Transcript

St. James Infirmary · Politix

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SPEAKER_01: I think electric cars are good.
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SPEAKER_01: I don't own one, but I don't want the industry to fail in order to antagonize Elon Musk.
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SPEAKER_01: I want the industry to survive, but Elon Musk's portion of it to fail.
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SPEAKER_01: So do something outrageous like...
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SPEAKER_01: Hey everyone, you're listening to a free preview of the Politics Podcast.
0:20
SPEAKER_01: On one hand,
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SPEAKER_01: most Democrats have been fielding very promising poll numbers
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SPEAKER_01: and crushing their opponents in televised debates.
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SPEAKER_01: On the other hand, Donald Trump is selling out to Russia for a pittance of diesel fuel.
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SPEAKER_01: He ordered a raid on the home of a prominent black immigrant Democrat.
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SPEAKER_01: His inner circle promoted a quickly debunked smear of James Tallarico.
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SPEAKER_01: Pete Hegseth announced that the Department of War will live stream
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SPEAKER_01: the firing squad execution of the Fort Hood shooter.
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SPEAKER_01: And Republicans spent thousands of dollars in support of Maine Senator Susan Collins
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SPEAKER_01: by running an ad in Portland, Oregon.
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SPEAKER_01: We'll assess the Dem case for optimism and the Republican case for desperation.
1:01
SPEAKER_01: If you want to hear the whole conversation, upgrade to paid at politics.fm.
1:10
SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to the Politics Podcast.
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SPEAKER_01: I'm Brian Boyler.
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SPEAKER_01: I'm Matthew Glacius.
1:15
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so on the one hand,
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SPEAKER_01: I have us discussing the highlights,
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SPEAKER_01: for Democrats anyway,
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SPEAKER_01: of recent Senate debates,
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SPEAKER_01: particularly in Georgia,
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SPEAKER_01: that was spicy,
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SPEAKER_01: but also in Maine and South Carolina and elsewhere,
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SPEAKER_01: along with a bunch of polls suggesting a steadier widening lead in the race
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SPEAKER_01: to control the Senate.
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SPEAKER_01: On the other hand, I have,
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SPEAKER_01: let's see,
1:39
SPEAKER_01: Trump's diesel price freakout,
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SPEAKER_01: which has culminated In a desperate purchase of diesel from Russia in violation of
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SPEAKER_01: the Lindsey Graham Russian sanctions bill he just signed.
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SPEAKER_01: I have the smear Republicans whipped up accusing James Tallarico of checking himself
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SPEAKER_01: into an Ohio mental institution, even though that never happened.
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SPEAKER_01: I have the Homeland Security raid of Ilhan Omar's house in Washington, D.C.,
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SPEAKER_01: I have the Pete Hegseth announcement that they're going to live stream the execution
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SPEAKER_01: by firing squad of the Fort Hood shooter.
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SPEAKER_01: And all of that is on top of the fact that Trump keeps offering voters $5,000
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SPEAKER_01: that they don't want in order for them to vote Republican.
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SPEAKER_01: They will get the $5,000 if Republicans win the election.
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SPEAKER_01: I was thinking we'd start with Democrats since at least...
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SPEAKER_01: We could probably find ambiguity in the case for Democratic optimism,
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SPEAKER_01: but we can then save Republicans for dessert.
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SPEAKER_01: But I leave it up kind of in your hands.
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SPEAKER_00: Sure.
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SPEAKER_00: So I don't think a lot has changed.
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SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've been looking at the,
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SPEAKER_00: say you look at the 538 Democratic Senate forecast,
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SPEAKER_00: and it rose very strongly between early September and early October.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
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SPEAKER_00: for the past week,
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SPEAKER_00: it's been about flat at around 74% Democratic odds of capturing the Senate.
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SPEAKER_00: So nothing new exactly happened.
3:13
SPEAKER_01: Although I do think that- Let me just say what my vibe is,
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SPEAKER_01: because I feel like there's some jitters about the Minnesota Senate race.
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SPEAKER_01: And there were real jitters about the main Senate race.
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SPEAKER_01: And I feel like in the last week since we talked,
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SPEAKER_01: the main Senate race has started to look better now.
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SPEAKER_01: Even though the Minnesota race has maybe started to look a little worse,
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SPEAKER_01: but it's Minnesota's, right?
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SPEAKER_01: So it's like... Sure.
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SPEAKER_00: It's not at the margin.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: You expect Democrats to pull that one out.
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SPEAKER_01: Beating Susan Collins has been hard.
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SPEAKER_01: So when she's leading in polls, that's really concerning.
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SPEAKER_01: Then Troy Jackson seems to have had a pretty good couple of debates against her.
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SPEAKER_01: And now the polling since then has been better.
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SPEAKER_01: That's my...
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I've been trying to look at this systematically.
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SPEAKER_00: I don't actually think there's a ton of evidence for a large improvement
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SPEAKER_00: in Jackson's polling lead.
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SPEAKER_00: His debate before... Back this up.
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SPEAKER_00: If you go way back to the podcast that I recorded on this feed with Alex Seitzwald,
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SPEAKER_00: before the candidate swap, before the Plattner...
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SPEAKER_00: Final Platinum scandal even broke.
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SPEAKER_00: The thing that Alex and I were both saying about Troy Jackson is
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SPEAKER_00: that he does not have a manner that is very appealing to highly educated liberals.
