Pod Save America - “The election is nigh!”

Episode Date: November 5, 2018

A final discussion about the state of the 2018 midterms, including our thoughts on why it’s close, the closing arguments, what races we’ll be watching on Tuesday, what’s making us nervous, and what’s making us hopeful. Then Democratic candidate Colin Allred talks about why he got into politics, and his race to flip the Texas 32nd on Tuesday.

Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. Just vote. That's Tommy Vitor. Hey, hello. We are coming to you today from our brand new studio, guys. Very nice. We've had a small studio in the new offices for quite a while, and the new one is now built.

And it is incredible. You're listening to this, but you're going to have to look at the live stream. Shame we finished it right before we get shut down like a Turkish opposition newspaper. Later in the pod, you'll hear from Colin Allred, a Democratic candidate running for a congressional seat in Texas that we hope to flip tomorrow. Tomorrow.

Because tomorrow is election day. Or today, if you're listening to this on Tuesday. That's true, too. Erin Ryan subbed for John Lovett this past week, completing her stint as a guest host on Love It or Leave It. Three cheers for Erin and Guy Branum. Guy and Erin did an awesome job hosting Love It or Leave It while I was gone. It's a machine.

It can run without me. That's the dream. We had some awesome episodes, and I'm back on Thursday with an after-election special win, lose, or draw. So check that out. Another programming note. We will be live streaming a vote. Save America,

2018 election special tomorrow night, right here at cricket headquarters. Pfeiffer will be here to the whole crew. Everyone in the greater Los Angeles area who wants to come for emotional support. Don't put that out there. We will all be here. We'll also be doing a wrap-up pod, all four of us,

on Wednesday afternoon that will be out Wednesday night. What will it say? Who knows? If you want to watch the live stream tomorrow night, it is youtube.com slash crookedmedia. Check it out. Check it out. Trying to get those YouTube subs for Elijah. Wall-to-wall coverage coming to you live from Crooked Election HQ.

We have a countdown clock. It's election night in America. I don't know what they say on the other networks. Anyway. All right. Tomorrow is election day. As you all know, we're out of the prediction business. We also try to stay away from too much horse race coverage.

That's all that's left. Exactly. That is all that's left. That's all that's left, so we're going to indulge a little bit of it today. I thought it would be useful to start by talking a little bit about the state of the race in order for people to understand where we are and how we got here. The final polling averages give the Democrats a 7 to 8 point lead on the generic ballot, maybe nine. That would be one of the bigger midterm margins either party's ever had.

For example, when the Republicans won by six point eight percent in 2010, they picked up 63 seats. In 2006, a seven point win gave the Democrats 31 seats. 2006, a seven point win gave the Democrats 31 seats. And yet, despite that, in this election, Republicans are heavily favored to keep the Senate and maybe even gain seats there. And while Democrats are heavily favored to win the House, the low end of the various projections have us picking up 20 something seats when we need 23. So it feels really close. Why is that? Who wants to take a stab?

Gerrymandering. Yeah. We're a divided country. That's good. And the house map shouldn't be so divided and difficult, but it has been gerrymandered to hell. So we're fighting an uphill battle. Yeah. That is the truth.

Now, I say that not as an excuse. We need to win 23 or moral victories mean nothing. But it's important when people are assessing what this means for Trumpism, because there's a concern that if we pick up the House and Republicans hang on to the Senate or pick up seats in the Senate, it'll be like, well, mixed bag on Trumpism. The reality is the national polls, the majority of the country is not pleased with the way he's running the country. They don't like a campaign that is entirely built on racism. They want people to talk about healthcare and things they actually care about. And so just some context. Yeah. And it's, it is also more than just gerrymandering. It is something unique to this moment. One of the things that was fascinating, John, I saw you tweeting about this yesterday, the,ate cone upshot completed their many real-time polls

uh that that got uh got fish like you on the hook you know look maybe tommy and i were texting back and forth about the leads changing maybe not but uh maybe we're reading them aloud in the car in real time one thing that is striking is just how many races are polling at one or two points. Yeah. Like if there is going to be a wave, it is going to be very, very wide and very, very shallow. And it will either be high enough to pick up a huge number of seats or if it is just a little too shallow, we will come close in a ton of districts we would have needed to win. So on top of the built-in advantage Republicans have because of gerrymandering, there's also just this fact of the electorate right now. I don't know if, you know, we won't know what it looks like till after it's done, but it's almost

like these two things sort of meeting this sort of changing country of people that want to reject Trump in the majority, plus this, the Trump base coming out and being energized and kind of meeting in the middle and creating weather all across the country in this specific kind of transitional period between Trump's older, whiter base and the coalition we've been waiting to show up since Barack Obama left us here alone. Just to give you an idea of this house map here, you can easily count about 16 to 17 pickups for Democrats. But then, like you were saying, Lovett, to get from 17 to 23, you have a ton of races in Republican territory. There are almost no races being fought on Democratic territory. And most of these races are like one to two point races a lot of these places um some

places voted for clinton that have republicans and then we talked about those districts but those are probably the some of the easiest ones to go most of this election is being fought in republican districts that went for trump now some of them might have gone for obama in 2012 but some of them haven't sent a democratic member to Congress for years, for a decade. Like Alaska. Like Alaska. But like, for example, one of the races we've been looking at is Abigail Spanberger in the Virginia 7th running against Dave Brat.

And she's a great candidate. It's been very competitive, very close. I was looking the other day because I'm like, oh, I wonder, you know, I wonder when's the last time a Democrat went to Congress here. Well, not for a very long time, but also Ralph Northam, when he went on to a nine-point victory in Virginia in just 2017, lost that district by four points. And yet Spanberger is still competitive in that. So just so people have an idea of what an uphill climb this is. And even if Democrats eke out a majority by 23, 24, 25 seats, it is an enormous accomplishment because it means that they won seats in deep red Republican territory.

Yes. Also, a good reminder, by the way, that the Northam polls were off by a few points. And because all of these races are so tight, the polling error feels almost more important as we head into tomorrow than normal. Yeah. And I will say too, the last time the Democrats had a wave election in the House was 2006. And the environment was different then, right? It was George Bush's second term. His approval rating was around 30 something percent. The Iraq war had been raging for a couple of years. Katrina had just happened. There was every day there were stories about Republican corruption. So even that was a better environment. It's a slog. It's a slog. It's a slog. It's also Peter Hamby wrote a piece about how pundits don't know anything.

