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- [00:00]
A
As we speak, you are working on your side gig, which is covering Formula one in Miami. So the Miami Grand Prix is on Sunday. We're recording this on Friday. The outcome will have already happened by the time folks are listening to this. Any crystal ball magic?
- [00:16]
B
Well, in the session that I just watched, it was Lando Norris, the reigning world champion, who qualified on pole position for the sprint race. So if anything is on the crystal ball right now, it's the Mercedes dominance so far might be ending this year.
- [00:30]
A
I just have to pretend that I know anything about what you just said. If you were going to translate that into politics election wonk speak like what's is what are we talking about?
- [00:40]
B
So this would be like if in the middle of Mitch McConnell's lengthy tenure, Rick Scott were to upset him and actually beat him for a leadership g.
- [01:00]
A
Hello and welcome to the GD Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Drouke. The contest for the Senate got a little clearer last week. Maine Governor Janet Mills dropped out of the Democratic primary, leaving former Marine and oyster farmer Graham Platner as the presumptive Democratic nominee facing Senator Susan Collins this fall, Mills was trailing Platner by 30 points on average before she dropped out. Platner, despite no shortage of early scandals, that infamous Nazi tattoo, writings online that ranged from calling rural whites racist and stupid to asking why black people don't tip, was raking in cash and rallying voters. It's a poor showing for Mills herself, but also for the establishment that drafted her to run in the first place. Today we're going to talk about what lessons we might learn from that truncated primary and how some of the other key Senate races this fall are playing out. We're also going to catch up on some of the latest news in Washington. The longest partial government shutdown in history is over. The deadline for Trump getting authorization from Congress for the war in Iran has passed. Here with me to discuss it all is Sahil Kapoor, senior national political reporter at NBC. Welcome to the podcast, Sahal.
- [02:08]
B
Great to be with you.
- [02:10]
A
You were in Maine recently talking to the candidates involved. So Janet Mills and Graham Platner, as well as voters on the ground about how they were viewing the primary. We'll get into everything they said, but from your perspective, why did Janet Mills get out of the race? And behind that is why was she faltering so hard in Maine?
- [02:32]
B
The first thing I noticed in Maine, spending time on the ground. And I've taken two trips there to report on this race over the last few months. And the jarring thing that I noticed was this disconnect between what Democratic voters on the ground and the grassroots there thought and how they perceived the race and the attitudes of the national Democratic establishment based in Washington. To the D.C. washington crowd. Janet Mills is kind of the ideal candidate. She's a tested two term governor. She's polished. She doesn't have a controversial history. She doesn't have extreme positions. She's the type of person that they typically, that the Schumer wing of the party typically likes to nominate. And Chuck Schumer did recruit her, so that's how they think. But on the ground, the perceptions were so, so different. I met a lot of Mills voters who were ready to move on, who like her, who still like her, who thinks she's done a good job as governor, but they're not going to vote for her as senator. There is a real, you know, Biden 2024 trauma, let's call it a Biden trauma tax that candidates like Janet Mills are paying through no fault of their own. You know, she is, I would say, more vigorous than, than Joe Biden was. She doesn't stumble the way, the way Joe Biden did toward the end, but I think the perception.
- [03:43]
A
Low bar to clear, but we'll give that to, to Janet Mil.
- [03:46]
B
Yeah, I mean, I don't mean this as a, I don't mean this as an insult. Yes, she is 78 years old, but she isn't Biden esque for sure. But still, voters in the Democratic Party, they really don't want to stick with the same similar crop of older candidates. And they are not judging Graham Platner the way the D.C. democratic establishment is. They don't. They view his controversial offensive posts, but they've listened to him apologize. They kind of believe him that he's a better person now. They're not gonna hold it against him and consider it disqualifying the way other Democrats are.
- [04:18]
A
So we, we ran into each other actually at like a party. This is gonna be the nerdiest thing I think I've ever said on this podcast. But we were chatting, we sort of ended up in the corner talking about the main Senate race and getting into the nitty gritty, which is part of the reason I wanted to bring you on. And one of the things you said to me, which I thought was so interesting, was that voters who were most concerned about winning, you would think they would go for Janet Mills because she's the safe tested, uncontroversial candidate. But you told me like, even though those voters like Janet Mills and would support Her. They're afraid that she can't beat Susan Collins. And so they actually think that Graham Platner is the more electable of the two candidates, which might be the opposite of how this frequently gets portrayed, which is Janet Mills is more electable, but everyone's heart is with Graham Platner because he's the populist upstart.
- [05:11]
B
Yeah, that was the other key part of the disconnect that I was very struck by. I met numerous voters who liked Janet Mills better than Graham Platner. But one woman, older woman, told me she was planning to vote for Graham Platner regardless in the primary. This was before she dropped out, of course, because she thought Graham Platner poses a better contrast against Susan Collins, that he's a, you know, he's a better campaigner, and that she thought Platner was more electable. And that is the opposite of what the folks in D.C. think. So, look, to get back to your previous question, why did Mills drop out? I think it was a couple. Number one, she didn't have enough money and financial resources. Graham Platner's been raising a lot of money. He's been on the air for quite a while now. He also jumped in earlier than she did, which ended up being a huge advantage. I think there's an alternate timeline where she jumps in early and Platner maybe doesn't even get in. I'm not fully convinced he would have run if there was an obvious front runner. So that was point one. And the second is her main argument was that she was more electable. Voters weren't really buying that. And when she put out those attack ads, you know, highlighting all those offensive things that Platner has said and the controversial pass that Republicans will use against him, that didn't work. His support. Platner's support went up in the primary after those ads came out. So I think if you just look at that one, two punch, there wasn't really a path for her. And I think she saw the writing on the wall.
