Texas Votes: Crockett vs. Talarico! How MAGA Will Texas Go?

Summary

Bulwark Takes – Texas Votes: Crockett vs. Talarico! How MAGA Will Texas Go?

Podcast: Bulwark Takes
Date: March 4, 2026
Host(s): Tim Miller (with Sarah Longwell, Jonathan V. Last [JVL], Lauren Egan)

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Episode Overview

This special live episode of Bulwark Takes dives into the 2026 Texas primary election night, focusing on the high-stakes Democratic Senate race between Jasmine Crockett and James Talarico, as well as the tumultuous GOP primary between John Cornyn and Ken Paxton. The Bulwark team analyzes early results, explores what each side’s choices say about their parties and the future of Texas politics, and reflects on real-time returns, special elections elsewhere, and ongoing shifts in American electoral dynamics.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Texas Democratic Senate Primary: Crockett vs. Talarico

• Election Context & Early Returns

  • There was confusion and voting delays in Dallas County, potentially affecting Crockett's base.
  • Early returns: Talarico leads overall, running up large margins in Austin-area counties and showing surprising strength with Hispanic voters along the Rio Grande Valley.
  • Crockett performing well with older Black voters, particularly in Dallas and Houston, but appears to be underperforming original expectations, even in those areas.
  • [03:00] Tim Miller: "The early results here are looking pretty favorable for James Talarico. Just to be blunt. Not over yet, but if you look at the Calshi prediction markets, they've basically called it for Talarico already."

• Democratic Party Strategy & Experimentation

  • JVL and Sarah Longwell commend the fact that the party tried experiments with different messages and approaches, rather than choosing indistinguishable candidates.
  • Talarico’s campaign is characterized by outreach to Trump voters, a faith-based message, and pragmatic appeals, while Crockett ran a more "fiery, authentic, fighter" campaign—described as “shitposting” for low-info voters.

  [05:46] JBL: “It’s good to run the experiments. ... It is good to have tried an experiment in real time and have gotten a verdict on it and not to just have had like two or three candidates who are all indistinguishable from one another running in the same way.”

• Voter Divisions & Electability

  • Black and Hispanic voters appear divided, but with pragmatic motives; White Democrats focused on electability.
  • Talarico chosen for perceived greater general election viability against a scandal-plagued GOP foe.

  [09:31] JBL: “He's one of my people.”
  [10:24] Tim Miller: “I want to deracialify that a little bit ... The Democratic primary voters overall are pragmatic.”

2. Republican Senate Primary: Cornyn, Paxton & Hunt

• GOP Dynamics & The Runoff

  • Race shaping up for a Cornyn-Paxton runoff, with a wildcard from Wesley Hunt splitting the MAGA vote.
  • Paxton is described as carrying significant personal and ethical "baggage."
  • If Paxton wins, consensus is he would be a uniquely vulnerable candidate for Democrats, reminiscent of Doug Jones vs. Roy Moore in Alabama.

  [06:49] Jonathan Last: “Ken Paxton, you know, and not — he's. ... It's also like a ton of corruption. This guy was actually — he was impeached by his own state at one point.”

• The “Show Your True Self” Republican Theory

  • The panel expresses preference for seeing parties nominate true representatives of their bases (i.e., MAGA-fied Republicans), rather than “moderate” placeholders, on the belief this clarity is healthier for democracy.

  [28:39] JBL: “Accelerationist Sarah is the best.”
  [28:43] Tim Miller: “That's the thing I come down to. ... Show me something that John Cornyn has voted on that was very meaningful that Ken Paxton wouldn't have, to contain Trump. He hasn't, so fuck him.”

3. The Role of Populism, Faith, and Media Savvy

• Talarico’s Media Breakout

  • Rose to prominence via viral social media moments, particularly anti-voucher speeches and faith-driven messages; boosted further after Joe Rogan appearance.
  • Tactically blends populist anti-elite rhetoric with moderate cultural cues, making him appealing across various Democratic factions.

  [33:24] Tim Miller: “Talk to us about how seriously the Democrats are taking this. ... As it looks possible that It's a Talarico vs. Paxton race. Is this like a social media buzz thing?”

• Populism and Authentic Faith Language

  • Talarico leverages his pastoral roots without “punching Trump” or the party—“all billionaires versus us” framing.
  • Panel notes Democrats often don’t “lead with faith,” but that many voters respond positively to authentic religious language.

  [20:04] JBL: “If you take the Jesus stuff seriously, it's both based and woke ... feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the prisoner...”

4. Broader Election Patterns and Down-Ballot Races

• Special Elections and Democratic Overperformance

  • Notable 30-point swing toward Democrats in an Arkansas special election, perceived as further evidence of GOP enthusiasm lag and potential Democratic momentum.
  • Generational transitions: Young, progressive Democrats making inroads in primaries, such as Christian Menefee and Nida Alam (NC-4).

• Crenshaw Defeated

  • Dan Crenshaw loses his Houston-area seat to Steve Toth. The panel revels in his downfall, seeing it as an object lesson in the perils of compromised anti-MAGA Republicans.

  [45:09] Jonathan Last: “Bye bye. Dan Crenshaw, you were one of the people who did all the accommodating and this is where it got you.”

  • [44:03] Tim Miller: “Bring me a high noon. I'm texting downstairs. I'm going to have a victory cocktail. ... Let me break Dan Crenshaw.”
  • [59:45] Jonathan Last: “Do you remember when he made that ad where he was in a really tight bodysuit ... embarrassing too.”

5. What Worked—and Didn’t—for the Senate Primary Candidates

• Crockett’s “Fighter” Appeal

  • Crockett’s unapologetically direct style—fighting for Black voters, internet mudslinging—motivated a passionate base, but had limited crossover appeal.
  • Team notes her campaign struggled beyond core urban counties and did not present a theory for appealing to persuadable or cross-ethnic voters.

• Talarico’s Cross-Coalition Appeal

  • Ran up scores with Hispanic voters and white suburbanites, while not alienating progressives. Succeeded by making himself relatable and “knowable” to diverse constituencies; clear about who he is.

  [56:42] Jonathan Last: “I think with Tao Rico, even if it's when you do the faith thing, like, if you've got something that's clear for voters to grab onto so they're like, I know that person. I know what they're about. Like, I get their vibe.”

• Primary Aftermath: Unity Challenges

  • Key early task for Talarico will be outreach to disaffected Black voters and Crockett’s base following a contentious race.
  • [74:23] Lauren Egan: “Yeah, I think that's going to be one of the main things right out the gate that he's going to have to focus on... that's gonna be a major thing that he's gonna have to work on...”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Democratic Experimentation & Pragmatism
  [04:17] JBL: “If it plays out the way we think it is total vindication for the Tim Miller, Sarah Longwell view of Democratic politics going forward... It's good to try these things... It is good to run the experiments.”

• On Electability over Ideological Purity
  [10:24] Tim Miller: "Democratic primary voters overall are pragmatic... care a lot more about electability in their primary."

• On GOP Base Preferences
  [52:13] Jonathan Last: "Sarah, he's a fighter and he's more MAGA. They think that John Cornyn is a phony, elitist, establishment Republican rhino."

• On the Kamala Conundrum
  [55:08] Tim Miller: “It is what I'm calling the inverse of the Kamala paradox. ... The ones like the Bernie voters look at them like, yeah, he's not quite Bernie enough for me, but I like that cut of that guy or gal’s jib. And the moderate voters are like a little lefty for me on some things, but I, I...”

• On Crenshaw’s Defeat
  [45:09] Jonathan Last: "Bye bye. Dan Crenshaw, you were one of the people who did all the accommodating and this is where it got you."

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Key Timestamps

• [00:58] Tim Miller opens the show and sets the election night scene.
• [03:00] Early results discussion: Talarico leading.
• [04:17] JBL on value of experimentation in Democratic primaries.
• [06:49] Ken Paxton's baggage and GOP chaos.
• [09:31] Discussion of racial/identity politics in the primary.
• [10:24] Tim Miller de-racializes, underlines Democratic pragmatism.
• [14:24] Down-ballot GOP chaos: Dan Crenshaw faces tough challenge, Tony Gonzalez in trouble.
• [19:57] Debates over Talarico’s “centrist” code and cross-racial coalition building.
• [33:24] Lauren Egan on Talarico’s TikTok/Instagram-driven rise.
• [35:49] Special election in Arkansas shows massive Democratic swing.
• [44:03] Tim Miller celebrates Dan Crenshaw’s defeat.
• [62:58] Discussion of generational change in Democratic primaries (NC-4).
• [74:23] Lauren Egan on the challenge of uniting the Democratic coalition after the primary.

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Flow & Tone

The episode features fast-paced, witty, often irreverent banter, peppered with personal asides and inside jokes (“Kamala conundrum,” “lesbian phone tree,” “lick the boot, Dan” regarding Crenshaw). The panelists are unafraid to directly critique candidates, parties, or their own biases, regularly exposing ideological and generational tensions at play in both parties.

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Main Takeaways

• James Talarico is the projected winner of the Texas Democratic Senate primary, surpassing Jasmine Crockett by successfully bridging progressive, moderate, Hispanic, and white Democratic coalitions through a savvy mix of populist and faith-based appeals, amplified by viral media savvy.
• On the Republican side, a Cornyn-Paxton runoff is highly likely, with both seen as flawed, but Paxton representing the “fully MAGA” option and uniquely vulnerable should Democrats manage to build a truly competitive effort.
• The night’s results, along with special election swings elsewhere, suggest sluggish GOP enthusiasm and improving Democratic prospects—even in traditionally red strongholds.
• Dan Crenshaw’s defeat is celebrated as symbolic of the peril facing anti-MAGA or compromising Republicans in today's GOP.
• Panelists caution against overinterpreting any one contest, but see real signs “something is happening out there,” with generational turnover, pragmatic coalition-building, and authentic campaign messaging at the forefront of political success in 2026.

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Closing

For those seeking lessons for the fall—and even 2028—the Texan progressive/populist cocktail, combined with authentic cross-ethnic appeals and “go everywhere” organizing, appears best positioned for future Democratic competition in red states. The Bulwark team underscores the need for both experimentation and focus on political fundamentals—electability, authenticity, and responding nimbly to changing coalitions.

