GD POLITICS

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player by following the directions here.The news cycle is quickly moving beyond last week’s elections. There’s the end of the shutdown, the Jeffrey Epstein emails, new candidates jumping into the 2026 primaries, and the release of Robyn’s first single in seven years (that one is for the gays). Pretty soon much of our electoral attention will be focused on the midterms.Before we say goodbye to the 2025 elections, I wanted to do a post-mortem with the advantage of more data and less sleep deprivation. So, today we are focusing on some of the fundamental questions of the election, in particular: who, where, and why. The demographic and geographic breakdown of the vote and the issues driving voters.We compare what we saw in 2025 to past elections, discuss what is means for 2026, and answer listener questions about the results. At the end we also get to some of the other things going on in the world, namely those Jeffrey Epstein emails and the raging battle over what kind of candidates the parties should be running if they want to win at the midterms.With me for our 2025 election post-mortem is Lakshya Jain, head of political data at The Argument, Linley Sanders, polls and surveys reporter at the Associated Press, and Lenny Bronner, data scientist at the Washington Post.

It appears that the longest government shutdown in American history is coming to an end.On Sunday night, eight members of the Senate Democratic Caucus joined Republicans in advancing a deal that would fund the government through January. It would also fund programs related to agriculture, military construction, and the legislative branch for most of 2026.What Democrats got in return is a promise to vote on the enhanced Obamacare subsidies in December, a reversal of government layoffs made during the shutdown, continued funding of the Government Accountability Office, and maintaining the office’s ability to sue the Trump administration.All eight of the senators who voted with Republicans are not up for reelection in 2026 and Democratic leadership criticized the deal, along with plenty of other Democratic lawmakers. So, in the end, which party came out on top?That’s the story we begin with and we also dig into how Washington is reacting to last week’s elections and the latest news from the Supreme Court. With me to do it is Gabe Fleisher, author of the Wake Up To Politics newsletter and friend of the podcast.P.S. We now have GD merch! You can find hats, tees, and totes here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

Democrats swept the bigs races across the country on Tuesday night and many of the not-so-big races as well. They over-performed their polls in Virginia and New Jersey and Zohran Mamdani may be on track to secure an outright majority in the mayoral election in New York City. The victory for Proposition 50 in California was also resounding.In this late-night edition of the GD POLITICS podcast, Mary Radcliffe, Nathaniel Rakich, and Lenny Bronner joined me (after a five hour livestream, no less) to break down the results of the evening and what they do or don’t portend for future races. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player by following the directions here.Happy Election Day! Last night Nate Silver, Clare Malone and I gathered with a sold-out crowd at the Comedy Cellar in New York City to share out final pre-election takes, discuss the latest political controversies and take on audience members in a game of “Guess What Americans Think.”We discussed the wildly divergent polls in the New York City mayoral race, how we expect the results to play into the Democrats 2024 post-mortem, and what it could mean for national politics if New York City has a Democratic Socialist mayor.In a round of “Hot Take Hat,” we discussed the demolition of the East Wing, Graham Platner’s Nazi tattoo, Trump’s suggestion that the Senate scrap the filibuster, and more.During “Guess What Americans Think,” Nate and Clare competed against the audience to gauge how Americans feel about topics like the government shutdown, the National Guard in American cities, and the amount of money being wagered on political betting sites in the 2025 elections. We also answered incisive questions from the audience.Remember to tune in to the GD POLITICS livestream of election night beginning at 7 pm ET at gdpolitics.com.

We now have GD merch! You can find hats, tees, and totes here.Election Day 2025 is just about upon us. In a matter of hours New York City will elect a new mayor, Virginia and New Jersey will elect new governors, and California will decide whether to gerrymander its congressional maps. Millions of Americans across the country will also cast ballots in local elections.We’ve got a lot cooking at the GD POLITICS pod, so let me share the game plan. Today’s podcast is a tick tock of what to expect on election night: when the polls close, what races we’ll be watching, what data we’ll have, and what time we might get race calls.Monday night we have an election eve live show at the Comedy Cellar in New York City. It’s officially sold out and I look forward to seeing some of you there! Paid subscribers can expect to get a recording of that in their feeds Tuesday morning (so smash that paid subscriber button!).On election night, I’ll be live streaming at gdpolitics.com alongside some of your GD POLITICS faves starting at 7pm Eastern Time – Lenny Bronner, Nathaniel Rakich, Mary Radcliffe, Jacob Rubashkin, with some other guests stopping by. Wednesday morning we’ll have a reaction podcast in the feed.Hold on to your seats, folks! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

