Breaking News from Pod Save America - Emma Vigeland talks Abdul El-Sayed, the midterms and the Democratic Party

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

What’s happening with Democrats heading into the 2026 midterms? Emma Vigeland joins Tommy Vietor to talk Abdul El-Sayed, Ken Paxton, and the state of the Democratic Party. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm so excited to have in the studio with me in Los Angeles. I'm a Vigland from the majority report. You know, are you lover? Good to see you. You might love me. You might not, and that's okay too. Good to see you as well, Tommy. Clicks are clicks.

Yeah, exactly right. We are, what is it, like a month until the midterms, a little more? What's a vibe check? How are you feeling? I mean, what are you watching for? I think that, what, six months ago we were talking about the best case scenario being Alaska's in play, Texas is in play. Ohio is in play.

And now we're talking about Kansas. We're talking about Iowa. We're talking about Florida. I'm certainly talking about Florida. You're definitely talking about Florida. Angie Nixon, I couldn't be more enthusiastic about her candidacy. She has like a message discipline that rivals Zorons. And I know that, of course, Florida has 1.5 million more registered Republicans than they do Democrats.

But independents are the largest growing constituency in this country. and I think her message has potency. So we'll see if you can drive turnout. She's not funny. She's good. She's good at like, what was her thing? She's like, do you still want to defund the police? She goes, no, I want to lock up my corrupt opponent.

She was like, Ashley Moody, why would I want to defund the police when I want you in prison for stealing $10 million from Floridians, which she continues to repeat? Talk about message discipline and she never takes her foot off the gas like Abdul al-Said. Yeah. That quote really got me. I was like, all right, I love that. Yeah, like the bull case on Florida is we're seeing a huge shift in Latino voters. The bear case is 10 gigantic media markets, cost a ton of money, has been sliding away from us, the registration advantage that you talked about. But hey, in a year where like things break our way for once, it would definitely be in play.

Yeah. And I'm glad you brought up the Latino voter piece because that is why it's so frustrating to read an article like I did the other day about how Chuck Scher. Schumer is saying to donors that they should be focusing on the Mississippi Senate race and putting money there, where what Trump won Mississippi by 23 points in Florida was more like 12 or 13 and the demographics are better for Democrats with that Latino shift. I do think that there is a real aversion to both of the candidacies of Abdul al-Sayed and Angie Nixon from the establishment of the Democratic Party that is frustrating to watch. But I think it's in part because they understand if there are more candidates like this, the Chuck's humors of the world, their relevance goes away.

Yeah, I think Chuck's relevance is waning, if not gone already. But I do want to talk to you about a duel in a second. But let's start with Ken Paxton. The Senate candidate in Texas, probably the worst person in the state that they could have fielded to run this cycle. The New York Times got a hold of some secret audio. We love secret audio from a fundraiser in D.C. I think it was a bunch of lobbyists, where he talked shit about Trump's midterm convention. Somebody said to Paxton about Trump, do you feel like he's a little bit of a drag?

Paxton responded, so to be honest with you, the numbers, when we did that convention, it dropped our numbers. Everybody's numbers dropped right now. Yeah, not good. So that's bullish. I'm sure that'll go over well at the White House. Then there is this clip of Paxton defending himself for offering a child rapist, a plea deal, where that person, Adam Hoffman, could walk away after serving just. just one day in jail. Let's watch that.

And yet the criticism has been that I let a child predator out having one day. Well, guess what? They served 60 days. It wasn't what we wanted, but we did not control that situation. We did our best. Not beating that party of Epstein rap, are we? No. And I do think that that is potent, too, because when you're associating abuse with Epstein and abuse of power, people now intrinsically understand, like, the rapaciousness of Epstein and that billionaire class is also wasn't just the girls that they were abusing, right?

