1080: Revenge of the Libs

24:24No, I look today. The RCP average, the real clear politics average was 3.3 at the end. And to your point, like there were a couple of polls late. They were like Cheryl plus one, Cheryl plus two plus three plus one. Like it, it, it seemed like it was tightening up and this is the one. Your day has passed Atlas Intel. Yeah. They want, they officially lost their eight plus rating tonight. Fuck you. Oh, that's a polling firm for all you non-sickos out there. I'm really excited to never have to learn how to say chitter rally properly i took you just did you did it correctly well i know but i heard john say it well just because i said it wrong a couple times oh you did not not tonight but in the past okay chider cheater so this is an interesting one right like phil murphy you've got an incumbent who's already served two terms so it's sort of hard for another democrat to win after democrats already served two terms chitarelli is someone who's run before so he has like near universal name recognition in the state.

25:20He was seen as a like Winsome Sears not seen as a great candidate but Jack Cittarelli not a bad candidate for Republicans. Was not like a super Trumpy Republican in the primary pretended he was a super Trumpy Republican and then basically forgot that Trump existed in the general. You look on his website and he had all the list of people who endorsed him at the very bottom in like small letters it says Donald Trump but that's like the only time he ever mentioned it. Unfortunately for Jack Cittarelli, he said Trump supported him on video and then it was put in ads for months. Oh yeah, well that's, there you go.

25:57And he also proposed a 10 % sales tax at one point, which is a bad move when cost of living is a type of issue. Oh, that's a tough one. That is a tough one. What do you think, Dan? What happened? Why was the polling so off on this one? I don't know why the polling was so off. I don't know that, you know, the polling was off in 21 too. in New Jersey, because that one ended up being much closer than we thought. So maybe we don't know how to pull New Jersey. I don't even think they did exit polls in 21 because we were so sure the race was going to be such an easy win for Murphy. So it was hard to even do – to do an apples-to-apples comparison of how things might have changed.

26:31It's a truly – this is even more of a stunning win than Abigail Spanberger's win because of the point you made, which is every election is a changed election. And it's so hard for a third Democratic term to replace a two-term Democratic governor and then to win by almost as much as that governor won the first time. I think Murphy won by 17 points in 17. But to win by such a huge margin, usually it's a begrudging thing even in a Democratic state. I think the other takeaway is if New Jersey shifted very far to the right from 2020 to 2024, a 10-point swing in Trump's direction, Trump made huge gains in the counties outside of New York City like Bergen and Passaic and Hudson.

27:15And as of the vote count I just looked at, like Cheryl is crushing in those counties. Now, and I think this doesn't tell us that New Jersey hasn't moved some to the right, but if this is a warning sign that it may be a fleeting moment for Trump to have the strength there. It may look more like Obama in Indiana in 08 than Obama in Virginia in 08, in the sense that it's a fleeting moment as opposed to a state on its path to purple status. Ron Brandstein was tweeting. He was looking through the exits and some of the - I literally have that highlighted on this. Really? It's so funny that you're going to do that.

27:52He said, no group received more attention as evidence of realignment in 24 than working class minorities. But Spanberger won 84 % of non-whites without a college degree. And Sheryl won 71 % of them. And that number is probably going to be adjusted up. In each case, that's better than Kamala Harris in 2024. Oh, I was going to say. Ron had a few of them. So who knows? Ron also pointed out that in New Jersey, the Republican, Cheryl didn't get back to the Democratic share with Hispanic voters that we reached in 17 or the 2020 presidential race. But Cittarelli did not come close to Trump's 2024 Hispanic number of 43 percent.

28:31He only got 34 percent, which suggests that Trump, like having permanently changed the baseline for Hispanic voters, that assumption is probably not proven out yet. Yeah. And I think I don't want to step on any of Dan's meta takes at the end, but in all of these races, it does seem like the voters that the voting groups that shifted the most towards Trump in 24, young voters, some black men, Latino voters. And then in some of the polling we've seen in the last couple of months, those have been the voters who are now disapproving of Trump. And I think this election has shown that like they actually did flip back to Democrats in a lot of these and a lot of these races.

