# Blue Wave, Big Tent | The Ezra Klein Show

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

Aaron Retica and Ezra Klein argue Democrats’ gains came from listening to local voters and running candidates who fit their states.

- Show: The Ezra Klein Show
- Hosts: [Ezra Klein](https://realalpha.app/people/ezra-klein/)
- Guest: [Aaron Retica](https://realalpha.app/people/aaron-retica/) is editor at The New York Times.
- Published: Nov 5, 2026
- Length: 51 min

## The best minutes

- [32:34](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1954) [AI investment could make the economy more fragile](https://realalpha.app/s/ai-investment-could-make-the-economy-more-fragile/) (3 min)
- [41:58](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2518) [Data centers became a local electoral flashpoint](https://realalpha.app/s/data-centers-became-a-local-electoral-flashpoint/) (3 min)

Skip the opening election recap, the electoral comparison of left and moderate candidates, and the discussion of what may follow Trump.

## Full analysis: Ezra Klein thinks all but one data-center moratorium passed so far

- By Klein’s count so far, he thought all but one data-center moratorium had passed.
- That is a local political signal, but it does not establish why residents objected or whether AI spending is overbuilt.
- Builders should separate siting risk from capex stress as Democrats decide what AI rules mean.

Its 6 sections, what it means for you and what to watch are on [the page](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/#analysis), free with an account:

- [5:23](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=323) Democrats reopened states campaigns had written off
- [18:21](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1101) Voters punished policies that made life worse
- [14:43](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=883) Candidate fit does not mean moving to the center
- [44:09](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2649) Data-center votes made local opposition visible
- [34:36](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2076) AI investment could widen the market’s downside
- [32:14](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1934) Democrats face three jobs beyond winning elections

## Summary

Aaron Retica is Ezra Klein’s editor at The New York Times. In this episode, Retica turns the interview around and questions Klein about Democrats’ midterm victories.

Retica and Klein examine Democrats’ sweeping wins and what they suggest about Trump’s coalition and the political map. Klein argues that voters punished Trump for policies that made their lives worse, while Democrats benefited from candidates suited to their states and districts. He says the party should protect a varied coalition, distinguish candidates’ identities from their policy positions, and avoid assuming midterm gains guarantee future victories. Looking ahead, he urges Democrats to balance investigations, governing and long-term agenda-setting, and sees an opening for candidates who speak in moral and religious language.

### Minute by minute

- [2:13](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=133) **The political map is unsettled.** Klein calls the election evidence that states should not be written off. He says Trump failed to listen to voters about costs, war and the border, while Democrats found candidates who fit their states, including Josh Turek in Iowa, Adam Hamilton in Kansas and James Tallarico in Texas.
- [9:19](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=559) **Fit matters more than ideological labels.** Klein and Retica discuss how to weigh progressive candidates against candidates better positioned to win particular states. Klein says electoral performance is not a measure of a candidate’s policy value, but argues Democrats should learn from candidates who fit their districts. He says Jared Golden was a valuable Democrat in a red district and that the party should make it easier for such candidates to stay in office.
- [16:46](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1006) **Voters reacted to worsening lives.** Klein argues voters responded to policies that made their lives worse, rather than rejecting the populist-right style itself. He cites the war’s effect on fuel prices and aggressive immigration enforcement. Reading House results, he notes shifts toward Democrats of 17 points among men, 32 points among voters aged 18 to 29, and 28 points among Hispanic voters, while cautioning that the data cannot distinguish persuasion from turnout.
- [21:35](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1295) **Midterm waves do not predict the next race.** Klein says the groups that appeared to move toward Trump in 2024 shifted back in these results, but cautions that midterm waves do not ensure victory in the next presidential election. He compares 2006 and 2018 with Republican wins in 1994 and 2010, which were followed by Democratic presidential victories. Retica and Klein also discuss John Ossoff’s strength and Democrats’ gubernatorial gains.
- [28:59](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1739) **Identity is not identity politics.** Klein says the results included an array of historic firsts, including the first openly gay male senator, the first Muslim senator and the first Black woman governor. He argues voters had rejected unpopular positions, not candidates because of their identities, and says Josh Turek’s record of appealing to Trump voters helped make him a strong candidate.
- [31:24](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1884) **Democrats face three governing priorities.** Klein lays out three tasks: oppose and investigate Trump, find areas where Democrats can get things done, and build a longer-term agenda on issues such as health care, AI and child care. He warns that economic uncertainty, wars and other unpredictable events could shape the next two years.
- [37:52](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2272) **Congress should follow the money.** Klein says the scale of alleged corruption and misconduct makes it important for congressional investigations to focus on issues voters can follow. He urges Democrats to trace payments, contracts and other financial ties involving Trump, his family and associates, citing the Qatari jet, Jared Kushner’s fund and crypto.
- [41:03](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2463) **Data centers became a ballot issue.** Klein argues Musk’s spending may have hurt Republicans in Texas, where Democrats made large gains, and discusses Vivek Ramaswamy’s loss in Ohio and his campaign’s attack on Amy Acton. He says data centers were a prominent campaign issue and reports that all but one of dozens of data-center moratorium measures had passed at the time.
- [44:10](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2650) **Trumpism has no coherent successor.** Klein argues there was never a consistent ideology behind Trump’s impulses: Trump did not stick to the ideas others used to explain his tariffs or foreign policy. He and Retica discuss JD Vance as a possible successor, but Klein says Vance has not shown that his version of the movement is electorally appealing.

