Vivek Ramaswamy’s Ohio ad fuels Republican backlash

Elections (13)

• Shane Goldmacher says campaign ads reveal what candidates fear and what they think voters care about; campaigns spend most of their money on television and digital ads.
• Campaigns use ads to reach voters who avoid politics, compressing a candidate’s pitch into a message people encounter during football or before online videos.
• Democrats frame the midterms around Trump’s broken economic promises, linking the Iran war, tariffs, and rising household costs to Republican governance. Ads cite gas prices of $5 or $6 a gallon and the war’s cost to taxpayers.
• Democrats connect Republican corruption to voters’ personal finances, arguing that political donors and lawmakers benefit while ordinary people fall behind. An Iowa ad says Ashley Hinson took drug-company money and voted to raise prices.
• Democrats repeatedly use Republican candidates’ voting alignment with Trump as a simple attack in swing districts where he is unpopular. Ads cite figures from 85% to 100%; one says Susan Collins voted with Trump 96% of the time.
• Democrats also court disaffected Republicans by presenting candidates as politically moderate or by reminding voters that Republicans opposed releasing the Epstein files. Shane Goldmacher says the Epstein ads aim to deepen Republican voters’ disappointment, including by encouraging them not to vote.
• Republicans defend their record by crediting Trump-era tax cuts with putting more money in voters’ pockets, while arguing that Democrats caused higher costs. Monica De La Cruz’s ad highlights tax exemptions for tips and overtime under the 2025 Big, Beautiful Bill.
• As Trump’s approval has fallen, more Republicans have advertised their bipartisan credentials. Mike Rogers opposes tariffs in Michigan, while Zach Nunn, Ashley Hinson, and Susan Collins present themselves as willing to work across party lines.
• Republicans also attack Democrats as extreme, using claims about immigration, policing, and transgender rights. The highest-spending ad of the cycle targets James Talarico with a claim that parents could face child-abuse charges for not supporting a child’s transition.
• Goldmacher says Democrats have the easier midterm message because their ads echo voters’ experiences of higher costs, tariffs, and the Iran war. Republicans face a harder task: defending their record while asking voters to compare them with Democrats instead of judging the party in power alone.
• Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado returned to the country after nearly a year in exile, increasing pressure on the authoritarian government to begin a transition toward democracy.
• Barack Obama appeared at a midterm rally for Ohio Democrat Amy Acton and attacked Trump personally, mocking the gold-heavy White House decor while arguing that Trump was not focused on lowering prices.
• Trump asked a federal court to block certification of Alaska’s Senate race if Republican Dan Sullivan narrowly lost, arguing that a candidate with a nearly identical name could taint the result. The administration separately asked California election officials to identify potential noncitizens on voter rolls and set aside their ballots.

Elections (12)

• Rich Barris says Mississippi, South Carolina, and Kansas are showing warning signs for Republicans, who risk spending heavily to hold them instead of defending Texas, Alaska, Ohio, and Iowa. In South Carolina, 30% of voters said they would not vote for Lindsey Graham.
• Rich Barris says Republicans lost support among the younger and Hispanic voters who helped Donald Trump win in 2024. He blames the Epstein files response and the Iran war, which he says broke promises and made Trump’s Republicanism look like George W. Bush’s.
• Rich Barris says a D+11 generic ballot could translate to roughly 29 Democratic House seats, but forecasts become highly uncertain beyond an 8-point margin. He credits Republican redistricting with limiting the damage; the host compared the margin with the largest House wins since the Watergate era.
• Rich Barris sees swings of 13 to 16 points in Virginia and North Carolina as a directional warning for other states. He says Ohio may be competitive because Sherrod Brown lost by 3.5 points while Bernie Moreno ran 10 points behind Trump, who won Ohio by 13.5.
• Rich Barris argues Republicans drew districts around Trump’s unusually strong Hispanic vote in Texas without securing that coalition for themselves. He says the strategy leaves candidates such as Dela Cruz exposed if younger and nonwhite voters return to their usual lower midterm turnout.
• Rich Barris warns that Hispanic voters are not a uniform bloc: he says Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Venezuelan voters differ, as do Hispanic subgroups in Florida and Michigan. He cites Florida special-election swings and Texas border-county results as signs that Trump’s Hispanic gains have reversed.
• Rich Barris projects Democrats will win at least 235 House seats and could do considerably better. He sees Sherrod Brown beating Jon Husted, Ashley Hinson narrowly holding Iowa, and Susan Collins in danger; he says a Texas Senate loss would likely cost Republicans control of the chamber.
• Rich Barris says polls are more likely to understate Democrats when Trump is unpopular and off the ballot. He cited a New York Times poll putting Trump at 34% approval, compared with a previous low of 36%, and argued that enthusiasm and voter disaffection favor Democrats.
• Rich Barris rejected the idea that Susan Collins routinely beats polls: he said she did so only once, in 2020 when Trump was on the ballot. He also cited Dan Sullivan’s 2014 Alaska race, where the RealClearPolitics average was close to the result.
• Rich Barris argues that the Iran war and high gas prices compound voter disaffection because Trump promised against new wars. He claimed unpopular wars have always led to electoral defeat and said Republicans should have acknowledged voters’ anger and promised to change course.
• Rich Barris says the Wedgwood polling controversy exposes weak oversight and a trust-based industry vulnerable to fabricated or deceptive polls. He says a poll affected a Michigan Senate primary and calls for stronger standards, pointing to RealClearPolitics vetting and the American Association for Public Opinion Research’s largely unenforced transparency effort.
• Rich Barris alleges that people traded in prediction markets before Wedgwood polls became public, then profited as prices moved and later settled. He says advance knowledge of polls may explain why market prices subsequently returned toward earlier levels.

