Major Win for Democrats, Minor Debate for Republicans

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Welcome to Pod Save America.

I'm Jon Favreau.

I'm Tommy Vitor.

I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

Dan Pfeiffer.

Hey, Dan.

It's good to have you down here in LA.

Hey, I haven't seen you guys in 72 hours.

Yeah, Dan is sick of our faces.

No, we're not sick of his, that's for sure.

On today's show, we got a big election day for Democrats to talk about and a somewhat meaningless debate for Republicans who are vying for second place in the GOP primary.

The 2023 elections were excellent for Democrats and those of us who want to keep abortion legal.

In Ohio, two ballot measures, one to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution and the other to legalize marijuana, both passed by a margin of 57 to 43 percent.

In Virginia, Democrats held the state senate and flipped the state house, which means Glenn Young will not be able to pass the 15-week abortion ban that he and Republican candidates campaigned on.

And in Deep Red, Kentucky, pro-choice Democratic governor Andy Bashir defeated anti-abortion extremist Daniel Cameron by 53 to 48 percent.

Democrats came up short in the Mississippi governor's race, but only by about five points.

We also picked up a state Supreme Court seat in Pennsylvania and a few more seats in the Democratic-controlled New Jersey legislature.

As you can imagine, most of these results gave the pundits on Fox and Newsmax a case of the sads.

You know, ever since Roe v.

Wade was overturned, pretty much every time the Democrats have run on abortion, they have won.

And was last night a harbinger for 2024, as you were alluding to, Hazley?

Absolutely.

Most people, they're Republicans, or probably pro-life.

But what's most important?

Republicans taking over and Republicans being able to keep our country.

What an epic failure by Governor Yunkin.

This is a huge loss.

It does seem like the Republican Party generally has a real problem with

winning.

And you put very sexy things like abortion and marijuana on the ballot and a lot of young people come out and vote.

Thank goodness that most of the states in this country don't allow you to put everything on the ballot because pure democracies are not the way to run a country.

That was Rick Santorum,

the winner of the 2012 Republican Iowa Caucuses.

Yeah.

Have you guys noticed that Steve Doocy has been the voice of reason on Fox and Friends a lot recently?

Clip that.

Yeah, I'll clip that out.

Dan, I'm just telling it to you straight.

It's people at home.

I love the hot take on Newsmax.

Republicans seem to have a problem with winning.

They sure do.

Rick Santorum.

Rick Santorum, democracies are the problem.

It's like we're getting that message from the Republicans.

And they have a plan to solve that.

I was going to say,

we hear you loud and clear.

So it seems like the big headline out of Tuesday is that wherever abortion access is on the ballot, choice wins.

Dan, is that your takeaway?

Did you have other big takeaways from the night before we get into each state?

That is the takeaway.

It is clear that abortion, which was for decades the single most polarizing partisan issue in American politics, has now actually transcended partisanship.

You have the

Democratic governor of Kentucky, a state that Donald Trump won by 26 points, campaigning on stopping abortion bans, who ran an incredibly powerful ad opposing abortion bans without exception.

You see it across the board in all of these states.

In Ohio, the initiative to amend the Constitution to protect abortion rights did better in almost every single county than Joe Biden did in 2020.

It is a tremendously powerful and galvanizing issue.

It remains so today, 18 months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v.

Way, which is sort of stunning in our

attention span of an amoeba media culture we live in.

And I think we will look back.

There are certain things in history that fundamentally shift the way politics are conducted, that change electoral coalitions in real ways.

And I think the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v.

Wade is one of those things that has changed politics in Republicans.

It doesn't mean the Democrats will win every single time, but it means that politics is different today than it was before that day because an unelected Supreme Court took away a constitutional right from more than half of this country.

And that is not something that has happened in American history.

Yeah.

And there were, I saw a few takes before these elections that were like, will abortion still have the same power it had in the 2022 midterms and some of these specials?

And by all accounts, it sure did.

Well, in Mississippi, Presley, the Democrat, was not pro-choice, and he lost.

And that is something that you can look at.

One of the things going into this election that we were worried about was we had this election in Louisiana where Democrats did terribly across the board, had low turnout, didn't get to 30% in most of the statewide races.

And the question was,

even though we'd all agreed to never speak of that,

was that a warning sign that the sort of Democratic enthusiasm, the anti-MAGA majority had finally succumbed to the political gravity that we see from traditional political gravity from presidential approval ratings, people's opinions in the economy?

And that was a state where abortion was not the issue that it is elsewhere because the incumbent outgoing Democratic governor was anti-choice.

Right.

Let's talk about a few of the big races.

In 2019, andy bashir barely won his first term as kentucky governor by less than half a percentage point of course it was an incumbent republican governor at the time matt bevin um in 2020 trump won the state by 26 points and now in 2023 bashir wins a second term by five points tommy uh we were all in louisville a few weeks ago knocking on doors louisville louisville uh we're knocking on doors with planned parenthood yeah why do you think bashir won a few reasons one because we knocked on doors because that's because i was that was the answer i was was hoping for.

Because Lovett chased down that woman with the golden doodle.

One.

Two, it's really hard to beat an incumbent governor.

The Cook political report said that only two incumbent governors have lost re-election since 2018.

One of them was Bevin in Kentucky.

In Bashir's case, he's also extremely popular.

I think his approval rating was consistently in the 60s, which is insane to any of us who worked in a national political.

He's the most popular governor in America.

Yeah, he's also the son of a previous two-term popular governor.

That helps.

He is seen as competent, empathetic, approachable approachable by voters.

They all just call him Andy.

He did a great job responding to COVID and all these natural disasters that were hitting the state.

I saw Nate Cohn, I believe, at the New York Times, suggest that Bashir actually did better in counties that had been hit hard by flooding, which speaks to maybe the response.

We heard that from people in Louisville.

I don't know if you guys were with, I don't know who it was.

I can't remember Louisville.

I can't remember who it was, but some people who live there were saying that

we've been through a lot in the last couple of years disaster-wise.

and he's just he's just been there yep and he's been there for the whole state and everyone's sort of like rallied together for sure as you guys mentioned i mean he ran hard on abortion rights i do think his opponent daniel cameron made it easier to run that kind of campaign because cameron had an extreme position on abortion that made him susceptible to that messaging but also bashir was smart he ran a kentucky focused campaign uh he did not allow it to get nationalized uh he talked in his victory speech he talked about how he campaigned with jack harlow who's from kentucky not sarah huckabee sanders who's from Arkansas.

Bashir also hammered Cameron on school vouchers, and then Organized Labor loves Bashir.

The president of the UAW, local 862, said about Bashir, quote, I take a bullet for him.

He's that important to the families of my union.

Wow.

He also, yeah, I mean, that's a hell of a quote.

He also raised a lot more money than his opponent.

So just all around, a hell of a candidate, hell of a governor, hell of a campaign.

So Bashir 2028?

That's what people are saying.

Many people are saying.

