Panic World - Our autopsy of the DNC autopsy

Episode Date: July 8, 2026

Why did the Democrats lose so badly in 2024? Rob Flaherty joins us to dissect the "DNC autopsy" — the formerly internal report about what went wrong in 2024 — about which he gave his own thoughts on The Bulwark in May. Rob was the deputy campaign manager for Kamala Harris and also formerly a digital strategist for Joe Biden. Rob distills his analysis of what happened in 2024, and then Ryan & Grant present Panic World’s own version of the DNC autopsy and get Rob’s response, as well as additional details from what he saw behind-the-scenes. How much did Harris only having 107 days matter? Or the administration’s stances on Palestine and Israel? How about Democratic Party’s general branding problems?Check out Rob's DNC autopsy on The Bulwark. You can also find him on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, @Rob_Flaherty — and you can follow his podcast Nobody Knows Anything here or wherever you listen.Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonuses & exclusives, and access to our members-only Discord? Sign up for a membership for just five bucks a month at https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. For Apple Podcast users, you can also find all of our bonus content — plus other great COURIER shows — with a subscription to COURIER+. SponsorsThis episode is brought to you by Mint Mobile. To get your new wireless plan for only $15 a month, go to https://www.mintmobile.com/courier/ — that's it, there's no catch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why do you think Democrats, I think I would say, are still so unable to tap into the disillusionment the same way Republicans can? People in politics pretend they're super data driven, but like at the end of the day, like, they just do what feels good to them. We tend to actually often explicitly say if it is resonant on the internet, it is not a good thing to be saying. But they know, like, what's happened in America for the last, like, decade, right? Like, they know, you know, power structures in the party are real, man. And, like, the people in charge still, like, don't consume the media that most voters consume. And so, therefore, it doesn't feel real to them. And that includes candidates, by the way.

We are months away from the 26 midterms, where America will go to the ballot yet again to decide our stupid country's idiotic future. But we're no closer to understanding what happened in 2024. The last time we voted. that put us into this nightmare from which we cannot wake. Well, this week, we have Rob Flaherty, former deputy campaign manager for Kamala Harris's 2024 campaign, who has recently written a juicy little tell-all all about everything that went wrong with the Democrats in 2024.

And we're going to be asking him the questions that we've been agonizing over for literally years now. I was wondering if we could talk about how you and I first met. Yeah, sure. I've never publicly talked about this part of that story. But basically, I received an email from you in, I believe, 2023, 24. Yeah. And I thought it was a fishing scam because it was from a White House email address.

You were working with Biden, President Joe Biden, and you reached out to me and invited me to the White House. We didn't meet when I went, but I would love to hear why you emailed me. I'm a longtime garbage day enthusiast. And I've been a subscriber for quite a bit. One of the big things we were trying to tackle at the beginning of the campaign, I still think we need to tackle, is the fact that so much of like political conversation happens in private spaces on the internet. And you in your piece, I think, I'm not even joking.

I mean, it was in, I put it in decks that we talked about with donors and, like, how we do the campaign, the sort of breakdown of, like, the public internet as, like, a consumption surface and the private internet as sort of a discussion surface. Right. And that breakdown was a great articulation that was, like, very formative in, like, how we talked about social and how we talked about digital strategy as we went along. And so, yes, I did resound. Yeah.

Well, yeah. So, as I said, you weren't at the meeting. I went to, and I did agree for that meeting to be off the record, so I won't go too deep into it. But for me, it was instructive, I will say, on the surface level, to just sort of get a sense of what people within the U.S. government knew and didn't know about the internet. I'm always fascinated by sort of when you get to the higher levels of power, like what people are actually thinking about when it comes to the internet. That meeting was also quite instructor for me going into the 2024 election because I was

like, okay, I have a vague idea of like how we've ended up here when it comes to, when we get to November 24. A thousand percent. The point about public internet, private internet, like, we came in being like, this is the, you know, this is the thing. Like people, our supporters are their own media channels, our supporters have their own influence. They're having these conversations in places we can't see. It was a thing we super fail that operationalizing and actually making it work. But it is.

Was that surprising? Like, I guess like, did you go into that thinking one thing and then be like, oh, oh, or was this sort of like you knew like this was going to be a long summer? Yeah. Well, it became pretty clear that we had it.

So there was these, what is happening at Gaza is not equivalent to what I'm about to say, but we had some experience. Hey, that's a great way to start off. Yeah, I know. But like, that will not be clipped.

Yeah, I was going to say, like we had a little bit of experience. This happened to Biden around Willow. there was a drilling project in Alaska, the Willow project. Oh, okay. We tried to stop it from the Trump administration letting it happen. There's a court case that like was going to probably say it had to go forward. And so we settled with the oil companies to like, construe.

Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, whatever. And it became this like whole fucking TikTok thing. Like it was this massive thing. And it was like maybe like some level of astro-triac. turfed, but also then it spun into being real. And I remember, like, I was on Biden's trip to Ireland and I was talking to some random person who brought it, an Irish person who like brought it up to me. It's like a reason why young people shouldn't be with Biden. Like these things were like, it made it so hard to communicate around. Like we had, we had been used to these kinds of things.

And then you get to Gaza, which just made it like, by the time we hit like mid-November, you know, it was just sort of like, oh my God, like this is really hard. And I would say I probably underestimated it, even in... I think the mainstream media did as well. I think, like, we're still sort of... This is very much, like, a post-mortem, and we're... For our audience, we're trying to figure out, like, exactly what happened here, and I'm curious, like, what Rob's feelings are about it.

And so we're going to be talking about things, like, like, Palestine and Israel, in sort of this macro concept of, like, how were people feeling about it? So if... From here on out, if we sound a little more, like, antiseptic than usual, like that's... Yeah. Let me just start with, hello. My name is Ryan Broder. Welcome to Panic World.

a show about how the internet warps our minds are, I'm so flustered, I forgot the tagline again. Wow, it's been a while. I memorized it for a little bit. Should I help you? How the internet warps our minds, our culture, and eventually reality. And joining us today is former deputy campaign manager on Kamala Harris' 2024, presidential campaign, digital strategist to Biden, my email pen pal, Rob Flaherty. Welcome to the show. How are you? I'm thrilled to be here, Ryan.

It's like, it's stepping into like a thing that I watch, which just. kind of crazy. And we wanted you to come on the show today to talk about the DNC autopsy, which is something that we haven't covered yet. And just for our listeners who are a little out of the loop, tell me if I'm wrong here. The way to describe this is there is an alleged report floating around democratic establishment circles that would have explained what went wrong in 2024. And there's been sort of different takes on if it exists, if it does exist, what's in it,

how well it was put together. But you in the bulwark put out what you. told the DNC autopsy team. And I have never clicked on a link faster. I was like, I have to know. I've been dying to know. And to spoil a little bit for you, we have put together our own DNC autopsy for you today. But I want to start with sort of the top level stuff here.