Two election week updates to start: First, we have a live show coming up at the Comedy Cellar in New York City with Nate Silver and Clare Malone on election eve, November 3rd. There are a few tickets left, so grab ‘em and join us!Second, I’ll be live-streaming on election night, November 4th, alongside some of your GD POLITICS faves. Think of this as friends having an election watch party that you’re invited to. Assuming we make it to midnight, it will also be my birthday, so don’t be surprised if you see a glass of wine or birthday shots. Grab your favorite beverage and join us starting at 7pm ET at gdpolitics.com.I’m first going to apologize to listeners who don’t care about New York City politics, because that’s what today’s entire episode is about. Though I wouldn’t skip just yet; I promise it will be interesting.For our New York-minded friends (or people who just get a kick out of Democratic Party drama) today is your day! We are just five days out from a New York mayoral election that has been nothing if not attention grabbing, and, in its own special way, reflective of the complicated city the next mayor will govern.Let’s begin with the spark notes version of the past 8 months…It all started with incumbent mayor Eric Adams switching his party identification to Independent, acknowledging that his corruption scandals and relationship with President Trump would prevent him from winning renomination in a Democratic primary.Then, there was the assured primary victory for the also scandal-plagued three term-governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, which, of course, was not assured after all. Thirty-three year old Democratic Socialist assemblyman Zohran Mamdani won the primary by 13 points, after making the cost of living his defining issue.Cuomo vowed to continue on as an Independent, while the Democratic establishment remained wary of endorsing Mamdani. Mamdani’s past statements about defunding the police, globalizing the intifada, and more – which hadn’t gotten much play during the primary – came to the fore.But while Mamdani has struggled to reach 50 percent support in the polls, anti-Mamdani forces haven’t had much luck either. The scandals and lack of charisma that plagued Cuomo in the primary, haven’t gone away. Curtis Sliwa, the – perhaps you could say – odd ball Republican candidate, who’s been a debate favorite for his old-school New York zingers, has wallowed in the teens. Though he told the press he’d only drop out if a Mack Truck hit him and he couldn’t be resuscitated in the ICU.While incumbent mayor Eric Adams did drop out after polling in the high single digits, his endorsement of Cuomo hasn’t made up the difference for Cuomo. Throughout all of this, Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and New York Governor Kathy Hochul have concluded, like just about everyone, that Mamdani will win the election and that they are better off endorsing.A similar conclusion about the inevitability of Mamdani from business leaders, online bettors, and political analysts alike hasn’t stopped the candidates from a brawl down the final stretch. For my part, I’ve spent more than one November in Wisconsin, and the political ads in the city right now are next level.So that gets us to where we are today. To elaborate much more, joining me is Michael Lange, the author of the newsletter “The Narrative Wars”. The big question now facing Mamdani is whether he can win an outright majority of New York City voters. The answer will shape his likely tenure. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