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SPEAKER_00: It doesn't really matter politically that he doesn't have a And
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SPEAKER_00: so Jackson performing well in debates against Susan Collins does a lot to make
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SPEAKER_00: Core Troy Jackson supporters feel better about Troy Jackson being the nominee.
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SPEAKER_00: His folksy mannerism,
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SPEAKER_00: which I have heard from many, many,
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SPEAKER_00: many people,
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SPEAKER_00: went over poorly at rallies,
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SPEAKER_00: at closed-door events with supporters,
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SPEAKER_00: at fundraisers, et cetera, wears much better in the context of a debate.
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SPEAKER_00: And I think it illustrates some of what is charming about it, you know, that he's kind of...
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SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's like actually a style that would win you in like
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SPEAKER_00: a graded competitive debate, but it's like good on television.
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SPEAKER_00: You know, it makes for good copy that way and certainly makes people feel better.
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SPEAKER_00: You know, the Minnesota thing is like an interesting sociological phenomenon.
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SPEAKER_00: Flanagan is polling...
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SPEAKER_00: Shockingly weakly versus DeFoya,
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SPEAKER_00: if you consider the underlying partisanship of Minnesota,
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SPEAKER_00: the national political climate, etc.
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SPEAKER_00: Tim Walz's approval rating is also terrible.
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SPEAKER_00: Amy Klobuchar is running weaker in her governor's race than she did
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SPEAKER_00: in her own 2024 re-election campaign, which is all...
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SPEAKER_00: Clearly, people in Minnesota are upset about the corruption scandals that emerged there.
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SPEAKER_00: That being said, like, Klobuchar is definitely going to win.
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SPEAKER_00: Flanagan is overwhelmingly likely to win.
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SPEAKER_00: It's like fine to be weak in Minnesota.
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SPEAKER_00: It's just an interesting sort of thing to take note of.
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SPEAKER_00: You know,
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SPEAKER_00: on the jitters front,
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SPEAKER_00: I think the most important thing is that El-Sayed has opened up a clear lead
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SPEAKER_00: against Mike Rogers.
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SPEAKER_00: That's what you would expect based on Michigan,
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SPEAKER_00: based on a D plus nine national political environment.
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SPEAKER_00: El-Sayed is underperforming by almost exactly as much as I said he would underperform because...
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SPEAKER_00: He's running exactly like a house squad member, but that is easily good enough to win.
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SPEAKER_00: When he first wrapped up the primary,
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SPEAKER_00: there was a good amount of ill will, and he was actually behind Rodgers.
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SPEAKER_00: But he's ahead now,
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SPEAKER_00: so it means that we really are fighting in this Iowa,
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SPEAKER_00: Texas, Alaska, Kansas, Ohio battleground.
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SPEAKER_00: Where the terrain, I don't want to put it, like it's unfriendly terrain for Democrats, right?
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SPEAKER_00: It's the kind of states where these really zany Trump gambits,
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SPEAKER_00: like you could imagine working, right?
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SPEAKER_00: Because it's the opposite of Michigan and Minnesota.
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SPEAKER_00: These are places where if you can just like
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SPEAKER_00: Get everybody into kind of like broad partisan defaults.
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SPEAKER_00: That's going to help these kind of stinker candidate who Republicans have in Texas
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SPEAKER_00: and, you know, just just hostile territory for Mary Perkins.
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SPEAKER_00: Michael Tola, Josh Turek, and Adam Hamilton.
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SPEAKER_00: So I can see why Trump is doing what he's doing.
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SPEAKER_00: Optimistically,
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SPEAKER_00: you could be like,
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SPEAKER_00: these are desperation ploys,
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SPEAKER_00: which I think they are,
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SPEAKER_00: but we're also in a battleground where desperation will plausibly work.
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SPEAKER_00: Compare that to, say,
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SPEAKER_00: John Sununu, who I think once upon a time had a promising campaign in New Hampshire.
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SPEAKER_00: But like,
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SPEAKER_00: the whole shot of John Sununu winning there is that
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SPEAKER_00: the local New Hampshire Republican Party has done a pretty good job
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SPEAKER_00: of like divorcing themselves from the specific antics of Donald Trump
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SPEAKER_00: and like Donald Trump putting himself And,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: it just leaves Republicans trying to hold the line in Kansas,
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SPEAKER_00: Ohio, and Texas, which...
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SPEAKER_01: Best of luck,
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SPEAKER_00: I guess.
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SPEAKER_01: The case that it's desperation isn't just these look like flailing moves
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SPEAKER_01: without much thought behind them, although we'll talk about all of that.
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SPEAKER_01: It's also what they're doing with their resources, right?
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SPEAKER_01: Like where they're spending,
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SPEAKER_01: where Trump is going does not look like a Republican Party that thinks
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SPEAKER_01: that they might fight this election to a draw,
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SPEAKER_01: you know,
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SPEAKER_01: like overperform the fundamentals of the 2026 mid I mean,
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SPEAKER_01: they've triaged out North Carolina.
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SPEAKER_01: They've abandoned North Carolina and Georgia, right?
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SPEAKER_01: Which is wild, completely wild.
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SPEAKER_01: And they've moved that money into South Carolina, which is crazy.
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SPEAKER_01: Florida, also kind of crazy, and then Nebraska and Kansas.
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SPEAKER_01: And if that's where they see the front lines of the midterm,
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SPEAKER_01: then Democrats are just going to win the Senate, right?
