Lisa Lerer

And we've really seen that edge erode to the point where Democrats were able to run a very successful campaign, almost exclusively focused on those issues, along with a heavy dose of, you know, opposition to the president, who's long been probably the best motivator for Democrats in the country.

Yeah, I think the scale of the Democratic wins here is really important.

As you're pointing out, we sort of was widely expected in the newsroom.

We anticipated that Democrats would win those three major races that we've talked about.

But it was these lower races.

They made huge gains in the Virginia Statehouse.

They won these two Georgia utility board races, which, you know, I talked to Republicans there and they said, well, we weren't paying attention to this.

We weren't invested in it.

But, you know, Democrats still flip those seats and the margins were really high.

It shows that the energy is still there and it shows that Republicans haven't solved one of their most sort of pernicious problems, which is their inability to get their voters to turn out when Donald Trump's name is not on the ballot.

That has been a problem for them since 2017 and they still haven't solved it.

And you know who else doesn't like tariffs?

Voters.

The voters.

It's really interesting because I was in this conversation reminding me I was in North Carolina in February and the tariffs were just starting.

They were talking about them.

And I was asking people, you know, what do you think about this?

And even some.

moderate Democrats said, well, we got to give the president more time.

This is what he promised to do.