The NPR Politics Podcast — live from Seattle!

The NPR Politics Podcast

Recorded live in Seattle, this episode explores the primary economic and social drivers of the 2026 midterm elections. The correspondents an

Key takeaways

• Voters are increasingly connecting diesel and fuel oil prices to broader economic instability.
• AI data centers have emerged as a bipartisan political issue due to concerns over electricity costs and job security.

Main topics

• Economic Affordability
• AI and Data Center Politics

Notable quotes

You can't eat GDP.

Conclusion

The episode highlights a volatile political landscape where technologi

Transcript preview

Speaker 8 (0:00) This is Ira Glass. On This American Life, we tell stories about when things change. Like for this guy, David, whose entire life took a sharp, unexpected, and very unpleasant turn. And it did take me a while to realize it's basically because the monkey pressed the button. That's right. Because the monkey pressed the button. Surprising stories every week, wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 1 (0:23) Good evening, Seattle. Speaker 7 (0:25) We are very grateful to be here in beautiful Seattle and we want to welcome you to the NPR Politics Podcast Live. Speaker 1 (0:41) This podcast was recorded at Speaker 7 (0:44) 7.15 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time on Thursday, September 24th, 2026. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but we will all still be having a great time here in beautiful Seattle. Okay, here's the show. Speaker 2 (1:11) Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast Live. I'm Speaker 6 (1:22) Tamara Keith. I cover politics. I'm Speaker 4 (1:24) Miles Parks. I cover voting. Speaker 3 (1:25) I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. Speaker 2 (1:34) And we are thrilled to be here in Seattle for this live edition of the NPR Politics Podcast in partnership with Cascade PBS. Speaker 4 (1:49) And for today's edition of the show, we're going to be talking about issues, the things that, as people are going to vote over the next couple months, are going to be driving what makes their decisions. So Speaker 2 (1:59) let's start with the thing that voters tell us is the top issue this election season, affordability. The president says affordability is something that Democrats made up, a hoax. But he also talks a lot about bringing prices down. And Republican ads make it clear that they know this is a very real problem. So, Mara, let's start with what Speaker 6 (2:25) is the Republican message on affordability? Speaker 3 (2:27) I think the Republican messaging has two tracks, and they're kind of contradictory. One is, as you said, the president, who sometimes makes fun of the whole idea, says affordability is a Democratic hoax. Or sometimes he says that he's solved the problem of affordability, that prices are coming down, the economy is booming, we're the hottest economy in the world. The problem is that he's right on some metrics, stock market good, sometimes GDP good. You can't eat GDP. And the thing that matters most to voters are prices, not the rate of inflation, but prices. And the Republican message is not addressing those concerns. Speaker 4 (3:09) This is what I don't fully understand about the way President Trump has messaged on this. Really, the last two years is I felt like coming out of the 2024 election, the big takeaway from how President Biden talked about the economy and about affordability was you can't just tell voters everything's OK. At some point, you have to kind of meet them where they are. And that's why I think I always go back to at the beginning of the Iran war when President Trump, what did he say? I'm not thinking about Americans' financial situations at all or something along those lines. That was like. That was shocking to hear. But Speaker 2 (3:38) essentially what he was saying is, when I'm thinking about the war, I'm not worried about how much things cost. But Americans are thinking about the war, and they are thinking about how much things cost, and they are very unhappy. And that is particularly salient when it comes to oil prices, gas prices, diesel prices, because people drive by gas stations. typically multiple times a day. And sometimes they even have to stop and fill up their Speaker 6 (4:07) vehicles. I Speaker 4 (4:08) do feel like gas prices are one of those things that as a political reporter, I've been very hesitant. I feel like it's my impulses to think of it as like hacky political journalism to like focus on gas prices because it's so obvious. No, I mean, sorry. But I do feel like in the last couple months, especially on diesel, because I don't know if you guys can see. do not experience diesel in my everyday life on a regular basis. I don't know if that's a shocker for our live audience here. But diesel is over $6 a gallon. People who work in agriculture feel that. People who work, I have a neighbor who runs a moving company who was just talking to me when we were at the playground the other day about how he's getting killed on diesel prices. And so I think when you look at these competitive districts, places like Alaska in the middle of the country that are moving, seem to be moving towards Democrats in some of these Senate races, I do wonder how much that has to do with diesel prices specifically. Speaker 2 (4:57) Yeah, and just to build on that, I have this project called Swing Shift, where I'm following about a dozen swing voters and swing statespeople, most of whom voted for President Trump in the last election, all of whom have voted for him at some point in the last decade. And they text me voice memos. I'm in sort of a constant conversation with them. It's like a very long-term focus group. And I got a text from one of the swing shift voters named Teresa who lives outside of Pittsburgh. It gets very cold there. And she said that like last year, she remembered fuel oil costing about $3.99 a gallon. This year it is $6 a gallon. And she said that everyone... she knows, is talking about how they're going to be cold. She said some people on Facebook are using this to push for voting for Democrats in November. But I want to just read a little bit of what she wrote to me. She says, I don't know that price. I don't know how we will make