Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - Mike Murphy on the Democrats' "Good Bad Night"

Episode Date: November 10, 2022

In this episode, we go deep on deconstructing the mid-term results. We try to understand the implications for both parties heading into 2024. (And Murphy even tries to draw a connection between Richard Nixon and Mahatma Gandhi). Mike Murphy has worked on 26 gubernatorial and US Senate races across the country, including 12 wins in Blue States. He was a top strategist for John McCain, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. He’s a political analyst for NBC and MSNBC. He’s co-host of the critically acclaimed "Hacks on Tap" podcast. Mike is also co-director of the University of Southern California’s Center for the Political Future.

Let's pretend the Republican Party is the Sopranos. If Tony starts getting everybody indicted and we're all going to jail, eventually there's a meeting of all the lieutenants. We've got to do something about Tony. It's bad for everybody here. So, you know, that's Trump's real jeopardy. He's a loser. Lots to digest and pick apart on the election results from the midterms. We wanted our old pal Mike Murphy to come back to the podcast to help us think this through,

both think through what happened, what we've learned from the midterms, and what this means for both parties heading into 2024. Mike Murphy, as you know, worked on 26 gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races across the country, including 12 wins in blue states, something that's getting harder and harder to do. He was a top strategist for John McCain, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Today, he lives in Los Angeles, where, shall we say, he's a close observer, maybe an informal advisor, to a leading candidate for mayor of LA. Mike's also a political analyst for NBC and MSNBC. He's a co-host of one of my favorite political podcasts, Hacks on Tap, which, if you're not a subscriber already, I highly recommend that you become one. Mike's

also co-director of the University of Southern California's Center for the Political Future. This is Call Me Back. And I'm pleased to welcome back to the podcast, fan favorite of this podcast, Mike Murphy, who's going to bring pearls of wisdom to make sense of what exactly has happened over the last couple of days. Mike, I'm sure you're exhausted, so I especially appreciate you making time. Well, I just came from an election night party at the Yamavot Tribal Casino, the jewel of California, where liquor would serve because we won our initiative against FanDuel and DraftKings with, well, we're still counting votes, but over 80% voting no in the most expensive campaign in the country.

And what were they voting no on? Online sports betting. FanDuel came in with $100 million and DraftKings and MGM Bets and the tribes, my client, we beat them like a slow mule. And we had what might be the biggest no vote in a contested initiative ever in California. So much drinking. So I barely made it here. And being a contested initiative ever in California. So much, much drinking. So I barely made it here. And being a Republican, I'm drinking too. It was a bad damn night.

All right. So let's talk about it. I'm not so sure it was so bad. Well, you're right. I mean, it's like Dunkirk. We won the house. But we should. I mean, we don't need more victories like this, as Winston would say. But we should have won big. I was wrong. I predicted there would be a wave. I wasn't sure how big it would be. But I knew we'd win the House, and I thought at least by 9 to 12 seats, probably a few more. And I thought we were more likely not to win the Senate.

Now, to be fair to the voters of Nevada and Georgia, we don't know who's won the Senate yet. But, you know, so it's one of these things where the Democrats may be very happy because, my God, we didn't get wiped out. We now have the leadership of John Fetterman. I'm starting a Kickstarter, by the way, to buy him a tie now that he's been elected into the Senate. That said, I'm an Oz hater, so I'm not unhappy about it. Ideologically, I am.

But bottom line is, we may, the Dems may avoid a complete wipeout, which in a year like this with inflation, they should have had. But the Republicans are going to almost certainly have the House, and they have still a fighting chance at the Senate. And from the Trump point of view, anti-Trump from my point of view, it was yet another field experiment of if we code our candidates in anthrax, how do we do in the election? So the Trump dynamic could change in the party so so let me give you let me give you let me give you a positive take from a republican standpoint that i'm not sure i agree with but i'm gonna but i'm trying to talk myself into it okay so first of all it was definitely not a red wave across the country but it was a red wave in certain

parts of the country and surprisingly it was somewhat of a red wave in blue states so where i am right now in new york we picked up republicans picked up like five congressional seats lee zeldin our gubernatorial candidate well he didn't win he came within five points keep in mind when andrew cuomo last ran he won by he beat the republican by 23 points right uh i mean there was a it's really extraordinary what happened down ballot here in New York. So Florida, obviously, is basically now a red state. DeSantis wins by 20 points. In 2018, he won by like half a point. Right. Marco walked a re-election.

Right. So in pockets of the country, there was a wave. And most surprisingly, some of it was in blue parts of the country. Well, yeah. You know, this whole thing is kind of an expectations curve, Graving. On one hand, historically, the Dems should have had a bad time. Biden's numbers on the economy, inflation was big. As we spoke about before, all those things should have been a very fertile Republican world. On the other hand, the victory victory we're call it a spotted victory or something i used on twitter that ticked off a bunch of liberals but i think it's accurate the democrats had a good bad night you know because ultimately if you lose the house that's

not a good night but compared to the opportunity we had it wasn't that good now you have the outliers florida new york got close but a close loss is still a loss but still but right there's energy out there in many places the voters kind of hated everybody right and in a few places they love the ours in a few places they love the d's in michigan where we ran another trump chucklehead not only did whitmer uh win reelection is now catapulted into the on-deck circle for the Democratic presidential nomination, I believe, with others. The Dems picked up the state Senate for the first time since 83. So, you know, you can find different things. My 50,000 foot analysis, or 10,000 foot,

is the Republicans did far less than they expected and far less than they deserved. And the culprits are pretty clear. I'll give you one case study that's like my favorite race. And it was the one I was watching the most because it reported fairly early. New Hampshire, first congressional district. You know, New Hampshire is a two congressional district state. The southern and eastern part is the first district. It is a classic 5-49 swing district.

