No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Lauren Boebert on the brink of defeat

Episode Date: November 13, 2022

Republicans took a gamble on midterms and it backfired spectacularly. Brian interviews former Obama speechwriter and host of Pod Save America, Jon Favreau, about what Democrats did right during this midterm cycle, what Kevin McCarthy would do if Republicans do manage to take the House by 1 or 2 seats, and whether DeSantis is likely to hit back at Trump as their feud intensifies. And Adam Frisch, who’s locked in a fierce back-and-forth with Lauren Boebert in Colorado’s 3rd congressional district, joins to discuss how many ballots are still waiting to be counted, when the next batch of ballots is expected to drop, and how he was able to give Boebert a fight in a district that was rated safely Republican.Donate to the "Don't Be A Mitch" fund: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dontbeamitchShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about the gamble that Republicans took on midterms and how it backfired pretty spectacularly. I interview former Obama speechwriter and host of POTS of America, John Favreau, about what the Democrats did right during this midterm cycle, what Kevin McCarthy would do if Republicans do manage to take the House back by one or two seats, and whether Ron DeSantis is likely to hit back at Trump as their feud intensifies. I'm also joined by Adam Frisch, who's locked in a fierce back and forth with Lauren Bobert in Colorado's third congressional district, about how many ballots are still waiting to be counted, when the next batch of ballots is a couple of ballots. expected a drop and how he was able to give Bobert a fight in a district that was rated safely Republican. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie.

Okay, so first off, wow, there was no red wave. There wasn't a red anything. As of this recording, Democrats have won the U.S. Senate with 50 seats, possibly a 51st with Raphael Warnock's race going to runoff in December. Democrats may lose just a handful of seats in the House. We're still waiting on a number of returns, but House control is still very much in play. Again, that magic number is 218, so neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have gotten to that point yet. Democrats not only didn't lose a single state legislature, but we actually flipped a few, including both the State Senate and State House in Michigan, meaning along with Governor

Whitmer, Democrats control that state for the first time in like 40 years. The Minnesota State Senate, meaning along with Governor Waltz, Democrats controlled that state, and Democrats are on the verge of winning the Pennsylvania State House and the New Hampshire State House. It's the first time that the party in power will not have lost a single state legislature during a midterm election since 1934. In the words of Joe Biden, that is a big fucking deal. So just a quick bit on the House, because I know that that's what's on people's minds most. Keep in mind that I'm recording this on Saturday, November 12th, so things can change depending on when you listen to this. But as of right now, Democrats have 203 House seats. Republicans

have 211. Again, neither side has hit the 218 number. Each side has a handful of states that are pretty much decided, but are still waiting on mail ballots to come in. A lot of those races now that we're waiting on are in California. If Democrats have any shot at holding the House, they'll need to have a really major deluge of Democrat-friendly mail ballots. In 2018, we did have a deluge of Democrat-friendly mail ballots. I believe that on election night, 2018, we had like 26 house seats and by the time the ballots were done being counted, we had 40 house seats. So history is on our side here. We'll need to win in some tough territory. We'll need Will Rollins, who I interviewed a few weeks back, to win in his district. That includes Palm Springs now. We're currently down

in that race. We'll need to win in Bakersfield, California's 22nd, where we're also currently down. We can very well win the house by a single seat or we could lose the house by a single seat. I'll be doing live updates on my YouTube channel as soon as there are updates. So check that out. you want to keep on top of this stuff during the week. But top line is that we still have a very, very, very legitimate chance to win these races and hold the House. So the question now becomes, how did we get here? How did we go from this? Red wave rising. That is the focus of tonight's angle. It's going to be a wave election and you're going to lose the Senate. I'll bet you $1,000 right now. The knives are being sharpened right now for Joe Biden.

You know, Democrats are going to get crushed on November 8th because a red wave is coming. I'm betting that joy will learn two new words on Tuesday. It's red wave. How big could that looming red wave get? We begin this Sunday morning with expectations of a red wave this Tuesday. I think this election is going to be a red wave. I think we're going to win. You know what?

I think, you know, your predictions of a red wave are accurate. And the reason I say that is because now even the mainstream media is catching up. We've been hearing us, is it going to be a red wave? Is it going to be a red tsunami? I think it's going to be a red hurricane. When the red wave comes and it is coming, Joe Biden's political utility is over. Are we in for a red wind here or a red wave?

Red wave or red tsunami? What are you feeling today? I'm feeling red wave. From that to now being in a place where we possibly expanded our Senate majority and might even hold the house. So it's twofold, in my opinion. First, it's that people have eyes

and they can see the extremism of these Republican candidates. They can see the election denialism. They can see the attack on abortion rights. They can see the attack on Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. And I get why Republicans thought that they could, you know, run on this stuff. Because for years, it seemed like Republicans could basically say anything, no matter how unpopular it was supposed to be, and still they'd win.

There's this meme going around from someone in Canada that says, like, this is what it's like being a Canadian and watching American elections. Free puppies, 50.1%, diarrhea forever, 49.9%. And that's basically right. Like, Republicans have spent years pushing the worst policies spewing the most anti-deasies. spewing the most anti-democracy bullshit, and it's as if they were never held accountable for it. But that clearly caught up with them this time,

as they were trying to run on the biggest rollback of rights in modern American history. So that's the first thing. But the second thing is that while the right-wing media was fillating itself over the impending red wave and the presumed salience of issues like crime and inflation and rising prices, because, dear God, that is all we heard for the last few months,

the mainstream media, like the legacy media, those who we consider the liberal media took its cues from the right-wing media and basically validated their talking points and why? It's a number of things. The mainstream media first is afraid to be viewed as liberal so they'll bend over backwards and overcompensate when it comes to Republicans.

That's one. They're horrified of making the same mistake that they made in 2016 by assuming that Republicans were dead in the water so they don't want to make that mistake again so they overcorrect in Republicans' favor. That's another. There's also that the GOP was so fucking certain that they were going to win, that they straight up

bullied mainstream media outlets to adopt their talking points. Maybe it's one of those, maybe it's some combination of all three, who knows? But the most important point here is that we're not really well served by a media that's more interested in focusing obsessively on the horse race of politics and doing it inaccurately, no less, than if that same media was actually focused on the issues. Like, imagine if they spent a fraction of that time that they spent obsessing over polls that were 15 points off,

as they did on telling people that we just passed the biggest climate investment in history, or that we just passed the first gun safety bill in 30 years that will fund red flag laws in the states or stop domestic abusers from buying a gun, or that seniors out-of-pocket health care costs are going to be capped to $2,000 a year, or that insolence cap to $35 bucks a month. And look, I get that it's not the media's job to do the Democrats work for them. I'm not saying that. But these are still laws that are going to impact Americans' lives, and it couldn't hurt

the news to take a little bit of time away from the reality show drama for five seconds to talk about why this election is important and how. how it'll actually impact our lives. The fact that so many people knew so much less about the laws that were passed than all of the polls and bullshit about the horse race is a really devastating indictment of our entire media ecosystem. And I'll just end with this because I think this is probably the biggest takeaway from this whole election. I was dreading the outcome because I knew that if Republicans won,

while running on a strategy of outright election denialism, that that strategy would be validated and it would completely envelop the Republican Party moving forward. They would lean full tilt into that against democracy. And so the only thing that would prevent that, as I've said before, would be a repudiation at the ballot box. That's it. There would be no other incentive for them to switch direction. We needed to send a message, and we did. Even if we lose the House by a seat or two, this was an unmitigated failure by Republicans. They have no mandate now. And so if you'd ask me two weeks ago what the outlook for democracy was, I'd say it was bleak. But after this election, I don't think that's the case. And look, that's not to say.

