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Let the Blame Game Commence!
00:56:00
As Kamala Harris officially concedes after a terrible election, Democrats begin searching for lessons—and singling out others for blame. Jon, Lovett, Dan, and Tommy discuss Harris's farewell message, the various conflicting and enraging theories being floated as to why she lost, and how we should think about campaigns going forward. Plus: Sen. Jacky Rosen appears to score a win in Nevada, and Democratic House candidates in uncalled races see a path to victory—and maybe even a narrow majority.
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- [00:20]
Jon Favreau
Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
- [00:22]
Jon Lovett
I'm Jon Levitt.
- [00:23]
Dan Pfeiffer
I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
- [00:23]
Jon Favreau
Tommy Vitor on today's show, Tuesday was for voting, Wednesday was for processing, and Thursday was for blaming.
- [00:32]
Jon Lovett
Just blame, blame, blame, blame.
- [00:35]
Jon Favreau
Just 48 hours after Americans went to the polls, the Democratic Party recrimination, soul searching, postmortem blame game pick your cliche has begun. Plus, and some critical good news for Democrats, Senator Jackie Rosen looks like she's going to hang on in Nevada. We'll talk about the latest updates. With the ballot still being counted in House and Senate races all across the country and what it all means for fighting back against Trump's second term agenda hurt saying that. But first, on Wednesday, Kamala Harris officially conceded to Donald Trump in a phone call and then gave her concession speech at Howard University, where she hoped she'd be giving her victory speech the night before. Then on Thursday, Joe Biden gave his first public remarks since his vice president's crushing loss. Here is a sampling from each to.
- [01:21]
Kamala Harris
The young people who are watching. It is okay to feel sad and disappointed, but please know it's going to be okay. On the campaign, I would often say when we fight, we win. But here's the thing. Here's the thing. Sometimes the fight takes a while. That doesn't mean we won't win. That doesn't mean we won't win. The important. The important thing is don't ever give up. Don't ever give up. Don't ever stop trying to make the world a better place.
- [01:58]
Joe Biden
We're leaving behind the strongest economy in the world. I know people are still hurting, but things are changing rapidly Together. We've changed America for the better. Now we have 74 days to finish the term. Our turn. Let's make every day count. That's the responsibility we have to the American people. Look, folks, you all know it in your lives. Setbacks are unavoidable, but giving up is.
- [02:29]
Jon Favreau
Unforgivable, getting harder and harder to tell the difference between him and Dana Carvey. So both Biden and Harris offered versions of it's going to be okay. This is, of course, after they both spent their respective campaigns hammering the stakes of a Trump presidency. Obviously, that's a tough balance to strike. What did you guys think? And any other reactions to either of their speeches?
- [02:55]
Jon Lovett
I find that we're gonna be okay pretty insulting and patronizing, to be honest. You're both giving these speeches because your theory of politics and of the future was wrong. That we all were wrong. Were collectively wrong. That's just a fact. And, like, I have great respect for Kamala Harris and the campaign that she ran and the hand she played. It was a very difficult hand. But they're just not in a position to reassure us right now. And, like, they don't know. We don't know. And the we will make it through. Like, I hope so. I believe so. I think we have to fight to make it so. But a lot of people will be hurt, like, if we keep sliding back on, like, reproductive freedom, a lot of people could die if we have mass deportations. There will be the children of American citizens who will not be okay. If there are rollbacks on LGBT rights, there will be trans people and gay people who will not be okay. So I am not really in the market for bedtime stories right now. I would like a little bit less reassurance and more vigilance. And I think politicians getting up there and. And being our mommy and daddy, I'm just not interested in right now.
- [04:03]
Jon Favreau
Anyone else want to take the other side?
- [04:05]
Dan Pfeiffer
No, I want to. Can I think of middle ground? Sure. These are impossible speeches to give. You're there to simply just acknowledge your own defeat and then thank your supporters and that you kind of have to do it. None of them are great. Some of them are remembered more fondly than others. The hard part here is the absolute dissonance between the message 72 hours ago on the campaign trail and right now about what a danger Donald Trump is, that he is unstable, unhinged, will be governing without guardrails. And I think both the vice president and the president could have done more to acknowledge people's fear, people's pain they're feeling right now, their anxiety about what's going to come in the country to, you know, speak to the fact that for the second time in three presidential elections, a woman has lost to someone like Donald Trump. I was just talking to my wife who is talking, was talking to her mom about never having seen a woman elected president and trying to explain to her six year old daughter why that hasn't happened. And I think this is hard to do, but a lot of people don't feel okay right now. A lot of people aren't sure that we're going to be okay. A lot of people are very worried. And so doing a little more to speak to that I think would have been appreciated in the moment.
- [05:23]
Jon Favreau
Yeah.
- [05:23]
Tommy Vitor
Just to echo on Dance Point, we got a text from a friend I love who's like, I'm really surprised you guys didn't Mention Kamala Harris, race and gender and the reasoning behind why she lost yesterday. And the reason for me is I have no doubt that it was a factor in a lot of voters decision, but I don't have any data to ground that opinion in right now. And I also don't want the takeaway from that conversation to be, well, now the Democrats can never run a woman for president again, because I do not think that's true. I actually think. I think that would be the worst lesson to take away. So I think just to address, you know, what Dan said up front, I found both of their speeches to be like, gracious and decent. And especially for Kamala Harris, because think about, she just spent 100 days pouring everything she had into this campaign. She's exhausted. Even in her private moments, she's thinking about this campaign. She hasn't slept in months. And she's expected, I think, to actually take on a bit of a parental role in the tone of her remarks and to. To comfort supporters and voters and people that loved her. And I understand that that might be grating to some people. Like, there's a naive version of like, we're all gonna be okay. And it's like, no, you don't know that. I think their point is we are all now charged with fighting to make sure that we're okay, especially for people that have it worse for us. And I think that was the takeaway I got from them.
- [06:38]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, it didn't bump me as much. Just because I think we're gonna be okay is just. Almost everyone understands that it might not be true, but it's what you want to hear because people want to be comforted in a time like this. Like, I'm sure we're all getting texts from people and emails that are like, are we going to be okay? Are we going to be okay? And I don't assure anyone will be okay, but we can be okay. Like, it's possible that we can be okay. We don't know. I don't actually think it's useful to spend a lot of time predicting whether we won't be okay or will be okay. I think it's about as useful as predicting election winners, which is why I don't really focus on that.
- [07:11]
Tommy Vitor
Not Silver modeled arc. Okay, yes, a thousand times, which I.
- [07:15]
Jon Favreau
Don'T focus on that as much, but I kind of just took it as like, leadership is about trying to comfort people or inspire people or whatever. And I take your point for sure, but I don't think it's. It didn't really bump me as much.
- [07:25]
Dan Pfeiffer
I had the same reaction to similar reaction to Barack Obama's remarks after the election in 2016.
- [07:32]
Jon Favreau
You know what's funny is our friend Terry Zupplat, who is a speechwriter with us in the White House, just has a new book out and I was doing a book event with him. And in his book he talks about how the only time in his life he'd ever been disappointed with Barack Obama was that speech. But then he said, you know, looking back on it now, all these years later, I'm glad he said what he did at the time because at the time everyone didn't want to hear that. But he's like, you know, he was right. He was right. So even though Biden and Harris both said nice things about each other in their speeches, it's knives out at the staff and advisor level. People close to both camps have been making their case to reporters. Pro Biden Democrats saying the President would have done better and that Harris could have run a better campaign. Pro Harris Democrats saying it was Biden's fault for deciding to run for reelection in the first place and waiting too long to step aside. What do you guys think should do?