Many people are tweeting.

That's great.

It's great.

It's good news for good news for Kentucky.

Good news for Andy Bashir.

Virginia Democrats were predicted to hold the state Senate.

The state house was seen as a toss-up.

Glenn Young went all in to get his trifecta.

His PAC spent nearly $8 million on these races, including half a million of his own cash, which he's rich enough that that doesn't seem actually so much.

Four of that was on Vests, unfortunately.

Campaigned all across the state, campaigned specifically on a 15-week abortion ban by presenting it as some kind of a compromise.

That was the big grant.

That was the Republican geniuses think that the 15-week abortion ban, this is what Lindsey Graham tried to do in the Senate too.

They think

this is the solution for

their political solution, did not work in Virginia.

Dan, what's your takeaway?

And does this mean the Youngkin as 2024 GOP Savior boomlet is finally over?

I know I tried to start that boomlet.

I know you did.

I was wondering if you'd remember your take.

I remember all my takes, and I just hope others don't.

I think it's probably the end of the, at least the 2024 Yunkin boomlet.

What is interesting here is the Republicans in that state ran ahead of Trump in 2020, but behind Yunkin in 2021.

So that's a little one piece of news that isn't quite as good as all the rest.

When I dug into that, I was like, oh, they all ran ahead of Trump.

Well, it's look, Virginia is a purple state that's pretty close to blue.

And just across the board, demographically, it models very well with the post-Trump Democratic coalition.

It is a high turnout state because of for that very reason.

And so it's one where Democrats should do well.

But the fact that Democrats did well with a president of their own party in the White House is a huge aberration.

It's been, it's very rare.

Virginia always has these off-cycle elections.

And it usually

won in the first place.

Exactly.

Usually the party of the president fares poorly in that time.

And so this is a huge exception.

And that says, I think, a lot about the power of abortions we're talking about and also the failure of this Republican strategy.

Because I think

these elections are testing grounds for the national parties, particularly in Virginia, about what messages work and what don't.

This was the test.

If that had worked here, it would be every Republican would be adopting it by the end of tomorrow, by the time you hear this podcast.

That did not happen.

And that says a lot about how far the Republicans have to go to solve their abortion problem, which may be frankly insoluble given Donald Trump's role in this, the their long history on it.

And that's a positive sign for Democrats.

I just saw before we started recording J.D.

Vance say, we got to try for this 15-week abortion ban because of what happened.

And like, that's the key.

And it's like, have you looked at the real, did you just see what happened to Glenn Young and Republicans in Virginia?

I think you probably can't overstate how big of a tactical error it was for Youngkin to come out for the 15-week abortion ban.

If he had not proactively proposed that, there wouldn't have been much for Democrats to run against.

If they'd run some boring, bland, sort of economic-focused, inflation-focused campaign, they very likely would have done better and potentially have won.

But giving Democrats this this 15-week ban to rally against was an enormous shot in the arm.

Yeah, and Youngkin has national ambitions, and it'd be very hard for a Republican governor in a post-Dobbs world to not advance some sort of ban.

So he was trying to split the difference between being seen as a rhino and a six-week ban.

And that obviously did not work as voters understand what is at stake here and they see through the bullshit.

And you can tell that's why Donald Trump and all these other Republican candidates have been have been so squirrely on a national ban and said things like, oh, well, I mean, whatever comes to me, you know, maybe I'll sign or I'll say, but it's not, it's never going to get that far.

Or whereas Trump said, I'm just going to make the best deal.

I'm going to make the best deal on abortion.

Because, you know, Youngkin did this and it didn't work out too well for him.

Trump is dumb in a lot of ways.

A lot of things he says are very stupid.

Politically on this issue, he's been very savvy in terms of just not letting this primary drag him further to the right on an issue that he knows is toxic for him.

And, you know, it's just worth pointing out that the Democrats in this state ran on keeping abortion legal through 26 weeks and then the third trimester allowing abortion access if you've got three referrals from three different doctors.

So an incredibly onerous requirement for the third trimester, but they did try to put some constraints on abortion access.

It's worth mentioning.

I just think it's important that every single Democrat who's running for office, who is talking to voters, assert that Republicans, if they get a trifecta, are going to pass a national abortion ruler.

Absolutely.

There is no way that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker Mike Johnson, of all people, are not sending a national abortion ban to Donald Trump's desk, and there's no way he's not signing that.

No doubt.

Well, to- Today, I don't care how many Pinocchios someone gives you, or that is reality.

No, let's dig into it.

Like, to think that that wouldn't happen, you would have to believe that either that Mitch McConnell would save the filibuster,

if he has the Senate, right?

If he has the Republican Senate, would save the filibuster and then say no abortion ban because I'm keeping the filibuster.

Or Mitch McConnell, who is like a lot of Republicans in his caucus now aren't really where Mitch McConnell is.

Like, he's like the rhino Republican.

And we think that if Republicans take the Senate in 2024 and there'll be even more crazy Trumpy Republicans there, like, will Mitch McConnell even be majority leader at that point?

I think there's a good chance Mitch McConnell doesn't run for majority leader again.

That's what, yeah.

And then the next person is going to be a MAGA person.

And of course, they're going to get rid of the filibuster.

Mitch McConnell was like holding, like, pretending that he was going to hold on to the filibuster, maybe because he thinks of himself as some institutionalist.

But, like, I don't see this as a possibility.

I don't care if you, you're right.

Like, even if you go fact-check this, like, it's, it just, it takes a lot to believe that they would preserve the filibuster and not pass a national abortion bill.

The most likely person to be Senate majority leader, if it is not Mitch McConnell, is John Thune.

I worked on two campaigns against John Thune in South Dakota a long, long time ago, and he's about as far right on abortion as he gets.

Yeah.

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All right, so Ohio.

In the 2022 midterms, Tim Ryan lost the Ohio Senate race to J.D.

Vance by about six points.

One year later, one year later, the voters have guaranteed abortion rights and legalized marijuana 5743.

Tommy, what do you think is going on in Ohio?

And does this give you more hope that Sherrod Brown could pull out another win in 2024?

So this result was driven by very strong Democratic turnout.

I think I read that self-reported Biden voters in the exit polls outnumbered Trump voters by two points.

But again, this is a state Trump won by eight points.

However, it was low turnout generally.

3.86 million ballots were cast on issue one compared to

4.14 million votes in that Senate race, the Tim Ryan Senate race last year.

So low turnout, but lots of Democrats.

The margin of victory was driven by really strong support from women, 63% of whom voted yes.

Black voters, 83% voted yes.

Latino voters, 73% voted yes.

And then young voters, nearly 80% of voters 18 to 29 voted yes, as opposed to only 45% of voters 64 or older.

It was also driven by college graduates, unmarried people.

So, you know, in addition to this just being a really strong Democratic turnout, there's a broader coalition of support for abortion rights than there was for Tim Ryan or for Democrats on the ballot, usually, right?

