Which Democrats Have What It Takes to Win the White House?

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I asked Axe to come on the show because I wanted to talk to someone smart about the midterms, both what the map looks like for the Dems after a series of devastating court rulings and what he thinks of some of the candidates running up and down the ballot. I also wanted to talk to him about messaging, namely how some of the party's leading voices and likely 2028 candidates are talking about the administration and if their theories of the case are actually any good. Be sure to great and wide-ranging conversation, which we'll get to in a minute. But before we do, if you're a friend of the Pods subscriber, which if you aren't, you should be, you can now buy tickets for this year's Crooked Con. There's a special presale just for subscribers. But if you're not a subscriber because you hate pro-democracy media and love listening to podcast ads, you can buy Crooked Con tickets next week, starting on May 19th. Either way, it'll be a big fun party right after the midterms and member 5th to 7th in Washington, DC. Go to crookedcom.com for more details, including how to become a friend of the Pods subscriber. All right, let's get to the show. Here's David Axelrod. What about, what did you make of what happened in Maine? Because that seems to be sort of indicative of a shift in the party, a shift in what people are looking for, maybe a sense that the Senate leadership or the establishment is, at least in that race, was not in touch with the voters wanted. There are a lot of factors here. One is that I think we're in an anti-establishment moment and that's true in both parties. I think there is a real jaundice about the status quo. You know, I mentioned early, you know, 70% of people in polling say the system is, is corrupt and rigged against them. I think there is a sense that Washington, you know, when you, you'll remember back in the day, Dan, when Barack Obama ran, one of the reasons he won was because his campaign was a full out critique of Washington generally, not just the Republicans, but Democrats as well and the sort of red, red, blue, who's up, who's down kind of struggle for power that had nothing to do with people's lives, lives of principle concerns. I think we're back there again. And so establishment candidates are at a disadvantage. And Janet Mills is a perfectly good person and served honorably, was very much the establishment candidate and she had the, she had the stamp of Senator Schumer on her to certify that she was the establishment candidate and she was, she would have been 79 years old when she got sworn in. So part of the other discontent people feel after two octogenarian presidents is with, you know, the gerontocracy in Washington, which also speaks to establishment politics. People don't feel like the folks in Washington are in touch with their lives or focused on their lives. And I think Trump has exacerbated it because he ran contending that he was. And then, you know, and he, now we were into, you know, ballrooms and monuments and, you know, a graft on a scale we've never seen before. This is one place where he says nobody's ever seen anything like this before. He's right about this. Nobody's ever seen corruption at this scale before. And so people feel betrayed, you know, you know, those who voted for him or who had some hope for him. And all of this, I think, makes a candidate like Platner in Maine, you know, appealing because he's a grassroots guy. He seems to be speaking the language and living the life of people who feel unrepresented. And I mean, but it was stunning the degree to which he was able to take that, you know, by storm. I mean, just literally blow the incumbent governor out of the race, you know, I actually wonder a little bit if he would have been better served by her hanging around for a while. I 100% agree with that. You know, there was no need to start free. For I'm not surprised Platner won. I was very frustrated at the DSCC and Schumer for endorsing Mills to begin with. For all the reasons you said, just the idea that we were just going to decide from on high in Washington that the best chance against Susan Collins was a 79 year old, uh, established from politician. And I say that someone who likes Janet Mills and interviewed her on the show. Yeah, yeah. She's no Joe Biden. It's the model everyone rejected last time and Platner turned out to be, you know, I certainly thought he would definitely win prior to all the online posts and then thought he navigated that well enough to survive and then knock her out of the water. But he would have been much better off if this had gone to the end, to beat her. You delay the general election by another month instead. Now he's already got negatives against him from, you know, Proces of Concepter. Yeah, I don't blame her though. She ran out of money and I'm not sure that she was that eager to hang around just to let him claim the trophy, you know. So the thing, one other thing I think this underscores, and you know this from your own career, don't let yourself get talked into running for an office you don't want to run for because it's never going to end well. You're not going to be an effective candidate. You know, I mean, Platner, by the time she dropped out, he had done, I think more than 50 town hall meetings in the state. She had done, I think, zero. You know, and if you guys have a huge listenership, so if I'm wrong, I'm sure someone will tell me. It's a number closer to zero than 50, I'll tell you that. Yes. Well, there's no doubt about it. Yes. You know, he's hungry for this and he's eager for it and he's young and he's going after it. And so getting drafted against your will is a bad way to enter a race. Don't back into a race. Another race the Democrats are very excited about and very interested in is Texas. Our old boss made his first campaign appearance of the cycle, getting some tacos with James Hilarico and Gina Hina-Hosa, who's running for governor. Trump waited on the race on his way back from China on Air Force One. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. The Democrats have a weird, a weird candidate on six genders, a real hit on Jesus. I mean, this guy, his man, with his mask from relatively recently, he's a vacant, he's a vacant old, he's not a vacant, he's a vacant old. Now all of a sudden, Texas doesn't like being. I do believe either one of them will easily win the race. I think that the candidate the Democrats have in Texas is a very flawed, very weak, very I think he's a pathetic candidate, especially for Texas. You know that Shakespeare thing about that, that protests too much. But you know, what's interesting about the dynamic in the Republican primary is that the folks who want John Cornyn, they'll say privately that they think Talarico's too left for Texas, they've got plenty of stuff, they can take them out. But they're not saying anything because right now what they're saying is Talarico can win unless we knock Paxton out of the race. If Paxton wins, Talarico can win. Once this primary is over, they're going to open up on him and they're going to, along the contours of what Trump is saying. I'm sure he was briefed a bunch of his guys are working on the Cornyn campaign. But interestingly, he has an endorsed Cornyn. I trust that when Talarico went out for tacos that he had beef or chicken. She's not a vacant as Trump announced it. A vacant, yes. Not a vacant taco. Not a vacant. Did he say, did I hear that right, that he's bad on Jesus or something? What did he say there? He said he had a hit on Jesus, which references, I think, I'm guessing here, which shows I'm way too online. The great question. I think it was at the same time he said the six genders thing. I don't really know. But there have been some clips from a speech he gave in 2020, I imagine, or right after that that have been going around. I think Trump has obviously seen those and he is doing it. But I'm not sure the idea that James Talarico's anti-Jesus is going to sell. No, I'm sure that he would love to have that conversation directly with the president. You can't violate many of the major 10 commandments and then start going after someone else over their Christianity. I mean, Talarico is clearly very serious about his faith and that's one of the reasons he is