Dave Weigel: Polls Wrong, Hong Gone

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What that is for, what the threat is, it is unclear. It is just a little bit of fascism. Theater for you from the Trump regime. We have a great guest coming for you today. We're going to talk a little bit about politics. Tomorrow, since I'm in D.C., we're going to have one of my Bulwark colleagues. I might bring the mailbag back tomorrow. You know, it's August. Have a little fun. You can email us, bulwarkpodcast at thebulwark.com. A couple notes about the mailbag. Fun questions I like. Life advice questions I like. Short questions. Are great. Very long notes about your feelings about the world. Those are appreciated, and we do our best to get to them, but they're probably not going to make the cut for the mailbag. So if you do want to make it in, keep it tight. Have a little fun with it. And I think we'll have fun tomorrow. And I think that's important because we've got a lot of serious stuff that I want to cover as well. And I want to get to it before we get to Dave, because I think Dave and I are really going to sort of nerd out on politics. Good news for the Democrats from the Nate Silver, the opening Nate Silver predictions for the House and Senate. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about the Wisconsin race. But there were two stories yesterday on the immigration beat that really struck me, and I didn't want to give them short shrift. So I just wanted to talk about them here up top. The first story came out of Virginia. It was flagged by Congressman Don Beyer's office. Don Beyer is just doing really an excellent job. I think a really underrated congressman in Virginia. And they got this video of a woman having a gun pulled on her during a traffic stop by four masked Gestapo. I'm going to play the video, obviously, for the audio folks. Let me just paint a picture for you. The video is coming from her inside her car. As I mentioned, there were two and then three and then four all masked ICE agents that come up to the car. The video begins with a man pointing a gun, straight in this woman's face, out of the holster, gun to the face. Let's watch. You record us. You almost ran us over. I didn't almost run you over. Stop playing. You're so full of shit. Stop playing. You are full of shit. All right? You're not funny. You're not funny. I will arrest you. Keep it up. I'm a legal citizen. Keep it up. I don't care. Oh, my goodness. We have to try to lock you up. Okay. For what? For the one that tried to run us over. Run you over when? I got recording. I got dash cam. I got dash cam. That's a lie. You're all fucking full of shit. This is horrifying. And what you see there is the woman saying, hey, I got you on camera. These lies you're trying to say about me that I tried to run you over or whatever, that's not going to work. And then these goons, these thugs go away. Like, this should not be how things work in a free country. A person should not feel like they have to have their dash cam on and be videotaping at all times and the chance that agents of the state will come up to their car, draw their weapon, and put their weapon right in the face of a woman driver who is obviously no threat, no danger. They don't even end up detaining her. Totally sickening. Congressman Beyer said this in a release in the video. My office has been in contact with the woman who recorded this video of an ICE agent drawing a gun on her. She's a Northern Virginia native and a mother. While I'm relieved that she is safe, the habitual dishonesty and dangerous and unjustified escalation seen in this video matches what we've seen from ICE for agents across the country. This kind of misconduct and threat of force against members of our community can't be tolerated. I'll be demanding answers and consequences. Consequences, a key word in that statement. And that's going to be a big job for the Democrats if they take over. And then there's another horrifying story that I'm not sure how much I can add from an editorializing perspective except to reiterate something I've been talking about ever since the interview with Jonathan Blitzer before vacation, which is that we have internment camps in this country. And I don't think that people have really mentally accepted that, but we are holding people in horrific conditions illegally based on their race, based on their country of origin. And it is the Japanese internment camps over again. And when I read you the story, I assume you're going to be just as angered and horrified as I was. So this is for the nation. I appreciate them publishing this. I'm just going to read excerpts from it because I think putting it in the detainee's words is better than me describing it. She writes this. My name is Miriam Tomasevi. I am a professor of psychology and statistics at Los Angeles Pierce College, or I was until April 9th. Remember that date, people, April 9th. When my life and my family's lives changed forever. On that day, I was teaching a class when my son texted me saying that my husband hadn't picked him up from school and wasn't answering his phone, which is very unlike him. I picked up my son from school, came frantically back home and called the police thinking that something horrible must have happened to my husband. Even so, it never occurred to me that he could have been detained by ICE. We are legal permanent residents with valid green cards. We don't have any criminal record, not even a traffic ticket. I was beyond. beyond shocked to realize that an online smear campaign without any merit or legal standing had convinced the government to try to revoke our green cards overnight without due process or even telling us. The government had decided to punish my husband for being the son of a woman who was a translator for the Iranian hostage takers in 1979 before he was even born. The next day, when I took my son to school, my car was surrounded by DHS cars and my son and I were detained. I had to watch my son, who was in high school and has been a legal resident of California for 12 years, be handcuffed. We were shipped to Texas overnight from Los Angeles in horrible conditions that I won't elaborate on in this letter. We have remained in Texas ever since. My son and I have spent over 120 days in the Dilley Immigration Processing Center away from my husband. We are asking anyone with a conscience to help us end this nightmare. What else is this, if not an internment? Since April, this woman and her husband and her son have all been held illegally in a camp. You heard from Jonathan Blitzer about how horrible the conditions are in these camps. She doesn't have an attorney that can get her out. They did nothing. Not that this would be okay if these were people that crossed the Rio Grande illegally, but that would be one thing. That's