Greetings all. Excited to share a wonderful conversation I had earlier today with Jen Rubin and Norm Eisen of The Contrarian. A recording is above and a transcript is below. We cover a lot of ground in our discussion - Talarico’s big win, the GOP’s Senate runoff disaster, Crockett’s gracious concession, encouraging results in Arkansas and North Carolina, the lawless new war in Gulf, our excitement about an inspiring new generation of political leaders rising across the country and more……
Always love joining Jen and Norm. Our discussions are always among the most lively and thoughtful I get to do each month, and I am grateful for the opportunity to join them.
To get to know James Talarico a little better watch my discussion with him from a few months ago and please donate to his inspiring campaign here. Let’s help him get off to a roaring start today!
The Rs are clearly worried about Talarico. Look at what Trump posted this morning:
And enjoy this data from a new Fox News poll. Ruh-roh Donnie!
Keep working hard all - Simon
Transcript - Jen Rubin, Norm Eisen Of The Contrarian And Simon Rosenberg (March 4, 2026)
Jen Rubin:
It was a huge night. We're going to tell you all the reasons why Democrats should be encouraged. And for a change, you're going to hear what Democrats are doing right. And it's not only in Texas, but it's all over. And we're going to talk about North Carolina. We're going to talk about the Texas and the Senate landscape elsewhere. We'll talk about how the Republicans have really screwed up badly on this redistricting and what that means. And we are going to talk about the Iran war and how that is affecting all of this. I should really say Trump's war, and how monumentally stupid it was from a human standpoint, a geopolitical standpoint, political standpoint, you name it, economic standpoint. We are so glad to have Simon Rosenberg, who's a familiar face to many of you, election guru, analyst, consultant. Simon, the thing that stood out to me the most last night in what was a really extraordinary night was that Democrats turned out in greater numbers in their primary in Texas than did Republicans. I don't think that's happened in decades.
Simon Rosenberg:
Yeah, look, I think the way to think about this is there's sort of one election that we're having going all the way back to the early part of 2025, which is that Democrats have had heightened performance. We're both overperforming in these special elections. And, you know, had this incredible election last November. We continue to outperform expectations. Our voters are highly motivated and their voters are not. And it may be a little bit more and a little bit less in each race, but there's sort of a universal kind of trend in all 50 states and all kinds of elections. We keep seeing the sort of same results. And that's why this is so worrisome for them and so encouraging for us. And so we saw it last night in North Carolina, we flipped a red seat in Arkansas in a state legislative race, we had incredibly heightened turnout in our race in Texas. And Republicans had a bad election in Texas last night. We'll get into that. So you continue to see this same encouraging dynamic all over the country continuing to manifest.
Jen Rubin:
Talk to us about what Talarico means for the Democratic Party, for Texas, for the down ballot races that have been redistricted. Such an impressive win from a very impressive young man.
Simon Rosenberg:
Yeah, I mean, Texas is a hard state. I mean, we have to just level set here. This is going to be very hard. But it's not impossible. And, you know, we got Beto O'Rourke got within a few points a few years ago. Hillary Clinton got within five points in 2016. Talarico is a generational talent. I mean, he is an extraordinary candidate. And the stars are aligning for this to be an election where we have a shot. You know, the Republicans are now going to go into this 12-week runoff attacking each other. Talarico is going to have the ability to be all by himself, introducing himself to the general election audience. Our gubernatorial candidate there, Gina Hinojosa, is a very talented Latina who's going to be able to speak to a different part of the audience than Talarico does. We also know that the terror campaign that Trump has launched against immigrants and Latinos across the country is giving us new opportunities with the Latino voters in Texas. So it's an exciting opportunity for us, Jen. And I think that the most important thing for your viewers to think about is that what has now happened is that winning the Senate… flipping the Senate was always a long shot… it was always going to be hard… but we now basically are at best case scenario.
