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Hello, everyone. This is JVL here with my best friend Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark. And it's spring. You can tell because I'm not wearing my spring and summer shirt, which is longer than.
C
Oh, it's a different brand.
A
Different brand. Totally different brand. I mean, super different.
C
This is one of the things you and I have in common, where we basically find a thing that we like and we just buy seven of them in different colors. Although in your case, you do it the same color. Like people think you have one shirt, but you actually have the same shirt seven times.
A
Like, I have it in different colors now. What I do is actually with the. The. So for the, the summer shirt, they're all different colors? Yeah. For the winter shirt, they are the winter and fall shirt, which is a long sleeve tee. I have like eight of those in like three different colors. And so they're, you know, I have like two or three of each color.
C
Do you know what I miss? I miss the days of the pandemic when you and I did these and I. Before we were on video, before we were on video, and I could just see so much of your flesh. You just.
A
It was everywhere. Tank tops, basically doing them shirtless. I was like. Like the Big Lebowski. It was. Those were the day we get. Get away with a lot. Before video, I could be wearing my glasses instead of contacts. It was. Yeah, it's good times. Good times. You know what else is good times, Sarah?
C
Tell me.
A
I. I woke up early this morning and I pumped out an absolutely kick ass newsletter. It's going to be read by nobody, but I am very, very pleased with it.
C
I'm sure I will read it a week from now.
A
It is a. It's a theory. I came up with a theory, and it's a theory about, you know, how the, like, they've talked about, like, the Trump madman theory. This is like a big thing that defenders do.
C
Voters, Voters in the focus group talk about it all the time.
A
The foreign leaders just give him whatever he wants because he's deranged and he's
C
unpredictable and you don't know what he's going to do. And that keeps them off balance. Yes.
A
So that has been vitiated by events, especially the Iran war. But what if the Trump madman theory is true about the stock market? And so this is what my, my pieces today. In a world in which Trump creates total chaos and we do like chaos is now the baseline assumption.
C
Yeah.
A
Markets, when chaos is normal, markets have to price chaos in as normal. And so a chaotic event like the biggest oil energy spike in history becomes something that the markets go. Yeah. They don't freak out about it. And then anytime you get a single hint of normality, the normality are the weird events and the markets react to those by jumping up. And so I, what I tried to tease out is we had this week simultaneously warnings from people saying, hey, hey. The last ships to have left the Strait of Hormuz, pre war they are about to dock and discharge their, their cargoes of oil. And after that we've got this huge gap in the supply of petroleum that's going to cause havoc. Oh, also The S&P 500 just hit a record high. You look at these two things, you're like, wait a minute, this doesn't make any sense. And so I, Anyway, the piece itself is a little. Is long. It's fantastic. It may not be right. This is, I'm not saying it's fantastic because it's correct, but it's, I think, an interesting way of thinking about this and I'm hopeful that it will spark some good discussion amongst readers about what some alternate theories are and because something's going on. Well, let me ask you this weird for the stock market to be going up like this.
C
It is.
A
While you're in the midst of something which 10 years ago in the before times, I think would have created a great deal of uncertainty.
C
Yeah, I mean, I mean, I've been looking at it thinking that the stock market has just become either untethered to reality because reality is no fun or. And everything I've read is like, well, in the short term it might not be great, but they're just betting on the long term that cooler heads prevail and that they figure it out. And to me, I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's chaos or just they price in the tacoing. They're like, Trump will. Not that he has shown a desire to get out of all of these predicaments like tariffs or whatever by like adjusting things when they're not going his way. And so they just assume that's going to happen.
A
That's part of. But that's that's all chaos, right? I mean, even the talk going is chaos because you're never sure, well, when is it going to happen?
C
Is it chaos or is it. Is it a predictable flip flopping?
A
So it's not really predictable. This is what. So I pulled a chart from Bloomberg where they looked at the tariffs and they, they kept track of all of the tariff threats and they broke them down by tariff that is has been implemented and is still there. Tariffs that were implemented and repealed, tariffs which were withdrawn before they were implemented and tariffs which have been threatened but not implemented, but not repealed. And the bars are all like crazy. There's no way of knowing what's going to happen. You know what I'm saying? It isn't like all are not on or all were repealed anyway. That's a longer story. We could talk about that. But I say this because I woke up this morning and I went to Truth Social as I always do. That's not true. I don't actually do that. And the first thing I saw was a truth about Tucker and Candace and Alex Jones. Tucker is a low IQ person, always easy to beat and highly overrated. So are Megyn Kelly, Candace, really dumb and mentally ill and bankrupt Alex Jones, who is completely fried. Okay, I don't quite understand where that came from. He was just reacting to a. Oh,
C
no, he's mad at Alex Jones. Alex Jones is mad at him. Alex Jones has been ranting about how Trump should be kissing his ass like there's a very stupid but very real podcast war now between Trump and some of the top people who abandoned him over the Iran war.