what the Republicans are pitching. That's what they're acting like. They kidnapped three people based on their ancestry. Like, based on what country they're from. And this is the fucking Japanese internment again. And this is what happened. It's like, we started a war with Iran, and so we've kidnapped three Iranians and held them in camps in Texas. Professors. It is fucking sickening, and everybody needs to know about it. So, she's asking anyone with a conscience to help. I'm asking our audience to do so. We'll put a link to the Nation article here. Please share this on your social media. Call your congressman. Call your senator. It's fucking sickening what these people are doing. All right. We're going to get really dorky on politics next. So do stick around. We're going to get into the map. Some pretty surprising news about Texas. Stick around. It's Dave Black. For me, the best part about looking at old photos is that it reminds you of the stories behind the moments in the pictures. I was just doing the iPhone nostalgia deep dive looking for college pictures of myself. Luckily, it was before I'm old enough that it was before the iPhone, so there are very few. But boy, do they tell a story. We'll have to reflect on that another time. One way to ensure. One way that you can have these memories so that a friend or a colleague or family member can have these memories without having to manually scroll through the phone is to turn to our friends at Aura Frames. Aura Frames enhances daily life without overwhelming it, servicing meaningful memories in a way that feels ambient, additive, and fun. And it's easy to use. You just download the free Aura app or text phone straight to your frame. With free unlimited storage, you can add as many photos and videos as you want. It was named. Number one by Wirecard. You can save now by visiting AuraFrames.com. For a limited time, listeners can get $35 off select frames plus free shipping with code THEBULLWORK. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com, promo code THEBULLWORK. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. All right, he is the sleep-deprived politics reporter at Semaphore. He writes his Americana newsletter, The Best in the Biz. He also is the author of the show that never ends, The Rise and Fall of Prog Rock. I don't know if we're going to do a lot of yes chatter on this podcast, but I like to point it out. It's Dave Weigel. What's up, man? How's it going? Good to talk to you. It is good to be with you. Polls wrong, Hong gone in Wisconsin last night, I guess, is the big news. Part of the reason why you're on, you're going to be on anyway. You're going to be on anyway. But I do just like to give credit where due, okay? I have a text from you last week, a week ago today, as a matter of fact. And you said this. We're just, you know, we're just gossiping about. And you said, hey, if there was no early voting in Wisconsin, I'd bet it all on Crowley. So it wasn't a full Nostradamus prediction, but you were reading the tea leaves. You saw this coming when I think a lot of us were kind of resigned to a Hong victory. Explain what you think happened last night in Wisconsin and why you saw it coming. Yeah, and Republicans were giddy about a Hong victory. They really, in talking to them yesterday before the polls closed, were prepping how they were going to, run against Hong, tie her to other Democrats, et cetera. It didn't happen. So I was in Wisconsin. I've been back and forth for years and years. Large story of Wisconsin, as you can read in Ben Wickler's book, is that it has been a swing state. Obama blew it out twice. And then it's been competitive. But unfortunately for Democrats starting in, because Republicans swept in 2010, they have run the maps forever. And the entire story of Wisconsin Democrats is slowly gaining ground. We're not losing it in every election until. One day this year, you can win a trifecta and redraw the state maps. And so those are the stakes for high information in Wisconsin. Democrats are the people who are not all of them are primary voters or high information. But the people who voted for every primary had been part of that story coming out for the state Supreme Court race, coming out for candy, et cetera, et cetera. And so Francesca Hong enters this view, this climate. She gets very lucky and she also runs a good campaign. Hong is this is this left wing legislator. For Madison, I repeat myself, Madison is the most left wing part of that state would be the most left wing part of many states. And she is a a good progressive legislator who is part of protests. I think I didn't meet her at the time, but in covering the Act 10 Scott Walker protest, she was part of that on the ground. And she runs on data centers, really does a good, very clear. She gets in. She says this is a state that can do a lot better. This is a state that in the past of the state, Milwaukee elected socialist mayors. Just as Zoran Mamdani transformed politics in New York by saying, I'm a socialist and I can deliver for you. I'm going to do that for Wisconsin. I'm going to raise taxes on the rich, expand social programs, bring about what she called permanent affordability and then runs against data centers, which she tells me just a lot. You hear this from a lot of left wing candidates is they do a lot of grassroots work. They go to rural areas and people are hyped up about data centers. They start talking about them as good, normal politics. And so she's running a good campaign. Everyone else. I think a bad one. There's a glut of candidates. There's the lieutenant governor to Tony Evers, who basically her campaign manager, Sarah Rodriguez campaign manager, is the key figure of this of this whole story, because he is bad at his job so bad that she has to drop out of the race. Mandela Barnes, who was Evers' previous lieutenant governor, is running, but has scar tissue from losing his Senate race in 2022. And also rumors that which end up being reported that at least one person. He. Hooked up with which didn't hook up with him. I'm not trying to minimize that, but there is in a Democratic circles chatter that something might come out about Mandela at some point. And so what Evers does as Hong surges and his lieutenant governor collapses, he while on an international trade trip convinces David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive who had been running and by his own words, I talked to him, said he ran a bad campaign, got no attention. He gets back in with Tony Evers endorsement and with all the labor unions that were endorsing other. Let's say center left candidates and he grinds it out and he wins. So you had a two and a half week primary, basically a mini primary where maybe 80,000 votes were already cast for other candidates who had dropped out. Out of