Blue Wave, Big Tent | The Ezra Klein Show

The Big 10 is real and the political map is fake. That is the lesson of the Democrats historic midterm, the blue tsunami that we saw on Tuesday. Democrats won in places nobody thought they had any chance even to compete in a year ago. As I record this, it's unclear which part is going to win Mississippi. But let me say that again. It is unclear which party is going to win the Senate seat in Mississippi. That was unimaginable 3 months ago. They won governorships in Ohio, in Texas, in Iowa. This was a win that destroyed the reality of the red blue map people had come to believe in so firmly. And so we're we're entering a new era, an era when much is unsettled. The realignment may not be what we thought it was in 2024. The realignment may be a map that is entirely up for grabs from here on out. Now, Democrats did do this on their own, of course, to a very large extent, President Donald Trump did it for them.

And both what he did wrong and what they did right were the same thing. Listening. Trump did not listen. Did not listen to the voters, did not even sometimes listen to himself. He was elected promising to lower costs, to end wars, to bring order at the border. Instead, he raised costs through tariffs and through new wars. and he created disorder after closing the border and sending in masked ICE agents to harass and upend settled communities. Trump at no point pivoted. He dismissed almost everything that people were angry about and his party paid the price. And at the same time, Democrats who I think their central political failing for years has been an unwillingness to listen. They listen to themselves as opposed to the voters they need to win over. In state after state, district after district, they found people who fit. Seminarians, parolympians, they found a whole new class of candidates who could put into play a whole new set of places. And then in some places like North Carolina and Georgia, they just had candidates of such exceptional quality who understood their states so well that they won states that should have been purple by 20 points for Roy Cooper, 18 points for John Of. So there's a tremendous amount to learn from this election and a tremendous amount that is now possible after it. But to to think through both

the lessons that we're seeing already, but then how Democrats and for that matter Republicans are going to respond to them, I'm joined here by my revered editor, one of the most beloved characters in our podcast cinematic universe, Aaron Ratica, is going to turn the tables and interview me. He joins me now. Aaron, welcome back to the show. >> Uh, thank you very much for having me. Um, let's start with uh almost a gotcha. Like, do do you have any idea who George McIll is? >> I don't. >> George McIll is the last Democratic senator in Kansas before uh Adam Hamilton who won last night. He won in 1932. I was trying to think of all the different ways of expressing what happened last night and that's the best I could come up with. >> That's a very good way of doing it. So everybody looking at this election, all the different constituents of the Democratic party, they all got something. The left won some races. The center won some races. Charismatic candidates were huge. Uncarismatic candidates also did well.

>> The Roy Cooper juggernaut. >> Roy Cooper plus 20. Uh, this has long been the dream. Was there a breakthrough for the Big 10 Democratic party last night? Yes, but let me hold that to the side for a minute. >> Donald Trump asked America to vote like he was on the ballot and it did. >> Trump of course had, I think, the funniest possible reaction to the election where in the middle of the night he posts on True Social. >> If I had been on the ballot, we would have won in a landslide. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump. And people today have been remarking how he doesn't seem very upset by the election results. And of course not. He does not mind when Republicans lose. And in fact, Republicans often lose because he intervenes in a way that is likelier to make them lose, right? Like bringing in Ken Paxton or assuring Ken Paxton's victory in in in the Texas Republican primary, pushing for Darlene Graham in South Carolina. >> But when Republicans lose, when Trump is not on the ballot to Trump, it shows his importance.

>> And so he, I think, doesn't mind this at all. is more evidence to him of his essential winner. What really happened here is Donald Trump has been a terrible catastrophic president who has betrayed the mandate he was given by voters and as he was losing bleeding public support not only never changed course but never admitted what was happening at all. And so Donald Trump led his party to defeat or certainly created the conditions for the party to go to defeat. And then there's a question of what Democrats did with that which >> Yeah. Well, so what did they do, right? >> The big tent is real and the map is fake. >> Help. >> Where? >> What's that mean? >> All right. So, Democrats ran candidates who fit their states and their districts. And I think it's just really important to center that. I mean, I I, you know, last year I did this big, you know, essay on the show about the need for a big 10 Democratic party. Other people making this argument too that that one of the problems that has emerged over time in American politics is that parties have become tighter in their ideological and cultural positioning >> and geographical >> and geograph Yeah. And that has made them tighter in their geographical positioning because they're not willing to run candidates who differ as much

from the kind of median member of the party. And what Democrats did really well here was in the way that they acted with power, right? Hakeem Jeff and Chuck Schumer here, they kept things very focused on affordability, on the Iran war. They didn't get distracted by a lot of other things. And then when they ran candidates, I mean, they ran people like James Telerico, a um sort of leading an almost religious left revival in Texas against Ken Paxton, Adam Hamilton in Kansas, as you mentioned, a Methodist megaurch pastor. Adam Hamilton and Scott Co, who's the candidate in Mississippi, who looks very much like he may win by like a hundred votes or something. >> Not even a 100. >> I mean, we'll see what where it plays out. >> Truly insane, though. Both of them describe themselves, Hamilton and and and Colum, as pro-life Democrats. Now, they want to create conditions under which reproductive freedom is protected, but they ran as pro-life Democrats, right? Because of their Christian faith.

