What Are We Learning from Democratic Victories?

Simon Bazelon on how Democrats can improve their electoral chances

On Tuesday, voters in the seventh district of Tennessee went to the polls to determine who would succeed former representative Mark Green (he resigned in July—less than one year into his fourth term—to cofound a company that facilitates economic development in Guyana. Why not?).

Democrats dared to dream about winning this special election, even though no Democrat has been elected there in over 40 years and Mark Green won the seat by more than 20 points about a year ago. After all, Democrats tend to over-perform in low-turnout elections. ←That sentence is a problem for the party.

State representative Aftyn Behn challenged former state general services commission Matt Van Epps. Money and attention poured in from both parties. MAGA Inc. (that’s a real thing) spent more than $1 million. So did Democrat’s House Majority PAC. Kamala Harris went to a canvassing kickoff in Nashville. Al Gore and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did a virtual rally. The President endorsed Van Epps, who said that “Running with Trump is how you win.”

Behn made up a lot of ground and still lost decisively.

Christopher Hale, a Tennessee Democratic politician and consultant, had this to say Wednesday morning: “A key takeaway for Democrats: stop nationalizing local races. If this contest had stayed under the radar, our odds would’ve been far better. The moment it went national, we bled seven to ten points as outside attention poured in. National Democrats need to stay far away from our races—red-state candidates have to run differently than Democrats in Washington, and every time DC steps in, it makes our jobs harder.”

And today’s guest, Simon Bazelon, pointed out that Behn called herself a “very radical person.”

Is the Democratic Party trying to win? Deciding to Win, a report from Bazelon, Lauren Harper Pope, and Liam Kerr, says the party isn’t acting like. Relying on extensive polling, they argue that winning in 2026 and 2028 is a moral imperative for Democrats. To do that, the party should follow Nancy Pelosi’s formula: “Winning an election is a decision. You make a decision to win, and then you make every decision in favor of winning.”

Deciding to Win is an uncomfortable read if you are a Democratic Party loyalist. The party is broadly unpopular, the report insists, and not because of Joe Rogan or Fox News or bad messaging or insufficient canvassing. Fundamentally, voters disagree with Democrats on what they perceive to be the policies most important to Democrats.

I know election post-mortems get tiring. I liked this report and this conversation because it offers a path forward. There is nothing fatalistic here. This is a prescription for a political party to act like one—to focus not on re-shaping the hearts and minds of the electorate but on winning elections.

I can’t help but wonder if the Tennessee 7th might have turned out differently—not a “we did great!” but “we won”—if the recommendations of this report had been ruthlessly adhered to beginning with the Democratic primary. As we gear up for 2026, I hope a critical mass of Democrats will make a decision to win, and then make every decision in favor of winning. -Beth

Topics Discussed

• Simon Bazelon on How Democrats Can Win

• Outside of Politics: Christmas Day Food

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Episode Resources

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• Deciding To Win

Episode Transcript

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:00:09] This is Beth Silvers.

Sarah [00:00:11] You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. Today we are excited to bring you a conversation with Democratic data analyst Simon Bazelon, who was one of the authors of the Deciding to Win report that has been getting a lot of attention recently. This report sought to answer two questions. Why did Democrats lose in 2024? And what do they need to do now to win? So we’re going to talk about that with Simon. Can’t wait for you to hear that conversation. Outside of Politics, we’ll be continuing our holiday themed conversations for the week. We talked about traditions on Tuesday’s show. We talked about gifts on the Spicy, and now we’re going to be talking about meals. What do you do? We spent all our meal energy on Thanksgiving.

Beth [00:00:50] I feel that.

Sarah [00:00:51] What are we supposed to do next? So we’re going to talk about that Outside of Politics.

Beth [00:00:55] Especially because our energy is drawn on in a lot of respects around the December holidays. So we’re very excited to get your tips for how to channel it around food. But before that, you may have noticed in the month of November, we talked to you quite a bit about Substack and how Pantsuit Politics gets made and how we are able to provide two episodes a week for free to anyone, everywhere in all the places. And we are very, very grateful for the way that you all responded. We especially want to shout out the new executive producers. This is our highest tier of support, the people who really make sure we can pay our bills every month. Thank you so much to Laura, Lauren, Janelle, Teresa, Melanie, Tina, Kelly, Mia, and Jen for joining that amazing, amazing group of people. I hope it is as valuable to you as it is to us. And thanks to all of you for your continued support and encouragement of our work here.

Sarah [00:01:50] Up next, Simon Bazelon. Simon, thanks for coming on Pantsuit Politics.

Simon Bazelon [00:02:07] Thank you so much for having me.

Sarah [00:02:09] Okay, Democrats have spent a lot of time over the last year thinking and talking and writing about what went wrong in 2024. And a lot of groups will come out and say, look, it’s because you didn’t listen to us. We have all the polling that says Americans love fill in the blank climate change initiatives, abolishing the police, XYZ policy stance, and y’all just didn’t advocate enough for it. I really think this is the Hassan Piker approach of it all, which is like Americans are on our side. You just do a shit job of explaining it. But you disagree. So tell us why you think this approach to polling is problematic and how you did it differently in deciding to win.

Simon Bazelon [00:02:56] So I really appreciate that. I’ll just start by saying that polling is a really difficult industry. It’s often a lot more art than science. There’s a lot of things you can do behind the scenes to make a poll look the way you want it to look. There’s a lot of ability that various groups have to do a poll and then only release the portion of it that supports the agenda that they’re pushing and put the other portion in the file drawer or put the whole thing in the file drawer if it doesn’t show what you want to show. So when I think about polling, I like to do polling, I’ve done a lot of polling in my career, but for me, it’s really about the first thing we need to do is look at our candidates who are actually winning in difficult elections. Those need to be our guide. We need to look at candidates who won districts that-- Donald Trump won the popular vote. So the median American voter is somebody who supported Donald Trump in 2024. So what Democrats need to be thinking is who are our candidates who are actually winning over those people who don’t agree with us on a lot of issues. And so I want to say Democrats need to look at candidates who win in swing races, whether it’s Jared Golden or Marie Gluesenkamp Perez or Andy Bashir in your Kentucky, or Ruben Gallego, folks like that. And I think we can sort of bracket the whole question of who’s polling has a better methodology or whatnot by just really looking at what these candidates do. And I think it’s really clear that what these candidates do is very different from the Hassan Piker school of politics. Jared Golden isn’t a socialist. He’s not running on massive restrictions on energy production or very liberal policies on crime or immigration. He’s a moderate. And that’s what wins in his district. And Hassan Piker lives in LA and he’s not running for office and he doesn’t have to win over voters who voted for Donald Trump. And I think when we’re trying to decide whose polling is more accurate, I think probably a good rule of thumb is whose polling aligns better with what the actual candidates who are winning tough races are really doing to win those races.

