Transcript

Wave, Goodbye?! · Politix

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SPEAKER_01: I think he's going to convince them
0:02
SPEAKER_01: that him internationally discrediting Israel is like actually something they favor.
0:08
SPEAKER_00: I was trying to piece together what the fuck you were thinking, but there it is.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: Hey,
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[music]
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SPEAKER_00: everyone, you're listening to a free preview of the Politics Podcast.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: This is our final pre-election episode, so we're doing the whole thing on the midterms.
0:24
SPEAKER_00: In the first half,
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SPEAKER_00: we'll go big picture with a vibe check,
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SPEAKER_00: some tea leaf reading, and broader thoughts on the nature of public opinion.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: Then in the second half,
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SPEAKER_00: we'll log our predictions and our bellwethers for some insight
0:36
SPEAKER_00: into how we'll be experiencing the returns on Tuesday.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: If you want to hear or watch the whole conversation, upgrade to paid at politics.fm.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: Hey everyone, welcome to the Politics Podcast.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: I'm Brian Boitler.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: I'm Matthew Iglesias.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: Reminder for everyone,
0:54
SPEAKER_00: we will drop next week's episode on Thursday morning rather than Wednesday morning
0:59
SPEAKER_00: because we want to record after we know more than just the bare minimum about how
1:04
SPEAKER_00: the election came out.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: And if, you know,
1:07
SPEAKER_00: we still have constitutional democracy in America, if there are tanks in the street.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: But for now, we're going to get all our nerves out.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk about how we're feeling about the situation,
1:26
SPEAKER_00: what we're doing to temper expectations or prepare ourselves for disappointment,
1:31
SPEAKER_00: stuff like that.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: How are you feeling?
1:34
SPEAKER_01: You know, I would like to know what's going to happen.
1:38
SPEAKER_01: I've entered a level of professionalism where I just want
1:41
SPEAKER_01: to do my editorial planning for next week.
1:44
SPEAKER_01: And I can't because I don't know what the election results are going to be.
1:47
SPEAKER_01: I've been trying to offer people promising that if they can tell me what's going
1:51
SPEAKER_01: to happen for planning purposes, I will respect their embargo.
1:55
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, just like be ready to go with good takes next Wednesday and Thursday.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: But nobody knows.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: I feel like we've I feel like we've engineered a situation,
2:04
SPEAKER_00: maybe on the Senate side, been the House through gerrymandering.
2:08
SPEAKER_00: Um, where, like,
2:11
SPEAKER_00: it should be a pretty normal distribution,
2:14
SPEAKER_00: and so you shouldn't have to worry that a tiny turnout differential is going
2:19
SPEAKER_00: to make some huge change in the, you know, like, it should follow.
2:24
SPEAKER_01: Yes, in the house,
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SPEAKER_00: it is fairly normal.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but it is and it isn't.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: I am not losing any sleep on the fear that the polls are off by six points
2:39
SPEAKER_00: or whatever it would take.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: For Democrats to actually not take the House.
2:43
SPEAKER_00: I don't worry about it.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: But like you can get into like D plus 6, D plus 7, D plus 8.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: And if it washes out in just the right way with the way things are gerrymandering,
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SPEAKER_00: it's really hard to go from like the 225 to 235 range and then to vault over 240.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: Even though it should kind of progress,
3:04
SPEAKER_00: not linearly obviously, but like Each percent gets you a little bit closer, right?
3:09
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: And so like my gut tells me Democrats are going to do well enough to win like
3:17
SPEAKER_00: a 240 plus seat majority in a non-warped environment.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: But I'm just completely uncertain about how it's going to actually wash out.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: Like I think D plus nine is very likely, maybe even higher than that.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: And I just don't know if that means 230.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: Or like 245.
3:37
SPEAKER_00: It could...
3:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's just that I did want to say about this.
3:41
SPEAKER_01: I have seen some loose talk about the idea that some
3:45
SPEAKER_01: of these gerrymanders could like backfire on Republicans in
3:49
SPEAKER_01: a large wave environment.
3:51
SPEAKER_01: And I was looking because I because we don't know what the election results will be.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: The one thing that I was able to look at,
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SPEAKER_01: like a very clear quantitative analysis of is that question.
4:01
SPEAKER_01: And that is not true.
4:03
SPEAKER_01: The net redistricting impact since 2024 has.
4:08
SPEAKER_01: Gains Republican seats at like all remotely plausible popular vote outcomes.
