The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: A Blue Wave vs. the Toxic Red Tide

Episode Date: September 7, 2026

With just under two months until Election Day, Tim and Bill revisit the run-up to the midterms in 2006 and 1994, two major wave election cycles where the bottom just fell out from under the party in power. The 1994 blowout was more about the end of an era, while 2006 was about an unpopular war in the Middle East, a scandal, and a disappointed base. What do those wave elections suggest about the prospects for a big blue year in 2026? Plus: Do not miss either the war stories from Tim as a young Republican operative on the campaign trail or Clinton blaming Bill for helping to tank his health care reform plan.Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller for a special holiday pod.show notes: Tim in 2006 Bill in "Morning Shots" with his Truman-related advice for the Dems COME HANG WITH THE GANG—Sarah, Tim, JVL, Sam and friends—during our Bulwark LIVE: Good Fight Tour this October 16-20:🎤Friday, October 16 at The Senate in Columbia, S.C.—Will Sommer joins the gang on stage. Is Columbia ready for the Trio? 🎤Sunday, October 18 at the Carolina Theatre in Charlotte, N.C.—special guest Pete Buttigieg joins the gang with Catherine Rampell and Lauren Eagan. 🎤Tuesday, October 20 at The Eastern in Atlanta, Ga.—Gen. Mark Hertling and the Morning Shots duo—Andrew Egger and Bill Kristol—join the gang for this final stop. Tickets are on sale NOW through the links above or through TheBulwark.com/Events. At Bulwark LIVE we can promise you a night of fellowship and politics with lots of laughs—and maybe a few tears too. We’ll keep you sane.

Hey, everybody. Just a real quick note, I pre-taped this upcoming pod with Bill. And so, you know, assuming it was a blowout LSU victory on Saturday night, that's why I didn't mention that because I don't know what has happened yet. I don't know what's happened in the world. So, you know, if we got the cheeseburger from heaven or whatever, I don't know about it. So it is a great show. We're talking a little bit about the midterms and it's a retrospective on 94 and 2006. I think that you're going to really enjoy it.

Also, a reminder, we've got these events coming up. tickets are starting to go. So if you want to come join us, Atlanta, Columbia, Charlotte, theborg.com slash events. And one last thing, I'm after the pod's over, let me know what you think about kind of the retrospective part of this. I have another little brainchild for something that I think you guys might like that is in a similar vein. And so I'm interested in your thoughts. So you can, if you didn't like it or it was boring or whatever, you can let me know. So appreciate you guys very much. Have a great Labor Day. Stick around for Bill Crystal. Hello and welcome to the Bullwark Daily.

I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Monday. It's Labor Day. And I have for you, of course, editor-at-large Bill Crystal. We have a very special episode by popular demand. It's the Labor Day kickoff, getting ready for the midterms. And Bill and I, on several episodes, have been discussing the 2006 wave year that led to the Democrats, taking the House and the Senate, as well as some other midterms. And I've suggested kind of cheekly, like maybe we should dedicate a full episode.

so to that. And people are like, yes, please do. We want that. And so we're going to do it right now for Labor Day. It'll free a little holiday bonus. So that sounds good, Bill. Sounds good. So we'll do 2006, which is the least modern history. Then we'll go back to 1994, the ancient times before you were born. And I could discuss what happened then. And then you also told me you wanted to just a little bit on your first campaign, 1948. Thank you. I set you up. I set you up so well for that. I mentioned 1984 and morning shots this week. And that's why Tim is having a good time. Having a good time with that. I was not quite around yet. Also, for the YouTube viewers and the Bullard plus subscribers,

we might have a picture of me from 2000 sex and video of Bill from 94. So you can go see what we looked like. We're both, we're both handser than ever now. Before we do that, I thought it would be good just kind of set the table with a little bit of, you know, just pure politic and some prognosticating, looking ahead to this year's midterm, and then kind of we can talk about how, like, our various experiences in past midterms sort of inform these projections. So I don't know that we need to like go state by state, but kind of wondering,

what, Bill, like your big picture thoughts are, as we sit here on Labor Day, for how the November election will go and maybe specific states that are catching your eye. I've thought it would be a big Democratic year for quite a while based on nothing other than just the obvious facts. The main fact being that Donald Trump's approval rating has gone down steadily since he was inaugurated, and the approval rating of an incumbent president is a good predictor of what happens in the midterm election, especially when his party control is what has as a Congress. So it is a referendum on, do you approve of what they've been doing for two years? And more importantly, probably, do you want the Republican, especially when the Republican Party

