Pod Save America - “You Fetter Believe It!”

Episode Date: November 9, 2022

Democrats fight off a Red Wave in a historic midterm that defied expectations and handed Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans a stunning defeat. All eyes turn to Georgia, Nevada, Arizona and California, where the mail-in vote will determine control of Congress. And some of Donald Trump’s biggest fans urge him to wait on that presidential announcement. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

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I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, Democrats fight off a red wave in a historic midterm that defied most expectations and handed Donald Trump and MAGA Republican election deniers a stunning defeat. That felt good to say. We'll go through all the big races and early data to unpack exactly what especially in such a tough year. We said a lot of these incredibly close races would be decided by the margin of effort.

And that's exactly what happened. That's because of all of you. So we wanted to thank you all for that. All right. Some stats in this midterm cycle. right, some stats. In this midterm cycle, VSA volunteers and donors raised $5.2 million and filled 46,672 volunteer shifts to help elect progressives and pass progressive ballot measures across the country. And our VSA community of 1,270 super volunteers were a huge part of that success, making over 1.5 million voter contacts. That's amazing. That's unbelievable. That is unbelievable. You guys are the best. All right, let's get to the news. And for the first time in a long time, it is good.

As of this morning, the Democrats have a very good chance of holding the Senate, thanks to big wins by Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire and John Fetterman in Pennsylvania. Republicans are still favored to flip the House, but it's still not a sure thing. And right now, they're only projected to have a very slim majority. Democrats won governor's races in pennsylvania wisconsin kansas new york massachusetts maryland minnesota and michigan where they also flip the state legislature giving democrats the first trifecta there in 40 years uh it appears right now they're about to flip the pennsylvania state house as well pennsylvania such a big deal that's huge voters enshrined abortion rights in the state constitutions of California, Michigan, and Vermont,

while Kentucky rejected an abortion ban. Missouri and Maryland legalized marijuana. Nebraska raised the minimum wage. And South Dakota expanded Medicaid. There's probably more, but let's stop there for now and talk about big picture before we dive into these results. Obviously, we don't have all the data yet, but what do we know so far about how and why this happened last night? Dan.

Verbal message box. Yeah, let's go. Hey, message box for a second. No, I have to go read the message box. Hey, Dan, what am I going to say on Monday? It's sitting in my outbox. It did send when we're done here. So I'd say a couple of things here.

One, it's very clear the red wave did not happen. And it did not happen because Democrats very successfully were able to turn this election from a simple thermostatic up or down typical midterm into a referendum on Republican extremism embodied by the decision the Supreme Court in the Dobbs case. And you saw Democratic turnout go up. You saw independents who may have qualms about President Biden or are concerned about inflation vote for Democrats because Democrats were running as the bulwark against that extremism. And it allowed us to dramatically outperform when anyone thought was possible in the House, potentially hold the Senate with the obvious caveat that there is a lot of vote to be counted. Some very important Senate races that could go either way and could tip this. We could still end all of this with losing the House and the Senate. But the early results show that the anti-MAGA pro-democracy majority in this country came out to vote and sent a pretty powerful message in blue and purple states.

Dan, what do you think the verdict is on the Mitch McConnell one-sentence answer, candidate quality matters? I think that is, I mean, very, very clearly matters. It is, you can look at it in a couple of ways. Like there are some political environment, partisan makeup of states is obviously the most important thing. So you saw very good candidates like Tim Ryan fall along the lines of that state, but in very, very close races. And he probably pulled some of those house races over the finish line. He probably won some seats in Ohio because of Tim Ryan. But you saw in, whether it is in Pennsylvania, it is in governance races in Michigan, you saw good candidates beat bad candidates. And if we hold on in Nevada and win the runoff in

Georgia, that will be yet another example of the Republicans will have left a lot of potential opportunities on the table because they ran very bad candidates who were out of the mainstream, who embodied that extremist message. In fact, where Republicans ran less Trumpy candidates, those candidates outperformed the more MAGA candidates in those same states.

So like Mike DeWine in Ohio outper outperformed jd vance by a lot chris sanunu in new hampshire outperformed don boldick by a lot brian kemp in georgia outperformed herschel walker by a lot split ticket voters exist people yeah i know it's impossible for everyone to believe it's a real thing yeah split ticket voters exist also the that like it looks like independence just didn't break bad, which is really unusual. I mean, hasn't ever happened in a midterm for the president's party since like, what, 2002? 2002 is the one modern political history exception to that rule. And in 2002, George W. Bush's approval rating was sky high,

which is what happened. Joe Biden's approval rating as of this midterm was the worst approval rating of any post-war president to head into a midterm. I want to understand more as we get more votes and people look at it more closely. So McConnell saying candidate quality matters was a dig at McCarthy because he was saying people pay attention to their senators and not as much to their house candidates. But yeah, we did see a lot of these more extreme MAGA house candidates lose. But then you have like a guy that was at the insurrection winning on Long Island, which I think is kind of strange. And so like how much of what happened in these house races where it's closer than we thought it would be is because there was this national conversation about how extreme these Republicans have gotten, how much of it was the breaking through of these individual candidates and how terrible they were.

And I just I don't think we know right now. Yeah, there are some examples like I think it's the Marcy Kaptur seat in Ohio, which was gerrymandered for the specific purpose of forcing her out. She won because of a Trump endorsed candidate named J.R. Majewski, who lied about his service in Afghanistan. It was a general nut job. And like that's one specific example. He got a ton of attention, part because Trump and we'll talk about this a little later, shine the spotlight on that candidate and nationalize that race in a way that was actually helpful to Democrats. Yeah. I kind of want to understand how much attention does it take to get how bad a house candidate is to cost them their seat?

