Full Episode - Both Parties Showing Cracks After Government Shutdown + How Democrats Can Win In Appalachia

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He is a former essentially career national security person, worked in the intelligence community and sort of gotten decided to get involved in politics, and within a couple of days of that, lost his security clearance via the political purge that was orchestrated by the current head of the department, the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsea Gabbart, and the whole sort of the the political retribution aspect of the Trump

administration sort of going after the intelligence community and anybody that he believes somehow that that was involved in surfacing the concerns of the intelligence community about how certain unfriendly nations to the United States seem to have access to Trump's inner circle. He obviously still is angry about that. But what's interesting about Joe Willett is that he's not, in some ways not a typical candidate for office, and I think and has an interesting background that will seem

quite familiar to people who read the book. He'll billiology by jd Vance for what it's worth. But what was really helpful I had conversation after the deal was done in the shutdown was to hear how a Senate candidate was responding to the shutdown, and just about like every other Senate candidate, he was pretty negative on the deal, while he wasn't personally trashing Chuck Schumer the way other

Senate candidates seem to be wanting to flex their anti Schumer muscles, as you've seen in so many Democratic primaries just in the last twenty four hours. I think he does give voice to at least I think he's a good example of explaining who the voters, the candidates think that are running for office in primaries think they're talking to.

And that's I think probably the best way to understand the initial reaction by those that are running for office, those that are running in Democratic primaries, those that want to be leaders within the Democratic Party, versus they have reacted the way they've reacted.

emphatic against cutting this steel. And I think the reaction is a reminder that this was not about healthcare, right.

it energized the base of the Democratic Party and they felt good about that energy and it because the elections went well last week. It can it seemed to provide the confirmation you know, a sort of form of confirmation bias. Hey, this shutdown seems to be working. Look at how well our candidates did. Why give up this this idea now when at the end of the day, you know, you know,

things can turn quickly if you're not careful. And already some polling a surfaced about how as this shutdown was impacting more and more Americans, blame was starting to get shared more and more between both parties. Yes, Republicans were taking the run of the blame. Yes, Mike Johnson and Donald Trump were actually making it easier for Democrats to

politically win the shutdown by their own maneuvers and their

own decision making there. But ultimately, as I've stated in a few other places that I've spoken in the last forty eight hours, there is a large chunk of voters in the middle who don't pay attention to day to day massinations, but that will pay attention when the proverbial government toilet is clogged, you know, and not being able to travel around Thanksgiving at a time when we have almost no choice but to use their airplanes in order to get where we want to get in a short

weekend was a way that you were suddenly going to start impacting people that don't normally pay attention to the day to day machinations, and that actually can become long term more politically damaging than anything you think is going for you in the short term. So that's my basic way to explain the situation we're in.

the debate on tactics. I don't know if it really does, but I will say this, once you have lost the trust of the people you're trying to lead, you probably ought to leave, right, you know. And and the best thing for the party would be if Chuck Schumer went out on his own, not forcing more groups to come out calling for his resignation and all this stuff. But ultimately,

I don't know if it changes. You know, you're still going to have a leader that's got to be thinking about, Hey, there's the base wants one thing, but you still got to appeal to swing voters if you actually want to win enough seats to actually be in charge of governing something. So I think that tension would exist whether it was Schumer, whether Brian Schatz is there, whether it's Chris Murphy, whether

it's Amy Klobashar, whether it's Patty Murray. Right, we could come up, you know, And I think if you know, this is one of those moments where if Schumer just decided in the next week to sort of you know what, all right, you know, I'm not wanted here, I'll take a step back. My gut is Patty Murray would replace him, because she'd be seen as a quote unquote caretaker majority leader.

She's at this point the senior most member of the Democratic Senate, and nobody would cross her right, and she really has the respect of sort of all wings of the party. I think she'd be seeing the original mom

and tennis shoes, you know, as she ran as a sort of a populist candidate of her day in nineteen ninety two when she first came on the national scene. I think she would be seen as somebody that would would be less of a public face for the party. And in some ways, I think many senators wouldn't mind that and would likely embrace that. But let's be realistic, you may not see any change in the short term.

disagreements about you know, how involved government should be in the economy. That's that's that's a larger divide that I think doesn't really get dealt with in the Democratic Party until the presidential primaries take shape. But I'd tell you, even as everybody's focused on the dem divide here, don't take your eye off the ball of a growing Republican divide.

I think that is coming. I think that right now, if you're a Republican elected official in Congress, you should You're trying to figure out what do I do when

the leader of the party is not accepting reality. And Donald Trump's inability to accept the reality that this economy sucks for a lot of his supporters is going to cause a much bigger problem for the Republican Party than anything the Democratic Party is going through at the moment, because ultimately, because they're in the minority and because they're in the opposition, you know, I mean, they're going to have a unity of message, They're going to have a

unity of focus. They may disagree on how to deal with Trump in the moment, but they're not going to disagree on how to court the voters in twenty twenty six. That's a divide that I think that is not the case on the Republican side of the aisle. As this economy weakens for those without money and essentially with those about real savings. And that's what we're seeing here right.

This is a This is the very definition of a trickle down economy where Donald Trump is hoping that the bang, the stock market success is going to somehow trickle down and help everybody else. There's not a lot of evidence that that ever works. You can just go back one hundred years and see how that worked out. The last time we sort of tried to put together an economy where government and big business fused itself together like it did in the early parts of the industrial and the Industrial Age.

the people decided, hey, they wanted government. They wanted more guard rails on big business, more guardrails on the economy than what we had at the time. And I have a feeling we're going to end up in a similar situation where we're going to have a downturn caused by

what we're seeing, this fusion of big tech and government, and that is going to awake awoke in a bunch of people who are going to want more guardrails put on our economy, necessarily leaving capitalism, but something more akin to what the two Roosevelts fought for, both Teddy and

Franklin in their very different ways. But I did get a lot of questions on the shutdown, so I decided that before we get to the interview that I would answer all the shutdown related q and as in this part of the podcast, we'll have our individual will it then I'll do my top five list this week. It's where I the top five Senate seats most likely to flip.

It's let's just say the top five has changed. Just like in college football, what the top five was at the beginning of October is a lot different than what the top five is at the beginning of November. So goes my list of top five most likely most vulnerable Senate seats in twenty twenty six. But before we get to all that, and I'll do some q and as on other topics that were not shut down related. So

we'll begin with this. This comes from Tim, and he asks, I don't I understand why the Democrats are being blamed

for the shutdown. If the Speaker will not convene the House, how can the Dems vote against it? Also, if the Republicans control the House, why can't they just.

