America's Talking - Episode 69: Republicans Maintain Edge in Battle for House, Senate, Gubernatorial Races

Episode Date: October 21, 2022

Join The Center Square's Executive Editor Dan McCaleb & D.C. Bureau Chief Casey Harper as they discuss: Republicans Maintain Edge in Battle for House, Senate, Gubernatorial Races. PayPal faces House inquiry after $2,500 'misinformation' fine controversy. Americans cut back on groceries because of inflation. Polls show gas prices are top concern for midterm voters with increase looming. 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.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the American Focus podcast, powered by the Center Square. American Focus is a production of America's Talking Network. I'm Dan McAiland, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. To support great podcasts like this one, please donate by clicking the link in the show description. Joining me today again is Casey Harper, the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. How are you, Casey? Doing good, Dan. How are you? I'm doing fine. We are recording this podcast on Friday, October 21st.

Casey, we're just about two weeks away from the very important November 8th midterms. In addition to dozens of governor races on the ballot across the country, voters will decide who controls Congress, both in the U.S. House and Senate for the next two years. Democrats currently hold a slim majority in the House. The Senate is divided 50-50 with Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris holding the tie-breaking vote. Casey, what do we know right now about how this election is going to unfold and whether Republicans, will take over either the House, the Senate, or possibly both. Yeah, well, in some sense, we don't know anything. As you know, these elections can change so much.

Anything can happen the night before an election change. But we can look at the data, piece through some things, and make some good guesses. And right now, CNBC, for example, just released a recent survey, which showed that Republicans have a two-point advantage over Democrats and taking Congress. So, and you may say, well, of course, you know, the challenging party to the president always does well in a midterm election. But it actually wasn't the case earlier this year. At one point, Democrats actually had an advantage over Republicans. So it's worth pointing out the Republicans are leading Democrats coming down to the wire on this.

It's also, you know, Biden's approval rating, you know, depending on where you look, it could be 42%. CNBC has it at 46%. So that's another key marker to keep an eye on because that tracks often with just general sentiment. It can affect turnout. If people are really unhappy with the president, more people can turn out to vote Republican in their local House race. So that definitely runs downhill when it comes to views of the president.

You know, other key issues to watch are things like crime and also gas prices, gas prices, which hit a record high earlier this year in the middle of June, have been watched really closely and factor into this inflation discussion, which we've talked about a lot. Higher prices and higher gas prices always affect politics, gas prices in particular. And a new poll from Convention of States Action, which they released along with the Trafalgar Group, found that 54.4% of voters say rising gas prices will make them more likely to vote for Republican candidates. So these high gas prices are definitely in voters' minds.

It is moving the needle. There's a lot of individual races with their own characteristics. But at a top level, Republicans are leading right now. Biden is still under 50% approval rating and gas prices are top of mind for voters. And so we'll get into that inflation impact on the election here a little bit more in just a moment. But really, pundits are looking at a handful of key races across the country, particularly in Senate races to determine who's going to control that House. in Congress, just name a couple of the races that on election night, Americans should be paying

attention to to see how it's going to go. Yeah, I mean, there are several big races, some closer than others. Of course, you know, states like California, expected to go blue. Arkansas expected to go red, but other states, it's a lot closer. Pennsylvania, for example, with Federman versus Dr. Oz is a really close state right now. Democrat, Dr. Rott and then Republican Dr. Oz, right? Go ahead. That's correct, right. And they, you know, Dr. Oz was taking a lot of heat early in the race. But just from my perspective, Fetterman has taken more and more criticism and questions about his health.

He is a stroke victim. And he even did an interview with MSNBC where the reporter basically said that there were times where Fetterman couldn't really understand the questions or communicate well because of because of health issues. And I think that has started to wear on the race. Right now, real clear politics still has the Democrat Federman up by a little over two points. But that's well within the margin of error. With a few weeks to go, that's definitely a toss-up. Another big race to watch is in Georgia where Raphael Wernock, the Democrat, is going up against the football star, Herschel Walker. Right now, Wernock is up. Again, 2.4 points, according to real clear politics.

Now, that's, again, within the margin of error. and with a couple weeks, you know, that's anything could happen. You know, some polls have it as a dead tie. Other polls, you know, have Warnock only up one point. So this is definitely, you know, within striking range for Walker, that's a big one to watch. You know, Wisconsin's big, Nevada's big, North Carolina. One more I'll point out is Arizona, where Mark Kelly, the incumbent Democrat, is going to get some Blake Masters. So Kelly's up two and a half points, but it's still considered, so considered.

to toss up, again, that margin of air. And it's worth pointing out that that governor's race there is really hotly contested. You know, and Carrie Lake has become kind of a rising star in the Republican Party. She's had some really viral moments where she's taken on the press and she's the Republican candidate there. So it'll be interesting to see how her viral, you know, her viral nature could impact the vote there. You know, it could be that if she gets a big swell, She could just carry Masters in with her. But, you know, only time we'll tell on that one. So the election is two weeks from Tuesday.