So for people who haven't read your piece, what would you say is sort of the ultimate takeaway for you, you know, thinking about all this, you know, almost two years later? Yeah. I think there's like a lot of different take. I mean, the piece is super long. It's like long. And, you know, I put a lot in it. The high level stuff is like the bar of authenticity for a candidate and for a campaign has been raised to a sort of infinitely high level. And in order to succeed, I think more than any of the tactical like tiki tacky stuff,

a campaign needs to have a clearly articulated reason about what it is for, why you are in the race, and then what you're going to do. And I think part of this owing to 107 days, part of this owing to the principles or whatever, there was sort of never like a clear through line that people could hold on to and that felt sort of believable to folks. And so sort of from there, you get all kinds of trouble. Right. And so it's sort of, to me, the most productive use of the autopsy was going to be, all right, what did we learn and what can we do differently on like a tactical level? Yeah, so we have, I have a section here where you talk about sort of the democratic branding going into 2024. And you write, and again, I'm sorry if this is

uncomfortable to read your own words back to you. I don't ever like it when people do it to me. But you write, we underestimated then and are underestimating now, just how disillusioned people are. There was and is a pervasive sense that nothing works and the institutions holding us up have failed. Media, government, business, no one trusts anyone anymore for reasons both of Democrats' own making and from simply being incumbents, the Democratic brands sucked. And what I think is interesting, in that first line, you basically say, like, people are disillusioned. And I was sort of hoping you could go a little deeper into that. Like, are you just saying that, like, disillusion in the entire Democratic process, disillusioned in the Democrats

themselves? Like, how, what's your read there? Yeah. You know, there are basically status quo voters. You know, I've called them opt-in voters, and there are sort of status quo, I don't know what the opposite of status quo is, disillusionment voters. Sure. Yeah. The median American voter. That's what you're trying to. Yeah. I mean, precisely, right? That, I think that there is a just sort of foundational level of pessimism about the future for a lot of people. I think there is. is a sense that nothing works anymore. Certainly not the government, certainly not the media. I think social trust is going down. And so I think that that changes like who the conception of like a swing voter is. And I think like political campaigns for a long time have been like a

swing voter is somebody who like maybe votes for a Republican and maybe votes for a Democrat and it's like a moderate. And I think that a lot of the campaign was sort of architected around that ethos, which is the traditional campaign ethos, right? What it means. to moderate what it means to whatever. And I think fundamentally, like James Talrico uses this now, but like this idea of like left, right, up down. I think there's some truth, right? To the idea that there are voters who are like, like, fuck all of you people. Like I don't, I fucking hate all of this and I hate you. And if you're in charge, you're going to get it, you know, like, and this is true for conservative parties that have been in power. This is true of progressive parties have been in power.

But I do think at some fundamental level, the basic coalitional math for Democrats has oriented itself around this sort of coalition of the engaged. And Trump sort of oriented around the coalition and the disengaged. And there's just more of the latter than the former. And, you know, you find yourself in, you know, a difficult situation. And part of that is how you have to talk to people and how you get to them. But there's something bigger than that that, you know, is more than just like, oh, if you went on 10 podcasts. they'd like you more. It's like there's a bigger problem about how we talk about ourselves and what we are and what we, you know, claim to represent. So you don't think Biden would have won if he had gone on

Nick Fuentes' live stream. I can't even imagine explaining that to him. Well, I mean, speaking of imagining, I guess, like, so I broadly buy your argument that, like, basically there is a, there is a modern American voter who kind of just wants to burn it all down. and there are some on the left and some on the right. And they have obviously, I think the ones on the right are much more dangerous essentially to like the, like the Democratic project. But like that is sort of a feeling that a lot of people have. Why do you think Democrats, I think I would say are still so unable to tap into the disillusionment the same way Republicans can? I think there's like a couple of different reasons.

Is it the flash mobs? Yeah, it's, yeah. Yeah, you got to, you got to just do more, like, viral dances and that'll... More viral dances, that's right. That's what I've been demanding. It's the people are crying out. I think it's like, there's a few things. One is people in politics pretend they're super data-driven, but like at the end of the day, like, they just do what feels good to them.

You know, and this is, you see this on people posting about politics. Democrats simply need to do a thing that confirms all of my priors and they'll win or whatever. But I think that when you actually think about like staffers, people on campaigns, they are typically doing pretty good. I am part of this too. And so the aesthetics of like democratic campaign world, it's like not legible. Like you literally know the like kind of disaffection that people feel. And so I think that like shades some of the decision making. Other parts of it are just I think like a cultural view of an old set of rules.

like what it means to persuade voters from the ground up is test the best message, say it at people a lot via like mostly television media and they'll eventually believe it versus the opposite, which is sort of like building messaging up from what people is resonating with people, which is what conservatives do quite well. And so I think there is just like a cultural construction of what it means to like be in a campaign and be in politics. is like a little data that exists in democratic politics, in addition just sort of like not having it be visible

because everyone is like college-educated urbanite, you know, who's like working on these things. You sort of describe this, this like social media branding death spiral once Kamala enters the race. She can't obviously like say like, yeah, Biden was totally unfit to run and we knew, but now I'm here, so it's fine. and also couldn't like articulate why she was running. But then when the issue of like, especially Palestine appears, there's nothing to fall back on.

I think the argument you made was like, Palestine from your point of view didn't totally move the needle for like the majority voter. But it created like social media conversations that Harris couldn't navigate. Is that, was that fair to say? That's basically right. There are things that live in politics that you just can't. can't measure. There are like tools that we use to make public opinion legible, polling, focus group, well, less focus groups, but you know, all the stuff. And I think that this is an issue that meaningfully affected the way you had to communicate and the like the brick wall

that you had to like communicate through. But like, was it the thing that voters in a poll would say what's like, I care about this a lot? It's like what's moving my vote when I say it out loud? No. But like, was it a thing that you know you go on the internet no one's saying anything nice about Harris because if they do they're going to get whacked on this or they are saying proactively bad things about Harris on this like it just it made it so that there was a a weight around the campaign and so it's like you know is it you know there were people running around saying well no it's not moving voters it doesn't really matter and it's like oh actually I think there's like a more intangible but yet still tangible way that like it did you

know it was a moral question for a lot of people that we just didn't really have an answer for and then there was just no way to communicate around it once you didn't have that answer i see these dynamics a lot actually when like two fan armies go at it with each other i was trying to figure out like who was spreading rumors about one pop star and then when i tracked it down it was coming from a olivia rodrigo fan who was basically like on ticot building out your Fave as problematic receipts for that other pop star. And so, like, I was trying to imagine, like, okay, if you're Popstar One's management team, you're seeing, like, oh, this person has problematic views on Israel, this person has

problematic views on AI, this person has problematic views on whatever. But you're probably not understanding that, like, that's part of a larger ecosystem where, like, if you don't have really solid, like, explanations for everything that you do and think and feel they're used by other fandums, for lack of a better word, to pounce on anyone in your comment section. That's sort of the closest pop culture equivalent I've seen to what you're describing, which is like, it's not just like people will attack Harris if she can't be clear about how she feels about Palestine. It's that they're going to pounce on anyone in her comment section that's supportive of her similarly sort of shutting that down.

