Michael Barbaro

When I look at all these Republican primary races from Indiana to Louisiana, I'm struggling to see any real risk for the president in intervening in these primaries.

His picks overall in Republican primaries, they tend to do really well.

These are red states where the winner of the primary, if it's his pick, almost certainly goes on to win the general election.

Yeah.

There's not really competition from the Democrats.

So what's the downside here?

All right, well, we're going to take a quick break, after which we will discuss the Democratic side of these primaries.

We exchange articles.

And so having read the same article, we can discuss it.

Welcome back, Lisa, Shane, and Reid.

Lisa, I'm going to 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.

Sounds like you're saying bad news for Republicans, which seems sort of inevitable in these midterms, Lisa, like you said, does not necessarily guarantee good news for Democrats who are themselves in the middle of their latest existential identity crisis.

The establishment candidate.

Right.

This all just happened in the past week or so that you were actually in Maine and that Mills dropped out.

And it felt like this political earthquake in the middle of the primary season because Maine is not just any state in these midterms.

It's one of the few states where Democrats think they could flip a seat currently held by a Republican senator and help them win control of the Senate this fall.

And for Democratic leaders...

It's been very bracing, Mills dropping out, because they are very anxious about Graham Plattner.

Reid, I want to represent the Democratic establishment's view of what just happened in Maine.