The 2026 midterms are less than two weeks away, which means we’ll soon have a better idea of what the next two years of American politics could look like. If Democrats win at least one chamber of Congress — and they’re comfortable favorites to control the House — they’ll enter 2027 with oversight power for the first time in Donald Trump’s second term. If they win the Senate, too, they’ll have even more power. 

Whatever the outcome, Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin wants her party to hit the ground running. In an interview with Vox’s Astead Herndon at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, she explained that the key divide in the Democratic Party is no longer “moderate versus progressive.” 

“Particularly in the era of Trump, I think it is fight versus flight,” she said. “Regardless of your persuasion, do you believe that we need to think differently about how we exercise power and oversight in the era of Trump and if we don’t, we’re at risk of losing our country as we know it?” 

Slotkin, who says she’s on “Team Fight,” discusses what that Day 1 Democratic agenda should look like, how she plans to hold the Trump administration accountable, whether she’s considering a presidential bid, and more.

Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full show, so listen to America, Actually wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on Vox’s YouTube channel.

How does Congress reassert its role so that people believe in the kind of checks and balances that Trump has washed away?

When I think about, hopefully, Democrats doing well in a few short weeks here, the election is the end of one phase, but a much more important phase then comes into focus, and that’s what you do with the power that you’ve won.

If we manage to win the House and especially the House and the Senate, there’s three things that we need to do. One, we need to pick two or three big pieces of legislation that speak directly to people’s pocketbooks and go hard on those — I would say housing and healthcare. 

Number two, we do have to have accountability for the unbelievable corruption that we are living under right now. But you can’t just make that your whole personality. You have to pick signature cases, and you have to go after people and projects that are super egregious. 

Everyone knows the East Wing of the White House, and people feel that in a way that’s different from a nameless contract at the Pentagon or whatever. So you need to pick those signature cases and go hard on accountability, not just Trump. Because of course, there will be moments of, “Let’s go after Trump himself.” As someone who voted to impeach him twice, he’s still there, right?

But the people around Donald Trump who are doing his bidding and enabling this have no such immunity. They have no immunity the way the president does. And to me, he couldn’t do any of this stuff without all of those people saluting and supporting it. So you go after the people who do his bidding. 

Third, we have to Trump-proof the government going forward so that no president of any party can ever abuse the system the way he did, because we figured out under Trump that a lot of the stuff that we thought were laws were actually just norms, standards, habits, expectations, good citizens.

And shame was required.

Shame was required. And when you have a president who has no shame, they just walk all over that. And then even for things that were laws, the penalties, the teeth are not there. So you make an ad that plays during a football game, a political ad paid for by US taxpayer dollars, your dollars. The penalty is like, you have to pay a fine.

Well, if they have the money and they have all the keys to the government, they’re going to pay that fine and not worry about it. So how do we get teeth in the things that were laws and strengthen those other laws going forward?

You mentioned Trump-proofing the government. At this point, he has stacked the courts with a lot of favorable folks. He controls the Republican Party, has installed people who do his bidding on each of those levels.

Is that possible? It does seem a little hard to figure out how the government becomes Trump-proof when it’s beyond an individual at this point.

One of the things I think is changing about politics is that there is a groundswell of energy around certain issues that is not partisan. The groundswell going on in the Midwest about data centers or Flock cameras or AI in general is not like, “I’m a Democrat, I’m a Republican.” It is organized and grassroots. 

Data centers went zero to 60 faster than any issue I’ve seen out there. And I think harnessing that outrage — and that outrage also, I think, is growing on the corruption side — so how do you harness that for an ethics package? 

And look, I don’t agree with Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri on almost anything, but he has a bill to get rid of corporate PACs and money in politics. Working with strange bedfellows, I think there is still a lot we can do because of that upward pressure.

The other piece I was going to ask about — you mentioned the impeachment efforts, and I feel like one of the things that came from those was a lack of belief from the public about the effectiveness of those efforts.

Let’s say Democrats were to take back the House and possibly the Senate. Should impeachment be a focus of a potentially incoming Democratic House?

I will say, because I still see him on the floor, that if Sen. Mitch McConnell had done the right thing, then Donald Trump would have been impeached after January 6, but he did not. And his legacy, along with his health issues, will be how he is remembered.

I am into effectiveness, and if we have the House but not the Senate, I don’t have a ton of faith that my Republican colleagues are going to have any more strength. I want to look at these signature cases and not just focus on the president, but on the people who enabled him. 

I want young people coming out of school to say, “Should I go work for the Trump administration? That sounds fun. I might get an opportunity.” I want them to be like, “Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want, and so let me avoid participating in that.” I want that deterrence message sent.

I have to ask about [2028]. A number of Democrats have said already that they’re thinking about running for president. Is that something you’re thinking about?

I have been open that I’m looking at it. It does not need to be me. I just need someone who understands the mission. And if that person comes out of the big process, I will be the first gal to get on whatever team they’re on and help them win in the parts of the country that I know well.