say that, you know, it's all good and we're in the clear. There's still millions of people who voted for election deniers and maga lunatics across the country. But we now know that there is an engaged, activated majority of voters in this country who are willing to turn out when democracy is on the line and to defend it. That part gives me some hope. Okay, next up is my interview with John Fabro. All right, joining me today is Barack Obama's former speechwriter and the host of Potsay of America, John Favro. Thanks for joining me today. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. So Republicans had promised fire and brimstone and Democrats instead expanded their lead in the Senate

and we're obviously still waiting to see what happens with the House. But in any case, no red wave. Your takeaways from the midterm cycle, what did Republicans do wrong and what did Democrats do right? So every midterm election or every time an incumbent president runs for reelection, the other party wants to make the election a referendum on the party in power. And the party in power tries to make the election a choice between them and the other party. And usually it's very difficult to actually make it a choice when there's a party in power, especially in the first midterm of a president's term.

Like everyone says they want to do it. It's hard to do it. Yeah. The Democrats did it this time. Because the Republicans nominated so many extreme candidates and because the right-wing Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and the backlash to that was typical of the kind of backlash you'd see when a president's party passes a bunch of legislation like we saw this in 2010 with the Affordable Care Act, and that sort of fuels a backlash against the party in power. This time it wasn't the party in power that did something super controversial. It was the Supreme Court, but that sort of acted like something, you know, the effect of that was that most people in the country looks at the choices on their ballot and saw extreme MAGA Republican candidates who wanted to restrict abortion access in some places criminalize abortion altogether, who wanted to cut Medicare and Social Security. who didn't, who talked a lot about inflation, but didn't have any plan at all to reduce

inflation. And so because they had these extreme, these choice between these extreme candidates and Democrats, they went with Democrats. Do you think that what Americans viewed as extremists and extremism in this election is going to carry forward? Or do you think this is like riding the coattails of just the Dobbs decision and then moving forward, they'll just revert back to the mean? I think it depends on who the Republicans nominate. And not just at the presidential level, but all the way down. Because I think one dynamic you saw in the midterms is, like, in states where there was a non-Maga Republican candidate running for one statewide office and a MAGA Republican candidate running

for the other statewide office, the non-Maga Republican candidate did much better. Clearly overperformed. Yeah. So Chris Sununu's Republican in New Hampshire wins the governor's race there by quite a bit. Don Boldock loses to Maggie Hasson. Mike DeWine in Ohio, the governor there, ran far ahead. of J.D. Vance, even though J.D. Vance ended up winning. And you sort of saw that pattern repeated throughout the country. So we're obviously still waiting for the results for these

House elections. We'll be waiting probably a couple weeks until we get the full results from California and any other states that are waiting on mail-in ballots. But to play devil's advocate here, let's say that Kevin McCarthy ends up with a one or two-seat majority. Yeah. What can he do, practically speaking, knowing that his caucus is going to span from, you know, moderate Republicans all the way to somebody like Marjorie Taylor Green. He's going to give in to the Marjorie Taylor Greens of the world, right? But don't the moderates have just as much leverage as the Marjorie Taylor Greens of the world? They do. They could, look, I think the whole thing's going to be a mess.

Yeah. I think that, you know, I don't know how he's going to do this. Like there are going to be times where it seems like Nancy Pelosi or whoever the Democratic leader in the House is if Pelosi retires. is going to be in charge because, you know, they're going to have, like, you're right, Kevin McCarthy, you could see scenarios where, like, they could only keep the government open or lift the debt ceiling if McCarthy agrees to some deal with the Democrats. But again, then if he agrees to that deal, then suddenly they could, they're trying to reinstitute a rule in the House, some of their right-wing crazies,

where they can call sort of a snap election any moment for Speaker. to replace him. So if McCarthy pisses them off, then they can just oust him and then the next and then the next one gets in there. Now, a Republican flip of just a handful of seats during a midterm cycle where with the other party in power and 10% inflation is pretty disastrous, I'd imagine that it pretty much wipes out any mandate for Republicans. So do you think that means that Kevin McCarthy and Jim Jordan's plans to impeach Joe Biden and investigate Hunter and investigate litter boxes and school bathrooms. Do you think that that goes away? Do you think that that doesn't materialize now, given the performance that they had in midterms?

It certainly should, but this is not a crew that has learned many lessons over the last decade. Like, every time we, you know, I mean, I was on the Obama campaign in 2012 and the reelect, and Obama famously said wrongly so, if we win this one, the fever will break and maybe Republicans will learn that they should work with us. not just out of the goodness of their heart, but because otherwise they'll just continue to get defeated like this. They never learned that, right? They nominated Donald Trump and they kept in, you know, then they won, so that taught them all the wrong lessons in 16. But yeah, look, I think if they wanted to be smart, if Republicans wanted to be smart, they would figure out how they would not impeach Joe Biden for nothing.

Maybe they do a few investigations here or there where it seems like it made more sense. I don't think any of them make sense, but like, you know, not so crazy. But I don't know that they're going to be able to do that because the incentive structure there is they have a bunch of right-wing lunatics in their caucus. They have a right-wing media that is going to keep the base outraged and angry and fearful all the time. And so, you know, these people don't make a lot of their own decisions. Their decisions are made for them by Tucker Carlson. and Marjorie Taylor Green. Who just the other day came on TV and, like, gave a message as like a news person,

gave a message to Republican leadership, like marching orders from this guy who's like a purported newsman. Yeah, no, he like, he's, I heard he was meeting with them, you know? I mean, it's crazy. In a scenario where Democrats hold the Senate but lose the House by just a handful of seats, what does the next two years look like for the Biden administration? I think it looks like confirming a lot of judges, filling every judicial vacancy that there is. And look, the Biden administration has been really good at that. They've been at better pace than the Trump administration or the Obama administration filling vacancies.

So I think they'll continue to do that, including, like, if there are other Supreme Court vacancies, I think that President Biden will be able to staff the government and sort of just nominate people for administration roles and be able to confirm them. And beyond that, I think with the Republican House, it's sort of tough to do anything other than keep the government funded. and have, you know, deals to keep the government funded and obviously lift the debt ceiling to avoid financial catastrophe. Yeah, I mean, something else that we'll look forward to seeing is a lot of the plans that were put in place prior to this start to bear themselves out.

