Change elections are the new normal — Democrats are slight favorites for 2028 but would be underdogs again in 2032, and the UK's revolving door of prime ministers shows the pattern of voters punishing incumbents regardless of party.

(00:00:00) Partisanship is the gravity that dictates every election in the US, right? (00:00:06) Like my job, don't worry, I will get criticized if we say, oh, whatever, Gavin Newsom or AOC is a 55% favorite and they lose. (00:00:15) But like, but 43 of the 50 states stated, we could probably predict right now with 97% confidence who they'll vote for in 2028. (00:00:23) And it's not because of rigging, it's because polarization and partisanship (00:00:28) are very powerful forces that we can't seem to escape from. (00:00:37) Starting a business usually means juggling a bunch of different services just to look legit. (00:00:42) Not anymore. (00:00:43) With Northwest Registered Agent, you get a complete business identity all in one place. (00:00:48) A business address, domain, website, phone number, and more. (00:00:52) With privacy protection built in from day one, don't spend hundreds or thousands on services. (00:00:57) You can (00:00:58) get from Northwest for free. (00:01:00) Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/allinfree and start using free resources to build your business today. (00:01:09) All right, everybody, welcome back to the All In interview program. (00:01:13) We are delighted today to have the one, the only Nate Silver on the program, gambler, statistician, podcaster, sub stacker, go subscribe right now for a hundie, quick hundie. (00:01:27) at Silver Bulletin over at Substack. (00:01:30) It's a great Substack. (00:01:31) How you doing, brother? (00:01:32) Nice to see you with your Knicks hat on. (00:01:34) I'm good. (00:01:35) You know, I think I have like one more week to wear the Knicks hat. (00:01:37) It's a little bulky, not super podcast video friendly, but I, you know, once in 53 years, once in my lifetime at least. (00:01:45) Did you go to any of the games? (00:01:47) I went to a bunch of the Philly series. (00:01:49) I went to, I think as Jason did, I was in Philly for like the New York City takeover of Wells Fargo, or we know where the hell it's called now. (00:01:57) Infanity or something. (00:01:59) I went to the Trump game, which was not the right game to go to, but I wanted to be there. (00:02:04) I wanted to kind of cover it for my readers. (00:02:06) I felt like it was a moment where New York might triumph out of this shit show that it was to get into the arena. (00:02:13) It was a little bit. (00:02:14) You had to show up, what, two hours early to get in, three hours? (00:02:17) I am not a particularly prompt person. (00:02:19) No, I'm not, wasn't going to miss it. (00:02:20) So I got there at like 6. (00:02:22) 605 for an 830 game. (00:02:25) Lined up. (00:02:26) You're supposed to get in on 6th Avenue and 33rd and I was like on 6th and 30th or 29th. (00:02:31) It wasn't the worst. (00:02:32) It wasn't the least efficient process I've ever seen. (00:02:35) New York has a way of getting things done and you just kind of like follow people. (00:02:39) And once you get in, I mean, it was like literally TSA security. (00:02:42) They like literally like look at your wallet by hand and they take your lighters and your pens and your vapes and everything like that. (00:02:50) And once you get in, it was pretty normal. (00:02:52) I did feel like the crowd was a little bit fatigued by the second-half, which was a choppy second-half where there were some (00:02:59) questionable officiating decisions. (00:03:01) I actually did you bet any of the games and did you find the odds were off anywhere? (00:03:05) I had the Knicks to win the Eastern Conference Finals and then after they wrapped up their series, I bet them to win the finals against either OKC or San Antonio. (00:03:14) So I actually, the ticket was not cheap. (00:03:17) I paid, it would not cover Jason's tickets. (00:03:20) But I was able to cover my 200-level bowl seat with the profits from those non-Homer bets. (00:03:27) I thought the Knicks were legitimately overlooked in the East. (00:03:30) And when you see a team that wins, like that came against Atlanta where we were up like literally like 77 to 22 at some point or something. (00:03:37) I'm like, as somebody who like studies this stuff and builds models to see that kind of signature significance for that level of dominance over whatever it was, 4 rounds to the playoffs, like that's (00:03:48) Do you bet prediction markets or how do you bet? (00:03:53) Big Tony. (00:03:54) If you are, I don't bet you're big Tony. (00:03:56) If you are someone who's perceived, so I've been limited by DraftKings and MGM, a lot of the traditional retail sports books limit you. (00:04:06) The prediction markets do not. (00:04:07) I consult for poly market, I should say. (00:04:09) So if you're a sharp bettor, I have other issues, believe me with the prediction markets, but if you are a sharp bettor, then it becomes easier to just concentrate your activity. (00:04:17) On the prediction markets where, you have very smart people, you have hedge funds who are probably making bets in these markets more and more, but more and more, I don't want to go through the rigmarole of like, can I even get my money down? (00:04:28) So I will admit I've gravitated toward those, yes. (00:04:31) And when you look at this team, what do you attribute? (00:04:35) Because obviously during the season, (00:04:37) It was up and down. (00:04:39) We were 15 games from the end of the season. (00:04:41) People