Dave Weigel: Now That's a Landslide

Summary

---

Podcast Summary: The Bulwark Podcast

Episode: Dave Weigel: Now That's a Landslide

Date: November 5, 2025
Host: Tim Miller
Guest: Dave Weigel (Semaphore reporter, author)

---

Brief Overview

This episode breaks down the results and repercussions of a “landslide” set of elections, with a particular focus on key races in New York, Virginia, and New Jersey. Tim Miller and Dave Weigel analyze the shockwaves sent through both major parties—especially the Republicans—by unexpectedly large Democratic wins. Major themes include the normalization of political backlash against Trump’s policies, the impacts on redistricting and congressional maps, the turnout surge, Hispanic and immigrant voters’ reactions to GOP messaging, and what Democrats might learn from upstart Zoran Mamdani’s mayoral win in NYC.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Trump Backlash & Political Normalization

[01:51–04:00]

• The episode opens on the impact of Trump’s direct threats to punish cities and states led by political foes, highlighting this as “new” in American politics.
• Both parties had an interest in using the NYC mayoral race as a proxy for national arguments, but the results reflect a return to “normal” politics, with voters rejecting the idea of presidential retribution.
• High turnout in NYC, the highest since the Beatles era, helped drive the Democratic win.

Memorable Quote:

“There has been a normalization of the idea that the president can stop funding states and politicians he doesn’t like… that is new.”
—Dave Weigel, [03:15]

2. Democratic Victories and Factional Narratives

[04:00–05:43]

• The elections were a reaction to the failure to deliver on economic promises, with backlash in Hispanic and immigrant communities over costs and Republican immigration overreach.
• Both progressive (DSA) and moderate Democrats found success, but the backlash against costs and “Trump’s tariffs” defined the race.

Memorable Quote:

“There was an across the board backlash to costs continuing to be high in Hispanic communities, to the overreach… on immigration, and just a general sense of enthusiasm on the side of the out party.”
—Dave Weigel, [04:40]

3. Immigration and the Hispanic/Immigrant Vote

[09:20–13:13]

• New Jersey and Northeast races provided a test for Trump’s mass deportation rhetoric, revealing that Latino and other immigrant communities are not receptive to aggressive deportation policies.
• The episode notes that the Trump-era appeal to working-class minorities may have peaked, with reversals possible when Democrats stay focused on costs and basic economic grievances.

Memorable Quote:

“Latino voters are very different, but in the Northeast, the answer is: not really much at all. They were very easy for Democrats to flip back.”
—Bowen Yang, [11:00]

4. Republican Messaging & Disconnect

[14:43–20:34]

• Republicans fell back on crime and violence narratives, but these didn’t resonate beyond their media bubbles.
• Attempts to use incidents like the Charlie Kirk assassination to tar Democrats with violence fell flat with voters.
• Dave recounts how Republican talking points were only registering with deeply embedded conservative media consumers.

Key Moment:

“It’s a dumb dad joke. And then Ron DeSantis, Mike Lee, the whole conservative ecosystem jumped on this as if a bunch of teachers got together and went to school like, ‘We’re going to do a fuck you Charlie Kirk costume.’”
—Dave Weigel, [19:04]

5. Redistricting Shockwave

[29:55–36:39]

• The Democratic landslides, especially in Virginia, radically strengthen their hand in upcoming redistricting, with the potential to reclaim several congressional seats.
• Republican plans to “gerrymander their way to a hard-to-penetrate majority” have been thrown into doubt.
• Gavin Newsom’s bold pursuit of partisan redistricting in California serves as a model for other Democratic governors.

Notable Quote:

“I think that chilling effect on [Republican] effort is really—the most meaningful story of the night for me.”
—Dave Weigel, [35:25]

6. What Democrats Can Learn From Zoran Mamdani

[44:05–48:47]

• Zoran’s NYC mayoral campaign engaged a new electorate by focusing relentlessly on tangible working-class issues.
• His speeches hyper-personalized the struggles of “the dude whose knuckles are burned because he’s a fry cook” instead of using vague platitudes—seen as a model for broader Democratic messaging.
• Guest discussion notes that this approach may not be one-size-fits-all but illustrates a way to reach non-engaged voters.

Memorable Quote:

“He just starts by listing out random working class jobs and how this victory is for those people. Just a notably different strategy than Democrats being like, ‘I care about working people.’”
—Tim Miller, [45:32]

7. New York & Public Statements on Immigration

[51:20–52:25]

• The episode features a notable soundbite from the newly elected NYC mayor:

“New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants, and as of tonight, led by an immigrant. So hear me, President Trump… to get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us.”
—Zoran Mamdani (quoted by Tim Miller), [51:39]

• Discussion follows about how Republicans may attempt to make Zoran a national “face” for Democratic supposed radicalism in 2028—and whether that can backfire.

8. Downballot Notes & Ballot Initiatives

[56:39–58:51]

• Democrats won a string of downballot races, flipping Republican offices in historically red or swing districts (e.g., Bucks County DA in Pennsylvania).
• The podcast highlights the importance of successful yimby (pro-housing) ballot measures and the rise of new Democratic constituencies in suburban and exurban areas.

9. Final Diversions: GOP Personalities in Chaos

[61:45–65:31]

• A lighter segment on Nancy Mace’s erratic behavior in the South Carolina governor’s race, with Tim and Dave lampooning her conspiracy-minded tweeting and self-martyrdom.

---

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On the “Normalization” of Political Retribution:
  “[The] president can stop funding states and politicians he doesn’t like, which is new… I don’t remember Joe Biden saying, ‘Sorry about the hurricane aid, Ron DeSantis, I’m giving it to my friends.’”
  —Dave Weigel, [03:15]

• On the Lesson for Democrats:
  “He’s got a lot of focus on that. That is a good lesson… The positivity, the happiness, he’s smiling, it’s an upbeat message.”
  —Tim Miller, [46:01]

• On Republicans’ Loss of Narrative Control:
  “Their first gambit here seems to be potentially—I don’t want to overstate it—but, like, potentially rebuffed.”
  —Tim Miller, [37:01]

---

Important Segments & Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment | |-------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:51–04:00 | Opening analysis of the Trump/NYC dynamic, presidential retribution | | 04:00–05:43 | Factional narratives and “reaction” effect in Democratic coalition | | 09:20–13:13 | Hispanic/immigrant vote and the backlash to mass deportation | | 14:43–20:34 | Crime messaging and the conservative media bubble | | 29:55–36:39 | Redistricting implications and Democratic resurgence | | 44:05–48:47 | Lessons from Zoran’s campaign and personalization of political messaging | | 51:20–52:25 | Immigrant pride/NYC, Zoran’s victory speech | | 56:39–58:51 | Downballot wins, Pennsylvania and Midwest; limits of progressive criminal justice | | 61:45–65:31 | Nancy Mace segment, GOP chaos, lighter closing |

---

Tone and Language

• Smart, irreverent, and wonky, with moments of snark (e.g., frequent jokes about GOP Twitter, use of pop culture, “crepiness”).
• Critical of both parties’ strategic missteps but openly supportive of liberal-democratic principles.
• Dialogue is high-energy, opinionated, and, at times, personal.

---

Summary

This episode thoroughly examines the “landslide” Democratic victories in key 2025 elections and what they signal for 2028. Dave Weigel and Tim Miller argue that backlash to Trump’s overt retribution, rising costs, and harsh immigration policies have re-energized Democrats at multiple levels, complicating GOP gerrymandering strategies and offering valuable lessons for Democratic messaging. The episode highlights a rising “screw it, we’re fighting too” attitude among Democrats, best embodied in Zoran Mamdani’s personalized, upbeat approach. The GOP, meanwhile, is portrayed as increasingly out of touch, stuck in a feedback loop with partisan media, and at risk of losing their strategic edge in future elections, unless they reconnect with real-world voter concerns.

---

Transcript

[Matt Rogers]

This is Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. JBL Tour Pro3 earbuds are for those.

[Bowen Yang]

Who don't conform to the standard.

[Matt Rogers]

Yeah, I mean if you want to get into some touchscreen technology, how about the smart charging case Clear sound? These are not standard things. You're only gonna get them with the JBL Tour Pro 3, baby. And I love the sound of JBL when it goes.

[Bowen Yang]

These earbuds are packed with innovation because you can't stand out by following others.

[Matt Rogers]

Touchscreen Smart charging case for one touc instant EQ customization, true adaptive noise canceling and the one of a kind audio transmitter which can plug and play with everything from game consoles to in flight entertainment. What more could you want? First doesn't follow grab a pair at.

[Lowe's Advertiser]

Jbl.Com@Lowe'S this veterans Day and every day verified military members, veterans and their spouses get automatic silver status in Milo's rewards with free standard shipping plus 10% off eligible purchases with no annual limit. It's one way we honor and give back to those who have served and stayed still. Do learn more now@lowe's.com Military 10 discount can't be combined with another offer Exclusions Terms and conditions apply. Loyalty program subject to terms and conditions details@lowe's.com terms subject to change.

[Donald Trump (referenced)]

So Donald Trump, since I know you're watching, I have four words for you. Turn the volume up.