I talk about this to new journalists or those folks in journalism school where I remind people because I learned this from interacting with viewers during my time at Meet the Press. Is how often a viewer, particularly a first generation American, would come up to me and say that they watch Meet the Press to sort of understand how the American government works. And every time I would get a response like that, it would remind me that, hey,

we're in the education business first. That's first and foremost what a journalist is. They're educating the public. We shouldn't forget that. And you know, I had a viewer one time, I think it was somebody on social media one time respond you know, somebody was lamenting the fact that people didn't know that there were nine members of the Supreme Court, or how all that worked? Somebody said how often do you put it in your stories? And I thought, you know,

that person's right. We sometimes don't reiterate basic facts about government because we go through this well, people already know that, or the people that are paying attention to this story are already going to know those things. And you're like, well, what about the Joe Demaje. You know, there was a great saying by Joe Demaggio. He used to say he played hard every game because he thought that there might be somebody in the stands who was coming to see

him for the very first time. And guess what, there's somebody reading your story. There's somebody listening to my podcast, there's somebody you know, reading your commentary.

spend a lot of time explaining how the college.

blames to their shutdown? Well, it was technically Democrats that withheld just enough votes where the Continuing Resolution to keep the government open couldn't pass the Senate. Now, in the House, Mike Johnson got a party line vote and he passed the continuing Resolution and in the House, so what they did is he passed that bill and then they want to This is a case where the House wanted to jam the Senate and they didn't want to. And his

thesis was, I'm not even going to come. I'm not going to convene the House until the Senate deals with the bill that we gave them. And we gave them a bill to keep the government open. It's up to them to get that bill passed. So this is the whole the House passed its version. So no, you're right, the House didn't didn't convene while the government was shut down. But what Johnson's thesis was they didn't need to because

there was no legislation. Now, why else did he keep him out, Well, because he didn't want his members, you know, board showing up on cable TV saying things that would cause them political pain.

this deal, he had to go find eight Democrats. So in that sense, this is why in theory, because it

needed sixty votes when Democrats withheld their votes, unless the Republicans are willing to get rid of the filibuster, which was something Donald Trump talked about then the only way the government could get reopened is if eight Democrats joined fifty two Republicans to reopen the government. So I think what you're right about is every time that the story was reported that would not be explained at the top. And I think it's a bad habit professional journalists, particularly

Washington journalists, have come. I always say that a lot of times Washington reports for Washington or producers produced segments for producers, they don't think about sort of are we educating somebody who's tuning in for the very first time? And you know, in that sense, I think that's something that we all need to do better on. In this way, I love the podcast format where I can feel like

I'm not I don't have some sort of time constraint where I have to take a shortcut on something because the main thing I need to convey needs a certain amount of time to explain, and I don't want to take away from that by having to explain the basics and yet not explaining the basics all the time is what makes politics inaccessible to people. And I've always said my real goal, and I've had this goal ever since

I entered journalism is, and political journalism is. I love politics, and my job is to explain it in such a way that it's more accessible to people. You know, there there was another person who used to go out of his way to talk about the Gang of five hundred and maybe politics inaccessible and would claim that politics was

an exclusive club and only those in the know understood it. Yeah, there's people that want politics to be that way, so that way they are not subject to what the actual democracy wants, small d democracy wants, and so in that sense, I'm a populous when it comes to information, and I think we need to make politics more accessible, more understandable, so more people understand how much it's impacting their lives.

I hope that helped you as to understand why in this case democrats had skin in the gament.

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have lost the shutdown fight. Likewise, all of the conservative political commentators believe they somehow won the shutdown fight, assuming no last minute silliness by Senator Ran Paul. Yet all of the more moderate political commentator seemed to paint a vast different picture as to who won and lost, and most seem to think Democrats got most out of the shutdown. So this brings up a good question, how do you win a shutdown fight? How do you know who won

the shutdown fight? Can you even win a shutdown fight? Or is it really just a lose lose lose for everyone involved? Or at the end of the day, is who won or lost?

political circus. The idea that the most important government on the face of the earth.

need to prevent shutdowns from ever happening again. It is absurd that we are hiring people to be air traffic controllers and part of the process is, hey, you know, every couple of years there's going to be a political fight and you're not going to get paid for about a month or two. Are you okay with that? What kind of circus are we running here? I mean, that's just you know, deciding to run to intentionally create a shit show government. It's stupid, it's unnecessary, and it shouldn't be.

It's dumb, it's it's and it all. The only people that benefit from a shutdown are elected officials who are trying to make a name for themselves. You asked who wins in a shutdown? Individuals win, No party wins. Nobody likes the result of the shutdown at the end of the day, everybody collectively hates the process of it, right, But the winners are individuals. You know, Ted Cruz, you know,

So take the twenty thirteen shutdown. Republicans quote unquote are seen as having lost that shutdown, right, because politically they did. If it wasn't for the shutdown, Republicans would have won a governor seat in Virginia that year, and instead Democrats won the governor seat. So you could look at just sort of the tactics and say up, Republicans lost and Ted Cruz was unpayable. Yet Ted Cruz built a political following. Ted Cruz was trying to run for president in twenty

sixteen and build a national following. So it worked for Ted Cruz. And that's who the shutdowns are for. They're for partisan actors, pure and simple, to try to make a name for themselves. That's so the only people that have ever come outquote unquote ahead. Right, it becomes about who can raise the most money off of the silliness

of the shutdown. And I'm sorry, I just think the idea that it's a practice that is somehow allowed and the only the only reason to have it is to figure out a way to bring more attention to a funding dispute. Guess what, perhaps we shouldn't put three hundred and fifty million people in the crosshairs of a of

a political disagreement over funding levels. That seems like a waste of a superpower's time. It actually makes us more vulnerable as a nation on national security. It is certainly a huge sign of weakness. And again there's you know, so a responsible democracy and a responsible government wouldn't put put us in a situation where we can just easily have a couple of people decide that the government is

just going to close its doors. And then, of course we've exempted so many aspects of the shutdown that if the initial idea of the shutdown was to you know, it was going to be so painful that everybody wouldn't want it to be be for more than a day or two. But when you take away you know, when you decide, well, social security isn't going to be a part of it, and we'll exempt military pay, and we'll exempt this, and we'll exempt that, then it becomes easier

to do the political theater. So I have to say, I, as a as a voter who would like to have less dysfunction in our politics, am sorry that there's not a single elected member of Congress Democratic Republican currently advocating a no shutdowns bill. They've existed in the past. Where

are they now where are they today? Instead, everybody wants to perform for the frickin' basis of each party because of how stupidly we've gerrymandered everything and our partisan primaries, all of those things, right, we have all of our incentive struck or for politicians to only pay attention to the base. And it's just so the people that hate this shutdown stuff the most are the ones that aren't

partisan activists. And it doesn't seem like there's a single person in the in Congress that represents the constituency that just doesn't want the goddamn toilet clogged purposely, and instead this is what we have. So I don't know if I answer your question right, I don't think anybody won

the shutdown fight. And if you're wondering to me, you know, it is one of those where the only time anybody gains from it is if they're trying to if it's somebody individually trying to build their own following for some sort of national political purpose, you know. And the best example of that Ted Cruise twenty thirteen. He shut down I was seen as a loser, but actually gave Ted Cruise a constituency, all right, next question comes from Kenny

from Long Islanding Rights. My question for you about the deal that seems to have been struck. It seemed to me that the Democrats traded their leverage for a campaign at the Republicans will not have to take the tough vote, but will inevitably vote down the Obamacare subsidies. And that's about it. Snap resumes, payments resumed, no one gets fired. But all that is the standard course of events for the end of a shutdown. The only thing Senator Schumer

seems to have extracted here is a tough vote. Am I reading this correctly? If so, why on earth would he have fought this hard and held out this long only to give up and walk away with nothing to show for it. Lastly, I agree and disagree with your assessment about President Trump entering this lame duck era. I agree that's the biggest takeaway for the shutdown resolution. To me, though, it's not because of the defiance. It's because they negotiated

a solution without them in the Senate. At least, the President disengaged and made it easy for this to play out, but ultimately Senator thoonstruck the deal. I love the new format and I feel as though I'm learning so much more about the inside game when it comes to politics. Thank you for the scoop, all right, Kenny. I appreciate the construction constructive critique there on that front. It's interesting. I guess I could word it, you know, and again

