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Extinction Level Event · Politix

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: The truth of the matter is that nobody is going to tune into an Energy
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: and Commerce Committee hearing on restoring Medicaid cuts.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: They will tune into a Judiciary Committee hearing on the Epstein files
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: or on revenge prosecutions.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: And if the Democratic Party leadership is in the mindset
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: that we don't want people tuning into that because we want them tuning
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: into the Energy and Commerce Committee shit,
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: then they're going to not turn the screws on Trump.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Hey everyone, you're listening to a free preview of the Politics Podcast.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: We did it, Joe.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: But for real this time.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Democrats won a historic realignment landslide on Tuesday,
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: possibly the biggest many of us will see in our lifetimes.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: The dust is still settling, so there aren't too many things to be conclusive about,
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: but we do know enough to discuss how our predictions held up,
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: how various candidates performed relative to the party overall,
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: and what this kind of election typically means for the party that wins
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: and for the party that loses.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to hear the whole episode, upgrade to paid at politics.fm.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to the Politics Podcast.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Brian Boitler.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Matthew Glacius. We're going to have to- My pronouns are he, him.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Where's your kente cloth?
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Why aren't you kneeling?
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we're doing what we can.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: We worship an awesome and non-binary god in the red states.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Look, look, look.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: We are going to get to this, but to the extent that there are any, you know,
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: mods or consultant types out there freaking out that Woke 2 is going to come rear
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: in its head and that it's going to take that form, you know?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Land acknowledgements all over again.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: They should really start doing the Nuremberg trials now and just not, you know,
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: don't let that get started.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Make everyone focused on the objective.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to have to get through this episode somehow.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: I feel horrible.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like...
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you became a father and became boring and all right wing, but I did not.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so I like I like had a nervous drink at like eight
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: and then my first celebratory drink at like nine,
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: because that's when it became clear to me what was happening.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then I did, you know, I that pace continued for like till two in the morning and.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I was up till two working and then like up at five, 530 parenting and just been on call.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, it's a fucking mess, but it's good. It's good. It's good night.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: Democrats did well, I would say.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: My assessment is that they did well.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: It turns out that polling error is symmetrical after all.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: And while the absolute scale of the polling miss is not that big,
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: it was roughly 2016 sized and in the opposite direction.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: And much like in 2016, there were several very important states that were within that.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: And some interesting regional patterns that have implications.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: So like Democrats did like way worse than the polling suggested in Minnesota,
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: but like that's still fine.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: It may win by five instead of by 11 and
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: then to put a finer point on it we spent
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: the last couple episodes I think like the source of like our prediction misses
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: for instance was that like a one -point error in the other direction
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And you're wondering if they can even take the Senate at all because the way
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: the dynamics work runs the opposite direction as well
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: as the direction it actually ran.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so when it runs the good direction, right, it's like, oh,
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Darlene Graham lost and Scott Colombe.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think as of this recording, he's still in the hunt, right?
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like maybe slightly favored to win or has that been updated?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know. It's close.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see what happens.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Within like a thousand votes of each other or some shit.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Very close.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: So let's review.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, predictions. So you were, I think,
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: the only person I know who really wanted to put South Carolina on the map.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: So you were correct.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, the way we did this for people who didn't listen
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: to the full episode last week was that we went with just like top line,
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: how many House seats, how many Senate seats,
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: and then at the outer perimeter of what's possible,
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: like which are the ones that you're just – If you give me odds, I'll take that one.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: I picked Darlene Graham losing in South Carolina,
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: both because I think that Trump imposed her on Republicans in a way that was just
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: so insulting.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: That as long as Democrats had a credible alternative, and they did,
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: that voters there would be like, you know what, we can survive this for six years.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: There are probably some professional Republicans who are like,
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: it's better to eat this now and come back in six years than to make this person,
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Darlene Graham, a senator for life.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so that hocus pocus worked perfectly.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: To push Annie Andrews over the top in South Carolina,
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: where Democrats fell short in Louisiana, they might lose Mississippi, etc.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I feel great about it.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't like last week I was like, no, no, no, Annie Andrews got this.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: She's definitely going to win.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'll eat my shoe if she loses.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: But when I saw the needle on her, I was like, can't wait to talk about this on the podcast.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: And the gamblers think Colum is going to win.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: When I woke up this morning and I had to do a bunch of different work because,
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: as I mentioned, I was just drinking while watching Returns instead
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: of being productive.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I think literally nobody predicted that.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean— I think it was like it was like me.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: There were people out there who were with him the way I was with Darlene Graham
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: and Annie Andrews, where it was like if you're on if you're taking an overdose
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: of hopium, you look at you look at Darlene Graham losing.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: You look at City High.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: You look at maybe Florida flipping, which didn't happen in the end.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: So there was chatter about it.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is kind of how we knew to keep our eye on it.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there was chatter about Cullen,
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: but I didn't even think that the people chattering about him really thought he had
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: a chance. You know, sometimes people say this stuff, and it's like...
