America's Talking - Episode 72: Red Wave Hits Florida, Stops There

Episode Date: November 10, 2022

Join The Center Square’s Executive Editor Dan McCaleb and D.C. Bureau Chief Casey Harper as they discuss the red wave that hit Florida but stopped there. Amid GOP gains, Warnock, Walker headed to Dec. 6 runoff to decide pivotal Georgia Senate seat. 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 America in Focus podcast, powered by the Center Square. America in Focus is a production of America's Talking Network. I'm Dan McAaleb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. To support a great podcast like this one, please donate by clicking the link in the show description. Join me again today is Casey Harper, the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. How are you, Casey? Good, Dan. How are you? Doing well.

We are recording this podcast on Thursday, November 10th. It's a day earlier than usual. And the reason we're recording this a day earlier is tomorrow is Veterans Day. Casey, America just voted this week in the all too crucial midterm elections. Before we talk about the results, though, let's just take a moment to honor those who allow us to participate in these free elections. Any thoughts on veterans? Yeah, you make a great point. I mean, I spent all week, you know, knee-deep or, I guess, in.

these results looking through how people voted. And, you know, there's been a lot of talk about democracy on the ballot, but none of this would even be happening if we didn't have these freedoms, then we owe a real debt because of that. I would agree with you there. Thank you to our both active and retired military members for allowing us to have a peaceful election. And outside of 2020 or besides 2020, this one's actually not going too bad. yes, there's some grumbling, particularly about late votes coming in, some accusations that, you know, counties like Americopa and Arizona, Harris County, and Texas, that there might be some issues there. But really, compared to 2020, nothing of the sort. So when we jump in, Casey, we still don't know the midterms elections, every single U.S. House member, about a third of U.S. senators were on the ballot on Tuesday. And of course, nowadays, in the weeks leading up to Tuesday because of the expansion of early voting,

we still don't know which party controls the House or the Senate. But we do have some indications of where we're headed. Why don't you just, where are we at now on Thursday, November 10th when it comes to the House? Let's start with the Senate. Yeah, I mean, so as you said, there's a lot of things coming in. I mean, by the time you wake up tomorrow, these things could be different. But right now we've seen Republicans on the verge or potentially on track. to take those 218 seats. They need to control the House representatives. Of course, that would give

them a lot of power to slow down or stop Biden's agenda, kind of make it a lame-d-up sort of two years heading into 2024, which is not uncommon. Similar thing happened to President Barack Obama in 2010 and then former President Donald Trump in 2018. Right now, 538, which is a group that takes all the polls that are done, analyzes them, and compares them to get a kind of aggregate. with keeping track of the election results. They're a pretty reputable group. And they have about 210 Republican House seats right now compared to 200 for Democrats. Right.

So that magic number is 218. There's a lot of races that are still undecided. You know, we wrote on the center square.com you did in a story about how Kevin McCarthy, who is expected to be the Speaker of the House of Republicans take over, he's basically declared victory already and said, we have the House. this is happening. Nancy Pelosi, of course, the current Speaker of the House for the Democrats, hasn't weighed in on that. She's been pretty quiet this week, actually. So McCarthy is saying this is over, but the votes are far from counted. It wouldn't be surprising if Republicans took

the House, but that's where it is. As far as the Senate, as you said, things are split. Right now, it looks like it's coming down to a handful of races. So one of those, of course, is in Georgia, where Raphael Warnock, the Democrat, and Herschel Walker, the Republican are going to a runoff. So that runoff is going to be December 6th. It would be interesting to see how it goes. It could come down to really that race. In December being the deciding race for who controls the Senate,

there's a race in Arizona where the Democrat Mark Kelly is leading Republican Blake Masters about 51.4% as we're recording this to 46.4%. And then, you know, there's, there's Nevada where Adam Luxalt and Democrat Catherine Cortez Mastow, they're nearly tied. The Republican is leading by about almost two points there with 83.83% reporting. So, you know, all the votes aren't in. These are very tight, narrow margins. Otherwise, we would have called them by now. There's some interesting things going on with Kerry Lake and,

you know, Arizona we can talk about. But right now it's very much up in the air. And that's where we stand. Well, let's stick with the U.S. Senate for, for a moment. Heading into the midterms this week, the Senate for the past two years has been divided exactly evenly. 100 seats in the U.S. Senate, each state gets to vote for two U.S. senators. It was 50-50 since it's been 50-50 since the 2021. Right now, by my count, and not just my count others who follow such things. Republicans hold 49 U.S. Senate seats. Democrats hold 48, so it's going to be another very, very tight U.S. Senate for the next two years. And as you mentioned, with Laxold up in Nevada, currently by just about two percentage points, plenty more votes you have to

