Your 401(k) Just Met the New Congress

 

Wall Street gave Democrats a standing ovation on Wednesday and a dose of reality on Thursday. After Democrats won both chambers of Congress, flipping more than two dozen Republican-held House seats, the Dow jumped 3 percent, its best post-midterm day since 1982. Then Thursday arrived. At the close, the S and P 500 had fallen 4.36 percent, or 334.89 points, and the Nasdaq Composite 5.52 percent, or 1,421.52 points. The VIX, Wall Street's fear gauge, jumped 68 percent to 27.46. That is the worst second day after a midterm in nearly a century, well past the 2002 low of 2.3 percent. More than $2 trillion in value evaporated from pension plans, IRAs, and 401(k) plans.

I won't pretend one election explains one bad Thursday. The AI trade was already under scrutiny. The Nasdaq-100 closed in correction territory on Monday, more than 10 percent below its October 6 record. That came on the heels of an October 30 sell-off that erased more than $1 trillion in tech value on doubts about AI spending. Thursday's focus shifted to what a Democrat Congress could mean for the AI buildout. In 30 years of pricing risk, I've learned that investors charge for uncertainty about taxes, regulation, and investigations the same way they charge for a shaky balance sheet. Here's where I land: a Democratic Congress will pull Washington toward the California model, and Republicans handed over the keys by leaving their own agenda unfinished.

I moved to California in 1990, when the mood was upbeat, and the economy was on an upswing. I raised three sons there and made a life for my family. Democrats have since held both legislative chambers for nearly three decades and now hold 29 of 40 Senate seats and 60 of 80 Assembly seats, a two-thirds supermajority in each. Add it up: a 13.3 percent top income tax rate, the highest in the nation, a steady stream of businesses leaving, and regular gas at $5.84 a gallon against a national average of $4.10. Costs are up, crime is up, housing is unaffordable and our educational system is failing our kids. Watching Washington copy that script feels like Groundhog Day, except Bill Murray eventually escaped Punxsutawney.

Texas shows how fast the model travels. The state has more data center capacity operating and under construction than any other, and Bloom Energy projects it will hold nearly 30 percent of U.S. capacity by 2028. Voters just replaced Texas Gov. Greg Abbott with Gina Hinojosa, who promised a ban on all data center approvals until the Legislature acts. Abbott had already paused approvals for audits. Still, a rising technology powerhouse just elected a governor who wants to shut the front door. Thomas Sowell wrote in Is Reality Optional?: "The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics." Power and water are scarce, and a ban doesn't make either one less so.

Ayn Rand wrote that man is "not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see." Legislators can evade arithmetic for a decade or two, and California has. Markets extend no such courtesy. Thursday's tape was reality sending an invoice, and it arrived before a single bill had passed.

This reaches well beyond Wall Street. Gallup finds 62 percent of American adults own stock, directly or through a 401(k) or IRA. Thursday's losses landed on teachers, nurses, and contractors saving for retirement.

Republicans earned their share of this. They held the House, the Senate, and the White House, then spent the time arguing with each other. The White House pulled more than 50 nominees in 2025, the most in a single year in decades, many after Republican senators balked. When President Trump demanded an end to the filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act, a senior GOP aide told Time that 15 of the 20 Republican senators summoned to the White House were a hard no. I respect the 60-vote rule as a brake, and I'd defend it. But a party can't hold every lever, refuse to pull any, and act surprised when voters hand the levers to the other side. Vice President JD Vance now says the party lost because of the Iran war and cost-of-living worries.

Calm has a case, and it's a fair one. Gridlock usually soothes investors. The S and P 500 has risen an average of 15.5 percent in the six months after the last 14 midterms, going back to 1970, according to Edward Jones. Democrats lack a filibuster-proof Senate majority, and the president can veto what they pass. Wednesday's rally priced exactly that.

A veto stops bills. It doesn't stop subpoenas. Rep. Robert Garcia will chair House Oversight and plans to investigate corporate corruption alongside the Trump family business. Sen. Elissa Slotkin told a University of Chicago audience she wants prosecutions of Trump's enablers to carry "that deterrence message" to graduates weighing administration jobs. A party that wants to look to the future shouldn't spend it on investigations and on frightening young staffers. UBS economist Jonathan Pingle notes that Democrats must now approve any new Fed governors.

