Latest / Pod Save America / “2022 is dead. Long live 2024”

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“2022 is dead. Long live 2024” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett. Tommy Vitor.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: On today's show, Democrats keep the Senate. Hold off a
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: red wave in the house and look forward to a
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: productive lame duck session. The knives are out for Mitch
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: McConnell and Kevin McCarthy while Donald Trump gets ready to
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: announce his third presidential campaign. Then the people behind John
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Fetterman's campaign join us to talk about how they did it.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: And later, a new game that tests our knowledge about
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: just how crowded the Trump train is right now. But first,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: we are now offering crooked coffee holiday boxes to make
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: gift giving easy. How about that? Each box is filled
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: with full-sized bags of delicious medium and dark roast coffee,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: plus a fun activity that isn't scrolling through Twitter.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: And if you buy them all, and they are great,
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: we'll stop doing this. I'm a dark roast person. Have
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: you guys decided?
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: I'm a medium roast person.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: You're a medium roast? Yeah. Tommy's like a sophisticated palate.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: I want everything to taste like Diet Coke. Yeah, I do.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: I really like Diet Cokes.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Every order from Crooked Coffee will support Vote Save America's
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Every Last Vote fund. It helps grassroots organizations get out
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: the vote, which we still need to do in Georgia
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: on December 6th. You can pick from three different boxes
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: for three types of people. The extremely online box with
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: witty magnetic poetry for your fridge. The craft lovers box
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: with a learn to crochet kit inside. And the home
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  Speaker 1: baker box with the insta-famous apple cider donut kit from
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  Speaker 1: Farmsteady that's so popular it's almost always out of stock.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: I can't believe I have to read this.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: I'm so glad you have to read this show. Everybody
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: buy the boxes. Just buy the boxes.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: You know the Insta-famous Apple Cider Kit.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: We're diversifying our revenue streams. Buy the boxes.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Your staff hates us. There's a limited quantity, so head
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: to crooked.com slash coffee to shop before we sell out. Also,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Crooked and Duolingo just released a brand-new limited series podcast
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: together hosted by audiojournalist Ahmed Ali Akbar, Radio Lingo investigates
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: all of the ways that language shapes our world and
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: how the world shapes our language. Each episode explores a
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: different way language plays a role in our life, from
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: swearing to subtitles and everything in between. Listen today and
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: subscribe to Radio Lingo wherever you get your podcasts. New
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: episodes drop every Tuesday. All right, let's get to the news.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Democrats have retained control of the Senate after Arizona was
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: called for Mark Kelly on Friday and Nevada was called
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: for Catherine Cortez Masto on Saturday. Kelly's leading Blake Masters,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: 51 to 46%, not particularly close. And Cortez Masto has
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: squeaked ahead of Adam Laxalt, 49 to 48%, just about 7,000 votes.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Both states are still counting ballots, but almost finished. Democrats
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: now have 50 Senate seats with a chance to win
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: 51 if Senator Raphael Warnock defeats Herschel Walker in Georgia's
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: December 6th runoff. Guys, how big of a deal is this?
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: How much of a surprise is it? And do you
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: have any more thoughts on how it happened now that
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: we've all had a few more days to dig through
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: data and just swim through takes.
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: Can you imagine if Blake Masters was one of the
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: 100 people we send to Washington to be in the U.S.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Senate?
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: One of the many pieces of color from all of
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: the great reporting over the last couple of days about
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: the midterms was how the focus group One of the
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: first focus groups with Blake Masters done by the Republicans
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: was one of the worst focus groups they've ever seen
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: in their entire lives.
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: And he was getting this sort of crudité treatment where
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: people were recirculating old videos that he himself had shot, edited,
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: and released that just showed how weird he was. One
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: of them was him in a random field shooting a
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: German pistol with a silencer on it. It looked like
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: the ending scene in Seven. It was very off-putting.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: When you call the Unabomber an underappreciated thinker and say
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: that you want to privatize Social Security.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: Not the best position.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: It's a tough one. It's a tough, tough.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Sending emails to his vegetable co-op telling him why democracy
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: isn't so hot. The guy's been a kook his whole
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: fucking life. Just spindly. Spindly and fascist.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: And also Adam Laxalt, by the way, because we spend
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: a lot of time on Blake Masters and Oz and
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: Herschel Walker. And Adam Laxalt has just kind of gone
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: under the radar. But he's a terrible candidate.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Also, like, embrace the big lie, election denier.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: He wasn't as splashy.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: He wasn't as splashy.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: He wasn't as splashy in his embrace of election denialism.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: But it was there nonetheless. He was the Conroy of Nevada.
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: John Ralston, who's the dean of the Nevada press corps,
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: talked about how Black Salt was a terrible candidate as well.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: Just nobody saw him because they did let him out
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: of his little candidate cage in the media.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: And Ralston took some shit for being too Pollyannish about
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: Democrats by saying that he believed Masto would hold on
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: and that Democrats would win two out of the three
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: seats in contention and actually won all three seats.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: All three seats.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he got it right.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: He was right about the governor's race too. Steve Sisolak,
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: the Democratic governor of Nevada, is the only Democratic incumbent
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: governor in the country that lost.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: You know, I was, I think like by constitution, when
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: I see everybody in a state of despair, it's my
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: instinct to be like, all right, you're, everybody chill out.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: Like there's, here's some things that we should be considering
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: and not losing our heads. And I have the same
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: thing when I see Democrats rejoicing and I see all
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: this celebration. They hold on a second. All right. Like
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: we have we we lose the House, which means we
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: lose the ability to legislate in the same way. The
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: Senate map in 2024 is pretty tough. Like, let's all
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: not act as though all of our problems are solved.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: We have a lot of hard things ahead. But what
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: I was thinking over the weekend was imagine the three
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: of us doing this pod right now with election deniers
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: in charge of key election infrastructure and in Wisconsin, in Arizona,
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: in Nevada, in Pennsylvania, and us trying to come up
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: with some godforsaken reason people should still try.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, America, spare a thought for us, for the three
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: of us.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: No, I don't mean it because of us. First, I'll
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: take down this straw man over here. No, no, shut up.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: You shut the fuck up. Who shall think of the podcast?
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Shut the fuck up. I wasn't saying thinking of us,
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: I was thinking of how bad a situation it would
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: be in to try to make an argument for why
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: We're going to still have this fight left in us.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: And actually, we stopped all these fucking people. Yeah, it
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: would have been harder.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Here's the truth. You know, in 18, expectations got out
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: of control. The blue wave was supposed to win us
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: the Senate. It didn't happen. In 20, Joe Biden was
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: ahead by 10 points in Wisconsin. It was close. This one,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: it was the red wave. It was close. The thing is,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: we were a few thousand votes in a couple states
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: away from that.
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: Of course.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: It was once again super close. We are on a
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: knife's edge at this country.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: Thank you, Harry Reid. I know you can't hear me
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: because you're dead. That was the joke that I was
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: making on Twitter that people didn't necessarily get.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: Oh, now he's shadowboxing some menchies.
• 6:57
  Speaker 5: I am.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: There's nothing more annoying on social media than when you
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: make a joke and people don't get it and then
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: they make fun of you and you're, anyway. But Harry
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: Reid built a political machine in Nevada that is so
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: powerful that it exists.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: Years after his death. It's really impressive. Yeah.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Do you know, so if Warnock and Lisa Murkowski win,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: because they have ranked choice voting in Alaska, so we're
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: still waiting on the outcome there. It'll be the first
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: time in over 100 years that no incumbent senator running
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: for re-election lost. Isn't that nuts?
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: It is, and it does go to the larger, like,
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: you know, there's, Joe Biden's doing some kind of a
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: victory lap, I think, around the dip room. He's in, like, Bali.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: He's wearing silly shirts and having a good time.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: He's talking to Xi. But you look at, like, the
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: kind of the number of people that were dissatisfied with
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden's job performance, but still voting for the Democrats.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: And a lot of people went into that booth or
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: looked at that piece of paper and were like, I'm
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: in a really pissed off mood, but I cannot support
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: these people. I just can't do it. I cannot bring
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: myself to do it.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: When I think back to the wilderness focus groups, it's
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: like they would complain for an hour about Joe Biden, Democrats, inflation, crime,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: all the stuff that the media is talking about that
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: everyone's mad at the media for having to talk about.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: And then at the end, it'd be like, so you're
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: going to, but would you vote for Herschel Walker? Oh, no,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: he's crazy. And Sarah Longwell's just saying that the New
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: York Times.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: Same thing about Blake Masters.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: Same thing about Blake Masters. And at the end of
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: the day, the candidates that the Republicans ran, I mean,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: people are talking a lot about how it was democracy.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: It was democracy, but it was, you know, in the
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: sense that they would embrace the big lie, that made
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: them too extreme, that they would want to criminalize all abortions,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: that made them extreme. Sometimes it was just Blake Masters
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: saying things like the Unabomber is an underappreciated thinker, that
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: makes them extreme. It was a whole bunch of things
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: that made them just completely unfit for public office.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: And I do think there was a kind of vicious
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: circle in the rhetoric that they were using in their
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: own information bubble around not just abortion, but around trans issues,
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: around gay issues. that just didn't comport with people's reality,
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: trying to scare people about what was happening in schools.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: It just didn't reflect the experiences people were having. And
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: that also weren't anywhere near the list of the top
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: issues on people's minds. That I think is like whether
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: someone's going to vote for or against someone based on
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: some of these issues, we don't know. But I do
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: think there are some ways in which someone will say
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: something completely unhinged and it's a signal to you. They're like,
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: this person's without a lunch.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: I think if you look at what Democratic candidates who
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: won tough competitive races did. They basically did four things.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: They went on offense on abortion and Republican extremism. They
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: drew contrasts with their opponents on economic populism. You know,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: they said they didn't have a plan for inflation or
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: their plan for inflation is to cut taxes for rich
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: people and gut health care. And we've been fighting for
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: the middle class over the last year. This is what
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: we've accomplished. They dealt with crime attacks. by reiterating their
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: support for law enforcement and gun control. And then they
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: talked about their bipartisan credentials while pointing out that their
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Republican candidate was extreme. And almost every single Democrat that
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: won did all of those things in their ads and
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: their speeches and how they made news. What kind of
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: impact will a Democratic Senate have?
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: I mean, if we can get 51 votes in the Senate,
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: then we will have the majority on committees, which means
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: you can vote nominees out of committee and not have
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: to take everything to the floor, which will speed up
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: the whole process of moving legislation. You could imagine scenarios where,
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: I don't know, we'll see what happens in the House
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: pretty close. You could see a scenario where you have
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: a weak speaker. There are votes that are bipartisan. You
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: have Republican House members who want to work with Democrats
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: on discrete issues.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: The fact that Democrats control what happens on the Senate
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: floor would be a very big deal if we're trying
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: to figure out how to get a budget or some
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: kind of must-pass thing out of both chambers.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: It means there will not be impeachment trials. The House
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: can do whatever they want, but the Senate will not
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: hold the trial.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Don't they have to hold the trial?