And it was a good piece. This is a unique election. It's the only time Donald Trump has been president during a midterm election. And there's all these contradictory indicators. There's an economy that's doing well. There is a president who is unpopular, but not as unpopular as someone like George W. Bush. There is a lot of dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, yet the party in power is viewed as being better on the economy than the party trying to defeat them. So there's a lot of confusing signs out there. If you were to just come into this race without all the context of how polarizing and terrible Donald Trump is, you'd be saying, wow, it seems impossible for Democrats to win this election. Look at all the basic political science 101 stuff that's going up against them, not just gerrymandering,

but the concentration of Democrats in the cities, the way the economy is going, and so much else. Well, let's talk about the Senate map, which is even tougher. Why is the Senate map so tricky for Democrats? I mean, it's just a bad year. It's just the worst year in a century. We are competing for seats in, I mean, we're talking about Montana. We're talking about Missouri. We're talking about North Dakota. We're talking about West Virginia. We're talking about Texas. We are trying to keep seats in the purpley red states like Arizona or the purpley blue states like Nevada. just a combination of the inherent disadvantages Democrats now have in the Senate, combined with the fact that these are just the 32 that happen to be up and they happen to be in parts of the country where we struggle. It is very important. I think that, you know, the predictions are all over the place in the Senate, but every single Senate seat matters. And it matters for the long game too, which we haven't talked about because in 2020 it looks like Colorado is a target

for us with Cory Gardner and Maine is a target because of Susan Collins those are states that have been trending Democratic over the last couple years Iowa and North Carolina Joni Ernst and Tom Tillis are both also maybe competitive for us and then Doug Jones is going to be up again in Alabama. So if we end up with a 50-50 tie in the Senate after tonight, for example, and Mike Pence is the tiebreaker and Republicans keep it, in 2020, because we still got 50, if we pick off Colorado or we pick off Maine, we have a Democratic president, suddenly we have a majority in the Senate and can confirm Supreme Court justices. So it's actually a huge deal. If know, if we lose the Senate by one, by two, by three, it's actually a big difference.

Right, yeah. Right, in the next two years, it's a digital thing, win or lose. But in the next four or six years, we are trying to slowly claw our way back to a majority. So as Tommy mentioned, because Dems are favored to win the House and Republicans are favored to win the Senate,

we're starting to see headlines like this one from the Wall Street Journal. A test of Trump midterms could result in a mixed verdict. Would this scenario be a mixed verdict on Trump, a Republican held Senate and a Democratic House? No, it would not be a mixed verdict. If you lose the House, it's a big defeat of Trump. If you lose the House with a wildly gerrymandered House map, it's a rebuke of Trump. If you lose, if we pick up any governor seats, it's a rebuke of Trump. Like Trumpism is on the ballot.

He declared it to be on the ballot. Just because the Senate races are all bright red states doesn't mean that somehow he is, like he is set up to win in the Senate. They have a huge structural advantage in the Senate. Places like Missouri and Texas and all the states we've already mentioned are tough races for Democrats. It's part of the reason why horse race coverage is so lacking, because the thing that doesn't get enough tension are structural differences. The map, right?

Like Missouri, Montana, West Virginia. Donald Trump won West Virginia by 42 points. The fact that Joe Manchin is hanging on as a Democrat is crazy. This is what frustrates me about this whole conversation. Not our conversation, like the whole conversation about whether this is a rebuke of Trumpism or not. In 2010, when Barack Obama, we held on to the Senate and we lost the House. It was seen as a huge rebuke.

Huge rebuke. Huge rebuke. Shellacking. And rightly so. And rightly so. But the press covers voter suppression and gerrymandering, which is essentially voter suppression in some ways, as if it's just sort of a built-in feature of American democracy and not a long-term effort to completely pervert the way our democracy works. And that drives me a little bit crazy. Like voter suppression tactics in Georgia should be a much bigger story than a fucking caravan that is still 800 miles away. And then we've been talking about

for weeks, but that is not how these things are covered. Yeah. And the Senate has a different problem, which is less about gerrymandering than just not at all about gerrymandering, just geographic problems too. And the fact that across the country, that less about gerrymandering than just... Not at all about gerrymandering, just hard states. Just geographic problems, too. And the fact that across the country, in races that are going to be really close, their efforts to suppress the vote are enough to swing an election. Right. And I say this less for, you know,

influencing the horse race coverage, which they're going to do what they do. But for all of you listening, right? Like, if we wake up on Wednesday and we win the House and we come short in the Senate, no one should feel like, you know, Democrats and Polio or what happened to this blue wave. Like you just you got to know how hard these states are. And the reason these states are hard is because we are seeing a real realignment between the two parties right now that is based on education among white people. And so college educated whites are moving in droves towards Democrats. Non-college-educated whites, we have never been doing worse with them. It is true, it is possible that in this election,

we may make up a lot of ground among non-college whites in the Midwest, the very place that lost Hillary the election. We are seeing Democrats do very well, especially in governor's races, in Ohio, in Wisconsin, in Michigan. Gretchen Whitmer is on her way to hopefully a pretty big win. Knock on wood. Knock on wood. And so, you know, we could make up a lot of ground in these Midwestern states that have traditional,

in Pennsylvania, that have traditionally gone to Democrats. But the Senate, most of the Senate map is not in this. I mean, like, if you had told us a year ago, we'd be sitting here and Sherrod Brown would be on his way to victory. And Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin would be on her way to victory. People would say, that's crazy. Trump won those states. Or that I would even know who was running in Texas. Right.

Exactly. Bob Casey in Pennsylvania. Tom Wolfe, the governor there. Like they're all doing fantastic in these states. But Missouri. Tough. Montana. Tough.

Indiana. I mean, these are really tough states. North Dakota. Also, the narrative that the political press used to describe the outcome of the election doesn't really matter at all. If there's a bunch of stories- Once we got the gavel in the house.

Yes. By one seat. By one seat. Look, here's the thing. If there are a bunch of stories on Tuesday or on Wednesday or Thursday, by the way, I want to once again reiterate, we may wake up on Wednesday having won fucking nothing, wishing we could go back in time and appreciate how lucky we would have been to have a narrative called Squidward.