Republicans have three moves left. They control both chambers until the new Congress is seated, so they should confirm the qualified nominees in the queue and pass whatever can clear now. Governors who still want the AI buildout should win it, because data center policy is set largely at the state and utility-commission level, according to LPL Research's Jeff Buchbinder, and predictable permitting and power will beat a federal fight. Savers should control what they can: the savings rate, the allocation, and the urge to sell at the bottom. After 30 years managing money for families, I can tell you the last one costs the most.

Margaret Thatcher put it bluntly in a television interview: socialist governments "always run out of other people's money." California has spent three decades testing that theory and keeps finding new pockets. Republicans have until January to prove they understand what they hold, and voters will render another verdict in 2028. Wall Street needed two days to price the risk. Californians needed nearly 30 years. The rest of us should skip the wait.

One Nation, Under Judgment? Spiritual Implications of the Election Results

America should not be surprised that our nation, largely existing in flagrant rejection of God’s Word, is reaping the consequences of its own rebellion.

The 2026 midterm elections, with the Democratic takeover of both houses of Congress, have delivered painful setbacks for Republicans and a significant political shift in Washington. The larger question confronting America is not simply which political party wins elections. It is whether our nation is experiencing the consequences of turning away from Almighty God.

From a Biblical perspective, there is a sobering likelihood that the United States of America is a nation under judgment by God.

Throughout Scripture, God holds nations accountable for their conduct. Proverbs 14:34 declares, “Righteousness exalts a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.” When a society celebrates what God condemns, marginalizes biblical morality, disregards the sanctity of human life, and increasingly substitutes government dependency for personal responsibility, it cannot expect God’s blessing indefinitely.

The Inconvenient (but Very Relevant) Question

American Christians must confront a question: Where have our pastors been?

The great failure of the American evangelical church is the reluctance of many pastors to address the moral and spiritual implications of political issues. Sunday after Sunday, congregations hear sermons about personal relationships, forgiveness, generosity, and platitudes about Christian living. Those subjects are important. But where are the sermons condemning abortion, supporting the sanctity of human life, religious liberty, constitutional government, and the moral foundations upon which a free society depends?

Where are the pastors’ sermons condemning transgenderism, vocally supporting Israel, denouncing antisemitism, and saying that Muslims are spiritually lost and in need of Jesus? Answer: You’ll never hear sermons on these topics in your local church. Why? Because sermons like these come from pastors with courage. Today’s pastors do not realize that biblical faithfulness does not exist in a context of political silence.


When Scripture speaks clearly about the sanctity of life, sexual morality, honesty, justice, and personal responsibility, pastors have an obligation to teach those truths, even when they become politically controversial.

Malachi 2:1-9 contains a sobering warning to spiritual leaders who fail in their responsibility to teach God’s law faithfully. The Lord rebukes priests who have turned aside from their calling and caused others to stumble through their instruction. 2 Peter 2:17 similarly warns about false teachers, describing them as wells without water. These passages should remind every pastor that spiritual leadership carries an enormous responsibility. Silence, compromise, and the abandonment of biblical truth are not harmless.

A Matter Deserving Far Greater Attention From American Pulpits: Voting As Stewardship

The privilege of voting is not merely a political convenience. It is a responsibility. Christians have been entrusted with opportunities, freedoms, and civic privileges that believers in many other nations do not enjoy. Those privileges should be exercised thoughtfully and prayerfully.

A Christian’s faith should influence every area of life, including decisions made in the voting booth. If the Bible teaches that human life is sacred, that truth cannot suddenly become irrelevant when evaluating public policy. If Scripture teaches personal accountability, honesty, sexual integrity, and justice, those convictions should inform our understanding of candidates and their platforms.

Indifference is not an acceptable option for Christians. James 4:17 reminds us that knowing to do good and failing to do it is sin. Christians should seriously examine whether political apathy, unwillingness to become informed, or refusal to participate in the public square amounts to neglecting responsibilities God has entrusted to them.

