An Empire Running on Empty with Sarah Trone Garriott & David Wessel

**Al Hunt** (0:10)
Hello, and welcome to Politics War Room with James Carville and I'm Al Hunt. This week, our guests are David Wessel, esteemed economist at the Brookings Institute and former economist correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, and congressional candidate for Iowa 3, Sarah Trone Garriott. Now, remember, we love taking your questions, so write to politicswarroom.gmail.com for next week's show. Now, we're going to get to as many as we can, but please tell us where you're from. You also can get text updates about what's next for Politicon and Politics War Room by signing up at politicon.com. So tell your friends about us and remind them to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Please check out the links to our sponsors, Miracle Made, Mint Mobile, Trust & Will, and Quince in our episode show notes. We thank you for supporting these sponsors. It really helps make this podcast happen.
Hey James, Michigan primary. Big news, Dr. Al Said, a left-winger, won the Senate primary, barely.
Two others from the left captured house primaries in the state.
This is a major achievement for Dr. Al Said, who had been seen earlier as just a fringe candidate. The bad news is he may have a hard time winning in November, which would hurt Democratic chances of winning the Senate. Let me just offer what I think is some perspective here.
Dr. Al Said beat a weak candidate by a point. Moreover, the third candidate, Mallory McMurrow, who I think would have been the stronger one-on-one against Al Said, dropped out a month ago and still got 4% of the vote. So, therefore, he got about 48% and the others are 49 The others got 51 or 52 So, say in the 13th Congressional District, where left-winger William Lawrence won with 40% of the vote, two pretty good mainstream candidates, a former ambassador to Ukraine and an ex-Navy Seal, split 59% of the vote. That's what happens when one left-wing candidate runs against two mainstream candidates. And also in Missouri, a major Democratic socialist, Cori Bush, a former congresswoman, was soundly beaten when she tried to oust an incumbent. And a socialist who once called for abolishing Thanksgiving may win, however, next week in Wisconsin's Democratic primary. But, you know, I hope this may tamp down the wildly exaggerated media narrative that socialists left are taking over the Democratic Party, like the Tea Party did with the Republicans in 2010 The House challengers, and we have interviewed now about a dozen of them this year, are overwhelmingly mainstream Pelosi-type Democrats. Candidates like Rebecca Bennett in New Jersey and Kate Connolly in New York beat rivals on the left. With the Senate, you mentioned earlier, Iowa's Josh Turek and Texas' James Tellerico. They beat left-wing rivals. The two biggest Democratic challenges this year are Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Sherrod Brown of Ohio. This is not a left-wing party. They win in selective areas given unusual conditions.

**James Carville** (3:36)
Okay, here we go. Michigan. First of all, let's look at this. 30,000 feet for a second. You know who carried Michigan easily in 2016? I do, Bernie Sanders, all right? You know who carried Michigan in the Democratic primaries of 1972? Well, George Wallace, all right? So, Michigan, but let's be fair, I don't think he's DSA, but clearly a DSA-backed candidate got 48 and a half in the Democratic primary in Michigan. That cannot be denied. They feel like they're an ascendant wing of the party, that they represent the future of the Democratic party. We can go and point out where you didn't get this, we didn't do that, we weren't here, we lost there. This is my singular idea. First of all, how much El-Said wins by or loses by in November is going to profoundly affect the Democratic nominating process for president in the year 2028
If he were to lose, I'm just giving you a different... If he loses, that's the end of it, have any progressive Democratic nominee for president's chances. It dies right there.
Let's just say that he doesn't, that he wins, but he doesn't win by very much. He should have won by more. What you got to do is we all got to run for president. And the direction of this party can only be determined by people that vote in its primaries. It can be determined by talking points. It can be determined by talking heads. It can be determined by quats. All right? It can only be determined on the field of play. And that's running in the 2028 primaries.
So this is an enormously consequential event.
This is an enormously consequential general election at more levels than I can imagine. Yeah, the United States Senate is worth a lot.