Like they are also elites that people see as abusing the American people or our systems of government. And so you can translate that and tie this deference to elite pedophiles to Ken Paxton. He is, as you say, arguably the worst candidate that they could have fielded. I mean, like Donald Trump, but without the charisma as Trump will readily tell you. and with a lot of a, I mean, Trump is sloppy in a weird way. Paxton is sloppy in like a, I don't know, get your crap together kind of way. Trump's just like a clown. But if Paxton is saying that in a state like Texas, man, I mean, Trump, this is the hostage situation that they deserve.

I saw that, you know, he's kind of insisting that he's going to be going to Iowa and everybody, no one wants him there. But they've made a deal with the devil. So like deal with him. Ashley Hinson, the Senate candidate in Iowa was at the Oval Office. And Trump's like, I'll be going to Iowa. I'm very popular there. She's like, we love your agenda there, sir. Like, wouldn't even say you.

Yeah, Paxson looks like he's been on like a seven-day bender. Yeah. And doing things beyond just drinking. For just for a look, no, Adam Hoffman was an attorney in Waco, Texas. He was arrested in 2022 after being accused of repeatedly sexually abusing a young boy. A grand jury indicted him on continuous sexual abuse of a young child, which is a first-degree felony. They can land you in jail for 25 years to life. Long story short, Paxton offered a plea deal down to two misdemeanors that originally proposed

giving Hoffman just one day in jail. The judge lengthened the sentence to get to that 60-day period that he's bragging about there. But it's not a job well done, sir. No, certainly not. And it's just one of the many problems. Kent Paxing was caught on camera stealing an $1,000 pen. That's one of my favorite videos.

I mean, his corruption and his crookedness is comical. And it's just a very bad look for Republicans. One, they had to get tied up in the runoff. And so they had to expend their resources there, which they're very bitter about. Cornyn says he's not going to fundraise for Paxton, given his character. And of course, the establishment Republicans wanted Cornyn to pull through because he had that fundraising apparatus already in place. Now, Elon Musk is quietly spending a lot on Paxton's behalf.

And I wish that the Democrats would highlight that because as we saw in that Wisconsin judicial race, like early on, it was the earliest rebuke of Trump and Musk himself when he was central Democrats, like, really, really were galvanized against him. So I wish that they would highlight a little bit more how much behind the scene support Elon Musk is giving to this fellow criminal. Remember when Elon was on the stage in Wisconsin with like the Packers cheesehead thing on? Yeah, I do. I do. Also, Jordan Love sucks. If we want to talk about quarterbacks that suck, we can do a whole list. We could do.

We could do that. I do think that Matt LaFleur doesn't have a ton. Drake May does suck. It's been tough. I'm so done with these Pats fans getting in my mentions and saying that he doesn't. But anyway, I'm sorry about that. I'm sorry. I hurt to my heart.

All right. Tough off season for you guys. We'll talk football at the end. All the listeners are like, skip, skip, skip. Another race we're watching closely is the Ohio Senate race. Former Senator Sherrod Brown is running strong against John Husted or Hoosted. I never remember. Yeah.

This new ad from Sherry's campaign caught my attention. Let's watch. Listen to this shit. People living in poverty are just not very, they're not very experienced at navigating the real world, right? I remember talking to one young lady who said, well, I don't really know how money works at a grocery store because she grew up and has lived all of her adult life using snap cards to buy groceries. And so you literally have to teach people how to budget. Fuck that. I'm sure Brown and I approve this message.

Now that's an ad. That is an ad. And I love that. Pointing to the condescension of guys like Hustad, which also J.D. Vance is super emblematic of, which, you know, obviously applicable to the Ohio race there. Using kind of tropes about poor people that the Republican Party had previously basically reserved for black people and applying them also to poor white people in Appalachia. That's what the whole like implication of that book that everyone was fawning about from J.D. Vance was and I couldn't stand it at the time. And now we're seeing, yeah, it's like this rugged individualism and blaming of the conditions of poverty on the people there. And people are sick of that. They understand that we're being robbed blind. And so no one wants to hear blame for their own condition when we all know why we're in this situation right now with untold levels of income and wealth inequality that surpassed the gilded age at this point. Yeah, they all think Atlas Shrugged was nonfiction and that they're just great men who had success because they have these great intellects and they're all funding people like J.D. Vance is entirely a creature of Peter Thiel's imagination who just invented the senator who is now a vice president. But yeah, I love that. Just going after not just the bad policies, but the condescension to talk that way about working people in this economy and in this country when you're dumb ass president is the reason gas prices are through the roof.