count. And with the Democrat leading in Arizona, let's just say those two hold true by whether it be by tomorrow or by next week, those two hold true to where they're at right now. That would make it 50 Republicans and 49 Democrats, meaning this ratio referenced in Georgia, which is going to the runoff between Warnock, the Democrat and Hershey Walker, the University of Georgia football star,

her first-time politician. That's kind of a dead heat. I think Warnock has a few thousand votes advantage in that one. And that's going to go, because there was a third party candidate in that race, and Georgia law requires you to have a majority. The third party candidate took enough votes away from Warnock and Walker that that's heading to the runoff. This very well could be determined by Georgia for the second consecutive election cycle. Two years ago, Republicans had a 50 to 48 advantage after President Biden won the White House with two seats up in Georgia. Democrats took both with the 50-50 split and Biden and Kamala Harris, the vice president,

winning the White House. Kamala Harris had the tiebreaker. But now if Republicans have Walker, again, this is assuming Nevada goes Republican and Arizona goes Democrat, Georgia voters could decide who controls the Senate again. Yeah, you're absolutely right, Dan. Georgia has become an increasingly important state electorally. used to be thought of as a pretty reliably red state. But in 2020, we saw them turn blue and a big surprise to a lot of Republicans. And so of course, it's been a focus because of Stacey Abrams has been

questioning the integrity of the election there for a few years. But even beyond that, we've seen Democrats make in roads there. A lot of that is because of Atlanta and the suburbs there. But it's complicated. So this is going to be a closely watched race. I have friends here in D.C. who are going to be to work in the political world, working for the RNC, who are going to be very likely traveling down to Georgia. So you're going to see this flood of all the electoral resources that have been spread all across the country for the last few months are suddenly going to be honed in on one state. I feel bad for the people living in Georgia because you think you have political ads before. Now it's going to be laser focused, the door knocking. Everything's going to be going on

there because it's not just, you know, the Senate race, as you said, it's the fate of who controls the Senate. And what does that mean? That means judicial nominees in particular. Will Republicans have the ability to block Biden's Supreme Court nominees? Other judges, that's become a really big issue. Trump was famous for how many judges he appointed. Of course, he had more Supreme Court judges. But he also, or justices, but he also appointed a lot of judges at lower courts. But Biden has actually outpaced what Trump did. the rate at which Trump was appointing judges. So Democrats have prioritized these judges. So if just that alone, because it's not likely that any big legislative wins are going to be able to

happen in a split government, but the judges will be really important part, an important thing to watch if Republicans are able to take the Senate. I agree with you. Absolutely there when it comes to judgeships. Casey, you want to go back to something else you said briefly, though, if it does come down to Georgia, which it looks like it will, the next. The next Not just national attention is going to be paid on Georgia. Money is going to flow into Georgia. It's funny, we've got the Center Square staffer, one of our editors, lives north of Atlanta. And she'd been complaining about all the ads in this race that she'd been seeing leading up to Tuesday's midterm.

The next month, are you kidding me? That's all you're going to see in Georgia is national Republican Party money, national democratic money, which had already been flowing into Georgia, that's going to be like a landslide of dollars going into that state with the advertising. I do want to, I don't agree with you one thing you mentioned. Oh, you're wrong. What? Oh, go ahead.

I don't agree with you. You are wrong. And calling Georgia maybe a blue state. Brian Kemp won the governorship there, Republicans, all Republican state-upublican state-wide officers on the ballot. they won their races. Kemp, of course, beat Abrams again. So I still think it's, you know, maybe you call it pink.

But certainly with this race coming up, it's more purple. And all eyes will be on Georgia. Let's go back to the House, though, for a second there. You said as of this morning, 538 had Republicans with 210 House seats, Democrats with 200. That's closed in the last couple of days. I think on election night early Wednesday morning, Republicans had more than a 25 to 30 seat lead in the House. So what's happening there? Yeah, I mean, you're seeing these votes come in.

One thing that's interesting is you watch the results come in is the votes are not counted in even order. So often you'll see the urban votes come in first. So that gives Democrats a big swing. But then the rural votes will come in and then Republicans can often retake the lead. But then what comes in after that in many states are, the mail-in and absentee ballots, which can be sometimes counted after election day. You know, some states have laws where you collect the mail-in ballots, but you can't start counting them until election day. And so you might have these hundreds of thousands, you know,

of ballots that have piled up, but you can't start counting until election day. And so those trickle in and they trickle in at uneven rates. And that's why you see these swings. And then, of course, there's different counties that drop more populous counties and keep pouring in these. votes and more populous counties tend to be Democrat. And so often over time, you know, uh, you have more votes coming in and a higher, even if, you know, a higher percentage of them are a Democrat. Um, so if a county is 60% Democrat and 40% Republican, there's, you know, 800,000 people living in that county or something like that, then it's going to take a long time to count those votes and a higher percentage of them are going to be Democrats. So you're going

to see Democrats steadily either, you know, extend their lead or, or catch up to a Republican who had taken a lead when the rural votes came in. Good point. So at this point, the Senate's probably coming down to December. Won't know who controls the Senate until then. The House could be tomorrow. It could be probably well in the next week just because of all these outstanding votes. So stay tuned to thecenter square.com. We will be updating throughout the weekend in the early next week. You can check it out there. One of the interesting, you and I both worked election night. Casey will We were both paying attention early on and throughout the night.