- [06:28]
A
Should we take that to mean that the things that Graham Platner said are appealing to Maine voters?
- [06:36]
B
No, I don't think it's because they were appealing, certainly not to Democratic voters. I do think that they were angry that one candidate on the Democratic side was going negative on the other candidate when they'd rather focus on Susan Collins. That's another thing I heard from a Mills supporter who was leaning toward Mills two weeks ago and said when Mills put those ads up, that upset her, that annoyed her, because she would rather keep the political fire pointed towards Susan Collins and not kind of an intradem Civil War thing. So there was that sensitivity as well. And I think that's another reason it backfired on Mills. And by the way, she took it down. So she also saw that it wasn't working for a number of reasons.
- [07:15]
A
You mentioned the sort of Biden 2024 tax and friend of the pod, Nate Silver recently published some data looking at the age of Senate Democratic candidates this time around versus in 2018, and what he found looking at the median age of Senate Democratic candidates in competitive Senate seats. In 2018, the median age was 63 years old. This time around, it's 45 years old. He acknowledged that part of that may be because of incumbents in 2018, Democratic incumbents defending their turf. So if you control for incumbency, you see that in 2018, the median age in those competitive races was 57. Now it's 40, 48. It seems like Democratic voters and even the people who are recruiting Democratic candidates have taken something to heart about how dissatisfied Democrats were with the age component.
- [08:15]
B
The Biden trauma is real. I can't over overemphasize that there are a lot of Democrats who are deeply scarred from that experience and angry frankly, at the. At the Democratic establishment for conveying and telling voters that he was fine, that everything was okay, that he could do another four years of this when everyone knew the stakes of that election and Democrats were describing it as about the survival of American democracy. So, yeah, that's a part of it. So, yes, age is one factor. And I did see that study from Mait. I thought that was really interesting. It is one factor that's moving Democrats. It's not everything. The Democrats strongest recruit. The brightest spot on the entire calendar for them is Roy Cooper. He's not young, so it's not everything, but it's one factor. I think with Platner, there's the left right spectrum that people like to focus on. I think in Maine, the more important one is the insider versus outsider spectrum. And that's the divide that Platner has been very effective at playing on. There's a disenchantment, a dissatisfaction and a populist energy now in both parties. And there is an authenticity about the way he campaigns and about the way he talks. You know, you kind of get the sense that he believes what he's saying, that he hasn't filtered this through focus groups, that he hasn't had consultants telling him what to say. And I do think that appeals to people on a certain level in this day and age.
- [09:27]
A
What is he campaigning on?
- [09:29]
B
For one, he wants to be kind of an heir to the Bernie Sanders legacy. I sat down with him when I was there in Maine and we talked a lot about what kind of a senator he wants to be. He supports Medicare for all. He wants to take on corporate power. He wants to tax the rich, kind of the suite of proposals that you would expect from that wing of the party. But he also wants Democrats to get much more aggressive and reimagine how they wield power. He said his biggest critic of the Democratic Party is that they don't organize power from the outside, that they're too, you know, wedded to this kind of internal thinking about the procedural machinations of what's possible in D.C. that they don't organize movements. He said he's confused as to why they don't use their resources to organize an anti war movement. He wants to bring labor to the table, to sort of set up an AI federal standard. Some of this stuff you can tell he's thought more about than other things, especially as a political novice who's never run for anything before. There's still a lot of work in progress for him on the policy side. But he also wants a very aggressively investigate the Trump administration. I think you'll find a lot of Democrats want to do the same if he makes it to the Senate. And he said he wants the House to impeach Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas for corruption. Now, they're not going to get convicted, but it sounds like he wants to do it to send a message and to put pressure on the Supreme Court in a way that they haven't felt. Lastly, and I think this is interesting, he opposes an assault weapons ban. Graham Platner is more pro gun, it seems, than your average Democrat in Congress. I have a feeling that's going to come in handy in Maine's 2nd congressional district. That's the rural Obama to Trump. It's voted for Trump in the last several presidential elections. Very working class. I think for Platner, if he is to win, part of his path would be to overperform in Maine's 2nd congressional district, given that he probably will lose some of the older, centrist, moderate voters who have been supporting Susan Collins for many years.
- [11:23]
A
I'm curious about his position on immigration, specifically, if we're talking about scars from the Biden administration. Age is one of them. Inflation is another. Already it seems like Trump is discrediting the Republican Party on inflation, sort of all by himself. How is he positioning himself on the border and immigration enforcement?
- [11:45]
B
It's interesting. He doesn't really talk a lot about immigration. You know, he's very critical of ice. So I think that's to the extent that I've heard him and seen him talk about immigration, it's being very critical of ice, which is about as mainline a Democratic position as you get. So, you know, he wants to investigate the administration officials who are behind the ICE and CBP actions that led to the deaths of two Americans in Minneapolis. But that's really where his focus is on. He doesn't have a section of his stump speech where he talks about immigration policy or talks about border policy or gets into that stuff. I don't think that's one of his core issues.