4:17
SPEAKER_01: You know, so like there is a shot that Democrats will bust two of the gerrymanders.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: And that'll be nice and that will feel good.
4:27
SPEAKER_01: And I really like the candidates in those seats, Bobby Pulido and Jenny Garcia.
4:32
SPEAKER_01: But it's not like a dummy man.
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SPEAKER_01: Like they engineered that outcome by making the core Austin and San Antonio seats better.
4:43
SPEAKER_01: I guess one fairly predictable outcome is the Democrats take the House
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SPEAKER_01: a comfortable enough margin that the gerrymandering doesn't matter.
5:06
SPEAKER_01: And I don't want that to give people complacency
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SPEAKER_01: because these gerrymanders are optimized so that Republicans can hold the House
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SPEAKER_01: in like a D plus two, D plus three environment, which is like clever gerrymandering.
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SPEAKER_01: And they have achieved that goal.
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SPEAKER_01: And unless Democrats follow through in Virginia,
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SPEAKER_01: Colorado, California, Possibly New York, possibly Maryland.
5:30
SPEAKER_00: Hold on to some of these because you're teasing too much about segment two.
5:34
SPEAKER_01: But yes, I agree.
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SPEAKER_01: We need to go forward with the vibe from last spring when people were worried about this.
5:43
SPEAKER_01: It's true that with diesel at like $17 a gallon or something, it doesn't quote unquote matter.
5:50
SPEAKER_01: But the gerrymanders are efficacious.
5:52
SPEAKER_01: Just like I think the half a billion dollars of Elon Musk money is Is efficacious.
5:59
SPEAKER_01: It's not going to work, but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I agree with all that.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: Get the distinction.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: But so given all that, like, what do you actually think?
6:11
SPEAKER_00: Like, don't give me your number because we're saving that for our predictions.
6:14
SPEAKER_00: But, like, is your sense that Democrats are doing about as well as the aggregators say?
6:24
SPEAKER_00: And what is giving you doubts in either direction, if anything?
6:29
SPEAKER_01: I guess my – the strongest critique of the sort of poll-based models
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SPEAKER_01: that show Democrats – Sweeping Senate seats is that historically,
6:43
SPEAKER_01: polls are biased, like within state.
6:47
SPEAKER_01: Uh...
6:48
SPEAKER_01: In the wrong direction.
6:50
SPEAKER_01: Like Republicans get overestimated in blue states and Democrats get overestimated
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SPEAKER_01: in red states because of, I think, the way demographic weights work.
7:00
SPEAKER_01: So I think that we should assume that some of the Democrats
7:05
SPEAKER_01: who have occasionally looked like they might be in trouble,
7:08
SPEAKER_01: like Flanagan and Chris Pappas, are going to be fine.
7:13
SPEAKER_01: But that some of the Democrats that like Angie Nixon within striking distance
7:18
SPEAKER_01: and Adam Hamilton ahead in Kansas, that that's probably a mirage.
7:23
SPEAKER_01: And that like on both sides...
7:26
SPEAKER_01: We should expect a somewhat chalkier outcome,
7:30
SPEAKER_01: you know,
7:30
SPEAKER_01: than you would think by looking at the kind of most excitable polls,
7:34
SPEAKER_01: which in the just given what the map looks like,
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SPEAKER_01: probably caps Democrats gains that I think is probably bad news for Hamilton
7:43
SPEAKER_01: and Turek, who are a couple of my faves.
7:46
SPEAKER_01: And then especially for like the real reaches in Nebraska, South Carolina, Florida.
7:53
SPEAKER_01: Doesn't that just put us basically?
7:55
SPEAKER_00: Like 52, 53, which is where most of the models stay?
8:10
SPEAKER_01: Because if it's 51,
8:11
SPEAKER_01: then everything comes down to managing the interpersonal relationship
8:14
SPEAKER_01: with John Fetterman, which I don't think is going to go well for Democrats.
8:20
SPEAKER_01: And in a sense, 52 is like the real number.
8:23
SPEAKER_01: And it's hard.
8:25
SPEAKER_01: It's a steep climb.
8:26
SPEAKER_01: When you get past Maine, Ohio,
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SPEAKER_01: North Carolina,
8:32
SPEAKER_01: every additional flip beyond that is like Really, really, really hard.
8:39
SPEAKER_01: Ken Paxton is like enough of a fuck up that I feel like gonna get Texas.
8:47
SPEAKER_01: And then it's tough, you know?