Beth [00:04:50] I also think there’s no harm in taking the approach of this report, which is kind of over and over saying we should behave as though we are unpopular. We should look at things right now and say, this brand has a problem. How do we fix it? It seems like there’s just no downside in that form of humility and kind of putting everything back on the table and asking some really tough questions about whether we are trying to win elections here or we’re trying to change the electorate. That’s what this really crystallized for me. The Democrats have been advocating to change the electorate, not to win elections.

Simon Bazelon [00:05:25] I think that’s exactly right. I think there’s been a sort of strange inversion of responsibilities on the progressive side of the dial in the last 10 or 15 years, where people have gotten a little bit mixed up about what the role of elected officials is versus what the role of creatives are or people who do journalism or people who write books or whatnot. And I think we live in a democracy, right? And so the job of an elected official in a democracy, the literal job description, is to represent your constituents. It’s not just tell your constituents that they have the wrong views. It’s to acknowledge that those are the views they hold and that your job is to make sure that their views are represented. And that’s not to say that there’s no role for public opinion change, but that treating elected officials as the people who have to be on the cutting edge of public opinion, who have to be leading public opinion in a direction that voters don’t agree with. First of all, I think it’s really hard to find cases of that actually being successful. And then second, I think it’s just like a bit of a misconception about what a democratic system is set up to do.

Sarah [00:06:27] Well, here’s the thing, and I think it’s hard to articulate this. And I think you guys get really close, which is saying that there is this middle of swing voters, independent voters who are not intensely partisan, is not the same as saying they’re not ideological. And I think people confuse the two. I think people think, well, if they’re not hardcore Democrats or they’re not hardcore Republicans, then they’re persuadable or there’s not an ideological bent to those people. And the sentence in your report that I was like, ooh, it’s a hard one to read, but everybody should read it. Because you do go into a lot of like there are swing voters. There are people who change their minds about candidates. It doesn’t mean necessarily that they’re changing their mind all the time about ideology. You say a supermajority of Americans, 71% per gallop, identify as moderate or conservative, including majorities of swing voters, nonvoters, working class voters, and minority voters. And I think that’s just something that’s hard for Democrats to hear.

Simon Bazelon [00:07:48] Yeah, it’s tricky. You just have to reckon with the electorate as it is, not necessarily as you want it to be, right? A supermajority of voters have identified as moderate or conservative, essentially as far back as we have polling data. Liberals have always been a minority of the electorate. That’s increased a bit over the last 30 years or whatnot. But still liberals are a minority. And so when you see something like-- look, one thing I tell people is in 2024 Kamala Harris actually did slightly better among self-identified liberal voters than Barack Obama had done in 2012 when he won re-election. But she did dramatically worse among voters who identify as moderate or conservative. And that’s a big problem because those voters are the overwhelming share of the electorate. I also think when we’re thinking about nonvoters, a big problem here, and maybe you guys don’t experience this as much in Kentucky, but I think for a lot of people who work in democratic politics, whether they live in DC, if they live in New York City, if they live in the Northeast, they are constantly being exposed in their social life or online to a set of people who are disaffected from the Democratic Party because they’re frustrated that the Democratic Party isn’t left-wing enough, that it isn’t fighting hard enough. And I just think it’s important to understand that group of people is a really, really tiny share of the overall American population. Something like seven percent of Americans said that Kamala Harris was too conservative, right? As opposed to 55% of Americans or 50% of Americans who said that she was too liberal. And then of that 7%, a very small share of those people-- most of those people actually ended up voting for her. So the share of people who don’t want to vote for Democrats because they don’t think Democrats are too left wing enough, that is just a tiny, tiny fraction of the electorate. But it’s a huge fraction of the people who work in democratic politics and the people who work in democratic politics, the people they socialize with. So I think it looms large in the minds of a lot of folks in democratic politics, even if it isn’t a big part of the overall country.

Beth [00:09:41] I think it drives a lot of discussion too. It’s hard to be honest about being part of a small group of voters. I’m a person who was excited about John Huntsman. Okay, I was a Republican of the John Huntsman model. That was a long time ago, so not a lot of people are going to understand that reference, but we are a teeny, teeny slice of the electorate, right? And most of us now we’re Harris voters. Because we came into that pro-democracy coalition and said, hooray, this is where I want to be. It’s as hard for me to admit that I am part of that small fraction as I think it is for a lot of our listeners to go, oh my gosh, I’m really excited about student loan forgiveness. That is a broadly unpopular policy. How do I reckon with something I’m really excited about being broadly unpopular? That’s just a big psychological lift for people who enjoy politics.

Simon Bazelon [00:10:34] Yeah. Look, I’ll just say there’s nothing wrong with having a view that most people don’t share, right? It’s very rare that you have everybody has the popular view on everything. I have views that most people disagree with. I’m sure. I’m sure you guys have views that most people disagree with. And that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with that. I think the issue you run into is expecting that elected officials are going to endorse the views that you have that are unpopular, as part of I think it gets to a lot of people seeing politics not as a way to improve the world or a struggle over material interests in this country and who gets to have healthcare and who gets to have their taxes cut and whatnot, but as an issue of personal fulfillment that politicians are supposed to be validating your personal worldview and making you feel that you’re yinvolved and that your feelings are valid and real. And I just think that’s not really what politics is for. Politics is a real endeavor with serious stakes and it’s a serious business. And so we just can’t let ourselves get caught up in the idea that what our elected officials need to do is appeal to their most fervent supporters rather than win over people who might be a bit more skeptical.

Sarah [00:11:47] Yeah, but let’s lay it out clearly the stakes in people’s minds. I think student loan forgiveness is one example, but another example for both Beth and I that we identify as radical positions, we understand that Americans are not on the same side with us. Beth is all in on restorative justice and would like to abolish prisons. I am staunchly pro-choice. So I think that that’s the difficult. The difficult ones are not about tax policy or economic stakes. They’re about what people see as moral issues. and I think that that’s where we really have to work out. And I think you guys do a lot of this work in the report around the word moderate. What does it mean? If a majority of Americans are moderate, and maybe I have a radical view on one issue that I think is an issue of justice or fairness or civil rights or whatever, you spend a lot of time in the report talking about, okay, well, what does moderate mean around those issues? What does it not mean as far as the status quo and how things are functioning? Can you articulate some of that?