Casey, it's going to be all hands on deck at the center square in terms of coverage of it because it's such a huge election. You ready for election night? Start preparing yet? I'm ready. I'm excited. I've been preparing for weeks, Dan. And as you know, I'm the most well-prepared journalist in the Washington, D.C. area.

So I appreciate that, Casey. So let's talk about some of the issues that are driving voters decisions here. You mentioned inflation, gas prices hit record highs in June, started coming down. But the last few weeks, they're ticking back up again. Grocery prices, as inflationary data has shown, are up double digits year over year. Tell us what polling is saying about the issues that are driving the election. Well, yeah, as you said, we talked about gas prices, but we really can't overstate the importance of gas prices because that the incumbent party is blamed for gas prices. And it's especially potent because just a couple of years ago during the Trump administration, gas prices were extremely low.

Domestic drilling was up. We were basically energy independent. You know, gas prices weren't even a factor. We didn't even talk about them for pretty much the entire Trump administration. And now as soon as Democrats take power, there's this big rise in gas prices. Now, it's more complicated than just one political party took power. There is the Ukraine War, which affected global oil markets, there are different things going on.

But a lot of it can be put at the feed of the Biden administration. And regardless, whether you like it or not, just in politics, it doesn't always matter whose fault it is. What matters is who's in charge when the symptoms hit. And right now, Democrats are in charge when these gas prices really hit all-time high. I mean, $5 gas prices are unprecedented. There's something that even if you don't watch the news, as many Americans don't, you can't avoid seeing the price of the pump. So that poll that I mentioned earlier, Convention of State's Action, this is interesting, found that 55.5% of independents also say they're more likely to vote for Republicans because of gas prices.

So independence are the very sought-after demographic and gas prices are pushing them to the right. I think those gas prices are going to start to go up in the coming weeks because OPEG said they're going to cut production. But energy, I also just point out it's not just gas prices. Energy prices overall, according to federal economic data, have risen 20% in the last 12 months. Yeah. And that's huge. Heading into winter here, too, I'm seeing all kinds of news reports, both, at the center square and elsewhere that home heating prices are going to skyrocket.

After skyrocketing last year, they're going to go up again this year. Yeah, that's right. You and your buddies in Illinois, in particular, those colder states, you pay the price for it. You pay the price for it for sure. One more thing I'll point out, and I'll toss back to you is, you know, I've brought this up before, but grocery prices in the last year have risen 13%. 13%. And actually, if you want to go out to eat, it's risen more than 13%.

So it's not like you can just go grab a bite and avoid these grocery prices. There's no getting away for it. If you're eating, if you're driving your car, which everyone does, you're feeling the pain right now. And because of grocery prices being as expensive as they are, you wrote a story this week that Americans are cutting back on certain types of groceries because of it. Yeah, that's right. It's kind of hard to believe. But people are cutting back. They're actually buying less food.

They're buying less food because of grocery prices. Now, that's not the majority of people, but the majority of people are at least cutting back on the kinds of food they buy to make it cheaper. So this is a morning consult survey, which dove a little bit deeper into this problem of high grocery prices, which we've talked about a lot on this podcast. And it found that 82% of American shoppers, I mean, vast majority, 82% report trying to save money on groceries in the last month. So this isn't like, you know, back months ago when inflation,

used to be bad and now it's fine as the Biden administration is kind of trying to couch this. And inflation was bad, but it's leveled off now. This is the last month. 82% are trying to save money on groceries. The most common way they're doing that is they're buying generic. They're trying to cut back in that way. But it's definitely on their minds when people are going to the grocery store. And even more interestingly, is this poll found that a lot of Americans are actually just buying less food.

Just trying to make do, buying less food, making, you know, whatever it may be, maybe you usually have spaghetti with meatballs. Now you're just having spaghetti without the meatballs. That kind of thing are the decisions. The next day you're having the leftover spaghetti. Exactly, exactly. So while inflation's obviously going to be front of mind when voters go to the polls, November 8th, another big issue around the country has been rising crime rates,

particularly rising violent crime rates. Law enforcement groups are saying are essentially blaming the defund the police movement after the murder in Minneapolis of George Floyd at the hand of a couple of Minneapolis police officers. Tell us about what's going on here. Yeah, this is a really interesting issue that we've been covering a lot at the CenterSquare.com. Since 2019, just to throw this strategy, since 2019, there's been a 40% spike in high. homicides in the United States. 40% spike in

homicide since 2019. And you could say that that's because of COVID, but it's really, the data does not support that. It already began, so much of it is actually tied to certain cities. It's not just everywhere, 40% increases happen. It's actually tied

mostly to certain cities that had some of the worst of the BLM rioting in the summer of 2020, where in many cities, the riots were allowed to happen without any real police crackdown. I'm pretty much no one went to jail. Hundreds and hundreds of people looted, ransack stores.

