Pod Save America - “A hit Trump will holler.”

Episode Date: November 15, 2018

Trump lashes out at everyone after his midterm defeat, Democrats see opportunities and challenges in the Midwest and Florida, and the party debates how best to take on Trump in 2020. Then Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum talks to Jon and Dan about the recount effort, and what he learned by running against America’s mini-Trump. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Later in the pod, we'll be talking with Andrew Gillum about his race for governor in Florida, which is currently in a recount. We're also going to talk today about Donald Trump's post-election meltdown and what the 2018 midterms tell us about the elections in 2020. A new Pod save the world posted on wednesday tommy did a roundup of post election foreign policy news with ben rhodes um also anna marie cox had a really smart conversation about the election with the great rebecca tracer on the last episode of with friends like these so do not miss that finally a scheduling note next week we'll have a pod on monday afternoon and then dan we're gonna have have our annual Thanksgiving mailbag episode

out on Thursday. It's now become a tradition. That's exciting. I know, I know. So we'll do all that next week. Okay, let's get to the news. On Wednesday, the Washington Post published a front page story

about how Trump has been handling the results of last week's midterm elections. And the answer, Dan, is not great. The Post reported that Trump's frustrations led him to lash out at British Prime Minister Theresa May. Because, you know, when you're pissed about your drubbing in the midterms, why not call up a foreign leader and yell at her? Trump has also threatened to shake

up his white house staff a separate story in politico about the mood in the white house quoted one staffer who said it's like an episode of maury povich the only thing that's missing is a paternity test quote of the month from a white house official right there um yeah i'm also not sure it's accurate the odds of a paternity test are not zero. That's true. We could be getting that soon. Dan, why is Trump so upset? I thought he said the election was a total success for Republicans. I thought I heard certain pundits say that it was only a blue ripple.

I would note that Trump apparently does not read Brett Stevens or Nick Kristof or listen to James Carville or read the front page of the Wall Street Journal, all of which would have validated his idea that it was a blue ripple, a split decision. You know how I feel about that. But it appears that Trump is a more astute political analyst than many of the people on television. And that is saying a lot. Yeah, he doesn't seem to be taking it too well. Yeah, he doesn't seem to. I guess too well. Yeah, he doesn't seem to. I guess the hashtag red wave did not come despite all the tweets predicting it.

Although it is funny how the organs of the Republican Party are still pushing that notion. I think I saw a tweet from the Republican Party, the RNC yesterday that was like, here's one reason for our complete success last week. It's like, what? What are you talking about? It's so dumb because it just proves that what has happened is the – it has become the job of the Republican Party, Republican pundits, the Trump media to just try to fill the bottomless hole that is Trump's insecurity, as opposed to like what you would really want if you were thinking like we want to win elections is you want your voters to be scared. Right, right. You would want them to know you don't want like,

we have we have a little experience in this. Don't wet the bed, everything's going to be fine sort of situation and it does not end well. And so you like bedwetting is actually in the sense that you want them to be concerned that it is not a guarantee. It is not a guarantee that Trump will be elected. It's not guaranteed that some red wave will happen. The election was not stolen from you. You want people to think that unless they work their asses off and donate money and canvas and do all the things we've encouraged you Democrats to do, that that's what you would want Republican voters to do to solve some of your very real 2020 electoral challenges, which we will talk about later in the pod. Yeah. I mean, look, the one time that you're almost guaranteed to see a party engage

in self-reflection and have some humility is after a loss in an election, right? Like that's been true for the Democratic Party and the Republican Party throughout time. And yet, you know, a week later, as the reality of the election results have sunken in for a lot of Republicans, you're only seeing like, you know, I see a few commentators, few conservative commentators here and there, some of the never Trump types saying, okay, we might have some problems. You see some Republican strategists who actually worked on these campaigns thinking, yeah, we might have some issues, but by and large, the rest of them are just full speed ahead. If you say there is a problem, then Trump will stop paying attention to you or turn on you.

And that is the challenge Republicans have found them in since the day Trump became their standard bearer, which is if you speak truth to power, or frankly, if you speak truth period, you were hurting the team and therefore thrown off the team. And it is not healthy for the party in the long run, which doesn't mean they're not going to win a lot more elections. No, not at all. They're just uh based on narcissistic uh idiocy so speaking of trump turning on people the post also reported that trump wants to replace homeland security secretary kirstjen nielsen possibly with former ice director thomas homan just maybe chris kobach's name was floated Just some really bad characters. And he wants to replace

Chief of Staff John Kelly, possibly with Vice President Pence's Chief of Staff Nick Ayers. There was also a very bizarre incident this week where Melania Trump got Deputy National Security Advisor Mira Ricardo fired after the First Lady's office put out a statement saying she doesn't deserve to work in the White House. So a lot of possible staff shakeups here. None have happened yet, though, I'm sure as we're recording one will, as that often does happen. But let's talk about chief of staff position first. How much do these shakeup stories matter at this point? First, they don't matter. They are interesting and they do because they are a window into Trump's mentality at any given moment. But remember when John Kelly was supposed to save the presidency because we were having a serious general in there who could stand up to Trump?

And then he just became one of those dolls that you punch and then they bounce back up again, you punch again. That was basically what he became for Trump. Yeah. And he's basically a human stress ball, I guess. So it doesn't really matter. I would also say we have read 10,000 stories about John Kelly being fired over the last year. I know.

And so we eventually, I mean, it's the broken clock theory of reporting, which is eventually Kelly will leave. And whoever just happened to have written the story most recently, we'll get credit for breaking some story. Yeah. I mean, it's always entertaining to read these stories about Trump's dark moods and how he's freaking out, but they have been written a million times. And that's not the fault of the reporters. They keep happening, so it's smart to write them. But yeah, I mean, I think I saw a former Trump administration official say the other day,

yeah, the John Kelly thing worked for about an hour when he got to the White House trying to control Trump. And then everyone pretty much gave up on that. So, like, no matter which of these bozos you replace with other bozos, it's pretty much going to be the same thing, right? Like, yes, is it worrying that Kirstjen Nielsen is going to be replaced with someone even more right-wing and extreme when it comes to immigration yeah that is very worrisome but also kirsten nielsen did absolutely nothing to moderate trump's stance on immigration and in fact helped him carry out like her legacy will be carrying out the family separation policy and defending it publicly. I mean, that is the lesson of the last two years. It's the lesson that should be heeded by anyone who is thinking of taking any of these jobs in the administration is no matter how you view yourself, your morals, your policy positions, your ideology, before you walk into Trump's orbit.

