Pod Save America - “Doompolling!”

Episode Date: October 20, 2022

The Great Poll Freakout of 2022 has begun, as Democrats give their closing message to voters. Congressman Tim Ryan stops by to talk about his Ohio Senate race. And Jon and Dan look back at the recent debates in a game that demands they say something nice! For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, the great poll freakout of 2022 has begun. Democrats debate their closing message. Congressman Tim Ryan stops by to talk about his Ohio Senate race. And later, we look back at some debate highlights of the last few weeks in a new game where Dan and I will be challenged to create some of our own. Exciting. I had honestly forgotten we were doing that. Yeah, me too. Yeah, me too.

But first, in case you missed it, Rachel Maddow recently joined me on Offline to talk about her fantastic new podcast called Ultra, which tells the story of an all but forgotten right-wing plot to overthrow American democracy in 1940. Dan, have you listened to this podcast yet? It's in my queue, John. It's in my queue.

I was talking about Ultra, not Offline. I mean, I assume you listen to Offline the second it comes out every Sunday. I oftentimes do. I have to admit, I've been very busy. I have neither listened to the Rachel Maddow episode of Offline or Ultra, but they are both on my list. Good. Ultra is fantastic.

You would love it. I thought about you. The NBA season has started. Fantasy basketball has started. My podcasts are very busy, but I'm getting there. I thought especially about you and Tommy who love historical fascism, kind of. Usually it's books.

I think what you mean is we love learning. We love learning. We love information delivered in something other than 280 characters. That is true. Also, don't miss the newest episode of Hysteria. Aaron and Alyssa were here. They were in Los Angeles,

joined by mayoral candidate Karen Bass, along with the panelists you know and love. They broke down all the latest news and politics live from SiriusXM in Hollywood. You can listen to new episodes of Hysteria every Thursday wherever you get your podcasts. It was great to see Alyssa. She came to town.

It was fun. It seemed exciting. It was very cool. All right, let's get to the news. We are a little less than three weeks out from Election Day, which means it's time for all of us to freak out about polls. And boy, did we get a doozy from the New York Times that changed the narrative about the midterms in a way that only a Nate could do.

Republicans now lead among likely voters on the generic ballot by 49 to 45, erasing the Democrats one point lead from the Time September poll by making big gains with independents and opening up a huge lead among people who said the economy or inflation is their top issue, which was most people in the poll. The economy and inflation were the top issues for Republicans, independents, and Democrats. Republicans now have, as of today, a slight lead of just 0.1% in the 538 polling average, down from a Democratic lead of 1.5% about a month ago. Dan, what do you think? Should people cancel their New York Times subscriptions? Should we unskew the poll? What's going on here? What should we do?

Both? No. I think, is this poll right? Is any poll right? It really is an existential question. Only the election will tell us. Let's put aside the margin here for a mean, we, not Democratic ad makers, like the people trying to organize this election. But what I think is interesting about this poll is I do think the stuff underneath the margin tells a story about how the political playing field has shifted since this summer when Democrats had a pretty strong advantage in the Senate races and were doing much better in the House races than I think people suspected. So in this poll, the number of voters who list the economy slash inflation as their top issue has gone up eight points since the previous poll. Republicans are winning those voters by like 30 points. Over the last month or so, the economy has become a bigger issue in this race than it had been over the summer. And that is not the product of

brilliant ads or Fox News. It is reality. Gas prices went down for like 100 days. Then they started going up again. They have since started to come down recently, but they did spike in September. Inflation remained stubbornly high. I think there was a thought that it might be starting to come down. It did not last month. And this is the reality. And it's not just New York Times poll. In the Navigator poll, you had an increase by 27 points of voters who said that they were now paying more for gas than they were before since the last poll a few weeks ago, and a 14-point drop in the number of voters who said the economy was getting better.

So the economy has become more central. That is not good for Democrats, which leads us to a conversation we'll probably have later in the pod about what to do about it. But the playing field has shifted. It does not mean we're doomed. It does not mean it's over. But we are operating in a slightly worse political environment than we were a month and a half ago. Yeah. And we're in a particularly shitty economic spot because the Fed has begun to hike interest rates to try to tamp down inflation. That has not tamped down inflation yet, but now we have higher interest rates for people looking to borrow money and take a mortgage out. Yeah. I mean, it's really, it's fucking beautiful. You're supposed to either have inflation or,

you're supposed to either have inflation fears or recession fears. And right now, we have- You got both. We're living through inflation and the recession fears loom. So that's what we got right now. There was also, by the way, a Monmouth poll out just this morning, Thursday morning,

that shows Republicans up six in the generic ballot, 50 to 44. Again, if you want to put the margin aside, the overall trend is what's important here. And the trend is, as we could tell from the 538 polling average, moving towards the Republicans as we have a couple weeks. There was another, just in case you're not depressed enough, there was another depressing follow-up story about this Times poll the next day with the headline, voters see democracy in peril, but saving it isn't a priority. The piece says that 71% of all voters believe democracy is at

risk. So it's like, oh, that's great, right? But only 7% identified that as the most important problem facing the country. The poll also says that about 39% of registered voters are open to supporting candidates who reject the 2020 election results. That includes 37% of independent voters and even 12% of Democratic voters. What the hell do you think is going on there? I didn't find that story depressing. You found that inspiring? No, I thought it fucking clarifying. I think it's really important and it's a reminder that we make politics way more complicated than we have to.

