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- [00:01]
A
There's a lot of voters I listen to who talk about Trump and they say, like, well, I think he transcends politics, right? They feel like he himself is not as much of a political figure. But I could see a lot of the voters and the way they talk about him liking somebody like aoc, like, they would find her authentic, they would find her radical, they would find her energetic.
- [00:20]
B
And now the good fight with Yasha Monk. Trump has been in office for about 100 days at this point. And one of the questions that I've been asking myself is how Americans are responding to his presidency. Are they satisfied with what he's doing or are they growing concerned? Are they running away from him? Now, one way to answer that is to look at top line opinion polls. And those show, as I'm recording this introduction, that about 50, 51% of Americans disapprove of Trump, about 45% approve of him. That is a significant decline over the course of the last month, but not yet in territory that is deeply concerning to him. But another way of getting at this is to listen to what voters are actually saying when you give them the chance to talk at greater length, if you actually have a deep conversation with them. And nobody does that better than Sarah Longwell. Sarah, who's been on this podcast a few times in the past, is the founder and publisher of the Bulwark. She was a longtime Republican, one of the founders of Log Cabin Republicans, who has run a lot of important groups criticizing Trump over the last years. And she is a master of the focus group, as many of you who might be listeners of her podcast, the focus group may know. So what we did in this conversation was to break down the American electorate into lots of different segments. And Sarah told me about how MAGA faithfuls are feeling about Trump these days. How about Republican voters who mostly were enticed by his promise of economic growth and lower prices in grocery stores? What about traditional Republicans who might have identified more with a Mitt Romney or John McCain than Donald Trump? What it is that Democrats want of their political leaders, and whether somebody like AOC might incarnate that. Sarah Longwell says that perhaps that is the case. I push her a little bit on that. And then finally, in the part of this conversation that is reserved for paying subscribers, we talk a little bit prematurely, perhaps about 2028. Who is likely to be the Democratic candidate? Is it somebody like aoc, or is it a more moderate Democrat like Josh Shapiro? And who is going to be the Republican candidate? Is it Trieny Vance? Is it Donald Trump Jr. Is it Trump himself? Sarah seems to think it is perhaps less likely to be one of those three things than a certain famous media figure. If you want to gain access to that part of the conversation, please become a paying subscriber. Please go to yashamunk.substack.com and support this podcast. And today, we're even giving you a special little deal. If you go to jasamunk.substack.com thegoodfight, you get 25% off your first year of membership. That means it's only about a dollar a week to listen to the full episode without ads. Thank you so much, Sarah Longwell, welcome back to the podcast.
- [04:04]
A
Hey, Yasha, thanks for having me.
- [04:06]
B
It's always a pleasure. There's a million things to talk about in terms of what's actually happening, but one of the things that I've been trying to figure out is how people respond to that. And you're one of those rare people who are super insightful about politics, but actually also take time to talk to American voters. So I was very intrigued to hear from you how you think different kind of segments of the American electorate are processing very radical policies and fast changes of the first hundred or so days of a Trump administration.
- [04:35]
A
Yeah. So, you know, I do focus groups almost at scale now, which meaning they'll do, you know, three groups a week, four groups a week. And so I get to do kind of segments within segments of voters. And it's interesting to think about how they all kind of work when you think about them and then in totality, because, you know, there are the longtime Trump voters, right? The people who are dug in on the project of Trump and what he is doing. And for those people, you give them Doge, you give them a trade war. They don't care if the market gets rocky. They are, they are here for it. You know, as far as they're concerned, Trump's executive orders, you know, seeing ice trucks in neighborhoods, all of it just reflects, for them, movement.
- [05:22]
B
He's doing what he promised to do.
- [05:25]
A
Yeah, that's right. They're like, I signed up for this. This is what I said I wanted when I voted for this guy. This is Trump being Trump. And he told us he was gonna do this. And, and they're, they're an interesting group in that they tend to be. They don't. It's not that they have. They're not that they're bought in on Trump's ideological project, but they are so bought in on Trump that if Trump says, hey, I Need you to. It's your patriotic duty to, you know, suffer through the market loss and the supply chain disruption and everything else that's gonna come for the short term pain, for the long term gain. And one of the things that's so interest and how I know they're in for Trump and the project and not necessarily for ideological reasons, is when you listen to people talk about why they're so into tariffs, some will say, I'm into tariffs because, hey, this is how we're going to pay off the debt. And then other people will tell you, this is a negotiating tactic. Trump is just trying to negotiate. He's trying to get a better deal. And then a third group will tell you, Trump is trying to remake the American economy. We've got to bring manufacturing jobs back. Now, of course, all of those things do not exist together. They don't work together. Right. He can't do all of those things. It's either a negotiating tactic or we're remaking fundamentally the American economy. And so, depending on who they're listening to, they're just there to give you a reason why what Trump is doing is good. And so, you know, sometimes people are like, the chaos. Don't. Aren't regular voters, like, worried about the chaos? And I was like, you know, it doesn't read as chaos if you're a dug in Trump voter. It reads as the rest of the government moves too slowly. You know, it doesn't take risks. And here's Trump trying to make it difference. And so that group is like, they're pumped. They're actively excited by this. And the market going down isn't going to stop that excitement.
- [07:11]
B
If your starting point is as I think it is for many Trump voters, that the establishment, the institutions, the normal political class is just fundamentally corrupt, fundamentally dysfunctional, that none of it works, then the chaos is a sign that you're actually taking it on when you would expect chaos. If you're going to do anything about it, you're not going to get rid of a corrupt, dysfunctional political system without some amount of turbulence. Right. So it's not surprising that from that vantage point, they're saying, yes, this is what he promised. And what might concern me is if nothing happens, if everything is calm, all of this is a sign that he really is taking a hatchet job, to quote, unquote, the deep state, and so on and so forth.
- [07:49]
A
That's right. And this burn it all down mentality is something that was initially attractive to people about Trump. And I think for the. There's another section of people who would talk about Trump's first term and say, like, yeah, he said he was going to do all the crazy stuff, but he didn't really do it. This group of people is disappointed by that, right? They're like, yeah, no, we got to do this. We want mass deportations, and we want to bring manufacturing back, and we want to take on China. And that's America first. That's maga. Those people are sort of hardcore. Then there's this other group of voters that we hear a lot from, and those are still in the Trump voting group. And maybe they've voted for Trump a bunch of times, but. Or they voted for Trump. They're new to voting for Trump, but for them, it was about the economy. It was about prices. Things were too expensive, cost of living, groceries, gas. And I heard from this group of people constantly going into the election, and they're not. Trump is Trump. And maybe they don't like his personality, but him being a businessman is important to them because they think under Joe Biden, everything got too expensive. You know, I've been hurting since COVID and I'm looking for somebody to turn it around, around, and that's where Trump is. Just as a businessman, I think he'd do a better job.