## Transcript

The Ezra Klein Show, hosted by Ezra Klein, with Aaron Retica.

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there. Where the podcast’s audio and the video part ways, some times are a minute or so off.

[1:27](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=87) This is A.G. Sulzberger. I'm the publisher of The New York Times, and I'm also a former reporter who's watched with a lot of alarm as our profession has shrunk in recent years. Normally, this is where I'd ask you to subscribe to The Times. But today, I'm encouraging you to support any news organization that's dedicated to original reporting. Whether that's your local newspaper, a national paper, or the New York Times, what matters most is that you subscribe to a real news organization doing firsthand, fact-based reporting. And if you already do, thank you. The Big Ten is real and the political map is fake.

[2:27](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=147) That is a lesson of the Democrats' historic midterm, the blue tsunami that we saw on Tuesday. Democrats won in places nobody thought they had any chance even to compete in a year ago. Kansas, Texas, Iowa, South Carolina. As I record this, it's unclear which party is going to win Mississippi. But let me say that again. It is unclear which party is going to win the Senate seat in Mississippi. That was unimaginable three months ago. They won governorships in Ohio, in Texas, in Iowa. This was a win that destroyed the reality of the red-blue map people had come to believe in so firmly. And so we're entering a new era, an era when much is unsettled.

[2:45](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=165) The realignment may not be what we thought it was in 2024. The realignment may be a map that is entirely up for grabs from here on out. Now, Democrats did do this on their own, of course. To a very large extent, President Donald Trump did it for them. And both what he did wrong and what they did right were the same thing. Listening. Trump did not listen. Did not listen to the voters. Did not even sometimes listen to himself. He was elected promising to lower costs, to end wars, to bring order at the border. Instead, he raised costs through tariffs and through new wars. and he created disorder after closing the border and sending in masked ICE agents to harass and upend settled communities. Trump at no point pivoted. He dismissed almost everything that people were angry about and his party paid the price. And at the same time, Democrats who I think their central political failing for years has been an unwillingness to listen. They listen to themselves as opposed to the voters they need to win over in state after state district after district, they found people who fit. Josh Turek in Iowa, Adam Hamilton in Kansas, James Tallarico in Texas. They found seminarians. They found Paralympians. They found a whole new class of

[3:15](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=195) candidates who could put into play a whole new set of places. And then in some places like North Carolina and Georgia, they just had candidates of such exceptional quality who understood their states so well, that they won states that should have been purple by 20 points for Roy Cooper, 18 points for John Ossoff. So there's a tremendous amount to learn from this election and a tremendous amount that is now possible after it. But to think through both the lessons that we're seeing already, but then how Democrats and for that matter, Republicans are going to respond to them. I'm joined here by my revered editor, one of the most beloved characters in our podcast cinematic universe, Aaron Redico is going to turn.

[3:32](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=212) tables and interview me. He joins me now. Aaron, welcome back to the show. Thank you very much for having me. Let's start with almost a gotcha. Do you have any idea who George McGill is? I don't. George McGill is the last Democratic senator in Kansas before Adam Hamilton, who won last night. He won in 1932. I was trying to think of all the different ways of expressing what happened last night, and that's the best I could come up with. That's a very good way of doing it. So everybody looking at this election, all the different constituents of the Democratic Party, they all got something. The left won some races.

[3:51](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=231) The center won some races. Charismatic candidates were huge. Uncharismatic candidates also did well. The Roy Cooper juggernaut. Roy Cooper plus 20. This has long been the dream. Was there a breakthrough for the big 10 Democratic Party last night? Yes, but let me hold that to the side for a minute. Donald Trump asked America to vote like he was on the ballot, and it did. Trump, of course, had, I think, the funniest possible reaction to the election. We're in the middle of the night. He posts on True Social. If I had been on the ballot, we would have won in a landslide. thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump. And people today have been remarking how he doesn't seem very upset by the election results. And of course not.

[4:22](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=262) He does not mind when Republicans lose. And in fact, Republicans often lose because he intervenes in a way that is likelier to make them lose, right? Like bringing in Ken Paxton or assuring Ken Paxton's victory in the Texas Republican primary, pushing for Darlene Graham in South Carolina. But when Republicans lose, when Trump is not on the ballot to Trump, it shows his importance. And so he, I think, doesn't mind this at all. It is more evidence to him of his essential winnerdom. What really happened here is Donald Trump has been a terrible, catastrophic president who has betrayed the mandate he was given by voters. And as he was losing, bleeding public support, not only never changed course, but never admitted what was happening at all. And so Donald Trump led his party to defeat or certainly created the conditions for the party to go to defeat. And then there's a question of what Democrats did with that, which yeah. So what did they do? Right. The big tent is real and the map is fake. So Democrats ran candidates who fit their states and their districts. And I think it's just really important to center that. I mean, I, you know, last year I did this big essay on the show about the need for

[5:52](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=352) a big tent democratic party. Other people making this argument too, that one of the problems that has emerged over time in American politics is the parties have become tighter in their ideological and cultural positioning. And geographical, which is critical. And that has made them tighter in their geographical positioning because they're not willing to run candidates who differ as much from the kind of median member of the party. And what Democrats did really well here was in the way that they acted with power, right? Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer here, they kept things very focused on affordability, on the Iran war.