what's going to be 800,000 votes and Crowley just is the Evers candidate. If you want to continue what Tony Evers is doing, I'm your guy. I'm a competent executive of Milwaukee County. I'm not as left wing as Francesca Hong. He survives a. Mini scandal where he is was tied to a Twitter account that said to just racy kind of stupid guy things, not with his name. It was an anonymous account. He also has kind of a weird story where it's like a group account and like one of the people that was on it is dead. It was a pretty weird story. Very weird story. He doesn't defend it very well. So the left is feeling very good about its chances to nominate the first socialist, democratic socialist governor candidate in a swing state. It would be historic. We'd be in it. 4,000 votes flip and ready when we're talking about that today. And I think in that moment, they get a little bit hubristic and put Francesca Hong out in front of me. Now, I'm a reporter. I love when candidates talk to media. I don't like it when they cut the media off. Hong, I've known for a long time and she was very willing to talk to me. We got cut off at one interview and she called me back at 11 p.m. to finish it for 20 minutes. You should be talking to people. However, the conversation turned to let's call them woke tweets. She had sent between 2019 and 2014. Twenty one about abolishing prison, abolishing police. And I think this is the one that will live forever is that we should cancel Thanksgiving because it's a colonial holiday. Yeah. And in her media interviews, not just mine, I was on the phone with her in person, but on TV, she's defending it and just doesn't come off very well. And one thing I've been figuring out today is she did not get the same progressive endorsements and strategies as some candidates. This was so what they were worried about is that Abdul El-Sayed is a very. Talented, brilliant Rhodes scholar who can dazzle in an interview and explain anything he said before. It really is a lot of I wish I hadn't said that, but he can explain it. And she's not as nimble at explaining herself. So did it all come down to her and Caitlin Collins and her getting a long winded answer when King Collins says, do you still want to cancel Thanksgiving? I don't know. Didn't help, though, and I was saying, yeah, I think we can say this now, Wednesday, August 12th. I'm going to admit something that I've not admitted on the podcast yet. Thanksgiving. It's just OK for me as well. There's a lot of people who complain about Thanksgiving and and the travel and the family, you know, getting on their high horse about Thanksgiving the last couple of weeks. But to me, it was less about the substance of that and just what you're saying. She was not that deft at explaining herself. And I get another difference between her and Abdul El-Sayed is not just his talent as a candidate, which she has. But like, I think about it with like the school principal. Rule like if my kid was at a school and we're getting a new principal and Abdul El-Sayed comes in, I'm like, this guy can handle this. Like, he seems very competent. She at times felt very unsteady, you know, like there were some things that she obviously did well, but but both of her bio, the way she presented herself, like all of that. And with the stakes being so high, as you mentioned, with the redistricting in Wisconsin, I mean, they could have Texas, Wisconsin, you know, had the Republicans had a big had big victories. They're in the legislature, the governor's race. It's just the stakes are very high. And to me, you end up kind of with this coalition of, like you said, strategic voters. She doesn't run up the vote as much in Madison as you would have thought. Some strategic voting with just like we saw in Michigan with Haley Stevens, like the more non-college, particularly black voters, you know, not really, not really digging the cut of the jib of the DSA guys. Yeah. Also, money matters. And there had not been a lot spent on the primary before. This this period where Crowley gets back in a race with Evers, it did help that Evers directed money to super PACs that were on the air for Crowley and on the air against Hong. What they were fueled by, though, was Republicans were spending money to help Hong. They had both a pop up PAC that was running pro-Hong ads and they had through the Republican Governor's Association ads that were transparent. We're all familiar with this now. Negative ads that are clearly positive. One of them was warning, oh, Francesca Hong opposes Trump's deportations. OK, what's the Democratic primary voter? The most aggressive. Yeah. Crowley fed into that or I actually jumped onto that and said when I talked to him the day he got back in and you say, yeah, I was convinced by several things. One of them was it looked like Republicans were going to pick our nominee. And and that was a good response. The other one, importantly, was that many people think God has abandoned us. In 2026 in this country. But Crowley said that, I guess, his wife, they'd prayed, seen a vision that there was a red bird. Yes. Saying that he should run. And then the bird with the word came to them and they saw a red bird. And that was also why he got in. Yeah, that happened, too. Although that was this may be a tangent, but every race is flattened, obviously, and all time is now circled because a thing you said six years ago can be blooped. I thought it was interesting and And kind of effective for the online left to take clips of Crowley, who most people had not heard of. If you're Milwaukee, you've heard of him. He was a rising star in Milwaukee. Yeah. But just to make him look both kind of loopy and like he was a corporate Democrat who was going to turn the whole state over to AI companies. Because he actually, his wife had told that story in his launch, his relaunch speech. And I remember thinking, oh, that's interesting. But I didn't make a clip out of it. Well, it's still a clip if it became famous. Yeah, right. But what was the overall pitch there? It was really just don't let the establishment take down Hong with this guy. And in Wisconsin, the establishment is Tony Evers, this nice old man who is the reason why the state is not Texas right now, as you were saying. Who has been the bulwark against what a lot of Republicans want to do. Yeah. And this is, I think, again, why I kind of thought the whole thing was kind of crazy. It's just like things in Wisconsin are going kind of fine. You know, I understand wanting to try new things in certain places where Democrats have been losing. And we're. They feel like establishment candidates have failed them. And we've seen this in some other races, which we should talk about. Americans are carrying over a trillion dollars in credit card debt at rates north of 23 percent. That's more than $200 billion a year in interest paid mostly by households who happen to be sitting on the largest pool of untapped home equity in U.S. history. Think about that for a second. You own a home. You've built real equity in it. 