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The Supremes and the Ballroom, plus the Dems and the Senate / Start Making Sense · The Nation Podcasts

• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: From the nation magazine, this is start making sense.
• 0:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm John Weiner.
• 0:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Later in the hour, the Democrats are now favored to win not only the House in November, but also the Senate.
• 0:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: John Nichols will explain where we stand right now in the key Senate races.
• 0:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: But first, the Supremes in the ballroom, Rob Weisman has our analysis in a minute.
• 0:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this Supreme Court gave Trump a victory on Monday when they ruled five to four that he could keep going with construction of his ballroom.
• 0:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: For comment and analysis, we turned to Robert Weismann, he's co-president of public citizen, the nonprofit group, that defends democracy and resist corporate power.
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: They've sued Trump dozens of times.
• 0:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Rob Weismann, welcome back.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, in that decision on Trump's ballroom, the conservative majority made it clear that they were not ruling on the merits of the case.
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: What are the merits?
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: What does the constitution say about the president's authority when it comes to major White House construction projects like this massive new structure that will dwarf the historic White House?
• 1:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Or the management of federal properties and the spending of money and a lot of money is being spent on this.
• 1:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's the prerogative of Congress.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the underlying substance of the case that was brought says the president can't do this You know, laterally requires congressional approval and appropriations and there was haven't happened And therefore the project shouldn't move forward.
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: And as you said, the majority did not disagree with that.
• 1:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Chief Justice Roberts, who was in the minority on this one, voting with the more liberal justices, he said he thinks most likely it is illegal, what's being done.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the majority said that the plaintiff who brought the case, the national trust for historic preservation, didn't have standing to bring the case.
• 2:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's the legal document said you've got to have enough of a direct injury to bring the case forward.
• 2:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the Supreme Court for decades has narrowed the definition of what constitutes standing in this case, they said, not this group, but not this time.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: And if it's not this group at this time, there probably is no one who has standing except all of Congress itself.
• 2:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Of course, with Republicans and control of the Congress, Congress ain't bringing this case.
• 2:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let me just underline here that the idea that it's Congress not the president who has the authority here, this is not just your opinion.
• 2:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's the official ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, which took this up, didn't consider standing a problem, and ruled that the Constitution's property clause, something I'm not familiar with, gives Congress, quote, full constitutional control
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that there is no basis for the president to do anything like this.
• 3:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: White House lawyers argued before the Supreme Court that Trump's ballroom was different because it was, quote, an integrated military complex, which is vitally required by national security.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's some sort of national security exception to this, is there any basis for that?
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is when Trump is president, but also when he's not is that when the president says national security in the case about 98% of the time, of course, are going to agree with the president.
• 3:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: So here, the Trump administration has invented this preposterous rationale for a ballroom, which is that.
• 3:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is a national security imperative, and that's not because of the ballroom itself, as people will know, is because of this massive underground complex, they say, and actually, I believe, are building underneath the ballroom.
• 3:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Of course, they couldn't build exactly that under the existing structure, and there is already massive underground structures beneath the White House to serve the national security interests of protecting the president in case of some kind of emergency bombing or threat or whatever.
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the standing question, the heart of the majority opinion was this critique of a statement by one of the members of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which is the non-profit chartered by Congress to protect public buildings.
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: They have a member named Allison Hoglin.
• 4:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: She lives in Washington and in the plaintiff's brief, she said she walks by the White House and that she found the scale height and massing of this ballroom that it caused her to quote suffer both professional and personal injuries, including to my aesthetic cultural and historical interests, she is a professional architectural historian, I should add.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the conservative majority said, quote, mere offense, disagreement or distaste does not qualify as a concrete in particularized injury.
• 5:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And therefore, the national trust lacks standing.
• 5:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I wonder whether that really was the heart of the plaintiff's case that Trump's ballroom caused them to suffer aesthetic injury.
• 5:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do we need to debate about the law of whether aesthetic injuries are real injuries?