8:49
SPEAKER_01: Alaska, Iowa, it's tough states.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:53
SPEAKER_00: Um, so I basically agree with that.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: And like, I, I,
8:57
SPEAKER_00: I'm setting my expectations basically where like Nate Silver or G.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: Elliot Morris would have me set them like 52, 53 seats in the Senate ish.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: But like, um, my,
9:12
SPEAKER_00: you know, when,
9:13
SPEAKER_00: when I'm,
9:13
SPEAKER_00: when I'm dooming or when I'm feeling good about things like better than,
9:18
SPEAKER_00: than the aggregators would, would want me to or whatever.
9:21
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: Like, I do a little gut check, right?
9:26
SPEAKER_00: Like, am I being misled by spin?
9:30
SPEAKER_00: Are
9:33
SPEAKER_00: the people making the Doomerish cases, like,
9:39
SPEAKER_00: using pure reason?
9:41
SPEAKER_00: Or do they have some sort of motivated reasoning?
9:44
SPEAKER_00: Like, what does history say about the situation that we're facing?
9:50
SPEAKER_00: And, like,
9:52
SPEAKER_00: I think that if you like look at 2018 or 1994 or even like 2010,
10:01
SPEAKER_00: you should expect a really big wave election, right?
10:06
SPEAKER_00: Like
10:08
SPEAKER_00: it would be weird to me if you had a situation where the president was – Like
10:18
SPEAKER_00: a hyperpolarizing figure who tended to polarize people negatively against him.
10:23
SPEAKER_00: He was overall extremely unpopular.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: He had done a lot of policy damage to the country.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: And you were
10:36
SPEAKER_00: noticing just
10:39
SPEAKER_00: like qualitatively that
10:41
SPEAKER_00: the way his supporters were talking about him had shifted, right?
10:48
SPEAKER_00: You would expect that that would give you an outcome equal to or worse
10:53
SPEAKER_00: than what you saw in previous times when the country seemed to just be done with
11:00
SPEAKER_00: the current state of affairs, right?
11:02
SPEAKER_00: And I take your point about the money that is being spent to try to save some
11:07
SPEAKER_00: of these seats,
11:10
SPEAKER_00: but just how much it would take to overcome the The kind of like forces
11:17
SPEAKER_00: that give you 1946, 1994, 2010 style waves seems like you can't really stop it.
11:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I just think that like,
11:31
SPEAKER_00: what was I gonna say?
11:34
SPEAKER_00: I remember that
11:37
SPEAKER_01: had these kinds of feelings around 2016.
11:44
SPEAKER_01: You know,
11:45
SPEAKER_01: and it just seemed not only like the polling,
11:48
SPEAKER_01: you know,
11:49
SPEAKER_01: showed Hillary was going to win,
11:50
SPEAKER_01: Democrats are going to pick up a lot of Senate seats,
11:52
SPEAKER_01: but it was like clearly Republicans themselves were very,
11:55
SPEAKER_01: very panicked, you know, and you could see it.
11:58
SPEAKER_01: And it's like,
11:59
SPEAKER_01: it is definitely true that there is not some secret Republican Party source
12:04
SPEAKER_01: of political information that is making them much more confident, right?
12:11
SPEAKER_01: Like Trump,
12:13
SPEAKER_01: Has been campaigning in deep red states to shore up,
12:18
SPEAKER_01: you know, things that shouldn't be on the map at all.
12:21
SPEAKER_01: Republican money is being spent very, very defensively.
12:25
SPEAKER_01: They have given up on North Carolina, which is a state that Trump won three times.
12:30
SPEAKER_01: Like they are seeing the same things that You know, that is in the public polling.
12:35
SPEAKER_01: There are differences between the different public models, but they're like pretty nuanced.
12:40
SPEAKER_01: And also to give credit to everybody doing this work,
12:43
SPEAKER_01: like, you know, I think like Elliot Morris is clearly a more...
12:48
SPEAKER_01: He's a left-wing person than Nate Silver is and more of an anti-Trump partisan
12:54
SPEAKER_01: than Nate Silver is.
12:55
SPEAKER_01: But his model is actually slightly less bullish on Democrats' fortunes than Nate Silver is.
13:04
SPEAKER_01: So they're like converging on basically the same story and the differences
13:08
SPEAKER_01: between them are nuanced and not just like two guys kind
13:13
SPEAKER_01: of talking their own preferences.
