A Hit of Democratic Hopium

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2:48So, David Ferris, Lizzie O 'Leary, are you ready for Super Tuesday? That is what we are calling this segment.

2:59David Faris: I hope it's super.

3:04David Ferris teaches politics at Roosevelt University, and he talks politics on this show and others. Lizzie O 'Leary, you know her from What Next TBD. Okay, you gotta sound more excited, David. I'm making little, like, squirrel hands.

3:20David Faris: Yeah, look, I'm trying to hedge a little bit, but I'm extremely excited, yes. We gathered Lizzie and David together for what is now a Tuesday tradition here on the show. A weekly hang to get you through midterm season.

3:37David, I gotta say, you were here partially because back in January, like let's do a real rewind here. You came on the show and you told listeners a blue wave is coming. Are you feeling pretty good about the prediction right now?

3:56David Faris: I'm feeling pretty OK with it. Yeah. I mean, I think there were a lot of signs in January that the blue wave was coming. And then our illustrious president decided to start a war that made like literally everything worse for his party. So things look much better even than they did in January. Better politically, worse in almost every other way. Yeah, no, I'm not enjoying it economically for sure. So, but yes. Yeah. I mean, you recently wrote Republican strategists are starting to see the birds head out to sea and the faint outline of an inbound tsunami. Lizzie, are you feeling the blue tsunami energy?

4:35Yes. And yes, but maybe not as strongly as David. I think it's in my nature to be cautious. But yeah, like when you drill down into the specific races, things do not look good for the Republicans because things do not look good for Trump. But David, you're here to make the case that the Senate is within the Democrats grasp.

4:58David Faris: Oh, yeah. I mean, at this point, I think Democrats are more likely than not to take the Senate. At this point, the question is, how many seats do they take? 52 makes it John Fetterman proof, which I think is very important because he's a major flight risk at this point, like party switching risk. But I think the real tell for Republicans is that they are starting to panic and pour money into races that should be safe Republican.

5:25Today on the show, we are going to interrogate David's optimism here and tell you about a few races that are making the three of us think the Dems may have the Senate within their reach. I'm Mary Harris. You're listening to What Next? Stick around.

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8:04Okay. So David, I want to talk about why you're so bullish about these midterms, especially in the Senate. And I want you to really do the work to explain why it's not just hopium. Can we start by going back to 2018, which is the last time Donald Trump was two years into a presidency and looking to get a comeuppance. I think I have this strong memory. Lizzie, do you have this too, of the Democrats taking the House and all these women sitting there in white to take their seats, including AOC. And the suffragette white suits. Yes. It was like the whole ceremony of it. But, but, but that was the House.

8:40And in the Senate, Democrats actually lost a couple of seats. So why do you think this time could be different?

8:49David Faris: Well, structurally, it's a similar situation, right? In 2018, it was not a great map for Democrats. Democrats were defending some seats in deep red territory where they happened to have incumbents, for example, so like Claire McCaskill in Missouri, or where they had good candidates that they had recruited for tough races like Phil Bredesen in Tennessee, who was a popular former two-term Democratic governor. You had some reasons to think that the wave in 2018 would be so big that it would carry over these pretty good or credible Democratic candidates. And that just did not happen. Claire McCaskill lost.

9:20David Faris: And if you look at the polling, like I'm just going to focus on the polling for a second, which is that if you go back and you look at polling averages for these races in 2018, at this point, right, we're almost in October, all of those candidates had surrendered their leads that they had in the spring. In other words, those states had started to revert to their partisan baselines by mid-September, early October. And at this point, Claire McCaskill was a clear underdog, right? Phil Bredesen was a clear underdog. And even when they were leading those races, they were doing so with 44 or 45 percent of the vote, 43 percent of the vote.

9:53David Faris: There were a lot of undecided voters. And in these states, the undecided voters lean really heavily Republican. And what gives me some extra hope this year, come with me into the Hopium Den.

10:07Have a toke in the Hopium Den. Let's just do it.

10:10David Faris: It feels good. So what gives me some added hope this year is that the candidates in those tough races are not at 44, 45 percent. They're at 48, 49 percent. Right. And the independent, the undecided voters don't have to break overwhelmingly for the Democratic candidate in order for them to win. Yeah, for real. OK, so I want to get into a few races specifically. I think everyone's talking about Texas. Everyone's talking about Michigan. But I wonder if we can shift focus to some places that the listeners may not have heard as much about. And places where you're legitimately optimistic, David, like Iowa, for instance.

