Is the Progressive Takeover Real?

Summary

Pod Save America – "Is the Progressive Takeover Real?"

Episode Date: August 9, 2026
Host: Alex Wagner (guest-hosting)
Guest: Chris Hayes (MSNBC's "Ms. Now")

---

Overview

This episode dives deep into the state of the Democratic Party after a string of significant primary results, especially in Michigan. Alex Wagner and Chris Hayes break down what the recent progressive victories mean for the party, the challenges progressives and the establishment each face, the looming general election battles, and how changing media landscapes and generational shifts are reshaping Democratic politics. The discussion covers the role of outside money (especially AIPAC), the nuances of the left's messaging and candidates, the impact of new-media influencers like Hasan Piker, and even the subtleties of masculinity in American political leadership.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Are Progressives Having a Moment? (05:46–09:54)

• Michigan Primary Analysis: Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive, secured a surprise win in the Michigan Senate primary, overcoming huge resources and the party establishment.
  • "You had $60 million in outside spending on [the establishment candidate’s] side against Abdul Syed, and he emerged victorious in a swing state... There's no universe in which he would have emerged victorious two, four, six years ago. Like, something is obviously happening" – Chris Hayes (07:38)
• Changing Tides on Electability: The definition of "electable" is shifting as voters look for authentic progressive voices.
  • Wagner sees El-Sayed as presenting "an authentic answer to what it means to be a populist" and able to speak credibly to working-class concerns (08:04–09:02).

2. All Politics Is Local—Or Is It? (09:54–12:58)

• Contradictory Trends: For every left-wing win, there are centrist victories and progressive defeats. Voter profiles and local conditions still matter greatly.
• The "Short-term vs. Long-term" Perspective: Hayes argues the progressive left is clearly growing in aggregate power over the last decade, but gains aren't always linear (10:38–12:17).
• Gifted Communicators: Non-traditional, progressive candidates often succeed because "they're just extremely gifted communicators"—winning not just on ideas but on charisma (12:19–12:58).

3. Wisconsin, Bernie, and the Peril of Ideological Extremism (13:12–16:23)

• Francesca Hong’s Candidacy: Lack of progressive endorsements (including from Bernie Sanders) and Republican-funded ads signal anxiety about running too far left.
  • "There is a penalty for ideological extremism... that’s a sign of health, actually." – Chris Hayes (15:46–15:54)
• Progressive Wins are Not Guaranteed: Even in a progressive moment, "everyone kind of understands there is a penalty for ideological extremism...everyone loves a winner. No one wants to be associated with a loser." (15:46–16:23)

4. Should Dems Obsess Over the DSA and the Left Flank? (18:55–23:23)

• Rahm Emanuel’s Op-Ed: Warns against overreach by Democratic Socialists. Hayes counters:

  "There is a kernel of truth to it, but also are you helping by putting more attention on it?" (19:36)

• Lessons from the UK Labour Party: Picking big public fights with the left can backfire by raising salience of divisive issues (20:47–20:55).
• Primary ≠ General: Both guests agree progressives should admit that "a primary electorate can select a candidate who is poorly optimized for a general election." (21:47–23:17)

5. Framing Republican ‘Socialism’ & the Hypocrisy Game (23:28–26:09)

• Hayes notes Trump is "more antagonistic to free markets" than any president in memory (24:26–24:42).
• "I don’t think the hypocrisy thing matters as much as just being like, everything's expensive and he doesn’t care about you. He's corrupt. There's no point in making an ideological argument against this." (25:43–25:59)

6. AIPAC Money & The Fracturing Over Israel (26:18–33:56)

• Money and Misdirection: AIPAC spends huge sums in Democratic primaries, but their ads seldom discuss Israel directly—instead, they use generic attacks.

  "They have relied on a strategy of attempting to trick voters as opposed to making their case." – Chris Hayes (27:16)

• Repercussions: This method deepens the association between "Israel interests and big, dark money," which Hayes sees as self-defeating (30:37–31:09).
• Can El-Sayed Benefit?: Calling out outside money may be an effective general election tactic, but also brings up discomfort about perceived anti-Semitic dog-whistling (32:15–32:40).

7. Hasan Piker, New Media, and the Party's Future (36:47–43:25)

• Influencer Politics: Hayes and Wagner debate whether and how to handle bombastic leftist commentators like Hasan Piker.
  • "If Hasan Piker wants to contribute to the success of the movement, like, he's probably gonna have to watch what he says a lot more" – Chris Hayes (40:40)
• Associational Politics: The guilt-by-association game isn’t as potent in the Trump era, but candidates who campaign with lightning-rod figures must accept the consequences ("buy the ticket, take the ride") (42:03–42:49).
• Media Landscape Shift: Wagner and Hayes agree candidates must reach voters across traditional and new-media platforms, including streamers and podcasts, to connect with younger and more diverse audiences (44:15–49:54).

8. How (and Where) to Speak to Voters in the Attention Economy (44:15–53:40)

• Candidates Must Go ‘Everywhere’: Risk aversion in Democratic media strategy is an impediment; charismatic "good talkers" are increasingly winning primaries (47:00–47:45).
• TV vs. Social Media: Roughly half of the electorate can be reached via TV; the other half requires new strategies. Campaigns can’t rely exclusively on paid TV ads anymore (50:03–51:40).
• Mistakes and Messaging: More frequent media appearances can blunt the impact of any one gaffe, but candidates must learn to talk about uncomfortable topics authentically (52:43–53:13).

9. Polling: Direction or Distraction? (54:53–59:14)

• Polling Fatigue: Recent primary polls (especially in Michigan) have misled both campaigns and media due to unreliable methods and overrepresentation of very liberal, highly educated respondents.
  • "Polling is best in just the general aggregate as a directional point… we want a level of specificity that it can't deliver." – Chris Hayes (57:50–58:07)
• Bottom Line: Use polls for the general "vibe," not for precision (59:00–59:05).

10. Masculinity, Identity, and Democratic Leadership (60:28–66:43)

• Crisis of Masculinity: Democrats are still searching for an answer to Trump’s "vile" brand of masculinity; the left hasn’t found its own model.
• What Should Progressive Masculinity Look Like?
  • "To be a man is to be a person who is strong in a sort of inner and deep sense and who… looks out for people and does the right thing… You take the aspects of masculinity… like strength or leadership or dependability… but you cultivate those in a broader sense… being the one that stands up for [the marginalized]." – Chris Hayes (63:02–65:36)
• Wagner’s Suggestion: Emphasize loving, emotionally open men as role models—a humanizing contrast with the right’s anger and bluster (65:36–66:08).

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the role of communicators:

  "If you’re not going that [establishment] route… you have to be a really dazzling communicator." – Chris Hayes (12:19)

• On the polling obsession:

  "Should everybody just shut the fuck up about polling?" – Alex Wagner (56:53)

• On campaign media:

  "You gotta be willing to go everywhere, and I think you gotta get your reps in and you gotta be good at talking." – Chris Hayes (48:38)

• On associational politics:

  "I don’t know how much the guilt by association works in the era of Donald Trump. The man had dinner with Nick Fuentes." – Chris Hayes (40:25)

• On political masculinity:

  "Trump has found unity through hate and like... love and affection is always in season." – Alex Wagner (66:08)

• On AIPAC’s strategy:

  "It is a lot of throwing rocks and hiding hands from AIPAC at this point." – Chris Hayes (29:13)

---

Important Timestamps

• 05:46 – Are progressives really winning? Michigan as case study.
• 09:54 – How a new populism is redefining electability.
• 12:58 – The candidate communication “X-factor.”
• 14:06 – What’s happening in the Wisconsin primary.
• 18:55 – Rahm Emanuel, DSA, and the salience of party fights.
• 23:28 – Trump’s "socialist" hypocrisy.
• 26:18 – Israel, AIPAC, and outside money in primaries.
• 36:47 – The Hasan Piker effect and influencer media.
• 44:15 – Where do voters get their information now?
• 54:53 – Is polling still useful?
• 60:28 – Masculinity, the left, and the search for new leadership models.

---

Tone Snapshot

The conversation is candid, irreverent, and wide-ranging, with both participants blending sharp political analysis with humor, personal anecdotes, and a frank acknowledgment of the complexities reshaping the Democratic Party. The episode’s tone is urgent but optimistic, highlighting the party’s internal struggles while emphasizing the repair (and opportunity) that comes from open debate, new ideas, and authentic leaders.