And so we'll see the infrastructure plan start to bear itself out in the different states. We'll see hopefully continue to work toward the process of choosing those collection of drugs that they're going to allow the government to negotiate lower prices for. So a lot of the plans that were laid out that Democrats had criticized, you know, the party more broadly had criticized the, the leaders for because like these things weren't instantaneous and we need to like deliver relief right now um now it'll give us a little bit more time to allow that to happen so and um i mean it's a good point that having a functioning government that is staffed with qualified people who get confirmed

is critical to be to making sure that like all of those things actually work that's exactly right um is there anything that democrats would be able to do on the shoring up democracy front because we have Moore v. Harper looming in a scenario where we don't have the House. Is there anything that, like, the Biden administration would be able to do by Fiat? I mean, I do wonder if in this lame duck session, they will pass the electoral reform, electoral count reform act, right? To just be ready for the next election. It seems like there was bipartisan support there. It seems like something that they could do in the lame duck, no matter what, how the results are. Look, I think the most important thing that we learned from this midterm is I think all of the election deniers who were running for offices

where that would give them power over our elections yeah just I think all of them have lost so far I think Carrie Lake is the only question but this in the secretary of state offices in the AG offices like they all lost and I think that's a lesson where like yes we should try to pass whatever legislation we can to protect democracy, but where we fall short of that, where we can't do that because of Republicans in Congress, we just get to beat them at the polls. And we did that, you know, and that's really great. And in many cases, by the way, the Democratic Secretary of State candidates ran ahead of some of the Democrats on the top of the ticket. I think it was like Adrian Fontes. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. When they were running against election deniers, which goes to should

that, like, you know, voters get it. Voters get the danger. What should happen in New York? There calls for Kathy Hokel to replace Jay Jacobs, who is the New York party chair, which she's vowed not to do. Do you think that's the right move? I don't know enough about New York politics to like really get into that, but it certainly sounds like if you were party chair in New York during what has clearly been a disaster of an election for New York Democrats, yeah, maybe you look for someone else, right? Like, not only do we lose a bunch of house seats there, in fact, not only would we probably have the house right now had we not lost all those seats in New York, but like Kathy Hokel only winning by five, six, seven points against Lee Zeldon

is, it's not great. Yeah. What about Florida? Because, you know, like, what do we do in a state like that where the bottom basically fell out of the entire Democratic apparatus, short of shipping Ben Wickler there? Yeah. Look, there are states that have been getting redder over the last decade or so. where I would say because of demographic changes,

because of people moving out of the state, because they're losing population, et cetera, et cetera, we should still compete there, but it's going to be really hard. Florida is not a state like Florida looks really tough right now, and I'm certainly not predicting that Florida is going to come back to us on like the next cycle,

but it's worth investing in that state and continue to invest in that state because the demographics there should favor us, right? Like, I realize it's an older state. It's always going to be an older state because people are always going to retire there. But, like, especially the fact that the state is so diverse, like, we should not give up on, especially the Latino population. It's a young, you know, there's young people moving there just as much as there's old people moving there, too, especially in Miami area. And I would not completely give up on the state.

I would make sure that we invested at a local level, right? And that we start in places that are bluer or purple in Florida, we should, like, run good candidates and have. like revitalized local democratic institutions, grassroots organizations, like that. I know you have colleagues from the Obama administration who started, who bought a radio station there, and so that's a good way to like reach people on the ground level as opposed to just throwing a bunch of money at ads five minutes before an election. Absolutely, the Latino Media Network and some friends of our, Stephanie Valencia, who worked in the Obama administration with us.

And some of her colleagues, like they have, you know, they are running the sort of local radio stations all over the country, but also one of the bigger stations are in Miami-Dade. And I do think, like, building up progressive media in these states is key. Yeah, yeah. What changes do you hope come out of this cycle? I'd imagine less reliance on, like, bullshit Republican polls. But more broadly, what do you hope that the media changes? What do you hope that Democrats change because of what happened in this cycle?

Yeah, so I've stopped hoping for the media to change. I've yelled about the media for so long. now. The thing too is that when you have these non-traditional media outlets like crooked like what I do, I think the fact that these outlets are growing more and more and the

numbers continue to decline from mainstream media outlets, I think that's a testament to the fact that people can see through all this bullshit and just buying in of Republican talking points and I mean it's the same, it never changes. It's always like Republicans yell about crime and the mainstream

media sees that oh if we don't also yell about crime were going to be referred to as the liberal media, which Republicans do anyway. And so you're not actually changing anything. All you're doing is being bullied into adopting Republican talking points. Yeah. No, it's, look, it is, um, it's an endless source of frustration. Um, I do think that like, trying to bully them into doing their jobs, into doing the kind of jobs that we hope they would do is, um, look, it can work on the margins, right? Like, they're human beings and then they feel bad when they screw up sometimes. So that's like it's always worth pointing it out when they screw up. But I do think building up more progressive media, more shows like this, more

crooked media is like that's going to be the ultimate solution. I think for the party, one lesson for the party is, I mean, so many of the debates during this midterm that we saw on social media or on cable ended up being like false choices, right? Like there's this whole debate about like Should we talk about democracy? Or we should we talk about abortion? Are we talking about abortion too much? We're about a kitchen table issues. And then people make fun of kitchen table issues, blah.

And it was interesting because, like, when we went out in the last couple of weeks and we campaigned with some of the candidates in Nevada, when we campaigned with Katie Porter down in Orange County, like the Democrats who ran and who were going to win, like they did all of the above, right? And what's important for Democrats is not necessarily, it's not about picking between issues. It's about talking about issues in a way that really resonates with people and makes it personal for them, right?

And so, like, when I did all these focus groups for the wilderness, I had a lot of people say to me, like, oh, you know, I think the media covers January 6 too much. Why do we keep talking about January 6? And so you hear that and you're like, oh, maybe people don't care that much about democracy. But then, like, one of the toughest focus groups I had was in Las Vegas and I was talking to working class Latinos there. There was this one guy he had been a Trump voter, and now he doesn't like Trump, and he's, like, leaning towards DeSantis in 2024, which isn't great. But I asked him, I'm like, oh, you're going to vote for Adam Laxalt, and he was like, oh, no, no. He braces the big lie. Big lie.

I can't do big lie. And this is, like, a pretty conservative guy, and it's like, he didn't, we didn't need to talk to him more about January 6 or give big speeches on democracy. But he did care about democracy because when it means something to people in terms of, like, I don't want to, elect someone who could then overturn an election and who could make my vote not count, right? That matters to them. Same thing with like people talked about inflation more than any other issue that I talked about. But they also were, and the reason they talked about inflation is because they were like, I can't afford to live where I'm living. Like, I want to buy a house someday. Like I'm worried about my debt, right? I'm worried about health care. But they were also

like, I'm really worried that someone I know is not going to be able to get an abortion. Or I'm really worried about the fact that I'm going to send my kid to school and there's going to be a mass shooting, right? So we think about these issues as either like democracy or cultural issues or economic issues, but really it's all about like what matters to people in their own lives. And I think candidates that talk about those issues and the candidates that do all of the above, like those are the candidates that end up resonating the most. Right. And I think we're under this impression that all voters are just litmus test voters. And if inflation is the number one issue for 60% of people, then those people are just

inflation drones. And all that they can think about and all that they can comprehend and take in is just inflation and nothing else. And, like, yes, inflation can be important to you. It could be the most important thing to you right now. But, like, climate change could also be important. Abortion could also be important. And, like, you know, I think that's something we forget.

