Donald Trump says everyone should start learn to stop worrying and love data centers. Democrats say, “hey, thanks!”

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* Why is Donald Trump clinging so hard to the wrong side of a 25-75 issue?

* Is free-floating data-center hatred a good thing, or is the public making a mistake?

* What’s the right line for Democrats ahead of the election—and in the new Congress?

Then, Hakeem Jeffries hinted this week that Democrats would run on a simple agenda: End Trump’s Iran war; end his trade wars; end his war on people’s pocketbooks. But he has not provided similar specificity about the Democratic oversight agenda. Are Democrats going to repeat the mistakes of 2019 and 2020, when they were too eager to work with Trump substantively, and too reluctant to check and expose him? Is the spirit of Resistance One really dead, or are Democratic voters mostly just frustrated by the lack of follow through.

Answers are available in full to listeners and viewers on YouTube. Check out our new channel, or upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

Further reading:

* Brian argues that Democrats will regret it if they think their voters no longer want them to wage “resistance” style politics.

* Matt argues Democrats should promise to surrender to Canada in the trade war.

* David Wallace-Wells on what the data-center backlash is really about.

Donald Trump is accelerating America’s transformation into a banana republic, most recently by instigating a trade war against Canada and compromising the integrity of U.S. economic statistical agencies.

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* Why Donald Trump keeps doing the same kind of stupid shit over and over again;

* What Congress (maybe the next Congress?) could do to stop him;

* The extent to which this is driven by corruption vs. Trump’s own personality disorders.

Then, are Trump’s power rivals letting him off the hook too easily? Why are Democrats supporting protectionism for cattle ranchers rather than attacking Trump’s cronyism or attacking his broader protectionist regime? Why are civil servants silent as he calls the reliability of official U.S. economic and demographic indicators into question? Why is the Supreme Court letting him impose illegal policy for months or years at a time? And what would it take to correct all of these failures?

Answers are available in full to listeners and viewers on YouTube. Check out our new channel, or upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

Further reading:

* Matt’s paean to Mark Carney.

* Brian wants Democrats to borrow from Trump’s playbook for normalizing power grabs, but to soften the public for court expansion.

* Jared Bernstein sounds the alarm over the political infiltration of the Census Bureau.

Jon Ossoff says he has no interest in running for president in 2028. But between fundraising prowess and narrative shaping and attention driving, he’s doing a better job of it than just about anyone else in the Democratic Party.

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* The Natalie Harp ploy, and how Ossoff yoked national attention to Donald Trump’s broader degeneracy;

* Whether Ossoff provides (finally!) a template for the moderates-who-fight synthesis we’ve been promised;

* Unanswered questions about how much of this glow up is luck, and whether Ossoff’s actual record will hold up in a presidential primary, if he run and has a left-wing opponent.

Then, Democratic Party officialdom has pulled back together pretty well after bruising primaries in Michigan and Wisconsin. But on the fringes, influential progressives and moderates continue to take potshots at the nominees they were hoping to beat: progressives at David Crowley in Wisconsin; moderates at Abdul el-Sayed in Michigan. What are they thinking? Could Bernie Sanders and AOC tamp down the cheap-seat heckling from the left? Could Chuck Schumer snuff out big-money anti-el-Sayed activism in the center? And where will moderate, pro-Israel Jewish voters take their political resources if they leave the Democratic Party, but have no home in the increasingly Groyperified GOP.

Answers are available in full to listeners and viewers on YouTube. Check out our new channel, or upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

Further reading:

* Brian asks why more Democrats don’t sound like Ossoff specifically on the Iran war question.

* Matt on the differences between the left-wing insurgency and the progressive establishment.

* Natalie Harp: More than Trump’s “human binkie.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders have conceded to the excesses of what we must all now call Woke One. But the concession, and that characterization of it, raise some obvious questions.

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* What was Woke One;

* Which aspects of it do progressive leaders now concede were “crazy”;

* Why did it happen in the first place?