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, there are a lot of I was just on a call to prepare
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: for a panel that's going to happen in a week and a half.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the people on the call was saying, you know,
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: she wants to advocate for more long term institution building in the South.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's like one of many things that people go around year after year and ask for money for.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and it's like not a crazy idea,
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: but lots of people have lots of ideas about what money should be put into.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so I just kind of thought there was some like prepositioning of that take
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: by being like, we got to invest in Mississippi
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: because like really like why would you invest in Mississippi?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: And yet apparently here we are in Colombian, you know,
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: Florida was a little different just because there were people
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: with a real ideological investment in Angie Nixon, you know, and like,
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: Also, Florida, I mean, you know, it's one fucking election after another in Florida,
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: but still by the numbers, Florida is a much more winnable state than South Carolina
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: or certainly Mississippi.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I was never a Florida believer,
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: but I see from the charts and graphs why somebody might be.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: And there was a time like...
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: nine months ago, maybe it was longer ago when I was on the phone with Senate leaders
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: and I was the one who was badgering them about Florida and was like,
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: shouldn't you guys run a candidate here?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: If you think you can win Texas, there's no reason you can't win Florida.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, they won like everywhere except Florida.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: I guess the other one that got away is Nebraska,
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: where like Osborne did quite well
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: in the like disastrous national environment of two years ago.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously he did better in 26 than he did in 24, but as like a relative performance,
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: it went from, wow, this guy's onto something to like, eh, this didn't work out.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the way I'd put it kind of globally is that in hindsight,
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: I feel less bad about resource misallocation.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: There's some, I mean, like I think, you know, Justin Pearson lost,
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: but he was really close and like with some help, I think might've won.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: We'll never know, right?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: But the errors were much more tactical, I think.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think if Dan Osborne had cut the cute routine about, I'll be an independent,
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'll caucus with everyone, I'll caucus with no one,
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: and just had done what Adam Hamilton did and be like, look, I'm a Democrat.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to run as a Democrat because of what's happening, and it's intolerable, right?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, also, if Seth Bodnar in Montana had won a proper primary campaign, he might have won.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: John Bel Edwards, like, would have won.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Would have won, yes.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think you look at what happened in Mississippi and South Carolina, and it's like,
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: if he had thrown his hat in the ring—
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's a different world where,
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: like— They won 58 seats.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's crazy.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I mean, like when Democrats started doing this thing, they did it.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: They tried to do it in Montana. They did it in Nebraska.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: I believe they did it in Idaho unsuccessfully.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: At the time, I was like, that is probably a shrewd move because you couldn't predict
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: that it was going to be a D plus 14 environment, right?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: But in hindsight, it was a mistake, right?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like it was just a mistake.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And they should have just been like, We have the courage of our convictions.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: We believe that Trump is so bad that like the the the obviousness
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: of it will impel people to do the right thing and vote for the other party,
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: even if they think Democrats are terrible as a brand or whatever.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: And in that world where you didn't make that tactical decision.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's it's probably 57 or 58.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe 59. I don't know.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's crazy. Yeah, I mean, you know, so I do want to emphasize this point, though,
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: that the strategies that worked, right,
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: are pretty normal politics. You know what I mean?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like, it's an extraordinary situation.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, Adam Hamilton had to win a contested primary in Kansas
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: against somebody who was more progressive than he was.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: And he...
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know. It's not easy to win elections.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: He's very gifted.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: He's extremely gifted.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: He might have lost the election, but instead he won it.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: But he didn't try to do something galaxy -brained about it.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Annie Andrews and Tellerico and Josh Turek and everybody running
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: in deep red areas found one
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: or two at least issues that they kind of took a dive
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: on with regard to local public opinion and it's like, I don't know.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there isn't really like science to it.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: You have to search your heart and search your understanding of the electorate
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: and decide what you're going to take risks on and what you're not going to.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: But.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, none of the like the cute stuff the Democrats tried to pull in Alaska
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: to an extent that just got fucked by The New York Times.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: But it just also seems like it backfired, you know,
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: and you would have been better off just being like, I'm Mary Peltola.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: I've represented this state before.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know me. You see what a shit show Republicans have made of this.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm not doing anything weird.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: But it's very good.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's no sense in complaining or second-guessing too much, I think,
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: anything that went on other than to say that people who took
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: a shot were broadly rewarded and people who assumed that things were unwinnable
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: or not worth trying, you know, you can't win if you don't run.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: In a weird way, I kind of wonder if the...