- [09:04]
B
I wrote a piece about aspirational populism after Trump's election, which I think speaks a little bit to that segment of a population. Tell me whether that roughly is the same segment. Right. Those are people who are upset about some of the shortcomings of the Biden economy, the high inflation and other things that really were a problem in the four previous years. I think that people who often hear Democrats talk about higher minimum wages and other kinds of things that they feel is not sufficiently aspirational and say, that's good, perhaps I would have no problem with that. But I actually really want to make it. I want to live the American dream. I want to really become much more affluent. And they saw Trump as being able to promise that. And part of his businessman Persona is that even part of the partnership with Elon Musk and occupying Mars and so on, right. To them, all of that was sort of an exciting promise of what the future might hold. And presumably that segment of the election might also include some of those Latino and other voters who swung towards Trump who are perhaps less. I'm sure there's some deeply ideologically committed MAGA Latinos as well. But I would guess that a lot of the Latinos who voted for Trump fall into that category of people who Weren't happy with Biden economy, who wanted some disruption, who looked up to Trump's business success and thought he can help me and us live a similar kind of success story. So how are they feeling? Presumably they are looking at things like the tariffs and talk about a recession and other things with a good amount more concern than that segment of sort of Deep Magal Oil, as you were talking about earlier.
- [10:32]
A
Yeah, so that's exactly right. And so actually, and I want to put a finer point on this, especially for younger voters, for black men, but black voters overall who sort of move toward Trump and Hispanic and Latino voters. You're exactly right. Like, that is a big part of the group that we saw move in places like New Jersey and all that. Who, for them, it was, it was aspirational. And so the left's culture stuff that they tend to, it's more like they're not, they're not like so bent out of shape about it as much as they just roll their eyes at that part and say, like, no, I want this exciting vision for the future. And Elon Musk, you know, I think Democrats would say, you know, we gotta be wage war against billionaires. And these voters say, I think billionaires are cool. How do I become a billionaire? How do I. Or how do I just. It doesn't even have to be a billionaire. It's just, how can I afford a cooler apartment or have things be a little bit easier? And so I think a lot of those voters saw in Trump, it's not that they're like so into Trump. They just, they want somebody who's going to give an aspirational vision. The thing is, and again, here I'm going to do a segment of a segment. There are some of those voters who are, who are very like, fingers crossed. I don't know, I'm not seeing it yet, but I'm still hopeful. And I like some of what Elon Musk is doing. But a lot of this depends on where you fall on the income spectrum. Because if you have some latitude, right, and you're hoping you're really looking forward, you can say, yeah, I'm going to give it some time. They say, look, Rome wasn't built in a day. You know, you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. Like, they kind of give Trump a little bit the benefit of the doubt to maybe he'll get there. I'm like, I don't really know if the tariffs are going to work. I don't really know. But I'm still Hopeful. Fingers crossed. But then there's another segment in there that is super cost sensitive. They do not have the financial latitude to give Trump a lot of grace. They say, this guy said he was going to lower grocery prices, and he is not lowering grocery prices. You know. You know, and you get people that, usually when people talk like this, they give you very concrete examples. They'll say, I just went in and got my gas changed. It was $10 more expensive. Like, things are actually worse than they were under Biden. They're not getting better. And those people have no patience because they don't care about Trump as Trump. Like, for them, it is just, you said you were going to lower my prices. You are not lowering my prices.
- [12:52]
B
He made a promise. They wanted what that promise was. And if that's not going to materialize, they're not going to come up with some clever ideological justification for why actually increasing the price of eggs in the grocery stores is a good thing after all. They're just going to get pissed. In a way, there's something optimistic about that segment of a population. And I was thinking about this when I had Jason Furman on the podcast recently, who was very, very critical of Liberation Day and Trump's tariffs, but who also wrote about the failure of the Biden administration's economic policies. And he seemed quite convinced that the fact that prices increased and so on really did have an impact on voting behavior. That perhaps in some ways, voting behavior is a little bit more rational than political scientists and economists had believed for a long time who thought that actually voters don't re rationally track what happens in the economy, and they certainly don't rationally track the extent to which the President is responsible for something like that. My upshot from that conversation was, no, actually, perhaps to a great extent. Then we realized if you have economic policies that are going to lead to high inflation, voters are going to punish you for it. And if that's true about the Biden economy, that might be true about Trump. So if Trump actually decides in the next whatever is left, 70 days of the pause on these extremely high tariffs, that he does, want to use that as an opportunity to climb down and to pretend to have struck some grand deal. And in the end, he might be able to avert the worst damage to the economy, some of those voters might come back to Trump. But if he goes through and we end up in a recession or we end up with sky high tariffs that really impact the price of everything you're able to purchase in your local store or on Amazon, Those voters are going to be gone.
- [14:31]
A
That's right. And this is where I get sort of frustrated when people are like, well, voters think this and voters think that, or Dem voters think this, and Trump voters think that. Like, actually, there's, there's real segmentation in these groups, and some of these swingier groups, they're not particularly ideological. They are just price sensitive. And of course, I think, you know, Democrats for a long time have talked about income inequality, and I understood that for a long time as a political observer and consumer of how we think about politics and policy. But listening to voters all the time, you can hear the difference between somebody for whom $10 makes a meaningful difference. Like there just are. Even though under Joe Biden, I think this is what Democrats struggled with. Joe Biden's macro economy was, was improving relative to the rest of the world. We were improving. So a lot of people sort of like us and academics and journalists were sitting there being like, why aren't voters happier with this economy? And it's like, okay, well, because if you're on the lower end of the income scale, inflation is high and it's not going down. Like, stuff's more expensive, and that's hard on people, and it just doesn't, it doesn't resolve itself quickly. And so those voters were absolutely part of Trump's coalition in electing him. And it's not that they will. They're not sitting around being like, boy, I, I, I wish, I think I made a mistake or this or that, and I wish I'd voted for Kamala Harris. What happens with, for those people is whenever they get the chance to register again, how they feel, they're just gonna vote for the person who's saying, I'm gonna lower your costs, because for them, it's everything.
