12: Where Do Republicans Go From Here?

Guys, I can't be held accountable for anything I say on today's podcast. Uh-oh. I am fully strung out on suit-a-fed. [laughter] So glad I'm sitting right in range of your spittle. [laughter] Welcome to Still Counting, I'm Gaelin Drake. I'm Claremalone. I'm Nate Silver. Yeah, you are. I remain. Estoy. Soy-- Not Estory. Soy, you are permanently Nate Silver. Yeah, this was kind of expressed. Are you at all bilingual? Gaelin's like, "tri-lingual." I tried to keep that on a doubt. I tried to keep that on a doubt. I can read menus really well. 'Cause I like tea. E, and I know a lot about-- That says taco. And you-- And you're sure we're going to have Gaelin say something in Italian. Tell me how beautiful I look. I want to say battle, that's clear. Oh! Tell me you like my Obergine sweater. Eh, "Mi pietro un sacco, quest-- no, I don't-- I don't know how to say Obergine." Ah, on today's show, we're going to talk about what went wrong for a publicans in the midterms. How crushing the loss was. I mean, crushing, crushing. Yeah, crushing, that's our analysis. How leaders in the party have reacted over the past week and what might come next, including-- [GASPS] Our 2028 Republican Party-- Oh, shit, I didn't do any preparation. --presidential draft. And Nate will be doing it from the seat of his pants. Which is basically like-- Everything he does. Oh, it's offense. That's not really true. I know, that's not fair. As Gaelin has said, Nate is the hardest working girl in showbiz, don't let anyone forget that. He's just really bad at answering emails. OK, we're also going to talk about the emerging beef between one Democratic Senate candidate and the expert race rating groups, like Coke Political Report and Sabito's Crystal Ball. But first, a very important announcement. You should subscribe to our podcast. You should subscribe to it on YouTube, in your RSS feed. You should tell your college group chat about us, because we think they would really like us. And it helps us when you subscribe and review, and rate the show, and share it. And you want to help us, don't you? Yeah, it's like post-election. Sometimes there's a law in these kinds of things. That's right. But we're relying on you to help us get through the three-week period between the midterms and when the 20s and 20s and 20s and 20s and 20s again, so yeah, I mean, even giving us a review, you know, like, you know, it's free to give a review. Go share, go share the love. That's right. Yeah, and we're still going to be here making podcasts for-- I know some people were like, oh, are you going to be done now that the midterms are over? You mean, are we going to stop counting? No. It's in the name folks. We're still counting. OK. All right. So let's get to that. That is the state of Mississippi. Oh. Look at that professional transition. He's not a professional. Call me Mississippi because I'm still counting. OK. As I tease in the intro, let's talk about Mississippi. Where district attorney Scott Palom is very likely on track to defeat incumbent senator Cindy Hyde Smith and win another seat for the Democrats. You may know Scott Palom for his viral ads, like pick another protein. Shit. I rather pick another senator instead. That's right. Which talked about this really good, Galen, which talked about the cost of beef. But this race largely did not get national attention until very late in the game when a Chuck Schumer aligned Super PAC dropped some money and everyone realized that it was a lot closer than expected. And Scott Palom has been telling a different story. He has been criticizing the media, Democrats, and race raiders, like cook political report very specifically for writing Mississippi Democrats off in the cycle. And he called out cook political in a pretty viral tweet, I would say, and also mentioned other on air prognosticators, as he called them, who by rating his race and other Southern races as out of reach for Democrats, it made it, quote, much more difficult to fundraise and are part of the reason the South has been neglected for so long, close quote. He also expanded on this point with a hit on MS now on Monday. Here's a clip. You know, and I'll tell you this, the thing about cook political report is there was one guy that I tried to explain to him the potential in Mississippi and why the ready was wrong. And he wouldn't even listen to me. He basically acted like he knew more about Mississippi politics than me. And I'm like, thinking about my mind, he's been so kind of sitting to me. I've been paying attention to Mississippi politics for 20 years, buddy. I've never seen you in Mississippi. Okay. I was a spicy little entree into election Twitter, and I for one, uh, found it very interesting. Nate, what'd you make of it? Did you just got clumped talk before he tweeted this? We did not. And we should say flipper for all its success doesn't really want to talk about Mississippi. I know you'll give Democrats a five percent chance of five point something percent, I think. And the polls only version, it was like nine percent, there weren't many polls. So it was just saying, I don't know what the ironically the fake wedge would pull was in Mississippi that kind of was most suspicious. And then in our deluxe version which lawyers and expert ratings, then it's four, but also based on the fundamentals of Mississippi, right? This is a real surprise, personally, it's a risk where I'm happy. I think it's a really fun four percent to come in, you know what I mean? It does signify something unlikely that happened. Yeah, like, I think the expert ratings agencies, um, that really been election, right? One point I emphasize is you can't just count where people are on election day because strategies are planned throughout the campaign. People are viewing your page that the campaign, people are prediction markets like trading throughout the campaign, right? And so like there are all these debates over what about flipper versus calcium versus whatever else on election day, and it's all within, I mean, there were some good models and some Nazca models, all the good models, and they were like four of them, right? Like all wound up in the same place, but they got there in different ways. Um, like meanwhile, the expert ratings agencies really had the incorrect picture of the race until way too late, right? Um, they, for some reason thought we're going to be in a presidential type year environment despite all the science like present Trump's approval ratings by the long history of the midterms. It's just a really weird thing to anchor to. Um, I think part of what happened is that like in, in 2024, 2020, those years, the house is pretty neutral, right? In 2022, you had a below average wave, I mean, a red ripple against Biden, which was surprising in its own way, right? So they haven't gotten burned by this in a while, but, you know, but I think it was, they are supposed to be rating individual races, and they're supposed to provide things that the polls or the fundamentals may admit, right? And let's talk about that. Like for people who don't know. I, I have to confess, and I, I want to fall up in something you said there about, um, the, the differences between race raters and maybe modelers and push a little bit, but before we do that, Galen, what do people like cook? What are the inputs into their predictions? Like what are the things that they're actually using? Cause I, I was actually thinking about it. I haven't really thought that deeply about it. So what are, what is, what is cook using to rate those races? Yeah, they're using some of the same tools as forecasters like Nate, they're using the publicly available polls. They're also talking to the candidates and assessing how good they are as candidates. They're looking at private polls. So there, there's not as much public polling done in a lot of house races. In particular, for example, so they see some of that private polling in a place like Mississippi or South Carolina, where some of the private polling was never made public, even in Senate races. They look at some of that stuff, but you know, I, in thinking about Scotland's assessment, if he's saying that cook political report was wrong on its assessment of Mississippi point taken, but I do wonder if his point is, you know, people like cook political report made Democrats lose races that they otherwise could have won because they would have spent more money there. I'm skeptical of that because if you look at South Carolina, any Andrews campaign said we had internal polling that showed us winning and we kept it private. He didn't make it public because we didn't want this race nationalized because we worried that if it became nationalized, that would be to our detriment. So if cook political report had been out there saying, you know, Mississippi as a toss-up or something like that, this is a state that Trump won by 23 percentage points, a state like that that becomes nationalized, I don't think is to Democrats benefit. So having this kind of slip under the radar and Scott Colombe is able to run, you know, this pretty good campaign on more populist issues where he talks about, you know, he's a former Republican, his dad worked for Reagan, all this kind of stuff. You know, Republican turnout is not juiced there because it's not nationalized, but Democrats still get excited and they're already angry at Trump. And I'll just say also when it comes to funding, I mean, he said like, oh, races are going to be underfunded for Democrats in the South because of moves like this. They were outfunded, you know, three to one relative to Cindy Heitzmith and yes, a lot of those dollars came in later in the race once they had internal polling that showed that it was closer. They were up or whatever. But I think this is kind of how these things go. And actually, I think it had the race been nationalized. Yeah, I wouldn't have been to Scott one benefit. It's kind of funny because first of all, there was a