Simon Rosenberg is the head of the progressive think tank NDN, 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’s apostle of optimism.

“I'm not sitting here and telling you we're going to win,” Simon told us
over lunch this week. “What I'm telling you is that the narrative about
this election, about there being a red wave— there isn't one. There
never has been.”

If you spend a lot of time on political Twitter, you have no doubt
encountered Simon’s tweets and threads over the last few weeks. He’s
built a large and loyal following of Democrats looking for silver
linings amid the clouds of negative media coverage about their party’s
prospects in the midterms.

— Hispanics abandoning his party? Simon says that NDN’s polling doesn’t
show it.

— Polling averages tilting to the GOP in the last few weeks? Simon says
they’ve 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…)

— 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.

Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.
Simon Rosenberg is president of NDN. 
Afra Abdullah is associate producer for POLITICO audio.
Kara Tabor is producer for POLITICO audio.
Brook Hayes is senior editor for POLITICO audio.
Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.
Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio.