What Happens After a Blue Wave

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3:14It's really nice to be needed. Jonathan Last is my pal and the editor of the Bullwork. After doing a whole bunch of shows about a coming blue wave, I felt like calling him could bring me back down to earth. I just feel like it's cold shower time for anyone who is excited about dunking on Donald Trump. And you're usually pretty good at that. I mean, it's my calling in life, my carism. I feel like that's what I do. I like to bring a little bit of cloudy rain into everybody's sunny lives. We should start here, which is even you, the ear of American politics, have been bullish about this midterm cycle, like very bullish, like to put numbers behind it. I mean, like what do you think the chances are of the Democrats winning the House or the Senate? So I think the chance of the Democrats winning the House is basically like 99 to 1.

4:17And the one is that every poll taken everywhere is wrong. JVL, like you probably, thinks this sounds good. Great, even. The Senate, I sort of did this as an exercise last week. If I was setting the Vegas line for the overrunner, which means that what you want to do is you want to pick a number that gets people to bet an equal amount on either side. I would set it at 52 and a half Senate seats. And I think it is. That's pretty good, right? Is that Federman proof? Yeah, 52 is Federman proof. Wow. I mean, I think you said it was like 60 something percent odds that they get to a Federman proof majority, which doesn't mean it means it's the most likely outcome. The most likely outcome out of a lot of different outcomes. So yeah, there's a one in 20 chance that you could roll the dice here and get 56 Democratic senators. At this point,

5:22you might be wondering why JVL is sounding so glum. But don't worry, he got there. Like, you know, once once we get to, yay, you have 52 or 56 Democratic Senators. Now what? I mean, the real upshot of it is that it gives the Republican nominee in 2028 something real to run against. And so you will then have two years and saying, look at this. You have all these Democrats in Washington and everything is terrible. It's because of them. Today on the show, we talk about what happens and what doesn't the day after election day. And we talk about the real downsides of Democrats winning. I'm Mary Harris. You're listening to what next? Stick around.

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9:39financial infrastructure built on over a trillion dollars of secure payments. Visit bill.com slash proven for a special offer. Okay, I want to go deep into why you think about this election, and even though you're feeling good about it, you sort of recognize it won't solve the fundamentals, which I think is where people get misled, right? They're like, oh, we're going to it's winning, and then like yay, and then, but like then there's like so much to do. And then what? Right, exactly. And then what? And like the example you gave this week was Brazil. And I want to talk about why. I want to just lay out the case. And like I think first we just need to remind people that Brazil's recent political history has mirrored our own in January of 2023. Brazil had its own version of January 6th. I just wonder if you can explain that explain how like Brazil reacted really differently

10:39than we did. Yeah. So Brazil took their attempted coup seriously and they launched criminal prosecution of of hair Bolsonaro. And he was convicted and he's under house arrest and he can't run for president again. And yay, the story's over. We won the forces of the world. I mean, this has been held up as an example. Like I'm going to read you like three headlines from the New York Times. Okay. Two capital riots. Two very different results. This is January 2024. So it's like America look how good Brazil is, right? And then why Trump is returning to power while Bolsonaro faces prison. Why Brazil just succeeded where America failed? Do you know what I mean? Like these are this is the framing we've had here in the US like Brazil good America bad. Now maybe we want to remind people would just happen to Brazil. It's all relative, right? I mean, it is relatively Brazil better. And the Brazilian government treated its democracy more seriously than the United

11:43States government did. The problem is the Brazilian people may not have. So what we saw over the weekend was the latest election. Bolsonaro's kid finished in front. He'd been not like way back in the polls, but he was not projected to win. And they're going to now advance to a final round of voting. I mean, I don't understand Brazilian politics. Maybe in the final round of voting, Lula will pull it out. But I don't know the people who do observe this say, yeah, you know, Bolsonaro has a has a chance and we should underline his father cannot run because he's under arrest. He is sitting in his his mansion with his, you know, ankle bracelet on and he can't leave. So do you like if Don Jr. ran? Not only if Don Jr. ran because it would be like if Don Jr. and Molania and Eric Antifini all ran because there's a whole bunch of the kids who have run for the Senate. And I believe they've all