That's devastating. Yeah, it is. And I like that that's what they're leaning into. And just to tie in with Talarico, you know, Talarico is running a campaign that I would say he is moderating, but he's not caving on any of the core issues that are strengths for Democrats this cycle, which include what was in that Sherrod Brown ad, which is the economy, really, and the billionaire class and targeting them. He's continuously Talariko made that at the forefront of his. his campaign and hasn't moderated in the ways that, you know, sometimes I was fearful that he would on that very issue. That's a strength for Democrats. And they shouldn't be afraid of running against the oligarchy because that's where the national mood is right now. Agreed.

To lean in. Let's talk about Michigan. Abdul al-Sayed is battling to defeat the former czar of the deep state, Mike Rogers. I saw Abdul in Detroit a couple weeks ago. I saw him in L.A. on Monday. I don't know if he's going to win, but the guy is like he is one of the best speakers we have in the party period. His stump speech is so good.

It's funny. It's light. He talks about his bio. He talks about the issues and the stakes. But like, it's just really hopeful and optimistic. And like, it was great to watch. He seems to have thoroughly won over one TV hosts in a way that is surprising. Let's watch this clip.

Abdul has a legitimate reason to be targeting these Maha voters. He's actually a doctor. Yeah, he's an MD. He's not a practicing physician. But yeah, so. Oh. Well, Bobby Kennedy is a nothing. So he's the.

I could, well, no, he's confirmed as that, but I'm saying, like, on the scale of going to medical school and getting through that, he's a zero. Yeah, but he's even in better shape than Abdul, isn't it? And he wears jeans to work out, like all real men. I bet he could put up more weight than Abdul. You like this talk. He could win.

Does Jesse Waters want to fuck Abdul? What is happening? It's the 10th time he's done this. I genuinely think that there are a bunch of conservatives who have not dealt with an aggressive. style progressive leftist that is not going to back down and is not going to cave on the issues. And when you rhetorically punch someone in the face who is on the right, that is when they start to respect you. And I think we're seeing that was Zoraamamani and the way that Trump is responding to him to. Speaking of love affairs. Exactly. My God. And I think that like when you're a fascist or you're a far right individual or you're a right wing or what have you, the only thing that they respect is strength. And so this is no longer. are these squishy neol liberals that are going to cower and cave on all the framing. No, he's going to, he's going to fight back. And that, like, that is what I think Waters is attracted to there,

for lack of a better description. He likes those buys. He likes the tries, shoulders, the traps. The Trump, boomed down, you think is so funny because I was talking to a journalist who's like a close Trump watcher who was like, mark my words, Trump is a type. He's going to like Zoron because he's good looking and he's got Riz. And sure enough, they come out of that meeting the first one at the White House, we all were like kind of blown away, like, what just happened there. And then I talked to people who have been in the room with them since. And I think Trump, like, leads with how good looking are you comment, like every time. Yeah. Well, I mean, we also, we now know that he is a closeted and chaotic evil bisexual. We're learning all about this. And the more that his

dementia sets in, the more that he is fixated on men's looks. I mean, did you see that lie that he said about how these strong firefighters carried him out on 9-11. That's a new one. Yeah. I'm like, bro, that was like something you watched on the internet and dreamed about or something. That's not, that's not something. You think he's Amy Klobuchar at the Minnesota State Fair getting held by these beefy men? The Trump administration really is like a box of chocolates.

You never know which hypodermic needle you're going to bite into. Step on. Yeah. Also, Jesse Waters. Okay. RFK Jr. is not in better shape than Abdul. I'm like the amount of peptides and injunuched. and injections and all of this stuff that these guys are taking.

