The Midterms No One Saw Coming: A Postmortem
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This is Honestly. And here's what happened last night. Hi, everybody. Welcome back. Good morning. It's 1 a.m. on the East Coast, 11 p.m. on the West. This is our coverage of the 2022 midterm election. It has been an unexpectedly good night for the Democrats against the odds. Let's get straight to it. Going into last night...

Joe Biden had an approval rating of about 41%. Well, nobody with this low of an approval rating as a sitting president has ever done this well in a midterm. We're experiencing the worst crime wave in decades and the worst inflation in more than 40 years. You would expect the Republicans to do far better than it looks like they're going to do. This shouldn't be competitive.

And it is, and I think you have one place to look. And yet the red wave, the red tsunami that Republicans were hoping for, that didn't arrive. The Democrats are having a good, bad night. The results are still coming in, but it looks like Republicans will narrowly win control of the House. The Senate remains a toss-up, though it's looking likely to remain in Democratic control, at least as of this recording.

And some commentators are saying they haven't been this surprised by an election since 2016. How did Republicans not have a huge night in this economy? How did they not have it? So what happened?

To talk it all out, we're back with journalist Mary Catherine Hamm, Josh Kraushaar from Axios, Batya Anger Sargon from Newsweek, and new addition Olivia Nuzzi from New York Magazine, who's joining us from Vegas, where she hasn't slept a wink. Guys, thanks so much for being here. Sure thing. Thanks, Barry. Thank you. Before we get into the state-by-state stuff...

I want to hear your first impressions of last night. How are you interpreting what the voters told us? MK, let's start with you. Well, first, the fact that I was eating cookie dough right before this began is more a comment on my pregnancy than the election. I'm okay with divided government if that's where we end up.

But look, many Republicans are probably eating cookie dough this morning. And I should also say as a pundit and as just an industry corrective that I think is helpful, I haven't been that wrong about an election since 2006. So I am happy to eat my crow along with my cookie dough, everyone. Just put it out there. I was wrong. But I think what it offered was...

pretty clear picture outside a very big asterisk in Florida, which we will get to. But the idea that the GOP as a viable alternative to people who were genuinely upset about the state of the country, as you see in the exit polls, was not operative, that they didn't respond that way in many cases. And some of that is candidate choice. Some of that, I think, is the issue of abortion, which I under read in some of these results. And I think the results give Republicans a

Batia, in two sentences, what's the headline from last night?

To me, I think the headline is, are we seeing now what Trumpism without Trump will look like? I'm not so sure it's an off-ramp for the GOP, an off-ramp from Trump, but I think the themes that he put on the table are very much there. And I think also, to me, one of the things I really noticed was

You know, Democrats used to talk a lot about kitchen table issues and accuse conservatives of focusing on culture war issues. You know, the whole what's the matter with Kansas narrative.

And that really seems to me to have been reversed. It's the Democrats now who seem to me to be running on much more cultural issues, Republicans running on kitchen table issues. But I think what we saw in last night's midterms was, you know, cultural issues have significance for people who really don't like Trump, really don't like what he brought to the table. We'll

We'll get to abortion and also I think culture war picks up on DeSantis' win. He's running on a very different kind of culture war than we're historically used to and seems to be winning. Olivia, you tweeted in the wee hours of Wednesday morning when I was doom scrolling my phone and the baby was keeping me up. You tweeted this, a big night so far, again, for the idea that we really don't know a fucking thing. Excuse the French.

What did you mean by that? I did not say excuse the French. That was your word. But I mean, I just think there is a tendency in...

Thank you.

have confirmed like again and again that the people that we consider to be experts and all of the metrics by which we judge what is likely to happen, they're not really working anymore.

anymore. I feel like we're just sort of, everyone is afraid of their own shadow. Everyone is terrified, at least in the mainstream and the liberal media, of which I am a part, of being embarrassed, of being wrong, of being blamed if things go a certain way, of being blamed for a Trump victory or a Republican victory again. Everyone is just kind of scared shitless and

And I just think that's driving a lot of the punditry and a lot of the decisions that newsrooms are making about how we predict these things and whether or not we ought to be predicting these things and how we're framing the polling, how we're framing the projections. And I just think everyone needs to get more comfortable with the idea of uncertainty. It's also the case that

For several years now, at least in my time in the media, there has been the idea that data is king. I think that again and again, we've seen in the last few elections...

that these projections are not super sophisticated and they do not tell us more necessarily than going and interviewing real people where they really live and finding out what they really think and how they really feel and what's really driving their decisions. If they are just on a spreadsheet or however the fuck these people who do math make these projections, I certainly don't know. It doesn't seem to be working. And I just think there needs to be a bit more humility in the way that we approach all of this

And I don't think that there will ever be any recovery in terms of trust in the media until we can all be open about the fact that we don't necessarily always know what we're doing. Often we make mistakes. So that's kind of where I was at last night watching the – and just watching people just contradict themselves.

in the course of 24 hours about things like exit polls and whether or not to trust them. It's just ridiculous. It's beyond the point of parody. And I think we are getting embarrassed again and again, and maybe we should change our approach. You told us last night that we don't know a thing, and I totally understand the need for humility, especially in the press over the past few years. I think...

If we did learn one thing from last night, and I hesitate even to say this because who knows where we'll be a few hours from now, but it seems to me that Donald Trump did not have a good night, or at least many of the candidates that Trump endorsed, some of whom he handpicked, didn't.

did not have a good night. Thinking, of course, of Dr. Oz, handpicked by Trump in the Pennsylvania Senate race over many better candidates, I think, like Dave McCormick. Doug Mastriano ran for Pennsylvania governor, crushed by Josh Shapiro. I'm thinking of Don Bolduc in New Hampshire. And then many of the candidates that Trump actively trashed did great.

I'm thinking of Brian Kemp in Georgia, Republican governor who Trump personally attacked over and over again throughout his campaign. I'm thinking of Chris Sununu in New Hampshire. These people won and sometimes over celebrity opponents like Stacey Abrams. Josh, what do you make of all of this?

Well, I agree with Olivia that a lot of intellectual humility is in order, especially when expectations really veered quite a bit from August and September to October and November. I mean I remember – I was in New Hampshire in September writing about how the nomination of so many MAGA-oriented candidates could cost Republicans money.

Senate seats, House seats. The expectations in mid-September were very much in line with what the results were last night. But then we saw some very bullish polling in the final month. We saw Republicans pour votes

$57 million in the deepest of blue districts in California and Oregon and across the country. The Republicans I talked to, I mean, the expectations kind of built upon each other. And there was a lack of humility, a lack of sense that things might not go as well as planned. You know, one of the things I saw that was very interesting in the exit poll data, the somewhat disapproving voters of Biden

Democrat. They stuck with the Democratic Party. There's a sense that, yeah, if you had a Krista Nunez, if you had a Doug Ducey, if you had a traditional Republican, those are the types of candidates that I would gravitate to, they would gravitate to.