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That's A-V-E-N.com. Avon. Stop overpaying for capital. Avon Financial Inc. NMLS 204-2345. Cards issued pursuant to a license from Visa USA Inc. by Coastal Community Bank. NMLS 462-289. Member FDIC equal housing lender subject to approval. Terms apply. Visit Avon.com. Avon.com for details. Just a couple other stray thoughts I had. I just wonder if you had any other takeaways from this race in particular. Then we'll go around the country. But huge turnout. I mean, just huge enthusiasm of the Democrats. Kind of insane. You know, I see this a little bit with Trump. When there is a firebrand candidate, it draws people out for and against. But huge turnout in Wisconsin. Another polling miss. Maybe that's something to monitor. Maybe not. I saw you kind of engaging in that discourse on social media. Any other questions? Any other takeaways? I think the money part of this is it's. I was talking to Democratic strategists today. We do our best in the press to track this. But a lot of campaign spending is done so that you don't get the full picture told over. And who's reading and reading the stories about what was spent in a race a month ago? We will learn that had money stayed on the sidelines, Hong still wins. But in the end, it's. In Michigan, it was for 51% of people who voted for somebody who was not Abdul El-Sayed. And luckily for him. Some of that was for a candidate who dropped out already. And in Wisconsin, it's about 60% of Democrats voted for somebody who was not Hong. Three had dropped out already. Some people stuck it out for the two kind of stragglers who stayed in the race. But there was this worry about nominating Hong. And the idea that the state that was so close that Trump had won twice was waiting for a progressive socialist champion, which is not very convincing. And again, I'm blending this with the money. On an even. On an even playing field, does the socialist candidate win bigger in Michigan than they win Wisconsin? Possibly. But we keep finding this, that there is not a secret socialist vote in rural America that is waiting for this kind of candidate. Now, are they waiting for populist candidates who are against data centers? Yes, they are. I thought William Lawrence in Michigan who won the mid-Michigan primary for what was. I talked to him a bunch in that race. What he was able to do was just make it a pure populist candidate. The only people bringing up what he tweeted in the past, I did. And I asked him about some woke tweets he'd sent. It just wasn't part of the discourse. I do think there are people who used to vote for Democrats who can be convinced that this Democrat is a little bit different. But if you were posting too hard in 2020, then they say, Ah, it's just like those liberals I hate in New York. Just like these John Oliver liberals. Rebecca Cook was another example of this. Maybe for people who aren't familiar with her, talk about her race. I mean, she ends up winning. She has the backing of the Bernie. Crowley crowd and kind of the D-triple-C, more moderate crowd sort of running on this populist platform that doesn't kind of dabble in some of the elements of the DSA that's worrying people. You want to do takes, but you don't want to just flatten out the whole country because the conditions are different. I would say, though, and I'm just talking about Evers' popularity, just what does the Democratic establishment, what does establishment mean? Because this is something else that came up with Crowley. Crowley was. And again, I asked him this. And then I could blast him on camera and it got kind of viral. This is like a natural question. What does establishment mean? He was getting annoyed saying, You're calling someone like me who grew up in Milwaukee, first black county executive, the establishment. That's a slur to me. And I got to translate it. Does he think the word establishment is racist? No, it's that in his particular context, like the most segregated city in America, like the suburbs of Milwaukee being having been very Republican, what he did was interesting and transformative. And he was annoyed. He wouldn't pay attention. But also, the Democratic establishment includes both Chuck Schumer and people in D.C. who are losers and lost. It includes Tony Evers and Peggy Flanagan and Tim Walz and Democrats in states and cities who have won elections. And I do think the establishment as an epithet, the one you talk about with Rebecca Cook was especially dumb. Because, yeah, she's run three times. This is the third time. And Republicans want to beat her because they think they can make her go away. They win this time. Lost her first primary as an insurgent. Won the second one. And this time it was a more progressive city councilman in the most liberal part of the district saying she's backed by the establishment. What does the establishment mean if both DCCC and Bernie support you? Like, not that much was the answer. And just saying my opponent is the establishment. There's a lot of room to color in inside there. It's not clear to me that voters are just saying I want the most anti-establishment person. They want a person who's not a loser. And so that you've seen, maybe we'll talk about John Larson in Connecticut. You've seen Democrats who are saying, keep me in the ring. I might be old and I might have lost to Trump, but I can do it next time. You're seeing voters say, no, you lost. You won fighters. Kind of putting a loop on what's happening there in the upper Midwest. Or closing the loop, rather, on what's happening in the upper Midwest. It's interesting the way that ICE and kind of Operation Metro Surge, like, had an impact, both in that Minnesota race, which you mentioned, where Peggy Flanagan beats Angie Craig. Angie Craig, who I like a lot, lesbian, I've had on the show, really good member. She's affable, and it's like she voted for the Lake and Riley Act. And it's just, it seemed like it was hard for her to get past that vote. She ends up losing, you know, a respectable loss, but a clear loss to Peggy Flanagan, the more progressive lieutenant governor. But there's also some bleed into Wisconsin here, which is interesting, where, because I remember seeing this when we went to Minnesota. Many of the protesters that we met and talked to were from the exurbs, the suburbs exurbs of Minneapolis on the other side of the border in Wisconsin. Which went for Hong. Yeah, they were talking about how a lot of ICE agents had gone there. And so if you look at the map of Wisconsin, like, yeah, Hong does well kind of in Dane, and then also does well