Democrats Won Big. Now What?

I'm Michelle Colle, I cover National Politics for New York Times Opinion and welcome to the Post-Election Breakdown for Opinion. I'm fantastically thrilled to be here today with my brilliant colleagues, columnist Carlos Lassada. Good to see you, Michelle. And contributing writer, EJDM. We try to be with you always. It is so great to have you guys here because we have a lot to talk about. The Democrats won crazy big last night. This was, you know, you can call it a route. You can call it a tsunami. You can call it whatever you want to. I like to go with Thumpin. That's just like a good political thumpin warms my heart, but you take all those things. That's a George W. Bush reference there. George W. Bush '06, '06 midterm, Thumpin. Oh, six. That's a deep cut. That's a deep cut. It is a very good day for the synonym industry, repudiation, rebuke, sensual goes on. You got it. You got to just go through your Thessaris, I'm saying, but you take all these pieces. You take the Thumpin in Texas, you take Kansas, you take Iowa, you take, it's a lot. They're still counting in Mississippi as we're doing this. But what is the big takeaway? I mean, are we talking about, was there something in terms of particular candidate type that resonated or a particular policy message that resonated, EJ, you go first. First were the words they're still counting in Mississippi on your bingo card for this morning. Not decades. Not decades. Tell us something about what happened yesterday. I've had these two ideas all year long and they're rooted in two old slogans. One is the great old Fannie Lou Hamerline sick and tired of being sick and tired. I use sense in the country and it turns out way outside the democratic base into Republican territory that people are really sick and tired of the way politics has been carried out in the last year and a half and particularly in the second part year of this Trump second term. You know, people are tired of the division. They're tired of wasting time. They're tired of stupidity and ballrooms and wars. And I think that's a sort of very deep in these results. And the other slogan really that's been in my head all year is the old John F Kennedy. Let's get the country moving again because again, I keep going back to the Trump years. We talk about the outrage to like a decency and all of that, but it really does feel like wasted time in the face of really, really big problems. We're going to deal with AI or position in the world is changing and maybe weakening climate, all kinds of things and we're just doing this crazy stuff. And I think people across the board, it was, you know, we really was this incredible sort of array of ideological candidates that the Democrats had a really philosophically diverse array. And I think all of them were saying something like that and oh, yes, our prices are too high and our incomes are too low. Carlos, what's your theory of the game here? So the, the messages that resonated the most were the ones that we knew going in for the ability, healthcare costs, corruption, war. I don't think that's a big surprise. That's what folks have been worried about. And that's what moved this election in, you know, whatever, rebuke, censure, wave, tsunami, whatever you want to say. Right. Now, but the question, the question that I had before the midterms was which type of Democrat was going to win and which version of the Democratic Party, you know, progressives or moderates was going to kind of emerge ascendant. And I think there's something here for sort of all parts of the party to try to claim that victory. Right. I'm dualist. I get a Michigan, maybe Troy Jackson in Maine. They can claim victory for kind of more progressive voices, but you have, you know, the Adam Hamilton types in James Tolerico that signal the appeal of the, of the more moderate Democrat, the kind of preachery, but not preachy wing of the party. So that's really, to me, the, the, the battle that's going to play out, you know, like yesterday and today, you know, big day of triumph for the Democratic Party. But you know, how will they attempt to govern legislatively? How will they coalesce around 2028? You know, that's where this question of which party, which part of the party is ascendant will really play out and, and, and matter a lot more than just, you know, we won today. Quote unquote, as, as the party would conclude, could I just pick up on one great thing? You just said preachery, but not preachy. You know, we did not think of an election one by Democrats. It would be part of a big theological argument in the country. But really, in a way, all fashion love your neighbor Christianity, be Christian nationalism yesterday. Um, and I think one of the interesting things that was happening is you had candidates like Adam Hamilton and Kansas and James Tolerico down in Texas and a bunch of others who were preaching this really old gospel of, you know, the good Samaritan and the Beatitudes and the, you know, servant on the Mount, um, and they were being attacked by as heretics by some of the religious right when this is really old fashioned stuff. And I think that's one of the