- [16:09]
B
So this segment we've been talking about, how big a segment of sort of swing voters is this and what other kinds of swing voters are there, and how are they responding to this situation? Perhaps it's worth just saying sort of. You know, I think it's great to jump into these focus groups, but just to give a sort of bird's eye view, Trump's approval ratings, as measured by something like Nate Silver's polling, have gone down significantly over the course of the last few months, but they are not in extremely negative territory. So I think that he is at something like 50, 51% disapproval, something like 44, 45% approval. Those are pretty bad stats for a president who's only been in office for about 100 days. But they're not catastrophic. And so I think to understand the situation, we have to understand, okay, why is it that Trump has gone from having a positive approval rating, perhaps for the first time in his political career about three or four months ago, to his clearly negative territory, but also why is he in moderately negative territory? But we are not yet, despite all of the turmoil, despite the very extreme steps taken by the administration, seeing the bottom fallout, I guess the big question is, what would it take for more of those swing voters to abandon Trump in such a way that the bottom falls out? Now, even when the bottom falls out, that first group you were talking about is probably going to stick with them, the really ideological MAGA people. That's going to be his base. If he's down to 25% approval ratings in three and a half years time, those are going to be the ones that by and large, with individual exceptions, are still going to be approving of him. Where are the kind of voters that might make him go from 45% approval to 40% approval to 37% approval, 35% approval, all of which I think would make a huge difference to the extent to which Trump can impose his will on the American Republican?
- [17:54]
A
Yeah. Well, here's the most interesting thing about the polling numbers around Trump, which is that Trump's approval, his overall approval rating is slightly higher now than his approval on the economy. Now, that always used to be reversed. He was always had a higher approval rating on his handling of the economy. That was his big thing. Right? Because pre Covid, even people who didn't like Trump thought he's doing a pretty good job handling economy. Economy is good. And for a lot of people who voted for him this time around, even people who had gone to Biden and then come back Trump, right? This was them saying, I thought I just, it was nostalgia for that sort of 2019 economy that brought them back. So here's the thing. I think that if Trump's overall approval rating starts to come into line with right now, his approval on the economy and his economy, and his approval on the economy continues to drop. This is where it starts to get really into the sour spot for Trump, because his superpower has always been convincing people that he is this businessman. Right? It is central to the mythology of Trump and why people believe in him when they feel economically pinched. And so if things continue to get worse, we go into a recession. It takes a knife to that central mythology, which I think hurts Trump. But here's the people that I think abandoned him. So right now, the drop that I think has come in terms of Trump's approval is actually coming from the people for whom he said, I will lower grocery prices on day one and has not, because people do also. And you hear this in the groups, they don't think he's focusing enough on the economy. They're kind of like, doge, whatever, like, are you doing something about grocery prices? And for those people, I think they're the first to go because they are. They're not your typical swing voters in that they have some kind of ideological makeup. They're swingy in the sense of who's doing something for me, for my immediate needs. That's who I'm going to vote for. So those are the first people to go. The second people to go are the group I was talking about a little bit earlier. With the fingers crossed I got hope still, because, hey, it's early days.
- [19:59]
B
So those are also economically based voters, but ones that have a little bit of a longer time horizon. They're willing to give them a little bit more grace for a while, but if in a year or two or three, they haven't seen their personal situation improve and they don't think that things are looking up for the American economy as a whole, they're going to be off the boat.
- [20:15]
A
Exactly. That's exactly right. And again, it goes back to the stratification of people's personal economic circumstances, and it's how much elasticity and room do you have to take a little risk? And for people who have no room, they're out on Trump immediately. They're like, he's not lowering grocery prices on day one.
- [20:31]
B
It's interesting that you always talk about grocery prices and not about stocks. How important do you think the stock market is? There's one striking stat I've seen that I think Harry Anton for CNN shared this, that 61% of Americans are currently employed and 62% have some exposure to the stock market. So you might think that the stock market is incredibly important now, probably for a lot of people, whatever they get from stocks is much less than what they get from employment. And that exposure to the stock market may be $10,000 in an IRA that they hope to be able to retire on 30 years from now. But it's quite distant in their mind in these focus groups. Do people worry about the stock market as a stock market, or do they worry much more about the things we've been talking about, which is grocery prices, the labor market, how much salary they're going to be able to command, and whatever it is they do and so on.
- [21:21]
A
Yeah. So again, I'm going to sort of tease out this, this group, this second group that I think is not hardcore maga, that is thinking about the economy for the, the reason I keep talking about grocery prices is because voters keep talking about grocery prices. I cannot tell you the number of people who will tell me specifically how much an item, you know, people use eggs as a stand in. But people will tell you about the price of milk, they will tell you about the price of bread, they will tell you about their overall grocery bill and how much it has increased. And so again, for people who are really sensitive, they have a lot of kids, they're thinking about how to stretch a dollar. Like that's a real segment of the population and they know exactly how much things cost, items cost. Now, that next group, though, that has just a little more latitude and flexibility, they care about the markets, they'll talk more about the markets and they don't like the volatility. But they're the ones too who are like, yeah, this isn't great, don't love it again. And they have this fingers crossed. They'll say, I'm nervous. They are nervous about tariffs. Now, these voters, the ones who have a little moral attitude, they live though, in the economy where they'll say, okay, I was about to buy a new car, but now I'm nervous about buying a new car because I think it's going to go up too much. And they'll talk about the price of things and they'll also talk, a lot of them will say things like, I work in X industry and it impacts us in the following ways. And so they're kind of in a wait and see deal of is this going to hurt me? And I think that if you believe as I do that Trump's economic choices right now are going to start to have negative personal impacts, impacts on both these interest industries and people. Then this is where I think you start to get Trump down into the lower 40s and higher 30s as people see who live in these industries, okay, the trade war with, with China impacts. And I hear voters do this all the time. They'll be like, I work for a small business, I own a small business, we get all of our stuff from here or we our lumber costs matter. And so I think it's that group right now that's still, like, I don't know, that could really drop out once it starts to hurt them.
- [23:23]
B
Have we covered swing voters or are there other important segments of swing voters that we need to get into?
- [23:27]
A
I'M actually still on all Trump voters, I would say the swingier voters. So let's talk about sort of the more college educated suburban types who've been moving away from Trump and a lot of them have politically realigned into Democrats. But then there's like this other cohort that's pretty, pretty swingy that like has been a traditional Republican all their lives. They like kind of make peace with Donald Trump a little bit, but they're open to voting for Democrats, especially if you give them a Herschel Walker or a Carrie Lake. Right. That's who we think of like a sort of suburban woman.
- [24:02]
B
So is this kind of a country club Republican ish territory or you're talking about something else?