We have a live show coming up on November 3rd at the Comedy Cellar in New York City with Nate Silver and Clare Malone. Come join us for a rowdy election eve!We are one week away from Election Day 2025, so this week we’re zooming in on the biggest contests of the year. Today it’s Virginia, New Jersey, and California. Later in the week we’ll take a detailed political tour of New York City’s vastly different neighborhoods.In Virginia, Democrat Abigail Spanberger currently leads Republican Winsome Earle-Sears in the race for Governor by an average of 8 points. Underneath that top line number there’s plenty of variation, with recent polls ranging from a 5 point lead to a 13 point lead for Spanberger. The Attorney General’s race, in which Democrat Jay Jones has had to apologize for text messages that promoted political violence, is significantly closer.Meanwhile in New Jersey, Democrat Mikie Sherill leads Republican Jack Ciattarelli by 6 points on average. Most polls there have shown a mid-single digit race. In the legislatures in both states, Democrats appear assured to maintain their majorities or grow them.We also take a look at areas of Virginia and New Jersey that could give us and indication of how different parts of the electorate are reacting to Trump 2.0. There are the wealthy Northern Virginia and Northern Jersey suburbs, large Latino communities also in northern Jersey, and large Black communities in Hampton Roads, Virginia.If you stick around until the end, we also get to the latest Graham Platner polling in Maine.With me to do it all is Chaz Nuttycombe, executive director of State Navigate, which covers state-level politics around the country from a data perspective, and Mary Radcliffe, who also works at State Navigate and runs the new polling aggregation site FiftyPlusOne. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player by following the directions here.Shortly after I launched this podcast, I had a guest on who caught folks attention. Her name was Joan C. Williams, a law professor at UC San Francisco, and she joined me to talk about her new book, “Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back.”She spoke straightforwardly about why the cultural values of America’s liberal elites and working class are different. As she said, working class values reflect working class lives. And she described how a strict adherence to elite values by Liberals creates challenges for a Democratic Party in pursuit of a majority coalition. After all, less than 40 percent of American adults have a college degree.It turns out that Joan became something of a listener to this GD podcast herself. A few weeks ago, she sent me an email saying that she listened to an episode I did about whether there are electoral advantages to being moderate. She told me she had just written an op-ed in the Boston Globe about what politicos mean when they talk about moderation, and that there are many different types of so-called moderation, not all of which have the same electoral advantages.I told her to come back on the podcast and talk to me about it and that’s what we’re doing today. And speaking of liberal elitism, Joan joins me from Siena, Italy where she has been writing about class divides from the 13th century and how they relate to our class divides today.

We have a live show coming up on November 3rd at the Comedy Cellar in New York City with Clare Malone and Nate Silver. Come join us for a rowdy election eve!Maine Democrats have themselves a primary contest between the current governor Janet Mills and former Marine and oyster farmer Graham Platner in their bid to oust Senator Susan Collins next year. On its face, it looks like a battle for the soul of the party, though Platner’s recently resurfaced comments on Reddit could disrupt his momentum.On today’s podcast we take a look at the contours of that race and what’s at stake in the Voting Rights Act case at the Supreme Court. Nate Cohn at the New York Times is calling it the “case that could hand the House to Republicans.”We also get some updates on the 2025 elections, which are just two weeks away. It’s debate season and we’ve now seen gubernatorial debates in Virginia and New Jersey and a meme generating mayoral debate in New York City. Think parade politics, bodega orders, and New Yorkers’ favorite kind of virtue signaling: subway ridership.With me to discuss it all is reporter at the Associated Press Leah Askarinam and chief elections analyst at Decision Desk HQ Geoffrey Skelley. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

A question that political analysts often ask is whether something is “breaking through.” Is a piece of information reaching the masses? And is it not just the case that everyone knows it, but does everyone know that everyone else knows it too.Did we all see that Super Bowl ad? Did we all see that political gaffe? Or as today’s guest would put it: Is it common knowledge?When people know that something is known or believed by others, it can change human behavior. Think about the watershed moment that President Biden’s 2024 debate caused. Polling already showed that a majority of Americans – even a majority of Democrats – believed Biden was too old for the job. The debate didn’t so much change the facts, as it made it obvious that everyone else knew them too.Or think about the many Democratic voters in the 2020 primary who wanted to vote for the candidate they believed others would vote for. In an instance like that, simply publishing polling results can influence who voters might support.This is a phenomenon that shapes electoral politics, but it extends well beyond that, to stock market bubbles and bursts and online mob behavior. With me on today’s podcast to break it down is Steven Pinker. He’s a psychology professor at Harvard University and author of many books, the latest of which is, “When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . . Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

