And I wonder how it is using that money, Lisa.

Right.

Well, part of how they're trying to circle the wagons, as Shane said, is by just dumping money into these races.

Texas has seen just an extraordinary influx of Republican money, and they are just pounding the airwaves with ads, largely linking Democrats to the more progressive socialist wing of their party.

I think most of it is negative on Democrats.

There's some effort also to tout some economic improvements made by President Trump, but most of this is a negative campaign against Democrats and, you know, a focus also on crime and threats to personal safety.

But yeah, the main thing Republicans have going for them here, along with the map, is the extreme financial advantage they have over Democrats.

He was not.

Could a Democrat win Alaska this year while we're all obsessing on Michigan and Maine and Texas and Georgia? I mean, I guess you just said possibly yes, but why? And does it have anything to do with that fisheries question?

Well, look, Alaska is definitely in play.

It is on the list of six or so seats that, you know, Senate seats that both parties are hyper focused on.

And part of it is these sort of local issues that are fisheries.

But, you know, a really big issue up there is tariffs.

Much of what Alaska brings in is imported from either lower 48 or lower.

foreign countries, particularly Canada, where they share a very, very long border.

How about George H.W. Bush's infamous Willie Horton ad? That was 1988 and so many others.

How about George H.W. Bush's infamous, infamous Willie Horton ad? That was nineteen eighty-eight, uh, and so many others.

Yeah.

There's certainly a long history of candidates in both parties using the politics of fear, you know, to try to s- uh, get their base out to the polls.

You know, this version of it was particularly-- I think you could reach back even further.

I was, uh, joking to some of my colleagues that it was kind of a blue scare, you know, playing off the red scare, just because the, there was such a heavy discussion of communism and socialism.

A- and I think concerns that, um, that one's Democratic opponents are communists are not something we've heard in our, uh, political discourse, at least not in the past, you know, two, three decades, maybe longer.

So i- you know, there's certainly a long history of these kinds of attacks, but it was really striking, um, at that gathering to hear how heavy, uh, Republicans really leaned into those kinds of calls, into portraying Democrats as communists, as socialists, as hating America, as un-American, um, and how little they talked about really the things that-- the policies that are most closely identified with this administration.

Mm-hmm

Wow

... running ads defining him as, uh, bigoted and violent and too risky for the state.

So they were charging into this general election defining Platner as unfit for office, and now they're gonna get some new person, and they certainly will have to do all the research to figure out who this person is and figure out how to define them in a way that works for Republicans in a very, very short period of time.

And I think it's also important to remember in these conversations that Senator Collins has plenty of her own vulnerabilities, and there's two that stood out quite strongly in our polling.

As you both know, there's a group of political consultants who took some measure of pride in bucking that set of protocols and traditions when they found Graham Platner, and I wonder if they now second-guess the pride they took in bypassing some of that traditional vetting.

Look, I, I think there was a desire in Democratic circles to find candidates who had, quote-unquote, "authenticity." That was the big buzzword.

But authenticity comes with authentic problems and missteps and mistakes.

I think the people involved with Graham Platner's race felt that voters would like a narrative of someone sort of pushing through adversity, cleaning up their life, finding a new path forward, and I think voters do like those kinds of stories.

Who else

cares? Well, I think it's largely their base, right? It is so striking to me because the court has actually been more favorable to the administration than most other courts have been to past presidents.

The New York Times had a chart today saying over 60% of the decisions had sort of sided with where the administration wanted them to be, which is significantly more like a high for recent presidents.

So it is interesting that they're seizing on this one.

And I think the reasons that you were referencing earlier are part of it, that it's about this fear among their base that white conservative Americans are losing their place in the national project.

And that larger idea, I think, is very motivating to a certain subset of Republican voters and particularly MAGA voters.

It's a pretty fundamental piece that's intertwined with Trump's whole rise and the rise of that whole movement.

It's it to me, though, is symbolic of a moment we find ourselves in where people are saying we need to shake up these institutions.

Uh, and she describes his behavior, uh, that night as reckless and unsettling, and says she goes on to cut off contact with him.

So the other element that we had to contend with in this story is that Lindsey Fifield is a conservative, and she is someone who has a long history of working in Republican politics.

She worked for The Heritage Foundation, which is, of course, a conservative think tank.

She worked for Independent Women, which is a conservative women's organization, and she worked briefly on Nikki Haley's primary campaign.

These were not things that she hid from us.

She was very open about her political views and her political background, and said that they had no influence on the allegations that she was making against Platner.

But, you know, as part of our corroboration process, and certainly on behalf of Times readers, we had to look into those claims and really investigate whether she did have any ties to the Collins campaign, and in the end, we could not find any evidence that she did.

And how did the Platner campaign react when you brought them this reporting? Before you publish, when you're letting them know this is what our reporting has revealed.

