The Bulwark Podcast - Dave Weigel: Polls Wrong, Hong Gone

Episode Date: August 12, 2026

Democratic primary voters in Wisconsin didn’t really care much for how hard Republicans were working to try to make democratic socialist Francesca Hong the Dems' nominee for governor. That whole strategy helped draw last night’s primary winner, David Crowley, back into the race three weeks ago. Maybe there is not a secret socialist vote in rural America, after all. Plus: the fallout from ICE on key Minnesota races, the Dems are still going to war against their gerontocracy, Nate Silver has some very encouraging polls, and Fetterman could use a Democratic friend. And Tim asks The Bulwark community to help a family of legal immigrants who are currently being held in one of the country’s new internment camps. Dave Weigel joins Tim Miller.show notes: Dave's "Americana" newsletter Letter from legal permanent resident, Maryam Tahmasebi, in The Nation Tim's recent interview with Jonathan Blitzer on our new internment camps Mailbag email Exclusive $35-off Carver Mat, Aspen, and Walden frames at https://on.auraframes.com/BULWARK. Promo Code THEBULWARK

Welcome to the Bullwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I'm coming at you from the occupied capital of our nation. Went past DuPont Circle this morning. Four National Guard troops, a tank, what that is for, what the threat is. It is unclear. It is just a little bit of fascism theater for you from the Trump regime. We have a great guest coming for you today. We're going to talk a little bit about politics. Tomorrow, since I'm in D.C., we're going to have one of my Bullwark colleagues. I might bring the mail bag back tomorrow. You know, it's August, have a little fun. You can email us Bullwork Podcast at the Bullwark.com. A couple notes about the mailbag. Fun questions I like. Life advice questions, I like. Short questions are great. Very long notes about your feelings about the world. Those are appreciated and we do our best to get to them, but they're probably not going to make the cut for the

mailbag. So if you do want to make it in, keep it tight. have a little fun with it and I think we'll have fun tomorrow and I think that's important because we've got a lot of serious stuff that I want to cover as well and I want to get to it before we get to Dave because I think Dave and I are really going to

just sort of nerd out on politics good news for the Democrats from the Nate Silver, the opening Nate Silver predictions for the House and Senate. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about the Wisconsin race but there were two stories yesterday on the immigration beat that really

struck me and I didn't want to give them short shrift. So I just wanted to talk about them here up top. The first story came out of Virginia. It was flagged by Congressman Don Byers' office. Don Byer is just doing really an excellent job. I think a really underrated congressman in Virginia

and they got this video of a woman having a gun pulled on her during a traffic stop by four mass Gestapo. I'm going to play the video obviously for the audio folks, let me just paint a picture for you.

The video is coming from her inside her car. As I mentioned, there were two and then three and then four, all masked ice agents that come up to the car. The video begins with a man pointing a gun straight in this woman's face.

Out of the holster, gun to the face. Let's watch. You record us. You almost ran us over. I didn't almost say you over. You're full of shit. Stop playing. You are full of shit. All right? You're not funny. You're not funny. I won't arrest you.

Keep it up. I'm a legal citizen. I don't care. Oh, my goodness. We have to lock you up. Okay. For what? The one that tried to run us over.

Run you over when? I got recording. I got dash cam. I got dash cam. That's a lie. You all fucking full of shit. This is horrifying. And what you see there is the woman saying,

hey, I got you on camera. These lies you're trying to say about me that I tried to run you over or whatever. That's not going to work. And then these goons, these thugs, go away. Like, this should not be how things work in a free country. A person should not feel like they have to have their dash cam on and be videotaping at all times. And the chance that agents of the state will come up to their car, draw their weapon,

and put their weapon right in the face of a woman driver who is obviously no threat, no danger. They don't even end up detaining her, totally sickening. Congressman Beyer said this and really seen the video. My office has been in contact with the woman who recorded this video of an ICE agent, drawing a gun on her. She is a Northern Virginia native and a mother. While I'm relieved that she is safe, the habitual dishonesty and dangerous and unjustified escalation seen in this video matches what we've seen from ICE for agents across the country.

This kind of misconduct and threat of force against members of our community can't be tolerated. I'll be demanding answers and consequences. consequences, the key word in that statement. And that's going to be a big job for the Democrats if they take over. And then there's another horrifying story that I'm not sure how much I can add from an editorializing perspective, except to reiterate something I've been talking about ever since the interview with Jonathan Blitzer before vacation, which is that we have internment camps in this country. and I don't think that people have really mentally accepted that,

but we are holding people in horrific conditions illegally based on their race, based on their country of origin. It is the Japanese internment camps over again. And when I read you the story, I assume you're going to be just as angered and horrified as I was. So this is for the nation. I appreciate them publishing this. I'm just going to read excerpts from it because I think putting it in the detainees words is better than me describing it.

She writes this. My name is Miriam Thomas Seby. I am a professor of psychology and statistics at Los Angeles Pierce College. Or I was until April 9th. Remember that date, people? April 9th. When my life and my family's lives changed forever. On that day, I was teaching a class when my son texted me.

saying that my husband hadn't picked him up from school and wasn't answering his phone, which is very unlike him. I picked up my son from school, came frantically back home, and called the police thinking that something horrible must have happened to my husband. Even so, it never occurred to me that he could have been detained by ICE. We are legal, permanent residence with valid green cards. We don't have any criminal record, not even a traffic ticket. I was beyond shocked to realize that an online smear campaign without any merit or legal standing had convinced the government to try to revoke our green cards overnight without due process or even telling us.

The government had decided to punish my husband for being the son of a woman who was a translator for the Iranian hostage takers in 1979 before he was even born. The next day, when I took my son to school, my car was surrounded by DHS cars, and my son and I were detained. I had to watch my son who was in high school and has been a legal resident of California for 12 years be handcuffed. We were shipped to Texas overnight from Los Angeles in horrible conditions that I won't elaborate on in this letter. We have remained in Texas ever since. My son and I have spent over 120 days in the Dilley Immigration Processing Center away from my husband. We are asking anyone with a conscience to help us end this nightmare. What else is this, if not an internment camp?

Since April, does woman and her husband or her son have all been held? illegally in a camp you heard from Jonathan Blitzer about how horrible the conditions are in these camps she doesn't have an attorney that can get her out they did nothing like not that this would be okay if these are people that like crossed the Rio Grande illegally but like that would be one thing that's what the Republicans are pitching that's what they're acting like they kidnapped three people based on their ancestry like based on what country they're from. And this is the fucking Japanese internment again. And this is what

happened. It's like we started a war with Iran. And so we've kidnapped three Iranians and held them in camps in Texas. Professors. It is fucking sickening. And everybody needs to know about it. So she's asking anyone with the conscience to help. I'm asking our audience to do so.

We'll put a link to the nation article here. And please share this on your social media. Call your congressman. Call your senator. It's fucking sickening what these people are doing. All right. We're going to get really dorky on politics next. So do stick around.

We get into the map. Some pretty surprising news about Texas. Stick around. It's Dave Black. For me, the best part about looking at old photos that it reminds you of the stories behind the moments and the pictures. I was just doing the iPhone nostalgia deep dive looking for college pictures of myself. Luckily, it was like before I'm old enough that it was before the iPhone. there are very few.

But boy, do they tell a story. We'll have to reflect on that another time. One way to ensure that you can have these memories so that a friend or a colleague or family member can have these memories without having to manually scroll through the phone is to turn to our friends at ORAFrames. ORAFraimbs enhances daily life without overwhelming it, servicing meaningful memories in a way that feels ambient, additive, and fun. And it's easy to use.

You just download the free ORA app or text phone straight to your frame. With free unlimited storage, you can add as many photos and videos as you want. It was named number one by wirecutter. You can save now by visiting AuraFrames.com. For limited time, listeners can get $35 off select frames plus free shipping with code the bulwark. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com promo code of the bulwark. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout, terms and conditions apply. All right, he is the sleep-deprived politics reporter at Semaphore.

He writes its Americana newsletter, The Best in the Biz. He also is the author of the show that never ends, The Rise and Fall of Prague Rock. I don't know if we're going to do a lot of yes chatter on this podcast, but I like to point it out. It's Dave Waggall. What's up, man? How's it going?

Good to talk to you. It is good to be with you. Polls wrong, Hong, Gone in Wisconsin last night. I guess it's the big news. Part of the reason why you're on. You're going to be on anyway. You're going to be on anyway. But I do just like to give credit we're due, okay?

I have a text from you last week, a week ago today, as a matter of fact, and you said this. We're just, you know, we're just gossiping about the racists. And you said, hey, if there was no early voting in Wisconsin, I'd bet it all on Crowley. So it wasn't a full Nostradamus prediction. But you were reading the tea leaves. You saw this coming when I think a lot of us were kind of resigned to a hung victory. explain what you think happened last night in Wisconsin and why you saw it coming.

Yeah, and Republicans were giddy about a Hong victory. They really, in talking to them yesterday, before the polls closed, were prepping how they were going to run against Hong, you tie her to other Democrats, et cetera. That didn't happen. So I was in Wisconsin. I've been back and forth for years and years.

Large story of Wisconsin, as you can read in Ben Wickler's book, is that it has been a swing state, Obama blew it out twice, and that it's been competitive, but unfortunately for Democrats, Democrats starting in, because the Republicans swept in 2010, they have run the maps forever. And the entire story of Wisconsin Democrats is slowly gaining ground or we're not losing it in every election until one day this year, you can win a trifecta and redraw the state maps.

And so those are the stakes for high information in Wisconsin Democrats who are the people who, not all of them, or primary voters are high information, but the people who vote every primary had been part of that story coming after the state Supreme Court race, coming out of the coming out for Kenny, et cetera, et cetera. And so Francesca Hong enters this view, this client, she gets very lucky and she also runs a good campaign. Hong is this left-wing legislator for Madison. I repeat myself, Madison is the most left-wing part of that state,

would be the most left-wing part of many states. And she is a good progressive legislator who is part of protests. I didn't meet her at the time, but in covering the Act 10, Scott Walker protest, she was part of that on the ground. And she runs on data centers really does a good, very clear message. Yeah, so she gets in, she says this is a state that can do a lot better. This is a state that in the past, not the state, Milwaukee elected socialist mayors. Just as Zoran Mamdani transformed politics in New York by saying, I'm a socialist and I can deliver for you, I'm going to do that for Wisconsin.

I'm going to raise taxes on the rich, expand social programs, bring about what she called permanent affordability, and then runs against data centers, which she tells me just a lot of, you hear this from a lot of left-wing, candidates is they do a lot of grassroots work. They go to rural areas and people are hyped up about data centers. They start talking about them. That's like good, normal politics. And so she's running a good campaign. Everyone else is running a bad one. There's a glut of candidates.

There's the lieutenant governor to Tony Evers who basically, her campaign manager, Sarah Riggick's campaign manager, is the key figure of this whole story because he is bad at his job, so bad that she has to draw. out of the race. Mandela Barnes, who was Ivers' previous lieutenant governor, is running but has scarred tissue from losing his Senate race in 2022, and also rumors that, which end up being reported that at least one person he hooked up with, which didn't hook up with him. I'm not trying to minimize that, but there was, in a Democratic circles chatter that something might come out about Mandela at some

point. And so what Evers does, as Hong surges and his lieutenant governor collapses, he, while on an international trade trip convinces David Crowley, the Milwaukee County Executive, who had been running, and by his own words, I talked to him, said he ran a bad campaign, got no attention. He gets back in with Tony Evers endorsement and with all the labor unions that were endorsing other, let's say, center-left candidates. And he grinds it out and he wins. So you had a two-and-a-half-week primary, basically, a mini-primary, where maybe 80,000 votes were already cast for other candidates who had dropped out out of what's going to be

800,000 votes. And Crowley just is the Evers candidate. If you want to continue what Tony Evers is doing, I'm your guy, I'm a competent executive of Milwaukee County. I'm not as left wing as Francesca Hong. He survives a mini-scandal where he was tied to a Twitter account

that said to just racey kind of stupid guy things, not with his name. It was an unmiss account. He also has kind of a weird story where it was like a group account and like one of the people that was on it is dead. It was a pretty weird story. Very weird story. He doesn't defend it very well. So the left is feeling very good about its chances to nominate the first socialist, Democratic socialist,

governor candidate in a swing state. It would be historic. We'd be in a 4,000 votes flip and we're talking about that today. And I think in that moment, they get a little bit eubristic and put Francesca Hong out in front of media. Now, I'm a reporter. I love when candidates talk to media. I don't like it when they cut the media off. Haung, I've known for a long time, and she was very willing to talk to me. We got cut off at one interview, and she called me back at 11 p.m. to finish it for 20 minutes. You should be talking to people. However, the conversation turned to, let's call them woke tweets she had sent between 2019 and 2021,

about abolishing prison, abolishing police. And I think this is the one that will live forever, that we should cancel Thanksgiving because it's a colonial holiday. Yeah. And in her media interviews, not just mine, I was on the phone with her in person, but on TV, she's defending it and just doesn't come off very well. And one thing I've been figuring out today is she did not get the same progressive endorsements and strategists of some candidates. This was so what they were worried about, is that Abdul al-Said is a very talented, brilliant Rhodes scholar who can dazzle in an interview and explain anything he said before. He has a lot of, I wish I hadn't said that, but he can explain it. And she's not as nimble at a explaining herself. So did it all come down to her and Caitlin Collins and her getting a long-winded answer when King Collins says, do you still want to cancel Thanksgiving? I don't know. Didn't help, though. And I was just saying, I think we can say this now, Wednesday, August 12th. I'm going to admit something that I've not admitted on the podcast yet. Thanksgiving is just okay

for me as well. I don't know. There was a lot of people who complain about Thanksgiving and the travel and the family, you know, getting on their high horse about Thanksgiving the last couple of But to me, it was less about the substance of that and just what you're saying. She was now that deft explaining herself. And another difference between her and Abdul El-Sahed is not just his talent as a candidate, which he has. But like, I think about it with like the school principal rule. Like if my kid was at a school and we're getting a new principal and Abdul El-Syad comes in, I'm like, this guy can handle this.

Like, he seems very competent. She at times felt very unsteady. you know like there were some things that she obviously did well but but both had kind of her bio the way she presented herself like all of that and and with the stakes being so high as you mentioned with the redistricting in wisconsin i mean they could have texas wisconsin you know had the republicans uh had big had big victories there and the legislature of the governor's race it just the stakes were very high and to me you end up kind of with this coalition of like you said strategic voters she doesn't run up the vote as much in madison as you have thought, some strategic voting with, just like we saw in Michigan with Haley Stevens, like the more non-college, particularly black voters, you know, not really, not really digging the cut of the jib of the DSA guys. Yeah, also, money matters. And there had not been a lot spent on the primary before this, this period where Crowley gets

back in a race with Evers, it did help that Evers directed money to super PACs that were on the air for Crowley and on the air against. Hong. What they were fueled by, though, was Republicans were spending money to help Hong. They had both a pop-up pack that was running pro-Hong ads, and they had for the Republican Government Association, ads that were the transparent, we're all familiar with us now, negative ads that are clearly positive. One of them was warning, oh, Francesca Hong opposes Trump's deportations. Okay. What's the Democratic primary voter? The most aggressive, yeah. Crowley fed into that. Or I should say, jump.

onto that and said, where I talked to him the day he got back in and he was saying, yeah, I was convinced by several things. One of them was, it looked like Republicans were going to pick our nominee. And that was a good response. Yeah. The other one, importantly, was that many people think God has abandoned us in 2026 in this country, but Crowley said that, I guess, his wife, they'd prayed, seen a vision, that there was a red bird saying that he should.

should run and then the bird with the word came to them and they saw a red bird and that was also why he got in. Yeah, that happened too. Although that was, this may be a tangent, but every race is flattened, obviously, in all time is now circled because a thing you said six years ago can be blooped. I thought it was interesting and kind of effective for the online left to take clips of Crowley who most people had not heard of him. If you're in Milwaukee, you've heard of him.

