Podcast
GD POLITICS
Hosted by Galen Druke · EN
Making sense of politics and the world with curiosity, rigor, and a sense of humor.
www.gdpolitics.com
www.gdpolitics.com
123episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
El-Sayed Won. The Polls Did Not.
3d ago00:20:59Summary readyThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.Abdul El-Sayed has officially won Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, but by nothing like the margin the polls suggested.El-Sayed led Haley Stevens by about 13 points in the polling averages. Instead, he won by about one percentage point after Stevens outperformed expectations, particularly in rural Michigan.That’s partly a reminder that primaries are uncertain and open primaries are especially difficult to poll, but it also highlights a tension within the Democratic Party: El-Sayed campaigned as a champion of working people while finding his greatest strength among younger, college-educated progressives. Stevens performed better with many of the rural and working-class voters Democrats say they need to win back.On today’s episode, Mary Radcliffe and Nathaniel Rakich joined me to sort through the results in Michigan and debate what they mean for the general election. We also assessed results across the country.Voters in Missouri overwhelmingly rejected a Republican-backed amendment that would have made citizen-led constitutional amendments nearly impossible to pass. Missouri Rep. Wesley Bell also easily defeated former Rep. Cori Bush’s comeback bid, giving the Democratic establishment a clear win.In Washington, moderate Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez advanced from the top-two primary in a Trump-won district that has recently moved left. And in Kansas, voters rejected a Republican-backed effort to require state Supreme Court justices to be chosen by popular vote. The state’s primaries also put data centers and the growing backlash to their effects on local communities in the spotlight.
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Scandal, Insurgents, And Big Money
5d ago01:00:19Summary readyA heads-up: We’ll be covering this week’s primaries live starting at 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday at gdpolitics.comOhio Republican Rep. Max Miller is under pressure to step aside after new details about allegations of abuse emerged from his divorce and custody case. Miller denies the allegations and says he will stay in the race. His former father-in-law, Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno, says Miller should not be serving in Congress.On today’s episode, Inside Elections’ Jacob Rubashkin joins me to discuss what this means for Miller’s political future and what new polling tells us about how voters in both parties respond when a candidate faces a scandal.Then, the blockbuster Democratic Senate primary of late summer is here. Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed face off in Michigan on Tuesday. The polls don’t show a particularly close race — El-Sayed leads by 13 points on average — but primaries can be unpredictable. No matter the outcome, the results will tell us plenty about what Democratic primary voters are looking for and how far money goes in politics.Michigan isn’t the only state holding important elections this week. Both parties have competitive primaries to replace Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a term-limited Democrat. We also look at Cori Bush’s comeback bid in Missouri and a ballot measure there that could make it much harder for voters to amend the state Constitution.Lastly, we’re one week away from the end of Wisconsin’s chaotic Democratic primary for governor. The race has featured several scandal-plagued dropouts, one candidate dropping out and then jumping back in, last-minute endorsements and a democratic socialist leading the pack. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe
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We Drafted The Perfect Primary Calendar
1w ago00:24:04Summary readyThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.The way Americans choose their presidential nominees is largely an accident of history.Some states began holding more open primaries during the Progressive Era in the early 20th century, but the nominating process was substantially democratized after the disastrous 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.No one set out to give Iowa and New Hampshire so much influence. But after the process opened up, and Jimmy Carter propelled his campaign by camping out in Iowa ahead of the 1976 caucuses, building momentum in the early states became essential to winning a presidential nomination.The result is a system that some consider nonsensical, or at least unfair. Why give so much power to a handful of states? Why not have everyone vote at the same time, or have groups of states vote together? And what is so bad about letting party conventions choose the nominees in the first place? That would be closer to how political parties in most other democracies select their candidates.In 2028, the process is getting shaken up again, just not in any of those ways. The early states will retain their outsized influence, but Democrats are reshuffling which states receive the privilege.Under a newly proposed Democratic National Committee calendar, six states would vote before Super Tuesday, the earliest date on which any other state would be allowed to hold its contest. In the proposed order, they are: South Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Michigan and Virginia.Iowa has been dropped from the early-state lineup altogether, while South Carolina and Nevada have been placed ahead of New Hampshire — the state that has historically held the nation’s first presidential primary.To mark the occasion, we are holding our first-ever primary calendar draft. If a select group of states is going to vote first, which states should they be? Nathaniel Rakich and Mary Radcliffe join me for this very nerdy (and genuinely fun) exercise in redesigning the presidential primary calendar.
