[00:00:00] Daryl Cagle: Hi, I'm Daryl Cagle and this is the CagleCast where we're all about political cartoons. We have a special podcast today. It's our election day special with all of my own favorite editorial cartoons about the election day. And you're going to see my take on everything starting with this lovely eagle, this is probably the most important election to get out and vote in I've ever seen. Here you've got the old lady and the young lady, and they're both voting. The young lady says, ee dee bee ee dee biney! And the old lady says, Are you kidding me?! there's an age divide here.

[00:00:38] Daryl Cagle: There's a crazy bunch of undecided voters. It just makes no sense that any of them are undecided. I find it frustrated that anybody's undecided. So, I can understand the old lady's reaction here. This is the reaction I'd like to see. I call this the Election Day Daydream, Dreaming of Kicking Trump Out.

[00:00:56] Daryl Cagle: It's a very pleasant daydream. It's an optimistic cartoon, this one. I don't know that I really am optimistic. I'd rather draw optimistic cartoons than pessimistic cartoons. so it is with this one. We'll see if this is what happens. This on election day is, what I expect. We've got the Democrats glaring at the Republicans.

[00:01:16] Daryl Cagle: I like the wordless cartoons. It's something that I gravitate to more, I think, than other cartoonists. International cartoonists like the wordless cartoons. you know, you're going to have a page with enough objectionable election day text going on around the cartoon. I don't think the cartoon needs to add any more words to that.

[00:01:33] Daryl Cagle: So, this is where we are. This one's pretty similar. Republicans says jerk and Democrats says creep as they are voting. there's a whole lot of, bad feelings about this election. I think, people get, more. interested and angry about editorial cartoons when, passions are running high about the news and passions are running no higher than this election day.

[00:01:57] Daryl Cagle: this is one that I drew, On election day, at the last election, I have learned that editors don't like vomit, particularly editors in Britain, I've learned. For some reason, throwing up is more obscene in Britain than it is here, And you, you learn these things by drawing cartoons of people throwing up.

[00:02:16] Daryl Cagle: so I learned it the hard way. although this is very much the way I feel about it most of the time. It seems that both choices or all the choices that we get are not the choices that we would like to see. So I'm afraid this is going to be the outcome of the election. I'm putting it 60 40 that Trump's gonna win.

[00:02:36] Daryl Cagle: This is, uh, bold for me to say, seeing as I'm recording this the day before election day, we're probably not gonna know how the election turns out for a week after election day. We'll see how, accurate my, cartoonist prognostications are here. So it is. I, I, I hope for what I don't expect will happen.

[00:02:54] Daryl Cagle: This is Guernica for the Democrats. If Trump wins, those poor Democrats are going to be, quite disturbed. Therefore the Guernica metaphor. You just can't draw any more anguish than Guernica. So these are the disturbed donkeys. I also like to do old couples watching TV.

[00:03:16] Daryl Cagle: here's the old guy. He's watching TV. Everything he hears on TV is don't vote for Trump. Don't vote for Trump. Don't vote for Trump. And he hears what the doggy hears is vote for Trump. That may be because of the news channels that I happen to watch. It could very well be the reverse of this had I chosen to watch different news channels.

[00:03:38] Daryl Cagle: So here's the old man, the old lady and the doggy watching TV. Man says, Trump won the debate. Old wife says, Kamala won the debate. And the doggie says, Migrants are eating the pets. This one, of course, was after the last debate. And, I think it's still kinda true, although they've quit talking about migrants eating the pets.

[00:03:58] Daryl Cagle: Here's the old couple watching the TV on election night. The old man says, We used to watch TV on election night, to route for who we wanted to win. And the old wife says, Now we watch to root against who we want to lose. So, I will be watching and I will be rooting against who I want to lose. And that seems to be the way it goes these days.

[00:04:21] Daryl Cagle: I do draw too many old couples in front of the TV, but, you notice I draw the back of the TV, that way I don't have to draw what's on the front of the TV, and it makes the cartoon really quite simple to draw. These, these old couples come Very easy out of my hand, perhaps easier as I get old too.

[00:04:38] Daryl Cagle: So there is, uh, divide of the sexes. We find that more men are for Trump and more women are for Kamala or rather against Trump. And, this is my illustration of that. Interesting, situation. I look forward to seeing how this turns out. Now, Trump has some basic issues that he seems to hover around.

