'BradCast' 11/14/2025 (Encore: Dems Win Everything Everywhere All at Once; John Nichols of 'The Nation' on Election 2025)

Today's broadcast was originally recorded on November 5th, 2025. The sun may have set over our city this evening. But as Eugene Debs once said, I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity. Wow, Eugene Debs. That's a deep cut. I'm so skis! No place. I'd rather be stuck. From Pacific Radio in Los Angeles, this is the broadcast. As heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in LA, and on dozens of other fine affiliate stations on both the public airwaves and the internet surround the country and the world. Blanketing Planet Earth. I'm Brad Friedman, your friendly investigative blogger, journalist, troublemaker, muckraker. And all around swell fellow says me from bradblog.com. Doing slightly sweller than usual today for some odd reason. How are you, Desiree? Doing sweller than usual as well. There you go. That's Desi Doyen, our producer. So our friend Dread, a longtime commenter over at brandblog.com, rang in on the... Posting of our show late last week, the one that I posted at the Brad blog with the headline, A Pretty Weak Strongman, in which we cited on the show among other signs of failure and weakness for Donald Trump and his regime. New polling then had found his approval ratings this month were underwater in 12 states that he won last year. Negative approval ratings in all seven swing states, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina. Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. But even in five states that he won bigly just one year ago in November, his approval ratings are also underwater. That would include Alaska, Florida, his new home state, Iowa, Ohio, and, yes, Texas of all places. Negative approval ratings for Donald Trump in all of those states. So I posted that show and our friend Dredd rang in into the comments section to say in response to that and the other signs of Trump's growing weakness that we talked about on that program to say, quote, the system that can't stop him is weaker. Well, my reply to Dread was, quote, I'm not counting on the system. I'm counting on the system. I'm counting on the voters.

His reply in kind, quote, that part of the system is known to fail to, adding, like last time. Well, yep, he's right. Voters do make mistakes. Voters are, especially during presidential elections, especially during presidential elections that Donald Trump is running in, often wildly disinformed. But I would like to think, in fact, as noted, I am counting on it, the voters, not the institutionalized systems that have failed us over and over again, including the media, by the way, especially during the Trump era, but the voters, the voters will ultimately get it. And I think that Tuesday night may have proved that point once again. The voters triumphed on Tuesday as I see it in state after state, after state, on one candidate after another, on issue, after issue, after issue. It was not even close in really any of them. Democrats and the voters that supported them on Tuesday won damn near everything, everywhere all at once. At least in the states that held elections on Tuesday, and there were about 30 of them that had either statewide or local elections in the first chance that voters from coast to coast and many places in between had to respond with their votes to the first year of the failing second presidency of Donald J. Trump. The voters defied the media, defied the predictions, which said at least some of these contests would be very close, defied the threats and the intimidation of a weakening wannabe strong man and the voters struck back, just as I had hoped that they would, but frankly, in even bigger numbers than I think any of us might have imagined. Now, I know you've likely already heard about most of the top line victories on Tuesday. We will get to them. And we will be joined momentarily by the great progressive journalist and author and longtime friend of this program, John Nichols of the nation, to get his thoughts on what all of this means and or does not. But just to make sure you heard how thorough this thumping was that Donald Trump took on Tuesday night because he's already out there lying about it naturally. As he does. You'll be shocked to hear. Just to make sure, let's start with some of the lower profile contests first for a change, some of which we tried to give you heads up about before Tuesday, just to make sure that you fully understand what a game-changing triumph, I believe that it was on Tuesday with voters pushing back against obnoxious, cruel, overreaching Republican autocracy across the country on Tuesday.