there in the Minnesota exurbs. And I think that's just interesting, the impact of that, both in these primaries, but then prospecting out to the general, Wisconsin has been a swing state, you know, to the extent that Minneapolis suburbs continue to expand into Wisconsin. Like, that's an additional voting block that could potentially help Democrats. And in general elections there. It's unique what happened in Minneapolis. Everyone knows the basic history. But in the Minnesota primary, Craig voted for the Lincoln Rally Act, as did some other Democrats in swing seats. I think her seat was Kamala plus six. And in the context of Trump having won again, and she would have been that happened to pass the Biden border bill. That wasn't what was in front of him. You know what was there. Democrats bit the bullet and voted for this. And then Republicans want to give Trump a win. So they waited to send the bill to him and not Biden. So it was Trump who got to sign the Lake Raleigh Act even worse. If you're a Democrat, it wasn't the Biden signed bill. It was you voted for a bill that Trump signed. And I'm not new to the idea of their cynicism of six. But Republicans do want it both ways. They want to pass their legislation and they want to hurt moderates and get them replaced by progressives who they think can win. So it was the Lake Raleigh Act. It was also the resolution last year that that was drafted as an anti anti-Semitism resolution. Republicans added language praising the work of ICE because there had just been a shooting outside an ICE facility in Texas. I think that was the one where I believe the the perps are in jail for 50 years now. And Republicans added this language. And if you're a Democrat, you make this calculation. I can either vote against this and have an opponent say you didn't condemn anti-Semitism or I can vote for this and protect myself. What has happened to everyone who voted for that bill in Democratic the Democratic primary or the resolution is that they get by it. Maybe they either apologize for it or explain it, but it was, you thanked ICE. That's pretty simple. My opponent thanked ICE. Why would they thank ICE? I'm always sympathetic when people are trying to explain something, their position, but it's not that much of a sympathy-inducing thing to say, I was too scared to explain my actual position and I just voted for this poorly written political resolution. That hurt her a lot too. And I've seen, that hurt Raja Krishnamoorthi in Illinois. I've seen, I've heard other candidates who thought, to be safe, I'm going to cast this. Oh no, it turned out there was a huge boondoggle in defining issues of the primary. Good issue for the left, but set up by the right. Yeah. I mean, my takeaways on this is number one, I have a longstanding policy that I'm never going to be in Congress. So, you know, my advice to Congress people is to not vote on any non-binding resolutions, hard policy of no voting on non-binding. It's, they're just tweets. All they are is tweets. If you want to give a statement- And then you go back home and say, hey, I never vote on that stuff. People say, oh, I don't vote on that. Yeah, yeah. The Lincoln-Barley Act was a bad vote for these guys. And I think that they're trying to be strategic. They're trying to be savvy. And I think it's unfortunate in retrospect, not giving it to Trump on immigration was the right thing to do. And there was a lack of imagination about how bad the Trump immigration regime could be, I think, for people that thought that there was going to be a middle ground on that one. So. This is Jana Kramer from Wind Down with Jana Kramer. I had this moment the other day where I thought, why am I waiting for my next vacation to enjoy life? I'm not going to wait for my next vacation to enjoy life. 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And then I want to get into kind of the map. You mentioned it in Connecticut, the Larson race, there's this kind of war on gerontocracy within the democratic party. The mills situation in Maine, obviously a prime example of this, a pretty interesting race there in Connecticut, because the guy that, that beats him, Bron and the mayor does, does not fit the mold of some of these other kind of lefty DSA challengers. I think he was, I think he was in the abundance program with your, your friend. And, um, you know, he just ran basically saying I've got more energy to do the job. Maybe there's more to it than that. Why don't you just kind of give a rundown on that race and, and this kind of other model that is being promoted by people at the bench and other places where you've got these, you know, more working class, um, challengers that, that have a more middle of the road profile ideologically. Well, you just mentioned the bench and that's, that's a fairly new fight inside the party kind of late. Cause we're almost done with the primaries, but the bench is a, is a big doter funded effort with good democratic strategists to recruit and nominate candidates who are young and active and, and they think would be never good members of Congress, but not necessarily left wing. This is a threat. If you are DSA, if you are, if you're a Bernie, et cetera, and you want every primary winner to be progressive, that is a threat to you. So you start David Sirota's public case, the lever started to go after this. It didn't work very well. That was John Larson tried to make that an issue in his race, but the issue would, John Larson's race is that he was 78. He last year, early last year, when the nerves about Biden were very, very tense is giving a floor speech to fairly empty house floor about his issues of security. Cause he wanted to expand social security and freezes up, uh, several times. And then his office says there was a medication reaction. It was a partial seizure, but he's fine. A couple months later, Luke Bronin gets into the race. He was the former mayor Hartford or in scholar veteran, not left wing. And Larson's really annoyed by this because he thought Bruna was going to support him. But Brunin saw where things were moving that Democrats said, democratic voters, I should say, say, yeah, the last time we said, let's, let's wait. We believe that this incumbent can, can pull this out. It led to a generational disaster. So Democrats were open to supporting someone else. So Brunin gets the endorsement of the local democratic party. He ever competes the conventions. The Larson strategy is basically just to hopefully there's enough votes for other candidates to split it. He gets, ends up as a non-scandalized incumbent. His only scandal being seizing up on the floor with a third of the vote, a two thirds of this safe democratic seat vote for somebody else. I think he wins two towns in the whole city, his town, East Hartford, and then one other town. And it was