I mean, Issue One did better than Ryan did with unmarried men, Trump voters, independents, and moderates.

I think if anyone can

recreate that group of excited Democrats turning out and able to persuade traditional conservatives, it is someone like Sherrod Brown.

I do think, though, the electorate is going to be completely different in 2024.

I think I read that the electorate is likely to be 60 to 90 percent higher, larger in 2024 than it was this cycle.

So it's going to be really tough in an election year to win Ohio, but Sherrod's the kind of candidate that can do it.

Yeah, it's like another 2 million voters in Ohio over the midterms.

Yeah, it was almost 6 million voters in 2020.

Yeah.

I mean, and also, by the way, the much maligned New York Times poll, which we'll get to.

Oh, please.

In that poll, it has 40% of Trump voters saying that abortion should be always or mostly legal.

And I think that also also helps explain there's 18 counties in Ohio that voted for Trump and that also voted for this abortion amendment.

Now, some of that is turnout differential, right?

Because so you look at a county like that, like a Trump county, and it's only Democrats in that county turned out for the abortion access.

That's possible.

But the New York Times poll also suggests that there are some Trump voters, which Trump obviously knows, who like Trump and will vote for Trump, but also want to protect abortion access, which again, voters are fucking weird.

I've said it a million times.

24% of white evangelicals voted yes on issue one.

Wow.

According to exit polls.

Yeah, I mean, it makes you wonder if part of the messaging is libertarian as well, just sort of like keeping these decisions away from the government.

Of course, the Ohio legislature already is saying that they're going to try to overturn the will of the voters on both weed and abortion.

Shocker.

Please don't do that on the November 2024 ballot.

Don't.

And by the way, the marijuana referendum was a total afterthought.

I was talking, when we were in Cleveland, we were talking to some folks, you know, some electeds, some folks of the state party.

They were like not focused on this at all.

It just kind of got tossed on the ballot by, I think, a different group of activists and organizers, and it just got pulled over the line, I think.

I was reading that because it's not obviously an amendment like the abortion amendment is, it could be easier for the Republican legislature to screw with the marijuana measure by just like reappropriating funds and passing some law than it will be with the abortion amendment.

It's much harder to screw with the constitutional amendment, though they claim they're going to try.

So, of course.

Yeah.

Speaking of 2024, there has been a lively debate on the internet and cable news about what these results might mean for Joe Biden's re-election campaign.

Our friends at Playbook laid out the two theories of the case, as only they can do.

Theory one is called time to chill out.

Polls are one thing, actual votes are another.

These are not election returns consistent with Biden's 40% approval ratings.

Bashir won despite tons of GOP money that was spent trying to to tie him to Biden.

So there's plenty of room for the incumbent to recover.

That's the theory that the Biden campaign likes.

We've been seeing that online a lot too.

Theory two is called time to freak out.

The polls are absolutely right.

The problem isn't the Democratic brand, it's Joe Biden.

The anti-maga coalition that showed up in 2018, 2020, and 2022 is still intact, but it's not going to show up for just anybody.

Trump will bring his voters out next year, and Americans are giving every possible signal that they won't be happy if the alternative is Biden.

Dan, what do you think?

You got to pick one.

There is no nuance.

No, Dan, pick one.

Like everything else.

We're playing playbook rules.

Dan,

there is black and white, left and right.

That's it.

I love that the choices are: everything is fine.

Do not worry, or everything is doomed.

Give up.

There is nothing in the middle.

There is so much to say about this.

I just want to start by trying to explain how it is possible that Joe Biden could be behind, tied with or behind Donald Trump in several swing states.

And

at the exact same moment, Democrats can win huge victories in states like Ohio, Kentucky, and Virginia.

And here is why.

I think it's a very simple explanation, which is

the voters that Joe Biden is having the most trouble with right now are less engaged voters.

They're the voters who did not show up.

So in the New York Times Sienna polling, this analysis that Nate Cohn did prior to this most recent poll, In all of their polling to date, prior to this one, Joe Biden is up by four points among people who voted in the 2018 election.

He is down by several points with the people who did not vote in the 2018 election.

The turnout in 2024 is likely to be 30 to 40% higher than it was in 2022.

So a whole bunch of people who are telling pollsters that they are currently not happy with Joe Biden did not turn out on Tuesday, did not turn out in 2022, but are going to return to.

Did not turn out in 2018?

Yeah, they're going to return to election.

We are now the party, Democrats are now the party of the most highly engaged voters.

Because of the changes in the media environment, particularly since 2020, the chasm between the highly engaged voters and everyone else has never been greater.

And so that is why it is possible.

This is the entire theme of the last season of the wilderness, in case you want to go check it out.

And I could like plug in whatever we got.

Message box.

There's also several.

I have a fury-fueled message box on this coming out tomorrow.

But so the point here is

special elections, particularly off-site elections like this, are not great predictors of what is going to happen.

We'll take the example of in 2012, Democrats tried to recall Wisconsin governor Scott Walker.

Walker easily won that election, easily defeated the recall only a few months before President Obama was going to take on Mitt Romney in that state.

Obama then won Wisconsin by seven points because the turnout was massively higher.

Wisconsin, aka Paul Ryan's home state.

Okay, it was on the ticket.

Yes, that's right.

Exactly.

Thank you.

I didn't feel like I needed to say that, but thank you.

But it doesn't mean that there isn't relevant information in what happened.

Like everything that happened yesterday, first is good for America.

It's good for people of those states.

There are people whose lives are saved because these abortion bans will not go into place.

And which is why we started with all that.

Right.

And there.

That's the most important thing for us.

And right.

And if, and if Glenn Young had gotten his trifecta, a whole bunch of really terrible gun laws would have been passed in Virginia.

And that did not happen.

But, so that's point one.

Point two is that it's also what is evidence of some good news for Democrats of what to look at, right?

It isn't, it's not a predictor, but it is an indicator.

And some of the good news in there is one,

as we've talked about, abortion is still the number number one issue.

That is very important, right?

That is wind at Joe Biden's back.

Two.

Not the number.

Well, for the electorate that showed up and for a good chunk of the Democratic Party, it is an extremely salient issue.

But if you look at the Democratic voters that Joe Biden is currently struggling with, abortion is a huge issue for them.

For them.

Yes.

So that means there's work to do there.

Right.

That's how we should view these polls as a roadmap of who the voters we have to talk to and how we have to convince them.

And to abortion is going to be a hugely important issue to reconstitute the 2020 coalition that elected Joe Biden.

Two, and I think this is really important, is that turnout is not an accident, right?

These election victories are not just the result of some sort of rule about who can vote and who can't.

It's the Democratic campaign machinery is working.

Yeah.

And it is kicking Republican asses left and right.

And that is important.

The other thing is, and this is not getting enough attention, and you could write, Donald Trump is winning in that New York Times poll in those swing states, but there's a lot of stuff underneath.

And you guys talked about some of this in the Tuesday podcast that should be very alarming for Donald Trump and Republicans.

