Pod Save America - Have Republicans Already Blown the Midterms?

Episode Date: October 18, 2026

With two weeks until the midterms, Amy Walter, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Cook Political Report, sits down with Dan to break down what she calls the most brutal political environment Republicans have faced in twenty years. They discuss whether the numbers indicate a "blue wave" or a "red undertow," whether the polls can be trusted, and why massive Republican spending can't outrun Trump's cost-of-living crisis and his war in Iran. They also dig into the strategy—or lack thereof—behind Trump's rally blitz, whether gerrymandering has backfired on the GOP, and why Democrats may actually perform better in red states than in blue ones this November.Hate listening to ads? Become a Friends of the Pod subscriber for ad-free episodes of Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, Lovett or Leave It, Runaway Country, Offline with Jon Favreau, and more—plus exclusive content, including bonus episodes of Pod Save America. Subscribe now at crooked.com/friends, on Apple Podcasts, or through the Pod Save America YouTube channel.You can request a transcript by emailing [e-mail]. Include the podcast name, episode title, and air date. Please allow 48 hours for delivery.

Welcome to Pot Save America. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Today you're going to hear my conversation with Amy Walter, the publisher and editor-in-chief of the Cook Political Report. The midterms are now less than two weeks away, and I thought Amy would be the perfect person to set the scene as we head into the final stretch. We talked about the latest in the Senate races, the House map, whether Republicans redistricting gambit worked, and voters' attitudes towards Trump, the economy, and the war in Iran, and so much more. We get to that conversation in a moment. But before we do, Crooked Khan is fast approaching. The weekend after the midterms, the member 5th through 7th, will be in D.C. for a weekend full of live shows, conversations, and so much more. If you're anyone working in politics or interested in politics, this is a can't miss event. We're breaking down what just happened in the midterms and setting the stage for what's to come in 2028. Head over to crookedcon.com to get your tickets now. And while I have you, I want to make a pitch for the message box, my substack newsletter. It's the best way to get serious analysis of midterms based on the data and my way too

long experience working in politics. When the election happens, I'll help you understand what happened, why it happened, and what it means for 2028. I have a special pre-election discount for Pod Save America listeners. Go to Cricket.com slash yes we, Dan, to get 20% off for an entire year. Okay, here's my conversation with Amy Walter. Amy Walter, welcome back to Pot Save America. Hi, Dan.

I'm very happy to be here. A little more than two weeks to go before the election. Feels like we would never get here. These are the long, going to be the longest two weeks we've had in a very long time. How are you feeling? I'm tired. And like every, I feel like every voter in a swing state, who's saying, just let it end.

Let's just let it be over, right? As you very well know, the last two weeks of the campaign, and probably the last five days, are the absolute worst. Yeah. Because it's now everybody just hosting theories and conspiracies and conversations they had

with someone they went to high school with and what does this mean? and, you know, we're not going to get any polling, I think, that's going to make us change any of our theories of the case of this election between now and election day. We're really basically locked in. And we've got to wait for the results. Yeah.

I'm counting on some more polls, I'll be honestly. I feel like Nate kind of in your time, Santa owes us some more polls, yes. We're going to get more polling. I'm just saying I wouldn't expect that all of a sudden. you're going to open up polls that show. Oh, wow. This is really, oh, so-and-so's open to seven-point lead now. Yeah, that's right.

So you wrote back a few weeks ago on October 7 that this political environment is as brutal for Republicans as any you've seen at least 20 years. We're now a couple weeks or a week and a half after that. I assume that assessment still holds. Why is this political environment so brutal for Republicans? And Dan, you remember this election quite well. Oh, I do, yes. We're all coming back.

This feels very 2006 deja vu because you have a president with an approval rating under 40%, which is where George W. Bush was at this point in 2006, an unpopular war. And corruption being sort of the center of the conversation in Washington. Back then it was Jack Abramoff. Now it is all of the things. There were also some sex scandals that were going on in 2006. We have that carryover in 2026. but really a feeling among the American public about, you know, a deep, deep frustration with the direction of the country, even deeper frustration in 2026 with the direction of the economy, with inflation being a big factor.

But what you're also seeing that reminds me of 2006 is the real energy and enthusiasm difference, between Democrats and Republicans. For most of the Trump era, even when Democrats were more enthusiastic in 2018, Republicans didn't fall through the floor, right? I mean, it helped that the Kavanaugh hearings came out a couple weeks before the election. I think that helped to energize some of those less engaged Republican voters.

So that was something of a boost. But I think even going into that election, The expectation was that there were going to be some places where because of how badly Trump was doing with independence and how motivated Democrats were, those swing seats, those seats that Hillary Clinton won, those were going to be all but impossible for Republicans to hang on to. But that how deep into the Trump seats they could go was limited by the fact that Republicans showed up. This year, and I think this was the case in 2006, how deep Democrats go into Republican territory is really driven by the fact that independence are going to show up for Democrats. Democrats are going to show up for Democrats? But are Republicans going to sit home? Are they going to show up? And every indication we have right now is that they're not enthusiastic. They're frustrated with the president for a whole range of reasons, but mostly the cost of states. stuff and the war in Iran. And they, we've spent how much, how much money has been spent in the,

in the last three weeks in these races, right? More than $200 million. Yeah. More than $200 million. To try. Exactly. And then if you're in Alaska or Texas or Ohio or Iowa, your goal isn't to try to win persuadable independence. It's, you are sending signals to your base. about why it's important for you to turn out. And thus far, I mean, to me, what's the most telling in some of the polling we've seen recently

is that opinions of the Democrats remain above water and opinions of the Republican candidates are below water, which says, boy, you've spent a lot of money, and I don't know that you're getting what you thought you were going to get from all of it. It is, there's so much to unpack there. You know, the 2006 is the most obvious historical analogy. I do think you look at a whole bunch of different factors. This is a worse political environment for Republicans that 2006 was. You can argue maybe the Democrats were better positioned in 2006 than they are now just because of the brand at the time. But either way,

Trump is more unpopular than Bush by some measures. The economy is obviously much worse. You know, he's 30 points underwater on the economy, 50 points under water on gas prices and some polling. Yeah, and gas being over $4 a gallon is, you know, that's a political killer. The, you know, so like it could be, I would say these midterms are always hard to judge because we, the typical, you and I are a little different, I think, but the typical person judges in terms of seats one, not House popular vote, which is what it really is, because everyone's like, wow, Obama lost 63 seats. that must be the worst midterm ever, but I'm only lost to popular by like six and a half points.