- [24:07]
A
Yes.
- [24:07]
B
So these are people who definitely would have voted for George W. Bush, definitely would have voted, you know, perhaps for John McCain in 2008, would have been very comfortable with Mitt Romney, you know, and then sort of face his choice. When Trump first came onto the political landscape and said he's not really, he doesn't talk like the people we like and identify with, we don't like that. He beats up on politicians that we actually might have liked in various ways. We're kind of nervous about him. But also we've never really voted for Democrats and we have some ideological differences from Democrats and so we're cross pressured in this kind of way.
- [24:37]
A
They are. And you know, also I could call these like Wall Street Journal editorial page Republicans or other people who, I think they, they dislike Donald Trump actively and they will tell you they dislike him, but they kind of live in a. But Democrats are worse, right? And they have the story about Democrats being worse for all kinds of ways. Maybe they don't, maybe it's the woke stuff, maybe it's, you know, other cultural issues. Sometimes you'll hear voters like this say, and they don't have to be country club, they can just sort of be like upper middle class or middle class. And sometimes these are the people who will bring up like, well, yeah, Trump's crazy, but you know, Democrats don't even know what a woman is. You know, there's like kind of this voter, but if you give them a Herschel Walker and a, and a pretty normal Democrat locally. These are especially the types of people who will vote for a Democrat for governor in their state. They tend to be more likely sort of cultural moderates. Like they don't like the super woke stuff, but they also think gay marriage is fine. You know, they, they, they tend to be more pro choice. And so this is a swingier group too. That I think is an interesting group to think about in the long term because they still think the Republican Party might come back, right? They still think Donald Trump might be a bit of an aberration. And they are surrounded by other Republicans who kind of reinforce that. And these are the ones who I sort of wonder about long term because these are the ones where if Democrats gave them like take Virginia. I think there's a, probably a lot of these kinds of voters in Virginia. Abigail Spanberger versus Winsome Sears is going to be the 2025 gubernatorial race in Virginia. I think Abigail Spanberger will clean up with this type of voter over Winsome Sears, who's a very Trumpy kind of out there Republican.
- [26:29]
B
And how are those voters feeling? I mean, I would guess that those voters were very put off by parts of what the Biden administration, certainly by the overall cultural drift of the last 10 years. They probably felt, you know what, we need something to put a stop on that. And they hoped that Trump would turn out to be a relatively conventional Republican despite his rhetoric. Now, my guess would be that they've been looking at the first 90 days, first hundred days of his administration. They may be nervous about the tariffs, they may be nervous about the economy, but they also presumably are nervous about him working, seemingly wanting to like, not just to course correct the universities, but to destroy the universities. Right. Not just to course correct on some of the woke stuff, but to sort of impose, you know, an anti woke agenda with a force of, a coercive state of a federal government in a, in a, in a quite extreme way. And I would guess that that is making them nervous. Or am I, am I guessing wrong?
- [27:24]
A
No, you're right. So this is, this is a crowd and it's maybe a little bit of like, I don't want to just name publications, but I kind of put them in buckets of like this is the free press crowd, right? The, the, I'm more, I came into this, I voted for Trump because I was more worried about anti Semitism on college campuses or I thought, you know, I really don't like the cultural woke stuff. But they're looking at Trump, what he's doing on the economy, the saber rattling at Greenland and Canada, the level of disruption in chaos. And they thought they were going to get first term trial Trump, right? They thought they were going to get Trump and they, they, they missed the part where Trump was not going to be surrounded by normal, sensible Republicans who are going to put guardrails around him and they are Slowly realizing that this is a lawless, crazy Trump. And, and I put the market sort of in this category where the markets all were in the. I'm going to focus on what Trump does, not what he says because I don't really believe what he says. I think I. Because here part of, of part of this crowd's MO is that they're so educated that they will tell themselves a story. They can convince themselves that Donald Trump isn't going to do all the things he says he's going to do. That's like, that's for the rubes. That's for the, you know, these guys. Like he's not going to do any of that. He's a normal business guy. And those people are starting to be like, ooh, this is not good. I do not feel good about where this is headed. I still think they're a little bit in the fingers crossed, maybe the market volatility will back him off. You know, that's like the Bill Ackmans who try to. They think they can flatter their way through it or they think they can find carve outs or that this will work itself out in some way. But those people are nervous as well. And I could see being some of the ones to bolt eventually.
- [29:10]
B
How big a part of the electorate is this? Because on the one hand, some of the things you're saying makes me think that they're quite a small part of the electorate. Right? I mean the Wall Street Journal editorial audience, the Bill Ackman's of the world, you know, the country club Republicans, which is my term. On the other hand, of course there is a lot of traditional Republicans. There's a lot of mostly conservatives in the country that wear the bread and butter of the old style Republican Party. And that is a real social set of people in the country. So how should we think about how electorally significant the segment of the electorate is?
- [29:44]
A
So here's how to think about it. They are a small but decisive part of the margins that elect Trump. But more importantly, they have outsized influence because these are the people who control things in a lot of ways. These are small business owners. These are people who are looked up to in their, in their, you know, respective fields or in the organizations they participate in or the towns that they live in. These are people who are considered sort of local thought leaders. And that's why I sort of go to like a, you know, people still look at National Review or the Free Press or the, you know, and they'll. When, when people are like, okay, okay, we all get that Trump is bad, but like the libs are worse. That gives them sort of a permission to say, okay, we're going to go ahead and go with Trump. But these people are also the kinds of people who can set, when they start to turn on Trump and say, like right now, they all think again, they're smart enough and they're used to controlling things enough that they're like, well, we can, we can nudge him in the right direction. We have agency here. If we flatter him, if we push him, if we explain why this is bad, we can make a difference. But also when Trump, if Trump doesn't listen to them and does behave irrationally and they start to turn on him, they can have an enormous influence over the vibes of how a broader section of the electorate views Trump.
- [31:08]
B
Very interesting. And you think they haven't yet turned on Trump, that they're getting nervous, they might get there. And this is part of what sort of one of the mechanisms will be involved in Getting Trump from 45% approval to 40 or 35% approval if this segment really loses faith in him.
- [31:24]
A
Yeah, and this is the segment that you could, you could think of as the people who, the days that the markets were crashing right after Trump released his insane tariff regime that was, you know, filled with errors and didn't make any sense. These are the people who are like, oh, this doesn't make any sense. This. Why are they doing it this way? Now? Of course, they're also the ones who, when he does the 90 day pause, they're like, well, he's listening to people, he's backing off. And so I think you see this is reflected in the markets by people being like, is he going to behave rationally or is he going to behave irrationally? And they're not sure.
