Trump's Wars Are Bankrupting America

27:26Bottom dropped out, yeah. Yeah, but it's like the ceiling on Democrats to this point has been people do not like Trump. They do not. They think he's doing a terrible job on these issues, but they trust Republicans more than Democrats on these issues, particularly the economy and inflation. And there was a member of that Wall Street Journal poll that was, I think, late last year, earlier this year, which showed on almost every single issue other than health care and climate, Republicans, people voted for Republicans over Democrats. The fact that Democrats have a 10-point advantage on the economy in this Fox News poll is incredibly consequential.

27:58Trump had an advantage on the economy in 2018. We picked up 40 seats. The economy is a more resonant issue this time. That's very good for us. And just to give you a perspective of how much things have shifted on the economy in that Fox News poll, Republicans have only a seven point advantage among white non-college voters on the economy. Oh, wow. Trump won that group by 34 points in 2024. And the economy always has been Trump's superpower. It has been the thing that has held him afloat to this point. He lost that superpower, but Democrats were unable to take advantage of that. We are starting to make real gains there.

28:34And if that stays the case, we will have a very good 2026 in terms of the national popular vote. It won't look like the seat gains from 2018 because of all the gerrymandering and redistricting that's taken place, but it could be a very good year if these numbers hold. Yeah, I was happy to see this because I feel like in the last month, there have been a number of polls where Trump's approval is in the shitter, but the generic ballot was closer than you'd expect from Trump's approval being that bad in the same poll, right? And so that you have polls where it's three, four, five. Now, all three of these polls could be outliers, but they're also all three of them high quality polls, rated very highly, Fox, Emerson, and Pew.

29:19So who knows? But maybe, like you said, maybe it's a focus on Iran. Look, I mean, gas prices were going down before the MOU went kaput and we were back to full-scale war. So, you know, it could be as simple as that. They could come down again, for sure. They could come down again.

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30:18All right, let's get to the latest on the presidential race, which we're talking about because the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee met this week. The RBC. The RBC. Yes. That's what the people in the know call it, the RBC. Yeah. They met this week to figure out the early state primary calendar for 2028. Most of the reporting points to four states that are likely to make that window before Super Tuesday in March. So this is in the January, February window. South Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Michigan. There may also be a fifth state added. And now reporting is centered around possibly New Mexico or Virginia.

30:59But the order of which states go first is very much up for grabs and the source of all the drama that's been leaking out of these meetings. South Carolina and Nevada are jockeying to be the first state fueled by what Axios called a long simmering feud between black and Latino leaders. New Hampshire has a law that requires the state to hold the first primary. So that's tricky. There are 49 people on the committee who will decide this. And one of them told notice, quote, it's going to be a bloodbath. Most states represented have at least one or two members on the committee. And I think they're all going to fight to the death for this.

31:37Great. So what are the big issues here and how much does the sequence matter? So let's do the issues first. I think there are a handful of things that need to be in consideration as you do this. The first is the first four or maybe five states, any states that come before Super Tuesday have dramatically more impact than all the states that come afterwards. Right. These are the states that window the field. They are the states that help pick the front runner. they matter a ton. And so if they're going to matter a ton, they must represent the full breadth of the Democratic Party in the electorate, right?

32:09You need to have states with large black population. You need Latino voters to have a say. You want theoretically a swing state in play. You want rural voters to have a say. So it's got to have real representation of all the parts of the Democratic Party. That's one. Two, you also want the states to be states that play in ways, both in terms of the voters you appeal to, the size of the state that give us the best chance of picking our best nominee. Right. It can't be for giant states where the person with the highest name ID automatically wins. It shouldn't be for rural states or for states that are demographically similar.

32:49You want it to look like, you want it to be a good trial run for a general election. And then what I think is really important is you want, because millions of dollars and thousands of hours of tens of thousands, a hundred thousand hours of organizing is going to go into these states. You don't want all that investment to go to waste in the general election. Like you remember this, we were together in Iowa in the 2020 caucuses. We're flying out the day after the caucuses ended, but there's still no winner declared. And at the airport with us were all these organizers who worked for Bernie, Pete, Biden, Elizabeth Warren, who had spent the last year in Iowa, who knew the names of every Democrat and caucus goer, their names, their fund numbers, their kids' names in these communities in Iowa, and they were leaving to go to another state to never return to Iowa again.

