1092: Will There Be a Blue Wave in 2026?

29:14It's now part of the Constitution. um but are people willing um in the state to say i'm going to give up my local what i felt was like a vote for something unique in my state in order to make a broader statement nationally and i think democrats have been more willing to do that i'm also kind of impressed quite frankly to see. But Republicans, you're right, they gave up some of their territory, although they're not, they have not put themselves in really dangerous positions, right? They're not taking the kinds of risks like, oh, we're going to put you, you've gone from a Republican plus 20 to Republican plus two.

30:01But they do have new territory they're going to have to introduce themselves to, which no member wants to do that. They are comfortable in their district. So yes, at the end of the day, I think there is the short term, which is, okay, let's say that Republicans end up netting a couple seats out of this, two, three seats, pad their majority. So now Republicans have a six seat, or the other way to think of it is Democrats need to, instead of winning just three seats to get a majority now need six or seven. But the longer term implications, I think this is goes to your point about, you know, you redrew these lines, assuming a certain environment.

30:49What is it going to look like in a presidential year? What is it going to look like four years from now? And so we don't we don't know that. And, you know, you have also really soured the public that already thought that this process is corrupt. Now they think it's just all really looked at as pretty contemptuous. Yeah, it's going to be interesting. It's going to be a very busy year for Cook Political is when they have to redraw the districts again before the 2032 elections. Dude, I just – how people handle that. And also, okay, just from a software update sort of thing, okay, we think about redistricting every 10 years and like what do we need to have on the site and what do we need to build and how do we do – What?

31:49We were not prepared to do that for... I mean, Dave Wasserman needs nine years to recover every time we do this. Now we're redistricting every five years. That's right. Now we're only giving him, right, like a year. I mean, North Carolina's redistricted every cycle. Hasn't had a new map every cycle for like the last however many cycles. Every cycle. Yeah. Since 1992. Yeah. The other thing that hangs over this conversation is the pending Supreme Court decision on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Yes, that's what I was going to do on VRA. That's right. So, uh, so Supreme for people who have not been following this, if you're a Democrat, very, very alarming, uh, situation is Supreme Court is reviewing section two of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination, uh, on racial lines.

32:31And the specific question is about whether majority minority districts, the districts that are drawn to specifically include mostly black voters in the South, but could also be Latino voters in the Southwest or wherever else, is unconstitutional. If they were to, even though they just upheld this like pretty recently, but if they were to strike that down, there would be a rash of redistricting that would happen again, mostly in the, but not entirely in the deep South. Mostly in the South. Because, you know, people was like Alabama, these states like Alabama, Mississippi, that Republicans win by 20 points in presidential election years have one or two Democratic districts because they have large, concentrated black populations.

33:12They can read all the districts to divide those populations up and ensure there's no Democratic districts in the South. That could happen before the 2026 midterms, but they'd have to move pretty quickly. Not likely. Not likely. They'd have to have a decision now or January, I think, would probably be the end. Because you really have to do it before the primaries in March. How are you thinking about that? And have you guys done any math, any sort of range of outcomes for what that would mean? Let's say it's for 2028 in terms of net Republican gains. I know. So we have not done it here. I know Nate Cohn over at The New York Times has done a good look at that.

33:53And I think his was something like five seats that Republicans get of it. Now, Texas is an interesting story because in Texas, this Supreme Court fight is not—the case in front of the Supreme Court right now is constitutional. on the, I know we have to like parse all of this, but the case there is a constitutional argument versus the Voting Rights Act argument. So this would not, right now, what's happening in Texas is separate from this. However, you're right. This would definitely mean fewer seats in the South, Black seats in the South. So let's just say now if Democrats were to win the House in 2026, and let's say they have an eight to 10 seat majority and VRA struck down, and now we go into 2030 with five or six fewer Democratic seats, right?

