Breaking News from Pod Save America - Are Democrats Making A Mistake With Graham Platner and New Candidates?

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

Jonathan Martin, the politics bureau chief and senior political columnist at POLITICO, joins to debate Tommy Vietor on new Democrat candidates versus the establishment. Get 50% off your new system. Visit https://simplisafe.com/crooked. There’s no safe like SimpliSafe®. CHAPTERS 0:00 - Democrat candidates 11:57 - Ad break 12:29 - Democrat candidates cont. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The Democratic Party is fighting two existential battles right now. There's the fight against MAGA and the Trump agenda. And then the second battle is to define the future of the Democratic Party itself. That second battle comes at an especially difficult time for Democrats. We have no power. We have no clear leader. And there is growing frustration among the base with the party's congressional leadership in Washington. For example, there was a recent Pew poll that found that only 35% of Democrats have a positive view of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, his unfavorability,

number is at 39% now. And for the first time in a decade, Pew found that more Democrats disapprove than approve of the job that Democratic leaders in Washington are doing. That's a reversal from 2023. That is the context into which this controversy over Maine Senate candidate, Graham Platner, exploded. For those who haven't followed the story, Plattner is an insurgent, populist candidate running for Senate in Maine. His candidacy has attracted a lot of grassroots interest and support from the Bernie Sanders wing of the party in particular. But, But he has also had a rough couple of weeks because of a series of articles about controversial and offensive things he posted on Reddit and because of a tattoo that he disclosed on Potsave America that resembled a Nazi symbol. He has since had that tattoo covered up.

Complicating matters, Chuck Schumer and the DSCC spent the past several months recruiting Maine Governor Janet Mills into the main Senate race, arguing that she is the safer and more electable bet, and that the Democratic Party is widely perceived now to be behind. and the Democratic Party is now widely perceived as being behind the attacks on Platner. So joining me today to talk about the controversy in Maine, the anger at the party gatekeeping, and how Democrats can figure out how to win again is Politico's Jonathan Martin. Jonathan has been covering and writing about politics for two decades. He has watched the Democratic Party rise and win big elections in 2006 and 2008 and then fall to where we are today. I think we may still be falling. He knows the party leaders.

He understands how they recruit candidates. He knows how party leaders decide whether it's time to ride or tame the grassroots beast. Jonathan, welcome to the show. Thanks, Tommy. It's great to see you, my friend. Good to see you. So for listeners, like, look, a lot of the content you're seeing on this channel is debate-focused. Obviously, Jonathan doesn't work for the DSCC or for the Democratic Party, so I'm not going to demand that he defend Chuck Schumer's decision-making.

We are just two political hacks trying to suss out, like, what is the smart strategic? approach in 2025. But let's just start, Jonathan, with the column you wrote recently that had the headline, Democrats keep falling for political fantasies. When will they learn? Tell us about the piece and the argument you made. Well, thanks for having me. It's great to be on.

There's this culture that's taking place in the party. It's not reserved, by the way, to one faction or another. I mean, you could say that what's happened with Platton happened with candidates like Amy McGrath in Kentucky here, Stacey Abrams and Georgia. I wouldn't put them in kind of the Bernie faction, Tommy. So I don't think it's limited to just the left. But there is this culture of what I call kind of political hobbyists, folks who follow all this stuff pretty intensely, who have really come up in the Trump era, which, by the way, they've brought enormous grassroots energy and a kind of new volunteer corps to the Democratic Party in the Trump era. But they've also become a,

incredibly powerful in some ways unwittingly powerful by virtue of the small dollar contribution. And here's how it works. These candidates who are often outsiders, or at least kind of new folks sort of haven't been around before, do a viral video. These donors see the video and their social media feeds. They get intrigued and they reach for their credit card numbers and give 50 bucks, a hundred bucks of these candidates and the candidates take off. The challenge is, is that they do so rather quickly. It's a bit of like a sort of like beat the girl one night, fall in love, asking to marry you the next day kind of thing. And there isn't the kind of vetting of candidates. And so sometimes you wind up with folks who are not exactly ideal candidates. And this is just