12:46won and I believe his wife. She I believe is also one. And so it's you know, it's a dynastic family. Oh, get it's the same movie. Yeah, it's the same movie. And this is why I keep saying everybody says I'm a crazy person. When everyone's like, do you think it'll be Marco or JD? Well, I just look at this and I'm like, anyone who doesn't think that Don Jr. could have the nomination if he wanted it, he's crazy. Yeah. Because if he announced that he was running for president, he would clear the field. Nobody else would run. The times had this op-ed about Brazil that I found so damning in this sort of like parallelism regard. It basically posits that the opposition to authoritarianism in Brazil, it is helmed by richer, wider people. And that like those are the people taking to the streets against Bolsonaro. And all I could think

13:47about was, Rutto, that sounds a lot like the No Kings protests. A little bit. Yeah. A little bit. Again, I don't, you know, if this is one of those things where we see, we see right wing nationalism rising everywhere from Japan to Italy to Hungary to Germany to Brazil to America. And I just, I so I, okay, in a previous life, I spent a lot of time writing about demographics. And one of the things that I talk about is fertility declines. You see fertility declines almost everywhere. There's like, you know, 2% of the countries in the world that don't have declining fertility rates. And when something, when it trends that widespread, it means that there are a whole bunch of general inputs, which are broadly shared among these countries. But also there are a whole lot of very particularized inputs. And so like, you know, there's the reason you see, the reasons you see the

14:52fertility decline in Iran are not exactly the same as the fertility decline in Japan. I think it's probably the same with the nationalism stuff. I think there are probably broad factors which are true in many places, but then particularized things, which, you know, which is why I'm not willing to say that we're exactly like Brazil. So what's happening in the United States rhymes with what's happening elsewhere? It's not the same song. Yes. If I was more clever, I would have just said that instead of like doing a detour to demographics. I mean, another example I'd throw on the pile is France, which again, it's different, right? But it's like in 2024, they had this election. It was like a huge surge of people coming out across the spectrum of anti-authoritarian folks looking to stop the right wing there, right? What do we see? Like a couple years later, like protests in the street. We have not solved like the basic fundamental undergirding issues, whatever they may be

15:52that are causing discontent. People are pissed. People are pissed. They are. I mean, there's one of the things I think a lot about is how running a presidential level political campaign in the United States used to be the kind of thing that you only get to do once if you lose, right? If you crash and burn on that, it doesn't matter whose fault it was. It doesn't matter if you are a better candidate, it's a bad environment. It's like you don't get to do it again. You're one and done. You're one and done because the party like it has too much invested in it. There's too much money. There's too much for sure. And we have gone away from that, obviously in America. And a lot of yes. This is what happened in France. Like Marine Le Pen just got to run over and over and over and over. It wasn't the case that you only have to defeat her fascist movement once. They just kept getting free shots. And at some point, they're going to run when there's an overcession on and they are out of power and people looking for change and be like, I don't

16:53know, they're still there. And so that is an advantage that a lot of these nationalist movements have. They can learn. They can learn. And they can just keep going as no real price for defeat for them. It's not great. We have to win every time. They only have to win once. Once. I think part of what you're saying is that no matter what happens next month with the midterms, whoever gets elected in Washington, they're inheriting a mess. A mess made worse by tears of Donald Trump being in office. And the people who elected them will be hungry for something to change. They'll be limited power for things to actually change. Nothing they can change. Yeah. And I'd actually positive something else, which is like, if the Democrats win, there's a good chance their leaders will be like the dogs that caught the car. Do you know what I mean? Like, Donna Brazil wrote an outfit in the Washington Post. Its title was Republicans failed to control the fringe. The key hem Jeffries won't. And I was like, okay, like who's this for right now? Like, you're in

18:00like an interesting position right now in terms of like the blue way of territory. And like the the thing you're saying is like, everyone settle down. I'm like, oh, yeah. I was a little, maybe be a little bit worried about the leadership in DC and like what they're making of people electing certain folks at this moment or seem inclined to elect certain folks in this moment. I don't know. I mean, that's an interesting question. I mean, the good news is that the fringe Democrats won't be able to do anything more than the mainstream Democrats will after the election. I would just say, you know, fuck all. Like, they just want to have any real power. They can hold a bunch of hearings. They can try to impeach heat heat heat tech Seth. But they're going to be elected on a platform of affordability with zero ability to impact affordability. I'm just not sure how that works out for them in the long run. On the other hand, I think you can say looking at the Democratic fringe, some of it, not all of it, but some of it has really grown up and turned