• 5:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or is this all just the way of avoiding the obvious conclusion that the president can't do this?
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think both things are true.
• 5:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a way to avoid the obvious conclusion.
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: The federal courts can only hear live cases or controversies, which means they have to be two parties, both of whom are directly affected by the issue at hand, for a case to move forward in federal courts.
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: 50 years ago, there was an expansive understanding of standing, so that when the government acted in a ways of it hurt consumers, a consumer organization like mine, automatically would have standing, wouldn't even have to explain why we did.
• 6:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Nowadays, it's almost impossible for us to bring a case on the grounds that a member of public citizen is being hurt by a proposed rule that's going to injure consumers unless we can
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: that person specifically is going to be heard by a rule.
• 6:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: So if the rule was designed to make it less likely for people to be injured by a dangerous car, the court might say, we can't bring that case because we can't show that the person we name actually was going to be injured as a result of the rule.
• 6:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: But that's the kind of move the courts have made over the one of the courts.
• 6:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Supreme Court has made over the last 50 years to restrict standing and they get a, and this is only applies on the public interest side.
• 7:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: It only applies when you're trying to protect consumer interests, worker interests, environmental interests.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And yet in this case, the chief justice of the Supreme Court did not think that standing was a problem.
• 7:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I guess this one upsets up.
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I think this, again, the standing law is going is training this horrible direction, but has been more open for environmental cases.
• 7:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it would be easy to have a ride, conclusion, as the lower courts did, as the four judges did.
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: that the National Stroke Trust does have pressure, does have standing.
• 7:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it truthfully, as you are suggesting, the standing is a really procedural thing and it's supposed to be wholly apart from the merits, but it's not like the judges, the judges, don't know what's the stake.
• 7:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the more inclined to find standing,
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: if you want the case to move forward and you're less inclined to find standing if you don't.
• 8:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: So presumably in this case, John Roberts wasn't just ruling on the standing.
• 8:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: In fact, he said he thinks that this is illegal.
• 8:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: So he was aware of and wanted to reach the substance of this.
• 8:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a block, Trump from moving forward with his ballroom on Strassyny, the other five justices, conservative justices, presumably just happy to represent where Trump does.
• 8:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: They too might find the ballroom to be on Strassyny, but more important for them is establishing an executive power and bowing down to Trump, I guess.
• 8:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: In the bottom, of course, is this weird personal obsession of Trump's.
• 8:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Here's a time when, you know, he should be focusing on ending the war in Iran and working to reduce inflation, but he's spending a lot of his time and energy focused on this vanity project, which is immensely unpopular with the public.
• 8:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Most recent poll I could find said 61% of Americans disapprove of the ballroom only 25% approved and that's not because of the constitutional issues.
• 9:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's because of what the ballroom is and what it means and what it says about our priorities.
• 9:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's I think going to help Democrats in the midterms.
• 9:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: They've already made the ballroom a central talking point, a symbol of
• 9:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: uh, twisted priorities, especially that was this period where the Senate Republicans included a one billion dollar earmark in the budget for the ballroom and it's so called security enhancements.
• 9:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: They were forced by public opinion to remove the billion dollar earmark, but it's
• 9:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Trump is still paying 300 million at 400 million from some other monies.
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's unclear what.
• 9:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Even though he first announced that quote, this is a gift zero taxpayer funding to the United States of America, close quote from the corporate donors who were supporting him.
• 9:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the Democrats have yet another political issue here about how the ultra wealthy have taken over the White House and the Republican Party.
• 10:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are doing that Americans do not need a ballroom.
• 10:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: They need relief from rising costs of groceries, gasoline, housing, healthcare.
• 10:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not going to help the Republicans in the midterms.
• 10:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Question really is, what can be done now?
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: You said that there really is apparently no plaintiff aside from Congress that would pass mustard with the majority.
• 10:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is there any other possible way to revive this case?