what's happened now. And really kind of the last 10 years, I would say, not coincidentally, in the Trump era. And, you know, so sometimes these canons have taken off, but to other cases, they have kind of been bum steers. So I want to talk to you more about this sort of the viral moments and this online kind of grassroots piece of this. But also I want to start with just by asking you about like some of the lessons I feel like I learned over the last decade that have been swirling in my head as there's been this fight over Platner and like kind of I've gotten pulled into it because I did that interview. And I just love your like blunt assessment of, of whether you agree, disagree,

you think I'm overstating things, like mostly what to take away from this. So look, in 2016, as you recall, as listeners recall, the consensus view in Washington was Hillary Clinton is the most electable candidate. So Democrats got to pick her. And then Trump is the least electable Republican in the race out of what, like 16 candidates or whatever it was.

Those assumptions were catastrophically wrong in 2016. I was catastrophically wrong. And more so today, now that we've seen Trump literally been the Republican. party to his will for the past decade. So isn't part of the lesson from that race that the party apparatus like people in Washington should have more humility when it comes to thumbing the scale and picking winners and losers? So I would separate the presidential cycles from the down ticket side. And this is an important question. Look, if you take Joe Biden out of the equation, because I

I think we can all agree that Biden was a vessel in 2020 to stop Donald Trump and end COVID, more than he was a sort of inspiring candidate in his own right. And I mean, that's not a knock on by. He was the man for the moment, right? The problem with Biden was he thought he was buying the car. It turned out it was a lease on the car, but we won't dig up that issue today. We don't have time for that. But take Biden out of the equation.

Look at where Democrats have found success for the last 50 years at the president. presidential level, right? It's with outsiders who have a compelling message and ran against Washington and the status quo Tommy in both parties. Carter 76, Clinton 92, Obama, 08. So I think there's something to be said for insurgents in the Democratic Party at the presidential level. The track record is actually pretty darn good. And when you look at the folks who have been nominated who are kind of Washington figures, Gore, Carrie, Mondale, Hillary Clinton, it obviously hasn't gone as well for Democrats. So I'm sympathetic on the presidential level.

What I think has happened is this democratic, it's almost in the DNA, this eagerness to fall in love to be swept off your feet, always looking for the next JFK or Obama. It now translates, I think, in a more risky fashion for gov

or for senator. And you don't know anything about these people besides the two-minute bio video and you give the money and prop them up. I just think that's a different any issue than the presidential level. I think party bosses trying to figure out the best possible candidates for general elections can be really effective sometimes. Like, you know, Harry Reid made no apologies for that, right? I don't want primaries. I want to find good candidates and coordinate

them and win general elections. And like Schumer has followed in that track. It doesn't always work, right? Like, let's be honest. Sometimes pick in the most, the best known candidate, who can clear a primary field doesn't always win a general election. Ted Strickland, Steve Bullock, Evan Bay, Russ Feingold. These are folks who Schumer and

Reed went back and found brought back to run statewide and it flamed out. So bosses, picking candidates, doesn't always work. There's no question about it. But I do think the virtue of bosses,

whether it's Schumer, read or anybody else, trying to figure out the best candidate is, they do find, people who've been vetted before, right? And that's the key here, I think. Yeah, it's just not, you know, sort of coming fresh like we all saw with Sarah Palin. Look, I think what sort of bugging people was, but what bugged me is it feels like the

DSCC is thumbing the scale so hard. Like, again, I've said this a million times. Like, I'm not, I don't have a dog in the main Senate race. Like, no one believes me on Twitter, whatever, it's Twitter. But like, I want, I want someone to win. You know what I mean? And I like talking to Platler. I appreciate the conversation.

I don't know much about Janet Mills. But I think what bugged people is not just the recruiting of Mills so quickly. It was the DSCC launched this joint fundraising committee with her and then Schumer and D. D.S. And like, look, let's just break it down to basics. If I had a DSCC person on right now, they probably say, hey, moron, your choice is a candidate with a now covered up Nazi tattoo or one that never had a Nazi-looking tattoo. Like, is that complicated? And like, I hear that.

I'm sympathetic to it. Like, I get that the Reddit post were bad. I'm not naive. I know that $100 million worth of attack ads. you know, like highlighting some comment, like him calling himself a communist, can be devastating. But the flip side is, you know, you make this point about online fundraising and sort of energy that comes from a great video. But Platner is also seemingly getting really big crowds on the ground in Maine.