were like, hey, we got to trade for Giannis. (00:04:43) We got to get Cat out of here. (00:04:45) But in January, February, we had this incredible run where we had used Cat as the point center. (00:04:51) And then we backed off of it. (00:04:52) And I was on Knicks Fan TV talking with like the real deep folks. (00:04:56) And there was speculation, like they figured it out. (00:04:59) And they're like, let's hold this play. (00:05:01) Mike Brown said, let's hold Cat at the point. (00:05:04) from, until the playoffs, because we know it works so good. (00:05:07) But what makes this team so special? (00:05:09) Is it the wings? (00:05:11) Is it just Brunson's grit? (00:05:12) Is it the three-point shooting across the team, selflessness, ball movement? (00:05:15) There's so many things people talk about here with this team. (00:05:18) I think it's Mike Brown and Cat. (00:05:21) I'm not saying the most important components of the Knicks. (00:05:24) I'm saying those are the deltas where things changed the most. (00:05:28) On defense, a couple of things. (00:05:30) Number one, you have, I love Jalen Brunson, might be my favorite player. (00:05:34) He's not a terrific one-on-one defender. (00:05:37) He gets a few seals, but like he's undersized. (00:05:39) The low center of gravity somehow doesn't work on defense as well. (00:05:42) But like every other defender of the Knicks, including Townes, which is a descended point of view, are at least average, if not better. (00:05:50) And so like kind of figuring out that system, by the way, (00:05:53) When you rely on a defensive system that requires high effort and transition play, not playing your guys 37 minutes per game against like the Charlotte Hornets in the regular season, probably a smart move. (00:06:04) Yeah, this is why Tibbs had to go. (00:06:05) When you look back on it, Tibbs going, who ground these guys into submission for three seasons and they were (00:06:12) it was like we were down one, two, or three starters for every round of the previous playoffs. (00:06:17) Yeah. (00:06:17) I remember going to the Indiana, I guess game seven of the semi-finals against Indiana in 2024. (00:06:22) You kind of see like OG was hobbling around out there. (00:06:26) I guess Josh Hart kind of valiantly played and you're like, these guys are like an infirmary ward. (00:06:32) And especially because you're relying on smart, high effort defense. (00:06:36) So that part of defense and low key, (00:06:39) They became like a much better defensive team in the second-half, right? (00:06:43) I remember also going this year to the Knicks-Nets game in December or January, not the most fun part of the year in New York, where they had lost like 7 out of nine games and there was all the talk about like cat being traded. (00:06:57) And I just wanted to go and check out the vibe. (00:07:00) I actually bet on the Knicks (00:07:02) to win by like 15 points or more because I thought this is either going to be like the beginning of the end for this regime or it's going to be a turnaround game against a team that's trying to lose, frankly, a crosstown rebels trying to lose. (00:07:15) And the fans were like pretty tolerant of Cat. (00:07:18) They wound up winning by like 60 points or something totally absurd or held the Nets of one of the lowest scores in the modern NBA era. (00:07:25) And like that team from there, they, by the way, they won the NBA Cup. (00:07:28) Yep. (00:07:29) But like in the second-half, they had (00:07:31) something like the fifth best defense in the NBA. (00:07:34) They had the best defense in the NBA in the playoffs, maybe not sustainable, but that on defense. (00:07:39) And then Kat presenting, look, again, like I love Jalen Brunson. (00:07:43) The offense can be a little bit predictable. (00:07:45) Maybe in-touch possessions. (00:07:47) Yeah, right. (00:07:47) And it's amazing that Jalen Brunson, I mean, he shot like 53% between 16 and 22 feet, which is kind of insane, given that you know what's coming. (00:07:56) It's like Marian Rivera is like cut fastball. (00:07:58) You know what's coming. (00:08:00) But just to have more optionality and variety in the offense and to have more ball movement. (00:08:05) So to have those two spontaneous things happen, the coaching system led improvement on defense plus like Kat having a revelation, like I think he's like one of the 15 best players in the league. (00:08:18) He was very short. (00:08:19) Yeah, he's a really good player. (00:08:21) And (00:08:22) So those two things combined, a little bit unusual for a veteran team, granted, but spontaneous improvement on both sides of the ball, coupled with the Knicks, by the way, have the most playoff games out of any team in the past four years, more than Boston, more than OKC, a lot more than San Antonio. (00:08:40) There is empirical evidence that playoff experience does matter. (00:08:44) This comes up in poker, too. (00:08:45) If you are in (00:08:47) your first big tournament and maybe you're rated the GPI number one player and you're playing in the main event of the World Series of Poker, nerves are a thing. (00:08:55) Even in golf, nerves are a huge thing. (00:08:58) It's a physical ordeal almost. (00:09:00) And like you're operating on a different operating system and to have had experience in a lot of high stakes games, not all of which were wins, but like it really does, it really does help. (00:09:09) And (00:09:11) Those 2 comebacks from the Pacers game, from the Boston games, where we just broke their backs last year, that I think made it obvious to anybody. (00:09:20) When we're down 10, 15 points, that's