Am I too harsh?

I think it's not a bad first response, but then we can cool it down or heat it up, depending on which coffee you have, and think about how this has come about and what we might do to support both the potential candidate and the potential employer.

to help them get to know each other better.

Because I think the people who are walking in with the iced coffee or the hot coffee are from the generation that were overtaken by COVID and lost the capacity to distinguish between when is it formal and when is it informal.

When their first job interviews were over Zoom instead of face-to-face, or when they sat unemployed for a long time and drank a lot of coffee.

So we have to be a little sympathetic to how we got there and now think about helping the employer and the employee find each other.

Now, I agree with you that if you want to show yourself at the best, you should probably turn up 100% focused and not looking like you've just grabbed a coffee on the way in because it's going to be a casual chat.

Agreed.

How much money are we talking about, and how does it compare to previous years?

In 2022 in the midterms, it was over a billion, uh, donated by top dollars, and this year it is looking at 1.6 billion.

That's where we're at.

So we're far ahead, and we haven't even come into those last stretches.

The fact is that the money increases every cycle.

There's something a little bit inevitable about it.

You know, it's interesting because some of those tried and true donors, like Miriam Adelson, Jeff Yass, Richard Uihlein, Deborah Simon on the Democratic side, private equity titans like Steve Schwarzman, and Mark Rowan, and Paul Singer, who runs a hedge fund in New York, the- they have been known as early money.

But in some districts, outside spending has helped candidates win handily, and that's often when they already had an edge.

What are the pitfalls and hurdles of older people wanting to stay on in the workforce?

Well, it's interesting you ask about pitfalls and hurdles first because my first comment would be that the workforce is a great place for many people to be and age shouldn't be the determinant of whether or not we can be there.

It really...

It is so good for well-being, for socializing, for engaging with others, for keeping us healthy, for keeping us connected with the world, that it's a great shame for people if they feel that they do have to stop.

And I think you've already been talking a bit about the hurdles, the concerns.

The first one is the idea of the pension and what it means, and financial, and that's not my area of expertise.

So I need to sort of step away from that a little bit and talk about there might be benefits that mean that that attention one has to be only a small thing to think about, not the biggest.

And as you say, there are many benefits of staying in the workforce, even if it's only part-time.

Okay.

And I was deferring to Carrie.

It's funny because on these meetings, like, I'm looking at Carrie, but she doesn't know I'm looking at her.

Right.

I think, so I know, it was right when George Floyd happened.

This was August of 2020.

And we were tired.

So as a minority dealer yourself, what does that partnership look like from your perspective?