(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to the Bullwork Daily. I'm your host Tim Miller. I'm coming at you from the Occupied Capital of our nation. When Paz DuPont circled this morning, four National Guard troops, a tank, what that is for, what the threat is, it is unclear, it is just a little bit of fascism, a theater for you from the Trump regime. We have a great guest coming for you today. We're gonna talk a little bit about politics. Tomorrow, since I'm in DC, we're gonna have one of my Bullwork colleagues. Am I bringing the mailbag back tomorrow? It's August, have a little fun. You can email us,
[email protected]. A couple of 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 gonna make the cut for the mailbag. So if you do wanna 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 wanna cover as well. And I wanna get to it before we get to Dave. 'Cause I think Dave and I are really gonna. Just 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 wanna 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 Byer's office. Don Byer 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 gonna play the video obviously for the audio folks. And I just painted a picture for you. The video's coming from her inside her car. As I mentioned, there were two and then three and then four all masked ice agents to 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're recording. You almost ran us over. - I didn't. - You almost ran us over. - Stop playing. - Stop playing. - You are a full of shit. - All right. You're not funny. - You're not funny. - I will arrest you. Keep it up. - I'm gonna legal say it. - Keep it up. - I don't know. - Keep it up. - Keep it up. - Okay. - For what? - I want to try to run us over. - Run you over where? - 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 gonna 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 Byer said this and really seen 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 magically 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 that 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. It is the Japanese internment camps over again. And when I read you the story, I don't-- I assume you're going to be just as angered and horrified as I was. This is for the nation. Appreciate them publishing this. I'm just going to read excerpts from it because I think putting it in the detainees words is better than me describing it. She writes this, "My name is Maryam Tomosebi. 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're legal, permanent residents with valid green cards. We don't have any criminal record, not even a traffic ticket. I was beyond shocked to realize that an online smear campaign without any merit or legal standing had convinced the government to try to rule 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 Dilly Immigration Processing Center away from my husband. We are asking anyone with a conscience to help us and this nightmare. What else is this, if not an internment camp? Since April this woman and her husband and her son have all been held illegally in a camp. You heard from Jonathan what's there about how horrible the conditions are in these camps. She doesn't have an attorney that can get her out. They did nothing. Like not that this would be okay if these are people that crossed the Rio Grande illegally. But I could now 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. And 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 gonna get really dorky on politics next. So do stick around and get into the map. Some pretty surprising news about Texas. Stick around, it's dayplug. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) All right, he is the sleep deprived politics reporter at Semaphore. He writes it's Americana newsletter, the best in the biz. He also is the author of the show that never ends the rise and fall of Prague rock. I don't know if we're gonna do a lot of yes chatter on this podcast, but I like to point it out. It's dayplug, oh, what's up, man? - How's it going, good to talk to you? - It is good to be with you. Pulls wrong, hung, gone, in Wisconsin last night. I guess it's a big news. Part of the reason why you're on, you're gonna be on anyway. You're gonna be on anyway. But I do just like to give credit where do, okay? I have a text from you. Last week, a week ago, today is a matter of fact. And you said this, we're just, you know, we're just gossiping about the racist. 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, no stradamus 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 hung victory, explain what you think happened last night, Wisconsin, and why you saw it coming. - Yeah, and Republicans were giddy about a hung victory. They really ain't talking to them yesterday before the polls closed. We're prepping how they were gonna run against hung, use tie hurt, other Democrat, etc. It didn't happen. So I was in Wisconsin. I've been back and forth for years and years. Large story of Wisconsin, you can read in Ben Wickler's book, is that it has been a swing state, Obama blew it out twice and that it's been competitive, but unfortunately for Democrats,