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: I think they... It won't make it easy, but they
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: have to hold the trial. Can't they.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: They can do it in a kind of... They have
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: to hold the trial, but it doesn't have to look
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: like the trial. The trial that Schumer would hold would look.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Very different than what McConnell would. Yeah, but to Tommy's point,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: there are 87 judicial vacancies right now in the country.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: There are 58 Biden nominees awaiting a hearing or a vote.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: So the judicial outcome is that's the that's the biggest impact,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: especially if we end up not winning the House here.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Then there's a question of like if there's a Supreme
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Court opening, we could fill it. There's also been some question,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: you know, Sonia Sotomayor is 68 years old. She would
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: be 74 in 2028. if we lose either the presidency
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: or the Senate in 2024, so possible retirement there. Sam
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Alito's 72, Clarence Thomas is 74, so Supreme Court thing
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: could be in play over the next couple years.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: Clarence Thomas has been in our lives for a thousand years.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: I know, 74, and he's still only, it's only 74.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: Also, I will say, Ginny Thomas doesn't do anything halfway.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: You know, she was in that cult, now she's like
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: on full cue. She's always like one charismatic scuba instructor
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: out of four seasons away. from putting Clarence Thomas's life
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: at great personal risk. Like she can be convinced to
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: do skydiving, spelunking, bungee jumping. Like she is a persuadable
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: voter on a number of key issues. So that's something
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: to keep in mind. Play this out.
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: Are you saying that there's like extreme sports or she's
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: gonna leave him for the Scoop Steve?
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: No, no, I'm just, I'm saying that like, if a
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: well-placed person at a White Lotus-like resort for conservatives suggests...
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: You know that thing where people jump like flying squirrels? Yeah,
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: squirrel suits. I think that she could be persuaded to
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: do that and maybe bring Clarence along. All I'm saying
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: is Clarence may not be there. Wow. If things go
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: a certain way. Another point I'd like to make about
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: why 52 points about why 51 is better than 50. Again,
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: there's going to be a very tough Senate map in 2024.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: And also, they're all a thousand years old. And we
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: never get to the... This two-year term in the House
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: and Senate is like The Oregon Trail. You don't end
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: up with everybody at the end.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: A lot of dysentery.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, people fall by the fucking wayside. These people are
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: a thousand years old. Patrick Leahy falls down the stairs
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: twice a week.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: Oh my God.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: Well, he's not going to stick around anyway.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: I want to go back to your point about the
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: 2020 format. They're old. The 2020 format is important.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: God makes openings.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: There is... There is now almost zero chance the Republicans
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: can get a filipuster-proof majority in 2024, which you might
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: be thinking, oh no, there was a chance? Yes, there was.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: We lost a couple of these.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: The map is brutal in 2024. So we will be
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: defending Democratic incumbents in three Trump states, West Virginia, Montana,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: and Ohio, and then defending incumbents in purple Biden states, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: and Nevada. Our best pickup opportunities, our best possible flips
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: in 2024 Are Florida and Texas. You know what I'm saying?
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Those aren't very promising. Well, those are the only possibilities.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: That's why we're going to be all encouraging everybody to
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: go knock on doors for Kirsten Sinema. Listen. We'll get
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: you there. 51 votes.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: Maybe Ruben Gallego.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: Maybe she can get her to be some cabinet position. Yeah.
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: 51 takes the balance of power out of the capricious,
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: coal-dust-covered hands of Joe Manchin and Or Kyrsten Sinema. I
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: think I'd rather slightly more liberal hands.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: They both. Well, the thing is, it's like it's a
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: double edged sword, right? Because the two of them have
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: stuck together because neither one of them wanted to be
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: the one to sink any kind of votes. But. Also,
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: I still think that they can make 51 look a
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: lot like 50 or they can decide they can split
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: off on things.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Also, if Joe Manchin is facing an incredibly tough reelection
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: in 2024 in West Virginia, if he decides he's going
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: to go be an independent or switch or something, then
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: 51 helps with that. And also, I saw someone point
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: out Kamala Harris doesn't have to be in D.C. anymore
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: to cast tie-breaking votes so she can spend more time
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: in other places.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: That's good. Campaigning.
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Also, I read, like, oh, all the things that will
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: happen in the Senate if we have 51. How about just, like,
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: we have Raphael Warnock instead of Herschel Walker? We have, like,
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: a brilliant, inspiring preacher instead of a fucking stone-cold moron who, like,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: put a gun to his ex-wife's head. That's a bonus
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: right there.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it just seems wrong for him to win.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: How do you think the fact that control of the
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Senate has already been decided should impact Warnock's strategy in
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: this runoff? that's happening on December 6th.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: I doubt it does.
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, don't you assume that Warnock's people have been
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: running this race the whole time, assuming they had another
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: month and that they're just going to kind of execute
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: on that? I mean, look, if I were them, I'd
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: take some cash. I would maybe buy a Mar-a-Lago membership
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: and see if I could talk Trump into coming down
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: to Georgia for a few stops.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's an opportunity.
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: I do think given that the stakes are not control
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: of the Senate, it makes it more about character, qualifications, record.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: It makes it more about which man do you want
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: to represent you? And it makes it a much, much
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: harder road for the Republicans.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: And I think that's the strategy that Warnock follows because
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: his first ad for the runoff was all about character.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: And it said this whole thing is about character. Who
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: do you want? And I think it's easier to do
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: that when Senate stakes are high.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: It's just harder for the Republicans to motivate people, I think.
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think you could get a lot of
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: these voters out again to say, own the libs, keep
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: them out of power, vote Herschel Walker.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: No one's turning out for Herschel Walker. You gotta get
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: in your car. and drive again to vote just for this,
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: make a plan of it.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: I did see that Kemp is now going to campaign
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: with Walker and he didn't before, probably cause he was
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: worried about his own election and like the Senate leadership fund,
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: like they're going to lend their dad and some money.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: So like they're, they're all getting behind, they're all going
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: to try, but, um, which is why everyone should, which
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: is why we all need to sort of get involved and, uh, and, and, uh,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: send money down there and help when, whatever we can, because, uh,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: We don't want Hershel Walker in the Senate and Raphael
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: Warnock is one of the best senators we have. So
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: one more fun thing before we move on to the House.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: The Republican infighting over losing the Senate has begun. Mitch
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: McConnell's flunkies are blaming Rick Scott's flunkies. Rick Scott's flunkies
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: are blaming Mitch McConnell's flunkies. And at least five Republican senators,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: including Scott, have called for a delay. in leadership elections.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: What do you guys think? Is Mitch in trouble? And
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: who are we rooting for?
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: Who are we rooting for? It's aliens versus predator. Whoever wins,
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: we lose. I see the points that Rick Scott is making.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: They're great points. I see what McConnell is saying about
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: the Trump people. They're making great points. Honestly, some of
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: the points Trump's making, not so bad. The thing is,
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: they're all responsible and they're all trying to make this
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: about the decisions they made in the last year. because
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: that's a place where they can find dissensus and maybe
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: places where they can find some purchase to make an
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: argument for why it's not their fault, it's someone else's fault.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: This is the culmination of years, of years of getting
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: exactly what they fucking wanted. They wanted to overturn Dobbs
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: and they got fucking killed for it. They wanted all
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: the enthusiasm and excitement that came from the Trump base
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: and then they got fucking punished for it. All of
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: these people got exactly what they wanted, which is exactly
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: what they deserve and have at it. blame each other,
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: tear each other down. You're all full of shit. That's
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: how I feel about that.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: I'm obviously rooting for Rick Scott here.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: I am too.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Well, of course, he's because he's an idiot.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: He's a Medicare thief.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: Telegenic, brilliant policy mind. Just expert recruiting. That guy is
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: the best.
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: We know what Mitch McConnell is capable of. He's an obstructionist,
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: and he can raise a lot of lobbyist money. I
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: would love to see Rick Scott take the reins here.
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: He's one of the most personally unappealing people politically tone deaf,
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: personally damaged, corrupt goons in that entire city.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: Go for it. Sure. Look, let's not, It's not like
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: Mitch McConnell is like George Clooney, right? Like he's not
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: exactly personable or like a great- Another straw man gunned down.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: I said I know what he's worth. He's a good
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: obstructionist and he raises money. Are there any more Twitter
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: mentions you want to argue with?
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: I don't want anyone to tell me whatever happened to
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: when they go low, we go high.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Republican infighting.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: All I'm saying is I think some, look, minority leaders
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: often look like geniuses. It's easier to obstruct when you're
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: in the minority in the Senate. He has benefited from
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: a lot of decisions a lot of other people have made.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying Mitch McConnell isn't a smarter and better
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: politician than Rick Scott, but I'm a little bit done
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: with the Mitch McConnell strategic genius thing.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: The Washington Post has an extremely long story that is
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: very good about everything that happened in the last year
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: with Republicans. or two years, whatever it was. And there
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: was just one great moment where they're like, at one point,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: McConnell's people blamed Scott and his people for the plan
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: to cut Medicare and Social Security and every other government
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: program after five years and also raise taxes on working people.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: But then Scott blamed McConnell for letting Lindsey Graham do
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: the 15 week abortion ban. And so I'm like, which
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: goes to your point, which is like, there's just plenty of,
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: plenty of dumb ideas to go around.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: There are, I will.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Yes, I will.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: I will. I will pause and say the Rick Scott sunset, Medicare,
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: Medicaid raised taxes on half of taxpayers plan is excellent.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: One of the greatest unforced errors in my entire life
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: of paying attention. There was absolutely no need for it. Drove.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: 300 miles to step on a rake. It was completely unnecessary.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: If you look at the amount the Democrats spent on ads, abortion, obviously,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: number one, as we've talked about before. But right after that,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: ads about Medicare, ads about Social Security, it wasn't in
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: the headlines, it wasn't being covered by the media, but
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: it was, Democrats were hitting that message pretty hard.
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: Those were all the big, like the clips of Obama
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: on the road that were going around, it was all
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: those sorts of hits.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. And also, like, Mitch McConnell is in this mess
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: because he and his flunkies realize that Trump is the problem,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: but they are all too weak to take him on.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: They're cowards. Complete cowards. It's not just that they're cowards.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Where is the enthusiasm for other, you can maybe point
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: to Ron DeSantis. They didn't just concede the kind of
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: party to Trump. They have been relying on the enthusiasm
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: and excitement and engagement that Trump generates. They have really
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: outsourced the kind of grassroots part of politics to to
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: Trump as a person and they're kind of shit out
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: of luck. And you know what he does?
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: That deal with the devil gets you emails from Trump
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: that are ostensibly about raising money for the Walker campaign,
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: where it actually splits the thing nine to one favor
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: of money to Trump versus money for the candidates. But
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: the McConnell people have no sympathy for them because they
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: could have voted to impeach Donald Trump and taken this
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: off the table to some extent. They were worried that
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: he would leave the party and do his own third
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: party sort of new MAGA party thing, and they were
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: afraid of him. And that cowardice and that weakness is
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: what got us here.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and also, you know, look, you can try to
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: burn down the Capitol, and you can insult and degrade
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: every institution and aspect of our political life.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Don't you lose us the midterms.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: But don't lose us the midterms. Look, I mean, now
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: you're costing us seats. That's a sin we can't abide.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: Now, as much as I would love Rick Scott to
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: take over for Mitch McConnell, I did look at the
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Senate Republican caucus page and looked at all those pictures.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: I could only count about 10 true yahoos that might
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: back Scott over McConnell. There's too many sort of, establishment
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: cucks there who are just McConnell people.
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: There's a delay caucus, which is like Cruz, Rubio, Hawley,
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: Rick Scott. The argument is, let Herschel Walker, this is
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: what they want, get elected, then we should have a vote.
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: I think that's also supported by right-wing organizations like the
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: Heritage Foundation and Club for Growth, but you're.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Right, it is a very fringe. It's still hard to
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: get the number you need to oust McConnell. Well, let's
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: talk about the House. So Democrats path to keeping a
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: 218 seat majority is incredibly narrow right now. Dave Wasserman
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: of the Cook Political Report says that Republicans have won
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: or will probably win in 220 districts. For Democrats, it's
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: 213 and two seats are still toss ups. Either way,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: this will be the smallest number of House seats lost
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: by the party in power in 20 years, even though
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: the overall House vote is so far eight points more
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Republican than it was in 2020. That number could come
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: down a bit as California gets counted, but probably not
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: a ton. Any more thoughts on why that is or
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: how we got here in the House?
