Who Do Voters Hate More? A Midterm Roundtable.
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I'm Barry Weiss, and this is Honestly. CNN's latest poll of polls shows Democrats and Republicans in a dead heat for control of the House of Representatives. Early voting kicked off today in the critical swing state of— We're less than a week out from Election Day, but more than 20 million people have already cast their votes. 2022 could be the third federal election in a row setting new records for voter turnout. And that isn't so surprising when you consider the stakes.

Most economists polled by The Wall Street Journal believe the U.S. is headed towards a recession in the next year. If so many economists and politicians from both political parties saw it coming, why didn't Joe Biden see inflation coming? I can't tell you how many times I've seen gas pumps and grocery store aisles in political ads this year. One of the most divisive issues in this year's midterm elections: crime in America. Murders rose 29.4 percent from 2019 to 2020.

Democratic pollster Tom Bonior wrote that abortion had become the most potent issue he'd seen in his 28 years in the business. Yet in July, President Biden suffered his lowest approval rating ever. Midterms are typically hard for the party in power. But President Biden's approval numbers are among the worst for a first-term president in American history. 71% of Americans say they don't even want him to seek re-election. So given all this, many are predicting a red wave.

And yet, the Republicans have problems of their own. Are you willing to fight China? Will you fight for our kids and our schools? Are you going to fight back to keep our borders clean? Are you going to fight back to make sure we don't have Fauci? You want to fire Fauci? No!

I thought that would get you worked up. Many GOP candidates spent their primary races trying to out MAGA each other. A Republican pro-MAGA candidate for Senate in Missouri is openly calling for his supporters to hunt down political opponents. Eric Greitens did so in a campaign ad published online. I'm Eric Greitens, Navy SEAL, and today we're going rhino hunting. The rhino feeds on corruption and is marked by the stripes of cowardice.

Mark Kelly's Republican rival for an Arizona Senate seat is out with a disturbing new campaign ad. It shows him shooting at Kelly, President Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. When you steal something, that's not really a win.

That's a fraud. Many of us were warning about the fact that the Democrats unilaterally fundamentally altered our voting system inside 90 days. And many of these candidates, think of Herschel Walker in Georgia. I'm this country boy. You know, I'm not that smart. Frankly, just seem unfit to serve.

American voters in poll after poll say the following. We're dissatisfied. And we're dissatisfied with both parties. Not just that, we're dissatisfied with Congress itself as an institution, which hasn't had an approval rating of over 30% in 10 years. And 58% of Americans across both parties are so unimpressed that they say they would prefer to upend the entire system.

So who are these dissatisfied Americans, Republicans and Democrats, going to vote for on Tuesday? And why? To talk through what we're watching as voters head to the ballot box, we have Mary Katherine Hamm, sometimes Honestly Guest host, author and commentator. We also have Batya Anger Sargon from Newsweek and Josh Krausar from Axios. We'll be right back.

Hey guys, Josh Hammer here, the host of America on Trial with Josh Hammer, a podcast for the First Podcast Network. Look, there are a lot of shows out there that are explaining the political news cycle, what's happening on the Hill, the this, the that.

There are no other shows that are cutting straight to the point when it comes to the unprecedented lawfare debilitating and affecting the 2024 presidential election. We do all of that every single day right here on America on Trial with Josh Hammer. Subscribe and download your episodes wherever you get your podcasts. It's America on Trial with Josh Hammer.

Guys, thank you all for joining me. Thanks, Barry. Sure. Thanks for having me. Okay, so over the summer, polls show that Democrats were rallying a bit. And there were all kinds of stories about how they were perched to keep power in the House and maybe gain seats in the Senate. And all of that sort of happened, those news stories, in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision. But now, with just a week to go, really less than a week, it appears that Republicans have kind of come back in a big way. What happened? Mary Catherine, let's start with you.

Well, I think, uh,

This is the theme that runs through a lot of what I'm seeing out there, is that, look, the Dobbs decision was a giant news story that does certainly have the potential to change a race and to override a few fundamentals. But I think what's happened is that everyday concerns and I think some lingering anger over those COVID concerns and COVID restrictions and school closures has turned what would have been sort of the hoped-for Dobbs-Rowe women voter into

many of them into folks who are just willing to pull the lever to go the other way to force a reckoning on some of that stuff. And that's what I saw in the Yunkin race in 2021 in Virginia.

That's where a Republican governor, one in the state of Virginia, largely animated by some of these COVID and school closure issues, is that people were willing to shuffle a bit. They were willing to take a step that they hadn't before. Many of these Democratic women who had maybe been Republican voters at some point or this demographic had been Republican voters at one point had drifted Democrat in the Obama years. And then we're like, I can't do this. Somebody's got to be punished. And the choice was Yunkin.

Josh, how do you see it? Well, I think everything MK said is spot on. I think the economy is in bad shape. Crime is on the rise. There's a sense of disorder in the country. It doesn't seem like anyone in power has a handle on the problems. But I also think Democrats have made things worse for themselves in many cases by being inattentive to the problems at play. And I'll give you two big examples on those two major issues, the economy and crime.

I was stunned when the White House passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which doesn't really tackle inflation. It doesn't do anything with inflation, but it was branded that because it was seen as a good PR pitch. But they invited James Taylor to the White House to party in...

In the fall, at a time when the stock market, that very day, by the way, the stock market was dipping 1,000 points and everyone was freaking out over inflation. And yet you had James Taylor and a big party in the Rose Garden. That couldn't be more disconnected with Wall Street.

with where your average voter is and the disconnect, the bubble that you have to live in in the world of politics to think that was a good strategy in the most important part of the homestretch of the election. And I'm sure people saw those highlights on their local newscasts or on Twitter or wherever they get their news and saw a White House and a Democratic Party that looked out of touch.

And the crime issue is such a significant issue in so many states, a lot of blue states. These are not Republican states. They're not swing states. We're talking New York. We're talking Oregon. We're talking Washington state. And the biggest problem for Democrats isn't so much that, you know, they have an opportunity to address the issue. They're in charge. And yet you have like a governor like Pockel in New York who just gave an interview this past weekend. Governor, these are master manipulators.

They have this conspiracy going all across America to try and convince people that in Democratic states they're not as safe. Well, guess what? They're also not only election deniers, they're data deniers. The data shows that shootings and murders are down in our state by 15 percent, even in New York City, down 20 percent on Long Island, where Lee Zeldin comes from. And it's the Republican states. About how crime is a figment of a lot of voters' imaginations.

This is not hard. This is politics 101. Say you're funding the police. Say you're trying to fix the problem. If I'm Governor Hochul, the first thing I would do is call on the assembly to change the bail law that has been responsible for such an uptick in violent and also petty crime in New York City. But she had the audacity both in her debate against Lee Zeldin and in the subsequent interview with Al Sharpton to basically saying crime is not really that big of a problem and it's voters that are freaking out over it for no good reason.

That is adding fuel to the fire, and it makes a lot of the already fundamental problems that Democrats are facing even worse. To me, the WTF moment came when I saw that the Biden administration had decided to prioritize a sit-down interview with a progressive outlet called NowThis, in which the president had this sort of back and forth with a TikTok trans activist to talk about so-called gender-affirming health care.

And I thought in a moment where the economy is what it is, crime is what it is, and the voters are saying very clearly, this is what we care about. I really thought to myself, like, how,

like who is making this decision? Batya, give us a little insight. Like why, to me, this seems simple. You know, exactly as Josh said, we're going to fund the police and we're going to fix the economy. That's it. Focus on those two things alone. So why the lack of focus? Why the James Taylor moment or my TikTok trans moment? What's driving that sort of mixed up priorities? It's so interesting because, and I'm sure Josh, you would agree with me on this,

President Biden, to me, seemed to have clinched the nomination for president by ignoring Twitter. I mean, he did a really good job of sort of campaigning to the median voter, to the median Democratic voter. But since he's been in office, the pull of the Twitterati seems to be getting stronger and stronger now.

To me, that's really about class more than it is about politics. You know, the average Democratic working class voter has a lot more in common with a Republican working class voter than they do with the kind of people who watch those TikTok videos of that transgender celebrity. And thinking about abortion...

in particular is interesting, I think, because where the median American voters add on abortion, neither party is really representing them. So, you know, the vast majority of Americans kind of agree about abortion. They want it to be legal. The

But they don't want it to be legal in the third trimester. They're very iffy about it being legal in the second trimester. But they also don't want a ban on abortion. And neither party is really representing that view. But I think for a voter to say, I'm going to be voting on the Democrats' platform on abortion, which is the kind of third trimester legal abortion position, is

To me right now, that has the status of almost a luxury belief because if you can't afford to feed your kids and you can't afford to drive them to soccer practice and you know that they're going to have to walk through gang territory to get to school, those things are just so much more important. And when you look at the breakdown of the top concerns of Democrats and Republicans, the top concerns of Republican voters are,

crime, inflation, and immigration, which are all about class. They're about where in American society you fall. And the top concerns of Democratic voters are abortion, climate change, and gun control, which is, again, to me, increasingly reflects another data point, which is that Democrats

are represented in households that make more than $500,000 a year, whereas Republicans are increasingly represented in households that make less than $75,000 a year. So we tend to think about these things as political, but I think they're a lot more to do with class. And because the media comes from that upper, overeducated coastal class,

And because the Biden administration has increasingly been feeling the pull to cater to that class, they can't do what Josh said they should be doing, which is just say we're going to get more cops on the streets to protect your kids and we're going to get the price of gas and groceries down.