35:09You can see how the math now works going into the next election. But to me, what it really highlights to Dan is that this idea that the House is going to ping pong every two years between the parties is something we have not really dealt with fully. You know, when I first came to Washington in the early 90s, Democrats had had control of the House, unbroken control of the House for 40 years. And Democrats lose it in 1994. Republicans hold it all the way to 2006. And then after that, it just starts flipping pretty quickly, right? Democrats lost it in 2010. We won it back in 2018. We lost it again in 2020.

36:11Right. And then now you could see Democrats get it back in 26. And then you go, oh, is it going to flip again in 30? So what does that mean for just the body in general? Like, what do you do when you are just constantly ping-ponging between majority and minority? You know, historically, at least in the last 30 years, a president comes in with the House, the Senate and the White House, gets to do one really big thing. Right. Bill Clinton gets to do his budget. um obviously for obama it's obamacare trump gets to do the um the tax cut you know you do and then this year or whatever um biden does inflation reduction act trump does the big beautiful bill right you use your majority i call it sort of a it's like a smash and grab now is our politics that you have, you've got a majority, you know it's only going to be for two years.

37:14And so you use it really to get one thing, go in, you smash, you grab what you can, you lose. Maybe you can come back four years later, two years later and do something else. But it's not a great way to do big things because really what we're doing is one party gets in control and uses that as their opportunity to fulfill the dreams of the base. They get one thing that they dreamed of to get done. They fulfill that one dream. But there's not like a, hey, let's think about the really big consequential issues that are impacting American society. Let's really tackle AI. Let's really tackle the disintegration of institutions and what that's going to mean.

38:06Let's really fundamentally think about this question of affordability. What does that mean in a world where, right, we've got more billionaires but yet than ever and the gap between rich and poor is bigger than ever? So I don't know that. It's not a great way to run a company. And the thing that's really changed here is the way it used to work. As you said, you'd come in, you'd do your big thing mostly on a party line basis. you would lose the House or the Senate. The president would get reelected, then would do something big and bipartisan with the other side because the other party would be chagrined by the presidential loss.

38:48They feel like they should do some sort of compromising. And this all sort of fell apart after Obama won in 2012 and the Republican House bailed on immigration. Like that was the exact model. You know, Obama wins by a bigger margin than they thought. John Boehner stands up the next day and says, Obamacare is now the law of the land. Every Republican from Rupert Murdoch and Sean Hannity down says, we got to do comprehensive immigration for him, passes the Senate, gets to the House, and dies in part because the House - Eric Cantor. The Whiff lost his primary over immigration. And then now we're just in this world.

39:24Also, there's this House pinging back and forth dynamic, but we also have had two one-term presidents in a row, which is not something we've had in a long time. That's right. Which is - Exactly. Yeah. So now we're just really pinging back and forth.

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41:25Let's actually just pivot to the house writ large here. So we started this conversation about 2025, Democrats are super excited. Trump's numbers are in the toilet. Affordability is the top issue. Trump's numbers on affordability are in the toilet. You know, looking at the 2025 results, we're winning back Latinos. Things are feeling great for us. People on my side here feel great. They open up Cook Political. They read Amy Walter's latest column, which says basically Democrats are ascendant, but we have a very low ceiling. So my question for you is, why are you such a buzzkill here? Hey, let us have our moment.

41:58It's been a long year. Math is math. Math is math. So part of the reason we're ping-ponging back and forth, right, is that there are just so few swing districts and that the House is pretty evenly divided between seats that Kamala Harris carried and seats that Donald Trump carried. And there are very few crossover seats. So if you're in a Harris district, you're a Democrat. If you're in a Trump district, you're a Republican. And there are also very few seats that Trump won narrowly. Like, usually after, especially this one, which was a close election, right? This wasn't a landslide in 2024. But there are only 14 districts that of the 222 that Republicans hold.

42:43Only 14 of them are districts that Trump lost or won by less than five points. That's a wild statistic. That is just such a small number. It's like when you look at, not to sort of, you know, make you go to PTSD land, but 2010, you know, there were so many, there were 48 Democrats in McCain districts in 2010, right? Because there were a bunch of districts that, you know, they voted for John McCain for president, but the Democrat was able to hold on because, right, they were unique to that district. They were used to voting for Democrats there even as they were voting for Republican for president.