[6:37](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=397) They didn't get distracted by a lot of other things. And then when they ran candidates, I mean, they ran people like James Tallarico, sort of leading an almost religious left revival in Texas against Ken Paxton. Adam Hamilton in Kansas, as you mentioned, a Methodist megachurch pastor. Adam Hamilton and Scott Colum, who's the candidate in Mississippi, who looks very much like he may win. a hundred votes or something. Not even a hundred. I mean, we'll see where it plays out. Truly insane, though. Both of them describe themselves, Hamilton and Colum, as pro-life Democrats. Now, they want to create conditions under which reproductive freedom is protected, but they ran as pro-life Democrats, right, because of their Christian faith.

[7:31](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=451) Mary Patola, who ran, you know, what was her slogan in Alaska? Faith, freedom, and fish or something. So the Democrats did a very good job in this case of picking candidates who fit the state. And when I say the map is fake, one of the revelations from this election is you really should not treat states as off the table. People were not talking about Kansas. By the way, Adam Hamilton is not a Schumer recruiting victory. Adam Hamilton decided to run. And by the way, shout out to my colleague at Vox and colleague here at the New York Times, Sarah Cliff, whose bombshell story, bombshell investigative work on Roger Marshall's unbelievably brutal pursuit and persecution of people who are not able to pay his medical bills was a major, major, major part of that race. And that's a story Sarah Cliff broke here at the New York Times. Shout out to Sarah. I want to throw in a shout out while we're at it. And that's howard dean right because the 50 state strategy is vindicated here right so i mean this is what you're saying but like there's two reasons one you might actually win some of these states but also there are going to be talented politicians in these places who can't necessarily win their

[9:05](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=545) state who are still worth having in your coalition just being out there and not writing things off is critically important yes and doing the work to recruit the candidates and then supporting them so So I think Democrats have sort of treated Florida as not winnable. And what you saw here, I mean, you know, Nixon's only going to fall a couple points short. Florida is winnable if you have the right candidates in the right environment. And so you have to build that kind of party strength. You have to look for those people. Now, there's like an interesting question here. You were saying at the beginning that everybody got some of what they wanted, and that's at least somewhat true.

[9:40](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=580) I think it's going to be fascinating to see what lessons Democrats learn from Michigan, election from Maine and from Florida, which is where they ran in contested or contestable Senate elections, much more left-wing candidates. And Abdul Syed, one, it looks like he'll win by something in the seven range as we're taping. Maine, it's a little harder to say because they had the whole disaster with Graham Plattner. Susan Collins is actually a quite good candidate because she has a reputation for independence, not totally well-deserved from the other side. but jackson's win there looks closer than you would expect given the demographics of maine right it's not like the john ossoff plus 18 win in georgia and in florida angie nixon you know a more direct dsa candidate lost right it's not you're not looking in florida okay what you're seeing in south carolina or mississippi i want to push back on that a little bit right because it sometimes sounds like progressive candidates are just a hindrance to the party but without their imagination, without their ideas, that's very important. And they, they didn't do as well as the less left candidates, but they didn't do terribly either. No, I don't think they did

[10:55](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=655) terribly. And I agree with you that whether you're an electoral over-performer is even correlated really with whether you are a good or important member of the house or senate a lot of i think the most creative members of congress and the most important members of congress are safe seat players who are not operating under the constant threat of electoral wipeout you know elizabeth Warren, I think is one of the most important senators has been. for some time is not an incredible electoral performer by any means, but is creative and innovative as a policy thinker in a way very, very few of her colleagues are. I think, and I've said this on the show before, I think Abdul Syed is going to be a superstar. And I agree with something that I think you think, which is that it's very likely he might build margins over time.

[11:53](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=713) The effort to authorize him was grotesque. And it's part of why when he was on the show, like we focus on in his actual story i mean this is a he's like an an american boy who's a road scholar and a doctor and a captain of his football team i mean i found what they tried to do to el sayed reprehensible and i find outside to be a very impressive person the question of how some of these people will play out in the senate you know or in the house for that matter is different to me than the question of can you extract any signal in terms of what it means for the democratic Party to compete in places it has not competed before. And I'll say I had winning by plus seven or eight or whatever it's going to be in a Democratic plus 13 environment is just it's not an electorally impressive performance. Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota, she wins by about looks like it'll be about nine or 10 right now, 10-ish. Again, Minnesota, Democratic plus 13, it's not a good performance, right? You shouldn't take a lesson that that's what you want to run right there. Angie Nixon, I think that there's a world, and I think the DSCC bears some blame for this, but a stronger Florida Democratic Party that picked a candidate who is better suited to Florida

[13:06](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=786) in the way that you saw in Kansas or Mississippi, and a DSCC that invested more in the state, I think that was a winnable seat. And so, you know, who you want to blame for that, I think sort of like both sides deserve some blame. But I don't think there's any reason to look at the results and say, it was a brilliant strategic move to run the DSA candidate in Florida. That isn't what won in Kansas. It's not what won in Texas. It's not what won in Georgia. It's not what might win in Mississippi. It's not what seems like it will win in Alaska or Iowa, for that matter. And so, you know, you got to hold these things in tension. Sometimes people take statements about electoral performance as moral statements about the worth of a candidate.

[13:52](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=832) or the ideas or the ideas that's crazy in my view by the way i do think we often end up too tight on this like moderate to progressive to dsa or whatever it might be scale you can have candidates who have like many views all at once so dr annie andrews in south carolina who i mean the moment you realize the night was really turning was when all of a sudden the democrats are going to win in South Carolina, reflects a terrible candidate in Darlene Graham as well. Okay, but South Carolina, I mean, wow. I know. Dr. Annie Andrews, right? Both somebody who fits South Carolina, but has, I think, if you were grading it on a scale, quite progressive views on healthcare. And progressive views on healthcare are very popular. That's also a good issue for Abdul Sayed. So I think sometimes you can get into this thing where people think what you mean by fit the district or fit the state is just to be more moderate. James Tallarico should correctly be understood as a fairly progressive candidate, but he moved right on oil and gas. And he also moved right on border security.