And I do think, look, we are a, we're a very college-educated coalition right now, the Democratic Party, more so than we ever have been. And there are a lot of benefits to that. And one of the benefits is in a midterm election, college-educated voters are more likely to turn out. And that's what we saw happen in 22. It's what we saw happen in 2018.

I think that we should not give up on trying to reach out to non-college educated voters. And it's not just white voters. Increasingly, it's non-college educated Latino voters and even some black voters who are drifting away from the party, not necessarily towards the Republican Party, but towards like maybe not wanting to vote at all. And the reason is not because there's anything specifically wrong with the Democratic Party, not necessarily because they think the Democratic Party is like too woke or anything like that. It's because they don't see anyone fighting for them.

And the struggles that they're facing, struggles about a declining standard of living that hasn't just happened because of the recent bout of inflation, but that's been happening over a couple decades, that matters to them. And they want to vote for people who are going to fight like hell for them. And they understand that sometimes those leaders aren't always going to be able to deliver because there's gridlock in Congress and there's the other party and all that kind of stuff. But they want people who seem like they're going to run through a brick wall for them. And I think if you look at particularly John Fetterman, you know, in Pennsylvania, very progressive candidate, but just like just had this working class appeal because he like lives it, right?

Or like Gretchen Whitmer and Michigan who just won a huge victory, right? Like, she said she's going to fix the damn roads and that's what she's been trying to do, right? Not a very sexy topic, but it's something that, like, she promised or something that she fought for and, like, people believed in her because of it. And I hope that people's focus on candidates like that

also kind of chips away at just the general lack of any material offering from the Republicans. I mean, for years and years and years. It's almost become a joke now that it's like, well, it's September of an election year. Where are the migrant caravans? You know? And there comes a point when, like,

Yes, that will be effective in terms of scaring the shit out of their base. But at the end of the day, what do they get from that? Like, Democrats were able to deliver student debt relief. They were able to forgive marijuana convictions at the federal level and get free COVID vaccines and tests for everybody and lower the price of drugs and cap out of pocket costs for seniors at $2,000 a year and insulin in $35 a month. And, like, all of these are material impacts.

And, like, on the other side, it's like, you don't want your kids to be using litter boxes and bathrooms, you don't want, you don't want these immigrants to rape your wives and sell drugs to your kids. At the end of the day, like, you're not getting a lot from that, as opposed to the other side where you're getting actual, like, material benefits from electing these people. And I think that people understood that in this election, right? And I think that is one big reason why inflation didn't have the political effect that a lot of people expected because the Republicans decided not to have a plan. Yeah. Inflation. I think if Republicans campaigned all over the country on some three or three five point plan to reduce inflation, like we might have had some more trouble in some races. But I think people understood that like these people, if they won, weren't going to go and try to reduce inflation. These people are going to go try to ban abortion. And maybe gay marriage and maybe a whole bunch of other shit that like we didn't, we didn't ask them to do.

Yeah. Moving forward toward the Georgia runoff because we're not done yet. And we live in a perpetual cycle of hell. Yeah. What do you think the Democrats' best message to seize on in that races? I mean, I think it's, I think it's going to be more of a, well, it depends, right? If, so if we have the Senate, because if Catherine Cortez-Mastow wins and Kelly is declared, officially declared the winner, then we have the Senate. And then I think it becomes much more of a Georgia race. It's about these two candidates.

And it's about the fact that Herschel Walker is like one of the least qualified. people ever to hold office. And Raphael Warnock has been there fighting for Georgians for the last couple years, right? I think that's the race. I think if Cortez-Maso loses and now the Senate sort of hangs on Georgia, control the Senate hinges on Georgia, then I think it becomes naturally a more nationalized race. And then the real message is like, you know, this whole midterm was just fought over Dobbs. and over the fact that, like, we lost an election, a couple of elections where we didn't get to nominate

Supreme Court justices, and because of that, a very right-wing court just overturned Roe v. Wait, right? And I think that campaigning on the importance of holding the Senate so that we don't have any more extremist right-wing judges all over the country and potentially on the Supreme Court is going to be not the only message, but definitely a message that I think will get a lot of Democrats in Georgia to the polls. especially like our base voters. Okay, so let's move over to Trump. Yeah. Do you think that this signals the end for Trump?

Because this does seem to be the weakest position he's been in. Even Kaylee McInney came out on Fox the other day and told him to stay out of Georgia while also telling Ron DeSantis to go to Georgia, which I'll ask you about in a minute, but just right now I just want to focus on Trump. And I say this all knowing full well that we've said that this is the end for Trump, you know, from Access Hollywood. to impeachment number one, to impeachment number two to January 6, and the guy's still here. So with that said, just what are your thoughts on his strength in the party more broadly right now?

Again, it should be the end for Trump, but like he's Trump. Yeah. And all he can think is all I can think about is himself. And I don't think that he like is thinking 10 steps ahead or even two steps ahead many days. So I think he goes ahead and announces on Tuesday night. and now as for the party I think most elites in the party don't want him

I think there was always a bargain that they made right like for all morals aside their bargain was like yeah he's a drag when it comes to suburban voters but the base turnout that we get is worth it and so like we're gonna just make this devil's bargain with Trump

and whatever else the question is if if the midterm results start making them think like maybe the bargain isn't worth it anymore for our political survival and maybe like we have a better shot with someone like Ron DeSantis. Now the question, like they all think that. The question is that they act on it, right? And they're all so afraid to say something, right? Like the same people who always say shit about Trump are saying it. And then there's still a whole bunch of people that are being quiet.

And I just don't know. Like, I think if you want to, if you're in the Republican Party and you want to take this guy down, you've got to throw a punch. Yeah. You can't just, like, sit around hoping that he goes away on his own because that's what they did in 2016. That's what they've been doing since then. It doesn't, it never works. Well, with that said, onto Ron DeSantis now, you know, Trump came out with a fully swinging, basically. He came out with a series of truths, basically, like a ton of truths, you know, taking

credit for his win and calling him names. That's worked before. He cleared the Republican field in 2016. Granted, he didn't have the baggage in 2016 that he does now. He doesn't have these midterm results that basically show that he's something of an albatross on Republicans next. And if they want to win more elections, which presumably that would be the goal moving forward, he's going to make that more difficult. So do you think that Trump is able to keep DeSantis at bay? Or do you think that now is the time when DeSantis should move? forward with a, you know, a strike against Trump. If I was Ron DeSantis, I would absolutely run for president right now.

