Will There Be a Blue Wave in 2026?

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Speaker 3 Welcome to Potsdam America. I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
One year ago, Donald Trump won the popular vote, swept all seven battleground states, and made major gains, Latino voters and younger voters.

Speaker 3 But earlier this month, Democrats notched big wins in New Jersey, Virginia, and several other states, thanks in part to winning back some of the very same voters who had swung to Trump last year.

Speaker 3 So what happened? What does it tell us about the midterms next year? Can Democrats actually take back the House and the Senate?

Speaker 3 And where do things stand with Donald Trump's ongoing efforts to rig the midterm elections?

Speaker 3 Joining me to break all of this down is Amy Walter, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Cook Political Report.

Speaker 3 Amy is one of the sharpest political analysts in the country with a granular understanding of races in every corner of the map.

Speaker 3 There is no better person to give us a lay of the political landscape as we head into the midterms.

Speaker 3 Amy Walter, welcome back to Pot Save America. Well, hello.

Speaker 4 Can I just say, Dan, that I got cool points

Speaker 4 from my sister

Speaker 4 who said,

Speaker 4 oh my gosh, my friends heard you.

Speaker 3 They don't have any idea what I do.

Speaker 4 But if I'm on Pod Save America, now suddenly I'm

Speaker 3 cool. There's nothing that says cool, like an appearance on a

Speaker 3 political podcast run by four somethings. Yes.
Exactly.

Speaker 3 So now now we are hip all right we got a lot of we got a lot to talk about today we had i want to get into the 2025 elections the state of redistricting battles for the house and the senate this is an important podcast because it's going to air on sunday the historically worst travel day in america so people are going to get our takes as they are stuck in airports or in traffic going up and down 995 or wherever else so we got we got a lot to talk about here All right, let's start with the 2025 elections.

Speaker 3 The Democrats had huge wins. It was a rare, positive day for the Democratic Party in the last year or so.
One in New Jersey, one in Virginia, one in California, one in New York City, one in Georgia.

Speaker 3 You know, sort of one everywhere, one by bigger margins than people expected.

Speaker 3 What was your take on what powered those wins? And were you

Speaker 3 surprised by the margins?

Speaker 4 Definitely surprised by the margins.

Speaker 4 If you look at the margins at Georgia and New Jersey, right? You could

Speaker 4 look, Dan, you know well enough that the focus inside the Beltway is often where it's where are we closest to. And so Virginia got a great deal of attention.

Speaker 4 New Jersey doesn't get as much. Certainly Georgia didn't get as much.
So to see big double-digit wins there by Democrats, certainly pretty

Speaker 4 instructive. I think what I learned from it is, first,

Speaker 4 there is, despite all of the hand-wringing among Democrats for these last,

Speaker 4 well, eight months since the election, that the party is fractured and leaderless and rudderless, Democratic voters want to show up and vote.

Speaker 4 They may not like the party, but they dislike Trump and they dislike Republicans more. So the party is motivated.
I think that was answered question number one.

Speaker 4 Number two was the question about whether this realignment that we saw in 2024 was just a realignment or a dealignment or just a one-off.

Speaker 4 I don't think we can answer that question until we get to 2028. So I want to be very careful how I say this.
But I think- Could you explain why that is?

Speaker 3 Why 2028 is more indicative than 25 or 20 or even 26?

Speaker 4 That's right. Just the kinds of people who show up in an off-year election are very different than the people who show up in a presidential election.
And

Speaker 4 also, as we know, Din, in the next four years, people are going to move in and out of the electorate, whether they age in or

Speaker 3 they leave for reasons. They did

Speaker 3 not require

Speaker 4 careful not to look at the results, say, of 2025 and say, wow, okay, well, Democrats quote unquote fixed their Latino problem or fixed their young people problem, or Donald Trump now

Speaker 4 has so alienated Latinos that they're never going to come back to Republicans. I don't think you can say that.

Speaker 4 What you can say, though, is that the kinds of people who are showing up to vote in these off-year elections, which a midterm election will have higher turnout than,

Speaker 4 say, a 2025 electorate, but it suggests that the people who are the most interested in turning out, especially among these

Speaker 4 voters of color,

Speaker 4 also happen to dislike what Republicans are selling or what Republicans have done.

Speaker 4 So if you are sitting in, let's say, in New Jersey, there's that the ninth district there, which is one that swung, I think, the most

Speaker 4 of any state, of any district last cycle.

Speaker 4 And it went for Cheryl this time by 20 points. So won by Trump by barely a point,

Speaker 4 swung to Cheryl by 20 points. I think that has implications for districts in Texas, districts in the Central Valley in California, obviously in New Jersey.

Speaker 4 So that was instructive. And I do think that this idea, we hear affordability.
as the watchword. I do think the fact that every candidate

Speaker 4 talked about that in a a way that voters saw as believable. And to me, New Jersey was the best test of this because

Speaker 4 it is a

Speaker 4 obviously this was a gubernatorial race. Theoretically,

Speaker 4 the top concern for voters in a gubernatorial race should be what's happening in my state.

Speaker 4 Do you think things are going well in your state? Do you think they're not? The nationals shouldn't influence it.

Speaker 4 But what became very clear was that even as voters in that state, frustrated by Trenton, definitely liked the idea of a change from having a, you know, Democrats were in charge of the government for two years, open to that idea, think taxes are too high in the state.

Speaker 4 It was their opinions about Trump and the national environment that really moved them. And Virginia was the same.
I mean, Glenn Young,

Speaker 4 people like, if you look at the exit polls, people like Glenn Young. People think the state of Virginia is doing pretty well.

Speaker 4 That would be a reason, if you're a Republican, if you just saw Glenn Young's approval rating and how people felt about Virginia,

Speaker 4 that looks like a pretty good environment to be a Republican.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, I think the New Jersey, Virginia is like, I think Cher Spamberger's margin is quite notable,

Speaker 3 but it's also just historically, this is what Virginia does. Yeah.
Right.

Speaker 3 And every year, but 2013, and what is it, since 1975, the Republican, the party that lost the previous presidential election wins the election. We've been flipping, you know, every year.
Every year.

Speaker 3 So, yeah. But New Jersey, like you really hit on something really important about New Jersey, which is if you were mad about affordability based on your own

Speaker 3 like financial circumstances, theoretically, you should be really mad at the Democrats who've been in charge of Virginia for the last eight years. And then you have

Speaker 3 New Jersey. Of New Jersey, yes.

Speaker 3 Yes. If you live in New Jersey, you should be because and every election, every election is a change election.

Speaker 3 It's why Democrats were pretty worried about Cheryl was winning the third, even in a Democratic state, winning the third gubernatorial election in a row is very hard.

Speaker 3 Yet not only did you see Democrats turn out for a Democrat, which is notable and important, but you saw a, you know, based on exit polls, which we'll have all the caveats with them, but 7% of, in the ex poll, 7% of Trump 2024 voters voted for a Democrat.

Speaker 3 And that's even more voted for Cheryl.

Speaker 3 But what even more interesting about that to me is the, if you are voting in a off-year gubernatorial election in new jersey you're a pretty engaged political that's right person and so that you know i sort of think of this in concentric circles right you have off-year special election voters who are the most engaged of all then you go out one circle and you have the midterm election which has some people who they're still you're still pretty engaged in politics you vote in a midterm but

Speaker 3 you're not as you know you're not so dialed in that you're not you're not missing the you know special bond election or city council election in your town and you have presidential election years people who come in all the time and the fact that like these highly engaged voters who voted for Trump switched is, despite Democrats being in charge, I think is a pretty notable

Speaker 3 fact that tells us something about at least the political environment where it is in November. Exactly.