interesting things we're going to be talking about, uh, going forward out of this election. Well, I do think that that's right in terms of apart from the individual races, Democrats needed to signal that they had gotten the message that they had gotten too far to the fringe with a lot of their cultural signaling. And I think that when you get back to the kind of old fashion, you know, you get a little bit of the religiosity in there, whatever kind of old school you're talking about. That kind of signals that you understand that there are some, you know, kind of mainstream traditional values that people are still interested in hearing about. But that said, they kind of kept the social issues to the edge. I mean, they looked at what the Republicans had screwed up with, definitely affordability, you know, the health cares cuts to Medicaid and the ACA subsidies, the war in Iran making everything feel, you know, just that much tougher to deal with. I think that they really made a concerted effort to keep that front and center, but also with the second piece of their mandate, which is the Trump accountability. And so the upside to this is that no matter what branch of the Democratic Party you're talking about, this is kind of the unifying message. And you see them talking about this with their first 100 days agenda that they've already sort of soft, soft launched. They're going for the most unifying pieces of what the party believe in instead of, you know, you know, there's this fragment that wants to tack, you know, go back, dive into the culture wars or whatever that. That seems to be put on the back burner for now because they do really understand why voters have sent them there. But as far as like how they get stuff done, I think probably the easiest piece of this will be kind of holding Trump accountable. And how do we think they're going to go forward with this? There's going to be a lot of pressure. They hold the Senate. So there's going to be talk of impeachment of administration officials, if not the president himself. Where do you think this is going to start? EJ, what do you think the accountability, the first thing up with that's going to be? Yeah, let me just say on the social issues, I think they actually kind of transcended them. They changed the conversation because if you look at all these pictures, this is an incredibly diverse set ethnically, racially, first time there are 100 women in the Democratic Caucus in the House. So it wasn't that they have moved right on the social issues. They figured out how to talk about them in a way that was unifying rather than divisive Hamilton, said, we shouldn't pick on trans people that didn't get in the weeds that the right wing wants to get into about what to do about this or that sport. But they said, we want to be decent. And then they moved on to populist economics. And I do think the populist piece actually united these wings and that I think gets to what they are going to do coming in. There are two sides of the corruption thing. One is, what do you legislate? I think bands on stock trading are going to be very popular. I think they're going to do a whole slate of things on what do we ask our public officials to do? What standards are we going to inscribe in law to them? I do think they're going to do investigations and I think they're going to try to be careful. What do they pick out that is either the most egregious or the most telling about what the administration has been doing? But I think this idea that you can either legislate or investigate is just wrong. They've got to hold them accountable. But I think out of the box, the other stuff they're going to do is stuff they ran on like end those healthcare cuts that have really hurt a lot of people and actually kick in in a big way this year in Mississippi, Scott Cologne, the Democrat, within 48 votes as we speak, talked everywhere about what this was doing, not only to people's coverage, but to the threat of rural hospitals. And I think that's the other interesting thing. thing that happened, Democrats have been shot out and shut themselves out of rural America. And because of Trump's policies, the tariffs, the war, the high fertilizer prices, high diesel prices, rural America is open to an argument again from the Democrats. And that's amazing, given where they've been for the last 10, 15 years. So Carlos, what's the practical ability, though, for those kinds of things? I mean, the House can presumably, you know, he came Jeffries is going to be the speaker. He has himself a nice fat majority, unlike the last couple of Republican speakers. But then it goes to the Senate where they do not have a filibuster proof majority. And then they still have to get it passed Trump, anything they want to do. I mean, so like, from your position, what do you think is practical? I mean, you can, you can do messaging bills all day long. Yeah, I mean, so part of Trump's problem was that he wasn't focused on the things that people care about, right? So you're bragging about the ballroom while the public is worried about groceries, right? So given that, it would seem wisest for the Democrats to be laser focused