America's Talking - Episode 30: Polls Show Voters favor Congressional Republicans on range of key issues heading into midterms.

Episode Date: January 21, 2022

Poll: Voters favor Congressional Republicans on range of key issues heading into midterms. Biden's filibuster, voting legislation failure leaves issue to the states. Rand Paul: Federal COVID stimulus to blame for record inflation. U.S. political alignments experienced historic shift in 2021. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to American Focus, powered by thecenter Square.com. I'm Cole McNeely. Coming up, we'll take a quick look at one of the top stories from thecentersquare.com. And later, executive editor of the Center Square, Dan McAulb, and DC reporter Casey Harper, will take a deeper dive into some of the top stories of the week. Coming up right after this on American Focus, powered by thecenter square.com. Hi, this is Chris Krug, publisher of the Center Square. Our team produces the nationally read and recognized news stories at the center square.com,

the country's fastest growing, non-profit, nonpartisan, state-focused news and information site. We deliver essential information with a taxpayer sensibility through reporting that's easy to understand and easy to share with your friends and family. We know that you need information that allows you to understand what the governor and your local legislators are doing. Get the news that you need to know at thecenter square.com. That's the center square.com. Thecenter Square.com. Newly released economic data shows a surge in first-time unemployment claims last week,

much higher than experts predicted. The Department of Labor reported Thursday that for the weekend in January 15th, a total of 286,000 Americans filed for first-time unemployment claims. The latest jobless numbers are much higher than expert's predictions of roughly 225,000 claims. The figures are at the highest level since October. of last year. To read more about this story and many others, visit thecenter square.com. Now for a closer look, it's Dan McAulb and Casey Harper. Thank you, Cole, and welcome back to American Focus, powered by the Center Square.

I'm Dan McAleb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me today is Casey Harper, the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. Casey, we're recording this on Friday, January 21st. President Joe Biden hit the one-year anniversary of his presidency this week and celebrated by holding a two-hour press conference and suffering some significant setbacks in Congress. Casey, you watched the press conference. What's your take? Sure. It was a very interesting, and as you pointed out, a very long press conference, and we can get into some of the details, but one big takeaway is that if you thought that with the exit of President Trump, the days of long, meandering speeches that threat, you

threatened to upset the global order were over, you were wrong because it was a Trump-esque press conference. It was open-ended. It went on and on. There were moments where you tensed up as the president just talked about issues like Ukraine. It was clearly going off the cuff. Multiple times he said, I don't know if I should say that or I should say this. We said, yeah, I could probably say this. That was kind of the thing. And so, you know, you're just, it was very, um, it was very, it was very Trumpian. It was, you know, it was very entertaining. It was exciting. Policy was being developed in real time. That's probably not a good thing.

No, especially when it's international. Yeah, right. Yeah, especially international policies. And he had to, you know, we don't generally talk about foreign policy here, but he essentially, his advisors had to clean up his Ukraine comments. Very much of the effect. Yeah. And one of the criticisms, one of the many criticisms of President Biden's first year in office is that he doesn't often take questions from reporters.

His handlers, it's kind of become infamous that he's even said himself at past press briefings, that he's told who he can ask questions of, that he's not supposed to, that he's told who you can ask questions of, that he's not supposed to. say certain things. So this was, this was different for him. Right. And I think you maybe saw why. That was the policy because I'm sure that reporters appreciated the access. But, and I think overall, they were pretty fair to him. I didn't see anybody really twisting the knife or anything. But you, you see why the staff has put the distance between him because, as I said, it went on and on. He was meandering. He didn't stay, you know, in politics, he used the language of staying on message. you know, you have three things we're talking about Ukraine and no matter what question you get asked, you say these three things. It doesn't matter the question on the spending