Right. I don't know enough about it, but this can't be healthy. It's completely unsupervised. And this man is in his 70s. There's no reason he should look that way and be that shade. And yeah, he looks like a football used in a playoff game in the 1980s. He's like a weird, very tan, very red, catchers, leather. Catchers mint.

Just a really old catcher's mint. Ty Cobb's glove from the baseball game. But, you know, I don't know what they're taking. I assume it's TRT, it's testosterone replacement. I get made fun of my friend for saying this other. I really don't know what a peptide is. Like, I live in L.A. People talk about peptides all around me.

Yeah. I genuinely don't know what they are. I think they get shipped over for China and you just inject them into yourself. But like, why? I don't either. I mean, there is, it really is incredible as there's this war on gender affirming care for trans kids, that you have this entire class of Republican man that feels that they are not sufficiently masculine enough and producing their own tea. And you have guys like Max Miller,

who is taking testosterone in his 30s. And when you start to take it, that means you have to continuously be hooked on it because it doesn't naturally get replaced anymore. And so... We know what happens then. Exactly. Right. We do. And they don't want to know what happens then. But then why start taking it now? That's my question. But, you know, all of the Maha health stuff is about giving people this false sense of agency over their health via supplements or, you know, extra medicinal treatments and things like that without actually addressing the root causes of why people feel alienated from their health care, which is cost.

Totally. It's cost. And also, I have a friend who tracks a lot of the MAHA influencers or sort of health influencers that got pulled into MAHA. And they are so disillusioned because they really thought Trump was going to ban certain pesticides and chemicals and whatever else. and he has just completely abandoned them and let them down and walked away from like the real things in that agenda because of course he does corporate bidding. Right. I had a really interesting conversation with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez about that.

And she is specifically targeting that cohort as well. I asked her, you know, what she thinks are the biggest kind of pressure points or ways to fracture the Trump coalition. And that was one of the answers that she gave because they, she says they view their fight as largely. non-political. They just want their food to be healthy. And so like that is a way to actually, you can address that anxiety in a way that meets the moment with facts, but you can't be mealy-mouthed about it. It has to be on the basis of universal health care and addressing it in that way, because snake oil salesman will come in and charlatans and fill that void. And they are disillusioned, as you say. So there's an opportunity there. And Democrats have a strength on the issue of health care. They just have to unite around a message. A message and a policy.

And the policy most importantly. I know. I mean, you've been talking about Medicare for all for a very long time. Did you talk to AOC when she was doing the series of Instagram videos around freezing her eggs? Was that when that? It was before. It was beforehand. It was probably a month before that.

It's really just interesting that she decided to do that. I mean, it's like my family's been through that process. I've seen it up close. I thought it was cool that she was willing to kind of let us be a part of it because it's painful and it sucks. Nothing about that is fun. Right. I mean, like, I'm perhaps my wasp sensibilities. Like, I couldn't put myself out there like that.

Not a million years. I'm too repressed. But I'm impressed that she did it. And I will say that I went to like a wedding with a bunch of people who are not political at all. And they just like moms and women in their 30s and 40s came up to me and were like, I love that she's doing that. It's so cool. So there's a real audience for it that she's tapped into. My algorithm is just like politics and sports.

but she knows what she's, she knows what she's doing. 90s rap. Yeah. No, there's sometimes every once in a while, my New England sensibilities will let me talk about a sliver of my personal life and you'll be surprised. If you're vulnerable, how often people would be like, oh, it's, you know, nice to hear about that process. Right. You feel less alone. Right. Vulnerability. Gross.

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All right. Let's end by talking about the pitched battle between the majority report and the bulwark. Your co-host, Sam Cedar. had a comment the other day where he suggested that Sarah Longwell over the Bull Work actually wanted Abdul Al-Sayed. It's created this back and forth that is all over my Twitter algorithm. I've tapped in a little bit, but not read all of it. So I just want to get your sense of sort of like where Sam's coming from. You don't have to speak for him, obviously.