29:10Or they flip to the couch, which is the more likely thing here. Or they flip to the couch. Which is just like... Like J.D. Vance. Yes, exactly. Too late for that? Never too late. It's just, this is such a smaller electorate with more highly engaged voters. So it's not necessarily that a bunch of these people, there will be some who voted Trump in 24, who voted for Sheryl or Spanberger in 25. But the most more likely scenario is people who came out for Trump in 24 stayed home. Now, that is a sign of political weakness for Trump because he has not been able to turn these people into regular Republican voters.

29:44And he's not going to be on the ballot. He'll never be on the ballot again. Will they come off the couch for J.D. Vance, Tommy? Phrasing. Yes. Come off the couch? I don't know. It's late. It's 9.15. My kids had me up before 4. It's okay. We have a 7 a.m. flight tomorrow. Great. Anything else in New Jersey? No? Great state. Close to New York. Easy to commute to the city. Good, good. That's the kind of analysis people come for.

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31:45Pennsylvania, we retain three state Supreme Court justices. So we got the 5-2 majority. We mentioned that. It's a big deal. Should we talk about the biggest? Just honestly, probably the most impressive electoral performance of the whole night are these two candidates that won that flipped Republican seats in the Georgia Public Service Commission because they were state. This is a statewide statewide race. And not only did they just win, knocked out these Republicans. The margin here is 61 to 38 in one of them and 62 to 38 in the other. I mean, wow. And don't take our word for it. We're going to drop in right here, Steve Bannon, talking about this race on the War Room podcast tonight.

32:28The midterms start tonight. One of the biggest warning signs that we've got that we need to get focus is these two commissioners in Georgia, the MTG mentioned. First time in 30 years that Democrats have won a statewide election. I don't think they've ever had commissioners have been Democrats in a couple of decades. That is a warning that this thing is going to cut deeper. So Bannon legitimately, I think, was shaken up by this Georgia result. And for those wondering, what are you guys talking about? This is a state agency that regulates utilities and makes sure that electricity, natural gas, and telecommunications are provided safely and at reasonable rates.

33:05But it became a proxy for this broader political battle we're all waging this evening. And you know why people who are listening to us may be more aware of this race than some other folks? Because one organization that was laser focused on this race, Vote Save America. Damn right. Great work to that team. And they would tell us, hey, could you in the pod talk about the Georgia Public Service Commission? And we'd be like, what? And they were right. Glad we focused on that. Yeah. You got to be feeling good if you're John Ossoff trying to defend a seat in Georgia. Again, obviously, very different electorate, midterm to off year.

33:44But I don't know. What do you think, Dan? I think it's very positive, right? Like, this is, it's just, if there was lingering positive effects for Donald Trump after 2024, then you would, these would have shown up in some way, shape, or form. And the exact opposite happened, right? This is a, it's a full rebuke. And the fact that it's even showing up in Georgia, like Virginia, that's a Democratic state. New Jersey, that's a Democratic state. California gets a Democratic state. Maine, Democratic state. Georgia, purple as can be. Trump won it last time. And the fact that Democrats were able to win there, that Steve Bannon's right to be worried.

34:18When Ossoff was in here, he said that he thinks his race is going to be like a half a billion dollar election. The Georgia Senate race. Also, way taller than I thought. Very tall. Very tall. Very tall. Goddamn good looking. Handsome. Really handsome. Handsome and tall? That seems unfair. Handsome and tall. If he were blonde, he would look like a DHS or Ice recruiting costume. He's got that kind of like 50s throwback handsomeness. You know what I mean? These guys get it. No, you're glad he's not blonde, right? You're like, don't step into my territory here. That's right. Get away from my culture.

34:50My culture is not your costume. My culture is Ice's costume.