13:14
SPEAKER_01: It's some kind of actual disagreement about how to weight some of the fundamentals in the race.
13:23
SPEAKER_01: I just don't know how much credence we can really put in this.
13:30
SPEAKER_01: In these things, we have seen multiple times in recent circles this kind of mirage
13:41
SPEAKER_01: Just like loyalist Republicans or loyalist Republican geography showing up
13:47
SPEAKER_01: in polls like, oh my God, like everything's changed now.
13:51
SPEAKER_01: And then on election day, it turns out to have like not changed that much.
13:56
SPEAKER_01: And like, I just, I don't, I don't know, you know.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: But why, what about 2026 would make you think that Trump would experience less of a backlash
14:07
SPEAKER_00: than he experienced in 2018, right?
14:08
SPEAKER_00: Like,
14:10
SPEAKER_00: But it's not that I think less.
14:31
SPEAKER_01: To weather the storm and actually consolidate his hold on power there.
14:37
SPEAKER_01: And that just has been my concern about this map.
14:40
SPEAKER_01: It's my concern about what we know about historical polling error
14:44
SPEAKER_01: in deep red states,
14:46
SPEAKER_01: et cetera,
14:47
SPEAKER_01: that like,
14:48
SPEAKER_01: you know,
14:49
SPEAKER_01: so much of what is clearly not the only thing that's hurting Trump is energy prices,
14:56
SPEAKER_01: but that's like the cherry on top of the sundae.
14:59
SPEAKER_01: Right.
15:00
SPEAKER_01: Is just high energy prices are pushing a certain number of people who were like,
15:06
SPEAKER_01: I'm fine with pardoning January 6th rioters,
15:11
SPEAKER_01: but like paying four dollars and a quarter for gasoline.
15:13
SPEAKER_01: That's like a bridge too far for me.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: And if we can get that to deliver a Democratic Senate that can like actually not in
15:24
SPEAKER_01: a performative way,
15:26
SPEAKER_01: but just in the sense that like you need Senate votes to confirm judges can like put
15:31
SPEAKER_01: the brakes on this.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: Then I think a lot of the MAGA machine starts to get pretty rickety,
15:37
SPEAKER_01: but they're within a very small polling error of holding the Senate.
15:43
SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
15:44
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to be really nervous about that outcome until the votes are in
15:49
SPEAKER_01: from Alaska.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no,
15:52
SPEAKER_00: this is what I was trying to get at at the beginning is that like
15:54
SPEAKER_00: a one point difference in turnout can be the difference between a 50 seat thing
15:59
SPEAKER_00: where Democrats had a really good night.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: Neted three Senate seats, almost certainly took the House.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: You're probably talking about a D plus 8, 9, 10 environment there.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: And yet you don't have the Senate and Trump gets judges through for the next two years, right?
16:14
SPEAKER_00: Versus they do one point better than that.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: And like dominoes fall and you get to 53 or four.
16:21
SPEAKER_00: And like being...
16:23
SPEAKER_00: Trying to have the right mental habits about that for like,
16:26
SPEAKER_00: what does it say about the mood of the country?
16:28
SPEAKER_00: Like the difference between a 50 and 53 seat Senate majority?
16:32
SPEAKER_00: Probably not very much, right?
16:33
SPEAKER_00: Like it is still like an overwhelming rejection of what Trump has delivered.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: But in terms of like the effect on the world,
16:43
SPEAKER_00: on like psychology of politics, like the people doing, it's going to
16:50
SPEAKER_00: And that's extremely annoying to have to live with that uncertainty.
17:07
SPEAKER_01: Discourse, right, about like, where are Americans really?
17:10
SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
17:10
SPEAKER_01: if it's a D plus six result and 227 House seats
17:15
SPEAKER_01: and Democrats gain three Senate seats,
17:18
SPEAKER_01: you know,
17:18
SPEAKER_01: that shows the mood of the country is turned against Trump,
17:21
SPEAKER_01: just as 2018 showed that the mood of the country is turned against Trump.
17:24
SPEAKER_01: But it doesn't actually stop Trump.
17:27
SPEAKER_01: You know,
17:28
SPEAKER_01: whereas if it's D plus nine and Democrats flip five or six Senate seats,
17:33
SPEAKER_01: you know,
17:34
SPEAKER_01: Then it's not that like that's the end of Trump,
17:38
SPEAKER_01: but it's a scenario where, you know.
17:42
SPEAKER_01: Like, is Trump going to try to steal the election?