But you had so many candidates that even if they weren't endorsed by Trump, they had some connection to January 6th or they said things about abortion that just sounded a little off key. They did not seem normal. They didn't seem like the Democrats have had issues with abortion.

being appealing to the so-called normie voters, but so did Republicans too. And I think that was pretty clear last night. The folks who somewhat disapprove that Biden broke Democrat. And I was also surprised that the independents, you know, I was working under the assumption that as we see in many midterm elections,

If you're not – Independence, we're going to break Republican. They break late. If you're not voting Democrat at the end of October, you're not going to stick with an incumbent lawmaker, with a party in power. And both the Fox and the CNN exit polls had independents slightly going towards the Democrats, which that was my biggest surprise from last night. So you're right, Barry. You hit the nail on the head that the two biggest success stories for the Republicans last night, Ron DeSantis –

And Brian Kemp. And those were the two Republicans who politically, for different reasons, had kept their distance from the most toxic elements of Donald Trump. But.

But you had mentioned before that this is what Trumpism looks like without Trump. And I wondered if you could elaborate on that, because I see last night as like if there was ever going to be a moment, if there was ever going to be a sign that it's time to sort of put down the bottle and walk away. It's this morning. Do you think that the Republicans are going to actually do that?

I think that, I mean, if you watch Fox News last night today, in addition to seeing the brilliant Josh, you will also see a lot of people speaking very harshly about the former president. They've been critical, I think, since January 6th. There was definitely a sense in like, you know, Rupert Murdoch world that that was not acceptable. And, you know, that freed up a lot of certain kinds of discourse. But it was really sort of magnified last night and this morning.

But I think the question is, how do you define what Trump's legacy was? How do you define what his impact is? How do you define what he did, right? What his accomplishment was?

If, like me, you see it as putting working class Americans back on the table in a big way, if, like me, you see it as giving a voice to socially conservative but fiscally protectionist Americans, of whom there are many, who both parties basically ignored and abandoned for generations, then I think Ron DeSantis is 100% the inheritor of that.

But without Trump, without the baggage of the man himself. If, however, like the Democrats want you to believe, to you, you see Trump as this, you know, January 6th insurrectionist, democracy flouting, breaker of norms, who's in, you know, I think they still believe is a Russian plant. Then clearly someone like DeSantis, who is much more dignified...

much more mainstream in his mean would seem like a break from that. So I think it really all depends on what Trump represents to you, which of course is a cipher for what political party you are, but even more than that, what class you identify with.

To Bacchia's point, I think that the Republican Party, regardless of whether Trump is there or not from here on out, is a more populist party. That is just the facts on the ground. And that's one of, I was never a Trump supporter, but one of my issues with some of my brethren who were critical of him was that they didn't deal with the facts on the ground, which is that voters were asking for something different. Right.

They were just asking for something different. They were not taking the 2016 version of GOP policies or pitches. They didn't want them. And so you have to deal with that. And so I think it's interesting to me that, and I may eat crow in just a couple hours on this one, but Laxalt in Nevada is a candidate who united those who are more populist with a more traditional conservative Republican. DeSantis has the power to do the same thing. Now, if you're talking about

whether you can combine those things and then also knock off a Trump if he ends up running, I think you have to have someone with a little bit of the, shall we say, gumption of a DeSantis, right? It's because I'm not going to use, I guess I won't use the bad words. But I think regardless, you have a more populist party. And if the candidate that those who are critical of Trump

want to go up against Trump, does not respect the fact that that's what voters want, then they won't beat him. So at the same time, it was a good night for moderate Democrats like Abigail Spanberger holding onto her seat in Virginia, John Fennerman in Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania.

And it was kind of a bad night for woke ones like Beto O'Rourke in Texas, like Stacey Abrams in Georgia, who without ever winning a major election, either of these candidates, they've both been seen and touted as the future of the Democratic Party. So if last night was a repudiation of Trumpist candidates, was it also a repudiation of woke Democrats?

Yeah, well, I thought it was notable that the two Democrats in the House that Liz Cheney endorsed, Alyssa Slotkin and Abigail Spanberger, won.

And I thought the fact that Cheney, who has been in a pretty rough political spot over the last year, she had a good night. And some of the moderate national security first Democratic lawmakers ended up prevailing despite the expectations that they could lose. You know, I think the lesson writ large is that extremism doesn't sell. We just talked about that on the Republican side. But, you know, Mandela Barnes, who was certainly a notch at least to the left in

in Wisconsin. It looks like he's probably going to lose in what could have been a winnable race in Wisconsin. And what you see, you know, in the Democratic Party is that you have these donors that back the most left-wing celebrity-type candidates.

And they don't support the Henry Quayars or, you know, they don't get as much support for some of the folks who are a little more pragmatic. A little less sexy. Yeah. And we saw – sure, Josh Shapiro, Jared Polis. I mean Colorado was a big success story for Democrats last night. Michael Bennett. And that's going to be a lesson. I think –

We talk about Trump without Trumpism, but there's also kind of Bidenism without Biden, where you have the message that Biden ran on in 2020, which is very appealing. It's unifying. It was the anti-Trump coalition of 2020. And the Democrats that could capture that most effectively were the ones that did quite well last night. We'll be right back. My eyes have seen the glory.

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. All right, let's look at some key states, starting with the one that we keep talking about, which, of course, is Florida. Well, thank you so much.

You know, over these past four years, we've seen major challenges for the people of our state, for the citizens of the United States, and above all, for the cause of freedom. We saw freedom in our very way of life. In so many other jurisdictions in this country, wither on the vine. Florida held the line. DeSantis crushed it.

No other way to spin it. Not only did Republicans show up big for him, but he won swing voters. He won Hispanic voters. He won voters who didn't vote for him four years ago. He carried blue counties like Miami-Dade, I think by something like 10 points. Leadership matters. We refuse to use polls and put our finger in the wind. Leaders don't follow. They lead.

We set out a vision. We executed on that vision and we produced historic results. And the people of this state have responded in record fashion. Is the Republican Party the party of Ron DeSantis now, Olivia? I keep thinking back to the primary debates in 2015 and I watched them again recently and I

Looking back, it's easy to say that I knew what was going to happen. But Trump is just so... It's impossible to look away from him and everyone else on the stage looks so puny compared to him and uninteresting. And they are. And...

It is because he has, you know, this is wholly unscientific, but he has star quality. You know, he has a certain charisma, a certain X factor that translates extremely well on camera and through all forms of media. And there's a reason why he has been a celebrity for, you know, most of the last half century. Yeah.

And I think it's easy when he is isolated or any other candidate is isolated and people are yearning in their hearts for some sort of alternative to this candidate who keeps punishing them for loving him and supporting him and just wants to burn everything down and almost succeeded. But I think until you see someone like that actually running against Trump, it's

very, very hard to know whether or not he will really live up to the hype. I mean, anecdotally, for whatever it's worth, which I think it's probably worth as much as like a poll, for the last several years, pretty consistently, and more so in the last year, at events very far away from Florida, I see people all the time in DeSantis merch and ready to talk about why they want to support him. And it's just not typical. I mean, you guys can speak to

this too. I don't typically encounter people hundreds or thousands of miles away from a state eager to like pitch me on the virtues of a candidate that they hope runs several years out. So I think that's worth something and I think all the hype around him is worth something. But I was going to say to what we had just been talking about, I think in some ways the lesson, I think maybe we took the wrong lessons from Trump's rise and Trump's victory where a lot of people on the right are

were sort of mimicking him and coming up with these pitches and slogans and way of speaking that echoed how he was speaking. And in response to that, on the left...

