A Guide to the 2024 Battleground States

Transcript

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Speaker 11 Welcome to Pot Save America. I'm Tommy Vitor.

Speaker 12 I am Odissu Domesi.

Speaker 11 You guys, you all know Odissu by now. He's been on co-hosts before.

Speaker 12 He's on live shows before.

Speaker 11 In case you missed those,

Speaker 11 he has worked for every top Democrat in the party, at least the ones you guys like. Obama, Biden, Clinton, Gavin Newsome, Corey Booker, Katie Porter.

Speaker 12 Sure, I left some out, but you did, but that's cool.

Speaker 11 As experienced a campaign staffer, as I know, and a great guy. So thank you for being here.

Speaker 12 Yeah, good to be here again. In person, too.

Speaker 11 In person. I love it.
In L.A.

Speaker 11 Of course, rocking the...

Speaker 12 Yeah, I got to represent the bay. I'm rocking my Warriors gear as ever.

Speaker 11 Steph is still good. We got a great show today.
Sherry Brown's going to officially face off against against Bernie Moreno in Ohio's Senate race.

Speaker 11 Biden travels to Nevada and Arizona to make his pitch to Latino voters and promote his plan to lower housing costs and create jobs.

Speaker 11 And Team Trump is getting the old criminal band back together for 2024 as Paul Manafort and Corey Lewandowski are making a return to the team. God help us.

Speaker 12 God help us all. Why do that?

Speaker 11 We'll get to that in a bit.

Speaker 11 But first, the DSU, the presidential primary might be over, but there's lots of action happening in these down ballot races that could determine who controls Congress next year or will determine who controls Congress next year.

Speaker 11 Last night we had primaries in five states: we had Ohio, Arizona, Kansas, Florida, Illinois.

Speaker 11 In Ohio, the Trump-backed MAGA candidate Bernie Moreno managed to fend off challenges from Secretary of State Frank LaRose and the state senator named Matt Dolan.

Speaker 11 Moreno is now going to go up against Sherrod Brown in the general election. Moreno is a former car dealer from Cincinnati.
He's the MAGA guy. He had backing from Trump and J.D.

Speaker 11 Vance and all the goobers.

Speaker 11 The tally with about 95% of the vote in this morning was Bernie Moreno, 50%, over 50%,

Speaker 11 Dolan at 32.9%, LaRose, 16.6%. So they certainly split the vote there.
So, Adisu, this is one of those races where Trump's guy won and our guy won.

Speaker 11 The Democrats' guy won.

Speaker 11 Can you talk a bit about Bernie Moreno and what you think his winning means for our chances of keeping this seat?

Speaker 12 Yeah, I mean, I don't know if he's our guy, but I think he's the best candidate that DSC spent $3 million. Yeah, fair.

Speaker 12 He is the candidate that is most likely to lose and thus to have Sherrod Brown go to the base.

Speaker 11 The Senate majority packed it, rather.

Speaker 12 Sorry, DSC.

Speaker 12 Shout out to SMP. But yeah, I think it increases our odds.
I think the SP knows something. I think the DS knows things, and that is that Reno's weak.

Speaker 12 And we saw this in 2022, that, you know, while Trump is his own political phenomenon, you have to, you know, credit that with the performance both in 16 and in 2020.

Speaker 12 He has whatever the opposite of the Midas touch is when it comes to endorsing down ballot.

Speaker 12 You got, I'm thinking back to 22, Doug Mastriano and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, Carrie Lake and Blake Masters in

Speaker 12 Arizona.

Speaker 12 God it, the list goes on. Herschel Walker.

Speaker 12 I'd thankfully forgotten about him. Herschel Walker in Georgia, et cetera, they all lost.
And I think, you know, the MAGA thing is

Speaker 12 it helps Trump, but it hurts everybody else, I think. And it helps Trump only to a degree.
And so ultimately, I think, I think Moreno is the weakest candidate that we could have drawn.

Speaker 12 That said, in 2022, one of the candidates that Trump endorsed that actually did win was J.D. Vance, right? So

Speaker 12 in Ohio right there. And so Ohio is a tougher state for us, but we've got Sherrod Brown.
And I think, you know, with no offense to Tim Ryan, who ran, I think, pretty much a flawless campaign.

Speaker 12 He was not an incumbent. He did not have.
decades of statewide name recognition and brand building and all the things that Sherrod Brown has.

Speaker 12 So bottom line, Bernie Moreno is for a national abortion ban. He's for repealing the ACA.
He's everything that we hate in

Speaker 12 many many of the other senators that are there in the Republican caucus. And he has the MAGA stain on him and a tough primary.
He just went through with a lot of negative ads dumped on his head.

Speaker 12 So is it going to be easy? No. But did we draw the best candidate that we possibly could? Yes.
And I think Sheridan has a real chance.

Speaker 11 Ohio is a tough, tough state. Tough, tough state.
But the DSCC put out some attacks early on Moreno. He also opposed the existence of the minimum wage, apparently.

Speaker 12 Yes.

Speaker 11 He refused to pay employees overtime and shredded documentation about it when challenged. He's an election denier.
He called the J6 defendants political prisoners.

Speaker 11 And there was this late-breaking AP reports scandal about Moreno. So the AP reported that in 2008, someone using Bernie Moreno's work email

Speaker 11 created and authenticated an account on a website called Adult Friend Finders who was seeking men for one-on-one sex while traveling.

Speaker 11 Geolocation data says this account was set up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where Moreno's parents owned a home at the time. The account name was like his first name and his birthday.

Speaker 11 Why does it matter? It shouldn't choose to be an enthusiastic supporter of LGBT rights, but he changed everything about his views in 2021.

Speaker 11 And now he is seeking votes from bigoted people that he spoke to, you know, with these bigoted views. So, you know, the Moreno campaign says a former intern created this account as a prank.

Speaker 12 That intern is also. The old intern defense.

Speaker 11 Yeah, the old, let's sign my boss up for adult friend finder prank who hasn't done that one. Anyway, weird thing that just happened at the end.
Again, I don't give a shit, but Republicans might.

Speaker 11 But we should say, so the establishment rode for Dolan, the Republican governor of Ohio. Mike DeWine endorsed him.
Rob Portman, the former senator, endorsed him too.

Speaker 11 But Dolan and La Rose split the establishment votes. But let's just play a quick clip of Donald Trump out on the campaign trail stumping for Moreno from, I think, last weekend.

