Transcript of Last Call for Takes!

Simply Safe, ahead of crime in real time. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.

I'm John Lovett.

crookedcon.com to get yours and see if Lovett's joking or not. See you this weekend in DC. All right, the day has arrived. Our last show before polls close and the final midterm election of the Trump era in American politics. No president since Harry Truman has been this unpopular heading into election day. He got us into a war that spiked gas prices to record highs, imposed crushing tariffs on everyone, deployed paramilitary squads to terrorize communities, made billions of dollars for himself and his friends, put states into play that Democrats haven't won in decades.

Tremendous algae problems. And you have that picture with the algae. It's not an easy thing. The algae is brutal. The green, that's not grass, that's algae that took over the entire pool. The pipes, the pipes now are totally renovated. They have brand new pipes put in. It's also something very important in terms of the algae. It creates the bubbles and creates what's necessary that the algae does the form. We fixed the granite. We recalced it. All of this has been recalced. The granite stone is so strong. It literally has thousands of years of life.

I mean, if we fucking if we don't win this one, fucking pack it in, guys. Pack it in.

He's talking about Saad.

It was like a resistance lib joke came to life. Like my jaw dropped watching this. He brought the chart out, like couldn't believe this was actually happening.

It takes a lot to surprise us 10 years into this bullshit.

Yes.

But we were watching it live on Fox, our favorite channel, with a Chyron said like, "President speaks one day before critical midterms."

Guys, he literally said in his remarks, "We have a lot of great things planned for the nation, and we could get into that, but we don't have enough time."

Don't have enough time.

Don't have enough time.

Sir, now is the time.

Because there's a lot of grass, talk about a lot of algae.

After like what, like 30 or 40 minutes on Reno, he then did a kind of sad.

They're going to trans your children.

Sad kind of low energy stunt.

Communist jihadist kind of stuff.

Right.

And he did it with a mic in front of his face like this and a hat pulled down really low. So you couldn't even see him.

His heart wasn't in it. But he also doesn't seem down, oddly enough, for thinking that he may lose the midterms, as he said there, and looking at all the polls. He kind of just seems like, "Look, I'm here. This is what I care about. I'm trying to keep my moods lifted."

Right.

Yeah, it's like he's heard that Americans are angry about all these construction projects, and he thinks it's because of anger at them not going well enough, as opposed to, say, the incorrect focus.

Yeah, they don't know enough about the successes.

Yeah, once they hear about what the bubbler's been up to.

You think that's it?

And the challenging Saad conditions we were working under, it's very hard to regrass. Very challenging.

I think he just doesn't give a shit.

I think he doesn't give a shit either. It's also like it really is a story about how his staff now has no control over him.

I talked to Rom for like three minutes today. I got one of those two-minute Rom phone calls, and he was like, "If you came into my office and pitched me on a day before the midterms event about the renovations at the reflecting pool, I would have ripped your arm off and thrown you out of the office." It's insane.

I think he wouldn't have even done that at first, because he would have laughed at you and thought it was like a practical joke that you like a prank that you guys were doing.

And then throw me in the fire. Did he do a follow-up thing on the arch afterwards?

Well, everyone cut away, so we cut away because we were like, "I guess that's it." And then because then Doug Burgum got up and spoke, and then I guess he came back to talk about the arch.

He came back after Doug?

They cut away when I was watching after, because I was literally.

He had to get to all of his telerallies, Donald Trump. He's doing a lot of telerallies today.

I was at the dentist, and my deal, and I was like, "Oh, I got to prepare for the pod, and so I can so I don't have to do the odd conversation while you're on the dentist chair." So I was watching from my dentist chair.

So I've evolved on this. I'm now fully headphones in, like noise cancellation, listening to something. Because first of all, I get huge anxiety at the dentist, and it's also you can't talk to them anyway. They try to talk to you.

Yeah, I know. I know.

Anyway, we're like Trump just talking about the dentist here on election day. In addition to all of Trump's governing fuck-ups, did you guys see that Semaphore put together a great roundup of Trump's political fuck-ups?

Yes.

That almost single-handedly put the Senate in play, and which do you think were the most consequential? Great list.

Yeah, so I think unforced error list, number one, I would say, is going to war with Iran. Let's just.

Yeah, well, we have all the governing ones.

Right. But it's a tough category. I think Paxton over Cornyn is probably the cleanest.

I think that's right.

Because it just absolutely put I mean, who knows what the actual race would be now if it were Cornyn versus Talarico, but totally changed the dynamic. And they were saying even before Paxton was the nominee, their best-case scenario was nominating Paxton. A win would require at least another $100 million. So that was the handicap before they even went through with it. So I'd say that. Maybe second being for inexplicably deciding that Darlene Graham shouldn't just be the interim senator, but should also go for the full term.

That certainly put South Carolina on the map. It's crazy. I think those are better choices and more accurate choices. I really like pushing this idea that choosing JD Vance was a historic mistake.

Yeah, same way like put Ohio on the ballot in '26. And if he hadn't done that, if I hadn't chosen JD, you could imagine Trump getting mad about this and ranting about how if I hadn't chosen JD, things would be different.

Yeah, because JD would still be senator from Ohio.

Really annoying senator.

There wouldn't be a race there. I hadn't thought about Tillis either.

Yeah.

Pushing Tillis up. Now look, I think.

And count bowing out.

I think Roy Cooper versus Tillis, I still would give that in this environment to Cooper, but certainly didn't help.

But we're spending in that scenario, right? We're spending tens of millions of dollars. Like there's all this effort going into North Carolina, and the party kind of walked away from it months ago.

And Kemp is kind of a double there, right? Because if Trump wasn't president or Trump didn't hate Kemp, maybe Kemp would have run for Senate, and that probably would have given Ossoff the toughest race. But then Kemp had a guy, this guy Dooley, that he wanted to run against Ossoff. Trump took that guy out with Mike Collins, the bigot. And so, yeah, there goes Georgia. So Trump really helped put the Senate in play. So we'll see how that worked out for him. Not to get too far ahead of ourselves, but I think it's worth talking about what's next for Trump after Tuesday.

It was a very long post. It's always interesting when people write like the op-ed tweet. It's like, "Huh."

And he doesn't do that often either.

He doesn't tweet a lot anyway.

Yeah. So the Iranians just floated a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz that included some things like lifting sanctions and billions in frozen asset relief that make it hard for me to imagine that Trump would take a deal. So I think renewed conflict is more likely than not. Pickax Mountain is more likely than not to be a target because it is the place you hear the neocons kind of froth in the mouth about because of potentially including a new nuclear site. I personally think the nuclear weapons part is made up. It doesn't make sense really militarily or strategically. I think this could be some Gulf source, like someone in Qatar or UAE or whatever talking to Tucker and trying to spin him up.

In perpetuity.

In perpetuity, to keep it open. The other thing about the Tucker post, it said Obama opposes a deal, which I don't buy the sourcing there, but also that could be someone said to me, "What if that's just a genius way for Tucker to try to get Trump to like the deal?" If Obama hates it.

