A 2026 Midterm Shift + Megyn Kelly on Trump, CNN & 2028
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Everybody, welcome in Mark Calper here. This is Next Up. Thank you for joining. Uh we got about 40 days to go to the midterm elections and uh a lot of confusion in some ways and a lot of clarity in others. I am the editor-in-chief of Two Way, Live Interactive Video Platform. Glad to welcome all new and old Nexters here. Great program today. Megan Kelly will be here in a bit. We're going to talk a little bit media, a little bit politics. She's going to decode some things for us, including what's going on with AOC and also what's going on between the president and the socialist mayor of Gotham City. And in a moment, my report and monologue, one of the episodes I love to do this, where I'm going to just do my reporting live right in front of you with Doug Sosnik, a longtime Democratic Strategist, worked with Bill.
Clinton has been at the top level of American government and politics for a long time and um is a great political analyst because even though he's a Democrat, he's just for truth, uh and he's a very sophisticated reader of history, of polling data, of campaigns, of elections, and of uh of the flow of uh the calendar. So Doug will be here. He writes uh regularly writes memos about campaigns, politics, and government. Uh they're super sophisticated and super accessible, and uh he's gonna to walk us through his latest one, which finds what I found in my reporting, what we talked about last episode, which is there are a lot of signs that this is going to be a very big midterm election for the Democrats.
Not every, not every piece of data flows in that direction, but plenty do. So Doug will be here and we'll walk through his memo in a little bit. Um, you know, I've been reporting now for several days, uh that that it looks like it's going to be a good time For the Democrats in this midterms. And sometimes when you go out and you say stuff like that, like in uh '96 or 2004, let's say, or 2024, rather, when I said it looked to me like uh based on my reporting and based on public polls, uh, private polls from both parties that uh Kamala Harris was likely to lose, I heard from a lot of Democrats pushing back, including folks in her campaign, saying, No, here's our what our poll show, and here's why we think you're wrong.
I've had no pushback from Republicans in the last few days about the overall environment. Uh. Two kinds of calls from Republican strategists, many working on midterm races. Some say, uh, Mark, you're exactly right. You've nailed uh where we stand. We have more money than the other side. Uh we have 40 days to go. Uh we're not that optimistic, but but uh you're right about the environment. And then the other category is people saying, Mark, you're understating it. Our problems are bigger uh than you're than you're describing uh in across the country, in red states, blue states, purple states. Um and what I haven't heard uh from as I said is people saying you're just flat out wrong. Now, what I do hear is from people working individual races who say
Well, you're right, the environment's horrible, but our candidate, our campaign's gonna find a way to win this. And somewhat confusingly, and we'll get into this with Doug, in some of those races, a lot of them, they're in blue states. Senate races in Maine and Michigan and New Hampshire and Minnesota, all northern states to New England states, where Republicans have not done particularly well over a long time. Uh, the data suggests maybe, maybe those are exceptions. Now, We're gonna talk to Doug about this, but we but but but it's worth examining. If those are exceptions, if those candidates have a better chance to win than Republicans, ironically, in red states. Why would that be? And is there an explanation?
That doesn't. Uh uh undermined. The point of view of many people. What got a lot of folks' attention yesterday. Was a post on Twitter from Steve Deese. Steve Deese is a longtime Republican talk show host in Iowa. But he's more than a talk show host, really. He's kind of one of the hybrids. He's very involved in talking to campaigns, very involved in elections.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:02–24:24
2
What does Doug Sosnik’s new memo say about the 2026 midterm outlook for Democrats?
24:24–37:48
3
How are early‑voting trends expected to affect the 2026 midterm races?
37:48–47:45
4
Why is the Iran war and rising gas prices reshaping Republican strategies in key states?
47:45–1:04:35
Speakers
4 identifiedMore from Next Up with Mark Halperin
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