This is a lightly edited transcript of the November 4 edition of Right Now With Perry Bacon. You can watch the video here or by following this show on YouTube or Substack.
Perry Bacon: We’re obviously gonna talk about tonight’s election results across the—really, I mean, really in three places—but really across the country there are elections happening. So we’re gonna dive into three in depth.
So, welcome, guys. Thanks for joining me.
Monica Potts: Thanks for having us.
Alex Shephard: Great to be back.
Bacon: So let’s start, like, as—when I just looked up—let’s go through them quickly.
So, Virginia: Abigail Spanberger, the Democrat, appears to have won by 12, 13, something like that, last I checked. That’s similar to what Democrats won in 2017, the first time Trump ran. It’s a lot. I think Harris won by about six in 2024, so a big overperformance compared to that.
So what are you making? What happened in Virginia? I’ll start with Alex.
Shephard: I mean, I think that this was a—a huge overperformance in a lot of ways. I think it didn’t shock me. I think, you know, the state of Virginia itself is being hit particularly hard by the ongoing government shutdown. It is, in a lot of ways, the kind of most establishment-friendly state of the moment.
I think what we’re gonna see—I don’t wanna get too far ahead of us—but I think that people are gonna look at Spanberger now as a kind of generational talent, because she, you know, is racking up pretty huge numbers there. And I think, you know, that she should be praised for that. But, you know, I can feel the gravitational pull of the 2028 takes already.
I think that people should remember that Jay Jones, who spent the last, you know, month embroiled in, you know, a pretty serious scandal, also significantly overperformed. And I think that that sort of points me to my kind of big take from right now, which is just that everywhere you turn, you know, Democratic voters are mad as hell. They’re scared about the current administration, and they wanna show it.
But I think that, you know, the larger story here—being one that benefits, you know, the sort of establishment figures like Abigail Spanberger—I’m very, very skeptical of that.
Bacon: Monica?
Potts: Yeah, I’m equally skeptical, and it’s important to remember that in a year like this, the voters that are gonna be motivated to turn out are just way different than the voters that will probably be motivated to turn out in 2026 and 2028.
So it’s hard to extrapolate what happens in one state—especially one as close to D.C. as Virginia, and that is dependent on government jobs, has a lot of people hit by the cuts that DOGE made and the Trump administration has continued to make. And it had a sitting Republican governor, and so the motivation was to kind of swing the other way.
And that happens a lot in Virginia. So it’s not necessarily gonna tell us a lot about what’s gonna happen next year around the country. But I think it does show this year that voters are very mad at the Trump administration and the Republican Party, and they had a weak candidate in the Republican nominee there.
Bacon: So when you say that we don’t know much more about this—this does line up with, like, if you, like… I would say, right? Notice that the Democrats are gonna have a strong midterm, and the results in Virginia do line up with the—like we’re in there—we’re probably in a 2018-like environment.
Is that fair to say?
Potts: I think so, yeah. I mean, every midterm is gonna swing that way. Whoever’s in the White House is probably gonna lose some seats in the House.
But I think also we just don’t know what’s gonna happen in a year either. And a lot’s gonna depend on the redistricting that’s happening around the country in Republican states, and then in Democratic states in response to that.
A lot’s gonna depend on what happens with the Trump administration between now and then. But I think it also just shows you that if the Trump administration continues like it has been, Democratic voters are going to be motivated to turn out—and who they run on the Democratic spectrum is gonna be less important than that they run.
Bacon: Go ahead Alex.
Shephard: I was gonna say, I think that there’s this sort of big take here, which is just that, you know, Donald Trump won last year because he promised to lower prices. I don’t think it’s really that much more complicated than that. It was also because his first opponent was 8,000 years old, but it was, you know, mostly the first thing.
And he has not kept that promise, and I think the economy will probably be worse when you go into next year. So that’s the sort of big umbrella take—and it’s not that interesting. I think that the sort of micro take here, though, is that the Democratic base that’s gonna choose which candidates go up against Republicans here, I think, is gonna look quite different from the one in 2018.