---

TL;DR

Recent progressive victories reflect a real, if uneven, shift in Democratic politics. New media personalities and gifted communicators are changing the game, but the party’s divisions over ideology, money, and identity—especially around Israel and working-class engagement—remain crucial battlegrounds. The definition of "electable" is evolving, polling remains more art than science, and the left continues searching for an alternative to right-wing masculine bluster—a search that may define the next chapter in American politics.

Transcript

[Pod Save America Announcer]

Today's presenting sponsor is Simplisafe Home Security. Every political consultant will tell you hope is not a strategy. You don't wait until election night to see if your ground game works. But traditional security systems do exactly that. They play defense only after someone is already inside your house. Like not going to Wisconsin. You know what I mean?

That's exactly what it is.

It's the traditional security system too. Unlike traditional security systems that only alert you after a break in is already underway, Simplisafe is designed to help stop stop intruders before they get inside. They got smart AI powered outdoor cameras that detect suspicious activity the perimeter and alert live US based agents to step in. Simplisafe's agents assess the threat, intervene through the outdoor camera to scare off trespassers and call 911 for dispatch. Our CEO Lucinda recently had a SimpliSafe system installed at her house. She got the indoor and outdoor cameras, the motion sensors, the windows and the door centers and so her home is fully protected. She said installation was super easy. Everything has worked seamlessly since the day it got done. And it gives her peace of mind knowing that her home is now protected by the good people over at Simplisafe. Simplisafe has been protecting your world for 20 years. Right now you can get 50% off a new SimpliSafe system. Go to simplisafe.com crooked that's simplisafe.com crooked for 50% off. There's no safe like Simplisafe.

[Alex Wagner]

Hi, I'm Alex Wagner. I do not need to tell you that being an American right now is a wild ride. But as a longtime journalist, I am not interested in the noise or the fear mongering. I'm interested in the stories at the heart of the headlines. That is why every week on my show Runaway Country, I'm joined by folks in the middle of the crossfire. From disillusioned maha moms to newly fired immigration judges to Epstein victims themselves. To understand what it means to live through this political chaos as an actual human being. And now I'm excited to tell you that Runaway country is available ad free to Friends of the POD subscribers. Friends of the Pod is a subscription that supports the work Crooked does as an independent media company and gives you a ton of great bonus and ad free content. With the midterms approaching, you are going to need more content to keep you sane. And now you can find Runaway country right there. Subscribe [e-mail] backslash friends.

[Advertisement Voice]

Big color, bigger savings. Sherwin Williams Super Sale is here. Get 40% off paints and stains August 7th through the 13th, with prices starting at 30 89. Whether you're refreshing your interior or exterior, we've got the colors to bring your vision to life. And with delivery, getting everything to your door is easier than ever. Shop online to have it delivered or visit your neighborhood Sherwin Williams store. Click the banner to learn more. Retail sales only. Some exclude. See store for details. Delivery available on qualifying orders.

[Alex Wagner]

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Alex Wagner. On today's show, Ms. Now's Chris Hayes stopped by to talk about recent progressive wins, how Democrats find their path to victory in 2026 and beyond, and who is winning the war for American attention. Chris and I dug into candidate strategies as the midterms draw ever closer, as well as how the Democratic Party can rally around its new Senate candidate in Michigan, Abdul El Sayed. We also talked 2028 and how these midterms this November might influence the party in the wild ride ahead. It was a great conversation and we're going to get to it in just a minute. But first, a little housekeeping. If you have not gotten tickets for Crooked Con yet, what are you doing? Here's another reason why you should At Crooked, we believe the answer to right wing authoritarianism is a big, welcoming, fun pro democracy movement. So we have invited some of the biggest, funniest voices online to all day crooked con. At CrookedCon you will have the chance to meet creators and new media personalities who make sense of the news with humor and hot takes. They'll be popping around the Washington Convention center hosting happy hours, Q&As and workshops for for attendees. They will also be of course making content because what happens at CrookedCon ends up online. For every political nerd to see, check out which creators are joining us so [e-mail] and grab your tickets today. Post. Hey, see ya in dc. Here's my conversation with Ms. Now's Chris Hayes joining me now in a tank top. For those of you who are not watching on YouTube, you should be please hit subscribe while you're at it. Is the one. Oh my, look at those.

[Chris Hayes]

Gun season.

[Alex Wagner]

What does it say? Sun's out. Guns out.

[Advertisement Voice]

Gun season.

[Chris Hayes]

Sun's out. Guns out.

[Alex Wagner]

Sun's out. Guns out is the great Chris Hayes. Buddy. It's always great to see you, especially in the summer.

[Chris Hayes]

It's pure August right now, so I'm

[Alex Wagner]

not even it's giving real it's also

[Chris Hayes]

recording this on a Friday in August.

[Alex Wagner]

We sure are. So you know, if you didn't Think he was wearing a hot pink tank top and a gold chain, drinking Celsius. Like, there's no.

[Chris Hayes]

Got my Tombo, Chico.

[Alex Wagner]

Okay. I was hoping it was Celsius. That would have just been a little

[Chris Hayes]

bit more on brand show tonight. And that's. That's a hard rule.

[Alex Wagner]

Got it.

[Chris Hayes]

There's a hard rule one has had to enforce.

[Alex Wagner]

Learn the hard way. Yeah, I was really excited when. When we had a big primary on Tuesday and we thought, who can help us unpack? What the fuck happens now? Who is wise but also just ballsy enough to say what they really think? And Chris Hayes, you're up.

[Pod Save America Announcer]

I won.

[Alex Wagner]

You won. Let's start with kind of where we sit, as you say, on Friday after the Michigan primary, ahead of the Wisconsin primary. Are progressives having a moment? Yes or no?

[Chris Hayes]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a huge. You know, one of the weird things that happens in elections is we interpret the results against the benchmark of polls as opposed to the benchmark of, like, fundamentals. So, like, you know, I remember 2020 people. That was a disappointing election night for Democrats in 2020 because it was all much closer than the polls had predicted. Sarah Gideon was going to beat Susan Collins, and she lost by 12 points. And, you know, there's a bunch of races like that. So. But you got to take a step back and say, what happened here was that the polling was wrong. Right. The polling was a myth. So just look at the results. And the fact of the matter is, you had a unabashed progressive candidate who has run statewide in primaries before and lost by 20 points. He ran against Gresham Whitmer, win a narrow victory over a candidate who I think is not a great candidate, as like, politicians go. Not a great. But did have the backing of the state party essentially behind her, both the incumbent Senator Gary Peters and the incumbent Governor Whitmer. You had $60 million in outside spending on her side against Abdul Syed, and he emerged victorious in a swing state in which. Look, there's a theory of the case here why a progressive, outspoken progressive candidate can win a statewide swing state race. They have a theory of the case, and I think it's actually a relatively persuasive one. But it's also like, there's reason to be worried about it. And just like there is. I mean, there just is. And despite all that, he did emerge victorious. And I just think there's no universe in which he would have emerged victorious two, four, six years ago. Like, something is obviously happening among. And let's be Clear here. The Democratic primary electorate, which is a different electorate than the general electorate.

[Pod Save America Announcer]

Right.

[Chris Hayes]

And a different electorate than the presidential general electorate. We're talking about concentric circles. But yes, it was a huge win for progressives for sure.

[Alex Wagner]

At the risk of sounding like I'm glazing first time I've used that term. Abdul Al Said. I do think there's really something to be said like the redefinition of what electable means is changing and the issues that he's talking about. It's the first time I've seen a glimmer of an authentic answer to what it means to be a populist and to be on the left and end take rightfully the mantle of economic populism and really appeal to working class voters in an authentically progressive way that really steals it from Maga convincingly. I felt like he was very Abdul Al Sayed, we'll talk about Israel in a second. But just on the economic issues, on healthcare, on jobs, he was relentless on beating this drum in a way that felt utterly authentic and very much in line with what Democrats maybe should have been talking about for decades. For years now, if not a decade.

[Chris Hayes]

Yeah. And I think that points to what the theory of the case for the progressive left is about how to win cross pressured swing state elections. Right. Is that people are pissed off at the status quo. They don't like foreign wars and money going abroad. Again, these are like the cross pressured voters you can win. They're pissed off with the economic status quo, things are too expensive. And they are enraged at the billionaires and the corporations and the tech lords that want to put data centers in their backyards. And that this is a cluster of issues that are both squarely in the kind of progressive populist wheelhouse and also can win people who aren't just down the line progressives. Right, right. And if you focus, that's the theory here. And they, I mean again, it's going to get tested.