- [08:20]
Tommy Vitor
A blanket caveat, which is that so we don't all have to repeat it. Running a presidential campaign and putting it together in 100 days is nearly impossible. She did an incredible job. The biggest moment of the entire campaign, though maybe the only one that mattered was the debate. And she did better than anyone could possibly have expected. So blanket caveat. Now we're going to nitpick.
- [08:39]
Jon Favreau
Great.
- [08:39]
Tommy Vitor
Starting at the top because I don't want to just repeat ourselves. Do you want to go to nitpick? I was just giving someone else space to speak.
- [08:45]
Jon Favreau
Okay, well, do you want to start with the who? Which side do you.
- [08:48]
Tommy Vitor
Right now I'm going to nitpick. So the substantive critique from the Biden people seems to be two things. That she abandoned the kind of anti populist messaging and that she failed to respond to millions and millions of dollars. These anti trans ads that ran on every football game we ever watched, I didn't find those to be unfair or unreasonable criticisms. I mean, the 10th time I saw the Kamala is for they them ad, I wondered, boy, did the Trump people know something that we don't know about how effective that ad is in. The New York Times reported today that when Future Forward, the big Dem super PAC, tested the ad, it moved the needle 2.7 percentage points in Trump's favor and that the Harris campaign tested a response ad that didn't work well in focus groups, so they never ended up using it. And I think maybe it's fair to say that letting that go unresponded to was a mistake.
- [09:35]
Jon Lovett
Here's the problem with that. In the states where Kamala Harris campaigned the hardest, those are the places where she outperformed what happened in the other states. Those are also the states that saw the most number of ads. So I mean, if you just, if you just said, okay, what was the effect? I mean, it's hard to measure all these different competing variables. But if you just said, all right, there were states where they ran anti trans ads and there are states where they didn't, Trump did better in states where they didn't run those ads. That's just a fact.
- [10:01]
Tommy Vitor
A lot of those ran nationally.
- [10:03]
Jon Lovett
Even so, there was $100 million dumped in Pennsylvania of anti trans ads. And you can say, all right, well, what was the impact of that money? Maybe it made things harder for her to claw back. Maybe she would have done better if those ads weren't there. I just, I just don't think we know right now, broadly speaking. That's why, like, the one nagging feeling I have is that that kind of is resonating with me is because we felt it a bit at the time and it was. Which is that answer on the View. How would you do differently than Joe Biden? And she says, well, I can't think of anything. Or when she's asked about why she, how she changed her record from 2020, she had answers that were about, well, I haven't changed my values. And they tried to deal with what was, I think an incredibly difficult substantive critique, which is, you're in the Biden administration. You don't represent a break from the Biden administration. How do you respond to that? They tried to kind of weave a kind of more like vibes based, message based argument against that. And then in the same on her how she differed, because there it was hard to answer that question of how she had differed from the position she took in the 2020 campaign. And I say, okay, could that be something that has an impact? But even still, I say, okay, maybe those were bad, maybe those were a problem. Fine. I am still, it still seems very difficult for me to picture how she overcomes the fact that she had 100 days to run this campaign. And so I am, I am much more amenable to an argument about Joe Biden's culpability. And actually I'm less angry about the decision to seek reelection. I Don't. I don't think it was right. I think we're paying for it. But I'm more angry, actually about the month after that debate when what happened was unequivocal and he made that campaign even shorter, eliminating the chance to even have a debate about who the nominee should be and also leaving her such a short, short space to mount a credible campaign.
- [11:45]
Dan Pfeiffer
I mean, I just, I struggle with this entire conversation. I can pick 17 things that maybe could have been done differently. I can't pinpoint any of them or all of them that lead to a different outcome in this race.
- [11:57]
Tommy Vitor
That's true.
- [11:57]
Dan Pfeiffer
And so the way I think to think about it going forward is to try to figure out what from the campaign, sort of overlaying what the campaign did with the results on what we can learn in terms of going forward, like, what are better approaches, better strategies, better messages.
- [12:14]
Jon Favreau
On that note, I do think it's funny for a campaign that was so good about tailoring their message to what tested well, the. And this was like a hobby horse of mine during the campaign, the price gouging stuff. Like, she started with it and then it sort of fell off in the middle of the campaign somewhere. And then they kind of brought it back and it, the economic agenda was framed more as small businesses. This going to maybe give you this. Going to maybe give you this. And there wasn't a lot of bite against corporations that were doing bad things. And again, I'm just talking about going forward. I think it would be useful for Democrats to hammer that because you do need. People are, people are angry. People are dissatisfied mostly with the economy. And I think it is fair and also politically useful to go after corporations that are making record profits and screwing people over when they are screwing people over. You don't have to say all corporations are bad or capitalism is bad. Not any of that. But like, I think it's a good thing to do. And she had a record on those issues as attorney general that I think was very effective. And even voters that I talked to, when I brought up her record, that moved them.
- [13:26]
Dan Pfeiffer
So I think maybe the way to think about this is the Democratic economic message has not worked in 12 years. It did not work in 2016. It did not work in 2020. We lost on the economy. In 2022, we won despite our economic message. We lost the voters who cared about inflation.
- [13:44]
Jon Favreau
Do we have an economic message?
- [13:46]
Dan Pfeiffer
Well, we had Biden's economic record. Biden did all these things. He talked about them. Democrats ran, they did run a decent number of Economic ads. But we won the voters who, the 27% of voters who said abortion was their top issue. We lost the 31% of voters who said inflation was their top issue in 2022. And their economic message did not work here. Yet once again, when you go through all, you test all the individual policies, all our policies are popular. But we're getting hammered on the most important issue in every single election in modern history. And that is a thing we're going to have to figure out to go forward. Because Donald Trump has built what looks like a multiracial working class coalition that could dominate politics for a very long time.
- [14:23]
Jon Favreau
I understand why everyone's calling it like the anti trans ad, but I would even go one step further and say that ad had an economic component to it because it was. What was it about? Taxpayer funded gender reassignment surgery for inmates who are undocumented immigrants. And it got right to the heart of a Republican argument that Democrats are giving your tax dollars away to everyone else. All these different interest groups, identity groups, people that, that aren't you and you're struggling. Right. Like that is what that ad was saying, which I think to the extent it was effective, you know, Republicans have tried to run other anti trans ads over the last several years and other races that have not been effective.
- [15:05]
Tommy Vitor
They've been a waste of money in.
- [15:06]
Jon Favreau
Other states, they've been a waste of money and they failed.
- [15:08]
Jon Lovett
It just sounds crazy. It just sounds like a crazy. Wait, they're doing that? That sounds crazy to me. How can that be true?
- [15:13]
Jon Favreau
Yes. Right?
- [15:14]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah.
