Trump's Mile-Hide Club

24:32Here's some of that scene as well as other recent ICE confrontations that are making the rounds. You almost ran us over. You almost ran us over. Stop playing. You're so full of shit. Stop playing. You are full of shit. All right? You're not funny. You're not funny. I will arrest you. Keep it up. I'm a legal citizen. Keep it up. I don't care. Oh, my goodness. We have to try to lock you up.

24:56The Domingo family self-recording the tense moments when Border Patrol pulled them over Sunday afternoon. The couple complying with the officer's orders, then hugging during this emotional goodbye. when separated from their five children and detained. I know there's not a lot of new things to say about this because it's just horrific, but I think it is worth noting that it is still happening. It is happening all over the place. ICE has not de-escalated at all. They are still trying to meet Stephen Miller's dumb fucking quotas. Mark Wayne Mullen, the new DHS secretary, is already in trouble with like MAGA activists and the base.

25:41You know, Laura Loomer and Steve Bannon already have said he should be fired because, you know, he's not detaining and arresting and deporting enough people. So he's already feeling pressure to be even more aggressive in order to keep his job. So this is all happening still. Yeah. And it's just the only thing that's changed is they're not setting out a press release before they do it. Right. They're not inviting this. They're not inviting the MAGA influencers along for it. They're not inviting the Fox News crews. They're just doing it and hoping no one videotapes them when it happens. Did you see I heard I heard Tim Miller talk about this in the Bulwark pod, the the letter in the nation that this woman wrote?

26:17She is this Iranian family there have green cards, legal residents, a couple of professors. Yeah, they're the husband and wife of professors. And and then they have a child as well. And because the husband is the son of a woman who was an Iranian official during the hostage crisis, I believe she was the spokesperson during the hostage crisis in 1979. And her son and his family moved to United States, became college professors, had a kid, are permanent legal residents. and because like people online decided to make an issue of their association with Iran, then the State Department just decided to on their own revoke their visas.

27:11They picked up the husband. They also picked up the wife and the child and they separated them and they have shipped them to Texas where they've been in detention facilities for the last four months. four months with like just just just holding them holding them hostage for no reason no due process not even deporting them not doing anything just jailing them just because of an association a family member because some fucking idiot online decided to call them out terrible it's just the whole thing is so just gross and morally bankrupt i just i don't like i get that this won't be You know, I think when Minnesota is happening, we probably thought maybe this would be a big issue in the midterms.

27:56I'm guessing it will not be as big of an issue in the midterms. But is the best play here? The Democrats have to just hope we get Congress back, be able to conduct some kind of oversight over ICE, hold hearings, subpoena officials and documents, and then just change everything if a Democratic president wins. Like it doesn't. What else can people do at this point? So you are right that this is not going to be the biggest issue in the midterms, and it probably shouldn't be. The voters we need care about immigration. They absolutely do. But it's not their top issue. But it's not as complicated as I think a lot of people make it.

28:38Trump is 11 points underwater on immigration right now. This is not it's not an issue of strength for him. He doesn't win by shifting the issue terrain to immigration. It doesn't help him. The videos like this hurt him when you track his approval rating drops since 2025. Some of the biggest ones happened during both first the Kilmar Obrigo Garcia CECOT stuff in the spring of 2025 and then after the killings of Alex Preddy and Renee Good in January of 2026. So it matters when these things come up. So no one should shy away from talking about it. Absolutely not. It's also worth pointing out to voters that once again, not only is ICE bad, but we gave ICE$700 billion and we paid for it by cutting healthcare and food assistance.

29:21That's what the priority is. People don't like that. But when you – so let's say we get to – we get a majority, right? And we'll talk about the prospects for that later in the show. People should be realistic. We cannot realistically abolish ICE, but we can hold hearings. We can shine a light on this. There can be accountability. We also have if we have the House and the Senate, but even if we have just the House, we have real leverage in budget negotiations if Democrats are willing to use it. So the one challenge on that one is because they passed so much ICE funding through reconciliation, like they could shut down the government.

29:58We went through this, right? Like the Democrats could theoretically shut down the government if we control Congress again or hold up the whole budget over ICE funding. But because they have so much funding left over from reconciliation, like they can still do everything they want to do. Yes. I mean, we're right back in the same spot. But you have a couple options here. One is you can take, I hate to use this terminology, but you can take a different hostage. And the ransom is changes in ICE. Other things Trumps want, you cannot get them. You can shut down the whole government over it. You can put real pressure on them.

30:33Once again, ICE has money. There is a limit to what you can do here. Up until the moment, you have a trifecta. Well, if we have a trifecta, you can do the following things. One, you can take that money and redirect it elsewhere. You could, with a trifecta, abolish ICE in some way, shape, or form. Yeah, if we have a Democratic president. Yeah, you do all those things, but yes. But for the next, it'll be, even winning back Congress, it'll be hard for the next two years to do anything outside of threatening to shut down the government over ICE. But, you know, like you said, take a different hostage.

