Which Democrats Have What It Takes to Win the White House?

Crooked Con is coming up right after the election and we have just added a bunch more great names to the lineup. We got Governor J.B. Pritzker coming, Senator Chris Murphy, and then over from the House side, Ilhan Omar, Robert Garcia, Sarah Jacobs, Jamie Raskin, Sarah McBride. We also have Carlos Eduardo Espina, Simone Sanders, Townsend, Eugene Daniels, David Pakman, Jessica Tarloff, Heather McGee, and then all the other people that we've announced on the website, plus more to come. Great list. Check out the full lineup and get tickets right now at crookedcon.com. We'd love to see you there. That's crookedcon.com. This is LeVar Arrington from Two Pros and a Cup of Joe. Let me tell you about Xero. That's X-E-R-O. Xero is a financial management platform that loves giving small business owners the clarity to have the confidence in their numbers. It puts accounting payments, payroll, and analytics all in one place, so you always have one clear picture of your business. With visual dashboards, Xero makes it easy to understand your cash flow, you know exactly what's coming in and what's going out, so you can make smarter decisions that can help grow your business. Xero's AI can even offer insights to help you make your best move. It's powerful enough for an accountant and 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 Dan Pfeiffer. Joining me today is former senior advisor to President Obama, David Oxelrod. You all know Axe. Maybe you've heard him on this pod, listened to either of his shows, Hacks on Tap or The Axe Files, or you've likely seen him on CNN. Axe is an all-around expert that can save you money. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He can speak to anything in democratic politics. I asked Axe to come on the show because I wanted to talk to someone smart about the midterms, both what the map looks like for the Dems after a series of devastating court rulings and what he thinks of some of the candidates running up and down the ballot. I also wanted to talk to him about messaging, namely how some of the party's leading voices and likely 2028 candidates are talking about the administration and if their theories of the case are actually any good. We shared a great and wide-ranging conversation, which we'll get to in a minute. But before we do, if you're a friend of the pod subscriber, which if you aren't, you should be, you can now buy tickets for this year's Crooked Con. There is a special pre-sale for you. You can buy tickets for this year's Crooked Con. Just for subscribers. But if you're not a subscriber because you hate pro-democracy media and love listening to podcast ads, you can buy Crooked Con tickets next week starting on May 19th. Either way, it'll be a big fun party right after the midterms, November 5th to 7th in Washington, D.C. Go to crookedcon.com for more details, including how to become a friend of the pod subscriber. All right, let's get to the show. Here's David Axelrod. David Axelrod, welcome back to Pod Save America. Yeah, it's good to be with you, brother. Always good to see you. It's been a long time since I've seen you. It has. But I will catch you. I assume I'll catch you in Chicago in about a month at the Obama Library opening. I'm looking forward to it. I went through there the other day. Have you been there? I have not. I talked to Cody Keenan after he went and he said it was quite emotional, actually, and pretty amazing. That's exactly. I went over sort of out of a sense of obligation. They'd wanted me to come see it. And I found it incredibly emotional. It really was like reliving the journey. So I'm anxious for you guys to see it. Yeah, we're very excited about it. All right. Fortunately, we've got a lot of things happening between now and then. We are now less than six months from the midterms. A few weeks ago, things look great. Democrats felt like they were on a glide path to taking the House by a pretty significant margin. Then over the last few weeks, there's been nothing but bad news. Supreme Court got to the Voting Rights Act. The Republicans are rapidly redrawing the map, eliminating Democratic districts across the South. Virginia Supreme Court throws out the new map that would have given Democrats four seats. As a party, we've returned to our natural state of panic. Yes. Where do you think things stand right now in the race for the House? How worried are you? Look, Dan, you know the history of this. There have been 39 midterm elections since World War II. And the party that is in the White House has gained seats in two of those 39 in 1998 and 2002. And in both those elections with Clinton and Bush, Bush right after 9-11, they both had approval ratings in the 60s. These races are, no matter how hard, and you and I were on the losing end of this, you know, no matter how hard you try, there's always a referendum on the president. And very rarely do you win in that because it's an opportunity for people who express their opinions. So, I mean, it is still the case that Democrats, I think, are probably significant favorites to win the House, just not the prohibitive favorites they were. And I think there is a, this is a flashing light in this regard. When you're in a campaign against Donald Trump, it's sort of asymmetric warfare because he does not adhere to rules and laws and norms and institutions. I mean, that's a disadvantage for Democrats who are accustomed to doing that. And so this is one element of what he has in his, in his asymmetric toolbox. But we still don't know what is going to happen relative to voter suppression, voter purges, you know, the Justice Department showing up and seizing voting boxes and all kinds of other things that are meant to do that. I mean, if you look at the numbers, you just look at the numbers, right? Nate Cohn estimates Democrats need to win the popular vote by 3.9% to take the House with this map. And that even presumes Republicans getting, definitely getting that seat in South Carolina and maybe getting two and losing it where they're only going to get one. And we're on track for that. It's just what that margin is, is really hard for, it's just not what should be given Trump's approval numbers given the economy. And then that, that we may still get, look, you win the House by one seat. Hakeem Jeffries is still Speaker. He's still in charge of every bill that passes. But it's, can you keep the House in a less favorable political environment two years from now, four years from now? And that's where the redistricting- No, I think that that's a, that's a valid concern because I don't think the full effect of the Voting Rights Act kind of rescission by the Supreme Court is going to be felt in this election. And the Republicans are not going to have as much time to organize around it. And a presidential election, you know, used to be that a presidential election favored Democrats because the infrequent voters tended to be Democrats. Now, you know, the midterm election, midterm elections and special elections favored Democrats because the Democratic Party for better and worse has become a party of sort of metropolitan professional, you know, white collar people, college educated folks who tend to vote regularly. This used to be a Republican advantage. So I think, you know, the next elections could be more challenging if the margin is small. But as to November, you know, Trump's numbers are abysmal. And they're getting worse. His numbers on the economy, which was the calling card that got him elected in many ways, are atrocious. You know, 30% in the last CNN poll, among independents, 23%, because it's his base that's keeping him buoyed. And those independent voters are going to be pretty important in these swing states and districts. So, you know, this is why I think he will reach into this bag of tricks. And on top of that, he's got, he'll probably have, you know, he has what whether he spends it or not, we'll see. But he'll probably have $600 million. You know, he had $300 million in his, in his super PAC at the beginning of the year. And let me tell you, when you're when you get, you know, millions and millions of dollars in donations from the families of people you pardon, in advance of the pardon, that's a very efficient way of fundraising. Half the money at least comes from people who have, you know, government interests, and, you know, like I said, there's nothing that the words that you will never hear flowing from this president's mouth is, well, we could do it, but it would be wrong. That's just not going to happen. That is a thing you can hear from Democrats mouths. And like going forward past this election, you know, you talk about the asymmetric warfare, and you know, Hakeem Jeffries is out there since decision saying we have to have a total warfare approach. Virginia Democrats, at least for a minute, look relatively seriously at the idea