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As Trump and the Republicans try to take stock of their midterm losses, Hakeem Jeffries is asking House Democrats to elect him speaker. His proposed first 100 days include reversing the Medicaid cuts, restoring food-assistance funding, extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits, ending Trump’s tariffs, stopping the Iran war and banning members of Congress from trading stocks. As of late Wednesday, Jeffries said he hadn’t spoken with Trump or House Republican leaders since the election. The question is how much Democrats were elected because voters believe in Democratic leadership and how much they were elected because voters wanted a check on the Trump administration. If you listen to Jeffries, what Democrats essentially want to do is restore the funding that was removed to pay for the Big Beautiful Bill’s tax cuts. That gets back to the problem Democrats have whenever they talk about affordability and why people don’t tend to trust them on the economy. It’s not that they’re proposing tax increases here. They want to restore cuts that were made to fund tax cuts. Whether voters read that distinction into it, we don’t know. Democrats will have a large enough majority to move what they want through the House. The question is whether any of it gets signed, beginning with the December 11 government-funding deadline. Politics Politics Politics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. On the other side of the aisle, Mike Johnson won’t seek the House Republican leadership job in the next Congress. Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan are competing to lead Republicans in the minority after both unsuccessfully pursued the speakership in 2023, before Johnson emerged as the compromise choice. Austin Pfluger is also challenging Tom Emmer for whip as Republicans prepare for their November 10 leadership election. There’s jockeying on the Senate side too. Chuck Schumer appears to have the votes to remain leader, but Elizabeth Warren may try to move into the number-three position and become whip. Other Democratic senators could use the moment to extract guarantees from Schumer, including whether he’ll let them eliminate the filibuster. If Hawaii and Mississippi hold as they currently stand, Democrats would only need four Republicans to reach 60 votes. Finally, the first — but almost certainly not the last — Trump administration official has resigned. Harmeet Dhillon is leaving the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, saying she made the decision weeks ago but was asked by the White House to wait until after the midterms. She says she wasn’t pushed out and wants to return to private practice. There are also rumors around Marco Rubio. I’ve long said he wasn’t leaving the State Department until there was an American flag flying over Havana, but maybe the Iran war has dragged on as far as it’s going to and he no longer has the juice to do anything in Cuba. We’ll wait and see. Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:55 - Interview with Kirk Bado 00:26:10 - Update 00:27:18 - GOP Leadership 00:28:59 - Democrats 00:30:18 - Vance 00:31:56 - Interview with Kirk Bado, con’t 00:58:46 - Wrap-up This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/subscribe

(This episode is the final chunk of a four-hour election night livestream.) This is a blue tsunami — an absolute wipeout of Republican power in the House and Senate. When Talarico is winning Texas by 20 points, Democrats are leading in Kansas and South Carolina is competitive, there’s nobody safe outside of maybe Tennessee and Kentucky. Democrats have a real shot at ending up with somewhere around 53 to 55 Senate seats, possibly more depending on races like Alaska and Iowa. I thought polarization would keep these midterms closer, and I was wrong. Justice for pollsters — they did the damn thing. Take your vibes and shove them. Republicans are going to have to look back at a campaign that went to the culture-war well again and again without understanding why those messages worked in 2024. The “Kamala is for they/them, Trump is for you” ad worked because it combined public money, an unsympathetic person and something voters viewed as frivolous, all overlaid on doubts that Harris knew what she was doing. This time, Republicans just screamed that Democrats were going to transition your children. Nobody bought it. The border had already been “solved,” the Iran war never had a clear explanation, and Republicans let Democrats completely own affordability. Everybody said, “Let the man cook.” Well, the meal’s on fire, the kitchen’s on fire and everybody got burned. Politics Politics Politics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is the end of peak Trump power — the end of Trump as a cult-of-personality force capable of clearing the field and holding the party completely in line. He’ll still have a segment of the population that finds him persuasive, and Republicans will try to recobble parts of his 2024 coalition, but that version of MAGA is over. Now Democrats inherit the worst position in global politics: power. They can check Trump, force votes and attach priorities to government funding or defense authorization, but the real question is whether they fight for something effective or fight just to look like they’re fighting. They’ll call this a mandate for Democratic power. I think it was a vote against Republicans. Either way, the playtime’s over — the wide-open fight for 2028 begins now. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/subscribe

I defy anybody to feel like they have an accurate read on the vibes going into these midterms. The polls look electric for Democrats, even if there’s a general belief that they’re overrepresenting Democratic support. Republicans seem depressed as they realize that Trump beat the party into submission, and that the coalition that won in 2024 could only be unlocked by tying themselves completely to him. MAGA Inc. has spent money and Trump has been on the road, but the war in Iran is unpopular, inflation remains a problem and the economy hasn’t been solved. Then, with Democrats gassed up to the nines, Michigan broke completely loose: Haley Stevens endorsed Republican Mike Rogers over Abdul El-Sayed. El-Sayed beat Stevens in a primary that ended much closer than many people expected, and Stevens initially played the good soldier. But El-Sayed has run a campaign committed to his own point of view, even when reaching out could help him with voters who might have to hold their noses to support him. This is a common trait among the first candidates to break