Because we have a few places where there are some Trumpy people that won in like kind of more moderate districts. Then we have cases like that where, because it was so big and it was so public, it seems like it mattered. I still think in the House, it's more about sort of larger structural environmental forces here. I mean, you were talking about the anti-Trump majority. I remember talking to Michael Podhorzer for The Wilderness like before the election season started or at least at the very beginning. And he said to me, he's like, I know Democrats are nervous. Democrats have a lot of things to be nervous about, but there is a path. And that path is the anti-Trump coalition showing up. And the best chance to get them to show up is to make them understand that the threat of Trumpism

is still very real. And the threat of Republican extremism is still very real. Now that of course was before Dobbs, but, and then Dobbs became the greatest example of MAGA extremism. But also all of these candidates that Trump had were also just terrible, terrible candidates. The economy was the top issue for voters. Three-fourths of voters said it was fair or poor. Four-fifths said inflation caused them either severe or moderate hardship. said inflation caused them either severe or moderate hardship. But Democrats still won 40 percent of voters who said the economy was just, quote, not so good.

So that was actually a big deal. It looks like slightly more Republicans turned out than Democrats. This was an R plus four electorate. But independents and especially independent women broke for Democrats slightly and then broke for Democrats by a bigger margin in the Senate races in Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. Abortion was the second most important issue for voters and the most important issue for most Democrats, especially, especially in states where the outcome of the race would determine the future of abortion access in that state like Pennsylvania and Michigan. Yeah. It's interesting, notable that abortion, obviously, we talked about this before, but abortion was more salient in issues where the vote really, really mattered as opposed to California where there's a constitutional amendment now that will be in place soon. It's also interesting and probably not surprising that independents broke particularly hard against

the wackiest Republican candidates. That makes sense. Just thinking back how we were feeling in the days before, obviously the narrative had turned sour on us and there were a lot of bad polls, but there was this hope that we talked about it, that we're lighting this candle for this Dobbs vote that's going to be out there, that's going to show up. And it does seem like that happened. Like it seemed like we did have that Dobbs vote in a way that really helped us. With independents and independent women. Even in Kentucky.

We'll have, you know, the data will come in in the next month and we'll have more sort of like demographic data. But in the initial exits that are now, you know, weighted with some of the results, you see that like young people made up slightly less of the electorate than in 2018. There was some erosion among voters of color. There's some erosion for Democrats among white college voters, but still the coalition basically held that we had in 2020 and 2018. I also think it's worth just caveating that sometimes the sub-samples that you just mentioned within the exit polls get changed drastically over time. That's what I'm saying.

Because you are not talking about, you know, those are not the best numbers. We're going to have to wait. Unless they confirm our prior beliefs. In which case we're clinging to them. They'll never adjust. They're a little, the point is they're better than they were last night because overnight they sort of wait them to the results. One other just exit poll result that I think is worth noting is that in Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania exit poll, abortion was the number one issue, outpacing inflation by eight points.

Because if Mastriano had won, they would have banned abortion. But the fact that in Kentucky, by polls, one of the most anti-abortion states, an anti-abortion measure failed at the ballot box just tells you that there really is from Kansas to Kentucky to everywhere, this big pro-choice majority that turned out. And I think that that is it was it's really helpful. Let's talk about the Senate. As of this recording, it's still too early to call it. Mark Kelly is leading in Arizona. Raphael Warnock is leading in Georgia, though it's looking like that will definitely go to a runoff. Catherine Cortez Masto is behind in Nevada right now, but she could end up winning once all the mail-in ballots are counted. We just don't know how many are out there or where they are or what the split is, but we should find out more about that today.

But the big win to celebrate right now is John Fetterman's victory over the pee-drinking puppy killer from New Jersey, Dr. Oz. Take your boot off his neck. He lost. Why'd you sit on that branding until today? I like that. Dan knows that. We talked about that on the Thursday podcast. You guys do a show on Thursdays? Yeah, I know. It's probably pretty good. Here's a clip from fetterman's victory speech this race is for the future of every community all across pennsylvania for for every small town or person that ever felt left behind

i'm proud of what we ran on. Protecting a woman's right to choose. Raising our minimum wage. Fighting the union way of life. Health care is a fundamental human right. healthcare is a fundamental human right. It saved my life and it should all be there for you when you ever should need it. Standing up to corporate greed, making more things right here in America and right here in Pennsylvania,

and standing up for our democracy. How did Fetterman do it? I mean, I just want to say pour one out. In this case, I guess a warm glass of pee for all the people who had Fetterman's done because of the debate takes, you know? Look, Dan and I have made our thoughts on this. I heard you guys talk about this. I like to be known that at 4.30 this morning,

I woke up to see what time it was. I saw that John was texting with one of our friends on the East Coast about Clark County mail-in ballots. At that exact moment in time, he was also running through his list of people, Democratic strategists who complained about Federer being tried to exact revenge on them.

I was. It was like my Arya Starkala. I like that. I like that a lot. Good for you. I mean, it was, my aria star cal i like that a lot good for you i mean it was yeah anyway enough about that yeah anyway i want to talk about how federman did it i mean it seems like he outran biden in uh some of the more rural counties and then did incredibly well in philadelphia right i mean this is sort of the bath yeah the um what we've talked about since uh This is sort of the bath.

Yeah. The what we've talked about since Hillary almost won in 2016 in Pennsylvania is no, you can't just focus on the places where we drive up the boat in places like Philadelphia. They have to drive down the margin in rural counties. He was explicit about that, even in his victory speech that he wanted to go to those places to drive one day one. And he was the right person to do it. He outran Biden by eight to 10 points in a lot of those rural counties that Trump won. It's the Obama 2012 coalition is what he reconstituted.

