S03E01 – Voting Felons and Meanie Musk

In this new episode and format of Finding Common Battle Grounds, we introduce a new member of the podcast team, Nate Triplett, and mix up the structure and format a bit. Ryan moves to the moderator role, Tom dons the conservative hat, and Nate steps in as our resident progressive. Also, instead of coming prepared with questions to try to get the other person to agree, both the conservative and progressive critique two topics to see if we can find common battlegrounds. First, we discuss Ron DeSantis’s efforts to arrest former felons in Florida who were approved to vote by the State of Florida and voted, only to find out they were not supposed to be able to vote and were arrested. What are the consequences of arresting such individuals for democracy? Both agree that such actions are intended to and will have a chilling effect on people voting. Second, we explore whether the mainstream media is being too hard on Elon Musk as the new owner of Twitter. Both participants agree that the mainstream media is leveling rather meaningless criticisms of Musk, but slightly disagree as well. Tom argues that the mainstream media are showing their liberal biases in attacking Musk, who is increasingly libertarian and conservative in his views. Nate argues that their criticisms of Musk are missing the bigger issue – that rich people are controlling media outlets, leading to monopolies and censorship of dissenting views. Some great bonus content as well.