Matt and Sam talk to reporter David Weigel of Semafor about the 2026 midterm elections.
Duration
1h 28m
Broadcast on
05 Oct 2026
Audio Format
other
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Dave Weigel is a longtime favorite political reporter of ours—someone we've both read for years, and find unusually unblinkered by partisan loyalties—so we couldn't think of a better guide to the 2026 midterms elections than him. What everyone knows is that, right now, polls show a possible Democratic wave in the offing; we try to understand why, and the ways both parties are responding to a genuinely new phenomenon of the Trump Era: the economy struggling, and voters blaming Trump directly. We discuss the flop of a GOP convention in Texas; how Republicans seem to be re-running outdated campaigns—in part because they've already achieved so many of their policy goals on "hot-button cultural issues"; the Democratic strategy of conceding on such cultural issues to seem "normal" and focus on the economy; and more.
Register to see Matt and Sam live and in person at Jewish Currents Live on Sunday Oct 11 here.
Sources:
Read all of Dave's reporting and columns at Semafor here.
All right. Welcome listeners to episode 145 of Know Your Enemy. I'm at sipping your podcast co-host and I'm here as always with my great friend, Sam other Bell. Hello, Samuel. I'm Matthew. I love that you call me Samuel sometime, that you're really the only one and my father. With that what you will. Yes, yes. Most of the time growing up, if anyone called me Matthew, it'd be my mother, you know, when I was in trouble. Because I was a real how, you know, a kid as you might imagine. I really highly doubt that. I know. I was not. I was very good. But Sam, we're trying to get into trouble this week. We're putting out this episode with our friend Dave Waggle. We're waiting into politics, baby. We have been, I would say, Sam, especially on your part, you've been unusually interested in the upcoming midterms. Yeah. And so we thought, we'll probably talk about them more for subscribers between now and, you know, early November. But to get things kicked off, a little midterm mini-series, we had on our friend Dave Waggle, who is, I think, one of the very, very best political reporters out there and a great writer. And you can read him currently. He's a columnist at the news website, Semaphore. And I just, I followed Dave's stuff. I mean, forever, even when I was a young conservative. When he was at Reason, right? Wasn't he? Yeah, exactly. But he's just incredible. And I had a blast talking to him. Yeah, not least because he actually goes out and talks to people and gets on the ground. And columnist undersells what he does. He is a columnist there, but he does a lot of reporting on the ground, which is important. And I think the other thing about him, I've always thought this, is that I think that his political background, which is pretty unclear, it doesn't come through in his work at all, really. But he's really, truly not a partisan of either party at all. That's true. In a way that is actually just incredibly rare. Like, he doesn't really have a rooting interest in a way that I think just really improves the quality of his work. And that we wouldn't improve the quality of everyone's work. But I think that for Dave, it's like, he's able to write about the, you know, factional conflicts between the parties without a rooting interest or like, you know, without tipping the scales one way or the other, because he's just interested in it, rather than like, when I write about, you know, a conflict between Democrats on the left. I'm rooting for the left. And I think Dave, unlike a lot of mainstream reporters, who on some level are acculturated into the world of like, the serious people in the Democratic Party are the centrist, wonks, and the unserious people are our friends. Dave doesn't have that. So he's able to, he's able to write about it in a more, in a more, I don't know, it's just in a more straightforward and realistic way. And I think the same applies to conflicts within the Republican Party. Yes. Yeah. He gets away with it because he's so smart. And I think he's just been doing it for so long. Like, people genuinely talk to him because they respect him. I think. So yes, Dave was our guide to the midterms. We spend a lot of time talking about the Senate race in Texas. And also, Texas was where the Republican midterm convention was held. And so we dug into that, but we also, we kind of skip all over the map, talk about what's going on in both parties. The Michigan race, Senate race, we talk about as well. But it was a great kind of tour. And I think a good prep so you can follow what's happening. Or you can listen to this and stop following what's happening. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Check back in about a month. We'll let you know how it went. But Sam, we're releasing this episode Monday, October 5th, Sunday, October 11th. People can go about to see the Know Your Enemy Boys with some good friends of ours live. Live and in person. Yes, we're doing a live taping of the podcast at Jewish Currents Live on October 11th at the Brooklyn Academy of Music BAM, which I'm really excited about to be at BAM. But Jewish Currents listeners almost certainly know of as the premier magazine of the Jewish left. And what they're doing this coming weekend is convening a bunch of thinkers and organizers and artists for a full day of panelists and performances. And we are hosting a conversation with Get This, Dave Cleon. The one and only Dave Cleon. And Andrea Longchu, one of our great critics, about one of our favorite topics, neo-conservatism and Jewish reaction more broadly. So I'm really excited for this. Yes. And I feel like if there's ever a chance we get canceled doing something live
Transcription truncated.
Matt and Sam talk to reporter David Weigel of Semafor about the 2026 midterm elections.