Okay. I want to get to the big picture issues that we've referenced here so far, crime, abortion, the economy, but I want to get there sort of by focusing on some of the key races. And I want to start with my home state, which is Pennsylvania, where the Senate race is the one that everyone seems to talk about and not for very good reasons, right? So Pennsylvania was supposed to be the Democrats' insurance policy for keeping control of the Senate.

And as recently as this summer, it seemed very certain that the Democratic lieutenant governor, John Fetterman, the guy with a lot of tattoos who wears shorts in winter, I officiated a wedding with him once. He wore shorts even at the wedding. And he's been sort of an interesting, pretty commonsensical Democrat. Speaking in the shadow of a U.S. steel plant, Fetterman described the cost of not putting working people first.

And if we turn our backs on the remaining industries and not reinvest in these places and just say, "You're on your own,"

We will lose an entire generation of people that have no other options other than to turn to somebody like Donald Trump and say, you know, wow, he at least gets me. He at least cares. He at least pays lip service. More focused, Batya, I would say on the class issues that you would argue that the Republicans have sort of claimed the mantle of. And it seemed that he was going to crush the Republican candidate, TV star Dr. Oz.

My parents immigrated here legally and our country provided unparalleled opportunities that have benefited me. And I feel firmly it is time to repay my debt. America is in crisis. That's not news. Our values are under attack. So I want to serve America in its time of need.

I think I can do that by running for the U.S. Senate seat in the state of Pennsylvania. But then everything got upended, of course, in May. Good evening, I'm Joe Holden, Pennsylvania. Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman says he has had a stroke. Fetterman has a stroke, and the campaign insists from the jump that... He says the clot has been completely removed, and he's well on his way to a full recovery. It's a nothing burger. We hit a little bump on the campaign trail.

It was on Friday. I just wasn't feeling very well. So I decided, you know what, I need to get checked out. So I went to the hospital. I made you get checked out. Because I was right.

And in the meantime, what they did was they kept him completely out of the spotlight, away from constituents, away from voters. And aside from a few tightly controlled interviews that happened via Google Hang with closed captioning, they kept him away from the press. Then a few weeks ago, we get to the night of the debate. With that, let's get started. Mr. Fetterman, we're going to begin with you. What qualifies you to be a U.S. senator? You have 60 seconds. Hi. Good night, everybody.

I'm running to serve Pennsylvania. He's running to use Pennsylvania. Here's a man that spent more than $20 million of his own money to try to buy that seat. I'm also having to talk about something called the Oz rule. And Batya, I'll let you take it from here. What happened in that debate?

Oh, God, it was so hard to watch. I mean, your heart just went out to him. I'm here today to have a debate. I have, you know, speeches in front of 3,000 people in Montgomery County, you know, all across Pennsylvania, big, big crowds.

because it was very clear that... If my doctor believes that I'm fit to serve, and now with two weeks before the election, you know, I have run a campaign and I've been very transparent about... He did struggle throughout the debate to be coherent, to answer questions. You're saying tonight that you support fracking, that you've always supported fracking, but there is that 2018 interview that you said, quote, I don't support fracking at all. So how do you square the two?

I do support fracking and I don't, I don't, I support fracking and I stand and I do support fracking. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Fetterman. And it seemed very clear to me anyway, that the stress was contributing to it in the way that stress will contribute to somebody who has a stutter.

I don't buy the narrative that his campaign and his wife and, you know, that he's this bad all the time. I think what's more likely is that he probably has days where he's with his family, where he's with the campaign, where he actually is operating at, you know, 80 percent. I mean, his recovery has been, to me, it seems pretty remarkable. But

on that debate stage, he did very poorly. It felt to a lot of people, I think, that they had been lied to by the media because so many in the media had said there's nothing to see here. But when we saw it with our own eyes, it looked really, really bad. To me, what's even more interesting about this race actually was what happened in the Republican primary, which was...

You had three Republican candidates that I think really exemplified the tension within the GOP and the ways in which it's getting misunderstood by the liberal press. You had David McCormick, who was sort of like a mainline, mainstream Mitch McConnell type, pro-business, pro-free market Republican. You had Mehmet Oz, who was a celebrity but had no values that anybody could sort of discern. And then you had Kathy Barnett.

Now, Kathy Barnett was the Steve Bannon picked candidate. So Trump gave his endorsement to the celeb, right? Typical Trump.

But there was actually a much more MAGA candidate in the race who was Kathy Barnett, who was conceived when her mother was raped, when her mother was 11 years old. She's extremely pro-life, but she was also very on board with the Trump economic agenda, which is actually extremely protectionist, extremely pro-working class.

And she's black. And she was making the case that there should be a home in the GOP for black voters, which is something Steve Bannon says a lot, much to the chagrin of the liberal media who want to cast them as these sort of white supremacists. No one is more loyal to the Democrat Party than black people. And I begin to pose the

question, what exactly have we gotten for that loyalty? We know Democrats cannot secure the White House without getting 92 to 95 percent of our vote. But what exactly have we gotten? Because—and I think it's a legitimate question. I mean, they get the White House, but we get poor schools, unsafe streets. Instead of getting the police when we dial 911, they now want to send social workers and black—

And I think that that divide where Trump sort of made the mistake of being Trump, right, and going with the celebrity instead of the person who really represented his agenda. I mean, the real divide to me in the GOP is not over January 6th. It's not over who won the election. It's over Trump's economic agenda, which was extremely, I mean, it was extremely left, if you ask me as a lefty. It was very Bernie Sanders circa 2015. And I think that's

I think that that was really a story that was missed in this election cycle. I would have loved to see Kathy Barnett go up against Fetterman because that would have been, you know, something on the substance. Instead, we got, you know, Mehmet Oz, who believes in nothing, and then a struggling John Fetterman, who struggled to articulate what he stands for because of the stroke. Josh, you want to jump in? Yeah. I mean, that race is so fascinating because unlike a lot of the primaries where Trump endorsed candidates,

Oz was the one non-MAGA candidate. And it showed that the Trump, people like to give Trump these special powers. But when you look at the election results from that primary, it was obvious that Trump may have pushed him over the finish line. But boy, there were a lot of MAGA voters that would not listen to Trump. They voted for Kathy Burnett. They actually, some of them voted for David McCormick, who was the Wall Street, as Batya said, the Wall Street business guy in the race.

And the scar tissue from that primary is still present in the general election. And my big question, I don't know if it's going to be answered until election night, but...

Are those blue-collar voters that just couldn't cast their ballot for Oz, he's going to win most of them. A lot of the people that have voted for Trump are going to stick Republican. But if Fetterman makes even small inroads with those blue-collar working-class voters who just think Oz is not authentic, who just don't trust what he says, that's what's keeping Fetterman in this race. Now, Fetterman – I mean, boy, Fetterman's debate performance –

I cannot think of a more shocking political event that I've seen in a long time. So, look, biggest piece of political malpractice is the fact that the Fetterman campaign, including Giselle, his wife, were basically trying to censor any reporting, including NBC's Dasha Burns. Yes. Really, really good reporter who did a great piece on Fetterman. The interview wasn't the worst interview in the world. Let it stand.

Don't draw attention to it. I mean, I was sort of got sucked into this whole scrum because I simply noted that Dasha Burns said that he had trouble making small talk before the interview. And I was, you know, people were calling me to delete the tweet sensor, you know, the correct, you know, and I even. Delete your reporting. I put the transcript. I put the video. Gouge out your eyes, Josh. Right.

But I think their first strategy was to like kill the messenger. Then they actually wanted to go after Dasha Burns and his wife. And Giselle, his wife, said there need to be consequences for her. That only – I mean I actually watched the whole 25-minute interview uncut because of the whole kerfuffle, which I might not have otherwise done because of how the campaign drew attention to it. So that was a huge, huge political blunder where many, many more people saw that story and saw the question. Right.

Now, the debate was a disaster. And I also think that Futterman is trying to play to the – he authentically looks like a blue-collar guy, but he also comes from a wealthy family. And his position on – the lieutenant governor in Pennsylvania doesn't do a whole lot. He's the lieutenant governor.

But one of the things he does is head the parole board. And one of his big political vulnerabilities is that he's broken with Democrats. He's soft on crime because he wanted certain criminals who were serving life sentences to get out early for good behavior. And that's become a big political hot potato in that state. There were two things that came to mind as I was watching this. The first was, what would it have looked like if in May, after he had the stroke, the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania said, sorry, guys, we're putting up Conor Lamb instead?

Like, how would this election be panning out? And the second thing was this move that I think we see over and over and over again from many people in the legacy press, which is...

There's nothing to see here. There's nothing to see here. There's nothing to see here until we all see it, at which point the pivot happens instantaneously. And it's to see it is to be a bigot. In this case, the bigotry was ableism, as if, you know, it's ableist to not want a blind person, let's say, flying a plane. You might want a senator to be able to sort of track sentences.

And I think that voters are aware of that move at this point, and it feels disrespectful to them. It feels disrespectful for their ability to sort of use their own eyes and ears. Yeah. I think that this, like many races in American politics, this has become a bit of a squeamish off, which is like voters very understandably feel squeamish, perhaps about both of these votes that they might be to cast. But on Fetterman's

campaigns part, it became more of an issue of their own making because at that time period where the stroke happened and they said this is gave the impression that it was very minor, the party had time to maybe make some changes. And then there was all through the summer where things could have been done to change the dynamics of this race, as you point out. But they chose not to do that. And I think that was a bad position for them to put themselves in.

