Politix

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Democratic leaders have been delivered a thrashing from the left this primary season. So naturally, the lesson they took from it is that they should…fund Trump’s crooked government before the election he’s trying to steal?

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* The deal Democrats struck with Susan Collins to avoid a pre-midterms government shutdown;

* What Democrats could have demanded that might have won back respect from their voters while either a) making...

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The Iran war’s back on, oil prices are back up, the Republican election outlook is back down. But…it’s not playing out as an existential political crisis for Donald Trump.

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* Why Trump was unable to make surrender stick;

* The peculiar case of the missing oil crisis;

* Whether Trump’s untrustworthiness, and Iran’s experience exploiting U.S. election deadlines, means he’ll be unable to get anoth...

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What if the Democratic establishment could take the wind out of the sails of the left wing insurgency by…giving in to progressives on their most morally resonant and popular issue?

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* The moral and political advantages of Medicare for All as an abstract concept, and how health care had become the motive force driving the growth of the Sanders movement;

* Why no plan to open up Medicare to al...

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While Brian was away, Graham Platner’s campaign imploded, rumors circulated that Republicans were playing Weekend At Bernie’s with Mitch McConnell’s corpse. And then Lindsey Graham went and actually died.

In this episode:

* Matt gives an on-the-ground rundown of how the Maine Democratic Party is going about choosing Platner’s replacement on the Senate ballot;

* Brian tries to sniff out whether Maine Democratic voters feel burnt by the Sanders operation, and thus may insist o...

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Brian’s vacation continues for a second week, so Matt is joined by Caitlin Legacki, a Democratic strategist and Third Way fellow, to talk about some of the less-covered but more-successful 2026 senate recruits starting with former North Carolina governor Roy Cooper.

In this episode Matt and Caitlin discuss:

* Why objectively successful red state governors struggle to obtain national attention.

* The constraints and upsides of dealing with an opposition legislature.

* The New South tradition of...

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With Brian out on vacation, Matt is joined by Alex Seitz-Wald of the Midcoast Village to discuss Graham Platner and the shifting political tides of Vacationland more broadly.

In this episode, Matt and Alex discuss:

* Troy Jackson, the man who really is the thing Platner sort of pretends to be.

* Paul Le Page, the “Trump before Trump” figure likely to replace Jared Golden in the House.

* How a pedophile brought ranked-choice voting to Main...

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Donald Trump, in his haste and corruption, has wrecked the historic reflecting pool that spans the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial.

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* How this lazy and corrupt endeavor went to shit so quickly;

* Why it serves as a useful metaphor for Trump’s Iran war, and just about every initiative he’s undertaken autocratically;

* Whether this should also be a cautionary tale for Abundists, who often see the...

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Donald Trump will either surrender to Iran on Friday in Switzerland, or scuttle the deal—sorry, “memorandum of understanding”—in the face of overwhelming opprobrium and humiliation. Who can say!

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* Why the terms of the peace deal, such as we understand them, are so unacceptable to the Iran hawks who made strategic alliance with Trump because they thought they could manipulate him into war;

* How a deal that’s both wea...

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The results from California are (mostly? almost completely?) in. They are mixed, and extremely consistent with pre-election polling. Naturally, Republicans are subjecting the country to a blizzard of lies.

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* The results, and the merits of the California election system, which maximizes ballot access, but at the expense of quick ballot counting.

* What should California Democrats, and the national party, do about the scourge of GOP election lies?

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It’s a been a busy seven days, so we race through a bunch of topics, with a special focus on Graham Platner, the state of the Maine Senate race, and then some stake driving on how Democrats should prepare for the likelihood that they’ll inherit the country back in economic and budgetary shambles.

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* Would the Democratic Party be better off or worse off with two Democrats (Xavier Becerra and...

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Donald Trump went back to the hospital Tuesday for his third “checkup” in just over a year, but faces fewer questions about his age and vitality than Joe Biden. He lost a war of choice, at serious cost to the U.S. and the world, but we don’t hear much about how weak and discredited he is. Why are these critiques missing?

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* Jared Polis…what the fuck?! (Redux.)

* Jake...

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Donald Trump is more unpopular than he’s ever been. But he’s still got a tight grip on the GOP, he keeps making progress on his plan to subvert elections. And Democrats…well it’s unclear what they intend to do about it.

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* Jared Polis…what the fuck?

* Are Republicans simply winning the fight for historical memory of January 6?

* Would impeaching Polis, or removing Virginia supreme co...

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Late in the game, Trump-loyal judges at the federal and state level joined his effort to rig the midterms. Democrats will thus enter this fall’s race for House control at a systemic disadvantage.

But for Trump, that’s about the only good news. He’s lost the war he launched against Iran, and keeps falling asleep on the job as an eerie hantavirus outbreak slowly spreads here and abroad. Yet as the public grows more outraged, Trump only seems...

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Democrats were winning the gerrymandering arms race Donald Trump kicked off last year, and still seem poised for a good fight. But then things changed.