of changing the age limit on their justices to retire all of them and replace them. Turned out to be whatever, whatever other problems there were with that plan, it just turned out to be logistically impossible to fire the justices, get new justices, draw new maps and get them approved at time for the primaries. But there's been since this decision has been talked about, you know, like expanding the playbook, Kamala Harris was doing a zoom call with a political group where she talked about court reform, multi member districts, all these things. What do you think about how Democrats have to change our approach over the narrow that asymmetric gap. Yeah, well, first of all, look, I think that you heard for the longest time and it was reflected in polling discontent with the leadership and both Jeffries and Schumer because of a perceived passivity. I think Hakeem has changed his tone markedly lately, in part because he's trying to hold his his troops together here. You know, I mean, I'm mixed on this stand because I understand the stakes and I understand the idea that if the other side is playing tackle, you can't play touch. And on the other hand, you know, this is the lot of Democrats. If you're the party who actually believes in rules and laws and norms and institutions, it's very hard to reconstruct them once they're shredded. And so I'm struggling with this. As to how far we should go and the best thing we can do is, you know, embrace the right message, which is going to be more important and even more important in 28 than 26, because so there's so much that should be pushing our way if we become the party that we should be, which is to respond to the fundamental concerns that people have been expressing again and again and again that Trump has ignored. And. And. and so, you know, I don't want the I don't want this next several years to be defined by a contest, you know, between who can be more clever in sort of gaming the system. I don't think we have to if we are the party that honestly is responding to a system that is in many ways corrupt and rigged against people. And we're offering a real vision for the future that holds out some. Promise for real, bold and genuine reform. Yeah, I go back and forth on this, too. I generally believe that it is in the country's interest to find ways to make our institutions more democratic. And when they are rigged towards one from one for one party or the other, that is bad because it suppresses the popular will. That's why I'm very open to, you know, term limits for Supreme Court just to things like that. The one thing I'm very confident that we just have to do and it's not an option is redistrict to maximum advantage in 28 in the states where we can do that. Just because you just can't. This is a little bit like we hate super pat. We hate dark money, but the other side is taking all the dark money. So we can't unilaterally disarm. I think we cannot unilaterally disarm here. So I think whether it's Oregon, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Pennsylvania, these states where we have control, we have to do it because there are just the number of states that Trump was won three times. Just have a hold a lot more seats in the number of states that Democrats have won three times. We kind of have to do. No, I don't disagree. I don't disagree with that. I hate it. But yeah, but it's. It's just, you know, you know, like changing the changing the age limit on the Virginia Supreme Court. I don't know about that. I think I don't think that's where we want to be. So, you know, I just don't want. Well, Trump will. Trump would do it to be always be the yardstick by which we measure ourselves. One of the geniuses of Trump. And let's be clear. He is. He is. He does have certain genius. I mean, kind of an idiot savant. In many ways. But he. But one of them is that he exposes hypocrisy very well. I mean, you know, when you see the law firms that folded and the and the universities that folded and and all the politicians who have folded on principles that they heretofore had held close, you know, his point. This is what Donald Trump really believes. He believes the world. This is the hunger games where the strong take what they want and the weak fall away and everybody has a price and rules and laws and norms and institutions are for suckers. That's what he believes. And every time every time someone, you know, submits to that because they think they're going to somehow win his favor, they they help prove his point. But that's separate from this issue of redistricting. But he does bait you into these fights so that he. Can say, well, they're no better than I am. Yeah. Well, if everyone's corrupt, you might as well take me. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Let's move to the Senate here where, John, despite discussions of possibly making Venezuela state, Trump has been unable so far to rig the map in his favor, although he has some advantages inherent. In some of the states that Democrats need to win or have to win, like Iowa and Michigan, we're in the midst of some pretty divisive primaries, which are they're exposing all kinds of divides. In the party, they're being seen as they're being treated as proxy battles for the future of the party. How much do you worry about this sort of Democratic division? Do you think it's generally healthy for the party to have the have these fights now? It's it's really hard to avoid them. You know, we don't have command and control, even though sometimes those in Washington would like to have that. At some point, you know, you do hope that people will evaluate their their own chances to win a primary. And. You know, perhaps influence the outcome of a primary, but with no chance to win if people get to that point. But, you know, you you would like to feel the best candidates in the general election. And part of the way you find out who the best candidate is, is to see what they do out there. I think in Iowa, you know, I think Turek is probably the strongest candidate in the general election. And I think he'll and I think he is showing himself. To be that and will probably be the nominee. You know, Michigan's a more complicated case. It's a three way race just in terms of skills as a political athlete. Abdul El-Saeed is probably the most gifted athlete of the three. Whether, you know, there's concerns about whether he, you know, in terms of his position. Is the best candidate for the general election. And and we'll have to see. But I do know this. If Democrats are going to take over, it's almost impossible to believe that Democrats would take the Senate without Michigan, without holding. Absolutely. So that's a that's that's the reason for people's concern. And it's a it's a legitimate concern. This is a perfect opportunity for me to point out that Potsdam America is hosting a Michigan primary debate on next Sunday's episode. Where Alex Wagner is going to host a conversation with the three Democrats in the race. Abdul El-Saeed, Mallory McMorrow and Haley Stevens. Very excited about very excited about this one. Yeah, I didn't even know that. 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Take control of your future at Strawberry.me slash Cricket today and get 50% off your first coaching session. That's Strawberry.me slash Cricket. What about, what did you make of what happened in Maine? Because that seems to be sort of indicative of a shift in. The party, a shift in what people are looking for, maybe a sense of the Senate leadership or the establishment is. at least in that race, was not in touch with what the voters wanted? There are a lot of factors here. One is that I think we're in an anti-establishment moment, and that's true in both parties. I think there is a real jaundice about the status quo. You know, I mentioned earlier, you know, 70% of people in polling say the system is corrupt and rigged against them. I think there is a sense that Washington, you know, when you'll remember back in the day, Dan, when Barack Obama ran, one of the reasons he won was because his campaign was a full-out critique of Washington generally, not just the Republicans, but Democrats as well, and the sort of red-blue, who's up, who's down kind of struggle for power that had nothing to do with people's lives or principal concerns. I think we're back there again. And so establishment candidates— are at a disadvantage. And Janet Mills, who's a perfectly good person and has served honorably, was very much the establishment candidate, and she had the stamp of Senator Schumer on her to certify that she was the establishment candidate. And she would have been 79 years old when she got sworn in. So part of the other discontent people feel after two octogenarian presidents is— with, you know, the gerontocracy in Washington, which also speaks to establishment politics. People don't feel like the folks in Washington are in touch with