Money & Wealth: Midterm Elections 2026: Red States, Blue States, Broke States

John Hope Bryant (0:00)

Welcome to Money and Wealth with John Hope Bryant, a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio.

Hey, hey, John Hope Bryant, and this is the Money and Wealth Podcast Series, Season 3 on the Black Effect Network on iHeartRadio. And I am honored to bring you a special episode on midterm election week, 2026, in the United States of America. I know this is a global podcast. Thanks for making it top 75 for entrepreneurship here and around the world. I do believe that the circumstances warrant a deep dive, a discussion, an understanding about how politics and money interact, how and where they intersect.

Where you should pay attention and where and what you should ignore.

I don't talk about politics in a much or in a partisan matter. I have this book. It's the number one bestseller on three categories on Amazon, which is Capitalism for All, Inclusive Economics and the Future Proving of America. I'm on tour right now. Thanks for making the book number one again across the country. But I don't talk about politics in the book. It's 200 pages of math. To quote my friend Melody Hobson, I like math because it doesn't have an opinion.

I'm going to have an opinion tonight. I'm going to lay out some things that I think you should know. The topic of this episode, to bring this country together with one understanding for a moment, thank God. Red states, blue states, broke states.

Unfortunately, right now, everybody seems to have one thing in common. They've got too much month at the end of their money. There is the largest reality TV show going in the history of the world, in Washington, DC, right now, and every day is a new episode. And you can obsess yourself with that, that's not gonna help you pay your bills or raise your children or live your dreams. In fact, just the opposite, they should be helping you to do those things. Well, tonight, this week, we had a referendum.

We had a national public opinion poll called the midterm elections. Let me give you a fact before I give you the thesis.

About 44%, 45% of the nation are independents. These are Gallup numbers, right? Gallup poll numbers, not 14%.

Just under half of America says they're politically independent, including myself. About 27% are Republicans. About 27% are Democrats. About half of the people in each party are frustrated with the political rhetoric in their own party. And both parties up until now have been really maximizing the messaging from the edges of each party. And to put people in the middle really did not have a voice and did not feel they had agency. I think we are in the third reconstruction right now, which is all about ownership and agency, from the streets to the suites, from the civil rights to include civil rights. And people are anxious about a range of things and they want their voice heard. And the middle showed up in this election.

So you have a core thesis for tonight, in this, today, in this episode, this week. Political power matters. But the real test of economic leadership is whether families can afford life, build financial resilience, and ultimately acquire some ownership. A lot of this socialism talk is really affordability in disguise. A lot of the discuss around socialism is really people saying, I can't afford my life. I've got too much month at the end of my money. I am a hardworking person. I'm not lazy. I work maybe one or two jobs, or plus a gig, a gig opportunity. And I just can't afford my life. I see some half-wit who's worth supposedly a half a trillion dollars, or a half a billion dollars, and they're not very bright, it appears. They don't work very hard, but somehow they seem to have it all. This must be rigged. And so people begin to say something that's not true. I hate rich people, is what they say. And my response is, no, you don't. You hate rich people until you become rich. What you hate is a game system, a system that no matter how hard you work, you can't seem to get ahead. My response at Operation Hope in my book, Catalyst and For All, is let me help you un-game this system. Actually, all seven of my books, most recently being Catalyst and For All, the bestseller. Let me help you un-game this system. You don't destroy it, you refine it, you make it better. But have our political leaders, I'm not a political leader, have our political leaders responded to that question, and have they acknowledged that 70 percent of this economy, 30 trillion dollar economy, the biggest economy in the world, 70 percent of this economy is consumer spending.