Once you are in Trump's orbit, he turns you into a mini Trump because the incentive structure is to – he demands loyalty and wants to be pleased at all times, no matter how absurd that desire is. And so the only way to succeed is eventually to just start doing what Trump wants. And before you know it, you have become a caricature of a human being doing horrible things. And it is, Kirstjen Nielsen was a theoretically serious person. Her relationship was with John Kelly, not Trump. She was not like some MAGA hat wearing Fox News green room drag who got brought in the administration. But once she was there, Trump yelled at her enough times and dressed her down and cut off her access and did all those things that the only way she thought she could keep her job was to put children in cages. And then to lie about it in front of the country, because to have not done what Trump wanted to do

or tell the truth about what Trump wanted to do would be to be excommunicated from Trump land. And it is the fastest way to ruin your reputation forever is to go work for Trump. And so I don't know why anyone would take any of these jobs, but people seem to continually make poor choices in life. So who knows? So back to's mood uh that's seemingly causing all this turmoil is it possible that a massive electoral repudiation by the american people is going to actually worsen trump's behavior this morning he was tweeting about how a hundred bob muller is a disgrace to our nation the investigation is the worst witch hunt ever i mean it's all stuff that he's treated before but he hasn't actually attacked Bob Mueller personally for many months, but his mood seems to be darkening, especially

with regard to that investigation. I think an important fact here that we should remind people of is what Trump is currently doing, according to reports from Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan, other people who have a good sense of what's happening in the White House is Trump is spending a lot of time with his attorneys working on the answers to Mueller's questions. Can you imagine that? And so that is something that is in Trump's head. Donald Trump's sitting in, I just imagine Donald Trump's sitting in the Oval with like 10 lawyers around him, a bunch of goofball advisors, and they've got all the questions printed out and he's trying to write them and they've got all the questions printed out

and he's trying to write them and they're all yelling at him and he's yelling back at them. I would love a good TikTok on, which I'm sure we'll get after the fact, on what it is like for Trump to answer the Mueller questions. I mean, it's got to be wild

because his attorney's job is to prevent him from committing perjury. Right. That is what they're trying to stop him from doing. Yeah. And Trump is someone who does not believe in the concept of truth. He will sit there and tell you that the sky is green and the grass is blue. And I know people have pointed out that in depositions in the past, he has somehow managed to tell the truth, but he is getting worse by the minute. He is deteriorating as a human being. And so it just seems like an incredibly tall order to keep this man

from committing perjury of some kind. And so that is the one thing that is going on. It is also, as you pointed out, it is a long tradition in this country. Whenever a president gets, has an electoral, a huge electoral loss in the midterm to do some measure of self-reflection and change what's going on. The bloodthirsty members of the establishment generally demand some sort of firing. bloodthirsty members of the establishment generally demand some sort of firing. There is always this view of like, the people have told you what you're doing is not working. And then it's also the members of Congress who are now going to be on, the ones who survived the electoral slaughter, know that they're on the ballot the next time around and they want you to fix whatever caused this problem. For Bill Clinton,

the next time around, and they want you to fix whatever caused this problem. For Bill Clinton, he made a ton of changes in his White House. He, I think, in my personal opinion, swerved too far in the other direction by announcing that the era of big government was over at a State of the Union, did a whole bunch of other things like welfare reform that were pretty gross. But he reflected, I don't agree with some of the choices he made from his reflection, but he deeply reflected on what went wrong and did it. When George W. Bush faced his electoral reckoning in 2006, he fired Rumsfeld the next day because a huge part of that electoral reckoning was centered around the direction the war in Iraq was going. was centered around the direction the war in Iraq was going. When Obama faced his in 2010, we made efforts to begin to work with the new Republican Congress. Those were ill-fated, and maybe some would argue, and I might even agree with some of that criticism,

that we swerve too far in the wrong direction sometimes. But there is self-reflection. The only measures of accountability that that the report cards that presidents get are on election day, first midterm, re- self-reflection from him. And his staff is too dumb and too weak to demand self-reflection of him or themselves. So we're just going to, you can see a man who is constantly doubling down with a hand that is like a seven high. Well, and yeah, doubling down is on a policy front too. I mean, you know, the first things we're hearing out of the white house are you know trump will uh willing to shut the government down if he doesn't get his wall like if that election wasn't a repudiation of the idea that he needs to build a fucking wall

i don't know what is you know but and then also you would you would expect i mean there is this there is this you know push in washington every time an electoral defeat happens and there's divided government like now there must be bipartisanship. Let's work together. Well, you know, Mitch McConnell the other day was asked, well, what about working with Democrats on infrastructure? Remember, at the beginning, you know, one of the pundit theories was, oh, Trump could work with the Democrats on infrastructure and that would screw the Democrats or put them in a tough spot because, you know, our base would like that and Trump would like that and all this kind of shit. And Mitch McConnell's like, we're not doing a a 900 billion dollar stimulus we don't want to do

infrastructure and it's like okay well you just did a billion dollars i mean i'm sorry a trillion and a half dollar stimulus which was uh for rich people and big corporations only but no no no infrastructure thanks so this idea that like maybe trump will work with the democrats on some issues maybe it'll be prescription drug prices, maybe the infrastructure. There's zero hint of that happening. And even if Trump was somehow smart enough to want to reach out and try to work on those things with Democrats, it's not going to work because Mitch McConnell has said that Republicans are just basically going to be for, you know, gutting health care and giving more tax cuts to rich people and confirming more right wing judges. That's it. That's the agenda. If you don't like it, fuck off.

The idea that Trump would work with Democrats is just so dangerously naive about Trump himself, but also the political moment that we're in, which is that Trump has for two years now made zero effort to do anything other than keep his 38% to 42% base excited about him. He's done nothing to try to expand that base, to do anything that would win over other people. And every time he does something, he stumbles into it by accident just by being sort of a dangerously naive egomaniac. He gets slapped on the wrist by Ann Coulter or Tucker Carlson and immediately retreats. He cuts a deal with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer on Dreamers. The Morning Joe set erupts in praise. He's very excited about that.

