Front Burner - The U.S. midterm election explained

Episode Date: November 7, 2018

CBC Washington correspondent Keith Boag walks us through the United States midterm election results and what they mean.

My name is Graham Isidor. I have a progressive eye disease called keratoconus. Unmaying I'm losing my vision has been hard, but explaining it to other people has been harder. Lately, I've been trying to talk about it. Short Sighted is an attempt to explain what vision loss feels like by exploring how it sounds. By sharing my story, we get into all the things you don't see

about hidden disabilities. Short Sighted, from CBC's Personally, available now. This is a CBC Podcast. Everybody have a good show. Starting on A's. Sound on A's. A's fine. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson, and this is Front Burner. One. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson, and this is FrontBurner. Two, one. Roll A up.

We are live in Nashville, Tennessee. It's just after 8 o'clock on Tuesday night, and we're in a CBC control room. U.S. midterm election coverage has just kicked off. Our TV friends are about to be on the air for the next five or six hours. And when they're done, I'll be talking to Keith Bogue, our Washington correspondent, about the midterm results. Man, I can't imagine being on TV for six hours straight. Okay, no matter the outcome, Keith, this is going to be a big night. It'll be a big night in large part because mid's going to be an awful week as a referendum on the president.

How have the campaigns played into that? U.S. networks have declared that the U.S. Senate will be Republican. Not only are they projected to hold, but there's a good chance that they'll pick up a couple of seats there. CNN projects that Democrats will reclaim control of the U.S. House of Representatives. This ends the Republican monopoly in Washington. So it looks like what Keith predicted is coming true. The Senate goes to the Republicans. The House will most likely go to the Democrats. Yeah. Keith, thank you so much for coming on this podcast.

I know you've just been on air for about five hours and now it's about 2 a.m. But Jamie, thank you for inviting me. So here's what we know now. The Democrats are poised to take control of the House of Representatives and the Republicans have held on to the Senate. So first reactions. What's your first reactions? I think that the expectation was the most likely outcome would be that Democrats would win the House and Republicans would keep the Senate. I'm a bit surprised as we watch the results still coming in how well Republicans have done in the Senate.

And I think that will give the president something to crow about. And I think that that will give Republicans some security in the next Senate elections in 2020. I want to come back to the significance for the Republicans and the Democrats, particularly moving into 2020. But first, can we pull back a little bit? And can you give us some quick context of where the U.S. was heading into these midterms? Well, I think that there was a large part of the country that was still recovering from the election of 2016. Those that didn't think it was possible that Donald Trump would be elected and didn't want

him to be elected were concerned about what would happen if he did. And over the course of the last two years, that particular group has had a lot of its fears reinforced. And in some cases, they've developed new and deeper fears about where Donald Trump was heading with his presidency. And I think one of the concerns that they had about it was that the United States Constitution anticipated a president like Donald Trump. And that's why it had built into it checks and balances to make sure that he could be kept under control if he seemed to be doing things that were contrary to the interests of the country or to the Constitution itself. Instead, what they got was a compliant congress controlled by republicans that didn't want to look too deeply into what was going on with the president's own business dealings, whether he had conflicts of interest, whether those affected his foreign policy, whether they had ties with – his campaign had ties with Russia.

All of those kinds of things could have been dealt with by a congress that would hold him accountable but the constitution never really anticipated what would happen if you didn't. And that was the context going into this election campaign. For an awful lot of Americans, the question was about accountability and how could they achieve accountability and the only way that they could do that was by the result that they had tonight, getting power back. Today is more than about Democrats and Republicans. It's about restoring the Constitution's checks and balances to the Trump administration.

OK, so we have the Republicans having had control of the House that gave them the ability to pass a tax bill, to partially repeal the Affordable Care Act. But now what does it mean that they've lost the House and now that the Democrats have the House? What could happen? Well, it means first and foremost that the president no longer has complete control over his agenda. He's subject to the power of the Democrats in the House for all kinds of things, not just the things that are on his agenda, but routine things like the budget. He'll have to negotiate with the other party on the budget. He'll have to listen to what they have to say, for instance, about a border wall. They may not want a border wall at all. At the very least, if they're going to fund a border wall, they're going to want something in exchange.