not a lead against the Knicks. (00:09:23) The Knicks are going to come back. (00:09:25) We're just that good. (00:09:26) And it's just fantastic now that the entire league has to plan how do they beat the Knicks. (00:09:32) We've spent the last like five or six years, how do we get through Boston? (00:09:35) How do we get through this team? (00:09:36) Now the entire league has to do that. (00:09:38) All right. (00:09:39) We should get started here. (00:09:40) We got so much to talk about. (00:09:41) And obviously, you specialize in elections. (00:09:43) We have the midterms coming up. (00:09:44) We're going to talk about 2028, post-Trump world, all of that. (00:09:48) But we just concluded an election, an election which, I don't want to speak for Dave, but you may have seen or heard the podcast where he was like, hey, this is not illegal, but it doesn't feel like a real election. (00:10:01) Take us through what happened in your estimation (00:10:06) in California with Spencer Pratt, fraud, just mail-in ballots. (00:10:10) Yeah, that was just the LA election, Jason, just to be clear. (00:10:13) Yeah, just to go with LA, but go ahead, build on it. (00:10:15) The question that I wanted to talk to you about, Nate, is when you look at the in-person return data and then you look at the early mail-in data and then the late mail-in data where suddenly Nithya Raman has this massive surge and there's this huge statistical difference as the ballots start to get counted in the days and weeks that follow, she wins. (00:10:36) it seems very improbable that there's a true statistical difference in the population that might, be in person, mail in early and mail in late. (00:10:45) And I just wanted to get your read on that. (00:10:47) So I'd say I think there's no evidence of fraud is the short summary version. (00:10:52) The mistake that can be made is to assume that each ballot like comes in independently when there are systematic differences between groups and when they tend to cast their ballots. (00:11:02) So Democrats, (00:11:03) have long been encouraged to vote by mail. (00:11:06) Actually, it used to be more of a Republican thing, but like under Trump, who discouraged mail voting in 2016 and 2020 and 2024 to some extent, like that shifted. (00:11:16) So look, I think California's system is completely unacceptable. (00:11:21) I've done some consulting work on like the Indian election, where you like literally have polling stations in the Himalayas and they actually stagger their elections. (00:11:30) But once (00:11:31) Election Day happens, they count their vote within 24 hours. (00:11:35) I think it's ridiculous and very failed state that California takes longer than that. (00:11:39) But if you have one party who systematically tends to vote later, also Democrats in both the LA race and the governorship had more of a choice to make. (00:11:49) You know, it wasn't clear, you know, for a while it looked like Eric Swalwell was going to win, and then Katie Porter, and then, and then, you know, Becerra finally emerges. (00:11:58) Becerra (00:11:59) look, my dad is from LA. (00:12:02) I spent a lot of time in California and I am all on board with the criticisms of how the state is being governed, at least in parts of the state. (00:12:09) I was in San Diego for New Year's. (00:12:14) And beautiful time of year to be in San Diego and you can literally run on the sand and the beach and everyone's kind of like hot and you have good fish tacos and everything else. (00:12:23) Like that I kind of understood the California of like my youth or my dad's youth or whatever else and understand the appeal of the state. (00:12:31) And I understand why LA and SF, I think LA in particular kind of never really recovered from the pandemic. (00:12:37) We can talk about that. (00:12:38) At the same time, (00:12:40) It's a very partisan state. (00:12:41) We have very partisan Democrats like Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom who emerged in the state. (00:12:47) We saw in the redistricting referendum, I guess it was in 2025, how like you can debate whether it's a good idea or not, but like that traced with the Democratic margin in presidential years very strongly, even though for many years Democrats had been the party against (00:13:00) gerrymandering. (00:13:02) It's a capital D democratic state. (00:13:05) It's not an idiosyncratic blue state like Maine or something. (00:13:09) And like, so like to expect even a very talented Republican like Spencer Pratt to win the mayorship. (00:13:16) I mean, even in New York, we have a bit more heterodoxy historically. (00:13:20) We've had a (00:13:22) socialist mayor, we've had Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani in recent years too. (00:13:26) California is not that way. (00:13:29) It's much more of a machine state. (00:13:31) But when you look at that statistical difference, I get the idea that Democrats mail in ballots and they show up late. (00:13:38) But when you look at the overwhelming votes for Nipia Rahman over Karen Bass that happened late in the counting cycle, (00:13:47) versus early in the counting cycle and the statistical kind of shift over that happened. (00:13:52) And you look at the difference between in-person and mail-in being so statistically different. (00:13:56) And I get your point about Republicans are more likely to go in-person and maybe you can make that leap there. (00:14:01) But the difference in the counting that happened over time, the ratio just seems so different between Rahman and Bass. (00:14:07) And then people bring up this idea of ballot harvesting