The Democrats' takeaway from the Big Beautiful Bill

22:13Brian Tyler Cohen:And I know we have agency in this, but is there some concern that we're far away? We have over a year until the next election. And while this might be very much in the zeitgeist right now, that they can kind of escape by virtue of the amount of time that's going to pass. Yeah, look, I do worry a lot about that. I mean, you never know what could happen. There could be some sort of exigent event, you know, sort of a terrorist attack. Right. I mean, look, in January of 2020, nobody thought that 60 days from then we would be in the midst of a global pandemic. Exactly. You never know what's going to happen.

22:40Brian Tyler Cohen:Exactly. You never know what's going to happen. Donald Trump always likes to fabricate like the latest caravan full of, you know, MS-13 guys who have Ebola or whatever right around an election. So they're going to try to change the subject to what they want. It's just incumbent on us to remind people what a piece of shit this bill is. Right. Like six trillion dollars in debt, according to the conservative Cato Foundation. Yeah. Massive tax cuts for the richest people in the country, throwing 12 million people off of Medicaid. I mean, this is like a cataclysmic event politically. It's going to harm real people.

23:11People are going to die like 50 ,000 people a year are going to die because of this bill. And we need to be the ones who tell those stories. Republicans will lie and spin and Trump will say, oh, no, I said no Medicaid cuts and there's none in this bill. And just people are completely full of shit. We need to correct that.

23:24Brian Tyler Cohen:What is the polling showing right now in terms of how much people actually know about what's in this bill? Just in terms of knowing how much work we have to do to get people aware of what's happening. Yeah, so like in polls that look at approval of the bill, it ranges from 19 points underwater to 29 points underwater. So it's wildly unpopular. But Priorities USA did some polling that found less than half of Americans know anything about the bill. and only 8 % of Americans could name Medicaid cuts as a detail of the bill they have heard about. So the most unpopular part of this thing is barely talked about.

23:59Brian Tyler Cohen:Right. And I think that it's incumbent on us then every opportunity we have to let people know that, yes, there are 17 million people who are going to lose their health coverage through Medicaid. 18 million kids are going to lose their access to school meals. We have food assistance is going to be stripped away to the tune of$300 billion. We're going to see 300 rural hospitals close, including the one that I just referred to before. We're going to see the budget explode to the tune of, you know, it depends on the estimates, but the one that you just cited before was$6 trillion. That's in addition to the$8 trillion that Republicans exploded the deficit during Trump's first term for the exact same thing for these tax cuts.

24:35Brian Tyler Cohen:And it would blow up ICE's budget to the tune of, I think it would be the sixth, if If ICE was a military, they would have the 16th largest budget on Earth. It's terrifying. They have a bigger budget than the militaries of a good portion of Western Europe, including countries like Brazil, Israel, Italy. And so that's what this bill does. And I think to your exact point, it's incumbent on us to make sure that people know it. But they have, I think one of the more insidious aspects of this is that they have included crumbs in this bill to be able to give themselves messaging opportunities. And so they're touting this idea that there's no taxes on overtime, no taxes on tip, and no taxes on Social Security.

25:18Brian Tyler Cohen:First of all, no taxes on Social Security does not exist. It is a figment of the Republicans' imagination. Fully made up. It is not in the bill. If anybody could find me that text, I would love to see it. And then as far as no taxes on tip and no taxes on overtime, those are minute provisions that are capped at$25 ,000 for tips and$12 ,500 for overtime. So these are still poverty wages that they're allowing before they start taxing again. And the provision sunsets in two years. So it's just enough time while Trump is still in office that he can beat his chest about that. The second he's out of office, those things go away.

25:56Brian Tyler Cohen:And look, they likely know full well that if a Democrat, first of all, is allowed to win in the 2028 election cycle, but if a Democrat wins, then all of a sudden, even the minute popular provisions of this bill go away so that Republicans can say, hey, weren't things better when Daddy Trump was in office and you had all these provisions? The daddy Trump stuff is so weird, man. Why are they doing that? Yeah. I mean, look, to your point, I mean, the people who are getting a tiny, tiny little tax cut on tips for their first twenty five thousand dollars in income, they're very likely going to be losing benefits in the form of Medicaid or food assistance.

26:33Right. So those people are going to get probably going to get harmed more than they get helped. Meanwhile, a married couple worth$30 million will no longer have to pay an estate tax. They'll just pass all that money down to their kids. So those are the people that are actually benefiting. But the other thing that's helpful here, Brian, is like there are district by district breakdowns of the impact of this bill already. Like David Valadeo, California 22nd District, 65 ,000 people in his district are going to lose access to their health care. 60 ,000 could lose access to food assistance. 3 ,612 energy jobs could be lost because it also guts tax credits for renewable energy.