Speaker 4 Exactly, where it sits right now. And,

Speaker 4 you know, I looked at this poll that came out over the weekend, the CBS poll. And to me, what would worry me the most as a Republican is not simply that Trump's approval rating on the economy is low.

Speaker 4 It's that when you ask voters, do you think Trump has anything to do with prices going up? And 65% say yes, including like a third of Republicans, that is a very tough place to be, right? So

Speaker 4 when Republicans talk about, well, we need to do a better job on the affordability, right? We need to tackle this head on.

Speaker 4 Part of the challenge is that they believe that the president himself and his policies have gotten us to this point.

Speaker 4 It was when you guys were in the White House, you did have a certain amount of time in which people gave you a benefit of the doubt because they said, look,

Speaker 4 Obama didn't create this mess. This was there.

Speaker 4 He walked into it.

Speaker 4 You got some of that cushion. And I think Republicans started

Speaker 4 their initial reaction to why are we getting blamed for inflation when inflation isn't our fault is correct, right? You'd say, we didn't start this fire. This was started before

Speaker 4 we came into office. We're dealing with the after effects of COVID, of the Biden policies and inflation that accompanied that.

Speaker 4 But voters

Speaker 4 think that you do, that Trump and the White House do have something.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 4 with the rising cost of steps, right? So how do you, you can't do the traditional, which I'll just blame it on the guys who came before me.

Speaker 4 So now you have to really figure out, all right, how do we tackle affordability in a way that voters believe is, one,

Speaker 4 actually working, and two, isn't just passing the buck?

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's, you know, you, the Obama comparison is really interesting because it was up until 2012.

Speaker 3 So we've been in office for four years, you know, three, three years at that point, that people still blame blame George W.

Speaker 3 Bush more than Obama for the state of the economy because there was this precipitating event of the financial crisis and the crash of Lehman Brothers and all that that happened before Obama was president.

Speaker 3 Everyone knew that

Speaker 3 Trump had this gift wrap for him, right? Everyone blamed Biden for the economy. Biden's numbers on inflation were abysmal.
Yep. Came in.

Speaker 3 focused on a bunch of things that weren't inflation and then did several high-profile announcements to raise people's prices, which is truly one of the more insane things you could possibly do politically.

Speaker 3 And when you see, you know, Navigator Research, the Democratic Aligned polling organization do word clouds of what they know about Trump and what they hear.

Speaker 3 And tariffs is always like giant in the middle. It is the thing that people know and they believe Trump's raising their costs.

Speaker 3 And it really is a pincer movement here for him because they think he raised their costs.

Speaker 3 They also think in this CBS poll, they ask you, well, what's the most important issue that you want Trump to focus on? Overwhelmingly, it's inflation. What do you think Trump is focusing on?

Speaker 3 It's like a fifth of voters say he's focusing on inflation the most.

Speaker 3 And so he's both causing the problem and then being seen as not trying to solve the problem, which is why his numbers are now as bad as Biden's were right before the election on inflation.

Speaker 4 Right. And so if you're a Republican looking forward to 2026, you say, all right, so how can we get out of this pincer that we're in?

Speaker 4 And as you very well know, it is very difficult, even

Speaker 4 pre the Trump grip on the party, but it is very hard to run against your

Speaker 4 the party of the president in the White House in a midterm year and be successful. And we see it year after year, right? The the

Speaker 4 Democrats who voted against Obamacare in 2010, they can't point out that, see, I'm independent. I didn't vote with this Obamacare thing.

Speaker 4 Voters want to punish the party in power and

Speaker 4 you will be punished. The thing you can hope for is,

Speaker 4 yes,

Speaker 4 those same people don't want to punish you as much because they like you for other reasons. And also, your base turns up.
So you depress your base when you try to distance yourself from the president.

Speaker 4 But I think in this case, this is why this healthcare debate has become so fascinating, right? Because

Speaker 4 in many ways, Trump is correct. He looks at the environment.
He sees people are blaming him for high costs. He knows that this

Speaker 4 ACA extender

Speaker 4 would

Speaker 4 be one tangible piece of evidence to show I'm actually bringing costs down.

Speaker 4 But he can't do it because

Speaker 4 Republicans or Congress are like, we voted against Obamacare 60 times.

Speaker 3 Remember that?

Speaker 4 Remember how we overturned, and now you're asking us to extend it? But as a political move, if...

Speaker 4 If I'm a Republican in a swing district, yes, I would like to vote for something that I say, I actually am here to lower your costs of health care.

Speaker 3 It's the Obamacare extension thing is interesting because, well, two things. One, Trump is making it much harder for himself by coming up with these crazy plans that basically are akin to

Speaker 3 repealing Obamacare,

Speaker 3 which is quite an unpopular move and one of the reasons why they lost so many seats in 2018.

Speaker 3 But so he could just take the money on the table and just do the two-year or three-year extension, but that's not available to him.

Speaker 3 And this is where his lame duck status matters, Because if he was running for re-election in 2028 and he came and said, I need to do this, a rising tide lifts all boats. We got to do this.

Speaker 3 They would do it. But here, he's not going to get the swing, but the swing Republicans, of which there aren't a ton, would like to vote for it.

Speaker 4 The base doesn't

Speaker 3 care if Trump is re-elected. So absolutely not.
They care about their own primary. And so you can't do the obvious, easy thing, which is, this is like the tariffs.

Speaker 3 Like it is insane that in an election, when affordability is the top issue, the Republicans refuse to open the government or you know, unshut it down, or whatever words you want to use for something that would have benefited them politically on the affordability issue.

Speaker 3 I mean, there was that polling memo from Tony Fabrizio, who's Trump's pollster from back in the summer back in the day, yep, yeah, which basically said, like, in the swing districts, the generic ballot would go to Democrats plus 15, which I'm a little skeptical of those numbers, but and I'm skeptical about who paid for that poll.

Speaker 3 But either way, Trump's own pollster believes this is very, very bad for them and they can't fix the problem, which does make me think, and we'll get more deeper into the 2026 election in a second, but it does make me think that their best play is not going to be to solve the affordability problem.

Speaker 3 It's going to be hope and pray the economy gets somehow better and the salience of that issue goes down and try to raise the salience of something else.

Speaker 3 This is the equivalent of Trump in 2018, when the election was about healthcare and taxes, tried to make it about the caravan of MS-13 members know marching on the border and so i fully expect to see something like that as their more there that is i don't think it's a likely successful play but it is probably their more likely play

Speaker 4 than trying to come up with some sort of a try to come up with a i mean

Speaker 4 and again

Speaker 4 you know the

Speaker 4 the um you know what that issue is going to be look if we had been talking at this point in 2021 there was no scenario in which democrats were not not going to lose lots and lots of seats in that midterm, right?

Speaker 4 After what we saw in New Jersey and Virginia in those elections and a Democratic base that was so deeply demoralized and just checked out and a Republican base that was fired up and inflation hitting,

Speaker 4 which we knew was going to be the, you know, sort of real Achilles Hill for Democrats. And then boom, comes the Dobbs announcement in June.

Speaker 4 And that's where the race, right, where we went from it being all about inflation to, yes, inflation is still the number one issue. But now we also have this piece.

Speaker 4 So, I mean, you and I know we've got a long way to go in a year.

Speaker 4 So it's whether it's we, if there's nothing that is happening outside of the control of the two parties, i.e., something that Supreme Court does or natural disaster war.

Speaker 4 Yes, I would, you know, if you if you look at, again, that CBS poll, what I found interesting is even on the issue of immigration, just specifically, if you just ask big picture way, do you approve or disapprove of what the president's doing in enforcement?