through from an electrified ideological movement. They’ve spent years believing the establishment strangled their momentum, so once they reach the big stage, they have a hard time shaking a hand. It’s something Trump is actually good at: he’ll scream a million nasty things while trying to win, but if the deal is the deal, he’ll shake hands afterward. El-Sayed hasn’t done that, and he’s struggled to make inroads with the Black community in Detroit and the Jewish community in the suburbs — precisely the voters for whom Stevens should’ve been a useful surrogate. Politics Politics Politics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. The situation boiled over after El-Sayed was asked during a debate whether Israel or Iran posed the greater danger to the United States. He called it a ridiculous hypothetical. Then Rebellion PAC aired an ad suggesting Americans couldn’t afford groceries because their money was going toward killing Palestinians, before ending with a play on Trump’s “they/them” ad. The “they” and “them” in this version weren’t pronouns — they were Israelis, Jews or Zionists, depending on how you interpreted it. Stevens saw the ad as rank antisemitism and demanded that El-Sayed denounce it. His answer was that he had nothing to do with the ad. That wasn’t good enough for her. In another era, somebody with institutional power inside the Democratic Party would’ve removed Stevens from the situation before it reached this point. Eleanor Roosevelt would’ve put her on a one-way trip to Hawaii with a belly full of lithium and told her she could come back when permitted. It wouldn’t matter whether Stevens was right or wrong — she simply couldn’t be allowed near the race. But nobody has that power now. Stevens’ fiancé announced that he was voting for Rogers. Stevens went on CNN and said theirs was a split household but that she was still voting for El-Sayed. El-Sayed responded that she was insisting on relitigating a long-decided primary. Party elders tried to arrange a unity event, nobody could get the camps to shut up, and Stevens ultimately went to a church with Rogers instead. The professional Democratic class is aghast because politics is a team sport. If Stevens put herself ahead of the team, then she betrayed everybody. But I’ve also heard from Never Trumpers who see her decision as proof that politics isn’t all sociopathic laundry — that people don’t have to walk blindly toward whichever candidate has the correct letter beside their name. If Stevens genuinely believes there’s an antisemitism problem inside the Democratic Party, then she shouldn’t have to stand beside El-Sayed when he won’t make even a minimal peace with her or the voters who supported her. That primary was close, and El-Sayed still needs some of those people. I’m leaning toward this not mattering in Michigan. I still suspect El-Sayed will win, even if it’s close, and he’ll take that as a mandate to purge the Haley Stevens wing of the party. But if he loses, the stories coming out of that campaign will be like somebody turning off the containment vault in Ghostbusters — ghouls flying everywhere. This is a loser-leaves-town match now: either Stevens is finished in Democratic politics, or El-Sayed gets fired into the sun. The larger question is about coalitions. We’re in a warlord era with very little allegiance to the greater party, and “me over we” can look either righteous or cowardly depending on where you stand. If Democrats begin chasing away high-propensity Jewish voters, it may not decide this election, but over time it could put states in play that wouldn’t normally be there. Chapters 00:00 - Intro 05:10 - Haley Stevens 30:54 - Wrap-up This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/subscribe

I’ve talked to a lot of really intelligent, analytical people, left, right and center, and nobody believes Republicans will keep both the House and the Senate. It’s a silly scenario. Dismissed. That leaves two possibilities: “win in name only,” with Democrats gaining 15 House seats and taking control but falling short in the Senate, or “my blue heaven,” with Democrats gaining more than 15 House seats and taking the Senate, too. On a bad map, that would be quite a big deal. A lot of the states now in play voted for Donald Trump by eight, nine, ten, fifteen points and up. As I think about my prediction, I can’t help but have Chuck Schumer on my mind. He didn’t begin the second Trump term feeling good. His party had lost the Senate, and other Democrats thought he was asleep at the wheel, part of an older generation that wasn’t going to get things done. He was forced into positions he wouldn’t otherwise have taken. He had to shut down the government twice after repeatedly destroying Republicans for doing exactly that. He’d been the adult in the room, and now, he had to righteously shake his fist in anger. That might not seem like a big deal, but senators take pride in their records. Every vote matters. Trust me — they keep track. Politics Politics Politics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. But even while he was embattled, Schumer hung on to probably his most defining foreign policy position: his support for Israel. He also has a long history of supporting corrective action against Iran, specifically in tandem with Israel and particularly over a buildup of missiles. Then the president ordered military strikes on Iran. That’s a tremendously unpopular position within Schumer’s party, so there’s only so much he can say publicly. But I’d have to imagine privately he wasn’t sad about it. And then a funny thing happens. That war spiraled into a series of blockades, driving up the price of almost everything in America and sending Trump’s approval ratings through the basement. Schumer went from being chased around by his own party to getting his cake and eating it, too: a war with Iran, and he gets to run against it. It’s good to be Chuck. Suddenly Democrats are asking whether they can win Texas, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi or South Carolina. If only a few fall their way, Schumer gets to be Senate majority leader again. And when it comes to my prediction? I think he will. I’ve stuck with “win in name only” this entire time. I correctly picked Trump and the Republicans in 2024, and I’ve had to be dragged toward changing my mind now. But here’s the thing: I thought we’d see the polls close as Election Day approached. I expected Republican enthusiasm, in a time as polarized as this, to pick up as voters started thinking about Supreme Court nominations and the possibility of losing Texas. I thought they’d press their voter advantage in these states. But we haven’t seen it. At a certain point, intellectual honesty requires a decision: Do I believe we’re in a polling-error cycle where everybody is wrong, or do I believe this tsunami real? I don’t quite understand a polling environment that puts Trump below where he was after January 6th, and I don’t fully believe Texas will flip blue. But my final prediction is that Democrats will gain more than 15 House seats and win at least 51 Senate seats. Schumer becomes majority leader again. This is an eleventh-hour change of heart, but I think my blue heaven is going to happen: a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House. Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:05 - Final CNN Polling 00:05:24 - Interview with Reese Gorman 00:40:43 - Economy Growth 00:42:36 - California Ballots 00:44:25 - Vivek-Acton Polling 00:47:04 - Justin’s Final Predictions 00:57:10 - Wrap-up This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/subscribe