27:09So the impact is real.

27:10Brian Tyler Cohen:Yeah, and it's in these districts where, I mean, these frontline members, many of whom have predicated their entire identity on protecting those Medicaid recipients, on making sure that the budget isn't exploded. These are the very people who ushered through this same bill. I mean, you have you have people like Lisa Murkowski who are trying to applaud the fact that she was able to make this bill less terrible by saying, OK, well, we we were able to raise the rural hospital fund from twenty five billion dollars to fifty billion dollars. But but it's to offset damage that the same bill imposes. And so if you're voting in favor of legislation that would strip$1.1 billion from Medicaid, but then also saying, hey, we're able to get a few percentage points of that funding back, you don't get credit for making the thing that you are voting for less bad when you had the opportunity to just not vote for it.

28:01Brian Tyler Cohen:I mean, the example I like to use is this is the equivalent of her basically saying, I was able to secure fire extinguishers in this bill that would set the forest on fire. Did you see the video of her? I think she got asked by Ryan Nobles, maybe NBC News, about criticism of the bill and criticism of her vote. And she just stared daggers into his eyes. For 10 seconds. Like, just crazy. And then was just, like, so defensive. Like, she is the victim here. Not the people in her state who are going to get thrown off their health care or going to lose food assistance. And I think the saddest part is, I'm going to read an excerpt from the New York Times.

28:38Brian Tyler Cohen:And this is you're not you'll be you'll be shocked about this. But this is Lindsey Graham speaking about Donald Trump. He likes hosting people. It relaxes him. He said that Mr. Trump told him he could go to the pro shop and pick out a shirt. So like this is who these people have debased themselves for. This is who they are currying favor for. This is who they're so fucking afraid of that they will throw their own constituents, millions of their own constituents under the bus. This is who they'll strip lifelines, essential lifelines away from so that they can suck up to a guy who might give them who might give them a free fucking hat from the pro shop.

29:16Lindsey Graham. There was a profile of Lindsey Graham a couple of years back by Mark Leibovich, where he just talked about how desperate he was to be relevant. And it just explains everything about Graham. You know, he is for whatever's happening. When John McCain was potentially going to be president, he was best friends with John McCain. When Donald Trump came on the scene, now he abandons McCain. Now he's a Trump guy. He's one of the saddest, most pathetic people in all of politics. What does he get out of this? I guess he gets a hat and he gets to talk Trump into starting a war with Iran. Oh, that was fun.

29:44Yeah. What's happening to Ukraine, though? Oh, actually, they just cut off deliveries of incredibly important weapon systems like interceptor missiles, like the Patriot missiles that block Ukrainian cities from getting destroyed by Russian ballistic missiles and drones. We just cut that off. So Lindsey Graham, you were the big Ukraine guy. You're welcoming Zelensky to Washington, fighting for the Ukrainian military, pushing money their way. Now Trump's cutting them off.

30:09Brian Tyler Cohen:Right. I mean, it's the same thing as Elon Musk, who's complaining about the impacts of this bill as far as clean energy and EV tax credits are concerned. Yeah, dude. Yeah, buddy. You got these people into power. Congrats. You bankrolled this party. You dropped 300 million. You have somebody like Lindsey Graham who's doing the same thing, who's, you know, bolstering the profile and kowtowing to a guy who is acting in a way that is completely antithetical to all of Lindsey Graham's purported values. And I think that that's the sad reality of what Trump has done to so many people. He has basically gotten them on record showing that they stand for nothing at the end of the day.

30:44Brian Tyler Cohen:You have the House Freedom Caucus who pretends that their whole thing, their whole raison d 'etre to be in Congress is that they want to make sure that we don't explode the deficit and balloon the debt so that future generations of Americans are not saddled with bills that we can't pay off. And yet they ushered it through, certainly bigger than anything those communists on the left like Barack Obama and Joe Biden were putting through. And now their names are all over the thing. So what do you stand for at the end of the day if it's not the very things that you are in Congress to do? Well, in the maybe the number one example is J.D.

31:18Vance, who cast the tying vote that got this bill passed by the U.S. Senate. This is a man who came up as some sort of populist working man's hero talking about me, ma and people. And, you know, he had his book. And now he tweeted the only thing that mattered in the in the bill was the money for ICE, that everything else, including, quote, the minutiae of Medicaid policy is immaterial. So I guess by minutiae, he means throwing 10 to 12 million people off of Medicaid. That's what he's that's minutiae now.

