Hey, Raw America family. Welcome to the Sunday Wrapup. I’m here with my cup of coffee, and I’ve got a lot to catch you up on this week.
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Trump has a line he’s been repeating at rallies: vote as if I were on the ballot.
A 24-year-old Texas grad student who voted for him in 2020 told The New York Times this week he’ll do exactly that: “Not vote.”
The Times sent Sabrina Tavernise to southwest Michigan this week. Nearly three dozen interviews found few people still enthusiastic about Trump.
Lindsay Kronemeyer knocked doors for Trump in 2016 and 2020. The only yard signs in her deep-red county this year are for a judge. “He’s just not there in my head anymore,” she said.
At Kent County GOP headquarters, bags of brochures sit in a pile because nobody will pick them up.
“There’s very low energy on the Republican side,” a party official said.
Then there’s Jim Pasek. He’s 80, a retired plant maintenance worker, and he voted for Trump twice. He watched Trump start a war he promised he wouldn’t. Gas prices have shot up to five dollars, which Trump calls chump change.
“He’s not making sense,” Pasek said. “It confuses me, and then I just get disgusted and tune out.”
His granddaughter works three jobs and has struggled to find a house she can afford.
Politico Charlie Cook has a name for this: the red undertow. It’s the Trump brand going under, and it will “pull many Republicans under” with it.
The Times/Siena poll, one of the most reliable, has Democrats up by seven among registered voters, and up by nine among the likeliest to show up.
I won’t oversell it. Trump’s loyalists have dodged pollsters before. But the signs are looking good.
An undertow only matters if somebody’s swimming the other way. This week, three Democrats stood up.
James Talarico is 37. He taught middle school on San Antonio’s West Side, went to seminary, and served four terms in the Texas House. He’s running for Senate in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat statewide since 1994.
Talarico invokes religion in a way Democrats haven’t done in years. His stump speech quotes the Gospel of Matthew: “The greatest among you will be a servant.” Then he says this: “That is a radical idea in a world obsessed with power, and wealth, and status.”
He also recently nailed Elon Musk: “Why do we have a trillionaire when veterans are sleeping on the streets? The reason poverty exists is not because we can’t feed the poor, it’s because we can’t satisfy the rich.”
We put that clip up Thursday. It took off.
Talarico has had the flu since late September. On Wednesday night, Trump flew to San Antonio and mocked him, telling a crowd he was “throwing up all over the place,” then demanded on Truth Social that he “immediately report to a Debate Stage.”
Talarico’s answer, Thursday morning: “President Trump just said Ken Paxton should debate. I agree. Ball’s in your court.”
Talarico has accepted four debates. Paxton hasn’t accepted one. A Republican polling firm had Talarico up three this week.
Democrats need four seats to take the Senate, and the map doesn’t work without Texas. And in a year about corruption, he’s running against the living example of it.
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Under President Biden, Deb Haaland was the first Native American Cabinet secretary: Secretary of the Interior. If she wins New Mexico, she’ll be the first Native American woman elected governor of any state.
Haaland won her primary with 78 percent of the vote. The last Albuquerque Journal poll has her up six in her gubernatorial race.
Haaland’s biography echoes a life every candidate claims to understand but rarely lives: a single mom on food stamps who sold homemade salsa and cleaned her child’s preschool to pay her tuition.
“It’s expensive to be poor,” she said when she rolled out her affordability plan. “I wish I had all the money I paid in bank fees when I only had $1 in my account.”
On Wednesday, Barack Obama endorsed her. On Thursday, she skipped the one scheduled TV debate, and Republicans hammered her for it.
Here’s how I see it: she’d offered eight dates since July. Her opponent took none. The station picked a day she’d already promised to farmers and ranchers in southern New Mexico, and she went to see the farmers.
“I’m keeping my word to the New Mexicans I made a commitment to months ago,” she said.
That’s been her mantra all year. The New Mexican rode with her through eight towns in oil country, places Democrats don’t go.
In one town, a Trump voter came out to see her anyway: “I’m just tired of politicians who are just playing a part.” A Republican running for sheriff put it simpler: “In rural New Mexico, for me, it’s who shows up.”
Haaland’s race matters. When Washington cuts Medicaid and food assistance, governors are often the final line of defense. New Mexico could elect someone who knows what food insecurity feels like firsthand.
We’ve talked about Jon Ossoff here before. Ossoff was supposed to be the most vulnerable Senate Democrat, but he’s polling so well the prediction markets give him a 95 percent chance to win.
Ossoff threw the typical Democratic playbook out. Thursday night, he set it on fire.
Ossoff opened his first debate with Republican Mike Collins by announcing “a united Georgia will hear the trial of Mike Collins.”
Twelve minutes in, he glanced at the clock: “We are now 12 minutes into this debate and we still haven’t heard an explanation as to how the tariffs are helping Georgia families.”
“Family farms in Georgia are getting crushed,” he said of the Iran war, which Collins voted for seven times. He added that Trump “unleashed federal agents to kill citizens on our streets with impunity.”
And Ossoff repeated what reporters have documented for a year: that neo-Nazi material was tied to Collins’s family and office.
“Imagine running for the U.S. Senate while neo-Nazi propaganda is disseminated to an audience of millions from your home,” he said.
For a decade, Democrats in tough states were told the way to survive Trump was to blur their liberal affiliation. Ossoff tests the opposite idea: that you can say exactly what’s happening and win anyway.
I started Raw Story in 2004, when Democrats felt just as outnumbered. What I learned is that nobody wins on the other guy’s collapse alone. People stay home when there’s nothing left to vote against. They show up when there’s something to vote for.
If Raw America speaks to you — if you want news that shares your values, today’s the day to upgrade. I wanted to make it easy for you, so we’re offering subscriptions now for 20% off.
Our side has a teacher who took his faith back, a mom who went to the farmers, and a senator who put a bigot on trial on live television.
I know which side I’d rather be on. Thanks again for reading and subscribing and for making it possible.
See you next Sunday.
— John Byrne / Founder, Raw America and Raw Story
P.S. It’s time to start making a plan to vote, and to get your friends, neighbors and family to vote too. Get the word out — we need everyone on board to make sure we win.
