Jeet Herr, Harry Litman, & Jacob Rubashkin

Published Apr 5, 2024, 4:01 AM

The Nation’s Jeet Heer weighs President Biden’s reaction to policy pushbacks coming from his left. Talking Feds’ Harry Litman examines the stakes of Judge Aileen Cannon’s latest insane ruling. Inside Elections' Jacob Rubashkin uncovers some of the less-covered House races that could really matter in the 2024 election.

Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds, and Texas Republican Michael McCall says, I think Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States. No, really, and unfortunately it's infected a good chunk of my party's base. Oh, you don't say. We have a fascinating show for you today. Talking Feds, Harry Littman tells us about the stakes of Judge Aileen Cannon's latest insane ruling. Then we'll talk to Inside Elections Jacob Rubashkin about some of these very exciting house races. But first we have the host of the Time of Monsters the Nations, jed Here. Welcome back to Fast Politics The Nations. My friend jed.

Here, always great to be on the show. Willy, So, I.

Want to talk to you about something that got no coverage but that I know happened because I watched c SPAN and I'm a total nerd. Yesterday Bernie Sanders. You'll remember Bernie Sanders because he was really probably very likely could have been president. Whatever. We're not going to relitigate twenty sixteen, but we'll just say this Bernie Sanders has become, and of course it gets no media attention because there's no drama. One of the great champions of Joe Biden. And yesterday he was at the White House talking about how drug prices. I mean, this was like I was listening to this and I was like, holy shit, this is the thing that I've been obsessed with forever. That an inhaler will cost six hundred dollars in America and ten bucks in Germany, that you know, in asthma medicine will cost seven hundred dollars in America and two dollars in the UK. Joe Biden has really satiated a lot of the stuff Bernie Sanders had been has been trying to a pass. Can you talk about that?

Yeah?

Sure.

I mean one thing about Joe Biden is he's really, on almost all issues a party man, and then he will go where the party is. And I think that he more than a lot of mainstream Democrats saw, you know, like how far Bernie got in twenty sixteen, and to be fair, even like in twenty twenty, where he did less well in a more crowded field, but still he was like, you know, the number two guy. And so I mean, I think Biden realizes that you have to have a functioning party, you have to like include you know, the first time is like the second most popular person, like two times in a row. The drug prices is a great example of this. I mean, I think there's other stuff like it sort of builds back better the sort of infrastructure spending. It's such a no brainer, and it's such a way to draw contrasts between the Democrats and the Republicans and between Biden and Trump, particularly since you know, like I think, actually what weakness of Trump is that he can no longer really own the economic populism in a way that he kind of did with like Hillary Clinton in twenty sixteen, We're not seeing like you know, answert of like trade issues or other issues. Biden seeding that ground. And furthermore, I mean, I think the great thing he is like Trump barely talks about this stuff. I mean he does kind of talk about trade, but like, you know, much more grandiose and I think frightening to a lot of people, like you know, to.

Say, you know, like.

Yeah, well where else you know, like I actually think, like in twenty sixteen, like you know, the moment I got terrified was when the speeches he was making in places like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, where you know, like often he's undisciplined, but like when he was there, I don't know if Steve Bannon or somebody else was like really you know, like whispering in his ears. But he really hit the economic populism everything hard about, you know, like deanersitization and job losses. But I actually think, like you know, Democrats have regained that territory. Yeah, I mean, Burney deserves a lot of credit, and you know, like I want to be fair, like Biden deserves a lot of credit here too.

Yeah. Well, and I mean I don't think it matters. Like Bernie did come in and he was really involved in the budget stuff and in the Inflation Reduction Act, which by the way, reduced inflation, right like government spending works. I mean, that's the crazy thing we've seen, Like in two thousand and eight during the financial crisis. We now know that the reason that it fucked up was because we didn't go big enough.

Right Yeah, no, no, no, that's right. And I want to say something else on the inflation front, because it ties in with this economic populism and the way Biden has observed a lot of this stuff. I mean, there is a kind of debate among economists at a very high level, you know, like what was the cause of this recent spurt of inflation. Basically, people like Larry Summer's have a sort of monitorist view like the spending that caused the inflation, and the only cure of this is to like radically raise interest rates. And then like Larry Summers that actually said, you know, you need like seven point five percent unemployment or maybe ten percent unemployment, that's the only cure. Right where is that? There are other economists like Isabella Waverer who made that quite rational or like argument, like we're talking about inflation, like what actually happened here? There was like you know, like a pandemic. There were like in these shortages of goods, and then companies were able to exploit this to do sort of price gouging and that if you address that issue you can have a better take on this. And one notices that like Biden, he's talking about you know, things like shrinkflation, but also like corporate profit hearing, you know, like yeah, this was not a natural thing for Biden.

By the way.

I mean I think he was actually initially there. The White House was reluctant to go this path. But all the polls show like if you actually talk about inflation in those terms, that like like this is not like you know, just some act of God or some cause of like simply monetary policy, that that they are actually people who have taken advantage of the chaos caused like COVID, and that we will go after them. That resonates with the experience of a lot of people. I mean people actually experience this with eco shopping, prograsseries and they suddenly notice that like the cereal box is like half empty, Like there's something save more higher price with a half empty box.

