What A Day - The Panic Over Progressive Dems

Episode Date: August 3, 2026

You’ve probably heard a lot about the Democratic Socialists and progressives running for office nationwide – and maybe even more about how establishment Democrats are terrified of them. A lot of that concern is because they think they’ll lose to their Republican counterparts. But many Republican candidates running for statewide office this term are in a league of their own… and not in a good way. So are establishment Democrats right? Will progressive candidates push voters to Republicans – even if they're the least qualified people around? To find out, we talked to Dan Pfeiffer. He’s the co-host of Pod Save America and the author of the Message Box newsletter on Substack.And in headlines, Iran and President Trump disagree over whether negotiations are back on, two Republican senators clear the way for acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s confirmation, and the Michigan Department of Health announces the first confirmed deaths related to the ongoing cyclospora outbreak.Show Notes: Check out Message Box – www.messageboxnews.com Check out Pod Save America – youtube.com/@podsaveamerica Call Congress – 202-224-3121 Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/y4y2e9jy What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast Follow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/ For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail]

I guarantee you that if you knew that we were going to, we might lose the Michigan race, that chance of winning the Senate would drop well below 55 because when you do all the paths, you really need Michigan to get there because otherwise, and you have to win three of the four states that were Democrats competitive for the Trump won by double digits. I'm Jane Koston, and this is what a day, the show that says congratulations to former Olympic canoeer David Hearn. You might remember that the Trump administration accused him of vandalizing the reflecting fool and charged him with a felony.

Well, on Friday, U.S. Attorney Janine Piro dropped all charges against her, admitting that the many, many problems with a reflecting pool are the result of, quote, a botched installation and not vandalism. But don't tell that to President Donald Trump, who said today that Piro, quote, choked, and quote, folded like an umbrella, because, of course, he did. On today's show, we talk midterms madness and the weirdest Republican candidates we're ignoring with Pots of America's Dan Pfeiffer. Before we get into all that, here's what we're following today.

Monday, August 3rd. We're talking about the straight, the opening of the straight, having it open literally by tomorrow. Completely open. My question is, who is he talking to about this? Because Iran is reportedly not picking up. Trump spoke to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday after Iran said that negotiations to end the war aren't restarting. The mixed messaging comes after the president canceled strikes on Iran over the weekend, saying there was another framework for a ceasefire and the U.S.

full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to oil and natural gas tankers. Remember the Strait of Hormuz that was open before the war began. President Trump criticized Iran for claiming that its meetings with Oman were focused solely on establishing a temporary route for safe navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. The president also said in the Oval Office today, quote, I want to give them every last chance before decapitation. Very tough to do what we have planned, still planned. We'll see what happens.

Sure. Mr. President, Mr. President, did you sign off on Todd Blanche. I didn't look at it. All I know is that Todd Blanche is great. He's going to do a great job. Everybody knows it. And I understand there's been a sign-off. But I don't know what they agreed. I think Todd Blanche agreed to reconfirm things that he's already said. And what he said was okay. President Trump maintained his support of Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in the Oval Office today. Despite news that Blanche had committed in writing to killing the president, President's beloved anti-weaponization slush fund.

Blanche's commitment came after days of impasse between the Trump administration and two outgoing Republican senators who no longer give a shit. Texas's John Cornyn and North Carolina's Tom Tillis. Tillis and Cornyn threatened to block Blanche's bid to lead the Justice Department unless they got written assurance that Trump's $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund was officially dead, which, it turns out, worked. The two senators said Monday they will now vote. to advance Blanche's nomination.

But don't worry, Trump and his family still get protections from IRS audits of past tax returns. Because I suppose, that's fine. Two people have died in the cyclospora outbreak. The Michigan Department of Health announced the first confirmed deaths in the U.S. related to the microscopic parasite on Monday. Officials said underlying health conditions in both people may have impacted the intestinal illness and dehydration. Since May 1st, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have received reports of more than 4,100 confirmed cases related to the foodborne illness, which causes explosive diarrhea.

More than 7,000 other likely cases are being investigated across 41 states. The CDC has warned that the total number of people sickened by the outbreak is likely higher than the official tally because not all cases are reported. So ask yourself, if I had assaulted her, would she had offered to cook me dinner six days later? Would she have invited me to spend an afternoon at the playground with her and our daughter? That was gross human. Ohio Republican Representative Max Miller, in a video posted on his Twitter account on Sunday,

attempting to explain away the horrifying allegations made by his former wife, Emily Moreno. In court filings, Moreno accused him of putting a gun to her head and shoving her repeatedly, in addition to physically abusing their young daughter. In response, Miller has denied the allegations and said his former wife has, quote, significant mental health challenges. The divorce was finalized in 2025, but the legal battling hasn't stopped. Last week, Emily Moreno's attorney filed a restraining order against Miller, alleging harassment. Emily's father, Bernie Moreno, is the Republican senator from Ohio.