33:39If you're going to organize these states, you want to have some benefit in the general election. So I think those are sort of the main considerations. There's one more thing, which is you need if you're going to move a state's primary, you need control, democratic control of the state. Yeah, this is the most practical concern. Yeah, this is not like something about winning the election or anything, but like you can't because some of these states have already had their primary set and the legislature sets it. And so if the Democrats have said, oh, we want to move it up, you'd have to go to the legislature.

34:12And if it's a Republican legislature, like in Georgia, because Georgia was being considered instead of South Carolina, because it would make more sense for a whole bunch of reasons. It's a competitive state. South Carolina is not still also has a very large black population. but we don't control the legislature in Georgia. And so there's no reason to believe they would ever move the primary date for us. So, yeah. I mean, there's all these like little things in here that are really seem like they should be done, but are quite consequential. It is New Hampshire law that New Hampshire goes first no matter what.

34:40New Hampshire insisted on going first anyway in 2024 and got no delicates, faced a huge price. And they had to sit like in the back of the convention. They had to theoretically change their law if they don't go first, If they're not picked first here, they probably shouldn't be picked first. Nevada, this is really interesting. Nevada is a vote by mail state where votes count if they are postmarked by election day. So if Nevada is the first state, you couldn't call – there's a chance you wouldn't be able to call the winner on election night. Therefore, depriving that winner of that moment where they accept the – they give their victory speech.

35:16It is the moment that's propelled Obama in 2008. So that's a consideration. There's a bunch of little ones like that. If we won the governorship in Georgia, which I'll talk to Jennifer Palmieri about later in the show, you can maybe do it there, but you won't know that when you have to make the decision on this. So New Hampshire, they have this law. They can't change the law. I mean, they could change the law, but we have a Republican governor there and a Republican. They control at least one part of the legislature. Can't do it. Kelly Ayotte is not going to do it. Yeah, because the Republicans want New Hampshire to be first.

35:49Right. So I don't know how. all the reporting is like, well, it's between South Carolina and Nevada for first. How are they getting around the New Hampshire problem? Even if New Hampshire, even if the New Hampshire Democrats at the DNC agree, they still have the law. So I don't know why they're talking about South Carolina or Nevada first. They would just not, if New Hampshire can't change the law, New Hampshire would not count. It would be just like 2024. Remember, I mean, And this has happened in the past. You may remember this from a different period of our lives in 2008. Florida and Michigan moved up to go too early against DNC rules.

36:27Their primaries did not count because they were awarded no delegates when we didn't even compete in those primaries. And so New Hampshire could, if they don't pick New Hampshire, New Hampshire has its primary on that day. It's for nothing. No vote, no delegates are awarded. I guess they could have – and I heard a rumor that this is possible, that they could have that primary that day, no delegates awarded, and then the state party can organize and put on a primary when they're supposed to have it agreed by the Rules and Bylaws Committee. Yeah, you could theoretically do that, although I'm not sure – there must be a way to do it, but I'm not sure how you would fund that if the governor didn't want you to do it.

37:09So that's one issue. The issue you cited with Nevada is worrisome to me that we would not know who the winner is for. That seems like a disaster in the making. but like there's this big fight between South Carolina and Nevada and the chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party said in the New York Times that if Nevada goes first then it will say something about how the Democratic Party views black voters which I think is quite a statement to make and then the chair of the Nevada Democratic Party who is a black woman as well she was like well, 15 % of our electorate is black also. And what are you talking about?

37:50And also, does that mean that if South Carolina goes first, that the Democratic Party is saying to Latino voters that they don't count as much like this? But I just feel like the best way to deal with that is to let the state with the law that says it's supposed to have the first primary go first and then next have South Carolina, Nevada go like within days of each other. like yeah like how much does the order matter among the early states right like i get why you want to be in one of those five states in that window but but like if new hampshire's one week and then south carolina and then nevada or then nevada then south carolina like how much how much does that matter it matters a lot to the people who own tv stations cool in those states it matters a lot to people who own hotels in those states, people who have companies that rent bike rack and other things for rallies.