It just happened to be there are all these seats in play. But on its face, this is a very, very bad math for Republicans. And I do feel like they have fewer levers to pull than they did in 2006, in part because TV ads clearly matter less than they did back then. I mean, it's like that to me is the big question of they spent all this money. As far as we know, we're all trusting the polls. And we'll talk about whether we can do that a little bit. But if you trust the polls, they have not moved.

the Democrats are no less popular than they were before in a typical environment where you were spending hundreds of millions of dollars on an election, you would see even if you- The negatives don't go up. The negatives aren't moving. And I don't know if that's because, and I'll be interested in your taking this, is it because the attacks are the wrong ones and it's mostly transcultural attacks, you know, anti-transcultural stuff? Or is it that people aren't, the people you're trying to reach aren't seeing,

ads because of how I was to see ads or people have just tuned out they've already made the decision and none of this information is going to make a difference. I don't know what you're thinking. I know. I was just asking someone this very same question. And it's probably like everything, a combination of everything you just laid out. The first is I think Republicans came into, as they saw the environment deteriorating, they were like, okay, this isn't great for us. But here are the things we have going for us. socialism, look, test it in a poll. Everybody hates socialism.

So we're going to link everything to socialism. We still, even as we're underwater, this would be a Republican saying this, even if we're underwater on inflation and the economy, we are still above water on immigration, crime taxes. So let's just lean into those four things. We'll lean into immigration, right? If my opponent gets in, he's going to give

reopen the borders, give all your money away to illegal immigrants. By the way, he'd also raise your taxes. I cut your taxes. Remember, we had no tax on tips. Wasn't that great? And then finally, if you put Democrats in charge,

all these crazy woke things are going to happen. And it's not that voters don't care about those issues, but when you compare it to, wait a minute, it just cost me $100 to fill up my car. And you're telling me that I have to worry about these other things, no facts on tips? Like, that's fine. Okay. And yeah, I'm really happy the president closed the border.

And I don't want to give, you know, welfare to illegals. But that is not my priority today. I need you, Republicans, to give me an answer for how you're going to get the cost down, which is what the president told me he was going to do in 2020. for. He was going to lower costs. He wasn't going to get us into a forever war in the Middle East. Those two promises have been broken. And I don't see you trying to fix it. Because the only way they would be able to fix it, Dan, is to come out and say, this war needs to end. I'm not going to vote to continue the war. We got to get the straight open. And I'll do everything I can. You know,

when the president's right, I stick with him. But in this case, he's wrong. But they can. They're in a total bind there. The other thing, and I heard this from a Republican really early in the cycle, when I wrote something about are these socialism attacks going to work? And this person, this Republican said, you know, I've been doing a lot of polling on this. And the challenge is that, you know, people don't really know what they think about socialism. It's still a concept in a way that.

So if you ask it in a poll, do you like socialism? People go like, I don't know, that sounds like it's kind of a bad word, right? I hear it in context, it seems like, or out of context, I'm sorry, it seems like something negative. But then if you ask me to describe it, I don't exactly know what that means. And so we've tested these messages, and I've seen them, other people test them as well in polling, you know, somebody who's identified as MAGA versus somebody who's identified as a a socialist, and the MAGA label is more toxic than the socialist label, in part because people know what MAGA is. They're like, oh, I get that. I know what that is. Socialists,

I don't 100% know. It's Bernie Sanders, but it just doesn't relate in the same way. And look, if Democrats get in charge, if there was a Democratic president who said, hi, I'm a socialist, and these are the five things we're doing, then yes. It goes. couldn't be a bigger problem for Democrats to have to decide, am I going to associate with this candidate and their policies or not? But right now, it's just this big overarching term that is being thrown at people that is not resonating in the way that I think many Republicans had hoped it would. It doesn't probably help the Republicans case that one of the two most prominent socialist in American politics is someone who Trump keeps fawning over inviting to the White

House and hanging out with. Right. Is Maldani. I mean, everyone remembers that, I mean, even Democrats, like the folks at Third Way were in a panic that if Maldani became the mayor, he would be weaponist because all these Democrats. Right. You know, Mondani isn't showing up in a single ad anywhere. Yep.

In part because, I think, one, it's absurd to use the mayor of New York to run, to associate with someone running the second district of Iowa, like, that was never going to work under any scenario, but also Trump has buddyed up with him. And he's had a bunch of these things that are seeing very, you know, he's filling potholes and he's helping people get food. Well, that's the thing. If Mom Donnie had come in and, you know, was like, fired the police chief. Exactly. Exactly. Crime goes out of control. All businesses leave New York City, right? Then yes. That would have been a more effective cudgel. But just the name and even the AOC Bernie stuff. I mean, this is where, the conversation about, you know, ideology, personality,

and the environment and partisanship all kind of muddled together. It's not as clear. Again, ask people, do you like socialism? Not really. Do you like Medicare for all? Yeah, that sounds pretty good, right? Do you think that, do you like capitalism? Yeah, sure.

Do you think we should have more taxes on billionaires? Yeah, yeah. I like that too, right? So people are a little bit all over the place when it comes. The things that Bernie Sanders is talking about, tax corporations and give Medicare for all, he's not a toxic position today. So that also, I think, takes the sting out of the socialism attack. Yeah, it's been, I've been in these rooms.