I think that there’s a lot of skepticism about the party establishment and what they’re doing. And I think that, you know, the victories of Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger are, I think, unfairly or undeservedly going to kind of ease some of the tension there. Democrats can say, look, you know, look how big we won by choosing these kind of boring candidates.
But, you know, I think that the larger story is that this base is still really, really upset with the party leaders.
Bacon: I was struck on Monday before the election—Spanberger was asked about Mamdani and basically said he’s promising unrealistic, fairytale things. It was sort of weird. It was unusual. She was cruising to victory.
I didn’t sort of see the point, you know, just rise above it. But it suggests that she does, probably—I think she is more leaned into this progressive-centrist fight than, like, Andy Beshear. There are a lot of Democrats who sort of avoid it all. She’s going to position herself as a leader of the sort of moderate affect now, right?
Potts: I think that’s right. And also, I mean, you know, Virginia Governors served four terms. It behooves her to position herself as a potential national candidate going down…
Bacon: Four years, you mean? Right? You said he said four terms. You mean four years.
Potts: Four years. I’m sorry—yeah, one-term year, yeah.
And so, she’s probably leaning into this fight for her own reasons in that way too. But I do think that Democrats are deciding now how to present themselves in 2026. And, you know, they feel that they’re kind of lost in the wilderness right now, and they need to come up with a new message—a new way of messaging to voters.
And that’s not entirely wrong, I don’t think.
Bacon: Talk about New Jersey. I think, you know—and Alex, throw this in a little bit—I think there was a lot of worry that in New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill had really been kind of, not just blah, but actually an actively bad candidate.
But the margin of victory suggests that she’s, like, she’s gonna win by double. Just suggests—I think Harris won this state by also around six—so she’s gonna do better than Harris did. That’s not surprising necessarily, but she overcame what I thought was a bad campaign.
The incumbent governor’s a Democrat, was not very popular. So, Monica, what’s your—what’d you make in New Jersey?
Potts: It was less close than I thought it would be. I was prepared for it to be closer for kind of the opposite reason—the opposite dynamics of what are happening in Virginia.
They have a current Democratic governor. New Jersey has its own weird politics. New Jersey voters are almost always mad at their current governor for some reason or another, and they wanna switch paths. But the fact that it was so decisive for the Democratic candidate, I think, does just really show the national mood is anti-Republican and anti-Trump right now for voters.
Bacon: What do think Alex?
Shephard:I mean, I think I was sort of ready to treat New Jersey as a completely singular state here. And, you know, it was… I wrote an anxious piece after talking to a lot of people in New Jersey last week. That was wrong.
I mean, I think that whether or not Mikie Sherrill ran a good campaign, I think is kind of a question that doesn’t matter at any point at this point. She won in a state where there was a lot of skepticism about Democratic rule, where the incumbent Phil Murphy had only won by one and a half points four years ago—and she romped to victory.
And I think that, you know, the larger story there, you know, is that, you know, there are a lot of ways in which this—the dynamic right now—is like 2018: that if you’ve got a D next to your name right now, people are going to vote for you.
And I think that even with redistricting, it’s gonna make it a pretty profound difference next year. At the same time, I think that in some ways what we’re seeing now, especially with kind of everybody succeeding here—I’ll talk about New York in a second—but is that, you know, I think that the party’s fight over what exactly it is post-2024 is going to get supercharged right now.
And I think that Democratic leaders are gonna take a sort of a victory lap right now. They’re gonna try to push various sort of left-populist candidates out. They’re gonna make the case that somebody like Haley Stevens, right—who looks a lot like Mikie Sherrill, right?
A kind of milquetoast candidate and who’s particularly uninspiring as a public speaker, somebody whose kind of ideological framework is not kind of something that you could easily explain to voters, and certainly not somebody like Zohran Mamdani in New York, or a figure who can kind of go anywhere, right?
Like, I think that the anxiety over the loss in 2024 was built partly around the sense that the party didn’t have messengers anymore. And I think voters wanted people who could go out and talk. It’s one of the reasons why Graham Platner has been able to hang around despite having a Nazi tattoo. And I think that there was some hope that we would have a little bit more clarity about how that tension would get resolved after this.