He was a rising star in Milwaukee. But just to make him look both kind of loopy and like he was a corporate Democrat who was going to turn the whole state over to AI companies. Because he actually, his wife had told that story in his relaunch speech. And I remember thinking, that's interesting, but I didn't make a clip out of it.

Well, it's the clip that became famous. Yeah, right. But what was the overall pitch there? It was really just don't let the establishment take down Hong with this guy. And in Wisconsin, the establishment is Tony Evers, this nice old man who is the reason why the state is not Texas right now, as you were saying, who has been the bulwark against a lot of Republicans want to do.

Yeah. And this is, I think, again, why I kind of thought the whole thing was kind of crazy. It's just like things in Wisconsin are going kind of fine. You know, I understand wanting to try new things in certain places where Democrats have been losing and where they feel like establishment candidates have failed them. And we've seen this in some other races, which we should talk about. Americans are carrying over a trillion dollars in credit card debt at rates north of 23%. that's more than $200 billion a year in interest

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If you own a home and you're carrying a high-interest balance, you're overpaying for capital. Avan fixes that. Go to Avan.com to discover your offer. that's AVE-E-N.com, A-V-N. Stop overpaying for capital. Avon Financial Inc. NMLS. 204. 2345. Cards issued pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. by Coastal Community Bank, NMLS 462-289. Member FDIC-E Equal Housing Lender, subject to approval. Terms apply. Visit Aven.com for details. Just a couple other stray thoughts I had. I just wonder if you had any other takeaways from this race in particular, then we'll go around the country. But a huge turnout. I mean, just huge enthusiasm. of the Democrats, kind of insane. You know, I see this a little bit with Trump when there is a firebrand candidate.

It draws people out for and against, but huge turnout in Wisconsin. Another polling miss, maybe that's something to monitor, maybe not. I say you're kind of engaging in that discourse on social media and the other takeaways. I think the money part of this is,

I was talking to Democrats right just today. We do our best in the press to track this, but a lot of campaign spending is done so that you don't get the full picture told's over. and who's writing and reading the stories about what was spent in a race a month ago. We will have learned that had money stayed on the sidelines, Hong still wins.

But in the end, in Michigan, it was for 51% of people who voted for somebody who was not Abdul Ossain and luckily for him, some of that was for Canada who dropped out already. And it was constant, about 60% of Democrats, voted for somebody who was not Hong. Three had dropped out already. Some people stuck it out for the two kind of stragglers

just dated in the race. But there was this worry about nominating Hong and the idea that the state that was so close that Trump had won twice was waiting for a progressive socialist champion, which is not very convincing. And again, I'm bledding this with the money. On an even playing field, does the socialist candidate win bigger in Michigan, do they win Wisconsin? Possibly. But we keep finding this, that there is not a secret socialist vote in rural America that is waiting for this kind of candidate. Now, are they waiting for populist candidates who are against data centers? Yes, they are. I thought William Lawrence in Michigan, who won them in Michigan primary for what was Ellis Lopkin's seat. I talked to him a bunch of that race. What he was able to do was just make it a

pure populist campaign. The only will bring up what he'd tweeted in the past, I did. And I asked him about some woke tweets he'd sent. It just wasn't part of the discourse. I do. I do. think there are people who used to vote for Democrats who can be convinced that this Democrat is a little bit different. But if you were posting too hard in 2020, then they say, I was just like those liberals I hate in New York, just like these John Oliver liberals. Rebecca Cook was another example of this. Maybe for people who aren't familiar with her, talk about her race. I mean, she ends up winning. She has the backing of the Bernie crowd and kind of the D-T triple C, more moderate crowd, so running on this popular.

populist platform that doesn't kind of dabble into some of the more, the elements of the DSA that's worrying people. Do you want to do takes, but you don't want to just flatten out the whole country because the condition of it? I would say, though, and I was talking about Evers of popularity. Just what is the democratic establishment? What does the establishment mean? Because this is something else that came up with Crowley.

Crowley was, and again, I asked him this, and then, okay, blasted on camera, and it got kind of viral. This is, like, a natural question. What does the establishment mean? He was getting annoyed saying, you're calling someone like me who grew up in Milwaukee, first black county executive, the establishment that's a slur to me. And that guy to translate is, does he think the word establishment's racist? No, it's that in his particular context, like the most segregated city in America,

like the suburbs of Milwaukee being, having been very Republican, what he did was interesting and transformative and he was annoyed he wouldn't pay attention. But also, the Democratic establishment includes both Chuck Schumer and people in D.C. are losers and lost. It includes Tony Evers and Peggy Flanagan and Tim Wall, and Democrats in states and cities who have won elections. And I do think the establishment as an epithet, the one you talk about with Rebecca Cook was especially dumb because, yeah, she's run three times, this is the third time, and Republicans want to beat her because they think they can make her go away. She, they win this time. Lost your first primary as an insurgent,

won the second one. And this time it was a more progressive city councilman in the most liberal part of the district saying she's backed by the establishment. What does the establishment mean if both D-T-T-T-T-C and Bernie support you? Like, not that much was the answer. And just saying, my opponent is the establishment, there's a lot of room to color in inside there. It's not clear to me that voters are just saying, I want the most anti-establishing person. They want person who's not a loser. And so that you've seen, we maybe we'll talk by John Larson in Connecticut, you've seen Democrats who are saying, keep me in the ring. I might be old and I might have lost to Trump, but I can do it next time. You're seeing. You're seeing.

go to say, no, you lost, you won fighters. Putting a loop on what's happening there in the upper Midwest, or closing loop, rather, on what's happening in the upper Midwest. It's interesting the way that ICE and kind of Operation Metro surge, like, had an impact both in that Minnesota race, which you mentioned, where Peggy Flanagan beats Angie Craig, Angie Craig, who I like a lot, lesbian, I've had on the show, a really good member, affable, and it's like she voted for the Lake and Riley Act. and it just seemed like it was hard for her to get past that vote.

