Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. And Susan Rice says Trump's calls to putin a peer illegal. We have such a great show for you today. Justin Wolfers, the host of the Think Like an Economist podcast and a professor of economics and public policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, talks us through Biden's economy.
Then we'll talk to Michigan Senator and DSCC chairperson Gary Peters, and he's going to talk us through the Senate map for Democrats.
But first the news Somali, I am going to shock you here that the Trump family has some eyes on business in Israel. Who would have ever thought of them including over in that region.
Yeah, of course it is. Any time that Trump World is interested in a particular country, there's always always a reason, and often it's real estate. Trump organization it was in talks about Israeli hotels before the Hamas attack of October seventh, and says that they want to resume them in the future. This will be if Donald Trump wins the presidency. An enormous, enormous conflict of interest, which is why we know that
Donald Trump will try it if he is elected. Yet again, just such a dishonest and bad way to run a government. Jesse Cannon. President Biden had to give a long, long briefing today.
Well, I feel like there was a while where we weren't hearing as much looney stuff from Marjorie Taylor Green, but she is back on her bullshit like no one has been lee.
President Biden gave an hour plus briefing about the previous hurricane and Hurricane Milton, which will by the time this podcast drops have hit Florida. This is really unusual for Biden to do, or even for any sitting president to do, but because of the flood of misinformation and disinformation coming largely from Republicans, Biden had to do this. He also had to say.
Now the claims are getting even more bizarre. Congress from Marjorie Taylor Green and Congress from Georgia is now saying the federal government is literally controlling the weather. We're controlling the weather. It's found ridiculous. It's got to stop. Almost like this. There are no red or blue states. There's one United States. Of America where neighbors are helping neighbors. Volunteers and first responders are risking everything, including their own lives,
to help their fellow Americans. State, local and officials are standing side by side of a repeat. No one should make the American people question whether our governments will make sure that this is acting round of strikes. They'll be there.
That's a sense of what President Biden had to do today in the hopes of debunking some of this Republican misinformation. Disinformation, pretty bleak moment in American life.
So my Trump went on some one of these podcasts that Baron's been telling them to go on with. I can't even tell who it is, and I usually know these, but there's a pretty funny moment we're going to listen to. Now.
I have a hard time doing it to them, because you know, I'm basically a truthful person.
But here's a great sign that you're not a truthful person when you say to the podcast that you're on, which is a podcast of your supporters, I am basically a truthful person, and the host cannot stop laughing. That's what a Litnus test. If you're wondering when you say a statement like I'm basically a truthful person and the other person finds that hilarious.
Funny enough, somebody pointed out that when he was on lex Fridman, he also said something like this, and Lex Fredman couldn't even keep a straight face through a similar statement of.
His Yeah, amazing stuff.
I feel like this is one of those things that we see with Trump all the time, that the same story resurfaces with that's the same theme, but just a different detail, And this time it's about Trumo's Trump God Bless the USA Bibles? Where do you see, dearby so these.
God Bless the USA Bibles. You'll remember last week we learned that the only Bible that can meet the specs for Oklahoma's Bible mandate for the schools was the Donald Trump God Bless the USA Bible. Remember that, Well, you're going to be shocked to find out where the Donald Trump God Bless the USA vibe are printed. Yes, you
got it. A country that Donald Trump regularly accuses of stealing American jobs and engaging in unfair trade practices, A country that Donald Trump wants to enact high tariffs on the country of China. Global trade records reviewed by the Associated Press showed a printing company in China's Eastern city shipped close to one hundred and twenty thousand of these bibles to the United States between early February and late March. Who could have seen it coming, certainly not everyone in the world.
Yeah, I never ever would have seen him skim and coming to light, So this is pretty interesting. The GOP was really hoping that Vance could help them win some more races in Ohio of the few districts left that are Dems. But that looks like it's not quite happening. After he made up a bunch of lives about Ohio, what are you seeing here?
Yeah, I'm not even sure that that was what it was. Remember, jad Evans has historically run about twenty points behind the governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine in twenty twenty two. It's not a total shock to see that he is not helping any of the down valid candidates in Ohio. Marcy Captor has a ten point lead in Ohio, and the Republicans in Ohio are not using vans on billboards or in any way advertising him. Politico reviewed the ad impact data and found that despite a lot of outside spending.