- [12:22]
A
You mentioned that Platner criticizes the Democratic Party for not focusing enough on political movements and power outside of Washington, which provides me the perfect opportunity to ask a question that has been percolating throughout the beginning of this primary season. And we're gonna get to see ask the question many more times over the coming months. But do you see a Democratic version of the Tea Party forming? Is that trying to sort of draw overwrought parallels?
- [12:54]
B
I think the honest answer is we see a lot of parallels right now. We won't. We won't truly know until November. Well, I guess we won't truly know until the primaries are over. And then we won't truly know whether the Tea Party side of the or the Tea Party energy within the Democratic Party is onto something. Whether they're going to make nominate self defeating or, you know, nominate unelectable candidates who will ultimately end up losing, or whether they're going to nominate, you know, more like Marco Rubio versus Charlie Crist, people who can win and just sort of end up redefining what the party's all about. Yes, I absolutely see a Tea Party style energy within the Democratic party because that 2009 and 2010 moment within the GOP was largely about Republican voters losing faith and losing trust in their own leaders. And they were suddenly interested in nominating very different types of candidates. They were interested in knocking out incumbents. The old formula that GOP leaders at the time used to pick candidates and what they thought worked with their own electorate stopped working. So from that standpoint, I see a very similar kind of distrust within the Democratic base toward their leaders. And there's no better example of it in Maine. I mean, this is the perfect encapsulation of that Tea Party energy within the Democratic Party where The prize recruit, the two term governor who Chuck Schumer went in front of the cameras and I asked him this question. He said, Janet Mills is the best person to, they thought to take down Susan Collins and she has the resume that they want. And she's losing to a novice who they said was dangerous and unelectable, or let's say politically dangerous to put up against Susan Collins and unelectable at the time. So if that, we'll see how widely that replicates, but we're certainly seeing the signs of it.
- [14:34]
A
I was looking through the favorability numbers in Maine right before Janet Mills dropped out and it is striking that Mainers, I think, like many people across the country, just feel a pretty heavy anti incumbent sentiment. So Susan Collins, who has been pretty popular throughout her time as senator representing Maine, is 19 points underwater right now. Janet Mills was, you know, she saw some decline once she started running for Senate, but her favorability rating is 14 points underwater. You look at Graham Platner, he's 4 points above water. And sort of like in this dynamic, two people who have been in Maine politics for a very long time, extremely well known. It seems like Maine voters just really don't want all that much to do with them. And so this guy who people don't know that much about other than that he's cut, you know, pretty ads where he's doing the oysterman thing and sort of he speaks compellingly in a gruff voice and a populist, you know, delivering a populist message. That's the guy that they view sort of overall positively.
- [15:49]
B
This is the insider outsider spectrum. This is the anti establishment energy. And it exists across both parties for many years. It was more prevalent in the gop, I would say, which is what led to Trump being nominated and ultimately winning. The insider outsider spectrum, that is how you get a virtually unknown new candidate who, when he speaks, people think he's saying what he really thinks versus two establishment politicians who have been around for a long time. So, yes, I do think that's a real disconnect. Now, your other point about Susan Collins. Susan Collins is always unpopular right up until the point where she needs to be popular. And then somehow she always ends up winning. So she has been the white whale for the Democratic Party. She's literally the last surviving unicorn in the Senate. And by that I mean a senator who consistently wins a state that her party consistently loses. We had Joe Manchin and Jon Tester and some others last time around. They got wiped out in the last cycle. Susan Collins is the only one And I think there are many very real different. And this is not to predict that she'll win. I think this is gonna be a much tougher race for her than was in 2020. And look, her team doesn't really know what to do do with Graham Platner. They've never faced a candidate like him. The NRSC and the Republican Senate super PAC are going to spend millions upon millions of dollars highlighting all these controversial and offensive things he said and done. Will that work? It'll reach more people in Maine than Janet Mills was able to. The jury's still out. And if that doesn't work, then what do you do?
- [17:19]
A
Yeah, a couple things. So Susan Collins is right now at net negative 19, somewhere around there. That's not an average. That's just the most recent Emerson College poll. So give or take a few points around that in 2020, when she won reelection, like on election day, her favorability was net negative 6. So she'll have to improve quite a bit from where she is now to get to where she was when she won reelection six years ago. And that was a big deal, right? I think Sarah Gideon was leading four points in the polls on election day, and Susan Collins ended up winning by eight and a half points. Like a huge polling miss. A big win for Susan Collins, like, you know, don't count her out yet. But I am curious, like, you bring up a good point. What is the strategy? Is it going to be attack Graham Platner on the cultural issues? Because in some ways, his comments on cultural issues could offend. Like, depending on which ones you pick, could offend literally anyone. Like, he has, he has a stream of thoughts from Reddit, from, you know, the early 20 teens that would offend a bunch of liberals, like, using homophobic slurs. And again, like I said, asking why black people don't tip, saying sexual assault, you know, victims should take more responsibility, like, don't black out or whatever. But then more recently, he's calling himself a communist, saying, like, how do you expect a working class revolution if it's not armed? You know, he said cops are bastards and that rural white Americans or Trump supporters are as racist and dumb as Trump thinks they are. And so, like, really take your pick. But for those of us who covered the 2016 presidential election where it was, you know, at the end of the day, one of the main messages, or maybe the main message against Trump was the things he says are deplorable. And then on the other hand, you had like, an economic populace saying that the whole establishment is Corrupt. It would surprise me if Republicans didn't sort of learn a lesson from that and realize that they probably have to run a different campaign than just the things that Graham Platner says are deplorable.