38:42Because the first state people will be there for a long time. For longer and spend more time. And then it's diminishing, right? Because you put most of your resources in the first state because for most candidates, they don't get out of the first state. They're not going anywhere. The front runners then put their second most resource in second state. And you're sort of like, well, if I make it to South Carolina, which used to be the third state or Nevada, we'll figure it out from that point on. A lot of the calculus on this is really dumb because there is this reporting. I think this is in Peter Hamby's excellent piece in Puck, that there are some folks who are very worried about Nevada because they think AOC could win.

39:17You and I both. Yeah, this is so stupid. And the argument is because Bernie won. But just to put some numbers on this and because it was a caucus in 2020 when Bernie won and they made it. It was a hybrid caucus. There were four days of early vote and then the actual caucus day. But even with that, there were 105 ,000 Democrats who participated in the primary in 2024, where when they're when Biden was running uncontested, essentially 150 ,000 people voted. And if there are 500 ,000 registered Democrats in the state, if it participated, if it operated at a turnout level, like a typically contested presidential primary, there'd be like 250 to 300 ,000 people would vote.

39:54So it's a very different electorate. And it's a more moderate electorate because for a couple of reasons, like just because primary electorates are always more moderate than caucus electorates, because to go to a caucus, you tend to be highly engaged, more of an activist. You're getting out of your house in the middle at night and going to sit in a town hall somewhere for hours and hours. And so the people are more committed. They tend to be more partisan. And so like Bernie Sanders organizing the culinary workers in Nevada and winning the caucus that way versus an AOC trying to win over a larger primary electorate of.

40:35And yes, younger than South Carolina, more heavily Latino, but still a lot of like non-college working class voters, which like, yeah, she could do well. But like so could any candidate. And it's not it's not obvious that that would benefit a progressive candidate like AOC over anyone else. And then there's there is concern about Michigan because they think Gaza would make Gaza a dominant issue in the primary. Yeah, I think everyone's overthinking this. We don't know what the world's going to look like when people are campaigning, you know, when these elections happen, you know, a little less than two years from now.

41:14Yeah, it's it's fascinating and how they ordered will does affect things a lot. The only other thing I'd say is the identity politics fight about which voters we care, that is not particularly constructive. It is true that black political power in this country has been decimated in a lot of ways by the Supreme Court in terms of congressional representation and all of that. But one thing that I think has not gotten a ton of attention is because of the way the districts where all these majority minority districts, which are mostly black across the South, have been written out of existence, that is going to diminish black voters influence in a longer primary process because those districts are ones that perform incredibly well.

42:02And you get a bonus delegate if you perform above a certain level. And so the way Obama and Clinton really cleaned up across the South is that they were claiming all five delegates in those districts. There are fewer – there will be almost no districts like that left across the South. And so there is a – the opportunity to have a say in the process earlier. I don't think the South Carolina should necessarily be first. But that it's the process doesn't look like it used to for black voters now post the VRA decision that did before. Undoubtedly, one of the five early states should have a heavily black population.

42:39Undoubtedly. It is particularly rich for South Carolina to be the ones complaining about this, because that is a state that plays no role. And it is the one state we're talking about. Yeah. That plays no role in the general election whatsoever. whatsoever. And so when you talk about like time wasted by candidates who are organizing in a state that they're never going to go back to, that's, I mean, you could make the same argument for New Hampshire, but Michigan, Nevada, you know, again, it would have been much better if we had democratic control of Georgia to make just, Georgia would be the state and that would be it.

43:14But you also have a lot of black voters in Michigan. You have about one in five, uh, democratic primary voters is black in michigan yeah and you and look ideally you'd want a southern state um to be in the top five that um uh no matter what and it just because of who controls the legislatures it seems like we're stuck with south carolina yeah north carolina is also an option that could have could have easily put in there north carolina would have been good where we control the governorship why didn't north that's an interesting one i wonder why north carolina didn't and then i guess virginia also but virginia the reason people are floating virginia is because it is a way to have a southern state that solves the Georgia problem because we control the legislature there.

