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Hey everybody. Tim Miller from the Bulwark here. I was just on deadline White House with my friend Nicole and fellow New Orleanian Mitch Landrieu and as well as Basil Smichel. And we were talking about the Democratic special election wins this week or at least in areas where they lost, where they gained a lot of ground. This is something, it's hard to cover all the special elections given the fact that Donald Trump is threatening civilizational annihilation and the Middle east and you know, having deals, no deals, and you know, there's a lot in the news, but it's important to just get a sense of where things are at. And you had in Marjorie Taylor Greene's district, the Republicans end up having to spend money to protect their candidate. And the Democratic candidate had a 20 plus point improvement over what the Democrat did against Marjorie Taylor Greene in 2024. Uh, and so that's good. Uh, you have a new Democratic mayor and crucial Waukesha, Wisconsin. Uh, you had a Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin. Huge win by the Democratic aligned candidate. So lots of positive news in the special elections. And as you hear, as I'm talking to Nicole, there's one particular shift number that I'm looking to this year for people to keep in the back of their head. That's this 14 point shift. And you can hear more about that with Nicole. I wanted to talk about one other thing while we're here among friends. I was just at a meeting of state Democratic parties and had the opportunity to meet a lot of folks who are like, doing the work out there in the states, working for the state parties, working for affiliated organizations. And there's always a lot of focus on the big swing states and the big races and the big candidates. But these are a lot of the folks who are like behind the scenes doing work in real, you know, in places where the Democrats might have unexpected victories this year, where it's critical that the Democrats are competing. You know, second, one guy who's at the Alaska party and talking about how, hey, state House and Senate in Alaska this time could be winnable. There's a very competitive House race that's in addition to Mary Peltola, somebody I talk about a lot, who's running for Senate. I think his name is maybe the best Democratic Senate recruit this cycle. So, you know, that's a place where Democrats have to compete and they need people to do the work there. They need bodies, they need volunteers. And you know, among the questions people were talking about asking me was how to get people to motivated. And I'M over here going, shit. I'm hearing from people all the time. They're listening to this show, asking what I can do. And so there is a little bit of a disconnect there, you know, where there are, you know, these organizations that, that are looking for excited volunteers to help. And maybe people don't know exactly how to connect. So I would people, you know, look at your local, state and county parties. And even if you're in a red state, you know, I met folks from Arkansas, Kentucky, state party chairs, a lot of these places. I mentioned in the Nicole segment that I think Florida is a sleeper state right now. I met Nikki Freed today for the first time, who was a past candidate that's now running the party there. So this is the moment. It's all ties to what I've been trying to say in the discourse about whether it's about Hassan or whether it's about the war, how to talk about the war. My conversation with Congressman gottheimer, like in this whole thing, like, this is the, the moment for the Democrats to go out and be active and communicate with people in communities who are unhappy with what Trump is doing. This is the time to go to these places where Democrats usually don't do well and say, hey, Trump's fucking over on tariffs. He's screwing you over on your energy prices because of his dumb war. He doesn't care about you. He cares about himself. He cares about his ballroom. You know, maybe in the past you thought the Democrats, you know, we're too woke or too crazy or whatever, whatever it is, let's get a clean slate now. Let's get a clean slate. Let's, let's try to demonstrate to these voters that there are people on the pro democracy side that hear their concerns and are ready to actually govern in a way that is responsive to the American people. So it was cool to be there with everybody. The vibes are getting a little better. You know, I've been in some of these pro democracy or Democratic Party or whatever activist groups over the past year and a half, and obviously there's a lot of anxiety. There's still some anxiety today, but the vibes are getting a little better. And I do like to see that. So anyway, up next, stick around for Mitch, Basil, Nicole and yours truly and subscribe to the feed. Subscribe to you. We're trying to get to 2 million. Try to get to 2 million YouTube subscribers. Help us out. There's some MAGA losers that have more subscribers. We don't want that. You don't Want that?