[Tim Miller]

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back to this show. My friend politics reporter at Semaphore, author of the show that Never Ends the Rise and Fall of Prog Rock. We'll get to that at the end.

[Dave Weigel]

But we got some politicking to do first. It's Dave Weigel.

[Tim Miller]

David we'll do some New York mayor's race, but Zo run there delivered a message to Grandpa Trump. Make sure he was listening. It feels like he was listening. Last night he did some bleeding. What did you think was the message.

[Dave Weigel]

That was taken from the President last night?

[Bowen Yang]

It was really unsurprising. The President's been kind of boring frankly about New York and you could tell that Zoron was bored in talking about it. He was a very on message candidate kind of famously. It was a very funny interview he did with Ari Melbert where Melbourne dares him to connect everything he can back to the cost of living. But yeah, it wasn't a secret. I think Republicans and Trump would tell anybody that would listen. We want this guy to win so we can use him as his foil in every, every district and Senate. Republicans had a memo today saying, we're going to. Here is how every single person we're running against, we're going to tie to Mamdani in some way. And I think the way it played out in New York, there's so, so many inputs that went into. This is the highest turnout for a New York Mares race since I think the Beatles were still a band. The selector was very different. Lots of things influenced it. Andrew Cuomo going around begging people to drop out. That helped him. But the premise of Trump criticizing Mamdani was often, I don't like his policies and I will hurt the city and take its money away to punish him. Cuomo kind of went along with that. The whole protection racket idea of the president and saying, he's going to eat you alive, but I know how to deal with them. And 50 point something percent of voters said, we're going to go with a young guy who wants to fight Trump. That feels like more normal politics to me. I feel like there has been a normalization of the idea that the president can stop funding, funding states and politicians he doesn't like, which is new. I don't remember Joe Biden saying, I don't like Ron DeSantis, sorry about the hurricane aid. I'm giving it to my friends.

[Dave Weigel]

Yeah, that is new.

[Tim Miller]

And I think it's interesting, even good.

[Dave Weigel]

On this, talking about this, about the.

[Tim Miller]

Backlash, like the kind of people being pissed that they're not getting their money.

[Dave Weigel]

And services and maga, thinking they can make this all part of some like, imaginary Internet war where they're owning people and dropping poop from airplanes and stuff and like actual voters.

[Tim Miller]

Like, wait a minute, the bridge isn't open. And so I want to get back.

[Dave Weigel]

To New York in a little bit. But we had to start with Zoran Troll and Grandpa Trump. The biggest picture, though, you know, you wrote this morning for 74 blowout state elections offer something from. For every Democrat.

[Tim Miller]

And I think that's true.

[Dave Weigel]

I like the meta narrative here. And I think that a lot of.

[Tim Miller]

Democrats, a lot of people listen to.

[Dave Weigel]

This show, a lot of people that.

[Tim Miller]

Have interest in what direction the party goes.

[Dave Weigel]

Wanted to make yesterday kind of about the factional fights about the rise of.

[Tim Miller]

The DSA or normie centrist candidates doing better in governor's races, et cetera. And the reality, I think, was the.

[Dave Weigel]

Elections offered something for every Democrat because the election was a reaction to a president that has not delivered on the economic promises that he made for people. And there was a backlash across the board and obviously there's some differences, various races we'll get into but there was an across the board backlash to costs continuing to be high in Hispanic communities, to the overreach, especially to the overreach on immigration and just a general sense of the enthusiasm, as is often the case in off years elections, being on the side of the out party rather than the party in power.

[Tim Miller]

Would you agree with that? I kind of like there's one of these things where people like to say.

[Dave Weigel]

Like Zoran type candidates couldn't have won in Virginia and the other way around and I'm kind of like I don't.

[Tim Miller]

Know actually I think, I think Zoran.

[Dave Weigel]

Probably would have won in Virginia and New Jersey and in a non sex.

[Tim Miller]

Pest establishment Democrat who didn't like play.

[Dave Weigel]

Footsie with Donald Trump probably could have won in New York City last night. And there's a big backlash against Trump generally.

[Bowen Yang]

The events change things. I'm not impugning what Mamdani did because it's historic and he changed electorate. And I, I don't think any candidate added as many Democrats to the voter rolls as they campaigned. It's more more than 150,000 people joining the party to vote for Zoran successfully last night. But yeah, it was different than the rest of these races because Cheryl and Spanberger who won by landslides and like real landslides, not, not like 1.2% but if you look at the swing state. Yeah, no, like a real landslide, like one that carried along Democrats who did not think they were going to win their local races. They both ran overlapping campaigns that you set it up pretty well. Costs are too high. Donald Trump is hurting you on purpose through tariffs and through doge firings and through camps in the Gateway Tunnel. And I'm not going to get distracted by other stuff that was their campaigns. And I was writing other piece for the newsletter about we campaign reporters need to appreciate that our interests of writing interesting stories and new stuff every day or so are across purposes with candidates who want to be consistent. So I was noticing in the last week as I was in these states and last places I went to were New Jersey and New York and finding it looked like a Democratic electorate looked like they were probably going to win that they didn't think they win by this much. And then I would see commentary that said, well look at this boring Mikey Sheryl answer or look at Abigail Spamberger having a long winded answer to something. And I Was thinking, well, yeah, because they want to get to the cost issue. They want to explain the cost they're talking about. And there was this idea also of magic that Trump was able to perform that Cittarelli might pull off to a lesser extent, Earl Sears could pull off. But sticking with Cittarelli, Hudson Passaic County, Patterson like Union City, these places that were moving towards Trump, he really did campaign in those places. His campaign bus, like the biggest pitcher on the bus was Chittarelli in North Bergen, which is a very Hispanic communities surrounded by Hispanic voters. He put in the time, he got excitement when he was in the parades there just got destroyed. And he was not able to convert those people who took a chance on Trump into Republican voters. And if you were a Republican making maps and target lists for next year, assuming that the electorate is what it was in 2024, it's not going to be.

[Tim Miller]

I want to go really deep in that because to me, I think actually.

[Dave Weigel]

Bigger than the races themselves is the impact on this map and the redistricting and Trump's efforts to rejigger or some Democrats have said rig the midterms with the redistricting efforts. I think that took the biggest hit of all last night. But let's just go a little bit deeper on some of the things you said in some of these states. Looking at New Jersey in particular. And I will just say I will raise my hand as that's why I want to have you on. You're actually, you actually go to the states and follow the campaigns.

[Tim Miller]

I'll raise my hand among the people.

[Dave Weigel]

Who was a little frustrated with the Cheryl and Spamberger.

[Tim Miller]

But I always said, I always caveat it. I was like, they're probably doing the right thing that they need to do.

[Dave Weigel]

To win in New Jersey and Virginia.

[Tim Miller]

I was like, I just need, like this is about my emotional needs and I need an excited somebody to be excited about. You know, like all my lived out.

[Dave Weigel]

Friends were so excited about Zoran and.

[Tim Miller]

I kind of came around on being.

[Dave Weigel]

Excited to be against Zoran's haters.

[Tim Miller]

But I was like, I wanted somebody to be excited and they weren't doing that because they were running discipline campaigns.

[Dave Weigel]

That were smart for an off off your election. But to that point in New Jersey.

[Tim Miller]

Mikey ends up winning by 13.

[Dave Weigel]

That's a bigger pull miss than the Trump pollenist for 2024 that people talk about. The idea that she'd win a double digit victory I think exceeded even the most optimistic Ken Martin projection in New Jersey.

[Tim Miller]

What do you think that Was you talked a little bit about the canceled projects.

[Dave Weigel]

You talked about the Hispanic vote. Passaic county, which you mentioned. Sheryl wins by 15. That's the most Hispanic county. It's a county Trump flipped last time. First Republican win in ages. He'd won it narrowly. Mikey is up by 15 as of this morning. What else do you attribute the big kind of surprising win for Sheryl?

[Bowen Yang]

We were talking a little about immigration, and that was part of it. So this is the first real test because we had the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. We've had these races in Iowa. We have not had, until yesterday, race with a large number of Hispanic voters where Republicans were doing a gut check on, okay, he said mass deportation. And it looks like this. It looks like this ice center where the member of Congress is going to get arrested for resisting arrest at a protest. And it looks like memes of halo about how awesome it is to everything. We need to go into all of it. But how much were Latino voters in the Northeast going to put up with that? The answer is not really much at all. And Latino voters are very different, and they come from different parts of the world to America, around the country. Texas Latinos, I don't see evidence from. There were just some ballot measures in Texas, some constitutional amendments. You didn't see a shift to the left in Texas, but it was not a candidate shift. This is the test we've seen of the Trump policy in action over immigration that is actually removing not just criminals from the country, but people who've overstayed their visas and have not committed any other crime. We still have the ongoing birthright citizen case. Right. Which is going to blow up again next year, or DACA kids in every way. The Stephen Miller policy of just trying to get immigrants out of the country, obviously, I think probably frustrating to Bulwark readers because you could say, like, didn't you guys look at the signs of the convention, that this is their plan?

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, they put it right there on the sign, y'.