I would word it differently. I don't think there's a cave here. I think there is. I think Warnock said it. He said, if you're going to say that the Democratic Party seems to care about those on snap benefits more than the Republican Party cares about then I think he said, guilty is charged, right, that that's not a And I think if you're you know, again, a better leader and a better communicator would not have would not have signaled that this is over, would signal it.

so I don't think they gave away any leverage. I think they still have leverage in January to essentially shut down government again if they want to, if these Obamacare subsidies don't get passed for a year. I think I think that there's going to be a majority of the US House that votes for these Obamacare subsidies. Not a majority of Republicans, but a majority of the House. I

think you will see somewhere between thirty and forty Republicans who do this. I think you will see ten to fifteen Senate Republicans wanting to be for this. So I think it's going to happen. I think the results of the I mean, I think the biggest impact on the healthcare subsidies was the twenty five election results. The fact that it was a romp, the fact that cost the living issues and Democrats didn't even have the healthcare issue

yet and it was working for them. We already know how well healthcare works as an opposition issue when you're messing with it. We just saw it in twenty eighteen. That benefited the Democrats and back in twenty ten when it benefited the Republicans. Anytime you mess with the status quo of healthcare, the party messing with the status quo gets punished, and in this case that's going to be now the Republicans. And so I guess I don't accept the premise that they got rid of.

So I guess I'm not I think they could have communicated this in such a way where they could have been seen as the adult in the room and not giving up their fight on healthcare, because technically they've given themselves opportunities before the State of the Union in February to make this a showdown vote one more time. All right, last question comes from David Crowder, and then we'll get to the interview with Joe Willett. I like your work

in thoughtfulness. Thank you saw your podcast at sam First Info and Jay Jones came out in mid October. Virginia begins early voting mid September. You get my point. Second, the shutdown argument pre pandemic. Some twelve millions participated in the bill. Their subsidies remain with premium increases. It's not a big deal. The big deal is the twelve million who enrolled post pandemic who did not qualify financially for

pre pandemic for subsidies they lose the subsidies. Is that disconnect worth shutting down the government.

this way, right, these ten year increments. We do this sort of funny business accounting when it comes to the impact on the deficit with these funny numbers with the Congressional Budget Office and these estimates that are all that are all just sort of make assumptions that nobody can assume when it comes to the actual state of the economy.

But we make these deficit projections in such a way that it encourages these sort of false expiration dates. Right, some will have them, some will don't. They're usually time to make it politically difficult to somehow not extend the deadline, whether it's on a on a tax rate, or whether it's on a subsidy or whatever it is. So you know, this goes to the this is what you get when you when you don't have a functioning committee process in Congress.

And not to get really dorky here, but essentially when we totally polarized the US Houses, which which really began sort of late eighties, early nineties, right, and you know, there's those on the right blame Jim Right and the Democrats, those on the left blame Newt Gingridge and the Republicans.

I think I think sort of there was there was certainly power plays that Jim Right made that new Gingridge then emulated and took to took to an took even further that ultimately destroyed the committee process and the destruction of the congressional committee process both in the House and the Senate. Is why we get such poorly written legislation which used, so I think eloquently pointed out with the way you worded your question, the fact that the question

was a bit confusing. I don't put on you, I put on Congress because this is how they legislate now, with these sort of weird expiration dates. It's all designed to create sort of political poison, almost almost like these sort of delayed bombs that suddenly explode and you have no choice but to continue a policy that maybe you were never in favor of. You know, Obama didn't want to. Obama ran on getting rid of the Bush tax cuts.

Turns out he couldn't get rid of them because of what kind of impact it would have had on a number of people seeing their tax bills go up, and he didn't want to politically put himself in that situation. He had made a pledge not to raise taxes on anybody over I think it was four hundred thousand dollars. So the new line that they drew on that. So ultimately, you know, someday we're going to have a Speaker of the House and a Senate Majority leader that actually wants

to make the legislative branch great again. But until that time comes, we're going to continue to have this poor, horribly dysfunctional legislative process that we've now seen that for many of you feels like the normal way Congress works, because trust me, this was not the intent. How Congress has worked the last thirty years is not the way that Congress was intended to work in the previous two hundred and twenty years. All right, So with that, there's

all the shutdown, Q and a's that I got. We're going to take a pause when we come back, meet a candidate for Kentucky Senate, basically somebody who I think was a political independent who chose to pick a side. Here's motivation, how he did it. I'm always intrigued by first time candidates because I think they come they literally come at things with a fresh set of eyes, and I think it's always important to hear what a fresh set of eyes has to say about the current political system.

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in some ways for his candidacy. But he's all so, you know, we want to highlight interesting first time candidates who are not coming from sort of a typical place, hard left, hard right, things like that, and Joe Willett got on my radar and he agreed to sit down. Mister Willett, nice to meet you. Yeah, thank you, Chuck. So let's start with how you got into service. Look, we're taping just before Veterans Day. You're a veteran. I'm

a huge advocate. That feels as if that the people best equipped to what I call to I'm looking for more pastors for patriotism in this country that I think the military community and the intelligence community, where you have to be Team America before your Team Red or Team Blue is probably as good of a place to find these pastors for patriotism as you can find. But tell me how you got what got you into service?

every weekend growing up and was heavily involved with my church for a long time, so it resonates. So yeah, thank you for the opportunity to tell my story. I am Joel Willett running for the US and in Kentucky. Your listeners can catch all the parts of the story at joelfer Kentucky dot com if I missed something here. But I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and my path to service was perhaps common in some ways and uncommon in others. My dad was a Union iron worker. He

was a Golden Gloves boxer. My mom worked in hospitals taking care of people. But we had some Kentucky struggles growing up. The lights didn't always come on when I got home from school. I learned, you know, early in my adolescence that both of my parents were struggling with addictions to opioids, and I would eventually lose my father to a fenteral overdose in twenty nineteen. It wasn't just my family, it was you know, tens of thousands of

Kentucky families over the past couple of decades. But I was one of the lucky ones because I had incredible grandparents on both sides of my family. I had my grandmother's church, but I also had the institutions of this country public education, our military, our civil service, some of these things that I believed to be some of the greatest tools for achievement and economic mobility in the world.

And when the attacks of nine to eleven happened, I was a senior in high school and a few months after that, after months of begging my mom to sign the paperwork, she relented and did and I joined the Army National Guard when I was seventeen years old, and I served in the Military Police Corps. I was able to graduate from the University of Louisville and from the

University of Kentucky, and that launched a career. Once I left the Army in the intelligence community, I spent some time with the FBI working on canterterrorism and then was recruited into the Central Intelligence Agency into the Director to Operations, where I represented this country here at home and abroad in the Balkans, Baltic, Southeast Asia, Western European capitals. I

speak Russian. Do without what you will, and you know, finished my last year in government in the White House Situation Room as a nonpartisan civil servant, there to provide intelligence and crisis management support to the president who was then President Obama and Vice President Biden. There to serve the presidency, not the president, and the true spirit of our civil service. I left government twenty fifteen in part to be able to take care of a lot of

my family that remained in Kentucky. Went into the private sector have since been running businesses that have put hundreds

of people to work every day. So, Chuck, I truly got to live my American dream and have been living that life as a private citizen for for some time now, and it's been increasingly hard to set on the sidelines and watch working families across this country, working families like the one that I grew up in, getting steamrolled by a political and economic system that I think continues to treat them as acceptable losses. So, as you said, I

started exploring a run for the Senate. This administration found out about it, and as it is wont to do. Began trying to act revenge on people, no matter how long they'd or no matter what they had served, but

because they had said mean things about Donald Trump, and we're thinking about standing up against some of what we're saying today, and they revoked a security clearance, and you know, came after me the way they've come after so many others. What made your democrat? Why'd you pick a party? Yeah?

