The Midterms Episode ft. Adrienne Elrod | Ep. 078 Lemonade Stand 🍋

I'm Ida Garten, and each week on Happy Hour, I invite new and old friends for a drink and a fun conversation at my kitchen table in New York City. On this week's episode, I'm joined by Jennifer Garner. We talk all about what it means to be a good friend, Jen's encyclopedic knowledge of my recipes, and the Paris tour I put together for Jen and her daughter. New episodes of Happy Hour are available every Wednesday. You can watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Cheers. Hey, Sue Bird here. This week on Bird's Eye View, I catch up with 2026 WNBA champion and finals MVP Gabby Williams after a whirlwind of a week. Gabby talks about her mindset going into game seven, how it felt facing an equally defensive-minded team in the Atlanta Dream, and why Golden State's system can't be the same. Plus, a special guest hops on the pod to surprise Gabby. You got to check it out. So check out this week's Bird's Eye View on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Lemonade Stand. We checked the news for the last seven days. There's no business and there's no technology. Nothing has happened. Absolutely none. Except one big one, politics. It's politics week. The midterms are happening. Now, I don't know what they are, by the way. Yeah, me neither. And we're going to need some sort of primer from our jet-lagged, fever-ridden co-host. Well, thank God, Doug, because I spent all week prepping for the midterm episode. You went to the heart of it in Germany to learn about these midterms. In Germany and Poland. That's where they keep the secrets of the U.S. midterms. Yeah, they don't tell you. I didn't know that I had to travel to Krakow to get insight into the Iowa midterms race, but I did. And you put your body on the line because you were laying on the floor sick as we prepped for this episode. I did. I did. I prepped for this. This might be my worst prepared episode of the entire show. I did put this together in what I would call a literal fever dream this morning. So if any of this is inaccurate, it's because some of the demons or ghouls had us come here. Ghouls related. I see. That's what we call the deep state. They don't want you to tell the truth. Yeah, I think it's a deep state thing. The deep state saw that I went to Krakow. They knew you were getting closer to the truth. They didn't want me to come back. They infected your ass. I did see, I did see, this is totally unrelated to the midterms, a woman on a club boat that I was out at one night who took her breast out and began breastfeeding random British men that were also at the party. So, if you want any takeaways, you would elude. And that segues perfectly into the United States midterms. A really important time for this country. And much like those British men getting suckled. Why don't you unveil your nutrients to the audience here and let them suckle on your knowledge? Yes, absolutely, that's great. So, honestly, what do the midterms mean in simple terms? These are the elections in the U.S. that happen halfway through each presidential term. Our presidents are on four year cycles here in the United States and every two years there is some midterm election that affects us. A bunch of different positions across the rest of the country. So, that includes things like the House of Representatives where every seat is up for reelection. A bunch of Senate seats because those are on six year terms instead of four or two. And then a variety of state legislature and governor races for the states themselves. And then also, of course, you have like little things, you know, for your area, for your city, for your state, like props, laws. Judges, a variety of positions that pertain to your local area, right? We're going to go through every single judge, comptroller, every election in the entire country. I don't know what you're thinking. This is a 48 hour episode. We've been looking into you, viewer, into where you live locally, what's going on. We want to see, does your community, your address going to be affected by this? We have every address in America in the timestamps, find yours. Just go to your zip cone in the chapters. And it's crazy. We got it for the Nordics, too. We're going to go through what we consider to be some of the most important elections today and talk about how this might affect the overall outcome of the Democrats or Republicans ending up winning either the House or the Senate. Do you have the seat math on this? So as you can see, I know this off the top of my head. The Republicans right now are looking about 218 seats in the House and 212 are going to the Democrats. Now, I believe maybe, Aiden, I don't want to cut off you. That it seems from prediction markets, from the news that likely the House of Representatives is going to go to the Democrats. Is that is that the vibe? Yeah, that is likely. And something interesting when I was looking into this this morning was I didn't realize I knew that in midterm elections, generally the party opposite to the president is the one that increases their share in the House. I didn't know. This is crazy. Did you know that? Since every midterm since 1842, with only three exceptions, this has been the case. Every single one. 42 was a wild year, let me tell you. That was a crazy one. And the only times it hasn't happened were in 1934, 1998 and 2002. But those are the only exceptions to the streak since then. You're saying where it's always going to go against the incumbent president. Yes. Wow. 98-02, huh? So if we were to follow this pattern. Yeah. The Democrats are expected to gain positions in the House in this upcoming election. And I think just to briefly give people some idea of why this really matters, because historic turnout for midterms is way lower. If you look at like percentage of available voters that vote in like presidential elections this century, it averages out to like 63 percent-ish. And then for midterm elections, it's like 46. It's like 47. It's way lower. And they're all old. And they're older. Answer the people. Both. But the people are, it's an older voting base for midterms than it is for presidential. So to maybe incentivize you, you know, depending on you live in the U.S. or not. So like why midterms matter so much. In the U.S., it right now, the Republicans control all three branches of government. You know, we're only voting on something that affects one. But that means, you know, we're going to have to wait and see, you know, we're going to have to wait and see, you know, we're going to have to wait and see, you know, we're going to have to wait and see, you know, we're going to have to wait and see, you know, we're going why midterms matter so much in the U S it right now, the Republicans control all three branches of government. But that means the passing of big pieces of legislation, like the big, beautiful bill. This is something that affects that very directly. It affects things like government shutdowns. Even if you live abroad, right? American's foreign policy is heavily dictated by who is in the house and Senate at a given time. Uh, things like tariffs, especially with the more recent Supreme court ruling, uh, that we got, these are things that are supposed to be established by those bodies. And you might be thinking to this, well, this has been an executive power craze the past year and a half. This guy's using, uh, executive orders left and right to make decisions rather than pushing through traditional legislation. But even though that is the case with executive orders, you can't spend money that Congress did not. Budget or appropriate, which is why things like the big, beautiful bill matter so much. Um, the, uh, legislation can be levied to delay or block executive orders to combat things that the executive is doing. And even though executive orders can be made, you know, they're more legally fragile, even in this time where Trump, uh, has, has kind of stacked the Supreme court. And we have a heavily Republican leaning Supreme court. There has been decisions in executive orders. He's made that have been challenged by that. Um, so that's, you know, just to give some groundwork as to like why these things are important, especially if you're in the U S and you're tentative about voting. Uh, but I would say just for the executive orders, like the reason ostensibly he's been able to do it just by Fiat and writing it out is because no one in Congress has challenged him. But if they did, it would be a whole different, even the Iran war, like Congress can pass a thing that this needs to stop. Um, and I think that's, I think that's, I think that's a stop, right? There's supposed to be a limit. Like as a reminder, the way it's supposed to work is that Congress authorizes war, not the president, but the president can go and kick off a war. You're right. A, uh, like a special military action. Yeah. And not even that it's over, by the way, it's already won. So it's weird to even bring it up. It's weird. It's weird that he keeps bringing it up, but you are supposed to wrap it up in 60 days. If you don't have Congress's approval, I, you know, I haven't, uh, checked recently on whether Congress has explicitly approved extending the war, but like, that's how it's supposed to work. So if Congress decided, uh, Hey, what if it, and if there were Doug, Doug, what if we were like inventing fictional things to be mad about? We're just saying hypothetically, the importance of midterms for some point in the future, not right now. What's the legal perspective on if it was basically over by 60 days? Donnie Pollard's never thought of that one, huh? Where it's like, we basically was like basically done by spending money and fighting, but like, it's basically if a fight's over and there's residual like resentment, that's not a war. I'm not at war with my girlfriend right now. I didn't do the dishes last week, the entire time. Okay. We did want to take a look at five different States and the specifics of what their midterms look like. And Alaska was the first one on the docket. Wait, wait, wait, before we move on, I just want to, I got some, I got some, some, some numbers here. Cause I want to use these numbers because we're focusing mostly on the center. for these breakdowns yeah we're gonna because oversimplify and say let's assume the house goes to the democrats we only have so much time in this episode we have an interview at the end of it we want to get to the key races you might be important the house uh betting markets which are the most important source of truth in this world but also polling have democrats winning like 80 plus like very likely like you said this happens every cycle the president counterparty wins big so the senate though the math is usually pretty bad for democrats but this is where a lot of the power is so if they won this would be a big fucking deal and it's possible that the flip i mean i don't have the exact they need a net gain of four seats yes and you can see the numbers here but you know the point obviously is for each seat that you flip the republicans go down by one so there only needs to be four that are flipped so yeah a net gain of four and it can't be three which would be a tie because then jd vance is the tie-breaking vote and they could still pass the legislation so they need to be four and it can't be three which would be a tie because then a net gain of four and previously it was thought to be impossible but you know trump's polling has been pretty bad and the numbers have been ticking up and now it's like a 50 50 i mean it's a real uh razor thin margin in both polling and betting markets nobody knows how it's going to break and it's hugely important and it's down a very few number of races so we've got the races up here and we're going to go through some of the key ones point by point i think you want to start and what's cool is we got a chance to talk with adrian elrod is someone who is a campaign consultant and we're going to talk about his campaign so the second half of this podcast episode is going to be uh brandon my interview with adrian and that was really interesting to largely hear about like the mechanics of how these campaigns are run and what's going on and what people are doing and how that has changed over time i thought it was really interesting um so we thought it would be fun to pair that with okay let's take a look at some of the key senate races because this is really starting to kick off right now what you're thinking me and doug couldn't find a guest we made up adrian and it's just aiden that's actually not true this is actually a different person aiden was not available this day i just want people to know because they think that we have a real so okay alaska um as part of our conversation with adrian later uh we we sort of highlighted a couple states we thought were interesting so the first is alaska um alaska as a reminder on this map it looks like it's about the size of i don't know you know utah or something but as a reminder alaska is the size of our entire country it is gigantic um however not a lot of people there uh there's only 750,000 people so if we go over to the alaska race we are seeing a heated back and forth the current incumbent senator from alaska is named dan sullivan he has been there since 2015 and alaska traditionally is a very red state trump won alaska in the last presidential election by 13 okay so dan sullivan been there for a while running for re-election and the way this works is anybody can run in the primaries which just happened and the top four move on to the general election so