where there were homeless people from Skid Row and the number of ballots that came from that particular region in the late mail-in. (00:14:16) was kind of concentrated for Nithya Raman. (00:14:19) Do you get a sense that actually is a true representation of individual voters and how they individually voted in that election? (00:14:28) I think the California vote count is an accurate tally of the votes that were cast. (00:14:32) I mean, yeah, look, I think mail-in. (00:14:35) Were they cast by the individuals that were supposed to cast them, right? (00:14:38) This is one of the theories is that there's ballots that are getting filled out en masse in these ballot harvesting efforts. (00:14:45) or people walk around and they say, hey, fill out this ballot for this person and here's a free lunch or I don't know what's going on, but like there's all these videos. (00:14:51) I don't know if they're true or not. (00:14:52) I think there is propaganda around this. (00:14:54) I also think that like mail-in voting provides some verification challenges in different ways. (00:15:02) You know, I don't inherently see anything that wrong with a system where you go to a physical place to vote and you sign (00:15:10) you sign your voter log and whether you show ID or not. (00:15:14) And then if you have a disability or you're really in bad straits or you're traveling in Albania or something, then you can. (00:15:20) That makes sense. (00:15:20) But I want to ask you, I just want to ask you the empirical question. (00:15:23) What is the difference in states or districts or cities that don't have voter ID and those that do politically? (00:15:30) Like, is that basically create a huge overweighting for Democrats? (00:15:34) Can you just help us understand the politics behind this from an empirical perspective, not putting on a spin hat or anything? (00:15:40) So the theory used to be that Democrats benefit from higher turnout by kind of any means at all. (00:15:48) And that was an era when Democrats tended to dominate among non-college educated voters, whereas Republicans were like the, you know, country club, Kiwanis club people who like show up in the first day of voting. (00:16:00) That has shifted. (00:16:01) Look where Democrats have really, really overperformed. (00:16:04) It's in special elections. (00:16:06) It's in midterms as opposed to high turnout races like when Trump stood on the ballot. (00:16:12) And so I think if Trump, like, look, I think voter ID would be pretty reasonable. (00:16:18) I'm not against voter ID. (00:16:20) You show your ID to do, you know, if you show ID even at mid-40s to get into a bar, you can probably show it to vote. (00:16:27) But like at the same time, I don't think that explains what we saw in California. (00:16:31) I think it's a system that is much too slow, (00:16:34) We have different branches of ballots that are kind of differently and where younger people that might be more progressive tend to vote later and or by mail. (00:16:43) And again, it's not like this happened in Alabama or something. (00:16:47) The prior on Pratt advancing probably would be pretty low potentially. (00:16:52) And I wish that people were less partisan. (00:16:57) I have been critical on the newsletter, Silver Bulletin, about Graham Plattner. (00:17:03) for example, because I think he's somebody who has not proven A reliable figure, so to speak. (00:17:10) And I was critical of Joe Biden. (00:17:13) And I'm not even registered as a Democrat, by the way, despite what people assume. (00:17:18) But if you're going to have five different ways to vote, and I say to someone with experience, like actually trying to build election night models and being on national TV on election nights, (00:17:29) These blue shifts or red shifts are somewhat predictable and are going to be an inevitable consequence of having different mechanisms to vote where you have like different cues in a line, right? (00:17:39) If you're at MSG and you have like a VIP line, the cohort that arrives through the VIP line is going to be different than the one that arrives through like the main gates on 7th Avenue or whatever. (00:17:49) And I think the system should be simplified. (00:17:51) By the way, also things like ranked choice voting, which I, again, as an election wonk, I support giving voters more choice. (00:17:59) You shouldn't need, like Maine or New York City take, an extra 2 weeks to count ranked-choice voting where I could clod code a ranked-choice voting algorithm that would resolve itself in 7 minutes, even with 100 million votes in Maine or half a million or whatever it was in the primary. (00:18:19) Is the coronation me that we have the appearance of impropriety and we have a highly politicized system. (00:18:25) I don't want to lead the witness here too much, but we do find (00:18:29) isolated cases like this woman, Anika, Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, she was paying people 3 bucks or giving them cigarettes to register them. (00:18:38) You have these on the margin, fraudulent looking behaviors. (00:18:43) And then if it takes this long, that gives another appearance of impropriety. (00:18:47) But I keep bringing up the Heritage Foundation. (00:18:50) I'm sure you've looked at their data. (00:18:51) They have a lot of people trying to figure out where fraud exists, investigating it, and it's de minimis. (00:18:57) It's a couple of thousands of cases they can find. (00:19:00) So even if you extrapolated them 10X or 20X, pick your multiple, it would never swing a major election. (00:19:07) In fact, the number of elections that have been