- [15:14]
Jon Favreau
So it turns out there's a third option here beside it being the Biden campaign's fault or the Harris campaign's fault. It was the Obama campaign's fault. It was Obama's fault. Here's a blind quote given to Politico by an anonymous former Biden staffer. Quote, there is no singular reason why we lost. But a big reason is because the Obama advisers publicly encouraged Democratic infighting to push Joe Biden out, didn't even want Kamala Harris as the nominee, and then signed up as the saviors of the campaign, only to run outdated Obama era playbooks for a candidate that wasn't Obama. Those outdated Obama era playbooks that won him two presidential campaigns, the best record of any Democrat since Roosevelt. But anyway, I just have to say something about this one.
- [16:00]
Dan Pfeiffer
Please don't go. The floor is yours.
- [16:02]
Jon Favreau
I am going to generously assume that the constant anonymous sniping from Biden World about Obama or Kamala Harris and everyone who worked for Them is coming from, like, the same three or four people. That's going to be my generous assumption. And it does not reflect the views of most of the Biden folks. Just stipulated, like Tommy's stipulation earlier. We all.
- [16:22]
Tommy Vitor
Blanket caveat there.
- [16:23]
Jon Favreau
Blanket caveat.
- [16:23]
Dan Pfeiffer
We all agree.
- [16:24]
Tommy Vitor
Now we're going to nitpick.
- [16:25]
Jon Favreau
Joe Biden's decision to run for president again was a catastrophic mistake. It just was. And he and his inner circle, they refused to believe the polls. They refused to believe he was unpopular. They refused to acknowledge until very late that anyone could be upset about inflation. And they just kept telling us that his presidency was historic and it was the greatest economy ever. We just heard him again say that it's the greatest economy ever. Clearly, 70, 80% of voters don't believe that. They don't believe that about their own personal financial situation, but they just keep telling us that. And then after the debate, the Biden people told us that the polls were fine and Biden was still the strongest candidate. And the. And they were privately telling reporters at the time that Kamala Harris couldn't win. So they were shiving Kamala Harris to reporters while they told everyone else, not a time for an open process and his vice president can't win, so he's the strongest candidate. Then we find out when the Biden campaign becomes the Harris campaign, that the Biden campaign's own internal polling at the time when they were telling us he was the strongest candidate showed that Donald Trump was gonna win 400 electoral votes. That's what their own internal polling said. So, like, I don't have a lot of.
- [17:34]
Tommy Vitor
I just. I don't know what it means by the Obama era playbook. I think what Dan said yesterday about.
- [17:39]
Jon Favreau
They're just. Matt, they just don't. They just.
- [17:41]
Tommy Vitor
But let's just try to unpack it. I think what Dan said yesterday about trying to examine, reexamine all the money Democrats spend on field programs is something that it's a conversation worth having. Because, like, I don't want to overreact here, because in 2020, there were people saying, well, the Biden people were too scared to get out of their house and knock on doors and did everything virtually. And that's why the margins were closer.
- [18:03]
Dan Pfeiffer
Right.
- [18:03]
Tommy Vitor
So we kind of learn a new lesson every cycle. But I think it's worth thinking about that spend and the opportunity cost. That said, all that infrastructure was in place when Joe Biden was the nominee. This wasn't like an Obama thing or a Kamala Harris thing. And then also part of this could be Democrats do need to go back to the drawing board when it comes to figuring out what is the coalition that we assemble to win.
- [18:24]
Jon Favreau
Right.
- [18:24]
Tommy Vitor
The Obama era coalition. That is.
- [18:27]
Jon Favreau
It seems to be we've lost it.
- [18:28]
Tommy Vitor
That is gone. But on the idea that Joe Biden would have won, I think is what the subtext of that comment was. Again, there were polls showing 80% of voters thought Joe Biden was too old to get a second term before the debate. And then we all watched the debate. And then in the last few weeks, Biden was campaigning and he said, we need to lock Trump up. He created a controversy over whether Trump supporters were garbage. He said, you know, the weird thing about slapping Trump on the ass, like, his moments on the campaign trail weren't flawless either.
- [18:57]
Dan Pfeiffer
You can't. You cannot look, it's absurd.
- [19:00]
Jon Favreau
It's absurd.
- [19:01]
Dan Pfeiffer
Two points. I want to be jealous.
- [19:04]
Jon Favreau
I'm done being jealous.
- [19:04]
Dan Pfeiffer
I want to stay for the record. I also think all the TV money ad should be. Should be rethought too. Rethought too. But more importantly, the idea that Joe Biden was going to do better in this race than Kamala Harris is on its face, absurd. No one is making that case.
- [19:19]
Jon Favreau
There's zero data to support that. There never has been, ever.
- [19:22]
Dan Pfeiffer
And no one is making that case with their name to it.
- [19:24]
Jon Favreau
That's what I was. And I was going to end by saying if someone would like to put their name on it or even come here and talk to us about it right here, we can have a nice civil conversation about it. They're more than welcome. And it's a lot better than just sniping to Alex Thompson and Politico and whoever else you want to snipe, you know, leak to, which is what they've been doing for a year.
- [19:43]
Dan Pfeiffer
The suboptimal place we were put in after the debate was to go from a close to 0% chance of winning to someone who had a chance but was probably an underdog in the race. And that's where we went. And that's how it ended.
- [19:53]
Jon Lovett
We know that. We know that. We know that. We know that because over 100 days of an extraordinarily well run campaign, she clawed her way back on all these metrics on which Biden was doing much worse. And she. And she lost by what, two points? And I like, maybe one sign for hope in all of this is there's gonna be a lot of infighting. There's a lot of people with different points of views about the future. We have to be generous with one another, we have to listen to one another, we have to be open to one another. But we can all unite in knowing that Joe Biden would have lost and deserves a lot of blame for the situation that we're in. And maybe that's something that can bring us all together.
- [20:26]
Jon Favreau
Well, I mean, also when Harris became the nominee, Obama people, Clinton people, Biden people, like, they all came together in that campaign and did a, got really close to winning, you know, and they all worked really well together and they all put their heart and soul into it and they worked their asses off, right? So it's like this idea that there's all these divisions and blah, blah, blah. It's like the people who just continue to do this, it's crazy because a lot of people from that were had a whole bunch of different bosses all came together to work hard to try to get her to win. So beyond the Biden Harris sniping, there have been a number of other broader critiques about the Democratic Party that we can talk about. Bernie Sanders, who over the summer had lobbied for Biden to stay in the race, but then became one of Harris's most effective surrogates, released a blistering critique of Democrats whole strategy and identity, saying, quote, it should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them and then blamed the big money interests and well paid consultants who control the party. And he expressed skepticism that we'll be able to learn our lesson. He later told the New York Times, it's not just Kamala, it's a Democratic Party which increasingly has become a party of identity politics. Rather than understanding that the vast majority of people in this country are working class. What did you guys think of Bernie's critique? Is he right that the Democratic Party has abandoned the working class?
- [21:57]
Jon Lovett
So my problem with the statement, so I largely think that like there is a directional critique that I agree with, right? That like when Bernie came on Ponzi America and talked about, we were not talking enough about corporate influence over politics, the money in our politics. We're not talking enough to those concerned, to the working class. Like, I believe that. I agree with that. I think the nuance that is missing here and I think is important is Joe Biden when he won. And one of, I think his great achievements and one of the things we talked about when we were beseeching Joe Biden to step aside is that he listened. He brought in Bernie Sanders, he brought in Elizabeth Warren, he Put Lina Khan at ftc. He canceled student debt. He pursued an incredibly progressive economic agenda. Now, I think we should think about why did that not resonate with people? Why did people not believe that? Why did people not see the effects of that? Why did people still not trust Democrats as messengers? I think those are really important questions that Bernie Sanders is going to be very helpful in figuring out how to solve. But I think to say carte blanche Democrats abandoned working people is I think, to embrace a part, a reality of our politics and the influence of money on our politics, and in part to embrace a Republican critique and Republican vibes. And I just think those things need to be separated out.