Like the other night, on Monday night, he had 700 people in the gym in the mid-coast. And again, this is an election that's, I mean, it's October 29th today. The election is in June. I don't know, man. I'm just wondering if D.C. is kind of missing something. or at least where the energy is. You'll have no argument from me on that. Look, I think generally the effort to find well-known vetted candidates, I think is really smart.

But it doesn't always mean that they're going to win or they're the best candidate for the general election. And there's definitely times where, you know, you take a risk and it pays off. So this is a classic example of that. Do we go with the less-known candidate who turns out to have a bad opophile, but who was actually like really, you know, tapping into a lot of energy in the party, or do we play it safer with a well-known two-term governor? I think you can argue it both ways. You make an important point, though, that it's not just out-of-state donors. He also is sort of finding energy inside the state. His crowds have been huge. Look, I think this is a really acute issue for two reasons. One is

the Democrats are forever fighting the Hillary-Burney primary. You know, it's like it hasn't stopped, Right? This is different characters in the play, but it's the same play. So that's number one. Number two is Trump won and he won decisively and he's back and he's governing in ways that are, you know, really, really, you know, undermining the traditional fabric of the country. And Democrats are mad as hell about it. And look at 2017, 2018. What happened? You had a similar grassroots anger and galvanizing.

power. And what happened? You had a lot of Democrats who won primaries against incumbent House members, most famously AOC beating Joe Crowley. And I think that's what's happening here again, Tommy, is that Trump won. People hate that. They're not as shocked as they were in 1617, but they still are up in arms. And that grassroots energy translates into anger, not just at Trump, but anger at the Democratic status quo and the Democratic establishment. God damn it, Why didn't you guys do something about this? And how dare you then tell me who the best candle is for our party? So I get the anger, and I understand why it's translating.

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To get 50% off your new system, go to simplysafe.com slash crooked. That's simplysafe.com slash crooked for 50% off. There's no safe like Simplysafe. Yeah, so you touched on a bunch of things I want to ask you about. The other like major lesson for me from 2016 is I just totally underestimated the depth of the wound from the Bernie Hillary primary. Yes. It's lasted longer than I expected.

The Bernie world genuinely believes that the election was rigged against him, which frankly, I think that's overstated, but the feeling is real. I mean, Bernie himself articulated the other day on the flagrant podcast. It was exacerbated again in 2020 when the party coalesced around Joe Biden. There's been other races that have been like kind of Bernie proxy wars. And so, you know, ultimately, my fear is like we have this younger, more progressive part of the Democratic Party that feels like the Democratic Party fights fights harder against the left than they do against Republicans. And then when I look at what's happening in Maine, it's exacerbating it. The hesitation to endorse Zoran Mamdani in New York is exacerbating. All part of the same. Similar dynamic in the Michigan Senate race, right? There's a Schumer endorsed candidate that is the least progressive of the three.

And like, I guess what my fear is, like, at what point do younger and more progressive voters just be like, you know what, I'm done? I'm walking away. I'm DSA now, like enough of this party. I think this is a huge challenge for Chuck Schumer. And, you know, let's say he gets Mills through the primary. Obviously, Coopers has handpicked candidate in North Carolina. Let's say that he gets his preferred candidate in Michigan. And just hypothetically, all three of them lose.

Boy, I think that it would be hard for Schumer to survive that after next November. And in fact, he may even step down regardless next November because it's not clear he's going to run for re-election in 20. But yeah, no, look, this is always the risk for the party, right, which is how do we balance the energy and the sort of more ideologically driven younger voters with this need to appeal to the broad center? And let's be honest, the Barack Obama's the world, a guy that you know pretty well, they don't come every day, right? And that's, you know, Obama's talent was to be able to appeal to moderates and progressives alike. And that's really damn hard to do. And I think part of the appeal of Platner, at least you talk to a lot of people, is here's somebody who has got real, you know, real working class credentials, at least a sort of current job. But he's also at the same time, he's not going to, you know, he's not going to scare off the kind of broad center either.

