Jenna Flanagan and the We Decide panel break down three Senate races, what the polls suggest, and how turnout could decide which party controls the Senate.

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The embedded video contains solely the questions that WBAI’s We Decide’s Jenna Flanagan asked me. You can view the full panel discussion here (Episode: 2026-11-02). We Decide is a joint Pacifica Affiliate and WBAI production, and We Decide: America at the Crossroads with Jenna Flanagan.

Summary

Haley Stevens once warned Michigan voters that Republican Mike Rogers would rubber-stamp Donald Trump’s agenda. Two days before the election, she endorsed him. On WBAI’s We Decide: America at the Crossroads, Jenna Flanagan opened with that reversal, then pressed a more consequential question for working families in Michigan, Ohio, and Texas. How much power does a campaign’s closing stunt have over someone who just opened a health insurance bill? The election-eve panel featured Laura Jedeed, Dave Levinthal, and the host of Politics Done Right.

• Michigan exposed a double standard inside the Democratic Party. Progressives routinely face demands to rally behind a centrist who wins a primary. When Abdul El-Sayed won, Stevens claimed the freedom to campaign for his Republican opponent.

• Ohio showed what a billionaire candidate could buy. Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign spent roughly $1 million airing an attack featuring Dr. Amy Acton’s estranged mother. The panel questioned whether the ad could persuade anyone beyond the MAGA faithful.

• Healthcare costs gave voters their own evidence. After enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits expired, 80% of returning marketplace enrollees in a KFF survey reported higher healthcare costs. Families living through that increase have good reason to demand answers from Congress.

• Texas put the turnout argument to the test. Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton entered Election Day within the margin of error in polling cited by The Texas Tribune. Harris County turnout and reluctant Republicans’ choices could help determine the winner.

• The broadcast made a prediction and left it open to the voters. The Politics Done Right host expected Democrat Sherrod Brown to outperform the polls in Ohio’s separate U.S. Senate race. He also voiced concern about interference in Texas. The segment identified no specific incident.

Flanagan’s sharpest distinction was between public sentiment and political power. A voter can agree with a candidate, tell a pollster so, and still have no say in the outcome if that voter never casts a ballot.

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Haley Stevens Owes Michigan an Answer About Mike Rogers

Haley Stevens owed Michigan voters an answer before she asked them to send Mike Rogers to the United States Senate. She had warned those same voters that Rogers would serve as a “rubber stamp” for Donald Trump. What had Rogers done to earn her new confidence? When Anderson Cooper pressed her, Stevens talked about her falling-out with Abdul El-Sayed. That explained why she was angry with a fellow Democrat. It left unanswered the question that matters to a Michigan family whose health insurance just got more expensive. How would giving Trump another Senate vote help them?

Jenna Flanagan opened her election-eve edition of We Decide with the endorsement. The Politics Done Right host responded with a wicked little thank-you to Stevens for uniting Democrats. Behind the joke lay a serious point about who gets to define party loyalty. A progressive who loses a primary can expect an immediate question about whether the nominee has earned his support. El-Sayed won his primary. Yet in the final hours, he still had to answer questions about whether the woman he defeated felt welcome at his events. Rogers, meanwhile, got a Democratic congresswoman by his side in Detroit without changing a single position to get her there.

Ohio supplied an even uglier example of what campaign coverage can reward. Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy put Dr. Amy Acton’s estranged mother on television to attack her daughter’s honesty. The two had last seen each other nearly half a century earlier. The Associated Press reported that the campaign spent roughly $1 million airing the spot, about a quarter of the amount it originally announced. Trump wanted it to stay on the air. Consider what that purchase accomplished. A billionaire candidate got broadcasters, reporters, and voters talking about a little girl’s childhood on terms his campaign chose. Acton had to spend part of her campaign for governor answering for what adults did when she was a child.

Ohioans had a better argument available to them. Acton proposed making wealthy residents contribute more toward schools and healthcare. Ramaswamy proposed phasing out the state income tax. A rural parent could reasonably ask how Ohio would fund the local school once that revenue disappeared. A hospital worker could ask who would cover the cost of treating patients who lost insurance. Those questions expose the power dynamics behind a tax proposal. The attack on Acton’s family consumed airtime that could have gone toward getting answers.

Flanagan brought the conversation back to affordability, where the evidence runs deeper than any campaign anecdote. KFF went back to people it had surveyed about their marketplace insurance in 2025. After the enhanced federal tax credits expired, 51% of those who returned to marketplace coverage described their healthcare costs as much higher. About one in ten in the original group dropped marketplace coverage and became uninsured. A family can trim its grocery budget to keep a policy or give up the policy to buy groceries. Either choice lets Washington shift a public cost onto a private kitchen table.

Texas offered the clearest reason to take that economic anger seriously without pretending to know the result. The Texas Tribune found Paxton and Talarico within the polling margin of error heading into Election Day. The broadcast heard grounds for optimism in callers who felt Republicans had taken them for granted. The harder question was whether enough of those Texans would vote. Stevens could deliver her endorsement with a phone call. A Houston worker trying to vote around a shift had to make time. That worker’s judgment about wages, healthcare, and who deserves power carries exactly as much weight on a ballot as hers.

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