This is, I mean, like, Ron DeSantis, and I am not a fan of Ron DeSantis by any means, but he is at like the height of his political standing right now because of what happened in the midterms, right? Like, whether it's fair or not, like the guy, you know, won a crushing victory in Florida. That's what the perception is. perception is that was the one bright spot for the Republican Party. By the way, his gerrymander in Florida probably helped Republicans win the House. And so, and Donald Trump had a catastrophic night because all of his Looney Tunes candidates lost, right? So if you're DeSantis, like, yeah, your

choices, do I just wait, do I let Trump do this in 24 and maybe he loses in the night run in 28? Or Trump runs and runs more. So I just wait to. 28, no matter what. But like, I don't know, I think in politics, sort of moments come and then they go. I mean, Obama faced this in 2008, and a lot of people said, like, maybe he should wait until 2012 or whatever else. And it's like Hillary Clinton, do you really want to take her on? Yeah. But he sort of knew that the sort of the buzz around him was like reaching a fever pitch at that moment. And I think, I think the same is true to DeSantis. But like, if Donald Trump's going to like send out 30 truths, you know, saying crazy shit about you. You can't just, like,

I saw some of his advisors talk to, I don't know, it was the post or the Times or something, to be like, oh, no one thinks that he should hit back right now. Like everyone, we think he should just wait. I think it's crazy. Like, I think if Donald Trump is coming after you, you have to show that you can throw a punch back, right? And it doesn't have to be like, he doesn't have to come up, he doesn't have to get down in the mud with Donald Trump. Like, he doesn't have to be like making dick jokes like Marco Rubio was, you know, back in 2016, which made Rubio look like an asshole. But he can go out there and say, like, look, Donald Trump did great things for this party in this country and stuff like that. But like, he's a loser. Yeah. Like, we've now lost

three elections with Donald Trump. And it's time to look ahead. Yeah. And it's time to turn the page. Like, I think that's, I think he needs to say that soon if he really wants to be present. Yeah. Something tells me, like, deep in my gut, if I had to, if I had to get. I said that's just not going to happen. It just doesn't seem like any of these Republicans have this, you know, which is ironic because, you know, their whole, their whole, the mystique around them is that they're these like alpha tough guys. Yeah, right, right.

Don't tread on me. Meanwhile, this guy, this like reality star who's lost three elections now and basically cleared the, you know, like elections that should be gimmies for Republicans. You know, they're all, they're all betas when it comes to Trump. Okay, so let's move over to the online universe, uh, Twitter. You've been hosting offline, which is a great. series and I would recommend anybody, anybody watching or listening to definitely check that out. Here's something that I've wrestled with. The online culture is toxic. Like that's, that's

terrible. Clear. You and I and people in our space are part of like a growing progressive media ecosystem right now. If we're confronted with a lie from Ted Cruz, our options are to say nothing or to rebut it. If we say nothing, it's kind of, it's kind of like an abdication of our responsibility by being there to rebut that lie. try to introduce like accurate information into this ecosystem but if we engage and we let people know what a lying piece of shit Ted Cruz is then then we kind of like add to the overall sense of conflict and toxicity that kind of envelops the internet anyway so how do you how do you square those two things I it's a very good question and it's a hard one I think there has to be a

balance, right? Like, I think that you can't, you can't just let every lie go, because some of them turn into conspiracies that can be really damaging and that can really hold sway with people. I think the way that you rebut them isn't necessarily just to fact check. I think you have to, and this is what, like, sort of disinformation researchers do, you have to sort of inoculate people against these lies. You have to, you have to explain the motivation behind the lie, why this person, is lying the way they are, not just what the truth is, but like, this is why they're telling you this kind of thing. Don't, don't you fall into that trap of like, I was interviewing Al Franken and he was like, Democrats have this problem where when we, when we explain things, it's like,

our bumper stickers are basically like continued on next bumper sticker. And so like, you know, if you have, if you have someone, you know, to use, to use the example of like the big lie, if somebody says, like, the election is stolen and they just say that and it's just short and sweet. And then we're like, well, actually. Right, right. You know, no, that's, no, but that's, no, but that's why you can't, you have to sort of go at, well, that's what I'm saying, you have to go with the, you don't want to do a long explanation of the lie, but you have to go with the motivation for the lie, right? Like, yeah, he thinks the election's stolen because he lost and he wants to take power, right? Like, and, and here's one obvious reason why it's, it's, it's a completely

silly, uh, conspiracy, right? Yeah. But I do think that we spend too much time, like, going after every single lie or every single public. And then we don't get our message out or not. Yeah. And at least this is what happens online. Like, I think if you look at, again, all of these successful democratic campaigns in the last midterm, you know, if you looked at all of their messaging, whether it's the speeches, the ads, where they make news, they're not spending 40, 50, 60 percent of their time debunking the other side. They're spending some time doing that. Their communication staff are.

But most of the time, they're trying to get their message out. And I think sometimes the online conversation that we're all in is we spend a lot of time just trying to go after them and debunk their bullshit and not enough time pushing out to people what we want our message to be. Yeah. And I think if you look at the 2018 midterms, for example, as kind of a framework for what happens when Democrats are solely on the offense and not just back on our heels, beating back Republican bullshit disinformation. Like, our plan was to make sure that you have health care. And that was it. And it was just on the offense, health care, health care, health care. And Democrats won, like, over 40 seats in the House.

And so. And by the way, the most effective messages are they test, like, purely positive messages. They test purely negative messages. And then they test comparative messages. And the comparative messages end up being the most effective. So you give people, oh, here's a little bit of what I'm for. And then, but if you go with the other person, this is what they're for, right? And so you have that contrast right there.

When I spoke with Dan for an episode. of political experts to react, he basically explained that, like, the best messages are where you can do those comparative messages, but where if one person's strength directly contrast with the other person's weaknesses, like what happened with Federman and Oz, like, Federman's authenticity and Oz's phoniness,

then, like, that's the most effective thing that you could possibly do. It was the absolute best contrast, I think, in all of the big midterm races between Federman and Oz. Do you get a sense from the majority of your guests that the onlineness of it all is a net negative? Yeah, 100%. And here's why, like, it is easy to say, okay, so Twitter is a small, seemingly disintegrating platform for us.

Right, as of this recording, Twitter is still here. Right, yeah. But it is like, it does not have nearly the same user base as YouTube or TikTok or Facebook, or Facebook or any of these others, right? But because every journalist in the world is on Twitter, it has an outsized influence on shaping the media coverage that is where most people get their information about politics and how most people make their choices about politics.