A lot of politicians became quite popular, certainly became successful in the media, became successful with donors, if not electorally. Coming up with an alternative to that, something comparably to the left that sounded like a good retort to what he was offering.

And I think maybe the actual truth is that he is a celebrity who is extraordinarily charismatic. And what he was saying a lot of the time was not as important as we thought that it was. And it was not as meaningful to his supporters as we thought that it was and that they were really laughing quite a bit of it off. And it's totally possible that...

Last night at DeSantis' victory party, supporters were chanting...

Two more years, obviously a nod to the potential 2024 run. The night before the midterms, everyone was tuned in to this rally in Ohio where the entire Trump family was arrayed for what was supposed to be a big announcement that never came. Now people are saying Trump is going to announce sort of a week from now in Mar-a-Lago. Do you think that last night changes any of that, MK?

Look, if I knew what changed Trump's mind, I'd be in a much better place right now. But what I think is that Ron DeSantis made a statement about being the alternative in the best possible way possible.

Yeah.

And so I think while I want to say that it's hard to understate how disappointing the night was for the GOP overall, it's hard to overstate how well he performed in Florida. And the idea that Florida is just this battleground state now disappeared is kind of amazing, particularly when it comes to a lot of that coming from Hispanic and Latino voters. I think I'll disagree with Olivia a bit in that I think

I think you're right that Trump voters are not always interested in policy per se, right? This idea that they want something a bit more populist, I think, than what the GOP was offering. But it's not really specific on policy. But they do require a sort of punchiness and pugilism that many, like, say, I don't know, Mitt Romney, were not offering them. Yeah.

But that DeSantis really does, and does in a much smarter way. I will also say, like when he goes against the media, he's like, I have a slate of facts in the back of my head. Let me list them for you, media. This is why you're wrong. That's not Trump. Trump's like, you're a big jerk face, right? Yeah.

It's a very, very different approach, but it's one that Trump voters like from DeSantis. And the last thing I'll say is that I do think DeSantis and Trump probably have to be head to head or quickly eliminate the rest of the field here or else you end up with the same problem you did in 2016. You know, if I could, if I could jump in here, like if you saw the New York Post cover today, it's,

It's the future. It is a... Well, it's like he's our new Reagan. I mean, it's like a... It's this glorious photo of him with his hand outstretched to the heavens and his beautiful family behind him in front of the American flag. It looks like a cartoon. And I have to imagine as the only newspaper that Donald Trump actually probably at least...

at each day and probably skims, that will mean more to him than, you know, any real analysis of what the results were last night. And I also think, you know, he's not a kingmaker the way that he would probably need to be on paper to be welcomed with open arms.

by the party if and when he announces again. But it's not the kiss of death from him either when he endorses someone. I think that it kind of proved that somewhere in the middle last night, at least based on where we are right now. You know, I talked to him in mid-July pre-raid and I went into the conversation thinking he absolutely is going to run and the media is already downplaying it because they don't want to face it.

And, you know, we're going to need to reckon with this. And throughout the conversation, he was saying that he had made up his mind and it was just a matter of when he would announce, not if.

And I left the conversation thinking, is he really running? I did not think that he wanted to. He did not sound like someone who wanted to run for president again. He sounded like someone who wanted me to think that he wanted to run and wanted me to print that. But he did not. It just didn't sound like his heart if there is one was going to be in it.

But I think that we can't forget the fact that he is under many investigations currently that are ongoing that are causing immense legal and potential financial distress. And there's a certain amount of protection there.

that actively running for president could offer you. And that is one of the big reasons when you talk to people around Trump who are still in contact with him, who are still working for him, that is something that they routinely mention as a large motivating factor. It's not like he's making a rational political decision the way that, you know, Emmett Romney, to bring him up again, would make.

He has all sorts of different totally weird and specific to Trump things that are factoring into this. And I think it's important to remember how unusual a figure he is and what unusual circumstances these are when we assess, you know, what is he going to do next? Olivia, are you hearing anything sort of in the aftermath of last night from the Trump campaign about how this changes his calculation? No, but I should make some calls when we hang up.

Yeah. Okay. Looking forward to reading whatever reporting comes of that. Okay, guys, let's go from Florida to Georgia. Oh, y'all are great. Thank you. As we mentioned before, Brian Kemp won easily over Stacey Abrams, who did concede in this election. And he gave this really kind of heartfelt acceptance speech where he essentially said... As you all know, there was a lot of people in high places...

who thought tonight's victory would never happen. But just like so many times before, you all and Team Kemp proved them wrong. Everybody was against us, not just the usual suspects in the mainstream media, but also the standard bearer of our party, President Trump. The media here and around the world watching this race will try to make this victory tonight about a lot of things.

They'll say it was about Joe Biden. They'll say it was about Stacey Abrams, Donald Trump, because that makes for flashy headlines and generates a lot of website clicks. But here's the truth. This election was about you. It was about you.

The people of Georgia. His speech, I think, was softer in tone, but quite similar to the speech that DeSantis gave. They opposed our measured approach to protecting both lives and livelihoods. They won because they kept the state open. According to the pundits and the so-called experts, if you wanted to keep your barbershop open, you were a threat to public health.

If you didn't want a government forcing you or your family to get vaccinated against your will, you were part of the problem. They kept extreme ideology out of the schools. And it was also about making sure our kids recover from pandemic learning loss and get the best education they can in a safe, welcoming environment.

free from politics or divisive ideologies. And they focused on policies, economic policies and other policies that help the state. We did not waver. We hunkered down. And by God, we kept chopping. Josh, what does Kemp's victory signal to you?

Well, look, two things. He was one of the very few Republicans who stood up against election denialism on the right in Donald Trump and election denialism on the left in Stacey Abrams back in 2018 at least. I actually was struck that she did concede unequivocally last night, and that's good. I actually think it's encouraging, by the way, that a lot of these Trump-endorsed Republicans are conceding once the vote counts are in. The bar is so low. I know. The bar is low, but we're passing it. We're passing it.

You know, look, I think as far as Governor Kemp goes, he was able to build a broader Republican coalition based on policy. He's not Ron DeSantis. He doesn't have that, I don't know how you describe, intellectual charisma. I don't think DeSantis necessarily has all that charisma himself, but at least as you guys were talking about, he has these facts at his command and can really inspire some of his supporters that way. But Kemp just ran a traditional Republican campaign. He benefited from kind of resisting the most

Trumpian wing of the party. And he also scored a lot of points by challenging a lot of Stacey Abrams narratives about so-called voter suppression and a lot of the theories she was endorsing from the last election. But yeah, the COVID, I mean, look, I also have said this for the last couple of years that the scar tissue of what happened during the pandemic, of the COVID closures, of the regulations, I mean, that is another through line between Governor Kemp and Governor DeSantis.