Of all the ways this could have emerged, we got the candidates we wanted in Alaska, and in North Carolina, and in Ohio. Talarico, you know, has come out with a decisive victory and the Republicans are in this incredible mess that they're in, right. Which is sort of the only way this would have worked for us in Texas. Even though we have primaries in Maine and Iowa, the parties and the elections that we've been having in those states over the last year and a half have been very encouraging for us. Jon Ossoff has come out of the box strong in Georgia. And so I think what everyone should be optimistic about is that, you know, let's say we had a one in three shot of making the Senate competitive or winning it. Well, we're there now. The scenario that we needed to have the Senate be competitive is playing out in front of our eyes. And I think, Jen, the other thing I know you were going to reference, and I'll be done with my opening remarks here, is that Talarico, also, I think represents Democrats who want the next thing to come and are sort of tired of the old ways, and want to feel like the party is moving into the future. He is a very powerful communicator about that. And, you know, he and Jon Ossoff, and Mary Peltola, Gina Hinojosa. We're going to see great House candidates like Paige Cognetti. I think the Democrats, by the spring or summer, if you want to know whether or not the Democratic Party feels fresh and alive and has exciting new next generation candidates, we're going to have a whole lot of them. And it's going to make this, I think, a very exciting election cycle for us.
Norm Eisen:
And we saw that in 2025 with Spanberger, Sherrill, the next generation coming on the scene very successfully. Let me follow up. Simon, with a question about the Talarico coalition as it exists now, kind of the one he built up from the Rio Grande Valley up the I-35 corridor, Laredo to Dallas. How does he build on that group plus the young people and bring in the African American voters in Texas, particularly given the amount of Republican money that we're going to see pour in after they punch each other out for 12 weeks in the primary?
Simon Rosenberg:
Well, and also, Governor Abbott has over $100 million and is a proven winner. So, you know, I continue to wonder whether or not the dynamic that we could see in Texas is [that] if you're a marginal Republican voter or somebody who's sort of not firmly aligned with either party, you know, if Abbott sort of comes out and is 10 points up and looks like he's going to win, the question is, does that give a lot of people freedom to then vote for Talarico? Because they know, okay, so there's going to be a Republican who's going to win. And so maybe I'll take a flyer on this young guy because I also am not happy with what the Republican Party is doing in Texas. And so, I think that to your question, Norm, look, he has a lot of work to do. Texas is an incredibly hard state for us. It's incredibly diverse and large, just an enormous state. It has two time zones, right, which is one of my favorite things about Texas. It's so big. And he is going to have a lot of work to do to bring along the Crockett coalition. She did get at least 46 percent of the vote in the primary and had a high level turnout primary. It's not just going to be African American voters. It's going to be her whole coalition. And so, yeah, he's got a lot of work to do.
I mean, this is not a done deal, but he's obviously a talented politician and he is clearly welcoming in the way that he operates. And so if anyone can kind of build this coalition that is necessary to win in Texas for a Democrat…we haven't won there statewide since 1994…this guy kind of has the right orientation, the right vibe about sort of bringing in everybody, being part of my team.
But he's got work to do. And Crockett conceded this morning, which is really important, right? That was an important step, so that we don't have a contested, drawn out thing there. So I have faith that he's going to be able to do what is necessary to build this coalition politically. I also want to just give a shout out to Kendall Scudder, the new Texas Democratic Party chair. We have a strong party there now in a way that we haven't had in a long time. And so, you know, the stars are aligning here where something really magical could happen this year in Texas.
Jen Rubin:
To her credit, Jasmine Crockett came out with an extremely gracious concession statement. She said, it's about more than one person. I'm going to do everything I can to elect James Talarico. And the smartest thing I think he could do would be to go out with her and some of the other African American candidates in the state and really hit the trail and hit those places where he didn't do as well as he did. Let me switch gears just a bit and ask you about the down ballot impact on those redistricted House seats. Republicans have taken a huge gamble thinking Hispanics were totally in their corner. And now they're up against a guy… and let's not forget the Democratic nominee for governor, who is also Hispanic, who can really pull out Hispanic voters… what does that do to their re-redistricting plan, which already looked stupid before tonight… before last night?
Simon Rosenberg:
Yeah, look, I think there's very little question now, looking backwards, that this mid-decade redistricting gambit by Trump was idiotic, impulsive, and a failure, and in a very kind of Trumpian way, right? Because, first of all, I think it ended up lifting the Democratic Party. The work of the House Democrats in Texas, including James Talarico, and JB Pritzker and Gavin Newsom fighting this last summer kind of lifted our party off the mat. I mean, I think we were kind of down and felt defeated up until this fight that happened. And so Trump gave us a fight that kind of started the process of the Democratic Party getting off the mat. So number one, that was a huge error. Number two is it gave us James Talarico. James Talarico simply would not have emerged as a candidate without this opportunity in what happened with the House Democrats in Texas fighting this mid-decade redistricting. Third is they made ridiculous assumptions about what the electorate was gonna look like in 2026, taking the strong performance Trump had with Hispanic voters to the bank in the way they designed the seats.
