Trump Puts the Mid in Midterms

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It's powerful enough for an accountant, but simple enough for you. Xero is the all-in-one to get business done. Learn more at Xero.com. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, we'll take you to Trump's rally in the United States. To the newly-minted swing state of South Carolina. To Atlanta, where Barack Obama closed out the campaign with Jon Ossoff, Keisha Lance Bottoms, and a second helping of Cheesecake Factory content. We'll also talk about the situation with Democrats' ballot stacking in Alaska, what the almost-final polls and models are telling us, and hear some voicemails from our subscribers expressing the anxieties we're all feeling. Then, on this last Friday pod before the midterms, we're going to do what the consultants always say. We're going to say about their candidates, and let Dan be Dan. At least we have a title for this episode. Dan, in our editorial meeting this morning, you offered to, quote, totally nerd out. Are you feeling loose? Feeling limber? We'll see. We'll see when we get there. I got to warm up through all the Trump discourse. Okay, great, great. And we have a couple announcements before we get into it. On election night, Alex Wagner will be hosting a live stream of the results on the Pod Save America YouTube channel. It's going to be Alex, a bunch of your favorite Crooked hosts, including us, and a bunch of great guests. It's Tuesday, November 3rd, Election Day, starting at 9:00 p.m. Eastern, 6:00 p.m. Pacific. Friends of the pod will get a chance to have their questions answered live on air. So subscribe to the Pod Save America YouTube channel now so you don't miss it. That's what you got to do. Go subscribe to the channel. It's free. Just go to YouTube. If you're watching this on YouTube, if you're not, get on your YouTube app and just hit subscribe for free. Thank you. Join the channel. Also, if you haven't already, don't forget to get your tickets to CrookedCon. We're all going to be there. We're all going to be celebrating or drinking. Drinking either way. And it's good because we'll all be together, and there's going to be great conversations, and you'll get to meet a bunch of friends. So, CrookedCon.com. Check it out. Get your tickets now. Okay, as we head into the final weekend before Election Day, let's start with some mood music and a classic of the genre. That includes background interviews with 16 current and former Trump officials. The New York Times sees a grim White House and an angry president who has raged against bad stories and is increasingly cloistered with a small group of aides like Natalie Harp, who apparently now works out of Trump's private dining room, and Bill Pulte, whose role one Trump official described as "court jester." Both Natalie and Pulte have been fired. Both Natalie and Pulte have been fired. have been feeding Trump a steady diet of fawning press coverage, memes, and AI slop. Which looks- Otherwise known as the president's daily briefing. I was gonna say. And you know, to be honest, the whole story, a little hard to believe because, you know, the deranged, declining Donald Trump portrayed by the Times, it just doesn't comport with what the rest of us are seeing out there on the campaign trail. For example, here's the president stumping for Darlene Graham in South Carolina on Thursday. They forced meat down his throat. Tranny Hattie is a mutilizer. If you're black or if you're Jewish and if you vote for Abdul, you're crazy. Lindsey's looking down. He said, I'd love to be here, but it just didn't work out. I don't even believe in polls. Donald Trump is at 42%. 42%. 42%. You mean times two and add 20. Boy, they are bad. They're sick people. Fake polls. If you're president, Republican or Democrat, for whatever reason, you don't win the midterms. We have the biggest rallies ever in history and you'll never, I hope you enjoy it because you're never gonna see it again. Now that's good news. Here's hoping. Here's hoping. Do you think, you think the Graham campaign got what they needed out of that event? The president saying, well, presidents always lose the midterms. Lindsey Graham's looking down, but couldn't make it. A lengthy diatribe about Abdul Al-Sayed, who's running in Michigan, not South Carolina. A lot of Tallarico talking there too. A lot of Tallarico. Yeah, Tallarico likes meat. That was the beginning. Did a full episode of Polar Coaster about the Wedgwood polling scandal? We didn't include it, but there was also like, it was a lot of Ilhan Omar. There was basically everything except talk about Darlene Graham and South Carolina. That was, I don't know. It appears there was a teleprompter. Yeah. Because every once in a while, he would just look up and then sort of read in a monotone, read something about Darlene Graham and then go back to the Trump show. I mean, it's, it's truly, it's like he's trying to lose the midterms. Or, I mean, I guess maybe the way I put it is he just wants to do his thing without any regard to anyone else, which should not be surprising to anyone, but there's nothing there that would be seen as helpful to the candidate he's trying to help. I think in his mind, he has already lost the midterms. I think he believes that about President Obama's loses the midterms. He probably thinks that, you know, maybe Republicans can keep the Senate. Maybe it won't be as bad as the polls suggest, but he kind of knows that like, it's not going to go great. Like, I'm sure he thinks the House is gone, right? And so at that point, he's just having fun. He's going to say what's on his mind and enjoy these rallies because they might be his last rallies. They're definitely not his last rallies. There's no way he will give this up. We will be watching those rallies. We'll be watching videos of these rallies the rest of our lives and just commenting on them, even if it's AI. I feel that's true. I was going to say, like, I guess he'll campaign for the, he'll campaign a lot for the 28 nominee for the Republicans, but like, it can't be a situation like it was in Mississippi with Cindy Hyde-Smith where the Republican nominee comes on stage for two minutes, leaves, and then Donald Trump just does the whole rally in 28, right? Right. Well, I mean, we have, we'll have some gubernatorial elections in 2027 that he can participate in. So, but I think the bigger point here is that if Trump really wanted to win the midterms, he would shut the fuck up and stay in the White House. The best thing for Republicans would allow these to be a race between a Republican and Democrat, like Abdul versus Mike Rogers, Sherrod Brown versus John Husted, Annie Andrews versus Charlie Graham, although that's maybe not the best example of Charlie Graham. But just there's some cases where you can make it about individual Democratic candidates in red states, but Trump cannot cede the stage. So he would rather lose the midterms out in public than win them in hiding in the White House and have there be some narrative that he couldn't, you know, that they won because he wasn't out there campaigning or is hiding or whatever else. Yeah. Speaking of hiding in the White House, I don't know if you had any other favorite bits from that time piece. To your point that you just made, I did like in the piece, it says that Republican advisors and outside groups have warned the White House that Trump's appearances could have hurt candidates in close races. His team has largely, discounted that concern. Yes, I'm sure they have. Yes. Yeah, we can see. And is concentrating on turning out Republicans in red states. Even, I'll get to the piece in a second, but even if you wanted to say, yes, like maybe Trump can be helpful in Mississippi, in South Carolina. These are Trump plus 18 states, plus more than that in some cases. But Trump going to Michigan is bananas. It's just a truly bananas choice, right? Ohio even, which even though it's a state he won by double, digits, certainly not helpful, right? But it's to the peace. All right. It offends me to my latent political strategist soul that they're doing something this stupid down the stretch. And that not enough people are talking about how stupid it is. It's so obviously stupid that everyone's so knocked upside the head with Trump always defies the expectations. It's idiotic. Everyone knows it's idiotic. No one in the Republican Party will say it. The fact that Mike Rogers spent all this time