34:57Says Thomas Frederick Vitor. Should we come back here to California? Prop 50 wins. Crushes. Great work. We got 65 % of the votes in. It is 64 to 35 right now. That's awesome. That's a lot of votes to count already. I'm surprised. Usually we don't count votes that fast. No, we count them early. They come in early, we count them early. That's right. And then we have to wait. It's the harvesting. The rigging starts tomorrow morning. Well, when you rig, then it makes it easy to count. It's a joke. big win for the Democratic Party in being able to neutralize the gerrymandering that Texas did. So they took five.

35:38Now we'll take five. They're still trying to take more so it won't completely neutralize the gerrymandering they're trying to do. But it is very good news for Democrats taking the House in the midterms of 2026 at least gives us more of a fighting chance. And also, big win for Gavin Newsom. This was a risk. so he took a bet i i think this is a really big deal i mean obviously once he put forward the idea and said it was going to be on the there was going to be a ballot initiative it seemed very likely given that this is the state of california given the makeup of off-year voters in a special election like that are primarily like the libya slips yeah there's like the positive america election like odds are we were going to win it but he had the guts in the foresight to conceive of this idea push it forward and get this thing done and like imagine if we were sitting here tonight like knowing we were going at the 2026 midterms at a deficit of five seats because of texas like this is a huge deal i believe he he spoke about the idea for the first time right here yeah right here at this table yeah and then we i think we scooped his own podcast by accident because we put out the clip early told us he's like well we can either try to do something with the legislature he's like but also i think we might just be able to put it on the ballot yeah wow what an idea cool do it here it is here we are things happen do you vote for prop 50 then were you four did i yeah me too it's good me too me too any okay let's do let's do meditix any other any other races that we should talk about we talked about those two main uh the main ballot measures we so there's the a red flag uh gun uh gun control we call it sure it's a red it's a red flag uh gun measure gun safety measure uh has passed and uh and then Tommy you noted that a voter ID measure failed.

37:27John wasn't there a big race in your wife's hometown? Oh yeah Aftab. Mayor Aftab Purval uh had a challenge from JD Vance's half brother kicked his ass. The love seat. 50 points. Crushed him. Crushed him. Absolutely crushed him. Good job good job Aftab. Great mayor great person glad Cincinnati has him for another term. I think that's it any meditakes should we do meditakes dan what do you got dan yeah unschool your meditake i'll give you give it give it to us first before you put it in the message box yeah it's well what's how what time are you posting this now it's live well hold on i need a second gotta hit send um i think the biggest one is that this is a massive rebuke of trump right he like he is massive he's underwater in all these states the in both virginia new jersey two-thirds of voters were dissatisfied with the direction of the country.

38:20The economy was the number one issue for most voters. In both states, the Democrats won those voters by 20 points. The Democrats won with moderates. They won with independents. They held their margins with young people in the core parts of the Democratic coalition. Donald Trump is unpopular. His political operation couldn't get out of their own way, made things harder for Republicans in Virginia and New Jersey. It's very clear in the results. I think Abigail Spanberger would have won shutdown, no shutdown, doge, no doge. But what he did to the federal workforce and federal government sunk that race, made the political situation so much worse.

38:55And then he's got his fucking Grim Reaper, Russ Vogt, just canceling infrastructure projects for New Jersey in the months and weeks leading up to the election. And so it's a huge rebuke for him. There are a whole slew of polls came out over the weekend. All of them had Trump at his lowest approval rating in a very long time. People are pissed about the economy. They're pissed at him. Democrats are still fired up. Even if they don't like the brand of our leaders, they're still showing up to vote for Democrats. Most of the polling shows that people who voted for Spanberg and Sheryl did it to vote for them, not to oppose Trump or someone else.