on the issues that the public has signaled that it cares about the most, cost of living, including healthcare costs, you know, government corruption is being on a big issue. The war in Iran, in part because it's impact on fuel prices, right? But of course, you're right. You're also on their agenda. Yeah. Absolutely. And actually, that's kind of interesting because it's how all these things have come together, right? People worry about affordability, but that's also related to the war, it's related to trade policy and tariffs. So like, in a sense, it's like perfect storm of stuff that the public didn't want, right? But you're right, even with the House and Senate both under Democratic control, it's hard to get stuff passed, you know, stuff that Trump will sign into law. They still can conduct oversight. They can conduct investigations. They can present at least alternatives on healthcare, right? They can post force votes and debates so the public sees what they stand for beyond just being against Trump. That's something that the Democrats are going to have to get beyond, right? Like, it's just like it's not going to be enough for the Republicans clearly to be with Trump. The Democrats can't just be the anti-Trump party, a specific thing that I think they can do. To the extent that the post-mitt terms world for the White House will involve maybe some house cleaning, maybe getting rid of some cabinet secretaries, you know, the control of the Senate means that they can at least keep, you know, unqualified, hackish people from taking on these very significant jobs. I think that's not a trivial consideration. The aftermath of the '06 midterms, I always remember, was when, you know, for instance, Don Rumsfeld was unceremoniously pushed out of the Pentagon, who's to say if, you know, we may see some action at the Pentagon as well this time around. I think that's really interesting because I think when you think about what our Democrats going to do, and you're right, they don't quite have the number of votes to get things through because of the filibuster, a lot depends on what the Republicans choose to do. And that's two, and there are two polls there. One is, do Republicans in Congress look at this, say, Trump is on his way out? He has been poisoned to us. And some of them, really, we candidates for hand-picked by Trump. They're really angry at Trump. And the money, he forced them to spend in states like Louisiana and Mississippi and South Carolina that they never expected to have to defend. What did they do with this? Do they decide they need to take a different path? Do a certain number of them decide if Democrats end up with, what, 55, 56 seats? They don't need as many Republicans to get to 16, but then you get to Trump's desk. And Lord knows I have absolutely no insight into the brain of Donald Trump. I will not pretend to know that. But he really faces an interesting choice, which is, how does he want to go out? And the most confounding thing he could possibly do would be to offer to cooperate with Democrats. And who knows? It's hard to believe. It's hard to see. It's hard to see that he could maintain that day to day. But how does he decide to behave in these last two years? And I think that's one of the most interesting facts about your questions about the next two years. I love your optimism that we're going to see kind of a new Trump show reboot where he's a kinder gentler, less unhinged. I just want to be absurdity of the statement, but we are counting in Mississippi. He shows. So, you know, it's a new season in a way. I think if we weren't looking at a huge push for accountability, it might be more of an issue, but they're going to have to balance that whole, what are they going to try and cooperate on and strike deals on with the, how much are we going to break the administration over the coals for all of the crazy corrupt stuff that they seem to have done, like he doesn't respond to that well, which means we're going to see contempt of Congress citations potentially because they're not going to turn over data. They're not going to provide witnesses for this, you know, there's plenty of energy for just investigation after investigation. So I just, I'm not hopeful that Trump is going to be in a kind of accommodating mood, but, you know, I tend to be the skunk at the garden party in these things. I mean, like Chris Jeff, you wise assumption, Michelle, I think what, what I'm, I guess it's banking on who is Trump fundamentally is he just so unpredictable that he'll do any damn thing today, even if it completely contradicts what he did yesterday. That is one side of Trump. The other side of Trump is exactly, as you say, that to the extent that they do do serious investigations and they will, he'll revert to all of the stuff he said during this campaign. And we don't know. Carl, what do you think? I think his MO is pretty consistent when Trump feels cornered when he feels attacked. He fights back. He projects, he insults, he ignores, he lies, he stoned walls, he always declares victory no matter what. So, especially when we get into full on investigation world, I think that is very likely to be his