[15:01](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=901) But he also was a very populist candidate running against billionaires, a very pro-building candidate, right? The sort of populist abundance synthesis that I think you saw in a lot of different places. So in my view, there's a lot to learn from a bunch of these candidates, But I do think it is notable if what you would like to see is Democrats building on this success, that I don't think the place you want to look for electoral lessons is Abdul Syed is Peg. Flanagan, is Angie Nixon, is Troy Jackson. And I think Maine has another lesson if you go down. So the Maine's second House district was represented by Jared Golden. Last three elections, that is the reddest district represented by a Democrat. Golden is the most conservative or was the most conservative House Democrat. And he was tormented by the left for this, including facing a challenge by a more progressive challenger matt dunlap and golden decided to retire he was done with it he was tired of it and now it looks like even in this gigantic wave election dunlap is either going to win it incredibly modestly or lose the seat jared golden was like a most valuable player for the democrats he is a kind of person you want in the party and

[16:13](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=973) you should protect. And there's a lesson in that. If you want to build power and the Democrats excited about possibly winning Mississippi right now, excited about winning Kansas in 2032, you're going to need to try to keep these seats. You want to build a super majority. You want to build a durable majority. That doesn't just mean moderating, but it does mean recognizing that you need these candidates who are right for their states, right for their districts. And then you need to do everything you can to make their life easy. Not, as was done with Jared Golden, try to like hound them out of office. I want to rain a little bit on the parade because since Trump first came down that escalator, right? What is that? June of 2015.

[17:05](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1025) Everyone on the liberal side, the centrists, the never Trumpers, everyone has been wondering when are the scales going to fall from their eyes? What will it take? So what it took is kind of insane, right? It took an unpopular, unconstitutional, inconclusive war, driving up gas prices and crucially diesel gas prices. It took taking Latino voters for granted and attacking on immigration and shooting people in the streets. Like, all of that is what was needed to get where we are now. So, like, it's obviously a tremendous victory for the Democrats, but it does give me a little bit of pause that it took so much.

[17:54](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1074) I see it as more environmental, even than you're describing it there. So, I think at this point, internationally, we have enough examples of Trump-like politicians. Flavio Bolsonaro came out ahead in the first round of Brazil's presidential election, ended up losing to Lula in the second round. But there is just no evidence that the Trumpy style or what we think of as the Trumpy style in America, but what you might think of as like the populist right style worldwide, is a turnoff to voters. What voters don't like is their life getting worse. Who likes that? Nobody. But when you're saying it took so much, I actually think it didn't take so much. What you're describing is a chain of very intense events that led to real-world consequences for people. So you could have imagined a world where actually Trump governed much more modestly, but there was a recession.

[18:47](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1127) No, you can't. You can't, actually. Well, but what I'm saying is, or maybe a different way of putting it, is in 2008, Barack Obama won a very big victory, but the unemployment rate continued to go up. And so 2010 was a historic wipeout for the Democratic Party. And that wasn't because Obama's personal style was repulsive to the electorate, right? He won in 2012. People liked him quite a bit. It's because fundamentally, if people do not feel their lives are getting better, in fact, they feel they're getting worse. And sort of another way of saying what you're saying is people felt their lives were getting worse.

[19:19](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1159) And then particular groups, you know, Hispanic Americans saw their lives getting much worse because of the amount of state force, Donald Trump and Stephen Miller, who did a lot to lose this election. Republicans, was aiming at them and aiming at their communities. Bobby Polito winning Texas District for the House by 25 points. He's an amazing candidate, this very, very well-known singer and just somebody who has run a fantastic race. But I remember him getting in. That was supposed to be a safe Trump district. He won by 25 points. And that's a guy who I think should be treated in the Democratic Party right now as a star. And in the end, you cannot make people's lives worse. But conversely, the reason Trump was able to survive in the way he was at other times was he benefited from like a pretty strong economy for most of his first term. And people remember that when he ran for his second effort at reelection. Well, and he did better in the first than people expected, in part because he was sending people checks, right? Yeah.

[20:23](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1223) This is something that's worth noting because you know what fell apart was the realignment. Oh my God, the realignment. Hey, it's Anna Martin from The New York Times. Wherever you get your podcasts. You've heard that line before. right wherever you get your podcasts wherever you get your podcasts of course you have but what if i told you you never have to hear that line ever again you know what you caught me i actually can't tell you that but i can tell you somewhere i think you might want to go it's the shows tab in the new york times app you can find full episodes of the ezra klein show the interview modern love the daily new and classic episodes from serial and so much more so much to listen to and watch i think that's really special. I did this interview once on Modern Love with the actor Andrew Garfield. He was reading an essay and suddenly he was moved to tears.

[21:30](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1290) And when you watch the video, you feel like a part of it. The Shows tab. Find it wherever you get your... just kidding. It's in the New York Times app. Explore the Shows tab and follow a show today. Okay, can I riff for one second? I would love you to riff. I am a racial realignment skeptic. As you know, I hated it from the beginning. It seemed insane to me. It was clear that the people who had moved into the Republican column, whether that's young men, younger Black men, Hispanic people as a whole, and I'll say the thing we have to say, which is that there's a million different kinds of Hispanic, right? I mean, duh. But yet, But all those groups surged toward Trump, they have all surged back at staggering numbers.