some people, through military service. The military exposed me to people from all walks of life, nationalities, sexual orientations, all of that, and I began seeing, you know, what I have since come to believe is, you know, this source of strength in our military and in our country, which is the diversity that we have. But it was also

seeing the lies of the Iraq War. I, you know, I could see something very different than what the George W. Bush administration was saying publicly, you know, about this status or the state of our military, our readiness to fight such a war. And then you know, we we we later come to learn that much of the rationale for going to war in Iraq was a house of cards, and I continue to see that, you know, some twenty years later, as one of the most disastrous foreign policy

decisions we've made, certainly in my lifetime. So that began, you know, a period of reassessment for me away from you know, what was the Republican Party or conservative viewpoints. And I would say that the journey into being you know, a Democrat is something that happened much later. I you know, I'm sure somebody will fact check me on this, but if my memory serves me, the first time I registered

as a Democrat to vote was in twenty sixteen, and it was in response to what I saw as the clear and present danger of Donald Trump. And I have been proudly a Democrat since that time because that is the party that I see standing up for a strong America, for an America that works for everybody and not just the wealthiest.

I'll set that aside. I'm curious what you made of that book and how much of what jd Vance shared in that book resonated with you.

you for it. And I would say, my life for six years has been a project and trying to understand how this country could you know, create my life, which I see as a truly uniquely American life, coming from Valley Station, Kentucky to the halls of the West Wing in twelve years to leadership and business. If my life

is uniquely American, so too was my father's death. Because people do not die from fentonyl overdoses in a statistically significant way in other parts of the world, yet it's the leading cause of death, I believe, in the United States for people ages eighteen to forty four. So I became aware of hillbili elogy during that time. And I would say there are a lot of similarities between my story in JD. Vance's. My heart aches for you know, the life that he described, you know, living growing up,

and so much of it resonates with me. And I understand that, you know, he similarly felt a need to serve his country. And you know, I will have to transition now to say that there are major differences between my story and JD. Vance's, and that being that I didn't turn into a giant asshole at the end of it.

doesn't doesn't compute. But what does compute, frankly, is the fact that these so many of these stories exist and why politicians have had a hard time figuring out how

to use government to fix this.

You got a president who's manufacturing, is using the fentyl crisis, which is real, and ascribing it to the Venezuelans, which have nothing to do with this, right, and getting us potentially to screw up yet another Latin American country with interventions that will only cost us cause this country problems for decades to come, and our distrust in that region of the country. And it's like, how many times do we have to screw up our relationships with Latin America

with this? But what is you know, you've it sounds like, for the last six years in particular, you've really wanted to understand both the struggles people have with ventanyl, how it gets into this country. What should we be doing differently to stop ventanyl from getting into this country? And is it possible? You know, are we trying to like stop the weather right?

this another way.

the only president that has stopped the conversation. There. We talk about, you know, a drug war, and usually what we mean there is attacking the supply and where the stuff is coming from. Yes, we have to secure our borders. Yes we have to go after and chase to the ends of the earth the supply of this stuff, whether we find it in a factory in Beijing or whether we find it being pushed from boardrooms in some of

the largest companies and richest families in this country. And you know, we've had many, many Kentuckians lose a father or a brother because of unregulated capitalism and doctors who had very perverse incentives to continue pushing highly addictive opioids and poison into our community. So I think we've we've got to pursue the supply of this in many different directions. We've made some progress on that, but it's the demand side of it. Why are people turning to these drugs?

Why do people want to use them? And I think it is that that we need to that there is so much more that this country could do. When I talk to, you know, friends in Europe about, you know, what's going on with drugs and addiction here, and they're like, wait a minute. Drug addicts, you know, they often not because they're terrible people, but because they're literally out of their minds while using do some destructive things, whether they steal or are a public nuisance or wrecked cars and

all these things. These are stories that are just so vividly remembered in my life and in my family's life, and European friends are like, wait, you send those people

to jail. Why don't you send them to the hospital, because it sounds like that's probably what they need. In Kentucky, we've had three years of declining overdose deaths from syntheticopioids. We've got down to like fourteen hundred and ten this past year. A lot of that progress was made because we invested heavily in this state and medicaid expansion, and it was access to medicaid that paid for treatment, that helped people, paid for some NARCAN community awareness, and also

paid for treatment for addicts. And I do think that is just something we have to invest more in because we want people to have good lives and good opportunity in this country. And you know, young men especially account for I think eighty percent of what we call deaths of despair, which are deaths from overdoses of some form or another or from suicide. And I think this can all be tied back to people who see their prospects demming, who see that no matter how hard they work, they're

not going to be able to get ahead. And that's something that has to change. And I think that once we have a sane economic policy in this country for the working class upon whose backs all of this prospects already was built, only then we be able to truly address these problems with addiction.

civil servant, you know, living on an okay salary, but in a very expensive city in Washington, d C. It was very tough to get access to resources. And so I always say, you know, we confronted my father and checked him into you know, dollar Store Rehab and Elizabethtown, Kentucky. You know it was there were professionals there were doing the best they can, but it wasn't the most well resourced facility, and a lot of desperate people showed up there.

But even that bought us some valuable years with my dad. He was able to see his granddaughter, you know, grow up. In his best moments, you know, in my in my recollection were always when he was a heavily involved father. And it was as my you know, my life and his started going in very different directions when I was a teenager. And this is because you know, there was

a free fall that happens in this country. You know, you you grow up, you have some roof over your head or some access to basics, you get good public education. You've got some opportunities if you make just even marginally okay choices in this country. And my dad's path, you know, wound through a union and I got him jobs that were relatively you know, well paying when he could work.

But you know, obviously there were mornings in the union hall where he didn't have work and the earlier mid nineties, but it was it was you know, surgeries and things like that that started to get these pain pills into his system. And then as his economic prospects dimmed, those that became a way to medicate away some of what I'm sure was existential pain for him. I was going to provide for his family. I was going to provide for his kids, for son and his daughter, my sister.

So to answer your question specifically, yeah, we are doing a lot more today. There's a lot more awareness about it than there was before. This is an uncomfortable thing to talk about, is I'm sure it has been for you,

you know, opening up and and it takes Look, you're never going to get over it.

they need more resources to staff those facilities.

not like the average Kentucky voter. And they paid for all of this by taking money out of healthcare programs that as as our governor has been front and center in the press sounding the alarm about this. These cuts put thirty five rule hospitals pills in this state under threat of closure for people, you know, to lose access to that healthcare. Even people who maintain health insurance through their employers are going to have to drive farther, wait longer.

These communities are going to lose you know, one of the largest employers in their communities. So yeah, we have

a shortage of health care access in the state of Kentucky and in many parts around the country. And I think Republicans in this administration have shown just play in simply in recent months that they do not care. So I do think that we need to increase the supply of health care. We need to invest in more of what people actually need, and in Kentucky that does mean you know, more access to addiction treatment and overdose prevention.

But again, I think the root causes of all this happened way earlier in life, and I would again tie it to increasing inequality and dimming prospects for working.

