Let the Blame Game Commence!
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This week only, you can get 60% off any new system with a select professional monitoring plan. This is their best offer of the year. Head to simplisafe.com slash crooked. That's simplisafe.com slash crooked. There's no safe like SimpliSafe. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Tommy Vitor. On today's show, Tuesday was for voting, Wednesday was for processing, and Thursday was for blaming.

Blame, blame, blame, blame. Just 48 hours after Americans went to the polls, the Democratic Party recrimination, soul-searching, post-mortem, blame game, pick your cliche has begun. Plus, and some critical good news for Democrats, Senator Jackie Rosen looks like she's going to hang on in Nevada. We'll talk about the latest updates with the ballots still being counted in House and Senate races all across the country and what it all means for fighting back against Trump's second term agenda. Oof.

I just hurt saying that. But first, on Wednesday, Kamala Harris officially conceded to Donald Trump in a phone call and then gave her concession speech at Howard University, where she hoped she'd be giving her victory speech the night before. Then on Thursday, Joe Biden gave his first public remarks since his vice president's crushing loss. Here is a sampling from each. To the young people who are watching, it is OK to feel sad and disappointed. But please know it's going to be OK.

On the campaign, I would often say, "When we fight, we win." But here's the thing, here's the thing. Sometimes the fight takes a while. That doesn't mean we won't win. That doesn't mean we won't win. The important thing is don't ever give up. Don't ever give up. Don't ever stop trying to make the world a better place. We're leaving behind the strongest economy in the world.

I know people are still hurting, but things are changing rapidly. Together we've changed America for the better. Now we have 74 days to finish the term, our term. Let's make every day count. That's the responsibility we have to the American people. Look folks, you all know it in your lives. Setbacks are unavoidable, but giving up is unforgivable. - Getting harder and harder to tell the difference between him and Dana Carvey.

So both Biden and Harris offered versions of it's going to be okay. This is, of course, after they both spent their respective campaigns hammering the stakes of a Trump presidency. Obviously, that's a tough balance to strike. What did you guys think? And any other reactions to either of their speeches? I find that we're going to be okay. Pretty insulting and patronizing, to be honest. You're both giving these speeches.

Because your theory of politics and of the future was wrong that we all were wrong. We're collectively wrong That's just a fact and like I have great respect for Kamala Harris and the campaign that she ran and that hand she played It was very difficult hand, but they're just not in a position to reassure us right now and Like they don't know we don't know And the we will make it through like I hope so I believe so I think we have to fight to make it so but a lot of people will be hurt and

like if we keep sliding back on like reproductive freedom a lot of people could die if we have mass deportations there will be the children of american citizens who will not be okay if there are rollbacks on lgbt rights there will be trans people and gay people who will not be okay so i am not really in the market for bedtime stories right now i would like a little bit less reassurance and more vigilance

And I think politicians getting up there and being our mommy and daddy, I'm just not interested in right now. Anyone else want to take the other side? No, I want to. Can I take a middle ground? These are impossible speeches to give. You're there to simply just acknowledge your own defeat and then thank your supporters and that's

You kind of have to do it. None of them are great. Some of them are remembered more fondly than others. The hard part here is the absolute dissonance between the message 72 hours ago on the campaign trail and right now about what a danger Donald Trump is, that he is unstable, unhinged, will be governing without guardrails. And I think both the vice president and the president could have done more to acknowledge people's fear, people's pain they're feeling right now.

their anxiety about what's going to come in the country to, you know, speak to the fact that for the second time in three presidential elections, a woman has lost to someone like Donald Trump. I was just talking to my wife who is talking, was talking to her mom about not never having seen a woman elected president and trying to explain to her six year old daughter why that hasn't happened. And I think this is hard to do, but, um,

A lot of people don't feel okay right now. A lot of people aren't sure that we're going to be okay. A lot of people are very worried. And so doing a little more to speak to that, I think would have been appreciated in the moment.

Yeah, just to echo on Dan's point, we got a text from a friend I love who's like, I'm really surprised you guys didn't mention Kamala Harris's race and gender and the reasoning behind why she lost yesterday. And the reason for me is I have no doubt that it was a factor in a lot of voters' decision, but I don't have any data to ground that opinion in right now. And I also don't want the takeaway from that conversation to be, well, now the Democrats can never run a woman for president again, because I do not think that's true. I actually think

I think that would be the worst lesson to take away. So I think just to address, you know, what Dan said up front, I found both of their speeches to be like gracious and decent and especially for Kamala Harris because she's

think about she's spent 100 days pouring everything she had into this campaign she's exhausted even in her private moments she's thinking about this campaign she hasn't slept in months and she's expected i think to actually take on a bit of a parental role in the tone of her remarks and to to comfort supporters and voters and people that loved her and i understand that that might be grading to some people like there's a naive version of like we're all going to be okay it's like no you don't know that i think their point is

We are all now charged with fighting to make sure that we're okay, especially for people that have it worse for us. And I think that was the takeaway I got from them. Yeah, it didn't bump me as much just because I think we're going to be okay. It's just almost everyone understands that it might not be true, but it's what you want to hear because people want to be comforted in a time like this. Like, I'm sure we're all getting texts from people and emails that are like, are we going to be okay? Are we going to be okay? And I don't assure anyone we'll be okay, but we can be okay.

Like, it's possible that we can be okay. We don't know. I don't actually think it's useful to spend a lot of time predicting whether we won't be okay or we'll be okay. I think it's about as useful as predicting election winners, which is why I don't really focus on that. Net silver modeled our okayness a thousand times. Which I don't focus on that as much, but I kind of just took it as like...

leadership is about trying to comfort people or inspire people or whatever. And I get, I take your point for sure, but I don't think it's, it didn't really bump me as much. I had the same reaction to Brock, similar reaction to Brock Obama's remarks after the election in 2016. You know, what's funny is,

Our friend Terry Zupat, who is a speechwriter with us in the White House, just has a new book out. And I was doing a book event with him. And in his book, he talks about how the only time in his life he'd ever been disappointed with Barack Obama was that speech. But then he said, you know, looking back on it now, all these years later, I'm glad he said what he did at the time. Because at the time, everyone didn't want to hear that. But he's like, you know, he was right. He was right.