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: Not especially. I couldn't put it better than that. I mean,
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: just to give it a whirl. Thanks, Tommy.
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: I think some bad candidates cost them. A notable one,
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: John Gibbs in Michigan. Completely wackadoodle out there, candidate. Clearly,
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: the concerns about Republican extremism outweighed anger at Biden or
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: the economy. I think we were greatly damaged in our
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: efforts to keep the House by the Republican gerrymander in Florida.
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: I think the Republicans got four seats out of Florida.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: Didn't help that we nominated a completely warmed-over, uninspiring gubernatorial
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: nominee against Ron DeSantis, and he just mopped up. You
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: contrast that with Ohio, right, where Tim Ryan lost to J.D.
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: Vance but helped flip House seats. We talked about New
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: York last week and how we didn't do well there.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, look, you can put together a Democratic majority
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: by just undoing the gerrymander in Florida, a couple other
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: southern states, a better map in New York, a better
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: map in Wisconsin. Just the fact that Salt Lake City
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: is divided instead of being a district. There are places
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: all across the country you can look and find the
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: gerrymander to lose.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: Cook Political says Democrats won 100% of solid D seats,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: likely D seats, and lean D seats. 100% of all those.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: 69% of toss-ups.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: Nice.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: And one lean R. That was the other very extreme candidate,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: Joe Kent in Washington.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: That guy's bonkers. Bonkers.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: And that was another Trump thing because Jamie Herrera Butler
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: was a Republican who voted to impeach Trump. The party
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: ousted her because, you know, you can't be impeaching Trump
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: in that party anymore. Joe can't win the nomination. They
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: thought it was still going to be safe. They lost.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: There are a few places. I mean, one reason you
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: will see Democrats winning all the places that lean Democrat
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: is because if they are places that lean Democrat, they
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: were not gerrymandered. And these Republican gerrymanders are so strong.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: that it makes it possible if you just, like basically,
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: they got a little greedy here and there, and there's
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: a couple seats we're picking off because they got a
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: little greedy in their gerrymanders.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and then the other reason you had that gap
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: between the swing for the House vote and how many
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: seats Republicans picked up is there was real low turnout
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: in safe Democratic seats, and then there were more contested
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Republican races. That makes sense. So the Wall Street Journal
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: reported that right-wing representative Andy Biggs of Arizona will challenge
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: Kevin McCarthy for Speaker. There's a vote today where McCarthy
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: only needs a majority of House Republicans, which he'll get.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: But Biggs wants to show that McCarthy does not yet
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: have the 218 votes he'll need when the House convenes
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: in January. What do you guys think? Is McCarthy in trouble?
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: This is a hard one. I don't know. It's hard
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: to see how this thing shakes out. There was reporting
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: that McCarthy called Henry Cuellar to see if he could
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: get him to flip.
• 26:43
  Speaker 6: Really?
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it didn't work. It didn't work. I've been saying,
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: not our Henry. But yeah, it's, you know, you got
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: Matt Gaetz running around proposing every fucking numbskull.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: Can we listen? I think we have the Matt Gaetz clip,
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: which we have to play.
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: I've heard the name Tulsi Gabbard, someone who might actually
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: bring us a few folks from the left who are
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: tired of the corrupt ruling.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: Class in this town.
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: Right now, there are a lot of the establishment Republicans
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: in denial, believing that Kevin McCarthy can somehow still become speaker.
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: What I'm here to tell you is, There are definitely
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: at least five people, actually a lot more than that,
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: who would rather be waterboarded by Liz Cheney than vote
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: for Kevin McCarthy for Speaker of the House.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: And I'm one of them. So one thing I just
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: want to point out is that who waterboards you doesn't matter.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: It's more the process. It's the experience. So it's a
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: weird thing because he makes comments like this in the
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: past and it always ends up having a kind of
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: vaguely sadomasochistic sexual element. That's all I wanted to point out.
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: Do you think a Cheney could have some expertise that
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: others don't possess?
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: Does that make it worse or better?
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: The founding fathers of.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: Also, by the way, good for Liz Cheney. You know what?
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: Good for Liz Cheney. She stuck her neck out. She
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: campaigned with Alyssa Slotkin.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: You know what? Good for her.
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: On this Tulsi Gabbard thing, I think I saw that
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: Adam Laxalt was the eighth loss out of the 12
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: Republicans endorsed by Tulsi Gabbard in her little tour where
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: she pretended... that she was suddenly leaving the Democratic Party
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: for reasons other than her being just a completely weird person.
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: I think if Carrie Lake loses, Tulsi will lose her
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: ninth endorsement. So let's not pretend that anyone cares what
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: she thinks or says.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: No, I don't think so. So like, if Republicans end up,
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: if House Republicans end up with 219 or 220 seats,
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: they can only spare one or two defections, Kevin McCarthy.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: So that's on the, like, he could be in trouble side.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: On the other side, like, you can't beat something with nothing.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: Any kind of challenger would also need 218 and only
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: could spare a defection or two. Apparently, Donald Trump is
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: telling people to back McCarthy. One Trump advisor said to CNN,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: the strategy is to protect McCarthy from blame because Trump
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: needs him for his presidential run. So Trump's trying to
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: use McCarthy here. And then apparently Marjorie Taylor Greene went
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: on Tommy's favorite podcast, Bannon's War Room, and she said
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: it would be a bad strategy to challenge Kevin McCarthy.
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: I mean, Kevin has to get 218 votes. The question
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: becomes what concessions you make along the way to get there.
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: Some of the House Freedom Caucus members are pushing for
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: a rule change that would make it possible for any
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: member At any time to call a vote to depose
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: the speaker.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: Endorse.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: Endorse.
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: In practice, it just means, you know, Kevin's going to
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: spend the next couple of months sucking up to dudes
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: with names like Chip Roy.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean? But like he might get there.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: There's no various QAnon supporters.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: There's no alternative. But there are. What will these chaos,
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: these right wing chaos agents be willing to take in
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: terms of heat from the kind of serious adjacent people
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: that are telling them to just go along with Kevin McCarthy? Like,
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: how long can this go? How much can they drag out?
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: How long can we go without a speaker? before they
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: kind of relent? I don't know. I don't know. I
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: think this is a little bit wishful. I can also
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: see this coming together pretty quick. But in the part
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: that wishes, the same candle I lit before the election,
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: let it drag out. Let it go on and on.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: But I do think if it does come together for McCarthy,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: he's still going to have a really tough time. It's
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: a hard job. Back to the impeachment conversation, I don't
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: know that there will be an impeachment with that size
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: of caucus because you need everyone on board. You have
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: a couple people on board. And again, there's a very
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: real shot that Democrats retake the House in 2024. We
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: lost five seats in New York that Joe Biden won
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: by four points or more in 2020. So there's a
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: real chance Democrats retake the House in 2024. So there's
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: a bunch of Republicans sitting in districts that are pretty competitive.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: Do you really think going forward with the impeachment of
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden is the best move here? I don't know.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: They don't want to.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: And if they had, let's say they'd gotten their 30
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: or 40 seats, nobody wants to be part of the
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: 10 to 20 that defect for something that passes.
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: But to be the 10 to 20 that just stopped
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: something from happening. Yeah. Feels much more palatable. Yeah.
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: The hard thing is that the hard right base of
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: the party, the kind of TP USA kind of goobers
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: are all going, they're very mad at McCarthy to begin with,
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: and they were all are going to be demanding blood.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: They want to own the lips. That's all they care about. Right.
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: They want Hunter Biden investigations, which could still happen in
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: a Republican house and they want impeachment.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: And will happen. Yeah, they absolutely will happen.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: Fauci in jail.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: Right. So like that, how Kevin.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: Head back to the Wuhan lab.
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: How Kevin balances him wanting the title of speaker with
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: the demands of the genuinely crazy people like Paul Gosar
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: within his caucus is going to be, I don't know
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: how you do that.
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Like, I mean, look, the same dynamic, this is
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: why it's like this, you know, there was like a
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: weekend of Trump's toast. Okay. The same dynamic is at play,
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: which is a lot of, Republicans, whether they said it
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: out loud or not, believed that election denial was a
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: losing issue. A lot of them believed that abortion was
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: a losing issue. A lot of them believed these kooks
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: were going to cost them races and seats. They thought
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: maybe the wave would be big enough to overcome it.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: But now we've been given this proof point. Okay, we've
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: now seen it. These are losing issues. They still have
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: to do the hard work of that like base to
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: leader to base to leader and back and forth conversation
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: where a big group of people that are supposed to
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: be the adults start signaling down that we're not doing
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: this anymore. But they're all afraid to do that still.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: Kevin McCarthy cannot do that now. So for all the
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: talk about how they've learned their lesson, they can only,
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: that is only true if over the next six months
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: to a year, they start the hard work of like
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: basically like trying to civilize the base that they've let
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: go rabid over the last 30 years. And I don't
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: believe it's going to happen.
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: And I think you need a party leader to do that.
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: I think Donald Trump could do that. He could tell
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: the base to chill out if he wanted to. Ron
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: DeSantis did do it to a small extent in Florida.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: I was just going to say that.
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: When they were going, when they were screaming for him
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: to pass a six week abortion ban, he said no
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: and stuck at 15 weeks, which was one of those
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: moments where you're like, ah, this guy actually has some
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: political instincts that are smart that Trump does not.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, before we get too excited that they're not going
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: to be able to pull this together, like Ron DeSantis,
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: Greg Abbott, some of these red states did not, like
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: they were able to deal with the headwinds from abortion bans, extremism,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: threats to democracy, which weren't popular in their states, and
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: these governors won anyway. So, but if Donald Trump's leading
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: the party, that's going to be tough.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: Yep, yep.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: So we still have a few months before the new
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: Congress is seated, and there's a long list of things
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: to get done in what's known as a lame duck
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: session of Congress. Nancy Pelosi said she wants to lift
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: the debt ceiling. The Senate announced they'll be voting to
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: codify same-sex marriage protections. There's also the Electoral Count Reform Act,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: government funding debates. What do you guys think is most
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: realistic and important here on this list? Because really, there's
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: not a lot of time.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: The single most important thing that they can do is raise,
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: ideally eliminate, the debt ceiling. There's nothing more important that
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: they can do in this period of time. Ideally, they
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: could scrap it forever. I don't know that that's possible.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: It seems like maybe too hard a road to hoe.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: But look at what is happening in the house right now.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: It is a dust cloud of right-wing arms and legs.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: They don't know. They don't know what they're going to
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: do to stop the country from going into default. You
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: cannot rely on this group of people. You know, Schumer, Pelosi,
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: they both said they want to do something with the
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: debt ceiling. Manchin today kind of echoed what has been
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: a party line, which it should be bipartisan.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: Anita Dunn said that over the weekend as well. That's
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: just what you say.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: Obviously, like whatever concessions or deal you need to make
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: with a few Republicans in the Senate right now is
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: far better than taking the country to the precipice with
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: a Republican House that has already said they will use
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: the debt ceiling to get concessions on social safety net
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: and taxes. They are telling you they're going to hold
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: a gun to the country's head already. Don't wait for
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: them to do it. Yeah.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: And on the because I saw people freaking out over
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: a mansion saying it should be bipartisan. The reason the
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: Democrats for a long time and I think it's back
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: to the Obama administration would say, oh, it should be
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: bipartisan is what they mean is one party shouldn't use
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: it to ring concessions to policy concessions out of the
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: other party. So it should be. If Manchin changes to, oh,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: it must be bipartisan or else I'm not going to
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: do it, then we're all fucked.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: People like Romney and others are looking at this and
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: they don't want to put the country through it either.