Wake up and we're like, what? Mike Levin's the only one going to Congress? Yeah. Minority leader Mike Levin? No humor dark humor guys but what i was going to say is the narrative doesn't matter it doesn't know it does it matters a lot it matters a lot when dave bratt beat eric canter the narrative coming out of that was that it was all about immigration that scuttled the hopes for immigration reform for a long time. And people that have dug deep into what actually happened in that race was the Virginia congressional race primary, uh, have figured out after the fact that it was really not about immigration, but like these things can set narratives and they can,

they can give Republicans the courage or not to say Trumpism is bullshit, or at least that Trumpism won't work for me. I think that's a good point. Winning the House means that we have power for the next two years. And there's nothing that a DC press corps can say about what the verdict meant to change the fact that we will have control of these committees, that we will have the speakership, that we will have power and a seat at the table. That's all that I'm saying. And I'm not arguing about that. But I'm saying that the narrative coming out of these elections really does matter. And I think

like this is why, you know, pre 2016, when we were wildly wrong, but everyone wanted not just to be Trump, but to rebuke Trump ism. Because you had the 2012 election and the after action report about being more inclusive and reaching out to Latinos and African Americans. And that was fully rebuked by the Trump win. And we've seen the Republican Party go full MAGA right wing crazy. We move on to the closing arguments both parties have been making. So for the last month or so, Trump has been churning out even more explicitly racist and xenophobic lies, even more than usual. As summarized by the Washington Post in their piece on Sunday night,

quote, Trump is claiming that Democrats want to erase the nation's borders and provide sanctuary to drug dealers, human traffickers, and MS-13 killers, unleashing a wave of violent crime that endangers families everywhere. Good for the Washington Post

for saying it like it is. And yet, there's a Politico story that also went online last night that says this quote republicans focused on the house are profoundly worried that trump's obsession with all things immigration will exacerbate their losses the story even has paul ryan calling up donald trump on sunday begging him to talk up the economy instead of immigration do we believe that trump is the only Republican who's wanted to focus on xenophobia? You think that call happened?

I don't give a shit. Paul Ryan giving interviews on Face the Nation decrying the fact that we can't have a strategically valuable, inclusive, inspirational politics while his super PAC runs some of the most racist fucking ads this cycle all across the country tells you everything you need to know. What is to me, Tommy, the narrative that is going to be the most important thing to focus on after this election is not what does it mean if Democrats win the House or don't win

the House. Right now, you have conservative pundits trying to say that this is an election about deregulation and lower taxes. And that's what they're campaigning on, right? If Republicans win the House, they're going to say they won because of low taxes, and they won because of deregulation. If they lose the House, the intellectuals are going to say it's because Trumpism doesn't work, right? And they will do the exact opposite, depending on the outcome. And to me, that is the most important thing. And I think we have to all be

very clear. If Republicans don't do well, we need to make it our story that an attempt to cover up for their unpopular policies, they tried to use immigration, but they can't deny that what happened in this campaign was about both. That to me is our big task to make it both about race baiting and about their unpopular policies. Yeah. I think that the challenge on the race baiting piece is that you have so many media outlets, and we've talked about this before who won't call overt racism for what it is like for example the des moines register you know not like some big mainstream news outlet referred to steve king an avowed white nationalist a white supremacist uh as blunt talking conservative politician uh usually they say

firebrand. Yeah, and then what was the other thing they said about him? That he has a headline of off-color comments and strong anti-immigration views. I mean, that is whitewashing. Pun not intended. Like a guy who just went to Austria to meet with a party started by a former SS officer. Like a Nazi. Right? I mean, this is a bad, bad, bad human being,

but we won't call these people for what they are. It's like saying Stringer Bell was a no-nonsense boss. So anyway, these are just like, these are the hobby horses that I have, that I, that's all I have left to complain about these closing days of an election. It is important to recognize that it is not just Trump who has gone full xenophobe in the Republican Party.

They've all gone along with him. It's not even like we always complain about Paul Ryan being silent about it. It's not like they were silent about it while it happened. They use this in their own campaigns. Look at Ron DeSantis' campaign that he ran in Florida. Look at Brian fucking Kemp in Georgia, who is in the running for the worst villain of the cycle for sure. Which is a tough, tough category. I realize that at this point, Brian Kemp has engaged in so much voter suppression

that when you see a story about him and voter suppression, you're like, whatever. It's like it's Tuesday, you know? But what he did over the weekend, that was a new fucking low. So in 2016, Kemp was one of the only Secretary of States in the country to refuse help from the Department of Homeland Security to shore up their election systems because they said there are huge vulnerabilities in Georgia's election system that are vulnerable to cyber attacks. And so a constituent in Georgia wrote an email to someone at the voter protection hotline saying there are vulnerabilities in the secretary of state's website that could be exposed by hackers and then kemp said that that person who wrote about the vulnerabilities was a democrat trying to hack the system and said that the democrats were under fbi investigation for trying to hack the fucking georgia election system

it is fucking stunning and in case you hear that and think that's ludicrous that's laughablyably stupid. I mean, Stacey Abrams was doing a round of Sunday shows this weekend and was asked this question about this allegation from Brian Kemp by very serious journalists like Jake Tapper. And that sucks for her, that her closing message is colored by this nonsense made up allegation. It is. I mean, that election, by the way, God, I hope Stacey Abrams wins, but he has done everything possible to steal that election. And I say steal, not as an exaggeration. Yes. And, you know, this again comes down to the language we use. Tom Skoka wrote a great piece. Great piece. You read it, right? It's for someplace called Hmm Daily, which I...

It was floating around last week. I don't know. And it was... I just saw it this weekend. It's sort of weekend bubbling up. Um, but basically about that, because a lot of our political conversation is about how bad will Trump get, we're not doing a good enough job of accepting and describing how bad things are right now. And this is a great example. You know, we have already seen with the, uh, with the voting rights act being restricted by a conservative Supreme court, an incredible amount of voter suppression of anti-democratic practices. What Brian Kemp is doing is stealing an election.