31:50Brian Tyler Cohen:Right. There was a quote from Republican lawmaker Derek Van Orden. He said, I guess he was getting defensive because people were accusing the Republicans of just basically being a wholly owned subsidiary of Donald Trump. And so, I don't know, which I don't like, I don't know where anybody would get that idea. But Derek Van Orden said, the president of the United States didn't give us an assignment. We're not a bunch of little bitches around here, OK? I'm a member of Congress. I represent almost 800 ,000 Wisconsinites. I want to tell you, like one of his next tweets was, I am standing with real Donald Trump and the one big, beautiful bill.

32:22Brian Tyler Cohen:Well, once again, we have some pretend-a-cons backstabbing President Trump. No bueno. Jesus Christ. He is one of a bunch of members of Congress who all said they would absolutely not, under any circumstances, vote for something that included Medicaid cuts. Cut two. Here we are. Yeah. I think there were two people who voted against it. It was like Brian Fitzpatrick and Thomas Massey. That's it. Everybody else was perfectly content. And so now that people are looking at this, what is your, you know, look, you work at Crooked Media, host Pod Save American, Pod Save the World. What is your focus now as it relates to this bill as we head toward midterms here, which, again, are more than a year away?

33:02Yeah, I mean, I think the insidious thing about this bill is that a lot of the impact is going to be delayed until after the elections. And so we just have to make sure people understand what was voted on and what was coming. And it's pretty frustrating that this is getting rammed through July 4th weekend. And, you know, the people were more focused on the Diddy trial than they were on what was happening in Washington. So it's incumbent upon us.

33:23Brian Tyler Cohen:To the Democrats' credit, the fact that Hakeem Jeffries was able to stand on the floor and speak for almost nine hours meant that the Republicans could not vote on this bill at 4.30 in the morning. It meant that they had to vote on this bill, you know, in broad daylight. And that's, you know, one, I mean, hardly a silver lining, but at a bare minimum, it's what we should be doing. Look, I appreciate the hustle. Good for him. I couldn't talk for nine hours straight. I'm glad we're talking about this thing in the middle of the day and not the dead of night. But it's going to be a long time between now and the midterms, and we're going to have to talk about this every day, constantly, and make sure that all these frontline members own this thing.

34:01Brian Tyler Cohen:Yeah. And one step that we all can take in terms of making sure that voices like Tommy's and your co-hosts at PodSafe America are elevated in this ecosystem is, if you're not yet subscribed to PodSafe America's YouTube channel, I'm going to put the link right here on the screen and also in the post description of this video. These are the voices that we need to lift up so that when people come onto YouTube, come onto these social media platforms looking for information that they are not immediately sorted to right-wing sources. So again, I'll put that link on the screen and also in the post description of this video.

34:26Brian Tyler Cohen:Tommy, appreciate your time. Thanks, buddy. I'm joined now by the managing editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, Kyle Kondik. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thanks for having me. So I want to talk to you a little bit about some changes that we've seen with how you and your team have begun rating these races as we head toward midterms. I want to start first and foremost with what you think the implications might be for somebody like Lisa Murkowski, for example, who was this crucial vote for the passage of the one big, beautiful bill in the Senate.

35:01Brian Tyler Cohen:Of course, she's not up in this term, but just the implications for somebody like this who will obviously have a major role in the passage of this bill. Murkowski, I think even though she basically she won her last race and races in the past with substantial crossover support from independents and Democrats, I think she is still fundamentally Republican. She was elected as Republican last time she was at one point elected as an independent way back in 2010 after she had lost her primary. But, you know, fundamentally, she's a Republican. While she does break from the party on certain things, she did come through for them on this on this big vote.

35:39Now, it wasn't without some price tag. I mean, there were some pieces of this bill that are designed specifically for her, but that's not unheard of. You remember the sort of the horse trading about the Affordable Care Act in the 2009 and 2010 range. You know, there are little provisions put in there, maybe significant provisions put in there to appeal to individual members for their individual districts or states. So, again, that's not necessarily unprecedented, even though, you know, you sort of take a step back. You're not jaded about this stuff the way that I am. And you say, oh, well, that's pretty distasteful.

36:11But, you know, it is what it is.