of infrastructure bill or on billback better. These are the three things we're going to say. And so that's staying on message. And you see politicians do it. It's one of the reasons people don't like politicians, but there's a reason for it because, you know, one misstep. And you can create a whole new cycle. And as you referenced it, the White House has been cleaning up and really, released statements, kind of contradicting the president to make clear that, you know, Ukraine and Russia knew the stance. And Ukrainian president responded on Twitter to Biden's remarks and kind of publicly corrected him. And so that all happened. And then, you know, one of the big highlights was when Biden was asked about the upcoming election. Now, the backdrop of this is that in Atlanta

last week, Biden just excoriated his opponents. He said that they were. racist. He, you know, compared to the Bull Connor and these kind of American villains of segregation and, you know, civil rights movement or opposition to the civil rights movement, rather. And he compared those fights to the current, you know, voting legislation, which it does different things, but one of the most striking things that it does is it allows for essentially a federal takeover of state elections, state election laws would have to pass through be approved or could be overturned by the federal government. So, you know, the president gives that speech last week in Atlanta. He just crushed the taxes, enemies. And then immediately,

when he also calls for getting rid of the filibuster to pass the legislation, and immediately, even his own members of his own party in the Senate come out publicly and disagree with him. And so it really deflated that. That bill has really stalled. It's, you know, not looking too hopeful. And then it comes to this press conference and he gets asked about it again. And the reporter basically asked him if he can trust the integrity of the upcoming midterm elections if this law isn't passed. And the president really waffles on it, which, as you can imagine, sparked a ton of controversy. Instead of saying, yes, regardless of politics, we trust the integrity of our elections, I'm not like President Trump, which is what you kind of expected Biden to say. He wouldn't say that he could trust the upcoming elections.

He would say that, you know, it was up in the air. And so that's really dangerous. And it's really started a whole other conversation and controversy around the voting legislation. It hasn't pushed the legislation any further either. So we've been talking about this voting legislation that Democrats have been trying to get passed in Congress. You mentioned they would essentially federalize state elections since the 2020 election, where during the pandemic, during COVID-19, particularly Democratic states, but really it happened across the country, there was increased mail-in-voting, increased access to mail-in-voting,

drop boxes were set up around entire communities where people could drop off their ballots, which many called into question could increase the possibility for voter fraud. First, President Trump took that whole voter fraud thing to a completely different level, and many Republicans supported him there. But Democrats, so in the wake of that, various states, particularly red states, passed new voting legislation just meant to limit the possibilities of voter fraud, requiring IDs for mail-in voting. essentially making statewide laws for the use of things like drop boxes and mail-in-votings, making it uniform.

And in response, the Democrats proposed this federal legislation that would essentially undo many of those new state laws. But this week, President Biden suffered some pretty significant losses in Congress. What can you tell us about that? Sure. Well, he, the biggest loss has been his own party. And namely Senator Kirsten Cinema from Arizona and Joe Manchin from West Virginia. Now, these are the same two who really held up Build Back Better. Now, it's possible Bill Back Better could be passed in smaller pieces now, but I don't think that's likely this year. But Mansion and Cinema have really taken, just taken a meeting in the press.

you know, there was yeah, by their own party exactly. And there was a push, you know, to get rid of the filibuster, but that would allow the Senate to pass, to bring in debate and pass things with a simple majority, which is never, I believe never happened in the

history of the Senate. And so it's a very big deal to do this. That's why the Democrats are moralizing so much and saying that this is basically the continuation of the civil rights movement because they need a really big reason. to justify overturning basically how the Senate has worked forever. And Mansion and Cinema just couldn't get on board with that, even though I think they do support the voting rights legislation.

They want to preserve the filibuster. And we talked last week on the podcast about, you know, the role of the filibuster and how it might be a little short-sighted because Republicans will be in charge soon. And you'll have a whole litany of bills that Democrats will have to just have shoved down their throat if Republicans are in the same situation. But, you know, they, There was 50 Republicans and two Democrats that oppose Biden's move.