So I get the anger. And let's be honest, I do think Trump is probably the best adhesive. it's hard for the kids to walk away as long as Trump is still the threat he presents every day. I'm not saying that you can still bank on that forever, but Trump is the best force for unity Democrats have, you know. Yeah, I mean, I think as long as he is president, I do think there was some attrition with younger and more progressive voters in 2024 because, I don't know, maybe Joe Biden had just so thoroughly let them down that they were willing to walk away, whether it was on Gaza or some other issue. But yeah, I hear you. I mean, I guess the final big kind of lesson I've been taking with me into these debates is from the Biden era, which is the Democratic Party is a huge gerontocracy problem. It was true.

It was true with Biden. We saw the results in that first debate. But it's not just Biden. Like Schumer 74. Eleanor Holmes Norton is running again at 88. Diane Feinstein, you know, wouldn't leave. Committee chairs don't have turn limits so that younger members can't advance. And then sort of into that mix, the DSN.

recruits a 77-year-old candidate in Maine who would be the oldest freshman senator in history. And again, I have nothing against Mills. I don't have a candidate in the race. But I just want to win. But I'm wondering if like when you're out there talking to voters, because one of the things I love about your reporting is you're not in D.C. You're just out in state all the time. Do you think gerontocracy is really an issue or is this an online thing as a Biden thing? Oh, I mean, I think it was very much an issue with Joe Biden.

I mean, I kind of used the real estate analogy. like Joe Biden couldn't make the sale about his record or what he wanted to do in second term because he couldn't get the buyer inside the house because they were looking at the frame of the house from the sidewalk and it was like rusty and falling down. I mean, it's like if you can't make the sale because the person, the voter can't get past what they're seeing and just a sort of gut image, like that was always Biden's biggest challenge. And I think it was devastating, you know, and obviously immigration inflation, didn't help, but just the perception that he had lost to staff.

And then that debate obviously crystallized it. So, yeah, I think it's very much an issue for Biden. I think it is an issue with Schumer or two. It's a little more online just because the people who follow those stuff very closely, I think tend to be more cognizant of who that is than with Biden. But look, I think here's the good news for Democrats. I think you get to 27, and this is going to be a hinge moment. This is a next generation election, right?

First time since 1984, there's not been a Biden or Clinton, either running for president or looming over the election. Wow. That's a long time for two families to basically be the biggest drivers. Don't count out Hunter. We can't roll it out. We can't roll it out. Sorry. Keep going.

But you know what I'm saying? So, yeah, the Schumer thing, there's no question. the perception that Schumer's, oh my gosh, you know, Cliver and Pelosi, Hoyer, they're all still there. You hear these stories about Eleanor Holmes-Norton. Absolutely. It's sort of, it's still there, especially in the aftermath of Biden. It's very delicate. I guess what I'm saying is two years from now, we're gearing up for 28, I think this is a next-gen party. And you're going to have a variety of candidates to choose from who in their 40s and 50s. So part of the subtext of what we would talk.

This is all 24, 24 hangover. Like, we're still living the hangover of 2024. I look, I think there's probably a lot of truth. I think, like, Democrats who came out of 2024 and saw that age was such an issue for Biden just in terms of his performance of the debate and the fact they never should have run again. And just the fact that like the age of the president of the United States, given the vigor required for the job is like a specific thing. So do people apply that exact same standard to a senator or a congressperson? Probably not. But I think that the base was pissed off by the feeling that the party hadn't learned. No question about it. And it's the same people who they see as presiding over losses, i.e. Chuck Schumer, who were then saying, you know, listen to me, voter, this is the best candidate take your medicine.

that's a difficult thing to swallow. There's no question about it. Here's my issue, though, with the sort of democratic political hobbyist is, you know, you got to be more discriminating and who you're looking and who you're giving money to. I'm not picking on Graham Platon. I'm just saying, like, this is not about, you know, finding somebody to fall in love with. It's about adding one more seat to the U.S. Senate, so you can get closer to 51. And you've got to be clear-eyed about it.

And by the way, the Republicans had this problem really from 2010 for the last 15 years. They would nominate these candidates. And it was less because their base fell in love with those, more just because their base is radicalized. But they would nominate these candidates in primaries who were either Tea Party-ish or Trumpy, depending upon the decade, who were losers in the general, right? And this plagued them for years. And so the, you know, the story here is the sort of transfer of power from, you know, elites in Washington and kind of the bosses to the grassroots. It's more of a pure small deed democracy crowd sourcing thing now. That's sort of how primaries are driven.