But I think what is clear to me is that the American public is looking for something different — that generational shift. And I think that there’s hopefully going to be lots of opportunities for lots of people who you might not be thinking of who haven’t been sitting waiting their turn who are going to get in the mix. And I think that’s a good thing.

I wanted to ask about something on the 2028 front. One thing that we have heard consistently over the last year, and I think this is a consequence of Democratic trauma from 2024 and also 2016 — people’s fears about sexism when women run. I’ve heard so many people, including women voters, tell me they think it needs to be a white guy.

I find it to be a kind of depressing takeaway of those elections. It’s wrong, and I know it’s wrong because this very question is what we’ve been digging into as I’ve traveled around the country. What I think is happening is right now, is the public is so in search of something different from the traditional. If you’re a good communicator, if you’re exciting, if you’ve got big ideas, you can surmount what are thought of as traditional deficiencies or traditional weaknesses.

So if you’re a woman, if you’re African American, if you’re Muslim American, if you’re whatever, those things forever have been thought of as negatives. But if you’re the right person with the right energy, you can surmount that. I think we’re seeing that around the country already.

Polls and pundits alike are widely — if sometimes cautiously — predicting a blue wave in the midterm elections on November 3. But there’s an important caveat to predictions of a Democratic triumph: Republicans have far more cash at their disposal.

President Donald Trump’s super PAC alone had around $400 million on hand earlier this fall, and Elon Musk has personally pumped hundreds of millions into critical races, including $158 million for Texas alone. 

Democrats, by contrast, have lagged far behind, especially relative to their performance in past cycles, with the party’s candidates propped up more by small-money donors than deep-pocketed institutional players.

Shane Goldmacher, a national political reporter for the New York Times, has extensively covered the role of money in American electoral politics. He spoke with America, Actually host Astead Herndon about where that money is coming from, how the GOP is spending it, and the effect that it might have on the coming elections. 

They also discuss the races that aren’t getting funded — and what current fundraising patterns might tell us about the candidates who could be in the mix in the next presidential campaign cycle. 

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full show, so listen to America, Actually wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on Vox’s YouTube channel.

A couple of weeks ago we asked, “What is the GOP strategy to try to win?” And one of the answers we got is they simply have more dollars than Democrats. Everyone’s talking about this GOP money advantage, but how big is it really, and where is it coming from?

It’s bigger than I’ve basically seen in the last 20 years, and it’s almost entirely coming from big donors. President Trump has a super PAC. It had about $400 million in it at the beginning of September, and there was no Democratic counterpart.

And then the Republican National Committee, which is functionally controlled by Trump, had another $130 million. More than Democrats, because the DNC has literally more debts than cash. That’s a half a billion dollars.

You’re saying this is a historic edge.

In 2024, Kamala Harris outspent Donald Trump significantly in the general election. In 2020, Joe Biden significantly outspent Donald Trump in the general. In 2016, Hillary Clinton. And in the midterms along the way, same story. 

This is a switch, and when you talk about how many seats can the Democrats gain, given how unpopular Trump is, the Republican money is seen as a real limiter on Democratic chances.

Do we know anything specific about the people putting in money to the Trump super PAC and the RNC to give them such a lead?

Most of these folks are disclosed. And Trump has been pretty open about raising money from the very moment that he won. He’s been pretty clear that he is in business to help people who are helping him. And so there are big crypto industries that are giving money that are expecting or hoping for favorable regulation from the administration.

So it’s a lot of big businesses. It’s a lot of wealthy Republicans who generally support him anyway, and there are industry groups that see benefit to being in favor.

I will never forget, obviously, the scene from Trump’s second inauguration when he had the Zuckerbergs and the Bezoses and Elon Musk behind him. Is that how I should think about the people funding this donor advantage? Is it tech oligarchs? Is it tech forward?

There’s a lot of tech. I wouldn’t say it’s exclusively [tech]. And Musk, by the way, is like an extra pot of money. Musk, the world’s richest person, is said to be spending at least $200 million. So that’s a bigger chunk. He has given some money directly to the Trump super PAC. He’s given some money to these congressional super PACs. 

Is this just quid pro quo? Is this just a group of businesses who think, “Hey, no matter how unpopular this guy is, it is worth investing in him and his party because they’re gonna, regulate or not regulate in a way that’s favorable for us”?

It’s not quite just that. He raised a ton of this money when he was not so unpopular. If you want to say something smart that he did, it was that. Throughout 2025 he was raising all of this money.

And I don’t want to overstate the Republican advantage. A lot of these Democratic candidates are raising a ton of money. James Talarico stands out as maybe the peak example of this.

The Texas Senate race is the most expensive race in the country right now, and Republicans are pouring $200 million to save the nominee there. So a big chunk of that advantage is going to Texas. And the Democrats have put very little money from outside groups into Texas. 

Talarico has captured the imagination of these small Democratic donors, and he’s raised tens and tens of millions of dollars. I would be shocked if he doesn’t hit $100 million by the end of the cycle. 

You reported that the GOP’s pulling back in North Carolina. What should we take from that in terms of how the GOP sees its own landscape when it comes to the federal races?