43:52So you can easily move it up. Well, I'll tell you this. If it is Nevada, we will be moving production of this show to Las Vegas for many months, maybe even a year. John, I've been to Vegas with you. We should do it one weekend at a time. I just don't think an extended period is not going to be good for anyone. I'd love it. I don't know what would even happen to him. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, this could be a real problem. Staff's going to love it. I can just tell. I can already see the excitement here. All right. Last thing before we get to Dan's conversation with Jen Palmieri about long play. On Tuesday evening, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino posted a minute-long video on his official Twitter account, set to some theme music that some of you might recognize who are millennials or older, in which he panned his phone camera around the walls of the Oval Office in admiration of Donald Trump's interior decorating.

44:43Check it out.

44:50For those of you just listening, this is a lot of gold. Some more gold. There's a lot of model airplanes here. Uh, oof. It's like fucking Saddam's palace.

45:11I don't know what's with all the planes. yeah it the saddam's palace thing is right except this makes saddam's palace like a pottery barn oh god it's so much is that the liberty bell

45:28oh uh okay so what'd you think dan it's not often you get to see you know when you see the oval office on tv you only get to see part of it at a time so you don't fully understand how absolutely gaudy it is now it's just it's gross it's gross there's just too much there's too much gold and it also looks like cheap gold and i'm sure it's not i'm sure he just like spent whatever but it's just it's it's busy it's too it's tacky the model airplanes make no sense um there's some real substance here that we can talk about uh The Washington Post was out with a new poll about Trump's big self-memorials, found that about two-thirds of Americans are unhappy about the renovations in D.C., the Trump renovations, led mostly by Democrats and independents.

46:22There is a big intensity gap. 67 % of Democrats chose the most negative answer, upset, whereas only 31 % of Republicans chose the most positive descriptor, enthusiastic. stick. How much of a political liability do you think? Not just that oval, but all of this shit is? Every one of these things is an affordability issue. It's just like, this is... Do people... Are they really passionate about an ugly arch on the mall or the amount of time the president or what the reflecting pool looks like? No. What they are upset about is that when the prices are going up, the president is spending so much time on the resin on the bottom of the pool.

47:03or on individually hand sourcing gold flake for the White House, or when he went shopping for marble armrests like that, that is to people just like, he's supposed to be fighting for me, and he's doing all of this shit for himself. What a waste of time and energy. I will say, I'd rather him be doing that than focusing on the economy, because when he focuses on the economy, he makes everything more expensive, not less expensive. That is a very glass half full take. John, you know, if all he did was just run around and sourcing fucking gold leaf from other places and just left everything alone, we would probably be we wouldn't be doing a lot better.

47:44We'd be probably doing better than when he actually focuses and decides he's going to slap more tariffs on shit, start more trade wars and forever wars. So he basically needs at all times some sort of fidget toy. Yes. Maybe taxpayer funded fidget toy or billionaire funded fidget toy. But that's what you want to be doing. Yeah, that's just a thought. All right. When we come back, Dan talks to Jen Palmieri.

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49:19Joining me now is the former White House Communications Director, the Emmy-nominated host of the sarcastic and creator of the new show long play, which you can find on YouTube, anywhere you get your podcasts. Join me now is my old coworker, my friend, Jennifer Palmieri. How are you? I'm good. I'm psyched. I'm so psyched that this is like this, that we're actually doing the show. And now it's also out in the world and people know about it. It's very exciting. On Monday. On Monday. We have two episodes. Our first two episodes drop on Monday. They're about Georgia and Texas. Okay. That's right. So this is a six part series on how Democrats win back power in the South.

49:52I'm impressed you can do this in six parts. It seems like quite a task. you have been to Georgia and Texas. What did you find and where are you going next? So, okay. So Georgia, I mean, every state is super interesting. Right now we're in North Carolina. So this is episode three will be North Carolina. We're going to go to Tennessee next. Then we're going to go to Alabama. And then episode six is a jump ball between Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Kentucky. So we're figuring that out. Does the Oklahoma count as the South? It does. It is. I mean, I looked it up in like whatever, you know, I think it's MSAs.