[00:05:00] Daryl Cagle: central to this is immigration. He wants to kick out all of the illegal immigrants. And, uh, this will be a massive effort. and we'll see, how much he really puts into that effort. effort if he's elected. this is the red meat for the base and, I think it's kind of disturbing and stirs up more mess than needs to be stirred up.

[00:05:22] Daryl Cagle: And, I have some sympathy for these poor people, but, all I have to say about it is what I can draw in a cartoon, which is, frustrating. Here are the immigrant kids, longing for the other side of the wall. again, this is, Trump's bread and butter. He locks the kids up and of course the MAGA people argue, well, Obama locked him up first and locked up more.

[00:05:45] Daryl Cagle: And, I get it. It doesn't make me like it any better, no matter who does it. The other big issue for Trump is inflation. And, This is an interesting one because, on the left, they argued that inflation is down and Biden is cleaning up the economic mess and, people are doing better than they ever have, but it doesn't feel like that.

[00:06:04] Daryl Cagle: It actually doesn't feel like that to me. I'm in a business where the newspapers are going out of business. So, I'm struggling with that. My income's going down. The cartoonist's income is all going down. The groceries are all going up. It's very frustrating. So you gotta, you gotta look at the situation and who do you blame?

[00:06:22] Daryl Cagle: You, you blame whoever's in power and that would be Joe Biden. And so, you know, uh, the Republican side, you got the kick the bastard out, argument, just as well. And. I gotta recognize that. Here's Joe Biden blowing up inflation the way he does. He says, you're not going up very far. And that doesn't quite, jive with what we see. So, I have some sympathy for the cartoonists on the right, and, surprisingly, I don't disagree with all of their cartoons. So Here's Inflation, and he's, Clearly being baited by Biden in this cartoon.

[00:07:00] Daryl Cagle: and he is a prickly monster. I am in California. in fact, I, the last gas prices I saw were about 20 cents more than this. along with all the other prices going up, gas prices probably haven't gone up. As much, they were pretty crazy in California before, just in combination with everything, it makes your, head spin.

[00:07:18] Daryl Cagle: And, I appreciate the economic arguments here. This is the gas dominatrix. it seems like the price of gas and all things, gas and energy independence, and Who gets to drill where they want to drill. This seems to motivate the Republicans, even though we're producing more gas than, any country has ever done before.

[00:07:40] Daryl Cagle: And, we're a net exporter more than, ever happened to the Trump administration. But you know, the Trump people don't see that because they just want more gas and not getting more gas is, where we always are. And who's to blame for not getting more gas? It must be Biden. although I have to admit that when I draw dominatrixes and naked butts, the cartoons don't get reprinted much.

[00:08:03] Daryl Cagle: So, there's a conflict between what you feel like you want to draw, what you feel like you need to draw, and what you can get into the newspaper, which makes the world frustrating for me and my fellow cartoonists. Now on the Democratic side, I think one of the most motivating issues is the abortion issue.

[00:08:21] Daryl Cagle: And we had the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, taking away Roe versus Wade and the right to an abortion nationwide. And that was a horror, a horror that came about from, President Trump's, uh, very disturbing three, , Picks for the Supreme Court, and that's what I have illustrated here with Lady Justice, the statue, being manhandled by the courts.

[00:08:44] Daryl Cagle: I think this is probably the Democrats strongest issue, and I'm certainly with them on this one, as are probably, Nine out of 10 editorial cartoonists, Here is Donald Trump and you know, he has his various lawsuits. This is the Mar a Lago documents case. what can I say?

[00:09:01] Daryl Cagle: The guy is a convicted crook. And, that doesn't seem to matter to the Republicans one bit. It matters to me, I was disturbed to see this documents case thrown out in Florida by the Trumpy judge. and if Trump gets elected, he gets off on all of the bad stuff that he did. And it was, In my view, a lot of bad stuff.

[00:09:25] Daryl Cagle: So you've got the prosecutor versus the felon in some eyes, and you have the unjustly persecuted, against the persecutors in other eyes, which makes for a disturbing dichotomy. Of course, this is what The world through my eyes world, the eyes of the left, Trump in his orange jumpsuit, which seems befitting, Trump hitting the Bobble Sam, he says, I keep punching, but democracy just won't stay down. The danger to democracy, January 6th insurrection, False claims of election fraud. This is what scares the left and motivates the left. And I think justifiably. So here we have baby Trump saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And. Liberty says, open wide, accept the election results, hmm, bitter.

[00:10:17] Daryl Cagle: He hasn't accepted the last election results. Uh, he seems to be positioning to not accept these election results, which is why our podcast today is probably going to be good for a week or two, until this stuff, starts to sort out, uh, perhaps it won't ever sort out because, we are pre positioned for it not to sort out.