So there are a couple of points to take away from this thing. One is it's just yet another reminder, a point President Obama made to us last weekend, that people's personal financial situation trumps everything else. And before everyone yells greedy about these people, that is bullshit. For rich people who are freaking out about having to pay slightly higher taxes, yes, that's greed. For the average person just trying to make it by to put food on the table, put some money away so their kids can go to college, have a vacation, any of those things, that's life. And that's always going to trump esoteric arguments about political systems in democracy. It just always will and probably always should. Now, we can quibble correctly that many of these voters, as we talked about in the Times poll,

are picking the wrong party to address that situation. But instead of yelling at them and calling them stupid and greedy for that, let's figure out why they feel that way and then try to fix it. Yeah. And many of these same voters, and I talked to them, I don't know how many times, people are probably sick of hearing me talking about the wilderness focus groups, but just about every single voter I spoke to was outraged about the Dobbs decision and is worried that Republicans are going to move to ban abortion nationwide and even more states than they already have. But what they talk about constantly and what they like stay awake thinking about is that they cannot afford to live on their own. Like if you heard some of the people, especially in Las Vegas, who were talking to me, the working class Latinos I talked to in Vegas, talking about like being evicted out of their house and then having to like pay for motel rooms for three months at a couple hundred. This is not just like the Ohio family that complained about the extra gallon of,

the extra couple of dollars they were paying for a gallon of milk and then everyone shit on them on fucking Twitter. Like, these are people who are really struggling. And you're right, they are wrong. They are wrong that Republicans would give them a better life than Democrats would under Republican rule versus Democrat rule.

They are 100% wrong about that. But it is on us to persuade them of that. And if we don't think it's on us, then we can all fucking just quit now and sit home. That's fine too if we want to. But if we want to save democracy and we want to make sure there aren't abortion bans and we want to make sure that people are making more and can afford housing, then we have to persuade people. We have to do it. We cannot take a shortcut. Yeah. A couple more points on this poll. It's also an argument that we should stop polling

about democracy. It's a word that is a Rorschach test for people. For partisans on the left, the threats to democracy correctly represent growing authoritarianism, voter suppression, everything Trump stands for. On the right, Threats Democracy incorrectly are about stolen elections and voter fraud. And for a lot of people in the middle, it is correctly, to an extent, about corruption in government. And so we're asking a question that the answer tells us nothing if it is brought. We don't really control what pollsters ask, but we do control how we talk about it. And this is yet another reminder that all of us, and I put myself, I don't even want to do a find through my message box archives to the word democracy. But we are talking about something using a word to

describe a situation, a system, and a problem that does not mean a lot to a lot of people. And we have to get away from talking about democracy as an end in and of itself and talk more about how the specific threats to democracy threaten the things that matter in people's lives. That includes abortion. That includes Social Security, Medicare, that includes contraception, et cetera. And we are stuck in this like overly online resistance Twitter podcast lingua franca that doesn't matter to voters. And it's a problem. And we should take that, like this poll should tell us that. And I think what's most frustrating about it is that you and I have known that people feel this way about government for as long as we've been in politics. And our brains are

broken. I know. And just to drill down on the numbers that you mentioned, especially with the largest group of folks in the middle. So 71%, as we mentioned, said that democracy is under threat in that poll. So 71% of people, but only 17% of those voters talked about that threat in terms of Republicans, Trump, political violence, election denial, authoritarianism, all the stuff we talk about all the time. And as you said, most summarize the threat to democracy as government corruption, government not working on behalf of ordinary people, too much greed, power and money in politics. Sixty eight percent of all voters, 68 percent said the government mainly works to benefit powerful elites rather than ordinary people. That is the message for

Democrats. That is the fight that we have to wage, a government that works on behalf of ordinary people, a government that actually delivers in ways to improve people's lives, that protects their freedoms, that makes sure that wealthy, powerful elites don't get to run the government. And that they actually have to pay their taxes and they actually have to contribute to society and they don't get that case republicans are going to keep making that case about elites but their elites are going to be like people in the media and people in academia and liberals and all this other bullshit like that's what they do we have to have our elites as villains and it has to be the fucking super fucking rich people that are friends with republicans that are gouging consumers and trying to like run congress it that that finding is so important because it it helps explain why in 2008 brock obama beat every member of the democratic establishment to win the nomination and why in 2016 donald trump beat every member of the republic establishment to win