31:06Or probably the most likely path is to hold all kinds of hearings and oversight. And you can get, I mean, which will hopefully sort of till the ground for the battles to come when you have the trifecta. But you can't, like some of the policy changes we did not get in this time, you can make another run at in 2027, 2028. I also think it's worth saying that just from a and we talk about politics and campaigns and what's most likely to help win an election. But when these stories are in the news and when public officials, whether they're local, state or national, talk about them and lift up the stories like the politics are bad for the Trump administration.

31:48Usually when they are when Donald Trump's approval rating is in the shitter, he turns to immigration to try to get his mojo back. And it is telling that they have chosen the democratic socialist communist threat over immigration this time around because they just went through a cycle back – I don't know when it was – earlier this year, last year, when their immigration agenda was underwater and became pretty unpopular. Not as unpopular as how he handles cost of living or jobs or around war, but still unpopular. Yeah, it's not an advantage for him anymore, which is a huge change in the political firmament.

32:25Yeah. All right. This week's Democratic primaries were one of the last contests before the midterms. A week after Abdul El-Sayed defeated the establishment-backed Haley Stevens by just under a point in the Michigan Senate primary, the more moderate David Crowley eked out an upset over Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong in the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary. In Minnesota, the more progressive Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan beat Congresswoman Angie Craig by 20 points. In Connecticut, the center-left mayor of Hartford, Luke Bronin, knocked off 78-year-old Congressman John Larson, making Larson the seventh House Democrat to lose a primary this year and the fifth past his retirement age.

33:062026 is now tied with 2012 as the worst year for Democratic incumbents in primaries this century. When you step back and squint at all the primary results this year, do they tell to you any kind of cohesive story about Democratic voters and the Democratic Party? It's complicated, but yes. If you look at all the results, all the ones we've had, all of the the DSA wins, the incumbents who got elected, the incumbents who got defeated. I think you can take a couple of things from this. One, Democrats are furious that Donald Trump is president. Two, Democrats are incredibly skeptical and distrustful of their own leaders, their own institutions, and the way the party has done politics in the past.

33:54Democrats are incredibly fired up about voting. They are turning out in huge numbers. Like in Wisconsin, this statistic blew me away, nearly 250 ,000 more people voted in this Wisconsin primary than in 2018, the year of the big blue wave. I know. That's wild. Now, what I think is when you look at all of this, it sort of belies the overly simplistic narratives that people who talk about politics are living and try to jam this through. DSA versus centrists, left versus right, institution versus anti-institution, even generational. like it's a lot of these races and the thing is the wisconsin and michigan races come by if 18 000 votes between the two of them had gone a different way we would have been like dsa is dead long live the moderates or d or like go comrade the socialists have won and it's and it's uh it's all more complicated voters looked at it and made decisions there were some local factors in all of them.

34:57I think the one thing that is true is that voters are looking for fresh faces and those fresh faces are often younger. And we are, we saw that in all the incumbents you mentioned, it is a fresh face who has come in and beaten them and almost always a younger one. And, you know, and I think that that like democratic voters are done with the gerontocracy. To your point about how many more voters are participating in this year's primaries versus 2018, or at least in Wisconsin, is part of that that people who usually just vote in a general election but not a primary are now voting in a primary? I thought I saw somewhere that like just the interest is so high that even a lot of normie Democrats, quote unquote, who usually just turn out in a general but not a primary are now like interested enough and engaged enough that they want to participate in the primary.

35:48Yes, that's definitely happening. Wisconsin is particularly impressive. You have the run up because Wisconsin is one of the highest turnout states in the country. Right. But yeah, I think the stakes of these primaries feel very high to people because I think there is a real question about where our party is going and people want to have a say in that. So they are turning out. And it felt that way in Wisconsin, felt that way in Michigan. In these races, I think that to the people in New York City in those races or in the Colorado one, it felt that way where it's like our party is going to go one of two ways.

36:16And I want to have a say in which way it goes because the direction we choose is going to matter not just in the 2026, but in 2028 and beyond.

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39:14So on that note, the primary results have inevitably led to another round of electability discourse. Easily one of the top five discourses in the Democratic Party. What else is on the list? Let's see. Motivation versus persuasion. Motivation versus persuasion. Left versus center left. Yeah. Let's see. Orange man bad is the best political strategy or not. Is that a discourse? Yeah, okay. How much should we focus on Trump? Right, right. Wokeness is kind of a relatively new one. I don't know. I'm just kind of shooting from the hip here. How are Democratic voters judging which candidate is more electable here in 2026 based on everything that you have seen thus far this year?

40:05I think like the pundits, the voters don't know who's more electable. And that is showing up at these races as people are making different choices. What I think is interesting is electability. There's been this big discussion like in the Trump era, Democratic voters care a lot about electability. And that is true. But it's also always been true. And it is also an axiomatic thing, which is you want – do you want someone who can win or do you want someone who is less likely to win but agrees with you? People always pick the one who's going to win. You can look at even before Trump in 2004, when the Democratic primary that you were working on was going forward, people all of a sudden were like, wait a minute.