In Maine, there were just two questions for voters on the ballot. Question one, it would have mandated photo ID restrictions for in-person voting, shortened the number of early and absentee voting days. It would have limited the use of ballot drop boxes, among other changes, to make voting more difficult. Maine voters rejected that Republican-supported proposal by almost 28 points. Question two in Maine would establish a so-called red flag law to allow people to request extreme risk protection orders from law enforcement and the courts against individuals who are believed to be dangerous, prohibiting them from possessing firearms or other weapons. Yes, it would take guns away from people by court order in the rural state. That measure passed by 26 points in a rural state. There was an interesting mock election among high school students in Maine in the run-up to Tuesday's election, and I had wanted to cover that, but I didn't get to it. They both rejected both questions the students did. Question one on voter ID, and they voted in favor of question two. on a red flag law. So the high school students matched what actually turned out. Well, I had wanted to share that with folks before the election, but I kept running out of time. I wanted to share it because by way of saying, look, I know these Republican photo ID restrictions have passed in state after state in recent years, but that the younger generation, at least according to their views on question one, that they seem to get it. Well, we may have to, you know. wait for them to become old enough to vote for reels, but the younger generation they get it. That was my thinking, but on Tuesday night, apparently everyone got it in Maine. As the photo ID restrictions to make it harder for people to vote went down in flames, and the red flag law was passed overwhelmingly. So it's not just the younger generation. It's all voters, apparently. And Ruby Red Mississippi, Democrats broke the Republican Party's supermajority in the state Senate for the first time since 2011. In 15 years, the first time they've done that. They flipped three Republican legislative seats in the state Senate in Mississippi. In swing state, Pennsylvania, the most populous battleground state in the nation, all three state Supreme Court justices on the ballot for retention elections were in fact retained by voters for another 10 years, despite an expensive, if failed, GOP effort to unseat those three judges in hopes of winning a Republican majority on the critical swing state's high court in advance of the 2028. presidential election, but not even one of the justices was rejected by voters, and it was not even close in any of those statewide races. They each won by more than 20 points. The three victories ensure that the court's Democratic lean on the high court will hold through the next presidential election. That's a big victory for Democrats in the biggest swing state in the country.

But that was not all that happened in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, as Daniel Nishanian of Boltz magazine, who posts as Tenial on social media noted. Bucks County, Pennsylvania was ground zero for the conservative takeover of school boards and anti-LGBT policies back in 2021. on the Penridge and Central Bucks school boards. Well, Dems actually flipped both boards back in 2023, but on Tuesday night, voters ousted. All but one of the Republicans from both of the school boards, which are now 8 to 1 and 9 to 0 Democratic to Republican, respectively in those two counties. Democrats also flipped Republican offices and county boards in Luzerne, Bucks, and Erie County, which is a Bellwether County that Trump won in 2024. In Colorado, voters voted overwhelmingly to fund free school meals with a ballot initiative to raise taxes on high earners to fund those free school breakfasts and lunches. In the great battleground state of Georgia, one of our favorite states, as you know, not one but two seats on the previously All-Republican so-called Public Services Commission. It's what some states call their Public Utility Commission, which sets electricity rates for state residents, among other things. On Tuesday, there were two races for the PSC on the Georgia ballot, and Democrats won. Both of them. In what was the first time that a Democrat has won any statewide state office in Georgia since 2006. On Tuesday, they won two of them. The very Maga Vice President JD Vance's very Maga half-brother. He lost the race for Cincinnati mayor. decisively in Ohio. In Detroit, Michigan elected Mary Sheffield as its first ever woman to serve as mayor in the city's history. Boston mayor, Michelle Wu, became the youngest person to be reelected in the city's history. She ran unopposed on Tuesday. Why? Well, because her opponent... Patriot owner Bob Kraft's son actually withdrew a few months ago after realizing that he had no chance of winning. And boy, was he right.

And people turned out anyway, even though there was no challenger for her. They turned out everywhere all over the country. And an election that, you know, an off-year election, we're not supposed to pay attention. It's supposed to be tiny turnout. No, that was not the case in state after state. And that is just some of the lesser watched contests where Democrats won in race after race and issue after issue winning everything everywhere all at once. They rejected Donald Trump and his Republican Party in case after case after case. In the higher profile contest, the story was the same. In the great state of California, voters stayed online for hours out here even after the polls had closed in order to cast their vote for one single issue on the ballot, Prop 50, to redraw our state's U.S. House map in response to Texas's Trump-ordered Republican theft of five Democratic congressional seats. in the Lone Star State before voting even begins for next year's critical 2026 midterm elections when the entire U.S. House will be on the ballot. Polls showed that that constitutional referendum here in California was likely to pass, but few thought it was likely to pass by almost 30 points as it did. In the purple, trending blue state of Virginia, Democrats picked up a stunning, at least 13 seats in the state's House of Delegates, going from the slimmest of 51-49 majority margins in the 100-seat House to at least a decisive 63 to 37. Democratic majority in the state's lower chamber. Clearing the way, by the way, for step two, the second consecutive legislative vote next year to get a measure on the ballot also next year to rewrite the state's U.S. House maps to flip two or maybe three seats in Virginia from red to blue. Given the results on Tuesday night, I'd say it's probably going to be three seats. In the U.S. House, in response to the Trump ordered mid-decade Republican gerrymanders across the country. Every single county in Virginia shifted blue word on Tuesday night. In fact, as pollster and data analyst G. Eliot Morris pointed out, quote, what we saw last night was a directional shift toward Democrats in 99.8% of counties that held partisan elections. But I digress. As to that huge new legislative majority in Virginia's House of Delegates, well, that will come in very handy for the state's new Democratic governor, former CIA official and Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, replacing the state's current Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, after she defeated her Republican opponent by nearly 15 points on Tuesday. The Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, Gazalahashi, won easily to become the nation's first Muslim.