Speaker 14 I like sports and I like tradition. So you have a team called the Cleveland Indians.
Indians. They're Indians.

Speaker 12 Indians.

Speaker 14 And they took the name Cleveland Indians and made it the Cleveland Guardians. It almost like they're in charge of a trust fund.
They're in charge of a trust fund. The Cleveland Guardians.

Speaker 14 And my attitude is anybody that changes the name of the Cleveland Indians to the Cleveland Guardians should not be a senator. should not be a governor.

Speaker 11 So I just thought that clip was like a perfect encapsulation of Trump because it's clearly racist because Mr. Populist there is dropping a reference to trust fund stewardship.

Speaker 12 I don't even know what he's talking about.

Speaker 11 But also at the end, he seems to maybe forget what Moreno is campaigning for. So just vintage Trump right now.
Vintage.

Speaker 12 Yeah. I mean, look, yeah, he's a, it is part of the appeal of Trump to the Republican base that he just sort of

Speaker 12 says whatever the heck comes to mind. It is not convincing to swing voters and obviously, you know, even left-leaning voters as well.
So, but that's the thing that sells.

Speaker 12 And look, the Republican Party is Trump's party. I said it last time I was on this show.
I said it in the live show we did back up in San Jose.

Speaker 12 And last night's results just make it clear, not just in Ohio, but elsewhere, that he has taken over the party. And this brand of politics is going to win over a majority of Republican voters.

Speaker 12 but not a majority of American voters. And our challenge is to make sure they vote for our guys

Speaker 12 when time comes in November.

Speaker 11 And we should just note that in this case, Sherry Brown is like one of the best senators we have. He is extremely progressive in a very red state.

Speaker 11 He is more comfortable in factories and union halls than he is at fundraisers. And trust me, I've seen him at both.

Speaker 11 A lot less good at the fundraisers, right? And that's why we like the guy. So we really need him to win.
Yeah.

Speaker 12 And can I just say, I think the Sherrod Brown model of the Democratic Party is actually, I think, the future of the Democratic Party.

Speaker 12 Weird maybe to say about a, you know, relatively older white guy from the Midwest, but the combination of populism and social liberalism that, you know, he really embodies maybe better than anybody, it's kind of similar to what President Biden, sort of how he came up in politics, is, I think, the coalition that we both have to assemble this year and going forward.

Speaker 12 And we will see, I think, in November that it can win in a place like Ohio, let alone Pennsylvania, Arizona states that are a little more purple than Ohio is.

Speaker 12 So he's a great, great senator, a great guy, and in many ways, I think going to be a model for us going forward into 26, 28 and beyond, hopefully with Trump in the rearview mirror.

Speaker 11 Totally agree. And critical to holding the Senate.
Also, add Maryland, by the way, to your states to be anxious about. Larry Hogan is near 50% in some polls out today in that Senate race.

Speaker 11 So don't like that, Adiece.

Speaker 12 Don't like that.

Speaker 11 So a couple other races we should mention.

Speaker 11 So there were special elections in Ohio's 6th District and California's 20th congressional district to replace retiring Republicans, including Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Hilariously, Vince falling...

Speaker 12 Falling on his face here in California.

Speaker 11 So the Trump-McCarthy-backed candidate for McCarthy's seat didn't get to 50%,

Speaker 11 which means he will now face a runoff, which means Speaker Johnson can't count on that seat, which is just delicious.

Speaker 11 So again, the Republican presidential primary is over, but we still have people voting in Florida, Illinois, Ohio. There were some exit polls we can dig into.

Speaker 11 But D2, any like big takeaways from these other states and races?

Speaker 12 Yeah, I mean, I think the first one is the Trump

Speaker 12 hold on the party continues. And we saw, obviously, leading into Ohio in particular, that that was the narrative that was out there.
But 50 to 33 or whatever you said is a pretty big win.

Speaker 12 And elsewhere, we saw Trump's endorsed candidates win. So again, I think that's mostly a good thing for Democrats in November.
It also is high risk, high reward, right?

Speaker 12 If some of these folks, you know, if Bernie Moreno becomes a senator, that's that's that's very, very bad. Honestly, the other thing I saw from yesterday is Nikki Haley still getting in the teens

Speaker 12 everywhere. Everywhere, including Kansas, including

Speaker 11 Florida? She dropped out before voting.

Speaker 12 Yeah, and it's not, you know, DeSantis only dropped out, whatever, a month before her and is not getting nearly as as much vote in his home state, let alone in these other states.

Speaker 12 And everyone is talking about how,

Speaker 12 and rightly so, how President Biden needs to consolidate the Democratic Party.

Speaker 12 But we consistently have now seen over the last month that Republicans, a good 10, 20% of Republicans are coming out to vote in a primary that is over. Yeah.

Speaker 12 to express their displeasure with their candidate more than what is happening with President Biden. And so it's an undercovered story.

Speaker 12 I think it's interesting to see if that continues as the Haley dropout becomes further in the rear view.

Speaker 12 But I even saw exit polls yesterday from Ohio that showed that 10 to 15% of Republican primary voters might not vote for Trump in the general or might vote for Biden. And so Ohio is one thing, right?

Speaker 12 Is it going to be on the map in the fall? Maybe, maybe not. Probably not.

Speaker 12 But

Speaker 12 if you extrapolate that to the Arizonas and Georgias and North Carolinas and Pennsylvanias of the world, like that's a not insignificant number of people that could swing back to the Democrats and are expressing their displeasure despite voting in a Republican primary.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I mean, just to give the exact number, so in the Ohio exit, seven in 10 GOP primary voters will definitely back Trump. One in 10 will probably back Trump.

Speaker 11 Two in 10 are leaning Biden or third party. So yeah, that definitely shows that.

Speaker 12 That's a lot of people.

Speaker 12 Again, Republican primary voters. These are people who are the base, in theory, of the Republican Party.
The Republican Party.

Speaker 11 You mentioned Nevada and Arizona. So since the State of the Union, President Biden's been on the road.
He's been going to swing states. This week, he's stopping in Nevada and Arizona.

Speaker 11 During the trip, his campaign launched a national program to mobilize Latino voters. They also released a new TV ad targeting Latino voters, though the issues they highlighted were very familiar.

Speaker 11 It was, you know, the cost of insulin and abortion access. Biden also did some Spanish language interviews where he said Trump despises Latinos.
That was an exact quote. So strong words there.