And then, as you note, they were not only sort of hiding the ball on this and being dishonest about it, frankly, and working with the press to do that, but then they insult people for noticing. And voters don't want to be told that the things in front of their eyes are not real. And that goes for crime, for instance, and something like Fetterman's condition, which they are

perfectly free to wonder whether might have an effect on his representation of them in the Senate. That is a perfectly fair thing to do. And I would, I would, I think, you know, there's a chance that certainly people's ideology and concerns about overrides Fetterman's condition and they, and they vote for Fetterman. I think there's a better chance if he were moderate on crime that

Plus had been honest about his condition. I think there would be much more sympathy there and that you would end up with more people falling that way. In this case, I think fundamentals push people towards Oz on all of these metrics that we've talked about.

And from a squeamish point of view, Oz in that debate looked like normal guy debating, right? There was talk of him bullying, but I did not see that. I think he looked like he was trying to rein it in and be very milquetoast. And I think that may have given a lot of people permission to go that direction. Speaking of squeamishness, you know, my parents are voting in this race. And my mom, after the debate, I was like, well, did you change your mind? She was like,

Absolutely not. She's still voting for John Fetterman. Yeah. So there you go. Okay, let's turn to Georgia. I can think of no Democratic politician who has been more of a media darling over the past few years than one Stacey Abrams. What an honor to have Nobel Peace Prize nominee Stacey Abrams on the show tonight. Stacey, how are you? She's been a regular on all the late night shows. Stacey Abrams, welcome back. Yeah!

Welcome back. I mean, this is strange because it's the fourth time that we're chatting. The Sunday shows, all the CNN, MSNBC, you can't get away from her. She even had a cameo on Star Trek. United Earth is ready right now to rejoin the Federation. And nothing could make me happier than to say those words.

Just two years ago, she was put forward as a leading contender to be Joe Biden's vice presidential nominee. Hey, everybody. We're back with one of the architects of Biden's victory in Georgia, Stacey Abrams. And she was largely credited as the person who led Georgia, obviously a deep southern state, to elect two Democrats to Congress. But now, what a long two years it's been, far from being the star of her party, she's trailing several points behind her Republican opponent, Governor Brian Kemp.

Josh, what's happened to Stacey Abrams? Well, look, I think it comes down to political basics. She's very much an Elizabeth Warren liberal running in a very moderate swing state. And I think it's very notable that Senator Warnock, even in the polls where he's not doing as well, has much, much higher likability scores than Stacey Abrams.

And, you know, it comes across pretty clearly whether it's when she just the politically smart thing to do when it comes to talking about 2018 is saying, I lost the election. I'm moving on. This is what I want to do in the second go around. But she just she's been on Fox. She even she went on Fox News and she couldn't quite acknowledge like 100 percent without any kind of ifs, ands or buts that she lost fair and square the 2018 election.

And while you gave a speech recognizing that Brian Kemp would be Georgia's next governor, you refused to concede and say that you lost.

Do you stand by that decision today? Absolutely. She couldn't acknowledge that she lost the court case that ruled a lot of her arguments that the voters were being systemically suppressed. She couldn't say that. I can't say that empirically I won, but I will never know because we did not have a fair fight. And my responsibility was to acknowledge that he had the numbers, but to call out the fact that the process was wrong. You know, she even, even when talking about the issues, like she goes on Morning Joe and is asked about abortion rights and she says abortion is

is an economic issue. Abortion is an economic issue. It's been reduced to this idea of a culture war. But for women in Georgia, this is very much a question of whether they're going to end up in poverty in the next five years because women who are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies end up in poverty within five, they're four times more likely to be impoverished in five years.

Democratic strategists would tell you when you talk about abortion, frame it in the issue of rights and freedom, not that you can just have an abortion anytime you want because you're struggling. And she's violating every basic –

and tackling element of politics. And yet you're right, Barry, she just doesn't get the kind of scrutiny that any normal politician would. And that doesn't help Democrats, by the way. Like when you don't cover someone aggressively, when you don't give them the scrutiny that you would give any other politician, and I think Abrams has certainly been something of a Teflon candidate for a long time, it doesn't help you.

The voters are not – as we've been talking about on this show, voters are smart by and large. They can figure things out. And she's definitely running to the left of where your average Georgia voter is. So it's pretty remarkable, Barry, that Warnock is still in the race. The Democrats have a chance to hold his Senate seat, but Abrams is consistently behind in her own campaign, and it's her own fault. Yeah.

Well, one of the things that I think is most notable is if you think about like the headline for Democrats in this election, I would say like the biggest headline is Republicans are dangerous to democracy, right? We cannot afford as a country to elect Republicans, not because of any particular policy, but because they are fundamentally existentially dangerous because they deny the lawful results of elections. And here, Josh, as you just mentioned, Stacey Abrams has never...

And I think the thing that's especially ironic about this is that Trump also claimed that Kemp robbed him of his rightful victory in Georgia without evidence to back up the claim. So the parallel is almost poetic in a way. I think, first of all, we should rejoice that Kemp will likely be victorious as the vanquisher of election deniers on both sides in a huge way. So there are voters to be gained this way. But I think the perfect illustration of this dynamic is

And like the lack of sort of scrutiny of this is Obama. President Obama is down there stumping for Abrams and saying, look, when I lost elections, I just admitted it. I didn't do what these guys did. And I'm like, which guys are you talking about, though?

Because I remember 2018 and also last week. And then one of the problems, I think, with the existential democracy talking point, which I think voters aren't really buying, even if I can see that there's a real issue here with many bad actors, is that

They're not buying it partly because of these everyday issues that hit them in their pocketbooks, that hit them at home, that are really problematic for them. And when you sort of take the eye off of that ball and talk about election denialism and preservation of democracy, the sort of philosophical thing, and you do it disingenuously, you're going to run into problems.

The other race that all of us are watching in Georgia is for the Senate. In 2020, the state of Georgia flipped blue for President Biden and secured Democrats' control of the U.S. Senate by electing Senators John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. But in one of the country's most closely divided states, where President Biden beat Donald Trump by fewer than 12,000 votes, the question is, will Georgia stay blue come November?

We got the Democratic incumbent, Raphael Warnock. Georgia did an amazing thing. At a moment when there were folk trying to divide us, the American family has a complicated story. And there were folks who were trying to stir up that ugly and complicated side. But Georgia did an amazing thing. It sent its first African-American senator and its first Jewish senator to the United States Senate in one fell swoop. Who's up against former NFL superstar Herschel Walker.

I don't look like a politician. I don't talk like a politician. I don't even dress like a politician because my neck is a little bit too big for this tie. But I like not being a politician. Politicians are messing this country up. But don't you worry, I'm here to help fix it. Now Walker is a little bit like Dr. Oz in that he has no experience in public office and he was hand chosen by Donald Trump, sort of against the wishes of the GOP establishment.

Many thought that after Walker won the primary that the Republicans were essentially blowing their shot to take this seat back. And yet the race is a dead heat. Even as Herschel Walker suffers from...

Personal scandal after personal scandal. This morning, a new report about the woman who accuses Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker of paying for her abortion. I just saw there was a headline just up again on the Daily Mail with another woman claiming that he did something horrible. Breaking news this hour. The New York Times is now reporting that Trump endorsed Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker urged his ex-girlfriend to have a second abortion.

after he allegedly paid for that first abortion. His ex-wife says that he put a gun to her head. Walker's ex-wife discussed how Walker had threatened her with weapons. Just the...

guns and knives. And then you have his son. Family values people. He has four kids, four different women, wasn't in the house raising one of them. He was out having sex with other women. Do you care about family values? Who is on Instagram with a ton of followers saying to people, I beg you, do not elect my dad. Batya, what do you make of this race? I think the Republicans desperately want to shed light

Right.

And then they implode because these people are problematic in other ways. But the desire to be a multiracial working class coalition is a good one. And this to me is just they're trying to shortcut the way there by picking celebrities instead of going into black communities and saying, hey,

Hey, your top three issues, your kids getting a good education and not being shot at on their way to school and you being able to afford to give them the American dream. We're the party that represents that. And going in day after day after day and making that case to black voters. I mean, that is God's work and that is what they need to be doing. And instead, what they keep doing is being like, oh, look, this is what we're doing.

doesn't believe in, you know, ninth month abortions. They're one of us, you know, or this celebrity. Right. And I think that that's sort of what happened here again with Trump muddying the waters, not being able to find somebody who represents his actual legacy, his actual legislative legacy and what it did for working Americans, what it did for black Americans. Right. He's got a lot to be proud of there, but instead sort of shortcutting the way, you know, and standing behind somebody like Herschel Walker.

The things that have come up from Walker seem like in a pre-Trump America, they would have been absolutely disqualifying. Josh, how do you explain how he's still very competitive, could win the race? Is Walker sort of the Fetterman for Republicans in Georgia? In other words, I don't care as long as he's not the other person? Yeah, maybe even worse. I mean, the allegations of like pulling a gun on your ex-wife's

These are things, like you said, Barry, that these would have been disqualifying incidents a decade ago. And I still think, by the way, that this race could head to a runoff specifically because you need to get 50 percent of the vote in Georgia. And a lot of Republicans who think Walker might do well still think he may come short of that 50 percent threshold. But you're absolutely right. It's because we view things in tribal terms, not in who's the best candidate.

People view on the Republican side, they want to own the libs. And maybe Herschel Walker is the best way of doing that. You stick to your red and blue jerseys and that's all you care about.