As long as we can remember, the working people of New York have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands. Tonight, against all odds, we have grasped it. As we turn the page on a politics that abandons the many and answers only to the few. Tonight, you have delivered a mandate for change. Because of you, we will make this city one that working people can love and live in again. To every New Yorker, whether you voted for me, for one of my opponents, or felt too disappointed by politics to vote at all. Thank you for the opportunity to prove myself worthy of your trust. Tonight, we have spoken in a clear voice. Hope is alive. Hope over tyranny. Hope over big money and small ideas. Hope over despair. And we won because we insisted that no longer would politics be something that is done to us. Now it is something that we do. In this new age we make for ourselves, we will refuse to allow those who traffic in division and hate to pit us against one another. In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light. And we will build a city hall that stands steadfast alongside Jewish New Yorkers and does not waver in the fight against the scourge of anti-Semitism. Where the more than one million Muslims know that they belong.

message only through the prism of misinformation. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent to redefine reality and to convince our neighbors that this new age is something that should frighten them. As has so often occurred, the billionaire class has sought to convince those making $30 an hour that their enemies are those earning $20 an hour. people to fight amongst ourselves so that we remain distracted from the work of remaking a long broken system. Together, we will usher in a generation of change. And if we embrace this brave new course, rather than fleeing from it, we can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves. After all, if anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him. And if there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power.

This is not only how we stop Trump, it's how we stop the next one. New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, power by immigrants. And as of tonight, led by an immigrant. So hear me. President Trump, when I say this, to get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us. If tonight teaches us anything, it is that convention has held us back. We have bowed at the altar of caution and we have paid a mighty price. Too many working people cannot recognize themselves in our party. And too many among us have turned to the right for answers to why they've been left behind. We will leave mediocrity in our past. No longer will we have to open a history book for proof that Democrats can dare to be great. Let the words we've spoken together, the dreams we've dreamt together become the agenda we deliver together.

New York, this power, it's yours. This city belongs to you. Thank you. Democratic New York City mayor elect. Zohran Mamdani at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater on Tuesday night in New York City blowing the roof off the joint. Indeed. So what does it all amount to? What does it all mean? That discussion begins after a quick break and we will be joined by the great John Nichols of the Nation magazine. I'm Brad Friedman and you are listening to the Bradcast. What the public hears on the public airwaves matters. Please help us stay on your public airwaves by going to bradblog.com slash donate to help keep us going. That's bradblog.com slash donate. And thanks. Hey, this is Bradd. You're listening to an encore presentation of the Bradcast.

It was quite a night for a change. I'll take it. Welcome back to the Bradcast, Brad Friedman from Bradblog.com. All right. Well, as you know, Democrats and other anti-Trump voters won in Tuesday nights, Tuesdays, I guess, off year 2025 elections in state after state. in partisan contests and on ballot initiatives alike, from the high-profile contests like the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, where it was not even close, to high-profile ballot referenda like Prop 50s partisan redistricting measure in California to state Supreme Court elections and local school boards in Pennsylvania to, yes, electing an electric 34-year-old Democratic Socialist as mayor of New York. York City. As detailed in the previous segment, Democrats appear to have won almost literally everything everywhere all at once, as the nation's voters in some 30 states finally had their chance to ring in at the ballot box in response to, well, the first 10 months of Donald Trump's second term amid the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history, the largest ever cuts to health care, including the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, and Medicare. Rising prices that Trump has failed to lower as promised during his campaign last year. Violence in the streets by masked federal thugs rounding up immigrants and U.S. citizens alike across the country and a wholesale destruction of the federal government and even the literal. destruction of the East Wing at the White House that voters were finally able to send a message about at the ballot box on Tuesday. Joining us now to help us put all of this in perspective for this year and what it all means moving forward into next year's critical 2026 midterm elections. I'm delighted to say is our old friend and legendary progressive journalist and author John Nichols National Affairs correspondent for the nation. author of more books on progressive politics than I can possibly mention most recently with co-author Senator Bernie Sanders of a book titled It's Okay to Be Angry About Capitalism. Oh, John Nichols, you have joined us for many a post-election day conversation over the past 20 years or so. I got to say some of them. have been quite grim or leaving us sort of grappling to find upsides or even trying to just figure out who actually won or lost. But frankly, not today, Satan. There seems to be a little question about what happened on Tuesday. So first, let's focus on the big picture for the moment. What do you see as having happened on Tuesday? Well, a lot, my friend. And I do have to reflect on exactly what you said. We have had so many conversations where we were trying to find the straw. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of, well, you know, there was actually a pretty good result out there in North Dakota. Right. But now we are in the...