I know how this goes where it's like every poll, every piece of research says, all people care about is costs. Like, it's one, two, and three on everyone's agenda, you know. And so then you're like, well, we're going to test a bunch of our cost messages. And then those aren't going to move voters. So we're going to try to talk about something else. But the problem of that, that is a very understandable checkers move. But the problem is that if you, the main thing is always the main thing.

And if you're off the main thing, you look like you're ignoring. You're just reinforcing the critique that you don't care about costs because anytime you turn it on the TV, all you see as Republicans in Republican ads talking about something other than costs. Positive America is brought to you by Haya. As parents were back in the full swing of the school year and can already feel the holidays approaching fast and furious. The last thing any of us want is our kids or ourselves, down for the count. That's where Haya comes in. Formulated alongside pediatricians and nutrition scientists, Haya's products target kids' most common nutritional gaps. Their core daily multivitamin packs 12 organic fruits and vegetables plus 15 essential vitamins and minerals into every chewable.

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I wanted to, as we think about this environment, there's been this debate, kind of kicked off by your colleague, Charlie Cook, about whether this is a blue wave or a red undertow. And what he means by that, by Charlie's definition, a blue wave is, you know, is some, is a validation of democratic politicians, democratic ideas, the Democratic Party. A red undertow is an election that is a rejection of Republicans. how do you how do like what's your take on that idea because that's sort of been this like this become in the preemptive factional debate within democratic party about what all this means and I'm going to ask you a little bit more about that later yeah Charlie's term of red under toe is being used is become part of like part of the conversation I'm curious what your take on that is about what that yeah um so we both know that every midterm election is a referendum on the party

in power and it's not a referendum on the party that wins you can be super popular as a Democrat in this environment and win, you can be kind of unpopular and win. It's not about you, right? And it's not about your ideas, and it's not about all that. This is definitely, it's always a backlash to whoever is in power. So that's true. To me, what I took from that analogy,

what it is, look, here's the blue wave. The blue wave is the Democratic enthusiasm, which has been there, right, since 2025. We saw in the governor's races. We've seen it in special elections. We've seen it primaries. Added to that blue wave are independents, which we haven't talked about yet, but man, even in 2006, I can't remember what Democrats won independence by. Maybe it was 20. It might have been a little bit, maybe it was in the teens, but they're leading right now by like 23 points, a generic Democrat with independence. Trump's approval rating with independence is 26%. I mean, if you're sitting in a swing district, you cannot win as a Republican and the president's at 26% with independence.

Like, that's just deadly, right? So that's the blue wave is Democrats, enthusiasm, really angry independence. But what could keep, what could make this wave go into territory where it doesn't belong, i.e. Trump plus 10, 12, 13 districts and states is the undertow are. Republicans who aren't showing up. And that Democrats' wave is dependent on a whole bunch of Republicans staying home, even in places where they have such a decided advantage, like Alaska and Texas. And that, I feel like is the difference between,

Democrats having a good night, a great night, or like a historic night is the undertow piece. The other thing that I do think is important to appreciate about where Democrats go on this. And somebody else wrote about this. I can't remember where I saw this. But the gap between Democrats' approval rating and their lead on the generic ballot. your net approval rating, like let's say the net approval rating for Democrats were five and they were leading on the generic ballot by eight. Okay, so that's a three point different. But what we're seeing now that could be historic is how unpopular Democrats are,

but how big their lead in the generic ballot is. Right. So that there is, there, usually you're not, those two things are not supposed to work together. You're not supposed to be this unpopular, but have this big of a lead. Some of that unpopularity, though, as we know, and comes from Democrats themselves, right? Like, Democrats don't like their own party for various reasons,

but they're going to turn out and they're voting for Democrats. The, I think the challenge for the Democratic leadership going into 2027 with the Democratic House, and maybe a Democratic House and Senate is the expectations of the base now are so different from where they were in 2018 or even 2006. This is more, they want more than just putting a check on Trump. They want a real change to the system. And they want something more substantive than just, you know, we're kind of moving around the edges.

So I think that's going to be the more challenging dynamic going into 2027 than whether Democrats are liked by the broader public. Yeah, it's also interesting because the reason the red undertone matters so much here is because the map is so much of the map is taking place in red America. Yes. I mean, even the vast majority of swing districts are in districts that are won by even a little bit. And then the Senate, like if this was a Senate map where we were, that looked a little bit more like 2006 or some of us, we're running someone, we're trying to, or even what could be the 20, you know, the 2028 map where we're trying to win in Wisconsin, more swing states or more blue states. Exactly. Then we would be less dependent on. This is a totally different.

Exactly. You don't need, I was, I've been saying that for a long time. If the Senate map ran through like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, like. that's a no-brainer for what happens, but that's not where it's going. And I also make the comparison. So when Democrats lost those 60 seats in 2010, there were 60 districts that Democrats held in 2010

that Obama either lost or won by less than five. 60. There were 37 of those in 2018. Republicans held Hillary Clinton seats or Trump won by less than five. They're basically now a little over a dozen of those. So if you were picking up more than if the net, right, when Democrats are the bigger the gains in the House,

they are coming from places that Trump won by six, seven, ten points. And even on the Senate side, in 2006, you had John Tester Wynn in Montana state that Bush had carried by 20 points, but every other state Democrats flipped, Bush had won by single digits. So this would be really, you know, something we haven't seen before, which is a party's flipping to win control, yet Democrats have to do this, which is to flip two double-digit seats in a time where, as you rightly pointed out,

were even more partisan and more dug into partisanship. Yeah. Those states, you know, 20 years ago had, it was very common to have a Democratic senator. Yeah. And the Dakota and all of that, and all these plus 20 seats. In Republican, you know, Susan Collins, Olympia Snow,

in places like Maine, we're in a different world now. The other interesting thing here is, you know, people are, I was at a fundraiser the other night for a candidate I won't name. And there were a bunch of former Obama and Democratic staffers there for the Bay Area diaspora. And we were talking. And these are all hardened political professionals with many commas of the belt. Everyone afraid to believe the polls, right?