• 10:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Congress still has a direct authority forget about bringing a loss.
• 10:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Congress could order this to stop prohibit the use of any additional public dollars.
• 10:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: And as you say, hundreds of millions of public dollars are being spent apart from the corrupt contributions that are coming in.
• 10:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: of the corporation and super rich.
• 10:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: If control of the Congress flips in November, there actually is an opportunity for Congress to say no more.
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: And these spending bills do have to get past.
• 11:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there will be a real chance.
• 11:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Of course, Trump is trying to create facts on the ground and if the thing is mostly completed, it's going to be hard to stop it.
• 11:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I don't want to brush up the other element you were saying, which is in some ways the most important.
• 11:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, yeah, this is a vanity project and he loves it because it speaks to his idea to be a king and so on.
• 11:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's horrible.
• 11:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a distraction although I'm happy for him to be distracted every day.
• 11:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's not thinking about every minute he's not thinking about doing the next evil thing.
• 11:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a good minute as far as I'm concerned.
• 11:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the original funding for this and still the base funding for a country of these hundreds and millions of dollars and contributions from corporations and super rich people with business before the government.
• 11:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we've looked at this and the more than two dozen companies that pay a contributions,
• 11:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Had in the last five years, about $400 billion in federal contracts, and the time since the project was announced, they've secured another $50 billion in federal contracts.
• 11:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: They've got all kinds of enforcement actions they're trying to escape from, they've got all kinds of policy interests, they won't advance.
• 12:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: So for them, this is just trivial money to grease the contracts they want, or the policy outcomes, they're lobbying for it.
• 12:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's the really big picture corrupt angle of this thing, and hopefully it will be a message that's driven home to the American people.
• 12:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: in the election and done so in a way that rejects that kind of politics.
• 12:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Not just when it comes to Trump, but when it comes to all the ways the corporations that money not just the Republican Party, but the Democrats as well, the Democrats remember that.
• 12:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: As they take control, hopefully again, the presidency that we're abandoning this politics of supplicating ourselves to the big donors, whether it's to build ballrooms or to fund our campaigns and to sacrifice policy that the American people need in or to abandon it.
• 12:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there's one other big picture issue that this raises once again supreme court reforms.
• 13:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is something that you and your organization have been working on for a while.
• 13:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: What have you been arguing for this we need in terms of Supreme Court reform?
• 13:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, obviously, this is one and a long series of cases that precede Trump and that get to the heart of our democracy, whether it's the gunning of the Civil Rights Act, or the authorizing of endless corporate money and super rich money and elections via citizens united, and that all of the many decisions during this Trump administration through informal processes.
• 13:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: to rubber stamp, what really should be why they understood to be illegal actions by the Trump administration.
• 13:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: So what do you do about this quote that's packed with three Trump appointing justices who tend to vote for whatever he wants?
• 13:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: a lot of ideas on the table about how to reform the court.
• 13:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think the easiest and best one, at least for right now, circumstances actually could change this.
• 13:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the best one is to give it to establish 18-year term for Supreme Court justices, rotate the justices after 18 years.
• 14:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: So in every four-year term of a president, they would get to a point.
• 14:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: to justices.
• 14:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: In the immediate term, if you apply that retroactively, which is necessary, you would push out some of the older conservative justices that have a chance to rebalance the court, so it's no longer not just a pro-Trump court, but a rubber stamp pro-corporate court.
• 14:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Last thing, getting back to the structure under construction right now, their various proposals of what the Democrats should do with that, assuming they get back in power in 2029.
• 14:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Some people say it should just be torn down.
• 14:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Others argue it should be repurposed, and I think my favorite proposal is they should ask.
• 14:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ordinary people, what they think should be done with this building.
• 14:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: They should ask in Rust Belt towns and declining agricultural areas, what would they like to see done with this building?
• 15:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Some of proposed, for instance, be turned into a museum of corporate corruption.
• 15:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you wonder if you have any suggestions?