Voting is a matter that deserves prayerful moral examination. Christians should not casually excuse positions that contradict fundamental biblical teachings simply because a candidate belongs to a favored political party. Every candidate must be evaluated against principles of righteousness, truth, justice, and human dignity.

The Democratic Party’s embrace of policies that conflict with biblical teachings should be a matter of serious concern. Christians need pastors willing to explain issues that are not mere political disagreements but issues on which the Bible has unequivocally spoken.

America’s present political circumstances should therefore provoke more than frustration among conservative Christians. They should provoke repentance, prayer, renewed commitment, and action.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy is not simply that America is changing politically. It is that so many churches have failed to prepare their congregations to understand the moral and spiritual stakes involved.

We need pastors who will courageously preach the whole counsel of God. We need Christians who understand that citizenship carries responsibilities. We need families who teach their children that religious liberty, constitutional government, personal responsibility, and the sanctity of human life are worth defending.

And above all, we need a spiritual awakening.

Political victories cannot save America. Only God can bring genuine national repentance and spiritual renewal. But ungodly policies can definitely harm America for generations.

2 Chronicles 7:14 still offers a timeless prescription: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

Perhaps it is time for America’s pastors to stop worrying so much about offending people and start worrying about offending God.

A nation needs courageous leaders. But it also needs courageous pastors. And the American church must decide whether it will faithfully proclaim God’s truth or remain silent while the nation drifts further away from Him. 

Trump’s Second Term—the Counterrevolution Explained

 

But the second half of that rise is what is he actually doing in his first years of presidency, and what is the point of it?

In the prior video, as I said, he wanted to address the progressive revolution, how they took power without being elected. By that, I mean control of the institutions even when they did not have the Supreme Court, the Congress, or the presidency.

So, he said, “This time I’m not gonna complain about the symptoms. I’m going to look at the causes.”

So, he wanted to have zero immigration, zero immigration that was illegal, and cut back on immigration from countries where people were coming antithetical to the values and traditions of the United States, not assimilating, not acculturating, and not integrating, and often being very critical of the country that was so generously their host on the first day they set foot into it.

So, he revolutionized immigration. For the first time in about 50 years, we did not have more immigrants than Americans being born. It’s the first year that immigration will fall until we can properly integrate people into the American tradition.

He also said, “If we do what Europe does with green energy, and the Biden and Obama administrations have put us on that disastrous pathway, we will be a third-rate nation.”

Solar and wind are good auxiliary sources of power. They cannot be subsidized at forty cents a kilowatt, like here in California, to provide reliable twenty-four-hour power. They will not work.

We have enough natural gas and oil to be, if we are wise, to be the greatest producer of both in the history of civilization. And indeed, that’s where we are today.

He greenlined new leasings, the construction of new pipelines, and, of course, encouraged fracking. In addition, he’s encouraging nuclear power, smaller decentralized nuclear power, more hydroelectric, more everything.

The third thing is he said, we hollowed out the interior of the United States. We just simply said they’re losers. We offshored. We outsourced. The coasts got wealthy.

They had a global audience for their media, their lawyers, their executives, their CEOs, their insurance, their academics of seven billion people.

The people in between, often the muscular classes, fell short under globalization. I’m going to tell the world that one way to reduce their huge surpluses, we have over a trillion dollars in trade deficits. If they come to the United States and they build plants and they invest in our superior Constitution, our superior legal system, our cheap energy, they will make money, and they will hire Americans.

And already we have somewhere between $10 and $15 trillion in the pipeline of foreign investment.

He also said that we have too many regulations and we have too many people working for government. He let go 270,000 federal employees. We forget about that.

He looked at the military and said it’s been creeping for a long time, insidiously so, DEI programs. The Left likes the military because there is no discussion. There is no vote. There’s no argumentation about DEI. Once you get to the Pentagon, and you tell them we want DEI or else in a Democratic administration, then it’s the chain of command, and change happens like that.