Simon Bazelon [00:12:55] Absolutely. So I think there’s a tendency for people to treat the word-- and I don’t want to get overly caught up in language games, but I do think the words are important so I’m happy to spend time talking about it. The word moderate I think it often gets caught up in an idea of being defenders of the establishment or being part of the establishment or defending the status quo and not wanting to ever change anything or defending big corporations. I think what we really clearly see is that there’s a ton of frustration across the country about the status quo. And people feel like their institutions aren’t representing them. They feel like they’re not getting a fair deal. Now, I don’t think that that necessarily means what some on the radical left and radical right think it means, that voters necessarily want to abolish capitalism or that they want to have a fascist leader like--.

Sarah [00:13:36] Right. Mass deportations.

Simon Bazelon [00:13:37] Yeah, I don’t think that frustrations with the status quo mean that voters want either Nick Fuentes or Hassan Piker to be running the country. But there clearly is a frustration about the establishment. And I don’t think that Democrats want to be casting ourselves as the defenders of the status quo right now. What we want to be doing is articulating how we’re going to change things and improve people’s material lives. But I also think that there’s a tendency to cast being anti-establishment as a salve that will work to fix all of Democrats’ problems. And I think that’s really not true. The fact that you’re anti-establishment, if you support decriminalizing border crossings, which is obviously a super unpopular position, just because you want to burn down the establishment, that doesn’t mean that voters are going to be excited about your candidacy. And so I think it’s important to disaggregate these questions of ideology. And anti-establishment positioning because I do think they operate on sort of separate axes.

Beth [00:14:30] And it’s hard talking about being purely responsive to what your constituents want, because the Republican Party did that to such an extreme that we had people saying, well, my constituents don’t believe the exec election results were valid. So I’m going to vote against certifying the election. So finding this sweet spot of advising people on how to campaign and linking that to how they govern and linking that to what’s popular, that’s really challenging. So I would love to know who you think is doing that really well. You mentioned Jared Golden, but he’s not running again. So that’s a sore spot, right? What do we do about that?

Simon Bazelon [00:15:08] I always want to look at the states. I think people are very frustrated with Washington. Some of my favorite people who are doing politics right now on the Democratic side are these governors of states that are more purple or red, whether it’s Josh Shapiro or Gretchen Whitmer or Andy Bashir, folks like that. Laura Kelly is another good example of a Midwesterner who I think does a really good job appealing to a wide swath of voters. And then at the federal level, people like Ruben Gaego or Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, or Adam Gray, folks like that. There are a number of up and coming candidates that I’m really excited about, people like Christina Bohanan in Iowa, Bobby Polito in Texas, who aren’t household names by any means, but I’m following them and hoping that they’ll succeed. So for me it’s always just focusing on who’s actually doing the work. We can argue all day long about whose theory of politics is correct, but at the end of the day, we have to look at the results and see whose brand of politics is actually-- again, it’s not just about winning the presidency, right? Democrats need to win a Senate majority if we’re going to pass any laws, if we’re going to confirm any judges. And I think that also clarifies a lot of the stakes, which is Donald Trump won 24 states in 2024 by 10 percentage points or more. So that means that 48 U.S. Senators come from states that Donald Trump won by at least 10%. So that’s a heavy lift. That I think just really clarifies the stakes. Democrats are going to have to win seats in states like Ohio and Iowa or Alaska or Texas if we’re going to win. And the way we’re going to do that isn’t going to be by pursuing the same approach to politics that we have been for the last decade.

Sarah [00:16:45] I want to talk about Trump a little bit. Do you think that the Democratic Party has Trump derangement syndrome? Do you think that we’re just so obsessed with him? I feel like it’s coming back up a lot this syndrome. I’m hearing it in a lot of mention; it’s getting a lot of talk. How do you see those candidates that are successfully speaking out and against him, especially his unpopular policies? Because that’s going to be the challenge of 2026. He’s doing a lot of things that are deeply unpopular. But how do you talk about that without tipping into the save democracy, fascism, all that? How do you see candidates successfully walking that line?

Simon Bazelon [00:17:25] So I think Trump deranged syndrome gets thrown around a lot. I think to the extent that it exists, it kind of manifests in two specific ways. So I think the first thing that Donald Trump he kind of did break a lot of people’s brains on the left, including people-- maybe mine a little bit too. I won’t claim to be above all of it.

Sarah [00:17:42] Listen, 10 years is a long time to be a president in this era of politics.

Simon Bazelon [00:17:44] Ten years is a long time. Donald Trump’s been in our lives for a lot much too long. I’ve had to think about him too much. It’s really a bummer. Cost me a lot of time. I’m not a fan. I don’t like the guy.

Sarah [00:17:57] You see how we’re not...

Simon Bazelon [00:17:59] Yeah. I think one big thing that Donald Trump did that I think broke a lot of people’s minds is that he was so vulgar and extreme in his rhetoric and the way he talked about minorities or women or all kinds of things like that, or like John McCain, all these things. He was so crude that people on the left couldn’t see that on the policy side he did a whole bunch of things to actually moderate the Republican Party. And I think this really goes under the radar.

Sarah [00:18:30] It’s like a smokescreen.

Simon Bazelon [00:18:31] People are like, well, if he says these racist things or these sexist things, then he must be super extreme, leaving out that in 2012, the Republican Party platform called for raising the retirement age to 70. And in 2024, the Republican Party platform called for protecting every single penny of Social Security. So that’s like a big policy change. A lot of people care a lot about Social Security. I’m not on Social Security yet, but I imagine that one day I will be and I’ll care about it then too. But that’s a big policy change. In 2012, the Republican Party platform called for enshrining a fetus with equal rights as part of the 14th Amendment. In 2024, they did not call for that. In 2012, they called for privatizing Medicare. In 2024, they didn’t. So there are these big shifts on these issues that Donald Trump forced the Republican Party to do as he wrested control away from the old Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, older guard. And a lot of those economic issues in particular, he made the Republican Party’s position more popular. And that compensated for a lot of the crude stuff that I think voters on the most part don’t really like. They don’t like that Donald Trump was offensive. What they like is that he moderated them on economics at the same time that Democrats moved left on issues like immigration and public safety. So that’s kind of the first part, is I think liberals’ Trump derangement syndrome has made it hard for us to understand the extent to which Trump actually did a bunch of making the Republican Party’s positions more popular.