where he is because that's translated really well. He has preached the gospel of the brotherhood of man and people who are so tired of all this conflict are responding to him. So we'll see what happens. Look, I think Texas is hard. You and I have gone through campaigns together where we held out hope for states like Missouri at one point and it always turned out to be fools gold. And the question is that the case here. One of the wild cards in Texas is that Trump won a solid victory there, but it was with a lot of Hispanic votes, particularly in South Texas. The two biggest losses in terms of support for Trump have been among Hispanics and young people. Hispanic voters, I think they're very sensitive to economic issues. They're a working class constituency in the main. And I think in South Texas, I think they were eager for border control. They weren't eager to be racially profile. I think because of all the stuff that ICE has done, combined with the economic stuff, he has completely dealt away the advantages that he gained among Hispanic voters. That puts Texas more in play. It also means that they're probably not going to capture all the seats they thought they were going to capture when Jerry Mandarin the state. Yeah, Texas is interesting. I think Taylor Rico is a uniquely talented candidate. Yeah, he's great. Yeah. He's very good. He is, I think, if anyone can do it, it's James Taylor Rico in this year, particularly against Paxton. The Latino numbers you point out are very notable. Pew has a poll out today which shows that Trump's approval rating among Latino Trump voters is down 30 points since Election Day 2024, which is a big chunk of voters. We saw this in the primary. Taylor Rico got more primary votes than Kamala Harris got votes in, sometimes, I'm going to consider two or three in some of these Rio Grande Valley counties. She got two or three times the number of votes Kamala Harris got on Election Day in 2024. There's obviously some persuasion. This is not just turning out there's some persuasion happening here because a lot of these Latinos who voted for Trump were registered Democrats. It's interesting. I was going to say, just on the Hispanic issue, I think one of the reasons Trump is harping on him and Christ is that I think it's very advantageous for Taylor Rico to be able to go into churches across Texas, including Hispanic churches and as fluent as he is in scripture. I think Trump is trying to chip away at that. What were you going to say? I was going to ask you about the decision to have Obama come to Texas for him. Is it a race where he's got to win Trump won Texas by 13, I think? He's got to get a bunch of people who pull the lever for Trump to vote for him. Do you think bringing Obama was a good move? I haven't seen his numbers in Texas, but my guess is that looking at his numbers nationally, they're not bad. And Obama's not campaigning that much for candidates at this juncture. I'm sure he will. But there is a stature thing. It kind of elevates Taylor Rico and the race. And he may just want to, because of the whole vegan thing, as you said, Trump said, maybe just wanted a guy who really appreciated a good beef taco. Yeah. And look, I think also I imagine, I'd have to look at what I imagine that Obama's numbers with Latino voters, even Latino voters who voted for Trump are quite good. And so with like, Taylor Rico's smart, his campaign's being run by smart people. They're not just doing this because it's good for TikTok views. Like they obviously have looked at their data that suggests that with their target voters, Obama is a plus. And the other it's not like they're a bunch of Republicans who are going to stay home because they're mad at Trump and all of a sudden Barack Obama shows up for tacos one day in May. Like, OK, we're turning out one last thing on this. I mean, one of the reasons Trump's going after Taylor Rico is because it seems pretty clear that he's decided to stay out of this race. There was a presumption that he was going to endorse John Cornyn as the most likely candidate to win. He's now been convinced that either of them can win. But the Paxton question is really an open one because he's a guy who is absolutely freighted with scandal. And while he's very popular with the Republican base, he could be very vulnerable with some traditional Republican voters in the suburbs around the big cities there. I don't think Obama is going to play badly with those voters. I don't think it's going to hurt Taylor Rico to have them there with those with those voters. So we'll see. But I will say, I mean, because of the Fools Gold PTSD I have, you know, I'm looking, you know, I look at Iowa, for example, and I'm wondering is Iowa ultimately going to be a better shot than Texas? Is Alaska with Mary Peltola and the ranked choice voting system against a very weak incumbent in Sullivan? Does that give you a better chance? Here's the thing. When you, you know, you have to win a couple of states where Trump won in dub by double digits in any case, and you want as many opportunities as possible. So Democrats can turn to Alaska, to Iowa, to Texas, even. And I think it's the longest of them, but even Nebraska, you know, where you have an independent candidate supported by Democrats who did very well in a Trump landslide last time against Ricketts, the senator, the incumbent senator, former governor. You know, I think that there's a better than 5050 chance that Democrats can piece it together, assuming that the wave is what we think the wave could be. And remember, the wave is more important in these Senate races. You know, they may piece districts together to hold down the House margin, but statewide, you know, harder. Pod Save America is brought to you by Fast Growing Trees. Fast Growing Trees is America's largest online nursery with thousands of trees and plants for every space and every climate. And they make it easy to get plants that actually work for your yard delivered right to your door. OK, we can sense a little skepticism about ordering live vegetation online. John is skeptical, but the proof is in the planting. Sure is. They said, did their line was the proof is in the plants? No, no, no. Proof is in the pudding. So the proof is in the planting. You're right, Tommy. I nailed that. Fast Growing Trees, that punch up was free, has shipping plants down to a literal science. 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Take control of your future at strawberry.me slash cricket today and get 50% off your first coaching session. That's strawberry.me slash cricket. What about, what did you make of what happened in Maine? Because that seems to be sort of indicative of a shift in the party, a shift in what people are looking for. Maybe a sense that the Senate leadership or the establishment is, at least in that race, was not in touch with the voters wanted. There are a lot of factors here. One is that I think we're in an anti-establishment moment, and that's true in both parties. I think there is a real jaundice about the status quo. You know, I mentioned early, you know, 70% of people in polling say the system is corrupt and rigged against them. I think there is a sense that Washington, you know, when you, you'll remember back in the day, Dan, when Barack Obama ran, one of the reasons he won was because his campaign was a full out critique of Washington, generally, not just the Republicans, but Democrats as well, and the sort of red, red, blue, who's up, who's down kind of struggle for power that had nothing to do with people's lives, lives or principal concerns. I think we're back there again. And so establishment candidates are at a disadvantage. And Janet Mills is a perfectly good person and served honorably, was very much the establishment candidate. And she had the stamp of Senator Schumer on her to certify that she was the establishment candidate. And she would have been 79 years old when she got sworn in. And so part of the other discontent people feel after two octogenarian presidents is with, you know, the gerontocracy in Washington, which also speaks to establishment politics. People don't feel like the folks in Washington are in touch with their lives or focused on their lives. And I think Trump has exacerbated it because he ran contending that he was. And then, you know, and now we're into, you know, ballrooms and