reaction when the Democrats, you know, go full force on that. But what I find interesting is not just his relationship to the Democrats, but his relationship to his own party. I think that's going to be interesting to watch over the next two years. I mean, you know, for him, it's so important to remain the center of attention, right? This goes back to the art of the deal, you know, and he would say that, that even negative coverage is, is better than, than, than no couple. All publicity is good publicity. So, I think he's going to zealously try to police the efforts that are already underway by members of his party to distance themselves from him. And I wonder if he's going to try to stage manage the race to succeed him, right? Even if he's not able to be on the ballot himself, I think he's going to try to make sure that his vote in that race is the most important one. So, we have a kind of comment from folks watching, which is, will the Democrats be able to make the necessary connection between corruption and self-tealing and the kitchen table issues that they got elected on? I mean, will they be able to kind of make that link and push things forward? I mean, this is what they were trying to do during the campaign, and that certainly seemed to be successful, but then when you actually, you know, rubber hits the road with trying to make stuff happen, it gets more complicated. Do you guys have a prediction, I guess? John Assob became the Michael Jordan or Jason Tatum of the campaign by making that link constantly and making it really, really effective. I don't, I think that the voters have already made that link for themselves. You know, the, the, the old sort of finding a political science is, corruption doesn't bother you if everything's going well. That old Southern Senator who allegedly said, I may have stole, but I stole for you, you know? If people are feeling good, the corruption doesn't bother them so much. When they're not feeling good, they naturally link this to a corrupt government. And I also think the corruption is linked to this really strong populist pushback against the rich and powerful, the billionaire says, Bernie likes to say, and the amount of money that poured into this campaign against them is really part of that so that I think those are naturally linked. And it's going to be interesting to see, not necessarily what they legislate on, but what do they talk about in terms of holding tech companies accountable? What are they proposed doing about AI? And data centers was the hidden, the issue nobody expected that was really strong in these campaigns. So I think there's just a natural fit given the economic discontent. Okay, I want to, I want to take that and twist it before I get you in here, Carlos, which is that, so to do any of this, as you've noted, they probably need a little bit of Republican assistance to get stuff over the line. So forget about what Trump is going to do. Do we think that we've hit a moment where the Republican Party is so disgusted that congressional Republicans will finally be like, okay, it's a risk, but I want a future after this guy I will use the state. age, I need to start breaking with him on real stuff. How optimistic are you that that will happen now? Nothing focuses the political mind like a good thumpen. After the 2016 election, there were some Republicans who had resisted, you know, joining up with Trump, who immediately, you know, suddenly were, you know, psychologically going all in, right, because they needed to remain relevant. And some people on the Trump team called them the November 9th Club, right, because the election was on November 8th. And so these were like the people who just showed up at the end, right? Like, now I think you may have a club going in the opposite direction, right? That it'll be the November 4th Club, right? The people who used to be all in with Trump, who are now like, oh, you know, like all along, I was privately very concerned, you know, or Paul, or worried and the like. And so I think you are, I mean, you already saw that during the race, you saw people trying to create that distance. And now, you know, after the Chalacan, the thumpen, the rebuke, the censure, the upgrading, whatever it is, you know, the cost of that, the risk of that is just much lower. And so I think, I think you are, you are likely to see that happening. Okay, so what I'm looking forward to the most is, so the 2028 primary starts today, we all know that, right? So I can smell on both teams, people just like strapping on their gear and getting ready to go, so what happens if you're like Ted Cruz, right? You're the last Republican standing in Texas. You've tried to kind of start separating yourself from Trump. You were worried about JD Vance because Trumpism was right and high and he's the air parent, but like now all bets are off. I think they're all going to pile in and they're all going to try to be carving out their own lanes. What do you see in terms of like how this changes the Republican view of where the party's going and who's going to lead it? I think that the, you know, until yesterday, the conventional wisdom, which is probably