So even though Biden and Harris both said nice things about each other in their speeches, it's knives out at the staff and advisor level. People close to both camps have been making their case to reporters. Pro-Biden Democrats saying the president would have done better and that Harris could have run a better campaign. Pro-Harris Democrats saying it was Biden's fault for deciding to run for reelection in the first place and waiting too long to step aside. What do you guys think?

Should we do a blanket caveat, which is that, so we don't all have to repeat it, running a presidential campaign and putting it together in 100 days is nearly impossible. She did an incredible job. The biggest moment of the entire campaign, maybe the only one that mattered was the debate, and she did better than anyone could possibly have expected. So blanket caveat, now we're going to nitpick.

Great. Starting at the top because I don't want to just repeat ourselves. Do you want to go? I'm happy to nitpick. I was just giving someone else space to speak. Okay. Do you want to start with which side do you? Great. Now I'm going to nitpick. So the substantive critique from the Biden people seems to be two things, that she abandoned the kind of anti-populist messaging and that she failed to respond to

millions and millions of dollars, these anti-trans ads that ran on every football game we ever watched. I didn't find those to be unfair or unreasonable criticisms. I mean, the 10th time I saw the Kamala is for they, them ad, I wondered, boy, do people know something that we don't know about how effective

that ad is. And the New York Times reported today that when Future Forward, the big Dem super PAC tested the ad, it moved the needle 2.7 percentage points in Trump's favor. And that the Harris campaign tested a response ad that didn't work well in focus groups. So they never ended up using it. And I think maybe it's fair to say that letting that go unresponded to was a mistake. Here's the problem with that.

In the states where Kamala Harris campaigned the hardest, those are the places where she outperformed what happened in the other states. Those are also the states that saw the most number of ads. So, I mean, if you just said, okay, what was the effect? I mean, it's hard to measure all these different competing variables. But if you just said, all right, there were states where they ran anti-trans ads and there were states where they didn't. Trump did better in states where they didn't run those ads. That's just a fact of what happened. Well, a lot of those ran nationally. Yeah.

Even so, there was $100 million dumped in Pennsylvania of anti-trans ads. And you can say, all right, well, what was the impact of that money? Maybe it made things harder for her to claw back. Maybe she would have done better if those ads weren't there. I just don't think we know right now. Broadly speaking, that's why the one nagging feeling I have is, that kind of is resonating with me, is because we felt it a bit at the time and it was

which is that answer on The View. How would you do differently than Joe Biden? And she says, well, I can't think of anything. Or when she's asked about how she changed her record from 2020, she had answers that were about, well, I haven't changed my values. And they tried to deal with what was, I think, an incredibly difficult situation

substantive critique, which is you're in the Biden administration. You don't represent a break from the Biden administration. How do you respond to that? They tried to kind of weave a kind of more like vibes based message based argument against that. And then in the same on her, how she differed because it was hard to answer that question of how she had differed from the position she took in the 2020 campaign. And I say, OK, could that be something that has an impact? But even still, I say, OK, maybe those were bad. Maybe those were a problem. Fine.

i am still it still seems very difficult for me to picture how she overcomes the fact that she had 100 days to run this campaign and so i am i am much more amenable to an argument about joe biden's culpability and actually i'm less angry about the decision to seek re-election i don't that's i don't think it was right i think we're paying for it but i'm more angry actually about the month after that debate when what happened was unequivocal and he made that campaign even shorter eliminating the chance to even have a debate

bait about who the nominee should be and also leaving her such a short, short space to mount a credible campaign.

I mean, I just, I struggle with this entire conversation. I can pick 17 things that maybe could have been done differently. I can't pinpoint any of them or all of them that lead to a different outcome in this race. That's true. And so the way I think to think about it going forward is to try to figure out what from the campaign sort of overlaying what the campaign did with the results on what we can learn in terms of going forward. Like what are better approaches, better strategies, better messages?

On that note, I do think it's funny for a campaign that was so good about tailoring their message to what tested well.

the and this was like a hobby horse of mine during the campaign the price gouging stuff like she started with it and then it sort of fell off in the middle of the campaign somewhere and then they kind of brought it back and it was the economic agenda was framed more as small businesses this gonna maybe give you this gonna maybe give you this and there wasn't a lot of bite against corporations that were doing bad things and again i i'm just talking about going forward i think it would be useful

for Democrats to hammer that because you do need people are angry, people are dissatisfied, mostly with the economy. And I think it is fair and also politically useful to go after corporations that are making record profits and screwing people over.

When they are screwing people over, you don't have to say all corporations are bad or capitalism is bad. Not going to comment on any of that. But like, I think it's a good thing to do. And she had a record on those issues as attorney general that I think was very effective. And even voters that I talked to when I brought up her record, that moved them. So I think maybe the way to think about this is the Democratic economic message has not worked in 12 years. It did not work in 2016. Right.

It did not work in 2020. We lost on the economy. In 2022, we won despite our economic message. We lost the voters who cared about inflation. Did we have an economic message in 2022? Well, we had Biden's economic record. Biden did all these things. He talked about them. Democrats ran. They did run a decent number of economic ads. But we won the voters who, the 27% of voters who said abortion was their top issue. We lost the 31% of voters who said inflation was their top issue in 2022. Their economic message did not work here. Yet-

Once again, when you go through all that, you test all the individual policies, all our policies are popular, but we're getting hammered on the most important issue in every single election in modern history. And that is a thing we're going to have to figure out to go forward because Donald Trump has built what looks like a multiracial working class coalition that could dominate politics for a very long time. I understand why everyone's calling it like the anti-trans ad, but I would even go one step further and say that the, that ad had an economic component to it.

because it was, what was it about? Taxpayer funded gender reassignment surgery for inmates who are undocumented immigrants.