monuments and, you know, graft on a scale we've never seen before. This is one place where he says nobody's ever seen anything like this before. He's right about this. Nobody's ever seen corruption at this scale before. And so people feel betrayed, you know, those who voted for him or who had some hope for him. And all of this, I think, makes a candidate like Platner in Maine, you know, appealing because he's a grassroots guy. He seems to be speaking the language and living the life of people who feel unrepresented. And I mean, but it was stunning the degree to which he was able to take that, you know, by storm. I mean, just literally blow the incumbent governor out of the race. You know, I actually wonder a little bit if he would have been better served by her hanging around for a while. I 100 percent agree with that. There was no need to start free. His for I'm not surprised, Platner, one, I was very frustrated at the DSCC and Schumer for endorsing mills to begin with. For all the reasons you said, just the idea that we were just going to decide from on high in Washington that the best chance against Susan Collins was a 79 year old establishment politician. And I say that someone who likes Janet Mills and interviewed her on the show. Yeah, no, she's not. But it's just it's the it's the model everyone rejected last time. And Platner turned out to be, you know, I certainly thought he would definitely win prior to all the online posts and then thought he you know, he navigated that well enough to survive and then knock her out of the water. But he would have been much better off if this had gone to the end to beat her. You delay the general election by another month. Instead, now he's already got negatives against him from, you know, process accounts. Yeah, I don't blame her, though. She ran out of money and I'm not sure that she was that eager to hang around just to let him claim the trophy, you know. So the thing that one other thing I think this underscores and you know this from your own career. Don't let yourself get talked into running for an office you don't want to run for. Because it's never going to end well. You're not going to be an effective candidate. You know, I mean, Platner, by the time she dropped out, he had done I think more than 50 town hall meetings in the state. She had done, I think, zero. You know, and if you guys have a huge listenership, so if I'm wrong, I'm sure someone will tell me. It's a number closer to zero than 50, I'll tell you that. Yes. Well, there's no doubt about it. Yes. And, you know, you know, he's hungry for this and he's eager for it and he's young and he's going after it. And so getting drafted against your will is a bad way to enter a race. Don't back into a race. Another race the Democrats are very excited about and very interested in is Texas. Our old boss made his first campaign appearance of the cycle, getting some tacos with James Tellerico and Gina Hina-Hosa, who's running for governor. Trump waited on the race on his way back from China on Air Force One. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. The Democrats have a weird, a weird candidate. Six genders, a real hit on Jesus. I mean, this guy, this man, with his mask from relatively recently, he's a vegan. He's a vegan all of a sudden. He's not a vegan. He was a vegan all of a sudden. He's not Texas, doesn't like vegans. I do believe either one of them will easily win the race. I think that the candidate the Democrats have in Texas is a very flawed, very weak, I think he's a pathetic candidate, especially for Texas. You know that Shakespeare thing about that, that protests too much. But you know, what's interesting about the dynamic in the Republican primary is that the the folks who want John Cornyn, they're there, they'll say privately that they think Tellerico is too left for Texas. They've got plenty of stuff. They could take them out. But they're not saying anything because right now what they're saying is Tellerico can win unless we knock Paxton out of Paxton out of the race of Paxton wins. Tellerico can win once this primary is over. They're going to open up on him and they're going to along the contours of what Trump is saying. I'm sure he was briefed a bunch of his guys are working on the Cornyn campaign. But interestingly, he has an endorsed Cornyn. I trust that when Tellerico went out for tacos that he had beef or chicken. She's not a vegan, as Trump announced. A vegan, yes. Not a vegan taco. Not a vegan. Did he say, did I hear that right, that he's bad on Jesus or something? What did he say there? He said he had a hit on Jesus, which references, I think, I'm guessing here, which shows I'm way too online. Great question. I think it was at the same time he said the six genders thing. I don't really know. But there have been some clips from a speech he gave in 2020, I imagine, or right after that that have been going around. I think Trump has obviously seen those and he is doing it. But I'm not sure the idea that James Tellerico's anti-Jesus is going to sell. No, I'm sure that he would love to have that conversation directly with the president. You can't violate many of the major 10 commandments and then start going after someone else over their Christianity. I mean, Tellerico is clearly very serious about his faith. And that's one of the reasons he is where he is, because that's translated really well. And he has preached the gospel of the brotherhood of man and people who are so tired of all this conflict are responding to him. So we'll see what happens. Look, I think Texas is hard. You and I have gone through campaigns together where we held out hope for states like Missouri at one point. And it always turned out to be fools gold. And the question is that the case here. One of the wild cards in Texas is that Trump won a solid victory there, but it was with a lot of Hispanic votes, particularly in South Texas. The two biggest losses in terms of support for Trump have been among Hispanics and young people. Hispanic voters, I think, they're very sensitive to economic issues. They were a working class constituency in the main. And I think the in South Texas, I think they were eager for border border control. They weren't eager to be racially profile. And I think because of all the stuff that ISIS done, combined with the economic stuff, he has completely dealt away the advantages that he gained among Hispanic voters. That puts Texas more in play. It also means that they're probably not going to capture all the seats they thought they were going to capture when Jerry Mandarin the state. Yeah, Texas is interesting. I think Taylorico is a uniquely talented candidate. Yeah, he's great. Yeah. He's very good. He is, I think, if anyone can do it, it's James Taylorico in this year, particularly against Paxton. The Latino numbers you point out are very notable. Pew has a poll out today which shows that Trump's approval rating among Latino Trump voters is down 30 points since Election Day 2024, which is, that's a big chunk of voters. We saw this in the primary, right? It's a primary, but Taylorico got more primary votes than Kamala Harris got votes in. Sometimes I might match it to two or three in some of these Rio Grande Valley counties. She got two or three times number of votes Kamala Harris got on Election Day in 2024. So there's obviously some persuasion. This is not just turnout. There's some persuasion happening here because a lot of these people, these Latino voters for Trump were registered Democrats. So it's interesting. No, I was going to say just on the Hispanic issue, I think one of the reasons Trump is harping on him and Christ is that I think it's very advantageous for Taylorico to be able to go into churches across Texas, including Hispanic churches, and as fluent as he is in scripture. And so I think Trump is trying to chip away, chip away at that. What were you going to say? I was going to ask you about the decision to have Obama come to Texas for him. Like, is it race where he's got to win, you know, Trump won Texas by 13, I think he's got to get a bunch of people who pull the lever for Trump to vote for him. Do you think bringing Obama was a good move? You know, I haven't seen his numbers in Texas, but my guess is that looking at his numbers nationally, they're not, they're not bad. And there is a, you know, Obama's not campaigning