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SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, the one thing I would say about this is that I remember in 2020—
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SPEAKER_00: You know,
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SPEAKER_00: when the polling was like incredibly optimistic for Democrats,
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SPEAKER_00: so optimistic that a lot of people were like, OK, common sense check.
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SPEAKER_00: But do we really think that Lindsey Graham is imperiled in South Carolina?
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SPEAKER_00: And Republican money allocation decisions seem to track what you would do if all of
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SPEAKER_00: that polling was accurate.
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SPEAKER_00: And it turns out from everything that I understand that
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SPEAKER_00: the Republicans' internal polling was saying the exact same thing as
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SPEAKER_00: the public polling,
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SPEAKER_00: which was saying the exact same thing as Democrats' internal polling.
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SPEAKER_00: It's just that Republicans' internal polling isn't magic,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: and it was wrong for roughly the same reasons
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SPEAKER_00: that everybody else's polling was wrong.
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SPEAKER_00: So it tells us something, right,
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SPEAKER_00: that like Republicans also think That they need to triage out North Carolina
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SPEAKER_00: and Georgia.
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SPEAKER_00: That they need to play defense in South Carolina and Kansas and Nebraska.
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SPEAKER_00: And maybe even Florida.
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SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't answer,
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SPEAKER_00: like the known unknown that I think has been hanging over this campaign
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SPEAKER_00: since mid-August is like, is this polling correct?
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SPEAKER_00: Or is there a 7%, you know,
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SPEAKER_00: I didn't even say 7%, 5% shy Trump approvers who are out there and not answering the polls.
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SPEAKER_00: And it's like, we can think about that.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: We can ponder that.
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SPEAKER_00: We can chew on it.
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SPEAKER_00: We can say that even if that's true,
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SPEAKER_00: even if it's a 2020-style polling error,
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SPEAKER_00: Republicans will lose Senate seats, but they won't lose the Senate, right?
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SPEAKER_01: The House is cooked, but
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SPEAKER_00: the Senate isn't.
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SPEAKER_00: Look, like
12:05
SPEAKER_01: in the spirit of like,
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SPEAKER_01: if you're winning,
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SPEAKER_01: you should run like your three points behind or whatever,
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SPEAKER_01: just as like a gut check or like a antidote to complacency or whatever.
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SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't want Democrats to be as bullish as I just sounded about them.
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SPEAKER_01: But when I read what the smart data analysts have to say about like,
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SPEAKER_01: if there's a polling error, where would you find it?
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SPEAKER_01: Versus What is the strong case of these polls are basically correct
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SPEAKER_01: or maybe even understating democratic strength?
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SPEAKER_01: The best data analysts do not say that they know.
12:43
SPEAKER_01: They say,
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SPEAKER_01: if there is a polling error,
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SPEAKER_01: if we find there is a polling error,
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SPEAKER_01: we'll be able to look at this thing that I see here and say that in hindsight,
12:52
SPEAKER_01: that was a warning sign.
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SPEAKER_01: You have those on both sides.
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SPEAKER_01: There's an upside risk and a downside risk.
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SPEAKER_01: And to me,
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SPEAKER_01: the case that maybe there's something wrong and the Democrats are running weaker
13:08
SPEAKER_01: than the polls suggest requires like feats of human psychology
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SPEAKER_01: that are not really like Occam's razor-ish to me.
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SPEAKER_01: Whereas if you talk to the people who focus group with Trump, Trump,
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SPEAKER_01: Trump voters,
13:24
SPEAKER_01: they're finding like Unheard of levels of those people saying I'm out or this sucks
13:31
SPEAKER_01: or what you know what I mean?
13:33
SPEAKER_01: And and weighing those two things.
13:36
SPEAKER_01: Right.
13:37
SPEAKER_01: I think that the like.
13:40
SPEAKER_01: The case that Trump has made a huge mess for himself and his party
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SPEAKER_01: and people are actually genuinely upset about it is quite a bit stronger
13:48
SPEAKER_01: than this idea that like, well,
13:51
SPEAKER_01: if you look at people who start taking surveys but then drop off halfway
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SPEAKER_01: because they get distracted or bored or frustrated or whatever,
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SPEAKER_01: those people are unusually Republican.
14:03
SPEAKER_01: And if there are a lot of them voting, then the polls will be off.
14:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I guess so.
14:09
SPEAKER_01: But like, you know what I mean?
14:10
SPEAKER_01: That's like,
14:11
SPEAKER_01: that's good seal manning of like, like,
14:14
SPEAKER_01: like really like look for every possible indication that there's,
14:19
SPEAKER_01: that there's a bad signal here.
14:20
SPEAKER_01: And I, and I applaud it.
14:22
SPEAKER_01: Like, I think it's good,
14:23
SPEAKER_01: but I think getting spun up and like,
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SPEAKER_01: this is going to be like 2020,
14:28
SPEAKER_01: like looking at a presidential year as opposed to previous midterms is like a way
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SPEAKER_01: to make yourself feel unnecessarily do me about the situation.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: Okay, well,
14:37
SPEAKER_00: let me make this a little bit more concrete because some pitches that I have gotten
14:43
SPEAKER_00: and or complaints that I've heard directed at national party committees, right, are,
14:49
SPEAKER_00: you know,
14:49
SPEAKER_00: a request that Democrats spend more in Florida on both the Senate
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SPEAKER_00: and governor's race,
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SPEAKER_00: requests that Democrats spend on Gina Hinojosa's governor's race in Texas,
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SPEAKER_00: and Personal requests that I have received to talk more about the governor's race
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SPEAKER_00: in Alaska and the governor's race in Nevada and the question
15:14
SPEAKER_00: of how much Democrats should try to put money into the Senate races
15:18
SPEAKER_00: in South Carolina and Nebraska, right?
