There's Been a 'Regime Change' in How Democrats Think About Elections
About this episode
Commentator Matt Yglesias takes stock of the 2022 midterms two weeks out. He argues polls are likely biased toward Democrats, as in 2020, and that poor Republican candidate quality — Mehmet Oz, Herschel Walker — is lifting Democratic Senate hopes alongside Dobbs-driven mobilization. He defends the Biden administration's record of minimizing 'thermostatic' backlash, notes the party's legislative agenda was heavily edited by Joe Manchin, and discusses crime, immigration, and the asylum mess as Republican advantages. The episode's core is the 'regime change' in Democratic thinking: after 2012's autopsy, Trump's 2016 win, and Bernie Sanders' rise, the party abandoned the belief that only moderate triangulation could win, embracing the idea that mobilizing the base matters more — a shift Yglesias says went too far and then partly corrected.