36:13Brian Tyler Cohen:What about the environment in Alaska? We saw Mary Peltola win in Alaska. She's since lost, but still it shows that Alaska may not be as far-right Republican, solidly Republican as we might have presumed in the past. Yeah, the state has changed a little bit in that the Republicans are not quite as strong as they used to be there, although Donald Trump did still win the state. But I think it was maybe 12, 13 points in 2024. His margin was only about 10 in 2020. And you have Lisa Murkowski there who, again, provided an important vote on this and is going to vote with the Republicans most of the time.

36:51But she does have kind of mavericky sorts of votes here and there. The state legislature – this is down in the weeds a little bit. But the state legislature often has these sort of like cross-partisan coalitions that govern things. And so it's just kind of a quirky state politically. The state does have an open governor's race coming up next year. Teltola is a possibility to run for governor. And if she did, as a Democrat, that might actually be kind of a legitimate toss up race, again, even though Alaska definitely has a Republican lean to it.

37:18Brian Tyler Cohen:OK, so let's talk about another big retirement announcement or announcement not to seek reelection. And that is Tom Tillis, the senator from North Carolina. What are you looking at in terms of that race as we head toward 2026? Because that seems to be the biggest pickup opportunity for Democrats. Yeah, we had started that race as a toss up and we kept it there after Tom Tillis retired. You know, Tillis is in some ways kind of a generic Republican in terms of his electoral performance. He's won really narrow races in both 2014, defeating incumbent Democrat Kay Hagan and then holding off Democrat Cal Cunningham by a little less than two points in 2020.

37:58Tillis did have a little bit of sort of residual Republican strength in suburban Raleigh and suburban Charlotte, which helped him do about, I think it was kind of four tenths of a point better in terms of margin than Donald Trump did in 2020. But they were pretty, you know, their overall performances were pretty similar in 2020. And as an open seat, you know, naturally, I think for any party, you'd kind of rather be running for an open seat if you're the challenger party. You know, all eyes are on Democratic, former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper, who has thought about running. I think he'd probably be a pretty strong recruit for Democrats there.

38:31You know, on the Republican side, there are any number of people who could run. You know, maybe the most prominent person is the person whose last name is Trump, Laura Trump, who was a co-chair of the RNC. She's Trump's daughter-in-law. And presumably if she ran, she would have Trump's endorsement. And the thing that I'm just sort of curious about here is that a lot of Republicans seem to believe that they need to sort of be Trumpy, I guess, to try to get as much of the midterm turnout as they can without Trump on the ballot. Well, you might have an instance where you actually would have someone with the last name of Trump on the ballot in North Carolina, despite it being a midterm year and not a presidential race.

39:09I do still think generally the turnout environment should at least be a little bit better for Democrats kind of across the board than it was in 2024. In a state like North Carolina, which is very close to competitive, although, you know, has a little bit of a Republican lean, just a little bit better of a turnout environment could, you know, could take North Carolina from being like a 50-48 Republican state to more of a 50-51. And then we'll see what the candidate contrast ends up being. But, you know, if Cooper doesn't run, if Laura Trump doesn't run, you know, you might have actually big competitive primaries on both sides, hypothetically.

39:42Brian Tyler Cohen:If we do see a Roy Cooper, who, again, to your exact point, would likely be the strongest, at least as of right now, the strongest Democratic recruit and Laura Trump on the Republican side, is there any polling yet to suggest how that race would turn out? There hasn't been anything yet. North Carolina is a state that has just it's polled pretty often. There are a lot of university polls of that state. Obviously, North Carolina has been a presidential battleground in recent years, so there's been some attention on it. But I haven't really seen anything lately. You know, Tillis himself would often trail Cooper in polling, although that's not necessarily predictive because one other thing about North Carolina is that it's not uncommon for Democrats to be kind of overstated in polling in North Carolina, which we've seen in, you know, in other places and in other kinds of races.

40:28So, you know, Cooper is the one who would have the name ID as the former governor who just left office at the end of last year. Although, you know, Trump is a Trump, so I guess she'd have name ID too. At least people recognizing her last name, if not necessarily knowing her all that well. You know, she was floated as a possibility to be appointed to the Senate seat that Marco Rubio left behind when he became secretary of state in Florida. Obviously, that didn't happen. And Trump, she has some connections to the Wilmington area in North Carolina. So she's not some sort of total stranger to North Carolina or anything like that.