• 15:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's a problem that it's part of the White House complex.
• 15:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you do have legitimate security interests.
• 15:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can't just make it easily open to the public.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: You couldn't, for example, easily convert it into a homeless shelter.
• 15:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Which would be nice.
• 15:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Rob Weissman is co-president of public citizen Rob.
• 15:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for talking with us today.
• 15:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, gentlemen.
• 15:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: For today's political update, we turn to John Nichols.
• 15:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, he's executive editor of the nation.
• 15:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: John, welcome back.
• 15:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: It is a pleasure to be with you.
• 15:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, Labor Day marks the semi-official start of the real campaign, ordinary Americans don't follow politics the way you and I do.
• 15:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: They don't think about it every day.
• 16:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And thank you.
• 16:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: a lot of people don't think about politics much at all.
• 16:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Remember only about 60% of Americans even vote for president, only 40% vote in the midterms for their members of Congress and state officials, maybe higher this year because Democrats are so motivated to vote.
• 16:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: But as we go into Labor Day weekend,
• 16:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: seems pretty clear that the Democrats are going to start the campaign season looking like they're going to win a majority of the house in November.
• 16:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And right now, Democrats are favored to win a majority of the Senate too.
• 16:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to look at the Senate races because those are there could be the more challenging ones.
• 16:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: The most amazing one is Texas.
• 16:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: where good polls have Democrat James Taloreco ahead of Republican Paxton by three points.
• 16:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is Texas where, you know, the last time a Democrat was elected to the Senate was 1988.
• 17:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: What is going on in Texas?
• 17:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's two things.
• 17:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: Number one, Texas is changing.
• 17:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: When you look at the election results in presidential races, you see that Democrats now run quite solidly in Texas.
• 17:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: They don't win it necessarily, but they're certainly in the game.
• 17:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, that's number one, but number two is the unique reality of the current moment, which is both a national factor and a local factor.
• 17:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: The national factor is Trump is not popular anywhere.
• 17:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and in a lot of places around the country, the voter for Trump twice, three times.
• 17:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: He just doesn't have the numbers that he did, so he's ability to kind of deliver for Dombalic
• 17:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: Tell Riko's opponent, Ken Paxton, who is, you know, it's almost unimaginable that a major political party in the United States would nominate a candidate with so much scandal associated with him.
• 18:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, look, there have been Democrats or Republicans who've tried to stop Paxton.
• 18:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, he's the state legislature is, you know, gone after him.
• 18:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: The, you know, he's had primary opponents.
• 18:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's, there is opposition.
• 18:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: Trump did back him in the primary and he beat John corner in the sitting center who would have probably had an easy reelection run.
• 18:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: Packs and scandals again.
• 18:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: We don't have a whole shoulder to vote to, but there's a lot.
• 18:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, personal financial, political, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
• 18:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: So that hurts.
• 18:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: On the other side is that there's a lot of evidence that Tau Rico's a unique candidate, unique candidate in the recent history of the United States, because he is a young state legislator.
• 18:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: who is very comfortable talking about his faith and talking about his values, talking about morality and politics, and that makes him, I think, in many senses, almost a perfect juxtaposition to bactin, it's very compelling to listen to.
• 19:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: The sense is that there's a potential for this to get through to voters who might not otherwise be reached by a Democrat, and all this has made Texas competitive.
• 19:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, the Democrat is ahead in the Texas Senate race.
• 19:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's one big flip possibility.
• 19:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Another flip possibility is North Carolina, where Democrat Roy Cooper is ahead by nine according to Fox News.
• 19:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Another key flip state is Ohio, where that same Fox News poll has Democrat Sherrod Brown ahead by eight.
• 19:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: the closer it raises in the flip states.
• 19:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, start with Maine, where you may recall, we had a few problems right now.
• 19:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Troy Jackson is ahead of Susan Collins, one good poll by two points, another poll by eighth points.