And then Ann Coulter tweets about him and he completely backs away. And instead of protecting dreamers, he puts them on the deportation chopping block and tries to and puts in place the family separation policy. And so this idea that Trump could cut a deal with Democrats on prescription drugs, for instance, which would be politically smart if you had a strategy to get more than 42% of the country to support you. He's unwilling to trade 6% of his base for 6% of Republican-leaning independents, right? Yeah. Because that's like if you upset the base, it has costs,

but upsetting the base can for Republicans. I think it's slightly different for Democrats who have more similarity between their persuasion message and their motivation message. It could work, but he cannot do that because the thing that keeps him going is just Noah is the praise he gets from Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson. And if he were to lose that, then he would just melt into the floor like a character from The Wizard of Oz. Yeah, he's stuck on that sugar high. All right, let's talk a little bit more about the midterm results and what they mean. We wanted to do this today because when we talked about this last week, we were operating off of partial data and exit polls that frankly aren't all that great. But now we have some better data,

partly thanks to the folks at Catalyst who do their own exit poll and match it with the voter file, which gives you a much more accuracy. So here's a quick few points from their research. One, there was an increase in youth turnout. And even more notably, the democratic margin among 18 to 29 year olds, how much we won that group by went from plus 25 went from plus 25 in 2014 to plus 44 in 2018. That is a crazy margin. And this was especially true among young white voters. In 2016, Democrats and Republicans were essentially tied among this group. On Tuesday, Democrats won them by 26 points. And you saw something similar in an increase in the turnout and the margin among 30 to 44 year olds. So now everyone basically from 18 to 44 is, you know, turnout was up slightly, but the margin, how much they voted for Democrats by over Republicans has swung super far to the Democrats. um we also saw that the 2018 electorate was more diverse than the 2014 electorate with big democratic gains in comparison to 2016 among white voters with a college degree

and asian americans uh stayed about the same among african americans and actually lost a little ground among latino voters between 2016 and 2018 um and then one more point, the turnout was also slightly down in rural areas and Democratic gains were pretty big in rural areas, but mainly because of young voters who live in rural areas who went more Democratic by 17 points. The older voters really just, we didn't make any gains at all. Dan, what are your takeaways from all of these data points? Does it paint a cohesive picture? Is it sort of confusing? What do you think? Well, it's confusing, but I'd make a couple of points. First, there's this very critical caveat that midterm elections are not great predictors of what's going to happen two years later. In 2010, Democrats lost big races in Ohio, Iowa,

Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Florida. And then in 2012, Obama won all of those states, in some cases by pretty good margins. And so you just have to recognize that it's all about the turnout mix, right? Turnout for Democrats was bad in 2010, much better in 2012, and that put those states back on the map yeah um so just you can't draw conclusive lessons but you can you there are things you can learn that can help inform your 2020 strategy which i think is the important thing here yeah um i would say that there was this i had this fear and I think a lot of people had this fear that the Midwestern states were moving sort of quickly and irrevocably into the Republican column,

right? We've been having this debate within the party where it's like, what's going to happen first? Are these states that are getting older and whiter because young people are moving out instead of into the state, are Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin going to become red before North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and even Texas become blue, right? And that was sort of a race. And we always sort of thought we were going to win that race because Obama had won North Carolina in 2008, I think think absent some pretty significant voter suppression, Obama would have won it in 12. And then it fell off a little bit in 16. And we thought Florida was moving strongly in our direction. And that turned out not to be the case. But if you look

at what happened in the Midwest, you see some encouraging signs for Democrats. It seems like it is going to still be true that Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin will be true toss-up states, and that Iowa, there is possibility for the right Democrat to repeat Obama's performance in Iowa. There are some concerning signs in Ohio, despite Sherrod Brown's win. But if you sort of think about it, Democrats hold the states we won in 2016, and then you just add Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan back to your column, you get to 279 electoral votes and you win without having to win Ohio, Florida, or iowa so they're like the path remains for democrats uh but you can see how that you can see a clear path to get to 270 it's just perhaps a little

more narrow than we thought it was going to be uh six years ago yeah i mean so let's talk about the midwest and then we can talk about florida uh in the midwest i think the good news is the Democrats bounced back from their performance in 2016 in a number of these states. The bad news is they didn't bounce back to the Obama level performance of 2012. So there is no such thing as a blue wall anymore. And I don't think there will be in 2020, right? Like you said, we're going to have to compete in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, intensely, whoever the nominee is. And I do think, you know, we saw some troubling signs in Ohio, like you said, even though Sherrod won. And I think a lot of these has to do with sort of the demographic makeup of each of these states. So it does look like the reason that we carried, and when I say we, I mean the Senate and gubernatorial candidates in Wisconsin, in Michigan, in Pennsylvania, they carried these states again, is that they, by and large, ran up margins in the suburbs that were even greater than what we did in 2016 or what we did in 2012 and they made up some ground in rural

areas but they didn't make we sort of didn't make up ground or didn't make up enough ground in a lot of like old you know industrial towns in the midwest um that have a lot of uh that where the population is a lot of non-college educated white voters and because ohio has a greater proportion of non-college educated white voters and older voters than um some of the other states we're having particular problems in ohio because we can't get enough votes out of the suburbs of ohio to make up for um a lot of the other parts of the state sherrod could so there's a lesson to be learned there. But Cordray didn't. We got sort of shut out in congressional seats. And so that's pretty

tough. But I do think then you look up, like we talked about this before, you look at Michigan and Gretchen Whitmer, you know, she sort of held down the margins, the Republican margins among non-college educated whites. And she ran up the margins in the suburbs and around Detroit. And I think Tony Evers did that in Wisconsin with Milwaukee and the suburbs around Milwaukee. So it's going to be a dogfight. So what do you think, Dan, we should do over the next two years, what Democrats can do to make sure we win at least pennsylvania michigan and wisconsin i think it it is going to be very dependent on our nominee in a lot of ways and i can't i don't know which person who's think of which which of these 700 people are thinking of running is the right person to solve this problem yeah but it is

it's sort like if you look at what happened in these states and then florida which we'll discuss shortly the it sort of slays this dumb debate about do we want a moderate or a progressive right because it that that debate is just has been stupid for 30 years and it's even more stupid now but for democrats to win they have to do – in these states and around the country, frankly, is we have to do two things at the same time. We have to turn out our base, including young people, people of color, periodic voters, new voters. We have to turn the base out at a high rate and win independence. And it's not an either or, right? If we were trying to win a popular vote, I think you could pick one of those two choices. But when you have to put together a – to hit a win number in a bunch of different states,

