Marcus and Madeline are doing the midterm math — and for once, the numbers are looking up.
They open on Ken Paxton’s win over incumbent John Cornyn in the Texas Senate primary, and while nobody’s putting a Cornyn bumper sticker on their car, the implications are significant. A MAGA-endorsed candidate with a criminal rap sheet facing a general electorate that’s increasingly fed up? Marcus and Madeline have seen this movie before — and it ended with Raphael Warnock winning a runoff in Georgia while Herschel Walker became a nightly comedy segment.
Madeline breaks down why Trump’s primary endorsements are actually self-defeating in general elections: the MAGA base dominates primaries precisely because the disillusioned stay home, but those same defectors — the ones Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene are now courting — don’t disappear in November, they vote Democrat.
Then there’s California, where Trump’s premature endorsement in a top-two primary may have single-handedly rescued a Democratic candidate from elimination. The word they’re both looking for is “dumb.”
The bottom line: Republicans are going to burn a mountain of money propping up Paxton in Texas — money that won’t be going to defend vulnerable Senate seats elsewhere. And if Democrats show up, organize, and start donating now, flipping both chambers isn’t a fantasy anymore.
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