Where have Republicans put that money? They put it into South Carolina right next door to protect a seat that was once thought, on the Senate front, to be safe for Republicans. This is the former Lindsey Graham seat that his sister is now running in. And then even more of it has gone to Kansas. This is a state that has not elected a [Democrat] to the Senate for nearly 100 years. 

If you’re the Republican Party and you’re pulling money out of a state like North Carolina that hasn’t elected a Democrat since 2008, and then putting it into a place that hasn’t elected one since 1932, that tells you where the, the bar is moving.

I think the concern for Democrats right now is there might be a wave, but Kansas has a big red wall. It’s hard to beat that kind of institutional advantage for the Republican Party.

Considering how close we are to Election Day, like, what are they actually spending this money on? Is it just more ads? Is it just more mailers?

I was in Pennsylvania this month, and I was trying to watch political ads on YouTube for various races. And I was getting pre-roll of three political ads before I watched the political ad I was trying to watch. So much about our elections is being decided now by people who are actively trying not to consume political news. It costs more money to reach people who are avoiding it on purpose.

There are some organizing things that happen, but most of the money is various versions of advertising.

On the Democratic side, considering this GOP edge, what are the races that you currently describe as underfunded? Where do the Democrats wish they had more money?

Number one is governors’ races, actually. When you look at where Democratic donors swoon, it’s Senate races. There are no candidates for governor who have made people swoon like this in recent years. 

[James] Talarico is raising all this money, but in Texas also, Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic candidate for governor, does not have that kind of money, and she’s running against Greg Abbott, who had $100 million.

What should we ascribe that to?

I think there’s actually a pretty simple answer, which is, if you don’t live in the state, it doesn’t impact you. If you’re a small donor and you live in California, you can be excited about a Senate candidate because you want Democrats to control the Senate. Are you as excited about a Democratic governor of Georgia?

It’s hard to argue that the governors of these key presidential battlegrounds aren’t some of the most important races on the ballot this year.

By the way, a problem with both parties. Republican national donors and these super PACs also don’t fund these governor’s races at the same level. So it’s not just a Democratic issue, but it’s more acute [for them] because Democrats are so well-funded at the small-donor level.

Fundraising is a huge part of what sets the presidential candidates apart from one another. The money game among those candidates has already started. Is there anyone who’s quietly built some donor network that’s worth thinking about? Is there someone who stood out as a particularly effective fundraiser when we think about the 2028 crowd?

Let me give you my favorite stat from the last Democratic primary, which is that Mike Bloomberg spent twice as much as Tom Steyer, who spent twice as much as Bernie Sanders, who spent twice as much as Joe Biden, who became the Democratic nominee. And so money isn’t gonna determine who wins the next Democratic presidential primary.

One person who has unlimited money, functionally, is JB Pritzker. He’s a billionaire, the governor of Illinois, and he is spending his money now to help other Democrats, which is a good way to make friends.

My last question is an open one. What’s an underexplored story that we should be following going forward when it comes to campaign cash or both parties’ relationship with money?

One of my big questions is what happens to Republican small-dollar fundraising in that post-Trump era. Because there have basically not been any other Republicans who have excited donors for a decade.

Not JD Vance? 

I have not seen evidence. JD Vance was not a good fundraiser before he [joined] the ticket with Donald Trump. When he ran for Senate, his primary run was funded chiefly by Peter Thiel through a super PAC.

There are candidates who’ve raised some money, but nothing on the scale of what these Democratic candidates have been able to raise online. When you talk about that Trump era [ending] at some point, are there others who are going to get Republican small donors excited? We don’t know. We haven’t seen it yet.

The Wisconsin gubernatorial race was one of the most closely watched Democratic primaries in the country this year, pitting a democratic socialist, state Rep. Francesca Hong, against Milwaukee Democrat David Crowley, who received the endorsement of the state’s sitting Democratic governor, Tony Evers.

Hong lost the race, setting up Crowley to face Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany in the general election this fall. But she’s already back on the campaign trail, this time trying to help Democrats win a trifecta in the state: the governor’s race and both legislative chambers.

Unifying the state’s voters to achieve that won’t be easy, though. Hong spoke with America, Actually host Astead Herndon about her own loss, Evers’s role in it, and whether or not the voters who felt so passionate about her own campaign would find enough to love in Crowley’s campaign — in particular on the increasingly important issue of data centers. 

Astead and Hong also talked about what Wisconsin means for the Democrats nationally, and what lessons the party should take from her race, including her loss.

“I said this, and I will continue to say it — the person who is most electable is the person who ended up getting the most votes, and that was Crowley this time around,” Hong said. “But I think there’s a disservice when you have the most powerful Democrat in the state choosing to ignore a lot of voters and people who were inspired and energized and coming out to participate in politics for the first time through our campaign. I think it was shortsighted to use electability almost as a fear tactic.”

Below is an excerpt of Astead’s conversation with Hong, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full show, so listen to America, Actually wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on Vox’s YouTube channel.