19:09out to be interested in actually being serious legislators. And I'm thinking about AOC here. So I'm I'm Donnie in New York. It seems to be a pretty competent mayor actually. He's not there to woke a fire and force everyone in New York City to have a trans surgery. He's just going out and you know, governing in a pretty responsible way. I don't know. That is I think hopeful. And you know, where is it written that other of people who, you know, are on the fringe of the party now can't do the same. Is that too hopeful? Maybe I should take that back. I don't know. No, I'm thinking no, no, I mean, I kind of want you to be hopeful. Like, I want to turn your front upside down slightly again. Like, because I do think some things will definitely happen when and if whatever happens to November happens. Like you, you've mentioned a couple of times

20:13Pete Higgseth. I would like to say that I think there is a decent chance Pete Higgseth is impeached. And I wonder if you would agree with me on that. If the Democrats don't impeach them, it's political malpractice. Like I just don't understand. He is the middleman on the most unpopular war we've had in America since I don't even know what. He is demonstrably just an absolute shit heel. And tell me I really feel he is fucked up everything. And if you impeach him, you force Republicans in the Senate and in the House to have another Iran vote. And so it's another chance to put them on the record as supporting Trump's war. Why wouldn't you do that? Yeah, I mean, like my main evidence here is that Kim Jeffries has said he wants to do it. And he's not going to say something out loud that he doesn't mean I don't think. I think he's very careful. And even Republicans don't seem to like

21:17Pete Higgseth at this point. A lot of them are trying to distance themselves from the Iran war as they're campaigning. I just feel like it's this is coming. This is coming. Yeah, well, you know, but of course, for Republicans say that now because it's easy to say that now. If you actually have to go and vote on Higgseth though, like then all of a sudden, like I don't know, can you give the Democrats a win? The Democrats are the real enemy. They're the horrible war. It becomes very, very difficult for Republicans. And for Trump, it becomes hard. I don't think he would just toss Higgseth overboard. If he did, he would have to do if the Democrats take the Senate, I think Trump would have to do it sooner rather than later. So you think the move if your Trump is like toss him out in like November, December gets someone new in there. That's what I would do. But the other problem with that is if he really is thinking about escalating post-election, can you escalate while pushing your SEC def out? How does that work? I mean,

22:20there are somebody does need to like turn lights on and stuff. Okay, well, the analogy there, how do you do that? You look at, you analogize it to Kristian O'Me, right? Kristian O'Me's out. Brought in Mark Wayne. Mark Wayne is still getting the job done in a less showy way. Well, I just mean in that bridge period where Higgseth is out and you haven't confirmed his replacement yet. Because that replacement vote becomes really hard for Republicans. Even the ones who, even the ones who are critical of Higgseth, so confirming somebody else who is an obvious dope, which I think is what Trump would have to do. I just don't, again, his project of co-opting the military and politicizing the military requires somebody like Higgseth. You can't put a Jim Madison there. You can't put a good actor in there and still do what he wants to do to the military. He's stuck. And so are we. Yeah. We'll be right back after a quick break. Quick reminder,

23:27before we go to the ads, you could be listening to this without ads if you joined us. The way to do it is to go to slate.com slash what next plus. Use our offer code what next 50 and you'll be able to join for half off. Thanks. This episode is brought to you by Homeshev. Can I tell you what my next month looks like? I've got like five family birthdays, two weekends with house guests, a little trip out of town, and oh yeah, every day we all got to eat. It'd be pretty nice to eat without actually having to cook while simultaneously not feeling that post takeout hangover I sometimes get. This is where Homeshev comes in. Homeshev delivers restaurant quality meals right to your door for less than eating out with way less stress than meal planning. Homeshev makes cooking simple. It's fresh food delivered, easy recipes to follow, and meals that taste great. It takes the stress out of your week with

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25:32first box and free dessert for life. Homeshev.com-sash-whatnext must be an active subscriber to receive the free dessert. Trillion dollars of secure payments powering our bill pay tools. Instead of just moving money, bill is powering the financial operations of nearly half a million customers. So stop the guesswork and start scaling with the proven choice. Ready to talk with an expert? Visit bill.com-sash-proven to get started and grab a $150 gift card as a thank you. Terms and conditions apply. See off for page for details. Another thing where I think there might be movement after November is healthcare. And I'm not saying big movement. I'm saying we got a lot of people talking about Medicare for all. That's not going to happen. But I do think a lot of people are talking about the Obamacare subsidies. And I think a lot of Republicans found it very painful that those subsidies got rolled back.