And the results are we have about 50,000 recruits short. Donald Trump said his first year in office, and we’re going to get rid of DEI. And, of course, what happened? 50,000 Americans showed up. We’ve had the best recruiting years in a decade. We’ve got the highest energy production in a decade. We’ve got the most job creations from foreign investment probably in a decade.

He did. He wanted a couple of other things as well. He wanted American preeminence in the world in the broadest sense of the word. He increased the defense budget. He changed the idea from a few defense contractors with very expensive platforms, $160 million for an F-22, $90 million for an F-35. They’re great planes. $14 billion for a carrier.

We can shift a little bit now that we have those investments into quantity as well as quality. Why not build a million drones a year? We’re trying to build 350,000. Why not have 20,000 Tomahawks produced a year?

He also said that he was going to promote American companies, sort of like the War Production Board of FDR. FDR was a leftist. The corporations in World War II were rightist. But he brought in William Knudsen from GM, Henry Kaiser, Henry Ford, and said, “Go to it. I’m not going to regulate you. Produce, produce, produce, and we’ll win the war.”

Donald Trump was just the opposite. He was a rightist, and the companies were mostly in Silicon Valley, especially leftists. He brought them all in and he said, “If you make America preeminent in software, digital media, space launches, satellite launches, bioengineering, artificial intelligence, what’s gonna determine who leads the world in the next 50 years, I’m gonna protect you from Canadian regulation, from European arbitrary fining, from Chinese patent and copyright theft, as long as you put your country first.”

And what are we looking at now? If you look at those categories I just delineated, American companies are eight to nine of the top 10 in AI, in digital media, in satellite launches. Elon Musk, by June this year, has launched more satellites than all the satellites in history. In history. So we are dominating all the new fields.

He also said the world has taken advantage of us, or at least sized us up as ossified, calcified, asleep, and the result is American power and prestige is waning throughout the world.

I’m gonna go down to Latin America. I’m gonna get the Chinese and Russians, if I can, out of Venezuela. I’ll stop the Maduro communist spread of countries. I’ll get the Chinese out of Panama. Instead of having 28 of the 32 Caribbean nations anti-American, for the most part, anti-capitalist, anti-Western, we’ll flip them.

And as we speak today, all but four or five countries in Latin America are pro-U.S. and pro-capitalist, with the exception maybe of Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, Nicaragua.

He also said we have to look at the Middle East. We have an existential problem. Iran is getting closer and closer to getting a nuclear weapon. We had a one-day strike. Apparently, we didn’t get all of the nuclear materials.

So, on Feb. 28th of 2026, in a very controversial move when the economy was going very well, oil prices were near historic lows, he took on the 93-million-person Iran, and he said that I will bomb their infrastructure but not their dual-use infrastructure. I do not want to destroy their oil sector. I do not want to destroy their bridges, their highways, their factories. I want the Iranian people to have an infrastructure when they get rid of this odious regime.

It’s a very hard thing to do. There were certain taboos. He said no ground troops. No dual-use targeting like Barack Obama did in Libya and Bill Clinton did in Serbia.

And here we are into our ninth month. People are unhappy about the war. Oil has gone up over $100 a barrel, even though more oil is leaving the Gulf through the Red Sea, the Gulf of Oman, and the Hormuz Strait than before. But we have sort of a bottleneck with distilleries.

People are very angry. It may cost Donald Trump the midterms, people are predicting. But the point of this is that if you can strangle the Iranian regime, strip away its money, strip away its nuclear threat, strip away its missiles, strip away its subordinates, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, from their source of income, the entire Middle East will start to change.

And again, he’s not nation-building, no boots on the ground. No, we’re gonna make a democracy here or there. No, what he’s saying is that Shia minorities and terrorist groups are funded by Iran, and they make it impossible to have a stable pro-Western Middle East. I’m going to address not the symptoms, but the cause of this.

I’d like to finish with, very quickly, Europe. Trump is not critical of Europe in the hostile sense, nor is his administration. What they envision is a partnership, but that’s impossible right now because European fertility is about 1.35. They have open borders. They have, in some European nations, 15% of unassimilated immigrants, mostly from the hostile Middle East. And when you count first- and second-generation, that number can get up in some countries to 30% or 40% of the population.

