---
author: The Ezra Klein Show
date: '2026-11-07'
guest: ''
layout: post.njk
source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvYKx-USiZQ
speaker: The Ezra Klein Show
tags:
- electoral-strategy
- populism
- political-realignment
- voter-mobilization
title: 从得州到南方：民主党在选举中的竞选策略、民粹主义与联盟重组
summary: 节目讨论了民主党在得克萨斯、佐治亚等地的选战突破。候选人结合反科技寡头与腐败的民粹主义议题、道德价值观叙事及全线参选协同效应，在南方及铁锈带拓展了跨党派吸引力。
insight: ''
draft: true
series: ''
category: politics-society
area: society-thinking
project: []
people:
- Michelle Goldberg
- James Talarico
- Donald Trump
- Gina Hinojosa
- Jon Ossoff
- Abdul El-Sayed
- Adam Hamilton
companies_orgs:
- The New York Times
- Democratic Party
- Republican Party
products_models: []
media_books:
- Good People
- The Feast of the Goat
- The Man Who Loved Dogs
status: evergreen
---
### 民主党在得克萨斯的胜选与基层动能
这次选举涌现了众多非同寻常的民主党竞选活动。不可否认，这在一定程度上得益于特朗普引发的浪潮，但要在如此多的选区冲过终点线，民主党人必须派出恰当的候选人，而且必须在截然不同的地方采取非常迥异的竞选方式。我想用一期节目的时间，探讨一下他们的一些竞选方式，以及这能揭示出从这次选举中崛起的民主党将呈现何种面貌、民主党在进入下一次选举时会吸取怎样的教训。你已经能感受到民主党内部开始出现派系内讧的苗头。但我认为，周二获胜的各场竞选之间的共同点，远比它们之间的分歧更加耐人寻味、更具启发性。我的同事米歇尔·戈德堡（Michelle Goldberg），也是我们《纽约时报》的专栏作者，在过去一年里报道这些不同的竞选活动，做了非常出色的工作。她亲赴得克萨斯、密歇根、缅因等众多地区，实地体察选举在基层的真实氛围。正因如此，她带来了这些极具质感的现场细节——那还是在这些策略能否奏效尚不明确的时候，在民主党浪潮、更不用说蓝色海啸是否真能成型还完全不明朗的时候。所以，我现在想请她来到节目中，聊聊到底是什么策略奏效了、她当时看到了什么，以及这些观察如何让她理解眼下从这场选举中走出的民主党。她现在来到了我们节目中。
Original English
This election was full of so many extraordinary [music] Democratic campaigns. Lifted, yes, by a wave that kind of Trump set into motion, but to get over the finish line [music] in so many places, Democrats had to run the right candidates and they had to run in very, very different ways in very different [music] places. And I want to spend an episode looking at some of the ways they ran and what that [music] can reveal about the Democratic party that will emerge out of this election, the lessons Democratic Party will take going into the next election. There's already like you can feel these efforts [music] at factional infighting beginning among Democrats. Uh but I think what is uniting the campaigns that won on Tuesday is a lot more interesting and a lot more revealing than the differences between them. My colleague Michelle Goldberg, also an opinion columnist here at the New York Times, has [music] done amazing work over the past year covering these different campaigns, going to Texas and Michigan and Maine and so many other places to actually [music] see what the elections felt like on the ground. So she brings all this [music] texture from when it wasn't clear if these strategies would work out. It wasn't clear if a democratic wave to say nothing of a blue tsunami would actually build. So, I want to have her on the show now to talk about what actually worked, what she saw then, and what that allows her to understand now [music] about the Democratic party that is emerging out of this election. She joins me now. [music] [music]
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Michelle Goldberg, welcome to the show.
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>> Thanks for having me.
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>> So, big week. [laughter] I want to begin with Texas, which you covered extensively and I think is the heart
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>> of both why this election
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>> feels like and more than feels like really is like an earthquake that will reshape the political landscape for a long time. How did Democrats win Texas?
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>> Well, I mean, I think, you know, look, I don't they couldn't have done it obviously without Donald Trump. Donald Trump got a bunch of new voters among um mostly [clears throat] Mexican-American people in Texas and then he absolutely terrorized them. So that's part of the story, but also I think you know James Telerico was a phenomenal candidate. Um [clears throat] and he identified something really early. I mean I when I when I profiled him, he was like the underdog in the Senate primary. And so, but even then, I think he had this very clear vision of what he thought people in Texas were going to be looking for, you know, that people were so tired of being angry all the time. They were so tired of, you know, he would always say, "I'm tired of hating my being told to hate my neighbor."
It was on the one hand, you know, as he talked about this politics of loving your neighbor, this politics of like kindness at a time when, you know, the um the right had kind of polarized against the very conception of empathy. Um and at the same time, he also identified an enemy and an enemy that kind of was in its own way uniting. Right? the way he talks about billionaires is not that different from the way Bernie Sanders talks about billionaires. Um I think with the difference that he is often talking very specifically about tech billionaires. You know he talks about you know t Texas is a major um center of the data center buildout. people in the rural part of the state hate them because they're they see them and their eyes sores and you know and sometimes they people feel like they're ruining their lives.
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>> They're loud. Like you talk to people who can no longer sleep at night who say that the noise is like killing their livestock, you know, and they want to move but they can't sell their property cuz their property value has um fallen through the floor. So that's like one group of people. Then there's just people for whom the construction is like a huge inconvenience. It's ruining their views. It's, you know, they kind of moved out to, they didn't think they were moving into industrial areas, right? Maybe they were in favor of Donald Trump saying he was going to re-industrialize the heartland. They didn't think he meant like their backyard. Um, so there's that, but then there's also just, you know, this sort of ambient resentment of all of these tech bros who are saying, "We're remaking the future, you know, get on board or be left behind. And by the way, there's a chance we're going to destroy the world and, you know, and and you're going to pay for it, right? Because and so, you know, it's one thing to make sacrifices for an industry that you think you're going to benefit from. It's another to make sacrifices for like a crypto mine." Um and so you know so all these things come together.
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>> Ask not what the crypto mind can do for you but what you can do for the crypto [laughter] mind.
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>> Yeah. Exactly. So I think
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>> actually feels like that way with AI sometimes. Ask not what AI can do for you but ask what you can do for AI.
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>> Right. I mean that is kind of Sam Alman's attitude half the time you know and then on the other side you have Ken Paxton who is uniquely loathome. Although I I suspect that maybe John Cornin would have lost also. Well, this is I think one of the really interesting things about Texas because there was a story that I think people were fairly clued into before the election. Telerico is an excellent candidate in a way. You got to give Joe Rogan some credit here. It was Rogan inviting Terico on and then
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>> you know lavishing him in praise that made I think a lot of Democrats think maybe Taller Rico's thing actually works on,
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>> you know, the kind of people Democrats need to actually win over. And then Trump intervenes, make sure Paxton is going to be the nominee. You've got this very, very talented, nice Democratic candidate running against a scandal plagued Republican. And so if we had ended up with an election night where James Telerico won for Senate, might say, "Okay, Trump is unpopular. Paxton is like a monster [laughter] and you know, Telerico is an excellent candidate."