They are not using images of every man jad Evans can't imagine why.
We have even more towar dates for you. Did you know the lincked projects? Rick wils that a past politics bolli jug Fast or out on tour to bring you a night of laughs for our dark political landscape. Join us on August twenty sixth at San Francisco at the Swedish American Hall, or in la on August twenty seventh at the Regent Theater. Then we're headed to the Midwest and we'll be at the Vivarium in Milwaukee on the twenty first of September, and on the twenty second we'll
be in Chicago at City Winery. Then we're going to hit the East coast. On September thirtieth, we'll be in Boston at Arts at the Armory. On the first of October, we'll be Infilliate City Winery, and then DC on the second at the Miracle Theater. And today we just announced that we'll be in New York on the fourteenth of October at City Winery. If you need to laugh as we get through this election, and hopefully never hear from a guy who lives in a golf club again. We
got you covered. Join us in our surprise guests that help you laugh instead of cry your way through this election season and give you the inside analysis of what's really going on right now. Buy your tickets now by heading to Politics as Unusual dot bio. That's Politics as Unusual dot bio.
Justin Wolfers is the host of the Think Like an Economist podcast and a professor at the University of Michigan. Welcome back, Too Fast Politics, my friend Justin Wolfers.
Hey, Molly, I was.
So excited to have you because oivey, Hey, hey, explain to us where we are right now with the United States economy go pretty.
Good, you might even say really good. I did a funny thing the other day, Molly. There's an old index people used to put together. They called it the misery index. It adds up the bad things. It's the sum of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate, so two bad things they taste even worse together. And I looked at that misery index in November of every election year for the last fifty years. That misery index right now is at the second lowest level that it's been over the
past fifty years. I'm not saying the economy is perfect, But what I'm saying is that we normally approach election day with things looking a whole lot worse than this.
So that's a really good place to start. So let's start there. I want you to explain to us where we are. This is the soft landing. You have been talking about how we were going to have this soft landing. You were cautiously optimistic, and then you were optimistic, and now you are correct. So discuss.
Yeah. Look, great deal of credit to the administration, a great deal of credit to J. Powell, and a little moment for those of us who are true believers that sometimes good things happen. Look, there's been really two major challenges during the Biden administration. The first was he took office during the pandemic and the deepest recession in a century. In fact, at its deepest point, perhaps deeper than the
Great Depression. The economy is bounced back. And not only is it bounced back, it has kept moving and in fact, the economy today is in a better place than people thought it was going to be in twenty nineteen, back before they thought they'd be a pen So that was the first challenge. We've got unemployment right now at four point one percent, that's just a hair above a fifty year low. The other great challenge was inflation. Supply change
became totally messed up. At the price of oil rows at different points, all sorts of shocks were hitting the economy. COVID was a tough time. It led to a very sharp spike in inflation in the United States and every other major industrialists country. And it's come down further and
faster in the United States than any other country. And then the real victory lap here is the usual logic says the only way to get inflation out of the system is to create a recession, and in fact, a lot of people were calling for that or predicting it. But if you get it just right, you can tap on the brakes without an abrupt stop, bring the economy back to a sustainable pace, and possibly bring down inflation without causing a recession. Very very hard needled a thread.
But it looks like we've done it. So we're at a point now where inflation is back to where it was at the start of the Biden administration. At the end of the Trump administration two and a half percent and unemployments back to where it was, and output has continued to grow, and incomes have continued to grow, and wages are growing faster than inflation, and inequality has fallen. Sometimes good things do happen.
Yes, sometimes good things do happen. But this was also the Inflation Reduction Act reduced inflation.
Oh my god, you are the greatest troll in human history. And I love that about you, Molley.
So that's all I have.