40:44We're going to run the anti-war governor of Vermont against George W. Bush? That's not a good idea. And then they immediately shifted to John Kerry, the war hero. Didn't work out great, but you understand the thinking that got them there. In 2020, electability drove Biden's nomination. Six in 10 voters in a Gallup poll at that time said they'd rather have someone who was more likely to beat Trump than someone who they agreed with on policy issues. In the exit polls of the primary states, six in 10 voters in most cases said electability was their top issue. People care about it. what is different now, and I believe you see this in both Wisconsin and Michigan, is that the voters no longer trust the Democratic Party establishment and the experts to tell them who is most electable, and they have to see it with their own eyes and make their own judgment.

41:33Because you have it in Michigan. Unless it's Tony Evers. Well, I mean, I think we can debate Tony Evers. Tony Evers obviously played a huge role in this, but this is the difference between Michigan and Wisconsin is all of the voices were saying, Abdul is less electable. Voters looked at that race. They looked at him. It was not patently obvious to him, to enough of them that he was less electable than Haley Stevens. Wisconsin, Evers made electability number one issue down the stretch by announcing that he thought Hong could not win or was unlikely to win if she was the nominee. But then Hong went on a media tour where she did not acquit herself great and sort of amplify the questions that Evers had raised.

42:14And so voters looked at that. I think if Evers had said she can't win and then she had done fine, they probably would have still picked Hong. But because of that, enough of people changed their mind in the final days to do it. And then in Minnesota, where Angie Craig made electability the centerpiece of her issue, no one thought we would lose that seat. So they didn't care. I think that's a really important point that's getting lost in the Minnesota example, because I think it sort of like I think a lot of voters, especially like highly engaged voters who pay attention to this, who are the voters that vote in primaries, they try to make rational decisions about who is going to who they think is going to win the race.

42:57Right. And if you're in a state like Minnesota, where it just seems like the Democrat is going to win. And now Minnesota is not like a deep blue state, but you could make a good argument that Angie Craig or Peggy Flanagan, whoever won that nomination was going to, um, yes, it was going to be a heavy favorite, right? Like a likely DC. Um, and so in that scenario, as a voter, you look at the choices and you're like, well, now I am free to just support whoever I want to support that I believe in the most. And, you know, Peggy Flanagan wins by 20 points. And in Wisconsin, you have to imagine there were a bunch of Francesca Hong, people who really liked Francesca Hong and probably agreed with her more on the issues or found her campaign more inspiring or whatever it may be than David Crowley, but looked around, looked at polls, looked at her performances, maybe looked at their governor that they like very much, even though he's older in establishment, and said, you know what?

44:03Can't do it. Can't do it. It's too important to win the state. And that seems to me like an entire—I know everyone always says, electability is all subjective and it doesn't matter. But I do think there have to be some sort of objective standards by which to judge electability that I think voters are trying to sort of figure out on their own. There are, I think the way I like to think about it is no one knows for sure who is electable and who isn't. And the political environment is much more important than the quality of any individual candidate. But there are things we can look at that give us an idea on people's electability.

44:42One of which is how they, what is their history of winning tough races? Do they have it. Is there actual evidence of them winning over swing voters? This is quantified by split ticket in their wins over replacement model. But you can just like we know that Andy Beshear and Josh Shapiro can win over Republican voters. They have proven that on multiple occasions. Do we know that Gavin Newsom or AOC can do it? We do not know that. Can they? Maybe. But they've never proven it before. So that's an untested proposition. We should say because it's actually very useful for people, I think, is the wins above replacement sort of calculation.

45:19Basically, what Split Ticket has done is, and other people have done something similar, but what they've done is they come up with like a baseline, right? So if like the baseline - How would a generic Democrat do? Right. How would a generic Democrat do? So what was like the national sort of, was the national house vote or, and they put a whole bunch of factors into it. So if a regular Democrat or if a generic Democrat would win this race by two points, and X candidate wins it by four points, then their plus two win above replacement. If the other Democrat still wins the race, but only wins it by one point, then their minus one wins above replacement.

45:55And you can do this with all the different House candidates and all the different. Now, what was interesting in the case of Michigan is, first of all, a duel had run once for governor and lost. In a primary. In a primary. So he didn't have a long record there. Haley Stevens was sort of the lowest wins above average of any of the Democrats in the House in Michigan, which I hadn't realized. So in that scenario, you actually didn't like it seemed like Haley Stevens was like because she was more moderate and backed by the establishment. Like maybe it's think she was more electable. But in terms of the the objective measures you had, that wasn't necessarily the case.

46:36Sure enough, the argument, which is, you know, Lakshad Jain, who's the pollster for the argument and also is split ticket, does the wins above replacement. He said that they had in their model, if they have a dual as a 70 % chance of winning the general and Haley Stevens would have been 80 % chance. So it's like 10 % difference is it's something, but it's not. It's big. It's actually, I mean, the difference between 70 and 80 doesn't feel huge. difference between 50 and 40 feels quite big when you get there. Well, that's my point. That gets you to the other measures. Then you get past data, right?