Speaker 11 Odissu, there's been a lot of polling. showing President Biden slipping with Latino voters.
Why do you think that's happening? And what do you think the Biden campaign needs to do to fix the problem?

Speaker 12 So,

Speaker 12 a couple of things. First, I don't think that's actually much different from what's happening sort of across the board.

Speaker 12 I think we're seeing a lot of people who are coming to grips with the fact that we have a rematch of 2024 in every demographic group.

Speaker 12 They may be, you know,

Speaker 12 costs are higher, things are difficult in the world, et cetera. They're generally upset with the way the country is going.
We know the right track, wrong track numbers aren't great across the board.

Speaker 12 And so, the president bears the brunt of that, regardless of who he, hopefully someday she is.

Speaker 12 So I think we're seeing a lot of that. Other thing I would say is Latino vote, I think about this a lot, not just with the Latino community, but particularly with that community,

Speaker 12 is almost like a phrase that doesn't mean anything because a first-generation Cuban-American in Florida and a third-generation Mexican-American in Nevada, like, I know, they're Americans and that's, I'm sure they have other cultural similarities, but like they're so different.

Speaker 12 And so

Speaker 12 I think the better way to think of it is the way that the Biden campaign thought of it this week, I've seen, which is there are states where the Latino vote is going to be particularly critical swing states to the path to 270.

Speaker 12 And those are in particular Nevada and Arizona, but there are pockets in other places as well.

Speaker 12 How do they get there? I mean, I think the first thing is show up, which I know is a trite thing to say, but I think it's true in that community. It matters a lot.
Physically, show up. Do it early.

Speaker 12 And do it early. And it is still March.
And the president is already out there doing this in a trip to Nevada yesterday, I think Arizona today.

Speaker 12 But I think, and you mentioned this in the ad,

Speaker 12 fighting Trump on the character and culture issues, I think in the Latino community in particular, is probably not where we should be fighting our message war. It's on the issues.

Speaker 12 You know, when you talk to Latino voters and focus groups and polling and you ask, what issues do you care about? It's

Speaker 12 certainly the economy and jobs, but increasingly it's abortion access. It's gun violence, which I've seen pop a lot,

Speaker 12 not just since Uvalde, but we've seen it. Crime.
Crime. Yeah,

Speaker 12 et cetera. And so

Speaker 12 and they trust Democrats on those issues two to one, three to one, four to one. And so show up and talk about issues and don't get sucked into the back and forth about Trump and the

Speaker 12 circus around him, which for us drives liberals and people like me crazy, but I don't think is what a swing Latino voter in Arizona or Nevada is.

Speaker 12 is not what's going to drive their vote decision come November.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I mean, to your point, Axios did a survey in June of 2023 where they they found that a plurality of Latino voters now say that neither party cares about them.

Speaker 11 Democrats still have a basically three-to-one advantage because 30% of Latino voters think Democrats care more about them. 11% think Republicans.

Speaker 11 But to your point, I mean, I think people don't feel like they're being spoken to about the issues they actually matter to them.

Speaker 12 And in 2020, President Biden, I mean, I think I ran a campaign against him in the primary,

Speaker 12 and Bernie Sanders and others really focused on this.

Speaker 12 You know, I think Sanders and Biden did a better job than any of the rest of us in talking to Latino voters early.

Speaker 12 And once we got into the general, even though it was early and mid-pandemic days, they were up early on TV. They were talking about these issues quickly.
And I anticipate the same happening this time.

Speaker 12 And so eight months is a long time in politics. And that,

Speaker 12 I hope, and I believe will sort of move things into

Speaker 12 the president's direction. Reality is...
In an election where the margins are going to be so close and they are, everything matters.

Speaker 11 We have to run every play and run every play well yeah one thing i just wanted to flag uh just because i know you're a geek about polling like i am so the folks at pew released this interesting report about bad data that's coming out of a type of polling called online opt-in polling that is an online survey that's not a random sampling of americans they're not dialing through the phone book it's people who choose to take a poll because they usually they get compensated in some way yeah so the folks at pew noticed several recent studies that found large errors in these kinds of online opt-in polls because a bunch of people were just i guess ripping through the questions as fast as they could to get paid.

Speaker 12 To get their 25 bucks. Yeah, to get 25 bucks.

Speaker 11 So, in particular, the polling,

Speaker 11 these types of polls tend to overestimate what would normally be a rare belief. For example, there was a recent opt-in online poll that made big headlines when it found that 20% of U.S.

Speaker 11 adults under 30 think the Holocaust is a myth. Pew tried to replicate that survey with different methodology.
They found 3% of adults under 30 think the Holocaust is a myth.

Speaker 12 So it was a totally wrong poll.

Speaker 11 And to test it further, in February of 2022, Pew did a survey asking respondents if they were licensed to operate a nuclear submarine.

Speaker 12 In the opt-in survey,

Speaker 11 12% of adults under 30 said yes. 24% of Latino respondents said yes.
In reality, statistically, 0% is the answer. So what does this mean? We don't know.
It doesn't necessarily mean that

Speaker 11 young people are the ones skewing these polls or that Latinos are. It could just be like everyone taking them as lying.

Speaker 12 Yeah, it's true. I mean, if you offer an incentive, I mean, it's the downside of offering an incentive, people, it doesn't really matter.
You're not offering them an incentive for the result.

Speaker 12 You're offering them an incentive for participating. And if all you have to do is click, click, click, click, click, that's probably what's happening is click, click, click, click, click.

Speaker 12 But it's, it's part and parcel of the broader issue, which we've been talking about since 2016 about polling. It is becoming more difficult.
It is becoming more expensive.

Speaker 12 And to do it well, you have to have a good sample. And to get a good sample, you have to spend money to go find people to be representative of

Speaker 12 the electorate at large and make some assumptions about it. And

Speaker 12 everybody who is listening to this, who's reading polls for the next eight months, you should pay attention.

Speaker 12 Sure, look at the number on the top line first, but like the second thing you should do is go look at the methodology. Understitch.

Speaker 12 And then look at the averages and all those things, because the methodology can really make a difference

Speaker 12 in serious ways when you're talking about nuclear submarine. Nuclear sub.

Speaker 11 A lot of nuclear sub captains out there in America. But yeah, the moral of the story is, right?