Democrat incumbent there, Chris Pappas. You political junkies who've ever been to the Puritan Backroom, the political hangout restaurant in Manchester, that's the family business. He was the maitre d' there. He's a well-connected local guy, moderate, run-of-the-mill Democrat. This kind of year he should have lost. But the Republicans nominated kind of a he should have lost, but the Republicans nominated kind of a B-minus Trumpy regular Republican. The

establishment got behind him, thought okay, in a year like this we can probably make this happen. And remember, New Hampshire is a rare Republican kind of pro-choice state too. He lost the primary to Carolyn Levitt, who had worked as a junior aide in the Trump press office and was kind of beyond Trump, kind of tickling the outskirts of Marjorie Taylor Greenville there. You know, hadn't quite stepped over the line, but two good skips, she'd be in there. And so great test. Will the wave be enough to drag in a cinder block like that in a very winnable district for the ours? And the answer was no. Pappas won, and he won pretty comfortably, which showed that bad candidates are still an anchor that can ruin a big opportunity. And if you go down the list,

you can write an exception for J.D. Vance, but that's Ohio. But in the competitive places, the Oz's, not so good. A bunch of congressional races, not so good. A lot of it linked to Trump. So will the parties take a second look at Trump, understanding 2018, 2020, now 2022? When a general election is about Donald Trump, the Democrats win, even when they ought to be in trouble. And I think that'll shake a lot of thinking in the GOP going forward. The New York, New Hampshire race.

I mean, there's that Majerski in Ohio, same thing. Yeah. You know, the- Bulldog in New Hampshire again. Bulldog in New Hampshire. The John Gibbs in Michigan who had beat Peter Meyer in the primary, who had voted for Trump's impeachment, and then- Right.

Gibbs beat him, and then Gibbs loses the seat. It should have been a winnable seat for Republicans. Right. Big honor roll of Trump's anthrax in a general election. And how many times we have to conduct this experiment? The flip side is, so we talked about DeSantis. There's obviously Brian Kemp in Georgia, ran away with it. But ran away from Donald too. Didn't attack him, but was an antagonist in the primary. Mike DeWine in Ohio. So there was also a wave of competent Republican governors, not hostile to Trump, not like they don't wear anti-Trump, you know, signs and armor.

Yeah, but they just avoid them. They kind of do the lip service and keep going. They get them out of the way. So that's interesting, right? In a sense, was this election kind of like a surgical strike against Trump-affiliated or Trump candidates plastered with Trump all over them? Yeah, I think that's true. And when you run a general election in a competitive place like it's just another part of the primary, which is what the Trump candidates do, they lose. And it's amazing that that's enough baggage in a year where the barrier to entry to win ought to be a lot lower. I mean, I think the other thing out there we should pay some attention to, and we're

going to need time to get all the data from the college towns and everything. The exit polls are one indicator, but they don't know everything. Young voters did participate above normal. They acted more like a presidential year. How big that surge is, we got to find out, but it was definitely there. The abortion issue had some kids. Yeah, yeah, totally. I don't think it's the only reason. I think the Republican brand has become culturally creepy elders from Footloose. All that stuff, I think, energized younger voters and is a drag on the party. And by the way, I think, I guarantee you, and I think you won't disagree with this,

that last night, the encrypted texts were flying between members saying, what the hell do we do about Kevin McCarthy? Because we should have won, in their point of view, we should have won 25 seats last night. And instead, we're going to be in the single digits somewhere. So I think, I'm not sure his pathway to speaker is at all clear now. And I think Trump's going after him, too. Trump's got to blame somebody.

He'll blame McConnell. Now he'll blame McCarthy. Press reports are he's blaming Melania for his endorsement of Oz. Okay. Really? Really? Boy, I hate to see that guy lose. You know, I don't like left-wing senators but boy

oh boy uh oz on so many levels is um an easy guy not to like and i think the voters of pennsylvania made that decision so two two questions one i had someone present polling who's doing polling for nbc news come to my place last week and show me a bunch of polling that turned out to be, his polling turned out to be pretty accurate in terms of the final results. He texted me this morning, very sort of smug. Yes. Remember our conversation? Remember I watched the other status? Nothing's worse than pollsters when they're right. Oh my gosh. It's insufferable. He's probably listening right now. He knows who he is. Uh, but I think I do too so good job on that polling at dinner he said candidate quality in big high profile races still counts for about five to six percent five to six points so i know

dan you don't think these races are breaking against the republicans and they shouldn't break against the republicans but when you have flawed candidates in a number of these states, five to six points could be the price. Oh, yeah. Look, if voters don't have anywhere to go, then they can get trapped casting a vote for something they don't like, but they don't feel they have an alternative. And I think you saw that, you know, the tell again, if you had asked me to bet and many people did in a few days for the election, I would have bet on Oz to narrowly win Pennsylvania, basically on the wave. And I tweeted about this about a week out, there was a Fox Insider Advantage poll and the Fox polling is pretty good. And it had Fetterman a little ahead, but it had Oz sitting at 42. And what I tweeted was, God, they hate this guy.