And it got right to the heart of a Republican argument that Democrats are giving your tax dollars away to everyone else, all these different interest groups, identity groups, people that aren't you and you're struggling, right? Like that is what that ad was saying, which I think to the extent it was effective, you know, Republicans have tried to run other anti-trans ads over the last several years in other races that have not been effective. They've been a waste of money. They've been a waste of money and they failed.

It just sounds crazy. It just sounds like a crazy way they're doing that. That sounds crazy to me. How can that be true? Yes. So it turns out there's a third option here beside it being the Biden campaign's fault or the Harris campaign's fault. It was the Obama campaign's fault. It was Obama's fault. Here's a blind quote given to Politico by an anonymous former Biden staffer.

Quote, there is no singular reason why we lost, but a big reason is because the Obama advisers publicly encouraged Democratic infighting to push Joe Biden out, didn't even want Kamala Harris as the nominee, and then signed up as the saviors of the campaign only to run outdated Obama era playbooks for a candidate that wasn't Obama.

Those outdated Obama-era playbooks that won him two presidential campaigns, the best record of any Democrat since Roosevelt. But anyway, I just have to say something about this one. No, go. The floor is yours. I am going to generously assume that the constant anonymous sniping from Biden world about Obama or Kamala Harris is

And everyone who worked for them is coming from like the same three or four people. That's that's going to be my generous assumption. And it does not reflect the views of most of the Biden folks. Just stipulate it like Tommy stipulation earlier. Blanket caveat. We all agree. Joe Biden's decision to run for president again was a catastrophic mistake. It just was.

And he and his inner circle, they refused to believe the polls. They refused to believe he was unpopular. They refused to acknowledge until very late that anyone could be upset about inflation. And they just kept telling us that his presidency was historic and it was the greatest economy ever. We just heard him again say that it's the greatest economy ever. Clearly, 70, 80 percent of voters don't believe that. They don't believe that about their own personal financial situation, but they just keep telling us that.

And then after the debate, the Biden people told us that the polls were fine and Biden was still the strongest candidate. And they were privately telling reporters at the time that Kamala Harris couldn't win.

So they were shiving Kamala Harris to reporters while they told everyone else not a time for an open process and his vice president can't win. So he's the strongest candidate. Then we find out when the Biden campaign becomes the Harris campaign that the Biden campaign's own internal polling at the time when they were telling us he was the strongest candidate showed that Donald Trump was going to win 400 electoral votes. That's what their own internal polling said. So like, I don't have a lot of...

I don't know what it means by the Obama era playbook. I think what Dan said yesterday about... They're just mad. They just don't... But let's just try to unpack it. I think what Dan said yesterday about trying to examine, re-examine all the money Democrats spend on field programs is something that... It's a conversation worth having because...

I don't want to overreact here because in 2020, there were people saying, well, the Biden people were too scared to get out of their house and knock on doors and did everything virtually. And that's why the margins were closer. Right. So we kind of learn a new lesson every cycle. But I think it's worth thinking about that spend and the opportunity cost.

That said, all that infrastructure was in place when Joe Biden was the nominee. This wasn't like an Obama thing or a Kamala Harris thing. And then also part of this could be Democrats do need to go back to the drawing board when it comes to figuring out what is the coalition that we assemble to win. The Obama era coalition, that is, it seems to be- We've lost it. That is gone. But on the idea that Joe Biden would have won, I think is what the subtext of that comment was. Again, there were polls showing 80% of voters thought Joe Biden was too old to get a second term.

before the debate, and then we all watched the debate. And then in the last few weeks, Biden was campaigning and he said, "We need to lock Trump up." He created a controversy over whether Trump supporters were garbage. He said, you know, the weird thing about slapping Trump on the ass. Like his moments on the campaign trail weren't flawless either. - You can't, you cannot, you, look. - It's absurd. - Two points. I wanna- - Try to be generous here. - I'm done being generous. - I wanna, stay for the record, I also think all the TV money ad should be,

It should be rethought to. Rethought to. But more importantly, the idea that Joe Biden was going to do better in this race than Kamala Harris is on its face absurd. No one is making that case. There's zero data to support that. There never has been ever. And no one is making that case with their name to it.

I was going to end by saying, if someone would like to put their name on it or even come here and talk to us about it, right here, we can have a nice civil conversation about it. They're more than welcome. And it's a lot better than just sniping to Alex Thompson and Politico and whoever else you want to leak to, which is what they've been doing for a year. The suboptimal place we were put in after the debate was to go from a close to 0% chance of winning to someone who had a chance but was probably an underdog in the race. And that's where we went. And that's how it ended.

We know that. We know that. We know that. Because over 100 days of an extraordinarily well-run campaign, she clawed her way back on all these metrics on which Biden was doing much worse. And she lost by, what, two points? And I like...

Maybe one sign for hope in all of this is there's going to be a lot of infighting. There's a lot of people with different points of views about the future. We have to be generous with one another. We have to listen to one another. We have to be open to one another. But we can all unite in knowing that Joe Biden would have lost and deserves a lot of blame for the situation that we're in. And maybe that's something that can bring us all together.

Well, I mean, also when Harris became the nominee, Obama people, Clinton people, Biden people, like they all came together in that campaign and did a fucking, got really close to winning, you know, and they all worked really well together. Yeah.

And they all put their heart and soul into it and they work their asses off. Right. So it's like this idea that there's all these divisions and blah, blah, blah. It's like the people who just continue to do this. It's crazy because a lot of people from there were had a whole bunch of different bosses all came together to work hard to try to get her to win. Pate of America is brought to you by Zip Recruiter. There's a lot of offices out there. You got law offices at the Oval Office. Got mobile offices. Work from home.

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So beyond the Biden-Harris sniping, there have been a number of other broader critiques about the Democratic Party that we can talk about. Bernie Sanders, whoever the summer had lobbied for Biden to stay in the race but then became one of Harris's most effective surrogates, released a blistering critique of Democrats' whole strategy and identity, saying, quote,

then blamed the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the party and he expressed skepticism that we'll be able to learn our lesson he later told the new york times it's not just kamala it's a democratic party which increasingly has become a party of identity politics rather than understanding that the vast majority of people in this country are working class what did you guys think of bernie's critique is he right that the democratic party has abandoned the working class so my

My problem with the statement. So I largely think that like there is a directional critique that I agree with. Right. That like when Bernie came on Ponce America and talked about we're not talking enough about corporate influence over politics, the money in our politics. We're not talking enough to those concerns of the working class. Like, I believe that I agree with that. I think the nuance that is missing here and I think is important is Joe Biden.