10:47Like, I don't think of Iowa as a state where it's like, oh, really in reach for Democrats. But just in the last week, there was this story about a conservative radio host in Iowa who kind of took to Twitter and was like, I didn't know if I should say this. But, you know, Republican strategists are basically warning if you are in a Trump plus 10 district, you are underwater at this point. And I was like, wow, wow. And then we also have a candidate there who seems legitimately to be resonating. So, I mean, the Cook Political Report just made Iowa Senate race toss up. Is that for real, David?

11:24David Faris: It's for real. I mean, if we believe the polling again. And I love the Iowa Senate race because it doesn't have some of these confounding factors of the other races, right? There's no incumbent. What do you mean by that? Like, there's no incumbent in the race, right? There's no popular, you know. Oh, so clean slate. It's a clean slate, right? It's a Joni Ernst seat. Yes. It's an open seat. It's an open seat. Joni Ernst's retired. Joni Ernst's last seat in telling people, like, everyone's going to die. So sorry about your health care being cut. Okay. Yeah, way to set the table for your successor, Joni.

11:57David Faris: Yeah. So yeah, so there's no incumbent. There's no popular former governor running. There's no extremist. There's neither primary resulted in a bad candidate or an incredible candidate, like the dream candidate. It's two legislators going against each other. This is a Trump plus 13 state from 2024. for. And it's a real test of like, can the policy outcomes in a deep red state be bad enough to peel away enough Trump voters to put Democrats over the top? Like this is a real test of the actual national environment right now, because you have two candidates that neither party would disavow, right?

12:36David Faris: They're fine. And you have a lot of really negative policy outcomes in Iowa specifically. Diesel. Diesel is a negative policy. Yes, for sure. It's a, you know, it's an agricultural state. It's a state that's been struggling economically. It's been hit particularly hard by the Trump tariff stuff and the Iran war. People are angry, right? I mean, I think that Republican strategist was not making that up. There's a lot of panic in Republican circles about safe house seats and the wave sort of cresting over that sort of like 10-point threshold. Well, can we put like names and faces to this? Like, Lizzie, can you tell me about the Republican candidate in Iowa for Senate?

13:09Well, this is very interesting. Ashley Hinson, she's, you know, representative for the second congressional district. And the thing she did most recently was she called for an end to the war in Iran. Like to have a Republican candidate on the record saying that I think is incredibly telling. I mean, she is not going like hook, line and sinker with the MAGA line, even though she's a pretty MAGA friendly candidate. Well, Mike Rogers did that, too, in Michigan. Right. So it's like you're seeing these people who are feeling at risk being like, maybe we shouldn't be doing that. Like, let's get a little daylight here.

13:42I also like I have such a soft spot for some of the races that we're going to talk about because I just I like Iowa voters and I like New Hampshire voters because they are such big nerds because of their role in the presidential calendar. Like they tend to be very demanding voters, which I love. Like voters should be demanding of their candidates. They should ask these kinds of questions. So I think the Ashley Hinson thing is interesting. And then, you know, I know you're going to talk about Josh Turek when we talk about the Joni Ernst, like we're all going to die health care thing. Turek has made it a part of his campaign to say that government health care covered by the V.A.

14:20was incredibly important to him surviving and thriving. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, David, you want to talk about Josh Turek a little bit? He's known for being a wheelchair athlete, basketball player, and he's running as a Democrat. Right.

14:35David Faris: Now, he's got a very inspirational backstory, right? He was born with spina bifida, and he's a Paralympian, a medal-winning Paralympian. And he's a House legislator, right? He's immersed in politics. He has some set policy positions. I've watched a lot of Josh Turek ads, and there are a number of ads where he's knocking on doors and literally pulling his wheelchair up by hand to walk up the stairs to talk to people. whether that happens at every doorknock i do not know um but it's a it's a pretty striking visual for an ad these are really good ads um and he's calling himself straps like literally right literally by your bootstraps and he has called himself a prairie populist right so um in other words he's leaning into this kind of populist moment where he's maintaining the affiliation with the democratic party unlike a couple of other candidates um sort of in the plains he's a democrat he's a he's a he's a lifelong democrat um but he's kind of distancing himself from the party on a couple of key issues.

15:32Like what?