15:22
SPEAKER_00: So those are like aggressive plays, right?
15:26
SPEAKER_00: Those are the plays where I 100% agree that like,
15:31
SPEAKER_00: If Michael Bloomberg a year ago had said,
15:35
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to spend a billion dollars on the midterms,
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SPEAKER_00: I would be like,
15:40
SPEAKER_00: some of that billion dollars should definitely be going into those races
15:43
SPEAKER_00: that I just named, right?
15:45
SPEAKER_00: Races where Democrats are currently being badly outspent and are also like one
15:50
SPEAKER_00: to two points down in the polls and where the Republican is below 50%, right?
15:55
SPEAKER_00: Like the kind of places where maybe we're going to be kicking ourselves the morning
16:00
SPEAKER_00: after election day.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: I'm skeptical of all of that,
16:05
SPEAKER_00: not because of like the specifics of Angie Nixon or Gina Hinojosa.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I am a little skeptical of Angie Nixon,
16:12
SPEAKER_00: but like I'm not skeptical of Jonathan Christ Thomas.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: I'm not really skeptical of Hinojosa.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm skeptical of the case for aggressive investments,
16:23
SPEAKER_00: because I think we can see what is most likely to be pivotal on the map.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: Senate wise is Iowa, Kansas, Texas.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: And like those races need money.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: And there's this very high stakes governors race in Georgia.
16:41
SPEAKER_00: We're like, clearly we can win.
16:43
SPEAKER_00: Right.
16:44
SPEAKER_00: Like Ossoff is crushing in Georgia.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: Democrats did not get the best nominee in Georgia and her fundraising has been bad,
16:52
SPEAKER_00: but like she's fine.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: This Biden won Georgia in 2020.
16:56
SPEAKER_00: Ossoff is cruising in Georgia.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: Warnock won in Georgia.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: I think Keisha Lance Bottoms really needs money.
17:03
SPEAKER_00: I think Josh Turek really needs money.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just like reluctant to get Yeah.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: I'm all for it.
17:30
SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm not I'm not like against it per se,
17:33
SPEAKER_00: but like all the Democrats in key races are getting outspent like quite badly
17:38
SPEAKER_00: in some cases.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: And it makes me worry.
17:41
SPEAKER_01: Well, look,
17:42
SPEAKER_01: like and I didn't mean what I said is like a dig at you
17:46
SPEAKER_01: for being unnecessarily pessimistic or like risk averse or whatever.
17:51
SPEAKER_01: Like, I appreciate the risk aversion, but I do think that things are.
17:56
SPEAKER_01: Shapes a little differently, right?
17:57
SPEAKER_01: Like, I agree.
17:59
SPEAKER_01: That in Iowa, Josh Turek is running just barely ahead maybe or maybe tied with Ashley Hinson.
18:06
SPEAKER_01: It's really close.
18:07
SPEAKER_01: And that's a relatively cheap state, right?
18:11
SPEAKER_01: Definitely needs money.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: Definitely should not take money from that guy to give it to Florida, right?
18:17
SPEAKER_01: But I also think James Tallarico has plenty of money.
18:22
SPEAKER_01: He's got a lot of money.
18:23
SPEAKER_01: He probably doesn't need more.
18:25
SPEAKER_01: And I think that if you're in a situation where he is clearly winning that race, right?
18:31
SPEAKER_01: And Hina Hossa is viable, but not winning.
18:36
SPEAKER_01: Close, though.
18:38
SPEAKER_01: The money should go to her.
18:39
SPEAKER_01: And then if you have the situation where you're like,
18:41
SPEAKER_01: Texas is like, Democrats might get a split verdict there.
18:46
SPEAKER_01: If Democrats can be Viable in Texas and Ohio.
18:51
SPEAKER_01: And Peltola can kind of be running away with it in Alaska.
18:54
SPEAKER_01: Like why?
18:56
SPEAKER_01: Why?
18:56
SPEAKER_01: Like I realized like people are once, twice, thrice bitten, four times shy in Florida.
19:04
SPEAKER_01: But like, why couldn't?
19:06
SPEAKER_01: They win with good candidates that they have against
19:08
SPEAKER_01: the bad candidates Republicans have nominated there, right?
19:12
SPEAKER_01: Why not like spend some money,
19:15
SPEAKER_01: not like Jamie Harrison money,
19:18
SPEAKER_01: but some money on Annie Andrews in South Carolina who's running
19:21
SPEAKER_01: against Lindsey Graham's sister who's a terrible candidate, right?
19:26
SPEAKER_01: Like the Republican candidates are basically awful everywhere.
19:30
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, like I think slightly...
19:35
SPEAKER_01: To the more aggressive side of where you are is where my sweet spot would be.
19:40
SPEAKER_01: Where what you're hedging against is that feeling that you described where,
19:45
SPEAKER_01: you know, Calarico wins by six or seven points in Texas.
19:50
SPEAKER_01: And you're like,
19:51
SPEAKER_01: we spent like tens of millions of dollars that he spent there to overperform
19:57
SPEAKER_01: that much would have dragged one or two of these other people over the line.
20:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
20:04
SPEAKER_01: And so I don't know for me like and I feel similarly about Ossoff, like he's crushing it.
20:09
SPEAKER_01: But then I see him aggressively fundraising still.