it's going to be a different formula each place, but it all kind of boils down to that same thing. Now, my view is you can do that with a progressive message, because particularly centered around economics and healthcare. And we've saw people in 2018, who did that very successfully, notably Beto O'Rourke, Andrew Gilman, Stacey Abram. Now, none of them have as of yet won, but there are lessons to be learned from their campaign. Well, Sherrod is the exception there. And Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, by the way, Tammy Baldwin is a progressive senator in Wisconsin. And, you know, she won 17 counties that went for Trump. I mean, just when you think you've got, you know, electoral politics figured out, think about the fact that there are 17 counties in wisconsin that voted for donald trump in 2016

and then turned around and voted for tammy baldwin a progressive senator uh in 20 in 2018 yeah and it says a lot about that candidates matter right it is someone who it's not just simply like we're conservative therefore we're not going to be for progressive it's not just simply like we're conservative, therefore we're not going to be for progressive. It's can you convince people that voting for you is going to improve their lives, whether that's convincing you to vote for a Democrat, even though you live in a Republican area, or to convince you to go from being a non-voter to a voter because it's going to matter. And the best candidates can do that. So I think that that is an important thing. That is one, it's just one thing that we should try to move away. We will not move away from that debate because everyone in political punditry and journalism is sort of wrapped around an axle that was last relevant in 1989, but such is life. I would just make one other point about these states that shows how quickly things change, which is in 2012, we were so confident of our position in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan that we decided in order to save money to be able to match the Romney campaign for spending that we would not advertise in any of those three states. And it wasn't until the very end when we had extra money and we knew we could compete financially that we put up a few ads in those states and visited those states. We were so confident that

they were in our column that we didn't campaign there. And then Trump wins them four years later and now they are going to be the states that decide the election as opposed to being the three states that make up the blue wall. Yeah. And I'll just say one more thing before we move on there. That's also winning these states. It's about finding the right candidate for sure. But it's also about being on the ground there and the Democratic Party investing in these states. And I know that the DNC and other entities, you know, they were in Wisconsin and with other groups as well. Some, you know, whether it's Indivisible or Swing Left or all these groups that have sprung up since Trump became president, you know, they really sort of rebuilt the relationships with people, with voters on the ground. A lot

of these organizers in Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania that, you know, atrophied a little bit over the years that Obama was president. And, you know, because we didn't even compete in them in 2012 because they were so safely in our column. And famously, you know, I mean, Hillary campaigned a lot in Pennsylvania, but in Wisconsin and Michigan didn't campaign as much there. So I think sort of rebuilding the relationships with voters in those states is going to help us as well. Let's talk specifically about Florida. Obviously, recounts are still underway, but no matter what happens, it was obviously much closer than the polls suggested. Nate Cohn of the New York Times Upshot wrote an analysis the other

day about how heavily Democratic Miami-Dade County could be the single biggest cause of the potential Democratic disappointment in Florida. Democrats did eight points worse there than Hillary did in 2016 in Miami-Dade. And President Trump's net approval rating was also about 10 points better than it was in this 2016 election. Sorry, the margin was 10 points better. So that's fascinating. I talked to Steve Shale, our friend who ran Florida for Barack Obama in 2008, 2012, two winning campaigns, has run a lot of other campaigns in Florida. He thinks the Miami-Dade thing is troubling. He also thinks an even bigger issue was Trump really ran up the margins around Tampa and Orlando and a lot of those suburban exurban counties. We won them. Obama won them in 8 and 12. Trump won them in 16.

Trump won them in 16. And it looks like DeSantis and Scott won them in 18. And actually, Nelson did okay there, but that's, I guess, because his congressional seat is from there. So it does seem like those are still the swing counties in Florida and Democrats need to figure out how to win those. But what do you think about Florida? I'm worried about it because I think we have been somewhat out-organized there. I saw also in Steve's email to you that he pointed out that the Democratic registration advantage in the state has dropped significantly over the last many years. And that's a problem. And it should be going the other direction because from a pure demographic point of view, the state should be getting more democratic.

There are, you have younger people moving there. You have a non-Cuban Latino population who is aging to the electorate. There continues to be a large segment of unregistered African-Americans in the state. Obama had success in registering a lot of them in 08 and 12, but there's still a lot more voters there. You have Puerto Ricans who moved to Florida in recent years, but also since the hurricane, who are eligible to vote and Democrats have a very good case to make to them. And so there's an organizational challenge. And part of it has been, at the state level, until I think Gillum's campaign here, we've been sort of getting not had the governorship in this century. And so that just is going to affect it over time. And you can't just have Barack Obama come in in 2008 on a wave of enthusiasm and win the election and then organize the state from the perch of the White House with tremendous resources in 2012 and then expect that to change the direction of politics in that state forever. Florida is the great warning that we should have all heeded

after 2012 that demographics are not destiny, right? You have to put the work in and you also have to appeal to as broad a cross-section of voters as possible. And it is... Now, we don't need Florida to get to two 70, but if you win Florida, it's game set match. Yeah. It is interesting because on one hand, uh,

Democrats did flip two Republican seats in Florida, uh, in the Miami area. Uh, Donna Shalala won Debbie Mooker, Sel Powell, who was on the pod. Uh,

she won as well. Um, and yet in that County, it seems like Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis both made inroads among Latino voters. Now, Steve talked about this. He said, look, in midterm years, you actually get more Cuban Americans voting. And then because in presidential elections, you end up getting a larger Latino turnout. And in midterm elections, Latino turnout drops a little bit, but among Cuban Americans, it doesn't drop.