Yeah. With an added like sprinkling of suburban, former Romney suburban voters. Yeah. And I will also say that like, you know, there's an online debate that probably doesn't translate into the real world between like, is it? Come on. Is it? Yeah, right. Make the real world between like, is it economic issues? Is it the much maligned kitchen table issues? Or is it abortion and democracy?

John Fetterman did all of the above. He talked about abortion a lot. He talked about democracy. But he was relentless on talking about economic issues. He was focused on economic populism. talking about economic issues. He was focused on economic populism. And he was still progressive on issues like choice and marijuana legalization and stuff like that. So he has criticized before John Fetterman, the sort of like left moderate ideological divide. He says it's kind of phony and it's really about voters wanting to know that you're someone who's going to fight like hell for

them. And that's exactly who John Fetterman is. And that's, I think, why he won. He also did a very, I think, good job of blunting some of the crime attacks that he was facing just by, I think he never really got defensive. He doesn't really do defensive in a way that I think people should look at, because even when he was getting hit for being on the parole board, he never backed away from talking about the importance of reform. He talked importance of giving people a second chance. He didn't pivot and say, no, no, no, I'm the tough on crime guy. He kind of kept to his, he kept to what people liked about him.

And I think that that was good. Yeah. I mean, he's obviously a very nontraditional candidate. He was running against a really nontraditional opponent. But it was the classic way in which you just win a campaign. You run everywhere. You take no vote for granted. The measure that has almost always decided who's going to win or lose is the question in the poll about who's going to fight for you. Always. He hammered that home. He had an actual economic plan. He had a four-point plan. He mentioned it all the time. Make shit at home. Take on corporate greed. It was good. It is the model of what Democrats should do because we can talk about some of the troubling trends in some of this otherwise very good night. consistent shot at a Senate, Democratic Senate, and make the Electoral College more friendly to

us, we are going to have to have the Fetterman coalition in all of these states. I also won with the most enormous disadvantage you could ever imagine, which is your candidate having a stroke and not being able to campaign for months and months and months and ran a relentlessly brutal, but funny and lighthearted and devastatingly effective campaign to change the way people think about Dr. Oz. It was so, so impressive. about the issues of democracy and abortion. But like when we were in Nevada with the candidates there and we were with Katie Porter down in Orange County, like Democrats in their speeches and their ads, like they all had economic plans. They were all talking to volunteers about you're going to hear inflation when you when you knock on the doors. Here's what you say about inflation. Here's what you do it. And don't forget to talk about protecting abortion access. And don't forget,

you know, like it was just an all of the above strategy and it worked. Yeah, we were I actually just went to look because Susie Lee, who we were with in Nevada and is currently that was one that Ralston thought we might lose just kind of up by nothing. We'll see if it holds. Hopefully it does. When we were doing a canvas kickoff with her, she ran through all these issues, democracy, ran through abortion. But then she said, you're going to get questions about inflation. And here's how I want you to talk about inflation. Talk about how serious it is. Talk about how we're the people that are going to address it. argument on abortion than they were able to make on inflation. But I do think Republicans just hoping that they could say, look at these terrible democratic cities, look how bad things are, crime, crime, immigration, immigration, inflation, inflation, without having a clean message of their own of what they're going to do really hurt them because Dr. Oz had nowhere to go. None of these

Republicans has anywhere to go. And if even if we're winning 40% of the people who said this was their most important issue, that is a real failure on the part of Republicans to make a clean message in a year where they really could have succeeded. It was a massive strategic miscalculation from McConnell and McCarthy is they wanted to be the generic alternative. And by being the generic alternative who stood for nothing, they created a vacuum that Democrats filled with accurate pictures of their extremism. And they did. Well, you know who else filled that vacuum is Donald Trump. Yes. And a lot of their candidates.

And the Supreme Court. But to contrast it on abortion access and Dobbs, Florida Republicans passed a 15 week abortion ban. So there was a law in place that they could point to and say, this is our alternative. And, you know, look, Florida might've been just sort of a uniquely weird situation this cycle, but Democrats didn't seem to benefit, uh, from turnout around the Dobbs decision in Florida, like they did everywhere else. That is true. Uh, what do we know about the outstanding votes in Arizona, Nevada, and what's going on with Georgia? Georgia is likely to be runoff. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. That's

an easy answer. We're waiting in Nevada. We are. In Nevada, we thought we were waiting for the county Reno is in and Clark County, which is where Las Vegas was in. Then we got some of the Reno vote, and it wasn't leaning towards Catherine Cortez Masto, as we hoped. So now, in five minutes, we're recording this in the morning on Wednesday. In five minutes, we're going to find out how many votes there are outstanding in Clark, which will tell us if Catherine Cortez Masto can catch up. But either way, even whatever we're going to hear, it's going to be incredibly close in Nevada. The fundamental question in both Arizona and Nevada is there's a bunch of outstanding mail vote. Some portion of that mail vote is mail ballots that were dropped off on Election Day.

portion of that mail vote is mail ballots that were dropped off on election day. There is some theory that those mail drop off on election day voters are actually profile more like in-person election day voters who profile as more Republican. So the split between traditional mail balloting and in-person drop off on election day, it helps will determine whether how much outstanding Democratic vote there is in Arizona and Nevada. And if it is, we need a ton in Nevada. We need to win the in-person drop-off at a very good rate to make up the delta. In Arizona, the number of in-person drop-offs and how those voters profile will determine whether Masters and Kerry Lake can catch up to Kelly and Hobbs.