Part of the reason we wanted to come here was because we saw you were getting back on the campaign trail, and specifically around that idea of energizing Wisconsin toward a trifecta.

Now, just tell me the difference in terms of the importance of Democrats winning it all — not only the governor’s mansion, but both houses of the state legislature — versus just the governor’s mansion. How does that change the possibilities of what the party could do?

For the last 16 years, a Republican majority in the state legislature has meant that passing the types of policies that we know can drastically improve the lives of everyday folks here in Wisconsin stalled. And we have a historic opportunity to flip the assembly and the state Senate and hold the governor’s mansion and the entire executive branch to a Democratic majority, meaning the opportunity to pass the policies that the majority of our state supports — things like increasing minimum wage, things like legalizing marijuana, codifying abortion. 

We also need to repeal Act 10 [which dramatically restricted collective bargaining rights for public-sector employees]. Wisconsin is where workers’ rights, things like unemployment insurance, Social Security were born, and we moved backwards with the Republican majority. That’s all on the table with the Democratic trifecta.

It also, though, raises the political standard of what Democrats would have to do to achieve that, and some of it goes through these more rural communities.

Why do we think the party has fallen behind in more rural communities, and what could be done to reverse that?

I think it’s important to look at what’s happened in the rural communities when we’ve seen manufacturing jobs leave the state, when we’ve seen fewer and fewer supports for our small farmers.

And so much of this — what connects it — is actually the growth of massive wealth and corporate control and corporate greed, and more people feeling the impacts of that. There’s an opportunity right now to say, ‘Hey, Republicans have been in the legislature, they’ve been in power, and things have not improved for you or your community … Now’s the opportunity to make sure that we’re actually able to see our shared Wisconsin values of working hard and taking care of our kids be reflected back in Madison through laws.’

So much of your campaign was focused on data centers, stopping data centers. Should I think of that as a rural issue?

I think the issue around data centers is an everyone issue. It’s a democracy issue. It’s people wanting to feel like there are folks who care about what happens to communities, and that they have control and an actual say in what happens in their communities.

To that point, is it a mistake for David Crowley, the Democratic nominee, to have not gone as far as you did and say, “We won’t be building more data centers for a period of time”?

He’s fighting for communities and community control when it comes to data centers.

But it’s not a moratorium.

But it’s not a moratorium. It isn’t, but he’s also committed to 100 percent renewable energy, clean energy to power data centers.

And achieving that is going to be incredibly difficult, and it is going to be the developers having to pay their own way, and these are things that he’s committed to that we know can slow down the growth and development of data centers. 

Have you had time to reflect on your primary loss? If you had to diagnose, why do you think you lost?

I’m still doing a lot of reflection. But I think that I want to continue to look forward. And what I’ve learned from our election is that it’s so important to continue to stay grounded in becoming accessible to people. I think that as an organizer and an elected official, it’s my responsibility to continue to go to the people and remain very in touch with what’s going on on the ground.

I have a couple more questions about the nature of the loss. Evers’s endorsement changed that race, so much so that your opponent David Crowley was able even to win in some smaller communities, like places where you were pitching yourself as the voice of more rural communities.

Does that disprove any of this thesis around, say, data centers? If that was the top priority for Wisconsin voters, wouldn’t you be the nominee?

I think it wasn’t all rural communities. It wasn’t all suburban communities. We saw certain demographics but also ZIP codes where we outperformed David significantly.

And I think that where the governor’s endorsement played a bigger role was areas where he was also more popular. 

Did it surprise you when Evers endorsed Crowley?

I was disappointed.

Why?

I was disappointed because I was getting a lot of feedback from folks who hadn’t committed to any candidate yet that this felt like the governor was putting his thumb on the scale.

I wanted to ask about electability, because it seemed as if Evers’s endorsement was about a fear that maybe you couldn’t win in November.

So much of the primary concern was around the DSA label, even campaigning with folks like Hasan Piker. In retrospect, was any of that a mistake?

We knew going in that we would have to encourage new voters to come out, folks who typically do not come out for primaries, quote-unquote low-propensity voters. And we knew that we would have to campaign in places where folks weren’t expecting to see a gubernatorial candidate. And those included Twitch streams.

Those also included going to dive bars and bowling alleys and making sure that we were accessible and shaping our policies based on what the people were telling us they wanted to see happen and also what they wanted to see out of their governor. I think electability… I said this, and I will continue to say it — the person who is most electable is the person who ended up getting the most votes, and that was Crowley this time around.

But I think there’s a disservice when you have the most powerful Democrat in the state choosing to ignore a lot of voters and people who were inspired and energized and coming out to participate in politics for the first time through our campaign.

I think it was shortsighted to use electability almost as a fear tactic, when Democrats need to be inspiring and project a vision where everyone can see themselves in it as everyday working-class folks.

When you’ve got a party that has struggled with elitism to then cave to an establishment narrative … being more afraid of labels when I’m hearing from people on the ground that they’re interested in solutions and solving problems, maybe somebody who knows the hustle of the service industry and running restaurants and has worked across the aisle to pass bipartisan legislation. There are ways that we can maneuver around labels and what the loudest narrative might be.