- [32:01]
B
All right, so we're starting to get into the swing voters. This is perhaps a relatively small but very influential segment of the electorate of swing voters. What are some of the other segments of swing voters? You've been looking at it well and
- [32:14]
A
then you've got sort of what I would call like red pilled Democrats. And so this could be like a reflection of a Joe Rogan, you know, even like Elon sort of people who had traditionally been Democrats, who have more socially liberal views, but they are mad at Democrats and they have kind of found themselves in a weird heterodox relationship with Republicans. That kind of group can sometimes be Trumpier than sort of the old school Republicans. And I don't actually want to spend too much time Because I think similarly, this is a group with a lot of them are just sort of. Basically, they're not Republicans by any ideological way. But like I said, they are red pilled. They are people who are like, I reject Democrats, Democrats reject me. I'm in a hot war with them, and I'm going to align with the right. Even like a Bhatia Sargon, whoever that woman is, who's always out there being like, I'm a Communist MAGA person. Like these are. And this is actually Yasha, if I can make a broader point right now. If I can make a broader point
- [33:19]
B
about Communist MAGA people.
- [33:21]
A
Yeah. Well, actually it's reflective of something that I think as I listen to people, we've talked a lot about political realignment and there is a lot of political realignment going on. And this is where the swingy stuff can get interesting. But it's not just political realignment. This idea that there is a far right, a far left, a center right, a center left and a center. It just kind of isn't true anymore. Like the electorate now is just a big weird salad of people and policy beliefs. And some of this was happening already. Some of it is due to Trump and the way he hijacked the Republican Party and made it no longer anything that reflected. People are always asking me, are you still a Republican? And I'm like, well, I still believe in limited government, free markets and American leadership in the world. And no. So, no. So no. Because that current Republican Party reflects none of that. And actually like a weird segment of sort of moderate Democrats can now reflect that anyway. But it's. But it is a. But like the sort of Bernie types, some of the aggressive Bernie types might actually be more like a. Joe Rogan is somebody who was a Bernie guy and had liked his kind of burn it all down sort of feeling. And they've all migrated to Trump now.
- [34:35]
B
Yeah. I was going to ask you whether some of that segment might have voted for Bernie in the primaries in 2016.
- [34:41]
A
I hear from these people all the time and some of them are now like the hardest core MAGA types. And so if you think about, again, this is more like horseshoe theory of politics as opposed to a linear spectrum. Although I think sometimes we twist ourselves into pretzels trying to make sense of an electorate that doesn't try to make sense of itself. But you do have people who are very Trumpy and will say, I loved Bernie. And really what they mean is like, stuff's not working and I want radical change. And they're not Thinking that hard about the individual policies that make them up. This is where I. People ask me a lot too, about, like, are you a centrist, whatever, Or. Or how do we make the country more centrist? How do we. How do we rebuild the American center? And it's funny because it's less a set of policies that come together to form a center. It's temperamental. There's a temperamental moderation.
- [35:37]
B
And that makes sense, right? I mean, I have a higher opinion of Bernie than I do of Trump, for I certainly disagree with Bernie on many very important things. But the basic narrative is you're being exploited. America doesn't work. The political establishment is corrupt, and we need very radical change to do something about that. And that involves upsetting some people and burning some stuff down and to some extent portraying yourself as a martyr, then that's fine. Then that's great. And again, you can have an ideological analysis of those two political figures or an analysis of how they would govern, et cetera, in which case they look very, very different. But when you look at it as sort of a figure, you can project that anger against what is. And that desire for some kind of radical attempt to start from scratch onto then it's not that hard to see why they would appeal to the same kind of person.
- [36:31]
A
And honestly, I could see a lot of these voters, there's a lot of voters I listen to who talk about Trump and they say, like, well, I think he transcends politics. Right. They. They feel like he himself is not as much of a political figure. But I could see a lot of the voters and the way they talk about him liking somebody like aoc, like, they would find her authentic, they would find her radical, they would find her energetic, and they would say, yeah, no, that's. And. And they would not see a particular difference for themselves, or they would see no contradiction in a Trump aoc. Lik. Lik liking both of them.
- [37:04]
B
So we'll get more to Democrats in a little moment. But is there not an important difference between Bernie in 2016 and AOC today, which is that Bernie emphasized the economy rather than identity, and in that sense had a kind of slightly folksy, common sense way of talking. He didn't use a lot of big words, for example. Right. Whereas aoc, for she's obviously very media savvy and quite charismatic, is just much more steeped in that kind of identitarian language in a way that both, I think, would put some people off because they might feel. I'm not sure that she's really fighting for me, but also, I think, is linguistically in a different register. Right. They might think, well, I don't know, she uses these terms that I've never heard. And she might say. She might look down on me if I somehow use the wrong word. And so I'm not quite sure that she actually would be fighting for my interests in the same kind of way that they might have related to.
- [37:55]
A
But so I have. I think AOC is a fascinating figure in part because she is young enough that she can still define herself in a certain way. She has not yet run on a national stage in a way that I think she is boxed in. And I think some of this depends on how she thinks about positioning herself. Because she can be the bartender, Right. She can be the waitress. AOC who understands regular people and talks like a regular person, or she can be sort of the younger version that's, you know, talking like a graduate student or like a. Like a somebody with a college education and can turn people off. And she can still talk about being exploited and all of these things. Yeah. But, like, I do think that if AOC listened to Bernie a lot and took Bernie's economic populism and then just wrapped it in a younger, more energetic kind of package and talked a lot about working people, I think AOC could go a long way.
