Hello there I'm Chuck Todd and this is the Chuck Todd cast.

As we start to get a deeper understanding of what happened during the 2022 midterm elections,

we want to understand who actually voted and what it means for the future of both parties

and we've done a lot on the Republican side and much of the mainstream media has been

focused on the Republicans' failure to essentially perform a lot better than they did but we've had

much less of a focus on whether Democrats have some lessons to learn out of this election.

So my guest today is someone who focuses on this, Roy Cheshire, progressive writer and scholar

who focuses on the American electorate, he's co-author of the seminal 2004 book, The Emerging

Democratic Majority. In July, he left the Center for American Progress and joined the American Enterprise

Institute as a senior fellow. Roy, welcome back to the podcast. How are you?

Time to be here Chuck. So I look at these midterms and there's no doubt Republicans have a lot,

you know, I joke, we knew the results of these midterms on October 1st in this respect.

Whatever party was deemed the loser was going to have to face up to its problems,

its factual problems inside their party and whichever party was deemed the quote winner,

they would probably paper over the issues that they have. And look, the Democratic issues with

Trump, I'm not saying they've ripped the bandaid totally open, but there is open dialogue,

open conversation, they're having the type of conversation, a political party that loses or does

better, worse than expected, should be having. Let's talk about the Democrats. They did better

than expected. But what lessons should they be taken away? Where do you begin?

Well, yeah, I mean, I think the contrast is interesting that you alluded to. Republicans are

having long, loud, agonized conversations about how they want, why they underperformed. And there's

calls all over the map in every part of the party except for the really, really, really hardcore

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