Off The Record With Paul Hodes

USA Today's Rex Huppke is one of America's sharpest voices on politics and society, and he joins Beyond Politics to discuss what we really learned about America and politics from the 2022 midterms. Did voters side with "decency"? Where do Republicans go from here on Trump? Does polling do anything good for us? What does it mean that America pushed back against election deniers? What do Republicans need to fix to be more successful? And what do Democrats need to fix to be more successful? 

David Beard, Contributing Editor at DailyKos Elections and co-host of The Downballot podcast, joins Matt to walk through exactly how Democrats could still win the US House of Representatives, and what an ultra-thin margin in the House would mean for both parties. 

The election appears to be a stunning win not just for Democrats, but for the fight against the Big Lie and election denialism. In this extended discussion on the bipartisan Balance of Power round table, Matt, Paul, and Alicia discuss what the results mean for democracy, Democrats, Republicans, Trump, polling, the media, campaigns, and the future of America. 

The midterms could still go either way. That's the message from Michaeleen Crowell, former Chief of Staff and strategist for Bernie Sanders.  She's the rare Washington insider with insights from across the full political spectrum, someone who's seen Democratic and Republican polling and who thinks this election is still up for grabs. Is a Republican sweep possible? Sure she says. But, is a Democratic win possible?  Absolutely. Also...why Democrats' accomplishments have gotten buried, and who's been holding the shovel. 

In 1984, Ronald Reagan won a landslide re-election as President on a message of economic recovery, despite prices and unemployment being higher than when he took office. This year, President Biden and Congressional Democrats have a record of achievements that absolutely dwarfs Reagan's, and not just on the economy -- though the greatest one year job growth in history is a good start. Yet, you probably haven't heard anything about it. Based on Matt Robison's article for The Editorial Board, former Biden ad-maker Cliff Schecter and Matt go through what that record is, and why the accomplishments that should make this election a slam dunk have been absent from the political conversation.

Chris Hill of Motley Fool Money explains why Facebook is spiraling, and where that situation may be headed. Also, a big week for the big economic picture; a rough week for Big Tech Companies Not Named Apple; and Amazon has a bold but slightly confusing new offering.

Also, Elon Musk fuels the online dumpster fire, how a quirk in polling may have caught the Democrats, and is John Fetterman's auditory issue really an impediment to him doing the job of US Senator?

Mark Bergman, a top Dem political consultant working on some of the biggest races around the country, joins Matt to look at which factors have really been shaping the midterm elections, where things stand now, and how the dynamics are looking in each of the biggest races on the map.

As we barrel toward the midterms, the parties have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into delivering their messages to voters. Doug Thornell may be responsible for more of those ads than anyone.  He's a partner at SKDK, one of the top strategic communications companies in the world, and one of the few Black media consultants in Democratic politics.  So when we asked him what making all those ads has shown him about the challenges that the party faces, he had something interesting to say. "The Democratic Party has an image problem.  And we have for awhile now." 

Also, are debates uniformly terrible? And is Kanye too crazy for Tucker Carlson?

Andrew Heaton is a comedian, author, and political satirist. He’s also the host of “The Political Orphanage” comedy and news podcast.  As a couple of passionate moderates, Matt and Andrew dive in to some of the goings-on in politics recently that are driving us the most nuts.  Then we get into some of the really good ideas we've heard on our shows recently, from why multi member congressional districts might fix some our partisanship to how to survive a nuclear war. 

Something is wrong in America, and we’ve gotten so used to it, we don’t really talk about about, or not enough anyway. We are in a major happiness recession, and we have been for a long time. The highest proportion of Americans ever (80%) say they are satisfied with their family’s financial situation, while an all-time low reports being “very happy” in their lives (14%). Over the last 40 years, a median of 66% of Americans have told Gallup they were “dissatisfied.” In the decade or so before the pandemic sent our despair into overdrive, major depression was rapidly rising, the suicide rate was up 35%, drug use and death were skyrocketing, birth rates were down 23%, and Americans told Pew researchers that they had become deeply pessimistic about the future. Our guest today, Catherine Sanderson, has become a widely cited author for her contributions on positive thinking and achieving better parenting, happier aging, and more courage in our lives. Dr. Sanderson is the POLER Family Professor and Chair of Psycholo

Did the January 6 hearings accomplish anything? Did Democrats actually botch the impeachments? Is inflation taking center stage again and killing Dems' ability to talk economic accomplishments?  And are we about to start eating...congressmen?