in Congress is so attached to Trump, do you want them to continue rubber stamping what he's been doing for the next two years, or do you want a party to check him? That was very much my experience of 2018, the last Trump midterm. And so I've always assumed Democrats had a pretty good shot at a pretty good victory. And then as Trump got into the Iran war and decided to monkey around with tariffs some more and inflation didn't go down and he made generally seem disconnected from people's lives and so forth. The gas prices went up by quite a lot. I thought a good year could become a very good year. And that's kind of for the Democrats. And that's kind of where I am. Yeah, so let's just do the House first. I agree with you on all that, on the big picture. I'm a little bit of two minds at the

House and the Senate. And it's a little bit because of the playing field. I do think, that the Democrats are going to see big gains among Latino voters. So, you know, in the parts of the country where there are a lot of Latinos like Texas, that is maybe relevant for the Senate, but I think that they're going to overperform there. There will be a lot of Trump backsliding. And I think the prognostications are wrong a lot about what's happening in South Texas, maybe even South Florida, some places like that. And so I expect the Democrats to even overperform in the House for that reason. And if you look at a lot of the United States, lot of the projections right now, Nate Silver, the Democrats need to win four seats against

218. A lot of these projections have them only netting like eight seats or something and ending like 222. And the reason for that is two, one, the cheating that Republicans did. The gerrymandering did work a little bit. That's going to offset some of the gains. That's one. And another reason for that is just this kind of, and you discussed this with, oh, shoot, was it Doug Schoen? Doug Sossack. It was on your... Doug Sossack. Thank you. Doug Sossack. Thank you. Doug Sossack. on your crystal conversation. And just like the nature of this is very different

than 06 and 94 and just how polarized we are. There aren't as many districts in play. And there's been gerrymandering even before the cheating gerrymandering. There's regular old gerrymandering. And so I see that and I recognize it. But man, I just look at the map in some of these places that Cook, for example, has as leaning towards Republicans, you know, in South Texas, as I mentioned,

in eastern North Carolina, in Colorado, a couple of districts in Colorado, Iowa, Florida. I think there are going to be a bunch of surprises. We'll get into why. So I think that the Democrats could net as many as like 16 seats and end up at 2.30, which would be less than still, those other wave years we're going to talk about, but more than what is being projected. So that's kind of where I'm at the House. I'm less bullish on the Senate. We'll get to that in a second. But what's your review on that? Yeah, same on the House. I just think people are underestimating. They look at a district that's gone Republican in the last few years. It's a Republican now called Republican plus six, maybe

Republican plus eight, because Trump might have been strong in 2024. And they underestimate that if the whole country moves, Trump won by a point and a half, right? Let's say the generic ends up plus eight, that is the Democrats win the National House vote by eight, which seems reasonable. That's a nine and a half point move. That means that a lot of districts that are Trump, you know, plus six, seven, eight are in play, right? In fact, not only in play, but you might even, maybe should be almost favored to go Democratic. So I, I, I tell you. tend to think also that people are being a little too, what's the room I'm looking for, deterministic from the past in this respect and not understanding that when you get to a wave,

you know, districts toppled that we're a little beyond the, you know, of course they can win this one because it's only plus two Republican and or or Republicans holding a seat that Harris actually won. There aren't some of those. So I'm sort of in the two, I've been saying just to be a little optimistic just to make the numbers round 235 to 200 in the House. Oh, wow. Although to 235 making me seem cautious with my 230 projection. My job is to make you, my job is to make you sane, prudence, you know, reasonable. I just like in some of these districts. I mean, I don't know. Annapolina Luna isn't a close race in Florida. That's in the likely our category on Cook. The fifth, Jeff Crank has been in this Colorado Spring seat forever. There's a lot of like

sprawl into Colorado Springs and from the rest of Colorado. You know, it's like places like this start to fall. The mill seat I've talked about a lot, Daytona Beach. I think that's potentially winnable. Democrats have a strong-kind at their bail Dalton. So I just think that there are a lot of potentially getable dem seats in this kind of likely dem category. There's the toss-up category, the lean category, than the likely.

I think there's a lot of potential dem seats to pick up there. So we're in the same page, even if not the same number, in the House. Here's my nervousness about the Senate. We talk about the Senate a lot so people who listen to this show should be pretty familiar with the playing field, but I'll just lay it out. Democrats need to pick up

four to get to 51. And really they need to pick up five because John Federman's been acting pretty squirrelly. And I don't know. It's kind of one of those. Dan, if you do, damned if you don't, if you're Chuck Schumer, if you have 51, it's like either you got to pass everything by John Federman or John Federman switches parties and puts it back at 50-50. So you really want to try to get to 52, which means you got to win five. Yeah, net five. Yeah, net five.

