This is an IHeart podcast.

Hey guys, we are back on normal.

The show with normalish takes for when the news gets weird and it's always weird.

And in the absence of my dear friend Carol Markowitz, who is actually going to enjoy her trip and vacation,

I have called in a ringer.

My friend Matt Whitlock, he has been with the

National Republican Senatorial Committee, a couple of Senate offices, long-time Republican

communicator and strategist, and host of the 10-minute drill podcast, which is exactly what it

sounds like. If you want your information in 10 minutes, you go get it from Matt Whitlock.

How are you doing, Matt? Great to be with you. This is very exciting. Huge fan of the show. I will do my best to fill in, but my takes will not be quite as saucy. I don't have the accent, you know, of Carol, but I will do my best. Sometimes when she gets really heated, she gets like extra accenting. I really like that. So I'm going to do my best here. This is controversial. This is your first hot take because Carol will tell you she doesn't have an accent. Well, I think we can roll the tape. Luckily, there's lots of record of her talking and we can... It's like me. I don't have an accent either. I don't know what you're talking about. There you go. Okay. So let us start today with the New York Times reporting on the autopsy that Democrats are

doing on the 2024 election. Now, for those who are not super political junkies and maybe don't know

this term, an autopsy is basically what it sounds like, which is

there's a dead campaign that lost and you have to look back at its mistakes and examine what

killed it. It is what it sounds like, right? Yeah, the Republicans most famously did this in 2012

after Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama. And then also famously, Trump tossed out every conclusion

from that autopsy and did the exact opposite. And here we are with him and his second term.

It seemed to work out. Yeah. Who knows, man? So they're, they're an imperfect analysis, but they're a way

for parties to get their heads around this. What's going on with the one for 2024?

I love this story. I love the genre. I love the idea of trying to pick apart what went wrong.

But in this case, I think a lot of us who watch this election play out would argue an autopsy

is not really necessary. We know a lot of went wrong. But if you're going to do an autopsy,

you can't cut out the biggest reason,

...