decent amount of campaign activity in Mississippi, people to judge campaign there, Kamal Harris campaign there. For example, I think Madagascar said in her election at livestream that like Democrats thought this is where they might have a chance, right? So that was weird. Yeah, I spent video, actually, I spent time yesterday watching video of like all the emerging stars of 2026 for a piece. I'm working on it. And Colin has an interesting, I mean, a lot of the more successful candidates have some means of cold switching when they're talking to different audiences, right? And you see the ads and they're very funny and creative. being a permission structure to be like, well, just like you might get a different hamburger, right? Then why not pick a different sentence? Well, I was kind of lame, right? And he's smiling and funny, right? You got to watch him on like shows for black audiences and it's more vernacular. You see him at local events and he comes across a very much a product of his state, right? - Well, he doesn't like talking to Trump, I mean, one of his videos was him talking to Trump understanding him line for a Trump rally where he's like, what are you worried about? And then he wrote, he can't have sharp elbows. - Yeah, so finish the point. Are you saying that he was speaking to the fundraising class, like the MS now class? There's obviously a bunch of like democratic party inside re-events coming up this next couple of weeks. - No, I don't think he's doing that, right? I think he was speaking to Mississippians as compared to someone like Any Andrews where Any Andrews clearly wants to be a big star, right? He wanted to win his race and that worked too, but he wanted to win a race in Mississippi and like I don't know that national attention. Also like I don't think it's a job of political raiders to care what impact it has on the parties, you know what I mean? - It was interesting, I mean, I will say, you know, pulling back the curtain on my commute here. I was listening to Adam Jentelson on the Esther Klein show. I have not listened to the full conversation because my train ride ended and I had to come record our podcast, but Jentelson's book basically talks about like how do Democrats build a super majority over, they basically wanna recreate like the FDR over a decade of super majority power for Democrats. And I sort of interpret, maybe you're sort of saying the same thing, I sort of interpreted the Scott Colombe thing as like come to play in Mississippi, right? Like that we are, that like recruit candidates like pay attention to us, that it was a little bit like that. It was kind of pay attention to the South, which I think has become a strain of real argumentation in this post blue wave. - Yeah, I think what Nate was saying that like on the stump during the 2026 race, Scott Colombe was speaking to a Mississippi audience. This kind of mini fight that he's picking with Cook Political Report, I think is in service of something else now, which is, yes, saying go spend money in the South. And look, at a certain point, not in this election or even the aftermath, Democrats are gonna have to think about how slowly they do seem to be doing worse in the North, and slowly they seem to be doing better, and sometimes not so slowly, sometimes in one fell swoop, they seem to be doing better in the South. So is there a longer term realignment, that's a dangerous word here? But if there is, then Republicans are gonna have to get more comfortable campaigning in the North, and they have been leaving a whole bunch of races uncontested in a lot of places in the Northeast and so on, and Democrats are gonna have to get more comfortable campaigning in the South in places where they have been. - Yeah, 2008, Democrats have won a U.S. Senate race in 43 of the 50 states. The added, so many sources are called Mississippi this year, Alaska, Kansas, Texas, and Maine, where you actually hadn't had a capital of the Democrat in a long time, I might be missing one there potentially. - Oh, South Carolina, yeah. - I mean, Galen, your point about those, that Annie Anders didn't wanna nationalize her race, and the Democratic Party thinking about how to play on this big map, you know, on Monday, the Washington Post wrote about, you know, across the, Democratic leaders across the South, talking about how some races were really close. There wasn't a lot of polling in certain states, like Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and that maybe some things could have pushed things over the edge. How do you think you go about, like navigating that nationalized race versus localized tailor-made candidate for a state thing? That's a really actually kind of difficult balance to strike in a lot of ways. - I mean, the way that a lot of Democrats did it in 2026 was by creating distance from their own party. Like first and foremost, what you hear from somebody like Rob Sand or Adam Hamilton, or Scott Cologne, is either from Scott Cologne, my dad worked for Reagan, or from Rob Sand, you know. - Left-righting, right-wing, same-bird. - Right, is sort of saying this whole two-party system, it's bullshit anyway, like I'm post-partisan or I'm anti-politics. I mean, we've seen this in other countries too, that anti-politics is popular. More, like, take a step back. How did you do that when you're a sitting senator or a sitting governor, though, of course? - Yeah, but like, also, you know, you can always just fudge it, make things up, whatever. You know, that is true. That, like-- - Are you saying politicians lie? - Yes, exactly. The outsider position is like, a tale is old this time in American politics. Reagan did it, Trump did it, you know. Obama did it as a sitting senator to be clear. And so, I think that while in this very moment, there are plenty of partisans on the left who are very excited about what just happened. And so I'm like, I still think that broadly Americans don't really like politics and one of the best ways to-- And especially, like, what's going on in politics now and one of the best ways to relate to people is by agreeing with them that the system is broken. It has become overly conflictual and unpleasant. And you kind of, like, put yourself-- It's a populist way of putting yourself with the people when you kind of trash pop up. - Well, Sand is unusual in that, he actually seems cross is quite angry. Like, his affect is not chill. - Trump, Sand. - Rob Sand, yeah. Not chill, like, Adam Hamilton, right? He needs a smile, more. He's got a great smile. (laughing) River sex, like something we love it. - Oh, mine. (laughing) - Well, these candidates have a lot of interesting texture, right, they're all quite interest, especially that, like, Sand Andrews column, you know, host a group. - They'll have different ways of creating distance with their parties. 'Cause you have to show some anger. I mean, I don't want to steal a future column. So we'll talk about this bit with the column, come down. But yeah, anger and American problem. - Interesting, I mean, in Rob Sand's case, it might just be his smoldering zoo lander face, right? (laughing) - Well, the house candidate in Montana, Sam Forstay, who's also above average looking gentleman, what might say, also doesn't smile very much. - Nate, I actually pitched the New York Times opinion section on a piece called Will Hot Politicians Fix What Ails Us back in May, which they rejected. But I went and I did the research, I did the research, and I found that across many different countries, different political systems, there's a benefit in electoral politics to being hot. But that benefit decreases significantly. Yes, but that benefit decreases significantly as partisanship goes up. And so in the same way that the penalty for scandals has been going down recently, the benefit for being hot has been going down recently as well, because people care more about the art or the D than they care about whether you're hot or scared or free. - I actually really love that. One of the things that would fix American politics is if we got to a place where people were more persuaded by, on one hand, scandals and rejecting people who are sort of like scandalous and not fit to serve. And on the other hand, it would be a sign that our politics is maybe curing itself if we had hotter people in public affairs. - Do you think our ugly expression is ugly? - This pitched did not get accepted. This pitch was rejected, although I think that November 3rd was, I don't know, a testament to the fact that it was a good idea. - Many of those people who look like oil painting presidents, like it's hard to-- - Unfortunately guys, young Stalin? - Hot. - Hot, I know. - Yeah. - I know. Okay, let's talk about Republicans. - Still counting is brought to you by Zippercruder. We are in peak back to school post-labor day. Everyone's so busy. Everyone's trying to save time. I mean, if I know a busy man, it's Nate, how are you trying to save time? - I hate to admit it. I've kind of become open the laptop in the cab kind of guy, right? - Red flag. - Red flag, car sickness prevents me from doing that. But anyway, we all have our time saving hacks for everyday life. 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Meet your match on Zippercruder. - Still counting is brought to you by Wild Alaskan Company. Galen, I hear tell that you are eating a lot of brain food, aka fish from Wild Alaskan lately. - Yeah, Wild Alaskan in a fortuitous way accidentally sent me Nate's portion of the fish that we were gonna try out as well. So I had two big boxes of Wild Alaskan Company fish hanging out in my freezer throughout election season. I kid you not, pretty much, I was like, it's the one of those periods of time where like you don't realize you're hungry until you're starving 'cause you're working so much. You know, go, my freezer, take it out, pop it in the air fryer, 13 minutes, make a little rice meal, done full. Like, I don't have to worry about food for another five hours. It's the beauty of fish, it kicks up quick. And while the Laskin Company offers the best way to get wild-caught, high-quality seafood delivered to your door on your schedule. 