And the fact that they kind of went against the conventional wisdom and succeeded both economically, educationally, you know, COVID may be behind us, but trying to figure out how to make government work effectively. By the way, Florida counted votes very fast and effectively and efficiently in a way that we're not seeing in a lot of other states, Georgia as well.

So making government work, like if Florida and Georgia are examples of government competence, government effectiveness, that is a winning, a winning Republican message going forward. And whether it's DeSantis, Kemp, or anyone else, I think they'd be well-suited to delivering that argument. Yeah, I'm biased because I want that to be the argument and the takeaway, but I also think it's true. They did focus on governing. They governed in a slightly different way and led when things –

when these sort of popular notions were lined up against them and stuck by what they were doing. And I do think that that mattered to voters and built a broader Republican coalition, which is what you want to do. The other race in Georgia is the race for Senate between Warnock and Walker, which is still too close to call and seems likely to head for a runoff.

And I wonder what you guys make of the fact that so many Georgia voters seem to have voted for Kemp for governor, but Warnock for Senate. Yeah.

So what does that tell us? Last week, we were talking about how the narrative in the press is that we are more partisan than ever, more polarized than ever, but maybe not so much. In many of these races, it seemed like voters sort of split the ticket. And partisanship doesn't actually seem to be voters' primary motivator. And Georgia seems to be a really good example of that, Batya. Yeah.

I think Pennsylvania is as well, right? Because Shapiro did a lot better than Fetterman. I mean, Fetterman won, but clearly there were a lot of people who voted for Shapiro and for Oz, right? I don't have a lot to say about that, except I think it's very heartening and exciting. And it filled me with optimism to see voters making decisions like that. And I think related to that, in Florida, I think I disagree with you, MK. A lot of people were saying Florida is now solidly red, right?

But I think what's more likely is that a lot of Democrats voted for DeSantis, a lot of people who are going to vote for Democrats again. I mean, I guess we'll find out when there's more detailed polling results. But to me, it seems much more like he managed to create not just a working class multiracial coalition, but actually a bipartisan coalition of middle and working class people. And that, you know, there was this kind of easing of...

what the media very much wants us to see as intense, deep polarization that has us at each other's throats. Let's go to Pennsylvania since Bacha brought it up, my home state. Trump's candidate, Dr. Oz, loses to John Fetterman. Who not only secured all of the Democratic-leaning districts, but made key inroads in rural counties where Democrats have been getting crushed since 2016.

And I got to say, because his mental health and competency became a key factor in this election. We launched this campaign almost two years ago. His victory speech looked like he was doing much better than he was even a few weeks ago. And we had our slogan. It's on every one of those signs right now. Every county, every vote.

every county, every vote. Spoke with a lot more control than he showed in his debate performance. That's exactly what happened. We jammed them up. Josh, what does that mean that Fetterman was able to do well, not just with swing voters, but also with some Trump voters?

You know, I think this was actually a race when you talk about perhaps some biases among folks in the New York, D.C., Accela Corridor. Oz ran the kind of campaign that was geared toward the Philadelphia suburbs, right? He ran the kind... With his crudité moment. Yeah, and Fetterman was certainly not... I mean, I can't tell you how many folks in the business world were just wondering if Fetterman's going to wear his hoodie if he's elected to the Senate, right? I mean, there was a cultural disconnect. And look, we talked about how we thought...

I certainly thought partisanship was going to reassert itself across the country, but certainly to a degree in Pennsylvania. And it looks like from the returns that Fetterman did very well in a lot of these blue-collar parts of the state, Erie County, for example, or the Lehigh Valley. These are areas that are swing areas, have a lot of blue-collar voters, and I'm pretty sure Fetterman's style image appealed to them. And he also managed to hold his own ground too in the suburbs.

So, you know, I always feel, I always felt like that was a race that would almost be a test of sort of the, the Accela corridor. Cause I, you know, I admit, like I thought Oz was sort of more appealing to your typical suburban swing voter and maybe he was, but

But Fetterman had some additional appeal. And I think also a lot of people, you know, they may have empathized, you know, more than the punditry did with his performance in the debate and understood the health challenges he was facing. So, you know, that is a big, not only was that a big win, because that was the bellwether of bellwethers for the Senate. But is it also that

that Fetterman has a kind of, I hate this word because it's so hollowed out, but a kind of authenticity. I mean, I officiated a wedding with this guy once and he showed up in mesh basketball shorts and flip-flops. I mean, he kind of has this, I don't give a fuck quality that I think a lot of people are drawn to that are sick of politics as usual. I mean, Oz has a Botoxed

phoniness to him that I, it was just so clear if you were just looking at that debate aesthetically, which would have been obviously a lot better for John Fetterman, it was so clear he had this smirk and he just, he is a TV doctor. And I think, I think that definitely has something to do with it. But I also think, I mean, this was always going to be the, at

a test of whether or not such a bruising Republican primary process driving the eventual victor to further and further to the right was going to be able to translate in a general election. And I guess the answer in this case was that it did not translate. Oz had to

make a lot of compromises and become this very Trumpy, far-right candidate that by all accounts, you know, he did not resemble who he was allegedly prior to this campaign at all. And his attempts to be everything to all people, his attempts to be a kind of Youngkin-like figure to some groups of people some of the time during the general election just didn't work. You can't, in this media environment anyway, talk to one group of voters one way and another group

of voters another way and expect people to not really see who you are. And I think it's another lesson, like, you know, Youngkin did not have a bruising primary process. Youngkin was able to be all things to all people and to kind of campaign very gracefully in

Northern Virginia and in rural Virginia and not appear to be full of shit about it. And Oz did not get to do that because of the primary process. And I think he just was not a great candidate. I mean, he didn't live there. He lives in New Jersey. He said that he lived on his father-in-law's lawn, basically. I think people can just see through that.

Josh, I wanted to ask you, do you think that President Obama showing up for Fetterman had a deep impact on the race? So I just want to – before we get to Obama, I think the one county where Oz did better than Trump was Pike County on the border with New Jersey. So I think it tells you something about where that race was. That's a great question about Obama. Yeah.

I talked to a lot of Democrats last night who actually said Obama was like the key closer for the party. Not only did he do the most events, but Biden was just not capable of being an effective surrogate. He wasn't even the lead. What was it? Biden went first, then Shapiro, then Fetterman, and then Obama closed it out as the keynoter in Philly. And look, I think that turned out Democrat. Democrats showed up and Obama was good. He brought his A game. Let's talk about Arizona. Yeah.

If there was a state to watch, I feel, to sort of look at to the future, what we were told was the future of the post-Trump MAGA party, right? Standard bearers of the new right. It was the race for the governor's mansion in Cary Lake, sort of TV superstar who also happens to deny elections.

And then also Blake Masters, you know, funded by Peter Thiel, touted by Tucker Carlson. These were supposed to be sort of runaway success stories. And yet as of taping, it's too close to call both elections. I think Mark Kelly is slightly ahead. The astronaut who made the bold decision to campaign in the final week of the race with the son of John McCain saying he didn't have any animosity toward Republicans.

who was pulled ahead of Blake Masters. And then, you know, we have Carrie Lake who has not sort of rode to victory. It's not been a romp. She might not win at all.