17:46
SPEAKER_01: Maybe.
17:47
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, he he does crazy things, but like but like it would mean that.
17:54
SPEAKER_01: His legal paths to continuing to tilt the political landscape in
18:01
SPEAKER_01: the country are really blocked.
18:03
SPEAKER_01: It would mean that Business people who got on the Trump bandwagon need
18:10
SPEAKER_01: to ask themselves, did I make a mistake here?
18:13
SPEAKER_01: Rather than just saying, whew, you know what?
18:16
SPEAKER_01: Like, we weathered the storm.
18:18
SPEAKER_01: This Hormuz thing is going to get sorted out at some point in the next 18 months
18:22
SPEAKER_01: and we'll probably be okay.
18:23
SPEAKER_01: And like,
18:24
SPEAKER_01: I want to see,
18:25
SPEAKER_01: I think we need to see,
18:26
SPEAKER_01: I think the country needs to see some real panic among members of
18:31
SPEAKER_01: the Trump coalition.
18:33
SPEAKER_01: Like, I want to see...
18:35
SPEAKER_01: You know,
18:37
SPEAKER_01: Angry pro-life activists arguing in bad faith
18:41
SPEAKER_01: that Republicans would have done better if they,
18:43
SPEAKER_01: like, stood firmer against abortion.
18:45
SPEAKER_01: I want to see Mark Zuckerberg scrambling to put pronouns in his bio to,
18:51
SPEAKER_01: like, try to get his woke cred back.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: I want to see him arrested in Brazil.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: You know, he's probably just not in Brazil.
19:01
SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't know.
19:01
SPEAKER_01: It'll be fine.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: They could nab him somewhere.
19:03
SPEAKER_01: He could go to Glenn Greenwald's house and they can...
19:06
SPEAKER_01: Take a stand against Lula or something.
19:10
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's fine.
19:12
SPEAKER_01: You know, there's just like, there's things...
19:16
SPEAKER_01: There's clearly been a very cynical decision by a very diffuse... Not diffuse, by like...
19:24
SPEAKER_01: A disparate group of stakeholders made a decision sometime after,
19:30
SPEAKER_01: sometime in 2023,
19:32
SPEAKER_01: that they were bandwagoning with Trump,
19:35
SPEAKER_01: that he was going to win the primary,
19:38
SPEAKER_01: that he had the upper hand against Biden,
19:41
SPEAKER_01: that the candidate switcheroo discredited Democrats' policies.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: Plaintive concerns about democracy,
19:51
SPEAKER_01: that all the money that Kamala Harris raised didn't get her the election, etc.
19:57
SPEAKER_01: And like,
19:58
SPEAKER_01: you know,
19:58
SPEAKER_01: people are going to change their calculus,
20:01
SPEAKER_01: not in response to You know,
20:03
SPEAKER_01: the difference between Peltola wins by one and Peltola loses by one is
20:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
20:35
SPEAKER_01: Cares what government entities think of them.
20:37
SPEAKER_01: Has to make multiple different adjustments to a Dem-led governments.
20:43
SPEAKER_01: Like, that is good.
20:44
SPEAKER_01: And that should try, hopefully, get...
20:47
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to give some, like, the fever will break kind of moment.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: But are we going to have among Republicans a debate in 2028 about who should lead the party?
20:57
SPEAKER_01: And what should that leadership look like?
20:58
SPEAKER_01: Are we going to have a J.D.
20:59
SPEAKER_01: Vance coronation?
21:01
SPEAKER_00: I'm glad that you mentioned the...
21:03
SPEAKER_00: The money that Harris raised and how it was deployed
21:06
SPEAKER_00: and how it didn't ultimately work well enough to deliver her the presidency.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: Because I remember that that money was spent overwhelmingly in six states, right?
21:20
SPEAKER_00: And it did work.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: You could look at the swing nationally versus the swing in those states,
21:26
SPEAKER_00: and it was smaller in those states,
21:28
SPEAKER_00: suggesting that the campaign had a small but measurable effect, right?
21:35
SPEAKER_00: There is a spending differential that's kind of like the mirror image of that now.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: And the difference is,
21:44
SPEAKER_00: I think,
21:45
SPEAKER_00: that that money is being spent in a much more diffuse way or
21:48
SPEAKER_00: a significantly more diffuse way now than it had to be then because this is
21:52
SPEAKER_00: an archipelago of races, not one big one, right?