I wish our governor hadn’t fed into that.

To be fair, to your point, the establishment label doesn’t fully fit even someone like Crowley, who comes from a working-class background. But am I hearing that you think Evers’s move made your life in the general election more difficult?

Is it harder to re-inspire if young people who are invested in the Hong campaign think that the establishment squashed them out?

We still had over 300,000 votes. We lost by fewer than 4,000 votes. I had more votes than Evers did during his primary. That’s not squashing our voices.

We’re still here, and it’s so important that people find avenues to continue to exercise their voice and their new organizing power. And I’m definitely going to continue to work to make sure that we get results and that we win the trifecta, and that’s the most important thing we should be focusing on right now.

I hear why a trifecta matters in the state context, particularly the state policy.

If I’m someone, though, who’s not in Wisconsin, who’s just worried about Donald Trump running amok in Washington, why should I care if Democrats win the governor’s mansion and the state legislature? Does that matter for folks outside of the state?

Because we will start to see that when you feel government actually working and you see change happening in your lives, these are then voters who are going to continue to come out and vote for Democrats.

We’re a pivotal state when it comes to the federal elections as well. We’re actually in a swing district right now. 

We have an opportunity, through Wisconsin, to actually start improving the brand for Democrats. And if we do that here, this trickles out to the rest of the country.

The premise being that delivering creates a connection for Democrats that is helpful in the presidential election, and it’s helpful in all these other ways too.

Yeah. We’re not going to be fighting every single midterm and presidential for our lives based on what’s happening in just one state.

But I think if we can start showing durable power for Democrats in a state like ours because of the policies that we’re prioritizing, and you have more folks coming out to vote for Democrats, that’s good for the health of democracy.

Horse racing can be an unusually dangerous profession for both the jockey and the horse: Riding a half-ton animal at nearly 40 miles per hour means your fate depends on the health and performance of both athletes. And the horse can be at risk of catastrophic injury if the jockey doesn’t have the required physical fitness to maintain proper technique and lightning-quick reflexes. 

But new wearable technology and advances in sports medicine are enabling everyone involved in the sport of horse racing to identify risks earlier and prevent injuries to horses and jockeys alike.

In order to find out more about both of these athletes, I took a trip to Belmont Park, to watch competitive horses train and to speak with Dr. Sara Langsam, an equine veterinarian and chair of the American Association of Equine Practitioners Racing Committee. And to learn about the jockey side of the equation, I talked to Michaela Keener, a jockey health researcher at University of Kentucky, and ReyLu Gutiérrez, a jockey who has started in over 6,000 races.

Read more about horse racing safety and health:

• Article about wearable biometric sensors as a horse injury detection system
• “Physiological Demands and Muscle Activity of Jockeys in Trial and Race Riding”
• New York Racing Authority’s page on equine safety
• Horseracing Wrongs, a nonprofit committed to ending the horse-racing industry for reasons of animal welfare
• Information about the new Belmont Park racetrack, including details on its new, technologically advanced surfaces

This video is presented by Colgate. Colgate doesn’t have a say in our editorial decisions, but they make videos like this one possible.

With the 2026 midterm elections fast approaching, polling increasingly suggests that the GOP is in for a bad time. As the Iran war drives up inflation and fuel prices, Republicans are on the back foot not just in swing states like Michigan, but in redder parts of the map: Iowa, Texas, and maybe even Kansas, among others. (Not to mention Georgia and North Carolina.) 

It’s shaping up to be a Democratic wave, in other words, and a major repudiation of President Donald Trump. According to Sarah Longwell, the publisher of political news site the Bulwark, there’s a clear reason why this is the cycle that things seem to be falling apart for Trump, who has dodged scandals and bad poll numbers before. “The average person is often voting on instinctual things,” she explains, “and those instincts are a lot of your animalistic desires for things to be okay materially.” And for many voters right now, things are not okay materially.

Longwell would know: She regularly speaks with voters for her podcast, The Focus Group, and she’s the author of the new book How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time. 

Longwell talked with Vox’s Astead Herndon for a special live recording of the America, Actually podcast at the Texas Tribune Festival earlier this month about why voters are both more and less complicated than punditry sometimes suggests, what the future holds for the Republican Party post-Trump, and the lesson Democrats need to learn to capitalize on their wins.

Below is an excerpt of Astead’s conversation with Longwell, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full show, so listen to America, Actually wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on Vox’s YouTube channel.

One of the themes in the book is to talk to voters like real adults. What does that mean? 

There was a long period of time in our history where the artifice of politics was part of the performance of politics.

You could give a good speech. You’d do a debate. Those are not the rules of politics in this communications environment anymore. Every single one of you, if you’re a Bulwark person, you interact with me. I am in your ear, and we’re having a conversation.

We have a parasocial relationship. I walked in here and met a bunch of people, and they were like, “I feel like I know you.” And people want to feel like that about their political leaders now. And so they want to know what makes you tick. Are you a real person? And so the artifice of a debate on CNN is starting to feel really stupid, no offense to CNN.