43:33And Obama did better in those districts than a typical Democrat. Correct. Because that election is fascinating. That's exactly right. That's one of the rare times where there are two wave elections in a row. Yes. 2006 was a wave election in 08. And so you had all these people who won on the back of those two waves. Because normally you have a wave election in an off year. Then you have the presidential. The tide comes back in. You lose a bunch of seats. We just kept winning people. And so there was this huge list. And now that does not exist. That does not exist anymore. And the challenge then comes in.

44:09So that's 14, quote unquote, I won't call them easy seats, but those are the most fruitful to flip. So even if you win all of those, that's just a gain of 14 seats. And let's say you need six seats to win. So that gives and you don't lose any of your own. That gives you an eight seat majority. It's not bad. I mean, no. Yeah, it's a narrow majority. Yeah. So you could have a wave election, which would look like 2010, 2018, in which the party outside of the White House wins almost all of the seats between zero and five and those seats won that are crossover seats and come up with a much smaller number.

44:59Now, to me, the big question then is, could we see a wave that is even bigger than that? And that I'm not seeing evidence of that yet, of one in which districts that Trump won by double digits start to go, right? that there's a real collapse there because of what, either because of the political environment or this idea that Trump was just so unique and so skilled at putting together a coalition that just can't hold without him on the top of the ticket. But this is where you, I'm going to go back to where we started, Dan, from the conversation, where we started about Virginia and what we learned from the off-year elections.

45:51Democrats had a great night at the legislative level, too. They picked up 13 seats at the state legislative level. But all of them were in districts that were basically Trump zero to five or were Harris districts. So even on a great night in Virginia, you say, oh my gosh, Abigail you know, Spanberger wins by 15 points. They win all of the row races, the statewide races, and pick up 13 seats. But they didn't win in districts that are red. In other words, they're winning all the swing districts, which is what you need to do to win an election. But what you're not doing is dipping into these deep red areas.

46:42Those areas are going to stay red. They may be a little less red. And so it's not going to be the kind of election that at least at this point that we're seeing that you can say you're going to see big shifts that would make Republicans absolutely reassess what, either what they're doing or what they're saying or how they're thinking about their coalition. The other way I think about this is the Senate map is basically getting a win. In order to win control of the Senate, Democrats need to win in Trump plus 10 states or more, And so winning in Ohio, winning in Iowa, winning in Texas, if they are winning there, then they are going to be winning 30 or more House seats too.

47:44Yeah. Looking at your data, it's like it's so you have 14 Republicans in T.C. either Harris won or Trump won by less than five points, another 14 in Trump's districts that Trump won by five to 10 points. Right. Which is those are some possibly attainable, but but hard. But the thing that really is stunning, and this does show why the House will ping pong back and forth and why the days of large majorities are gone for now, at least, is 187 of the Republicans are in districts that Trump won by more than 10 points in a year in which he won the popular vote by the smallest margin of any candidate since Al Gore in 2000.

48:24So this is not Obama 08 or Biden winning the popular vote by 7 million votes or whatever it was in 2020. This is an incredibly narrow popular vote win. And even under those scenarios, 187 of the sitting Republicans feel that they are in no danger of possibly losing an election, which does go back to the point about why they don't really care about extending the Obamacare tax credits because their only fear is losing. The only election they were ever going to lose, most of them were ever going to lose as a primary. And so they're not really concerned about the other thing. The reason we're in that position, is that a combination of polarization and gerrymandering or mostly polarization?

49:04How do we get there? Yeah, I do think it's a lot about polarization, but gerrymandering too that went and benefited one side or the other. But the fact that you just have so few people willing to give the other party the benefit of the doubt and split their ticket means that you just are you're just not going to get these crossover kinds of districts that, when we were starting out in politics, were just so commonplace. And so you're right. If each party has, you know, 180-plus seats sitting in deep red, deep blue, we're going to fight over the same 30 seats every two cycles. And the only way that changes is either one, there is a big decoupling at some point.