the basically top four but really as you would expect there's like the main democratic candidate and the main republican candidate and the main democratic candidate is doing shockingly well right now so her name is mary pelota and perry if you pull up her website she is like alaskan dude she is just alaska her tagline is fish family and freedom her mom is from the indigenous upic tribe i don't know how to pronounce that i apologize if i got that wrong she for decades worked in the fishing industry like rivers and then worked in local alaskan politics for like two decades one alaska's only they only have one congress seat won the only congress seat in 2022 she did then lose in 2024 but that was like you know this huge red wave in that 24 election yeah uh and she's like a real genuine alaskan first alaskan native to ever go to congress so just super interesting and you can click on some of her like priorities or salmon run it's it's you know a lot about fish so she's a more moderate democrat um salmon run salmon run is a small game to basically talk about the fishing policies that she thinks are important she's really all in on fish huh yeah there's a lot on fish i think generally the vibe is sort of a focusing on alaskan industries and reorienting them so they're really going to benefit alaskans and not letting outside parties come in and sort of take over and destroy things for example trawling which is a very destructive way of doing fishing where outside companies are coming into alaska so a lot of like sustainability about fishing and focusing on expanding the energy industry but doing it in a way that is not just again outside corporations coming in a lot of focus on affordability stopping corruption in dc getting more money to low income alaskans cutting taxes for low income alaskans so it's it's fairly like a moderate democrat but with this real like strong alaska vibe her opponent is dan sullivan dan sullivan again this is the incumbent senator and he is the traditional conservative all right but he grew up in ohio he went to the university of new york and he's a very conservative man he grew up in harvard and georgetown he spent 30 years on the marines and then only moved to alaska in the 90s so he was working for a judge and then he became attorney general and then joined the senate in 2015 and has been there since okay his policies are very like pro-industry very pro-trump it's like we need to keep developing more oil and natural resources we've got to lower taxes uh supports trump's tariffs and supports the iran war pretty vocally okay something i thought was interesting here is mary pelota the you know the challenger has all of these policies listed on our doesn't really have anything it's just kind of like i'm a hard-working american representing the country and here's how you can donate which i thought was uh sorry dan so this is dan sullivan who is the the republican incumbent and this is the battle and there's a third candidate dan sullivan there is another guy named daniel j sullivan with legally the same name you can go down on this alaska uh like tribune page this is the only picture i could find of him there's no website that he has there's no platform this is respectfully a totally unknown guy who's just done a bunch of blue collar work for decades he's like a retired teacher and worked in the forest service and this is dan oh there you go okay so we got dan and dan dan sullivan and uh he decided to join the race as a republican he said that he swapped and registered as a republican like right before but he has to be an independent now right am i crazy uh there's a primary no so the primary is just the top for regardless of party go through so it doesn't really matter really but the thing is this dan sullivan this retired teacher blue collar guy is on the ballot as republican dan sullivan next to the incumbent senator republican dan sullivan um again i can't find any real platform for this person other than he says he's upset at tariffs apparently this must be yeah it's it's intentional like this is he's like i'm just fucking around trying to fuck with him a little bit yeah so he has said no this is genuine i'm just really frustrated with dan sullivan the other one and his position on tariffs and i feel like it's driving up costs so here's what happened next this is according to rooters but a lot of people have reported on this yeah do you say like that on purpose no re-outers re-outers thank you finally um people have been begging you because you say re-outers i just just wanted to check give me the nuclear right now according to readers i want people to know that every time you can't complain about me saying nuclear it feeds my soul and then i can't wait to say it wrong again in the future i think i saw one of those threads and i was like guy who gets really upset when they hear carmel and say caramel well people like that should be shot strong opinions but constantly mispronounces things on purpose that's a good guy all right so uh rotors said the republican party when this happened months ago that dan sullivan technically is we talked about a little bit on like yeah he like joined in he joined this is daniel j sullivan jr against daniel s sullivan so when daniel j sullivan joined the republican party representing daniel s sullivan complained and said he shouldn't be on the ballot this is clearly some sort of like ruse he was removed from the ballot by the alaska division of elections so this like got to that and they said yeah this doesn't this is this is clearly some sort of scam but then in mid-june a court judge in alaska added him back onto the ballot and said look we've looked into it this appears to be good faith this guy's just running wow so they asked him like the republicans asked could you just put your name as sullivan comma daniel james jr parentheses non-incumbent and he said no so the primary happened okay so this guy this gets the primary is anybody can enter but we get down to our top four in first place mary pelota with 48 of the vote in second place dan sullivan the senator with 43 percent this is like wait alaska unique though this is not how primaries are done in other states like this well it depends right but alaska okay yeah okay and in third place dan sullivan that guy at 2.4 percent he got two and a half percent of the vote that's so and then fourth place was uh david leslie who's a democratic socialist who uh i believe is dropping out or is not really super focusing on this up two percent although based on what you're showing me here even if all of the daniel j sullivan votes were put over to dan sullivan he would still have been slightly less in the primary yeah yeah so another way to put this is mary pelota won the primary by or or is was number one in the primary by five percent so now it's going into the general election dan the i don't want to call him fake he is dan sullivan both dan sullivan are staying in the race but uh you know dan sullivan like literally trump was like tweeting out do not fall for the fake dan sullivan like check your results like the republicans are freaking out yeah daniel s sullivan they're trying to like change the names to make it easy but then you still see two dan sullivan's on the thing yeah that's what you might not remember it would be so funny if the the absolute craziest outcome is that dan sullivan would win this thing and then it all goes to the wrong day it goes to the wrong thing yeah yeah daniel j sullivan wins the whole damn thing so this midterm election this senator seat it would be crazy if mary pelota takes it and and swaps it and that's very possible right now she won by five percent in the primary but ultimately comes down to who gets the most votes in the general election it's ranked choice voting so if the um teacher dan sullivan loses his votes would go to his voters next choice which probably is the other dan sullivan but maybe not who knows and as of two weeks ago the department of justice is now investigating dan sullivan jr saying he might have entered the race to confuse voters so there's now a federal investigation going into dan sullivan dude it's so fun the idea of going into the ballot box being confused and putting one next to one dan sullivan that you feel more sure about and two next to the dance cover your bases he's like well at least i get it either way so if we imagine a world where dan sullivan the incumbent loses oops and dan sullivan uh or mary no we don't want dan sullivan to the one mary pelota wins that it would go it would flip one i think it's but maybe i'm reading it wrong have i been saying it wrong this entire time so but you all said reuters wrong that's maybe it's all part of a grand bit you know oh my god i've been reading it wrong this entire time excuse me pelotola not pelota yeah um okay well why don't we mosey on over to texas texas and i want you to explain this to me atrioc because i feel like every i feel like for my entire life whether i'm in some sort of like social studies or civics class i'm i'm reading or listening to the news i'm hearing about how texas is going to texas is about to flip blue texas blue texas is coming they've been saying it for years atrioc they have been saying it for years do you know when the last time a uh democrat won the presidential race in texas maybe clinton 92 1976 jimmy carter that's the last jimmy carter won texas that's the last time texas was blue in the 70s the last time any democrat won a statewide election at all and this is like governor this is senate this is anything was 94 so it has been a solid solid red state both senate seats have been blue for have been red or sorry red for like 30 i'm very dyslexic today for like 30 years yeah yeah since 94 so uh this would be quite the flip for james talarico versus ken paxton but there's a few things that make this a unique race normally we would have a couple people get hyped all blue texas and then you'd look at the math and you'd say it's done it's cooked however ken paxton is a uniquely bad candidate and i'm saying it's not even in a partisan way i'm gonna tell you ken paxton is a guy that was um what are they impeached when he was in the state uh legislature of this of texas by a body of entirely republicans that was a political move though they said he was um embezzling funds they said he's been accused of a lot of things he also like his wife was a state senator for texas and she recused herself from the trial where she could have given one of the votes to help um get him off and they got divorced over it because she didn't want you like wonder so like there's like a long history anyway he's got um business dealings that have gone wrong publicly he's got people accusing him of he's a guy that really uh has a long history of uh baggage that has caused him to pull under basically every other republican running currently in this election and for example governor uh abbott of texas is polling like five to six points higher than ken paxton is so among the same republicans they are choosing there's a lot of suburban republicans who are not interested in ken paxton and the reason he's the nominee is because he was losing to this is john cornran seats i'm gonna see can you look at it i want to try to say his name right he had a weird last name no no no just send it confidently with whatever comes john cornran is the current senator of texas and he's had the seat for a while it's his seat however in the primary this time around he didn't get enough to guarantee it he won the primary he had more votes than ken paxton but it went to a runoff vote and then the runoff vote donald trump stepped in and said ken paxton is my guy he stepped in and endorsed them now everyone else in the republican legislature of texas um in republicans in the senate in the house they endorsed john cornran but it didn't matter trump had the fucking push was there anything like specific that trump was saying or is it just this guy is maga it was this is my guy like that ken paxton is a true maga ally he's a trump ally in texas he's the guy you should vote for and trump has been doing this throughout all of the primaries the republican primaries um in this cycle he has gone through one by one to find loyalists and has one by one gotten them he's almost at a hundred percent success rate like for example he did with um the guy the uh ed gallreen that beat uh thomas massey thomas massey a big anti you know republican but not trump supporter he got kicked out so john corner is another victim of this he got kicked out and now there's like probably the weakest senate candidate the republicans have had in texas in a long time so i want to show you this clip because i saw this without being able to hear the sound and then i watched it with sound disagree with this politics all you want but obviously this guy has it i haven't felt this way since obama i didn't know this was sarcastic until i watched the clip play the clip but the future of our our state and the future of our country rides on this race so i'm out fighting but he just he just uh has you know the the vibe from texas republicans is this guy has no charisma no social media presence not a really good fundraising game and not a lot of allies so he's kind of just pulling based on the trump brand recognition alone which again polling is not too great on him so because he's running that far under abbott it's possible at the same time his opponent james talarico a former school teacher who has a huge social media presence and is pretty you know young energetic has like the i don't want to say mom donnie yes but like this