I was able to go to college. Little did he know how important that would be in that moment.

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Now we've got AI displacement's going to hit another chunk of workers. This attempt to bring manufacturing back. Frankly, doesn't involve many individuals, right, It is more of a robotics and automated situation. So, you know, how do we You know, we can't go backwards. We're not going to force companies to use humans if it's cheaper to do an automated thing, Right,

That's just not how capitalism works. But what's what should we you know, what what is what are the jobs in the next twenty years that we ought to be trying to get our communities prepared for, get our public education system geared towards you know, because I think about think about the last thirty years, and we thought all of our kids needed to learn to code, right, And it turns out whatever coding you've learned, it doesn't matter anymore.

We have always innovated and with every wave of you know, innovation from you know, the industrial age too, you know, the assembly line, to even modern management theory and efficiency in factories and in business, there's there's always been displacement and we've always found, uh, you know, ways to innovate even around that, and people have always found, you know, new ways to to to to labor and to work. And I think there is some really, there are some

reasons to believe. And I'm someone who has spent a lot of time, you know, running a technology company. Over the past couple of years, I've had the chance to uh, you know, I when I lost my security clearance, some of the you know, the most strident and well known right wing trolls on Twitter told me that I should learn to code. I'm like, yeah, thanks, I did that

six years ago. You know already did that. So I say that only to say that I've you know, spent a lot of time uh playing around experimenting with and understanding AI tools and you know their implications in the workplace. I I am less bullish about the immediate, you know, wide scale impacts of this because there are a lot

of implementation issues. There are a lot of data quality issues, hallucination issues, and all these sorts of things that I think even companies who have made a decision to lay off and displaced workers thinking they're going to be replaced

with AI, are going to see and relatively short order that that it is not the panacea that they might think it is. Even still, I do accept the premise that we are going to have some massive changes in the economy, uh and in the jobs that are available to people. And I think that there are there are two things we need to wrestle with. Is one like, Okay, if a business finds a more efficient way to do something, well, great, they're going to have more profits. But now we're going

to have more people on snap benefits. Now we're going to have more people, you know, needing Medicaid because they don't have healthcare. Because you know, all this activity in the economy has to come from somewhere. It has to come,

you know, from from consumers. Buying things. And what I'm increasingly worried about is just that that the broad consumer base in this economy is just going to be completely left behind because the wealthy have enough at the top to continue pumping money into these businesses and these experiments and buying really expensive things.

one thing that can address this. You don't have a situation where, you know, the America's first billionaire he died a billionaire, John Rockefeller, in nineteen thirty seven. Bill Gates fifty years later became the fifteenth billionaire, and thirty eight years since then, we now have seven hundred and fifty, right, and you know, all of the gains in the economy since the early nineties or like fifty two percent of

them have been captured by the top one percent. So there has to be a reckoning with this growing inequality. It's in moral but to anywhere in the world in history where you see fascism grow. It does so in the fertile fields of wealth inequality, and people get desperate. They turn to strong men who say I alone can fix it.

shaves who sort of started this revolution. Both of them used frustration in poor communities to go after the so called elites, right in Istanbul or Caracas. I mean, look, I assume this is your experience overseas that this is there's a pattern here right where they when there's a belief when the gap between rich and poor gets so big, you can weaponize the poor against the elites and the pitchforks will come. But democracy leaves.

Because I agree that tax policy is probably the that's what a small d democracy should do, and that sort of capitalism with guardrails.

FIKA and into payroll taxes. And even in the you know, Reagan years, they found a way to say, hey, no,

we're going to make sure that Okay, if you're if you're just putting money, you're making money off of money, well that's going to be taxed in the same way that making money off of you know, your labor or breaking your knees, you know, welding iron together and setting iron. Is that we're going to tax the same And that actually happened in this country for two years until George H. W. Bush undid that policy. And I don't remember if it was eighty eight or ninety, but one of those years

check up on me. I think that that is a fairly easy place to start. And then the second thing, you know that we just have to deal with or you know, the strategies that the ultra wealthy use to live off of their unrealized gains. You know, people will say, if if I have stock and it appreciates in value, but I haven't sold the stock, I didn't actually make

any money. That's true, except that you also collateralized that stock and borrowed a lot of money from banks to be able to live off of you know, you you accessed some value from that appreciation and that gain, and so I think even a simple policy like removing this by borrowde wealth preservations strategy that wealthy people use could also go some way in curing or making this a more equitable system. Basically, if you if you obtain cash

flow from those unrealized gains in any way, at that point, it would be subject to tax. So these are kind of simple things. I think there's a lot of other complicated things that I'm sure academics and tax policy experts

have a spectrum of disagreement about. But I think, you know, to your last point about redistribution, this is where Democrats often get in trouble because everybody sees that, oh, well, we're going to tax, we're going to tax everybody more, you know, hard working people, and then we're just going to do handouts to people who don't want to work.

And this is just silliness, right. I believe that that's a myth for the most part, that most people receiving whether they're snap benefits or medicaid or whatever, actually do want to work. And I think forty million people on snap benefits, fifteen million of them do work full time. They don't make enough to actually be able to afford groceries. So I think we got to do away with some of those myths about the working poor in this country.

But separately, rather than handing people you know, money to go buy things, we as a country need to invest some of those proceeds into building more. We don't have enough high quality education in this country. We have an energy grid that is increasingly falling behind for the demands that are going to be placed on it by an ai centric economy. We don't have enough hospitals and doctors, as I alluded to earlier. We need to invest in all of these things heavily and infrastructure in this country.

I believe that it is just that this system has been captured by the political and economic elites that are entrenched interests. We have campaigns, you know, bought and paid for, Elon Musk invests to forty something million dollars in getting President Trump reelected, and all of these parties you know, are looking out for their own interests and they are

the ones you know, funding politics. And we have tried to have grassroots campaigns over the you know, the past decade, but these relentless text messages and emails and candidates like myself have to send two people who already probably don't make much and know, chip in five bucks to save democracy, and then a lot of that just goes back to, you know, paying for campaign consultants and all. It's absolutely

fundraiser makes the money. Yeah, it's absolute nonsense. And I think that that, you know, we have to start electing people to the Senate who understand the struggles of the

working poor in this country. We talk about how much representation matters, you know, especially as Democrats, and we mean that in a variety of different ways, but one way in which we don't explicitly talk about it is do poor people see themselves in any of the people that are elected to represent them, And I would say that they do not, because you know, many people who seek office year after year, cycle after cycle and win or lose. I just don't think they have much in common with

the people who who they are trying to represent. And I think that that representation matters a lot.

why did an Amy McGrath fail in twenty twenty?

If the dog won't eat the dog food, you know it's not going to work. Why didn't it work?

faith in its trust in Donald Trump. You know, three three times three three elections in a row, and it you know, voters here believed the promises that he made and believed that he was going to be looking out for them. And when when Democrats don't actually offer an alternative vision, when they when they sometimes speak in ways that sound just kind of Republican but just a little less republican, I don't think voters can really tell the difference. And so if you got people on the fence, they're

going to just vote for the Republican. Uh and Andy, butsheer didn't you know, do that. This is a governor who led with his values in both of his campaigns. He didn't shy away from talking about hard things, but he explained his choices, his decisions and reasons for different things and decisions he would make and policies he would advocate for. And even people who disagreed with Andy Bushier said that they trusted him and they thought that he would look out for them. And then he has shown up.