the bizarre reverse position where when you look across the entire United States, you are very hard pressed to find any disappointing reason. And the reason for that is pretty simple. Donald Trump is a year after his election, nine months into his second presidency, it has been an unmitigated disaster. And we've said that, you know, I mean, we've said it frequently. We've talked about, you know, all the ice raids and the, you know, threats and assaults on Medicaid, assaults on hunger programs, shutdowns. You know, you just kind of run through everything. We've all complained about it. And we've pointed to the polls that say, you know, look, his popularity is way down. People don't seem to like them very much. But I don't think we have believed it fully. And then last night, you got the confirmation. that across this country, from New York to Virginia, to New Jersey, to California, but also to Mississippi, where they took away the Republican supermajority in the state Senate to, you know, Georgia, where they were winning public service or public service commission elections that they never win to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. They're all races in Iowa. You know, it was just across the board. The Democrats won and one and one. And I have to tell you, I don't think there's any question, that a portion of that is a reaction to Donald Trump. You know, it is. And I know a portion, only a portion, John? Well, let me tell you. I'm going to offer two streams of thought here. Uh-huh. One? A substantial portion of that is reaction to Donald Trump accepted there. But also something else. I think that there is an emerging consciousness of how to run for office on the part of Democrats. And I know they're not, as a party, they have no history of getting their act together. And they often have patterns of division and bumbling and things like that. But the truth of the matter is that if you look at these campaigns around the country, in all sorts of places, there was an understanding of, yes, you run against Trump, but you also run for something. Yes. something, I think that combination has become more sophisticated. If it is well developed, and there's so much work to do, if it is well developed in 2026, I think it has potential to be incredibly beneficial to the Democrats. And I ask you this question, Brad, you've covered a lot of politics.

Don't you wish that the 26 midterms were last night? Well, no, because last night was fantastic, and maybe we'll get a fantastic 26 as well. I'd like one of these at least once a year, Jon Ossoff opposed to at this point. At this point, it's been like one every 20 years. I'd be really looking at the results last night as they were coming in. Usually, you know, on a good election night, you might see a bunch of stuff you like, but okay, we lost over there or over there. I mean, there was virtually nothing that I could complain about last night as far as the results go. And John, you're right on the money as far as, you know, both, well, you have to give voters something to vote for. And certainly Zohran Mamdani. Zohran Mamdani did, we'll get to him in a moment, but I'm wondering what you think, what does it mean that a Democratic socialist won what amounted to a landslide in New York City, a Democratic former fighter pilot, one as governor in New Jersey, a Democratic CIA officer, one as governor in Virginia, all on the same night, all by huge numbers. What does it say about, well, first, the old Dems in Disarray line. and about this notion that, you know, Democrats sort of have to make a choice between the progressive and the moderate wings of the party. I think it says a lot about that. And one of the things is that's always been kind of a bogus choice because there have always been people who blend the issues, right? Somebody very good on economics, but a little bit more cautious on social issues. Someone who's very, very good on social issues, but doesn't really come through on labor rights, et cetera. So you've always had a little bit of a mix there. But what you saw last night, was pretty clear. With Zohran Mamdani, as an example, not the only one, and there are obviously different people running in different ways. But with Zohran Mamdani, he came out early with a clear set of issues. And those issues were rooted in where he lived, right? Where he was running. And so, yes, he talked about affordability, but you realize that if some consultant had told him, yeah, go out and talk about affordability, say you want New York City to be affordable. He wouldn't have gotten anywhere. He'd still be out in Astoria in Queens. But what he did was figure out how to make it tangible, right? Okay, I know people find this place on affordable. What are the things that would make it functional for them? Fast free buses, rent freeze. universal child care, grocery stores in food deserts. You know, he run down the list of issues. These are very specific things, and he got more specific, help the people who own food carts, you know, cut through the regulation on small business. It was a full spectrum of practical solutions to what they needed. And I think you saw a number of these candidates do similar things with education, health care. I don't think any punded on TV last night.