idea of like digital native campaigning that is like pretty anyway he's doing pretty well and he has uh you know this strong faith forward messaging that resonates in texas so he's like a pretty good candidate like a like a better than average someone democrats could put up and so because this mismatch is so big texas is looking like a pretty good candidate and he's like a pretty good like a possible flip now i don't want to say that he's 37 so he's a relatively young guy he could be on this podcast instead he's running first uh so that that's the big issue is that like this guy and by the way i think he's out raising him it's like 40 million dollars in small donations for talarico maybe eight million dollars total donations for paxton so it's it's a it's like a all this combined is like giving people hope where it's more serious than it usually really oh blue texas like this looks pretty close all the polling has it though razor thin because you have to understand texas is still a red state it just is people primarily will vote red uh and and i have to say if i was giving you a betting man's guess like whether we flip this i almost think we don't i think we i think if we're being honest the lemonade stand prediction i would love i think it'd be cool it'd be awesome i think people should get out there and vote but i they've been telling me to dream about blue texas my whole goddamn life but ultimately i think brandon's saying don't bother it's probably not going to happen anyway i'm saying my message is don't show up never vote don't dream don't no i just like one vote's not gonna make a difference guys a prospective a prospective democratic voter in texas yeah it's basically already over yeah that's not what i'm saying uh but i have to give a prediction i'm like i looked at the math today and i just don't think i don't think i think it'd be so close and maybe if paxton says something really stupid uh they might be able to get him but i think people are going to lock step with their party it is oh i mean wow as of uh today the betting market is at 5149 so it's a real it's a real tight race for tallarica and would be a um would be a huge coup for the democrats going into the this would be a a previously unthinkable flip for a senate seat um that's that's what i don't even know your questions on texas but that's like the main thing it's like this guy's uh let's just imagine a world let's imagine a world where it happens okay so then did i do that right dude something is wrong in my brain out of it this week i literally looked at the number two and went did that get higher or lower um are you tired of hearing about business tech and finance from the bros we are the tiger sisters a top business podcast with the vox media podcast network tiger sisters releases every monday and we decode money power and love and who doesn't love all those things we are the internet's wall street and silicon valley big sisters tune in every monday for late night sister talk meets boardroom strategy check out tiger sisters on youtube spotify or wherever you get your podcasts welcome to the tiger fam i'm bridget reed and i'm james walsh the alexander brothers moved in a world of multi-million dollar homes exclusive parties and powerful people behind that glamorous lifestyle were years of rumors, and allegations that they were committing sexual assault. In our reporting for New York Magazine, we investigated what people knew and heard from women who came forward to tell their stories. Now, that reporting is the basis for a new three-part docuseries, The Wolves of Real Estate, The Alexander Brothers. You'll see exactly how privilege protected them and how they were finally stopped. Stream all three episodes now, only on Peacock. I do want to take a little pit stop on our journey through the states. Okay. And touch on an article that I had seen called Millions of Dollars in Secret Spending Could Upend the 2026 Midterms from the New York Times. And it is an exploration of the quantity of dark money involved in our elections now. And specifically, the 2026 midterms right now. And for those who don't know, dark money, the term that is used to describe political spending by groups that hide the names of their donors. Primarily through non-profit groups that aren't obligated to disclose their donors that then send that money to super PACs or PACs that then donate it to actual political campaigns. Sounds like it's a really good political process. It is awesome. And the reason this really stuck out to me is not only the money that is involved, but because for an episode like a month ago, I started to look into the difference in campaign funding since Citizens United. Okay. That gets talked about a lot. It's like Citizens United was this pivotal ruling in 2010 that allowed corporations to spend as much as they want on elections. And what's interesting is in this article, it mentions that when that was determined at the time, the majority opinion, written by one of the justices, mentioned that the transparency of how money is spent will be the self-regulating thing around why this is okay. And the idea that money is a representation of speech and it's protected by the First Amendment is the downsides of that money on our elections is protected because you'll be able to see who the campaign contributors and donors are. Right. That was the argument that was being made at the time. But it's interesting because as time has passed, that has not come to be at all. And I have this crazy. Here, this was just this crazy graph. This is just a graph I made in Claude. Just to represent the amount of spending on elections since that ruling, and the way that it has grown over time. And you see this gigantic increase in the amount of money that's spent on elections since that ruling, and the way that it has grown over time. And you see this gigantic increase in the amount of money that's spent on elections since that ruling, particularly for presidential elections, but also for midterm elections now. but also for midterm elections now. With the most recent midterm election in 2024, With the most recent midterm election in 2024, nearing, I think almost a billion in spending. nearing, I think almost a billion in spending. And then already, this is without us actually getting to November and all the way through 2026, without us actually getting to november and all the way through 2026 there's already real quick you said a billion this shows two billion sorry i the the two billion sorry that's the two billion is total money yes total spending in total spending so two billion in wait no the red is dark money yeah and 20 you said 20 oh mid-term i'm sorry i was looking at the p1 i'm sorry sorry no all good oh so the most recent midterm election you'll see that the dark money spending that we can't see where it comes from was nearing a billion dollars it was over the uh and then uh the uh the total spending for that year was a little over two billion and already dark money spending as reported to the new york times by the new york times in this article is over a billion for this cycle for this cycle and we are months away that's primaries alone basically from from this ending still uh and it is this incredible uh arms race since the ruling of this one thing like we we are seeing an incredible amount of money being dumped into these campaigns even in non-presidential years which is insane i think if you have the time to read all of this um it's a really really great article but it's amazing to see the way this is like charted out just in the span of like 15 years where we've gone from like you know tens of millions hundreds of millions of dollars to now billions in a relatively short period of time so do you think the corporations have had more speech i mean like if they felt more represented if each dollar is an opinion their way it's their way they're winning way more than they used to uh i think the and i think something interesting that the article also touches on is the like scale like dark money is becoming a larger and larger percentage of the total spending it's not just a raw increase on both sides it's like people are realizing that oh we can just continue to funnel unlabeled money into elections in this way with little consequence and there's a lot of structure within campaigning to collect this money it's a win-win if i were a corporation i would like to donate to a politician so they do things for me but i don't want to i want to get blowback for it yeah that's a pain i don't want people to know about it yeah so just a super pack i could donate to it'd be awesome well you know what's kind of stupid too is obviously this is such a huge problem and i feel like when you talk to people it's such a bipartisan thing right now no one i've ever talked to is like it's so awesome there's all this corporate money involved in politics no no person has ever said that to me do you know what i mean and then and then to top it off it's these donors are only anonymous to us the public like if you're the person running you know you know where the money comes from like you get to know but we don't there should be some perks to being in office aiden there should be things you get to know about that not everyone the fucking tom dick and harry gets to know about but it the article also mentioned that this has started backfiring sometimes so in certain races the party or between the two candidates that are running uh the one that gets way more corporate donations can flounder a bit because it's just used against them in marketing and michigan is one of the state senate races where in the primary this was felt to be the case and now you wanted to take a look at the michigan general election yeah so that leads very nicely into what happened with Michigan recently. So this is a very highly publicized Senate race or excuse me, primary race for Senate happened recently in Michigan. And it was between Abdul El-Sayed and Haley Stevens. So this was running for the democratic nomination, right? Probably you're aware Abdul El-Sayed ended up winning, but this ended up being like a pretty iconic race and a very high profile race because El-Sayed is farther left, right? He's perceived to represent the far left side of the democratic party and this sort of insurgency uh that is may or may not be having a bigger and bigger influence on the party versus the more establishment democratic liberal so i'll say i mean he's like this like wickedly smart dude who's a physician and studied at oxford and columbia right that's what i noticed about him i'm a guy that i'm a real physique guy you know because i've been working out so much so like we have a thing in common so you see a chad by his own admission short i don't know how tall abdul sayyed is i just saw that he mentioned that so but i get it you um deep connection with him so the the primary was really notable between el sayed and hayley stevens because again it was it was highly representative of this sort of the the more standard uh liberal democrat versus the more far left so he is explicitly not part of the DSA. He was not endorsed by the democratic socialists of America explicitly. Uh, but he has campaigned with people who are either associated with it or have similar policies like Bernie Sanders or AOC. So, you know, the kind of mainstream media has very much just lumped him together with this group and said, this is a far left candidate. And he does have, while a lot of his policies are just popular, like affordability, corporate money out of politics, tax billionaires. He's got the in quotes, extreme ones like Medicare for all or abolishing ice or cutting support to israel very vocally like no more support to israel we do not want to support this this type of like military action for the government and then hayley stevens on the other side is you know congresswoman since 2019 a lot of again like democratic opposing tariffs promoting clean manufacturing which is important to michigan industrial expansion via chips all this type of stuff that's stevens i was hayley stevens yeah but again the the real notable thing here was sort of establishment democrat versus far left so hayley stevens was endorsed by the outgoing senator was endorsed by the current the current governor governor whitmer and by chuck schumer right um and this was actually a quote from fox news that i thought was interesting by liz peak michigan quote michigan can stop the socialist fever rage or watch it swallow the senate this race is a choice between normal and crazy el sayed who wants to abolish ice eliminate oil and gas ban school choice deny armed shipments to U.S. ally Israel, sharply raised taxes, provide tuition-free four-year college degrees, and establish a wealth tax, will likely win the primary. Stevens, in contrast, is a normal liberal Democrat. So that's like Fox News talking about it. getting the donations, which was a very interesting story. El Sayed, in total, raised about 15 million dollars from direct contributions hayley stevens raised like 12 from direct contributions but then 60 from super packs yeah um i saw a number a different numbers about exactly how much was raised but uh what is pretty clear is that 30 million dollars was from a pack which is the that's what which is the american group that represents interest for israel isn't it basically the israel lobby the most money a pack has ever spent on a race or something on the ed gallerine uh massey one am i crazy that the the sources i saw which i believe was from realtors was largest investment ever in a single primary okay uh i'm seeing 37 million