And because Cuban Americans traditionally have voted more Republican, you get a little bit more of a Republican electorate. That combined with, I guess, Rick Scott has done a lot of work reaching out, organizing with Latinos. And I think DeSantis ran with a Lieutenant governor candidate who was also Latina. So that might've had something to do with it, but it is pretty weird that we sort of lost ground among Latinos there. Yeah. I'd be very curious to see precinct level data among the mostly Cuban precincts that Obama won in 12, which had never been won by a Democrat previously, or at least not since like 1968 or something. yeah so i'd be very curious to see that and i'd also love to know and this isn't an easily knowable thing until you look at the voter file but the age makeup of the cuban voters that turned out right so like there is it to steve's point

there is a there is a group of older cuban cub vote reliably Republican, and they vote reliably, like older voters tend to do. And there is a group of younger Cubans who are more in line with where the Obama administration came down on Cuba and supported Barack Obama with some pretty great enthusiasm. But I'm curious about whether they also turn out at a lower rate in a midterm because they are younger voters and younger voters tend to turn out at a lower rate in midterm. So you're sort of looking at two separate things. And until you know that answer, you don't know, has Trump and Rick Scott changed the politics in that community? Or is it simply a turnout problem among Democrats that we need to address in 2020? That is sort of the question that dictates strategy that you can't know until you get deeper into who voted and who didn't. so let's talk a little bit about how democrats can win some of these states when donald trump is on the ballot uh in 2018 you know we've talked about this democratic candidates focused almost exclusively on health care particularly pre-existing conditions and

generally in their races avoided trump. And that was true across the ideological spectrum, whether you were, you know, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Joe Manchin. You didn't talk about Trump a ton. You talked a lot about issues, especially healthcare. Will, the big question is, will this strategy work in 2020 when a Democratic candidate is actually running against Trump himself? Is it possible to ignore him? I know you talked about this a little bit in a Daily Beast story the other day, but what do you think about this? I sort of felt sorry for Gideon Reisnick, who's the reporter,

who reached out to me because I had a lot of thoughts and I sent him back basically like a manifesto of my views on this. I mean, the person you're really gonna upset by that is brian boitler at cricket.com but go ahead yeah i'm unfamiliar with him where does he work again um the uh look it is obviously harder to ignore trump when you're running against trump right like that is just is just a fact because that it's, it's just like, you're easier to say if you're Katie Porter, uh, I'm not focused on Trump. I'm focused on Mimi Walters, right?

Or if you're Joe Manchin and I'm not focused on Donald Trump, I'm focused on fighting for the people of West Virginia and Patrick Morrissey, my opponent, uh, would do the following bad things to them. It's like an easier pivot. But I think there are some lessons in there, which is Trump's great superpower to the extent – in like a supervillain sense of superpower – is that he can move the conversation onto the things that do not work for Democrats, but do work for Republicans, right? There's nothing about the caravan discussion that helps Democrats turn out their voters or persuade independents to support Democrats, right? But it is a conversation that helps motivate Republican voters.

voters. And so he sucks you into this vortex of culture war marginalia that is a net negative for Democrats and net positive for Republicans. So how do you avoid that? The first thing you have to do is know how to pivot. And we talked about this a lot in the run-up to the election about calling out the game of what Trump is trying to do to show the conversation he's trying to avoid, right? Trump's trying to scare you about this caravan that's 700 miles away in Mexico because he doesn't want you to know that if Republicans keep power, they're going to cut your Medicare and take your health care, right? So that's part of it. The other thing is you have to, the best candidates are the most disciplined candidates, right? Where you, you know, like as a democratic candidate,

we could do not control, uh, despite what Republicans would tell you what is in the traditional media, right? Like Trump can, as the president of the United States and someone who drives ratings and clicks, he can dictate what the media talks about.

We can't, but we can dictate what we say talks about. We can't. Yeah. But we can dictate what we say when we talk to the media or what we say when we're on the stump or what we say we're on in our advertising, preferably digital to television, but in our advertising. And that's where we have to be disciplined. And so I think there is a way to, you can't ignore Trump pretend he doesn't exist because you're running against him, but you can be incredibly disciplined about not following him down these rabbit holes that help him and hurt us. Hillary Clinton's communication shop in 2016 had what I thought was a really smart tweet storm about this the other night, based off, you know, you talking about ignoring him in the story. He basically says that it's extremely difficult to ignore Trump on a campaign against him because

he'll say something crazy and offensive. And then most of the media, especially television, they'll lead with that. And the only way for the Democratic opponent to get into that story is to hit back against Trump. So Trump says something racist and offensive, sexist, whatever. You know, the Democratic candidate can't just say, oh, no, no, I have my tax plan today, or I'm talking about healthcare today. Now do a story on me. The only way they can get into the story is if they respond to Trump. So then he said, this creates a sugar high of satisfaction, a false sensation of being on offense for once, rather than being on defense about some contrived controversy. But the joke is

on you because in reverting to an exchange of salvos, you're playing Trump's game. You can give a thoughtful speech documenting Trump's many examples of acting racist, but at his evening rally, he will with no supporting evidence simply call you a racist back and the next day's stories will read candidates trade barbs which i thought was a great summary of what happens and a real window into the frustration that the clinton campaign had in dealing with trump it's not that they didn't know this was a problem it's that they couldn't find a way out of this box. Yeah, that is exactly right. And it is, the problem for Democrats is we are still adhering to the wrong view of what works in politics. And so the incentive structure for a Democratic

campaign, if you're on the communication staff is twofold. How much coverage are you getting? Are you in the stories? I mean, you've seen this in campaigns we've worked on, the campaign manager comes down and is like, how come we're not in the story? So you got to get in that story. How do we get coverage? And that's particularly true in primaries where you are trying to build name ID. And the second one is you build these massive rapid response apparatuses with opposition researchers and people doing digital content and all of this. And when you build an army of hammers, everything looks like a nail, right? So it's like you do your rapid response meeting and it's like, what are we going to hit Trump

for today? And Trump gives you 700 options every day. But each of those options has a differing amount of strategic value to your campaign. And a hit for hit's sake is a mistake. And you look at how do you measure success? Think about the Hillaryinton delete your account tweet that she did when she attacked trump remember this in 2016 yeah and every it became at the time like the most retweeted tweet ever and it was funny but what how did it move the ball forward right

it didn't no and so you have a bunch of people satisfied that she did it right like yeah we got them good hit good for her. We win this. Or some people made fun of it. But that's like, exactly. What voters' mind did that change? What voters' mind did that change to say either I'm going to vote for her now or I'm going to get out and go to the polls and I wasn't going to before? Like no one, right? Yeah. And this is where discipline matters and it has to come from the top. And so in 2008, we were fortunate to have, as our campaign manager, David Plouffe, the most disciplined human alive. And we knew the only way Obama could possibly win the White House was to win Iowa. And so in every senior staff meeting I ever went to, when someone had an idea,

Plouffe would ask you, how does this help us win Iowa? Because if it doesn't help us win Iowa, there's a real question as to whether it is a good use of limited resources and time. And you have to sort of bring that discipline to all of your communications, right? to sort of bring that discipline to all of your communications, right? How does this help us turn new voters out? How does this convince this target group of voters to support us? And if your answer is it gets a lot of retweets or it gets us cable TV coverage or mainstream coverage or whatever else, that is not a good enough reason to do things. If the only way in which you're going to build name ID and persuade voters is through the mainstream media in the Trump era, you are going to lose, and you're going to lose pretty bad because they have zero incentive to cover the issues you want

to cover. You want covered and to talk about the things you want to talk about. They want to talk about Trump because he's president for sure, but also because they are businesses. And the things that drive ratings and click rates that drive up ad revenue are things about Trump. They are just because they are marketing to a niche audience of super engaged political people who made up their mind about who they were to support for president, probably the day they turned 18. And not the sort of voters that we need to persuade either to become voters or to support our candidate, less engaged people. And so you're going to have to, mostly through paid advertising, but also through clever content that you create, have an alternative communications infrastructure that works.