• 19:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Susan Collins has been elected, I think it's 29 years.
• 19:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: So tell us about what's going on in Maine.
• 20:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: where there's a lot of more conservative voters than a coastal area with a lot of more liberal voters.
• 20:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: Collins has always had a ground to build off of.
• 20:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: She is the last of a certain kind of New England moderate Republican.
• 20:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: I've never believed she was a moderate.
• 20:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: I put quotation marks around the word.
• 20:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: But, you know, she's sold herself as that.
• 20:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that has worked for a long time.
• 20:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: Maine has been hard hit economically, they affordability issues, which are often under-discussed in national media.
• 20:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: We also say, oh yeah, affordability is a big issue.
• 20:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: Then we go on to something else.
• 20:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: In Maine, that is a fundamental issue.
• 20:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: And Collins is running her typical reelection campaign.
• 20:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, I know people in Washington and I can get things done.
• 20:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Jackson is running a very,
• 21:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: From up, you know, in a very distant, far, far state where folks, a lot of folks really struggle to get by economically, he, I, I've interviewed him, I've seen him on on stages and he's an experienced political figure.
• 21:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: He served in the state Senate.
• 21:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's he's done all these things.
• 21:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's ran for governor and only nearly lost, but it.
• 21:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'll tell you, it is a compelling distinction between him and Collins.
• 21:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Collins is DC and, you know, she does her best to, you know, present herself as a mainer and kind of get out of the streets.
• 21:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: And she's not terrible.
• 21:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, she's not as out of touch as some of these politicians.
• 21:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: But with Jackson, when he starts talking about what the race is about, it's very, very powerful.
• 21:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: because one of the lines I heard him say at some point, I'll paraphrase it, but essentially, they have taken so much from us.
• 21:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he talks about, you know, what corporations and wealthy people have done to our politics or our governance.
• 22:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he talks about just, you know, not even having the free time to be with your family and kids anymore and things like that, that's very human appeal.
• 22:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I just think he's getting a mark there that makes him very Bible.
• 22:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: My sense is that he can win this race.
• 22:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: The only counsel I'll give you is that Collins is a master fundraiser and will have all the money in the world.
• 22:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so this will always be a very, very tight race, it'll always be a hard race.
• 22:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: But I do think that that's a result where you can see Jackson win.
• 22:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the other swing state that's a flip opportunity for Democrats is Alaska, I am nothing about Alaska, but there's a candidate named Mary Peltolla running as a Democrat, the people who know Mary Peltolla, lover, they say she's wonderful, and she's narrowly ahead of the incumbent Dan Sullivan, and the trend seems to be in her favor.
• 23:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: What can you tell us about Alaska?
• 23:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: great big state my friend.
• 23:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: Then up there a few times, like many national reporters, I've jetted right in when Sarah Palin was selected for a bunch of friends.
• 23:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: We all took our to examine the circumstances in whistle of course, Palin's home talk.
• 23:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Overall, it's a state where voters actually are more willing to go unexpected directions than they tend to get credit for.
• 23:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: And remember, this is the state where Lisa Murkowski got beaten in her own primary and then got reelected as a right-in candidate.
• 23:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a pretty adventurous politics up there and they have a voting system that's fascinating, which, you know, you put the top four candidates to come out of a primary.
• 23:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: They had a primary and Peltolla came out way ahead, definitely with an advantage.
• 24:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: over the Republican Sullivan, to have the Democrat come out first in a primary of this kind of this, but you all candidates in sort of voting, very rare.
• 24:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: The other thing is that the other candidates who came through in addition to Senator Sullivan is another guy with the same name, and so that's a problem, I think maybe, for Sullivan.
• 24:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: there's some analysts who have suggested that she's moved to, you know, not a, that's sort of a big front runner status, but sort of a tilt D, you're trying to status like she could pull it off.
• 24:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's probably no one more Alaska than Peltola.
• 24:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: and she's very, very comfortable talking about all of it.
