AI Summary
5 min readThe Federal Reserve raised interest rates this week, gasoline prices are above $4 a gallon and climbing, and diesel hit an all-time high — all while the Republican frontrunner for 2028, J.D. Vance, stood before a room of billionaires at the All-In Summit and pleaded for voters to give his party another chance. “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” he said. On Pod Save America, hosts John Favreau, Alex Wagner, and Dan Pfeiffer spent the episode walking through a political environment that looks, by multiple measures, worse for the GOP than 2018 — and a set of structural problems, from the war in Iran to the farm crisis to the unregulated rise of AI, that are only compounding the damage.
The Economy and the War Are Making Each Other Worse
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What you'll learn
- 1 (03:07) **Show Open & Book Plug** - The hosts introduce themselves and Dan Pfeiffer plugs his new book "The Steel for Right Wing Hardliners, one Republican presidency," a history of the conservative takeover of the judiciary.
- 2 (06:17) **Economic Gloom & Vance's Weak Pitch** - The hosts break down the bad economic news and JD Vance's uninspiring midterm pitch on the All-In Podcast.
- 3 (10:14) **Fed Rate Hike & Political Fallout** - The hosts discuss the Fed's rate hike and Trump's reaction, linking it to the war in Iran and the broader economic pain for Americans.
- 4 (13:14) **The War in Iran Is Getting Worse** - The hosts detail how the war in Iran is escalating, with a key pipeline bombed and oil prices expected to rise significantly.
- 5 (16:34) **The Polls Look Amazing for Democrats** - The hosts review a flood of new polling showing Democrats with their largest lead of the cycle, including a New York Times/Siena poll and Cook Political Report data.
- 6 (22:07) **Why This Could Be a Bigger Wave Than 2018** - Dan Pfeiffer explains why the current political fundamentals could produce a blue wave even larger than the 2018 midterms.
- 7 (27:22) **Reality Check: New Hampshire and Minnesota** - The hosts offer a dose of cold water, noting that the New Hampshire Senate race is closer than expected and a new poll shows the Minnesota race tied.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
JD Vance begs voters to give the White House "another chance" as a series of new polls show a political environment even more favorable to Democrats than the one that propelled the blue wave in 2018.
Jon, Dan, and Alex break down how much "hopium" we should be huffing, a new ad from a Florida Republican breaking with Trump on immigration, and whether unexpectedly close Senate races in Minnesota and New Hampshire should have Democrats worried. They dive into JD Vance's advice to AI companies to simply stop "building Frankenstein" and unpack Trump's fixation on demolishing the Kennedy Center if he's not allowed to name it after himself.
Alex talks about her new book, "The Steal: Four Right-Wing Hard-Liners, One Republican Presidency, and the Raid on America's Courts," which follows the conservative movement's deliberate takeover of the American judicial system. Then, Dan Osborn, the independent candidate for Senate in Nebraska, stops by the studio to talk to Jon about his campaign against Pete Ricketts.
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