41:03Brian Tyler Cohen:What about the always elusive main Senate seat in terms of Susan Collins' popularity? Collins makes smart votes to break from her party from time to time. I think she just made another one in voting against the quote unquote one big beautiful bill. It seemed like Republicans were trying to get her support in certain ways, but she voted against it. But from a Republican perspective, with a 53-47 majority and the ability to potentially hand out what we call kind of a hall pass or two to vulnerable members, I mean, Collins is the only Republican senator who represents the state that Kamala Harris won.

41:40And so obviously she's the only one in that sort of situation is on the ballot in 2026. The situation with Collins is is is pretty strange and pretty unpredictable. She was a big underdog in the polls back in 2020. She ended up winning. And even the polling now, there's wide disparities on what her actual image is. Let me give you a couple examples of just some recent polling. So Pan-Atlantic, which is a main pollster, they have her favorability, 49 % favorable, 45 % unfavorable. That's not great, but it's also not bad. University of New Hampshire just did a poll. They had her favorability, 14%, 57 % unfavorable, and they also offer a neutral option, which is 26%.

42:22But you can see that's a huge difference. I mean, one poll makes it look like she has no chance of winning and the other one suggests that maybe she would she would be OK. We're still waiting to see who the Democrats get to run there. There's a former congressional staffer and Jordan Woods who's running. But but I wouldn't say that he's some sort of top tier recruiter. At least he's an unproven person. You know, maybe he proves to prove to be a great candidate. But I think Democrats are looking for someone else there. And there's a lot of focus on the outgoing governor there, Janet Mills, as a potential Collins challenger.

42:50And she reportedly is considering it.

42:52Brian Tyler Cohen:And we've seen that unpredictable polling play itself out in Maine as well. I mean, Sarah Gideon back in 2020, I believe it was, was it 2020 or 2018? 2020, yeah. There were polls that were showing her 10, 12 points up ahead of Susan Collins. And of course, to your exact point, Susan Collins was able to pull out a win in that race. So we've seen in an environment where it so often feels like polling is just, is not working. nothing exemplifies that more than the polling that we've seen come out of the state of Maine. I want to move over to the Nebraska Senate. We had an insurgent challenger come out in the last election cycle.

43:32Brian Tyler Cohen:That was Dan Osborne, who ran as an independent. Of course, he garnered all of the support of the Democrats as well. But what are we looking at in terms of the prospect of a Dan Osborne challenge again in the other open, well, not open, in the other Senate seat in Nebraska? Yeah. So Osborne is exploring a run. I think it seems like he's basically going to run. Yeah. I don't know if it's I don't know if it's official official, but, you know, this time it's probably going to be a better political environment. You know, there's just the nonpresidential party in a midterm. That's kind of when you want to be the opposition party and running in an election.

44:08But Nebraska is also definitely a Republican leaning state. And I think that Senator Fischer, who Osborne challenged last time, I think she got kind of caught flat-footed a little bit. Senator Ricketts, I think, is probably paying closer attention to this and is ready for the challenge. So I wouldn't – I mean the Democrats are going to need kind of a big upset or two if they want to have any chance of winning the Senate next year. Maybe Nebraska would be part of it. I think it's probably fairly unlikely. But it should at least be on people's radar screen.

44:39Brian Tyler Cohen:So what are you looking at big picture in terms of the House and the Senate? As of right now, if we were to do a snapshot in time, what we could expect if the election was today? In our U.S. House ratings, we have 209 seats, safe, likely, or leaning Democratic, 207, safe, likely, leaning Republican, and then 19 toss-ups. So in terms of the ratings, we've got the Democrats a little bit closer to the magic number of 218 than the Republicans. I'd say the Democrats, just based on history, are probably bigger favorites to flip the House than what those ratings would suggest, although there are paths for the Republicans to hold on.

45:16One thing to watch coming up over the next month or two or three is that there's the potential for a new congressional map in Ohio that would maybe help the Republicans get an extra seat or two there. There's the possibility of Texas Republicans going back to the drawing board on their map. Maybe they're able to squeeze a few extra seats out of that state. That would make it harder for Democrats, although I think they probably would still be favored even in that event. But that would – if the Republicans keep the House, that might be part of the story. But I do think Democrats are favored in the House.

45:48There was a really big House retirement very recently. Don Bacon of Nebraska's 2nd District, which is the only House district represented by a Republican that gave Kamala Harris more than 50 percent of the vote. That is now an open seat. Harris won that seat by about four and a half points. We now have Democrats as favored to flip that as an open seat. And that's reflected in that top line number I just said a minute ago. So in the Senate, Democrats need to net four seats to win the Senate majority. It's 53-47 Republican right now. The Democrats also have some vulnerable seats of their own to defend.