She ends up losing a respectable loss, but a clear loss to Peggy Flanagan, the more progressive lieutenant governor. But there's also some bleed into Wisconsin here, which is interesting, where, because I remember seeing this when we went to Minnesota, many of the protesters that we met and talked to were from the suburbs, the suburbs, excerpts of Minneapolis on the other side of the border in Wisconsin. Which went from? Yeah.

They were talking about how a lot of the ice. agents had had gone there. And so if you look at the map of Wisconsin, like, yeah, Hong does well kind of in Dane and then also does well there in the Minnesota excerpts. And I think that's just interesting, the impact of that, both in these primaries, but then prospecting out to the general, Wisconsin has been a swing state, you know, to the extent that that Minneapolis suburbs continue to expand into Wisconsin, like, that's an additional voting block that could potentially help Democrats in general elections there. It's unique what happened in, in Minneapolis. Everyone knows the basic history, but in Minnesota primary, Craig voted for the

Laken Rally Act, as did some other Democrats in swing seats. I think her seat was Kamala plus six. In the context of Trump having won again, and she would have been that happened to pass the the Biden border bill, that was what was in front of him. You know what was there. Democrats bit the bullet and voted for this, and then Republicans wanted to give Trump a win, so they waited to send the bill to him and not Biden. So it was Trump who got to sign the Lake Riley Act, even worse if you're a Democrat. It wasn't the Biden signed bill. It was a you voted for a bill that Trump signed. And I'm not new to the idea of their cynicism and politics, but Republicans do want it both ways. They want to pass their legislation and they want to hurt moderates and get them

replaced by progressives who they think can win. So it was the Lake and Riley Act, it was also the resolution last year that was drafted as an anti-Semitism resolution, uh, Republicans added language praising the work of ICE because there had just been a shooting outside an ICE facility in Texas. I think that that was the one where I believe the perps are in jail for 50 years now. And Republicans added this language. And if you're a Democrat, you make this calculation. I can either vote against this and have an opponent say, you didn't condemn anti-Semitism, or I can vote for this. I protect myself. What has happened to everyone who voted for that bill in Democratic primary or the resolution is that they get destroyed by it. Maybe they either apologized for it, they explain it, but it was, you thanked

ice. That's pretty simple. My opponent thanked ice. Why were they thanked ice? I'm always sympathetic when people are trying to explain something, their position, but it's not that much of a sympathy-inducing thing to say, I was too scared to explain my actual position and I just voted for this poorly written political resolution. That hurt her a lot, too. And I've seen, that heard of Krishna-Morthy in Illinois. I've seen, I've heard other candidates who thought, to be safe, I'm going to cast this. Oh, no. It turned out there was a huge boondogle in defining issues of the primary.

Good issue for the left, but set up by the right. Yeah. I mean, my takeaways of this is number one. I have a longstanding policy that I'm never going to be in Congress. So, you know, my advice to Congress people is to not vote on any non-binding resolutions, hard policy of no voting on non-binding. They're just tweets. All they are is tweets.

If you want to give a statement, go back home and say, hey, I never vote on that stuff. people say, oh, I don't vote on that. The Lake and Barley Act was a bad vote for these guys. And I think that they're trying to be strategic. They're trying to be savvy. And I think it's unfortunate, in retrospect, not giving it to Trump on immigration was the right thing to do. And there was a lack of imagination about how bad the Trump immigration regime could be,

I think, for people that thought that there was going to be a middle ground on that one. So a couple other big narratives. And then I want to get into kind of the map, you mentioned it in Connecticut. the Larson race. There's this kind of war on gerontocracy within the Democratic Party. The Mills situation in Maine, obviously a prime example of this. A pretty interesting race there in Connecticut, because the guy that beats Imbrana and the mayor does not fit the mold of some of these other kind of lefty DSA challengers. I think he was in the abundance program with your friend Desry Kline. And, you know, he just ran basically saying, I've got more energy to do the job.

Maybe there's more to it than that. Why don't you just kind of give a rundown on that race? And this kind of other model that is being promoted by people at the bench and other places where you've got these, you know, more working class challengers that have a more middle of the road profile ideologically. You just mentioned the bench. And that's a fairly new fight inside the party, kind of late because we're almost done with the primaries.

But the bench is a big doder-funded effort with good Democratic strategists to recruit and nominate candidates who are young and active and they think would be good members of Congress, but not necessarily the left wing. This is a threat. If you are DSA, if you are Bernie, et cetera, and you want every primary winner to be progressive, that is a threat to you. So you start, David Serodis, publicates, the lever started to go after this. It didn't work very well.

John Larson tried to make that an issue in his race, but the issue of John Larson's race is that he was 78. He last year, early last year, when the nerves about Biden were very, very tense, is giving a floor speech to fairly empty house floor about his issue of Social Security because he wanted to expand Social Security and freezes up several times.