the nomination and it also explains why every two years we throw out our Congress. Yeah. I mean, everyone thinks that Barack Obama won in 2008 because of all the rhetoric about unity. And I think that was important to some people, some voters, but like we ran relentlessly against Washington corruption, special interests, money in politics, constantly, constantly. And he was an outsider therefore he had credibility about being able to do something about it just like trump different approach different deal with it a bit different yeah but yes um all right let's focus on what democrats and the rest of us can actually control between now and election day uh and let's start with the

most powerful democrat in the country president biden this week he did two things worth noting First, he gave a speech where he promised that if Democrats win the House and add two more Democratic senators, the first bill he'll sign in January is legislation to protect abortion access nationwide. Then he announced the release of 15 million barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Oil Reserve in an attempt to lower gas prices, which, as you mentioned, are now declining for the second week after rising for about a month. Let's start with Biden's speech on abortion. He said a version of this before, though the promise that it will be his very first bill that he signs in January is new. Why do you think he did this now? And what do you think

about that strategy? It's pretty clear in looking at the polls that we've just been talking about that over the summer, abortion was a huge driving force in the political conversation and as a motivating factor in people's votes. That has dropped just as time has gone on since the Dobbs decision. And this summer, in the wake of that decision, there's this wave of Republican efforts to, particularly because it happened in the middle Republican primary season, to push these even more extreme policies. They have quickly realized that it's better to not talk about it in advance, just get in power and then take away everyone's freedom. Yeah.

And so it has dropped this issue. So we always, whenever we nerd out, we talk about issue salience and what is on people's minds. And Biden is trying to re-inject abortion back into the conversation. So in that sense, it is a good strategy. It is important. Because the economy has risen here, which is not an argument to stop talking about abortion. Because you don't just pick one issue. You talk about multiple issues, but getting abortion back in the conversations is important. And this was a pretty clever way to do it by – there's like a handful of news hooks that you have when you work in communications. And one of them is the first bill I will send.

And they pulled that one out and it worked. I will send. And they pulled that one out and it worked. Yeah. I mean, look, I think there's going to be a whole group of voters who are cross pressured in that they are very much against the Republican position on abortion, but they are very pissed off with inflation and think that by voting for Republicans that they can change that. And I think what Republicans are trying to tell those voters is actually don't really worry about our position on abortion. It's not as extreme as you think. And also vote for us because you're pissed about inflation. And I think what Democrats clearly need to say is voting for Republicans is not going to fix inflation. It's going to guarantee that there are abortion bans and inflation will continue to rise.

And if you're afraid about abortion bans, vote for Democrats because they will actually do more to fight inflation and protect abortion access. Like that's sort of the message there. On the strategic petroleum reserve release, do you think that can make a difference? And is there anything else Biden can do on either gas prices or inflation between now and Election Day? It can make a difference. Is it going to make a gigantic difference? No. It can make a difference.

Is it going to make a gigantic difference? No. Does it continue to help counteract the various market pressures that come from the war in Ukraine and the various shenanigans the Saudis are pulling? Yes. It is helpful. It's a market signal. If it keeps it flat to where it is now or prevents the gas prices to start ticking back up, that is a good thing to do. The messaging is, as it always is with complicated government decisions, a little complex because at the same time, you're releasing the SPRO, but you're also, which is the terrible

government term for Strategic Petroleum Reserve. I don't even know what the O is, but whatever. You're releasing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, And you're also touting the fact that gas prices have been going down for two weeks. Those are a little bit at odds. But from a substantive perspective, this will help a little bit, at least. It certainly can't hurt. All right. So that's Biden. Say you're running a Democratic campaign right now. You've already canceled your New York Times subscription because of the poll and probably something that Maggie Haberman wrote. But now now you have to figure out how to help your candidate actually win. You know, the economy, inflation are the most important issues for voters right now. Democracy and abortion have receded as issues. Maybe abortion has. I don't know if democracy was ever a forefront for people, at least not in the way that we talk about it. What do you talk about and run ads about and hopefully make news about between now and

election day? Is it more abortion, more economy, more Republican extremism, more legislative accomplishments? There was a new story this week that Democrats aren't really running on the Inflation Reduction Act. What do you think about all this? Well, I think, as per usual, this conversation about what the Democratic closing argument should be has devolved into a series of straw men and false choices, where it's, are we going to stop, never utter the word abortion again, and focus on the economy. Or if we just say abortion a thousand times, we will win. No one thinks that that's not how campaigns work. You have multiple issues you talk about in a campaign, on the stump, in ads, in social media.

