Let’s Make Sense Of Democrats’ Conflicting Primary Results

Part of any midterm election year is trying to guess the larger trends to see how our politics are evolving in one direction or another.

“Progressives are gaining momentum!” Except not in Wisconsin this past week, where David Crowley beat the DSA-aligned candidate Francesca Hong in the Democratic Governor’s race.

“This isn't an election about ‘progressive’ versus ‘moderate.’ This is a ‘change’ election,” said Mo Elleithee on the left. “In Wisconsin, they went with the person that they thought was maybe the more realistic change deliverer.”

Jonah Goldberg on the right added that voters also want quality candidates.

“I think that Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are more mature, serious politicians, and there’s a reason why they didn’t endorse Francesca Hong,” he said.

Jonah added that’s true on the Republican side, too, where Mike Lindell lost in the Republican primary for Minnesota Governor.

“Don’t be a moron or don’t be crazy or both, and he lost despite Trump’s endorsement. And of course he’s claiming that the election was stolen from him.”

President Trump faces the inescapable reality that he’s lost support for the war in Iran among voters and his own party.

But he recently said his new war strategy is “low-keying it,” and that he’ll let economic pressure mount on Iran.

On the other hand, an Iranian military adviser said his country could wait out the war until Trump is out of office.

Jonah said that Iran has the upper hand if this plays out.

“It is true that we can keep Iran from getting ships of at least much oil out through the Strait of Hormuz,” he said, “but Iran can keep everybody else from getting oil out of the Strait of Hormuz. And that means the economic consequences of this are going to pile up.”

Congress — specifically Senate Democrats and some Republicans — are taking up this “wait” strategy, too. They left for a month-long recess without passing the President’s $1.5 trillion defense budget and the request for extra spending on Iran.

“This is in many ways one of the few times recently that Congress is actually doing its job, right?” said Mo. “We've talked a lot about the war powers votes and how they keep failing. But right now you see at least Congress saying, yeah, we're not gonna give you a blank check for this thing anymore.”

WNBA has been getting its moment of glory, but it’s also being dragged into the culture wars.

This narrative has built up around race and gender for weeks, and most of it driven by conservative talkers. Part of it centered on star player Caitlin Clark, who’s white, and some said Black players were fouling her too much without getting punished.

Another focused on Clark’s teammate Sophie Cunningham, who, when asked by reporters, said she was against trans athletes competing in women’s sports. But she and others want the coverage to get back onto the games.

“There’s just so much distraction,” she told reporters. “I think the WNBA media, all we ever do is cover everything except basketball.”

“One of the things I think is making people crazy in the Trump era, and I think there’s blame to go around, is the injection of politics into everything,” said Jonah.

But Mo noted that a league getting politicized is a sign that the WNBA is growing up.

“It is something that people are now watching the way they hadn’t before,” he said, “and so you’re gonna start to see it get some of the same kind of attention that other major sports leagues have gotten.”

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Producer: Leo Duran

Host: David Greene

Guests:

• Mo Elleithee, executive director at Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service - @MoElleithee

• Jonah Goldberg, co-founder and editor-in-chief at The Dispatch - @JonahDispatch

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