People demand more now. And a lot of it is just that artifice is falling away for voters. Donald Trump understood that as a person who had been in people’s living rooms as a performer. Democratic politicians still have not figured it out. 

One of the things that comes through in both the book and I think the work that we both do is how voters don’t always fit into those neat ideological boxes.

I always tell the story about when I was at the Iowa caucuses, and I remember in 2019 in the Democratic primary, someone telling me they were stuck between Bernie [Sanders] and [former New York City Mayor Michael] Bloomberg, and asking, “How did you get there?”

And what was the answer? 

I think the short answer was they liked a strong guy where they knew what he believed in. And they did not care which side of that coin that was, as long as it felt consistent and something they could put their hands around.

If ideology is not the controlling paradigm for voters, how should we think about the different ways people are sorting themselves right now? 

My answer is genuinely not to sort them as much. This is the reason people say things like, “It’s the economy, stupid,” and then everybody gets bored with that answer, and they want to talk about 10 other things because they’re like, “Well, that’s so straightforward.”

But I try in the book to say it really is about improving people’s material well-being and ensuring their safety. So you go back to: What are the most human things that people want? They want to be able to afford gas. They want a job. They want a job [where] they think that they can go up the ladder. 

They want their kids to get a good education. Then they want to be safe. They want to know that they’re safe in their community. They want to know they’re safe in the places that they go. And Donald Trump and Republicans really do understand: People vote with weird animal instincts. 

Now, I bet a lot of the people in this room are college-educated suburban voters, but the average voter in a general election is a 55-year-old white guy without a college degree.

The average person is often voting on instinctual things, and those instincts are a lot of your animalistic desires for things to be okay materially — your cost of health care, and then for you to be safe. And so if you think about those base-level desires and then think about what Democrats spend most of their time talking about, you’re like, “Is that the thing that captures all these people?”

When I watch Democrats as somebody who’s an immigrant into the Democratic ecosystem, there’s a lot of, like, “And you get a policy, and you get a policy, and you get a policy.” And I don’t really understand that because everybody needs cheaper gas.

Everybody needs groceries that they can afford. And so talking about the things that unite us or that everybody needs, to me, is the secret sauce for how Democrats should think about policy. 

Three years ago, Democrats thought that being against January 6th was a thing that united everybody. There was a belief that pro-democracy arguments were going to unite people across ideology. Why did that fail in 2024? 

I’ve been thinking about this a lot as Trump gets terrible poll after terrible poll, and this is my point.

The coup, all of the horrible things he said about women, all of the lawsuits — I mean, he told everybody an election was stolen. Why is he underwater right now? Because of gas prices, because of a war in Iran, because the negative personal consequences of his policies are hitting people.

I know that it frustrates people. I’m so aware of the frustration where people are like, “Why are people so selfish? Why don’t they think about the bigger picture of democracy?” And one of the things I try not to do is magic words — consultant stuff, because a lot of consultants do that. They’re like, “Say freedom,” and “Say affordability.”

There’s nothing to back it up. But the one magic word I do think that Democrats should start using is “America,” and swap it in for “democracy.” And the reason is, voters practice democracy in America by its individual things.

They practice free speech. They like rule of law. They like checks and balances. So they like the elements of democracy, but they don’t think about them up here as democracy. And also the word democracy now is very polarized, right? Republicans think that Democrats are a threat to democracy because they stole the 2020 election. And Democrats think Republicans are a threat to democracy because they lied about the election being stolen and then tried to overturn the entire government.

I think one side of that equation is more right than the other. But I think that’s why it didn’t work. 

I want to look ahead. Our show focuses on building a roadmap for American politics without Trump, and part of that question has been about Republicans.

They have made themselves into a new kind of America First-esque party. But what does that mean without Trump at the center of it? When you’re in your focus groups, is it clear what values or principles Republicans believe in besides what Donald Trump says to them?

Absolutely not. They don’t have anything. This is why I wrote the book. I wrote the book because we have 2026, we have 2028, and we have 2032. 

By 2032, there’s going to be a new census, and things are going to get worse for Democrats. Hear me on this. People are not grokking this yet. The map — people are leaving California for Texas, people are leaving New York for Florida, and it’s just going to get harder for Democrats to win if this same trajectory that we’re currently on holds.

But there is a generational opportunity right now, and it’s why I desperately wanted to bring this book and get it out there. The Republican Party at this moment is as hollowed out as … Donald Trump is going to leave it in shambles. There is no Trump heir who can do what Trump does, who has the longstanding parasocial relationship with voters where they give him this blank check that other people don’t get.

But my concern is that 2026 will go really well and that Democrats will say, “See? It’s fine. Everybody likes us.” They don’t.

This was the big mistake in 2022. The midterms were extrapolated [to signal] Biden’s re-election, and those were not the same thing.

They are not the same thing. And again, the average voter is a 55-year-old white man without a college degree. And you can just hold that in your head and picture that guy and say, “Do we have candidates who can appeal to that guy?” 