Sarah [00:19:53] What was that saying in 2016? Some people took him seriously but not literally.

Beth [00:19:59] Literally but not seriously.

Sarah [00:19:59] Yeah, but and then you should really take him seriously but not literally.

Simon Bazelon [00:20:03] Yeah. So I then they think the second piece of this, I think Trump does so many bad things that I think it creates kind of a whack-a-mole problem for people on the left, which is we get a little...

Sarah [00:20:13] Flood the zone, right? Flood the zone.

Simon Bazelon [00:20:15] Yeah, you flood the zone and then it’s hard to remember what to actually focus on. Am I supposed to be mad about the ballroom or them blowing up these poor people on these boats? Or am I supposed to be mad about the corruption or Medicaid or the tariffs or the tax cuts and whatnot? And so we kind of lose focus and end up defaulting to what makes us personally most upset. And I think what makes people who are on the left personally most upset about Donald Trump is generally speaking his threats to the rule of law, his treatment of undocumented immigrants, and things like that. And what makes Donald Trump most upset-- not what makes Donald Trump most upset? What makes people in the middle most upset about Donald Trump tend to be more concrete economic things, things like Medicaid, things like tariffs, things like tax cuts, increasing budget deficit, increasing interest rates, et cetera. There’s just a big disconnect there where one of the things we saw really clearly in our data was comparing the priorities of highly educated Democrats to non-college educated voters as a whole or swing voters or the general electorate. What we saw was that highly educated Democrats care dramatically more about issues like climate change and voting rights and gun control and race relations, and dramatically less about issues like border security and crime and the budget deficit, et cetera, et cetera, and gas prices. And so what’s really important is for Democrats to remain focused on those concrete economic issues. We hear affordability all the time, but it’s specifically around health care, around taxes, around tariffs. Things like that that really impact voters, everyday pocketbooks.

Sarah [00:21:48] Where do you think corruption can fall out with all this? It feels like to me corruption is like a little bit perfect. Like he’s gotten richer. You’re not getting richer. And it’s a little bit the rule of law. It’s a little bit pro-democracy. We don’t have to articulate it that way. It feels like it’s kind of a catch-all. And also just so happens to be completely true and blatant and offensive.

Simon Bazelon [00:22:13] I think that the corruption stuff is a great issue for Democrats. I think it’s one of those things to tie in, but when I think about it in my head of issues we want to be running on for the midterms, it’s healthcare, tariffs, tax cuts for the rich, corruption. Those are my top four in my head right now. And I think it provides really good contrast and also a way for Democrats to be critical of the establishment in the system without calling for radical reshaping of the political and economic system. Because I think when people talk about people being frustrated with the system, I think what they’re more talking about is how dare these members of Congress be trading stocks at the time that I’m struggling to get by rather than how dare these members of Congress not have implemented full socialism, which obviously would be a lot more disruptive than a stock trading ban. So I think corruption is a great issue for Democrats.

Beth [00:23:09] The report makes a very solid case that our elections are not vibes-based. They are issue-based. At the same time, I notice that the report has a vibe in that it is extremely plain spoken. It almost feels to me like trying to take the crudeness out of Trump, but also meet that sense of like I’m saying the thing. The report says very plainly, Joe Biden should not have run for re-election. It was a disastrous decision.

Simon Bazelon [00:23:38] Yes, it was.

Beth [00:23:39] I would love to know how you thought about the tone of this report and how you think about the tone that candidates set across the country as we go into the midterms.

Simon Bazelon [00:23:51] Look, I’m not a politician, I’m not running for office, so the tone that I adopt in a kind of like insider focus. This document isn’t a mass persuasion document. It’s not designed to be read by tens of millions of people or seen in a speech by tens of millions of people. It’s aimed at a crowd of people who work in politics and talk a lot about politics. So obviously, the tone--

Beth [00:24:11] But it aims to be influential among that crowd, right? And I mean it felt very intentional to me. This is a compliment.

Simon Bazelon [00:24:18] Okay. I think a lot of it is just like that’s kind of my general tone is to try to be direct and to the point on a lot of these things as much as possible and not use unnecessary words where we don’t have to, well, without also straying into hyperbolic language or being overwrought or saying anything. We try to avoid any language that’s inflammatory for the purpose of being inflammatory. I think my view is always like substance over everything, right? If the substance is going to be the thing, I want the substance to be the thing that gets people agitated as opposed to any additional rhetoric on top of that. And I think that’s a good reminder. I would just tie that into how elected officials work, which is people talk a lot about vibes and the idea that elections are vibes-based. And I think there’s a lot of vibes that goes on in elections, but then there’s this huge question, which is like where do those vibes come from? And the reality is those vibes are usually downstream of the substance, right? Voters think somebody like Ilhan Omar, they think she’s very liberal. And the reason they think she’s very liberal is because she’s very liberal, right? It’s not like a mystery. It’s like if you ask Ilhan Omar’s staff members, are you guys very progressive? They would be like, yes, we are on the left of the party. And so it’s not a mystery. If you ask Joe Manchin’s staff members, are you guys in the center? They would say, yeah, we’re moderate Democrats. And Joe Manchin is seen as a moderate Democrat. And he votes in a very different way than you know, Ilhan Omar would vote. And it’s not just about race and gender, right? Like there are very left-wing white men in the Democratic Party who are generally seen as very left-wing, whether it’s somebody like Bernie Sanders, there are women, Marie Gluesenkamp Pereza, a Latina woman, she’s very moderate, and she’s seen as much more moderate than the average Democrat, I would say as a result. And so I think people have a tendency in politics to reach for explanations that don’t require them to do anything differently than they don’t want to do. And so we see coming out of 2024 this big impulse to come up with theories for why Democrats lost that talk about social media and how we don’t have a Joe Rogan of our own, or we spent the ad money in the wrong way.

Sarah [00:26:21] Or turn out.

Simon Bazelon [00:26:21] Yeah, turn out. And so there’s just a lot of motivated reasoning because if it was true that the Democratic Party’s main problem is that we didn’t time the spending of our ads appropriately, then we could win in 2026 and 2028 without making any hard choices that would make anybody upset. But that’s not true. And it’s important to be honest about that.

