Show Notes
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.com
Heads up: our 2026 election season discount is currently live! It’s 20% off paid subscriptions for first-time subscribers at gdpolitics.com. Join us for the final stretch of the midterms, election night and the aftermath — then it’s on to 2028! You’ll get Thursday episodes, virtual happy hours, merch discounts and access to our subscriber chat to ask questions and suggest topics. Join us! The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here. What would it take for Donald Trump’s voters to give up on him? And if they did, would that mean giving Democrats a chance or just staying home? With less than two weeks until the midterms, those questions are being put to the test. Trump is 23 percentage points underwater with the American public, and Democrats lead on the congressional generic ballot by nine points. My guest today has spent the past eight years listening to voters explain why they support Trump, why they’ve turned against him, and sometimes why they’ve gone back. Sarah Longwell is a former Republican, publisher of The Bulwark, and host of The Focus Group. Her new book, How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time, argues that it’s possible to build a coalition that defeats Trump’s style of politics for good. That’s a bigger ambition than winning a midterm. So we examine what would have to change to make it happen and whether the dissatisfaction Longwell hears from Trump voters could translate into lasting support for Democrats. We also discuss how today’s swing voters have changed and when better messaging can help versus when voters simply don’t like a party’s policies. Finally, Longwell weighs in on the 2028 Democratic presidential field, including the picks from our recent candidate draft over at Still Counting.
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Heads up: our 2026 election season discount is currently live! It’s 20% off paid subscriptions for first-time subscribers at gdpolitics.com. Join us for the final stretch of the midterms, election night and the aftermath — then it’s on to 2028! You’ll get Thursday episodes, virtual happy hours, merch discounts and access to our subscriber chat to ask questions and suggest topics. Join us! Since President Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, there’s been an extra question hanging over American elections. Not just who will win, but whether the will of the voters will be respected. With roughly two weeks until Election Day, I wanted to sort through the concerns surrounding the midterms and distinguish the plausible threats from the more farfetched scenarios. So today, Votebeat managing editor and friend of the pod Nathaniel Rakich joins me to walk through what could go wrong before, during and after the election. First, a brief soapbox moment: Republican and Democratic GDers are equally welcome here. Disagreeing about how the country should be governed is why we have elections. But respecting the results once we’ve settled on the rules is a prerequisite for that disagreement to mean anything. And so this is an area of coverage where we don’t really mess around. That said, Nathaniel’s assessment is somewhat reassuring. In Votebeat’s informal survey of 31 election experts, respondents generally expected challenges to the election, but did not expect those challenges to overturn the results. That still leaves plenty of room for damage. We discuss bureaucratic errors, the strain on local election offices, the difference between routine poll monitoring and intimidation, and the possibility of federal interference in counting ballots. The biggest variable in Nathaniel’s outlook is also a familiar one: the margin. A decisive result leaves much less room for mischief. A razor-thin race that determines control of the Senate, with ballots still being counted days later, is a more concerning prospect. So how much anxiety is warranted, and where should we direct our attention? That’s the conversation today.
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.com
If you thought there was a 20 percent chance that artificial intelligence could wipe out humanity, what would you do about it? That’s my guest’s estimate of the risk if we continue on our current trajectory with AI. And he’s trying to write the laws that could change it. Alex Bores is a Democratic New York State assemblyman and the sponsor of the RAISE Act, which requires major AI developers to publish safety plans and report certain critical incidents. He’s also the co-founder of Who Decides, an organization working to shape Democrats’ AI agenda ahead of 2028. On today’s podcast, we discuss what taking these risks seriously actually means. Should the government have to approve AI models before they’re released to the public? Should we pause the development of more powerful AI altogether? And what happens if slowing down rattles the economy or gives China a leg up? I also press him on why New York Governor Kathy Hochul moved to water down his AI legislation, and what that experience tells us about the obstacles to regulating AI more broadly. And we get into partisan politics. If Democratic and Republican voters share many concerns about AI, could making it a partisan issue be counterproductive? And either way, how might AI reshape the politics of 2028?
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.com
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.com