I was being annoying when I was flying here, tweeting things, and there’s a new poll out for [Pennsylvania Gov.] Josh Shapiro. He is beating his Republican opponent by 21 points in the poll right now. This is the largest swing state in the country, and Democrats hate Josh Shapiro.

Hate feels a little strong. I think the left doesn’t like Josh Shapiro. I don’t think that’s the whole party.

That’s a good point.

I’ll just say, as a slight Josh Shapiro stan, perhaps I feel more than most people’s antipathy to the idea of Josh Shapiro running. I get a lot of people just being like, “Absolutely not. He’s a corporate centrist. We would never consider him. And also he’s Jewish slash Zionist.”

And a lot of this is Twitter discourse, but it feels like he doesn’t get the same buzz or interest, which seems insane to me when you’ve got somebody that popular in such a big, important state that Trump was able to win twice. 

The electoral argument for the Josh Shapiros of the world is clear.

Twenty-one points in Pennsylvania at any rate is impressive, but let’s use him as an example, because I do think it speaks to where some Democrats have gone in the last couple years. The polling will tell you that the majority of Democrats want to see their party reshift its relationship with Israel and want to see things like an arms embargo.

Polling would tell you that the majority of Democrats believe that they shouldn’t be taking corporate money, or that things like AIPAC money are bad. How does a Josh Shapiro — let’s use him as an avatar. … Is that compatible with where the Democratic base is right now, even if it’s clearly compatible with Pennsylvania?

The way that you just said it doesn’t sound compatible. But I don’t think that it’s incompatible. 

This is a book about what the voters think, and the voters want a new relationship with Israel, hands down. Without question. They want America to reevaluate our relationship with Israel. And the next Democratic presidential candidate is going to have to do that.

And I have a theory about this. I do think that the 2028 nominee is very likely to be a Jewish person who is highly critical of Israel, because I think that it helps to heal the deep divide right now on this issue within the Democratic Party.

Now, do I think it’s more likely that that is the very handsome Jon Ossoff? I kind of do. But I just … a big part of this book is, “Don’t you want to win? Don’t you guys want to win?” Like, do you want to win more than you want to be right about everything?

Hier ist das diesmalige Heftblättern – unter erschwerten Umständen (Messelärm…), aber mit großem Enthusiasmus aufgenommen von unserem Autoren Stephan Freundorfer und Jörg Langer. Dass wir ein, zwei “Regieanweisungen” aus dem laufenden Interview heraus drin gelassen haben, ist kein Versehen, sondern Teil der Atmosphäre…

Wie üblich bei diesem Format, besprechen wir das aktuelle Heft (hier erhältlich) und lassen auch die eine oder andere Anekdote unserem Gehirnarchiv entspringen. Viel Spaß!

Retro-Gamer-Autorin Nina Schild begann schon in frühen Jahren, Adventures zu spielen – sie lernte Lesen mit Maniac Mansion und fing an, nackte Frauen zu malen, nachdem sie als kleines Kind Leisure Suit Larry spielte. Ihr Mann erteilt ihr beim gemeinsamen Adventure-Spielen Redeverbot, da sie sonst selbst die abstrusesten Rätsel in Rekordzeit löst und ihm den Spaß kaputtmacht. Diese und etliche mehr Enthüllungen findet ihr in Hardy Heßdörers Gespräch mit Nina auf der Gamescom 2026:

 

Jahrzehnte nach dem Original hat Inin das Remaster Apidya Specal herausgebracht. Programmiert hat es Stefan Becker, und den hat Jörg Langer auf der Gamescom 2026 am Retro-Gamer-Stand interviewt. Viel Spaß mit dem kompakten Eindruck zur Entstehung sowie der Frage, wieso, bei allen Verbesserungen, keine Rückspulfunktion enthalten ist.

Am Stand von Retro Gamer kommen Vorserienmodelle des neuen Joysticks von OSA-Stick.com zum Einsatz. Und wenn doch mal eine Mikroschalter den Geist aufgibt, ist (zumindest auf der Gamescom) der Entwickler der OSA-Sticks, Frank Niggemann, nicht weit, und repariert das Ding in 3 Minuten…

Ein witziges Fundstück von der Gamescom 2026: Factor-Five-Urgestein Willi Bäcker zeigt Retro Gamer einen Bug/Cheat in der Mega-Drive-Version von Turrican, den er erst kürzlich entdeckt hat. Er sei “zu 98% reproduzierbar”, erklärt er uns dann noch off-camera.  Im kurzen Video seht ihr den Bug, und wie er per Smartbomb an der richtigen Stelle erzeugt wird.

In regelmäßigen Abständen gilt: Retro-Gamer-Leser fragen (vor allem auf unseren Social-Media-Kanälen), und Retro-Gamer-Autoren antworten. Dieses Mal sind das Hardy Heßdörfer und Jörg Langer: Willkommen also zu unserer neuesten Q&A-Runde, das wir dieses Mal auf der Gamescom 2026 aufgenommen haben!