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Obviously, the Republicans had a bad night, and we've already talked about a lot of reasons for why they did so poorly in the midterms cost of living, the price of gas, and diesel as a result of the Iraq War, the Freudian slip, as a result of the Iran War. Keep that in because it's just actually quite true, just echoes of history, corruption and their unwillingness to or inability for Republican candidates to distance themselves from Trump. But we wanted to talk about how Republicans have reacted in the past week or so and where the party goes from here. Are there any stats or that really stand out to you in this week about what demonstrates the scale of those losses for Republicans? Yeah. I mean, I think one in particular, DubTel's off of what we were just talking about, which is having cross-partisan appeal. After 2024, there were only 16 congressional seats in the entire country that were represented by a representative from a different party than the person who won at the top of the ticket. 13 were Democrats representing Trump, one seats, three were Republicans representing Kamala Harris, one seats. In this Congress, Democrats will be representing at least 53 House districts that Trump won. So that says something about where Democrats were able to compete and break down partisan barriers and whatnot. I mean, it also tells you something about what the incentives are going to be of those 53 lawmakers who can't just sort of like hookline and sink or agree with Democrats probably. So that's one thing. I mean, that's just like a really large number, especially, you know, as we talk about our politics as being so stuck in the mud, I think for people who have been paying attention for the past decade, a lot has happened underneath the top line that suggests we aren't as stuck in the mud as people like to think we are. But that's one stat. I mean, the other stat is that Democrats flipped 12 state legislative fingers. That's what stands out to me, really, yeah. And I think like Democrats have been playing catch up in some ways since 2010 when I think it was they lost over 500 state legislative seats in one fell swoop in that, you know, sort of tea party energized midterm. And they now have trifectas in Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. All of those basically being swing states. I mean, maybe minus Minnesota, you could make the argument, who knows? But that says something dramatic about we've all been focusing on the Senate so much I just want to sort of point out how severe some of these losses were in the house and in state legislative positions. It's really true. Nate, I feel like one of your skills has always been kind of creating a buzzy names for different tracks of, you know, you had the wine and beer voters, maybe you didn't come up with that, but you, you used it a lot. And I'm kind of curious how you've been metabolizing all the news about Republicans and where you see the biggest, you know, factions or how would you would characterize the different factions of people? Obviously like Ron DeSantis and Vance, you know, we're quick on the Twitter trigger finger. But like, how are you thinking through the past week of news from Republicans out of things? I, I don't think you really have factions, because you don't have a healthy party, symmetric group in front of the show calls it the K-shaped Republican party. There is a little bit of a center right establishment. He claims Nikki Haley, for example, Glenn Youngkin, then you have conservatives, you have the kind of high brow conservatives like Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz, maybe Thomas Massey. People who literally went to Ivy League, Ivy League or MIT, is that what it means? High brow populist. Yeah, you have the low ground, his terms, not mine, for the president of the United States, Donald Trump, who deserves our respect, but he can sometimes be a little bit vulgar. The office deserves our respect. And then various people in the middle, national populists, he calls Josh Holly and Gidey Vance, and then his Marco Rubio is stuck in between that riding establishment lane and- Sitting on the couch, staring blankly ahead. Yeah, and usually to be somewhere in the middle is how you win, you know, to appeal to multiple lanes, right? But like, it's not as much dimensionality as you see in like the Democratic. I don't know. I think this is all a little bit too complicated, to be honest. Okay. Coming out of the results on Tuesday night, I see three different buckets of people, which is people who say that Republicans lost because they betrayed the principles of America first. Mm-hmm. I've talked about this at all at this point on this podcast, but like you said no more forever wars. You started a war in Iran. You said that you were going to carry the mantle of the little guy, like all you did- The ban in war, really? Yeah, exactly. So like, it was, you didn't do the populism that you said you were going to do, and that's how you lost. Yeah. Then there's people like Mike Pence riding an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that are saying, this is a sign that we need to return to our conservative principles. And you have Nikki Haley on CBS and whatnot and other folks sort of saying that as well. It's bucket one, more populism, bucket two, go backwards in order to go forwards. And bucket three is sort of like, that's all beside the point we need better governance, which is like Rhonda Santas' argument, like look at the Florida- Look at the free state of Florida. We have been able to rebut the Democratic wave because we've had- yeah, we've taken care of your social issues, but we're also doing good on the economy and all the- we're running the state well. And I see that- I see those as the kind of three buckets of margin. It's interesting. I- I think Nate is right that there is- it isn't- it is a unhealthy party that is going through a lot of stuff. The one thing I've been thinking as kind of putting my media reporter hat back on is in this two-year period, I mean less than, right, once people like really declare their candidacy, which- what should these factions not only can coalesce around something, a message that really resonates, obviously they're sort of the anti-war and Iran stuff is the strongest like to stand on. But also kind of what- what catches fire with like Fox News? Like it or not, that's a huge part of the Republican ecosystem. I mean, you definitely have the podcast ecosystem, but like Tucker, even though Tucker's like out there with his own political faction, he's nowhere near as visible as he was when he was on Fox. So I still feel like the Murdoch, you know, benediction of a message, you know, if it- it can really matter. I mean, there has- there have been sort of revolts of the- the Republican party base to, you know, what they're hearing on Fox and- and that will sometimes cow Fox. But I just think it's like they have to figure out a message kind of quickly, because these people are going to start declaring their candidacy relatively soon. And I mean, Marco Rubio, I think, is his own kind of interesting question. I don't want to like preview our Republican primary draft too much. But I just think that there's a real- I don't know, there- like it's- it's really open season. And you kind of have to harken back to like the 2012 autopsy when they were- when they- they did kind of had this radical- from the top, they were like, we had to radically rethink this. And now it's kind of this bubbling up from the bottom where they radically have to rethink this. And they're in the same place they were 10 years ago. They spent the first week after the election learning that- the CEO of NBA Jensen Huang had cheated with the Chinese spy, and he's been- I don't know if he's a Trump stan probably not, but, you know, but he's a friend of Trump, right? They call each other. The Secretary of Defense, Pete Higgseth, was trying to fend off impeachment. Stephen Miller was elevated above one of the- regardless, more competent, less f-word people in the White House in Susie Wiles, right? You know, none of these things seem- seem like good news. [BLANK_AUDIO] well, every little ballot dump that comes into Mississippi brings Democrats once they close to winning Mississippi. And on top of that, we had a hot inflation report, it looks like an interest rate spike is plugged in at this point. So yeah, I mean, this is, you might call it Republicans and just the right. Well, but I mean, like, how do we think because it's true, like the Stephen Miller appointment, even though Trump went on 60 minutes and was like, I love Jordan becoming so like the Stephen Miller appointment coupled with Jim Jordan becoming the leader of the House Republicans does sort of say like, all right, we're we're spitting angry and we're going to fight all the way down. But how do like, I guess this is my it's a better way to frame my question is like, do the Fox News and other influencers buy that? We're fighting as we go down or do they kind of do what they did on election night, which would say like, man, Trump really kind of screwed us. And we've got to find other ways because he's on his way out. And I genuinely like, this is why this is the one of the most interesting elections. It's the way I felt it like curiosity wise coming out of 2016 is because I genuinely don't know what how they're going to go. I feel like often in the Trump era, it's been like, well, they're probably going to keep with the momentum of like just like fight the Democrats, no matter what, but I do feel like the Rand Paul's and the Thomas Massey faction does have like a decent amount of attention that could grow. I don't know. I think somewhat similar to the Democratic side, arguments over leadership right now are