They are terribly divided on abortion.

They're terribly divided on Donald Trump, who is actually less popular than Joe Biden.

Yeah, even in that poll.

Even in that poll within his own party's voters.

Yes.

And the other thing is really important, and this played out in

a lot of these races around the country, is Donald Trump is forcing at political gunpoint a series of Republican candidates to adopt his lies on the 2020 election, which kills them with a huge swaths of voters.

And that is going to happen up and down the ballot in 2024 if Donald Trump's a nominated.

Which in Tuesday night's results, Republican Secretary of State candidate in Kentucky was the only one on the ticket, only statewide candidate to like reject election denial.

And he's the Secretary of State and like ran on that and he did better than every other Republican on the ticket.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So once again, election denial.

I mean, interestingly, look,

if you locked a bunch of nerds in a room and you gave half of them.

Well, what we're currently doing.

Exactly.

If you locked a bunch of nerds in the room and you gave them only the polling, potentially,

about these races, these results are not surprising.

If you locked those same nerds in a room and gave them Joe Biden's approval rating in all these other states and told them it was an off-year midterm election, these results would be very surprising, right?

So this is the kind of disconnect we're trying to work through.

I think the challenge for Biden in that New York Times poll is that a lot of the problems were specific to him, in particular age and concerns about his handling of the economy.

And then if you look at the crosstabs, he has particular challenges with young voters and voters of color.

Maybe it's the case that if the 2024 campaign is all about abortion rights, that that issue can bring back those young voters and those voters of color and get them to turn out and not stay home.

And that's how you make up the difference in that Times poll and you win re-election.

But I don't think that's a guarantee.

I think, obviously, the Biden campaign has a lot of agency here.

This is going to be something they focus on.

But the other challenge is, as you said before, Dan, the electorate is going to be incredibly different in 2024.

You're going to have a lot of kind of disaffected, less engaged voters.

They tend to vote against incumbents, especially when they're super pissed off.

And one thing we know from every poll is that the wrong track number is at like 70%.

It's historically high.

And that's a really challenging setup for an incumbent president going into a re-election.

I brought up the wilderness not just for the plug, but because I also for the plug.

Also for the plug.

Mostly for the plug.

But also when I saw the New York Times poll, and I've seen other polls since then, like it brought me back to the focus groups that I did for the wilderness.

And

at the outset, I thought that the, I did a focus group in Virginia of Biden voters who then switched to Youngkin.

And I was like, oh, those are going to be the tough voters because they voted Republican.

Those were the people who were most like, oh, I did it for whatever reason.

I'll come back to Biden.

I still like the Democrats.

I'm pro-choice.

They were the best, the Pennsylvania voters who were like slightly disaffected.

They were all like ready for Fetterman, all that kind of stuff.

The voters that were most disappointed in Biden, that were crankiest, were the young voters in California, the black voters in Atlanta, and the Hispanic voters in Las Vegas, the very groups that Joe Biden's having a problem with.

And then I talked to like a ton of strategists and pollsters in the party who all agreed that

this is the issue.

So this is not like Nate Cohn and the New York Times and some media pollsters doing this.

These are like Democratic Party strategists all know this.

John DeLa Volpe, Joe Biden's, one of his pollsters in 2020, just had an op-ed in the New York Times that says Joe Biden's in trouble about young voters.

So Linda Lake has been talking about needing to reconstitute, who's another pollster that we've had on this podcast and who also has worked for Joe Biden.

She's talked about it too.

So this is not like, and I'm not saying this to like freak people out, right?

Like Joe Biden, we want him to win.

We will do everything we can to get him to win.

Like, I still think he can win.

I think there's a clear path for victory here.

But, like, I don't think it does anyone any good to just sit there and be like, oh, the media said red wave and they're wrong again.

And every time there's an election, they just prove the media wrong and all the pundits and blah, blah, blah.

It's like, no, actually, the polls.

have been right every single special election and midterm now for the last several cycles where they've been off of the presidential races, which by the way, are the races that have this completely different, bigger electorate, which are harder to measure in polls.

In which way have they been off, John, in the presidential races?

Yeah,

they've been more favorable to Democrats.

Yeah, copium is not a good drug to get hooked on.

No one should.

None of us want to repeat this mistakes of 2016.

So no one's trying to bum anybody out or suppress turn.

I mean, I do understand why Biden supporters are kind of taking a victory lap and dunking on people who are critical of him because, you know, you get frustrated.

You care deeply about your candidate and you want to push back.

But, you know, I think we all should be clear-eyed.

No one wants to repeat mistakes we all made in 2016 of thinking there's no way we could lose.

One last thing.

Just how nice was it to not have anyone contesting the results of the election?

Even the craziest right-wingers, like nobody was like

that I saw was saying that they're the Cameron was like, let's all pray for Bashir.

They're all saving it up for 2024.

Also, when you lose by five points, it's hard to contest it.

Tell Donald Trump then.

I'll say one more thing about this pool of voters who are going to show up in the general election that have not, in the presidential election, that have not shown up in these specials and midterms.

like if you look at the new york times polling and and nate cohens says this in his piece today the folks who showed up for these 2023 off-year elections are like the democrats that showed up are pretty favorable towards biden you brought up the ohio exit poll that's plus two biden so it's not like it's there are specific problems that biden might have but what i get nervous about is not just problems that biden may have but like this pool of voters, this disaffected pool of voters, they're more moderate.

They are younger, they're voters of color.

They're sort of more cynical about politics and institutions.

They're harder to reach.

They don't consume as much news.

They're harder to reach with ads.

Like, I just worry about them long-term for the party because it's much, I think it is easier for Republicans to make a case like, aren't you pissed about shit?

And don't you want to tear institutions down?

It's a longer term issue that I actually worry about that goes beyond Joe Biden.

We talked about this after 2020.

There were obviously very troubling signs among black voters and Latino voters, younger voters without college educations across the board.

And there was a big sigh of relief after 2022, but we didn't really test the proposition because the voters we're most concerned about did not vote in that election.

They are not midterm voters.

And so we don't know, like this poll is consistent with, the New York Times poll is consistent with that trend continuing.

Right.

And we'll say, look, it's possible that a good chunk of these disaffected voters don't show up in the presidential.

That's on the

democracy, but also the electorate then could possibly look more like a midterm election.

Absolutely.

Low turnout?

I'm not rooting for low turnout, but I'm just saying we don't, there's different scenarios where it's going to be okay for Democrats, right?

But it all depends on the shape of the electorate is our point here.

It depends on the shape.

It's apples to oranges comparisons to just say the media said this in 22 and Red Wave here.

It's like a presidential electorate is so, so, so different from a midterm electorate.

We just used to live in a world, and this was true under President Obama and previous Democrats, was midterms were bad for Democrats.

Presidential years were better.

And that has shifted under Trump.

That has fundamentally shifted.

And the reason it has is because college-educated, older voters, whiter voters, used to be heavily Republican.