A
Well, it's interesting, but then 45 minutes before we started to tape, we got. Iran has just announced that the Strait of Iran is fully open and ready for full passage. Thank you. Is all caps. Followed 20 minutes later by all caps. The Strait of Hormuz is completely open and ready for business and full passage, but the naval blockade will remain in full force and effect as it pertains to Iran only until such time as our transaction with Iran is 100% complete. This process should go very quickly in that most of the points are already negotiated. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump.
C
I saw this tweet in Slack and I just responded and said what?
A
What? Great. I guess it's all. It's all worked out.
C
Yeah, but hold on.
A
Nothing to worry about.
C
Well, let's just take it. Let's take it line by line for just one quick second and I. We don't even have to Spend that much time on this. But. So it's open, but not to Iran. But it's called the Straight of Iran now. But is it. Well, remember in the first tweet, you see, he said the Strait of Iran is open. And I was like, is this like a. Is this a. A Gulf of America type thing where part of the conditions is now that we call it the Strait of Iran, or is Trump just forgetting what things are called?
A
Yeah, he did. That's right. The Strait of Iran is fully open.
C
Yeah, I didn't.
A
My brain just went right over that.
C
But so, like, okay, so our navy is still blockading it against Iran, only blockading ports.
A
Iranian ports, not the, the waterway itself. And this is a. So what? This is sort of a semi important distinction. We talked about this with hurtling yesterday. Trump had originally said, we are blockading the Strait of Hormuz. Now, this would have been an illegal action because the Strait of Hormuz is a waterway governed by international law, which assures freedom of passage. For Trump to say we are going to blockade is very possible that the US Military would have refused to carry out that order because that would be an illegal order. So, like, four days later, CENTCOM comes out and clarifies. No, no, no, no. The president, what he meant was that we are blockading Iranian ports along the strait because that's a thing you can do as an act of war. That does not violate international law. Yeah, of course it violates American law because we haven't declared war. And a blockade is again, just as a. If we're going to talk about the definitions of words and whether or not they have legal meanings, blockade has a legal meaning in America as an act of war, not an act of a military conflict or a military operation. And so once you, like, you can, you can send troops into a country, you can drop bombs on a country, and you can, you can play with the words and say, well, this is a military action and not an act of war. You can't do that with a blockade. Whatever.
C
Okay, well, good. I guess we'll see where it goes. Since they're still negotiating these points that we don't know. Clearly they are not. They have not found.
A
Well.
C
Well, they haven't found. The whole thing of nuclear weapons has still not been resolved. And until it is, we're just hanging out in a middle space. So, yeah, we'll see.
A
Right? It's good news. It's all good news.
C
Let's. I want to talk about the election. Come on.
A
Okay. So in New Jersey, my district actually New Jersey 11.
C
Is that true? Did you vote?
A
I didn't. I'm sorry. It's been a week. Actually, I, I have stuff to talk to you about. Offline.
C
Okay.
A
Off. So In New Jersey 11, we had an election yesterday. I want to, want to just pull up the results. We had Joe Hathaway, rock jawed, good Republican, not very trumpy, or at least presented himself as not very Trumpy, running against Ana Lilia Mejia, a Hispanic gal from the precincts of Bernie Sanders land. Very, very progressive. And she crushed him.
C
She crushed him. And this is Mikey Sherrill's old seat, her vacated seat at a special election. Yeah.