I think that's a really problematic aspect of our politics, that we can't even make judgments about awful things someone does in their past and weigh that as part of their vote. I mean, there are a lot of other Senate candidates who are on the ideological side of things outside of the Republican mainstream. And we'll see whether Republican or swing voters are going to stomach some of those flaws. Normally, Republicans or swing voters would say, hey, I'll vote for, you know, I may want to vote Republican, but

that this candidate is taking things too far. This is going to be a really big test of whether that doesn't apply anymore, that you're just voting based on your partisan and tribal leanings. I do think that, you know, this is one of those tests, much like Fetterman, I think is a good example of does your ideology or your desire to own the other side overcome your squeamishness about this election?

I think Walker gave a lot of people permission to vote for him after the debate performance, which was not unlike Fetterman's, which was overachieved what people thought he was capable of. And again, much like Fetterman, I think even with the worst parts of the candidacy, you can be honest about those things and you can say, I went through a really dark time, but he didn't do that.

He said, no, no, no, these things didn't happen. He's denying it. Right. So I think, again, there's a well of sympathy that you can tap into with voters, particularly of your own ideological side, if you are straight with them. But that has to be part of it. But I will stick with my prediction from way back, which is that as a University of Georgia graduate, which colors my, you know, I understand colors my analysis here.

Herschel Walker, in a red wave year, as a Republican, does not lose in the state of Georgia. Despite all of these stories that came out, which many of us knew were going to come out, it's hard to overstate how much of a sort of like a demigod figure he was before this campaign started. Buck Malou gives it to Herschel Walker. Walker gets a big block on the right side. And look at the big guy go. The question.

And that 98% name ID was just irresistible to some people. Let's go on to Arizona. Let's start with Carrie Lake. Hello, everyone. Trump Republicans, are you out there? Yes!

Carrie Lake is many things. She is very charismatic. The America First movement is alive and well. And you know what? It is the only way out of the mess we're in right now. She, like Dr. Oz, has a background on television. You know, in my time covering Arizona, 27 years, I never saw things as good as they were when we had President Trump at the helm. We had a secure border, strong economy.

She's also one of the most vocal supporters of the idea, the lie, that Trump had the election stolen from him. Anybody who was involved in that corrupt, shady, shoddy election of 2020, lock them up.

So given that, many people thought, even in the Republican Party, that when she won the primary, the Democrats would beat her fairly easily. But again, Lake is not only winning in the polls, she's also emerging, I would say, as a rising star in American politics. And I have a message right now to the people flooding across our border. When I am governor, you will be arrested and sent back across the border. Batya, what do you think of Carrie Lake?

You know, I was just in Phoenix and I spoke to a lot of people there, including a lot of Democrats, and they just hate Katie Hobbs. I mean, she is so unpopular. And this kept coming up from people, from working class people I spoke to who are Democrats, who were saying to me, I'm going to vote Republican for the first time in my life, down ballot. So I don't know how that's going to shake out, but I definitely heard that from a lot of people.

And I heard from people as well that, you know, when they are looking at the landscape, they don't see Ron DeSantis as Trump's sort of inheritor. They see Carrie Lake in that way. So I would say that, you know, her popularity really is, from what I was able to garner from the time that I was there...

it is transcending some of the political divides. And I think it's because of the positions she's taken on issues that are very important to voters on both sides of the political aisle, which we often talk about as, you know, cultural battles. These guys are just full of terrible ideas. Let me list a few of them. It's terrible. Defunding our police. How do they come up with this stuff? Open borders. Censorship. Racist curriculum.

Masking our beautiful children? I can't take that one. That one just puts me under.

Like school choice, like how much say a parent should have in what their child learns. Now, that sounds like a political question, but again, just to repeat my mantra, that is a class question because rich people are always making the decisions about what their children get to learn with their pocketbooks, right? By paying $50,000 a year for private school tuition. It's working class parents and middle class parents who are stuck with public schools who are showing up at these school board meetings and thinking,

see champions in people like Lake, see champions in people like DeSantis. And I think that that is a really winning issue that does transcend party affiliation. Okay, Josh, MK, what do you guys make of Carrie Lake? Do you see in her the makings of a political star? Yeah, well, I think she's a mega star for certain, especially if she wins the election. But this is the two things she shares in common with Donald Trump is that

She's a local celebrity. She was on the news for decades in Phoenix. And she's a traitor to her class or traitor to her profession, I guess, would be the more accurate way of putting it, in that she was a news anchor who is now attacking the media. And that whole, like...

kind of having this revelation is a powerful thing. It was powerful for Trump as someone who was social in the business world and elite circles and took that on as a presidential candidate. I do have...

I think she's far more towards the Dominion vote hacking theories than the let's just say that there was misbehavior on the social media platforms part. And I think that's why she's not winning. I mean, she should be winning by 10, 15 points.

In this type of year in a state like Arizona, I think she's favored to win if you look at the polls, but she's only up by a few points. And there is a hesitation in the suburbs, in Scottsdale, in suburban Phoenix about her because she just –

has not pivoted to the middle like you've seen Dr. Oz do, for example, in the Pennsylvania race. You're not seeing the appeal to the pragmatism that a lot of Republicans who got Trump's support but also realize that there are a lot of swing voters that don't – that are not on the populist wing of the party. One last thing I'd say about Arizona is that I've covered Arizona politics for 20 years now and –

There's always been this fierce divide within the party before Trump between the McCain, if you will, the McCain wing of the party and the anti-McCain wing of the party. And McCain had the numbers and McCain had the support for a long, long time. But there was always this very anti-immigration, anti-elite – it manifested itself within the Tea Party party.

movement in 2010. But there was always this strain of populism that even descended into anti-Semitism and racism at times. And that's nothing new in Arizona. There's a certain libertarian Wild West streak in the state's politics. And unfortunately, instead of having the moderate wing of the party giving a pragmatic voice to the Republicans running, you've seen the more populist

you know, uh, anti-establishment wing taking charge and fully in power. And they have not made the most responsible decisions. They've not engaged in responsible rhetoric. And it's what, if, if Republicans don't do well, the Senate race is, is a race that Republicans should win. The, the Governor Ducey would win that race, uh,

In all likelihood, the fact that Republicans aren't performing like they should be doing is because of that wing of the party taking charge and fomenting some pretty extreme positions in some cases. Yeah, I'm more of a like, give me Ducey as a school choice advocate hero. Like that's that's my area. But I do think there's a there's a bit of a there's a cautionary tale here, which is with Kerry Lake, especially who's very telegenic and clearly intelligent.

Like a force of some kind is don't help to create the instrument of your destruction. Now, I don't like Lake, I don't think is one of the candidates, MAGA candidates that folks on the left and super PACs gave money to. But they did attack her more moderate opponent by linking her to old Democratic candidates.

she had made. Carrie Lake has also made some of those donations and been part of the Democratic Party in the past, but they didn't attack her because they thought she would be the more ripe for the picking. Yes. And now you may have put yourself in a position where if indeed you believe that there's an existential threat to democracy, that's shooting yourself in the old existential foot because

because you do, you ended up helping this person. So I do think there's a cautionary tale there. And there may be many cautionary tales. When these primary fights were going on, I kept saying that like, you guys, if this is a big red year, you'll bring in, the wave sweeps in the problematic just right along with the moderates and the normies. That's what happens in a wave. And so you may be faced with some of that.

The other race that we're all following in Arizona is the race for Senate, where we have Democratic Senator Mark Kelly, the astronaut. - You know, growing up, we didn't have a lot of money. My parents were both cops, and they taught me about public service. I spent 25 years in the United States Navy as a combat pilot.

and as an astronaut. Two years ago, you sent me to the United States Senate to cut through the red tape and get things done for Arizona. Now, we have more work to do. Families are struggling and often can't afford gas or prescription medication. So I worked with Republicans to bring manufacturing back to America to cut costs. And when Democrats are wrong, like on the border,

I call them out on it because I'm always going to stick up for Arizona. Facing off against one of the new right's newest, biggest stars. You know, we're seeing a seismic shift. America first. It's here to stay. That would be venture capitalist Blake Masters. President Trump launched this movement in 2016. And man, he upset the apple cart. He upended the political establishment. I think he literally saved the country by winning in 2016. You know, and he did it by running on and then delivering this bold agenda. It's secure the border.

It's stop the senseless wars abroad. Let's be smart and tough, but we've got to stop that. He delivered this economy that worked. It worked for American workers and families. I've been fascinated watching Masters pitch himself as sort of the future of the GOP, saying his number one priority is to ensure that America remains the best place in the world to raise a family.

In America, you ought to be able to raise a family on one single income. He keeps hitting this theme, speaking of class, Batia, over and over and over again, that he wants American families to be able to afford to live on a single income. Most families would prefer to have one breadwinner and have one parent stay at home with the kids.

He also talks about us stopping to get involved in sort of pointless wars, sort of this isolationist tilt that we're seeing happening in the country. He's certainly riding that wave. And the third thing that he's talking a lot about that I think is becoming increasingly relevant to people is taking seriously the monopolistic power of big tech. The truth is, we can't take America for granted. And if we want to keep it, we've got to fight for it.

Because we are up against a media that lies to us. Schools that teach our kids to hate our country. And corporations that have gotten so big, they think they're bigger than America.