In a democratic society, they’re captive to that very powerful constituency. Until recently, they were pretty much disarmed. Even 2% of GDP, which they have just achieved, is pretty meager.

They have made disastrous choices on energy and shut down their fossil fuel industry for all practical purposes and are paying for highly subsidized, highly inefficient wind and solar, especially in places like the United Kingdom and Germany.

I could go on and on, but what I’m getting at is it makes them weaker than they should be for a 500-million-person EU with a $20 trillion GDP. We want them to be strong. Remember, we have about 100, we have about 340 million people. They have 500 million, and our GDP is $10 trillion larger.

So, what we want is Europe to be confident and armed and a partner and to resist the Russia-China axis, not in a hostile way, just a rivalry. But when you’re failing economically, and you have these open borders, and there’s a threat that under your system that these immigrants will get a very powerful voice in your government, then you get insecure. And when you get insecure, you get angry and envious.

And we can’t be partners when we’re not equals. And they are not equal to us economically or militarily, and they can be ’cause they’ve done it before.

So, what Trump is trying to say in this counterrevolution, as it applies to foreign affairs: Be strong, be a partner, take half the responsibility, and we will get along better than ever.

Exposes Oakland’s Lawlessness

 

person 2: let’s start talking about Oakland, which I know you’re very familiar with, and you probably had to dodge the bullets there or whatever.

person 1: Yes. I have to drive through there to Santa Rosa once or twice a year, and if I get on an off ramp, you know, I am very leery. Yeah.

person 2: Well, yeah. Lock the doors. So here’s an article, really interesting article from City Journal, Sanjana Friedman. It’s called “Oakland’s Experiment in Anarchy.” I’ll read here quickly. “What would happen to a city if its government effectively stopped enforcing laws protecting public space and private property?

“Oakland has been testing this proposition. You know, its violent high crime rate is four and a half times the national average. But in addition to that, in recent years, the city has also struggled to enforce laws against illegal dumping, burglary, car break-ins, and squatting. As a result, much of the city is buried under trash, according to a recent government report, which found that the city collects some 20 million pounds of illegally dumped debris.

“Also, Oakland has the highest level of property crime of any large city in the U.S. It solves these crimes at a rate of just 0.1%, not 1%, 0.1%, meaning that one in every 1,000 property crimes is reported to the Oakland Police and it results in arrests. City’s also become home to a shadow industry of squatter removal services, including one whose sword-wielding operators promise to help landlords reclaim homes from unauthorized occupants.

“Why? Because the city’s sheriff’s office takes months to act.”

This is what becomes and has become of a major American city. Victor, your thoughts as a Californian or just as an American on this?

person 1: Well, this is a lab test. We have candidates that are running as I speak, not as you will hear this, but I am talking on Monday afternoon, and they have told us that if you defund the police, if you don’t— you had cash bail, if you don’t arrest people for breaking the existing laws, if you feel that empty houses that are either up for sale or their second homes are not really the owners’, but they are the communal property in which the dispossessed have a right to go squat, even though that’s against the law.

And if you believe AOC or Abdul El-Sayed or Zohran Mamdani, who said he was going to go after richer, whiter neighborhoods, AOC said the chief existential threat in America, it’s white supremacy. Ilhan Omar trumped her on that and said white racism. But the point I’m making is that this is what you want.

This is what people vote for. It is—if you’re a leftist Democrat and you’re a socialist, you say Oakland’s our place. There’s very few white people. There’s no white rage, no white supremacy, no white privilege, because there’s no white people there. Essentially, I mean, there are some up in the Oakland Hills in Piedmont, but that’s a separate, almost a separate enclave.

But Oakland itself is a DEI city. It has all minority police, basically. It has minority civic government. It has minority executive branch, minority mayor, and more importantly, they’re all left-wing and socialist. So they did defund the police. They don’t arrest people. They feel squatters have a right, and this is what you get, and people are going to be voting on that.