swung (00:19:10) based on what they told me, is like the most local smallest election where there's 10s of thousands of votes or thousands of votes. (00:19:17) So is that the issue that we're seeing here, this collection of appearances of impropriety? (00:19:23) Yes. (00:19:24) Look, the American election system is very decentralized, which, you know, as kind of like an old school liberal in some ways, who I'm kind of against centralized power, I think is quite (00:19:37) brilliant in some respects. (00:19:39) But yeah, the scale, there is certainly, there are certainly cases of fraud when Al Franken won, what was it, 2006, right? (00:19:46) That came down to like a recount of like 200 votes. (00:19:49) We're never going to know that with any degree of certainty. (00:19:52) There is like a (00:19:53) margin of error. (00:19:54) But in practice, and we know this too, when you do have recounts, again, I've studied this a lot, you have an 0.5% recount threshold in most states. (00:20:03) Almost never have you had a margin larger than 0.05% or so overturned. (00:20:09) The errors can also cancel out. (00:20:11) Again, the notion that someone can vote without physically being like the ward of their ballot, understand why that bothers people. (00:20:20) And I think California has been (00:20:23) complacent about this. (00:20:24) And I think perception does matter. (00:20:26) And I think you can, there's a kind of certain arrogance, I guess, is the term that comes to mind about saying, well, we are wanting everyone to vote. (00:20:34) And so we're just going to do things our way. (00:20:36) And it takes a long time because we're like taking time to verify things. (00:20:39) Again, you know, having studied elections all around the world, it's very unusual. (00:20:44) Most countries would count much, much faster than the US. (00:20:47) It's really because we have an electoral college system. (00:20:49) It's decentralized. (00:20:51) But like in most elections in France, (00:20:53) or the UK, or they keep having elections or wherever else, or Japan or India even, the result of the vote within a few hours. (00:21:00) And the fact that the United States, the technological leader of the world, and the supposed like bickering of democracy can't do that, I think is a sign of atrophy of the efficacy of the system. (00:21:11) Or is it by design, Nate? (00:21:12) Let me ask you a question. (00:21:13) If voter ID laws don't change and mail-in ballot laws don't change and the system doesn't change, (00:21:20) Is there a chance, do you think, from the data you've seen, for a Republican governor to be elected again in California or for Republicans to win more seats in the House or have a shot at winning a Senate seat in California? (00:21:33) I mean, fundamentally, does this system not get set up in such a way that it creates an irreversible model for Democrat establishment to maintain its control over elected seats in the state? (00:21:45) I mean, Democrats have lost plenty of elections recently, but not in California. (00:21:49) Partisanship is the gravity that dictates every election in the US, right? (00:21:55) Like my job, don't worry, I will get criticized if we say, oh, whatever, Gavin Newsom or AOC is a 55% favorite and they lose. (00:22:03) But like, but 43 of the 50 states dated, we could probably predict right now with 97% confidence who they'll vote for in 2028. (00:22:12) And it's not because of rigging, it's because (00:22:14) polarization and partisanship are very powerful forces that we can't seem to escape from. (00:22:21) Again, I would love, you see a little bit of this in New England, actually, right? (00:22:25) You see like a Charlie Baker or is it Phil Scott in Vermont, right? (00:22:28) You see a little bit of like cross-partisanship in New England. (00:22:32) You see even in the South, like Beshear in Kentucky is a moderate but Democratic governor. (00:22:39) For some reason, you don't see it as much (00:22:41) in California. (00:22:42) I don't know why. (00:22:43) California's like always been like the laboratory of weird and eccentric political ideas, but it's become a machine state. (00:22:49) Maybe because it's so large that voters can't kind of touch the candidates up close and don't have a lot of like directly relatable experience. (00:22:59) Maybe California is just kind of like too large in general, but I look, I am very concerned about polarization and partisanship. (00:23:08) I think it leads to lower quality of governance. (00:23:10) I think it's (00:23:11) exacerbated by gerrymandering, this gerrymandering kind of war to the bottom. (00:23:18) And Democrats had paid the price where like the triangulation, you pick the least worst nominee, works perfectly fine in blue states. (00:23:26) They're going to win the general election. (00:23:29) It hasn't given the Democrats very effective general election nominees, right? (00:23:33) Between, you know, I consider like (00:23:36) they're one of the last four. (00:23:37) I consider Biden to have lost in 2024 before Harris lost instead. (00:23:43) The one election they did win was during a once in a century pandemic that, although I had my critiques of liberal handling of COVID, was kind of objectively handled. (00:23:52) Well, I don't know, you can talk about Operation Worksheet. (00:23:54) I understand my voters were very unhappy with 2020, the 2020 version of Trump and the greatest economic disruption since the 1930s. (00:24:03) So they kind of won the gimme. (00:24:05) They haven't won the close elections recently except for Obama, who conspicuously at least kind of made rhetoric to