And if he wins by a tiny majority, it will be an illegitimate election. But our politics so presumes the respectability of both parties. And not just in not using the word lie, not just in the kind of surfacy way, but deep. It is a deep core philosophy of our political system that both parties are respectable and competing on a level playing field in a battle of ideas. And when that does not happen, which is what's happening in Georgia, if Stacey Abrams loses by a tiny amount, or if it goes to a runoff because you need to get 50 and she almost gets to 50 and she loses, it will not be legitimate. But our politics doesn't have an ability to allow that information to inform our politics. The political press will call him the winner and describe his strategy as having been effective. Right. I was going to say, as you say, our politics,

what you really mean is our media. Our media. Well, yes. Well, no, yes, of course. It is. That's what it is. But even Democrats don't. Look, yes, of course. No, Democrats know. We're all saying it. We know how to say it. We know how to say it.

But I don't know that we know how to truly live in a system in which Georgia will have an illegitimate governor who does not belong there and does not deserve the power that he has. Yeah. I don't know how to handle it. You just say that it's true. I know. Well, I don't know what you do beyond that.

Just a note shy of that. I mean, Brian Kemp, again, terrible terrible person tweeting out racist photos of the new black panther party yesterday just to play the racist greatest hits um but that race someone has to get 50 or else it goes to a runoff so i know we all want to take a deep breath on wednesday and like reassess our lives and call some old friends and shit but if that gets to a runoff we all need to go all in on making sure stacy abrams has the resources and it really might you know what i was saying instead of asking the question like what does it mean for our politics if trump's strategy and the republican strategy of race baiting xenophobia works or if it doesn't we don't know right but whether it works or not what will remain remain true after Tuesday is that there is a sizable part of the population, a Republican base, that got excited about it.

Because whether it's enough to get them over the edge or not, there has clearly been movement consolidating the Republican base over the last month. That is partly a result of Donald Trump race baiting and being a full xenophobe on immigration and him having the largest propaganda network in the world on his side, Fox News, just churning that shit out and all the other right-wing outlets. It's okay on China Daily, but sure. And all the other right-wing outlets and perhaps an unwitting propaganda machine, Facebook, that has been spreading all of these conspiracies, too. There will be a bunch of wars for the spin out of this. And I know we've sort of debated the relevance of them.

I just want to note one thing, which is the new NBC Marist poll of Florida Senate. The likely voters say they prefer a candidate who opposed Brett Kavanaugh to a candidate who supported him. That is the fifth state where the NBC poll has shown this, including Nevada and Arizona. So this is another example of where I think the spin coming out of this is very important because you're going to have the Hugh Hewitts of the world, as you call them, the intellectual Zambonis that sweep up after Trump, who say that Democrats' efforts to make sure a woman making a credible allegation of sexual assault be heard was somehow bad politics and thus bad, right? Because that's the Trump zero-sum

view of the world. You win, you lose, you're right, you're wrong. And we need to make sure that people understand that no, that had to be heard. And you know what, Tommy? that's the trump zero sum view of the world you win you lose you're right you're wrong and we need to make sure that people understand that no and you know what tell me that had to be heard that's the trump view of the world but that has been the view of the world from the political media the dc political media for as long as all we've all been in politics and it's like if we if democrats win we're they're the biggest geniuses ever known to man everything they did was right they They ran a perfect campaign. And that's not going to be true. I just want everyone listening. You may not be able to hear it,

but I promise I'm knocking on wood every time anyone says the words Democrats win. Axelrod always used to say this. It's like, we are not as smart as people say we are when we win. And we're not as dumb as people say we are when we lose. And that's going to be, because it's all they can handle

is winning or losing. And they don't, and everything else gets blinded. And that goes to this question of the narrative after, because winning the House or losing the House, it's a yes or no proposition. But the actual interplay of Republicans, you know, business politics around tax cuts and regulation and their racial politics around immigration, these things are going to be with us for a while. politics around immigration. These things are going to be with us for a while. And regardless of whether or not we can say after the fact that immigration worked for Trump or didn't work for Trump, what we know right now is immigration is working better for them than their actual agenda.

Even if this isn't enough to get them the victories that they need, we know that they don't feel like they have a platform they can run on. And you know, Paul Ryan, I'm going to be obsessed with Paul Ryan saying this to fucking face the nation forever. But him saying, like, how do we make inclusive, inspirational politics more strategic? It's actually a really good question. It's a really, really good question. How do we get Republicans to decide that there's a different kind of politics, whether it's anti-healthcare, deregulation, pro-tax cut for the rich,

or using race baiting to try to win despite the unpopularity of the agenda? I don't know how you get them to moderate on policy i don't know how you get them to de-racialize uh in order to win but beat them but the only answer the only answer is to beat them that's all there will always be an electoral wipeout is the only thing the only thing that can get the reckoning that we need to get the answer to paul ryan's question is to kick paul ryan out of politics. And even that might not be enough. How many times did we all say,

because our boss said, Obama said, it will break the fever if we beat them. And in 2012, especially, he thought, if I win 2012, if I win this reelection, it will break the fever in the Republican Party and they will stop some of the shit they're doing because then it was Benghazi, right? And it only got worse.

There was always a Benghazi. There will always be a got worse. There was always a Benghazi. There will always be a caravan. I have no hope of that changing. I just think we have to win and win. And we need to win, and then we need to change some of the structural things that have made it impossible to win

in some places since 2010. That is very, very true. 2010 was a decade-long disaster because of the census year, and we are hopefully going to be able to fix that. They could always point to the fact that, yeah, yeah, Barack Obama won,

but Mitt Romney had flaws. Barack Obama's a once-in-a-generation talent. They could point to the fact that they were doing well in the House and Senate to avoid that reckoning. If they had lost in 2016, I believe that reckoning would have come. You know, they just needed to be laid low. And we have not since Barack Obama won in 2012.

And really, since Democrats won the Congress in 2006, there has not been a decisive blow to Republicanism in politics. That's 12 years ago. The only one was from Donald Trump to the establishment. Right. And that was the only decisive blow. And they were just like, well, we'll just... The establishment is still sitting around being like,

no, no, no, our tax cuts, they're very popular. And so is our position on healthcare, which is why we're fucking lying about it this whole election. Can I just say one thing? We're in a slightly dark place. I know I certainly am, but I want to say thank you. I'm in an anxious place.

