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Why Democrats think they can win back Iowa from Trump
00:31:53
And president Trump’s winning streak ends after backing the losing Republican candidate
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- [00:00]
Justin Webb
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- [00:06]
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- [00:49]
Justin Webb
Hello, it's Justin and you're about to hear ameracast. We are delighted to have you with us and if you enjoy what you hear, please do consider subscribing to the podcast. That way you'll never miss an episode. Now, on with the today.
- [01:01]
Sarah Smith
Today we're asking whether Democrats could actually win in Iowa, a red state that Donald Trump's Republicans have been dominating for more than the last decade. But there's real optimism among Democrats after last night's primaries for both the Senate and the governor's race. They've got a wealthy pro hunting candidate for governor who's facing a Republican pick who's not the one that Donald Trump endorsed. And then look at the Senate. You've got a Democrat who's a Paralympian, backed by the whole establishment wing of the party. So are Democrats. Right to get their hopes up about Iowa. Welcome to AmericasT. AmericasT, AmericasT from BBC News.
- [01:41]
Justin Webb
You hear that sound? Oh, I think when I hear that sound, it reminds me of money.
- [01:46]
Political Candidate/Voice
We didn't start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it.
- [01:50]
TikTok Advertiser
This is a big cover up and this administration is engaged in it.
- [01:54]
Sarah Smith
This guy has Trump derangement syndrome.
- [01:56]
Political Candidate/Voice
I have four words for you. Turn the volume up.
- [02:05]
Sarah Smith
Hello, it's Sarah in the BBC's Washington bureau.
- [02:07]
Anthony Zurcher
And it's Anthony right here with Sarah in Washington, DC.
- [02:10]
Justin Webb
And it's Justin in the worldwide headquarters of AmericasT in London, England. And I should say before we start, it is just coming up to 3 o' clock in the afternoon on Wednesday in London. And that matters, of course, particularly this time around, because we're going to be talking about election results that are not necessarily fully in, but I think we can be pretty confident about what we're saying all the same. And what we're saying, guys, is just fascinating, isn't it? Because we're going to be talking mainly about a rural State and Democratic Party successes in that rural state. And also potential big pitfalls, setbacks for Donald Trump in that rural state. And this really matters, and it matters in the state we're talking about, which is Iowa. But it matters more widely as well, doesn't it?
- [02:52]
Anthony Zurcher
Yeah, because it is gonna be the key for Democrats in these midterm elections. Iowa has a Senate race that is currently leaning towards Republicans, but if Democrats could flip that seat that's held by Joni Ernst, who is retir retiring, they could be one step closer, as we discussed in the past, to taking control of the Senate. There is also a governor's race there. Iowa. We talk about Iowa. And I think we all know and are familiar with Iowa more than most typical Midwestern states because it has had a traditional position as one of the early states determining who a presidential nominee is going to be. So governor of Iowa actually makes a difference in that contest as well. As if Iowa does become more of a Battleground State in 2028, whoever the party is that controls the governorship might have a little more influence in helping their candidate to win that state.
- [03:42]
Sarah Smith
Yeah. And I mean, Donald Trump is popular there. He won it three times. 2016, 2020, 2024. So even though he lost the election across the country in 2020. And so it is perceived largely as a Republican state now, but Democrats have won in living memory, in my living memory, haven't they, Anthony? I mean, it's not one of the deepest dread states in the country.
- [04:00]
Anthony Zurcher
Right. Barack Obama carried Iowa in 2012. That Iowa went Democratic in the Senate race was 2008. It's not like Texas, where we were talking about half a century of Republican control. It does have a history of swinging sometimes to the Democrats. And The Democrats in 2018 actually picked up three of the four House seats there. So also they have a hope. And I think that part of the reason why they have a hope now is because the unique things that are going on in the American Midwest with farmers and unique things that are going on in Iowa.
- [04:35]
Sarah Smith
Yeah. And the farmers are fascinating because they broke really big across the Midwest for Donald Trump and are suffering quite particularly from the war in Iran because not only has the price of fuel gone up, the price of fertilizer has gone up as well. There have been issues with Trump's trade tariffs, also hurting the farming sector. They've had a little bit of a bailout, but probably not as much as they feel that they deserve. So watching what happens with that vote is going to be really interesting, Justin.