[22:19](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1339) The youth vote was like, what, plus 30? I don't know the exact number, but— Yeah, I'm going to pull up this number just while we're saying this, because I think it's so striking. So right now, I'm looking at House results at the New York Times. And this can all change a little bit on the margin as more votes get counted. But here, we're speaking on Wednesday morning. Male voters swung 17 points towards the Democrats. Voters aged 18 to 29, this is just a crazy number, swung 32 points towards the Democrats, 32 points. Hispanic voters, 28 points towards the Democrats. I will say that there's something to be careful with here, which is we don't know how much of what happened here is persuasion versus turnout.

[23:05](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1385) Voters who supported Trump in 2024 just didn't like him enough or didn't care enough to come out in 2026. You can't really see that in the voting data, right? Right, no, and you also can't see, I mean, roughly speaking, 150 million people vote in these presidential elections, right? And maybe 110, 115, 120 million decide the midterms. So, yeah, yeah, you can't, and it's definitely not. necessarily the case that this person changed his mind or her mind. It's often these people showed up or they didn't, right? The true swing voters are the people in some ways who only vote sometimes, right? That said, though, two sets of historical examples from midterms, right? Okay, so we have two—on one side, we have 2006, where the Democrats do extremely well. It is a harbinger of the rise of the first Black president, although very few people realized it at the time. He did. David Axelrod did. But like, it was not conventional wisdom in 2006. I had just started working here the year before. I would say no one was talking about Barack Obama. Very few people were talking about Barack Obama, right? And then two years later, he's the president of the United States. The flip side of that, though, is 1994, Gingrich

[24:20](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1460) and co win the contract with America. They do change the face of American politics quite a bit, and we're all still paying the price. Trump is in many ways, right, the fruit of that tree. God, that was terrible, but you know what I'm saying. But they lose to Clinton in 1996. In 2010, as you alluded to earlier, what did Obama say, right? There was a shellacking, right? But then he won really pretty comfortably in 2012, although uncharacteristically, he was a president who lost electoral votes the second time he ran, which is actually very unusual, right? Usually it's more like Reagan where you win by a little bit and then you win by a lot.

[25:00](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1500) So what do you think this is? All right. So just in the modern era, you have wave midterms that lead to the party that won the midterm winning the presidency and winning seats in the next election. So good examples of this are 06, where Democrats win in the kind of second Bush midterm. And then in 08, they win a supermajority. It's not just that Barack Obama wins in 08. It's Democrats get 60 votes in the Senate. Unpopular war in the Middle East, I might add. And then ultimately a financial crisis, which given, I mean, there's a lot of shakiness around AI right now, particularly after this election and what that might mean for Texas data center construction.

[25:37](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1537) So the economy may not be getting better from here. 2018, big Democratic midterm. They win in 2020. OK. But 1994, huge Republican midterm. Bill Clinton wins in 1996. 2010, huge Republican midterm. Barack Obama wins in 2012. Midterms are not a straight line to victory in the next election. You have to be thoughtful about what you do, thoughtful about who you run, thoughtful about how you run. I will say you often do have, to what you were just saying about Obama, the 06 midterm was this very Americana flag and national security midterm on the Democratic side. You know, like a big start of that midterm was Jim Webb, the sort of Virginia, like tough talking Marine. You wouldn't necessarily have seen that going to Barack Obama, as you were saying. Trump winning in 2016 after the 2012 Republican wipeout. One of the big things Republicans believed after 2012 was he had to moderate on immigration. Then, of course, you end up getting the most nativist president in, you know, kind of modern America.

[26:41](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1601) i don't i'm not predicting the idea though that this era in politics with all the fights around israel and anti-semitism we're having does seem to be like more than any other recent one leading to like possibly the first jewish american president in john ossoff if he decides to run the amount of energy around him wow you heard it here first it's not first right i mean this is not It's not a new point, but it is just interesting. I mean, if you want to talk about a singular star coming out of this election, I'm not saying Ossoff wants to run for president. From what I hear, he doesn't. He may not really end up having a choice on this one.

[27:23](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1643) He crushed his opponent in Georgia, right? And getting back to the Trump political malpractice issue, Ossoff... He's a senator because of Donald Trump. He's a senator because of Donald Trump. He's a senator who has a demonstrated capability to win in a purple state. By the way, he has co-tails. I'm not saying it's just him. And you've got to look here at, like, organizing. This is done by Stacey Abrams and, you know, Raphael Warnock as well. But Keisha Lance Bottoms won for governor in Georgia. I mean, we've been talking here about House and Senate, but Democrats won the governorship in Texas, right?

[27:48](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1668) Rob Sand won easily in Iowa. I mean, there are a lot of big gubernatorial pickups here. I think I saw a number floating around on Twitter yesterday. I think, can we call it ex-Twitter again? Is that part of the election? I'm going to get to him later. I saw a number floating around on Twitter yesterday. The Democrats now control the governorships in states worth 392 electoral votes, which is just huge, right? And so, you know, but John Ossoff, like being able to navigate this moment in the way he has, being able to be as dominant in the attention economy as he has been, but maintain a kind of highly message disciplined approach, like straddle the divide where, you know, both Hassan Piker and Matt Iglesias will talk up John Ossoff to you.