Okay. So that means you have to protect Georgia. That seems safe at this point. and you have to protect Michigan, which other people think is less safe than me. I think that's pretty safe at this point. Okay, then you go into the pickups. You've got North Carolina is the one that it seems like you're going to get.

That's one. You've got Maine. Susan Collins is tough. I think that Maine is going to be a flip this year, but that's not a guarantee. Then you've got to get two more to get to four, three more of Ohio, Iowa, Texas, Alaska. Three of those four are the best four. Then after that, you get into like Kansas, which you and I've talked about. Nebraska's an independent running.

Montana's an independent running. Florida, maybe. You know, the map is tight. And a lot of those places, you mentioned eight, nine earlier. Most of those places are 11, 12, Trump states. He won by 11 or 12. I'm a little nervous that they end up running up into running a bunch of really close races and a bunch of losing by three points.

A lot of 51, 48 losses in those center races. If I sat here today and you forced me to choose to prognosticate, I do think that they get Ohio with Sherrod Brown. And I kind of look at Texas and Alaska. I don't think they're going to get Iowa. That would be if you're just asking me today. You look at Texas and Alaska, those are pure coin flips. And just to be cheery, I'd say they go with the Democrats. But I think that they're, I think both of them right now are like really neck and neck.

So that's kind of the state of play. You'd win both of that. If you did win, hold the same seats when North Carolina, Maine, Ohio, Alaska, and Texas, that does get you to 52 and a real majority that you can work with where, I don't know, who is the next biggest troublemaking senator after Faterman? There really, there really aren't any. I guess that would be Peltola probably. You have a pretty cohesive Senate conference where you're just kind of dealing with, you know,

working with Peltola. And who knows, in that case, maybe Murkowski dips, honestly. So I think that would be kind of the state of play. What about you on the Senate? I mean, I basically agree. And, you know, obviously predicting races that are basically 50-50 is a fool's error. And so, I mean, there's some historical precedent, I guess you say, when you get a wave, things tend to tip over to 5149 in your direction.

You know, I mean, that seems like that can't mathematically or scientifically be determined that way. It just feels that way, though, the, you know, whatever, the weird, you know, dynamics of these races. They do tend to tip one way or the other for some reason. And so I kind of think that you could split. those, the big four, two to two, which is sort of what you were suggesting, might be the single most likely outcome, but they could also go four zero either way, honestly. But if the wave continues, this is where it's so important, what happens late. And, you know, September, October aren't that important in the sense that I feel like we know

90%, 95% of what's going to happen already. And I'm exaggerating a little bit. We know a lot of what's going to happen in 2026. But that last delta, that last bit is awfully important if you're looking at four, but I would even say five, maybe six very close. I mean, Kansas was closer than Iowa, I think, in 2024, in the presidential. They have a Democratic governor. So, like, no one in Kansas is ever like, like, well, voting for a Democrat.

That would be crazy. So I kind of think that, I'd put that almost the same category as those other four, make it five. And also, there'll be some surprise. Like, the Democrats will lose a state they were supposed to win, maybe Michigan in this case, but maybe Maine, and then still get the majority because Kansas and somewhere else will come through. You know what I mean? That's sort of what happens in these years. If it's a dynamic wave-like year, if it reverts a little bit, I think you said this on the last,

podcast on Monday, does the wave continue a little bit in those last two months or does it revert to the, what's the expression I'm looking for, refer to the mean, you know, revert to in the last two months. And that makes all the difference. Does it go plus eight to kind of drift down to plus six or does it go up to plus nine? You know, that just makes a big, big difference in these close state Senate races. And that's a good transition into 2006, because I do think that the scale of that wave for the Democrats change based on what happened in October. And it went from what was going to be a really, really good year for the Democrats, no doubt, kind of like this year, to a bunch of seats falling.

And producer Ansley just kind of pulled this for me. If you kind of look at going back to that Cook political report, which I referenced, and we love Amy Walter and everything that they're doing there is really great. Even though in 06, it was Charlie Cook, you know, at the end, they looked at their own projections and saw how many they got right and they got wrong. And in 06, there were a bunch in that kind of likely Republican category that were surprising dropped at the end. that gets attributed to this October

kind of momentum for the Democrats. So we'll get to what happened in October in a second. I just want to start on both years of the basic facts. So the Democrats in 06 gained 30 seats in the House, which is more than we're both projecting for this time, but for the reasons we laid out a lot because of gerrymandering, they gained six seats in the Senate. Right.

