Will Trump's Postal Service Seize This Mail Bag?

Pod Save America

Jon Favreau, Tommy Vitor, Dan Pfeiffer, and Lovett Purnell tackle listener questions on the 2026 midterms, political ads, and the Republican Party's 'groyper'

Key takeaways

• The 2026 midterms may reveal whether progressive candidates face a penalty at the ballot box.
• Data centers are emerging as a politically salient issue with potential electoral impact.

Main topics

• 2026 midterm election outlook
• Progressive penalty in elections

Notable quotes

"This now is our moment. These midterms knock on everything." – Tommy Vitor

Conclusion

The episode emphasizes that the 2026 midterms are a pivotal moment for Democrats to build momentum

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:00) Today's presenting sponsor is SimpliSafe Home Security. Back to school just turned your house from full to empty for seven hours a day. That's a pattern anyone can spot. SimpliSafe's AI cameras and live agents are watching your perimeter while you're out, not waiting for an alarm to go off inside. Unlike traditional security systems that only alert you after break-ins. are underway. SimpliSafe is designed to help stop intruders before they get inside. Smart AI-powered outdoor cameras detect suspicious activity at the perimeter and alert live US-based agents to step in. SimpliSafe's agents assess the threat, intervene through the outdoor camera to scare off trespassers, and call for 911 dispatch. Here are some of our CEO's favorite features. Installation was quick and the system was up and running in no time. The app is easy to use. She can arm or disarm the system and check the cameras all from her phone. All the components have worked smoothly since day one. The family now has total peace of mind knowing they are protected. by SimpliSafe. Right now, you can get 50 % off a new SimpliSafe system. Go to simplisafe.com slash crooked. That's simplisafe.com slash crooked for 50 % off. And when you order, please write in Pod Save America in the How Did You Hear About Us survey to let them know we sent you. Don't forget, there's no safe like SimpliSafe. Speaker 3 (1:24) Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Levitt. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Happy Labor Day, everyone. We took Monday off but wanted to give you a pod because we love you, which is why we're going to try to answer all of your burning questions about the midterms, 2028, and Dan's skincare routine. Speaker 4 (1:42) Hey, Dan. What are we doing? What's our peptide situation? Peptides? No peptides. Is that skincare related? Yeah, that's not skincare Speaker 6 (1:49) related, is it? Oh boy, Speaker 4 (1:50) guys. Speaker 6 (1:51) I don't know what a peptide is. I feel like it could be anything. Oh, I Speaker 4 (1:55) need to know what it is now? Speaker 6 (1:57) To put it on Speaker 4 (1:58) my skin every day? Well, it's like we're in LA Speaker 6 (2:00) where everyone's Speaker 3 (2:00) vain. Speaker 6 (2:00) I Speaker 3 (2:00) thought Speaker 6 (2:00) you injected them or something. There's topical peptides. Oh, but Dan's Speaker 4 (2:05) in Speaker 6 (2:05) San Francisco where all the life hackers are. What's that guy's name? Brian Johnson. The one who's measuring his boner. I think he's pivoted off longevity just being fit Speaker 5 (2:12) now. Ah, I see. Speaker 6 (2:13) That's Speaker 4 (2:13) good. Uh-huh. Speaker 6 (2:14) It's probably better for him. Great. Anyway. Speaker 4 (2:19) We'll even answer questions you didn't ask. Speaker 3 (2:23) That's part of it. And then after we answer some questions, Shaniqua McClendon, our fearless leader of Vote Save America, will talk through the best ways to volunteer to help take back the House and Senate now that we are in the final midterm sprint. Can you believe it? All right. You guys ready to answer some questions? Anyone can say yes. Yes. First one comes from Vanessa on Facebook. Is there anyone that can stop this orange piece of shit? Three exclamation points. Vanessa from Facebook. I just thought I'd put that one first because that's just a tenor of the questions we get from Facebook. Speaker 6 (3:00) Iran's doing a pretty good job. Yeah, so far. Speaker 3 (3:03) I think the answer is no. Speaker 6 (3:04) Like heart disease has always got a shot. Yeah, right. Father Speaker 4 (3:10) time will get there eventually. Sort of, you know, the hardness of the veins sort of gets us all in the end. Anyway, Speaker 3 (3:17) you know, it's 2026, almost 2027. So pretty soon we won't be asking that question. Hopefully. You think. Then what happens? Well, then we'll... We get real jobs? Yeah, probably. All right. Subscriber Katzo, one of our subscribers. What are going to be the main things you're hoping to learn or have tested in the midterms as we head into 2028? This is a great, great question. Great Speaker 6 (3:43) question. Tommy, what do you think? I think there's a bunch of things that we're all kind of watching for. For example, data centers. It's a thing people are talking about. It seems to be really politically salient. What? No, this is funny. Data centers. I think people are talking about it. That's why Speaker 4 (3:59) you said it's inaccurate. It's a real like hot Speaker 