50:09And it does feel as if, you know, this is to me, the really great paradox of our time is that people are less aligned to party than ever. our politics is not as linear, meaning in terms of thinking about a scale of conservative to liberal. I think there's a recognition of voters being more heterodox on policy than politicians are. So there is this ability to sort of cobble together a coalition of voters that looks very different than what we have seen in the last 30 years. And I'd add to that a decoupling as we've become less racially polarized. So it was like politics is a little bit detached from demographics in that sense.

51:06There we go. All of that should expand this playing field. Yeah. It's interesting because it expands it at the presidential level, but not at the House level. Not at the House level where you're able to, yeah, draw these districts that take out any of the uncertainty, right? In the Senate, too. Like, now what do we have? One Republican Susan Collins in a solid blue state and no Democrats in a solid red state, is it? Correct. Yeah. Yep. Yep. So Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, because they ping pong back and forth, you know, those are, right? How many other states have split delegation? Wisconsin, Pennsylvania.

51:51It's Maine. Maine's the other one. There we go. But we had that. Is that it? So it's just three? I think that's right. That I can think of on the top of my head, yeah. Yeah.

52:05That's pretty... Pretty dark, yes. Pretty, pretty. Well, it's dark for Democrats because we're very good at winning lots of electoral votes and not so good at winning lots of states. And so that really puts a ceiling on the debt, which we can pivot to the Senate. Actually, before we pivot to the Senate, I do want to go back to just one thing on the House map. There was this Politico story the other day that was about Texas. And Texas, as we mentioned, has this question, is the current redistricting gerrymandering map going to be tossed out? Then go back to the old map. But it had a bunch of Democrats from Texas and D.C.

52:42saying that they are optimistic about winning seats in Texas under the current map, Texas map, if it were to stay in the place, the one that Trump wanted, because of the shift in the Latino vote they saw, particularly in New Jersey. jersey now there's a lot of uh bloviating from the people in charge of winning the house and set it on both sides at this point because you want donors and people to believe you have a chance to win but there is this interesting dynamic in texas which is they did draw those maps largely assuming that the the 2024 gains that would trump made with latinos particularly along the Rio Grande Valley are like that.

53:24That is those are Republican gains, not Trump gains. And, you know, I do always point out that that according to exit polls, at least better work one Latinos against Greg Abbott in the last time he was up in a midterm. And so there is this world in which they made this bet in Texas that Latinos were going to operate at a 2024 level and they may not going forward. But looking at your guys' essential, I would say for everyone who's watching, essential race ratings at Cook Political, if you want to know where to donate your money, what races to watch, you should look at those race ratings. But I don't think you guys have any of those races in the toss-up or lean Republican category.

54:05Or maybe one. Maybe Mayra Flores, I think. Maybe the one. Right. Now, that would be one, to your point. She fits into the Trump. Again, this is... under the map that is on pause, but is the redistricted map, is a Trump plus, I think it's like plus eight, nine, something, 10, something like that. Okay. So that would be interesting. That is definitely one to keep an eye on, right? To say, it's one thing. So I think there are two conversations when we're talking about Texas and Latinos. The first is, Republicans said, we can gain five seats with this map. That five seats depends on winning, knocking off two Democrats in South Texas, based on, as you said, the performance of Donald Trump in that area.

55:08So you could argue that at the very least, Democrats are able to hold those two and Republicans come out of Texas winning three seats. Plus three, yeah, plus three. Right, instead of five. The other is that you could look at, okay, again, this is a Republican held seat, the 15th district, and say, well, that also should be considered more competitive if these numbers with Latinos hold up across the country. And as we know, the results in New Jersey are about New Jersey. They may not translate into the Central Valley. They may not. It's that whole Latinos are Latinos everywhere, and they're obviously not.