Everyone very nervous about the polls. Yeah. What I, like, understandably so. After 2016 and 2020, people very nervous about the post Democrats in particular. We're very worried about getting our hearts broke and we're a very sensitive group. But I found interesting. is that in previous elections, even in 2020, when the polls look really good, there would be all these Republicans out there saying to people like you, to Politico, elsewhere, or releasing

internal polls that show something very different or saying, like laughing at Democrats who are optimistic like in 2020 about Iowa, Alaska, South Carolina Senate seats, you don't, you may hear something different because you talk to a lot more people than us than I do, certainly, certainly more Republicans. But I, you don't really hear that this time. Like, and if you look at the spending patterns, Republicans seem to believe the holes. And I think that's, I think that's exactly right. I mean, are there differences in the ways that the two parties see a handful of these states, especially ones that are further out in the margins for sure? But you're not going to hear Republicans say, no, I don't, I don't think Alaska's real, right? I don't think Ohio and Iowa are real. I think what they are

counting on and what your friends fear, Republicans are hoping what Democrats fear is the polling, all of the polls are within the margin, right? So that's always dangerous. No, even for these polls were Democrats ahead. No one's at 50. And you start to think, okay, well, have Democrats, basically, has the Democratic candidate peaked. They've gotten all the available voters and they're at 48%, that's where they're

going to end up. And that all the people who haven't been participating in the polls, again, it's not because these polls are biased or whatever. You can't find people who don't want to take a participate in giving their opinion. Many of those people are going to be sort of disaffected. Republicans, if they just decide on election day, like, screw it, I'm going to go out. I'm going to just suck it up and vote for the Republicans. Because even though I'm mad at Trump and I'm mad about this war, it would be worse to have Democrats in control of the Senate. For today, that's the one thing I can control. I can't control Trump.

I can't control this. And that, yeah, these races just kind of get there. The other is, you know, what are these undecided? So that's piece number one is of, you know, those Republicans who show up, who we aren't capturing in the polling on either side. I mean, both sides will admit that's what we don't know, what we don't know. To me, the other big question is, you know, I'm sitting here in Maine right now, and, you know, no one knows what's going to happen up here. You know, there is this, and this is the real interesting tension point and the different tension points. I look at a place like Maine where if you just, all I told you, Dan, was Trump's approval rating in the state is like 32%.

And the generic is Dem plus like six or something like that. And so they're like, we wanted Democratic Senate and we don't like Trump. Well, then the Democrat should win, right? But there still are people holding on the people who don't want Trump and they don't want a Republican Senate are still having reservations about Troy Jackson or have some affinity to Susan Collins. Similar thing happening in Michigan.

Do those folks ultimately stay home? Do they show up? That is a big... Or do they all just break at once, right? That's what we... If we just assume that everything's partisan, and which has been the theory of many Republicans from the beginning of the cycle that at the end of the day we're going to do all this and everyone's just going to throw their jersey on.

And so the red states, the deep, deep red states will barely stay red, but we're going to, you know, the blue ones and the purple ones go, then, right, when you end up with an outcome where Democrats could come up short, even though they came really close. Yeah. I mean, that is, that is, like, that's the thing that if you, like, are trying to put the opium aside for a second and, like, you know the good, they all, you know all the positive arguments, right?

But we have, I would argue, it's certainly in these Senate races, in most cases, we have much, Democrats have much better candidates. We have all of it. They have political environment. I think are running hands down better campaigns and how they're, they've used their money. We're raising money on the hard side. We have, we're running, you know, we're sort of. of narrowing that money advantage by running more ads.

We're doing all these things. But at the end of the day, you need almost every single thing to break your way to win a Trump plus 11 state. And in the, at least in the New York Times, Santa Poles, in all of these states, all these red states for the Senate states, the majority of voters or the plurality of voters at least want a Republican control of the Senate. Right. And so that's true.

In Ohio, I mean, I think it's the hardest one. This is where it gets really complicated. because the hardest one is Texas, I think is one of the, you're right, I can't remember now the Sienna polls. I think Ohio, that flipped. So Ohio is now more Democratic than it was earlier. So the Sienna polls in the summer certainly pointed that way in June and July said, these Democrats are looking strong,

but every one of these dark red states, Alaska, Ohio, Texas. Iowa. They prefer a generic Republican. But the Seattle polls that came out in September showed something a little bit different, which was, as I remember, you took, you know, let's say Alaska goes from plus eight to plus two, right? Like, oh, well, that's winnable, but that's still also a Republican, right? They generically, just in their DNA, want to see Republicans more than Democrats, in charge of the Senate. And so, you know, again, if you just looked at the generic and said, how many of these do Democrats win? You say, well, they want Democrats in Michigan, Ohio, Maine. Maybe they're evenly, I can't remember where they were evenly divided in one of those states,

but they're narrowly, Republicans are narrowly ahead in the other deep red states. Now again, the generic doesn't really mean anything if what voters are seeing is, well, I'd really like a Republican Senate, but I just do not like Kemp Axton. Right? And that's where the disconnect is real. And that's where the disconnect is real in Maine and Michigan, too.

Like, I really want a Democratic Senate, but I don't know that I, I don't know that I could go for El Cyan. I don't, mm, right? So that's why we love campaigns. Yeah. The polling error thing is interesting because everyone's worried about a polling error. There can be, as you point out, there can be zero polling error and Republicans could win

three of those four seats we're talking about and keep the Senate. And there's also possible, like I almost hesitate to say this, but it is also possible the pulling error operates in the wrong direction. Absolutely. And these all break, including like Kansas. Yes. You put Nebraska, right? Like we have, we always know there's a surprise.