running ads saying that he was against the kind of sort of against the tariffs, kind of said, get the war. And then he has to stand next to Trump at a rally. Like, that's stupid in the piece. And I'm surprised. I assume this is also your favorite part where it says that Trump has been calling allies to regale himself about how long his crowds were, how big his crowds were. But to mention that J.D. Vance is not getting very big crowds. You know me. That's it. That's right. Top of my list. Yeah. It's just so funny. Yeah. I mean, the 28 campaign, like, I'm not looking forward to our primary. Yes. Their primary is going to be amazing. Very much looking forward to that, to watching that show unfold. The human psychodrama is Trump tortures J.D. Vance the whole time. It's like the saving grace for the whole year. I also like that Bill Pulte, the court jester, as he's known, his thing is his thing is memes, apparently. And he he made a poster of John Husted. Was it of John Husted's ass? That wasn't clear. It doesn't. Yeah. It did not specify. In the in the New York Times because God is a sort of respected institution. But the New York Times did say they made a poster of John Husted. Who's ass Donald Trump? Who's physique? Who's physique? Yes. Trump has repeatedly praised. And then also, as I think Tommy guessed this on Tuesday's pod, but we did find out that Trump dictated the 1300 word Bill Maher tirade to Natalie after watching Bill Maher's monologue. So. You know why Natalie, you know, she had one of the desks outside the Oval Office, but he's moved her into the Oval Office or basically to the private dining room off the Oval Office. And typical of Trump, don't necessarily think there's anything untoward going on there. The reason she's there is so when he can watch the TV, he can just yell to her in the dining room and tell her to start doing some truths, doing some posting. Well, it'd be really annoying to call her by the time she gets there. The segment's over. She's got to be in the moment. She's got to be right there. She's got to be just typing that shit out. So certainly the people who came to see Trump in South Carolina were excited to be there, minus the several protesters who interrupted the event. That seems to be happening a lot more these days. I don't have almost no recollection of it happening for years now. And it happens everywhere we go. Yeah, it's interesting. It could be it could be a sign or not. But then there was this guy who showed up at the rally. Tom, why are you here this morning? Well. In the late 70s, I was a little too young to get involved and go to South America for the Jonestown massacre. But this is as close as I'll ever get. So that's why I'm here. Wait, the Jonestown massacre? That's right. See, it's nothing like being a cult right up front, man. All right. Maybe, maybe this is not a Trump supporter. Fucking hero. I did like that it took the Fox News reporter just an extra beat to get it. He was like, Jonestown massacre? Didn't get it then. And then the guy was like, yeah, cult up close. And he's like, oh, oh, I get it. You're not a real Trump supporter. I think the fastest way for the Democratic nomination is to promise that guy the Presidential Medal of Freedom if elected president. I mean, that guy might end up on the ballot. Oh, you know what? If this were 2017, he would be. He would run right now. You know, if we were 2017, we would have figured we got to get him on the show. How do we not have that guy? Probably because he's at the rally. Probably because he's on the bulwark right now. Don't fuck it. It's going to happen. Tim's going to be dead serious. We're going to wake up tomorrow. Tim's going to be talking to this guy. He may be doing it right now as we speak. Fuck. I'm going to start sending some slacks while I'm in this recording. Yeah, yeah. Just pause the podcast. Let's send some notes. Okay. I don't want to read too much into one man's successful infiltration of a Trump rally, but we did get a Time Sienna poll of South Carolina on Wednesday, which was a bit of a surprise, partly because we were, you and I have been hoping for Time Sienna polls all week. Maybe by the time you're listening to this on Friday, there will have been another batch of Time Sienna polls that we'll have missed because they came out on Friday. But on Wednesday, we got South Carolina, Florida, and Minnesota. But the South Carolina one was pretty amazing because it has the race in a dead heat with Annie Andrews and Darlene Graham at 48% each. Silver Bulletin's polling average still has Darlene Graham up one and a half points. I think, Nate, you're listening to this on Friday. There will have been another batch of Time Sienna polls that we'll have missed because they came out on Friday. But the South Carolina one was pretty amazing because it has the race in a dead heat with Annie Andrews and Darlene Graham at 48%. Silver Bulletin's polling average still has Darlene Graham at 48%. But previously, the polls were like 44, 43, 45, 44. And 44% is what Jamie Harrison got in 2020 in that Senate race. So the New York Times poll shows that Annie Andrews can grow her vote share to the point where she has a real shot at winning. You look at the internals, people do not like Darlene Graham. She has a, there is a negative, she has a net negative favorability rating. A plurality of South Carolinians think she has not, she does not have the experience to be an effective senator. People like Annie Andrews, although she, her name ID is still a little bit low, which is a little bit shocking this far into the race. But 54% of South Carolinians think she has the experience to be an effective senator. A, the plurality think that she is not too far to the right or too far to the left, which is a huge thing there. On the issues, the people, the people of South Carolina think, trust her more to handle all the major issues except immigration, all very positive. And the There are two third-party candidates on the ballot in this election. They did not show up in this poll. They both came in at less than 1% combined. Are they also named Darlene Graham? There, we'll get to that. Darlene with a Y, Graham. And they have shown up in other polls, though. So we'll see. And I don't know whether the Times asked them by name or asked just, are you voting for another candidate? So this is a state Trump won by 18 points. This is a very hard state. But listening to the excellent podcast, Still Counting, at which they made the point, and I think Nate made this point, that if South Carolina is a state with a gigantic black population, there's evidence in early voting and voter registration data that turnout could be through the roof amongst black voters. We saw this in the primaries in some states, especially in the South, that if you had presidential year turnout among black voters and midterm level turnout among everyone. else, which is white voters, the state would ship nine points to the left. Which still doesn't quite get you there. But you need independence. And in this poll, Annie Andrews has crushed you with independence. And then interestingly enough, also in the Spartanburg-Greenville area, which is where Ralph Norman's from, she's underperforming significantly there. And, you know, there is now a sort of undercover write-in Ralph Norman campaign happening. Oh. That Ralph Norman has not. Um, disavowed, per se. And he will not be campaigning with her. And he's not happy with Darlene Graham or Donald Trump for the situation we're in. Yeah, I mean, I think everyone should just, the fact that it is tied in this poll, and the fact that we're even talking about this at all, when Donald Trump won the state by 18, is crazy. Yeah. And also evidence of, like, just how far the country has shifted, or the electorate has shifted. And how bad a candidate Darlene Graham is. And how bad a candidate Darlene Graham is as well. You know, some people are saying, well, everyone got really excited about Jamie Harrison in 2020. And, you know, the polls showed that he was close, and then he lost by 10 to Lindsey Graham. But, like, someone pointed out the Time Sienna final poll in 2020 did have, um, it had Graham ahead of Harrison by 6. Yeah. And he ended up winning by 10. But so, like, there was no tied poll from Time Sienna in 2020. And that was a year where all the polling was off and overestimated. Yeah, and the Times polling, too. And the Times polling, too. So that, and, you know, it's a presidential year, so it's hard to compare both. But you're right. Like, if you get, if everything has to go right for Annie Andrews to win, right, which is incredibly high black turnout, midterm white turnout, some depressed turnout among Republicans, crushing with independents, and, you know, some Republicans crossing over to vote for Annie Andrews. Yeah. It's, I mean, like they said, it's very, very hard. But. But it's also worth noting that Trump is in South Carolina, was in South Carolina today. The Republicans are spending a ton of money in South Carolina. They believe it's a real race, too. This is not just us huffing hopium somewhere. Pod Save America is brought to you by Remy. It's spooky season, but nothing is scarier than the sound of nighttime teeth grinding, except ignoring your oral health during National Dental Hygiene Month. 