But one of the most interesting things was, you know, heading into the midterms, Republicans were predicting like a red wave, maybe even a red tsunami. And when the first vote started coming in on the East Coast, particularly in Florida, it looked like they might have been right. Certainly in Florida, there was a huge red wave. That didn't translate it to across the rest of the country, however. Governor Ron DeSanis of Florida running for re-election, speculation that he might run for the presidency in 2024. He won huge victories.

Of course, Senator Marco Rubio, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida also won big against a well-known opponent. But Donald Trump, who endorsed in a lot of races across the country, didn't have such a good night. You wrote about that this week. Tell us. Yeah, I did. it was funny to watch me. You're monitoring on Twitter. You're talking to people in D.C., texting, all kinds of messages coming in.

And as you said, it seemed like the red wave was a lot like these hurricanes. You hear about the hurricane coming in, and then you prepare for it. And then it just kind of, it heads north and just goes along the coastline. It just hits the outer edge of Florida. And that's what happened here. And a lot of Republicans, though, were opening the champagne bottles a little too early. I think you saw a lot of celebration. You were hearing a lot of celebrations.

celebration, even from lawmakers, that this is it, it's happening. And if you looked at the stats coming out of Florida, you had every reason to believe that. I mean, some of the swings to the right in Florida were pretty amazing. I mean, Miami-Dade County has been, you know, really talked about Hillary Clinton in 2016 won that county by 29 points. And this time around, Ron DeSantis won it by 11, which is an incredible swing. Yes, huge Hispanic population in Miami. Yeah, Marco Rubio was also able to win. at least in some areas, yeah, Marco Rubio as well.

So at least in some areas, the Hispanic vote, which Democrats used to be reliably able to count on, they're changing streams there. Yeah, you're seeing that in South Texas as well. It's pretty interesting to watch. Hispanic voters always been interesting to look at because they're often pretty socially conservative. So they do vote Democrat, but they're pretty sympathetic on some social issues, you know, family value stuff to a lot of the Republican messaging. And so it's not, you know, I think there'll be a real autopsy on the Democrat side of how they, how they're, you know, really hemorrhers in some of these areas. It's also worth noting that, you know, all Hispanics, they're not a monolith at all. The nation of origin matters a lot into determining how they vote, you know, so Cubans, for example, might, you can vote at a higher rate Republican than in different nationalities. And so that, that is kind of a nuance there.

But as you're saying, this red wave hit Florida. everyone was ready for it. And then the other states just didn't bear that out. And so the takeaway from that is that, well, what's the common denominator in the successful areas? It was Ron DeSantis and his brand of politics. And so, you know, to what degree he actually deserves all this credit? It will probably never know.

But it does, it is really interesting because he's taken a really, I think, risky political path here. He's been really aggressive on social issues. I mean, he took on Disney World. world in Florida. The governor of Florida taking on Disney World head on. That is a very risky decision. You think about how much of, there's a whole city built around Disney World. First of all, it's so much part of the culture down there, huge tourism boost. So for him to take that on and win so big is really, I think, sends a message to other Republicans that, you know,

Desantis could be a fluke, but being aggressive on these social issues, you know, in his acceptance speech, he's talking about taking on, you know, woke politics head on. He's been on that message. I think there's a certain kind of voter who's turned off by that. But apparently, it's working for him because in his first governor's race, he won, you know, by about 30,000 votes, 33,000 votes, I believe. This time, he was getting in the neighborhood of 2 million, you know, winning by getting over 1.5, getting closer to 2 million votes in his win. So, you know, the other thing he did was he was really lax on COVID. And he was known for that. So you could attribute it to the woke politics or you could say, hey, the guy who's,

say we're not shutting down, we're going to keep things open. I don't believe in the vaccine mandates or all this mass stuff. He did really well. Lacks, I would say is a loaded word there, Casey. I take a negative connotation from that. I think Floridians cheered his policies when it came to COVID, keeping the economy open, opening schools well ahead of most other states. He was heavily criticized by Democrats and by the mainstream media for reopening the state. But when you look, When you look at the health factors there, deaths and everything else, they weren't, they didn't surge ahead of other states. So I think, I think his residents, I think, I think the voters in Florida applauded him for what he did. Absolutely.