Two-thirds of Israeli voters had cast ballots four hours before polls closed Tuesday, the highest turnout at that stage since 1973, according to Axios. Election officials ordered polling stations to accelerate voting after reports of long lines, saying anyone arriving by 10 p.m. local time would be allowed to cast a ballot. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seeks another term, with 61 seats needed for a parliamentary majority. This is Israel’s first election since the October 7th attacks in 2023. I’m not going to pretend that I’m an expert in the Knesset or Israeli coalitions, which will essentially decide who becomes prime minister. It does seem, at this hour, that Netanyahu will end his extraordinarily consequential reign at the helm of that nation — one that looked like it was over right before October 7th. I don’t know if the guy coming in will make anybody who didn’t like Netanyahu happier. The issues they seem to disagree on are more domestic issues, not what Americans who talk about Israel a lot particularly care about. He’s probably more aligned with Netanyahu on prosecuting the war in Gaza, at the very least. The question would be how far it extends into Iran and what victory against Iran would be defined as. Politics Politics Politics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Still, if this is indeed the end for Bibi, it’s been a hell of a ride. I don’t know if anybody other than Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir would be more consequential leaders for that nation, but I’d leave that up to the Israeli scholars. We don’t know the outcome yet, but it does, at least right now, look like curtains for Netanyahu. Meanwhile, President Trump has changed the list of Canadian products subject to an additional 50% tariff, with revisions taking effect Friday, October 30th. A proclamation on the 23rd removes some products from duty and adds others. Republican Susan Collins says nine exempted categories will help Maine’s blueberry, potato, apple and seaweed industries. Those categories include packaging materials, refrigeration equipment and agricultural machinery. The exemptions apply to the additional duty imposed over Canada’s treatment of American vehicles. Separate tariffs remain in place. There’s also late-breaking reporting that negotiations are underway to try to avert some of the steel tariffs between the two countries. I’ve thought this would be brought to a brink and then eventually resolved. I tend to still think that’s the case, but we’re getting a little late in the innings to assume so. Finally, Marco Rubio said street protests wouldn’t produce democracy in Venezuela following opposition leader María Corina Machado’s return to Caracas. Machado is demanding elections in 2027, while U.S. officials want changes to the Supreme Court and Electoral Council, along with progress on debt, before a vote. Rubio said the current authorities were meeting agreed deadlines but didn’t publicly specify an election date, warning against derailing the process. Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:18 - Midterm Map Madness, Part One 00:47:52 - Update 00:48:26 - Israel’s Elections 00:51:16 - Canadian Tariffs 00:52:36 - Venezuela 00:55:00 - Midterm Map Madness, Part Two 01:39:37 - Wrap-up This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/subscribe

Mike Rogers is trying to tie Abdul El-Sayed to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah and other radical Islamic organizations. El-Sayed isn’t known to be a Muslim Brotherhood member, but unearthed tweets from his sister suggest their mother helped organize or work with the group. Other parts of the attack rely on El-Sayed’s relationship with organizations like CAIR and the allegations Republicans have made against them. Politically, the strategy makes sense. Rogers needs to split Black voters in Detroit and Jewish voters in the suburbs away from the Democratic coalition. He’s trying to make El-Sayed “more Arab” and exploit tensions inside that coalition. El-Sayed clearly understands the reputation problem — he’s already running ads with his white grandparents to reassure voters. But Michigan is reportedly a Democrat-plus-11 environment, and Republicans haven’t won a Senate race there in many years. Politics Politics Politics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Compare that with the attack Vivek Ramaswamy is running against Amy Acton in Ohio. His ad effectively asks voters to believe Acton’s estranged mother over her and to believe that a 12-year-old lied about being sexually assaulted. That’s supposed to prove Acton has always been a liar. It’s a deeply ugly message without the same kind of political logic behind it. Trump endorsed the ad on Truth Social, and JD Vance defended it by saying the campaign wouldn’t have run it unless it thought the ad would work. That’s like farting and then defending the smell as proof of success. Vance went even further, trying to sell the gigantic crap on the rug as a feature of the Feng Shui. Ramaswamy is running a bad campaign, and I don’t think he’s going to become governor of Ohio. John Husted is now in peril too, even after Sherrod Brown’s last campaign demonstrated that Ohio is a Republican state. The environment matters, but candidates can still make terrible decisions. Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro 00:03:45 - Mike Rogers vs. Vivek Strategies 00:13:30 - Interview with Abby Turner 00:42:11 - Update 00:44:27 - DCCC 00:45:52 - Susie Wiles 00:49:44 - Canada Tariffs 00:50:58 - Interview with Ed Tarnowski 01:20:11 - Wrap-up This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/subscribe