[Alex Wagner]

Oh, it sure is. It sure is. And not just in Michigan. I mean I think also it's. This is, we're talking, these are precursors to national debates that we're gonna be having for the next two years.

[Chris Hayes]

And what happens here is gonna have a huge impact on those national debates, particularly the presidential primary about who and what is electable. Yeah.

[Alex Wagner]

And so when you hear, when we talk about Abdul Said, and to some degree when we talk about like Zora and Mamdani, how do you square that with Abigail Spanberger and Mikey Sherrill and Cori Bush being beaten in Missouri by Wesley Bell, who was backed by AIPAC in Marie Kluzenkamp Perez, who handily wins her primary and is one of the most centrist moderate Democrats in the House. Do you just kind of say, I mean, all politics is local and if that's the case, then what does that portend for the national reckoning that's afoot come next year?

[Chris Hayes]

Yeah, I think one is, yes. I mean it's sort of a boring and deflating thing to say all politics is local, but that is a big part of it. Like we're talking about very different constituencies in very different places with different electorates and different issue profiles. That's one, two. None of this stuff is linear. Right. So it's like in the. It's like the stock market goes up and it goes down. It goes up and it goes down. Over a 30 year period it's gone up. Right. So it's like if, if you take sort of take a step back, it's like is the progressive left growing in strength inside the Democratic Party in the aggregate over the last 10 years? Yes. Like pretty clearly. Yes. Right. Like since 2016. I think the answer is since the Bernie primary, you know, defeat. I think the answer is very clearly Y. Now in individual cases, that doesn't mean like they're winning everything. And no, there's a lot of variation. The last thing I would say here about Abdul Said and Mamdani and this was true of Platner too, before he dropped out. So think about what are the gates that you go to go through to become a candidate through the traditional. People call it establishment, let's just say traditional channels. Right. It's like constituency relationships, relationships with mentors and other elected officials, endorsements from local groups. Right. Being good at navigating the politics of the coalition. Right. These are all things that you have to be good at. Being a really, really great communicator is nice to have but not necessary to ascend up the ranks in the traditional politics.

[Alex Wagner]

So like Troy Jackson, right?

[Chris Hayes]

Yes, exactly. Who got pretty high in Maine politics or even Abigail Spanberger is a perfectly good communicator, but she's not like electric. Electric. Right. If you're not going that route and you are going to have success, you have to be a really dazzling communicator. So you got a different set of features that are being selected for. So the reason that you get Platner lighting up main on fire and the reason the Mamdani is able to win that primary, Murray coming out of nowhere and the reason I think Abdul Syed ends up winning a very hard fought split vote win is that they're just extremely gifted communicators.

[Alex Wagner]

Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

Now that's not all that matters in politics. Because another thing that happens through the gate, checking that happens through the normal ascent in politics is some vetting, is some like, is this person got some stuff in their past that's gonna blow up?

[Alex Wagner]

Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

And we saw like a rocket ascendancy via tremendous charisma and political talent and Graham Platner completely blowing up. Right. So. But, but I think that distills down a little bit when you point to Mamdani and Abdul. As I said, it's both. And Right. The ideological ferment has to be there, but you have to be really good to capture it because.

[Alex Wagner]

Well. Okay, so where does that leave you on we're saying this. You're gonna be hearing this episode on the eve of the Wisconsin primary where Francesca Hong, who is not a dazzling communicator.

[Chris Hayes]

No.

[Alex Wagner]

And who Bernie Sanders, who's been kind of like a mini kingmaker in this primary season, has not endorsed on Pod Save America with my colleague Jon Favreau, did not specifically endorse her. Do you have a theory of the case on that? Is that because there's a sense that she's gonna lose and she's actually one of the future stars of the party of the, of the left of the party.

[Chris Hayes]

There's a few things going on. One is the sort of. There has been a sort of comedy of errors among the sort of establishment or the Democratic Party that has led to this moment in terms of Mandela Barnes drops out. Sarah Rodriguez, who is going to be, who was kind of the sort of consensus pick but had an enormous kind of. Basically her finance director did a whole bunch of stuff she shouldn't have. It's unclear like the extent of it, but she drops out. So one is just like one of these kind of, you know, a kind of car crash that happens that you're sort of around for. The other thing is, yes, there is a desire for. There is the primary base. The primary voting Democratic base is to the left of both the median voter and the median like Democratic politician. In a lot of cases, Hong is taking advantage of that. The other thing that's really important here is no one in that primary has gone up with TV ads. But for the Republican super PAC that spent $5 million boosting Hong Kong. This is part of the thing that people have not talked about, but is a big part of the story there. No one else is spending. The state party in Wisconsin has a lot of money, partly because of how good a job Ben Wickler has done through the years. They won't spend until the general. They're not spending the primary. The primary candidates have been spending. There has been 5 million about dollars of outside money spent to boost Hong by Republican interests because they think she's beatable. And the last thing I'll say here, what you see in Sanders not endorsing Hong and even Hasan Piker rapping her on the knuckles for her Thanksgiving answer.

[Alex Wagner]

Oh, God.

[Chris Hayes]

Is that everyone actually understands that there is a penalty for ideological extremism.

[Alex Wagner]

Yeah, there is. And that's good. That's a sign of health, actually.

[Chris Hayes]

But people kind of pretend not to. It's like we all get that there is kind of a bell curve of political views. And you do. You don't want to be too far from the center. And everyone gets that. And everyone loves a winner. No one wants to be associated with a loser. So this sort of ascendant movement doesn't want to feel like Hong disproves their theory if and when she loses. Because I don't think she's. Yes, exactly.

[Alex Wagner]

Bet on people who like fireworks.

[Chris Hayes]

Yes, right.

[Alex Wagner]

Bet on people who like the 4th of July.

[Pod Save America Announcer]

Pod.

Save America is brought to you by cookunity. I love cookunity. I've been a cookunity customer for years, long before they ever sponsored this podcast. Just had a bunch this week. I had a great chicken Szechuan salad. I had a Thai beef and rice dish that was really, really good. And I'm gonna have it again tonight probably. Cookunity is the first chef led meal delivery service that makes your meals in small batches inside local micro kitchens across the US not factories. So every dish arrives with the kind of freshness you'd get at the restaurant itself. Meals from Michelin starred chefs, James Beard winners and Food Network stars. Go to cookunity.com crooked or use code CROOKED before checkout for 50% off your first week. CookUnity works with some of the best chefs in the country to bring creative, delicious meals to your door. There are hundreds of dishes to choose from and the menu is updated constantly over 10 different dietary preferences. High protein, low sodium GLP, one pescatarian, gluten free and more. Over 25 global cuisines. Mediterranean, Korean, Thai, Mexican, Italian and more. Taste what happens when real award winning chefs make fresh, small batched meals just for you? Go to cookunity.com crooked or enter code crooked before checkout. To get 50% off your first order. That's 50% off your first order by using code crooked or going to cookunity.com

crooked this episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp has an average live therapy session rating of 4.9 out of 5 based on over 1.7 million client session reviews. The feedback from real people who have actually used the service speaks for itself. More than 6 million people have used BetterHelp. Globally, BetterHelp therapists have at least 3 years and 1000 hours of hands on experience. They also hold all required education, training and certifications across a range of mental health specialties. Meaning the perfect therapist for you could be just a few clicks away. BetterHelp makes it easy to get started, answer a few questions, get matched with a therapist based on your needs, and switch therapists at any time if it's not the right fit. Listen, you guys have a lot going on in your lives. You got family stuff, work stuff, just the news, country stuff, country stuff. The worst person in our country happens to be the president of our country. You should probably talk to somebody. It would benefit you to talk to somebody. Check out BetterHelp, see the reviews, see what stands out and see if BetterHelp is right for you. Visit betterhelp.com PSA that's better. H E L p.com PSA

[Alex Wagner]

I bet I know where you sit on this, but like Rahm Emanuel, who's probably running from president in 2028, is very worried about the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, and writes in a Wall Street Journal op ed this week, when the DSA attempts to turn safe Democratic states and districts a darker shade of blue, Democratic candidates in swing districts are put at a distinct disadvantage. Should 2028ers just shut the fuck up about the DSA for right now? Like, what is the answer there? How would you like to see them grapple with this dynamic?

[Chris Hayes]

Well, part of the thing I would say is that I think there's a, like there is a kernel of truth to it, but also are you helping by putting more attention on it?

[Alex Wagner]

That's what I'm saying. If the whole point, and also if you're wrong, you've alienated a crucial part of the base that you're going to actually need to try and win over.