- [19:26]
B
I think if there's one thing that the rise of Trump shows, it's that voters are willing to forgive or look past controversial and offensive things a candidate says as long as they believe they're getting the real version of that person. And, you know, I know a lot of Trump critics will heavily protest this and, you know, argue that he lies and he BSS and all this stuff. But generally, I think voters, when they listen to him, they believe he's saying what he really thinks. And whether you think that should be how voters vote is one question. Let's put that to the side. But it just does matter. I think it objectively does matter. And also, I also don't think voters in this day and age and the country will hold people's past moral failings to the same disqualification level that both party establishments would like to. When they're facing a candidate with these types of flaws, again, they can throw the kitchen sink at him, and some of this stuff might work. I don't know what will stick, what won't. I think this is still. There's still a lot of open questions here, but you're right, they're gonna have to prioritize. They're gonna have to strategize. I think some of the offensive things he said, some of the controversial things he said. Yeah, they do run the spectrum. You know, you can pick a group and find some and find something he said that will appeal to them and something he said that has offended them. I think his st. His vibe will play better in Maine's 2nd congressional district, I think, than what other Democrats who have been nominated have been able to do. I think that's gonna be a really key component of this race. Now, one Last Point on 2020 with Susan Collins. I actually think one of the reasons she overperformed and won that race handily was that she had the best of both worlds. Trump was on the ballot. A bunch of MAGA voters showed up for Trump and then just voted down ticket voted for Susan Collins because they had no use for Sarah Gideon. Now, a lot of those MAGA voters are not gonna show up because history has shown that when Trump is on the ballot, a lot of them just stay home. So Susan Collins is not gonna benefit from that quite the same way. LePage is on the ballot in the second congressional district that Might help her a little bit, but nowhere near the level of Trump. So she's gonna have to do something to juice that turnout. And she's doing this high wire act, a very awkward dance with maga. She's going to the Oval Office sometimes. The other day she was caught with a MAGA swag bag. I'm still curious what she did with that, whether she kept it or whether she donated it to someone. But it's a very awkward situation.
- [21:50]
A
Yeah. Because I guess the two sides were one. She's not going to have the juiced MAGA turnout. But also, split ticket voting has declined. You know, it's only been six years, but still split ticket voting seems to continue to decline. And also, Maine is more blue now than it was even in 2020. I think it was 4 points to the left of the country in 2020, and most recently it was 8 points to the left of the country In 2024.
- [22:19]
B
And by the way, the central part of Susan Collins strategy, and I think it's important to note she's gonna run a hyperlocal campaign. She's gonna make it all about. I'm the chairman of the Appropriations Committee. This is a once in a century opportunity for Maine. And she's brought her office counts more than a billion dollars, almost 1.5 billion, according to them, that she's brought home to Maine over the, you know, since she last got reelected, that is a lot of money. And she's going to win. She's going to win some votes on that basis. And that's a way for her to deemphasize party ID to localize the election. And that's going to be something that Platner has to deal with, too.
- [22:54]
A
I mean, there's another important issue here, which is that the war in Iran, if it's still a high profile issue come election day, and at the very least, gas prices are liable to be. You know, he is a Marine veteran who has a strong anti war message. And it's put Susan Collins, I think, in a difficult spot. Like you said, she wants to keep Trump's voters on her side, but also sort of as we're speaking, Congress had to contend with the War Powers act and she had to come out basically against Trump saying this war is no longer authorized. I guess what's her. How does she handle that position?
- [23:33]
B
Yes. So she had a carefully worded statement talking about how she's changing her position on the War Powers Resolution that Democrats keep putting up. They've been forcing votes on this weekly to end the war in Iran unless Congress approves it first. And she decided to vote yes on it for the first time after voting no on the resolution, essentially siding with Trump's letting him do what he wants in that military campaign. And now she says it needs to end without congressional approval. Her rationale has been that the war is now 60 days old. It just hit its 60 day mark a few days ago. And that was the basis for which Susan Collins said she was voting to end the war. Now, Platner is responding pretty aggressively with this and saying, so Susan Collins only problem with the war is that Trump didn't file the proper paperwork. He's making a much more passionate, like, personal case against the war. You can tell he feels it when he talks about it because he got sent to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said it was a terrible experience for him. It scarred him deeply. And that was while he was suffering from a lot of that stuff, is when he said he had his darkest days and made a lot of these comments that he now says don't reflect him, et cetera, et cetera. But he can speak about the war in a very effective way. Now, to your other point about. I don't think the real question is whether the war ends before the midterm elections in terms of the politics of it. I think the question is whether it ends early enough for gas prices to come down and for supply chains to basically get back to where they were. Because there's an issue of fertilizer prices. About 30% of the world's fertilizer passes through the Strait of Hormuz. There's diesel. Prices have gone up even more than gas prices. And food is transported, you know, on trucks that use diesel. So it's going to push up the price of food. There's so many downstream negative impacts of this. And for Susan Collins, of course, turning against an unpopular war is a politically helpful position. But. But I don't think that's the end of the story. I don't think he's going to. He's going to let that lie.