trying to bridge a divide between the parties. (00:24:16) You know, Obama still has a, I look at this today, a 57% approval rating post facto with independents. (00:24:23) Biden is at 20%. (00:24:25) And like, look, I think a lot of Democrats and Republicans, certainly, maybe even more so Republicans, frankly, under Trump, (00:24:30) feel as though you don't even have to try to turn out the other side to persuade people. (00:24:35) It's just a numbers game. (00:24:36) And in California, if you're Democrats, you win the numbers game. (00:24:44) You run back-to-back calls all day. (00:24:46) Decisions get made, then the details slip. (00:24:49) Claude fixes that. (00:24:50) Clip Claude Note Pro to your phone, hit record, and stay in the conversation. (00:24:53) Claude Intelligence captures every word and turns it into structured notes, action items, and follow-ups, not a transcript you'll never open. (00:25:01) The actual work done for you. (00:25:03) Capture more, miss nothing. (00:25:05) Find Claude Note Pro at claude.am. (00:25:10) I think we want to really get to 2026 and 2028 and talk about what you were alluding to, which is the polarization and how these parties have changed. (00:25:20) The Republicans used to be, you know, this country club group, elites, rich people, business owners. (00:25:27) Now they're the populist party. (00:25:29) Then the other side, which used to be the working man and the working women's party, they've become this liberal, weird socialist party. (00:25:36) And that seems to be playing (00:25:38) They're both popular. (00:25:39) What's going on with the vibes, I guess, between these two parties and how do you look at them? (00:25:45) Because it does feel like inside of each of those parties, you have two sub-parties. (00:25:49) So you really have some sort of four by four matrix here or two by two matrix with four different groups. (00:25:55) How is that going to play out in 2026, which still feels like the anti-Trump vote, like, hey, I'm not happy about Trump, but 2028, Trump's not going to run a third time in all likelihood. (00:26:06) Let's take those two buckets as well as the vibes and these parties fracturing a bit. (00:26:12) Yeah, I think Democrats really have 3 factions as I've described them. (00:26:17) One is the left. (00:26:18) The avatars might be Zoran, might be AOC, might be Bernie Sanders, all of whom, by the way, are quite effective politicians in their own way. (00:26:29) I mean, Zoran (00:26:31) understood how to be a Knicks cheerleader, for example. (00:26:35) Oh God, yeah. (00:26:37) That speech was like almost perfect. (00:26:39) Whoever wrote it for him is a Knicks fan. (00:26:42) But look, I'll be honest, I didn't vote for him, but like I think find anyone who's like trying to like bridge gaps and expand a tent, even if it's from a direction that I might not agree with. (00:26:53) I find that like somewhat appealing, I suppose. (00:26:56) You know, AOC, (00:26:57) you can take your leave. (00:26:58) She has become a more effective tactical politician. (00:27:01) You know, Bernie, what he's built with being a freaking old guy from Vermont, the socialist mayor of Burlington, Vermont, coming within not a hair's breadth, but coming, you know, quite close and beating Clinton in 20 states in 2016 or whatever was quite impressive. (00:27:17) But like that's one constituency and historically the left has not had a lot of big wins outside of the bluest states. (00:27:23) On the other side, there are the abundance libs kind of named after (00:27:26) as reclined, right? (00:27:27) They are more pro-free market. (00:27:29) They sometimes deny that they're centrist. (00:27:31) I think they're pretty centrist. (00:27:32) They are the ones who are very concerned with California as a case study of poor governance. (00:27:37) And whenever you think about parties at the national level, generally speaking, it's the purple states, sometimes the red states where things are more functional, where there's more housing, (00:27:50) where when you get out of the airport to catch an Uber, there's not some convoluted system where you have to wait 20 minutes in line to go to some shuttle like an LAX or whatever else, right? (00:28:01) Where there's population growth. (00:28:02) I mean, you want to talk about like hard data. (00:28:04) Population data in the US and jobs data is pretty good. (00:28:08) And those are states where people have moved to. (00:28:09) And the abundance libs are critical of democratic governance and critical of culture war issues on policing and trans rights and (00:28:20) you have what I call the resistance Lib faction. (00:28:25) They're the ones who say they're really fed up with the Democratic establishment, but are still often very partisan and often very like cheerleading for the blue team. (00:28:34) They're the ones who thought that Joe Biden was railroaded out of the 2024 race, for example. (00:28:40) They're really Gavin Newsom's constituency. (00:28:43) Why is Gavin Newsom going out of his way to support and endorse kind of the Bidens when Biden, even among Democrats, is not all that popular anymore? (00:28:52) Everyone else wants to move on. (00:28:53) And well, it's because it's a signal to like the resistance libs that like, I have your back. (00:28:57) I'm a fighter. (00:28:58) The reason why we didn't win in 2024 is because the media was unfair to Biden and or because Kamala Harris was a black woman. (00:29:07) So pick a white guy who will fight for you and tweet in all caps (00:29:11) And you'll win. (00:29:12) So it's kind of like ride or die. (00:29:14) We're going to just