[88:30] Tim Miller: “What a night. I'll see you tomorrow on the podcast. Later, y’all. Subscribe, tell your friends.”

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Lauren Egan]

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[Tim Miller]

that's odoo.com what's up everybody? It's an election night. I love an election night. I used to really love election nights until Donald Trump started winning elections and they're a little triggering now, but I do, I do still love them deep down inside. I'm Tim Miller. I'm here with Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark jvl Editor, author of the Triad Newsletter. Love our girl Lauren Egan coming in here in a little bit. She's been covering the Dems and we just want to do a little live live podcast and live streaming with you on on a big election night. Set the table here. Big win for the eight year old girls basketball team. I coach the Honey Badgers tonight. Doesn't know that's what you guys are here to hear about. It's been a tough season, but things are clicking right as we get to playoff. Okay.

[Jonathan Last]

Anyway, Tim's working the refs.

[Tim Miller]

That's why I was working the refs. I was working the ref and it was working, baby. We got big W tonight. Okay, on to the actual news. You're here for the the Texas Senate race is on both sides. It's the one that we're most focused on. There'll be a couple other races we're monitoring. Returns are coming in on both the Republican and the Democratic side. We had a delay. I guess the big news of the night is that in Dallas county the Republicans don't know how to run elections or don't care. I don't know if this is this kind of news to you guys, but in Dallas county there was like mass voter confusion. One of my buddies lives there, so I was texting him about it. It's like the, the voting. The election site was down if you. A lot of places where people usually went to vote, you weren't allowed to vote there because they changed the rules. You had to go to your precinct. And a lot of people tried to vote, weren't able to. So they extended it an hour. I think that in particular, I think Jasmine Crockett's campaign is interested in that because it's her home base, it's her base of support in Dallas. So that might delay us a little bit tonight night that's the big news. The early results here are looking pretty favorable for James Talrico. Just to be blunt. Not over yet, but if you look at the Calshi prediction markets, they've basically called it for tall Rico already. Dave Wasserman over at this over at Cook Political is very sober minded. He says it's looking like Talarico. The broad swaths of that. And then I'll let you guys kind of weigh in is Crockett continues to do well of voting base of black voters, older black voters in particular. She's doing well in a lot of the counties that Joe Biden did well in in the 2020 Texas primary where he beat Bernie. But it was a more of a. It was a bigger field. Right. So a lot of other other vote was fractured. Talrico is doing well, as expected. Like around Austin. He's running up Saddam Hussein numbers in Austin. He's up 76.23 there right now. And in, and in West Texas, that Austin to San Antonio area. The interesting thing is Houston was one, we were wondering, another urban area. You know, a lot of black voters in Houston, but also a lot of college educated voters, which seems to be the big kind of fault line here. Talarico is down in Houston, but it's a lot closer than I think people thought. And then the other group was Hispanic voters along the Rio Grande Valley and they're a little later to come in. But early results seem to indicate that Talarico is doing well among Hispanic voters. So that is kind of where we're at to start. Any big takes from you guys on what, why this matters, what you're seeing, I guess. Jb, I want you go first because you kind of wrote about why this matter. I gotta.

[JBL]

So this total. Okay, if it plays out the way we think it is total vindication for the Tim Miller, Sarah Longwell view of Democratic politics going forward. For people who are not maybe regular viewers of this. Tim Miller has been saying Democrats got to try doing different things everywhere. Sarah Longwell has been saying gotta speak to Trump voters, gotta Try to meet them where they are, speak their language, maybe lead with faith at some point and tell Rico did this. And Jasmine Crockett did something different too. Now, what she did wasn't very effective, maybe it turns out, but she tried running like a shit poster, like, hey, I'm just going to go for low info voters and try to turn that out. And it seems to have not worked. But that's good. It's good to try these things. It is good to run the experiments. And what I most wanted, I just didn't want like a 49.8 to 49.

[Tim Miller]

We might still get that.

[Jonathan Last]

Yeah, I would not sp.

[JBL]

Yeah, we might, but it looks like we're going to get like a clean result and not, not a dusty finish as they would call it in wrestling, but, but a clean win. And it's good to have tried an experiment in real time and have gotten a verdict on it and not to just have had like two or three candidates who are all indistinguishable from one another running in the same way.

[Jonathan Last]

Yeah. Let me talk a little bit about why it matters, like big picture. So people watching this live stream are probably political nerds. So this might be a little basic, but I do just want to lay out the fact that Texas has been like a desperation reach state for Democrats for so long. They thought they could get somewhere with Beto against Ted Cruz. It didn't work. Colin Allred didn't work. Just hasn't worked in Texas. However, the Republicans, much like they did in 2022, seem primed to nominate. We haven't gone to the Republicans yet, but there is a strong chance that they might nominate a guy named Ken Paxton who has more baggage than Tim Miller on a trip to Europe. It is. I don't know. Do you pack a lot to go? It's. Guess it's all Speedos and stuff. I don't know. You're muted.

[Tim Miller]

Dude. I was coughing. I thought that was me. I'm just going to move on. What I thought that was, I shouldn't say. So you just keep going.

[Jonathan Last]

A lot of baggage. Ken Paxton, you know, and not. He's. There's been a lot like the tabloidy stuff with his wife and affairs and things like that, but that's not. It's also like a ton of corruption. This guy was actually. He was impeached by his own state at one point. He leads with his faith too, just like James Delrico, although there's a few problems with that. And so his wife divorced him not that long ago saying that he had offended their spiritual home and arrangements. So in a year where Republican enthusiasm might be at its absolute lowest point with a candidate quality problem on the Republican side, it is the closest opportunity Democrats have had in a really long time to pick up a Senate seat in Texas in a. At a moment when that could be the difference between Democrats and being even with Republicans.

[JBL]

Second coming of Doug Jones versus Roy Moore.

[Jonathan Last]

That's right. It's a big race. It's a big race. And so who the person is on the Democratic side is very important. And so you're testing what I like about. I've really liked this Texas primary. Even though it's been kind of ugly at a national level, doing the focus groups with Democrats was actually a bit of a relief. I don't know if you guys listened to the episode, but. But Democrats in Texas were like, I'm

[Tim Miller]

making a big announcement. I'm getting back on the focus group podcast right now. I had to take a year off because I just couldn't hear the voters. I was too mad at them. But I should have listened to the Texas primary when I feel bad I didn't right now. And I'm getting back on starting this Saturday. Sorry, continue. Tell us about that. Thank you.

[Jonathan Last]

I can't believe that. Because you know what? They, you know. So we were talking about what a nasty race it's been. They liked both of them. 70% approval for both of them. They were not really tracking like the, the, the, all of the, the drama. Yeah. The online stuff. They were like, on one side we got Jasmine Crockett. She's fiery, she's authentic. She goes hard. She's a fighter. I love that. On the other side, we've got James Talrico, who talks about faith, which is so good in Texas. And so if Tao Rico pulls this out, I think what you're going to see is the divide between black voters and Hispanic voters. Like, we already see this. We got a guy named T. Rico. We've got a black woman in the race. And so blacks and Hispanics are. Seem to be lining up calorie co.

[Tim Miller]

Just because his name ends in a vowel. He's not actually Hispanic.

[Jonathan Last]

I know, but this is.

[Tim Miller]

This is.

[Jonathan Last]

This is I. But this is. Everybody is talking about the Hispanic.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Black.

[Jonathan Last]

Like Hispanics are going for Taurico.

[Tim Miller]

Yep.

[Jonathan Last]

Talo Rico.

[JBL]

He's one of my people.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Last]

Is. He's just Catholic.

[JBL]

He's not Catholic.

[Tim Miller]

Jefferson Davis county in Texas.

[Jonathan Last]

Can you just let me finish this? And then I'm not going to say that much more. Okay, so then where it goes is going to be down to a lot of the, like white Democrats in Texas. And here's the thing about the white Democrats in Texas. The whites, they, I don't think, have as much of a dog in the fight as it seems like Hispanics and black voters do. They want to win. And so this became for those voters an electability conversation with who do they think could potentially beat Ken Paxton? And if this goes the way it looks like it's going to go with Talarico winning, it's because they decided he was the more electable candidate. Probably not that they liked him better, but that he had a better chance of beating Ken Paxton in a general election.

[Tim Miller]

I want to deracialify that a little bit because I think that just we've learned a lot over the last six years. In particular, the Democratic primary voters overall are pragmatic. Overall, they're pragmatic. They're more pragmatic than Republicans. It doesn't mean that they won't pick the more lefty candidate. We even talked about that main race earlier today. And so people say, well, if Democrat voters are pragmatic, why isn't Janet Mills doing better? I think that they're pragmatically making a bet. Maybe they're wrong, but I think that they think that Graham Partner would actually be a stronger candidate in the general because of the way he codes, is a working class guy because they tried Sarah Gideon last time, she lost. They don't want a boring old person. So the Democratic voters care a lot more about electability in their primary. It's a higher education audience. It's a higher engaged audience, higher news watching audience. And you know, this is our boy Laksha Jane over at Split Ticket and he's saying that Jasmine Crockett is basically underperforming everywhere. And obviously she's doing better in black counties and closer to home counties. But like, based on the baseline of what they thought that she was going to do, she seems to be underperforming everywhere. And you know, and so I look, I think that the Hispanic voters are also being pragmatic. And again, despite that, Talarico sounds a little more Hispanic. He's just a white guy, he's just a pastor. So I don't know that there's a big racial affinity there. I think that folks are looking at this and saying, look, this guy, we've talked about the religious aspect. He goes on Fox, he went on Joe Rogan. He at least has a theory of the case for talking to Trump voters. This is my big thing about Crockett. The whole time, she didn't even offer a theory of the case for what her message was to them. It was basically like, fuck you, Trump voters, and we'll see what happens. Maybe that would have worked. It seems like we're not going to know. We don't know for sure. But I just think that there's a lot. You see this across the board now for a while in Democratic primaries, a lot of pragmatism. I hate to bring up old wounds, but it's kind of why some of us thought there should have been a primary in the 2024 presidential campaign. So do you think the Democratic voters would have been pragmatic about that? But anyway, we'll continue to monitor that as it goes on over to the Republican side. Unless jvl you had anything to add to that.

[JBL]

No, I agree completely.