56:02So Rio Grande or San Antonio, it's like saying all women vote this way. It is very much so. We're not saying all Latinos are going to vote a similar way. But I do think that, and the folks over at the ECCES project just put out their big survey of Latino voters. And, you know, their bottom line is their assumption is that the vote will look a lot more like it did in 2022 than it did in 2024. In other words, Democrats are going to do better with Latinos, but it's not like it won't look like it did in 2020. It won't look like it did pre basically pre Biden. We're not going back there. Yeah. 2016 was the high water mark.

57:02And we're not, their point is, we're not going back to that 20, at least right now they don't see it. Don't look at that as the baseline number that if Democrats don't hit that, they have failed. Look instead at how Democrats did in 2022. And I think that is, Texas is going to be a great place to see just where that number ends up. When we come back, more of my conversation with Amy Walter. But before we go, if you're someone who lives and dies with every single poll, is obsessed with what is happening in our politics, feels overwhelmed by all that's happening, I would highly encourage you to subscribe to my newsletter, The Message Box.

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1:00:10All right, let's go to the Senate real fast here. is you, so the Democratic path to a Senate majority, which I think most people thought was off the table earlier this year, or pretty close off the table. There has been a lot of optimism, and I think measured optimism from the people who don't have a very specific political interest in making people optimistic about it, that Democrats, we've been fortunate in Republican recruiting failures. Like if you live at the beginning of the year, we think Brian Kemp's running against John Ossoff. We think the governor of New Hampshire is running against what we thought would be Gene Shaheen at that point.

1:00:42you know, Republicans can't recruit their best candidates. We get some really good recruiting wins in Roy Cooper and Sherrod Brown. But our path, so people know, is we got to defend open seats in Minnesota, Michigan, and New Hampshire. We have to defend John Osloff in Georgia, have to beat Susan Collins in Maine, win in North Carolina, which Susan Collins theoretically should be, for all the reasons we talked about, a very winnable race for us, although she has defied partisan dynamics before. Have Roy Cooper win in a state that Trump won by a little, by a few points in 2020, and where we haven't won a Senate race since 2008, I believe, was Kay Hagan was the last one.

1:01:26But have won statewide a couple of times now, Roy Cooper, Josh Stein, et cetera. And then we have to win two of the following four, Texas, Ohio, Iowa, or Alaska. And the big asterisk I put for Alaska is you need Mary Peltola to run for that. She was the statewide rep. Of those four, all of which Trump won by double digits, and all of which have been trending Republican over the last eight years here, what is your assessment of the Democratic path? And if there is one, what do you think is the most viable path right now? Right. So the Ohio seems the next most vulnerable for Republicans, simply because you've got a very well-known and well-established brand in Sherrod Brown.

1:02:17The current Republican isn't particularly well-known there. he's more of a traditional Republican. He kind of comes out of a Mike DeWine style Republican, which in some ways you'd say, oh, well, that makes it a safer bet, right? Because if anybody remembers the last Senate race in the state, that was the Bernie Moreno race, which was a lot closer than people had expected against Sherrod Brown. There, of course, was J.D. Vance. There was a lot of hand-wringing by Republicans when he first ran about his campaign. They didn't think he was running a strong enough campaign. He wasn't a good fundraiser.

1:03:04So that, there's not— J.D. Vance, I would say, just notably underperformed every other Republican in the state by a fair amount, even if he did end up winning by— Exactly. And so there are two ways to look at that. One is, even when you have candidates who don't run great campaigns as Republicans in the state, they're still able to win against well-known, well-established, and well-funded Democrats. The other way to say it is, yes, but you could also make the case that, you know, the last two elections have been relatively decent ones for Republicans. And the last time that the environment was as weak as this for Republicans was 2018, and Sherrod Brown won in 2018 in Ohio.

1:03:58Of course, he was the incumbent then. But, you know, you also think about a place like Ohio and Go. I just don't see places where the Trump brand is receding enough to get you over the finish line. But Iowa, to me, is really fascinating because you've got a state where there are clear implications. Really, in Iowa, you've got—there's been real consequences to Trump's tariff policy there, right? This is a farm economy. The soybean farmers and ranchers getting hammered. ranchers and cattle. And I just saw a tweet, I think it was today or yesterday, from Senator Grassley upset at an appointment to one of the bodies that HHS Secretary RFK Jr.