just, it was just a completely definitive rejection of old Democrats. Uh, and he had progressive endorsements. Jamie Raskin came out to help him. Working families, partners endorsed him. It was just, it's not an ideological question in that race. It is, we are worried that you are too old and you were not effective at fighting Trump and fighting Trump means many things. Yeah. But if you watch Larson, but Larson was kind of classic North, Northeast liberal and, but you know, very Kennedy esque speeches. Obviously he's older now, so they land a little bit less hard. But he was portraying himself as you need me back in there. I have the seniority of that experience. I can fight Trump. You know how that ends. Democratic voters say you lost though. We would, we would give you a mulligan on the first one because of Russia and all the stuff. Yeah, no, he won. Twice. Yeah. You guys lost again. You can't convince us that you can win. This is the thing I think that, um, the guys at the bench and a few other places are doing that smart. It's just that like, you have to give democratic voters another option for wherever your ideology is. If you're in the center, if you're just kind of a traditional liberal, it's like you have to tell democratic voters, like you recognize that, that the strategy has not worked the last decade and you're offering some new either kind of angle on how to go out Trump or just kind of a new face. Or a fresh face or a new kind of background, new story. And I do think that where the establishment will failed in a lot of these races, it was because the more moderate candidates weren't offering anything. And, you know, I think this was a mistake. This was another one of those candidates where it didn't work. I've said this in the podcast, like Mallory's race, where it's like, it felt like she was offering that at the start and Haley was, and then it ends up being kind of, you're attacking the left and like, that's not going to work. If like only the left is offering something new and you're attacking the left, like democratic voters we're seeing are, are going to, I think, go to the people that are offering them a positive vision and another, you know, another way to kind of go at Trump. And so anyway, the Connecticut race was an interesting microcosm of how that looks when it's not from the coming from the Bernie wing of the party. Yeah. And Mallory was another bench candidate and, uh, Bonin do not get stuck in that same tar pit of, uh, fighting about Hassan piker and fight about Israel. That was also had, had Bronin put out tweets years ago saying, I hate Connecticut. Well, he might've been different. There were a bunch of issues that were happening. That was, that was, that was a very specific race. Anyway, I've talked about that a bunch, but you're right on the J the general idea is that, um, and this is the Mallory people's theory was, uh, was Haley cannot actually win in this environment. People do not want the Schumer candidate to win the primary. It was basically, that was correct. It was close as it got. That was correct. They just couldn't get. People to vote for their candidate instead. Last example of this, and then I want to do kind of big picture general election and some, some decent news for Democrats on that front is we had the Massachusetts race coming up Moulton, also more of kind of a center candidate trying to make this generational change argument against Markey kind of without getting into like the nitty gritty of the back and forth of what's happening in that race. It felt like there was some momentum there from Moulton, but that Markey has kind of pushed it back. What, what, what do you think? Is there, is Is there a possibility still that Markey gets clipped there or not? So there still is. And Markey is, on the one hand, more prominent than John Larson, but not that much more. The idea of Markey as a liberal hero is pretty recent. It was built for his 2020 campaign when he needed to polarize the race between him and Joe Kennedy III, the congressman. And that progressive movement has not shown up for Markey this time for the reasons we're talking about. It's just he is 80. He was part of his big project in 2020 was the Green New Deal. And that kind of ashes the mouth of a lot of Democrats because every part of it they could pass, the Trump administration got rid of. And he's not run a very focused campaign. What he has done is portrayed Moulton as an opportunist who has betrayed constituencies like trans people in order to get ahead. That's not as compelling as you need me. In the Senate to transform the economy into a green economy. It's been a much more defensive, smaller campaign. His campaign manager from the 2020 race, who was brilliant, passed away in between races. I'm not insulting the new guy. It's just that he is trying to stitch together a I'm the true progressive. And in Massachusetts, not to get too much into the degree, but in Massachusetts, vote the electorate is registered Democrats and non-enrolled independents. And polling has showed Moulton wins those guys. He loses with Democrats. That is his path. Fifty percent by losing Democrats and winning those voters who are non-ideologically are just tired of old people. If Moulton Super called me, I would have said I would have, and I guess there's still, what, a week to do it, a couple weeks to do it? Three weeks. I would have become anti-ICE's strongest soldier. I would have been like chaining myself outside the ICE detention facility. He has done that. He called for abolishing ICE early on, but not to injure himself. Yeah, but I want 110% energy on that. And I think that's, you know, picking something like that is maybe a more compelling counter message for the folks in the center. So we'll be watching that one closely. I like that. So Nate Silver, you know, for all of the people who have little nitpicks about him on social media, he rubs some people the wrong way. But he still seems to be like the gold standard that people go to for these prognostications, at least the person that people are the most familiar with. He dropped his House and Senate prognostications yesterday, and it was, I think, better for the Democrats, particularly in the Senate, than a lot of people expected. Yeah. He offered a 57% win probability for the Democrats to take the Senate. I think the House is like 80 plus percent. I think that people have a sense for where things are going in the House. In the specific races, his model had Texas as a flip, Tallarico with a 63% chance of winning, which was, I think, the big headline number. Al-Said is the favorite. Troy Jackson in Maine is the favorite. Sherrod Brown in Ohio is the favorite. Overwhelming favorites for the Democrats protecting the seats in North Carolina and Georgia, both 90 plus. And then he had the