The midterm elections were great for Democrats everywhere, but some triumphed even more decisively than others: Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, for example, cruised to reelection with roughly 63 percent of the vote.
Voters pushed Republicans out — and kept Democrats like Moore in power — in part because of their concerns over a handful of critical issues, including the rising cost of living, the Iran war, and the growing dominance of AI and data centers. The question now is how Democrats can best wield their new power to act on the currents that carried them into office.
For Moore, the stakes may be particularly high: He’s often mentioned as a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2028, speculation that he has not exactly batted down.
America, Actually host Astead Herndon spoke with Moore about his vision for how the Democrats should proceed. As Moore put it, this is a moment in which the party will have to move quickly on the problems that motivate voters most.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full show, so listen to America, Actually wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on Vox’s YouTube channel.
Lowering cost is the top priority for voters, and, frankly, it was where they penalized Trump the most. What’s the single biggest thing Democrats could do to address folks’ cost of living concerns?
Actually move fast to fix the things. No more studies. No more 10-year research reports. Move fast. For example, in Maryland, we’ve done permitting reform to be able to speed up affordable housing, right? And I did not need a 10-year research paper to tell me that we have an issue with affordable housing.
Get more housing around transit. Do more transit-oriented development. If it’s state-owned land, don’t tell me why we can’t do something. It is state owned land. Do something on it.
The reason we made the largest investments in childcare in our state’s history is because it is insane when you’re watching the fact that people are spending thirty and forty percent of their paychecks on child care and knowing how much that’s actually going to impact [them]. So there are things that we can do right now to be able to address it.
But I also think that there are things that we need Washington to be able to do. For example, gas prices: There’s no governor that can impact gas prices. We just need to stop fighting stupid wars. There’s no governor that is impacting national energy policy or national grocery prices. What we need to do is stop allowing illegal tariff policy to happen. So I do think that there are things that Washington Democrats have got to do, and that they need to move fast on. But I also think that we don’t need to wait for them to be able to put things in place that we know that actually work.
I wonder what universal healthcare means to you. Is that the government providing insurance?
If you look at what we’ve done here in Maryland, we’ve been able to actually come up with platforms through our Total Cost of Care [Model]. We’re actually working with our hospitals. Our hospitals have a universal budget, and are then able to make sure that people are getting the care that they need.
That has done a tremendous job of being able to help to break the cost curve. Maryland is one of the only states in the country where you’re watching the cost of healthcare actually go down, [while] also being able to increase coverage.
A lot of the Democrats’ affordability message came out of Mamdani’s win. I remember him telling me the one thing he would never budge on is the belief that billionaires shouldn’t exist. I wanted to pose that question to you. Do you think billionaires should exist?
I lose no sleep over the amount of billionaires in our society. I do lose sleep over the amount of children that are growing up in poverty. And I think those who [do] have, have a responsibility to support and uplift and create pathways for those who do not.
Here in our state, we actually cut taxes for the middle class. We cut taxes for military veterans. And I said [to wealthy Marylanders], you need to invest more to make sure that we’re doing things like we’re doing: having the fastest public safety turnaround story in the United States of America, having math and reading scores in our public schools now at five-year highs. And I did ask wealthy Marylanders to invest a little bit more to make sure we can get those kinds of results.
I wanted to move on to Iran. You served in Afghanistan and are a veteran. When we think about this incoming Democratic Congress, should they continue funding a war that Americans have mostly found is not in their interest?
No, and they shouldn’t have funded in the first place.
I’ve heard the argument that that leaves soldiers behind.
No, because we’re talking about a president who unilaterally went to war without even asking Congress for authority. The president does not have the authority to just wage war by himself. That is something that the Constitution lays out. Congress is the only one that has the authority for that. And truthfully, this Congress has been so caught up in the aura of the president of the United States that they have not been leaders; they have been cheerleaders.
Part of the issue is that this Congress needs to be held to account, and that’s exactly what I think happened on Tuesday. But I think about my experiences, right? I served in Afghanistan. I led soldiers with the 82nd Airborne Division, and we went over there with what we believed was an understanding of what was at stake and what needed to happen. That this was about the Taliban, and the Taliban could not be in charge of Afghanistan after 9/11. Twenty years later, trillions of dollars spent, thousands of American service members dead, and do you know who’s in charge of Afghanistan right now? The Taliban.
And so we are dragging ourselves again into another forever war. And the problem is that we have a Congress that is not actually asserting its authority to be able to check this administration. I think that Congress needs to get this done not in the first hundred days, [but] in the first hundred hours. Congress needs to assert its authority and say to the president of the United States: This needs to end.
Data centers also had a horrible night on Tuesday. But I still hear a lot of Democrats say that AI has a place in the economy of tomorrow. Is there a place for pro-AI Democrats in this big tent?
I am very concerned about what we’ve seen from AI, and I know a lot of Americans are. I’m hopeful for what I think the promise of what AI can bring to things like health care and what I think AI can bring to things like education. But I also know that there need to be guardrails.
What we have seen from Donald Trump and these folks is that there are no guardrails. They just let it do what it does. I don’t think that’s the right answer. I think that’s remarkably dangerous.
I don’t think that the answer is telling them, “Police yourself, guys, because that’s going to get us to the right answer.” And that’s why in Maryland, we’ve actually put together guidelines as to how we’re going to be protected from AI. That includes things like protecting our workforce. That includes things like protecting our pocketbooks. That includes things like protecting our children.
We put together some of the most stringent guidelines in the country that said things like, they have to pay for all their own energy and all their own upgrades. That our taxpayers do not pay a single penny for that. That they cannot pollute our air or pollute our water. They need to follow all environmental guidelines. That they need to hire local union workers. And also really importantly, that we need to make sure that the people of Maryland have control, not the data center companies, not the Trump administration. That control belongs to us.
About half of the local jurisdictions in Maryland have either a ban or a pause on [data centers]. And I’ve said the state will never override you, ever. If you have a ban or a pause, that is done, because control goes to the locals.