starting because the Republicans swept in 2010, they have run the maps wherever and the entire story of Wisconsin Democrats is slowly gaining ground or not losing it in every election until one day this year, you can win a trifecta and read through all the state maps. And so those are the stakes for high information in Wisconsin Democrats or the people who and not all of them are primary voters or high information. But the people who vote every primary had in part of that story, coming out for the States of pre-court race, coming out for county, et cetera, et cetera. And so Francesca Hong enters this view, this client that she gets very lucky and she also runs a good campaign. Hong 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 good progressive legislator who is part of protests. I think I didn't need 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. It really does a good, very clear. So she gets in, she says, this is a state that can do a lot better. This is a state that in the past, not the state, Milwaukee elected socialist mayors, just to Zora and 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 you call 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. Those they start talking about them as I think it's good, normal politics. And so she's running a good campaign. Everyone else is running a bad one. There's a glut of candidates. There's the lieutenant governor to Tony Evers, who basically, her campaign manager, Richard is giving that, 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. Madela Barnes, who is Evers' previous lieutenant governor, is running but has scarred tissue from losing his Senate race in 2022. And also, rumors that which end up being reported that at least with one person he hooked up with, which didn't hook up with him. I'm not trying to minimize that, but there is in Democratic circles, chatter that something might come out about Madela at some point. And so what Evers does, as Hong surges in 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 said is the Evers candidate. If you want to continue with Tony Evers' doing on your guy, I'm a competent executive of Milwaukee County. I'm not as left-wing as Francesca Hong. He survives a midi scandal where he was tied to a Twitter account that said to just gracey kind of stupid guy things, not with his name. It was an anonymous account. He also has kind of a weird story. He was like a group account and like one of the people that was on it is dead. It was a pretty weird story. A 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 we're talking about that today. And I think in that moment they get a little bit eubristic 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 to media off. Hong, I've known for a long time. And she was very willing to talk to me. We got cut off of 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 2021. It's about abolishing prison, abolishing police. And I think this is the one that will live forever that we should cancel Thanksgiving because it's a colonial solid day. And in her media interviews, that's my, I was on the phone with her in the 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 strategists as some candidates. This was so what they were worried about is that Abdullah Sayed is a very talented brilliant rose scholar who can dazzle in an interview and explain anything he said before. Well, he has 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 just telling 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's just okay for me as well. There's a lot of people who complain about Thanksgiving and the travel and the family, you know, getting on their high horse about Thanksgiving the last couple weeks. But yeah, to me, it was less about the substance of that and just what you're saying. She was now that deafed at explaining herself. And I get another difference between her and Abdul El Sayed is not just his talent as a candidate which he 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 had kind 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 and Wisconsin, I mean, they could have Texas, Wisconsin, you know, had the Republicans had a big had big victories there. And the legislature, the governor's race, it 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 Hayley Stevens, like the more non-college, particularly black voters, you know, not really not really digging the cut of the jib of the DSI guys. Yeah, also money matters. And yeah, there were not been a lot spent on the primary before this this period that we're probably gets back in a race with the Evers. It did help that 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 pack that was running pro-Hong ads. And they had through the Republican Governor Association ads that were the transparent, we're all familiar with us now, negative ads that are clearly positives. One of them was warning, oh, Francesca Hong opposes Trump's deportations. Okay. What's the Democratic primary voter? The most aggressive, yeah. Crowley fed into that or I should say 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 that was a good response. Yeah. 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 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 I think you said six years ago, we were blooped. I thought it was interesting and kind of effective for the online left to take clips of Crowley, who most people had not heard of it. If you're a Milwaukee, you've heard of him. He was a rising star Milwaukee. Yeah. But just to make him 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, that's interesting, but I didn't clip out of it. Well, it's still some clip of it came famous. Yeah. But what was the overall pitch there? It was really just don't let the establishment take down harm with with this guy. And in Wisconsin, the establishment is Tony Evers. And this nice old man, who is the reason why the state is not Texas right now, as he was saying, who has been the bulwark against 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 where they feel like establishment candidates have failed them. And we've seen this in some other races, which we should talk about. Just a couple of the straight thoughts I had, just wonder if you had any other takeaways from this race in particular, then we'll go around the country. But a huge turnout. I mean, just huge enthusiasm of the Democrats kind of insane. You know, you see this little bit of Trump when there is a firebrand candidate, it draws people out for and again, it's a 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 on social media and the other takeaways. I think the money part of this is it's talking Democrats right just 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 whole picture told over. And who's writing and reading the stories about what was was spent in a race a month ago.