Republicans as the favorites, narrowly, in Iowa, Alaska, and a couple of those other stretch seats. I think that that is maybe just slightly more bullish for the Democrats than conventional wisdom. I mean, particularly Texas. I think that a lot of people are scared to be the person putting their reputation out there, that this is the time for blue Texas, the longest running streak of any state, of not having a statewide victory for the Democrats. But pretty noteworthy. I don't know. What's your sense, kind of talking to people on the ground for whether Democrats, like, are really kind of feeling like the Senate is, could be happening for them? Well, one factor both parties know about is that unlike 2018, where Democrats had more money for their individual candidates, more money for their PACs, as you remember, 2018, at the end, Paul Ryan said, can literally keep going to the Adelson family to cut giant checks to fund a super PAC. Republicans will have more money. I think. I think Texas is viewed in that context is that donors do not want their money to go to Ken Paxton, and yet he's trying to beast this out and be outspent heavily by Tallarico, be outspent on the air. I think also, not without reading Nate's mind, every primary Republicans had the same, Democratic primary Republicans had the same strategy. We've got our nominee. We're going to find the most woke left-wing things the Democrat has said, beat him up with that. We'll get a natural discourse going in the mainstream media. And I saw this at Tallarico several times. When I talk with the media being flat, like there's stuff that he has answered. He answered four or five times. Why did you say this about God being non-binary, et cetera? Because it's always new to somebody. And that didn't put him away. The hope was that that means that race is off the map. Now, the math in Texas is it's the money, but it's also what has Trump done to consolidate the Latino vote he got in 2024? Maybe not that much. And so do the math. If Democrats go to. There are 2020 even numbers with Latino voters. Twenty eighteen would be better in Texas if they turn out the black vote, which there's the discourse of whether you can do that. But I feel like that might be a little bit over overrated by activists who show up and yell at him. And then white suburbanites, he has been doing great with them. And so you can stitch together forty eight percent of the vote for Tallarico, which is what Beto got. I mean, the big part of it is getting back to that Latino vote, getting that Asian vote. It makes sense to me. Alaska seems more. Promising for Democrats just because it's cheaper. Caltoa has one statewide and not to get into the deep politics of Alaska, but it is not a super right wing state. It is not having new people moving from the Midwest to right wing suburbs in Alaska. So I think that that is a target is more promising. Yeah, that was the Texas thing. I always loved that stat, which was that Ted Cruz won with the transplants. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was narrow on both ways, but, you know, there is something to. Oh, yeah. A lot of these states. Every cycle, there's a couple hundred thousand more Texas Republicans and they did the same thing in Florida, which is even more intense. I do think the in all these states, though, it's funny. Republicans talk about their good recruiting for the cycle. They have avoided primaries. Sure. But they've got candidates who are it's there's a little bit of Schumer energy in who they've recruited. They have John Sununu, the former senator who voted for the Iraq war and has been out of politics for a generation in New Hampshire. OK, better than a far right guy. But. Not exciting. Who's, you know, older than his opponent. You have Michael Watley in North Carolina, who they say is a good recruit because he's been for primary. Sure. Against the popular governor. He hasn't really found his footing in Texas. Paxton's kind of kind of a mess. Yeah, I'll go even further than you. I think that because, you know, the media acts like the Democrats only owns with agency and like we're 10 years into Trump and nobody wants to do this anymore. The Republican recruitment has been basically bad this cycle. And Ashley Hinson in Iowa is a good, strong candidate, I think. But. Besides that, they're recruiting two models. You know, they have the establishment model of person that is not going to excite the Trump voter, the Mike Rogers type that is going to have all of Trump's baggage, but none of the positive. That's your Watley and Mike Rogers. And then in several states, they nominated Kooks, you know, and yesterday they nominated Michelle Tafoya, sideline reporter in Minnesota, Mike Collins, Ken Paxton for all of the, you know, kind of rending of garments about. Yeah. Yeah. Syed and what have it of Maine, it's a pretty motley crew on the Republican side. For example, John Sununu's advertising. Now, his name is Sununu. His brother's a popular governor, but he's running as this sort of New Hampshire-focused change agent. And you think, but you were the senator. You were the senator a long time ago. Back when the IMAC was a green apple-colored thing and people's dads, you're not a change candidate. And so I was going to say that, and this is obvious, but bears repeating, that every incumbent party's job is let's turn this into a choice between the crazy opponents and our sensible policies. And because it worked for Biden sort of in 2022, Republicans think they can do it. But is it working? Is the thing is, like I said, they came out of the gate with Sal Rico saying, look how crazy this guy is. In Iowa, Ashley Hinson just keeps pretending that Josh Turek is more liberal than he is. For example, she said that he wants girls and boys sports. I think it's down to a vote he voted against because it's a huge package. And he's actually distanced himself on part of that issue. Going down that path is a little tricky because not just because the particulars of the issue, but because how much do you want to go on the air with it, et cetera, et cetera. But basically, they're just running against every Democrat. Like this is the future. This is communism. They wanted Hong to win so they could say, see, they're winning everywhere. And what's the positive agenda? The positive agenda is we cut your taxes and we're not communists. OK, I mean, I can see an election where it doesn't go very well for them. Everyone agrees that that was. That was silly. They should have tried to do something positive instead of just worrying about. Because in most of this, it's other states. I mean, the whole Mike Lawler campaign is just, yes, I'm running against a centrist, but Zoran exists. OK, you know, 2022, maybe that would have been better. All right, y'all, I have a bad habit. You probably have it, too. We know we should stop doing it. It's scrolling on our phones while we're laying in bed. And here's what's actually happening when you're doing that. The stress, the screen time, the just one more headline spiral. It all raises your core body temperature and a body that's too warm. Can't get into deep sleep. 