[Chris Hayes]

This is a real, and this is a real paradox, I think, of what we might call like this term that got start used as popularism, right? Which is a broad term. The Democrats had to sort of move back to center, align themselves with views that had Majority support. And there's a certain weak version of that argument that's almost tautologically true.

[Advertisement Voice]

Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

When you run for office, you want to be near ish, the center of the voters that you're appealing to. Now the question of what is the center and what's the issue space and what's salient and how you get it is a whole complicated thing. That's harder than it looks. But one of the things that we saw happen with the Labour Party in the UK which tested this theory, they came into office and they're like, we're going to engage in a bunch of high salience, high profile fights with the left flank of our party. Which meant we're going to put immigration and trans issues in the paper all the time. They're our worst issues. We know that from the polling. But we're gonna pick a bunch of high profile fights. So everyone's constantly talking about it all the time. And guess what? It didn't work.

[Alex Wagner]

No.

[Chris Hayes]

Because why would you want to talk about the things? Even if you're trying to get to the center on it, you end up raising the salient.

[Alex Wagner]

So it's like, don't workshop it in public.

[Chris Hayes]

If Rom thinks that Josh Turek is being hurt at the margin by Darielisa Chevalier winning her primary in Washington Heights, which is not a crazy idea. Why does talking about that in the Wall Street Journal help it? She already won.

[Alex Wagner]

She won the Wall Street Journal.

[Chris Hayes]

No way at this point. How are you helping him? By being like, boy, these people are really a problem and they're gonna be a problem for the Josh Turek's of the world. Just talk about something else. That's not helping Josh Turek.

[Alex Wagner]

Right. And it's. Nor is it dissuading people in the DSA from mounting, like, making their case.

[Chris Hayes]

Right. Because the other thing is, she won that election. The voters are the voters.

[Advertisement Voice]

Now.

[Chris Hayes]

Can I argue against myself for a second too?

[Alex Wagner]

Sure. I mean, that's why we thought you would do both of these things. Which is why we only need one booking today.

[Chris Hayes]

Because I do think there's a little bit of this I wanna say to my friends on the progressive left. Let's all just concede the fundamental idea that a primary electorate can select a candidate who is poorly optimized for a general election.

[Alex Wagner]

Yes. Which we've seen for many, many years now under Donald Trump.

[Chris Hayes]

Like the idea of like, well, who's electable now? We just won the primary. It's like, no, no, no, that's a different electorate. That doesn't mean anything like. And I again, I think most people think in more sophisticated fashion. Clearly the folks in Michigan do like, like we said earlier, Al Said has a theory of the case. But I do think there's a little bit of this. Like the way I think about it is in order to get to the NBA, a basketball player has to have a completely delusional sense of their own ability or they won't make it.

[Alex Wagner]

Right.

[Chris Hayes]

That is an adaptive quality, but the scouts can't have that. And the other people have to be clear eyed to win as a candidate. To be Zoram Downey, you have to have a kind of delusion of your own ability, but everyone else should be pretty clear eyed that like, yeah, there's a trade off about where you are on the ideological spectrum. And it is possible that you engineer a very motivated, disproportionately highly educated Democratic primary electorate that selects for candidates who are too ideologically extreme to win generals. This is just obviously a true thing.

[Alex Wagner]

Right. So just because you're winning the primary doesn't mean the TLDR is primaries aren't generals.

[Chris Hayes]

Yeah, Blake Master won the primary. You know what I mean? It's like Mark Robinson won the primary down in North Carolina.

[Alex Wagner]

Christine. I'm a witch. O'. Donnell. I wonder, I'm always like galled by this and I kind of wonder where you sit because Donald Trump's making hay as every single Republican in the party about the fact that Democratic socialists in the vanguard and they're all commies and they're gonna be coming for your money and your children should they win in 2026 and 2028 at the same time that Donald Trump is like nationalizing private enterprise and has these like federally run gas stations up and down the east coast, like he's practicing socialism and like, I'm not gonna like, maybe it's time for the federal government to like, gas subsidies. I mean, there's a case to be made for a lot of this intervention. And I'm not saying we should be nationalizing private enterprise, but should democr Democrats point out the sort of socialist tendencies of this administration as hypocrisy, or is it just too fraught to be aligning yourself in any way with the most questionable parts of the Trump agenda?

[Chris Hayes]

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, it's a really important intellectual point, which is that I have never seen a president in my lifetime who was more antagonistic to free markets, to the fundamental sort of like, he's like,

[Alex Wagner]

gas is too high. Chevron and Exxon are making too much profit.

[Chris Hayes]

He does. He truly does not believe in free markets and he truly is illiberal on that sense. In the old classical sense of the word. Remember, Adam Smith's wealth of nations is written as a polemic against what? Terrorists and mercantilism. Donald Trump is fundamentally authoritarian, illiberal, and believes in a personalist controlled economy in which he makes all the choices. And also believes as one of his core ideological commitments, bizarrely along with women and people of color are inferior, is that tariffs are how everything works. Truly believes to his heart, in the deepest part of him. So he's a mess ideologically. He is totally hostile to free markets. One of the things you've seen that's interesting actually in the polling is that, that if you ask people about socialism and capitalism, socialism is gaining over capitalism. But people like the notion of free markets and they also increasingly like the notion of free trade, including people who consider themselves the most sympathetic. Dsa, which is fascinating. I don't think the hypocrisy thing matters as much as just being like, everything's expensive and he doesn't care about you. He's corrupt. No, I'm serious. There's no point in making an ideological argument against this.

[Alex Wagner]

I just mean as a rejoinder to like, they're all commies and socialists. It's like, well, actually you're the fucking socialist. But then that's sort of painting Donald Trump with the socialist brush, which is a turn off to every. It's like a boner killer for everybody.

[Chris Hayes]

That's right. He's something totally different. You know what I mean? Like, he's in his own category. He's like a pre Adam Smith monarch.

[Alex Wagner]

Okay, well then that settles that. No more mention of Donald Trump's socialist policies. I do. We have to get to the thing that is actually like that. It's not the third rail. I don't know. It's like, it is the thing that I think this, this week has taught us and maybe this season is teaching us, which is Israel is. And I want to, I want to get at something that Ryan Broderick over at Garbage Day writes. The Democratic 2026 Democratic Civil War is a rat's nest of different schisms. It's young versus old, labor versus capital. Maybe progressivism versus the status quo. Populism versus elitism. Perhaps more than anything though, it is a conflict between the Democrats that are willing to accept money from pro Israel organizations and those who aren't. Is that fair, Chris?

[Chris Hayes]

I think it's been one of the biggest fissures. And I do think that there's something about. There's a few things. One is that I think AIPAC has made, and they don't care what I think, an enormous tactical error.

[Alex Wagner]

I know. I agree. Just in service of their goals.

[Chris Hayes]

Yes, in service of their goals. And here's the argument I'm gonna make. They have relied on a strategy of attempting to trick voters as opposed to making their case. So what they have done in all these cases, and it happened in Michigan, and the New York Times ran an analysis of this, is they have spent enormous amounts of money. Some of the most expensive primaries in history are all APAC primaries. Jamaal Bowman before that, the Cori Bush one was very expensive. The Cori Bush, Wellesley Bell one this time was they spent 5 million in a relatively small house race. They spent 30 here. There's another 30 that we still don't know what it was because we don't have the disclosures yet. So, like, maybe it was that, maybe not. And in all the cases, the vast majority of the ads they ran were not about Israel. They were attempts to paint the person that they were attacking as often insufficiently loyal to the Democratic Party.

[Alex Wagner]

Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

That's not what they actually believe and it's not the case they're trying to make to the public. I think it is both toxic for the discourse and also self defeating to spend tons of money in the attempt to essentially trick the voters. I think it would have been better to spend the money being like, we think Israel's a good ally. What Hamas did was horrible. They're defending themselves or whatever you want to say.

[Alex Wagner]

Right, Right.

[Chris Hayes]

Here's why Iron Dome is important. And in fact, having Iron Dome leads to less Israeli fatalities, which also does lead to better outcomes in the region. Whatever argument we want to make, they're not making that argument. And there is something insidious about the combination of all of this money where you're trying to trick the voters. And then when people call the money out, you're like, that's out of line.

[Alex Wagner]

That's anti Semitic.