Now, there is no gerrymandering in the Senate. So that's more of an apples-to-apples situation, right? Like if you match the 06 number, you should get about six, which is kind of what we're talking about. That would get you to 53. If you, then that's really what you're saying is the sweep maybe of Iowa, Ohio, Alaska, and Texas. Or maybe you win three of those and Kansas. And then you get to six. So that was the 2006 year.

Compared to this year, in both cases, the president's approval rating is above this current president's. W on Election Day of 06 is at 38 in Gallup, which is above, which is above. Trump is right now. It's 3856. So that's a state of play. I'll give you guys some names and then we'll do big picture to get your mind in the right time space. In the Senate, Claire McCaskill, my MS now buddy, beat Jim Talent. John Tester wins that year. Sherrod is. Sherrod Brown defeats Mike DeWine. So Times a flat circle in Ohio. I like that as a current governor, Sherrod's back running. Sarah's Frederick Santorum goes down to Bob Casey. This was a devastating one for me personally. Sheldon Whitehouse defeated Lincoln Chafee.

The running joke on that campaign that year, because I was always like the House moderate and it was like, we need to moderate more, we need to moderate more, and they called me a Lincoln Chafee Republican in the campaign that year. And then Jim Webb defeated George McCaca Allen in 2006. And I was set that year. I was working in Iowa. We'll put this picture up for Jeff Lamberti who's running in Iowa 3,

which is a Des Moines District, challenging a vulnerable incumbent Leonard Boswell. Oh, there it is. uh whoa look how much handsomer i'm looking man thanks to our friends at one skin my plan there there was a political consultant that i knew and it was just like you should go to iowa you should meet the reporters this was the first campaign where i got to do PR i was before that i was just kind of a little low-level assistant funky field person and um to be a comms person to i go to iowa meet the reporters and he's like then whatever presidential campaign i end up running he was in line to be a

presidential campaign manager i'll hire you to be the iowa person i was like great it's a great deal And so he looked like that was going to be George Allen, and then George Allen did a racial slur on the campaign trail, kind of a weird one. McCaw, it's not like a common racial slur. And that was enough to crush him different, simpler times in 2006, to think that that would be, like nowadays, George Allen would go up with the Republican voters after doing that.

But he goes down and then that consultant ends up working for McCain and dressed history end up working for McCain. So there is 06. Have you ever thought I should be doing something to protect myself? from stalkers, scammers and hackers. I got stalkers, baby. I'll tell you about the stalkers that are out there. Some nice stalkers. And that's nice. I never had a stalker before. That's cool. But you got to be careful. You got to be careful. And the scammers, the fucking scam tax these days, it's crazy. So many of you're not sure what to do. Here's what you do.

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www. that join delete me.com slash bulwark code bullork. Before I go through the full timeline, what are your big picture memories of OSEX? Well, just on that, so I lived then as I do now in Virginia. I knew George Allen some and thought well of him and

he was a pretty good, it was a good governor and his father had a great Redskins coach, obviously. And a very affable guy and a very good politician, actually. Jim Webb, I respected. I knew him slightly too. He had been Reagan's secretary of the Navy, I think, and then it quit and protest over something. It was kind of an irascible, kind of

old-fashioned Democratic hawk sort of and kind of a populist. He wrote like, did you write like erotica? Was he an erotica guy? I can't remember, which was that. I don't know like that. He wrote some history of like the Irish, the Scottish Irish in America, fighting something. I don't know. He was like an amateur historian.

He was a smart, very smart, is a smart guy. I think he's still learned. Yes, Jim Webb did write erotica. Okay. I don't know if that helped. So George Allen was, I'm going to say, I don't know what, mid-50. I mean, the height of his career, had been governor, then. senator, as you say, a lot of the smart money was on him for president, possibly in O.H.

And he was VP who wasn't going to run to succeed. Bush, obviously so wide open race on the Republican side, a senator for swingish state, more Republican than the Democratic, unlike now, Virginia. But, you know, sort of a representative state. And everyone liked Allen. And then Webb read a pretty good campaign, but I remember thinking in the summer, I wonder if this could be close. I mean, everyone assumed down the one easily.