their lives or focused on their lives. And I think Trump has exacerbated it because he ran contending that he was, and then, you know, and now we're into, you know, ballrooms and monuments and, you know, graft on a scale we've never seen before. This is one— this is one place where he says nobody's ever seen anything like this before. He's right about this. Nobody's ever seen corruption at this scale before. And so people feel betrayed, you know, you know, those who voted for him or who had some hope for him. And all of this, I think, makes a candidate like Plattner in Maine, you know, appealing because he's a grassroots guy. He seems to be speaking the language and living the life of people who feel unrepresented. And, I mean, but it was stunning the degree to which he was able to take that, you know, by storm. I mean, just literally blow the incumbent governor out of the race. You know, I actually wonder a little bit if he would have been better served by her hanging around for a while. I 100% agree with that. You know, there was no need to start for it. I'm not surprised Plattner won. I was very frustrated at the DSCC and Schumer for endorsing Mills to begin with, for all the reasons you said, just the idea that we were just going to decide from on high in Washington that our best chance against Susan Collins was a 79-year-old establishment politician. And I say that as someone who likes Janet Mills and interviewed her on the show, but she's no Joe Biden. No, she's not. Right. But it's just, it's the model everyone rejected last time. And Plattner turned out to be one of those people. You know, I certainly thought he would definitely win prior to all the online posts and then thought he, you know, he navigated that well enough to survive and then knock her out of the water. But he would have been much better off if this had gone to the end, he had a chance to beat her. You delay the general election by another month. Instead, now he's already got negatives against him from, you know, pro Susan Collins. Yeah, I don't blame her though. She ran out of money. And I'm not sure that she was that eager to hang around just to let him claim the trophy, you know. So, you know, I think, you know, I don't blame her, though. So I don't blame her. him claim the trophy, you know. So the thing, one other thing I think this underscores, and you know this from your own career, don't let yourself get talked into running for an office you don't want to run for, because it's never going to end well. You're not going to be an effective candidate. You know, I mean, Plattner, by the time she dropped out, he had done, I think, more than 50 town hall meetings in the state. She had done, I think, zero. You know, and if you guys have a huge listenership, so if I'm wrong, I'm sure someone will tell me. It's a number closer to zero than 50, I'll tell you that. Yes. Well, there's no doubt about it. Yes. And, you know, he's hungry for this, and he's eager for it, and he's young, and he's, you know, going after it. And so getting drafted a few years later, I think that's a good thing. Against your will is a bad way to enter a race. Don't back into a race. Another race the Democrats are very excited about and very interested in is Texas. Our old boss made his first campaign appearance of the cycle, getting some tacos with James Tallarico and Gina Hinojosa, who's running for governor. Trump weighed in on the race on his way back from China on Air Force One. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. The Democrats have a weird, a weird cat today. Six genders. A real hit on Jesus. I mean, this guy, this man with his mask from relatively recently is a vegan. He's a vegan. All of a sudden, he's not a vegan. He's a vegan. Now, all of a sudden, he's not. Texas doesn't like vegans. I do believe either one of them will easily win the race. I think that the candidate the Democrats have in Texas is a very flawed, very weak, very, I think he's a pathetic candidate, especially for Texas. You know that Shakespeare thing about thou doth protest too much. But, you know, what's interesting about the dynamic in the Republican primary is that the folks who want John Cornyn, they'll say privately that they think Tallarico's too left for Texas. They've got plenty of stuff. They could take him out. But they're not saying anything because right now what they're saying is Tallarico can win unless we knock Paxson out of the race. If Paxson wins, Tallarico can win. Once this primary is over, they're going to open up on him and they're going to along the contours of what Trump is saying. I'm sure he was briefed. A bunch of his guys are working on the Cornyn campaign. But interestingly, he hasn't endorsed Cornyn. I trust that when Tallarico went out for tacos that he had beef or chicken. She's not a vegan, as Trump. That have been going around. I think Trump has obviously seen those and he is doing it. But I'm not sure the idea that James Tallarico's anti-Jesus is going to sell. No, I'm sure that he would love to have that conversation directly with the president. You know, you can't like violate like many of the major Ten Commandments and then start going after someone else over their Christianity. You know, I mean, I mean, Tallarico is clearly. Very, you know, serious about his faith. And that's one of the reasons he is where he is, because that's translated really well. And he, you know, he has he has preached the gospel of the brotherhood of man and people who are so tired of all this conflict are responding to him. So we'll see what happens. Look, I think Texas is hard. You and I have gone through campaigns together where we have. Held out hope for states like Missouri at one point. And it always turned out to be fool's gold. And the question is, is that the case here? One of the wild cards in Texas is that, you know, Trump won a solid victory there. But it was with a lot of Hispanic votes, particularly in South Texas. The two, the two biggest losses in terms of support for Trump have been among Hispanics and young people. You know, Hispanic voters, I think, they're very sensitive to economic issues. They're a working class constituency in the main. And I think the the in South Texas, I think they were eager for border border control. They weren't eager to be racially profile. And I think because of all the stuff that ICE has done, combined with the economic stuff, he has completely dealt away the advantages that he gained among Hispanic voters. That puts Texas. More in play. It also means that they're probably not going to capture all the seats they thought they were going to capture when they gerrymandered the state. Yeah, Texas is interesting. I think Tallarico is a uniquely talented candidate. Yeah, he's great. Yeah, he's he's very good. He is. He is. I think if anyone can do it, it's James Tallarico in this year, particularly against Paxton. He you know, the Latino numbers you point out are very notable. Pew has a poll out today which shows that Trump's approval rating among Latino. Trump voters is down 30 points since Election Day 2024, which, you know, that that's a big chunk of voters. You know, we saw this in the primary, right? It's a primary, but Tallarico got more primary votes than Kamala Harris got votes in, you know, sometimes by matching two to two or three in some of these Rio Grande Valley counties. So you got two or three times number of votes Kamala Harris got on election day in 2024. So there's obviously some persuasion. This is not just turnout. There's some persuasion happening here because a lot of these people, these these Latinos who voted for Trump were registered Democrats. So it's interesting. No, I was going to say just on the Hispanic issue, I think one of the reasons Trump is harping on him and, you know, and Christ is that I think it's very advantageous for Tallarico to be able to go into churches across Texas, including Hispanic churches and as fluent as he is in scripture. And so I think Trump is trying to chip away. Chip away at that. What were you going to say? I was going to ask you about the decision to have Obama come to Texas for him. Like, it is a race where he's got to win. You know, Trump won Texas by 13, I think. He's got to get a bunch of people to pull the lever for Trump to vote for him. Do you think bringing Obama was a good move? You know, I haven't seen his numbers in Texas, but my guess is that looking at his numbers nationally, they're not they're not bad. And there is a you know, Obama's not campaigning that much for candidates at this juncture. I'm sure he will. But there is a stature thing. It kind of elevates Tallarico in the race. And he may just want to, you know, because of the whole Reagan thing, as you say, Trump said, maybe he just wanted a guy who really appreciated a good beef taco. Yeah. And I look, I think also I imagine I'd have to look at what I imagine that Obama's numbers with