And I think instead, you know, this kind of fight is gonna just accelerate now.
Bacon: Let’s zone in on one part of—like both in New Jersey and Virginia—it looks like we had a lot of talk about realignment, working-class voters of Republican and Republican Republicans. I think some of the exit polling—we can debate that itself—does not.
New Jersey, if you could, we’re gonna see a realignment. New Jersey would be a place that has a large Black population, largely non-white population from the large working-class towns. If someone like Mikie Sherrill, who is kind of a generic college-graduate Democrat, can win by 13, I’m skeptical that we need to—we need to rethink all minor.
Maybe 2024 was a bit of an outlier. We need to—we need to rethink all of the political coalitions. But what do you think about that, Monica?
Potts: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think 2024 was a bit of an outlier for a bunch of reasons. And I think one of the things I see often is that Democrats always overlearn the lessons of the last election and—and focus group themselves into a weird corner.
And they…
Bacon: But now it’s 60 page reports, to be clear. I dunno if you read now, the new thing is…
Monica Potts: Yeah. I mean, we can find as many reports as we want to say whatever we want. And I think that the main thing that voters have been—I think the Democratic base wants bolder action from their Democratic candidates.
They want more talk about the fundamental unfairness of the American economy. They want more bold ideas about how to change the status quo. They don’t wanna just say, we’re gonna undo everything that Trump did and stop there. They want new, fresh ideas, and they want a positive message for the future.
But I think that that can take a different form in different places. They want people to feel genuine and say what they really believe. And so I think a lot of this hand-wringing stuff will probably—should probably—pass by the time we’re talking about who’s running in 2026, because it’s just gonna depend on where they’re running and what they personally believe as candidates.
And I think that’s one thing that people forget at a time like this.
Bacon: You’re in New York, right Alex?
Shephard: Yes, I am, yeah.
Bacon: So talk about—so it looks like Zohran, just looking at the poll, looking at the results just now—I think Zohran appears, and is probably going to clear, to be right near 50%. So that’s something that we were looking for. The results are a little bit closer than I thought, though.
If only—it looks like Sliwa’s number dropped a lot, and it was like a two-man race. It appears Zohran’s gonna be about 50 and Cuomo around 42. So what do you make of—so the polling was mostly like 45, 35, 15. So what do you make of the results?
Shephard: I think that there was some, certainly, hope—talking to people in the Mamdani orbit earlier today—that there would be this kind of decisive mandate that would emerge from this.
And what they were looking for was an opportunity to essentially tell people to shut up when they said, like, oh, you know, you didn’t do enough. I think, you know, the kind of arbitrary standard for that is clearing 50%. It looks like he’s gonna probably be around there.
That said, I think that Cuomo’s performance here was strong enough, particularly in eroding support from Sliwa—which, you know, is sort of an accomplishment when you consider how many Republicans in New York State despise Andrew Cuomo and have despised him for many, many years.
I still think that the larger story here is that, you know, a 34-year-old Muslim who was born in Uganda, who no one had heard of a year ago, ran a, you know, just an incredible campaign here, inspired people, and activated voters who do not vote normally. And I think, in a lot of ways—well, I’ll have piece in our upcoming issue that’s about some of this—but he did all the things that people wanted Harris and Biden to do, right? He brought back Latino voters. He brought back Asian voters. He brought back young voters.
He was able to kind of go anywhere and talk to anyone. He did it with a very Bernie Sanders–y sort of message discipline—it’s very hard to knock him off his game. And I think that, you know, the story here is gonna be, well, what happens now? And I think that the party establishment, by keeping him at arm’s length for so long, has set him up to fail.
And I think that—I think the tension there is gonna reverberate in a lot of different ways. You saw this with Spanberger’s comments earlier. You know, looking at that race from afar, Spanberger’s message was not super different from Zohran, right? Zohran’s promises themselves are really, really small, right?