that much for candidates at this juncture. I'm sure he will. But there is a stature thing. It kind of elevates Taylorico and the race. And he may just want to, you know, because of the whole vegan thing, as you said, Trump said me, maybe he just wanted a guy who really appreciated a good beef taco. Yeah, and I look, I think also I imagine I'd have to look at what I imagine that Obama's numbers with Latino voters, even Latino voters who voted for Trump are quite good. And so with like, Taylorico smart, his campaigns being run by smart people, they're not just doing this because it's good for TikTok views. Like, they obviously have looked at their data that suggests that with their target voters, Obama is a plus. And the others, it's not like there are a bunch of Republicans who are going to stay home because they're mad at Trump and all of a sudden Barack Obama shows up for tacos one day in May. Like, okay, we're turning out. One last thing on this. I mean, one of the reasons Trump's going after Taylorico is because it seems pretty clear that he's decided to stay out of this race. There was a presumption that he was going to endorse John Cornyn as the most likely candidate to win. He's now been convinced that either of them can win. But the Paxton question is really an open one because he's a guy who is absolutely freighted with scandal. And while he's very popular with the Republican base, he could be very vulnerable with some traditional Republican voters in the suburbs around the big cities there. I don't think Obama's going to play badly with those voters. I don't think it's going to hurt Taylorico to have him there with those voters. So we'll see. But I will say, I mean, because of the Fool's Gold PTSD I have, you know, I'm looking, you know, I look at Iowa, for example, and I'm wondering is Iowa ultimately going to be a better shot than Texas? Is Alaska with Mary Peltola and the ranked choice voting system against a very weak incumbent in Sullivan? Does that give you a better chance? Here's the thing. When you, you know, you have to win a couple of states where Trump won by double digits in any case, and you want as many opportunities as possible. So Democrats can turn to Alaska, to Iowa, to Texas. Even, and I think it's the longest of them, but even Nebraska, you know, where you have an independent candidate supported by Democrats who did very well in a Trump landslide last time against Ricketts, the senator, the incumbent senator, former governor. You know, I think that there's a better than 50-50 chance that Democrats can piece it together, assuming that the wave is what we think the wave could be. 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There are things in life we make more complicated than they need to be, and things that we worry about that we don't need to. Like making tax digital for income tax. SumUp's free MTD for income tax solution is ideal for sole traders turning over more than 50,000 a year. It's already built into the SumUp platform, so you can stay compliant without paying for software, or worrying about getting it wrong. Did I mention it's free? Getting started is easy. Just search SumUp MTD online. Yeah, the Senate map is, I mean, it's challenging. It's kind of shocking, and it says everything that we'd be sitting here now, and you'd say it's a coin flip that we take to Senate, or maybe even a little bit better than a coin flip. When I look at it, you just, if you're just doing like most likely scenarios, I would probably pick Alaska of the Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Alaska. Probably I'd pick Alaska just because of the fact that Mary Pantone was one in that state before. There was ranked choice voting, Dan Sullivan, particularly unpopular. And then, you know, I think maybe Ohio, and then the other. Yeah, I think Ohio, you know, Sherrod Brown came pretty close last time as Trump was carrying the state by double digits. And he's running against a senator who was appointed, who's never run on his own statewide, and who doesn't have a, you know, a huge image in the state. So he's going to be more associated with Trump, just by dint of having no real profile. I mean, he'll try and be, he was the wind's guy, he'll try and run that way. But he can't run away from Trump. Trump won't allow him. And it's very hard as you know to run away from an incumbent president anyway. So, you know, Sherrod Brown was an economic populist before economic populism was cool. So I think, you know, I'm not sure that I would rate Alaska over Ohio, but I think that the most likely combination, if Democrats are to take the Senate, would be North Carolina, Maine, Ohio, and Alaska. Yeah, I'm sort of stipulating Maine in North Carolina as must-wins. Because winning three of the other four is hard. Yeah, but he, Platter is going to, you saw a David French wrote a very tough column in the New York Times this week about him. I mean, not that people read that, but that was the tenor of what he, you know, they're going to go back at him with more ferocity. And, but Susan Collins, you know, after all this time and given the nature of the times is, is a, is a really vulnerable candidate, you know, so we'll see for all the reasons we discussed earlier. It's, the Susan Collins thing is interesting because she has been like, she is a Republican in a state that Democrats win by nine points. We should beat her. Should have beaten her in 2020. She's very tough to beat. She's been fortunate enough to be able to avoid some of the worst votes this time around because of the Senate margin. Yeah, they cut her loose to do it. Yeah, she didn't have to fight for the beautiful bill. She got to take a pass on some of the worst cabinet appointments, but she still is a Republican in a Democratic state and one who represents status quo, you know, it's going to be a very fascinating race. And the real, the question is, you know, you and I both know the folks working on that race is Ken Plattner with Stain, what will be a massive amount of scrutiny, some of it from his own side, because there are people pretty pissed about how this race played out and every possible dollar dumped on his head with some of the nastiest. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, time will tell about that. Yeah, I heard someone told me about a focus group in that state and someone was talking about Susan Collins and they said she's bipartisan. She's only bipartisan when it doesn't count. And I think that's something that some of a lot of voters there kind of intuit. And, you know, she didn't vote for all of Trump's Supreme Court nominees, but she voted for some. She voted for the ones that counted for sure. As I pointed out to someone, it's, you know, you can, you can remove a tattoo, but you can't remove a Supreme Court justice. So, you know, that, we'll see how that goes. It'll be a fascinating, fascinating race. But I'm assuming that that Plattner wins the race in the end. That's my hope for sure. You know, both at the House and the Senate, everyone keeps saying the campaign's about affordability, affordability, affordability, affordability. Obviously just saying the word affordability is not actually a message. Although, you know, some Democrats have the habit of reading the stage directions instead of the script. And so they're just saying affordability over again. Is a message around affordability enough? Does it need to be bigger than that? What do you think Democrats should be saying? Well, I think, I think that we have structural issues in our economy. We've got the affordability issue is hitting people hard, but people have been, you know, kind of bobbing in the water and not gaining for a long time. And the polarity in our economy gets worse and AI is going to turbo charge that, at least in the short run, maybe in the long run. And I really think, I don't know that it's necessary to win in November. There are discrete things you could propose in order to win in this November. But as I said, it's largely a referendum. Anybody who runs for president better have a much bigger vision about how you reform a system that was broken before. I've always, you know, I think it's a mistake to assume that when you run in 28 that the message could be we're just going to kind of restore everything that Trump knocked down because people weren't that happy with the system before he knocked it down. I mean, they didn't feel they were being well served and, you know, they felt the system was corrupt. They felt it was rigged against them. They felt that they weren't getting ahead. And that's, you know, it requires big structural kinds of answers that, you know, to not only to put some equity into the system, but also to genuinely try and reform a system that is, you know, since our, you remember when our boss, warned people about Citizens United in 2010 and Justice Alito was deeply offended by that and shook his head on the floor. Everything he said has happened. I mean, we are awash in money and dark money and pernicious influence and it's, it all conspires against working people. So campaign finance reform is really important. We also have to think, I think Democrats, you know, what strikes me, Dan, is that we have this battle going on between the great ideas of the 19th century and the great ideas of the 20th century, you know, you know, tariffs and no civil service and so on from the 19th century and then, you know, sort of, Rooseveltian structures in the 20th century and we're in the 21st century and we ought to be thinking about how do we solve the problems of today using the tools of today and not be wedded to the old ways of doing things, be wedded to creating a country in which people can work hard and get ahead and where we can deal with some of our most pressing problems. But don't assume that the way we approach them in the 20th century is necessarily the way we have to approach them now. I think there's a lot of room for a genuinely reform oriented candidate who has some vision for the future to move this country. I also now you put the quarter in you're getting 10 plays but I I expect nothing less. I love it. But you know, I've been thinking a lot about this election and there no no two elections are alike. But if you were going to say well what is this election most like, it goes back to one that you will not remember but I do, which is the election of 1976. It was the first election I ever voted in when right after Watergate and the country was stunned by what happened in Watergate by the corruption of Richard Nixon. And by the way, you know, there was a real politicization of the Justice Department of the CIA. A lot of these I mean it was it was somewhat analogous to what we're facing today. People wanted to a cleansing. They wanted to give Washington an angioplasty. They wanted a fresh start. And that's how Jimmy Carter emerged in 1976. No one would have known who Jimmy Carter was at this point. And he became the nominee of the party and he won. I don't know who that person is but I think that two things care care qualities of character are going to be very important. Empathy decency honesty integrity humility all the qualities that Trump doesn't have are going to be prized in 2028. And the second thing is I think being an outsider who is willing to really challenge Orthodoxy in Washington challenge the institutions on behalf of people is going to be candidate who's well received. This is a perfect segue to what I want to get to because we're going to have a little fun here. I'm going to play some clips from some 28 potential 28 contenders and I get your take on them, but this messengers what they're saying. But before we get to that I want to you sat down with AOC at the Institute of Politics before a live audience. One of her answers went quite viral. I'm going to play it for audience. I'm going to ask you about it. It was very clear this was a veiled threat, right? So the elite saying if you want this job you just stepped out of line. They assume that my ambition is positional. They assume that my ambition is a title or a seat. And my ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country. Presidents come and go. Senate house seats, elected officials come and go. But single payer health care is forever. A living wage is forever. Work is right for forever. Women's rights, all of that. So a couple of questions on this. Did that answer was a Rorschach test for people about whether she was going to run for president or not run for president? I wanted to see how did you take that? Do you think that means she's planning on running for president, planning on running for the Senate, doesn't yet know? First of all, let me say I thought it was a really powerful answer. You know, I heard Favreau say the other day that if you want to run for president you better know what you believe. And what she was saying there is I'm not in politics for a job. I'm in politics for goals that might impact positively on people's lives. The kind of people who I grew up with, the kind of people live all over this country. And I think she really means it. And I think that authenticity is really powerful. That said, if you, you know, she said other things in this answer and elsewhere in this conversation that made me think she really isn't hungry for that job. And if I were her, what I would be thinking is I want to have an impact. And I'm not ready to sideline myself, the chances of anyone getting elected president no matter how good they are, are limited. And, you know, she's 36 years old now, she'll be 38. She could walk into that Senate seat in New York. And interestingly, with this crowd of young people, I said, you know, some people would like to see you run for president and a bunch of them cheered. And I said, others would like to see you run for Senator Schumer's seat in New York. Louder cheers. I couldn't tell they were cheering for her to run for Senator, cheering for the fact that you said Schumer was up. Yeah, no, it was definitely a combination of those two things. You know, she's got a high class problem here. She get a lot of votes if she ran for president. But I think the way I interpret what she said is I'm going to go where I think I can continue this fight for those things that I believe in and have the most impact I can have right now. And that led me to conclude that she is more likely headed to the Senate race than to the presidential race. I mean, it's nothing. She told me nothing. But was that reading between the lines, I would be more surprised if she ran for president than if she ran for the Senate. And you and I both know that she would not be one of 100 if she went to the Senate. She, you know, she would, you know, when Barack Obama went to the Senate, he was, you know, number whatever, 99, 98 in the Senate. But he was not the 98th member of the Senate. People were always interested in what he had to say. Yeah, she, I have seen, I worked for, as you have as well, worked for many politicians who were planning to run for president, who got this question for the years, leading up to the actual announcement. And the general approach is to just start muttering words until the questioner stops paying attention. And they're terrible at it. And this is the, I mean, I say this without any hesitation, the best answer I've ever seen of anyone asked that question. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, it really does help to be motivated. To be motivated by doing something, then by being something. I mean, the world of politics divides in these into these two cohorts, the people who run because they want to be something. And that's the larger cohort. And then the smaller, more admirable and the more impactful cohort are the people who run for office because they want to do something. And it doesn't mean they don't have personal ambition. But, but you really, you know, honestly, I would say this, anybody who runs for president, it's too damn hard to do it. I don't mean just to win, but it's such an arduous thing to do. Don't do it unless you know why you're doing it. And just, you know, and if you think that it's such a prize to live in a gilded prison, you're making a mistake. You know, no one ever will. No one ever will feel sorry for a president of the United States, but you do change your life forever. And it's not all positive. I mean, you basically give up your, you know, a lot to do it. I, you know, I think I'm not saying that she won't run it. I'm not saying that she won't run someday. But based on what I heard, and if I were betting on it, I would bet that she's going to the one place and not the other. I had the same impression that she was that it clearly the people who have