Clock It with Symone & Eugene

Instead of bringing just one friend onto the show to discuss the historic 2026 midterms, Symone and Eugene invited the whole groupchat. Tune in to listen to what Vice President Kamala Harris – in her first public reaction to the results – DNC Chair Ken Martin, Michael Steele, Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester, Governors Wes Moore and Andy Beshear, Mayor Brandon Scott, SEIU President April Varrett, Jane Kleeb, pollster Terrance Woodbury, South Carolina State Representative Hamilton Grant, and Mike Smith, president of the House Majority PAC, all have to say about what they believe their mandate to be. And detail the plans they’re already putting in motion, from investigations to trying to raise the federal minimum wage to building the infrastructure for 2028.

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President Trump is at his lowest approval rating ever. Polling averages from FiftyPlusOne show Democrats winning in 11 of 15 key Senate races. Its generic ballot test for control of the House asks voters which party’s candidate they would support. Democrats are +9. But the party isn’t declaring victory just yet. Many of them still have a touch of PTSD from election nights in 2016 and 2024. But Clock It’s latest guest – pollster and data journalist G. Elliott Morris – says unless Republicans have secretly generated the biggest get out the vote campaign they’ve ever had, there’s no evidence that Democrats won’t win big. “ The Republicans right now are just hoping, praying for polling error,” said the FiftyPlusOne co-founder. “That's obviously a bad place to be. And like, if you got nothing else, then you're saying all the polls are all rigged.” Symone and Eugene also ask Morris about how FiftyPlusOne ensures the veracity of their reporting, as well as breaking the news about the fake Wedgewood polls that made it into national political coverage, including on MS NOW.

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This week Symone and Eugene joined Nicolle Wallace on her podcast "The Best People" to discuss all things midterms: El-Sayed's low polling with Black voters, Talarico fever in Texas, and could the senate seat in Mississippi... be in play for Democrats? All three MS NOW colleagues talk about the best version of America they’ve seen under Trump 2.0, exemplified by the Minneapolis ICE protests and the “No Kings” marches — times where we rely on community to propel us forward. “There is a world where selfishness is not the way you have to operate in your daily lives” says Eugene. “The only way to do that is to hold hands and jump together.” And Symone agrees: “We're the people, it is literally on us,” she says. “History is going to record that we made a difference.”

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Two weeks from the most pivotal midterm elections in modern history, the polling looks good for Democrats. But if they’re going to win back the House and the Senate, they’ll need voters to show up to the polls. Eugene’s been traveling around the country working on a series focused on Black voters called “The Deciding Vote.” In the first episode, he went to Cleveland, Ohio, where over 600,000 Black voters sat out the 2022 midterms. In the city, he finds that most of the non-voters he speaks to never connected – or were never told – how much voting could change their lives. Then Symone and Eugene invite Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott to the groupchat to prove how much a good leader matters. Mayor Scott, sworn in at the age of 36 in December 2020, has presided over a resurgence in public safety and development in the city he grew up in. He credits his success to being his real, authentic, Black Baltimore self. “ I grew up basically at the worst time to be a young Black poor person in my city,” Mayor Scott said. “My view on what happened, and what the city needs to focus on is different because I lived it.”

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This season of America continues to get more and more violent. Last Thursday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that the administration would livestream a public firing squad execution. That same day in New York City, an ICE agent shot immigrant Oscar Bergal in the neck while he was driving a car with his five-year-old son in the backseat. “We're moving the bar on what is socially acceptable,” says Daniel Peña, the latest member of the Clock It groupchat. Symone and Eugene invited the Pushcart Prize-winning writer & Fulbright-Garcia Robles Scholar to discuss his new book “How to Look Away,” America’s evolving relationship with violence, how hit TV shows from the 2010s predicted Donald Trump’s rise and the use of force for political gain. “ For people who were like, it was outside the realm of their imaginations that Trump could happen, you saw pretty quickly like, no, this is in the DNA of the country right now,” he says.

Editor's note: After this episode was recorded and originally published, President Trump posted on Truth Social that the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan on December 3rd will not be livestreamed.