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It takes two minutes to apply. Can I, uh, I know this wasn't on the outline, but can I ask you about the Minnesota poll? The time Santa poll, because so it has Peggy Flanagan up 14 points. Um, largest lead any poll has shown for her by far, by far, there's been some polls that had it quite close and made some people nervous. And, you know, you see it up 14 points. You see the top line. I was like, great. And then, you know, we all sent this around to each other. Nate Cohn. Wrote up his analysis of the polls. And, uh, he said, you know, if, if it turns out that the polls have underestimated Republican strength, we may look back and say that this Minnesota poll was a canary in the coal mine. And the reason he said that is because Minnesota is apparently the only state where, um, you don't have party registration in the voter file. And so usually you can solve the problem of not getting enough Republicans with the, uh, party registration data. Um, and because you couldn't at Minnesota, like maybe this is an unvarnished look at what happens when you just can't get enough Republicans in your sample. Um, I didn't totally follow why that should be a canary in the coal mine. Um, but what do you think? Yeah, I it's, I'm not saying Nate's wrong because Nate's quite smart, but I, they did. Self-identification in the poll, obviously, because they say in the poll how many Republicans and Democrats there are, and then they weighted it to that. Which is how most polls, the New York Times is a rare media poll that goes off the voter file. They're one of the few media organizations that has the resources to conduct a poll that way. That's how every campaign does their poll. It could very well be this poll is an outlier. It's clearly an outlier. The one thing I would say, though, is that if you were just to say, look at the political environment and the partisan lean of the state, 14 points is almost exactly what the margin should be. If this is a plus 10 environment, Minnesota's a state that was about plus four for Kamala Harris in 2024, you're looking at a 14-point race. Now, that doesn't take into account. In the New York Times' own national poll, it has a 10.5-point lead, right? That's right. So, like 10.5 plus four points. Yeah. Which is what? Kamala Harris, which it was to the left of the nation by in 2024. Yeah, you're right. That does it. So, like there's a word which it adds up, and it's exactly right. We just don't know. We'll see. We'll see. So, while we didn't get any fresh Times-Santa Senate polls on Thursday, we did get a new round of CNN polls showing Democrats ahead by anywhere from four to seven points in Michigan, Texas, Maine, and Kansas. As of this recording, Flipper, Nate's model, has the chance of Democrats flipping the House at 95%. Yep. And the Senate is around 80%. I think it's 79 or something, but it's like right there. And if you're wondering what the White House political team is seeing, Trump just canceled his in-person rally in Kansas this weekend, and he's replacing it with a series of tele-rallies, including one on Election Eve for the Republican Senate candidate in Louisiana. Now, Trump was asked by a reporter why he canceled the Kansas rally, and he flipped out. Very much matching the Times piece, called the reporter fat and out of shape, which is quite something to say for him, and then said he's canceled the rally because Roger Marshall's doing so well. Which is what everyone is saying. Everyone is saying that. Anyway, Louisiana. So, go ahead, Dan. Unburden yourself. Where are we with four days to go? How are you feeling? Look at the whole map. What are you thinking? So, I think the way. The way to think about it is you take the House. If you just look at the seats that the Republicans have already conceded, it suggests they've basically conceded the majority and are now just trying to put up firewalls to stop Democrats from winning in hugely Republican districts and deep in Trump country. It's clear that the race has been actually remarkably steady for two months, but the trend has been growing momentum for Democrats and expansion of the map. Just today, Democrats put money into North Carolina 9, which is a district that Trump won. It's also the home district of Richard Hudson, who also happens to be the head of the NRCC, the Republican House campaign arm. So, they're going after him. You also see Democrats making moves in New York 21, which Trump won by 21 points, which was at least the phonics old district. So, Democrat. Like, the map is moving in Democrat's direction. I think on the Senate, where I would put this is all of the key races, the ones we care the most about, are within the margin of error. It's still that way. Still that way. Yes. And that is. That has been that way. Democrats have had a pretty steady lead in the polling averages in all of those states. That lead has not really grown in any way, shape, or form over the last couple of weeks. It's stayed the same. But it hasn't tightened. And you have to dig really deep to find any polls that show Republicans leading in any of the main races. But we started this cycle with this idea that somehow Democrats could possibly win two seats out of four deeply red states. Ohio, Iowa, Texas, Alaska. They could get the majority. What has changed in the last month is now we don't have to win 50% of those races because you also have, as possibly winnable races, South Carolina, Kansas, Mississippi, and Nebraska. So, the map is wider for Democrats, which just gives us more shots on goal, which is incredibly important. Yeah. If you sort of look at all the polling in the last couple of weeks, I would say that in Michigan, at least the polling there, shows Abdul sort of creeping up. Yeah, it's hard to say. There's been so many different polls of middle in quality that some of them have had Abdul with bigger leads than we've seen anywhere. The CNN poll, which is a high-quality poll, had that today, seven points. But then a lot of other bad polls would have it two points. Well, the Glenn Gareff poll, the CNN poll, there was another Detroit News poll that was not that, that was also the same. So, that one's going good. Hasn't been a lot of polling out of Maine. Still wondering about that. The Texas polls have just been, like, really steady. Yeah. Like, I don't, I can't, I've lost kind of how many polls show James Tallarico with, like, a two-point lead in Texas. Yeah. And the CNN poll had him up a little bit more today. Yeah. So, I don't know. And then same thing with Ohio has been steady at two or three. But you're right. It's all, it's all within the margin of error. Yeah. But do you think these things break, is it more likely they all break one way? Or do you think that in a midterm like this, you really could see? You know, one state going one way for certain reasons and another going another way, even though they were both, like, two-point races in the polling up until now? In a presidential election, the states are highly correlated because it's the same two candidates in every case. That is not, the states are not as correlated in midterms. And you do have some geographic differences and some demographic differences among the electorate that does matter. Like, the question in Texas is, is the Hispanic swing what we think it is? Right. And if it is what we think it is. If it is not, that doesn't tell you anything about what's likely to happen in Ohio, Alaska or Iowa, right? South Carolina and Mississippi, very, Ohio is just great. a certain extent, very dependent on high black turnout. Right. That tells