- [25:30]
A
So betting markets currently suggest that there's a 70% chance a Democrat wins the Senate race in Maine. That's ticked down ever so slightly after Janet Mills got out of the race. I know, I don't know if you're a betting man. You are covering Formula One at the moment, but at 70, 30, I mean, are you buying, selling or holding? Do you think that's well calibrated?
- [25:55]
B
70, 30 Democrat wins in Maine. Hmm, That's a tough one. I mean, if this environment holds. I think that's accurate, yes. I don't know how much of a political headwind Susan Collins can outrun. You know, if you look at her past elections, 2020, it was almost a 5050 election. I mean, Donald Trump lost the Electoral College by tens of thousands of votes. It was not a blowout for Democrats, so that was a very. That was a decent environment for Republicans to run. Yes, she did overperform for sure, but in 2014, that was an absolute blowout for the GOP. That was a red wave. Those were her last two elections. And this is so this is going to be much tougher than both of them. Yeah, I don't think 7030 is too far off if the political environment remains what it is today, which is what presumably the betters are assuming.
- [26:43]
A
Today's podcast is brought to you by you, the listeners GD Politics simply wouldn't exist without paid subscribers. Paid subscribers like Jonathan, who recently sent me this message. Hey Galen, just got a notification from Substack that my subscription will be renewing in the next few days. Normally when I get renewal notices, I roll my eyes and wish that particular thing was free. But I could not be more excited for my subscription to renew and for you to get paid once again. Your podcasts are highlights of my week and allow me to stay abreast of the news in a way that helps me understand the forces behind it. I'm a happy, satisfied and excited subscriber. As long as you continue recording, I'll continue subscribing. Well, Jonathan, I'm flattered, but more to the point, people like Jonathan make this podcast possible. Your support means we can make an independent podcast guided by curiosity, rigor, and a sense of humor. Paid subscribers get about twice the number of episodes and can join in the paid subscriber chat. You can also connect your personal feed to your favorite podcast player so you get every single episode paid, unpaid. All of them. Wherever you listen to podcasts, Become a paid subscriber today@gdpolitics.com there's never been a better time to join the community. That's GDPolitics.com hope to see you there. Let's move on and talk about some other Senate races. We haven't turned our eyes for the past couple weeks to Texas, but Donald Trump never ended up endorsing between Ken Paxton and John Cornyn. Of course, Cornyn won the first round by two point. I mean, didn't win, but it was 42 to 40 Cornyn versus Paxton. The polling average right now shows Paxton at 46 to Cornyn's 42. What are you watching for in that race? I mean, do you think it's a foregone conclusion that it's Paxton?
- [28:32]
B
I don't think it's a foregone conclusion, but it certainly looks that way. The fact that Trump has been begged by every senior official in the GOP and lots of donors as well, to endorse Cornyn and the fact that he vacillated on it, the fact that he waffled, he sort of indicated, according to a number of reports, including from my colleagues at NBC, that he was strongly leaning in that direction or that he had essentially been convinced. And then Paxton comes out and does this jujitsu move saying, I would like to abolish the filibuster to pass the Save America act, which is exactly what Trump has been saying, which Cornyn did not support at the time. And that was Trump's number one priority. He was truth social posting about that every day. You know, all caps, angrily demanding that Republicans do this. And Ken Paxton got on the right side of it. And that was exactly around the time that Trump decided or Trump, you know, was expected to endorse Cornyn and then just didn't do it. So I think there's a real connection there. No, I don't think it's a foregone conclusion, but I think you'd probably rather be Paxton right now. And if you're the Democrats, you would be very, very happy if Paxton is the nominee.
- [29:40]
A
Do you think it makes that much of a difference who the Republican nominee is in Texas? Because at first blush, I would say, yeah, it makes quite a bit of difference. Like, we've seen Cornyn do particularly well amongst Texas voters. Like, we saw some split ticket voting in past elections where Cornyn is doing better than your replacement level Republican in Texas. But right now, I'm just looking at the most recent polling here that pits Talarico against Cornyn and Talarico against Paxton. So this Texas Politics Project poll from the University of Texas. Talarico leads Cornyn by 7 and leads Paxton by 8. A Slingshot Strategies poll. Talarico leaves Cornyn by 3 and Paxton by 5. Impact Research. Talarico leads Cornyn by 2 and Paxton by 1. Of course, there's a bit of a difference there, but I mean, the polling seems to show a pretty pessimistic picture for Republicans. Again, these are still tight races, all things considered, a pretty pessimistic picture for Republicans. No matter. And I almost wonder, similar to what we were just talking about in Maine. If there's so much energy behind an outsider in Paxton, and then, you know, all these Republicans rally to Cornyn's side, in this day and age, does that no longer accomplish what we think it might?
- [31:02]
B
So, first off, on the polling on the general election, I have one small discount that I would like to apply to it, and I like polls, and I'm not being critical of the polls, but I do think, are you gonna
- [31:12]
A
be critical of the polls?