Speaker 11 Don't freak out about anyone pole, or especially some outlier subsample of all young people now oppose abortion rights. Like, that's probably not true.
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Speaker 11 The other big push during Biden's trip and since the State of the Union has been to highlight his housing agenda.

Speaker 11 That includes urging Congress to pass legislation aimed at opening up the housing market for first-time homebuyers and making renting more affordable. We both live in California.

Speaker 11 Housing prices are and have been a huge issue politically and personally for people for a very long time, especially with young voters.

Speaker 11 So this is no surprise, and it's good that Biden's focusing on this. But there is basically zero chance, I think, that Congress is going to do something.

Speaker 11 So what do you make of the strategy of highlighting housing and what can we actually do here?

Speaker 12 I think it's brilliant. I think, look, every piece of research I have seen for the last two years, cost of living is the number one issue.
It does not matter the demographic.

Speaker 12 It does not matter the geographic. It is the number one issue for everybody in the sort of post-pandemic era.

Speaker 12 And what is the line item on everyone's budget, pretty much everyone's budget, that is taking up the biggest chunk of their money? It is their rent or their mortgage or their housing costs.

Speaker 12 And so while, you know, the cost of get, we talk a lot about the cost of gas and the cost of groceries because you see it every week when you go to the store.

Speaker 12 It's dynamic, exactly.

Speaker 12 It actually is at the bottom line,

Speaker 12 it's the thing that's driving a lot of costs.

Speaker 12 And we were on the vanguard of that here in California because we've been seeing that for longer, I think, than the rest of the country, certainly pre-pandemic because of our housing shortage.

Speaker 12 So I think the president is doing a really smart thing that may not, particularly here in the West, I think, where we've had these problems for

Speaker 12 longer, but even in most urban areas where we've seen rents and housing costs go up, to talk about an issue that is hitting people in their pocketbooks and trying to do something about it.

Speaker 12 And I think I said this last time I was on the show.

Speaker 12 We're not going to be able to convince people that, you know, the sky is green when the sky is blue, if they're not, you know, if costs are high and if

Speaker 12 the economy isn't in a different place come November, but we certainly can. And I think people are willing to believe that the president is trying to do something about it.
Yeah, fighting for you.

Speaker 12 He's fighting for you and Donald Trump.

Speaker 11 He understands and cares.

Speaker 12 So that's what this is about. That's exactly right.

Speaker 11 Just so folks know, Biden's also in Arizona to cut a big check to Intel from the CHIPS Act from a new manufacturing plan, which would create a bunch of jobs.

Speaker 11 So they're still sort of working to get him credit for things he has done play as well. In terms of the polling, look, I mean, in Arizona,

Speaker 11 some recent surveys, recent Emerson poll has Trump up four. He's up more, if you included RFK Jr.
in that and some of the other candidates. There's a big Arizona Senate race.

Speaker 11 Ruben Gallego is beating Cary Lake by four at the moment in the most recent poll.

Speaker 12 And then again, I really want to meet these Trump Gallego voters. I would love to meet them too.
They're out there. They're out there.

Speaker 12 There are a lot of Trump, you know, Trump Kelly voters in the state. We got to find them.
Yeah, we got to find them.

Speaker 11 And then in Nevada,

Speaker 11 you know, Trump is up between three to five points. So, you know, tough, tough states right now.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I think the map is, look, there's no sugarcoating it. It is a tough environment out there right now, but we're also in a pre-campaign period.
We're really at the starting gun, right?

Speaker 12 I don't know what, use whatever analogy you want.

Speaker 12 It's spring training. Maybe it's the first inning.
Maybe you can call it the first inning. Yeah, why not? Certainly the first quarter.
There you go. Yeah, let's go March Madness.

Speaker 12 It is the first quarter of

Speaker 12 the play-in. What are they? What were those? The play-in games?

Speaker 12 Yeah, the games that happened before the first four.

Speaker 11 The games to get into the tournament.

Speaker 12 Yeah, those ones, right? So we're at the beginning. And

Speaker 12 the president, like I said earlier, is the incumbent and takes all the slings and arrows that come along with it.

Speaker 12 We have to change this election from a referendum on the president to a choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. And that is what the campaign is all about.

Speaker 12 That's what the next eight months are all about. And so polling is polling.
It's a snapshot in time.

Speaker 12 It means something, but it means nothing. It is not predictive of the outcome.
The outcome, there's a lot of twists and turns. And

Speaker 12 we cannot predict, honestly, what's going to happen between now and

Speaker 12 November. That is out of our control, and we can only do the things that are in our control.
So I'm not worried about the polling, honestly.

Speaker 12 But do I think this is going to be an election decided by a couple thousand votes in a couple states? The answer is yes.

Speaker 11 Me too. Yeah.
After Labor Day, we all get to freak out. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 12 You can freak out about the polling. Have me back in October and then we can freak out.
Then we can freak out.

Speaker 11 Promise. We will.

Speaker 11 So the key states this time around will sound very familiar to anyone who lived through 2020. Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, maybe North Carolina.

Speaker 11 Hopefully North Carolina.

Speaker 12 I think North Carolina.

Speaker 11 North Carolina's got a big governor's race. The Attorney General, Josh Stein, is running against a genuinely frightening extremist Republican Lieutenant Governor Nate Mark Robinson.

Speaker 11 We've talked about him a bit before on previous episodes, but here's a quick sampling of this guy just to prepare us for this segment emotionally.

Speaker 32 America is still the greatest nation on earth. And I don't care what these communists say.
I don't care what these socialists say.

Speaker 32 I don't care what these blue-haired freaks say with a tackle box in their face at the college campus. This is the greatest nation on earth, and it's all because of God.

Speaker 32 He's the one that made it possible. So we give him thanks first and foremost.

Speaker 11 How about that shit?

Speaker 11 So, Adesu, like, okay, let's be hopeful. Let's start with North Carolina.
Let's go on offense here. So, Obama won the state in 2008.
We haven't won again since.

Speaker 11 There's a Maris poll out this morning that's not great. Again, Trump at 51, Biden at 48, snapshot in time.
We'll set it aside.

Speaker 11 But as compared to the 2020 exit, it seems like Biden is gaining support among white voters, but losing ground with black voters.

Speaker 11 What do you think of our prospects in North Carolina generally and whether it's worth, you know, I think it's a pretty expensive state, right?

Speaker 12 Yeah, it's, it is. It's a much bigger state than I think.
Even as I was thinking about this cycle, I forgot. I think 16 electoral votes.
I mean, that's big.