- [23:09]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I feel Bernie's like, rage here and he's got some fair points and his analysis of votes we're losing is absolutely right. But I think the harder thing to reckon with is the fact that Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden worked together to pass Covid relief money cap the price of insulin. They passed the child tax credit, while Republicans voted against all of those things. The Biden administration was great on antitrust and breaking up corporations. Joe Biden fought for unions. He went on the picket line. And then Donald Trump campaigns with Elon Musk, famous Union Buster and wins those working class voters. And so the question is, how does that disconnect happen and how do we fix that politically? Because we're doing the right things substantively. Not enough. Not enough. And the messaging wasn't perfect. Right. I've criticized the lack of economic messaging on the campaign before, but we're not reaching the voters we need to reach.
- [24:00]
Jon Favreau
We've been dealing with this since the Obama years. And I know President Obama thought, well, we just, we should prove that democracy can deliver. And if we deliver for people, for working people, then they'll like the Democrats. Joe Biden certainly had the same theory, and I've thought that would be true as well over the last several years. And I do think that's one of the things we have to reexamine the idea that, like, if we deliver for working people economically, they will automatically, you know, start voting for Democrats. Because I think it's. It's more complex than that.
- [24:31]
Dan Pfeiffer
The economy in politics is a cultural issue. We think of it in Democrats as a substantive issue. What are the policies we can stitch together to prove to them that we will fight for them? But it's all vibes. Donald Trump doesn't have a policy director. He has three policies about taxes. That's it. But he wins.
- [24:47]
Jon Favreau
All of them. Would screw working people.
- [24:49]
Dan Pfeiffer
Yeah, yeah, I Mean, and. But we're losing because the vibe that he gets off, he is coming off as someone who was fighting for a certain set of people, and we are not giving off that vibe. I think you can have a fair critique about whether the Harris campaign used as much populist messaging as perhaps it could. Maybe that doesn't feel particularly natural to her. That's. Maybe that's not. She's not Bernie. She's not Elizabeth Warren. She's not even Joe Biden, like Scranton Joe era. But there's a broader issue here, is that we are approaching the issue wrong. The last time we won an economic fight was in 2012, when that was a cultural war. That was an identity issue culture war. We had better policies that supported that, but that's not really what it was about.
- [25:29]
Jon Favreau
And just in case you think we're just simping for Obama here, like, we get a lot of help because Mitt Romney was the opponent.
- [25:34]
Dan Pfeiffer
Yeah, for sure, for sure.
- [25:35]
Jon Favreau
You know, and just seemed like a rich, you know who else is rich?
- [25:38]
Dan Pfeiffer
You know who else is a non touch rich guy? Donald Trump.
- [25:40]
Jon Favreau
Right. How culturally this is, to your point?
- [25:43]
Dan Pfeiffer
Yeah, that's right.
- [25:43]
Jon Favreau
How culturally different did Donald Trump and Mitt Romney seem, even though they're both rich guys?
- [25:48]
Jon Lovett
But it's worth, but it's worth pointing out, right? Barack Obama wins a throw the bums out election. He wins in 2012 against a plutocrat running a campaign against a plutocrat, which is an exception to the rule. Uh, Donald Trump wins a throw the bums out election. He loses his reelection when he's now the establishment. Then he wins another throw the bums out election. Right. And so I do think part, like I want to, I actually agree with everything that we're saying, but I also, like, there are signs here that we can point to that, like, part of this is the energy Donald Trump brings, but part of it is also he got to just. He is a, he is a walking fuck you. Hey, that is how he won in 2016. He built an even broader coalition of people who wanted to say fuck you this time. And there's lessons we can learn from that, but we also shouldn't, I think, overlearn those lessons. And it's a different fight when we're fighting as outsiders taking on an incumbent in a country that is extremely angry at the establishment.
- [26:42]
Jon Favreau
One more point in this, to Bernie's point, that we've become the party of identity politics rather than understanding that most people are working class. It did make me think that after 2016, after Trump won. It became this sort of, like, punchline in liberal spaces that, oh, it was economic anxiety because someone said, oh, some people voted for Trump because of economic anxiety. And then you were mocked if you said that, because really, everyone just voted for Trump because they were a racist or misogynist or misogynist. And, like, a couple things can be true. There's, like, a lot of people who are say racist things and misogynistic things and who voted for Donald Trump partly because they like that. There's also people who just, they did have economic anxiety and voted for Donald Trump despite his racism and misogyny. And I think that, you know, that's one thing if we're going to be introspective going forward, is that like, yeah, there's some people who are just racist, who do racist shit. And then when we hear that, we don't necessarily have to say, well, that means that everyone who voted for Donald Trump, the economic anxiety thing was just bullshit. That really wasn't.
- [27:44]
Dan Pfeiffer
That runs into a real. That argument runs into a real problem when his largest gains were with Latinos.
- [27:48]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I just wanted one just to push back to Bernie, though. Like, Kamala Harris did not play identity politics or highlight her identity at all on the campaign trail at all. The opposite happened where Republicans called her a DEI higher. So they played identity politics in the most racist, sexist way possible. And the Democratic Party did not do that.
- [28:06]
Jon Favreau
She went out of her way, I would say. Yeah.
- [28:09]
Tommy Vitor
That doesn't mean the Democratic Party writ large hasn't focused on identity as part of the coalition. Well, we'll get to this campaign.
- [28:15]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, we'll get to this when I think we're going to talk about it. But, like, sometimes a lot of what people are directing at Kamala or at Democrats, they're directing actually at the commentariat, they're directing at Twitter, directing at social media. Exactly.
- [28:26]
Jon Favreau
And it's so hard and infuriating because it's like, we can't control those people.
- [28:31]
Dan Pfeiffer
We've tried.
- [28:33]
Tommy Vitor
There's not a mute button at the DNC for all Democrats.
- [28:36]
Jon Lovett
But, you know, Tommy, you talked about the effect of, like, organizing in field and, like, you know, Ben Wickler pointed out all the ways in which organizing in Wisconsin was what allowed them to be in a position to keep the Tammy Baldwin seat despite the incredible national swing. And I think there's like, I want to just, like, you know, I am not ready to say that organizing or field did not matter in this race. But what I do want to figure out is Donald Trump didn't need it. He did something else. Right. He did podcast. He had these influencers behind him and like, what is he doing instead of field that we should be doing, too?
- [29:08]
Jon Favreau
Well, that's a good segue into the.
- [29:09]
Jon Lovett
Way that being online is now real life.
- [29:11]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, well, that's a good segue to. We're going to take through some of the other theories here, and the first is Harry should have done more to meet voters where they are, as they say, including but not limited to going on Joe Rogan and more broadly, Democrats need to run the kind of candidate who can go on those kinds of shows and mix it up. I think, I think we're all in agreement there. Is anyone not in agreement?