It doesn't look like there's much hope for it now. Of course, you know, Texas is a big state in this, you reference to state issues. You probably remember, and our listeners probably remember when that cadre of Texas Democrats fled the state to come to Washington, D.C. A few went to Europe and got COVID. But, you know, they fled the state to keep a quorum from happening. So Republicans couldn't pass the voting law, although they had, eventually returned and, you know, maybe probably got more fundraising money, but the law passed.

And in Georgia has been a big place, too, you know, the president's speech in Atlanta was no accident. Georgia elected two Democratic senators, which is a surprise to a lot of people. It's been the center of voting rights debate for several years, thanks in part to Stacey Abrams, who has been questioned the integrity of those elections long before President Trump's doing it. So, you know, this is ongoing issue. The, the big takeaway to, me is that election integrity has evolved from being something that a lot of people would call a Trump conspiracy to both parties are engaging in it. It's just commonplace talk, and I really think it's not good for the country. And Democrats have been trying or have been saying, not trying to say,

they've been saying since the 2020 election and many of these Republican-led states have tightened up their voting laws, that what Republicans are trying to do is, suppress the vote, particularly in minority communities. Republicans steadfastly refute that and say it's just about shoring up election laws. And black voters and Latino voters will have every right in access to polling places and to voting as, you know, Republicans and white Americans or whatever. And so how do we, who's telling the truth here? Do we know is it, is it not that simple?

With many things, it's not that simple probably. But a few things. When polling shows that many more Americans want election rules to be tightened up rather than loosened up. So that's important. The majority do favor some kind of tightening up of the laws. I'll also say that, you know, the real thing happening here is that no matter what form, of it's not so much about the details of the policy because you know like there are certain democrat run states that actually have more strict voting laws than say Georgia where this whole

debate has happened you know New York has had some really strict voting laws other states and those have been in place for forever for a long time right it's just it's these states that have passed new laws since the 2020 election that the focus has been on right right and I really sadly think this is just a lot of politics more than people who genuinely caring about the policy because, you know, America has a really ugly history on this issue and not too recent past with segregation. A lot of things were done in our history with, you know, voting polls and, you know, literacy tests. And so no matter what you propose on this issue, it is always going to be brought up by your opponents. No matter how tame or how mild

voting laws are if you're a Republican, you're always going to face this. So I think that's actually, you know, this may seem like a new issue of the year for a lot of listeners in us, but I think for Republicans who've been in the Senate for a long time, this is the same old song and dance that Democrats always do. It's like whenever you try to reform welfare, you hate poor people. And whenever you try to tighten up legislation on voting laws, you're racist. And whenever you don't support universal health care, you hate, sick grandmothers. You know, there's always kind of the moral side. There's the same moral

arguments that get trotted out on every issue. And so I think that's what we're seeing here again. And I think Republicans have heard it before and they're not, they're just not standing down this time. Just the bottom line, congressional Democrats tried to take the authority over state elections away from states. They didn't have the votes to get it done this week. Is it dead? Yeah, I think that's that's right. And it may seem like we're overstate. stating the federal taking over elections, but it's really not. And this is, if this pass would be an extremely consequential bill, talk about state sovereignty feeling threatened or states wanting to buck the federal government. I mean, to have the federal government be in charge of state elections

is, you know, maybe, maybe people support it, but it's definitely not in the spirit of how the nation was set up, the nation was set up so the states had sovereignty. They could determine who they elected and how they elected them. And they even had total control over how they chose, you know, their contribution to electing the president because they were 50 individual, or, you know, fewer than, but a lot of individual states that contributed to this federal government. And now it's, it's trying to morph into one federal government that has these little protectors that carry out administrative duties like, you know, local police departments and building bridges. And so I think that's one of the big, when we talk about decades or, you know, the 50-year battles that we're in

right now, I think that's one of them. That's really one of them. Let's move on, Casey. Somewhat related topic, though. New polling came out this week showing pretty dramatic shift in voters' political point of view. What can you tell us about this Politico morning consult? Sure, yeah, it's really interesting. There's, there's an entire narrative about, you know, President Trump's effect on the Republican Party, it was really a tough loss for him in the party because not only did he lose, but he fought it for months and months. And that really soured a lot of people, I think, and it ended up losing. It's really like he lost several times throughout the year.