When he won, and one of, I think, his great achievements, and one of the things we talked about when we were beseeching Joe Biden to step aside, is that he listened. He brought in Bernie Sanders. He brought in Elizabeth Warren. He put Lena Kahn at FTC. He canceled student debt. He pursued an incredibly progressive education.

economic agenda. Now, I think we should think about why did that not resonate with people? Why did people not believe that? Why did people not see the effects of that? Why did people still not trust Democrats as messengers? I think those are really important questions that Bernie Sanders is going to be very helpful in figuring out how to solve. But I think to say carte blanche, Democrats abandoned working people is, I think, to embrace

part a reality of our politics and the influence of money on our politics, and in part to embrace a Republican critique and Republican vibes. And I just think those things need to be separated out.

Yeah, I feel Bernie's like rage here and he's got some fair points in his analysis of votes we're losing is absolutely right. But I think the harder thing to reckon with is the fact that Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden worked together to pass COVID relief money, cap the price of insulin. They passed the child tax credit while Republicans voted against all of those things. The Biden administration was great on antitrust.

and breaking up corporations. Joe Biden fought for unions. He went on the picket line and then Donald Trump campaigns with Elon Musk, famous union buster, and wins those working class voters. And so the question is, how does that disconnect happen? And how do we fix that politically? Because we're doing the right things substantively, not enough, not enough. And the messaging wasn't perfect, right? I've criticized the lack of economic messaging on the campaign before, but we're not reaching the voters we need to reach.

We've been dealing with this since the Obama years. And I know President Obama thought, well, we just we should prove that democracy can deliver. And if we deliver for people, for working people, then they'll like the Democrats. Joe Biden certainly had the same theory. And I've thought that would be true as well over the last several years. And I do think that's one of the things we have to reexamine, the idea that like if we deliver for working people, then

economically, they will automatically start voting for Democrats because I think it's more complex than that. The economy in politics is a cultural issue. We think of it in Democrats as a substantive issue. What are the policies we can stitch together to prove to them that we will fight for them? But it's all vibes. Donald Trump doesn't have a policy director. He has three policies about taxes. That's it.

And all of them would screw working people. Yeah, yeah. I mean, but we're losing because the vibe that he gets off, he is coming off as someone who was fighting for a certain set of people. And we are not giving off that vibe. I think you can have a fair critique about

Whether the Harris campaign used as much populist messaging as perhaps it could. Yeah. Maybe that doesn't feel particularly natural to her. That's maybe that's not she's not Bernie. She's not Elizabeth Warren. Yeah. She's not even Joe Biden. Right. Like Scranton Joe. Yeah. Era. But there's a broader issue here is that we are approaching the issue wrong. The last time we won an economic fight was in 2012 when that was last.

that was a cultural war. That was an identity issue, culture war. We had better policies that supported that. That's not really what it was about. And just in case you think we're just simping for Obama here, like we get a lot of help because Mitt Romney was the opponent. Yeah, for sure. You know, and just seemed like a rich, a non-attached rich guy. You know who else is a non-attached rich guy? Donald Trump, right? How culturally, this is to your point, how culturally different do Donald Trump and Mitt Romney seem even though they're both rich guys? But it's worth pointing out, right?

Barack Obama wins a throw the bums out election. He he wins in 2012 against a plutocrat running a campaign against the plutocrat, which is an exception to the rule. Donald Trump wins a throw the bums out election. He loses his reelection when he's now the establishment. Then he wins another throw the bums out election. Right. And so I do think part like I want to I actually agree with everything that we're saying. But I also like there are signs here that we can point to that, like.

Part of this is the the the the energy Donald Trump brings. But part of it is also he got to just he is a he is a walking. Fuck you. That is how he won in 2016. He built an even broader coalition of people who wanted to say, fuck you this time. And there's lessons we can learn from that. But we also shouldn't, I think, overlearn those lessons. And it's a different fight when we're fighting as outsiders taking on an incumbent in a country that is extremely angry at the establishment.

One more point in this to Bernie's point that we've become the party of identity politics rather than understanding that most people are working class. It did make me think that after 2016, after Trump won, it became this sort of like punchline and liberal spaces that, oh, it was economic anxiety because someone said, oh, some people voted for Trump because of economic anxiety. And then you were mocked if you said that, because really everyone just voted for Trump because they were a racist or misogynist or misogynist. And like,

A couple things can be true. There's like a lot of people who are, say, racist things and misogynistic things and who voted for Donald Trump partly because they like that. There's also people who just they did have economic anxiety and voted for Donald Trump despite his racism and misogyny.

And I think that, you know, that's one thing if we're going to be introspective going forward is that like, yeah, there's some people who are just racist to do racist shit. And then when we hear that, we don't necessarily have to say, well, that means that everyone who voted for Donald Trump, the economic anxiety thing was just bullshit. That wasn't that runs into a real that argument runs into a real problem when his largest gains were with Latinos. Yeah. I.

I just want to one just push back to Bernie, though, like Kamala Harris did not play identity politics or highlight her identity at all on the campaign trail at all. The opposite happened where Republicans called her a DEI hire. So they played identity politics in the most racist, sexist way possible. And the Democratic Party did not do that. She went out of her way, I would say. Yeah.