I'm curious what you guys make of their underperformance. I think I see Arizona and Pennsylvania sort of as mirror images of each other for me, where it's like I find them both sort of strange and confusing lands. But Pennsylvania leans a little more blue, and Arizona generally leans a little bit more red. But if you tick off the wrong constituency...

even inside your party in those states, things can get a little sticky. And I think in this case, look, well, I thought Meghan McCain had a nice suggestion, which is that maybe if you're... Stop trashing my family. Stop crapping on her family while you're running in the state of Arizona, which, you know, you can, a little discipline and you can really manage that. But I thought particularly Carrie Lake, look, this is the danger of having a more extreme candidate who is nonetheless talented. I think she's like...

Very clearly, objectively talented. But that is not always going to serve you all the way across the finish line. And I do worry about that state when it comes to the election security and confidence issues.

issue because someone like Carrie Lake, who is a very gifted orator, if she does not get across the line and a charismatic leader, is going to make an issue of some of the problems there, which is another reason that I wish every state would just be Florida when it comes to tabulating their votes so that we can all feel a little better about that and stave off these kind of dangers in the future.

But yeah, I just think both of them little out there, even if they're talented. And I think Master's pretty decent as well when I saw him debate at not looking out there and putting on a pretty good show.

Josh, you've covered Arizona for years. You said last week that in a usual year, Republicans should be crushing it. What do you make of these results? Well, look, you know how we always say Twitter isn't real life and usually we're talking about folks on the left? I mean Twitter isn't real life for a lot of these new right folks who think that everything is revolving around Elon Musk or Peter Thiel or David Sasse. I mean there's like a new right online platform.

you know, niche that people are on social media. You know, Elon Musk, I've sort of been surprised by his tweets lately. And I think sometimes he says some sensible things, but sometimes I feel like he's kind of caught up in this whole, this whole movement. And it doesn't reflect your average swing voter in the country, in Arizona. And Masters was sort of the epitome, like to some extent too, but Masters was this new right, Peter Thiel-backed,

candidate who just had no real political skill he couldn't connect to to voters he was kind of operating in a very intellectual space

And Lake, like we talked about this on the pre-election show, but she doubled down with the base instead of trying to appeal to John McCain voters. That's just not good politics. Like whatever you think about her and her charisma and her skills, she wasn't trying to broaden the coalition, which is pretty broad. Arizona, you should be able to elect a Republican in this type of political environment. Right.

So I feel like – I mean Arizona has always had a pretty hard right element to the party. McCain kept it in tap when he was running the show. But yeah, like I feel like this is an example, especially with Masters, of the right kind of operating in its own echo chamber as well. And boy, I think these results were a real political wake-up call to a lot of folks who thought that the new right, the Masters type of candidate is the political future. Yeah.

But is it candidate-specific? Because I'm curious, you know, you've covered Arizona a lot. That whole area of the so-called Sun Belt is changing a lot the last several years, right? So is it a function of Lake and Masters and specific candidates, you know, people reacting to them? Or is it just demographic shifts and, you know, other factors that are not candidate-specific? So I thought it was really interesting, yeah.

that Masters brought in Lindsey Graham as one of his leading surrogates in the final few weeks of the campaign in Scottsdale, Arizona, in those same swing suburban areas that where a lot of people, snowbirds are moving down from, you know, Illinois or, you know, California or wherever. You know, like Masters, I think under...

maybe late in the game knew he had to play ball with McConnell knew how he had to kind of reach out to broaden the coalition but ultimately it was too late and he had just said so many things alienating these folks that you know it doesn't look like it's going to work out very well for him

Josh, what's your take on why Masters couldn't pull it off, but J.D. Vance, who comes from that same world, that same sort of teal-funded, right-wing sphere, elitist sphere, come populism, what was different in Ohio? Well, Ohio's a more Republican state. So Trump won Ohio by eight points. I think Vance has only won by six, and DeJuan won by like 20 points. It

You know, like the political environment will take you so far. Vance also got money from McConnell. Like if McConnell decided to, out of spite, not support J.D. Vance, not to bail him out in a sense in that campaign, you know, it would have been a lot closer. But ultimately, you know, McConnell's big super PAC essentially decided to spend money that would otherwise have gone to a state like Arizona or a state like Colorado and spent it in Ohio.

And even with that money, you know, I did not think that was an impressive win by J.D. Vance. Vance is also famous in a mainstream way, right? I mean, he wrote a mega bestseller that turned into a popular movie. He was a known entity before he transitioned into this new career in politics. Yeah.

Do you think that has anything to do with that? The Vance that wrote Hillbilly Elegy was kind of unrecognizable, right, from the Vance that wrote it. I mean, I kind of wanted to ask, will the real J.D. Vance please stand up? And look...

I mean, I'm kind of curious that McConnell really was such a key ally of his. And I mean, I kind of wonder how he's going to act in the Senate. Is he going to be, you know, is he going to be actually more aligned with leadership because of gratitude for McConnell's help? Or does he go his own way? I think that's an open question.

Right. It's so interesting because to me, when I think about Vance's campaign, if you have sort of for each candidate, like the one thing that sticks with you, for me, it was his opposition to funding the war in Ukraine, which I think was, you know, extremely admirable, cards on the table. But that's going to put him at...

extreme odds with the kind of Republican establishment that helped him get elected. And so it'll be really interesting to see that play out, I think. What do we make of the fact that he beat Tim Ryan, moderate, honorable Democrat, who it seemed to me ran a really excellent campaign? I think one of you the other day said he was running the Glenn Youngkin playbook, but for the Democrats.

Yeah, I think that was my line. It was a great line. Yeah, I think Josh's point is apt. I mean, it can only take you so far. And in a matchup between a populist and an establishment character within your own party, that's one thing. But in a matchup between a populist who's sort of riding a wave of populist dissatisfaction with establishment characters to try to pull off the Youngkin move there, it wasn't enough. I mean, you know, one thing that I think is, I don't,

I don't know how, you know, I don't have the polling yet to say how influential this was, but J.D. Vance went on my friend Darvio Morrow's show twice, not once, but twice. Darvio is a black radio host who owns his own radio network.

And he really did sort of make that effort to at least brand himself as part of this multiracial, multiethnic working class coalition. And of course, you know, we can sit here and chuckle about how overeducated and elite and billionaire he is to be pulling this off. But, you know, in a case where somebody is really putting in the legwork to make that to make that case for themselves, you know, the Youngkin playbook may not just may not have been compelling enough to on the other side of that.

I thought Tim Ryan made a big miscalculation, though, and this is just my hunch. This is not based on polling, but watching their debate, which I thought was one of the best debates, if not the best debate of this cycle, and it was really substantive and interesting, and for the most part, they kind of did not veer into shouting and accusing each other of crazy things. But I thought watching it, I kept thinking...

