts is weak. I’m strong.” — the contrast Democrats won’t draw and independents will
- Seven and a quarter million of Ricketts’ own money, plus $50M from the machine, versus small-dollar donors in all 50 states
- The USS Abraham Lincoln, eight attempted suicides on board, and families paying their own way home from the Iran war
- Why Congress needs to invoke the War Powers Act — and why the “jellyfish” in Washington won’t
- Christmas on a credit card: the real cost of forever wars at the kitchen table
- Building a coalition with Joe Walsh, Ro Khanna, the former Montana governor, and voters across the spectrum
- Football Friday picks: Texas-Ole Miss, Utah-Houston, Michigan-Indiana, Lions-Packers, Chiefs-Seahawks, and the Nebraska blackout game