Speaker 12 Not quite Pennsylvania, but bigger by 50% than Michigan and Wisconsin, for example. So a lot of money has to go into it, and you have to feel confident that you can win it.

Speaker 12 I definitely think it's on the map. 100% think it's on the map.
I think

Speaker 12 whether Robinson's lunacy helps drive people into the Democratic camp, I think is an open question. I don't think it's a certain thing.

Speaker 12 But the map is wide right now, I think, because 5147, right, again, snapshot in time, whatever it might be,

Speaker 12 that's in play, right? That's not, it's not out of, it's not out of touch or out of reach, I should say. And whether it be North Carolina, Georgia.
I also think it's true on the other side, right?

Speaker 12 We have to make sure we keep an eye on the Minnesotas and Colorados of the world

Speaker 12 that could fall the other way. But I think North Carolina is squarely in the battleground map.
I think Georgia is squarely in the battleground map.

Speaker 12 And they're going to have to be some tough decisions from people over the Biden campaign and others come the fall about

Speaker 12 resourcing, right? And this is where everybody talks about fundraising, vote save, all the things we're doing.

Speaker 12 Like those are when you're a campaign manager and you sit down and the rubber meets the road and you say, okay, I have X amount of money to invest in X amount of places.

Speaker 12 That X number gets bigger if you have more money. It gets smaller if you have less.
And so it's going to ultimately be a resource decision.

Speaker 12 But of the eight states that could tip this election, North Carolina is one of them.

Speaker 11 Yeah, and you have X amount of candidate time, and you have to decide where that person goes.

Speaker 11 So we mentioned the governor's race. Mark Robinson, the lieutenant governor, the Republican, he's a genuinely frightening person.
He has a history of posting anti-Semitic conspiracies.

Speaker 11 He said the film Black Panther was a plot by agnostic Jews and satanic Marxists. Did not know that.
He wants to erase boundaries.

Speaker 12 Effective then, because I really enjoyed it. It's a great movie.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 11 He thinks church and state should be synced up. No boundaries there.

Speaker 11 Like this guy, look, he's dangerous. And it's, in my view, another reason I think I hope the presidential will actually invest in North Carolina to at least to boost Stein.
But he's so extreme.

Speaker 11 He's made so many outrageous comments that he's Trump-like. It can be kind of hard to know where to shoot at, like what things to focus on.

Speaker 12 What do you do with a guy like this? You know, that's a good question. I don't, I said this earlier.
I don't think that Trump is a replicable model. I think Trump is one of one.
Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 11 Most famous person.

Speaker 12 Yeah. And, you know, I think about something Chris Christie said back in 2015.
I'll never forget it, where he said, I didn't realize I was going to be running against 15 years of the apprentice.

Speaker 12 Right.

Speaker 12 And not just, you know, Trump the candidate. And I think that that is, or something.
Yeah. It was something like that.
And that's what Trump is.

Speaker 12 It's not just the politician Trump that came down the escalator in 2015. It's everything that preceded that.
Mark Robinson doesn't have any of that. Right.

Speaker 12 And so I think you go straight at the extremism.

Speaker 12 I do not think that swing voters or, you know, moderate, independent, whatever you want to call them voters in North Carolina are feeling the Mark Robinson thing the way they might feel the Trump thing, because again, there's more to Trump than just the last eight years in a lot of their minds in terms of his brand.

Speaker 12 So I think you go right at it.

Speaker 12 Still think you can't, you can't avoid talking about the bread and butter issues, as it were, but I think he is so far out of the mainstream and so not well-defined in the electorate that you can run right up the middle.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 we could see a Mastriano Shapiro, which is the Pennsylvania governor's race where Shapiro won by, what, to 15 points? Right.

Speaker 11 Yeah. I mean, Robinson really liked to post on Facebook, which I think he probably regrets.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 11 Speaking of Georgia,

Speaker 11 Georgia's looking a little tougher. Again, another Maris pullout today is Trump winning 51% of the vote, 51 Trump, 47 Biden.
Again, snapshot in time. RFK Jr.

Speaker 11 isn't on the ballot yet in Georgia, but Trump also wins if you include him. So it's clear that RFK Jr.
is not helping Biden anywhere.

Speaker 11 Maris write-up of the poll notes that Trump is gained with younger voters as compared to the 2020 exits. That seems to be a trend we're seeing in a lot of places.

Speaker 11 What do you think is going on in Georgia? And do you think it's still like a top-swing state this time?

Speaker 12 I do. I think it is different because there's no Senate race on the ballot.
There's nothing else on the ballot. Yeah, no Warnock.
No Warnock, no Osoff, no Stacey Abrams.

Speaker 12 And that,

Speaker 12 you know, Amanda Lippmann talks about reverse coattails and run for something a lot.

Speaker 12 And I think that there is something to be said about that, particularly with Warnock as an African-American, you know, from Atlanta and how he, I think, helped Biden in 2020.

Speaker 12 So, but I do think it's still on the, it's still squarely in the, uh, in the battleground map similar to to uh

Speaker 12 uh to North Carolina. If I'm being honest, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan are still the blue wall.
Like they just are. And

Speaker 12 they're also, I think, the states that probably Biden is currently strongest in.

Speaker 12 And you win Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire, and I think the Omaha congressional district, and you get 270 electoral votes.

Speaker 12 I'm not suggesting that is the only path, but it's probably the path of least resistance right now.

Speaker 12 And so I think that

Speaker 12 I would put the Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, the other

Speaker 12 swing states that Biden may have won, some of which he won in 2020,

Speaker 12 in a second, but close second tier. Right.

Speaker 11 So like a 1A. Yeah.

Speaker 11 So you mentioned Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. So you're right.

Speaker 11 The best state for Biden in the RCP polling average at the moment is Pennsylvania. I think he's tied basically.
He's down like 0.6. Then it's Wisconsin, then Michigan.

Speaker 11 There was a Quinnipiac poll the other day that Biden down about three points in Michigan in the head-to-head and down five if you include RFK and other candidates.

Speaker 11 Biden has gotten some good news recently in terms of endorsements from labor unions. He was out on the picket line.
But like, what do you think? I agree with you. These are like the blue wall states.

Speaker 11 What do you think he needs to do to win these voters?