Usually it's in the House, especially in this day and age, that we don't get surprised in Senate races. But in 2009-6 we did. I think I was saying, I mean, maybe you weren't surprised, but the fact when- Are you surprised by which one? Webb, I think. I think we were all surprised, which is so funny to think about, like, you guys were you thought that you couldn't flip Virginia?

It was like Virginia was very different in 2006. Yeah. I mean, it's so hard, it's like, this is, you and I've been in the game for a long time now, but at the time you had a guy who was not a very good, candidate, like on the stump. But obviously Jim Webb, a very, very powerful candidate on paper, beating a guy who was the leading contender to be the next Republican nominee at the time in George Allen, a former NFL player.

That's right. And because that was the one that put him over the top. Yeah. Yeah. Very, very popular. But I think there is, the polls, like, people forget this. Because it's funny, Democrats only care about the poll error is happening when they go against us.

And the polls were quite wrong in 2025. They underestimated Democrats or overestimated Republican turnout. Yeah. Yeah. Especially in New Jersey. Yeah. Certainly in New Jersey. And that could happen again because of the statistical tools being used to jam these

Trump voters into the polls to have accurate representation because you're trying to, you know, maybe will try to model these off the 2024 results when that coalition maybe has collapsed. So we don't actually know what's going to happen in the polls. And we are, right. I mean, polls are, it's an art and a science, right? You're making assumptions about an electorate that may not, it will come close to that. But you just move a couple of these demographic groups, a few points either way.

And there's, you know, 5,000 votes and 10,000 votes, and there's the election. Yeah, I think it was, I can't remember who, maybe it was the New York Times who had the tool that you could use in 2024 where you could move things. but, you know, move the Latino vote, both in terms of turnout and vote choice and get entirely different results. Let's talk about Trump for a second here because obviously the subjects of all of this is Trump's very unpopular.

He's the one who people believe raised their costs. He started the war where he hates. In a typical midterm with an unpopular incumbent, whether it be Joe Biden in 2022, the George W. Bush in 20, 2006, Obama in 2010, the incumbent president kind of hangs out in the White House and doesn't really try to back out. Trump's doing the opposite. He's campaigning. He's doing rallies every day. He's headed to Georgia right now as we're recording this. He's going to be in Kansas, Michigan,

Ohio, a bunch of other places for the end of the election. I'm trying to imagine what the strategic upside of that is for these Republicans. Do you have thoughts on that? I don't see much upside at a time where, you know, when he is on the, when he's in people's consciousness, it only reminds people of him, right? If you are a Republican in one of these red states, what is going to get your voters to the polls is not, oh, that's right, I need to do this for the president. It is, oh, that's right. If I vote for, if I don't show up, Democrats are going to be in and then bad things are going to happen again. So I quote the echelon poll that they did for Puck recently a lot.

Because I think this tells also the story of where the Republican voter is today. Back in January of 2025, I think of something like 60% of Republicans identified as a Trump Republican. And now it's like 34% identify as Trump Republican. So when Trump says, pretend I'm on the ballot, vote like, you know, this is about the MAGA movement. Well, 34% of Republicans are like, okay, great, that speaks to me. But the other whatever percent are saying, well, no, that doesn't resonate with me, right? That's not what's going to motivate me to get to the polls. And, you know, not to be a knock on your old boss.

But I remember in 2014, you know, here, was Obama went, he did go on the trail in many places to say like, you're doing this for me, right? Like help. When you vote for these guys, you're helping my agenda. Let's do this. It's just a hard, it is hard to get people who are already feeling pretty disconnected from politics to make a connection with some House or Senate candidate that a president who you're kind of of right now, disappointed in, or at the very least, feeling like, I'm not, I don't feel great about the way things are going in the country, that that's going to be somehow motivating for them. So, look, I think the reality, and we've seen this for the last two years, but especially in this

last year, the reigning theory of the case in the Trump world is let Trump be. Trump, right? There is no telling him, like, this isn't really the strategy. We got to kind of here, let's go do this, but we should probably not say that. Please don't say this, but do say this. So that's part number one. Part number two, I think he loves proving people wrong. You guys keep saying we're going to lose. You guys keep saying that I'm a drag on the party, that this is so unpopular, that the MAGA isn't, you know, has lost its way. I'm going to prove. all of you wrong because I always do prove you wrong. You laughed at me in 2016. You laughed at me in 2022. Laughed at me in 2024. And I come back every single time. That is kind of what it feels like,

right? Like, I'm going to do this for that reason. And so whether it's strategic, it's clearly not. Yeah. I could retcon a strategic argument for why he could be helpful in Alaska and I Iowa and Kansas in particular. These are states he won by double digits. We know the undecided voters there are like 91% Trump voters or whatever. I think someone who's struck approval rating on Republicans, which is 20 points lower now than it was in 24 or even in 2018. It's probably not the drawl he used to be. But you could do that.

What I can't, what you can't tell me is that him going to Michigan is helpful. Yeah. A state where he's 20 points underwater. That's fair. And we're the best thing for Mike Rogers, who would. would possibly be is to make this campaign all about Abdul. All about, yeah. Make it all about Abdul.

Yeah. And then if Trump shows up, that makes it very hard. And Trump, these guys are in such a prison because Mike Rogers can't not go. That's right. Right. So he's got to go. Positive America is brought to you by Stamps.com. We could all use a few more hours, even minutes in the day for ourselves.

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We're talking about the candidates. We don't talk enough about the specifics of the battle to win the House. Today, on Friday morning, Cook Political Report, moved 11 more races in the Democratic direction. I was struck by two of these in particular. The first is Florida 25, which is the district that represented by Democrat Jared Moskowitz, the Republicans redrew to try to make it a pickup. And the second district in Montana where Sam Forstag, the smoke jumper, is running. What's going on here?