That is not going to replicate in 2026. And so we could have a whole bunch of competitive house races which will help James Talarico, which will help us and not them, right? That's what they didn't want to happen. And also in one of the house races, these newly drawn house districts, Tony Gonzalez, the scandal-plagued, vile incumbent House member, got through to the runoff. So not only are they going to have the Paxton, you know, this vile creature, Paxton, running against, you know, against Cornyn for the next 12 weeks, they have one of the most disgusting, vile members of Congress that we've seen in a recent generation who is still in office. The Republicans…just so people understand how significant this is…the Republican plan was that Gonzalez didn't have to resign and give up his seat, but that he would lose in this primary. And they could say, that's enough, right? The voters rejected him. Well, the voters didn't reject him. He could actually get reelected to Congress. And what that means now is the pressure is on Johnson to force him to resign, for them to kick him out of the conference, which puts another vote for Johnson now in jeopardy.
So this was a terrible outcome for the Texas Republicans and for Mike Johnson. And it's not getting as much press as this other stuff. So what it means is that, look, we're probably going to net more seats out of this mid-decade redistricting than the Republicans. And the fact that they were arrogant and, and in a very kind of Trumpian way, right after the election, they believe the thousand year Reich was coming and they made, you know, these incredible errors. This is an example. And it just means that we have a year of opportunity in Texas. You and I discussed this earlier, what people have to realize is that Texas has an extraordinary pool of eligible voters who are neither regular voters [nor are they] registered voters. The potential of this electorate, if there are exciting races all across the state, to become much more Democratic is there. We saw this with Beto's race in 2018. And so having these additional competitive House races is a nightmare for the Republicans statewide in this cycle.
Jen Rubin:
400,000 new first time voters turned out, an extraordinary number.
Norm Eisen:
And Simon, you have places like Texas-15, where you have the Tejano star and the next gen Democrat, Bobby Pulido, who has the potential to oust Monica De La Cruz. I want to ask you about what advice you have for Texas Democrats to build on those 400,000 new voters….. what specific advice do you have on how to energize and capitalize on those new voters who turned out for Dems? Keep them in and even build it. Build it to 800,000.
Simon Rosenberg:
Yeah, look, there are millions… I've done a lot of demographic research in my career and I haven't looked at the pool of these voters in Texas in a long time, since probably the 2018 cycle, but Texas has the most restrictive voter registration laws in the country. It's very hard to register to vote in Texas. It's very hard to register people in Texas. You have to be registered with the county and all this stuff. They put in enormous restrictions.
So this is why this cycle is turning out to be kind of a nightmare for them, which is we have this young, exciting candidate. I assume that what he's going to be able to do is – if Jasmine Crockett campaigns with him and Colin Allred, they're going to be able to send a clear signal of a new day and that there's change happening in Texas and there's a better day coming. And that we don't have to accept this kind of, you know, very right wing, oppressive, wildly corrupt Republican Party in Texas, because there is this kind of sense in Texas that they're just going to be in power forever. And what happened in other states that flipped…what's really important, states like Arizona, Georgia, that went from being red or kind of leaning red to purple to blue, is that there had to be a sense with younger people and newly arrived people that voting Democratic was not a wasted vote, or that I would get in trouble with my boss or whatever it is. And I think that this cycle, we could see significant cultural movement away from kind of this old, corrupt, oppressive, right wing regime in Texas to [something] younger, more dynamic, more diverse, more optimistic.
Because Talarico… if you wanted to find a candidate who felt like the opposite of corruption, you know, I think we found one. And if Paxton is his opponent, who gives Trump a run for the money as the most corrupt public figure in American life in the last 20 years…that contrast between a sexual predator and a corrupt politician who's been impeached by his own party. I mean, the Republicans, if you haven't taken a look, and I posted this on Hopium today, the latest ad the Senate Republicans ran against Paxton…it is unbelievable about his sexual escapades. So my view is that it's likely he is their nominee at this point. Cornyn only got 40%. I mean, historically, the way this works… again, this is unique and we can't assume anything… but when an incumbent gets 41% of the vote, that means 59% of the Republicans in the primary audience have already left Cornyn. And when you've lost those voters, they don't come back to you very easily. So the historic physics of this race, and I'm not saying it's going to play out because this is a unique race, is that Paxton wins now. And this is why you're going to see the pressure on Trump to endorse Cornyn, you know, Paxton is Trump's guy. Paxton is Trump's guy down there and does Trump come in and endorse Paxton? Fascinating dynamic for them and and certainly this is a year where the stars have aligned for us in Texas, and we have to go for it.