you a little bit less about Iowa and Alaska. Obviously, we don't like to dig into the early vote, which has disappointed us before reading tea leaves from the early vote, partly because you don't know the how many people are going to turn out. You're missing the denominator because a bunch of people vote on election day. But I feel like, you know, I still look at the early vote in different places and some places it's it's it's more helpful and more useful than others. It doesn't seem like there's anything alarming in the early vote. No, like I feel like that you you can't look at it and say like, oh, great news. We're doing great here. People. But like it doesn't it doesn't seem like anything in the early vote is telling us that the polling is way off so far. Yes, we just don't we just don't know enough. And the reason why the early vote has been wrong before is because either it's a party registration state where, you know, whether it's Democrats or Republicans or you're making assessments based on demographics as to whether this person is likely to vote for Republican or Democrat. And in 2020, people were very off because who we thought were Democrats was, you know, we were looking at 2016 level Latino numbers that it turns out not what to get, not what we had at all because there was a shift and then a bigger shift in 2024. Same thing in 2024. You're like, oh, look at all these young people. It turned out that wasn't as good for Democrats as we as it would have been in a different election year. So we did. We just don't know. But there is, you know, every once in a while there's like this giant warning sign in one state. Like it's often Nevada where you always get some of the best data. There's nothing there that is said. There's a huge challenge. In fact, I was just going to raise this like in Nevada, there's the governor's race, which is the most competitive race. I think like the three Democrats that are running in those three districts are doing three of the four districts. Democrats are doing really well. In fact, like I think the Republicans have sort of dropped spending in most of them. But the governor's race is close. Joe Lampardo is the Republican and Aaron Ford is the Democrat. He's been interviewed here on Pod Save America. And I've been reading John Ralston's blog. And again, the reason that you look at the early vote in Nevada is because everyone gets mailed a ballot. So you know the whole universe of voters. And so you can sort of do the calculations a bit easier. And I mean, if you just look at a graph of what was happening in 2024 in which where like things were getting worse and worse for Democrats as the days went on and then got a little better at the end, but still not much. And what's happening now, which is just like Democrats are just building this huge lead in ballots that is just getting bigger and bigger and bigger every day. It looks quite good there, but we'll see. Don't want to get too excited, but Nevada is looking pretty good. Now, what does that mean for the rest of the country for all these other races? Again, it's hard to tell, right? Because it's a very specific population in Nevada. It's heavily Latino working class. You've got a governor's race there. It's not a Senate race. So, you know, a bunch of different things could be unique there, but so far, so good. Pod Save America is brought to you by Bombas. Cozy season is upon us. That means curling up on crisp mornings and soft layers. Bombas makes your comfiest fall staples so you can make the most of, arguably, the best of your life. Bombas new suede moccasins are perfect for fall with cushy soles, a shearing lining and water resistant suede. 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Xero is a platform built for small business owners that brings accounting, payments, payroll, and analytics together in one place. You can access reports, visual dashboards, forecasts, and AI insights to help you better understand your cash flow and make informed decisions about your business. All right, let's talk about Georgia, where our old boss held his final event of the campaign, Wednesday night at a rally with Keisha Lance Bottoms and John Ossoff. And for all the conservative pundits and MAGA warriors who thought it was wise to pick a fight with the most popular political figure in America over a joke about Donald Trump's interior design aesthetic, Obama had this to say. I heard the president was not happy when I joked over the weekend that he's got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. I lived at Chuck E. Cheese. And California Pizza Kitchen. And the Cheesecake Factory. That was my jam for about a decade. Of course, the real problem is prices have gotten so high, a lot of folks can barely afford to go out to eat. The president wasn't even mad about the Saddam Hussein comparison, but he was very upset about the Cheesecake Factory comments. They mobilized a whole of government response to that joke. The White House even called the Secretary of the Treasury. They told him he should hold a press conference in front of the Cheesecake Factory. And the Treasury Secretary, he happens to be a former hedge fund manager worth half a billion dollars. And he was out there in front of the Cheesecake Factory explaining how he ordered the delicious French dip cheese. Instead of the egg rolls, I inherited this major financial crisis. I never called my Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, said, man, you got to go to Harvard. This is what I mean when I say these are not serious people. They don't have solutions to actual problems. So they'd rather have the media and you talking about the Cheesecake Factory. That's the game they've been playing for the last two years. Just keep throwing distractions out there and hope that you won't notice that your bills are higher and your life is tougher. Uh, you think he was having fun there, Dan? Yes, just, just a little bit. Just a little bit. Well, I guess that's that. I guess, uh, I don't know if Republicans, do they want any more? Uh, you want to go another round? Let's do it. I'm sure some of them do. Sure. We can schedule another rally for you. Yeah. If you want to. Trump didn't really bring it up today, right? I don't think anyone's bringing it up anymore. I think that's about that. I think that's about it. So good. Um, uh, yeah, he was very, uh, I, I, I, I have heard from our friends that he was very excited to do that. Yes. Yes. The, and in fact, and in fact, the response and the thing about Besson, like that was, that was right from him. The best he had, he had clearly caught a clip of Scott Besson walking out of the Cheesecake Factory and thought that was the both funniest and craziest shit he had ever seen. Just so stupid. So much fun. Um, not to be too credulous here, but what do you think of the way he's trying to tie Cheesecake Gate into a larger argument about Donald Trump? I would just say that, um, I do as, as you are, as we all are, um, we're very prideful of the old boss. We very, uh, we always want people like it makes us feel good when people admire him and say nice things every time of year, every year when Obama comes out, does a couple of rallies and everyone is just, they swoon over it. Like I find that very enjoyable because it is reminder that he is remains the best communicator in American politics for his generation and maybe some generations to come. So good. And the reason why you see that in this case is like, this is how you do modern communications, which is impressive for guys been out of office for a long time. Now is you find the thing that is viral, the thing that people are paying attention to, the people are talking about, and then you attach a real argument to it. Um, you take, you, you, it's attention hijacking basically. And so he makes this joke, which was just kind of a throwaway joke in a rally. That was quite funny. The right wing reacts to it, has, you know, Trump takes the bait, they do it. And then he, Obama sees his opportunity to punch back, but do punch back in a way that actually advances the argument, which is the difference between Trump and Obama or Trump and the, and Obama in the right wing here, which is there, they have no argument about the cheesecake factory. It's just, they keep crying. Like there, even if you could sell like people on the idea that Barack Obama was elitist for it, how is that helping you win an election? It's not helping you beat