I'm in a very anxious place. I will never take anything for granted ever again. But I just want to say thank you to the Pod Save America listeners because the people who listen to this show did not sit on their ass

and just read tweets. Some couple quick stats. You guys raised $1.34 million for 20 targeted candidates that we started talking about. You raised another $785,000 for 11 targeted candidates. Back in the day, you guys raised like $400,000 for the Crooked Eight districts. That is on top of 207,000 people pledging to vote on Vote Save America. 20,000 volunteer shifts were filled through Vote Save America. Nearly half a million people use the Vote Save America voter guide. So like you guys, every time I went canvassing, there were five Pod Save America t-shirts. There

were people, every campaign I met with when we went to Beto's office, half the people there had gotten staffed up via Pod Save America somehow, like we're listeners. So you guys were out in force. Yeah, no, it's been incredibly inspiring. I mean, that brings us to Democrats. We should be self-reflective before we know the verdict. That's right. Are the Democrats closing well? Do we think they made any big mistakes along the way? Harder to do before we know the verdict, huh? You know, I just say uh all the judges giving him tens just 10 10 10 10 10 landing every triple axel i will say democrats have not figured out how to talk about immigration um it's been a long term we are there are some

that have i think that beto's been we'll see if he wins or not but i think like i hear him talk about it and i feel like he sounds honest and candid and understands that, you know, we need to have a border in this country. We need to have immigration laws and policies. But I think most Democrats have run scared. And when Republicans sense that, when the media senses it, it becomes a meta issue, which is why we're talking about the caravan still. I agree with that. I'm very proud of the party for honing in on health care and particularly pre-existing conditions. And especially, look, the media narrative was not there for them. The media narrative kept pushing. And when you're in a race like that, and all you see on the news is immigration, immigration, there is a real fear of like,

maybe we have the wrong strategy. Maybe we shouldn't be talking about health care all the time. Maybe we got to go talk about this. Maybe we got to move this way, that way. And for so many campaigns all around the country to think to themselves, okay, here's our plan. We're going to talk about healthcare. We're going to talk about things that matter. And there's also a larger message too, that some of the best candidates I think have hit, Gillum, Abrams, Beto, some of these house members, which is if you don't like this division and this fear, vote for us. Because the only way to rebuke this kind of politics is to vote for balance in Washington, which I also think is a really smart message besides just the health care thing. So, look, I'm sure there's Democrats.

Democrats made plenty of mistakes along the way all over the places. I, to be perfectly honest, like if we come up short on Wednesday, I do not think it will because the Democrats as a whole made some big, huge mistakes, except like you said, maybe not figuring out how to talk about immigration. But I think, you know, the healthcare message was strong, powerful. We know what matters to people. That's what voters are telling people in polls. That's what voters are telling people in person, the people we've talked to have said that. Yeah.

So I was thinking about that too. So what happens if we wake up on Wednesday and we haven't won the house? What's the lesson there? What can you take away beyond just the fact that we have this uphill climb? Because that uphill climb isn't going anywhere, right? And we need to do better. And we should want to do as well as possible, even if we do win the house. And to me, what I see around healthcare is the model for how we need to widen out our approach to other policy areas as well. That on healthcare, what you have seen in the last two years is the Democratic Party shift to the left and not haphazardly, but toward a simple idea of universal coverage through access

to something like Medicare, right? That is now a pretty well established consensus view. It runs from people who have proposed, like Chris Murphy, a bill to make sure everyone has access to something like Medicare, all the way to Bernie Sanders and others who have been advocating for Medicare for all. I think that's really exciting. And what I want to see after is that kind of approach to other areas, whether it's taxes or green jobs, green jobs, energy, energy, simple, elegant, universal, because a pro-democracy agenda, like Tommy was saying, that includes, you know, stop redistricting and ending voter suppression. Not just ending voter suppression, but automatic registration, weekend voting, and the ability for everyone to vote no matter what, that shifting the burden of proof back onto the government and not onto people to prove that they have the right to vote. The unity on the policy of healthcare is what allowed for the unity on the politics of healthcare.

We were able to keep Joe Manchin in line, Joe Manchin who voted for Kavanaugh, right? We were able to keep this caucus together because we weren't just adhering to a white paper around healthcare. We had established that Democrats were better on this issue and that gave Democrats everywhere from the most liberal places to the most conservative places, the confidence to stand firm on the issue. And I think we need to look at that healthcare lesson and apply it across the board. And look, the party and everyone in the party was very unified around giving just about every candidate a lot of running room on this issue. There are a lot of candidates who said, we're not for Medicare for all, we're here defending pre-existing conditions. And then there are candidates who are for Medicare for all in blue states and in red states too. I mean,

some of these people in California that are running in these Republican orange County districts came out for Medicare for all too. Right. But whatever you decided, there was not a lot of infighting in the party about, Oh, you're not with us on this. You know, the people who believe in Medicare for all are pushing hard as they should, as we have been. But if the people who aren't, as we're running a race against Republicans have been okay with saying, okay, you go defend preexisting conditions and you're a very tough race. And, and so, and so win, lose,'re running a race against Republicans, have been okay with saying, okay, you go defend pre-existing conditions in your very tough race. And so win, lose, or draw, the takeaway from that, there's going to be, if things don't go as well as we want, people will say, oh, Democrats need to run to the center. Democrats need to run to the middle.

And what I see is Democrats need to do more around other issues to give people the same level of confidence in this party that they have. The fact that we have moved to the left while the country has united behind Democrats on healthcare, while we might have the ability to win this election on healthcare is going to tell you something really, really important

no matter what happens. Yeah. Let's talk about, let's end with talking about what we are watching for on Tuesday night. What are the races we are most excited about?

What are we going to be looking for? What do you guys think? Were the emotions invested? We could yeah emotions are invested in texas georgia andrew gilliam's race in florida those are things i'm watching three for very very closely i'm in four i'm in four in florida that's a 60 threshold and that's going to tell us a lot and then five is a big deal it's it's a super majority for tax increases that could level up the next person. Florida's a, whatever, that's a bad one. Other candidates you're excited about? I mean, Gillum, Abrams, and Beto to me are the top three. Because they tell a story that's bigger than just those candidates in those states. It's about politics in general, I think. Yes. And when you look at those three candidates who are, you know,

a diverse three candidates, they also have a lot in common, right? Which they are a new generation of Democrats who are just, they are talking big, right? Their message is big. It feels like a message for the entire country. And that's because they are three progressive Democrats running in very red states. Unabashedly so. You know, and I don't, and when we don't know if all of them will, you know, Beto's a long shot, though he's closing. We love him. Stacey Abrams. It's, I mean, the first black woman to be governor of Georgia. Georgia, that is an extremely tough race.