I drove from Austin to Waco along I-35, one of the most heavily traveled corridors in Texas, and James Talarico is dominating the billboard game. I don’t love the billboards themselves because the text is too small to read safely from a distance, but the themes are smart and clear: Talarico will protect healthcare, and Talarico will lower costs. One is the issue of the day — affordability — and the other is an issue Democrats are generally trusted on. Ken Paxton was almost nonexistent. The biggest Republican billboard I saw looked like something a random person had purchased: “Democrats now support communism, and Republicans don’t.” That belongs more on your uncle’s Facebook page than a gigantic roadside billboard. I don’t know how much billboards matter, but when these campaigns and their super PACs are spending roughly half a billion dollars, it’s worth noting that one side is buying more of them. Politics Politics Politics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. The obvious Republican voters I met in Waco knew Paxton, had been in rooms with him, and didn’t like him. They were Cornyn voters and wished they could vote for Cornyn again. But they’re still voting for Paxton because they view Talarico as that odious. Outside Austin, people see the city as a problem and Talarico as a product of that problem. I’ve officially concluded that Paxton is running a bad campaign and deserves to lose. Based solely on his campaign, Talarico should become the next senator from Texas. I still don’t think he will. Now for my semiannual warning: Looking at early-voting trends is bad, and only bad people do it. They don’t reliably predict final results, and partisans use them to create engagement or scare people into voting. That said, Democrats ran through the brick wall on opening day. In North Carolina, Democrats cast roughly 327,000 votes to Republicans’ 151,000. Georgia’s opening-day turnout was up 40 percent from 2022. Iowa Republicans held the majority of returned ballots, while Texas saw nearly record first-day voting. These are good signs for Democrats, but we don’t know whether they represent a continuing freight train or enthusiastic voters casting their ballots early and leaving the rest of the electorate to revert to normal patterns. The dirty ads are also arriving. An anti-Amy Acton video raised her estrangement from her mother, allowing Acton to explain that her mother sided with a man Acton says molested her as a child. That seems like an extraordinary gift to Acton. In Maine, an ad against Troy Jackson includes the lyric, “If he’ll F his own family, he’ll F yours too.” In Texas, an ad attacks Brandon Herrera — the “AK Guy” — for demonstrating weapons connected to high-profile crimes, including the Uvalde shooting in the district he wants to represent. This is playoff-caliber filth. Then there’s the apparent sequel to the unsolicited Texas text messages promoting transgender healthcare. A new flyer presents itself as trans advocacy, directs minors toward legal organizations and out-of-state care information, and advertises events around Texas. I have no idea whether any of it is authentic. But in 2024, we saw one organization run opposing messages on Israel to shake up a race, and that effort was eventually traced to Elon Musk. This is only an unqualified guess — a feeling-the-Force thing — but I suspect America PAC, or a group funded by it, may be behind these messages. Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:59 - Waco 00:09:22 - Early Election Results 00:13:40 - Crazy Midterm Ads 00:22:57 - Andrew Heaton on Libertarians 00:58:48 - Update 00:59:44 - Ukraine 01:03:09 - Republicans’ Red Wall Defense 01:06:45 - Supreme Court and Distilling 01:07:58 - Laurence Leamer on JFK’s Mistresses 01:32:34 - Wrap-up This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/subscribe

Former Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan recently said, “We’re still running transgender ads, and it’s just not resonating.” Republicans are trying to recreate the most iconic attack of 2024 — Kamala Harris is for they/them, Donald Trump is for you — by targeting James Talarico’s old progressive positions. But if the ads aren’t moving the polls and voters would rather discuss gas prices or inflation, what good are they? Maybe somebody decided to take the left-hand path and raise the issue’s salience another way. Texans have begun receiving messages that say, “Questions about gender-affirming care in Texas? Start here. You can get the care you need,” followed by a link to the Transgender Education Network of Texas. That sounds like something a transgender advocacy organization might send. The problem is that TENT says it didn’t write, authorize, approve, or distribute the messages. The organization says it has received hate and threats, and it has sent cease-and-desist notices to two messaging companies while demanding to know who hired them. Republican State Representative Jeff Leach has asked Attorney General Ken Paxton to investigate. Politics Politics Politics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. It seems pretty clear what somebody is trying to accomplish. Paxton needs every possible Republican to come home, hold their nose, and vote for him because the issues at stake are supposedly bigger than their dislike of Ken Paxton. I don’t know whether it’ll work, and we don’t yet know who paid for it, but this trick is dirty as hell. Trump is already preparing an explanation for a Paxton loss, naming John Cornyn and Karl Rove as the people he’ll blame. Meanwhile, Talarico just gave an extended television performance without any of the fogginess his critics had insinuated. He aced it 11 out of 10. A Reuters survey also asked 26 Senate campaigns whether they would accept November’s results unconditionally. Fourteen said yes: nine Democrats, one independent, and four Republicans. Both major candidates in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, and New Hampshire agreed. Neither Talarico nor Paxton responded in Texas. This used to be simple. An agreed-upon arbiter called the race, the candidates spoke, and somebody conceded. Now we have little trust in the system and even less interest in rebuilding it. From Trump to Stacey Abrams and everybody in between, candidates who refuse to believe they lost should be shamed. You lost. You’re a loser. Run again and maybe you’ll become a winner. The Justice Department has demanded that California segregate ballots belonging to people federal officials suspect aren’t citizens. California Secretary of State Shirley Weber says her office received no list and was given 48 hours to investigate. Los Angeles election