50:24Do you remember that? Like metropolitan statistical areas. It is classified as part of the South. I think they consider themselves pretty Western, but I just find it an interesting place. There's interesting Republican leaders there. Mayor David Holt from Oklahoma City, Governor Stitt's kind of interesting guy. So we'll see. So let me start with Georgia, because what's fascinating about that place is why it is different from all other Southern states and why it became a belt. I'm in North Carolina right now, right? And why did Georgia flip first? Why did Georgia flip before North Carolina? Like, I think we're both old enough to have, when like we thought North Carolina would be the one, right?

51:03Hillary lost Georgia by five points and then Biden won. Hillary lost North Carolina by like one point something points. And Trump came back and won in 20. He won in 24. And I think, you know, and what you learn with Georgia is intention matters that that state like there was decisions made in Atlanta 50 years ago at the end of Jim Crow, beginning of civil rights by a white mayor, Mayor Hartsfield, that Atlanta was going to be the city too busy to hate. You know, that was like partly an economic reason, right? Because racism is bad for business. But with intention, Mayor Jackson, you know, the first black mayor of Georgia, of Atlanta, followed him and built.

51:46That's why Hartsfield is so huge, the airport, because they wanted it to sustain a black middle class. Georgia is the state that was the heart of the Confederacy. It was the heart of the civil rights movement. And and just as, you know, 50 years ago, the civil rights leaders had to come together to make things to make change in Georgia. So did Black Voters Matter. So did Stacey Abrams. You know, they didn't because like, Dan, remember in Georgia 10 years ago or so, it was let's run conservative Democrats in the Zell Miller, you know, sort of mold. Right. They're like kind of almost Republican.

52:26And most of the Republican governors of Georgia, by the way, were former Democrats. And then Stacey Abrams is like, no, we're going to do something different. We're going to like build a different electorate. We're going to change the electorate. You have Senator John Ossoff, Senator Raphael Warnock. They are running different kinds of campaigns and they, you know, and they won in very tough years. Warnock won again in 22. You know, John Ossoff is like in a good it's in good shape right now. But it mattered what happened 50 years ago and that decisions that were made in Atlanta that are different than decisions that were made in Birmingham, different than decisions that were made in Raleigh, North Carolina.

53:02So that reverberate today. And so you just get a sense of. And then, of course, moving with intention now and trying to do things differently in Georgia, like it matters. And that's sort of the inspiring part is if people come together and try to make change and they're smart and consistent about it, you can do it. And so let's talk about Texas. Super interesting. Yeah. So I spent a lot of time in Texas in 2018, as many people did. Oh, for Beto. Bunch of events with Beto, you know, watching that race. Democrats got their hopes up there. This was a state that where it's the one state, I believe, that Hillary Clinton outperformed Barack Obama from 2012 was Texas.

53:45And she did so somewhat substantially in 2018 look good. And then snap back in 20, snap back further in 2024. Seen to be moving much redder. Democrats are pretty optimistic about James Tallarico this time. What did you find in the state? I was pretty, you know, I was a little skeptical of Tallarico coming into the state and I left with a different view. You know, what is I think faith is a faith is a very big deal that Democrats discount too much in the South. You know, I think there are there are big structural reasons of why Democrats and black voters are disenfranchised in the South. And, you know, that was sort of the impetus for this series to understand all of that.

54:22But also there's a there's a big cultural disconnect. What was amazing about and I did feel this in Georgia and also in North Carolina. It's like I'm not saying Tallarico is necessarily going to win, but it feels more fluid, I think, as we're sort of the tail end of Trump's popularity. And since he was not an ideological conservative, voters are it's more of a jump ball for them. Right. So, for example, we went to Tarrant County. I interviewed Taylor Remitt, who's the guy who's the state senator that flipped a Trump seat earlier this year because I had an open election, open seat. You know, and he was basically like, look, I'm a machinist that just knocks on people's doors and, you know, meets them where they are.