- [31:13]
B
Honestly, I think they're accurate. Because I think what's partly what happens here in the midst of a very. In the midst of a heated primary is that Republican voters who strongly support Cornyn, or asked by pollsters, who are you going to vote for if your guy loses? And it's these two. In that moment, it's very easy for them to tell the pollster, no, I'm going to sit it out, or I'm going to vote Talarico, even if they're actually not going to do that. So I think in heated moments like these, people tell pollsters things out of anger. And when it actually comes time to, are you going to vote for. Are you really going to vote for a Democrat if you're a Paxton voter and Cornyn is a nominee? I think that's part of what's going on. I'd be very interested to see how those general election polls look if Paxton does get nominated. But look, to your other point, Cornyn has been a really tough nut to crack for Democrats in Texas because he's just not that easy to paint as an extremist or outside the mainstream. And Texas is still a red state, but it's not like Mississippi red. It's been getting bluer and bluer. There has to be. Democrats still need a. Democrats need to run the table in order to win Texas. They need an inside straight. Pick your metaphor. They need everything to go right for them. They need an excellent environment, which they might have this fall. They need a really good candidate, which many believe James Talarico is. We'll see how he fares in a general election. Still a little bit untested from that standpoint. And they need a candidate who they can paint as extreme, crazy, outside the mainstream, which Dems think they can do with Paxton. So I do actually think the conventional wisdom is accurate that Cornyn would be more likely to win a general election and considerably more likely to win a general election, because he can. Also, Cornyn has won a lot of elections in Texas, and he knows how to pivot and he knows how to speak to a general electorate for a statewide Texas Senate race. So I don't think those Paxton voters are actually not going to sit it out or not going to vote for him. I, I suspect they probably will. And honestly, vice versa. For the Republicans who are with Cornyn right now, I think they ultimately end up supporting Paxton. But how many independents, how many soft Republicans who may or may not vote in primaries but turn out in a general election? How many of them could Paxton win over? I think the Talarico folks think they have a shot at peeling some of them off.
- [33:36]
A
All right, I'm now going to ask you to engage in a question that I've put to various different national campaigns reporters, which is to line up the Senate races, the competitive Senate races, in order from most likely to flip to least likely to flip, and the races that we're considering here. There's 10. It's New Hampshire, Michigan, Georgia, Nebraska, Texas, Iowa, Alaska, Ohio, Maine, and North Carolina. And you can, you can, you can give me like a couple sentence rationale as you go, if you like.
- [34:13]
B
Okay, let me. I'm gonna break this into two categories. The Dem held and the Republican held. Let's start with the Dems, because there are only two of them. I think that Dems hold and all of the others are Republican held. Michigan and Georgia and New Hampshire. Oh, sorry. And New Hampshire. So there are three. You want me to start with most
- [34:29]
A
or least most likely to flip between
- [34:32]
B
these three, I'd have to say Michigan. There's a pretty feisty Democratic primary going on right now. There are three candidates who are all flawed in their own ways. We're all imperfect. And Republicans have coalesced behind their candidate. Mike Rogers is a former congressman of many years and he nearly won in 2024. Granted, that was a better environment for Republicans than 2026 will be. So I think he'll have a harder go of it. But yeah, I think that would be probably the most likely. Again, I don't think it's terribly likely you'd still rather be the Dems, any of those three in a environment like this. But yeah. And then after that, I would say Georgia and New Hampshire. I mean, Georgia is a real bright spot for Dems this cycle. Ossoff has been cleaning it up on fundraising. He's got a really effective message. Again, I keep coming back to the insider outsider spectrum. He plays that card really well by talking about corruption all the time. He goes quiet for a while and every now and then he comes up with a speech that goes viral and gets 10 million hits on social Media and the Dems are all praising him for it, but yeah, he's been pretty focused. I think he's got that fairly well locked up. And the Republicans I've talked to are really pessimistic about it. So between that and New Hampshire, even though New Hampshire is a much more Dem friendly state, I don't see that flipping either. So I'd have to say a tie. I would say Georgia and New Hampshire are at about a tie for me, which is crazy to put Georgia in the same category as New Hampshire. I would never have done that in any other cycle.
- [36:07]
A
Okay, fair enough. Let's get to the spicier side of the ledger, which is Republican held.
- [36:12]
B
Yeah. Okay, so in terms of most likely to flip, North Carolina, gotta start with that. Won't argue with you that Roy Cooper, he's sort of the Dems dream recruit. He has won North Carolina on the same ballot as, you know, when Trump had won the state. And he seems to be the, he's on track right now to become the first Democrat since 20028 to win a North Carolina Senate race. So I would put that as number one. Then I would say Maine, just the state being the makeup of the state, the Democratic lean, it's hard not to put that second, despite the fact that Susan Collins over performs it and won't be easy to beat. But none of these are gonna be easy for Dems. So it's either somewhat difficult or very difficult. After that it gets a lot more interesting. Okay, I'm gonna go with. It's a bit of a tie for third between Ohio and Alaska for me. Hmm.
- [37:10]
A
Okay.