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: This is where the business interests will lobby against it
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: as well. This is where traditional Republicans have a little swat.
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: They're also going to have to pass some must-pass spending
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: bills or else we're going to go into a government
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: shutdown in mid-December.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: Which, by the way, I'm wondering if they're just going to,
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: they need to do a couple spending bills. You can
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: do the debt ceiling without not having to do a
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: deal with the filibuster if you do a budget resolution
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: because that only needs 50 votes. So why don't you
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: do a budget resolution that funds the government and everything else,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: all those other priorities, and then just tack the debt
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: limit on there and just do it all at once.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: The debt ceiling is like if you were trying to
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: cut your credit card spending and so you took a
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: picture of yourself in full Nazi regalia and you set
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: an auto send on your email to go to everyone
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: in your contacts if you ever hit your limit. But
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: it doesn't stop you from spending money on the credit card.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: You just keep raising your credit card limit.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you risk sending that picture.
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: I think this happened in the NXIVM documentary I'm watching.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just don't do it.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: All right, so the debt ceiling we can do if
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: we get Mansion in Cinema on board.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: Good idea.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: Let's do that. That's what it comes down to. I
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: think it sounds like from... all the reporting today that
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: same-sex marriage protections will pass.
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: The Respect for Marriage Act. Yeah, I'm very happy Tammy
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: Baldwin was insistent that it wasn't a political message bill.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: It was actually a bill to protect marriage equality. For me,
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: it was a political message bill, so pass it. I
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: don't give a fuck.
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: Pass the House with 47 Republican votes.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: I think the Electoral Count Reform Act is in very
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: good shape as well. And we've talked about that before.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: I think they have like 30 co-sponsors, including Mitch McConnell.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: It would clarify the vice president's role. It would basically...
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: put the judiciary in charge of state certification or at
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: least as a backstop for state certification so that people
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: in state legislatures and governors couldn't just overturn the election
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: with no judicial review, which is very important. And then
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: it would raise the threshold in Congress to objecting to
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: any electoral results.
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: Let's do that. I do think it was a bit
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: untoward to include as a concession to some of the
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: more conservative members of the House that we will hang
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: Mike Pence.
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: To get it done.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: It's in there.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: Leave him alone.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: He's on a book tour.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: Look, people don't read these bills. They didn't know you
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: couldn't vote on Saturday before the Georgia runoff. They don't
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: know that this electoral county will kill Mike Pence. He'll
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: be hung to death. That's what it says. Until he
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: is dead.
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: There's some talk of trying to get the child tax
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: credit done. I don't know what the prospects of that are.
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: Some version of the permitting reform bill that was promised
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: to Manchin is associated with the IRA.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: I don't know if that's going to happen.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: Look, These people barely work three days a week here,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: and we got two months. We got debt ceiling, we
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: got same-sex marriage, we've got Electoral Account Reform Act, and
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: then all this other funding for Ukraine, for the government,
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: for everything else. That sounds like a pretty full agenda.
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, these people run out of steam at 4.30.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: I mean, so do I. They're early risers, too. They
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: gotta pee three times a night. They're old, is what
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: I'm saying.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: Last but not least, Donald Trump is expected to announce
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: his third election. presidential campaign from mar-a-lago at 9 p.m
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: eastern tonight and a growing number of republican politicians are
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: not all that jazzed about it uh now that the
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: twice impeached two-time popular vote loser is responsible for the
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: party's poor performance in the last three elections in a
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: row a new yougov poll also shows that more republicans
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: now want ron desantis to be the party's nominee over
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: trump by a slim 41 to 39%.
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: I just saw another poll come through. It's from the
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: Club for Growth that did state by state in the
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: early states. And it's got DeSantis beating Trump by 11
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: points in Iowa, 15 points in New Hampshire, 20 points
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: in Georgia, 26 points in Florida. No surprise there. I
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: guess not all early states. I'm not sure what their
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: calendar is, but those Iowa, New Hampshire numbers, look, it
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: could be juiced. I have no idea if a Club.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: For Growth is a good pollster, but it's not going
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: to make Mr. Trump very happy.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: No.
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: Club for Growth freaks. I love it. Just I'm going
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: to stop myself. Now I want to hear what you're
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: going to do. Something about masturbating to the Dow and
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: then making up the numbers.
• 39:20
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's where I was.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: Workshop a little bit. Come back to the next pod.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: I didn't have it.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: Are you guys pretty psyched for another Trump campaign?
• 39:27
  Speaker 7: It is funny.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: This is the last thing we talked about today. in
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: a very long list. Donald Trump is fucking running for
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: president again. It's happening, guys. Do you think he is
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: as weak as he seems right now? You seem to
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: think no from our earlier conversation.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: Look, maybe he is, maybe he isn't. I'm not going
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: to make any predictions. All I would say is... Why?
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: Our predictions are perfect.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: That, you know... There was a week after the insurrection
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: where it seemed as though his political fortunes had turned.
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: I would say burning down the Capitol should be a
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: bigger deal breaker than not getting as big of a
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: majority in the House. But we will see.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: But to voters, who knows?
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: They want to win.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: If this was a conversation just about like, will the
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: Republican politicians break from him finally or back him in
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: the end? They'd be like, yeah, of course, they're going
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: to rally around him in the end. That's what they
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: always do. But the voters, the base is a different story.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: Laura Ingram on her show the other night was like,
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: we can't be doing this anymore.
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: He's starting to lose.
• 40:25
  Speaker 4: I know.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: He's starting to lose Fox.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: I just think like, I really do think it's an
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: open question. We forget how much institutional opposition he faced
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: before he started winning primaries in 2016. He never had
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: a supportive majority of the party. He won because they
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: were divided amongst the other people that decided to run.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: So who knows?
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: We'll see. Little run to sanctimonious. Let's see if it works.
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: I think the challenge for all these guys, I agree
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: that I think that much like Democrats in 2020, Republican
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: voters this time around will care most about electability and
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: not losing again. And so that would be the Achilles heel.
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: I think the challenge for DeSantis and anybody else is
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: that Trump politically is Mike Tyson and he punches everyone
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: as hard as he can all the time. And these
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: guys come out and they shadow box him and they
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: slap box him and they.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: Go for these sort of oblique moves.
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: Criticisms in you know the Washington Times on background it's
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: just like it's not gonna work Trump has been able
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: to consolidate the right wing the MAGA base the Fox
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: News primetime hosts time and time and time again until
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: we see like Tucker Carlson break or Sean Hannity break
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: then I will start to wonder but yeah but not
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: the like you know elitist London based owner of the
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: New York Post that like semaphore is all fired up
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: about like I that to me is not like where
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: the base.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: Is so far just about every Republican candidate who has
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: lost a race in this midterm has conceded, or at
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: least has not claimed victory. I think that is wonderful
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: for democracy, first of all. But second of all, it
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: hurts Trump and it hurts Trump's cause. Because one of
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: the reasons he embraced the big lie in the first
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: place is because he knew the worst thing that could
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: happen to him was for him to be viewed as
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: a loser. And now Republican voters are once again thinking, hmm,
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: we've now lost again. We've lost a bunch. From 2012
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: to 2020, except for 2016, and not a great midterm
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: in 2014, Democrats have won every election. And so I
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: think at some point, at some point, the voters might say, I.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: Wonder, because if.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: I'm just making the argument.
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: I don't know. None of us knows, obviously. But I
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: look at this too, and I'm like, I want to win.
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: I'm a Republican. I want to win. And I got
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: my two options here. I got Donald Trump who won
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: in 2016, and I kind of think probably won in 2020.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, I've got Ron DeSantis, who I like a lot,
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: but who I know, if he defeats Donald Trump in
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: a primary, will be torn to absolute fucking smithereens by
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: this guy and will come out like a wounded animal.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: Oh, by Trump.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: Oh, oh. Like, I just, Trump, it is inconceivable to me, like,
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: that Donald Trump goes quietly into the night. You know,
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: that's not gonna happen. Because even if, like, whatever, like,
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: if a Republican defeats a Democrat in 2024, Donald Trump
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: will view that as a personal rebuke to him. It
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: cannot be allowed to happen.
• 43:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he'll burn the whole thing down. Run as a
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: third-party candidate.
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: He will never do that because he's too lazy and
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: he won't actually get on the ballot. He'll just be
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: like a chaos agent on truth social.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which, you know, isn't going that far.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: Not the worst thing, you know.
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: When we come back, Rebecca Katz and Kip Hebert from
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: the Fetterman campaign join Tommy to talk about how they
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: pulled off a big win against Dr. Ross.
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: I am thrilled to be joined now by two of
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: the brilliant minds that helped propel John Fetterman to victory,
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: Rebecca Katz and Kip Hebert.
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: Thank you both for being here.
• 43:57
  Speaker 8: Thanks. Good to be here.
• 43:59
  Speaker 9: Thanks for having us.
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: So why don't we just start with the basics? Can
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: you guys just quickly tell folks what you did for
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: the campaign once you start, Rebecca?
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: Sure.
• 44:07
  Speaker 8: So we've been with John now for about seven years now.
• 44:12
  Speaker 8: So we basically had been working with him on communications
• 44:17
  Speaker 8: and just like general strategy.
• 44:18
  Speaker 7: That whole time.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: That's excellent.
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: I should note for just for history that Rebecca and
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: I worked together on the John.
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: Edwards for president.
• 44:26
  Speaker 8: A very long time ago.
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: In 2004 campaign, which I called the good one, the
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: good Edwards campaign.
• 44:33
  Speaker 8: I refer to that as well.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: We'll let that go there.
• 44:37
  Speaker 8: Okay.
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: So we're going to get to the big picture stuff
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: in a minute about how you guys won and all
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: the strategy. But first question, it just has to be
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: about Snooki because in case listeners don't know what I'm
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: talking about, the Fetterman campaign released the funniest video I've
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: seen from a campaign.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: Maybe ever.
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: It starred, uh, the Jersey shore star Snooki. Do we
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: call them stars? I guess we do talking about Dr.
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: Oz leaving his home in New Jersey to go find
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: a new job in Pennsylvania, like genuinely hilarious. Um, I
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: read that you guys first tried to get a video
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: from The Situation, another Jersey Shore cast member, but that
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: he didn't deliver.
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: What happened there? What happened with Mike?
• 45:15
  Speaker 8: I mean, where to begin? So first of all, you
• 45:17
  Speaker 8: have to know that New Jersey wasn't just about like
• 45:20
  Speaker 8: shit posting. It was actually the number one thing that
• 45:23
  Speaker 8: was popping off on odds with regular voters that, you know,
• 45:26
  Speaker 8: people from Pennsylvania, especially Philly, don't like New Jersey. And
• 45:31
  Speaker 8: so we were having some fun with this New Jersey theme.
• 45:35
  Speaker 8: John was doing the memes. And so we had a
• 45:38
  Speaker 8: bunch of ideas about, you know, people from New Jersey
• 45:40
  Speaker 8: and then tactics. So it was just, you know, I
• 45:43
  Speaker 8: remember calling up Kip and we were talking about Jersey
• 45:45
  Speaker 8: Shore and Cameo. And then we tried the situation. And
• 45:50
  Speaker 8: then Kip, why don't you talk about what happened when
• 45:52
  Speaker 8: we got it back?
• 45:54
  Speaker 5: To his credit, he turned it around in a couple
• 45:55
  Speaker 5: of days. He took some liberties. I don't think he
• 46:00
  Speaker 5: had much else to do, man.