Jen Rubin:
To your point about corruption, there was, of course, a kerfuffle in Dallas, and that was caused by the fact that the Republican Party would not agree to what they call a joint primary. So people's polling places were different than they thought they were. There was mass confusion. One judge said, let's extend the voting times, [and] of course, who comes into the scene but Ken Paxton, who wants to create trouble? And he got the Supreme Court to say, no, we're going to segregate the ballots and not count those votes. Bottom line, it didn't make any difference in the Talarico race because he won by over 150,000 votes. But going down the road, it could. And it's an example of what Ken Paxton is capable of doing. And so this is a warning flare, I think, for November. We have to educate voters. They have to know where they're going to go. They have to know what their options are for early voting so that we don't have election day problems like this.
I do want to switch gears to North Carolina. Simon, something amazing happened there, and it's due to your friend and ours, Anderson Clayton. And I'm going to have her on, by the way, later today, folks. What did Anderson Clayton do for the Democrats?
Simon Rosenberg:
Well, and the governor, too.
Jen Rubin:
And Josh Stein, yes.
Simon Rosenberg:
You know, there were Democrats elected in 2024 in the state legislature who have been switching over and voting with the Republicans to override vetoes, and sort of recreate the supermajority that they had lost in the 2024 cycle. And everyone should realize that, and you should watch the interview with Anderson later, is that, you know, in 2024 North Carolina was our most successful down ballot [swing] state below the presidential. We won five out of the 10 statewide races. We kept that contested Supreme Court seat. And we also broke their supermajority, which they were using to override and take away powers from the governor and override vetoes. That supermajority, though, [was created] because of a bunch of Democrats essentially betraying the governor and the party, voting with Republicans, all of those state legislators. Anderson announced at the end of last year that they were going to cut off those candidates from our voter file and they weren't going to get access to all the party services because they had betrayed the campaign to make it much harder for them to run elections. And I talked to her the other day. She said, look, I wasn't going to allow a bunch of Republican consultants to make money off of our voter file and our list. So they knocked him out of the campaign apparatus, meaning they were on their own. And then they recruited candidates to run against them, which were backed by party and by the governor and all of them won last night.
And so this is the kind of brass knuckle kind of politics that I think many people in our party want us to be practicing, right? When we have people that, you know, betray the party in such a sort of obvious way, that we had a way of disciplining them and then frankly, removing them from office. So listen, you know, my Hopium community was the largest investor in North Carolina in 2024. We raised over a million dollars for Anderson and to help her have those big victories. And she can talk about that with you today. Anderson, like Talarico, like Jasmine Crockett, like Jon Ossoff, she's a generational talent. She is one of the most incredible political leaders that I have met in all the years that I have been doing this because she not only, you know, brings the energy and the fight and the grit, she's competent. And she is now running one of the most competent, successful Democratic parties in the whole country. And she's 28 years old. And so she is amazing. I'm glad that you're going to bring her on today. And I know people enjoy getting to see her. I got lots of exclamation points and capital letters in the text from her this last night about what happened. She's really happy. She took an enormous risk. And it paid off.
Norm Eisen:
One more, Simon, one more question on North Carolina. The Senate president, Berger, he appears to be in trouble. What do you make of that? And how's that going to turn out? And could those voting trends… I think at the moment he's down by two, you know, how's that race going to shake out? And what does it mean?
Simon Rosenberg:
Listen, the North Carolina Party, one of the reasons we've invested so much money is that there were two states…you know, a lot of the terrible redistricting that happened, you know, in the Obama era, which pushed these battleground states very far to the right at the legislative level because of their big wins during redistricting…a lot of those states kind of unwound. We won [them] back and we sort of unwound this kind of incredible illiberal redistricting that took place. But two states didn't. One of them was North Carolina and the other was Wisconsin. And what you're seeing is we're in the process of unwinding these states that aren't really functional democracies. You've got a party with one party control, even though they're purple states, 50-50, where they control, you know, 60, 70 percent of the state legislative seats. It's unbelievable.