A
So this is what I want to, to, to bring home to people. This is New Jersey 11. So in 2024, Mikey Sherrill, who was the incumbent, ran against a tomato can of a Republican named Joseph Bel and she won by 15 points in a. Not competitive. This was, you know, barely had to spend any money. It was just, you know, Boom, boom, boom. 15 point margin of victory in an open seat in this special election with a first time candidate in Mejia who is, unlike Mikey Sherrill, quite progressive. You would have thought, ooh, well, maybe it's kind of risky for Democrats to run somebody like that in this seat. Right. I mean this is, this is where I live. I'm telling you, not a bunch of comm here. She won by, by 19 or 20 points. So this, to me the big story for this is, it is another data point. If you are looking at what the environment is like for Republicans that here where they spend some money and there's, there's no outside spend. In this case it was just pure that the two campaigns going head to head against one another, you know, in a very achievable, again, it's a blue seat, but not a super blue seat. It was held by Mikey, Cheryl's farther Democrat shifting pretty far to the left candidate wise. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. In fact, the margin is even bigger.
C
Yeah.
A
I mean again, if I'm just a Republican strategist doing X's and O's, I look at this and it's just one more like holy fuck, going to get our teeth kicked in.
C
Yeah. Yes, totally agree, totally agree. I think that's the top line takeaway is. And you know, I don't know if you saw this, but I did a take yesterday where I was breaking down all of the, the fundraising halls from the Democratic candidates like Tal, Rico and Ossoff. Like these guys are just blowing the door. Sherrod Brown, they're blowing the doors off their fundraising numbers, totally outraising their Republican counterparts. And that's not, it's not really a story about money. It's a story about energy. Right. And, and part of what I was trying to. Because what was so interesting to me is the infrastructure of the Democratic Party, the dnc, their Senate packs, they're not, they're getting their butts kicked by the Republicans at the, at the infrastructure level, which means people don't want to give to the Democratic Party qua party, but they do want to give to these individual candidates.
A
Sounds fine by me.
C
Well, that's an interesting thing. And you can see then this when you see a lot of the polling where you're like, well, you know, the Democratic Party is really underwater and approval. And I have been saying that's because people are, that's because actual Democrats are mad at the Democratic Party. And so the, the party apparatus is having a hard time fundraising. But that does not mean there's not a ton of energy on the Democratic side. There is and that's why they're individual candidates are putting up these, these big numbers. So I think that's the top line takeaway. But I want to go a little bit deeper because something else happened.
A
I want to hold on. Can we. Before we go deeper, I want to prompt you for something else though.
C
Oh, okay.
A
Along this top line, a T shirt
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A
So you talk. In your book how to Eat an Elephant you talk a little bit about the so the Democrats have a brand problem. Why the independent voters don't like the Democratic Party. But there is an opportunity for Democrats to run candidates who do run against the Democratic establishment. Right. Donnie is one of these. AOC is one of these. Mejia was one of these. Is what you're talking about with the fundraising another sign of that? Right. Like we're tell like you have Democrats who are basically re. What's it? Soft rebooting the brand of the party by not running as like your father. I don't know like how this isn't your father's Democratic Party. That's like a stupid thing. But they're running not as like, hey, I'm an Institutional Democrat, but like I'm my own person. Here's like, this is what I wanted to put a quarter in the machine for.
C
But actually so they are running against the Democratic Party in both directions. So when I talk about the big broad tent, right. I used to talk about sort of a pro democracy coalition that went from Liz Cheney to Liz Warren. And I think now we need to sort of update that to. To we're talking about a sort of pro democracy. But not even a. It's not even pro democracy. Like it's really a democratic coalition that runs from, you know, your Mikey Sheryl, your Abigail Spanbergers over to your mom Dani's and like this woman is quite progressive and your Bernie's and your AOC is right. In both cases, the moderates are running against. In more moderate places, in more red places, they're running against the sort of woke dei. You know, that part's ridiculous. And I'm not like that. And I'm focused on affordability. I'm focused on money. I am not money. But like I'm focused on improving your lives. Right. Your material well being. On the moderate side, on the very progressive side, they are also running against the party, the establishment, the big money, elites, corporations. And also they're focused on affordability and the material improvement of your lives. However, it is like the DSA socialists all the way over to the sort of the DSA Socialist side of Mamdani. To the more, let's say free market side of. Yeah, the Neolips. Right. Our friends.
A
The more it's good, right? Isn't it good having both of those within the party?