Sharon Brown or Annie Andrews or Josh Turek. It's just, it's, it's idiotic grievance politics, Obama. He could just get into a pissy match with Trump, which he would, he enjoys doing here, but then he takes it one step further to make it turn into a case for Democrats and a case against Republicans. Yeah. I mean, look, the most difficult part of responding to that is the whole cheesecake factory fiasco is so fucking nuts on so many different levels. It's like the elitist thing is crazy, but also the like, yes, we're making fun of Trump's interior design aesthetic, because all he does is just renovate the White House in his elder years here as he is sundowning while at war in Iran, and he's just running around the White House. And then the way that Trump responds to all of it is by going down to Mississippi. First of all, Mississippi, where he feels the need to campaign, and talking to a crowd about the fine artisans they're using in the White House, and how he used exterior plaster, and skim coating, talking about skim coating. And then, literally right after Obama delivered the riff we just heard, Trump spent several hours truthing photos of the government-owned golf course, East Potomac, that he's been trying to renovate over a judge's orders, because he cut down a bunch of fucking trees, and in the truth claimed that the problems with the driving range netting caused a White House staffer to be, quote, sadly, So it's like, what do you expect? And all these people being like, oh, Obama's, like, Donald Trump is out there talking about his fucking golf course, how he's going to renovate that, and then Obama talks about, it's, it, the best part of it is, like, Obama does the Cheesecake Factory joke. Everyone's like, all right, this is our opportunity to turn the attention away from Donald Trump, and his corruption, and the fact that he's out of touch, and the fact that everyone's pissed, and we're going to make, we're going to do this fake fucking, and we're going to do this fake fucking thing about Obama being elitist. Great. And then Trump's like, nope, I'm not playing that game. I'm not doing the play. Instead, I'm actually hurt by the joke, because I love my home renovations, and I think my sense of design is top-notch, and so I'm going to talk about it even more. It's really the only thing that he cares about. That's it. He was genuinely hurt by Obama's joke, because he takes great care of himself. He takes great care of himself. He takes great pride in all of the shit he's doing at taxpayer expense, and the expense of focusing on the problems that most people care about and have. It's just, he just cannot help himself. I mean, it's really, it's a gift. I mean, imagine, like, this would be a hard political environment for anyone, but he insists on making it worse every day. He's like, what is the critique of me, and how can I double and triple down on making it effective? I also, I would love some New York Times, Wall Street Journal, whoever reporting on the backstory of how people are besant got to the Cheesecake Factory. Like, what were the conversations? How did it end up being him? How was it? Of all the people, of all the people. It couldn't be RFK Jr., so he probably was off the list. You were trying to portray the ex-president as elitist for a jab about the Cheesecake Factory, so you send Scott Besant to the Cheesecake Factory to talk about his French dip. It's like, how? Did Sean Duffy not get that task? Anyone. I don't, Pete Hegseth, for God's sake. I don't, anyone. J.D. Vance. J.D. Vance. He probably volunteered, and they told him no. They're like, you can't pull this off, sir. It is, goes back to, like, the trying to lose the midterms. Sending Scott Besant is something you would do if you were trying to lose the midterms. Yes. Yes. I remember, I think David Axelrod said this to you when you were talking to him, which is, if he were trying to lose the midterms, what would he be doing differently? Right. If he wasn't trying to lose the midterms, what would he be doing differently? I don't know. I don't know. All right. There's one new message Trump is pushing in the final stretch about Democrats that may or may not stick. Let's listen. Mary Peltola should resign from the race. I think she should be prosecuted criminally for what she did. Whoa. Okay. What did she do, John? Well, for those just tuning in, that's him responding to the Times report on Wednesday that Peltola's team worked with the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee last summer. And he said, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. I don't know to find other people named Dan Sullivan to get into the race and draw votes away from the incumbent with the same name, Senator Dan Sullivan. They succeeded, of course. And as we've discussed, the DOJ has filed a lawsuit to try to stop Alaska from certifying a Peltola win, if it appears to be the result of the other Sullivan's presence on the ballot. On Thursday morning, the Republican governor of Alaska ordered an investigation into the effort, even though the president of the United States, Joe Biden, is not a Republican. An Alaska court already ruled that other Dan Sullivan could be on the ballot. It's unclear what, if any, laws could have been broken. And Republicans worked to help spoilers all the time, including in Alaska during the cycle's primary. So, question that I hear a lot of people asking, and it's a good one. Why would Democrats do this in the first place, especially in a state where you have a rank choice between four names anyway? Like, it doesn't seem like it would have the maximum effect because if you could just rank both Sullivans, if you were confused somehow. Yeah. Let's start there. And then we can talk about. I can't really figure out why this was worth that level of effort. Same. That was that was sort of my first. If someone just looked at the first Dan Sullivan they saw, and it was the other, the other Dan Sullivan, not the Senator Dan Sullivan, and then put their second choice, who was not named Dan Sullivan, second, then that would solve the problem. But if someone got in there, they were legitimately confused about which Dan Sullivan they were supporting, and they just put them one in two, then that, that, then Dan Sullivan center would get that vote in the second round of rank choice voting. Yes. So it seems a little like overcomplicating the simple. Now Alaska has the, Alaska is challenging because it's a rank choice vote and they have a four person primary. It ends with the four top people being on the ballot, and so they went, they, this was smart, they went to great efforts to ensure there was no Democrat, other Democrat on the ballot, and like ultimately the larger math here is you can't, in a rank choice vote, and you can't lower the number below 50 because that's the whole point of rank choice voting is you've got to get to 50 in multiple errors, but, you know, I think they thought that if you, one, if you had multiple Republicans, multiple Dan Sullivans, you might get to the second ballot with Mary Paltolla winning. Right. So. You know, there's been a sort of an outcry, even not, not just on the right, but, you know, people who are more center left, moderate, some Democrats were just like, you know, we should, should condemn this, this was wrong. And I like, so Alaska public media went and interviewed a bunch of voters about this and voters who were like either Republicans were voting for Paltolla or independents or, you know, so not like Mary Paltolla fans necessarily, but, um, so one voter. Who's an unregistered, like no party voter, um, uh, who I think is going to go for Paltolla said it does give, I think, as some of the kids would describe it, icky vibes. But at the same time, I think voters are intelligent and can figure out how to rank and can figure out which Dan Sullivan is their person. And I think that's where I land on the whole thing. Like icky, but also like if, if it's within the law, which it sounds like it is not illegal. It's not illegal. Ballast hacking is not illegal. And is it like a campaign dirty trick? Like the kind that Republicans do all the time? Yeah. But it's like, if we want to make it illegal, we should make it illegal. If we don't, if we think it's wrong, wrong enough that it shouldn't be allowed, then there should be laws against it. Right. There are, there are several questions here. There is one, is it illegal? It is not. Two, is it