And by the way, illegal, up until the Supreme Court intervened, Norm knows all about this, right? At one point, all of these maps were declared to be illegal, and then the court kind of made it possible for them to re-redistrict some of these. And so what's happening is that both in North Carolina and Wisconsin, we are unraveling these things, the redistricting. What's happening in North Carolina, I mean, look, we had a huge Democratic turnout last night even though we did not have a competitive statewide Senate race, the Republicans had a marginally competitive statewide race, had low turnout. And we have a great candidate, Roy Cooper, who's never been defeated, who's up by five, six, seven points in the polls, raising money, an incredibly competent candidate running against Michael Whatley, who's Trump's RNC chair, an oil lobbyist, a guy who hasn't been in North Carolina. Right now, today, the most likely pickup in the Senate we have is North Carolina, building on the strength of what we did in 2024, the work that Anderson did. And we now, all of a sudden, North Carolina is looking like a place of enormous progress for us across the board, Norm. That's the other thing – we're going to have a Supreme Court race there. They've got a plan to sort of try to flip the court over the next few years. And all of a sudden, that state went from being a state hijacked by right wing folks to being a state of great opportunity for us this cycle.
Jen Rubin:
Right. Let me switch gears to a much larger issue, and that is this idiotic, immoral, unconstitutional war that Donald Trump has launched against Iran. Simon, I mean, how is this playing out in the Democratic caucus and in the country at large? There is no rally around the flag that we see. In fact, it is hugely unpopular and for good reason. Donald Trump can't even explain why we're there. And it seems to be another forever war. How should Democrats be talking about it? And what do you think that does to the election landscape for November?
Simon Rosenberg:
Yeah, I think that we're going to see a lot of the next few days. I mean, we're going to have votes on the war powers resolutions in both the House and the Senate. I don't know exactly the timing because it's been moving around a little bit, but within the next 48 hours. You're going to see Democrats rising on the floor in both chambers, making, I think, very strong arguments against this illegal unconstitutional war. And reckless war.
I think it does a few things, Jen. One is that it continues to affirm for voters…I think that one of the big dynamics of the Trump, year one of Trump, is that when he feels threatened and like his powers are ebbing, he does these kind of, you know, autocratic spasms where that then I think always are rejected by voters and then it pushes him further and further away from the electorate…and so this is all fitting that pattern based on polling right now, that the country doesn't want an autocrat. They want a president who's fighting for them and not for him and his buddies. And so this reaffirms… wait a minute, this isn't what we were voting for. We thought this guy was going to lower our prices and take care of us. And he seems to be off doing all these other things. And so I think it's going to push him further away from the electorate, making it more likely we have the election we all want to have. The second thing is that it does something very important for Democrats… which is this election was never only going to be about affordability. The issue of his autocratic fantasies and his trampling of rights and liberties in the Constitution… it always needed to be an issue of equal import, in my view. It's where the polling is. By the way, it's also just where we have to be. We have to be both warriors for the middle class and proud patriots defending our liberties and our freedoms and our democracy. And I think the combination of what's happened with ICE and the way the country has rejected this kind of a terror force, and this vote, is giving Democrats an opportunity to find their voice on democracy and freedom.
And then third, I would just add one more piece to this – I think that Trump, I think though the admonition and this gets to the work that Norm's been doing, is that Trump has essentially declared himself no longer bound by law or the Constitution. In that New York Times interview in January, he declared himself a king. Stephen Miller reaffirmed it on CNN in that famous interview about the rule of law, or as Gavin Newsom calls it, the rule of Don, right? And I think that because he's now unbound and untethered, it means that we're facing an election that where, you know, [it’s] whatever it takes for them to stay in power. We saw that with Ken Paxton last night in the Supreme Court in Texas. And I think that we have to start war gaming out what it means to be in a whatever-it-takes election where our opponent does not feel bound by the Constitution or law any longer… this is why Norm does his work every day… but I think that it brings in a lot of scenario planning.
I don't know that we were ready for what happened in Dallas last night, for example. I don't know that the party really understood the dynamic of what was playing out there. We have to get better about starting to imagine now how this is not a typical midterm. This is not going to be like any other midterm that any of us have ever been through. We have to stop thinking this is like 2018 or 2006... we are up against something that none of us have ever been up against in a midterm. Donald Trump, the Russian government, other international allies are going to do whatever it takes to keep the Republicans in power and to prevent us from winning. And I think that's the other lesson of the last few days, you know, because they're scared. They had a bad election last night. If you're sitting in the Washington Republican Party right now, right, it's just unrelenting bad news. And so the panic that's going to settle in… the increased number of retirements we may see, right?