Yeah, exactly. And I actually think it's kind of really great. And one of the things that I've really been struck by in Biden world, which I like and appreciate and I hope to see more of, is them being pressured into doing the right thing. Sometimes they do the wrong thing, and the activist side is able to sort of get them to do what needs to happen. What the right thing to happen there is Can you talk about that a little bit?

The question is like when you're talking about politics, like what sort of theory of change do you have? And I think that, like, you know, for me, it's always been that there's two sort of preconditions for like sort of you know, progressive politic in the last century, like let's not talking about the nineteenth century, where you know, you had the Republican you actually had good Republicans like Lincoln in Ulysses Grant. But in the twentieth and twenty first century, what do you need to actually have probably like two things. One is the Democrats political party having power like the presidency, Congress. The second pre condition, though, is that you need a mass movement that is actually prodding them to like do something. Because to be honest, like I think, like you know, like natural condition a lot of politicians is you know, like you get away with as tho as you can, like if you can make people happy by declaring, you know, well, this is National pine Cone Day and don't we all love pinecones? Like they'll do that, right, Like they could do that all day long, every day, three hundred and sixty five days a year, right, Yeah, like you know, like hug your dog day. Sure, But if you actually have you know, people out on the streets like the unions were in the thirties, or like the anti war movement and the civil rights movement we're in the sixties, or act Up was in the nineteen nineties. And you don't have Republicans who just not listen to people, you actually have Democrats who know that well these are actually are voters. Then yeah, you can actually prad and change things. So my theory of change so always been you need those two things, most of them, and I think the fallacy that people fall into is like seeing only one side of the equation. Well, we just need to like you know, vote blue, no matter who you know, then that will be a fight or con recently, you know, like we just need to kind of protest, although I actually you actually have to like vote that people are going to listen to you into office and then you protest.

One of these sort of interesting moments here that we saw is that there's a real sea change in Democratic leaders from Bill Clinton, who got in there, Like I'm struck by you have a Republican base that is just controls drives the fucking ship right. They want no abortion, they want no birth control pills, they want no anything. They want no, no fault divorces, and Republicans are like yes, And then you have a Democratic base that want like clean air. You know, maybe Exon shouldn't be you know, controlling our federal government. We don't think kids should get cancer from dirty air. And you know what I mean, like these are not wildly progressive ideas, and there's still quite a bit of pushback in the Democratic Party. And I think that Biden world has been much better about that.

Biden hasn't been about that. I mean, I think this is sort of like is this change that take it a long time to get together? And you know, like not to speak ill of the dead, but I think an emblematic figure, well I will speak ill of is Joel Liberman. You know, it was like remember the sort of you know, Democratic vice presidential like nominee in the year twenty oh oh and like you know, right with Al Gore and was seen as like, well, this is the guy we need to win over the moderate boats. But you know, it was a major Democrat, but his major achievements were always like, you know, to go against the base of his party to the point where like you know, like he got primary doun where they you know, like the Democratic voters of Connecticut said Noah, and then he ran as an independent. I think the easing out of figures like Joe Lieberman is a kind of significant factor. I mean, there's still you always get a few Senators who like to show vote by doing that, but I think that particular type of politics doesn't have a future. And once he's actually also with the sort of like cinema, like I think, like, you know, the fact that she is going to be like, you know, one term senator is not an accident, Like you cannot get very far with that sort of politics anymore. And I think Joe Biden, you know, like he's been around for a long time, but partly he's been around for a long time because he knows which way the wind is shifting, and he knows what the party is and where the party is going. So yeah, I mean, I mean, I think he does kind of deserve credit, and I think he understands that old sort of primelation model does not work anymore.

Yeah, And one of the things about Joe Biden, which I actually really do appreciate is bin World has actually been really good at working within the kind of weird metrics of what the American system is right now. Like what I'm thinking of that I think was a real three dimensional chess move was this bordered bill. Because that border bill. So you know, we've had in America, we've had zero border legislation since for about twenty years. So there's no money going to the border and no legislation. So surprisingly it's not going great. And everyone who is there on the left on the right agree is they need money. They need money for judges and agents and care for people and you know, everything from food to enforcement. Both sides agree that when you starve a part of the federal government, it really sucks. I mean Republicans wanted to suck and Democrats don't, but they agree on that central premise. You know what Biden world did was they were like, Okay, you guys are going to negotiate this border bill, which had it passed, it is a very restrictive fell right, it involved border closures. By the way, border closures one of the dumbest Republican ideas. You know how many people go across the border Republicans for dinner, for shopping, for vacations. I mean, like anyway it would have involved border shutdowns. It would have involved very stringent numbers and would have you know, limited immigration in a million different ways, and you had Mike Johnson saying it was dead on arrival. I mean, was Biden World playing three dimensional chess or did they just get lucky? Well?

Well, I mean I do think that they have a pretty good sense of how dysfunctional the Republicans are now they can shoot themselves in the fund coming out of the border thing, like I think, like it really was a sort of clarifying moment, especially like this particular Republican Congress where both the margins are small, but also like Johnson is perhaps the most incompetent party leader like I've ever seen in a lifetime of the anti Nazi Pelosi, and then they'll be holding too extremists and they don't know how to control that. I mean, the big picture is Biden has up and where when what I wanted him to be, like in the polls. But things are tightening now and things are improving, and I think it's partially this clarification issue where like you know, like if you actually see how incompetent and extremist the Republicans are, then I think Biden's virtues shining forth, and they are virtues of sort of like you know, actual governance, actual policies, you know, like he maybe does this sort of you know what, I'm trying to be bipartisan more than I would like. But actually, because the Republicans are so incompetent, like it actually has worked out. The times actually like show how extreme and bad they are. So I agree that, you know, there's a lot of like, you know, very positive developments.