[Tim Miller]

I think on the Republican side, we are probably, probably headed towards a runoff. You got to get 50%. There were three candidates on the Republican Senate side. John Cornyn, Ken Paxton, and Wesley Hunt was the third candidate. Sarah talked about Ken Paxton's baggage earlier. The relevance of, I think the results in this primary is a lot of people are saying if Ken Paxton won by a lot, then maybe the runoff would kind of be pro forma because Trump would endorse him. And that's not happening right now. Right now, John Cornyn's up by about 4%. It looks like there's a lot of vote, not out of vote out, uncounted out in rural Texas. And you kind of like, look at the map here. You know, Cornyn is. Is doing a little better in the suburbs, and. And Paxton's doing better out in kind of the exurb. So we'll see how that goes. I think it's possible that Paxton could run up the score in some of these other counties, so it doesn't look like Houston's and either. So TBD on that. A couple other things to monitor on the Republican side that are a little bit of fun for everybody. Well, one's kind of dark, but the other ones are kind of fun. Dan Crenshaw, he's got a primary from the right. I made a suggestion to a couple of bull, and I was like, look, if you're a bulwark podcast lister and you live in Houston and you don't have a dog in the Senate race, maybe consider pulling the Republican valid and voting against Dan Crenshaw just for kicks. Right now he's down 53 to 44 to a man named Steve Toth that I'm just going to be honest. I don't know much about. But he cannot possibly be as smug and condescending and annoying as Dan Crenshaw. So we'll keep an eye on that. That's early. It's very early. Only 20 of the vote.

[JBL]

Looking forward to Crenshaw podcast, the Sham.

[Tim Miller]

It exists already. It's doing worse than mine. The shamwow guy is also running in a primary. That's Election monitor. Yeah. There's a big issue that they wouldn't let him put his name, ShamWow, on the thing on the ballot. So he's mad about that because it's a steal. And then Tony Gonzalez, who is the congressman whose Gomar set herself on fire, he is also in a primary. He's up 1.4%. So that's kind of what we're watching on the Republican side. Anything I missed there you wanted to talk about on the Republican side?

[Jonathan Last]

Sarah, did you hit North Carolina? No.

[Tim Miller]

So why don't you talk about North Carolina?

[Jonathan Last]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Mike Whatley has won the Republican primary in North Carolina, which means he is going to face off against the guy who's going to beat him, whose name I don't know. I'm just blanking on right now. Anybody got it? Roy Cooper. Thank you. So. So that's the only other one I'm really watching. I do want to go back to the Texas Senate race for just one second.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Last]

Because I was seeing some chatter in the comments about how, like, running to the center doesn't work. And I'm interested in that comment because I am wondering which candidate they mean, because one of the interesting things about the Texas Senate race is that I think people think that Jasmine Crockett is the more progressive candidate in the race, but she is not. She is the more. Just as a strict policy matter or a strict establishment Democratic matter. Jasmine Crockett's pretty like establishment Democrat. And James Tao Rico is, I think, sort of the more aggressive one when it comes to actual policy beliefs. And so I don't know who they think is running to the center. I do think it's probably fair to say some people think T. Rico codes more center because he seems more temperamentally moderate. Like, some people think he's a little more boring. I heard this in the focus groups that some people thought he was a little milquetoast and she was just more, like, fiery, had more passion.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. I also say that's just wrong. I hate when People make just blanket statements like that. I do think there's this really big online thing where, like, it's like a big fight between moderates and progressives. And it's just like, you know, sometimes the progressives. Right. Sometimes the moderates are right. I hate to bring that, you know, bring it down like that, but it. Running to the center does help sometimes. Ruben Gallego, who had on the pod today, ran to the center on immigration and outperformed Kamala Harris by, like, 12 points and ended up winning his Senate race while she.

[Jonathan Last]

Because he lives in Arizona.

[Tim Miller]

He lives in Arizona. Right. So it made sense for him to do that. You know, we're talking about Platner. Like, Platner is kind of running to the left, but it's a populous left. I think that makes sense. Right. So, you know, they don't. There's never folks that say that running the center never works. They don't ever offer that same opinion when it's the Republican side. So I think it's important to make sure you just for a thought exercise, if you think it never works, think about a Republican primary. Like, do you think the Republicans benefited from having Kerry Lake as their nominee in Arizona versus having, like, a more boring moderate person? I don't. Like. I think that they. And so, you know, at the presidential level, things are very different. And so I just. I would encourage you. You can't necessarily map presidential politics in a swing state where there's all this national attention onto what's happening in, like, a Texas Senate race. Like, the dynamics of it are quite different.

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Yeah.

[Jonathan Last]

But also Donald Trump, people thought he coded as a moderate. They thought he was moderate on social issues because he was. Because he was moderate on social issues

[Tim Miller]

and spending and war and spending.

[Jonathan Last]

And, you know, he was. I'm gonna save Medicare, Social Security.

[Tim Miller]

Didn't turn out to happen on war, but he did run to the center on war. Just he didn't end up doing social issues. He said it. We all saw the truth, but some of the voters did it. So, you know, there's maybe some lessons to learn from that. Okay, more results coming in. Talarico now 52% to Crockett, 46. And I think we're not going to really know until we get to Dallas and see what happens out of Dallas, but signs are. Are looking towards Crockett. One other thing I just want to mention on House primaries, a couple other races we're monitoring. And while you guys just shoot out questions to us, you can shoot a super chat to us here on YouTube or questions on Substack. A couple other primaries. I just want to mention Valerie Fouche. Is it Fouchier Foucher? I don't know if I'm getting that right. She is a North Carolina Democrat that was supported by AIPAC and had kind of a left challenger. Wasserman says she's looking okay so far. Al Green, who's more of kind of an establishment Democrat that has basically complained about him, is that he's old, very old. He has a younger challenger, I think also slightly to the left, but. But that race is basically mapping along a generational lines and, and Green seems like he's in trouble. It's a Texas Democrat, so Al Green and Dan Crenshaw and maybe Tony Gonzalez in the House on, on the ropes a little bit. Sorry, sir, we trying to chime in on something.

[Jonathan Last]

I wasn't.

[Odoo Advertiser]

No.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. So, yeah, hyper driven here. Talarico codes more center and appeals more to the Latinos. Yeah, I think that there is something to that. But we'll see in a prior. We'll see how that plays out in general. I mean, he's. That he hasn't. Tailorico has not really in any meaningful way actually taken like centrist positions, has he? Is there something that I'm missing?

[JBL]

Well, I mean, talking about Jesus codes as centrist.

[Tim Miller]

Right. Sure.

[JBL]

And.

[Tim Miller]

But I mean, actual issues.

[Jonathan Last]

Right.

[JBL]

Well, but here's my question for you guys. Is it possible that Talarico could help some people understand that if you take the Jesus stuff seriously, it's both based and woke. Like, I mean, this is one of the things I've spent the last decade sitting around going is like this, this Christian nationalism stuff has all to do with Jesus. And if you, if, I mean, if you just look at all the Catholic doctrine and I understand Christianity is more just Catholicism, sort of like it's, you know, it's awfully woke. All the woke stuff is in there. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the prisoner. Like, I, you know, this is all that New Covenant stuff. It does not mesh well with what is political Christianity in America.

[Jonathan Last]

Yeah, I think that's right. I also just think it would be helpful because one of the things I know listening to the focus groups is while Democrats don't lead with their faith, they're plenty faithful. Like, if you start, if you bring up religion, lots of Democrats will speak to it. But if you talk to Republicans and ask them, why are you a Republican? They will point to their faith as a central reason, which I think confuses people as to how somebody could, you know, vote for Donald Trump if they're a Christian. But if your entire culture has intertwined your Christianity with your political identity and your identity is like deeply rooted, that holds up better to change than Democrats who are say I'm a Democrat because I believe in X, Y, Z. Because then if a candidate doesn't do xyz, you get mad and maybe we don't vote for them. Whereas Republicans are willing to vote for anybody who shares that identity, even if they don't share the faithfulness.

[Tim Miller]

Nick Nicholas says Speaking of coding, JBL is coding Episcopalian which Shots fired. Shots fired big time. Yeah.

[JBL]

Wow.

[Tim Miller]

Live ass JBL coding of his women.

[JBL]

That's really that those are hurtful words.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

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[Danielle Fishel]

podcast is sponsored by Nurture Life. Hey, it's Danielle Fishel from Pod Meats World. And as a mom to two growing boys, I know how chaotic mealtime can get. No matter how confident I am with what I'm serving them, my kids will always find a way to call the meal gross or stinky or yuck. It's true. They can be wildly picky about new foods. And with my busy schedule, I don't have the time to become America's Next Top Chef. And so that's why I love Nurture Life. It's a meal delivery service that actually caters to kids. Ideal for ages 8 months to 8 years, fully cooked and ready to serve in just one minute. It's the problem solver I've been praying for. It's the top meal delivery service for babies, toddlers and kids. And everything is designed by registered dietitians so you can sleep safe knowing your kids are getting the protein, veggies and nutrients they need while still eating favorites like Mac and cheese, spaghetti and meatballs and so much more. Plus, it's allergy friendly, which we know is clutch. And when it comes to options, Nurture Life has you covered. There's more than 50 nutritious meals and snacks on their menu. From soft finger foods for babies and toddlers to balanced kids meals for when they get older. Nurture Life does the cooking. They deliver it straight to your door. And then you might even have time to eat something for yourself. So now is the time to head to nurturelife.com pod and use code pod for 50% off your first order plus free shipping. That's right, 50% off plus free shipping. Once again, that's nurturelife.com pod and make sure you use promo code pod. Even if you aren't a parent with young kids, you might have parent friends who struggle with mealtime. Make sure to share our Code Pod with them. Remember, put your little ones first with healthy meals from Nurture Life. That website one more time is nurturelife.com

[Tim Miller]

pod pod here's the other thing about Tall Rico. Tell her who came into a lot of people's consciousness. I'm pretty sure, but he went on Fox and he had a huge viral moment with Pete Hegseth going after Pete Hegseth, the current Secretary of War who was at the time a co host on a weekend talk show. And James Talrico was trying to get him to say who won the 2020, which is a good, good gambit. And then he goes on Rogan and Rogan by all accounts like so and, and like says nice things about him which like, you know, shows you the benefit of like trying and you know, showing up. A lot of these guys, it's another thing that got always annoyed me when people like the Democrats shouldn't go on those things because they have bad opinions. It's like all these guys are stupid. I was about to say the R word. You know, a lot of them are very dumb and it's like if you're smart like James, tell Rico you can sit there for two hours of Joe Rogan run circles around him. It's not that hard to win some people over. Riago says if Cooper or one of the Dems that has lost him in Texas win the general election, are they the front runner for 2028? I don't think that Roy Cooper is going to be in the 2028 mix. God love him. Who the hell knows, though? I mean, I think that Talarico, there'd be a lot of, lot of pressure on him not to run because the Democrats finally win in Texas and finally get a Texas seat, and then you give up the Senate seat. That said, I don't know, a lot of people told Barack Hussein Obama that he should wait for Hillary Clinton. We saw how that turned out. So sometimes waiting, you know what?