[28:39](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1719) Like I've been talking him up for a long time. The guy is just demonstrating an incredible amount of political skill. And, you know, in terms of these sort of weird ways that American politics often leads to not the person you would have expected from narrative a couple of years before. He just has a there's a lot of energy around him at the moment. I guess I'll say that. Yeah, I mean, there were so many remarkable things about last night, right? I mean, it became temporarily illegal to talk about identity. And of course, it wasn't actually illegal, but you know what I'm saying? Like, we weren't supposed to talk about that. But the result of that is actually quite striking in identity terms, right?

[29:29](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1769) Right. We have the first openly gay male senator. We have the first Muslim senator. We're going to have the first black female governor. We have a man with spina bifida who's going to be a senator. We have there's Native American first. It's like an amazing array that, you know, 1976 Democratic Party is like, woohoo. So what do you make of that contrast that people read? They didn't run on it, but they won with it. I don't find that surprising. It just was never the case, even though some people took this as like a lesson of 2024, that candidates who are women don't perform well. Candidates who are black don't perform well. Candidates who are Native American don't perform well. What didn't perform well was candidates taking very unpopular positions. Some of them, though, by the way, not all of them tied to race and gender and identity.

[30:05](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1805) But, you know, you look at Barack Obama. Obama is by far the most popular political figure in America, has been for a long time. You know, at the same time, people were saying that, well, this goes to show you a woman can't win in the Rust Belt. It's like you had a woman governor in Michigan. You know, we just had like obviously Amy Klobuchar win in Minnesota last night. And so this was always, people were conflating wrongly the identity of candidates with identity politics. And what you see here is that that just was incorrect. And you have these candidates who are just like running really, really strong races, right?

[30:55](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1855) Josh Turek, who the, you know, the Paralympian with spina bifida, just ran a really strong race. But by the way, Josh Turek was somebody who one reason that there was excitement about him running was in Iowa in the state. I think it was state senator. He ran in a district where he had to learn how to appeal to Trump voters. I would say like the heuristic you often want is. Does this candidate have a record of appealing to the kind of voter they're going to need to win? And Democrats ran a bunch of people like that, and they did a really good job. So we talked a lot about how they should campaign and how they succeeded in campaigning, but how should they govern?

[31:41](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1901) Which would, if you're Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, and by the way, shout out to New York, last shout out, New York in control of the House and the Senate. Very weird. Yeah. And by the way, also, Christian Gillibrand, a New York senator who is leading the DSCC this cycle and sort of leading that project. And New York has like the country's most famous mayor and Bob Donnie and AOC. I mean, the New Yorkization. And he, of course, the president. The New Yorkization. But he's Florida. And the president. But he wants to be from Florida. He can be from Florida. Democrats have three like broad things we're going to have to balance, right?

[32:18](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1938) One is what I'd call resistance, which is fighting Trump, investigating Trump, holding Trump and the Trump administration, Trump family accountable, sending him bills that are going to lead to contrast that the public can see, right? He said he was going to be Mr. Vito. Mr. Vito. You know, Ed Markey said they're going to need to cut down trees for all the subpoenas that are going to be offered, which I'm not sure is the most helpful comment from one of the senators from Massachusetts. And environmentally unfound. Yeah, for a big environmentalist. But then there is actually getting things done. So, you know, you have this big permitting bill that's going to get voted on. But I think there's interest and you're hearing people talk about doing things on AI regulation. You know, you can imagine things potentially on immigration, at least around the corners of it.

[33:05](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=1985) Because now it's hurt both parties. Now it's hurt both parties. But that doesn't mean they'll be able to do it, right? I'm just saying that there's a bucket of how much do you work with the other side and even work with Donald Trump to get things done. And I mean, after 2018, there were things that got done. And particularly once you got into the pandemic period, I mean, there was huge agreements between, you know, the Nancy Pelosi-led House and Donald Trump. And then there is what I would think of as like power building an agenda setting, which is not so much what you pass through the House or the Senate, but beginning to hammer out, say, what is the Democratic position look like on health care reform that they would bring into a 2028 and then 2029, you know, first campaign and then governing agenda?

[33:47](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2027) what is the democratic position on AI regulation? How do Democrats in general begin to create a sense of what the center of the party, not like the centrists in the party, but the center of the party believes? And I think you're going to see a lot of work done on, say, Medicare for more policies, which are going to unite the sort of more moderate and the more like left parts of the party. I think you're going to see a lot on AI, a lot beginning to be thought through on sort of, you know, pre-K and other forms of child care. So how they balance it and pretty how they balance the first two, you know, confrontation and compromise, that's going to be a lot of the a lot of the work.

[34:24](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2064) The only other thing I'll say, though, is that when I look at the next two years, I think a lot is going to go sideways and it's hard to predict exactly what.

[34:36](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2076) **Ezra Klein:** But the economy looks very shaky to me, given how much is built on an AI CapEx boom, which could very, very, very easily collapse into a market correction. You have the Iran war,

[34:47](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2087) right, which could explode into something completely different or, you know, Israel could, you know, launch a gigantic round of new attacks. There have been talk about, you know, would Iran use chemical weapons? I mean, there's all kinds of ways that could go sideways even more so than it already has. There's Russia, Ukraine. There's AI, not from the economic standpoint, but, you know, rogue swarms of AIs hacking into China. There's China and Taiwan, There's Donald Trump's health. He's an 80-year-old who's very increasingly discursive and all over the place. There's all the corruption around him. There is so much that is unknown.