That's not what happened. Democrats won four of the five redistricted house seats. They won for governor. They had huge gains in the Texas House. And so that wasn't all scandal plagued Republicans on the other side. I mean, Greg Abbott wasn't considered a highly vulnerable Republican before this week.
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>> So there's two different parts of that, right? So on the one hand, Greg Abbott, there was huge resentment. And when you hear about this resentment, you never really can understand how like um anecdotal it is, you know, like I was meeting a bunch of MAGA voters at Gina Henos's events. You know, she put one of them in her ad, right? He had a commercial with somebody who had been at the capital on January 6th.
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>> I was at the January 6th rally. I'm a staunch conservative, but I cannot support Governor Greg Abbott. Greg Abbott is bought and paid for by the billionaires and the corporations. And they were furious about data centers and they were furious about school vouchers. And I think, you know, this is maybe a kind of a sleeper issue in a lot of places. Um, but not for parents who live in places where there aren't a lot of private schools, but where they feel like their schools are being defunded. So, people are just livid about this, you know, and they would talk about like cutbacks in say after school busing so that people couldn't do extracurriculars or sports or anything unless they had someone to pick them up. Um, so I met this guy at a rally in Long View, Texas. He's like a MAGA voter, super conservative. Um, told me that the last time he had voted for a Democrat was back in the '9s, and that was only because back then lots of Texas local officials were still Democrats. Um, and he's, you know, not only is he voting against Greg Abbott, he's at the Gina Henosa rally, and it's because he was a school superintendent, but was so angry about vouchers, right? Was so angry about vouchers, what vouchers were doing to like his particular school system. So that's part of it. The other part is just the fact that you did have Democrats running in all these races which I think you can't like serious Democrats running in all these races which you can't understate. So you had Democrats running up and down the
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ticket. When I met Gina in like before I went out there um I met her when she was in New York um [snorts] to kind of hear more about her race and I said to her, you know, why should Democrats believe when believe in this race when like Texas is always Lucy in the football for Democrats? Um and she said she said because this time we have a ticket like because this time we have a team. You know, when when Beto ran in 2018 and came pretty close to Ted Cruz, there wasn't a competitive campaign for governor, there weren't competitive races around him. It was just him. And there's like a magnifying effect of having all of these different candidates, you know, doing their own events, running their own commercials, doing their own get out the vote efforts and that that's kind of compounding. And so I think that part of like party building, not just I mean James Helerico is a fantastic candidate, but not just relying on one marquee candidate to drag everybody across the finish line was I think really important.
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>> I always think about politics as having content and texture
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>> and you know a lot of what you're describing here is content. The you know voucher issue, the AI data centers issue, high prices, you know what is Donald Trump doing in in Iran, right? That's all content. And then there's texture, which is like how does politics feel to people? And and one interesting thing to me about the Texas arc here was Democrats actually had two very very high-profile candidates running in the Senate primary, you know, with Telerico and Jasmine Crockett. And Crockett is much more the traditional fighter candidate. Um, you know, takes on the right, had all these viral videos where she was, you know, lacing into Republican members of Congress. the the Democrats go for Teler Rico and and he sort of infuses I think the the campaign with this particular texture and I want to play a clip here of his victory speech.
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>> My faith teaches me that love is the strongest force in the universe. Love is not passive. Love is not neutral. Love is not weak. Love requires that we stand between the bullies and the bullied. Love requires that we look evil in the eye and not blink. That kind of love has always been a threat to the powers that be. That kind of love is revolutionary.
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That kind of love is creative. Hate is predictable. Hate is boring. Hate can't lower our energy bills. Hate can't teach a child to read. Hate can't build a future, but what hate can't do, love can.
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>> I love that. I think it's really beautiful.
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>> Something was happening in the texture of the campaign in Texas, not only there. I mean, I think you see with Adam Hamilton in Kansas who we'll talk about,
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>> you know, you see it some with Elsa, there's like this rise of a religious left, a more moralistic left, John Of talking in the language of values, but I think Telerico in particular exemplified this. Can you step into the Trump era? Can you win over Trump voters, not by mirroring Trump,
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>> but by acting as this
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>> Well, he's the anti-Trump.
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>> He's the anti-Trump. Tell me a little bit about this side of it. This kind of
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>> So, so at the time that I first met Terico, there was still this idea in the Democratic party that like they needed their own Trump, right? That was I think around the time that Gavin Newsome was like selling knee pads. [snorts]
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>> And Ter Rico, I mean, you know, his faith is real. He was a seminarian. He still eventually hopes to be a pastor um when he's done with politics. He's ve he's not a Christian nationalist by any stretch of the imagination and in fact developed his politics like very much in opposition to Christian nationalism. Believes it's kind of sinful um and you know he's in a state where it's so preeminent. But he does believe that Democrats lost something as they became more secular and [clears throat] kind of lost a language to talk about values and conviction and the things that make life meaningful and people slipped into you know kind of atomization and despair and at least for him you know kind of it's faith is what what what keep what sustains him and I think he thinks that you know other people he would never try to push his faith on other people, but he does think people need something transcendent.
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>> Well, the the other thing though that I thought was very effective in what he did, Telerico is a progressive candidate. I mean, he had these points where he moderated um on, you know, oil and gas
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>> on, you know, certain trans issues on um immigration and and sort of like pushing himself forward on border enforcement. But I think people some just think too much about politics as a single dimension of like where do you stand on Medicare for all.
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>> People's impression of what a Democrat or Republican is is also do they have faith is also where do they live is also how do they talk and how do they dress and and one thing Telerico seemed to me to be doing throughout the campaign quite effectively and many of the candidates did it in different ways was sort of saying I'm not like those other Democrats. First of all, I don't hate you. I mean, there's been a clip going around of him on a podcast asked about Donald Trump. Begins by listing what he likes about Donald Trump.
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>> I think the president does have clear strengths. I think he's able to communicate in a way that's clear and and concise and powerful to people. He is willing to take action when there's so much gridlock. Um, he's willing to just kind of bust through walls to deliver for people. And he has a sense of humor, which I I feel like is really missing in in politics. you know, he has a a light-hearted weight about him. Those are, I think, some of the redeeming qualities, right? That that kind of it's a very Obama-like politics, right? There's no red and blue or at least those divisions do not fully define us. And this has been a layer of politics that I think has sort of been lost in the Trump era because Trump made so many people feel it didn't matter. And it has been really interesting to me to see it roar back. Well, and it's interesting because there's there's two dimensions to this because on the one hand, you know, James Telerico is not a pushover, right? And he's not really a um
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a kind of squishy centrist, you know? I mean, James Helerico will tell you that like the Democratic Party has forgotten how to fight,
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>> you know? He talks about flipping tables, right? He does. So, it's not that he's saying that the Democratic Party needs to be more consiliatory. It's more just that it needs to be more willing to fight for the right things and the right things are kind of unchecked billionaire corporate power, economic inequality, the like. So it's this kind of like everyone against the billionaires kind of politics which just is numerically um much better than a sort of like red blue divide.