C
That's why not to. Not to derail us into any Hasan Piker conversation. But. But only to say like my object to him personally and the things that he said was more from like, do you want to carry his baggage? Because it's not. The coalition does need to include basically this incredibly wide group of people. Now my, my frustration is when I get frustrated because I am somebody who is like part of building it is about being a pro democracy coalition. It's about, you know, saving American liberal democracy. And so when some people run against American liberal democracy in general or reject American liberal democracy or use violent rhetoric, they're just not for me. Right. Like I'm not going to support that. However, that's different from like the big broad coalition of the. Of the range of Democrats people. But the through line is. And this is why one of the chapters is called it's the affordability Stupid is like talking about improving the material well being of working class voters can unite all of the different parts of this coalition together and that different candidates are gonna work in different places. Right. And so like the fight between becoming more moderate and more progressive doesn't need to happen. Doesn't need to happen. But. But here's the. Then there's. Can I go deeper now if I sufficient.
A
Have I please? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. No, I just wanted you to. To hit that level for me.
C
Yeah. The most interesting thing to me though is another place where Democrats are starting to reevaluate things. So in this race, because it's an open seat. So there was a Democratic primary AIPAC came in and spent against our friend Tom Malinowski. Now Tom Malinowski was a pro. Was like, I don't even like he's a. He was a perfect. He was perfectly friendly to Israel. He just said I'm not going to give Israel a blank check anymore. Which by the way, I'm sorry guys, this is where it's going. Okay Candidates, this is where it's going with Democratic voters and where even. And a lot of independent voters.
A
Independent Republican voters too.
C
Yeah, exactly right. This like not a blank check. And so he was on the very moderate wing. AIPAC rolls in, spends hard against him and as a result now the person who won, this woman who won much more progressive, she is a Palestinian activist, she is super progressive. And so like I don't know what AIPAC was thinking that they wanted to come in there and. And go against Malinowski. But it is an example and this is part of what's interesting is that this is all over the focus groups now. You do Dem focus groups or sort of left leaning independent focus groups. So I just did this in. Did you listen to the focus group episode about the election in Chicago where Stratton, Julia Stratton or Juliana Stratton? I can't remember. She was the one who ran the F. Trump like just a straight up F. Trump ad.
A
They did.
C
Okay, so, so, so I did it with Axel Rod, Chicago guy. And.
A
Oh, it must have. If it was with Axe, I must have, I must have listened to it. Yeah.
C
So it was before the election. It was before the. And, and it's, it was one of those Senate races where in the Democratic primary, whoever won the Democratic primary was going to be the senator. And there was other things about her. She got JB Pritzker's endorsement and a bunch of his money, but she basically catapulted over a more establishment candidate by just running an ad that said F Trump. But in that, when I was doing the focus groups in that race with Democratic voters, they all knew who was taking APAC money and who wasn't. And that was their litmus test. And this is, and this is, I can often distinguish between social media phenomena and real life phenomena. And this is one that is not just a social media phenomenon. Democratic voters are looking at who AIPAC is funding and they are voting against that person. But also AIPAC is spending a lot of money in these races to try to get the more pro Israel candidate. But they got mad at Tom Malinowski, spent a bunch of money against him, and as a result got a much less friendly candidate. And I find that interesting. And I do think in this argument around sort of the tent, the coalition, you know, this is why my argument was don't make some streamer. The litmus test, don't. It's not about going on and talking to the streamer. It's about the Democratic Party fundamentally reevaluating their relationship with Israel, which doesn't mean necessarily hostility to Israel. Right. It can just mean like Tom was saying, we're not going to do a blank check or, you know, this. The way that both America is behaving right now and the way Israel behaving is alarming. And so in the, you know, there are, there are things that we will do that, that I don't know, maybe it's like we fund the defense, we still fund defense forces, but we don't give them money to attack people. Like, we don't give them money for bombs. Like, there's, there are a lot of ways in which people can start reevaluating this that don't have to go so far as to be like, and also I'm pro Russia and you know, anti Ukraine and I love China and the Communist Party. Right. Like there is, and this is, you know, it's like I always said about immigration, if sort of the, let's call Them classical liberals, like the people who believe in liberal democracy, don't say that they're going to do something about the border when Americans really care about it. They're going to let the fascists do it. It's the same thing on Israel. If sort of regular Democrats don't start reevaluating, they're going to reach for people who are much more anti Israel. What do you think about that?
A
All right, let me read to you from the Times of Israel today. This is their headline. Democrat Anna Lilia Mejia, harsh Israel critic, wins New Jersey special election to Congress. She narrowly beat a more moderate opponent, Tom Malinowski, in a February Democratic primary that saw the pro Israel lobby AIPAC spend $2.3 million against Malinowski, who supported conditions on military aid to Israel. Mejia has been a harsher in her criticism of Israel and unlike Malinowski, refers to the two year war against Hamas in Gaza as a genocide. I don't want to hear a single fucking word from anybody who is AIPAC aligned about Mejia not supporting Israel. Don't want to hear a word because they worked to put her in that seat.
