Hey, everyone, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the bulwark, and you are watching a very fresh bulwark take with Lauren Egan. And we're going to try not to laugh throughout this because we're going to be talking about Lauren's latest newsletter, which is objectively, it's objectively great. Yeah, it's like watering. I know. It's going to be bad. How are we going to get

through this? Lauren has decided that, let's just back up for a second. Lauren last week called me and

said, I'm going to write a newsletter about how Democrats want to run more hot candidates for

office. And I thought it was a joke at first. But then she said, no, this is empirically true. I've had many

conversations in which Democratic operatives have said we need more hot candidates on the ballot.

And so me, this is always about me. I said, sure, go for it. Why not? And that's where we're at.

So Lauren, I guess I want to know how this kind of popped up

originally because we didn't really talk about that. Like, this just comes up randomly that

Democratic operatives thinks they need, they need to run like more hot people. Is that really

what happens? Truly, that's what happens. So I feel like this started a couple months ago.

Just like talking to operatives about, you know, this big question. What do

Democrats do to win back power? How do you repair the brand? All of that. And at first, it was

kind of a joke, like, oh, we just need to run more hot people. And then it actually like kind of

turned into a real thing. People are like, no, like this is real. are seen as this, like, sexless party of a bunch of nerdy

teachers, pets, kids. And, like, the best way to sort of shed that reputation is to run hot people.

So it's very much a real thing.

How real, though, come on. Like, when they say run hot people, I mean, are we talking about, like, let's just, like, find, you know, people on only fans and see if they can hack it? Okay. Well, I think everyone starts with the disclaimer that being hot in D.C., the bar is lower. This is not just D.C., though. These people are running from around the country. Okay, fine. Politics. In politics, the bar is lower. But I think what this is like really about is like, I mean, it's obviously like kind of ridiculous and we're cracking up and laughing about it. But I do think it's kind of another way. It's a little, you know, it's a weird conversation to be having. I mean, it's funny. But I think it's like a manifestation

of this larger post-Biden gerontocracy. Like we want younger people in office. We want to be the party

that's more culturally relevant again. And I think this is just like an offshoot of some of that.

Well, I mean, sure. Yeah. I think that's right. I mean, one of the reactions to your piece,

and there's been a lot of reactions we'll get into it in a little bit is a minute a litman who we love

here, who runs the organization run for something, which is about getting people to just run for office.

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