11/2/26: BP Full Midterm Predictions, Haley Stevens Endorses Rogers

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Catch up on Breaking Points with our free daily newsletter. You'll get our breakdown of every daily story. And lots of links in your inbox every day. So head over to BreakingPoints.com. You can sign up for the newsletter at the top for free today. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. It is midterms week. They are happening tomorrow. So we have an entirely midterm-focused show, including we're going to be joined by Ryan and Emily. We're all going to reveal our Senate map predictions. There's some pretty wild new polls out this morning also from Atlas Intel, which has been the most accurate pollster in recent years, and New York Times-Siena, which is also considered one of the sort of big gold standard polls. Some really wild numbers there. We'll get into all of that. We're also, of course, taking a look at the complete insanity unfolding in the state of Michigan with Haley Stevens. And her fiance and whatever the hell is going on with that. So we'll break all of that down for you. Rich Barris, the MAGA pollster, is going to join us to really take us through some of his polling and help us understand where any sort of misses could come in because it is kind of increasingly more art than science. These pollsters are making individual decisions about who to include, how to weight their samples, et cetera. So he's going to break that down for us. We are also going to take a look at the early vote and what we can say about who is turning out to be the best pollster. We're going to take a look at the early vote and what we can say about who is turning out to be the best pollster. And then we've got a panel for you. We've got one Democratic strategist, Vaz Shakir, who works with Bernie Sanders and many others, and Ryan Gerduski on the right. They have picked some of their favorite ads, both on the right and on the left. Socrates and I have also pilled a couple of ads. We're going to dig in with them about what works about them, what some of the big themes have been in the election thus far. So really excited about that. That's right. People always like the panels, right? Remember our rising days? Thank you to everybody who's been subscribing to the show, BreakingPoints.com. We initially have a new thing that we can show you. Let's put it up here on the screen. Not only do we have our free month trial, of course we will be live, but more importantly for our premium subscribers, we will have an after-hours stream exclusively for our premiums after our public stream goes down, where you can watch our immediate reactions. Additionally, the next morning, while we're doing the show, we will actually do it live, and we will do it live, though, only for our premium subscribers, who of course then can see not only how the sausage and all of that is done, but also just to give you the most real-time update whenever that video comes out a little bit later. If you don't want to sign up for any of that, that's fine, even though it is literally free for an entire month. You can just go ahead and hit subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you're listening to this podcast, please share an episode with a friend. But with that, let's bring in the dream team, Ryan and Emily, for the four of us. All right, Ryan and Emily, it's good to see you guys. We've got our new slew of polls. Let's start New York Times, Siena. What do we have here? It is the final drop from the New York Times. Here we have, and this is the actual shocker, in my opinion, is El Sayed, 53, Rogers, 42, Texas, Tallarico, 50, Paxton, 43, Maine, Troy Jackson, 51, Susan Collins, 45, Ohio, Sherrod Brown, 49, Houston, 44, Kansas, another shocker, Hamilton at 49, Marshall at 44, Alaska, Peltola at 48, Sullivan, 46, and lastly, Iowa, 48, 47. So basically, you have the Democrat leading in all of the swing states that they're calling. Pretty crazy to even say Kansas, Iowa, Alaska, Texas are swing states. Noteworthy, though, as they are flagging that the Iowa one is squarely within the margin of error. But Ryan, first of all, we're going to get to your map prediction. You're predicting a Dem blowout, a little bit of a teaser. There for you. What do you think of all of this? Well, I don't know if we have this handy either, but Nate Cohn had said that several months ago, they redid their the way that they were waiting the likely voter screen because they are nervous that over the years they have underestimated Republican performance. And so if they had gone with the way that they were counting, you know, their screen before, you'd have what, you know, they just thought it was ridiculous. I think, you know, I think they had outside up by 14. They had Kansas close to double digits and so on. And so they're really using their guts here. They're kind of putting their pundit brain and you have, you know, you got to do some level of that. The question is always how much in between art and science you land. They seem to be going a lot more art because they're saying, we don't think it could possibly be this much of a blowout. We must be missing a significant number of Republican voters who we can't find, but are going to win. They are going to turn out on election day because they're not, you know, they're not turning out in mass during early voting. But if that, but there's no evidence and there's no articulation for why that would be other than it just makes sense. Like this is America. There's a lot of Republicans. They're going to vote. They've got to show up. But if that assumption turns out to be untrue, then the partisan lean pushes up somewhere between 14 and some polls getting up even closer to like 18 for Democrats. And you have a, a bunch of races that shouldn't be in play. And then people aren't even talking about all of a sudden you're watching them at like 11 PM being like, whoa, I don't, who, who's this? Who's this Democrat? What's, what's their, what's their last name? What is a police jurist? And I don't know. I'll hope, hopefully I'll learn that by Tuesday, but the Louisiana Democratic candidate is a farmer and a police jurist. Some, somebody know what that is? Police jurist of his parish. What a state, what a state. I don't even know what a parish is. - We're going to do that research between today and tomorrow. Well, and one of the factors here that's showing up also that I think didn't get discussed nearly enough was the Supreme Court decision that upended majority minority districts. And you know, that decision was centered in Louisiana. And by all accounts, the black turnout in throughout the deep South has been surging like crazy where you have, you know, most white voters turning out like it's a midterm and black voters turning out like it's a presidential election. So in states where you've got a large black population, Mississippi comes to mind, Louisiana comes to mind, South