Because if you're depending on people who depend on Trump for business, you are going to be playing Trump's game till the end of time. And if you do that, he will be president till the end of time. Yeah. And look, there's also a question about what kind of candidate is best suited for this, right? And Brian had a really smart thought on that too. He basically ends the tweet storm by saying, a nominee best suited to be able to ignore Trump is one who commands a media ecosystem apart from Trump, whose life story is inherently fascinating enough to draw endless human interest stories, whose life story is inherently fascinating enough to draw endless human interest stories, whose social media videos in the car or carving flank steak are

deemed interesting. This type of person can talk about economic inequality or universal health care and have it actually break through because the messenger is authentic and intriguing enough from a storytelling standpoint to exert their own gravitational pull on the media cycle away from Trump. Democratic primary voters shouldn't make some pundit-driven judgment about who can best beat Trump. They should follow their heart and vote for someone who inspires because the same quality that inspires caucus goers will enable them to transcend Trump attacks in the general. Yes, this is 100% right. And Brian is not being subtle. he refers to a certain candidate who would live stream his trips to Whataburger or recently posted a video on Instagram of himself carving a

flank steak. That would be Fred of the Pod, Beto O'Rourke. But there is a lesson in Beto's campaign. There are a lot of lessons in Beto's campaign, and I could talk about them till the end of time, frankly. But what is really... He is a very skilled politician. He exudes authenticity, which is very helpful. But he also filled the content void by live streaming everything. And that is not to say every candidate should live stream everything,

because many candidates are not going to be interesting or charming as they drive to Whataburger. That's just not whether they're the best self or they maybe they don't like Whataburger. I don't know. But what it is, is that you did not you could get information. You could make a judgment on better or work on better or works terms. As opposed to making a judgment on better or work by looking at his reflection in the funhouse mirror of Trump politics. And I think it's just very important.

And I think Democratic candidates, either Beto O'Rourke in 2020 or someone else, needs to think very seriously about that. I mean, Obama used to say this all the time to us, which is he believes the reason he won Iowa is because he was able to go to Iowa, spend months and months and months on the ground there, meeting as many caucus goers as possible. And he said, when I met them and they saw me and they got to know me, they realized that I wasn't the caricature, the Muslim terrorist imposter that he was being depicted as on Fox News. And so he's like, this is the caricature of me, what didn't hold up to them

meeting me. Now, that's impossible to meet every voter in every state, right? But the point is, is the media ecosystem apart from that. And like you said, it worked for Beto to be in the car, right? So the lesson is not for the communications people out there to run to their can and be like, we got to drive around like Beto did and Facebook live stream it. Like, you got to do what works for you, right? Like, what would have worked for Hillary Clinton? Well, Hillary Clinton is a policy wonk, very fluid in every subject, really cares about actually passing policy

to help improve people's lives. You know, you could put her at a round table, live stream that. And she's talking to people about policy for an hour who, you know, it impacts like mothers, children, families, whatever it may be. Figure out what works for you, where you're at your best as a candidate. Doesn't, you know, it doesn like mothers, children, families, whatever it may be, figure out what works for you, where you're at your best as a candidate. It doesn't matter what that is

and figure out how to create a media ecosystem around that. I mean, you and I and Tanya all talked about this on the media episode of The Wilderness. Tanya has been talking to us about this since she joined Crooked Media that you need to find and create this sort of media ecosystem and fill the void with content as a candidate so that you're not defined by the opposition but i think it's essential for whoever is going to be the nominee in 2020 to figure out what works for them and to have this sort of this entire life outside of donald trump you can't be sucked into his vortex all the time because it's not going to fucking work you're just going to get him and we saw this right like elizabeth warren who we love who's brilliant on policy and has this great story and it's passionate she gets she got sucked into it for a moment there with that

video um about her native american ancestry because it was so much about well here's what trump said about me here's how i'm hitting. And it was suddenly like her going back and forth with Trump as opposed to her on her own, who's so much more inspiring and passionate and brilliant. That's right. I have referred to on this podcast before this book that was written in 2006 called The Way to Win, which in most cases is a pile of hot steaming establishment garbage that should not be read, in part because it was a treaties on the 2008 election that didn't include the words Barack or Obama. But I will say this. They spent a lot of time talking in there about what they refer to as the freak show, which was Fox News, Drudge Report, just how the crazy nature of media. And this is 2006 before Facebook and Twitter became dominant parts of political campaigns.

And the point they made is that Democratic candidates from Al Gore and John Kerry had both basically had their public narrative completely disrupted and destroyed by the quote-unquote freak show and to win you have to be a candidate who can survive the freak show and walk out you know walk onto you know walk into the ballot box on election day controlling your own story and not the where the people under the american people know you for who you are not for who fox news or matt drudge uh think you should be and hillary clinton suffered for that now in her defense she had been dealing with that for 30 years by the time she even announced for president so it wasn't really a fair it wasn't like she started out and just didn't navigate in the campaign. Most of the, almost all the damage that was done to her was done before the campaign,

long before she was running for president and, and then was exacerbated by some decision she made that the media then treated really stupidly, like using a personal email server, et cetera. Yeah. But like, that is what now that is that much harder because your opponent is the

person who conducts the freak show. That is what Trump does. He tells them what to say about you. He gives you your nickname. It is repeated on Fox News. Then mainstream normal media then sort of echoes that. And it's like, how is Jeb Bush handling the low energy label, right? He is able to push it into the brain firmament of the American people. And your ability to survive that will determine whether you win or lose. And Barack Obama is the other candidate that Brian is talking about in his Twitter thread, which is Obama's personal story and message was so compelling, and he was able to tell it better than Republicans were able to tell

