Astead Herndon

I also would say Democrats, and I think the parties in general, have multiple fights at once, and particularly in statewide races and in races where there is a competitive Republican on the other side.

The issue of electability of someone being so-called less of a lightning rod or less controversial

It becomes more important.

Voters want to find someone who maybe can reach out to the other side.

There simply aren't enough Democrats in places like Virginia for you to not be able to win over folks with some more conservative leanings.

And so, you know, that is going to produce a different type of candidate in the Virginias and New Jerseys than it would in the New York City election.

But I would also say that Donald Trump won the popular vote because of Democrats' erosion in blue areas also.

And so it's not as if they can choose candidate that does well in suburbs over candidate that does well in city.

You know, the Democrats' national success has come from when they found candidates who can do all of the above or at least minimize the worst of some of those things.

Yeah, I think that Republicans have the same problem that we knew they had in the Biden era that they have not solved since Donald Trump showed up on the scene, which is that in elections where he is not on the ballot, they have not been able to put it together.

So they underperformed in the 2022 midterms.

They lost seats in that 2018 midterms.

And without the kind of uniqueness of the Donald Trump-only voter...

Their coalition is very beatable for Democrats.

On the Democratic side, I think there is both hope and peril.

I think the hope here is that it shows how this big tit party, a version of the party that includes both Mamdani, Sherrill, and Spanberger, has an opportunity to really claw back some of the losses that they've seen over the last several years.

The peril is that the path to success in the midterms is not the same as the path to success in the presidential race, and particularly the presidential primary.

The conversation that Democrats have to have amongst themselves to produce their nominee is much more on the terms of the Zohra Mamdani race than it is on the Spanberger-Cheryl race.

The New York City electorate and that diversity and that scope

is, I think, a harbinger of the ways that the party is changing across the country, and I think shows, if you are someone who doesn't want the Bernie Sanders wing of the world to take over the Democratic Party, I think you could take Mamdani's win as a warning sign that they have learned some lessons about how to win, and that this version of Democrats