And she is so close. But that's tough too. And Gillum, you know, poll show is slightly ahead, right? Like, I think i'll be i'd probably be most crushed if gillum loses because he's probably the most likely to win um right that's why i'm the most i'd be the most crushed beto and abrams have a tougher slog beto especially um but those three candidates whether they win or lose should point the way to democrats for be you know they should be the model for other

Democrats running for office, I think. Right. It's funny too, because of course, the margin doesn't matter as much as the outcome, but the margin will tell you if it was effective or not. And so, you know, there's going to be whatever happens that the, the, the conversation is, is based entirely around this, whether or not someone crossed a 50, 50 threshold, but what matters, what we can learn the most from is what's effective in a subtler way by looking at margins, by looking at what was effective and what wasn't.

So, you know, that's all. That's all I have to say about that. Races to watch early when the East Coast closes to give us hints about whether the Democrats will have a good night race to the medical marijuana store no i'm just kidding uh medical indiana kentucky florida will be pretty early right and so and a note on those like indiana is a tough state so indiana comes out you know the polls close there early if joe donnelly is having a tough time, it is not the end of the world.

So just letting everyone know that. See, I know, I know. Amy McGrath in Kentucky. Kentucky is the other one that closes super early. Yeah, a very tough race. That is a very tough race, too. She's in the hunt. It's very close, but it could go either way.

Other ones to watch early. Antonio Delgado in the New York 19th. If he wins, that is a very good sign for Democrats. That is a big middle finger to Paul Ryan. Right. Jared Golden in Maine in the second district. He is in a very tight race. If he does well, that's a good sign. Tom Malinowski worked for the Obama administration in the New Jersey 7th. In Jersey.

And then Spanberger in Virginia 7th. I would watch all of those races early. And if Democrats do well in a bunch of those races, it is a very good sign. What are you going to be doing, Leavitt? I'm going to be in a vampire's coffin, sensory deprivation tank. And I would like every once in a while for you to lift the lid and hand me little updates on like post-its or something. I liked your tweet about you want to just spend the next however many hours in a room without any news coverage and someone just hands you an envelope. That's all I want. Yeah, I want to be in like, I would never have that.

I would never be able to have that discipline. I want to be in like an old boy room, the movie old boy where they locked somebody in a room for 30 years. I just want to do it for two days without the gross stuff. There's that movie. There's a movie about locking a dude in a room for 30 years. There is. Is it terrible?

It's terrible. People listening to this who have, who know about old boy are like, yeah, you don't want that but i just want it for two days without any of the things around it um there's also some favorites too that i'll be watching for abby finkenauer in iowa who we know uh chrissy houlahan who was on the show in pennsylvania katie porter people will be so good at the job katie porter katie hill um

jd shoulton in iowa you know getting a close race with steve king perhaps pennsylvania Good at the job. Katie Porter, Katie Hill, J.D. Shulton in Iowa. You know, getting a close race with Steve King, perhaps. Pennsylvania. Aftab. Watching Pennsylvania is going to be, I think, emotionally important just because we got to remind ourselves that we know how to win in Pennsylvania. Right. Yeah. Aftab Perville in Ohio. Lauren Underwood in Illinois.

Lucy McBath in georgia lauren bear in florida there's a lot of names that i will not list off yeah but one of the best parts of the job is getting to actually speak to these people face to face and realizing how impressive the slate of democrats is um last any democrats you hope lose well wait no there are there are none because every i don't care how bad of a candidate you are we need every democrat elected possible right now disagree this is a national it is a national emergency when we go back to having regular republicans that beat us we can talk about that final question what's making us nervous and what's making us hopeful in these in this final day

let's start with nervous and then we'll end on a high note for everyone i think genetics uh everything i am motion i am nervous that the caravan stuff has gotten the level of coverage that it's gotten that we have learned nothing from 2016 that that donald trump has found yet another issue that he can harp on that he can get the press coverage he wants around and that even that that we will look back on it as having swamped the political coverage in a way that pushed out things like health care and tax cuts and all the rest. That makes me very, very nervous. Yeah. I go back to sort of structural realities.

I worry about, you know, when the results started coming in in 2016, When the results started coming in in 2016, there was a surge of Trump voters in a lot of ex-urban, far-flung suburban counties that we hadn't seen before that no one expected. And I wonder when you look at all the polls now and it says that Trump's consolidated the base and Republicans are almost as excited as Democrats to turn out. It's just, this is, it's not only an election where, oh, Republicans might stay home. It's an election where Republicans are going to turn out. And the only question is, does our turnout beat their turnout? And also, if this was a presidential year, it would be different. Midterms, traditionally, Republicans have better turnout in midterms. For us to win this midterm again, we have to change the electorate by bringing in new voters

who have not voted in a long time. And that's going to heavily depend on young people turning out, Latinos turning out, and suburban women who've been crushing it. Yeah, I mean, I worry about the zero-sum nature of politics where winning and losing is everything, coupled with the structural challenges we face going into this year with how hard it is to win the house or do all the things we want to do. Uh, plus the fact that a six point margin or a seven point margin is all the difference in the world. And there's all these young people who are getting involved in politics for the first time. It's all these new voters who are turning out. And I want those people to feel like their participation really did matter because it did. And just because, you know, there was a smaller, smaller turnout than we needed, doesn't mean that we were fully rebuked as a party or ideas

were rebuked. We have to keep fighting. We have to wake up on Wednesday morning, unfortunately, and do it again. We got to run it back. What's, what's, uh, what's making us hopeful? Great candidates fighting their asses off. I mean, truly, this slate of candidates is unbelievable. I was going to say the same thing. I have never seen a field of candidates so inspiring than I have in 2018. And that goes from the very top races in the Senate to people running for state legislature that we've met. Yeah. I mean, and, you know, kudos to run for something and to all the groups that have been helping recruit these candidates. Indivisible, swing, left, left. Those people did amazing work.