And on Sunday, he finally said something about the alleged abuse. Senator Moreno wrote on Twitter in part, quote, As he has admitted privately, Max Miller needs serious psychological help. He is a danger to my daughter, and I hold my breath every minute he has custody of my granddaughter. He continued saying, quote, he should not serve in the House of Representatives. And that's the news. Let's talk about the midterms.

You've probably heard a lot about the Democratic Socialists and Progressives running for office nationwide, and maybe even more about how establishment Democrats are terrified of them. Like in Michigan, where former Wayne County Health Director Abdul al-Sayed is running for Senate on his support for Medicare for All and opposition to funding Israel. A lot of that concern is because establishment Democrats think that progressives will lose to the Republican counterparts. But how much have you heard about the Republican candidates running for state-wide office this cycle? Candidates like Victor Marx, who is running for the governor's mansion in Colorado, and who also claims to have committed murder as a child.

Or Mike Lindell. You might remember him as the My Pillow CEO who bolstered 2020 election conspiracy theories. Well, now he's running to be Minnesota's next governor, and he has Trump's support. So are establishment Democrats right? Will progressive candidates push voters to Republicans? even the least qualified people around? To find out, I talk to Dan Pfeiffer. He's the co-host of Potsave America

and the author of The Message Box newsletter on Substack. Dan, welcome back to Waddey. It's great to be here. So we've been hearing for months that Democrats have a good shot of winning back the House. But a new election forecast from G. Eliot Morris

at Strength and Numbers out today says Democrats also have a 55% chance to win the Senate in November. Does that line up with what you're seeing or are we just getting really high on hopium again? Well, it's, you know, it's interesting. I've always sort of thought that we were basically a coin flip. And maybe Republicans had a slight advantage.

But G. Liot Morris, this is not the only forecast that has Democrats slightly favored. Laxha Jane of the argument has it at 53% chance. It kind of makes sense if you believe the fundamentals of politics still work. Trump's numbers are in the toilet and getting worse. People are very unhappy with the economy. Democrats have a pretty massive enthusiasm advantage in terms of who's most likely to vote. And Democrats have great candidates running in these Senate races. So if this really is a

plus seven plus a Democratic environment and you have candidates like Roy Cooper, Mary Poltola, and Sherrod Brown, who have a history of vote performing in their states, you can see how you can get some wins in some pretty hard states. If you're also dazzled by the idea of big Democratic wins in tough states, stay tuned. We'll get back to my conversation with Dan Pfeiffer in a moment. In the meantime, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some next. What a Day is brought to you by Delete Me. Have you ever thought, I should really be doing something to protect myself from stalkers,

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Drink responsibly, and you'll feel your best tomorrow. Every time I have pre-alcohol before drinks, I do notice a difference the next day. Even after a night out, I can confidently plan on working out without worry. Mondays don't move for anyone. Pre-alcohol works overnight so you can have a real weekend and still show up sharp. Zobiotics.com Wad, code Wad, for 15% off. You hear that? That's Rogers Red Partner program at work in your business. Bringing more customers through your door with additional cash back for eligible Rogers Red Credit Cardholders.

And more savings to your bottom line with lower transaction fees. Give your business a real edge with Rogers Red Partner program. More than a point of sale, a sign of smarter business. Learn more at Rogers.com slash Red Partner. Let's get back to my conversation with Dan Pfeiffer. Republicans have a noted track record of electing people who were once thought to be unelectable, namely President Donald Trump. I think Democrats thought that this is kind of what they were doing with Graham Platner in Maine. They ran an untraditional candidate with a complicated past who they thought in some ways made them a better candidate, but they weren't. He had to drop out.

So why can Republicans do this successfully and Democrats can't? Why do Republicans get to nominate, to me, crazy people? and Democrats can't do that. I think the history show Republican cannot do it either. Well, besides Trump, again, besides Trump. Trump is a, he is a Black Swan event. He is a unicorn. So let's take Trump out of it for a second.