6 (4:02) button issue in politics. And I Speaker 4 (4:04) think we'll find Speaker 6 (4:04) out if it's a thing people are voting on. Yeah. I think we'll find out if there's a progressive penalty and if so, how much, whether, you know, kind of how DSA candidates or left candidates do against the national average. And then everyone will look at those numbers and then use them to confirm their priors going into the 2028 primary. We'll figure out about online scandals. Populism versus moderation, right? We have populists, like Rob Sand out in Iowa, more of a moderate. Yeah. It's a lot of interesting things we learned Speaker 3 (4:32) from elections, I think. Dan, what are you looking for? Speaker 5 (4:35) I think Tommy hits on the real problem, which is this is a election that we hope is taking place in a democratic way. A lot of people who may not win in other years could win this year. That will then be used to suggest that everything that they did is right. As we know, it's obviously easier to learn from the elections you lose than the ones you win, although that's never the outcome you really want. I'm interested in some more granular nerdy stuff about like testing new relational organizing strategies, field strategies. There's a lot of talk about Democrats out there experimenting with new ways of communicating, new ways of organizing, and having ways to measure the efficacy of that to see if it actually worked in move numbers. Speaker 3 (5:13) Love it. You got any? Speaker 4 (5:15) Yeah, I mean, I think you all hit on it. There's been more discussion about ending the Senate than why Democrats can't compete in rural areas. And I do think we'll learn about whether a candidate that is, you know, center left, but not running as a Democrat, like what does that teach us about, you know, competing? Like what's going to happen with Dan Osborne? How does that look versus what happens in Iowa? Like I'm interested in that and where sort of the Democratic brand stands at the end of this. You Speaker 3 (5:40) guys hit most of the ones on my list, but I have. how close Dems will be to a trifecta if we win the White House in 2028. Like, what's the upper limit on a possible majority? What's that looking like? And Speaker 4 (5:52) just as part of that, how important is John Fetterman? Speaker 3 (5:58) Right. And how much does he Speaker 4 (5:59) become the main character of our politics for a while? Yeah. Speaker 3 (6:02) Turnout, level of enthusiasm among Dems, which demographic groups swung back to Democrats since 2024, if any, hopefully. Speaker 3 (6:11) Very interested to see what happens in Texas, the state of blue Texas. To Tommy's point about is there a progressive penalty, just like Abdul's performance in Michigan, I think is key. Like does he, you know, if he wins, does he win by the same amount that other Michigan Democrats do or other national Democrats do or not? Also, if there are any new, any states that maybe are not thought of as competitive tough states now or competitive swing states now, but maybe. long shots worth investing in for the 2028 campaigns. Like if we suddenly pull out a win in Iowa or Alaska. Ohio. Yeah, right. So I'm kind of looking at that. And then just on the Republican side, Trump's approval in the exits, Republican drop off from 22 the last midterm. And then, you know, if there are Republican candidates who surprise us and either do better than expected or outright win competitive seats, like. What's their formula? What do they look like? What should we be worried about for 2028? It'll also be funny to see how much of Trump's super PAC money he spends. He has, what, $400 million? Speaker 6 (7:14) That's hilarious if you spent just $0. Yeah, that's a fun one to look for. The Speaker 5 (7:18) thing you mentioned, John, that's interesting is elections like this can tell us what are the next states to come under the presidential map. Because in 2006, we won Senate races in Virginia and Indiana, which we would then go ahead and win in 2008. Smart. This will be really interesting to watch. Speaker 3 (7:36) Subscriber shibbles and bits. Speaker 3 (7:40) Very good. A handful of candidates in statewide races, Texas, South Carolina, Tennessee, have refused to debate their opponents. Do you think the importance of the election debate is waning? Dan, start with you. Speaker 5 (7:54) This is a bit of a paradox, but I think the penalty for skipping debates has been greatly diminished as the power of the traditional media to hold candidates accountable has drained. But the opportunity cost for not doing debates has gone way up. because it's so hard to break through to have any event you do, any moment in a campaign that can actually break outside the political media bubble. And debates are the best opportunity to do that. So you could definitely get away with it. People can dress in chicken suits and say you don't want to debate, and you won't be haunted the way you have before. But you're leaving a lot of opportunity on the table if you don't debate. Speaker 3 (8:30) Anyone disagree or have anything else Speaker 6 (8:32) to add? I mean, the argument for it was a primary, but the argument for debates not mattering at all is that Darlene Graham won because she gave one of