- [39:04]
B
So, look, I'm somewhat sympathetic to that point of view, and I can see how when you look at the transformation of something like Nancy Pelosi over time, she went from being a quite radical San Francisco Democrat to a kind of moderate Democratic figure over the course of many years. And AOC obviously entered Congress at such a young age that she has a lot of time to reinvent herself. When you look at national polls, she's quite unpopular today, and I think she is quite marked because she became so famous so quickly. But she probably does have time to evolve in those kinds of ways. But that would require her to be the sort of person who is able and willing to do both of those things. And I guess I have considerable doubts about both parts of that. I have parts about whether she's willing to do that because she is come of age in a political movement that is very big on political purity. And so she, I think, is visibly annoyed with the fact that despite all of her attempts, some of that movement now thinks that she's not pure enough. And so there could be a kind of oppositional dynamic where she says, screw you, people. I'm never going to be pure enough for you anyway. So I'm going to Go off to do my own thing. But I haven't yet seen any indication that she's really liberating herself in those kinds of ways. But there is also a question about whether she genuinely is that thing. I mean, I think Bernie Sanders grew up, I believe, reasonably poor. I'm not sure that I know quite enough about his upbringing. Steeped in an economic left, has in some ways a very odd political biography, being off in Burlington, Vermont and so on. But he's been banging on about those things for decades. I mean, you look at a speech that he held as mayor of Burlington in 1980, and it sounds exactly like what he was talking about in 2020, 2016. And part of that authenticity, of course, was part of what made up his appeal. AOC went to a pretty affluent high school. She was an undergraduate at Boston University, which is not the most elite university in the country, but certainly a very good school. Yes, she worked as a bartender for a while while being very active in the DSA politics of New York City. And then at a very early age, she went into Congress. Despite all of her political talents. I don't know how authentically she can speak to that kind of working class economic populism that is shorn of the kind of markers of that more identitarian elite discourse.
- [41:17]
A
Well, here, let me just give you an example. Like, you know, somebody who went like full spectrum from. Is like Kyrsten Sinema. Kyrsten Sinema was a queer, radical Green Party person who got so far to the center that the Democrats basically got rid of her.
- [41:37]
B
But that didn't work. Right. And there may be a reason why that didn't work.
- [41:40]
A
It was too. It was too. Probably either. It was both too much too fast and I think wrong for the moment. But here's what I think happened. I always was interested in Kyrsten Sinema's political evolution in that I think it was born of true experience of trying to find common ground with Republicans. Now, it came at a time when people were not that interested in finding common ground with Republicans. And so that was no good. But I do think that I have watched aoc and this is not. I'm not. I am. AOC is not for me. Right. Like, I'm looking for, you know, a centrist Democrat who I think focuses on the economy and leaves. Figures out how to leave a lot of the cultural stuff behind. But I also recognize as I listen to voters, the desperation for somebody that they feel connected to, who doesn't sound, and this is the most important thing, who does not sound like a regular politician. And there is something about her and her ability to communicate with people that is light years ahead of just about every other Democrat. There's a reason she's drawing these enormous crowds out there with Bernie right now. And I think we should go to Democrats because I think I just did a bunch of focus groups with Democrats where we were asking them, we separated them into two groups. Groups of Democrats who wanted the party to be more moderate and groups of Democrats who wanted the party to be more progressive. And listen to both. And it turns out in this moment, the appetite for being more moderate or more progressive was much more muted than simply being more aggressive. Like, what voters want on the Democratic side is somebody who's going to fight Trump. And I think that, that, that fighting can easily become a stand in for I can fight Trump. And that shows you that I can fight for you, which is what people want and is one of the things people like about Trump, this idea that he fights for them. And look, I'm not, I'm not wild about that. We've gotten to a place in our politics where wanting somebody to fight is the dominant factor. But man, is it the thing that I hear over and over again.
- [43:49]
B
So I want to get deep into Democrats, but just, are we done with swing voters or are there other important segments of swing voters that we need to cover?
- [43:55]
A
I guess the only other main point I would make about what it means right now in this moment to be a swingyish voter has to do with a segment of voters that we call often low information. And what I want to emphasize about low information voters, what I mean by low information is that they do not watch the news at night. They do not seek out lots of, you know, they're not like, ah, what is the latest twist and turn about the Supreme Court and how it's ruling on the Brago Garcia case. They are just, they're not tapped into politics that much. However, they are awash in information. They are not. Low information does not mean that they don't have information. And they might be really interested in fitness and they might be really interested in other cultural things, tv, movies, whatever. But because all of that is now infused with politics, right, they are still getting political information. So there's this swingy type of voter that I think probably voted for Democrats before that now. And fitness is a really easy one or even wellness. This is where you get the, the, the relationship between Maha, the Make America Healthy Again RFK type Democrats who are now very much red pilled. This is now a swingier Part of the electorate where they're saying, I want red dye number three out and I want to eat organic. And I don't like people telling me that I have to have a vaccine. And these people might have been more on the left and they are now again, they are not Republicans by any stretch of the imagination on policy, but vibe wise, culture wise, red pilled wise, they are now voting for Trump. And I think who those people vote for in the future is entirely up for grabs because they are non ideological.
- [45:44]
B
And how are they processing what's happening with Trump so far? Are they sort of tuned out and they haven't really moved? Particularly are they seeing signs of things that they like, like the fact that RFK is, you know, heading up the Department of Health and Human Services or, you know, other things that worry them at this stage?
- [46:02]
A
I think they are. No, there's things that worry them, but they're still fingers crossed, they're like waiting to see, I don't know, are we going to get red dye number whatever out of all of our food. And also, but these, the red pilled people, though, also to be clear, here's where they become sort of apathetic when Trump's in charge because a lot of what red pills them is opposition to modern democratic culture. And so right now they're kind of like, I don't know, I'm in wait and see mode. Because they're not ready to say I was either out, not that I was wrong, because mostly people don't say I was wrong. They're not ready to say, like, yeah, let's move on from him, let's do something different. But they are, they're like, I don't know, this doesn't seem great, you know, and I think that there's a fair amount of this doesn't seem great going on with the voters, but not what I think Democrats wish was happening, which is like massive regret for voting for Trump. Those two things are not like, there's a lot of people saying this is not great. There's not a lot of people being like, boy, I wish I'd voted for Kamala Harris.
- [47:14]
B
I'm going to use the fact that you just said the word Democrats to make an elegant bridge back to that topic. So you were saying that there's an ideological debate about whether people want Democrats to moderate or whether they want Democrats to become more progressive. And that is obviously an important debate, particularly in high information, left of center circles. There's a lot of competing position papers trying to persuade rank and file Democrats that in order to win the midterms, in order to be competitive in 2028, they have to do A or B or C. You're saying that what you're actually seeing from voters is something that's sort of less ideological and just Trump is doing terrible things. We just want champions who are going to stand up for us against Trump. Is that broadly right?