our team, our team, our team's going to win. (00:29:16) It doesn't matter. (00:29:17) We never apologize. (00:29:18) Kind of the Trump playbook. (00:29:19) Never apologize. (00:29:20) Go on the attack. (00:29:21) Seems to be what Gavin's doing, right? (00:29:23) Absolutely. (00:29:24) And he had some proof of concept. (00:29:27) I mean, the redistricting thing was a genuinely smart tactical move. (00:29:31) Democrats are going to wind up losing seats, but like without California, they probably lose even more. (00:29:36) And so he did skate where the puck was going there. (00:29:39) instead of the party's like usual risk version that I've critiqued before. (00:29:43) But at the same time, the triangulating spirit of like, let's pick Kamala Harris because she's like the least unacceptable candidate, or Hillary or John Kerry, if you want to go back to 2004. (00:29:57) The establishment doesn't seem to have (00:30:00) understanding the fact that like almost every election now, Obama in 2012 was, I guess, the exception. (00:30:05) Almost every election now is a change election. (00:30:08) We might ping pong back and forth for many cycles. (00:30:11) Like I think Democrats are slight favorites to win in 2028. (00:30:16) It wouldn't shock me if AOC or Newsom or Shapiro or Ossoff or whomever wins. (00:30:22) If they're underdogs again in 2032, look what's happening in the UK where, I mean, it's kind of become like a running joke, but we're going to be through like what, (00:30:28) like 6 prime ministers in nine years or something, and they're probably the US's closest comp. (00:30:35) It's not a good time to be a defender of the status quo. (00:30:39) And I do think candidates like Kamala Harris, who was unable to distance herself, kind of literally unable or unwilling to distance herself from Biden, or Newsom, who's kind of defending that legacy in the same way. (00:30:51) To me, that seems like (00:30:54) a failed strategy, but in a lot of these World Cup games, sometimes, sometimes you win on penalties. (00:30:59) I don't think that any of the GOP nominees look to be particularly strong. (00:31:04) Donald Trump and our approval ratings now is down to 38%. (00:31:07) People are upset about Iran. (00:31:09) They're upset about gas prices. (00:31:11) They're upset about just fatigue of having, you know, a singular (00:31:16) center star of politics over the past. (00:31:19) Trump kind of is like, it's fatiguing a little bit. (00:31:21) And so it's an uphill battle for the GOP. (00:31:24) Democrats might do their best to give Republicans a fighting chance despite that. (00:31:28) So just to extrapolate from that, the point about needing change, driving change on the progressive side, we are seeing socialists getting elected as mayor, socialists starting to rise at the state level. (00:31:44) And many of these candidates that you've mentioned are self-declared socialists at the national level. (00:31:49) We may potentially have a democratic socialist as president 2028, based on what you're saying. (00:31:55) Is that ultimately (00:31:57) where this goes, where the populist movements drive the left further left. (00:32:02) And everyone in that party now seems to be jumping on this bandwagon, proclaiming socialist principles as the only way to solve inequity and unfairness in this country. (00:32:11) And kind of jumping on what we were from empirical kind of history shown doesn't work as a governing system, as an economic system. (00:32:20) But suddenly everyone's kind of been swept away by it and seems to think it's, (00:32:24) It's the only way forward. (00:32:26) Does that kind of be the output of the conditions that you're describing, that the left, the Democrats basically become a socialist party and they embrace socialism fully and full-throated? (00:32:35) I think there are huge generational divides where, you know, so I grew up, I'm 48. (00:32:43) So I still remember the kind of, not last questions, but like I still remember the Cold War. (00:32:48) I still remember (00:32:49) the Berlin Wall following, right? (00:32:51) So for me, the connotations of socialism are close adjacent to communism, are a long history of failure of economic development in countries that adopted that system. (00:33:04) I think people who are a little bit older don't realize that the socialism brand is much more popular among younger Democrats. (00:33:11) By the same token, America is still a supremely capitalist country. (00:33:18) if not for, and again, in my book, I have lots of critiques of the tech sector. (00:33:22) We still are attracting the best and brightest young talent from all around the world. (00:33:27) I personally think the AI capital boom, whatever becomes of it, is responsible for keeping our economy, at least the stock market, in relatively good shape. (00:33:38) And also things like, (00:33:40) Where have Democrats lost support? (00:33:42) Well, actually the biggest differences are concentrated among Hispanic and to some extent Asian American voters. (00:33:48) You know, who do you think are the most likely people to own small businesses in the US? (00:33:53) It's A cliche, but 100% true that like recent immigrant groups are very entrepreneurial. (00:33:59) It's one thing that I believe makes the United States great and one thing that makes me very pro-immigration. (00:34:04) But you have seen shifts in those groups and the most entrepreneurial groups away from Democrats. (00:34:10) because I mean, they all escaped socialist countries and socialist backgrounds and the economic mobility that's afforded by free markets and capitalism and the degree