15:33David Faris: Like like trans women in sports, for example, where he has come out and said, you know, like that he's sort of taking the Republican line on that. Right. I think a lot of Democratic candidates in these purple states or even in the in the red states are just looking at the polling on this issue and saying, like, you know, I want to wash my hands of it. I don't think that's necessary, especially in this environment, because it is not a top tier issue at all for voters. Very low salience. Very low sailors. Right. But otherwise, I think he's really got the wind in his sails here. Right. I mean, he just did an ad with Barack Obama.

16:05David Faris: Right. And Barack Obama, by the way, won Iowa twice. Yeah. And so he has some cachet in that state. Turek likes to say things like, there are more Obama Trump voters in Iowa than in any other state in the country. But I fact checked that. Right. But he is leaning into that a bit. And I think it's a fairly effective message. Okay. But here's the thing. Like Iowa was the state where there was this poll that was really off in 2024. So off that Donald Trump like decided he should sue the pollster and Selzer who had had Kamala up by a few points there. So how much should we trust what the polls are telling us here?

16:46And I think everyone remembers Michigan too, where in the primary race, it looked like someone like Abdul El-Sayed would like surge. Yeah. And then it was like, okay, well, he just kind of barely won. So is this real?

16:58David Faris: It's real. Yeah. I mean, first of all, I mean, important to note that Ann Seltzer retired after the election. And I have to take a deep breath before I think about that poll, right? Because that gave a lot of us some hope that things were going to turn out very differently in 2024. And she was a reputable pollster, but who famously had not started adjusting for things like college education, which is a polarizing feature of our politics at this point. It's worth repeating. Trump took the state by 13 points. Yeah, it was not close. It was a big, big leap. It was not close. But from the vantage point of my hope, I'm done here.

17:32The polls, it's not just one poll, right?

17:35David Faris: It's not like one out of left field poll where it's like, oh, we see a competitive race here where no one else does. It's like everybody that has gone in the field in Iowa over the past two months has found a competitive race, right? Either Ashley Hinson leading by a couple of points or a tie or Josh Turek leading by a couple of points. And actually, Turek has the momentum right now. Like this is a race that has gone from like a pretty clear hints and advantage, I would say, a month ago to a place where the polls suggest really like a pure toss up. This could be a really, really, really close race.

18:07David Faris: And again, in a Trump plus 13 state, you have a number of states that went for Trump by 13 points or more, where you're seeing competitive races or Democrats leading that suggest to me that the Democratic advantage on the so-called generic ballot may be even bigger than we're seeing right now. Well, isn't that the question is where the independents break at this point? It is. And independents do not like Donald Trump right now. I mean, his numbers are bad with Democrats, understandably. But if you look at the polling on independents, he's 30, 40 points underwater on approval. He's 30, 40 points underwater on the economy, inflation, the war.

18:42These are voters who are sort of not super keyed into politics.

18:47David Faris: Always, they tend to tune in late. The true persuadable voters, you know, the 5 % of the electorate that really does just switch between parties between elections. These are people who are not super attached to the Republican Party, the Republican brand. This is not what they voted for. It's actually kind of explicitly what they didn't vote for, which was like a new war in the Middle East and higher prices, like deliberately making things more expensive. And Trump, it's like he pushed a button that said, like, I did this. You know, it's like you can't always blame the president for the economy.

19:18David Faris: Right. But he and all of his genius, you know, he went out and he did this thing that clearly raised prices on everyone immediately. And he won't stop doing it. When we come back, we'll talk about a couple of Senate races that have some Democrats worried. But a quick reminder before we do that, if you were a Slate Plus member, you could be listening to this ad-free and it's pledge season around here. So go on over to slate.com slash whatnextplus and use the offer code whatnext50 to sign up while you listen. We're grateful for you.

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21:49Okay, let's pivot to New England and talk about some crucial Senate races there. New Hampshire, Maine. jane lizzie i want to talk about new hampshire because this this race shouldn't be exciting this is like a i mean it's a democratic seat but um it still seems like there's some uh you know there's a little bit tension there but what's going to happen can you just explain what's going on in new hampshire yeah well this is jane shaheen's seat the democrats need to keep it um you know she's retiring um so again a clean slate yeah clean slate uh but it's also like it's a clean slate and yet there are like new hampshire dynasty questions floating around in the background of it because of who we're talking about here democrat is chris pappas who is a congressman but also this is really dorky his family runs this restaurant that is like a must do stop on the trail in manchester like where people why why do you have to go there Because New Hampshire is tiny.