A free bus is not, you know, even a chicken in every pot—it’s a free bus. And, you know, Spanberger also talked about affordability issues, but when it came time to talk about him, she was like, oh no, this guy is, you know, beyond the pale. He is totally different.
And I think the party establishment is gonna have to kind of wake up to the fact that the energy right now is still all around these kind of left-populist insurgent candidates. So, you know, they can maybe weather out storms in places like Michigan in these primaries, but it doesn’t change the fact that what people are still looking for—we know from this race that it doesn’t matter—but what people are still looking for is enthusiasm.
Dynamism—things that were lacking in 2024. Mamdani had those things. He’s gonna win, you know, by a smaller margin. The party establishment is gonna crow tomorrow, and they’re gonna be wrong.
Bacon: Monica, what do you think about that?
Potts: Yeah, I think that’s right. And also, I would say that this was a citywide mayoral election, and Mamdani had almost the entire Democratic establishment sort of against him.
And so he ran anyway. And you know what? I thought Democrats were paying more attention to that race—and Republicans were paying more attention to that race—than the governor’s race in Virginia and the governor’s race in New Jersey. And so, you know, I think that the fact that he overcame that, despite that opposition really from everywhere, just showed how excited people were. And like Alex said, he ran a fantastic campaign. It was just really incredibly engaging, and it hit a lot of notes that people wanted to hear.
So, you know, a lot of his promises were stuff that other cities do—like free buses. That’s not a radical idea. A lot of cities have free buses around the world. But, you know, he has a lot of opposition in the state of New York.
Some of those things are gonna be harder to accomplish, but I think whether voters give him a bit of a pass for trying is something we’ll see. You know, they wanted somebody to champion their ideas, and how much he can bring to pass might not be necessarily something that they hold against him, as long as he’s earnestly trying and making headway on those things.
Bacon: I wanna zone on three things—three Democratic leaders. Over the weekend, or the last seven days, I think Hillary Clinton was asked somewhere, gave an answer that was asked about Jewish resident safety—and kind of a non-answer.
Schumer spent the last few days literally declaring he would not say who he voted for—kind of running away in a press conference— won’t say who he voted for. Barack Obama did this weird thing where, I guess, he leaked off his staff or—there was a phone call in The New York Times in which Obama said congratulations—congratulated Mamdani—and said he wanted to help him, but there was no public endorsement.
And so that was also bizarre. So what do you make of, like—so, of, of those—any of those three actions?
Shephard: I mean, I think that it—it points to a party that is still living in fear of taking any action that could get put on a mailer. Like, I think it’s not even just, you know, the sort of cowardice or lack of principle involved here—it’s that it’s an outdated way of thinking. They are—they are convinced that if they can somehow keep or maintain rhetorical distance from Mamdani, that it somehow won’t come back to bite them.
That’s not gonna happen, right? Mamdani is gonna be a focal point of Republican attacks in the next year. There is going to be a concerted effort, I think, by the Trump administration, but also by forces within this—New York City—probably the NYPD. Zohran’s actually, I think, walked a pretty fine tightrope with them so far.
But I think that people will be looking to see what happens there. But I think, in general, what we’ve seen, you know, is just an establishment that remains terrified of taking any kind of risk. They remain really scared of embracing people with new ideas, and I think that they’re always worried about how actions will come back to haunt them in some way.
But in this instance, I think what people are seeing—what a lot of the young voters, people of color who turned out here in New York are seeing—is a candidate who listened to them, who paid attention to them in the way that Democrats haven’t.
And I do think that if they throw him to the wolves—which is what I think that they are planning on doing—that that will come back to bite them in 2026 too.
Bacon: So your point essentially is like Mamdani is one of the most famous Democrats in the country now. He’s part of the team whether they want him or not, they should help him succeed. And their current posture here is basically rooting for him to fail. Is that what you’re getting at?
Shephard: I mean, I think that the—the point here—I think the general point of this race—is that Democrats everywhere are winning, and that Democrats everywhere are activated.
