Dems Take the Gloves Off (with David Plouffe)

Runaway Country with Alex Wagner

Crooked Media

Politics, Government, Society & Culture, News

4.8 • 12.8K Ratings

🗓️ 30 October 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Alex talks about the hottest issue leading up to next week’s election….the 2026 election. California’s Proposition 50 is a power play by Governor Newsom and Democrats to fight back against Republican gerrymandering in Texas, in the hopes of saving Democratic seats in Congress in the midterm elections. Now a firestorm has ignited with states across the country launching redistricting efforts, and both parties have come to play. First, Alex hears about grassroots efforts to tackle the issue from Richard von Glahn, the Executive Director of People Not Politicians in Missouri. Then she speaks to democratic strategist David Plouffe about the moral quandary Democrats find themselves in, and why our hyper partisan political environment necessitates a gloves-off approach.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, everyone. Election Day 2025 is five days away, but perhaps you have noticed that everyone this week is talking about Election Day 2026, the midterm elections.
0:12.8	Now, every election matters, even and especially the 2025 elections. Governors races are in Virginia and New Jersey. There is Mamdani madness in New York City.
0:23.5	But in the age of Donald Trump, elections that determine the balance of power at the national
0:28.3	level are crucial. With the president who has spent the last nine months trying to establish
0:33.5	himself as a monarch, literally, and has been enabled to do this by a Republican Congress.
0:39.6	One of the most powerful bulwarks against Trump crowning himself king and continuing to ride
0:44.9	roughshod over our U.S. Constitution is the House of Representatives.
0:49.8	If Democrats can flip the House in the 26 midterms, it would be a significant safeguard for American democracy.
0:57.2	Trump could be stopped legislatively, he could be investigated officially and actually,
1:02.2	and otherwise just held accountable on a number of fronts.
1:06.2	This is not a false hope.
1:08.7	Midterm elections, if you remember, often punish the party in power. And right now,
1:13.2	the party in power is terrorizing communities with ice dragnets, storming cities with National Guard
1:20.2	troops, and oh, by the way, sending the cost of living through the roof. So Democrats taking back
1:25.7	the lower chamber is a very, very real possibility, which is
1:29.5	exactly why Trump is trying to stop this using every tool he has. But this time, Democrats seem
1:37.2	ready to fight fire with fire. I'm Alex Wagner, and this is runaway country. In today's episode, we'll be talking about Trump's
1:46.0	pressure campaign to gerrymander the hell out of blue votes in red states and how it's all
1:51.0	unfolding on the ground. Back in July, the president convinced lawmakers in Texas to redraw their
1:57.2	voting maps, which was not something they were scheduled to do until a year 2030 when
2:01.6	there was a new census. And these new Texas maps now guarantee Republicans five more seats in the
2:07.6	House. But Trump didn't stop there. He is now called for partisan redistricting in a number of
	...

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