[Chris Hayes]

It's like there's this old expression I love which is like throwing rocks and hiding hands. It is a lot of throwing rocks and hiding hands from a back at this point. And I sort of feel like, look, it's a free country and you've got a view. And that view is shared. There's a lot of Democrats that share that view. There's a lot of particularly Jewish Democrats in my life who share that view who are defensive of the state of Israel and they think it's under siege and under threat, and they don't like the direction the Democratic Party is going on it. You have to make that argument and have the argument on its terms and not attempt to use the catastrophic. Citizens United's decision to pour a ton of money into races in the hopes of tricking voters into electing a person allied with you, but not on the terms of the thing you actually agree in. And I think that has been an absolutely poisonous, toxic. And it's not. I want to be clear, it's not just them. Crypto's been doing the same thing. AI is doing the same thing. This idea that you're going to come in on primaries with this agenda and try to get voters to vote for your candidate. Not by making an argument that crypto is good or AI shouldn't be regulated, but rather that, like, that person didn't vote for Kamala Harris or whatever you think is gonna get the primary voter. I just think it's a really toxic way of doing politics that's been incredibly destructive.

[Alex Wagner]

It really pushes the debate off into completely different territory.

[Chris Hayes]

Well, and it also. It also ends up. It has ended up connecting in the minds of people, the Israel lob, the Israel interests and big money. Yes, and big dark money. Which is not a connection that you want to create.

[Alex Wagner]

No, it's not a good connection for Israel.

[Chris Hayes]

What you want to say is, like, look, there's actually a lot of people in the Democratic Party who agree with us. Like, we're representing them. And again, that's fine. Like, I have different views than AIPAC does on the conduct of the war in Gaza and a bunch of other stuff. But it's true that there's a lot of Democrats who agree with them, right?

[Alex Wagner]

Totally. You gotta do this.

[Chris Hayes]

You gotta make the case.

[Alex Wagner]

No one's. Yes. No one's making that case. And instead AIPAC is aligned with, like, nefarious outside spending and trickery effectively. And so I guess so. The inversion of that is Abdul El Sayed to great effect, talked about all the AIPAC money that was flooding his race. They overwhelmingly supported Haley Stevens. AIPAC is now considering pouring millions of dollars into the general election race between Mike Rogers and Abdul Al Said. Do you think that for a general election, campaigning against AIPAC's outside spending is a useful tool for Abdul El Sayed? Or, like, where is the benefit? Who gets the upper hand in aaps?

[Chris Hayes]

I think it probably is, actually. And again, I want to express some sympathy with the critique that there is something oogie about the like, constant invocation of the dark.

[Alex Wagner]

Like, yes, the very ridiculous dark Jewish money. Yeah, totally. There isn't latent anti Semitism or explicit

[Chris Hayes]

people getting uncomfortable with that I don't think is crazy. The problem is that it is a fact of the matter that like, and, and the other thing is if you're gonna have $60 million or $30 million dropped on your head, the only thing that you could do is call it out.

[Alex Wagner]

So it's like, do you think it meaningfully? Do you think El Sayed's ability to use AIPAC's sort of weaponization against him is more useful to him in the general than the money that Mike Rogers could actually get from aipac?

[Chris Hayes]

Well, I think because there's going to be an enormous amount of money dropped on his head in that race that's going to be across the board. It's not like AIPAC won't be a small fraction of it because it's going to be a ton of that Senate majority PAC stuff. I think calling out that is actually very useful just as a general thing. And in the general, most of the money won't be, by and large, it's going to be outside money from corporate interests that have all given money to Donald Trump or to Mitch McConnell's PAC or whatever. And in that case, I think just taking the same line, which is like, these people want to, like, jack up your oil prices and they want to put data centers in your backyard and they want to close down your hospitals so they can get tax cuts and they're spending 150, 200 million dollars to beat me. And I think that's, you know, you use the same line there because again, what else can you do other than, you know, he's not, he's, he's probably going to be outspent from the outside in this race because Republicans are going to put but, you know, a lot of money into that race.

[Alex Wagner]

Well, it could be the race. I mean that in Maine, God forbid you are a television viewer in either one of those states in the coming months.

[Pod Save America Announcer]

Pod Save America is brought to you by blinds.com There's a version of your home you haven't lived in yet, where the light behaves, where the rooms feel finished, where you sleep until you decide to wake up. Blinds.com has spent 30 years making it easy to find the perfect fit. With over 25 million windows covered and 50,000 Firestar reviews, you can feel confident you are in good hands. Whether you want to go full diy. Bring in licensed embedded pros to handle the measure and install or land somewhere in between. You're always in control. They make it simple to choose the level of support that works best for you, with flexibility every step of the way. No pushy salespeople, no awkward in home visits, just real advice on your schedule. They'll even ship samples to your door fast and free. Choose from a huge variety of style options at prices that fit any budget. Everything is backed by blinds.com's 100% satisfaction guarantee. Because at blinds.com, the only thing they treat better than Windows, it's you. We have blinds.com great. We installed these electric shades. I don't even know what the term is. We operated with a button, a remote, so that because it gets super sunny at different times of the day and super hot in the office, it's made a huge difference. It made the office much better. They're great blinds. They came in, they installed them, took basically no time and they're great. And right now blinds.com is giving our listeners an exclusive $50 off when you spend 500 or more. Just use code crooked at checkout. Limited time offer rules and restrictions apply. See blinds.com for details.

[Alex Wagner]

Hi, I'm Alex Wagner. I do not need to tell you that being an American right now is a wild ride. But as a longtime journalist, I am not interested in the noise noise or the fear mongering. I'm interested in the stories at the heart of the headlines. That is why every week on my show Runaway Country, I'm joined by folks in the middle of the crossfire. From disillusioned Maha moms to newly fired immigration judges to Epstein victims themselves. To understand what it means to live through this political chaos as an actual human being. And now I'm excited to tell you that Runaway country is available ad free 3 to Friends of the Pod subscribers. Friends of the Pod is a subscription that supports the work Crooked does as an independent media company and gives you a ton of great bonus and ad free content. With the midterms approaching, you are going to need more content to keep you sane. And now you can find Runaway country right there. Subscribe [e-mail] backslash friends. I want to ask about the flip side of all this, which is. Let's talk about it. Hasan Piker. This is what Hasan Piker had to say after Abdul Al Said won Michigan and people began talking about what he needed to do next. Here is that clip.

[Hasan Piker]

Like everyone being like Abdul has a fuck ton of work to do mending bridges. Here's the fucking take nuke for you, okay? You are all unbelievably Islamophobic pieces of shit, ok? You literally called the dude a fucking terrorist terrorist for months on end and like, called him a sexist misogynist terrorist. Bad candidate doesn't fake doctor when he has like two degrees. And now you're gonna sit there and be like, well, you know, you really gotta come to me now.

[Chris Hayes]

Like, what are you talking about?

[Hasan Piker]

Do you want to win or not? Lock the in, okay?

[Chris Hayes]

Lock the in.

[Hasan Piker]

And I do worry that there are some out there who, in an effort to make sure it's that they. That this narrative that a progressive can win in a state like Michigan doesn't take root, will literally, either subtly or, you know, not so secretively endorse Mike Rogers.

[Alex Wagner]

Okay? It is some deep paranoia that people Democrats, so in so threatened by the rise of democratic socialists and hardcore progressives on the left wing would be support Mike Rogers over Abdul Al Sayed. We can unpack that in a second. But just more broadly, like, what the fuck should happen here with Hasan Piker? Like, what should Democrats do? I mean, is this the case where it's like, don't talk about it. Should Abdul Al Said continue to campaign with him? We're gonna get to his reach in a second. But just as a specific political actor, should other Democrats be talking about him? I was on Deadline White House with Nicole Wallace, and she wanted to ask Mallory McMorrow about Hasan Piker. And I was just like, this just is not good for anybod. Like, what should happen here, Chris?

[Chris Hayes]

I don't really know. I mean, one level, like, I think there's a little irony in like every. The whole discourse being like, the left needs a Joe Rogan and then like getting the closest thing to it and being like, not like that.

[Pod Save America Announcer]

Not like that.

[Advertisement Voice]

Not like that.

[Chris Hayes]

No, no, no.

[Alex Wagner]

Not everyone who says incendiary things.

[Chris Hayes]

It's like, do you ever watch Joe Rogan's show and says he says crazy stuff all the time. Like, it's like. And I do think, I mean the difference in this case. I think there's a difference between going on someone's show and campaigning with them hugely. Right? So I think you can go on lots of people's shows. I've been on Bill Maher show. Bill Maher says all sorts of things. I know not only do I disagree with, he says some things I really find pretty wrong.

[Alex Wagner]

And more often with greater frequency.