Yeah, and it is this sort of interesting world where you're really on a knife sedge. One of the things that we're going to watch this week is whether Mike Johnson can keep his job. Marjorie Taylor Green is getting increasingly insane and mad at him, called him a Democrat. One of the things that really annoyed the fuck out of me, to be honest, is that I was reading some reporting about it, and the reporter, a mainstream where political reporter was saying, well, Democrats should watch out because they could get someone more conservative than Mike Johnson. Now, eventually this Republican party will get more conservative than Mike Johnson. But I mean, don't you think Mike Johnson.

I mean, he's a pretty conservative.

Yeah, I mean, this is the day that no holds war theocrat, like, you know, we want to control what is I always forget the number of mountains. It's like five, six mountains whatever, Like yeah.

Seven mountains.

It's some crazy yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This sounds like a theme parky you take your kids to, Like We're going to seven mountains this weekend. By all evidence, just in a very extreme theocrat and you know, like hardline conservative all along the way. But the media is still psyched with his idea. You know, it's up to the Democrats to create a good Republican party. But I mean, I think Democrats as a whole have moved on that. There's ha been a shift. I mean, it is interesting. I think it also like how Biden conceives of the presidency is different. Like I think that both Clinton and Obama saw themselves as trying to be this independent force of the party that can you know, negotiate between Democrats and Republicans, whereas I think Biden has more parliamentary sense, like I am the leader of this party and I represent the interests of this party when I'm negotiating with Republicans. And I think that is a sort of significant shift. I mean, I think that is a model one once for democratic presidents going into the future.

Yeah, I think that's right. Chid here. I hope you'll come back.

You can't keep me away.

Spring is here, and I bet you are trying to look fashionable. So why not pick up some fashionable all new Fast Politics merchandise. We just opened a news store with all new designs just for you. Get t shirts, hoodies, hats, and topaks. To grab some head to fastpolitics dot com. Harry Litman is a former US attorney and host of the podcast Talking Feds. Welcome back you to my podcast, Meet your podcast. Hi Harry Lettman.

Hey, Hey, Hey, Molly Dong Fast It is another Molly mash up, the special correspondent extraordinaire for Fanny Fair, the host of the podcast Fast Politics. So yes, we're we're having an unholy marriage here between Fast Politics and Talking Fed.

And you know the rules.

Now, you show every question, baby, totally candid, and then I get to turn the tables on her. So I want to start with your nerdiest, pointy headedness little legal question and see if you can stump me. I'm ready.

This is not my nerdiest question, but this is the thing that everybody's interested in it seems as if things have escalated with Judge Cannon and Jack Smith. Right that there was sort of a back and forth, and now Jack Smith is kind of like he kind of gets what a bad faith after she is talk to me about where you think this case is and more importantly where it can go.

Yeah, so you're one hundred percent right. This was the big move Monday night. Remember what has she been doing entertaining all kinds of fur cocked ideas from Trump but also even worse delaying, delaying, not ruling.

And the like.

And that put the DOJ in a tricky position because they have a previous bad ruling by her, and if you combine it with another, that'd be a case to recuse. But she doesn't give them anything and purposely doesn't give them anything to grab onto as a ruling. This latest thing is a perfect example, one hundred percent bizarre idea. Let's just talk about jury instructions based on law that doesn't exist. Let's just talk about it though, engage with right the radical. Yeah, well, let's have a little salon about this. And you know that's not a ruling to try to reverse. And there have been different versions of this, and this time it got even more ominous because she suggested, maybe I'll just do this at trial and the jury stage, and guess what, at trial if she pulls this crap at trial, you can't. It's a double jeopardy and you can't retry him. So that's like the perfect prime. I think people sort of sense the tone of it, but it's stronger than people are appreciating. He really drew the line this time. First he came out and said, this whole Presidential Records Act, it is completely ludicrous. I'm not going to play ball with you, judge. I'm not going to do a little jury instruction based on it because it's totally nuts. But guess what, here's the real jury instructions. And now you, judge, have to rule. So you've been sort of dithering around and the if you don't, so you know right now he's there with like nothing to sort of grab ontos. And so the movie made is rule on the Presidential Records Act. If you rule for Trump, great, we take you right up to the eleventh Circuit and we try to refuse. You rule for us. Okay, good, move to another day. But if you keep not ruling the m word comes into play, and it was just subtle at that we are going to Manda, miss you. It's a special writ. It is hard normally to.

Bring and explain what it means.

It's a sort of all purpose just like mandate.

It's getting a judge kicked off in case.

Well, there's a separate thing that is recusing. But Mandamus is just going to a quarter fields and saying just correct her course of fields are normally very receptive to it. But he's really set the table perfectly, and they know what's going on to say. If you don't rule, we're going to do a man damis. And they found a couple cases where it had happened, so it it would be a game changer for a couple reasons. One, she could see the riding on the wall and actually rule not too likely, or she could keep farting around. They could bring emotion to man Damus. If the eleventh circuit is receptive, they bounce her and now a lot of time is past. You know, it's not so easy, but there's the actual chance this case is really cut and dried.