[Bowen Yang]

All.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, yeah, I got pretty frustrated. We were doing frustration. There was a tweet about.

[Dave Weigel]

I saw you. That you also shared about a South.

[Tim Miller]

Asian precinct in New Jersey that went.

[Dave Weigel]

From, like, Patterson Trump plus 20 to Cheryl plus 70. And it's a tiny precinct, but they had, like, 300 votes for Trump and 22 votes for Citarelli.

[Tim Miller]

And it's like, y' all recent immigrants. Like, we're telling you that it was not just going to be trend.

[Dave Weigel]

But yeah, that part is frustrating. But it's noteworthy, though, because that was.

[Tim Miller]

An Important part of the Trump shift.

[Dave Weigel]

Right.

[Tim Miller]

Like not just with Hispanic voters, kind of across the board.

[Bowen Yang]

Yeah.

[Dave Weigel]

With recent immigrants and a more, more.

[Bowen Yang]

Minor part because this is Asians but also Arab Americans. Yeah. In 2024, Trump ran on I'm going to bring peace to the Middle east and he has got this deal in Gaza. I'm definitely not going to go in the rabbit hole of what the Gaza deal looks like, et cetera. But those voters also kind of rented Trump for one election and then given the chance to vote on other issues with Gaza. Not top of mind, didn't vote for Republicans. They turned out they were very easy for Democrats to flip back. I think his numbers on foreign policy went up a little bit and then nothing else did. Like this is a little reminiscent of the George H.W. bush problem in the 90s. Great job on foreign policy. We don't care. Things cost too much. And that's certainly true for yeah. First generation Americans who are also getting, they're getting more racist rhetoric from social media, from conservatives on social media than they would have before. I think just it has changed who is posting on it. People are bolder, they're global worried.

[Tim Miller]

Look, you've seen this just in and.

[Dave Weigel]

I don't know if you've seen it.

[Tim Miller]

In your reporting, but I've seen man on the street interviews from recent immigrants that are not Hispanic. Latino, but they're like, I'm worried. I've seen examples of people being deported, you know, people getting papers checked and.

[Dave Weigel]

That, things of that nature.

[Tim Miller]

So I do think that, you know.

[Dave Weigel]

A lot of these other communities are also like feeling in addition to like the race of social media stuff, like a little bit of fear now and like wait a minute, are these masked.

[Tim Miller]

Guys going to come for me and my family? Do I have to worry about that now? I think that's potentially having an impact.

[Dave Weigel]

Even beyond the Hispanic community.

[Bowen Yang]

Yeah. And it hasn't solved the Democrats problem because I think the question for them in 2028 will be if we put you back in charge, do you let the border fly open again and people come into the country that turns out to be unpopular. Can Democrats be trusted to enforce that? You've got Ruben Gallego who was campaigning in New Jersey for Cheryl. You, you've got some Democrats just moving on that issue, not to the far right, but Moving to like 2012 Obama actually maybe you needed a deporter in chief while you're also not willy nilly deporting everyone who you can find in the country so they're not there yet they didn't solve their problems. It was just that there was a cost to the way Republicans have carried themselves and just the hubris. The focus they have from day to day is really not on issues that voters care much about. And they cannot stop gloating about enactment of their policies, even when they're not that popular. If I was listening to Republicans in D.C. over the last week, I was hearing about Arctic Frost and investigations of the 2020 election and the plots to overturn it, and hearing about James Comey and just the degree to which the Republican conversation is centered around Trump and his. In his interest and not voters. That was not what it was in 2024. I mean, he could go off the tangent on a tangent at a rally, but the whole party just got very confident that elections were, like, static. And there were. And there was. They didn't really need to go into what voters cared about because Democrats were so weak.

[Dave Weigel]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

The vibes. And then.

[Dave Weigel]

And just being out of touch with where voters are.

[Tim Miller]

In some ways, it's a flip of.

[Dave Weigel]

You know, how people felt about Democrats. Right. Like, where, like, there's too much focus on some of the cultural issues, et cetera. Right. It's like, why people are focused too much on the Donald Trump's random obsessions rather than the things that people are upset about.

[Tim Miller]

One thing that made me think about.

[Dave Weigel]

This yesterday, and it hadn't really occurred to me until I actually got the exit poll data.

[Tim Miller]

One of the things I always do.

[Dave Weigel]

In the exit poll data is, what was the most important issue for you? What did you vote for last year? As I was dealing with my PTSD from being in New York last November.

[Tim Miller]

I remember looking at that early exit.

[Dave Weigel]

Not at the ballot number of Trump, Kamala, but at the. What is the issue that was most important to you? And you look at those numbers and last year, and it was like, you know, immigration was up there and crime and your economy.

[Tim Miller]

You figure that probably is cutting against.

[Dave Weigel]

You know, the Democrats. And you look at, like, abortion and.

[Tim Miller]

Democracy, you figure that's probably cutting towards.

[Dave Weigel]

You know, that's right. Those are probably Democratic issues. You just looked at it all, and I looked at the jumble of issues, and I was like, I don't know, this feels like a Trump jumble of issues that people care about.

[Tim Miller]

Yesterday I was looking at the exit.

[Dave Weigel]

Polls, and they came out and the.

[Tim Miller]

Issues were like, economy, immigration, healthcare, democracy. And I looked at him, I was.

[Dave Weigel]

Like, I wonder if any of these are Trump.

[Tim Miller]

What are the Earl Sears and Cittarelli.

[Dave Weigel]

People Even saying any basket of those issues could have been bad for him.

[Tim Miller]

And I think that kind of to.

[Dave Weigel]

Me represented how they're in a bad place right now just as a party politically. What would you say that they own issue wise where you'd look at that and be like, oh, those people are coming out for Trump crime?

[Tim Miller]

I guess maybe.

[Dave Weigel]

But it's hard to even think about any. Like you figure that immigration is probably cutting both ways at this point.

[Bowen Yang]

Yeah. And the salience of crime has been falling. You saw that with Mamdani success. That was the first. But if you look at mayoral races that were not that competitive but gotten the news Cincinnati, there was this drunk brawl at a jazz fest that got weeks of coverage on Fox News Conservative media as Cincinnati falling apart at the seams. And J.D. vance's half brother was the the challenger to the mayor lost by 50, 56 points. I think the mayor of Charlotte was facing reelection. We have one very easily.

[Tim Miller]

Poor J.D.

[Dave Weigel]

Vance'S half brother.

[Bowen Yang]

What a shame. He did a lot for him. I think he posted. He's a good guy and you should vote for him. But he wasn't out there campaigning for him.

[Tim Miller]

JD Is good at sucking up and.

[Dave Weigel]

Riding the coattails of somebody that's on their way up. That's been his prime skill throughout life. And so he's not grabbing onto a sinking stone just because he's blood.

[Bowen Yang]

That's true. He doesn't like to endorse people who are not winning even if they're related to him. Yeah. Charlotte. The mayor of Charlotte got reelected. And again, if you paid a lot of attention to conservative media, which I know you do and I do, there was a pretty clear story in conservative media for a few weeks which was this psychopath who killed a woman on transit in Charlotte. That's Democrats fault. Specifically, it's the Roy Cooper's fault. The former governor Reason TBD and also Charlie Kirk was assassinated. And murder, murder, death, death. Democrats want you to die. Democrats laugh about you dying. J. Jones is texted we'll get into that. They folded that in. It was a coherent message. Like coherent doesn't mean effective. But this was a closing message for winsome Sears in winsome World. Sears in Virginia was the Democrats are violent people. We can't allow their violence to win. And you saw a little bit of this hangover today of Ron DeSantis, other Republicans saying, well, I guess this election means that Democrats embrace violence. And you're starting to see, I think the separation from the epistemic bubble that Republicans get their news from and what voters who just kind of turn up for elections and are worried about costs. Live from. Actually, it was funny. I was at Curtis Lewis final rally in New York, not because I thought he'd win. I just was like, I need to get some Republican voters. And I heard some people there talking about, if I can paraphrase the conversation, hey, did you see that? That picture of all the teachers making fun of Charlie Kirk assassination? And they're referring to. There are these teachers in Arizona who had a shirt that was a bloody Halloween shirt that said problem solved. That was a math joke which they'd worn in the past. It was a joke about math problems really hard and we beat it. Look at this blood on me. I kind of get it. I'm not sure if I'd wear that shirt.

[Dave Weigel]

Yeah, it's a dumb dad joke. I did a whole video on this.

[Tim Miller]

It's a dumb dad joke. And then like Ron DeSantis, Mike Lee.

[Dave Weigel]

The whole conservative ecosystem jumped on this as if like a bunch of teachers got together and went to school and were like, we're going to do it. A fuck you, Charlie Kirk costume.