U Mary Pollah, who ran, you know, uh what was her slogan in Alaska? Faith, freedom, and fish or something. Um so, the Democrats did a very good job in this case of picking candidates who fit the state. And when I say the map is fake, one of the revelations from this um election is you really should not treat states as off the table. >> People were not talking about Kansas. By the way, Adam Hamilton is not a Schumer recruiting victory. Adam Hamilton decided to run. Yeah. >> Right. He is somebody who decided, and by the way, shout out to my um colleague at Vox and colleague here at the New York Times, Sarah Cliff, whose bombshell story, bombshell investigative work on Roger Marshall's unbelievably brutal um pursuit and persecution of people who are not able to pay his medical bills was a major major major part of that race. And that's a story Sarah Cliff broke here at the New York Times. Um shout out to Sarah.

>> Yeah. Wait, can I I want to throw in a shout out uh while we're at it and that's Howard Dean, right? Because the 50 state strategy is vindicated here, right? So, I mean, this is what you're saying, but like there's two reasons. One, you might actually win some of these states, but also there are going to be talented politicians in these places who can't necessarily win their state who are still worth having in your coalition. Just being out there and not writing things off is critically important. >> Yes. and and you know doing the work to recruit the candidates and then supporting them. So I think Democrats have sort of treated Florida as not winnable and what you saw here I mean you know Nixon is only going to fall a couple points short. Florida is wable um if you have the right candidates in the right environment and so you have to build that kind of party strength. You have to look for those people. And now there's like an interesting question here. You were saying at the beginning that everybody got some of what they wanted and and that's at least somewhat true. Um, I think it's going to be fascinating to see what lessons Democrats learn from Michigan, from Maine, and from Florida, which is where they ran in contested or contestable um, Senate uh, elections, much more left-wing candidates. And Abdul Seed won, it looks like he'll win by something in the seven range as we're taping. Maine, it's a little harder to say because they had the whole disaster with Graham Platner. Susan Collins is actually a quite good candidate because

she's has a reputation for independence not totally welld deserved from the um other side. But Jackson's uh win there looks closer than you would expect given the demographics of Maine, right? It's not like the John Of plus 18 win in Georgia and in Florida. Angie Nixon, you know, a more direct DSA candidate lost, right? It's not you're not looking in Florida, okay, >> at what you're seeing in South Carolina or Mississippi. I want to push back on that a little bit, right? Because it sometimes sounds like uh you the progressive candidates are just a hindrance to the party. Um but without their imagination, without their ideas, that's very important. And they they didn't do as well as the less left candidates, but they didn't do terribly either. >> No, I don't think they did terribly. And I agree with you that whether you're an electoral overperformer is even correlated really with whether you are a good or important member of the House or Senate. Right? A lot of I think the most creative members of Congress and the most important members of Congress are safe seat players who are not operating under the constant threat of electoral wipeout. You know, Elizabeth Warren, I think, is one of the most important senators, has been for some time, is not an incredible

electoral performer by any means, but is creative and innovative as a policy thinker in a way very, very few of her colleagues are. I think, and I've said this on the show before, I think Abdul sayed is going to be a superstar. And I agree with something that that I think you think, which is that it's very likely he might build margins over time. Um the effort to otherize him was grotesque and it's part of why when he was on the show like we focus on in his actual story. I mean this is a an American boy who's a road scholar and a doctor and a captain of his football team. I mean I found what they tried to do to Elsa >> and I find El to be a very impressive person. I thought it was reprehensible. The question of how some of these people will play out in the Senate, you know, or in the House for that matter, is different to me than the question of can you extract any signal in terms of what it means for the Democratic party to compete in places it has not competed before. And I'll say winning by, you know, plus seven or eight or whatever it's going to be in a Democratic plus 13 environment is just it's not a it's not an electorally impressive performance.