47:15And so then there is the question of extremism. And it's not always true, but it is mostly true that the candidate who is seen as more extreme loses. This is the thing that always makes people want to throw their phone in the ocean, but Donald Trump was seen as more moderate than Kamala Harris in 2024. And Joe Biden was seen as more moderate than Donald Trump in 2020. And so you look at that and you say, does that do like if you take Michigan, for instance, you would say, does Abdul have positions and statements that could be used to make him seem more extreme than Haley Stevens? Possibly. I think that's probably where you get to this, that, that net difference for them.

47:58Then the third thing is candidate quality. And this is all subjective, where you're like, does this person seem like they can stand – this is going to be particularly true in a presidential debate, in the presidential election. Can they stand on the stage with J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio or Tucker Carlson, whoever else, and hold their own? Can they go on podcasts? Can they give a good speech? Can they do those things? And that, I think, is where Abdul seemed like he really showed a lot of candidate skill. And Haley just ran a campaign in the end where she was just not very present in the media. So people didn't see her.

48:29Although I would say her post-election media tour, she has crushed. And then Hong went on this huge media tour, did every interview, seemed ill-prepared for a lot of them. And that people saw that with their own eyes. So it's like, yes, Evers said that. But then everyone actually saw clips that made them say, maybe this person cannot win or is less likely to win. Well, that's why she was like, yeah, That is subjective and no one really knows who's electable or not is technically true. But all of this exists on a spectrum. And there are some people where you're like, who's the more electable candidate?

49:04Well, they're both kind of good on TV and sometimes they make mistakes, but one's inspiring for this reason. And they're like, that's a close call. With like when Francesca Hong goes on TV and is like, well, let's have to talk about canceling Thanksgiving and and why, you know, police exist to uphold white supremacy. Most people, most people who don't pay attention to politics, if you showed them that clip, they'd be like, yeah, that's weird. No, thank you. So like that's an easier or, or let's take another example, the Biden-Trump debate, right? And Biden performs so horribly that afterwards it's like, okay, yeah, there's like nitpicky debate, you know, figure skating judge quality to analyzing debates, but that's an easy call.

49:48Most people would be like, that's awful. Right. See, these are extreme examples, but the problem, it gets harder. Like, we get to the presidential election, right? And so imagine you're down to at the end. I'm just picking these sort of randomly. Gavin Newsom, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, AOC. Ooh. Like, they're all - That's a tough one. Say they're all - Like, you can make a case for all of them, and then it becomes more subjective. And then the thing that I think is important to note, and this is like a huge problem in 2020, is the electability discourse is very racially and gender coded. And there is just like, there is, this was particularly true in 2020, where it's just, we filter the election through the mind of a white dude in Wisconsin.

50:34And like, who do they want? And people, you hear this in focus groups all the time. People project onto voters they do not know biases. It's like Kamath Harris did with Pete Buttigieg is the VP, right? you say, well, he's a gay man. That's too much for America. And that's like that very, and if you take that, but if you take that, you never, like, you would have said, you also would have said Barack Hussein Obama, too much for America. There are times, like, it's just, it is, it's just, I think the discourse is, there are some things you can look at for real. There are some things that makes it quite complicated and, and so it can narrow the aperture of what you're looking for.

51:15you're not even doing it based on data. You're doing it off of perceived biases of the electorate or small sample sizes of women losing presidential elections. Sometimes I think we confuse in the electability discourse, the very real perceived biases in the electorate, right? And the fact that a lot of this electability discourse is absolutely gender and racially coded with, with, okay, but that is true. That is how people think. And what does a candidate in the campaign do to overcome that? So yes, people thought that Barack Obama couldn't be president because how are we going to elect a black guy named Barack Hussein Obama from Chicago as president of the United States when we just lost with the war hero against George W.

52:05Bush and even black voters in South Carolina at the beginning of the campaign did not think that Barack Obama was ready to become president. So what did Barack Obama do? He won over a bunch of white voters in Iowa and proved that maybe it's not so crazy to think that a black man named Barack Hussein Obama could become president. So part of this is realizing the biases that exist in the electorate and then and then putting together a strategy to overcome those biases and prove yourself unfair as it may be, it is the world that we live in. Yeah. And what makes it more unfair, and this is where it played in 2020, is there's a lot of the campaign that ever happens before you get to actual voters.

52:46Yeah. And so it's like, you need money, you need attention. And when people like it, there was a Elizabeth Warren was at the top of the polls until there was a New York Times story about how Elizabeth Warren probably couldn't beat Trump. And she really tanked after that because the hyper engaged Democrats, particularly the ones in Iowa, New Hampshire, we're like, oh, wait, we love Elizabeth Warren. We like her policies, but she probably can't beat Trump. Well, then we six and 10 of us would prefer to have someone who could beat Trump. And this is going to absolutely shade a lot of the discourse going into 2028, particularly because we have lost to Donald Trump two times now.