[Chris Hayes]

Yeah. But again, it's a free country. So the big question is campaigning with. I don't think it makes a ton of sense in a general election, frankly, to campaign with Hasan Piker. I think you also can't control what a 35 year old streamer is going to say. I also think that he is learning the lesson that like, with great power comes great responsibility. And like, no, seriously, I mean, it's one thing to be like, look, this is a dude who streams like seven days a week for years. Do you know the amount of words he said? Like, you're going to say some stuff. Stuff. And part of the genre of what he's doing is saying stuff. I'm reminded a lot of Marcos Malitsa Seniga, who played a somewhat similar role a generation ago, was the founder of Daily Kos and would say pretty provocative things and would curse and be like, f these people. And there was also an attempt to sort of tie him. I also sort of feel like, I don't know how much the guilt by association works in the era of Donald Trump. Like, the man had dinner with Nick Fuentes.

[Alex Wagner]

Yeah. Like, not even for any purpose other than like, let's break bread. I just think let's hang out.

[Chris Hayes]

Let's hang. I want to hear what you're trying

[Alex Wagner]

to get his kids.

[Chris Hayes]

What help I get about these days, Nick.

[Alex Wagner]

I'm interested in your point of view, Nick.

[Chris Hayes]

So I do think there's a little bit of like, the associational politics have, have lost a little bit of their sting. But the other thing is, like, if Hasan Piker wants to contribute to the success of the movement, like, he's probably gonna have to watch what he says a lot more. And like, that, that's not that fun for him. And I get that, like, he's been in a different lane. But one of the things that all of us, I think, with public platforms start to learn is that your words have consequences. And it doesn't mean that you say things you don't believe. It doesn't mean you don't say things you do believe. But it does mean that how you select your words and the way that you communicate really does matter. And I think that's gonna be true across the board. The other thing I'll just say on the substance of what he was saying was the Democratic Party's not dumb. They need him to win so they could have power. Like, they're all going to. They've all consolidated behind him.

[Alex Wagner]

They're not so anti DSA that they would literally cede control of this.

[Chris Hayes]

They want to control the United States Senate, believe me, like, very badly believe him. They truly do want that. So.

[Alex Wagner]

So probably not Hasan.

[Chris Hayes]

But the other thing I'll say too, in the same way that I said, it's like a little bit of buy the ticket, take the ride, where it's like, APAC spent that money. And the cost of that is that you're going to get called out.

[Alex Wagner]

Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

Like, Abdul Al said made a choice to campaign with Hassan Piker. I think it probably helped in the primary. And the cost of that is people are going to criticize that. And you got to like, that's buy the ticket, take the ride. And you got to come up with a way that you're going to talk about it. I thought that. I thought the two best response to this was Debbie. Did you see Debbie Dingle talking to Greta Van Suster?

[Alex Wagner]

Yes.

[Chris Hayes]

Where she's just like, he's a way to reach a lot of young people who we have a hard time reaching. And he looks good when he works out. This is the Debbie Tingle take. And I was like, you know what? This is a person who is a conduit to reach people who are outside the system that I want to reach. And that's important to me. And that doesn't mean that I agree with everything he says, nor does it mean that he hasn't said things I think are really gross and wrong.

[Alex Wagner]

That's right. You do not have to endorse, in turn the values of every person that interviews you.

[Chris Hayes]

That's right. Or endorses you or even the works. You know what I mean? And I also thought that the AOC's response to the TMZ's reporter. I can't believe I just said that sentence. Who said the AOC's response to the TMZ reporter who was like, aren't you worried about it's not just socialists and there's going to be communists? And she's like, I'm not the belief police. People can believe whatever they want to believe. I believe what I believe. I'm going to try to do what I'm going to do. And I do think that, like, that's another way of sort of threading the needle here.

[Alex Wagner]

I think it's also just. I mean, I think what I'm hearing in your response is it's, like, about frankness. It's about honesty. It's about not apologizing, but also not glossing over the rougher parts.

[Chris Hayes]

And don't get defensive. The other thing, though, too is. And this is the thing, Mamdani is good about is like you gotta pivot to what you want the election to be about.

[Alex Wagner]

Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

And right now there's like both the, both the sort of mainstream media and the right wing media are like this is an election about what Hasan piker said about 911 seven years ago. By the way, can I just say this? Ron Johnson, the sitting senator from Wisconsin is a fully avowed 911 truther. And somehow this is like not a story. I think I'm going to do it either today or soon because I got a whole thing about this. It's the craziest thing. He has gone to conferences, he has said basically he thinks Building 7 was a controlled demon.

[Alex Wagner]

Like the full like controlled demolition. Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

Jet fuel doesn't melt steel. Like all the stuff that you and I 20 years ago were hearing from like kooky people outside, like anti war rally, I mean legit, like straight down the line. And people have been run out of public life, they have been hounded. Van Jones had to leave his job in the White House cuz he signed something that was like very tangentially related to 911 truth about we need an investigation, yada yada. And Ron Johnson's like sitting center, just being like yeah, probably. I don't know but looks like it might have been an inside job. It's like. And they want to like have these crazy 911 discussions anyway. It just, I can't get over that.

[Alex Wagner]

A good note, good note. Just, I mean as a reminder, the depravity and delusion on the right far outweighs literally anything.

[Chris Hayes]

Ron Johnson's on 911 truth. Or someone talk to him about that. Like Mike Rogers was talking about this. I'm like, go call up Ron Johnson and get his takes on 9 11.

[Alex Wagner]

Totally.

[Chris Hayes]

What do you think about that?

[Alex Wagner]

Speaking of alternative facts. No, not alternative facts, but alternative ecosystem. We were talking about Hasan Piker largely because of his sphere of influence. And there is a real kind of gut check happening inside Democratic politics right now about what kind of media matters, what kind of messaging is resonant. Ryan Broderick, who I quoted before from Garbage Day, lays out the two axes as he sees them. One is the institutional axis, which includes cable news podcasts hosted by former Obama and Biden Bros. So we are guilty as charged. The New York Times, Axios, Politico, the Washington Post, blah blah blah. The related substacks and X accounts with those folks. And then new media, which is leftist streamers like Hasan Piker, YouTube essayists, he calls them dark woke podcasters, Ryan Grim and Dropsite News Blue sky users, short form video content from the dsa, random shit posters. You are an expert in the attention economy. Where do you see, like if you're mapping out your 2028 presidential campaign or even your next three months in your midterm election campaign, like, where, who matters? Where is the. Like what is most relevant in terms of, you know, speaking to the voter?

[Chris Hayes]

I do think one frustration that I had that, that I expressed in one of the chapters in the Sirens Call, my book about the attention economy that had a chapter of politics and that I said a lot when I was doing the book tour when it came out, is the risk aversion of Democratic political class. Consultant, class around interviews had to go away.

[Alex Wagner]

Haley Stevens, she never came and got her interview. Thank you very much.

[Chris Hayes]

Well, she was a good example, right?

[Alex Wagner]

She was a great example. Like repeated entreaties, begging, what can we make work? Nothing, nothing can ever work.

[Chris Hayes]

Go talk to people. I think that is actually a big thing. You got to go talk to people. And I think actually that's, it actually connects to one of the things we're seeing in the Democratic primary electorate, which is that people want good talkers because they felt like they didn't get them. And I like Joe Biden, who in his prime was a great, I mean a truly Fidel Castro level talker, right? I mean the man, the man could talk. Truly the gift of gab. That was not the case of the Joe Biden that was, you know, in the White House basement.

[Alex Wagner]

Well, or basement Joe the campaigner.

[Chris Hayes]

And like Kamala Harris is, I would say a perfectly proficient communicator as a politician, but she is not a particularly great one.

[Alex Wagner]

I would, I would go one step further. I think she's remarkably risk averse and that she wants very, very controlled environments. And that's, and that's not politics. That's just not politics.

[Chris Hayes]

Very risk averse and very wary in extemporaneous settings. And so I think there is a desire, Dave Weigel has made this point and I think I even, I sort of thought of this, but he's kind of articulated of like we want a really good talker. And it's like Barack Obama was great talker, really good at talking. And again, talking is not. I talk for a living. So I rate it, I sort of both rate it highly and I also look for it because I'm, you know, literally this phrase good talker is a thing that we use in our booking

[Alex Wagner]

meetings, in our booking, in our show on msn.

[Chris Hayes]

And it's like Is good talker correlated with, like, Donald Trump? I hate to say it in his own weird way.

[Alex Wagner]

Is a good talker less so now, but, I mean, I went to so many Trump rallies and that guy could just do a routine for an hour and a half and loved it.