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He also is able to speak to the fact that people are like so burned out on rage and so hungry for like an alternative and for the idea of a politics that can feel different. Um, you know, there's a lot of kind of very conservative Christians who were kind of apoplelectic about the way he used faith. They would say he was a heretic in some ways. they were more threatened by him than they were by a secular candidate. But when I would go to his rallies, I would talk to people who would say how good it felt that there was, you know, a kind of a Democrat who wore his Christianity on their slee on his sleeve and who would say that they had felt in the past like the Democratic party was not was not open to religious people even though Terico um represented their faith much more than the Republicans did. And so yeah, there was a sense there there was a population there was a group of Texas voters who felt drawn into the party by him.
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>> So I do think it's really interesting the way this openhearted love thy neighbor politics doesn't have to feel like this appeal coexisted with with populism. Um and you could really see it also in in Hinosa's campaign. We talked a little bit about the data center populism, but I I want to play this clip from an appearance she did on the campaign trail in in August where she was talking about the the data centers.
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>> It is the fight for Texas. It is the fight
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in America. It is the fight about is this going to be a Texas that is by and for the people. And we need a governor who will defend the rights of the people, who will cancel contracts that jeopardize our water that we need to drink and live in our homes. It is common sense. We need to get back to a time. Back to a time when our elected leaders did the bidding of the people and not the moneyed interests and not the billionaires.
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>> There's something I can't remember if you said it or she said it in an interview with you where she talked about AI contributing to a feeling people had that their lives were coming out of control, right? That there was disordering.
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>> So like how did she like build that populism?
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Well, I think, you know, she would often say like the culture wars are over, right? And I think I was a little bit skeptical of that going in. like I don't know if you can just kind of unilaterally say that this um central source of division in American politics is no longer relevant but there is a sense that they become that it becomes kind of tired when people feel so directly threatened you know kind of in both in their immediate environment in what what their kids schools are going to look like in these billionaires telling them that their jobs are disappearing that their world might disappear where it helped [snorts] in some ways that Elon Musk moved to Texas and made himself the face in a lot of ways of the of the Republican party there. Um, you know, in some ways she often seemed and I think Delerico even more so often seemed like he was running as much against Elon Musk as against um Ken Paxton. But and then she convinced people that that was going to be her priorities, right? not that she was necessarily [clears throat] moderating, you know, so she would say, "I still believe what I believe, but like we're not going to get consensus on this, so we're going to do the, you know, the things around the edges that um that we can all agree on, like making sure that women who are having miscarriages are treated in hospitals. But what really matters is the kind of unchecked power of these billionaires. I also think that, you know, there's a kind of an upper middle class person, take myself, um, not that I'm a swing voter, but if I think about who do I find threatening now, it's Elon Musk, right? It's like the tech bros. They seem to be like the forces of not just inequality, but incipient totalitarianism.
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>> And they are culture warriors. It's also worth noting,
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>> right? And they're culture warriors. and they are, you know, the sort of um the forces behind this presidency and the Republican party. And I've written this in other instances before. You know, Democrats have been sort of um bemoning their kind of loss of the white working class and not just the white working class for many many years, right? And they sort of they wanted to bring back a sort of FDR coalition. and they wanted to bring back, you know, the political power of unions, but also being the party in many cases of the educated upper middle class that for a long time was very very comfortable with Silicon Valley, right? So for a long time, Silicon Valley was seen as a kind of democratic stronghold [snorts] and people who felt like comfortable and optimistic about the role of technology in their jobs and the future um were a big part of the democratic coalition. People now in polls see the Republican party as the elitist party. That was not true a few years ago, right? people and it's kind of obvious why that is because you see Donald Trump and these billionaires and his like you know kind of Caligula like Halloween parties and stuff but you [snorts] know Donald Trump was always this extraordinarily goddy and decinent figure but the fact that he was kind of culturally in tune with the work with parts of the working class overrode that as did and I think this gets lost the fact that they saw him as a class traitor.
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right? They saw him as someone who had seen the inside of the system and was going to blow it up as opposed to just someone who wanted to get inside there so he could like grab everything in sight. And you know, so again, this has created a problem for Democrats in terms of fundraising, in terms of, you know, having kind of hostile forces own a lot of these platforms, but it has also created this like kind of generational opportunity for a possible realignment. If you go back to 2016 after Donald Trump wins, there's a certain category of Democratic interpretation which is this is the last gasp of like a dying old political coalition.
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But then in in 2020 and particularly in 2024, he begins making really significant inroads with Hispanic voters, with Asian-American voters, um to some degree with black voters, certainly in 2024 with young voters. The Hispanic strength was always the most important and unusual change he was making to the electorate and the most significant way in which Democrats have turned out to be wrong about him
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>> and wrong about the right ways to to combat him.
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>> And then Donald Trump won office in 2024, turned over the entire immigration portfolio basically to Steven Miller and Greg Bevino and Christy Gnome. And in the border counties of Texas, the swing versus like the 2024 presidential election, to just name a couple of these, Cameron County plus 44 swing to the Democrats. Hidalgo plus 49, Web plus 50. I mean, these are heavily Hispanic border counties. And part of the story here is not just like Palico's kindness or um Hinosa's you know AI populism but as you were saying a massive swing in the Hispanic electorate right leading people like Bobby Pledo who is running for the house this amazing like candidate you know well-known singer in those communities you know he wins by 25 points in a Trump district
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>> right I mean in some ways that's the easiest to explain right I mean I think there was in retrospect the idea that as the country became more diverse, Democrats were going to have this like automatic demographic advantage and people leaned into that, right? I mean, I think that maybe that was like the substrate of a lot of emphasis on identity even going up to the 2024 election, but it's one thing for people to be able to look beyond kind of rhetorical disrespect, and it's another thing to have masked men grabbing your relatives off their job sites, right? Kids afraid to go to school. I mean, just the amount of terror that people were feeling. I mean, there was a story that I don't think got a lot of international attention, but it was something that people were talking about when I was in Texas, that there were two young guys on their way to enlist. I mean, these are the kind of things you can't make up, right? These two young guys on their way to enlist in the Marines and they they're citizens. They get picked up and roughed up by ICE. those kind of encounters or things that people were seeing firsthand or hearing about from people that they knew.
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>> If you're not a subscriber to the New York Times, [music] we have some news for you. You can now explore the Times for free without any payw walls at all during your [music] first month in the New York Times app.
So, I want to then shift over to Georgia where John Of crushed Mike Collins by 18 points. This was supposed to be an endangered seat. the OS of victory which I think has been one of the big stories that coming out of the election. I would say that was not just a politics of loving thy neighbor. [laughter]
Th this clip from one of the debates between OF and Collins is I think maybe the single most brutal moment I have ever seen in a political debate.
Mike Collins and Donald Trump, they're still obsessed with overturning the 2020 election. Mike Collins still believes the 2020 election was stolen. Mike Collins has supported Donald Trump's effort to overturn the election and he wants to give your tax dollars to the violent thugs and criminals who sacked the US capital on January 6th. Mike Collins is attacking your voting rights. But that's not a surprise when you consider who Mike Collins is. This is a man who cheered on a group of young men who were mocking a black woman on a college campus with monkey sounds. If John Lewis were marching today from Selma to
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Montgomery, Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club.
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>> Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club. Mike Collins is standing there during this [laughter] like just like looking down at his papers. You and I you reported on the the campaign.
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>> What did you see there?