of true liberalism we provide in this country is what's given folks opportunities that don't exist elsewhere. (00:34:26) But the second and third generation of the American middle class are probably, (00:34:32) more likely, as you point out, to kind of be convinced of the benefits of socialism. (00:34:37) This isn't your wheelhouse, Nate, but if you were hired to give a playbook to either party for 2028, what would be in that playbook? (00:34:45) What would you tell them is the right platform for this moment in time, a post-Trump era, and (00:34:53) with socialism, wealth disparity, healthcare. (00:34:56) There's a group of issues here that keep coming up, the support of Israel, foreign wars. (00:35:02) What's the perfect platform for either party, an independent or left-leaning or right-leaning? (00:35:08) What are going to be on the top of Americans' minds if you can look that far out? (00:35:13) Yeah, look, I, by most definitions, am an elite, as are you guys. (00:35:18) You can afford tickets to game three of the first NBA Finals game in New York and whatever, 25 years, and you're probably an elite. (00:35:25) And most elites like me say they're, you know, socially liberal, economically moderate. (00:35:32) I use the term liberal, meaning the way liberals use in Europe, meaning some role for the state, but pro-market in general, and that's probably my view. (00:35:43) I'm not sure that you is actually an electoral winner as much, right? (00:35:49) The most neglected voters in the US are people who are culturally a little bit more conservative, but like economically more progressive potentially, but not quite in the same way that you get from like an AOC. (00:36:03) They support small business. (00:36:05) They are wary of conglomerations of power. (00:36:08) Maybe I'm putting that with too generous a brush, but like I do think that like (00:36:12) When you have the world's first trillionaire, when people have a lot of anxiety, maybe the anxiety is not the right shape of anxiety, but understandable anxiety about AI, when you have AI leaders saying things like, it's going to displace all these white collar jobs. (00:36:29) Look, I think a (00:36:31) Electorally, I'm not saying morally or righteously, whatever else, right? (00:36:35) I think combining a little bit of the right kind of anti-oligarch rhetoric with moderation on some of the issues, you know, on the woke stuff, I get that term already feels like it's becoming outdated, but like still supporting small business, especially for men, right? (00:36:57) Young men still want to feel as though they control their own destiny. (00:37:02) A lot of them feel like they don't do that anymore, but I don't think they necessarily want like all that much hand-holding. (00:37:07) But no, it's a difficult thing to triangulate. (00:37:10) And the US is not alone in having a lot of resistance and dissatisfaction with the status quo. (00:37:18) You know, I mean, again, this is part of why, and I'm sure about 2% of your audience will be sympathetic to this, why I have like, (00:37:25) been more defending of Zoran Mamdani living in New York is because like he's at least getting the ins and outs. (00:37:32) We'll see what happens in after four years of like New York being like a basically functional city, right? (00:37:40) We have really nice new airports. (00:37:42) It's not Zoran's doing that's quo and a hell of a lot of money spent. (00:37:46) But like our crime is like relatively low compared to California. (00:37:51) I used to live right near Penn Station, Madison Square Garden, not the nicest neighborhood, (00:37:55) not the nicest block, but I never walked around feeling unsafe there when I visit SF, then you have to be more careful, right? (00:38:04) And so I think like combining functional performance and government with whatever message you want is part of it. (00:38:10) I think maybe even like having like a little bit more like optimism too. (00:38:15) I'm kind of always a fan of like zigging where other people zag. (00:38:19) Obama presented (00:38:21) a more optimistic take about kind of like the American spirit, right? (00:38:26) look, I see all the enthusiasm around the World Cup and the Knicks. (00:38:31) I don't want to sound like cliche, but tonight, after we tape, which is taping on a Monday night, New York time, right? (00:38:38) I can like wander around (00:38:40) the streets of New York and there'll be some like Norwegian bar that has Norway game on and that does make America great and like rediscovering those values. (00:38:49) I don't know. (00:38:50) I mean, maybe somebody like a, I think maybe the most electable Democrat might be somebody like a John Ossoff who is younger, who is pretty progressive if you look at his voting record, but like, but isn't like a brawler in quite the same way that Newsome is trying to be. (00:39:06) I mean, the generational part is a lot of this. (00:39:08) You know, I think it's (00:39:10) in saying that we had a candidate who was trying to be president until he was 86 and the alternative is someone who's trying to be president until he's 82. (00:39:19) Like I don't, you don't see very many Warren Buffett fine. (00:39:22) If Warren Buffett ran for president, maybe I'd vote for him, right? (00:39:26) But like you don't see very many leaders in other parts of the world. (00:39:28) You don't see very many CEOs or leaders otherwise. (00:39:32) I very much value the contribution of my older friends, right? (00:39:35) But to run the biggest country in the world as an 82 year old to me seems kind of insane. (00:39:42) And so there's some basic level of.