maybe that's 60 but wait wait yeah 37 million was spent on kentucky's massey gallerine was it by a pack specifically you're right maybe it was because hayley stevens had like 12 million they spent 12 million so there you go so this is this is the most they've spent wow so that was only 12 wow so this is a gargantuan amount of money from a pack spent to try to stop el sayed and basically just flood the whole campaign with attack ads this is for a democratic primary this is not even like the general election right um and so this became el sayed his like one of his calling things is he's like extremely sharp and just like strongly worded and just use this as an attack he said things like i don't take money from the corporations jacking up your prices in the in the first place freedom from these donors will allow me to enforce trust policy tax billionaires and vote to keep money in michigan rather than sending that money quote somewhere else to drop bombs on kids like just hit the line directly and on august 4th el sayed won the primary 48 percent to 47 percent it's a one point margin so it was extremely close um so el sayed is now going into the general election versus uh the other big dog on campus mike rogers mike rogers is the uh very kind of traditional conservative guy it's more the manufacturing in america let's you know expand energy productions pro-life conservative on social issues you know some basic affordability stuff but is he strongly pro-israel is he the incumbent or did he win the primary against the economy like is he uh no no gary peters is the incumbent he's retiring so this seat is up for grabs this is it for audio listeners the picture we were looking at of mike rogers it's it's like if you designed if you told an ai make up a republican senator and the the picture we were looking at before this one this one i feel like like generic republican senator this is this is what i imagine in my head i think it's specifically because the way the photo is like stylized mike rogers is like a very yeah he's like i mean that's he was in the u.s army okay he was an fbi off agent okay you know michigan state senate he was a former congressman for 14 years so um but yeah so a notable thing about this race now at this point right it's a part of it's like progressive versus the whole question is like okay progressives are winning some of these primaries versus democratic candidates can they win in the general election and right now this is up for grabs um abdul seems to be doing well but this is flipping constantly really interesting piece to this mike rogers is very openly for supporting israel and ukraine and taiwan very pro like military support but per axios allies of mike rogers have asked apac not to advertise on their website because they are worried that apac's involvement is actually going to tank mike rogers ability to win wow apac has become so toxic and unlikable that he is specifically apac came to them and said we're ready to spend tens of millions of millions of dollars and says you guys are a public liar you are a liability um even though he is staunchly pro israel apparently mike rogers team was like look how about instead of you guys running all these ads that you're that you're paying for and you promote you know you go you attack i'll say it you just send money to our super pack we'll kind of use the money how we want maybe you guys are like a consultant i was literally just gonna say that as a joke i was gonna say why don't they just make another separate pack and then have apac funnel no but apac doesn't want that this is the quote from axios the group wanted a visible role in defeating el sayed so this is now for apac this like the most money they've spent on the primaries i know i i always can't believe you already want to influence the election but now you want to get crazy we want them to know we want the we want the musselman to know we did that's crazy bro yeah and one thing i found just crazy a recent fox news poll found 55 of michigan voters oppose continued us aid to israel at this point it is a losing issue and mike rogers is trying to distance himself from apac crazy i guess it is really interesting right because they're you have a lot of people who are like i don't know i don't know i don't know where israel wants to maintain its political support within the u.s and now candidates even if they support israel have to navigate the fact that support from constituents is just so dramatically different now so we need to play this like weird game to like they've become the data centers of countries bro every harry potter just has to back away because it's it's politically it's like unfathomable that 10 years ago you'd be like don't even be involved with this we want nothing to not taking the money is a pretty crazy line in american politics that's a mean something and i will say his primary is is one of the like you were saying one of the big counter examples of um outside money spent and correlation to victory yeah which is like but it's happened i don't have the other examples on me but he's not the only one this cycle has been one where um the the line is breaking a little bit where it's like the candidate with more money usually wins like just the way it works but now it's been a little different because of the outsized impact of social media where a message can get millions of views if it resonates the right way yeah you really don't need more money you need like the right money money can help obviously there's a lot of boomers that vote you need tv ads but like it's changed things uh the internet and so it's like starting to break down and yeah like this is a crazy update i have an example i've been i watched a number of abdul el sayed clips and i heard a lot of people saying that they're not going to i saw him described somewhere as kind of like he's like zoron mom donnie like zoron mom donnie when asked a controversial question about israel or something will be like smile and just bring it back to how he wants to make new york more affordable and he loves the community and then el sayed is like i'm gonna fuck your mom if you bring that up again like he's just like no it's not like that aggressive but he's like zoron and that he goes into hostile environments and handles it perry if you bring this up he keeps going on fox news and talking talking to uh what's his name so guess what you think this question is about it comes to football look i know you guys like to think i don't like football but i'm happy to line up against anybody who thinks that i don't like football and i'll just tell you the bigger issue that we have for football right now is i looked at ticket prices to try and go and see a game with my family it's astronomical through the roof now i think football used to be the kind of thing that you could enjoy with people it's another dodge i mean i want to talk about access to football i i asked you if you thought the nfl was racist because you said the nfl was racist and now you're talking about ticket prices no i'm just telling you yeah i i get what you mean he's like the the the more like the more macho version of let's get it back on message it's like let's talk about affordability of the tickets this one's less aggressive there are other ones where he's just like combat it and it's pretty fun because he's extremely eloquent but yeah no it's like he goes on fox news they're just like so why do you hate all of israel and all of religion and he's like i just want to talk about mission gers mission ganders to be able to afford houses and it's like this just ridiculous dynamic back and forth yeah i saw him he did something about uh was he the one where they asked him some question about um kids being abused or whatever and he brought it back to trump and the epstein file am i crazy on that it went super viral but i'm gonna be getting wrong anyway yeah yeah yeah um so yeah this is a what's the polling at though like what what is because i think this is an important one obviously it's if you're like uh on the deep end you're gonna be sad it's an important like can you win a general election but it's also one where it's like i think it needs to flip in order to for the math to be right on getting a number of seats or it has to be pretty close um there was discussion i i saw a bernie clip where he talked about this apparently there's the rumors going around that there are some in their greater party who would prefer to lose this race even if it meant they wouldn't get the senate but i think what bernie said is that if those people exist it's still a massive majority even with a minority i mean yeah between even within like a hardcore democrats because i think most people want control of the senate more than anything else yeah so according to prediction market abdullah said is at 65 chance to win i will give the caveat that he was leading in the primary voting polls substantially going into the election and then he only won by one percent so right now maybe has a lead but as we all know these things can be highly inaccurate yeah this is crazy 65 to 36 is insane i mean i this is it's just people putting their money where they think it is i feel like that must have to do with media though right like he has just an insane media presence right now so people who are online enough to bet on this are probably just more likely to vote on him i will say not their money behind i mean they've been fairly accurate i'll just i'm not i'm not glazed i hate these websites to be honest i'm just saying they've been the polling uh the polling so far in this cycle i think has been more inaccurate than the prediction market i think putting your money up makes you a little more likely to be honest but i'm not this is not endorsement i just uh yeah anyway interesting race i know but much like michigan and every other race maine also touched by dark money and i am wondering what is going on over there okay let's talk about maine uh maine is interesting because it has gone through some candidates bro uh this is the state where graham platner maybe you heard of him the oyster farmer with some tattoos uh tattoos of what it's contentious it's a contentious subject uh he won the primary had a ton of grassroots support ton of uh fundraising a lot of a lot of energy and then was credibly accused of rape and had to drop out on june 9th he denies it but uh the pressure from it was getting intense and certainly was dragging down the campaign so he stepped down and the democratic party had two weeks to do like a flurry flurry convention to try and figure out who's going to replace him they came up with troy jackson who is uh a fifth generation logger and former maine senate president uh he won unanimously after his rivals dropped out so here's what's interesting about maine um maine in 2020 went for biden like by like eight points like a pretty blue state and in 2020 this woman susan collins won by like nine points for republican state and in 2020 this woman susan collins won by like nine points for republican senate and it was the only state it's one of the only states in the past like 20 years to have such a big break between presidential polling and senate polling most states fall in line i mean most most states vote blue or vote red and if they do break it's usually pretty rare so for whatever reason susan collins who's now on her like her i don't know that's like a fifth term it's like she's she's she's been in this seat since like the 90s because we get the fact check on that i want to make sure i'm not crazy but she has an iron grip on getting mainers to vote more red than they normally do for this tendency uh it's i i can't explain it i don't know the answer but she's done she's outperformed now um will this hold up i don't know that it was trending pretty bad against her but now troy jackson is this guy who doesn't really have the same level of enthusiasm and ground game and voter support that's uh grand plan around by the way a little grand platter story i'm gonna throw it in here uh i made a video when he first came on the scene kind of excited about him and then uh through our connections that we've got us some interviews there was a connection to get me an interview with that guy yeah and then last second not him but his campaign manager said i would be too controversial you it was just funny to me i just funny to me that that worked out that way grand platters campaign manager who then later like resigned from the job so back to susan collins susan collins has served five terms in this role this is a blue state and she keeps winning and again the 2020 result is one of the most anomalous results in like polling history between the gap so she's she's found something if we go by the normal math of how maine is looking how the country's training how polling's trending this should be kind of a wipe out even with anyone in this seat troy jackson notwithstanding he seems like a fine guy i don't know actually don't do much about him he's only just committed to the position but she has some magic sauce so that that's the big question in maine is whether this will go the way people expect which should be leaning blue or not uh where susan collins pulls it out yet again by the way you know we've complained about um you know boomers in government people holding on to power a little bit too long she is 73 and again has been in this role since the 90s a lot of experience crazy too much experience at this point at this point i think too much experience but um so it's troy jackson versus susan collins and her magical potion her magical potion keep her you know