Speaker 4 Not just on is he keeping the border safe, but they specifically used the word,

Speaker 4 the words like enforcement and dealing with illegal immigration.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 he was only underwater by two or three points. And it's because

Speaker 4 Republicans support him 90-10 on that, whereas on affordability, he's still losing a third of Republicans on those issues.

Speaker 4 So independents still don't love how he's dealing with immigration, which is why it's not necessarily going to save those swing state or swing district Republicans.

Speaker 4 But if you're in a Republican enough enough district,

Speaker 4 right, a Trump 9, 10 plus,

Speaker 4 that

Speaker 4 could be enough.

Speaker 3 Yeah, the turnout differential is enough

Speaker 3 to EQ over, even if you're losing to independence, 30, 70.

Speaker 4 Exactly.

Speaker 3 Exactly.

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Speaker 3 To redistricting, right? So earlier this year, Trump sends out a truth. Texas immediately says they're going to redo their maps, pick up five seats.
All of a sudden, other states, Missouri, Indiana,

Speaker 3 are starting to talk about how they're going to do it. Democrats are in a full state of panic that, you know, they're going to be able to rig themselves into

Speaker 3 at least permanent majority of sorts, right? We're just going to be, they're going to take the Republican, the slight Republican House advantage. They're going to make it much bigger.

Speaker 3 We're not going to be, even in a good Democratic year, we weren't going to win the House. As we sit here today, a lot has happened.
California has passed Prop 50. Some states have redistricted.

Speaker 3 Some Democratic states have talked about redistricting. Courts are involved.

Speaker 3 Where does the battle for the House through this redistricting process stand right now?

Speaker 3 Poof.

Speaker 4 Okay. So

Speaker 3 you don't have to go state by state.

Speaker 4 I'm not going to go state by state, but I think if we just put it in, I'll start really big and then we can go narrow. Right now,

Speaker 4 my colleagues here at the Coke Political Report, Erin Covey, especially who's tracking this intently.

Speaker 4 And if you want to look at her redistricting tracker on our site, it's fantastic at cookpolitical.com. But right now, she's projecting just

Speaker 4 if the Texas map, even if the Texas map is upheld, that Republicans gain just two to three seats

Speaker 3 in this whole process. Does that include Florida moving?

Speaker 4 Does. So, what would happen if the new Texas map is upheld?

Speaker 4 So here's what's happening right now between Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, Missouri, and Florida gets you,

Speaker 4 let's say,

Speaker 4 you know, the best case scenario,

Speaker 4 two, three, four,

Speaker 3 five, six.

Speaker 4 That's like nine seats there, something like that, nine or ten seats there. But then between California, Utah, and now Virginia, which could get you two seats.

Speaker 4 Now we're talking about,

Speaker 4 you know, Democrats being able to get five or seven seats.

Speaker 4 So that's where you net out the Republicans

Speaker 4 getting

Speaker 4 two

Speaker 4 seats out of this now.

Speaker 3 A narrow advantage that would be

Speaker 4 very, I mean, it's very, very narrow. And so, these numbers, literally, Dan, like our tracker of how many seats can our liberal

Speaker 3 started

Speaker 4 well, it started at Republicans likely to pick up as many as a dozen seats, which is where we started to

Speaker 3 net

Speaker 4 a dozen seats, which your point when this all first started. And it was this concept of California maybe having this ballot initiative to, okay, well, maybe now they'll net

Speaker 4 seven or eight seats. Okay, maybe they'll net five to six seats.
Okay, maybe now it's four.

Speaker 4 Okay, now maybe it's so we're definitely in the low single digits.

Speaker 4 What happens with Texas becomes really important. And then, you know,

Speaker 4 as I said, Virginia and Florida are the only two really outstanding states that, but they

Speaker 4 they could also end up canceling each other out. If Virginia's pass and they get two seats out of that, and Florida has two seats, well, there you go.

Speaker 3 And what's interesting is the way that some of these things have fallen, which is Utah, which is a obviously Republican state, Democrats are going to pick up a seat there because of a court decision

Speaker 3 in a very Democratic district that's so Democratic that the guy who held it the last time probably can't win the primary.

Speaker 3 It's too moderate for the district, which is a wild thing to say about Salt Lake City.

Speaker 3 And then Ohio, this is this, I think this speaks to Republicans' challenges here is the Republicans in Ohio cut a bipartisan deal to protect themselves.

Speaker 3 And so they might pick up a little bit there,

Speaker 3 but

Speaker 3 they did not gerrymander to the max. So it's

Speaker 3 a, it's, that's interesting. And then Indiana, they're refusing to do it.

Speaker 3 And I think it does that that to me tells me like two things, right?

Speaker 3 One is the reality of gerrymandering, as I said, partisan gerrymanders, is there's real risk because there's like this simple mathematical fact that you have a static number of Republicans in the state.

Speaker 3 And then if you're trying, when you move them into other districts, you're making, you're taking some districts and tangling them from Democratic to Republican, but you're taking Republican districts and making them less Republican.

Speaker 3 So in a good year, you know, the wave goes over the levy they've built. And so Republicans are seeing that.

Speaker 3 um the not republicans in texas that they did not necessarily do that but like in indiana and elsewhere saying trump's not going to be around he's not going to be be on the ballot

Speaker 3 ever again. Why would we put ourselves at risk here?

Speaker 3 And it has limited their

Speaker 3 playing field in a pretty interesting way.

Speaker 4 Yeah. And it's also, I mean, when I started covering politics, and I probably would, Dan, if you remember, in the old days of redistricting, it really was an incumbent protection racket.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 4 Right. That

Speaker 4 the individual members did did have incredible influence because they were protecting their friends, they were protecting their own districts, and they would, to get a deal cut, would say, I'll protect yours, you protect mine, and here we go.

Speaker 4 Wasn't necessarily the best way of doing, I'm not advocating this is the best way of doing business, but they did have agency in this. And I think what we're seeing

Speaker 4 and Kansas did the same. They rebuffed the president as well.

Speaker 4 What we're seeing in Kansas and Indiana is we are red states, we get it, but we also have our own individual priorities that, as you said, are going to outlast Donald Trump.

Speaker 4 And whether it's something as small as,

Speaker 4 you know, I don't like the idea of taking whatever

Speaker 4 county and chopping it up five ways, right? In the hundred years of this county, it's never been chopped up before and it should always have one representative, right?

Speaker 4 There are those things that still we think all politics is national but there is a very parochial part of politics that still exists and especially if you're a state lawmaker you think i have i'm thinking not just about are we going to win or lose because in kansas or in indiana like you're going to be the majority party forever it is

Speaker 4 What do we need to do beyond just winning and losing?

Speaker 4 So if you're a swing state where you're constantly, you're Pennsylvania and you're constantly thinking about that little edge you have in maybe swinging your state is different from,

Speaker 4 you know,

Speaker 4 if you're, if you're a deep red or a deep blue state. And that's why the Virginia ballot initiative is so interesting too, because like California, this

Speaker 4 independent redistricting passed overwhelmingly when it was on the ballot. and it's now part of the Constitution.

Speaker 4 But are people willing

Speaker 4 in the state to say,

Speaker 4 I'm going to give up my local, what I felt was like a vote for something unique in my state in order to make a broader statement nationally? And I think Democrats have been more willing to do that.

Speaker 4 I'm also kind of impressed, quite frankly,

Speaker 4 to see, but Republicans, you're right, they gave up some of their territory, although they're not, they have not put themselves in

Speaker 4 really dangerous positions, right? They're not taking the kinds of risks like, oh, we're going to put you, you've gone from a Republican plus 20 to a Republican plus two.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 they do have new territory they're going to have to introduce themselves to, which no, no member wants to do that. They are comfortable in their district.
So

Speaker 4 yes, at the end of the day,

Speaker 4 I think there is the short term, which is, okay, let's say that Republicans end up netting a couple seats out of this, two, three seats, had their majority. So now

Speaker 4 Republicans have a six seat, or the other way to think of it is Democrats need to, instead of winning just three seats to get a majority, now need six or seven.