Auf der Gamescom 2026 hatten wir unseren GamersGlobal- und RetroGamer-Autoren Michael Hengst am Stand – ein Urgestein des deutschen Spielejournalismus. Mit Jörg Langer redet er unter anderem darüber, wieso er von der Branche enttäuscht ist und dies seine allerletzte Gamescom sein wird. Viel Spaß beim Ansehen!

Passend zum großen Evolution-Artikel in Retro Gamer 4/26 namens Die Chroniken von Zelda führt euch Hardy Heßdörfer in diesem rund 20-minütigen Video launig durch alle Serienteile der ruhmreichen Action-RPG-Serie.

 

Sollte oben bei euch eine Fehlermeldung stehen statt das Video (ein Problem des Safari-Browsers), klickt einfach auf “Video auf YouTube ansehen”. Viel Spaß!

Last week, I discussed the miniDSP UMIK-2 USB measurement microphone and as I mentioned then, it's not often that we see much discussion about these devices among audiophiles even though they are important in helping us chase down sonic problems and of course to calibrate the sound system. To me, that calibration process is an essential part of achieving a truly "accurate" sound system once we

Liebe Retrofreunde, entweder zum Anfixen geeignet, wenn ihr das Heft noch nicht habt, oder aber zum gemütlichen Mitlesen: Egal wie ihr unser regelmäßiges Heftblättern nutzt, wünschen euch Anatol und Jörg ebenso viel Spaß beim Zusehen, wie wir bei der Aufnahme hatten! Wer das Heft als ePaper oder Einzelheft bestellen möchte, wird im Shop fündig.

Das Video ist nur leicht geschnitten und damit 53 Minuten lang, aber wir wollen ja nicht durchhetzen. Also zieht euch ein frisches Bier oder einen Tee oder einen Kaffee oder ein Glas Rotwein oder was auch immer ihr gerne trinkt (wir akzeptieren auch kristallaktiviertes Wasser) und macht es euch gemütlich

 

Solltet ihr oben eine Fehlermeldung bekommen statt das Video zum Abspielen (das ist browserabhängig), klickt einfach auf “Video auf YouTube ansehen”.

Im aktuellen Heft Retro Gamer 2/26 haben wir einen vierseitigen Praxistest zum Commodore 64 Ultimate – hier ist das zugehörige Video, in dem euch Jörg Langer knapp 20 Minuten lang den Wunder-Brotkasten vorführt. Viel Spaß!

Sollte statt des Videos bei euch eine Fehlermeldung erscheinen hier drunter, klickt bitte beherzt auf “Video auf YouTube ansehen”.

 

Manchmal dauert es etwas länger, und so ist der in diesem Heftblättern besprochene Retro Gamer 1/26 bereits rund zehn Wochen im Handel (und fast elf bei den Abonnenten). Aber dafür haben wir einen ganz besonderen Partner für Jörg Langer dieses Mal: Spielejournalisten-Urgestein Roland Austinat, der eigentlich in San Francisco lebt und demzufolge eher selten in der Redaktion vorbei kommen kann. Viel Spaß!

Falls ihr im folgenden die Meldung “Fehler 153” seht (das hängt von eurem Browser ab), klickt bitte einfach auf den großen Link “Video auf YouTube ansehen”.

 

Eine knappe Stunde lang blättern Hardy Heßdörfer und Jörg Langer für euch im Retro-Gamer-Sonderheft Die 90er Jahre – das über 150 aktuelle Spieletests von 90er-Klassikern enthält. Das Heft war im Retro-Gamer-Shop direkt zum Start ausverkauft im Dezember 2025, in der Woche vom 5.1.26 wird die 2. Auflage gedruckt und ab 12.1.26 verschickt. Wer bislang kein Heft abbekommen hat, kann es nun wieder im Shop bestellen.

Viel Spaß mit dem Video (in manchen Browsern kommt unten eine Fehlermeldung – in dem Fall bitte einfach „auf YouTube ansehen“ anklicken):

Zunächst wünsche ich Euch einen schönen 2. Advent 🙂 .

Es gab nun schon länger keine Brot-Videos mehr von mir. Das hat zeitliche Gründe, denn ähnlich den Fotodokumentationen und dem Verfassen von Blog Artikeln steckt hinter einem gut geschnittenen und editierten Video eine Menge Arbeit.

Vor zwei Wochen war ich in Leverkusen und konnte als neuer Experte beim Youtube-Kanal „Brot – Kongress“ auftreten. Entstanden sind drei Videos, zwei davon mit meinen aktuellsten Rezepten. Gemeinsam mit Michaela Emundts backe ich die türkischen Sesamringe „Simit“ und das „Dinkel-Sylter.

Simit

Dinkel-Sylter

Video Nr. 3 über das Vierkornbrot aus dem Buch „Heimatbrote“ ist noch nicht erschienen. Ich ergänze es dann später.

Ich hoffe Euch gefallen die Videos und tragen dazu bei, die Rezeptbeschreibungen noch etwas besser zu verstehen.

Euer Doc!

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