• 46:02
  Speaker 9: In mid-June, we first had this idea.
• 46:05
  Speaker 5: I wrote up a script and sent that to the situation.
• 46:09
  Speaker 5: He sent us back something a couple of days later
• 46:11
  Speaker 5: that was, I guess you could say, off-message. Our white
• 46:16
  Speaker 5: whale was Snooki. That's the one we always wanted. We
• 46:18
  Speaker 5: submitted it and she there's this thing on cameo where
• 46:23
  Speaker 5: if you don't, if the celebrity doesn't do it within
• 46:26
  Speaker 5: 77 days, they refund your money and then you have
• 46:29
  Speaker 5: to submit it again. And we submitted it four times.
• 46:32
  Speaker 5: And then finally in, I think we'd given up hope
• 46:35
  Speaker 5: that it would actually ever really happen. And then in
• 46:37
  Speaker 5: mid July, we were in the middle of like a
• 46:39
  Speaker 5: staff meeting and I got an email from cameo that
• 46:41
  Speaker 5: said it, she had done it and we just stopped
• 46:43
  Speaker 5: everything and watched it several times in a row.
• 46:45
  Speaker 8: We were screaming. I mean, it was, it was the
• 46:47
  Speaker 8: most perfect piece of, of, video presentation I've ever seen
• 46:52
  Speaker 8: in my life. It was just, she, she nailed it. Um,
• 46:55
  Speaker 8: and then, and then it exploded. It really felt like
• 46:58
  Speaker 8: there was like a time on the campaign before Snooki
• 47:00
  Speaker 8: and then after Snooki.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. I mean, did you enjoy it more
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: than the Crudite?
• 47:06
  Speaker 10: Yes.
• 47:07
  Speaker 8: I mean, the Crudite was him, the Snooki was us.
• 47:09
  Speaker 8: You know what I mean? Like we had, well, I
• 47:12
  Speaker 8: think you guys actually discovered a lot of the Crudite video.
• 47:15
  Speaker 8: That was, you know, um, missed by some folks because
• 47:18
  Speaker 8: he recorded it like back in April or something, but
• 47:21
  Speaker 8: Snooki was just something that we had been having so
• 47:24
  Speaker 8: much fun with New Jersey. Like, do you remember that
• 47:26
  Speaker 8: he recorded a message for Pennsylvania voters from his mansion
• 47:31
  Speaker 8: in New Jersey?
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: I know that because you guys told everybody and you landed.
• 47:35
  Speaker 8: That on our team, found that out. And, you know,
• 47:39
  Speaker 8: he was, he was looking at the video. He's like,
• 47:40
  Speaker 8: and he sent in the group chat, um, I think
• 47:43
  Speaker 8: this is New Jersey House. And we all stopped everything
• 47:47
  Speaker 8: that we were doing. We spent the whole day trying
• 47:51
  Speaker 8: to figure out if it really was the same house.
• 47:53
  Speaker 8: And I think, Kip, you were the one that found
• 47:55
  Speaker 8: the bookcase, right?
• 47:57
  Speaker 5: Yeah, there's no way to talk about this without sounding
• 47:59
  Speaker 5: completely crazy. But I found eight books in a row
• 48:03
  Speaker 5: that were the same color and size in both of
• 48:05
  Speaker 5: the two photos.
• 48:05
  Speaker 9: I was like, OK, this is definitely it. But we
• 48:06
  Speaker 9: were analyzing it like it was the Sapruder film or something.
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: God, I love it.
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: But I mean, like, so the Snooki video gets at
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: a broader point about the campaign that John ran, which
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: is that the tone of the messaging, you guys seemed
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: like you were having fun. We're having fun talking about
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: it right now. The attacks on Dr. Oz, they were tough,
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: but they didn't read it, read as harsh or mean, especially,
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: especially when compared to what the monsters who worked for Dr.
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: Oz eventually ended up saying about John's health. How did
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: you like settle on that approach in that tone? Is
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: it a strategy that's uniquely suited to, to running against
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: someone who is a, let's face it, a clown?
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: Or is it like something- Well, he wasn't.
• 48:44
  Speaker 8: Always the clown. I mean, that's, I mean, we, I
• 48:46
  Speaker 8: feel like we made him a clown. I mean, when
• 48:48
  Speaker 8: he was running in the primary, they didn't view him
• 48:50
  Speaker 8: as a clown. They were running xenophobic and hateful negative ads, right?
• 48:54
  Speaker 8: Like we, John is from Pennsylvania. Like he gets it, right?
• 48:59
  Speaker 8: So he knew we had real research to back up
• 49:02
  Speaker 8: that people did not like, you know, the fact that
• 49:05
  Speaker 8: Oz just moved here to try and win the Senate race.
• 49:08
  Speaker 8: And- And John wanted to have fun with it. Remember,
• 49:10
  Speaker 8: these are the early days that he was recovering from
• 49:12
  Speaker 8: his stroke. We were having internal meetings, but he wasn't
• 49:15
  Speaker 8: out on the trail yet. And he just, I remember
• 49:17
  Speaker 8: he just started sending us memes and they were really funny,
• 49:21
  Speaker 8: you know? And so he really started, it wasn't that
• 49:24
  Speaker 8: like when they go low, we go, you know, we
• 49:27
  Speaker 8: go high.
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: Like we didn't go high.
• 49:28
  Speaker 8: We just tried to have some fun, you know? And like,
• 49:32
  Speaker 8: and it worked and it comes from the candidate really.
• 49:35
  Speaker 5: Usually the campaign that's having more fun is the campaign
• 49:37
  Speaker 5: that's winning, right? Yes, John is a unique person and
• 49:40
  Speaker 5: Oz is also very unique, but I do think that
• 49:41
  Speaker 5: there is something that here that more Democrats should take
• 49:44
  Speaker 5: advantage of because using humor allows you to deliver a
• 49:48
  Speaker 5: negative message that just doesn't feel negative, right? And it,
• 49:51
  Speaker 5: especially when you're doing it in a bunch of different ways, like,
• 49:54
  Speaker 5: you know, we found that, I mean, exit polls show
• 49:58
  Speaker 5: that like 56% of Pennsylvania voters said that Dr. Oz
• 50:01
  Speaker 5: didn't know Pennsylvania well enough. And this wasn't something that
• 50:03
  Speaker 5: had been a message focus of ours since the summer.
• 50:05
  Speaker 5: So I think it really did stick in or sink in. And,
• 50:10
  Speaker 5: you know, in a tech ad, you can respond with like, okay, well,
• 50:13
  Speaker 5: here are the facts. But like a good joke, like
• 50:15
  Speaker 5: mockery is hard to respond to. I mean, the only
• 50:19
  Speaker 5: way is by being funnier. And if I might overgeneralize,
• 50:22
  Speaker 5: Republicans are not funny. Like, I think that this is
• 50:25
  Speaker 5: a thing that Democrats need to do more because professional Republicans,
• 50:28
  Speaker 5: at least, They've like, as you alluded to with the,
• 50:31
  Speaker 5: you know, making fun of John Stroke, they view cruelty
• 50:33
  Speaker 5: and humor as the same thing. And they just instinctively
• 50:37
  Speaker 5: punch down, which is something that just, you know, as
• 50:40
  Speaker 5: human beings is not funny.
• 50:42
  Speaker 9: So I think this is an area where Democrats have
• 50:44
  Speaker 9: an advantage and could use more.
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: I could not agree more.
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: I mean, so like, again, just stepping back a little, like,
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: I can't imagine anything more challenging on a campaign. then
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: losing your greatest asset, which is your candidate's ability to
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: campaign for several months during the race. That's obviously what
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: happened when John.
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: Had the stroke.
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: How did you guys even begin to think about how
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: to deal with that, knowing that you're not gonna be
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: able to move election day?
• 51:12
  Speaker 8: I mean, it was hard. I'm not gonna pretend it
• 51:14
  Speaker 8: was easy. I mean, there was like shell shock coming.
• 51:17
  Speaker 8: Like really, we drove right from the hospital to the
• 51:21
  Speaker 8: election night party on primary day. And then we won
• 51:25
  Speaker 8: every county in Pennsylvania. It was happening quickly. And then
• 51:30
  Speaker 8: we went right into focus groups. Honestly, we were running
• 51:33
  Speaker 8: on two tracks. And I mean, the research showed exactly
• 51:37
  Speaker 8: what John had been saying all along, that people actually
• 51:41
  Speaker 8: care about real human issues. And he was real. And
• 51:46
  Speaker 8: so we decided to share information the recovery a little bit.
• 51:50
  Speaker 8: And it wasn't easy for him. When you have something
• 51:53
  Speaker 8: like a stroke, you wanna go away for a few
• 51:56
  Speaker 8: months and recover in private. And there was such a
• 52:00
  Speaker 8: drumbeat of like, when is he coming out there? And
• 52:02
  Speaker 8: it was just, it wasn't, that part wasn't fun, but
• 52:07
  Speaker 8: we decided to go out before he was perfect and
• 52:11
  Speaker 8: to show people a little bit about like that humanity.
• 52:14
  Speaker 8: And I think a lot of reporters just thought, like
• 52:18
  Speaker 8: looked at him and just said, like, he's not, he
• 52:20
  Speaker 8: can't do this. And a lot of folks actually, like
• 52:24
  Speaker 8: this resonated with them. It was like a family member.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: I mean, like the, the biggest, obviously instance of this
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: was the debate. I mean, when we had John on
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: Posse America, I didn't do that interview, but when I
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: listened back, you know, there were times where I winced
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: a little bit, you know, I watched the debate online.
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: I found it hard to watch in moments in part
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: because like I fell for him as a human being.
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: But also because, look, I'm a hack. I worried about
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: how it would play politically.
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: Now, I've made a fool of myself enough with predictions
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: not to do that anymore, right? So I shut the
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: fuck up. But a lot of reporters and pundits predicted
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: doom and gloom. What do you think they got wrong?
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: I think they got a lot wrong.
• 53:00
  Speaker 8: I mean, I think when this debate, people came out
• 53:04
  Speaker 8: of it believing that John had had a stroke and
• 53:07
  Speaker 8: that Oz was like, a snake oil salesman who was
• 53:12
  Speaker 8: going to take away their abortion, their right to an abortion, right?
• 53:15
  Speaker 8: And people already knew that John had a stroke. So
• 53:18
  Speaker 8: it wasn't like they were learning something new, but they
• 53:20
  Speaker 8: also knew he was getting better. And he was brave.
• 53:25
  Speaker 8: He was reading through captions. He was doing something that
• 53:27
  Speaker 8: no one had really done before, and the stakes were
• 53:29
  Speaker 8: very high. Oz, as Kip likes to say, he was
• 53:32
  Speaker 8: like lying on television for 20 years.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: It was.
• 53:37
  Speaker 8: It was a place where he felt comfortable. And he
• 53:39
  Speaker 8: didn't do that good a job. And then he was
• 53:40
  Speaker 8: a little too honest in terms of talking about local
• 53:43
  Speaker 8: political leaders taking away abortion rights. And people looked, I mean,
• 53:49
  Speaker 8: that was the takeaway. I mean, we turned the women
• 53:54
  Speaker 8: on the team, the second that Oz said that about
• 53:58
  Speaker 8: local political leaders, all of us kind of yelled at
• 54:00
  Speaker 8: the same time. And we turned that into an ad.
• 54:04
  Speaker 8: And we, you know, when people in Pennsylvania think of
• 54:06
  Speaker 8: local political leaders, they think of people like Doug Mastriano.
• 54:09
  Speaker 8: They don't want him, you know, in charge of their rights.