wrong, as it often is, was this was a race between Marco Rubio and JD Vance. This was not a good night for JD Vance as long term prospects. Let's just put it there. A lot of people, conservatives are looking to Rubio as somebody who's distant enough, but inside, he can bridge his gap. I think that's going to be much harder than they think. And so I think you have a lot of people on the outside, you know, as you suggest, hey, Cruz certainly is wants to do this. But I think there may be other people now who look at this and say, you know, the mega coalition really kind of got blown up yesterday because they lost a lot of votes among working class white voters, Simone County, my favorite ordained class, County Youngstown. It was, I think with my numbers are right, plus nine for Trump, plus seven for Sharon Brown yesterday. That's a huge swing. That's old industrial America. And you saw that all over the place. And so maybe the mega coalition isn't the future coalition of the Republican Party. After all, but what is? And I think, you know, I don't think it's just pure Reaganism, although I think there are some Republicans who'd like it to be that. So I think it's going to be very interesting. Who is creative on the Republican side who can create built to I am trailing Bill Clinton, build a bridge between this old Republican party and the new one. Boy, that's a hard job today. Okay. I want to throw in another, we've got another audience question, which is how are the Democrats going to deliver? And it goes back to our discussion of, you know, how difficult legislating is going to be. So how are they going to deliver on affordability issues if they keep the filibuster is the filibuster? Is the death of the filibuster going to come back again? Is this going to be a hot issue? Show mansion's gone, Christian sentiment's gone. What where do we think that's going to go? Do we think that's coming back guys? Haven't you had multiple? Democrats saying so saying that they're, that they're, you know, they're they're in on getting rid of the filibuster. Well, yeah, but it takes more than just a few Democrats saying. Right. Like a mansion provided cover for a plenty of Democrats last time. They just, they threw Joe under the bus because they could or, or, or, or Kirsten sentiment. But a lot of them like their prerogatives. They, you know, if we had had the filibuster gone for the last couple of years, there's plenty of Republican policies people wouldn't have enjoyed that got passed through. So, no, I think this is, you know, $10 billion question. It's inflation. It used to be a smaller number than that. The, I think that there, there is a strong instinct in the party that look, we may win next time. And we're going to really want to legislate. And what better thing to do than get rid of the filibuster now? When Trump is president, we have enough majorities to block him. I think that's a strong sentiment. But they also know that even if they get rid of the filibuster, Trump still has veto power. So, is it worth getting rid of it now? Or are they better off to wait when they have the full control of government? And they know they can pass stuff in, get it signed. And I think that's going to be a lively underground debate. I'm wondering if they would go to weakening it, you know, issue by issue. I think there, one of the things that happened yesterday is this enormous outpouring of black votes. Black voters are really angry about what the Supreme Court did to the Voting Rights Act. They basically gutted it. And I could imagine saying, look, on this reform stuff, on voting rights and basic civil rights, we are going to act. And we're going to shelve the filibuster for this purpose. And so, I think there is going to be a big debate about this. And I think there is going to be division in the party. But I think the thing that Democrats were united in being mad at Joe Manchin about was his refusal to let it be lifted for voting rights. And I think that's still a very strong sentiment in the party. Kenton and money, by the way, campaign finance reform has a new lease on life thanks to Elon Musk. We've been saying that for years and years. But okay, so before we go, I want to like, let's just do a little poke pressure test at the kind of new democratic majorities coming in. So obviously, the Democrats did a jaw drop in, did a jaw drop in jaw last night had a lot of good candidates. But this was fundamentally an anti-Trump election. And so, going forward, the democratic party is going to need strong leaders to keep it together. If it wants to get anything done, there are an awful lot of people in the party who have questioned whether the current leadership, Chuck Schumer in the Senate, Ikeem Jeffries in the House, has what it takes. What do you think, guys? I mean, they're going to be what they're going to be. But how do you feel about this? This reminds me a little bit of what happened after the 2022 midterms, right? When the Democrats, you know, didn't lose by as much as people thought they might, it was seen as validation for the Trump, I mean, excuse me, for the Biden administration, right? And that may have propelled Joe