We've had fourteen natural disasters or something declared in the state of Kentucky over the past couple of years or during his administration. This isn't a guy who hides in the governor's mansion. He's been out, He's been present with people, and I think that even when they disagree with them, are in, you know, marginal things, that he has their back on the major things. So I think that that's probably the big difference.

money to buying groceries. And this administration made sure that Republicans in the Senate couldn't negotiate a deal with Democrats so that Americans wouldn't be faced with this unconscionable choice between being able to afford groceries or seeing a doctor when they get sick. And I would just ask voters to keep asking themselves why that is. Do you believe

that this man has your back? And I think there is ample evidence at this point between his ballrooms, his own increase in his wealth, and these other policies he does not definitely.

want to pick it.

the adult in the room here. And oh, by the way, if you're trying if the whole point of this was to bring more attention to healthcare, that's been a mission accomplished, and then now the burden is on them to either deal with this or watch out. In twenty twenty six, this becomes certainly a populist issue. So obviously you could

see I can argue one side of this. I understand the other that, hey, the shutdown's gone politically really well for the Democrats, and Trump has made all sorts of mistakes like advocating to not pay snap benefits even when a judge says to do it, and the Speaker of the House is abdicated responsibility, right Like, I can I get the arguments and I couldn't I hear both of them. Where do you fall on this argument? And I'm mindful that you're in a Democratic primary in the moment.

choice with the with the eight Democrats who who broke pretty angry about this, I am very fired up, Chuck. I went to bed mad and angry last night. I woke up this morning, uh, the same exact way. And while yes, there are you know arguments there, I you know, we're fond of, you know, saying in sports, and when we're trying to encourage people to to you know, get in there and and fight and play a game, we say, well, hey,

you can't win if you don't play. But I want to quote my favorite, probably one of my favorite TV series of all times, The Wire, And I'm sure this was a David Simon line, but one of the characters told the police chief, you can't lose if you don't play, and that is I think some of the energy Democrats needed here. If the Republicans wanted the government open, they found ways to force through the you know, the big

bullshit bill back in July. They did that right with with UH without getting the support that you know, they they wanted from Democrats. They could have funded and reopened the government the same way. Not sure there would have been some procedural issues and delays and things like that. They could have gotten it done if they wanted to. Democrats did not need to go support this. And yes, it is terrible to watch people potentially lose their SNAP or food stamp benefits. I was on food stamps as

a kid. I know what that's like. You know, when my parents had to make decisions between being able to afford groceries or putting gas in the car to get to a job so they could make money to buy more food. I get that personally, But it is not Democrats that have made those choices. It was not Democrats going to the Supreme Court to try to get permission to not pay SNAP benefits. That was Donald Trump. That was Republican enablers in Congress. Democrats had a very radical

idea throughout this shutdown. Maybe in the most prosperous country on earth, with thirty trillion dollars in GDP, we can have a country where people can afford groceries and be able to see a doctor if you get sick. That

seemed like a pretty noble fight to me. And I don't understand, you know, when we've had millions of voters across this country in Virginia and New Jersey, in California and New York show up just this week, right, you know, over the past seven days, rather to support a party that it's a fighting for them, to just immediately turn it out.

we're not gonna we're not going to make people have to ration food because this administration is going to do it. But we're going to keep fighting for healthcare and come January, if they don't do this, we're shutting this place down again.

And what's wrong? What is wrong with that strategy because you do sort of try to strike I could argue that it strikes the balance between you know, helping in the immediate term, and again I think, look, we're playing with fire with what's going on with their traffic control and not paying these folks and and all of this stuff.

people under duress, meaning they've got to work with a promise to be paid right, which I've never met the landlord that said that, Hey, I'm going to post date this check just you know, I just don't know when I have to get to post date it. Do you not accept the premise that there's time to fight keep fighting for this in two months?

I think you know. Fune has been very public that there is going to be a vote and it's going to happen on such and such date and all that. So take them out the where there's going to be a vote. What is that going to accomplish? Do you think magically Republicans are going to extend these enhanced subsidies. I think would be enough because I think they're petrified of this. I think they're absolutely petrified of the impact

com mess. I think they look at for a way out. Yeah, well right, And so I don't have that level of faith right now because they are beholden to Donald Trump. And this is a man who found his affordability in the rative for a maximum of five hours one night before he the next day said don't talk to me about affordability. I mean they are going to do whatever he says, and until he's out there saying the personation is noted there, Joel, I see that. It's incredible. Check

you know you got to keep that up. What more?

incredible impersonation Donald Trump and an even better one of George W. Bush, the president that that he serves so firstly, and Paul Lagalla busted into a Bill Clinton, uh that would deceive anyone. And I just thought that was very impressive that the presidents that they had served, that they had just kind of embodied their voice so realistically.

got paid. Yeah, it always came back. But even if there was like a you know, a temporary you know, bulip in it, you you're you're not getting paid that much anyways, right, and you you continue to show up

and it's it's work that you care about. But ultimately, you know, you've got to be able to afford things. And I don't want to use public servants as a as a political football in that way. But we cannot be the only party that cares about that one. One side of the spectrum right now is letting Donald Trump just run rough shot over the entire federal government, dismantling the civil servants, civil service that we fought so hard to build in an a political way in this country.

And uh, you know, so I get Tim Kane when when he's trying to support federal workers, but you know the same is true from our corner. And so I do think this is uh, we we have to keep fighting. But like Democrats have to read the room the do you think Schumer should resign as party leader? H I I think that there are very valid and open questions about that. I want I don't know Chuck Schumer. I've

not met with Chuck Schumer. You know, I get that you know there is a lot going on behind the scenes, and you know, for a party that is out of power, and so you know that's that's not something I'm prepared to say, as we said here, but it is an open question. In my mind.

finals I believe will see the light of day. They have to. Voters are demanding it. But you make a broader point just about you know how we have to work together. No one senator can promise to get anything done on their own. You have to build relationships. You have to be able to work across the aisle. And I'm not somebody who presents just to be some above it all centrist. I am not, and I, like I said, We'll always tell voters you know where I stand on things,

and my mind is made up on something. I'm not going to hide from you what I believe about it. But that doesn't absolve me, or any senator or any congressman of a responsibility to represent all the people in our states, because it is inevitable in a state like Kentucky if I win, you know, there are going to be lots of people here who did not vote for me, and they deserve a voice and they deserve representation as well.

The problem that we have right now in this country is that, you know, you can have seventy five million people vote for Kamala Harris and marginally more millions vote for Trump, and they pretend that the score was one hundred to nothing, I know, and that all the other people didn't exist. You don't, you didn't win.

American death from finandol. Well, there's another uniquely American death, and that's to get killed atra elementary school. And you know, when you've got senators, you know, who are completely owned by the NRA that that aren't even looking out for response responsible gun owners anymore. You know, I've just been impressed with, you know, his leadership on that issue and other things, and somebody who I think is intelligent, whose

heart's in the right place. And yeah, so I admire it, admire that guy.

I know Gavin Newsom has been very public in saying this. I've been saying it privately for months, that this administration intends to have free and fair elections in twenty twenty eight. And so if your listeners care at all about our two hundred and fifty year experiment with democracy here or liberal democracy in America, it is imperative that we turn

out in massive numbers in twenty twenty six. I believe it's one of our last chances to provide accountability for this administration and to ensure that Americans have a free and fair choice, whether that be for Andy Basheer or anyone else in twenty twenty eight. So I don't think the stakes could be any higher. And I will say Andy Basheer has been an incredible governor of this state, and he's shown it path to victory here for Democrats who want to lead with their values to respect him for that.

happens if you have bad intelligence. Like I'm working with people who are nervous that the information you know, we already know there's a lot of misinformation and disinformation out there, and that if we don't figure out clean ways to get information, then we're going to make terrible national security decisions. Like how bad is the flow of intelligence these days?