[Bowen Yang]

Right? And their assumption was, well, everyone must know that when people see that, they think of Charlie Kirk. And I thought, with no disrespect to Charlie Kirk, who I liked personally, did not deserve to be murdered. That's not what the country was thinking about. Like it or not, this is a very distractible country that can't remember what it watched yesterday. And the effort to say the country is going to change and we're going to have a new conversation about political violence after Charlie Kirk was assassinated. One, that didn't happen for people who are not paying a ton of attention to news. Two, it's pretty convenient because it's not like Donald Trump said, you're right, I'm going to change my tone and not joke about shitting on protesters anymore. They kind of wanted it both ways. We're going to say Democrats are crazy and violent and we're also not going to police our own speech in any way whatsoever. The combination of that, I think you were seeing how just Republicans were not connecting with people who in a non presidential environment are not paying attention to that sort of news. And the final thing I'll say Cittarelli in New Jersey, who's one of the real losers in this process, his stump speech was day one, I declare the end of sanctuary cities in New Jersey and I get us out of the greenhouse initiative. And that's going to drive down energy costs. Are those immediate things that solve your problems. Are they the sanctuary cities? Is that not something Trump is taking care of right now? They just were not very immediate issues unless you were watching Newsmax all day. And those are the big issues.

[Dave Weigel]

And just hearing you talk about that and try to explain it just shows how unresonant it is as a message as compared to the type of stuff Trump was running on in 24.

[Tim Miller]

All right, I got to tell you once again about this game changing product I used before a night out with drinks. It's called Pre Alcohol. Whether you're raising a glass, you're a team winning. Catching up with old buddies back in town. Happens to me a lot because I.

[Dave Weigel]

Live in a great place people want.

[Tim Miller]

To visit or just trying to stay sane with a house full of relatives. How you feel the next morning still matters. That's why I drink Pre Alcohol Zebiotics Pre Alcohol Probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. Here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into toxic byproduct in the gut. It's a buildup of this byproduct, not dehydration, that's to blame for rough days after drinking. Pre Alcohol produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down. Just remember to make pre alcohol your first drink of the night. Drink responsibly and you'll feel your best tomorrow. Zebiotics taking the World by Storm Twice in the past month or two I've had a bartender ask me if I had my zebiotics before they fed me a drink. Appreciate those bartenders for listening to the show. The nerds behind the scenes up in the office in Washington D.C. they were all drinking during the returns last night, the election returns, and it was mandated that they have their Zbiotics before they started. And I gotta tell you, everything's been working well this morning. I'm not sensing any any issues, any lagging. So that's about as good an endorsement as you can ask for. Make the most out of every toast, tailgate and touchdown this holiday season. Just don't forget to bring Pre Alcohol along for the ride. Go to zbiotics.com thebullwerk to learn more. Get 15% off your first order when you use the bulwark at checkout. Zebiotics is backed with 100% money back guarantee, so if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money, no questions asked. Remember to head to zebiotics.com thebullwork and use the code thebullwork at checkout for 15% off. Just really quick on Virginia because the.

[Dave Weigel]

Story is basically the same, you know, a blowout for Spam Burger, which is gonna have some redistricting impacts, which I want to get to next. But just generally, you know, obviously this focus on Northern Virginia and how the shutdown had an effect on this, but really she gained ground across the state, flipped a couple of counties in more exurban rural Virginia that Democrats hadn't won back since they were Dixiecrats wins a huge landslide. I looked at Loudoun county, this classic suburban exurban county that was an early warning sign last year because how well Trump was doing there. And she runs an absolute blowout there. And the blowout is so great that as you mentioned, Jay Jones, his attorney general, who got caught up in a variety of scandals, including some texts about wishcasting, the death of his opponents and wanting to shit on their graves and stuff and going after their kids. He gets kind of dragged across the finish line running pretty significantly behind her actually. But she wins such a huge race.

[Bowen Yang]

Yeah, I was going to say he did better than Kamala Harris. It looked like he would fall over the finish line. He went over the finish line then like took another lap and did very well. Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

That's telling though, how big the Spamberger.

[Dave Weigel]

Win is though, actually, that the J.

[Tim Miller]

Jones runs like whatever, seven, eight points.

[Dave Weigel]

Behind her and still does better than Harris.

[Bowen Yang]

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that was, which is what Democrats said, but they were, look, you were talking to some of the same Democrats. I'm sure they were thinking like, well, maybe if we're lucky, 11 points. And when you win by 17 points. Yeah, think funny things happen.

[Tim Miller]

The big cope from Republicans online today is all about Jay Jones and the Attorney General's race. To me there's just not really. I mean, these jokes are gross.

[Dave Weigel]

Like this idea that I got two bullets and what was it like Pol Pot, Hitler and my opponent are in the room and I'm using both of them on my opponent or something like that.

[Bowen Yang]

It's apparently an old joke. I didn't realize this. I had a friend who found examples of it. Kind of not like I'm going to defend Jay Jones with this, but he'd heard it before. I'd never heard it, but I believe that then somebody pointed out to me it was on the office. And as a non office watcher, I missed that. But maybe you heard it from there. Democrats love Normie TV shows.

[Dave Weigel]

They do so yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Anyway, to me, I guess the analytical response to that is I see this everywhere. I see it in areas that concern.

[Dave Weigel]

Me a little bit from time to time. Some Democratic voters have taken the inverse of when they go low, we go.

[Tim Miller]

High to heart a little bit. They're so committed to rejecting the Michelle Obama line that they want to go.

[Dave Weigel]

As low as possible.

[Tim Miller]

I think that that is motivating a lot of Democrats. But I think that on the other hand, his biggest under performance is in.

[Dave Weigel]

The areas in Northern Virginia where people are most paying attention. A lot of this is that he ends up. It's not as if people are affirmatively going in and being like, I love Jay Jones texts. It was, I'm really upset about this administration. Democrats are motivated and he gets dragged across the finish line.

[Bowen Yang]

I had a theory last night, and it's a good night to just throw stuff out there and see if it's true or not. But Miyares, the attorney general who lost to Jones, his campaign for much of the year was what you typically do if you're an attorney general, especially in a swing state, which is, look at all the people I've been putting in jail. I've been keeping a safe Crime is down. My opponent voted for criminal justice reform. He's not going to keep crime down. And Jones's strategy was, hey, Doge exists. Other states had attorneys general who were suing to get your job back. And Jason Mayores didn't because he's a Trump supporter. And they had footage of the mayor is at a Trump rally. And whenever they could polarize the race, it was good for them. And so the final weeks, that's also.

[Tim Miller]

Just a substantive critique.

[Dave Weigel]

Right.

[Tim Miller]

It's like, other states are getting jobs back for the states and we're not, because this guy's a Trump humper. I mean, it's not just like even.

[Dave Weigel]

Like, oh, he's bad because of Trump.

[Tim Miller]

It's like, he's bad because of Trump.

[Dave Weigel]

And it's harming us in a material.

[Bowen Yang]

Way on either side. Maryland and North Carolina had attorneys general who we're suing, and Virginia didn't. But so the final 10 days of the race, Democrats call back the legislature, which they can do to start this process of redistricting. And it's another thing, this is a big theme of the night, is Democrats being very bold and saying, screw you, we're going to redistrict to get. If you're going to do it, we're going to do it. And mayores gets into that fight by saying, Well, I think this is illegal. I read the state constitution. I'm suing to stop this. And so voters who are making their minds up at the last minute or maybe Democrats who might vote or not, they remember, oh yeah, that's right. We have a Republican attorney general who's trying to stop us from getting two or three or four more seats to beat Trump. I don't like that. And they had another reason to put up with Jones. But this is another Trump era Republican hubristic mistake, possibly just nothing Miyares was doing in the final month except for saying my opponent sent these insane texts, was saying and if you're a Democrat you should vote for me. So the first time I was hearing Democrats panicked about Jones and then the first polling that was public and released maybe two weeks later, Jones had, had lost his lead to mayor's but Miars had not gained anything. What was he doing to gain people? Kind of nothing. It was just he was hoping that they, they leave their ballot blank or something. And some people did. I think it was about 40,000 fewer votes cast in that race. In the race for governor, twice as many write ins but Democrats felt like voting for for Democrats and getting revenge on Republicans. And what was his plan for that? He didn't really have one.

[Tim Miller]

All right y', all, I'm going to start this ad read with a message I received yesterday. Don't mean to humble brag wasn't me. I didn't send this message myself. This is a real message from a real human, a woman even. And she said whatever you're doing to your skin is phenomenal. You look amazing. Damn. I don't know if that's true, but any credit about my skin goes to our friends at One Skin and their moisturizing products. At their core is their patent patented OS1 peptide. The first ingredient to target senescent cells. The root cause of wrinkles, crepiness and loss of elasticity, all key signs of skin aging. Part of the reason this is one of my favorite sponsors is just I.

[Dave Weigel]

Love saying the words senescent and crepiness.

[Tim Miller]

Those are just, they have a nice ring to them. Even though we're trying to get rid.

[Dave Weigel]

Of the crepiness and the senescent cells, I do still like to say the words.

[Tim Miller]

These results, getting rid of crepiness, that is, that's been validated in five different clinical studies. They're known for cult skincare favorites like OS1 body, OS1 face, OS1 eye. OneSkin stands out for their science first approach to skin aging. Delivering hydration barrier support and powerful longevity.

[Dave Weigel]

Benefits in every product.