Yeah. I mean, I've never seen a slate of candidates. I'm so proud to be a Democrat because of the candidates we're running. Me too. And that makes me hopeful. And the energy. We were all canvassing yesterday. Love it. You were with Katie Hill. We were with Harley Ruda. love it. You're with Katie Hill. We were with, uh, Harley Ruda and it's just the passion and the energy. And it like, you know, we met someone in, uh, who was canvassing for Harley Ruda who was like, Oh yeah, I was just canvassing for Katie Porter. And I decided to do that in the morning and then drive all the way up to the other County and do this in the afternoon. She did the LA like ski and surf thing, but for canvassing. Right. It is, you know, it's funny. It's like the enthusiasm and the energy is both what it is, what makes me hopeful. It is also nervous and nervous because we have done more in a midterm than we, than we ever have before. I think there's a lot of people

participating in a midterm and paying attention to a midterm in a way they haven't before. And that's really exciting. And I do, I see all that energy and I see that all enthusiasm. And I think, God, I hope, I hope you feel, I hope it's enough. I hope it's enough because the thing that makes me most nervous is waking up the next day and all these people feeling, but we did everything we could and it wasn't enough. And I, and I do think we did everything we could. I think every, you know, every person who has participated in this election, many of them who've never participated in an election before have worked their asses off and they have believed you know yeah no it's it's no but like it's i i'm glad we're talking about this today i

i just what's gonna happen tomorrow is this has been a really shit A shit show. It's a shit show. And it's been a really, really long two years. And we need a fucking win. We need it. And we've talked about just how Herculean the task is. We've talked about just how important it is, not just because winning the house means we can stop what Trump does,

but the power that comes along with it. But more than that, it's a moral victory and a psychological victory that I think a lot of people listening to this feel like they need. And I know that going into Tuesday, you feel like you need it. And it's so hard to say this now before it happens. But because it really is 50-50, we need to go into this with eyes open. And knowing that we have done everything we can, it truly may not be enough.

But if it is, it will be because we all did our part. it truly may not be enough, but if it is, it will be because we all did our part. And if it isn't, it will be because it turns out that things were even worse and even harder and, uh, and further gone than we realized. And it just means we'll have to do that much more. And that's all there is to it. And I also, I'm hopeful because I have sensed a slight shift in the mindset of democratic activists and organizers. And that that is it is not just about and and the media would say otherwise but this has not just been about we must stop trump no this is and because of candidates like beto o'rourke and stacy abrams and andrew gillum and a lot of these uh congressional candidates all over the country a lot of these gubernatorial candidates

who are talking about a vision for the country that is bigger than Donald Trump, a type of politics that is better than what Donald Trump has given us. People are voting for something. They are knocking on doors and inspired and out there because they believe in something, not because they just want to stop Trump. And I think that that energy is more powerful than the negative energy just to stop something bad from happening. And that makes me hopeful. Okay. Well, we will talk to you all Tuesday evening here in the studio. If you need me, I'm going to go throw my laptop into a fucking volcano and hide from the noose. I'll be refreshing Twitter every five seconds.

From now, it's 11 a.m. Monday. And from now until the first results come in, I feel like I'm back on a campaign, even though we're not on campaigns. All you do is you just text your... You hearing anything? You hear anything? What do you know? What do you know? Any numbers?

You got any numbers for me? Everyone I've ever worked with in politics is now on a group text. There really is nothing left to say. Nothing. We have spent two years trying to convince people to go to the Olive Garden instead of a restaurant where they poison you. Don't pay their staff. And the owner is a racist. And, you know, the Olive Garden isn't perfect.

All right. You wish it was more consistent. But you know what? When you're there, you're family. Awesome. End it there. The Olive Garden election. All right.

When we come back, we will have our interview with Texas congressional candidate Colin Allwright. the midterm elections. And today for our final candidate segment, we're going to hear from someone who's coming to politics after two careers. One is a civil rights attorney and the other is a linebacker in the NFL. From the NFL to Congress. Colin Allred, Pete Session race is attracting national headlines because Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump in this district. A New York Times poll last month said he was just one point behind Sessions. I've seen some incredible energy here on the ground. The state of Texas increasingly is turning blue. Colin Allred is the Democratic congressional nominee for Texas's 32nd district. He's running against Republican incumbent Pete Sessions. It is a district that encompasses the northern and eastern parts of Dallas and some of

the suburbs that are north and northeast of Dallas like Richardson and Garland and Wiley and Sachse. I was born and raised here in this district by a single mother who was a public school teacher. My mom taught in Texas public schools for 27 years, and we don't pay our teachers enough, so growing up it wasn't always easy. Colin's dad wasn't around, but he doesn't focus on that. You know, my story is about the mom who was there, and it's not so much about the's dad wasn't around, but he doesn't focus on that. You know, my story is about the mom who was there, and it's not so much about the father who wasn't. And, you know, my mom worked extremely hard, sometimes two jobs. And we see that teachers across the country are having to make

these choices about working multiple jobs. And, you know, when you're doing that, and you're being raised by a single mother, you rely on the community more. And it's that community, not just his district, but the whole state of Texas, that Colin wants to serve. I am a fourth-generation Texan, and so I think I have a little bit of an understanding about it. The Texas that I know believes in something larger than ourselves, believes that we're better when we invest in each other, when we give each other a chance. It's always been a diverse state with lots of different types of folks here, people who came from different backgrounds, maybe came here on different ships, but I believe that we're in the same boat now and that we need to be pulling in the same direction. And that's the Texas that I know, that's the Texas that I love, and that's the Texas that I want to represent. One of the reasons Colin loves Texas is the time he spent in college

and playing linebacker at Baylor University. Well, football for me has always been a means to an end, but also something that taught me, I think, really important values. I wanted to play to pay for my college in college at Baylor, and then when I pursued my NFL career, my goal initially was to play long enough to pay for my college in college at Baylor. And then when I pursued my NFL career, my goal initially was to play long enough to pay for my law school. For me, my football career was actually the surprise. My goal was to go to law school.

I applied to law schools during my senior year at Baylor, and I expected to be going to one of them the year after I finished playing. And I started getting approached by agents who wanted to represent me and who basically convinced me that I was going to have a chance at having an NFL career. And so then I decided to give it a shot and see what happened, knowing that I'd gotten into Cal, that I'd deferred my admission, and that that was something that I was going to do whenever my career was over. Collin came into the league as an undrafted free agent, but got signed and played for five years.