[35:23](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2123) You know what it makes me think of? It makes me think of the first line of the Shelley poem, England in 1819. Let's see if I could do it right. It's an old, mad, despised, and dying king. That's the beginning. uh you know princes dregs of the dull earth i could go on but that poem actually speaks to what we're talking about because at the end of it he asks you know it goes through how horrible the senate is but then at the end of it he asks you know what's the glorious phantom that's going to come from this right which is what we're we're talking about and also just trump's personality i don't know what to call it uh because i'm not a doctor and i wouldn't if i were i wouldn't say But there's some kind of disintegration going on, I guess, or a man not in super great contact with reality to begin with.

[36:14](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2174) You don't feel like the reflecting pool speech was a closing argument Republicans needed? I just, I'm like, if you look at the world in a sort of historical and literary frame, as I tend to, right, the anxiety is, and you just outlined it well, that this is 1912, this is 1913, this is 1914. This is 06. And these things are all converging on us, right? Right. And then the president is not, let's just say he is not adaptable. Right. He's not. And you, as you pointed out earlier, he doesn't react to events. He doesn't even seem to know they happened in the way that other people experience reality. And so that is unlikely to go super well.

[36:52](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2212) And his staffing is not going to get better in the lame duck period of his second term. And some of these people might get shuffled out, as some of them have, like Kristi Noem. But the people who come in are not—Trump is not going to suddenly surround himself with a team of rivals. He's not going to suddenly begin listening to people's advice. And so what you tend to have in the second—you know, predicting a second term, predicting the back half of it—is an exhausted staff, less able to challenge the boss. As you say, the boss is more erratic, more mad. He is not obsessed with Republicans winning in 2028.

[37:29](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2249) He does not want to lose control. And so the more Republicans try to win in 2028— On your theory, he would like them to lose. I think he would— In part. I think he would prefer them to lose while embracing him than to win while running away from him. Yeah. I don't think there's any doubt about that. To get to your point about investigation and corruption, there will be people who say, let it all go, don't impeach him again, don't do this, don't do that, we have to govern, right? But here's the problem with that. First of all, there's the level of the corruption and incompetence and just grotesque, grotesque behavior, just staggering, like the amazing stuff that they did.

[38:31](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2311) But they destroyed, I mean, huge agencies that USAID and the Department of Education and the Consumer Protection. I mean, all of that, it's just, right, there's that, there's the immigration, there's all these things. So what do you think they should do on the investigation corruption front? I don't think anybody in the party is saying don't investigate. I mean, I've not, I think there's going to be. Don't impeach, they are saying that. Let's hold impeachment aside because they're not going to impeach right now, right? That's not their first day plan. What they've been planning for is investigation. And the challenge you're going to face on investigation is actually how target rich the environment is. The resources of Congress are significant, but the amount of corruption, malfeasance, lawbreaking, etc. in the Trump administration is like so vast.

[39:21](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2361) in order to make anything stick you need to focus on things people like a couple of things people can can begin to hold in their minds it's something that it's one reason john ossoff has been better at making the corruption argument than a lot of others he tends to focus on one small thing at a time, right? It allows you to, to kind of conceptualize a whole and a part the way I hope they will do it as an organizing thread, at least at the beginning, not because it'll be the most emotionally satisfying or even important, but because I think it actually reflects like what the American people are interested in is I want them to follow the money. I want to know who bought what from the Trump administration, who gave what to the Trump administration, things like the Qatari jet, how much do we not know?

[40:00](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2400) how much did the trump family get what contracts went into trump family hands during all this what's going on with jared kushner's fund i would love to know real details on that jared kushner fund that has seemed to be so popular among gulf state funders it's surprisingly popular yes um and on the flip right not just like who bought what like what did they get and then where Where has the money been going for the Trump family and for Trump associates, right? As you've been getting hosed at the pump and in the grocery store and like, you know, when you're trying to buy a home, how many billions of dollars has he made exactly?

[40:41](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2441) And not just him, Don Jr., Eric, right? All their friends and family, Steve Whitcoff's son. What's going on with all the crypto, right? There is so much money that has been moving around. to me like that is the place to start but as you were kind of suggesting too there's all these other questions about what laws are broken in different agencies and and i'm not saying they can't do that too but they're going to have to choose what to focus well and which things to try to put back right do you just try to reopen the consumer financial protection bureau do you what do you do there well there's that it's maybe we're spending a moment on what happened to the doge co-chairs right elon musk and vivek ramaswamy who i think together like vivek lost the ohio governorship to amy acton running one of the most like not the most grim and disreputable campaigns i thought you were gonna say that because that was the worst thing ever the ad for people didn't follow this where he had an ad on from her estranged mother who said amy acton is a liar And what she was suggesting he acted and lied about was being sexually abused by her stepfather, of which there was quite good evidence. Grotesque, like just reprehensible behavior. Ramosomi is already on track to lose that election, but, you know, he's lost it. And really.

[42:03](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2523) Yeah, he should be drummed out of public life, no question. So then, and then Elon Musk. It's only $500 million. I mean, for him, it's like nothing. What are you talking about? But it's not just that that money didn't do anything, or it doesn't appear to have done very much. A huge amount of it was spent in Texas, and there is nowhere, there is nowhere in the country that Republicans collapsed like they did in Texas. If you do this for a living, right, the dream of Blue Texas has, or really what appeared to be at first the fantasy of Blue Texas has been alive and well for decades. Yeah. And now it's here.