And I think that pushing that kind of enthusiasm is the way to win. And it’s gonna look like Abigail Spanberger probably in more places than it looks like Zohran Mamdani, and it looks somewhere in between in some other places too. But, you know, the party’s insistence on kneecapping those people is something that, you know, consistently hurts them.
It hurt them in 2024, right? I think that the decision by the Harris campaign to kind of modulate its rhetoric on Gaza while still refusing, for instance, to give them even a symbolic, non-televised speaking appearance at the DNC actually really did resonate for a lot of people. I think what people wanted to see, one, was that the Democratic Party had space for them—that they weren’t gonna be told to shut up about Gaza, or trans issues, or, you know, $15 minimum wage, whatever it is—that they didn’t wanna be condescended to in this way.
And that Democrats have consistently pushed the same kind of message, right? Which is that the stakes are too important for you to care about that—you need to trust us.
Right. We’re gonna sort of moderate to speak to this kind of hypothetical voter, and then we’ll win. Well, you know, certainly when I talk to people now—and this is, I think, the core difference between now and 2018—is that people are pissed off, and they don’t trust the Democrats because the Democrats keep saying, we know how to win, right?
We’ve picked these people—you know, we designed them in a lab to win. They don’t win, right? So, Graham Platner—like, he might have a Nazi tattoo, which is crazy and bad—but he can speak to people, right?
And I think that what the party hasn’t shown is any sense of humility that is interested in actually learning from these people or embracing them, especially in places where they can win.
Potts: Yeah, I think that’s right. You know, it is in the interest of Democrats for Mamdani to be able to deliver on some of his promises, because they wanna show that the Democratic Party can deliver things that they say that they’re gonna deliver on. You know, it’s important.
We haven’t talked about Katie Wilson in Seattle, but she’s another challenger to the left. We won’t find out about her race tonight on the East Coast, but, you know, it’s important that affordable housing is built in cities where Democratic voters are struggling to be able to pay their rents and can’t buy houses. It’s important for the Democratic Party to kind of get behind these ideas.
And I think that the other, you know, component of it is that, whatever happens—no matter who is elected anywhere in the country—the Republican Party is exceptionally skilled at painting the entire party as who they see as their most extreme members. They are good at attacks; they are good at political attacks, and the Democrats are terrified of it.
And they—I think they need to find a way to just say, you know, these are the positive things that we believe, that we believe that they can deliver for voters, without being so scared about that.
Bacon: Are we talking about one party or two parties? Like, are—I guess you all are describing a situation in which there’s a big party, and it’s socialist in New York City, but it’s moderate in Virginia, and it’s somewhere between in New Jersey, and so on.
I get the sense there can be a lot of people who are Democrats who are openly rooting against Mamdani—or privately, for sure. Same thing with Spanberger. If you’re more progressive—like, when I go on Twitter, I do not see people who seem to be in the same party. I see people who, like, maybe hate their intra-party rivals more than Trump.
Are we describing that accurately? Is the pro-Israel person in New York hoping he succeeds? I don’t think they are.
Shephard: No, I think you might be actively rooting against it, but—and I think that’s a problem. I think it’s a problem on the other side too, right? I think that there’s a desire for priors to be confirmed here. And the larger environment right now kind of suggests that everyone’s priors are being confirmed, which is, generally speaking, I think, a really good sign.
I mean, I focus on the sort of other part of it, partly ‘cause that’s where I am politically, but also just ‘cause I think it’s more interesting. That said, you know, I think that the party itself remains stuck in a way of thinking that they can kind of model tech—and sort of design their way out of these problems.
Bacon: The Popularism, DLCism modernism, centrism, that thing.
Shephard: It’s a party that’s afraid of politics, right? Like, I think that politics is talking to people, and it’s sort of shifting based on that. And I think that the sort of dream that every Democratic strategist has is that they can win elections without doing any politics at all.
Right? That somehow you can just sort of adopt the right positions and the voters will fall in line. Well, it doesn’t work like that. And, you know, I think one of the things on the left that’s a real problem is that everybody hates Trump because he is an authoritarian and he is a moron—but he is a damn good politician, right?