Okay. If you go back to the years that should have been great, there are three examples of cycles that should have been good for Republicans in the Senate. 2010, in a huge Republican landslide year. 2012, even though it was a good year for Obama, it was a terrible map for Democrats. We had a defense seats in Missouri.

and Indiana and Ohio. And then you have 2022. Biden's very unpopular of his first year. In all of those examples, the Democrats held the Senate because Republicans nominated unelectable candidates. Like Blake Masters in Arizona, Churchill Walker, Dr. Oz. Yeah.

In 2010, in the 2010 Senate race to replace Joe Biden, who had just become the vice president, Mike Castle, who was the incredibly popular Congressman from Delaware, lost in a primary to Christine O'Donnell, a Tea Party candidate who called herself, a witch. Ah, who famously had to explain that she was not a witch. And when she dabbled, she claims

to have dabbled in witchery. But she was not electable and lost and gave a seat that we were promised to walked into. So for both sides, have suffered from this. And so you do have to nominate candidates who can win. I think, though, that maybe this is actually a complaint about how

the media covers Democrats specifically. That's a fair point. As always. Which is that, you know, this year we have Mike Lindell, the My Pillow guy who has Trump's backing to run for the gubernatorial nomination in Minnesota. You have Victor Marx, who has claimed to have killed multiple people, including as a child, and have rescued 45,000 people from slavery, which I don't think happened, and he's the GOP nominee in Colorado. Now, these are both states where the Minnesota GOP and the Colorado GOP are kind of not doing very well.

But it seems as if when we're talking about Democrats, we're talking about the DSA, for example, which we'll get more into. When you read media outlets, they are comparing DSA candidates to, say, generic Republican of 2012. When they're not talking about how, you know, a lot of these candidates are operating in the same milieu as someone like Victor Marx or Mike Lindell. So why does that keep happening? Why is it that Democrats need to have this Sturm and drang about establishment versus progressive and who can win? and Republicans just keep nominating people who say they killed people. You know, it's interesting because in one sense, you're asking me,

why does the media hold Democrats to a higher standard than Republicans? I do not have an answer for that question, but it has been a problem for a very, very long time, and particularly in the Trump era. One of the reasons why we are having the electability debate on the Democratic side is there are a bunch of very powerful Democrats who want to have the electability debate, and have argued in Michigan in particular that Abdul El-Sayed is not electable. And so they are forcing the debate upon themselves.

And there's also been a lot of hoopla about Francesca Hong in Wisconsin, a Democratic socialist who looks poised to win the state's Democratic primary for governor. But I've also noticed there's a lot of concern about how she's unelectable and how this is terrible. But there seems to be a lack of curiosity as to why she's doing so well. I think back to 2016, 2017, Dan. And there was that meme about sending journalists to diners to talk about why they voted for Trump. No one is really doing that with why voters support Hong or other DSA candidates in races, both in New York and elsewhere, beyond the kind of, oh, you know, they're downwardly mobile and they're dumb.

Why is that not happening? And what are we missing about why these voters are supporting any number of DSA-linked candidates? Yeah, it's interesting because the DSA conversation is kind of, I think, becomes overly specific because Abdul TSA, not a DSA candidate, but falls into this category. And you're 100% right that there is this lack of curiosity, not just from the media, but from the establishment folks who keep losing these primaries as to why they are losing. And I think in New York and in Colorado, they could in their own minds chalk it up to these are incredibly, some of the most liberal districts in the country. Kamala Harris won all those districts by more than 50 points, even Colorado won. And ultimately, while it may cause Akeem Jeffrey some challenges in terms

how he manages this caucus because people all kind of ran against them, the Democratic nominee is winning those races no matter what. Now we get to Michigan and Wisconsin statewide races. These are quintessential swing states that Trump has won in two of the last three elections. Wisconsin is such a swing state that it's been decided by one point in five for the last seven presidential elections. And with huge consequences for the party in both races, you know, I guarantee you that if you knew that we were going to, we might lose the Michigan race, that chance of winning the Senate would drop well below 55 because when you do all the paths, you really need Michigan to get there because otherwise, and you have to win three of the four

states that were Democrats competitive for Trump won by double digits. Who wins Wisconsin governorship has massive implications for the administration of the 2020 election. And if that person is reelected, that person will be in charge of drawing the maps after the 2030 census. Like, this is incredibly important. So the stakes are very high here. Democratic established books are applying to this electability question, an old model, right, where you look at it and you say candidates further to the left or the right of the electorate in whatever state or district you're in do less well than ones who are more aligned with it. Like, that's what the political science research. That's what history says. Is that still true in this environment? That's a really