His career ended abruptly after he suffered a neck injury during a game against the Cowboys. When I had that injury and I was lying on the turf in Dallas, I remember thinking, you know, I'm just so ready to go to law school. But Collin got a lot from his years on the gridiron, much more than just tuition money. One of the things that I've always loved about football and football locker rooms is that you would be surprised, you know, who is best friends on a football team and who gets along. It brings together people from all different backgrounds, people who maybe come from the inner city, maybe from, you know, more rural areas. And when you throw us all together, what we end up finding out is how much we have in common instead of how different we are. Colin brought that sensibility to law school, where he planned to focus on civil rights.

At Berkeley, Colin found his passion. What appealed to me most was voting rights, because I found it to be sort of the source of all of our other rights. And I knew that there was a lot going on in Texas to make it harder for people to vote, and so that became my focus. After the 2010 census, the Texas legislature met and passed a series of even more restrictive laws than we had in place previously, beginning with a voter ID law that placed severe limits on the numbers and types of IDs that you could use to vote in person in Texas. That's one way that the people in charge make bad laws to help themselves stay in power,

by setting unconscionably strict requirements. And we have a lot of people here who did not meet those requirements, and I worked with a lot of them on the ground here. And as somebody who believes in our state, who grew up going to schools that were extremely diverse, that believes that we need to have more people engaged in our democracy and that Texas can do a lot better than being dead last or next to last in voter turnout, I knew I wanted to get involved in voting, make sure that no matter who you were going to vote for, that you were able to cast your ballot, that you were able to make your voice heard. And I still think that is the main struggle that we face in this country.

We need to expand our democracy. We need to make it easier for people to get engaged, make it easier for them to be involved. That will produce for us a more representative government, a government that I think is more responsive and more accountable to the people who it's supposed to be representing. After graduating, one of Collins' jobs was in voting rights litigation. He worked on cases against states that are illegally restricting the right to vote. One of the biggest cases that I worked on was in Wisconsin, where we have seen a lot of laws passed that made it very difficult for folks to vote, from a voter ID law to restrictions on voter registration to limiting polling place locations and hours in early voting locations.

There really was a comprehensive effort underway in Wisconsin to make it harder for folks to vote. And, you know, we saw in this last election that Wisconsin was extremely close. And I think that we have to understand the role that voter suppression and that the laws that are in place play in restricting the turnout, restricting who turns out, and in changing really the course of elections. And I don't think that that's in anyone's interest. I think that we as a country should be able to have a contest of ideas, that if you get more votes and you convince more people, then your ideas win out.

But if you don't, then you should have to change them to match what the majority of folks want and to try and make sure that we have a representative democracy that actually does represent the people. I'm running here in my hometown where I was born and raised and where I believe my life was made possible by the people in this community and the investments that they made in me. And I want to give back to that community. And that's a different motivation maybe than just wanting to go to Washington

to gum up the works or to try and pass a certain ideology. I want to do what's best for North Texans. Things that will throw open the shutters, so to speak, and let the light shine in and let people understand and know more about their democracy and have a greater faith in it. Another issue that's very personal to Colin is affordable health care. My grandmother moved in with my mom when I was young because she had Alzheimer's and I saw kind of the day-to-day struggles that go into having to nurse a family member and having to rely on the health care system so directly.

My mother is also a breast cancer survivor, and this is something that everywhere I go here in North Texas, people talk to me about it, and it's the number one issue by far, that people are concerned about their health care. They're concerned that it's become a political football because things like having a preexisting condition, which having breast cancer is a preexisting condition, really is not political. Collins trying to unseat Pete Sessions, a longtime Republican incumbent. There comes a point when every congressman needs to head home.

In Washington, Pete Sessions has taken... I'm a former NFL player turned civil rights lawyer who's running here in my hometown to represent the people who I believe so much in and who gave me a chance to live the life that I've led. Unlike his opponent, Collins not setting himself up to be accountable to special interests. And I don't take any corporate PAC money, I believe. And I made that commitment because I want to make sure people know that no one has their hooks in me, that I'm going to be representing them, and that there's no one else who's going to be trying to tell me what I'm doing. Instead, Collins' grassroots approach is bringing a personal touch to his campaign. Well, I believe that the most effective tool in our democracy is still a neighbor talking to a neighbor. And from the very beginning of this campaign, we have invested in a grassroots movement that I think has allowed us to do something that is extremely special here in North Texas and that I think is almost unprecedented here in our area.

We have had hundreds and hundreds of volunteers who have knocked on well over 150,000 doors, who have made many more phone calls than that. People who bring their kids in little red wagons to go block walk. People who strap their babies to their chests and go talk to their neighbors. It's inspiring. To me, it's the way our democracy should work. I think it's the most effective tool we have, and especially with voters who maybe don't always vote in a midterm or who have checked out because they feel like it doesn't matter or that their vote doesn't count. I think it's really important here in Texas that we take our campaigns to them, that we go to those voters, that we show up at their doors. I show up at their doors. I've done

dozens and dozens of town hall events that we call Coffee with Colin, where I'll go to a coffee shop and speak for a little while and then take questions for as long as people have questions. I want to be as accessible as possible in this campaign and use that as a model for how I'll be in Congress. And I think that's the best way to get more people engaged. I think that's the fundamental aspect of our democracy that we have gotten away from a bit. And I think that's what we have to work on restoring in these coming elections. That was Colin Allred, the Democratic nominee for Texas' 32nd Congressional District. You can learn more about him and other exciting candidates and competitive races near you

at votesaveamerica.com. You can even see a sample ballot so that you're ready to vote on election day. Thanks to Colin Allred. Thanks to all of you. Everyone, 24 hours left left do everything you can that you haven't done yet phone calls get people to the polls get your friends to vote who are lazy and might not vote every time someone asks you what's gonna happen go to swing left and do some fucking phone banking or something yeah just tell your friends about yeah especially your lazy

friends yeah get those lazy friends especially the ones who are like, what? I thought only presidential elections are important. No, wrong, 2018. Midterm elections are everything. You've got lazy friends. You know those lazy friends of yours sitting on their couch with their edible gummy bears and their video games. Bye, everyone.