- That doesn't mean the Democratic Party writ large hasn't focused on identity as part of the coalition. - Well, we'll get to this. - In terms of this campaign. - Yeah, we'll get to this when I think we're gonna talk about it. But sometimes a lot of what people are directing at Kamala or at Democrats,

they're directing actually at the commentariat. They're directing at Twitter, directing at social media. And it's so hard and infuriating because it's like, we can't control those people. We've tried. There's not a mute button at the DNC for all Democrats. But, you know, Tommy, you talked about the effect of like organizing in field and like, you know, Ben Wickler pointed out all the ways in which organizing in Wisconsin was what allowed them to be in a position to keep the Tammy Baldwin seat despite the incredible national swing. And I think there's like

I want to just like, you know, I am not ready to say that organizing or field did not matter in this race. But what I do want to figure out is Donald Trump didn't need it. He did something else, right? He did podcast. He had had these influencers behind him. And like, what is he doing instead of field that we should be doing too? Well, that's a good segue. The way that being online is now real life. Yeah.

Well, that's a good segue to we're going to take through some of the other theories here. And the first is Harris should have done more to meet voters where they are, as they say, including but not limited to going on Joe Rogan. And more broadly, Democrats need to run the kind of candidate who can go on those kinds of shows and mix it up. I think we're all in agreement there. Is anyone not in agreement?

No, I, yeah, I'm gonna grab it. I just think it's more complicated than she should have gone on road. Oh, yeah. I'm talking again. Sorry. Looking towards the future. Forget about like nitpicking the past. But like, yes, I think in the future, the whole conversation, like, why are you talking to this horrible person? You shouldn't be on the set with them. You're legitimizing them is like. Yeah. Also, there's been a few people saying like, well, we need a Joe Rogan of the left.

And it like we were talking about this yesterday, which is like that's to me is quite stupid on two fronts. One is like Joe Rogan wasn't built in some conservative lab. He's a Tom Tommy was saying this yesterday, like he was a television host and a fear factor guy got into M&A, started hosting the show and had built an audience. And then people went to that audience. The second problem with that is.

If there was a Joe Rogan on the left that appealed to the kind of people Joe Rogan appealed to, he would be vilified by people on the left for all of his heterodoxies and ways in which he annoys them. It is very annoying and terrible, uh, that Joe Rogan is anti-vax. He has stupid views on a lot of issues that I don't agree with. But, uh, Joe Rogan was somebody that had had Bernie Sanders on when we, Dan, you said this yesterday when, when Bernie Sanders put out that Joe Rogan endorsed him, people fucking went after him, uh,

And you know what? People are right to find Joe Rogan's noxious views noxious, totally. But I think we should be honest about the ways in which we've kind of pushed, like there's this conservative media ecosystem that is directly partisan,

right-wing conservative covers politics every day. But now around it, there is this collection of comedians, entertainers, influencers who are not political, but feel much more comfortable on the right than they feel on the left. And so I am less interested in should Kamala Harris go on Joe Rogan or should we have a Joe Rogan in the left and more thinking, A, how do we build

the progressive version, we're trying to do that here at Crooked, but we need help, of that kind of partisan infrastructure? And then how do we make those nonpolitical hosts that have huge followings feel as welcome in our world and we as welcome in their world as they now currently feel on the right without giving up on our values, being honest about where we disagree, but being willing to go there and those people feeling comfortable with us?

yeah i mean i think that the love it handled the infrastructure piece of this and i talked about it last episode but i think it's rogan's sort of become a proxy for a broader conversation about like should kamala harris have let her rip a little bit you know what i mean like should should you should she have gone on joe rogan

arguably the biggest media platform in the country? Yes, obviously she should have. But if you watch Trump's three-hour rambling mess of an interview, we all had kind of a Rorsak test about what was our takeaway. And I think the takeaway for a lot of people was he didn't sound like a politician. We made fun of him saying he does the weave. We called it being a rambling, incoherent old man. We thought he did pretty well. Well, yeah, but like, you know, so I think that's the question is like,

Should Democrats have to find ways to communicate to people where they don't sound like they're reading a script or talking points? Because that was the narrative you started to hear a lot about Kamala Harris. There was a lot of TikToks where people ask, hey, like, Bruce, what do you want for dinner? And it's like, well, I grew up in a working class family with a four mic a table or people were that was kind of a meme that people were making fun of her because she was so on message. Charlamagne asked her about this directly. She gave.

A good answer. A great answer. Well, it wasn't great. We don't know. I mean, she gave an answer that worked in the moment, but maybe it was a sign about a broader challenge that was never addressed. There are two separate issues here. One, there is what we say and how we say it, right? There's what we say. The words that come out of our mouth. And as we talked about in our last podcast, which feels like seven years ago, but was yesterday, that-

Democrats sound too much like politicians. And that's, that is not, that's not Kamala Harris herself. That is everyone. And also like 90% of Republicans too. Yeah, exactly. Just to, I mean, JD Vance sounds terrible. He's bad in these forums. The second issue is how we get people to hear what we're saying. And that's what we are failing dramatically as a party. We have not yet figured out how to get our message in front of voters who do not consume news as a hobby.

And you can see that in part in the giant gap between how common it is in the battleground states where we spent,

several billion dollars to communicate to those voters and where we didn't. Yeah. Right? Lost six points nationally, three points in the battleground states. And that's because those people, they are consuming some information, but they are not getting our side of the story. We do not have a capacity as a party to tell our story on our terms to our voters. And that is, we don't fix that problem. None of the other things are gonna matter. We can have a thousand messaging discussions about how we talk about the economy or how we sound more like a human as has been your hobby for us for 20 years.

And it won't matter because no one will fucking hear it. Yeah, we could spend another billion dollars in ads and, you know, battle to a close to a couple points down. Well, or just that we like we were talking about this before we recorded, like all this fucking conversation about Tony Hinchcliffe's joke and the WhatsApps about the Puerto Rican community vote coming out in droves like it didn't matter. None of it was real. Or maybe it was real in the maybe 30 or 40 percent of the country that was tangentially touching the campaign. But that there's this vast,

tens of millions of people who are silent. We are not talking to them and they are not talking to us. And so we can run these campaigns and maybe they'll help at the margins, but those, but winning or losing will be determined by the vibes in a place we don't reach. Yeah. All right. Another take. This one's embodied by Wednesday's Brett Stevens column. You know, it's a good day at Pod Save America when we're going to Brett Stevens. It's been a while since we've done that. All right.