Peggy Flanigan in Minnesota. She wins by about looks like it'll be about 9 or 10 right now. 10ish. Again, Minnesota Democratic plus 13. It's not a good performance, right? You you shouldn't take a lesson that that's what you want to run right there. Um, Angie Nixon, I think that there's a world and and I think that the SEC bears some blame for this, but a stronger Florida Democratic Party that picked a candidate who is better suited to Florida in the way that you saw in Kansas or Mississippi. Um, and a DSC that invested more in the state. I think that was a winnable seat. And so, you know, who you want to blame for that, I think sort of like both sides deserve some blame. But I don't think that the I don't think there's any reason to look at the results and say it was a brilliant strategic move to run the DSA candidate in Florida. That isn't what won in Kansas. It's not what won in Texas. It's not what won in Georgia. It's not what might win in Mississippi. It's not what seems like it will win in Alaska or Iowa for that matter. And so, you know, you got to hold these things in tension.

Sometimes people take statements about electoral performance as moral statements about the worth of a candidate >> or the ideas >> or the ideas. That's crazy in my view. >> By the way, I I do think we often end up too tight on this like moderate to progressive to DSA or whatever it might be scale. You can have candidates who have like many views all at once. So Dr. Annie Andrews in South Carolina who I mean the moment you realized the night was really turning was when all of a sudden the Democrats were going to win in South Carolina reflects a terrible candidate in Darlene Graham as well. >> Okay. But South Carolina I mean wow >> I know Dr. Annie Andrews right a doctor right both somebody who fits South Carolina but has I think if you were grading it on a scale quite progressive views on healthcare and progressive views on healthcare are very popular. Right. That's also a good issue for Abdul Asad. So I think sometimes you can get into this thing where people think what you mean by fit the district or fit the state is just to be more moderate.

James Terico is a like should correctly be understood as a fairly progressive candidate but he moved right on oil and gas but like very much opened himself and he also moved right on border security but he also was a very populist candidate running against billionaires a very probing candidate right the sort of populist abundance synthesis that I think you saw in a lot of different places so in in my view there's a lot to learn from a bunch of these candidates but I do think it is it is notable. If what you would like to see is Democrats building on this success that I don't think the place you want to look for electoral lessons is Abdul Seed, is Peggy Flanigan, is Angie Nixon, is Troy Jackson. And I think Maine has another lesson if you go down. So the main second house district was represented by Jared Golden last three elections. That is the district in America that the reddest district represented by a Democrat.

Golden is the most conservative or was the most conservative House Democrat and he was um like tormented by the left for this including facing a challenge by a more progressive challenger Matt Dunlap. And Golden decided to retire. He was done with it. He was tired of it. and Golden who held this seat with insane overperformance year after year after year. You know, now it looks like even in this gigantic wave election, Dunlap is either going to win it incredibly modestly or or lose the seat. Jared Golden was like a most valuable player for the Democrats. He is a kind of person you want in the party and you should protect. And there's a lesson in that. If you want to build power and the Democrats excited about possibly winning Mississippi right now, excited about winning Kansas in 2032, you're going to need to try to keep these seats, right? Like, you can't just lose them again. Um, you want to build a supermajority.

You want to build a durable majority. That doesn't just mean moderating, but it does mean recognizing that you need these candidates who are right for their states, right for their districts, and then you need to do everything you can to make their life easy, right? not as was done with Jared Golden try to like hound them out of office. Um, I want to rain a little bit on the parade because >> since Trump first came down that escalator, right, what is that? June of 2015, everyone on the liberal side, the centrists, the never Trumpers, everyone has been wondering when are the scales going to fall from their eyes? What will it take? Right? So, what it took is kind of insane, right? It took an unpopular, unconstitutional, inconclusive war driving up gas prices and crucially diesel gas prices. It took taking Latino voters for granted and attacking on immigration and shooting people in the streets. Like all of that is what was needed to get where we are now. So like it it I mean it's a obviously tremendous victory for

the Democrats, but it does give me a little bit of pause that it took so much. I I see it as more environmental even than than you're describing it there. So, I think at this point internationally, we have enough examples of Trump-like politicians. Flavio Bolsinaro um you know, came out ahead in the first round of Brazil's presidential election, ended up losing to Lula in the second round. But there is just no evidence that the Trumpy style or what we think of as the Trumpy style in America, but what you might think of as like the populist right style worldwide is a turnoff to voters. What voters don't like is their life getting worse. Right. That was a big problem for >> Who likes that? >> Nobody. But but when you're saying it took so much, I actually think it didn't take so much. What you're describing is a chain of very intense events that led to real world consequences for people. So you could have imagined a world where actually Trump governed much more modestly, but there was a >> No, you can't. You can't actually. Well, but what I'm saying is, or maybe a different way of putting it, is in 2008, Barack Obama won a very big victory, but the unemployment rate continued to go up. And so 2010 was a historic wipeout for the Democratic party because, and that wasn't because Obama's personal style was repulsive to the electorate, right? He won in 2012. People liked him quite a bit. It's because fundamentally, if people do not feel their lives are getting better, in fact, they feel they're getting worse. And and sort of another way of saying what you're saying