Here's my favorite Thanksgiving trick. When you're at Thanksgiving in a month's time with that trolley uncle or aunt of yours who says Biden caused inflation and it's been a terrible problem. You show them a graph of inflation and then you say, look, this is where the Inflation Reduction Act passed. And basically, as inflation peaked, the Inflation Reduction
Act passed, and then inflation fell. So if that's all you knew about the world, you would say, oh, my goodness, we absolutely definitely needed the Inflation Reduction Act to reduce inflation. The reality is the Inflation Reduction Act was mostly an environmental bill that was rebadged to get Senator Joe Manson to vote for it. So if you take the same piece of legislation. But you tell Mansion it doesn't save the environment, but in fact reduces inflation. Mansion thinks it's
a terrific idea. So I think the Inflation Reduction Act was a wonderful, wonderful piece of legislation. It may have had a very very slight effect reducing inflation, but that's probably not where most of the effect came from.
So where did most of the effect come from.
The seeds of this disinflation were actually right there in the causes of inflation. So what happened was during the pandemic or the post pandemic period, prices started rising. I remember life was chaotic, things were hard to get, shipping routes were all massed up. This is what economists call
a supply shark. And what happened is there's one class of economists who were used to the idea that if inflation goes up, it must keep going up, or it must stay high, and everything's ruined and everything's going to be terrible. Another possibility is that a post pandemic readjustment is a temporary thing, and if there are some things that are a bit messed up, give it time and
things will get back to normal. And that's essentially what happened, which was twenty nineteen was really normal, and twenty twenty four the economy is really normal. And what happened in between was things got messed up and then they got unmissed. When things got missed up, that created inflation. And when things were turned back to normal, we got normal rates of inflation again.
So it was really ultimately translatory inflation because of the supply chain.
It was transitory inflation, but the word transitory turned out to mean three years rather than three months. And then Moly, I hear you looking for a hero in this story, and we find this narrative of a little unsatisfying with Inflation went up and then it went down. Y' on, so let's go looking for a hero. Inflation went up, and every right wing economist around the world said the Fed needs to create a recession get rid of this.
Right, But if you.
Believed that it was really important to emphasize not just inflation but keeping people in work, then following the prescription of the right wing economists came with a risk you might create a recession that you don't really need. And so you have to if you really believe in full employment, as I do, be willing to take a little bit of a risk and say, hey, let's just see how this goes for a little while. Inflationhoud might get worse, but gee, I want to give this economy a chance
to heal without me inflicting pain on other people. And that is the narrative that yields a hero in this story. This says the administration's economic policy was one that was fundamentally tied to keeping people in work and respecting the dignity of work and the importance of work to their lives. And they weren't willing to sacrifice that in order to please a right wing economist's talking point. And that took courage,
and it was a bet. But it's a bet that's paying off in million into people's lives today.
Yeah, recession has so many victims, right, it would be terrible for many many Americans.
Well, you seem to be struggling with the idea that recessions are bad. They're awful.
No, I'm not, but I'm trying to quantify. It's bad for workers, but it's also it has downstream effects being like bad for people, being miserable, and.
It's a real kitchen table problem. Right, you can't find work, you lose your sense of self. Ours as a society, for better or worse, to organize such that we get our sense of worth from work. You wake up in the morning, you light to your wife and you tell her that you're going to go to work because you're afraid to tell her that you don't have a job. You tell the kids they can't go on the school
excursion because you don't have cash. There's that awful feeling in the pit of your stomach, even if you do have work. Layouts are coming next week. Your listeners have lived through recessions, and they've lived through those moments, and they know how freaking awful they are. And what I want is to do right now is for every one of your listeners who's not feeling that in the pit of the stomach to recognize the absence of that fear right now. And that's the payoff of good economics.
That was the answer I was looking for. Thank you. I always believe that it's really important to look at the economy in a holistic way. Right, it's not the stock market, it's many aspects of our lives that need to be sort of looked at as a pesties. I'm hoping you could talk to us about right now, at this moment, there is Republicans, and again, I think this is sort of to be expected with the Republican war
on the federal government. When you read Project twenty twenty five, what you see is that the Republicans are literally at war with the federal government. They want it gone, they want it not to exist, they want it to be an arm of Republican presidencies. You know, they really want to shrink it and drown in about them.
Are you still trying to decide which side to vote for?