Sarah [00:26:44] Yeah. So I really agree broadly with the premise of this report. I agree that we should focus on the economy because that’s what Americans are focused on and the cost of living. That’s what I’m focused on as an American. And the Democratic Party should too. What I’m really hungry for, and I’m wondering if you’ve done polling on this, I’m wondering if you’re planning to do polling on this. I’m interested in just your gut instinct about a future vision. Not just protecting Medicare and Medicaid, not just expanding health insurance, but I’m thinking a lot about what the people in my life spend a lot of time talking about, which is what is going on with public education? What is the future of public education? Is a college education worth it anymore? What does that mean for America? And definitely about the role of technology in our lives, about regulating social media when it comes to our kids, the transition to artificial intelligence. We’ve spent time on this show about institutional changes like term limits, which seem broadly popular with America. I wonder if, like I said, are you doing any polling about this, about what the future vision, not just what has worked for Democrats in the past and what we need to get back to, but what this future vision could look like?

Simon Bazelon [00:27:55] There’s an old Yogi Berra quote, predictions are hard, especially about the future. I think that I like that a lot because it is a challenge to articulate a policy agenda in response to changes that are ongoing and haven’t fully happened yet. But I definitely think the Democrats need to be forward thinking, particularly on AI, which I think has the real potential to reshape a lot of what we do. One thing that’s funny in the polling that I do is that AI is an issue where I think the substance and the politics line up very nicely. That doesn’t always happen, but voters are very concerned about artificial intelligence. One way to think about this is that if you ask voters, for example, just an abstract question of are you more worried that the government will regulate business too much or not enough? Most voters are more concerned the government will regulate business too much than that they won’t regulate it enough. So there’s a default presumption in favor of a more moderate, conservative view on that issue. But if you ask voters are you more concerned that the government will regulate artificial intelligence too much or not enough? Dramatically more people are more likely to say they’re more worried that government won’t regulate artificial intelligence enough.

Sarah [00:29:02] Wow.

Simon Bazelon [00:29:03] So it’s a huge difference from that baseline conservative libertarian inclination on this specific issue people are really concerned about it. And so I think it’s important for Democrats to be articulating that we aren’t in bed, we aren’t in hock to some of these huge tech companies, and that we’re willing to fight for guardrails around a transformative technology that has the potential to, yes, cause a lot of innovation, but also has a lot of potential downsides and harms. We saw with social media what happens when you leave a technology that’s really powerful, completely unregulated. I think there have been a lot of deleterious effects on kids, on our attention spans, things like that. And so I do think there’s room for Democrats to be articulating a positive agenda on AI, particularly.

Sarah [00:29:44] Well, and isn’t there an opening? I don’t know. And I’m interested in your thoughts on this. Isn’t there an opening when it comes to that default? Because that’s really not the position of the Republican Party anymore, is the sort of hands off regulation. They’re out here taking percentages of businesses. But I don’t know how successful it is for candidates to try to call out the hypocrisy in the other side because people just feel like both parties are hypocritical. They don’t trust them as an explainer of what the other side is doing. Does that work to say they are not hands off business? They are promoting almost a form of socialism in some of these industries.

Simon Bazelon [00:30:24] I would say that’s a reasonable attack. I could I could see it working in some places, but I do think ultimately we want to be mostly focused on things like tariffs and Medicaid and concrete harms as I was talking about before.

Beth [00:30:34] I think that gets back to that tension around where do you lead and where do you sort of ride where the public is. I know the idea is that if you’re explaining, you’re losing. And so I guess I wonder where you think the appropriate places for that sort of leadership are to be a little bit in front of-- maybe not in front of where the public is ideologically, but just in front of where the public is in terms of raw understanding of an issue, to be conversant in it.

Simon Bazelon [00:31:01] Yeah, I think an important issue is one really underrated thing in politics is that being correct about the merits of policies is very important. And something like the Iraq war is a good example of this, which is when the vote happened in the Senate, the Iraq war was very popular. It turned out to have been a very bad idea. And so it quickly became very unpopular. And so the senators who voted for it paid in the end a big political price for having been on the wrong side of that issue. And that’s just to say being correct about whether or not something is a good idea on the merits is a very important part of governments. It’s also not trivial. It’s hard to get things right. It’s hard to make the right choice. Things are very uncertain. But I think particularly with something like AI, you want to be on the right side of this issue, I think, in particular as it becomes more and more important.

Sarah [00:31:56] Well, and I think the Trump era has perpetuated this narrative that it actually doesn’t matter. At least it doesn’t matter for him. I don’t think that’s always true. I think again you’re really right. The crudeness and the vibe is so often a smokescreen for his actual policy position.

Simon Bazelon [00:32:14] Well, I think what we see with Trump as well as the most unpopular portion of his first term was when they were trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act. His approval rating took a big nosedive following those Liberation Day tariffs that you know disrupted so much the economy. And we see really clearly that his approval rating is very negative. The share of voters who think that the Republican Party is too extreme, is too conservative, has gone up dramatically since a year ago. And I think the reason for that is because they’ve engaged in massive policy overreach on essentially every domain. Their mandate was to come in and secure the border and lower costs. And instead, what they’ve done is engaged in targeting of people who aren’t threats to law enforcement or public safety on the deportation side, tariffs that raise people’s prices, cutting people’s health care, cutting rich people’s taxes. That wasn’t what they were elected to do. And I think that they’re paying a political price for it. I think the challenge for Democrats is to understand that just because Trump administration is unpopular now doesn’t mean that we’re a shoe-in to win the Senate in 2026 or to win the White House in 2028. There can kind of be a tendency to say, oh, look, we’re winning, so therefore we don’t need to change anything. But we have to remember that those lower engagement voters who power Trump to victory in 2024, they’re probably not the people voting in special elections in Virginia and New Jersey. But they’re probably going to vote in 2028, and we’re still going to need to win them over. So I’m very worried. One thing that I’m concerned about is Democrats feeling like we’ve righted the ship completely, and then getting blindsided by the realities of public opinion in 2028.

Beth [00:33:48] That’s why I think it’s so smart to just start with like we’re unpopular. Like just let it sink into your bones. We are unpopular.

Simon Bazelon [00:33:54] You got to internalize where the problems are for sure.