[Jonathan Last]

That was an Illinois Senate seat.

[JBL]

If you want a good Christian Democrat who can speak to his faith, go get Raphael Warnock.

[Tim Miller]

I like Raphael Warnock. We're getting. Lauren Egan's gonna come on here in a minute. Let me just peek up here at the latest on the numbers. We're still. Ken Paxton's closing the gap a little bit with Cornyn said something that we'll monitor and tell Rico's expanding interest in

[JBL]

the Corn and Paxton race.

[Jonathan Last]

Yes, Paxton, here, here's. So I. And this is, this is a, this

[Tim Miller]

is a change for you.

[Jonathan Last]

It is.

[JBL]

This is back to 26.

[Tim Miller]

Boy, that's a.

[JBL]

Well, I want to hear you.

[Jonathan Last]

So, look, I think that this is, this is the only way a Democrat wins this seat is if Ken Paxton is the nominee. And I would like a Democrat to win the seat. And I think I have made this case now. I think one of the big shifts for me was there was a period of time when what you needed were sort of reasonable Republicans to stand up to Trump during the first term. Right. And so I was like, yeah, you know, we should, we should be trying to elect sensible, sane Republicans, but they all got run out of the party, like out on a rail. And at this point, the moderate Republicans, Susan Collins, and not even just like establishment Republicans, like old school Republicans, not only do they not stand up to Trump, but they do a tepid currying favor of Trump. Like, Cornyn has done his best to butch up. Like he did an ad where he was like reading the art of the Deal. And I would rather the Republican Party just show people who they are. They are hypocrites. And, and I, but, you know, I think this now. But like, I, I think you should. They should be who they are. And Ken Paxton perfectly reflects what Republicans want.

[JBL]

Accelerationist Sarah is the best.

[Jonathan Last]

Sarah, this is not an accelerationist.

[Tim Miller]

This is, this is what is better on. I got. That's the thing I come down to. It's. It was like, show me something that John Cornyn has voted on that was very meaningful that Ken Paxton wouldn't have to. To contain Trump. He hasn't, so fuck him.

[JBL]

Well, and this is. This. I would say this speaks to something you have said many times, Tim, which is that maybe if the grownups hadn't been in the room and Trump won, we wouldn't have had Trump 2. Right. Like, all of the people were like, well, I got to be in the room to stop the worst stuff and I'll take the really crazy shit off his desk. Maybe if they hadn't done that and we could have just had the real full Trump and Trump won, we wouldn't have be here now.

[Jonathan Last]

Maybe we saw plenty of full Trump. I mean, he tried to overthrow the election.

[Tim Miller]

He did a lot of crazy ideas that he didn't get to execute on. But, yeah, sure, fair enough. And it's a weaker argument now that he got elected after January 6th.

[Jonathan Last]

I will, I will say, yeah, this is just. There remains a theory out there that, like, you should be protecting what's his faults, who he voted to impeach Trump. But then he said Cassidy, right? Like we should protect him from a, from a tough Republican primary because the other person's going to be more maga. And you're like, what's the difference? What's the difference between Cassidy and this other person? Now you can look backwards and say Cassidy was willing to impeach him, but if you look at everything since then, Cassidy has done everything Trump wants in order to try to win this election. And I would rather just dispense with the farce, dispense with the kayfabe, as JVL would say.

[Tim Miller]

I want to.

[JBL]

Before you go, oh, yeah, you. You know what? Go ahead, you say it, because we're going to say the same thing.

[Tim Miller]

I have a moment. Just. I'm just going to sit here.

[Jonathan Last]

They call him French?

[Tim Miller]

No, haven't called it yet. But Mr. Toth is beating Dan, and I'm not going to comment on any of how Dan looks, so I'm just going to enjoy it. Mr. Toth is beating Dan Crunch by 20 points with 60% in. So not called yet, but not looking great for old Danny. Danny C. Could somebody find me on the producer side? There was this. There's a sad video of Dan Crenshaw. He used to act like he was an independent Republican. This is right of mine was what Sarah was just talking about. And when he decided to throw all in with Trump, he was at like a TPUSA event and he was sitting down in the front row, like, screaming like, Mr. Trump. Please sign my. Please sign my boobs. Like he was shouting at him. It was very sad. Let's, let's, let's do a low light reel of Dan Crenshaw. If we could effort that. Let's bring in Lauren Egan while we try to find some of the most embarrassing moments of Dan Cruncher. Maybe a highlight reel of the time. Me and Dan Crunch. I'll debated each other. Maybe, Maybe. Should we watch me? Should we watch highlight reel of me? I don't know. We'll see how things go. Lauren, what I want to get your take on this Democratic Senate race. Things looking good for Talarico. I had mentioned kind of him going into the lion's den as something that sep that separated him and draw a lot of attention to him doing Rogan and Fox also. His social media game though has been pretty legit. Why don't you kind of talk about what you think explains how taller Eco's positioned himself.

[Lauren Egan]

Yeah, he was kind of a no name person. I mean, just a few months ago, I remember the first, I think like a year ago, Sam and I were slacking about like how do we pronounce this guy's name? And now everyone knows him, but he really started to catch people's attention off of his TikTok and Instagram when we're talking about the attention economy. He's kind of one of these early Democrats who really demonstrated that he knew how to master it. He went viral a lot for his speeches on the House floor, especially in his opposition to the school, school voucher movement in Texas. And I think what's interesting about his social media stuff, I mean, it's kind of different from what we've seen with mom Donnie. It's not super gimmicky. There's not like a halal cart involved or things like that. It's oftentimes him speaking from the state House, oftentimes him talking about scripture, talking about his faith and how he relates it to politics. And it just really took off. He has millions of followers on TikTok and Instagram and someone ended up sending one of his TikToks to Joe Rogan, like one of Joe Rogan's friends. It was basically like, hey, you've got to have this guy on your show. So long story short, Talarika goes on the Joe Rogan show last summer and that's kind of what kickstarted his whole campaign. He announced he's running for Senate just a couple weeks after that.

[Tim Miller]

Talk to us about how seriously the Democrats are taking this. I'M looking at the prediction markets here and you know, we, there's no sense overreacting to that. But it's, it's a data point. And tonight, as these results are coming in, you see Texas Senate winner, Republican or Democrat, The Republican number has gone, you know, from like 80% down to 65. Like you start to see the red line going down, the blue line going up. As it looks possible that It's a Talarico vs. Paxton race. Is this like a social media buzz thing? A lot of us like to talk about it, but the actual DSC stat, the Democratic campaign folks are more interested in other states or do they think it's real?

[Lauren Egan]

It's not anything. It's real is not on the top tier list of states. This is, I mean, when Schumer and the DCC were laying out their top tier, the states so that they had to win, this was not on it. When I talked to Schumer a couple of weeks ago about Texas, he basically said we're going to wait and see what happens in the primary. We'll make our decision about how much we want to get involved and how much money we want to put into the state until we see who these winners are. Obviously they were watching to see who the Republican winner was and the Democratic nominee as well. I think that if this ends up being a Paxton Talarico race, which early signs indicate that that's potentially where we're headed, Democrats are going to feel a lot more bullish about this race. But it's, this is still, I mean, we say this every cycle. This is still a really hard state for Democrats to win in. So I think the difficult thing for the party now is they're going to have to decide just how much do they actually throw into the state and invest when their path back to the Senate has to include places like Ohio, potentially Iowa, Alaska, North Carolina and then Texas is really on that like B list of. Of states.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I mean Ohio and Texas could end up flopping. I don't know. Sarah, wanted to get you chime in just on the Democratic wave thing and these random races. There's also Arkansas to tonight, so random House district. It's north of Little Rock. But in the election in 24, the Republican won narrowly in this kind of Little Rock suburb. 51:49 Special election. Right now the Democrat is schlonging The Republican like 63 to 36 and they're about to call it. So you know, just things like that's just whatever. It's just, it's Just an Arkansas special. But a 30 point swing is in line with kind of the stuff we've.

[JBL]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Last]

And I think Republicans have noticed this.

[Danielle Fishel]

Right?

[Jonathan Last]

They've noticed that in every special election. This is not, it's not. Look, you can. One race. I think it was DeSantis who came out and said, hey, I think we should be worried about this. We're seeing 15, 20, 30 point swings in every single special election. And it speaks to two things. One, increased Democratic enthusiasm and two, decreased Republican enthusiasm and. Or also. And I think it's worth just making this point every time we talk about the midterms, but the fact that Republicans have. Sorry, somebody else go. I just lost my train of thought. I have to come back to it. Lauren, you go. The chat is. Lauren, I look at the chat.

[Tim Miller]

Why are you looking at the chat? Leave the live streaming to the professional.

[Jonathan Last]

I got. I gotta turn it off. I gotta turn it off.

[Lauren Egan]

There's too many things.

[Tim Miller]

I'm live.

[Jonathan Last]

No, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. I got it back. Sorry. It's that the people who are turning out in the midterms. Right. Are the low propensity voters who vote for Donald Trump are not midterm voters. Sorry. That is just the big overarching thing we want to say every single time that Democrats now have a structural advantage in off years that Republicans used to have but no longer do.

[Tim Miller]

We were mentioning the TikToks live and we wanted to trigger Sarah a little bit on this one. So there was an issue that James Tall Rico got a lot of momentum on that is I think maybe contra Sarah's priors. That's good. We like, we like to be honest about our views around here. Maybe even contra JBL's. Let's watch it. It's James Talarico as one of his first viral videos on TikTok.