Webb was kind of an odd candidate, right? It wasn't like the attractive 38-year-old Tala Rico against the corrupt facts. And this was, everyone liked George Allen and he hadn't defended anyone much. And then the wave happened. That was part of it, I think. I think Virginia is a state because it's got a lot of, especially northern Virginia, very susceptible to waves, as it was later on in 2018 and so forth. You know, it's kind of a lot of upper middle class.

It tuned into politics voters who were like more, had maybe voted for Bush in 2004, had voted a Republican at the Senate level and thought, oh, man, this has gone really badly. So that, that helped. But then he did have. this slur, which was crazy. So do you remember the story? Of course, yeah.

This young guy was a tracker. He went to, he was from Northern Virginia. He went to the same house, Golson, went to, T.J. He's a little older. He had graduated and was 22 years old, I think. And Alan, he seemed to get along fine, actually. But then he was bothering Alan. Trackers, you know, the guys who go around everywhere and try to record everything

and find you and catch you in some slip up. Yeah, they got the cameras. And this is pre-Iphone, but they got the little camera and all this. And Alan sort of, I can't wait. He said something like, oh, come on, macaque again. We got macaca over here. We got a little macaca over here. I mean, I think it's plausible.

We didn't even know kind of what it meant. Like someone said, his mother had used this term about Indian, Indian Americans or Indian, you know, people from the South Asia, I don't know. Anyway, it became a big thing. And it kind of then, he handled it very badly. That's my man memory. He didn't explain it. This is always the case, often the case of these things, right?

And then the waves just kind of carried Webb onto a victory. But I remember, like around now, saying to someone, I guess Webb will be fine, right? And this person who was older and had been around for 94 and for a couple of other bigish elections, Reagan 80, I suppose, said to me, I don't know, Bill, you know, in a wave, the stuff that looks shaky

on Labor Day goes down. You know, that's sort of what it means to have a wave. And so that's my memory of the Virginia situation. I don't get the time of it, just the House people, anyway, just because it's kind of fun to go back in OSEC. So here are some of the Democratic winners that beat Republican incumbents.

Gabby Giffords, beat Jim Colby. Republican that year. Another race I had a friend working on in Colorado 7, Ed Perlmutter beat Bob Bray, it's the start of Denver suburbs going blue. I've talked a lot about this race, Iowa 2. I was working in Iowa 3, which was the big race already spent money. Nobody spent

money on Iowa 2. Dave Lobesack was a professor in Iowa. Literally was not on, I should have went to look to see where it wasn't cook. It had to have been like not lean or likely, but solid Republican. It was a solid Republican. Jim Leach had been there a hundred years, moderate Republican,

popular. He loses to Dave Lobsack. Minnesota won. You know who won that one in 2006? Tim Walts. Tim Walts. Kids in and beats Gilgutnik. Christian Gillibrand is that year. Fun for football fans.

Heath Schuller wins in that rural North Carolina 11 district, which is the same one. I think the Democrats could surprise on again this time. Okay, here's the timeline of a 6-0-5. And I think this is part of what prompted this is we a little just kind of our memories were different on like, why did Bush get so unpopular in this period of what happened?

So I'm going to run through the timeline. We can kind of go through our memories of it. He's reelected. He gets in in January. And things are looking kind of good in Iraq. Actually, they hold their first parliamentary elections. I think that's the blue thumb election. Yeah, right?

So it's January. Purple thumb, sorry. It's January of 05. But then, like, pretty much immediately after the counter, the insurgency intensifies some IED, suicide bombings. Then you get to August of 05. And this is the last month. month where a majority of Americans approve of Bush and the polls.

And this is like mostly Iraq stuff. Sydney Sheehan, like her big protest starts then August of 05. And then August 29 is Hurricane Katrina, which is like now, basically, a year ago at the same time. Obviously, everybody knows how it was there. My Sleeper event of this time is October 3, the Harriet Myers nomination. Everyone looks to Katrina because it was like where he got such bad. PR, like in the media. And I do think that, like, you know, whatever,

there's some swing voter types that I don't think there are a lot of Republican voters. So, like, I'm bailing on Bush over his handling of Katrina. That doesn't feel right. To me, there's some, you know, some of this kind of proto-populist right, isolationist right, we're unhappy at the war. And the Myers thing, he gets just filleted

and including you and conservative media over this, you know, and I think this is where you start to get maybe the Myers-parallel. as like the Epstein files in a way. It just in a weird way because like it upsets the base, right? And the base now is starting to get frustrated fall of the first year. Okay. John Murtha then first calls for withdrawal in November, a scooter Libby indictment.