1:05:01oversees who wants to ban pesticides, which again, just another blow to farmers in the state, right? They are just getting really pummeled by the policies of this administration. If you look at off your special elections in that state, Democrats have outperformed by significant amounts in Iowa. So it seems like there's some weakness there for Republicans. I think the hardest part for Iowa, and even Democrats will privately admit this as well, is as an open seat, it actually may be harder for them to win than if Joni Ernst were still there because she just had a lot of that baggage. Now, the one thing I'll say, Ashley Henson, who is the Republican nominee, is a very strong candidate.

1:05:57She's a former TV reporter, so she's got some name ID. She is very polished. and a very good campaigner. But she also has a voting record, right? She's not an outsider. You know, part of what made Joni earn such a great candidate when she won this seat in 2014 was she was known just, right? She was known as the castrating pig lady, right? For people who were not around in 2014, she has a farming background and was a veteran, but I believe she was a veteran, but also ran an ad about castrating pigs. which in a time before things went truly viral politically, this was an ad that everyone knew about and was quite excellent.

1:06:43Right. But that's been the last 11 years now. No, it's a castrating pig lady, yes. Right, that is a lady that has to make, she'll make Washington squeal, right? So everybody got a little squeamish, so they're like, oof. But, so Hinson does not come in with the outsider-ness, right? She still will have to carry the baggage of all that's going on in Washington. So while I think she does not have some of the obvious weaknesses, and for Ernst, that was this last viral moment where at a town hall, she told folks who were worried about Medicare cuts and Medicaid cuts causing people to die. And then she said, well, you know, everyone's going to die.

1:07:30um so i i'm in very very intrigued by iowa there's a very big democratic primary though and we have to see the caliber of candidate that comes out of that primary now texas you know and the shorthand is oh well if paxton wins that puts texas in play here's the thing and you and i will probably be talking about this for years for the next couple of years but i also look at who's in solid. So Florida, there's really no effort being made by Democrats to win Florida. We know that Democrats haven't won Florida in a while. It's a tough state. It's an expensive state. But to not put Florida and Texas in play two years before a presidential election, we're like, if you're Democrats, you're looking at the electoral college map going into 28 and then going into 32.

1:08:27Like, if you're not competing in those states, what are you doing? You know, right? Like, at some point, you can write off, you can say, all right, fine. Ohio's not a swing state anymore. Iowa's not a swing state anymore. Fine, fine, fine, fine. We're going to give up those ghosts. You can't also say, well, Florida, we're going to give up there. And Texas had so expensive and it takes a lot of money to move just a point. So we're just going to go all in on, you know, Georgia, North Carolina. Sure. Yeah. Arizona, Nevada. Great. But that's not enough, especially as the Midwest continues to become not just more competitive and that blue wall gets smaller.

1:09:20But those states are literally shrinking. Right. New York is going to have fewer electoral votes. This is the most important point. Yes, this is so important. This is the thing. This is one of the things I worry about in the Democratic Party post the 2025 election is we have to think much bigger than how do we just win the majority in 2026 or even how we just win the White House in 2028, although those are high priorities for us, is they're going to redraw the maps after the 2030 census. The most likely scenario, as we sit here today, is that Florida, California is going to lose some seats. Texas is going to lose some seats.

1:09:52The blue wall is going to lose some seats. Florida and Texas are going to gain five to seven net electoral votes. And so the blue wall path no longer exists for us. Like that does not exist. And so we are going to have and in the coalition, which we currently have will be unless we can improve, we can actually make those gains we saw in 2020 by Latino voters will not be sufficient to ever win a national election. And so we cannot seed Florida and Texas going forward because what we have to we have to believe the Democrats can get back to something that looks like Obama's 2012 coalition with Latino voters and white voters, frankly.