And in the best campaigns, all of those issues buttress the larger narrative. In the best campaigns, all of those issues buttress the larger narrative. Democrats have spent the last nine months or so focusing on Republican extremism. That has worked for us because even if the polls are closer now, they are still better than anyone thought they would be a year ago. Just given the state of the economy, the historical headwinds that presidents face in their first midterm, all of the above. So you don't want to undo all of that work by just walking away from your extremism message. But as we develop our closing argument, I think we have to layer in a strong populist attack on Republican economic policies that ties it to the extremist narrative. And we're not going to tout our accomplishments as good as they are, because in a time in which inflation is high, we will seem out of touch with voters if we are talking about a bill we pass that

hasn't gone into effect or stimulus checks that we sent over a year ago. That is not enough. What we have to recognize is people's votes on the economy are not about policies. If they were, Democrats would always win. Because if you give people a menu of policy positions, they pick almost every single Democratic one over a Republican one. That is the paradox of American politics. Voters like democratic policies on the economy, but they trust Republicans more. And so what we have, the way you address this, you have to erode trust in Republicans as people who will fight for you in this time of inflation. And that is to go, the best way to do that, and there's a whole bunch of polling from

folks like Stan Greenberg and Data for Progress that show this, which is connect Republicans to greedy corporations who are profiting off inflation. which is connect Republicans to greedy corporations who are profiting off inflation. That is the Republicans' great, that is their Achilles heel on the economy, is that voters associate them with people who fight for corporations and the wealthy. They also, in this environment, think wealthy, greedy corporations are very much to blame for inflation. Marry those two, layer in some additional attacks on their proposals to

cut Social Security and Medicare to pay for more tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, and you have the opportunity to just, you just have to knock a few points off that Republican advantage on the economy, and we can win these elections. I was talking to Faj Shakir about this for Wilderness, Bernie Sanders, former campaign manager. And he was making the point that it's tough to tout the Inflation Reduction Act when a lot of the provisions that help people with costs don't go into effect for a couple of years. But he said, I do think that Democrats can gain credibility for the fight that they picked there. And I think if you frame it as like

Democrats took on drug companies to get people cheaper prescriptions, and if you give us a bigger majority, we will go after them again. We're picking a fight with big corporations that are using inflation as an excuse to gouge consumers. You give us a bigger majority, we'll make them pay. And then do all the things that you just said, which is then erode Republican credibility on their ability to sort of take on these special interests that are gouging consumers and use sort of the fights that we've picked as Democrats over the last couple of years to give ourselves a little credibility that, hey, we're in there taking on these fights and we'll do it again. I think that's right. But I think there's just one more like turn there, which is Republicans voted against all those things. Yeah, that's right.

That's right. Like who sided with like there was a big fight over the cost of prescription drugs. Who was on which side, right? Democrats on the side of seniors, Republicans side of big pharma. And you can go down the line on a bunch of different issues like that. I think that's very helpful. And we live, operate in a era of negative partisanship. And so we are going to have more success framing the other side than our side.

But you're right. You and Faz are correct. You do have to give yourselves a little credibility for those things by the things we've done and the fights we've picked. There have also been a lot of viral debate moments over the last week or so. How much do you think these debates matter that are happening all over the place this month? And how do campaigns make them matter? Well, I haven't looked at a lot of state constitutions. But it is true that the candidate with the most RTs wins, right? Like that's how it works?

Yeah, no, that is the way that we run elections here. Okay, perfect. Well, then we are golden. I mean, we're just in this very interesting world of national political hobbyism where more, I would bet more people outside of the state of Texas watch the Beto O'Rourke, Greg Abbott debates than people in Texas. I think that's certainly true about the Tim Ryan debate. It will probably be true about the Oz Fetterman debate. Having said that, these are incredibly close races.

Everything matters. It is, you don't get that many opportunities to be in front of a group of people to draw significant news coverage that might actually break through in a campaign. And so a debate is a moment. And which is, I think this is why we have these viral moments. And you know this, because you were always so involved in President Obama's debate prep, is particularly in a Senate race or a governor's race, very few people watch the debate live. Presidential race, a lot of millions of people do watch it, but the moments carry on. You're really focused more on delivering a handful of moments that will extend beyond the debate, will get shared on social, get press coverage, than some person who watches it like a boxing

match, the whole thing, scorecard, one point for Oz, one point for Federer. That's not how it works. It's what are people going to see from it, and it's going to be the things that travel afterwards. And so that's why we are inundated with moments. We have debate strategies focused around moments because of low viewership, and we have an array of national partisans fascinated by these races who watch them online, then sharing those moments. partisans fascinated by these races who watch them online than sharing those moments. Yeah, the people who are watching the entire debate tend to be people who have already made up their mind and are, as you said, political hobbyists like ourselves. And it's the moments that the casual observer of news and politics who still may vote, that's what they're seeing.

All right. So if you don't love polls or you don't believe in the polls, we actually now are starting to have some early vote numbers. So we can start reading those tea leaves. After only five days of early voting in Georgia, turnout has already broken records. It's 85% higher than it was at this time in 2018. And voters of color have also increased their vote share since the last midterms, according to Target Smart and their modeling. What do you think about that? Good sign or way too early to be a good sign? It's not a bad sign. I mean, that's actually important. Does this mean that Stacey Abrams and Raphael Warnock are going to win? No, it does not mean that. But we want

higher turnout and we want higher turnout among voters of color in Georgia in particular. And so if we are reaching those sorts of levels, that'd be great. There is a long way to go here. We have to remember that early voters overwhelmingly Democratic now. And so I think we would be deeply concerned if it was underperforming. So this is more like the dog that didn't bark yet. So this is more like the dog that didn't bark yet. Yeah. And I'm also I was I was saying this because Elijah was also hopeful about this. And I said you were just like crush those hopes. Well, no, I was saying like before 2016, I feel like it was like if there's high turnout, you think, OK, Democrats are doing well now because Republicans turn out so much and they've shattered turnout records on their side since 2016, sort of hard to tell where the vote is coming from.