I will say Reed included this because he said he was getting some texts from friends about the Brett Stevens column. And as he said that, I woke up and I had a text from my friend about the Brett Stevens column. No text from my friends about Brett Stevens. Not me either. Not a friend anymore. So Brett thinks that we're too annoying and elitist as a party, that we focus too much on scolding voters into appreciating Joe Biden's economy and achievements.

we all talked about that. Yes, I agree there that we too quickly respond to even reasonable critiques of progressive ideas by labeling them racist or misogynist or transphobic.

And that by going so hard after Trump's crimes and trying to get him off ballots under the 14th Amendment, we ended up validating the narrative that we were using the levers of power against him. Who wants to take any of that? I just want to just note that he begins this column about how Democrats are kind of pedantic and priggish with an anecdote about a jazz era chess master. Yeah, Brett Stevens is not he's not in touch with the.

the working folk. Or particularly self-aware. Right, yeah. This is a man who tried to get a professor at a random college fired because that guy tweeted something mean. Yeah, that's right. Called him a bed bug. So maybe not the best messenger. In the interest of a good debate, right? Take Bret Stephens out of it and let's just go with the message. I mean, yes, it is stupid to tell people

Well, the economy is great when it is not. Yes, it is stupid to demand that someone agree that Joe Biden is actually FDR if they don't feel that way. Yes, it is stupid to scold someone who has different views. But again, we're saying like it's exasperating because there's not a Democratic Party mute button where we can shut up all our annoying supporters. He also talks about the prosecutions.

Kamala Harris and Joe Biden couldn't tell Merrick Gardenland who to prosecute or not. They couldn't tell Alvin Bragg what to do. We couldn't tell prosecutors in Georgia what to do. Yeah. Did the prosecutions galvanize Republicans behind Donald Trump's candidacy and probably help deliver him the primary? Yes. But no one's in charge of all of that. Donald Trump broke the law. Maybe people who break the law should be prosecuted for breaking the fucking law. Yeah. The idea that like, OK, I would like to stipulate Democrats are annoying.

Correct. Present company included. Democrats are annoying. However, the things that annoyed you personally aren't necessarily the reasons Donald Trump won. No, I do not believe that the Colorado case about the 14th Amendment is what drove turnout in Arizona and Nevada. Give me a fucking break. I had forgotten that happened. I did too. I was forced to read this Brett Stevens column, not a professional obligation. And what is also frustrating, as we were saying, is a lot of what

annoys people like Brett Stevens and Elon Musk and all these people that are talking about this kind of thing is what they're... They're not really talking about Democratic politicians. They're talking about Democratic activists. They're talking about shit they see online. If Twitter was gone, probably most of the people who piss off the Brett Stevens of the world, they wouldn't even hear their critiques. But it is like... The thing I... Look, there is a scolding, right? And I think...

For those of us online, not the Democratic politicians, when someone says something that you don't agree with or that you think is racist or sexist or transphobic, one thing you have to think about is what does labeling that person racist, misogynist, transphobic, what does it get you? What does it do? Right. Sometimes it's just like, well, I did it because I'm angry. Right. So it's like, that's fine. But in terms of like building a political...

You could also say, here's why that's wrong. Here's why I think that's wrong. Here's why that was hurtful, what you just said, right? Though there was a, like, from 2017 to now, the, like, check your privilege and do the, like, it just doesn't, it doesn't bring people in is the only point there. But I would just say, like, those,

these are not the people running and losing elections. These are just people on the internet. And so to me, it's like, okay, what does that say about the democratic apparatus and the kind of candidates it's producing? And I was thinking about this anecdote, which is that Hillary Clinton failed the bar the first time she took it. And it turned out that she had studied incredibly hard as she did for every test she's ever taken, but she had somehow, I can't remember the details, but she had studied for the wrong version of the bar. The bar had changed. And sometimes I feel like Democrats are,

front-of-the-classroom kids studying really, really hard for the wrong test. And a lot of our candidates feel like front-of-the-classroom kids. And I think of Barack Obama, who had a front-of-the-classroom brain, but back-of-the-classroom vibes. Bill Clinton is kind of like that. Bernie Sanders is kind of like that. These are really smart people who are a little bit annoyed and kind of throwing spitballs at the teacher. And, like, that... Gretchen Whitmer has that vibe in Michigan? And so, like, I just...

I'm gonna try to be on guard because it plays by the way I'm a front of the classroom kid and like I like front of class I was Elizabeth Warren voter because they built it they should have a shrine in the front of the classroom for Elizabeth Warren front of the classroom person, but Donald Trump is not that and he appeals to a lot of people and I think it part because of that and That that is my takeaway from Democrats are annoying. There's I think I think we're missing a point here, which is there are annoying Democrats and

None of them have been our presidential nominees recently, right? They're not our Senate candidates. Republicans are also annoying. They also have very intolerant views. They also respond to people in insane ways. The Republicans have an apparatus that lifts up the worst of Democratic commentary, whether it's a Twitter person, a random state senator from Maine. Or by the way, now just fake.

They will make up something crazy that sounds like a leftist would say. This is the power of Libs of TikTok. Fox has been doing this for decades now to brand the Democrats, to make the caricature of Democrats seem real to lots of voters. We do not have a similar apparatus to do that about Republicans. Do you remember in our intro video for a while at our live shows, we had that

who used the example of Hitler. He was a random state senator, I think, from Oklahoma. That's so good, yeah. Like, Hitler is an example of how you can make it from the streets to success. Like,

Like if we had that Donald Trump said something, he then he praised Hitler and he became president. Yeah. What a country. But there is there is no apparatus to make that guy incredibly famous and emblematic of Republicans. And that's something that's one of the goes back to the other point about how we how we're losing the information warfare. Well, but also Trump, Tucker Carlson, some of the biggest voices in conservative media, they call Democrats demonic and evil. Unpatriotic. Yes. It's insane. And it's just no one cares.