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>> Well, so I mean John Oaf in some ways I don't think any candidate does quite so much like resistance fan service. Um and partly it's just these are different electorates, right? there is this kind of like resistance electorate in Georgia in a way that there just isn't in
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>> civil rights legacy,
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>> right? He grew up in a synagogue that was firebombed because of the rabbis commitment to civil rights and alliance with Martin Luther King, right? He's an intern for John Lewis. there is this, you know, kind of historic black Jewish alliance um that dates back to the civil rights movement and that he is very much rooted in and very much cognizant of. You've seen it in both of his campaigns. You saw it in him and Raphael Waro basically running as a as a ticket and this time he kind of ran as a ticket with Kesha Lance Bottoms. He is able to speak like I think very successfully both to kind of black voters who grew up in the civil rights tradition but also to some of these suburban women who were radicalized by the 2016 election. I mean I just I just want to go back for a second. [snorts] I was in such a bad place after 2016 and the first time I felt like a teeny bit of hope was when I went to the sixth district which is where John Oaf was running in a special election and there were all these women who had not been political but had all this kind of social capital from like the PTA and you know the stuff that you do as a suburban mom and who all of a sudden became like political fiends. They could look at the map of the block and say like, "Okay, you know, this guy, he's not going to vote Democrat, but the wife might, and she gets home from work first, so that's when we've got to hit the door."
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>> And I remember him saying to me, you know, I'm standing on the shoulder of these women. And he didn't win that race, but obviously that was like eventually a Democrat flipped that seat and that was the seat of his political career. And so I think he's always understood these kind of very outraged middle-aged suburban women who are very very important in the Georgia electorate. He also, you know, I've compared him to Peter Maguar in Hungary. That was the other race I covered this year was the Hungarian election. And what you saw with Peter Maguar was this combination of, you know, sort of like reclaiming Hungarian national identity, wrapping himself in the Hungarian flag, you know, reciting Hungarian poetry and just this relentless focus on Orban's corruption. John Oaf is always talking about the Mara Lago mafia. The Mara Lago mafia has taken American corruption to spectacular new heights. And so I think one of the things that he did so effectively is that in the past it's been hard to get voters to care as much as maybe I think they should about all of Donald Trump's like authoritarian depradations.
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But what John Ozaf does is connect those and and this is also something that happened in Hungary. Connect those to the suffering you're feeling in your own life. It's not just that they're enriching themselves, but they're doing it at your expense.
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>> Just think about this. When you are paying more for your health insurance, when a hospital in your community is closing down, Mike Collins voted to take that money out of your pocket and out of your community and give it instead to data center developers. And that's the problem, Mike. It's not just that you've hired half the Third Reich to staff your congressional office and you have promoted neo-Nazi content online. It's that you're robbing your constituents to subsidize your donors. I want to know if you will commit to voting to repeal that data center tax scam that you voted for. I mean, I think that that so exemplifies the way he's on the one hand able to make this like kind of sweeping moral case against the right, but [snorts] then again kind of connect it to the emiseration of the voters.
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He is really outraged by corruption. you know, he um like a big part of his story was that he was a documentarian before he was a um politician and made documentaries about corruption and you know had someone he worked with killed um for his work on one of those documentaries.
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I
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>> I think this is an important point about him because two things that are kind of in that answer you just gave that I think are worth drawing out a little bit. One is yeah he did not run a well I think Trump has done a lot of good things kind of purple state campaign right that is one move it would not have been a crazy move for him to try it's not what he did
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>> he became I think such [snorts] an important part of the Democratic message in this election because what he showed is something that Democrats had long believed but they couldn't crack the code on which is that Trump's corruption should be a tremendous political itical vulnerability.
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That is not like a new insight. [laughter] John Oaf, what happened was Oaf was the one who was able to weaponize the insight
Original English
>> into like consistent viral almost unanswerable clips. I I want to play one of them here that I think shows a couple of the things that he was able to do so well. Just listen to this. Last September, the president of Kazakhstan calls Donald Trump and says he wants to grant tungsten mining rights to an American company. And the very next month, Eric and Don Jr. get a stake in the American company pursuing the mining deal. 6 days later, 6 days after Prince Eric and Prince Dawn get their stake, Kazakhstan announces this company will get quote, "the largest known undeveloped tungsten resource in the world." Few more weeks go by and then the US government run by their father [snorts] sets aside 1.6 6 billion of your tax dollars to fund and finance their mining project in Kazakhstan. All this while you pay more for gas, for groceries, for healthcare. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Billions from foreign princes and oligarchs. Sweetheart real estate deals all over the world. Taxpayer funding to Trumpbacked companies. And listen, here's the bottom line. If you're involved in any of this, next year you'll be raising your right hand and swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help you, God, in front of the United States Congress.
Original English
>> This, I think, is why there's been something different about the reaction to Asso's victory. Because this is not, look how much money I brought back to Georgia for highways. I think this felt to many people like the case against Trump they had always wanted to see work and resonate
Original English
>> resonating not in San Francisco not in New York City but in Georgia where rode that case to an 18point victory
Original English
>> right so actually I mean and John Ov is kind of amazing at constituent service right that's that's the underlying part of it but yeah I mean I think part of why this has been cathartic is that in some ways this feels like
Original English
>> the first election where people have responded to Donald Trump in what seems like a normal way, right? It's kind of how we expected them to respond to Donald Trump in 2016 and 2018 and all these elections when they didn't. It's like, you know, now there is this kind of popular revulsion that he was able to channel. I think one of his skills and this again I think goes back to his background as documentary filmmaker is that he knows how to take these like really wonky details right it's like hard to build a drama out of like tungsten mining rights in Kazakhstan but he knows how to tell a story about that and to make that story symbolic because the other challenge in talking about Donald Trump's corruption is that it is you know it's sort of beyond the realm of human consciousness to keep it all in mind at one time and So he's able to find these like extremely salient examples and talk about them in this like condensed gripping way and bring people along with it.
Original English
>> He has this very old school ortorial style. You know, you hear the black church in it,
Original English
>> but you also just hear the way they used to teach
Original English
elecution.
[laughter]
Well,
and
he
and
and
Obama
like
Original English
>> Obama,
but
I
was
watching
him
and
Obama
and
I
was
watching
their
Obama
actually
does
have
a
much
less
Original English
>> formal
style
of
speech
than
OF
does.
Of
has
a
self-consciously
formal
construction.
Original English
>> Every
political
era
has
almost
like
I
think
the
same
structure
which
is
somebody
wins
doing
something
unusual
Original English
>> and
then
everybody
tries
to
ape
them
for
a
little
while.
you
know,
Donald
Trump
with
his
incredibly
offthecuff
weaving,
looping,
discursive,
you
know,
rhetorical
style.
You
know,
the
podcast
election
of
2024,
can
you
go
hang
with
the
besties?
[snorts]
Original English
>> And
then
everybody
try
to
do
that
for
a
bit.
You
know,
Gavin
Newsome
and
his
podcast,
you
know,
they're
all
doing
podcasts.
Original English
>> And
then
here
comes
John
Of
talking
as
if
he's
in
the
18th
century.
And
it's
refreshing
actually
like,
oh,
you
wrote
a
speech,
Original English
>> right?