I know you guys have been talking about this. And sort of it feels like the 2016 primary will never leave us. And maybe this is like a legacy of that. But I don't know. What do you think? Well, I mean, in 2016, Sarah Longwell was a Republican, a log cabin Republican. And so was...

He's just anti-Trump, right? Right. I mean, but I think that, you know, Sam's been in the progressive Luckwing media space for decades at this point and has been principled in what he stands for. You know, I've only been in this industry for around, I guess, 10 years at this point. I would say similarly. The last 10 years has been a lifetime. It has been. Don't only that.

Yeah. Well, it came. I came right out of college. this so I know nothing else actually. But yeah, it's we're freaks like that. But, but, you know, I think they are doing a lot of good work. I think Tim Miller even challenged Sarah Longwell a little bit in the in the conversation that we were referencing about Hassan Piker, which is like, why are we continuing to fixate on this? Why are we continuing to talk about this? Because in the primary, there were moderate to centrist Democrats that were more than happy to demonize Hassan as a proxy

to go after Abdul al-Said. But now that we're in the general, election, my question is, why continue to focus on Hassan Piker? Voters don't seem to care. And there's this this weirdness about like, you know, she will say, we shouldn't be centering Hassan Piker when no one was until these centrists and Republicans started to. And so I think like when a lot of your commentary is focused on saying Hassan is anti-woman, Hassan is pro-Hamas or whatever she said, or even saying something like she would prefer Ted Cruz to Zoran Mamdani, I think that it's natural to question if this former Republican is more partial to a Republican in that Senate race than the Democrat.

So I hear some of that. Like, I can't speak for Sarah. I mean, I know, look, I talk to her enough to know that she really, really wants Democrats to win. I think she's running campaign ads for Abdul in Michigan. And her organization, they have, like, Republican voters against Trump has been running ads this whole cycle. Yeah. So, like, I don't, I don't think it's fair to say she doesn't want to do it. I'm positive she does.

she wanted someone else in the primary. She was honest about that and then has come around since. Well, I don't care about the, frankly, I don't care about her intentions that much. I care what the output is. And I think that the continuous focus on Hassan has been a, they're creating it as an issue for Abdul al-Sayed, and it's manifesting in that way. And I think that it's fair to have a critique of that, which Tim Miller did in that debate. And now he's saying that we're being unfair about that. we were just kind of aligned with his own criticisms in their conversation. So look, the Hassan discourse has went on forever. We have defended Hassan on the show.

We've had him on our shows. He has a right to his own opinion. I just also think, like, Hassan has also perpetuated the conversation about Hassan by doing a million interviews, right? So he's been forced to because no one seems to ask. But no one's forced to do anything. Like he, like I agree. He has been attacked by Republicans and picked up and demagogued in a way that I think is unfair to him. that is fundamentally dishonest, and that is unbelievably frustrating for him personally.

But also, like, then you do a long interview with Axios. Of course, they're going to ask ridiculous clickbady questions or, like, pull shit out of context and get clipped, right? And it's going to be frustrating. And it's going to create another round of conversation about Hassan and Abdul that is, like, unhelpful to Abdul. So I think, like, political pundits are going to have a conversation about kind of what's in the news and they're going to have opinions on it one way or

the other. And like, I get the, I get the feeling of frustration and unfairness about the, like, stupidity of the focus on what Hassan said versus, like, the Iran war, for example. But, like, you and I are doing it right now. We're talking about it, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, I think, like, the, the, their, I think Hassan was forced into a response. This has been a very pretty, like, unprecedented, uh, focus on a private citizen who's a streamer in California because the, the moneyed establishment wanted to make Zoran Mamdani the boogeyman, but it turns out that the president's in love with him. The president's in love with him.