39:24And so even when our – so meditate number one, very bad for Trump. Meditate number two, that at least in this off-year election environment, the base of our party, our true most loyal voters, remain incredibly fired up and ready to go vote for Democrats, even if they are dissatisfied with large parts of the party leadership. Fired up and ready to go. I like that. That's pretty good. Dan Counterpoint, a political analyst I follow on Truth Social, posted, Trump wasn't on the ballot and shutdown were the two reasons that Republicans lost elections tonight, comma, according to pollsters. That was from Donald Trump.

39:58Was that Alan Lickman? Yeah, that was one of the keys. I have another new pundit. He was tied up for a bit, and now he's out and about again, Mr. George Santos. Yes. That's what he's saying. Fuck you, Curtis Sliwa. I hate you, your dumb wife, that stupid beret of yours, and all your fucking cats. That's a tweet we just got from George Santos. That's good. One more question. Federal government has now been shut down for 36 days. That is the longest shutdown in American history. Donald Trump seemed to, well, it didn't seem to. He did. In his Truth Social post was basically like, it was the shutdown that hurt us.

40:41do we think now's a good time for democrats to cave i mean dan could you imagine what's going on there i have not paid i i see people are looking for an off-ramp and then i saw a lot of other senate democrats go on the record to cnn and be like this would be fucking crazy to do this now so i don't know what's real what sources and what's not what well i read i read punch bowl so you don't have to and thank you thank you thank you and so what what the folks at punch bowl are telling me is there's upwards of a dozen Senate Democrats who are talking to Republicans or interested in some sort of off-ramp, which would include kind of what Thun's been proposing, which is open the government in exchange for a vote on the Obamacare subsidies.

41:21Republicans had a caucus meeting today. The Republican senators also want to vote on the Obamacare subsidies. I think, I'm not saying they're going to vote for it, but they at least want to be able to put up a Republican bill so they're not just voting against a Democratic bill. So there's some interest there. People seem to be very quickly moving to the exits on this. I keep asking this question, but like, what's going on with the House? You can't have a fucking vote in the Senate on this and then just not have any kind of deal happen in the House. Otherwise, it's a big leap. It's nothing. It's a flaw in the plan.

41:51There's also a lot in there, which is really the motivating factor here is the appropriators really want to appropriate. And part of this deal would be to get the appropriations process working again and they'd have three they'd pass three minibuses i don't even want to get into what that is but probators are excited about it but like i like i get the substantive reasons that everyone wants to end the shutdown we want people to get snap benefits we want tsa to work we don't want any more planes to crash i saw the sean duffy said he was going to shut down a lot of our airspace next week if the government doesn't reopen she don't love that yeah so that's all not ideal but if you wake up tomorrow and or in your your hakim jeffries or you're Chuck Schumer and you're meeting with your leadership or you're having a caucus meeting, like what in the data suggests that what you've been doing for the last month has been the wrong approach?

42:38So there's, there's a lot of ways to choreograph this so that Republicans can still say, um, you know, we didn't let them hold us, hold us hostage, uh, on something while the government was shut down. Right. Like there's a way to do it. So if you don't get the vote you want, then the government shuts down again because you only pass a funding bill that goes that far. So that's fine if they want to choreograph it, but the House has to be involved here, and we have to know that Trump's going to sign a bill that includes ACA subsidies as well. So if we're not having meetings where it's a deal between Trump and Schumer and Thune and Johnson and Jeffries, then what the fuck are we doing?

43:18Well, John, Trump is having breakfast with the Senate Republicans tomorrow, and he's going to tell them to invoke the nuclear option, eliminate the filibuster, and then not just open the government, but then pass a whole series of voter suppression methods. He also truthed about that tonight. That's what he wants them to do. That's another thing. Bad mail-in voting, do all these other things. This is one of the reasons they don't want to follow his advice and eliminate the filibuster is they don't have the votes to do all that crazy shit. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are not going to do that.