53:26And so unfairly or not, it's going to be a huge part of it. And it's going to be, I think, hard for a lot of these candidates to overcome it, but, you know, stranger things have happened. Barack Obama became president.

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55:25I feel really misunderstood, left behind, put down on, and didn't want to explain that to somebody. We're traveling across six southern states to explore the people, the issues, the assumptions that no longer hold, and what the rest of us are missing about a region that will shape the future of our politics and our country. From Left, Right and Crooked Media starting July 27th, Watch Long Play Series on YouTube at youtube.com slash longplayseries or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

56:03The polls were off by a decent amount in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota for different reasons. As the host of Polar Coaster, you are therefore required to defend this witchcraft that you keep telling us will predict the future of with near certainty. Yes, that is. That's been your message. As all listeners of Polar Coaster know, that is what we say. The polls are not a snapshot in time. They're not an imprecise measure. They are perfect sousing. Now, look, I think if we look at these, the polls were very wrong, but let's talk about what that means in this case. One, it's worth noting that primary polls are often quite wrong.

56:44Yeah. Like they have a long history of being wrong. That has become more true in this era where it becomes almost impossible to get anyone to take a poll because polling is now looks much more like election modeling where you're guessing what the electorate looks like in advance and then waiting your very random sample to match that. And so if you guess the if you model the electorate wrong, you are going to miss everything. And that it's easier to model in a general election, particularly now we've had a bunch of them in the Trump era, which is why the polls were more accurate in 2024. But that's even harder in a primary.

57:20It's particularly hard in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota because those are open primary states where independents and Republicans can vote. It's one of the reasons that even it appears that the internal campaign polls were all wrong because in those states, you can't even go off the voter file to poll. You're basically doing – these media pollsters are relying on self-reported party ID and the campaigns are using modeled support where they sort of guess whether someone's Republican or Democrat. But you go into it, you have no idea how many independents are going to – like they walk in to the voting booth and they pick a ballot.

57:54They get to choose right there. And so it's very hard to know. It also seems very clear that in these states, the pollsters oversampled young voters. And these young voters tend to be more progressive. They're the ones supporting Abdul and Flanagan and Hong. wrong. And that's a misjudgment of how many people vote. And they are undersampling working class voters, and particularly in Wisconsin and Michigan, black voters. And then the other thing I'd say is most of the polls that we saw were not high quality polls. We don't have New York Times Siena polls of these races. Marquette did poll. Marquette is a highly rated pollster.

58:31They did poll in Wisconsin and were wrong. But their poll was actually more than a week old by the time the election happened. And one thing is that we, you know, we'd get a poll a week out and it says the race is tied. And then one candidate wins by three. Everyone says the poll is wrong. It's like, well, it's also possible, in addition to that just being the margin of error, people change their mind, undecideds move. And in Wisconsin in particular, it seems very clear that there was real movement at the end. You had like in that, the state Navigate did a poll that was like five days out that ended up being quite wrong.

59:07But in that poll, so you had 9 % of undecided voters. So all those voters seem to have gone to Crowley. You had a bunch of other candidates in the field, including two in Mandela, Bars, and Sarah Rodriguez, who had dropped out of the race. And they had supporters. And some of those supporters went to David Crowley. And so what poll, like we have to know her polls. She hit her. Francesca Hong was basically polling around 40%, which is what she got. Like in some of these polls, She was four or five points over 40. But yes, it basically got her within a reasonable polling error. Right. They got her number.

59:43And what happened is everything else moved towards Crowley. And he had momentum. She was struggling down the stretch. He spent$4 million in the last week, 10 days or so on broadcast and linear television, which I think made a huge difference. And so we have to remember that people change their minds. Undecided voters decide. And that is what affects the final margin. And that it's certainly a huge factor in what happened, at least in Wisconsin, probably to some extent in Michigan as well. Minnesota's a little more confusing to me because in that one, the polls towards the end showed it kind of close.

1:00:19And then instead, Penny Flanagan, the more progressive candidate, won by 20 points. So they underestimated the more progressive candidate in Minnesota. Yeah, those polls might just been wrong. It just goes to show you, I think, that it's a number of different factors. And I wouldn't think to ourselves as we go into the midterms, and you tell me if I'm wrong, that like, oh, no, they're always going to oversample younger voters and the polls are all going to be off. Because that didn't happen in Minnesota and it hasn't happened in other places. It's possible. It's also worth remembering that in 2025, the polls in New Jersey and Virginia were off.

1:00:54They were very far off in New Jersey. And they undersampled Democrats in that case or oversampled Republicans. And it's going to be interesting. This is the I mean, we're getting super nerdy here, but they're in. They were wrong in 16. The polls were right in 2018. 2018 behaved like a normal midterm because all of these low engaged Trump voters did not turn out in that one. 2020, they were incredibly wrong. 2022, they were actually quite right. No one believes that because everyone thought the red wave is coming. But the polls were historically accurate in that race. And then in 2024, the polls were right again.