That would be some real chess from Tucker Carlson there.

It does seem like no matter what happens in the elections, all Trump has is foreign policy stuff like this.

As worse.

And Reno's, home Reno's.

Yeah.

That's about it.

I'd rather we do the Reno's. I've heard that.

Regime change abroad, renovations at home.

I've heard that Rubio, Bessent, and Ratcliffe kind of want to keep the economic pressure on and stay the course, that Vance and Wyckoff want a deal and sort of the Gulf want a lot.

I'm sure Vance does.

Oh, absolutely.

Oh, yeah.

Excuse me, I've got to be running for president in this.

Yeah, and then you'll never guess who really wants to run it back and do War 2.0, Pete Hegseth.

Of course.

Apparently. And I think Trump is leaning that way because I think he doesn't care about politics. I mean, look, like we were said at the top, the ballroom press events to close out the midterms shows, he doesn't care about politics anymore. I think he just wants to show that he can dominate the Iranians and will probably do it.

He wants a few like if things don't go well in the midterms, he wants a few good headlines.

Yeah.

He doesn't care how long they last, right? He's not looking for like some permanent peace or negotiation. He just wants a few good headlines. So if he bombs some things, maybe people will be like, "Oh, he dropped some bombs. He's strong again." This is as far as the thinking goes.

It wasn't as if when Bush held that press conference after the shellacking in 2006 where he relieved Donald Rumsfeld that suddenly everyone was like, "Oh, good."

Yeah.

It didn't buy a lot of goodwill.

Did not.

It's the right thing to do, but didn't buy him goodwill.

All right, on Sunday night, we got the final batch of Time's Sienna polls. By the way, Sunday night release. You know I was up.

It was rude.

4:00 in the morning.

Yeah, it was rude.

I thought it was going to happen Thursday morning, Friday morning, Saturday morning, checking the phone, and then all of a sudden Sunday, it's like dinner time Pacific. And I'm like, "What? Now we're getting them?" I had to drop everything.

Terrible football game on. We're doing things.

Anyway, these polls gave Democrats across the country a sinking feeling in our stomachs for the sole reason that they seem too good to be true.

Yeah, we don't trust them.

That's where we're at right now.

We don't trust them.

Bad polls, we feel the pit in our stomach. Good polls, we feel the pit in our stomach.

Well, because it's not real. Good feelings aren't real. That's not real. Only anxiety is real. That's our pattern. That's our pattern that we seek to recreate in our politics.

And yet we still read them anyway with great interest. All right, Abdul El-Sayed up 11 in Michigan.

Oof.

Hot poll, hot poll, a little hot.

Feels tough to buy that one.

James Talarico up 7 in Texas, Troy Jackson up 6 in Maine, Sherrod Brown up 5 in Ohio, Adam Hamilton up 5 in Kansas, Mary Peltola up 2 in Alaska, Josh Turek up 1 in Iowa. We will take these state by state. We'll start with Michigan. Again, Time Sienna has Abdul up 11 over Mike Rogers, 53-42. That's the biggest margin of the group. Nate Silver's average has Abdul up just shy of five points. All very encouraging signs that are just getting slightly overshadowed by Haley Stevens' shocking decision to endorse Mike Rogers on Sunday morning, which included going to church with him and holding a press conference afterwards.

It's unbelievable.

It's one of the most unbelievable interviews I've seen.

Debbie Dingell said that she talked to you at midnight last night and that you told her you were not going to endorse Mike Rogers. If that is true, what changed between then and this morning?

Well, look, this is just a weight off my shoulders, okay? Abdul has been getting angrier and angrier.

Back in August, you posted on social media, quote, "Mike Rogers will be another rubber stamp for Donald Trump's dangerous agenda. We can't afford to give MAGA another Senate seat in November." How do you why is it okay now? Why can you afford now to give MAGA another Senate seat in November?

Well, why is it okay to have the Democratic Party and a top nominee ejecting this type of or injecting, rather, this type of anger and lack of kindness? It sounds like you're upset with me too, Anderson.

No, I'm not. You're not really answering any of my questions. So it's somewhat frustrating. Do you want Democrats to win the control of the Senate?

I absolutely do. I'm just casting my vote this one way. Michigan, there's a lot of people out there voting.

But with all due respect, you're casting your vote that way and you're on television right now talking about it and you had a press conference earlier. There's reports that more than half of your staff has quit. Is that accurate?

Look, I have an incredible team in Washington. Obviously, they cast their votes.

You said in a press conference today, "We can't stand with hate." Do you believe that Abdul El-Sayed is hateful or an anti-Semite?

I'm just sick of who he stands with. He's picking a son piker and the uncle.

You wanted to be at a public event with him up until some point, I guess, yesterday. And it's just an interesting change. And I think a lot of people are curious to try to understand it.

Was that a question?

No, I wanted to see if you wanted to fill in the silence, but you don't.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

Yeah.

Dude.

You told Debbie Dingell you were not going to do this. Is that correct? Last night at some point.

Anderson, that is nice editorializing and nice bits of information.

I'm about to speak to Debbie Dingell about what's going on with Michigan politics. I'm giving you the courtesy of saying that out loud.

I had an opportunity to go to a church service and have a prayerful moment. It was Sunday. It was very beautiful. It was about friendship, which I have many incredible friends in the Democratic Party, and I care a lot about them.

You don't want to say whether you had a conversation with Debbie Dingell? Okay. Congresswoman Haley, I really hail the Stevens. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time.

So.

I had not watched it on normal speed. It is so much worse than at like 2X.

Oh, man.

So like Dan and I did a reaction to the news on Sunday on YouTube, and I sort of got all my anger out there. And then I watched that Sunday night, and I suddenly shifted to just feeling like, ugh, people have got to just someone who knows her, who she's still listening to, has to just get her off TV and stop doing press because something is just off there. That's it. But what do you guys think?

I felt bad for her after the Sienna interview. And then this morning I woke up and saw that she was talking to the Free Press and Scott Jennings' radio program and was on this endless media tour. And so I think I went back to not feeling bad for her.

Yeah, to be clear, I don't feel bad for her at all. I feel like for her own sake, but also for doing all the rest of the damage she's doing. I think everyone, including Haley Stevens, would be better off if Haley Stevens just went away.

Yeah, I think she's doing the most damage to herself right now. I mean, I think for Abdul, obviously, this is not how you want to close out the campaign. This is not the message you want to be talking about. It is catnip for the media, and you could see a bit of his frustration coming through when he was getting asked only about this. I think Abdul actually handled the questions about Haley quite well at the press conferences he did and tried to stay focused on the issues. But I spent my weekend rage-tweeting. I can't imagine how he felt or the people who work for him. I kind of think her antics won't have a big impact on the outcome. There was a very few undecided voters left in Michigan, I think less than 5%.