Why is Tim Ryan trying so hard to paint him as this rabid,

far-right extremist, which he comes across most of the time as extraordinarily reasonable and intellectual. And he seems like the J.D. Vance of Hillbilly Elegy, not of this new branding that he's done for this campaign. If I were Tim Ryan, which I am glad that I am not, but if I were Tim Ryan, I would have run calling him a phony and pointing out that he was

completely betraying who he had been publicly and by all accounts privately his entire life to try to condescend to the Republican base. And I thought it was just a condescending assumption about what voters cared about and how easily

Fooled by slogans they were and by, you know, popular meme rhetoric. And I thought it would have been much better to just point out that a lot of these candidates, and the same goes for Oz, are just full of shit and are really condescending when they do these, when they make these big shifts and try to appeal to what, you know, was Trump's base.

This is a bit of a gut feeling on this race as well. But real quickly, I just think if you're running uphill in a red state, you're a Democrat, your party's in power, it's a midterm year, a little more materially opposing the party in power and not just rhetorically is required for that moment. And so even though he did a good job on the latter, not so much on the former.

Oregon, not usually a state I pay much attention to. I just assume it's going to go blue. And yet this governor's race has been absolutely fascinating. You have the Republican candidate, Christine Drazen,

who is pro-gun rights. Her biggest sort of accomplishment is running on a kind of anti-climate change bill, and she looks like she could win in Oregon. It's still too close to call, and the CEO of Nike, Phil Knight, has sort of famously put in millions of dollars into backing her, saying that the race is sort of existential for the state. Any predictions that you guys venture to guess on how things are going to shake out in Oregon and what it might say? I

I think I might give the Democrat Tina Kotek a very slight advantage based on where the outstanding vote is, but it's extremely close, much closer than any Oregon governor's race has been in decades.

Same story in New York, by the way, Barry, where Lee Zeldin lost but only by about five points, which is a lot closer than we've seen a New York governor's race in some time and to the point where you're seeing down-ballot effects where Republicans ran on the issue of crime almost exclusively in New York and they're going to win. They defeated Sean Patrick Maloney, the head of the House campaign committee for the Democrats.

Oregon, there's a progressive that defeated a very moderate Democrat in a primary who's going to lose as a result of those down ballot effects. So, you know, look, I think it's in Oregon, like very close, like, you know, and we'll see what happens. Dave Drazen still has a chance. But I think what you're seeing is it's really hard to overcome the partisanship in such a deep blue state. But

The margins were, you know, five points in New York, maybe one or two points in Oregon. Those are those are notable numbers, regardless of even if the Republicans don't come out on top. OK, very quick break. And then we'll be back with some of the big issues on the ballot and looking forward to 2024. All right. Let's talk about abortion.

In the aftermath of the Dobbs decision in May, which repealed Roe v. Wade, there were all kinds of predictions, right, especially in the mainstream press that abortion was going to be the definitive issue in this election, maybe even determinate. And then that narrative sort of disappeared. Pollsters were telling us that abortion was trailing voter concerns behind inflation, the economy, crime and immigration.

And I wonder if last night proved that wrong. Exit polls showed that abortion ranked right up there with the economy for many voters and abortion rights referendums, which were on the ballot in four states, California, Vermont, Michigan, and Kentucky, not exactly a liberal readout, one in all four of them.

I've said this over and over, but I think it bears repeating. Americans are pretty moderate on the issue of abortion. Most Americans, when they are polled and pushed...

fall somewhere along the lines of where most European countries are. Abortion okay for the first trimester, not okay afterward. But if they have the binary choice between yes or no, it seems like voters are choosing yes to abortion rights, legal abortion with some restrictions. I'm wondering what you guys make of these referendums and whether or not many sort of

underplayed how important this issue was for voters. Yeah, I think in hindsight, certainly it was a crucial factor in certain states where abortion rights were very much on the line. Michigan, where you had a referendum codifying abortion rights protections, you not only saw that pass

comfortably, but you had Governor Whitmer winning comfortably. You had the whole Democratic slate statewide winning comfortably. And you have Democrats looking like they'll win control of the state legislature in Michigan, which if it went the other way, if a Republican won, if

Uh, Tudor Dixon won that, that they could have rolled back significantly abortion rights protections in Michigan. We saw what happened in Kansas. That was a race where the Democrat actually won re-election in Kansas. Um, and also a big suburban house seat that was once seen as a big battleground. Pennsylvania, again, a state that Democrats overperformed, I think, their expectations, at least in the Senate race and the two house races, there were two or three house races that were very close there.

So, yeah, I mean, look, I think we have such low attention spans these days. So, like, there's a story that's in the news. We argue about it. We debate about it for a month or two. And unfortunately, it was the number one issue. It was on all the campaign ads. And, you know, maybe we perhaps misread the late polls that showed it wasn't the number one issue. The economy was such a dominant issue in the homestretch. But it certainly was a voting issue for a whole lot of voters, Democratic voters, and perhaps some of those independent voters that didn't.

broke more towards the Democrats than I would have expected before the election. I would point out, I think, you know, we lose sight of the fact that it is an economic issue. It is a healthcare issue. And I think a lot of the stories that came out about underage girls, about children being in distress, having their health in jeopardy, their lives in jeopardy, all of that was really, really powerful. And even when it faded as an election-related talking point for pundits, it

and for people talking about the midterms and what was going to come next. All of that still stayed in the headlines, and it remained a central topic of general news coverage and certainly of social media activity that I saw. And I don't think people don't forget what the reality is about their health care and about their livelihoods and about the kind of lives that they want to live. And even if you're not part of the half of the country, that this could directly affect, you know, a woman, right?

And I just think the way that we talk about it is sort of just reductive and overly partisan. And I think voters have like longer attention spans than we do. And on some issues that we need to remember that sometimes that most voters are not in a 24 hour news cycle the way that we are looking for the next thing and the next thing and the next thing to talk about. And they were able to stay focused on some issues that really matter to them like this one.

MK, abortion used to be sort of the heart of the culture war in this country. It doesn't seem to me like that's the case anymore. Well, so I think you're right that many Americans are in this sort of consensus position in the second trimester where limitations are acceptable to them. And Roe actually prevented a lot of that consensus in various states.

And so I think eventually we will probably get to the point where in various states the community standards are reflected in those laws. But right now we're having an active battle in those states about where that consensus is. Right. So that energized a bunch of folks. I think Josh is right. Probably those independent women, some of that breaking toward Democrats at the end may have been from them.

And I think I under read it as a force because we saw it spike and then fall off. But combined with bad candidates, combined with some of these referenda, that's a perfect recipe for leading the Democrats to wins. And so and I would say also beyond the politics, I do want to make the note that I think for pro-life Americans, you know,

worth the trade-off for them to get the overturning if it means this electoral loss, for sure, just from their moral point of view. And it's much like Obamacare in that way, where the loss was worth it. Like, we got this thing on the books that we've been fighting for forever. So I just want to make that point outside of the politics, because that will matter going forward, because I do think

Again, there's a roadmap in Florida for speaking particularly to working class and Latino voters that might be more religious and more pro-life than the average independent white suburban woman was in this election. I also think it comes at a time of just absolutely zero faith in government in general. And we forget that human beings tend to have what we would probably describe as a libertarian streak on a lot of issues. And people in this country certainly have a libertarian streak on a lot of these issues that relate to their personal lives.

And I think we see that reflected here as well, where the idea of a government investigating you and being after you because of decisions that you're making with your doctor, with your family, absolutely terrified a lot of women and a lot of people who care about women. And that's what we're seeing reflected now. Can I make a counterpoint to that? Yeah, please. I think the dog that didn't bark last night was...