not necessarily going to transfer over to presidential primary fights in that like the people who remain in Congress right now, especially in the House because all of the seats were up for election are more die hard because the frontline moderates or people who are cross pressured have all lost their races. And so in that sense, I guess Jim Jordan makes sense for Donald Trump, it is weird because he's kind of saying he wants to on out of one side of his mouth. He's saying he wants to work with Democrats out of the other side of his mouth. He's saying that he's elevating Stephen Miller, which those two things don't necessarily seem compatible. But he's lame duck. He's never cared about how Republicans do if it's not him himself on the ballot. I mean, look, if I were, I look, the fact is that prediction markets, Democrats are two to one favorites, one in 2028, which is a lot for a open seat election given how closely American presidency tends to be. Yeah, no, I mean, look, if I were trying to paint a optimistic case for Republicans, right? I'd say, well, Democrats might nominate somebody that other is crazier, we can peg is crazy, right? That's a mean reversion on the economy, maybe we'll start to see more tangible dividends from AI and we'll figure out something in Iran. And just removing Trump from the scene might help a little bit and maybe Democrats are a little cocky after 2026, right? Like, it's not crazy. That story. Right. I mean, ultimately the, in many ways, Democrats were used as a tool to punish Republicans more than their world, if you look at like all the, there are a lot of ballot initiatives and in general, conservatively tinged ballot initiatives did well, and liberal ones failed, the wealth tax failed in California by quite a bit, which is the end of the day. Such a funny, the shoe is on the other foot. Yeah. Situation, because so often you'll hear progressives saying like, okay, well, in places like Missouri or whatever, you see that they're raising the minimum wage while they're also electing a Republican Senator or governor or what have you. And it's like in California and wherever else, they are electing Democrats while saying, we don't want a wealth tax or they're taking the more conservative position on trans issues or things like that. And so in some ways, the shoe is on the other foot. I don't know what that ultimately portends, but I think that this is, we've talked so many times about the winners over interpreting their mandate. I don't know that this is, we're all about to find out because they didn't run on a platform of these are the 10 issues that we're going to pursue if we win power. We're ultimately going to find out and maybe that will be popular and maybe it won't be, but like now I don't think that there's going to be as much an opportunity for a backlash Democrats as there will continue to be a backlash to Trump because ultimately he's the president of the United States and he will suck up most of the oxygen as he has done for the past 10 years. But yeah, I think, I think there obviously will be some openings I imagine for Republicans. Yeah. I mean, to that point, Nate, you got, you got name checked on the, the substack of the political reporter Rachel Bade, and I do love it when we cover your clips. She was, she was talking about how you run Ezra's podcast talking about how a GOP wipeout would make the president a quote, super lame duck, which does sound like something you would say. And you know, she also talks about how the AP was utilizing the twilight of the Trump era and she kind of had a different take basically where she said, she said, my take is if the Trump era is an eight book saga, where maybe at the start of book seven. So book one is 2016 shocker book two unified GOP control in the first two term book three Democrats flip the house impeachments book four, the wilderness years at Marlago book five, the comeback book six, Trump 2.0. And then book seven is a clash between Trump and the Democratic Congress. And then book eight, Trump as kingmaker heading into the 2028 primary, what's your reaction? Are you familiar with the term den you mom? Yeah, you know, the key actions have kind of, well, it depends, right? In a sex period tragedy, then you'd have things go totally mad over the next two years, right? So there's that part of it, right? But like, and some fit, since I feel like this midterm was the climactic action that triggers that the ending, right? It's hard to imagine Trump returning to a place where he's substantially more popular. Maybe Dario, maybe Dario is right, and Claude Kierer's cancer tomorrow. Still counting is brought to you by Zbiotics. The election is over, which means we can have fun again. We can go out. We can do like a weeknight drink with friends in the West Village, you know what I'm talking about? Like, I, you know, I've been keeping it, keeping it calm for covering the midterms. Like, I got it, you know, it's a lot of work. Get it out there. And when I, when I get back out there, you know what I'm bringing with me, Zbiotics pre alcohol by Zbiotics, Zbiotics pre alcohol probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. 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Try Zbiotics pre alcohol for yourself and if you're not satisfied, they'll refund your entire order no questions asked. Head to Zbiotics.com/counting and use code counting for 15% off your first order. Okay, it's time for our 2028 Republican draft. Your first one, oh no, actually we did want to have the comedy seller. It was a dark night. No, the people for the county select crowds, they would show the fuck up for the Democratic drafts or Republican drafts. You had to like, yeah, I mean, but we got a crowd, a packed audience in the West Village to cheer for Tucker Carlson. That was quite an accomplishment on our part. But this is our first still counting official draft. I think, you know, we have to like, you know, we had to have first for all our still counting stuff. Okay. We are new to this. This is a long playground elaborate rules draft thing. But here are the ground rules for our the way we do drafts. To determine picking order, we draw off names out of a hat, then we'll reverse that order in brown two. It's called the snake draft. Nate has problems with it, but we ignore him. And we will put the scoring system in our show notes, but you basically have big points for picking the eventual nominee, smaller points for picking candidates who will meet milestones along the way like entering the race. That's one of the milestones. Okay. Galen, what's our hat today? We got the GD politics hat as ever. All right. Who's going first? Claire. Oh, all right. Pressure is on Claire. Saul, did you write this? I'm sure this is it. Saul again has produced all has really good hair and writing. Nate. Hey, Claire Bricks, Claire, me and I guess I understand. I got Galen. Oh, my God. So it's me. It means Claire goes first. And they go second. Galen goes third. Okay. Okay. Okay. Claire, are you ready? Okay. I actually didn't want to get my first pick. The first pick. Do you want to know why? I'll just talk. I'll just talk it out. Okay. Because the two obvious front runners are JD Vance and Marco Rubio. And Marco Rubio has been doing this whole thing where he's like, I don't want to talk about 2028. I think Marco's going through something personally where he like feels a lot of pressure being the vice-dera event as well. And like he said, he was going to support Vance internally, but now Vance is sort of, you know, I mean I think Vance is not looking that great as a, as a 20-28 candidate. He's so closely tied to the Iran War, but obviously he's dedicated to running. And so my heart tells me that Marco Rubio would actually be a better candidate, but my brain tells me that JD Vance is the correct choice for a number one draft pick. So it's my head in my heart. Marco Rubio has my heart, JD Vance as my head. A conflicted woman. A conflicted woman. So I have to go JD Vance as my number one draft pick. As all conflicted women do. Do you like this? I don't know what that means. Someone has to say bad pick. It's traffic. It's traffic. Let me ask you guys a question. Yes. When was the last time the vice president to an unpopular president later became president? Uh, uh, was Bill Clinton. Al Gore. Yeah, but he did not. He did not do well. He did enter the race though. Obviously. I mean, is that Joe Biden? No. Obama was popular. Ish. Well, no, like wasn't he, no, he was in the 40s. We will go to the silver bullets in approval rating historical averages and I'll give you the numbers. Let me, let me go. Now I feel bad about my pick. I should have gone with my heart. No, you know, you got a, you got a, yeah, listen to your heart. Okay. Approval rings at the end of the term Biden 38, it's unpopular, term 39.7 unpopular. Obama 57 popular, Georgia, Bush 32 unpopular Clinton 66 popular. Okay. So what's the answer to the question was breaking unpopular by the end of his term? No. It's kind of popular. Just see now. Oh. So I don't know. There's no answer. Never. Technically, a really long way technically, technically Gerald Ford became president because Nixon resigned, right? Nixon was very unpopular when he resigned, but did not win re-election. Um, yeah, you know, Walter Mondale didn't follow in the footsteps of Jimmy Carter, um, Dick Cheney didn't run. So are you saying it's a bad pick? I'm saying a lot of people were nominated and lost, including Kamala Harris. Right. That's kind of how I feel. We're not choosing to be clear because this is an unpopular, yeah, we're not choosing the person that we think is best positioned to become president. We're choosing who we think the Republican Party will elevate to Republican nominee. And for me, it's basically like, even though I think Trump might be ticked off with Vance right now, like I felt it was a notable thing that the day or two after the midterm losses when he named Miller, you know, it was like