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: The horrible vibes of post 2024 were,
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: were like a hidden blessing in that I,
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: how do I want to put this? That like, there's a world where, you know,
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Democrats don't buy the hype about Trump's victory because, I don't know,
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: for whatever reason, they're just like, this is going to be terrible.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: But look, he, he didn't, he won a plurality.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like his house, Majority is tiny.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: We're just going to punch right back.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Where the usual people show up to run.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: And instead,
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: it was so bleak out there that it just kind
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: of fell to random people.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: James Tallarico is not a random person.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: He's literally a state legislator.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Adam Hamilton came out of nowhere because he was just like, this is bad.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is a bad situation.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: And like...
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Probably in a in a in a different kind of like climate,
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: you know, emotional climate after 2024.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's just no candidate there at all.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, Democrats recruit some former mayor who loses by, you know,
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: two points or something.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah. But I also want to give.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: They're due to Tallarica and Jeannie Hinojosa.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's sometimes a vogue for like unconventional candidates.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: And the thing about the two of them is that I think they both proved
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: to be pretty good politicians, but they're very normal politicians, right?
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: There isn't some crazy gimmick to either of them.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: And they both represented fairly safe seats in the Texas state legislature
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: and didn't really have a record that would necessarily...
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like, make you think that they could win statewide.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: And they both, like, flip-flopped some. You know what I mean?
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like, they looked within their heart and they looked at the map and they looked
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: at the charts and they were like, I want to win these...
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: And like what I would do to represent Austin or a neighborhood
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: of Houston is not what is going to win me statewide in Texas.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: And they staked out positions that were decidedly more progressive than Ken Paxton
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: or Greg Abbott.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: But like those guys are very right wing, you know,
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: and there's just like there's a lot of space between Greg Abbott's approach
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: to governing Texas and how like.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: How Democrats govern Rhode Island.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: like both people
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: from outside can come in,
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: but also people from inside politics.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and then just overcome why.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: All things are possible.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: The funny thing is, and we're going to pivot to like candidate performance here, I guess.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: But the funny thing is they won Texas by such large margins
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: that it's actually unclear how much they really needed to make those gestures
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: at all. Well, Tallarico won by a huge margin. Huge margin.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: The other people ran by smaller ones.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, is up by seven. No?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, seven's a lot.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't think it was that.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: That was what I saw this, like I said, this morning when I,
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: when I did the rundown of where things stood after three hours sleep or whatever.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, all right.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let's, let's, let's get into it.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Cause we were going to, because, because like, honestly,
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: like I want to spend most of this segment agreeing with you, but I,
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: I actually kind of nitpick around the way you set it up.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, like, um,
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think that there are multiple lessons here for progressives who want
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: to keep recruiting and running candidates in new territory, right?
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: But The way I agree with you is- Oh, so yeah.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: So seven points for Hinojosa, 12 points.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's wild.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: 12 points for Tularejo.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like I think Hinojosa could have been like,
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: I love trans people a lot and I want them to get all their surgeries and still won.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like, you know?
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: No, but okay, actually, to be more serious about it,
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: I do think that the stuff you're talking about,
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: the gestures that policy allows you to make are important,
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: but the nit that I want to pick is
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: that it's- It's how they it's it was how they were allowed into a conversation.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right. Like Tallarico says, I'm an oil and gas Democrat,
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: and that buys him enough credibility to be heard out. But from there. Right.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I think what works is.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like, uh...
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: Depicting yourself, communicating with how you talk and how you campaign,
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: that you are a pluralist.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: You are going to be senator for everyone.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're a nice guy.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Your instincts are progressive because in this climate, being cruel is partisan, right?
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like decency is partisan.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that's basically the story.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you...