Yes.

Arguably Kemp too, yeah. And Kemp as well. And yet maybe they were willing to reward those who governed differently during COVID, but not actually punish those who took away a lot of civil liberties during that time. But I do think a lot of people are so relieved to be beyond that, that the idea of thinking back to the period of time where everyone...

everyone was so restricted. I mean, I certainly don't want to do that. And I think it's hard to think back that way and make your decisions about voting based on what happened and you hope will never ever happen again versus what you know definitely is going to continue to happen in the future.

Are these abortion referendums a great thing for democracy in the sense of, you know, we sent it to the voters. It's not up to justices on a court. Maybe that's a good thing for the country in the long term. Yeah, I mean, that was sort of the judicial theory, the intellectual theory behind the

Dobbs case overturning Roe v. Wade, that it's actually healthier to have this part of the body politic. Yeah, was that argument right? Right. So, I mean, look, I think that is – maybe that's not what – the results from last night weren't what Sam Alito intended. But look, it's good to have this as part of the debate. I think it's good to have these debates to have policy reflect the voters and not have it from on high at the level of the Supreme Court.

In this spring's primary races, many people, myself included, I wrote about it, bemoan the fact that Democrats, including Sean Maloney, head of the DCCC, were saying that nothing is more important than protecting democracy, and yet were actively funding the campaigns of election-denying Republicans because they thought they would be easier to beat. I thought this was like the height of hypocrisy, and I couldn't believe it. Dirty trick. And yet the dirty trick...

appears to have been successful, Batya. What's the takeaway here? I know. I mean, look, dirty politics, you know, people do it for a reason. It does seem to have paid off. I mean, I guess every person has to decide like within their soul if morally it paid off the way that it did electorally. But yeah, it definitely seems to have had the exact impact that they were hoping it would. Josh, what's the takeaway for the Democrats that we're going to see more of this?

Well, look, it's funny because whenever we would talk to the Democratic officials and kind of have our moral outrage dialed up, they're like, are you kidding me? This is politics. We do what it takes to win. And frankly, like that's what I hear from Republicans when it's like, why are you funding Herschel Walker's campaign when he, you know, went up with all the scandal? The political class, the folks that are actually on the front line, all they care about is winning. And I think that's why, you know, the whole Trump movement, the whole reason that they line behind Trump goes back to that dynamic. Yeah.

So there's just not a lot of principles and values when it comes to campaigns and elections. And look, you're right. It worked.

There were two races I was watching to see whether John Gibbs would win in Michigan. The guy who beat one of the pro-Trump impeachment Republicans, Peter Meyer. The New Hampshire Senate race was the other one. It looked like if it was a wave, they could have pulled it off. But look, the Democrats, if you give them a few beers and talk about this, they're like, why are you guys in the media? The reality is I do think that a lot of this rhetoric about democracy, I mean, maybe it's about the health of democracy.

But the notion that democracy is over if, you know, if Republicans, that was all, if you actually talk to a lot of political folks, at least, they will say that this is for mobilizing their own side, for getting grievance checked up on their own side. And do they really believe that democracy is going to be over if Republicans won the House and the Senate? I really don't

think so. To me, it's a perfect American politics moment in this moment, which is that if the Democrat wins in that situation, there's perverse incentives to keep funding these more crackpotty candidates in the future. And as a Republican wins, it's like, yes, more crackpots. So that's where we are. All right. Let's look forward to

what we think is going to happen, right? Republicans take the House. What can we expect on not just day one, first 60 days? Are we going to see a lab leak investigation, the Hunter Biden laptop investigation we've been promised? What do you guys think it's going to look like? Batya, go ahead. Right. I mean, I think that's the big question. The Republicans who were elected were elected, you know, to write legislation around immigration reform, but probably they're not going to do that. Probably what we're going to get is a lot of like

hauling Dr. Fauci in for, you know...

All sorts of investigations and investigations into Hunter Biden's laptop. I'm not saying that there aren't like reasons to, you know, obviously, you know, investigate away. But at the same time, you know, these kitchen table issues that they ran on, it's extremely difficult for me to imagine them now turning around and actually delivering on those things as much as I would like to see that. I think first we'll see a hugely disproportionate amount of coverage compared to how much American people are interested in the leadership race. We're going to see that for a while.

And the fighting over that, if it turns out that McCarthy has this very slim margin and Scalise maybe wants to mount something against him. So we'll see that. I think Batia is right that if the small power that they have in oversight is not used to some extent, not just to scratch that

ideological itch, but to actually work on people's problems in their everyday lives that won't go well for them, but they won't get blamed for much because they likely won't have much power in the Senate or the House. So this is all sort of runway to 2024. So I think dealing with people's actual issues is the wise way to go about it. But there will be a lot of ideological itch scratching as well.

There was a lot of talk going into last night about the end of democracy, democracy being on the ballot. I'm sure you guys saw the New York Times put out five tips for anxious coastal elites who read the Times, who were terrified about what last night would bring, and they advised things like,

breathe like a baby and plunge your face into cold water for 15 to 20 to 30 seconds. That is really good for your skin though, the cold water plunge. So, I mean, now in an amazing twist, it looks like it's the Republicans that are waking up and having to use their deep breathing techniques and being under a weighted blanket. But I guess...

One of the takeaways for me is American democracy lives to see another day, and maybe this is good. Divided government keeps extremes in check. A lot of extreme candidates, Marjorie Taylor Greene aside, lost their election. Is this a hopeful morning in America? I think checks and balances went out. I think moderation was a selling point.

One thing we didn't talk about is that the secretaries of state, the actual like hardcore election deniers, I don't know if any of them won. I know Michigan was a loss. Arizona looks like a loss. Nevada may be a loss. This is a sign that I think the American public is a lot smarter than we often give them credit for. There are a lot of crazy people out there. You go on Twitter, you see the extremes.

But, you know, the critical mass of voters tend to get it. You know, maybe they're not ideologically centrist per se, but they understand who's normal and who speaks to the middle of the country. And look, they come in full circle. The hardcore MAGA folks lost last night and...

A lot of the more left-wing candidates underperformed or lost the celebrities. So this is – look, democracy works. I never was someone, like I said earlier, that was buying into the death of democracy and this is the election that's going to decide everything. We have checks and balances. We go back and forth between both parties, and it's been the case since the last two decades where we pretty much have checks and balances in every election and we're perpetually dissatisfied with the leadership of both parties.

So, you know, I think that this is a reminder that like, you know, the country is a 50-50 country. We're evenly divided. In 2020, it was a disappointing night for Democrats. They thought they were going to have a huge landslide. But Nancy Pelosi had a narrow House majority. And

You had two big wins in Georgia where you had a narrow majority for Chuck Schumer. You could have the opposite this time around where Kevin McCarthy is going to have a hell of a time perhaps trying to manage a narrow majority in the House.

You could have – I mean we'll see what happens in the Senate, but it could be a 51-seat Republican majority when all is said and done. It could come down to Georgia once again. Two years ago it was Georgia. We may have a runoff in Georgia that will decide the Senate majority, and it's kind of the inverse of 2020 where we have an evenly divided country with the other party in charge.