Today’s episode focuses on something that few Americans and seemingly even few lawmakers in Washington are particularly preoccupied by: the fact that the government is shut down. Given the lack of urgency, how will it actually end?After that, we have something of a grab bag of topics. We talk about the axis of conflict that Democrats are hoping to wage the midterms on, that video of Democratic candidate for California governor Katie Porter bombing an interview that wasn’t even particularly hostile.We also look at some polling on free speech and political violence that should give folks cause for optimism, and the legal questions at play in President Trump’s attempts to send the National Guard to American cities.This is a conversation that Gabe Fleisher and I had last week on Substack Live. Gabe is the author of the newsletter Wake Up To Politics, which he started writing at the age of nine, so he’s got quite a wealth of knowledge.Relatively little has changed in shutdown negotiations since we chatted, except one note that Trump announced that members of the military will continue being paid despite the shutdown. They otherwise would miss their first paycheck on Wednesday, October 15. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comA heads up that this is your last chance to get 20% off an annual subscription to the podcast. Our first-ever discount, offering paid subscriptions for just $5/month, ends at the end of this week.Paid subscribers get access to a second weekly podcast, access to the paid subscriber chat, and recordings of live shows like our upcoming live show on November 3rd. I hope you’ll join the crew!We are less than a month away from Election Day 2025 and today we have a primer on the key races to watch.There are technically elections all over the country, in 32 states, including contests for school board, city council, sheriff and more, plus referenda of all kinds. But the real blockbuster races are the gubernatorial and legislative races in New Jersey and Virginia, the mayoral race in New York City, and the redistricting ballot initiative in California. Call it the revenge of the coasts!The New York City race, as you might have heard, is a rematch between former governor Andrew Cuomo and state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, with perennial Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa along for the ride.In New Jersey, Democrats are starting to get angsty as the governor’s race between Democrat Mikie Sherrill and Republican Jack Ciattarelli looks to be a single digit race, maybe even a low single digit race.In Virginia, while the governor’s contest looks like an easier bet for Democrats than historically bluer New Jersey, that hasn’t stopped a spate of scandals from disrupting some of the down ballot statewide races.And lastly, the California fight over redistricting – Prop 50 – is already the third most expensive ballot measure in state history, with $215 million in spending as of the first week of October. The polling looks somewhat positive for Democrats hoping to gerrymander the state, but polling in such an irregular race can be tricky.With me to dive into all of this is deputy editor of Inside Elections Jacob Rubashkin.

We are currently offering our first-ever discount on paid subscriptions. Right now, an annual subscription is 20% off, meaning you’ll become a paid subscriber for just $5/month. Paid subscribers get access to a second weekly podcast, including recordings of live shows like our upcoming live show on November 3rd.The government has now been shut down for 6 days and there’s no clear end in sight, let alone any palpable urgency to reach that end. During past government shutdowns, there has at least been the sense that lawmakers are earnestly trying to find a path forward. Why not this time? Perhaps we need not look any further than the polls.The bulk of polling suggests Americans blame Republicans more than Democrats for the shutdown, so Democrats aren’t feeling pressure to fold. Historical polling also suggests that the party making the demands that provoke the shutdown – in this case Democrats – are eventually seen as responsible and fold after achieving little to no policy concessions. Given that, Republicans probably aren’t feeling the pressure to compromise either.Today we dig deeper into those surveys and try to get a sense of where things might go from here. We also focus on a couple other polls that have attracted attention recently. (Yes, it’s a polling heavy day, so grab that calculator and put on those stats nerd glasses. I promise it will be fun 🤓)The New York Times released its first national poll since April, following months of newsworthy developments and political rancor, resulting in… wait for it… no discernible change in how Americans view Trump and Democrats.There’s also a new poll out of Pennsylvania showing that Democratic Senator John Fetterman is a relatively popular figure in the state. Just one important footnote: he is 20 points underwater with his own party’s voters and 40 points above water with Republicans. So is his approach a roadmap for other Democrats to win over Republican voters or a one way ticket to a primary challenge and an ouster from Washington?With me to discuss it all are friends of the podcast Mary Radcliffe and Lenny Bronner. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comWe are currently offering our first-ever discount on paid subscriptions. Right now, an annual subscription is 20% off, meaning you’ll become a paid subscriber for just $5/month. Paid subscribers get access to a second weekly podcast, including the audio and video from live shows like the one above and our upcoming live show on November 3rd.Today’s episode is a live taping of the podcast with Nate Silver and Clare Malone at the Comedy Cellar in New York City. The video version is available here.During the taping, we discuss the strategy involved in a government shutdown (it hadn’t happened at the time of the recording, but we predicted that it would come to pass). We also introduce a new segment called, “Hot Take Hat.” There was so much news to discuss that we couldn’t decide which stories to cover, so we left it to chance. As a result, we discuss the NYC mayoral race, gerrymandering, vaccines, Fed independence, and more.Lastly, we play a game of “Guess Which Comedian Said This.” It was not lost on us that we were recording the podcast in something of a sacred place for comedians, during a time when the government is challenging First Amendment principles. To mark the significance, we compete — along with the audience — to identify which comedian is responsible for some audacious excerpts of political satire.We wrap up with some very thoughtful questions from members of the audience, ranging from free speech to Trump’s energy policy.