the worst debate answers I've ever heard, which was allow me to flip open my notepad. I don't know the foreign policy. Katie Speaker 4 (8:48) Hobbs skipped all those debates. Remember, that was like she was dogged for a while. Remember, wasn't Speaker 5 (8:52) there Speaker 4 (8:52) an issue of Katie Hobbs? My misremembering Katie Hobbs was dodging debates and we were like, why is she not debating? And it worked. And for Darlene, Darlene Speaker 5 (8:59) Graham won is interesting because. Like it's counterfactual. Like would she have won by more if she hadn't just absolutely faceplanted in the debate? Because you did win by a fairly small margin in a state that, you know, in a very Republican state with Trump's endorsement. Right. You Speaker 4 (9:14) have to assume she was declining. And in fact, if he had had another week, would he have been able to kind of do it? Of Speaker 3 (9:20) that list, I find it Texas is the most interesting to me because South Carolina and Tennessee and South Carolina, you can argue Darling Graham is, you know. polling ahead of annie andrews and that's why she's not debating same thing with tennessee um but texas like pretty tied race if not talarico a little ahead and the idea that paxton is just not gonna yeah not gonna debate do you think do you think that last have you seen him speak yeah i know but like Speaker 4 (9:44) if kemp paxton was my best friend i'd be like do not debate yeah right if you're the Speaker 6 (9:48) strategist you're thinking huh given my candidates record rap sheet and uh face yeah maybe we shouldn't do this yeah look Speaker 4 (9:54) you have your your your Public acts and private acts are disgusting. You're terrible at defending them. You're not particularly smart. You're not charming. Just Speaker 3 (10:04) wild to get away with it in a race that big and that close, you know? All right. Megan from Twitter asks, how does the party message to voters that even if Democrats win back the House and the Senate, change will be very incremental until we have a Dem trifecta come 2029 and still keep people? engaged and hopeful. Love it. Take it away. Speaker 4 (10:28) Look, we just, you know, tell people the truth and everybody will have a kind of reasonable discussion about it online and understand the limits of democratic power and not resort to assumptions around DNC being co-opted by billionaires being the reason we've not achieved any of our goals and that. you say, oh, if Democrats are so good, why don't we have Medicare for all when they control the Congress? That kind of a thing we'll have for a while. I think we have to, I think that the fight over Hakeem Jeffries and meeting which Eric Kushner was revealing, not because I found the debate particularly interesting about that specific meeting, but because of what it says about people's low expectations of Hakeem Jeffries, right? The problem in that moment was not that he had a meeting. The problem was that people don't trust him to have. a set of goals, a resolve, like a clear kind of moral compass that's guiding his strategy. And so we have these two years. And I think sometimes it gets boiled down to like, will you fight? Are you a fighter? Are you willing to fight? Right. But understanding what the Democratic goals are when they're in the minority, what are the investigations they're going to launch? What are the message bills they're going to pass and try to shove down Trump's throat? Or if we don't win the Senate, kind of lock in the Senate, right? Like those are the places where. One lesson over the last several years is that you can't just have a message. You can't just have even a policy. You have to pick fights and have big controversies that underscore the difference. And to me, if we can do that successfully over the next two years, while Democratic candidates are campaigning and competing to develop the platform for the presidential race, I think that puts you in a position to say, if you go with us, this is the future that you can have. Don't we think voters realize that? Trump is still president Speaker 6 (12:09) and there's not going to be any change. Like, I feel like it's like a harm avoidance message to the midterms. And then 2028, if we win, that's when the like, you got to deliver a problem gets really hard. Speaker 3 (12:20) Yeah, I certainly would hope so. I mean, that's what I've been thinking. Like, and look, for less engaged voters, maybe it's like an important message for all the candidates to deliver. So it's not to raise expectations. But yeah, like we're not Speaker 4 (12:34) passing anything. But the issue is not right. We're not passing anything. But the question is, like, who will own the failure over the next two years? Right. And there will be budget bills that like like that is the one place the government funding budget Speaker 3 (12:50) bill is where rubber meets the road on this. And do you shut down the government? And we're going to be back into the shutting down the government fight. And look, in fairness, this time. We have more leverage than when we talked about shutting down the government over the last two years. And we still there's still a lot of pressure to shut down the government, even though Democrats clearly did not have the