Yes, I'm on the fence. I don't know her emails. Just kidding, not in a funny way at all. But I'm wondering if you could talk about Marco Rubio. Had you know where I'm going here, because the last time you were on this podcast, we talked about the non partisan Bureau of Farm and Labor Statistics.
Go, I'm going to lead with fuck Marco Rubios. So I'm a nerd, I'm a wonk. I spent my hours my life staring at numbers and economic models and trying to make sense of it all in the days, I'm not doing that. I talked to room fulls of bright young undergraduates, helping them understand the world, because I fundamentally believe that what we need to do is look at facts, design better policies. And I don't care if you're from the left of the right. There's always a form of
better and there's a thing called truth. And for twenty years, Marco Rubio marketed himself as being a bright, young wonk. He was going to to be the ideas man of the Republican Party. He had ideas. They weren't mine, they were his. They needed some work. But if you wanted to sort of be a center right politician, he was kind of trying to do that. Last week, the employment numbers came out and Marco Rubio gave up his last shred of dignity, just threw it away. He said, these
numbers are fake. Yeah, everyone who knows anything about economics knows the numbers are not fake. I have dozens of friends inside the Bureau of Labor Statistics Molly. The day they fake it, every one of those friends will resign. And the day before they fake it, they'll call me to tell me they're thinking about resigning, and I will call you, and I will call your listeners and I
will tell them that the numbers are fake. But what they have is very very high quality processes involving literally hundreds of people in order to compile these numbers, the numbers that come from multiple surveys, and you can cross check them against private sector organizations that are doing similar things as well. During the Trump administration. The numbers were never fake. They were simply good. They were magnificent, they were great, they were lovely signs of the best economy ever.
That's what he kept saying. And then all of a sudden in October of twenty twenty four, for the first time in his career, Marco Rubio has concerns and he doesn't have concerns about the bier Is. You can raise concerns, you can describe them, you can say ways in which they're fake, how they're fake, what they're not capturing. He
just says they're fake. And from that day onward, Marco Rubio is dead to me as any kind of policy wont He's thrown his hat in with the bullshitters and the deniers, and there's no coming back from that.
I just want to go one step further. The reason why he says they're fake is not is based on the idea that sometimes the Bureau has to revise numbers. Explain to us just for a second, what the numbers revision process looks like.
Yeah, so now I'm going to boil your listeners to tears. But it's fantastic that we can do that like that. The first thing I want your listeners to know is the process by which official economics to tear are revised. It follows the same calendar, the same process, the same everything every year. We've seen this movie before. I've seen it fifty one times during my fifty one year life. So what happens. First of all, when we want to know how many people firms employ, we ask firms how
many they employ. Some firms don't send their forms in on time, and so what we have to do is we wait those folks who eventually send their forms, and we revise the numbers to include their numbers, to include their forms telling us how many people were employed. That's the first thing. The second thing is we always adjust our numbers for what are called seasonal effects. For instance, a lot of people go shopping in December. Now those
seasonal effects actually change through time. To give you an example, we just had my family's favorite holiday, Prime Day, and Prime Day didn't used to be a thing, and so that means retail sales in October are now stronger than they used to be in say, the year two thousand and so we have to adjust the seasonal factors to take account of changing seasonal patterns. That also causes revisions.
And the other thing is, if you want to know how many people employed, we have to know how many people are there in the United States, and we only do that well every ten years, and then we updated every year, and that sometimes causes what are called benchmark revisions how many people are there or how many firms are there. None of the revisions over the past few weeks and months have been unusual in any historical sense whatsoever. Half of them go one way, half of them go
the other way. There's really just absolutely nothing there. Hey, Molly, what do I want you to do is now ask me why is it dangerous to start calling government statistics fake?
Yes, what a good question, interviewe. Why is it dangerous?
Okay, let's say you're a senator or governor in Florida. One day you want to say, the government just published the unemployment rate, but it's fake. You should ignore it. And the very next day you want to say that the government weather bureau believes there's a hurricane coming straight for you, and holy shit, you better run. Once you cast down on the serious nerds who are giving us information so we can live bigger and better lives, it
just doesn't stop. And so I don't know if you've got a grandmother or a friend or a neighbor who's telling you that you know, these hurricanes aren't really happening, or democrats control the weather, but it's all the same disease, and it's a disease that Marco Rubio is feeding, which is when you call some stuff fake, you raise suspicion about everything, and that means that people can't take information seriously and it leads real people to make bad decisions in their lives.