So really, Oakland’s on the ballot, and this is their utopia. And they would say, not like you and I or our listeners, they would say, well, you’re just an old white guy, and, you know, come to Oakland. It’s a wonderful place. It’s a people city. And yeah, we get our hair mussed up now and then, but, you know, homeless people are homeless people.

They have a right to be in the sidewalk, and they defecate and inject and urinate, but that’s not a big deal. And property is not really property. It doesn’t belong to people. It’s communal. And we here in Oakland are a communal city, and we believe in green energy, and we believe in open borders, and we don’t allow ICE here. And look at the result.

And the result is that no one would really want to live there. And those that do live there would like to move. How close it is to insane wealth. And yet it is such a, you know, pre-Detroit type of city. Oh, I mean, yeah, if you go across the freeway into Piedmont… I had a very strange experience.

I was asked to speak at a country club near Piedmont, and there were wonderful people there, but I had to get gasoline because I was trying to… So I made a left turn coming into Oakland Piedmont into a service station that was completely closed down. So then I went further into the neighborhood, and I found one, but the person from the Middle East that was in the window had so many bars and tinted glass, I couldn’t even know who it was on speaker.

And two of the gas pumps were not working, so I was in line, and it was pretty scary. There were people coming up to me and asked for $5. Then I got out and went across on-ramp, and I went up to the Piedmont area, the hills to the east of Oakland. And when I was looking for a parking place in beautiful homes, it’s not very big, but I parked, and within, I would say, 10 seconds, a private security guard said, “You do not have a sticker.

What are you doing here?” And I said, “I’m trying to find this person. I’m supposed to give a lecture at his house.” “Oh, I know who he is. Follow me. Get in your car.”

So then I drove, followed him, and then he said, I showed had to show him my ID, and it was like wonderful in the sense… So there were two different antithetical communities right next to each other.

There was no middle class that I could see of, but that’s what we—

person 2: I had one experience in Oakland, Victor. I picked somebody up at the airport, and then he was hungry. So we went to a Denny’s, and I don’t—I believe the Denny’s has been closed, is now closed, but I thought I was in some kind of security operation.

I’ve never been in a restaurant that seems so concerned about thievery or likely thievery. And then around it, there were chickens everywhere running around the outside of the Denny’s. And I thought, “Is this a major American city?” I mean, there’s nothing wrong with chickens, don’t get me wrong. And I’m sorry—but we’re attacking Oakland because I know the former governor, Jerry Brown, who was also the former mayor there, occasionally listens to this show, and he might get—

person 1: I think he was, more or less, as mayors go, successful. I think it was a different place when he was there. But he doesn’t represent the Democratic Party anymore. It’s moved way beyond Jerry Brown liberalism. It’s into insanity right now as we’re—I’m thinking about what these people are running on.

Basically, you got to remember the Democratic Party is an anti-Semitic party. It really is.

Hasan Parker was right about that. No Jewish candidate could be nominated for their party nomination. If they did, they would have a civil war in that party. It’s just not going to happen. And no one could say that they were for fossil fuels or fracking or a closed border or deportation or supported ICE, period.

They will cut the military. They would do all of it. That’s who they are. And Oakland is their model city. It really is. They don’t want to live there themselves. Bernie Sanders doesn’t, with his three homes. And Spartacus, who grew up in a very wealthy neighborhood, wouldn’t want to live there. And Kamala Harris, I guess she moved from Brentwood to Malibu, $20 million home, something like that.

She doesn’t want to live there. And Hillary Clinton in her mansion and Barack Obama in his fort, they wouldn’t want to live there, but they support the idea of Oakland for other people.

What the Midterm Election Results Mean for 2028

 

person 1: We have to remember that, in the last 126 years, since 1900, when the party in the White House faces a midterm—whether its first or second—90% of the time it loses House seats. Ninety percent. 

Tony person 2: Yes, sir. 

person 1: And 75% to 80% of those administrations lose Senate seats, depending on how you count some independents. So, the odds were 90% against this administration avoiding House losses. That’s No. 1. 