- [05:00]
Justin Webb
And just to Sort of widen the lens for a second again before we focus again on who the candidates are who've done well. And it is really interesting, actually, the kind of candidates really matter. And we'll get to that in a second. Just sort of big picture. Yes, it's not Texas, Iowa, when it comes to the Democrats being completely out of the race in recent years. But it is still the case, isn't it, that one of the really striking things, you look back to 2008 and Anthony says Obama won as well in 2012. But actually in the years since then, it's been one of those places that has just leached away from the Democrats. And the thing that really is striking to me is that they have lost interest in it. And what really interests me is if a combination of Donald Trump messing up and messing things up for the Republicans and the Democrats suddenly themselves thinking, oh, I actually quite like farmers, they that, it seems to me, is seismic.
- [05:57]
Anthony Zurcher
Yeah, Donald Trump won Iowa in 2024 by 13 points. But to capture the way this may be swinging, there was a poll recently, a YouGov economist poll, that showed that Donald Trump had a net 20 negative approval rating in Iowa. Makes it one of the states where he is, you know, particularly unpopular. And, you know, obviously we can, we can say polls are polls. And if you remember, Justin, we talked about an Iowa poll that showed Kamala Harris winning that state.
- [06:27]
Justin Webb
They famously did November. Maybe we talked about it too much.
- [06:32]
Anthony Zurcher
Yeah. So, I mean, you can only, you have to take polls with a grain of salt. But I think those polls and the results we saw in Iowa on Tuesday night in these primaries, I think those are all data points for what could be trouble for Donald Trump in America's heartland.
- [06:50]
Sarah Smith
Obviously, we're wary of polls and all predictions, but Anthony, there's a couple of groups that look in great detail at different races, aren't there, and don't necessarily predict the winner, but they sort of give predictions as to whether it heavily looks like it's going Republican slightly or looks like a toss up. And they have moved, I mean, the Cook Political Report we've mentioned before, very, very well respected. And they've shifted the rating for Iowa's governor's race from lean Republican to toss up. And there's others aren't there, that people really watch quite closely.
- [07:21]
Anthony Zurcher
Larry Sabato, who's University of Virginia professor who runs a Crystal Ball, it's a whole organization that they have within the university that does these predictions. They also moved the governor's race from leans Republican to toss up and Both Cook and Sabato also move that Senate race from solidly Republican to leans Republican. So that's still not a total toss up, but it's one of those races that we've talked about on the margins that if Democrats could put in play, it gives them a shot at winning the four seats they would need out of the 33, 34 that are up for grabs in the Senate in November to take control of that chamber back.
- [08:02]
Sarah Smith
Yeah. And worth noting, the Wall Street Journal called Rob sand, who is the Democratic candidate for governor, easily the strongest contender his party could have recruited. And, Justin, it's almost as though they have been listening to you and your appeal for the Democrats to run centrist candidates who don't focus on cultural issues, who haven't said things about transgender or anything else that could become hostages to fortune. If you could put together a sort of identicate candidate to persuade the good folks of Iowa to vote Democrat. It's probably Rob sand, isn't it?
- [08:35]
Josh Turek
Yeah.
- [08:35]
Justin Webb
So he's the state auditor, isn't he? So he is already a guy who holds statewide office in Iowa.
- [08:42]
Anthony Zurcher
The only Democrat.
- [08:43]
Justin Webb
The only one. Yeah, the only one. And hugely unusual. He has two handguns. Now, I'm not endorsing, Sarah, the ownership of handguns, but I am saying that if you're in a place like this and you own handguns and you're a Democrat, you're immediately saying something to people. And it's exactly as Sarah says. It's this ability to signal. It is not that progressives cannot win in other parts of America. Indeed, very, very obviously they can. And the progressive left message can be hugely successful. But what the party's done in recent times seemed to me, and I've said this a number of times, is that they've not allowed those who are not progressive to be selected in places where the other message is a good one and this guy is the other message. And they've got in there. He quotes from the Bible. He's got it all exactly as Sarah says.
