Front Burner - Do the midterm results spell trouble for Donald Trump?

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

Going into the 2022 U.S. midterm elections, things didn’t look good for the Democrats. Inflation is high, approval ratings for U.S. President Joe Biden are low, and traditionally, the sitting president’s party loses seats in the midterms. So, it seemed like Republicans would clean up, and pundits and politicians predicted the electoral map would reflect a red wave. But the Democrats performed better than expected, and the wave didn’t materialize. The dismal performance by the GOP has sparked introspection within the party and amplified questions about whether Donald Trump is its secret weapon, or the kiss of death. Today, CBC’s Alex Panetta takes us through what the midterm results might mean for the future of the Republican party and its devotion to Donald Trump.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Donald Trump has a message he wants to send after Tuesday's midterms. Don't believe the lamestream media.

He's not mad. In fact, he's laughing. As he put it on True Social, quote, I am not at all angry, did a great job, I wasn't the one running, and I'm very busy looking into the future. But is that future looking quite as bright after the Republicans' disappointing performance? Votes are still being counted, and while the GOP could still take control of Congress, the big red wave that many anticipated. The red wave that's coming is going to be like the elevator doors opening up in the Shining. You know, your predictions of a red wave are accurate.

Somebody made a surfboard and said the red wave is coming. I think we're going to have a red wave. I think it's going to be maybe bigger than anyone thought. It just didn't materialize. So today, my colleague Alex Panetta joins us from Washington. He's here to take us through the midterm results, what they mean for the Republican Party, and who gets elected president in 2024. Hey, Alex.

Hi, how are you? I'm great. How are you? Excellent. Thanks for reaching out. It is always good to have you. So we'll get into the results in more detail in a bit. But first, Republicans, they didn't get the sea of red they'd hoped for. Just briefly, as of Thursday afternoon, when you and I are talking, where does control of the House stand? All right. So the House of Representatives is at this point likely to wind up Republican. They're still counting votes.

But if it winds up Republican, it will be a margin of maybe three, maybe five, maybe seven seats. It'll be a tiny, minuscule margin, which is stunning. It's a staggering result because the average midterm result since the Second World War is a 27 seat loss for the party in power, 27 seats. And you've got almost double digit inflation, rising gas prices, an unpopular president, an unhappy country, people not happy with the state of affairs. And Democrats lost like nothing. So it's a staggering result. What about in the Senate? Same kind of thing happening? Yeah, pretty much the same thing. It's at this point likely actually to stay

democratic, but it's not certain. It's like a 50-50, you know, it's almost a coin flip. But the coin leans a little towards the Democrats at this point, which is very, very helpful to Joe Biden's party, because it means you can keep confirming judges. You know, you can lose one chamber of Congress. You won't pass many bills that way, but you can still name judges, which is important, as we've seen over the last year with the Supreme Court decisions. And there's a runoff in Georgia, right? Tell me about how significant that is.

We'll find out in a few days how significant it is. Democrats need to win two of the three races where they're still counting votes in order to hold the Senate. It's Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia. If they win the first two, which could be confirmed within days, Georgia becomes redundant. It's a cherry on the sundae, as they say. If they split the first two, then basically Georgia becomes the tiebreaker in where you might end up with another 50-50 Senate if Democrats win and it would be a Republican majority if they lose. So, Alex, like why, why do you think they didn't get this massive red wave that everyone was talking about? Like, just, you know, what happened?

Let's start with the less obvious reasons. Number one is the, you know, the stuff that the Republicans have done over the last few years. I mean, let's not forget that a year and a change ago, some supporters of the party broke into the US Capitol to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power. Clearly that's stuck with a small percentage of the American public, right? You know you had other issues, you know increasing educational polarization in the country. Historically Democrats struggled in midterms because their supporters skew younger, but you're starting to see more college-educated voters who tend to vote more in midterms leaning Democrat more

and more. That might help the party in midterms leaning Democrat more and more. That might help the party in midterms. You know, they did well in 2018. They did well this year. They didn't do as well in 2020, technically, in terms of some of the expectations set there. So, you know, that might be another factor. But then the big one, the elephant in the room, is abortion. That decision at the Supreme Court did two things.

Number one is it crystallized for lots of people in the public why midterms matter. Had Democrats won the 2014 midterms, they would have controlled the Senate, they would have confirmed Barack Obama's judges, and you never would have had that decision at the Supreme Court. You might have still seen a weakening of Roe v. Wade, but you would not have had the six judges line up the way they did to do what they did. So that's the first thing. The second effect is young voters showed up and massively supported Democrats in this election. Young Democrats came out, young Republicans, not so much. And I think especially young unmarried women. I saw an exit poll that suggested unmarried women were just crazy. an exit poll that suggested unmarried women were just, it's crazy. Well, that obviously, I wonder why. Yeah. So that's the other effect. One race that we've talked about with our colleague Paul Hunter on the show before was the sort of dead heat race in Pennsylvania between Democrat

John Fetterman and Dr. Oz, Dr. Mehmet Oz. And Fetterman actually won. And just talk to me a little bit about what happened there. Do you think that that's a good example of kind of what you've been talking about here? Yeah, there's actually probably an even better example on the Pennsylvania ticket, which is the governor, the gubernatorial candidate, Doug Mastriano. Mastriano was at the January 6th insurrection. Mastriano was Donald Trump's biggest ally in Pennsylvania in trying to overturn the election. He got crushed. After months of campaigning and millions of dollars spent on advertising, voters have their say today. And as you can see, Democrat Josh Shapiro has defeated Doug Mastriano by double

digits. Absolutely crushed. Even more than Dr. Oz. Dr. Oz, who's, you know, also a Trump-backed candidate, but less extreme than Mastriano, lost as well. But yeah, that's, you know, Pennsylvania's another example where the Trumpier the candidate is, the worse they do.