The Left has long claimed the mantle of the party of working people. As recently as last decade, Democrats posted twenty point margins with union households. In the Trump era, the Right has posed a significant challenge to that identity. In 2024, Harris won union households by just 8 points, though as union membership has declined, that may not be the most apt measurement. Lower and middle income people have also shifted decidedly to the right.The stories that the two parties tell when trying to win over workers have variations, but generally go something like this: American workers have gotten the short end of the stick over the past half-century, as globalization and free trade have taken root, manufacturing has been hollowed out, and wages have stagnated. The Left includes blame for greedy corporations and union busting and the Right includes blame for mass migration and regulation.The majority of American adults are “working people,” and so there’s plenty of political power in claiming them as core to your coalition. That is the focus of today’s podcast. According to the data, how are workers doing and what do they think of the politicians who say they’re serving them?With me to discuss is John Lettieri, co-founder and president of the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan think tank. They put together plenty of economic research, including a recent poll of American workers, which they did with Echelon Insights. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player by following the directions here.We’ve got a lot to talk about today. We cover who is actually watching late night TV, Kamala Harris’s new book, whether politicians are using AI to do their jobs, whether efforts to reduce partisan animus actually work, and the government’s move to cancel a survey measuring how many Americans are going hungry.I say we, but I actually mean me. When I launched this podcast I said that I wanted to hear directly from you, the listeners, and speak directly to you as well. I imagined that might include episodes where I’d open up the mic and do exactly that … talk to you. I did it a couple times early on, but it’s been a minute and so I want to do it again.Tentatively I’ll call this the GD Notebook. I’ll open up my notes — books, articles, and the likes — that I’ve been reading and share them along with some thoughts and answer some of your questions. Often when I read a compelling article or poll, I’ll reach out to the author or talk about it with guests on the podcast, but I read a lot of stuff and we often don’t get to all of it. I constantly have loads of tabs open on my computer with things we didn’t get to. Hopefully we can make good use of them here!Today we’re mostly going to go through my notebook, but, as a reminder, you can send in questions on the paid subscriber chat and at galen@gdpolitics.com.

When President Trump took office on January 20th, 2025, he said in his inaugural address: “After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I also will sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America. Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents.”In just the past week, Trump has called critical television coverage of him “illegal,” and said that, “when 97 percent of the stories are bad about a person, it’s no longer free speech.” He’s also threatened ABC’s chief Washington correspondent to, “go after people like you,” for, “hate speech,” and urged his administration to revoke the broadcast licenses of TV stations that are “against” him. He also filed a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times and threatened protesters and left wing groups with racketeering lawsuits.Additionally, Trump has urged his Attorney General Pam Bondi to target his political foes. For her part, Bondi said in a podcast interview, “There’s free speech, and then there’s hate speech. And there is no place — especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie — in our society.” She went on to say, “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.” She later attempted to clarify that she was referring to incitements of violence.As we discussed on the last podcast, FCC Chair Brendan Carr threatened Disney and ABC’s affiliate stations over Jimmy Kimmel’s recent comments saying, “This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney. We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” and “These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”The Pentagon has said it will require journalists to sign a pledge refraining from reporting information that isn’t authorized for release, including unclassified information, or risk losing press credentials. And the vice president urged Americans to call the employers of anyone seen celebrating the killing of Charlie Kirk.The events of the past week add to a long list of moves that already concerned First Amendment defenders, like targeting law firms, museums, academic institutions, and career bureaucrats for expression Trump disagrees with and attempting to criminalize burning the American flag.On today’s podcast, we make sense of all of this with a longtime defender of the First Amendment, Nadine Strossen. She was the longest-serving president of the ACLU, from 1991 to 2008 and is now a senior fellow at FIRE, the Foundation For Individual Rights And Expression. She is also the author of the 2018 book, “HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship” and a professor emerita at New York Law School.Throughout her career she has defended all manner of expression, ranging from the alt-right in Charlottesville, to free speech on campuses, to pornography, to flag burning, to criticizing the PATRIOT ACT. Perhaps most poignantly, as the daughter of a holocaust survivor, she has spoken in favor of the right of neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois, a case that predated her at the ACLU. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player by following the directions here.On today’s podcast we talk about two shutdowns: the indefinite preemption of Jimmy Kimmel Live! and the possibility that Democrats will shut the government down at the end of the month.Wednesday night Jimmy Kimmel went the way of FiveThirtyEight (at least for now), when ABC preempted his show indefinitely. In a monologue on the show he had appeared to suggest that Charlie Kirk’s killer was a Republican, saying "The MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it."On Wednesday, FCC chair Brendan Carr appeared to threaten Disney over the comments saying, “This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney. We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” and, “These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”This has all caused outrage over the suggestion of government coercion and censorship and it comes not long after Attorney General Pam Bondi characterized the First Amendment as not covering hate speech.Today on the podcast, Mary Radcliffe, Nathaniel Rakich, and I react to the developments and the broader political environment in the aftermath of Kirk’s killing. We also debate whether Democrats should shut the government down.