- [09:35]
Sarah Smith
He's a bow hunter as well. And that takes some real skill. So that's. I mean, that's proper Midwestern stuff, isn't it? Anybody can pick up a handgun, takes something to be able to kill livestock with a bow.
- [09:46]
Justin Webb
And they go and do it early in the morning, too. I've done bow hunting in Iowa. I mean, we've all. We've got. All got Iowa stories. But one of my kind of main memories of Iowa is going out early in the morning at first light with bow Hunters. And it's a really big deal there. And it's a kind of deal that just interests local people. It's a local pursuit. And if you actually genuinely do it, rather than pretending to do it, then you're really in with people. And that's why this guy is such a strong candidate, which he genuinely is, isn't he?
- [10:18]
Sarah Smith
Yeah.
- [10:18]
Anthony Zurcher
And his office on the Capitol in Iowa has mounted taxidermy heads of animals that he's killed. His slogan is governor for all. So he is making a kind of a centrist pitch to disaffected Republicans. His yard signs are green, not kind of the Democratic blue. So he's the kind of person that you might imagine has a fighting chance to take advantage of divisions on the Republican side.
- [10:47]
Justin Webb
Yeah. And along the same lines, he starts his rallies by having the audience sing America the Beautiful. And he's actually posted a campaign video. We should listen to a bit of it. This is a compilation of people singing that song.
- [10:58]
Rob Sand
I want to do one simple thing to just get us all together and remember that actually we can work together to make. Make something nice. And that is sing the first verse of America the Beautiful.
- [11:09]
Justin Webb
Beautiful for spacious. Oh, Anthony's gonna be welling up now.
- [11:26]
Anthony Zurcher
I know. Can you sing the first stanza of America the Beautiful, Justin? Did you ever get that ingrained in your head while you were here?
- [11:32]
Justin Webb
No, I wish I could, actually. Yeah, that's terrible. I'm not even sure my daughter can, but I'll test her on it and get back to you.
- [11:39]
Sarah Smith
Now, sand, as you mentioned, Anthony does describe himself as a governor for all, and he's actually picked a trademark slogan where he says, it's not red or bluer, it's better and truer.
- [11:50]
Rob Sand
You want to know what real change looks like? How about a campaign for governor that has over 1,000 donors from the opposite political party? This campaign is bigger than being Democrats or Republicans. It's not redder or bluer. It's better and truer. And people are responding. People are coming together in a way that considering how divided we are these days, feels really meaningful. So I hope you'll join us. Thanks.
- [12:18]
Anthony Zurcher
So all these donations from Republicans. He's also got a lot of donations from people a little closer to him. Over million dollars from his wife and in laws, which has helped him capture the Democratic nomination. In fact, he ran unopposed. The whole party kind of rallied around him. He has the ability to fund himself in a state where it's not all that expensive to run for statewide office. So it makes him a formidable candidate.
- [12:43]
Political Candidate/Voice
Yeah.
- [12:44]
Sarah Smith
And it's interesting, isn't it, when we talk all the time about how polarized American politics is, how nobody will even consider the arguments of the other side. And far fewer people, it seems, are switching their votes between Republican and Democrat to have somebody who's appealing straight down the middle like that and saying that he can bridge these divides. So, I mean, it's an interesting model for other candidates across the country.
- [13:04]
Justin Webb
And it's a model just to emphasize this case, it's a model that they used to follow. You think of Brian Schweitzer. I don't know if either of you ever came across him. When he was governor of Montana, I spent a memorable day with him. Gosh, it must have been in, well, I suppose in the early 2000s, which is when he was governor of Montana. But he had these lines, these kind of stock lines, like, I think gun control is hitting what you shoot at, and all these kind of things that were just completely flew in the face of the norms in the Democratic Party. And yet he was pretty successful and very popular, at least for a time, Democratic governor. So they're, in a sense, with this guy with sand. They're going back to a model that's worked in the past, aren't they?