officials received a password-protected thumb drive but hadn’t accessed it because of security protocols, and the Justice Department didn’t say how many people were involved. California disputes the demand’s legal basis and says being flagged doesn’t prove someone is ineligible or voted illegally. This connects directly to the collapse in trust: Trump’s side assumes California permits rampant illegal voting, while liberals have no incentive to treat anything from his administration seriously. Finally, Social Security benefits will rise 3.6 percent in 2027, adding an average of $75 per month to retirement benefits. Nearly 72 million beneficiaries will receive the increase beginning in January, while higher payments for roughly 7.3 million Supplemental Security Income recipients begin December 31. The adjustment is calculated under federal law using an inflation index for urban wage earners and clerical workers. So if you’re looking for good news from inflation, at least Social Security recipients are getting more money. Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro 00:04:19 - Texas Dirty Trick 00:10:28 - Interview with Karol Markowicz 00:51:36 - Update 00:54:10 - Accepting Election Results 00:55:48 - California Ballots 00:57:37 - Social Security 00:58:49 - Interview with Katie Harbath 01:42:29 - Wrap-up This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/subscribe

A race that should’ve barely garnered any attention outside its home state is turning into one of the hottest of the midterms, as Republican Senator Roger Marshall is in the fight of his life against Democrat Adam Hamilton. Six months ago, Democratic hopes for the Senate were centered on Maine, Ohio, and Michigan, maybe even Florida at the outer edges. Nobody was talking about Kansas. Now Emerson has Hamilton ahead 45–43, the New York Times/Siena poll has the race tied at 45, and YouGov has Hamilton leading 48–45. These are consistent, margin-of-error leads for a Democrat. Marshall is a throwback religious conservative from the pre-Trump era who’s plugged himself into the MAGA universe through faith-and-family politics. He has the votes you’d expect, including a controversial one involving January 6. Hamilton is a centrist Democrat who founded his own church in 1990 with four people in a borrowed space. He’s using that religious background and his charisma as a leader of men to say, “I’m not asking you to vote for a Democrat. I’m asking you to vote for common sense.” Politics Politics Politics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Hamilton wants congressional approval for tariffs, more agricultural export promotion, and year-round guest-worker visas. Those positions push directly against Trump’s tariffs and hard-line immigration policies. Marshall, meanwhile, has to defend Trump during what’s being called “Farmageddon.” Diesel prices can only stay this high for so long. Restrictions on selling crops can only remain this punitive before farmers go crazy. Marshall’s medical career has also become a liability. An investigation found that he sued more than 700 patients over unpaid medical debt, and court records showed 81 arrests after people missed court appearances connected to those cases. His side says the collections were necessary to sustain medical care and that nobody was criminally convicted simply for being unable to pay. But Hamilton has an effective ad featuring a woman who says she was arrested while eight months pregnant after missing a payment. “I’m a doctor” is usually a good political pitch. Marshall found a way to make it a negative. This isn’t simply the national environment. Republicans face similar problems with farmers, diesel, and tariffs in Iowa, but Ashley Hinson is still leading her Democratic opponent and running ahead of the Republican gubernatorial candidate. Kansas is the combination of a bad environment and an incumbent who’s never been tested suddenly finding himself in the race of his life. The cavalry is arriving: Marshall has hired Chris Grant of Big Dog Strategies, and the Senate Leadership Fund is bringing in nearly $8.2 million, possibly redirected from Georgia and North Carolina. My gut says Kansas is much closer than it should be but doesn’t tip. Raw political gravity and the Republican registration advantage probably carry Marshall through. Maybe. The broader Republican strategy is now triage. Two Republican super PACs are withdrawing support from Tom Kean Jr. and Mariannette Miller-Meeks, leaving both incumbents without the air cover they expected. Republicans aren’t trying to flip Democratic seats anymore; they’re defending their own and attempting to minimize the losses. Trump is even heading to Wasilla to campaign for Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan against Mary Peltola. Second-term presidents aren’t usually eager to do a full-court press, let alone fly to Alaska. Trump deserves credit for doing the work, but the fact that he’s campaigning in red states tells you where Republican priorities are. They’re no longer on offense. Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:45 - James Talarico 00:13:09 - Kimberly Guilfoyle 00:14:24 - Kansas Senate Race 00:25:30 - Update 00:26:22 - Republican Super PACs 00:27:25 - Trump Heads to Alaska 00:29:58 - DOGE 00:31:02 - Interview with Ryan McBeth This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/subscribe

We’re less than a month from Election Day, which means this is when polls should begin to move. The money has been spent, the persuasion is out there, and the surrogates have said what they’re going to say. A race sitting at five or six points needs to move toward three or two if it’s going to become competitive. Otherwise, it starts widening to the point where we can call it done. Michigan is essentially tied. Four recent polls have Abdul El-Sayed leading Mike Rogers by one or two points, while a smaller survey put El-Sayed ahead by five. I’m inclined to throw that smaller poll out. El-Sayed also appears to be distancing himself from Hasan Piker after campaigning with him during the primary. If he’s trying to get away from that association now, somebody internally is showing him scary numbers. My verdict: Michigan is tightening — like two hands coming together on a first date. Politics Politics Politics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Georgia and North Carolina are going the other way. Jon Ossoff leads by eight to 10 points in three recent Georgia polls. That race is wider than the Grand Canyon and only getting wider. In North Carolina, Roy Cooper leads by five to 12 points, and Michael Whatley has temporarily pulled his television