55:08And they understand, like, who I am, where I come from. I don't associate with the Democratic Party, national, local level. And they know that they can rely on me. The other thing that happened was we interviewed PTA moms in Tarrant County. Right. So Terrence Fort Worth is the big swing. It's the swing of the swings in Texas, particularly this year. these are three Republican women one was like a never Trump Republican the other two identify themselves as evangelical Christian conservatives and they are not just voting they're just not like sitting out not just voting for Governor Abinett for re-election and they're not just not voting for Ken Paxton they are voting for James Tallarico and Gina Inahosa because they're so upset about, wait for it, the MAGA takeover of their school districts.

55:58So like there was a big, it's so interesting, Dan, because it's like the call, it's like the clap back to 20, to Glenn Youngkin and Loudoun County and critical race theory and all of that in 21 and in the 22 midterms. And what one of these moms said is her child was an infant during COVID. And she said, I heard about critical race theory. She's like, I was concerned about it because I don't want any children to feel like they're not equal or victimized. I heard that boys were going into girls' bathrooms and boys are playing sports. She's like, so I voted for this MAGA school board candidate. And then she said, my son goes to school and I come to find out they're not teaching critical race theory.

56:38They're just teaching normal history. And, you know, we need to know the good and the bad parts of history. They're just teaching like ABCs and one, two, three. She's like, there's no boys going in the girls' bathrooms or boys trying to play in girls' sports, not at our school. And she said, I kept saying, show me where it's happening. And so then I came back to her and I said, well, you know, you're saying you're going to vote for Tallarico, but what about like Jimmy Six Genders that Ken Paxton throws at him? And what about low T Tallarico? And they're like, we're tired of that. We're tired of that.

57:06So it's, if that's breaking down, if people feel, she said, I feel duped now. So I think a lot of times we can hear MAGA voters and think they're wrong, but not understand that they're saying what they believe to be true. And once these women found out that that was not true, and they're super fresh, they like the dual language programs. They liked the DEI program centered the school because it gave their kids more opportunity. So I'm like, if these women are voting for James Tallarico, that's a different deal. But also sort of more importantly for the democracy, it felt like people questioning things more and being more open.

57:48Were there things that the, not just the absence of all the things they said were happening in school districts, but were there things that MAGA school ward was doing in the schools, whether it was, you know, book banning, changing the history curriculum that they were reacting to as well? Yeah, it was book banning. They hated that. You know, oh, interestingly, both of these women who were evangelical Christians said, you know um i don't want the 10 commandments taught in school that is not what school is there for she said i do that they i do this at home um and i think that um and they also didn't like they had i guess very aggressive and good dual language programs so that from a young age you know english-speaking students are being taught um spanish and they're gonna they're going to come out of that school district fluent and they got rid of all of that and then there And then there was a confusing takeover where the states started closing schools as well.

58:45And that happened, too. And of course, it's also very this sort of state takeover is also very antithetical to the you know, what we think of as traditional Republican ideology. And that rubbed in the wrong way as as well. He's not, you know, Trump is not popular there. We also fascinating Mitch Landrieu spoke with two Hispanic small business owners who had both their construction, have a construction company. They had both voted for Trump. They were very patriotic, voted for him for the economy. And they're going to vote for Democrats now, too, because the way he's corrupted immigration enforcement, you know, has like has handicapped their business.

59:31And also it's really and Gina and a host have brought this up, too. It seems it's really struck a chord with Hispanics in Texas, their patriotic pride. You know, they're really proud to be American. They think they've worked really hard for that. They're culturally conservative. And it's an insult to them when they're, you know, when everyone is rounded up, when no one, when, you know, whether you're here with documentation or not is treated as the same. Super interesting place. Yeah, I mean, I'm very fascinated by Texas. It's, you know, I don't want to get my hopes up for it, but this is there's a convergence here between the kind of Republican Paxton is the kind of Democrat Tallarico is the dramatic.