Speaker 4 But the longer term implications, I think this

Speaker 4 goes to your point about,

Speaker 4 you know, you redrew these lines, assuming a certain environment. What is it going to look like in a presidential year? What is it going to look like four years from now?

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 so

Speaker 4 we don't know that.

Speaker 4 And,

Speaker 4 you know, you have also really soured the public that already thought that this process is

Speaker 4 corrupt.

Speaker 4 Now they think it's just it's all

Speaker 4 really

Speaker 4 looked at as

Speaker 4 pretty contemptuous.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's going to be interesting. This will be a very busy year for the cook political, for Cook Political is when they have to redraw the districts again for before the 2032 elections.

Speaker 3 Dude.

Speaker 4 And how people,

Speaker 4 how people handle that. And also, okay, just from a software update sort of thing, okay,

Speaker 4 we think about redistricting every 10 years and like what do we need to have on the site and what do we need to build and how do we do

Speaker 3 what we were not prepared to do that for i mean date dave wasserman needs nine years to recover every time we do this now we're redistricting every longer we're only giving him right like a year i mean north carolina has redistricted every cycle has it had a new map every cycle for like the last however many cycles

Speaker 3 yeah since 1992 yeah the other thing that hangs over this conversation is the pending supreme court decision on section two of the voting Rights Act.

Speaker 4 On VRA. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 Supreme, for people who have not been following this, if you're a Democrat, very, very alarming situation is Supreme Court is reviewing Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination

Speaker 3 on racial lines.

Speaker 3 And the specific question is about whether is about whether majority minority districts, the districts that are drawn to specifically include mostly black voters in the South, but could also be Latino voters in the Southwest, whatever else,

Speaker 3 is unconstitutional.

Speaker 3 If they were to, even though they just upheld this like pretty recently, but if they were to strike that down, there would be a rash of redistricting that would happen again, mostly in the, but not entirely in the deep south, mostly in the south.

Speaker 3 Because, you know, people was like Alabama, these states like Alabama, Mississippi,

Speaker 3 that Trump, Republicans win by, you know, 20 points in presidential election years, have one or two Democratic districts because they have large concentrated black populations.

Speaker 3 They could read all the drists to divide those populations up and ensure there's no Democratic districts in the South.

Speaker 3 That could happen before the 2026 midterms, but they'd have to move pretty quickly.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Not likely.
Yeah. They'd have to basically have a decision like now or January.
I think would probably be the end. Yeah.
Because you really have to do it before the primaries in March.

Speaker 3 How are you thinking about that? And have you guys done any math, any sort of like range of outcomes for what that would mean? Let's say it's for 2028 in terms of net

Speaker 4 gains. I know.
So

Speaker 4 we have not done it here. I know Nate Cohn over at the New York Times has done a good look at that.
And I think his was something like five seats that

Speaker 4 Republicans get of it. Now, Texas is an interesting story because

Speaker 4 in Texas, this Supreme Court fight is not

Speaker 4 the case in front of the Supreme Court right now is

Speaker 4 unconstitutional. constitutional.

Speaker 4 I know we have to like

Speaker 4 parse all of this,

Speaker 4 but

Speaker 4 the case there is a constitutional argument versus the Voting Rights Act argument. So

Speaker 4 this would not,

Speaker 4 right now, what's happening in Texas is separate from this.

Speaker 3 However, you're right.

Speaker 4 This would definitely mean fewer seats in the South, Black seats in the South. So let's just say now

Speaker 4 if Democrats

Speaker 4 were to win the House in 2026, and let's say they have an eight to 10 seat majority and VRA struck down, and now we go into 2030 with five or six fewer Democratic seats, right?

Speaker 4 You can see how the math now

Speaker 4 works going into the next election.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 4 to me, what it really highlights to Dan is that this idea that the House

Speaker 4 is going to ping pong every two years between

Speaker 4 the parties is something we have not really dealt with

Speaker 3 fully.

Speaker 4 You know, when I first came to Washington in the early 90s, Democrats had had control of the House, unbroken control of the House for 40 years.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 Democrats lose it in 1994. Republicans hold it all the way to 2006.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 3 then after that, it just starts flipping pretty quickly, right? Democrats lost it in 2010. 2010.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And then lost it again in 2020.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 4 And then now you could see Democrats get it back in 26. And then you go, oh, is it going to flip again in 30? So what does that, what does that mean for just the body in general?

Speaker 4 Like, what do you do when you are just constantly ping-ponging between majority and minority? You know,

Speaker 4 the historically, at least in the last 30 years, a president comes in with the House, the Senate, and the White House, gets to do one really big thing, right? Bill Clinton gets to do his budget.

Speaker 4 Obviously, for Obama, it's Obamacare. Trump gets to do the

Speaker 4 tax cut.

Speaker 4 And then this year, or whatever,

Speaker 4 Biden does Inflation Reduction Act. Trump does the big, beautiful bill, right? You use your majority.

Speaker 4 I call it sort of a, it's like a smash and grab now is our politics that you have, you've got a majority. You know, it's only going to be for two years.

Speaker 4 And so you use it really to get one thing, go in, you smash, you grab what you can,

Speaker 4 you lose.

Speaker 4 Maybe you can come back four years later, two years later, and do something else. But

Speaker 4 it's not a great way to do big things because really what we're doing is one party gets in control and uses that as their opportunity to fulfill the dreams of the base.

Speaker 4 They get one thing that they dreamed of to get done, they fulfill that one dream. But there's not like a, hey, let's think about the really big

Speaker 4 consequential issues that are impacting American society. Let's really tackle AI.
Let's really tackle the disintegration of institutions and what that's going to mean.

Speaker 4 Let's really fundamentally think about this question of affordability. What does that mean in a world where, right, we've got

Speaker 4 more billionaires, but yet

Speaker 4 than ever, and the gap between rich and poor is bigger than ever. So

Speaker 4 I don't know that it's not, it's not a great way to.

Speaker 3 And the thing that's really changed here is the way it used to work. As you said, you'd come in, you do your big thing, mostly on a party line basis.

Speaker 3 You would lose the House or the Senate.

Speaker 3 The president would get reelected, then would do something big and bipartisan with the other side because

Speaker 3 the other party would be chagrined by the presidential loss. They feel like they should do some sort of compromising.

Speaker 3 And this all sort of fell apart after Obama won in 2012 and the Republican House bailed on immigration. Like that was the exact model.
You know, Obama wins by a bigger margin than they thought.

Speaker 3 John Boehner stands up the next day and says, Obamacare is now the law of the land.

Speaker 3 Every Republican from Rupert Murdoch and Sean Hannity down says, we got to do comprehensive immigration for him, passes the Senate, gets to the House,

Speaker 3 and dies in part because the House

Speaker 3 lost, the WIF lost his primary over immigration. And then now we're just in this world.

Speaker 3 Also, just the, it's a, you know, there's this House pinging back and forth dynamic, but we also have had two one-term presidents in a row, which is not something we've had in a long time.

Speaker 4 Which is

Speaker 4 exactly.

Speaker 3 Yeah, which is so now we're just really pinging back and forth.

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Speaker 3 Let's actually just pivot to the House writ large here. So we started started this conversation about 2025.

Speaker 3 Democrats are super excited. Trump's numbers are in the toilet.
Affordability is a top issue. Trump's numbers on affordability are in the toilet.