JD Vance was kind of like nowhere to be found in sort of these photo opportunities, whatever, maybe I'm over reading it, but that feels like something I don't know who's leaking all this stuff to the New York Times, but, you know, JD Vance and a mustache as we like to say. DJ Wands. Yeah. I mean, I also think it was interesting that there was a story, uh, that heavily featured Marco Rubio, like waving a paper in front of Trump's face on the plane to China being like, uh, Johnson Wong slept the Chinese spy. I'm kind of like, whoa, who leaked that to the New York Times, which makes me feel like maybe Marco's kind of like in it to win it. So there's a lot of kind of weird jockeying when it comes to like, um, hey, I tried to make Trump not do that really, really catastrophically dumb thing, um, and also be like, but I love the guy. And he's super smart. And I think that that's like, like JD, JD Vance, I think has the inside track. And also he's just so incredibly thirsty, like, never has there been a thirst year candidate. I will also say that you should have chose Rokana first during our democratic primary draft if we're going based off that. That's true. I mean, but I think the Demarit points, the reason why it's a bad pick are like all of my sort of like instincts about how he is actually like a, this is a whole, like nothing to do with his policy stuff. He's just a bad campaigner. Like he's a, yeah, he's a pretty underwhelmed, but he's a, I think he's a really stiff campaigner. You want to hire by six points when he ran, but the, the, the, um, the kind of the idea of standing behind Vivek Ramaswami, I don't know if and the, and the sort of really gross Amy actinette. I don't know if that'll, I think people will forget about it, but it's like, it does actually speak to his political instincts a little bit though. Like I know he and Vivek are, like they're personally friends, but it just felt like kind of dumb. Like that's when you distance yourself. You just don't think he has great, like on the ground political instincts. Yeah. I think voters don't love someone who's ideological to the point of being a zealot, but voters also don't love somebody who seems to just like be sticking their finger in the air and trying to figure out which way the winds are blowing. And that's his political career. Yeah. Okay. Nate. So Claire, you picked JD Vance. Nate, who are you going with? I guess it's pretty obvious. But I will take John Federman with my second pick. I pick Rubio. I think he's a better performing track record than Vance. I think he's more talented. I mean, the, you know, the rumors that help probably leave at some point. It's easier to do for a secretary of state than for a vice president, although it has happened, by the way, you have had, I think, Calhoun resigned. John C. Calhoun is who we're talking about. You know, John, Nate. Sorry. You're actually ran against. John C. Calhoun resigned in order to start a separate republic. Okay. So Marco Rubio may well resign. Yeah. I think he's smarter and has like more of a resume and, like, impact, graffiti needs chart. Maybe bridge is a little bit of a divide between the old school establishment and the new. I mean, he was considered like a tea party or by some people when he began running in 2010. I will warn you. I have overrated Marco Rubio before he was the great hope. Yeah. You always thought you're like to avoid being right about everybody says in every poll that they prefer Donald Trump. But once the voting begins, they're all going to choose Marco Rubio. I can't think of like a science. Okay. So, Nate, you chose Marco Rubio. Anything else you want to say? Claire, good pick, bad pick. It's a good pick. I genuinely think Marco Rubio is like, if he decides to run, he'll be formidable. Okay. So I get to choose two people because of the nature of the snake draft. I'm actually pretty, I know which two I'm picking, but I'm pretty torn between which one to choose first. So I'm going to go first, Rhonda Santas, I think that I said that the party is trying to choose between like we need more populism and we need more conservatism. And Rhonda Santas is kind of neither of those two things or he can marry them together and do whatever he wants. And he can run on, I've been good at administering government in Florida. Like I think things are getting tricky in this moment in Florida in terms of the cost of living and homeowners insurance and things like that, but he fortunately for himself gets to leave now, give that job to Byron Donalds and run on sort of the memories of the free state of Florida. He also has a good, you know, his speech after Republicans lost on Tuesday night was like, okay, we can't just run on the culture stuff, right? I already did all that culture stuff, the things that you wanted. I implemented and now we really need to focus on people's pocketbooks, stuff like that. And he also, a lot of people who ultimately end up winning their party's nomination try once before don't succeed and then have to come back for more later. He would sort of fit with that mold. And you know, I think that because he ran in 20s running for obviously he did quite poorly, but he has a pretty big donor list. He's got a lot of emails. He can fund, I mean, he fundraised once I imagine he can fundraise a second time. And he will, yeah, like, I think having run is a big benefit actually. And you can just kind of see anyone from like Mike Pence to Megan Kelly kind of getting behind him. I agree. He's an interesting pick because, you know, I would say the big knock against him was sort of what the JD Vance knock is, which is like not actually a great interpersonal campaign or like a bit of a weirdo weirdo weird presence. We've already talked about his cowboy boots, just like a lot of people sort of personally hating on him. But I think he was kind of like a big winner quote unquote politically out of COVID, right? Like Florida, a lot of times I think particularly in this current environment, governors a little bit like fall into this weird space of like, we're not talking about them that much. Florida's the opposite though. I mean, it's kind of like, it gets all the New York post coverage because all the rich people from New York were moving to Miami and like Jeff Bezos and is moving to Miami and so there's a bit of a like a cultural relevancy around Florida that's obviously helped by Mar-a-Lago. I mean, you know, again, just like famously a bit like difficult had a big falling out with Susie Wiles, but like having actually run does I do think makes a big difference. And the one thing I will say is he was really early in that that 2024 campaign to kind of pick up on the fact that the Republican base was angry with Trump about COVID policies and about the way, like he picked up on that kind of like anti-vaccine fervor that was perglating. And I think that there's a, there's still a sort of hunger for that among them. I mean, we're that it seems too much like he's a member of like election Twitter and has like his very detailed opinions about like, but most people don't know election Twitter. I know, but I mean, also remember that if you, if we're going to go based off of polling, He was already at a point in 2022-2022. 23 where something like 45% of likely Republican primary voters supported him. Yeah, there was a period where he was yeah, even with Trump. Exactly. All the prosecution started. I mean, that's a simplified. So people have to stand as familiarity with supporting him before the COVID boost wore out. I think is part of the story too. But again, I also think he's not he's not like he's I do think he's he's smart, right? Like see, I think his like foray into election Twitter was obviously for like the think, you know, the the big thinkers of the party and to be to be out in front of things. But he is not a like natural human presence. Yeah. But I think maybe you would say the person who's most natural on the stump of these folks so far is marker review. But I just think there's a great advantage to not having been a part of the administration. I mean, I just think about, I just think about like John McCain after Bush, for example, who can come out being like, I'm my own person. I have my own record. Brian DeSantis is going to try to do that. I don't know to what effect. I think my next pick is actually going to be able to do a better job of it. I'm excited for the back. And it is. Because I think they're Brian. Brian camp. It's who? Brian camp. Oh, bad pick. Oh, I think it's a fantastic. So Brian time has better experience than pretty much anybody. I think that we're going to talk about being sort of pursued by Trump in a negative fashion and still coming out on top. Brian camp is, and also what's the antidote to one popular politician from Georgia on the opponents ballot, your own popular politician from Georgia on your ballot. Brian camp is, you know, remained pretty popular as governor of Georgia throughout a tumultuous period of time for the Republican party. Obviously, Trump endorsed against him. He's still one. He can sort of traffic in the, he was elected. It's kind of trafficking in the cultural politics of the base, but also governed in a way that felt competent to a broad swath of Georgia Republicans and even Georgia independence. Like Rhonda Santos, I don't think he falls into the like more populism or more conservatism category. He falls into the, let's be competent Republicans category. And I think there's going to be a lot of anxiety around how Trump does or doesn't endorse and he just has muscle memory of sidestepping all of that from the way that he campaigned the last time that Trump endorsed against him. Okay. Have I convinced you from bad pick? Like that. No. He's just so. First of all, he, he chickened out even running and saw stuff he could have, right? We had a center race this year. Well, that's smart political instincts. He wouldn't have won. It's just not the right timing. I mean, which is maybe a