Yeah, so when I saw this happen, I was like, knot in my stomach. And I saw people kind of wish-casting like, oh, maybe this will backfire. And now I'm pretty convinced it will backfire, in part because she is so incoherent. And watching someone say that they want there to be a Democratic Senate, but they are voting against Abdul and being unable to defend it and being unable to defend how they could violate so many of their principles, including saying they are campaigning against hate, having made a series of demands of Abdul, including the most important one per her that he met in which she praised him for meeting, and then turning around.

Which condemning the contents of the Rebellion Pack.

Yeah, there's the Rebellion ad by Jenk Ugar.

The uncle.

The uncle. The uncle clearly impactful, clearly his insertion into this race was wonderfully helpful. Fantastic work. But Abdul did denounce. First of all, he had already disavowed it. He then disavowed and disagreed with it. Great. I had thought it was a good thing for him to do, not because he was trying to win over Haley Stevens, but because for some small subset of people who are maybe undecided and reluctant and who are Jewish Democrats specifically in Michigan, being deluged with anti-Abdul hysteria was a free opportunity to disentangle having extreme criticisms of Israel while being able to call out anti-Semitism.

Some event. I saw some clip of it.

It was a Jewish community event, I think, fundraiser.

Yeah.

I have a feeling that she is getting a lot of applause from a subset of Democratic voters who are planning to vote against Abdul anyway. I don't know who is being brought along by Haley Stevens. And for everybody else, I think it's a unifying moment about the state's election. And by the way, Abdul's remarks right after where he talked about it, I just thought were excellent. And that's it.

It's just worth pointing out too that for those listening and thinking, well, why didn't he just denounce the ad earlier? Her ransom note included much more than just denouncing the ad. It was like the ad didn't invent its argument. It dramatized one of Dr. El-Sayed's made in his own words. So she wanted him to basically condemn his own past statements and policies. Also, get Israel out of his explanation for everything Michigan can't afford. Apparently, we can't talk about the Iran war, increasing costs. She also wanted him to take down his advertisement featuring Tucker Carlson.

Which, by the way, just the idiot of.

Which she said was an insult to the black community. It was just like this crazy all over the place statement from her.

I was going to say that I've had this sort of experience of being on both sides of the algorithm in the last couple of days, right?

Street shooter.

Well, because we posted a video of my saying that Jewish voters in Michigan have a moral obligation to support Abdul, which got me just absolutely vilt. I just, oh, you would have been a Jew loading people on the fucking trains. That level kind of.

That's fun.

That's terrific. And then I point out that I actually do think that that chank ad is anti-Semitic and that Abdul should denounce it, not because he hasn't been against anti-Semitism, but just because I thought it was a free opportunity to demonstrate the points he's been making about the difference between having a disagreement on Israel and when a ton of people feel as though they're being targeted, that he'll stand up for them. Fine. I think those two things do go together. And I think you see why when you have someone like Haley Stevens who is abandoning everything that she claims to care about and claiming to making a decision based on hate while siding with Mike Rogers and making zero demands of him.

Well, this is I mean, I had a suspicion around the time when she was the calls for him to condemn the ad and all that. None of this was on the level and the reason that Abdul's team did not want to make a big deal of going even further to condemn the ad is because they knew that no condemnation is going to be enough for Haley Stevens and the people around Haley Stevens and the people criticizing Abdul. And it's like, apologize for this. Okay, I apologize for this. Denounce this ad. All right, denounce this ad.

And also.

And beyond that, it's never on the level. And then when your criticism of Abdul doesn't seem like it's working with enough Jewish Democrats in Michigan, now you're going to throw in that he somehow that black Democrats in Michigan should be wary of Abdul because Tucker Carlson is in an ad for five seconds saying that he wouldn't vote for Mike Rogers with a gun to his head. As if that is some beyond the pale thing to include in an ad. The whole thing is fucking bullshit. And she proved it because he goes and denounces the ad and then she's like, I don't want you to just denounce the ad.

Yeah, I feel like those are separate things. I agree. I don't think Abdul should denounce the ad to please Haley Stevens or the people for whom there will never be enough. I thought it was the right thing to do to denounce the ad, in part because it's being shared around Michigan as being his ad, which I don't think is fair. And the fact that he went from disavowing to say he disagrees with the statement, and which Haley Stevens seemed to celebrate, it points out that Haley Stevens is not on the level. It doesn't mean that it isn't the right thing to do in that case. I thought it was I think it got harder as the week went on.

I think it was a roiling issue online in certain communities. I think in crass political terms, Abdul's job is to talk about the things he wants to talk about in a campaign and keep the focus on the issues he wants to focus on. So I could make a political argument for why you don't denounce that ad because you don't want to get sucked into this morass of relitigating all the shit that we fought about in the primary. I could also make the argument that denounce it, put out a statement, and move on, right?

Yeah, that's what I think.

I just think you could go either way.

But he ultimately does disavow it, right? He does.

Right, and it didn't help.

Well, it didn't help with Haley Stevens, right? And well, first of all, I mean, who knows? We can't make decisions about what to do in politics.

But the point I'm making about is a messaging focus one, which is like this wasn't about the advert. This feels like a political rollout that started with her fiance, which led to this crazy statement, which led to this weird back and forth and her lying to everyone she knows in her life, her political mentors, people she was with at dinner, and then culminating in this is what Anderson Cooper was trying to get at. What changed between midnight Saturday and Sunday morning? It's inexplicable, right? Which is why I just don't trust that any of this would have helped because she was the one creating the firestorm.

Yeah, what I'm trying to separate out, I agree with that. What I'm trying to separate out is the fact that Haley Stevens ultimately said she was pleased with his statement and then does this crazy back and forth Hamlet routine until abandoning Abdul part of whatever's going on in that relationship, whatever she's saying, lying, whatever. I don't have to worry about Haley Stevens. She seems fucking out of her mind. Fine. Whether or not it was helpful to denounce the ad, I think it was the right thing to do. I was glad he did it, and I was glad that Haley Stevens said that she was pleased by the statement, which seemed to have resolved it.

Yeah. And I do think that I mean, we'll see how the results go, but just looking at this back to the Times Sienna poll. So this was obviously probably Abdul's best result in a poll that we've seen. He matches Jocelyn Benson's margin pretty much in this poll. He and Benson match the generic ballot in Michigan in this poll. So it's about, what, 10 or 11 points. If Trump won Michigan by, what, 12 points and there's a shift to the nation, the shift of the entire nation left about nine points on average in some of these polls, that pretty much lines up with where Michigan would be.

Where did the uncle rank on?

Yeah.

Uncle. It was actually, it was like cost of living.

Uncle.

Uncle and hate and just hate. And then it was the economy again.

You know what's interesting about the poll? Look, Nate Cohen, to his credit, talked about why they put this out, even though obviously if it turns out that it's closer, they're going to be like, oh, wow, they were so off. They were so in favor of the Democrats in this poll. And they talk about the challenge of reaching Republican voters. And they released the data of what the poll would look like if they kind of adjusted it down. And Democrats are still winning in that polling. But let's say that even if the polling is a little bit off, it's not crazy off, right? And Abdul really does have a sizable lead.