1:01:29But the pollsters, for the most part, there are some exceptions, Nate Cohn and the Times included, but they used basically like a statistical sledgehammer to jam more Trump voters into the polls, which worked. how they're going to factor in and model Republican turnout in this election and how they're going to try to accommodate. Like what the, what is the baseline? Are you, you, if you do it, what are you waiting? They waited basically in 2024, they waited the poll to the 2020 vote chair. I don't know how they're going to do this year. It's going to be very interesting to see. I should probably bring this up since it's sort of breaking here as we're talking, but Fox News released two Senate polls, Michigan.

1:02:10Mike Rogers, 51, Abdul, 47. And then Sherrod in Ohio is up by the same as he was last time, which is 53, 45. I don't know if I buy either of those. I mean, Sherrod Brown is not winning Ohio by eight. That would be a 19-point overperformance in 2024. That to me seems further off than the Michigan Bowl. Yeah, I would say that both of those races end up being closer. Closer, like two-point races. I think there's a world where Abdul could win by four or five. I find it highly unlikely that Mike Rogers could win by that much. Yeah. But I think there's work for Abdul to do. I think he has real work to do.

1:02:56And it like he in all of the polling, even the ones that showed him doing the same as Haley Stevens against Mike Rogers, he was dramatically underperforming the political environment. It should be this is Michigan. It's 50 50 state. It should be he should be starting with six points in his pocket. Right. Because, yeah, for so everyone knows, even though Michigan's close, if the national environment is six points more favorable to Democrats than it was in 2024, then, yeah, that's how you get that. Speaking of election forecasts that promise 100 % accuracy, Nate Silver dropped his midterm model this week called forecast with leading indicators, polls and expert ratings or flipper for short.

1:03:38You want to call it flipper. So Nate's forecasts have historically been closer to the mark than I think most other models. He's not known as someone who's who's biased towards Democrats or Republicans in his in his modeling. But it is notable that he gives Democrats, as of this recording, an 86.1 % chance of winning the House. And I said, as of this recording, 56 % chance of winning the Senate. But I bet once he throws in that Michigan poll, that might go down a little bit. Yeah, the Fox is an A-rated poll. And so that will bring that down somewhat. And since it just came out, I'm sure he hasn't updated it yet.

1:04:11But by the time you listen to this, it will be updated. What do you think of Nate's forecast? And what should people know about what goes into that besides just polling? Because I think some people probably just assume that it's a polling aggregator where you're just throwing a bunch of polls together and averaging them out, which it's not. Yes. For a long time, the RealClearPolitics polling average was what everyone followed. And that really was just math where they added all the polls together and then divided by the number of polls to get the average as if they were in fifth grade math. What Nate does and others like Lakshadjain do that's much more complicated is they build a statistical model that takes in polling.

1:04:49They then, Nate at least weights the pollsters based on quality of the poll. He actually has in the past, I don't know if he's doing this in the case he's established what it calls a house bias, that some pollsters over time tend to be more Democratic or more Republican, and then he will factor in that house bias into it. He also includes fundamentals, like how much money the campaigns have raised, the larger political environment, the there is a benefit to incumbency in these races and fits that in. And then this time, actually, he has three versions of his model. The the deluxe model, if you will, actually factors in the expert ratings from like Cook political report and others.

1:05:28It's, you know, it's you know, it's interesting to if you read his methodology page, because the polls have been so wrong, he's overweighting towards fundamentals this time or he's putting that overweight. He's putting more weight on fundamentals than he has in the past. Interesting. Which is interesting. And I'm going to be very, very interested to see what the Michigan poll, which by the time you guys are listening to this, you may be able to go to his site and check it out. But how that changes it. Because if I recall correctly, I think maybe this was Lachlan-Chain, but I don't want to smear him in case it was an incorrect take.

1:06:03But basically, in some people's model, if Democrats' chances of winning the Senate are, let's say they're 57 or whatever it is, if they lose Michigan, that number drops to the 30s. So you really need Michigan to take the Senate. And if we are a poll that shows us losing Michigan badly, we'll probably move the Senate forecast a little bit at least. I also think the Senate forecast started even higher than 56 percent and it went down to 56 today because there was an Emerson poll that shows Tellurico down one in Texas. I'll tell you what, though, that poll shows Tellurico was 70 percent of the black vote.

1:06:43And if he is down one with 70 percent of the black vote in Texas, then he is going to be he's going to win by a fair amount, which I think that I think that is a bad. They probably not enough voters to actually have it, but he's he's going to get a lot more than 70 percent of black vote. Now, we're not in the prediction business and, you know, we always warn you about these things. So what good is an election forecast for all of you? I do think that one of the more interesting parts of Nate's forecast, Nate's model is in for the house races. they show you like what are the closest house races in the country.