20:13
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like,
20:15
SPEAKER_01: I hope you're taking that money and just giving it freely
20:19
SPEAKER_01: to other Democrats running elsewhere because you don't need it anymore.
20:22
SPEAKER_01: You got this, man.
20:23
SPEAKER_01: Like, well, I agree with that.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I wish that Ossoff would like.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: Push the brakes on the fundraising because I think there's like actually limit.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think he's like done mostly what can be done in terms
20:39
SPEAKER_00: of funding like coordinated campaign stuff in Georgia, which will help bottoms.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: But there's like legal and logistical like limits to that.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: Like he actually needs to just like it's maybe too late now, but like do fundraising for her.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: You know, rather than for himself.
20:57
SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, you know, I mean, everybody's sort of got to play to their own self-interest.
21:02
SPEAKER_00: That case is particularly unusual because like we assume
21:05
SPEAKER_00: that he has presidential ambitions and it will be a big handicap
21:12
SPEAKER_00: to his presidential ambitions if nominating him puts Democrats down a Senate seat.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: You know,
21:20
SPEAKER_00: which like so the Georgia governor's election,
21:24
SPEAKER_00: I think, like speaks directly to his viability.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: And I I wish that would all be taken a little bit more seriously.
21:31
SPEAKER_00: You know, you said the Republicans all have bad candidates.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm not totally sure how true that is.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they have a they have a real stinker in Texas and in South Carolina.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: I think I think that's pretty clear.
21:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: They got a good candidate.
21:46
SPEAKER_01: I think I think Ramaswamy is a bad candidate, I think.
21:50
SPEAKER_01: And I think the candidates who are you probably are thinking of
21:52
SPEAKER_01: as good are unseasoned because they are Republican incumbents in red states
21:57
SPEAKER_01: and never imagine themselves in the competitive.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: So like Roger Marshall is a shitty candidate,
22:03
SPEAKER_01: not necessarily because he has no political skill at some DNA level, but because.
22:09
SPEAKER_01: He didn't expect to be here, you know?
22:11
SPEAKER_00: Sure, I mean, Marshall clearly a bit of a weak candidate.
22:16
SPEAKER_01: And what's his name in Florida is terrible.
22:17
SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't know, there's just bad.
22:20
SPEAKER_01: Donald's?
22:22
SPEAKER_00: Oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, the governor's candidate, yeah.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: But like,
22:25
SPEAKER_00: I think like Ashley Moody is like a totally reasonable,
22:29
SPEAKER_00: I mean, she's a former statewide elected official in Florida.
22:33
SPEAKER_01: She's got this big Medicaid scandal that she was like, Well, listen, I don't want to come here.
22:40
SPEAKER_01: If you can get the electorate of Minnesota upset about a...
22:45
SPEAKER_01: Corruption scandal involving basically private actors stealing from Medicaid.
22:50
SPEAKER_01: Here you've got public figures stealing from Medicaid to fund the Republican Party in Florida.
22:55
SPEAKER_01: Like, I think that you can spin that up and do a pretty big.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: I am not here to be like Ashley Moody's discourse lawyer.
23:01
SPEAKER_00: I just like I want to I want to draw a distinction right
23:04
SPEAKER_00: between Republicans have obviously a very strong candidate in Maine.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: They have in New Hampshire,
23:10
SPEAKER_00: probably their best candidate would be Sununu's brother, Chris Sununu.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: But John Sununu is a strong candidate in part because people confuse him
23:21
SPEAKER_00: with his brother,
23:22
SPEAKER_00: who was recently governor and is doing well,
23:25
SPEAKER_00: or maybe Kelly Ayo would be stronger, but that's a good candidate.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: Ashley Hinson in Iowa was the best electoral performer of Yeah.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: Turek just has to run against like a normal Republican Party elected official,
24:02
SPEAKER_00: which is tougher.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: Again, South Carolina is like a very poor choice just because South Carolina is full
24:08
SPEAKER_00: of like Just Republicans who've won elections in the past and they didn't pick any
24:14
SPEAKER_00: of them.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: They picked Lindsey Graham's sister who doesn't know what she's doing
24:18
SPEAKER_00: and has absolutely no experience.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: Again, like Dan Sullivan in Alaska is a bit of a wooden candidate in the manner
24:26
SPEAKER_00: of Roger Marshall,
24:27
SPEAKER_00: like caught flat-footed by needing to run a tough race,
24:31
SPEAKER_00: but is just still like a baseline politician.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: Paxton...
24:37
SPEAKER_00: You know, is really bad.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: And Ramoswani is really bad in Ohio.
24:45
SPEAKER_01: He's running very aggressively and it's making his poll numbers go down.
24:50
SPEAKER_01: It's not like he's lazy.
24:51
SPEAKER_01: It's not like he's overcautious.
24:53
SPEAKER_01: It's not like he has a hard time articulating his thoughts or sticking
24:57
SPEAKER_01: to talking points or whatever.
24:58
SPEAKER_01: It's just like the thing he is selling with gusto is like the more people see it,
25:03
SPEAKER_01: the more they reject it.
25:06
SPEAKER_01: The definition of a bad candidate.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: He's also committed some gaffes where like,
25:09
SPEAKER_00: frankly, I tend to agree with him, but he's- Like dropping the baby?