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: If you actually, I think if you like just compared it ad for ad or stump speech
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: for stump speech, someone like Abdul El-Sayed was probably more disciplined
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: about turning everything to like gas groceries and Medicare for all.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Which is like what the textbook would have you do.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: And he underperformed a lot.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think he's actually like a bad person to to key this discussion off of.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: But like it's not because gas groceries and Medicare for all are unpopular.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's because Medicare for all in particular.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: But like he entered the conversation saying my my role here is to pull
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: the Democratic Party to the left.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: And just by the nature of that proposition, he had to reach further into.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I mean, I
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: broadly agree with that.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think that, you know,
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: after you win, right, you end up facing a lot of,
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: like, concrete votes and other things like that that may or may not make
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: a difference depending on – What happens?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: Campaigns are a little weird, right?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: You can do these things in different ways.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's inherently, people have talked so much about El Sayed that I'm going
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: to talk about Peggy Flanagan.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, I was actually going to ask you to do that.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, it just—Peggy Flannigan and Angie Craig both wanted
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: to be senators.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: These things happen, right? People's professional ambitions clash with one another.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: Angie Craig had taken a couple of noteworthy moderate votes in her time in the House.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: Not like a million.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, she's not a blue dog.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: She's not that conservative.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: But like she voted for Lake and Riley.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: And Peggy Flanagan wanted to win the primary.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: So she voted.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Correctly keyed in on this as something that would not play well with Minnesota primary voters.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: And she ran a lot of attacks on Angie Craig as this like pro-ice sellout,
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: like a PAC person.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it worked and she won.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: But it then means that you enter the general election with people like...
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: Understanding you as this progressive, you know, factional candidate.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, her numbers come in pretty weak.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: Not catastrophically, like it's Minnesota.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's no there's no reason.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to be clear about this because I've spoken favorably of Angie Craig many times.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you look at Angie Craig and look at Peggy Flanagan and you live in Minnesota
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: and you just agree with Peggy Flanagan, there's no reason not to vote for her.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Right. Like there's no there's no reason to be concerned about this.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: But.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think it is true that those kind of legacies,
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: like how you enter into the public consciousness, matter to people.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: If the only thing you paid attention
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: to was Abdul El-Sayed's general election campaign— You'd be like,
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: this is like the most moderate guy I've ever seen, actually.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, he's like talking about, no, no, because it's like you're saying, right?
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like he was more bending over backwards
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: to have this like hyper focused grocery prices,
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: like look at my religious faith kind of campaign than other people were.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: But there was so much attention was paid to him.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: Both by his enemies, as his friends would like to point out, but also by his friends.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody who was just reading articles about the Michigan Senate race was like,
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: Abdul El-Sayed is a guy who got into this because he's really upset
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: about grocery prices.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody understood this to be part of a larger kind of factional enterprise.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, like, that's also fine if that's what you believe in.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: And we saw a, you know, there's this word carcination, whatever it is,
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: like all kinds of different creatures like evolved, have the body type of a crab.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: And all different kinds
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: of Democratic Party general election campaigns end up being like kind of similar,
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: you know, despite all this kind of Yeah.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: That we do at each other.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: So like on some level, I think there's convergence that like the thing
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: that was hurting Trump the most
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: with the marginal voters was people were mad
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: about the war in Iran and its impact on gasoline and groceries
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: and people like health care.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: So everybody kind of talked about that stuff, but they had all...
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: Gotten to the starting line, you know,
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: like in different ways with different stories and in different states and something
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: that like if you went on Blue Sky at any point over the past two months,
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: there was a lot of angst about Josh Turek and some of the things he had said
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: about trans girls in in sports.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: What he said was like, honestly,
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: not that different from what Tallarico said or what Andrew said or what any
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: of the other people in the red states were.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: But he did say it a little bit differently in a way that antagonized activists
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: a little bit more and created a thing where it seemed like way harder for them
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: to get to yes with him than with other people whose position
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: on the issue was quite different.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: I don't totally know what to think about that.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: Some of these people become shelling points for conversations.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think this is not a politics thing.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it becomes one when it gets filtered
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: through the conversations candidates have with their advisors around a table.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: But it's really just about people
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: How to win friends and influence people.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: How to be decent.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think Josh Shirk is a bad person,
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: but I thought that he picked an intentionally indecent way to do that to signal
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: to people on the other side, I'm more like you than I am like them.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: And
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think that Barack Obama's legacy in politics would be quite a bit different
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: if he had the exact same position on same-sex marriage in 2007 and 2008,
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: but he front-loaded every comment he made on it
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: with how bad he thought same-sex marriage.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: You have to do it the other way around exactly the way you would if you were talking
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: to somebody to their face, right?
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: And having a disagreement with them, but wanting them to be clear,
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: like it's all in good faith and with love. You know what I mean?