[Chris Hayes]

So does it mean that the person is, like, gonna be good at the job? No, unfortunately, those two things don't have a great correlation. But it's also the case that. And so the reason this all relates back to your question about where you go is I think you gotta be willing to go everywhere, and I think you gotta get your reps in and you gotta be good at talking. And I think you gotta be good at talking. I mean, this is one of the things that got us, you know, Vance. Vance goes everywhere. He went everywhere.

[Alex Wagner]

He's getting his reps in.

[Chris Hayes]

And he liked. He likes to mix it up with. He goes on the View, he go like. Like, all of that, I think, is actually really important. And again, the other thing about volume is the more of it there is, the less people obsess over a single gaffe. Like, you just go do another interview. It's like, remember when he said the dumb thing about cat ladies? And that was he's still talking about

[Alex Wagner]

the cat ladies in the cat lady.

[Chris Hayes]

That hurt him for sure. That hurt him. But also it kind of ended up being swallowed by the sheer volume. I mean, Trump is the sheer volume

[Alex Wagner]

of shit that's coming out of his mouth.

[Chris Hayes]

Well, true, but I also think that that's kind of partly the way it works. So I do think that. I don't know how you rank, but the other thing I would say is I talked to someone the other day who said of an electorate that you're dealing with, the sort of operative rule of thumb these days is about 50% you can reach through TV and 50% are just completely off TV. And that, to me, is the fundamental structural thing that people have to reckon with. And part of what I wrote about in my book is that in the kind of TV dominant era, that sort of starts really in the 60s and sort of extends, I think, all the way through for the next 40 or 50 years of American politics. It's like you raise money, and the money is used to buy TV ads. And that is most of what a campaign is, raising money, running the ads. And when you're down to only 50% of the electorates being reached that way, you still got to do that part. Like, we saw this, actually, I think with the Stevens race, I mean, I think Part of the reason those numbers, There's a bunch of reasons that her numbers in rural areas were not as

[Alex Wagner]

bad as they should have been.

[Chris Hayes]

Well, no, they were, they were higher than anticipated, partly because that was the place that was getting tv.

[Alex Wagner]

Those are the people that are watching TV too.

[Chris Hayes]

I mean, both older, you're not doing a lot of, of. There's not like a bunch of local press there. You're not doing a bunch of events there. And so it's like there's huge swaths of your electorate that like the way they're going to learn about this race is like they're watching TV and they're getting those ads. So you can't give up on that. But you gotta have a theory of the case. The other 50%.

[Alex Wagner]

I'm gonna, I'm gonna interpret what you're saying slightly differently because what I'm hearing is, and I would probably put it more like 60, 40, like 40% of the people are getting it on TV just because, because if you look at those numbers, which I'm sure you don't actually, in order to survive your day, the demographic numbers are. It's just an increasingly old audience. Right. But that social media and shitposting and shitposters, and those accounts are now equally as important as broadcast television. And that is actually a sea change from even like eight years ago or four years ago. And that it actually really does matter. And, and that doing more media is in some ways less impactful, but also is a little bit of an insurance policy against the mistakes that you're inevitably gonna make by doing long form interviews. Which is, I think, the real essential fear. It's not that I'm gonna do an interview that doesn't matter. It's like, oh, I'm gonna fucking. How do I fill an hour and a half with Alex Cooper without having to talk about whatever, Willie Brown? I don't fucking know. Give me something that's uncomfortable for me.

[Chris Hayes]

Yes. Yeah. But also learning how to talk about uncomfortable things is kind of an important skill.

[Alex Wagner]

Well, and if anybody's shown you, I mean, if there's one lesson for Democrats to take away from the Trump years, it's like you can do some crazy shit and as long as you are authentic about it. And I'm not saying anybody should try and model Donald Trump's fucking behavior.

[Chris Hayes]

No, but it's like, how many bad interviews did that guy give that like, were like these? I mean, the moment where, you know, Heilmann and Halperin ask him for his favorite passage in the Bible.

[Alex Wagner]

All of them.

[Chris Hayes]

Kim telling Chris Matthews that you gotta punish the woman on a board. I mean, you know there's a million

[Alex Wagner]

and they don't even. Like those aren't even at my fingertips. In terms of his worst moments, like there's so many.

[Chris Hayes]

No, I'm reaching back to the archives of course. Like I like people that weren't captured, like which was the original one?

[Alex Wagner]

Or I don't really care about Americans financial situations. That was a podcast interview. But anyway, that's just him fucking talking.

[Pod Save America Announcer]

Pod.

Save America is brought to you by Mint Mobile Summer means a well deserved break. Some extra time to stretch out and relax. Mint Mobile thinks you deserve a break too, which is why they created the Mint Mobile Summer sale. Right now, all of mint's plans are $15 per month, even unlimited. So free yourself from big wireless and their gimmicks and gotchas and switch to Mint for high speed data and coverage on the T Mobile 5G network. Mint Mobile took what's wrong with wireless and made it right with Premium Wireless. For 15 bucks a month on America's largest 5G network, you can even bring your phone and your number. Choose from 3, 6 or 12 month plans and say goodbye to a monthly bill. Ditch overpriced wireless With Mint Mobile, it's so easy. Sign up online and get three months of premium wireless service for 15 bucks a month. To get your new wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to mintmobile.com crooked that's mintmobile.com crooked Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com crooked that's it. There's no catch.

Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for 12 months. Plan required, $15 per month. Equivalent taxes and fees planned term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Includes up to 20 gigabyte hotspot capable. Device required. Availability, speed and coverage varies. See mint mobile.com

[Alex Wagner]

hi, I'm Alex Wagner. I do not need to tell you that being an American right now is a wild ride. But as a longtime journalist, I am not interested in the noise or the fear mongering. I'm interested in the stories at the heart of the headlines. That is why every week on my show Runaway Country, I'm joined by folks in the middle of the crossfire. From disillusioned Maha moms to newly fired immigration judges to Epstein victims themselves. To understand what it means to live through this political chaos as an actual human being and now I'm excited to tell you that Runaway country is available ad free to Friends of the POD subscribers. Friends of the POD is a subscription that supports the work Crooked does as an independent media company and gives you a ton of great bonus and ad free content. With the midterms approaching, you are going to need more content to keep you sane. And now you can find Runaway country right there. Subscribe [e-mail] backslash friends. All right, I have two more for you. One is, you know, we began this conversation talking about expectation setting and how if you're trying to understand where the sort of zeitgeist is at in terms of Democratic politics, like maybe leave the polling out of it because polling distorts expectations and therefore also results. You know, Nate Silver, the great statistian, was talking about the polling that led up to primary day in Michigan that, that showed Abdul Al said with like a very, very healthy lead. He of course goes on to win by like a point. And I think everybody had flashbacks to the Ann Seltzer poll, which was off in 2024 by a whopping 16 points and had showed Kamala Harris winning the state. Abdul is now saying he's gonna beat Mike Rogers by seven points. His campaign has a history of releasing internal polling. All of this seems like highly sus. Maybe something you don't wanna do. If you're, you know, as someone who follows all this stuff closely, should everybody just shut the fuck up about polling? Should we stop looking at polling numbers entirely? Like what, what do we do about polling?

[Chris Hayes]

Well, I think that primary, I think primary polling is always hard. And particularly Michigan where people don't register for a party. We've seen a bunch of these cases. Both the Obama Clinton one was a surprise and then the Bernie Hillary one was a big surprise. So there's been a real history of specifically Michigan Democratic primary polling Mrs. Yeah. So I think there's partly that again, I think it's like the thing about polling is it's best in just the general aggregate as like a directional point.

[Alex Wagner]

Is it though? I mean like 16 points. Abdul was up by a 17 point. It's not. Wasn't good for his support. Like just what is the utility of it? That's a lot off.

[Chris Hayes]

Yeah, I mean I think when, right when something's off by that much, there's no utility. But I don't think that's usually the standard Ms. You know, I mean like even like if you look at what the, you know, what was the 2024 presidential, like a close race decided By a few points in either direction.

[Alex Wagner]

Yeah, right, fine.

[Chris Hayes]

It was like, I mean, you know what I mean? Like, part of the problem is, here's my general thing about polling, and this doesn't really respond to Michigan. This is more about. About broader stuff and presidential polling. In a country as polarized as ours, we want a level of specificity that it can't deliver. Because in our country, a point or two matters a ton in frontline swing races. In the state Senate, in the statewide Senate races, a point or two is probably determinative. Polling's not going to be great at telling you a point. So my general takeaway is that the Paxton Talarico race right now is close in anyone's race. My general takeaway of the polling that we've seen is that Michigan's going to be close, very close. You know, that Maine is going to be really close. Nothing more than that.