Molly.

It's been the easiest one and a serious one, and there's a chance with a new judge, it could actually get back on track and be heard say in the summer, lead to a conviction and the like. But Smith is this is the filing. It's the most important since the indictment, where Smith is saying, we're not going to take it anymore if you don't act like a real judge and decide things, We're going to use that very fact of not giving us anything to appeal to appeal. Does that make sense?

Yeah? Wow, yeah, all right, wow, big day satisfied.

Yes, Okay.

You recently wrote one of you're really both. I mean, you have a way of saying this is not supposed to be a spoosh fest, but you're just really good at making things find interesting but also trenched.

Oh thank you.

In your recent piece Trump's Losing Touch, you say the road to Democrats having kept the Senate thus far is lined with Trump's bungled attempts to play king maker. Now you know, in the last several years, his whole inter rearm effect, as I have understood it, with Republicans who mainly behind the scenes hate his guts, have been there terrified that he could primary them, and that's his whole secret power. And now you're talking about a run of times where he is trying to do the same and he's losing again and again. Has he lost his magic powers here?

So one of the interesting things about Trump is that he's never been amazing at picking candidates, and part of that is because she's open to candidate. Like, one of the things that Trump did was he took over the Republican Party. Right, he bullied people either with the threat of primary or with the threat of their physical safety. I mean, think about Romney had to pay all that money for extra security. And he took over and what happened then he became the de facto leader of the Republican Party. And one of the things like, you could criticize Nancy Pelosi, right, you could say she isn't lefty enough, she's this, she's that. But at the end of the date, Nancy Pelosi was very organized, right, so you wouldn't see votes come up that would fail and rules committee. And another thing she's really careful about was she wouldn't make her purple district Dems who had to be up for reelection in a year or even less. She wouldn't make them vote on things she knew could be used against them an election. Now fast forward to this Republican party where you have blue state Republicans. You have a bunch right in New York and California, people like Mike Lawler, I mean, like Michael Goes on MSNBC and says he's the sane Republican. But he's had to vote for both impeachments. Right, he voted to impeach a cabinet official, the first time in more than one hundred years that's happened. You know, there were no high crimes and misdemeanors. They just didn't like him. And he voted to a peach show Biden, and again that was a completely vibes based impeachment.

Or he voted to keep the investigation going right, right, to open the impeachment.

You'll open, That's what I mean.

Yeah, outs try to go ahead.

So what you have with trump Ism is there's nobody driving the ship. Right, He's in charge, but he's not really driving the ship. So when you have these candidates, nobody is saying like, this is not a good candidate for swing voters. This candidate is an extremist candidate. And I think one of the original sins of trump Ism one of the things that ultimately I think very likely will be his undoing, though I don't want to predict the future, is that he went way more right wing and let the party kind of control him. Right. He sort of embraced the bassist act aspect of the party, which is not what you do right. Usually you get elected and you try to pivot to the middle so that you can get the Democrats so you can grow the electorate. Right, and so what he never learned the lesson that you don't want and nominate the most extreme person as a candidate because voters don't like it. In ruby red states, he was able to win with these candidates so often they've delivered results that were below what the polling average would be. Right, but he would get these people elected. But his swing candidates always always always failed because they were just too extremely Oh this is dating back.

I see. This is always from.

Roy Moore right right in Alabama. I mean, the man turned an Alabama Senate s blow. He has never been a good candidate picker. Like the one time he ever picked anyone who was a winner was Mike Pence, who helped him win. But otherwise everyone else has just been a disaster. And you know a lot of times he's just endorsed people to get his numbers to be better. He has endorsed like people who were running for reelection. But ultimately he's a very bad candidate picker. And you know, why shouldn't he be. You know, he doesn't have any you know, he's only been in politics since twenty fifteen.

And I mean, he just it seems to he just picks based on patty, personal things, not not any kind of political calculation.

If you suck up to him, he likes you. Yeah, that's very busy calculus. Yeah, okay, your turn. So the Supreme Court right now is looking at this idea of presidential immunity, which is, as we all know, completely silly and not concealed Team six murder your political opponent. Yes, because crimes are on crimes if you're president. There is no world in which any of this flies. So why is it taking so long? Obviously Alito and Thomas are all in on this, But what do you think the timetable is on this? Are they going to try to keep it going till June? What do you think this happens? And also, like people like who are trying to pretend to be real justices like Justice Kavanaugh kekestand I mean he must be pretty pissed too, and a certain way. So let's talk it through with me.

Great question.

You're right.

There is no world in which Donald Trump, at the end of the day gets a ruling from the Supreme Court or any court that says he's out of jail free because his actions are covered by presidential immunity.

Right, it's not how any of this works.