• 54:13
  Speaker 8: And so it was a real blunder. And most reporters
• 54:16
  Speaker 8: missed it.
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: I mean, Kip, I saw Rebecca say, you know, the
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: coverage the next day was basically like candidates spar, candidates
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: trade barbs, right? Like typical stuff. What like were the D.C.
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: pundits not reading the local coverage? Or is that a
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: ready fire aim approach? Like, how do you think it
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: got so, I don't know, twisted on on social media mostly?
• 54:34
  Speaker 5: I think there's a tendency for reporters and political insiders,
• 54:37
  Speaker 5: because we are the ones who care about soundbites, like
• 54:39
  Speaker 5: nobody's harder on our candidates than ourselves, to think that
• 54:43
  Speaker 5: this is how voters think. But pretty much everything that
• 54:47
  Speaker 5: we know suggests that that's just another sort of DC obsession.
• 54:50
  Speaker 5: I think John was also able to survive it in
• 54:54
  Speaker 5: part because he had never been a candidate who tried
• 54:57
  Speaker 5: to come up as the slickest or most polished.
• 54:59
  Speaker 9: John was real. First and foremost, that was his biggest asset.
• 55:04
  Speaker 5: And that really continued through the stroke through, you know,
• 55:07
  Speaker 5: showing him flaws and all, you know, people sometimes say
• 55:10
  Speaker 5: that John is an effective politician because he's like a
• 55:13
  Speaker 5: regular person. I don't know if he's a regular person. Like,
• 55:15
  Speaker 5: can you just look at him? It doesn't look like that,
• 55:17
  Speaker 5: but he's a real person, you know?
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 55:20
  Speaker 9: You're getting the real, the real thing. It's, you know, unfiltered.
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: It's not scripted.
• 55:24
  Speaker 9: It's not polished.
• 55:25
  Speaker 5: And I think because John has always been that way
• 55:27
  Speaker 5: because we ran the whole campaign that way, you know,
• 55:30
  Speaker 5: we were able to, to show people what the, what
• 55:33
  Speaker 5: was really happening here. And I think to their credit,
• 55:36
  Speaker 5: I think the voters of Pennsylvania were a lot more
• 55:38
  Speaker 5: sympathetic to John than some of the reporters covering him.
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, certainly.
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: And I, frankly, I also thought that Oz came off
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: as like really like slick and fast talking and aggressive
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: and it didn't play that well to me.
• 55:50
  Speaker 8: His whole campaign was me. I mean, that's like, you
• 55:54
  Speaker 8: can't pretend to be Mr. Nice guy when you say
• 55:56
  Speaker 8: the things that you're, that campaign has said. And I
• 55:58
  Speaker 8: think it caught up with him.
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: Saying that if John had eaten a vegetable, he maybe
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: wouldn't have had a stroke is one of the most
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: insanely tone deaf, like disgraceful things I've ever seen a
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: flack say. I'm surprised that person wasn't fired.
• 56:10
  Speaker 10: But that's the whole point.
• 56:10
  Speaker 8: He didn't fire her.
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 56:12
  Speaker 8: Like she still had the job. And and if if
• 56:15
  Speaker 8: anyone on our staff had said something like that, like
• 56:17
  Speaker 8: there would be zero tolerance for that kind. And and
• 56:20
  Speaker 8: then what Oz did, which was so Oz like is
• 56:23
  Speaker 8: then he just said, well, she doesn't speak for me.
• 56:24
  Speaker 8: She only speaks for the kids. I mean, it was
• 56:28
  Speaker 8: just he just he he couldn't. no matter, even as
• 56:32
  Speaker 8: a stroke survivor, John was much stronger than Oz ever was.
• 56:35
  Speaker 8: And voters saw that.
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: There was this huge debate at the end of the
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: campaign in all the races about whether Democrats should be
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: talking about abortion access, democracy, inflation, the economy, like some
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: Twitter geniuses wanted to focus on Paul Pelosi for a cycle.
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: What did you guys hear at the end from voters
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: and what worked when it came to persuading and turning
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: them out?
• 56:56
  Speaker 8: I mean, so the voters who were still like the
• 56:59
  Speaker 8: ones that we were persuading were those independent suburban women.
• 57:02
  Speaker 8: And then for turnout, we were still making sure that
• 57:04
  Speaker 8: all of our, you know, like everyone in Philadelphia got
• 57:07
  Speaker 8: out to vote and things like that. And I think,
• 57:10
  Speaker 8: first of all, we had Oprah, which was the most
• 57:12
  Speaker 8: beautiful gift I think we could have ever asked for.
• 57:16
  Speaker 8: And she said this very devastating quote about Oz where
• 57:19
  Speaker 8: she said, you know, she said if she lived in Pennsylvania,
• 57:23
  Speaker 8: she would have already voted for John Fetterman. And she
• 57:26
  Speaker 8: said for quote unquote, many reasons. I thought that was
• 57:29
  Speaker 8: the most devastating thing I've ever heard because it's just
• 57:31
  Speaker 8: like you don't know what they are, but you know
• 57:32
  Speaker 8: it's bad. And she just kind of dropped that news
• 57:37
  Speaker 8: on a Thursday night. And then we had The View
• 57:40
  Speaker 8: the next day where we were talking to those same women.
• 57:43
  Speaker 8: And then we had Obama come in on that Saturday.
• 57:46
  Speaker 8: And it just felt we just felt like we had momentum,
• 57:49
  Speaker 8: like it just felt really, really great on the ground.
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, Kip, you guys did those events with
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: Obama at the end of the campaign. They looked big.
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: They felt exciting, right?
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: I was sitting here in L.A. on Twitter, like all
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: inspired all over again because I'm a, you know, has been.
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: But did those rallies translate into votes in a way
• 58:07
  Speaker 3: you guys felt you could quantify?
• 58:09
  Speaker 9: I mean, it certainly it translated into great coverage wall
• 58:13
  Speaker 9: to wall.
• 58:13
  Speaker 5: And also, you know, Donald Trump gave us a basically
• 58:16
  Speaker 5: an inclined contribution by coming to Pennsylvania on the same day.
• 58:19
  Speaker 5: So really, like it couldn't have been a better way
• 58:21
  Speaker 5: to close out the campaign by showing the contrast between
• 58:23
  Speaker 5: you know, somebody who's like, he was trying to present
• 58:25
  Speaker 5: himself as moderate, but was standing with Trump, literally standing
• 58:28
  Speaker 5: with Trump and Mastriano. Whereas John, you know, he might
• 58:30
  Speaker 5: have an unconventional style, but he's, you know, you know,
• 58:34
  Speaker 5: a relatively mainstream Democrat. Obviously, you know, he's, I'd say
• 58:36
  Speaker 5: he's a good Democrat, but he's not, you know, they
• 58:39
  Speaker 5: were trying to portray him as extreme and scary. And like,
• 58:41
  Speaker 5: there is nothing extreme. It's like Biden's ratings might not
• 58:43
  Speaker 5: have been great, but there's nothing extreme or scary about
• 58:45
  Speaker 5: Joe Biden.
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: No, no, there is not.
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, the flip side is you guys got a
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: barrage of attacks. A lot of them were on crime
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: from Dr. Oz, from super PACs, were there ones that
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: really stuck or worried you? And if so, how did
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: you rebut those?
• 58:58
  Speaker 8: I mean, it was a hundred million dollars in attack ads. Like,
• 59:01
  Speaker 8: let's just talk about like from the middle of August
• 59:03
  Speaker 8: to the end of September, we were out there basically
• 59:06
  Speaker 8: by ourselves, like the, the, the, the, We didn't get
• 59:11
  Speaker 8: real backup until October with the outside group. So for
• 59:15
  Speaker 8: six weeks, they were just beating the shit out of
• 59:18
  Speaker 8: us all day long. And then Fox News all night
• 59:20
  Speaker 8: long was just going after John. Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson,
• 59:24
  Speaker 8: the worst. So it was just it was like nonstop attacks.
• 59:28
  Speaker 8: And they were going after his character because they didn't
• 59:31
  Speaker 8: they knew that Oz's ratings were so low that they
• 59:34
  Speaker 8: couldn't they couldn't bring him up. So they wanted to
• 59:36
  Speaker 8: tear John down. So they spent just like going after everything.
• 59:40
  Speaker 8: Fox News went after John's wife, Giselle, and just like
• 59:43
  Speaker 8: pretended that, you know, John was a vegetable and Giselle
• 59:45
  Speaker 8: was behind the scenes. Just like crazy bat shit stuff.
• 59:49
  Speaker 8: And they just didn't stop. And they were relentless. And
• 59:53
  Speaker 8: our side wasn't– like we weren't as– we weren't mean.
• 59:56
  Speaker 8: We were talking about what was on the table. And
• 59:59
  Speaker 8: I think voters at the end of the day decided
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 8: they wanted more normal representation than these crazy people out there.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 8: And it was very mean-spirited too.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: It was nasty.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: $ 100 million. That's so much money.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 8: But that goes back to– Our July stuff, like when
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 8: like when John was doing all the snooki, you know,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 8: you can make fun of it. People thought he was
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 8: funny and they liked him.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 7: Right.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 8: And if you have a candidate for a state like
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 8: Pennsylvania where the Republicans are going to come after with
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 8: everything they have, which is like one hundred million dollars,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 8: you got to be fucking likable at the end of
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 8: the day, because like they're they're they're just going to
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 8: bring those negative approvals down as much as possible. So
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 8: you have to at the end of the day, like
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 8: you have to get people to like, you know, to
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 8: say that they're going to vote for you.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 9: Yeah.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: This is a long question, so bear with me. But
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: the strategy you guys ran was very smart, in my opinion.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 3: John outran Biden in these rural, more red counties, pushed
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: down Oz's numbers there, and then you run up the
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: score in Philly and other urban places to win. That
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: sometimes gets shorthanded, including by you guys, I think, is
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: a strategy where Democrats have to go everywhere. You go
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: to every county, you count on every vote. That's the
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: key to victory. The pushback I hear when I evangelize
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: that kind of strategy from Democrats is they point to
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: Beto O'Rourke's race in Texas and they say, That guy
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: went everywhere literally for four years. Couldn't have worked harder,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: still fell short. I was talking to a statewide elected
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: official the other day who said to me, if I
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: hear you guys talk about this go everywhere shit one
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: more time on your podcast, my head is going to
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: explode because I go everywhere. I go to red counties
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: and it gets me nothing. So I guess the question is,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: is it better to describe the strategy as Democrats need
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: to pick candidates like John, who for whatever reason, background
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: policy look can get a hearing everywhere versus go everywhere.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 8: I mean, so there's a couple of different arguments here, right? Like, yes,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 8: I think, I think you want, we need better candidates.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 8: I think there's been this like, um, milquetoast kind of
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 8: cookie cutter, democratic ideal candidate that loses a lot of
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 8: general elections that we've seen run statewide a lot. I
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 8: also think a lot of this is about having candidates
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 8: who know who they are and who have backbone. I mean,
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 8: John went into those counties, those deep red counties, and
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 8: he talked about what abortion rights, gay rights. There was
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 8: nothing he said there that he wouldn't say in Philadelphia
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 8: or Pittsburgh. And he went into those counties and he said,
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 8: I want to be the 51st vote for Democrats in
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 8: the Senate. He wasn't afraid to be a Democrat. I mean,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 8: you remember when Obama was president, we had people running
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 8: for Senate who were afraid to say they voted for him.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 8: We can't have that kind of... If we as a
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 8: party need to actually be a little bit more... confident
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 8: and not ashamed of.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 7: Who we are.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 8: And I think that's part of it, too. So it's
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 8: about going to every county, but then having something to
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 8: say when you go there.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: Kip, you got thoughts from my go everywhere critics who
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: yell at me?