43:48They're not going to probably get, I guess they can get the Tillis. I don't know. I think they can, they could get, they don't have, they don't, they don't have the votes for those people to even get rid of the, they probably don't have the votes to get rid of the filibuster that they don't. And they don't want to get rid of the filibuster because then they have to do all Trump's crazy shit right now. He calls him and says, do this insane thing. And they're like, well, we can't, the Democrats won't let us. But once they hit, but now he's learned, he's like, wait a minute. Wait, this is what's stopping me from doing all the crazy shit.

44:13That's only five years in. Yeah. He's figured it out. He did have some new spin on his election night defeat. He tweeted out or chart truth out just out the 60 minutes interview of Donald Trump on CBS Sunday night was the highest rated 60 minutes in years. That is some cope. That is some cope that is right alongside when every election the Republicans lose. Someone tweets a photo of a map of a state or the country. And it's like, if not for all these cities, Democrats would never win. And it's like, yes, if not for all the human beings, the citizens who live in those cities who vote for Democrats, we would never win.

44:46You are correct. Counties don't vote. Here's a here's a Democratic senator who's not backing down. Chris Murphy just put out a statement about the shutdown. Democrats win when we show the American people what we stand for and how we're willing to fight for it, as we have been for the last month. Tonight's election results are an unmistakable rejection of Donald Trump's corruption and Republicans billionaire agenda. but the result should also give Democrats confidence that the American people have our back as we engage in the fight to protect people's health care and save our democracy. Good for Chris Murphy.

45:13Get him, Murph dog. Meanwhile, fucking Chuck Schumer can't even tell us who he voted for in New York. Let's talk about that for a second. It's pretty galling. It's just so, it's bad politics. Yeah. Also, if you didn't vote for him and you know that everyone's going to be pissed at you, just fucking grow a pair and say you didn't vote for him. Just say it one way or the other. This has been Chuck... Cowardly. But this is, I think, Chuck Schumer's greatest flaw as a leader. He's afraid to tell people what they don't want to hear. And what is his thinking here? That the Republicans would be like, man, we were going to run all these ads comparing John Ossoff to Mamdani.

45:49But Schumer never voted for him. So I guess that's off the table. I guess we can't do it. Would be unfair. Rats, he foiled our plans. Well, in his, the Schumer approach is only just a little bit worse than Hakeem Jeffries, who just took on water from the left for like a month or two months. Yeah, he took the bandaid off painfully slowly, but he did take it off. You took it off and I give him credit for that, but it's like just politics. Like what, what did you, how did that benefit you? But you got the left mad at you and all the attacks you were worried about can still come. Yeah, I'm like, I'm almost more offended as like a, like a practitioner of politics.

46:26I would have been annoyed if you said I'm not voting for him for sure but this was the worst of all options. Also does Chuck Schumer think he's going to take this secret to his grave? He's going to face reporters and they're just going to people are going to keep asking who you voted for It's so annoying. Secret ballot. Secret ballot.

46:50He's never going to come on Pod Save America that's the only thing we're going to ask. He's not invited. Who would you vote for, Chuck? Tell us. Come on. Was it Sliwa? He shows up at the studio and there's just in his chair is a new piece of crooked merch called that says closeted homosexual waiting for him. Remember when people were rocking homosexual shirts like in real life? A lot of people's 2020 tweets did not age well, I would say that. Well, let us never say his name again. That's actually, fuck yes, that's it. In the words of the next mayor of New York City. Let us defile the words of his father.

47:33Great night. Great night, everyone. We're still alive. We're still kicking. Democracy is not dead yet. So everyone should feel good about that. Thank you to everyone who volunteered in this election, who got out there and voted, who talked to your friends about it. It really mattered. And we'll see you guys in D.C. See you, Crooked Con. What a time to all get together in person. I'm so excited. Better than the alternative. See you guys soon. Bye, everyone. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to crooked.com slash friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts.

48:11Also, please consider leaving us a review. That helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Crooked. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Illich Frank, and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farrah Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reed Cherlin is our executive editor. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant.

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