Sarah [00:33:58] Where do you fit foreign policy on the Iraq war sort of angle of all this into your understanding of the American voter? We read a really interesting book, had the author on the show where he talked about Americans articulate one thing they want in a president when it comes to foreign policy, but that’s not who they reward.

Beth [00:34:16] It’s the Commander-in-Chief Test. This is literally the question I was about to ask too. We’re on the same wavelength here, Sarah.

Sarah [00:34:21] Yeah. They say they want a strong commander-in-chief, but really what they want is no engagement overseas. They articulate they want these leadership on these issues, but really it’s almost like America first is really the undercurrent of the moderate median American voter. And I wonder how you think about foreign policy through this lens.

Simon Bazelon [00:34:43] Yeah. Look, the thing about foreign policy is that like many other issues, it’s pretty responsive to the actual facts of what’s going on. So right now the US doesn’t have ground troops committed to any foreign nations for a war. And foreign policy is pretty low salience to the average voter. And our polling the war in the Middle East was around like 30th in importance out of 35 issues we tested. The war in Ukraine was pretty similar, around 32nd, if I recall correctly. But that’s not to say that foreign policy is always an afterthought for voters. Obviously, after 9/11 it was a big deal. National security was a big deal. I’m not as familiar with the polling from World War Two, but if I had to guess, I would say that foreign policy was a pretty big issue at the time for the American public. But I do think that there’s definitely a strain of isolationist thought in the electorate, particularly right now, people being frustrated about feeling like their tax dollars are being wasted on wars that don’t really make sense or that they don’t receive as being in America’s interest. I think there’s definitely room for politics to tap into that. But I also think overwhelmingly voters right now at least want Democrats to be focused on domestic issues, particularly around the cost of living.

Beth [00:35:54] A thing that I thought was interesting in the Commander-in-Chief Test, though, was that this kind of description-- and I think this is a little bit different than vibes. This description of some intangibles beyond issues about the candidate. Voters know you’re going to confront things that we haven’t dreamt up, especially if you’re the president, but maybe if you’re a senator or a governor or too. There are going to be some things that come like a pandemic and we want to just trust your judgment overall. How do you think about that bucket of unknowns and character and all the things voters are evaluating that we have tossed under the umbrella of vibes, but that I think are different than that.

Simon Bazelon [00:36:33] Yeah. Voters want people who are going to be good into crisis. They want somebody who they feel like they can trust. They want somebody who they feel like has Americans’ best interests at heart. I think having a track record of competency in government is usually useful, particularly and we see I think this is a good example of something like when we look at the state level, like I said, I always want to look at the state level. I always want to see who’s actually succeeding as our sort of-- because all this data happens in the abstract. The rubber really meets the road in these actual elections. And so what we see is that the governors who are most popular in the country are people like Phil Scott in Vermont, Laura Kelly in Kansas, Andy Bashir, Charlie Baker in Massachusetts when he was governor, none of those people were like bomb throwing fire brands. They were all just like really competent and focused on improving the material circumstance of their voters’ lives. And I think people really rewarded them for that. And those are traits that I think people appreciate in their elected officials.

Beth [00:37:29] So to demonstrate those traits in a campaign, you would say talk about bipartisanship, transparency, ethics and government, that kind of thing?

Simon Bazelon [00:37:39] Absolutely. Cleaning up Washington, making clear that you’re not going to be beholden to special interests on either side or big corporations, and making sure that voters understand that your allegiance is to the best interest of the country, rather than to any specific political party or any specific special interest on either side.

Sarah [00:38:00] Yeah, but I think you make a really good point when you talk about Kamala Harris that that moderation has to seem sincere. Like it can’t seem inauthentic. I keep thinking nonstop about I was listening to Ezra Klein, and he was talking about Gavin Newsome, and he said, “I just think what he’s got going right now is he doesn’t seem afraid.” And I think that there are a lot of Democrats that seem afraid, that don’t want to piss off the interest groups, that don’t want to make the base of the party mad, they want to sort of have this right moral posture instead of being fearless in the face of saying that’s not where the average voter is. And I do think Gavin Newsome has nailed that recently, even though nobody would call him moderate.

Simon Bazelon [00:38:40] Yeah. I think Newsom we’ll see how he positions himself going into 2028. He’s certainly taking taken a number of unpopular policy stances over the years in California. And I think those will definitely sit with him as he runs for president, as he’s expected to do. I think the Harris point is a really important one. People talk about, well, a common response I got to deciding to win is like we already tried this, it didn’t work. Kamala lost. What are you talking about? It’s like, well, yes, Kamala Harris, when she was running for president during that brief 107 days, she was talking about a secure border. But I think her talk about a secure border was really undermined by the fact that she was the vice president of an administration that allowed an unprecedented increase in unauthorized border crossings. And it’s pretty hard to have people take seriously your line about border security when your literal governance was exactly contrary to that line you’re trying to take. And that’s just a good example of, again, vibes are downstream of this substance. The reason people were upset about immigration wasn’t because of Fox News trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. There really was a very large increase in unauthorized immigration, and people really responded to that.

Beth [00:39:45] How much do you think-- this goes back to the Joe Rogan idea...

Sarah [00:39:50] Love it all.

Beth [00:39:51] And I really appreciated you saying, hey, we need to have things to say. I loved when the report says the better question is if Kamala Harris had gone on Joe Rogan, what would she have said? I think that’s exactly right.

Simon Bazelon [00:40:03] What would she have said? Exactly.

Beth [00:40:04] At the same time, there is a concerted effort to build more of an ecosystem for democrats, a media ecosystem to counter that Fox News presence. And I do think it’s true, and I’m curious if you think I’m wrong about this, that what is on Fox News does inform my views of what an average Republican thinks.

Simon Bazelon [00:40:26] Sure.

Beth [00:40:26] So when you think about that media landscape for Democrats, how important is it, do you think, for people in that influence space to be reading reports like this and thinking about what is popular and unpopular?