25:14
SPEAKER_00: No, not that.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: He early off in his campaign ran a little bit more like J.D.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: Vance and J.D.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: Vance's book rather than J.D.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: Vance and J.D.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: Vance's political campaigns.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: You know, we're like J.D.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: Vance and his book is like these white working class people in Appalachia need
25:32
SPEAKER_00: to like stop scapegoating immigrants for their problems to get their shit together.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: And Vivek said some of that as a Republican candidate, which is just terrible.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: Vance is a really cynical person who,
25:48
SPEAKER_00: once he stopped trying to be well-regarded by center-left intellectuals,
25:55
SPEAKER_00: was just like, I'm going to run the con that I accused Donald Trump of running.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: And he's not as good at it as Trump was because he's...
26:04
SPEAKER_00: He's just not.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: He's not.
26:05
SPEAKER_01: He's a Yale train.
26:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
26:07
SPEAKER_00: He's not as good of an actor, you know, and you can see him sort of breaking character.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: But Vivek is, you know, I sympathize.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: You know,
26:17
SPEAKER_00: also in the early days of Doge,
26:19
SPEAKER_00: people were telling me like center right budget people were telling me like.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: They never heard from Elon Musk,
26:25
SPEAKER_00: but that Vivek was going around to ask them serious questions about fiscal policy.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: And so the upshot of that was that Vivek got fired from Doge
26:35
SPEAKER_00: because they didn't want serious questions about fiscal policy.
26:38
SPEAKER_00: They wanted clown show antics.
26:41
SPEAKER_00: So he got punted down to this Ohio governor's race,
26:44
SPEAKER_00: which I think Republicans felt was unlosable.
26:47
SPEAKER_00: But everything is losable.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: When it's D plus eight, D plus nine.
26:51
SPEAKER_01: Well, also when you're running as a South Asian man as a Republican.
26:55
SPEAKER_01: Well,
26:58
SPEAKER_00: that's what I mean, though.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: It takes it from fucking anybody can win,
27:02
SPEAKER_00: like he'll just run weaker than the fundamentals and win anyway,
27:05
SPEAKER_00: to like, oh no,
27:06
SPEAKER_00: the fundamentals are quite bad and we need a good campaign and he doesn't have it.
27:10
SPEAKER_00: Amy Acton seems cool, although I don't know that much about her.
27:14
SPEAKER_00: You know, she's doing great.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: Everybody's doing great.
27:17
SPEAKER_01: Democrats are doctors maxing this.
27:19
SPEAKER_01: They're like, they're doing what Republicans do.
27:21
SPEAKER_01: It's like turning to doctors to run in tough races.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: Well, the partisan realignment of medical doctors as a profession,
27:29
SPEAKER_00: which is something like the real nerds have been tracking for the past 10 years,
27:34
SPEAKER_00: is interesting because medical doctors make for pretty good candidates.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: I think what I've seen is, you know, combat veterans are good.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: Astronauts appear to be really good, but it's like N of two.
27:46
SPEAKER_01: Because you have to.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: It's like both John Glenn and Mark Kelly were very, very, very strong candidates.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: Doctors are, you know, they're no astronauts, but they're good.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: And people like doctors, people trust doctors a lot.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: This is why like one of the attacks on El-Sayed has been the idea that he's not
28:05
SPEAKER_00: a real doctor,
28:06
SPEAKER_00: which is like a tell that just like, Doctors seem to be strong candidates.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: It used to be that the overwhelming majority of doctors were Republicans.
28:17
SPEAKER_00: Now, particularly younger doctors are almost all Democrats.
28:21
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it's good recruiting opportunity there to throw up a lot of MDs.
28:27
SPEAKER_00: Nurses, probably a little underrated as potential candidates in the future.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it all seems good, give or take like one public execution.
28:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:39
SPEAKER_01: Before we do that, though,
28:40
SPEAKER_01: I want to talk about Ossoff because he's clearly the star,
28:44
SPEAKER_01: like breakout star of the cycle.
28:46
SPEAKER_01: He's running, I mean,
28:47
SPEAKER_01: it's not,
28:49
SPEAKER_01: Republicans have pulled their money out of the state,
28:51
SPEAKER_01: but they're not even trying to spin up bullshit like they are about Tallarico.
28:56
SPEAKER_01: You can kind of tell because,
28:58
SPEAKER_01: you know, Ossoff,
29:00
SPEAKER_01: Tallarico,
29:01
SPEAKER_01: both handsome,
29:02
SPEAKER_01: young, charismatic Democrats running in States should be tough for Democrats, right?
29:08
SPEAKER_01: But Tallarico's up by like seven,
29:11
SPEAKER_01: and so Republicans are trying to, like whipping up lies to try to drag him down.
29:18
SPEAKER_01: I don't think that they're saying anything about Ossoff.
29:23
SPEAKER_01: And I,
29:25
SPEAKER_01: my original intent was to watch the clips of the recent Senate debates and Posted
29:33
SPEAKER_01: to Twitter and Blue Sky by progressive TV monitors who will post the clips
29:41
SPEAKER_01: that make me feel good about things.
29:43
SPEAKER_01: I was like, I don't actually want to know who won.
29:46
SPEAKER_01: I just want to watch the clips that make me feel good.
29:48
SPEAKER_01: And of course, it worked.
29:50
SPEAKER_01: They showed me the clips that made me think that Ossoff won his debate,
29:54
SPEAKER_01: that Troy Jackson won his debate, that Abdul El-Sayed won his debate.
29:59
SPEAKER_01: Then I started feeling guilty about this poor methodology I was choosing
30:04
SPEAKER_01: to make myself feel better.