22:53And so you have like you have to go to these places. Right. So they claim they invented the chicken tender. Yeah. Yeah. But then he's running against John Sununu. Which everyone knows his name. Right. Yeah. Everyone in New Hampshire. I mean, everyone knows his name. But like John Sununu, son of John Sununu. So there is some dynasty happening here. David, I'm curious about what you think about this race and like whether it exists on its merits or whether it's like filtered through all of the New Hampshire-ness in the background.

23:26David Faris: Sure. I think I don't think this is going to be a super close race. Like this is not a race that I'm worried about. It's interesting you say that because literally there was like a New York Times article that was like, everyone's panicking about New Hampshire because, you know, Sununu's name is so high recognition there. There's a lot of panic buttons out there, according to the New York Times. There really are. I think that just to I want to simplify this. It's the wrong Sununu. It's just the wrong Sununu. Chris Sununu, who is the multi-term governor of New Hampshire. New Englanders, who are very Democratic-meaning at this point, do have a soft spot for Republican governors, right?

24:02David Faris: Like Vermont's about to reelect Phil Scott. It's a mystery to me. I don't live there, but my brother lives in New Hampshire. And so I'm very jealous of the amount of access that he has to political candidates all the time. But it's the wrong Sununu. John Sununu, he was a senator from New Hampshire. He was defeated by Gene Shaheen. And he has spent the last 20 years, like, just imagine all the worst things you can do as a former official in D.C., like lobbying, you know, like joining the boards of financial firms, just like making money for himself. And he's been out of that seat for 20 years. And I just that's just not to me a super credible challenge, even though he does have the Sununu name.

24:41David Faris: it's like the bushes of New Hampshire. I'm very bullish about Chris Pappas in this race. The polling has been good for the last for the last week or so. And New Hampshire is a blue enough leaning state nationally that that that a Democratic wave of eight or 10 or 12 points is just, you know, to me, without question, I'm going to put Chris Pappas over the edge here. Lizzie, can you tell us a little bit more about Chris Pappas? Because I feel like while John Sununu has been out there like lobbying, Chris Pappas has been living a very different life. Yes. And I well, this is a question I have for David.

25:12Is New Hampshire ready for a gay senator?

25:15David Faris: I think so. I mean, and I would say like his district is the. The more southern, like closer to Boston and also the seacoast, it's not the like way up there, New Hampshire. For sure. But it is a competitive seat. I mean, Pappas has won a competitive seat several times now. And it's not a statewide election, but New Hampshire is so small. it's like a half statewide election, right? Like, you know, he's reached a lot of New Hampshire voters already. New England, I think, is at this point kind of a safe haven for LGBTQ plus communities, right? Like, this is where you go, right, if you want to be safe.

25:58David Faris: And so, you know, will Sununu do a little bit better than some other Republicans nationally? Yes, I think so, right? Like, I don't know that Chris Pappas is going to ride the wave as much as other people will. but I but me I'm kind of he's he's very charming he's you know he's he's out he's obviously very well known and the largest I don't know if I want to use the word city to describe Manchester but um ouch it's a city man's Vegas man's Vegas I live there for almost a year it's a lovely place it really is it's a lovely place but yeah and also he won 17 grand on who wants to be a millionaire.

26:37David Faris: Yeah, that'll go a long way against Elon Musk's money. But I find him a very appealing personality. I've heard him speak. You know, he's he's got the juice. There's something wrong with him. Right. So he doesn't have any candidate quality problems, any scandals. He's just he's like a nice guy running for running for Senate. OK, but you say you're not worried about New Hampshire, but can we talk about Maine? Can we talk about Maine? This is the last Senate race we are going to have a family meeting about. And of course, everyone remembers over the summer, Graham Plattner dropped out. Troy Jackson came in.

27:11Susan Collins is Susan Collins. We've had a little bit of time now to get used to the fact that Graham Plattner is out of here and Troy Jackson is in here. How is this race looking to you?

27:25David Faris: I don't feel as good about this race. Susan Collins has some kind of hex on us. She's a witch. She's a witch. I mean, if you think back to 2020, Sarah Gideon led every single poll of that race. And then she lost the actual, actual race. Honestly, it's one of the biggest polling misses in the history of modern polling. Ever, ever. Right. I mean, it wasn't close either. It wasn't like Collins eked it out. She won by like seven points. And so clearly Susan Collins just has this incredible personal brand in Maine we have to concede. Sort of like Joe Manchin had in West Virginia. You point her and she's like, she's the only Republican probably that could win statewide here at all, but especially in this environment.