Original English
>> You
then
went
back
over
it
and
you
edited
this,
Original English
>> right?
And
he
does
and
he's,
you
know,
he
he
writes
his
own
speeches,
which
is
somewhat
unusual.
Original English
>> He's
like
a
very
kind
of
earnest
and
reserved
person,
you
know,
he
doesn't
want
to
do
like
Original English
>> Yeah.
Original English
>> kind
of
casual
off-the
cuff
kind
of
hanging
out
on
a
podcast.
Original English
>> Nobody
has
heard
about
his
workout
routine.
Original English
>> Yeah,
exactly.
Even
when
they
asked.
Another
another
candidate
with
the
OV
bulkup.
You've
heard
of
I
mean
we've
heard
about
other
candidates
workout
routines
because
that
was
part
of
the
mimicking
the
Original English
>> Abdul
say
I
think
had
an
had
someone
from
the
times
I
believe
interview
him
while
he
was
working
out.
Original English
>> Yeah,
he
did
that
with
us
on
too.
It's
like
he
holds
a
lot
backstage.
Original English
>> He
dribbles
out
his
clips.
It
just
it's
interesting
to
me
stylistically
he
was
doing
something
disciplined
in
an
era
when
almost
one
of
the
lessons
people
had
taken
was
discipline
is
dangerous.
Well,
and
he
has
a
theory
of
this
and
you
know
how
much
of
this
is
just
kind
of
a
rationalization
because
I
think
he
is
a
sort
of
reserved
and
introverted
person.
But
he
also
has
a
theory
which
is
that
there's
power
in
not
being
in
people's
face
all
the
time
that
like
if
you
sort
of
hang
back
then
when
you
do
intervene
people
are
more
ready
to
listen
or
it
will
get
you
know
his
theory
of
attention
is
sort
of
like
the
opposite
of
the
theory
of
attention
that
people
have
been
learning
for
the
last
however
many
years.
Original English
>> Yeah.
They
should
want
more
of
you,
not
want
less
of
you.
Original English
>> Right.
Exactly.
That
like
Yeah,
you
should
be
maybe
like
a
little
bit
koi.
Original English
>> So,
Georgia,
I
mean,
going
plus
18
for
the
Democrats,
going
to
the
Democrats
in
the
governorship
Texas,
you
also
had,
and
these
were
not
races
that
you
were
on
the
ground
for,
but
I
think
you
understood
the
night
was
going
to
be
something
different
when
the
needle
began
swinging
on
South
Carolina.
God,
Original English
>> for
a
while,
I
didn't
believe
that.
Original English
>> I
mean,
that
was
that
was
healing.
Original English
>> I
was
[laughter]
I
was
not
ready
to
believe
that.
Mississippi.
It
looks
like
the
Democrats
are
are
going
to
win
that
seat.
When
I
think
of
what
is
now
different
in
American
politics,
it
will
be
sustainably
different.
I'm
not
saying
the
South
has
realigned.
People
always
talk
about
realignments.
I
think
of
this
more
as
a
deignment.
Original English
>> What
has
happened
is
the
South
has
become
unreliable
now
for
the
Republican
party.
They
have
to
defend
it.
Demog
going
to
have
an
opportunity
to
say
this
is
what
it
is
like
when
we
govern
Texas,
when
we
govern
Georgia,
when
you
know
you
have
a
South
Carolina
senator,
a
Mississippi
senator.
And
just
the
collapse
of
the
Republicans
southern
wall.
I
mean,
we
never
even
called
that
the
red
wall
because
you
wouldn't
even
have
really
thought
to
attack
it.
[laughter]
But
now
the
entire
political
map
is
it's
just
a
map
again
of
states,
right?
It's
like
it's
hard
to
imagine
it's
hard
to
even
imagine
what
the
2028
like
presidential
looks
like
if
people
are
fighting
in
Texas
in
Kansas
Original English
>> to
say
nothing
how
the
candidate
recruitment
goes.
I
mean
I
think
one
thing
the
Democratic
party
was
not
doing
in
the
way
you
might
have
thought
was
really
thinking
about
who
do
you
recruit
in
South
Carolina.
You
know
it
ended
up
getting
a
great
candidate
but
a
lot
of
these
were
Original English
>> were
people
who
step
forward
themselves.
Original English
>> People
who
step
forward
themselves.
I
mean,
the
Scott
Column
story
in
Mississippi
is
is
is
so
interesting.
Maybe
it's
worth
saying
for
a
minute
how
he
ends
up
in
this
race
because
he
could
have
had
another
job,
Original English
>> right?
He
was
appointed
to
the
federal
bench
by
Joe
Biden
and
he
is
blocked
by
Mississippi
Senator
Cindy
Hyde
Smith
and
then
he
decides
to
challenge
her
in
the
election
Original English
>> and
now
he's
beat
her
for
her
Senate
seat.
Original English
>> We
[laughter]
think
Original English
>> we
think
we
think
we
think.
But
yeah,
what
does
it
mean
that
the
South
has
fallen
for
the
Republicans?
So,
I
mean,
look,
obviously
in
some
ways
I
think
we're
still
metabolizing
this
because
it's
just
I
can't
think
of
another
time
when
like
so
many
of
our
political
assumptions
have
just
been
exploded
overnight.
There
was
kind
of
an
attempt
after
Mitt
Romney
was
defeated
to
reckon
with
what
it
means
to
be
like
a
conservative
party
in
a
multi-racial
democracy.
And
then
Donald
Trump
kind
of
blew
that
up.
But
they're
going
to
have
to
start
thinking
about
it
again
with
Donald
Trump
being
on
the
way
out,
right?
Because
like
[snorts]
how
does
a
candidate
like
JD
Vance,
you
know,
sort
of
even
more,
I
think,
aligned
with
white
nationalist
forces
in
the
Republican
party
than
Donald
Trump.
How
does
he
win
in
a
state
like
Mississippi
if
Mississippi's
votes
can't
just
be
taken
for
granted
from
the
outset?
You
know,
and
then
at
the
same
time,
you
know,
maybe
Marco
Rubio
is
a
better
candidate
for
Mississippi,
but
maybe
not
a
better
candidate
for
an
anti-war
electorate.
And
so,
you
know,
they
just
like
their
coalition
has
evaporated
overnight.
Um,
but
there's
also
all
of
these
questions
for
the
Democratic
party
because
you're
going
to
start
hearing
demands
from
some
of
the
more
left-wing
candidates
and
some
of
those
demands
are
going
to
be
really
popular
and
I
think
that
again
is
worth
keeping
in
mind.
Right?
There's
a
lot
of
things
that
I
think
will
both
satisfy
certain
left-wing
base
voters
and
potentially
help
the
Democratic
Party
solidify
itself
as
a
national
party.
And
it's
kind
of
been
a
while
since
we've
understood
the
Democratic
Party
as
a
as
a
national
party.
And
then
there's
another
part
of
it
that
is
less
about
like
messaging
and
such
and
is
also
just
about
like
investment
and
building
and
taking
seriously
that
you
need
a
strong
Democratic
party
in
those
places.
[music]
And
I
think
it
then
gets
into
kind
of
what
happens
in
the
places
Democrats
are
more
prepared
to
contest,
right?