Democrats were able to capitalize on that and talk about it a lot. But the poll, this poll has shown that came out, obviously political morning consult are not right-wingers by any means. But it showed that Republicans are favored on a whole host of issues. So here's a few. Republicans are trusted by voters more on the economy. 47% for Republicans and Democrats have 34%. When it comes to jobs, Republicans have 45%. Democrats have 35%. On immigration, Republicans have 45%. And Democrats have 37%. National security, Republicans have 49%. and Democrats have 32%. You know,

those are, yeah, these are big margins in politics. You know, usually you don't have margins as big in politics. I mean, Republicans traditionally do better on issues like jobs and Democrats do better on issues like health care because they talk about those issues more. They're just seen this kind of their issues. But there's been big swings. And we could probably talk about the Gallup poll. I don't know an hour later.

But there's just been a seismic, a historic shift to the Republican Party in 2021, one, partially because so many fell away from the Republican Party in the aftermath of January 6 and COVID and all that. But it seems like there's a big coming home that's happened. And Republicans are seeing the benefit of that now. Well, you referenced the Gallup one that the new poll from Gallup also came out this week. What's that tell us? Sure. So it's a really interesting.

I'll pull it up here. But essentially it showed truly historic realignment. So Gallup is, you know, very, I'm sure there's no very reputable pollster. And they combined and collated all the polls from 2021. And they reported a nine percentage point Democratic advantage in the first quarter to a rare five republicans swung from Democrats being up nine points to Republicans being up five points. So that's a 14 point swing in one year. And Gallup called that the last. largest they've measured for each party in any quarter since it began regularly measuring

party identification and leaning in 1991. So, you know, it's funny, though, after all the chips have settled, Democrats are still in the lead. You know, 46% of Americans identify with the Democratic Party, 43% with the Republican. But you can imagine where it was this time last year. So I think, you know, we can talk about the why. I mean, I think the mandates have really upset a lot of people. You know, Biden ran on shutting down the virus, not shutting down the economy. And I mean, you know, whether the president really has the power to stop a virus is kind of an interesting question.

And probably it probably answers no, but he ran on it. And so you could say, well, the president can't just stop COVID. You can't blame him for that. But it's like, well, when he promised to do it in his campaign, you kind of can. And voters are. So he promised to shut down COVID. It seems like more people have COVID than ever with Omicron. And there hasn't been any major improvement.

It turns out the vaccines aren't nearly as good as we thought they would be. I mean, they still help. But the vaccines were initially pitched as like the solution. Like we're going to end the pandemic with these. And now it's like, well, you can still get it. But you're less likely to die. So people are upset with COVID. Then there's the Afghanistan issue, which for a lot of voters, this has become a really big issue.

Biden withdrew from Afghanistan. Afghanistan on the second half of last year. And, you know, a lot of people died. That's pretty chaotic. You know, I think you could make arguments over people, whether people wanted to leave. But the way it was handled was not popular. The polling at the time showed the Americans were really unhappy with how it happened. And so now the other poll we referenced showed that 49% trust for Republicans on national security, where Democrats only have 32%. And then, of course, you know, for some voters, it doesn't really matter. But the, there is a contingent of voters that really care about immigration.

And immigration has actually skyrocketed under Biden. Illegal immigration has just taken off. It's at like record levels almost. And it has been since he took office. And, you know, Biden is not really done much about it. Maybe that's just a strategic decision or policy decision. But these things kind of adding up. And they've kind of reset the equilibrium of politics.