Yeah, I mean, they're two very different states. Yes, I would say Gerr Moskowitz and Sam Forstag are very different candidates. Yes. People don't know Sam Forsyggs are smoke jumpers. Yes. Yeah, one's a smoke jumper. Yes. Jared Boskowitz.

I don't think he, maybe he would do it. I don't know. I haven't asked him. He might do it if there was a TV camera there. So, yes. So I think there are so many, I love the house because there's so many different storylines, right? And so one storyline on election night is going to be,

how did this whole redistricting thing work out? And Florida and Texas, obviously, will take center stage. And as you know, the Texas and Florida maps were redrawn, basically with the theory that the Republicans would do as well with Latinos as they did, as Trump did and as Republicans did in 2024, which is clearly not working out. And if you look, for example, at those Texas seats, I think three of them, Trump won by double digits, but Biden had carried those. Right?

So if we just, just by going back to not even the greatest that Democrats have ever done, but just go back to the 2020 number, those seats are now no longer look safe. The Florida 25 is another good example of that. That was a district that Biden won, even though I think it's a Trump. or nine, something like that district. Moskowitz is, obviously, is a very aggressive candidate, has raised a ton of money. And, you know, the same thing with you have, like,

we haven't in Lean right now, but Maria Salazar down in South Florida, that was a district Trump barely won in 2020. I wanted by about 15, I think, in 2024. Yes. In a new version, yes. Yeah. And the 22nd, which we have as a toss-up, another one that this is that district that goes all the way across South Florida, like from the east to the west coast. And that's another one that Trump carried by double digits, but Obama won. So those are, again, it's not a dummymander because a dummymander is, oh, you made some, you made a Republican less safe by trying to draw out a Democrat. In this case, it's just that they're not going to make the gains that they thought they would.

Montana is as much about, you know, there's this other group of states. Montana, we have Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Iowa, places that had been drifting to the right in 2024 and even to a certain extent in 2020. But if you go back not that long ago to the Obama era or if you go back even further to the Clinton era, these are the kind of districts that Democrats were winning. Now Montana's changed a lot since then, obviously, and this is the more democratic part of the state anyway.

But I think what you're seeing in somebody like Forstagg is he's a really strong, you know, has a great appeal because of his story as being. a smoke jumper and like this blue-collar guy. And that these are the kinds of voters in these sort of ancestrally democratic areas that for them voting for a Democrat, they've moved off from them culturally,

but not necessarily economically. I would say North Carolina Levin fits into that category too. That's the old Heath Shul. district. If people remember that, Western North Carolina, where there's a Heath Schuller-like Democrat running there. Is that the Jamie Agar seat? That's the Jamie Agar seat.

So you've got, and then the Iowa districts that, let's face it, they do swing a lot and swing years. But if Democrats sweep all of those Iowa districts, which at one time a Democrat did hold all of, all three of those districts, the ones that Democrats never win is the one furthest west. That's the most rural. But, you know, that's kind of going back to where Democrats had been with a lot of these sort of working class white voters.

Also, Macomb County, there's a very competitive race there as well. So if it's a good night for Democrats, they win in all the places where because of the Hispanic shift and because of independence cratering, they pick up the Florida's or they hold the Florida's and the Texas and the swing seats in Arizona and Pennsylvania and New Jersey. If it's a good, like a great night, that's when you start knocking off the seats in the seats in the New Jersey. more traditionally blue-collar working-class areas that had shifted. Scranton is another one where there's a great race there. That's page-kinded. Here's a top-natch Democratic candidate. Yeah.

So that would be a really, really good night. And then an absolute whooping of a night. for Democrats would be that they're now moving into territory that, again, these were seats that flipped in 2006, but we don't think of as competitive now. They moved so far to the right since then. But in Kentucky, the Lexington, Kentucky District, which was redrawn to be even more Republican. And then Minnesota won, the home of then- Congressman Waltz, in 2006.

That was an upset race. Huge upset. Huge upset. It was a huge upset. So that's when you start getting into, into like tsunami territory. I want to flag the Kentucky one just for our audience because Kentucky, Kentucky's polls closed first.

And so if you're looking for a canary in the coal mine in either direction, how things come in that Kentucky six race where Democrats have a very good candidate. and Zach Dembo, will begin to tell you a little bit, I think, about what kind of night it's going look like. I think that's right. And so right now, for example, we have that in Lean Republican. And if the Republican does end up winning here, what that would suggest is, okay, the battlefield now is much narrower, right?

There could be some surprises over here on the further edges and the deeper red states. But that, for the most part, the battle is going. to be taking place in, you know, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Texas. And thankfully, a lot of those races will come in pretty early, too. Hopefully Texas comes in. They count pretty quickly. Florida counts pretty quickly. Very fast, yeah.

Ohio counts quickly. Ohio's good. Virginia is another good place to watch on election night. the district that almost always flips in a wave is the second district, which right now is Elaine Luria running to get her seat back from Jen Kiggins, the congresswoman there. If Democrats flip the first district, that is now getting into like, oh, wow, this is a very, very good night for Democrats. If Tom Perrello comes back, another blast from the past, the 2008 passed, not 2006, but

But if he wins that area, it's now more rural district, but around Charlottesville, well, now that's now Katie Bar the Door kind of election. It's going to be interesting because it may not be uniform across the country. 100%. Because it's usually not. And there's a couple of factors here, and you wrote an excellent column about this just the other day about how different fractured the Trump coalition can work. But, like, you could, we could lose Kentucky and lose some of these more white districts that are Trump, you know, Trump 10, Trump's 12, Trump 15.