Macro (2)

• The host says home sellers outnumber buyers by 62% to 63%, the widest gap in Redfin records and the largest since the 2008 housing crash. Pending home sales fell 7.3% in September, far more than the 0.5% decline economists forecast, reaching their lowest level since 2001.
• The hosts describe a housing squeeze driven by near-record prices, mortgage rates around 7.3%, and weak construction. They say tariffs raise material costs, immigration enforcement restricts labor, financing is expensive, and AI data centers compete with homebuilding for investment; wealthy cash buyers still support luxury housing.

Media (2)

• The hosts urged listeners to fund the show rather than Kalshi or Polymarket, arguing that paid subscriptions let the program avoid prediction-market advertising. The promotion also offered a free newsletter and a chance to win Phish tickets for New Year's Eve at Madison Square Garden.
• Ryan Grim said Rogers's cease-and-desist letter did not identify a specific false fact in the Dropsite report; it objected to the article's implications and to its repetition of earlier critics. Dropsite declined to retract the story, and Grim said readers contributed $50,000 to its legal fund after the threat.

War (3)

• The hosts said U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran could resume within weeks, possibly before or after Israel's Tuesday election. Netanyahu was polling 12 to 14 seats behind the opposition, whose path to power could depend on Palestinian parties.
• Ryan Grim said most of Trump's inner circle had cooled on renewed attacks, leaving Admiral Brad Cooper as the main advocate. Grim argued the U.S. would reenter the conflict with oil near $100 to $110 per barrel, depleted interceptors and missiles, exhausted personnel, and lost drones and fighter jets.
• Brad Lander said Israeli forces detained him and volunteers who were harvesting olives with Palestinian farmers in the West Bank; authorities released him with a warning, while other volunteers remained detained. Lander said the grove had gone unharvested for three years because farmers feared nearby settler violence.

Diplomacy (1)

• The hosts described active diplomatic traffic around Iran: Pakistani, UAE, and Russian officials were engaging with Tehran, while Iranian officials threatened strikes on regional infrastructure, including data centers and undersea cables. Gregory Brew's report, cited on air, said a UAE government plane had made two trips to Iran.

Macro (1)

• The hosts flagged rising auto-loan delinquencies and home sales falling to their lowest level in many years as warning signs for the economy, but did not provide figures or further analysis.

Corruption (4)

• The hosts accused Ramaswamy of building his fortune through a pump-and-dump scheme involving an Alzheimer's drug: they said he promoted trial results that made the stock rise, sold shares, and then disclosed that the drug did not work.
• A ProPublica follow-up alleged that the FBI purge under Trump derailed a bribery investigation involving Lindsey Graham and James Clyburn. The hosts said the reporting described lawmakers advancing provisions that helped defense contractor Navitek secure a multimillion-dollar contract they characterized as worthless.
• Mike Rogers argued that Epstein-related records should protect victims and people whose names appear without evidence of wrongdoing. The hosts said voters want fuller disclosure and that Republican votes against releasing the files are now appearing in campaign ads across several states.
• Dropsite News reported that Aegis, the security contractor run by Mike Rogers's wife, won a major government contract while Rogers chaired the House Intelligence Committee. Rogers's letter disputed the implication of influence, while the hosts said the reporting also raised questions about his handling of Benghazi and the committee's failure to hear from Aegis.

Elections (1)

• Democrats put $1.2 million into a Mississippi race after a candidate had campaigned for more than a year, while the hosts discussed whether a large national wave could make normally safe races competitive. A New York Times-Siena poll put Trump among the least popular presidents in more than a century, behind only Harry Truman in 1946.