what i think i'm gonna be a little more honest about her magical potions yeah she's on some committees in uh in in uh congress that have unique like appropriations committee that are uniquely beneficial i think to some main businesses maybe okay and troy jackson would not be on those committees if he won so she is like giving a little bit of like a edge to maine by being in these key committees yeah the appropriation committees she's the chairman of it and this is like i think of values maybe the the main business community kind of likes her more than they would otherwise i i can't put a on it but that's that's what we're down to um yeah i think that's the main thing uh is is it's looking like a bit of a toss-up actually it's looking like he should win i haven't been this inspired by susan since obama yeah she's just got it she's got it she's got something yeah the um the prediction markets have troy jackson at 70 do you have any sense of why this would be the election that breaks the collins back like what what what is so different about it if she's ripped this hard for what five terms and now it looks like again just according to prediction market data that she's way behind is it just the backlash of trump maybe or the fact that she is 73 i mean again i think there's been a rising tide against uh or towards more youthful candidates although troy jackson is not as youthful as a grand planner was and i do think it's a lot of trump backlash listen all i'm saying you look at this number and you look at the polling it looks like it's a slam dunk but i all i'm telling you is that in 2020 it looked like a slam dunk too and she pulled it out and no one else did that in any other state so she's got something that makes this more contentious than normal i think realistically though we can flip this one okay based on how things are going and based on based on trump's popularity you've lost the ability to count i'm confused no he's having a tough time flipping it i'm the average voter what are we there's gonna be some candidate watching this to be like oh no oh no i gotta convince this guy okay so that is let's just assume even though pretty big lead on prediction markets abdul el sayed does not pull it out with just those three being flipped out of the four that we've discussed so far that would be 48 um that would be 48 senate uh excuse me democrats and 50 republicans you need one more so aiden what's happening over in iowa well in iowa uh i did so the two people in the senate race are josh turek and ashley hinson and they are racing for the position held by joni ernst who is retiring joni ernst someone you might not recognize by her name but you might recognize by this clip that i found very funny this clip is joni ernst the current senator at like a town hall i believe earlier this year so when you are arguing when you are arguing about illegals that are receiving medicaid benefits 1.4 million 1.4 billion and they are not they are not eligible so they will be coming off so we people are not well we all are going to die which is maybe a stunning campaign message a tear down from the peter teal interview where he just won't say that he carries about the continuation of humanity dude it was someone asked him are you the antichrist and he doesn't say well he pauses you can't pause on that question pause and joni ernst that's uh that's her retiring this year and going to be replaced by one of these two new candidates josh turek the democrat and ashley hinson the republican uh turk seems pretty moderate he like as an example he wants expansion and security of the affordable care act instead of uh fighting for like a medicare for all platform or something similar to that and then on hinson's end she seems she was endorsed by trump you know in her campaign messaging she says she's very in line with trump proud to like work with him to make america great again yeah i did i for a clip i did recently i looked at like a bunch of people's websites yeah so it's it's almost like as a die hard trump fan it's kind of cool to see her ride or die with her big dog because a lot of people in uh republican party have been kind of distancing themselves the website they're not right or die they've been taking his photo off the website and saying like independent leadership i can work with because because of the bad polling that he's had in the wave yeah especially if you have like a more latino voter base or a younger voter base people who really rode for trump at 24 that have backed away people are kind of like following it's like data centers it's like flipping to the i think something it's something interesting because i took a look at the governor race they have going on as well and in the republican primary uh trump endorsed randy feenstra uh but the uh one of the things that i think is really interesting is that one of the other candidate i think there was like five people running uh zach lawn won over the guy that trump endorsed so there's not always this automatic you know there's this shift in you know trump endorsing somebody doesn't mean this automatic win all the time like it used to even though it still seems to like wind up in his favor most of the time uh i also in something interesting is they have these like uh three congressional district races right now and uh one of the uh races is between uh miller meeks and bohanan and they this is a rematch so they ran against each other in like the previous term and last time in uh 24 miller meeks only won by 800 votes at a time when like the, the, the wind was blowing in Republican favor. Yeah. So it looks very poised to like blow in the opposite direction. And with the Senate race, the big change here is, uh, I think it's like cook polling, uh, adjusted the way they call are calling this race. So it was Republican favored or like leaning Republican. And they just changed it to toss up, uh, implying that there's been a shakeup in like, you know, in the polling and who they expect to win now. Uh, so I, that could be our other card to flip. Yeah. I mean, between the, the Michigan one, which seems like more likely probably than the Iowa one or nope, wrong direction. Uh, yeah. And that's 49 to 60 now. And so the Republicans are still going to take it by 11. This is impossible to use. By the end of the lemonade stand episode, we've added seats to the Senate, which I don't all for Republicans. So it's going to end up weird. Okay. So we got rid of seats somewhere around less seats. No, JD Vance is the last one. I think it's the last seat. That doesn't make sense. One, one, what you've shown. No, you're like, we're like 11 seats long. Wait, wait, wait, wait. That maybe this is an idea we should use for every Senate term. They, they do. They, they like coin flip a new, new state that only gets to have one Senator. Okay. And then the vice president is always and then, and then, and then in ties, I hadn't thought that far, but I'm sure we'll figure it out. I can do one more on, uh, on Georgia. Yeah. Okay. Well, you better hope. Cause right now the Democrats are crushing it. It's too much power. We were picking states ahead of this episode. Uh, I picked Iowa in a fever dream. You came into the studio today and said, do any of us have Georgia? So you seemed particularly excited about it. Georgia's already blue. John Ossoff is the, uh, democratic Senator from Georgia. He is defending this position, but Georgia is a purple state. It is a state that went for Biden in 20, uh, Trump in, uh, 16 Trump in 24. Like it's flipped back and forth. It's had, uh, both Republican and Democratic senators. So it's, it's, uh, it's a contentious one. And John Ossoff needs to defend it. Now, if you look at the polling and the, uh, prediction markets, he's crushing and likely will they're calling him the white Obama. I don't know if you've seen it. They can't be calling him that. People have called John Ossoff the white Obama. They need to stop doing that. I've heard it said, and I do think I'm not going to knock the guy. I think he's going to do well in this thing. He seems like a guy. He's going to do well in this thing. He seems like a guy. He's got the cadence down. Anyway, John Ossoff, 94 to six, uh, with the, with Mike Collins here and seemingly will defend this state. But we have to understand what I'm bringing this up is that the Democrats, because they are numerically disadvantaged in the Senate, they not only have to flip a lot of seats. They have to defend every single one. If either, you know, if any of these contentious seats flip, uh, to Republican side, it's over that being said, um, so if anybody, you know, if you, if anybody loses a Senate seat between these two midterm elections, right. So special election. And so far, every special election between Trump's election and now that has flipped has flipped one way, 31 to zero have flipped red to blue. None have flipped blue to red. So Trump has been a unique, I mean, that's rare. That doesn't happen to Republicans since 2010. So it does seem like Trump on a broad scale since he's been elected has been a huge tailwind or headwind, I guess, to Republicans chances in contentious seats. We don't, this is a good, the Senate's going to be really decided because it's going to have way more voters than anything I've talked about. Uh, special elections don't have as big a turnout, but like the odds are decent, um, that it'll go this way. That's, that's one to bring us up. That's why I thought George was interesting. And, uh, one more interesting note about John Ossoff in particular also on prediction markets, the democratic presidential nominee for 2028, which we brought up a couple times has his historically been Gavin Newsom, at least in the entire time we've done this show with AOC, usually being second. John Ossoff has shot up. It is now currently it is AOC number one, John Ossoff, number two, Gavin Newsom, number three, and they're all kind of clustered together. So I didn't realize how much momentum he has for the presidential candidates. White Obama, they've said they've there's a lot of people saying that it's been getting out. Well, sort of person I've heard you say it. Well, I'm a conduit for, for they, for they, and fourth is Kamala Harris, who I guess also has jumped up. I didn't know about that. Uh, you know, Gavin Newsom was doing a lot better in those polls when he was in the lemonade. Interesting. That being said, Pete Buttigieg has gone down in the rankings. Wait, no, maybe up. No, maybe. Well, I mean, I don't want to say it, but Pete Buttigieg was on an episode where Aiden was there. Oh, you know what? Mark Kelly is now up in the top, top seven. Look at that. The king makers. We can't count the number of Senate seats, but we can absolutely get you a presidential run. Uh, okay. You two did an interview while I was gone. Very upsetting, very upsetting, but tell me a little more about what it's about. We're going into this. Like I mentioned earlier, Adrian Elrod has been involved with a number of campaigns. I've been in politics for decades, working for various administrations, um, including the last like four or five Democratic presidential. Yeah, she was like Clinton. Oh, Clinton, like Bill Clinton, then Hillary Clinton, then, uh, Biden and Kamala Harris. I think she got like all the, and been involved in all these ways. And so we got to chat with her about like what her thoughts are on how campaigns are actually run, what's going on and sort of how that ties into what people are doing in these elections. And we talked about James Tallarico specifically in terms of how that particular campaign is going. So we hope you guys enjoy this interesting interview. I just want to give a quick caveat. Cause I think, uh, you hear that background and you want to talk about, uh, we didn't bring her on to discuss, like who she wants to win. It was that she has like 20 years of like seeing the mechanics of running a campaign change to get more digital, the more targeted. And we really got in the weeds on like how they think about that, how they're planning for this. She's not on this cycle. She's like watching as a third party, I guess. So it was good. It was an interesting interview to get her thoughts on like the mechanics behind running these campaigns and what they think about the art of it. So check it out. Well, you have an open mind. Hello, Adrian Elrod. Welcome to the Lemonade Stand. Thank you so much for joining us. Hey guys, thanks for having me. When we got connected with you, I was really excited to hear about the mechanics of how big political campaigns actually work. And you have an enormous amount of experience in these over the years with four different presidential candidates. I know that for me, as we're coming up to the midterms, I hear about these tens of millions of dollars being spent on all these campaigns. And I don't really understand what does that look like in practice? So for you as one of the few people who have been able to be on the inside of this, could you kind of walk us through what are the core things that you're having to do maybe on a day-to-day basis in a campaign? What are the parts that are surprising that the average person would not think about? Yeah, absolutely. It was great to be with you guys today and I'm excited to connect with your audience. So a couple of quick things. Number one, you guys have got to keep in mind my first presidential campaign was in 2007 and that was the Hillary Clinton primary in 2007. So at that point, we were very earned media focused. Our communications department was huge. Our field operation was huge. Obviously, we had robust teams in