[Tim Miller]

Oneskin also just launched their limited edition holiday sets including the Nightly Rewind gift set, which is one of those rare gifts that's both impressive and useful, providing an upgrade to anyone's nightly routine. Featuring their best selling face moisturizer, their new Peptide Lip mask. I'm gonna get me one of these Peptide Lip Masks.

[Dave Weigel]

Hell yeah.

[Tim Miller]

And a cooling Gua Sha tool. Each component of the set is designed to work together as your body enters its natural nightly repair mode, helping renew skin at the cellular level for a stronger, smoother and more resilient skin. For a limited time, try OneSkin for 15% off using code bulwark at OneSkin Co Bulwark. After your purchase, I'll ask you what.

[Dave Weigel]

You heard about them.

[Tim Miller]

Please support our show and tell them we sent you.

[Dave Weigel]

Okay to the redistricting. I think this is the biggest news tonight.

[Tim Miller]

So California Prop 50 wins.

[Dave Weigel]

I want to isolate Gavin Mania and the impact on that to the next segment.

[Tim Miller]

Focus on 26 first and then 28. The Virginia win is so big.

[Dave Weigel]

They swung I think about a dozen House of delegate seats. The final count is in maybe even a little bit more. And the Democrats are going to have a massive a majority in the state legislature. And so I think it seems inevitable that they will redistrict now, which could net three seats. I saw a map that if, if Spamberger wanted to go dark, Spamberger, they might even be able to get four seats out of that. But three seats seems pretty safe.

[Tim Miller]

California Prop 50 wins.

[Dave Weigel]

That was aimed at getting about four or five seats for the Democrats. So you're looking at, you know, whatever about seven to nine there between the two of those. Maryland gets off their ass. Westmore announced yesterday that they're going to start a redistricting process. It's only one seat, but still the.

[Tim Miller]

Texas seats, you mentioned this kind of a little bit at the top. Their redistricting was incumbent a little bit on redistricting those south Texas districts and TBD on whether Hispanics closer to the.

[Dave Weigel]

Border move the same way as Hispanics up in North Jersey. But potentially those are a threat a little iffy.

[Tim Miller]

And I think other Republican states are about to get a little scared about edge districts.

[Dave Weigel]

Right.

[Tim Miller]

If the redistricting means if you're in Ohio or Florida and you're like I'm.

[Dave Weigel]

Going to take somebody who's in a seat that is Republican plus 15, right, where there's like a 15 percentage point advantage for Republicans and move you to a Republican plus 8 district and take that other 7%, move them to a Democratic district to get the votes. Like that's how gerrymandering works.

[Tim Miller]

The Republican that's in that plus 15.

[Dave Weigel]

District going down to plus 8 might be like, whoa, I don't, after last night, I might not want, I might not be on board for this anymore because if there's a blue wave, I'm going to get washed out with it. And on top of that, Kansas yesterday said that they were backing off.

[Tim Miller]

So you combine all this, you go from something like three weeks ago, it.

[Dave Weigel]

Looked like Republicans could gerrymander their way to like, almost like a very hard to penetrate majority, you know, particularly the.

[Tim Miller]

Voting Rights act stuff, which is, I guess, a subplot of this. And now all of a sudden it is looking to me much, much more.

[Dave Weigel]

Favorable to the Democrats in that redistricting situation. And I think sets them up. Who the hell knows what next November looks like? But if it looks like last night for a pretty clear House victory, what do you make of that analysis?

[Bowen Yang]

Yeah, I was just thinking about the reason Elise Stefanik did a farewell tour but did not quit her seat in Congress, which was that Democrats kept doing really well in special elections in her seat, which is redder than I think any of the new seats Republicans drew in Texas. I don't want to be too defensive. I know, yeah, the Trump margin there was bigger than the new seat that's kind of in San Marcos and the new seats in the Rio Grande Valley that is freezing some Republican blood today. If you were starting with a 2024 Trump map, not to repeat myself too much, and you look at that and say, well, roll it back to maybe 20 Trump margins with non white voters, with young voters. Well, that's not the same map anymore. There's a bunch of people who are not in Trump seats, they're in Biden's seats. How does that change your math and how does the change Democrats math? Let's say Louise Lucas, actually she's the Senate leader in Virginia who is the most aggressive about remapping because she has a great backstory.

[Tim Miller]

Let's just pause on Louise Lucas really quick. She got redistricted. She ran for Congress, lost a close.

[Dave Weigel]

Race to black state senator and Virginia and kind of the eastern Norfolk, Virginia beach area somewhere over there, she loses very narrowly. And then coming up in the next year, you know, she's going to run again. It's a more favorable year for Democrats and they redistrict and, you know, kind of draw her out of being able to run in a seat. And I guess the Republican legislature says to her at the time something to the effect of you're never going to be in Congress. And now she is in a position of power in the Democratic state Senate in Virginia and she's coming for blood.

[Tim Miller]

She's got, she's got not in the J. Jones way, but in the redistricting sense. She is not going to be shy.

[Bowen Yang]

Yeah, she's Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. She's coming back with a katana for these. She probably would knowing Louise Lucas, if she gave her a good katana gift, she would use it. She's kind of infamous for when Youngkin sends a bill to the scent she doesn't like, she'll post a picture of her with a shredder. But anyway, yeah, that's her attitude. So it's spilled over into Maryland where there is a very fun story happening right now where Wes Moore, who I assume will run to run for president after saying he won't, does want to talk about redistricting Maryland. And the state Senate president is still on the Michelle Obama convention speech island of like, we're not. That's not what our party stands for. I think that you can see it quickening the Democrats there and saying, what if we do this? And you, if you look, if you're Lucas looking at Virginia like we were saying before. Well, it's one thing if, if we're remapping the state for seats that can elect 10 Democrats in a Trump map in this map much easier. And you probably be cocky but you're looking at and say, okay, we can you give Eugene Vim and a couple points. So Tara Durant can't really challenge him anymore. This already happened Ohio, by the way, there was a Republican who was going to challenge Amelia Sykes in Akron again. And then Republicans kind of conceded a map that gave her a couple points and maybe and he just, he bailed out.

[Dave Weigel]

They didn't go gerrymander maxing in Ohio. I know that was another state where Republicans are going to pick up one probably. But like can see if we could.

[Tim Miller]

Have picked up three.

[Dave Weigel]

But again, they were concerned about backfire.

[Bowen Yang]

Yeah.

[Dave Weigel]

And I think that chilling effect on their effort is really is the most meaningful story of the night for me.

[Bowen Yang]

Well, I want to see also what it does for candidate recruitment because let's say I'm a state rep in Indiana and I'm in the minority forever and they've drawn they might draw the seats, they might not. They've drew a new Seat out of Indianapolis. That's +8 Trump or something. Do I go for it? I might try. That's what Joe Donnelly did when they got rid of his House seat in Kansas. That was one of the reasons Republicans made it back down is Cherise Davids, who represents the Kansas City suburbs in Kansas. They've already tried to gerrymander her out. They were thinking of trying again. She said, I'm just gonna run for Senate in a good year for Democrats. What are you gonna do about it? So I'm interested to see what sort of ambition you see from Democrats who, instead of looking at the nice big red map that Trump gives everybody with all the red counties that voted for him, if they look at the slightly less red map from these races, imagine a midterm where it's D plus 8. You would win this. Do you want to try for it now? I think that'll start happening over the next couple months.

[Dave Weigel]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

And all these negotiations, it's like the Dems have a much bigger chip stack.

[Dave Weigel]

Now than they did. Right.

[Tim Miller]

They are arguing from a position of strength.

[Dave Weigel]

And I think that Republicans felt like they could, to maybe do a lame pun, they could Jerry, rig this thing next year in a way that protects Mike Johnson, protects their. Their House majority. And that looks a lot, a lot, a lot worse. And, you know, who the hell knows what other shenanigans they might try. But their first gambit here seems to be potentially. I don't want to overstate it, but like, potentially rebuffed.

[Tim Miller]

And a lot of credit for that goes to the electorate last night, but.

[Dave Weigel]

To Gavin Newsom for stepping up, and this was Gavin yesterday. I want to listen to him talk about how he defines his own fight against the administration.

[Tim Miller]

He didn't expect you to show up.

[Gavin Newsom]

He didn't expect any of this to happen. He thought maybe we'd have a candlelight vigil, maybe we would hold hands, maybe. Maybe we could all come together and like, you know, do an op ed in the LA Times and, you know, just say what it could have, should have done something. They never expected this. They never expected all of you. They never expected this show of unity and support and recognition.

[Tim Miller]

All right. I mean, I gotta say, boy, you gotta hand it to Gavin, man. I mean, he's out there doing the. He sounds like a presidential candidate. It's the self critique that all the Democrats believe about the Democrats. It's like, hey, people thought we were just gonna, you know, get together a blue ribbon commission on this and deal with it in 2032 and I said, f you, I'm gonna troll the president. I'm gonna dunk on him.

[Dave Weigel]

We're gonna steal your five seats, we're.

[Tim Miller]

Gonna drink your milkshake. And I think a lot of Democrats are going to be pretty happy about that. Gavin 2028 Stonk seems to be on the rise.