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Democrats Can't Fool The Working Class
2w ago00:46:44Summary readyBy now, the story of how Graham Platner was recruited to run for Senate is well known. Two Democratic Socialist-aligned operatives, Daniel Moraff and Leanne Fan, set out to find a like-minded candidate to challenge Susan Collins in Maine.As Platner told Jon Stewart, at the end of July 2025, “some people came to [his] house” who “had been in Maine for a few months working with the AFL-CIO a bunch of labor unions.” They were looking, as he put it, for “a kind of a working-class person on kind of working-class economic policies.”Over the next few weeks, the recruiters convinced Platner to run, telling him he could secure Bernie Sanders’s endorsement. He announced his candidacy in mid-August and landed that endorsement by Labor Day. Moraff later told The Wall Street Journal that they had not conducted a traditional background check on Platner.The candidate recruitment process usually unfolds behind the scenes. But given the spectacular way this campaign unraveled, it has become a central part of the Platner postmortem and of the recriminations now unfolding within the Democratic Party.It has also thrown a spotlight on a much bigger question: How should Democrats try to win back working-class voters? Recruiting candidates like Graham Platner is one approach. But is it the right one?To explore that question, I turned to Joan C. Williams, author of Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back. Joan is a Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California Law San Francisco and one of the country’s leading thinkers on class and American politics.We discuss what Democrats still misunderstand about working-class voters, why working-class values matter more than working-class aesthetics, and what politicians like Andy Beshear and John Ossoff are doing differently. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe
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What Has The U.S. Actually Achieved In Iran?
2w ago00:19:19Summary readyThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.Back in December, I invited Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution onto the podcast to talk about the developing conflict between the United States and Venezuela. At the time, we were discussing the possibility of being at war with Venezuela by the midterms, and I asked Michael whether it could become the next Iraq. He said no. And he was right.It turns out I just got the country wrong.Seven months later, we find ourselves in a quagmire in Iran. Of course, it’s an exaggeration to compare it to Iraq at this point. There’s been no ground invasion, and five months is not nine years. But we are in another war of choice in the Middle East that has not gone as intended.After a 12-week ceasefire, during which the fighting never entirely stopped, Iran’s attacks on commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz prompted the United States to launch what is now a 12-day campaign of strikes. In the latest escalation, Iranian attacks on U.S. bases have killed four American service members and injured more than 100.So where does the war go from here? What has the United States actually accomplished? And what would success even look like at this point?To answer those questions, I invited Michael O’Hanlon back onto the podcast. He is the Phil Knight Chair in Defense and Strategy at the Brookings Institution and the author of To Dare Mighty Things: U.S. Defense Strategy Since the Revolution.
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Can Progressives Win Swing States?
3w ago00:57:34Summary readyDemocrats’ messy internal politics are on full display as we enter the final stretch of primary season.The marquee event is Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary. Over the weekend, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez campaigned across the state with Abdul El-Sayed. Haley Stevens, meanwhile, argued that Sanders was nowhere to be found when she was working with President Obama on the auto bailout, and enters the final weeks of the campaign with a 12-to-1 advantage in television spending.In Maine, former state Senate president Troy Jackson became the presumptive Democratic nominee to replace Graham Platner on the Senate ballot. A longtime Sanders supporter, Jackson was widely seen as the clearest heir to the movement Platner built before leaving the race.And on Tuesday, Arizona voters will decide a hotly contested Democratic primary in the 1st Congressional District, one of the most competitive House seats in the country.On today’s episode, we break down all three contests. We also make sense of President Trump’s primetime address on election security and examine how the White House is trying to shape both the administration of the midterms and public confidence in the results.Joining me are Mary Radcliffe, head of research at FiftyPlusOne, and Nathaniel Rakich, managing editor of Votebeat. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe
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Democrats Are Favored. But By How Much?
3w ago00:24:24Summary readyThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.A hot new model has entered the villa! (Shout-out to Love Island fans.)On today’s episode, Geoffrey Skelley of Decision Desk HQ joins me to walk through DDHQ’s new 2026 midterm forecast model, why it gives Democrats the advantage in the House, and why election forecasters disagree so sharply about the size of that advantage.We also check in on two big upcoming primaries. In Michigan, new and conflicting polling has injected fresh uncertainty into the Democratic Senate primary between Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed. In Arizona, Rep. Andy Biggs appears to be cruising toward the Republican nomination for governor and a general-election matchup against the not-particularly-popular Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.Then we turn to two unusual Senate contests in which both parties are scrambling to replace candidates on the ballot this fall. In South Carolina, Republicans are preparing for a new primary following the sudden death of Sen. Lindsey Graham. In Maine, Democrats will choose a replacement nominee at a party convention after Graham Platner withdrew from the race.Skelley joins me to examine both contests and what history tells us about the prospects for replacement candidates.