is people felt their lives were getting worse and then particular groups, right? You know, Hispanic Americans saw their lives getting much worse because of the amount of state force Donald Trump and Steven Miller um who, you know, did a lot to lose this election for Republicans was aiming at them and aiming at their communities, right? Bobby Pledo uh winning a Texas district for the House by 25 points, right? He's an amazing candidate, this very very well-known singer and just like somebody who has like run a fantastic race, but I remember him getting in. That was supposed to be a safe Trump district. Right. He won by 25 points, right? And that's a guy who I think should be treated in the Democratic party right now as a star. And in the end, you cannot make people's lives worse. But conversely, the reason Trump was able to survive in the way he was at other times was he benefited from like a pretty strong economy for most of his first term. And people remembered that when he ran for his second um you know, effort at re-election.

>> Well, and he did better in the first and people expected in part because he was sending people checks, right? >> Yeah. This is something that's worth noting because you know what fell apart was the realignment, >> right? Oh my god, the realignment. I mean, okay, can I riff for one second? >> I would love you to riff. >> I am a racial realignment skeptic, as you know. I hated it from the beginning. It seemed insane to me. It was clear that the people who had moved into the Republican column, whether that's young men, uh, black young, well, younger black men, uh, Hispanic people as a whole, and I'll say the thing we have to say, which is that there's a million different kinds of Hispanic, right? I mean, duh. Like, but yet >> all those groups surged toward Trump. They have all surged back and staggering numbers. the youth vote was like what plus 30 some I don't know the exact number but >> yeah I'm going to pull up this number just while we're saying this because I think it's so striking. So right now I'm looking at house results >> um at the New York Times and this can all change a little bit on the margin as you know more votes get counted but here we're speaking on um Wednesday morning uh male voters swung 17 points towards the Democrats uh voters aged 18 to 29. This is just a crazy number. Swung 32 points towards the Democrats. 32 points. Um, Hispanic voters 28 points towards the Democrats. I will say though, there's

something to be careful with here, which is we don't know how much of what happened here is persuasion versus um turnout. voters who supported Trump in 2024 just didn't like him enough or didn't care enough to come out in 2026. You can't really see that in the the voting data. Right. >> Right. No. And you also can't see the, you know, I mean, roughly speaking, 150 million people vote in these presidential elections, right? And maybe 110, 115, 120 million decide the midterms. So, yeah. Yeah. you can't. And it's definitely not necessarily the case that this person changed his mind or her mind. It's often these people showed up or they didn't, right? The true swing voters are the people in some ways who only vote sometimes, right? Um that said though, let's try to read the rune runes a little bit. Uh 2006, >> you know me, Aaron, I love a good run. >> Yeah, a little rune reading is right. Yeah, >> it's right in my wheelhouse. uh two let's two two sets of historical examples from midterms right okay so we have two on one side we have 2006 where the Democrats do extremely well it is a harbinger of the rise of the first black president although very few people realized it at the time he did David Axelrod did but like not was not conventional wisdom in 2006 I had just started working here the year before I would say no one was talking Barack Obama. Very few people were

talking about Barack Obama, right? And then two years later, he's the president of the United States. The flip side of that though is 1994, Gingrich and co win the contract with America. They do change the face of American politics quite a bit and we're all still paying the price. Trump is in many ways, right, the the fruit of that tree. God, that was terrible. But you know what I'm saying. Uh but they lose to Clinton in 1996. Um, in 2010, as you alluded to earlier, they what what did Obama say? Right. There was a shellacking, >> right? But then he won really pretty comfortably in 2012, although >> uncharacteristically he was a president who lost electoral votes the second time he ran, which is actually very unusual, right? Um, usually it's more like Reagan where you win by a little bit and then you win by a lot. So, what do you think this is? >> All right. So just in the modern era, you have wave midterms that lead to the party that won the midterm winning the presidency and and winning seats in the next election. So good examples of this are '06 where Democrats win in the kind of second Bush midterm and then in '08 they win a super majority. It's not just that Barack Obama wins in ' 08, it's Democrats get 60 votes in the Senate.

>> Yeah. Um >> unpopular war in the Middle East, I might add. and then ultimately a financial crisis which given I mean there's a lot of shakiness around AI right now particularly after this election and what that might mean for Texas data center construction. So the economy may not be getting better from here. Um 2018 big Democratic midterm they win in 2020. Okay. Uh but 1994 huge Republican midterm. Bill Clinton wins in 1996. Uh 2010 huge Republican midterm. Barack Obama wins in in 2012. Midterms are not a straight line to victory in the next election. You have to be thoughtful about what you do, thoughtful about who you run, thoughtful about how you run. I will say you often do have to what you were just saying about Obama, the ' 06 midterm was this very like Americana like flag and national security midterm on the Democratic side. you know, like a big star out of that midterm was Jim Webb, the sort of Virginia like like tough talking Marine. You wouldn't necessarily have seen that going to Barack Obama as you were saying. Uh Trump winning in 2016 after the 2012 Republican wipeout. One of the big things Republicans believed after 2012 is he had to moderate on immigration.

