The Adam Mockler Show - WE JUST WON BIG!

Episode Date: March 18, 2026

Click below for premium Adam Mockler content 👉 https://www.youtube.com/@adammockler/join 👉 https://adammockler.com/subscribe Adam Mockler breaks down JOIN THE COMMUNITY: Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AdamMockler/ Discord: https://discord.gg/y9yzMU3Gff Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adammockler/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/adammockler.com/ Twitter: https://x.com/adammocklerr/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@adammockler Contact: [e-mail] Business inquiries: [e-mail] Adam Mockler - Mockler Media LLC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything. Like packing a spare stick. I like to be prepared. That's why I remember, 988, Canada's suicide crisis helpline. It's good to know, just in case. Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a train responder anytime. 988 suicide crisis helpline is funded by the government in Canada. I think we're officially live, so let's go ahead and dive in.

Welcome to another episode of Endless Urgency. I'm here with my good friend and fellow. Illinois Democrat Adam Mockler. We're going to dive in to the elections in Illinois yesterday because I think both Adam and I were talking about this before. We're both tired, but we're tired for a good reason because we were up late last night. Adam was at Julianne Stratton's party where she had a massive upset victory over Raja Christian Morthy. I was at Daniel Biss's party last night because I worked with Daniel Biss in the Illinois Nine race. So we want to dive into A PAC, Stratton's victory, Illinois 9, what this means for the Democratic Party and really just dive into that stuff. While people are

joining, do me a favor. Hit that like button. Some more people get a chance to see this on Substack. It makes a big difference. Make sure you subscribe to Adam. If you're new to me, make sure you subscribe to me, both on Substack and on YouTube. And then tell us where you're watching this from. Tell us where your reactions are. We'll do our best to try to track what you guys are saying and react to them. So Adam, I'm going to hand the mic over to you because you were at the Stratton party last night. Like walk us through, like how you're feeling right now. Well, Mike, today is a great day for the Democratic Party, a great day for America and an awful day for A-PAC, an awful day for the special interest groups that have been plaguing American

politics for decades and decades and decades. And Illinois just showed up and showed out. We're going to break down all of the Illinois races. Okay, not all of the Illinois races. We're going to break down some of the big Illinois races throughout this video. And last night, I was at the Stratton Party, as you said. You were at the Bist Party. I think we're both a little bit tired. I look visibly tired right now. We were up late. I had won too many vodka lemonadees, but that is what you do when you're celebrating a victory on St. Patrick's Day, a victory for America. Mockler Media was riding really hard behind Giuliana Stratton this entire time. And it's so nice to see this victory over Raja Krishnamorthy, who was a representative in Illinois,

who has a lot of criticisms of his own, but they ran good campaigns and now we're on the other side. I guess I want to start this off by saying that the voters in Illinois are a good indicator of where the Democratic Party wants to go. We want to push back against the special interest groups. We want to have an affirmative message on how we can beat Trump, beat Republicans, but also build something of our own. And I think most of all, it's about rejecting these insidious groups. I saw this interesting conversation with David Hogg,

where David Hogg pointed out that APAC in particular, and I want to talk about APAC with you as well. A PAC is disliked by about 65% of Democrats. Democrats, but it doesn't actually change people's vote. I found that to be incredibly interesting. So when you poll Democrats, I think they did the poll in Illinois, David Hogg was saying that Democrats overwhelmingly hate APEC. They do not like APEC. But then you ask them, is this a decisive factor in your vote if somebody is funded by them? They say no. So while people are pushing back against this, the real issue that people had at the top of their list was affordability and corruption,

stuff like that. We saw a Democratic candidate show up for affordability against corruption. I think that's huge. Yeah, and I mean, I think, look, I think APEC is not a deciding factor relative to somebody's vote, but APEC also understands that and is very savvy. If you watch what they did here in Illinois, right now, if you go look on X, like their Twitter account is claiming that the candidates that they did elect elect yesterday, proves that, you know, the Democratic Party is pro-Israel and pro-war and all this other stuff is really silly. But the ads that they ran, they repackaged themselves and created super PACs called like Elect Chicago Women and stuff like that. And then they ran aggressive attack ads on other issues, on affordability, on ice, on opposition research that they want. And what they're doing is, and look, you can feel however you want about Israel, you can feel

whatever you want about the war in Iran. I am, you know, anti-Bibin-Yahu. I am anti-this-illegal war. I am anti-the-abuse of our campaign finance loss. And that's ultimately the problem here, is that we have A PAC abusing our finance laws, manipulating the system by creating these super PACs and then attacking good, qualified candidates. And in the Illinois Nine race, I was at the Daniel Bis party last night. And part of the reason I'm a little haggard right now is because I had won too many beers,

myself celebrating a win. I told Adam, off stream, it's been a long time since I've been in person for a victory for one of my clients. It was really nice to just kind of see that and get to be a part of that energy because there were a couple hundred people at this really cool bar that we were at. But they spent a million and a half dollars attacking Daniel Bis. From an organization that never said anything about Israel, never said anything about Iran, never said anything about APEC. They did the same thing to the person who finished in second, which is Cat Abu Ghazala.