1:07:16And that can like that list can update. And I think if you're, you know, if you want to volunteer, if you want to donate money, it is kind of helpful to look and see the closest house races, the closest Senate races. And then, you know, you go to Vote Save America and we can make sure you're connected with the right people so you can have something to do and someplace to donate. So I do think that is very helpful to have like what races are the closest to kind of see it updating over time. It is emotional management for most people. They're going to live and die with several point drops in the forecast.

1:07:51Yeah. Yeah. Don't do that because it's going to be quite a polar coaster, if you will, from now until November. All right. Last thing before we go, White House Press Secretary Caroline Lovett announced on Wednesday that she's leaving her post at the end of the month to, quote, embark on a new chapter and spend more time with her kids. She will, of course, be missed. And as former White House comm staffers, we thought it only fitting to say farewell with a tribute to some of her finest moments. She's become a star. It's that face. It's that brain. It's those lips. The way they move, they move like she's a machine gun.

1:08:26Hatred has no place in the United States of America under President Donald Trump. The president's been spotted out and about a number of times with bandages on his hands. Could you please explain what that is about? The president is literally constantly shaking hands. Why was Renee Goode unfortunately and tragically killed? Are you asking me my opinion? Because an ICE agent acted recklessly until we don't have to fire. Oh, okay. So you're a biased reporter with a left-wing opinion. What do you want me to do? Yeah, because you're a left-wing hack. The president had a feeling again based on fact that Iran was going to strike the United States, was going to strike our assets in the region.

1:09:02At this moment in time, of course, the ballroom is really the president's main priority. He believes that Canadians would benefit greatly from becoming the 51st state of the United States of America. It's well past time that President Trump was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Because it was 2011 when Barack Obama and Seth Meyers said, you'll never be president, bloppity bop. Here we are with President Trump going on stage as a two-term president. For the first time, this piece tonight will be classic Donald J. Trump. It'll be funny. It'll be entertaining. There will be some shots fired tonight in the room.

1:09:37Very, you know, just North Korean propaganda through and through. Yeah, back dead Bob. Yeah, big time. I love that he does believe that Canadians will benefit from being the 51st state. Just said with a straight face. Which was a thing that actually happened in American politics. Well, kudos to her for saying that all with a straight face. As for who might replace Levitt at the podium, Names are already being floated all across the MAGA media ecosystem. Lots of exciting possibilities, and it's a wide open field. So each of us, without sharing with each other yet, has ranked our top five most likely picks.

1:10:14So why don't we – I think we should each go 5, 5, 4, 4, 3, 3. Okay, perfect. That's what I was hoping for. Okay. I really kind of missed the punchline of mine, but we'll do it this way. Okay, that's fine. You want to go for – who's your number five? Who's your number five? is Marco Rubio. That's funny. That's funny. I already saw some of the Rubio on the couch memes where he's got a blonde wig on. So yeah. Yeah. I use those. My number five, Erica Kirk. Now that is an interesting suggestion. You think it's crazy, but you're like, wait a minute. She's, you know, she does a lot of public speaking.

1:10:54Big, you know, big favorite of the MAGA world. Who knows? Number four? So before I give number four, I would like to just point out my thinking here, which is Donald Trump has had five press secretaries. Can you name all five? Whoa. Oh, because we have to go back to the first term, huh? Yeah. I can do it for you. Sean Spicer, Katie McEnany. Yep.

1:11:20Oh, what's his name? Scaramucci. Never press secretary. He wasn't for 14 days? Communications director. Oh, he didn't step in for the. Oh, yeah. He might have done some briefings. Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Yep. Caroline Levitt. And so now I'm just one. I have one, right? That I'm missing. Stephanie Grisham. Oh, Stephanie Grisham. Yes. OK. OK. So five press secretaries. The last four have been women. I don't think Donald Trump's going to pick a man. I don't either. So my number four is. Although I have one. I have one man on my list. I did, too, obviously. but my number four is Anna Kelly, who's currently the deputy press secretary.

1:11:59You know, I keep seeing that around, but it's like,

1:12:04I feel like he always wants to go for someone who has been on TV a bunch. He's also lazy. Yeah, that's true. He's a man so lazy, he wouldn't even pick a new national security advisor. Yeah, that's true. That's the lazy route. I don't think it's obviously not what I think is most likely, but I think it's on the table. My number four is my favorite and yours, Trisha McLaughlin. Oh, God, that's that's definitely not happening, but that is a good suggestion for content purposes. You don't think it's I think. Well, I did read somewhere that she might be pregnant. So that would be tricky, at least if it's happening soon.

1:12:41I don't know how pregnant she is or what. But like, but I could see I mean, she was clearly auditioning for White House press secretary her entire time at DHS. And she has not taken a new job yet. Okay. Look, it is on the table. All right. My number three, Carrie Lake. Yeah. Carrie Lake is, it's a possibility. Trump loves her. Trump loves her. She's a loyalist. She is crazy. She's crazy. She'll fight with the press, which is what he cares about most. She's very, she's a former reporter. She's good on TV in a Trumpian way. She's good on TV. Right. Right. Yeah. I thought about her. And I was like, is she, you know, Trump likes his spokespeople, like young, like Fox News anchors.