[JBL]

Just like any scam, vouchers may sound good, but once you dig into the details, you realize they're ripping you off. A voucher is any program that takes our hard earned tax dollars out of our underfunded public schools and gives them to unaccountable private schools. It's not a popular idea. And that's why voucher proponents have had

[Tim Miller]

to come up with a bunch of

[JBL]

new slogans to sell their scam. Let's walk through each one first.

[Tim Miller]

Let's not. Great. You get the gist. You got the just one point million views. Another thing he's been hitting on is talking about the tops versus the bottoms. It's kind of different than how we discuss it. At Oz in the fruit in New Orleans.

[JBL]

Can I ask about that, Tim?

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, but he's talking about the income bracket. Okay. Not anything sexual, so get your head out of the gutter. But he has, I think incorporated a lot of like the populist left economic stuff into more of that kind of moderate cultural attitude. And is that, I mean, and, and that's basically whatever. I mean everybody's doing that now at some level. But, but I think he, he's really done a good job of focusing on it. And I think that he separated himself from Jasmine on that focus. I don't know, Lauren, if that feels right to you.

[Lauren Egan]

Yeah, I mean this race is so interesting because it's hard to like put any of them into boxes. There's a lot of cross cutting dynamics on him moderating culturally. I mean, in some ways, yes, because I think you guys mentioned this earlier. The he talks about religion. It's so central to who he is that he kind of codes as a bit moderate, but he's really not on things like abortion a lot. You know, he kind of got criticized early on in the primary. Do you guys remember Terry Vert? He was running in this primary.

[Tim Miller]

I like Terry for astronaut. He's in a primary tonight. Let's check in on Terry.

[Lauren Egan]

You keep talking the House race now. Yeah, but he was in the Senate race and he dropped out. But he, he, he released an attack ad basically on Talarico, pulled up some of his old floor speeches that he made saying that God is by non binary, that there are six genders or something like that. And you can understand what Talarico might have been trying to say intellectually. But Terry Vert's whole thing was Talarico is actually too far left. He's too progressive for a state that's as red and moderate or red and conservative as Texas. So that's what I think is kind of fascinating about this race is you just. He's codes is moderate, but he's really not. And you can't put any of them in neat ideological boxes at all.

[Tim Miller]

One other Democratic race we've not mentioned tonight, which gained a little bit of interest because of the way that he inserted himself into the Senate race is the house district. It's 33 in the Dallas suburbs. I think it's the district that George W. Bush lives in, and that's Colin Allred and Julie Johnson. And it's two. Because of this redistricting nonsense, you know, two Democrats got thrown in together. I think the initial thinking, I think was that all red was Going to be a favorite there. But he, like, in a very weird way, like, inserted himself into the Talarico Crockett feud in a way that I think bugged a lot of people. Nothing there yet, because that is in Dallas. So we'll see in about 20 minutes, start to get some. Some numbers out of there. But what are, what are. What are the Democratic whispers on that race? Anything, Lauren or Sarah, you guys hearing anything on that race?

[Lauren Egan]

I think people were feeling pretty down on Allred going into this, which is interesting, just how much his sort of stock in the party has plummeted in the past couple of weeks. I mean, after a lot of that, his whole back and forth with Talarico and the Crockett campaign. That was when the influencer there was an influencer in Texas who basically accused Talarico of saying that Allred was a mediocre black man. And it created this whole identity conversation. She kind of misrepresented what Talarico is saying. He was trying to say that Allred was running a mediocre campaign, which I think is a fair statement to make considering he's no longer in the Senate race. And Crockett and Allred, I think, kind of cynically tried to paint Telo as being racist in this race, and I think that kind of backfired in some ways. I don't think that that was really taken very well in some corners of the party. And you saw some folks kind of come out and endorse Johnson in these past couple of weeks.

[Tim Miller]

So we'll watch that. Jay DiBagio says that Talrico is a white Barack Hussein Obama. You got any takes on that? That would go to my theory that he just. You win and you run any. I. I want to revisit this. I know. I know that people would not want him to leave the Texas Senate seat, but the Democrats do not have a front runner. If somebody won Texas, it might be there might. It might. The momentum might be too hard to stop. I kind of feel that way about Platner and Maine. I. I don't. I. The nobody. The thing is not the. The field is not lighting anybody out. The field is not lighting anybody on fire. That's awesome.

[JBL]

9:40 on March 3rd and Timothy guys won their primaries yet

[Jonathan Last]

also.

[Lauren Egan]

I just think there's some.

[Tim Miller]

There's going to be a buzz candidate. It's going to come from somewhere.

[Jonathan Last]

It's not going to be the guy with the Nazi tattoo.

[JBL]

He might.

[Jonathan Last]

He might be able to pull it out in Maine, but I don't Think it's. That's going to be the.

[Tim Miller]

I don't know about that, Sarah. I don't know about that.

[Jonathan Last]

Okay. Can I just say Julie Johnson.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Last]

Part of the lesbian phone tree. Know her like her. She's gonna be great.

[Tim Miller]

What happens on the lesbian phone tree is that like, do you share notes on scissoring or.

[Jonathan Last]

No, you can just. You can just find any lesbians. So like, if you have a. If you have like a core group from there, you can find anyone. Like JBL said, Sarah, I need to find Alison Bechdel. And what happened?

[JBL]

Five minutes.

[Tim Miller]

Boom.

[JBL]

Five.

[Tim Miller]

Ann asks how happy I am. The crunch on my list. I do. I'm hoping that.

[JBL]

No, it's been called, Tim. It's been.

[Tim Miller]

It's over.

[JBL]

And called it.

[Tim Miller]

Dave Wasserman has called it.

[JBL]

Wasserman has called it.

[Tim Miller]

Or I need to see it myself. I need to see it myself. We need to. Do we have a sound effects.

[JBL]

Steve Toth defeats Representative Dan Crenshaw in the Texas O2 GOP primary.

[Tim Miller]

Bring me a high noon. I'm texting downstairs. I'm going to have a victory cocktail. Let me tell you why that's a little more. Let me break Dan Crenshaw.

[Jonathan Last]

Let me stand.

[JBL]

The redistricting last year did Crenshaw no favors. So Crenshaw got fucked by his own Texas state Republican Party.

[Tim Miller]

Well, that's a shame.

[Jonathan Last]

First of all, that's the kind of smoke people deserve for them starting this. They set off that whole arms race on that. But, but, but Crenshaw is a perfect example of this, like, Cornyn phenomenon that I was talking about. It is somebody who does not like Donald Trump, does not like maga. It's not who he was. It's not who he wanted to be when his career. In his career when he got into politics. But he made his accommodations and he wound up in the sour spot with voters where he's not MAGA enough for the people who really want maga. And he's not sincere or, like, able to own his space enough to bring over Dem voters or build a big co. Bye bye. Dan Crenshaw, you were one of the people who did all the accommodating and this is where it got you.

[Tim Miller]

Somebody's phone's buzzed on their desk. I am. I'm waiting for my victory drink. Waiting for my victory drink. Luckily, I think that there's some viewers of this live stream downstairs at my house. Nice to live stream.

[JBL]

I need to ask Lauren.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[JBL]

Because she's still relatively new here.

[Tim Miller]

I don't know their announcement, but sure.

[JBL]

Lauren, what, what feels better? Seeing a good candidate win. We're seeing a terrible candidate lose. There's only one right answer to this.

[Tim Miller]

Whoa.

[Lauren Egan]

Only one right answer. For me personally, it's seeing a terrible candidate lose.

[Tim Miller]

Yes, that's really satisfying. It's really satisfying. But that does speak, I think, to the cynicism of our time. I do think people have had a different answer about that in 2008 and that does that does make me kind of sad. Well, good riddance old Dan Crenshaw. We the other announcement is that it seems like but we don't really have a call on the Republican side of the Texas race, but we have a call that will go to a runoff. I I still think it's pretty relevant whether Ken Paxton can pick up enough ground here to pass Cordon. There's just something, I don't know, there's something vibes ish about winning the first round. It doesn't guarantee anything in the second round of a primary, but especially in a race like this, it's basically a head to head and you have a third candidate. It's like kind of different if there's a coalition, but I think that's meaningful.

[JBL]

What is Hunt? Is it good to the right of ever of these guys?

[Tim Miller]

Mostly Hunt is a typical kind of maga,

[Jonathan Last]

so. Oh, that's nice.

[Tim Miller]

Good riddance. Dan Crenshaw. Tough break. We'll see you on the podcast charts where you'll be losing again to the show.

[Jonathan Last]

Listening to the show and heard you call for it. Yeah, if anybody's listening, I would like a drink.

[JBL]

Gary's on his way over to your house right now.

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[Danielle Fishel]

This podcast is sponsored by Nurture Life. Hey, it's Danielle Fishel from Pod Meats World. And as a mom to two growing boys, I know how chaotic mealtime can get. No matter how confident I am with what I'm serving them, my kids will always find a way to call the meal gross or stinky or yuck. It's true. They can be wildly picky about new foods. And with my busy schedule, I don't have the time to become America's next Top Chef. And so that's why I love Nurture Life. It's a meal delivery service that actually caters to kids. Ideal for ages 8 months to 8 years, fully cooked and ready to serve in just one minute. It's the problem solver I've been praying for. It's the top meal delivery service for babies, toddlers and kids. And everything is designed by registered dietitians so you can sleep safe, knowing your kids are getting the protein, veggies, and nutrients they need while still eating favorites like Mac and cheese, spaghetti and meatballs, and so much more. Plus, it's allergy friendly, which we know is clutch. And when it comes to options, Nurture Life has you covered. There's more than 50 nutritious meals and snacks on their menu, from soft finger foods for babies and toddlers to balanced kids meals for when they get older. Nurture Life does the cooking. They deliver it straight to your door. And then you might even have time to eat something for yourself. So now is the time to head to nurturelife.com pod and use code pod for 50% off your first order, plus free shipping. That's right. 50% off plus free shipping. Once again, that's nurturelife.com pod and make sure you use promo code pod. Even if you aren't a parent with young kids, you might have parent friends who struggle with mealtime. Make sure to share our code POD with them. Remember, put your little ones first with healthy meals from Nurture Life. That website one more time is nurturelife.com pod pod.