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 5: Well, I mean, I think another thing, another lesson from
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 5: John's race that I think could apply to a lot
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 5: of Democrats is, you know, as Rebecca said, stop apologizing
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 5: for being a Democrat. Just be confident in who you
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 5: are and what you stand for. I think people will
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 5: respect that. But I think it's also illustrative that, you know,
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 5: John One, in a year when the president was unpopular
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 5: and he did it, he didn't do it by trashing
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 5: his own party. He didn't do it by throwing Biden
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 5: under the bus. He didn't do it by running hard
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 5: to the right. He did it by being himself, not
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 5: apologizing for it and just, you know, having confidence in
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 5: his convictions that, you know, whatever they're going to say,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 5: we are still the party that's, you know, closer to
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 5: like what the mainstream of Pennsylvania actually wants.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 8: And not just confidence in his convictions, but courage in
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 8: his convictions. You know, I think that was, that's part
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 8: of it too. Like they came after us on crime.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 8: They came after us about his stroke, whatever it was,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 8: we just talked about it.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 7: Right.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 8: And, and John had a record to point to, and
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 8: he wasn't just going to sit like, I think there's
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 8: been too many Democrats who try to be Republicans on, on,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 8: on some of these issues just because they're afraid to
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 8: be attacked. And I mean, John was head of a
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 8: board of pardons, you know, he let like, he allowed everyone,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 8: innocent men to leave prison because it was the right
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 8: thing to do.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 7: Right.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 8: But he knew when he did that, that people were
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 8: going to come after him and use it in attack ads.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 8: And they did. And it was like, and he did
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 8: it so people wouldn't die in prison for, for crimes.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 8: They were wrongly convicted of doing, you know, like it's
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 8: like he had humanity. And I think it comes back
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 8: to that a lot.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: No, I'll be honest.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: When I saw his response to those attacks and, And
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: the idea that he should have just sort of let
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: a couple guys rot in prison for the rest of
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: their lives who were wrongly convicted just because it would
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: have been bad politics. That's when I was like, all right,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 3: this guy's for me.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 9: Okay.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: Looking ahead.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: You know, I've luckily in this job, I've gotten to
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: work with like talk to a lot of smart people
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: like you. I talked to Ben Wickler, the head of
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: the Wisconsin Democratic Party all the time. I like thank
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: God that for what he and his team are doing
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: every day, there's just like two years, four years, like
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: party building infrastructure. What do you think Democrats need to
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: do to be prepared in the same way in Pennsylvania
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: in 2024? And is there the same sort of state
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: party infrastructure that we should be investing in and building
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 3: off of?
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 9: Right.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 8: I mean, as you know, I come from the Harry
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 8: Reid machine.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 7: Right.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 8: And like this is this is all about like investing
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 8: in the party infrastructure and like building something for years
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 8: and years and years. I think we should be doing
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 8: that everywhere. I also think we need better, more competent
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 8: staff like Democrats. in a way that there's a lot
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 8: with campaign staffers that you kind of just go and
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 8: you do it for a little bit and then you leave.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 8: I think we actually need to get some professional staffers
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 8: who can get better and wiser and help usher in
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 8: a new generation of talent. We need a bench. We
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 8: don't have that right now. I think we're starting to
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 8: get some rising stars. We need more of them. But
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 8: I think, I don't think these scary things right-wingers are
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 8: going anywhere. And I think we need to be able
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 8: to fight back hard and not just, you know, say like,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 8: you know, there, there's some good people on that side. Like,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 8: you know, like I think we have to understand what
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 8: some of these risks are and, and what's out there
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 8: and fight back.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 3: Kip, you mentioned before that, that Snooki was kind of
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 3: your white whale. Were there any white whales that didn't
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: get back to you or like hits you wish you
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: could have delivered that you never, that got left on
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: the cutting room?
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 5: I mean, we really, we, would have loved to have
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 5: done something with it's always sunny. Um, just given the connection,
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 5: they were just sort of seemed like a match made
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 5: in heaven, but that, you know, proved to be difficult
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 5: for interactual issues. I mean, for a long time, a,
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 5: we had been hearing about, there's this puppy story that's
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 5: coming and we just kept hearing about it in the
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 5: background for months and months and months.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 9: And it just sounded like the worst, you know, the
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 9: worst thing ever. And then it, it, it came out
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 9: and it.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 8: Kind of was, um, it was worse than we had heard.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 8: It would be.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: Yes. Yeah. It was disgraceful. I mean, like inhuman.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's such a good example of how politics
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 3: and like campaigning has changed because when I was like
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: doing oppo hits against Sarah Palin, right? Like you beg
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: the wall street journal to write that story up for
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: six months based on some oppo. And like, if they
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: run it, you're psyched. If not, it can just die.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: Like the fact that where did that end up? It was, um, uh, Gawker. Yeah.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: It was Jezebel, right?
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: Like it didn't matter that it was on, you know,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: a blog that some people might not have heard.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: From about before. Like it exploded either way.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 8: Well, because it was true. I mean, it exploded because
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 8: like he couldn't, he couldn't deny it. Like he was like,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 8: he did the most horrible, horrible things. And the contrast
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 8: of that with John and Giselle having these like rescue pups, like,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 8: I mean, they have a three-legged dog who had been abused.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 8: I mean, they, they really, they are, they are rescue
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 8: dog people. So like, Oz could not have been more
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 8: like the cartoon villain, I would say, except he was
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 8: actually like killing puppies. I mean, it was like you couldn't.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 7: Make it up.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's just the worst.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: Final thoughts, any like final thoughts from both of you
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 3: on lessons to learn from this cycle and things we
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 3: should just be thinking about going forward? Because obviously, you know,
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: the results were better than a lot of us anticipated.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 3: Maybe they were better than we anticipated because Democrats sometimes,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 3: myself very much included, assume the worst is going to happen.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 3: based on recent history, but Rebecca, why don't you go first?
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 8: I mean, abortion, like let's, let's talk about that for
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 8: just one more sec. Like we would not be where
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 8: we are today. The, all the Democrats, unless women's rights
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 8: were taken away very drastically and horribly.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 7: Right.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 8: And we can't just sit around and high five. Like
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 8: we have to fight back. We have to codify row.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 8: We have to codify same sense of marriage. Like we have,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 8: we have a lot of work to do. And as
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 8: we go into the next Congress, um, We got to
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 8: try and push through as much as possible because I
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 8: think there's some really bad things coming. And I think
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 8: the lesson here is when you get power, let's produce
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 8: some results.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: Use it, yeah. Kip, thoughts?
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 5: I mean, one thing I would love the party to
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 5: take away from this is re-evaluating the idea, its idea
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 5: of who we consider to be electable. I mean, I
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 5: think often there's just this assumption that bland and generic
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 5: candidates are going to be our best chance of winning.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 5: And I just don't know that it's really played out
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 5: that way. I think, in fact, A lot of these
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 5: white for red candidates, they try to appeal to absolutely everyone.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 9: And as a result, they excite pretty much no one.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 5: And I think one of the reasons John was able
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 5: to succeed this year is in large part because he's
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 5: not straight from central casting. It allowed him to establish
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 5: his own sort of independent image. It means he doesn't
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 5: necessarily like rise and fall along with Biden. And I
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 5: think we could be missing it. We missed out on
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 5: a lot of candidates like John before.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 8: In fact, we missed out on him in 2016 when
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 8: he ran.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: That's right. That's right.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 8: Or the party went with somebody else.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: I mean, this isn't John, but I was trying to think,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 3: when was the last time you think the Democrats ran
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 3: a candidate for a statewide office who had not graduated from.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: College, for example?
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: There's clearly a massive gap in terms of Republicans and
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 3: Democrats in terms of college-educated voters. And I wonder if
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 3: we tried speaking to those voters from a place of experience,
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 3: for example.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 5: Or embraced... Shamelessly embracing economic populism. We know it works,
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 5: but too many Democrats aren't into that.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And super, super tall U.S. senators, I think. No hair.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 3: Well, listen, Kip, Rebecca, thank you guys for everything you
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 3: did to make this happen. Literally can't thank you enough for, like,
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 3: you know, saving democracy.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 8: And a special thank you to all the Pod Save Boys.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 8: I mean, we were up against Fox News and we had, like, you.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 8: So thank you, because it's just it is there is
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 8: there is not an apparatus to really effectively deal with
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 8: with the right wing media that's coming at us. And
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 8: so we thank you for.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: What you do as well.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 3: Listen, you're very nice to say that we are trying
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 3: to build a progressive media infrastructure. If you wouldn't mind
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: letting some of the folks over the White House know
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: that it would be a good thing to help cultivate
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 3: and build that. and care and feed places like us,
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 3: that would be helpful.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: But listen, we're going to do it anyway, so I
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: appreciate it.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 8: Not sure if they listen to me, but sounds good.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 8: They should.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 8: Thanks, guys.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: Talk to you.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: Bye.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: All right, before we go, Hallie Kiefer is back.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: She's back.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: By popular demand.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: They're waving at us. It's a podcast. I know.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 7: We're in the same room.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: We're going to play a game about Donald Trump in
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: honor of his announcement today.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: It's exciting. Hallie, take it away.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 7: I will. Thank you.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, good.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 6: Over the weekend, Senate running back Josh Hawley tweeted, the
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 6: old party is dead. Time to bury it, build something new.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 6: While Hawley might want to inter Trump's legacy, his fellow
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 6: Republicans are running in circles trying to decide the party
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 6: line on the former president, given that old daddy boy
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 6: is going to be announcing his 2024 run on Tuesday night.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 6: Are they all going to run like rats.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 7: Off the ship?
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 6: Or are they excited to scrape Trump's ketchup off the
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 6: White House walls for four more years? While plenty of
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 6: Republicans seem confused about whose boots to start licking, Trump's
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 6: or Ron DeSantis' gorgeous white knee-high numbers, others have made
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 6: a definitive statement, and that's all I needed to bring.
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 7: You a game.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 6: Here's how this is going to work. I'm going to
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 6: read you the name of a Republican. You're going to
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 6: tell me what you think they've indicated post-midterms with regards
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 6: to Trump. Are they riding the Trump train, exiting the
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 6: Trump train via the emergency exit? Or are they sort
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 6: of just dangling precariously, holding on with one hand to
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 6: the Trump train as like a Bond villain's henchman as
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 6: the Republican Party hurtles around a sheer cliff? So those
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 6: are the options, riding, exiting, or dangling.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: Got it.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 10: I'm just going to read the name. And you'll let
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 10: me know where do you think we've landed.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 6: And I'm going to read you the quote that, again,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 6: could any of them be trusted?
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 10: No.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 6: And also, you may have all heard this. The post-election
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 6: cycle has been insane in the news. But are you
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 6: ready to play?
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 7: Yeah, so ready.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 6: Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican of Louisiana, and love it,
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 6: I guarantee you probably don't know the answer to this.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 6: What did he say with regards to Trump on Meet
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 6: the Press? And is he riding?
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 7: Is he exiting? Or is he dangling?
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: Dangling. I know what he said.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 7: Okay.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: I know what he said. Well, where do you think
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: he said it? He said, we're not a cult, is
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: what he said. But honestly, it seemed like a way
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: out of answering. To me, he's dangling.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: That's how I feel about it.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: It felt like it was between dangle and exit.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: But I think I'd go with dangle.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: Louisiana, I think you're dangling for dear life. You can't
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 3: jump off that train yet.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: I think he'd like to leave the train. but he
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: doesn't feel I.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: Mean most of these people are in their hearts they're
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: leaving in their hearts.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah how do we adjudicate this do we call them
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: I think there's.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 6: Unfortunately no way to know it's a game with no
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 6: meaning that exists in a liminal time hopefully we'll also
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 6: even if there were definitive answers they just changed their
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 6: minds that's true.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: I think his majority rule is dangling dangling it's a
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: dangle just to read.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 6: The whole quote we're not a cult we're not like
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 6: okay there's one person who leads our party could have
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 6: fooled me Bill Cassidy How do we feel about Senator-elect?