- [13:47]
Anthony Zurcher
Yeah. I think that one of the things that Democrats have been trying to do this time around in this midterm is run candidates who appeal to the place that they're from. And so you run Mamdani in New York City, but you run Abigail Spamberger in Virginia, who campaigned as a centrist and has been governing as a centrist, much to the dismay of some Democrats. So it is the kind of formula that helps when you're not in power and you don't have to establish some sort of a national policy. The question then is, in 2028, when the party has to determine who they are as a national party, then you have a bunch of different people all kind of pulling in different directions. But for midterms in November and in this place, Iowa, he seems like he is the kind of guy who's a. The right fit.
- [14:37]
Sarah Smith
So let's look at his opponent, the Republican candidate who won the primary. Now, we'll get to the details about him, what he's running on. But Zach Lane, businessman and farmer who's never run for office before, is particularly interesting because he beat a sitting congressman who had been endorsed by Donald Trump. And we've talked on the podcast about the other primaries we've had this year already and the way in which Trump candidates have all won, have all stormed to the front off the back of Donald Trump's endorsement. Here is our first glimpse that he doesn't have the vice like grip on the Republican Party that we've been talking about before because Zach Lane was not his preferred choice and yet he went on and won. So why Anthony?
- [15:20]
Anthony Zurcher
Well, we talked about last week Donald Trump being able to pick people and throw his endorsements behind and push them over in the top, including in ousting incumbent Republicans who had found disfavor with Trump. But this time around, yeah, Trump threw his weight behind Feenstra, the incumbent congressman, three term congressman who had been a loyal Trump supporter in the House of Representatives. And that wasn't enough. Now part of it was the endorsement came just in the last week. Feenstra didn't even have time to go up on it with a television ad touting that endorsement. But the base in Iowa, conservatives, evangelicals in particular, they weren't sold on Feenstra. They found him as two establishment too centrist. And so they backed a couple of different candidates. But the one who ended up winning was Zach Lahn who had endorsements from Charlie Kirk's old group. Turning Point USA had endorsements for the Make America Healthy Again group. He campaigned on Making Iowa Healthy Again. He campaigned on Iowa first, which sounds a little bit like America first and limiting foreign and out of state ownership of Iowa farms. So he ran to the right, I guess feast draw, which you know, he out, he out trumped the candidate that Trump endorsed.
- [16:41]
Sarah Smith
Yeah, that's fascinating. And Justin, you can probably hear he is so little known on the national stage that I call him Zach Lane. Anthony's calling him Zach Lan. It is spelled L A H. I think you're right. And so, so we will find out.
- [16:55]
Justin Webb
I think it's Lane. And the only reason I think it's Lane is I've actually listened to the guy's adverts and it definitely says Lane at the end. But when he, when he eventually runs for the presidency, we'll have sorted it out. In the meantime, actually, why don't we listen to him talking of his adverts. Let's listen to his victory speech because there's a load of things you just brought up, Anthony that I think are just fascinating about the message that he has and where he's running from as well. This isn't just as simple as oh, the non Trump candidate has won. Chalk this up to, I don't know, sort of country club Republicans finally winning one. This isn't that at all. It's more interesting than that in a way. But let's listen to the guy himself. Here he is.
- [17:34]
Political Candidate/Voice
I fear every day we are losing the Iowa we love. We've lost 10,000 family farms since 2000. Our young people are leaving faster than 46 other states because they don't see enough opportunity here. Wall street hedge funds and foreign interests are buying and selling our land, driving up costs, so our kids are priced out of the market. They treat Iowa land like it's a commodity instead of our inheritance. They treat us like numbers, not neighbors on the front steps of our farmhouse. Many of you were here when I announced my campaign. I made it very clear as governor, I will take on the big ag cartels, I will break up their monopolies, and I will get Iowa farmers a fair deal.
- [18:20]
Anthony Zurcher
Yeah, that's really fascinating, right? An anti establishment, anti outsider campaign. That does sound a bit like some of the Trump's themes that he's run on for the past decade. And I think you're right, Sarah. I think that Trump probably looked and saw Feenstra. Oh, he's an incumbent congressman. He's been able to win there. He had been up in the polls, generally viewed as the front runner and the likely nominee. I mean, if you believe in these things, the betting markets had him like a 70 to 80% chance of winning when Donald Trump endorsed him. And on the ground, it was a different story. And on the ground, there are people who are not all that thrilled with the way things are going in Iowa, aren't all that thrilled with some of Donald Trump's policies, to be quite honest. His tariffs and the way that China responded to the tariffs by stopping purchase of Iowa agricultural goods, that really hit farmers hard. And then the Iran war by raising the price of energy, by raising the price of fertilizer for all of these farms in Iowa, that's been a double punch. That has really hit them. And so just because Donald Trump says jump and this is the guy, it seems like there was and we're talking about a few thousand plus votes. This was a small sample size because not many people vote in Republican primaries. But still they didn't fall in line behind Donald Trump's pick, the way we've seen in other places.