unprecedented? It's absolutely unprecedented. Campaigns do this all the time. In fact, you may remember from that dark period of time known as 2020 that, uh, allies of Trump recruited Kanye West to run for president in the hope that it would siphon black voters away from Joe Biden. There are efforts underway on both sides to promote third party candidates in the races where they think that's going to help them. And if there's a socialist on the ballot, they're gonna try to promote that socialist. The Republicans in the Trump campaign did this with Jill Stein in 2016. Like we have, like, this is not. And they spend money on this. Yes, they spend a lot of money. To really promote these candidates. You normally need like a pass through separate super PAC. Like it's, it is. It is legal, but sketchy is basically all campaign finances these days. Um, and then this question is, was this advisable? You know, you know, it's probably not as beneficial. If there were two Dan Sullivan's or was no rank choice voting, that would be more impactful than this, but it probably helps on the margins. And what does it, you know, certainly looks to be a very hard, but winnable race. And then there's the question of now that this has been revealed, is it going to hurt Mary Paul Tola? Right. This is a big question. I, I mean, I can't take a few interviews from. Alaska public media to tell me that it's not going to do it. I would be surprised if it had an impact. I would. And I've, and I've seen some, I've seen some social listening data, which shows that this story is not exactly, um. Breaking through. Rocketing across both either nationally or in the state. So, um, I can't, you know, obviously in a close race, everything makes a difference. I would, I don't think this is a game changer. Yeah. I thought, I thought that the piece by Alaska public media was like a good focus group, right? It's not hard data, but you know, registered Republican planning to vote for Paul Tola said, this is nothing we haven't seen before. Or heard before. Um, and then someone else said both sides play pretty dirty pool. And if you're stupid enough that you can't tell the difference between an incumbent and a non-incumbent, I don't have any patience for you. Alaskans are smarter than that. That's why Trump's the one who said people were too dumb to know what an incumbent was. I do think there's a little bit of that where it's like you hear about the news and you're probably like, well, that's kind of scummy, right? Like that's kind of gross that they did that. But what's the different, like, I thought that's what politics is. And that's why I don't like politics and probably hate both parties equally. Like this is probably your median voter, right? Yeah. And also, what do you think? Do you think we're dumb and we can't figure out the difference between an incumbent and not an incumbent? Like there's also a little bit of that too. Yeah. like, what are you talking about? Like, it says right there, Senator Dan Sullivan, or Dan Sullivan incumbent, and then the other one is Daniel J. Sullivan. And now, I mean, it's public enough, and it's getting enough attention that I'm sure there won't be much confusion. Yeah, which is one of the arguments for why, political arguments for Trump during the lawsuit, right, is to draw attention to this. Right. Now, I think that, so we got the DOJ now trying to investigate. We got the House Oversight Committee, subpoenas here and there. I don't know where any of this goes, but it does seem like, unless there is some kind of a campaign finance violation in all of this, right, or there's some kind of sketchy finance thing that's actually illegal and not sketchy, none of the other stuff seems like it is even close to breaking the law. Right. I mean, this is ultimately, in their minds, pretext for a very, very long shot to somehow prevent Mary Poltola's election win from being certified. Yeah. Citing voter confusion. Like, Mark Elias had a good piece on this, which went to, like, they drafted the complaint in the suit to make, to set the case for, or to set the context for claiming that voters were confused, which could be an argument that could be used, although it'd be very, very hard, I think, to prevail on that argument, to prevent Poltola from winning, from being seated if she won. And just so everyone knows, if Alaska goes to a rank choice tabulation, because no one hits 50%, November 18th is the date they do that. So buckle up, folks. It's going to be a fun few weeks. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. We all have those persistent things taking up way too much real estate in our brains. It could be a nagging problem at work, an interpersonal conflict that we just can't seem to crack, or even embarrassing things from our youth that play on endless loop the minute we lay our heads down to sleep. It doesn't have to be like this. Therapy can help you evict intrusive thoughts and reclaim that precious space in your brain. Start the process today with BetterHelp. BetterHelp therapists are licensed, experienced professionals such as psychologists, marriage and family therapists, social workers, and counselors. They have at least three years and 1,000 hours of hands-on experience and have the required education, training, exams, and practice. BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. 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That's BetterHelp.com slash PSA. If you run a small business, you know how important it is to stay on top of your numbers. That's X-E-R-O. But yeah, so it seems like the most significant consequence here could be, you know, Republicans using the episode as another justification for Xero. Meddling with elections in the name of rooting out fraud. Thankfully, we haven't seen too many troubling signs of that yet, aside from already the Alaska thing they tried to do. They also tried to force California to set aside a bunch of ballots that the federal government is claiming are non-citizen ballots, though an appeals court just said, no, they can't do that. But there was a, there was also a disturbing MS Now story this week about how FBI agents are telling people they're safe. They're not safe. They're not safe. They're not safe. They're not scared. They may be ordered to seize voting machines or interfere with people's rights in other ways. Again, it's just a few FBI agents that talk to MS Now, but still. Also, according to government court filings, ICE and FBI agents will not be acting as poll monitors, but ATF, DEA, and Bureau of Prisons officers will, but they won't be acting as law enforcement officers while they do, and they won't be carrying firearms. Yay. What do you think, people should know about this, Dan? Because, you know, the most common question you get is like, are we going to have a midterm? What's going to happen? Is he going to fuck with it? I know the polls show Democrats winning, but like, what is he going to do to screw this up? I think let's start with the fact that, yes, Donald Trump would like to interfere with these elections. He would like to do that. He, but more than interfering with them, he wants not just to stop the election. He wants you to think he's going to stop the election so that you will voluntarily cede your own political power. You will think your vote will not count. This is what all the stuff about mail balloting is. And we cannot let that happen. And here's the thing, more than 40 million people have already voted. Yeah. Right. Donald Trump has a lot less power than he thinks he has when it comes to elections. He doesn't decide how they're administered. He doesn't decide when they're administered. He doesn't count the votes. He doesn't certify the election. He does all, he has almost nothing he can do there. And so the thing that I would just encourage everyone is to recognize that Trump is going to try things that Democrats really do have been thinking about this for a very long time. They, a lot of criticism of the Democratic Party. One thing that we have been very good at is election law over the years. And the best and the brightest in our party have been working on this for a very long time. They're working on it right now. Our job is not to be deterred from voting, not to be freaked out about it, is to go vote, to get our friends to vote, to make sure our vote counts and try and go, let's just go win the election. And if we win by enough, nothing they do can stop us. I was just