Do you is it in considering sort of how much we've alienated some of our key allies, you know, in the in the world of the Five Eyes, all the English language allies of ours that I get the impression that there's either concern that, you know, we've got too many leaks in our system or all of our stuff. There's one country in particular that gets access to intelligence

without telling them what what is? What do you feel like is the state of America, the American the intelligence that are are the intelligence community is getting these days?

an example of this. During COVID, you may recall some of these images of Vladimir Putin setting at the end of a you know, a thirty foot table and an advisor you know, at the other end, and I, you know, equipped at the time that he had entered the late stage Howard Hughes phase of his government, his governing.

But he also routinely just says things that are untrue, and you don't know if that's propaganda. I believe at this point that Vladimir Putin's information environment has become massively polluted because everybody in the Siliviki and the intelligence community in Russia has figured out that like, this is what this man believes, this is what this man wants to hear, and that's what they tell him, and he's manipulated in

those ways. So there are very real examples of the consequences of that type of government that we see with Russia and the atrocities that are being committed in Ukraine. So let's go from Russia to the US intelligence community,

and then I'll just finish my response with kids. My security clearance was revoked, as we talked about it at the top of the show, and it was revoked because I said something mean about Donald Trump six years ago, and because they found out I was going to exercise political speech by potentially, you know, by considering a run for the US Senate.

think the follow on effects of something like what happened to me? But it is since I mean James Comy being indicted and other people who were actively serving in the CIA being walked out by security because they ended up on some list that nobody knows how well. So this is going to and perhaps already has a massive chilling effect throughout our federal government. And it's not just the intelligence community. I mean Donald Trump went to war

with a weather forecast during his first administration. We might recall where he modified the course of a map rather than just saying, you know, I accidentally added an extra state in my comment. Right, So, up and down the civil service, you have people who know that if they speak truth to power like they're supposed to, they're just going to be out a job. And so that is dangerous for national security. It's dangerous for domestic security to not have expertise in the civil service, and.

out these orders on these on these Venezuela on these boats outside of the coast of Venezuela. I'd ask Jim Stavertez, former NATA supremat like commander, former head of Southern Command. I said, what happens if you get an order you're not on our pcent?

carry out lawful orders. And it's easy for me to say from the cheap seats over here at the stage of my life, I only, you know, hope that I would have had the courage of putting the same situation that i'm that I am asking other people to exhibit a day.

that all works out. So, speaking of the Senate, it is that time I said every month I would update my top five, top five, top top top five, just a reminder in October and the way I do this and my ranks have been doing this since I wrote a column called on the Trail back during my National Journal dot com outline days, which was I like to order these races are most likely to flip parties, so not in the toss up Lean ar Lean d category,

but most likely to flip to least likely to flip. Obviously, by keeping it to five, you know all of them are going to be somewhat competitive races that crack the top five.

New Hampshire is the Gene Shaheen seat that she is vacating, a Democratic seat there. So look my new top five. In some ways, number one hasn't changed. The most likely seat to flip is North Carolina. It is an open seat. It is the one open seat, you know, one of two open seats in the big seven battleground states. Right, The big seven battleground states are Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada in sort of the sun Belt, and Wisconsin, Michigan,

and Pennsylvania. And so when you look at the competitive Senate map these days, there's actually, you know, the last two cycles, they all seven of those states. We had, I think two cycles in a row. We either had seven for seven or six of the seven with Senate seats this time, right, we'd have nothing in Arizona, nothing in Nevada, there's one seat in Georgia, one seat in North Carolina, nothing in Pennsylvania, nothing in Wisconsin, and one

seat in Michigan. So it is the presidential battlegrounds. This happens to be the one cycle where we have the fewest amount of Senate seats in the presidential battlegrounds. But I think you still have to put you know, I think what I learned from the twenty twenty five elections, and again history being a guide. Every time we've seen a route like this by one party, we have seen that continue in the following even numbered year. I am

looking for the time. I mean, twenty thirteen is one of the few exceptions where Democrats did well in the off off year, but that did not translate to twenty fourteen, which was not a good year for Democrats in there and again right there was there's a HEAs in twenty thirteen is the exception to every single one of these trend lines we've been talking about with New Jersey and Virginia, et cetera. And you know, certain things I think that

I took away from the off off years. One, Democrats are ready to vote, and you know, the sheer raw number of votes that the Democratic candidate got in New Jersey versus the Republican candidate continues to blow me away. I think it's the single most important statistic that you need to understand coming out of these off off year elections.

votes than Phil Murphy got in twenty twenty one. Okay, that tells you a whole bunch of Democrats who didn't bother to show up in twenty one decided to show up in twenty five. I don't think I had anything to do with Mikey Cheryl and Jeck Chodarelly, and everything to do with the larger national environment. By the way, we got that result on Tuesday. If you recall the NBC News poll that came out two days earlier that I am a big believer of because I trust those

two pollsters. They had a generic ballot lead for the Democrats of eight points. It was the largest lead that Democrats had going back to twenty seventeen. Twenty eighteen cycle, another pretty good cycle for Democrats. So I throw all that in there in that my new top five list is skewed a bit towards the Democrats. So number one hasn't changed. That's North Carolina. It's not going to change. But my number two has. I had Georgia's the second

most vulnerable seat. After seeing what we saw with those Public Service Commission races where there was no money spent and Democrats just generically won by a lot, you've got

a growing divisive Republican primary. I highlighted an add a couple of podcasts ago where Derek Dooley, the son of Vince Dooley, the former football coach of the Bulldogs, that the super pack of Brian Kemp, the sitting governor, was running an ad that sort of lumped in the two Republican congressmen in the primary and osof as all responsible for the shutdown. So you now know what kind of campaign Dooley is going to run as the outsider, the anti Washington crowd. I think it's a smart place to

position himself at this point. Though, if Dooley is the nominee,

I think Osoff's in bigger trouble. But if Dooley is not the nominee, and so far he's still the third place candidate, I think Osoff is a bit safer than I preps. Look, he's still in the top five, but he is not number two most vulnerable. I think now you have to put in the second most vulnerable.

going to serve to reassure Platner on there. The anti Schumer vibe, the anti establishment vibe, seems to be much stronger than the anti character vibe inside the Democratic Party right now. And you know Collins is going to be defending a bunch of status quo stuff it is. You know, do I think if Janet Mills is the Democratic nominee,