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* What does the decision, by Sam Alito and the five other Republican Supreme Court justices to effectively end the Voting Rights Act mean for the gerrymandering fight, and the race for House control in 2026 and 2028?

* Should the Supreme Court’s decision, which was wi...

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Donald Trump had to be evacuated from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday, after a “gunman” “attempted” to breach the security perimeter around the dinner hall at the Washington Hilton. But unlike last year, when the entire GOP responded to the killing of Charlie Kirk by attempting a broad civil-society crackdown, this time Republicans have a somewhat different focus: Helping Trump get his palace ballroom built on White House grounds?

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* Are fa...

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Donald Trump has, in fact, damaged the economy. He’s juiced inflation and weakened the labor market and created deep uncertainty. But the public seems to think things are worse now than at any time since the Great Depression. And that is empirically not true.

So in this episode, Matt and Brian try to unravel the mystery of why perception and reality have departed from one another so dramatically.

* Does Trump in some sense deserve this economic di...

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Matt’s away this week. Or since he’s in London, maybe we should say he’s “on holiday” with a funny accent. In any case, Brian’s piloting solo this week, and since he’s always going on about “fighting,” we wanted to give the concept clearer shape.

In this conversation, Brian and the veteran political scholar Norm Ornstein discuss:

* When did needed political reform in America stop pertaining to modernization and become a more existential campaign to fascis...

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As we were all waiting on tenterhooks after Donald Trump threatened to wipe out Iranian civilization, Matt and Brian took a step back to examine why Democratic opposition to the Iran war hasn’t pierced public consciousness.

* Is Democratic infighting over the status of Hasan Piker a proxy for internal divisions over the war and the U.S. relationship with Israel?

* Is Matt right that Dems have opposed the war as aggressively as they oppose (e.g.) cu...

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Donald Trump hasn’t been this unpopular since he incited an insurrection. But he’s still at least a bit more popular than an entity called The Democratic Party.

In this episode Matt and Brian discuss:

* Do Democrats deserve any credit for Donald Trump’s political woes?

* How should we square Democrats’ impressive performance in special and off-year elections with their underwhelming performance in the generic ballot?

* If Democrats change nothing between now and Nove...

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Donald Trump seems to want out of the Iran war AND out of the Department of Homeland Security shutdown. But only if he can get out by being an even bigger asshole.

In this Matt and Brian discuss:

* Trump’s latest, inscrutable, and quite likely corrupt machinations to end his war of choice (or at least prosecute the war without throttling global oil supply);

* Signs that Republicans are catching more heat than Democrats for the DH...

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Democrats are caught in a new and somewhat troubling fad, in which they promise working-class people extremely broad tax cuts, which, in practice, would make expanding the safety net all but impossible.

In this Matt and Brian discuss:

* The Oscars!

* What are these policies, where do they come from, and what would they mean, in practice, for other elements of the Democratic agenda?

* Is there tension between Revenuemaxxing™️ and Billionairemogging™️, and can it be resol...

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Depending on whether you believe Donald Trump, or Donald Trump, or Donald Trump, his war in Iran is “very complete” or “just beginning” or “both.”

In this Matt and Brian discuss:

* Has Trump finally set in motion a disaster he can’t contain?

* What does TACO mean when others have a say over the disposition of events?

* Are we doomed to reprisal attacks and a long-lasting energy crisis?

Then, what the hell is Jared...

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We’re at war with Iran all of a sudden, and nobody can say why, even the people who started the war. After closing the loop on the Texas Senate primary, Matt and Brian discuss:

* What was Donald Trump thinking?

* What consequences (regional, domestic, and global) should we be prepared for?

* What do we make of the Democratic response so far?

Then, because the war has no support and was not justified, the pu...

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You can’t say Donald Trump used his State of the Union address to distract from the Epstein files!

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* How boring the speech was;

* Whether boring is better for Trump, given his political predicament, than stuntiness;

* Should the Democrats who chose to attend be ashamed of themselves?

* All of the lies.

Then, are we finally going to have it out over whether Tr...

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They’re calling it the liddlest, tiniest government shutdown of all time. Democrats are demanding changes to policy that helps Trump’s immigration police get away with abuses. So they’ve shut down the Department of Homeland Security and only the Department of Homeland Security.

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* How we ended up with such a narrow shutdown, instead of one that spanned multiple cabinet departments;

* Whether this was a mistake or a savv...

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Donald Trump has picked big fights on multiple fronts…and lost.

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* The narrow question of how Trump and MAGA lost the culture war fight they picked with Bad Bunny and the NFL.

* How we ended up in a situation a year ago, when it seemed that MAGA had, on balance, won the fight over the direction and influence of American culture.

* How the worm turned back, or...

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Donald Trump ate up several weeks and caused tons of damage as he sought to delay further production of the Epstein files. But now the files are right back in the news.

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* What’s in this new tranche?