100%. It made it impossible to say anything nice about Biden. on the internet. And then it made possible to say anything nice about Kamala Harris. I mean, it was easier for Kamala Harris, but still very difficult because there was just like a lot of risk of what was going to happen. And like creators, you know, you guys knew this better than anybody. They're small businesses, you know. That's right.

And so I weren't both Republican. Yeah, exactly. I'm about to outflank Ryan and. Yeah. The Manosphere here. We're Republican. We're just really bad at business. So we make a little podcast.

Yeah. So, you know, like these folks are concerned about all that stuff. So it impacted creators, but it also impacted humans who had influence in their community. Right. Because it's not just like you're watching TV and you receive that information and feel a certain way about it. It's the human supporter of the candidate is also media. Yeah, 100%. So it's crazy that like it's been that way since at least 2008.

And yet it's still kind of a mind-bending concept, I think, for a lot of people to understand that like it's not just how I perform on the internet. It's how I create a space for the people who support me to perform on the internet. internet for me. A thousand percent. And, and, and before we go to our first break, I wanted to throw an idea at you to get your thoughts on because it didn't appear in your piece, best as I could tell. But it was something that kind of has stuck out to our researcher, Adam. And it's sort of been his bugaboo for years.

He believes that the 2024 election was actually decided in October, 23, when RFK moved to being independent. And through his research, and it'll be. reflected in what we sort of throw out you today. He believes truly that like the the thing that no one really understood was how powerful RFK would be specifically on Instagram and Facebook going into 2024. Like I haven't as I think about it more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just throwing that hot one at you. Yeah. Throwing hot one. I think there is truth to I think we underestimate it. Not the power of RFK though RFK is the channel of it. Probably the like influence of Maha as like a

a general thing and like the magnetic force that it was, it was sort of picking off like unconventional voters. I don't have enough off the top of my head to like say in a very informed way that like what electoral impact that had in the, beyond the abstract. Was he on your radar sort of? I mean, I guess. Yeah. I mean, we had a like after 2016 in particular where there was a real impact that third parties had, I think there were sort of a determination not to get caught lying down on some of And so, you know, we were pitching stories on RFK. We were, like, running content campaigns about RFK, like, those kinds of things to try to pull voters back. Like, there was.

Did you ever ask Kamala to work out with her jeans on? You know, I dared not. Okay. Well, is her pull up for him better? I know that. Next time. Yeah. Did she, could she just, like, pick up two snakes, I guess?

I think I saw him do that yesterday. She's busy murdering a couple of bears, you know? Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. She could have just been eating roadkill. We're going to go to a word from our sponsor. And then we're going to come back and we're going to throw at you our DNC autopsy and get your thoughts on it.

This is going to be basically all of Garbage Day and Panic Worlds, various gripes over the last two years. So buckle up. Here we go. Bring it. Recently, I successfully murdered people who I either grew up with or have like some strange ties to. And I was finally able to sit on the iron throne. And I thought, oh, this day's going to be awesome. But instead, I found out that, like, there's no gold.

And, like, I ran as a populist and also manifest destiny, which is kind of confusing. But now people are, like, mad. And what can I offer them to quell a riot that doesn't involve creatures of fire breathing down upon them? and that's where your friend's Mint Mobile comes in. Mint Mobile took what's wrong with wireless and made it right with premium wireless for 15 bucks a month. All plans come with high-speed data,

an unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can even bring your current phone and your number. Choose from three, six, or 12-month plans and say goodbye to a monthly bill. Ditch overpriced wireless with MintMobil. It's so easy, sign up online and get three months of premium wireless.

services for 15 bucks a month. I was trying to make another House of Dragons joke, but honestly, I'm like a real casual about this. And I, anything else I said was going to backfire on me. To get your new wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to mintmobile.com slash care. That's mintmobile.com slash courier. Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com slash courier. That's it. There's no catch. Up front payment for $45 for three months. $90 for six months or $180 for 12-month plans required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees extras initial plan terms only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy includes up to 20 gigabytes hotspots capable devices required availability and speed and coverage varies cementmobile.com

So we're going to start in 2024 based right after RFK has said that he's moving to independent so that's October, 23, January 24, Ron DeSantis suspenses campaign, and we get an official Biden-Trump rematch. This might sound like a leading question, but I am curious. How seriously were you guys taking Trump? Were alarm bells going off as early as January 2024? That what about that Trump could win? Oh, yeah. I mean, we knew from the very beginning, especially in the Biden context, this was a super close race. Okay. And the definitional thing about it, particularly in the Biden era was, like, there were no, like, voters were locked in. Like, there was no real movement.

I mean, there was, like, little moments here and there. But that was, like, really the definitional thing of the Biden era was it was just sort of stock. Trump was a real, viewed as the threat, viewed as going to win. Like, you know, there were likely scenarios where he was going to win, but more likely than not, probably. So yeah, I mean, I think super seriously. I ask just because I feel like a comment or refrain from a lot of particularly left-wing digital media.

I know I have made this argument many, many times. It was just like, and it's funny because I've had this gripe for so many years. And now if you had put a gun to my head, be like, what do you mean by this? I actually don't know what I would have wanted. But there was this sort of feeling of like, when are they going to get serious? I suppose it's good to know that you guys were like, yeah. yeah, Trump could like easily win this and we need to get serious. And I, and I guess I wonder, like, how do you telegraph seriousness in an inherently

unsurious media environment now? Like, it does sort of break my brain to think about. Well, this is what's tricky, right? Because, like, you have to remember that the voters, there's two types of voters who could, who were going to be able to decide this election. They were a subset of the like traditional swing voters, like people. who were like, you know, whatever. And then a lot of them were what you might call disaffected Democrats or, you know,

we called them persuade to participate or whatever. Like, fine. But these voters who like, it was more about, they traditionally voted for Democrats and then they were either going to stay home or maybe vote for Trump. And what those voters needed was probably different than like what super high attention people needed, right? And a lot of those voters, one of the things I think we found looking at, backwards on the campaign was like we hit them with ads yeah they liked the ads the ads tested

well and we hit the voters that we thought we were going to hit with them and something just and we even changed how they thought about Kamala harris on the economy whatever all of that but something didn't gel and i think there just is this thing where what does it look like to be serious and to like lock in i think there's the like what does it look like to campaign at 11 all the time every sure i i think that's that's that's sort of my question Yeah, I actually don't know. Yeah. And like some of that is like a narrative optical stuff.