I do think that if Target Smart's modeling is right and it's a higher share of voters, if voters of color have also increased their share, that's obviously a good sign. But just higher turnout in general, if you don't know where or who it's coming from, it's sort of hard to guess who that helps. It's going to be very different on a state-by-state basis. Georgia is actually a state where I think higher turnout will benefit Democrats. Wisconsin, not so much. Arizona, real open question. Texas, real open question.

And what's interesting, you can take this for what it's worth, but there's an Echelon Insights, which is a Republican data firm. They do a turnout demographic modeling. And one of their conclusions on 2020 was that higher turnout is what made the race closer for Republicans than anyone thought. And it was particularly because it was higher turnout among Republican-leaning Latinos in particular. So these are not people who switched from Clinton to Trump. They are Hispanic voters who had not previously turned out, who turned out in this election. And so it's a little – there is no far and fast rule here.

And if you don't want to believe Echelon Insights on that point, Equis Research found the exact same thing from carlos odio who's been on this podcast many times um okay so still i think georgia good news like let's try to end like that is a positive sign it should be encouragement to get involved so let's let's try to let's end this section at least on that point yeah and not just like good news that you can sit with like you said encouragement to get involved georgia is one of the many states that has early vote happening right now, which means that you have the power to help a voter cast their ballot today. One great way of doing it, as we've been saying, VoteSaveAmerica.com slash volunteer. We will give you plenty of things to do if you sign up. Phone banks, text banks, all kinds of stuff. And you can help voters in early voting states

make their plans to vote right now. Another thing you can do is donate to our Every Last Vote Fund to help fund rides to the polls. So in 2020, the Collective Education Fund was able to provide over 100,000 free round-trip lift rides to get voters to the polls in states like Georgia that really made a difference. So you can go to votesaveamerica.com slash every last vote where your donation today can directly help a voter get to the polls. And as you all know, every vote is going to matter in this election in the next couple of weeks. If you make calls, if you donate, if you help voters make plans, if you can go to votesaveamerica.com, you can see what's's on your ballot you can help friends see what's on their ballot if they're confused if they're scared like there's so much we can do and i think as we learned in 2020 as we learned in 2020 like every these states are incredibly

close these races are going to be close whether we win them or we lose them it'll be close and that means that everything we do between now and the next couple of weeks really, really matters. So votesaveamerica.com, get out there. I think the most important thing to take away from this polling conversation is that we could win every one of these key races or we could lose every one of them. And what we do over the next three weeks will determine that. That's right. That's right. All right. When we come back, we will talk to one of the candidates in a very tight race, Tim Ryan. We'll talk to him about the Ohio Senate race right after this. Joining us now is the Democrat fighting to become Ohio's next senator, Tim Ryan. Welcome to the pod. Hey, thanks for having me.

My wife is from Cincinnati. She and my in-laws are very excited that you're on the pod today because they have been telling me that you have a really great chance to win long before it was cool to do so. So this is good. Very good. I'm no Joe Burrow, but I guess settle for me, right? Okay, that'll work. So I've heard a lot of takes about why a state that voted for Barack Obama

twice went on to vote for Donald Trump twice by a fairly significant margin. What's yours? Economics. I think people in Ohio consistently vote their pocketbook and they vote for the candidate who they think is best going to increase their economic security, which is why Sherrod Brown's been able to win here, you know, three times. And that's why we're going to win, too, because we have such a economic focused campaign for working class people, not just college educated people. And that's that's really important here. That's why Trump won. He connected with those voters. That's why Barack Obama won against McCain and then against Mitt Romney. And you guys know better than than anybody, the ads you were running. Those are very economic centric ads. And that's why I won. And that's again, that's why we're going to do it, too.

So you gave an interview with The Washington Post this week where you criticized national Democrats for not doing more to support your campaign. You said there's frustration among rank and file Democrats that the leadership doesn't quite understand where we want this party to be. Where do you think the party should be? Laser like focused on working class people who don't have a college degree. degree. I mean, we saw it again today in the paper where, you know, there's a national Democratic consultant saying, you know, North Carolina is a better state because there's more college-educated people. I just think that's what absolutely pisses me off about the Democratic Party nationally, is that there's somehow a higher priority for these college-educated voters and a lack of resolve to actually go to the working class communities like we've done around Ohio and recognize that the Republicans haven't done shit for them. Like absolutely abandoned them.