It's time to put this country first. He's supported by both Trump and Thiel. I guess I wonder, Josh, let's start with you. Do you see any evidence that his policy proposals, let's put his sort of personality and style, he's had some like very hot campaign ads to the side for a second. Are his policy proposals resonating with people in Arizona? Or is his race more about voting out a Democrat? I think it's much more the latter. And what MK was just saying in that when you have a big Republican wave or any wave that

In politics, even the non-A-list candidates often get swept in. And I think that's what could happen in Arizona, though Kelly still holds a small lead in most of the polls. And he's kind of holding his own despite the political environment that's really problematic for Democrats. You know, one interesting thing about Arizona and that Senate race is

and tying in Carrie Lake to this. Carrie Lake said she basically voted for Obama because he was anti-war. Yes. You know, there is this like realignment of sorts going on where some people who voted for Obama, and I think it was because of opposition to the Iraq war, are finding themselves much more comfortable with the Republican Party. Tulsi Gabbard's another example of sort of an isolationist Democrat who now finds herself in the Republican Party.

So I think there's like an interesting constituency in the country that is realigning. Now, Arizona is a very military heavy state, a lot of veterans. I thought it was super interesting that I think it was a couple of weeks ago, Blake Masters invited Lindsey Graham to appear in Scottsdale with him for a town hall about foreign policy where it sounded like Blake Masters was actually moving a little bit to the

hawkish side, or at least rhetorically speaking, he sounded more like a hawk than like Tulsi Gabbard at this event. So I think it's interesting. I do think there is something really important about sort of Obama-Trump voters like in Iowa who may have been much more isolationist and now find themselves at home in the Donald Trump Republican Party. But it also, for every action, there's an opposite reaction. And I think Masters, if you look at some of the polling, he's had trouble winning over military veterans. He's had trouble winning some of the McCain voters.

in the suburbs of Phoenix. And there are also a lot of hawkish pro-military supporters, especially in a state like Arizona. So that explains, I think, why Masters has underperformed, that he hasn't done as well as John McCain did and a lot of other more traditional Republicans have done in those Senate races.

And what do we make of the fact that he's positioning himself as a populist, but he's basically a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who I believe graduated from Stanford? Well, that's the feel factor. And I actually think that's going to be fascinating to watch. Look, if Masters gets elected to the Senate and J.D. Vance gets elected to the Senate and Joe Kent, who's a very, you know, has that same backing, has heterodox views on foreign policy, he gets elected to the House.

That is going to be a fascinating sort of caucus to watch. I've had people close to Masters tell me that Mitch McConnell didn't get him elected. If he gets into the Senate, he's going to really create a stir against Mitch McConnell and against some of the party establishment. So I think that is a very fascinating angle to watch going forward.

Well, speaking of sort of the Teal-backed populace, you know, there are two candidates that have the sort of personal financial backing of Peter Teal and the endorsement of Donald Trump. And the other one is in Ohio. I'm so sick of Republicans who say, well, we're just going to push back against the Biden agenda. Well, of course we're going to do that. But what are we going to actually do for our voters? What are we going to do for the American people? There are a lot.

J.D. Vance and quite similar sort of in his policy outlook as masters, right? We're for middle class people being able to raise a family and do it on a single income. We're for the reindustrialization of this country. So we make more stuff in America. We build our own things. We don't have to rely on the communist Chinese to make our pharmaceutical products.

We bring our fertilizer manufacturing back so the Russians can't cut off 10% of our fertilizer. There are things that we stand for in this Republican Party. We stand for parents being able to set a course for their children. But he's neck and neck with Democratic nominee Tim Ryan.

MK, have you been watching Ohio? Any thoughts on who's going to sort of pull ahead there? And what do you think of J.D. Vance? Well, OK, on this issue of the populist candidates who are nonetheless Ivy League and tech moneyed, I think, you know, look, voters have a talent for sort of sussing out that kind of inauthenticity and figuring out if it works for them. I also think it's not

We shouldn't call it all inauthenticity for this reason. And I think this is something that showed up in 2016 that I missed until too late in the GOP primary, which is that there is a demand for populist policy and rhetoric, right? One of the reasons the, you know, sort of at the time thought of as this very talented group of GOP candidates kept getting their butts handed to them by Trump was because

Voters simply didn't want the old style of GOP policies and rhetoric hand in hand that they had been getting for a long time. That wasn't the product that they wanted to buy. They wanted a different product.

And part of that product is a more populist bent on economics. Don't love it. Foreign policy, sometimes don't love it. But that is what voters are, they are asking for. And what they've gotten in Masters and Vance and others, and I think Kerry Lake and DeSantis also are examples, are GOP candidates who are better at doing it than Trump is. Now, there's not that same sort of cult of personality there.

But when it comes to throwing down with the press, give me Laker DeSantis over Trump being like, you're a jerk for whatever, like grab bag of insults. They generally have some facts at their command and can go in that direction. So I think that's some of what's carrying a lot of these candidates. I think Ohio...

Ohio is pretty red, y'all. Like that's just that's just the facts on the ground there. And I think to Josh's point about Arizona, perhaps it's an indictment of the Vance campaign to some extent that he's not performing better because other races in that state don't look like that. But in the end, I think he probably comes out on top.

Batya, if Masters and Vance are elected and Peter Thiel's big bets pay off here, what will that signify? Will it signify sort of what they're trying to tell us it will, which is sort of a new epoch in the Republican Party, in Republican policy priorities, in Republican legislation, in Republicans sort of becoming the party of the working class? So as a person with a PhD who's a populist...

I'm sensitive to the critique of... Not just inauthenticity, that's what I'm saying. I don't buy that. But, you know, listen, I'm obviously like, you know, I'm not objective on this topic, but I don't buy the whole inauthenticity thing. Like a vote, you're either going to vote for another $40 billion for Ukraine or you're going to vote against it. Like it's the idea that like, you know, how much education you have or how much money you have is more important than that, I think is, you know, look, here's the thing about the teal guys. If I had told you,

If I had told you 30 years ago, 40 years ago, 50 years ago that there was a guy running on the American dream that you should be able to support a family on a single income and that America should not be waging war in far-flung places and paying for that at the expense of the working class and getting involved here and there, you would have told me that that was a left-wing candidate, right? That would have been a Democrat.

right? You know, if I told you that, you know, somebody's running on, you know, keeping black neighborhoods safe from criminals, you would have said, oh, that's probably a Democrat that they care about that, right? That's what you're seeing here is that these two guys are showing up and, you know, maybe you need to be a millionaire with an advanced degree to have the confidence to go up against your own party and say, you have abandoned the working class and I'm going to stand here and take on

all the haters on the left because they hate me because I care about the family, but also all of you in the Mitch McConnell camp and say, you are the ones who should be embarrassed. You should be ashamed because you're stealing from the working class Americans to pay the elites, right? So the authenticity argument, I feel like I'm not so compelled by that. I think what's going on in Ohio is really interesting because the Wall Street Journal had a great op-ed about this. You know, the problem

there is that J.D. Vance wrote a book. He made his name off a book that was about how poor people are lazy, right? Like that's what hillbilly algae is about, right? It's like a cultural problem. You know, in Appalachia, these people don't want to work. They don't want to get off their butts and like work. And so, you know, like that's

what that book was about, right? And now he's running as the hero of the working class, whereas Tim Ryan, right, is out there giving interviews and saying, since when did college become the only avenue to the American dream? That's garbage. When did we start devaluing the American male? When did we start devaluing hard work and, you know, the stuff that you guys do every day? You show up to work.

So in a way, it was like it's funny because J.D. Vance had to disavow the very thing that made him famous and gave him a name in order to compete as a popular. So I think that that is maybe why he's struggling because he cannot – there's something – there's like a double consciousness there. And I think that that is – the op-ed made the argument that at campaign stops, the lack of charisma, the lack of engagement with voters is because of that kind of like – he knows he wrote that book.

Right. Like he's he doesn't he hasn't forgotten about that. But it also seems to me like I've seen a bunch of Tim Ryan ads lately. I'm a Democrat, but I agree with Republicans. I'm doing what's in the best interest of Ohio. And I've had the guts to take on my own party. I ran against Nancy Pelosi. I've gotten in fights with Bernie Sanders. I take on Democrats when I think they're wrong and I will agree with Republicans when I think they're right. And that's why I think J.D.'s off.

because he's on the extreme vein of politics today. And that's just not Ohio. It seems like he's running a really strong, solid campaign as a kind of moderate. He's running the Youngkin campaign as a Democrat. And that was a brilliant decision to make. His campaign ads are gorgeous. They're sexy. They're about how much he loves his wife in America. I mean, they're beautiful. And how they can agree to disagree and have a glass of Chardonnay at the end of the day. What's not to like? It's great stuff. Okay, let's turn to Oregon.

where Christine Drazen, a pro-life, pro-gun rights Republican, best known for fighting a state climate change bill, is in a dead heat to become the next governor of the state. It's a little bit ironic to me to constantly hear my opponents on the stage just be obliterated by how horrible Oregon is. They've had all the levers of government at their hands. They've been in charge. If they could have fixed it, if they would have known how to fix it, they would have done it.

We are here because of them. We need change. I am, in fact, a pro-life woman. You know, it's a faith-based decision for me, and I don't shy away from that. This is Oregon, okay? One of the hippie capitals of the country where Democrats have controlled the governor's mansion for four decades, where the state legislature has been controlled by Democrats for 15 years.