Like Zoron is doing a very good job at this right now where like he feels like the guy doesn't sleep. Yeah, he's very good at it. But he probably his day to day is the same as most mares. But like I imagine. He is telling a narrative story about how much he is doing. You know, with Biden like we would try to do that. But I think it just was there were reality limits and there were also like optical limits, you know,

which is like a video of Joe Biden in a G7 meeting was never going to do as well as a video of Joe Biden falling over. And like people kind of saw age for what it was. I mean, it was the unmistakable definitional thing. It was difficult to show he's like super locked in because that just doesn't, it doesn't comport with the narrative about who he was and what people were seeing about him. Well, when we're talking about like the narrative formation, you know, early in 2024, the next big moment on our autopsy that I feel like doesn't get as much scrutiny as I think it should is the ban on TikTok. So this was sort of a weird one where Adam and I, my researcher Adam, thought we were crazy.

And we started asking around. And then we started looking through our own reporting. And what we realized was that when the ban hit, you know, even though it wasn't totally functional, obviously people were still on TikTok and, you know, but it was like this slow kind of like ceasing of things. And we don't to this day know if bite dance was throttling itself to avoid scrutiny or if the average American user was like, I think it's banned so I'm not going to use it or whatever. Or I can't download it from the app store or whatever. Basically, it grinded TikTok to a halt. It made it not as active as it would have been in a normal election year. I think it kind of froze the people on there and they're on there and they're going to use it. But it's not like getting, we sort of noticed there were not new memes to write about. they were not new trends to write about. Like TikTok culture just sort of went like flat for most of 2024.

It stayed that way. I think it sort of has continued to be flat. Yeah, that's interesting. Like I think sentiment analysis is like largely bullshit. But there's a sentiment analysis tool that I've played around with. And getting into the general election times, Harris was sort of had a more positive sentiment. There were more of positive videos of Harris on TikTok.

And the moment it flips is, Trump at McDonald's, and that sort of like kickstarts and jettisons a sort of tsunami of Trump, pro-Trump content. That was the late- That is so embarrassing. That is so embarrassing for America. It's embarrassing on all accounts, I think. God damn. I want to die hearing that.

And so what I will say is that like TikTok basically up until that moment was like our home turf. Sure. And there was polling that showed this, like voters who were more likely to use TikTok. were more likely to vote for Kamala Harris demographically and these kinds of things. You know, I think that TikTok was just an interesting, it ended up being a difficult surface for us in the Harris era. It was impossible for us in the Biden era. Right. And so, yeah, I mean, it's interesting, the flattening of TikTok.

But, you know, generally, basically up until the last month, at least in the Harris context, more TikTok would have probably been helpful. So it's hard to say, like what the, what the, Yeah. That's what it been. I take the claims that like TikTok was being censored or manipulated to hide, you know, atrocities in Palestine with a big grain of salt. I think it's a little more complicated than that when you're dealing with algorithmic platforms as large as TikTok. Yeah. But just to sort of throw a little bit on the heap here, in May of 2024, Mitt Romney ends up asking Blinken why the nonstop barrage of horrific images coming out of Gaza is affecting Israeli PR and then he ends up saying some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to

shut down potentially TikTok. I think the right wing clearly understood that young people were on TikTok and we don't have a great way to be on TikTok. We need to do something about TikTok. That would be my most skeptical take on that, I would say. I have not seen any intelligence as it relates to TikTok. I don't know anything. So this is me just talking and sort of relaying the steel man of what I think. There is a red dot that just appeared on your head through the window, but yeah. The steel man, I think, of that version of the argument is sort of twofold, which is one, the evidence points to China having real control over the platform and China having a vested interest in causing sort of civic and social discord on top topic issues and therefore would have an

advantage in disproportionately amplifying certain things that are hot topics, as the Russians did in 2016 and, you know, yada, yada. And so having a platform that is dominant with young people that is controlled by and able to execute on the diplomatic interests of China is probably a bad thing. I don't think that's a crazy position to hold. I don't think the ban was good politics. I don't think it was the right thing to do. But like, I don't think that's a crazy view to hold. And then you do talk to some people who are in the sort of foreign policy blob who say that like the you know the intel is quite scary or whatever i don't know i mean i had a conversation with a bite dance employee in Beijing in 2019 saying this out loud knowing that i might never get a visa to go to china again it's a lovely country

um but i've always wanted that it's great um i went to wuhan china and on december 9th 2019 um fun fun fun fact i took a train across china uh but i met uh an employee at ByDance in 2019, who said that yes, he was an American who was working over there or in some capacity with them. And he was like, yes, even the most average employee at ByteDance has like read, write access to most TikTok content globally.

In the same way that like, when I was a comment moderator for a long time and like you could just open up a control panel and like delete comments, change comments, whatever. Not change them, but like remove them, hide them. Like they can do the same thing. And it was really not like something. they had thought much about. I don't want to get down into the weeds of like what TikTok's algorithm can and can't do in terms of civic unrest because I'm also kind of like a Russia

skeptic to a degree. But like I am with you that like I I think the ban definitely put Biden in particular in a really tough spot. I mean you guys had an account like a campaign account on the app that is being banned. Right. Like that's tough. Like that's a I think it goes back to kind of like the branding death spiral where it's like you can't fully articulate what you're doing and why. So like the average person's like I don't get it like I thought the app was banned and the president's on their campaigning in anyways When we get to June we get to the first debate You've obviously written and talked a bit about you know what that was like, but for our audience How did you feel about the first debate? Because I have a tweet from the time that just I just wrote uh-oh

Do you snack during the debate? Were you like yeah like did were you just like squeeze it? like a like a fidget spinner to dust or something like I mean how did how did you feel about that one so I thought he was having a stroke no um I I'm joking honestly I think you would have done better it that's a that's a deal by you if he had had a medical crisis I think the country would have rallied around him but yeah I mean like how did you feel not good man like you know sorry to ask that it's a simple terms I just how did you feel there's like two things there's a lot about this because it is just an incredibly difficult. So you're watching it, and it's like, this is terrible.