That said, I’m not sure it’s going to change much, because the presidency has evolved, for good or ill, into an imperial presidency. I’ll give you an example. 

person 2: The Wilsonian state, yeah. 

person 1: Yes. Presidents [Barack] Obama and [Bill] Clinton had worse midterm losses in 2010 and 1994 than anyone except FDR in 1938. They came in with huge House and Senate majorities and held the White House. By the time of their last midterm, with two years left in their second terms, they had lost both the House and Senate, and dramatically so. And nothing happened. 

What I mean by that is Clinton said he didn’t need congressional authority to bomb Serbia for 77 days, and he did it. He said, “I’ll work with Gingrich, and I’ll get two more years of balanced budgets,” and he did. He said, “At the last moment, I want to have a Palestinian-Israeli summit,” and he did. 

Domestically, of course, they had executive orders. Obama said, “I have a pen and a phone. It’s not going to affect me,” and it didn’t. In foreign policy, the last years were the most radical of his eight. He recognized Cuba and restored full recognition to Communist Cuba. Then he entered into this disastrous Iran deal and said it wasn’t a treaty, so he didn’t need the Senate. I thought the worst was the Paris climate accord. 

person 2: Right, right. 

person 1: My point is that a few things will make a difference. I don’t think [President Donald] Trump will be able to get judges confirmed with a Democratic majority, if they take the Senate, and I think they will. I’m not sure, but I think they will. These people will not approve a single district or circuit court judge, much less a Supreme Court justice. That’s for sure. 

And we know that in the House, there will be a circus of subpoenas, impeachment, and lawfare. We’ll see that nonstop. 

But Clinton and Obama left office with 70% and 59% popularity, respectively. They were more popular than they’d ever been. I think part of the reason is that the party that wins a big midterm overreacts. Its members get a little crazy and say things. In 1998, I didn’t approve of Clinton’s behavior, but the economy was booming. They tried to impeach him, and that was very unpopular. 

So, I think the Democrats will overreach, No. 1. Then the presidential campaign heats up. We saw that with George W. Bush and Al Gore. Clinton just watched them beat each other over the head. Gore didn’t even want Clinton campaigning for him, and Clinton became Mr. Statesman. 

The same thing happened with Obama. Trump and Hillary [Clinton] went at it. The less you saw or heard of Obama, the more popular the idea of Obama in the abstract became. 

I think Trump will do what he wants in foreign policy. He’ll use executive orders and vetoes in domestic policy. He won’t get judicial nominations through. 

The only caveat is how big this blue wave becomes. He has to prevent a 60-vote Senate. By that, I mean he needs his entire Republican Senate minority to stand in lockstep with him, so you don’t get a [Sen. Lisa] Murkowski or somebody else joining Democrats to override a key veto, such as one involving opening the border. Otherwise, they could end up governing the country. 

The other thing I’m worried about is the ramifications for 2028. We had not seen a socialist win a statewide race. We all said, “Well, [New York City Mayor Zohran] Mamdani was in New York. That’s a weird place.” Or [Rep. Darializa Avila] Chevalier, and, you know, she’s in a district that’s left-wing. 

But if [Abdul] El-Sayed wins, and [James] Talarico is just as radical and may win, and [Angela] Nixon came very close, then the implications are significant. If they go into 2028 with this hold on Congress, I don’t think they’re going to nominate a Josh Shapiro. I can tell you that. 

Someone like [California Gov. Gavin] Newsom is a chameleon. He’ll adapt to however left he has to be. He made it clear on a hidden recording that that’s where the energy was. 

person 2: Yes, and someone like [Sen.] Jon Ossoff. 

person 1: Exactly. Jon Ossoff is just Newsom without the record. 

If they go into 2028 in that position, the election really will be for the fate of the country, because they’re not just saying, “We want a socialist agenda.” They’re saying, “We’re going to get rid of the Electoral College without following the Constitution and amending it. We’re going to use the voter compact.”

They’re going to open the border and bring in two new states. They’re not going to say they need three-quarters of the states or two-thirds of the Senate to approve anything. They’re just going to do it. 

I imagine they’ll get rid of the filibuster very soon if they win the Senate. They’ll pack the court. They’ll defund policing in cities. DEI and all of that will be back if they win the presidency. So, 2028 is going to be very important.