And then his office says there was a medication reaction. It was an partial seizure, but he's fine. A couple months later, Luke Brunen gets into the race, He's the former Mer Hartford, Rhodes Scholar veteran, not left Wayne. And Larson's really annoyed by this because he thought Brunner was going to support him. But Brunin saw where things were moving,

that Democrats said, Democratic voters, I should say, say, yeah, the last time we said, let's wait, we believe that this incumbent can pull this out. It led to a generational disaster. So Democrats were open to supporting someone else. So Brunen gets the endorsement of the local Democratic party. He ever competes the conventions. the Larson's strategy is basically just to hopefully there's enough votes for other candidates to split it.

He ends up as a non-scandalized incumbent, his only scandal being seizing up on the floor with a third of the vote, two-thirds of this safe Democratic seat, vote for somebody else. I think he wins two towns in the whole city, his town, East Hartford, and then one other town. And it was just a completely definitive rejection of old Democrats. And he had progressive endorsements. Jamie Raskin came out to help him. working families, parties endorsed him. It was just, it's not an ideological question in that race. It is, we are worried that you are too old and you are not effective at fighting Trump.

And fighting Trump means many things. Yeah, but if you watch Larson, Larson is a kind of classic northeast liberal and, you know, very Kennedy-esque speeches. Obviously, he's older now, so they land a little bit less hard. They used for trying yourself. You need me back in there. I have the seniority of that experience. I can fight Trump.

You know how that ends. Democratic voters say, you lost, though. We would give you a mulligan on the first one because of Russia and all the stuff that happened. They were in the popular vote. Yeah, no, he won twice. Yeah. You guys lost again. You can't convince us that you can win.

This is the thing I think that the guys of the bench and a few other places are doing that's smart. It's just that like you have to give Democratic voters another option. Wherever your ideology is if you're in the center or if you're just kind of a traditional liberal, it's like you have to tell Democratic voters like you recognize that the strategy has not worked. the last decade and you're offering some new, either kind of angle on how to go out Trump or just kind of a new face or a fresh face or a new kind of background, new story. And I do think that where the establishment failed in a lot of these races, it was because the more moderate candidates weren't offering anything. And, you know, I think this was a mistake. This was another one of those candidates where it didn't work. I've said this in the podcast, like Mallory's race where it's like, it felt

like she was offering that at the start and Haley was and then you know it ends up being kind of you're attacking the left and like that's not going to work if like only the left is offering something new and you're attacking the left like Democratic voters we're seeing are are going to I think go to the people that are offering them a positive vision and another you know another way to kind of go out Trump and and so anyway the Connecticut race was an interesting microcosm of how that looks when it's not from the coming from the Bernie wing of the party yeah and Mallory was another bench candidate, and Bonin did not get stuck in that same tarpitt of fighting about Hassan Piker and fight about Israel. That was also had Bronan put out tweets years ago saying, I hate Connecticut.

He might have been different. There were a bunch of issues that were happening. That was very specific. I said, yeah, I've talked about that a bunch. But you're right on the general idea is that, and this is what the Mallory people's theory was, was Haley cannot actually win. in this environment. People do not want the Schumer candidate to win the primary. It was basically, that was correct. As close as it got, that was correct. They just couldn't get people to vote for their candidate instead. Last example of this, and then I want to do kind of big picture general election

and some decent news for Democrats on that front is we had the Massachusetts race coming up. Moulton, also more of kind of a center candidate trying to make this generational change argument against Markey, kind of without getting into like the nitty-gritty of the back and forth of what's having that race, it felt like there was some momentum there from Moulton, but that Markey has kind of pushed it back. What do you think? Is there a possibility still that Markey gets clipped there or not? So there still is, and Markey is, on the one hand, more prominent to John Larson, but not that much more. The idea of Markey as a liberal hero is pretty recent. It was built for his 2020 campaign when he needed to polarize the race between him and Joe Kennedy III, the congressman.

And that progressive movement has not shown up for Markey this time for the reason we're talking about. It's just he is 80. He was part of his big project in 2020 was the Green New Deal. And that's kind of ashes the mouth of a lot of Democrats because every part of it they could pass, the Trump administration got rid of. And he's not run a very focused campaign. What he has done is portrayed Moulton as an opportunist who has betrayed. constituencies like trans people in order to in order to get ahead. That's not as compelling as you need me in the Senate to transform the economy and to a green

economy. It's been a much more defensive, smaller campaign. His campaign manager from the 2020 race who was brilliant, passed away in between races. I'm not insulting the new guy. It's just that he is trying to stitch together a, I'm the true progressive. And in Massachusetts, not to get too much in a degree, but in Massachusetts, vote the electorate is registered Democrat. and non-enroll independence,

and polling has showed, Moulton wins those guys, he loses with Democrats. That is his path, 50% by losing Democrats and winning those voters who are non-ideologically are just tired of bold people.

If I was Moulton, if people called me, I would have said, I would have, and I guess there's still, what, a week to do it, a couple weeks to do it, I would have become anti-IS's strongest soldier.

I would have been like chaining myself outside the ICE detention facility. He has done that. He called for abolishing early on, but not danger himself. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but I want,

I want 110% energy on that. And I think that's, you know, picking something like that is maybe a more compelling counter message for the folks in the center. So we'll be watching that one.