But when Trump 15, 20 districts that are mostly Latino, right? And you can see. And then you look at a race like Alabama 2, which is the redrawn district that currently has Democrat Shumari figures in it. Trump campaign there recently. And that, but because of what could be a. sky high turnout among black voters after the Calais decision. So you could have some of these districts in the south with large black votes, districts in the sunbelt, with large Latino votes that can shift, and then maybe more suburban districts. You know, it's all going to be very interesting.

It can be very lumpy. Exactly. I think people hear wave and they assume that it goes across. Everything goes. And it's like, it's more like a tornado. You know how a tornado can come to their neighborhoods? and skip over an entire block, but then it takes out an entire neighborhood over here.

And so, look, you know, Iowa, every one of those seats is competitive. And so that's what's nice about that state is that it can tell us, it's literally you can go, like, is this a category one, two, or three storm based on, you know, the first going, the third going, and then I think a category three storm would be that the second goes as well.

So they sweep the whole state, which is I think what happened in 2006. So like all of Iowa went in 2006. But some of the districts we thought were going to be definitely flipping, like suburban Philadelphia and suburban New York did not. So you can't look at this list and go, oh my gosh, if Democrats don't win this seat, then that means they're going to lose.

Or if Republicans don't win this, then it's going to be a, 50-seat gain. It's like, you gotta just like, look at it, as you said, look at it as, you know, the distinct regions and appreciating that it may be better in one place and not as good in another. And another, this is like, I kind of look at that in terms of like voter demographics, but there is this regional question in the Midwest, particularly the farm belt, about whether Trump's policies on tariffs, diesel prices have, put Republicans in a particular problem there, which is one of the reasons why, you know,

Democrats are so competitive at Iowa and Kansas. Like, I can understand when Democrats are competitive in Ohio and Alaska in Texas because we have great candidates, you know, Sherrod and Mary Potola have one state-wide. They have brands independent of the Democratic Party, which is helpful in a red state. Tala Rico's, you know, obviously very talented. Ken Paxton is a different kind of candidate than that. He brings some baggage with them. but in like Iowa,

Maturek's, you know, obviously has a very powerful story, but what's happening in Iowa has made that competitive. What's happening in Kansas has potentially made that competitive. So that also is another, there's a geographic thing.

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So go to shopbeam.com slash crooked. Go now. That's shopbeam.com slash crooked. Long play, our docus series exploring the people and forces shaping the South is back. News slash, the South is the new political epicenter of the country. Democrats are way on their heels in this region, but Republicans are going through their own reckoning in the South, We're in the final stretch of the midterms, and the political map has only gotten more competitive with new states and districts emerging as potential flips.

So we thought it was time to get back out on the road and take a closer look at what's actually happening on the ground. I'm Aaron Haynes, journalist and expert on all things Southern politics. And I'm Jennifer Palmary, former White House Communications Director. Tune in on Mondays to Longplay Series on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. There is this question, I think, that does worry a lot of, Democrats, which is when you look at the polling, you see under, you see overperformance in red areas, right, like particularly in the Senate side, and you see underperformance relative to the political environment in blue areas.

And in particular, like we talked about Maine, and that can be Susan Collins specific, right? That is happening for your selections. You look at Michigan, which could be, you know, Abdul al-Sayid specific, if, although I'm not, I think it's a little more complicated than that. But then you look at Minnesota, right, which is, you know, I think like three points in the three, you know, around three or four points in the Nate's over polling average right now. That's a state that should be, if you just believe the political environment is the state that Democrats should be winning by 10.

Right. Do you have any thoughts, you know, and you see this in New York, too, the generic ballot and some of these Siena polls in New York has been much narrower than you would have expected in a state that Democratic? Right. Kathy Hockel's obviously winning, but she's not winning by 20. You know, do you have any theories about the, the, the, the, sort of the dissonance between or the underperformance in blue states this cycle for Democrats?

Yeah, I think that there are probably a couple of things going on here. The first is that in this really polarized moment, Democrats just are not, there's a state like Michigan, a state like Minnesota, New York, Maine, there's not a lot of elasticity. It's as polarized as it's ever going to get, right? And so there's not much movement. In a good year or bad year, you're just literally moving on the margins. A state like Ohio or Alaska or Texas is moving as much as it is

because this is where the polarization is not sticking. And some of that is because of polarization in a place like Texas was built on the strength with Latinos, same with Florida. And that these Republicans who voted for Trump were going to continue to show up and continue to show allegiance to the Republican Party. And if they are staying home and they're no longer part of the electorate, then the electorate gets to be much more Democrat, look less, Republican than it did in 2024. So I think that there is just that much more movement in some of those states. And that's why from the very beginning, our question has always been, but just how far can you stretch that band, right? And if you're Democrats, it's like, okay, you can get to 48% of the vote. You can get to 49%. Can you really get to 50? I also think,

you know, there are going to be so many hot takes after this election. But one thing I think you will hear from the left of the party if Al-Sayed and Flanagan and Jackson win is, see, you guys, we're all worried we're going to lose these blue states because our candidates were too far to the left, and they can win anywhere, and you guys just bed wet and panicked. I do think you're going to hear pushback from centrists in the party. Number one, if any of them lose, it will be serious, pushback.

But even if they win, to look at the margin that they carried, right, especially compared to the gubernatorial race. The other thing I'll say about Minnesota that I didn't really appreciate when I went and I was poking around and the states looking the same way you did about why this is a lot closer. You know, one, Republicans really do have a stronger candidate there, and I think if this were a different year and they had the money to put in, they would.

So the fact, you know, your follow-the-money dictum is a really important one here in Minnesota that they have not invested. They're spending more in Kansas and Nebraska and spending zero in Minnesota. So that kind of tells you where things are going. But I will say that there are, the amount of money that's getting spent against Amy Klobuchar

in the governor's race is significant. I think it's up to like $14 million or something. All of it on the Somali welfare fraud scandal. And obviously, Peggy Flanagan, the nominee for the Senate, as was lieutenant governor, so she can be attached to that scandal by Republicans. But Amy Klobuchar obviously was in the Senate. She's not.

