“Women are among the strongest counters to the chaos and cruelty of the Trump presidency.”

The 2026 midterms are around the corner, and although we’ve been hearing “this is the most important election of our lifetime” for literally all of my adult lifetime, I think it’s pretty safe to say this one is really it. So in addition to all the candidates and elected officials I’ve interviewed here over the past year, I’m trying to feature a few more conversations with folks working in different ways on Election 2026. Today I’m very excited to be chatting with Jessica Mackler. Jessica is a longtime political strategist, currently serving as President of the legendary group Emily’s List. Emily’s list is the premier outfit working to elect Democratic women to all levels of government. This year, they’re especially focused on Congress.I’m going to get out of the way and get right to it, so here you go.A Conversation with Jessica MacklerGive me an overview of your map: some of the candidates you’re most excited about and maybe one or two places you’re excited to be competing in that maybe weren’t on your map in earlier cycles. Absolutely. Well, one of the things that was very clear to me coming into this election cycle, kind of our guiding North Star strategic focus, was that the most important thing that we could do was to leverage the strength of this organization into the fight to take back power in this country.That we needed to secure majorities in the House, in the Senate, secure governing power in the states, so that we could fight back against some of the most grave threats that this country has ever seen. And so, that’s really how we’ve oriented our work all cycle long. What I’m most excited about right now is that we’ve delivered on that, to see women at the center of the House majority, women who are going to deliver that House majority for Democrats is really exciting. When we saw the first round of initial party red-to-blue races come out, 8 of the 12 candidates on those lists were EMILYs List women. Emily’s List women make up the majority of toss-up races in House races right now. So everyone from Christina Hines in Michigan 10, Denise Powell in Nebraska 2, Joanna Mendoza in Arizona 6, these are women who are at the very heart of the House majority fight.The Senate majority is in play because of Mary Peltola’s campaign in Alaska, once in a generation opportunity to flip that seat. But beyond that, what I’m really excited about is that we are competing in seats that have eluded Democrats in the past. That is true of the Michigan 10 seat that Republicans have been able to hold onto over and over again, and is really at risk of flipping. I think Christina is going to flip that seat this November. It’s also true of seats that Donald Trump carried by significant margin. When we look at someone like Pia Dandiya, who is a lifelong educator, former principal, running in Florida: this is a district Trump carried by 10.5 points in 2024. It’s a district that Republicans gerrymandered to give themselves a seat that is now in toss-up territory for Democrats. So the fact that we’re really able to compete in places all over the map that would not normally be in play. There’s another district that is up in Michigan, Michigan 1, this is the UP. Really tough territory for Democrats. Callie Barr, a military spouse, former high school English teacher, is putting this district in play. This has never been competitive for Democrats before. This is a Trump 21.2-point district in 2024. So across the map, whether we’re talking about the districts at the heart and soul of this majority, the districts that are being pulled into competitiveness that haven’t been before, women are at the center of that. We’re really proud of that fight. I could talk as you can tell all day about these, but you can find all of them on our website.We could talk about Christina Hines all day. She’s a friend of mine She's a friend of mine over in the Michigan 10th. She's been on this chat, too, as well. Alright, so walk me through your process right now at Emily’s List. You’re a values-driven organization but you’re also a serious political operation. What are you looking for both early on and, as an election cycle moves forward, to partner with particular candidates and in particular states?Well, if you zoom out, the founding of Emily’s List, the genesis of Emily’s List was to create political power for women. That women didn’t hold enough offices for their concerns to be taken seriously, and so they were dismissed and they couldn’t get that power because nobody took them seriously as candidates.So our role here is to elect women. I judge our success by hands raised taking oaths at the end of the day, and that’s really the foundation of all of the work. And one of the reasons that we have such a strong record of delivering wins with these candidates is we approach this work through that lens throughout. What does it take to actually win this seat, for this district, for this candidate in this place, in this moment? And that tailored work is what drives really big impact and really big results. That’s everything from working with candidates on their launch, thinking about tweaks to their call time program if it’s not working but also some of the bigger strategic challenges of their election. And so we are real partners with them embedded in their races, thinking through every dynamic of those races to think about what does it take to get us across the finish line, keeping an eye for what is starting to expand, what is working in our favor. Certainly in other cycles, that could work in reverse, but in this cycle, we’re in a cycle where the opportunity keeps building, and so we’ve really been thinking through the entire cycle of what does it take to expand upon opportunity and to put women in this, in the position to actually make those wins happen. You don’t get to a point where we’re here in the end of September with Democrats having, at times, a double-digit advantage on the generic ballot. We don’t put those races in play by starting here in September. We put them in play because we started back in early 2025, really looking at what was on the table for us. We set out one of the most expansive maps of any national organization in the country at that time, even at a time when it didn’t necessarily… we didn’t know that that was all going to come to fruition, but it’s really by that kind of broad strokes look at the map, what is working, and then the very detailed, tailored work in each individual race that puts us in the position to be able to have people win and make competitive districts that, again, as we’ve said, are just… have not been traditionally competitive for Democrats.You are curating both an immediate electoral project but also a longer term political project. I had Adam Jentleson on here a couple weeks back and we talked about durability. How do you at Emily’s List think about being a part of a larger coalition of potentially ideologically, geographically, and demographically diverse candidates, while also keeping laser-focused on some of the specific goals you’re also trying to meet and make last?I think for us at Emily’s List, it’s really been about abandoning the idea of those working in competition with each other, but really seeing that it works in concert. And when you put them in concert with each other, we actually have greater results. You know, we hear all the time that pundits, stakeholders, others question