Yeah, and I have an aunt who's in the path of the hurricane right now, and I pray that she's okay. But I think that's a really good point. You can't trust the federal government for some things and not for other things. That is not a good message, and that's what Republicans are doing right now.
It's a very very dangerous thing. And there are people, and I hope it's not your aunt, who are leaving themselves in harm's way right now because they believe that you can't trust what the government's telling you.
Yeah, and I think that's really scary. So you can't to me. I'll probably have you back before the election, but it is in twenty seven days. So if Vice President Harris, who has in some ways the benefit of incumbency and in some ways not, is this a good economy to be an incumbinant.
I believe it is. What's less clear is how much that message is breaking through. And so for your listeners, who I have a guess lean liberal, you probably want to make sure you have some good talking points to take to Thanksgiving because nerds like me and charismatic podcast hosts like you, Molly only get so far. The folks who voters are going to believe their nephews and nieces, brothers and sisters and the folks around the Thanksgivting table.
And so my plea to your listeners is learn the facts that unemployment's near a fifty year low, that inflation has happened, and is behind us. That inflation happened to at least as large as a degree in every other industrialized country, but the US has recovered even faster, that inequality has fallen, that as much as inflation was painful, wages have risen ahead of inflation. So the reality is for most American workers, you can in fact afford more
today than you could in twenty nineteen. And also that the cavalcade of lies coming from Trump's so called policy process is just whatever he happens to think about at any given moment. And if you add it all up, it's clear that he doesn't actually mean any of it because it would bankrupt the federal government.
Yes it does, Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Justin and a great pleasure, and let's enjoy the next few weeks. And let me say to all of us, let's look after ourselves out there. Okay.
Are you concerned about Project twenty twenty five and how awful Trump's second term could be? Well, so are we, which is why we teamed up with iHeart to make a limited series with the experts on what a disaster Project twenty twenty five would be for America's future. Right now, we have just really at least the final episode of this five episode series. They're all available by looking up
Molly Jong Fast Project twenty twenty five on YouTube. And if you are more of a podcast person and not say a YouTuber, you can hit play and put your phone in the lock screen and it will play back just like a podcast. All five episodes are online now. We need to educate Americans on what Trump's second term would or could do to this country, So please watch it and spread the word. Gary Peters is the junior
Senator from Michigan and the chairperson for the DSCC. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Senator Gary Peters.
Well, it's great to be with you.
Let's dive in to the Senate map because you are both the senator from the great state of Michigan, so we can talk about Michigan. But also you are the head honcho when it comes to the incredibly tight and tough Senate map for Democrats.
Yeah, that's right. It's a tough map, but I think where we thought we would be right now, and basically we're kind of following the same strategy that we use last cycle. As you recall, I ran the d SEC last cycle and we had a tough map, and we had a history against us, but we were able to hold the majority and expand it and I'm expecting to do that again.
Democrats had a tough map, but it actually did really well. This map is tough, it's complicated. Let's start with Senator Tester seat in Montana.
Yeah, Montana is a tough place.
You know.
Montana is a state that will likely vote for Donald Trump by roughly twenty points or more. That's not an easy place for a Democrat. The good news is that John Tester knows how to win in Montana. He's had tough races before, he has it again. He knows how to win, and over the years he's been able to build relationships with people in Montana. Although Montana is a
huge state geographically, it's actually fairly small population wise. It's a little more than a congressional district, so basically you get to know a lot of folks and not a whole lot of votes makes the difference there.
I think the thing that makes this Senate map and this election cycle so crazy making is that the polls are not necessarily consistent. So right now we're seeing Harrison a pretty good trajectory of pulling better and better. I have seen not so many poles out of Montana, but I have also seen polls that have she up. But then I've seen polls that have tests her up in fact. And I mean, is this a state where there's just not a ton of polling?