multiple states, especially Super Tuesday states. And of course, as you guys will remember, that became a very competitive primary with Barack Obama, who ultimately won. And a lot of people went into that primary thinking, oh, Hillary is for sure going to win. And then this really dynamic guy came along and it was competitive until the end. But President Obama ultimately became the nominee and became president. And Hillary went on to become a secretary of state and everything was great. But just to think about this in terms of the way that we had the campaign structured, I want you guys to take a guess. How many digital people do you think we had on the 2007 primary going into 2008 for Hillary Clinton? Digital. This is going to be MySpace era. I assume you have a MySpace person. MySpace era. Facebook was just getting started. I'm going to say less than 14. But for a national campaign, I would say four. I feel like they're so underinvested maybe. Is that crazy? My guess is four and I might be too high. The answer is one. We had one human being. It was the digital director. He did everything. And he was embedded in the communications team. Obviously now going forward to 2024 and then going forward to 26, 28, I mean, almost all communications is digital. It has to be intertwined. So that's going forward to answering your question about what is spending tens of millions of dollars. What does that mean? A lot of it is paid digital. A lot of it is very specifically targeting the people you want to get out. I mean, right now on presidential, well, sorry, right now on Senate races, top tier Senate races, top tier governor's races, even top tier congressional races, the candidates and campaigns have identified who are the people who are going to vote for them for sure. Who are the people who are going to vote on the other side for sure? And so they want to make sure that they get those people out to vote, which means you're spending digital ads to target them. You are, you know, you're having people knock on doors and we call it push and pull where you knock on a door. the right of the polls, have you voted early, all of those things mean that in-person field, the in-person field operatives and strategists, those are fewer and far between now because digital has replaced so much of it because we're all living on our phones. But when people say tens of millions of dollars, it really is getting out your base, making sure they vote, and also spending a ton of money on that very sliver of undecided voters. It could be 2%. It could be 4%. It could be 8%. You know, we know that right now, for example, James Tallarico is sitting on tons and tons of cash, and he's within two to three points ahead of his opponent. It depends on what poll you look at. He's up on Paxton, but he's generally up a couple of points. So what he will be spending his money on more than likely between Labor Day and Election Day is making sure that every persuadable voter, every undecided voter out there is persuaded to vote for him. And that costs a lot of money. Most of it's on digital. Some of it's on earned media. He'll obviously be going out and, you know, making sure that he's getting the right people to vote for him. He'll obviously be going out and, you know, making his case to voters directly. But as you guys know, again, we're all living on our phones. And some of the best outreach that you can have is through platforms and direct social media content that goes directly to the people. Wow. What's the difference between like social content that you're paying to create, like ads that you're promoting, and like the stuff that goes viral, things you're trying to create that is spread by word of mouth? I guess I. Where does the money come from? Where does the money go in those two buckets? I mean, it's a great question. I mean, first of all, you always want those viral moments, right? I mean, that's really one of the reasons going back to Tallarico, why he's been so effective. It's one of the reasons why, frankly, Barack Obama took off so quickly. He had these viral moments that, you know, these incredible soundbites when he gave speeches, when he was just talking to regular people on the stump. We call them everyday voters. He was very. He had some very compelling content that just, you know, took off on its own, became organic. Now, of course, what a lot of people will do is take that organic content that tends to go viral on its own and boost it. They'll put some money behind it. But you do have the organic content that you can boost or that just goes viral on its own, which is really what you want. And then you complement that with the paid content. Some of the paid content looks like it's organic. A lot of it's not. Some of it is a, you know, well-polished, well-put-together ad, digital ad that you see, you know, going out across multiple platforms. But, you know, for James Tallarico, and I'm sorry that I keep going back to that phrase, but I just keep thinking about how vast and huge Texas is and how this really is increasingly a seat that Democrats believe that we will flip and we will quite possibly win back the Senate, win control of the Senate because of Texas. He has little slivers of voters, right? He's got, you know, suburban women between 35 and 55, many of whom are mothers, many of whom are disgusted with the current status quo, but many of whom have not voted for a Democrat. In the last several cycles, if ever. So, like, he's got to, you know, tailor a very specific message to them. Then he's got older voters who are the most reliable voting bloc in the Democratic Party. Actually, large, Republicans as well. But he's got a message to them. Then he's got a message to the younger voters. Then he's got a message to different demographics within those demographics. So, for him, a very well-concerted digital strategy and paid media, I mean, TV still counts for something, one that is tailored to meet all those little slivers of voters that will ultimately end up when you're losing these races. And look, I mean, a lot of races, especially right now, the gerrymandering, are going to be decided by a small amount of people. So, having more money, having more resources, especially to boost digital so that you can target and micro-target the voters that you need to get out and the voters that you need to persuade is really how you win these things. I just want to say, this is, and so you're saying this is drastically different than how it used to be. Like, this, like, this is a lot of money. This is a lot of money. This is So, yeah. So, so, so, funny story. So, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is the party committee that is tasked with winning or, you know, winning back House seats for, you know, for Congress. So, for the House side of things. You've got the House of Representatives, you've got the U.S. Senate. So, these are the congressional seats. I work for a guy named Rahm Emanuel, who I'm sure you guys know, in 2006, at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. We call it the DTREP. And I was the only regional press secretary. Which meant my job every day was to get, you know, whatever stories, whatever messages we were trying to drive on certain candidates, my job every day for the year, when it was just me, was to get these stories out there. And I would start, obviously, pitching the East Coast. I would call the AP desk for, you know, Hartford, Connecticut, and pitch a race. And then I'd start focusing on the Midwest by the time, you know, it was 11 a.m. Eastern. And then I'd end at the end of the day, maybe pitching, you know, the LA AP or the LA Times or, you know, the paper in Las Vegas. I'd focus that at like six or seven o'clock at night. And Rahm would really, literally walk by my desk every day with a Post-it note in the order of the races that he wanted me to pitch and the stories that he wanted me to pitch. Like, that was the old-fashioned way. And you hoped that you would get an AP story or a story in whatever the lead local newspaper was the next morning. So, I'm just, I want to make sure I'm reaching out to local, like, outlets, like, journalist outlets and saying, hey, try, please try to cover this story. And you have to just be calling all of them and sort of just throwing it out there and maybe something on the phone. Wow. Is that still done in addition to things or is that totally? Is there still, is there one person now who's dedicated to that and everybody else is on the digital side or is that just totally gone? They've thrown that out. There definitely is. I mean, you always want, you know, good local press. Local press is everything. On a presidential campaign, on a congressional race, whatever it is, local press is everything. But now what you can do is you get those stories and you boost it. You know, you make it, you, you know, you want those stories to go viral if they're good for you. And you want to make sure that you're targeting people on Facebook, on TikTok, on whatever platform they use. You're targeting that local press to them. So, there's a whole digital push behind it. Whereas, again, back in the olden days, it was, well, I'm getting the Columbus Dispatch. I live in Columbus, Ohio. This is my local daily newspaper. And you would hope and pray that whatever you pitched was at section of the newspaper. So, when you say local press is everything, though, is that, are you just being not, like, people aren't reading the newspaper as much anymore, like nearly. So, they're not reading the newspaper as much anymore. You're right. But, but you still want to show that your candidate, even if they're running for president, is well attuned to the local press issues. So, I mean, local press is important when, for anything that you're doing. So, if you're doing a big policy rollout on healthcare, if you're, you know, announcing your immigration policy, like, you want to make sure that you have a team of people that are in certain key swing states that are driving local press, that are tailoring that press around that rollout so that it's applicable to the people that they, that you are seeking to serve in that state. So, you get local validators. Maybe you get the mayor to amplify what you're saying. Maybe you get a couple state reps to amplify what your policy is. You hope to get some quotes for them in this, in the local stories, etc. But increasingly, yes, to your point, I mean, you know, I am from Arkansas. I, like to keep tabs on what's going on. I still, a couple times a week, will read the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, but chances are, I get most of my news regarding what's going on in Arkansas on my friend's Instagram accounts or, you know, on various social media posts, sometimes even on TikTok. But you still want to have local press, local stories that are written, you know, by local reporters that you amplify through those platforms. Man, this is so interesting. It's complex. And every presidential cycle is different. I mean, 2028 could look totally different from 2024. So, if we were to use Tallarico's campaign as an example, and let's say you, you were giving advice on how to, first off, I thought it was very interesting. I, in my brain, a presidential campaign is trying to convince everybody in the entire country to vote for you. But of course, you're right. If a small percentage of people are what going to swing, is what is going to swing it, of course, you'd really want to focus on them. So, within that, let's say two or 3%, which are the swing voters that are going to determine the outcome ultimately, right now, in 2026, how would you determine the importance of these? We just talked about local media or, you know, print media, and maybe how that's lower in the totem pole. Do you feel like there's a clear, this is the most important platform to be reaching people on? Or is that changing every day? Or do you need to hit everywhere? It all depends. It all depends. I mean, I worked with a client who did a post campaign election analysis in terms of how different voting sectors were consuming information. And we found that men, I mean, this has now been widely reported, but at the time, we were kind of like aghast. We found that men between the ages of 18 and 25, 70% of them said that they got the majority of their news, not advertising, the majority of their news from like a gaming platform. Oh, damn. A gaming platform? A gaming platform. Wow. Okay. We have been in the wrong space. We got to move over to video games. That's funny. And then, of course, older voters said, well, we get most of our information from our local newspaper, our local news. And Facebook, you know, older voters tend to be on Facebook. You know, moms between the ages of 35 and 55, which is a key demographic for, you know, suburban moms, got a lot of, I think they said that the majority of them got their news from Instagram. So they sort of rank it, which means you have to have a team of people that is extremely well-versed and attuned to all these different platforms so that they know how to reach people effectively. in Trump's campaign. I will give them all the props in the world for number one, knowing how to get to younger men more effectively than we did. And number two, to going to these gaming platforms. I saw some of the, I saw some of the discrepancies in advertising placement and revenues spent by various campaigns and committees on different sides of the aisle. And I think Democrats, especially at the presidential level, because I'm not just talking about Kamala Harris's campaign or Joe Biden's campaign. I'm talking about