28:09David Faris: It is really remarkable that she's competitive. I will point out that since some of these scare polls came out, there has been a pretty significant scandal involving Susan Collins that was revealed by ProPublica in The New York Times. We should be hearing more about this. I don't. We should be hearing more about this from Troy Jackson. We should. So David, do you know the specifics here about who was offering what to whom? I mean, there's a guy in prison, right? Yeah, there was a big DOJ investigation back when we had a DOJ that did that kind of thing. Remember those days? But the basic idea is that Susan Collins voted to give defense contracts in Maine in exchange for campaign contributions.

28:52David Faris: So there was this one company that cut like a$500 ,000 check to the to the Collins campaign when she was in deep trouble in the 2020 cycle. You know, magically a few days after she voted to give this defense contract, like this main based defense contract to this contractor. And it was not the only instance of this happening. The thing about this scandal is like it's alarming on a bunch of levels. Like, first of all, the contractor was getting money from the government to do things and then not actually like none of its tech worked out for the government. It was essentially just like a leech on the government taking money.

29:28Then it was like there was these like shell companies they set up in order to like filter the money to Collins. So like a lot of forethought here about how are we getting this money to her? it just it's the more you look into it the more upsetting it is it's it's really gross honestly

29:46David Faris: um there was a there's a really telling moment and if you if you read the whole pro publica article um where they're you know they're putting together the bribe and the the contractor's like we want to you know we're going to create this shell company but we want to make sure that susan collins knows that this money came from us and her staffer and the so there's a super pack right in the super pack, I was like, don't worry. We'll relay. We got you. And they like do this whole thing at Corner Bakery. Yeah. Corner Bakery. Corner Bakery, Catch and Strays. Yeah. I find this one very complicated to kind of follow.

30:18But also the other layer of this is not just the thing. It's that there was an investigation into the thing that was then quashed. Yeah. I mean, I guess my My question for you, Lizzie, is like, is Troy Jackson doing enough here with this seems like a gift, this scandal? And if I was him, I'd be like, anyone who will have me, I would like to discuss this scandal on the record immediately. You know, I know they have a debate coming up next week in Maine. And so and he's been bullish about let's debate. So that'll be interesting to look at. But like, I don't know, we could be doing more here, right?

30:56I think so. But I wonder and I don't know, like a question I have for the Jackson campaign is how are they reading this? Are they reading this as like. You know, say she's corrupt, which he did after, you know, this news from ProPublica broke. But are they also saying, but a lot of Mainers really like her and have liked her for a long time. So, like, don't. Go too hard on that. I don't know. Like, I'm curious how they tease those things out, because she is in many ways like well-liked in Maine for a long time. She has won for a very long time there. And so how can they separate out the person from what seems to be like a pretty clear line from this company to something tucked in an appropriations bill?

31:45Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because when Troy Jackson took over the ballot, I remember some people saying, actually, this could really work out in Maine. because generic ballot, I think, was polling better than Graham Plattner because Graham Plattner was so besieged with scandals. The thing that worries me about Maine is it seems like, for whatever reason, the Troy Jackson campaign is sort of like riding on that generic ballot momentum. He's just sort of like, yep, we're going to generic ballot it all the way. And I'm like, bro. I don't know that we can just sit around here.

32:22David Faris: You can't generic ballot Susan Collins. No. Yes. Yes. You can't generic ballot Susan Collins. It's like, she's, she's, she's outsmarted, outwitted for many years. Survivor. Before we go, I do want to go like around the horn and like with me and Lizzie, like what are the races we're watching? Cause like these three were, I know on your list And Kansas was on mine because in Kansas, that race is crazy. You have a guy, a pastor, Adam Hamilton, running as a Democrat. A Democrat has not won the Senate there in like 96 years. So it would be a big deal if my guy won. But he's running against Roger Marshall.

33:00That's his Republican opponent, doctor. And last week he released, Adam Hamilton's campaign released this ad that I think it was like a knife to the gut. To Roger Marshall, who served as an OBGYN before he served in the Senate, he goes by Doc. And it's a woman who's a former patient talking about the cops showing up at her door because she couldn't pay a$50 bill. And Roger Marshall did that to her. And I was like, wow, wow. And a lot of people. Yes. And a lot of people, not just her. So it's like, I do think Kansas is like interesting to watch, may actually be in play, even though it doesn't seem like it should be.