And there's upside to that. There's also a risk to that, too, you know. Yeah. And there is this just fundamental tension between establishment and non-establishment. Like, I understand why you would recruit Governor Mills. She won her gubernatorial race in 2022 by like 12 points. But there's also, there was a similar Democratic Party recruit in Maine, Sarah Gideon, who was a Speaker of the House who got trounced by Susan Collins by like nine points in 2020 despite raising more money than she could spend, literally.

He's still spending our money. I gave to her. And I think part of my- Because they're getting LLB for Christmas for the next hundred years. Yes. And part of my. fear is I worry that establishment Democrats in D.C. just fundamentally don't get how reviled the establishment is writ large. Like they can see it in polls. They can hear it in focus groups,

but they're really insulated from it in their own lives. And by the way, one way that a lot of these anti-establishment candidates like prove their bona fide as to voters is they say they are willing to buck the leader of the party and say, look, I'm not going to commit to voting for Chuck Schumer to be leader, which feels like, you know, probably a big factor in who he recruits and endorses. Do you think that D.C. Democrats get how, like, hated Washington is? I'm not sure how many more Democratic Senate candidates have to say publicly that they won't commit to supporting Schumer for leader until they wake up. It's blazingly obvious to me for the reasons you just mentioned. Like, they won't commit to supporting the leader. That's not a general

election issue because a lot of their primary voters can't stand Schumer, right? So, yeah, like, They should recognize the problem they have. And what I don't understand is it's not like this is all new. Like we're living through 17 and 18 all over again in which Democrats saw the same challenge, which is enormous democratic grassroots energy, which wins you a bunch of races, but which also has like a negative impact on your incumbents

who don't get the message or are otherwise vulnerable, right? Like that's how AOC's in office today is that same grassroots energy, which turns votes out against Trump, it also can bring out votes against your own establishment too. So if they don't get it now, man, they're never going to because we live this once in the previous decade. And now we're living it again every day that somebody says, I'm not going to support humor for a leader or I won't commit to it at least.

I mean, I don't know how more hints they need. Yeah. There's also just like an archetype of kind of an establishment candidate that always gets recruits. Like I was thinking about 2020, the DSCC, endorsed a guy named Cal Cunningham pretty early on in the Carolina Center primary. He seemed like a great pick. You know, the guy did three tours of duty in the U.S. Army Reserve, served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was ordered the Bronze Star. He got the General Douglas MacArthur Leadership Award. Like great candidate on paper implodes in the past few weeks because of a sexting scandal.

And it's like no one could have predicted that probably. Maybe people then knew him really well. But like it did make me wonder if we need to open the aperture of like what a good candidate on paper looks like. Maybe it is someone with like working class populist credentials like a grand platinum who's out on a boat every day, you know, farm it for oysters. Yeah, I mean, the Schumer formula is who has the most name ID can raise the most money and has been elected ideally to statewide office before governor, senator, the best. And like, look, John Hickenlooper and a purple to blue state like Colorado makes a lot of sense, right? Two-term governor. We want a big Cory Gardner, this guy ran for president, he flopped, but a serious person, well-known

in the state. And you know what? Schumer was right. The problem is, as you point out, the formula doesn't always work because the best-known candidates aren't always the strongest, most compelling candidates. And Steve Bullock was a fantastic governor of Montana, but this is more of a challenge when you get to reddish states or even purple to red states, is that the folks from yesterday or who you think are going to be your best candidates. Yeah, they can raise money. Yeah, they got an AIMID. But boy, for governors, it can be hard to make the jump to Senate

because just the federal versus state races are tougher. They're more partisan, the more national in nature. And then also, I think Tommy, it's fair to say that Schumer is more inclined to find folks who are older. You know, I think about Feingold or Ted Strickland or Evan By, obviously Mills now. You know, these are people. who were not in their 40s. Let's put it that way, right? And the upside is that they've been

vetted in statewide before. The downside is it's hard to say that they're fresh, new, galvanizing candidates, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So I want to pick up on your piece you wrote that we talked about at the top. In your piece, you know, you're clear like you don't think this kind of like falling love phenomenon applies only to progressives. You specifically write, I give you Amy McGrath, Stacey Abrams, Beto O'Rourke, in the latest Texan posing for a glossy photo spread somewhere near a lone star flag, James Talleyco. So I wanted to tick through those three campaigns. So Beto O'Rourke, his Senate campaign in 2018 was against Ted Cruz. He lost, it was 58.