1:00:18This is the dramatic shift in the Latino vote, which is happening to Trump across the country. But it happened. This is. Yeah. I mean, if it's going to he's going to pay a price for it. It is in Texas more than almost anywhere else in the country. 53 % of Hispanic men in Texas voted for him in 24, I think. A big jump. It was like a 15-point jump from 20. But that feels tough now. I mean, Texas is still super conservative. Just to remind everyone, it's not all Austin. Houston, it's places like Tyler. It's places like Laredo. We went to Laredo, which was super cool. You know, right on the my hotel balcony looked out over the Rio Grande and the barter was like our hotel was sort of part of the Border Patrol.

1:01:06I did not understand what I was looking at for like two minutes. I mean, Dan, I thought it was like the catering part of the hotel. I was like, oh, that chain link fence with the awning, that must be where they bring the catering down. I was like, oh, that's that's not what happened. Oh, no, that's what the Border Patrol is. Yes. Democrats are going to have to do better in the South, particularly when the as the electoral map is going to change up the 2032 census, the blue wall will be insufficient to win the presidency in and of itself as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin potentially lose electoral votes and Texas and Florida gain them.

1:01:42So there's Georgia and North Carolina. Georgia is a battleground state. North Carolina is a battleground state, but as you point out, it's one that we've struggled with at the presidential level, although we've run three statewide governance races there. We run a few statewide races last time. Is there another southern state that you look at that could be the next one to go? Like, is there a Georgia in the making out there somewhere? I think it's a long way off, but people point to Alabama as that state. Because of the size of the black population? Because of the sign. I mean, here's the thing with Mississippi and Alabama, right, that it is I think Georgia probably has the third highest per capita percentage black voters.

1:02:20Mississippi and Alabama have the highest or about thirty nine percent. And but what's happening and they just have not been you know, and I was born in Mississippi. I lived in Mississippi and South Carolina until I was 11. So I kind of, you know, I love this part of the region. It like would kill me, Dan, how we just like a summer class, like I left and I never had a reason to go back because even for work. Right. Because we just like it's like, well, this is this is what happens when you ignore a region. Um, and the thing with Alabama is, uh, there's a high percentage of black folks. There's just a lot happening there.

1:03:01Um, Huntsville is a big, you know, NASA is there. There's a lot of research there. There's people moving to Huntsville. I think it's like the second fastest growing city in the South. It's diverse. So kind of the way that the research triangle in North Carolina attracted new kinds of voters. Huntsville is doing that. And then Birmingham is really growing economically. But also you're starting to see new kinds of Democratic infrastructure come into Birmingham. So Doug Jones is running for governor there, former Democratic United States senator. We're going to go. I'm super sorry to go to Alabama because, you know, you just don't hear.

1:03:45really interesting culture too interesting music music's a big part of the show too um so that people are moving with a little more intention in Alabama but like it's a way Tennessee is kind of the uh I feel like Tennessee is another place that with focus could change there's a lot of um people that are pretty you know really angry at the way They they've just you know, I think at the after this election that there will probably not be a Democratic member of the House representing Tennessee anymore. Right. They gerrymandered Jim Cooper out a few years ago and now they're gerrymandering the last standing Democrat and it will be nine zero.

1:04:30And then the expectation has come next year. They will gerrymander the state legislature as well. And that the resentment there is building now because you got to get better candidates. As we are having this conversation, the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee is meeting about what the presidential calendar is going to look like. There's – John and I talked earlier in the show a lot about it. But one of the things that some people think is very important is that there's a southern state in there and maybe two southern states, South Carolina being one and then possibly either North Carolina, Virginia, or possibly Georgia.

1:05:04Although, as John and I discussed, you need the governor to change the law to move the primary, which is possible. You need the governor and the legislature, which could be an impediment there. Do you think that having the Democratic presidential primary take place in the South would be a net positive or a net negative for impressions of the Democratic Party in the South and their ability to win a general election? I think it's better. First of all, I think Democrats would learn the South more, which I think is really important. And, you know, I think if you look at the stereotype of a Christian conservative mother who's Republican and voted for Trump three times and Greg Abbott three times, you probably didn't imagine that she didn't want the 10 commandments taught in school and that she wanted her children to be taught Spanish.