And so, unfortunately, the toxic conversation that happens on Twitter does shape political news coverage in a way that I think is detrimental to politics as a whole, but especially detrimental to the Democratic Party and to Democratic candidates because I think Republicans have built their own sort of online media ecosystem so they can get messages out that way because the progressive media infrastructure

is still not anywhere near as powerful as the right wing, we still rely on mainstream media and if mainstream media is continually shaped by this... Republican talking points. public and talk points and this sort of silly who's winning, who's losing bullshit conversation that happens online, then it's just not helpful to us. Yeah, I think that's spot on. I think that the reason that there hasn't been a lot of room made for progressive outlets, although I think it's getting better, but I think the Democratic Party still views, or Democrats, or the left, more broadly, views like the mainstream media as our team. And like I said before, I mean, ironically, like these people will do everything in their power to try to show that they're not.

liberal like like god forbid somebody does call them liberal they'll run the opposite way as fast as they possibly can and that's why we're left with uh we're left with legitimizing coverage of bengazi or hillary's emails or all that bullshit because like we as a party more broadly view them as our team and they don't want to be on our team and so like republicans have their team who are who are unapologetically republican and then the democrats have these guys who are like oh fuck that we're not like they're not on our team and then look that's not their job to be but that's it's it's it's it's an imbalance because of what you mentioned with the Republicans. I will say the other

reason I think the being extremely online is bad particularly for Democrats, particularly for progressives, is the Republican philosophy, the right-wing philosophy, is survival of the fittest. Every person for themselves,

we want a small group of people who take power and then people who don't look like us, who don't think like us, who don't act like us, who don't believe what we do. Like, you get, you don't just get You get shut out of power altogether, right? And the theory behind progressivism and liberalism is solidarity, right? It is not just working together with people who don't look like you or act like you or think like you.

It's actually like having empathy for them. It is standing with them to fight not just for your rights, but for their rights, to make sure that they have opportunity and not just you have opportunity, right? And to have that kind of solidarity, you need to have relationships with people. You need to have organized, you need to be able to organize with people in a way that is like real life,

that is like meeting with people, that's talking to people, and be able to argue with your allies in a way that is productive and that, like, leads to resolution. And you can't do that online. And that's why I think, like, you know, like, I was on the Obama campaign in 2008,

and online organizing was extremely helpful to us then. But I think we have reached a point now the way the internet is and the way that like online organizing is, is that it is insufficient to building the type of solidarity that the progressive movement needs to actually succeed. And the organizers who are organizing folks in real life and who are still like hanging out in coffee shops and knocking on doors like that, like those people, whether they're far left, mainstream, center left, they are having more success than people who are just yelling into the void online. Yeah, I think that's pretty spot on. And it feels like that, too. Like, I feel like it's changed. I feel like it's shifted since I got online in the beginning. Yeah.

And it doesn't feel fun. And sometimes, I used to be really good at compartmentalizing all of this stuff. And even during the early days of the Trump administration, like, I could see terrible stuff. But I was still physically able to, like, at the end of the day, turn my brain off and, like, go get a drink with friends and not, and not like, not think about it all the time. I feel like, I feel like it's been, you've been worn down. You get worn down, like, over the years, and I'm not good at compartmentalizing it anymore. And sometimes, like, you know, especially leading up to the midterms when we were just, like, consume with so much dread. I would, I would log on the Twitter, and it's just like, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, dreadful, like, and you just, and I'm just like, for like my, I could feel, like, for my health, I can't, I can't be on this.

And, and, of course, you have to, if you do what, what we do, which is, like, you have to, you have to watch the news. You can't just, like, close yourself off to it and then expect to get anything done that day if you're just, you know, like, no one's going to knock on your door and tell you what's going on in the news. But, like, the way that we receive it and these channels and these outlets are just, it is. And I know, like, the incentive structure is there for people. Like, I know that negativity works more than positivity. And, like, there is all of these bad incentives online. And so. And again, if you're, if you're the political movement that's simply trying to burn.

down the barn, that's fine. Yeah. If you're just trying to tear down institutions anyway, which is what the right is trying to do right now, like that works for your... It actually works perfectly. Yeah. Yeah.

But if you're trying to build a community and build a government that is like that everyone is involved in, that's much harder to do when all you see is that negativity and all you see is that bad news. That's the perfect point. John, where can we see and hear more from you?

You can check out Pod Save America, is every Tuesday and Thursday, you can check out offline my show about the internet, which is on Sundays. And then, you know, I did all these focus groups for this podcast called The Wilderness that I did six episodes in different places. And I will say, having seen the midterm results, it holds up pretty well. So if you're looking for more info on what happened in these midterms and what voters are thinking, I'd check out the Wilderness too. I would also add, definitely check out Pod Save America's YouTube channel. It's been totally revamped. It's awesome. It is my, the biggest piece of my, of my news diet. So definitely subscribe to

Pod Save America's YouTube channel. Elijah Cohn will be so happy you said that. He'll be so mad that I forgot that. That's what I aspired to. I aspired to just making Elijah happy. Thank you. John, thanks so much for taking the time. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Now I've got the Democratic nominee for Colorado's third congressional district locked in a back and forth battle with Lauren Bobert. Adam Frisch. Thank you so much for taking the time today. Great to see you. So as I mentioned before, you're locked. in a super close race between you and Lauren Bobert. I believe that you're about just a little over a thousand votes down as of right now. We're recording this on Saturday. So I guess first off,

could you explain how many ballots are still outstanding in that race? Well, great to see everybody here. So we think that there's somewhere between three and six thousand ballots that are outstanding. We're down by about a thousand. We're down about 0.3%. At 0.5% or closer, the Secretary of State pays for and does an automatic recount. So we feel pretty comfortable. For better or worse, we're going to end up getting in a recount no matter what. And so this thing could go on for a little bit longer than a lot of us would like. You know, we think there's somewhere between 500 and 550 overseas ballots that are outstanding. They have until this coming Wednesday, I believe it's either 5 p.m. 7 p.m. or

11.59 p.m. to come into the county clerk's office. We think there's another 1,500 ballots that haven't had a chance to be counted that were shuffling around the state, that were just not counted. And for some technical reasons, they hold them off the 27 county clerks. We think there's close to about 1,000 ballots that need to be cured, C-U-R-E-D. It's a new verb for a lot of people. that means the ballots, 95% ballot, it just has to confirm that the signature is right or that the date was put on their right. And so a lot of us are spending time curing those ballots. So that's about 3,000 ballots that we know for sure that are in some type of secretary state's hands or county clerk's hands that just haven't been counted. Then we think there's a whole other two to 3,000 ballots that we assume are going to come in since those last numbers I brought up to you or will should be here by.

at the end of the day and Wednesday. So that's where we get to three to the 6,000 ballots. That's what the local political press in Colorado thinks as well. So that's the ballots. On the timing, and this is where we get frustrated for a lot of us, is that we don't think there's really going to be a big update until probably next Thursday or Friday. We might see a couple ballots trickle in or a trickle in and then announced,

maybe on Monday or Tuesday, but we have a feeling that the county clerks are really going to just hold off until that Thursday or Friday before they make an announcement. Do you have any indication as to how those ballots that we are waiting on are breaking just based on how similar ballots have broken in the past? No, it's a little bit hard. I mean, on one level, there's this assumption that the overseas ballots normally lead Democratic. That's what a lot of Democrats think is least, and they must have that based off on something.