Well, there's actually there's been a lot of polling, but it is inconsistent to your point. You know, that bounces around a lot, and it's not unexpected because it's just a really difficult place to poll. It's a rural area and right now, actually there's a lot of folks that are that are pulling there. At least they're calling folks because it is such a hotly contested place and because there isn't a lot of people that they're getting a
lot of calls back to you. You know, addecdonally, you talk to people in Montana, they're saying, like a poster's calling me all the time, and they're saying, please don't call me anymore, and they're using more colorful language than I just did.
You had a sort of similar situation with your race, I mean, maybe not quite the same, but you had a lot of polling stuff like that. Do you think that this is just the state of polling, and also were there things that you think helped you towards the end?
Yeah, I mean pulling it's a science, but there's also a lot of art involved in it. And the thing about polling is that you have to try to figure out exactly who's going to come out to vote, and so you have to have the right kind of sampling of demographics and gender, you know, all those kinds of issues and people who lean Republican or Democrat. So there's a lot of art and if the poster gets that wrong,
their numbers are going to be off. And so you do see a lot of polls that have different numbers, and part of it's probably because their model is a little different to when they're doing that. So the question is is it systematic error? And you try to minimize that, and why you see these polling aggregators, you know, these services that will take a look at ten polls and then they average the numbers and they think, well, maybe then we're you know, we're smoothing out some of the
errors there. But even that is not always accurate. The only poll that's going to matter is on election day, and other than that, everything else you get it. I always take it with a grain of salt, especially in a small state like Montana, where a lot of people don't want to answer poles for a variety of reasons, and so you often have to ask your question, who is actually spending time with a polster telling them what
they think? And who is not? And who are you missing because of a group of people who do not want to talk to a bolster.
So certain races have been like boons for Democrats and could not have worked out better. I'm thinking of Kirsten's Cinema not running for re election, Ruben Diego getting in there early, raising a boatload of money, continues to pull about ten points ahead of the woman who considers herself to be the rightful governor of the state. Carrie, Like that turned out trump Ism doesn't scale there. But like,
talk to me about your own state of Michigan. Because you have the Debby's Dabina has retired, is not running for reelection, You've got a lease lock in there. The polling seems to be good, but again, Michigan has a number of factors apply.
Yeah, in Michigan is a tough state. We are a battleground state. So by definition. We're a really close state, so the numbers are going to be close as which way we would have expected. You know, folks looked at the election last cycle. We didn't have a Senate race, but all of our Democrats did well. But I remind folks we had Proposition three, which enshrined abortion rights into the state constitution. It was by far the top vote getter.
It got more votes than anybody on the ballot, and people who showed up tended to be folks who lean Democratic, and we're voting for Democratic candidates. But this year we don't have that. We don't have a referendum like that, and so we now revert to the me which means Michigan is a close state. When I ran in twenty with Joe Biden on the ticket, I won by roughly two points and he run one by roughly two and a half points, So you know, it's a close race.
Yeah, what do you think Democrats should be doing to win Michigan.
We have to make sure that we are running really strong ground campaign and that's what we're doing. It's about getting out talking to voters and then identifying those voters who are with us, and then we have to make sure that they actually vote. It's not enough just to stay on a poll. I'm going to support so and so.
Are they actually getting a ballot and voting. Right now, it's election day in Michigan, and it has been for a few days because we have no reason absentee and so people can request an absentee ballot or go to the clerk and get an absentee ballot and they can
vote today if they'd like. And so we treat every day now until November as election day and identifying our voters and then keeping track of them to see when they actually turn in their ballot, and if they haven't, remind them gently at first, and then sometimes keep calling them if you need to. And that make sure that you can get the votes in because in a closer election, the better ground operation can truly be a decisive factor.
And Harris has a bunch of offices in Michigan, right, doesn't she have tons and tons of field offices.
Yeah, we do. We have a very robust field operation here in Michigan. People are door knocking and I'll tell you the thing that is very exciting, and it's not just in Michigan. I can say this confidently from all the states that I'm working on across the country that have Senate races, is that voter enthusiasm for Kamala Harris is very high. People are very excited about her campaign. So the number of volunteers that we're getting is very large,
and it's spiked. It's interesting after Joe Biden decided that he did not want to run and pass the torch to Kamala Harris within a week as an example, the number of volunteers, and these are volunteers we've been We were recruiting for roughly a year and a half up to the time that Joe Biden dropped out, but in that next week the number doubled statewide. I mean, it was just a huge rush of people and that has continued.