There was violence, vandalism. Pretty much nobody went to jail for that. And since then, there has been just a change in the way that police are policing in the way that citizens and criminals are behaving. They're being more risky. They're doing more things. And so in some cities, like I think this statistic is incredible. You know, only about a third of homicides in Baltimore are actually solved.

You know, that's just a case study. Baltimore is particularly bad. But, you know, only a third of homicides in Baltimore are solved. And so when you have things like that happening in cities, people know they can get away with it. There's been a police officers. I've talked to experts and cops on this. And they've been demoralized or they're afraid of being the next viral incident or they're afraid that if they make a questionable decision, they won't be backed up by the, you know,

by the prosecutors, by the local politicians and officials. They're afraid that they'll be scapegoated for political purposes. So they've pulling back, they're being less risky, less aggressive in their policing. Criminals feel more emboldened. And so this is all what law enforcement groups are saying contributed to this. And the last factor is what, you know, this is a little bit of a, I don't know, this term is a little bit. inflamed, but it's rogue prosecutors. There's been this, in the last few years, there's been this push to put really progressive prosecutors in charge in major cities around the country.

George Soros is often blamed for this, and that's because he does fund a lot of it. I think there's more involved in that, but they're often called Soros-funded prosecutors, if you've ever heard that. What they're talking about are these progressive prosecutors. Go ahead. No, I was going to say, yeah, I'm well familiar with that issue. A couple of things I just. I just wanted to add there at the Center Square, starting in the summer and through the fall,

we took a look at, for example, arrest rates in major cities across the country. And arrest rates have been declining for years even before the George Floyd murder. And one of the reasons law enforcement has said for those declining arrest rates, and I'm not talking, you know, 10% decline in arrests year over year and like that, I'm talking like 60% declines in arrest over a several-year period is because they're afraid to be overly aggressive. And they use the term Ferguson effect. You have to go back several years to Ferguson, Missouri, where there's a high-profile confrontation with police. And they're saying essentially that snowballed shortly after the George Floyd murder and police officers are now tentative.

They don't want to get into a situation or where there could be accused of wrong done. Right. That's right. And the prosecutor's issue I was hitting on plays right into that because so many of these progressive prosecutors actually aren't prosecuting some of these crimes anymore. There's entire categories of crimes that they just don't prosecute. And so a cop can arrest someone, have all the proof they need against them. But the prosecutor will just drop the charge. It's kind of on ideological issues.

I think there's a lot that goes into war. why they're doing this, but they, I think it's really demoralizing for police when they arrest people or do things and then they aren't prosecuted. And even some cities, the policies on the books are supporting this. So in San Francisco, for example, low level shoplifting is basically decriminalized. And so we've seen these viral videos of people walking with trash bags, filling them up, leaving, and stores like CVS announced and others have just announced they have to leave the city of San Francisco because it's no longer safe to their employees. They're losing so much merchandise. So I think we've really swayed to one direction of the political spectrum on law enforcement right now.

And I think we're seeing some of the political pushback on that. We're seeing some of the effects of that. And I wouldn't be surprised if we see kind of a pendulum shift back in the other direction in the next few years to come. Yeah. And one more example there in Illinois. A new law takes effect January 1st, so just a couple of months. It essentially eliminates cash bail regardless of the crime. You commit a felony. You get booked and then you get released without having to post any bail.

The law enforcement community across Illinois is almost unanimous in opposing this new law. It's become, it's not on the ballot on November 8th, but it's become an issue in key legislative races and the governor's race. on Illinois. So there's definitely, not just crime, but this criminal justice, quote, unquote, reform measures that have been taking place across the country is very controversial and also going to be on voters' minds when they go to the polls November 8th. Yeah, that's absolutely right. And this is impacting people's communities. I mean, when you here in D.C., where I'm based out of, I've definitely noticed an uptick in violent crime. And, you know, people, you know, you often hear the phrase, all politics is local. Some of you.