They show up at the local red party, you know, county party dinner, uh, and speak at the, you know, that, that banquet that they have, but they don't do anything for them. They don't do broadband. They don't do infrastructure. And so we got to show up there and make the case. And I just think giving up on a place like Ohio is not where we want to be because we can win here and I think build a robust party here too. Let me just drill down on that because I've been banging this drum for a while myself. Do you think it's, is it economic messaging? Are there policies that you think the party should be pursuing that we haven't, that you'll want to if you get into the Senate? Is it about breaking through the media environment because the media tends to not cover economic issues and debates as much as they do cultural debates? not cover economic issues and debates as much as they do cultural debates? Yeah, all of the above. Yeah, the clickbait on economic issues aren't always,

you know, as good as some kind of conflict around a culture war issue. And that's part of the problem, too. But look, we're leaders. You're running for the United States Senate. You're running for a statewide office or a federal position. You're a leader. You need to show some leadership. And that's what we're trying to do here. And I do think it's a huge messaging issue. I still laugh at the old Jimmy Carter aide who said that Democrats show up at a gunfight with a 10-point policy plan. I just think that accurately describes sometimes how we talk about things and really resonate and try to connect with working class people. And we're trying to, trying to show the way here a little bit. And, and, you know, again, just to read in the paper this morning that, you know,

we're going all in on North Carolina because they got more college educated folks is just it just frosts me, man. And then it's part of the problem that we got to overcome if we're going to be a really strong, sustainable national party. Let's talk about your your MAGA opponent from Silicon Valley, J.D. Vance. He said he said the other day that the reason the polls are so close is because voters are wrongly identifying you as a moderate diet version of Vance. What's your reaction to that? He's so frustrated.

He wants me to be a socialist. He wants me to do. I tell him we don't do socialism in Youngstown, Ohio. That's just not how we roll. down Ohio. That's just not how we roll. And so he's very frustrated by the fact that I did agree with Trump too when he renegotiated NAFTA. I did agree with Trump when he had a firmer stance on China. I didn't agree with necessarily how he implemented all of it, but definitely agreed that we need to have a firmer stance on that. I supported General Mattis to become Secretary Mattis because he's

exactly the kind of guy we need to be Secretary of Defense. So I have these issues and he's just, he's so frustrated by it. And, you know, so, but he has no agenda himself. Like he's got two donors. This is what's really resonating in Ohio. He has two donors. He's got Peter Thiel, who now wants to become a citizen of Malta. He gave him 15 million bucks. And Mitch McConnell, who gave him 40 million bucks to totally rescue his campaign. We have 350,000 donors. 95% of those contributions are under $100. And anybody who wants to go to timperoh.com to drop us a few bucks to keep the fires burning here would be very, very helpful. But that's the big contrast here. And so he's trying to pigeonhole me into somebody that I'm

not in Ohioans want an independent guy and just say last, last thing quickly, you know, I've taken on my own party, you know, in multiple times. And he got called an ass kisser by Donald Trump on the stage, and then gets back up on the stage afterwards. He walks up to the microphone and he says, aren't we having a great time here tonight? And I just don't know anybody I grew up with. And I don't know anybody I know that would like get insulted, have their dignity stripped from them and then get back up on stage to kiss his ass again right there afterwards. So that's what we're dealing with here. Except Ted Cruz and actually most of the Republican Party. I would. There's been a few of them. All right. So Vance also said the other day at a stop that

if he's elected, he'll threaten to shut down the government unless Biden finishes Trump's border wall. I know that immigration policy is one area you've been critical of the Biden administration on. What would you push for if you're in the Senate on immigration? Yeah. You know, again, J.D. has invested into dozens of companies that have foreign workers there. So this is just another example of how fraudulent the guy is. He also tries to have a tough stance on China and he's invested in the companies in China, again, across the board fraudulence. But I think, you know, comprehensive plan, like any pragmatic strategy would have

a strong border. There's 8 billion people in the world. A lot of them want to live in the United States. You've got to have a strategy to know who's coming in and out. So you do need a strong border. You do need more border patrol. I think we need to go all in on technology. I started last year the Border Technology Caucus to figure out how do we take the technology that we have in this country and utilize it to try to keep fentanyl out of here, to try to keep heroin out and all these things that are destructive to our society and how do we have a big-hearted approach when it comes to refugees certainly don't want to be separating kids from their babies and how do we have an orderly process to get people in if you're here undocumented you pay a fine pay some back taxes pass a background check and then come into

the united states and and help, you know, build this great country up like immigrants have always done. So I think that's like a policy that like probably 80% of the people would think is a pretty pragmatic idea. Yeah, President Obama talked about that policy quite a few times over the eight years he was in the White House. So you've you've also criticized Biden's decision to cancel student loan debt because Ohio has a lot of people who didn't go to college. I'm totally with you that those folks deserve relief too. But I also think like Ohioans are also more likely to have outstanding student loan debt than people almost anywhere in the country. Nearly 90% of relief dollars go to people earning less than $75,000 a year.

And almost half of all borrowers didn't finish college. So they are some of those folks in Ohio who don't have college degrees. Why do you think those folks don't deserve relief? I'm very sympathetic. We are still paying off my wife's college loans. And I see what's going on with 8%, 9%, 10%, 12%, and sometimes higher percent interest rates. It's usury. It's wrong. And I think there's a way to help those people too.