Carolina comes to mind, that could end up being a major factor. Let's put the Atlas Intel poll up here. This is the last element in this block, A9, because these are also, I mean, these, this is really crazy. So this is their generic ballot. They now have Democrats with a 14 point lead on the generic ballot. Atlas Intel, has been the most accurate pollster in recent cycles in cycles where the mainstream polls were underestimating Republicans, underestimating Trump Trump specifically, they were pretty much on the money. So when you see something like this, you go, wow, could that be possible? Because yeah, if you're talking about a 14 point generic ballot lead, that's an even greater swing from 2024 'cause Donald Trump won the popular vote. So you're talking about something like a 16 point swing, towards Democrats. Yes, that will put certainly Kansas, Nebraska, South Carolina, Louisiana. I mean, there's a whole slew of states then that become possible. And it does seem insane to imagine that that could actually be the case. The most compelling story that I've heard from anyone about how to think about this is from Nate Silver. He was talking about, okay, so if you take 2018, that midterm as a baseline, Democrats won the popular vote by more than eight points. So it was a, you know, heavily democratic electorate. Now, because of the Senate map, that wasn't enough for them to avoid actually losing some Senate seats in red states. But that was at a time when Trump was still really popular on the economy. And he still had his base lockstep with him and fired up and ready to go. It was all Brett Kavanaugh thing that brought a ton of people, Republicans out to the polls as well. So if you think D plus eight, more than D plus eight is possible in that, in that environment, and then you add on to it over $6, gas is over $4, unpopular war, Epstein, Trump deeply, deeply unpopular overall, but specifically on the economy in a way he has never been before, then does it really feel crazy to say, okay, that could get you three more points. That could get you up to like D plus 11 or something like that. That doesn't seem insane to me when you consider that in the last 2018 environment, it was D plus eight. It doesn't seem insane to me that this would be worse than what we were looking at then because the conditions are so much worse than what we were looking at then. Nothing seems insane, honestly, because I feel like the polls are right now, if they're our window into public sentiment, they're so fogged up and murky. But I think we're both, everyone is like relatively prepared for standard polling error that we've seen over the last 10 years. And I think reasonably so, like if you look at a state like Iowa, you see a polling within the margin of error. Maybe what we see is in a normal standard polling error environment, Iowa stays red. Everyone would kind of expect that and it would make sense. On the other hand, what I think what a lot of people in the kind of mainstream media are not prepared for, and I know you guys are going to talk to Rich about this because you've talked to him about it before, is that actually there could be under polling of Democrats. And that probably sounds insane to some Republicans. But when you look at the places that even Republican pollsters say they have a hard time polling, particularly Republicans, rural areas, places like, guess what, Kansas, places like Nebraska, places like Maine. Places like Texas, actually. Well, typically that would mean they feel like they're under sampling Republicans. And so they're going to weight Trump friendly Republicans a little bit higher. That goes into the formula that Crystal, I think, rightfully described as an art. But what could be happening this time around is if you think about that type of voter and what might have been the thing that got them to vote Obama and then Trump, or might've been the thing that got them to vote Trump for the first time, it might've had something to do with affordability and no new wars. Seriously. Yeah. And so those are the types of voters, it seems to me, that might actually be flipping in a place like Nebraska or in a place like Texas. And the pollsters, because they're trying to compensate for years of those people voting Republican, they might actually be under weighting the extent to which some of those hard to find typical Trump voters have flipped this cycle because the things that Trump and Republicans are vulnerable on are just really, really hard to find. So I don't know that that's the case, but I think there's been a lack of preparation for the possibility of that tomorrow. I think that's fair, Emily. I think for where I kind of am is, look, things just seem, I mean, let's just take, let's take Crystal's point, obviously, correctly. D plus, what'd you say? Eight. I think I had it in front of me. It's 8.2. It's 6 in 2018. Let's even assume D plus 11. All of that entirely reasonable. And yet we are talking in states like Kansas, in Iowa, in Nebraska, in Texas, even where Trump won by double digits. So even D plus 11 doesn't necessarily make up for all of that. D plus 14, even in some cases, right? Especially in the deep, deep red states or Louisiana, which apparently, you know, some people are saying is on the table. It is not normal to see states, especially in the deep, deep red states, I think it's only been a couple of times in 25 years where you've had states vote double digit and then vote for the opposing party. And in the Tea Party polarized era, really, I mean, if you think 2010 onward, America is just a dramatically polarized nation. I find it just incredibly difficult. So I am very willing to believe, and in fact, you know, teaser for my map, I think Texas is going to vote for James Tallarico. From what I understand from my sources down in Texas, though, I think Greg Abbott is going to hold on. That is consistent with a singular kind of candidate quality issue. I think it's going to hold on. With Ken Paxton, in addition to some, let's say, D plus 11 environment. However, if you were to add on to that, if you were to really believe like the wave scenario, then I would say, OK, Inyosa is going to win. Like, ultimately, you will have to get non-college white boomers who are some of the non-college white boomer men specifically, one of the most reliable, you know, Republican voting blocs of all time. And yes, they don't necessarily have to vote in some of these states to be able to come to the table. But I think it's going to hold on. And for a Democrat to win. But in some of these states like South Carolina or Kansas, Nebraska, elsewhere, they actually are going to have to straight up just vote Democrat or vote independent. In some cases, I think that could happen, you know, combined, Emily. But I'm finding it just a little bit hard to believe. I'm curious what you guys, Ryan, I know you're the most bullish, actually. Why don't you respond to that point? I mean, you really