ads. His campaign says it’s merely adjusting whom it targets before making a late push. I say: liar, liar, pants on fire. That race is wider than a waistband on Thanksgiving, with more green-bean casserole still coming. Texas is telling two different stories. Large polls have James Talarico ahead by six, while others show him leading by only one or two. My gut, living here, is that this race isn’t as tight as Beto O’Rourke versus Ted Cruz. Talarico is popular, but he isn’t a cult figure, and winning statewide as a Democrat would be historic. On the other hand, Ken Paxton is a lump of dirty clothes with the charisma of a wooden spoon. So is Texas tightening or widening? I don’t know. It might be staying the same while being pulled equally in opposite directions. Kansas is unquestionably tightening. Recent polls range from Democrat Hamilton leading by three to Republican Roger Marshall leading by one, with another showing a tie. An earlier poll had Marshall ahead by five. If you start at Marshall plus five and end at Hamilton plus three, there’s only one way to describe that: tighter than new underwear. It’s all bunching up in there. The big picture is ugly for Republicans. They’re effectively giving up on Georgia and North Carolina while betting their hopes on Michigan. Candidate quality matters — Ossoff has become a feared candidate, Cooper has won statewide, and Rogers is strong enough that he might lead in a better environment. But the environment isn’t better. Republicans have very few bright spots: races are tightening where they shouldn’t be, and they’re widening in places where Republicans desperately need them to stop stretching. Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro 00:04:18 - Widening and Tightening 00:20:55 - Update/Marco Rubio in Greece 00:25:58 - Microsoft H1B 00:28:36 - Iran 00:32:13 - Interview with Dave Levinthal 01:10:52 - Wrap-up This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/subscribe

This wasn’t supposed to be a good Senate year for Democrats. They’re competing in states Trump won, sometimes by double digits, and Maine looked like their best pickup opportunity. But if you believe the RealClearPolitics averages, we’re going to see a blue Senate. Democrats currently lead by 0.7 points in Iowa and Maine, 1.6 in Minnesota, and 1.8 in Alaska, while Kansas Republican Roger Marshall leads by only one. Recent polling is even worse for Republicans: Marist has Troy Jackson up four in Maine and Josh Turek up eight in Iowa, while a New York Times/Siena poll has Mary Peltola up seven in Alaska and Kansas tied. My hypothesis is that polling is simply getting worse. It’s harder to reach people, fewer people are willing to participate, and the public averages are increasingly flooded with internal polling or something that looks like it. An interest group aligned with a candidate releases a poll, it enters the bloodstream, and it shifts the aggregate. At the same time, reputable pollsters may be overcorrecting based on whom they missed in the previous presidential election. Politics Politics Politics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. I took five of the most competitive Senate races from 2014, 2018, and 2022 and compared the final RealClearPolitics averages with the actual results. In 2014, the average error across those races was 2.31 points. North Carolina polling had Democrat Kay Hagan ahead of Thom Tillis by 0.7, but Tillis won by roughly 1.5. The biggest miss came in Iowa, where Joni Ernst was expected to win by 2.3 and instead won by six. The misses got worse in 2018, when the average error reached about 4.5 points. Polling had Rick Scott losing in Florida, Martha McSally beating Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona, Claire McCaskill and Josh Hawley essentially tied in Missouri, and a Democrat winning in Indiana. Hawley and the Indiana Republican both won by nearly six points, while Democrat Jacky Rosen won Nevada by five. When those polls missed, they missed horrendously. In 2022, the average error across the five races was 3.92 points. Polling had Pennsylvania essentially tied, with Mehmet Oz slightly ahead, before John Fetterman won by about five. It had Herschel Walker beating Raphael Warnock, who ultimately won the race, and Adam Laxalt leading Catherine Cortez Masto by 3.5 points in Nevada before Cortez Masto won by nearly one. These weren’t all misses in the same partisan direction. The polling right now unquestionably shows a blue wave. To believe otherwise, you have to convince yourself that unreachable rural Republicans will come home even though they don’t want to talk to pollsters. I’m skeptical of rosy Democratic numbers in deep-red states like Iowa and Kansas, but in Ohio, Michigan, and perhaps Pennsylvania, the polls may actually be undercounting Democratic support. A three- or four-point miss is entirely plausible and would change many of these races. The problem for anyone relying on that possibility is that there’s no guarantee which way the miss goes. Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:48 - Polling 00:15:11 - Update 00:16:00 - Trump Ads 00:18:28 - Midterm Spending 00:20:31 - Supreme Court Climate Change 00:22:57 - Interview with JD Durkin 00:57:45 - Wrap-up This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/subscribe

A Democratic outside group called Defend the Vote has launched a $7 million statewide television campaign attacking Senator John Husted’s ties to data-center developers and making him the face of AI data centers in Ohio. Husted knows he’s vulnerable on this. That’s why he attached his name to the Ratepayer Protection Act, which was designed to prevent regular citizens from paying higher electricity costs because of data centers. The bill passed the House but failed procedurally in the Senate, 57–43, because it needed 60 votes. Most people don’t really know why data centers are supposed to be bad beyond the fact that big tech wants them and nobody knows what that means for their community. There’s plenty of misinformation, but the issue has still become a galvanizing cross-party force. The strongest Democratic argument is to frame data centers as corruption — payback, kickbacks, graft, and politicians acting as supplicants to big tech. Otherwise, it’s mostly a NIMBY concern. But if that concern reaches the exurbs, Democrats will gladly take those votes because they don’t normally get them. Politics Politics Politics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Ohio used to be one of the swingiest swing states before moving firmly into the Republican column during the Trump era. Now it’s close again. One poll has Sherrod