And by the way, I like Cat a lot. I know that the internet wants to tell you that you got to either pick Daniel Viss or Cat or you got to pick another candidate in the race. I liked all of them. I thought there were a lot of really great candidates in that race. And the voters of Illinois 9 had a tough decision to make. And they chose Daniel, mostly because Daniel's been around for a long time and done the work. But they have, Apex just been abusing our campaign finance lesson.

It's why we have to overturn Citizens United. We have to ban super PACs. We have to bring real transparency. and we've got to get all this dirty money out of our politics. Because, by the way, it's also not just APEC. Crypto spent an incredible amount of money through their super PAC called Fair Shake. There are AI super PACs, AI PACs, which is a little bit of a misnomer, AI, APEC at that point. But these AI companies are spending so much money, and this has got to stop.

And what they're trying to do is rig the system so that there's never any accountability for this illegal war or these AI data centers or crypto just scamming the American people. Yep, exactly. And let's go through some top-level results, because I want to read all. what the New York Times has up the morning after this Illinois race. Giuliana Stratton, the lieutenant governor of Illinois, beat Raja Krishnamorthy, was a representative by almost 100,000 votes, even though she got out fundraised by like, what was like 10 to 1. Raja Krishnamorthi had $20 to $30 million to spend.

He was all over every TV in the state of Illinois, and Juliana Stratton was still able to prevail a great day for fighters in the Democratic Party. we have Don Tracy who won in, let me see, this is the, oh, that's the GOP primary. Never mind about that. Nobody cares about that. I was for a minute, I was like, Don Tracy. I don't know who that is. Yeah, I was trying to think I was like, which one is it?

Then I realized why it's all red. I just want people to know that neither Adam or I could name a single Illinois Republican. There are none as far as I know. We have Illinois District 9, which we were just talking about. So there was Daniel Biss, who is the current mayor of Evanston. He taught at the University of Chicago. and Mayor Daniel Bis has lived and worked in Chicago for a few decades. Now, this race was interesting because Kat Abu Ghazale then entered the fold.

She is a journalist who worked at Media Matters. She's very respected in this space and respected online. And it was an interesting thing to watch because I was just kind of trying to figure out how much of this hype and momentum will translate into the actual voting booth on the day of the election. You oftentimes see candidates hyped up online. You're wondering how much will this translate. I saw that Kat was gaining a lot of momentum. running an amazing, amazing campaign.

Like, genuinely, she should be very proud of what she built. Yes. I think that a lot of people online today are having this battle over, oh, was she too far left? Was she not far left? Was she not far left enough? Should she have been more moderate? It's really not even about her ideology. Her and Daniel Biss aren't even that many degrees of separation on ideology.

You pointed it out very perfectly earlier from my friends that I've talked to in Illinois District 9, and this is not a criticism of Kat personally. Nobody should take it that way. It's just the fact that she didn't have enough time to build credibility and trust in the district since she moved to Chicago, I believe a year and a half ago, maybe two years ago. I don't want to misrepresented, but I've lived in Chicago for about two and a half, three years,

and I've lived here longer. And I think that when I talk to my friends in Illinois, District 9, they would say like, dude, I just want to pick somebody who can, you know, reliably represent this district. And I think Kat could have absolutely done that, but I think Daniel Bis had the proof of concept of being someone who's in power in that district.

And that's a very, very real thing. You know, I think people online are trying, I see people who are running their Twitter accounts out of New York or out of California who are saying that Illinois District 9 made a mistake. They were saying, if I were in Illinois, I would have voted like this. And it's like, well, you're not. You live in New York. You live in California. And you don't understand with the on the ground feeling of people who might want a candidate that they've met before. I mean, this ran for governor in the 2018 against J.B. Britsker.

I mean, he's been around for a while, shaking people's hands. So I don't want people to be taken away from this race that like, oh, we can't be this progressive, we can't do things in this way. No, that Abu broke a lot of ground in campaign methods and campaign strategy. I think it's worth talking about how she ran her campaign because she did break some of the norms.