Yeah. And right now, Kelly is outrunning Hobbs by a few. So he's in better shape than she is. So as you guys mentioned, Georgia's headed for a runoff. How does Raphael Warnock win a runoff? Is it easier or harder if the Dems have already won the Senate by then? I wrote a couple couple advantages and disadvantages. Cool. Advantages. Pro con list, eh? Why not?

Here's a couple. Kemp was on the ballot. He will not be on the ballot this time. Democrats are genuinely— Are these advantages? These are advantages. Advantages for— For Warnock.

For Warnock. Yeah, I'm doing it from the perspective of Democrats. I don't know. Democrats— You're doing a little both sides action. So, look, Democrats generally love Raphael Warnock because he's an incredible candidate, senator in person. Republicans were holding their noses. So that's and without having other Republicans, they have to turn out just for the

purpose of electing the schmuck. Fine. If we managed to pull it out in Arizona, Nevada, the fact that Senate control is not at stake would make revving up enthusiasm more important. It would make it more about the candidates themselves. And then as in 2020, once again, we'll have a massive amount of Republican infighting as the kind of, you know, the story unfolding Trump and DeSantis, Trump, Trump go to Georgia, all of this arguing. And that was, that was extremely helpful in helping us gain the majority when Warnock and John Ossoff won the day before the insurrection. By the way, Kayleigh McEnany was on Fox News this morning saying Ron DeSantis should go to Georgia and campaign and that Donald Trump should not. So I'm sure that landed well at Mar-a-Lago.

Oh boy. At the 19th hole. Oh yeah. We're going to get to him. Oh yeah. Oh God. He's just serious. Stewing. Putting and looking at Ivana's grave and furious he calls it that's why he's blaming melania for dr oz yeah his future write-off is yeah uh and then if now disadvantage if senate control is at stake then it becomes a massive clusterfuck uh with republicans revving

up the base and that's what i'm worried about the hold your nose and vote for Herschel Walker, because even if you don't like him, Senate controls it. Yeah. That's my, that's my fear. That's my fear. And like, so yeah, it's interesting. The other, the other question is it, one of the takeaways we may have from this election is that Democrats are now a better midterm voting party because our coalition has changed and in, and we do very well in specials. We've done very well, always in very well specials. We do particularly well in specials. Maybe that goes to runoff. This will profile as a special election. So, I mean, you can sort of argue it either way, and the political environment is going to matter a lot. If we go to a runoff and the Senate control is at stake, we're all going to be freaking out and pushing everybody to do everything they can

because no one's going to know. And I think he has a good, Democrats have a good argument there, which is Senate control is at stake. And this is about Joe Biden's ability to fill a whole bunch of judicial vacancies. And let's remember, the reason that we're in this mess because of Dobbs is because of judicial vacancies. And this is what's at stake in this election. I mean, it's pretty clear. Check the Republican court, make sure we have the ability to confirm is good. Although, you know, stop Joe Biden from confirming any more radical judges is also going to work on the other side. Let's talk about the House. So as Lovett mentioned, the theory going into the election was the candidate quality would matter less in House races, which would help Republicans pick up anywhere from 20 to 40 seats. That isn't going to happen. So what did happen with the House? Dan, what do you think? And where

do you think this ends up? It's hard to say. There are a lot of outstanding votes in California. We're probably not going to know the answer about a whole bunch of California House races for weeks, maybe. But it looks like it's going to be very, very close. I think some of the projections are somewhere between a one-seat Republican majority to a 13-seat Republican majority, depending on how some of this stuff breaks. A lot of the places Republicans had to win were in purple and blue states. And purple and blue states voted just like in a presidential election, not in a midterm election. It's certainly not like the midterm election we expected. And so Democrats did better, and they won mostly in seats that Joe Biden won and with the one exception, which I know we'll get to. And so Republicans then blew a bunch of races they shouldn't have blown, like some of the ones we talked about in Ohio that were Trump's fault. And therefore, they blew a historic opportunity to take the House in a pretty spectacular fashion.

a pretty spectacular fashion. How much of a difference does it make if Republicans have a small House majority versus a bigger one? So, Kevin McCarthy, by temperament and flaws at the core of his being, was always going to be a weak speaker. He just gives off a weak ability to be manipulated kind of

energy. Him needing to keep his entire caucus together where three, four, two, whatever defections means he no longer has a majority to pass things makes him extraordinarily meek. Makes him someone who needs everybody, has to respond to everybody. It also turns a lot of must pass bills into a real clusterfuck for him, where if he's losing anybody and all of a sudden it's do we shut down the government or do I go walk over this, walk across the street, ask Nancy, walk across the aisle and ask Nancy Pelosi for help is going to be a question that comes up more frequently. So and that will be in a in a climate in which everyone is fucking furious at him for not delivering the bigger majority. Uh, if he does manage to become the speaker, which he still probably will, but man,

it's, uh, it's pretty fucked. It seems like, um, Marjorie Tova Green and that crew is going to try to extract concessions from him to even, uh, you know, give their, to, in exchange for their support for him being speaker. And listen, you know, Donald to even, you know, give their to in exchange for their support for him being speaker. And listen, you know, Donald Trump engages, you know, once every two years on congressional strategy, and he's been shouting about using the weapon of the debt ceiling against Democrats. So that that's coming, that train's coming down the tracks. If the Democrats cannot eliminate or at least forestall the death ceiling confrontation, and I know that is not going to be Joe, that is going to be really on Joe Manchin and Kyrsten