We have a special guest on the podcast today: former FiveThirtyEight Politics podcaster, staff writer at The New Yorker, and dear friend, Clare Malone.As a reminder Clare, Nate Silver and I will be taping a live show at the Comedy Cellar in New York City on September 29th. Tickets are available here.In this installment of the podcast, Clare and I catch up on some of the latest news in politics and media. We talk about the political and emotional reverberations from Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the strange bedfellows who have found common cause in the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, and we dig through the most recent polling in the New York City mayoral race.We also debate the potency of Democrats’ messaging about Trump’s “culture of corruption,” as well as the meaning of Kamala Harris’s new book. Lastly, we discuss what the recent Murdoch family settlement means for the future of conservative media. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player by following the directions here.I recorded today’s podcast on Wednesday before the news broke that Charlie Kirk was killed, so I want to take a moment to address it at the start.It’s despicable and saddening. It’s sad on a human level and sad on a national level. On a human level, my heart goes out to Charlie’s family and his young children. On a national level, it’s a horrific situation to be in that someone was murdered while engaging in debate on a college campus. People must feel safe to speak their minds in a free country — left, right, center, controversial or not.At the time I’m writing this, we don’t have details about the perpetrator, but all indications point toward political violence. If you’re a longtime listener, you’ve been alongside me for far too much political violence: multiple assassination attempts against President Trump, January 6th, the shooting of Steve Scalise, the shooting of two state lawmakers in Minnesota, the El Paso Walmart shooting, the Brian Thompson shooting, this assassination of Charlie Kirk, and more.Partisans may focus on blaming a political party. We know from evidence that’s not helpful. The best way to prevent future political violence is for all leaders to condemn it in the clearest, strongest terms whenever it happens, by whoever it’s committed. Evidence also suggests that it’s a very small number of Americans who see violence as an acceptable form of political behavior. Tragically, though, all it takes is one person to wreak havoc on our nation and our system.It’s heartening to see the most prominent Democratic leaders condemning the violence in absolute terms. It’s disheartening to see left-wing provocateurs celebrating and right-wing provocateurs describing this as a call to arms.For my part, this is the whole ballgame. Decreasing political discord and engendering a shared sense of fate amongst Americans is one of the things I care most about. I hope I never have to cite statistics or evidence about the number of Americans who support political violence again on the GD POLITICS podcast. I sadly know that’s unlikely.It’s hard to feel optimistic at a moment like this, but I do feel thankful for the positive community we have here on this podcast. So thank you for that and my prayers are with Charlie Kirk’s family.The bulk of today’s show focuses on recent elections and questions from listeners. We got a lot of great questions, so please continue sending them in. We talk about why Trump’s approval rating has been holding up better now than in his first term, whether all those spam calls and texts are making it harder to poll, and how young voters’ priorities are diverging along gender and partisan lines. We’ve also got some recent election news, including the special election in Virginia and a national election in Norway.With me to discuss all of that and more is friend of the pod and senior data scientist at the Washington Post Lenny Bronner.