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Why Europe’s Politics Keep Breaking
4w ago00:58:45Summary readySome of the episodes that have gotten the strongest response since launching GD POLITICS have been about politics outside the United States — the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, and Ireland.I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe it’s because international politics is an underserved beat in American media. Maybe people are exhausted by a decade of Trump-dominated news, but still enjoy following politics, making a trip abroad a welcome change of pace. Or maybe my own curiosity comes through in those conversations. I’ve found that when I’m genuinely excited to learn about something, it usually makes for a better show. Or perhaps, more cynically, it’s nice to hear that other countries’ politics are messed up too. We in America are not alone.Whatever the reason, it’s something that I want to keep doing, and it’s what we’re doing today, because there’s been some big election news across the pond lately.Last week, French right-wing populist Marine Le Pen was cleared to run for president in next year’s election after a court shortened her five-year ban on running for office for misusing European Union funds. The same day, she announced her candidacy.In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced his resignation as prime minister late last month. Nominations are currently open to replace him as Labour leader, and only one candidate has emerged: former mayor of Manchester Andy Burnham.If he remains uncontested, he could be declared leader of the party as soon as this Friday and become prime minister the following Monday. This is all happening just two years after Labour won the third-largest majority in the party’s history.With me to make sense of it all, and to meander into conversations about the World Cup, NATO, and air conditioning, is our European correspondent, Lenny Bronner. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe
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What Platner’s Exit Means For Control Of The Senate
4w ago00:15:40Summary readyThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.We’ve gotten some dramatic updates since the last time we discussed the state of the 2026 midterms. Chief among them is, of course, that Graham Platner announced he’ll drop out of the Maine Senate race after he was accused of rape. He denies the allegations.The Maine Democratic Party now has until July 27 to replace him on the ballot. It plans on hosting a convention of about 600 delegates made up of local party officials from around the state. The party’s executive director suggested candidates may need to collect signatures from voters in order to be eligible at the convention.On today’s episode, election forecasters Lakshya Jain of The Argument and Zachary Donnini of VoteHub join me to discuss how Platner’s departure will shake up the fight for control of the Senate. Both of their forecasts suggest it will improve Democrats’ odds in Maine, but that may not be enough to make them favorites to control the chamber.Maine also isn’t the only must-win Senate seat for Democrats that’s recently been in flux. In Michigan, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow dropped out of the Democratic primary last Sunday, leaving a two-person race between establishment-backed Haley Stevens and progressive-backed Abdul El-Sayed. They faced off in a debate this week and will face off on the ballot next month.We discuss the dynamics of that race and the ideological divides within the party more broadly. We also ask what lessons Democrats — both progressives and the establishment — can learn from what just happened in Maine.
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What Does 'Liberal' Even Mean Anymore?
Jul 601:04:28Summary readyI hope everyone is recovering nicely from their July 4th hangover. At 250 — hell, at 35 — those things aren’t single-day affairs anymore.Today’s episode is a conversation I had with Adrian Wooldridge about his new book, “The Revolutionary Center: The Lost Genius of Liberalism.” Adrian is the global business columnist at Bloomberg and was previously the political editor at The Economist.To be honest, I had intended to air this conversation in the run-up to our semiquincentennial. After all, the Declaration of Independence may well be the most famous liberal document ever written.But as the calendar worked out, our last episode before the Fourth was a paid episode, and I thought this conversation was a worthwhile listen for the wider GD universe. (Although, of course, if you appreciate this podcast, I encourage you to become a paid subscriber👇️) So I’m publishing it now, for folks to chew on as we return from the weekend’s celebrations.The word “liberal” gets thrown around a lot. It’s used to poke fun at the left (”resistance libs”) or chastise the right (”neolibs”), and in American politics today, it’s not clear what it even means.Adrian clearly defines liberalism and lays out a forceful case for why it’s a worthwhile worldview today, despite some of its failures.We talk about who can be a liberal, according to Adrian, both socialists and nationalists, but not populists. We discuss where the ideas came from and how they developed over the centuries, and how liberalism addresses the challenges of today. It was an enlightening (pun intended) conversation, and I hope you appreciate it too. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe
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