Also, I don't want to pin this on Jewish voters in Michigan because there are plenty of Jewish voters in Michigan that are behind Abdul. And then there are plenty of people who are not Jewish at all who have been propagating these narratives about Abdul, including Mike Rogers.

No, no, sorry. I think that the effort to appeal to Jewish voters in this way and to appeal to voters who may not this may not be their number one issue, but it's a kind of shibboleth about being a lefty. Fine. No, yes. And that will see. We'll see how important that was. One other thing, I watched the Rost outfit conversation with Abdul, the full conversation.

Yeah. That's must-see TV.

Well, and yeah.

As long as there's an NFL lead-in, some people agree with you.

Well, this is only available online because it's the unedited clip. This is the Trump-insisted uncut.

Pure uncut Doufit.

Uncut Doufit.

Uncut Doufit. That's what I want.

Yeah. But I don't know. I assume it is an uncut Doufit.

Okay.

Well, it's Catholic. I don't know how it works over there. But so anyway, he's a traditionalist. It's a great conversation. And obviously, the parts that have been clipped out have been about Israel. But it was just interesting to watch Abdul have a long, substantive, somewhat contentious conversation about healthcare, about data centers, about the economy and capitalism, about Democratic socialists. And it was just a reminder too that Abdul in the Senate will just be an interesting, thoughtful policy voice around a whole range of issues. And he's an incredibly smart and talented politician and thinker about Democratic politics and policy.

All right, let's go to Kansas, where Times Sienna has Adam Hamilton leading Roger Marshall by five points, 49 to 44. Silver Bulletin's average has him ahead by a bit more than three points. As we've discussed, Hamilton has done a great job of making an issue of Roger Marshall's history of sending debt collectors after his patients back when he was in OB-GYN and in some cases leading to them going to jail. Marshall apparently got sick of his campaign's refusal to respond more forcefully to these charges.

I love him so much.

He went around his staff to record this ad with his own film crew, which he then posted on Twitter. Amazing. Let's watch.

I'm Dr. Roger Marshall, and you should know the truth about Adam Hamilton's ads. They're false, plain and simple. Now, to ensure that 40,000 Kansans would still have access to care, we did have to keep the lights on. So we occasionally handed some accounts over to collection agency, just like nearly every private medical practice does. To be crystal clear, the Kansas Bill of Rights ensures that no one can go to prison because of indebtedness. And I would never wish that on any patient I had the privilege to serve. My involvement in any patient's account ended the minute it was turned over to an outside agency.

Never had anyone arrested is your closing message. In case you want to parse what he's saying there, it is in the Kansas Bill of Rights that you can't go to jail for having debt. But what happened was people who got the debt collection notices and might not have known, then got a summons. If they didn't appear in court for the summons, then they went to jail as a result. There was an arrest warrant from the bench for them as a result. So it is still true that people, because of the debt collection, ended up arrested.

That's unfair. I saw this ad, and I actually hadn't seen the reporting about it. I saw this ad, and the first thing I thought is, he made them do this. His key is he is furious. Like Haley Stevens is in these crazy text messages that's riling her up. He was riling himself up with his doctor buddies about how he's getting the fucking shaft in this campaign.

So one of them was Jason Turkish?

Yeah. The mastermind. The mastermind behind the whole goddamn thing.

Well, I'm sure, yeah. He's probably got the group chat going. Everyone's spinning him up. He's like, you know what? I'm going to grab my Merlot shirt, and I'm going to go out there, and I'm going to talk about how I never knowingly had any new mothers arrested. And I think this is going to work for me because the Kansas Bill of Rights says no one can go to prison because of indebtedness. But they might. It's like, what do you?

Someone get me that folksy guitar riff that's in all those ads. We don't need much more than that.

Now, I want to be holding the fence. I want to be off to the side of the shop.

One hand on the fence. And the way they rolled it out was the staff refused to air the thing. So he emailed it to random people. So one guy posted. So you get all the earned media of this ad kicking back up the stories about him getting the woman who just had a C-section arrested three times. But you get none of the benefit of paid media getting your message in front of people. It is the biggest campaign cell phone I could imagine. The first time I was really that the race really caught my attention was when they had a debate at the state fair.

And this sounds so corrupt. That staff sounds terrible.

Yeah.

This poll has Hamilton leading a sample in the poll that leans Republican by nine points. And he's ahead by five points. The House ballot in the poll is 50 to 47 Republicans. So there's a three-point lead on the House ballot. It's a nine-point lean in the state. And Adam Hamilton's still up five with this electorate in the poll. Another thing that was interesting is the number of voters who had either no opinion or didn't know, have never heard of him, of Adam Hamilton fell from 36% last time there was a good poll from New York Times Sienna in this state to just 13%.

And this is a state where I'm skeptical of the polling for demographic reasons and because I don't know. It seems like it's hard to poll Kansas. But Nate Cohen had a piece where he wrote about how The Times in 2022 had a poll that had Charice Davids up 14 points in the third congressional district in Kansas. They downplayed it because it seemed unrealistic, and then she won by 12. So they have a track record of actually calling the ball right in Kansas, which was interesting.

I had forgotten about that one. The other one I thought about is in 2022, the abortion ban. So we've now I mean, the whole Kansas thing sounds crazy, but when you think about the Charice Davids race, when you think about the abortion ban, which was a statewide ballot initiative, when you think about the fact that Laura Kelly is governor right now, Democrat Kathleen Sebelius, our friend Kathleen Sebelius, has been a very popular Democratic governor. It's not crazy that they would be a Democrat elected in Kansas, or at least not as crazy as it seems at first look.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of people that have taken the current specific conditions of red states as sort of like some immutable fact of politics. The ACA passes in part because you have people like Ben Nelson in Nebraska, right? We're not that far off from having Democrats as senators in these places. And the idea that it's better to talk about abolishing the Senate than actually competing and winning these places, I think, is pretty foolish.

Closing message from Matt Schlapp. Remember Matt Schlapp?

Yeah, yeah. He did some schlapping.

He did some schlapping. He got him in trouble. Conservative, National Conservative, Trump guy. He posted, "Dear Kansas Conservatives, if we lose the Senate race in Kansas, we most likely lose the majority in the Senate. Vote Republican tomorrow, even those of you who are hurting. If you don't, it will all get much worse. Your message of frustration has been heard loudly and clearly." What a message. And also, has it been heard loudly and clearly? By who? Who has heard the message?

Right. I mean, it's just so hard. The other part of this, which is hard to untangle from the polls, is, OK, there's a concern that some of these rural voters, these Trump voters, may not be as enthusiastic and either they're not going to vote or they're just not talking to pollsters. But also, we know that the tariffs and the war has had this disproportionate impact on some of Trump's best places, right? And so it's just hard to disentangle what that will be. And actually, that's why I think it's the kind of hurting in polling, it leads to either everyone moving together correctly or everyone moving together incorrectly.