There just may be anchors around his feet. And that's clearly in the end they decided. I mean, I give Fetterman the line of the year after the bad debate when he said, I'm going to get better, but Oz is going to be terrible forever. And I think that's the decision they made, that they just couldn't live with him. And that's candidate quality. I think McCormick would have won that race. Yeah, so do I.

I was for him. He's a great guy. Hope he stays in public life and runs again. And he doesn't have to wear Yeah, so do I. I was for him. He's a great guy. Hope he stays in public life and runs again. And he doesn't have to wear the bright red hat now. He can be himself. That's the other lesson. I hope he's listening.

The reemergence of Trump in the final days of the election. So he had been very present late summer. There was the Mar-a-Lago raid, which put Trump right back in the frame. And then I was struck kind of September through middle of October. Trump was kind of quiet. And then something happened those last 10 days where he reemerged and not only did he reemerge, but he reemerged in states where he had delivered candidates in the primary and forced them to campaign with him. So suddenly Oz and Vance and others were, and Walker, I think, were appearing with Trump in the closing days of the election, which I don't know anyone around Trump who thought it was a good idea to

put these candidates in the position. It's one thing in the primaries, but in the general. Right, right. So what was going on there? And do you think it had a- You know, I think they're playing in turtle King Trump politics, but you're right. Trump, the minute the primary is over, Trump should have been duct taped to a chair and put on whatever cargo plane they had Kamala Harris on to go tour the Guam naval installations. The Dems knew what to do with her for the most part.

But because Trump's a gorilla driven by ego and it, he had to show up. And the Republican label used to be a charging elephant. Now it's a cowering elephant shivering at the idea of Trump's displeasure. So we led with our orange chin, and it got in the way of what should have been a pretty easy House and Senate pickup, which we may still eke out. I'm trying to figure out, Nevada looks really, excuse me, Nevada. I always get mad when I say that. Oh, my gosh.

I know. It's the only time I got in real trouble on the Romney-Ryan campaign is when I referred in a press interview to Nevada. Yeah. I almost got kicked off the plane. I hear you're posting to state, actually, yeah. But anyway, Nevada is going to be real tight. I saw this mystery boat in Clark County, but Laxalt still is in that hunt for sure.

And, you know, if that pops, a million years ago, I worked on, uh, for, on the Coverdale race. And that was another one of a 50% runoff and the turnout dynamic, you know, in a runoff in Georgia, hard for the Dems. Now this thing is going to be so nationalized. There are going to be caravans and volunteers driving down there. It's going to be the biggest proxy war, uh, in, in party history. So we'll see what happens. But you know, the Senate could still creak in the Republican direction. It's still very possible. So again, this could be a good Dunkirk. But there's no way the Republicans can't look at this and say massively underperformed. Yeah, but in the House, the Republicans can get to 230.

I mean, so in the House, they could get close to 230. Yeah, they could. They could. But, you know, again, you know, this is one of these things where you win the lottery, and on the way there, you, like, fall down a manhole cover, and you cut an artery with picking up the card. You know, it couldn't go more wrong. But there is a donkey to murder metaphors here to pin this thing on. It's Trump.

Trump got into primaries in state after state and whack competitive candidates to run run wacko birds as my old pal McCain would say who in a general election or trouble and then he popped up in the general election just to put icing on the cake and it was a massive gift to the DS and they frankly ought to name the DNC headquarters after him one thing you know even the Trump people can't really dispute this I mean they will because they're factotums and yes men but we now have enough history of trump on general election ballots from 2018 to 2020 um you know now 2022 right this is not how you win elections so maybe

the republican party doesn't want to win elections anymore they want to win primaries one thing the Democrats did in this cycle, which we were, you and I and others were very critical of, was the Democratic Congressional Committee's intervention and Democrat-aligned Senate committees' intervention in Republican primaries to get MAGA Republicans to win primaries. And they spent $42 million, which is on the one hand, a lot of money. But when you think about the return on investment they got, it wasn't that much money because it turns out they got a lot of Republicans nominated who probably wouldn't have gotten nominated otherwise. And they turned out to be very beatable in the

general election. And also by populating the cycle, they can contributed to this sense that there were a lot of unfit candidates running on the Republican side. So on the one hand, I think it was it was reprehensible what the Democrats did on the one hand, talking about the importance of there being a healthy Republican Party and Republicans need to stand up to Trump and all these, you know, principled calls for courage and at the same time funding the defeat of those Republicans that were standing up. So on the one hand, it was quite cynical. On the other hand, looks like it worked. Yeah, you know, in the great history of cynical and somewhat immoral tactics, it worked pretty well. Now, you know, it's like nerve gas in World War I. The first time they used it, it went backwards and killed their troops and the Germans. But the second, it started to work pretty well.