Then of course you end up getting the most nivist president in, you know, kind of modern America. I don't I'm not predicting. The idea though that this era in politics with all the fights around Israel and anti-semitism we're having does seem to be like more than any other recent one leading to like possibly the first Jewish American president in John Of if he if he decides to run. The amount of energy around him. >> Wow. You heard it here first. >> It's not first, right? I mean this is not a new point but it is just interesting. I mean, if you want to talk about a singular star coming out of this election, I'm not saying wants to run for president. From what I hear, he doesn't. He may not really end up having a choice on this one. >> Definitely. I'm not sure. Yeah, definitely. >> Crushed his opponent in Georgia, right? >> And getting back to the Trump political malpractice issue, Oaf is a senator because of Donald Trump. >> He's a senator because of Donald Trump.

He's a senator who has a demonstrated capability to win in a purple state. By the way, he has coels. I'm not saying it's just him and you got to look here at like organizing. This is done by Stacy Abrams and you know, Raphael Waro as well, but Kesha Lance Bottoms won for governor in Georgia. I mean, we've been talking here about about House and Senate, but you know, Democrats won the governorship in Texas, right? Rob Sand won easily in Iowa. I mean, there are a lot of big gubernatorial pickups here. I think I saw a number floating around um on Twitter yesterday. I I think Can we call X Twitter again? Is that part of the election? >> I'm going to get to him later. I >> I saw a number floating around on Twitter yesterday. The Democrats now control the governorships in states worth 392 electoral votes, which is just huge, right? And so, you know, but but John Of like being able to navigate this moment in the way he has, being able to be as dominant in the attention economy as he has been, but maintain a kind of highly message disciplined approach. Uh like straddle the divide where you know both Hassan and Madaglacius will talk up John O to you like I've been talking him up for a long time. the guy is just demonstrating an incredible amount of political skill. And you know, in terms of these sort of weird ways that

American politics often leads to not the person you would have expected from narrative a couple years before he just has a there's a a lot of energy around him at the moment. I guess I'll say that. >> Yeah. I mean, there were so many remarkable things about last night, right? I mean it became temporarily illegal to talk about identity and of course wasn't actually illegal but you know what I'm saying like we weren't supposed to talk about that but the result of that is actually quite striking in identity terms right we have the first openly gay male senator we have the first Muslim senator we're going to have the first black female governor we have a man with spina bifida who's going to be a senator where we have there's Native American first. It's like an amazing array that you know 1976 Democratic Party is like woohoo. Um so what do you make of that contrast that people ran they didn't run on it but they won with it?

>> I don't find that surprising. It just was never the case even though some people took this as like a lesson of 2024 that candidates who are women don't perform well. Candidates who are black don't perform well. Candidates who are Native American don't perform well. What didn't perform well was candidates taking very unpopular positions. Some of them, though, by the way, not all of them tied to race and gender and and identity. But, you know, you look at Barack Obama, right? He's very very very popular. Still the single most popular politician in the country today. Um, you know, whether you want to call him a politician, we can argue, but Obama is by far the most popular political figure in America. Has been for a long time. You know, at the same time, people were saying that, well, it just goes to show you a woman can't win in the rust belt. It's like you had a woman governor in Michigan. You had, you know, we just had like obviously Amy Clolobachar win in Minnesota last night. And so this was always people were conflating wrongly um the identity of candidates with identity politics. And what you see here is that that just was incorrect. And you have these candidates who are just like running really really strong races, right? Josh Turk who the you know the parolympian with spinobipida just ran a really strong race. By the way, Josh Turk was somebody who one reason that there was excitement about him running was in Iowa in the the the state I think

it was state senator like he ran in a district where he had to learn how to appeal to Trump voters. The I would say like the heristic you often want is does this candidate have a record of appealing to the kind of voter they're going to need to win? And Democrats ran a bunch of people like that and they did a really good job. So we talked a lot about how they should campaign and how they succeeded in campaigning, but how should they govern? Which what would if you're Hakeim Jeff and Chuck Schumer. Um and by the way, shout out to New York. Last shout out. New York in control of the House and the Senate. Very weird. >> Yeah. And by the way, also uh Christian Gillibrand, a New York senator who is leading the DSC this cycle. Um and and sort of leading that project. Uh and New York has like the country's most famous mayor and Mandani and AOC. I mean, the New York >> and of course the president, >> the New Yorkization of the president, >> but he he wants to be from Florida. He can be from Florida.