50.89% Cruz to Beto got 48.33%. So pretty close to statewide race since 1978. No Dem had won the state statewide since 94. The last Democratic Senator was 80. Yeah, so tough state, right? Amy McGrath in 2020 got crushed by Mitch McConnell. I would argue it's probably more because it was a really tough cycle and a tough state than candidate quality, but it wasn't a perfect campaign, far from it. And I think it's fair to argue that that campaign may be siphoned off dollars that could have gone elsewhere. And then finally,

in 2018, Stacey Abrams narrowly lost. It was basically 50% to 48%. So I think my question for you is this. Like, I hear you on falling in love, the grassroots. you know, money flowing because one good two-minute hype video on Twitter. But like, could Democrats have done better that Beto O'Rourke did in Texas that year? You know? And it's like, don't we just have to run people? Like, we have, I feel like the failure of those three candidates probably says more about the challenge of the map for Democrats than almost anything else.

Pepsi prebiotic cola in original and cherry vanilla. That Pepsi taste you love with just 30 calories and no artificial sweeteners. Pepsi prebiotic cola. Unbelievably Pepsi. It was a really good cycle for Democrats in 2018. Look, could somebody have done better than Beto? I think it depends on who that person would have been. But I think he benefited and the race was so close in part because it was a great year for Democrats

with massive Democratic energy in the grassroots. A big suburban backlash going on that really energized places like suburban, Dallas, Houston, and Austin. And I also think that the Cruz was sort of uniquely unpopular for reasons that we don't have time to go into on this show. And so I'm not sure about that. I feel pretty strongly about Georgia and a state that I didn't mention in that piece. But look, if Democrats in 2018 nominate Gwen Graham as the daughter of Bob Graham, it was a much more vanilla candidate than the person they nominated Andrew Gillum, there is no Ron DeSantis today. Yeah.

Yeah, it's a fair point. And I think if Democrats nominated Stacey Evans, they probably beat Brian Kemp in 2018 in Georgia. So I think there were candidates that year who were safer plays who would have been more formidable in the general election. I do. McGrath in Kentucky, it's a hard state, but she just wasn't that great of again. And she'd run before in the House. But, you know, they're fundraising machines. And, you know, running against Mitch McConnell, it doesn't take much to raise a lot of money.

So, yeah, look, some of these races are challenging in the first place because of the nature of the state. And, you know, it just, I think it varies state by state. I do. Yeah, I think that's fair. I mean, look, you alluded to this earlier. Like, the other sort of piece of this is just the primaring of incumbents. Like, obviously, the Democratic Party, the various party committees are not thrilled when a Democrat gets primaried. It makes their jobs harder if you're at the D-T-T-Rple-C or the D-SCC.

We saw that tension play out between Ken Martin, the DNC chair and David Hawley. who was the vice chair for a little bit when David announced this plan to primary, a bunch of Democrats. But as you mentioned earlier, like the biggest star in the Democratic Party right now, arguably is AOC. She is only a member of Congress because she primaried Joe Crowley, who was a popular incumbent. I realize that like the party is never going to be four intra-party primaries. But I think people recognize that like it's good for us sometimes. Like the turnover and new energy, especially in like deep blue seats is good. Oh, I mean, it's happened for so many years, right?

It's like this wasn't invented in the Trump here. I mean, there have been Democrats or Republicans who win primaries against incumbents who come to power that way for a long time. So it's a painful part of the process for the party because it does expose tensions and fissures from the party along generational lines, along racial lines sometimes. But yeah, look, I mean, I think it's important to have that. that's what the nature of political parties is. So it's not going to change. And I think you're going to see folks doing that again and again in the future. You and I know this.