And he's going to have to pay attention to that. going to fund a border wall. They're going to want something in exchange. And he's going to have to pay attention to that. I wonder, too, what this could mean for Trump in terms of what the Democrats could do to him. The Russia investigation is the first thing that comes to mind or his tax returns. That may be the first thing that comes to mind for the president as well as he considers what his new future is like. Democrats in Congress will have control not just over the federal budget, but they'll have control over committee chairmanships and the budgets that those committees will want to divide up in terms of their priorities. And if their priorities include accountability for the president on things such as the Russia investigation, then the House Intelligence

Committee will do that. It'll have a Democratic chair. It'll have access to resources and staff and budget to investigate that more thoroughly than it has been to this point. It's almost certain, and I think there are reports tonight that the Democrats are even confirming this, that they'll be demanding the president's tax return. We don't know what's in that. We do know that the president has been reluctant in the extreme to share that information. And he might not have a choice now but to try to fight it in the Supreme Court and possibly lose there. And what about if they subpoena his tax returns? Then they'll be trapped into appealing to the Supreme Court.

And we'll see whether or not the Kavanaugh fight was worth it. Okay, let's move on to the Senate. What do you think happened there? What's the impact of what happened in the Senate? Well, I think what happened is that Trump understood that the House was in jeopardy and probably was beyond him rescuing it. But he associated himself with Senate campaigns. He campaigned in Montana, for instance.

He went there four times. Matt is going to protect your Second Amendment and he's going to defend your borders and we're doing a good job in those borders with the worst laws you've ever seen. Four times. There was really only one reason to go there and that was to try to defeat the Democrat John Tester.

And it appears as though he might do that. What happens now is that the Senate becomes the main defender of the president. We've heard in the last couple of weeks some senators talking about using their power if they maintain control of the Senate. For instance, to open an investigation into Hillary Clinton.

Now, I mean, imagine what that would be like. She's been out of public life for two years now, and the Senate majority would use its political power to undertake an investigation of the president's political enemy. So hypothetically, we could see a Democratic House revamp or revitalize an investigation into the president for his ties to Russia and also ramp up demands for his tax return. And at the same time, we could see a Republican-controlled Senate launch an investigation into Hillary Clinton. It's possible. It was Senator Lindsey Graham who was speculating about that. I think it was last

week. He was also seen to be angling for the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee as well. So who knows? But the idea that they're even talking about that, I mean, that's a pretty astonishing thing. You know, watching some of the coverage tonight, I was interested. The Republicans look to have gained some ground in the Senate and obviously lost ground in the House. And do you have a sense of why that's happening? Who is moving that needle for them? Well, I mean, essentially what you saw was two completely separate elections happened tonight.

You saw one election for the House that took place across the entire country. And then you saw another election for the Senate that took place mostly in Trump country. That's where it was decided. That's why it was so difficult for Democrats not just to pick up seats but to even hold the ones that they were defending. And as it turned out, they couldn't do that. But they were very, very different kinds of elections and completely different electorates. It just happened to coincide on November the 6th. Is it fair to say that these two parallel elections are indicative of just how divided the country is? in terms of the national popular vote that the Democrats had. And you look at the impact of that, which was zero in the Senate,

because, as I say, it looks like the Republicans actually picked up seats. There's a real disconnect there in terms of what actually happened last night. Right. So what you're saying is that more people actually voted Democrat in terms of the entire country. The same thing that happened in 2016 when more people in the United States voted for Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump. Even more so because, you know, the challenge that Democrats were facing in the House was that because of gerrymandering and because of the density of their vote in urban areas and so on, they started off at a distinct disadvantage to Republicans. If Republicans had had as many votes as Democrats won tonight, you would have seen a massive pickup of seats in the House of Representatives,