talked about rural hospitals, I can tell you that both, you know, Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger did as candidate running in Mississippi, as did the candidates running in Georgia, as did the candidates running in other places around the country, because rural hospitals are a huge issue. My point here, Brad, is that I think that that... There were a lot of people who listened less to the consultant class and more to the voters they wanted to win. And I think that was very, very beneficial to them. I think it's one other thing as well. And that is that I was struck by the fact that Zohran Mamdani, from the start of his candidacy, from the very, very beginning, talked about gossip. And that's a moral issue that maybe the mayor of New York doesn't have a big impact on. But I can tell you that is something that no consultant would have told him to run on, right? Right. Well, not in the largest Jewish city in the world outside of Tel Aviv, of course. Yeah. They just wouldn't have told him to do that. And yet he did. And it was highly beneficial to him because it. communicated that he was a candidate who actually believed in some things and was willing to say it even if there were potential political risks. Now, I don't think it happened to be a political risk, but I will tell you, that is an emerging reality of our politics that Democrats cannot seem like programmed, predictable candidates. That have a little more to them. You know, I'm not saying every candidate running last night had that. I do think this is an emerging reality, though. Whereas the Republicans, and if we could just do a quick flip over to the Republican side, I would be fascinated. You know, turnouts were up everywhere, right? Big goose. That boosted turnout was disproportionately democratic, especially a lot of young people coming back into the fold, other groups that had seemed a little bit shaky coming back into the fold. But... We have to wait till we see, you know, to the extent that there was ex-polling, to the extent that there's other methods that we can look going down to the, you know, granular stuff of precinct by precinct. I'm going to suggest, I bet there was a significant drop-off in Republican turnout. Republicans don't switch over. It's not like somebody voted in most cases. I think in New York you saw a little. But in most cases, they don't say, yeah, in 2024, I voted for Trump, but this year I'm going to vote for, you know, some Democrat. It can happen, but it's pretty rare. What Republicans do when they're disappointed, when they're frustrating, when they cannot figure out why Donald Trump wants to take away their Medicaid, when he cannot figure out why.

Donald Trump wants people in their town to not have food through hunger programs, when they cannot figure out as farmers why, you know, the tariffs are coming down, when they cannot figure out so many things of what Donald Trump is doing, and when they can't figure out why he's tearing down the east wing of the White House, you know, all of this stuff, I think. made a lot of Republicans just sit home. Yeah. Oh, I think there's no doubt. I mean, it's hard to get behind any of this. We've been talking about on the show of late. There has been a new poll out. I think it was last week showing that Donald Trump is underwater in 12 states that he won. just last year. So, yeah, there's obviously disappointment there, but there seems to be energy. And, you know, I've long argued that you can't just run against something. You have to run for something. Clearly, that was something that Zohran Mamdani and Zohran Mamdani did. Very specifically, everybody knows, you know, free buses, universal child care, city-owned grocery stores, et cetera, et cetera. He gave what I regard, frankly, John, you've been in this business longer than me, but I regard as one of the best political speakers. period that I ever recall seeing his acceptance speech on Tuesday night. You've been at it longer than me. You can, you know, tell me how you feel about that. But yet, even with an electric superstar candidate like that one, even on election day, Democratic U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York refused to say. Who he was voting for in Tuesday's mayoral election. I mean, you know, WDF, John, what is wrong with these people that they can't even vote for a wildly popular Democratic nominee in New York City in a major election, even on election day when it looks like he's going to win? Well, I think there's, you know, two possibilities there, each of them troubling. Number one is that Chuck Schumer really doesn't believe in what Zohran Mamdani and Zohran Mamdani is running on. Like, he actually disagrees with it, right? Okay. And, and, Chuck Schumer's been around so long, you know, kind of charting a centrist path. I think the general assumption has always been he does it because of concerns about fundraising, concerns about keeping the Senate caucus together, things like that, okay? Maybe we're just cynics. Maybe he really doesn't believe. in where Zohran Mamdani's at. That's a legitimate thing to ask because if you can't bring yourself to endorse your own party's candidate in your hometown, that's, you know, that opens the possibility. The other possibility, I think the one most people do tend for it, is that Chuck Schumer misread this situation in an almost,