reason why a lot of people who want to be president, who want to be Republican presidents, won't end up running in 2028 because it's going to feel like. Yeah. I mean, it's in like 2032, a more desirable nomination, right? Yeah. But for our, we got to, we got to deal with the hand we've been dealt, which is we have to draft a 2028 Republican nominee. But that is important because it affects like, you know, camp might have a political future in a post-Trump, we're, I mean, the prime is like, I don't want some fucking clips that come out in, in on November 11, 2026 to be replayed when the GOP wins the presidency in 2028, which could easily happen, right? But like, but if you're making long term plans, making this two-year commitment, even in the best case, we'll probably end in failure, right? Like that has to be a governing kind of kind of thing. But remember, right? Like no one wanted to run against George H. W. Bush because after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and he won the Gulf War and like a matter of days and had an over 90% approval rating everyone was, every Democrat was like, well, I'm not going to waste my powder now. And some random governor from Arkansas said, okay, fine, I'll do it. And then it ended up becoming sort of like setting the direction of the Democratic party for a couple decades. But you also have the twin problem of like, the fucking Trump is still president, right? He won't be the nominee, but he's still president and he's going to, you know, he no longer has a stranglehold in the Republican base, but like a chokehold, is that metaphor? Which is why I think being able to maneuver around Trump and still be. And like 95% of Georgia Republicans have a positive view of Brian Kemp and that is after Donald Trump trashed him. So like he just has, like Georgia is not the country, but he has probably more than many people out there experience dealing with the precarity of running as a Republican in Trump's party. Yeah. I think I think he has no nationalized platform and that's a huge problem and that you kind of can't overcome that. Okay. Well, okay. Now back to, back to, back to Nate. So another obvious one I want to Michigan or so, let's go with Haley Stevens as the. He's just going to punk this entire thing. God. This is hard. I guess I'll take Tucker, okay. I wanted to say bad pick, but I can't, but I have, I have thoughts against it. I mean, if you go to the prediction markets, then yeah, everyone after the first three, first of all, there's some person named John McIntee. I know. I actually had the thought I was like, who is John McIntee paying on the prediction markets to get there? Because like I am genuinely serious, investigate that shit. He just works in like the office of personnel or works in the office of personnel for Trump. It's so weird. It's so like smacks of like some weird corruption stuff going on there. Absolutely not. Uh, yeah, it's, uh, I was going to say doge claim, but it's like, uh, AMC stock. Anyway, look, he has a big platform. It's probably not quite as big as it once was. There is always a chance for a Republican party gets crazier. He's not been afraid to criticize President Trump over Iran in particular. And I don't think anyone would like question his conservative bona fides. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's the case. It's a lack of lack of, lack of options like the argument against it is that, um, it's fun to be rich and exactly it's that. It's like why would Tucker Carlson run for president? We can, he can just do his podcast, run his media company, drive around Florida, drive around Florida in his golf cart and like, go to nice dinners. Like, why would he spend hundreds of hours on the phone fundraising for the people? Does he live in Florida? I think he lives in Maine, but he lives, like he lives in, he lives in, but like he lives in Florida. Cause then you can make, make more money and become more famous and have nicer dinners. No, I, I actually think that Tucker Carlson is just not a politician in that, in that sort of like, uh, in that way. I think he's, he knows he has the better job. Yeah. He knows what it's like to be president. Yes. And he knows what it's like to have his job. And he knows he has the better job. Yes. I think it, I think it comes down purely to like, um, personal will, but it's a good ish pick. It is a good ish pick. Like I understand, I understand the, it's the, we need, it's the, it's the, we need more populism. Pitch. It's, but yeah, it's, and that's why it's why the back half of this draft is much more interesting to think about because it's, because it's the kind of like, ooh, the lights are off. And it's about to get weird in here, kind of like version of the, of the primary light, light, lights out Republican primary draft, 2028. Let's go. Um, clearing. You get two picks. Okay. My first pick is in the, let's get weird Republican party, part of the draft, it is Thomas Massey outgoing, okay, outgoing, uh, Congressman Thomas Massey. And my reason for this pick is, um, a few, right? Like Massey has, first of all, he has obvious will to run for something. He has, um, like a personal, um, beef with, beef with Trump that he has, I have seen him speak a lot in the last year. And it's like part of his stump speech right is like playing on the dissatisfaction with the Trump administration. He has this, he's like, he went to MIT. He's got this kind of like libertarian, um, I'm a farmer background. He has embraced the, um, you know, COVID skeptical anti vaccine maha side of things, both the food and vaccine side of that movement, um, grew a beard. He grew a beard, um, he got married, um, he, but he's, but I think that he had, and he also has a national platform through the Epstein files, which I think is a huge, um, star on his resume to burn us, right? So I think he has, he's definitely, he belongs in the lower part of this draft, but I think he is the most plausible and polished of that weird faction that's formed in the Tucker MTG lane, which is like, fuck Trump, fuck Iran, um, this party needs to get back to it sort of almost like tea party principles. And I think he's actually, he's got the will, he's kind of a, like, he, he, he's got more polish and more like, you know, human interest than Iran to Santa, he's like a better campaigner. Uh, I don't think he's actually crazy. I think he, I think he'd play well in national TV, but he just lost a Republican primary. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the tricky thing is Donald Trump came to power by, but in, and the Republicans just lost a massive midterms, right? Like I think it, Donald Trump came to power by criticizing this sort of entrenched Republican elite that he cast as corrupt. He was going to drain the swan. he was the outsider, he was gonna counter punch, yada yada yada. And over the past 10 years, he has become that. He has become the entrenched Republican elite. Is the same sort of trick gonna work again, which is now somebody comes and says, "Donald Trump is the entrenched corrupt elite. "He went to war the wrong. "He did all, he has become in all of the ways "he criticized the previous elite for being corrupt. "He has become corrupt himself. "And listen to me like I am going to actually "drain the swamp when Trump didn't." Or is somebody gonna come in and say, "We need conservative principles." Like I think if Republicans are ready to hear the like drain the swamp 2.0 message, I understand Thomas Massey. But I do wonder if like there needs to be some novelty. Everyone was just sold on the drain the swamp populism. Do they wanna hear something about how like, you know, we need to have a more sort of serious look at the nation's balance sheet. And we need to talk about debt and deficit. And we need to reinvigorate like, you know, you hear even Megan Kelley, who's more on the populist side of things, being like we need somebody who has strong moral values as like the next person to guide the Republican party. I wonder if there's-- - Who are you then Megan Kelley means? - I don't know who Megan Kelley means. But I do wonder if they don't just want the like the Republican primary electorate, doesn't just wanna be fed the same pitch. It was just fed in 2016 and throughout the entire Trump era. Which is why I do, which is why I pick, I think, you know, Brian Kemp and Ron Distances, who can maybe like play different sides of that. But I, both in Tucker Carlson and in Thomas Massey, I'm a little skeptical if the like, drainless swamp populism works twice. - I think there's some chance of a total nobody winning. Maybe not our friend, John McIntee. But like somebody who like, you know, a lot of these Democrats, I don't think you're a man who had heard of Adam Hamilton or James Talleriko at this point two years ago. I don't know, you know, people always love the Ross Perot analogy if there's a certain age in our business, right? Where maybe some rich guy plug, probably just to fix things, right? Or Dana White or somebody, or I don't know what, exactly, right? Joe Rogan. - But there is a lot of, you know, you know, who I was, this morning I was as I was thinking about my picks and I was trying to remember who are all the facts, who are all the parts of the Trump, I mean, the sort of Tucker MGG faction. And I was like, who's that guy who resigned from like the national security stuff a while ago? And it's this guy named Joe Kent, who is, he basically resigned over the Iran War. And he strikes me as, and he wrote a big open letter. He strikes me as someone who is looking to make a play, like keep your eye on Joe Kent people. He's going to be a rando candidate someday. (upbeat music) - Still counting is brought to you by Give Directly. Give Directly is a nonprofit that puts money directly into the hands of the world's poorest people, no strings attached. Give Directly sends your donations to a family across rural Africa living in poverty to spend how they see fit. $100 means about