- [29:32]
Dan Pfeiffer
No, I, Yeah, I am. I'm in agreement. I just think it's. It's more complicated than she should have gone on.
- [29:38]
Jon Favreau
Oh, yeah, I'm talking again, sorry. Looking towards the future. Forget about, like nitpicking the past, but like, yes, I think in the future, the whole conversation, like, why are you talking to this horrible person? You shouldn't be on the set with them. You're legitimizing them. Is like, yeah.
- [29:53]
Jon Lovett
Also there's been a few people saying, like, well, we need a Joe Rogan of the left. And it like we were talking about this yesterday, which is like, that to me is quite stupid on two fronts. One is like, Joe Rogan wasn't built in some conservative lab. He's a. As Tommy was saying this yesterday, like he was a television host and a Fear Factor guy, got into mna, started hosting the show and had built an audience and then people went to that audience. The second problem with that is if there was a Joe Rogan on the left that appealed to the kind of people Joe Rogan appealed to, he would be vilified by people on the left for all of his heterodoxies and ways in which he annoys them. It is very annoying and terrible that Joe Rogan is anti vax. He has stupid views on a lot of issues that I don't agree with. But Joe Rogan was somebody that had had Bernie Sanders on when. Dan, you said this yesterday. When Bernie Sanders put out that Joe Rogan endorsed him, people fucking went after him for that. And you know what? People are right to find Joe Rogan's noxious views noxious totally. But I think we should be honest about the ways in which we have kind of pushed. Like there's this conservative media ecosystem that is directly partisan, right wing conservative covers politics every day. But now around it There is this collection of comedians, entertainers, influencers who are not political but feel much more comfortable on the right than they feel on the left. And so I am less interested in should Kamala Harris go on Joe Rogan or should we have a Joe Rogan in the left and more thinking a, how do we build the progressive version? We're trying to do that here at Crooked, but we need help of that kind of partisan infrastructure. And then how do we make those non political hosts that have huge followings feel as welcome in our world and we as welcome in their world as they now currently feel on the right without giving up on our values, being honest about where we disagree, but being willing to go there and those people feeling comfortable with us?
- [31:52]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I mean, I think that Lovett handled the infrastructure piece of this and I talked about it last episode, but I think it's Rogan's sort of become a proxy for a broader conversation about, like, should Kamala Harris have let it rip a little bit? You know, I mean, like, should, should Joe Rogan, should she have gone on Joe Rogan, the arguably the biggest media platform in the country? Yes, obviously she should have. But the. If you watched Trump's three hour rambling mess of an interview, we know we all had the kind of a Rorsack test about what was our takeaway. And I think the takeaway for a lot of people was he didn't sound like a politician. You know, we made fun of him saying he does the weave. We called it being a rambling, incoherent old man.
- [32:27]
Jon Lovett
We thought he did pretty well.
- [32:29]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, but like, you know, so I think that's the question of like, should Democrats have to find ways to communicate to people where they don't sound like they're reading a script or talking points? Because that was the narrative. You started to hear a lot about Kamala Harris. There was a lot of tiktoks where people ask, hey, like, Bruce, what do you want for dinner? And it's like, well, I grew up in a working class family with a Formica table. Or people were. That was kind of a meme that people were making fun of her because she was so on message. Charlamagne asked her about this directly. She gave a good answer.
- [32:56]
Jon Lovett
Well, it was great.
- [32:57]
Tommy Vitor
We don't know. I mean, she gave an answer that worked in the moment, but maybe it was a sign about a broader challenge that was never addressed.
- [33:05]
Dan Pfeiffer
There are two separate issues here. One, there is what we say and how we say. Right? There's what we say. The words that come out of our mouth. And as we talked about in our last podcast, which feels like seven years ago, but was yesterday, that Democrats sound too much like politicians. And that's. That is not. That's not Kamala Harris herself. That is everyone.
- [33:21]
Jon Favreau
And also like 90% of Republicans, too.
- [33:22]
Dan Pfeiffer
Yeah, exactly.
- [33:23]
Jon Favreau
Just to.
- [33:24]
Dan Pfeiffer
I mean, J.D. vance sounds terrible. He's bad in these forums. The second issue is how we get people to hear what we're saying. And that's what we are failing dramatically as a party. We have not yet figured out how to get our message in front of voters who do not consume news as a hobby. And you can see that in part in the giant gap between how come layers did in the battleground states where we spent several billion dollars to communicate to those voters and where we didn't. Yeah, right. Lost six points nationally, three points in the battleground states. And that's because those people, they are consuming some information, but they are not getting our side of the story. We do not have a capacity as a party to tell our story on our terms to our voters. And that is, we don't fix that problem. None of the other things are. We could have a thousand messaging discussions about how we talk about the economy or how we sound more like a human, as has been your hobby for us for 20 years. And it won't matter because no one will fucking hear it.
- [34:18]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, we could spend another billion dollars in ads and, you know, battle to a close to a couple points down.
- [34:24]
Jon Lovett
Well, or. Or just that we. Like we were talking about this before recorded like all this. That's fucking conversation about Tony Hinchcliffe's joke and the whatsapps about the Puerto Rican community vote coming out in droves like it didn't matter. None of it was real. And. Or maybe it was real in the maybe 30 or 40% of the country that was tangentially touching the campaign, but that there's this vast tens of millions of people who are silent. We are not talking to them and they are not talking to us. And so we can run these campaigns and maybe they'll help at the margins, but those. But winning or losing will be determined by the vibes in a place we don't reach.
- [34:56]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. All right. Another take. This one's embodied by Wednesday's Bret Stevens column.
- [35:01]
Jon Lovett
You know, it's a good day at Pod Save America when we're going to Bret Stevens.
- [35:04]
Dan Pfeiffer
It's been a while since we've done that.
- [35:06]
Jon Favreau
I will say Reid included this because he said he was getting some texts from friends about the Bret Stevens column. And as he spoke somewhere about Reed's friends, I woke up and I had a text from. A text from my friend about the Bret Stevens column.
- [35:16]
Dan Pfeiffer
No text from my friends about Brett Stevenson.
- [35:17]
Jon Lovett
Not me.
- [35:18]
Tommy Vitor
Not a friend anymore.
- [35:19]
Jon Favreau
So Brett thinks that we're too annoying and elitist as a party, that we focus too much on scolding voters into appreciating Joe Biden's economy and achievements. I think we all talked about that. Yes. Agree there. That we too quickly respond to even reasonable critiques of progressive ideas by labeling them racist or misogynist or transphobic. And that by going so hard after Trump's crimes and trying to get him off ballots under the 14th Amendment, we ended up validating the narrative that we were using the levers of power against him. Who wants to take any of that?
- [35:49]
Jon Lovett
I just want to just note that he begins this column about how Democrats are kind of pedantic and priggish with an anecdote about a jazz era chess master.
- [35:59]
Jon Favreau
Yeah. Bret Stephens is not. He's not in touch with the working.
- [36:04]
Dan Pfeiffer
Folk or particularly self aware.
- [36:06]
Tommy Vitor
Right. Yeah. This is a man who tried to get a professor at a random college fired because that guy tweeted something mean. It called him a bedbug.
- [36:14]
Jon Lovett
So maybe not the messenger messenger.