And he understands that. And I think that one of the things he understands as a campaigner is that people want you to tell them what you’re gonna do, right? They wanna hear how you’re gonna materially change their lives.
And I think that what you’re seeing on the Democratic side right now is still this over-willingness to sort of very carefully fine-tune policies so that you say, okay, yeah, you know, our new policy—we’re gonna ban congressional stock trading. Well, yeah, that communicates that you’re an anti-corruption party, sure. But like, how’s it gonna change somebody’s life, right?
Twelve-dollar minimum wage—that’s great. But the party said fifteen, you know, eight years ago, right?
What does that say about the party?
Potts: Yeah, and they have to connect those two—like, they have to connect those messages to how that’s gonna help the voters that are in front of them, because they should be talking to them about those ideas. Like you said, that was what Mamdani did. He campaigned—it was like an old-fashioned campaign—where he connected to voters and went to their neighborhoods and talked about the issues that they cared about, and talked about how his policy ideas would connect to those ideas that they cared about.
And I think that you’re right, Perry, about the pundit class. Like, this is definitely a conversation that they’re having online and in their Substack. I don’t know how much Democratic voters really and truly pay attention to that. I hope it’s less attention than we pay.
Bacon: So Alex has a piece that just—on the website—called, basically, The Democrats Are Having Their Tea Party Moment. And it really resonated with me ‘cause I’ve heard a lot of my friends basically saying, I used to trust the party’s view about electability or what have you. And two things—three things—happened. One: they insisted upon Biden running when I thought that was—when, you know, people thought that was—a mistake.
They insisted upon sort of anointing Harris in a way that people thought was a mistake. And three, I could see with my eyes that the Gaza policy was a mistake, but they kept doing it anyway.
And so, sort of raising these—I think that, so the point being that the Democratic Party doesn’t trust their leaders anymore, and I think that’s pretty obvious. I think the other point I wanna give is that—I think, Alex, you’re saying—is the Democratic leaders themselves don’t know that they’re distrusted.
Is that part of what’s going on here?
Shephard: Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, part of the reason I wanted to write this piece is that I just think that Jefferies and Schumer are in really, really big trouble as they head into reelection years in 2026 and 2028… Schumer’s up in 28’.
Potts: Yeah.
Shephard: But you know, I think that there’s a larger sense within the party that the people that are running it don’t know what they’re doing.
And I think that that sense is really well deserved. Now, one of the other lessons, I think, from today is that you can kind of run anybody with a D next to their name right now, and they’re gonna do pretty good. But I think what you’re seeing is that the party establishment is not taking that as a sort of expansive idea.
They’re taking that as a restrictive idea, and I think that voters are responding to something different right now. Again, it’s just different than it was in 2018, when the candidates that the sort of voters largely coalesced around were very pragmatic. They were people that looked like Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger.
They were kind of national-security-aligned, and, you know, I think the party is starting to look elsewhere. And, you know, I think one of the lessons for me of Mamdani’s victory is that Trump in 2016 understood that the media environment had changed fundamentally—and that you could kind of reach, you know, entirely new groups of voters with different types of messages. And you could, you know, you just have to go where they are.
And, you know, there are Democrats that are starting to understand that. Graham Platner, you know—I still think he should probably drop out—but he is one of those Democrats. And, you know, I think that the party establishment actually, you know, still favors these candidates that go on Meet the Press.
They don’t say anything substantively, because if you say anything substantively, then somebody’s gonna disagree with you. And, you know, that’s where the energy is now.
I think one of the takeaways from today is that maybe you don’t see the same kind of groundswell you saw in the base in 2010 and 2014 in particular, but I think that there is a lot of anger in the base right now that, you know, is directed at the leaders.
Bacon: Do you agree with that, Monica?
Potts: Yeah, I do. I mean, I think that what voters don’t wanna hear anymore is that things take time in Congress—that, you know, that our institutions have to be protected because they’ve already been wrecked.