Latino voters, even Latino voters who voted for him. I think that's a good move. I think that's a good move for Trump are quite good. And so with like Tallarico smart, his campaigns being run by smart people, they're not just doing this because it's good for TikTok views. Like they obviously have looked at their data that suggests that with their target voters, Obama is a plus. And the other it's not like there are a bunch of Republicans who are going to stay home because they're mad at Trump and all of a sudden Barack Obama shows up for tacos one day in May. Like, OK, we're turning out. One last thing on this. I mean, one of the reasons Trump's going after Tallarico is because he's going to be the candidate to stay out of this race. There was a presumption that he was going to endorse John Cornyn as the most likely candidate to win. He's now been convinced that either of them can win. But the Paxton question is really an open one because he's a guy who is absolutely freighted with scandal. And while he's very popular with the Republican base, he could be very vulnerable with some traditional Republican voters in the suburbs around the big cities there. I don't think Obama's going to play badly with those voters. I don't think it's going to hurt Tallarico to have him there with those voters. So we'll see. But I will say, I mean, because of the fool's gold PTSD I have, you know, I'm looking, you know, I look at Iowa, for example, and I'm wondering, is Iowa ultimately going to be a better shot than Texas? Is Alaska, with Mary Peltola and the ranked choice voting system against a very weak incumbent in Sullivan, does that give you a better chance? Here's the thing. When you, you know, you have to win a couple of states where Trump won by double digits in any case, and you want as many opportunities as possible. So Democrats can turn to Alaska, to Iowa, to Texas, even, and I think it's the longest of even Nebraska, you know, where you have an independent candidate supported by Democrats who did very well in a Trump landslide last time against Ricketts, the senator, the incumbent senator, former governor. You know, I think that there's a better than 50-50 chance that Democrats can piece it together, assuming that the wave is what we think, the wave could be. And remember, the wave is more important in these Senate races. You know, they may piece districts together to hold down the House margin, but statewide, you know, harder. Positive America is brought to you by Tommy John. What do you love about Tommy John? Well, it's not just a surgery anymore. You know what it is? It's not just your two hosts right here. It's an undies brand. That's right. And they have all kinds of actually undergarments. They got t-shirts and all sorts of great stuff. Well, here's what you like about Tommy John. Their underwear, they're soft and they're durable. They're breathable and they're lightweight for all day comfort, especially when you're outside. You don't want your underwear suffocating. No, no. They've got a curved pouch. It's designed for comfort and control to support and flatter your natural shape. Do you feel your, does your natural shape flatter? It flatters the hell out of what I got. 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Corrupting our democracy works best when we forget that we, the people, are in charge. I'm Stacey Abrams, voting rights advocate and host of Assembly Required. In my podcast, I'm talking with some of the sharpest minds in politics and in civic activism to help us figure out how to fight authoritarianism and win. My podcast doesn't just diagnose problems. We give actionable steps to help you feel a little more connected and a lot more empowered to make change in your communities. So check out my podcast, Assembly Required. New episodes drop every Tuesday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Troy Millings from Earn Your Leisure. If you run a small business, you know how important it is to stay on top of your numbers. That's why I want to tell you about Xero. That's X-E-R-O. Xero brings accounting, payments, payroll, and analytics together in one platform, giving you a clear picture of your business. With reports, visual dashboards, forecasts, and AI insights, Xero can help you better understand your cash flow and what's coming in and going out. It's a simple but powerful platform that can help you better understand your cash flow. Xero is a platform built for small business owners and designed to make managing your business finances easier from day one. Join 5 million customers worldwide who use Xero to manage their finances. Yeah, the Senate map is, I mean, it's challenging. It's kind of shocking. And it says everything that we'd be sitting here now and you'd say it's a coin flip that we take the Senate or maybe even a little bit better than a coin flip. When I look at it, you just, if you're just doing like most likely scenarios, like I'm sure Mary, I would probably pick Alaska of the Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Alaska. Probably I'd pick Alaska just because of the fact that Mary Paltola has won in that state before there was ranked choice voting. Dan Sullivan is particularly unpopular. And then, you know, I think maybe Ohio. Yeah. And then the other. Close last time as Trump was carrying the state by double digits. Uh, and, uh, he's running against a Senator who was appointed, who's never run on his own statewide, uh, and who doesn't have a, you know, a huge, um, image in the state. So he's going to be more associated with Trump, um, just by dint of, um, uh, of having no real profile. I mean, he'll try and be, he was DeWine's guy. He'll try and run that way. Uh, but he can't run away from Trump. Trump won't allow him. And it's very hard, as you know, to run away from an incumbent president anyway. So, uh, I, you know, and Sherrod, Sherrod Brown was, uh, uh, was a economic populist before economic populism was cool. Uh, so, uh, I, I think, you know, I'm not sure that I would rate Alaska over Ohio, but I think that the most likely combination, if Democrats are to take the Senate, would be, uh, North Carolina, Maine, uh, Ohio, and Alaska. Yeah. I'm sort of stipulating Maine and North Carolina as must wins because winning three of the other four is hard. Yeah. But he, he, Plattner is going to, you, you saw a David French wrote a very tough column in the New York times this week about him. And, uh, I mean, not that people read that, but that was a, the tenor of what he, you know, they're going to go back at him with more ferocity. Um, and, uh, but Susan Collins, you know, after all this time, And given the nature of the times is is a is a really vulnerable candidate, you know, so we'll see for all the reasons we discussed earlier. It's the Susan Collins thing is interesting because she has been like she is a Republican in a state that Democrats win by nine points. We should beat her. Should have beaten her in 2020. She's very tough to beat. She's been fortunate enough to be able to avoid some of the worst votes this time around because of the Senate margin. Yeah, they cut her loose to do it. Yeah. Yeah. She didn't have to fight for the beautiful bill. She got to take a pass on some of the worst cabinet appointments. But she still is a Republican in a Democratic state and one who represents status quo. You know, it's going to be a very fascinating race. And the question is, you know, you and I both know the folks working on that race is can Plattner withstand what will be a massive amount of scrutiny? Some of it from his own side, because there are people pretty pissed about how this race played out. And every possible dollar dumped on his head was some of the nastiest. Yeah. And I mean, I think, you know, time time will tell about that. Yeah. I heard someone tell me about a focus group in that state and someone was talking about Susan Collins. And they said she's bipartisan. She's she's only bipartisan when it doesn't count. And I think that's something that some a lot of voters there kind of intuit. And, you know, she didn't. She didn't vote for all of Trump's Supreme Court nominees, but she voted for some. She voted for the ones that counted for sure. As I pointed out to someone, it's, you know, you can you can remove a tattoo, but you can't remove a Supreme Court justice. So, you know, that we'll see how this goes. It'll be a fascinating, fascinating race. But I'm assuming that that Plattner wins the race in the end. That's that's my hope for sure. You know, both at the House and the Senate, everyone keeps saying the campaign's about affordability. Affordability, affordability, affordability. Like, obviously, just saying the word affordability is not actually a message, although, you know, some Democrats have the habit of reading the stage directions instead of the script. And so they're just saying affordability over again. Is a message around