Brown leading Husted by nearly four points, another has him up eight, another has him up 2.6, and the latest has him ahead by one. The race appears to be narrowing, but this is still a state Trump won comfortably in 2024 and one where nobody spent much time, money, or effort trying to elect Kamala Harris. Democrats may have an even better opportunity in the governor’s race. Amy Acton leads Vivek Ramaswamy by six points in one poll and nine in another, and she’s above 50 percent in both. Another poll has Ramaswamy ahead by one, so this isn’t universal, but we may be seeing the degradation of the Trump coalition — voters who believed in Trump’s brand of populism and now feel disillusioned or betrayed. Acton is also the more charismatic candidate. Ramaswamy is compelling when he’s on the attack, but when he isn’t tearing somebody down, he’s odd. He’s in this position because Trump was popular in Ohio. Now he may have to eat a gigantic sandwich full of excrement. Democrats also appear to be addressing their money problem in the House. Their two main outside groups raised a combined $230 million during the third quarter, the best quarter they’ve ever had, bringing their cycle total to $514 million. House Majority PAC plans to spend more than $291 million on advertising before Election Day. Democrats were hurting, and now they’ll be able to play on the air. The question is where they can still buy space, because many of those slots were reserved months ago. Trump, meanwhile, is using investment announcements and campaign visits to help vulnerable Republicans. He announced a $54 billion Alaska gas project with Senator Dan Sullivan and promoted a proposed $15 billion steel plant in Iowa alongside Ashley Hinson. I don’t think anyone will be able to say Trump was lazy during these midterms. The Republican fear was that he’d sense things were going badly, pull back, stop spending money, and start trashing his own candidates. Instead, he understands this is the last time he’ll be on the ballot, even by proxy, and he’s getting off his ass. Whether it’ll matter is another question. Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:57 - Ohio 00:09:06 - Update 00:09:40 - Dem Fundraising 00:11:35 - Reflecting Pool 00:12:46 - Trump’s Midterm Push 00:15:50 - Interview with Kirk Bado 00:55:05 - Emails and Wrap-up This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/subscribe

Right now, the prediction markets have James Talarico at about 60–40, and the polling shows either a tied race or one where he’s slightly ahead of Ken Paxton. But I live in the most liberal enclave of Texas, and this doesn’t feel like Beto mania. You see Talarico signs around Austin, but you don’t see the same cultural energy. Maybe that’s by design. Talarico is trying to appeal more to the middle, and Beto lost in a favorable environment during Trump’s first midterm. The biggest wind at Talarico’s back is the environment. Trump is historically unpopular, gas prices are high, inflation is persistent, and people are paying more to get the same or less. That’s a recipe for killing presidential and party momentum. It would help Republicans if they had a dynamic candidate, but Paxton is a big fat bullfrog who mostly sits on a log and puffs his neck. Mr. Saturday Night he isn’t, and his lack of charisma may be the least of his problems. He’s rife with scandal, including a divorce from his very loyal wife on biblical grounds. Politics Politics Politics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. My crystallized view is that these are two weak candidates. Talarico is weak because of who he is: a slight guy from the most progressive place in a state that isn’t progressive, with years of statements from the legislature that can and will be used against him. He took progressive positions during a progressive age that are no longer fashionable. That would normally be enough to sink a candidate, but it hasn’t because I think he’s running a good campaign. The upside comparison is Brock Purdy — undersized, underqualified, carrying baggage from his past, but succeeding when he finally gets his shot. Talarico’s campaign still seems unsure how to sell him. One ad puts him in a rocking chair on a front porch somewhere outside Austin, trying to reassure religious voters that he’s just like everyday Texans. But the chair’s back towers over his head, making an already slight candidate look even smaller. Paxton’s campaign, meanwhile, stinks on ice. Until MAGA Inc. and the Senate Leadership Fund arrived, he barely had a pitch. He doesn’t talk to the camera, doesn’t appear in his own ads, and hasn’t offered a basic argument about what he accomplished as attorney general. The outside groups are now doing that work for him. The coalition problem cuts both ways. Talarico needs the Democratic city centers, Black voters around Houston, and Hispanics along the border who moved toward Trump in 2024. But Jasmine Crockett still hasn’t bridged the gap between Talarico and Black voters after losing the primary. She released an endorsement list without his name on it. Paxton needs the suburbs, rural Texas, and as many Trump-voting Hispanics as possible, but John Cornyn seems perfectly happy to watch him crash and burn after losing the Republican primary. Cornyn and Crockett should form the Sore Losers Guild. So, does Talarico have a shot? Yes, but everything has to go right. He got the opponent, environment, and campaigns he wanted, but it’s like needing a coin to land tails 10 times — getting nine doesn’t matter if the last flip is heads. Texas remains highly polarized, voters still dislike the Democratic Party, the Republican advantage may improve if gas prices fall, and Democrats are being badly outspent. I don’t think backing Talarico is ridiculous, but with plus money available on a Republican in Texas, I’d feel like a real horse’s ass on election night if I passed it up. Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:45 - Texas 00:23:07 - Update 00:24:18 - America.gov 00:27:39 - Iran 00:32:32 - AI 00:34:28 - Interview with Juliegrace Brufke 01:15:34 - Wrap-up This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/subscribe