And that has changed in the Trump era.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

And the last thing I'll say about this is

this is very challenging in execution.

But there has never been a race where it was more clear on how you win.

You know exactly who the voters are.

You know how to, how you get them back is hard.

But we do not have to go get a bunch of people who voted for Republicans in the midterms.

You don't have to get a bunch of people who voted for Trump in 2016 or voted for Trump in 2020.

You just have to get the people who voted for Joe Biden in six states to do it again.

And that is not an easy thing to do, but it is a clear, clear path.

And that means we actually have agency here.

Yeah.

Right.

And that is a very, very powerful thing, which is why you can have some more confidence about Joe Biden's ability to win than the polls would necessarily suggest because they are our voters we have to get back.

They are not people

who we previously never had before.

And to get granular about it, like it's everyone has people in their lives who are not political junkies like you all are listening to the show.

And these disaffected voters, they don't just like live in one place.

Like they're all around us.

And I do think that is going to,

what's going to make the difference there is going out, talking to people, persuading people, not being pissed off when someone just doesn't say like, oh, I might not vote and yelling at them before it.

Like it's really going to take some persuasive work.

At every live show, Q ⁇ A thing we've ever done, people are saying, how do I talk to my MAGA uncle Thanksgiving?

Fuck your MAGA uncle.

Find your Biden skeptical cousin, right?

That's who you want, right?

Is Is your Biden skeptical cousin?

What if you're married?

What if you're Mike Johnson?

What's your accountability board?

Hey, another bonus.

There's lots of a huge pool now of super well-informed Trump jurors that will be voting for the first time.

Oh, wow.

That's exciting.

He's doing persuasion for us.

All right.

Before we get to break, just one quick housekeeping note.

In case you missed it, Love It Tommy and I wrote a book, and it's coming out June 25th, 2024.

Guess what?

I've read the book, people.

Dan read the book.

It's quite good.

Thanks, Dan.

Tommy's supposed to have a whole script here, but he doesn't have it.

Yeah, I don't want to read that.

It's called Democracy or Else, How to Save America in 10 Easy Steps.

And we just revealed the official cover this week.

Was that a big moment for you and

on every single book PR planned?

The cover reveal is a huge moment.

Step one is buying it.

Because Crooked's donating the profits to support Vote Save America, its partners, and other organizations mobilizing for progressive outcomes in in the 2024 election and beyond.

Dan, you got any tips for us in promoting a book?

I thought putting yourselves on Mount Rushmore as the cover art was kind of a weird choice, but

did we do that?

Oh, no.

That was a big mistake.

You gave cover approval to love it, and there we went.

God damn it.

We did do that probably.

You're doing it right, people.

Well, check out the cover now and pre-order at cricket.com/slash books or wherever books are sold.

Exclusive signed editions, what?

Just get through this.

Are available from bookshop.org.

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It's the Smuckers Uncrustables podcast with your host, Uncrustables.

Okay, today's guest is rough around the edges.

Please welcome Crust.

Thanks for having me.

Today's topic is round with soft pillowy bread.

Hey, filled with delicious PBJ.

are you talking about yourself and you can take him anywhere why'd you invite and we are out of time are you really cutting me off uncrustables are the best part of the sandwich sorry crust

okay we're back the third republican debate was wednesday night it was hosted by nbc in miami florida moderated by lester holt kristen welker and tommy's favorite pundit hugh hewitt i mean I could do an hour on that guy why he should not be there.

The debate featured Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tim Scott, and Chris Christie.

And it was two hours of what?

What was that?

What was that we just watched?

I think we all went into this thinking this debate wouldn't really matter much.

Anything happened to change your mind on that, guys?

No.

No.

A lot of obscure foreign policy fights, which I enjoyed.

Kind of.

Yeah, Tommy was into it.

I was talking about boats and sanctions and getting my, you know, jollies off, off, but no.

You know what my view of this debate was?

If we can just escape a second Donald Trump presidency, we're going to beat a lot of Republicans all the time.

That's true.

Those people were

not good.

They were not good.

I'm not afraid of any of those people.

But the whole thing was surreal.

They all dressed up.

They wore ties.

The moderator showed up with serious questions on serious issues.

And everyone involved knew that none of those people were ever going to be president of of the United States.

Ever.

Like they took time to ask them repeatedly with follow-up questions about the specific ships that they would commission in the U.S.

Navy if they were.

Spoilers are skipping ahead.

There's not a person listening to this whole, who did not watch this debate.

So

thank God for Lester Holt and Christian Welker.

I think they have been the best moderators so far.

I think they're both great.

And for anyone who's mad at the questions, I seriously doubt that they wrote a lot of these questions.

I'm sure this was made by network brass and producers, et cetera.

But just in terms of controlling the audience, controlling the candidates, there was some clapping in this, but then they like Lester Holt kept trying to calm him down.

And then they would really jump in when the candidates started talking over each other.

I think they did a great job.

Thank God for Lester Holt.

He finally kicked off a Republican debate by asking directly about Donald Trump and what each candidate would say to Trump supporters whose votes that they presumably want.

And here's what we heard from

Ronnie D.

And Donald Trump's a lot different guy than he was in 2016.

He owes it to you to be on this stage and explain why he should get another chance.

He should explain why he didn't have Mexico pay for the border wall.

He should explain why he racked up so much debt.

He should explain why he didn't drain the swamp.

And he said Republicans were going to get tired of winning.

Well, we saw last night, I'm sick of Republicans losing.

In Florida, I showed how it's done.

One year ago, here, we want a historic victory, including a massive landslide right here in Miami-Dade County.

So honestly, for those who didn't watch the debate, that might have been Ron DeSantis' best moment.

That was literally minute two.

Yeah, it was the top.

It was about minute one.

Nikki Haley complained about debt, Donald Trump, you know, racking up debt.

And he said Trump was getting weak in the knees, I think, on Ukraine.

On Ukraine, yep.

And she said, we can't live in the past.

We got to look at the future.

Vivek went on this whole thing.

We've become a party of losers.

It's the establishment.

He then called on Rana McDaniel to resign as RNC chair, which is fair.

Yeah, I mean, she's not done a great job.

He invited her to come on stage, which would have been a cool moment.

He also said that Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, and Joe Rogan should be moderating.

Oh, yeah.

He also hit the moderators.

He attacked Welker.

He said the media rigged the last election.

It was a whole fucking show for Vivek.

He mentioned Hunter Biden's laptop within the first nine minutes of the debate.

And again, to Kristen Welker's credit, this ranting, raving lunatic is screaming at her from the stage, and she just smiled at him.

Yeah, she didn't.

And he looked so small.

And he wanted her to take the bait so badly.

Kristen and Lester did a great job.

Remember that?

These are also the first actual reporters to moderate a Republican debate.

Yeah.

I forget who the other moderator is.

They all work for Fox.

Oh, yeah.

Right.

Christie talked about Hamas, Putin, all the world on fire kind of thing.