a hundred times more to them than it does to you. The price of a nice dinner out can be life changing for someone in extreme poverty. It can buy livestock or a new roof, cover an urgent medical visit, or get a kid back in school. It can start a business, or get someone their first mattress. - Right, I gotta say, the holidays are coming earlier and earlier every year. Like we didn't even wait till Thanksgiving this year. I see ads already about, you know, give this, give that. I mean, you know what, give Directly. - It's a cost effective. It's like really like bang for your buck truly. One reason Give Directly's model is so great is that it is one of the most effective means of charitable giving. With Give Directly, you can be confident your gift has proven impact. There have been hundreds of independent studies showing giving cash directly improves people's lives in many ways. Researchers have studied giving people cash, no strings attached, hundreds of times across hundreds of places. And study after study finds the same thing. Families earn more, eat better, and their kids do better in school and have better health. And these impacts last for years. Why does it work so well? Give Directly sends families about $1,000 at once, enough for them to make the big purchase that starts something. People buy livestock, tools, or stock for a shop. They fix a leaking roof, they pay off debt, then they work more for themselves and own more. The money keeps earning after it's spent. Just like it does for us when we invest in something. - There you go. - If you're just hearing about Give Directly, don't don't it yet. Just go and read some of these research studies at givedirectly.org/counting. If that's givedirectly.org/counting. (bright music) - My next pick is. (singing) Bobby Kennedy. - Of course. - Tell us about that book you're writing, Claire. (laughing) - Now, listeners, I am writing a book about the Maham movement and Bobby Kennedy. So I'm kind of in. - Wait, also by the way, that pick. - Okay, that's fine. - I don't think it's that bad a pick. - That's fine. Here's my reasoning for it. Okay, Bobby Kennedy obviously ran as an independent in the 2024 election for a time before things obviously narrowed, was pulling pretty high for an independent. I mean, not as high as like the, you know, the Ross Perot era of independent candidates, but high name recognition and has obviously entered the Trump administration is very controversial, but has made the interesting decision. If you are a person who pays attention to Maha as I do, the past week has been popping off in Maha land. Because Stephen Miller and his wife, Katie Miller, are quite Maha, as they say. And Bobby Kennedy has, you know, I think a lot of people thought he was going to leave the administration after the midterms. The Maha though that he kind of promised didn't really appear. And you know, I think I've always been skeptical about whether or not theory is actually, I think Maha is a cultural movement. I'm not sure it's an electoral movement. But I think that Bobby Kennedy has still has an appeal that is certainly based on a lot of his candidness. He is obviously a hugely controversial figure, but he also has this ability to kind of play the, yes, I've got a lot of conservative views, but also I have a lot of like, you know, I do have a lot of fans on the left. And in Maha land, Bobby has decided to throw in his lot with Stephen Miller and kind of remain in the administration for a while and try to get things done. But a very close ally, Cali Means, has very publicly and dramatically left the administration. I don't know, is he like a, is this kind of like a place, he did a Joe Rogan interview, it's sort of like a, maybe this is like a placeholder, presidential campaign formation and waiting. I just think there's a lot of interesting things in here. I also think that that Bobby Kennedy is the kind of person who would like to run for president again. And that is a personality type. And that is my pick. Why is it a bad pick? Nate says fine pick. You say bad pick. Hit me. - It's not a good pick for a moment of generational change. He's pretty old. He reads as pretty old on the stump. And I think that he's got the local fry. He's, he's too in mesh in the administration for like a sense that the Trump administration screwed the pooch and the party ought to go in a more either like competent direction administratively or more conservative, or more populist. He doesn't really, it's not clear. I guess he goes in a more populist direction, but he doesn't have any foreign policy experience. So like what is he even going to, is he going to be able to make a credible pitch about like what we should have done instead on the Iran war. Like, yeah, I mean, the populism pitch that he can make is about health and bored his COVID fuel over. Right, like I'm sitting here sick right now. I'm not even wearing a mask. - I mean, I'm thinking, I think, just spread it right in my zone. - Boy, you're going to love my book. I think the other part of his, the movement is about chronic disease. And I think that is actually sort of a compelling issue for a lot of Americans. - Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I think that is, it's a good point and it's a good counter, especially perhaps for Republicans counter to Democrats who are going to try to pursue expensive health insurance legislation, right, potentially Medicare for all or a public option or what have you. Since I've been observing politics, I think I've maybe twice ever seen somebody bring up this topic on a presidential debate stage, which is like when you're addressing health insurance, you're addressing like a secondary problem in some ways, which is like Americans are really sick. If we could make Americans healthier, health care and health insurance would both be more affordable as well, not to say that there aren't problems in those systems for sure, but one of the most expensive problems is that just Americans are not healthy. And the two people I've heard make those arguments are Mary and William sent in my cockpey. Obviously neither of them went very far with those pitches, but I think there is a certain sense that, like there is definitely some sort of leverage that somebody could try to employ to say, okay, there's so much fighting going on about how do we take care of people once they're already sick? What about taking care of people so they never get sick in the first place? And I mean, as I've mentioned many times, I was in Iowa in the final stretch of this campaign, and there's just a lot of campaign ads about cancer. And so they're like, yeah. - Yes, there is, I see something there. I just don't, like, if you're, I think you're probably most likely to believe that message from somebody who seems like a paragon of health, and I don't think Bobby Kennedy is that. - Bobby Kennedy does a lot of chin-up, see ya. - But we're not talking about a healthy party, though, right? - Right, if it's a Republican nomination draft. - Wow, wait a minute, extend the metaphor. - But it's an opportunistic, like if we're talking about land grabs, it's an opportunistic moment to make a land grab on a space in the Republican party. Anyway, I think he'll run. - It's so hard to pick like Republican candidates. Byron Donald's is one I'll pick, because he's the one Republican who had a good performance on Tuesday night, last Tuesday, by winning the state of Florida, by about a point. Was it over David Jolly? I think I picked him in our earlier draft the Comedy Cellar a year or so ago. Interesting background, he's from Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Florida is the largest state now with a Republican governor. It is kind of the unofficial seat of power for Republicans, no kidding. I've seen him and think he's an interesting dude. The thing is, usually you do not go and immediately run for president when you've just won your first major office, right? He was in Congress, I think, three times. So the track record of that's quite a negative, right? But that's somebody whose future I'll be looking to see how he'll position himself. And by the way, there are consequences to having a bad night in a midterm where just none of your swing state candidates win. You'll probably yourself have like future recruits for the bottom and the top of the ticket. Yeah. Do you see there being downside to taking the reigns of Florida now in an environment where inflation is rising and there's all of the, like I was thinking of picking him when I picked Ron DeSantis, but I thought, you know, having been the governor of Florida is probably better than being the governor of Florida right now. Yeah, everything's gonna be tough in 2028 for Republicans. I think Florida's been hit a little bit less hard by some of the energy costs, right? You don't have a lot of, in the winter, particularly you don't have a lot of like heating expenses in Florida, for example. Okay, yeah, me, two picks. Oh, we are scraping the barrel here. Okay, this is really hard. It's really hard. I, here's what I'm looking for. I'll tell you what I'm looking for if I can create a candidate in a lab. Let me be your personal shopper for Republican to primary candidates. So everyone's running on cost of living issues. And the way that they're trying to address them is like, you know, to suspend the gas tax or to increase the minimum wage or whatever. Like things that if you take a macroeconomic class, which suggests, don't actually tamp down inflation. How can you tamp down inflation? You can increase interest rates. You can also increase taxes. You can also cut federal spending. And, you know, I don't, those are obviously, those measures are very much would be a zig at a moment when economic populism seems to be zagging, right? Like economic populism is the name of the game for the Democratic Party. It's the name of the game for the sort of like Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, Josh Hawley part of