Speaker 12 Same as what he's been doing. I think,

Speaker 12 you know, Pennsylvania in particular, I think it means a lot, obviously, to the Bidens and to the president

Speaker 12 personally. And he has a sort of unique connection, I think, with Pennsylvania.

Speaker 12 Michigan, Wisconsin, all those states are, they're blue-collar states, you know, and Joe is a blue-collar guy.

Speaker 12 And I think, you know, they're disproportionately, at least certainly Wisconsin and to some extent, Michigan, white, whiter than the Arizonas and Georgia's of the world, as it were.

Speaker 12 And so you've just got to keep being

Speaker 12 Joe. Right.
And

Speaker 12 like I said earlier, the

Speaker 12 costs are still the number one issue of the economy, but specifically costs and costs of living. And the president has a record to run on there, right? And a record of supporting labor and

Speaker 12 having, you know, working people in organized labor get a hand up and get a leg up in this otherwise difficult economy, creating jobs, increasing wages, you name it.

Speaker 12 And so I actually think that message sells in some ways even better in those

Speaker 12 upper or whatever you want to call them, the blue wall states than it may in the Sun Belt. But

Speaker 12 just keep doing what you're doing and deliver it. Honestly, it's volume.
At some level, it's volume. It's like you got to break through the noise.

Speaker 12 And that's what presidential campaigns do when we're all talking about it, when the media echoes with the paid media, echoes with the candidate appearance. A lot of paid.

Speaker 11 Well, the Trump strategy seems to be a couple of parts. It's one, he's just using immigration to demagogue issues.

Speaker 11 He's trying to use immigration to split off Latino, black, and labor voters from the Democratic Party. He's overtly saying that, you know, Biden's bringing them in to take your job.

Speaker 11 So that's one piece of it. And then, you know, today, actually, Biden rolled out a new rule to ensure that all new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the U.S.

Speaker 11 are electric or hybrid by 2032, something that Gavin Newsom has actually led on here in California.

Speaker 11 Obviously, that's hugely important for climate change, but Trump is trying to use that as a wedge issue to say, you know, people don't want these electric vehicles. They don't work.

Speaker 11 We don't have plug-ins for them. He's going to tank the auto industry.
That was the bloodbath.

Speaker 12 He needs to call his buddy Elon. But

Speaker 12 that's a conversation for another.

Speaker 11 Are you worried about that?

Speaker 12 I am. If I'm going to be honest, I am.
I think,

Speaker 12 because again,

Speaker 12 the margins are so close, right? And Trump is very, what Trump, I think, is best at in some ways in politics is driving a wedge, right?

Speaker 12 He is, he really understands that, oh, this is the issue that touches the hot, you know, the hot buttons. He always finds it.

Speaker 12 He finds it and he just digs in and he demagogues it and he finds a way to get attention for himself, which will amplify it to the conversation we just had. And so I am worried about it.

Speaker 12 And I think there's an anxiety in the country, right? And that is the interesting thing about this race is that despite that anxiety, it's not really a change election. It's like a stability election.

Speaker 12 People want to feel

Speaker 12 like things are okay and order election a little bit.

Speaker 12 Yeah, but Trump is going to try to make it a change and anxiety election, and that means he's going to keep demagoguing that stuff.

Speaker 12 And so I don't know what we can do other than counter it with our own message on whether it be immigration or,

Speaker 12 you know, the jobs that come with the green economy and what have you. But it is definitely going to be a sort of clash of strategies and a class of messages.

Speaker 12 And, you know, may the best, hopefully, liberal Democrats.

Speaker 11 You mentioned anxieties. My anxieties are two things that are sort of writ large.

Speaker 11 One, there's a national pullout today by Ann Seltzer, who was the Iowa upholstery who was like the best in the business.

Speaker 11 The take home is Democrats have lost the enthusiasm advantage we had prior to 2020.

Speaker 11 Part of that, I'm sure, is whenever you're the incumbent, you know, people get mad at you for stuff that's happening in the world.

Speaker 11 I do think a big chunk of that is Gaza Gaza and what people are seeing in the news every night and the frustration people are feeling about President Biden's refusal to split from BBNet and Yahoo, take a harder line, cut off weapons to Israel.

Speaker 11 So I'm going to keep pounding that hobby horse. But also, I do, there's this cultural thing happening.

Speaker 11 I feel like the Democratic Party is kind of like missing out on this sweeping anti-establishment feeling that you see in a lot of ways. You see it in people mad about cancel culture.

Speaker 11 You see people mad about vaccine mandates, people who are are psyched about crypto and wanting to burn the financial system down, right?

Speaker 11 It's like it crosses into that weird like Manosphere MMA space, the Joe Rogan space.

Speaker 12 You're totally right. It's like the Rogan podcast world.

Speaker 11 Yeah, the Barcelona Sports. And like, look, this is like ill-formed idea.
But I just, I hate that we Democrats. are like the establishment party now.

Speaker 11 And I think for young men in particular, being for Trump is anti-establishment and it's cool. They feel like the system has screwed them and Trump can help them burn it all down.

Speaker 11 You're seeing like LA comedians and actors endorsing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
for some reason. And like that kind of strain of feeling and sentiment is really worrying me.

Speaker 11 And I don't know that Joe Biden is the guy who can speak to that.

Speaker 12 I mean, I'm happy to be your therapist on that.

Speaker 12 No, I think about it a lot too. And I think you're right, particularly, honestly, young white men, I think.
I think.

Speaker 12 young men of color are also susceptible to it, but the sort of feeling of loss, you know, the anxiety and the feeling of of loss of power that I think some lattice of status, I think is also fueling a lot of that.

Speaker 12 And look, the president is the president, first of all. So it's really hard not to be the establishment when you sit in the White House every day.

Speaker 12 And he's, and he's, you know, been around for a long time, right? So it's going to be hard to be the insurgent when you are sitting

Speaker 12 in power.

Speaker 11 It should be hard for Trump too, but somehow he pulls it off.

Speaker 12 But I do think here would be my number one pushback on all of that is

Speaker 12 the populism. The villains are actually the corporations who are taking advantage of us,

Speaker 12 partially responsible, the elites, the people who are partially responsible for the high costs that we're seeing out there that are gouging us and taking their sixth home in whatever, San Trope, instead of while workers

Speaker 12 are on the line working harder for less. And I've seen UAW, President Fane, and others sort of really harp on this, and the president has leaned into it too.