We will learn that had money stayed on the sidelines long, long still wins, but in the end it's, in Michigan, it was for 51% of people who voted for somebody who was not a bill else I had and luckily for him, some of that was for Canada who dropped out already. And it was constant, it's about 60% of Democrats voted for somebody who was not long, three had dropped out already. Some people stuck it out for the two kind of stragglers who stayed in the race. And if 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, I'm blending this with the money on a even playing field as 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 min Michigan primary for what was illicit lock and seed. I talked to him a bunch in that race. What he was able to do was just make it a pure populist campaign, he only would bring 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, I 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 that are familiar to her talk about her race. I mean, she ends up winning. She is the backing of the Bernie crowd and kind of the D triple C more moderate crowd. So running on this populist platform that doesn't kind of dabble into some of the more the elements of the DSA that's worrying people. He wanted to do takes, but you don't want to just flatten out the whole country because the condition, I would say though, and I was talking about Evers's popularity, just what is 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 he got kind of viral. This is like a natural question. He was getting annoyed saying, you're calling someone like me grew up in Milwaukee, first black kind of executive, the establishment that's the slur to me. And that kind of reminds me, does he think it's the word establishment's 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. So, the Democratic establishment includes both Chuck Schumer and people in DC who are losers and lost, and includes Tony Evers and Peggy Flanagan and Tim Law, 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 Rowland's won a beater because they think they can make her go away, she won this time. Lost your 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? Not that much. It 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 person who's not a loser, so that you've seen, we may be able to talk about John Larson and Connecticut, you've seen Democrats are saying, keep me in the ring, I might be old and I might have lost a Trump, but I can do it next time. You're seeing voters say, no, you lost, you won fighters. I'm putting a loop on what's happening there in the upper Midwest, or closing a loop rather on what's happening in the upper Midwest. It's interesting the way that ICE and kind of Operation Metro Surge 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. That on the show, a really good member, affable. And it's like she voted for the Lincoln Riley Act. And it just seems like it was hard for her to get past that vote. She ends up losing 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 suburbs, the suburbs of Minneapolis on the other side of the border in Wisconsin, which went for on. Yeah. They were talking about how a lot of the ICE agents had gone there. And so if you look at the map of Wisconsin, like yeah, Hong does well kind of endane, and then also does well there in the Minnesota excerpts. And I think that's just interesting, the impact of that both in these primaries, but then prospecting out to the general Wisconsin's 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 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 Riley Act as did some other Democrats and swing seats. In the context of Trump having won again, and she would have been that happened to have passed the Biden border bill that was what was in front of him. You know, what was there, the Democrats bit the bullet and voted for this, and then Republicans wanted to give Trump a win. So they waited to send the bill to him and not buy it. So it was Trump who got to sign the Lake Riley Act, even worse if you're a Democrat. It wasn't the Biden signed bill. It was you voted for a bill, the Trump signed and I'm not new to the idea of their cynicism politics, but Republicans do wanted 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 Lincoln Riley 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 nice facility in Texas. I think that that was the one where I believe the purpose or in jail for 50 years now. I'm probably going to say 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 primary or the resolution is that they get destroyed by it. Maybe they either apologize or they 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 that I just voted for this poorly written political resolution. That hurt her a lot too. And I've seen that hurt Roger Krishnamorthy 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 and set up by the right. Yeah. I mean my takeaways of this is temper when 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-bite. They're just tweets. All they are is tweets. If you want to go back home and say, hey, I never vote on that stuff. People say, oh, I don't vote on that. Yeah, yeah. It 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. 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, a couple of their big narratives 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 Jaren Tak or Sikh 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 beats Imbron and mayor 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 friend Ezra. And, you know, he just ran basically saying, I've got more energy to do the job. I mean, there's more to it than that. Why don't you just give a rundown of that race 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 challengers that have a more middle of the road profile ideologically. Well, you just mentioned the bench and that's a fairly new fight inside the party kind of late because we're almost done with the primaries. But the bench is a big doater-funded effort with good democratic strategists to recruit and nominate candidates who are young and active and they think would be memory good numbers of Congress, but not necessarily the left wing. This is a threat. If you are DSA, 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 Sarodas publicates the lever of starting to go after this. It didn't work very well. John Larson tried to make that an issue in his race, but the issue with 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 issue of security because he wanted to expand social security and freezes up several times. And then his office says.