- [19:44]
Sarah Smith
Donald Trump obviously knows he's in trouble with the farming community even before he saw this result because he's making one of his rare visits outside of Washington to go and talk to voters campaign event. And it's farmers he's going to see in Wisconsin on Friday. So, yeah, I think if you Needed extra reminding. This is the fact that, yeah, that is one community that needs to be heavily courted, I think, by Donald Trump, if they're not gonna desert him in their droves.
- [20:09]
Justin Webb
But what interests me is it's not just the farmers, is it? One of you mentioned that he was endorsed by Make America Healthy Again or by their PAC or super pac. The money that fascinates me. Cause if you think of Making America Healthy Again, the Maha movement, so this is Robert Kennedy jun and his people. It's very much focused on healthy eating, et cetera. But it's also got a kind of tinge, to put it mildly, of anti vax, hasn't it? Certainly anti big pharma. Very based outside the mainstream, edgy, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And until recently, I think it's fair to say, isn't it pretty Trump adjacent? And so this is yet another split, isn't it? So you could talk about the farmers splitting off those who were, and lots of them were keen Trump supporters, but the Maha movement as well, what's going on where suddenly they are also outside
- [21:05]
Sarah Smith
the tent during the Iowa caucuses at the beginning of 2024. I was there covering the race, you know, Trump running against Ron DeSantis and all of the other candidates, and spoke to lots of voters and families who turned up at their rallies. And I've kept in touch with a few of them to say, how do they feel now? People who then decided they were gonna vot Trump in the primary, who enthusiastically voted for him in the general election in November 2024. Every few months I just give them a ring and have a chat about what they think is going on in the country and how happy or not they are about it. And a couple of the mothers particularly are really, really Maha. And they will say they were upset about trade tariffs and worried about what it was going to do to inflation. They're not happy about the war in Iran. They're certainly not happy about what that's done to the cost of living. But they are so invested in Maha in some of the ideas about getting additives out of food and changing Americans diets. And that feels to them much closer to their kitchen table, to their families than a lot of the big policy things that we talk about all the time, that I would say they're probably more invested in Maha than they are in MAGA, no matter how MAGA they seemed in 2024.
- [22:12]
Justin Webb
That's really interesting. I mean, it is exactly as you suggest, kind of splintering, isn't it potential splintering of a coalition that's been enormously powerful for Donald Trump. It's pretty obvious, isn't it? But now could equally go in any direction. And it's a reminder, isn't it, that people saw Donald Trump as a vessel for putting their own views on what should happen into reality. In other words, they wanted him, you think back to the anti abortion movement and what they wanted from Trump in his first term and the picking of the Supreme Court justices that would get rid of Roe v. Wade, et cetera. People have used him for various reasons at various times, but they have not necessarily ever been as committed to him as a person as sometimes I think it is suggested in the media. And that seems to me to be coming true now.
- [23:07]
Anthony Zurcher
Right as we talked about at the top, there's another statewide race, an open seat, the Senate race in Iowa. And in that race, the Trump back candidate Cruz to victory. Ashley Hinson, who also is a member of Congress representing Iowa, she ran and won by a comfortable margin. So the interest in that the Senate primaries for Iowa is actually on the Democratic side because there was a contest, there was a contest between someone who was a more kind of progressive candidate and one who had been backed by establishment Democrats, including Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority leader. And it was that candidate, the establishment backed centrist, who won. His name is Josh Turek. He's a two time Paralympic gold medalist in a wheelchair. He has spinal bifida because his father, who fought in the Vietnam War, was exposed to Agent Orange. He's a state legislator now and he won defeating another state legislator. He had endured 21 surgeries since the age of 12. So he's got a compelling personal narrative. He's running also as a centrist and he had campaign videos where it showed him getting out and talking to people in his wheelchair and then getting out and dragging his wheelchair up the steps to get around to knock on front doors. I mean, it was a pretty powerful moment. Well, Josh, tell us, how'd you win that House seat when no one said that was possible?
