TEASER: The Red Ripple (Midterm Debrief)
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Matt and Sam recap and analyze the 2022 midterms — as we know them so far.
Why did Dems do so much better than we thought? Why did the GOP underperform? How cucked were the polls? How happy is Matt that John Fetterman beat Dr. Oz? (Very) What about Blake Masters in Arizona? Was this a bad night for Trump? Was it a good night for DeSantis? How worried should we be about the integrity of American democracy given these results? And how happy should we be that the Democrats managed to stave off the worst possible outcome? Listen while it's hot...
One of the things, I think to note, about Federman's victory is, it went down exactly as they'd planned it. - I know. - They thought they could go in to these red counties, places like where I grew up. Flair County, where I grew up, went 71% for Trump in the 2020 presidential election. And so the theory is, you don't have to flip those counties. That was always, I think, one of the dumber. People were just being purposely obtuse if they thought that's what it was about. No one thought you could go in and, like, regain the, quote unquote, white working class. But could you go into those counties and make the margin 61% instead of 70%, right? And if you did, you were gonna clean up across the state, right? So this was a strategically important win for Democrats. It flipped the seat, remember that, the seat had been held by Pat Toomey. But it also was like a test case for a certain theory of democratic politics, right? What kind of campaign you could run in a state like Pennsylvania? - I mean, I feel the same way. It's so satisfying to see Dr. Oz, that piece of shit, lose to John Federman, who is genuinely just such a likable dude. He's authentic, he looks the part, he came out for the victory speech, wearing his hoodie. And they set out to do this thing and they did it. And it just feels like it's so uncommon that democratic partisan politics at this point, just like, we've got a strategy and we're gonna do it. And it worked, especially kind of like progressives trying to do something a little different than what the mainstream party has been pushing. - You know, the other interesting aspect of the Federman's strategy is that, you know, he didn't kind of reach out to those voters by say, moderating his position on abortion. It was just a bedrock value for him. And he didn't try to like finesse that to win over like supposedly culturally conservative voters in these parts of the state. - Obviously, another important thing about this race is that John Federman had a stroke in the middle of it and continues to struggle with certain cognitive functions. - Auditory processing especially. - It manifests in how he processes speech,
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Matt and Sam analyze the 2022 midterms. What the hell just happened?