open question. Will it matter in an environment that is plus six, seven, or eight points Democratic? Where Francesco Hong or Abdul-Said, who could outperform Democrats, but if they were to underperform Democrats by five points, are still the next senator and governor of those states. To get to your original question, the reason why people are not exploring this question is because they don't want to know the answers. Because the answer is, is that this era of the Democratic establishment is over. The people in charge of it may still be in charge of it at the end, but the voter are done with it. They're not listening to it. They do not care about it. The 2028 will be the transition to a new era. We went from the Clinton era to the Obama era. We've been struggling to

figure out what comes next after the Obama era. We went back to a Clinton era for a while. The Biden era was kind of a mix of both. And voters are looking for something very different. And the people who in charge don't really want to know the answers to those questions because the answers are not good for them. Yeah, I think that something I keep getting just from anecdotal conversations with people I know, family, things like that. I don't think. people in establishment politics are quite aware of how angry Democratic voters are right now. Like the level of anger coming out of like my dad would surprise some people. But that's right.

The challenging thing about a primary is that it is not the end of the race. Eventually these candidates will go on to face Republican candidates in the general electorate. So if Democrats do sweep the midterms, take both the Senate in the House, is it going to be because people are responding to their messages? Or will it have to do with that D plus 8, D plus 7 environment, and kind of this idea of like, sure, you wouldn't normally vote for someone like this, but they're running against a complete maniac

or they're running against Stephen Miller existing or they're running against Trump writ large? I think no matter how it ends, the people who are in both on either side of the faction on the Democratic Party, we'll try to weaponize those results to explain why their side did not lose because in the Democratic Civil War, it's always heads-eye win tells you lose, always. And so you're trying to have like a true assessment of the race. Like how did they do?

If you're trying to actually see the results in 2026 and apply them to what it says about 2028 and the types of candidates that appeal in a state, you have to like look at it and say, Let's say, let's say Abdul wins the Michigan primary tomorrow night. Let's say he beats Mike Rogers. Does he beat Mike Rogers by a lot more, but the same amount that Jocelyn Benson wins the governor's race? Does he do it by a lot less? Does he do it by more?

You need a baseline to work with. You know, are Democrats winning governor's races across the country by six points? And then Francesca Hong wins by eight points. That tells us something about her message. You know, so it's elections are dynamic. A million things are happening. Mending decisions will matter. What happens on the ground will matter.

The state of the economy. You know, if a plant closes in the last week, you know, two weeks the election, that can affect things. Wisconsin's really going to be really hard to analyze because not only is Francesco Hong, a Democratic socialist running in a state that is certainly more moderate than she is. She's also running to succeed a two-term Democratic governor. And those are always the hardest one. That third term is always really, really hard. So it could be she could lose a close race and it tells us almost nothing about her message.

And it says more about this is a change electorate and she had to happen to be, she was a Democratic socialist running on this very progressive platform and stopping data centers, yet was also the status quo candidate in a change election. Dan, as always, thank you so much for joining me. Happy to be here and to chew over these unanswerable questions. I love an unanswerable question. Well, you're in the right line of work for that. That was my conversation with Dan Pfeiffer, co-host of Pod Save America,

and author of The Message Box Newsletter on Substack. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. Before we go, in case you missed it, cricket media has an exciting new limited series to share with you, just in time for the midterms. It's called Longplay. For both major parties, the path to winning America runs to the South, but to win it, we have to understand it.

Today, they're heading to North Carolina to learn about the issues driving voters, the assumptions that no longer hold, and what the rest of the country is missing about a reason, that could shape the future of our politics and our country. It's really excellent work from Emmy-nominated host and Southerner Jennifer Palmerie, former mayor of New Orleans, Mitch Landrie, and award-winning journalist Aaron Haynes.

Listen now every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, contemplate the continued grossness of Republican men and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading, I'm not just about GUP representative Chuck Edwards, whose behavior towards young female staffers,

including personalized handguns, Personalized handguns and creepy poems has gotten so bad that the House Ethics Committee recommended he be censured today. Like me, What Today is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Jane Koston. And again, personalized handguns and creepy poems. Why? What a Day is a production of Crooked Media.

Our show is produced by Caitlin Plummer, Emily 4, Erica Morrison, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Haley Jones, Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Joseph Dutra, Johanna Kays, and Desi Taylor. Our music is by Kyle Murdoch and Jordan Cantor. We had helped today from the Associated Press. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.