>> Um >> Democrats have three like broad things are going to have to balance, right? One is what I would call resistance, which is fighting Trump, investigating Trump, holding Trump and the Trump administration, Trump family accountable. Um, sending him bills that are going to lead to contrast that the public can see. Right. That's >> said he was going to be Mr. Veto. >> Mr. Veto. Um, you know, Ed Marky said they're going to need to cut down trees for for all the subpoenas that that are going to be offered, which I'm not sure is the most helpful comment from uh one of the senators from Massachusetts, >> an environmental. >> Yeah, for a big environmentalist. Um, but then there is actually getting things done. Uh, so, you know, you have this big permitting bill that's going to get voted on, but I think there's interest and you're hearing people talk about doing things on AI regulation. Uh, you know, you can imagine things potentially on immigration at least around the corners of it >> because now it's hurt both parties.

>> Now it's hurt both parties. Um but that doesn't mean they'll be able to do it right. I'm just saying that there's a bucket of how much do you work with the other side and even work with Donald Trump to get things done. And I mean after 2018 there were things that got done and particularly once you got into the pandemic period. I mean there was huge agreements between you know the Nancy Pelosi le house and and and Donald Trump. And then there is what I would think of as like power building and agenda setting, which is not so much what you pass through the House or the Senate, but beginning to hammer out say what is the Democratic position look like on healthcare reform that they would bring into a 2028 and then 2029 um you know, first campaign and then governing agenda. What does Democratic position on AI regulation? How do Democrats in general like begin to create a sense of what the the the center of the party, not like the centrists in the party, but the center of the party believes? And I think you're going to see a lot of work done on say Medicare for more policies, which are going to unite the the sort of more moderate and the more like left parts of the party. Um I think you're going to see a lot on AI. Um a lot beginning to be thought through on sort of, you know, prek and other forms of child care. So, how they balance it and particularly how they balance the first two, you know, confrontation and and compromise, that's going to be a lot of the a lot of the work. The the only other thing I'll say though is that when I look at the next two years, I think a lot is going to go sideways

like in and and it's hard to predict exactly what, but the economy looks very shaky to me given how much is built on an AI capex boom which could very very very easily collapse into a market correction. Um, you have the Iran war, right, which could explode into something completely different or, you know, Israel could, you know, launch a gigantic round of new attacks. There have been talk about, you know, would Iran use chemical weapons? I mean, there's all kinds of ways that could go sideways even more so than it already has. There's Russia, Ukraine, there's AI, not from the economic standpoint, but, you know, rogue swarms of AIs hacking into China. There's China and Taiwan. There's Donald Trump's health. He's a 80-year-old um who's, you know, very, you know, increasingly discursive and all over the place. There's all the corruption around him. You know, there there is so much that is un >> You know what it makes me think of? >> What? >> Uh this is pretentious, but I'm a very pretentious person.

>> It makes me think of the first line of uh the Shelly poem um England in 1819. Uh let's see if I could do it right. It's an old mad despised and dying king. That's the beginning. Uh, you know, princes, dregs of the dull earth. I could go on, but that poem actually speaks to what we're talking about because at the end of it, he asks, you know, it goes through how horrible the Senate is, but then at the end of it, he asks, you know, what's the glorious phantom that's going to come from this, right? Which is what we're we're talking about. And also just Trump's personality. I don't know what to call it. Uh cuz I'm not going to speculate on on I'm not a doctor and I wouldn't if I were I wouldn't say but there's some kind of disintegration going on I guess or a man not in super great contact with reality to begin with. >> You don't feel like the reflecting pool speech was a closing argument Republicans needed. I I just am like if you look at the world in a sort of historical and literary frame as I tend to right the anxiety is and you just outlined it well that this is 1912 this is 1913 this is 1914 >> this is 06 >> and these things are all converging on us right and then the president is not let's just say he is not adaptable right he's not and you as you pointed out earlier he doesn't react to events he doesn't even seem to know they in the way that other people experience reality. And so that is unlikely to go

super well. >> And his staffing is not going to get better, >> right, >> in the lame duck period of his second term. And it some of these people might get shuffled out as some of them have like Christy Gnome, but the people who come in are not Trump is not going to suddenly surround himself with a team of rivals. He's not going to suddenly begin listening to people's advice. And so what you tend to have in the second, you know, particularly in a second term, particularly in the back half of it, is an exhausted staff, less able to challenge the boss. As you say, the boss is more erratic, more mad. He is not obsessed with Republicans winning in 2028. He does not want to lose control. And so the more Republicans try to win in 2020, >> your theory, he would like them to lose. >> I think he would >> in >> I think he would prefer them to lose while embracing him. Yeah. >> Than to win while running away from him. Yeah. >> I don't think there's any doubt about that. >> To get to your point about investigation and corruption, there will be people who say, "Let it all go. Don't impeach him again. Don't do this. Don't do that. We have to govern." Right? But here's the problem with that. Uh first of all, there's the level of the corruption and uh incompetence and just grotesque grotesque behavior. Just staggering.