1:10:30But, you know, because if you cannot do that, you cannot win. You can't win a national election. You cannot. Yeah. Like we, the Republican electoral advantage is going to get so severe that we cannot do that. And so that is the argument for running vigorous Senate races in those states in 26. in 28 and 30. Even if you say, right, even if you say, okay, so we've lost and it is a lot of money. You're right. It's a lot of money to put into two states that literally just a million dollars gets you nothing, right? A million dollars in Iowa can actually get you something. So I get the math of that. I really, really do.

1:11:15And yet, I also take your point that if you're not going to at least just say, let's just play here. Let's see what we can do. This is the, and nobody wants to do that because, right, you say, well, you spent way too much money on Florida and Texas and you didn't spend any money. You didn't spend enough in Ohio and that's why we didn't win this control of the Senate, right? I think that is such myopic thinking because for two reasons. One, maybe we could spend less money in these other states where we are just basically running a bailout program for local television stations by running. Like there is a, there are such diminishing returns, particularly in this media environment to linear television advertising.

1:11:58And so we were just dumping money, mostly super PAC money at huge, at a huge cost markup into these states with small media markets and like to what end and also you can run vigorous races for less money now if you are good at communicating yeah like poor man do we need how much more can you put into the state of man right like there's just nothing else yes it's gonna be it's gonna be an absurd amount of money spent there an absurd amount of money spent in georgia all these races and and it's diminishing returns because there is just this closed-minded thinking about how to spend money in presidential campaigns where the only thing of true value is linear television because it's the only thing you can go to your donors and say, we bought this many ratings points and this commercial is going to run this many times during this football game.

1:12:47It just, it makes no sense, particularly at a time in which this is now my soapbox that I am at every time I see a donor, but is if you are a younger person, 40 and under, you There are two elements here. One is you were raised your entire life to not believe ads. You lived in the, you skipped them, you fast forwarded them, you swiped them, you don't know them. Your source for like what is to me the McDonald's I'm loving commercial for people younger than me is an influencer saying they love McDonald's or whatever product they have. It's very different. And the other thing is, if you are a young person who does not watch sports, because the only way to really reach people right now is sporting events, then you have no way to reach them in a linear television ad because Netflix doesn't take political ads and TikTok doesn't take political ads.

1:13:38So like 80 % of the time that they're doing things, you're not in most streaming television services do not take political ads. And so you just can't reach these people. And it is voters under 40 in 2024. We couldn't reach voters under 45 in 2028. We can't reach voters under 50. We can't reach voters under 50 in 2032. Like this is the world. And so you just have to think more creatively. Like we haven't talked about Zoran Mondani in this. I think people are over-reading the importance of his win, both as a positive and a negative, to the House and Senate midterm. But there is a lesson here, which is if you are good at content and you understand the media environment, you can dominate attention for much less money than you would spend.

1:14:22So if we could have—and there are some interesting candidates, particularly in Texas, who are good at attention, and particularly both Tallarico and Jasmine Crockett, if she were to run. We can talk about them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there are people who could, there's a way in which you could spend less money and still win and at least spend less money and run vigorous races. And so like, and just we have to expand the playing field or we're never like, it can't be that every single cycle we have to draw an inside straight to get to 51 seats. Like that is not a viable, that's not a viable approach to a party with true governing ambitions.

1:14:56Like you can't win because the next, you know what also sucks? The math cycle. It always sucks for Democrats. Because it's not getting there. As we said at the beginning, there's nobody sitting. There's one Susan Collins. That's it. And if she. And we've got to be Dave McCormick and Ron Johnson. And then that's it. And then we've got to go to a state that Trump won by a lot to win. Like that is where it is. Yeah. And maybe the other seat in North Carolina, I guess. But that is the full. But that's still saying that the playing field for the Senate is the same five or six seats every single cycle.

