NDN<\/a>, and he has a message for jittery Democrats on the eve of the midterms: cheer up! This week on the Playbook Deep Dive podcast we sit down with the Democratic Party\u2019s apostle of optimism.<\/p>\n\u201cI’m not sitting here and telling you we’re going to win,\u201d Simon told us over lunch this week. \u201cWhat I’m telling you is that the narrative about this election, about there being a red wave\u2014 there isn’t one. There never has been.\u201d<\/p>\n
If you spend a lot of time on political Twitter, you have no doubt encountered Simon\u2019s tweets and threads over the last few weeks. He\u2019s built a large and loyal following of Democrats looking for silver linings amid the clouds of negative media coverage about their party\u2019s prospects in the midterms.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Hispanics abandoning his party? Simon says that NDN\u2019s polling doesn\u2019t show it.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Polling averages tilting to the GOP in the last few weeks? Simon says they\u2019ve been polluted by a barrage of Republican polls dumped strategically to depress Democrats and excite Republicans. (This claim has been met with a lot of skepticism, because surely Democratic campaigns would be leaking their own internals, but we digress\u2026)<\/p>\n
\u2014 And that red wave? Simon says that if you look at the Kansas abortion referendum, the five House special elections earlier this year, and especially the early voting data, that the anti-Trump coalition that powered Democrats to victory in 2018 and 2020 is holding strong in 2022.<\/p>\n