Biden to think like, yeah, I should totally run again, you know, like, and we all know kind of like how that ended up, right? I think in a way, this will be seen as validation for current democratic leadership in a similar way. And sure, like, you know, all credit and power to, you know, Chuck and Hekeem, but I don't know. And, you know, you guys cover this more closely than I do. I don't know that this necessarily means that, you know, yes, we should continue with this kind of long-term leadership of the party under current management. The party's changing. The party is evolving. The party is getting younger ideologically at shifting. It's very unclear as we talk at the beginning exactly how that's going to coalesce. It doesn't necessarily mean that the current leadership is the best one suited to the task of of leading that party into the future. Yeah. And there's a couple of different pieces there, one. So like, if you're looking at Schumer, Schumer is not the, you know, freshest face on the blog. There's questions about whether it's time for him to move on. It's just, it's almost just a question of generational change, where with Jeffries, Jeffries is, Jeffries is young by, you know, at least by congressional standards. But there are some ideological issues and also just temperamental issues. One, he's much farther to the kind of center right on Israel and corporate pack money than a lot of folks in the base and he gets hit for that. But also he's just, you know, he's more temperant and establishment and they feel, you know, people feel like he's more status quo and okay, with that sort of thing than they are. So that's not really an age thing. That's just that's more of a positioning thing. But I do think that the party is going to be looking at some of these issues in the next couple of cycles. EJ, did you want to throw in? Yeah, I think that it's matter of when I think that that both Schumer and Jeffries in this election certainly bought or earned themselves two more years I don't think they're going to throw. Oh, you don't throw them out when you've been winning. And when you've been winning and the same with Hakim Jeffries I mean, you know, whether it was their strategy or just the public mood or the fact that the two work together pretty well and Democrats were very disciplined. I think they've got another couple of years. I think this is really a 2029 question, not a 2027 question. And we'll see how that plays out. One of the things worth noting is the average age of the Senate just got a lot younger when you look at who has gone in in this election. And you know, I've been thinking about this. What really keeps Democrats united? You know what Democrats have been looking for for like three or four generations. They've been looking for another Herbert Hoover. Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression kept the Democrats united election after election no matter what was going on they could run against Herbert Hoover. And it really worked in probably the late 60s at least for them. That was a long time. And one of the questions coming out of this is Will Donald Trump be their Herbert Hoover for a long time. And it's the nature of this repudiation that gives you a sense. That's really possible that when people look back on this, they're going to ask what were we doing as a country in this period. And so I think Trump could be the gift that keeps on giving to Democrats, which can help them sort of push back on their normal behavior, which is to fight with each other about stuff. Yeah, but let me tweak that just a little bit, which is like I remember back in the day when Nancy Pelosi was like leading the minority charge against George W Bush. And people kept wanting her to come up with some kind of proactive agenda that she was going to push. And she's like, no, we're just going to we're going to oppose his privatization of entitlements. And she stuck by that. And she could because they were, they were in a midterm and they were the opposition. But when it's time to run a presidential campaign, you can't run a presidential campaign on just what you're not. You have to have more of a vision. And so I do worry, you know, to Carlos's point about overeating over kind of overeating their mandate or like being too excited about what happened that they're going to be like, oh, we fixed everything. Now it's great. But by the time 2028 rolls around, they really need to know what they stand for, what their core values are, and be able to communicate those in a message that voters get other than we're just not Trump. Because that doesn't play quite so well when it comes time for presidential. But that's just me. This will be the case for both. This will be the case for both parties, right? The Democrats have to figure out who they are beyond their opposition to Trump. And the Republicans absolutely now realize they have to be something other than feelty to Trump. And that's what makes actually 2028 so interesting because it's an open primary on both sides. There'll be a lot of, a lot of sort of tussling for that to be able to define those lanes. What are you? What are you? When this is not