in such a dramatic way that it almost looks like it's malpractice, right? That he assumed that a 34-year-old Uganda-born Muslim Democratic Socialist was somehow, you know, too red-hot, too... controversial and if if such a person was elected mayor of new york that somehow that would be you know uh attached to some democratic candidate running in iowa right or running in in kansas or something Well, you know what the misread on that is? It's a dramatic misread because of something that Rahm Emanuel did recently. He was out in Iowa, and he was apparently dissing Mam Zohran Mamdani and saying, you know, Maudey, that could never play in Iowa. There's special elections here. People are winning those special elections on, you know, downhome issues, blah, blah, which as if Rahmone and you don't know what any of that was. And. Apparently, if I'm right, I hope I have this right, a reporter actually went out and talked to one of the candidates who won in an Iowa race, and the candidate said, oh, yeah, I'm really into Zohran Mamdani. You know, he's, I'm very interested in what he's doing, talking about these affordability issues. I've heard it in Wisconsin. I've been to, I was in New Glaris, Wisconsin, population about 2,000, speaking to a group of people in the back of the village hall. And I mentioned that I would be going to New York the next day to interview Zohran Mamdani. And the whole crowd erupted in, and this is a rural. you know, farm and small town crowd, they erupted in thunderous applause. Well, it seems to me not unlike, yeah, not unlike the way they underestimated Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez all of these years. You know, when she was elected, oh, that's fine for, you know, for Queens in New York City, but she's never going to play to a national crowd. Now she's out there getting the largest national crowds of any candidate, her and Bernie Sanders on their no oligarchs tour. I understand. understand, you know, why Republicans would oppose policies like a rent freeze and freezing buses and universal child care. And by the way, when you talk about downhome issues in Iowa, these are downhome issues in New York City, you know, buses and so forth. So it's not like they're talking about, you know, some crazy scheme of, you know, nationalizing the oil industry or something. These are issues that are very real to. people who live in New York City. They're not crazy ideas. They make a lot of sense to them. But to be fair, it's not just Chuck Schumer or Rahm Emanuel. It's also Senator Gillibrand from New York. It's also Barack Obama, who's pretty good at politics. And he didn't. He called Zohran Mamdani, but I guess he didn't officially endorse him publicly.

So, you know, I'm still wondering what it is those folks are afraid of. Are they, are the Democrats here fearful that Zohran Mamdani will be a failure? Or are they fearful that he will be a success? Isn't that a good question? Thank you. And that really gets to the heart of it, doesn't it? Because there is this clear reality that Zohran Mamdani ran against Donald Trump. Donald Trump made that easy because Trump endorsed his opponent. Donald Trump made that even easier because of all the threats and things like that. So for Zohran Mamdani, that was a pretty clear and easy expressible political desire, political focus. But. He also ran against essentially the establishment of the Democratic Party. And he clearly suggested there's a better way to do this. And I will show you how to do it. Now, I think there are a lot of Democrats who, in the consultant class, in the donor class, who probably would prefer that no one came along and showed them how to do it differently. Because it's worked very well for them, even when they lose. But for grassroots Democrats, for the people who actually want the Democratic Party to be something. to stand on issues, to have some sort of reflective nature, i.e. reflecting its own base and bringing their ideals, their values, into our politics. What made Zohran Mamdani exciting was he was consultative. He asked people what they needed and how government could be on their side. He then reflected that back to them. He brought them into his ads. Think of how many grassroots New Yorkers you saw. you know, talking with Zohran Mamdani in a video or something like that. Yeah. And so he developed out a different kind of politics. What is that kind of politics? Not reliant on immense amounts of money. New York has public financing. That's very, very helpful. But that also puts a restriction on how much you raise and spend. But rely instead on massive numbers of volunteers, tens of thousands of volunteers. And you know what? That is a replicable. model for campaigning. And you say, well, not every place has public financing. True. But Bernie Sanders showed people how to do massive small donor fundraising, and it actually works pretty well. It's not always guaranteed, but if you catch traction, look at what's happening with Graham Platner up in Maine, as an example, and other James Talarico in Texas. These are candidates who have drawn in immense amounts of money via small donations. And then if you can excite people.