She's the antichrist. Well, they think they're calling like democratic politicians that, you know? And what happens is they try to say that we think of

other voters like this. They take that. It's deplorable politics. It is deplorable and garbage. And again, but they're allowed to say, I mean, imagine if Elizabeth Warren went and said, I was in Tennessee the other day. What a fucking dump it is. It wouldn't be seen as politically helpful, but Tucker Carlson can rant against San Francisco as a place. Trump said Detroit was a shithole, basically. I mean, I picked up votes. And again, I was going to say, again, those people can say it and they won and we're losing. So,

Well, yeah. So that's something to think about. Well, this is why it's not fair. Maybe the world as it is not fair, but maybe we should think about how to win. But for sure. But also, that's why I go back to like Kamala Harris saying we're all going to be OK. And it's like, I don't know, are people in the market for that? Is that what the leadership we need is right now? It seems like people want to want a little bit more anger and a little more antagonism. And we can do that in a way that we should yell at voters more. I'm not saying we should yell at voters. I'm not saying we should call them more racist.

That's not, obviously I'm not what I'm saying, but I just, there's a kind of, there's an imperious vibe. Brett Stevens is annoying. Yeah. Some good points. But so are we. Everybody's annoying. He's had some good points.

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Gone are the days of searching through the Pod Save America YouTube to find the latest episode of Offline because we now have our own YouTube channel. Give your thumbs a break from endless doom scrolling and tune into smarter, lighter conversations about our collective internet culture with guests like Stephen Colbert, Hasan Piker, ContraPoints, and Megan Rapinoe joining to help make sense of your digital world. Type Offline into your nearest YouTube search bar and tune in for new episodes every Sunday for episodes of the same show you know and love.

Lastly, there are those who say this wasn't really about Trump at all. It was about prices and the global anti-incumbent mood. We talked about this a little yesterday. And we are in danger of overlearning our lesson because MAGA only works for Trump. What do you guys think? Yes. The biggest factor is the political environment.

That supersedes every tactical, strategic decision that the Harris campaign made, that the Trump campaign made. The Trump, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles will be seen as geniuses because they won this race in the most favorable political environments anyone could possibly imagine. And that's just how it works. Yes, it's true that MAGA only works for Trump, but Reagan only worked for Reagan. And then they won more one more election after that.

And the Reagan, the coalition that Reagan built lasted for three presidential cycles. And Bill Clinton kind of had to win with the Reagan coalition. It did not change again until 2008. So we had 28 years of basically the Reagan coalition working. And this is the, the urgency of our task is to make sure that the Trump coalition does not exist beyond this election. And it's not a guarantee that that automatically falls by the wayside of Donald Trump's not the top of the ticket. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, John Byrne Murdoch at the Financial Times had this chart for the first time since 1905. Every governing party facing an election in a developed country this year lost vote share. First time that's happened since 1900. And that is like center-left party, center-right, far-left, far-whatever it is. So there was an anti-incumbent mood. I do think that there's also been this rise of authoritarian movements, right?

all across the world. And you can, I think, adequately blame inflation for sort of accelerating that. But it was also the forces were there before the pandemic causing this too. And I think one of the projects we have to figure out is like how we drain the appeal of autocratic regimes and demagogues so that people who might feel economically stressed or

like they've been left behind, overlooked, whatever it may be, actually don't vote for them and then vote for pro-democracy candidates. - Yeah, I was thinking about this too. And it's like, I know a lot of people listening have been feeling this too, which is like, how did this happen? How is it even close? It doesn't make sense. I still can't make sense of it. And I do think we'll also look back on this era and say,

We went through a traumatic once in a hundred year pandemic. Millions of people died. It messed with all of our mental health. It messed with our sense of safety, our sense of security, our sense of the world. And I think what we're talking about here is, yeah, maybe it really is just anti-incumbency, right? Maybe it really was just anger and inflation, but we got to make sure the door doesn't lock behind us.

because that's the risk here. And I think even if it is true, I think we should live as if it is not. We should do everything we can to fight back as if this does represent a real kind of, of a real change we have to figure out how to argue our way out of because of what Dan said.

I think anti-incumbency is very real and the largest driving factor. And I'm not suggesting you guys are doing this, but I don't think we can let ourselves believe that that was all of it. I do think Trump has a unique appeal in the Republican Party, and he outran lots of down-ballot Republicans, and he's a noxious person and in many ways the worst candidate we all could imagine, and somehow he did better than we thought. And we need to sort of reckon with and understand that. And then also there were discrete issues where voters were like,

telling us for a year that they're mad about something and the Democratic Party refused to listen. And my biggest hobby horse on this is Gaza, that

The war was raging for a year. The Biden administration walked through the uncommitted vote process. 100,000 plus people voted uncommitted in the Democratic primary in Michigan, and they didn't change a fucking thing about the policy. And then the DNC comes around and no Palestinian is allowed to speak and Arab American, Muslim American voters feel pushed out. And then when you look at precincts

in Dearborn. Trump won Dearborn, Michigan with 42.8%. Harris got 36. Jill Stein got 18. It's half Middle Eastern. In 2020, Biden won almost 70% of the vote in Dearborn. And again, I'm not suggesting those margins would have changed the outcome of the election. Obviously, there are broader forces at play. But when voters are like, we hate this thing you're doing, and you keep doing it. And what we're talking about here is

outsourcing US foreign policy to Bibi Netanyahu, one of the worst people on the planet besides Donald Trump. The Trump of his country. Should listen to them. You can't just not course correct in a situation like that. I think we are also not fully analyzing the impact of GALSA when we limit it only to Michigan. Definitely. Because there are like 4% of voters in the exit poll said that

foreign policy was their top concern, which to me, I find personally shockingly high. Hey, those are my people. Trump won them 55-39. But it's just the year-long impression about Democrats to young voters because of the Biden administration's approach to Gaza mattered. I mean, there's a gigantic shift among young voters, particularly young men. Is it only Gaza? Of course not. But it did become a reason not to trust the party among voters we need. Well, I will say too, it's not. I mean, just

we're all in support of Ukraine against Putin's invasion here. But when you look at polls and you listen to focus groups, what comes up even more often than Gaza is like, why are we sending money to Ukraine or Israel and Gaza, right? Like it's all of it together. So you have some people who, like as I am, are like, I can't believe the fucking slaughter in Gaza is being allowed to continue right now. But also like a lot of other people, why are we sending so much money overseas? Right.