By Battle 11, everybody had it. So is the walkaway lesson here, the Republican Party is now in the AOC business and Democratic primaries? Maybe, but net-net for the democracy and the category. I mean, I can win the Michigan Ohio football game every year if I'm allowed to bring machetes, uh, for my team, but I predict, you know, it'll catch on and then we're going to have a very bloody version of football.

So morally I'm opposed to it, but sure. Cynical, dirty, rotten trick. Work fine. All right. I want to get into national, looking ahead to national politics in a minute, but sure. Cynical, dirty, rotten trick. Worked fine. All right. I want to get into national, looking ahead to national politics in a minute, but before I do, you live in the belly of the beast of one of the most interesting races, I think, in the country, which is the LA mayoral race. So what actually is happening? Oh, it's fascinating. And I'll take a 10 second stop just on one more federal race. Go Adam Frisch. Colorado is interesting. That's Bolberg.

Oh, the guy, Bolberg's race. Yeah. Yeah. He's from like Pitkin County, I think. Yeah. Yeah. It's hanging on by a thread. There's more vote for her there, but he's got a lead praying for him.

And disclosure, I was for him. I sent him money. That was an interesting microcosm because the local Republicans, many of them publicly got on board were fresh. I mean, that was a case where it was too much. She had a primary opponent, primary opponent who got a decent chunk of vote. And a lot of Republican notables actually cross party to support him as kind of a unique candidate. And it may well have worked. And that is the happiest single thing if we pull that off because on behalf of Western civilization, she has no room in the U.S. House. Now, to Caruso versus Bass. So here we are in L.A.

We've reported as of now, I haven't looked in a few hours, there's another dump that may come later today, and they're going to say how many total votes were cast, most of them by mail. There are about 500,000 votes cast. I think Caruso's up 12,000-ish. Those are mostly first wave of, I believe, vote by mail. Now, somebody told me the registrar is saying they're election day. I'm dubious because the way they do it in L.A. is all the voting locations load them up on trucks

and drive them to one counting center far in the county. So we add L.A. traffic to the complexities of this. And then, of course, if your ballot ballots postmarked yesterday you know they still have time to wait a week to count everything there will be a big dump on Friday which will really be when we get a handle now the 500,000 that are in now are anywhere between 40 and 50 percent of the ballot in 2018 the city cost cast in the last governor's race because normally these mayor races are not on November election days. That's something new, which has been good

for Caruso because it's bringing in more general election voters, not the normal kind of inside LA Democratic base club that would vote in a weird election day made up of public employee unions, etc. So this thing could have over a million votes, even up to 1.2, depending on turnout. We got half a million in now. Car 1.2 depending on turnout we got half a million in now caruso's ahead the question is how the next waves look now um caruso had all the momentum and you know disclosure he's a friend of mine i know you were for caruso blah blah yeah yeah i'm for caruso but but to try to be skeptical and honest about it she has the democratic advantage in this city.

In the Democratic primary in the city of L.A., Bernie beat Biden. Just to remind our listeners, Caruso was by public registration, and I think Donation's a lifelong Republican. He changes registration to Democrat and says he's a Democrat and ran as a Democrat, but as a tough-minded, kind of technocratic, kind of fix-the-city Democrat. Yeah, it's kind of a complicated journey. He was a Republican for a long time, you know, business guy, et cetera, et cetera. Then he kind of had it with the Republicans during the rise

of Trump and changed to independent a few years back. And he voted for Jerry Brown. You know, he supported both sides. He's a pragmatic, middle-of-the-road guy, not super ideological. Then he supported Kasich as an anti-Trump alternative and switched back to Republican because he didn't feel he could be a finance co-chair as an independent. Then he switched to Democrat after that as he prepared a race. And he's been pretty, I left the Republican party, it changed. His first job in politics is working for a Democratic mayor, Tom Bradley. So it's more complicated know what the bass people

and their ie will say is he has a wild-eyed Kevin McCarthy Mitch McConnell loving pro-life nut Republican which is not really true but hey it's politics so anyway he is running as a Democrat she is a Democrat she has the Democratic establishment here labor Labor is split. He's got building trades. He's got the cop union and the firefighters. He's got the Latino Democratic clubs. He's doing very well in the Latino part of the city. So, you know, it's become more complex. And to be clear, L.A. may not be as much of a hellhole as San Francisco is these days with crime and drugs, but it's not far behind.

I mean, there's a real sense that the city is falling apart. Well, yeah, we have a huge homeless crisis here and tent cities everywhere, kids walking past infested tent cities, a crime surge. Caruso is a former police commissioner in the Bill Bratton area. He helped bring him in. So, you know, he's running his, I'm going to clean up homelessness, and I'm a builder. I can build the housing.

You want more of the same from City Hall, you can have it. It's corrupt. They can't get anything done. I'm a big broom. And that's resonating. That's lifting them up. So in the last five weeks of the election, Caruso's been picking up a point or two a day from behind. She has been flat but strong.

She's the normal here in an election. So in the last polling, it was within margin of error. Caruso plus one tied, but he had a palpable sense of momentum. So the question is, will messaging and the need for change lift him in? Or will everybody go to the tribal corner and have they done enough damage to him on your secret Republican pro-life nut, which he's made it clear he's pro-choice. But you know, if you've ever shaken hands with a Republican, of course, you're a pro-life nut, which he's made it clear he's pro-choice. But, you know, if you've ever shaken hands with a Republican, of course, you're a pro-life nut from their point of view.