Yeah. She was doing, like basically running a charity center out of her, out of her food drive, out of her campaign center. She was giving resources back to the community. It was a solid race to continue. Sorry, not trying to yap on. for too long. Can I know? Can I jump in there though on Cat for a second? Because like one, again,

we're told that we have to pick one and we have to hate the other, which I absolutely despise in Democratic politics. And to your point, there's a creator class at this point. I think we have to admit that that exists. You and I are members of that creator class that are out there trying to explain to people what's going on. Some folks are getting paid, but we saw this in the Texas primary where there were a lot of people who were backing Jasmine Crockett. There were a lot of people who were backing James Tala Rico. They were both good Democrats. They were both good candidates, but then we're told we have to hate the other one. And I'm really tired of that stuff because I was skeptical of Kat when she got into the race.

I'll admit that. Like she's sort of in my view, swooped in, started running for Congress, had a lot of like internet support and stuff like that. But the campaign that she built and what she accomplished yesterday, incredibly impressive. And now what you find is people online are trying to bury Kat by saying she was too far left or she didn't run a real campaign.

Kat got 20-something percent in a district she just moved to in her very first race. If she sticks with this and keeps running for office and keeps investing in the community, she's going to do very, very well. And I'm so annoyed at this because remember when Deja Fox ran for Congress in Arizona in that special election. Deja was a first time candidate. Deja used to work was on my team on Kamala Harris' was 20, 2021, no, 2020 presidential campaign. And I like Deja a lot. Deja got 37% of the vote.

Now she wasn't close to winning, but a first time candidate running against an entrenched essential incumbent in Adelaide Grijalva, who I also like, who was the daughter of Rahulgahalva, like people were like, well, Deja Fox is terrible, she should never run again. That's what they're doing to cat right now. Stop burying people when they don't win their first race. Give them an opportunity to grow. Kat's 26 years old.

Look at what she's accomplished. Look at what you've accomplished at 23. Yeah. Am I right about that? Yeah. Look at what you've accomplished. Like stop burying people. Give them a chance to grow and get better

and build their relationships in the community. And if Kat does that, she's going to have an opportunity to run again and be a leader for Evanston in Illinois 9. wherever she ends up popping up. Yeah. Barack Obama lost his first ever race in 2000 to Bobby Rush. Well, his first ever,

federal race, because I think he was a state senator. Okay, his first ever federal race. Yeah, yeah, he lost for Congress. And look what he ended up doing. Right. Or John Ossoff, Adam. Like, John Ossoff ran for a special election for Georgia in a house race,

got creamed. A lot of people online buried him. Now he's a presidential contender, in my opinion, when he wins this, is a reelection act this year. Yeah, I think there's also a really good conversation to be had around the Giuliana Stratton race, which we touched on a little bit. But this one was a great, great feeling last night because a lot of the polling markets had Raja slightly ahead. A lot of the people that I was talking to said, listen, like Raja's poured $20 to $30 million

into this race. You know how it works. Money trumps all in politics. And I held that hope. I saw the Strattonementum that we saw over the past few weeks where she's gaining ground in the polls. Julianna Stratton was doing great. And then finally, last night, we start getting the results. And Julianna Stratton spikes up to like 90% on the prediction markets. Yes, I was watching the prediction markets because they were good, they're a good real-time indicator of how people are feeling, right? You just got to know how to index on them or ignore them in certain times.

And I went, oh, my Lord, it was such an exciting moment. A friend of the show, Chris Maury, who you know lives in Chicago, he has been a huge, huge, huge Juliana Stratton advocate showing up to a bunch of her rallies, working closely with the campaign. So it was a big win for Machlear Media, a big win for Chicago, a big win for America, and a big loss, again, for those special interest groups. We currently live in a political system where politicians are fallen victim to the same sort of personal incentives that a lot of people do in the daily economy that ruins their lives. Basically, there's a structural framework where if you apply the incentives that people have in their daily lives, which is self-interest. I want my family to be happy.

I want to be happy and I want to be safe. We apply this to the average American citizen, right? The average person participate in the economy, but we don't apply it to politicians. We expect them to be perfectly rational, but they are just as self-interested as everybody else, just as self-interested as me. They want their family to be happy.