[Bowen Yang]

Oh, absolutely. This was a real bet that he took. I remember talking to Gavin people when he announced it, because there was one poll, California ballot initiatives. I mean, you lived there for a while. The phrasing really matters. And the attorney general controls how the ballot measure is phrased. And so there were some polling said, well, voters like the independent commission, Gavin's team said, yeah, they say that, but we're going to make this a Trump referendum and they want it. And, you know, again, we know California, we will find out the margin. I don't know at Christmas what it was, but it probably did much better than Kamala Harris last year. Just a pure partisan, hey, this is the Trump sucks measure. Do you want to vote for it? It did very well. Not a surprise that would work in California, but I think it's that spillover that I mentioned, Wes Moore and the difficulty he has there. But Democrats were tiptoeing. They did not want to think about this too hard. Do they really want to be blamed for making the partisanship in Congress worse? And they really do have a screw it attitude that Newsom's partly responsible for. One, there's clearly no what's the penalty? It's kind of a. Kind of a catch 22. Like if voters want. If you gerrymander and voters don't like it, that's the point of the gerrymander. They can't stop you. And to just. It might be popular. It's certainly popular for Texas Republicans, what Greg Abbott's doing. Although you poll Texas, most people don't like the gerrymander because it was just framed as I'm doing this for Donald Trump. But they've gotten a lot bolder and Gavin was leader of that. So I hate doing early 2028 predictions. Except for I do think that it was true before that the governors who can actually resist Trump in meaningful ways and sue him and beat him occasionally have the advantage over no disrespect to him, but people to judge who can't do that. He can be on podcasts and he can go to rallies. He cannot govern. If you're in Congress, if you're Chris Murphy, you can give speeches, but you can't really win. So, I mean, you can Stop a nominee sometimes. But what's more compelling? Hi Nashua, I stopped a terrible nominee for the Office of Legal Counsel or I destroyed four Republicans with my bare hands. Probably the second one.

[LifeLock Advertiser]

Tis the season for identity theft. This time of year, most of us are checking off our holiday gift lists. But guess what? Identity thieves have lists too, and your personal information might be on them. Protect your identity with LifeLock. LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points every second and alerts you to threats you could miss by yourself. Even if you keep an eye on your bank and credit card statements. If your identity is stolen, your own US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. And all plans are backed by the million dollar protection package. The last thing you want to do this holiday season is face drained accounts, fraudulent loans or other financial losses from identity theft all alone. Make this season about joy, not identity theft. With Lifelock, save up to 40% your first year. Call 1-800-LIFELOCK and use promo code iheart or go to lifelock.com iheart for 40% off terms apply.

[Dave Weigel]

While we're doing dorky gerrymandering redistricting talk, we might as well do a little.

[Tim Miller]

Dorky Hill talk with the filibuster. Trump last night posting after the results.

[Dave Weigel]

Basically blaming the results on Trump. He speaks about himself in the third person not being on the ballot and on the shutdown and saying that they should end the filibuster. He had a breakfast with John Thune this morning. I'm just seeing coming across right now that Thune said to him he doesn't have the votes to break the filibuster. Has Donald Trump ever not gotten what he wanted with the Senate? I don't know. There's first time for everything. I guess. Maybe this is it. But I'm wondering what you think yesterday's impact is on both that conversation on the filibuster and just the shutdown in general.

[Bowen Yang]

Well, he has never gotten what he wants the filibuster for the pretty simple reason that right now, the way the country is structured, most of what Republicans want to get done in a big new way can be done with 51 votes in the Senate or by suing in the Northern District of Texas and getting the Supreme Court to say, yep, that has been the pattern of Trump's term so far. You can't do Medicare for all that way. You cannot have a president say executive order, I'm getting rid of your health insurance. I guess you could try, but Sam Alito probably wouldn't like that.

[Dave Weigel]

Yeah.

[Bowen Yang]

And so it is Democrats who for their long term plans want to get rid of the filibuster. And just the, the opportunity cost for Republicans is not there. Like you would get rid of it. And then in the future, maybe they're not ambitious enough. If Republicans said we're getting rid of the filibuster and we're going to split Texas into five red states, that would get them something. But they're not there because they look at the arrangement of the country and say, well, no, the judges are going to take care of a lot of this for us. And the Republicans who are barely resisting Trump, except for on some nominees, the terrorists, for example, the tariffs, a great example of this. Do you need to do some legislative maneuver to stop the terrorists? You can have the Senate vote that doesn't do anything and then you cross your fingers and hope the Supreme Court solves the problem for you. So they're just not, it's just not in their interest to do this for Trump and they know that it is in Democrats interest too. I think with, with Manchin and Sinema it would have been tough, but if there was no filibuster whatsoever in Biden's first term, there's not even a debate. Should we get rid of this hallowed institution that we pretend is from the founders but isn't, would Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin have voted against some of the stuff they voted against? Maybe not. If There was a 53 seat Democratic Senate majority under President even Josh Shapiro and no filibuster, could they do a public option like day one right away? So, yeah. Much more threatening. Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Abortion.

[Dave Weigel]

Yeah. And then also you get out of that stuff, get into social issues like a natural right to abortion, that kind of stuff. While we're talking about progressive dreams, I'll do a little bit more on that New York mayor's race since you were, you were there reporting on it.

[Tim Miller]

I watched his speech last night and he's good.

[Dave Weigel]

You know, I mean, he was happy. He's uplifting, he's good.

[Tim Miller]

He's throwing some socialist turn. You know, he does some Eugene Debs quotes. Okay, that's not my people. Okay. That's, those are my, you know, but whatever, you know, he, the room got, the room was happy about the, about.

[Dave Weigel]

The Eugene Debs quotes.

[Tim Miller]

But when I look at that race.

[Dave Weigel]

And you, you mentioned it briefly, I just want to spend a little more time on it. Just like the, and the highest turnout in a race since Mayor Lindsay, you know, ran on. He is fresh and everyone else is tired. 1979, which is a little ominous, but great, great motto.

[Tim Miller]

And part of the, part of the.

[Dave Weigel]

Turnout is there's, there's a lot, there is a decent amount of anti zor.

[Tim Miller]

Hunt interest as well.

[Dave Weigel]

And Cuomo ended up getting more votes than a lot of the winning mayors.

[Tim Miller]

Did in the past few elections. But that said, he obviously engaged a.

[Dave Weigel]

Lot of folks and I think that's something Democrats are going to have to care about eventually in 2028. Zo wrong can't be their nominee. He's born in Uganda.

[Tim Miller]

Really?

[Dave Weigel]

Actually not like fake like Barack Obama.

[Bowen Yang]

But if you make Uganda the 52nd state after Greenland potentially, well, I think that would be kind of a mumble.

[Dave Weigel]

Against interest for Trump.

[Bowen Yang]

But I'm still stuck on if Republicans got rid of the filibuster. Who has stuff you can do.

[Tim Miller]

But I wonder what you made of it just kind of being there and everybody.

[Dave Weigel]

Wants to project onto him their pet.

[Tim Miller]

Reason for why he was successful. And I look at it, I just.

[Dave Weigel]

Kind of mark this down about what Democrats could learn from him in other places about how they engaged other non voters.

[Tim Miller]

Part of it was obviously the relentless.

[Dave Weigel]

Message about caring about working people. And you look at his speech last night, he just starts by talking about listing out random working class jobs and how this victory is for those people. Just a notably different strategy than Democrats being like, I care about working people, right?

[Tim Miller]

It's like, no, I'm going to spend two minutes talking about the dude whose.

[Dave Weigel]

Knuckles are burned because he's a fry cook and then the person whose back.

[Tim Miller]

Hurts because they're a garbage, like whatever.

[Dave Weigel]

Like he lists everybody and by name.

[Tim Miller]

He just has a lot of focus.

[Dave Weigel]

On that I think is smart. That's a good lesson. Obviously. The positivity, the happiness. He's smiling. It's an upbeat message. I think there's a Gaza element to this. There's a little bit of subtext. He doesn't mention it really in the speech last night. But. But there was a lot of energy obviously about folks that didn't turn out for Kamala on that issue.

[Tim Miller]

And then I just think that there's.

[Dave Weigel]

Just this anti established he's running at some level against the party. He does one line last night that kind of bristled me a little bit.

[Tim Miller]

It's like, you shouldn't have to go into the history books to find a Democrat that actually did something. They elected the first Black Democrat. Like 2 minutes ago I was like, I'm not that old. Okay. Anyway, but so that is kind of the.

[Dave Weigel]

The gumbo for me, of like, the ways in which he engaged people that hadn't been engaged. How do you react to that? Was there anything I'm missing? Anything else?