Then, how relevant is any of this for near-term politics so long as Donald Trump is in power wrecking the economy? The country keeps losing jobs (or putting up extremely week monthly jobs numbers). Congress is about to give Trump more power to impose tariffs. And there’s no clear offramp to the war in Iran. Are Republicans simply fucked? If so, why hasn’t the war been a bigger political disaster for Trump? Could Democratic leaders forge a factional truce around a midterm-campaign promise to end the war next year? Or is it going to be 2007 all over again?

Answers are available in full to listeners and viewers on YouTube. Check out our new channel, or upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

Further reading:

* Matt on how the high cost of living is tearing Republicans apart.

* Brian takes a stab at a Woke One origin story.

* Why are Democrats voting to give Trump more tariff power?

* The doctor advising Republicans on how to lose weight says his miracle diet gives him orgasmic, wipe-free poops.

Democratic leaders have been delivered a thrashing from the left this primary season. So naturally, the lesson they took from it is that they should…fund Trump’s crooked government before the election he’s trying to steal?

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* The deal Democrats struck with Susan Collins to avoid a pre-midterms government shutdown;

* What Democrats could have demanded that might have won back respect from their voters while either a) making the election more secure, or drawing national attention to the GOP’s intent to cheat;

* Why establishment Democrats didn’t want this fight; but neither, apparently, did leaders of the left-insurgent faction.

Then, if after all this, there’s such little appetite in the party for procedural hardball, should we have any hope at all? Would a Democratic trifecta in 2029 simply not make any structural changes to U.S. democracy? If so, would progressives be better off trying to work with GOP extremists now to abolish the filibuster while Republicans are still in power? Will a mainline figure emerge who unites the party, holds Republicans accountable, and leads the country back to normalish politics? Or is it horseshoes all the way down?

Answers are available in full to listeners and viewers on YouTube. Check out our new channel, or upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

Further reading:

* WE HAVE A YOUTUBE PAGE NOW! You can watch this episode in full there, and we’ll be rolling out new subscription options over the coming weeks. Hit like, subscribe, and all the other buttons.

* Brian on Democrats squandering their last pre-election chance to fight Trump.

* Matt’s plan to swap voter ID for filibuster abolition.

* Carlos Odio and Rachel Stein on the rightward lean of unmobilized Latino voters.

The Iran war’s back on, oil prices are back up, the Republican election outlook is back down. But…it’s not playing out as an existential political crisis for Donald Trump.

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* Why Trump was unable to make surrender stick;

* The peculiar case of the missing oil crisis;

* Whether Trump’s untrustworthiness, and Iran’s experience exploiting U.S. election deadlines, means he’ll be unable to get another ceasefire on the books before November.

Then, why aren’t Trump’s horrifying failures triggering a flight to safety among his political allies? Is it because the Democratic Party is in shambles? Or because Trump loyalists control too much of the media? A bit of both? What do Ken Martin’s failures as DNC chair tell us about the state of Democratic opposition politics? And should we take heart in the fact that Democratic pushback against an oligarchic takeover of Warner Bros. seems to be working?

Answers are available in full to listeners and viewers on YouTube. Check out our new channel, or upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

Further reading:

* WE HAVE A YOUTUBE PAGE NOW! You can watch this episode in full there, and we’ll be rolling out new subscription options over the coming weeks. Hit like, subscribe, and all the other buttons.

* Matt on the difficulty defining class in the U.S.

* Brian on how to divide and conquer the billionaire class.

What if the Democratic establishment could take the wind out of the sails of the left wing insurgency by…giving in to progressives on their most morally resonant and popular issue?

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* The moral and political advantages of Medicare for All as an abstract concept, and how health care had become the motive force driving the growth of the Sanders movement;

* Why no plan to open up Medicare to all beneficiaries has ever become law, and who’s principally responsible;

* How the Bernie Sanders plan came into existence, and what it would take to get a version of it enacted without accidentally blowing up the health care system.