I like that. So Nate Silver, you know, for all of the people have little nitpicks about them on social media, he rubs some people the wrong way, but he still seems to be

like the gold standard, the people go to for these prognostications, at least the person that people are the most familiar with. He dropped his House and Senate prognostications yesterday. And it was, I think, better for the Democrats, particularly on the Senate than a lot of people expected. He offered a 57% win probability for the Democrats to take the Senate. I think the House is like 80 plus percent. I think that people have a sense for where things are going in the House. In the specific races, his model had Texas as a flip, Tala Rico with a 63% chance of winning, which was, I think, the big headline number. Al-Said is the favorite.

Troy Jackson and Maine is the favorite. Sherrod Brown and Ohio is the favorite. Overwhelming favorites for the Democrats protecting the seats in North Carolina and Georgia, both 90-plus percent for Cooper and Ossoff. And then he had the Republicans as the favorites narrowly in Iowa, Alaska, and a couple of those other stretch seats. I think that that is maybe just slightly more bullish for the Democrats. conventional wisdom, particularly Texas, I think that a lot of, you know, people are scared to to the person putting their reputation out there, that this is the time for Blue Texas,

the longest running streak of any state of not having a statewide victory for the Democrats. But pretty noteworthy. I don't know. What's your sense kind of talking to people on the ground for whether Democrats are really kind of feeling like the Senate is, like, could be happening for them? Well, one factor both parties know about is that unlike 20, 2018, where Democrats had more money for their individual candidates, more money for their PACs. If you remember 2018 at the end, Paul Ryan said, had literally keep going to the Ailsen family

to cut giant checks to fund a super PAC. Republicans will have more money. I think Texas is viewed in that context is that donors do not want their money to go to Ken Paxton. And yet, he's trying to beast this out and be outspent heavily by Tala Rico, be outspent on the air. I think also, not without reading Nate's mind. Every primary, Burlington's had the same, Democratic primary, Braudans had the same strategy. We've got our nominee. We're going to find the most woke left-wing things the Democrat has said, beat him up with that. We'll get a natural discourse going in the, in the mainstream media. And I saw this to tell Rico several times when I talked with the media being flat. Like there's stuff that he has answered, he answered four or five times. Why did you say this

about God being non-binary, et cetera? Because it's always new to somebody. And that didn't put him away. The hope is that that means that race is off the map now. The math in Texas is, it's the money, but it's also what has Trump done to consolidate the Latino vote he got in 2024, maybe not that much. And so do the math. If Democrats go to their 2020 even numbers with Latino voters, 2018 would be better in Texas. If they turn out the black vote, which there's the discourse of whether it's how you can do that. But I feel like that might be a little bit overrated by activists who show up in

at him. And then white suburbanites, he has been doing great with them. And so you can stitch together 48% of the vote for Calarico, which is what Beto got. I mean, the big part of it is getting back to that Latino vote, getting that Asian vote. It makes sense to me. Alaska seems more promising for Democrats just because it's cheaper. Caltolla has one statewide and not to get into the deep politics of Alaska, but it is not a super right-wing state. It is not having new people moving from the Midwest to right-wing suburbs in Alaska. So I think that as a target is more promising. Yeah, that was the Texas thing.

I always loved that stat, which was that Ted Cruz won with the transplants. Yeah, yeah. Beto, I mean, it was narrow in both ways, but, you know, there is something, too, a lot of these states. Every cycle, there's a couple hundred thousand more Texas Republicans, and they did same thing in Florida, which is even more intense. I do think in all these states, though, it's funny. Republicans talk about their good recruiting for the cycle.

they have avoided primaries, sure. But they've got candidates who are, there's a little bit of Schumer energy in who they've recruited. They have John Sununu, the former senator who voted for the Iraq War and has been out of politics for a generation in New Hampshire, okay, better than a far right guy,

but not exciting. Who's older than his opponent? You have Michael Watley in North Carolina who they say is a good recruit because he'd have a primary, sure, against the popular governor. He hasn't really found his footing. In Texas, Paxton's kind of,

kind of a mess. Yeah, I'll go even further than you. I think that because, you know, the media acts like the Democrats own loans with agency and like we're 10 years into Trump and nobody wants to do this anymore, the Republican recruitment has been basically bad this cycle. And Ashley Hinson in Iowa is a good, strong candidate, I think. But besides that, they're recruiting two models, you know, they have the establishment model of person that is not going to excite the Trump voter, the Mike Rogers type that is going to have all of Trump's baggage, but none of the positive. that's your Watley and Mike Rogers. And then in several states, they nominated Cooke's.

You know, and yesterday they nominated Michelle Tofoya, sideline reporter in Minnesota, Mike Collins, Ken Paxton. For all of the kind of rending of garments about El Ceyed and what happened of Maine, it's a pretty motley crew on the Republican side. For example, John Sununu is advertising. Now, his name is Sununu, his brother's a popular governor, but he's running as this sort of New Hampshire focus change agent and you think,

but you were the senator. You were a senator a long time ago. Back when like the IMAQ was a green apple-colored thing and people's dads, like you're not a change candidate. And so I was going to say that this is obvious, but bears repeating, but every incumbent

party's job is let's turn this into a choice between the crazy opponents and our sensible policies. And because it worked for Biden sort of in 2022, Republicans think they can do But is it working? Is the thing? Like I said, they came out of the gate with Salar Rico saying,

look how crazy this guy is. In Iowa, Ashley Hinson just keeps pretending that Josh Turek is more liberal than he is. For example, she said that he wants girls and boys' sports. I think it's down to a vote he voted against because he could package of stuff. And he's actually distanced himself on part of that issue. Going down that path is a little tricky,

not just because the particulars of the issue, but because how much do you want to go on the air with it, et cetera, et cetera. But basically they're just running against every Democrat. Like this is the future, this is communism. They wanted Hong to win so they could say, see, they're winning everywhere. And what's the positive agenda? The positive agenda is we cut your taxes that we're not communists.