• 24:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: She is a Democrat, she's pro-union, she's you know, reasonably progressive on a number of things, but I think the basic image of her that comes across is, you know, yeah, I know this person, if you're an elastic
• 25:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, she's probably the best chance to last against Laska Democrats who've had it in a very, very long time.
• 25:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: What this means is because of Peltola's strength.
• 25:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: There is a very good chance that people will be up all night and maybe into the next day to see whether Alaska has flipped the sun.
• 25:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the Democrats form best chances to flip.
• 25:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: They need to flip four seats in order to get the majority
• 25:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: North Carolina, Ohio, Maine, in Alaska, and Texas is kind of the freebie there.
• 25:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you can get Texas, you've got five and you're in great shape.
• 25:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: But we still need... Bro, another one into it.
• 25:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sure, man.
• 25:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that's Iowa.
• 25:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's two.
• 25:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I gotta tell you, 10 years ago, if you asked me about Iowa, would it say it's a swing state?
• 25:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's state that Obama did well in.
• 26:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's had a Democratic governor.
• 26:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: had a Democratic senator for a very long time.
• 26:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: It went very much for Trump.
• 26:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: It became a state that a lot of people kind of wrote off.
• 26:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think Democrats are kind of coming back all over the place.
• 26:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: They have the lead in the governor's race.
• 26:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: Tureka's looking very solid in the Senate race.
• 26:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: They might flip three house seats there.
• 26:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then there's the holds states.
• 26:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: We need to hold Michigan, optal else I had right now.
• 26:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: The poll show a head by four in the latest poll.
• 26:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I understand you have spoken with optal else I had recently.
• 26:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: I have, I've interviewed him a number of times over the years.
• 26:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: In fact, we covered at the nation.
• 26:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: We covered him when he ran for governor.
• 26:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: As an insurgent candidate back in 2018, with the support really not of a lot of
• 26:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: you know, interesting newcomer in politics at the time, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who in one of her first moves after winning the Congressional seat in New York, went to Michigan to campaign for Al-Sayed, arguing that he was
• 27:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, like her, somebody who had a vision for where the Democratic Party could go, and what it might be.
• 27:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: He didn't win that race.
• 27:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's very, very young candidate.
• 27:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's still a very young candidate.
• 27:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: But he has come back gotten a Senate nomination, and I will tell you the conversation that we had with him, which will be published in the upcoming issue of the nation, Katrina Bennett of Old and I interviewed him.
• 27:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was really striking because whether you agree with him or not, whether you like him or not, this is an exceptionally well-thought and well-prepared candidate.
• 27:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: No matter what issue comes up, he is excited to talk about it and he takes it deep into policy.
• 27:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: And the other thing about it is, he's an interesting figure because he's very, very energetic and he's been all over the state.
• 28:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's been outspent.
• 28:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: He was outspent the primary.
• 28:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: He will probably be outspent in the general election.
• 28:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: There are usually very few advantages to being outspent in politics, sad to say, but one advantage is that he spent a lot less time talking to campaign donors and a lot more time talking to voters, and if of all the candidates I've talked to this year, he stands out because he recognizes a set of issues that voters care about that don't get talked about a lot.
• 28:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: in national media.
• 28:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: He was way ahead on AI.
• 28:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a pleasure to talk to him again whether you agree with him or not because the conversation just isn't standard talking points.
• 28:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a much more serious examination of where the country is at and where it needs to go.
• 28:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Last but not least, we have been worried about Wisconsin, where the governor's race has been a focus for Democrats.
• 29:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right now, the good poll there that Market Law School poll has Democrat David Crowley, ahead of Republican Tom Tiffany by five points.
• 29:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, we really need a Democratic trifecta in Wisconsin.
• 29:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: You've been talking about this for a few years on this show, remind us what Wisconsin
• 29:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: with a trifecta.
• 29:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: Wisconsin is the ultimate swing state.