33:35And like, Lizzie, I'm kind of wondering what your version of this is. So my version of this is the like is the revenge candidacy of Sherrod Brown. I mean, it's not not technically a revenge candidacy. Right. So but he got booted in 2024. But he got booted in 2024 from by Bernie Moreno, who is still in the Senate ex-father-in-law of Max Miller, which is its own like thing. But the big issue in that race, like in many others, but data centers, data centers is like the animating Ohio thing right now. And I find it fascinating that it's possible that Brown could win back a Senate seat, not his Senate seat, as sort of like an anti-tech guy when he got ousted by a tech guy the first time.

34:25Like Bernie Moreno is a crypto guy. So like this is I don't know. It's like my my beat colliding in many interesting ways. Also, Sherrod Brown was just like a fun person for me to cover when I covered Congress. So I am very curious to see how that race goes. And it's a toss up. It is it is also exceptionally close right now. Yeah. OK, guys, one more question before we go. I think we've like really laid out why the blue wave might happen, even in the Senate. To me, it's going to raise this issue. And I just wonder if each of you see an answer to this question. If there is this blue wave and if it does materialize in such a way that the Democrats really do have power in the House and the Senate, what the hell are they going to do?

35:04And are these candidates providing a clear path and answer to that question? I just wonder what each of you say to that, because I kind of think it's going to be a wild pack of people all together if the Democrats do pull it off. It really will be like the rainbow coalition. But I don't know what that means in terms of getting stuff done. So maybe, David, what do you think?

35:25David Faris: Well, I don't think that getting things done is really going to be the thing that this Congress is going to do, right? Like, I don't think there's really any plausible world in which they're going to be making policy in any meaningful sense. They can go toe to toe with the Trump administration about budgets. Like, they can grind the gears a little bit. Right. But the Supreme Court has basically appointed Trump as the emperor of America. He's allowed him to seize the power of the purse from Congress without stopping him. They're doing it every day. Like, they're doing the pocket rescissions thing.

35:56David Faris: this is not a situation where Democrats are going to be able to use this majority to win a bunch of, you know, like policy concessions from Trump, or they're gonna get some big win over him, right? This is about checking his power, slowing whatever's left of the Republican legislative agenda to a halt. They could impeach some people. And then there's gonna be a big, big, big debate about impeachment. And I think that the, I think the way the wind is blowing is we're not going to impeach Trump, we're going to impeach Pete Hegseth. We're going to impeach some of these these other figures in the administration.

36:26Hakeem Jeffries is like, Hegseth is next. I'm like, wow, we're really we're really on it. Hakeem Jeffries. I know. I know.

36:32David Faris: Yeah. I mean, admittedly, the Pete Hegseth is very impeachable. You know, I mean, like, yeah, really has it coming. So that's how I see it. So so my concern is sort of flows from that, which is. all of these potentially elected Democrats trying to figure out whether or not they do things like impeach people, try to stop construction of the Arc de Trump, deal with the ballroom. There is a long history of Democrats like falling all over themselves when they're trying to figure out what to do and how to do it together. And maybe I'm a cynic, but I'm I'm like, guys, guys, if you win in November, don't do that.

37:17Like, you've got to figure out a way to take the power. Political power is very small. It doesn't last for long. And, like, do something with it that's not just retributive. The other thing that keeps me up at night is just, like, the idea of martial law before the midterms. But I'm just going to, like... Breathe through it. I'm going to breathe through that one. But yeah, maybe, maybe, yeah, don't punch each other in the face if you win. Yeah.

37:47David Faris: Low bar, but we should be able to clear that, I think, right? We'll see. Maybe. Maybe. David, way too optimistic. I'm still in the Hopium Den. I'm still in here. Yeah, you are. We've left. David, Lizzie, this was a blast. Can we, hopefully we can do it again. What do you think? Anytime. You got it, baby. All right. Take care, guys.

38:10David Ferris is an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University. And my colleague Lizzie O 'Leary, you know her. She's the host of our sister show, What Next TBD. All right, that's it for us. What Next is produced by Evan Campbell, Madeline Thames-Ducharme, and Patrick Fort. Paige Osborne is the senior supervising producer of What Next and What Next TBD. Mia LaBelle is the executive producer of podcasts here at Slate. Ben Richmond is our senior director of podcast operations. And I'm Mary Harris. Go track me down on Blue Sky. I'm at Mary Harris. Thanks for listening. Catch you back here next time.

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