going to say, to borrow the Trump campaign mantra from 2024, too big, too rigged. Um, like the, the larger the margin, the harder it is to pull something off. You know, it's, it's where you get problems as if it's like, we're up and we're waiting and there's a recount and it's like a 0.2% difference. And then, then that's when Trump jumps in, you know, but that's why you got the, the best thing you can do to like prevent this is like, you know, get a bunch of people who might not have, have a plan to vote to have a plan to vote. And don't freak everyone else out about it either. You know, there was this thing that happened a few weeks ago where there was this photo taken of these national guard members standing in front of a ballot box in DC went immediately viral. Everyone freaked out about it. There's no evidence they were doing anything other than standing in front of the ballot box. You know, I don't know that I trust the government officials who said that, but I also don't think that Trump's plan to steal the elections is going to start with the DC mayoral election. Um, but that went viral. People were like, Oh my God, the national guard is coming off that. It's like, like be calm, carry on, go vote. If we all vote, they cannot stop us. Stay in line. If you're there when polls close, if there's a problem with your registration or eligibility, you can ask the election official about the remedy for that. You can get a provisional ballot, uh, where, where that's available. And, uh, you can always report intimidation or voting problems to 866 our vote 866-687-8683 by call or text. So everyone have that number. Uh, all right, Dan, speaking of election day, we thought we'd talk a bit about what the two of us will be watching for the election. What's the results start to come in? It's got me nervous just saying that, uh, what's on your list. So I wanna start with some house races. I, I did a little bit of some pull across. I'm gonna write a much fuller thing for message box, but just as the polls close on the east coast, what are the races we should be watching to see how there may be harbingers of things to come. And I'm gonna start with Kentucky six polls close in Kentucky. First, Kentucky six is the seat held by Andy Barr, who is running for, he's the Republican nominee for this for the McConnell seat. He that's a district that Trump won by about 15 points. We have a great Democratic candidate in Zach Dembo there. This race has been seen as competitive. Republicans are very worried about it. Look at the results there. That'll be there. Our first sign of whether of how big the wave is of Dembo is immediately very competitive or even ahead. That's very positive. Then we're gonna get poll closings in North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, um, in Georgia, in Florida, it's Florida 27. I'm very interested in that's in South Carolina. Yeah. And South Carolina. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And South Carolina, a little bit less interesting on the house races. Um, but in Florida, the house race that is far to 27, I'm most interested in that's the Maria Elvira Salazar seat. She's the one who did that very aggressive ad sort of breaking with Trump on migration. It's a district that Trump won by 15 points, heavily Latino, very interested to see what's going on there. The caution I would give is in Nate made this point on still counting as well, that how Latinos in Florida move, doesn't, this ain't gonna tell us how Latinos in the Valley move, but still I think very interesting. And also if they don't call that race for Ashley Moody quickly, that'll be very interesting as well in North Carolina. I'm interested in North Carolina 11, which is the seat that, uh, was the Chuck Edwards seat before he resigned to Jamie Agers. There were Republicans have pulled out of that seat, uh, out of that race. Uh, Jamie Agers running there. He's a, he's a fourth generation farmer. Very interesting. It was kind of tell us a little bit about how Democrats are doing in rural areas in Virginia. We got a bunch of house races. The one that I'm gonna look at. Virginia is Virginia five, which is a Trump plus 12 district, which is where our old friend Tom Perry yellow is running for Congress. Again, this is sort of. in and around the Charlottesville area. This was supposed to be a very Democratic district if the Virginia maps had come in. So I'm fascinated by that one. And if that one is very competitive and they count votes fast in Virginia, another very positive sign. And then in another one I'm going to look at, which closes a little bit later, is Alabama. Alabama 2, which is, this is the district that the Republicans redrew after the Clay decision. This is Shamari Figures, who's in this race as the incumbent Democrat. Probably has gotten very worried about this seat in recent days as a Trump plus 15 district. This is going to be our sign about black turnout across the South. I think we'll be in this district, because even though it has many fewer black voters than it had before, it still has a high black population. So I'm very interested in that one. Then we're going to get to Texas. And then our friend Bobby Polito, I'm interested in that race, is another one. A bunch of races in Pennsylvania as well. And then I mentioned it earlier, but in New York, New York 21, I think I'll be very interested in seeing how that goes. I mean, I don't have too much to add to that. I think Virginia is interesting because there's three house races there. And it's sort of like a ladder of how good the night's going. So like Virginia 2, I think Nate's model has that projected at D plus 5.9 right now. That's Elaine Luria. She's running to get her seat back. So that's like the most gettable, right? I think that's- I think Trump won that by like less than a point, right? Right. So we should absolutely get that one. And then there's, uh, Shannon Taylor is running against Rob Whitman in Virginia 1. That is lean D. It's like Nate has it as like D plus 1.6. So then if we're also winning that, that's, you know, that's good too. That's a little bit better. And then Virginia 5. I mean, Nate has that as R plus 5.8 at likely R right now. So I think it's like if Tom Perriello is winning in Virginia 5, that's a really good night. Yeah. That's, or at least it's a harbinger of a really good night. Yes. And you know, I, when I did that, I did our Sunday podcast with Amy Walter a few weeks ago. It's worth, like, these are all potential signs. It's not, we should be, it may be that the wave does not hit. That's true. In the same way in every single geographic area or demographic group. Right. Right. It may hit better in red States and blue States. Like you may see underperformance in New York in some places, but over performances like in Iowa too, in Iowa. Maybe better in heavily Latino places. Then white, then whiter areas. Same thing with black voters, as you just mentioned in Alabama. So yeah, you have to sort of look at the demographic representation of the race that you're looking at in order to sort of make or to compare it to like other places like that all around the country. And then Michigan is going to be like, obviously where everyone's going to be ahead of their eyes, good on Michigan, but there's just so much interesting stuff there. Obviously Abdul's race, but then you've got a bunch of interesting house races. I mean, Michigan, ones that Democrats should win, like Michigan seven, there's Michigan nine. There is how the governor does, you know, relative to how Jocelyn Benson does relative to Abdul, just like that is going to be a very, very fast one. You're going to have a bunch of these different benchmarks you can use to look, to measure success and like which voter groups you're doing well with. The other thing is some of these, like I saw this about Michigan too, you know, Michigan can count slow sometimes. And if Abdul is down or some of these house candidates are down and it's like one in the morning, but the votes that we're waiting for tend to be like, you know, areas like Detroit or places like that, like, or we hope, right. You just got to wait. Yeah. It's, it's Michigan. I think is the one that, I mean, maybe, maybe there's new polls we write and Abdul will win relatively easy, but that's one you could see yourself waiting for Wayne County and being very, which is where Detroit is being very nervous about because there are quite, there are. There have been