Talk to me more about that. Like, how did Trump-endorsed candidates do overall here, right? Because everybody was clamoring for the former president's stamp of approval leading up to the midterms. Well, I think if they win, I should get all the credit. And if they lose, I should not be blamed at all, OK? Let's run through the list. Georgia. Donald Trump can't through the list. Georgia. Donald Trump can't stand the governor of Georgia. Brian Kemp is a turncoat, is a coward. It is a

complete and total disaster. Georgia has been the object of Donald Trump's obsession since narrowly losing the state in 2020. He's never forgiven Kemp and other GOP officials for refusing to meddle in the election. Brian Kemp, he sold you out. He didn't look. He didn't want to look. He didn't want anything to do with it. Can't stand the Secretary of State of Georgia, Raffensperger, because they certified the 2020 election against him, right? But he, Trump, likes Herschel Walker.

He basically proposed him. He helped elevate him as a candidate. Herschel has been one of the greatest athletes in America, and I know he will go down also as one of the greatest senators in America. So what happened in Georgia? Brian Kemp, the governor, Trump can't stand, easily won re-election. Raffensperger, easily won re-election. Herschel Walker, he's off to a runoff. He's possibly going to lose that seat. So that's just

one example. You saw similar versions of that elsewhere in the country. There were six swing states that I counted where you had an election denier, one of these Trumpy types running to become Secretary of State, basically the chief electoral officer. These people were running to control elections in 2024, which could have had significant consequences on the rest of the country and on American democracy. By my count, they're winning at most one and maybe zero of those six. In Arizona, there's a chance Republicans are going to win the governorship of Arizona and maybe the secretary of state's position. That's one of the only races they might win in that regard. But you have Republicans in Arizona, longtime Republicans saying, if we just nominated

someone more normal, this wouldn't have even been a close race. Now, of course, you can never test that counterfactual, but it's an example of what you're hearing from Republicans who are frustrated that, you know, by following Trump down these rabbit holes and re-litigating the 2020 election forever, you're not really appealing to moderate voters. And, you know, they exist in the United States. This midterm taught us that there's a small percentage of the public, then 4%, 5%, I don't know, a certain number, perhaps it's very small, but that percentage of voters who are critical mass that want kind of sane, you know, non-conspiracy theory spouting candidates. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection.

Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo.

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One candidate who came out of the midterms with like a lot of shine on him was Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. And where does he fit into this, I don't know, Trump spectrum, right? Like what is his relationship like with Trump? Well, it's interesting. Trump kind of created him too. You know, he elevated him in 2018 when he ran for the governorship because he saw DeSantis on

Fox News very often. It was part of a very deliberate strategy to just, you know, DeSantis basically ran his campaign in front of a television camera, beamed into Trump's television set, and he got Trump's endorsement, won the nomination, won the governorship, and he became very popular in Florida in part because he kind of tacked towards the center at first, then realizing he might have some juice, some presidential prospects. He then basically started campaigning on a hard right message and governing from the hard right. We fight the woke in the legislature. We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the corporations. We will never, ever surrender

to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die. You know, it's transparently an effort to sort of build his national reputation so that he can maybe win the Iowa caucuses in 2024 or 2028. Right. So DeSantis suddenly has this big national profile. He would be the only person at this present stage who has any chance of competing with Trump for the presidential nomination. He would still lose if the current numbers are accurate. But given a six or 12 month fight, I'm not so certain he would. is he has acute survival instincts. And he sees this guy in the decor and he clearly is starting to chafe at the fact that people are talking about DeSantis as a potential alternative to him.

And he kind of made fun of his name at a rally a few days ago. We're winning big, big, big in the Republican Party for the nomination like nobody's ever seen before. Let's see, there it is. Trump at 71.

Ron DeSantis atonious at 10%. And you can bet your bottom dollar that Trump was steaming, just absolutely steaming to see after the midterms the front page of the New York Post, his favorite newspaper, running a front page headline referring to DeSantis as the future of the party. And then the next day, the Post runs a headline, front page, making fun of Trump as basically a failure. There are some cracks in Donald Trump's support among conservative media.