I'm kind of new to this whole thing. There's those that think the cured ballots are usually younger voters because they're not as experienced in actually filling out a ballot, which would possibly help us as well. But we really don't know. You know, our district has 27 counties. We have some of the most blue counties in the country, and we have some of the most red counties in the country. From what we know, there's no geographical understanding of those ballots. So it's a little bit of a mystery box about what's actually. going to come out of there. Okay. And now can you speak about how many ballots as of right now still

do need to be cured and what and what the campaign is doing to reach out to those people? So, you know, my understanding is there's about almost a thousand ballots that need to be cured that are sitting in one of the 27 counties in our district. This is for everybody. It's Democrats. Yeah. Yeah. These are these are there's a thousand ballots that need to be cured. I think they're roughly along the lines of, you know, about what's called 25 or 30% Democratic, you know, 30 to 35% Republican. But, you know, our district is 40 is more than 40% unaffiliated, which is our fancy term for calling them independent. And so, you know, we're basically neck and meck. It was basically 50-50 right now. I'm a little bit under 50-50. But the Democratic registered participation in our

district is only 25. So in theory, more than half of my votes can't. from non-democratic voters um and so we think those cured ballots are roughly the same amount we think they might be a little bit more skewed democratic but we're working on calling people and texting people there's kind of just a general public understanding of how people cure ballots you know we're working really hard i'm assuming the republicans are working hard as well okay so so that's the deal with all the technical stuff bigger picture now i guess how the hell did we end up in the situation where, like I said before, I mean, this is a race that was rated safely Republican. It's a race that was anywhere from R plus 7 to R plus 15. You know, when you were out in the campaign trail,

what did you hear from independents and Republicans who clearly weren't happy with Lauren Bobert? So, you know, I'll talk about what I heard, but I'll say first, here's how I think it played out from a year ago when I looked at this race. You have eight or nine or 10 really loud, brand extremist Republicans out there in the country. Every single one of them had 65 to 75% wins in 2020, except for Representative Bobart. She only received 51% of the vote, did not win her home county. So my view is, oh my goodness, those that know her best in 2020 did not care for her. And she comes from a pretty rule, a pretty red district. And a lot more people know now and not for good reason. So I assume actually the closer her circle is, the wider it is,

the more people are going to be open to voting for someone else. And so one of the things that we had to have happen is that you needed to have a very weak electorally candidate. And while she's very loud and comes off as strong from a brand, it's pretty superficial because again, she only got 51% of the vote in 2020. She would have had about 54% now because her district has been districted that, as you said, it got moved from kind of R5 to our somewhere around 7, 8, 9, 10, 538, even last week had this in an R15 district. The second thing is you needed to have a candidate that was going to work very, very hard, and we did, and I knew we were going to do that, and we drove 24,000, 23 or 24,000 miles.

Our district is half the state of Colorado geography. It is larger than the state of Mississippi, and so a lot of hard work. Third is the candidate was going to have to have some policies and a personality that was going to connect with a lot of frustrated prior Lauren Boat voters. And I thought I had that in me on the policies as well as I usually get along with people fairly well. I'm a good listener. And I have a pretty good grasp of some of the issues that are really facing a lot of people here. And so those are the three legs of which I was able to build this kind of, I'll say with a great team was able to build like, you know, the moral victory. So we have the moral

victory. We obviously want the real victory. So we're working on that. I wish, at least in 2022, I don't think there were any other of these loud extremists that had any other chances to lose. I thought that a year ago when it played out. I wish there were more opportunities, but there just weren't. And that's kind of why I'm like, oh, my goodness, a year ago, like the world might end up focusing on CD3 because if we can make a go of it, we can make it very close. It's a little daunting that there are literally hundreds of millions of people watching what's happening here. But we're sleeping well because we know we ran an really good race and we still like where we are. Yeah.

And I should know, too, that you're on the right side of this. So yeah, we like that part two. So what did we hear? What did I say that resonated? One, I said a lot of times that if I only had six words to run the campaign, it was people want the circus to stop. I've been saying that for a couple years. It resonated in the most blue parts of our district, and it resonated in the most red parts of our district.

I believe that 40% of the Republican Party wants their party back, and I needed to get about a fourth or a fifth of them. And so we've come pretty darn close to that. We'll see if it's enough. But we're really happy with the focus on those just true prior Bobart voters that were sick and tired of the circus. And, you know, there's one conversation if you have traditional conservative or Republican values and we can have a conversation about how to make the country a better place.

But, you know, you have this Trumpism wing of the party that I thought a year ago was going to start to sink. And obviously, I think one of the main consistent themes that we hear from the left or the right since Tuesday was Trump was a big loser. Like a smarter version of his played out in Florida. and Governor DeSantis, but almost, not exclusively, but almost everywhere else in the country, Trump's candidate lost, including against some well-funded but also some not well-funded Democratic Party. So basically just Trumpism lost.

I thought it was going to be a year ago, and Bobart is the definition of Trumpism. I spent a lot of time talking about, you know, I think we need to build a coalition of the pro-normal party. That's the word my mom came up with, but this pro-normal party, I would call it tri-partisan. Democrats, independents, and Republicans, you know, and that goes back to wanting the circus to stop. Was there a moment while you were out on the campaign trail where you realized that you do have a chance, even amid the fact that basically the entire media had written this campaign off? Was there a moment that you were like, oh, shit, this is real?

Yeah, you know, I would say about when I started, after I got by the end of the general election, I started to speak in front of some in some conservative towns at the Chamber of Commercees, which are conservative small business owners. But most of them are pretty practical. And ranchers and farmers, which we have a lot of, are the ultimate, pragmatic people because of how they have to live their lives. It's so hard out there dealing with mother nature and all the moving parts. And a lot of them are dealing with animals and livestock.

And I spoke, the first couple of times I spoke to people, it seemed to resonate because I saw their heads nodding when I talked about what I wanted to focus on. And I didn't spend too much time talking about her, but when I did, they put their heads down and they knew what I was mentioning. And they saw the effort. And when I was leaving, they came up to me and said, Adam, I like what you have to say. You got my vote. I've never not voted for Republican in for 30 years, whatever.

So that's when I started to feel like we were resonating. Because again, you have that 50% or 60% of the Trump party that loves all that the yelling and the screaming, I call it the anger attainment industry. But, you know, for those Republicans that are more traditional, and they might even be very, very conservative, but they're more moderate in personality and they're kind and they're thoughtful and they want to build a good community. And that doesn't, you know, being thoughtful and kind in building a good community is not a left or right thing. It's just more of who you are as a person. And I knew, and we only needed 10 or 15% of her prior voters. And, you know, 36% of the Republican base voted against her and her own primary at the end of June. So I knew we were on to a path that I thought about a year ago, and we've executed it with a fabulous team very, very well.