- [24:35]
Josh Turek
The blueprint is hard work, grit and determination. I went out every single day, crawling those stairs, knocking doors, dragging my wheelchair up, having face to face conversations with Republicans, with independents, with Democrats, it did not matter. The party. Very first thing they would say is, how in the world did you get up here? And I would say, I crawled up here, I drugged my wheelchair up here. That's how important it is to have a conversation with you.
- [25:00]
Anthony Zurcher
Talk about red states and red districts and red Senate seats, turning Blue look no further than Iowa.
- [25:08]
Justin Webb
The big thing about this guy, Josh Cirac, is not only, as you say, he's got an amazing kind of resume and this kind of real sense about him of being special and interesting, that comes from the fact that he has to cope with all these physical difficulties to do the job. But number two, he is, I mean, again, to go back to this thing of picking horses for courses, as it were. So there was a progressive left candidate who ran against him, and that's fine. But the party in the end made the choice of him for the obvious reason. It seems to me that he would be much more likely to win the Senate seat than the progressive left candidate. So he was endorsed, wasn't he, by the party leadership. Bit of a rare victory for the party leadership for Chuck Schumer and the rest of them. They're battered about all the time now until they're useless, and they don't fight Donald Trump enough, et cetera, et cetera. But Bernie Sanders and all the progressives went for the other candidate and lost. And that seems to me to be another example of the Democrats getting serious about winning in a place like this. It's as simple as that, isn't it?
- [26:16]
Anthony Zurcher
We'll see on this. As we noted the prediction sites, the expert crystal ball Piers said this is a leans Republican race, but this is also an environment where Democrats might have the winds at their back and they might be able to pick up an Iowa, they might be able to pick up an Ohio or a Maine, as we talked about, or Alaska or even Texas, as we talked about. And if they do enough of that, then they can take control of the United States Senate. The thing to remember also is that Donald Trump isn't on the ballot. And when we talk about how Donald Trump has won in Iowa three straight times, one thing I've noted when I've been there is that Donald Trump's support has come out of the woodwork in Iowa. They are people who are not what you would call high propensity voters.
- [27:05]
Sarah Smith
Well, it can be a very, very long drive to the polling station in Iowa.
- [27:08]
Anthony Zurcher
And, yeah, and so they show up. And that's one of the reasons why some of these presidential polls, I think, have been wrong, is because they don't correctly capture Donald Trump's ability to turn out his supporters. What they don't do is they don't always turn out in midterm elections, and they don't always turn out to support candidates, even if Donald Trump stands there and says, vote for this guy, vote for him now and he's my pick. And I think that's what we saw last night.
- [27:33]
Justin Webb
So, okay, so they've got a list of places to pick up. And we've talked in the past about Maine. We've talked about Texas as well. Where does Iowa sit? How necessary is it for them to win in Iowa to be able to take control of the Senate?
- [27:47]
Anthony Zurcher
I think Democratic insiders, they may think that Iowa's a better pickup opportunity than Texas. Part of the reason is because it's not as expensive as campaigning in Texas, which has three of the biggest media markets and in the nation, but also because as we've discussed that history of Democrats being able to win statewide in Iowa more recently. So I think it fits in with the two obvious pickups that we talked about, which are North Carolina and Maine, although there's some trouble with Maine. I'm going to Maine this week and we're going to see how much trouble Graham Platner, that Democratic candidate, is in. So that's the two that they're really counting on. Then you have to find another two. Iowa's one of them, Ohio's another one with Sherrod Brown, who's a former senator, as running, might be able to flip that seat back. Mary Patola, a Democrat running in Alaska who has won statewide there before, she might be able to oust the incumbent and then Texas and that really fascinating race that we've discussed in Texas and then maybe throw in Florida also. But there's two that Democrats really think they have to get and then they have to find two from the collection of Iowa, Ohio, Alaska, Texas and Florida to be able to flip while defending two other seats, Michigan and Georgia, that Republicans are targeting the Democratic candidates there.