And, you know, you can argue about how much we're sending and relative to this and that and the other thing. But like, that's a message that broke through. All right. So did we fix everything? I think so. Any other takes on how did you do it? Did my caveat at the top do it for us? Did that work? I think we talked about going forward.

Anyway, there's gonna be a lot more. We're gonna have a lot more research in, talk to some really smart people. Dan, you're gonna talk to some folks for a special Sunday edition of Pod Save America, right? I am. I'm gonna talk to Carlos Odio, our friend who is an expert in Latino vote, and Sarah Longwell from the Bulwark about, we're gonna dig in the details about what actually happened and maybe some lessons about going forward. And are you mostly just gonna yell at her about Kamala campaigning with Liz Cheney? No, I'm not gonna do that, no. We forgot to talk about that.

you know, clear disaster. Well, guess what? We got a lot of podcasts to go. So my sense as a Democrat has been around a lot of losses.

This conversation is going to continue for a while. Especially now. Yeah, we've been there. We're doing the same thing we've been doing. All right, let's talk about the Senate and the House where things stand with congressional control. In the Nevada Senate race, it's looking better and better for Jackie Rosen. AP hasn't called it as of 1 p.m. Pacific time on Thursday, but Decision Desk HQ and John Ralston's Nevada Independent have. The AP has called Pennsylvania for Dave McCormick, but Casey has not called

The Casey campaign still believes there's lots of ballots that haven't been counted and they think they could come out ahead. So we shall see on that one. In the House, it's a more fluid picture. There are 29 races that haven't yet been called. That includes a lot of races that are, you know, probably going to be

The Democrats going to win or the Republicans going to win, but the count just isn't done for whatever reason. Within that number, there's about a dozen swing races that aren't over yet. That includes Marcy Kaptur in Ohio, who's ahead a tiny bit and her race has gone to a recount. And then, of course, races in California and Arizona where we canvassed where the final count will likely be determined by on the ground efforts to cure defective ballots. Something's wrong with your ballot. You signed it wrong. You did something wrong. You get a call. You can fix your ballot and they will count it.

Democrats, including our friends at Vote Save America, believe there is a path still to a razor-thin House majority. More on that in a minute. Just so everyone understands, what's the real-world difference between a Republican trifecta, Democrats getting control of the House? If we win the House, Donald Trump will pass no legislation in his entire presidency.

That's cool. I like that. Yeah, that's a big one. That's no national abortion ban. If they want, if they try to do that, no repeal of the Affordable Care Act, no budget cuts, no huge tax cuts. Got the IRA. No, that's right. No gutting of the IRA. The chips act stands. Thank goodness.

It's a good, it's creating jobs all over the place. It's funny the way you said it. I know, I know. That's why I did it. What do we know about the map and these uncalled house races? What are you thinking? I mean, we just, we know from 18 that in California it does take a while and then at the end in 18 that's when a lot of the Democratic ballots came in. It could take a while and it's going to be tough. I think there's six races in California, two in Arizona, so it could be a while. And then,

And the question in California primarily is, is the remaining male vote that still has to come in going to be as Democratic as it has been in previous elections? If it is, we get a very good shot. Like male ballots, not male versus female. Yes, yes, male ballots. The male ballots we know are not good for us. Did females send male ballots? If so, we got a shot. That's it. Okay, that's a good take. Let's talk about the Senate. We know Republicans will get control. So here's the map in 2026. We can flip Maine.

Because Susan Collins is there and either we beat her or she might retire. Murkowski in Alaska has a wild card. I don't know. That's a wild card. Here's a good one. North Carolina. Tom Tillis. That's a possibility. And then it's like Texas again. Yeah. John Cornyn's up. It's Cornyn. So it's Texas. Tough. And then after that, it's Ohio, Iowa. Because there's going to be a J.D. Vance replacement. Ohio, Iowa, Montana, Texas.

Been there. And Nebraska again. So it is a... And to defend, we have to defend Ossoff in Georgia, Gary Peters in Michigan, and Tina Smith in Minnesota. Gene Shaheen, Mark Warner. Gene Shaheen and Mark Warner. Yeah, so that's our... Ossoff's hard. Obviously, Peters is hard. The defend seats aren't as hard as they were, I think, this time around. But flipping...

After you get through Collins, it's a tough map. Tom Tillis should be beatable. He spells his name with an H. Thom. Yeah, that is stupid. Disqualifying. That is dumb. Okay, that's something. That's good. See, this is the kind of creative thinking. I can say that. This is the kind of creative strategic thinking we need in the Democratic Party. As a baby named adult Tommy, I can say that.

Now that we've talked about the stakes, let's talk about what you can do. These uncalled house campaigns, they could use your support. They need to fund legal challenges. They need to keep paying staff salaries as the courts continue to count. And then an easy thing you can do is help people cure their ballots. They need volunteers to help people do that and to reach out to people to find out how you can help. You can just go to votesaveamerica.com. It's really important.

This message has been paid for by Vote Save America. You can learn more at votesaveamerica.com. This ad has not been authorized by any candidate or candidates committee. It's unbelievable. I have to say that every time. Yeah, I don't think we can. I just don't believe it. What are laws anymore? Trump's president. You have to say that every time. What's going to happen for us? Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I guess the wrong side of the law. The first law the FEC ever enforces will be a Trump FEC case against us. Anyway, how are y'all feeling? You guys? Terrible. I'm doing the...

the stages of grief in reverse I'm on anger today I'm pretty mad yeah I woke up because I hit myself with too many of the takes this morning well honestly mad's better than sad and I'm really enjoying the stupid fucking takes I am it is getting it is keeping me getting me putting one foot in front of the other all right well everyone enjoy your takes but more importantly enjoy your weekend and Dan will be in your feeds on Sunday with a great new episode and then Tommy and Lovett and I will be back in your feeds on Tuesday bye everyone

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