• 29:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a state where of the last, you know, six, seven presidential races, you know, five of them were decided by about under 30,000 votes, right?
• 29:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's just, this is a very competitive state.
• 29:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: The thing that kind of warped Wisconsin politics was the 2010 election.
• 29:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: where Scott Walker and the Republicans won the governorship in the state legislature.
• 29:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was a red wave, red-tied election, and they took full advantage of that, right?
• 29:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: They got to power, they went after labor unions, they went after all sorts of structures of the state, and they jerry-mandered the legislature radically, so that even when Democrats got the most votes statewide for legislative races,
• 30:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: at the district level that there was almost no change because the jury mandering was so rigid and that jury mandering has been upended.
• 30:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: Courts began to examine it and then finally the legislature in the governor who was currently a Democrat and Republican legislature, Democratic governor agreed
• 30:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: to a redraw that was, it's in perfect, but it's fair, reasonably fair.
• 30:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: And result is that in a fair fight, Democrats have a very, very good chance of winning the State Assembly and the State Senate.
• 30:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: If Crowley wins the governorship, they will be able to govern at a fundamental level.
• 30:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: not a Democratic governor saying no to Republican legislature, but to actually implement policy, as you've seen in Michigan and Minnesota and other states where you have a trifecta at times.
• 30:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: You can't begin to imagine how much that would shift the dynamics of the state.
• 31:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Probably says his number one initiative is to undo walkers and I labor.
• 31:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: bills.
• 31:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so that takes us right back to this initial fight and turns us in a different direction.
• 31:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: But the thing for national consumption that a lot of people will pay attention to is that Wisconsin has been radically journeymened or not just at the state legislative level, but also at the congressional level.
• 31:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: Here you have a swing state where you've got, you should have
• 31:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: for Republican House seats for Democratic or something like that.
• 31:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: Instead, we've got two Democratic House seats.
• 31:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so a fair redraw of the maps could have an impact on national politics in that it would very probably create several more districts that are likely to elect.
• 31:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: a Democrat and potentially even several, you know, and result is that there's an intensive focus on this governor's race because of state and national potential and you are right that Crowley has opened up a little bit of a lead.
• 32:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: But Wisconsin is a very competitive state, you have to, you have to expect that it's going to, there will still be a real battle, but one of the interesting dynamics of it is that the Wisconsin Democratic Party has nominated a remarkably diverse ticket.
• 32:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: they are leaning into that.
• 32:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: They are leaning into mobilization of voters in cities and small towns among immigrant groups and sticks generation Wisconsinites and you know just it's a it's a model of a politics that is very similar to what Ben Whickler who was the longtime sheriff
• 32:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: everybody who lives in Wisconsin and who wants to have economic and social and racial justice should have a way into our politics, right?
• 33:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: They should have a way to participate.
• 33:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: And with the rise preached a vision of a multiracial multigenerational party that spoke to a lot of folks
• 33:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: you know, be a part of this.
• 33:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: And they've actually nominated ticket that has potential to do that on all sorts of levels.
• 33:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: The focus will be on Crowley, but in reality, my sense is that the Democrats have a rare opportunity to kind of win up and down the ballot.
• 33:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: If they do, we're going to be a very different state than we were back in the those many days John, where I was whining to you about the difficult circumstances of my my beloved home state.
• 33:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Democratic hopes, Democratic possibilities is going to labor day weekend.
• 33:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: John Nichols, you can read a mettonation.com.
• 34:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: John, thanks for talking with us today.
• 34:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: To great honor to be with you, my friend.
• 34:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Start making sense.
• 34:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: A podcast from the Nation Magazine is recorded at our upstairs studio in Los Angeles.
• 34:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Renee Reynolds is our associate producer, Alan Minsky is our producer.
• 34:25
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• 34:34
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• 34:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can find out more about Start Making Sense at thenation.com and subscribe to Start Making Sense on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
• 34:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm John Weiner.
• 34:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for listening.