Okay. I mean, I can see an election where it doesn't go very well for them. Everyone agrees that that was silly. They should have tried to do something positive instead of just worrying about, because in most of this, it's other states. I mean, the whole Michael Aller campaign is just, yes, I'm running against a centrist, but Zoron exists. Okay.

You know. 22, maybe that would have been better. All right. Last thing, we just went through all the Senate states. The number that we always talk about, the Democrats need to pick up is four seats to get to 51. Some concern they might need five, though, because there is the John Federman Wildcard. And Federman did this weird thing yesterday where he talked about how Dave McCormick, the Davos, David McCormick, the Republican Center from the state, is his best friend and he would never go against him.

And he's on Fox all the time shitting on Democrats. And I don't know, you know, you kind of wonder if he's the 51st Democrat, does he want to be the troublemaker that just annoys Democrats all the time? Or does, or does he want to, like, do the thing that would most annoy them, which is flip and give the Senate back to the Republicans in exchange for something? I said yesterday on social media, and I want to reiterate it here because I believe this as incumbent on Chuck Schumer, if he's doing his job to nominate one Democratic senator to become John Federman's friend. Like somebody has to become his friend and nod when he complains about stuff you know, commiserate about the Lib Tards like whatever like it takes.

Okay, like he needs a friend that's a Democrat. Michael Bennett, you've got nothing to do. You tried to run for governor and failed. That's my nominee. But I'm open to other people. Like what's your, you've been covering all that? Like what do you think is kind of the state of play there? With Ferreman, so looking down to the 28-28 primary,

one of his many interviews over the last couple weeks, he was asked if he could win the election if it was held today, and he said, yeah, probably. He wouldn't. He would not win a primary in Pennsylvania if it was held today. He in the next cycle will need to start raising money. Who is going to give him money? It's not going to be almost any of the people

who donated him in 2022. A lot of buyers remorse in Pennsylvania among Democrats, they did not nominate Connor Lamb. And so what is he looking at in 2028? is it retirement? Is it being a pundit? Is it winning re-election as a Republican? Something that he lived through when Arlen Specter did a version of this and switch parties to win, he couldn't win because he's still going to be a Democrat who voted against every major Trump priority except the Iran war. And the other thing I think about his views is what is the point of a Republican Senate in 20, 27, 28 if Republicans hold the Senate or if it's 50-50 and he flips. The point will be for, for a Republican Senate. Sam Alito and Fires Thomas to retire to be replaced by young conservatives. That is the point.

There's like nothing else that they really need to do. The House will be doing investigations. Is that important to him? I'm not in his life, as much as he's changed, the way he talks about things, what in John Federman's career in life suggests that he would want to cast of the vote for ensuring a

Aline Cannon gets on the Supreme Court? I don't think there is one. Now, but I agree with you generally that so much of the Federman story is just that Democrats are, to him. He's not even pro-Israel. I think he really got radicalized on how he talks about progressives because they protested his home. They went to his house in Braddock, and he stood on the roof with his Israeli flag. That pissed him off. And so he does need some temperate to tell

him, we are not all like this. The guys yelling at you online are not at everybody. But this is a weakness of the way the left deals in rhetoric, right? There are a lot of super angry people online and when pushed, it's, well, online is the real life. It is, though. When I go outside to the park, am I seeing people taking in all of nature? Am I seeing them on their phones? I've seen them on their phones. Everyone is online all the time.

And so him being bullied all the time by leftists clearly made him hate the left more than he ever has in his life, makes him sympathetic to Republicans. Because remember Ben Terrace writes this New York Magazine story about Federman, and McCormick is out the gate saying, they're only doing this because of my brave friend's bravery. And he actually, he's great. We love him.

If you're going to be unsympathetic to Federman, he's kind of been a little bit easily convinced by Republicans who are making fun of him as a vegetable five years ago and not pretend he's a genius. But you're right. I think you're right that Democrats need to work him. I'm just skeptical that he would end his career in politics, electoral politics, making sure that Republicans have a Supreme Court

majority that will unwind most of what he ran on. I just think things happen. I would be skeptical. Okay, Wigel. I hope you're right about that. But in the meantime, just to be safe, I don't know. Ben, Ray, Lujan, what are you doing? Okay, take him to lunch.

All right? I mean, Joe Mansion's still hiring around. I mean, you can take him on the yacht. Take him to fucking lunch. All right. Actually, I think for Mansion, we're Mansion Liz. Could you get up the river to, I don't know. I want to get into at the very end of the conversation,

river geography between West Virginia and Pittsburgh. But the point is they'd have a lot to talk about. Yeah. All right, Wigel. I appreciate you doing this. on Little Sleep. Everybody go sign up for your newsletter, Americana, over at Semaphore. We'll be talking to you again soon.

We'll be talking to you again soon. All right. See you, Wigel. Yeah. See you, man. Everybody else will be back here tomorrow. Member, mailbag, send me some funny stuff. We'll see you all then.

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