think a guy who's been voting Republican his entire life is going to come out and vote D? I just I don't see it. I don't. I have heard from a couple of people who have those people on Sirius XM who are longtime Republicans. You're not wrong. That's just anecdotal. Anecdotal. That is that is anecdotal. That's true. But I'm talking about en masse, the whole nation, deep red states. I mean, these people are and they're Republican for not just economic issues. They're Republican on cultural issues. These are like going to church every day. That's just a tough pill to swallow, Ryan. The thing that really screwed Democrats in 2010 was not necessarily that Republicans turned out at higher margins than they used to. It was that Democrats turned out at higher margins than they used to. It was that Democrats turned out at Democrats were completely demoralized and didn't come out that term. So I think that guy who's voted Republican his entire life, like Emily said, some of them absolutely are going to vote Democratic because they want this guy to feel pain. Others, I think, will just stay home because not only are you unhappy with the way that he has governed, but he also is covering up the Epstein file. So why like to go out of your way and go ahead and do that? So I think it's a we were talking earlier about 1946. This was the only time there was a president who was more hated about Harry Truman than Trump is now, according to the polls. And what happened in that midterm, the New Deal coalition, which people assumed was going to be like a hundred year coalition. And in fact, it did stitch back together and carry on for another like two decades after that. Republicans that were everybody was so mad at Harry Truman, they wiped out the New Deal coalition. And they weren't mad at Harry Truman for the same reasons they're mad at Trump. Harry Truman is incompetent. You know, he wasn't FDR. There's a lot of problems with the economy after World War Two. They're mad at Trump for a very specific Trump related reason. This guy made two promises. I'm going to end the forever wars. And instead, I'm going to focus on getting prices down for you. Instead, he started a new war. And that new war, very directly and obviously created painful price increases. And then on top of that, you got the Epstein files. And along the way, he, his family and all his friends got fantastically rich in the same arena that is causing so many people economic pain. Yes. So I feel like he might have he might be in a worse situation than Truman, because also back in 46, there was less partisan stickiness. So people were willing to do whatever they wanted to do. And so he was able to do what he wanted to do. And he was willing to move a little bit more with how they felt about the economy and the culture and move away from their party. Whereas now there's a lot more partisan stickiness. So Trump benefits from that. Like, if he were in that 46 era right now, and had done all of this, he his approval rating might be down at like 12%. Wow. So I just feel like the structural hurricane that he himself produced by his own decisions is just it's something that you can't really factor in because it's kind of historically unprecedented. But the facts, let's move forward from there. Fall and comfort foods go hand in hand. Grandma's mac and cheese, soup and grilled cheese. But how do you create those cozy moments while still maintaining your health goals? Hero bread can help. Hero bread, soft, fluffy, flavorful sliced breads, bagels, tortillas, and hero noodles have only zero to five grams net carbs and up to 19 grams of protein per serving. So go ahead, enjoy some cheesy mac and cheese. Enjoy that stack sandwich with hero bread for lunch, or start your day with a fully loaded bagel. Because with hero bread, there's none of the stiff baked goods you expect from better for your brands. And right now, hero bread is offering 10% off your order. Go to hero.co and use code I heart to check out. That's h e r o.co code I heart. All figures per serving of hero bread. See nutrition facts on hero.co for sodium and sugar content. All right, let's go ahead and get to our predictions. I'll go ahead and start with mine, guys, if you want to throw my map up on the screen. And in some ways, this is a very boring and safe map. In other ways, this map is completely insane. And I think this is part of what we've lost sight of here. Going into this election cycle, no one thought that Democrats winning the Senate was on the table. Why? Because it requires winning states like Texas, winning states like Alaska, winning states like Ohio, which, you know, Ohio is one of the states that has fled from the Democratic Party the fastest out of the entire nation. And yet my map is just really based on what the polling averages are at this point. So I have Democrats winning Ohio. I have obviously North Carolina. I have them holding on to Michigan. I have them flipping Maine. I have them winning Alaska. You know, the ones I have, them winning Texas. The ones that I struggled with a little bit were Iowa, which appears to be very, very close. But I just, you know, thought that because Iowa is such a rural state and that's been so difficult for Democrats, I have this intuition that they'll vote for the governor, but then there will be enough who will split their ticket for the Republican that they'll feel like they're, you know, be able to send their message through voting for the Democratic governor. But it may be a bridge too far to vote for two Democrats. So I have Republican, holding on to Iowa. The other ones that I had a hard time with are Kansas and Nebraska. At this point, the polling does seem to pretty consistently show Democrats winning Kansas. And we've seen the way that Kansas, first of all, they had the whole disastrous brownback era that apparently they're still traumatized over, which really demonstrated the disastrous nature of hardcore Republican governance. Second of all, it's a state that has been slowly shifting a little bit more Democratic, more purple over time. They did vote in favor of a pro-choice ballot initiative right after Roe versus Wade. So I went Kansas, yes. Nebraska, a little bit of a bridge too far. Part of my thinking with Dan Osborne is the first time that he ran, I think he was really able to hold on to that independent label. This time, second time around, people are more thinking of like, yeah, this is just really a Democrat who's calling himself an independent. It feels like it's a little bit too far for him to be able to pull it off. But would I be surprised if Dan Osborne ends up winning? No. So all of that said, that puts us at 53 seats for Democrats. If this is the map at the end of the night, even though we've all had our expectations now shifted so dramatically that we're like, what about Mississippi? What about Arkansas? What about Florida? This will be an insanely, insanely good result for Democrats and one that would