- [36:16]
Jon Favreau
In the interest of a good debate. Right. Take Bret Stevens out of it. Let's just go with the message.
- [36:20]
Tommy Vitor
I mean, yes, it is stupid to tell people the economy is great when it is not. Yes, it is stupid to demand that someone agree that Joe Biden is actually FDR if they don't feel that way. Yes, it is stupid to scold someone who has different views. But again, what we're saying, like, it's exasperating because there's not a Democratic Party mute button where we can shut up all our annoying supporters. He also talks about the prosecutions Kamala Harris and Joe Biden couldn't tell Merrick Gardenland who to prosecute or not. They couldn't tell Alvin Bragg what to do. You couldn't tell prosecutors in Georgia what to do. Yeah. Did the prosecutions galvanize Republicans behind Donald Trump's candidacy and probably helped deliver him the primary? Yes, but no one's in charge of all of this.
- [36:58]
Jon Favreau
Donald Trump broke the law. Maybe people who break the law should be prosecuted for breaking the fucking law.
- [37:04]
Jon Lovett
Yeah. The idea that, like, okay, I would like to stipulate Democrats are annoying. Correct.
- [37:10]
Tommy Vitor
Present company included. Included.
- [37:12]
Jon Lovett
Democrats are annoying. However, the things that annoyed you personally aren't necessarily the reasons Donald Trump won. No I do not believe that the Colorado case about the 14th Amendment is what drove turnout in Arizona and Nevada. Give me a fucking.
- [37:25]
Dan Pfeiffer
I had forgotten that happened. I was forced to read this Bret Stevens column out of professional obligation.
- [37:29]
Jon Lovett
But. And what is also frustrating, as we were saying, is a lot of what annoys people like Bret Stephens and Elon Musk and all these people that are talking about this kind of thing is what they're. They're not really talking about Democratic politicians. They're talking about Democratic activists. They're talking about shit they see online.
- [37:46]
Jon Favreau
It's. It's. If Twitter was gone, probably most of the people who piss off the Bret Stephens of the world, they wouldn't, like, they wouldn't even hear their critiques. But it is like. And the thing I, like, look, there is a scolding, right? Like. And I think. I think for those of us online, not the Democratic politicians, when someone says something that you don't agree with or that you think is racist or sexist or transphobic, one thing you have to think about is, what does labeling that person racist, misogynist, transphobic? What does it get you? What does it do? Right? Sometimes it's just like, well, I did it because I'm angry, right? So it's like, that's fine. But in terms of, like, building a. You could also say, here's why that's wrong. Here's why I think that's wrong. Here's why. That was hurtful what you just said, right? Though there was A, like, from 2017 to now, the, like, check your privilege and do that. Like, it just doesn't. It doesn't bring people in. So is the only point.
- [38:42]
Jon Lovett
But. But I would just say, like, these are not the people running and losing elections. These are just people on the Internet. And so to me, it's like, okay, what. What is it? What is it? What does that say about, like, the Democratic apparatus and the kind of candidates it's producing? And I was thinking about this anecdote, which is that Hillary Clinton failed the bar the first time she took it. And it turned out that she had studied incredibly hard, as she did for every test she's ever taken, but she had somehow. I can't remember the details, but she had studied for the wrong version of the bar. The bar had changed. And sometimes I feel like Democrats are front of the classroom kids studying really, really hard for the wrong test. And a lot of our candidates feel like front of the classroom kids. And I think of Barack Obama, who had a front of the classroom brain, but Back of the classroom vibes. Bill Clinton is kind of like that. Like, Bernie Sanders is kind of like that. These are really smart people who are a little bit annoyed and kind of throwing spitballs at the teacher and like that.
- [39:38]
Jon Favreau
Like the Gretchen Whitmer has that vibe in Michigan.
- [39:41]
Jon Lovett
And so, like, I just, I am going to try to be on guard because, by the way, I'm a front of the classroom kid. And like, I like front of the classroom. I was Elizabeth Warren voter. They built a. They should have a shrine in the front of the classroom for Elizabeth Warren in front of the classroom person. But Donald Trump is not that. And he appeals to a lot of people. And I think in part because of that. And that is my takeaway from. Democrats are annoying.
- [40:06]
Dan Pfeiffer
I think we're missing a point here, which is there are annoying Democrats. None of them have been our presidential nominees recently. Right. They're not our Senate candidates. Republicans are also annoying. They also have very intolerant views. They also respond to people in insane ways. The Republicans have an apparatus that lifts up the worst of Democratic commentary, whether it's a Twitter person, a random state.
- [40:30]
Jon Favreau
Senator from Maine, or by the way, now just fake.
- [40:33]
Dan Pfeiffer
Yeah, we're fake.
- [40:34]
Jon Favreau
Right. Cause they made up. They will just make up something crazy. That sounds like a leftist would say. And then that's.
- [40:40]
Dan Pfeiffer
This is the power of libs of TikTok.
- [40:42]
Jon Favreau
Yeah.
- [40:42]
Dan Pfeiffer
Right. And this entire apparatus, Fox has been doing this for decades now to brand the Democrats in a way to make the caricature of Democrats seem real to lots of voters. We do not have a similar apparatus to do that about Republicans. Right. Do you remember in our intro video for a while at our live shows, we had that guy who used the example of Hitler. He was a random state senator, I think, from Oklahoma.
- [41:04]
Jon Favreau
That's so good. Yeah.
- [41:06]
Dan Pfeiffer
Like, use Hitler as an example of how you can make it from the streets to success.
- [41:11]
Jon Favreau
Like if we had that Donald Trump said something, then he praised Hitler and then he became president. Yeah. What a country.
- [41:16]
Dan Pfeiffer
But there is no apparatus to make that guy incredibly famous and emblematic of Republicans. And that's something. That's one of the. That goes back to the other point about how we, how we're losing the information warfare.
- [41:26]
Tommy Vitor
Well, you know, but also Trump, Tucker Carlson, some of the biggest voices in conservative media, they call Democrats demonic and evil.
- [41:33]
Dan Pfeiffer
Unpatriotic.
- [41:33]
Jon Favreau
Yes.
- [41:33]
Dan Pfeiffer
It's.
- [41:34]
Tommy Vitor
You know what I mean? And it's just no one cares.
- [41:35]
Dan Pfeiffer
Yeah.
- [41:36]
Tommy Vitor
The Antichrist audiences.
- [41:37]
Jon Favreau
Well, they call. They call Democrats. They think they're calling, like, Democratic politicians. That, you know, and what happens is they try to say that we think of other voters like that, you know.
- [41:48]
Dan Pfeiffer
But it's deplorables politics.
- [41:49]
Jon Favreau
It is deplorable and garbage and again.
- [41:52]
Jon Lovett
But they're allowed to say like, I mean, imagine if like Elizabeth Warren when she was like I was in Tennessee the other day, what a fucking dump it is. It wouldn't be seen as politically helpful. But Tucker Carls can rant against San Francisco as a place.
- [42:03]
Tommy Vitor
Trump said Detroit was a shithole, basically. I mean, and again I picked up.
- [42:07]
Dan Pfeiffer
Votes and again I was going to.
- [42:08]
Jon Favreau
Say again, those people can say it and they won and we're losing. So. Well, yeah, so that's something to think about for. Well, this is why it's not fair. Maybe the world as it is not fair, but maybe we should think about how to win for sure.
