The Odd Years

Americans have a pretty dismal view of Congress. Lawmakers in the U.S. House and Senate are seen as ineffective and a much diminished power under President Trump. Last year, for example, Congress passed a record low number of laws while President Trump issued the most executive orders in modern history.

Paul Kane, a veteran Capitol Hill reporter and one of its smartest chroniclers recently wrote a column for the Washington Post in...

Amy has long been an admirer of this week’s guest, The Wall Street Journal's chief economics commentator Greg Ip. She finds his insights into how our economy functions to be thoughtful as well as approachable. It’s also why she thought he'd be the perfect person to talk with about the central disconnect we've seen in perceptions of our economy over the last few years - namely that the markets and Wall Street suggest everything is g...

The Odd Years is back with our first episode of this midterm year!

Political news and events seem to be breaking faster than the human brain can process, so we wanted to take a step back and talk to people with experience, insight, and perspective who can help us make sense of it all.

That is why we kicked off the inaugural 2026 episode with two political reporters who embody those traits: The Wall Street Journal's Annie Linskey an...

It's a consequential week in the Supreme Court as justices hear a case that could reorient the bounds of executive authority and overturn a ninety year precedent that insulates independent government agencies from political interference from the president.

President Trump has tested those bounds of his executive power on everything from tariffs and trade to immigration to government spending.

It's now up to the Supreme Court to dete...

In Amy’s opinion, Astead Herndon is one of the sharpest and most thoughtful political journalists out there. His New York Times podcast, The Run-Up, did an amazing job pulling back the cover on how national politics is done and showing the gulf that exists between the parties, the insiders and actual voters.

It’s this kind of journalism that has set Astead apart from the pack. He picks apart conventional wisdom and elevates the comp...

Californians often like to think of themselves as the center of the universe. But when it comes to politics, this deep blue state is rarely in the spotlight - until now. The passage of Prop 50 in last Tuesday's election was the most consequential development to date in the redistricting wars. The new Democratic drawn map will cost Republicans three to five seats in 2026 and also shores up five vulnerable Democratic incumbents.

The w...

One week from today, voters in New Jersey and Virginia will go to the polls. These are state and not federal elections. But they can serve as bellwethers for the upcoming midterm election next year.

Topics that resonate in a purple state like Virginia this year, for example, are likely to be issues that are significant in swing states and districts in 2026.

Next Tuesday, we’ll also look closely at voter turnout for some early clues...

It's safe to say Democrats are going through something of an identity crisis at the moment. They have no clear leaders, no driving issues, and no real power in Washington. And that makes the current government shutdown an interesting test case for Democratic leaders like Chuck Schumer over what they think their voters want and how best to fight Donald Trump.

Our guest today, Democratic strategist Lis Smith, has not minced words when...

We're about eight months into Donald Trump's second term, a victory driven in large part due to voter frustration with the economy and their belief that he would help get inflation down. So what does the economic picture look like today? That's not as easy a question to answer as you would think.

Stock market set record highs, but consumers remain pessimistic about inflation. The tariffs implemented by the Trump administration haven...

We took a late summer break, but we're back with a new slate of really great interviews!

When we started this year, redistricting was not something we thought would be driving our politics this cycle.

But, of course, that's no longer the case with Texas unleashing a domino effect of redistricting efforts across the country.

Thankfully, we know someone really well who can help us understand what's happening: The Cook Political Report...

Back in 2023, Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini wrote a book that laid out a path for how the party could win future elections with a working class multiracial coalition.

Later that year, Amy talked with Patrick on this very podcast where they discussed whether Trump could expand his base to include those voters of color. Well, as we saw, he did. In fact, in 2016, the coalition that elected Trump was 88% white. By 2024, it was dow...

This week we are diverging from our normal Odd Years format to introduce you to another Cook Political Report product, Editors Roundtable.

This podcast features a rotating cast of our Cook Political Report team breaking down the latest news, analysis and insights about the most important House, Senate and Gubernatorial contests in the country.

We like to think of this podcast as an opportunity for you to get the behind the scenes ac...

Most of the political attention these days is centered in D.C, but there's a pretty fascinating primary contest happening just a train ride north in New York City.

The Democratic primary for mayor of the Big Apple features a crowded field of Democrats, including some well known names like former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who was forced to resign after multiple sexual harassment allegations against him in 2021, and some new names like ...

President Trump's signature legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, is crawling its way through Congress. Having passed the House by a single vote, the so-called BBB is in the Senate where various Republican factions - the fiscal hawks, the centrists, the populists - are divided over how to resolve their many competing priorities over the national debt, Medicaid, and tax cuts to name a few.

What's driving these ideological diff...

When we booked this episode with Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer several weeks back, our plan was to talk about the Democrats and their strategy and messaging around Trump - something Dan's been writing about for his Substack, Message Box.

Should Democrats just focus on the economy? Should they raise alarm bells over deportations? How loudly and strongly should they push back against Trump?

And we do discuss that, but as it tu...

Rahm Emanuel has held many titles: Congressman from Illinois, DCCC Chairman, Chief of Staff to Barack Obama, Mayor of Chicago, and Ambassador to Japan under President Biden.

These days, he doesn't have an official position at the moment. But that's not stopping him from giving some very pointed advice to Democrats on every possible platform: cable TV, political shows, podcasts, late night TV, and different political conferences.

So h...

You may know our guest today, Josh Holmes, as one of the hosts of the popular political podcast, Ruthless.

For those of you who don't know, Ruthless is to the conservative media sphere as Pod Save America is to the liberal media ecosystem.

But long before he started his podcasting gig, Amy knew Josh as a Republican political operative.

He was chief of staff to Mitch McConnell and ran his 2014 re-election campaign. He also had a stint ...

We are 100 days into the second Trump administration and there's no better person to help us understand what voters are making of these first months of Trump 2.0 than Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson.

Kristen is a founding partner of Echelon Insights, an opinion research and analytics firm. She's a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and an on air political contributor at CNN.

Quick disclaimer: we taped this...

Way back in the late 1990s, Cook Political Report founder Charlie Cook had an idea to rank all 435 congressional districts by their partisanship - in other words, whether a district is more Republican or more Democratic.

That way, we'd be able to see, at a quick glance, which members of Congress represented districts that were either slightly or strongly partisan. For example, is a certain Republican representative in a very solid R...