C
And why I genuinely don't. Can't.
A
Because they want to be the boss of everything. Right? This is a like, hey, we get to decide. And you know what? I Good luck with that. Good luck. What an uncle you are. You are. It's a, it's a real interesting thing. And I looking at the way the Netanyahu administration treated Joe Biden and made his life very, very difficult and really, I mean, very clearly worked to while Biden was president, hurt him politically so that Donald Trump could wind up as president again when Biden had put himself all the way out on the line for Israel and had hugged, hugged Netanyahu as tight as he possibly could after October 7th. I mean, the deal in international relations is that in theory, especially when you're a supplicant nation like Israel is you try to make sure that you have good relations with both parties in the nations that you need help from because you never know who's going to be in. This is, this is why Zelensky tried to placate Trump in Trump won. So remember the perfect phone call where Trump is saying, I want you to pretend that you have dirt on Biden. And Zelinsky is not saying no, right? He's not saying like, how dare you, sir? Because he knows he has to maintain good relations with Trump. But he also knows that like, well, I don't know, the Democrats might get power Someday, like, Ukraine needs to have good relations with the American, you know, political system, regardless of who is in power. I gotta try to make sure that I'm, like, staying on both sides. Bibi was like, fuck you, Democratic Party. So you know what? Good luck, Bibi. Netanyahu wanted America to have Trump because he thought it was good for Israel, which means that he took sides against American democracy.
C
Yeah.
A
And I understand that from his perspective as the head of Israel, that he thinks that that was good for them. That's fine. As a person who cares about American democracy much more than I care about Israel, I think that we should not be helping a state whose government is antagonistic towards American democracy. I mean, I like and so no animus, but good luck is what I. I would say. And to the apex of the world, also, good luck. This is where the Democratic Party should absolutely not be sticking their neck out for, again, a government. In the Netanyahu government, which is anti Democratic Party. Like, which. Which is. Which worked to help Donald Trump.
C
Trump. And this is where. This is the only thing that really.
A
Is that crazy. Maybe this is me ranting a little bit.
C
No, the only thing that irked me, which is a bunch of new. When I, When I got in that argument with Tim, because I didn't like Tim downplaying the things Piker was saying for us. And that was why I went in there and, like, was had that conversation. And like, a whole bunch of people who've never heard anything about me decided, you are a genocide lover who. You know sports. I'm like, have you ever listened to me talk, like, half. I. I just had just like two weeks earlier, had done a podcast with Tim about how we needed to reevaluate the unconditional support with Israel. But that's not even the point. The point is I have. All I wanted is to get rid of Donald Trump. Right. To help save American liberal democracy. And I couldn't be more critical, not even of Israel, specifically Netanyahu, because he did exactly what you just said. He worked against American democracy to get a criminal who, like him, a corrupt leader like him, elected again in America. And look, and to do that has nothing to do with. I think Israel has every right to defend itself after October 7, but obviously, at some point, it tipped over into a humanitarian disaster. And, you know, I like. And there's all kinds of reasons to reevaluate America's relationship with Israel, which doesn't mean being hostile to it necessarily. Like, there are. There are a lot of ways this could go, but Democrats are going to have to be leaders on this. Right. They can't be led by some of the most toxic forces. They need to decide for themselves that they're going to reevaluate this because it has been bad for American liberal democracy.
A
Yeah, no, I, I agree. Actually. They got to be out in front of this.
C
Yeah.
A
And talking about it. And it should. I think Tim's analogy to the way Canada has reevaluated its relationship with America. America is exactly, exactly Right. Like, that's how we should be reevaluating our relationship with Israel.
C
And that doesn't have to be forever. It just has to be till everyone starts behaving normal again.
A
So this actually, this is great because this brings me to the conversation I want to pick up from the very end of focus group yesterday.
C
Yeah. Oh, my God, guys. JDL was on the focus group yesterday. Yeah, but like, you were super normal for like the first 40 minutes. But like in the last 20, you started to start just like screaming at the voters. You're making great points. But you were, you're like me. You were all. You were yelling at the camera and you were mad and you were swearing, which we're gonna have to bleep out because the focus group podcast is a family show. But I do.