Right, there's no world where s that happens. But of course Trump always operates on two levels, a delay level, maybe the most important, and then the merit. He will not win the merits, but delay is everything, especially for him. This's a federal case, and I think you all your listeners know this, But all that has to happen if he wins, he just tells the doj oh, that little prosecution drop it. So the thing about immunity that from day one has always been so worrisome is it's a right not to stand trial in the first place, and as a result, and a trial court rules against you, you can make an immediate appeal. Almost everything else. You have to go to trial, be convicted, go through it, and then make all your claims. But immunity is special. Okay, so we've known that, and we already he played his card on immunity and got a pretty good delay out of chuck In, but a really excellent opinion by the DC Circuit it might have been the end of it there. And yes, so now here comes the US Supreme Court. First, they took two weeks to decide, so some shit was going on there, and then we'll we'll eventually find that out. But the big question is, here's the concrete risk. And it's not small to me, Molly that they decide they have to look out for not just the case, but the principle that they set down. Let's say they think, all right, you know Trump, of course, but there could be a situation a president bomb's Cambodia and you know, he gets sued criminally. There could be a situation where we want to hold that the constitution prohibits the a criminal charges against the president. All they have to do is annunciate some test like that, and what happens is it goes back for a remand Judge Shutkin takes an hour and a half to say it doesn't apply to Trump. But then Trump gets a shorter, but another trip up and down.

Oh wow, could that really happen one percent?

That's a risk that I think is more than fifty percent. So now let's talk about the court. They can do things quickly. They just in the Colorado case, the insurrection case, they made a point of issuing the opinion on the Monday before Super Tuesday, so people wouldn't know. You might have thought that they here would do the same thing, because we really want to have a trial, even if you're pro Trump. The value to the American people of having a trial so people know the results when they go to the polls. As best I can tell, that factor matters to the court zero. I think the Court has decided that's not our lookout. We're gonna take our regular time. They could have made the argument earlier. Instead, they put it on the last day of the term where there was one slot. You gotta imagine there's more than one opinion. So in other words, the earliest this comes out is like early June. And then okay, if it comes out early June and it's just affirming totally the DC Circuit, now Chuck's back in business.

But if it.

Comes out early June and it states, any test, any test where sometimes a president can be immune. Now we have the extra little road trip for Trump of back down and back up, and man, it looks very remote.

And that waits till September.

I think even without that little extra trip, it's sort of September. So it might just blow it out of the water. Let's say it is September by the time, because remember when it goes back to chuck In, he's still got to write this Trump to raise some things. So now it's September. Wow, So this most serious of all trials, with him having to be in the seat in the home stretch, he's going to stay to the Supreme Court. You've got to not let that. But we should have such problems because that is right now. The best case scenario and a likely one I'm really afraid of, is there's another round of a reman and September doesn't even happen. Okay, we're on time if we go quick. My turn Florida, which I grew up with always thinking Florida the crazy place that decides elections. So when this week the Florida Supreme Court out of the blue, on the one hand, kind of paves the way for a six week band, they just say it's the eighteen week so it could be six weeks. But on the other green light that initiative, which is a pro choice initiative. So there's going to be such focus and over the last two cycles, the issue is always played to the Democrat's advantage. But Florida is not your you know, your two thousand Florida which is on a knife SiGe. Florida is more read than that. So do you see any state of affairs in which the whole abortion thing actually puts in play in terms of winning or losing in the presidential election the great state of Florida.

I'm going to add something to your question, which is one of the things that this Supreme Court did was they said that now the six week abortion ban can go into action, and that is I think actually a really important data point because Florida has always been a state with pretty lax abortion laws for the South, and the people of Florida have never had the experience of being really a place where you can't get an abortion. So now you have Florida obgyns, we're going to have to practice obgyn care, maternal fetal healthcare as if they're in the state of Louisiana or Texas. And what that's mean is going to be a real sea change, because we've already seen this happen in the states that banned abortion. It will be in thirty days more dangerous to be a pregnant woman in Florida than it is in Connecticut or New York, or Rhode Island or Vermont, because if you're a pregnant woman in Florida, your doctor is always thinking I could go to jail for this, I could lose my license for this, I could be fined one hundred thousand dollars for this. Maybe Ron DeSantis, who we already know is kind of a loose canon, wants to make this Miami guynecologist an example. So already you're going to have doctors practicing defensive medicine. And one of the things I would say that I don't think we spend enough time talking about when we talk about choice in reproductive health care, is that pregnant women who are not necessarily pro choice, people who aren't Republicans, who never wanted to get an abortion, who never thought you should have the legal right to get abortions, don't necessarily realize how much their pregnancy care Chaine. Now that doctors are worried about getting arrested. From May to November, you're going to see the state of Florida as an abortion desert. So when those voters come to vote on those ballance initiatives, they're going to know really what they're voting for. And I think that is a really important data point. And historically we have seen that when people experience losing that right, they understand why it's so important. So I do think that'll be a big deal. Will Democrats win Florida, It doesn't matter. What matters is Republicans are now worried that Florida might be in played. This changes the map, right.

And the money right, money, money, money, money, money, right.

Yeah, And it's a very expensive media market Florida. And you've got Trump running defense in a state he thought would be a cake walk. And remember Florida is like the first time ever Florida population is going down now, right, people are leaving the state because of inflation because they have such bad inflationary pressures when it comes to insurance and inflation and the cost of goods and housing. So I actually think it's going to be a real problem and we'll a Democrat win Florida. Most pundits would say absolutely not. But again, we don't really know, right, we're basing all of this on polls. Maybe these poles are all totally correct, but there certainly has been a lot of cross tab volatility there.