women’s electability. This is particularly true when it comes to women of color, and really makes a lot of assumptions about who can win and where. And what we have found is that when we take that really tailored approach, when we look at a district and think about what it takes to win that district in that moment of time, then we’ve proven over and over again that that’s not true. Because what we see is that voters are looking for leaders who really understand their struggles, and we win seats by putting forth candidates whose life experience really resonates with voters.So a great example of this is Emelia Sykes, who represents Ohio 13. This is a district that is predominantly white. This a district that Trump carried twice, or that Trump carried that she’s won twice. And Emelia has won this district as a black woman.Because of her leadership and who she is and what she represents, and by winning that district, we really are able to cast aside some of those assumptions about, again, who is able to win and in what territory. And so I think when we really think about each individual district and what it needs to be successful that we’re able to drive a longer term strategy. To your point, how do you grow the political power of women over time within this coalition? It is by both having that broad philosophy about what it takes to be successful and then deploying it in individual races in a really specific and tailored way.And kind of casting aside some of the assumptions that people are making about who can win, and actually interrogating what is it going to look like to win right now with these candidates in this one place.I mean, we’ve been talking about Christina Hines in the 10th District of Michigan there. I can tell you, going out to Macomb County, there was still some conversation over there in the primary about, well, “only a guy is going to be able to win Macomb back for Democrats,” stuff like that. And it was something that you know, a lot of us who supported her from the beginning were trying to kind of really push back against. Like, this is not the conversation we need to be having right now. It’s also not very creative.No. And We hear this all the time, right? And you just gave a great example, but if, for any district and any race I give you, we would have examples of that. It’s what I talk most often with our candidates about, is the way in which, no matter how strong they are, they face these questions, additional questions about their electability.But what’s true and what we’ve shown over and over again is that when we put support behind these candidates, they deliver some of the biggest wins. That was true in 2025 with Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger. And so we say at the end of the day, supporting women is actually a strong electoral strategy. And the more we win, the more we prove it.I have a lot of readers and listeners here in the policy space, broadly, related to kids and families. We’re talking schools. Pre-K. Sometimes higher ed. One of the big themes in some of my writing right now—and I came out of the voucher wars in 25 states, mostly red and purple—is I worry that Democrats are really behind on K-12 issues. We’re starting to see this in polling. Democrats seem great on child care, Pre-K, school meals. All crucial stuff. But there’s really a lack of attention right now to K-12 improvement. This is something I ask a lot of candidates about—many of whom are working with you too. What do you think is going on here? Feel free to disagree with the premise of the question!Well, this is the reason, this is the very reason that I believe so deeply in how much it matters to elect women to office and moms to office. You know, Christina Hines will often invoke the fact there are more billionaires in Congress than there are moms of young children. The way that we drive attention to issues like K-12 education is by putting people in office who actually understand that on a personal level or have dealt with that throughout their professional lives. So when we have an educator like a Pia Dandia, when we have a young mom like a Christina, you have candidates who really understand this in a personal way, have lived it.And naturally, that is going to be a focus of their leadership. We know that education factors in a major way for voters, particularly women voters who make up the majority of the Democratic coalition. This is critically important in any given House district across the country.Women under 55 make up 25 to 30% of our electorate in this election cycle. So these issues do matter. The way that we get to a place where Democrats are really leading on this is by seating more women in office who are going to naturally bring that focus. And in fact, we see that in the data. There’s data from 2018 that shows that women, when they’re elected, are more likely to focus on K-12 education and similar issues. And so, again, to me, this is really at the foundation of why it matters to put people in office who truly understand what voters care about and what they’re going through, and then are going to make that a focus of their leadership.We’re six weeks ahead of the midterms so I don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves here. But give me a look ahead. What will you be looking for, say, one week, one month, and then maybe six months after Election Day? Do you jump right into 2028? What should folks who support you or at the very least follow what you’re doing be expecting from your team?Absolutely. I mean, 30-plus days is both a lifetime and not a lot of time at all, so it will be here before we know it. I mean, first and foremost, in those first few weeks after the election, we’re going to be talking about how women voters and women candidates were responsible for delivering the House and Senate majorities and governing power up and down the ticket. This is going to be really important that we drive that attention to the fact that women were at the center of this from the very beginning, that that’s the work that we did at Emily’s List to make sure that that happened and that they were the ones who delivered these victories.Beyond that, we’re going to see women be one of the strongest counters to this presidency, this Donald Trump’s presidency, the chaos, the cruelty that we’re seeing coming out of Washington. Women are going to be focused on the issues that are impacting people’s lives, thinking about what they can do to improve that quality of life, to push back on the ways this administration is making their life more difficult.But beyond that, whether you’re talking a week out or a month out or six months out, we will be right back to work. We will be recruiting candidates. That is work that we’ve actually already started. We are going to make sure that we build on the foundation, the successes of this cycle to put more even more women into power to keep and retain and build on those majorities, both at the state level and the federal level, and so that’s going to be critically important because this is not a short-term fight. We are going to be going up against the threats that this administration is bringing to us for quite some time, and it’s these women who are going to be the powerful force of standing up and figuring out how we chart a better course for this country.You can read more about Jessica Mackler, and support Emily’s List here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joshcowen.substack.com/subscribe