Sinema to get that done. Yeah. Because you have to do it in reconciliation. Just do it. You mean during, you're talking about basically that they should do it during- In the lame duck. In the lame duck. In the lame duck, we have one last chance to take this detonator out of the Republicans' hands. But it's up to them. It's up to Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. They have to do it. Yeah. But I mean, the other story of the House is clearly Ron DeSantis' strength in a Florida gerrymander was enormously helpful. And then for Democrats in New York, the map we wanted got tossed out. Thank you, Andrew Cuomo. And we lost a bunch of seats there. I wonder, though, how much of New York Lee Zeldin running a surprisingly strong race kind of pulled some of those Republican candidates over the finish line. Yeah. I wanted to ask you guys about New York because everyone's first reaction, and this is a correct reaction, is like, oh, we got screwed on the maps in New York, right? And

if Andrew Cuomo's conservative judges didn't strike down the map, we might win the House, which I think is true. But the seats that we're losing, including Sean Patrick Maloney, the chair of the DCCC just lost his, are still Biden plus five districts all the way up to Biden plus 15. And then Kathy Hochul only is five or six points ahead of Lee Zeldin. Chuck Schumer, who in his previous two elections to Senate won 66%, 70% is in the mid 50s. Yeah. After spending a lot of money, you look at the upstate map, the bottom fell out.

A lot of upstate New York behaving like a lot of other kind of rural whiter parts of the country, kind of reverting to the mean. There were a lot of indicators on the bad vibes scorecard before the election. There was the economy. There was inflation. There was a lot of Trafalgar polls. We can get into that later. But then there was also the fact that the President of the United States was campaigning in Yonkers, which didn't make me feel great about sort of the broader trends or what numbers people were probably seeing that have more access to data than I do.

But it does seem like there's a weird Florida and a weird New York story this year. Yeah, I also say too, like, so it does look like we're losing a couple of these New York congressional, we'll see what happens when it's all done. But we're going to lose a couple by a point or two when I think one by a point or two, which means everything mattered. And New York had the chance to pass a couple ballot measures, one of which would have kept the better redistrict, the redistricting in place. But also, New York Democrats didn't get behind enough a measure that would have gotten rid of this antiquated requirement that you have to be registered 10 days in advance of election, and that would have gotten rid of another dumb rule, which requires an excuse for absentee ballot. So New York has been behind in how accessible voting is compared to California, Colorado, and a lot of even Republican states. They had an opportunity to fix it.

Republicans spent a ton of money to stop those ballot measures. Democrats didn't do enough. And it really could be that the control of the House at stake and the fact that Sean Patrick Maloney, who kind of ran a bunch of shenanigans to put himself in place because he was the guy that could win this seat and then loses. It's just not been it's not a great day to be a leader of the New York Democratic Party. But what do the voters do? So I keep wondering, right, like why? I do think it might come down to something as simple as there's cranky people all over

the country, right? Wrong track and all these exit polls was like off the charts in new york when it's just all democrats in charge from local all the way up to state um the only thing you can do to express your distaste is to vote against the democrats yeah of course that yeah of course that's true i mean like two things can be true one can be that democrats democrats really fucked up strategically another is that you know uh Democrats that another can be that they just had a bad, a bad, a bad night in a few key places. Although I will say that, like, you know, the district I my my district from growing up is sending an insurrectionist to Congress, right? Like there's, it was a it was a very bad day in New York.

So one of the biggest concerns about this midterm was the number of election deniers running for offices that would put them in charge of our elections, like governor, secretary of state, just about all of them lost, though we are still waiting on final results in Arizona and Nevada. And, you know, Carrie Lake could end up being governor still. But there was a lot of pearl clutching over Democrats employing various tactics to boost some of these MAGA candidates in the primaries. Any lessons from the results? Any reflections on the Democratic meddling, the much maligned Democratic meddling? The ends justify the means.

They sure did. Look, as somebody who lost a lot of money in a casino recently, you can't win if you don't pledge. I mean, listen, I grew up under the tutelage of Mitch McConnell in Canada Quality Matters, and we learned that in a lot of places. Where did you grow up? I was just making a joke. You guys all looked at me like, really? I didn't know you were. Were you a page? Yes.

Were you Josh Holmes? I'm not a high-heeled lobbyist, as Tim Miller calls him. Yeah, he called him a lobbyist in lifts, I think. That's so funny. Yeah, he called him a lobbyist in Lyfts, I think. So funny. No, look, I realize there's a lot of strategists and people who are very upset, Twitter strategists and people who are very upset by this. But this is one for Democratic strategists, people who work on these campaigns, the DSCC, the DCCC. They get a lot of shit.

They did really well in this midterm. In this strategy and others, let's give these people their due. They did really well in this midterm like in this strategy and others like let's give these people their due they did really well i hate this conversation because it takes place in twitter this very black and white thing like democrats either did it yeah it was everything they did was exactly right or exactly wrong and it's different in every single case if we had not meddled in pennsylvania doug mascherni was probably still winning that race. He won by like 24 points. The same things likely happen in a couple other places. And Trump endorsed these people too. So was it the Democratic ads or the endorsement of the very popular with a Republican base former president who looms larger of everything? We don't really know. But the point is extreme candidates are less electable and we want to run against extreme candidates. There is risk in that for sure. And when Kerry Lake takes Arizona and succeeds from the union, we might reap the world win there.

Which for some reason is so hard for people to understand, especially Twitter people, right, that extreme candidates are easier to beat than less extreme candidates. But would you have rather Maggie Hassan run against Chuck Morse in New Hampshire? I wouldn't have, because now we could be sitting here talking about how we're not going to get the Senate back. It's a, look, it's, we live in an uncertain world. It is a decision to try to maximize your victories

while taking a certain amount of risk. That is looking to read down to our benefit right now. It could have gone the other way, but you make the best decision you can. Also, uh, one other part of this that always bothers me, you know, democratic consultants are not going door to door, putting a gun to Republican voters head. It is based on a theory. The theory being the Republican base has become so extreme and so radical that if you show them how awful these candidates are, they will get behind them and, and show the other independent, the independent and Democratic voters in these

states how unpalatable and extreme the Republican Party has gotten. Stepping back and letting Republicans nominate someone who seems less extreme, even though that is not giving Republicans what they actually want, is also a way of kind of covering for what's become of the Republican Party. So why would we do that? Why would we help them in that way? It's not our job to fix Republicans' problem. It's our job to beat them. And in this case, we did. Yeah. And the examples that worry me the most are like the Cary Lake example.