You know, Trump could do a lot of things really quickly by being a bad president. He could do a lot of bad things really quickly. Why can’t we do good things more quickly? And I think that that’s what you’re gonna see a lot of Democratic voters, and especially the base, really demanding—is, you know, we don’t wanna hear about why things take time.
We don’t wanna hear about bipartisanship. We don’t wanna hear about the coalitions you’re building in D.C. We want you to do things, and we want you to do them quickly. And I think that’s a different environment.
Bacon: I agree with what Alex said generally, but it’s hard to look at a night in which the, the blah candidates won—one by 12, one by 13.
Is it possible that if JD Vance, or Trump, or let’s say JD Vance or somebody like him, is the— I can see the appeal of our candidate says nothing interesting, Trump destroys the country, JD Vance says, I agree with everything Trump did. That’s a safer strategy than, We’re gonna run a socialist or someone with a Nazi tattoo.
You can see how they arrive at their position. And my sense is tonight is gonna sort of reinforce that. Haley Stevens will never say anything interesting—so she’s the best candidate in Michigan. Janet Mills will never say anything interesting—she’s the best.
You can see how they can arrive there. And I worry—I think you start here, Alex—tonight is gonna reinforce it, right?
Shephard: I think absolutely. I think that, I think that there’s a, a general reminder of the value of safety and that that is true in a lot of cases. But you know, I think what you’re also seeing here is that you want to find energy, right? You in, in Virginia, I think Abigail Spanberger did a pretty good job of that and I think that the party is shifting its messaging.
I think in general…
Bacon: She was more anti-Trump than she used to be. She used to be very much, I’m bipartisan. Look how bipartisan I am. She actually was for the anti-Trump.
Shephard: That’s true. Yeah. And I think that—I think it’s a campaign that challenged my own expectations about how she was gonna run, and I think probably pointed to the way that a lot of kind of establishment-friendly Dems are going to run.
However, I think that the larger message here is still one in which the party, you know, is living in fear of new ideas and new types of candidates. And I think the voter base is not like that at all. And I think, again, what they’re not contending with is the rise of independent media outlets—particularly things like Midas Touch—and, like, the ability for people to reach voters directly.
And so I think that, you know, the—the overall thesis here that if you run a kind of Haley Stevens-type everywhere, then you can kind of sit back and just, you know, watch, watch the success roll in—I’m not so sure that that’s right. I think that what you wanna see is a party that is showing dynamism.
Right. And I think that, you know, Schumer and Jeffries…
Bacon: I think you’re saying something… sorry to interrupt. You’re saying that person may not win the primary anyway. Right. Even if they agree that they want to have the most boring candidate possible, it appears as if the people in Maine are gonna give Platner a shot. Like, I thought Platner was gonna be out.
And it looks like these people showing at his events are like creating a primary where I thought one would end. And I think that’s what you’re… it’s not just, I think that it may be bad for the general election, the primary voter may no longer take these kinds of candidates, right?
Shephard: Yeah. I think that it’s not necessarily the question of whether someone is more electable than somebody else. Like, I’m agnostic on that point. Like, I dunno. I mean, I have candidates that I like more, but I think that Democratic figures are, one, overstating their ability to select people based on electability criteria. They’ve, frankly, they’ve just made up.
But two, I think they’re frankly overestimating their ability to control the environment. That’s what I think. And that’s what you’re seeing in Michigan. And I think that what’s gonna play out over the next year is going to be very, very interesting.
And that, you know, I think that Mills may very well prevail in Maine, right? But that race is starting earlier than a lot of others, and I think you’re gonna see these things pop up.
The other thing, which I think is very interesting, is to look at Hakeem Jeffries here in New York. I think Jeffries is gonna face a sort of DSA-backed challenger, probably in the next week or two. And that race—how that race gets nationalized—is gonna be very interesting. But how that race affects others will too, because suddenly, you know, there will be the question of: if you think Chuck Schumer should remain, you know, Speaker, if you’re in a Senate race, is a very interesting one.
Bacon: I think Janet Mills wouldn’t even commit to that.