And we're seeing. He's a Bass donor, by the way. He teases her about, well, if I was that bad on abortion, why didn't you ever send back a contribution and discuss? You know, you cash the check in a New York minute. And she's got her own scandal where she got an $80,000 graduate degree from USC by basically smiling and waving through a window, being a powerful member of Congress. And there's funny footage of her at a Church of Scientology kind of wackosphere event thanking them and without any

clue to their controversial behavior. So if you put a gun to my head, and maybe I'm talking my book here, but I think my pal Caruso was going to pull this off, but it's really tight and it could take 10 days to count. And any, any other races to watch in California that, uh, you know, there are a couple of congressional races. Um, again, the Dems aren't doing as well as they thought though. Yeah. I haven't looked in a few hours. I think Scotty Baum may not make it in Orange County against Katie Porter. Uh, but, uh, not a lot here. The statewide Scotty Baum may not make it in Orange County against Katie Porter. But not a lot here. The statewide stuff, Lanhee Chen, God bless him, never had a chance.

Really too bad. Good guy. All right, two items in the exit polls. We talked briefly about abortion and Dobbs. I was struck like in Pennsylvania. Something like 30% of voters cited abortion as their number one issue. Yeah, in all the exit polls, it ran higher than it did in the pre-polls. And the best explanation for that, with a big caveat on exits are tricky,

exits are a combination of precinct interviews and a phone poll to absentee ballot voters, which is awful hard to do during the madness of the final days of an election. But if the abortion number is up, that meant Democrat participation is up, which is a tell that young voters showed up. That the electorate was more young voters than the pollsters might've waited it beforehand. And we're know once we can look at precincts and learn more, but that seems to be the early tell.

And that's very good news for the Dems. And what about the seemingly consistent responses to questions about whether or not Joe Biden should run for re-election? And all these exit polls, like 50, 60, 65 percent of voters said he should not run again. Yeah, no, it's a thing out there, no doubt at all. But if he had lost both houses, which could still happen, but if it had been a bigger Republican night and there'd been a shocker, somebody, you know, a bulldog won or Patty Murray went down or something like that, then I think they would have been out for his blood. Now he's got a little of a comeback story. We got him on the run. The Republicans, if they get the majority, although hard to do if they're only three or four ahead, we'll see where it lands.

Hard to do their crazy impeachment stuff now, which would have been in Biden's interest if they overreached. So, you know, it's murkier for Biden now, but fundamentally people think he's too old and they're going to either have to fix that or they're going to pay the consequences going forward. So Biden just gave a press conference right before we went to air, so to speak, in which he said he, quote, he intends to run for reelection in 2024. Well, he has to say that because, you know, if not, then the primary starts in an hour. Right. So first of all, do you think he's going to run for reelection? He's not as I am. I think he wants to, like every president. You know, hard to give up that plane. But I think he knows he may not be able to.

So it's the right answer for him. I intend to run. That'll keep order to everything for a while. But, you know, right now everybody's going to see who controls the Senate in a week. Or, frankly, in three weeks because of the georgia runoff which looks like the future how long can he keep the i intend to run without making a final decision stick going given that he'll want to give other democrats who want to run if he doesn't time to start getting organized i think he's got to labor day of 2023 to stretch it. But you know, all roads lead to Nevada. Because if she hangs on,

then Walker's got to win to tie the game and keep the status quo. And the Democrats will smell victory. And then Biden will be stronger. And he'll be able to play that game later. If McConnell's the new leader, and it's quagmire, the pressure will be very strong on him to clarify by the early summer. Because you know, the campaign season for the primaries is this summer and fall because they're all in the first quarter of 2024. Right. So the Senate outcome is linked to Biden's situation, I think. And before we move to the Republicans, how's your governor Gavin Newsom looking?

And how do you think he's been? He's looking east toward New hampshire and uh uh south carolina etc um and you know on the west coast there's a there's a tell well not a tell there's a tilt which is there's always a snide feeling about oh a california you know politician i'm not a big gavin fan but he's telegenic and he's slick and he represents one of every seven Americans or one out of every eight. So if you're a California Democratic governor, you may not have a lot of general election skills because you're in a safe state, but boy, oh boy, you're from running big media driven stuff and you know how to raise money. So, and he's, if people think

Biden's too old, he's fresh and young and everything happens first in California. Very green. Been a mayor, been a governor on paper. He he's a player. I think Gretchen Whitman is the other big generational player. And then in the Democratic Party, who just really exceeded just be Tudor Dixon. Yeah. And can run as a hero. I mean, the press corps, based on identity, the new organizing principle of American life, always is going to—I mean, Amy Klobuchar got so many passes. Nobody ever voted for her, but she was historically important. It was kind of an echo of Hillary.