- [42:19]
Jon Lovett
But also that's why I go back to like Kamala Harris saying we're all going to be okay. And it's like, I don't know, are people in the market for that? Is that what the leadership we need is right now? Seems like people want to bought a little bit more anger and a little more antagonism and we can do that in a way that's we should, we.
- [42:31]
Jon Favreau
Should yell at voters more.
- [42:33]
Jon Lovett
I'm not saying we should yell at voters.
- [42:34]
Jon Favreau
I'm not saying we should call them more racist.
- [42:36]
Jon Lovett
That's not.
- [42:36]
Jon Favreau
I know, I know.
- [42:37]
Jon Lovett
Obviously I'm not what I'm saying, but I just, there's a kind of, there's an imperious.
- [42:41]
Tommy Vitor
Bret Stevens is annoying.
- [42:42]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, some good points.
- [42:43]
Jon Lovett
So are we. Everybody's annoying.
- [42:44]
Jon Favreau
He's had some good points. Lastly, there are those who say this wasn't really about Trump at all. It was about prices in the global anti inflammatory incumbent mood. We talked about this a little yesterday and we are in danger of overlearning our lesson because MAGA only works for Trump. What do you guys think?
- [43:10]
Dan Pfeiffer
Yes, the biggest factor is the political environment that supersedes every tactical strategic decision, every that the Harris campaign made, that the Trump campaign made the Trump. Chris A.C. wiles will be seen as geniuses because they won this race in the most favorable political environments someone could possibly imagine. And that's just how it works. Yes, it's true that MAGA only works for Trump, but Reagan only worked for Reagan. But then they won more. One more election after that and the Reagan, the coalition that Reagan built lasted for three presidential cycles and Bill Clinton kind of had to win with the Reagan coalition. It did not change again until 2008. So we had 28 years of basically the Reagan coalition working. And this is the, the urgency of our task is to make sure that the Trump coalition does not exist beyond this election. And it's not a guarantee that that automatically falls by the wayside if Donald Trump's not the top of the ticket.
- [44:08]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, I mean, John Byrne Murdoch at the Financial Times had this chart. For the first time since 1905, every governing party facing an election in a developed country this year lost vote share. First time that's happened since 1900. And that is like center left party, center right, far left, whatever it is. So there was an anti incumbent mood. I do think that like there's also been this rise of authoritarian movements all across the world. And you can, I think adequately blame inflation for sort of accelerating that. But it was also the forces were there before the pandemic causing this too. And I think one of the projects we have to figure out is like how we drain the appeal of autocratic regimes and demagogues so that people who might feel economically stressed, sort of like they've been left behind, overlooked, whatever it may be, actually don't vote for them and then vote for pro democracy candidates.
- [45:13]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, I was thinking about this too, and it's like, I know a lot of people listening have been feeling this too, which is like, how did this happen? How is it even close? Doesn't make sense. I still can't make sense of it. And I do think we'll also look back on this era and say we went through a traumatic once in a hundred year pandemic. Millions of people died. It messed with all of our mental health, it messed with our sense of safety, our sense of security, our sense of the world. And I think what we're talking about here is, yeah, maybe it really is just anti incumbency. Right. Maybe it really was just anger and inflation. But we got to make sure the door doesn't lock behind us because that's the risk here. And I think even if it is true, I think we should live as if it is not. We should do everything we can to fight back. As if this does represent a real kind of a real change. We have to figure out how to argue our way out of because of what Dan said.
- [46:01]
Tommy Vitor
I think anti incumbency is very real in the largest driving factor. And I'm not suggesting you guys are doing this, but I don't think we can let ourselves believe that that was all of it. I do think Trump has a unique appeal in the Republican Party and he outran lots of down ballot Republicans. And he's a noxious person and in many ways the worst candidate we all could imagine. And somehow he did better than we thought. And we need to sort of record with and understand that. And then also there were discrete issues where voters were like telling us for a year that they're mad about something and the Democratic Party refused to listen. And my biggest hobby horse on this is Gaza. The war was raging for a year. The Biden administration walked through the uncommitted vote process. 100,000 plus people voted uncommitted in the Democratic primary in Michigan and they didn't change a fucking thing about the policy. And then the DNC comes around and no Palestinian is allowed to speak and Arab American, Muslim American voters feel pushed out. And then when you look at precincts in Dearborn, Trump won Dearborn, Michigan with 42.8%. Harris got 36, Jill Stein got 18. It's half Middle Eastern. In 2020, Biden won almost 70% of the vote in Dearborn. And again, I'm not suggesting those margins would have changed the outcome of the election. Obviously there are broader forces at play. But when voters are like, we hate this thing you're doing and you keep doing it and what we're talking about here is outsourcing U.S. foreign policy to Bibi Netanyahu, one of the worst people on the planet besides Donald Trump, the.
- [47:32]
Jon Lovett
Trump of his country should listen to them.
- [47:33]
Tommy Vitor
We have like, you can't just not course correct in a situation like that.
- [47:37]
Dan Pfeiffer
I think we are also not fully analyzing the impact of gosh, when we limit it only to Michigan. Definitely because it's, there are like 4% of voters in the exit poll said that foreign policy was their top concern, which to me I find personally shockingly high.
- [47:52]
Tommy Vitor
Hey, those are my people. Trump won them 55, 39.
- [47:55]
Dan Pfeiffer
But it's just the year long impression about Democrats. Two young voters, because of the Biden administration's approach to Gaza mattered. I mean, there's a gigantic shift among young voters, particularly young men. Is it only Gaza? Of course not. But it did become a reason not to trust the party among voters we need.
- [48:14]
Jon Favreau
Well, I will say too, it's not, I mean, just, you know, we're all in support of the Ukraine against Putin's invasion here, but when you look at polls and you listen to focus groups, what comes up even more often than Gaza is like, why are we sending money to Ukraine or Israel and Gaza? Right. Like it's, it's all of it together. So you have some people who, like as I am, are like, I can't believe the fucking slaughter in Gaza is being allowed to continue right now. But also, like a lot of other people, why are we sending so much money overseas? And, you know, you can argue about how much we're sending and relative to this and that, the other thing, but like, that's a, that's a message that broke through. All right, so did we fix everything?
- [48:54]
Tommy Vitor
I think so.
- [48:55]
Jon Favreau
Any other, many other takes on how.
- [48:56]
Tommy Vitor
Do I caveat at the top? Do it for us?
- [48:59]
Jon Lovett
Does that work?
- [48:59]
Jon Favreau
I think we've talked about going forward anyway. There's going to be a lot more. We're going to have a lot more research in, talk to some really smart people. Dan, you're going to talk to some folks for a special Sunday edition of Pod Save America.
- [49:10]
Dan Pfeiffer
I'm going to talk to Carlos Odio, our friend who is an expert in Latino vote, and Sarah Longwell from the Bulwark about. We're going to dig in the details about what actually happened and maybe some lessons about going forward.
- [49:19]
Jon Favreau
And are you mostly just going to yell at her about, comma, campaigning with Liz Cheney?
- [49:22]
Dan Pfeiffer
No, I'm not. I'm not going to do that. No.
- [49:25]
Jon Favreau
We forgot to talk about that. You know, clear disaster.