[42:36](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2556) Alive and unwell for decades. Alive and unwell. The fantasy was alive. But hopes kept getting dashed. But Musk spent a tremendous amount of money, a large amount of that money, certainly plurality that went into Texas specifically. And I'm not sure it, I would go further than it, it bought him nothing. I think it hurt, right? People don't like their elections being bought. There were two forms of one-man rule on the ballot, right? Trump's and his, and they both got crushed. And Musk has moved himself and a lot of his corporations to Texas. So the question of Musk is going to be a very interesting one going forward.

[43:13](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2593) the uh yeah i mean there's a lot to say about musk i hope that this means that when you verge or maybe more than verge on you know white supremacy or certainly white dominance as your central idea that you'll fail. Like, I hope that's true. And replacement of human beings by robots. And replacement of human beings by robots. Might also not be hugely popular. Also not great, right?

[43:41](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2621) **Ezra Klein:** The AI centers are a huge electoral issue, right, that elites are maybe not focused on as much as they should be.

[43:48](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2628) I mean, I think they're pretty focused on this election. I mean, they, like, the amount that Democrats ran on that, I mean, Sherrod Brown running against Husted in Ohio ran heavily on data centers. Hinojosa in Texas ran aggressively on data centers. Abdul Syed ran on data centers. I mean, so there were dozens of data center moratoriums on the ballot. And I think so far, every single one of them except for one has passed. The exception that proves the rule. So a little inside baseball. You came to The New York Times the week of January 6th, 2021. You and I had already met, obviously. My first week at the time.

[44:23](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2663) Right. But his first week, your first week at the Times of January 6th. That was effectively the down payment on the second Trump term. It also made this even more the Trump era than it might have been. Is this finally the beginning of the end of Trumpism? It's definitely the beginning of the end of Trump, right? He's out in two years no matter what. But is it? So there's no Trumpism. There was only ever Trump. Which is to say that the work that various right-wing intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals tried to do to paint a coherence around Donald Trump's impulses and extract from that what he was going to try to do with the tariffs, say, right? What a highly structured tariff regime during manufacturing back to America would look like. That was a failure.

[45:19](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2719) Donald Trump's tariffs were insane. Trump is an end of the neocon Middle East meddling era in foreign policy, a failure. Trump did not agree with you. That was not Trumpism. Over and over and over and over again, there have been these efforts to say what Trumpism is, but Trump himself would not hold to any of them. And so one reason all of this collapsed, And one reason I think the infighting of it on the right is ultimately going to be so vicious is because you're still going to have the real Trumpism has never been tried, people. You already saw this happening on— It was happening last night.

[45:57](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2757) Last night, yeah. The MAGA people were all like— The neocons did this to us. The neocons brought the ring. Who were the neocons? It was Trump. Yeah. Marco Rubio didn't get you into Iran. It was Donald Trump himself with Benjamin Netanyahu who got into Iran. That wasn't Bill Kristol. You kidding me? It's ridiculous. J.D. Vance is going to presumably run for president as a human sacrifice to say this is what Trumpism could have been. Right. There's this whole. Trumpism, right, without the war. This is his whole view, right, that J.D. Vance could have been the intellectual nerve center of the Trump administration.

[46:30](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2790) He wasn't in the end. But maybe he'll run his at. The problem is nobody actually thinks Vanceism, which is what that really is, is appealing. J.D. Vance was not a electoral juggernaut in Ohio when he ran. He underperformed terribly. And he's not popular now. And so the movement is going to be to try to figure out like what can come after. And that jockeying, particularly outside of the House and the Senate, is already going to begin. And the key thing is Trump cares about his control. He doesn't care about his ideology. Trump wants fealty. He doesn't want consistency or coherence. He's not an ideas guy.

[47:10](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2830) And so in that way, he wants to keep his family out of jail, keep their profits right. But everybody knows it to be true. The Republican Party all knows it to be true. You don't think he's home reading Patrick Deneen? I don't think he's home reading. Patrick Dineen. Yeah. Okay. Before we go, I want to ask you something. So I was on my way here. I was texting with a friend of mine who's, well, she's a historian. And she was saying, I was telling her what I was doing. And she was like, okay, but don't, don't, you know, as my mother always used to say, don't gloat. And I, you know, I don't want to gloat.

[47:46](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2866) But I do want to focus on something. People that we are very glad to see the end of who lost last night. So I'm going to go first, and that is Susan Collins. She has the mask of the moderate, right? And she did. When things were close, she was the most likely senator to vote against Republicans, but that's still 15%, 16%, 17%, right? Most of the time, she voted with them. And she was the chief enabler of the destruction of women's right to choose because of the change in the court. And I'm very, very happy to see her go. Who are you happy to see go? I think that the place where I am happiest to see politicians and political tactics fail is when they front load unabashed cruelty.

[49:41](https://realalpha.app/v/yfysuUMShcM/?t=2981) And I think that describes Ken Paxton in Texas. Definitely. And immorality. i think there's a world where he ran a much more honorable campaign than this but it's not the world he ended up living in vivek ramaswamy in ohio i think roger marshall and kansas in the way that he like the incredibly cruel interest he like imposed upon his own patients right the the 18 interest rates he had it's just amazing and the flip it's an lbgyn and the flip of that because I think more about who I'm happy won than who I'm happy lost. The flip of that is I'm really interested and optimistic about this rise of a religious left, this revival of a religious left and a moralistic left, right? A left that is interested and able to speak in a language of virtue. James Tallarico, Adam Hamilton, Abdul El-Sayed, and John Ossoff. Ossoff is really