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Michael Steele remains a Republican, but the party as it stands today is unrecognizable to him. “For the sake of power, we bought the idea of the South will rise again,” he says. “We should've killed it in its infancy and [been] done with it because it gave rise to what happened on January 6th.” The first Black chairman of GOPAC and the RNC joins the groupchat to offer his take on big money (and dark money) in politics, to reflect on how his faith guides his politics, and to explain why he’s stuck with the Republicans in spite of their about-face with regard to individual liberties. “ The easiest thing to do is walk away,” says Steele. “ I have to believe in your rights as a citizen under the flag and the Constitution to be on this soil, to live on this soil, to flourish on this soil – however we find you on this soil.”

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We're a month out from the most consequential midterm elections of the 21st century. With momentum on its side, the Democratic party is hoping that big wins in November will lead to a dredging of the entire federal government – one that's continued an ICE surge with impunity, that's failed to stem a worsening affordability crisis, and that's started wars after promising to end them. As the countdown to the elections winds down, Symone and Eugene invite the one-and-only Rachel Maddow back into the groupchat to share their hope that the Democratic party will rise to the occasion and start cleaning up the political mess we’re in. They also get into how her new true crime documentary – Kill, Bury, Print – reflects local communities fighting back against corrupt forces in government. "This is not a smoke detector moment. This is a flames in the kitchen moment," says Rachel, who has not given up. "Even their own people are repulsed by the worst things they're doing. And that to me is a healthy sign."

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On Saturday, September 26th, Symone and Eugene taped an episode of Clock It in front of a live audience as part of MS NOW’s Together in Texas event.  They spoke about the money pouring into races all over the country, and polling that shows Trump underwater and Republicans in suddenly competitive contests. But they pointed out that it’s not enough for Democrats to win back the House – or even the House and the Senate. Symone implored the audience to hold the people they elect to their promises. “It's not just enough to take power and not do jack-ish with it,” she said.  “This is why I think some people [are] about to lose their seats, some Democrats have lost some primaries, and some new folks are about to get elected. And these are people that are not about business as usual. They are going to challenge the status quo. They're going to ask for things to be done differently.”

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Last week, President Trump banned CNN, Politico, and MS NOW from the White House grounds. And this is just the latest in a long list of times Trump has taken up metaphorical arms against the press. Symone and Eugene get into why the president -- under water in the polls as Republican candidates start to distance themselves -- might have decided to ban our journalists 40 days before the midterms. And with November approaching, our hosts invite one of the rising stars of the primaries, Florida's surprise Democratic nominee, Angie Nixon, to the groupchat. Nixon called in from the campaign trail -- specifically, from her van (“The Vangie”) -- to shed light on how much support she's receiving from the Democratic party, if the South can actually be repainted blue, and how she's being prosecuted for protesting redistricting. “ I have to push back," she says. "I know what we deserve, and I'm going to continue to fight for it.”

Note: This episode was recorded and scheduled for release before a federal judge blocked the president's ban on MS NOW, CNN, and Politico, citing a lack of due process. Visit ms.now for real-time updates on this developing story.

As the 2026 midterm elections heat up, MS NOW is headed to the Lone Star State. Join more than a dozen of your favorite hosts - including Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell, Jen Psaki, Michael Steele, Ali Velshi and more - in Arlington, Texas on September 26 for a day of community and conversation about the issues that matter most to you. Get your tickets at ms.now/together.

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If you’re thinking why did Symone and Eugene invite a live streamer to Clock It – or what even is a live streamer – that’s fair, but stay with us. Because right wing media is trying to drag this live streamer into the center of the culture wars. And Democratic candidates -- some of them -- feel the need to take public stances on him. He says he’s become the new War on Christmas. So instead of talking about him, or about other people talking about him, Symone and Eugene decided they'd rather talk to him. “I'm simply one individual that is now being presented as, like, the main media figure of this growing Democratic Socialist movement in the country,” he says. “But there is this broad left populism that is growing in places that I have not touched at all.”

As the 2026 midterm elections heat up, MS NOW is headed to the Lone Star State. Join more than a dozen of your favorite hosts - including Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell, Jen Psaki, Michael Steele, Ali Velshi and more - in Arlington, Texas on September 26 for a day of community and conversation about the issues that matter most to you. Get your tickets at ms.now/together.

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