- [29:02]
Justin Webb
I mean, it's worth really emphasizing that as well, isn't it, as well as obviously winning seats, they've also got to hold onto those two seats that you mention and some suggestions certainly in Michigan, that they might have trouble doing that, in which case picking up other ones isn't necessarily going to do the job for them. Look, before we go, Anthony, there is a lot of chat about Maine, a lot of chat about Iowa. There's also a lot of chat about you. We've had a lot of correspondence about something you said on the pod a couple of weeks ago. This is when we were talking about Javier Becerra, the Democratic candidate for the governor, California race, or at least he's in the primary, isn't he? We don't yet know exactly what's happened in that, but it wasn't actually necessarily about him. It was this.
- [29:45]
Anthony Zurcher
Some people started to gravitate towards Becerra because as milquetoast as he is, he at least seems to be a safer pit.
- [29:53]
Justin Webb
Right?
- [29:54]
Sarah Smith
Milquetoast. I love that phrase. And I still have. I've looked it up before. I know it's got a Q in the middle of it, not a C
- [30:00]
Justin Webb
somewhere in the middle. Yeah.
- [30:02]
Sarah Smith
I still can't work out what it means. And it always makes me think of dipping a piece of toast in a glass of wilk. What does it really mean, Anthony?
- [30:09]
Anthony Zurcher
I mean, I think that's the best kind of definition I can come up with, that it just means very bland and unchallenging.
- [30:19]
Justin Webb
Okay. Well, as ever, the expertise is not with us. It's with our listeners. And Mary Hill Harris's email us about it from an American, she says, an American resident in the UK since my marriage in 1966, still a regular visitor to a tiny village in western New York State founded by my ancestor in 1787. Milk toast, buttered toast cut into pieces and submerged in hot milk is, or at least was considered a mild, easily digestible meal, good for children, invalids, or people who are frail for some other reason. Surely, she says this is general knowledge. But what you may not know or remember is that in the 1940s and 50, there was a cartoon character named Casper Milquetoast. And this is in. In Sarah's manner of spelling it with the Q in the middle, portrayed as a tall, thin, and very spindly neck, wispy white hair, toothbrush, moustache. In one cartoon, he's pictured standing stiffly at attention. And the caption was the neighbor's boy's been practicing the Star Spangled Banner on his bugle all morning. So Mary says if you could describe Casper Milquetoast in one phrase, it would be that he was the antithesis of a he man.
- [31:30]
Anthony Zurcher
Well, I know he man, but that's a fascinating definition of milk toast and a description of the history behind it. So I really appreciate the informing us in this way.
- [31:42]
Sarah Smith
You had the meaning, right?
- [31:43]
Anthony Zurcher
I had the meaning, right.
- [31:44]
Sarah Smith
Yeah. Yes. So, yeah. Who knows what corrections will be offered from this week's episode, but we better wrap it up before we make any mistakes. Bye bye.
- [31:52]
Anthony Zurcher
Bye bye.
- [31:55]
Justin Webb
Thank you for answering our call and continuing to send your messages to us. We do read every single one. We love to hear your thoughts, your feedback and questions as well. So please do keep them coming. You can send us an email. It's americastbc.co.uk. the WhatsApp is 443-330-1239480 and you can get involved in the AmericasT Discord server. The link to that is in the description. And don't forget to subscribe. That way you will never miss an episode. Until next time. By.
- [32:45]
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- [33:00]
Kai Wright
I'm Kai Wright.
- [33:01]
Anthony Zurcher
I'm Carter Sherman.
- [33:02]
Sarah Smith
Welcome to Stateside with Kai and Carter. We're a new show from the Guardian.
- [33:05]
Kai Wright
We're talking to big thinkers and the best journalists just trying to understand the world through smart conversation and honest reporting.
- [33:12]
Sarah Smith
We don't have billionaires telling us what to say.
- [33:14]
Kai Wright
Stateside with Kyan Carter will come out three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, starting May 13.
- [33:19]
Sarah Smith
Subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.