wanted to be president since they were 17 years old. She said that it's obvious. It's obvious in the answer. She's clearly not one of those people. She said that she said, I'm not one of these people have been planning my political, my, my, you know, planning my campaign for an office since I was seven, seven years old. She said, you know, you rule all, we all remember her when she the night she got elected to or nominated to the Congress. And she was in her headquarters in a billiards hall in the Bronx with some supporters around her with her hand over her mouth and her eyes wide open, watching these returns come in. She was as surprised as anybody. Whatever she decides when I think when she first came to Congress, she was clearly one of the best communicators in terms of how you communicate. Like she understood the modern media environment better than almost anyone in Congress, which is not saying a ton. But, you know, she's doing Instagram live. She's on social media. She knows how to do it. But I think in the last couple of years, she's also become the best one of the best messengers in the party. Like about what she actually says, like is very, it's very powerful and very. She came as she's the youngest woman ever elected to the house. I think we've watched her mature as a political leader during those eight years. I think that process is ongoing, you know, and I think she knows that too. But she's an impressive person. The reason that she is so good. Yes, she knows how to use social media and modern media. But the thing that you can't teach and the thing you can't buy is the ability to communicate authentically and to give people a sense that you're talking honestly with them. That's what great, great political leaders do. And she has that quality. So that's a hell of a thing to build on. Potsafe America is brought to you by Built. We can all agree that housing is expensive. 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I'm going to start with John Ossoff, who may or may not run for president, but he certainly has to win reelection in Georgia first. Let's take a look at one of his recent rally. How does American politics really work? It's coin-operated. Money goes in, favors come out. It's been running on secret money, corporate money, billionaire money, both sides. Both sides. Citizens United was the worst court decision in modern American history. What do you think about Ossoff? He's seen it from my hymn book there. Yeah, I know. I know. What do you think about him as a communicator? He's a great communicator. I haven't seen him as... Most of the time when I see him, he's behind a podium. There are other elements of communication, and I haven't seen a lot of that. Although I just spoke to someone, someone you and I both know who saw him at an event. You may have been at the same event because I think it was out west. He was really, really good in kind of off-the-cuff interaction with people and so on. Listen, I take him seriously. If you believe what I said earlier about the kind of candidate who will do well, he checks a lot of those boxes. And he hasn't been... Even though he is a senator, he has not been there long enough to be sort of corrupted in people's minds as a kind of practitioner of inside the Beltway politics, which he's not. So, I mean, it's a quick turnaround. He's young. But I think youth also is an advantage in this election because after two presidents who were in their 80s, I think people are going to be really looking for a more youthful candidate. You raised an interesting point because I think he is the best speech giver that I've seen in a while. There's a whole generation of politicians sort of raised on Obama who speak like Obama. And I think he does the best... You can see it in the tone. He has some of the same pauses, the same cadence, but it doesn't look like Obama karaoke, which sometimes he does. Yeah, we've seen that too. He apparently does a lot of writing. You know, Obama, he had great speech writers, you work with some of them, but they would tell you that they would give him a product that was in good shape, and then he would buff it up or add things that took it from one level to the next. And because of that, he was familiar. He felt organic to the copy he was reading. So I think he has that. But the other thing that people don't appreciate about Obama, and you would because you travel around with them, like, you know, those 87 days we spent in Iowa, where he was, you know, doing six, eight stops a day more even in small venues, interacting with people, he was very good at that. You know, you have to... Running for president is a decathlon. It's not just one event. So you can be great at, you know, pole vaulting, but you still have to, you know, throw the javelin. And so the test of campaigns is, how do you do all the events well enough to win? So I don't know that about Asaf, but he's certainly a promising politician. Yeah, I want to see him, you know, this is a very self-referential to say, but like, what, like, can he pass the podcast test? Can he sit and shoot the video? Like, I was just watching a clip of Obama over there. Well, that's subtle fiver. Well, I mean, well, he's been on our podcast, he's done fine, but it's like, it's not really, can you come on positive America hacks on top? It's can you go on Rogan or all the smoke? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Can you relate to people on a cultural personal level that's not just politics? The test that Vice President Harris wouldn't take. Yes, yes. All right, let's do the next one is someone familiar to all of us, Pete Buttigieg. There is a powerful American majority for change and for the things we believe in because right now you got this administration that's created the illusion that their positions are supported by most Americans and it's just not true. Most Americans agree that we should be taxing the wealthy more, not giving giant tax cuts to billions. Most Americans think it is nuts that we're being told we can't have nice things like rural hospitals and good roads and fully funded public schools at the same time that you got billionaires paying a lower tax rate than the nurses in those hospitals and the workers who work on those roads and the teachers who teach in those schools. What do you make of Pete? Well, look, in many, I've said this before, he is as bright and thoughtful as anybody I've seen since Barack Obama in terms of his ability to sort of think in interesting ways and poset arguments in ways that really are clear and thoughtful. And he's a very, very talented guy and I really, I like him a lot. I mean, and I think he's underrated in this. You know, I mean, when you hear conversations, he's not, people don't talk about him, but you know, every time you look at a poll and some of its name recognition, yes, but he's, he's well regarded by Democrats and the things he's articulating out there kind of. They square up with some of the things I'm saying he's talking about renewal, not restoration. He's talking about reform, you know, like basic fundamental reforms. You know, now, you know, I don't know whether the experience of the Biden administration is advantageous or not. Maybe not. I'm guessing that neutral at best, this would be my guess. Yeah, yeah, I wonder, I haven't never had this conversation with him, whether if he had to do it all over again, whether he would have opted for that. He might be in better position than he was. You know, there's always this question about an openly gay man running is Merrick Wray for that. And look, he, he, he, the one thing that he did not prove in 2020 was that he could win black votes. And that is a really essential task for anybody to get through this process. You know, black voters in the South in particular are really, really important. And so, you know, there are questions, but the talent is, is, is undeniable. Yeah, I think Pete's a probably smart. I saw him at an event recently and he just, he's so good off the cuff. He's so good answering questions. Yeah, he does the pot. He passes the pot. Yeah, all those things. The thing that was always the, I think, not like the black voters is like the math. You can't, it's just impot, you can't win the math as such with primaries across the South, the way delegates are allocated. There's no way to do it. That's why it's a Y Obama one. It's why Hillary one, right. Right. Right. But the thing about Pete's communication in 2020 was it always felt to me like a little bit at a remove. Like he was so good and so polished that he was so good. You know, it just, like there was this distance between. I think it's a really, I think it's an important observation. Yeah, but I will say when he was on CNBC a few weeks ago and he was arguing with Joe Kernan. Yes, I thought it was some of the best people like people go on and he'll have like at every word exactly right on Fox News and he'll stuff Sean handing into a verbal locker or whatever else and it's incredible. But he, when he was on the show, currently, like he showed like a real, he was so frustrated and so angered by the stupidity of and the unfairness of what Kernan was saying that it was really was like a, that was one of his most authentic moments. I thought it was quite, quite good. And I think maybe indicative like his life has changed a lot since 2020. Right. He's had, he's got married. He's had kids. He's like been, he's been through times and I, so I think, you know, I think it'll be, I'm very interested to see how he's an involved candidate this time around because if so, there's real potential and benefits from the fact that New Hampshire is probably the first state and it's a place where he has a great base of strength. Yeah, and continues to poll well. Don't underestimate the value of having run the track before, you know, he know, or just to use another sports analogy, he knows the lay of the greens. And, and running for president is not like running for any other office. So he knows the pressures of it. He knows the cadence of it. He knows, he knows this stuff. That that is a valuable asset. All right, let's look at Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky. You've seen how some of this speak has crept into the Democratic Party and we sound like we're talking down to people. We've got to talk to people and not at them. You know, Kentucky got hit by that opioid epidemic as hard as anybody, but maybe West Virginia. I mean, we've all lost people we love and care about. I didn't lose one to substance use disorder. I lost them all to addiction. If we want to push back against this president and what he's doing to snap, trying to hold hungry people hostage to the pandemic, and to be able to use for political gain, it can't be that there'll be food insecure. It's got to be that they'll go hungry. We've got to communicate to people in the values that they know and how they would talk to each other. Electability is obviously going to be a huge issue for Democrats as it was in 2020. No one has a better electability story than you know, Beshear. What do you make of them? Look, I mean, again, going back to the things I told you before, I mean, you have to look at him because he's an outsider. He's also a guy who, by the way, can go into those black churches and in a compelling way. And, you know, and in terms of empathy, most of the time when we've seen him over the last eight years, it's because his state has been beset by some natural disaster, or, you know, in some cases, a horrific gun incident. And, and he's really, really good at that. He's great at expressing empathy. The one I sort of agree with what he said there. The thing I would say is it's not just about the language that we use. It's about, and I've said this a lot of times, my objection to Democrats since the Democratic Party has become a kind of metropolitan college educated party is we're still a party of working people or see us that way, see ourselves that way. But we approach them like missionaries and anthropologists and we show up and we say we're here to help you become more like us. And the implied message is that what you do really isn't as important as what we do, except then when we have a pandemic, and then we're home and we're making our living on our computer, and they're out there, caring for us, protecting us, making things, shipping things, and doing everything it takes to keep the country going. And then we go out on our balconies and we bang our pots and we say you're the essential worker until the pandemic's over. And then they sort of become invisible again. So I think it's more, it's about more than just the language. We fundamentally have to think about what, how we value people in our society. All right, last one we'll do is Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. We have an opportunity to have a real debate within our party about what we stand for, about what our affirmative vision is. It has to be about what we are going to do to make people's lives better. And I think that that is a debate that our party hasn't had for a good long while. And that debate is not only going to help the Democratic Party, I think it's going to be healthy for this country. And what I can tell you for sure is that I want to be a part of that debate, bring the common sense sensibility of what we do in Pennsylvania to that conversation. Like Bashir, Shapiro has won the key set of Pennsylvania, he's likely going to win it again by a very large margin, which will bolster his electability case. What do you make of Shapiro? Look, he's a very talented and very smart. And what he said, I obviously agree with. He's one of the guys who, he can slide into sort of pigeon Obama from time to time. And he's taken a lot of criticism for it. He can be a little irascible. And for him, I think the important thing is to be real. He's so smart and politically savvy that sometimes you feel like he's giving the politically savvy, well manicured answer. And you don't know what you don't see the person behind it. So those would be the concerns that I'd raise. But look, I thought, you know, I thought he should have been the vice presidential candidate in in 2024, probably good for him that he wasn't. But I think highly of him and he's got some good stories to tell. That story about the sort of record pace at which they repaired the fallen bridge in Pennsylvania is a metaphor for something that Democrats need to struggle with is if you're the party of government, how do you assure people that government can work? And he's got some examples to underscore that he also Dan has he's forged a relationship with working class voters and rural communities in his state. You know, I think he does approach those voters respectfully and has built alliances there that I think is very useful and important and instructive. So, you know, again, you've got a good assortment there. I know you only have a short period of time so you can't put all 106. Assurance up there. But that's a that's a that's a pretty strong assortment of candidate. Yeah, you know, this Shapiro, it's probably not discussed enough how popular he is in Pennsylvania. Being a popular governor of Pennsylvania is not an easy thing to do. This is a state that Donald Trump has won twice and has moved away from Democrats. As we we have moved away from Pennsylvania, demographically, as a party, he basically has a coalition that combines the new version Democratic Party with his college educated suburbanites outside of the collar counties around Philadelphia, with some of the numbers that Democrats like Obama and Clinton had within the rural parts of the state in the great, the great expanse between Pennsylvania and between Philly and Pittsburgh. Let me ask you a question. And based on, you know, you're you've got your finger on the pulse of of of the left in the party. You know, the question that comes up oftentimes from Jews and I'm Jewish is, well, can a can a Jew get elected given the antipathy toward Israel now and now he's been a very strong critic of BB Netanyahu. But how big an issue is that? Do you think that's an insuperable barrier for Democrat candidates? I don't, but but you would know better. I don't believe being Jewish is a barrier that cannot be overcome for Democratic candidate. I think that any Democratic candidate is going to have to have a vociferous criticism of Netanyahu, who government is going to have to take very strong positions that would have seemed impossible a few years ago about conditions on aid to Israel about funding the Golden Dome. I mean, even our your very your close friend, my old boss, Rahm Emanuel came out suggesting he would not be for that. Like, I think what you cannot be seen, you don't want to be seen in a Democratic primary as the pro Netanyahu candidate or the APAC candidate or someone who's associated with the Biden's administration's position or policy on Gaza. So I think he can do it. But it's good. Those are going to be tricky waters for him to navigate, given some of the ways in which he's approached those issues in his past. Well, let me say it changes rhetoric and recent, you know, Yeah, well, I mean, you know, one thing you said, I quite agree with the attitudes have shifted in ways we wouldn't have predicted, because BB has done things we never would have predicted. Perhaps we we could ever should have. But here's the way he prosecuted the war in Gaza. You know, I say this as a Jew, it's, you know, I was horrified and angered by what happened on October 7. But that doesn't mean that I don't agree for the children of Gaza, and that I'm not repulsed by the way that unfolded. And I don't think you're going to find candidates Jewish or not who don't agree with that. One interesting thing is that they have an election in Israel in October. BB Netanyahu may be gone by the time this campaign begins in earnest. And you wonder whether whether that changes anything, you know, Yeah, it's a very open question of what the world will look like when these candidates actually have to go get votes in New Hampshire or whatever other states in the early part of the calendar in 20 in early 2028. I did not play a clip from Kamala Harris. If you had asked me two or three months ago, I would have put the strong odds against her running. I think in the recent months, she's been out there more. She's been doing more things that suggest that maybe she's seriously thinking about running. What do you make of that? I don't know what to make of it. I mean, she obviously is making noises as if she's going to run. And then, you know, once you run for president, especially when you come as close as she did, especially under the circumstances, she did very hard to look around and say, why not me? But I also don't think America is going to and Democrats are going to ultimately go for the back to the future candidate. You know, there's a lot of there are a lot of seared memories of 24 and a lot of it don't have to do with her, but with her boss, you know, in the White House, but, you know, it didn't end well. There are a lot of Democrats who were hoping that it would and part of it did have to do with her inability or reluctance to do the things that you have to do at that level. You know, go on those podcasts, be real, be open. And and of course the answer on the view under the withering interrogation of the of the people on the view to not be able to answer the question that I think any sort of competent candidate for at any level would know how to answer when asked. Did you, you know, is there anything you would have done differently? I mean, I have to say, yes, these things. She could have said, I'm grateful for the opportunity he gave me. I'm not going to critique him here. I'm here to tell you, I'm not running for the to be the second term of Joe Biden. I'm running to be the first term of Kamala Harris and I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I mean, there are a million ways to have answered that question. She just couldn't find any of them. And those are the moments that define campaigns. Yeah, you know, it's from her perspective. Right. I was you came very close, you know, she believes as many people in the campaign that given more time, she might have actually won that race or she had not been thrust at you. She had a chance to actually buy and just not run at all. And she'd want a primary. She could have maybe actually won in no way, no way to answer that counterfactual. But you look at, you know, one way she's leading in all the polls right now. And now you and I know and everyone knows that oftentimes the person leading in the polls at the beginning is leading by dint of name recognition and nothing else. Pretty quickly, like it did for Rudy Giuliani in 2008, Joe Lieberman in 2004. But it still is true that you're not winning the Democratic nomination without running up the score with black voters across the south. And you look at that field right now and she's the candidate best position to do that. So you could she could make an argument to herself about how she could win that nomination. Now the question will be, you know, and this was, I think the experience John Kerry had when he was thinking of running again in 2008 is he was already to go. Picked up the phone sort of calling all those old supporters and they were like, I'm with Biden, I'm with that. I'm with Hillary. I'm with Obama. I'm with Edwards. And she might have a similar, you know, I don't know. Not just probably, you know, from what I understand, not just don't not just supporters and donors, but even some key staff. You know, look, I respect her and she got thrust into a really difficult position. But I just don't see this. And I, yeah, I mean, I do think she's the beneficiary of early name recognition on this issue. She may well do, you know, really well with African American voters in the south. But I keep thinking back to 2019 when she was a co-frontrunner with Joe Biden when she entered the race and she never made it to Iowa. And her numbers in those southern states weren't that good. So I don't know. I, it's, you know, there's one, I just don't have enough information to know, but I don't think she, I think she's going to receive some tough, tough news from some of the people who's been supporting her. And I think she's going to be very supportive of her support. Perhaps she was counting on anyone. I didn't mention that you have your eye on. Actually, it's kind of uncanny because you, you listed a bunch of folks who, you know, look, I got two guys from Illinois, right? Yeah, I was going to, I was looking for a good rom clip to play at the end for you. But I didn't want to look Ram Ram. You know, I would say that Gavin Newsom won the presidential primary of 2025. I think Ram is doing pretty well in 2026, at least with opinion elites. I mean, he's, he's, he's throwing out a bunch of ideas. He's really aggressive. You know, and we'll see where that takes him. Governor Pritzker is running for reelection, but it seems pretty clear to me that he's headed in that direction. And he's shown a lot more serious political chops than I would have expected when he first ran for office. He's, and he does have affection among some, among the Democratic base. You probably hear it in your own. And he's got, obviously he's got the advantage of resources. So, you know, I wouldn't draw him out of the, out of the circle. You know, rumors emanate from Washington that Cory Booker might run again. He didn't do that well in 2020. But he's got talents. He's got gifts. And in an election that may be about sort of character and kind of the, you know, to borrow Biden's phrase, though no one should use it, the soul of America, which honestly is going to be important in 2028. You know, he's a, he's a guy who can speak to that. But I, you know, I don't know if he can, you know, do appreciably better than he did. But I'm also like open to someone we haven't, you know, someone coming from somewhere we don't even know. Like I said, this is, this is a thing, an election that's grooved for an outsider. And it may be, you know, you hear about Mark Cuban, you hear other people mention. So who knows, who knows. I remember calling John Stuart in 2019 after Zelensky got elected president of Ukraine before Zelensky became, you know, the wartime leader, the Churchill of our time. And I said to John, John, you know, short Jewish comedians, they're all the rage right now. So, you know, don't, don't count him out. All right. I think it's a great place to leave it. John Stuart for president. David Axelrod. Thanks for joining us. Always great to talk to you. See you in Chicago. Absolutely. Thanks, Dan. Pods of America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts and Ferris Safari with Reed Cherlin, Elijah Cone and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroote, Ben Hefko, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Carol Pelleveve, David Tolles, Mia Kellman, Ryan Young and Naomi Sengel. Our staff is probably unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.