They want their family to be safe. And the reason the way they express that self-interest is by repeatedly getting re-elected and re-elected and re-elected. They become addicted to the re-election. They become addicted to the money that comes in and helps them get reelected. So due to the natural human incentives that are created, people in Congress will fall victim,

not even fall victim, they will begin to gravitate towards just taking in a bunch of money. Not going to lie, that's Raja Krishnamorty to a T. This guy took in a bunch of money from anybody who would even look his way. He wouldn't even turn any money down because he's falling victim to the same incentives that other people do. And due to that, it's been ruining our political system. So it's nice to see some fighters who can get in there and say,

we're going to rewire the way this works so that Citizens United so that all of these dark money packs aren't able to take advantage of the self-interested incentive that most Americans have. Yeah, I mean, so I've done work for Raja in the past, and I've worked for lots of members of Congress. I don't think Rasha's a bad guy or anything. I had to find time when I worked for him, but if you talk to the average member of Congress, the number one complaint that they have is that how much time they have to spend in a cold, dark room calling people and begging them for money. It's the worst part about running for office by far. And I have a neighbor that just ran and he had to raise a bunch of money for a judge race.

And it's an absolute disaster to do it. Raja actually likes doing stuff like that. And that to me is a gigantic red flag. If you like calling rich people and begging them for money, I have some questions about your site a little bit. And Raja had, what, $30 million to spend. He's been running TV ads since the middle of last year. They've all been focused on, you know, just repeating his name over and over and over again. But not in my view offering a good deal of substance.

And then you compare that to Julianne Stratton's campaign, which has been much more substantially focused on ICE, calling out for the next generation. She refused to endorse Schumer as leader. I think that's a big thing that you're seeing playing out in primaries right now. Same on the House side with the Kim. She tapped into the frustration that people have with Democratic leadership right now in a really smart and savvy way. And I want to add one more thing that also ties back into Illinois 9 because you mentioned all these people who don't live here, who don't know anything about the district, coming in with their hot takes. You got politicians that do that too, right? So politicians

who are going to swoop in and they're going to make their endorsements. And if you look at it, guys like, and I'm not attacking anybody, but like, you know, Rokana made a bunch of endorsements. I don't think a single one of his candidates won. I think Bernie lost all of his candidates. I think Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tiliu lost all their candidates. But you know who did really well yesterday? Elizabeth Warren. Elizabeth Warren endorsed Julianne Stratton. Elizabeth Warren endorsed Julianne. Elizabeth Warren endorsed Daniel Bis. She knew who the people were and who people were resonating with locally. They took the time to do that. And if you are somebody in Washington that wants to build progressive power, that wants to have more allies for your causes in Washington, you've got to understand what's happening on the ground and not just be endorsing the person who's going to get you the most energy online so that you can get a quick sugar high when you're trying to build up your social media following.

And I think that's the mistake that like I've had Roe con on my show before. And I've told him this to his face. I like Roe. I'm not attacking him. But like sometimes Roe will dive right into what's the most internet thing I can do to get attention. And I'm like, why don't you try to build some sustainability? power because Warren is very influential in the Democratic caucus in the House and the Senate. It's because of the way she handles her endorsement process, which is really smart and really savvy.

And now she's got another ally in the Senate and another ally in the House heading their way in November. Very true. That's a very good point. I was at Giuliana Stratton rally about three or four days ago. And Elizabeth Warren showed up, had a lot of energy for the crowd, hyped everybody up. And I want to talk about that event for a second, actually, because that one energized me, too. It was nice to see a bunch of like-minded young progressives in one room.

And by young, I mean relative to our current politicians in power. So when I was in that room, I think we talked about this. I saw a bunch of progressive people age 20 to 50. In my mind, this is the next generation of leadership in the Democratic Party, which sounds kind of weird, right? Like currently the leadership is 55, 60, 70. I see this young room full of people who are very energized who are all clearly very, very very concentrated, locked in, educated, intelligence.

And it just energized me a lot. It was really nice to see that people are showing up. They're activated in the city of Chicago. And look at what happened yesterday. Again, I've said this a few times, but just a big win for America, a big win for the Democratic Party. What I really love is that we have the opportunity every single day to push the party in the country in the right direction.

And this was the proof of that. We've been talking about this race. We've been talking about these candidates. It's, I mean, Juliana Stratton's website, I've shown on my channel a few times. I want to read what she ran on so we know what is popular and what beats people like Raja. It says, fighting for Illinois' working families. That is just the big headline. Give the people what they want, which is one of her tags.

Give them what they want. Giuliana knows that working families need government to be a partner, not a roadblock. I kind of like that. That's really good. Not a roadblock to getting what you want, but a partner. She ran on making life more affordable, creating and expanding economic opportunities, protecting rights, rejecting all corporate pack money, fighting for $25 minimum wage,

securing Medicare for all. These are real policies that can excite people. These are real policies beyond just, hey, we're not Donald Trump, we're better than the other side. This is genuinely like, hey, we're going to help you. We're going to push your life in the right direction, increase, improve your quality of life.