You know what I mean? I remember I was sitting in, so I was at the debate. I was in, it's at Georgia Tech. And I was sitting, we watched it in the Georgia Tech men's basketball film room. So we're in these like, you know, whatever. Yeah. Nice chairs and whatever. And, you know, he walks out, and this is just my theory.

he walks out and I can I'm like oh he's nervous like I can see he's nervous he did seem nervous yeah and you know the it starts going on and it's like this is this does not feel good and then I think within like the first three minutes there's like that debate he asked some question about abortion that he sort of pivots to undocumented immigrants and I'm like oh fuck oh boy and so it's it's not it's not good. And you know, you're at this interesting position that I think, you know, as we talk about platinum, like a lot of Democrats are sort of finding themselves in. It's just like, all right, what are we going to do now? You know, like, we just, we have to deal with what's in front of us. And what I will say is like those three weeks between the debate and when he drops out are,

it felt worse. Like, it felt worse than the three weeks. after we lost because it just was the three weeks between the first debate and him dropping him dropping out worse because it's why like the losing like you can almost you can wrap your head around but like being in three weeks of like this is really bad this is so sure I understand yeah this is terrible and and getting hammered every day it's like a slow motion car crash everybody like what the campaign team sort of was like experiencing in that real time is like the whole thing is blowing up but like what's going to happen we don't know you know and and how do you balance how you might be feeling about what's happening with if he's not getting out all we can do is

try to save the campaign like all we yeah sorry but do you feel like the assassination attempt like changed any about arithmetic as as these like insane three weeks you're playing out for you guys uh it i mean it i think it added a level of like grimness to the entire thing of like yeah i know what you mean this is all happening we are per like the biden of it all what is going to happen are we going to lose our jobs it's this is not good should he be in the race whatever and then also by the way like society is unraveling yeah did you guys feel like we were like about to lose the whole country for like it's like oh like maybe we we won't get to vote in November.

I mean, it was this, like, unique moment of, like, just completely being unsettled, you know? And, yeah, and so you're just in this, like, complete fog of war, you know? And I, like, and, you know, I have, in life, I have very little sympathy to the Trump people. And, and I want what is worst for many Trump folks, but in that moment, thinking about, like, like, they're going through a bunch of shit, too. You know what I mean? So it's like at the same time, it's like, you know, like you feel as, you know, campaigner to campaigner like, holy shit. Like that must be fucking terrible. Like it's, it was.

I think they're pros at it now. Yeah. It's been three or four times now. But yeah, I imagine the first, the first assassination attempt is probably the craziest. Yeah. I have to imagine the first is. And I don't want to rub salt in the wound here with you guys. Although I suppose that's kind of what this entire thing is about.

But like, historically, the public. doesn't like to vote for people who almost get assassinated, which is kind of interesting. I kind of went through it and I was like reading different historical takes on this where it's like a lot of times like if an assassination attempt is carried out against a, you know, a candidate, like they don't win. Like there are a couple from like the 1800s and the 1900s that like everyone was like, ew, this is like too intense for us. And it kind of political violence, you know, for better or worse, I guess, does tend to sort

of reflect the mood of a country. Shinzo Abe being an example where they sort of ethered his entire legacy after he was killed with a contraption. And so it's like, it's interesting to me that I was not one of those people who believe that the Trump photo, the victorious photo, was actually going to help him. I thought, I thought the average American voter would be like, this is way too much for me. I don't want anything to do with this guy anymore. How did you feel? Do you feel, this is the most callous politico question I can think to ask. Do you feel like the Trump campaign owned the narrative of his assassination attempt? Yeah.

Okay. I mean, yeah. I mean, like the two things I remember thinking seeing that photo are one, thank God he's okay. And two, and like legitimately on a human level, thank God he's okay. But then like, thank God for like society. Like we cannot, we cannot stomach an assassination right now. We like cannot, you know. Yeah.

But then the second was once you see he's okay and you see that photo, you're like, Fuck me. It does sort of turn on your darker, your darker political impulses where you're like, damn, he kind of crushed that one. Especially because the Biden age thing was. Oh, I hadn't even thought about like a vitality angle there. It's vitality, right? Like the entire thing is vitality.

I hadn't even thought of that. And so you have like, you know, Biden weak, the whole thing that we just saw. Right, right. And Trump like, Like it, yeah, and it was like it couldn't have played more into that argument. So, yeah, I mean, to me, especially with, by the way, when you think about the fact that this election was decided by voters who are like, fuck the system, whatever, you know, I want someone who's going to go blow the whole thing up. Like, you know, they own the narrative coming out of that for sure. And so that takes us to the end of July where Biden drops out.

Kamala Harris enters the race. Biden endorses her via a couple channels, but mainly his ex account. And we're going to talk about what happens once we get to Brat Summer after a word from our sponsors. Your summer travels deserve an upgrade. With select Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac vehicles connected by OnStar, you can stream, game, and more on the go. Whether you're headed to a music festival or a cottage getaway, you can access hundreds of apps on Google Play right from your center display. explore OnStar tech today at OnStar.ca and discover how to take your summer to the next level. OnStar, Better Never Stopps.

So, okay, I've sort of blocked out a lot of this stuff, but I'm going to read you something that I wrote at the time, apparently, that I don't totally remember, which was, the 2020 Biden campaign seems stuck between wanting to copy, Trump's 2016 playbook and also copy Obama's 2008 and 2012 campaign strategies, which just didn't work, RIP Bidenwater, but the question is whether or not all this coconut posting, which I had totally forgotten about, means anything. And it's likely the answer is an unsatisfying kind of. Was there a template you guys were trying to work with? Like, was there sort of a grand design once Harris entered the race? Like in the broadest sense, to step back, like, there's a couple of things. One, you had a whole team of people who were, I was a person who would work for Joe Biden.

You have to switch candidates. You have like a whole different thing. And you have to come up with that on the fly, right? I mean, there was no pre-planning for this outcome on the campaign level. Whatever. But like, you could argue it's a historic thing. Like, this is a crazy historic thing. Because if the campaign started preparing for that eventuality, it would leak.

So we had to do it on the fly. Everything was in our heads. So there were like fits and starts and whatever. So I don't think there was like this like grand thing. I think the things that we were thinking about were one, how do you strike a balance between the idea that if the campaign leans in too much, it will kill the organic enthusiasm. So actually like the coconut posting, like the campaign almost never posted about that ever. I mean, yeah, it goes back to our kind of earlier conversation about like it's not just what the candidate says. it's like figuring out how to work with the fans, the supporters, and their own media, right?