affordability enough? Does it need to be bigger than that? What do you think Democrats should be saying? Well, I think I think that we have structural issues in our economy. We've got the affordability issue is hitting people hard, but people have been, you know, kind of. Bobbing in the water and not gaining for for a long time and the polarity in our economy gets worse and AI is going to turbocharge that, at least in the short run, maybe in the long run. And I really think I don't know that it's necessary to win in November. There are there are there are discrete things you could propose in order to win in this November. But as I said, it's largely a referendum. Anybody who runs for. President better have a much bigger vision about how you reform a system that was broken before. I've always you know, I think it's a mistake to assume that when you run in 28, that the message could be we're just going to kind of restore everything that Trump knocked down because people weren't that happy with the system before he knocked it down. I mean, they didn't feel they were being well served. And, you know, they felt the system was corrupt. They felt it was rigged against them. They felt that they weren't getting ahead. And that's, you know, it requires big structural kinds of answers that, you know, to not only to to put some equity into the system, but also to genuinely try and reform a system that is, you know, since our you remember when our boss warned people about Citizens United in 2010 and just said, you know, we're going to reform a system that is, you know, since our you remember when our boss warned people about Citizens United in 2010. Justice Alito was deeply offended by that and shook his head on the floor. Everything he said has happened. I mean, we are awash in money and dark money and pernicious influence. And it's it it all conspires against working people. So campaign finance reform is really important. We also have to think I think Democrats, you know, what strikes me, Dan, is that we have this battle going on between the great ideas. Of the 19th century and the great ideas of the 20th century, you know, you know, tariffs and no civil service and so on from the 19th century. And then, you know, sort of Rooseveltian structures in the 20th century. And we're in the 21st century. And we ought to be thinking about how do we solve the problems of today using the tools of today and not be wedded to the old ways of doing things, be wedded to creating a country in which people can work hard and get ahead. And where we can deal with some of our most pressing problems. But don't assume that the way we approach them in the 20th century is necessarily the way we have to approach them now. I think there's a lot of room for a genuinely reform oriented candidate who has some vision for the future to to to move this country. I also now you put the quarter and you're getting 10 plays. But I I think. I love it. I but, you know, I've been thinking a lot about this election and there are no no two elections are alike. But if you were going to say, well, what is this election most like? It goes back to one that you will not remember. But I do, which is the election of 1976. It was the first election I ever voted in when right after Watergate and the country was stunned by what happened in Watergate. By the corruption of Richard Nixon and and by the way, you know, there was a real politicization of the Justice Department, of the CIA, of a lot of these. I mean, it was it was somewhat analogous to what we're facing today. People wanted a cleansing. They wanted to give Washington an angioplasty. They wanted a fresh start. And that's how Jimmy Carter emerged in 1976. No one would have known who Jimmy Carter was at this point. And he became the nominee of the party and he won. I don't know who that person is, but I think that the two things care care qualities of character are going to be very important. Empathy, decency, honesty, integrity, humility, all the qualities that Trump doesn't have are going to be prized in 2028. And the second thing is, I think being an outsider who's willing to really challenge. Orthodoxy in Washington, challenge the institutions on behalf of people is going to be a candidate who's well received. This is a perfect segue to what I want to get to, because we're going to have a little fun here. I'm going to play some clips from some 28 potential 28 contenders and I'll get your take on them. But this messenger is what they're saying. But before we get to that, I want to. You sat down with AOC at the Institute of Politics before a live audience. One of her answers went quite viral. I'm going to play it for audience. I'm asking about it. It was very clear this was a veiled threat. Right. So the elite saying. If you want this job. You just stepped out of line. They assume that my ambition is positional. They assume that my ambition is a title or a seat. And. My ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition. Is to change this country. Presidents come and go. Senate House seats, elected officials come and go, but. Single payer health care is forever. A living wage is forever. Workers rights are forever. Women's rights, all of that. So a couple of questions on this. Did that answer was a Rorschach test for people about whether she was going to run for president or not run for president? I wanted to see. What do you how did you take that? Do you think that means she's planning on running for president, planning on running for the Senate, doesn't yet know? First of all, let me say I thought it was a really powerful answer. You know, I heard Favreau say the other day that if you want to run for president, you better know what you believe. And what she was saying there is I'm not in politics for a job. I'm in politics for a goal goals. That might impact positively on people's lives, the kind of people who I grew up with, the kind of people who live all over this country. And I think she really means it. And I think that authenticity is really powerful. That said, if you you know, she said other things in this answer and elsewhere in this conversation that made me think she really isn't hungering for that job. And if I were her, what I would say is, you know, I'm not in politics for a job. I would be thinking is I want to have an impact and I I'm not ready to sideline myself the chances of anyone getting elected president, no matter how good they are, are limited. And, you know, she's 36 years old now. She'll be 38. She could walk into that Senate seat in New York. And interestingly, with this crowd of young people, I said, you know, some people would like to see you run for president. A bunch of them cheered. And I said. and others would like to see. see you run for Senator Schumer's seat in New York. Louder cheers. I couldn't tell if they were cheering for her to run for Senator or cheering for the fact that you said Schumer was up. Yeah, no, it was definitely a combination of those two things. You know, she's got a high class problem here. She'd get a lot of votes if she ran for president. But I think the way I interpret what she said is I'm going to go where I think I can continue this fight for those things that I believe in and have the most impact I can have right now. And that led me to conclude that she is more likely headed to the Senate race than to the presidential race. I mean, nothing she told me, but reading between the lines, I would be more surprised if she ran for president than if she ran for the Senate. And you and I both know that she would not be one of 100 if she went to the Senate. She would, you know, when Barack Obama went to the Senate, he was, you know, number whatever, 99, 98 in the Senate, but he was not the 98th member of the Senate. People were always interested in what he had to say. Yeah, I have seen, I worked for, as you have as well, worked for many politicians who were planning to run for president and who got this question for the years leading up to the actual announcement. And the general approach is to just start muttering words. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I mean, it really does help to be motivated by doing something than by being something. I mean, the world of politics divides into these two cohorts, the people who run because they want to be something, and that's the larger cohort. And then the smaller, more admirable, and the more impactful. cohort are the people who run for office because they want to do something. And that doesn't mean they don't have personal ambition, but you really, you know, honestly, I would say this to anybody who runs for president. It's too damn hard to do it. I don't mean just to win, but it's such an arduous thing to do. Don't do it unless you know why you're doing it. And just, you know, and if you think that it's such a prize to live in a gilded prison. You're making a mistake. You know, no one ever will. No one ever will feel sorry for a president of the United States. But you do change your life forever. And it's not all positive. I mean, you basically give up your, you know, a lot to do it. I, you know, I think I'm not saying that she won't run, and I'm not saying that she won't run someday. But based on what I heard, and if I were betting on it, I would bet that she's going to the one place and not the other. I had the same impression that she was, that it clearly, the people who have wanted to be president since they were 17 years old. She said that. It's obvious in the answer. And she's clearly not one of those people. She said that. She said, I'm not one of these people who've been planning my, you know, planning my campaign for an office since I was seven years old. She said, you know, you all, we all remember her when she, the night she got elected to, or nominated. To the Congress. And she was in her headquarters in a billiards hall in the Bronx with some supporters around her, with her hand over her mouth and her eyes wide open, watching these returns come in. She was as surprised as anybody. Whatever she decides. I think when she first came to Congress, she was clearly one of the best communicators in terms of how you communicate. Like she understood the modern media environment better than almost anyone in Congress, which is not saying a ton, but you know, she's doing Instagram lives. She's on social media. She knows how to do it. But I think in the last couple of years, she's also become the best, one of the best messengers in the party. Like about what she actually says, like is very, it's very powerful. She came there. She's the youngest woman ever elected to the house. I think we've watched her mature as a political leader during those eight years. I think that process is ongoing, you know, and I, and I think she knows that too. But she's an impressive person. The reason that she is so good. Yes, she knows how to use, uh, uh, social media and modern media. Um, but the thing that you can't teach and the thing you can't buy is the ability to communicate authentically and to give people a sense that you're talking honestly with them. Um, that's what great, great political leaders do. And she has that quality. So that's a hell of a thing to build on. Pod Save America is brought to you by Bilt. We can all agree that housing is expensive. Rent, mortgage, it doesn't matter which one you're paying. It stings every month. Sounds like the California debates we've been watching, governor's debates. Seriously. But Bilt can make it feel a little better. Let me explain. Bilt started out rewarding members on their rent. 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All right, let's watch some other people and see what you think about it. I'm going to start with John Ossoff, who may or may not run for president, but he certainly has to win re-election in Georgia first. Let's take a look at one of his recent rallies. How does American politics really work? It's coin-operated. Money goes in, favors come out. It's been running on secret money, corporate money, billionaire money. Both sides. Both sides. Citizens United was the worst court decision in modern American history. Yeah, he's singing from my hymn book there. Yeah, I know. I know. What do you think about him as a communicator? You know, he's a great communicator. I haven't seen him as, most of the time when I see him, he's behind a podium. And, you know, there are other elements. of communication and I haven't seen a lot of that that. Although I just spoke to someone, someone you and I both know who saw him at an event. You may have been at the same event because I think it was out West and said he was really, really good in kind of off the cuff interaction with people and so on. Listen, I take him seriously. You know, if you, if you believe what I said earlier about the kind of candidate who will do well, he checks a lot of those boxes and he hasn't been in, even though he is a Senator, he has not been there long enough to be sort of corrupted in people's minds as a, as a kind of fact, as a practitioner of, of inside the beltway politics, which he's not. So, you know, I mean, it's a quick turnaround. He's young. But I think youth also is an advantage in this election because after two presidents who were in their eighties I think people are going to be really looking for for a more youthful candidate. Yeah. You raised an interesting point. Cause I think he is the best speech giver that I've seen in a while. He, you know, there's a whole generation of politicians sort of raised on Obama who speak like Obama. And I think he's does the best, like you can see it in the tone, you know, like he has some of the same pause as the same cadence, but it doesn't look like Obama karaoke, which sometimes- Apparently. Yeah. Yeah. We've seen that too. He apparently does a lot of writing, you know, Obama, you know, he had great speech writers. You work with some of them, but they would tell you that, you know, they, they would give him a product that was in good shape and then he would buff it up or add things that took it from one level to the next. And he, because of that, he was familiar. He felt organic to the copy he was reading. So I think he has, he has that. But the other thing that people don't appreciate about Obama and you, I mean, I think he was very good at that. He was very good at that. Like, you know, those 87 days we spent in Iowa, uh, where he was, you know, doing six, eight, you know, stops a day more, even in small venues, interacting with people. Um, he was very good at that. Uh, you know, you have to, running for president is a decathlon. It's not just one event. So you can be great at, you know, pole vaulting, but you still have to, you know, throw the javelin. And so the test of campaigns is how do you do all, do you do all the events well enough to win? Um, so I don't know that about Ossoff, but he's certainly a promising, uh, promising politician. Yeah. I want to see him, you know, I mean, this is a, it's very self-referential to say, but like what the, like, can he pass the podcast test? Can he sit and like shoot the field? Like I was just watching a clip of Obama. Well, that's subtle Pfeiffer. Well, I mean, well, he's been on our podcast. He's done fine, but it's like, it's not really, can you come on positive America hacks on tap? It's, can you go on Rogan? Rogan or all the smoke? Can you, can you relate to people on a cultural, personal level? That's not just the test that vice president Harris, uh, wouldn't take. Yes. Yes. All right. Let's do the next one is, uh, someone familiar to all of us, Pete Buttigieg. There is a powerful American majority for change and for the things we believe in. Cause right now you got this administration that's created the illusion that their positions are supported by most Americans. And it's just not true. Most Americans agree that we should be taxing the wealthy more, not giving giant tax cuts to billionaires. Most Americans think it is nuts that we're being told we can't have nice things like rural hospitals and good roads and fully funded public schools at the same time that you got billionaires paying a lower tax rate than the nurses in those hospitals and the workers who work on those roads and the teachers who teach in those schools. What do you make of Pete? Well, look, in many, I, I, I've, I've said this before. He is as, um, bright and thoughtful as anybody I've, I've, I've seen since Barack Obama in terms of his ability to sort of think in interesting ways and, uh, posit arguments in ways that really are clear and thoughtful. Um, and, uh, he's, he's a very, very talented guy. And, uh, and, um, I, really, I like him a lot. I mean, uh, and I think he's underrated in this, you know, I mean, when you hear conversations, he's not, people don't talk about him, but he, you know, every time you look at a poll and some of it's name recognition, yes, but he's, he's well regarded by, uh, Democrats and, um, the things he's articulating out there kind of, um, they, they square up with some of the things I'm saying. He's talking about renewal, not restoration. He's talking about, uh, reform, you know, like basic fundamental reforms, uh, you know, uh, now, you know, I don't know whether experience of the Biden administration is advantageous or not. Uh, maybe not, you know, I guess net neutral at best. This would be my guess. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder, I haven't never had this conversation with him, whether if he had to do it all over again, whether he would have opted for that, he might be in better position than he was. You know, there's always this question, about an openly gay man running is America ready for that. And look, he, he, he, the one thing that he did not prove in 2020 was that he could win black votes. And that is a really essential task for anybody to get through this process. Um, you know, black voters in the South in particular are really, really important. And, um, so, you know, there are, there are questions, but the talent is, is, is undeniable. Yeah. I, I, I think Pete's incredibly smart. I saw him at an event recently and he just, he's so good off the cuff. He's so good answering questions. Yeah. And he does the podcast. He passes the podcast. Yeah. All those things. The thing that was always the, I think not like the black, black voters is like the math. You can't, it's just impossible. You can't win the math as such with primaries across the South, the way delegates are allocated. There's no way to do it. That's why it's a, why Obama won. It's why Hillary won. Right. Right. Right. Biden won. Right. I think it's a really, I think it's an important observation. Yeah. But I will say when he was on CNBC a few weeks ago and he was arguing with Joe Kernan. Yes. I thought it was some of the best people, like Pete will go on and he'll have, he'll like get every word exactly right on Fox news and he'll stuff, uh, Sean Hannity into, or we will lock or whatever else. And it's incredible. But he, when he was on the show, currently like he showed like a real, he was so frustrated and so angered by the stupidity of, and the unfairness of what Kernan was saying that it was really, it was like a, that was one of his most authentic moments. I thought it was quite, quite good. And I think maybe indicative, like his life has changed a lot since 2020. Right. He's had, he's got married, he's had kids. He's like been, he's been through times. And I, so I think, you know, I think it'll be, I mean, very interesting to see how he's involved Canada this time around, because if so, there's real potential and he benefits from the fact that New Hampshire is probably the first state and it's a place where he has a great base of strength. Yeah. And continues to poll. Well, uh, don't underestimate the value of having run the track before, you know, he knows, or just to use another sports analogy, he knows the lay of the greens, uh, and, and running for president, uh, is not like running for any other office. So he knows the pressures of it. He knows the cadence of it. He knows, he knows this stuff that, that is a valuable. All right, let's look at Andy Beshear, the, uh, governor of Kentucky. You've seen how some of this speak has crept into the democratic party. And we sound like we're talking down to people. We've got to talk to people and not at them. You know, Kentucky got hit by that opioid epidemic as hard as anybody, but maybe West Virginia. I mean, we've all lost people we love and care about. I didn't lose one to substance use disorder. I lost them all to addiction. If we want to push back against this president and what he's doing to snap, trying to hold hungry people hostage for political gain, it can't be that there'll be food insecure. It's gotta be that they'll go hungry. We've got to communicate to people in the values that, that they know and how they would talk to each other. Electability is obviously going to be a huge issue for Democrats as it was in 2020. No one has a better electability story than Andy Beshear. What do you make of him? Look, I mean, again, going back to the things I told you before, I mean, you have to look at him because he's, he's an outsider. He's also a guy who, by the way, can go into those black churches and in a compelling way. And, you know, and in terms of empathy, most of the time when we've seen him over the last eight years, it's because his state has been beset by some natural disaster or, you know, in some cases, a horrific gun incident. And, and he's really, really good. At that, he's great at expressing empathy. The one, I sort of agree with what he said there. The thing I would say is it's not just about the language that we use. It's about, and I've said this a lot of times, my objection to Democrats since the Democratic Party has become a kind of metropolitan college educated party is we're still a party of working people or see us that way, see ourselves that way. But we approach them like missionaries and anthropologists, and we show up and we say, well, we're going to do this, we're going to do that. And we say, we're here to help you become more like us. And the implied message is that what you do really isn't as important as what we do. than when we have a pandemic and then we're home and we're making our living on our computer and they're out there caring for us, protecting us, making things, shipping things, and doing everything it takes to keep the country going. And then we go out on our balconies and we bang our pots and we say, you're the essential worker until the pandemic's over. And then they sort of become invisible again. So I think it's more, it's about more than just the language. We fundamentally have to think about how we value people in our society. All right, last one we'll do is Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. We have an opportunity to have a real debate within our party about what we stand for, about what our affirmative vision is. It has to be about what we are going to do to make people's lives better. And I think that that is a debate that our party hasn't had for a good long while. And that debate is not only going to help the Democratic Party. I think it's going to be healthy for this country. And what I can tell you for sure is that I want to be a part of that debate. Bring the common sense sensibility of what we do in Pennsylvania to that conversation. Like Bashir, Shapiro has won the key state of Pennsylvania. He's likely going to win it again by a very large margin, which will bolster his electability case. What do you make of Shapiro? Look, he's a very talented and very smart. And what he said, I obviously, I obviously agree with. He's one of the guys who he can slide into sort of pigeon Obama from time to time. And he's taken a lot of criticism for it. He can be a little irascible. And for him, I think the important thing is to be real. He's so smart, and politically savvy that sometimes you feel like he's giving the politically savvy, well manicured answer. And you don't know what you don't see the person behind it. So those would be the concerns that I'd raise. But look, I thought, you know, I thought he should have been the vice presidential candidate in 2024. Probably good for him that he wasn't. But I think highly of him. And he's got some good stories to tell. That story about the sort of record pace at which they repaired the fallen bridge in Pennsylvania is a metaphor for something that Democrats need to struggle with is if you're the party of government, how do you assure people that government can work? And he's got some examples to underscore that. He also, Dan, has, he's forged a relationship with working class voters and rural communities in his state. You know, I think he does approach those voters respectfully and has built alliances there that I think is very useful and important and instructive. So, you know, again, you've got a good assortment there. I know you only have a short period of time, so you can't put all 106 aspirants up there, but that's a pretty strong assortment of candidates. Yeah, you know, Shapiro, it's probably not discussed enough how popular he is in Pennsylvania. Being a popular governor of Pennsylvania is not an easy thing to do. This is a state that Donald Trump has won twice. It has moved away from Democrats. As we, we have moved away from Pennsylvania demographically as a party. He basically has a coalition that combines the new version of the Democratic Party with these college-educated suburbanites outside of the collar counties around Philadelphia with some of the numbers that Democrats like Obama and Clinton had in the rural parts of the state in the great, the great experience. I mean, it's an expanse between Pennsylvania and between Philly and Pittsburgh. And it's very impressive. Let me ask you a question. And based on, you know, you've got your finger on the pulse of the left and the party. You know, the question that comes up oftentimes from Jews, and I'm Jewish, is, well, can a Jew get elected given the antipathy toward Israel now? And now he's been a very strong critic of B.B. Netanyahu. But how big an issue is that? Do you think that's an insuperable barrier for Democrat candidates? I don't, but you would know better. I don't believe being Jewish is a barrier that cannot be overcome for a Democratic candidate. I think that any Democratic candidate is going to have to have a vociferous criticism of the Netanyahu government. It's going to have to take very strong positions that would have seemed impossible a few years ago about conditions on aid to Israel, about funding the Golden Dome. I mean, even our, your very, your close friend, my old boss, Rahm Emanuel, came out suggesting he would not be