And I know, Brad, this is a foreign concept to Democrats in the United States, you know, that you might actually build a politics. that gets people energized and excited enough to not just come vote for you, but maybe go knock doors for you? Yeah, that's crazy. You mean actually like the candidate, not just because, you know, you're supporting your party, but getting behind somebody who believes in something that you also believe in so that you believe in them. I mean, we saw that with, you know, again, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. A few years ago, we saw that all the Democrats were terrified of her until it turns out, well, you know, she lights a fire under everybody. everywhere. I think we're going to see a lot more candidates. I hope we see a lot more candidates like Zohran Mamdani. No matter what the politics are, frankly, just the way he runs, the way he relates to people and what it is that people are, you know, looking for in that particular part of the country. I want to hit a few more points here before we get out, John. Credit due to Governor Gavin Newsom. Out here in California, I know you're out in California today for Prop 50. What he did was no small feat. It was done in record times. It was about 90 days. Successful beyond anyone's guess, like almost two to one victory, a huge turnout for one single item on the ballot, rewriting the actual state constitution in just 90 days. And I would argue resulting in reverberations across the entire country, especially by other Democratic. governors on how to push back against this Republican authoritarianism that we are seeing in state after state. Your thoughts on what happened out here in California? It's huge. And I think you framed it out pretty well there because this was fast. It was a quick effort to develop an issue, a set of issues, and get people think about something that they, A, weren't thinking about before, and B. might not even have been that excited by, right? California's put a big influence of trying to do more of a nonpartisan redistricting. Obviously, California's a very democratic state, but, you know, the idea of redrawing the district's midseason. Why? You know, what's all? It is like the most in the weeds, geekiest thing I've ever seen. And yet, people were lined up at polling places, you know, until 9 to 10 o'clock last night to vote on this one issue. It was amazing. And then we ask ourselves the very simple question. What's this all about? Well, what it's all about is this is another opportunity to push back against Donald Trump.

And the framing of the process here was fascinating. He said, look, you know, Trump is out there trying to warp the 2026 election in a way that might allow him to maintain power. He's gotten Texas to do something for him. We're a big enough state to push back against that. Yes, we're upending some of how we do things. Some folks may not even like everything we're doing. But the fact is, in practical politics, this is what you need to do. You need to do this pushback. That's the basic argument they made. And, you know, initially there were literally a lot of, there were pundits. There were political class folks, journalists who said, I don't think it's going to work. I think there's going to be a lot of Californians who at the very least don't like it. And I'm very questionable where they're going to get all that excited about it, right, where they're going to actually come up, you know, even if they're kind of minimally. supportive can they get really excited well the evidence is that a you could talk to people reasonably rationally make an argument for something that needs to be done and get them excited enough about it to come out in way disproportionately high numbers and and so what this does i think and and this is a big deal Because people will talk about Gavin Newsom as a presidential candidate, and he may or may not be that, you know, that's to be sorted out. But he did something that was really smart here. He sees the issue at the moment when he could. And in so doing, he created a circumstance where people in other states can now say, oh, okay, you can go into those weeds. You could, you know, push on these issues and get people excited about it, make it happen. Why does that make it? Because Republicans are trying to redraw the maps in Ohio, in Missouri, in states where they have the potential to petition a referendum onto the 2026 ballot that puts the gerrymandering of those states by Republicans on hold. Right? So excepting the new maps, you have a referendum on them. And if the referendum loses, if you... defeat the idea of the maps, they don't go into play. But at the very least, they don't go into play in the 2026 election. Why this matters is that a part of Trump strategy now has been, since California offsets Texas, you got to go elsewhere. Well, there are tactics and strategies that might work elsewhere to prevent Trump from getting what he wants. So Gavin Newsom. has proven a concept and then handed it off to other people. to potentially take it where they need to go. Yes, and he's proven that it can be done in inventive ways. And I think what we're seeing in Virginia right now is perhaps the most inventive way so far to make this happen. It looks like they're going to be able to redistrict and flip as many as three seats in the bargain. Of course, all of that may be for not if the Supreme Court undermines Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. But that's a different question for a different day. I got about a minute left here.