are kind of up in the air. They're kind of just ideological debates, but some things hit home when there's crime on your streets, when your gas prices are higher, when your grocery prices are higher, some of these political issues become day-to-day issues, and I think that is what motivates voters. All right. So just listeners, please get informed ahead of the November 8th election. Of course, early voting is underway in many states, depending on where you live. But it's an important election, get to know the candidates that are going to be on your ballot, any amendments or other resolutions that are going to be on your ballot. Please go out and vote. Let's segue away from the midterms, Casey, though. Interesting story this week after a controversial policy was leaked from PayPal in which

they would assess fines against users for disseminating misinformation. Now it got the interest of Congress and they're looking into it. Tell us about that. That's right. Some of our listeners may have heard the story, but just a quick recap, PayPal came under a lot of fire, a lot of controversy. Their stocks tumbled after news broke that they had updated their user policy to say that they could actually withdraw $2,500 from your account, basically a fine, if they deemed that you were, you know, spreading, quote, misinformation. So, you know, this quickly caused a lot of backlash. It went viral. Cancel or delete PayPal went viral on Twitter. It was trending. People were posting all their photos of them or their screenshots of them canceling their PayPal account.

It was quickly interpreted as a kind of quote unquote woke corporate push to police speech. And I think right now a lot of people in this country are really sensitive to that. We've seen a lot of different forums where big corporations have been seen as towing a kind of Democratic Party line and enforcing speech codes that only benefit one side. I think we saw that. For example, Twitter censored the Hunter Biden story right before the election as misinformation. And then later it came out that it was pretty much all true, which probably influenced the election in a pretty significant way. The New York Post's Twitter account was locked. That's like one of the most high profile examples of just big corporations interfering.

And so I think people reacted really strongly to this PayPal story because of all the, just all the baggage and the history on this issue. So now House Republicans are looking into it. They sent a letter to the head of the company. They want to know how this happened, who was responsible for it. And I'll just point out this has not been talked about as much. But PayPal, I read their user policy. And they actually still have that $2,500, they call it a liquidation policy. Liquidation.

For those accounts, they deem discriminatory or that push hatred, which I guess, you know, those kind of, you can be sympathetic to act. But also this one caught my eye, intolerance. If you're intolerant as deemed by the potentially HR officials who went to Berkeley at, you know, or wherever they went at PayPal, they can withdraw $2,500 from your account if you're deemed intolerant. So I don't know, don't be intolerant, Dan. I will report you. And this is still in their terms of service, you're telling me.

Yes, it is. They've removed the misinformation. part because of the controversy. They said, oh, that was a mistake. It went out an error. They acted like that was totally a mistake. Maybe it was. I think a lot of people were pretty skeptical of that.

It seemed like they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar on that one. But the parts about hatred, intolerance, and discrimination are still in there. And I think, you know, who, I mean, who supports hatred and discrimination and intolerance? I mean, nobody really, but the thing is the arbiter of, of me. Exactly. I mean, it. That doesn't make any sense to me. Right.

And you don't have to be on Twitter very long or listen to some speeches by people like those in the squad or elsewhere to hear that basically misinformation means saying anything supportive of Russia, basically, or anything questioning, anything about ballots or mail-in voting. That's misinformation. Intolerance in their eyes is any questions about the efficacy or benefit of things like transnational. transgender surgeries. That would be considered hatred and intolerance to them. So any questions or doubts on the transgender issue, as an example, could easily be considered intolerance and, you know, land you with a fine. And, you know, PayPal is, I think, within its rights to have its own policy, but American people are within their rights to know what it is and make their own decision about where they want to go with their, with their money. Is one of the questions House Republicans want to know or get to the bottom of is whether or not PayPal, um, the Biden administration work with PayPal on this policy. Do we know anything about that? That's correct.

That is one thing they're looking into. I think that's specifically because of the misinformation issue. The Biden administration actually has a history of pressuring corporations to silence what they call misinformation or disinformation. Of course, the Biden administration infamously created the Department of Homeland Security Disinformation Committee and has law enforcement power to regulate disinformation. They really have leaned on social media companies. these pretty heavily to remove posts and content that they deem misinformation or disinformation.

And often, you know, some of those labels have been pretty suspect. So I think that's where that's coming from. The Biden administration has a history of doing that. And if anyone on the Biden team was part of this PayPal, PayPal issue, that's just going to be, you know, all the, it's just going to confirm every suspicion that, you know, Republicans and right-line the Americans have about the collaboration, the, let's call it the collusion between big corporate America and the Democratic Party. They see them increasingly as one and the same. Interesting stuff, Casey, but that's all the time we have this week. A reminder to our

listeners, you can find all of the CenterSquares podcasts at America's Talking.com. Take a look. Please subscribe. There is no cost. This has been the America in Focus podcast for Casey Harper. I'm Dan and Caleb. We'll talk to you next week. Thank you.