A
Nobody told me that.
C
Yeah, no, no, let's, let's, let's continue that conversation, though, because it was a good one that we were. Because you were doing the classic JVL thing where you dropped, like, big, enormous things to wrestle with at, like, well, the 45 minute mark.
A
I did that for a reason. This is. I was trying to tease people across, bring people from one show to the other. It's a, you know, it's a smart thing that brands do. I. So I wrote about this this week looking.
C
Do you want to take it behind
A
the payroll buddy elections? You know what? I don't know. Maybe.
C
Okay,
A
people should join.
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Podcast: The Next Level
Host: The Bulwark (Sarah Longwell, Tim Miller, Jonathan V. Last)
Date: April 17, 2026
In this episode, Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last (JVL) deep-dive into the rapidly shifting political landscape ahead of the 2026 elections. The primary focus is on the Democratic sweep in New Jersey’s special congressional election, the implications for Republican strategists, and broader insights into party branding, coalition politics, the Israel debate, and fundraising dynamics. Genuine political banter, sharp analysis, and moments of levity drive an engaging and informative discussion.
[00:30 - 04:32]
"In a world in which Trump creates total chaos... a chaotic event like the biggest oil energy spike in history becomes something that the markets go, yeah."
— JVL [03:15]
[07:13 - 10:57]
“A blockade has a legal meaning in America as an act of war, not an act of a military conflict or a military operation.”
— JVL [09:36]
[11:02 - 13:47]
"In an open seat in this special election with a first time candidate in Mejia... she won by 19 or 20 points."
— JVL [12:41]
[13:47 - 15:15]
"It’s not really a story about money. It’s a story about energy."
— Sarah Longwell [14:44]
[16:23 - 20:25]
"They are running against the Democratic Party in both directions."
— Sarah Longwell [17:21]
[20:29 - 31:10]
“Democratic voters are looking at who AIPAC is funding and they are voting against that person.”
— Sarah [22:31]
“I don’t want to hear a single fucking word from anybody who is AIPAC aligned about Mejia not supporting Israel. Don’t want to hear a word because they worked to put her in that seat.”
— JVL [26:04]
"Netanyahu wanted America to have Trump... he took sides against American democracy."
— JVL [28:23]
[29:24 - 31:33]
"They can't be led by some of the most toxic forces. They need to decide for themselves that they're going to reevaluate this because it has been bad for American liberal democracy."
— Sarah [30:59]
[31:41 - 32:45]
JVL on markets and Trump:
"When chaos is normal, markets have to price chaos in as normal." [03:15]
Sarah on Democratic fundraising:
"It’s not really a story about money. It’s a story about energy." [14:44]
JVL on AIPAC’s unintended consequences:
"I don’t want to hear a single fucking word from anybody who is AIPAC aligned... They worked to put her in that seat." [26:04]
JVL on Netanyahu and US politics:
"Netanyahu wanted America to have Trump... which means that he took sides against American democracy." [28:23]
Sarah on Democratic priorities:
"Talking about improving the material well-being of working class voters can unite all of the different parts of this coalition together." [19:22]
| MM:SS | Segment Description | | ------- | -------------------------------------------- | | 00:30 | Hosts begin, light banter, newsletter theory | | 03:15 | JVL riffs on markets accepting chaos | | 07:13 | Trump’s social posts on Iran, Hormuz | | 09:36 | Legality of blockades/discussion | | 11:02 | New Jersey special election breakdown | | 14:44 | Democratic fundraising analysis | | 17:21 | Big tent & "running against the party" | | 22:31 | Focus groups on AIPAC as a litmus | | 26:04 | JVL’s AIPAC rant | | 28:23 | Netanyahu’s partisan bet criticized | | 30:59 | Sarah on Democrats leading Israel reevaluation| | 31:41 | Focus group crossover, podcast outro tease |
Sarah Longwell and JVL use their signature blend of sharp analysis, humor, and insider perspective to connect special election data, party energy, and evolving coalitional politics. They identify trends suggesting Republicans face deep structural disadvantages, and they argue that the Democratic coalition—by necessity and design—is evolving rapidly, particularly around hot-button issues like Israel and party identity. Listeners come away with a vivid sense of how campaign energies on the ground are reshaping American politics in 2026, and a call to keep watch on both big-picture trends and the daily scramble for electoral advantage.