But as you point out, the type of meddling was different in every election. And I think in that one, it was like some Yahoo at the Arizona Democratic Party put out a press release saying that she supported Barack Obama once. That's not a lot of meddling. And then in Maryland, when Democrats helped, you know, get a far right candidate into the nomination for the governor's race, Larry Hogan, the very popular Republican governor, declared the race was over the next day. And it was. And we flipped the district. We flipped Maryland, baby.

We flipped Massachusetts. So all this talk of election deniers brings us to MAGA King Donald Trump, who might have had the worst night of anyone. This is now the third election in a row he has lost for the Republican Party. There are reports that he's

rip shit and that everyone in the party is rip shit at him, though, of course, they're not saying it out loud or on the record. You know, everyone's very afraid, as usual. Meanwhile, Ron DeSantis just had the best night of arguably any Republican in the country. How does last night change the dynamics of 2024 for Trump and the GOP? I mean, like what Trump will always benefit from is he has an army of pundit janitors mopping up after him on primetime on Fox and Newsmax and OAN. So they'll find a way to spin this. But Ron DeSantis comes out of this thing looking like a political force to be reckoned with. And that makes me happy in the short term because it'll make Donald Trump very, very sad. But it's nerve wracking in the long term. But I do think like people who are

looking for an alternative to Trump are going to see DeSantis getting stronger and stronger. And like the people who ran strongest last night were Republicans, were DeSantis and then Brian Kemp in Georgia, who kicked the shit out of a handpicked Trump candidate in a primary and then won overwhelmingly because of perceived distance from Donald Trump that helped him to get independent. So, I mean, unfair as that was, you know. Yeah. Look, I mean, I wish Stacey Abrams had won as well. But like, you know, I think Trump attacking Kemp probably helped him. So it was not a So it was a very,

very bad showing for MAGA world. I mean, it should come as no surprise that Trump has terrible taste. And I mean, his choices for candidates, if Democrats hold on here, it will be Donald Trump's fault. He gave the Republicans bad candidates. They did easier for Democrats to win. He cost them a whole bunch of House seats. He cost them governorships. And that is on him, and that is only on him. As we talked before this election, this was going to be this incredibly unpredictable election. And what hurt Republicans is, one, Trump picked bad candidates, forced them on them. But then also, Donald Trump is very, very unpopular. There were only a small slice of people who did not like Donald Trump who voted for Republican Joe Biden, also struggling in the polls, but a much larger swath of people who were not particularly pleased with Joe Biden were willing to vote for Democrats because Donald Trump had to make this election about him. He picked the candidates. He did the rallies. He teased his presidential endorsement the night before the election. Also, he made all of his handpicked candidates embrace the big lie about the last election. And it turns out that's not very popular

with voters. And didn't he raise a hundred million and spend 15 million? I mean, he kind of like, he didn't do all he could here. He didn't leave it all in the field. Guys, let's chill out. Keep this talk up. He might not announce it next week. All right. I mean, the only way it could have gone worse is if he had followed his, if only he had followed his own instincts and announced on Monday night that he was running. That's the only way it could have gone worse. You gotta announce your next movie before your

current movie comes out. Yeah, I think he made a mistake. I think he should have announced it first. His instincts were right. He got talked out of it. He wanted to do it Monday night. He knew what was gonna happen. He was right. He was right. Well, now it seems much more likely that we get a Trump-DeSantis primary. And we're going to now go through another round of do the conservative elites and the conservative media have the sway to actually help defeat Donald Trump? Or are they just going to fall in line?

The Murdochs this morning are already fluffing DeSantis. They've been on that train for a while. On the New York, you know, cover the New York Post. Oh, DeSantis and some of the Fox pundits have been talking up DeSantis. Like you said, Kayleigh McEnany, former Trump White House press secretary. It's, you know, there's a look. Who knows what's going to happen? We don't even we don't know if DeSantis is going to do it or not.

Obviously, he's going to be getting his phone is just people telling him to run today. But everyone seems to even the people that maybe correctly say, hey, DeSantis is a much better national figure for the Republican Party than Donald Trump. They seem to skip this part where that requires beating Donald Trump in an election and then him doing what? Like being cool with that for a while. like being cool with that for a while like like the the path for ron de santis becoming the republican nominee runs through donald trump either by either you lose to him or you make him lose and donald trump losing to ron de santis makes it existential for trump that de santis go on to lose his ego requires it so it's like i don't see how all this i don't see how this desantis train doesn't run into this um uh you know uh trump train trump train wow yeah thank you i was thinking it's a drink i was trying to figure out

like could trump be uh i forgot the word herd a herd of cows on the tracks that wouldn't have been better i don't think it would have that's why that's why i hesitated um all right how about joe biden so how about joe biden his approval rating in all the exits again was the worst of any post-war president at this point in his term including trump um and yet he is on track to have the best midterm results of any post-war president how do we explain that what does it mean for joe biden's future a senior white house official told playbook this morning he's running who wants to who wants to take that first? I mean, I think politics is pretty binary, right? And the national narrative will be like a win is a win is a win. And if I were them,