have been inconceivable. The Kansas would flip. It would have been inconceivable a year ago. Oh, not even a year ago. I think a few months ago. Absolutely. That is the- Yeah. Actual shocker. Okay. Let me put mine up there. I picked a few upsets. So I have Texas going Tallarico. This is based on my own sources that are currently in the state. They think Abbott will hang on, but they do Republican crossover vote that I talked about. That is what I am hearing from my sources in Texas. GOP, you also have, we're going to talk a little bit later in the show about a titanic Hispanic early vote that has come in predominantly younger people and sometimes first time voters. So I think that's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing for first time Hispanic voters. I don't think any of that looks good for Ken Paxton in particular. You also have a rural Texas GOP problem, which I think Ryan Gerduski can speak to. Some of the other upsets. My big upset actually that I think I picked is Nebraska, Dan Osborne. And this is where, you know, Crystal, this is where I differed a little bit is Dan Osborne lost in 2024 in a red wave year by six points. And so currently the New York Times, which is the only real high quality poll we have out of Nebraska, has him down by six. It just doesn't track to me. And so I think that's a good thing. That Osborne could be down by six, the same margin that he lost by in 2024. I'm just assuming that it's going to be a little bit closer. Rick, it's literally a billionaire. You've got all the diesel and the fertilizer prices. So that's what I'm going to call a very, very close upset. The other upset I have here is Maine. And that's just purely a vibes based decision. This is just on my own gut. I just don't think Troy Jackson has the sauce. And Troy, Susan Collins, she's just defied the odds too many times. I'm gonna have to believe it. I'll tell you why I couldn't get there on South Carolina. Trump won it by 17.9 points. Do we really believe there's going to be an 18 point swing? They've actually put money into the state. Darlene Graham, horrible candidate. I do think she'll win, but it'll be a squeaker. Kansas, it's the same thing. For Kansas, for a Democrat to win Kansas, those traditional Republican voters are going to have to straight up vote Democrat. I just don't see it as of right now. Let me think. Are there any other upsets? I think largely that I pulled there. So ultimately, where I land is 51 for the Democrats, 48 for the Republicans, and one for the independents. Although we do expect- You got who's dead of the beautiful buns going down? Yeah. I mean, that one, here's the thing. Ohio, I don't even know if we have to spend a ton of time on it. This is just a Sherrod Brown election. This is where I'm not so sure a Democrat would necessarily, I mean, I think they would be competitive and we'll especially see in the gubernatorial race with Amy Acton. But even there, you have a candidate problem with Vivek Ramaswamy. Sherrod Brown is just tailor made for that state. I mean, the guy has just dramatically outperformed Republican expectations every single time that he's been on the ballot. And now you have kind of what is an expected blue wave year. There's not been a single poll, even Ohio GOP. I checked in a little bit. They felt relatively competitive a couple of weeks ago, but the Vivek ad actually did really screw Ohio GOP down ballot. And I just don't, I don't see it. So, I mean, as Crystal said, even then with all of that, this is still a very, very good night. For the Democrats, but it still makes them a little bit more vulnerable if this happens. So that's, that's kind of where I stand. I'm still, I'm not buying the, the, the blue tsunami scenario. You're not blue. You're not blue Nami pill. I'm not blue Nami pill just yet. Emily, what do you got? I'm kind of a mix of both of you. And so I'm agreeing with Crystal on Kansas, particularly because I think it's a candidate quality on the Democratic side with Adam Hamilton that makes it easier for a lot of, you know, sort of libertarian, Kansans to check their ballot off for the Democrat this time around. I think that's also true in Ohio. I also do just want to pause. The fact that we are talking about Ohio is a disaster for Republicans. Yes, it's Ohio. We all know the historical patterns of Ohio. We know that Sherrod Brown is a talented politician. Sherrod Brown lost. This was one of the most important quote, unquote, political scalps of the entire Trump coalition era since he first came on the stage, because this is where the Republicans were claiming the mantle of the new world. We're talking about a working class, multiracial coalition like that was Ohio was ground zero for that. And so, yes, there are candidate quality questions, but there's also candidate quality wins for the Democrats to think about here. And I think Ohio and Kansas are good examples of that. I have Nebraska staying red, despite the fact that Nebraska Republicans insist on nominating like Gilded Age villains for those positions, I think is going to be a tough one to pull off. I have Texas. I think I'm the only one among us that has Texas staying red. Yeah. Talk through it. Well, so I agonized over Texas and South Carolina. I think they're both very, very close. I will not be surprised if they go red or blue. But with Texas, I think I just have different sourcing than soccer. And keep in mind that soccer is literally from Texas when you're assessing the quality of our sourcing, to be honest. So, but I have sources that are saying they think Texas reverts on Election Day to normal Texas behavior. That's not what we've seen in the run up to Election Day, of course, but they kind of believe that they can get over the that get over that hump on Election Day. So that's why I went red with Texas. But honestly, I thought South Carolina was a really, really, really close call because of candidate quality, which is what everybody's going to be talking about on Wednesday. But just some obvious blunders. And of course, I have Michigan blue, too. I think do we all have Michigan blue? Yeah, we do. Yeah, I mean, for all the national race, I was just curious, we guys think Mike Rogers lost his state in 2024. I always just feel like I'm taking crazy pills. This, this loser literally lost in a red shirt. Okay, but Sherrod Brown, you know, if we're going to look at that 2024 to today, Sherrod Brown lost with a red wave is what I'm talking about. I'm saying Mike Rogers lost in a red wave year in a red wave. What are we doing? It's idiotic. It's not even the best joke. Yep. Yep. And Ryan's drop site story yesterday. I mean, I was just marveling at it that his spokespersons are literally working for the Israeli government. Like, just think of the politics. I'm just talking about this on a political level, like the moral level. I think we obviously all agree on, but the political level that your nominees, spokespersons, are working for the