Neera Tanden: How to Win

**Tim Miller** (0:12)
Hello, and welcome to The Bulwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller, delighted to welcome back to the show, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress. She was domestic policy advisor to Biden. She also served in both the Obama and Clinton administrations. She's in her pearls, which I appreciate.
I've not yet seen her post on x.com so far, which is a little different from how you seem to be spending your days lately. It's Neera Tanden.

**Neera Tanden** (0:39)
Nice to be with you.

**Tim Miller** (0:41)
So good to be with you.

**Neera Tanden** (0:43)
I think.

**Tim Miller** (0:43)
Welcome back. Oh yeah, it's always going to be fun.

**Neera Tanden** (0:46)
Sounds great.

**Tim Miller** (0:47)
You're getting sued by the White House and you are tweeting a lot. So we're going to get to both of those things. So you might be getting sued. They're threatening to sue you. We're going to get to those. First, we had some news last night in South Carolina.
Darlene Graham, Lindsay's sister, who apparently knows nothing and doesn't read the news, was nominated by the Republican Party to be the senator from that state for a six-year term. It's pretty crazy and she beat Ralph Norman. It was relatively close. Norman had been one of the key instigators of the insurrection, so not exactly a moderate, but then he did endorse Nikki Haley and that got Trump's eye, or Trump spent a bunch of money in that race. In some ways, I find Darlene Graham to be the perfect mega senator, but what was your reaction to the result last night?

**Neera Tanden** (1:32)
Did you find her to be the perfect mega senator because she seemed to be almost proud of not knowing anything about foreign policy, or what the Java senator would be?

**Tim Miller** (1:43)
Because she's an empty vessel for Trump.
I just think they should make her Senate Majority Leader. John Thune is not representative of the caucus. John Thune likes to pretend like he has views on things. Occasionally, he pretends like he wants to distance himself from Trump, but he never actually does it. Darlene Graham will just do whatever Mr. Trump says. That's what Trump wants in a senator. That's what mega voters want in a senator. So I just think that she should lead the caucus. A total no nothing Trump sycophant should be the Senate Majority Leader, I would think.

**Neera Tanden** (2:16)
Yeah. I think that's probably more reflective of where the caucus is. I mean, honestly, she is the natural extension of every single vote they've taken, every way that they're locked up with so much of the cuckoo crazy. That's the natural flow here.
I don't think it's easy to win in South Carolina for a Democrat, but I think hopefully this gives a little bit more to Annie Andrews who's challenging her.

**Tim Miller** (2:46)
Yeah, I was intrigued, Laksha Jain, who is not like a lib hype data analyst. He does some stuff over with our friends at The Argument.
He pointed out that Lindsey Graham actually underperformed the median Republican often in South Carolina, because he was in the sour spot where some MAGA people didn't think that he was MAGA enough because of immigration, and then some moderates thought he sucked up to Trump too much, and so he'd usually underperform a little bit. He was saying that if Darlene performed like Lindsey did, and the wave for Democrats was about what they predicted to be right now, that Annie Anders would only lose by three. I don't know that the Democrats should be like really invest huge amounts of money in a hopeless South Carolina race, but I thought that it was interesting. Nancy LaCour is a moderate veteran. Yeah, she's running in Nancy Mase's old district. I think this could really help her, because you can just imagine, Trump was booed at Ralph Norman's concession speech last night.

**Neera Tanden** (3:46)
Yeah, I saw it.

**Tim Miller** (3:47)
You can imagine people not being excited to vote for Darlene. It could tamp down turnout, and really I think helped Nancy LaCour in that first district, and who knows, I don't know, maybe in the Andros. What do you think?

**Neera Tanden** (3:58)
I mean, this goes to a broader issue which we might get into later, which is that what's actually happening in America today, which is, it's really hard for people to see this, but there are people who voted for Trump three times. They voted for him in 2016, in 2020, in 2024, you know, like working class people, particularly working class women who are like getting off the Trump train. And I think you see that in some group of Republicans voting for Talarico in Texas. And I think Darlene Graham puts a lot of pressure on those Republicans who are not so jazzed up about Donald Trump these days. And they could not vote at all, which would be a big problem for the Republicans. I mean, hopefully they would consider voting for any Andrews.