- [49:28]
Dan Pfeiffer
Well, guess what, we got a lot.
- [49:29]
Tommy Vitor
Of podcasts to go.
- [49:30]
Dan Pfeiffer
So my sense as a Democrat has been around a lot of losses. This conversation is going to continue for.
- [49:36]
Jon Favreau
A while, especially now. Yeah, we've been there. We're doing the same thing we've been doing. All right, let's talk about the Senate and the House, where things stand with congressional control. In the Nevada Senate race, it's looking better and better for Jackie Rosen. AP hasn't called it as of 1pm Pacific Time on Thursday, but Decision Desk HQ and John Raulston's Nevada Independent have. The AP has called Pennsylvania for Dave McCormick, but Casey has not conceded. The Casey campaign still believes there's lots of ballots that haven't been counted and they think they could come out ahead. So we shall see on that one. In the House, it's a more fluid picture. There are 29 races that haven't yet been called, but that includes a lot of races that are, you know, probably going to be the Democrats going to win or the Republicans going to win, but the count just isn't done for whatever reason. Within that number, there's about a dozen swing races that aren't over yet. That includes Marcy Captor in Ohio, who's ahead a tiny bit, and her race has Gone to a recount. And then, of course, races in California and Arizona where we canvassed, where the final count will likely be determined by on the ground efforts to cure defective ballots. Something's wrong with your ballot. You signed it wrong. You did something wrong. You get a call, you can fix your ballot and they will count it. Democrats, including our friends at VoteSave America, believe there is a path still to a razor thin House majority. More on that in a minute. Just so everyone understands, what's the real world difference between a Republican trifecta? Democrats getting control of the House.
- [51:05]
Dan Pfeiffer
If we win the House, Donald Trump will pass no legislation in his entire presidency.
- [51:10]
Jon Favreau
That's cool.
- [51:10]
Tommy Vitor
I like that.
- [51:11]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, that's a big one. That's. No national abortion ban. If they want. If they try to do that. No repeal of the Affordable Care Act. No budget cuts. No huge tax cuts.
- [51:20]
Tommy Vitor
Gut the ira.
- [51:21]
Jon Favreau
No, that's right. No gutting of the ira. The CHIPS act stands.
- [51:26]
Dan Pfeiffer
Thank goodness.
- [51:29]
Jon Favreau
It's a good. It's creating jobs all over.
- [51:31]
Tommy Vitor
The way you said it.
- [51:32]
Jon Favreau
I know, I know I do. That's why I did it. What do we know about the map and these uncalled House races? What are we thinking? I mean, we just. We know from 18 that in California does take a while. And then at the end, in 18, that's when a lot of the Democratic ballots came.
- [51:46]
Jon Lovett
It could take a while and it's gonna be tough.
- [51:47]
Tommy Vitor
I think there's six races in California, two in Arizona, so it could be a while.
- [51:51]
Dan Pfeiffer
And the question in California primarily is, is the remaining male vote that still has to come in going to be as Democratic as it has been in previous elections? If it is, we got a very.
- [51:59]
Jon Favreau
Male ballots. Not male. Not male versus female.
- [52:01]
Dan Pfeiffer
Yes. Yes. Male ballots.
- [52:03]
Jon Lovett
Yes. The male ballots we know are not good for us.
- [52:07]
Dan Pfeiffer
Did females send male ballots? If so, got a shot.
- [52:10]
Jon Favreau
That's it. Okay. That's a good take. Let's talk about the Senate. We know Republicans will get control. So here's the map. In 2026, we can flip Maine because Susan Collins is there, and either we beat her or she might retire. Murkowski in Alaska has a wild card. I don't know.
- [52:25]
Dan Pfeiffer
That's a wild.
- [52:26]
Jon Favreau
Here's a good one. North Carolina, Todd. That's a possibility. And then it's like Texas again.
- [52:33]
Tommy Vitor
Yeah, Sean Cornyn's up.
- [52:34]
Jon Favreau
It's Cornyn. So it's Texas.
- [52:36]
Jon Lovett
Tough.
- [52:36]
Jon Favreau
And then after that, it's Ohio, Iowa, because there's going to be a J.D. vance replacement. Ohio, Iowa, Montana. Been there and Nebraska again. So it is a. And to defend. We have to defend Ossoff in Georgia, Gary Peters in Michigan and Tina Smith in Minnesota.
- [52:54]
Tommy Vitor
Gene Shaheen, Mark Warner.
- [52:55]
Jon Favreau
Gene Shaheen and Mark Warner. Yeah. So that's our. Ossoff's hard, obviously Peters is hard. The defend seats aren't as hard as they were, I think, this time around. But flipping after you get. After you get through Collins, it's. It's a tough map.
- [53:09]
Tommy Vitor
Tom Tillis should be beatable. He spells his name with an H. Thom.
- [53:14]
Jon Lovett
Yeah. That is stupid.
- [53:15]
Tommy Vitor
Disqualifying.
- [53:15]
Jon Lovett
That is dumb.
- [53:16]
Jon Favreau
Okay, that's something. That's good. That's. See, this is the kind of creative thinking.
- [53:19]
Tommy Vitor
I can say that this is the.
- [53:20]
Jon Favreau
Kind of creative, strategic thinking we need in the Democratic Party as a.
- [53:23]
Tommy Vitor
As a baby named adult. Tommy. I can say that.
- [53:26]
Jon Favreau
Now that we've talked about the stakes, let's talk about what you can do. These uncalled House campaigns, they could use your support. They need to fund legal challenges. They need to keep paying staff salaries as the courts continue to count. And then an easy thing you can do is help people cure their ballots. They need volunteers to help people do that and to reach out to people. To find out how you can help, you can just go to votesave America.com it's really important. This message has been paid for by VoteSave America. You can learn more at VoteSaveAmerica.com this ad has not been authorized by any candidate or candidates committee. It's unbelievable. I have to say that every time.
- [53:58]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, I don't think we can.
- [54:00]
Jon Favreau
I don't think we have to.
- [54:01]
Jon Lovett
I just don't believe it. What are laws anymore? Trump's president. You have to say that every time.
- [54:05]
Jon Favreau
What's going to happen for us again?
- [54:06]
Jon Lovett
Yeah, I guess. I guess. The law.
- [54:07]
Jon Favreau
We're on the wrong side of the law.
- [54:09]
Dan Pfeiffer
The first law the FEC ever enforces will be a Trump FEC case against us.
- [54:14]
Jon Favreau
Anyway, how are y'all feeling, you guys?
- [54:16]
Tommy Vitor
Terrible.
- [54:17]
Jon Lovett
I've. I'm doing the stages of grief in reverse. I'm on anger today. I'm pretty mad.
- [54:24]
Jon Favreau
Yeah, I woke up because I hit myself with too many of the takes this morning.
- [54:28]
Jon Lovett
Well, honestly, mad's better than sad. And I'm really enjoying the stupid fucking takes. I am. It is getting me putting one foot in front of the other.
- [54:36]
Jon Favreau
All right, well, everyone enjoy your takes, but more importantly, enjoy your weekend. And Dan will be in your feeds on Sunday with a great new episode. And then Tommy and Lovett and I will be back in your feeds on Tuesday.
- [54:47]
Dan Pfeiffer
Bye everyone.
- [54:49]
Jon Favreau
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