Speaker 3 You know, looking at the 2025 results, we're winning back Latinos. Things are feeling great for us.
People on my side here feel great. They open up Cook Political.

Speaker 3 They read Amy Walters' latest column, which says,

Speaker 3 Don't basically, Democrats are ascendant, but we have a very low ceiling. So, my question for you is: why are you such a buzzkill here?

Speaker 3 Hey, let us have our moment. It's been a long year.

Speaker 4 Math is math is math. Math is math.

Speaker 4 So, part of the reason we're ping-ponging back and forth, right, is that there are just so few swing districts, and that the House is pretty evenly divided between seats that Kamala Harris carried and seats that Donald Trump carried.

Speaker 4 And there are very few crossover seats. So, if you're in a Harris district, you're a Democrat.
If you're in a Trump district, you're a Republican.

Speaker 4 And there are also very few seats that Trump won narrowly. Like, usually, after, especially this one, which was a close election, right? This wasn't a landslide in 2024,

Speaker 4 but there are only

Speaker 4 14 districts that of the 222 that Republicans hold, only 14 of them are districts that Trump lost or won by less than five points.

Speaker 3 That's a wild statistic.

Speaker 4 That is just such a small number. It's like when you look at not to

Speaker 4 sort of, you know, know, make you go to PST, PTSD land, but 2010, you know, there were

Speaker 4 so many,

Speaker 4 there were 48 Democrats in McCain districts in 2010, right? Because there were a bunch of districts that,

Speaker 4 you know, they voted for John McCain for president, but the Democrat was able to hold on because,

Speaker 4 right,

Speaker 4 they were unique to that district. they were used to voting for democrats there even as they were voting for republican for president and obama did better in those districts than

Speaker 3 democrat that's the right that's because now that election is fascinating because that's one of the rare times where there are two wave elections in a row yes 2006 was a wave election and 08 and so you had all these people who won on the back of those two waves because normally you have a wave election in an off year then you have the presidential the tide comes back in you lose a bunch of seats we just kept winning people.

Speaker 3 And so there was this huge list. And now that does not exist.

Speaker 4 That does not exist anymore.

Speaker 4 And the challenge then comes. So that's 14 quote unquote, I won't call them easy seats, but those are the most fruitful to flip.
So

Speaker 4 even if you win all of those, that's just a gain of 14 seats. And let's say you need six seats to win.
So that gives, and you don't lose any of your own, that gives you

Speaker 4 an eight seat majority. It's not bad.

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 4 yeah, it's a narrow majority. Yeah.

Speaker 4 So you could have a wave election, which would look like 2010, 2018,

Speaker 4 in which the party outside of the White House wins almost all of the seats between zero and five and those seats one that are crossover seats and come up with a much smaller number.

Speaker 4 Now, to me, the big question then is, could we see a wave that is

Speaker 4 even bigger than that? And that I'm not seeing evidence of that yet, of one in which districts that Trump won by double digits start to go, right? That there's a real collapse there

Speaker 4 because

Speaker 4 of

Speaker 4 what either because of the political environment or this idea that Trump was just so unique and so skilled at putting together a coalition that just can't hold without him on the top of the ticket.

Speaker 4 But this is where you I'm going to go back to where we started, Dan, from the conversation,

Speaker 4 our conversation where we started about Virginia and what we learned from the off-year elections.

Speaker 4 Democrats had a great night at the legislative level, too.

Speaker 4 They picked up 13 seats at the state legislative level, but all of them were in districts that were basically Trump zero to five or were Harris districts.

Speaker 4 So even on a great night in Virginia, you say, oh my gosh, Abigail Spinberger wins by 15 points. They win all of the row races, the statewide races, and pick up 13 seats.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 they didn't win in districts that are

Speaker 4 red. yeah in other words they're winning all the swing districts which is what you need to do to win an election but what you're not doing is

Speaker 4 dipping into

Speaker 4 these

Speaker 4 deep red areas those those areas are going to stay red they may be a little less red and so it's not going to be a

Speaker 4 the kind of election that

Speaker 4 at least at this point that we're seeing that you can say you're going to see big shifts that would make

Speaker 4 Republicans absolutely reassess

Speaker 4 what either what they're doing or what they're saying or how they're thinking about their coalition. The other way I think about this is

Speaker 4 the Senate map is basically

Speaker 4 getting a win to, in order to win control of the Senate, Democrats need to win in Trump plus 10 states

Speaker 4 or more, right? And so

Speaker 4 winning in Ohio, winning in Iowa, winning in Texas,

Speaker 4 that's

Speaker 4 if they are winning there, then they are going to be winning

Speaker 4 a

Speaker 4 30 or more House seats, too.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Looking at your data, it's like it's so you have 14 Republicans in CC there.
Harris won or Trump won by less than five points.

Speaker 3 Another 14 in Trump's districts that Trump won by five to 10 points, right? Which is, those are some possibly attainable, but hard.

Speaker 3 But the thing that really is stunning, and this does show why the House will ping pong back and forth and why the days of large majorities are gone for now, at least, is 187 of the Republicans are in districts that Trump won by more than 10 points in a year in which he won the popular vote by the smallest margin of any candidate since Al Gore in 2000.

Speaker 3 So, this is not Obama 08

Speaker 3 or

Speaker 3 Biden, you know, winning the popular vote by 7 million votes or whatever it was in 2020. This is an incredibly narrow popular vote win.

Speaker 3 And even under those scenarios, 187 of the sitting Republicans feel that they are in no danger of possibly losing election, which does go back to the point about why they don't really care about extending the Obamacare tax credits because

Speaker 3 their only fear is losing. The only election they're ever going to lose, most of them are ever going to lose is a primary.
Right. And so they're not really concerned about the other thing.

Speaker 3 It really, and that that is, is that a combination? The reason we're in that position, is that a combination of polarization and gerrymandering or mostly polarization? How do we get there?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I do think it's a lot about polarization, but gerrymandering too, that

Speaker 4 went and benefited one side or the other. But the fact that you just have so few people willing to give the other party the benefit of the doubt and split their ticket

Speaker 4 means that you just aren't,

Speaker 4 you're just not going to get these

Speaker 4 crossover kinds of districts that when we were starting out in politics were just so commonplace. And so you're right, if each party has,

Speaker 4 you know, 180 plus seats sitting in

Speaker 4 deep red, deep blue, we're going to fight over the same

Speaker 4 30 seats every two cycles. And the only way that changes is

Speaker 4 either one, there is a big decoupling at some point. And

Speaker 4 it does feel as if,

Speaker 4 you know, this is to me the really great paradox of our time is that

Speaker 4 people are less aligned to party than ever.

Speaker 4 Our politics is not as linear, meaning terms of thinking about a scale of conservative to liberal.

Speaker 4 I think there's a recognition of voters

Speaker 4 being more heterodox on policy than politicians are. So there is this ability to sort of cobble together a coalition of voters that looks very different

Speaker 4 than what we

Speaker 4 have seen. in the last 30 years.

Speaker 3 And I'd add to that, a decoupling as we've become less racially polarized.

Speaker 3 So it was like politics is a little bit detached from

Speaker 3 demographics in that sense.

Speaker 4 There we go.

Speaker 4 All of that should expand

Speaker 4 this playing field.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 It expands it on the presidential level, but not at the House level.

Speaker 4 Not at the House level, where you're able to

Speaker 4 draw these districts that take out any of the uncertainty, right?

Speaker 3 And the Senate, too. Like, now what do we have? One Republican Susan Collins in a solid blue state and no Democrats in a solid red state.
Is that correct? Yeah. Yep.

Speaker 3 Yep.

Speaker 4 So Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, because they ping-pong back and forth,

Speaker 3 you know, those are

Speaker 4 right. How many other states have split delegation? Wisconsin, Pennsylvania.