a true landslide. Instead, what you see is something like a landslide in the national popular vote, but something that looks more like an average pickup in a bad year for the opposite party in the White House, something more normal. I wonder what you think the impact of this is on democracy because we're seeing a country now where the majority of people aren't voting for the party or the leader in their government. I mean, I think there are serious questions that are coming up over the horizon about the legitimacy of institutions when you have a Republican president, two different Republican presidents in the last five elections are elected, even though they don't have the popular vote. Now you have this kind of result in an election for the House where it really should be a landslide

but it isn't. And at the same time, you have an increased power or representation in the Senate for the Republican Party. And on top of all of that, you have the Senate confirming the appointment of a majority conservative bench at the Supreme Court. All of these things are really stress testing the legitimacy of the popular representation of people by their government. I don't want to get too deep into individual races, but one race that was really interesting to me, and I think to a lot of people, is what happened in Texas.

So you have Beto O'Rourke, this energetic Democrat, very progressive. And he used to be in a punk band. And he's going up against Ted Cruz, former presidential candidate. And I'm wondering what thoughts you have about what happened tonight. Obviously, Beto O'Rourke conceded. Tonight's loss does nothing to diminish the way that I feel about Texas or this country. But he didn't lose by very much. No, I think, you know, there's something very familiar about all of this, though. Democrats have been hoping that they were going to turn Texas purple for a long, long time, and they just never seem to do it. There are some in Texas who believe that Texas is actually a blue state.

does never seem to do it. There are some in Texas who believe that Texas is actually a blue state. That means a democratic state, but they call it a blue non-voting state because they don't get enough of their constituency out to the polls. Its demographic makeup is not dissimilar from California's, but its voting behavior is very dissimilar. And if you look at California, California is almost monolithically democratic now. But in Texas, they have this problem. And Beto O'Rourke looked like the guy

who was going to finally break that out. He was charismatic. He was good looking. He spoke Spanish fluently. He was very, very good on the stamp. A very talented retail politician. And he came close. People say he may be a good candidate for president now.

Well, I think he's going to be someone who's talked about a lot as a potential candidate. I think he very well may run. I think it gets hard to run when you've just lost a race, though. I think it gets hard to run when you've just lost a race, though. Typically, you don't use a losing Senate campaign as a springboard to higher office when you just lost the lower office. But there's no question that the Democratic Party is looking for a figure that checks some of those boxes. Briefly, any other races that took you by surprise tonight or that you found particularly interesting? Well, I think that some of the headline stories that we were watching turned out to be disappointments, right?

In terms of their news value, we thought maybe there was the possibility of the first African-American governor in Florida. Nope. Maybe the first African-American woman governor in the entire country, possibly in Georgia with Stacey Abrams. Right. Nope. She's currently refusing to concede.

She's refusing to concede. I'm not sure if she's looking for a recount in order to get her into a runoff election. If that wasn't your first choice or if you made no choice at all, you're going to have a chance to do a do-over. But it's funny to say it wasn't the headline story that some were looking for. This blue wave that everyone was expecting, is it fair to say there were incremental gains, but these big wins that the Democrats were hoping for didn't happen? I think some are going to argue that there was a blue wave, that because of gerrymandering

and the density of the Democratic vote in urban areas, it did not show up in the landslide of seats. But if the margin of victory in the national popular vote was something like between eight and nine percentage points, well, that's the biggest landslide that we've seen in quite a while in a house race. Right. So it's a blue wave of people. It's a blue wave of people, but it didn't harvest the seats. One theme of the night I want to touch on is this record number of women. I know we just mentioned that Stacey Abrams, her seat is currently up in the air, but Sharice Davids is the first Native American woman and the first openly gay person to represent Kansas in the U.S. House. New York's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez became the youngest woman elected.

This is what is possible when everyday people come together. And if you have any thoughts on this new, more diverse Democratic Party. Sure. I think since 2016 with Hillary Clinton's loss, that had a tremendous impact on women. And if you have any thoughts on this new, more diverse Democratic Party. midterm election campaigns, I would run into women who would remember where they were on that night that Hillary lost. And that would tell me that they'd never had any interest in politics before. But that after getting over the loss, they would get on the phone, phone up the local democratic organization and say, what could I do? And that became a very familiar story. The number of women candidates that was running was probably the most visible part of it. But beneath that, there were a lot of women who were getting involved in politics who had not been before, who were coming out to vote who might not have otherwise.