- [37:11]
B
Alaska Dems have a good candidate, Mary Paltola, who's won that at large district. She has substantially overperformed in Alaska before. And Senator Dan Sullivan, the Republican incumbent, is behaving like someone who's worried about his reelection. You know, he's. I've covered him for many years in the Senate. He rarely bucks his party. When you do those Senate votes and they list the senators who voted against their party or who voted in opposition to one of their party's priorities, Sullivan almost never comes up. But lately he's voted with Democrats on healthcare, on restoring the ACA subsidies. He voted with Democrats on a number of amendments to the recent budget resolution for ICE and CBP about lowering healthcare costs, lowering grocery prices and electricity prices. And I don't think it's a coincidence that he suddenly started doing this when he's up for reelection. But then Ohio, and this is the other thing, Alaska is a red State that's been trending bluer. It's still red, but it's been trending bluer. Ohio's kind of the opposite. You know, it was a purple state and it's been trending red. Dems have Sherrod Brown, who's won Ohio many times. He's older now. I don't quite know how Ohio voters are gonna perceive him. Are they gonna still see him as the scrappy, young labor, working class guy as before, or are they gonna see him as someone they kicked out of the Senate and aren't really interested in sending back there? I don't know. It's hard to choose between Ohio and Alaska.
- [38:40]
A
I feel like. You think it's Alaska.
- [38:42]
B
Yeah, I was just gonna say I feel like I talked myself into Alaska. Yeah, I'm going with Alaska.
- [38:48]
A
Okay, so North Carolina, Maine, Alaska, Alaska,
- [38:51]
B
Ohio, and then I would say Texas, Iowa and then Nebraska.
- [38:58]
A
Okay. All right, interesting.
- [39:00]
B
Texas before Texas, also Texas before Iowa. Yes, because of the elements, Iowa has been a purple state, trending red. Republicans have been winning it handily. Now, Iowa, I realize there's an element of, you know, tariffs have hit Iowa really hard. Food prices and the Iran war is going to hurt Republicans there substantially. Already is politically, because food prices and fertilizer are going up. So I wouldn't completely put that off the board for Dems in a cycle like this. But it's so red at this point, they're gonna have to. They're gonna have to do some heroics to pull that off. And Nebraska, I'm just not convinced. I don't know what else to say about that.
- [39:38]
A
Okay, but good to get you on the record. I want to move on to what's going on in Washington. But before we do that, you recently reported on a trend amongst Democrats, mostly, I would say Democrats who are ambitious in 2028, more so than running for Senate in 2026. But still a pretty interesting trend of Democrats proposing lots of different kinds of tax cuts. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
- [40:08]
B
Yeah. It's a fascinating new trend among Democrats where they are competing with each other to put out tax cut plans, whether it is, you know, raising the standard deduction, like Senator Cory Booker wants to do. He wants to exempt the first 75,000 in federal income from any taxes. That's a massive increase in the. In the standard deduction. Chris Van Hollen has a tax cut plan as well at the federal level. And then you have Democrats running for governor in California, Katie Porter, who is Talking about exempting 100,000 in California state income from any taxes. That's a big deal. And then the other element of this trend is Keisha Lance Bottoms, running for governor in Georgia, trying to become the Democratic nominee there, is proposing to exempt teachers from taxes. So you're talking about exempting certain amounts of income. That's one bucket of tax cuts the Dems are proposing. And the other is exempting categories of people and exempting certain professions from having to pay any taxes. And this has gotten lot of criticism among policy experts in the Democratic Party, both the moderate centrist third way types and the progressive types, they all hate it. The moderate centrist third way types don't like it because this is Dems moving further away from fiscal responsibility. And the progressives hate it because these Dems, in their view, are essentially adopting the Republican frame by saying taxes are an evil that you have to get away from where taxes are a punishment rather than what liberals want to do, which is treat taxes as essential to have the programs that we care about as a social good. And the more you start exempting certain categories of people from taxes, the more you are surrendering to the Republican argument that taxes are actually bad. And if taxes are bad, then you can't have Medicare, Social Security, these big programs that Democrats want in the long run. So that's the crux of it. I do think this is a big identity question for the Dems going forward because the political component of this is that they've absorbed a lot of former Republicans who supported Romney, who supported the Bushes, supported Bob Dole, who don't like Trump. They're voting for Dems because they don't like Trump, but they do like lower taxes. So how hard do Dems work to hold onto that coalition by talking about tax cuts versus how hard do they work to try to win back working class voters by talking about bigger safety nets and social programs? Times.
- [42:38]
A
Yeah, I mean, in general, tax cuts are pretty popular. It's rare that you'll find somebody who will say, no, you know, don't cut my taxes. But it is something of a shift in positioning for the Democratic Party and seems to be taking a page out of Trump's playbook.
- [42:56]
B
It's no tax on tips. That was the root cause of it. I think people trace it back to that. Democrats saw that, they were like, whoa, this is popular. They immediately got behind that, and now everyone's competing as to how far they can take it.
- [43:07]
A
I think you talked to AOC about this in particular, and she was like, I hate this trend.
- [43:11]
B
Like, I don't want to do this outspoken critic. She said it was a competition among Democrats as to who can be exempt from participating in society. She said it's not a conversation she's interested in.
- [43:20]
A
How appealing do you see this being as we go forward? I mean, do you think, like, that's a lot of different people in different contexts suggesting Democrats in different contexts suggesting big tax cuts at the same time? I mean, perhaps it's more politically appealing than a minimum guaranteed income, which was, I guess, talked about in 2020amongst Democrats. Like, do you. Do you think this takes on a real life within the Democratic Party?