like amazing stuff that they did. They destroyed I mean hu agencies that USAD and the department of education and the consumer protection. I mean all of that it's just right. There's that there's the immigration there's all these things. So what do you think they should do on the investigation corruption front? >> I don't think anybody in the party is saying don't investigate. I mean I've not I I think there's going to be >> don't impeach. They are saying that >> let's hold impeachment aside because they're not going to impeach right now. Right. That's not their first day plan. What they've been planning for is investigation. And the challenge they're going to face on investigation is actually how target-rich the environment is. The resources of Congress are significant, but the amount of corruption malfeasants lawbreaking etc. in the Trump administration is like so vast. In order to make anything stick, you need to focus on things people like a couple of things people can can can begin to hold in their minds. It's something that it's one reason John Oaf has been better at making the corruption argument than a lot of others. He tends to focus on one small thing at a time, right? It allows you to to kind of conceptualize a whole and a part. The way I hope they will do it as an organizing thread, at least at the beginning, not because it'll be the most emotionally satisfying or even important, but because I think it actually reflects like what the American people are interested in, is I want them to follow the money. I want to know who bought what from the Trump administration, who gave what to the Trump administration. Things like the

Qatari jet, how much, >> how much did the Trump family get, >> what contracts went into Trump family hands during all this? What's going on with Jared Kushner's fund? I would love to know real details on that Jared Kushner fund that has seemed to be so popular among Gulf State funders. >> Surprisingly popular. Yes. >> Um and on the flip, right, not just like who bought what, like what did they get? And then where has the money been going for the Trump family for Trump associates, right? as you've been getting hosed at the pump and in the grocery store and like at, you know, when you're trying to buy a home. How many billions of dollars has he made? Exactly. And not just him, Don Jr., Eric, right? All their friends and family, Steve Witoff's son, >> right? >> What's going on with all the crypto, right? There is so much money that has been moving around to me like that is the place to start.

But as you were kind of suggesting too, there's all these other questions about what laws are broken in different agencies and and I'm not saying they can't do that too, but they're going to have to choose what to focus >> well and which things to try to put back, right? Do you just try to reopen the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? Do you what do you do there? I >> Well, there's that it's maybe we're spending a moment on what happened to the Doge co-chairs, right? Elon Musk and Vive Ramaswami uh who I think together like Vive lost the Ohio governorship to Amy Actton running one of the most like >> grim and disreputable campaigns. >> Oh, I thought you were going to say the ad cuz that was the worst thing ever. the the ad for people who didn't follow this where he had an add-on from her estranged mother who said Amy Actton is a liar and what she was suggesting Amy Actton lied about was being sexually abused by her stepfather of which there was quite good evidence um grotesque like just reprehensible behavior >> um Ramos is already on track to lose that election but you know he's lost it and >> yeah drummed out of public life no question >> so then and then Elon Musk single largest donor in history in this cycle.

>> It's only $500 million. >> I mean, for him, it's like nothing. >> What are you talking about? >> But it's not just that that money didn't do anything or it doesn't appear to have done very much. A huge amount of it was spent in Texas. And there is nowhere there is nowhere in the country that Republicans collapsed like they did in Texas. If you do this for a living, right, the dream of Blue Texas has or really what appeared to be at first the fantasy of Blue Texas has been alive and well for decades. >> Yeah. >> And now it's here. >> Alive and unwell for decades. >> The fantasy was alive was alive. But here it is, but hopes kept getting dashed. But Musk spent a tremendous amount of money. A large amount of that money. Certainly plurality of it went into Texas specifically. >> And I'm not sure it I I would go further than it it bought him nothing. I think it >> No, it hurt. >> It hurt. Right. People don't like their elections being bought. >> There were two forms of one-man rule on the ballot, right? Trump's and his and they both got crushed.

>> And Musk has moved himself and a lot of his cooperations to Texas. Uh so the question of Musk is going to be a very interesting one going forward. >> The uh yeah, I mean there's a lot to say about Musk. I hope this means that when you verge or maybe more than verge on, you know, white supremacy or certainly white dominance as your central idea that you'll fail like I hope that's true. >> And replacement of human beings by robots and >> replacement of human beings might also be hugely popular. >> Also not great, right? The AI centers are a huge electoral issue, right? That elites are maybe not focused on as much as they should be. >> I mean, I think they're pretty focused on in this election. Right. They like the amount that Democrats ran on that. I mean, Sherid Brown running against Husted in Ohio ran heavily on data centers. Ken Hosa in Texas ran aggressively on data centers. Abdul sayed ran on data centers. I mean, so there were dozens of of data center moratoriums on the ballot and I think so far every single one of them except for one has passed.