And it's kind of post-Trump. political landscape. So we've talked about these two polls that it's hard to argue. They're both leaning towards or swinging. It looks like Americans, voters, taxpayers, political beliefs are swinging a little bit from left to right. We have a midterm election this year that you referenced in 2020. Of course, Democrats won sweeping victories.

They took the presidency from Republicans. Joe Biden beat Donald Trump. They essentially gained control of the U.S. Senate, which Republicans had controlled previously. It's a 50-50 sort of tie in the Senate. But with President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris winning the White House, the vice president has the swing vote in the Senate. And they had Democrats had already owned. had a slight majority in the House.

But this year in November, every single U.S. House seat is up. About a third of the U.S. Senate seats are up. So, I mean, can this poll, these two polls? Tell us anything about what's going to happen in November? I mean, yeah, I mean, it's a long way until November, obviously. But you're right to point out that the leanings are going against Democrats. And it's interesting because the party in power during the president's first term, when those midterms come around, they usually get walloped.

So you remember Obama, the Tea Party was basically created as the first midterm election against Obama and his government. And obviously, you know, that was a huge Republican surge that pushed back and, you know, was a response to some of the things that Obama was pushing. of Trump, as you kind of alluded to, Trump had the same thing where he had control and then in the midterms, just Democrats had a big victory. So this is really normal, actually. It would be the exception if Republicans don't have big wins this November. So I think everyone in D.C. knows this. And it's just kind of the question is how big is the wind going to be unless something really big happens. I mean, you know, there are things that could become really big issues or happen the week of the election that can shake things up. But. If things stay the way they are. It could be a war over in Russia and Ukraine. Exactly. Yeah, and that's the kind of issue that does really shake up the polling and the landscape. And, you know, God forbid, that would happen.

But those midterm elections in the first term of a president are often major surges for the opposing party. And that's why we've seen, you know, there's been, I think over two dozen Democrats in the House have already. announced they're not running for re-election. So there's been about, I think 13 Republicans have said they're not going to run for re-election. They're running for other offices or they're retiring, but more than double that many Democrats.

And I think you can make an educated guess that some of them think they won't win re-election. They don't want to go through the craziness of running again just to get destroyed in the normal midterm Republican surge. And you referenced the midterms during

President Obama's first term of office, the Tea Party essentially having heavy influences on that election. Same thing happened during President Trump's term in office, the midterm. Before the midterm, when President Trump first took office in 2017, Republicans controlled both the Senate and the House, and of course, Donald Trump being a Republican, they were able to get through the massive tax cuts that they did. But at the midterm election, that year, 2019, Republicans, or excuse me, Democrats retook the U.S. House of Representatives. So it would not be a surprise if Republicans were able to take control of the U.S. House.

I think the Senate, because only about a third of the seats are up. And I think there's more Republican incumbents whose seats are up than there are Democrat incumbents up. So that's more up in the air. but it would not be a surprise if Republicans did regain control of the House. Right. And I think that that's why you're seeing Biden being so aggressive in his push, because, you know, he passed a lot of federal spending last year. And he hasn't really slowed down. He's, you know, pushed for bill back better. And then as soon as that failed, he pivoted very quickly and very hard to this voting issue. You know, you may think, well, he has four,

years, maybe eight years, but really I think in the White House's mind, they have eight months because come November they're going to lose their very likely going to lose their majorities, and it'll be gridlocked, gridlock D.C. again, that we've all grown so familiar with. So I think the White House feels under the, under the gun, the time's running out. They only have a few months, and even less than eight months because, you know, the last few months before an election, and everyone leaves D.C. I mean, good luck finding a congressman who wants to come and do a controversial vote in July. Got a campaign, right?

The election, you know, in November or August. Like, it's just very unlikely. So he really only has a few months left if you want to pass anything significant. Well, that's all the time we have, Casey. As usual, thank you for your insight on all that's happening in our nation's capital, Washington, D.C. This has been the America in Focus podcast. Thank you.