[Pod Save America Announcer]

So.

[Alex Wagner]

So like, like, ignore the numbers. Take the vibe, like, generalized vibe of this.

[Chris Hayes]

Yes. And like, yes. Now, again, if it's off by 13, there's nothing you can do with it. But it is rare. That is a pretty rare place, polling this.

[Alex Wagner]

Okay, fine. So whoever commissioned that poll does not need to leave their job like the poor and Seltzer.

[Chris Hayes]

Let me just say that there were multiple internals they released, which I think was like a weird psyop that I think blew back and was, yeah, not a good. But there were also public independent polls, including Emerson, which is a highly rated pollster that had that double digits. And I still haven't seen the, like, full autopsy of what went wrong there. The Seltzer one is that she just completely modeled the elect. Here's a big problem, too. Something that pollsters have been dealing with since 2016 is that the kinds of people who are highly involved and highly educated are the most likely to respond to polls. And those people are also the most liberal.

[Pod Save America Announcer]

Right.

[Chris Hayes]

And this is a fact about the world that every pollster has been trying to model and make and methodologically get their way out of. But it is a fact about the world that wasn't true in the past. It was not true in the past that your likelihood to respond to a poll correlated with your ideology in any way. It is increasingly the case. It is. And so now you have to model your way out of that. And that leads to a lot of modeling assumptions that introduce a lot of uncertainty.

[Alex Wagner]

That was very judicious, that assessment, Chris.

[Chris Hayes]

Thank you.

[Alex Wagner]

Now we're gonna return to the man who sits before me in a gold chain and A pink tank top for this last one, which we're sitting at this moment. I feel like so much of this season of Democratic politics has been defined by the questions around masculinity and power. Right. There's Platner. There's Swalwell in California gubernatorial race, obviously, main Senate race. Max Miller is currently in a House race, refuses to drop out despite, like, very serious allegations of abuse and otherwise. Representative Chuck Edwards is out with some ridiculous reporting about what he's been doing. We went to Brown University, which we're prone to bring up all the time. And I think I sound like a Brown graduate when I start talking about the essence of sort of, like, the fall of the patriarchy, defining the kind of chaos in the political landscape. But I do think it has a lot to do with why we had Barack Obama and then Donald Trump and then Donald Trump again, and this sort of crisis of, like, how to be a man. And, like, Donald Trump has come up with one modality of masculinity, which is. Is real fucking vile, if you ask me, but is intoxicating to both men and women, especially if they're white. And Democrats have had a really hard time figuring out, like, what does manhood look like coming from the left? And, like, you see these attempts at finding new models, whether it's Hasan Piker or, I guess, to some degree, Gavin Newsom or Graham Platner. And, like, it hasn't really. They haven't found the shoe that fits, I don't think. Yeah. And I'm not saying that Gavin Newsom's chances aren't significant, but, like, do you have a theory about how the Democrats should begin to try and answer? Like, what is the rejoinder to, like, the vile masculinity of the right? Cause that's gonna be, I think, essential in figuring out who should lead the party or be part of the leadership of the party in the coming years.

[Chris Hayes]

I don't have a good answer to that, but it's something that I puzzle over a lot. I do think Abdul Al Syed is kind of interesting because he is.

[Alex Wagner]

He has been charged with being a misogynist, though, and talking the way that he did about Haley. Oh, he rolls his ey pink tank top well.

[Pod Save America Announcer]

Well.

[Alex Wagner]

But I think that there are women that don't agree with you, even on the left, that, like, the way he talked about Haley Stevens was misogynistic. And, you know, some of his attitudes, the. Listen, I'm just a vessel for.

[Chris Hayes]

I mean, I think that charge. I guess what I would say is, I Think it's probably useful to separate out charges that happen in the context of a heated primary.

[Alex Wagner]

Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

With. With broader things about the person's lifestyle. You know what I mean?

[Alex Wagner]

Sure.

[Chris Hayes]

This is a different thing than Platner.

[Alex Wagner]

Yes.

[Chris Hayes]

I'm just saying that there's just different categories of what people say against each other when they're running against each other in a primary. There was a lot of allegations that Barack Obama was being sexist towards Sarah Palin or Hillary Clinton. And I don't think it was true of Sarah Palin. I don't really think it was true of Hillary Clinton. Some people maybe felt that it was, but I think those. Those exist in a different space than people that are attesting to your character who have been with you outside the campaign. The whole. He can bench 315, but he's also a doctor. And he also seems like a person who. I don't know. You said. The interview he did with his mother, that I thought was really interesting, who was an engineer, came here from Egypt, was often the only woman in a room, sort of talking to her about what that felt like, which I thought was interesting. And also I think speaks to them, recognizing they have some work to do on that front. The way that I solve for this is the same way that I think about how to think about patriotism and how to talk about patriotism from a center left, progressive standpoint, which is like my version. I think Barack Obama is the best example of this. But I also felt this way about the World War II Museum in New Orleans, which is a great museum, if anyone ever goes, which is a sort of like progressive, pluralistic patriotism. Like, we are a great country because we are this place that is built out of all these different people from all these different experiences. And we've screwed it up a million different ways and a million times. But we have also kept trying to figure out how to make all these people together work. And I think that the version of masculinity is to be a man, is to be a person who is strong in a sort of inner and deep sense and who, like, looks and can bench 350 and looks out for people and does the right thing and people can look towards and depend on. And to me, it's like in the same way that you take this Venn diagram of some of the attributes that we learn in our civic culture about America with the attributes that we as progressives cherish, and you're the thing I'm going for. I think you take the aspects of masculinity that I do think have a root in the culture, which is like, strength or leadership or dependability or looking out for people, even protecting people, that you cultivate those in a broader sense of looking out for people, looking out for people that are being bullied or being marginalized, being the one that stands up for them. That, to me, is the vision of. Of where you kind of find the sweet spot to this answer. And I don't know how you communicate that, but that's the way my own conception of it is.

[Alex Wagner]

I think one of the things that Democrats could really do is kind of wrap their arms around like someone who's loving and has shown themselves capable of great love, whether for children or their mother or their spouse or their partner. Because that's something that Trump doesn't have at all. And that is, I think, really aspirational, especially to see if we're talking about a guy like, men being comfortable showing the fact that they can be lovers. And I don't mean that in, like, a sexy way.

[Chris Hayes]

No, no, I think that's a good point.

[Alex Wagner]

But it's a real important reminder that, like, that's what most people are looking for in life, is to be loved and to feel loved and to belong. And Trump's found the inverse of that. Like, he's found unity through hate and like. Like love and affection is always in season. Sometimes it might come arrive at your doorstep in a hot pink tank top and a gold chain. Kate Shaw. Sometimes not. You are one of my favorite people on the planet. We have known each other for 30 fucking years.

[Chris Hayes]

I know. It's wild.

[Alex Wagner]

And every conversation is better than the last.

[Chris Hayes]

Oh, that's sweet. That was really fun. I'm so glad we did with it.

[Alex Wagner]

You're the best. Chris Hayes, everybody. Watch Chris Hayes on Ms. Now. Always listen to his podcast, why is this Happening? And consume all books he writes because they're really good.

[Chris Hayes]

Working on the next one. I'm very excited about this next one. Favorite project ever.

[Alex Wagner]

Of course you are. Oh, my Jesus. Okay, well, thank you for doing this in between writing drafts, and thanks to everybody for listening.

[Pod Save America Announcer]

Positive America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Farah Safari, with Reed Cherlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt de Groat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Kanter, Charlotte Landis, Kirill Pel Aviv, David Toles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Singel. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

[Alex Wagner]

Hi, I'm Alex Wagner. I do not need to tell you that being an American right now is a wild ride. But as a longtime journalist I am not interested in the noise or the fear mongering. I'm interested in the stories at the heart of the headlines. That is why every week on my show Runaway Country I'm joined by folks in the middle of the crossfire from disillusioned Maha moms to newly fired immigration judges to Epstein victims themselves to understand what it means to live through this political chaos as an actual human being. And now I'm excited, excited to tell you that Runaway country is available ad free to Friends of the POD subscribers. Friends of the POD is a subscription that supports the work Crooked does as an independent media company and gives you a ton of great bonus and ad free content. With the midterms approaching you are going to need more content to keep you sane. And now you can find Runaway country right there. Subscribe [e-mail] friends.