Well, Gretchen could get a little of that tailwind next time. Kamala Harris got out of the Democratic primaries in 2020 before Iowa. Yeah, yeah, exactly. By just hanging around, Klobuchar got nothing in Iowa, but they gave her a lift into New Hampshire. And so Whitmer, and she's from the industrial Midwest, swing states, anyway, there's some rocket fuel there. And then there's going to be a strong African-American candidate, and they may change their primary terrain to move up a diverse state because there's a lot of pressure. New Hampshire's white, yuppie Pete Buttigiegville. And then Cory Booker, Kamala Harris 2.0, there were a lot of candidate skill problems there.

Somebody's going to have some institutional swat if they can unify that vote and be that candidate. What about someone like a Chris Murphy? Not, you know, obviously moderate, maybe not moderate. White from the Northeast, got a lot of traction on issues like gun control, you know, like a Biden type. Yeah, yeah. Same with Warner in Virginia who's sniffing around a little bit. The problem is I wouldn't want to be a not particularly interested interesting white male in a Democratic primary these days Gavin's got the kind of monkey trick of being the California future super green guy which might be

helpful but boy I wouldn't want to be generic white dude all right now if they want to win the election find a southern white Protestant Jimmy Carter Bill Clinton that's what the computer tells you to run as a Democrat because you can go cut into some of those states and you can do well in the industrial Midwest. But their primary electorate, you know, there's symmetry in politics. It's not that different than a Republican primary. They think, when in doubt, have a bigger primary because every voter is like me. Every voter listens to Fox or every voter is a progressive. And if only we were prouder progressives, we'd get every voter and we'd win.

I mean, you're going to hear that now. Look how close Mandela Barnes came. We just need more candidates like that with more money. The National Party didn't back him enough. Same with Fetterman. Fetterman won. It's the new formula. Right.

You know, let's get some cage wrestlers. Okay, so now... Everybody argues their side. Let's talk about the Republicans. First of all, what do you think Trump does next? Oh, right now he's throwing plates, you know. And so he thought... He watches cable news all day, the fool.

So he thought there's going to be a huge wave and I'll go take credit for it and I'll announce. And that's also a bit of a screen against Justice Department because if I'm an active candidate, they're more hesitant to go after me. I think he's in such trouble it won't stop him, but that's generally a good tactic. And, you know, now I'm the front runner and I'll go after old De Sanctimonious a few times and shebang. The problem he's got is the narrative is now is what the hell is wrong with the Republican Party? And it's pretty clearly him. So first will be the vengeance tour of who screwed up the election. Well, it was the liberal media. I'm not ruling out they cheated in

some of these elections. That idiot Kevin McCarthy doesn't know how to attack. He's too nice to Mitch McConnell and the Washington, D.C. elite. You know, now he's got to be that guy. And that's not what he wanted. But that's where he'll go because he's got to divorce himself from his culpability in this disaster. And, you know, we'll see how well that goes. Remember, in every poll they say, Republican voters say, oh, yeah, he did a great job, 86% approval. Well, you for Trump again? It drops to 45.

And if you look at Florida, where DeSantis had a great night, among Florida Republicans, you ask them to pick, and DeSantis beats Trump. The one place where the consumers know both products. And I think DeSantis right now only illustrates the fact that a non-Trump populist can do some business. Whether or not DeSantis can take the second and third look, because he's got certain weaknesses, but boy, oh boy, he's stronger today than he's ever been, and Trump's weaker. So let's talk about that. So as I mentioned earlier, he won by 20 points versus 2018 when he won by half a point. According to the exit polls, he got something like close to 60% of the Hispanic vote in Florida, which is extraordinary. Yeah, that's been the big alignment there. Now, remember, that's not a Mexican-American vote. Florida is different than California or Nevada or other places, but the trend is there.

So it's Cuban, Dominican, Nicaraguan, El Salvador, Nicaraguan, Puerto Rican. Venezuelan. Okay. All right. Still impressive. Over half of women voters, close to 60% of suburban voters, over half of independent voters. Obviously, you won Miami-Dade, which is a big deal. You've done a number of races in Florida. You ran Jeb's campaigns in Florida. What was key to the DeSantis juggernaut? Well, I think you used incumbency well. The state is turning more red. And what the Democrats never learned is that the South Florida vote is not an identity vote. It's an economic issues and kind of small business conservative, culturally conservative vote. And remember, DeSantis has Hispanic roots, so he has a connection there.

And culturally, he kind of knows what to do. And there is a protest vote against Democratic liberalism in South Florida. And I think he fanned the fires adroitly. And he outspent his opponent 48 to 1. You know, they had a massive spend. And he was viewed as competent. Competent during COVID. Competent during the recent hurricane.

So he was a good governor. There's just no real dents on him other than you wouldn't want to be trapped in an elevator with him for an hour. You know, he's just kind of an uninteresting human, I think. Now, the Pauls will tell you who know him, and they'll look around to make sure nobody can hear him talk, that he doesn't believe anything. He'd be Bernie if that was the route forward. And then they tell me, you Trump hater, you shouldn't talk him up. He doesn't believe anything.