And that's what Democrats seem to be running on. Also, she's just a pretty badass candidate, like a powerhouse. I really, really do love the, when she's on stage, just like very much. so powerful powerhouse vibes Julianna's drive them.

Yeah, I mean, I think I think Julianna is a badass. And I, you know, I had a conflict in the race so I couldn't get involved in it as a consultant the way that I wanted to. But, you know, she's an impressive human being. I've met her several times. I think she's going to be a really great senator.

And again, to the point of, if you log online right now, there's a lot of people, both on the left and on the right, they're talking about how this is a bad day for America that a lot of APEC candidates won. And I want to be clear, there are a lot of candidates that got endorsed by APEC

or crypto or AI that did win their, primaries. I want to be clear about that. It wasn't like the clearest victory. But these are two tremendous victories because APEC in particular spent so much money against Julianne Estrada, they spent so much money against Daniel Biss. They spent so much money against some of the other candidates in there. There is a model here for how to take back our democracy from these corporate special interests. And I think the phrase you just used from Stratton's website is the answer, give the people what they want, but also give the people what they need. That's what populism should be in the Democratic Party. it should be putting together a series of policy positions that are going to make a direct

and immediate impact on people's life. It's got to be taking on corruption in Washington. It's got to be making people feel that impact every day and not doing what Democrats do all the time, which is coming up with some complicated 50-step plan that we can't explain to people where you file a form and you get a $50 tax rebate. Like getting to that point where you kind of take what Trump does on a very effective level, which is very visceral messaging and very quick and immediate action. He does it to steal from people and to hurt people that we love. Let's do it to help people.

And I think Julian Estrada and Daniel Biss and some of these other candidates we elected yesterday are going to be a big part of that solution in Washington. Absolutely. And I really like the wording you use as well when you said, this is a framework, a structure, a roadmap to take back our party from special interests. That is exactly what we saw in Illinois district. Sorry, not Illinois. In Illinois state Senate race yesterday, it was so incredibly beautiful to witness that.

And yeah, I think that's a good place. to leave it. We should continue to update on the elections as the general gets closer. And in 2008, man, we're going to be having some crazy conversations. The 28 battle is going to be intense. If people thought that this one was wild, people online bickering and fighting and calling each other names or whatever, if people thought the Texas primary was wild, just wait until it's 2028. And every faction along the left has split up into their ideological lines. And then we have bad faith actors on the right trying to provoke us into all fighting. And then there's going to be online algorithms which only stir up the most hateful of the fighting, even though most of us agree on like 98% of things.

There's going to be far left people who are at liberals next. Liberals who are at far left as people's next. It's going to be a huge, huge fight. And it'll make us stronger. I'm excited for it. Afterwards, we're going to come out with a candidate who has been stress tested, asked every single hard question in the book. And they're going to be unshakable. That's what we need in the Democratic Party. Yeah, I'm excited for it.

Thank you, Mike. I agree. We give me one final word, which is I'm old enough to remember because I dropped out of college to work for Barack Obama in 2007. That's what 2007 was like. But it's going to be this on steroids. Because what you said, social media, AI, we're going to have probably twice as many candidates. The ecosystem is so different. We have content creators. But we're going to go have a big, messy fight in the Democratic primary in 2027 and 28. And we will be stronger for it. We will cultivate more talent. We will develop a candidate that is ready to go and take on JD Van. or Marco Rubio or whatever clown they put forward. That's a good thing. And I look forward to a, but let's remember, and I think I say this to the people who are watching this now. Let's remember, we don't have to hate each other in that primer. We can disagree, we can fight, we can get in each other's faces.

We don't have to hate each other because at the end of the day, we're on the same side. And that's the side of trying to improve people's lives, not steal from them like Donald Trump does. Very well said. And if you want to be here for this fight, make sure you subscribe to both the Mike Nellis feed and the Adam Ackler feed, whether you're watching this on, Substack, YouTube, Facebook, wherever you are, we are. pumping out content every single day, making sure that we push the country, push the party in the right direction, that we at the very least are able to push back against the MAGA stream

of BS that is happening all the time. Right now, Caroline Levitt is speaking on the White House front lawn. And guess who the first people that are going to be, that are going to debunk her are, Mike and I. Mike and I are going to be there within the next few hours, debunking the hell out of Caroline Levitt. If you want to see that and more debates, subscribe below. Great chat, Mike. We'll do it again soon. Thanks, buddy. Talk soon. Get some rest today. Okay. He was low.

He was well.