And that's undercutting the Republicans' ability to demonize him. And so they are looking for another, frankly, Muslim person. This is like rank Islamophobia that the Republicans are running on to define. Additionally, DSA is an existential threat to those same people that are going after Hassan. So DSA is fairly, you know, democratized. There isn't one particular figurehead that they feel they can define. And the ones that are, are DSA members like AOC and Zoraamandani, are very popular with the base. So they've tried to make Hassan, in my view, consciously into a boogeyman based on a lot of, like, racist attacks.

And so I think it's incumbent on anybody that wants to get Democrats elected not to feed into that narrative. And, you know, the— But what does that mean? Does that mean you have to defend everything Hassan says? Because I've defended Hassan. I defended that Democrats should go on his show. Maybe not say he hates women. Maybe not say— That's fair. Like, I don't know everything Sarah has said. I'm just saying, like, there's also policy areas where I think Hassan is wrong or he said things that I profoundly disagree with. Like the idea the Middle East would be safer if Iran had a nuclear weapon.

I just think that's profoundly wrong. Well, I would agree with him on that just because it would disincentivize Israel from expanding and attacking Iran. If Iran got a nuke, the Saudis get a nuke, the Emirates would get a nuke. I'm a 14 nuclearization. So like that's why I just think that that logic is wrong. So I'm just think like what I'm getting at is we're all like you're friends with this on. I'm friends with this on. I don't want to see him attacked unfairly by Republicans or Democrats. I get the frustration around the whole conversation. But also, um, when centrist's shit libs say things that are dumb and annoying, like we'll make fun of them. You wouldn't say I'll make fun of them. Right. So it's like there's not like reciprocity on this ceasefire that I see out there.

Well, I think in my view, the, if we want to go back to 2016, who are the true people that want to get Democrats elected? I know that you do. Even when we have disagreements, like, I, what I love about our conversations is that we both want Republicans to lose more than anything. And I think in 2016, a lot of Bernie supporters were unfairly tagged as wanting Trump to win. And it gave centrists an argument something to offer the base when they weren't really offering as much political. politically or policy-wise to say, we're the ones that want to defeat Trump, we're the ones that can defeat Trump. And once I think the voter base started to see that perhaps leftists are a little bit more committed, committed to defeating Donald Trump than some of these centrists who, like, what was the reaction when Zoraaamongani won that race? Jill Brand went out and said this incredibly racist thing about him.

Never, I mean, she apologized, never endorsed him if I'm remembering. Schumer didn't endorse him until after. And Jeffreys had to be dragged kicking and screaming. And then Sarah Longwell said that she'd prefer Ted Cruz to Zoron, Mom Donnie. That's she kind of kidding. I mean, but she's a Republican. I hear you. It doesn't even identify as a Democrat.

So it's fair to say, like, if you're fixating on Republican talking points and parroting them and saying them over and over again, like, would you prefer for the Republican to win in instance. I don't think that's an unfair question to ask. I think it's total, like, look, I think all of us are allowed of our opinions. They can like people and dislike people in the primary. It's like once there's a candidate, we all got to get on board. You know, and I, you and I have both been on the winning side and the losing side of these conversations. In this case, in Michigan, both of us backed Abdul in the primary and are pumped. And frankly, it makes me even more nervous about the election, right? Because it's like, you want to be right. We're invested. Right. We're deeply invested and we care profoundly. I think that Sarah and Tim and all those guys,

Like they set up the bulwark and a bunch of other organizations because they, they want to defeat Trump and Trumpism. They've spent tens of millions of dollars in service of that. I don't doubt their sincerity there. I think everyone when your candidate, if a duel were to lose, would there be a bunch of people saying, we told you so? Absolutely. In the same way that, you know, when Hillary Clinton lost in 2016, there were a bunch of people on the left saying, I told you so about Bernie. And they had a point. You know what I mean?