Yeah, well, I'll just quickly start with a lot of voters, when you've seen four decades of Democratic policy, and I think the state has gotten even further to the left in the last five, six years, and I think the state has gotten even further to the left in the last five, six years.

you want to check on the crazy. And look, this is a great example of how Democrats have been very... They've had a big problem reacting to where voters are. So Oregon voters voted for a proposition that basically legalized all kinds of drugs, not just marijuana, but a lot of hard drugs. Yes. And it's had massive consequences, unintended consequences, negative consequences. And one of the differences in this race is that...

Drazen is calling for repealing that law.

And I actually just talked to the campaign of the Democratic nominee, Tina Kotak, who's the Speaker of the House in Oregon, and she doesn't want to change the law. She doesn't want to repeal the law. And I mean, that's a simple case where like the law of political gravity would say, you know, take a loss, say we're going to fix this, we're going to change this, make things better, and, you know, help your own party, help get some of those moderate voters back in your camp. But the

But we've seen in so many cases where Democrats have just been functionally unable to challenge the far left of their party to the point where they're losing governor's races in Oregon and New York and very blue states where these issues are solvable or at least able to deal with them. But there's just an unwillingness to challenge a core part of their coalition to the far left. And it's, you know, I think Oregon is going to be not just the governor's race, by the way. This is their three Democratic House seats now.

that Biden easily won in Oregon that are at risk of all flipping to the Republicans. So this is going to be a major problem. And sometimes democracy works in the way where you lose elections. That's the only thing that'll cause you to change course. Well, I think there's a, this is a representative headline that I just looked up. This is ABC.

In May of 2021, after a year of protests, Portland residents have waning patience for Antifa. Okay. So if you have bugged the residents of actual Portland after a year of sort of occupation of the city. Like if you've lost Portland. Then many, many other voters in Oregon are upset about it and they are further upset that

Again, and this is a theme, about being told by media and elites that the problem doesn't exist. Are you going to stop? Are you throwing pipe bombs at people? There was a lot of this during the time of the height of disruption and some rioting. Reporters would be sitting in a quiet part of the city and be like... You know, I think it's debatable if vandalizing a building or throwing a water bottle is violence. This is predominantly nonviolent protesters.

Everything looks fine to me, guys. That is not a credible message for voters. And yet it is one because if you're unable to buck the far left forces that created this situation and you don't want to be called a bigot for bucking them, which is what sort of inevitably happens, you end up just ignoring this and telling people that they're a bigot for noticing it. And that is that's not a sell. It's not a sell for voters, even in Oregon.

We ran a piece this week from Leighton Woodhouse, who we sent to Portland to talk to sort of lifelong Democrats who are considering voting Republican for the first time in their lives. And we had one source who said, you know, things are going downhill. Inflation, crime, homelessness, addiction, overdoses. Look outside. You see the homelessness, people dying in the streets from overdoses, people having psychotic breaks. It's in shambles right now. It wasn't always like this. You have other people talking about shielding their kids' eyes from people defecating in the streets.

Other people talking about homeless people stealing neighborhood dogs for ransom. I mean, yes, it's about Portland, but it could also be about San Francisco. It could also be about parts of the city where I live, Los Angeles. Are we ready, are American voters ready for a sort of correction to some of these blue city policies that have led to the chaos that have just made life less livable for taxpayers?

Well, I'm quite libertarian leaning on a lot of these issues. One of my more famous TV fights was yelling at O'Reilly about decriminalizing marijuana. You're like, let's put heroin in vending machines. So I'm like, I'm more libertarian, but you also on criminal justice on all sorts of things like this, but you have to show people the path. And if you're showing people the path and the path ends in Portland for a year between 2020 and 2021, it looks like that.

People don't want to be on your path anymore. And so I think the policy is not lining up with people's expectations and they should push back against that.

Unlike sort of the new right candidates, let's call them, J.D. Vance and Blake Masters, it seems to me that Drazen is running a kind of Glenn Youngkin campaign. You guys said Tim Ryan's running a Glenn Youngkin campaign as a Democrat. I think that's extraordinarily well put. Drazen is really doing the Glenn Youngkin playbook. He appeared with her the other day, and she ran this phenomenal ad last week. I'm an independent. And I'm a Democrat. I'm a first-time voter. I'm ready for a change. It's time for a change. I'm ready for a change.

pro-choice. I've never voted for a Republican. I'm voting for Christine Drazen. Christine's a new voice. She's smart. She listens. She brings people together. She has a plan to lower the cost of housing. To fix the homeless crisis. And to make our streets safe again. Christine Drazen gives me hope. Josh, do you think that her strategy is working? It is, and I think it's fair to call her the favorite at

at this point. And it's working because of some of this realignment we're seeing, um, in different places in different ways. But I, there are a lot of, there's actually an ad in Indiana. There's an African American, a military veteran running for Congress in the district that includes Gary, Indiana. And this ad that we're featuring in Axios has African American, uh, voters saying we've had enough with, with the democratic party. Uh,

They want someone who may more closely reflect their values. So, you know, I do think this is on the margins. We're not going to see this sea change in voting behavior from African-Americans or Hispanic voters. But all it takes is a little nudge, right? And all it takes is enough people who live in the city of Portland to be dissatisfied with the crime and the homelessness.

All it takes is a little nudge from Hispanic voters on the Rio Grande Valley or in Nevada to move towards the Republican Party. All it takes is a few points for African-American voters to say, hey, what are you doing for me lately? The economy is not working for me. And that's all it takes to make a good year or a good midterm for Republicans into a really big wave election.

And that's why you're seeing – when we're talking Oregon and New York in addition to all these other battlegrounds. That is blowing my – New York is blowing my mind. Yeah. You can see where the political winds are blowing. Okay. So before we move on to kind of the bigger themes that you guys are seeing emerging, are there any other states or races that –

you're watching closely for me, New York, which I had not been paying attention to. I was like, it's a walk for Kathy Hochul, even though I don't really know why. And now we're talking about Lee Zeldin. I'm like, what universe am I living in? Are there races like that for you guys that are surprises that you'll be watching closely on, on Tuesday night?

I'm looking really close. We've talked about Pennsylvania and I'm fascinated by the Senate race. That's the big one. There's also a congressional district in Scranton, which Joe Biden's hometown. It was the district where Donald Trump held his first general election rally of the campaign.

And it is also a district that voted for Trump narrowly but has a Democratic congressman that won both in 2016 and 2020. That is an area where Republicans have been making some major, major gains, Northeast Pennsylvania, Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

That is a huge, huge battleground for the Senate race, for the governor's race, but also for that little house district that's located there. So that's an early bellwether like I'm going to be looking at. If a Republican – As goes Scranton, so goes the nation. As goes Scranton, so goes the country. Scranton is like the bellwether of the U.S. political map this year.

MK, what races are you watching? I think to Batya's point earlier about sort of Republicans trying to cut corners finding candidates who make the party more diverse and reach out to people of all classes. By the way, every time I talk to Batya on anything, at the end I'm like, am I a Democratic populist now? Or is she? Or is she a member of the new right? None of us really know. We're coming together. This is the realignment. This is the horseshoe, baby. Yeah.

I think...

There's a handful of Latina candidates in the Rio Grande Valley where I think is where Republicans aren't taking that shortcut, right? They have picked somebody organically from this community who's really tapped in, in the case of Maya Flores. Maya Flores type. Yes, whose husband is a Border Patrol agent. Yes, Lee Vega in Virginia 7th is another example. Her husband, I believe, is law enforcement or military. I can't remember which one. With a compelling story up against Abigail Spanberger, who's one of the more endangered Democrats in the central to northern Virginia district.

where you could really tap into some of these working class problems. And again, the leftover anger from moms whose kids were locked out of school for more than a year. And I know I beat that dead horse all the time, but the moms are mad, y'all. And we saw a little uptick in August over Roe, which I think was people going, oh, I don't like that. And then it was sort of back to earth. What are my real on the ground problems?

Are these guys going to mandate vaccines for my kids to go back to school? Are they going to try to do masks again in the winter? These things matter to moms on the ground. And a lot of them are minority sort of swing voters and or white suburban women who maybe used to be Democrats who are willing to swing now. So I'm interested in that district.

And then, of course, is it Maloney in New York? I'm interested to see what happens there because, of course, he's the guy in charge of winning House districts and now he has to be in charge of winning his district. That's Sean Patrick Maloney, head of the DCCC in New York. One of the guys who defended the fact that the Democrats were basically spending tons of ad dollars to fund MAGA candidates. Batya, how about you before we go on to big themes?

I'm watching very closely that whole slew of 2018 Blue Dog Dems, Elisa Slotkin, Abigail Spanberger, Sharice Davids, who I love. You know, Sharice Davids actually, I think, is polling very well, but the...

What's going to happen there? You know, all of these Democrats who won in Trump districts, is that are they going to be able to hold on to their seats? I'm very interested to see if 21 percent of black voters are going to go for Republicans. That's something I've long wanted to see, just not because I want Republicans to win necessarily, but because I just want them to feel that they have a choice and I want the parties to be fighting for those votes and actually showing up and delivering. So that's, I think, very important.

really interesting. And also, yeah, the Latino vote, how are Hispanics going to vote? Is the shift we're seeing something that is reflective of something, you know, deeper and systemic that's going to, you know, be around for generations to come? We'll be right back with predictions from Batya, Josh, and MK. Winner gets a free bottle of whiskey. Okay, let's talk about some of the key issues shaping this election, right? Polls show, and all of us feel very clear on what the priorities are.