Speaker 12 I think we have to have our own villain, I guess, is kind of what I'm saying. And I think that is every story has to have a villain.
And

Speaker 12 that is the, I mean, the actual villain, but I also think the one that is the most, you know, the big pharmas and big oils is the one that is the most authentic to who Joe Biden is and who Democrats are at this point in time.

Speaker 12 And so we lean more into that and associate Trump and the Republican Party with that, which voters are, I think, inclined to do.

Speaker 12 They're still the party of big business, I think, in the minds of most voters. It will help us push off

Speaker 12 as you know, in our own anti-establishment, yeah, establishment.

Speaker 11 I mean, I think some of those big pharma companies paid zero dollars in taxes last year because of the Trump tax cuts in 2017, and that's just a story we have.

Speaker 12 And Joe Biden beat them, and now we have insulin at $35, right? That is a story that fits into a 30-second ad and is a real,

Speaker 12 I think, can be really effective with those people who might otherwise be disillusioned for whatever reason.

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Speaker 11 One place Biden is winning big is in this fundraising race. He raised more than $53 million in February, and now Biden and the DNC have $155 million on hand.

Speaker 11 The Trump campaign and the RNC have $40 million on hand at the end of January. I don't believe they've reported their February numbers yet.
Maybe I'm wrong.

Speaker 11 But so as as we speak, Edisu, the Biden campaign, they're putting ads on TV, they're opening offices in swing states. I think they just opened like 40-plus offices in Wisconsin.
Remarkable and early.

Speaker 11 They're investing in staff. The Trump campaign and the RNC, they're paying off legal bills.
They're installing Lara Trump to run the RNC. They're doing a red wedding for the rest of the staff.

Speaker 11 The Republican state parties in Michigan and several other states are just a fucking disaster, you know, like election deniers and insurrectionists leading them.

Speaker 11 But how much do you think money and organizing at this stage or the presidential level generally matters?

Speaker 12 I think it, I think it matters on the margins, right? If this is, if it's a wave election like 1984, right? Yeah. Or Reagan won 49 states, like there's only so much you can do.

Speaker 12 Campaigns can move things on the margins, right? A couple percentage points here or there, but you can write this down in ink.

Speaker 12 Like this thing is going to be decided by a couple percentage points in a couple states. And so it really matters.

Speaker 12 And I think in addition to having the bully pulpit of the of the White House as a huge advantage,

Speaker 12 the money and organizing and the sort of the fact that the Democratic Party, despite our challenges and our divisions inside, like

Speaker 12 we've kind of got our shit together right now, like as best as you possibly can.

Speaker 12 Certainly if you compare us to

Speaker 12 compared to the other side, right? And so

Speaker 12 it's a good thing. It is definitely a good thing.
Is it going to be dispositive? I don't know. Right.

Speaker 12 But

Speaker 12 I'd rather be us than them.

Speaker 11 Yeah, me too.

Speaker 11 Just to put a little more meat on this bone, so the New York Times says that outside groups have pledged over a billion dollars to help Biden's reelection.

Speaker 11 There was some strategists in this article that said they think the full total of outside money just for Biden could hit between 2.5 and $3 billion.

Speaker 11 And we're talking about like the illegal conservation voters pledged $120 million. The Biden campaign itself expects to raise and spend $2 billion.

Speaker 11 The future forward Biden Super PAC reserve $250 million in ads. It's just like the list goes on and on.
It's just, it's a staggering amount of money.

Speaker 12 Yeah, we'll see if it all happens. But I think

Speaker 11 these pledges don't always come to you.

Speaker 12 I mean, we'll see. I think have me back on December and we'll see

Speaker 12 what happens. But

Speaker 12 I think that, first of all, there's well-intentioned behind them. Second of all, some of them are real, right? We've seen reservations already go up.
But it really does matter. You know, it's hard.

Speaker 12 I came up through field. Like I'm an organizer at heart.
My first 10 years of my career, I was grinding it out in field offices in Hammond, Indiana, and God knows where else,

Speaker 12 West, Des Moines, Iowa.

Speaker 12 But I do think that as the media environment has fractured so much and people get their news from so many different sources, the importance of both individual contact and paid media has actually gone up and both of those things cost a lot of money.

Speaker 12 And so I mean, do I think that $3 billion is, I mean, I hope.

Speaker 12 If somebody told me that $3 billion is actually going to be spent on biden's behalf like i could sleep better at night about the results in november again not necessarily just positive but it would really help because it's hard to communicate with people even in organizing it's hard right it's hard to get people to answer the phone or to answer the knock at the door these days it's hard to get media in front of them because they're not necessarily watching broadcast television or cable they're watching streaming or maybe they're watching youtube or maybe they're watching tick tock which you can't advertise on so i

Speaker 12 We need as much resources as we possibly can so that we can reach people in any number of different ways. It's not just going to be broadcast television like it was even probably 20 years ago, right?

Speaker 12 Where it's just like, just pile money on TV and like you see the numbers move.

Speaker 11 Yeah, the other sort of near-term advantage is, you know, normally after a tough primary, the campaigns try to mend fences.

Speaker 11 You know, Biden did this with Bernie Sanders in 2020 and everyone else is running against him. Trump is just not even trying.
He's still attacking Ron DeSantis with his nicknames.

Speaker 12 Or Tiny D.

Speaker 11 Yeah, he's telling Haley voters that they're blacklisted if they give her money or they're not welcome.

Speaker 11 I mean, look, the cynic in me worries a bit that we're just a polarized country and eventually we sort into camps, but I don't know. It's a weird, right?

Speaker 12 It is weird. It's just, it's textbook Trump.
I mean, like we said earlier, what, 20% of Ohio Republicans are thinking about not voting for their party's nominee.

Speaker 12 So I do think people come home at the end, particularly in presidential campaigns, Democrats and Republicans. So I wouldn't put too much stock in it.
I don't know. What do you think?

Speaker 12 I think it's wishful thinking that a Republican in Georgia Georgia is going to vote for Joe Biden,

Speaker 12 a hardcore Republican. They're mad about a voter because they're mad about a primary.

Speaker 11 One thing that does worry me, though, about the Trump team this time around is his campaign has been far better run. They've organized well.

Speaker 11 Their negative campaign against Haley on Social Security was really effective. And they've done it with less money.
They've done it with a lazy candidate.

Speaker 11 They've done it with a candidate who's in courtrooms all the time. So it's impressive.
But those of us who miss the chaos and incompetence of the 2016-Guess what? Guess what?