And that's a really good point. And it's not just of course, the presidency. There's guys like Rick Scott, etc. All Right, we're down to five minutes and we've each had two rounds, and Jesse is very strict. I think we only have one question left.

What case is the case that you think might surprise us of the Trump cases? Or is there like a sleeper case like the case with the California bar. I mean, do you think there's a case that might sort of move the needle that we are not even looking out for?

Right, So I'll just say the legal needle and the political needle. Because we've had different cases where judges have found he basic lee is guilty as sin but not in the criminal context. And what you just named the Eastman and Jeff Clark disciplinary proceedings have that including like it was a really big thing. We got a preview of the what's going to be a killer witness in the January sixth trial, the Ramrod straight hats, Philbin, Pat Sippoloni, White House Council folks who invoked executive privilege in the January sixth committee. But they won't at trial, So that stuff is going to be killer. They'll also, you know, Hope Picks, I think, is going to be killer in this upcoming trial. In other words, there are trials that could be sleepers. But I think the real point is most of everything we've heard so far has been argument and people kind of you know, screaming in each other. But there's going to be these pristine, crystalline moments of testimony where like, what the hell is he going to say about that? I mean, these are witnesses from hell. For I want you to give me ninety seconds to do a plug.

Can I do that?

Yes?

Sure.

We just start arted a new speaker series out here called Talking San Diego. Jamie Raskin was here last week, Jensaki is coming. We got to have really a great slate of speakers. So if you're anywhere in the area, just go to Talkingsan Diego dot net and now I'll give you the info and you can buy a ticket for it. There's my self promotion name. Heyay.

Jacob Rubashkin is an analyst and reporter for Inside Elections. Welcome back to Fast Politics.

Jacob, Thanks for having me explain.

To us what you guys have right now that's new and exciting.

So we just publish at the end of last week our quarterly House Overview. You know, I think Inside Elections were the only ones who do with the kind of depth and regularity a look at the full house battlefield. We wrote about one hundred and ten house races that have either interesting general elections, interesting primary is special elections, something cool is going on there. We took about twelve thousand words the full issue to write a little bit about every single house race worth knowing about taking place around the country. And so we put out that issue at the end of last week, and along with that we included a number of ratings changes. So we assess the likelihood of each party winning every single seat across the nation, and we make adjustments to that as the cycle progresses. And so of those one hundred and ten that we wrote, about twelve of them the circumstances have changed, and so we updated the rating to more accurately reflect where we think those races sit today.

So one hundred and ten is a lot of races. Of those one hundred and tens, sort of exciting. That's about a third, right, of all the races in Congress, right, well.

A little less than a fourth.

Yeah, I was like four hundred three hundred. I write a ton about Congress for someone who's like a general opinion columnist, and I still, you know, I'm like, it's like three seventy five, four hundred, four fifty. But what I want to ask you is, so only a fourth are even worth sort of like looking into, right, because three fourths of them are people who've either been there for a million years or are just so there an R plus twenty seven or something, right.

Yeah, And you know I think that even of that one ten.

Of those one hundred and ten, how many are competitive.

Competitive in a general election? We currently carry seventy two seats on our House battlefield, so that is seats that will need.

That's actually higher than I thought.

And it's a little higher. It'll get smaller as we progress through the cycle. But I think there's a lot of uncertainty right now, and so what we try and do is give ourselves some latitude in both directions. Right, we're looking at seats that could be competitive in a good Democratic year, but we're also looking at seats that could be competitive in a good Republican year. And as we get to the summer and serve only to the fall, as the presidential election becomes a little bit more clear, we will know that a lot of those seats are no longer on the battlefield. Right if if we're in October or even if we're in July, right and the presidential race looks like it's going to be in favor of one candidate or the other, that's going to shift how the presidential battlefield goes. But for now, we've got a lot of seats that could go one way or the other. And then we've got a seat like West Virginia second District, which is not a competitive general election seat, but it's an open seat. There's going to be a Republican primary, and there's going to be a new member of Congress, and even if that's going to be a Republican like the outgoing member, it's always important when you get a new member of Congress, they come in with their own set of priorities, their own background, and as we've seen over the last year or six months, the individual personalities of all of these members can have an outsized impact on how the House functions.

See, you're straight reporter, so you can't say what I'm thinking, which is you can always get it crazy like Marjorie Taylor Green, who will hijack the entire party. See, you can't say it, but I can just not.

There are differences within each party's conference that can be just as important as whether you're a D or an R. I'll put it that way.

Let's get talking about this seventy two competitive seats. What are the sort of I'd love to know, what are the sort of ones that you were surprised by or that you were like, oh wow.

So there are a couple that I think have not necessarily gone the way I might have expected at the beginning of the cycle, kind of in both directions. On the Democratic side, for instance, Nevada right in twenty twenty two, Nevada was one of the big big prizes of the House battlefield. I mean, we saw both Democrats and Republicans super PACs spend tens of millions of dollars in the Las Vegas media market. There were three congressional districts that were looked at as up for grabs, the first, the third, and the fourth all held by Democrats. Republicans really wanted to win them, and they spent a ton of money trying to and they lost all them narrowly, but they didn't win any of those Nevada seats. And heading into twenty twenty four, I think there was an expectation this is a really competitive presidential year, this is going to be a top state in the Senate battlefield. These house races are going to be front and center again. And in fact, what we've seen is a lot of Republican pessimism about Nevada. They've been unable to recruit top tier candidates. They are not really talking about those races and those Democratic incumbents as top tier pickup opportunities. That's wild, and so a state that was so central to the battlefield last time has really become a bit of a backwater, even as that Senate race is super, super interesting, the presidential is super interesting, and I.