It is not democracy. It is not climate change. It is the economy. It is crime. And for some people, it's also immigration. Those are the issues. Given the unbelievable clarity that we've all had over those issues...

why couldn't the Democrats simply run on those issues? And how can the Democrats win, really, more to the point, given that they have been in charge as these changes have happened? Josh, how are Democrats playing this? Well, not well? What's sort of the rhetorical move they're using to get out of the fact that they're sort of holding the bag on this one? So for most of the fall, Democrats...

Democratic candidates were not talking about the economy. They were talking about abortion. As the debate over abortion rights heats up, some political analysts think the issue might mobilize younger voters to show up to the polls. And I've talked to a lot of Democratic strategists in the last couple weeks who now realize that

They kind of got a sugar high on the Dobbs decision. And right in the immediate aftermath of the ruling, a lot of smart Democratic strategists were saying this is an asset for us. We can use this to win some races. But we've got – this is not a game change. We need to keep talking about the economy. We need to make sure people know we're concerned about inflation and the cost of groceries and gas and so on.

And then I think when the polls got really favorable for Democrats during August and maybe that special election that they won in August, there was a total disregard for that balance. And I think there was a study that showed about half of the Democratic ads, if not more, were only on abortion. It was my decision, not some politician's. Every woman should have the right to make her own decision.

And I'll fight alongside you every step of the way until you do. I'm Mandela Barnes, and I approve this message. If you care about the right to choose, then you got to vote. That's why in these midterm elections are so critical to elect more Democratic senators to the United States Senate and more Democrats to keep control of the House of Representatives. Even though that was an important issue for some voters. The first bill that I will send to the Congress will be to codify Roe v. Wade.

It made a lot of Democratic candidates look like they were disconnected from the number one most important issue out there. So now you're seeing Democrats scrambling to come up with an economic message. I mean, Obama was trying a line about Republicans supporting cuts to entitlement spending. Senator Johnson voted to raise the retirement age to 70, supported a plan...

They would put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block every single year. Each year you'd have to vote to renew this thing. I mean, think about it, because Washington works so well. You want your Social Security and Medicare reliant on Congress every year. Some of your parents are on Social Security. Some of your grandparents are on Social Security. You know why they have Social Security? Because they worked for it.

How can that possibly stick? I saw it. Yeah. Yeah, Barry, it's like a student cramming for an exam the day before the test. It looks desperate. It looks like a Hail Mary pass. And look, I think they had a tough hand regardless, right? This was not going to be an easy election for Democrats no matter what. But they only made things worse by not balancing the abortion message with the economy and frankly having a crime message, like having a message that just simply went beyond, oh, yeah, we want to fund the police, like talking about bail.

talking about these fundamental issues that are of concern to so many voters. Okay, so speaking of abortion, you know, that moment was very clear to me for many reasons, but I remember very much, Josh, that sort of consensus that—

even if it was brief, that this was going to be the issue. This was going to be the thing that sort of changed the tide for the Democrats in the election. Are we seeing that? Are we seeing young women, you know, and angry moms, MK, as you mentioned before, energized around abortion rights in this election? You're seeing the energy, but that's slowed down a little bit. So,

I think the larger impact is that, number one, the base is a little more energized than they were. I mean, you were seeing a perfect storm for Democrats against Democrats in the spring where not only were independents breaking against the Democratic Party and Republicans were juiced to vote, but Democrats had nothing to vote for. They had nothing.

to show up for. And at the very least, I think the overturning of Roe v. Wade has given Democrats a reason to show up at the polls. But at the same time, a lot of the states we've been talking about, these blue states—

abortion policy is not going to change in Oregon or in New York. And I think aside from the Michigans and the Wisconsin's and the Pennsylvania's where you actually do have a little more on the line with abortion policy and a lot of these emerging battlegrounds, most even liberal voters know that they're not going to lose the right to have an abortion. So that just mitigates its significance in this election.

I don't know if there's been any issue that's radicalized more people that I know than COVID, COVID lockdowns, COVID school closures, the fact that people's relatives died alone. You know, people who were, I know, who are lifelong liberals, lifelong Democrats are now up for grabs.

And they are considering in this election either staying home because they're disgusted and fed up with the people who oversaw these policies, or some of them are considering voting Republican for the first time. Let's talk just a little bit. And MK, maybe let's start with you since I think you're one of these angry moms. Let's talk about the legacy really that the pandemic will have in this election.

Yeah, I think that what you see in all these polls, and there was a Harvard-Harris poll that, and Bhatia referenced a similar one, where it was the top three issues that people care about, and voters' top three issues aligned with what they perceived to be Republicans' issues. And when it came to Democrats, they were completely unaligned. That is a mismatch that is very, very hard to overcome. And again, the Democrats' priorities are seen as January 6th climate and women's rights, which are...

as Josh notes, in some places more theoretical than on the ground really hitting people on a day-to-day basis, particularly with the abortion, which can matter on the ground in various states. But I think COVID regulations and sort of the hangover from that set the kitchen table with these issues. And then Democrats just pushed their seats away from the kitchen table. They were like, we're not doing that. We're over here on the January 6th hearings, which even if voters think

There's a real problem. It's not the real problem that they are dealing with at that kitchen table. And I just think Yunkin in Virginia and the New Jersey race, which did not end with Republicans winning but scared Democrats, those were the first two chances at a reckoning. I think voters demand a reckoning of some sort.

over that. They haven't gotten a lot of mea culpa. They haven't gotten a lot of apologies. Again, they were told that the problem didn't exist or that they were bigots for noticing the problem when it came to school closings or any of these sort of unfairnesses. A lot of them don't think that this was a good faith mistake in the way these policies were made or that they don't have faith that they won't be used again against them. Right. So they want a reckoning. And I think that's to me what set the table for this election is

That's where these issues, these everyday issues came from and are exacerbated by a lot of that policy. And then voters are mad about them. In addition to just suffering, they're mad about the reason they were put in this position. One thing I've been thinking a lot about in sort of the lead up to this election, but also just more generally, is what I see as a kind of paradox.

On the one hand, I think like everyone else living in this country at this moment, I feel like we're living in an era of hyper-partisanship and polarization that feels undeniable.

On the other hand, I feel like more people that I know, and certainly a lot of polls bear this out, are up for grabs. In other words, they're not sort of set in voting for the party that they've always voted before. It's not just what we're seeing in Oregon. This is happening all over the place. And I wonder what you guys make of that tension. Is it that we...

are more partisan than ever before? Or are we less partisan and living through a kind of political realignment that's sort of still emergent? MK, happy to start with you. Well, it's...

It's interesting you say that because I have made this argument since Trump's election, and I was not a Trump supporter, but that it had this interesting way of scrambling. Like union voters would go to the right in ways they hadn't before. And some of these suburban, highly educated women in the suburb would go to the left when they hadn't for a couple of years. There was...

a scrambling happening here. And actually I found a race the other day that I was like, oh, that's the race I would vote D. It was some school board, like state school board related race where the Republican was union supported by teachers unions and the Democrat was pro school choice. And I was like, oh, that's my issue. That's my, again, am I a democratic populist now along with Batya?

That's my sort of class-related issue where this is something that really hurt people, particularly during the pandemic where they had no release valve, they had no escape hatch like richer families did. And that's where my vote would swing. And I haven't been that swingy a voter in the past. So I do think there's this strange dynamic where we are mixing in ways that we haven't before. But I think perhaps the people that report on the dynamics don't do the mixing so much. Yeah.

So they missed that. They're not doing the swinging themselves. Batya, how about you? I feel like the political realignment is kind of like a core issue of yours, both because you personally exemplify it in that I really don't know where you would vote on most issues. But, you know, what is it? Is it that we are hyper-partisan, more polarized than ever before, more tribal than ever before? Or are we just going through a kind of everything got thrown up in the air and we're not really all sure where we're landing yet? We're just pissed off.

Well, I don't think that the divide in this country is really between left and right anymore. I think when you poll Americans on the most important issues, there's just no partisan divide anymore on things like gay marriage, equal protections for every American, for black Americans, criminal justice reform. There's now an appetite for police reform, interracial marriage. None of these things have a partisan divide anymore.

But, you know, you go to the media and of course they're telling you that everybody who votes for the other party is, you know, hates black people, hates gay people, hates trans people, hates women, et cetera, et cetera. You know, and then of course on the right, everybody who votes for the other party is a groomer, right? Is a literal pedophile, right? You know, these are, so the way that I see it is that, you know, the average American is just not

that divided over the most important issues. It's the elites who make millions of dollars off of convincing us to hate each other that are very polarized. Of course, there's still debates over things like abortion, how many guns a person should own, but like a healthy democracy should have debates like that. I mean, we shouldn't agree on everything.

So to me, it's very much like elites versus working class, middle class divide and not really left versus right. And I think that the party that realizes that first is going to do very well. But what you've seen, I think, over the last 50 years is that the Democrats who used to represent labor are now very affiliated with the college educated. That seems to be their base. That's who they're catering to. And so anything that is the concern mostly of working class Americans is

Higher grocery prices, crime, not wanting gas to cost more. So climate, right? On all of these issues, COVID, right? Wherever there's a class divide, the Democrats have been on the wrong side of that, on the side of the top 10%, you know, or the top 6% who are progressive, you know, according to Pew.

So, you know, the Republicans are talking a good game now. They're doing well at telling Americans, look, we're going to represent you on questions of parenting, on questions of schools, on questions of inflation, on questions of crime. Whether or not they're able to deliver on any of those things, I guess we're going to find out.