- [43:49]
B
Absolutely. I think this is going to be one of the biggest policy questions of the 2028 Democratic primary. Not to already think that far ahead, but you can sometimes. You can see. You can see these things percolating way early. And the reason I say that is because it's not really gonna matter in the 2026 midterms. This is not really. That's not the stage where this debate is going to be had. That's gonna be in 2028. And I think you're gonna have the AOC wing represented there, maybe literally her on stage if she chooses to run for president, making the case that, you know, Dems shouldn't treat taxes as a punishment. And then you might have Cory Booker or Chris Van Hollen running, saying, here's why we need. Here's why we need tax cuts. So, yes, I do think this will become a big policy question for the Dems. And at some point, the reality, the mathematical reality is going to catch up to them. I don't know what that point is going to be, but at some point it's going to catch up to them. You can't have big tax cuts all the time and have universal healthcare and create new childcare programs and have paid leave and all these other things that Dems say they want. You kind of have to pick one.
- [44:54]
A
Yeah. No, it was a really good report, and I'm interested to continue watching how this debate plays out. Before I let you go, let's turn to D.C. for just a second. The longest partial government shutdown in history just ended. It doesn't seem like the result was much different than it would have been had the House passed the Senate plan, what, over a month ago?
- [45:18]
B
Yeah. This is a crazy thing about Congress right now. And I shouldn't just say Congress. It's really House Republicans, they are such a mess. And they've struggled to get basic things done. They've struggled to pass procedural motions, they've struggled to pass rules that were automatic in a previous era. But yes, on DHS funding, the 75 day record long shutdown of DHS is finally over because the House finally passed a Senate bill that the Senate passed a month ago, literally, I think four weeks ago. And more than that, actually. And at the time, House Republicans trashed it. Speaker Johnson said it was a joke. They had a lot of complaints about it and they even criticized the Senate for passing it by unanimous consent. What did the House do? Pass it by unanimous consent. Pass it by a voice vote. Not a single person stood up and objected. So they burned four weeks and they got absolutely nothing out of it because Senate Republicans had already embarked on this path to ripping out ICE and CBP from that DHS bill. It does not fund ICE and cbp, and they're going to fund those two through the process of budget reconciliation where they can cut out Democrats and do it on a party line basis. So that battle is over. It could have been over four weeks ago with a lot less pain and a lot less uncertainty for TSA workers, for fema, for cisa, that's a cybersecurity agency for the Coast Guard. All of these, you know, employees at all of these agencies have been in limbo and for no reason. Just because Republicans were fighting amongst themselves and were, and were mad at the Senate and were slow to go through the five stages of grief and get to yes. And they ultimately did. It took four weeks to get to yes or to get to acceptance.
- [46:59]
A
I should say to get to acceptance. Right, exactly. We mentioned the war powers approval in Congress. Essentially, Congressional Democrats and maybe some Republicans are saying, hey, the way that the law works is the President can take the country to war, but within 60 days, you have to get approval from the United States Congress in order to, you know, continue that war, what have you. The Trump administration is saying, well, the war ended with the ceasefire. Other folks are not having it. What are the repercussions for blowing past this, I guess, deadline?
- [47:39]
B
So first off, there is a dispute about whether the 60 day question even applies here. That, you know, the critics would say, and the Democrats overwhelmingly say there was no imminent danger to the United States. So the President doesn't just get to wage a war on whoever he wants for 60 days without congressional approval just by claiming, you know, just by citing that law. That's point number one. The second thing is the succeeding mark. A number of Republicans have said, based on the War Powers Resolution, they will not support this war going on beyond that date without congressional approval. Susan Collins is One of them, we talked about her switching her vote. There are a number of others that I've spoken to, including Thom Tillis. John Curtis has said this as well, that he won't Support the past 60 days whose votes are in question. But what the administration is doing, what the White House is doing is, let's say, creative accounting to say that it's not actually 60 days that the 60 day mark starts now. Oh, the ceasefire doesn't count toward 60 day question. So they're trying to extend this, you know, trying to extend this window for as long as they can, knowing that they're going to lose votes of Republicans. And there's a very real chance a war powers resolution passes the Senate. They only need a couple more votes and passes the House, given how narrow the margins are if it goes clearly beyond 60 days. So the administration's in a bit of a bind there. Trump, of course, could veto that resolution and it probably won't get an override because there's just no way Republicans would do that to him. But that is a political disaster. It puts the war entirely on, you know, on his shoulders in a way that we haven't seen, I think, in either of our lifetime times.
- [49:19]
A
All right, we're going to leave things there for today. Sahil, thank you so much for joining me.
- [49:23]
B
Pleasure. Great to see you.
- [49:25]
A
My name is Galen Druk. Remember to become a subscriber to this podcast@gdpolitics.com and wherever you get your podcasts. Paid subscribers get about twice the number of episodes. You can also join in our paid subscriber chat and pass along questions for us to discuss on the show. And you ensure that we can keep making a podcast that prioritizes curiosity, rigor and a sense of humor. Also, be a friend of the POD and go give us a five star rating wherever you listen to podcasts, maybe even tell a friend about us. Thanks for listening and we will see you soon.