And then he said Trump's going to spend the rest of his campaign in jail or in courtrooms.

Right, right.

He said, why are we going to nominate someone who's just trying to stay out of a courtroom?

Which we said, fair point, sir.

And then Tim Scott, who

someone gave a tranquilizer to before the debate, was so slow the whole time.

All I wanted to do was like speed him up the whole debate.

And he's like, he's talked slower than he has in previous debates.

It was really weird.

But anyway, he didn't mention Trump at all.

He pledged to attract independent voters, restore faith, Christian values, blah, blah, blah.

I don't know.

I really tuned out a lot when Tim Scott was talking.

So here's my question.

That was basically the only time.

that any of the candidates drew any contrast with Donald Trump.

Again, the person who is leading in every single national poll and every single state poll, not by a little, but by 20, 30, 40 points still.

What was the strategy there?

Was there a strategy?

Like, because I know these people, these people have high-priced consultants, right?

They sit in debate rooms, they do debate prep.

Like, what are they thinking as they head into this debate?

I think what this boils down to is none of them think they're going to be president.

They're not trying to be president.

They're not doing anything to ensure they'd be president.

As best that I can tell, they like visiting Iowa and New Hampshire and spending as little time as possible with their families.

Dan and I also share a theory that Vivek Ramaswamy started running thinking it would be great advertising for his like anti-woke investment ETFs and financial products, caught a little bit of fire in that first debate, and then slowly has been plummeting and doesn't realize yet that he's not got a chance.

Yeah, maybe.

He seemed to be trying, but he was mostly, I mean, I wrote down a bunch of the attacks, he mostly spent his time attacking Nikki Haley.

He, of all, everyone on that stage looked like he's auditioning for something else, for sure, whether it's like being a pundit, whether it's like a spot in the Trump administration, whatever.

I'll try something out on you guys.

And I think it's, Dan, your answer could be very correct here, but I'm wondering if they're thinking, okay, the only chance we have is if...

Again, Trump dies, gets convicted, the poll numbers change, whatever.

And in order to be the next choice,

the second choice of everyone in the Republican Party, I need to maintain my favorability rating by not attacking Donald Trump too much and also not attacking all the other candidates too much.

I don't want to be too nasty towards the other candidates.

And so that's why we got this sort of muddled mess.

I don't know.

Yeah,

I think that is correct.

But I think that's less about beating Trump in some case.

Like, sure, if he were going, Trump going to jail is not going to really help them since that is likely to happen after all the delegates are allocated.

But I guess it's like, what if he imagine a conviction in March, right?

And he's already got a bunch of the delegates, but suddenly

convicted in March.

Well, the trial starts March 4th.

Yeah, so maybe convicted in April.

Okay, so he's convicted in April.

This is just a fantasy scenario.

Okay,

let's do it, Serkin.

And suddenly the polls really change, right?

We saw in the New York Times poll, there's a bunch of Republican voters, British voters who said, I would actually vote for Joe Biden if Trump gets convicted.

And so we see all these polls change and all the Republicans are freaking out.

And then one of these goofballs is thinking, this is my time.

Sure.

I think, yeah.

I mean, they're, yes.

I think it is more about

managing their role

in whatever comes next.

In the post, either Donald Trump wins and now you have to exist in Donald Trump's Republican Party.

Party or 2028.

Or 2028, and you're going to need Trump's voters.

So you're trying to play out the string here, land this plane without lighting the rest of your political career on fire.

Yeah.

It feels like, but it feels like that ship has sailed for DeSantis.

Well, I mean, kind of.

He still has very high approval rate, favorability ratings among Republican voters, higher than Trump in most cases.

Yeah, he has high approval and he's got a ton of money and he's got a bunch of advisors sitting around him saying, anything can happen, sir.

Stranger things have happened.

Donald Trump could get arrested.

He could die, whatever.

You could catch fire in Ireland in Hampshire.

I mean, so I did come away thinking that DeSantis really was campaigning for something tonight.

I think Nikki Haley is too.

I think Chris Christie's on a mission, which is to attack Donald Trump and to get himself invited into green rooms from Washington to New York.

Well, even on that though,

I would say that, like, what was Chris Christie doing?

Like, if you're on that mission, like, he could have gone after Trump a little harder.

Like, I actually think that some of his regular policy answers, not to agree with him so much on domestic policy, at least on some of the foreign policy.

Like, he sounded like the more reasonable Republican, which I think is fine.

I guess that's just who he is.

But I was like, what are you doing up here?

I thought your whole thing was like going after Trump.

I think he genuinely regrets not running for president in 2012, and he's just going to run that campaign because it was 2012.

It's like, this is what he would do.

He's going to fantasy camp.

This is what he would have done.

Yeah, the only person up there, I mean, like, the Vaik previewed with a reporter that he was going to act.

What was the Unhinged.

Act Unhinged.

Yeah.

Said it was going to be unhinged.

Well done, sir.

Mission accomplished.

Nailed that one.

Tim Scott was the only one up there who I kind of wondered if he was going to drop out of the campaign at a commercial break.

He's just sort of like seemed a little bit lost.

Even the goatee was off.

He seems like,

I don't know.

It was really bad.

It was a really bad performance from Tim Scott.

He seems like a guy who's probably fundamentally like a pretty nice person.

And the world he's in on that stage is just horrible.

And it must be very hard play acting with those people.

It was really weird.

But it wasn't even like he, yeah,

enough talking about Tim Scott.

There weren't that many fireworks between the candidates, except for the

running will they, won't they, bit between Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley.

Here's where it really got heated.

That's the choice we face.

Do you want a leader from a different generation who's going to put this country first?

Or do you want Dick Cheney in three-inch heels?

In which case, we've got two of them on stage with Ramaswamy.

Thank you.

I'd first like to say they're five-inch heels, and I don't wear them unless you can run in them.

We've got two of you on stage.

The second thing that I will say is I wear heels.

They're not for a fashion statement.

They're for ammunition.

Ambassador Haley.

What is your take on more funding for Ukraine?

I am telling you, Putin and President Xi are salivating at the thought that someone like that could become president.

They would love to.

The The fact of the matter is she doesn't answer this.

This is what I will tell you.

We're driving Russia into China's family.

So you might want to take care of your family first.

Leave my daughter

adult daughter.

The next generation of Americans are using it.

And that's actually the point.

You have her supporters crapping her up.

That's fine.

Here's the truth.

You're just easy answer.

You're just scum.

She called him scum, and it just sort of was a throwaway line at the end.

I think Rivek, he had a little moment in the first debate.

In the second debate, I think almost everyone watching realized he has a repellent personality, going after someone's daughter.

Yeah, and we should

give everyone the context.

It was about TikTok.

There was like a back and forth about whether we should ban TikTok because TikTok's just radicalizing all of our children to become Hamas.

So that was the debate.

And then he was like, oh, by the way, you're tough on TikTok now, but your daughter is on TikTok.

So are you, Vivek?