For my money, the most accurate television depiction of politics isn’t House of Cards — villainous, murky, lethal — or The West Wing — quippy, nerdy, idealistic. It’s Veep: mistake-prone, profane egos slapping lewdly against each other while supplicants protect the fragile facade of elected officials. When a story reinforces that idea, we’ve got to talk about it. Mary Peltola is running as a strong Democratic candidate for Senate in Alaska. She’s well-liked statewide, has cross-party appeal, and doesn’t talk or act like a normal Democrat. The polling bears out the idea that she could win. But a new New York Times story, based on interviews with nine former staffers, says she isn’t the easiest person to work for. Politics Politics Politics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Former aides described angry and profane outbursts, slurs, firings, and one incident in which Peltola allegedly shoved a male employee in the chest. Four said they heard her use a homophobic slur, which her campaign denies. Former aides and text messages also show her using “retarded.” In one message about Planned Parenthood, she wrote, “I hope Planned Parenthood knows that if we don’t win, it’s more their loss than ours. F**k those b*****s.” In another, she wrote of a local Planned Parenthood board member, “I hope she dies of a botched abortion.” Staffers said Peltola sometimes jumped up and down, stomped her feet, and swept stacks of papers from her desk in frustration — something two people independently compared to a scene from Veep. They also said she would “nothing” people she believed had wronged her. One text read, “F**k that retard. Honestly, I nothing him.” Her campaign said she regrets using that word but denied that she used the homophobic slur. Nearly every Republican political operative I spoke with had the same reaction: She’s going to win now. Democrats desperately want to sweep this under the rug, while Republicans seem to think she sounds kind of cool and not uptight. Some Democrats have even criticized the staffers, which isn’t something you’ve seen much over the last decade. My assumption is that this is revenge for the campaign shakeup, when Peltola fired staffers after a fight over her signage operation. Some of the allegations also feel padded. Peltola asked aides to feed her family’s chameleon, Meatball, live crickets and eventually brought Meatball into the office to make that easier. I’d be shocked if members of Congress with dogs or cats had never relied on aides to feed them. Politics is a stressful business filled with ambitious members, colorful characters, and offices that are easier or harder to work in. Does any of this mean Peltola is a good person or a good boss? That’s up to you. All I’ll say is this: I’ve heard worse. Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro 00:03:12 - Mary Peltola (uncensored segment) 00:20:13 - Kevin Ryan on Culture 01:01:17 - Update 01:01:35 - WH Press Pool 01:02:49 - War Powers 01:05:27 - US-China Trade Truce 01:08:01 - Kevin Ryan on Culture, con’t 01:55:44 - Wrap-up This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/subscribe

I’m struggling to find anything that dissuades me from a position I think is probably too aggressive: Democrats are going to ransack. They’re going to pillage. They’re going to take things that aren’t usually theirs. The polling, the energy, and the environment all point in that direction, and I haven’t seen the midair maneuvering Republicans would need to put together a coherent message. Their argument is basically, “You’re really going to turn the keys back over to those guys? They’re lunatics and they’ve learned no lessons.” That’ll work with some of the base, but I don’t think it’ll be enough. I took a random sampling of 15 polls and looked at the five issues Americans say they care about most. Number five is foreign affairs and war. Number four is democracy and democratic values. Number three is healthcare. Number two is immigration. Number one, of course, is the economy. Foreign affairs and war aren’t showing up because people are pumped about the war in Iran. Democracy is an almost entirely Democratic-signifying issue, and voters nearly always trust Democrats more on healthcare. Politics Politics Politics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Immigration is the first good news for Republicans because nobody trusts Democrats on immigration. Some Democratic voters are worried about overenforcement, and even a Republican congresswoman from Miami has told Trump that he’s listening to the wrong advisers and going too far. But by and large, Republicans can argue that they’re correcting something that’s been wrong for a long time. Then you get to the economy, which is normally sewn into the DNA of the Republican Party. The problem is that when voters say “economy” right now, they mean inflation and gas prices — two areas where things have come in hotter than Trump swore they would. The rest of the top issues include crime, Social Security, housing affordability, government ethics and reform, the SAVE America Act, Trump himself, and abortion. I don’t see many things there that Republicans want to discuss. I see plenty that Democrats would like to discuss because Republicans have taken a position and now have to defend their solutions. It’s easier to run against a problem than defend a solution, and Trump is very good at doing things. He explores every legal option to do a thing, which creates a lot of surface area for Democrats to run against. Across the last 10 midterms, the five most common issues were crime and drugs, immigration, foreign affairs and war, healthcare, and the economy. The economy appeared in every one. But some issues that used to matter have disappeared. Morals and family values were major concerns in 1994, 1998, and 2006, but they’ve completely fallen off the political radar. If anything, shedding the morals-and-family-values label helped make the Republican Party more potent. Gun policy was important in 2018 and 2022 but didn’t make the current top 10. The federal budget deficit made the list only in 1986. Nobody cares about it now, which is why nobody is particularly interested in changing it. In 2018, the top issue was healthcare, followed by immigration, the economy, and gun policy. In 2022, it was inflation, followed by abortion, crime, gun policy, and immigration. This year looks a little more like the Bush era, with foreign wars and foreign policy returning to the center. But the biggest difference is enthusiasm. Democrats are doing jumping jacks, keeping their heart rates up, ready to run through the door like the Kool-Aid Man to vote. I don’t see that same enthusiasm among Republicans, and I don’t see a message telling voters what Republicans will do about the things they care about most — at least not yet. Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:40 - Midterm Issues 00:18:04 - Update 00:19:55 - Paramount Settlement 00:23:09 - Trump and Mamdani 00:27:17 - Trump TV and the Press Pool 00:31:50 - Interview with Gabe Fleisher 01:16:09 - Wrap-up This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/subscribe