21:55
SPEAKER_00: And also...
21:58
SPEAKER_00: I don't believe that it's being spent wise,
22:03
SPEAKER_00: like it's not being spent to do clever politics, right?
22:08
SPEAKER_00: Every Republican is doing the same he's with they, them,
22:11
SPEAKER_00: she's with they,
22:12
SPEAKER_00: them thing without the aspect of the Trump version of that ad where Democrats are
22:21
SPEAKER_00: in charge,
22:21
SPEAKER_00: things are going poorly,
22:23
SPEAKER_00: Democrats are distracted by their Picayune identity concerns
22:27
SPEAKER_00: when they should be focused on you, right?
22:30
SPEAKER_00: Like the whole package sort of helps explain why that worked, not just the raw bigotry.
22:35
SPEAKER_00: And Republicans are leaning into the raw bigotry aspect of it.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: And it seems to be less impressive that way, right?
22:43
SPEAKER_00: So, you know,
22:46
SPEAKER_00: my instinct,
22:49
SPEAKER_00: given those two things,
22:50
SPEAKER_00: is that all this money will be Help Republicans stem some losses in some places,
22:58
SPEAKER_00: but it'll just be a smaller effect than it was in 2024,
23:03
SPEAKER_00: which leaves me feeling pretty bullish.
23:07
SPEAKER_00: Because if you go from a D plus 10 to D plus 9 as a result of
23:13
SPEAKER_00: the spending differential, you're still basically fine, right?
23:16
SPEAKER_00: The margin where you start to worry just slips further down.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: And...
23:23
SPEAKER_01: Well, okay,
23:24
SPEAKER_01: I guess the other thing,
23:25
SPEAKER_01: I don't know how we can really formalize this so well,
23:31
SPEAKER_01: but I think that a spending edge helps you more when you are on offense, right?
23:41
SPEAKER_01: Right, like,
23:42
SPEAKER_01: I think that if, like, if,
23:44
SPEAKER_01: take the map that we have and take the public opinion landscape that we have,
23:49
SPEAKER_01: but delete Elon Musk's $400 million from the Republican war chest.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: But also you gotta kind of delete Paxton to run this experiment.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: No, no, well,
23:59
SPEAKER_00: you know,
23:59
SPEAKER_00: but I'm just saying,
24:00
SPEAKER_00: but like,
24:00
SPEAKER_01: but like give Democrats $400 million extra dollars in this landscape.
24:07
SPEAKER_01: And with those $400 million extra dollars,
24:11
SPEAKER_01: Then you can do things, each of which probably won't work, right?
24:16
SPEAKER_01: Like fully fund Angie Nixon's Senate campaign in Florida,
24:21
SPEAKER_01: fully fund David Jolly's Senate campaign in Florida,
24:24
SPEAKER_01: fully fund Gina Hinojosa's gubernatorial campaign in Texas, right?
24:28
SPEAKER_01: Like I think in expectation,
24:32
SPEAKER_01: all three of those candidates will lose even with infinite money behind them.
24:37
SPEAKER_01: But those are three individual races that have some correlation between them,
24:42
SPEAKER_01: but it's not that heavy.
24:45
SPEAKER_01: When the public opinion wins are at your back,
24:48
SPEAKER_01: if you have an infinite war chest,
24:50
SPEAKER_01: you can just give each of your candidates,
24:53
SPEAKER_01: who seems a little bit promising, like a lot of money, and probably some of them...
25:01
SPEAKER_01: They end up striking gold,
25:03
SPEAKER_01: you know,
25:03
SPEAKER_01: like an opposition gaffe or like remember in 06 when
25:07
SPEAKER_01: a Virginia Senate election winded up turning on, what was it?
25:13
SPEAKER_01: George Allen said macacca.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: There was a,
25:17
SPEAKER_00: there'd been a,
25:17
SPEAKER_00: there'd been a,
25:18
SPEAKER_00: I think it started with a Ryan Lizza story in the,
25:22
SPEAKER_00: probably in the New Republic back then on how George Allen had this racist past
25:26
SPEAKER_00: and it created like this, is George Allen secretly like a Neo-Confederate type?
25:30
SPEAKER_00: And then he said the Makaka thing and it all.
25:32
SPEAKER_01: So this is the kind of thing where like,
25:36
SPEAKER_01: it's too much to say that like Mark Warner won that race
25:39
SPEAKER_01: because he could self-finance,
25:41
SPEAKER_01: but like,
25:43
SPEAKER_01: It was a race that might have just gotten triaged out,
25:47
SPEAKER_01: right, in a different circumstance.