best John Norm Ornstein posted to social media last night as results were coming in. Quote, this could end up being a clean sweep for Democrats. Spoiler alert, it was. All three Pennsylvania Supreme Court elections, Virginia, New Jersey and California, Trump no doubt will go ballistic. He added, but it will put Republicans in Congress on their heels. Expect some resolution of the shutdown very quickly thereafter. Norma. Of course, congressional historian knows as much about this as you and I combined, I suspect. Does he have it right there when it comes to knocking Republicans back on their heels to the point where they're going to say, hey, we've got to get out of this shutdown and we've got to get out quickly? He might have it right. And I have great respect for norms. So I'm not questioning his skills at analyzing these things. I think literally Republicans right now are taking this in. Right? They went to bed last night. Wow, a pretty big storm hit. They wake up this morning and find out it was a huge storm. and it went into their states. Now, for Republicans who lived in districts where Kamala Harris won, and there's a group of them, I think this has to be the ultimate wake-up call. It's sort of like, you are going to lose in 2026 unless something extraordinary shifts. And so for some of them, yeah, there might be a self-protective. desire to go and maybe push your leadership to get better on some of these issues. For many other Republicans, though, there will still be that fear that Donald Trump tries to primary you, and now you have the additional threat that you might get beat in November. That will cause deeper conversations, and it may lead to some movement on the part of Republicans, particularly in the Senate, where the truth is, that there are, we now are starting to see a framework where more Senate races could come into play, even in places like Alaska. And if that is the case, then you're going to see incumbents, and especially like Susan Collins out of Maine, who will perhaps become more aggressive. So yeah, can it affect the whole shutdown? Potentially. But I still think. That the challenge with the shutdown is that there is no bargaining middle ground with the Republicans and the Democrats. They've had very little evidence of being able to find a place where they can even begin a conversation. I think there is likely to be some sort of resolution to the shutdown very soon. But I don't think it's going to be an agreement. I think it's more likely going to be some continuing resolution that softens things for a little bit. And so that, I just think you put that in a box and you have that reality. Separate from that.

I do think there's going to be, for a lot of Republicans, a really hard rethink about whether, you know, whether they want to lose their primary because Trump goes again, because they went against Trump and then Trump punishes them by backing it challenger. Or do they say, Or they want to go and lose in November. I like that choice for the Republicans. Do I want to lose in the primary or do I lose in the general? Which one? Enjoy the choice, guys. You brought this upon yourself. John, I've got to get out. John Nichols is a National Affairs correspondent for The Nation, contributing writer for The Progressive, Associate Editor for the Wisconsin Capital Times, and the author of many books most recently with Senator Bernie Sanders. titled It's Okay to Be Angry About Capitalism. You can check out his work right now at the nation.com where he writes today with Katrina Vanden Heuvel about Zohran Mamdani from Mission Impossible to Mr. Mayor. You can also find him on the social medias at Nichols Uprising. Glad to have a happy conversation with you for a change about elections, John. I look forward to the next one. You know, if we're getting out of streak here, I'm glad to stick with it. One in a row. Thank you, brother. Thanks, brother. Greatly appreciate it. All righty then. What a night indeed. Oh, no kidding. And you know, the things that jumped out at me just from today. Zohran Mamdani saying, if you come for one of us, you have to go through all of us. And John Nichols saying that the thing that he gathered from all of this is you have to run for something. Which is something you've been saying for a long time. Long time. Yeah, you have to give voters something to vote for. Not just against. Right. Not just against. Although you also, especially with what we're dealing with now, you also have to run against. something. Like fascism and authoritarianism. Exactly. That seems pretty easy. So you can run against fascism. You can run in favor of democracy. And you can tell your voters what you would like to do if they put you in office. And then, oh, by the way, try to actually do that. Yes, that's the other part. Anyway, a lot to learn this week. And now a lot to look forward to in the coming weeks. As a matter of fact, I think we can look forward to tomorrow being joined by Drift Class and Digby. Yes, we can. They may have a thought on what happens. happened on Tuesday. I bet they do. Until then, my thanks again to the nation's John Nichols, to our producer, Desi Doyen, and to all of you for spending a portion of your day or night with us. It's always appreciated. It's always an honor. If you missed any portion of today's show, download it anytime for free at bradblog.com. We have no paywall there because we want you to be able to. Get all of this good and hopefully accurate information. But that is made possible by those who hit a donate button or go straight to bradblog.com slash donate to help us stay on your public airwaves. Drop me email. I am Bradcast at Bradblog.com and on the social media, as you will find me at the Bradblog. We will see you there until we see you here next time tomorrow. I'm Brad Friedman.

Good luck, world. You're listening to the Bradcast. You're listening to the Bradcast. We are 100% listeners, thanks to listeners like you, thanks to listeners like you who drop by Bradblog.