Collins has a better chance of winning. I do, believe it or not, but I still think it's going to be it's going to be a hard time being an incumbent Republican running in twenty twenty six with this likely economy that we're staring at and the way Donald Trump is positioning the party's brand right, And while Susan Collins is never going to be mistaken for a Trump Republican, she's still going to have to carry around some of that baggage, some of that baggage on tariffs, some of

that baggage on health. I mean, she's probably going to be the loan Republican, you know, one of now she won't be the loan Republicans. She's going to be one of the lead Republicans trying to get these Obamacare subsidies extended, because if they do not get extended, she's done. She's completely done. Which is why I am bullish that you

will see a one year extension at a minimum of these Obamacare subsidies, because I think there is no senator that would be more vulnerable to a decision not to do that than Susan Collins. So number one is North Carolina. Number two is main Number three I am going to put Georgia. I still think that there is certainly, you know it is it is a even state. We've still not seen, you know, a demo until these psc elections. We hadn't see a Democrat went a down ballot statewide

contest in Georgia going back more than ten years. But the entire political environment in Georgia. I mean, if Georgia is indeed you know, I've been vacillating, was Georgia anti Trump state or is Georgia simply a swing state that demographics have been shifting over time? And I think there's now more and more evidence that this is a This is a realignment in Georgia. This is the growth of the Atlanta suburbs, This is all of those things that this is less about. And it may be what we're

seeing in the Atlanta metro areas. What we saw in northern Virginia that went from being an important pocket of voters for Virginia Democrats to becoming the most dominant feature of the state and of the politics of the state. And I think we're starting to starting to see more and more of that in Georgia. But I'm still going

to put it. I'm still going to put it right now in the third slot because because of the fact that this time Osof isn't going to have be running with Rafael Warnock or a presidential campaign, right, He's got

to do this entire turnout operation on his own.

as to why he lost in twenty twenty four. Boy, that's a long way away from the Mike Rogers I first started covering when he was in It's going to come as a surprise, I given that he doesn't really have any serious primary opposition, the fact that he's going down this sort of Trump grievance road on his twenty four election is a bit of a head scratcher. Doesn't seem as if he needs to be catering to that primary voter that enthusiastically. So perhaps he really believes this,

Perhaps he's going down this rabbit hole. I don't think that's good politics for him, but you know, he's still the reason I still give him and why I think Michigan could be very competitive is We're going to have a very messy Democratic primary. Who knows who gets elected? Is that the super progressive that gets elected is that the outsider and lsied is the progressive. McMorrow is the

sort of outsider. Stevens is the establishment candidate. They've all scrambled to be anti Schumer now, even Stevens on that front. So that primary could get messy, and it's an August primary, and it means that rogers Is should be in a strong position. But I am I do think that's a loser to go down the conspiracy road in a swing state like Michigan. And then I'm putting a new seat at number five. I had New Hampshire in the top

five before. No longer am I putting New Hampshire there because I think the political environment indicates that it's more likely another Republican health seat is going to fall before a Democratic health seat. And look, I think Johnson new is a much stronger candidate than Scott Brown potentially in an open seat. But if the wind is blowing left,

New Hampshire goes with the wind right, you know you can still get elected as a Republican in New Hampshire, which it needs to be in a either even or good Republican year. I don't know if this is a winnable race for any Republican Chris or Johnson unhu. If the wind is blowing as strongly for the Democrats in twenty six as it was blowing for the Democrats in New Jersey and in Virginia in twenty five, I can

just tell you that it knew it. The odds are it's going to look more more like a blue state in an environment like this than it will a swing state. So my new number five is Shared Brown and Ohio.

John Houstad is the appointed elected senator there. He's been doing quite well in some of his union endorsements and getting a few union endorsements at Shared Brown, and when he was an incumbent senator would get but if you just shift, if you believe the electorate in general is just going to be five points better across the board for Democrats, like it was in Virginia, that basically makes

Ohio a coin flip. And what we learned about Shared Brown in twenty four is he can run three to five points ahead of the Democratic of the generic Democratic number. He can't run it eight or nine points ahead of a Democratic presidential candidate. He's running in a midterm years. He has had more success running in midterm years than he has in presidential years. And he did win once in a presidential year in twenty twelve, but he had that Obama had a lot of wind at his back,

and that was quite helpful to him. In twenty eighteen, he was able to win in a Trump year thanks to, you know, a combination of a week Republican opponent, but also just again it was a good Democratic year.

that share before the results actually happen. Because if Democrats succeed in good candidate recruits in Alaska, a good candidate in Kansas, you may see them get six or seven Republican held seats in the competitive category.

You you suddenly have.

As far as the Chuck todcast is concerned, All right, let's take a couple more questions, ask Chuck. None of these will be shut down and related. This one comes from a third generation Navy vet John B from Saint Louis, and he writes, Hey, thanks for responding to my question about the atomic bowl. All right, so it's not a first time long time, but at least a second time long time. I'm a World War Two in Cold War history buff and I think it's crucial to keep conversations

about those times alive in our modern discourse. We live in the shadow of those events. I'm wondering how America might have been different during the past fifty years if we had not ended the draft falling Vietnam. I think we could expand that to include national service in general. Thought, John, you are scratching an itch that I'm constantly dealing with. I think, you know, I think not having national service.

I think national service could be a huge advancement of trying to depolarize America, right, getting people, getting American citizens to believe that they have to that part of your citizenship is to give a little bit to this country and service. And it doesn't have to be in the military. It can be a variety of ways you can give. It could be working, you know, in home health care for an elderly parent without a close knit family. It could be cleaning up rivers and streams. It could be

teaching in underserved communities that need more school teachers. It could simply be tutoring, or it could be military service. I think anything.

same uniform. They realize when you wear the same uniform you bleed the same red blood, that hey, they're really the differences really are are all surface. They're not They're not very deep at all. So not to sort of try to like, you know, but for the good old days kind of mindset, I'm a I'm a huge advocate of national service, and I think it could be a again, you know, you know, whether it's a way to pay

for college. There's all sorts of ways that you create sort of for every year of national you know, maybe everybody has to do one, and every extra year you give you get that much more off of your tuition. But I think there's a lot of ways, you know, or to trade school, whatever you wanted to do it. Anything that we could do to sort of get Americans

from different walks of life to have to have to give back for a period of time only strengthens the fabric of this country.

up every ounce of luck in the entire state. Bobby Petrino's come back to or hit all the wrong notes, and honestly, Faydeville needs a total due over new coach, new schemes.

kind of like you know what Auburn is. It's like, you know, it has all the ingredients, but it's impossible to succeed because the boosters are always going to get in your way. It just trusts me from experienced mind me.

be a great job. It is not clear they want to invest in football as much as they do basketball and baseball. That seems to be the be the biggest problem there. I do think the Penn State job is actually quite appealing to because there's such a loyal fan base. You I actually think even though Franklin, you know, think about how long he survived without succeeding at the tippy tippy top, which means fan base has actually a lot

more patience than it gets credit for. So that would be a good one that I think you could see quick success at and sustained success that and be in a community that would be pretty comforting. I mean you could turn you could definitely turn Happy Valley into Tuscaloosa and have a Nick Saban like run there. And that's probably the way I look at it. Where could you have a Nick Saban like run where you might go a decade and just be so dominant. I think Fills a place to do that. I think I think a

Happy Valley is a place to that. I'm less convinced you can do that in Gainesville, and I don't you know. I think history shows you it's pretty difficult to do. And I don't know if Virginia Tech it can be on that highest level right now. I don't know if they have the financial backing to do that.

that that Joe Biden did appeal to in twenty twenty. Yes, But I also think it's pretty clear, you know. I think it's a fair question about about whether it is hard. You know, I think I think race is less of an issue. I think gender was more of an issue. But it's hard to disaggregate it because you had a

poor economic environment. She was defending the history of sitting vice presidents trying to succeed unpopular presidents is pretty stark, right, you know, Hubert Humphrey couldn't win with LBJ, but he came awfully close, and neither could she. So it is I think it's hard to find isolate the specific voter itself. You hear it in there, but you'd have a better argument if she lost with a better economic record. And I think that that's.