[00:10:36] Daryl Cagle: So that is my overview of how it looks on both sides. We've got the Republicans on their pogo Bouncing up and down, banging their heads against the ceiling. Voter fraud! Election stolen! Loyalty to Trump gives me a headache! I think this is going to be a repeating scene, repeating over and over. Some of my old cartoons will turn out to be evergreens.

[00:11:01] Daryl Cagle: we'll see if I can post them again. These are the noble poll workers. I decided to draw this one because the poll workers have been getting such a bad rap with all of the, claims of voter fraud and, So many of the poll workers being blamed.

[00:11:17] Daryl Cagle: I think of those two, Georgia poll workers who sued Rudy Giuliani and won a huge bunch of money. And it looks like they're going to get Rudy Giuliani's 10 million New York apartment, which I would. Love to see because, poll workers are noble and they are heroes, especially now when half the population doesn't appreciate them and thinks that they're crooks.

[00:11:42] Daryl Cagle: And, they're not crooks. They're very nice folks next door who are, volunteering to do something that's, newly unappreciated. But, I appreciate it. So I drew them in the form of the Iwo Jima statue as heroes. And, I put a little thought into whether to draw them as a bronze statue, which I ended up doing, or draw them as.

[00:12:04] Daryl Cagle: regular people in regular people colors just in the Iwo Jima memorial position, raising the flag. And I decided I need to draw it this way because if I didn't draw them as a statue, it kind of didn't make too much sense as, uh, Tribute. but I debated that with myself for a while. Anyway, this is what it is and this is who they are, and they are indeed my heroes. So this one, you see the Republican who is inviting all the nice black folks into the polling place to vote here, and you see the. When they go into the dark room, they, fall down through the floor because this is just a way to get rid of them rather than to actually have them vote. And you know, we have seen a whole lot of Republican positioning to, make it more difficult.

[00:12:55] Daryl Cagle: for black folks to vote, removing polling machines in Texas from the, urban neighborhoods and, different schemes because, black people traditionally vote Democratic. And this is very disturbing and this leads to my doing this drawing. So, we are looking at an interesting, split in Congress right down the middle.

[00:13:16] Daryl Cagle: And it is possible that one or both houses could go to, uh, either party. And this is a scary situation that we will all be watching closely on election night. it looks like it's leaning towards the Republicans. And, uh, if they did a sweep of, uh, both houses of Congress and the presidency, we would see a very different, and disturbing America, I think.

[00:13:40] Daryl Cagle: that's what I'm watching out for. We'll certainly see the cartoons on that. And this is the impending doom, cartoon, where, Things are just cracking and we'll see which way they fall. The nation is just as divided. Here we see the Trumpies and, the rest of us who are, threatened by the Trumpies, the smiling, self confident Trumpies. And this is where we find ourselves. I think we'll be doing a lot of split down the middle cartoons for quite some time because there is quite a split down the middle.

[00:14:12] Daryl Cagle: this is what I'm afraid of, the Democrats deflating, and we are quite likely to see this. I hope that this cartoon doesn't turn out to be an evergreen.

[00:14:19] Daryl Cagle: This one too, this is basically the same cartoon. You know, it's possible that I will repost this cartoon right after the election, which hopefully I don't want to have to do. I threw this one in on, Ted Cruz because, you know, Ted Cruz is running for reelection in Texas and there is something of a chance that he might lose.

[00:14:40] Daryl Cagle: I would love to see Ted Cruz lose. And Here I have, him throwing all of his, fraudulent election bogus claims as poop against the wall. This cartoon is actually a tribute to cartoonist Steve Bell. And you can see our Steve Bell podcast, if you scroll back through our Caglecast podcast. He was the brilliant cartoonist for the Guardian in London, and, he drew a very famous.

[00:15:06] Daryl Cagle: Cartoon about George W. Bush as a monkey sitting on the toilet throwing his poop against the wall and very much this way and he tells funny stories about it and his editor's reaction to it and I I love that so much. I just had to do it and I chose to do it with monkey Ted Cruz And so here he is what's old becomes new again and perhaps There will be a call for this one again, and I can just put different labels on the poop to be, whatever is appropriate for Ted Cruz at the end of the week.