Josh, you've been a political reporter for a really long time. You're now at Axios. Do you buy Batya's argument here that the new divide is sort of populist versus elitist? Yeah, I'm on team Batya. I think she was ahead of the curve in understanding a lot of our divisions in politics are based on class, based on education levels, being in the elite. And you see these internal divides even within the parties along those lines as well. It's weird because I think, in a way,

in a weird way, we are partisan, we are tribal, but sometimes these realignments are actually reinforcing a new tribalism where, you know, I, I know people who have totally flip-flopped on, uh, their partisan affiliations or their ideological dispositions as a result of the COVID shutdowns, as a result of, uh,

the Biden administration's handling of crime or something like that, but they're not becoming independents. They're not saying, I like this candidate, I like Lee Zeldin in New York and I like Republicans in Oregon, but I still like moderate Democrats like Josh Shapiro. They're realigning and they're becoming more partisan in their new party, like Tulsi Gabbard or like some of the Hispanic voters along the Rio Grande Valley that are becoming more Republican. So I think tribalism generally is not good. I think you should vote

I understand that party matters and who controls Congress matters. But in some cases, you should elect the candidate of higher character who has, you know, a more convincing vision for the country. So, you know, I think what we're seeing in this year's election is that, like in the case of the Democrats, we've talked about in Oregon and New York,

They've done such a bad job that it's almost forcing people to consider their vote in a new way. But I think generally, like I think the realignment is fascinating and you are definitely seeing sort of upscale elites moving more into the Democratic Party. And you're seeing working class voters, as Batya has been writing about and talking about for so long, becoming more comfortable in the Republican Party now.

But I also do see sort of a new hardening where, yes, you're seeing the realignment, but you're not seeing a whole lot of split ticket. I'm going to vote for the candidate type of voters like we saw 20 years ago, 30 years ago.

Two questions, and then I want to get to predictions. A recent poll from Quinnipiac said that 69% of Democrats and 69% of Republicans both said they felt democracy was in danger of collapse. Though, of course, those sides have very different ideas of what the nature of the threat is. Is this election going to have a lot to say about the future of our democracy?

If the Republicans, let's say, if people like Carrie Lake, who have been pretty out-and-out election deniers, if she wins the gubernatorial race in Arizona, and certainly we will have op-eds the next morning saying democracy is not just under threat, democracy is over. Do you guys buy that? What do you think this election has to say about the future of our democracy? I'll jump in. I really get frustrated when I hear people say,

democracy is ending if a party wins an election. I mean, that's what we're hearing, that if Republicans win elections and they take back Congress, it's threatening democracy. No, no, that is democracy. I think there's a serious worry about certain people who don't acknowledge the results of the last election and having important positions, that that's an important concern to be vigilant about.

But I think what we hear about in the context of this concern about the health of our democracy is that when you elect Republicans, that conservative Republicans or pro-Trump Republicans alike, that that threatens democracy, even though you have free and fair elections. And that's what the voters want. That's what voters are sending a message towards.

But just to push back a bit, does it say something a little alarming about the state of our electorate if people are willing to vote for someone who says that the election was stolen or that the election was rigged? Well, I think voters certainly, as we've talked about, care about the economy, care about pocketbook issues first and foremost. It doesn't mean they don't care about folks who deny the results of the last election, but they're also thinking more broadly about their own personal needs and personal interests.

And, you know, I also think that there's also a lot of like cosplay going on in our politics where people say things to win a nomination. And, you know, if you told me that Brian Kemp and Doug Deuce, I mean, like there were certain Republicans who, if I would have guessed, would stand up to Trump, like a Brian Kemp in Georgia, who, by the way, Trump single handedly picked Kemp to run and endorsed him in the primary ahead of a front running candidate. I wouldn't have automatically put Brian Kemp on the list of someone who was going to be one of the bigger candidates.

of democracy. And it turns out that they acted differently than perhaps their rhetoric would have indicated in the past. So I think it's foolhardy to predict. I mean, there are certain cases where you do have extremists running for secretary of state where I think it's a little more crystal clear. But I really don't know, like, if Carrie Lake, like, people are assuming we know how Carrie Lake is going to govern. She certainly, as we've talked about, voted for Obama.

and has had a very heterodox past in terms of her political views. So I really think it's a little bit premature to say we know how people are going to act when their feet are held to the fire. It certainly isn't good that you have a lot of Republican candidates not willing to say that the 2020 election was fair and square, there was not systemic fraud. But I also think that sometimes they're playing to the base. They're trying to say whatever they want to say to win elections. And ultimately, they act differently once they're in office.

I'm of two minds on this that are constantly fighting each other. But I think what concerns me is that the voters' concerns about what threatens democracy, whether it's sort of media conformity and or not reporting things accurately or sort of the elite condescension and corruption or election denying, which is a very real problem and can really disrupt the system in bad ways. I'm afraid all of them might be operative.

Right. And what we're what we're doing is we are sort of realigning in this contest of like who's slightly less bad at the moment. And yet I don't have rose colored glasses about the past. You know, there's been plenty of bad candidates and bad situations in American history in the past. Right. So I on a case by case basis, for instance, when I'm in Virginia deciding whether McAuliffe or Youngkin is for me. Right.

This is the calculation a lot of people made. The Republican Party was offering something that was worthwhile and real and spoke to voters, and I want to respect voters making that decision and not throw up my hands and assume that it's the end of everything. By the way, I left out tech censorship thanks to this dropping of these documents this week. That seems like a

The government and tech colluding seems like a problem as well, right? We're battling on a lot of fronts, I think. But I think voters get underestimated, and I want to respect what they're doing. And I think it adds to polarization and these problems of democracy when you claim that listening to voters is the end of democracy. And many people running as Democrats did not listen to voters this time around. And I think that's not the end of democracy. It just means you need to listen more.

On the one hand, I think it feels to many of us like we're living through an unprecedented, wild, chaotic time. But I wonder if every generation feels that way and that every midterm cycle is sort of the same pattern. People, guess what? Shocker, care about the economy. And, you know, the president tends to have a bad approval rating and the incumbents tend to be on their back heel. So I guess the question is, before we get to your predictions,

Are these midterms actually substantively different from others that we've had many times before? Well, you know, one thing that's been in my 20 years of covering politics, the one thing that's been pretty consistent is that

People are perpetually dissatisfied. They don't like either party. They get sick of the party in power really quickly. In fact, you know, if we were in a parliamentary system like our friends across the pond, we'd probably have votes of no confidence like every, it would be like the British, like last four months, we'd have different prime ministers in the same part, you know, it would be crazy. And we basically deal with this stuff through wave elections in every midterm where, you know, Obama wins this historic election and people thought the

Republican Party was dead and extinct, and then they win one of the most historic comebacks, you know, two years later. And, you know, you see the same thing with Trump.

I can't tell you how many Democrats thought democracy was over after Trump won and they never went back to Congress because they missed it. And they win two years later because Trump overreached and played to the base of his own party. So, you know, that's not good, I guess. It shows that as a democracy, we're not able to deal with a lot of these systemic issues. Neither party is. And it's shown that they can govern effectively. But at the same time, it does show democracy is working because the people are registering their dissatisfaction and they're voting out the bums.

And we're getting Republicans and Democrats and they switch off in year after election after election. So, you know, I think that leads to the expectation that this could be another wave election for the Republicans. But it doesn't mean that people love the Republican Party or are endorsing Donald Trump. It just means that we have not neither party has shown the capacity to govern effectively for quite some time.

I think to the extent that it's unprecedented or new, it's partly because the COVID era truly was unprecedented in so many ways. And then I always think whenever I'm worried that things are too wild politically, I think of the fact that

Gerald Ford, sort of an unobjectionable figure as presidents go, had two assassination attempts within a month, and one of them was by a member of the Manson family. I was like, things get wild, y'all. So that's my comfort. That's my comfort for you guys. If the Mansons are a comfort, I'm not really. That's cold comfort for me. I'm bleak. I'm bleak, Barry. All right, last question. Betting time.

What is going to happen on Tuesday night? Josh, let's start with you. All right. Are we going to see a red wave or a red tinkle or a red tsunami? I think a red wave is likely. Look, I'll be a little conservative, but I think 20 seats in the House is pretty easy to expect. It could be higher, but 20 is a good round number. And I think Republicans are well within reach of that in the Senate.

It's going to be a lot. We're going to be counting votes for a long time. These are going to be very close races. We maybe have a runoff in Georgia. Yeah, I'll give Republicans two seats. They'll get the 52. That would be my prediction. Batya Ungar-Sargon? I'll just say I'm with him. Whatever Josh says on this, because he's always right. MK? I'm going to go higher than Josh just for fun. Let's go three, even three plus pickups in the Senate for Republicans and 24, 25 House seats. All right.

All right. Well, guys, I'm going to be DMing you frantically. I probably won't have my blue checkmark anymore at that point, but I'll be DMing you on election night and excited to see how it shakes out. MK, Josh, whichever one of you is closer gets a bottle of whiskey on me. MK, you can save it for after the baby. Guys, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thanks, Barry. Thanks, Barry. Thanks, guys.

My thanks to Batya, MK, and Josh. And thanks to you for listening. Did you learn something from this conversation? Did you find any of your assumptions challenged? Did you hear things maybe from Batya that you disagreed with? I hope so. That's the point. We

We want to start a conversation here. So please share this episode with friends, share it with people in your community, and use it to have an honest conversation of your own about the midterms or anything else. And if you want to support Honestly, the only way to do that is to subscribe. Go to our newsletter at commonsense.news. See you next time.