Well, I also, but there's a structure. thing that is not also being talked enough about, which is that there's a consultant class of Democrat that's existentially threatened, I think, by campaigns like Abdulahead and Angie Nixon. And, like, Longwell has done consulting. Like, I mean, you don't get these big commissions on big media buys, whether it's digital or TV, if you're a door-knocking-focused, people-powered campaign in the same way. And that is the underlying impetus in a lot of some of these, like, criticisms, I'm not to say them, but, but, you know, I watch CNN and I see like a so-called Democrat criticizing these

campaigns and they're a pundit. And you look it up and it's like, oh, they're a consultant. They're going after these left-wing campaigns and they don't like them because this is not the kind of campaign that would enrich them and it would make them less relevant within the party. And so I wish there was a little bit more transparency about people's financial investments in certain kinds of campaigning. And I just, those kinds of campaigns have all. also been ineffective. That's part of the frustration here is that there's an overrepresentation of the disillusioned Republican in the Democratic Party media ecosystem that is not really translating to everyday life. It's not representative of the electorate. And so I think that there can be

it's a well-funded operation in many ways to maintain a certain center of gravity within the Democratic party that is, I think, counterproductive if we're trying to win. And that's my feeling about it. But I'm happy to have like an ideological debate about it. And again, this was more about Longwell and also Nira Tandon. Nira Tandon kind of got thrown into this. And she's relentless. So I even talked to Nira in like a long time. I'm not going to speak for or against her. I do sometimes. There are people who are Democrats or Democratic activists who live. literally seem to wake up and do nothing but tweet about Hassan all day every day. And I'm like, I feel like you'd be happier if you just didn't do that.

But then what other actions say? That that to me demonstrates that she would prefer to use Republican attacks against the Democrat than uplift the Democrat. I can't speak for her. I find it to be a crazy waste of time. It's just my take on it. I will say on the Schumer piece, it's like I've been very hard on Schumer in this conversation, on the show generally, his leadership style, his recruitment.

I feel like they really stepped in it in Michigan because Haley Stevens was just not like the candidate for the moment and Abdul was great and they spent so much against Abdul and then lost. I think Maine was a bit of a wash in the end. We were obviously like more excited about Platner and that turned out to be a huge vetting failure and the pro Schumer people had a point. If you look at North Carolina,

I think Schumer deserves credit for getting Roy Cooper in there. If you look at Ohio, Sherry Brown, obviously he was a great candidate. Like, so there's been some, some wins and losses. I feel like I personally probably don't give Schumer, like, the flowers he deserves for some of that recruiting, in part because I was so pissed about Michigan. Yeah, I mean, rising tide. And for all of the issues in Platner, as soon as that credible accusation came out,

you know, I immediately was like, he's got to drop out. But at the, but the infrastructure still remains. And like that in Maine in a way that they wouldn't have like Janet Mills come on. I don't I don't even seem to water off. Right, exactly. And so like there's still that volunteer base that that is working on behalf of Troy Jackson that I think is encouraging. But yeah, no, it's like my my viewpoint here is that the party's a big tent, sure. And if you want to help get Democrats elected, I'm on board.

If you're as enthusiastic about Angie Nixon and Abdul Al-Said as I am, I'm on board. But to tie Schumer to this, the never Trump Republican, you know, and gearing the party towards suburban Republicans who are disaffected has like really materially damaged our democracy. The Democrats have narrowed their coalition and did so under Schumer's leadership since 2016 in such a way that we lost some of those low propensity voters that went to Trump in 2024 that we didn't see coming. And my contention, as you know, has always been that a focus. on economic populism and taxing billionaires and, you know, cut no new wars, as Abdul says, and re-focusing on your community and putting those resources there, that that is a message that can can win people over. And I am wary of the over-representation of like the more conservative, never-Trump Republicans that still seemingly, one, I think their strategy is

ineffective. And two, there still is not much of a reckoning about like, why did you become a Democrat. What were you okay with about the Republican Party prior to that? Was it all the tax cuts for the rich? Was it the Iraq war that you were in favor of? Or was Trump so rude? Like, I mean, being a log cabin Republican, you have to be a doting the wool Republican. And then turning around and lecturing the Democratic base about who's electable to me is a little bit rich. I think, you know, everyone gets to decide what they want to believe in, you know, whatever. Like, I'll fight with you, ultimately, I think people can just choose their political affiliations. I think the legislative agenda you laid out, I believe in wholeheartedly is the right path for Democrats.