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 7: I'm sorry to even say that. J.D.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 10: Vance out of Ohio.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 7: How do you think?
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: Oh, he is on that train.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: He's got to be on the train. That train got
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: him where he needed to go. Peter Thiel paid for
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: that with good money.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's how he got his ticket.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 6: Now, this I can say definitively, yes, because he said
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 6: every year the media writes Donald Trump's political obituary. And
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 6: every year we're quickly reminded that Trump remains the most
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 6: popular figure in the Republican Party. That, of course, saying
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 6: he's excited for Trump to be the 2024 nominee.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: J.D.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 7: Vance absolutely rioting.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: Fact check true. That whole statement.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 7: Fabulous.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 6: Senator John Thune, Republican from South Dakota, and I guarantee.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 7: You might not know what the answer is. Well, it's beautiful.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 2: I feel as though he's going to exit the Trump
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: train sooner or later.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 9: Oh.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 7: Well, that blew my hair back. Obviously, you can't see
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 7: it again. We are videotaping this. My eyebrows are just seeing.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: If I let... Wow. I mean, I think he wants
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 2: to exit. He's probably wanted to exit for a while.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: I bet he said something that's a dangle.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think he's a dangler. He's not trying to,
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: he doesn't want to make, not because he doesn't want off,
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: but because he didn't want to make news. Yeah.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: And he wants to be minority leader, majority leader.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 6: I want to say, he actually went public. He basically
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 6: blamed Trump's endorsements for the midterms losses. And he said,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 6: you can't have a party that's built around one person's personality.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 7: Again, they really did try though.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: Wow. Sooner or later, he's out of here. Yeah. It's
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: the same joke.
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 8: I know.
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 7: No, but it's funnier when he said it.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: It was funnier, honestly.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 7: It felt better when he said it.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: I think that's an exit. That's more of an exit
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: than Cassidy.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. I agree a little bit more.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 6: And then how about Representative Elise Stefanik from New York?
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 7: Where do you think we're headed with this?
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: She is so on. She's the conductor.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she's in. Yeah, she's in. She got one of
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: those hats with the lines on it.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 6: Well, I don't even know if you asked her to
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 6: or wanted her to, but she already preemptively endorsed Trump. Unbelievable.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 7: So threw her weight behind him.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable. Harvard's finest.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 6: I'm proud to endorse Donald Trump for President 2024. It's
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 6: time for Republicans to unite around the most popular Republican
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 6: in America, who has a proven track record of conservative governance.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: Just. I just want to say one more time about
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: this place called Harvard. They take all these kids, half
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: of them turn evil, and then the evil ones battle
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: the good ones for 500 years. So stupid. Shut it down.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: Take away their endowment. Tax it. Do something. This place
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: has to be stopped.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: Harvard grads, let us know what you think.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: And they waitlisted me twice.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 6: I was going to tell a terrible story about going
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 6: to Harvard, but millions of people listen to this.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 7: It's not really worth it.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: It doesn't stop loving it.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: You've got to forget that.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 10: I went to Harvard once and I got crabs.
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 7: That's all I'm saying.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow. Nice.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 6: That's my experience with the institution. Tom Cotton, where do
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 6: we think he's... Is he riding? Is he jumping out
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 6: the back of the train?
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 7: Or is he holding on for dear life?
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 2: He's got a dangle.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: He's got a dangle.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 3: I have no idea, but I'm going to say riding
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 3: because he did float hilariously that he was considering a run,
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 3: but he decided against it. Not that the people decided
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 3: they hated him and they didn't want him to run.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 3: So I'm going to say riding.
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: So I heard that you said over the weekend that
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: McConnell should still be minority leader.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: So that's gonna lead me to a dangle position because
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: if you're with McConnell.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: You gotta leave yourself some space.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 7: I think you're absolutely right. Here's a quote I pulled.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 6: When any party is out of power, as Republicans are now,
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 6: we don't have a single leader. Trump is obviously very
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 6: popular with many of our voters. We also have other
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 6: important leaders as well.
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: That's a dangle. That's a dangle, baby. That's a dangle.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: That's a real dangle.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: That's a dangle, baby.
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: He doesn't want to say Republicans dangle off the strain.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: He doesn't want to say too much too soon.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 7: Oh, my God.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: Oh, man.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 7: Oh, my God.
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: I think he's cottoning on to some of this Trump
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: lack of popularity. There we go.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 8: There we go.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: How many people have turned this off? It's just us now?
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: Hey, stay tuned for the C block for a lot
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: of puns.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 2: David Axelrod is here.
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 7: Little Marco Rubio.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: Oh.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 7: Where are we going?
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 9: So.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 3: He's one of the little mini insurrectionists saying they should
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 3: delay the vote.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: On Senate minority, majority leader, whatever it turns out to be. No, minority. McConnell.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: There is not an there is not a he is.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: He has to dangle. It's in his it is in
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: his bones. He does not know how to ride the train,
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: doesn't lead the train. He is dangling.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: There's no courage. He has no. He never breaks the
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: five inch heels. He wears nothing wrong with being short.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: Big chair.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: That's nothing. Being short is fine. He tweeted, You don't
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: need to be strong to be a good senator.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: That's an old thing.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 7: We get it.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: Better move.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 7: We get it.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: It's unbelievable.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 7: A man of a certain height. John Lovett.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 2: What does height do now? Nothing.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 7: That's true. We're all sitting anyways.
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 7: We love to sit. Sit in front of a computer.
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: I love sitting. Tall presidents are stupid. Where are we?
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: What's happening?
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: Read the quote, Hallie.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 6: First, we need to make sure that those who want
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 6: to lead us are genuinely committed to fighting for the
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 6: priorities and values of the working Americans. of every background
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 6: who gave us big wins in states.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 7: Like hashtag Florida.
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 2: To me, that's a DeSantis, the Florida of it all.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: That's a way of praising DeSantis while feigning towards suggesting
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 2: a criticism of Trump while never actually making it.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: It's a dangle.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: It's a dangle, 100%. Marco Rubio is the king of,
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: is the king of a double negative to avoid saying
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: the positive. Like, this party cannot be in the business
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: of being anti-working class. You know what I mean? He
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: just does the.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 3: I just want to credit Halle for when she said parenthetical,
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 3: she did kind of a curve with her hand.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 10: Right, because you can visibly see me, which is.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 7: Why I wave.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: It helps me. It's on the YouTube. It will be
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: on YouTube. We do have a website.
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 7: Two more.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 10: What is it even really? I just put it on
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 10: here because I thought it was interesting.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 6: And this isn't even specifically about the midterms, but just
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 6: sort of the timing of Mike Pence's ABC News interview,
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 6: which drops this night. This can't be a coincidence that
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 6: it's coming out now. And I'm asking you, Choo Choo,
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 6: is the Trump train leaving the station? Is Mike Pence
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 6: on it? And then I will read you the quote
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 6: because to me, I think it's pretty like, OK.
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: You know, he's he's off of it because otherwise he
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: would have been dragged behind it.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 4: No.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He got off the train.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 3: And then it's been a couple hours, and he's looking
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 3: around the station, and he's just a sad, lonely boy
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 3: with a suitcase, and his mom hasn't picked him up yet,
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 3: and he doesn't know what's going to happen.
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: They tried to kill him on the train. They tried
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: to throw.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: Mike Pence from the train.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: It was a murder on the Trump train.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: Murder on the MAGA Express.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: It was a case too easy for our man on
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: the train, Hercule Perrault, because we all know who did it.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 2: It was Trump with the noose at the Capitol.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 7: So the clip that.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 6: The ABC News released is him talking about January 6th
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 6: and sort of being asked, like, what do you think
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 6: about what Trump did? And Mike Pence says, I turned
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 6: to my daughter who was standing nearby and said, it
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 6: doesn't take courage to break the law.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 7: It takes courage to uphold the law.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 10: The president's words were reckless. And he clearly decided to
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 10: be a part of the problem.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 6: Adding he endangered me and my family and everyone at
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 6: the Capitol building.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: First of all, that is the most Mike Pence thing
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: I've ever fucking heard. First of all, it's such a
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: stupid way to describe an emotional, like, he tried to
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 2: fucking kill you. That's the first thing. Second of all,
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 2: how can you be given a layup like that and miss?
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: It does take courage to break the law. I don't
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: think it's good when people rob a bank, but you
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: gotta be brave. What conservative fiction.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 3: Writer did he turn to to design that little vignette?
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: I think he's a hero.
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 2: What a goofball.
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 7: Two sides to every story, I guess.
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: I mean, you forget that the guy wasn't alone in
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: the Capitol. He was with his kids. And he still
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 2: doesn't have the guts to say anything until he has
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: a book to roll out. Ugh, Mike Pence.
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it'll be a bestseller. No, I
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: don't think it will.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 7: I can't wait for, I would say, Tommy's Book Club.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 2: Oh, that. It'll be so hard to read that.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 6: We have one more person, just because I love the
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 6: quote he had, and that person is Newt Gingrich.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 9: Oh.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: Ooh. Recently voted to return his speaker by Matt Gaetz.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: Oh, my goodness.
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: Honestly, not his worst pitch, to be honest. I mean,
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 2: just on the list. It makes the most sense.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: Better than Tulsi Gabbard.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, better than bringing a Fox News kook. Yeah, Tulsi. Actually,
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: they're both Fox News kooks.
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: He's the original Fox News kook. Fox News was built
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: around him. Yeah, he's the.
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 2: ur-Fox News kook. If you dig under the mausoleum, the
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 2: equivalent of where they'll find Cleopatra's bones, you can find
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: Newt Gingrich.
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 7: Here's the quote.
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 6: I feel, and this is in regards to the midterm results,
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 6: I feel like a guy whose compass is so goofed up,
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 6: I have.
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 10: No idea which way is north. The Republican Party is
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 10: goofed up.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 10: There's no better way to say it. It's like, yeah,
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 10: you're goofed up right now.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: Congrats on trying mushrooms.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: It's like a genuine dangle.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, look at that.
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: Is it a seared dangle? I think Newt is torn.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Newt is a seared dangle. He's really, he doesn't
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 2: know what to do.
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: We might be able to get Newt.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 7: He's goofed up.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: We're never going to get Newt. You don't think we're
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: going to get Newt. We'll trade him for Henry Cuellar.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: My friend Liz Cheney over here begs to differ.
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 3: Remember when Newt did the TV ads about climate change
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 3: on the couch with Pelosi?
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: 2005. He had to walk that back. He's like, actually,
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 2: it's good. I like how hot and.
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 7: Wet everything is now.
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 6: Our phenomenal writer, Sarah Lazarus, wrote, and I just want
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 6: to read this to you, grand old party, more like
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 6: goofed old party.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: Well, this game couldn't have ended. Damn it.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 2: Couldn't have ended a moment too soon.
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 7: All right, everyone.
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: Allie Kiefer, thank you for a fantastic game. Rebecca Katz,
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: Kip Hebert, thanks for joining us. We will talk to
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: you on Thursday.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: See you at the movies.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein.
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: Our producers are Haley Muse and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: sound engineered the show. Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz,
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: Sandy Gerard, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim,
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: and Amelia Montu. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: slash podsaveamerica.