I think the best step now is to allow people to negotiate down the interest rate to 1% or 2%. Put a significant amount of money back in their pockets or they can start paying the principal down. But my big issue really is that we don't do anything to solve the problem. There's no provisions in here to say, well, we're going to be back in the same spot in a few more years and again going back to the whole idea of like going all in with the burdens of people who went to college versus the people who you know bought a truck or you know tools or you know whatever to to go into the construction business or the construction trades um they need help too.

And I think we've got to start having policies that are going to help people across the board. How do you bring the price of college down? How do you get to the source of this problem? Obviously, we'd have to look into it. But I think something along the lines of, look, if you want federal student loans and you want your students to be eligible for that, you can't increase costs past the rate of inflation. Put some mechanism in there that, of course, they're going to want all these people to take out loans to go to college, but you can't keep jacking up the price. Some mechanism like that, and I'm sure we could sit down with a lot of smart people who could help us think through that, but there's got to be some tie to this,

or we're going to continue, you know, even like when we increased Pell Grants. Well, we increased Pell Grants and colleges increased college tuition. It's like, that's not a good use of taxpayer money. All right. You're in the homestretch here. What's your closing message to the people of Ohio? Vote for the Ohioan. I'm way more Ohioan than J.D. Vance. You know, he's bought and paid for by Mitch McConnell and billionaires before he even walks into the Senate. And I'm not. I'm for the working class people. And the guy's super extreme. Like he raised money for the guys who stormed the Capitol on January 6th. He's running around with Ron DeSantis. That's a banned book. He's running around with Lindsey Graham who wants a national abortion ban. He says rape is inconvenient. Like, he's way out of the mainstream for Ohio. People here in Ohio are going to vote for the pragmatic, economic-focused Ohioan. And we're asking people to help out.

Go to TimProH.com and send us a couple of bucks. We're going to shock the world, man. We're going to win. And you heard it here first. All right. I like that. I like that attitude. Tim Ryan, thank you so much for joining the pod,

and good luck in this last couple weeks. Thanks for having me. All right. Before we go, we want to talk about some of those extra special debate moments we were talking about earlier from the last few weeks and we're going to do it with crooked media's comedy extraordinaire hallie keifer oh hello thank you for having me uh thanks for joining us this is very exciting thank you i am very nervous but i feel like it's gonna go well and if not i'll be dragged into an

office and berated i'm sure which is what usually happens to you. Exactly. A hundred percent. And I well deserve it. But yeah, the midterm elections and especially the final candidate debates have been filled with so much negativity. But we here at Crooked know how important it is to reach across the aisle, even if the aisle is made of lava and the hand being offered across it is a snake

that has tried to seize voting machines before. Luckily, debate moderators across the country never fail to remind us that no matter how far apart we are, we can still be little sweetie pies. Which is why they are ending debates by asking each candidate to say something nice about their opponent. Let's take a listen. Other than thanking them for being willing to serve in office, what is one nice thing you can say about your opponent? I've thought about this question. I think Tim Walz is an affable individual who has a wonderful smile. I think it's really cool that your daughter's on The Voice.

We should all be cheering for her. I like your suits. You look good in them. And I think that's awesome. And I hope that after the election we can come to terms and maybe you could take me suit shopping. Mr. Johnson. I mean, likewise, I appreciate the fact that Lieutenant Governor Barnes had loving parents, a school teacher, father at work, third shift. So he had a good upbringing.

I guess what puzzles me about that is with that upbringing, why is he turned against America? I mean, why does he find America awful? Somehow, we did not... We said something admirable. Powerful stuff. Whose daughter's on The Voice? That would be...

So that is Dan McKee's daughter. Was just on in September. Haven't seen it. Good luck to her. Let us know how she did. Very exciting. Who's the person with the good suits? Oh. Was just on in September. I haven't seen it. Good luck to her. Yeah. Let us know how she did. Very exciting. Who's the person with the good suits? That would be, I don't know. Tim Walls has the wonderful smile.

Dan McKee's daughter is on The Voice. That would be J.B. Pritzker from Illinois. He can afford them. So that was Darren Bailey telling Pritzker that he had good suits. Huh. I've seen a lot of J.B. Pritzker, and that's never been my first take, but what do I know? I think he was just probably looking around, and he was like,

that lamp is good or something. He's just like, what do you got on? A suit? It's that. And in the spirit of that, of those kind words, John and Dan, we're going to play a game. We're going to play a clip of a heinous Republican candidate. And I'm going to need you both to dig deep and say something nice about them.

Are you ready? Yes, let's do it. Okay, first up we have Arizona gubernatorial candidate Carrie Lake and her thoughts on her own election. Let's play the clip. Will you accept the results of your election in November? I'm going to win the election and I will accept that result. If you lose, will you accept that? I'm going to win the election and I will accept that result.