If I can paraphrase Norm, their shambolic shit show is what I've been calling it. And not just a shit show, a shambolic shit show. And they all know it. And they all know they're kind of cooked. And so, it means that they are going to start imagining doing things that they may not have done otherwise. With a president who, as he said, the only break on him now is his own mind, right. It was an immediate need to impeach him at that exact moment when he said that, right, but here we are. An election of opportunity, but one where we also have to be very smart and strategic about how we're preparing for what will be a very different battlefield than we normally are on in a midterm.
Norm Eisen:
Three very quick points before we move to what we're looking forward to. The first is a friendly amendment. It's not that he is… he may feel unbound and untethered, but he actually is bound and tethered, Simon. And what we've seen again and again is that the various dimensions of America, as it turns out, the very robust kind of immune reaction of the body politic has tied him down. Those 200 court cases he's lost, his plummeting numbers in and at the polls, that Arkansas legislative race that I think you were alluding to in passing, Trump and MAGA are 0-28. Right. In state legislative races… Simon and I are on a thread, since I play political scientist in my other life, we're on a thread where data is sometimes exchanged. Zero and 28 in the era of Trump in these state legislative off-cycle races. So that's point one. And the legal and the political constraints that he's fought against. Point two, I would say, is I'll take the example of the Iran war. One thing that the political scientists look to are defectors… representatives, former leading Republican representatives of all three branches of government, like Mike Luttig, Senator Jack Danforth and others, a magisterial 2,000 word analysis of all of the illegalities of the war. It is a grossly illegal war.
The court of law, court of public opinion, the American people are not behind them. Contrarians, there is going to be a litigation front. Stay tuned. It's tough to litigate against a president. But I think we found at least a partial way we can make some headway here and remind the American people of why this is an unjust and illegal war. Stay tuned on that. And then the third point I would make is I do think when you look at the it's what happened in Texas… Simon, I'm privy to the litigation preparations that are happening. And boy, if you want to talk about meeting flood this zone with rule of law shock and awe, we are not going to let a single vote be stolen in November. So the fight will be large in the court of law and in the court of public opinion.
Jen Rubin:
Listen, folks, we are having a good post election day. There will be hard days ahead of us, but there is much to look forward to. So, Simon, in that vein, what are you looking forward to?
Simon Rosenberg:
I'm looking forward to Democrats finding their inner patriotism in this fight against Trump and this reckless illegal war. I think that we need to meet the moment. And I feel like there's this kind of soft comfort in affordability that we kind of go there because it's easy and clean. And this fight, though, about democracy and about accountability, about our rights and our liberties and our freedoms… that muscle needs to get bigger. Because it's so central to everything that's going on. I'm very optimistic that the speeches we heard from Padilla and Spanberger last week were significant evolutions in our language and our rhetoric about all of this. You could feel 2026 Democratic language emerging. I think you're going to hear a lot of that in the next couple of days, and I'm really looking forward to it.
Jen Rubin:
Norm, what are you looking forward to?
Norm Eisen:
Well, the wonderful Anderson Clayton was mentored by our Democracy Defenders PAC colleague, Ben Wikler, and I've been privileged to talk to her over the years. I'm looking forward to the next generation of Anderson Claytons. Who are those young emerging stars, the youngest of the stars, who are going to come out, including as our party chairs? To think about the coming generation of leaders in our country… so I'm excited to see who will the next one be.
Jen Rubin:
Absolutely. I am looking forward to the Republican sloppy, messy, violent, angry runoff race between Paxton and Cornyn. [Simon laughs.] I think we should bring the popcorn, pull up a chair and make the most of it. Ken Paxton is a bad person. And we have put together a little compendium of why he's so bad at the Contrarian. So take a look. And there's no good outcome for them. Either they're going to get this old guy who's turned himself into a pretzel to please the far right, or they're going to get Mr. Scandal and Mr. Extremism.
So I think we should take advantage of it. And while they're slugging it out, Talarico can go around the state expanding his base. So friends, thank you so much, Simon. We are so glad to have had you this morning and to savor the wins and to figure out where we go next. Thank you.