the Republican Party. But is there going to be an opportunity at some point over the next year or so where maybe inflation has is now up to 4% annualized? It's going back up. Is there going to be a sense that, okay, actually, an opening for somebody to say, actually we need to use the levers that we know decreased cost pressure upwards. And it would be like, you know, cutting and also we're going to quickly approaching the sort of end of the road for the Social Security Trust Fund. And we are getting to a place where deficit spending is 100% of GDP or more. Like, our current deficit spending is greater than France. We're left-witched, we're highly leveraged. And they're like tearing their cities down over this issue. Obviously, we control our own monetary policy in a way that France does not because it's part of the Eurozone. But I wonder if there's room for somebody to come in and say, and this is this, I'm kind of picking aside here between the more populism, more conservatism, and try to be versus the third bucket, which is like try to be like, okay, I can administer government as a Republican. So I'm picking more conservatism. This is like, this is, and my bucket is like Mike Pence. It's like, I'm back at the-- I'm back at the country club, put your tassel loafers up on the couch and tell me about this policy. Right, and find, like, right. And like, let's do some welfare reform. Let's pass a crime bill. Let's do some welfare reform. Let's maybe do NAFTA. No, I'm kidding, obviously NAFTA. Probably not what you want to pursue in this moment. But yes, this is like going back to a 1990s consensus vibe. And this is where my picks are heading, too, by the way. And for me, I just feel like part of me thinks that Ted Cruz could try to pull it off. And there's like, obviously a history there of he did come in second place in 2016 and second place winners. He is the most teenage man in the United States Senate. Which is why I think, which is why I'm going to go ahead and pick Mike Pence. Jalen, that's crazy. That's one of the worst picks. OK. In the history of our drafts, what about Ken Griffin? Is that a better pick? The investor? Yeah. You can't, you can't-- No, you can't, there's no take backs. But I get two picks in a row. OK. Like, that argumentation-- Yeah. So OK. I'll pick Mike Pence, then I'll pick Ken Griffin. OK. My rationale for both of those is the rationale I just gave. I'll be more sympathetic than Nate was. Where Mike Pence is, obviously, he could appeal to the old school Republicans where he's like, I have now garnered Trump's ire by certifying the 2020 election. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Ken Griffin is an interesting one when you're going with, like, businessmen who will run. I can see it. They will say, hang Mike Pence. Chance. I know. It's a hard Republican. That's not very OK. OK, but think about, like, if we're talking about the most out there, like, activist people of the party, like, in 2020, I literally think John Federman would be a better pick than Mike Pence. All right, let's go to Nate's pick. OK, yeah. I mean, again, anything that I fuck up on this episode, I'm blaming on Soutefet. Like, I'm holding on by a threat. Like, I'm halfway to hallucinating the rest of the final picks of this draft. Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz. Sorry, this thing is working right here. Quiet voice. Ted Cruz. Did I just do all the argumentation for you? And then you picked the person that I was. So he was. He was second last time. I mean-- He grew beard. I should have picked Ted Cruz. It's fine. I'm blaming it on the sheet of bread. Regret is like a key. Immediate regret is a key part of this game. It's key. You got to, like, stand over the cliff and be like, oh, fuck. I didn't do that. As he does not, up in 28, FYI, right? Because that has to be a little bit more of a concern, potentially. No, Ted, take Texas back Cruz. I think it's good value with 11 picks into this. Also, there's so many Republican donors in Texas who now the only Republicans who's representing them statewide for them to donate to is Ted Cruz. By the way, can I just-- let me just tell you guys, because we talk about prediction markets a lot, although, again, what's the name of our guy that we want investigated? John McIntee? John McIntee. Just some goofy stuff over there. But I wanted to just, like, pull up the real clear politics, like, who has actually been called objective data. Oh, I'm a data journalist. I don't really think I am anymore, am I? Well, read the polls. And then yes, if you can read polls, yes. OK, but these are the people that have actually been polled. Just the real-- this is the real clear politics average. Vance 38, Rubio 26, DeSantis 8, Kennedy, Jr. 5, Haley 5, Cruz 2.8, Carlson 1.7, Scots. Again, we don't know if that's Rick or Tail Scots combined. But it's 1, Holly 1, and Youngkin 0.7. So just like a little-- I should have picked Youngkin instead of Mike Pence. It's fine. It's all like-- it's all play money down here. But it's just to, like, just to temper some of the craziness. And Calci, it's JD Vance 33, Marco Rubio 17, Rhonda Santis 16, absolutely bananas. John McIntee 5.2, Tucker 3.5, Len Youngkin 2.9, Ted Cruz 2.9, Brian Kempzwin 2.3, Thomas Massey 2, Trump, Donald Trump, not Junior, Donald Trump 1.6, Trump Jr. 1.2, Haley 1.1. So it's like-- Where's Mike Pence? Where's Mike Pence? Where's Mike Pence? Ivanka, Josh Holly, Byron, Donalds, we're not-- You're still not getting to Mike Pence? We're still not getting to Mike Pence. It's a stupid guy. It's a Christy Mike Pence. He'd haggsa. Mike Pence 0.4%. Right above Tulsi Gabbard, who-- Uh, Claire, we're back to you, that, right? We're back to me. I don't know. I don't know if it was Ted Cruz. This is the last pick, I think, right? The last pick of the-- I only have one pick. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to rage bait you guys. But it's in the general sphere of what Galen has been saying about just return to like, rewarmed grits. You know what I mean? Like, we've done this. Reheated nachos, I think, is what the kids are saying. Reheated nachos. Are the kids saying that? That's funny, that's funny, kids are funny. Okay, it's Chris Christie. Oh man, bad, now I feel better around Mike Pence, back, okay. And do you want to know why I just decided to do it? One, 'cause it's like, he's just like establishment. But it's this quote, it's this quote that he said in New Hampshire, some point in the last year. So am I looking at it? Look, anybody who comes up here, anybody who comes and told you that they're not looking at it again is lying. And then he said, once you go through the thought process of convincing yourself that you can be president and then the next step that you should be president, that doesn't leave your brain. I mean, an amazing, honest insight into the naked ambition and delusion that it takes for run for president to run for president. And you know what you get with that kind of attitude? Donald Trump? No, Joe Biden. Joe. But listen, at this point-- - I'm a job, Joe, great. - At this point in the draft, if you-- Who will not be doing interviews for his forthcoming book, in case you miss that tweet? Oh, really? Yeah. That actually, on a more somber note, it makes me wonder about his health. I mean, he couched it in-- Like, the first of his health, yeah. If he's like-- Yeah, I'm, of course, he's my dinosaur cancer, which is very sad. Also, saying, oh, if you've convinced yourself once, that you should run for president, forever more, the answer to should I run for president will be guest. Because if you've convinced yourself once, you can keep convincing yourself, that's how you get somebody running in the 1980s and becoming president in the 2020s. The rules of our game are you get points for the person entering the race. And if this guy is out here saying new hamster, this out loud, then maybe he'll get-- What if he runs just to destroy Rubio again? Like-- Totally possible. I think Chris Christie is obviously-- He's our former colleague. Traffic problems on Fort Lee Petty, right? Like-- He's our former colleague. And what that means is that he's as much as a media personality at this point, as he is a politician. He's good TV. And running for president increases name recognition and increases demand for the brand. Run for president, then renegotiate that ABC contract. Yes. I think it's not a crazy pick. That's my last pick. And it's rage bait. And I don't care. OK, should we go through and name everyone who's been picked here and listeners absolutely roast us in the comments? That's right. We want to hear it. Claire, your first pick was JD Vance, then Thomas Massey, then RFK Jr., then Chris Christie. It's so funny to hear it out loud. Nate, your picks were Marco Rubio, Tucker Carlson, Byron Donalds, Ted Cruz. I actually think you won. Who? I was Ron DeSantis, Brian Kemp, Mike Pence, Ken Griffin. Yeah, I won. Yeah. You didn't even have to ask me. You didn't really want that. That is very, very obvious. All right. With that, I'm going to stick my towel between my legs and thought around home from this exercise. It teaches me not to don't do drugs and podcasts. Guys, you will pick a horrible lineup for it. And listen, I'm totally sober and I picked a bad one. So that's it for today's episode of Still Counting. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe, we really mean it. Please subscribe on youtube.com/@stillcountingpodcast or wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back next Wednesday evening with another episode. Still Counting is a crooked media production, executive produced by Galen Druch, Claire Malone, and Nate Silver. Our team includes Saul Rubin, Emily Four, Claudio Shang, Charlotte Landis, Reed Charlin, Joseph Dutra, Johanna Case, Ben Heskot, Matt DeGro, Katie Long, and Adrian Hill. Our music is by great master cylinder. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the writer's guild of America East.