Speaker 3 It's Maine. Maine's the other one.
There we go.

Speaker 4 But we had that. Is that it?

Speaker 3 So it's just three?

Speaker 3 I think that's

Speaker 3 right.

Speaker 3 That I can think on the top of my head. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 That's

Speaker 3 pretty

Speaker 3 dark. Yes.

Speaker 3 Pretty, pretty dark. Well, it's dark for Democrats because

Speaker 3 we're very good at winning lots of electoral votes and not so good at winning lots of states. And so that, you know, really puts a ceiling on the debt, which we can get, we can pivot to the Senate.

Speaker 3 Actually, before we pivot to the Senate, I do want to go back to just one thing on the House map. There was this political story the other day that was about Texas.

Speaker 3 And, you know, Texas, as we mentioned, has this question is, is the, is the, is the current redistricting, you know, redistricting gerrymander map going to be tossed out? Then go back to the old map.

Speaker 3 But it had a bunch of Democrats from Texas and DC

Speaker 3 saying that they are optimistic about winning seats in Texas under the current map,

Speaker 3 Texas map, if it were to stand in place, the one that Trump wanted.

Speaker 3 because of the shift in the Latino vote they saw, particularly in New Jersey. Now,

Speaker 3 there's a lot of

Speaker 3 bloviating from the people in charge of winning the House and said it on both sides at this point, because you want donors and people to believe you have a chance to win.

Speaker 3 But there is this interesting dynamic in Texas, which is they did draw those maps, largely assuming that the 2024 gains that Trump enables Latinos, particularly along the Rio Grande Valley, are

Speaker 3 like that that is

Speaker 3 those are Republican gains, not Trump gains. And, you know, I do always point out that,

Speaker 3 according to Exoplost at least, Beto O'Rourke won Latinos against Greg Abbott in the last time he was up in a midterm. And

Speaker 3 so there is this world in which they made this bet in Texas that Latinos were going to operate at a 2024 level and they may not going forward.

Speaker 3 But looking at your guys' essential, I would say for everyone who's watching, essential race ratings at Cook Political, if you want to know where to donate your money, what races to watch, you should look at those race ratings.

Speaker 3 But I don't think you guys have any of those races in the uh toss-up or lean with lean Republican category, or maybe one. Maybe Myra Flores, I think, maybe the one.

Speaker 4 Right now, that would be one to your point. That's she fits into the

Speaker 3 Trump.

Speaker 4 Again, this is

Speaker 4 under the map that

Speaker 4 is on pause, but is the redistricted map is a Trump

Speaker 4 plus, I think it's like plus eight, nine, something, 10, something like that. Okay.
So that would be interesting. That is definitely one to keep an eye on, right? To say, it's one thing.

Speaker 4 So I think there are two conversations when we're talking about Texas and Latinos. The first is

Speaker 4 Republicans said we can

Speaker 4 gain five seats with this map.

Speaker 4 That five seats depends on winning,

Speaker 4 knocking off two Democrats in South Texas based on, as you said, the performance of Donald Trump in that area. So you could argue that

Speaker 4 at the very least,

Speaker 4 Democrats are able to hold those two and Republicans come out of Texas

Speaker 4 winning three seats.

Speaker 3 Plus three, yeah, plus three

Speaker 4 instead of five. The other is that you could look at,

Speaker 3 okay, a

Speaker 4 again, this is a Republican held seat, the 15th district, and say,

Speaker 4 well, that also

Speaker 4 should be considered more competitive if these numbers with Latinos hold up

Speaker 4 across the country. And as we know, you know, the results in New Jersey are about

Speaker 4 New Jersey, they may not translate into the Central Valley. They may not, it's that whole whole like Latinos are Latinos everywhere, and they're obviously not.

Speaker 4 So, Rio Grande

Speaker 4 or San Antonio, or this is

Speaker 4 not one, it's like saying, like, all women vote this way, all

Speaker 4 right?

Speaker 4 It is very much so. We're not saying all Latinos are going to vote a similar way, but I do think that

Speaker 4 and the folks over at the ECC

Speaker 4 project just put out their big survey of Latino voters. And their bottom line is their assumption is that the vote will look a lot more like it did in 2022 than it did in 2024.

Speaker 4 In other words, Democrats are going to do better with Latinos, but it's not like it. it won't look like it did in 2020.
It won't look like it did pre, basically pre-Biden.

Speaker 4 We're not going back there. yeah 2016 exactly hillary 2016 was the high watermark and we're not their point is we're not going back to that 20 at least

Speaker 4 yeah right now they don't see it don't don't look at that as the baseline number um that if democrats don't hit that they have failed look instead at

Speaker 4 how uh democrats did in in 2022 and i I think that is

Speaker 4 Texas is going to be a great place

Speaker 4 to see just where that number ends up.

Speaker 3 When we come back, more of my conversation with Amy Walter.

Speaker 3 But before we go, if you're someone who lives and dies with every single poll, is obsessed with what is happening in our politics, feels overwhelmed by all that's happening, I would highly encourage you to subscribe to my newsletter, The Message Box.

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Speaker 3 All right, let's go to the senate real fast here.

Speaker 3 So the Democratic path to a Senate majority, which I think most people thought was off the table earlier this year, or pretty close off the table, there has been a lot of optimism, I think measured optimism from the people who don't have a very specific political interest in making people optimistic about it.

Speaker 3 That Democrats, we've been fortunate in Republican recruiting failures. Like, if you look at the beginning of the year, we think Brian Kemp's running against John Ossoff.
We think,

Speaker 3 you know, the governor of New Hampshire is running against what we thought would be Gene Shaheen at that point.

Speaker 3 You know, Republicans can't recruit their best candidates. We get some really good recruiting wins in Roy Cooper and Sherrod Brown.

Speaker 3 But our path, for some people, know, is we got to defend open seats in Minnesota, Michigan, and New Hampshire.

Speaker 3 We have to defend John Osoff in Georgia, have to beat Susan Collins in Maine, win in North Carolina, which Susan Collins theoretically should be, for all the reasons we talked about, a very winnable race for us, although she has defied partisan dynamics before.

Speaker 3 have Roy Cooper win in a state that Trump won by a little, by a few points in 2020 and where we haven't won a Senate race since 2008, I believe, was Kay Hagan was the last one.

Speaker 3 But have won statewide a couple of times now, Roy Cooper, Josh Stein, et cetera.

Speaker 3 And then we have to win two of the following four:

Speaker 3 Texas, Ohio, Iowa, or Alaska. And the big asterisk I put for Alaska is you need Mary Paltola to run.
For that, she was the statewide rep.

Speaker 3 Of those

Speaker 3 four, all of which Trump won by double digits,

Speaker 3 and have been, all of which have been trending Republican over the last eight years here.

Speaker 3 Like, what is your assessment of

Speaker 3 the Democratic path? And if there is one, what's the, do you think is the most viable path right now?

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 the Ohio seems the, the next most vulnerable for Republicans, simply because you've got a very well-known and well-established brand in Sherrod Brown.

Speaker 3 The current

Speaker 4 Republican isn't particularly well-known there.

Speaker 4 He's more of a traditional Republican. He kinds of comes out of a Mike DeWine

Speaker 4 style Republican, which in some ways you'd say, oh, well, that makes it a safer bet, right? Because if anybody remembers the last

Speaker 4 Senate race in the state, that was

Speaker 4 the Bernie Moreno race, which was a lot closer than people had expected against Sherrod Brown. There, of course, was J.D.
Vance.