- [48:00]
A
Yes, that is broadly right. And I'll tell you, I mean, I wondered whether people would see what Cory Booker did, making his 25 hour speech on the floor as like performative nonsense that doesn't really get you anywhere or whether they would like it. And people were pumped about Cory Booker, like Democrats. Democrats were like, yes, and Cory Booker and AOC are not the same. But you heard the same level of enthusiasm for people who were going to go out there and do something like, Senator Van Holland is not somebody who is a household name. He's not somebody Democrats were that interested in. But they want to see people who are going to stand on principle and they sort of, right now in this moment don't, I don't care which principle, just stand up to what Trump is doing because they see it as entirely lawless. They're tired of getting run over by Republicans. They're tired of, they want people who can win and they want people who are going to fight. And I think they're, they're becoming increasingly, and I think Republicans did this too. They got increasingly policy agnostic and much more focused on who's gonna kind of broadly culturally take swings for my value set. Even if my value set isn't like a linear set of policies, it's more just, it's something a little more ineffable than that. And that's what you hear from Democrats that I think is interesting because I of course, am invested in the should Democrats be more moderate or should they be more progressive debate. And I would like them to be more moderate and I think they should be more moderate in order to win. However, it's funny that that is, you know, there you hear from voters annoyance with like, you hear moderates be annoyed with, like, we've gone too far left, we're being too progressive. Like the, you'll really get a lot of people talking about the trans stuff or DEI has gone too far. You hear a lot of that from Democrats. But the, and the, but then the progressives are annoyed with the moderates. Like, although I've literally never heard a single person bring up Liz Cheney, I know that people have like really zeroed in on that. I'VE never heard a voter bring it up, but they will say, like, we're not fighting for real people, or, you know, they are just billionaires, too, uni parties and stuff like that. But mostly that was so much less important to them than having people who emerge in this moment who fight Trump. And this is where I think aoc, one of the reasons I've been thinking about her so much is that she's filling a vacuum that voters are desperate for someone to fill. And I'm nervous about that, because what you don't want is for the face of the pushback against Trump to be so progressive that actually it continues to turn off all the moderate voters that they need to win to build a sufficient governing coalition or a winning political coalition.
- [50:52]
B
So this is where I guess I'm trying to pass my feelings about the very interesting facts that you present to us. Because, of course, Democrats have shrunk as a coalition. The people who we're talking about as Democrats in these focus groups are now a clear minority of the electorate. In order to win, you need certain to mobilize those, but you need to add a lot of those swing voter groups that we were talking about earlier. Now, I think, in principle, the instinct that these Democratic voters have is the correct one, which is to say Donald Trump is doing things that are very concerning. What we need to do is to stop him from doing those things. We need to stop him from destroying the American and the global economy. We need to stop him from expanding executive power in ways that go clearly against the Constitution. And what we want is just some life in the damn Democratic Party. We want to see some people take the fight to him. And I think that's a perfectly reasonable and appropriate sentiment under these political circumstances. Now, in the best kind of scenario, that might allow us to sideline some of the more extreme and ideological ideas and positions that have come to characterize the Democratic Party. Rather than talking about all of these things, we can focus on the bad things Trump is doing, and that can be a way to sidestep them. That would be a good way for that to happen. And perhaps it might allow a more moderate Democrat like Abigail Spanberger to rise to the front of the opposition to Trump and perhaps become the nominee in 2028. Of course, the danger is very much in the other direction, which is to say that because Democrats will never actually deal with some of the positions on which the people in these focus groups may be able to ignore and say, well, I don't love our party stance on gender reassignment. Surgeries for 13 year olds. But I'm much more focused on Trump. But because Democrats are not going to deal with some of those positions, it's going to make it easy for a lot of the swing voters to say no. The Democrats haven't learned we're not willing to quote was correct on that. And I am worried that some of the politicians within the Democratic coalition that might be best suited, in part because they generally have some political talents that need to be respected to sort of turn themselves into the most visible spokespeople of resistance, are ones that also are quite ideologically committed to the kind of policy positions, to the kind of cultural language that is going to continue to put those swing voters off. And so I worry when I hear you say, and when I hear Nate Silver say that AOC is this very talented politician who has a very real chance of getting the 2028 Democratic Party nomination, I worry when I hear Tim Wolf say in a televised town hall that the real problem is that we haven't explained di and wokeness and all of these policies to people and we actually have to double down on our support of those things. Things. Because while respondents in these Democratic focus groups may not be so concerned about those things, I just don't think that that is likely to be enough to build a broad coalition that actually beats Republicans in 2028.
- [53:55]
A
Yeah, you and me both. But here's the deal. I mean, so first of all, here's the good news. The good news is, is that honestly, I think if Pete Buttigieg became an enormously with all his technocratic whatever and his not super progressiveness, but if he became, if he just got out there and was swinging every day at Trump, he would rise to the top. Like there is a vacuum that could be filled. And I think one of the things going back to this idea of the problem with moderate moderates, right, the people that we like is that they do tend to be temperamentally moderate. And when they're temperamentally moderate means that they're cautious and they are not as aggressively out there and they're not willing to go toe to toe with Trump on everything. The problem is, is the vacuum is being created by people who want somebody to do that. And I want, what I would like to see is more of the people who are sort of moderates on policy become more aggressive in their opposition to Trump. And instead you're getting, I think, a really perverse political instinct by Gretchen Whitmer or by Gavin Newsom. And they're doing things like, well, I'm going to go work with Trump or I'm going to sit down with Charlie Kirk and I'm going to, I'm going to explain why the far left is wrong about a couple things like trans sports, and I'm going to do it with Charlie Kirk. And instead of fighting, they're giving cover to the worst instincts of the opposition and the worst, some of the worst players, the opposition that is no good. The people, the, the, the both from a voter standpoint and for me, just like how do you win standpoint? Gavin Newsom is basically, I think has had a catastrophic six months ever since the taking the wildfire and, and going all the way to sort of Charlie Kirk podcast. I think he is doing the exact wrong thing in the moment. I think that Gretchen Whitmer, what she did in the Oval Office, not just covering her face, but going there, period, putting out the thing about tariffs at a time when Trump was imploding, like those political instincts are going to get people nowhere. I think the opportunity is for somebody who has more moderate positions to become an aggressive fighter against Trump. And that, that is the, is the recipe. Otherwise, progressives who are more temperamentally suited to like, being outraged about everything will fill the vacuum.