Always think of Nevada as like a worry for them. It's like it's in the D column until it's not I feel like one of the big problems Republicans are having right now is money. That they have a cash crunch, and because Donald Trump's legal fees are so high, it's like a cash crunch for them. You can see it in down ballot races, which that would make the most sense, right.

Yeah, the Republicans have struggled to keep pace with Democrats on the fundraising side. On the candidate side, I'll be specific, because the Republican super PACs generally have more money than their Democratic counterpart. So like the Congressional Leadership Fund, which is the main Republican super pac, tends to have more money to throw around in the House Majority Pack, which is the analogous institution on the left. But of course those dollars they don't go as far because it's you get a better rate for advertising if you're the candidate then if you're an outside super pack. So it's definitely a factor for Republicans, the money.

So tell me what else you're seeing that's interesting and surprising like that.

There were a few races that we moved in republicans favor. I'll point out two of them here, Michigan's tenth District, which kind of Assits. It's a suburban district right north of Detroit. It has an incumbent Republican Congressman named John James. He won a very narrow election in twenty twenty two open seat race. Congressman Andy Levin held this seat for a while, but when Michigan redrew their maps, he chose to run in a Democratic primary against his colleague Hailey Stevens.

He lost and lost.

Yeah. Now, if he had run in this district, he would have won.

Oh no, Hailey's still running.

Right, Yeah, she's running for her seat again. But Andy Levin, there was some thought maybe he would run against John James, but he obviously is not doing that. This is a really marginal district. Trump would have carried it in twenty twenty by about a percentage point. But if you look at the results of the twenty twenty two elections in Michigan in this seat, they were all quite good for Democrats. Gretchen Whitmer, Jocelyn Benson, and Dana Nessel, who were the three women at the top of the ticket for Democrats in Michigan, all carried this district by double digits, and John James won by around two thousand votes.

Isn't John James the guy they keep running for Senate?

Yeah, so he he ran for Senate in twenty eighteen and twenty twenty.

Yeah, he's like the one black Republican.

Yeah, and they actually I believe there are now more black Republicans in Congress than ever.

Before, right, but it's still like four.

Yeah, I think it's four or five. But yes, he ran for Senate twice nearly one in twenty twenty and then barely won this congressional seat. The Democrats look like they're going to nominate a guy named Carl Marlinga, who is the nominee last time. He is a very old school attorney in the area. He was a judge in Macomb County. He was a prosecutor, a defense attorney. He was the nominee last time. But he is not a good fundraiser, and he's got some legal baggage from his time as a judge and a defense attorney because a lot of defense attorneys take on unsavory clients that Republicans were able to weaponize really effectively last time, and the fact that this should be a top tier pickup opportunity, they were not able to attract a real top tier challenger for James, and so in all likelihood Marlingo will be the nominee. Again, he's not going to have a lot of money. It's going to be a really expensive media market in Detroit because of that Senate race and the presidential and so this is one that again we kind of expect it to be a little bit more competitive.

Democrats could flip yeah, but they don't nominate the right person for it, so they can't. That's Michigan one, Michigan ten. I have a question about the ladies who control Michigan, the governor, the ag yeah, and the Secretary of State. Do they help down ballot candidates in Michigan or is there no correlation?

In twenty twenty two, they pretty clearly did because when they were on the ballot in Michigan, all three of its statewide offices are up in non presidential years, so none of them will be on the ballot this time. But clearly in twenty twenty two, the fact that you had three strong candidates at the top of the ticket was a big boon for Democrats running down ballot. Remember, you also had that abortion referendum that passed by a pretty significant margin. That was helpful. And you had Republicans in two of those three races. Republicans nominated candidates that were pretty trumpy, that were pretty baked in with the conspiracy theories about the twenty twenty election. So for Governor Tutor Dixon and for Secretary of Straight Christina Caromo, and so two out of the three state wide candidates couldn't raise any money and were really unpalatable to a lot of voters. And so that's why you saw Michigan was such a bright spot for Democrats in twenty twenty two. In twenty four when they're not on the ballot, I don't think it helps nearly as much.

But the Republican Party in Michigan has had some real problems. Yes, you want to talk about that.

The Republican Party in Michigan kind of underwent a schism. I guess it's the best way to think about it. So Christina Karama, who was that Secretary of State nominated, she is pretty wild. She has a lot of conspiracy theories about I think she said like Beyonce was demonic, Like it's just she's kind of all over the place. So she was elected the chairwoman of the state party in Michigan a couple of years ago in a pretty contentious race and running against actually the guy who was the nominee for attorney general, who performed the best out of the three statewide Republican candidates last cycle. So she beat him. The party was pretty torn up about it, and I mean, we're talking fistfights on camera at Michigan GOP retreats. It's been really rocky for the last year or so in her tenure. And she was ousted a little while ago, and she claimed that it was illegal and that she was still the rightful chair. For a little while, there were two dueling websites, they had two dueling conventions. But since then things kind of have settled. A federal judge ruled that she was properly ousted, and Pete Hawkstra, who is a former congressman, is kind of viewed by pretty much everyone now as the chairman of the Republican state party. They're still broke, they still don't have any money. But ultimately, whether or not you have a strong state party is a pretty secondary or tertiary concern when we're talking about federal races at least, right.

