Katty Kay

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Welcome back to The Rest is Politics.

We're going to take a quick look at the Democrats because Anthony and I are increasingly convinced that 2026 is going to be a good year for Democrats and potentially 2028 if things carry on as they are and Brand Maga is doing as badly as it is.

We could be looking at a Democrat in the White House in 2028 as well.

Before we get there, let's talk about these elections and the really important question at the moment.

I think there's a widespread assumption that Democrats are going to take back the House, but the question is, are they going to take back the Senate?

And we just wanted to focus on two Senate races that might give us some indication of that.

Here's the maths.

Democrats need to add four seats to their total.

Then they control the Senate as well.

The seats that are in play are Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina, Alaska, and Michigan and Maine.

And we're going to talk about Michigan and Maine.

Today, quickly, in Maine, something important happened last week, which is that in the primary, and we're still in the primary phase, in Maine, there is this guy Graham Plattner, who we've spoken about, ex-vet, ex-oyster farmer, more on the populist wing of the Democratic Party, younger.

He was up against the sitting governor, Janet Mills, who was going to step down as governor and run for the Senate seat, and last week, in something pretty seismic in Maine politics,

Janet Mills pulled out of the race saying she didn't have enough money and she didn't have enough support.

It was very interesting because you have an establishment Democratic politician who normally would have been a shoo-in for the Senate race to be the nominee for the Democratic Party in Maine.