So again, that is Carrie Lake refusing to commit to accept the result of the election unless she wins. Gentlemen, won't you please each say something nice about Carrie Lake? I would be happy to. I'm going to quote the Washington Post here, which wrote a lengthy profile on her. Her sepia-toned filters that she uses when she does interviews

I think are just fantastic. I think it's a nice light. It really softens everything up. A soup for the face. I wish I could have some of those here at Crooked Media. We could, I think we could look into that. Okay, thank you. Just get them from the love it or leave it budget.

I mean, seriously, you just put some Vaseline on the camera. We got plenty of it in the back. So here's what I would say about former newscaster, Carrie Lake. She reminds me of one of my favorite characters from my favorite movies. Ron Burgundy from Anchorman. Wow. Wow. Yeah.

I guess the other thing we could have said is we really liked that she supported Barack Obama. Oh, nice. That is true. She did support Barack Obama. That's a good one. Yeah. Who knew she was one of the terrorists Barack Obama was palling around with? Oh, boy.

So quickly. Dan really pulled a Ron Johnson on this one. Speaking of, up next we have Ron Johnson pulling back the veil on the government's nefarious, covert, anti-Ron Johnson agenda. Let's roll the clip. The FBI set me up with a corrupt, with a corrupt briefing and then leaked that to smear me. I am not, I'm sorry. He is referring to corruption with the FBI, which I've been trying to uncover and expose. All right. So do we have time for, please, audience, please. So again, there's Ron Johnson claiming the FBI set him up.

And then just, you know, in case you didn't see the clip, the audience laughing uproariously at Ron Johnson on the debate stage. John and Dan, I'd love to hear something nice about Ron Johnson from both of you. Dan, you kick this one off.

Way to use your power as the host of the episode. I went first last time. Yeah, it's fair. I think it's a lot of people are intentionally funny in that, but not as many people are unintentionally funny. And Ron Johnson is unintentional comedy. I shouldn't have let you go first.

A laugh is a laugh. I was going to say that my nice thing about Ron Johnson is that I'm just grateful to him for all the content. It's really close to what Dan said. That's true. And I have nothing else nice about him. And that's fair. We'll take it. Next up, of course,

we have Marjorie Taylor Greene, her debate against Marcus Flowers, during which she said all this. Did Joe Biden win the election, Congresswoman Greene? Joe Biden is the president of the United States. Absolutely. But you pushed a big lie that said he Joe Biden win the election? Congresswoman Green. Joe Biden is the president of the United States. Absolutely. But you pushed a big lie that said he did not win the election. There was election fraud.

And you drove those people to the Capitol on January 6th with your lie. We're going to move on. Josh Roe, it's your turn to ask a question to Marjorie Taylor Greene. We have FOIA evidence of proof of election fraud that came out. So again, that's Marjorie Taylor Greene saying that her evidence of proof of election fraud that came out. So again, that's Margie Taylor Green saying that her husband has proof of election fraud. Let's hope she wins that in the divorce.

Well, gentlemen, I'd love to hear something nice about Margie Taylor Green from both of you and I think it's only fair, Fabbro, you have to go first this time. I appreciate her commitment to exercise. That's a good one. I was going to make a CrossFit comment.

Oh, dear. That's true. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Vivid imagination. Okay. Vivid imagination. Lake out of the mind. Yes.

And finally, this one is about Nevada GOP Senate candidate and a former state attorney general, Adam Laxalt, who is this moment has big Paul Gozer energy in the wake of this announcement. Let's play the clip. Now in his race to unseat incumbent Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto. Today, 14 of Adam Laxalt's relatives came out in support of his opponent. 14 of Adam Laxalt's relatives came out in support of his opponent. So now keep in mind, 14 members of his own family couldn't do what you're about to do. But Dan and John, I ask you, please say something nice about him. Someone has to.

Dan, I'll let you start. Oh, man, that is a tough one. Adam Laxalt. What is positive about Adam Laxalt? He walks for the beat of his own drummer. There we go. Yes, you went broad. You had to go broad with it.

I have two things. I thought one Dan was going to say. He's a Georgetown alum. That is not. I say this as a Georgetown alum. It's not really an entirely illustrious list of people. You, Bradley Cooper, Adam Laxalt, all there at the same time trifecta alan iverson was there alan iverson too right yes um the other thing is about adam laxalt which is clear from what you just said is he has a really smart family wow

oh see that is good raised well well gentlemen gentlemen you did a great job so thank you so much thank you this much for playing this. Thank you. This is so fun. I hope things go well in the midterms. Us too. You went around for the A block. Listen, I can't wait to hear it in the car.

VoteSaveAmerica.com. Hallie Kiefer, thanks for joining us and playing this game. Tim Ryan, good luck on the trail. Everyone, go to VoteSaveAmerica.com, sign up, and do some calls this weekend. We'll see you next week. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.

Our senior producer is Andy Gardner-Bernstein. Our producers are Haley Muse and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis sound engineered the show. Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz, Sandy Gerrard, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support.

And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montu. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash podsaveamerica.