Which
is
like
the
kind
of
like
the
string
of
elections
in
the
Midwest.
So
you
had
Senate
seats
open
um
for
for
contest
in
Original English
>> Ohio
where
Sher
Brown
won
running
uh
again
a
very
anti-data
center
campaign
among
other
things
in
Minnesota
where
Peggy
Flanigan
won
for
the
Democrats.
Democrats
weren't
that
worried
about
that
one.
um
in
Michigan
where
that
became
a
very
marquee
seat
because
it
was
one
of
the
few
seats
in
the
country
where
Republicans
thought
maybe
they
had
a
pickup
opportunity.
Original English
>> Um
Gary
Peters,
a
Democratic
senator
from
Michigan,
had
decided
to
retire
the
cycle.
You
did
a
bunch
of
reporting
from
from
Michigan
and
and
now
kind
of
everybody
knows
how
it
went.
But
but
before
we
get
to
Elsad,
I
actually
want
to
talk
about
Haley
Stevens.
Original English
>> Mhm.
Original English
>> Who
was
the
Democratic
establishment
choice
in
that
election?
I
was
never
totally
sure
why.
Um,
but
Schumer
recruited
her.
Governor
Whitmer
endorsed
her
kind
of
towards
the
end
of
that
primary
hoping
to
push
her
over
the
the
edge.
Who
was
she
and
and
how
did
she
end
up
endorsing
the
Republican
in
the
final
days
of
the
race?
Original English
>> Okay.
So,
I've
been
critical
of
Chuck
Schumer's
intervention
in
some
of
these
races.
There
was
obviously
races
where
he
was
really,
[snorts]
really
important,
right?
He
was
really
important
in
like
convincing
Sherid
Brown
to
run
again.
I
mean,
Haley
Stevens,
as
far
as
I
can
tell,
her
main
attribute,
and
this
is
ironic
given
how
things
went
down,
was
that
she
was
a
team
player,
you
know,
and
she
was
just
like
a
kind
of
normie,
solid
Democrat
who
had
a
lot
of
patrons
in
the
party,
was
like
not
just
kind
of
normally
pro-
Original English
Israel, but incredibly passionately pro-Israel for kind of odd reasons because she's not Jewish or although she might become Jewish, she says, um, I always thought that was a huge mistake. I never understood why if you don't want if you don't want Abdul El Sayed to be the candidate either because you are like ideologically not in line with him or you think that he's a risk. I mean Mallalerie McMurro was right there.Original English
>> Yeah, I like Mallerie McMurro a lot. I never understood why the establishment was moving towards Stevens. I like Elsa too, but I understood what the fears about him were forability reasons.Original English
>> I always understood what happened here. Stevens, in addition to to some of the apac dimensions you just mentioned, she had originally won in a Trumpy district. Her her 2018 and 2020 Yeah. elections were in a a district that at least at that point was R plus4. And so there's a feeling that she could win over Trump voters and everybody's so used to Michigan being these like super tiny margins,Original English
>> but you would watch her on TV. You would just wasn't an impressive candidate. It's not just I think that she's like, you know, kind of not super inspiring or charismatic. She's also I mean you could not see her campaign, right? Like I go to Michigan and I wanted to go to some of her events. I understand I wrote critically about her, but I write critically about a lot of people and their press people will still tell me where they're campaigning. Like there was so and there or you sign up as a member of the public. She did so few events where if you just as a member of the public as opposed to somebody who was like recruited to be there where you could go see her. I mean it was like it was it was bizarre. I don't know that I've ever seen anything like it. She just kind of was not accessible. Um you know and then meanwhile Abdul say is going everywhere. Mallerie McMurro is going everywhere. I mean I think Mallalerie McMurro suffered from being the sort of Goldilocks candidate.Original English
>> Yeah. She was sort of in between the two of them. And then, you know, kind of once she dropped out of the race, especially once she I mean, I think it was always ugly, but it became especially ugly once it became a binary campaign.Original English
>> But this is I I want to say that I think Schumer ended up doing a good job on a lot of measures here, right? They just, you know, they put money to Mississippi late in the game when people thought that might be a completely crazy move. I mean, he took some risks. He got Roy Cooper. The thing that I thought was interesting here and reflected to me a way in which a Democratic establishment needs to update its sense of what makes a candidate electableOriginal English
>> is it does not care about and does not select for star power.Original English
>> It does not care about and does not select for charisma. It does not care about and does not select for people creating an authentic movement around them. Right. People being genuinely excited. But Elsad was exciting the hell out of people.Original English
>> Yeah. Absolutely. and the fear that he was both a kind of mobilizing and countermobilizing candidate. He mobilized his people and mobilized people against him, which is I think why the RepublicansOriginal English
>> thought they might win.Original English
>> But there was, I thought, a sort of for a long time like a like an an unwillingness to grapple with what it meant that, you know, so many Democrats in Michigan were so excited about Elsa.Original English
>> There's been a lot of attention to the Democrats who wouldn't vote for him, Haley Stevens being one of them. I think we would have seen something similar and maybe even larger on the other side. You know, voters who wouldn't have voted for Haley Stevens because of herOriginal English
>> passionate commitment to Israel. But there are some lessons that are hard to draw just because like the the tide was so high that it kind of carried so many people along. Like Elsa, on the one hand, Elsa when he was being really cocky would say he was going to win by seven and that seemed ridiculous. and I think he won by seven.Original English
>> And also that doesn't look like that's kind of an underperformance relative to the rest of the field. And so it's a little bit hard to draw direct lessons from it. But I absolutely think I mean I think you could see it in Michigan. You could definitely see it in in Maine, you know, and again, beating Susan Collins is no small thing, but you could feel the difference in energy between when Graham Platner was the nominee and when, you know, I went to a Troy Jackson event just um I have family in Maine and was visiting them. Went to a Troy Jackson event while I was there. You know, he seemed like a very nice man.Original English
>> They didn't have the energy of the platinum event,Original English
>> but yeah, you could just feel Yeah. There's just like you could feel the sort of like deflation. Um, and yeah, I mean, the Democratic Party maybe is not in the It should be optimized for vibes. I mean, after the Obama experience, but um,Original English
>> but it wasn't for a long time. Yeah.Original English
>> And it in some ways maybe still isn't. I want to play a clip of of Elsa's victory speech because I think it it it speaks to the way he specifically ran in Michigan.Original English
>> We spoke of a brighter, a bigger, more hopeful Michigan. There's an astrourfed corporatefunded advertising campaign built to deceive and distract.