Simon Bazelon [00:40:41] Look, obviously, I want everybody to read everything I write. But look, I think it’s really important on the media side. I’m not opposed to people trying to build more of a progressive media infrastructure. I don’t I don’t have any opposition to that. I do just think it’s important to be careful because there’s an element of like the first person you’re going to fool is yourself, right? If you do up a whole bunch of messaging about how every left-wing idea is popular, the people that’s going to mostly convince are people on your side who already agree with you on most issues. And so there’s real danger of getting caught in an echo chamber where by creating this progressive media ecosystem, really all you’ve done is created big incentives for candidates to run to the left that then hurt them in general elections. And I do think that there’s a huge element of this happening on the right now. You look at somebody like Nick Fuentes, his rise in the alternative media sphere, I don’t think any Democrat is looking at that and being like, oh no, I really hope JD Vance doesn’t endorse Nick Fuentes’ view of the world because if he did, that would make him super popular and we’d have such a hard time beating him in the election. I think everybody recognizes that the more JD Vance runs towards Nick Fuentes, the more unpopular he’s going to be because Nick Fuentes has horrible ideas and nobody wants that vision of America. But I think we just have to remember the inverse of like you can build your own media ecosystem, but the people that you need to reach aren’t the people who are probably going to be the hardest core supporters of that ecosystem. And then again, I think the Harris question that’s why, like I said, you can go on all the podcasts you want but if you go on podcasts and you say things that people really don’t like, if you go on podcasts and say that we should decriminalize border crossings, give free health care to undocumented immigrants, abolish prisons-- sorry, Beth.

Beth [00:42:25] I accept it.

Simon Bazelon [00:42:25] If you say all those things, then voters are going to be like, wait a second, that person doesn’t represent my views. I don’t want to vote for them. Even if they thought you were nice on the podcast.

Sarah [00:42:35] Well, and Joe Rogan and Theo Vaughn and on the Manosphere is just another version of that smokescreen. Those are not Republican operatives. Those are not coastal Republican elites. That they never were and they still aren’t now. And that’s different. And so that’s what we decided to paint them as.

Simon Bazelon [00:42:55] And Joe Rogan is a winnable voter.

Sarah [00:42:57] Yeah, the second Joe Rogan had on like Donald Trump or if he had on Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders went on Joe Rogan and that was unacceptable because what? Joe Rogan’s just a dude, man. He’s not like a Republican operative, but we’ve painted him that way.

Simon Bazelon [00:43:10] Well, Joe Rogan is kind of funny. Joe Rogan’s kind of a funny guy. He’s in many ways pretty similar to the average American. He doesn’t trust elites. He has liberal-ish views on healthcare and abortion, and conservative-ish views on immigration and trans athletes and affirmative action and some cultural stuff. He doesn’t like people telling him what to say. He doesn’t want his taxes to go up a lot. And he thinks there’s a lot of corruption in politics. That is an incredibly normal set of policy views, if you really think about it. And does every voter share that exact mix of policy views? Absolutely not. But there are definitely a heck of a lot of people like that. And those are gettable voters for Democrats.

Sarah [00:43:50] Eminently persuadable Joe Rogan. Anyone who comes on his show, he’s like, “Wow, I didn’t know that.” Every time. Every time, Joe.

Simon Bazelon [00:43:56] Hey, Joe Rogan, if you’re listening to this, if you want to have me on I’m always around. I will make time. I will go to Austin. Kamala Harris wouldn’t do it, but I would do it.

Sarah [00:44:07] It’s so true. Well, I think that that really gets at it. That we can’t discard persuadable voters because that’s absolutely what the Democratic Party and the Democratic base did with Joe Rogan. Still to this day, I will say something about Theo Vaughn and be people like, ugh! I’m like, y’all, Theo Vaughn is just a dude. He’s just a dude. And you know what, it’s pretty funny most of the time. But he’s not this political--.

Simon Bazelon [00:44:28] And he doesn’t follow politics that closely. He’s not that political.

Sarah [00:44:31] He doesn’t and it shows. That’s the only thing you should be mad about. But you know what most Americans don’t do? Follow politics that closely. And so instead of using them as a stand-in for the Republican operative, I think it’s a much better use of our time to use them as a stand-in for the average, low engaged, persuadable voter.

Simon Bazelon [00:44:47] The people spent all this time; how can we get our own Joe Rogan? We had our own Joe Rogan. His name was Joe Rogan. Anyway. Yeah.

Sarah [00:44:57] So true. Well, I really respect the work y’all put into this. I think it is incredibly valuable as two democratic leaning people who live in red states and see sort of the average American and not that it’s this blanket of idiot unpersuadables, which I really do feel is how a lot of people think about a lot of America, which is a problem.

Simon Bazelon [00:45:23] Yeah, I think the last thing I want to say is that all my work and deciding to win, all this is oriented around the idea of taking voters seriously. They’re just people. They have takes. You might not always agree with them, but they have sincere opinions on issues of public policy. And if Democrats don’t respect their opinions, then they’re going to get their policy preferences from people who don’t respect democracy. And so it’s very important that we make sure that we’re representing the people’s will because that’s what our political system was set up to do. And if we try to avoid that, we’re going to have some much worse consequences.

Sarah [00:45:55] Hear. Hear. Thank you so much.

Simon Bazelon [00:45:58] Thank you guys so much for having me. I really appreciated it.

Sarah [00:46:11] Thank you to Simon for coming on the show. I really enjoyed that conversation. I feel like I sorted some things out. I feel less stressed generally about it.

Beth [00:46:19] I think it’s nice. I know some people are weary of the why did we lose. And I like pivoting into, okay, but what do we do to win? And I think that this report provides a really clear diagnosis and prescription.

Sarah [00:46:36] Alright. Now, we just made big dinners. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, cranberry sauce. Green beans, rolls, pies. And now we’re going to turn around and do it again.

Beth [00:46:53] I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to make the same thing.

Sarah [00:46:56] That’s the thing. I just feel like the vision of a family dinner is a big old turkey. But I don’t really want turkey again for Christmas dinner, or if you do another like Hanukkah dinner, whatever your holiday dinner is, New Year’s Eve, I don’t want another turkey.

Beth [00:47:13] And it’s tricky.

Sarah [00:47:14] Although I think that’s what my husband is going to make. I think he’s going to make another turkey.

Beth [00:47:16] He’s going to do another turkey for Christmas.

Sarah [00:47:18] Well, he just bought a bunch of turkeys on clearance.

Beth [00:47:21] Well, I understand that. I respect that. It’s tricky too because we use our good side energy for Thanksgiving as well. So even if you change the meat, let’s say you do a ham or a roast or something like that, your sides are still kind of in the same ballpark.

Sarah [00:47:39] Well, I think people used to do like a prime rib on Christmas. I think that was like the traditional approach, but that’s gotten so insanely expensive.

Beth [00:47:48] Yeah.

