What was the cat's name again Toby? This is Izzy. Thank you for asking. I don't know where I don't know where I got Toby

She can meow into the microphone if that's helpful for audio first cold open meow

Can you meow?

No, but you can hear me

It's like I do not meow on on command

Hello, and welcome to the 538 politics podcast. I'm Galen Druke the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel dominated American politics over the weekend with candidates and

Politicians sharing their reactions to the violence and now the ongoing war and I'll just say the images are very hard to watch and my heart goes out to everyone

affected we had a packed show already planned for you today and we still do but we're going to take some time to talk about how the attacks and war are reshaping politics in Washington and on the campaign trail and also of course how this intersects with a currently speakerless house of representatives so far the speakers race appears to be between Louisiana representative Steve Scalese and Ohio representative Jim Jordan though some moderates have made the push to consider re-electing Kevin McCartney

In light of the war in the Middle East there are also some notable development secure at home that we're going to get to last week Biden appeared to pivot on border security with the administration waving 26 federal laws to make way for 20 miles of border wall in South Texas

Democratic mayors of big cities have been increasingly critical of the White House over the migrant crisis and Americans opinions of Biden and Democrats approach to immigration are at historic lows

also reports suggest that Robert F Kennedy Jr. is planning to announce an independent bid for the White House today Monday October 9th so how would that impact the two-way vote between Democrats and Republicans next November

we'll try to answer that and then lastly 538 is launching its state level averages of the Republican primary today now you can see how the candidates are performing state by state in the early states

so we'll let you know who looks strongest other than Trump in those early states lots to talk about as I said so let's get to it here with me to discuss our senior elections analyst Jeffrey Scalese hey Jeff

Hey Galen all's here with us is politics reporter Leah Skarnum Leah welcome to the podcast

Hi thanks for having me

So over the weekend lawmakers and candidates put out statements on the attacks on Israel and the country's response in Gaza

just from a starting point how much daylight is there either within the parties or between the two parties on this issue because we've heard an awful lot and I think there are some at least clear differences at this point Jeff

You know I would say that you know basically all Republicans and then most Democrats have expressed support for Israel obviously Biden president Biden came out and said you know we support Israel we condemn these attacks

and it looks like the Biden administration is getting ready to try to send more military assistance so from that perspective I don't know if there's a ton of daylight

But there is I mean there are clearly some some differences within the Democratic Party I would say in particular you have particularly among sort of the progressive left greater support for Palestinians in general and that has I think sort of translated in this particular moment into less over criticism of Hamas even while maybe condemning the situation is entirety

And this is you know Republicans have attacked Democrats generally probably pointing to these members of Congress like Ilyan Omar or Rashid Tileeb for or a quarry bush who are sort of members of the squad as it's often called for basically supporting Palestine and the even while Israel's been attacked so that's sort of how like if you're talking about divides or daylight that's sort of where I see see that situation

Yeah I think that was probably the most obvious cleavage you also think about on the Republican side there are isolationists who have been increasingly vocal over the past decade obviously Trump is in part one of those people Mike Pence was on the shows over the weekend saying that you know it's the isolationists and the Republican party that are allowing things like this to happen

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