I go, well, I'll take a dire cynic over a crazy person any day. Because I think in the last minute, the cynic will make the smart move for their own survival and career. Well, crazy guy, you can't game out. But he's going to be the thing now for a while. And you're going to see Trump validate that by attacking him. This DeSantis thing is only chapter one. Now let's talk about some of the other Republicans. And I don't want to talk about too many of them because I fear that we're going to get a reprise of 2016 primaries where you have Trump versus

a million non-Trumps and he gets to carve up the field. Yeah, the plurality theory. It's a real danger. On the other hand, I think the preseason will reward people playing with it. The actual running, I think there'll be a real mentality of winnowing down fast. And so there's going to... Really? More so than 2015? On the donor side. Yeah. Yeah. On the donor side. You know, we're C, but I think people get what happened last time. And the question is a little bit, does does the party now which is still at the rnc level there's a fair amount of trump control there but there's some regulars too do they start looking at fooling with the nomination calendar a little bit um what does that look like what is the implication

well making a more competitive yeah well well new hampshire is going to have to protect itself because if iowa goes away on the democratic side um know, there's going to be a big war over a more diverse state early. Will it be a caucus? Will it be what? And then, you know, the Trump people will try to figure out what is our best path. Is South Carolina still good? Do we want that after New Hampshire? New Hampshire's where Trump could be vulnerable? you know, they may try to change the Platform a little and then you've got the risk of a favorite son. What if Chris Sununu runs in New Hampshire? He sniffed around this thing a little bit then he devalues, New Hampshire. That's the best place to slow Trump down So you think about what's the second state if you wound Trump in New Hampshire where you can deny him a comeback? It's probably not South Carolina. And anyway, so there's some, there's going to be some machinations now because they're going to be quiet anti-Trump conspirators because Trump, the pragmatists will say, this

guy's going to, we're going to nominate the one guy the Democrats can beat. And the 19 other candidates all have one united interest, which is for Trump to, you know, go away or lose or be indicted or whatever. Yeah. I mean, Cruz is out running. Obviously, you know, Hawley is sneaking around. Cotton took himself out of it. Marco hasn't given up the dream,

but I don't know how he gets past DeSantis. But the ones that are interesting to me are, in addition to DeSantis, are people like Glenn Youngkin, Tim Scott, maybe Mike Pompeo. What's your, what are your reactions to these? I don't think Pompeo has a base. So I think that's make believe. I think Tim Scott is real and interesting. I don't know if he has the killer instinct, but, uh, and Youngkin, there's a whiff of cynicism to the Youngkin thing, I think, but he's interesting. Um, you know, I think, but he's interesting. Um, you know, I think either Kinzinger or Chaney will run just to raise hell.

I don't, I don't see a lot of delegates, but they could be catalytic Larry Hogan's out there. Same thing. But isn't the risk with one of them is that they wind up taking say three to 5% of the vote in a certain state. And that vote could go to a DeSantis or a Yunkin or a Scott and it's sort of wasted on, uh, Kinzinger or Cheney. I agree with that, but the invisible primary of law is now a big open public show. You can run, raise hell, do things and not be on the ballot, not get any votes and still

do 90% of what you're there to do. Uh, you show up at every debate trashing Trump. You're just a huge fan in the ass and then you go away. Cause in the old days you'd sneak around quietly and try to line it up, and then you'd pop out in the primary, and that would be the test. Now you could be the national noisemaker for a year on cable TV and go away before the primary. Hell, I might run in New Hampshire, eliminate the middleman.

And you got a house. You got a house. You should go do it. I could vote there. Yeah, I'd like to. All right. But point is, it's different now. You can have a preseason life, and you don't have to be a spoiler getting 5% of the vote

that you really want to go to the leading anti-Trump. And so to what end? Just to raise your profile? Yeah, to wound Trump. I mean, if you were signing up stop Trump people, you're going to have two kinds of recruits. One is going to be people who think that we ought to be a rule of law party, and we ought to be classic conservatives, not populist louts. That world exists now. It's probably growing. But the other world is regular Republican politicians who don't like losing. Political parties don't exist to lose. And so there are going to be plenty of people who aren't

ideological Trump haters. But it's like, let's pretend the Republican Party is the Sopranos. If Tony starts getting everybody indicted and we're all going to jail, eventually there's a meeting of all the lieutenants. We got to do something about Tony. It's bad for everybody here. So, you know, that's Trump's real jeopardy. He is a loser. Okay. I want to, just before we let you go, so we talked a little bit about the Latino vote in Florida nationally,

and you talked about young voters turning out, which is a good news story for the Democrats. So any other big demographic trends we're learning from this? Yeah, we're going to watch Clark County because if Laxalt wins. So in Nevada. Yeah, Nevada. My guess is the massive, important, unionized culinary union, Democratic vote in Clark County will have underperformed for her, which is kind of double

interesting because she has Latino heritage. And that'll be it. For Cortez Mastro, the incumbent Democratic senator. Yeah, the trend we see in Dade and parts of Orlando. We saw it in South Texas, though I haven't looked at those races now meant to be as tight this year. But there's been a trend there. One one thing to remember is that the Latino vote is never monolithic, not only ethnically, but generationally. And if you're, if you have recent heritage in LA, and we have a huge El Salvador and vote here, which is a little different, you know, there's a Nicaraguan vote,