Speaker 4 There was a lot of hand-wringing by Republicans when he first ran about his campaign. They didn't think he was running a strong enough campaign.
He wasn't a good fundraiser. So

Speaker 3 that there's not Jamie Vance, I would say, just notably underperformed every other Republican in the state by a fair amount, even if he did end up winning by

Speaker 3 exactly.

Speaker 4 And so there are two ways to look at that. One is, even when you have

Speaker 4 candidates who don't run great campaigns as Republicans in the state, they're still able to win against well-known, well-established, and well-funded Democrats.

Speaker 4 The other way to say it is, yes, but you could also make the case that,

Speaker 4 you know, the last two elections have been

Speaker 4 relatively decent ones for

Speaker 4 Republicans.

Speaker 4 And the last time that the environment was as weak as this for Republicans was 2018. And Sherrod Brown won in 2018 in Ohio.
Of course, he was the incumbent then.

Speaker 4 But, you know, you also think about a place like Ohio and Go. I just don't see places where

Speaker 3 the

Speaker 4 Trump brand

Speaker 4 is receding enough to

Speaker 4 get you over the finish line. Iowa, to me, is

Speaker 4 really fascinating because you've got a state where there are clear clear

Speaker 4 implications really um in iowa you've got there's been real consequences to trump's tariff policy there um right this is a farm economy the soybean farmers

Speaker 4 and ranchers and cattle and i just saw a tweet uh i think it was today or yesterday from

Speaker 4 Senator Grassley upset at an appointment to

Speaker 4 one of the bodies that HHS Secretary RFK Jr. oversees who wants to ban pesticides, which again, just another blow to farmers in the state, right? They are just getting

Speaker 4 really

Speaker 4 pummeled

Speaker 4 by the policies of this administration.

Speaker 4 If you look at off-year special elections in that state, Democrats have outperformed by significant amount in that, uh, in Iowa.

Speaker 4 So it seems like there's some weakness there for Republicans. I think the hardest part for Iowa, and even Democrats will privately admit this as well, is as an open state,

Speaker 4 it actually may be harder for them to win than if Joni Earns were still there because she just had a lot of that baggage. Now, the one thing I'll say,

Speaker 4 Ashley Henson, who is the Republican nominee, is a very strong candidate. She's a former former TV reporter.
So she's got some name ID. She is

Speaker 4 very polished

Speaker 4 and

Speaker 4 a very good campaigner. But she also has a voting record, right? She's not an outsider.
You know, part of what made Joni Earn such a great candidate when she won this seat in 2014 was

Speaker 4 she was known as the castrating pig lady, right?

Speaker 3 Like

Speaker 3 for people who were not around in 2014, she has a farming background and was a veteran, but I believe she was a veteran, but also ran an ad about castrating pigs, which in a time before things went truly viral politically, this was an ad that everyone knew about and was quite, quite excellent.

Speaker 3 Right. But that spent the last

Speaker 3 11 years now. That's the castrating pig lady.
Yes. Right.

Speaker 4 That is the lady who knows how to make.

Speaker 4 She'll make Washington squeal, right? So everybody got a little squeamish.

Speaker 3 So they're like, oof.

Speaker 5 But um

Speaker 4 so hinson does not come in with the outsiderness right she still will have to carry the baggage of all that's going on in washington so while i think she does not have some of the obvious weaknesses and for for ernst that was this

Speaker 4 last viral moment where at a at a town hall she told folks who were worried about medicare cuts and medicaid cuts causing people to die and then she said, well, you know, everyone's gonna die.

Speaker 4 So I'm in very, very intrigued by Iowa. There's a very big Democratic primary, though.
And we have to see the caliber of candidate that comes out of that primary.

Speaker 4 Now, Texas, you know, the shorthand is, oh, well, if Paxton wins, that puts Texas in play.

Speaker 4 Here's the thing. And

Speaker 4 you and I will probably be talking about this for years, for the next couple of years.

Speaker 3 But I also look at

Speaker 4 who's in solid. So, Florida, there's really no effort being made by Democrats to win Florida.
We know that Democrats haven't won Florida in a while. It's a tough state.
It's an expensive state.

Speaker 4 But to not put Florida and Texas in play

Speaker 4 two years before a presidential election, we're like, if you're Democrats, you're looking at the electoral college map, going into 28 and then going into 32, like

Speaker 4 if you're not competing in those states,

Speaker 4 what are you doing? You know, right? Like at some point,

Speaker 4 you can write off, you can say, all right, fine, we're not, Ohio is not a swing state anymore. Iowa's not a swing state anymore.

Speaker 4 Fine, fine, fine. We're going to give up those ghosts.

Speaker 4 You can't also say, well, Florida, we got to get, we're going to give up there. And Texas had so expensive and it takes a lot of money to move just a point.

Speaker 4 So we're just going to go all in on, you know, Georgia, North Carolina, sure. Yeah.
Arizona, Nevada, great. But that's not enough, especially as the Midwest continues to

Speaker 4 become

Speaker 4 not just more competitive and that blue wall gets smaller, but those states are literally shrinking. This is New York is going to have fewer elections.

Speaker 3 This is the most important election. Wisconsin, yes.
Yes, this is so important.

Speaker 3 This is the thing, like whenever we, this is one of the things I worry about in the Democratic Party post the 2025 election is

Speaker 3 we have to think much bigger than how do we just win the majority in 2026, or even how we just win the White House in 2028, although those are high priorities for us, is they're going to redraw the maps after the 2030 census.

Speaker 3 The most likely scenario, as we sit here today, is that Florida, California is going to lose some seats. Texas is going to lose some seats.
The blue wall is going to lose some seats.

Speaker 3 Florida and Texas are going to gain five to seven net net electoral votes. And so the blue wall path no longer exists for us.

Speaker 3 Like that does not exist. And so we are going to have, and

Speaker 3 the coalition, which we currently have, will be, unless we can improve, we can actually make those gains we saw in 2025 for Latino voters, will not be sufficient to ever win a national election.

Speaker 3 And so we cannot cede Florida and Texas going forward because what we have to, we have to believe the Democrats can get back to something that looks like Obama's 2012 coalition with Latino voters and white voters, frankly.

Speaker 3 Because if you cannot do that, you cannot win. You can't win a national election.
You cannot.

Speaker 3 The Republican electoral advantage is going to get so severe that we cannot do that. And so that is the argument for running vigorous Senate races in those states

Speaker 3 in 26,

Speaker 3 in 28.

Speaker 4 Even if you say, right, even if you say, okay, so we lost, and it is a lot of of money. You're right.
It's a lot of money to put into two states that literally just

Speaker 4 a million dollars gets you nothing, right? A million dollars in Iowa can actually get you something. So I get, I get the math of that.
I really, really do.

Speaker 4 And yet, I also take your point that if you're not going to at least just say, let's just play here, let's see what we can do.

Speaker 4 This is the,

Speaker 4 and nobody wants to do that because, right, you say, well, you spent way too much money on Florida and Texas and you didn't spend any money. You didn't spend enough in Ohio.

Speaker 4 And that's why we didn't win this, control the Senate.

Speaker 3 Right. I think that is such myopic thinking because for two reasons.

Speaker 3 One, maybe we could spend less money in these other states where we are just basically running a bailout program for local television stations by running.

Speaker 3 Like there is a there are such diminishing returns, particularly in this media environment, to linear television advertising.

Speaker 3 and so we are just dumping money mostly super pack money at huge at a huge cost markup into these states with small media markets and

Speaker 3 like to what end and also you can run vigorous races for less money now if you are good at communicating yeah like poor money do we need how much more can you put into the state of mess right like there's just nothing else yes it's going to be it's going to be an absurd amount of money spent there an absurd amount of money spent in georgia all these races and and it's diminishing returns because there is just this closed-minded thinking about how to spend money in presidential campaigns where the only thing of true value is linear television because it's the only thing you can go to your donors and say,

Speaker 3 we bought this many ratings points, and this commercial is going to run this many times during this football game.