Yeah, anyway.

It was really.

It was bad.

He was really bad.

She does not like him.

She does not like him.

There were a couple other kind of opposition research-based attacks that, frankly, did not land.

Like Haley was attacking DeSantis about some sort of Chinese plane manufacturing company in Florida.

It was like she had clearly read so deep into the opposition research file that she knew it backwards and forwards.

But I guarantee you that no one listening had any clue what she was talking about.

Haley attacked DeSantis about banning fracking.

That might play a little bit.

Vivek attacked Haley about attracting Chinese businesses to South Carolina and like sending some welcome message to Ambassador.

But like it was not, most of those attacks were just kind of confusing.

But Haley genuinely despises Vivek, which I'm with her.

I think it's her most relatable quality.

Yeah, for sure.

That's why she's had this boomlet in her goals.

I mean, the Haley DeSantis Vivek

attacks are it's just it's all so poorly done.

We've sat in debate preps before.

The research people come up with these hits, and so often they're so esoteric that the candidate cannot get them out with any context.

You have no, the audience has no way you were saying.

And the consultant's like, do not leave that stage without delivering this hit.

And they just, they make it.

Because in some focus group somewhere, they tested it, and the hit was people were like, oh, we don't like that at all.

And then they make the mistake of translating what that focus group said to like a national stage with no context.

It's like they were fighting, DeSantis and Haley were fighting over a economic development official who scrubbed a website on the channel.

Yeah, I really missed all that.

It's just, it's, it's just like everything else, it's low rent, poorly done.

Yeah.

Can I just make a point about DeSantis too?

He sucks.

His performance tonight, like he probably had a better performance than he has in other debates, like if you're counting points.

But like just the paint by numbers, consultant, stump speech, like every single answer.

Like I realize technically when you're prepping from someone for a debate and like you're supposed to give the answer, you're supposed to give the topic sentence first, and then you're, but it was just so cheesy.

Everything he says is so cheesy.

I like he sounded more like a typical politician than anyone else on that stage or like maybe anyone in the Democratic primary in 2020 or anyone I've heard in a long time.

He is a poor imitation of a typical politician.

Yeah.

It's like a character.

It's not the poor imitation of Trump anymore.

It's like poor imitation of any kind of politician.

It's appropriate.

Yeah, it is.

It is embarrassing.

The alliteration, the

from here to here, it's just

so embarrassing.

I'm not in it for you.

I'm not in it for me.

I'm in it for you.

It's just

a hit.

I'll take the hits.

Yeah, he kept saying that.

I'll take the hits.

I'll take the slings and arrows.

What hits?

What is he talking about?

Really terrible.

So the first full hour of the debate was foreign policy.

Sure was.

Gaza, Iran, Ukraine, China, Venezuela, and just a full 20 minutes of discussion about boats.

Yeah.

Tommy, what do you think?

Can you tell us what we learned from that?

Neocon BC?

Does that work?

When you write it down.

Neocon BC.

Neocon BC, like NBC.

But Neocon BC.

Oh, God.

Talk about things needing some conversation.

Talking about land in the plane.

Who told you how to get that hidden?

You know, so our good friends at NBC, the liberal media, spent a good 25, 30 minutes, maybe an hour, trying to push every candidate on the stage into the most hawkish position possible on a whole bunch of issues.

We talked about the use of military force against Iran in retaliation for Iranian proxy groups.

We talked about restoring sanctions on Venezuela and attacking the current Biden policy.

Ron DeSantis has a policy where he says he's going to send U.S.

special forces into Mexico to attack cartels making fentanyl.

And Hugh Hewitt's question to him was not, hey, you realize that's starting a war with Mexico, right?

Or like, what's the legal basis for doing that, Ron?

Or are you worried about the Mexican military responding?

Question mark?

No, it was how many, how often, what does it look like?

And then Ron DeSantis says, we're going to shoot them stone cold dead.

Okay.

In the face.

In the face.

In the face.

And then faux serious man, Hugh Hewitt, asked the ultimate faux serious person question, which is, how many Navy ships are you going to build?

Like these guys.

Every candidate got that question.

339.

He did not let them off the hook on that one.

He followed up and he followed up and he followed up and then what's with the boats?

Is there something we're missing here?

Is there a background?

The Chinese Navy is building a lot of boats.

That's the whole thing about it.

The China Hawks too.

There's a boat gap.

There's a boat.

There's a boat gap.

And it's silly because it's sort of a silly debate because there's these ship-killing missiles that kind of render the whatever.

This is boring.

I'm boring both of you.

I've lost the render.

I asked the question.

Ship-killing missiles missiles is the most interesting thing that's happened in this i tried to watch this debate understanding and i couldn't so this is why i

have you here on this show right here and then our chinahawk friends are talking about banning tick tock which we discussed earlier and then shortly after that segment they went to commercial and we all suck some tick tock ads so it's a full story there's like a there was like tick tock grandmothers and a couple others like a young woman who started a restaurant named family yeah i this is when i

now i remember this is when i thought chris christie was being responsible because they were all competing to see who could be the most bloodthirsty Yes.

About like, I'd tell Bib Netanyahu to like

finish them, flatten them, and do that, like just see who could be the toughest there and then who could be the toughest on Iran and then who could be the toughest on China.

And like Christie was definitely Republican tough.

Like if he was debating some Democrats, we'd all have some critiques, but he didn't, I was happy that he did not go there.

John, the Vaik Ramaswamy said, I would tell Bibi Netanyahu to smoke those terrorists on his southern border.

I'll be smoking terrorists on our southern border.

And then he was like, but we need to end these endless endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He really tried to.

Right.

Smoke them if you got them.

And then Tim Scott was talking about blood dripping from Obama and Biden's hands.

Yeah.

He said

he talked about blood a couple of times, Tim Scott.

It got weird for them.

So there was a section on the economy where the only policy solution they had for inflation

is to drill more and frack more.

That was basically it.

Even though we're like at the, we're currently producing more energy than ever before.

Most of them want to raise the Social Security retirement age.

No disagreement there.

And then they finally got around to a discussion on last night's election results and abortion.

They all tried to avoid answering whether they'd support a national ban, with the exception of Tim Scott.

He advocated for a national ban.

He played Mike Pence because Mike Pence wasn't there.

What do you guys think of all the answers around abortion in light of last night's election results?

Well, I mean, it seemed like most of them were trying to avoid coming out in favor of a national abortion ban because they know it's horrendous politics.

I mean, I guess Ron DeSantis is already completely on the record about his six-week abortion ban support in Florida.

But then I believe it was Vivek, or no, it was Tim Scott challenged Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis on the 15-week ban.

And Haley ended up saying, I would support anything that would pass.

Yeah, but she's like, let's be, she likes to use this line, like, let's be honest with the American people.

I don't think we, whatever we have 60 votes in the Senate for, because she's a filibuster believer, I guess.