- [56:17]
B
Let's be a little bit more precise about what that means stylistically. Right. So one point is that ideally it would be somebody who's relatively moderate on policy issues and who can course correct on some of the biggest issues that have tanked Democrats in the past to rise to the top, but to do so not by sitting down with Charlie Kirk on the podcast. And I've never been a big fan of Gavin Newsom for all kinds of reasons, but by being very present in the media, explaining why it is that we should be very concerned about what Trump is doing without sort of letting yourself be defined in this extremely culturally progressive way. And if somebody like Pete Buttigieg were to be much more present in the media at the moment, he might be the kind of figure that you have in mind. Another question, though, is about the style. And here I think that we're in danger of running two quite different things together. One is how principled, how vociferous, how present in the media is your opposition to some of the things that Trump is doing. The other is what kind of tone do you take? And I've been fascinated both by the energy around people like Jasmine Crockett who very explicitly want to defy the Obama era idea of when they go low, we go high, saying no, when they go low, we go lower. According for Example, the governor of Texas who uses a wheelchair. Governor Hot Wheels. And these other very personalized insults against Republicans. And then a recent write up in the New York Times and some other places trying to give this some kind of intellectual coherence as, as dark woke as sort of a way of arguing for these leftist positions in a way that's much more combative and that takes the fight to Trump. I presume that there's a way to take the fight to Trump in a way that doesn't go down the dark woke sort of stylistic avenue. That there's a way of doing that, but perhaps is much more like what Cory Booker did on the floor of the Senate in which you had perfect decorum. I didn't watch all 26 hours of it, but I didn't see any clips of him swearing or doing anything untoward. But in which sort of the energy and the importance of the moment of his opposition is symbolized by the length of how he speaks, by the substantive criticisms he makes, but which stylistically don't try to sort of match Trump's nastiness. Sort of an eye for an eye.
- [58:39]
A
Yeah, And I think this is, I mean, it's, you know, I've always felt like this about Trump, which is, you know, it's the, you stare into the abyss and the abyss stares back at you like, as you're fighting the monster. Be very careful not to become the monster monster. And I think Democrats run a real risk of that. I do not care. Like, part of the problem is right now is that Jasmine Crockett, like, you people are desperate for messengers, right? They're desperate for people to be out there, but you basically have the people with the worst message being the only ones willing to be messengers right now. And so that's when I say there's an opportunity, it's to say to anybody, I don't care. And, you know, maybe Bennett in Colorado or like a lot of the people that I'm talking about who are temperamental moderates, they find themselves struggling to balance their temperamental moderation with taking the fight to Trump. And I'm saying that is not. There's a false choice. It is not. It is a perfect time to do that. It is a perfect time for Alyssa Slotkin to be somebody who goes hard at Trump, who is a. And uses it as an expression of her moderation, an expression of her normalcy, to talk about how abnormal and how extreme Donald Trump is and how normal she is by example, not to match it, you know, extremism with extremism. Of but to say but, but you can fight hard. And in fact, I think should. And this is where you know who's much closer to this. And this is where I think politicians are ill suited, honestly, in this moment. And voters think they are too. They're not in the mood for regular politicians. But there's a reason you ask people who they're interested in in the groups. A lot of people say aoc. A lot of people say Mark Cuban and like their idea of Mark Cuban. They don't know Mark Cuban that well and they don't know what his policies are, are. They know that he too is famous, he too is a business person. He too has been out there being critical of Trump and it seems like he can talk to people normally and like that's what they want. The Democrats have had the exact wrong instinct, both politically. They, they do not go out and message. They do not go out and argue and put out ideas and run aggressively. And their failure to do so means that they don't get the reps in, in. They don't get the scrutiny, they don't get the opportunity to fail. Kamala Harris, this was one of her major, major problems. And it was the problem with the whole. If Biden had been forced to be out there all the time, everybody would have known. And now, granted, I mean, I knew and voters knew how infirm he was, how not up for the moment he was. I mean, the voters had been telling me for years, guy's too old. I think he's sick. I'm sure he's sick. He has dementia. Not Republicans, Democrats. Okay. And for some reason, elites, like, couldn't get their heads around this very simple prospect. But if you are getting your reps in, Mark Cuban, if he wants to do this, Mark Cuban should be out there every day. But you have the added benefit, the benefit not only of being a good messenger and of raising your profile, but also you're getting better all the time. And that's why you've got to go everywhere. You don't have to just build your own safe media ecosystem, go in the right wing media ecosystem, go fight with them, sharpen your. This is, I'm tired of us having to sit here and like pick apart somebody's political instincts. What we should have. Their political instincts should be on full display. They should be giving us a full meal of who they are to pick apart. And that is actually how you're gonna win now in this environment.
- [62:15]
B
That's very interesting. Just go out in all of the media environments and of Course, I know there's been this attempt by a lot of Democrats and sort of progressive groups and foundations and so on to reshape the media ecosystem because they're really worried that places like Joe Rogan now, you know, have quite firmly swung behind Trump. And so they are saying, we need a Democratic Joe Rogan. I heard you use a good line about this recently. Who was the Democratic Joe Rogan in the past? Sarah?
- [62:42]
A
Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan was the Democrats Joe Rogan. And Elon Musk was the Democrat. Like, these people have also, like, I, this is, I, like, lose my mind about this all the time. But if you look Trump, elon Rogan, Tulsi, RFK Jr. You go back 10 years, all of them Democrats. All of them, like so many of our major political figures, they were Democrats, they weren't Republicans. Like, the shift has been enormous. The upending of the political structure has been enormous. And Democrats are still dealing with the political environment like everything's just, like, normal and linear and whatever. No, it's not. And you know what? When I'm tired of all of us having to sit around and say, well, what should the message be? And what about this politician? Or that the person should show themselves. They should show themselves because they are driven by passion and have a view of the world and they know how to speak to it authentically. And so they'll go to everybody. You don't have to. If you have to build a whole media ecosystem, it's because you're doing something. Because there's a vacuum of leaders. Leaders show themselves.
- [63:46]
B
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Good Fight. If you want more of Sarah's wisdom, if you want to hear how she thinks Democrats can beat Republicans in 2028 and who the Democratic candidate is likely to be, why she is down on Gretchen Whitmer and on Gavin Newsom, but is hopeful about some other figures in the Democratic Party. If you want to hear her prediction about who the most likely Republican nominee is going to be, not necessarily J.D. vance or even Donald Trump Jr. You will need to support this podcast by becoming a paying subscriber. Please go to jaschamunk.substack.com and to say thank you for being a faithful listener with throwing in a special discount, 25% off, that makes it only about a dollar a week, go to yashamonk.substack.com the Good Fight to claim that special offer. Thank you for listening. Thank you so much for listening to the Good Fight. Lots of listeners have been spreading the word about this show. If you two have been enjoying the podcast, please be liked. Rate the show on itunes, tell your friends all about it, share it on Facebook or Twitter. And finally, finally, please mail suggestions for great guests or comments about the show to goodfightpodmail.com that's goodfightpodmail.com
- [65:25]
A
this recording carries a Creative Commons 4.0 International License. Thanks to Silent Partner for their song Chess Pieces.