it about him. And therefore, he was able to succeed twice. And that's what is what at stake in 2020. And that, to me, is so much more interesting that a candidate who can tell a clear compelling story about themselves in america without featuring trump as a major character is a candidate i'm most interested in 2020 yeah me too well uh someone who told his story very very well in the campaign um andrew is uh is going to be up next. So we will be right back. On the pod today, we're welcoming back Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum. Mr. Mayor, how are you? What's up, guys? I'm doing pretty good. just in a little fighting shape down here in Florida as we, you know, keep the fight up to count every vote, man. Yeah, you guys making it interesting again. Well, obviously, you know,

your race is in the middle of a recount, but what kind of reflecting have you done on the results as they stand now? Obviously, this is a much closer race than almost all of the public polls showed at the very least. Yeah. Well, first of all, I tried to keep telling people as we moved around the state during the general election not to sweat the public polls. I mean, we have been deceived by them before. In fact, if people were to believe the public polls, I was seven points behind my frontrunner opponent in the primary election, and we ended up three points ahead. So I know well that, you know, those polls may tell us something, but they don't tell us everything, which is why, you know, in my opinion, it was just so important that people got out there and voted. And you all have probably assessed this, but a typical midterm election in my state produces about six million voters. In the presidential, we approached nine million votes. We had 8.2 million people vote in the general election in a midterm in the state of Florida. We blew the roof off of the number of people who went out and voted. of the number of people who went out and voted. Your question was sort of where I am right now at this stage. And it, quite frankly, is really just fixed on, you know, how we make sure that

we don't send a sign to those people who went out there, who stood in line, who completed those ballots and mailed them in and affixed their signature, or through no fault of their own had ballots held up at a post office box because the bomber who was sending mail bombs to Democrats around the country sent them through that same post office. So I just want to make sure that those folks don't lose hope that these elections will result in their votes not being counted. don't lose hope that these elections will result in their votes not being counted. I am curious, sort of your reaction when you either see Donald Trump or Marco Rubio or other Republicans tweeting, claiming fraud, that Democrat lawyers are trying to steal the election. What's your reaction to that? Well, I mean, the truth is, it's just not evidenced. Right. And as I said once during the debate that a hit dog hollers that the kind of protesting that these folks have been doing with no evidence. stepped out of the governor's mansion, you know, dark all around him and said some big liberal conspiracy was at work to undermine, you know, this these elections here. Never mind that the supervisor of elections that he was taking aim at was actually appointed to that office originally by Jeb Bush, a Republican here in Florida.

You know, the same with the president. You know, Look, go back to election night and just count those votes and forget the rest. Well, listen, the reason why we have a curing process, the reason we have the process that exists, albeit imperfect, and I'm assessing some of those imperfections right now, is to make sure that we provide every opportunity, at least that's the goal we hope for, for every vote that was legally cast to be legally counted. And the fact that these folks want to hold up that process to include military ballots, overseas ballots, challenge ballots, and then those ballots that we call over and under know, to just get rid of all of that in an election where in my race, we're 0.4 points apart, percent apart, where in the race for the U.S. Senate, it's 0.25 percent apart. This is a definitely close election in the Commissioner of Agriculture's

race, the Senate race, and obviously here in my race for governor. And as we've said from day one, I didn't say count every vote that exists in a Democratic county. I said count every vote, period. And that includes votes that may not go my way because that's what elections are for, to ensure that the will of the people based off of their expression through the vote is counted. So when you and I talked before election day, we talked about the kind of race you ran in Florida, how you were trying to expand the electorate in your state, get people to participate who might not have been engaged in politics before.

A lot of other candidates might have tried to run your race differently, play it safe, run to the middle. What do you want people to have learned from how you ran your race? Well, I safe, run to the middle. What do you want people to have learned from how you ran your race? Well, I mean, what I want people to know is you can run as yourself. This whole debate, run left, run right, run center, we suspended with that. I mean, when I decided that I was going to run for governor of the state of Florida, I made the decision and informed everybody who was in my circle. It was a pretty small circle at that time. Nobody thought we

could really run and win this thing. But that small circle was, look, y'all, if we're going to do this, we're going to do it honestly. I'm going to run as who I am. I'm not about to get out here and become somebody else simply because we've been told that that is the recipe for winning in Florida. Every time we've attempted to modulate ourselves or try to run it as our most conservative versions of ourselves, not only have we lost these elections, but in some cases, we've lost them pretty substantially. If we just took the numbers as they exist today before we get to the, you know, 80,000 or so, you know, under overvotes and the other votes that are outstanding, we've gotten closer than any Democrat running for governor of the state of Florida in presidentials as well as in statewide races. We had more turnout than at any point we've ever seen in the history of our state in a midterm election. We, the people of the state of Florida, passed an amendment to re-enfranchise about 1.4 million

people who had previously had their right to vote taken away because of a felony conviction, right? And so, listen, y'all, and I'm sure both of you know, John and Dan, that nobody wants to win this thing and be the next governor of the state more than I do. But I will tell you, more than anything that I want right now, I want people to, one, have their vote counted, but to not be turned away if the candidate of their choice. And in this case, if it's me, if if I'm not able to get over the goal line, I don't want people to assess one, that the process doesn't work for them or two, that a progressive and somebody who's unapologetically so can compete in a state like Florida off the merit of who they are and what they represent and win. If I'm not the victor here, I don't believe it is going to be for the fact that I was too unapologetically progressive and therefore it turned off 30,000 voters and therefore they did not choose me. The truth is, is that as animated as Democrats were, as animated as the left was, the right was also animated. I think the president of the United States probably visited our race for governor and weighed in on my race for governor more than he did in probably any other gubernatorial race in the country. You all could probably assess the facts of that, but I certainly felt like I was running not only against Ron DeSantis, but against Donald Trump. And the truth is, is we're still hanging pretty close here. Mr. Mayor, stipulating that midterms are different than presidential elections and that

every candidate runs a different race, if the 2020 Democratic nominee could come back and talk to you for advice on how to win in 2020, what would you tell them? Win in Florida in 2020, what would you tell them? Well, I think it depends on if I win, right? Right. I mean, I think regardless, you obviously learned how this turns out. You learned a lot about, you ran a fascinating race and learned a lot about, showed people a lot about how to run in Florida. So I'd be curious what you would say to