Speaker 11 Of course, they did win, but they're bringing back Paul Manafort, Corey Lewandowski. Manafort was Trump's campaign chairman.

Speaker 11 He was convicted of felony bank and tax fraud, and at one point employed a Russian spy at his polling firm. Don't forget about that.
Trump pardoned him.

Speaker 11 Corey Lewandowski was Trump's first campaign manager. He was accused of physically assaulting a female journalist and eventually pushed out of that job.

Speaker 11 More recently, he was pushed out of a pro-Trump super PAC after the wife of a donor accused him of making unwanted sexual advances.

Speaker 12 Why?

Speaker 11 Why bring these guys back?

Speaker 12 What is happening? The guy just wants to surround himself with ass kissers. Like, it's what it is.

Speaker 12 And I think when the rubber meets the road, he's going to bring back the people that, to your point, he believes helped him win the first time, right? And who submit to his every whim.

Speaker 12 And he wants everybody to kiss his ass and be under his thumb. And Manafort and Lundowski are willing to do it.
And so there you go.

Speaker 12 I think it's, I think, I mean, I don't want to sound, I feel like I'm sounding too positive in some of this conversation, but like,

Speaker 12 here's what I'll say.

Speaker 12 I couldn't, yeah, you edit out some of the good stuff so we get to the tough stuff, but they've run a good campaign. They've run a really good campaign.

Speaker 12 I like, again, as a, as a practitioner, they like, they've run a good campaign. The way they went after Haley and DeSantis was very smart.

Speaker 11 He destroyed DeSantis.

Speaker 12 Destroyed them. And it is, it is, from a practitioner's perspective, a better quality campaign to date than I think 2016 or 2020.
And so bringing back the clown show, like, God bless.

Speaker 12 Like, can we have more mess? Like, sure. I want, I love mess.

Speaker 12 I do, too.

Speaker 11 I do.

Speaker 12 Ricondo said. So bring it on.

Speaker 11 I do wonder if there's part of Trump at the moment where he's just like railing against the justice system, period.

Speaker 11 And he's like, yeah, anyone who was convicted for being around me was, you know, set up by Joe Biden and the DOJ.

Speaker 11 I mean, Peter Navarro, Trump's former trade advisor, reported to prison on Tuesday for contempt of Congress because he wouldn't give testimony to the January 6th committee hearing.

Speaker 11 So he's going to do four months in a flank. Also coming back, though, with some old messaging, January 6th has become a key part of Trump's campaign messaging.

Speaker 11 Last Sunday, he played a version of the national anthem sung by the January 6th riders who are currently in prison.

Speaker 12 It's wild. It's wild.
I mean, that is just wild boy shit right there. Wild.

Speaker 11 He calls them hostages. He's talking about pardoning them.

Speaker 11 Look, it's enraging that January 6th didn't permanently end his career, right? Like, it's shocking that we're still talking about this guy.

Speaker 11 But again, we know from polling that pardoning these people in particular is wildly unpopular. Are you surprised that he's doing this?

Speaker 12 Why?

Speaker 12 He has no impulse control. I mean, everything I just said about the

Speaker 12 execution of his campaign has been around him, not him.

Speaker 12 And, you know, one of the biggest frustrations for me and probably a lot of the listeners is that the crazy shit that he's said over the last six months of this primary and even in this first sort of couple weeks of the general election is not as prominent as

Speaker 12 we'd like it to be, right? It's funny because we complained about him getting too much airtime in 16 and now it's like, where are we? Where are we? But it's true.

Speaker 12 But he has no impulse control. He cannot help himself.
And so I don't think he's doing this for political reasons.

Speaker 12 I think he's doing it because this is how he actually feels, despite the fact that it hurts him politically. It's our job to drive the message.

Speaker 12 Do I think that should be at the exclusion of all the things I talked about before?

Speaker 12 Economics stuff, et cetera. The answer is no.

Speaker 12 Like it can work with some people and it can work as a contrast message with, you know, President Biden being the statesman that he is and Trump being whatever the fuck you want to call that.

Speaker 12 But the core of the message, I think, still needs to be,

Speaker 12 I try, I am trying to make your life better with real things like insulin for 35 bucks and healthcare costs are down.

Speaker 12 And like, you might, it might be tough right now out there, guys, but like, I'm on your side and this guy is on the side of that's where you might be able to reference it, right?

Speaker 11 This guy's on the side of insurrectionists and corporate robber bear and yeah i know i agree i think you know the biden message will probably likely be what he's done and what he wants to keep doing and how he's fighting for you and then all that super pack money we talked about earlier i hope to god they are cutting ads with mike pence saying he's not going to endorse and talking about january 6th and just reminding people the horror of that day because it is shocking to me what we're able to memory hold in this country within days, if not weeks.

Speaker 11 But I still think that, I don't know, I think back to where I was on January 6th, like sitting on my

Speaker 11 13 months in a row, tweeting, screaming at the Twitter machine. But I do think it horrified most of the country.

Speaker 12 It did. It did.
And I think, but you're right. The memory whole thing is super real.
Like voters do not have memory for politics. They don't remember who is president, you know, who.

Speaker 12 All sorts of things, right? And I don't blame them. They've got more important things to think about on a daily basis, but it's our job to remind them.
Right. And that's what

Speaker 12 we got to do. And And luckily, the whole world is going to turn its attention to this competition come the fall.
And that's where it's all going to shake out.

Speaker 11 Most of the country right now is like, what?

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 12 They're gearing up for March Madness, just like me.

Speaker 11 Yeah, me too, man. Adisu, thank you so much for coming in, for doing the show.
This was a blast, and we're going to take you up on this offer to come back.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I really need anything. I honestly regret that decision.
No, just kidding.

Speaker 12 I'll be back.

Speaker 11 You're not leaving this room.

Speaker 12 All right. Take care, man.
Thanks.

Speaker 11 If you want to get ad-free episodes,

Speaker 11 And David Toledo. Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and Farah Safari.
Kira Wakeem is our senior producer. Reed Sherlin is our executive producer.
The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Speaker 11 Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kiefer.
Madeleine Herringer is our head of news and programming.

Speaker 11 Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Andy Taff is our executive assistant.
Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Mia Kelman, David Toles, Kirill Pelavive, and Molly Lobel.

Speaker 12 What's poppin' listeners?