Israeli government in this environment, in this environment, how dumb do you have to be of the Republican Party? Insane. NBC News reporting for America. code "iHeart." All figures per service of hero bread see nutrition facts on hero.co for sodium and sugar content with my map if you went like if you went state by state on some of these then you're like all right your life depends on getting this right i would do probably individually a bunch of these differently but going by my analysis earlier where i was talking about this being a historic like maybe even once in a century kind of wave my thinking was okay well what happens in that event like when it comes to maine like saga i kind of agree with you like troy jackson just he does not have the sauce like he doesn't have it on the other hand the numbers coming out of the early vote and all of the polling that we see is like wow people seem to be okay with him not having the sauce uh but again like i'm not terribly confident but thinking thinking through what what we were talking about earlier that that we're talking about earlier that people hate trump as much as they've hated any president probably even more than nixon like at this point this is what that that would look like if you promise no new wars i'm gonna get prices down and you do wars and you drive prices up so like montana for instance they've got this this alina bankhead democrat is in the race but she's just getting washed out there's an independent there who there have been polls showing the independent vote so it's like you know what if there is this massive wave and people are frustrated that's the kind of seat that kind of shocks you um uh arkansas is the one i'm the least confident about this is this is tom cotton um this haley what's haley schaffner is the uh farmer running against him she was there's some polls have had her competitive tom cotton put out a poll showing him you know ahead i think there was another poll that had her down by like nine so that's that's a tough one but if you think that all of these other things come true they're like well then arkansas really is in play right um so that that's that's why i kind of correlate them all together here south carolina in in multiple ways and so in louisiana and south carolina trump um you know kicked out uh uh he kicked out cassidy in louisiana uh lindsey graham dies in south carolina and then he basically jammed darlene graham through the primary so in both of those states he created this level of resentment among some voters and put forward candidates who are just not that not good uh and makes it more competitive in louisiana uh you know they've got julie letlow who's like a kind of whatever candidate uh in mississippi what cindy hyde smith she's run a worse campaign than roger marshall cindy hyde smith is a mississippi senator who you know basically has never had to run any serious right this is our first ever literally ever and she's like yeah yeah you're right beef prices are high there are other proteins for instance there's salmon like and then she was asked again about that like hey that was really a embarrassing gaffe is there anything you want to say about that and she's like no my job is to educate people that there are lots of proteins you can choose from yeah you know if beef is too expensive you know there's there's other things you can do it's like if you're in mississippi at that point like i i don't want to look at your face anymore like i don't want i don't want you part of my life uh even despite all of that i just i think it would be amazing to see angie nixon win she's like a generational political talent i and we definitely haven't seen the last of her uh and there could be enough swing vote um it certainly in the hispanic vote down there that could put her over the top but texas is ju i mean florida is just so like locked in yeah it's just very hard for me very ideal even in this even in this situation i don't want you to be part of my life even in this even in this environment yes correct yeah it's it's how like deeply ideological florida voters tend to be that makes it seem difficult to me now i do think david jolly has a chance i agree actually um and both because you've got apparently the panhandle uh you know his primary opponent won a lot of those counties um you know a little bit of sprinkle a little bit of southern racism in there and then you also have i think angie nixon really benefits david jolly because she's helping to you know get the vote in florida and she's helping to you know get the vote in florida and she's helping to you know get the vote in florida really drive up black turnout in the state and so um having her on the ticket i think actually is a real asset to him so i that one looks like it's close and actually we're going to cover later in the show that republicans are kind of freaking out about the what they're seeing in the early vote so far in florida specifically for the governor's race yeah what do we think about maria alvarez alzar that seat because i think that's a seat to watch tomorrow night i know we'll be paying close attention to it i mean we'll pay very close attention i haven't seen any good polling really out of it i mean that's part of the issue too now it's a vibe now that florida is no longer you know a battleground we don't really get me i was just looking at rcp they have a single one with byron donalds and uh new york times i think had one but so it's just there's not a lot of good stuff uh out of there there could be some shock i mean look there is a shocker every election night and i think that's what kind of the fun uh part of all of this remember i mean i remember at the desk watching hispanics vote republican you know for the first time in south texas i was like what the hell is going on uh i'll never forget that because it was such a paradigm shift i'm sure we're gonna see uh something else uh out of this there will definitely be one senate race which is a squeaker or a surprise and then last thing you know before we move on let's just remind everybody about uh calci odds and polymarket odds and how disastrous that they have been uh over the primary cycle there's some new uh research from my friends over the campaign for accountability and for stop gambling which show that actually have not been very predictive at all in 2026 so we will not be using them here uh on our show and we encourage you not to do so i just want to ask ryan um on your map if your map something like your map comes true democrats end up with you know with the independence in a super majority in the senate it's like oh my god we didn't think this was possible anymore right that we thought this died with the obama era and that was the last gasp of this what do you think it means in terms of you know our politics moving forward what is that going to look like is trump you know is trump going to be impeached what's the reckoning going to be in the republican