Yeah, 100%. Brack Girl Summer, like, Kamala is brat. We never said, you know? That's actually crazy, though. Yeah. That's like one of those things that, like, will be in a history book where it's like, fun fact. Kamal Harris never said, I'm brat.

Yeah, yeah. No, it was all Charlie XX, X, X, X, right? And no one, that just happened. So some of these things stuck to the campaign. Now, the thing was, is I think that. That then set the, like, I didn't even know, the temperature. It sort of set the ecosystem around it, which made it that the audience was growing and loved that and then wanted more of that, right? And so I talk about this in the article to your point about like, kind of, like, did it whatever.

Like, I think on balance, our problem with Biden early when we switched to Harris was reconcilitating the base. Like we had to get voters back. We had to make it cool, like Harris. and I think it did that and I think Kamal HQ was pretty instructive in doing that and that voice was instructive in doing that. I think the challenge was, it's kind of like how like the YouTube algorithm

like will, it serves you to the people that most likely like your content and then kind of finds, it stops once it starts finding the people who are like, eh, you know? Right, exactly. It's a little bit like that. I think we found all of the people and then it was like what lives beyond that.

Yeah, I mean, I think that like we tried to lean into it enough that it was resonant and that it worked. And I think it had real value, right? I think, like, those accounts and that voice, like, built Project 2025 up. Like, it could do stuff that Kamala Harris couldn't do authentically and all of that. But, like, yeah, there's, I think a legitimate argument and criticism to be made. And I don't know how much I agree with it. That, like, if that's what the, if that infilled the brand and felt like it was for an

in-group and not an out-group, then it could have been damaging. I don't know. I don't think I subscribe to that, but I think, you know, it is a criticism that I think is worth merit in discussion. Well, this time period is also kind of the, we start to get the sense of like what Trump's 2024 campaign even looks like. This is where you start to get kind of the broligarchy emerging and J.D. Vance is becoming kind of a character. And then you have Tim Walls on your side. And I emailed you about this actually before this episode. I was curious. And it's one of these things that has haunted me forever. And I know you already told me, but just for the audience listening, I've just been desperate to know why when

Walls figured out an attack line of like, these guys are fucking weirdos. To me, I mean, maybe I am just a middle-aged millennial that is so laser targeted by American football edits and Zaga Dreamcast boasting and calling Republicans weird fucking assholes. But like to me, I was like, that's cool, that's interesting, but then it just sort of felt like by the time we hit, like, May and August, it disappeared. And I've always just sort of never understood why. I think the concern inside the campaign, and again, I was not in these conversations. So this is just, you know, whatever. But like, especially because like the running mate team tends to operate, at least in Democratic world as like kind of a satellite, you know. But I think that my

understanding was there was a sense that like what worked for him was like, nice guy, Tim Walls, and sort of the name-calling gratuitous stuff, sort of felt like it was, well, it just felt like it was gratuitous and over the top. And people wouldn't take him seriously in the same way. I will admit, I was a fan of weird. It was like one of the reasons I was Team Walls. I thought it was cool. I had never, it's something I'd been waiting 10 years for someone to say, you know?

Yeah. And what I thought was interesting about Walls is he came in with a lot of interesting novel arguments. I think in his speech on the day he gets announced, he either, I think he might have made a couch joke. He did. He leaned into the couch fucker stuff, which was also very relevatory for me at the time. I was like, damn, this guy's firing on all cylinders.

Yeah, I think that it kind of comes down to like the difference. Like this fight plays out in a lot of different places in Dem world of traditional communicators and digital communicators and digital communicators who are like, say the resident thing and traditional communicators who are like say the thing that is like most like persuasive and whatever. I think that that was like a case where like the internet people were like, this is gold. And the sort of more traditional folks were like this is off putting. And I think both had some merit. You know, I think my macro lesson for like how Democrats construct messaging is like we tend to actually often explicitly say if it is resident on the internet, it is not.

a good thing to be saying because it is anti-persuasive. That is a literal line of thinking that, like, people will say and exist. So they, but they know, like, what's happened in America for the last, like, decade, right? Like, they know. A hundred percent. They, they, they know, like, who's president again. Yeah. Like, if you were in it, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's,

viralism versus persuasionism or whatever, but, um, this is blowing my mind. Like, I actually, like, I actually, like, I'm turning bright red thinking about this. The basic, again, I'm going to do a good faith. Sure. Still, of their argument. Yeah,

I'm curious. That things that generate the most heat on the internet have the most partisan support. And because people are going to like it, they're going to engage with it, they're going to share it, that therefore makes it, whatever. If it's going viral, it anticorelates with what, is actually going to change voters because those voters tend to want kind of moderate things. And so it's not a wholly untrue thing that, you know. Wait, hold on. Before you move past that, why is it, why is that true of Democrats and not

seemingly true of Republicans? Well, then this is where the argument falls over. Right. Like, I don't get like if they, like, I guess it's sort of like, okay, here, what I would say this is, is like, you're in a high school cafeteria, middle school cafeteria, and half the cafeteria, they're like, we only want ice cream. And the school's like, you can have as much ice cream as you want. And then they turn to the other half and they're like, we can't give you ice cream all a time. I think you guys want like real food too. And then you're just like, wait, what? What are the fuck you talking about? I would also like to just eat ice cream all day. Totally. The core difference between how Democrats, like, set up our system and how Republicans set up their system.

is Democrats tend to go, this is, like, we have tested this. This is the most persuasive message, you know, and it's usually like, we need to lower prescription drugs. And then what you do is you take that, you put into ads and you say it over and over and over again. I kind of talked about this earlier. Republicans go the other way. They say, all right, I've got a gazillion voices on the internet.

They're all going to try a bunch of shit. Oh, this is working in this corner. All right, I'm going to try it. Oh, great. Okay. and then it makes its way onto Fox News, or on to, you know, Tucker or Megan or whatever, and then it makes its way onto Fox News,

and then it makes its way into the candidate, and they kind of take the thing that is resonant and they figure out how to make it persuasive. We say, what's the thing that's persuasive, how do we make it resonant? And we're sort of chasing, like, what's the viral way to say prescription drug, you know? And it's much more memetic on the right.

Yeah, totally. And, I mean, actually, we've done episodes sort of about the Rush Limbaugh era, and it was the same then too. Like the Republicans have always had this like winner takes all media apparatus that kind of creates policy for them. Yeah. And I think the left, and I'm sort of excluding Democrats from that term, like the what used to be the dirtbag left, bread tube, the sort of online left are trying to create a version of that. But without any money or like, you know, thought into how the.

average person would receive what they're putting out there. And so they're not, I think, as successful as sort of like a bunch of guys bloviating on massive, you know, cable news channels or radio waves or social media accounts or whatever. Yeah, I think it's true. The other thing is, like the right, they are still trying to do. Like the thing, the goal, if you are a political operative, is to find the resonant thing that is also persuasive, that also moves people, right? Like, that's what you want to level up to. And the right does that by going. My thing, by the way, I would be a single issue candidate to abolish the TSA and put everyone who's ever worked for the TSA in jail forever. And I think I could win.