Sarah [00:47:49] Now, on Christmas Eve, we do fondue. That’s our Christmas Eve tradition when we get back from the pageant. We have fondue. Oh my gosh, do you remember that fondue we had in Switzerland?

Beth [00:48:01] I do.

Sarah [00:48:01] It’s never going to be as good as that.

Beth [00:48:03] It’s tricky to do fondue here once you’ve had it there. I have done fondue for New Year’s Eve. And I do like New Year’s Eve. And I do think it’s a very fun way to eat. For Christmas Eve, my mom’s family, who I used to always spend Christmas Eve with, did heavy appetizers. Just everybody brought things like sausage balls and you know.

Sarah [00:48:25] Chick fil A tray.

Beth [00:48:27] Fig bacon date combos, like that kind of stuff.

Sarah [00:48:30] I like that energy.

Beth [00:48:31] I do too.

Sarah [00:48:32] I like a heavy or dark buffet.

Beth [00:48:34] Yes, where you’re cooking the cocktail weenies in grape jelly and chili sauce. That kind of thing.

Sarah [00:48:39] Now we’ve done that on New Year’s Eve. Like the wings.

Beth [00:48:41] This is the thing, they’re kind of interchangeable, right? The Christmas Eve, the New Year’s Eve energy.

Sarah [00:48:47] What about like a breakfast?

Beth [00:48:49] I like that. I love a breakfast for dinner.

Sarah [00:48:51] Yeah, what if you had like a French toast bake? But then what are you going to do on Christmas-- you do that on Christmas Eve [inaudible] Christmas morning? Because you’ve also got to make something fancy for Christmas morning.

Beth [00:49:01] Well, we never get to have something fancy for Christmas morning because we’re always about to hit the road.

Sarah [00:49:04] That makes me sad.

Beth [00:49:05] I know, it is sad. So what we usually do is kind of like a breakfast casserole. Like I mix it up the night before so I can stick it in the oven quickly. We make it while we’re [crosstalk] and off we go.

Sarah [00:49:14] We do sausage and biscuits and my grandmother makes the most amazing cinnamon rolls. Lots of bread.

Beth [00:49:20] I like the idea of the fanciest breakfast for dinner you can imagine though on Christmas eve.

Sarah [00:49:25] I don’t know. But then what are you going to do on Christmas morning? I don’t know. I just think that’s tough. Okay, we’ve done my favorite one we’ve ever done. Well, first two things. My two favorite things we’ve ever done on Christmas dinner. One, Nicholas got duck from like our friend who’s a hunter, so it was wild duck. And it was like the best steak I’d ever had in my life. I still think about that duck. It was so good. And he will often do like a scallop potato, mixed it up a little bit from the mashed potatoes and stuffing, like a nice a beautiful scallop potato. And then one year I did the Christmas pudding, lit it on fire, made it a month before. I did the whole situation. And I really am about ready to do it again. It was really fun. But it took a lot of effort. There are some like ingredients we don’t have on hand. But lighting the Christmas pudding on fire and doing the whole situation, highly recommend.

Beth [00:50:16] So I did for lunch one year for Christmas of like a variety of soups and salads and I liked that a lot because you’re eating so heavy in that period that that’s kind of a nice way to go. Our friends Brian and Jen always get a honey-baked ham for Christmas Eve, and we usually have Christmas Eve dinner with them, and that’s very nice. I’m thinking about when I’m at my parents, so like Christmas dinner, not Christmas Eve, like Christmas Day, we’re doing the thing. We’re doing the big meal. I’m kind of feeling something like a baked potato bar, some kind of bar energy, some kind of build your own thing.

Sarah [00:50:50] Also don’t sleep on lasagna. That’s what we do at my mom’s side of things. My meemaw makes lasagna. Like a good Italian, like very different, but also takes a lot of effort. Fits the weather, fits the vibe, very filling. Don’t sleep on a lasagna, a baked ziti, an eggplant parm, an eggplant rollatini, which I highly recommend.

Beth [00:51:08] Yeah. And then you can have a big salad with it. You’re needing fresh things in this period, right? You’re just eating so much heaviness that fresh is good. I think that’s the problem. It’s the couplets. It’s the Christmas Eve followed by Christmas Day where you need to eat around the whole thing. And then it’s New Year’s Eve followed by New Year’s Day and you got to eat around the whole thing.

Sarah [00:51:31] Listen, New Year’s Day is set. You got to eat your cabbage and your black eyed peas, so you’re rich.

Beth [00:51:35] Can I tell you? I don’t want either of those things. I’ve tried so hard.

Sarah [00:51:38] No, have you ever had a Hoppin’ John?

Beth [00:51:40] Yes. It’s not for me.

Sarah [00:51:41] And you don’t like it?

Beth [00:51:42] It’s just not for me. I wish it was.

Sarah [00:51:45] It’s so good.

Beth [00:51:45] I know.

Sarah [00:51:45] Don’t you have Irish ancestors? What’s wrong with you?

Beth [00:51:47] I don’t have Irish ancestors.

Sarah [00:51:49] At all? How could that be?

Beth [00:51:51] No.

Sarah [00:51:51] You’re white and you’re from Western Kentucky.

Beth [00:51:54] My people are from everywhere. Like my 23andME report were like brrrr all over the world. And the farthest back they can trace me is to Switzerland. So that doesn’t really give me a whole lot of information. So no.

Sarah [00:52:08] That’s crazy. No, I love a Hoppin’ John. My husband makes a delicious Hoppin’ John. Love it. So New Year’s Eve is fine. I mean, New Year’s Day is set. You got to do it. Or, I don’t know, I think all your money just like disappears out your bank account the next day.

Beth [00:52:22] I mean, it hasn’t happened to me yet, but knock on wood. I’ll try to find some kind of substitute, but it’s just not Hoppin’ John.

Sarah [00:52:28] It is hard though. So we need your idea your ideas. And in summary, we’re having a little struggle. And so lay ‘em on us. We want to hear your traditions. We want to hear the meals you think really meet the moment, be it New Year’s, be it Christmas, whatever the big holiday you’re celebrating, we want to hear what it is.

Beth [00:52:51] And look, as much as I like to work on Thanksgiving, not what I’m looking for around Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. There’s too much going on. So I need it to be special but easy.

Sarah [00:53:04] Big order. Can’t wait to hear if they’re up for the task. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Pantsuit Politics. We will be back in your ears next week. And until then, keep it nuanced y’all.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our Managing Director and Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

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