are you going to have republicans break from trump like what have what are your thoughts about how that all plays out if we wake up in that ryan grimm map reality well then trump nukes iran a week later right that's right um if that you know it's he doesn't respond well to defeat yeah this is this is not somebody who takes that well or processes it well there has their democrats are trying to punt the war conversation into january or february um but there's a see-all and there's a see-through in terms of you know what's going to happen in the that needs to be passed in in december so i think it's december 11th so i think immediately the pressure comes from uh democratic voters and independent voters and republicans who switched because of the war say like no no more money for the war like we're done with this war like like stop it and then you have trump who who with netanyahu because he has his own political necessities back in israel are going to desperately try to restart these major combat operations and how they do that in the face of this in this hypothetical scenario this absolutely historic resounding rejection of him doing that is a really interesting question because he already kind of broke the kind of democratic small d democratic social contract that we have in the u.s here that you at least lie the public into war like you make some case it's made up but you make a case and then you go to war he didn't even do that this time so this time he wouldn't be making a case and he'd be doing it in the face of just epic opposition and to your point you're only at that point five votes away from like what you need for impeachment right and you got you know there's lisa murkowski you can kind of probably count on hers uh i guess you can't really count on fetterman um but you know there's grassley does he vote for impeachment at this point like it's it becomes like an open question where you're like starting to do the vote count you're like hold on 67 is not like out of the range of possibility here because he's talking about going back to war okay but not to be uh so purely obviously for the country that you know in that scenario you would say that's a better thing would you guys actually want to impeach trump jd would obviously end the war and he might do better and then he could easily win if that happened so i mean if you want to win is that exactly what you want to do some of us yeah would like the you know the war to end all the further human civilization into humor what would you really put it past humor and others to be like maybe we roll the dice on this one uh with all that yeah it's certainly it's that that's why there has to be just enormous pressure on sure like because you're right that like the the the k-fob of like losing a close fight right um is better than winning uh is something that you gotta be on guard for i just have two quick things to add to that first of all because this people weren't paying attention i think to the political situation on the ground we got a lot of questions about whether people would support hakeem jeffries i don't think we had enough conversations because nobody was taking quite seriously for long enough i feel like we did but especially like the mainstream people who are out in the field the idea that democrats could retake the senate there were not enough questions about where people are going to land on chuck schumer second of all who does john fetterman caucus with if the senate is tied yeah that's an actually interesting question yeah yeah uh wait what last thing is we're doing scenarios what do you guys think if republicans hold on if they keep control of the senate what do you guys think i mean what does that tell us about the country I think it just lies in polarization. It felt to me it was rude. Yeah, I think that's Ryan at this point. Well, I just, sorry, one last thought on this because we haven't raised it and I do think it's important to raise it, which is I think Ryan's map is a little premature. I don't, I'm not ready, obviously, to go all the way with the Democratic supermajority. However, I do think that coalition that is contemplated in that map is on the table for the future because of AI. Because of AI. Because of how existential it is. Because of how much it crosses, you know, partisan, typical partisan coalitions, the direct impact in people's lives with the data centers, the fears about joblessness, which are increasingly coming to fruition, a looming potential financial catastrophe. And the fact that Trump and the Republicans have done everything, Trump in particular, but dragging the Republicans along with him, have done everything to say, this is my baby. We're pushing this forward off to the races. You know, if you don't like data centers in your town, what did he say? You're poor and stupid or something like that. So I do think there is a world in which you have those coalitions come together and you have that level of a small D Democratic backlash against the, you know, the AI overlords, the tech barons and the party that helped usher all of that in. So to me, that's coming a little bit down the road. To bolster Crystal's point, Fox News yesterday had an issue by issue poll. Iran war was very, very high. AI was actually higher than immigration. AI has overtaken immigration in the top of voting priorities. Okay, let's get to Haley Stevens. It's the rage bait. We got clear facts. Hero Bread can help. Hero Bread's soft, fluffy, flavorful sliced breads, bagels, tortillas, and hero noodles have only zero to five grams net carbs and up to 19 grams of protein per serving. So go ahead. Enjoy some cheesy mac and cheese. Enjoy that stacked sandwich with Hero Bread for lunch. Or start your day with a fully loaded bagel. Because with Hero Bread, there's none of the stiff baked goods you expect from better for you brands. Go to hero.co and use code IHEART at checkout. That's H-E-R-O dot C-O, code IHEART. All sorts of drama unfolding in the great state of Michigan as we barrel towards Election Day. Haley Stevens, Abdul El-Sayed's primary, defeated primary opponent in spite of the tens of millions of APAC dollars that flowed into that race. She initially had embraced Abdul right after the primary and everyone was like, okay, good for you. Great, unity, yay, let's go. And then here in the middle of the night, in the final week, she started playing footsie with the idea of endorsing Mike Rogers. And after a whole lot of drama, yesterday, she finally pulled the trigger and out and out, went to a black church event with him, praised him for what he is going to do for black business owners, and then overtly endorsed him and said she was voting for him. Last night, she was pressed on CNN with Anderson Cooper about how and when she made this decision because there were all sorts of Democratic members of Congress and close friends of her who were like, I literally talked to her hours before she did this and she swore up and down. She was still with Abdul. So Anderson is pushing her on that and obviously the very negative things she had previously said about the man that she is now in league with and endorsing, that would be Mike Rogers. Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of how that all played out. Back in August, you posted on social media, quote, Mike Rogers will be another rubber stamp for Donald Trump's dangerous agenda. We can't afford to do that. We can't afford to give MAGA another Senate seat in November. How do you, why is it okay now? Why can you afford now to give MAGA another Senate seat in November? Well, why is it okay to have the Democratic Party and a top nominee, you know, ejecting, you know, this type of, or injecting rather, this type of anger and lack of kindness? That's all. I'm one Democrat. Okay, so it's the anger and lack of kindness, that's what you're focusing on. And there's others who feel the same way. So, you know, I'm one Democrat. The anger and lack of kindness. I'm sorry, I don't want to talk over you. No, no, that's okay. No, no, it sounds like you're upset with me too, Anderson. No, I'm not. I'm just, you're not really answering any of my questions. So, it's somewhat frustrating. And basically, and Ryan, I'll let you react to this. Basically, over the course of the 14-minute interview, which was a complete train wreck, even Van Jones afterwards was like, well, that was painful to watch. And Debbie Dingell came on afterwards and said, that was the most painful interview I have ever sat through. She could not react to that. She could not really articulate why she had changed her opinion so suddenly. There's the looming presence of this reportedly toxic fiancé, very pro-Israel fiancé, in the picture as well. There's a Haley Stevens friend who posted on Twitter that he had, the fiancé had taken Haley's phone and exhibited this very toxic and controlling behavior. So, I mean, look, she's a grown woman responsible for her own actions, but that plays as a factor in here too. Ryan, what the hell do you think is going on here? And what do you think? What do you think the impact is going to be on the ground in Michigan? We're hearing from now a ton of her former staff and a bunch of them were former as of like the last day. Yeah. Caitlin Legacki, who was, you know, fired from the campaign after it was revealed that she worked for Palantir, I thought put it well in an interview last night where she said, look, we saw this throughout the campaign the entire time. Like in May, kind of out of nowhere, this guy Jason kind of comes into her life and he starts giving her, you know, really horrible political advice all the time. And then he will give her some talking points and then we will road test those talking points in kind of a mock interview. And she'd say the talking points would completely fall apart upon first contact with any reality. And then the staff would say, okay, that didn't work. Thanks, Jason. Let's try something a little bit different here so that it can actually survive a two-minute interview with CNN, let alone a 14-minute interview. They didn't, they weren't around her. It was just him. And so he clearly sent her in with a couple of talking points. One, like a burden has been lifted. Another, I'm just one Democrat. So those were the talking points. Obviously, neither of those survives any contact with an interview. Like, what do you mean you're just one Democrat? Like, you also won 700,000 votes in the primary and you're here on CNN talking about it. And so it just, it just, it's devolved from there. You have, you have more psychobabble coming out of Democrats than we're really used to hearing in scenarios like this. You know, people like Debbie Dingell and Mallory McMurrow and lots of others saying that they're like genuinely worried about her bringing up this weird, toxic relationship. It's truly unusual because there really isn't anybody who's making like the rational case. But I do think that there was a rational amount of pressure that got her to a place to make an, an irrational decision, which was the donor class in, in private, but not, not very much private, has been pretty clear over the last several months that they're comfortable with a Republican House and a Republican Senate if the alternative is Abdul El-Sayed and this, this new block of socialists having like a substantial kind of sway over the party. James Carville, who does an enormous amount of fundraising for Mary Potbon. Mary Pat Bonner, who's one of the biggest Democratic fundraisers. Like he said it out loud because he's old man losing his filter. He said out loud, I'd rather have a Republican majority than have a Democratic majority that, that gives, you know, the DSA candidates power. So that's real. And those are who Haley Stevens operates with. Like those, those, those are her people. There was this incredible moment in one of the local papers where he was, where, you know, she and her husband at dinner with friends and the former governor, and they, and the husband is berating her and says to her, you know, you, they, they, they keep saying they, like they supported you all the way through this primary and then you lost and you immediately endorsed him. And they feel betrayed by that. They feel like let down by you. They feel like you didn't stand up for them. He doesn't. He doesn't justify who the they is, but it's like, and everybody at the dinner was saying how uncomfortable it was that he's berating her kind of in a semi-public way and yelling at her. And the former governor who was a Democrat is like, that's what we do. You lose the primary, you endorse the Democrat. But clearly she was under enormous pressure over the past several months and buckled under it. - Yeah. Here is a mashup. Some of her video, Abdul's response and much more. Let's take a look. Hey, Michigan. As you may have seen, our Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, Abdul, said that I was no longer welcome in his campaign and that I should stay away. And he's right. And that's why I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the United States Senate today. I don't belong in Abdul's campaign. I do not stand with Hassan Piker, who gets trafficked on our college campuses. I know what the Senate's going to look like. I'm not trying to be the soothsayer on it. I'm not trying to be the soothsayer on anything other than the integrity of being honest with people. When someone says to you, you are not welcome in my campaign, you take the message. And that's what Abdul said. I just want to say this. This is courage in politics in America today. My time in politics, blaming a certain group of people for all of your problems, that sounds like 1933. It doesn't sound like 1920. It doesn't sound like 1926. And it has consequences for those communities. There's a big group of Democrats for Rogers. A lot of them are in my congressional district. There are a lot of people across