I remember watching her CNN Town Hall with Jake Tapper a while back, and she definitely struck a more reasonable sounding, moderate sounding position on abortion.

But it kind of felt like she undid it in one second there by saying I would support anything that would pass.

Maybe she said that before, but the context here was clearly a 15-week abortion ban.

And if I were running a campaign against her, say if I were Joe Biden, I would use that clip as my evidence that, of course, she'll put in place a national ban.

Yeah, she said it before.

It's very weasly.

I think she's never been put on the spot like that on trying, because she's done the like, I'll sign whatever comes to me kind of thing.

But obviously, Tim Scott pushed her on it.

Yeah.

And, you know, because she wanted to just get away with her initial answer, which was like,

I don't judge people who are pro-choice.

I hope people don't judge me who are pro-life.

I think we need to find common groundball.

But then it's like, yeah, but if you got a national ban, you'd sign it.

She's like, oh, I'll sign whatever comes to me.

Well, what she did first is she just like turned it into a Punchbowl correspondent.

It was like, well, there are only 45 pro-life senators and therefore it can never pass.

And so her argument is it's a stupid conversation because it will never come to my desk, which is very weasily.

Don't get me wrong.

And then Vivek's like, speaking as a man, and I've been told that men have trouble speaking about this.

I'm going to dance around the issue for the next 45 seconds and not actually answer your question as far as I can tell.

The thing men have not had trouble talking about?

Abortion.

That's the problem.

He was like, he was like, he's like, we're all in this together, men and women.

Why are we?

And I was like, are we?

I do think that Nikki Haley's answer about

not judging people who are on the other side of the issue and not pushing people is the sort of rhetoric that Republicans could adopt

to sand down the edges somewhat.

Somewhat.

I think, as we've seen from the results from the election we talked about earlier, there are real limits to that, but that's the first time someone has actually tried out different messaging that is trying to be more accepting of difference.

And there was a long time,

not all of it was great, where Democrats were constantly reframing their language, particularly in the 90s with Bill Clinton, around making our position on abortion seem more appealing through a series of anti-abortion voters who would otherwise support Democrats.

There are a lot of Catholic voters in Pennsylvania whose votes Clinton got.

And now you're seeing the politics have shifted.

Republicans trying to do the opposite.

And I think that for DeSantis, too, it wasn't going to work too well because he obviously signed a six-week ban and he was trying to do tonight the old.

Some states are doing things differently, and it's bottom-up approach.

Right.

I mean, they said the word referenda a bunch of times.

So many times.

Chris Christie's like, it should be decided by the states.

Clean answer.

Got it.

Vivek does the, I'm going to pound my chest and answer it as a man and not answer your question.

Elise Nikki Haley enters the answer as a human being.

She says, my husband was adopted.

I had trouble getting pregnancy.

So I understand that these are sensitive issues.

Now, listen, as someone who comes from a family where you've had struggles getting pregnant, that would lead me to

allow people to have the freedom to make these choices themselves.

But she went a different direction with this.

So I I mean, like human answer in the start, horrible policy outcome, but I still think better than Tim Scott or Vivek probably or Ron DeSantis.

Well, and I also think that there was a point where language around this was important.

That point was long before Dobbs.

And now Dobbs has made it so that, like, and this is where Nikki Haley ran into trouble.

It's like, you're either for the national ban or you're not.

I don't care what your language is.

I don't care how accepting you are.

I don't care whatever else.

You either want to ban abortion or you want to make abortion available.

And that's really, and voters get that.

That's what we saw on Tuesday night.

Absolutely.

And if Nikkialy were to ever actually become a threat of becoming the Republican nomination, then she would get really pressured.

She's under no pressure now because no evangelical leader cares what she says because she's not going to be a position to implement those policies.

Yeah.

So then they did their closing statements, which why do they do closing statements?

They were all boring.

Except Vivek really went off.

He ended by saying, we must end this farce.

That Joe Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee.

He needs to step aside, end his candidacy.

He's a puppet for the managerial class and just let Michelle Obama or anyone else, whoever's going to do it, run.

And it's like a very, it was wild.

People online were saying it's a very, it's like a, it's a very QAnon thing.

Oh, that makes sense.

That Joe Biden's just like a puppet who's going to step aside and they're going to send out Michelle Obama or whoever else.

It's a real thing.

Yeah, he's just sort of like a walking Twitter reply guy.

He also called.

He replied to my tweet tonight.

Oh, really?

That's nice, man.

What did you tweet?

I tweeted, I didn't realize on the heels thing that he had said, and we have two of them on the stage.

I didn't know.

So I said,

was his attack about dictating a three-inch hills about Haley or DeSantis, thinking I was making a pretty clever DeSantis.

Yeah, we all left here in the studio.

And he responded both.

Now, obviously,

it was not Vivek himself since it was during the debate.

You don't know that.

Just take us for that.

Just firing away.

Vivek also accused Biden, I guess, for the United States of, quote, celebrating a Nazi in its ranks, a comedian in cargo pants, Zelensky, in the context of talking about Ukraine.

Again, he's calling a Jewish president in Ukraine a Nazi.

Really?

That's just a shockingly weird thing.

So that ended.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Florida, Donald Trump held a rally because why the hell would he be at that debate?

And here is some of Trump's speech.

We haven't heard this clip yet, so I'm excited.

We have him coming in from jails, from all of the places that you wouldn't believe, mental institutions.

My people said, please don't use the term insane asylum.

That's silence of the lamb, right?

Silence of the lamb.

Hannibal Lecter.

Anybody ever heard of the wonderful Hannibal Lecter?

We got him coming into this country now.

You're doing like a VP search.

So that's the guy that's winning by a lot.

But you're probably going to be the nominee.

Any final thoughts on that?

That guy is up in five of six swing states, according to the New York Times.

Oh, my God.

The Trump team put out a statement saying something like, when President Trump was in Florida having a street named for him, Governor Ron DeSantis was being paved over at the debate, which I thought looked funny.

It was pre-written, but accurate.

So, well, that's all we got today, guys.

Time well spent for everyone.

We had a great election and a terrible debate.

Terrible debate.

Well, you can't ask for much more than that.

And Trump's skipping the next one.

And Trump's skipping the next one.

So there we go.

We're not going going to get Trump in a debate until we can all do it until the fall.

Let's all skip it.

Let's all skip it.

Yeah, this is content.

You can hear Elijah screaming.

All right.

That's our show.

We'll be in New Orleans Friday night.

And then you guys will all hear that show on Monday.

So we'll talk to you next week.

Bye, guys.

Bye, everyone.

Pot Save America is a crooked media production.

Our producers are Olivia Martinez and David Toledo.

Our associate producer is Farrah Safari, writing support from Hallie Kiefer.

Reed Cherlin is our executive producer.

The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis.

Madeleine Herringer is our head of news and programming.

Matt DeGroote is our head of production.

Andy Taft is our executive assistant.

Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Mia Kelman, David Toles, Kirill Pelaviev, and Molly Lobel.

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