questions based on his primary performance, although it hasn't shown up in all the polls about how Abdul would do with black voters. And so you don't know what you're going to net out of there. So it's, it's, the whole thing is fascinating, scary, scary. Yeah. Last thing before we go, we know you're probably feeling anxious about how Tuesday is going to go and you're not alone. We thought we'd play some questions from our subscriber only voicemail line and take a crack at responding. Hi, this is Ted calling Grattan, New York. I heard yesterday, a recent NPR poll, which looked not great, low enthusiasm for younger voters, a little bit of a bucket of cold water. So I'm wondering, hoping you can, you can address that poll. Thank you. Hello, this is Brian. I'm calling from Medford, Massachusetts. What if all these polls are wrong? I'm seriously worried that we're going to have a serious miss and like the blue tsunami is going to be more like a blue trickle. It's kind of similar to how the 2022 midterms turned out. Thanks, bye. Hey, this is Jen in Philly. I'm wondering, is there historical election data showing whether there's a point in the run-up to a midterm or even a general when the polling leader becomes meaningfully predictive of the eventual outcome? Is it possible that's a real predictive factor or can you offer similar reassurances for the bedwetters? You're doing. I do appreciate Jen trying a different avenue there. Like, is it, can I, I'm looking for certainty so bad that I just want to know, is there a specific date by which it is more predictive? I really respect that question. Go ahead, Dan. So much there, right? And this is, we, I mean, I know you hear it too from everyone you talk to, this is the fear about the polls, that somehow the polls, are wrong, that we're going to, this is going to be 2016 or 2020. And I'd say a couple of things with that. One, a polling error is very possible. And you also don't need a polling error for us not to take the Senate. As I mentioned before, the polls could be right. And, and in all these margin of error, in a margin of error race, either outcome is within the range of possible outcomes. So the polls could be historically correct. And Ashley Henson could win in Iowa because she's only down like two points in the polls, whatever it is, right? Same thing in basically in all of these states. We should not assume. And then second, I'd say it is worth noting that the polls are more accurate in midterms than general elections. Like that has been the case. The polls were relatively accurate in 2018 and 2022. I just would state again that we should not assume that every single polling error is bad for Democrats. In fact, in 2022, in the individual states where the polls were off, half of them were off under underestimating Democrats. In previous, like in 2012, the polls underestimated Barack Obama. Like that does happen. And it is possible that the pollsters are so worried about not counting Republican voters that they're waiting, they're overcompensating, waiting the polls in the wrong direction. That is what happened in 2025 when in Virginia, there was a six point error. And in New Jersey, it was almost, there was a 10 point error, all underestimating Democrats. I would say put all the polls aside. Pretend there were no polls. Um, and you had to, uh, predict sort of what's going to happen just based on the environment. Last time Donald Trump was president and there was a midterm election was 2018. The economy was doing quite well. He was only two years into his term and, um, there was no war in Iran. He went into that midterm. He lost the popular vote by eight and a half points. Now, this is the second time he's, uh, been president, uh, where, where there's a midterm and there is a war going on in the middle East that we are involved in that has spiked gas prices to a level that they have never been on election day in as long as we can remember on top of inflation, on top of tariffs that have been also hurting consumers, uh, in a period where, um, people's, uh, inflation has outpaced people's wages. Um, and if you put all that together and you think he, he lost by eight and a half points last time, it, it reasons, it stands to reason that this time around it would at least be eight and a half or more, but probably more. Yeah. Especially because now he's been president. I mean, think of everything that's happened between 2018 and now there was the whole insurrection thing. There was, and like, we've seen, you know, his approval rating, even in the elections, um, where he outperformed his polls worse than they were in 2018. Yeah. And so it's like, just, if you, if you just put all the polls aside and you never looked at a poll and you looked at the map, you would think, yeah, he's going to do at least, if not worse, at least as bad, if not worse, and probably worse than 2018 when it was eight and a half points. If it's eight and a half points this time, does it guarantee that we win the Senate? No, because again, you need to like, some of these States are like double digit Trump wins, but you know, if it's 10 and a half points, time Sienna poll has it nationally. Yeah. That's probably enough to, to take the Senate. I mean, a blue wave is coming. It's just a question of whether it's big enough to, to wash the Democrats into the Senate majority. Yeah. And I think, and I think it was like, you know, it was, it was fun for some pundits to talk about a blue trickle for a while, but like, if we don't win the Senate, but we win the house, get a bunch of seats and we come close in the Senate, pick up a few seats. Like that's not a blue trickle. No, it's just not. It's just the last thing on 2022, everyone's focused on this. The polls were, right in 2022. The Republicans never had anywhere near after a 8.9 point, 10.11 point generic bout lead. It was like three points. They ended up winning by like two and a half. It is the idea of the red wave is not borne out by the polls. It came from bad analysis of the polls. The polls were actually correct and they predicted what you would get, which is a narrow Republican House victory and Democrats holding the Senate is what we got. All that said, of course, there could be a polling error. Of course, we can't give you that certainty. The only certainty we could give you is if you go have some conversations with people about politics and make sure your friends and everyone in your social network has a plan to vote and that you're available to ask any questions if they're not sure to vote for Democrats, then you're going to be in good shape. There's plenty to do between now and Tuesday. You go to votesaveamerica.com and we will find plenty for you to do. Find five people in your life who you think may not have voted yet and remind them to vote now. It's the best thing you could do. And the next best thing you could do is to become a subscriber. Become a friend of the pod because then your voicemail could end up on this show. And more than that, you get ad-free episodes. You get all kinds of subscriber-only benefits and shows that we do. Like Polar Coaster. Like Polar Coaster. The essential subscriber show. And you get to support, it's the best way to support the work we're doing here at Crooked, which is to try to make sure we have more pro-democracy independent media in the space. Because right now, there's too much right-wing slop out there. So go to crooked.com slash friends and subscribe. Thank you to Ted, Brian, and Jen for calling in. And a reminder, you too can leave us a voicemail with your questions if you sign up to be a friend of the pod subscriber. That's our show for today. Tommy will be back in the feed on Sunday talking with CNN's Harry Enten about the state of the race in the closing days. Then Tommy and Lovett and I will have your regularly scheduled Pod Save America on Tuesday morning and on Tuesday night. Dan will be here in LA with the three of us for Alex's election night live stream and then a late night bonus episode that'll be out Wednesday. So lots of content coming. Talk to you soon. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Michael Goldsmith with Reed Churlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Kenny Moffitt, Adam Lippert, Joseph Dutra, Desmond Taylor, Dan Farrow, David Tolles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. Visit Toyota.com today. Toyota. Let's go places. See packages and options at Toyota.com for future availability.