it. On a cold day, you use five gallons a day. So the math comes out to $900 a month for heat. That's a lot. That is someone making a choice between heat and something else that's essential. I Speaker 4 (6:15) feel like this came up also with health care, right? With the decision to not extend the subsidies last year related to Obamacare, I feel like that's another thing where there are people where this is not an academic or a political argument, but they are literally having to make decisions. And I don't know, I just think that moves, that can move people in political directions. stronger or quicker in ways that these sort of more academic arguments can't? Well, that's Speaker 3 (6:41) what we're watching for. In other words, we know people are struggling economically. The question is, will they turn out for Democrats because of that? And we do a swing voter focus group every month with voters who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and Donald Trump in 2024. And we're watching to see, number one, if they connect the higher prices they're paying to policies. by the Trump administration, and they are. The war in Iran, they get that. That causes gas prices to go up, causes fertilizer prices to go up in rural states. Also tariffs. Yeah, and tariffs, they connect the tariffs with higher prices, especially in a battleground state like Michigan, where we just were last month. But the big question is, will that motivate them to vote for Democrats? Because the Democratic brand is pretty bad. But we are seeing... movement towards Democratic candidates, certainly for the House across the country, and it's based on prices. And Speaker 6 (7:37) you mentioned Michigan. The Republican candidate for Senate Speaker 2 (7:42) there, Mike Rogers, this week is out with a video filmed in a grocery store talking about how prices are too high. Now, this is a video that could have been made two years ago by Republicans who were running and blaming Democrats. And sometimes they still do blame Democrats. But in this video filmed in a grocery store, he says, well, the Iran war needs to end. And if the war ends, Speaker 6 (8:12) then prices will come down. Well, that's what Trump has been saying all along. As soon as the war ends. It's a big if. If the war ends, when the war ends. There's not a lot of clarity there. But what we have seen is some Republicans. take some votes to make it clear that they at least want to be on record saying they want the war to end. Speaker 4 (8:33) Well, and it's a very short amount of time that a lot of these Republicans have to be able to make that pivot towards the general election, right? Because voting has already begun in many states. And so I think a lot of Republicans were very scared of saying something like... the Iran war needs to end during primary season. And so now they're trying to make that pivot while people are literally getting mail ballots in the mail, like right now. Also, Speaker 6 (8:56) I think during primary season, a lot of them believed the war was going to end. I mean, President Trump said it's going to end in six weeks. A lot of people, including voters, believed Speaker 2 (9:07) that. Then there were these sort of fits and starts of ceasefires and talks. And, you know, every other day he was saying they want to talk really badly. They want a deal. This is going to end. And I think that a Speaker 6 (9:19) lot of people sort of put their politics on hold waiting to see if it would end. But now the president is saying he doesn't expect it Speaker 3 (9:27) to end before the midterms. But now this has been the antipathy to the war has become bipartisan. More Republicans are supportive of it. what we're seeing is a real convergence on all these economic populist issues, whether it's tariffs, the war in Iran, higher prices. There's really a convergence between left and right on this. And I think that's something to watch. When you have Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders together leading a rally against AI, you know something's happening. Speaker 4 (9:59) Well, that's what I was going to pivot to, actually, as another thing that feels like very quickly it has become a theme of this midterms is AI, is data centers. It feels to me linked in some way to the affordability argument. I mean, can you explain that? Speaker 3 (10:13) Some of the antipathy to data centers is because they cause people's electricity bills to go up. That's not the case in every state. Virginia actually. drove a very hard bargain with the AI companies and made sure that they paid a lot of money to local communities there, but most states didn't. So there's the data centers, which are loud and noisy and dirty, and they cause your electricity... bills to go up. Then there's just the AI, the job-killing aspect of AI. Yes, some of the data centers provide some jobs in certain communities, but people overall, bipartisan majorities, think AI is not going to be good for them or their kids. And the other thing that we see in polling, in our focus groups, is when people are asked about the American dream, which is pretty simple. You work hard, play by the rules, you can do as well or better than your parents, and your kids can do as well or better than you. People don't believe that's going to happen anymore. That's a big thing, because that was kind of the foundation of American optimism. But people, oh, and in terms of the doomsday part of AI, I don't think that voters have completely wrapped their minds around this because it's a very hard thing to wrap your minds around the end of humanity. But people are worried about that. I was going to Speaker 4 (11:26) mention this poll, this Politico poll that came out that found that two-thirds of people now say that there's at least a moderate chance AI will destroy humanity. Great, cool. But I do think, I actually... To me, the AI story that is not being talked about enough is how much it is a money in politics story because all of these companies have so much money and it is the dark cloud looming over a lot of these candidates. There's been reporting that when you have a poll like that that says most of Americans are worried something's going to end humanity. There's reporting that shows that Democratic strategists are telling battleground Democrats