25:50
SPEAKER_01: And then the things that ultimately put him over the top,
25:53
SPEAKER_01: like didn't emerge until very late in the game.
25:57
SPEAKER_01: And you just don't know what's out there because Democrats,
25:59
SPEAKER_01: knowing that they were going to get outspent quite badly,
26:02
SPEAKER_01: have had to try to use their resources efficiently.
26:07
SPEAKER_01: And I think they've done a pretty good job of that, you know, Nothing's perfect in life.
26:13
SPEAKER_01: And of course, in retrospect, we'll see some other kinds of allocation errors.
26:18
SPEAKER_01: But it's meant that it's been, you know, like I felt bad.
26:23
SPEAKER_01: Like I got a plea from Aaron Ford's team,
26:28
SPEAKER_01: Democratic candidate for governor of Nevada,
26:31
SPEAKER_01: to be like, can you like, Put Ford on your slow boring list.
26:35
SPEAKER_01: And I kicked the tires on it.
26:36
SPEAKER_01: And like, I had no critique of Aaron Ford.
26:39
SPEAKER_01: Like, he seems great.
26:40
SPEAKER_01: I endorse him wholeheartedly.
26:43
SPEAKER_01: But there's no macro political implications there.
26:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
27:05
SPEAKER_01: So it was just a scratch.
27:07
SPEAKER_01: But these are plenty of races where I think if Democrats had musk bucks behind them,
27:15
SPEAKER_01: it would make sense to put money behind them and it would end up making
27:19
SPEAKER_01: the difference in at least some of these elections.
27:21
SPEAKER_00: Well, okay.
27:22
SPEAKER_00: But look, we're trying to control for variables or whatever.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: This is I agree,
27:30
SPEAKER_00: like you would expect more the wave to topple more unexpected races
27:34
SPEAKER_00: if there was more money behind Democrats.
27:37
SPEAKER_00: But there's something else happening,
27:38
SPEAKER_00: which is sort of implicit in what I said on my last little jag about how like
27:43
SPEAKER_00: the money is being spent for these ad campaigns that are that are a bad fit for
27:48
SPEAKER_00: the moment.
27:49
SPEAKER_00: You know, they're like Republicans are not allowed to be like, hey, we wrecked the economy.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: We're going to fix it or whatever, like.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: J.D.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: Vance saying, give us another try.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: But that is related to the fact that under Donald Trump,
28:02
SPEAKER_00: Republicans recruit very bad candidates.
28:04
SPEAKER_00: Democrats...
28:07
SPEAKER_00: Their record is fine, I think, spanning the whole post-Obama period.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: Like even in bad years for them,
28:15
SPEAKER_00: they tend to find some reasonably accomplished people to run for office.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: Like Mark Warner is not exactly like my cup of tea as a politician,
28:23
SPEAKER_00: but he clearly fits Virginia in some way.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: Like the Virginians seem to like him and he's got all that money.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: Great candidate, right?
28:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: And I think there's something like that happening this year,
28:34
SPEAKER_00: except on the other side of it,
28:35
SPEAKER_00: like George Allen turned out to be a bad candidate,
28:38
SPEAKER_00: but before Makaka, he was a really good candidate, you know?
28:42
SPEAKER_00: And the Republican field is not really like that right now.
28:45
SPEAKER_00: It's just like, it's like Ashley Hinson and
28:52
SPEAKER_00: Susan Collins.
28:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:54
SPEAKER_01: Hinson, Collins.
28:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: And every other candidate fucking sucks, right?
28:59
SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, it's...
29:03
SPEAKER_01: Lawler and Fitzgerald are very good incumbents.
29:09
SPEAKER_00: But the people that Trump went to bat for are all worse than they would have been
29:14
SPEAKER_00: if you'd had like pre-dementia,
29:17
SPEAKER_00: pre-health event Mitch McConnell like picking candidates.
29:21
SPEAKER_00: Like if John Cornyn had been able to run in Texas, we would not be talking about Texas.
29:26
SPEAKER_00: And like I think that Republicans feel this right like the
29:30
SPEAKER_00: the thing that's giving me the best vibes right now isn't really like any poll,
29:35
SPEAKER_00: any news cycle, any any aggregation.