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This special offer is available for listeners of the Bulwark podcast, but only for a limited time. Plus, it ships free and you can try it risk-free for 30 days with flexible payment and financing options. And if you don't like it, return it at no cost. That's sleep.me slash bulwark. Because when you optimize your sleep, you optimize your performance. This is Jana Kramer from Wine Down with Jana Kramer. And I'm like, wow. Why am I just learning about? Umbrella drink, my favorite book, lunch brought right to me. And I'm thinking, this is exactly what I needed. It's a great deal. Go to resortpass.com slash Jana and use my code Jana to get $20 off when you spend $100. All right. Last thing. We just went through all the Senate states. The number that we always talk about the Democrats need to pick up is four seats to get to 51. Some concern they might need five, though, because there is the John Fetterman wildcard. And Fetterman did this weird thing yesterday where he talked about how Dave McCormick, the Davos David McCormick, the Republican senator from the state, is his best friend. And he would never go against him. And he's on Fox all the time shitting on Democrats. And I don't. You kind of wonder if he's the 51st Democrat, does he want to be the troublemaker that just annoys Democrats all the time? Or does he want to, like, do the thing that would most annoy them, which is flip and give the Senate back to the Republicans in exchange for something? I said yesterday on social media, and I want to reiterate it here because I believe this is incumbent on Chuck Schumer if he's doing his job to nominate one Democratic senator to become John Fetterman's friend. Like somebody has to become his friend and nod when he. Complains about stuff, you know, commiserate about the libtards, like whatever it takes. OK, like he needs a friend that's a Democrat. Michael Bennett, you've got nothing to do. You tried to run for governor and failed. That's my nominee. But I'm open to other other people. Like what's your you've been covering all that. Like, like, what do you think is kind of the state of play there with Fetterman? So looking down to the twenty twenty eight primary, one of his many interviews over the last couple of weeks, he was asked if he could win the election if it was held today. And he and he said, yeah, probably he wouldn't. He would not win a primary in Pennsylvania if it was held today. He in the next cycle will need to start raising money. Who is going to give him money? It's not going to be almost any of the people who donated to him in twenty twenty two. A lot of buyer's remorse in Pennsylvania among Democrats. They did not nominate Conor Lamb. And so what is he looking at in twenty twenty eight? Is it retirement? Is it being a pundit? Is it winning reelection as a Republican? Something that he lived through when. Carlin Specter did a version of this and switch parties to win. He couldn't win because he's still going to be a Democrat who voted against every every major Trump priority except the Iran war. And the other thing I think about his views is. What is the point of a Republican Senate in twenty twenty seven, twenty eight? If Republicans hold the Senate or if they if fifty fifty and he flips the point for Sam Alito and Thomas to retire, be replaced by young conservatives. Correct. That is the point. There's like nothing else that they really need to do. Yeah. The House will be doing investigations. Is that important to him? I'm not in his life as much as he's changed the way he talks about things. What in John Fetterman's career in life suggests that he would want to cast of the vote for ensuring a lean cannon? Forty year old lean cannon gets Supreme Court. I don't think there is one now. But I agree with you generally that so much of the Fetterman story is just that Democrats are mean to him. He's looking pro Israel. I think he really got radicalized on how he talks about progressives because they protested his home. They went to his house. And in Braddock with and he stood on the roof with his Israeli flag that pissed him off. And so he does need some temper credit to tell him we are not all like this. The guys yelling you online are not everybody. But this is a weakness of the way the left deals in rhetoric. Right. There are a lot of super angry people online. And when pushed, it's well, online is the real life. It is, though, like when I go outside to the park, am I seeing people taking? In all of nature, am I seeing them on their phones? I'm seeing them on their phones. Everyone is online all the time. And so him being bullied all the time by leftists clearly made him hate the left more than he ever has in his life. Makes him sympathetic to Republicans. Because remember, Ben Terrace writes this New York Magazine story about about Fetterman. And McCormick is out the gate saying they're only doing this because of my brave friends bravery. And he actually he's great. We love him. If you're going to be unsympathetic to Fetterman, he's kind of been a little bit. Easily convinced by Republicans who are making fun of him as a vegetable five years ago. Now pretend he's a genius. But you're right. I think you're right that Democrats need to work on. I just I'm just skeptical that he would end his career in politics, electoral politics, making sure that Republicans have a Supreme Court supermajority that will unwind most of what he ran on. I just think things things happen. I was OK. OK, well, I hope you're right about that. But in the meantime, just to be safe, I don't know. Ben Ray, Lujan, what are you doing? OK, take take him to lunch. All right. Joe Manchin's still hanging around. You can take him on the yacht. Take him to fucking lunch. Actually, I think for Manchin, where Manchin lives, you could could you get up the river? I don't know. I want to get into at the very end of the conversation. River geography between West Virginia and Pittsburgh. But the point is, they'd have a lot to talk about. Yeah. All right, Weigel. I appreciate you doing this on Little Sleep. Everybody go sign up for your newsletter Americana over at Semaphore. We'll be talking to you again soon. All right. See you, Weigel. Yeah. See you, man. Everybody else will be back here tomorrow. Remember, mailbag. Send me some funny stuff. We'll see y'all then. Peace. The Bulwark Daily is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DiCicco and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.