Uh, and she describes his behavior, uh, that night as reckless and unsettling, and says she goes on to cut off contact with him.

So the other element that we had to contend with in this story is that Lindsey Fifield is a conservative, and she is someone who has a long history of working in Republican politics.

She worked for The Heritage Foundation, which is of course a conservative think tank.

She worked for Independent Women, which is a conservative women's organization, and she worked briefly on Nikki Haley's primary campaign.

These were not things that she hid from us.

She was very open about her political views and her political background and said that they had no influence on the allegations that she was making against Platner.

But, you know, as part of our corroboration process, and certainly on behalf of Times readers, we had to look into those claims and really investigate whether she did have any ties to the Collins campaign, and in the end, we could not find any evidence that she did.

And how did the Platner campaign react when you brought them this reporting? Before you publish, when you're letting them know, "This is what our reporting has revealed."

Levels of badness.

Levels of badness, and that is because the president is deeply unpopular, he's waging a war that is deeply unpopular, and on economic issues, which was really a central reason why voters elected the Trump administration, we have no indication that voters feel better about the cost of living of basic goods.

In fact, in-- there's tons of economic data that shows they feel worse about things like housing and groceries and gas.

That's for the general election.

Before we get to that point, how the general election dynamics shake out and the degree of badness will be shaped by what happens in these primaries that we're now about to enter the heaviest period of.

Lisa, I'm gonna ask you to talk us through the marquee Democratic primaries that are unfolding over the next few months, and what you think the big story is of those contests.

Well, look, Democrats came out of their 2024 defeat, which was very devastating for the party, with a real sense that they were a party in crisis, and poll after poll reinforces that you just see large swaths of Democratic voters saying that they don't like their own party, they don't know what their party stands for, and this is a party that really is in the wilderness.

And I think you see those divides in the party playing out in a couple of really big fronts in contested primaries across the country.

So what can you say about the Talarico coalition and if there is anything larger to take away from that?

So it's really hard to say whether he's motivating the Democratic base or expanding beyond it because Texas is open primaries, which means that you can show up and vote in whichever primary you choose.

What we do know is that enthusiasm for this Democratic primary was very, very high.

It broke records in early voting.

It broke records in Election Day voting.

People wanted to come out and vote in this primary.

Now, is that because of Talarico, or is that because it was an exciting race against another Democratic star, Jasmine Crockett, who has a totally different profile? She's someone who's really out there fighting and matching Ma-MAGA with her own insults.

So Lisa, what does this race now look like for the fall?

So what can you say about the Talarico coalition and if there is anything larger to take away from that?

So it's really hard to say whether he's motivating the Democratic base or expanding beyond it because Texas is open primaries, which means that you can show up and vote in whichever primary you choose.

What we do know is that enthusiasm for this Democratic primary was very, very high.

It broke records in early voting.

It broke records in Election Day voting.

People wanted to come out and vote in this primary.

Now, is that because of Talarico, or is that because it was an exciting race against another Democratic star, Jasmine Crockett, who has a totally different profile? She's someone who's really out there fighting and matching ma-MAGA with her own insults.

So Lisa, what does this race now look like for the fall?

Mm-hmm.

You know, they like to say resist Trump, and they absolutely should not give in on the shutdown, that they're being rewarded for refusing to give in to Trump to keep the government open.

But I do think there's another group of Democrats who look at these results and say, "This was not about the shutdown.

This was about cost of living." And the risk with this is that if the shutdown doesn't end, all those cost of living pressures get worse and worse for people, and in fact, they really want the shutdown to end and then move to this issue that they see as more politically salient and positive for them, which is talking about cost of living and affordability.

Yes.

Like, the SNAP benefits are gonna be a big problem.

They may be delayed.

The airline travel's gonna get messier and messier.

People still feel deep empathy for him and feel sad that he is going through this, but I think it's also fits in with the anger that a lot of Democrats have at former President Biden and the people closest to him who protected and abetted him throughout this process.

And I think an even more important dynamic here is almost since Biden won the presidency in 2020, Democratic voters have been saying again and again, in every way they can, in polling, in interviews, that they believed that Biden was too old and was unfit to hold the office.

And then here you are, four months after the man leaves office, he comes out with a public diagnosis of very serious cancer that would, in fact, make him fairly unfit to hold the office.

And that whole time, while Democratic voters were saying this in polling and everywhere else, Democratic officials were insisting that he was fine.

So there's this dynamic in the party where voters, Democratic voters, feel misled by their own leaders.

And now, in some ways, it appears that they are getting confirmation of their belief.

And that's a really difficult political dynamic for Democrats, and one that is really unclear how they will tackle and solve for in the coming years, especially now that it's a little bit harder to speak openly about the former president because there are such mixed feelings.

I mean, what do we make of that word? Does it feel like the right word? If it's not the right word, then what is the right word for what essentially was going on here?