the DNC. I'm talking about Future Forward, which was the big super pack that was spending on our behalf. Like all the other entities, we were spent, outspent 10 to 1 by the Trump people, by MAGA Inc., by Trump's campaign, et cetera, because they knew if they could make Trump look cool and make MAGA look cool in the minds of these younger voters, many of whom were first time voters, that could win or to lose the election for them. And it turns out that they did, you know. As we all know very well, they overperformed with young men. Now we are starting to get some of those young men who are not necessarily party line voters back in our category. So the 2026 midterms, one of the major things I'll be looking for is what do young men do? Do they turn out? If they do, who are they turning out for? My guess is they're probably going to turn out and they're going to turn out for the candidate that they identify the most with, as opposed to the party that they think is the coolest. This is a question I really have is, so if you're targeting all these different groups and through different platforms, they have clearly unique messages targeted to each one. How do you maintain message discipline to where, like if you're talking to some audience where you want to really hone in on issues that are important to them, but that issue is kind of a turnoff to a different group, how do you make it so that message isn't leaking into another group and then changing their voting habit? I feel like that is the hardest part when I'm thinking through this, what you're saying. It is a great question. It's a great question. And look, there's no easy answer. The bottom line is this. And I always advise candidates who I work for, whether you're running for president, whether you're running for Congress, whether you're running for governor, whomever it may be, whatever message you say to one sector of voters, you need to be fine with it getting to a different sector of voters. So like you can't go to one group of, I don't know, I'm trying to think of a good example here, but you can't go to like seniors and say the number one issue that I'm fighting for is protecting your social security. Right. No other issue more important to me than protecting your social security. And then you can't conversely go to, you know, women, I keep saying women between the ages of 35 and, you know, let's say 35 and 45 and say, the number one issue to me is making sure that you have free childcare. Like you can't, you have to, you have to talk about these issues holistically. And you have to say that they're all important issues. Now you can go in front of different groups and emphasize issues differently. Right, right, right. Say one of the most important issues to me, and I will make sure that if you elect me, I will fight every day for you is protecting your social security. You can go to young working moms, you know, young middle class working moms and say, I know that you're struggling to pay for childcare. I know many of you cannot go back to work because you cannot afford childcare. One of my top priorities when I go to Congress will be to provide free childcare to every single American family making less than X amount of money. One of my top priorities when I go to Congress will be to provide free childcare to every single American family making less than X amount of dollars a year. You can message different, you can emphasize the issues differently, but you have to stand by whatever you say to one group. You have to stand by that with all groups that you talk to. Do you think that holds for just candidly for Republicans? I feel like sometimes they have pulled off the, the just saying contrary things to different audiences. And it doesn't, it doesn't seem to hurt as much as you'd expect it to be when you put them side by side and it's two contradicting statements. I don't know that I wonder if that's all the time. And they, you know, the thing is we, we say that they're getting away with it, but they're not getting away with it. I mean, Trump's numbers are in the toilet. Frankly, I, I just to put that in perspective. I mean, I was on, I do a lot of morning Joe on MSNBC or MS now. And I was on the show yesterday talking about this new poll that came out in the economist, which is one of my favorite publications. It's a UGA poll, but they were going state by state with Trump's approval numbers on the economy, on immigration, uh, on, on the war in Iran. He is, his numbers are worse than Bush's numbers in 2006 at this time. And president Bush is, you guys will, you know, I don't know how old you guys were in 2006. Um, but he was around, were you born in 2006? And, and, and, and, and, and Americans were struggling financially. Corruption was like the name of the game. People thought that Washington was corrupt. Because it was corrupt. And it still is corrupt, um, to an extent. And they wanted to vote to restore integrity and government. Bush's numbers were worse than, I mean, I'm sorry, Trump's numbers now are worse than Bush's numbers were in 2006. In 2006, Democrats flipped 32 house seats and we won back the Senate. I think we flipped five or six seats in the Senate to win back the majority. So like, you know, you look at precedent, which is all we have, and it looks pretty good for Democrats. As long as we don't screw it up, um, things are looking pretty good going into the fall. I'm curious for, this gets back to kind of maybe the core of how do you run a campaign broadly, but particularly in 2026, given how just predominant digital media is and how everything's changing every day, all the time. You know, if you're thinking about campaign operations or broad strategy, like you were just talking about, how much of that depends on the individual candidate versus just what is going on culturally? That's something I've always been thinking about. I've always sort of wondered is the difference between this individual and what they are pushing for versus at some point we just have to respond to what our constituents want, what culturally is going on, what the other party is doing. And how do you kind of like balance that individual person? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, look, I think my, my best answer on this right now is the candidate has to meet the cultural moment because oftentimes the cultural moment is framed by campaigns. I mean, Trump, framed a lot of the cultural wars. I mean, he's, he has effectively used, and I think in a way that is frankly disgusting, but he has used culture issues as a wedge issue to divide the American people. So again, if you're somebody like, to go back to James Tallarico, he is meeting this cultural moment because first of all, he's, you know, he's sort of Obama 2.0. He's like the modern day version of Obama. If you hear him speak, I put him and Ossoff in the same category, John Ossoff from Georgia. They are both incredibly effective and compelling speakers. James Tallarico in particular uses his faith, which he is very well versed on, which it's not a fake thing. It is authentic to him. He uses his faith very effectively on the stump when he's talking about policy and faith is very important to a lot of people. It's not a cultural issue, of course, but like there's tinges of it that touch culture, but you have to meet the moment. And I think the most important thing being a candidate is if you can't meet the moment, if you are socially awkward and you have a team that is trying to make you seem cool and relevant and affable, it's never going to work. That didn't work, you know, 20 years ago, it didn't work 50 years ago, and it's not going to work today. So it's a long way of saying if you have a good candidate who can adapt to the cultural moment, it's going to make things a lot better for you. Okay. So we want to ask you about the CHIPS Act. This was an enormous bipartisan bill that came out of the Joe Biden administration. And for folks who are not aware of the exact details, largely the focus was on infrastructure broadly, but particularly on semiconductor chips and getting the production of those back into America. And that has been working. I mean, we're working with huge companies like Intel, Samsung, and Pringles, 52 billion went out as well as major R&D funding boosts. So a huge thing. And then Adrienne, could you tell us about your involvement with actually rolling that CHIPS Act out and what that looked like day to day? Yeah. I mean, you just talked about the historic nature of this. I mean, Congress has been trying to pass the CHIPS and Science Act to further incentivize the semiconductor industry to produce more domestic chips here, or more chips domestically, I should say, as opposed to abroad. Obviously, that's important to national security, it's important to our economic security, all the things. One interesting fact is 90% of the world's leading edge chips, these are the most sophisticated chips, they go in your iPhones, they go in your laptop computers, they go in some like very sophisticated military devices. 90% of them are produced at one fab, which is factory for chips in Taiwan. So I don't have to explain to you why that is a national security risk to us. If all of a sudden China comes in, invades Taiwan, they scoop up all these chips, we're totally screwed. So this was a very important piece of legislation that finally got passed under President Biden to further incentivize semiconductor chip production. My job in that, I ran external and government affairs. So I worked with members of Congress on the rollouts that we did in various parts of the country. I worked with a lot of the companies to make sure that, you know, their due diligence and their, you know, the data that they put forward was legit. There was a whole team that is far more sophisticated in going through a company's financials than me. But I was part of the team that, you know, helped bring in labor, bring in external facing validators, any time that we were making a major announcement about how we're tweaking the application process for semiconductor companies to apply for the funding, we or, you know, making, you know, maybe we made like a workforce announcement on how many jobs we will require to be labor jobs versus non-labor jobs, et cetera. My team worked, you know, worked government leaders, worked union leaders, worked state and local elected officials, et cetera, over to make sure the rollout was as good as possible. So it was extremely rewarding to be a part of that because it's something that like, you know, the average person is probably not paying a lot of attention to this, but if you frame it in the way of national security, that if we don't produce these chips here on U.S. soil, and if we don't have proprietary information and data guardrails protected over these chips, then like in 10 years from now, China's going to have our ass, is like the only way I can really put it. They are going to own us because they're going to have all the technology at their fingertips and we're not, and we're going to be behind. So it was important that the Intels, that the Microns, that the TSMCs, that some of these major chip producers have the capacity and ability and the incentives to produce these chips here. Because, you know, frankly, in some countries, it's just a lot cheaper to produce these chips. So we needed a little bit of a government boost to make sure that production was done here. So I want to dive into that though, because some of the challenges, basically, it seems like the Washington side of the equation, you guys really did incredibly well. You got bipartisan support, you got the funding unlocked, you get tens of billion dollars authorized. But then how does that, there was a big delay between the money being authorized and like breaking ground on a factory. And I'm wondering where you felt, I don't know, the system got gummed up. What happened to prevent like real construction? Or, I mean, do you feel the perception, you know, I assume you're, I think abundance in the book talked about this as well. And do you feel like, is there a gap or was this, did it feel like things were moving slowly, and it just takes a while to make the most complex factory that humans have ever made? I'm curious how you feel about that. Yeah, I'm so glad you raised that, because I did read that part of abundance. And I just sort of, I mean, I think Ezra Klein is one of the smartest people out there. But I, you know, if you're on the inside, look, you first of all, we were government employees, right? We are stewards of taxpayer dollars. And we really worked, I can tell you that, like, especially the team that was going through the due diligence, working directly with the companies, going through the financials, making sure that everything was buttoned up, before the money went out. And I think that's a really good thing. And I think that's a really good before the money went out the door. Those guys were up until two, three o'clock in the morning on a regular basis, because we knew that we were racing against the clock, that any extra delay from, you know, the money being awarded, the money then going out the door, and then the fab breaking ground was going to just delay us in terms of our competitiveness with other countries, especially regions like China. So they did the best they could. You know, some of it is also on the companies as well. You know, look, let's be honest, a lot of these companies do have the revenue to be able to build fabs here right now, but they needed a little bit of extra government incentives by, you know, not just in direct dollars given to these companies, but also tax incentives, you know, local tax incentives, you know, a little tax break here and there that made it more lucrative to build a fab in this particular region. Arizona, for example, is very, very good. There's a reason why the semiconductor industry has really invested heavily in production in Arizona, because they have allowed the governor, you know, the Mayor Gallego of Phoenix, they have put some strong incentives in place to try to push companies to do it. But look, at the end of the day, I mean, we are still stewards of taxpayer dollars. Your taxpayer dollars went to this. My taxpayer dollars went to this. My parents, everyone we know, this is all a U.S. taxpayer-driven enterprise. And it's important that you balance the speed of getting these fabs built with, again, being good stewards of everyone's, you know, hard-earned money. Speaking of the hard-earned money and feeling that it was well spent, I'm curious what you think about what happened with Intel. We've talked about it on our show, which, as a reminder for folks, you know, and actually correct me if I'm wrong here, but Intel was one of the recipients of a huge amount of grant money. It was. And then rather than sort of receiving the rest of the grant money, Trump took a 10% stake in Intel. We do not feel great about this decision, personally, in our opinion. I'm curious, you know, how that lands for you, having been on the inside, rolling us out for two years and then seeing this massive change and how that affects, like, the core fundamentals of how the chips act function. Like, is Intel going to act differently now because of this? Curious what you think. You guys are really on it. Seriously, you are on top of your game. Look, I thought it was disgusting. I mean, like, Trump rallies against socialists and socialism and calls Democrats communists and, you know, which is all bullshit. But hopefully, by the way, I can say that on this podcast. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, you're fine. You need to bleep it out. No, no, no. I don't bleep. But I mean, what is this? Not only is it unprecedented, it's questionable whether it's legal or not legal. And then Intel actually bent a knee and agreed to do it. I just, look, Gina Raimondo was my boss at Commerce. One of the best out there. Incredibly smart. I can't imagine us ever allowing that to even be a negotiating tactic on the table. And yet here are so many people that just either turned a blind eye or, you know, I feel like it barely made a blip in the news. It was sort of like, oh, my God, I can't believe he's doing this. And then people just moved on. So I thought it was very ethically unacceptable. But it's what Trump does. And here we are. And I am just disappointed that Intel agreed to do that. Wait, that brings up a really interesting, I'll say if it's interesting or not, but a question that I want to ask, I think I'm interested in. You talked about it being a blip in the news. When you think about that, isn't everything a blip in the news lately? Doesn't it feel like every single big story like moves and goes by so quickly? I'm wondering what you're on the pace of the job you're working at. How do you adapt to that? How have you guys adapted the conversation? Because I feel like nothing sticks in the public consciousness more than a week. I mean, we we try every week to get a thing to stick in the public consciousness. And then the next week, it's all gone. And it's a new thing, a new thing everyone's interested in or angry about. Or it seems like that pace has gone so rapid over the course of my life. And I'm wondering how it feels from that side of the fence and how you guys adapt to that. Well, it's very frustrating is how it feels. You know, you can you combine, you know, I look, I think Trump is very smart about doing so much out there, seeing what sticks, seeing what doesn't stick. We wake up in the morning, we're like, Oh, my God, there's so much coming at us, whether you are, you know, a teacher living your everyday life, whether you are somebody like me who works in politics for a living, whether you know, it's you guys who are podcasts, whatever it is, he throws so much at us, sometimes it's just hard to keep track of everything. And you just move on. And it feels like chaos is the name of the game. He's very effective at doing that. And then on the flip side, you know, Democrats will try to get a message out there. And we realize the only way really to ensure that Trump is not completely driving the news cycle every single day is to kind of play Trump's game. And that doesn't mean that we're always throwing stuff out there to see what sticks. But it means that we have to talk in soundbites. It means that we have to use every available social media platform to get our message out. It means that you have to do things like Hakeem Jeffries. I don't know if you saw him. He's gotten a lot of I think, ridiculous shit for meeting with Jared Kushner, when, you know, he's like, I don't know if you saw him. He's gotten a lot of I think, ridiculous shit for meeting with Jared Kushner, when, frankly, he's about to be the Speaker of the House, and he should meet with Democrats and Republicans. And also, I think, to me, it was a tacit acknowledgement that Jared Kushner believes that he will be a speaker. Thus, he is trying to build a relationship with him or a better relationship with him. So he stood in front of somewhere in Brooklyn with a green Yankees shirt on and a green Yankees hat and talked directly to the camera and said, let me make it clear if I meet with Jared Kushner, I'm still holding these guys to account. This is not, you know, me working out some backroom deal. That's how you have to do it. Those are the moments that breakthrough when you are looking authentic, when you are, you know, out there with the people. And I think Democrats are starting to do a better job of, again, not playing Trump's game all the way, but responding in a way that is not like a boring eight paragraph press release, right? That is a press conference that, you know, 25 people have to speak out for five minutes, and you're bored after the first two minutes of the first person speaking, like, we're getting better at finding ways to respond, where the message gets out to the right people in methods that they consume. It makes me wonder if charisma and content creation are going to become the most sought after political skills, you know, and that that may may usurp everything else. Because like you said, those moments are what's dominating headlines for pretty much everybody. And, you know, I think I like the idea of you could talk to a presidential candidate or a senatorial candidate, and they could have deep knowledge of the economic history of tariffs and explain why it's bad. But probably, realistically, it's being able to make a really punchy one minute video that gets to a lot of people. Now, it's a little worrisome, honestly, I mean, it's not any individual incentive structure creating it, but it does feel like it's pushing towards content creator presidents, like you're like content creator. Yeah, politicians, because I'm to his credit, great content. Content creator. Yeah. Listen, you guys are so spot on. I mean, I think about this a lot. I think about how much prep has always gone into, you know, when I was on Hillary's campaign in 2016, the Sunday shows were everything. Like, are we going to put Hillary out? on Meet the Press this weekend? Are we going to put her out on George Stephanopoulos? And if we are, there's going to be a lot of prep because you want to be prepared. And Hillary Clinton is one of the most prepared people I've ever had the privilege of working for. She's incredible. And a lot of it is inherent because she's just so damn smart. But a lot of it is, you know, you want to make sure that you understand what are the questions that checked out at the time it was the hosts are going to ask. Like what, you know, like you want to make sure that you are very well prepared. I think that we are now moving into an era, especially when we start the presidential campaign primaries in 2027, where if you're doing two hours of prep for like a five minute Sunday show interview, for example, that's two hours you could be producing content. You could load up on all kinds of different social media, podcasts, YouTube, you name it, content. And you're kind of like wasting pressure. It's time behind the scenes prepping for a five minute interview when you could be using that time to create some really compelling content. So I think some of the candidates who are going to probably do the best are the ones who do your point are the most capable of creating this content in a very authentic way. And number two, the ones who can sort of do this extemporaneously off the cuff without a time prep. Now, I still would say that if you were doing, if you were doing a really big sit down interview, you need to be, you need to be prepped and well prepared. But what is even is that these days? I mean, I, the Sunday shows, I still watch them every Sunday, but you know, fewer and fewer people in America are. So it's just going to be interesting to see, you know, how this all shakes out. I want to talk about a couple of things going forward real quick. You did an interview on CNN where you criticized current DNC leadership and warned that the financial and organizational problems of the DNC could be a problem in 20. I was wondering if you could talk our audience to that a little bit. What, what you're seeing are the issues and what they think you have to get together to fix before 28. Well, first of all, if you're the chair of the democratic national committee, you've got two jobs. First and foremost, you should be on TV every day, punching Republicans, right? Hitting Republicans on X, Y, and Z. Sorry, punching with your voice. You should be doing that every single day. It'd be good viral content. Yeah, that's the content. Right. And secondly, you should, you should be raising money. And if you're not able to do the two of those things, then you really have no business being the DNC chair. Now, Ken Martin came in, the DNC was a little bit in depth in the 2024 campaign cycle, not a surprise. But like, and he is raising money that is going right out the door to some state parties. And I give him props for that, because I do think we need to invest more aggressively in the states, but it's still really hard to go into a, really, really, really important election cycle in the red, meaning you're in debt. So, you know, look, I, this is not the right time to change the leadership of the DNC. We've got to get through the next few months. But if Ken cannot turn this ship around, you know, we probably, I would hope that the democratic national committee members, I'm not one, so I have no say in this, except for my own opinion. I would hope that they would make a change. And I also want to copy out that by saying that some of the best staff, some of the best operatives, for lack of a better term, are currently sitting at the DNC. The staff there is amazing. We just got to make sure that we are raising the money and that we're calling every single donor to get that money in the door. We do not have, this is not a personal thing. This is not, you know, a personal attack. It is, we just have to win. And the only way that we can win is to get more money in the door. So I'm hoping that Ken will turn the ship around and we'll see what happens after the 2026 midterms. Awesome. This has been incredible. Yeah. Incredibly interesting, Adrian. Thank you so much for joining the show. Appreciate it very much. And we're looking forward to an exciting election cycle. Exciting if nothing else. So I appreciate all the insight about it. Thanks so much for coming on. Thank you guys for having me. Thank you. Have a nice rest of your day. Bye-bye. Sweet. That was the interview. I hope you enjoyed. Aiden, what were your thoughts? She seemed nice. Aiden actually really wanted to do this, but then had to travel because he's receiving dark money from Ludwig. Yes. Funnel through Krakow. Funneling dark money from Ludwig. Money through Krakow. But this is, I thought this was really interesting. It was super cool to be able to chat. No, it was cool. I'll be perfectly candid. We weren't sure what direction this interview would go before it happened. Because with someone like this, with this much background, this much polish and media training, you kind of think you might get a standard answer. And I really like that you push it towards like, how does this work? That interview was really interesting to me. I didn't know what I would think going into it. And her answers gave me insights I didn't know I had. So that was cool. Yeah. So it's midterm season, baby. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see what happens. I mean, this is extremely consequential. And look, I know I'm not exactly somebody who knows things, but I feel like that this is really fucking consequential. And I would, I know we stay neutral third parties on the show, but. I'll lean Trump. I'll lean Trump. I'll say it. I would like the numbers to end up something like this. Okay. I'll say it. I would like some of the insanity to stop. That would be really fucking great. So we will be watching your involvement with great interest to Tallarico. If you want to check out an extra hour of the show, you can go to patreon.com slash lemonade stand, where I'll be giving you my fever dream pitch of how to fix elections. Thank you. By fix, he means rig. Thanks for watching. Thanks, everybody. Bye.