Viral and persuasive. I think that's it. I think just get rid of the whole thing. We don't need it anymore. Yeah. But no, I get what you're saying. Yeah. But my research admen put together like a lot of sort of our clips from this time period. And like reading them back, I was very angry. And I think I was very angry because from my point of view, which I would like to think is sort of fairly consistent with like the average person's point of view, is Kamala Harris has appeared. Okay, like that's cool. Like there's some wacky TikTok stuff happening. That's fun. She introduces me to this new old man who is very, very angry and I'm very, very angry and I like that. And then all of a sudden,

he kind of takes a backseat. And then she goes very hardline into the pro-Israel or at least, you know, anti-Palestinian protester stuff. So you kind of get the DNC incident where, you know, there are mass arrests in front of the Israeli consulate in Chicago. And so by the time we get to, like the end of August, I guess I was just sort of like, I don't actually understand what's going on anymore. Yeah. For someone like me who only does kind of consume this stuff via the internet, at least firsthand,

I was confused. And so, like, by the time we especially hit the Springfield, Ohio, eating the cats and dog stuff, I was like, everything is about Trump. And I don't even know where the Harris campaign fits into the national conversation. They've sort of taken over the court in a lot of ways. Does that seem fair? Well, I, you know, I say this in the piece. I think I say this in the piece. I do say this in the piece.

That, like, what happened is like, I mean, there are many things that happened. But, like, from my lens, we had an intentional event every single week that was, like, hardwired in from the switch. So she switches. We announce walls. We have the convention. We have the debate. Like, the focus was on Kamala Harris, basically right until the debate. And then the debate happens.

And it is like an open fight for attention. And in a cage with Donald Trump, who was the best of getting attention in the whole fucking world. It's pretty good at it. Yeah. Yeah, we were not very good at that. And so that's sort of what happened is the entire conversation about the election is about Donald Trump straight up at the end. And I think conventionalism was like, oh, great, if people are talking about how much Donald Trump suck or if Donald Trump is the thing, it's a referendum on Trump, not a referendum on Biden, great. But actually, that's not how it worked.

And, you know, you found yourself in this position where, yeah, like Trump sort of controlled the narrative down the stretch in a way that made it, again, difficult to communicate through. through sort of more traditional traditional methods. Yeah, and like, and for people listening, like, we're not going step by step through, like, what the Trump team is doing during this time period, because one, we've, we have many episodes about that, but also, like, I think it, I mean, what I liked about sort of what you have written so far is, like, judging the, like, judging the Harris campaign, the DNC sort of operation on its own merits, right? Like, it's not like, oh, Trump is doing Manosphere stuff. We've got to do Manosphere stuff. Now, obviously, like, there was the Joe Rogan.

an incident. But like, I, I, I think it is, it is worth sort of holding up the, the, as you said, the things happening every week and going like, you know, why didn't this work? Did this work? You know, what could have happened here? And it is, I had totally forgotten the advance in walls debated. I guess. I got to just straight up that forgot that happened. And it is so, it is such a bummer. Because, like, I think a lot, like, it would have been great. I think just for for me personally, if he had eviscerated Vance on stage, by the time we get to the fall, you know, we're a month out and Trump is inescapable. And he now has the influencer army that he's been sort of building with Barron and Joe Rogan

all summer, which is insane to say out loud. And like, you know, everything that we're looking at on social at the time, my team is like, oh, like Trump is the top of every leaderboard we have in some, or he's partnered with someone, you know, the, he's on every podcast, he's everywhere. And I guess like from your point of view, like, one, is that true? Like, does that feel right? That, like, by the fall, Trump is just sort of taken over the internet? And, too, like, does that even matter?

Like, is that important? I guess I'm trying to sort of figure out, like, how you guys judge these things. It's not that Trump took over the internet. It's that Trump defined the contours of the conversation on the internet. That's fair. Yeah, that seems right. The discussion was all on his turf. and the mainstream discussion was all on his turf.

I think that we were dominating a pocket. He was dominating a pocket and then sort of like everywhere else was reacting to him. You know, what's funny is like there was a poll that came out. I think I mentioned it in the piece, but polling cannot just for the election that showed that more voters actually saw comments on podcast clips or on podcasts generally than Trump. And I don't know if I fully buy the poll, but like the theory that I have behind it, It is Trump was doing a frequency play at one audience.

And we were doing a low frequency play at a bunch of different audiences. So we were trying to talk to young women with Alex Cooper. And we were trying to talk with young black men with all the smoke. And those were persuasion audiences. So audiences that like didn't necessarily, like we had to get back. So we weren't, we were in enemy territory. It was not enemy territory, but they were, it was not just like, oh, I love this guy or this gal. And, you know, Trump was like doing a home turf game and he had built up this

ecosystem over the course of a couple of years. To your point, though, and I think the deck, you know, I give you guys a bit of credit there. The deck was stacked against you. Jamal Bowie has like a great take on this where he keeps saying everything is gender. And that like by this point of Trump in Trumpism, everything has kind of become gender. And so for him, he doesn't actually have to pick out a bunch of different voters in a co-euvre if he can just target white men. And so if he just goes on Manosphere podcast, if he just hangs out with Theo Vaughn or whatever,

like he can kind of shotgun blast his entire like core. Does that, right? I mean, that's how I would perceive it. To me, it's true of fandoms. It's true of political campaigns. Like the thing you want is like a core that sort of pulls people in or pushes messages out. His was, he super focused on his. And yeah, it was, it was, it's just true that like, again, where the questions were vitality and who's going to go fight for you and have the right priorities, there's just this thing that sort of sticks to women candidates.

Like, you'd hear this, people being like, well, I don't know. Something I just don't trust about Kamala Harris or whatever. Like, you know, you'd hear that about Hillary. Something I just don't trust about Hillary. Now, people will disagree about both of those questions on the merits or whatever. but like that question comes back and I do think you see it with AOC right now too who it's starting yeah it's like as she's become clearly more like open about telegraphing some kind of run people are beginning to talk about her that way which is sort of wild well it's a you know like Zora Mabani like goes to the

white house and pals around with Trump and is texting with him and he's cutting deals left and right and people are like our our woke deal maker you know whatever this is exactly how grant my producer talks about female politics. He doesn't like it when they have fun, but he loves it when like the male ones do. That's so right. And Grant, that shame on you. I was just about to say something nice about Ryan, too. And you know what? Now lost to all time. Sorry, please keep going. Well, to close the loop here on our garbage day autopsy, I think gender comes into play in a huge way as the sort of tech guys all start to align around late October. That's when you get, Jeff Bezos blocking the Washington Post endorsement.