leverage that Republicans had because we don't control Congress. So now we do control Congress. So what do you do? Do you shut down the government over? You know, you can't really do it over ICE funding because ICE is like now separately funded and good for several years. But like. Medicaid cuts or ACA credits or, you know, do you try to demand something, the reversal of some terrible Trump policy and threaten to shut the government down over it if you're the Democrats in charge? Right. Like, Speaker 4 (13:34) I think the point that Tommy's making is right about why aren't we achieving the big changes we're promising to do in the future? Yes. But in terms of owning the current state of the economy, making things feel better, not ideologically, but just cost of living. Speaker 4 (13:49) and just like kind of the daily stakes in the economy. Like how do Democrats avoid taking ownership of that when they're kind of sending bills for Trump to veto or sending bills in the Senate? I don't know. I actually think it's hard. Dan, you want to jump in? Speaker 5 (14:02) Yeah, I'm kind of with Tommy that I'm not, this is a thing I'm not overly worried about for a couple of reasons. I don't think it's possible for, and there's not a lot of history for congressional majorities in divided government to take real ownership over the economy. Speaker 5 (14:17) The only way to do it would be to shut the government down in a very, very destructive and stupid way like Newt Gingrich did in 95 and 96. And I think you were right, John, that the cases where the pressure will rise on funding at the moments of government funding and where people will get pissed is if budget deals are cut to avoid that government shutdown, even if it is probably in the long run most politically advantageous to us to avoid it. And depending on how it looks at the moment, people will be pissed about that. And it's not about whether you can pass anything. It's about what you can stop from Trump. The other factor that I think is worth remembering is this is a – this is not just like 2020, 2019, 2020, where the Democratic candidates are just campaigning and that's – and then there's this whole other show over here with Trump and the government. It's an open primary on both sides. And that's going to suck a lot of oxygen out of the Speaker 4 (15:10) air. Speaker 5 (15:10) Like no one paid a lick of it. Speaker 5 (15:13) The Democrats were the majority in 2007. There was a bunch of attention early on on some things they did. They actually got Bush to sign a minimum wage increase. They passed some, they really pushed some ethics stuff, which Obama was involved in. But once you got to the end of 2000, once you get to the end of 2000, really the middle of 2007, everyone was talking about the presidential campaign and that will likely happen here too. I Speaker 3 (15:34) know all this discussion about like Jeffries and Schumer and they're right for the moment and this and that. No one's going to care over the next two years. It's not going to be any of the attention that's going to be focused on Congress. It is going to be 100 % Republican primary successor to Trump. The 50,000 Democrats duking it out in Congress will be a backdrop. Just in terms of not saying it should be that way. I'm not saying that's what matters. But like in terms of the attention it will get, that is probably what's going to happen. Yeah, Speaker 4 (16:00) I wonder also the other part of this is the way Trump uses military funding. Trump is saying, let's say Trump says, I am vetoing any budget bill or any funding bill that does not increase funding for the Pentagon. Now we're in a fight over funding for the war. You have Democrats in the House breaking and joining with Republicans. Like there is, I do think that there are some big thorny fights in which Democrats start to kind of own things. But the fun Speaker 6 (16:22) was the Supreme Court justice dies. We're all like, let's steal the fucking seat back. And some moderate Democrats are like, no, no, no. The norms say that we need to. John Fetterman right there. John, this is where Speaker 4 (16:30) the difference between 51 and 52 is going to be enormous. Okay. Meanwhile, as we cruise towards saying that out loud and not knocking on wood as we get to 49. Because we want everyone to be healthy. Right. No, no. No, no. Yeah. He Speaker 3 (16:44) was the majority. Just kidding. Nick from Twitter asks, Trump's made quite a few damaging remarks about high prices and data centers this year. Would it be worthwhile for some Democratic PAC to highlight these comments and national TV ads? How much should Dems prioritize a national media message? during these midterms. Dan, what do you think? Speaker 5 (17:07) This is a little bit like, should I drive a Ferrari? It'd be nice if I had the money to do it, but I don't. We simply do not have the money to run a national campaign at this level, but let's live in the hypothetical. There would be an argument for doing it, not a always-on set of Democratic ads or just running national ads, but picking a few. high leverage moments with like big football games, Monday night football, college football games, where you would run like some national ads that I think it'd be less about