[cheering]
Rather than try to unite us to contend with the crisis of gas or groceries, the opposition decided to try to divide us. At first, they pointed to my name and my faith as if to say, you know, he's a little different.Original English
>> And when it didn't work, they tried to guilt me by association. And when that didn't work, they went all in on one of the ugliest campaigns we've seen in our lifetimes.Original English
>> They might have been pointing to my name and my faith, but we all know that my name and my faith aren't the reason you can't afford your gas. Not the reason you can't afford your groceries.Original English
>> Not the reason you can't see a doctor.Original English
>> I think you see there. I mean, you heard a sort of similar move at the end of basically every clip I've been playing is this continuous bringing back to like they're trying to distract youOriginal English
>> from what you know, which is that everything is too expensive. In a way, what struck me as significant about Elsa's campaign is not, you know, did he underperform by a little bit. He didn't underperform by a lot, right? So he had a kind of normal performance for a, you know, Michigan Senate candidate. I think you could sort of, you know, debate whether it could have been five points more.Original English
>> That's significant in a place like Michigan. On the other hand, you just saw like a hardcore populistOriginal English
>> with like a huge amount of money spent to other him for his skin color and faith and nameOriginal English
>> win the rust belt.Original English
>> Right. It worked.Original English
>> Right. That was I mean and that was the gamble, right? that that was the big test is that Bernie Sanders wing of the party has a theory of politics which is that this there's a kind of like more workingclass coalition that you can bring together with a relentlessly populist message and that you can kind of increase turnout to make up for maybe some of the like suburban moderates that you might lose. And it worked here.Original English
>> It's also a reality. I mean Bernie Sanders is in his 80s at this point. MOriginal English
>> he doesn't have all that many obvious successors in the Senate. He does in the house with AOC. He actually has it in you know the New York City multi nowOriginal English
>> but but now Elsad comes in and is like a a can be a a champion for this politics there which you know when you think about the Democratic party is a big tent.Original English
>> People tend to talk about that and what they're thinking about is like the right side of the tent expanding. Who do you run in Kansas? Who do you run in, you know, Iowa? But it also means having representation for like the left side of the tent and having that kind of creative energy in the party as well.Original English
>> I mean, I could be wrong, but I think that the thing we're going to hear Abdul say talk about the most, my guess, is expanding Medicare.Original English
>> And that is really, really popular, right? And kind of having somebody bang away at that over and over again is is it can kind of only I think can only help the party. I mean, it's it's alsoOriginal English
fascinating. I'm not hardly the first person to point this out that he ran on Medicare for all which we used to think was like an extremely um electorally like dangerous position and it barely registered as like a a point of attack.
Original English
>> It is a reflection of where the healthare system right now is that Medicare for all has never pulled as well as it has this year.
Original English
>> And you know you also Dr. Annie Andrews who you know really hammers home on healthcare. So, you've got these doctors coming into the Democratic um Senate caucus at a time when I think there is going to be a revisiting of healthcare and healthcare reform parting in the runup to to 2028. I want to move to to Kansas. The last time Kansas had a Democrat in the Senate was the 1930s. Um, you know, I remember about two months ago people started to tell me they thought Adam Hamilton really had a chance. And this is one of those I could see a poll number, but I had a lot of trouble believing the poll number,
Original English
>> right?
Original English
>> And he did have a chance. He won convincingly.
And so I want to get at the way he sold himself in Kansas. I think this clip is really telling.
Original English
>> And I have people say to me, I can't figure you out. Are you liberal or conservative? And my answer is yes, of course. And [laughter] they're like, no, no. Which are you? And I'm like, I think we can be both. To be a liberal means to be generous of spirit, open to seeing things with new eyes and and to be and open to reform and and to be conservative means holding on to values or beliefs that are really important. We can be both of those things at the same time. And I know this about all of you. Even the most liberal in this room, you're conservative compared to somebody you know. And all of you who are more conservative are liberal compared to somebody you know. And so we need each other.
Original English
>> What did you make of his campaign?
Original English
>> Again, I mean, I think we've talked about this idea of transcendence, right? But there is people I think are so exhausted with being like enraged all the time. There's been so many families that have been split apart over politics. You know, friendships split apart. And I think people want to move beyond that. And so, you know, we've paid a lot of attention to the way James Telerico did. This was maybe like a more sort of like slightly more sedate Midwestern version of that. Um, you know, and if you are like a wellspoken Democratic mainline pastor right now, I imagine that like Democratic operatives are coming [laughter] in your door
Original English
>> because it does it has a signal, right? That's not what people are used to from Democrats. And so just hearing that that is what you do, right? You are a pastor. I think it opens the door from the beginning to, well, maybe this person is different,
Original English
>> right? And the fact that he has like a big, you know, it's a it's a big church, right? like people already he already has this kind of credibility in the community and he's already clearly you know he can't be painted as an interloper in the same way but yeah I just I think that you know we talked about like vibe shifts there is even maybe among people who voted for Trump there's an exhaustion and just like a desire for some sort of like national reconciliation
Original English
>> I think there's also a dimension here where looking at his campaign is a good moment to remember that populism even though we sometimes use it as like a synonym for progressive or leftist.
Original English
>> It's not like a position point on the left right spectrum cuz he went really hard against his opponent Roger Marshall for the way Marshall had hounded past patients over their debts and the amount of interest Marshall paid had demanded they pay. Some of them ended up in jail you know after he turned it over to collections. So Hamilton was running in some ways a very populist campaign against Marshall on the other hand running as you know both liberal and conservative ran as his line on this was I'm pro-life with a heavy heart. Um Scott Colum in Mississippi also ran as personally pro-life. I think both of them were also like pro-choice as a policy matter but he felt to me Hamilton more like the kind of candidate Democrats used to run like in the '9s.
Original English
>> Oh yeah for sure.
Original English
>> Where there were like you know you had this sort of southern populist tradition but it was more culturally conservative. if it like wore its faith on its sleeve. He feels like something new now, but he actually felt to me like something very recognizable from more when I was growing up.
Original English
>> Yeah. No, I think 100%. Um I mean part of this is just about the both the declining power of what you know people call like the groups and also a sort of acknowledgment I think among a lot of Democrats that
Original English
>> on the one hand you know like abortion rights for example can can turn people out on its own um that you see you know Kansas did pass this abortion rights referendum a lot of these red states states did, but it doesn't necessarily motivate people to vote for Democrats. I mean, if anything, some of these referendums kind of gave people um permission to vote for Republicans because they had protected their abortion rights. And there's also, I think, just a sense that people want to feel like their representatives are sincerely grappling with these issues instead of sort of like repeating the team's rhetoric. the Republicans tried to make trans issues such a like so salient probably at least is just them just playing the hits from the last election. But I also have a theory that voters reward the side that seems to care about that issue less. Right? that part of the reason it was damning for Kla Harris in 2024 wasn't because people were so concerned personally about um you know sort of whether people are getting their hormones in prison as just that it was such a statement about her priorities right and that it was like they care about this stuff they don't care about what you're facing
Original English
>> I'm interested in all the reporting you did as you watch us play out what you think ties all these candidates together. What this sort of new Democratic party with all this talent and and I want to note we've been focusing very strongly here on the Senate and a couple governors. It's like it's very hard to get at the House races because there's so many of them. But
Original English
>> you know, Democrats look to be on track for 250 to 260 House seats. It is an incredible incredible number.
Original English
>> So, I mean, this was happening there. This was all happening at every level. You know, state legislators flipped, but it does feel to me like there's a lot of new talent. You know, not all these candidates are millennials, but a lot of them are millennials. This feels like a very big moment of generational turnover in the Democratic party, which is one reason shared Brown and Roy Cooper's victories, which are both very, very, very impressive, I think, are getting a little bit less attention because I think people are looking to see what is this new generation going to be like? What do you think this new generation is going to be like? What do you think is different about the Democratic Party that is emerging out of the 2026 midterm from the Democratic party that emerged out of the 2018 midterm?
