Good day, Nexters, from coast to coast and around the world. Thank you for being part of Next Up.

I'm Mark Halperin, editor-in-chief of the live interactive video platform two-way and your guide to everything that's next up in politics, media, and beyond.

We've done the last couple episodes with a heavy focus on media. Today, our guest is someone from the media.

My friend Joe Scarborough, host of the Morning Joe on MSNBC,

but our focus is not going to be much on the media, although we'll talk some about it,

more on the Democratic Party.

This Trump phenomenon, 10 years now, of Donald Trump dominating international politics, there's a lot of angles to it.

I think arguably the biggest and most undercover angle is how Democrats have grappled with him for the last 10 years.

You can't say they've been that successful. He's won two out of three presidential races, and while he's not done as well down ballot,

it's certainly the case that Donald Trump gets his way a lot.

And he has for the last six months in this term.

So what we're going to talk to Joe about, what I'm going to talk about in my reported monologue, is this question of how are Democrats doing?

And to the extent they're not succeeding battling Donald Trump, why not?

Are they doing the wrong things? Are they doing the right

things poorly? There's no one I know who knows more about this question than Joe. I'm just,

he and I talk about this stuff all the time, so excited to share that conversation with you.

Because Democrats who are so frustrated and former Republicans who've left the party of

Donald Trump, they're so frustrated by how often he wins.

They have so little respect for him.

And most of them don't know him.

And I think part of why they don't do well going up against him is they don't understand

him.

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