I do think we as Democrats need to just more publicly account for the fact that we were way wrong on immigration. The country absolutely disagreed with our views. They believe that Joe Biden let the border get crazy and out of control, and that drove a shitload of voters to Republicans. And that's just an example of where like just pure economic populism isn't going to solve it. And we're seeing similar stuff in like Germany, by the way. We're like the far right and the far left are doing well in part because of this demagoguing of immigration. So there's just other elements that are just not like quite as clear cut as the kind of 2016 burning on a populist agenda. I'm like behind.

You know, I get what you're saying. And it's not as it's not as simple as like, you know, just what I would advocate for, which is actually having a message on immigration and not pivoting to the right. Like what would have been more impactful for Kamala Harris, for example, would have been to stake out a message that actually addressed immigration and wasn't just like I prosecute transnational criminal organizations and I will be just as hawkish. If that is your issue, you're already going to go for the real thing. Or just be like Joe sucked on this. Yeah. Well, she could.

She should have distanced herself from that. Yeah. I mean, there were a lot of things that went poorly. But the campaign, her campaign, when she was polling best, was prior to the convention before she did the moderating thing that a lot of these more like centrist Republican light types advocated for. The campaigning with Liz Cheney happened after that. And that's when she started falling apart in the polls. I feel like the Liz Cheney piece is the most over analyzed thick. Like I don't agree.

I think Liz Cheney's politics and policies and votes are terrible. But I think the idea of like doing like one or two events with her seeing if you can pull back some moderate Republicans. Like there's nothing wrong with that. I actually really I do disagree because I think it's under discussed how the name Cheney associated Kamala Harris with a really, really already existing weakness that was not picked up on by the political class, which is the warmongering. Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney. I mean, and people just go, oh, Cheney. Oh, and this is the administration.

that is, you know, helping commit genocide in Gaza right now and Trump is saying no new wars. I mean, he lied. He campaigned on no new wars and I'm going to fix the economy. And he started the worst war and destroyed the economy. And that is an immense vulnerability. But he, they lied. And because they knew that there was an appetite for a different perspective on that. And she kind of refused to do that and compounded an already existing weakness for her, which was the lack of daylight with Biden on foreign policy and made it seem like, oh, this is just a part of the very establishment that got us into the last war that we hated. That's fair. That's fair. Did we solve it?

No, I don't think so. It's interesting. It's fun to like go back. I love debate and discourse and all that kind of stuff. So I hope no one takes it super personally. Don't clip this. Hassan, don't clip this and yell at me. You know I like you. We text like I think you're great. We disagree on some shit. Sam, don't fucking yell at me. Come on. Let's talk. He absolutely won't yell at you. But he is also like me as sicko in this kind of thing. And I think, and we've talked about this before, running away from tough conversations on the left, like the right is at each other's throats constantly and it hasn't hurt them at all electorally.

People are star for honest discussion and like an actual hashing out of how we're going to represent them. And so I'm happy to have that. Exactly. Abdul's leaning into every tough conversation. He will have the hard conversation with you. you about Gaza. He'll go on raging moderates with Tarlov and Prof. G. And just have a 45-minute disagreement about whether there's a genocide in Gaza. And like, good for him. Have that conversation. Yeah. I really, I couldn't agree more. Go on fight with Jesse Waters. He might try to bang after it.

Well, I mean, he might slash your tires first to make sure that he can't leave. People should look up how he met his recent wife. It's a weird story. It is not charming. A Fox News employee who he let the tires air out of her tires so she would have to go home with him. And he tells us as if this is charming. Yeah. As a woman that sends a chill down my spine. My wife would be like, I hate you. Oh, yeah.

I mean, that's, kudos to Ryan Grimm. People can also look that if they want. They threw it out. My buddy. Emma, great to see you. This was very fun. Let's do this again soon. Absolutely.

Next time in New York. Yes, absolutely.