Over in Alaska, the race is closer with Mary Peltola, just two points up on Dan Sullivan according to The Times. It's not far off from where Nate's model has the race, where Peltola's up by around two and a half points. It is the only poll in The Times' last batch of polls where the margin has gotten tighter for Democrats. I think she was up six or seven in the last one. We also got an update on the Dan Sullivan ballot stacking scandal, the two Dan Sullivans, the Dan Sullivan. On Sunday, a federal judge dismissed the Department of Justice's Trump-ordered lawsuit trying to block the election certification.

I would say I'm a little there's like two levels to it. One, is this going to bother undecided voters and turn them away from Peltola? We don't know. I'm skeptical that it's going to be a lot of people, but it could move enough at the margin. And then two, it's like will Trump try to use this story as a pretext to overturn the results if Republicans lose? I think one, we don't know. Two, absolutely. And the DOJ amended their lawsuit to include all the New York Times reporting before it was tossed. So it's very frustrating because I don't think this is going to really impact the vote all that much because of the way Alaska votes.

This is the one where I think the one race where I was like my view of the race has gone from the most bullish to like now I don't really know. A, Alaska is very, very hard to poll. It's just hard to get people on the phone there. It's hard to get people on the phone anywhere, but especially in Alaska. Also, I think.

Because it's so cold.

You wonder why that is. You'd think if it's so cold, you'd be inside. Yeah. I think it's just that it's so rural and people are so spread out. It's all over. I think it's just it's a tough electorate to kind of. And the.

But they're not going door to door. I mean, I agree with you. I'm not saying you're doing a good, but I actually haven't thought about it. Why does them being far apart from one another change the way they answer the phone?

Yeah. Well, they also I mean, they're doing mail. They're doing online surveys. They're doing all that kind of stuff. I think that also the Dan Sullivan is a he's like you're seeing in these polls, he's like more well-liked than some of these Republican nominees. So it's just hard to it's hard to tell what's actually going to happen there. And so it's up in the air.

Yeah. The third thing I would just add to Tommy's list is even if there is nothing inherently illegal with having some random other Dan Sullivan run, is there any exposure in the effort to keep it a secret and the deception about it, which I think would play into Trump's hand as well and Trump's DOJ's hands as well? We'll see. Here's my question. If the response is, well, it doesn't really matter because there's ranked choice voting, what was the value of doing it?

We Dan and I talked about this on Friday. And there wasn't a ton of value in doing it. If you really dig into it, if you rank the different choices, there's some.

Some people drop off maybe. They only vote one.

Yes. Here's the thing. Every Alaskan voter that they've interviewed since then have been like, first of all, we knew this was happening the whole time. You have to think we're fucking idiots to not understand, which says something bad both about the effort to do it and the effort to make people think that the effort to do it was sleazy and beyond the pale because most people in Alaska, I think, are just like, yeah, of course we know the difference and what the fuck?

Well, it is sleazy, but it's a question whether it'd be efficacious, right?

That's what I'm saying, right, which is I think that people in Alaska were skeptical about.

I think weirdly, in 2014, there were two Dan Sullivans on the ballot at the same time just by happenstance. Yeah. But just to be clear, the Republicans do it too in Alaska, I think, because of the system. There's always just efforts to leech away a few votes from each side. And I think this cycle, the main Republican super PAC spent like $500,000 to get a Green Party candidate who lives in Arizona to run. And there was a lot of paid communications, like $800,000 worth of paid communications designed to siphon votes away from Democrats to fringe candidates. So for some reason, everyone just fucks around in Alaska.

I would say Sarah Longwell's final focus group was Alaska voters. I was listening to the episode over the weekend, and she's talking to Amy Walter. First of all, talking about why it's hard to poll Alaska, Sarah could only get three Alaska voters for the focus group. She was looking far and wide. And you did hear.

One of them was a moose.

You did hear these three women who were pretty conservative saying like, "Don't like Trump, but Dan Sullivan's always been " They all know Dan Sullivan. They all know Mary Peltola, right, because it's a small enough state. But the best anecdote, which will confirm all of our priors, was there's this woman who was a Trump 24 voter, Sullivan 22 voter, or Sullivan 20 voter, sorry, six years ago, and was like, "You know, I was going to I'm not happy with Donald Trump, but I like Dan Sullivan. And I was just going to I was going to vote for him again and just vote the same way.

That's great.

And now, not going to do it, voting for Peltola. It's so funny that Trump goes to Alaska and is rally turned off a voter.

Yeah. The other thing, too, is these polls are all obviously very good news for Democrats if they hold. But one, I talked about this with Dan this morning on the rapid response that it also shows late-breaking voters going towards Republicans by plus 9, which is a little bit confusing. But take that as a fact, then if people really are breaking towards Republicans, it really won't matter if the margins are where they're at in these other states. They have a bunch of Democrats over 50. But here in Iowa, in Alaska, where it's this close, people late-breaking could close the gap.

Yeah, I think it makes sense, but it's also not something to it's not unexpected because these are red states that Donald Trump won by double digits. And so the undecided vote is naturally going to be mostly Republican voters. And so you're going to get some to the extent that the Republican creeps up, you're going to get voters coming home, which is why you're getting these late deciders or later deciders who are just tuning in late actually just coming home to Republicans.

Well, it would be yeah. Yes, it would be that there are late deciders in an environment where a lot of Republicans who have decided early decided to vote for a Democrat.

Yes, right. All right. Let's talk Texas, where The Times had Talarico up by seven points and leading Ken Paxton by three and a half points in Nate's model. Like Trump, Paxton's also closing strong. His campaign appeared to cancel the final event of his Come and Take It tour, which was set to take place at the Alamo. He canceled the event at the Alamo.

Well, your other option is get slaughtered by Santa Ana's guys. It's just funny. It's funny, too, because I can see being talked into the Alamo metaphor and then also being talked out of the Alamo metaphor because it is perhaps a place to do your last stand. But of course, the reason we do remember the Alamo.

You've got to stand, though.

You got to go. You can't forget the Alamo.

It's got to be a stand.

You got to stand there. But also, it's not like it's a metaphor about winning. It's a metaphor about getting.

Imminent death.

Getting the big L. And it's where PeeWee Herman's bicycle was.

No basement, most importantly.

No basement in the Alamo.

No basement in the Alamo.

That's what we learned.

Paxton also closed his speech on Sunday by saying, quote, "Texas has never been this close to slipping away. We've never been this close to losing everything that we hold dear. If Texas falls, we don't have another Texas to move to," which is technically true.

It's just going to float down to Gulf of America. That's a very funny kind of sentence for just a losing candidate. It's just like, hey, do you think there's a chance that you're talking about yourself? Are you a little worried? This is a very big deal for you to lose. It feels very emotional for you, Ken Paxton.