But turnout is still helped by a good stay party. Yeah, talk to me about the races that keep people up at night. Marjorie Taylor Green is going to stick it out. But Lauren Bobert, right, I mean, there's a little excitement there.

This race has so many twists and turns. Talk about things that didn't end up how we anticipated heading into this cycle. Adam Frish, who I believe you've had on the show.

Before multiple times, Yes, took.

Lauren Bobert to a very very narrow and most narrow congressional victory of the twenty twenty two cycle just a couple hundred votes. He was back for a rematch. He was raising a ton of money. It became very clear that he was going to be a real threat to her in the general election. And then she got a primary challenger as well, who started getting some real backing from some of the more moderate and establishment Colorado Republicans. So she decided to switch districts and run in the fourth district, which is not currently represented by ken Buck, but up until about two weeks ago was represented by ken Buck. And this is really the thing that always really gets me as I remember in twenty ten when ken Buck was the Tea Party Darling he was nominating him in Colorado was a sign that the right wing of the Republican Party had really come into the four And when he lost that race to Michael Bennett, it was held up kind of in the same conversation as Sharon Engel and Christine O'Donnell, Republicans nominating unelectable candidates is costing them the Senate. Fast forward to decade and Ken Buck is the voice of reason in the Republican Party and is so fed up with how things have gone that he's calling it quit. So he is not running for reelection. He resigned his seat and on very short notice. And so now you've got an open a vacant seat, You've got an open Republican primary, and you've got a special election all taking place at the same time. Bobert is trying to win the Republican primary. She's not running in the special election. There are a whole bunch of local elected officials who are also running in the primary. It's gotten pretty.

Nasty who's running in the special So.

The special and Colorado is weird about this. Colorado doesn't do primaries for special elections. Yeah, they have a committee. They call them vacancy committees, which are basically committees of local elected officials and Republican Party officials or Democratic Party officials who meet up and choose the nominees at a convention. So the Republican nominee is a guy named Greg Lopez. He is a former gubernator candidate. He was a mayor of a town in the nineties. He was picked as the nominee for the special. He's not running in the regular elections.

The reason Lauren Boper didn't run in the special was because if you run in the special, you can't run in the general. Right.

Well, no, so you can do both. The reasons she didn't, I'm of two minds. I think one of the reasons why she didn't is because she was worried she would lose. She wouldn't get the nomination and that would be embarrassing. The other thing is if she ran on the special and won, she would have to resign her current seat, right because you can't hold two seats in Congress at once. She didn't put her name in contention. Lopez did, but he said up front that he was only going to serve till the end of the year if he won, And so he's the Republican nominee. The Democratic nominee is a woman named Trish Caborezi, who is a former speech writer currently works for the National Science Foundation, has a bit of a background in democratic politics. She's a real underdog. This is a very Republican seat. So that race will take place on June twenty fifth, on the same ballot as the primary featuring Bobert and a number of other Republicans for the full term.

Oh wow, for the primary. So this is wild stuff. Please tell me what the most fascinating house race you've seen.

I think the Alaska is super interesting. It's the most Republican state currently held by a Democrat. Democrat Mary Poltola, of course, won that big special election in twenty twenty two, beat Sarah Palin. Alaska has a unique system of doing congressional and Senate races. It's a top four instant runoff rank choice voting election. Nowhere else in the country does their elections like this. And she faces two Republican challengers, Lieutenant governor named Nancy Dlstrom and a tech entrepreneur named Nick Begich, who is the one Republican and the very democratic and very prominent Begich family in Alaska, and this should be a seat that Republicans are winning. Democrats have very little business holding a seat a statewide seat in Alaska. But because there are two Republicans in the race and neither of them are getting out, it's looking more likely that they're going to get in each other's way and really allow Peltola to do what she's done for the last two years, which is be relentlessly positive. She raised up million seven this quarter. That goes a long way in the Anchorage media market. She has caught a real lucky break because Republicans can't unify behind one candidate ahead of the general election. So I think Alaska politics is fascinating. That's a seat that Democrats absolutely have to hold if they want to maintain the majority or reclaim the majority. But you know they're going to have to have some things break their way over the next couple months for sure.

Thanks so much.

Yeah, thank you for having me a moment.

Jesse Cannon by drug Fast.

You know, it's kind of weird. It's almost like Donald Trump's a vengeful guy. Where are people getting this?

Trump says he'll jail his opponents members of the House January sixth Committee are preparing. Yes, they're ready because if Donald Trump, I am sorry, this is insane. Donald Trump is threatening to jail members of the January sixth Committee. Their crime is recognizing his crimes. And in case you're wondering, if Trump gets re elected, your crimes will be doing anything that draws attention to his crimes. So may I suggest that perhaps we should cover this election as the insane fiasco it is, and not business as usual. Donald Trump making overtures towards jailing his political opponents, and his political opponents trying to prepare for jail is our moment of fuck ray. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.

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