Pod Save America - “The midterms start now.”

Republicans have the best Election Night since Trump won in 2016, Democrats debate what went wrong in Virginia and what it means for the ’22 midterms, and Delegate Danica Roem joins to talk about how she managed to be one of the few progressives in Virginia to win re-election last night.

For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsaveamerica. For a transcript of this episode, please email [email protected] and include the name of the podcast.

Duration: 1h 26m
Broadcast on: 04 Nov 2021
Audio Format: other

The Supreme Court has had a busy summer loosening gun restrictions in states, overturning Roe vs. Wade, and severely threatening our Miranda rights. I'm Leah Litman, and each week on Strix scrutiny, I'm joined by my co-hosts and fellow law professors, Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw, to break down the latest headlines and the biggest legal questions facing our country. It's more important than ever to understand the repercussions of these Supreme Court decisions and what we can do to fight back in the upcoming midterm elections. Listen to new episodes of Strix scrutiny every Monday wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to POD SAVE America, I'm John Fabru. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's POD, Republicans have the best election night since Trump won in 2016. Democrats debate what went wrong in Virginia and what it means for the 22 midterms and delegate Danica Rome joins to talk about how she managed to be one of the few progressives in Virginia to win reelection last night. But first, I hope you're all listening to Kirkhead's new show X-ray Vision. Host Jason Concepcion and his co-hosts will be giving us the latest news on films and franchises over the next couple months including Dune, Marvel's Eternals, Spider-Man, No Way Home, Cowboy Bebop and Succession. Awesome. And don't forget to check out offline. Last week I had a fascinating conversation with Monica Lewinsky about public shaming and cancel culture. And this Sunday I talked with Snapchat's Peter Hamby about how Twitter has ruined journalism. This one's for you, Dan. They're all for me, John. They're all for you. You can find offline here on the POD SAVE America feed and you can find X-ray Vision wherever you listen to your podcasts. All right. Let's get to the news. Spoiler alert. It sucks. Republican Glenn Yunken will be the next governor of Virginia defeating Terry McAuliffe by about 80,000 votes in a state that Joe Biden won just a year ago by 450,000 votes in a state that Democratic Governor Ralph Northam won in 2017 by 230,000 votes. Democrats also lost the Lieutenant Governor's race, the Attorney General's race, and seven seats in the House of Delegates, giving Republicans control of that chamber. But wait, there's more. The Democratic governor of New Jersey, Phil Murphy, narrowly beat his Republican opponent by a point in a state that he won by 14 points just four years ago. And the Democratic president of the state Senate in Jersey lost to a random truck driver whose campaign spending totaled $153 for Dunkin' Donuts and Flyers. I do like the Dunkin' Donuts part. Republicans also won in places like Seattle, Long Island, and six of them were elected to state and local offices who had attended the January 6th rally that led to a violent insurrection against the federal government. I could go on, but I don't want you all to turn off the POD. Dan, before we get to why this happened, how surprised were you that this happened? What was your reaction to watching this absolute clusterfuck unfold on Tuesday night? I mean, obviously I did not predict, because I did not predict anything in politics, that McAuliffe would lose and the Virginia would be this close. We had a sense that the trends were all moving in the wrong direction. We talked this a little bit in the lead up to it. Democrats were facing a lot of political headwinds. I had this really bad feeling as I was watching the polls in New Jersey, which all of a sudden you started seeing these polls. We paid no attention to New Jersey, which obviously probably an oversight on our part. All of a sudden it's like six points, eight points, and I sort of thought to myself, you know, you can see a world where Virginia is way too close and McCall have eked it out or even, you know, the polls were so close that maybe a young can win, but we would be really shocking would be if Murphy only won by four, right? That would be the shocking thing. It turns out, as bad as we thought things might be, they were even worse, which is really a lesson in how we should prepare ourselves emotionally from politics these days.

Much like the Pennsylvania voters who clung to their guns in religion, I clung to the belief that there was something wrong with the polls only because I could not imagine that in a country as polarized as ours, that you could have such a big swing like this in a state that Democrats won by 10 points just a year ago. But it turns out you can't. And I'll talk about like why I believe that because we're going to get to this, but a lot of people say, you know,

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