Wednesday on the RealClearPolitics radio show — weeknights at 6:00 p.m. on SiriusXM’s POTUS Channel 124 and then on Apple, Spotify, and here on our website — Andrew Walworth, Tom Bevan, and Carl Cannon discuss the latest FEC campaign finance fundraising report, Zohran Mamdani’s trip to D.C. to meet with Democratic Party leaders, the results of last night’s special election in Arizona, and new comments from Hunter Biden about the Democratic Party betraying his father. After that, RealClearPennsylvania editor Charles McElwee talks about why it’s the most important state in American politics, and RCP’s Maggie Miller talks with RealClearInvestigations writer Paul Sperry about new CIA documents about the Steele dossier. *** First, a look at who is up and who is down, according to second-quarter campaign finance reports submitted to the Federal Elections Commission. Democratic socialists appear to be raking in the cash. What can the numbers tell us about political rising stars? “It tells us there’s a lot of money in politics,” Tom Bevan commented. “The numbers keep getting more and more staggering.” “One thing that jumped out at me was Iowa Republican Sen. Joni ‘We Are All Going To Die’ Ernst brought in a mere $ 723,000 in the second quarter, which fuels speculation that she actually is going to retire, because if you’re raising less than a million dollars a quarter for your Senate race, you’re just not trying,” Andrew Walworth added. *** Next, around minute 6:30, New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is in DC today for a closed-door meeting with AOC and House and Senate Democratic leaders. Can they rebrand “socialism” as just being for the workers and fighting corruption, or will the establishment rein them in once the primaries are over? “We’ll see! It’s a bold strategy!” Bevan said. “Mamdani doesn’t shy away from the term socialism. He tries to distance himself from the term communism, although he uses language straight out of the Communist Manifesto. So it is going to be really interesting.” “He may win New York, but if he’s the face of the Democratic Party going forward, I think that complicates things in the midterms and certainly in 2028. Hakeem Jeffries certainly understands that-he’d like to be Speaker of the House,” Cannon added. “Having a person who quotes Karl Marx being the mayor of New York and, until yesterday, was using a phrase that is widely understood to mean ‘kill Jews,’ how does that play beyond New York?” “The Romney campaign famously said he was an Etch A Sketch after the primary, right? You shake it and the slate is clean, and you start from scratch,” Bevan added. “While that may attract some people who weren’t paying attention during the primary, it offends the people who voted for you in the primary. They don’t want to see people crab-walking away from the positions and getting soft on the core tenets of the ideology that they just voted for.” “So it’s an interesting dance. It’s one that every politician has to do. We’ll see how well he’s able to do this.” *** After that, around minute 12, Adelita Grijalva, daughter of the late Rep. Raul Grijalva, won a special primary election last night in Arizona’s seventh district, defeating a David Hogg-backed young candidate. “It’s an old story,” Carl Cannon explained. “There have been 48 women-wives and widows-who’ve replaced their husbands in Congress. Now, the kids are a somewhat newer story… but not if you live in Michigan. John Dingell, his father, and now his wife, Debbie Dingell, have represented a district in Michigan for 90 years or something like that.” “Why is Andrew Cuomo where he is?” Bevan added. “Well, he had a well-established family name… But it’s actually the people’s seat. It’s not an heirloom that gets passed along… It’s just sort of an unfortunate feature of our democracy.” *** And then, at minute 17, Hunter Biden has taped a podcast with former DNC Chair Jaime Harrison, where he reportedly said Democrats “lost the last election because we did not remain loyal to the leader of the party.” “As long as we’re talking about children, their son got back in the news-Hunter Biden, remember him?” Andrew Walworth commented. “I think Hunter’s just speaking from the heart. But he’s about the last person to be objective,” Carl Cannon commented. And he’s leaving out something very salient… One of Joe Biden’s problems was Hunter Biden.” “So if you’re going to talk about the party melting down-one of the reasons it melted down is because you, Hunter Biden, were out there making money in nefarious ways, getting your brother’s widow hooked on crack, and catching gun charges, knocking up strippers, and all these other things that didn’t make your family look good-and at the very least made the president preoccupied with you instead of running the country.” *** In the next segment, starting at minute 23, Carl Cannon talks with RealClearPennsylvania editor Charles McElwee about the Keystone State’s central role in American politics and why both Vice President Vance and President Trump visited Pennsylvania this week. “It’s like the zeitgeist state,” McElwee said. “There’s this bipartisan push right now among Pennsylvania elected leaders, and nationally, in this all-important swing state, to go all-in on AI and tech. We’ll see if these working-class regions share the enthusiasm for this push.” *** Finally, at minute 33:30, RCP Contributor Maggie Miller talks with RealClearInvestigations writer Paul Sperry about his recent article on what newly declassified CIA documents reveal about the Steele Dossier, which played a critical role in the U.S. intelligence community’s report on whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump. Sperry’s latest piece is: “Secret Meeting Opens Document Floodgates on Trump/Russia Hoax” *** Don’t miss a single episode of the RealClearPolitics weeknight radio show – subscribe at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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