[00:15:38] Daryl Cagle: Let's just, hope for the poopy best on this one. This is actually a self portrait. It wasn't that long ago that I had a white beard and, I have lost the white beard, so perhaps this isn't an evergreen, but, here I am at my drawing board with, uh, Mr. Ku Klux Klan, Mr. Nazi and Mr. Satan, and they've come up to me and they say, We think you should draw nicer cartoons about Trump.

[00:16:00] Daryl Cagle: And This is kind of the story of my life. You should see my email box. My email box is, a whole bunch of you really should draw nicer cartoons about Trump. And of course, the larger frustration we have is that most of the, uh, the editors don't want any cartoons about Trump at the same time. All they're talking about on TV is about Trump.

[00:16:20] Daryl Cagle: The cartoonists all want to draw about Trump. and really we have a difference in markets, on the internet. All the Trump themed. Podcasts are the ones that perform the best, but in the newspapers, they want cartoons that don't really express much of an opinion. So the cartoonists are all motivated.

[00:16:36] Daryl Cagle: They choose this job, not because they have any good business sense, but they, want to draw their passion and their political views. And it is frustrating to live in a world like that. When. What you want to do is not at all what your market wants from you. There is no sense of supply and demand in editorial cartoons.

[00:16:53] Daryl Cagle: I do a lot of drawing of cartoons that nobody wants, and I try to intersperse those with, charming little, non opinionated comments on, on current events that editors prefer, but, it seems that no matter what I draw, if it's not a nice cartoon about Trump, I do get email from people complaining about that.

[00:17:11] Daryl Cagle: This is, what I expect after the election. Uh, we want to get those characters off our lawn. more and more, I become the old man in my cartoons, and I'm sick of these guys, and everybody's sick of these guys, and I just want them off my lawn. Same with pollsters. My goodness, how many polls can we hear?

[00:17:31] Daryl Cagle: and how wrong can pollsters be over and over again, yet we still hear from them as though they're not wrong and we should pay attention to them. So, this is, uh, this is something that will continue if the pollsters happen to be right. And, this just comes down to being too close to call for weeks.

[00:17:50] Daryl Cagle: I suppose we're going to have to suffer from more years of these pollsters, and if the pollsters are entirely wrong and we see a blowout for one side or the other, my guess is that we're going to continue to hear from the pollsters anyway, even though there's no reason that we should be continuing to hear from them.

[00:18:05] Daryl Cagle: I drew this one, uh, back in the COVID days, and all these guys were wearing masks as they went to mail in their ballots, and Trump was, complaining about, mail in ballots and how we shouldn't ever have those because that's all voter fraud. But of course now we have lots of mail in ballots and Trump urges everybody to mail in their ballots because it's to his advantage this time.

[00:18:27] Daryl Cagle: So, what can I say? I'm all for mail in ballots. I want to see everybody vote.

[00:18:33] Daryl Cagle: This is one of those cartoons that editors like, because it's neither right nor left, and it encourages you to to go out and vote, which is a virtue, and how can you complain about that? And we love all of these characters, because they're all us. And, I suppose if I was going to be more successful, I would draw more cartoons like this one.

[00:18:51] Daryl Cagle: That said, you should all go out and vote. And this is one that I hope will be a cartoon that will be, good after the election. this is the way that I'd like to see it go. We will hope to see it go this way. I don't know that it will. And I'm hoping to bring this cartoon back, which I did quite a few years ago, when the Republicans were quite disturbed by the outcome of that election, and they were having their Guernica.

[00:19:16] Daryl Cagle: we'll see which one of these two cartoons I bring back, the Democrats or the Republicans Guernica after election day, because somehow I think there's going to be a lot of pain and anguish that, needs to be depicted in cartoons. So. so that's it, folks. That is all Daryl Cagle, all podcast.

[00:19:37] Daryl Cagle: The first time I've done that before. I hope that you guys will remember to subscribe wherever you're watching this. our, Caglecast is available in both video and audio versions. And, uh, next time I'll have a gaggle of cartoonists to talk about their cartoons and everybody's cartoons, and we'll get back to the normal format rather than all me.

[00:19:57] Daryl Cagle: And perhaps that will be much better. Be sure you go to Cagle.com/subscribe and subscribe to our free daily cartoon newsletter. What a deal it's free and it's all the best cartoons so you never miss them and you should subscribe. Just go there, put in your email address, you're subscribed.

[00:20:16] Daryl Cagle: If you decide you don't like it, you click unsubscribe at the bottom of the email letter. And what a deal costs you nothing. You should go do that. Thank you so much for watching. Watch all the other podcasts. Be sure to like and subscribe and, we will see you on the next podcast thank you all so much.