So we have very robust canvassing. People are excited and what's most exciting to me, there are a lot of young people. And when I've done canvas kickoffs and I talked to young folks, probably over half of them say this is the first campaign they've ever worked on, which is really exciting.
Following up with that, what are the voter registration numbers?
The total registration. I don't have the percentage right, we have a pretty high number we have. I think already the last number I saw is over two million absentee ballots have been requested. We'll probably have five and a half million folks vote here in Michigan, somewhere in that range, and so already a pretty big number of people have requested absentee ballots.
In my mind, it strikes me that the metrics you know, are positive for her, that are in some ways they don't necessarily mean you win an election, but they certainly are important. Data points are first time volunteers, first time donors, voter registration. Right, Aren't those all numbers that are important?
Yeah, there's no question. Yeah, all of that are our indicators for you, and those are good. But I'll say there's enthusiasm on the Republican side too, So we definitely know that we have to work right to the end. We got to keep raising money. I mean, we're seeing massive amount of money coming in into the from Republicans into their candidates right now. You know, Tammy Balden had this big influx. Bob Casey has a billionaire that put
thirty million against him. Crypto folks put forty million against Sharon Brown in Ohio. So as this money is coming in, that is a challenge and we're working to try to match it as much as we can.
Let's talk about Dan Osborne. Not a Democrat, he's an independent. There's some pretty incredible polland coming out of Nebraska for any number of reasons, perhaps also because Republicans tried to take away that electoral vote from Omaha. Talk to me about are you helping him out? What is that like?
Yeah, no, you know, I'm the chair of the Democratic Campaign Committee and so we support democrats. He is not a Democrat, so I'm not engaged in that race in any way. Oh.
Interesting, So talk to me about the other races that are right now sort of what you're focused on.
Yeah, we talked about Montana, which is without question the toughest race for us, But then right behind that is Ohio. That's Shared Brown, who is the only statewide Democrat in Ohio, and Ohio used to be a battleground state has now really drifted more to a Republican state. And Trump won there by eight or nine points and will likely do the same there. But Sharon Brown knows how to win.
He's consistently one because he's a very authentic individual who cares deeply about working people and unions in his state, and people have been supportive of them over many years, and I'm confident he can win. But that's another state that is really tight. When you have the top of the ticket winning by eight or nine points, that's a lot of gravity for a Senate candidate. But Sharon Brown has done it in the past, and currently right now
in Napolling, he's up not a lot. It's a tight race, and so we know we're going to have to run hard. He's running against a flawed candidate. And if you probably asked me if there's one theme that we can say, all of our Republican opponents are kind of a If you're going to put him on a spectrum, it would start at flawed candidate and then move to very flawed candidate. And you mentioned one in Arizona. Carry Lake pushes the envelope on the very flawed category as we move on
that continuum. But certainly the Republican in Ohio the same thing. Very flawed. He's really inflated his biography, but he's also was a car dealer and refused to pay overtime to his employees. They had to sue him to try to get the pay that they were deserved and earned. He then destroyed documents. He had a fine from the court. Not a guy that you'd want in the Senate, someone who you think would be fighting for everyday people when he tried to cheat amount of money that they earned
working in his place. And that's just one negative. We could go on about negatives versus Shared Brown, who is just a man of incredible integrity and character and has a truck record of fighting for the people of Ohio.
So let's talk about Wisconsin Senate race. Tammy Baldwin has been up pretty much continuously. Cook political has moved it from a lean down to a toss up. What do you think the thinking there is.