I would run out in front of as many cameras as I could and take credit for this. And I think that's what's going to happen today. Whether these results show like strength under the hood, I think is a far more nuanced debate that is answered in some of the exit polls. If if we had woken up today and we were looking at the bloodbath scenario, we were worried that could be the case on Monday night. Everyone would be talking about Biden has to say he's not running. Biden's done. Biden's done. Biden's done. And none of those people today are going to say that the opposite is true. But Joe Biden is, he's well aware what people have said if he would have

lost. So how could he not view this as a validation of his case? I think if you want to try to unpack like what role Joe Biden played in this, if you want to hear the positive things thing to say is passing the inflation reduction act gave Democrats something to run on that that was no question a jolt of enthusiasm for democrats remember how depressing the depressed the party was in late july and august after like a raft of failures he also had didn't joe manchin pass that someone named joe was involved i don't really know. Joe Scarborough? And then he also had, unlike Trump, had the self-discipline to not make it about himself. It's very obvious the data showed that in the core battleground states, President Biden and Vice President Harris were not going to be a net benefit with the voters who were still making their decision. Yeah, that's why Joe Biden was in Yonkers and Kamala Harris was at UCLA.

She's campaigning door to door right now. That's not an easy decision for politicians to make, right? They did that. What it says about 2024 and his ability to win, we don't really know that. I don't think you will ever know that. This is an election that happened where really it was not about Joe Biden and that was good for Democrats. And then he, you know, what comes next will come next. But how the next several months played out and he, you know, if he abides by, you know, besides the one random White House aide trying to send a message to the FEC this morning via playbook, the, I mean, Joe Biden's timetable, as we've understood it to date, is that he would operate on the same timetable that Barack Obama used for his reelection, which was an announcement.

I think ours was like on April 1st or early April of 2011. So there's a several month period here. Some of the reporting suggests that he's going to talk to his family and he's going to talk to Jill and, you know, confirm a decision that is leading towards running. and confirm a decision that is leading towards running, the next many months play out will sort of shape that political environment and will include likely some pretty harsh confrontations with a new Republican Congress. Yeah. The really negative indicator was the exit poll that said 66% of respondents do not want Joe Biden to run for president again. Now that number can change over time when the economy gets better, inflation goes down, et cetera. But, you know, that would probably that no one likes that number. Well, and you said if the economy gets better, I mean, I think this is like, look, I am a big fan of how Joe Biden has governed as president.

I will forever be grateful for him for the fact that he beat Donald Trump and got rid of Donald Trump. He has governed really well. I'm a huge fan of his agenda. Donald Trump and got rid of Donald Trump. He has governed really well. I'm a huge fan of his agenda. He has basically done everything that the Democratic Party's base has asked him to do that is within his power to do. And I do not think it is his fault that we are dealing with inflation right now, particularly because inflation is up all over the world. But if inflation persists, if the economy tips into recession, if there is some combination of both, then like fairly or not, he is going to be held responsible by voters for those economic conditions. And we already saw in this election how many people are holding him responsible for that. And we are we already saw that all these Democratic candidates who outran Joe

Biden in their states, they didn't just not have Joe Biden campaign with them. They were actively running ads, touting their independence from Joe Biden, criticizing Joe Biden on a whole bunch of issues, saying that they don't vote with Joe Biden all the time, that they disagree with him on certain issues. And so like, I do, you know, I do wonder about like you're right. The White House is going to tout this as like a big Biden win. But I think it was and I think he did everything that you said, Dan, to help make that win possible. But I think this was really Democratic candidates in these states key states and key places. Yeah. Look, I also think this is probably the least, this is going to be the hardest time to have a conversation about this. Joe Biden is having the best performance in the term of any president besides George W. Bush after 9-11. But again, we will face the same question. Yeah. A lot of people look at Joe Biden and say, he's too old. That's what I'm talking about. That's the issue. And a lot of people are going to look at, it's not just going

to be about, do they want Joe Biden to run again? We're going to have the same conversation we had in 2020, which is like, who is the alternative? Who is going to step up? Is that a valid alternative? And are those people going to start making that noise in the next few months as the memory of this midterm fades and we start to kind of understand the broader environment that we'll be heading into? I just think we don't know. When we dig into the results here, this is like a lot of votes will be counted, but this is undoubtedly a very, very good night for Democrats. We averted an absolute catastrophe, which a lot of historical political indicators said should have happened. historical political indicators said should have happened. We could have woken up today losing 40 House seats, losing the Senate, losing with big lie believers in charge of the electoral

apparatus in almost all of the battleground states. That did not happen. Donald Trump could have a burst of momentum behind him. That did not happen. There are underneath it some tough questions or troubling trends that we are going to have to wrestle with. The electoral map got much more narrow. Florida is gone. Ohio is gone. We haven't talked about Texas, but not a lot of good news out of Texas last night. And the more narrow that map gets, the fewer paths a Democrat has to 270. It also speaks to a narrowing of our coalition and that we continue to struggle with in rural areas with white voters, non-college, potentially, we don't know yet, but some erosion with black and Latino voters, even though they overwhelmingly support Democrats.

That's in the exit polls. We have to see in precinct level data if that's real. And then another one of those is it is very hard to run for re-election if the vast majority of the country doesn't want you to run. Now, as Tommy said, that can change. We are going to – we can't allow the good news, which we should celebrate and enjoy and take all of our energy and not worry about this until after the Georgia runoff. But think about those questions because we have a lot of work to do before 2024, whether Joe Biden runs or not, to address those things. And the economy is a huge part of that because – A huge part of it. I think even more than the age issue right like if

if we are in a recession there's inflation it's i don't care who you are i don't care if you're the most talented politician in the world yeah it's just really tough and look i think the upside of this is the good news here is you know we now know that the the next democratic candidate has to win wisconsin pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, right? That's it. That's the path. And we have now seen, we've been worried about like a Democratic bench, Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, hopefully Mark Kelly, John Fetterman, right? Raphael Warnock, hopefully, right?