because there was a medication reaction, it was an artificial seizure, but he's fine. A couple months later, Luke Bronin gets into the race, he's the former mayor, Hartford, we're in scholar veteran, not left-wing, and Larson's really annoyed by this, 'cause he thought Bronin was gonna support him, but Bronin saw where things were moving, that Democrats said, "Democratic voters," I should say, say, "Yeah, the last time," we said, let's wait, we believe that this incumbent can pull this out. It led to a generational disaster, so Democrats were open to supporting someone else. So Bronin gets the endorsement of the local Democratic party, he ever competes in the conventions. The Larson's strategy is basically just to, hopefully there's enough votes for other candidates to split it. He ends up as a non-scandalized incumbent, he's only scandal being sneezing 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. He is town, he's Hartford, and then one other town. And it was just a completely definitive rejection of old Democrats. And he had progressive endorsements, Jamie Raskin came out to help him, working families, powers endorse 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. But if you watch, Larson was kind of classic, Northeast liberal, and very Kennedy-esque speeches, obviously he's older now, so they land a little bit less hard. They used for trying his office. You need me back in there, I have a seniority of that experience, I can fight Trump. You know how that ends, just Democratic voters say, you lost, though. We would give you a mulligan on the first one, 'cause Russia and all the stuff happen, you wanna talk about your votes? Yeah, no, he won twice. You guys lost again. You can't convince us that you can win. This is the thing, I think, that the guys of the bench, and a couple of other places are doing this smart, it's just that you have to give Democratic voters another option, where your ideology is if you're in the center, or if you're just kind of a traditional liberal, it's like you have to tell Democratic voters, like you recognize 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, another one of those candidates where it didn't work, I've said this in the podcast, like Malarie'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 gonna work. If only the left is offering something new, and you're attacking the left, like Democratic voters we're seeing are going to, I think, go to the people that are offering them a positive vision, and another way to kind of go out Trump. And so, anyway, the Connecticut race was an interesting microcosm of how that looks when it's not coming from the Bernie wing of the party. - Yeah, and Malarie was another bench candidate, and Bonin did not get stuck in that same target of fighting about a custom Piker and fight about Israel. That was, had Bonin put out tweets years ago saying, I hate Connecticut, people who might have been different. There were a bunch of issues that were happening, that was a very specific race. And I've talked about that a bunch. - But you're right on the general idea is that, and this is what the Malar people's theory was, 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. So as 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 a kind of big picture general election, and some decent news for Democrats on that front is, we have the Massachusetts race coming up, Molten 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 Molten, but that Markey has kind of pushed it back. What do you think is there, 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 to 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 reason 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's 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 Molten as an opportunist who has betrayed constituencies like trans people in order to get ahead. And that's not as compelling as you need me in the Senate to transform the economy into a green economy. And 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 stick together a I'm the true progressive and a Massachusetts, he went not to get too much in a degree, but a Massachusetts vote the electorate is registered Democrats and non-enrolled independence. And polling has showed Molten wins those guys. He loses with Democrats. That is his path, 50% by losing Democrats and winning those voters who are non-ideologically are just tired of bold people. - I was Molten. Molten super called me out of set. 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-ISIS strongest soldier I would have been like chaining myself outside the ice detention facility. And instead of-- - He has done it. He called for abolishing ice really on, but not-- - Yeah, he did himself. - Yeah, yeah, but I want 110% energy on that. And I think that's picking something like that is maybe a more compelling counter message for the folks in the center. So we'll be watching that one close, I like so. - So Nate Silver, for all of the people has little nitpicks about him on social media, he rubbed 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 in Senate prognostications yesterday, and it was, I think better for the Democrats particularly on the Senate than a lot of people expected. 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 kind of people have a sense for where things are going in the House. In the specific races, his model of Texas is a flip, Tolerico with a 63% chance of winning, which was, I think, the big headline number. El Saeed is the favorite, Troy Jackson and Maine is the favorite, shared Brown and Ohio is the favorite. Overwhelming favorites for the Democrats protecting the seats in North Carolina and Georgia, both 90 plus percent for Cooper and Ossoff. 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 do 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 are really kind of feeling like the Senate 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. If you remember 2018, at the end, Paul Ryan said, he had literally keep going to the Ailsen family to cut giant checks to fund a super PAC. Republicans will have more money. I think Texas is viewed in that context to speak 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 Teleriko, be outspent on the air. I think also, not without reading Nate's mind, every primary broadens had the same democratic primary, broadens had the same strategy. We've got our nominee, we're gonna find the most woke, left wing things the Democrats had said, beat him up with that. We'll get a natural discourse going in the mainstream media. And I saw this at Tel Rico several times, but I felt 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 on buyer, et cetera? Because it's always new to somebody. And that didn't put him away. The hope is 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 their 2020 even numbers with Latino voters, 2018 would be better in Texas if they turn out the black vote, which there's the discourse of whether teller you can do that, but I feel that that might be a little bit 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 48% of the vote for Caleriko, which is what Beto got. I mean, 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 because it's cheaper. LTOL has one statewide and that's getting 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.