Would not say he was, would not say that he was lax, would say that he, and one of the terms DeSantis has used this campaign the past couple years is that it's the free state of Florida. We didn't lock down like other states. we don't put these burdensome regulations on our businesses, and it has one of the strongest economies in the nation. It had a record budget surplus over the past couple years. But not to look too far ahead yet, Casey, but it's too interesting not to. With Trump flirting another run in 2024, DeSantis is the rising star right now of the Republican Party. Former President Trump was already starting to criticize his former really tight ally in Ron DeSanis. This could be an interesting next couple of years when you look at the 2024 presidential election.

Yeah, I know. Now he's Ron DeSanktonmonious. I got to come up with the name for you. Dan McKeel. How about Dan McCrybaby? I think that'll be one. Dan McCry baby. That way you come up.

You can work on yours for me. That was a huge. stretch their case. Yeah, well, don't, don't cry about it. It's okay. Go back to the drawing. Do you need a minute? I'm trying to actually help you out. Oh, that was the thing. Right. Okay. I don't want you to look, you know, look kind of weak. Oh, right. Well, from President Trump. If there's one thing that me and President Trump don't do is look, it's look weak. All right, Dan. So don't forget that. But you so Trump has actually, he was really criticized by some within the Republican Party because he started attacking DeSantis. a few days before election day.

And people are like, hey, what are you doing? I mean, we know you're going to attack him, but you're doing this right before an election. And he actually, you know, Trump went down to Florida and campaigned and promoted DeSantis. But then online, he was attacking him and calling him, you know, calling him name. So people were kind of like, hey, what are you doing here? But that fighting has already begun. I know you're, you know, just waiting on pins and needles for the true social account. But I do keep up with it.

And Trump has been really on a rant on true social the last couple of days. He's been attacking DeSantis. He's been pointing out that he got more votes in Florida than DeSantis. We wrote a story at the DeCenterSquare.com. The headline is DeSantis surges, Trump falters, and midterms. And I think that Trump... Was that your byline? Was that your byline?

That is my byline at thecenter square.com. At Casey Harper 33 on Twitter. Are you fake media and true social yet? I am. I listen to all sides, then, as a journalist, I take them in, right? and I analyze and I report just the facts. One last thing. President Biden said this week that he plans to announce whether he's going to run for

re-election early next year. Plenty of speculation. Plenty of Democrats don't want him to run. One, because of the state of the country right now, what's happened with the economy, record high inflation, but also because of his mental capacity right now. We've seen him, of course, fumble day in and day out with his words. and everything else. We got one time for one more story. Casey, new inflation numbers came out. Tell us what they said today. Yeah, quick 10 seconds on what you just said. I think Biden is going to

be emboldened to run again because everyone told him it was doomsday for the Democrats and it never came about. And we've heard this argument time and again that when people can't speak well, they can't be elected. But I'm starting to doubt the efficacy of that argument because Biden was elected and we just saw Federman, who's had huge speaking, you know, problems. He just got elected too. So it may be that voters just don't care that much about how people present on stage when they're speaking. But you're right about these inflation numbers. So the Bureau of Labor Statistics release new data as they do every month and we cover it closely, which show that inflation has risen 7.7% in the last 12 months.

It rose 0.4% in the month of October. A big source of that rise was actually shelter. So if you're paying for rent, you know, if you're also gasoline, food increase. So, you know, you're doing fine with inflation as long as you don't have to have a place. to live, a car to drive and something to eat. It's not affecting you. Of course. I was going to say it's November now.

We're heading into holiday shopping season. Any indicators there, whether it's going to be a down shopping season for the holidays? Yeah, I mean, it's going to be kind of a speculation. I will say that small businesses in recent surveys that have said that their perception is that voters are spending less, that small businesses report actually less spending. but data shows actually they have more, that Americans had more disposable income the last time that data came out. So I think it'll,

it hasn't, inflation hasn't changed that drastically in the last few months. I mean, it's been on a steady rise and it actually, it rose this last month, but not as quickly as it's risen at previous months. So I think, you know, psychologically people have kind of absorbed and maybe inflation

into their expectations or what they're going to do, but ultimately that dollar is just not going to go as far. yeah, at a certain level, they're not going to be able to buy as much. But whether it's going to discourage them from spending, I think that's probably on the mind of every board room in America. Thank you, Casey, but that is all the time we have this week. For our listeners, remember, you know, we're going to be following election results throughout the Veterans Day holiday

throughout the weekend. Still too close to call, the Senate, the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House. So follow us at CenterS.quare.com. Also a reminder to our listeners, you can find all of the CenterSquares podcasts in AmericaStalking.com. Take a look. Please subscribe. There is no cost. This has been the America in Focus podcast for Casey Harper. I'm Dan McHaleb. We'll talk to you next week.