In the run up to this vote, there was obviously a lot of talk about a series of polarizing issues. So the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh, who had been accused of sexual assault. The U.S. President Donald Trump has used a lot of racially charged rhetoric, particularly around migrants and this caravan that is making its way up through Mexico towards the U.S. border right now.

And they are about allowing crime to enter our country with open borders. Do we know or do you have a sense of how these events might have influenced tonight? You know, I think that there's somewhat wide agreement that the Kavanaugh confirmation did mark a point in the campaign, a spike. Whether it showed up in the polling at the time is unclear. It did show up in the approval rating for Donald Trump.

But I think when you look at the results in the Senate, because that was a story that largely involved the Senate, you in fact had a Democrat who was defeated tonight, i.e. Heinkamp, who voted against Kavanaugh. And you had a Democrat who voted for him, the only Democrat who voted for Kavanaugh, and you had a Democrat who voted for him, the only Democrat who voted for Kavanaugh, Joe Manchin, won. Yeah, I think that had an impact. The other stuff, not so much. It's interesting that you don't think immigration had a big impact because it played so much into the narrative, particularly in the last couple of weeks? Do you think it's because Trump was already speaking to people who he had? I think to a large extent, that's probably it. I think he found it a more comfortable message for himself to try and energize voters. But

you have a very curious split, I think, in the vote for the House going one way and the vote for the Senate going so strongly the other way. That really is explained more by the map than it is by the message of Donald Trump, more by the Senate map, I mean. Big picture. I want to talk about what this means for the Democrats in 2020 and the Republicans in 2020, the next presidential election. Well, I think first and foremost, we have to see, you know, if the Democrats do use the power they have to investigate, what do those investigations uncover? What do we find out once we finally see Donald Trump's tax returns and how does that shape everything? But on top of that, the Democrats now have a real opportunity to use their power in the House to define themselves. Let me give you an example. They could, for instance,

take a contentious issue such as immigration reform and come up with a proposal, maybe even draft a bill that would be defeated in the Senate. It wouldn't become the law. But it would help to define who they are. And they could tinker with it, reintroduce it, and have it defeated again and again and again in exactly the same way that Republicans did with repealing of Obamacare. They repeatedly introduced that bill on the House floor knowing it would be defeated in the Senate. And then when they won the Senate, they knew it would be vetoed by President Obama. But it didn't stop them from doing it. And by the time they were through all of that, they presented themselves in the election as clearly the party that was against Obamacare.

And that's what I'm suggesting is the opportunity for Democrats now to really define who they are and what they stand for by doing those kinds of things, because now they have the power to do those kinds of things. One last question for the night. I know you've been covering politics and elections for your whole professional life. And so I'm interested in how this presidency in this midterm compares to others for you. Well, this is the biggest story I've ever covered in my life. It is perhaps the most important story in the world right now. What's happening in America is happening in other countries

and it's worrisome. But the fact that it's happening in the United States is an extraordinary thing. We don't know how the story is going to end. So being in the middle of it is kind of exciting in its way.

But I think we're learning a lot of things about what may have been taken for granted about American democracy and what may be at risk. Keith, thank you so much. Thank you. Really appreciate it. Thanks. In the coming days and weeks, we're going to be learning so much more about what happened in this vote. In particular, who showed up? Did women show up?

What about young people? The racial breakdown of this is going to be really revealing, and we'll be keeping an eye on that. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts. It's 2011 and the Arab Spring is raging. A lesbian activist in Syria starts a blog. She names it Gay Girl in Damascus. Am I crazy?

Maybe. As her profile grows, so does the danger. The object of the email was, please read this while sitting down. It's like a genie came out of the bottle and you can't put it back. Gay Girl Gone. Available now.