26:37I just think there's so much energy around healthcare right now. Like we've had this conversation for so long, people are tired. People are tired. Well, I mean, that, but the the nationalists are open to it is the thing. I mean, there's a reason Tucker keeps talking about it. And I mean, this is this if you are looking to shift the Republican coalition to try to eat that gap in the horseshoe and try to pick up Bernie bros and sort of disaffected leftists. I mean, that's what Tucker is doing, right? That's why he's like playing footsie with L. Syed and talking about how great L. Syed is. Like there's a lot of anti-Israel overlap there. A lot of anti-corporate overlap anti-floc anti-AI like all that stuff is there for the taking. And I don't know. I think Democrats ought to get there first myself, but they don't ask me. So yeah, I mean, a problem that I see for Democrats. I think you see it too. Is that a big motivation for I think people voting right now is to stop chaos, whether you're

27:43referring to like immigration chaos, whether you're referring to like prices going up, gas prices being too high, a Ron war, they'll have limited ability to stop that chaos. Like you can't just be like, well, a Ron war is over. Let's go home. That's not a possibility. And also like stopping chaos would require its own measure of chaos. Like if you said, oh, we're impeaching Donald Trump, like that's a whole other load of chaos, which is also very fraught. Which nobody's going to want. Exactly. Right. Nobody's going to want that. I mean, I'm sorry, this is kind of on the voters. They voted for chaos. And here we are. I mean, Donald Trump did say I'm going to give Elon Musk keys to the federal government and he's going to cut $2 trillion. And I'm going to deport 20 million people. And what do people think that looks like? So you're basically electing more people to go to Washington and point at Trump and be like, still a problem. Still a problem, right? And to stop him

28:45from doing, to stop him from doing more legislation, I guess. Right. And to try to begin accountability, right? I mean, that's the point of congressional hearings is to try to start laying the predicate for criminal prosecutions, starting, I don't know, it's a 1202 January 20, January 20, 2029. I call this the like, we're stuck in the going on a bare hunt place. Just like we're going on a bare hunt. We can't go over it. We can't go under it. We have to go through it. But the vote here is about not wanting to go through it. And that's the problem. What does that mean for 2028? Because I think your big concern is that voters will get so high on their own supply of like midterms went well when like the fundamentals for the midterms are always going to go their way midterms are all about like the party that's not in power coming home. And like it doesn't mean anything

29:50about the next presidential, right? I mean, I wouldn't say it doesn't mean anything. It does start to shape the environment of the next president, but it's not a direct line. Right. I mean, it's not, you know, A to B. There's like a whole bunch of intermediary points. And where does it take us? I mean, the big question is, is Donald Trump ever going to say, I am not seeking re-election? I will not be running in 2028. Do we think he's saying? No, because he can't sell the hats. Right. And so like the whole race is frozen because on the Republican side, like if you want to not make enemies of Trump, you can't say I'm running for president or do any of the things that make it look like you're running for president until he says, I guess I'll abide by the Constitution. Which by the way, he might not do this. The audio has to find the video because the face he made

30:52was amazing. And and also he might not do it. Right. I mean, Trump might say, you know, I believe very strongly that I am owed a third term because they did steal the 2020 election from me and a lot of very smart people are telling me that the Constitution does leave a room for this and a loop hole. So we're pressing forward. I've talked to other people about like the idea that will Trump fight for members of Congress like the way he did in 2020. Like is he going to like lean on Georgia, like North Carolina or whatever to like find some votes. And you know, I think there is this real question of whether he cares enough about other people who are not him. But what you're saying actually frames that as part of strengthening himself, do you know what I mean? Like casting these other people aside is fine. It makes his project more complete. It makes it make more sense. And so it's like, yeah, okay, cool. You guys lost, but still me over here. I was very wrong in 2018. I thought that the 2018 review of Trump was going to cause Republicans