[Jonathan Last]

Here's the thing about Hunt. He was actually kind of a normal guy, like a normie Republican, until he decided he needed to get into this race and he became a super maga. Like, I love Trump. Like, he just went, you know, and it. And it gave him just enough juice to force these other two into a runoff, which I got to say there is also something that you can take pleasure from here, which is not only has Cornyn already spent more on this Republican primary than basically any other Republican in the history of Republican Senate primaries. Now Republican, Democrat, or sorry, Republican donors have to fund a runoff. And that's a lot of money for Republicans to have to spend in a primary and then a runoff probably for Ken Paxton to win. And then do it all over again. Yeah, do it all over again.

[Tim Miller]

Cornyn spent, I believe, 69 million. Nice. In the primary on TV, which is a hell of a lot. And they got a couple more months now and they think they will feel like they'll have to fund him, you know, just, you know, because making the bet, I guess that you save money on the back end in theory, not having to try to bail out Paxton because these guys all bail out packing because they have no, they have no morals. But it is definitely wasted resources. And a lot of the MAGA Republicans have noticed this. I've seen this in my feed. This could like, like they're getting hit from both sides where like MAGA Republicans are like, why are you wasting our money to save this desiccated old guy? Like, why shouldn't we be spending it in these other states with candidates that we. We like?

[JBL]

Can I ask leading question.

[Tim Miller]

Aren't most of your questions, I mean, who can say.

[JBL]

So you had said, you know, what is the difference between John Cornyn and Ken Paxton right there? They'll be the same name. It name. But if we switch it around and look at it from the point of view of a Republican voter in Texas, what is the reason you would prefer Ken Paxton, a guy who should probably be in jail, who is a serial adulterer, who, who would vote no differently than this other guy, John Cornyn, who is a respectable person who you voted for five times already and who also votes all the ways you want him to vote?

[Jonathan Last]

Sarah, he's a fighter and he's more maga. They think that John Cornyn is a phony, elitist, establishment Republican rhino. And they see all of his overtures in trying to like, put on a cowboy hat. Like, they just, they, they think he's a fake and they think Paxton. Yeah, right. No, that's true. He's part of an old guard Republican party that everybody was fine with back in the day, but now they want a MAGA fighter. And when you try to tell people who want a MAGA fighter, hey, this guy's had a lot of affairs and he's corrupt. They're like, that guy that's just like the. That's just like the other guy I really like. Like, they're not turned off by that.

[Tim Miller]

I also. This always takes me back. I want to add another thing to that answer to my favorite Sarah focus group ever, which was of Republican voters, I believe, in Georgia, Florida, Alabama. I kind of forget why you picked those three. But we were going through various races, and the voters, the MAGA voters, we were talking about the House candidates, and they were talking about in Congress, the people they like that are really getting shit done are Matt Gates and Marjorie Taylor Green. This is a few years ago now. And they didn't know what the policies were that they passed, but they just see them out there owning the lips. And then when they start and then when we moved on to ask about the governor's race and stuff, you know, they're like, I kind of like Brian Kemp better than whoever the MAGA was running at the time because our schools are getting better and I care about the road. Right. Like, I do think that a lot of voters do look at Congress as, like, your job. MAGA voters, in particular, your job is to make libs cry, like, to vote for crazy shit. You know, make a scene, make me feel good. And Ken Paxton can deliver that for him. I have a question. I want to get Lauren in on this. I want to go around the horn about a Talarico thing. Bill Kristol. Bill, if you want to jump on here, please jump on. Bill's messaging us in this like he's one of the commenters, Bill Kristol. And he wanted to put. He pointed out, jump on here if you want. Bill, we'd love to see you that Bernie Sanders and the Bernie Sanders counties near Austin, kind of the hill country. And like the Austin burbs, Talarico's putting up huge numbers in the Bernie Sanders counties. And this kind of goes to the conversation we were having earlier thinking about what might work for Talarico. And it is what I'm calling the inverse of the Kamala paradox. Is it the Kamala paradox? I'm trying to brand it. Sarah, you're good at branding these things. Triangle of doom. It's gonna be. It's the Kamala. It's the Kamala something. The Kamala conundrum. It's a Kamala conundrum, which is that lefty Bernie voters thought that she was a corporate shill, and centrist corporate shill voters thought that she was a California lefty.

[Jonathan Last]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

And so she was in the sour spot. And I do think that Talrico has a chance. And looking ahead to future Democratic primaries, I feel like the ones are going to succeed are the ones like the Bernie voters. Look at them like, yeah, he's not quite Bernie enough for me, but I like that cut of that guy or gals jib. And the moderate voters are like a little lefty for me on some things, but I, I like whatever. You know what, Something else about them and tell Rico has seemed to figure that out. I don't know. Lauren.

[Lauren Egan]

Yeah, I just, I think I was having a conversation with a strategist who's kind of in the moderate wing of the party the other day, and we were talking about populism and what role it should play in the party. And I was kind of surprised because he was like, yeah, we fully recognize that the nominee in 2028 needs to be someone who embraces populism. Which is interesting because again, this person, fairly moderate, very much mainstream centrist wing of the party. And I think Talarico absolutely did that. Like, he's. It's been interesting. He's not really gone after Trump a whole lot in his campaign. He did. He filmed like a little ad at the Texas State Fair a couple of weeks ago noting that, like, fried Oreos and all these things are so much more expensive because of tariffs. He never said Trump's name. He just talked about tariffs. So his whole thing really is not about punching Trump or punching the Republican Party. It's all billionaires versus us.

[Tim Miller]

So would you have on that?

[Jonathan Last]

The only thing I was going to say is that when you talk about the Kamala conundrum, a lot of that comes from her not being able to cut, like, a really clear picture of who she was. Like, I remember listening to voters talk about Kamala Harris all the time, and their big complaint wasn't even too liberal or too moderate. So much as I don't know what she stands for. I don't know who she is. And I think with Tao Rico, even if it's when you do the faith thing, like, if you've got something that's clear for voters to grab onto so that they're like, I know that person. I know what they're about. Like, I get their vibe. Just something that really stands out to them and is sticky, like, that's a big piece of it just so they can locate you, they didn't feel like they could locate Kamala Harris in terms of who she was.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, we've got a little bit of bad news and a little bit of good news. The bad News is the sham wow guy currently in sixth place and his primary challenge against some MAGA person I've never heard of, John Carter. So that's too bad. Kind of interesting in an Arkansas race I wanted to flag another one is there's a Supreme Court seat there, kind of like the Wisconsin Supreme Court. It's one of these non partisan things, but it's really partisan where the incumbent is this like, you know, person that believes that Earth is 800 years old or whatever and that the dinosaurs and ladies live together. And. And then there is like kind of an activist other candidate, one against book bans. And it's Arkansas and the conservative guys winning Bronnie 52 to 48 over Adams. But again, it's just kind of like those things are eyebrow raising. You know, there was the. Ryan Zinke dropped out in Montana this week. I think, Lauren, you're going to talk with Ryan, another Ryan, Ryan Bussey later this week about that race. He's running for Congress. It's like, you know, he only won by 12 last time, this Republican MAGA Republican guy in Montana. And if, if an Arkansas Supreme Court race is four points, you know, the field does start to open up a little bit for the Democrats. Are we ready for some schadenfreude?

[Jonathan Last]

Yes.

[Tim Miller]

All right. I asked for the video of Dan Crenshaw sucking up to Donald Trump. Let's, let's take a look at that. Pull that up. Look at Dan. Where is he? Love you, Trump. Oh yeah. Oh, we gotta come up on stage. Oh yeah, there it is. Can I get a signature? Oh, yeah. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Lick the. Lick the boot, Dan. Lick the boot, Dan. That's too bad, Dan. I thought was supposed to be a normal one. I said, this better be good, Dan.

[JBL]

That took a little long time.

[Tim Miller]

I said, Dan, what the hell is it?

[JBL]

He said, it's a no vote on impeachment day.

[Tim Miller]

That was a no. No vote on impeachment. No vote on Dan Crenshaw. That's enough. See you later, Dan.

[Jonathan Last]

It's been real.

[Tim Miller]

We can't enjoy Dan Crenshaw losing in a primary to a MAGA Republican. What can you enjoy in this world? You know?

[Jonathan Last]

Do you remember when he made that ad where he was in a really tight bodysuit and he like, he like dropped himself through a window in the Matrix or something. That was embarrassing too.

[JBL]

He's an action figure. Great.

[Tim Miller]

We have another. Let's keep doing it. We have another. We have a highlight reel. This is when me and Dan were Debating on Pierce Crusher. It's kind of. We need the music from, like, the. From the Oscars, like when somebody died. Here's the thing. Congressman Crenshaw wants your audience to think that the Republican Party right now is the same as it was in 2017, and that the Donald Trump administration will be the same as it was when he brought in a bunch of traditional Republicans to be around him in his Cabinet and to work in his staff. And I'm sorry, that's just an imaginary world that the Congressman wants to live in, to feel comfortable, because the world we live in now is all those people. No, I'm sorry, Pierce. Let me finish. Let me finish. All those people are gone now. And at the rnc, at the box, the people around Trump, Bill Gates, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson. Tucker had a prominent spot to speak at the convention. Congressman Crenshaw did not. This new party is a nativist party that's going to be about mass deportations and tariffs and revenge on Donald Trump's enemies. If you don't believe me, listen to what Donald Trump says. And I just want to know why Congressman Crenshaw thinks that he understands where the party is better than Trump's own Vice President, Mike Pence, who assesses this and says, no, this is not someone we can trust. Why does Congressman Crenshaw think that he knows better than Mike Pence about Donald Trump's character and what kind of policies he would. I was cooking.

[Jonathan Last]

You look so young. What year was that?

[Tim Miller]

Fuck you. You are the one aging me. You're making me sit here for hours watching the news.

[Jonathan Last]

Yep.

[JBL]

I need a cigarette after that.

[Tim Miller]

I might go get a cigarette, actually.

[JBL]

Can we.

[Tim Miller]

Okay.

[JBL]

Can we send him. Yeah. To his office. Could we send him an Edible Arrangements? Love the Bulwark.

[Jonathan Last]

No. We could send him some Soul Edibles. Let me tell you, I. This is. This is. We won't have a clip of this, but you know what else Dan Crenshaw did?

[Tim Miller]

Is it me doing something good?