right in Alaska. So I think that that as 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. Well, I know it was narrow and faultless, but you know, there is something to 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 fine. Republicans talk about their good recruiting for the cycle. They have avoided primaries. Sure. But they've got candidates who are. 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. Okay. Better than a far right guy, but not exciting. Who's older than his opponent? You have Michael Watley and North Carolina, who they say is a good recruit because he'd been for primary. Sure. Against the popular governor. He hasn't really found his footing in Texas. Paxton's kind of a kind of a mess. Yeah, I'll go even further than you. I think that I because, you know, the media acts like the Democrats own the ones with agency and like we're 10 years into Trump and nobody wants to do this anymore. The Republican recruitment has been basically that the cycle. I naturally hints in an Iowa as 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 microaggers type that is going to have all of Trump's baggage, but none of the positive. That's your Watley and microaggers. And then in several states, they nominated Cooke's, you know, and yesterday they nominated Michelle Tafoya, sideline reporter in Minnesota. Mike Collins can Paxton for all of the, you know, kind of rending of garments about El Sayed and what have it a main. It's, it's, it's a pretty motley crew on the Republican side. For example, Johnston, new news advertising. Now his name is new new, his brother's a popular governor, but he's running as this sort of New Hampshire focus change agent. And you think, but you were the senator. You were a senator a long time ago. Back when back when like the iMac was a green apple colored thing and people's dad is like, you, you're not a change candidate. And so I was going to say that and this is, 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 works for Biden's sort of in 2022, Republicans think they can do it. But is it working? Is the thing is, is like I said, they came out of the gate with style Rico saying, look how crazy this guy is. In Iowa, Ashley Henson just keeps pretending the Josh Turek is more liberal than he is. For example, she said that he wants girls and boy sports down to a vote he voted against because we could back just stuff. And he's actually this himself on part of that issue. Going down that path is a little tricky because not just because the, the particulars of the issue, but because how much they 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 long 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 that were not communist. Okay. 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 running about because in most of this other states, I mean, the whole Mike Lawler campaign is just, yes, I'm running against the centrist, but Zora on exists. Okay. No, 2022, maybe I'll do it better. 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 his four seats get to 51. Some concern they might need five, though, because there is the John Fetterman wild card. And Fetterman did this weird thing yesterday where he talked about how Dave McCormack, the Davos Dave McCormack, the Republican Center for the State, is his best friend. He would never go against him. And he's on Fox all the time, shitting on Democrats. And I don't, you know, 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, yes, yeah, in 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 lib Tards, like whatever, like it takes. Okay, 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 what do you think is kind of the state of play there? With Fetterman, so looking down to the 2028 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. Andy, Andy said, yeah, probably he wouldn't. He would not win a primary in Pennsylvania if it was held today. He and 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 him in 2022. A lot of buyers, Remorse and Pennsylvania, among Democrats, they did not nominate Connor Lamb. So what is he looking at in 2028? Is it retirement? Is it being appunded? Is it winning a re-election as a Republican? Something that he lived through when Arlene 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 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 2027-28 if Republicans hold the Senate or if 50-50 knee flips? The point will be for Sam Oledo and Cyrus Thomas to retire, be replaced by young conservatives. Correct. That is the point. There's like nothing else that they really need to do. 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 Federman's career in life suggests that he would want to cast of the vote for ensuring a Arlene can and gets on the role of the Arlene can. I don't think there is one. But I agree with you generally that so much in the Federman story is just that Democrats are mean to him. He's always in pro-Israel. I think you really got radicalized on how he talks about pro-ressives because they protested his home. They went to his house in Braddock with he stood on the roof with his Israeli flag. That pissed him off. And so he does need some temper criteria to tell him. We are not all like this. The guys yelling at you online are not everybody. But this is a weakness of the way the left deals in rhetoric. There are a lot of super-angry people online. And when pushed, it's well online as real life. It is, though. When I go outside to the park, am I seeing people taking in all of nature or am I seeing them on their phones? I see 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 near magazine story about about Federman. 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 Federman, 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 skeptical that he would end his career in politics, electoral politics, making sure that Republicans have a Supreme Court supermajority that won wind most of what he ran on. I just think things happen. Okay. Okay. Well, I hope you're right about that. But in the meantime, just to be safe, I don't know, Ben Ray Luhan. What are you doing? Okay, take take him to lunch. All right. I mean, Joe Manson's still hanging around me. Yeah. Take him on the yacht. Take him to lunch. All right. Actually, I think for Manson, we're Manson Liz, you could, could you get up the river to, 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. Well, I go, 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. I go. 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. I got my patience and I'm making too. The Bullwork Daily is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Anzaly Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DeCicco.
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