30:05
SPEAKER_01: And so I actually watched almost all of them.
30:08
SPEAKER_01: I didn't actually finish the Michigan debate, but I got a genuine sense of the situation.
30:17
SPEAKER_01: The weird thing is that Abdul El-Sayed was supposed to be the real puncher who was going to maul
30:25
SPEAKER_01: His opponent in a way that Democrats tend to like shy away from.
30:30
SPEAKER_01: And I was really excited to see it.
30:32
SPEAKER_01: And I think he's actually only kind of so, so at it, right?
30:34
SPEAKER_01: Like his debate performance was fine.
30:37
SPEAKER_01: I think he probably won given the situation on the ground there.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: I have never seen a debate.
30:47
SPEAKER_01: Somebody gets so pulverized in a debate as Mike Collins in Georgia
30:52
SPEAKER_01: with like attack lines that Like if they were false,
30:58
SPEAKER_01: Mike Collins would have been justified in like crossing the stage
31:00
SPEAKER_01: and punching John Ossoff in the face.
31:02
SPEAKER_01: Like to like basically like the big lines were like you've hired half of
31:07
SPEAKER_01: the Third Reich into your campaign.
31:09
SPEAKER_01: And that if John Lewis,
31:11
SPEAKER_01: if you were there when John Lewis was marching,
31:13
SPEAKER_01: you would have picked up a billy club, right?
31:15
SPEAKER_01: Like horrible slanders if false, right?
31:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
31:21
SPEAKER_01: But because true, like left Mike Collins sputtering, right?
31:27
SPEAKER_01: And Mike Collins is maybe one of the worst candidates of the cycle.
31:34
SPEAKER_01: So this is not,
31:36
SPEAKER_01: I'm not trying to say that what Ossoff is doing there is replicable,
31:39
SPEAKER_01: but the posture of indignance and fearlessness
31:44
SPEAKER_01: and seeing it work is really gratifying to me.
31:46
SPEAKER_01: And I hope Democrats are paying attention to it, right?
31:53
SPEAKER_00: I say this backwards,
31:55
SPEAKER_00: like because Ossoff is easily winning,
31:58
SPEAKER_00: he can afford to spend his debate making no effort to persuade undecided voters
32:03
SPEAKER_00: in Georgia and just trying to impress Brian Boitler.
32:06
SPEAKER_00: And he did a great job of it.
32:08
SPEAKER_01: He's been doing it the whole time and it's why he's winning, right?
32:12
SPEAKER_01: No, I don't really think so.
32:14
SPEAKER_01: It's part of a factor.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: We'll see what happens.
32:19
SPEAKER_00: We'll see what happens at the end.
32:20
SPEAKER_00: I think it's smart.
32:21
SPEAKER_00: I just don't think, I think it's meta-smart rather than first-order smart.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: Abdul, with his relatively subdued debate performance,
32:32
SPEAKER_00: I think wisely avoided falling into a kind of a trap for him.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: You know,
32:39
SPEAKER_00: that like,
32:39
SPEAKER_00: I think Rogers, sorry,
32:42
SPEAKER_00: El-Sayed,
32:43
SPEAKER_00: ever since he won the primary,
32:45
SPEAKER_00: Has done a pretty good job of backing off of the kind of revolutionary promises
32:51
SPEAKER_00: of his primary campaign and trying to just kind of normalize this race,
32:56
SPEAKER_00: understanding that if he wins,
32:59
SPEAKER_00: he can then say or do He has to do whatever he wants about his victory
33:02
SPEAKER_00: after he wins, but like he has to win first.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, he's been campaigning with Jenna Sidere and Chief Kamala Harris.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: He's been campaigning with Alyssa Slotkin.
33:14
SPEAKER_00: He called in Barack Obama,
33:16
SPEAKER_00: who he's in the past referred to as like a total failure, to help bail him out.
33:21
SPEAKER_00: And like, that's all the correct moves for him to make.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: You know, Ossoff...
33:28
SPEAKER_00: I think it's smart.
33:28
SPEAKER_00: I think it's smart for Ossoff to just prime himself to run for president.
33:33
SPEAKER_00: But he's got to help Bottoms out.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: Because to me, it's a deal breaker.
33:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to vote for a nominee who's going to just give up a Senate seat.
33:45
SPEAKER_00: Well, okay.
33:45
SPEAKER_00: No matter how much I like his video angles, his Dutch shots.
33:50
SPEAKER_01: Setting that aside where like if he,
33:52
SPEAKER_01: if she loses the governor's race,
33:53
SPEAKER_01: it really complicates things for his future ambitions.
33:57
SPEAKER_01: I disagree with you that saying to someone to their face,
34:02
SPEAKER_01: your campaign is full of neo-Nazis and you would have been on the side
34:05
SPEAKER_01: of like Bull Connor in the segregation era and they don't respond.
34:11
SPEAKER_01: I think that is persuasive to undecided voters.
34:14
SPEAKER_01: It's not persuasion the way people who do persuasion science in Washington,
34:20
SPEAKER_01: D.C. ever think of persuasion.
34:22
SPEAKER_01: But I think that if you were genuinely unsure who to vote for,
34:28
SPEAKER_01: those lines from Ossoff would be persuasive.
34:31
SPEAKER_01: I mean, not necessarily to everybody,
34:34
SPEAKER_01: but more persuasive than I think the intuition of people who are very close to D.C.
34:40
SPEAKER_01: politics assume.