She's a member of the Democratic Party, but was not involved with that scandal. But even so, when I watch Klobuchar's ads, she has to defend against that a lot. I think one of her first ad she came out and said, we're going to clean house and make sure we get to the bottom. There's not going to be any more fraud. So there's clearly, there's a lot of, there's a lot more going on in Minnesota than just, oh, the national environment, national environment, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. And that is another headwind against Democrats

that's not going on in other places. Right. And the subject of all this is, is that in this sort of factional fight with the Democratic Party is that Jackson, El-Sayed, and Flanagan were the more progressive, more liberal candidates who won the primary. This is a test of more, you know, Bernie endorsed, you know, progressive, far-left candidates,

whatever I'm going to say, in, you know, battleground states or important states or whatever else. I think the hard part about that argument is in Maine,

I'm not sure anyone knows that Troy Jackson is very liberal. It doesn't seem like they know a ton about him anyway. I mean, he is campaigning this week with Bernie. Yes, and he does,

his, he has not swirved out of that in any way to show for him, his, you know, his tackling all his ads, the solidarity. But the bigger issue there is Susan Collins.

Like, that's the thing. That's fair. And then I think Peggy Flanagan, how much people know about how liberal she is or not? I don't know, I imagine they probably do because that was a relatively contested primary, particularly on issues of Israel with APAC money, et cetera. Yeah.

But the bigger issue there is being the lieutenant governor to an unpopular. During the crisis. Yeah. My other sort of theory on some of these blue states, and this is less relevant to Maine, I think, but is we are in a change anti-encumbent environment, and these are states that have had Democratic governors,

like Minnesota's that Democratic governor forever. And Michigan's coming at the end of two-term. Like, Democrats have been in charge there for a while, so there's less of that. But you make the most important point of all in this, which is it's pure math. They're just, if your numbers go up when people leave the Republicans, there aren't that many people to leave the Republicans. There are more people to leave the Republicans if it's a Trump plus 10 state, then it's a Trump plus 0.5 state or whatever is in Michigan or a Trump minus eight state

like it is in Maine. Right. So there's just so much more. You're not going to win by, you know, no, even in the best Democratic gear, you're not going to win Maine by 25 points. Yeah. Right? We've polarized.

People are locked in. And then the swims will be still within that margin. Yeah. I would ask you about Kansas and then I'll let you go here. Kansas is not ready to toss up. Do I have that right by you guys? Yeah. Yeah.

That's a state that Trump won by 16 points, hasn't elected a Democratic senator. since Herbert Hoover was president, 94 years. What's going on there? Yeah, what's going on there is, I think, the confluence of factors that makes this unique. And this is how, in order to flip a state like this, you have to have everything go right, right? It has to be serendipity.

And so the things that they have going right for them, Democrats do is, as we just discussed, the challenge for a state that is a farm economy, when fertilizer, diesel, the tariffs are all taking a toll. And then, of course, just on inflation is taking a toll on everybody, whether you are related to the farm economy or not. So you get that. Then you have a really strong Democratic nominee who is very talented,

but also is very difficult to paint as a typical Democrat. And the fact that he doesn't come from politics, I think, is another asset, right? He is the, he started a megachurch in Kansas City. He is still a pastor there. So this is somebody who, you know, when you look at him and know his background, you don't go, oh, this is just kind of a typical Democrat or this guy just spent 25 years in the legislature. We know what he's going to do when he goes to Washington. So you have that going for you. And then finally, you have to have a very weak Republican, candidate. And Roger Marshall didn't, you know, I think I came into this thinking like, yeah,

you know, okay, he, you know, hasn't really had a race before and is he going to be prepared for this? And, you know, there were always the talk about how he doesn't live there and he's going to have talk about his residency. But I think that the hits just keep coming, right? And the piece that came out in the New York Times about suing his patients, I think that one, just really, because again, it combines all of those things. It's not just, oh my God, I can't believe this guy's stued and arrested women who had just given birth, but we're at a time where we're talking about cost of living and affordability issues and people feeling so stretched, and this is a guy who's doing this, Right. So it's not just that, if this were just about like, where's his residency? Does he really live here? I don't know that that would be enough to get people to go over fire. But all of that together is what has set this moment up. And you're right, it would be really, it is funny how Kansas, even though the states around it, of those other farmers,

states were electing Democrats through the Obama era, right? In South Dakota and North Dakota, Nebraska. And so, you know, I don't think we should say, well, it's been 100 years, so I guess that means they will never elect a Democrat. But it is, you know, the fact that Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, all are feeling this, right? They're all moving in a similar way, you know, moving away from Trump is, I think, a lot about where we sit in the political environment. And then Marshall and the Democrat of Adam Hamilton sort of seals the, makes this, he offers a permission

structure that I think another Democrat might not. Amy Walter, it is always so much fun to talk to you. Good luck over these next two weeks. You too. Hydrate. Everything you write in post is essential reading for anyone who's a true political junkie. We'll be looking for your analysis on election night and beyond. It's always great to have you on Pod Save America.

Talk to you again soon. See you soon. Thanks to Amy, Walter. Love it, Tommy, and John. We'll be backing your feed on Tuesday. Have a great weekend, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher,

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Long play, our docu series exploring the people and forces shaping the South is back. Newsflash, the South is the new political epicenter of the country. Democrats are way on their heels in this region, but Republicans are going through their own reckoning in the South, too. We're in the final stretch of the midterms, and the political map has only gotten more competitive with new states and districts emerging as potential flips.

So we thought it was time to get back out on the road and take a closer look at what's actually happening on the ground. I'm Aaron Haynes, journalist and expert on all things Southern politics. And I'm Jennifer Palmary, former White House Communications Director. Tune in on Mondays to Longplay Series on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.