the single most galvanizing and motivating character in American politics on both sides of the aisle. You're an Nancy Pelosi back then. Let Rama Manuel and Bruce Reed who later became an aide to Biden put together their six row six package. It wasn't a big deal, but they knew they had to say something to win those '06 elections. And I think Democrats who are very aware of the thing you just said, Michelle, because it's true. And I think there's again, there's a difference between defining the big vision for the party, which I think is the job of the presidential campaign. And that's what you're going to see. I think the real competition for what is our big vision of the future is going to come from people trying to win the presidential nomination. I think in Democrats in Congress have a clear but narrower responsibility, which is just to show there are very concrete things. We would be willing to do if the Republicans went along with us. These are things that are pretty popular with the voters. Either let's try to do them or why are you blocking them. And I think those two things are going to be going on at the same time. And they'll later act. But the presidential campaign, I think, is what tends to define vision. And that's happened time after time. Yeah. And they're going to start half. They're going to have to start hashing that out now. I'm like you guys were talking earlier about how every piece of the party is going to be able to claim victory after after this midterm weapon. But that also means that the identity fight, like what is the soul of the Democratic Party? What is its core is going to grind on pretty aggressively. So like we've already seen the progressives talk about L. Said's one in Michigan as proof of concept. But now the New York Times is just now reporting that centrist Democrats just announced they will have at least 14 new members of the blue dog caucus, which everybody thought was dead for a while. That's going to more than double the size of the caucus from its current 10 members. So they're feeling their votes as well. I know that they were putting forth when you have to do all this kind of pre-election behind the scenes planning. If you think you're going to take the majority back. So I know that Jeffries and the House Democrats had been like jockeying over what the blue dogs wanted to go into the rules or what the progressives want to get out of this committee or that committee. Like this is already going on. And so it's just going to get more and more aggressive within the party until it has its presidential standard bear. I mean, I'm here for it. I love the mess. But not everybody loves the mess. And I think Carla said this right at the beginning. When you win this big, it's very hard for a faction to say, this is our victory and our victory alone. And I think there's always some realization in that party that better be that if they're going to govern, these wings have to find ways of working together. And again, I think what was uniform across the wings was this degree of economic populism, whether it was your Tolerico or your Josh Toric in Iowa or whether it was the lefty candidates. I mean, they were on the same page on some of this stuff. And so I agree they're going to have tensions. But can we please stop and pretend that DSA, by the way, completely took over the Democratic party, which is what people were saying, you know, talking about back in the summit. No, this is important. It's an important wing of the party, particularly in more urban areas. They do are the forward edge of this economic populism. That's all true. And they're important, but they're not as important as a lot of the analysis suggested back in the summer when they were winning primaries. I think there was only like seven of them up, right? So like at most haven't done the count yet, but I thought it was a max of six or seven that they were going to get versus like your 14. That they're very excited. Carlos. I think I think Democrats across the board got AOC's memo. Woke one was crazy. We're focusing on economic populism. You know, that's the story. I mean, because even even on the on the progressive side of the party, that's what it was about. That's what it was about. So in that sense, there is some some consistency in what the party was was offering this time around. I'll say and slogan, money out of politics, money in your pocket. That's pretty good. Well, that fits with like, you know, we were talking about like, would it go back to the, you know, Reagan republicanism? I do think that one thing that Trump has done and then the progressives and the Democratic party have done, I think populism is going to have to be dealt with by both sides going forward. I don't think you're going to go back to like some kind of old Reagan school approach to this for the GOP, but you know, anything is, anything is possible these days. So I think that's going to have to end it for now, guys. Anything you want to throw in there before we let everybody get back to their day? I'm just so excited we got to do this. All right. Such a joy to be with you guys. Thank you so much. Let's let's do it again. [Music]