Wisconsin is also a tough place. It is also a battleground state like Michigan, so we always know that it's going to be a close race. And she's running against a guy who's got a lot of money. He's basically a southern California banker running now in Wisconsin, and he's putting a lot of his own money into the race. The Republican Committee is putting a lot of money in there. But Tammy, similar to the other candidates I've talked about. She is a true, authentic person who cares deeply about
the people of Wisconsin. But you know, she's running against a lot of cash coming in. But her opponent is also deeply flawed. There's going to be a air deeply flawed. And some of the things he said are crazy. I mean, one of them was that he didn't think people in nursing homes should be able to vote because they're not going to be living very long. I mean, it is pretty outrageous. That offends so many people.
There's a Senate candidate, Larry Hogan. He's running against Angela also Brooks. He's really, i want to say, a wolf in sheep's clothing, right. He seems like a more moderate Republican, but he in fact has been asked to run for Senate by Mitch McConnell. What are you seeing in that race.
I think your characterization is accurate. And he's a Republican and so if he were to win, he would put the Republicans in the majority. Win Kamala Harris, who wins as president, as you know as well as anyone, she needs a Democratic majority in the Senate or she can't accomplish the things that we want her to accomplish. Can't even get members of her cabinet confirmed without Republicans consenting to it, and they passed. The history is they make
that extremely difficult. So basically Hogan would give the majority to the Republicans, which would make it difficult for Kamala Harris to do the work that she needs to do and wants to do and will do with the distinction, and we just have to remind people of Maryland. I mean, Kamala will win Maryland probably by twenty points or more as well, but because people remember Hogan as a governor there,
he does have support. But once you tell people and remind them that he is a Republican and that he will give control to the Republicans, people and Maryland go oh well, no, I've got to make sure Kamala has a team member. This is a team sport, and then we'll vote for Angela. So the challenge is that everybody knows Hogan. He was a governor for a while, so his name idea is very high. Angela a very gifted,
talented person, but she just not as well known. So we have to make sure she has the resources for people to get to know her, and when they do get to know her, she'll win. But that does require resources.
Yeah, I'll say, Debbie Macarsle Powell in Florida, I want you to do two seconds on both her and so Colin Allread in Texas. These are states that were not on the map but are now sort of being added to the map. Just give me the lay of the land here.
In addition to defense, and we're certainly playing defense with a lot of our incumbents. And my number one job is to make sure all of the incumbents come back. I will tell you they remind me of that every week. That's my job. But I also know we have an opportunity to go on the offense. And both Florida and Texas are real the d SC we are investing money in both states and will encourage folks who might be listening to do that. So, Debbie Mucersel Powell in Florida
is a gifted person. She's a former congresswoman from the Miami area, and she's running against an incumbent, Rick Scott. Rick Scott has been a governor and now senator. But the thing to remember about him is that even when there has been a hailwin behind him with a strong Republican year. He's never won by more than just a hair over one point, so just one percentage point, very close. He's not that popular. And in Florida we have an
abortion referendum. I mentioned earlier the Michigan referendum and how powerful that was, the same thing happening now in Florida. And Florida has passed a draconian abortion lawed a six week ban and no exceptions for rape and incest. And Rick Scott has doubled down. He says he's voting against the referendum and supports it. But you have to remember that right now, based on public polling, sixty eight percent
of the people in Florida support the referendum. And my experience is if you're on the wrong side of sixty eight percent of the people, that's not great.
Yes, it's not great. Many people are saying, thank you so much, Senator Peters.
Thank you. It's good to be with.
You a moment.
Thick Jesse Cannon.
Malei jung Fast. I'm going to rewind us back to when Trump lost the election back in twenty two, and there is the whole stop the steel effort, and one of the people involved with it was Patrick Burn, who is the former CEO of overstock dot Com. What are you seeing here?
Yeah, this is like you had another situation where a Trump supporter turns out to be like a low key scammer slash total lunatic. This was a guy who was supposed to give a deposition in a case brought against him by Hunter Biden. He was a Stop the Steel guy and he now lives in Dubai because he says a Dea agent. Here's how you know that this guy's doing great. He says a Dea agent told him that the government of Venezuela has put a twenty five million
dollar bounty on his head. You think the government of Venezuela has put a twenty five million dollar bounty on his head? I think that someone is not doing great, and that is our moment of fuckery. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday Day, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds in politics make sense of all the chaos. If you enjoyed this podcast, please send it to a friend or an enemy and keep the conversation going.