Now, we're obviously all pulling for this race to go to you. I know that we're watching really closely as these final ballots continue to trickle in. But if this race doesn't go your way, do you think that this result, where it is so close causes Lauren Bobert to moderate her positions or do you think that she just stays as extreme as she's been thus far? So, you know, I think you're starting to see a lot of Republicans nationally realize that Trumpism is dying. I think you're seeing a lot of voters who are normally conservative or Trump or Republican starting to realize that that's starting to die out. I think that's a good news for the Republican Party and it's got a good news for the for the country most

importantly. As to Representative Boba herself, most people would realize maybe we need to do a course correct and actually spend time focusing on the district and not flying around the country, especially in Marlago, or maybe realize maybe I should actually spend more time in my district and focus on the needs of them and return the phone calls to those who have been calling me, which she hasn't been. Do I think she's going to do it? It's going to be hard to say. I'll let others figure that out. If past is prologue, she won't. But, I'm a big believer in incentives, and the incentive for her has been yell and scream and rally up that anger tainment, and that worked once in 2020, not by a lot, but she thought it was.

Obviously, she would have taken the job more seriously. So if I had money to bet or I was forced to bet, I bet that she's not going to course correct, and she's already blaming other people about why she did so poorly. She's blaming other Republicans. She's blaming everyone but herself, just like Donald Trump is doing her. right now. And so I hope, you know, on behalf of if she does win, for the sake of the district, I hope she does course correct. I really don't care about the yelling and the screaming. What I care about is she's not focused on this district. And I want her to focus on this district

because the men and women and the kids and the families and the businesses in the communities of this district want somebody to focus on them and not on the representative self. So for her sake, I really don't care. For her constituent stake, and for my community members' sake, I hope she does focus on the district. But if she doesn't anymore, I'm a big believer. She will definitely will be tossed in 2024. Yeah. And I think with regard to exactly that point, you know, we've seen that these house races in close districts are oftentimes more of a marathon than they are a sprint.

And we watched as, you know, Marie Newman took shots. multiple times at Dan Lipinski, who is a super conservative Democrat up in Illinois. And it took a couple cycles before people recognized who he was and before people kind of learned who she was. And, you know, as I said, people are learned who you are very quickly. It's clear that they're not pleased with Lauren Bobert in that district. So this doesn't mean the end of the road in any case, whether it's in 2022 or 2024. But with that said, you know, we're always looking for more data points on how to win in red districts because, you know, we, we can't win everywhere if we don't run everywhere. What advice do you have for Democrats who are running in these districts

that we would consider that we would consider safely Republican, especially in an era of such high polarization? Yeah. So, you know, I think two things need to happen minimally. One, you need to find a candidate that can really resonate with people. Now, in CD3, a district that's 25D, 31R, 43 unaffiliated, and people think is somewhere between R8 and 15, I thought, excuse me, I thought it was going to be required to be a moderate, pragmatic business person, which I am. And I think that's one of the reasons we did so well. Regardless of anything, you have to be willing to do a lot, a lot of work with some really good qualified people.

It can't be done on a whim. It doesn't mean you need an unlimited amount of money. We were outspent by her vastly, and here we are almost 50-50. But you really have to have a quality campaign. You know, John Federman is a lot more progressive than I am, but he was able to do well. So I'm not saying that every single person has to be center-left candidate, but that's what this district needs. And, you know, sadly, unfortunately, you need to find out and be realistic, not just emotional. Just because you really, really, really, really wanted to defeat someone or the country.

country really, really wants to defeat someone like Marjor Tela Green. I just ask people to really focus on doing a little bit of simple math, which is, is there someone that if you can get 10 or 15% of the prior voters, can that go on to your normal base? And will that get you to 50 plus one? And too many times with respect to people running, we see people absorbing a lot of money, a lot of media cycle and going after races and they're losing by 10 or 15 points. And so everyone who wants to run should run. It's not just about defeating that person in that one time. It's about sending a message. I believe in that. But my view was I wasn't going to get into what I thought was going to be a long shot, even though everyone else thought it was going to be a long shot.

I only was going to go after this if I could really look people in the eye and say, I truly believe there's a path and here's the math how to do it. And I need your help. And it was a lonely ask for many, many months, but we finally were able to break through the donor cycle and the media cycle. And, you know, here we are, you know, point three percent behind. We were up by a point and a half on election night. So we're in the mix. I'm getting calls from a lot of important people in D.C. They're very aware of how well the race we ran, and they're very well aware that they did not return any phone calls for months. But I'm not a vengeful person.

I don't hold them against them. There's a lot of other races to focus on. But, you know, the main thing is, is that we're in the ability to really defeat one of the true and only extremists that has any chance of being defeated. And we're proud for that. We're humbled by all the support we're getting from literally all over the world, but definitely all over the country. Yeah. And to build on that now, how could we best help? Like what does the campaign need in terms of reaching out to voters to cure ballots?

What can we do? Yeah. So pop on the website that's over my shoulder at Adam4Colrador.com. There's a way to donate still. Again, $5.25, you know, up to a couple thousand bucks. But these small donations really matter a lot. We need the money for the legal fund to possibly take on one of the most litigious persons and fiery persons in politics in the country right now as well. We also have a lot of, we basically have a new get out the vote team that we also need to pay for as well. so we'd love support from there. If there's people to help, it will say on the website about how people can help who to contact the help cheer,

which is making phone calls or sending text messages. If anybody does know anybody in western or southern Colorado, please reach out to them and make sure that their ballot is confirmed. You can go on the Secretary of Website for that, or if they want to do some door docking, again, you can go on the website at AdamforColrador.com about how to help. And I think that's really important. You know, our towns are Grand Junction in Pablo and Aspen and Tire riding in Cresta Butte, Durango, Alamosa, Rangelo, and those in Montrose.

So those are the big cities we have. But if you know anybody out there, just checking with them, they can get a hold of the county list of voters and they can look for those that are used or ours that might be friendly to us. And we'd love to get those phone calls made. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking the time. And thank you for running great campaign and inspiring campaign and kind of showing everybody. that there's hope to really take on and hopefully cast out these extremist Republicans who are kind of just dragging the entire political system down with it. So we appreciate it.

We'll keep pulling for you. And thanks again for taking the time. Thanks so much. Great to you. Have a great day and all your listeners. I know you have a big following and thanks everybody for the time. Thanks again to Adam. One last note here. To those of you who've been with me for the last couple of years and who've stayed engaged throughout this period, thank you. Thank you for caring and staying informed. Um, I sometimes get discouraged because I feel like with what I do, nothing really sticks. I'm sure you guys have felt discouraged more than once because everything felt hopeless. But people like you were paying attention. And while we may not get everything we wanted,

we absolutely staved off the worst potential effects of this election. Okay, that's it for this episode. Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, interviews captured and edited for YouTube and Facebook by Nicholas Nicotera and recorded in Los Angeles, California. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app. Feel free to leave a five-star rating and a review

and check out Brian Tyler Cohen.com for links to all of my other channels.