the Democrat who's going to try to flip this state back in the Democratic column in 2020. Well, I honestly, I would let them know to run as their authentic selves. People aren't looking for perfect. They are looking for what's real. That all of these, you know, sort of consultant driven, um, and no, no shade to any consultant that's out there. Um, but if, if, if you're getting into a race for governor or rather in 2020 for president, and you need a whole team to define for you who you are, what you stand for, you probably want to reassess whether or not this is the thing you want to do. My pastor puts it in terms of the thermostat versus the thermometer. Obviously, alluding to the fact that a thermometer can easily tell the temperature, but a thermostat sets it. And whether you're setting that temperature and it's consistent with you that maybe you're a little bit more fizzly conservative than I was going out and running and proposing a corporate tax rate increase for the 3% of the wealthiest

companies that exist in my state, that same percentage who walked away with $6.3 billion thanks to the Trump tax giveaway. Maybe that isn't your cup of tea, but whatever your cup of tea is within that lane, be honest about it. Be direct about it. Be unapologetic about it. Make your case for it. I don't know that this will come down to whether or not you're middle of the road or centrist or left or right as a Democrat. I think it will come down to whether you're real, whether the people trust you, whether they believe you're going to get out there and fight unapologetically on their behalf. I think if you do that, people may forgive you whether or not

they line up with you 100% of the time on 100% of the issues, but they're not going to take, I certainly won't be accepting someone who gets into this thing convicted more about whether or not they got to run to suit some theory of what it means you got to be in order to run here in the state of Florida and win as a moderate or something like that. That doesn't move me. What's going to move me is somebody who is going to talk about the issues that matter, who if they believe that healthcare ought to be a right, they're going to get out there and they're going to talk about it and we'll get around to what it is that their policy prescript is going to be in order to make that happen. But I'm not going to be easily swayed

just as a consumer, just as a voter by somebody or consultants telling me that this is the type of graph that is going to win a state like mine. Because the truth is, is I didn't fit any of the type of graphs. I certainly didn't fit a type of graph of what it meant to be the Democratic nominee. And in this race that I ran for governor, the reason why I'm not prepared to say that I got a real set of regrets here. Are there things we can learn from and do differently? Absolutely. But I wouldn't change it because I ran as who I am. And I let voters see me and assess me for who I was. And I went to red areas and blue areas and purple areas of my state, not make an apology for my

position, but for letting people know why I believed what it was that I believed and trying to do my very best to recruit them to agree with me at every turn. And if they didn't, at least respect me for having a theory of change and a belief system on how I make my state, the state of Florida, a better one for all of us. Mr. Mayor, Dan and I were just talking about also how you run against someone like Donald Trump, who is able to control the media environment, control the media ecosystem. candidate, sort of the incentive is to respond to him immediately. So you get in the news cycle too. And then you're in this sort of tit for tat with Donald Trump on his terms. And since you ran against the nation's mini Trump in Ron DeSantis, you came really close to what, you know, a race against Trump would be like in 2020. What did you learn about how to deal with a candidate like Trump and how to sort of avoid getting pulled into that person's vortex?

Well, I'll tell you, I mean, I tried not to allow for the attacks to be thrown and not to be responded to, but I never just left it there. It was always my intention to, yes, push back and punch back, but also give it lift again. And my debates, my opponent threw a lot of mess out there. I tried to deal with it in the first 15 seconds, first 20 seconds of it, and then move the rest of it back to what it was that I wanted to talk about. So the reason why my opponent didn't want to talk about healthcare and his plan there is because I knew his record. I knew that he had voted to allow for people with preexisting conditions to be discriminated against when it came to coverage. He didn't want to talk about that. And so he wanted to talk about Hamilton or

he wanted to call me a socialist or say that I was cop hating or whatever it was, I knew that I couldn't allow for the insult to sit unanswered because there's a whole group of people within the listening and the viewing audience who didn't know one way or another what my position was on that. So I didn't want them to walk away thinking Andrew Gillum hates cops. So I had to hit that, but then I had to move it back to a higher plane. And I think that we've got to, honestly, it's probably more of an art than it is a science. And I certainly cannot fashion myself an expert in this way because I'm just, I'm a data point as well now on the gradation of this thing. What I would say is what I felt confident about and what I felt confident in, and there'll be plenty enough people out there to analyze whether or not it was the right thing or the wrong thing. As I felt comfortable saying, I'm prepared to punch you back if you punch me, but I'm also prepared to then kick it back to a higher level so that folks were able to hear, you know what? This thing is not about what he's talking about. It's about the fact that these folks are voting at every turn or working at every turn to disenfranchise you, to silence you, to take away your health care, to pander to the 1% in the major corporate interests and aren't doing a darn thing to help improve your lived condition, your family, your children's outcome, whether or not you're able to work one job instead of two and three jobs in order to make ends meet. And I think at the end of the day, people do want to know what you're going to do for them. And so the back and forth with Trump or the Trump lights only gets you so far. I think the

rest of the way has to be, and us talking about what we're going to do for people, but we cannot draw the conclusion that we're going to be able to let them continuously throw punches and blows at us and that we take this, you know, quote unquote, higher road without letting people know that we've got a fight in us too that says we're not wrong about this and we're not going to accept your pejoratives and your insults without answering that and then also getting back on message and back to point around what it is that we're going to do to help you and your home, your family on your job and in your communities. That's what I think the mix has to be. And as I said, I don't think it's a science. I think it's probably more of an art. I think that's very good advice. Mr. Mayor,

thank you so much for joining us. We really, we're pulling for you in the recount. If there's anything we can do, if there's anything our listeners can do, please let us know. Listen, y'all, keep doing what you're doing. I'm such a fan, and I'm just thankful that voices like you all are out there to make sure that we don't all fall away of a few of the talking heads without really assessing what's happening in real time on the ground with real people. I think that's how we're going to have to transform this country by staying in touch with those folks. And you all do an excellent job of bringing those voices to the table. Well, thank you. And we're big fans of you, too.

And we've all been inspired by your race. So take care and please come back again soon. Indeed. Take care, guys. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you to Andrew Gillum for joining us today. And we'll talk to you on Monday

and then we'll have our mailbag for Thursday so get your questions ready over the weekend