1:05:52And she did not want this kind of takeover of schools. Right. So there's so many stereotypes that I feel like familiarity, our candidates in these states, and the staff, the infrastructure, democratic infrastructure having to focus on the state too, I think is a net plus. But I can imagine some of the concerns that you and Favs might have raised. Yeah, we didn't get too much into the long-term impact. The question we have is about, obviously, we need the states to be representative of the party in the country. And you want the states to be – there's sort of a short term and a long term. The short term is it's great if it's in a swing state because you do all this investment in building infrastructure there.

1:06:36And then you can use infrastructure in the general, which worked great in the years in which Iowa and New Hampshire were swing states. Right, yeah. Right. Iowa less so at the presidential level, New Hampshire sort of on the cusp there. But there is this argument for long term, which is if you actually had people investing in the state, you know, you had a two year cycle or an 18 month cycle where people were organizing the state within an inch of his life. That could be, you know, then you have the right demographic movement. You have the right political environment. you might actually, that's kind of the, a get some investment in the state that could lead to some of the things you talked about in Georgia, at least on the, on the progressive organizing side.

1:07:18I think that would really help in North Carolina in particular, you know, because I think the problem in North Carolina is inattention to rural areas. And, you know, I talked to some rural state lawmakers that represent us with the black rural counties. And they're like, there's just, you know, maybe if they heard something other than caricatures of Democrats, they would feel differently. So it is like, it's that kind of stuff that's killing Democrats. It's the national, you know, particularly if you're running for a federal state, whether that's in the House or the Senate, it's like, that's, you know, that's why North Carolina is sort of the inverse of Georgia, which is it can elect governors, but it can elect senators in Georgia.

1:08:02They elect senators, Democrats, but not governors. Although hopefully we'll be electing a Democratic senator in North Carolina this year. Because if we don't, we're in big trouble. If Roy Cooper's not winning, we're not taking the Senate. That looks good, but I'll just say the thing that they're nervous about, the Cooper people are nervous about a couple of things. One, Michael Watley, who's the Republican opponent, has not gone up on air yet. That may, you know, he's not, you know, so they're like, hey, we're at 48, his approval rating is 48%. I would like Roy Cooper's approval for him to be at 50%.

1:08:30You know, it's not. And they haven't even gone after him yet. And then, you know, it's just a tough state. And people aren't giving him as much money as other candidates because they think North Carolina is fine. But North Carolina has elected that guy a lot. I think four times in 80? Six? Yes, and twice with Trump on the ballot, which is a great feat. I talked to Governor Cooper a couple weeks ago on Ponce America, and you can feel the trepidation of people. Too many people are counting their chickens before they're hatched here. And just this is this is not going to be a seven point race. He's not winning my seven points.

1:09:12It's going to be a very close race. It's just there's this, as you point out, he's right kind of, you know, right around 50 in his in a lot of this polling. But either but he's not high above it. And so a lot of that vote, Watley is going to pick up and make it close. And so it's going to be a close race. One interesting Democratic congressional candidate I met in North Carolina is Jamie Ager, who he is running. He's in West North Carolina near Asheville. His grandfather was a congressman, but he is not, does not, he just does not feel political at all. He's a farmer. And he's running against Chuck Edwards, the incumbent, who just about a month ago was like, oh, wait for it.

1:09:53Shocker has like, you know, a problem with like sexually harassing his staffers and there's an ethics investigation of him. So, uh, that's like newly interesting. And he's like a very compelling guy. All right. We will, we will check him out. Fed hogs with him. I am. I'm very excited for long play. Everyone should check it out. Uh, YouTube more, you get your podcast. This is fun for me. Cause I am a long time Jen Palmieri fan. So I'm excited to watch it myself. Um, it's a very, very cool project. We're very, very excited to be participating in it with you. And, uh, it's Great to talk to you. Thanks, Fiverr.

1:10:25That's our show for today. Thanks to Jen Palmieri for coming on. Everyone check out Long Play on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. It'll be out on Tuesday. I'll be back on Sunday with Slow Boring's Matt Iglesias diving deeper into the midterms in 2028. Can't wait. Bye, everyone. Pods of America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Farrah Safari with Ree Cherlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hefcoat, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Kirill Pellaviv, David Tolles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single.

1:10:54Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.