I want to show the New York Post cover, Donald Trump as Humpty Dumpty, that he, Trumpty Dumpty, that he had a big fall. It was a pretty brutal front page, especially for a newspaper owned by the Murdochs that basically was Trump's mouthpiece for a while. But is DeSantis' win an example of how Trumpism is actually alive and well in the Republican Party if he's just like a mini Trump? Yeah, I don't think you're going to see a Republican Party repudiate its philosophical

underpinnings. You're not going to see it repudiate the nationalism. You're not going to see it completely turn its back on, certainly on immigration issues. The party for a decade now has wanted a harder line on immigration, more skeptical on trade, more skeptical to international alliances and stronger border security. elements of what you would call Trumpism, a tougher line on China, for instance, that's not going to disappear tomorrow. Trump has reshaped that party, partly by reflecting what its supporters actually wanted, right? Because you had this kind of country club wing of the Republican Party kind of bottling the passions of the masses. And suddenly Trump said, no, I'll give you exactly what you want. I'll do what you want on a wall. I'll do what you want on immigration, on trade, on China and whatnot. So he's reshaped that party. That's not going to change. What could potentially change is you might see Republicans, sort of the more business wing of the party, agreeing with more of the grassroots saying, look, we'll keep some of the priorities.

Just this particular guy is just too toxic. And there's going to be a counter-argument made to that. So, well, Trump actually got more voters out in 2016 and 2020 than any candidate in history for the Republican Party. So he elicits passions on the right. He gets voters out that never would have gone before to the polls. But of course, you know, Trump's critics will say, yeah, he arouses passions on our side. He also arouses passions on the other side. Right, on the other side. We lose. And he also lost the popular vote in 2016.

I mean, if you want, I can run through the list. Donald Trump won a 2016 election, possibly perhaps because, you know, two weeks before the election, the director of the FBI announces he's investigating Hillary Clinton. All right. Then he loses in 2018 the House of Representatives. He loses the House and the Senate in 2020 and 2021, was the last Georgia runoff, loses the White House. And now he gets involved in races where he loses in the Senate potentially and has lost seats in the House of Representatives in 2022. I'm sorry, that's not exactly a massive winning record. Exactly.

So do you think there's all the speculation that he's going to declare his presidency for 2024 as early as next week? And is he facing pressure now from Republicans to not do that? I mean, even his former press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, was on Fox News saying that she thought that he should hold off. I think he needs to put on pause. Absolutely. Look, he'll make that decision. He'll make his own decision. But does he go to Georgia? If I'm advising any contender, DeSantis, Trump, whomever, no one announces 2024 until we get through December 6th. So, you know, is he is he getting that pressure? And I guess, does he care? I'm certain he cares. I'm certain he doesn't like it. But he may choose to heed that strategic advice that the last thing he wants to do is get involved and then lose.

If, you know, if the Senate is lost again, he knows he's going to take a lot of blame. So this is a tough decision for him, I would think. On the one hand, I'm certain he wants to get involved in that race, you know, to prove that he's the, you know, the alpha gorilla in this cage and sort of scare off all the other primates and say, nobody better enter this thing. Or if you don't want to get beaten up and, you know, scare off the DeSantis of the world. On the other hand, I'm sure there's a, a part of him that says, well, if I get involved now and then we lose the Senate in Georgia, that's going to, that's going to be hung around me.

So maybe I'd better wait a few weeks. I suspect this is a conversation happening in his inner circle and it will last a few days until his, you know, projected announcement was supposed to happen next week. Okay, so let's talk about Biden for a minute. As we've talked about Biden, the Democrats have been celebrating what really in comparison to what his predecessors experienced is a victory. But as we talked about earlier, he still might have to contend with a Republican controlled Congress. And how is that going to affect the next two years of his term as president? the next two years of his term as president? You know the old saying, a win's a win.

Republicans might hold House of Representatives by one or two seats, which might be a difficult experience because you'll have basically 15 versions of Joe Manchin in the Republican Party constantly blackmailing the leadership. But on the other hand, they can still block Democratic legislation. So look at the Democratic track record. Biden signed bills funding green energy, lowering drug prices, some gun reform, infrastructure funding, massive infrastructure funding, and high-tech funding. But that's pretty much where the record would end. You're not going to see the other coveted items on Democrats' to-do list get ticked off. Immigration reform, I'd be

stunned if it happened in the next Congress. Statehood for Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, not happening. Parental leave, something Democrats have wanted to do forever, it's not going to happen. And universal pre-K. And there are a few other things as well. So that's the terrible news for Democrats. And it also gets worse for Joe Biden personally. There's going to be professional pain, which I just mentioned, but there's also going to be personal pain. His son is going to be raked over the coals. They're going to investigate his businesses, his family businesses, whether any money from foreign dealings went to President Biden before he was president. This is going to be a miserable couple of years for Biden, having Republicans run the House. So yeah, there are lots of silver linings for him,

but it doesn't mean that losing the House of Representatives is going to be painless. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, clearly we are all going to be hearing a lot more about Hunter Biden in the coming weeks and months. Alex, thank you for this. This is a lot of fun and really interesting. Thanks. Thank you. All right, that is all for today. Front Burner was produced this week by Shannon Higgins, Imogen Burchard, Allie Janes, Lauren Donnelly, and Derek VanderWijk. Our sound design was by Matt Cameron and Sam McNulty. Our music is by Joseph Chabison.

Our executive producer is Nick McCabe-Locos. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you on Monday. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.