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: And like, that is just like,
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: it comes from inside and James Tallarico clearly has it and Turek does not.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, Maybe he'll learn it or maybe he'll change or maybe he thinks he did it right.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's quite obvious that he could have changed nothing about his views on things.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: His thing about no public funds for transition surgeries is actually just really bad.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: But the sports stuff, right, where he and Tallarico really have the exact same position, right?
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Tallarico did not lose the activist community, really, but Turek did.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's like the human touch that Tallarico has
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: that did all the work.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: But the...
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think you have facts on your side broadly about what people,
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: particularly the people that you mix it up with all the time,
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: should take away from the results.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: I would – if I had to quibble with anything you just said,
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: it would be that I think Peggy Flanagan could
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: have reached the general election
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: with a more – Like non-factional image,
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: even after having gone at Angie Craig the way she did.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think, I think the way people develop that branding and they do it on purpose, right?
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah. Like I'm a factional warrior is by saying it, right?
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, like they, right.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's not so much the issues.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's that they talk about the issues as being radical and transformative and blah, blah.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that's like, you know what I mean?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then people are like, oh, you're, you're like that.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: You're trying to, the country in a direction that makes me
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: a little bit uncomfortable versus just,
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: so here's what if I were advising the progressives
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: that you fight with a lot on what
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: to take from all this? It's like, I think you sort of have two choices.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: And you either go back to 2016 and try to rebrand progressivism
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: as sensible moderation the way Bernie Sanders did.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, there's nothing radical about, you know what I mean?
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: But without, like, Bernie, he did that.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: And he's also like, but also I'm a socialist,
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: so you should know that I'm of the left and I'm trying
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: to radically transform America.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: But take that away and take the same exact policy agenda
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: and just say there's nothing radical about and then list the things that you want
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: to do, right?
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: You can do that.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: Or you can rebrand the whole factional project,
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: not as like progressivism is the way to win,
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: but like there is a way to make the Democratic Party more progressive by getting
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: the most progressive possible Democrats elected everywhere. Right.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then they could even say if they want like this election proved
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: that we could have had somebody more progressive than James Tallarico
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: and more progressive than Josh Turek. You know what I mean?
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: And like in a favorable climate,
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: you could have a very left wing Democratic Party and still have very, very,
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: very big majorities.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's true.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's risky. It's like a risky play to run cycle after cycle after cycle.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: But if you try to approach the job of candidate selection rigorously,
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: try to get the climate of the country right,
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: and then select candidates who you think can eke it out, I think that's fine.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: But you need to be honest that that's the approach and that there are limits,
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: that the progressive agenda is not actually magically easier to win
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: on than the pabulum that a lot of Democrats run on.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I sort of feel bad about the amount of pixels that have been spilled
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: on relatively modest differences in electoral performance.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, just to psych myself up for a week of takes, like I went back and read.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the thing is, is that like progressives have been saying not
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: that like their way is only like a little bit worse at persuading swing voters,
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: but that like,
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: Voters want like that's what people are crying out for.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like Greg Kassar put out this press release that was like,
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: we've got to like follow my way to win.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: And just like you just you look at Kassar's electoral performance and you look
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: at James Tallarico's electoral performance and he's just like he does way worse.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: There's many things you could say on behalf of Greg Kassar's approach to politics,
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: which I assume would start with him saying that he believes he's correct
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: on the merits of various public policy issues.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: But like, you know, it's just not true that there's like
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: a secret working class constituency for this kind of thing who will turn out
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: for leftists but not for more moderates.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so it all gets into kind of mystification.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think we should take a break and then pivot to this
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: because the much more difficult questions to answer, I think,
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: are about what should you actually do?
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: When you have won elections and you are in office and you are not just in a realm
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: of like, what should I say? Right?
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because you can only do so many things.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: You face different kinds of choices and the stakes
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: on the substance are very important.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, Democrats have done really, really well.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think they've done better than most people thought they were going to do.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think they've done better than they themselves.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it now really raises the question of like,
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: how are they going to wield these majorities in Congress to accomplish something?
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, presumably all this money and effort was expended for like an actual reason.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it's a weighty obligation to try to deliver on whatever those reasons were.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: So we're going to talk on the other side about
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what a public- The future of American democracy.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean,
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: when you win the biggest landslide in- 50 plus years, maybe even more than that.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: The public is trying to tell you something about what they want you to do.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that there are some indications that Democrats are misconstruing things
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: a little bit and that this could be a problem.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're going to try to intervene before it's too late,
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: but we're going to make you sign up if you want to hear it.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: So it's almost like a second podcast.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: We already had a full one.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Come listen to part two, go to politics.fm, upgrade your subscription,
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: and we'll see you on the other side.