I guess I wonder if last night was more about Democrat strength or Republican sort of lack of seriousness and formidable candidates. I was just going to say that I am generally perpetually dissatisfied, which to me is a sign that democracy is working. But I do think that when it comes to the coverage of candidates and the coverage of politics and our sort of constant obsession with it, and I'd say this as somebody who does this for a living, like risk calculation and risk calibration is really important just as a part of life.

And the idea that we get to the point where every single election is just like this 11 on the scale of 1 to 10 and it's covered that way or every moment of the Trump presidency is covered that way, I think is unhealthy for people. And that is why you see something like the New York Times tips for escaping the election night without a complete breakdown. And it's just something to think about in the way that we talk about things, because if everything's an 11, then nothing's an 11.

Like, we can't exist that way. And sometimes things are just a six, guys. They're just a six. All right. Because I cannot help myself and because I'm a junkie for this kind of thing, let's talk about 2024 for two minutes. You know, it's two years away, and yet you know that's all anyone's going to be talking about, at least in the kind of –

Twitter accounts that we follow here in this roundtable. It seems to me that after last night, Biden seems much more likely to be a candidate in 2024, and Trump seems much less likely to be the candidate in 2024. Agree? Disagree? What do you think?

things are shaping up to look like. I don't think that you seek the presidency three separate times over the course of several decades and finally get it and then give it up willingly with no logical error to beat anyone on the other side. I've always had a very, very difficult time seeing...

how that would work exactly both just for the Democratic Party and how it would work with my understanding. And I think the public's understanding, or at least the public who cares about this, of Joe Biden's personality. I mean, this is someone who's probably wanted to be president since he was like six years old. And I just don't, the way that, you know, president does not give up presidential power. I don't think that any president is going to

give up that office because it seems like the right thing to do or like it would be healthier for the party. I mean, these people don't care. They're out of their minds generally. Yeah, I think it's exactly that for sort of if I may call myself a normie right of center person. If you want a silver lining this for people like me, it is that Biden is more likely to be the candidate and he's more likely to maybe face

a DeSantis in 2024 because Trump is less likely. And so that's the silver lining that someone in my ideological circle is looking at. Tatia? I've never been convinced that Trump was going to run again or necessarily be the candidate

But I don't like to prognosticate because I'm always wrong. But I just was never convinced of that. So I'm not less unconvinced of that today than I was yesterday. But and as far as Biden is concerned, I really think it's going to... I think what we're likely to see is that John Fetterman is going to get better and better. And in a year, his stroke will be very far in the rearview mirror. And that President Biden, unfortunately, is likely to get worse. Now, I don't think that...

that President Biden is ruling like a person who's disabled. I think even if he was in his prime, it's very hard for me to pinpoint any policy decision and be like, he wouldn't have done this 20 years ago. He's ruling exactly the way you would have predicted a Democrat would have ruled at this time in this country. But I think that it is possible that things will get so bad to the extent that, you know, it will be hard for us to call upon images or clips of videos in which he isn't making some sort of gaffe.

and that that could have, you know, that that could impact where we're going to be in 2024. Josh? Yeah, I saw that going back to my theme that voters are smarter and more adept than sometimes the political class. I think it's more likely we actually see new candidates, that Trump doesn't win the nomination and Biden, because of age,

frankly, is not going to run again or not going to be able to be the nominee. The polls are pretty clear. The NBC poll that came out right before the election showed that the folks who supported the Republican Party over Trump was at the highest all-time number within the Republican Party pre-election.

And you look at all the Democratic primary polls or Democratic polling showing that, you know, majorities of Democrats just don't think Biden should run again. And I think it's age, you know, it's just he would be 86 years old at the end of his second term. I think normal people understand that that's a problem. And I think that Democrats can try to tiptoe around that. Biden himself may try to tiptoe around that. But I think that inevitably is going to come to a head.

And I wrote a column in 2015 when everyone was talking about Jeb and Hillary in 2015. That was going to be the nomination. And that's not what the voters wanted. It was the same deal where the voters were like, no, we don't want a rerun of all the nepotism and all that establishment craziness.

And it turned out that that's how we got Trump. And that's, you know, then Bernie, you know, ended up almost giving Clinton a run for her money. I think we're in for a lot of surprises in 2024. And I think the voters are going to have the last say and maybe the last laugh. You guys are all excellent reporters and columnists. After some of the surprises, disappointments, heartbreaks, whatever of last night, are there certain stories or candidates or issues that you're going to be looking at more closely in the weeks ahead? I think 2024 is already beginning.

And so to continue with the theme, you know, I don't think Trump is going to go away easily. And I think DeSantis is going to have to fight

Trump for the nomination. That's going to be an immediate theme. And I'm also fascinated by how many Republicans, I'm really interested in how many Republicans run for president. If DeSantis is sort of the elephant in the room taking on Trump, does you Pence? I mean, you know, the problem, the one thing that could keep Trump in the game is that you have this establishment wing, if you will, of the party, you know, having all these candidates running and dividing up the vote. And is there, it's a collective action issue. And I wonder in the next few months, what's,

whether Republicans can get their act together or it's going to be a 2016 repeat. Batia, what's your next story? What are you paying attention to? I am very interested in the 54% of Puerto Ricans that DeSantis won with. I'm interested in hearing from people like that. I'm interested in hearing from Black Americans in New York about why Lee Zeldin failed to address what they have been saying is a primary concern, which is crime.

So I'm interested in challenging some of my priors and then rewarding some of them, I guess. MK? Yeah, I think Latino realignment in the places that that happened and what it means and what it might mean in other places across the country. Noting, of course, that the Latino vote does not vote for the same reasons all across the country. And also then this, the dog that

that didn't bark, which is the... Angry COVID moms. Angry COVID moms. And maybe they swung left because of the abortion issue, but also related to that, just covering the continuing learning loss story, because that is going to stick around for a long time. Olivia, I know you're in Vegas this morning. What's your next story? I'm going to the casino. No, I'm just kidding. I...

She's actually been doing this podcast from a slot machine. MK, you were talking at the beginning of our conversation about Republicans kind of having this off-ramp with Trump now. And that's something I've been thinking a lot about. And they've had a lot of those, as you noted. And I'm very...

very interested to see how bad the Stockholm syndrome, I guess, really is in the Republican Party, uh, and whether or not there's really any will to break away from him, uh, and kind of get out of this cult of personality. I am always wrong, um,

Always wrong. Except I once predicted that Trump was going to play my way on election night, no matter win or lose. And I was right about that. But I just don't see if he really does get into the race and it's not just like a, you know, distracting thing to get people's attention and attention.

I really don't think that he could be beat in a primary. In a general, obviously, completely different story, but in a primary, I don't think so. Well, Olivia, Josh, Batya, MK, thank you so much for spending the morning with me. It's been a real pleasure. Thanks, Barry. Thanks, Barry. Thank you. And now the end is near, and so I face the final curtain. Thanks for listening. We'll see you again soon. Live.

a life that's full i traveled each and every highway much more than this i did it my