It's when you get Elon Musk doing his like fucked up weird little jump and then he like does a little Nazi salute. Yep. You get like all of the podcast guys going in. You get Trump's big day at McDonald's. By the fall they had figured out that they could guck up the works online with bullshit like in Springfield, Ohio. And then they could just sort of pal around and act like they don't give a shit, which is both aspirational for men and taps into those disillusioned voters you talked about at the beginning. So it's like, yeah, I don't care about America so much that I'm going to like go pretend to work

at McDonald's for fun. You know, me and my boys are just going to like hang out, even though someone literally shot at us on this stage like three months ago and I'm going to do a fucked up weird jump. Like it was such a total disregard for any of it. Meanwhile, like you go over to the Harris campaign and you guys are still like trying to like trying to engage with people. You compared to the other side, they might as well have just. been like peeing in the middle of time square with their pants down. They don't care.

Yeah. And it taps into, I think, a psychology that's very, very popular right now, which is like, I don't give a shit about this at all. Well, and it goes back to the very first thing we talked about, right? Which is, like, the swing voter right now is not this, like, left and right person. It's this person who's like, I don't fuck all of this. Like, you know, they're swinging between, like, burn the whole thing down and I have hope, you know? Yeah. And so in that way, when you're sort of the candidate who's, we're going to bring back the experts or whatever, you know,

that's hard to sustain when people are like, I don't know, I'll take the guy pissing in the street who like might give me a better shot. Yeah. And so that's a material condition question as much as anything. I guess like, you know, to take things home, wrap things up,

like you guys would probably do all the same stuff again, right? Like, I feel like you're fine with that. Yeah, I mean, here's my like long-term. thing. Like, I think you see lots of political people right now who say the internet is the most important thing. The internet is real life now. We have to do podcast. That's me. I'm saying. And you're going to be in the 2028 field, right? But I do think that, you know, power structures

in the party are real, man. And like the people in charge still, like, don't consume the media that most voters consume. And so therefore it doesn't feel real to them. And, um, and, And candidate, and that includes candidates, by the way. Like, candidates don't use social media and therefore they don't know how important it is or whatever. So, you know, I think you will see some, like coming in the next election cycle, you will see really interesting shit. You will see people try really new stuff and take big swings. You will also see some sort of frustrating stuff that looks like exactly what you've seen before. Yeah, that sounds about right to what I'm currently seeing.

Yeah. I mean, every day it's like either someone like, like. doing an Obama thing or someone who's like one step away from doing clavicular bone smashing on a live stream if someone will vote for him, right? Like it's sort of what oscillating between the two right now. Yeah. And my assessment, which I think is fairly similar to yours of what happened in 2024, is that yes, there were like a bunch of hopefully once in a lifetime kind of circumstances

that played out. I think there were a bunch of circumstances that were out of anyone's control. Like genuine things that like when you look at them all lined up, you're like, wow, that's actually crazy. Like those things happened. There is sort of the unpredictability of like RFK and the Maha movement, which I think is still, it needs more scrutiny and will hopefully one day get proper scrutiny and be fit into this context. And then I think you also just have gender and you have race at play. And then you just have the fact that Trump kind of never stopped running for president. He's effectively been running for president for like a full decade and has the apparatus.

to do so, kind of whenever he wants. I think that's tough. I think that's right. How are you feeling about 2026? 26, I think we're going to be okay. I mean, I have two things about this. Does that mean you don't feel good about 28? Well, here's what I'll say.

The structure of 2026, we're going to win something. I mean, they've rigged the game, whatever, but we'll win the house. I feel pretty confident about that barring something crazy. But generally, you know, in a state of nature, like, I think we probably are in, shooting distance of the Senate, you know, like, that's all cool. I think the fundamental problem is midterm elections are when the voters who give a shit about politics show up. Right.

And those voters used to benefit Republicans. Now they benefit us. And so we'll have a great thing, but I think there still exists a fundamental problem that we don't have a coalition big enough to win a presidential election. We didn't in 2020, even when we won. We barely won by 45,000 votes, like, across, you know, four states. Like, if the wind blows in the wrong direction, we lose. So, you know, I think that that thing between now and then we have to have a compelling theory of the case and really a compelling person.

Like I don't think the party solves it. I think a nominee solves it that can make a coalition big enough that is going to win. And I think that is still unresolved, which is why I'm like, I'm still feeling nervous. I think they got to bring back Rama Manuel. I have him take a crack at it or something. Look, I want to thank you for coming on, but I also want to thank you for, for talking about this stuff, for writing about it, for being so vocal about it. We have tried to talk to sort of members of the Democratic apparatus over the last few years. And like, it's not easy to sort of get actual soul searching.

We've been criticized by our own audience for not pushing people to actually do some soul searching. There's a lot of questions and I think a lot of frustration. And you are so far the person who's come on who's been like the most open to talk about this. So I really have to thank you. It's it was genuinely fascinating. Like I wish people knew more about what was going on at the time. Like, I wonder what would have happened, you know, if the Democrats operated like the Republicans from the bottom up rather than the top down. We'll have to see. Maybe someone will do it next time.

If people want to follow you on the Internet, where can they do that? I am on, well, first of all, I have my own podcast if you want bad takes like these, which is nobody knows anything. You can watch on YouTube or wherever you listen to your preferred. podcasts like this one. And then I'm on the artist formerly known as Twitter as Rob underscore Flaherty. So you can be there.

Thank you so much. This is a blast. Panic Whirl is a production of Courier. It is written and produced by Grant Irving and hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Josh Fielstead is our production coordinator and our amazing researcher is Adam Bumis. From Courier is Shane Verkest

who edits our video episodes along with our producer, Devin Baroni, and National Managing Director and Executive Producer Kevin Dreyfuss. R.C. DeMezzo is their VP of brand and social. Charlotte Robinson is their deputy director of brand and social. Marianne Couga is their director of marketing, YouTube, and podcast growth marketer Samantha Hollos. And Tracy Kaplan is the senior vice president of sales and distribution. If you want to sponsor the show or give us products to sell, she's the one to talk to. You can email her at

Tracy at courier newsroom.com. Be sure to check up the Panicworld YouTube channel, which you can find at YouTube.com slash at PanicworldPod. And please give us some nice ratings on podcast apps and leave a funny review. Lastly, here's my advice for you. Chill out and touch grass while you still can.