[Jonathan Last]

No. He threw Liz Cheney under the bus really hard. Like, they were the same. They were, like, had the same views. She was in leadership. And then he came out hard against her in her primary. And I hope that Liz Cheney sends him a little note.

[Tim Miller]

Hope she's happy tonight. We. In about three minutes, we're gonna be getting some Dallas numbers in, and I think that once we get the Dallas numbers in, we'll probably get a call on the Texas. On the Democratic side of the Senate race, and we'll know a little bit about that. Colin Allred JULIE Johnson, Lesbian ON Football player BATTLE so we'll keep an eye on that. Lauren, were you moderating this Valerie Fushi race at all over in North Carolina?

[Lauren Egan]

Yeah, yeah, the fourth District. Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Lauren Egan]

I don't know if we have. If that's been called.

[Tim Miller]

It looks like Valerie's gonna win, but it's, it's not over yet. They haven't called it.

[Lauren Egan]

Okay. Yeah. I mean, that was an interesting primary. This is, I believe, a rematch, I think, in this primary. Basically. Fu she is, I think she's almost 70. She's the incumbent, and she's getting a challenge from the Durham County Commissioner, Nita Alam alum Young. She's in her early 30s, endorsed by Sanders and Justice Democrats and David Hogg's groups and sort of that, that cohort. And this race, I think, was a lot in some ways, it was a generational sort of test, a bit of whether or not there's going to be a Democratic Tea Party. Alam was really painting her opponent as kind of backed a corporate Democrat, almost backed by apac, embed with AI industry, things like that. So, I mean, I'm interested if, if Fu. She kind of holds on. She's one of these older Democrats who's been criticized for not really, you know, kind of being asleep at the wheel sometimes, you know, taking forever to come out and say something against Trump's actions in Iran. So I don't know, it's hard to, like, read too much into any one race about what other incumbents can expect. But. And a really interesting test.

[Tim Miller]

This is an interesting race. I haven't been following the Texas Attorney General race and Chip Roy, I once wrote an article about Chip Roy where I called him a cowardly goldfish.

[Jonathan Last]

Goldfish.

[JBL]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

I kind of forget what. I'm the cowardly goldfish now because I kind of forget what I was mad at him about. But I would, I remember clearly. I still living in Oakland, so I thought, I bet I looked really young during this phone call as well. Sarah and he called me and like, yelled at me for an hour. This was like when the bullock was just starting, when Republicans, like, before they'd given up on me. They haven't given up on some of the other ones. For all these guys that I used to work with had given up on me. And so he called me to scream at me and yell at me and about how, like, it's important to still have good Republicans in here. Tim, why are you coming after me? I'm. I still care about spending. And I went against Donald Trump on Impeachment. And anyway, he left Congress to run for Attorney General and he's running against a guy named Mays Middleton. I know nothing about Mays Middleton, but if we could pull his picture up on the screen, that would be nice. We pull up a picture of Mays Middleton, look at this guy. It's gonna be a second, but here we go. No, there's some better ones. Let's keep going. Let's keep looking. Let's keep looking. Let's find his headshot. Let's find a headshot of Maze Middleton anyway, while we effort that he is. He's winning 43 to 29. Oh, over Chip Roy. Chip Roy left Congress to run for Texas Attorney General and he is getting beat pretty handily by a fellow named Maze Middleton, member of the Texas Senate, 11th District. You know, he looks like a goober.

[Jonathan Last]

Part of why that's interesting is it's the same picture.

[Tim Miller]

There he is, there we go. That man right there. That man is beating Chip Roy like a drum right now.

[JBL]

That is an alpha war fighter if I've ever seen one.

[Tim Miller]

It's a fighter. He's crushing Chip Roy, the Texas Attorney General race. That's something.

[Jonathan Last]

If you put a little hat on him, he looks like he could be working in the Santa's Workshop building.

[Tim Miller]

Little smash.

[JBL]

He's never frame mogged anybody in his whole life.

[Tim Miller]

I think he has been bone smashing. Maze might be the Attorney General now that is something else. Tough break for Chip Roy and Dan Crenshaw. Crenshaw, do you guys think you're going

[JBL]

to get any more Republican retirements in the next two weeks after tonight's like, as people start looking through again all the, the weird races, just places where it's a 30 point swing and stuff like that are more. Because I assume this is why Chip Roy didn't run and why, I don't

[Jonathan Last]

know in the next two weeks, but I think you're going to continue to see Republican retirements. Yeah, I think there's a lot of people heading for the hills. I think we've seen a lot already, but I don't think we finished. I do just what I think with Chip Roy. You know, Chipboy is one of those people who frequently doesn't vote for the speaker of the House or doesn't or doesn't vote to pass a spending bill. And I don't know that his principled conservatism is very welcome anymore. I think people want somebody who's just going to support Trump's agenda and keep their mouth shut.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, here Was Chip after this was. It was around January 6th. I was writing about this. Trump deserves universal condemnation for what was clearly impeachable conduct. Chip came around like they all did, and the people just didn't, didn't believe it. So we got talarico up by 8 here with about half the vote in. We're waiting on Dallas and I think that is gonna be pretty telling. I'll start to start to peek at you if you guys have questions for us. Did I say San Antonio was West Texas? Somebody's telling me I didn't. I know. I meant it's west of Austin. I'm aware that San Antonio is not west Texas. I watch Landman. Okay. I watch Landman. I know what's at. I know where West Texas is.

[Jonathan Last]

Lauren, did you know that James Talrico is not Hispanic?

[Lauren Egan]

Yes. Although I believe

[Jonathan Last]

I, I'm just saying Mexico. Talarico rhymes with Puerto Rico.

[JBL]

Does it.

[Tim Miller]

You know, I think, I think it did benefit Talarico a lot. Like, it's weird in these Texas races there usually is like a spoiler Hispanic candidate from the Rio Grande Valley, like Hidalgo county or something. And that, that didn't happen this Time to go is really running up the score down there. I'm just looking at this numbers right now. Like Cameron county is Brownsville 6334, Web County 6531. Talarico is really, really running up the score with the, with Hispanics. We'll, we'll keep, we'll take a look at your questions as we listen. Isn't Delrico Talarico running a business is

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[Tim Miller]

Oh, is it south of Austin? San Antonio is south and west of Austin, is it not? Am I crazy? Am I losing my mind?

[Jonathan Last]

I don't know. This is a fun geography question, but. Lauren.

[Lauren Egan]

Yes?

[Jonathan Last]

Do you know? So I don't need you to be Steve Kornacki here, but if. If Steve Bernanke was here, he would be trying to tell us how many votes are in Dallas that are possible and whether or not that would be enough to overcome the current 8 point gap that currently exists between Crockett and Tao Rico. Now, I don't know how many votes are there, but I.

[Tim Miller]

312,000 votes are in Dallas.

[Jonathan Last]

Interesting. The Democrats.

[Tim Miller]

I'm not wearing khakis, but I'll.

[Lauren Egan]

There you go. That, I mean that's, that's obviously Crockett's home base. I don't think. I don't know if there's enough where

[Tim Miller]

she could conceive her lead right now. We'll tell you this. Jasmine James leads by 100,000 votes. Right now. There are 300,000 votes in Dallas. You guys can do the math or you can just look at Dave Wasserman,

[Lauren Egan]

but we only have half of those.

[Tim Miller]

Dave Wasserman of redistrict. He's seen enough. James Talarico wins the Texas Senate Democratic Party and we'll head on to a general election against either John Cornyn or Ken Paxton. One of the big concerns that a lot of people had. Lauren, I want to ask you about this and we can let you pop if you want to about a general election with Talarico is that it got kind of nasty with Crockett. And there are some folks out there making the case that Tell Rico is going to have trouble turning out black voters in Texas. Now, Texas and Georgia, you know, the percentage of the black vote is not as great as it is in some of these other states. The raw number. There's a ton of black voters in Texas, like the second or third most in any state. But what's your sense of that? Is that kind of priority number one for him or what are people saying about. And what did Tel Rico been saying about how he's going to try to motivate black voters after kind of a contentious primary with, with Crockett?

[Lauren Egan]

Yeah, I think that's going to be one of the main things right out the gate that he's going to have to focus on. I mean, his strategy here was clearly he knew that Crockett was going to win the black vote by a lot. So his play here was to run up the score with white voters and Latino voters. Not to say that he didn't go into some black areas and campaign there. But that was not his primary focus in this, in this primary race. So that's gonna be a major thing that he's gonna have to work on coming out of this primary. Crockett, I will say, has a role to play there. And that is going to be interesting to. I think before tonight it was very clear that Talarico was a bit more of a team player. I mean, he, he made very clear to his supporters that if Crockett wins, we are all going to go knock doors. We are going to help her win this race. And then Crockett's campaign put out a statement basically saying like we'll support whoever wins. But it didn't come from her. You know, there's just like a different level of sort of commitment that you felt from the two of them. So I'm curious to see what she does coming out of this and how much she kind of helps to drive this.

[Tim Miller]

Mr. Obama's been on the sidelines and, you know, not done a lot, but he has popped out in campaign season from time to time. And I know that he and Tul Rico have talked and I wouldn't be surprised if he was called in to help with that. All right. Loan you got any other final thoughts for us you want to pop off? Then we'll just kind of go around the horn and close things down, the three of us.

[Lauren Egan]

Sounds great. Thanks.

[Tim Miller]

We'll look to your guys questions if you guys have any questions thoughts here before we let you all go. The Arkansas Supreme Court race, just one of the things I just want to mention. It does look like the bad the Christian nationalist guy is going to win there. But the the Democratic aligned person is over performing Kamala in Arkansas by 52 points right now. And so I just, you know, again, off off year, whatever, like special election but primary night. But I just can you continue the positives for me, the positive takeaways and we'll kind of go around and takeaways and go to questions is Dan Crenshaw bites the dust. See you later, Dan. Democrats do continue to overperform in these specials and the Texas Senate races. You know, nobody's getting counting their chickens on it, but it feels more in play than it did an hour ago for the Democrats.

[Jonathan Last]

Yes. And I saw a question in the chat that I think is a good one, which is it was, it was asking where do the Hunt voters go. Right. Because this is, this is the question. So right now in this Cornyn is up by about two points over Ken Paxton, but I believe Wesley hunt has like 12 points. So that's a lot. Right. That's a big chunk that he got as a, as a third candidate. And I think Hunt's people go to Paxton feels like it.