but the Mexican American vote here has fairly recent connections, much of it and not all the votes but culturally it you know interacts with the voting part of it in Mexico which has always had a corporatist political system where the big government takes care of you there's an obligation so they tend here to start more left of center based on that experience or that history and their family mythology. Not so much true of the entrepreneurial Cubans and El Salvadorans, and now in Florida, Venezuelans too, who are escaping a dictator of the left. So the question is, will the California and Nevada vote follow that evolution that you see earlier in Florida and kind of in the intermediate in Texas where it's been

assimilated longer and has multi-generational roots, which has grown into a more both parties vote. So, you know, it's a big, important, moving thing. But when we take Nevada apart, which is really what's going to set up Georgia as the decider or not. That Clark County Latino vote, that's to me and young turnout are going to be the two big drivers. Last question. If you're advising, I know you're not, if you're advising the House Republican leadership now, the new majority, how would you advise them to use these next two years if their goal is to prevent the Biden smaller margin than we expected, which means some of the more colorful characters are going to have outsized influence in that majority. Yeah, he lost most of his adults, which is a problem.

They've got to get out of the crazy business, which means out of the crazy investigations, out of primary politics, and have a bumper sticker agenda for meat and potato stuff and strategically oppose things, not be the wild-eyed talk radio host turned into a congressional party, and not feed the disgust people have with endless process squabbling in Washington. Get back into meat and potato stuff, family-friendly, and censor the kooks. The kooks are a problem. Now, I know the Freedom Caucus, I mean, McCarthy may not be a speaker, they have a lot of power in the caucus, but the kooks are a problem. They're ruining the brand. What about a serious oversight committee investigation,

serious, like 9-11 commission style, of how all the money was spent during COVID? We pumped out billions and trillions of dollars. Yeah, no, no, there but you know it all goes to fox it's the same feedback loop the problem is that american voters have a name for congressional investigations which is typical political you know where one group of guys in red ties are yelling at another group and it just doesn't have the traction the whole investigation thing's been watered down because there's investigation every two minutes. And the average voter thinks this is all a game they play. And meanwhile, I'm working two jobs for $5 gas.

So, you know, nothing's worse than a pompous congressman puffing into a microphone about, I want to know, because it's become a self-parody. So connect to people's actual lives in regular English and get out of the bug-eyed crazy talk radio thing. And put up, hood MGT and a few more, hopefully Boebert won't be back. Hood them like falcons to shut them up. Little party discipline. Bring an old-fashioned speaker back. Put them in an office with no air conditioning, get them outside the building. We got to fix the brand or we had a taste of the future tonight. Is there any world in which Trump decides not to run? Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, the dusty book they pull out in the Star Chamber right about now, or six months ago, the Nixon book is, all right, we don't put presidents in jail,

but they agree to go away quietly. It's retirement time. Now he may be too irrational, but I think he could make a lot of lead. I think there's a master plea deal. The problem is nobody trusts crazy Trump to keep his word. I mean, Nixon was, you know, a Gandhi compared to this guy and much more trustworthy, and he'd take the deal. I don't know if Trump will ever do that. He might be a mad dog. So there's, you know, politically metaphorically, not in real life, cause it'd be a felony, but, uh, you know, maybe he has to go behind the barn, but there, if he's civilized or is a way out, but he has to go away.

And I don't think with his madness and his need of attention, um, I don't think he'll ever do that, but yeah, yeah, he may, he may try that. He could say, I mean, I look, if do that. But yeah, yeah, he may try that. He could say, I mean, look, if I were a Trump guy, which is impossible, but if I were to say, Mr. President, you know, there's another way. You could run and probably lose and be humiliated and all that. Or you can announce you're not running and just make your all power, and he'd believe this, it wouldn't really be true, but your all powerful endorsement. You're still in the center of attention. You still have the most power in the party. You don't have to put anything on the line.

And maybe back channel, we can make a little deal to make the legal trouble go away. You're still Mr. Big number one. Oh, wow. All right. We'll leave it there. Maybe I should have left it on, on your comparing Nixon to Gandhi,

but I take Nixon in a minute right now. He'd handle this Chinese problem too, which is nothing to sneeze at right now. Let's ban TikTok. That's my other big idea. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Oh, look, it's a total mind twist. You ever seen the Chinese TikTok?

It's algebra lessons. And you think the U.S. government could get away just saying, we're shutting it down? By the way, I've heard a lot of right-of-center policymakers make this argument. Yeah, look, we have a lot of reasons why it's hard to cut free speech, but TikTok is a cywar weapon. All right, Mike, we'll leave it there. I'm moving to Singapore. They understand order. Look, just keep us posted on L.A. You can't leave L.A. We need you there.

I'm excited about Mayor Caruso, but we'll see. Take a look. Check the L.A. County Registrar voters. You have to go about 800 offices down to find L.A. Mayor because it's only part of the county. But check it Friday afternoon. That's when you're going to have a much better grip on what's going to happen here. All right.

From your lips to God's ears. Thanks, Mike. All right. You know what I always love to do? Call Dancino back. Thanks for doing this. Appreciate it. All right. Dump Trump. That's our show for today. To keep up with Mike Murphy, you can follow him on Twitter at Murphy Mike. That one's easy to remember. You can also follow his work at the USC,

University of Southern California's Center for the Political Future. Also on Twitter at USCPOLFuture. And of course, subscribe to the Hacks on Tap podcast. Call Me Back is produced by Ilan Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.