* What does it tell us about both the global elite, and Republican elite, leaders of which are overrepresented in the files relative to Democrats?

* What can we or ot...

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On Saturday, DHS agents killed Alex Pretti, a VA nurse who tried to help a woman they’d just pushed to the ground. By Sunday, the Trump administration had initiated an at least tactical retreat from Minneapolis.

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* The silver lining of Pretti’s death, in providing proof of concept that civil disobedience requires risk and sacrifice—but it does work;

* Whether the political blowback will be fierce enough to dis...

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Many people are asking: Has Donald Trump finally, completely lost his mind?

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* The importance of getting your flu shot.

* Why this latest episode, complete with rambling missives to allied heads of state, feels more like madness than Trump’s other bad ideas, driven by graft, vengeance, or whatever else.

* How his assault on Minneapolis is crystalizing the madness (or at least the bad faith) for the re...

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We’ll give Donald Trump this month: Thanks to his efforts, political discourse has moved on (for now) from health care and the Epstein coverup. But … not to anything particularly helpful for him.

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* What on Earth did Donald Trump think he was doing by ordering a campaign of legal harassment against Fed Chairman Jay Powell

* Is there a pattern that explains why Trump’s rich sycophants censor themselves in som...

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Gotta hand it to Donald Trump, he got the Epstein Files and the January 6 anniversary off the front page, and all it took was a wee little war, plus a threat to conquer the whole hemisphere

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* WTF?

* How has this destabilized the globe?

* Can the damage be undone?

* What’s the right political response, and who in the Democratic Party has risen to the mo...

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It’s that time of year again. Self-indulgent mailbag time. Thanks to all who sent questions, and apologies to those who didn’t get answers.

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* Whether Gavin Newsom is doomed to become yesterday’s news;

* Why there’s never been a better time to tax rich people;

* How (and if) liberals can coexist politically with authoritarians in a two-party democracy.

* What, if anything, the Biden pe...

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Donald Trump suddenly faces defections in Congress, from right-wing influencers, and even from his own White House chief of staff.

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* Susie Wiles’s…intemperate comments to Vanity Fair about all the incompetents and cynics in the Trump administration;

* The challenge of passing the cult following from Trump to JD Vance (or anyone else for that matter).

* Why Republican disarray has spread beyond health care.

Then...

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Donald Trump is suddenly mired in a huge war-crimes scandal, complicating his desire to launch an actual war (also illegal) against Venezuela.

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* All the things that make the circumstances surrounding the order to murder shipwreck survivors so strange and suspicious;

* How it all gels with Trump’s broader, corrupt foreign policy;

* Whether the so-called Seditious Six Democrats, who first elevated the issue of illegal orders, laid a...

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Brian is adventuring in South America, so Matt is joined by Lakshya Jain of The Argument and Split Ticket to talk about his Wins Above Replacement calculations, which politicians are good at winning, and what we know about them.

In the episode, Matt and Lakshya discuss:

* The importance of “downballot lag” in assessing candidate quality.

* Why AOC and Ritchie Torres are both overrated by their fans.

* While highly viral members of congress tend to u...

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Donald Trump has lost his grip, and it’s making him prone to a variety of political errors, some of which we enjoy with pure schadenfreude, others of which could cause tremendous collateral damage.

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* What if anything makes Marjorie Taylor Greene’s early exit from the House of Representatives different from past Trump purges?

* Why did he blow up his party’s big plan to make Zohran Mamdani the fa...

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Donald Trump’s Epstein coverup has faltered. Jeffrey Epstein’s estate has produced tens of thousands of emails implicating scads of U.S. elites, Trump foremost among them, but including famed economist Larry Summers and other prominent Democrats. Meanwhile, Congress has now voted overwhelmingly to compel the Justice Department to release its Epstein case files.

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* What do the recent disclosures actually reveal?

* What the fuck Larry Summers?! And, also...

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After notching huge victories in last week’s off-year elections, Senate Democrats were overcome by a failure of nerve, and agreed to reopen the government without restoring anyone’s health insurance or securing any legal mechanism to rein in Donald Trump’s lawlessness

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* What the fuck?

* Why did the standoff end the way it did?

* How could the eight capitulators plus Chuck Schumer have engineered a better...

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It was a night of blowout victories in elections for Democrats and Democratic causes across the country, significantly surpassing the party’s most optimistic expectations. In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* What, if anything, do the margins, and the nature of the sweep, tell us about the politics today;

* How compatible are these results with a Democratic Senate victory in 2026?

* Why “Democrats should moderate” and “Democrats need to fight harder” takesters both had good nights.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fm

Even some of Donald Trump’s own voters were shocked to see he summarily demolished part of the White House, surprising many Democrats who had convinced themselves Trump is teflon and people don’t care about his corruption or vulgarity. In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

* The long history of politicians not doing stuff like this, fearing political backlash;

* Whether this episode suggests swing voters can be moved by symbols and appeals to American greatness, or whet...