Speaker 3 It just, it makes no sense, particularly at a time in which this is now on my soapbox that I am at every time I see a donor, but is

Speaker 3 if you are a younger person, 40 and under,

Speaker 3 there are two elements here. One is you were raised your entire life to not believe ads.

Speaker 3 You lived in the, you, you, they were, you skip them, you fast forward them, you swipe them, you don't know them.

Speaker 3 They, your, your source for like when you like what is to me the McDonald's I'm Loving It commercial for people younger than me is an influencer saying they love McDonald's or whatever product they have.

Speaker 3 It's very different. And the other thing is, if you,

Speaker 3 if you are a young person who does not watch sports, because the only way to really reach people right now is sporting events, then you have no way to reach them in the linear television ad because Netflix doesn't take political ads and TikTok doesn't take political ads.

Speaker 3 So like 80% of the time that they're doing things, you're not, and most streaming television services do not take political ads. And so you just can't reach these people.
And it is voters under 40.

Speaker 3 in 2024 we couldn't reach voters under 45 in 2028 we can't reach voters under 50 we can't reach voters under 50 in 2032 like this is the world and so you just have to think more creatively like

Speaker 3 we haven't talked about zoron mandani in this um i think people are overreading the the uh importance of his win both as a positive and a negative and to the house and senate midterm but there is a lesson here which is if you are good at content and you understand the media environment you can dominate attention for much less money than you would spend so if we could have and there are some interesting candidates particularly in texas who are good at attention and particularly both tell rico and jasmine crockett if she were to run.

Speaker 3 We can talk about those,

Speaker 3 but they are people who could, there's a way in which you could spend less money and still win and at least spend less money and run vigorous races.

Speaker 3 And so, like, and just we have to expand the playing field or we're never like, it can't be that every single cycle, we have to draw an inside straight to get to 51 seats. Like, that is not a viable,

Speaker 3 that is not a viable

Speaker 3 approach to a party with true governing ambitions. Like, you can't win because the next, you know, what the next, you know what also sucks? The math next thing.

Speaker 3 It always sucks for Democrats.

Speaker 4 Because it's not getting there, as you we said at the beginning, there's nobody sitting. There's one Susan Collins.
That's it.

Speaker 3 And if she, we got to be Dave McCormick and Ryan Johnson. And then that's it.
And then we got to go to a state that Trump won by a lot to win. Like that is where it is.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 And maybe the other seat in North Carolina, I guess, but that is,

Speaker 4 but that's still

Speaker 4 saying that the playing field for the Senate is the same

Speaker 4 five or six seats every single cycle. And that becomes limiting.
But you're right, if you're thinking more broadly about, well, how do you build an electoral college coalition?

Speaker 4 That electoral college coalition

Speaker 4 also is likely the one that's going to win you some Senate. It's not going to necessarily win you

Speaker 4 in a state like Iowa, but it is one that you could take to

Speaker 4 Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, right? I mean,

Speaker 4 that is those booming, growing states, that's the

Speaker 4 next step.

Speaker 3 Latinos are the fastest growing population in the United States. You cannot be losing them.

Speaker 3 And by large, or not, if you're not going to win, if you're going to win a like a math where we win a tiny percentage of white non-college voters, the largest population currently, and are losing ground with Latinos, the fastest growing population is not one that wins.

Speaker 3 All right, real quick, because we are getting to the end here.

Speaker 3 There is an election coming up in a couple of weeks in Tennessee. It's a special election in the seventh district where Mark Green retired for a variety of reasons in the middle of the cycle.

Speaker 3 This is a district that Trump won by like 21 or 22, I think.

Speaker 3 Democrats are somewhat optimistic. Republicans seem quite concerned.

Speaker 3 Where do you think things stand in that race? And what are you looking for?

Speaker 4 What I'm looking for is

Speaker 4 the bigger question. I don't think Republicans lose this one.

Speaker 4 That would be a very, very big upset.

Speaker 4 Is it in the realm of possibility? Sure.

Speaker 4 But as you said, it's a Trump 22 district. So the margin here is going to matter.
I think if you're Republicans,

Speaker 3 you're really

Speaker 4 desperate to make sure that this is a double-digit win, right? Because it's one thing to say it's a Trump 22 district and we won it by 10.

Speaker 4 It is not as dramatic as a Trump 22 district that we barely eek out.

Speaker 4 Because I think if you barely eke out a race in a Trump 22 district, if you're a Republican

Speaker 4 running in 26 and you see those numbers. I mean, it's quite notable, by the way, that this is coming, that this election is coming right before the holidays.

Speaker 4 Well, right after one, and then right before the other big holidays, because

Speaker 4 we all know members go home over the holidays, they make a lot of decisions about what they're going to do in the next year.

Speaker 4 They sit down with family, they do the whole, like, is my life what I want it to be? Do I really want to go through this again?

Speaker 4 And if you're coming in with, these are the following things you're dealing with already.

Speaker 4 You know, the whole healthcare thing we talked about, you look at the 2025 elections and

Speaker 3 what happened there.

Speaker 4 And then, if there's a really close race in a district that Trump carried by 22 points, where Republicans poured in money and they aren't ignoring this,

Speaker 4 they're actually playing here for real.

Speaker 4 What does that say to you if you're a vulnerable Republican or even potentially vulnerable or have a potentially competitive race? Do you want to go through with it?

Speaker 4 Do you want to come back and, you know, do you have the

Speaker 4 sort of fire in your belly to go through a real race?

Speaker 4 And there will be a lot of people who say,

Speaker 4 I don't think so. Not really.

Speaker 3 There's a bunch of people in that bubble that we talked about who won by eight points or 12 points who haven't probably

Speaker 3 run a real race in a long time. They haven't done a lot of call time at the NRCC.
They don't really want to campaign.

Speaker 3 They may be probably older because it's the United States Congress and everyone's older,

Speaker 3 but and they don't want to do it. And this is, it's interesting.

Speaker 4 Like, don't be. Because I think that's where it has the biggest impact.
If it's, you know,

Speaker 4 it's not so much the winning and the losing. I mean, the losing, if Republicans lose this, that would be

Speaker 4 shock.

Speaker 4 Like this is

Speaker 4 world ending for

Speaker 4 the moment. But

Speaker 4 even a very narrow win, it says you should not feel comfortable. And

Speaker 4 you got to get yourself in that play, that headspace, if you're a member thinking about reelection, that this is not going to look like 2024.

Speaker 4 And it's not going to look like any other race maybe you've been in.

Speaker 3 Amy Walter, it is always so much fun to talk to you about politics.

Speaker 3 This has been talking politics with you for a very, very long time now.

Speaker 3 And I highly recommend everyone check out the Cook Political Report. It is

Speaker 3 the absolute, it's the Bible for people who follow politics very closely. It's how I track what's happening in the races.
It's how I track what's happening in redistricting.

Speaker 3 Amy, is uh, you are no better person to have this conversation. Thank you.

Speaker 4 This has been really great. Thanks so much.
Really appreciate it. Happy holidays to you and to everybody listening.

Speaker 3 Yeah, every by the time you listen to it, they will have had a happy holiday.

Speaker 3 I hope

Speaker 4 that the yes, and I hope that the driving and the airport is doing okay, or at least better because you got to hear us.

Speaker 3 There we go. Thank you.
Very well done. Thank you, baby.

Speaker 4 Bye.

Speaker 3 That's our show for today. Thanks to Amy Walter for joining.
John, John, and Tommy will be back in your feeds on Tuesday.

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