29:39
SPEAKER_00: It is watching Republicans because like you said that like Republicans seemed
29:44
SPEAKER_00: a little panicked ahead of the 2016 election and like they definitely were expecting
29:50
SPEAKER_00: to lose, I think.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: But I have not, I can't recall anything like this.
29:56
SPEAKER_00: Like...
30:00
SPEAKER_00: You know,
30:01
SPEAKER_00: you could see it in in Elon Musk likes banding about threats like you live by
30:06
SPEAKER_00: the sword,
30:06
SPEAKER_00: you die by the sword to anybody who's talking about how he's going to have to answer
30:10
SPEAKER_00: to Congress next year.
30:11
SPEAKER_00: He's not saying, no,
30:12
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to have to answer to Congress because like Democrats aren't going
30:15
SPEAKER_00: to have the majority or they're not going to have enough clout
30:18
SPEAKER_00: to like make me play ball with them.
30:21
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, like, I am going to like go after them back just as hard and like.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: There's this character on the right named Data Republican or who goes by
30:30
SPEAKER_00: the handle Data Republican.
30:32
SPEAKER_00: Who's like my, you know, my version of what Nate Silver is doing.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to have to put that behind a paywall on Substack because
30:41
SPEAKER_00: if I like made it public, it would demoralize the entire Republican Party.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: Now, like there's a grift there.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: But what happened is she posted that.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: And so a handful of people went and paid her the whatever it is a month, seven,
30:57
SPEAKER_00: eight dollars a month that she charges
30:59
SPEAKER_00: and started just like screen grabbing her actual analysis of the situation.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: And it's like bleak, bleak, bleak.
31:07
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, Republicans...
31:10
SPEAKER_00: They always affect bravado, aggression.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: They're never acting like, you know, Dear Lord Spare Us, right?
31:21
SPEAKER_00: But they have flipped from being
31:26
SPEAKER_00: confident aggressive to rearguard aggressive,
31:29
SPEAKER_00: if that makes sense,
31:30
SPEAKER_00: to where there's nothing that they're saying anymore that conveys any hope
31:35
SPEAKER_00: that they can pull this out somehow.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know, like, again, I don't think it's a head fake.
31:44
SPEAKER_00: I think I could detect when it's a head fake.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: And maybe they're right,
31:47
SPEAKER_00: but, you know, they'll still manage to save the Senate, which would suck.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: But, like,
31:55
SPEAKER_00: I can't recall them being quite this hind-footed in,
31:59
SPEAKER_00: I think,
32:00
SPEAKER_00: any of the elections that I've covered,
32:02
SPEAKER_00: except, I mean, I guess except 2008 would be the one.
32:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean...
32:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I think that's right.
32:11
SPEAKER_01: I just, you know,
32:14
SPEAKER_01: I've just, I've been on this Senate shtick for going on two years now.
32:21
SPEAKER_01: And I just,
32:21
SPEAKER_01: I still believe it,
32:24
SPEAKER_01: you know,
32:24
SPEAKER_01: that it's like there are the punches you can absorb and there's
32:29
SPEAKER_01: the punches you can't absorb.
32:31
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think that the dark heart of the,
32:37
SPEAKER_01: MAGA movement or whatever is going to mind losing the House.
32:42
SPEAKER_00: You know, they do.
32:43
SPEAKER_00: They proved that.
32:44
SPEAKER_00: They did that in 2018.
32:45
SPEAKER_01: They don't have big legislative aspirations.
32:49
SPEAKER_01: They don't mind, honestly.
32:52
SPEAKER_01: Like...
32:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: What happens at 28?
33:10
SPEAKER_01: If they lose the Senate,
33:11
SPEAKER_01: if weird state legislatures flip, I mean,
33:14
SPEAKER_01: if stuff happens,
33:16
SPEAKER_01: then you have a chance of actually shaking things loose and changing the dynamic
33:22
SPEAKER_01: in American politics.
33:23
SPEAKER_01: I didn't think that was really on the table a year ago.
33:28
SPEAKER_01: Thanks to the war in Iran, it clearly is on the table.
33:32
SPEAKER_01: And I'm just I'm very anxious about whether we seize that opportunity or not.
33:37
SPEAKER_00: So should we talk about some predictions on the other side?
33:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
33:42
SPEAKER_00: Let's predict some things.
33:43
SPEAKER_00: This is going to be the fun part.
33:45
SPEAKER_00: So if you want to join us, go to politics.fm and upgrade your subscription.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: And then you'll get to be with us after the election as well.
33:55
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