1:13:27Yeah, it's this. That's the only thing that. Yeah. Well, then my number three, same thing. This is a departure from this, which is Scott Jennings. Interesting. See, I was thought about Scott Jennings, but then I went with my whole man thing. And then I had a very cheesy and funny Rubio joke. I would not put the money on Scott Jennings, but I put him on my list because we are betting all of these on Kelsey, right? Yes, of course. Yes, obviously. As we do with everything. Okay. My number two, Katie Miller. So I was going to have Katie Miller on there. And then I, of course, did some research for this segment.

1:13:58And in one of the Politico stories about the search, a source close to Miller said, not happening. Absolutely not. That's exactly. Oh, now you take Katie Miller's word? Yes. Maybe. What was she? She has a wildly successful podcast. What's she going to do with that? Maybe she just do the podcast in the briefing room. yeah that's probably good she likes attention she's very combative yeah i mean she would yeah i could see it yeah um i have isn't my number two no one just doesn't fill the role continues to have a bunch of dipshits uh jump into the briefing room once in a while and says fuck it i don't even want the press i don't i want to deal with it i'm he's the press secretary yeah i thought about was maybe like a little a little too trying too hard for a viral clip if you will.

1:14:50What? No one? If I said Trump. Oh, Trump. My number one choice is Donald Trump. Yeah, that is a little. That seemed like a bit much. Yeah, no, that is a bit. I think he really cares about the briefing. He wants to watch something. He doesn't want to watch the stuff all the time. It is a lull on the Fox schedule during the day. I think he does not watch Will Cain. So usually the briefing is during Will Cain. And so that solves that problem for him. Will Cain? Too dumb. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Number one. Number one. This is a totally out of left field. It's a crazy choice. Rachel Campos Duffy. She's on Calci, but she fell.

1:15:30She started at like 40 percent. Like, I don't know how they bet there. I think it's like 40 percent or something. And then she's like falling down to less than one percent. Yeah, I think I'm not sure the people who are betting Calci. What we have to watch for is if all of a sudden there is a surge behind one person. Yeah. That's the only thing if you trust. She's a Fox News anchor. She is a reality TV star. She's married to Sean Duffy. Married to her cabinet. In the family. Yeah. Loyal. Trump likes her a lot. He talks about her a lot. Back before Sean Duffy was in the cabinet, he used to tweet in truth about her all the time.

1:16:04Oh. Big fan of hers. Oh. I could see that one. She was on my list. Yeah. I should have kept her on my list. I have Alina Haba. That's, yeah. I think she is the favorite right now. I knew in my soul you were going to pick Alina Haba first. And so for content purposes, I took Alina Haba off my list. I know. I almost didn't want her first because I was like, I think it's boring as a selection. But I actually think if we're just doing most likely, I would put money on that. Yeah. So you were taking this as a serious game. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Just like I take terminally online. I was doing this for totally content purposes.

1:16:42Of course. Of course. Yes. Of course. Well, good luck to everyone on our list. And hopefully it was good to do some outside the box ones that are not on Calci, like Erica Kirk and Trisha McLaughlin, because maybe if we say them, you know, the MAGAverse listens to us. So we just if we put it out there, maybe we can build some buzz behind these. If you are listening to Positive America and then you think that we said something about who Trump might hire as his press secretary. And then you went and put money on that. Get help. Well, that might describe Elijah. He's so far behind help. Yeah, I can hear Austin laughing.

1:17:25All right, Dan. Well, that's our show for today. Tommy will be back on the feed on Sunday with a conversation with tech journalist Casey Newton about the terrifying AI moment we're in exciting and what we can do about it Casey's awesome that's going to be a great conversation and then John and Tommy and I will be back with a new episode on Tuesday have a good weekend everyone bye everyone Pods of America is a Crooked Media production our show is produced by Austin Fisher Saul Rubin McKenna Roberts and Farah Safari with Reed Cherlin Elijah Cohn and Adrian Hill our team includes Matt DeGroat Ben Hethcote Jordan Cantor Charlotte Landis Kirol Pellaviv David Tolles Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single.

1:17:59Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

1:18:05Hi, my name is Mitch Landrieu. My name is Erin Haynes. My name is Jennifer Palmieri, and we're hosting a new series called Long Play. The South is the new political epicenter of the country. Democrats are way on their heels in this region, but Republicans are going through their own reckoning in the South, too. I mean, the South has always shaped American politics. We know that. The stakes could not be higher, but to win the South, you have to understand it. People in the South feel really misunderstood, left behind, put down on, and they want to explain that to somebody. We're traveling across six Southern states to explore the people, the issues, the assumptions that no longer hold, and what the rest of us are missing about a region that will shape the future of our politics and our country.

1:18:51From Left Right and Crooked Media starting July 27th. Watch Long Play Series on YouTube at youtube.com slash longplayseries or listen wherever you get your podcasts.