Original English
>> I mean fundamentally the focus on oligarchy which I don't even remember us kind of using that word in 2018 but right this kind of focus on oligarchy and corruption and some to some degree this is just a um function of the fact that Donald Trump has been so unleashed and has been able to um kind [snorts] of bestow so many favors on the codory of people around him.
Original English
>> But it has I mean and I' I've said this before, it has created the conditions for Democrats to be the anti- elite kind of anti-corporate, anti-billionaire class. And so that can mean a lot of different things in practice, right? I mean, I don't I would be very surprised if they're able to say raise taxes or institute a wealth tax anytime soon. There's going to be this debate in the new Congress about like, you know, move for hold Trump accountable or move forward. The middle of that ven diagram, I think, is investigating corruption, right? Investigating the sort of like siphoning off of public goods to all of these kind of vulturous figures. And so again, I think that you just have
Original English
[snorts] it's not so much just a kind of an anti-Trump party where the most exciting new faces are kind of like faces of the resistance. their faces. Uh the you know the I think the the general the the like how do I say this the gestalt or the um is people who believe that like our entire system has been just kind of like taken over and that the power of these kind of malevolent figures needs to be broken. I do think though that I both think that's true and in some ways I don't think this is going to be so salient between 2026 and 2028 because Donald Trump is going to remain the center of American politics
Original English
>> and Democrats are not going to have to manage some of their own internal tensions.
Original English
>> But the difficult thing about a big tent isn't so much running as one, but governing as one. And I I've been very interested to see, you know, right after the election, how some of the these different candidates are are speaking as they think about what is it going to mean to hold a Senate seat and and be popular among your constituents in Kansas, right? Or in Texas or in and and Terico went on Fox News the the day after the election. I think that's a signal unto itself,
Original English
>> but but I thought what he said was interesting.
Original English
>> I am not interested in retribution. The people of Texas did not elect me last night. uh for retribution. They elected me to deliver for them to make their lives easier and better and less stressful. And that's what I plan to do. And I plan to do it even for the Texans who didn't vote for me. It's why I'm here on Fox News the morning after.
Original English
>> We appreciate you coming on. We really do. I have a last easy quick question for you. Are you so glad you did that Joe Rogan interview?
Original English
Well, I I had a great time with Joe Rogan, and I'm always willing to go uh on to shows uh or podcasts with hosts who disagree with me on on any issue because we have to we have to build bridges in this country. We have to repair the ties that bind us together. That is the new form of politics that we pioneered in Texas. It's how we won by double digits in the largest red state in the country. And I think it can be a blueprint for our nation going forward.
Original English
This to me is a big difference between 2018 and 2026.
Original English
>> 2018 I think the Democratic party still sort of felt this Trump thing was an aberration
Original English
>> that you know Butterfly had flapped his wings and James Comey had taken a laptop and Hillary Clinton had lost in a fluke and you might just be able to like bottle this thing back up, right? Like shove it back into the the basement of the country. And so you had this, you know, this resistance politics, but it was a little bit of a doubling down politics, right? It's like we thought Donald Trump was bad for these reasons in 2016. Now you can see he's really bad for these reasons, right? Let's like end this forever. And I think now you have this Democratic party that doesn't believe that, right? They got chasened after 2024, right? They got power back
Original English
>> and whatever they did with that power, it wasn't good enough, right? And instead Trumpism roared back stronger than before, more popular than before, and fundamentally more dangerous and destructive than before. And so the sense of what happens if you wield power in a way that pushes people back to the other side, I think that's much more going to be much more front of mind for Democrats, right? They still have to win in 2028 to say nothing of then what you know if they do win then what they do after that. I I mean to me the biggest difference there is their theory about how you peel people off from that coalition because the the kind of in 2018 and really going through the Kla Harris campaign, there was a sense that the people that you could win over were sort of educated upper middle class suburbanites who were appalled um you know and who kind of found Donald Trump like vulgar and were responsive to appeals about democracy And I remember Gina Hinosa saying to me, she's like, the people that we're going to win are not the country club Republicans, it's MAGA. And I was like, really? You know, and obviously that can be overstated. There are a lot of people, I think, who were in MAGA for the mass deportations, who were in there for the cruelty. But there are people, you know, who again, and this is something that's hard for me to understand that people who still believed even after the first four years of Donald Trump that Donald Trump was going to [snorts] make their lives better, that his, you know, that he really was the man that they saw from the Apprentice, that he really was this sort of like, you know, financial genius, and that are going to be open to people who they feel like are not just kind of speaking to those to those anxieties and to the fact that their lives have been so hard, you know, right? Who are speaking to them with respect um and who can do something for them. I mean, that's the hard part, right? Especially when you have Donald Trump in office. You can, you know, you can do certain things. They might be able to restore the ACA subsidies, but I think there's a sense that their potential coalition going forward is a different one than the one they imagined a few years ago.
Original English
>> I think that's a good place to end. I'll also find a question. What are three books you'd recommend to the audience?
Original English
>> So, I read almost exclusively fiction in my spare time. And one of the books, a book that came out this year that I absolutely loved and I think it did well, but I feel like I didn't hear people talking about it was this book called Good People by Patmina Sabbat. And it's a book about a very assimilated Afghan family in Virginia where the teenage daughter is killed in what may or may not have been an honor killing. It's about a killing, so it has, you know, these kind of like page turning thriller elements, but it's just like [snorts] such a good book about assimilation and the limits of assimilation. Um, it's like so heartbreaking. So anyway, that is one of them. A book I've been thinking about recently for no particular reason. Um, it's about the last days of a decaying dictatorial cult of personality. Is the feast of the goat by Mario Vargas Yosa, which is a book about the assassination of Raphael Chiro in the Dominican Republic. And I mean, it's a brutal book, so just like, you know, trigger warning. Um, there's scenes in it that maybe will like never leave my mind, but the reason I've been thinking about it recently is because you just get this sense on the one hand of this man whose presence is like all-encompassing and then the way it disappears. Again, it's like a book that you can't stop reading, but I think it has certain um echoes of this moment, although obviously not in a in a violent way. And then finally, I'm going to recommend I hope it's okay to recommend a book that I'm halfway through, only because as I'm reading it, I'm like, how come I had not heard of this book before? And maybe half your readers have and they're just like, where have you been? But this book called The Man Who Loves Dogs by Leonardo Pedora. Have you heard of it?
Original English
>> No, I haven't.
Original English
>> Okay. So, I I actually bought it a few months ago when I was going to Mexico City, and it didn't come in time, so I've only just started reading it now. It's this like big fat kind of like Russian novel style um historical novel about the assassination of Leantrosky, which you know, if you like I I actually kind of love these novels that are like novelizations of exciting historical events. And and this is, you know, the the assassination of Lantrosky is just like a fascinating and kind of wild story. Again, I'm [snorts] halfway through, so maybe it falls apart, but so far I um feel like it should be more of a classic than it is.
Original English
>> Michelle Goldberg, thank you very much.
Original English
>> Thank you. [music]
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>> [music]
Original English
>> Hey,
[music]
hey, hey.