Then, even if this is a good idea on the merits, would it serve the political purpose of dialing down the factional war? Do progressive insurgents want single payer health care or do they want the issue to run on? Do they want policy wins or do they want to take over the Democratic Party? Is another truce, like the one Joe Biden forged in 2020 with Sanders and his allies possible? And would it hold even if a consensus left-center agenda didn’t drive Democrats back into full control of government?

Answers are available in full to listeners—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

Further reading:

* WE HAVE A YOUTUBE PAGE NOW! You can watch this episode in full there, and we’ll be rolling out new subscription options over the coming weeks. Hit like, subscribe, and all the other buttons.

* Brian’s original case: Why the Democratic establishment should surrender to the left on Medicare for all.

* Matt’s blueprint for a center-left counterinsurgency.

* Greg Casar: “In the past, there were some progressives, including people I’ve been friends with for a long time who used to say, I’d rather see you lose righteously than win politically and strategically. And I’ve learned to respectfully disagree with those people. We can’t afford to lose anymore because the cost of losing is just so high.”

While Brian was away, Graham Platner’s campaign imploded, rumors circulated that Republicans were playing Weekend At Bernie’s with Mitch McConnell’s corpse. And then Lindsey Graham went and actually died.

In this episode:

* Matt gives an on-the-ground rundown of how the Maine Democratic Party is going about choosing Platner’s replacement on the Senate ballot;

* Brian tries to sniff out whether Maine Democratic voters feel burnt by the Sanders operation, and thus may insist on a nominee from a different faction;

* Matt and Brian talk about Monday’s ICE murder in Maine, and how it’s shaken up the race even further.

Then, why did Lindsey Graham succeed where other’s failed to use flattery to get what he wanted out of Donald Trump? How will McConnell’s absence, and the fact that the South Carolina governor appointed Graham’s sister as his interim replacement, affect the GOP’s ability to advance its agenda, including Todd Blanche’s attorney general nomination? And was Graham secretly a hero of American democracy?

Answers are available in full to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

Further reading:

* Brian on how to eulogize dead fascism enablers.

* Matt on the Trump GOP’s authoritarian approach to immigration enforcement.

* Halina Bennet’s rundown of the Maine convention process.

Brian’s vacation continues for a second week, so Matt is joined by Caitlin Legacki, a Democratic strategist and Third Way fellow, to talk about some of the less-covered but more-successful 2026 senate recruits starting with former North Carolina governor Roy Cooper.

In this episode Matt and Caitlin discuss:

* Why objectively successful red state governors struggle to obtain national attention.

* The constraints and upsides of dealing with an opposition legislature.

* The New South tradition of business-friendly pro-growth Democrats.

* Applications of these points to Alaska, Michigan, and other states that lack the underlying economic strength of California or New York.

Paid subscribers also get to hear about the left’s misguided attacks on former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and a brief update on events in Maine.

Further reading:

* Roy Cooper’s tough on crime ad campaign.

* What Mary Peltola means when she says she’s “pro-fish.”

* The American Prospect complains that the Commerce Secretary met with commercial enterprises.

With Brian out on vacation, Matt is joined by Alex Seitz-Wald of the Midcoast Village to discuss Graham Platner and the shifting political tides of Vacationland more broadly.

In this episode, Matt and Alex discuss:

* Troy Jackson, the man who really is the thing Platner sort of pretends to be.

* Paul Le Page, the “Trump before Trump” figure likely to replace Jared Golden in the House.

* How a pedophile brought ranked-choice voting to Maine.

* Why Susan Collins is probably toast.

* Lifestyle businesses and downward mobility.

Plus paid subscribers will get an exacting level of detail on the political geography of Maine, Platner’s specific appeal in Washington County and on working waterfronts, and the clash between what made him so fascinating as a primary candidate and what’s objectively the easiest path to win a general election.

Further reading:

* Susan Collins touts her pork barrel achievements.

* ICE detains a small town general store owner.

* How Maine’s two most recent governors changed the state.

* Refugee resettlement in Lewiston, ME.