31:59to say crap. So we actually did lose the 2016 election. I know we won, but it was a fluke. That was a one and a million shot. And now we just got pantsed here. The entire country is turning against us. We got a move off of this guy. And that's not what happened. It commits Republican party to double down on Trump and become trumpier and more maga. Like why wouldn't that also hold for this election? Maybe this time it will be like that. But I was burned by that theory once before. And so I am, I am not going to automatically assume that that's how it'll work out this time. Can I tell you a thing that's giving me hope just to like brighten your day? We've been talking to people who we're calling them long shots candidates who are running in places where it's like, interesting. I think they have a shot this year. Like we talked to Brian Pointexter who's running against Max Miller in Ohio. We talked to Justin Pearson who's trying to like keep the one Democratic seat in Tennessee that was during Manderd. He's great. I like that. Yeah. And I

33:04got to say to me, they sound different than the baseline 2018 candidate. They are talking consistently about a few things. They're talking about visiting like every county in their district. They are talking about constituent services is really important. All this stuff is stuff that I think makes them and their case more credible in the long term. Also their opponents don't want to debate them, which to me is a sign of weakness. And it gives me hope. And I don't know how long we have to do that kind of like routes growing work that these candidates are doing now. I really, I think that's the issue. It's like a timing game. Like how much time do we have before the clock runs out? And we really just mess this up, but beyond repair. Am I convincing you at all? I agree with you. I think all in the whole the Democrats have done a really good job of finding good candidates for this this cycle. And not not all of them. They're not all great. You know, most of them are pretty impressive.

34:09They've run really energetic campaigns. They've run well. I think Chuck Schumer deserves quite a lot of credit for that. I mean, he recruited some very good candidates. Sometimes. I mean, sometimes, you know, and he makes it like the opposite of that. But like, yeah, the opposite. On the whole Schumer, I know like, no, no Democrat alive wants to give Schumer credit for anything. But like, I think he deserves credit for this. It is interesting though. Again, there is no template here though. Like they are, they're all very, very different, right? Amy Hackton is very different from Sherrod Brown, who's very different from Talleriko, who's very different from, you know, Abdul El-Sahat, right? I mean, you have lots of different things. And one thing I wish Democrats could learn from this is the idea of Godifying candidates who fit their spot. You know, like they're the, look, you might love Zoran. You might think he's great. And he is great for New York.

35:15But you got to find somebody different in Texas, right? You got to find somebody different in Florida. And, you know, I, that would be a nice lesson to learn. I'd feel better about our chance to Democratic Party could learn. Okay, let me, let me try to depress you. Great. That's why I call it. It will be very nice of the Democrats win congressional majorities. It would be better than if they didn't. Yes. It would be even nicer if Democrats also learned how to campaign better and message better and choose candidates in ways that were optimal. But at the end of the day, this thing of ours is not sustainable. If it depends on one political party, doing everything right all of the time. Yeah. That doesn't work. You can't win every time. And until the Republican Party decides that it is basically okay with the liberal democratic experiment again, I just don't know why anybody would feel good about our long term prospects.

36:18Counterpoint. The road to the Republican Party coming to that realization is getting their ass handed to them at the ballot box, right? I don't know that that's necessarily true. Why? Okay. So when putting them in jail, what are you doing with them? I mean, like AFD lost a bunch of elections. And it didn't convince AFD to, you know, maybe all this not too stuff is not where we should be doing, right? Rain lapen lost election after election. It did not convince her. I do not actually subscribe to the idea that electoral losses lead to ideological changes. So is it something cultural that has to change? I think it is. I think it's the culture has to change. People have to change what's in their hearts. And I don't know how that I don't know how that process works. And so I have no confidence that it can be accomplished

37:18intentionally. Maybe happens by accident, right? Nobody ever sees a great reawakening. I don't know. Like either the American people will stop sucking. It's just where the frogs in the pot. Maybe that's what it is. See? Look at my optimism there. Oh, you mean frogs in the pot in a good way. Got you. Getting colder. What do I mean? That we're escaping. Maybe that analogy doesn't work. Um, I am so grateful for your time. Thanks for coming on the show, JBO. Always good to be here. Jonathan Last is the editor of the Bullwork. And that's our show. What next is produced by Evan Campbell, Madeline Tams-Dusharm, and Patrick Fort. Page Osborne is the senior supervising producer of What Next and What Next TBD. Miello Bell is the executive producer of podcast year at Slate. Ben Richmond is our senior director of podcast operations. And I'm Mary Harris. Go talk me down on Blue Sky. I'm at Mary Harris. Thanks for listening. Catch you back here. Next time.

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