Last thoughts on Texas? Blue Texas? Is it happening?

I mean, it's weird to feel good about Texas. It's mostly because of the demographics, like 40% Latino. It's because Paxton is such a historically terrible candidate. I mean, he gave a pedophile a sweetheart deal. He stole from his friends. His staff reported him to the FBI. He was impeached by Republicans. And he seems to have a hard time keeping it within the confines of his marriage. Everything he does.

What's funny about that is.

That's the best way to say it.

What's funny about that is, basically, those all apply to Trump.

Yeah, that's true.

Every single one.

That's true. I also think they tried really hard to make Talarico into a boogeyman. It just doesn't seem like it's worked particularly well. I don't know.

Yeah.

Talarico's skilled.

James Talarico is too much of a pussy for Texas. Just didn't work. I think his favorable rating in this poll is like plus 10, and Paxton is negative 21. Now, if Paxton ends up polling this out and winning, you can see here, he gets Paxton in this poll gets 44% of the vote, even though he's at 33% approval. So this is like do enough Texas Republicans hold their nose and vote for Ken Paxton, not because they like Ken Paxton, not even necessarily because they dislike James Talarico, but just because they're Republicans and they can't vote for Democrats.

It's also funny to think about mismanagement in California caused a lot of people to move out of this state. And a lot of those people did end up in Texas. Now, I think that's probably a more conservative group than a typical California voter. But it is also going to be a subset of people who are very motivated around the economy and just not as susceptible to kind of hippie-dippie persuasion.

Yeah. And Gina Inocosa is up in this poll as well about racism. Talarico's like two points ahead of Inocosa and Paxton's four points behind Abbott. And so the governor's race is obviously much tighter, but we will see. In Iowa, the race continues to look pretty tight as well. Time Sienna has Josh Turek up just one point on Ashley Hinson, 48-47. And Nate and his average has it at 0.7. So by any measure, it's effectively a tie.

I knew Ashley for a long time, and she was a little bit heavier. She knew the weight was on her, really, literally the weight. And she knew the importance of what she was doing.

Oh my gosh.

And she went out the old-fashioned way, too, not with, you know, give me a shot. Boy, she put herself she went on a regimen. She put herself in shape. She's in perfect shape. She was good. I thought she was great the other way, but she put herself in shape. And she did that for years. Me, I put on a couple of pounds. I hate to tell you.

I had not seen that. I cannot fucking believe that is real.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

He did that. That was his rally? What?

Well, because you know what? He wants to treat both genders equally.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah.

If he's going to be talking about John Husted's ass nonstop, he's got to say something about the female candidates.

Look, Donald Trump.

And she did it the old-fashioned way. She didn't fucking take the shot.

Like I did.

Yeah.

Yeah. Donald Trump, the one issue he's a fucking Calvinist on is weight loss. Also, it's funny, too. It's like Trump's sexuality has always been really interesting. And for him, it's about the person.

Sapio sexual?

Yeah. He's just like he like John Husted, that does it for him. Ashley Hinson, that does it for him. What he's attracted to, yeah, it's a body. It's a body, but it's also a mind. And he doesn't see gender the way that we do. So that's kind of cool about him.

I asked Harry Enton if the polls tell us anything about a benefit from being caked up. So you got to listen to the Sunday episode to hear that.

What's caked up?

Just a big, thick, juicy ass.

Oh, yeah.

Box a quarter off it.

Like a Husted, yeah. Get two dimes and a nickel back.

As we've discussed, Democrat Rob Sanz seems to be running way ahead of Turek in the governor's race. He's up more than seven in Nate's average. Tommy, what do you think? Do you think there's going to be a bunch of ticket splitters here? Do you think that Rob could help Josh get over the finish line at the end?

I hope so. I mean, yeah, Rob's running a really good campaign. It's a unique campaign. It's sort of this nonpartisan campaign. He's also benefiting because his opponent lives in Kansas. That's always a good thing when you can run against someone who doesn't live in the state. But I was talking to you.

How many points do you give him for looking like you?

Dozens.

Dozens?

Dozens.

That's worth like a point or two at least in the home stretch.

That's 4X being caked up, in my opinion.

Caked up.

I was talking to JD Schulton earlier today. He served in the Iowa State Legislature, ran for Congress. He personally knocked on 1,000 doors, probably in Western Iowa, where he lives. He says it's the best environment of his political career, meaning the best targeting, the best lists, more persuasion conversations, the best conversations overall, and more people knowing what the hell is going on. So that is optimistic. That tells me that Rob's got a really good field program because he's got a lot of money. And then he can hopefully turn out more Democrats and then independents that are Democratic leaning that you need in that state to win.

Oh, he loves it.

Yeah, he does love it. The question for Turek's the question, I think, will be answered by the election is, do tariffs and do diesel prices keep home enough conservative farmers that are enraged about the economy?

Yeah. I think you're exactly right. This is an environment election more than it is candidate on the Senate side, right? Because first of all, I've got to give Josh Turek his due here. I think when you talk to people about all these races and all these candidates and you talk about Josh Turek, everyone's like, "Yeah, he's a good candidate. He's a good candidate. He has the best Democratic net favorability of any of the candidates polled in the seven states set by New York Times yet." And it's just so funny because everyone a lot about Abdul and James Talarico and who's popular and who's not.

In Ohio, Sherrod leads John Husted, ass man by five, according to The Times, and by three, according to Nate. Not much to say here other than the fact that the state has apparently set a midterms early voting record. Also, though, they have this horrible law there. There's like one early midterm voting location per county, which is why it's been so fucking hard to do.

Well, because you know there's the counties, some are very big and some are very small.

Right. Exactly. Exactly. Vance was also in the state on Monday, where he closed out the campaign by fearmongering about, quote, "illegal communities of Somali immigrants," quote, "coordinating to flood the polls and drown out Ohio voters." Excellent, wonderful stuff from the vice president in his home state. What do you guys think about this one? This is another this is sort of like Alaska, where as we get closer to the end, I'm like, oh, can we do it in Ohio? Because it's become such a tough state for Democrats. Again, I've always believed if anyone can do it, it's Sherrod. And in this poll, Amy Acton is also 49-43 over Vivek, which is very close to the margin, Sherrod's margin.

Yeah. I share your fear. It's such a tough state. I think it's trending against us. I'm so used to seeing polls in the end that have the Democrat at like 46-47, and then we lose. Harry Enton pointed out to me I mean, obviously, Sherrod's a great candidate. He's like the best candidate we could have run. Harry Enton pointed out that there are people, respondents in polls, who think that Sherrod is the incumbent, which is like a funny, goofy thing to imagine. Here's my big hope. I am hoping that Vivek Ramaswamy, being the worst person in the world and running one of the most shameful ads in history against Amy Acton, will collapse the electorate, throw the election to both Acton and Sherrod Brown, and hopefully turn the state to us.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's my feeling, too, that people have got to be demoralized if you're watching your gubernatorial nominee do this despicable ad campaign that is completely backfired on him. There's another moment where he's confronted by someone else. He's just constantly being kind of hounded by questions following this. He can't defend it. It's just he's got to bring people down. And in this poll, right, Sherrod is up by five. One second.

