The Playbook Podcast

Senior campaigns and elections editor Steve Shepard is out with the latest update of POLITICO’s 2022 forecast. Let’s begin with the headline: Five races are changing in this update, four of them in the GOP’s direction and one toward the Democratic candidate: Arizona Senate: Lean D to Toss-Up Pennsylvania governor: Lean D to Likely D CA-27: Toss-Up to Lean R CA-49: Lean D to Toss-Up OR-05: Toss-Up...

Let’s state the obvious: John Fetterman struggled to effectively communicate during his one and only Senate debate with Mehmet Oz Tuesday in Harrisburg.  We don’t usually dwell on a single debate in a single race, but this one is different. Control of the Senate, and the future of policymaking in Washington, may hinge on the outcome of the Fetterman-Oz race. The conventional wisdom over the summer...

“For some of Ukraine’s most ardent backers, even talking about diplomacy amounts to appeasement,” Gideon Rachman, the chief foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times, noted last week. Thirty House Democrats led by Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal learned this lesson the hard way on Monday, after they sent President Joe Biden what they believed was a nuanced and carefu...

15 days left until Election Day. … 7,501,492 early votes already cast as of 10:20 p.m. Sunday, per the United States Elections Project. And Playbook editor Mike Debonis and deputy editor Zack Stanton preview the packed debate schedule around the country, including the highly anticipated debate between Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz on Tuesday.  Plus, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis e...

Our colleague Natalie Allison got her hands on some new polling data out of Nevada that shows the closely watched race between Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican Adam Laxalt tightening even further. “Laxalt has inched ahead of Cortez Masto by 2 percentage points, within the poll’s margin of error, a gain from a month ago when he was down 3 percentage points, according to a poll...

There’s a reason White House chief of staff RON KLAIN checks AAA’s survey of gas prices every single morning. For all the well-informed punditry about whether this or that issue will be the terrain upon which 2022 rises and falls, today — with 19 days left until Election Day — it seems that the most salient issue in the election for most voters could be pretty straightforward: It’s the gas prices,...

We definitely have Georgia on our minds here at Playbook. The Senate race in the Peach State — pitting Sen. Raphael Warnock against football legend Herschel Walker — is likely the most consequential Senate race on the map this year. Early voting begins today. There’s nothing better as a reporter than getting out of the swamp to see what voters are thinking and saying for yourself — so Playbook's E...

For a minute there, Donald Trump wasn’t the dominant political story. In between peak coverage in August of the FBI’s search of his Mar-a-Lago home and Thursday’s public vote by the Jan. 6 committee to subpoena the former president, there were long stretches when Trump wasn’t the main character of the midterms. In some ways he still isn’t. As NYT’s Blake Hounshell and Alyce McFadden point out, Jan...

Since the very first hearing of the House Jan. 6 committee, the panel has vowed to do three things: (1) correct the historical record of the aftermath of the 2020 election; (2) present the case that former President Donald Trump was at the center of a scheme to overturn the results of a free and fair election; and (3) outline an ongoing attack on American democracy.  This afternoon, they’re set to...

It’s perhaps the most precious campaign resource in all of American politics — a presidential fundraising visit. So why, with less than four weeks till Election Day, is President Joe Biden pointing Air Force One at Oregon this weekend? And, senior campaigns and elections editor Steve Shepard joins the show to talk about the tactical battle over campaign advertising in Ohio, Arizona, Pennsylvania a...

This morning we have the first scoop from Robert Draper’s latest book, “Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind" ($29), which will be released Oct. 18. It’s been widely reported that Donald Trump and Kevin McCarthy had a fiery exchange on Jan. 6, 2021. But Draper adds a dramatic and newsworthy new detail about the House GOP leader’s side of the conversation, one that make...

Last night at a fundraiser in New York City, President Joe Biden issued a stark warning about the risks of nuclear war in Ukraine. “First time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, we have a direct threat of the use [of a] nuclear weapon if in fact things continue down the path they are going,” Biden told donors at the home of investor James Murdoch. “I’m trying to figure out what is [Russian President...