[Bowen Yang]

No. I like that you focused on the way he talked about working people and their jobs. So I've heard this from even Democrats who don't like Mamdani. Their favorite video. You free associate like, which of the 10 million Mamdani videos is your favorite? Halal. Halal truck. Yeah, Halal trucks. It was the halal truck one is like, wait a second. What if you actually use this? And he's not the first Democrat I've seen to say, here is a real business and here's something that. And here's how much it costs and here's how it's affecting you. It's actually Tony Evers, who's the opposite of Zoram Hamdani. The elderly, very nice. Governor of Wisconsin, wins two races. No one ever talks about him running for president. His favorite curse term is holy mackerel. But he did this. He had an ad where he went to a pizza parlor that he and his wife go to when he was running for reelection and talked about what he'd done to. He'd done for the economy. Yes. Unlearning the sort of, let's run this through focus groups and make sure we cover every interest group and making it very human. That was the one thing. Not that I thought Cheryl would lose. The one thing I thought, is she doing this the right way? She was very focused on her own biography, which is impressive. I mean, she's a veteran mom of four, prosecutor, et cetera, et cetera. And I started to wonder, well, is that a little. I'm with her. Are you talking as much about people's lives as. So yes. I think that's the first thing you'll see Democrats copy from Zoron, because Democrats do all the time. Let's have a press conference. And here's a real person who was affected by this terrible thing that happened. They go to the mic and maybe reporters quote them. Maybe they don't. Focusing on that is what they'll copy. Will they copy him protesting Tom Homan in person? Probably not. Will they copy him saying he's going to arrest Netanyahu? I don't think so. Maybe there's some assemblyman who got elected. I'm not sure. I don't know about. But the hyper personalization and being out there.

[Tim Miller]

Hyper personalization of a specific type of people, though, too. Like a specific.

[Dave Weigel]

And not just Kind of generalizing that I care about working people.

[Tim Miller]

And that is the thing about any Bernie speech you saw.

[Dave Weigel]

He's going after the billionaires and he's talking about people who are living paycheck to paycheck. Right. And it's like that.

[Tim Miller]

I think that if you talk to the Harris people, they would say she.

[Dave Weigel]

Did that because like she did in like a pablum way. Right.

[Tim Miller]

But it was like, if you look.

[Dave Weigel]

Into his speech, it's like they were sent. Now I'm a lib. Now I'm about to use the word centered. They were centered in his speech, you know?

[Bowen Yang]

Yes. Whenever you talk about growing candidate in a lab. If you were saying we need a working class candidate who can speak to how people normally live, let's choose the immigrant whose mom is the director of a bunch of movies and whose dad is a professor at Columbia and who went to a liberal arts college and started students like, no, you wouldn't. Obviously there are going to be lots of Democrats who have much more. I don't want to say traditional. That'd be a gaffe. But the stories that are, they're a little bit more like guy you grew up with rather than son of mirror Nair. He had some of the same crazy making ability as AOC because AOC grew up a little more poor than he did. Have you noticed sometimes Republicans can't decide whether she's terrible because she was used just used to be a bartender, or she's terrible because whenever they mention the bartender thing, she's like Brer Rabbit in the Breyer patch. Like, great.

[Tim Miller]

Is it she's fake that she went to a liberal arts college or is.

[Dave Weigel]

She downclass Cause she's a bartender. You know what I mean? Yeah.

[Bowen Yang]

She's lying to you. She lived not in the Bronx, but in a poor chart of Westchester County. Whenever they start getting to those details, it's a waste of time. Because speaking of people who have not grown a lab, how is Donald Trump able to be a blue collar billionaire when the many things you read, the bulwark that he's doing to enrich himself? Because I was at a presentation of some polling data a couple months ago and one of the slides that stuck with me was just contrasting events and the success of Donald Trump going to a fake McDonald's. Like if McDonald's had been closed today just to have his campaign event added. The mimetic power of that. People saying, gosh, Donald Trump went to a fast food restaurant for five minutes and serve fries. That's powerful. It was Obviously a response to Kamala Harris saying she'd worked at McDonald's and not really using it for anything. We're all talking about advertisements and authenticity that's being packaged. But it turns out you don't need to, you don't need to prove, like, here is my resume and here is how I've, I've never once gone on a liberal arts college campus. You don't need to do all that. You just need to, like, I honestly care about these people. And I'm coming up with a thing you can do too, is I came up with this idea because I've been doing this listening tour of people with normal jobs, and I think this would improve their lives versus, hey, we did a focus group. That's a pretty big difference that might land you in the same place. But one of them is just really powerful to watch.

[Dave Weigel]

One more from Zoran. I thought this was the best part of his speech last night, and it might be while he ended up wanting to focus on affordability and the rent freezing and the free buses and all that, depending on what Donald Trump decides to do, this might end up being the biggest fight of his first year. Let's listen to him talking about immigration.

[Donald Trump (referenced)]

New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants, and as of tonight, led by an immigrant. So hear me, President Trump, when I say this, to get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us.

[Tim Miller]

Not bad, good politicking, but also a.

[Dave Weigel]

Preview of, I think, a real potential fight to come if they, if, like.

[Tim Miller]

The Republicans are true to what they.

[Dave Weigel]

Are saying to you and other reporters that they want to make Zoron the face of the party. The best way to do that is to pick a fight with him in New York City over immigration.

[Bowen Yang]

Yeah, or I think it's Andy Ogle is in the House. There's a couple Republicans who are going to try stunty legislation to deport him. Or Randy Fine, I think has a version of this anytime you're doing that. So there's a thermostatic shift. People elect Trump and they say, oh, wait, he's against immigration in a way that I don't like. I wasn't paying enough attention. Do we get back to the mood of 2017 where every Democrat was confidently saying we need more refugees in the country? I don't think we get there. But the idea that some immigrants should be allowed in the country and improve it when they're here is pretty popular outside of Stephen Miller's office in the White House. This White House has gone very far in a nativist direction that I think Mamdani is comfortable rebutting. Because, yes, there are Republicans who say, I would like to remove people like him from the country. And there are people who say, he doesn't seem to be harming anybody. I remember when I was in New York early in the year checking in on the Maudani race because I met him when he was running for his assembly seat and then covered dsa, et cetera. One thing I was asking his campaign is like, hey, not that long ago, there was the Ground Zero Mosque in New York and there was a huge backlash that Republicans used around the country the idea of building a Muslim center near the old World Trade center site. And the campaign, they were aware of it. And then I would talk to voters, they weren't aware of it, but I hadn't appreciated how much the country had moved on with some nudging from people like George W. Bush and Republicans who are not blood and soil nativists saying, actually, America, it's pretty good that America is able to integrate different kinds of people and different religions and live together peacefully. There are conservatives who. One thing I've heard is most Muslims have come to who live in America right Now, came after 9, 11. And that is bad. I've heard that from national conservatives before when there is a case of terrorism or something. Yes, Trump is very good, better than any Republican at turning that into a nativist issue. He did this in 2015. It's crazy. If you go back now and look at, if you were there, Republicans like Marco Rubio, who are very uncomfortable with the Muslim ban and things he was saying, if we're back in that place where there's a mayor of New York trying to abide by the laws of New York, who is a Muslim immigrant getting racist attacks for things that are legal and people support, I think it will backfire. How would he play, for example, Texas moving migrants from the border to New York, which backfired? I don't know. But this is a thing. When Donald Trump is president and changes the policy environment, that's not as much of an issue.

[Dave Weigel]

Yeah, it's different. That's what I'm saying. Actually, it puts him, I think, in a stronger position than it would have been two years ago.

[Tim Miller]

Because Democrats don't have to be for.

[Dave Weigel]

Unpopular refugees being admitted or unpopular asylum cases being admitted. What he has to do is fight against.

[Bowen Yang]

It's just dudes from Johannesburg.

[Dave Weigel]

He's got to fight against the ovaries.

[Bowen Yang]

They just like de antvord is allowed in the country and nobody else.

[Dave Weigel]

Yeah, it's like he's got to fight against.

[Tim Miller]

He's got to do the thing that.

[Dave Weigel]

Brad Lander did, like go down to.

[Tim Miller]

The, you know, to where, you know.

[Dave Weigel]

CBP and ICE thugs are rounding people up and fight for his people. Anyway, I think it'll be a big story next year.

[LifeLock Advertiser]

Tis the season for identity theft this time of year most of us are checking off our holiday gift lists. But guess what? Identity thieves have lists too. And your personal information might be on them. Protect your identity with Lifelock. Lifelock monitors hundreds of millions of data points every second and alerts you to threats you could miss by yourself. Even if you keep an eye on your bank and credit card statements. If your identity is stolen, your own US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. And all plans are backed by the million dollar protection package. The last thing you want to do this holiday season is face drained accounts, fraudulent loans or other financial losses from identity theft all alone. Make this season about joy, not identity theft. With Lifelock, save up to 40% your first year. Call 1-800-LIFELOCK and use promo code iheart or go to lifelock.com iheart for 40% off terms apply.

[Tim Miller]

As you mentioned, you covered the DSA.

[Dave Weigel]

You knew Zoran before he was Zoran. You cover random things.

[Tim Miller]

I threw a couple of races here.

[Dave Weigel]

Into some random stuff I saw yesterday. I'm going to throw at you at any of these that you think are interesting you can weigh in on or there's something you saw that I don't mention. Go ahead.

[Tim Miller]

There are a bunch of ballot initiatives in New York that were yimby that all passed.

[Dave Weigel]

So that'll help Zoran a little bit some. The Yimbys are on the rise and a bunch of cities in Minneapolis, it.

[Tim Miller]

Looks like they had a socialist candidate running as well.