She kind of not answer ‘cause she knows where the numbers are. Monica talk about like, I mean, do Hakeem Jeffries and Schumer care if they’re popular or not? I mean, I guess they care if they lose their seats, but does it matter if they’re popular otherwise?
Potts: I mean, it matters if they’re popular in their districts.
That’s probably the only thing that matters to them. They want an effective caucus. They wanna be able to control their caucus and get what they want done in Washington. But I do think that, you know, there’s kind of a difference between winning in 2026 and in 2028, which—you know, in 2026, anybody with a D next to their name could probably win.
Depending on what happens in the next four years and who’s running on the Republican ticket, there’s gonna be a lot of anti-Trump sentiment still around. You know, if Trump wrecks the economy, then anybody with a D next to their name might be able to win. But there’s also a different question about actually building and using power effectively.
And so, you know, in 2020, electability was the main worry that Democrats had, and they chose Joe Biden. And that wasn’t a candidate who could last. He only could serve four years. Nobody wanted to support him again in 2024. Ultimately, he was kicked out of the race for a bunch of different reasons.
And so, do you wanna just win in ’26 and ’28, or do you wanna win in a way that helps you build power for the future—that helps you build a new majority, that helps you actually truly reverse a lot of the things that Trump did, and also really tackle inequality and make things better for your voters, and change the course of a lot of the things that have been going bad for a long time for a lot of voters in a way that will have an impact on their lives?
And so I think that if you just wanna win one race, you might not have to think about these questions a lot. But if you do wanna win kind of a lasting chance at really having the presidency for a while, really having the House and the Senate—then you do need to think about what your base wants, what the Democratic coalition you wanna build wants, and what voters wanna see you actually accomplish once you get there.
Bacon: So we didn’t learn much tonight, in part because it appeared to be anybody with a D on their name won. So you can’t really take much… Is that—is that the sort of subtext here?
Potts: I never thought that you were gonna be able to take a huge lesson from tonight.
Shephard: Yeah. I think that it buys everybody time to figure out what they’re gonna do.
Right. I think that that’s the big lesson right now. And Democrats have, you know, already had a lot of time—and they haven’t done anything with it, frankly. But I think what you have here is the sort of broad outlines of a party that can work to take on Trump.
You’ve got Mamdani and the kind of more, you know, activist left-wing policy laboratory way. I think Mamdani’s connection to the kind of abundance framework is something that’s often been misunderstood. But he’s very much an abundance, sort of YIMBY-style, you know, good-government, cut-red-tape-style Democrat.
And then on the other end you’ve got Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, who are, you know, less rhetorically interested, but I think generally aligned with the party’s overall image of itself as a kind of, you know, good-government, we-won’t-sort-of-bug-you-too-much, there’s-too-much-chaos-out-there, we’re-just-gonna-sit-down-and-get-stuff-done kind of party.
And I think that in terms of messaging, you see it everywhere, right? It’s—people hate this administration and they hate its policies, and they want anyone who will stand up to it. And they also think that everything’s way too expensive right now. And I think that that message itself is probably enough to carry them through the midterms.
Just briefly, in the last point though, what I think that they still have forgotten is just—the lesson of Barack Obama, but the lesson of Trump too—which is that voters belong to parties because they identify with them. They identify with people in them, and they have a sense that those people understand what they’re going for, and perform that in some way.
And I think that what is more concerning to me about the way that Spanberger and Sherrill have been embraced by the party and Mamdani has not, is that it suggests that Democrats still don’t understand that. That they still think that the party’s future is by showcasing, you know, a kind of version of politics that has no politics—that people just kind of, you know, put their heads down, they don’t distract you, you can just go about your life and watch, you know, Real Housewives of Salt Lake City or whatever.
And I think that the party needs to get more comfortable with dynamic figures that challenge the assumptions about what the electorate wants, because those figures keep speaking to the electorate right now. And you need to have both. And what we’re gonna see, I think, are a lot of people that are gonna say you need to have one or the other.
Bacon: Okay. I think that was a great place to close on. Thanks you guys for joining me. Thanks for everybody that tuned in and we’ll be back in a few days.