this beautiful state. And of course, Abdul has been running his campaign. He's been working really hard. I don't want to undermine that. I just want to be honest about where I am. Look, nothing is perfect. Nothing is perfect. Can you just very quickly, when did you guys? Did you have any conversations prior to this? What a scene. She's getting called a traitor there in the press conference. Emily, I mean, this is an all-time messy woman. Like, at this point. Unbothered diva. She is. Just wow. In terms of what's going on with her. It is shocking because what her fiancé says is emotive for Mike Rogers. She says, I'm still with Abdul. As of, Ryan, you were saying late last night, she's on the phone. With Jamie Raskin being like, I'm voting for Abdul. Saturday night. Sorry, Saturday night. Like, I'm voting for Abdul. And then she goes to church in the morning. Something even, I think she just spoke to him. She got that extra hour of dreams. Yeah, but it's that extra hour of dreams. What does she dream about? Israel. Israel came to her in her dreams. Right. Well, and also, yeah, her staff showed up to the Clyburn-Abdul unity event because that's where they had been told by her that she was going to be going. So, and someone else had said they talked to her literally at 8 a.m. on Sunday. And she's, no, no, I'm still with Abdul. Two hours later, she's at this event with Mike Rogers. There can only be one explanation. Let's roll B5. And in the United States Congress, I will continue to fight for the people of Israel. I will continue to fight for Israel's existence. Israel comes to me in my dreams. I see Israel's future. And I know that Israel will continue. I will continue to exist for the Jewish people. There you go. This is a good clip. Anderson Cooper literally asked her, did something come to you in your dreams? Did you guys see that she also was like, there's been so much obsession with Iran, so much obsession with foreign conflicts in that same interview. I'm like, you seem to be the one who's pretty obsessed with that. Lady, there's a foreign agent in this press conference that you're giving, literally. Two even. Yeah, two foreign agents in the Mike Rogers press conference that you did. And you can see her bold. The one that Ryan identified in the dropside story, bolt. When someone says Haley Stevens is a traitor, she bolts in that clip. People can go rewind it. But I do just want to make two points. I was pinging this off source last night with knowledge in this race particularly. And the notion now that the closing message of the Rogers campaign is so focused on Haley Stevens and a foreign conflict. It's taking oxygen away, serious oxygen away when it comes to like local media coverage, especially from his message on the. Like he's now mired in this personal drama that Haley Stevens has fomented along with him, of course, but they're now talking mostly about foreign policy and Haley Stevens. The reason she struggled in that Anderson Cooper interview is that the video she put out was pretty much centering her decision to flip flop squarely on being disinvited rather than saying all of these substantive policy differences just added up. Not that we would necessarily believe. But she's saying she couldn't take the hate, but it was also really just she got disinvited. And that's why the Anderson Cooper interview was a disaster for her. Like it doesn't look believable when it's overnight and you got just you had just gotten disinvited and you're saying he's a hateful guy. And it's like, why were you campaigning with him up until a couple hours before? So it's not good for the Rogers campaign. Actually, I mean, one source told me it can't hurt, but it actually maybe can if all you're talking about in the last 48 hours is hateful. Haley Stevens. I think it could possibly hurt because I think Crystal's heard about this polling, too, that all of the internal polling from both the Democratic super PAC and also Abdul was that the Muslim Brotherhood and all the like Islamophobic stuff was landing and that he was taking on water from from these attacks. And Mike Rogers was really leaning, leaning into them. And he was getting help from Democrats in pushing those. So it didn't look like it was just coming from him. But because of the way Stevens did this now. Everybody is lockstep rallying around Abdul al-Assad and calling Mike Rogers out for being like a bigoted, racist, hateful candidate. And to Emily's point, it's really drowns out what the message for him that was causing some real damage, which was this like he's a secret Muslim Brotherhood member. Yeah, it's distracting from their closing message of blatant bigotry. Effectively, there was one other piece I saw today, which is that apparently there was some relationship with AOC. We're hateful. Haley Stevens had her feelings hurt and she didn't get her text message read for two years or something crazy like that. So but the overall portrait, I think to anybody who's looking at this at all reasonably is just that like she's bitter and her feelings were hurt. And, you know, that's what she effectively admitted to in that video. She had no other explanation in that in that interview with Anderson Cooper. And you've got look, you've got. Democrats who are willing to crawl over broken glass to vote for any other Democrat against MAGA. That is where the Democratic base is. So I think most of them are experiencing this as a complete and utter betrayal. And I've seen all kinds of people saying I supported Haley Stevens. I absolutely regret it. I've also seen a lot of disgust at her attempt to, like, use black people as a sort of human shield for her own decision making here and like appoint herself as the spokesperson for Jews and blacks. And I think that's something that we need to be very careful about. And yet where have been any of the media stories about the dissatisfied MAGA Republicans who are breaking ranks in Michigan and voting for Abdul? So, you know, this media cycle has sort of spun itself up in a really insane way that when we talked to Sam Robinson last week, people who are on the ground, people who are covering the race for local news are saying, I've never seen a national media conversation that is more disconnected from what people are actually voting on here on the ground. Good point. And that was Sam. Shooting that footage of Haley Stevens going into the church. Sam's everywhere. He's just been dominating. He's a rock star. Good for him. Shout out. Good for him. Good for him. Good for him. Unneeded. Plus, get access to exclusive sale prices, personalized deals, and more as a member. Extra care is the way to save at CVS. Join for free online or in-store and start saving. Visit your local CVS store or cvs.com slash extra big deals for this week's deals. We know kids don't hold back. And I wouldn't want them to. Get in there. Make a mess. Slide for home. Bring on the stains. 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