[Dave Weigel]

There's getting lumped in with Zoran and right wing media. Somali guys.

[Tim Miller]

Seems they're not, they're.

[Dave Weigel]

They do rank choice. So I don't know if we have a winner yet, but it seems like he's not going to win.

[Tim Miller]

Democrats win huge in Georgia on the Public Service Commission.

[Dave Weigel]

Statewide race off off year but still.

[Tim Miller]

At Bucks county there's a district attorney race that was really kind of centered around tough on crime. Bucks county is a big swing area.

[Dave Weigel]

You had this kind of tough on crime Republican type running against a Democrat. Democrat wins pretty handily.

[Tim Miller]

Any of those things jump out to you? Anything else you saw last night that was of interest.

[Bowen Yang]

Yeah, the Bucks county race. So this is. They won the DA's office for the first time in Bucks county history. Bucks county has the Democrats won. Democrats won, yes. Historically Republican county. It moved to the left because of the suburbanites moving from both Philly and New York. Actually. It's a nice rural, cheaper area and it's starting to move back to the right. Republicans are very focused on voter registration and happened just very successful in getting Republicans registered in Pennsylvania across the country. If you remember Shane Goldmacher's New York Times story about this. And yet people voted and they got rid of the Republican and this happened all over Pennsylvania. So I'm paying attention because Josh Shapiro is in the mix for 2028. Shapiro was very successful and the new party chair was very successful in just maximizing Democratic performance, not just statewide. You can turn out Allegheny and Philadelphia, et cetera. But yeah, flipping Bucks county. The county council lose, Erin, which is one of the, if you remember Hazelton and the mayor of Hazleton going to Congress and the popularity of his anti immigrant measures, there was a reversal there. Democrats picked that up. Yeah.

[Dave Weigel]

And that's up by Scranton. That is prime Trump, Selena, Zito country. This is old. This is like your generic used to be Democrat, white, working class, Rust belt area that Trump has done well in. And they flipped the city council.

[Bowen Yang]

Yeah. And so how much of that Erie county, which is a swing county that used to be super Democratic and then Trump won it again in 2024. Democrats got rid of they probably pretty big margin because I think they're done counting. They flipped back the county executive office. They, they just won a lot down the ballot. In addition to winning those state supreme court races. I think those did get attention. The fact that Democrats wanted to retain these justices, but it was harder to cover because you know, the justices, they did one TB ad, but they're not, they're not out there at diners answering questions about Zoram Hamdani. The theme is talk to Democrats. They were not BSing me. They were not nervous, but they thought they'd win. And then they won by 20 points. And Republicans were just, were not able anywhere in Pennsylvania to say, hey, guy who voted for Donald Trump, it's very important for you to come out for this more obscure election to support Donald Trump. How much of that is people who might come back to vote against Shapiro might come back for J.D. vance, I don't know. But a lot of Republican gains just were wiped away in Pennsylvania. The Minneapolis thing is, it's interesting because of how conservative media cover it. I think they call the Omar Fateh the Minneapolis Mamdani, which that's alliteration. That's pretty good. But Jacob Fry is probably winning a third term in Minneapolis. He won his second term after refusing to endorse defunding the police and abolishing the police department. He is favored to win this term over a DSA member who was much more left wing than him. And Tim Walls actually campaigned for Fry over this guy. It divided the party locally. But if you are a Democrat, let's say you're a Democrat who wants to rebut your opponent, that everyone in the entire party is represented by the worst thing Mamdani said progressives are. I think they've regained some ground in cities. But it's very important how Mamdani renounced defund the police many, many times. And I talked to him in debates. He ran to the right of where he was when he got into politics. A more pro socialist candidate in another liberal city is not going to win. So it's not like the part I don't think the Democrats have figured out the Goldilocks situation where they know exactly how they should run around the country. But yes, the progressives have some limits. They need to be a little bit more careful about their criminal justice policies to win. And then where Democrats are running in swing districts, they really figured out what to do. I mean, they just had a fantastic night everywhere that was competitive and they had the can they wanted and Republicans had the message they wanted. The only place I was seeing Republicans hold on were Nassau county and Long Island. On Long island, where Mount Bounty was obviously a big issue, they held those offices. They held Manchester mayor's office. They did okay in places where they already had won. They were not gaining ground anywhere. In Pennsylvania, the inability to do that right now after Democrats are clearly losing ground with registration, that is significant. That is a problem for them. They're just kind of talking past today.

[Dave Weigel]

Final topic, the South Carolina governor's race. Really important race to cover.

[Tim Miller]

Congresswoman Nancy Mace is running for governor. She continues her psychotic break. It's been hard to follow. She sent, I believe, 97 tweets about.

[Dave Weigel]

An incident that she had at the.

[Tim Miller]

Airport where I guess she yelled at a cop.

[Dave Weigel]

And then it has spiraled out of.

[Tim Miller]

Control in a lot of ways. Just for kicks, to let people, you know, to give people a nice some.

[Dave Weigel]

Landing gear for this podcast. I want to listen to Nancy Mace discuss this encounter that she had at.

[Nancy Mace]

The airport when the dirty cop, yes, the cop, or Cops that filed a false incident report. You're giving other cops a bad name, and I'm coming for you, so you need to know that. But my interaction with the dirty cop was like, was it one second or was it two? It's really hard to tell. And if you're not man enough to take my feedback, my constructive feedback for you not doing your job, then.

[Bowen Yang]

What are you gonna do when I, Al.

[Nancy Mace]

Qaeda shows up at the airport?

[Tim Miller]

Like, I don't know what's happening with our girl Nancy, but she is off the rocker. Any other. Any thoughts on that? I looked at a Winthrop poll in South Carolina governor's race. She's in the Republican primary. It's tight as a tick. She's a lot undecided. She's right now tied to the Lieutenant governor.

[Dave Weigel]

Pamela Yvette, what's happening there with Nancy?

[Bowen Yang]

Well, this is not the first time that she has said that there is a conspiracy that only she has unraveled. And she needs to be there to get justice. And she needs more power in the governor's office to fire the people who have been behind the scenes, smearing her, hurting her ability to be the best Nancy Macy can be.

[Tim Miller]

And this extends to the mall cops.

[Bowen Yang]

Yes, the mall cops. She has a part of the plot. I've never gotten over how in 2021, she just got elected in 2020, she upset, but it was like a Republican district. But she overperformed the polls, won, and then a few months later reported that Antifa, which I didn't know was in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, had graffiti outside her House, slogans like, pass the pro Act. And these antifa members were never caught. They've never been seen in South Carolina again. And even then, I was talking to some Republicans who she does not have a lot of fans in South Carolina, Republican strategists who said, like, yeah, that's interesting that there's not any video evidence of what happened on her House. So South Carolina has a runoff system. And the question Republicans had was, is she famous enough to get through the first round of the runoff to then lose to literally anyone else? Because you've got the Lieutenant governor, you've got the attorney general. They were pretty confident that Donald Trump, who she has gone back and forth with in humorous ways. He's terrible. No, he's not. I'm going to campaign, Trump Tower, et cetera. Other Republicans in this race have been more supportive of Trump. Alan Wilson, the attorney general, son of Joe Wilson, the congressman, was a day one Trump endorser. It did not dither at all. Like. Like she did. So Republicans I talked to are different kinds of amused by this. I know some who are not amused. They really just can't stand her to want her to go away. It's not funny to them anymore. But they every, every tweet she sends gets them closer to just anyone. Beating her in that primary and her going away. That is what I hear from South Carolina Republicans who are not. And now all of them, obviously, are in league with the cops and the Trilateral Commission and other people who are trying to destroy Nancy Mace. So keep the grain of salt there.

[Dave Weigel]

Yeah, yeah. RuPaul's Drag Race is involved. Everybody. Everybody's out together.

[Tim Miller]

Nancy. Dave Weigel, appreciate you, man. One of the real ones out there doing reporting. As I mentioned, at the top, you have. You also did a book about progress.

[Dave Weigel]

I asked you to choose a prog rock song to take us out with. Do you have a comment on why you've chosen this number for People?

[Bowen Yang]

Oh, yes. It's King Crimson's One More Red Nightmare. And unimaginatively, if you are in the red team, did you have a good night? No, you had the opposite of a good night. You had a nightmare. So keeping it nice and mean, it was sweet dreams.

[Tim Miller]

Sweet dreams and la resistance. Dave Weigel, we'll holler at you next year during primary season.

[Dave Weigel]

All right, man. Appreciate you very much. Everybody else, we back tomorrow for another.

[Tim Miller]

Edition of the podcast. See you all then. Peace.

[Donald Trump (referenced)]

One more sa. My turtlings can be the Stewart baby, but the captain's a baby. One More and diamond.

[Tim Miller]

The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper, with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

[LifeLock Advertiser]

This time of year, most of us are checking off our holiday gift lists. But identity thieves have lists, too, and your personal information might be on them. Protect your identity with Lifelock. Lifelock monitors millions of data points every second and alerts you to threats you could miss. If your identity is stolen, Lifelock will fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Make this season about joy, not identity theft. With Lifelock, save up to 40% your first [e-mail] iheart terms apply.