For months, aides to President Joe Biden have been backchanneling to keep OPEC from cutting oil exports and, in turn, raising oil and gas prices around the world. So much for all that. On Wednesday, OPEC+ announced that it will cut oil production by 2 million barrels per day starting next month — a move that “sharply undercuts President Biden’s effort to avoid an increase in gas prices ahead of th...

President Joe Biden will arrive this afternoon in Fort Myers, Fla., where he will survey the damage from Hurricane Ian via helicopter and then receive a briefing on disaster response and recovery efforts from state and local officials, including one of his most bitter political rivals: Gov. Ron DeSantis. The president and the governor have talked on the phone several times. They’ve complimented ea...

Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker promised Monday night that he would file a lawsuit this morning against The Daily Beast, after the website’s Roger Sollenberger reported that Walker paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion in 2009. The woman, who was not identified, provided Sollenberger with a receipt for the procedure, a get-well card signed by Walker and an image of a personal ch...

AP’s Meg Kinnard and Adriana Gomez Licon: “A revived Hurricane Ian set its sights on South Carolina’s coast Friday and the historic city of Charleston, with forecasters predicting a storm surge and floods after the megastorm caused catastrophic damage in Florida and left people trapped in their homes. “With all of South Carolina’s coast under a hurricane warning, a steady stream of vehicles left C...

 A new Gallup poll set for release today shows a drop in approval of and confidence in the Supreme Court. Gallup previewed some of the key findings for Playbook:  The topline: “Less than half of Americans say they have ‘a great deal’ or ‘a fair amount’ of trust in the judicial branch of the federal government, representing a 20-percentage-point drop from two years ago, including seven points since...

Hurricane Ian is set to reach Florida’s Gulf Coast as early as this afternoon after days of dire warnings about its potential impacts. This morning, the national Hurricane Center said winds had reached 140 mph, strengthening to a Category 4.  More than 2 million people are under orders to leave their homes. Said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: “That doesn’t mean you need to go all across God’s creation...

Countdown — Six weeks until Election Day! Continuing Resolution released — Full text … Section-by-section summary Nestled into the stopgap spending bill that Congress is aiming to pass to avert a government shutdown this week is over $12 billion in aid for Ukraine, AP’s Kevin Freking reports. What else is in it: “The funding package, which Congress is set to consider this week, will also provide d...

Playbook editor Mike DeBonis and deputy editor Zack Stanton discuss Maggie Haberman's anticipated book, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. POLITICO's Steve Shepard's must-read this morning, Pollsters fear they’re blowing it again in 2022 and the odds of a government shutdown if Congress can't reach a deal by Friday at midnight. Subscribe to the POLITICO Playboo...

It’s perhaps the wonkiest, most in-the-weeds debate happening on Capitol Hill: The battle over Sen. Joe Manchin's (D-W.Va.) permitting reform bill. It’s also the biggest hold-up in the quest to keep the government from shutting down next week.  The measure (aka the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2022) would basically shorten the process to get permits for energy projects. Its inclusion in...

The two big stories in Trump World: 1. In a Wednesday night ruling, a three-judge federal appeals panel sided with the Justice Department, blocking “aspects of … Judge Aileen Cannon's ruling that delayed a criminal investigation into highly sensitive documents seized from former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate,” write Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein. Two of the three judges were Trump app...

With four offhand words, “the pandemic is over,” President Joe Biden touched off a firestorm during his Sunday “60 Minutes” interview. The White House cleanup attempt was swift. Obviously the president wasn’t saying the American people shouldn’t take Covid seriously, it told reporters. Sure, he could have been more nuanced, but he was simply saying we’ve hit a different phase. And yet: A summary d...

Is 2022 a ‘waves’ election? Evidence that the election will likely be closer than originally thought continues to mount, as two new polls give a sense of the contours of the race. First, there's the NBC poll, which paints a decidedly mixed portrait. Seven weeks out, voters are evenly split at 46% in their preference for which party should control Congress next year. Biden’s approval rating has ris...

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe, many Democrats pushed for legislation codifying the right to same-sex marriage, lest it, too, be taken away by the high court. Over the past two months, those efforts gained momentum thanks to the efforts of a small bipartisan group that saw a path to winning support from the requisite 10 Senate Republicans, raising hopes that a bill would soon hit Biden’s d...