>> The exception that proves the rule. So, a little inside baseball. Uh you came to the New York Times the week of January 6th, 2021. You and I had already met obviously my first week, but his first week at your first week at the times of January 6th. That was effectively the down payment on the second Trump term. It also made this even more the Trump era than it might have been. Is this finally the beginning of the end of Trumpism? It's definitely the beginning of the end of Trump, right? He's out in two years no matter what. But is it There's no Trumpism. There was only ever Trump. which is to say that the work that various right-wing intellectuals and pseudointellectuals tried to do >> emphasis on pseudo >> to paint a coherence around Donald Trump's impulses and extract from that what he was going to try to do with a tariff say right what a a highly structured tariff regime to bring manufacturing back to America would look like that was a failure Donald Trump's tariffs were insane Trump is an end of the neo con middle east meddling era in foreign policy a failure. Trump did not agree with you. That was not Trumpism.

Over and over and over and over again, there have been these efforts to say what Trumpism is. But Trump himself would not hold to any of them. And so one reason all of this collapsed and one reason I think the infighting of it on the right is ultimately going to be so vicious is because you're still going to have the real Trumpism has never been tried people. You already saw this happening on >> it was happening last night the MAGA people were all like >> the neocons the neocons. >> Who are the neocons? It was Trump. >> Yeah. >> Marco Rubio didn't get you into Iran. It was Donald Trump himself with Benjamin Netanyahu who got into Iran. That wasn't Bill Crystal. You kidding me? It's ridiculous. JD Vance is gonna, you know, presumably run for president as a human sacrifice to say this is what Trumpism could have been, right? There's >> Trumpism right without the war. >> This is his whole view, right? The JD Vance could have been the industrial nerve center of the Trump administration. He wasn't in the end, but maybe he'll run as that. The problem is nobody actually thinks Vanceism, which is what that really is, is appealing. JD Vance was not a electoral juggernaut in Ohio when he ran. He underperformed terribly and he's not popular now. And so the movement is going to be to try to figure out like what can come after. And that jocking particularly outside of the House and the Senate is already going to begin.

And the the the key thing is Trump cares about his control. He doesn't care about his ideology. Trump wants fieldalty. He doesn't want consistence or coherence. He's not an ideas guy. And so in that way, >> like he wants to keep his family out of jail, keep their keep their profits, right? But everybody knows it to be true. The Republican party all knows it to be true. >> You don't think he's home reading Patrick Denine? >> I don't think he's home reading Patrick Denine. >> Yeah. Okay. Um before we go, uh I want to ask you something. So I was on my way here. I was texting with a friend of mine who's a well she's a historian. I and um she was saying I was telling her what I was doing and she was like okay but don't don't you know as my mother always used to say don't gloat and I you know I don't want to gloat but I do want to focus on something uh people that we are very glad to see the end of who lost last night um so I'm going to go first uh and that is Susan Collins she has the mask of the moderate right and she did she voted when when things were close she the most likely senator to vote against Republicans, but that's still 15 16 17% right most of the time she voted with them and she was the chief enabler of the destruction of women's right to choose because of the

change in the court and I'm very very happy to see her go. Who are you happy to see go? I think that the place where I am happiest to see politicians and political tactics fail is when they frontload unabashed cruelty. And I think that describes Ken Paxton in Texas >> definitely >> and and immorality. I think there's a world where he ran a much more honorable campaign than this, but it's not the world he ended up living in. Vivec Ramaswami in Ohio. I think Roger Marshall in Kansas and the way that he like the incredibly cruel interest he like imposed upon his own patients, right? The the 18% interest rates he had. It's >> just amazing. >> And the flip OBGYn >> and the flip of that because I'm I I think more about who I'm happy one than who I'm happy lost. The flip of that is I am really really really is I am really interested and optimistic about this rise of a religious left.

This revival of a religious left and a moralistic left, right? A left that is interested and able to speak in a language of virtue. James Telerico, Adam Hamilton, Abdul Elsa, um, and John Of is really good at speaking in a biblical cadence thick with language of virtue. I think one of the giant opportunities in in politics right now is to rebuild a politics that is explicitly moral within the moral wreckage of Donald Trump. >> Yeah. It's a thermostatic response to their depravity and right >> I'm quite interested in the candidates who are figuring out how to do that and I particularly think the Telerico Hamilton Elsa Of like >> group there >> has has that moral language in a way relatively few of the others do >> let's give it a name you always like to give thing things a name right we'll call it the love thy neighbor coalition And we'll call it a day, I think. Yeah.

>> Aaron Reica, thank you very much. >> Thanks a lot, Ezra.