Leave it in. That's pundit.

That's pundit. Sherrod's up by five, right? There's still room for the poll to be wrong, for him still to.

It's a dumb Emerson poll that came out right before your recorder that has Husted up three.

Ruined my day.

Did you see the photos? There was a tweet that went pretty viral of Vivek Ramaswamy's haircut. And it just said, "Vivek went to his barber and said, 'Fuck my shit up.'"

He's just so unappealing. I guess the other point of optimism is like it doesn't really make if it really is this close in Iowa, in Kansas, right, in South Carolina, wherever, right, it just wouldn't make sense that Iowa Iowa's not a hard state compared to those states.

Every state that touches Appalachia is the so it's like Eastern Ohio, Western Pennsylvania. You start getting these areas of the country that are different than the Republican voters in the plain states. But the other thing is you have Hamilton County, where Cincinnati is, has become much more Democratic, right? And so does that offset the rest of the state in some of the rural areas? Then do you get enough to turn out in Cleveland, which sometimes lags? But Sherrod did this eight years ago. Now, eight years ago is a long time, but in 2018, it was a Trump midterm.

Yeah.

Jesus Christ. We've been doing this a long time.

We've been doing a long time.

But he did it with a midterm electorate. So all he has to do is how much has Ohio changed? The electorate change in eight years is the question. And the other thing, different from '18, is Trump is much less popular than he was when Sherrod won the state in 2018. So if he wins, that's the explanation.

Yeah. It's worth saying I had to talk about this with Dan earlier as well, that in 2018, the economy had a positive approval rating. Donald Trump was not nearly as unpopular he is right now. There wasn't a war in Iran, right? There's a lot of reasons to believe that this should feel different than 2018.

Yep. Right. Yep. That brings us to our last state, Maine. Times Sienna has Troy Jackson leading Susan Collins by six, 51 to 45. Woo-hoo! Nate has it at four.

Put that in your boba.

Didn't go for a cord of wood joke there.

Yeah.

So pretty stable. It's a pretty stable, if not overwhelming, lead for Jackson that's actually expanded a bit over the course of the fall. I don't know. How do you guys feel? We felt tense about this one for a while, but this is one where, on paper, the evidence keeps getting better for Jackson as we get to the close.

Dude, we get to Maine and I have face blindness. I got nothing. I got nothing. I got nothing going on there.

Yeah.

I mean, here's the one that if you're just.

No feel for it.

Here, on the other side, we've been talking about all these red states that have partisan leans where Trump won them by double digits, and they're just really Republican states that's going to take a real overperformance by the Democratic candidate to put them over the top in Alaska, Ohio, Iowa. This is one where if you're just doing partisan lean and you're doing the generic ballot shifts 9 or 10 points, then Maine's like a plus 17 Democratic state, right? And I know everyone's like, "Susan Collins is magic, and she's Teflon," and all this kind of stuff.

Her approval is way down.

Yeah. Her approval in this poll is 48-49, right, which is still good, but not what it was. Not what it was. Jackson's still underwater, but he's 45-48. The independents in the poll, the Times poll where she was leading by three, were 47-47. It is now 52-41 in favor of Troy Jackson in this poll. So that is probably a big reason why he's leading. And the House generic ballot now, and Hannah Pingree's running for governor, they're like more 55-42. So they're now closer to where Troy Jackson is, which tells you that the partisan lean of the state and the polarization of the state is sort of just naturally like all the if you're a Democrat and you weren't sure about Jackson, you're kind of coming home at this point.

A little metaphorically.

But in Maine, they love their invertebrates like Susan Collins. You know what I'm saying? We're doing metaphors, right? Right. Yeah. Because then also, lobsters are invertebrates.

Yeah. We went from surf to turf from the oyster guys.

They're kind of big bugs.

The logger guys.

If you think about a lobster, it's kind of like a big bug.

They're big gross bugs.

Big delicious bugs.

You boil them alive. Hoping to keep all these occasional or new listeners after the election. But this kind of.

You don't have to.

I just want to say.

This is the show. Fuck off. You don't like it.

Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. No skin off my fucking back. Listen. No exoskeleton off my fucking back.

That's part of the show. I don't want to get a little loopy.

Yeah. I just want to be clear. You don't have to boil a lobster a lot. You take the lobster, you put it down, you take a knife, you go right in, and you pull back. And then you boil it.

Are you doing that?

Yes.

What do you mean what you're doing?

I've done it.

OK.

I've done it, but do it again.

OK. Great.

Do it again. It's not aesthetically pleasing, but it's more ethical.

This is a tough process.

Final thoughts, guys. This is the section called Final Thoughts. We've reached it.

Got it.

We generally prefer not to play pundit here. Who said that?

Who wrote that?

No.

Who wrote that?

You know what? It's my fault for not looking at this closely. This is on me. This is on me.

Wow.

I got lazy at the end. We don't like to predict here. We, of course, play pundit.

That's all we've done.

We've done the whole fucking episode.

We're not playing pundit. We're living.

We are. Yeah.

The only thing I'm qualified to do.

We wish we were playing.

The whole world is staged.

We're living. Anyway, we generally do love we like to live pundit here.

Yeah. Live laugh pundit.

There's a dog named Pundit.

There's a dog named Pundit in the room.

We try not to do too many predictions, but we're going to do some sort of broader picture stuff at the end here. There's been some discussion about how anything less than winning both chambers will feel like a loss for Democrats at this point. Do you guys buy that?

Yeah.

Yeah.

100%.

So much so.

Yeah.

Expectations are fucked.

Yeah. No. Play this if I try to say otherwise after. In this environment, with a president this despicable, with an illegal war, with the tariffs, with the Republican Congress rubber stamping this ridiculous, vile, lawless administration, if we can't win both chambers, then yes, that will be a loss.

Yeah. I think I'm not dodging it because you're right. Expectations is way out of control, and Republicans will be crowing forever if we don't win the Senate. But to me, it's binary, right? It's about the consequences of winning the Senate or not, or the consequences of not winning the Senate. We're probably going to win the House. Nate's up to like 95%, right? And everyone can look at the old Hillary chart in 2016. It was never at 95%, OK?

It was like 70.

So we get the House. No more Donald Trump legislation that Democrats don't approve. So that part of the presidency.

Because he's been on a legislative tear.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

No more one big beautiful bill.

Right.

That was terrible.

None of that shit. The Senate, we get the Senate. We can hold off two Supreme Court, one or two Supreme Court appointments, and dozens of other judges. And if we don't, Alito and Alito probably, and maybe Thomas, then we're going to get two more justices that are like fucking Eileen Cannon or worse in their 30s for decades. So that, to me, is the binary in the Senate.

Of course. That's why it would not just feel like a loss, but would be a loss.