I mean, if more people in the party had spoken up about the incumbent in 2024, you know, maybe Biden feels some pressure to step down. It's so interesting, Tommy, because there's this idea. The right says, well, you guys never cover. at Biden's age, which is bullshit. But like what kind of gets forgotten is the sort of the wall of silence among every Democratic member of Congress and governor when it came to Biden and all, no, no, he's doing great, you know, and he's going to be a strong candidate. They knew it was going to be a risk. They just didn't want to answer the question about Kamala Harris, which they knew

was going to be the next question we asked, right? So I have Democrats have learned the lesson. And I think that's part of the issue now too playing out that, you know, they, they start chasing by what happened last year and they're not just going to fall in line now for for whoever is sort of the party approved candidate. Yeah, that's a really good point. I think 2024 is probably the best argument for more primaries. Final question for you. So there's some other examples of like party gatekeeping out there, right? There's barriers to participating in debates. You got to hit a polling threshold. You got to have a certain number of donations to your campaign. Then there's times when the party has moved around the order of the primaries to benefit a candidate or another, like,

for example, Biden moving up the South Carolina primary in the primary process clearly benefited him. He knew that. You know, he said it was about. He personally, he personally did that. It wasn't the staff. It wasn't Jim Clyburn. In fact, Clyburn was surprised to hear it when Biden called him, said, you guys are number one. He was like, we are. It's crazy. A lot of that stuff seems more reasonable to me. But I don't know, do you, do you imagine Democrats might take issue with that kind of gatekeeping in those choices? Oh, yeah. I mean, I think there's going to be, there's going to be a real battles going ahead

here in terms of who controls the process. By the way, I should add also, because there's always a different side of the argument, you know, what you would have heard in 23 and 24 if you and I were saying what we're saying now is you would have had Democrats, even those who didn't love Biden, who would have said, look, I get it, but he's our best option because if we have a primary against him. It's only going to wound him for the general. And if you look at the history of presidential campaigns, the incumbents who don't have primaries are better, are better positioned to win their elections than those who do. Carter had a primary and lost in 80. Bush 41 had a primary and lost in 92. And so, you know, which is also, you know, compelling history. I get that.

But sometimes, you have to have a primary. Obviously, Biden was the best case. On your question, Tommy, I just don't know what gatekeeping there's going to be by 2027. I'm not trying to be like superglasses half full or like everything's going to take care of itself. But like there's a real generational shift taking place among the Democratic Party right now. And by 27, Schumer is either retiring or there's huge pressure on him to step down. I assume that, you know, Pelosi's either retired then or is about to retire. I don't think Kamala Harris is going to be on a ballot again. Joe Biden certainly isn't.

The Clintons aren't going to be. You joked him 100 Biden. That's going to happen. Like, who would do the gatekeeping in 2017? Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know. Who is that? Yeah, whatever, like, the party is, whatever the –

I mean, there will be fights over the order of, you know, which state goes first, right? Yeah, but that's a more of a regional and, like, you know, alliances. is that's less like a big scary party boss and more just like, you know, state chairs and committee people like, you know, trying to get their spoils, right? I think like the best news for Democrats is like there's just not going to be anybody that can do that. This thing is going to be a free-for-all. And I think ways that could redound to the benefit of the ultimate nominee because they're going to have to prove their chops, you know? Yeah, look, I think that is the, the- There's no way to put a thumb on the scale because there ain't no

thumb. Right. Yeah, no one's got a big enough thumb. I think that is the best argument, which is like, you know what we've been missing in 2020, in 2024, in a lot of recent elections, like a completely wide open primary process where we let rip and candidates compete and there's no one pushing from any direction and voters just figure it out. And maybe that will end a disaster, but it can't be worse than we're at now. No, and look, I think, again, I think it makes a lot of sense on the presidential level. And it's we're down to the benefit of Democrats going back to Carter. I just think where you and I differ for a bit is that I think it's a different scenario when it comes to Gov and Senate races where I think gatekeeping and trying to put a thumb

on the scale on the primary can in some cases make sense. Yeah, that's fair. Well, Jonathan, thank you so much for doing this. Thank you for the piece. And, you know, it's fun kicking up a little hortens nest, you know, making a little news over. Enjoyed it. See you buddy. See you bye, bye, bye.