Matt joins legendary West Virginia radio host Howard Monroe to talk about what going "beyond politics" means, and also to dive into whether Trump will actually testify, where Trump's latest scandal rates in the all-time list, and whether Marjorie Taylor Greene is actually about to be in charge in Washington DC.

In November of 2019, the two top reporters covering the first impeachment of then-President Donald Trump for the Washington Post got together over a bottle of water and decided to write a book about what had really happened. Now, that book is finally hitting bookshelves tomorrow. It’s called “Unchecked, the Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump.”  The authors, Rachael Bade and Karoun Demirjian, join the show to reveal why the outcome of those impeachments was not as inevitable as people think, why Democrats pulled their punches, and what sliding doors moments might have changed everything.

Former USA Today / current Editorial Board Columnist and worldwide Twitter star Jason Sattler (known online as @LOLGOP) joins for a massive rundown of the most burning questions in politics heading into the midterms.  Borrowing from podcast legends Bill Simmons and Zack Lowe, Matt and Jason ask 15 big "are we sure" questions like "Are we sure that Democrats aren’t missing golden opportunities in the North Carolina and Ohio Senate races?"  "Are we sure that the Herschel Walker scandal is even in the top five of Republican hypocrisy scandals in the last 20 years?" "Are we sure we won’t have a constitutional crisis in this election?" And "Are we sure that we’ve seen the biggest October Surprise come out yet?"  Go to The Takedown YouTube channel for the full episode on video. 

We are proud to say that Beyond Politics just won an award from the New Hampshire Association of Broadcasters for outstanding Feature Story, so we are re-issuing that interview. One night, New Hampshire Supreme Court Chief Justice Justice Broderick awoke to find himself in the ICU.  He had been attacked by his son. The  story made national news.  But it was only after the cameras left that the real story begins. Since that day, Justice Broderick has been on a  journey of discovery and leadership on mental health in America. He’s working to improve understanding and awareness of mental illness in order to get rid of some of the myths, encourage discussion and treatment, and begin to change the unfair and shameful culture that surrounds mental health in America. Today on Beyond Politics, a  remarkable story of health, struggle, recovery, and hope, and a look at  the reality of one of America's greatest and least understood challenges.

The panel looks at the big economic news, including the Saudi oil production cut and the return of a potential railroad workers strike, and asks how much it will matter on election day.  Also, is the Herschel Walker scandal a political nothingburger, why are Republicans hitting the crime angle so hard, and Biden finally passes a "green new deal."

Quitting gets a bad rap. But the thing is, we know from psychological research, behavioral economics, and the professionals who help top business leaders to make decisions that actually, we should be doing a lot more of it, and a lot sooner. In fact, most us stick with losing propositions far too long, and a lot of the time the smartest decision is to make s strategic decision to focus on something else. So why don't we? And can we learn to be better judges of when to throw in the towel? Our guest, Annie Duke, is well known to anyone who got caught up in the poker boom of the mid 2000s as one of the top professionals in the game, but over a decade ago she quit, and now she’s a bestselling author, a corporate speaker, and consultant on decision-making, as well as Special Partner focused on Decision Science at First Round Capital Partners, a seed stage venture fund. Her newest book is Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away. For our WKXL radio listeners she’s also a Concord New Hampshire native.

Today, we feature the host of an amazing podcast called Gatecrashers, an eight-part series that tells the fascinating history of how the modern college admissions system (in fact, the entire notion of academically rigorous elite schools) that we know in America -- with its applications, essays, interviews, standardized tests, and US News lists -- all sprang from a surprising starting point: an effort to control how many Jews, and even what kind of Jews, were getting into the most prestigious schools. As the Supreme Court takes up a case that may end affirmative action in higher education, we couldn't have a more timely or important look at how we ended up with the modern higher education system.  Mark Oppenheimer created and reported Gatecrashers and he’s a Senior Editor at Tablet. From 2010-2016 he wrote the Beliefs column about religion for The New York Times. He also hosts the Unorthodox podcast about Jewish life and culture. He’s also the author, most recently, of Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Syna