[Tim Miller]

Right?

[Jonathan Last]

Yeah. I mean so you so first of all, Hunt ran as like the ultra MAGA guy, even though I don't think that's quite who he is. And he's also. He's a young black guy. And so I think that these are voters in Texas who are like, I want something new and different. And I don't think that the new and different crowd goes back to Cornyn. I think that's incumbent, right? Yeah, that's right.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[JBL]

You have two challengers in an incumbent.

[Tim Miller]

The.

[JBL]

What are the chances that the challengers, voters are going to say, oh, actually, I really want the same.

[Jonathan Last]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

The Al Green mentioned. I just want to bring that in one more time because just interesting, the generational change side of this. Christian Menafee is a young guy to watch, handsome guy, and he seems to be like, looks like he's going to be winning that primary over. Al Green hasn't been called yet, but he, he's up by. He's up by six points. Jbl, do you have any other final thoughts before we. We take some questions and get out of here?

[JBL]

Yeah, I do.

[Tim Miller]

There's.

[JBL]

You go. Pull out today showing that Trump's strong disapproved number is now 51%. His overall approval is down to 38%. This, this starts to look, say it starts to look like things could really, like the bottom could fall out. Right. We could go down to 35.

[Jonathan Last]

Bush line. Bush line. Bush line.

[JBL]

I'm just saying I like, I mean, nothing. If you look around and say, so what are the things that get better for him? I mean, I guess he could stop warring, he could stop doing his war, he could stop doing tariffs, but I don't know, like it. I don't want to be optimistic.

[Tim Miller]

Jbl, wow.

[Jonathan Last]

Yeah. Love that. Can I. Sorry, I have just one other little tidbit which is Kamala Harris endorsed Crockett, which was.

[Tim Miller]

Here's one of the questions. Jesse said that which endorsement was worse, Trump for Herschel Walker or Kamala for Jasmine Crockett?

[Jonathan Last]

Trump. Trump for Herschel Walker Was Jasmine Crockett. Both, like, was not an abuser who played Russian roulette all the time. Psychopath.

[JBL]

But.

[Jonathan Last]

But I do think it is. I was a tough one for Kamala to jump in and try to test her ability to, to move voters because that didn't, it didn't work out that way. So.

[JBL]

Yeah, but what if she didn't do it as ability to test voters? What if she did it as like, hey, Jasmine Crockett is a black woman trying to set something, trying to do something historic. And that's fine.

[Jonathan Last]

That's fine. Well, hold on. The question is not whether you Respect it or whether because her reasons can be perfectly good. It's more of a. It means like Trump could endorse somebody and pull them over the finish line, no problem. And so it is a test of her juice with voters.

[Tim Miller]

Here's another thing. It's just a test of political skill also. Yeah, zero juice, but also political skill. And let's. Let me say this. I like Kamala personally. I've got to meet her a few times. I like her. And I, and I, you know, to, to make this even. Steven, we're ripping on Jeb today on the TNL for his comment on Iran. I liked Jeb. Jeb didn't really have any juice. Jeb's political skills were not that great. He was a good governor. He wasn't politically that strong. And his instincts weren't that great politically on a national scale. And we've now seen from Kamala a primary campaign that was bad. Some bad political instincts as vp I think some bad ones in the post campaign choices. And this race, it's like going back to that sour spot, the Kamala conundrum. It's like it was kind of a half C endorsement. Right. She did a, she did a auto dial for something, a phone call that went to people's houses. So it was like not enough to really help her to help Crockett, but enough to annoy people that were on Delrico side. Right. And so it's like, well, what was the point of doing that? It just, it's just showed, I think a lack of political judgment that we've seen in a couple other cases with her. So anyway, not, not a huge deal but, but not particularly savvy endorsement.

[JBL]

We have breaking news here, I think.

[Tim Miller]

Okay. What?

[JBL]

Polis just pardoned Tina Peters.

[Tim Miller]

Oh, did we have to do this live? You have to come at me as Jeb and Jared Polis in the same.

[JBL]

I'm sorry, I thought this was a live cast as a news organic. We want to break the whole. Hold this. I'm going to try to confirm you talked him.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, I'm going to answer one of these questions because I have an answer to this. Od Tavish. I think 80 Tavish asked now are any of these races worth donating to or do we want to wait to help out smaller down ballot candidates later? I'm going to work on this project. It is coming soon where I'm going to highlight some races that I think are super interesting to donate to if you're so inclined. And the races that I think are the. Where you get the most bang for your buck are going into red states and districts where there isn't already going to be a ton of funding. So I kind of think Tall RICO is going to be pretty well funded. I don't think that's a waste of money. But the races, I'm looking at Mary Peltola, Alaska, making sure she's really well funded. I think it's going to be important for the Democrats and I don't know if that's going to be as high a priority from the big ticket donors. Maybe the Iowa and Kansas Senate races. Let's see how those shake out. I think those are also stretch races that Democrats are almost as likely to twin as Texas but won't have as much attention on them. And then a whole bunch of House districts. I mentioned that Montana House race earlier. Ryan Bussey's a really good candidate. Former gun rights advocate. He's kind of like the Sarah of gun rights. You know, he's, he's flipped and, and seen things from the inside. And it's still, still an active gun owner and user, but wants to see reforms and, and, and, but is not, is really in step with Montana. 12 point race, as I mentioned earlier. Like, that's something. So I'll put together a list for people coming up here in the next few weeks. But yeah, don't donate yet.

[Jonathan Last]

We are gonna, we will talk a lot about these things.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[JBL]

Fact check. Polis has not yet pardoned Tina Peters. He simply put out a tweet saying that here a Democrat has been just given probation for a thing which is just as serious as what Tina Peters did. And he really has to look forward to the equal application of the laws. That's what he's thinking about right now.

[Tim Miller]

Okay.

[JBL]

So he's going to party. Tina Peters.

[Tim Miller]

Well, don't make me text Jared Polis right now. I'm enjoying myself. I'm enjoying my. Don't do it, Jared. Don't do it. Don't do it. Guys, he's not going to listen to me.

[Jonathan Last]

Let's, let's, let's just do a quick recap because it's been a good night. Actually, I'm sorry.

[JBL]

I felt optimistic, so I had to even things out. Sarah.

[Jonathan Last]

Yeah. Okay. That's you. That, that tracks. But this was a really strong night and I want to say I, I actually maybe liked Jasmine Crockett more than one might think. I tend to think that right now she did not run a very good campaign. But I, I sort of like the gutsy, like, let's try like, let's be a fighter. Like, you're gonna need some of that energy. And I really hope she does go to bat for James Talrico going into this. That would be like a strong move on her part. But I do think Tao Rico was the best choice in terms of putting a seat in play. And I'm just gonna say again, Republicans now have already spent more on this Senate fight between Cornyn and Paxton than they wanted to. Now they've got to spend more money on a runoff. And this is going to be a competitive Senate race in Texas now. And so for those of you who are disappointed about Jasmine Crockett, I understand, but I do think everybody should think hard. Like, and look, nobody's here being Pollyannish about waves or anything else or it's just that for Texas to be in play when you're seeing these big swings, it means it's worth looking at. And I'm somebody who last go around I was like, leave Texas alone. It's not going to happen. But I think, you know, Ohio now will look very competitive in this type of environment, especially if we're in a war where you got Sherrod Brown running. And so this is a good first step, in my opinion.

[Tim Miller]

All right, everybody calls out recent Bulwark podcast guest Bobby Polito and Bulwark fan and musician. What's. What kind of music does he do that Latino music anyway, whatever. It's not my cup of tea exactly. But he was great. I liked him a lot. Very interesting candidate.

[JBL]

Sorry, we have one more thing, Tim, in the chat from Matt Marshall, our buddy. Texas Supreme Court has temporarily blocked a Dallas judge's order to keep the polls open until 9 and ordered the county to separate out votes from people who are not in line at 7pm this is not a final ruling, but will create chaos and getting the results.

[Tim Miller]

So why would they possibly do that? It's almost as if you think Tejano music, the kind of music I was talking about. It's almost as if the Republicans that run Texas want people to not have faith in elections so it makes it easier for them to steal them. It's almost as if that. It's almost as if they're trying to defund election administration and make this as hard as possible and as confusing as possible so they can do shenanigans in the future. That's just something to keep an eye out. So that's a negative thing. On the positive side, James Talarico ran a great campaign with a big win over Jasmine Crockett. On the Republican side, John Cornyn and Ken Paxton are going to a runoff, which means that they're gonna have to spend a lot of rich Republicans money trying to prop John Cornyn up. That's great. We like that Dan Crenshaw. Good riddance.

[JBL]

Goodbye.

[Tim Miller]

Lost a primary to a Mr. Toth. Tough titties for you Dan Crenshaw and some Democratic over performance in other places. So generally a good night. We appreciate you guys for doing this with us. We have made many primary nights ahead. So yes, leave some comments, let us know what you thought about how this things went. We will take your notes. I'll take your negative criticisms, things you'd like to see.

[Jonathan Last]

If you don't like the ads. I've seen some complaining about ads in the chat. Go ahead and become a subscriber. Just bid 10 bucks a month. And you know what? You can watch all of these as we get into primary season. There'll be lots of them. There will be no commercials. I know they're interrupting us, so just go. Subscribe guys. Subscribe for free or subscribe paid and you'll never see the ads again.

[Tim Miller]

That's Sarah Longwell. You would never hear me saying she looks old because she looks amazing. She's the publisher. Jonathan Last, Editor, author of the Tried Newsletter I'm an aging Tim Miller. What a night. I'll see you tomorrow on the podcast. Later y'. All. Subscribe Tell your friends.

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[Tim Miller]

Reggie, I just sold my car online. Let's go, grandpa. Wait, you did? Yep, On Carvana. Just put in the license plate, answered a few questions, got an offer in minutes. Easier than setting up that new digital picture frame.

[Odoo Advertiser]

You don't say.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, they're even picking it up tomorrow. Talk about fast.

[Odoo Advertiser]

Wow. Way to go.

[Tim Miller]

So, about that picture frame. Ah, forget about it. Until Carvana makes one, I'm not interested.

[Lauren Egan]

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