We have just seen a whole bunch of Democratic candidates, younger Democratic candidates who are like mainstream Democrats who united the progressive and moderate wings of the party win in really tough states. Like, that's good news. Yeah, we get some people to model success. So every candidate should go and talk to the people on John Fetterman's team to talk to them about how they thought through and executed a messaging strategy. Everyone running a campaign should go talk to organizers in Michigan to see how they figured out how to flip the statehouse and the Senate, keep the governor's race, take control of the state government, keep the Supreme Court, the AG, pass an abortion ballot measure, a voting rights ballot measure, and then go hang out for a couple weeks with the Wisconsin Democratic Party organizers who did an unbelievable amount of work over the course of years building, organizing, putting together an organization in an incredibly difficult state, and are probably the reason that we kept that governor seat. Ben Wickler is a hero. Truly. I mean, this whole team. Cannot even say how dangerous a situation we would be in right now if Tim Michaels

was the Republican governor of Wisconsin with the Republican legislature when it came time to certify in the 2024 votes in Wisconsin. A person who said that the Democrat would never win in the state again. And by the way, we should say that the Wisconsin Republicans did not win a supermajority in that legislature, too, which was going to render Tony Evers like just, you know. Unfortunately, it probably looks like we're losing that Senate seat if it's not been called yet. Yeah, it has been. I also think, too, like, look, we're recording this on Wednesday. We could have had this great night and still lose the

Senate, still lose the House. That is very much in play. But what I was feeling just last night and watching this all come in is I think a lot of us, all of us who pay attention really closely, it's this feeling of like, do people care about these things? Like, do they care about democracy? Do they care? Will they actually show up? Like, does it matter that there are these people out there that don't believe in democracy, that won't, that believe the 2020 was stolen? Like, is this breaking through? Like, are these crime attacks going to work? Are people really, like, are people going to be kind of buffeted by all this misinformation and propaganda? And this is another election in a row where right-wing fear-mongering just didn't deliver for them. It really didn't. And it is another election in a row where right-wing fear-mongering

just didn't deliver for them. It really didn't. And it's another election where despite our worst fears, there really is a majority out there that is paying attention enough to reject some of the most extreme and radical people.

And that continues to be true. And I think that is a broader reason just to be hopeful as we head into this slog of the next two years. Hey, Tina Kotek wins in the Oregon governor's's race pot of america bounce boom nice more importantly uh any thoughts on the polls is this the end for uh trafalgar who won the nade off is simon rosenberg our god now i think so yes on simon rosenberg i mean dan correct me if i'm wrong it

seems like good pollsters did well, shitty pollsters did badly. Like Ann Seltzer nailed the Iowa results. I think she got identical. The final New York Times polls were good. But like it was hard knowing how well Trafalgar did last cycle to tune those polls out. But they had Bolduck beating Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire. They had Zeldin beating Hockle in New York. And they had Michael Bennett winning by only one point in Colorado.

And he just mopped up. And like those are huge misses. And what those misses did is they also impacted like the 538s and the aggregators who have the very difficult job of trying to figure out how to incorporate or not incorporate those polling outfits. So like that that's a hard job. I don't know how I would do it better, but I do think it's a, it's an industry that is really struggling to keep, you know, pace with methodology to account for no one answering the phone. And then just these

partisan outlets like flooding the place. Whether it's because the polls worked or we just got lucky because Trafalgar has its ratings because for the same reason that a broken clock is right twice a day, they just have a pro-Trump bias and in states that have that were trump over reforms they're right and when he underperforms they don't but the polls were right they're just like they are not they're not precise instruments they have something called a margin of error these races fell within the margin of error as As advertised. The Democratic panic that happened over the last couple of which I very much felt over the week before the election did not show up in the polls. It showed narrowing in the polls, but didn't show Republicans winning. And then Democrats

ended up winning the close races by within the margin of error of the polls. And I do think one part of the freak out was the fear that the polls would show the same bias that they had in the previous races. And that didn't happen't happen yeah which that was a real fear there's still some question i think in ohio where there's some good polls you know like a data for progress poll kind of nailed the tim ryan jd vance race others had it much closer than it seemed like we i think there's still a challenge in some of those states have a high percentage of rural voters and non-college white voters that's sort of the trumpier states in general, polls are supposed to give us a general idea of how things are going to go. They're not supposed to tell us exactly what's going to happen so we can modulate our emotions

in advance. And they did. And they did. I like to live on the roller coaster. Yeah. And I will say that New York Times-Siena, which is an A-plus pollster, their Senate race polls and those House polls were very accurate very close uh which was pretty good for them and i know they've worked hard at figuring out the non-response issue uh including like trying like paying some people to take posts trafalgar real clear politics buh-bye no we don't we don't yeah that's you're you embarrassed yourself and good for simon rosenberg yeah and tom bonior too you want to tell anybody who's introducing this concept, I think. These are people who are very frustrated about partisan polls.

We did a whole segment on this. It's a new episode. Simon Rosenberg, Democratic strategist who, as we said last pod, was saying that the Republican-leaning polls flooding the zone were screwing up the averages. Designed for a narrative change. And Tom Bonior at Target Smart, who's been on this pod before as well, he was modeling the early vote and saying that the early vote was not definitely showing a Democratic win,

but at least not showing a red. Yeah, that part was definitely correct. All right, guys. Well, that's all we have. We'll be back next week and hopefully we'll have a whole bunch more results to talk about. But for now, good night.

Well done. Well done. Well done, everyone. Yeah. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein. Our producers are Haley Muse and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

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