for that. Like, I think what you, you cannot be seen, you don't want to be seen in a Democratic primary as the pro-Netanyahu candidate or the AIPAC candidate or someone who's associated with the Biden's administration's position or policy on Gaza. So I think he can do it, but it's going to, those are gonna be tricky waters for him to navigate given some of the ways in which he's approached those issues in his past. Well, let me say- I think he's changed his rhetoric in recent, you know- Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, one thing you said, I quite agree with, the attitudes have shifted in ways we wouldn't have predicted because Bibi has done things we never would have, you know, predicted. Perhaps we could have or should have, but his, the way he prosecuted the war in Gaza, you know, I say this as a Jew, it's, you know, I, I was horrified and angered by what happened on October 7th. But that doesn't mean that I don't grieve for the children of Gaza and that I'm not repulsed by the way that, that unfolded. And I, I don't think you're going to find candidates, Jewish or not, who, who don't agree with that. One interesting thing is that they have an election in Israel in October. Bibi Netanyahu may be gone by the time this campaign is over. I mean, you know, I don't, I don't know if it's going to This campaign begins in earnest. And you wonder whether that changes anything. Yeah, it's a very open question of what the world will look like when these candidates actually have to go get votes in New Hampshire or whatever other states in the early part of the calendar in early 2028. I did not play a clip from Kamala Harris. If you had asked me two or three months ago, I would have put the strong odds against her running. I think in the recent months, she's been out there more. She's been doing more things that suggest that maybe she's seriously thinking about running. What do you make of that? I don't know what to make of it. I mean, she obviously is making noises as if she's going to run. And you know, once you run for president, especially when you come as close as she did, especially under the circumstances she did, very hard to look around and say, why not me? But I also don't think America is going to, and Democrats are going to ultimately go for the back to the future candidate. You know, there's a lot of, there are a lot of seared memories of 24 and a lot of it don't have to do with her, but with her boss, you know, in the White House. But, you know, it didn't end well. There are a lot of Democrats who were hoping that it would. And part of it did have to do with her inability or reluctance to do the things that you have to do at that level. You know, go on those podcasts. Be real. Be open. And of course, the answer on The View, under the withering interrogation of the people on The View, to not be able to answer the question that I think any sort of competent candidate for at any level would know how to answer when asked, did you, you know, is there anything you would have done differently? She didn't have to say, yes, these things she could have said. And I'm grateful for the opportunity he gave me. I'm not going to critique him here. I'm here to tell you, I'm not running for the, to be the second term of Joe Biden. I'm running to be the first term of Kamala Harris. And I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I mean, there are a million ways to have answered that question. She just couldn't find any of them. And those are the moments that define campaigns. Yeah. You know, it's from her perspective, right? You came very close, you know, she believes, as many people in the campaign, that given more time, she might've actually won that race, or if she had not been thrusted, if she had a chance to actually, if Biden had just not run at all, and she'd won a primary, she could have maybe actually won in no way, no way to answer that counterfactual. But you look at, you know, one way she's leading in all the polls right now. And now you and I know, and everyone knows that oftentimes the person leading in the polls at the beginning is leading by dint of name recognition and nothing else. And that falls pretty quickly, like it did for Rudy Giuliani in 2008, Joe Lieberman in 2004. But it still is true that you're not winning the democratic nomination without running up the score with black voters across the South. And you look at that field right now, and she's the candidate best position to do that. So you could, she could make an argument to herself about how she could win that nomination. Now, the question will be, you know, and this was, I think the experience John Kerry had when he was thinking of running again in 2008 is he was all ready to go, picked up the phone, started calling all his old supporters and they were like, I'm with Hillary, I'm with Biden, I'm with Hillary, I'm with Obama. I'm with Edward. And she might have a similar, you know, I don't know, not just probably, you know, from understand not just don't uh not just supporters and donors but even some uh key staff uh you know look um i respect her and she got thrust into a really difficult position um but uh i i just don't see this and um i uh uh yeah i mean i do think she's the beneficiary of early name recognition on this issue she she may well do you know really well with african-american voters in the south um but i keep thinking back to 2019 when she was a co-front runner with joe biden when she entered the race and she never made it to iowa and uh her numbers in those southern states weren't that good um so i don't know i uh it's it's you know there's one i just don't have enough information to know but i don't think i think she's going to receive some um tough tough uh news from some of the people whose support perhaps she was counting on anyone i didn't mention that you have your eye on um actually it's kind of uncanny because uh you you you listed a bunch of folks who you know look um uh i got two guys from illinois right yeah i was gonna i was looking for a good rom clip to play at the end for you but i want to look rom look rom rom you know i would say that um uh gavin newsom won the presidential primary of 2025 uh i think rom is doing pretty well in 2026 at least with opinion elites i mean he's he's he's throwing out a bunch of ideas he's really aggressive um you know and we'll see where that takes him uh governor pritzker is running for re-election but it seems pretty clear to me that he's headed in that direction and he's shown a lot more serious political chops than i uh would have expected when he first ran for office uh he's and he does have affection among uh some among the democratic base you probably hear it in your own and he's got obviously he's got the advantage of resources um so you know i i wouldn't draw him out of the out of the circle um you know um rumors emanate from washington that cory booker might run again um he didn't do that well in 2020 um but he's got talents he's got gifts and in an election that may be about sort of character and kind of the you know to borrow biden's phrase though no one should use it the soul of america which honestly is going to be important in 2028 you know he's a he's a guy who can speak to that uh but i you know i don't know if he can you know do appreciably better uh than he did but i'm also like open to someone we haven't you know someone coming from somewhere we don't even know like i said this is this is a a thing an election that's grooved for an outsider and it may be you know you hear about mark cuban you hear other people uh mention some of the things that are going to happen in the next couple of years so who knows who knows uh i remember calling john stewart and in uh 2019 after zelensky got elected president of ukraine before zelensky became you know the wartime leader the churchill of our time uh and i said to john john you know short jewish comedians they're all the rage right now uh so uh you know don't don't count him out all right well that's i think it's a great place to leave it john stewart for president david axelrod thanks for joining us always great to talk to you see you in chicago absolutely thanks dan pods of america is a crooked media production our show is produced by austin fisher saul rubin mckenna roberts and ferris safari with reed churlin elijah cone and adrian hill our team includes matt de groot ben hefcote jordan canter charlotte landis carol pela vive david tolls mia kelman ryan young and naomi single our staff is proudly unionized with the writers guild of america east hey everyone my name is elijah cone and i've been a producer here at crooked media for a decade i love making our shows with the smart creative people who work here and hearing from all of you who listen every week but the thing that i'm proudest of is that video we made of yvette ramaswamy 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