Be a loss, yeah.

But I would also I don't I think if we can win the Senate, that is an incredible feat given this environment, right? And it wasn't that long ago that it looked, if not impossible, very, very difficult given the places we're talking about competing now. We are the day before an election, and we have a poll that has us up in some of the reddest states in the country. That's remarkable. I hope they're right. But I also do worry we just went through this Haley Stevens news cycle. I take Fetterman as word that he doesn't want to switch parties. I also wouldn't bet my life on it, especially when the way we have these arguments online, we definitely are not sort of coaxing, right?

California and Mississippi.

Right. If we start doing better, that matters not just for the Senate. So let's say we lose the Senate, right? But we win Texas and North Carolina and Georgia. That says for '28 and beyond that on the presidential level, that we now can compete in some of these southern Sunbelt states in a real way that we couldn't before. And I think that would be.

That'd be cool.

If we lose Texas, if we lose all of them at once, then that's going to be fucking terrible.

Not for nothing. Look, we all feel pressure. No one wants to die.

That's right.

OK?

We all want to take care of ourselves for ourselves, for our families. Could you imagine the pressure you feel to stay alive if you're a liberal judge in the Trump administration, like on the Supreme Court? You are on the treadmill.

Get yourself in that bubble.

You are crushing up Lipitor and doing all that.

You're listening to that guy that lives forever that talks about his life.

Yeah. That guy imaginary his son's erections.

Yeah.

That guy in Johnson.

Yeah.

You're making me remember when RBG did that wedding and performed that wedding. Remember during COVID, there were some moments.

She planking or something.

And then there was that.

I don't even remember that.

Yeah.

Oof.

All right. Next question.

I think Pundit farted, by the way.

I was just going to ask you. You have to look on your face like Pundit farted.

Sure.

And sure enough.

Pundit Tommy. Blame the dog.

It probably was her. She's doing that a lot.

What is an outcome anywhere on the map, or the whole outcome, that would change something you believed about politics heading into the election?

Full sweep would show that the fever is broken completely.

Ooh.

We got a broken fever.

Texas, Iowa, Kansas, South Carolina, Mississippi, for God's sake. New paradigm. Trump is over.

Yeah.

Bye-bye.

I would say that there's been this debate about Michigan and Abdul's performance in Michigan. And I think there's been these very kind of polar questions about will he overperform or underperform more center-left candidates and who would be responsible if that were the case, right? There's a lot of people like pre-score settling on this already, which I find very annoying. It's like, hey, guys, do you think we're not going to have time for score settling after the election? That's all we'll have time to do. That's what cricket comes about. But I do think that if Abdul runs close to Jocelyn Benson, doesn't have to get right up next to Jocelyn Benson, but doesn't kind of perform, I think, far under in the way that I think a lot of more center figures are predicting, I think that would tell you a lot about the left center-left dynamics going into the presidential.

I think if Democrats have a bad night, it would change my view about people voting with their pocketbooks. I can't remember an election where people have been.

Economic interests.

Yeah. I mean, look, that has obviously been disconnected from a lot of polarization has helped disconnect that from people's voting habits for quite a while. But this is a situation specifically where it's not just unemployment rates, it's inflation that has hit everyone, plus the tariff, plus the gas price, all of it. And if that does not do it, then that's going to be quite a signal. If Democrats have a great night, I think it's also going to change my view, which has also started to shift a little bit about how important money is in politics because they have spent more money than God.

Yeah. Well, the next question on the outline, apologies for jumping ahead.

Do it. Let's go there.

If results are worse, what's the cause? And my answers were polarization. It's just a depressing sign that especially lower-term midterms, lower turnout midterms are about the team you're on more than anything else. And then the money. Because if Elon Musk can spend half a billion dollars in these races, and the crypto industry can spend $200 million in these races, if that money can get Ken Paxton over the finish line, the most odious human being in the worst environment imaginable, it's a reminder that elections can be bought. And we're in a very terrible post-Citizens United new paradigm here.

Yeah. What about you, Lloyd? If we wake up to everyone wakes up tomorrow morning, the results are worse than we expected, what happened?

So first of all.

Fewer people voted for Democrats.

Yeah. That would be the shot.

You can't use that one.

No, no.

So first of all, there would be a polling error, a really big polling error, which would once again tell you something about the electorate. And I think one thing that that would mean is that the midterm electorate actually did look more like a presidential than we realized. And it tells you something not just about polarization, but just for how people are engaging in politics because it just would mean a lot of people, they're not responding to pollsters, they're not showing up in a lot of the data, but they were just ready to vote, and that they're going to vote every two years, not just every four years. And we do have a huge low engagement population of people voting.

Yeah. Here's what I think that's a little simpler and maybe more understandable for Democrats. So let's say the generic ballot polling is correct, right, nationally, and the whole country moves to the left. It's plus 9, right? And the whole country moves to the left. That still means that just based on fundamentals, Alaska, Ohio, Iowa, and Texas are still R plus. I think Nate has it 0.3 to 2, just to plus 2 on the simple fundamentals.

Yes. And that is certainly what would be the explanation, except go one step below that. Donald Trump is an extraordinary president.

Of course.

And I know you know that, but it's just like, hey, how did we allow as a party normal politics to prevail in an environment like that? And by the way, I wouldn't just be blaming Democrats. I think there'd be a lot of hand-wringing about Democrats. It's a societal problem that someone like Donald Trump is winning these states by 10 digits after launching an insurrection, right? There's a real kind of a culture that has sort of allowed someone like Trump to rise. But we continue to struggle to make the case to people that he is an extraordinary threat and the people that enable him deserve to be held accountable.

Yeah. And I think in the opposite scenario, where we wake up and everything's wonderful and maybe Annie Andrews pulls it out in South Carolina or Scott Colemont in Mississippi, right, then it's a whole bunch of Republicans who voted in '24 stayed home. Some of them decided to vote Democrat. And a lot of these low propensity voters who either backed Trump in '24 or didn't vote in '24 just came out in droves because of costs, war, ICE in their communities, whatever it may be. That's the upside scenario.

Yeah. And I also think that has a big impact, potentially has a big impact on '28 because that tells you, to Tommy's point, that the bottom really has fallen out and something big is changing.

Yeah. All right. That's our show for today. Reminder to tune into the livestream with Alex on the PSA YouTube channel. We will be back late, late tonight with our reaction to the results. Hopefully, we will still have this tone in our voices.

It won't be a fit.

Although we've been.

Basket cases.

I don't have good memories of that in the past.

I don't like elections.

But we'll see. Keep your eye on our YouTube for any updates after that. Go vote. If you haven't already, bring your friends to vote. VoteSaveAmerica.com if you need any help. And we'll see you on the other side.

Pod Save America is a cricket media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Michael Goldsmith with Reid Sherland, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hefcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Kenny Moffett, Adam Lippert, Joseph Dutra, Desmond Taylor, Dan Farrow, David Toles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.