34:41
SPEAKER_01: Similarly,
34:42
SPEAKER_01: I think that if Annie Andrews somehow wins in South Carolina,
34:46
SPEAKER_01: it will be her punching lines from her debate with Darlene Graham that did
34:52
SPEAKER_01: the persuasive work.
34:54
SPEAKER_01: It was at the end.
34:55
SPEAKER_01: She's like,
34:56
SPEAKER_01: I feel terrible for everything that's happened to the Graham family
34:59
SPEAKER_01: because Lindsey Graham died.
35:01
SPEAKER_01: But if your doctor said they didn't know much about surgery,
35:06
SPEAKER_01: you wouldn't trust them to do your appendectomy.
35:09
SPEAKER_01: You can't trust this person.
35:10
SPEAKER_01: She's not a serious person.
35:15
SPEAKER_01: Punching your opponent in the face like that with something true
35:20
SPEAKER_01: that everyone can see and they don't have a response
35:22
SPEAKER_01: for it It's not persuading somebody in the manner of making an argument
35:27
SPEAKER_01: that presupposes the strongest version of what they're feeling and tries
35:34
SPEAKER_01: to ease them into a comfort zone with you.
35:38
SPEAKER_01: It's persuasion in a different way where it's like, yeah, it's true.
35:43
SPEAKER_01: I can't look myself in the face supporting somebody that I know these things about.
35:48
SPEAKER_01: It works, I think.
35:50
SPEAKER_01: To do both, like,
35:51
SPEAKER_01: impress Brian Boitler with the meanness of it all and also to, like,
35:57
SPEAKER_01: kind of force people who are undecided to be like,
36:00
SPEAKER_01: yeah, you know what, that's too much.
36:02
SPEAKER_01: That's a bridge too far for me.
36:04
SPEAKER_00: I just,
36:04
SPEAKER_00: I think that if making people associate Republicans with racism was effective,
36:13
SPEAKER_00: that Republicans would, like, never win any elections anyways.
36:18
SPEAKER_00: I think you're much closer to being correct when you say that Vivek is
36:24
SPEAKER_00: a weak candidate because racists don't like Vivek.
36:28
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's definitely part of the story.
36:30
SPEAKER_01: But I mean, Asaf is Jewish, which is interesting.
36:33
SPEAKER_01: And I don't know how that cuts in Republican politics.
36:36
SPEAKER_01: They're moving very rapidly towards anti-Semitism.
36:39
SPEAKER_01: But you don't catch Republican elected officials having to like,
36:44
SPEAKER_01: you know,
36:44
SPEAKER_01: you have this weird situation where Vance has an Indian wife and
36:49
SPEAKER_01: and they've nominated Ramaswamy and blah, blah, blah.
36:52
SPEAKER_01: And and so they're grappling with this incredible surge of Anti-Indian racism,
37:01
SPEAKER_01: that the rise of Nazism on the right hasn't bled into Donald Trump's politics
37:10
SPEAKER_01: or whatever.
37:12
SPEAKER_01: But what I'm saying is that your point is that
37:16
SPEAKER_01: if just calling Republicans racist was an effective persuasion tactic,
37:22
SPEAKER_01: Republicans would not I don't think so.
37:24
SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's a question of goods.
37:26
SPEAKER_01: I think if you convince people...
37:36
SPEAKER_00: Republicans love white people and want to help white people and give advantages
37:41
SPEAKER_00: to white people because they're racists.
37:44
SPEAKER_00: But those aren't really into white people.
37:46
SPEAKER_01: But those aren't the persuadable voters.
37:47
SPEAKER_01: The persuadable voters are the ones who might have some kind of inclination in
37:51
SPEAKER_01: that direction,
37:52
SPEAKER_01: but don't want to believe that about themselves and thus are persuadable.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: I think Republicans are racist.
37:59
SPEAKER_00: It's like a pretty good message in South Texas where all these Latinos had flipped
38:05
SPEAKER_00: to the GOP and reminding them that these people don't have specific objections
38:12
SPEAKER_00: to this immigrant or that immigrant or this thing or that thing,
38:15
SPEAKER_00: but they don't want any non-white people living in America.
38:20
SPEAKER_00: It's like a great Great Texas message.
38:25
SPEAKER_00: But I've got big, big doubts in South Carolina.
38:29
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Ossoff's going to win, so it doesn't matter.
38:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, I mean, also,
38:33
SPEAKER_01: we should monitor his polls,
38:35
SPEAKER_01: see if they've gone down in sick or if Collins has gone up.
38:38
SPEAKER_01: Now that he's like, now that Ossoff has done him the favor of calling him a Nazi and a bigot.
38:43
SPEAKER_00: Well, he's just, he's,
38:44
SPEAKER_00: you know, I mean,
38:45
SPEAKER_00: Georgia has gotten triaged out,
38:47
SPEAKER_00: you know, so like it doesn't matter at this point, right?
38:50
SPEAKER_00: Like, so let's, I mean,
38:52
SPEAKER_00: I think we should take a break and we should talk about what Republicans are doing
38:56
SPEAKER_00: to try to win the races that they are still contesting because they've given up
39:00
SPEAKER_00: on Georgia and North Carolina,
39:02
SPEAKER_00: which is, you know, fascinating given where we were on the South 10 years ago.
39:07
SPEAKER_01: Guys, this is the fun stuff,
39:09
SPEAKER_01: but you've got to go to politics.fm and upgrade your subscription if you want
39:13
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39:15
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39:16
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