1:15:29And that becomes limiting. But you're right. If you're thinking more broadly about how do you build an electoral college coalition, that electoral college coalition also is likely the one that's going to win you some Senate. And it's not going to necessarily win you in a state like Iowa, but it is one that you could take to Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, right? I mean, that is those booming, growing states. That's the next step. It's gorgeous. You have like Latinos are the fastest growing population in the United States. you cannot be losing them. And by large, or not, if you're not going to win, if you're going to win a, like a math where we win a tiny percentage of white non-college voters, the largest population currently, and are losing ground with Latinos see fastest growing population is not one that wins.

1:16:36All right, real quick, because we are getting to the end here. There is an election coming up in a couple of weeks in Tennessee. It's a special election in the 7th District where Mark Green retired for a variety of reasons in the middle of the cycle. This is a district that Trump won by like 21 or 22, I think. Democrats are somewhat optimistic. Republicans seem quite concerned. Where do you think things stand in that race and what are you looking for? What I'm looking for is the bigger question. I don't think Republicans lose this one. That would be a very, very big upset. Is it in the realm of possibility?

1:17:13Sure. But as you said, it's a Trump 22 district. So the margin here is going to matter. I think if you're Republicans, you're really desperate to make sure that this is a double-digit win, right? Because it's one thing to say it's a Trump 22 district and we won it by 10. It is not as dramatic as a Trump 22 district that we barely eked out. because I think if you barely eke out a race in a Trump 22 district, if you're a Republican running in 26 and you see those numbers, I mean, it's quite notable, by the way, that this is coming, that this election is coming right before the holidays. Well, right after one and then right before the other big holidays because we all know members go home over the holidays.

1:18:07They make a lot of decisions about what they're going to do in the next year. They sit down with family. They do the whole, like, is my life what I want it to be? Do I really want to go through this again? And if you're coming in with, these are the following things you're dealing with already. You know, the whole health care thing we talked about, you look at the 2025 elections and what happened there. And then if there's a really close race in a district that Trump carried by 22 points where Republicans poured in money and they aren't ignoring this, they're actually playing here for real. What does that say to you if you're a vulnerable Republican or even potentially vulnerable or have a potentially competitive race?

1:18:56Do you want to go through with it? Do you want to come back? And, you know, do you have the sort of fire in your belly to go through a real race? And there will be a lot of people who say, I don't think so. Not really. There's a bunch of people on that bubble that we talked about who won by eight points or 12 points who haven't probably run a real race in a long time. They haven't done a lot of call time at the NRCC. They don't really want to campaign. They may be probably older because it's the United States Congress and everyone's older, and they don't want to do it. And this is—it's interesting.

1:19:31Because I think that's where it has the biggest impact. If it's—you know, it's not so much the winning and the losing. I mean, the losing—if Republicans lose this, that would be just shock. Like, this is world-ending for the moment. But even a very narrow win, it says you should not feel comfortable. And you got to get yourself in that plate, that headspace. If you're a member thinking about reelection, that this is not going to look like 2024. And it's not going to look like any other race maybe you've been in. Amy Walter, it is always so much fun to talk to you about politics. So fun. This has been great.

1:20:13I've been talking politics with you for a very, very long time now. Yes. And I highly recommend everyone check out the Cook Political Report. It is the absolute, it's the Bible for people who follow politics very closely. It's how I track what's happening in the races. It's how I track what's happening in redistricting. Amy is, you are no better person to have this conversation with. Thank you. This has been really great. Thanks so much. Really appreciate it. Happy holidays to you and to everybody listening. Yeah. By the time you listen to it, they will have had a happy holiday. Oh, I hope so.

1:20:42And I hope that the, yes, and I hope that the driving, and the airport is doing okay. Or at least better because you got to hear us. There we go. Thank you. Very well done. Thank you, Amy. Bye. That's our show for today. Thanks to Amy Walter for joining. John, John, and Tommy will be back in your feeds on Tuesday. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free or get access to our subscriber Discord and exclusive podcasts, consider joining our Friends of the Pod community at crooked.com slash friends or subscribe on Apple Podcasts directly from the Pod Save America feed. Also, be sure to follow Pod Save America on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for full episodes, bonus content, and more.

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