46:24John Ossoff in Georgia, although Brian Kemp, the popular governor there, did not run. And so that was really good for Ossoff. Open seat in Michigan, where the candidate fields seem a little bit fluid. And then, you know, Democrats have an open seat in North Carolina to target. Susan Collins in Maine is a target, although how good of one is we're still trying to figure out. But even if Democrats were to hold all their current seats and flip Maine and North Carolina, that would still be a 51-49 Republican Senate. And so to actually get the majority, they've got to do all that other stuff, but then also maybe try to flip Texas, where John Cornyn is an underdog in his primary.

46:59Colin Allred, the Democratic nominee there in 2024, former House member, just announced that he's running again. Joni Ernst, maybe, in Iowa. John Husted in Ohio. You mentioned Nebraska. But these are all states that Donald Trump won by double digits, kind of, you know, teams in terms of the margins in 2024. So those are pretty heavy lifts in an era where the presidential results are pretty strongly correlated with the down ballot results. So I do think Republicans are pretty decent favorites in the Senate right now. But maybe something happens to sort of shake that loose as we move along here.

47:32Brian Tyler Cohen:Yeah. I mean, look, if ever there was an environment where something like that could happen, this is very likely it. But still, to your exact point, these are going to be heavy lifts in these states that Donald Trump and Republicans have proven successful in election cycle after election cycle. I do want to dig in real quick to one race in particular. We've seen a lot of reporting that there have been discussions among Joaquin Castro, James Tallarico, Beto O 'Rourke and Colin Allred about who would run for the Senate. Obviously, you just mentioned that Colin Allred did announce that he's running for Senate.

48:05Brian Tyler Cohen:I don't think that that precludes the other three guys from either announcing themselves or deciding who among themselves would be the next candidate to run from that block. But do you have any indication of how these guys might perform against either John Cornyn or the more extreme Republican? I believe he's the current Attorney General Ken Paxton. Is that correct? That's right. Yeah. And Paxton is the favorite in the primary as we're talking now. Which is better for Democrats in a weird way. It's better for Democrats because he is a weaker general election candidate, but also worse for Democrats in the sense that if he does pull out the win, which it's Texas, definitely not off the table, then you've got Ken Paxton, who's going to make John Cornyn look like John McCain.

48:53Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think Paxton would still be favored in the general election, but I do think that the door might be ajar for Democrats in that state. You know, remember back in 2018, you know, that was the last kind of big Democratic midterm year. And, you know, 2025 has felt a lot like 2017. So maybe 2026 will feel a lot like 2018, too. You know, better work came within three points of beating Ted Cruz that year. So it's not impossible. And, you know, you do have already a primary in Texas because there's also a former astronaut, I think his name is Terry Virts, who just announced as well.

49:28And, of course, we saw, you know, Mark Kelly is a former astronaut, you know, do quite well in Arizona and his Senate races. And so that's also a person to watch. But, you know, you could actually have a competitive Democratic primary. Usually you say, oh, well, primaries are bad because you waste money in the in the, you know, in the primary or whatever. But actually, I kind of wonder if in this instance, a primary might not actually be the worst thing in the world just because Texas is such a huge state that these candidates might need a platform to sort of test themselves and to get their names out.

49:55Now, look, there'll be a resource challenge in the general election, although a Democrat may be running against Ken Paxton in a blue-leaning midterm. That would probably turn the money spigot on, at least in terms of small dollar donations and that sort of thing. So, I mean, look, Democrats are going to have to try to play offense in places beyond Maine and North Carolina. And there are several states competing for that role. Texas might be a part of it. And again, you know, it may very well be hopeless for Democrats, but it does bear watching, particularly with this primary situation on the Republican side.

50:27Brian Tyler Cohen:Kyle, where can folks who are watching and listening right now keep up with any changes that you guys make at Crystal Ball? Yeah, so centerforpolitics.org backslash crystalball. Visit our website. You can see all of our ratings there. And you could also sign up for free to get our email newsletter. We usually come out at least once and often, usually twice a week. We just had, you know, pieces this week about the Nebraska, Nebraska 2 with Don Bacon retiring and also the North Carolina Senate race. So we're, you know, trying to keep on top of this stuff. Well, appreciate all your time today. And we'll definitely be speaking soon.

51:04Thank you.

51:06Brian Tyler Cohen:Thanks again to Congressman Raskin, Tommy Vitor, and Kyle Kondik. That's it for this episode. Talk to you next week.

51:34You