So now you get into some controversies there. That's October. And then the Abramoff lobbying scandal is December. So 05 was a rough year. Lots happening there for Bush. Not a ton then in 06 happening. I mean, Iraq keeps getting worse. His approval ratings keep going down a little bit.

Gas prices are rising a little bit, so maybe there's the gas price issue. It's a parallel to this issue. And then really, you know, kind of nothing of note as far as like scandals or whatever until October, until a month out. Bush's numbers are low, but they really, the bottom falls out,

late September, October 1st where the Mark Foley page scandal happens. Mark Foley was sending inappropriate texts, young mail pages, he resigns, House Republican leadership had covered it up. One of the House Republican leaders had covered it up, pedophile, Denny Hastert. Didn't know that at the time.

Republicans circled the wagons around him. I remember this ruined the last month of the campaign for my candidate, Jeff Lamberti. It's like every interview, you know, what do you think about this? Like, we'd go to a local news interview. We'd want to talk about whatever, you know, national security and the clip that they'd show in the local news is whatever his response to was to Mark Foley, you know,

sending messages to teenagers. So deaths in Iraq go up that month. And then maybe a final two days. Saddam is convicted and sent us to death two days before the midterms. I'd forgotten this. A final breath of optimism maybe, but no, November 7th was the blah. And then November 8th, Rumsfelders signs. So note what is not there is much economy talk.

Gas prices were up a little bit. And you point that to the war. So it's a little bit of a parallel to now. but inflation was 2.5% in 06. I mean, standard what you're looking for. Unemployment rate was low. Economy's pretty good in 2006. So this is a lot of foreign policy, scandal, disappointing the base,

you know, wanting to have a check looking like things are out of control. That's kind of my overview. But what jumped out to you in that timeline? No, that sounds absolutely right at front in some of those things. As you spoke, I was thinking to myself, the economy wasn't that bad in 0506. And so all the talk about it's all kitchen table, you know, it's all this. I don't know, yeah, sort of, somewhat. It wasn't great, as I recall.

We didn't know 07 and 08 was coming, right? I mean, I don't think people felt that way. It didn't feel ominous or anything. The only two tiny points I'd make is Harriet Meyer, I think it had a slight, this is not crazy. It's a little bit like Trump with the ballroom or something like that in the sense that it was Bush indulging his personal, like, She was his counsel from back in Texas, and then he made her White House counsel. And she didn't have the normal qualifications for Supreme Court justice. I mean, and so it's a little bit like Trump just, you know, feelingless, I'm not going to just go with the kind of normal practices of the president.

I'm going to put my personal friend in there. I may be exaggerating that. I don't know how much hurt anyway, but it feels a little bit. Just real quick on Myers, I just want to expand on the Epstein thing. To me, it's like, obviously, poor Harriet Myers is still alive. So I'm not like comparing you to. Yeah, I know. I know.

To me, it's a comparison in that, like, midterms are different than presidentials and several effects. But one of them is, like, turnout is important in both. But turnout, like, really matters. Like, turnout is a little bit more important. And so depressing your base matters. And I do think it did. It happens that you're coming off of the first summer. It's the fall of the first year.

Like, there are other things to be worried about. And then it's like, what we wanted you to follow. Like, one of the things we cared about being the Republican-based magabase, this time is, like, to deal with this. Epstein issue. Like you said you were going to do, we wanted you to do it. And I think that the Republican base at that time in 2006 was like, we want good Supreme Court justices. Like this is our stand in for social issues. We care about the court. You ran on the court, ran on anti-gay marriage stuff, whatever. And it's like, okay, we wanted you to do, we don't want another suitor. Like, this was a

big thing then. And it's like, okay, and now you're just like, oh, you're going to give it to your friend. You know, and Epstein thing is horrifying. It's horrifying. What did it to these young women? but like in just the way of kind of letting down of something that they expected. No, I think that's well. That's a good point. I think it's, I mean, he began, people forget this the second term, by saying, let's privatize Social Security. Now, there's an idea that was perfectly reasonable, respectable.

I don't know if it was reasonable to that. No, and the think tanks loved it, the sort of things, he had not mentioned it to my knowledge during the entire campaign. And it had this weird, and I remember saying, I will say, that's kind of like the Iran War, apparently. One of the few things, it is. One of the few things I got right at early on in Fox. I was on the Fox Sunday Roundtable

pretty much every week then. And I said February, this is going to fail. I mean, the country is not ready for this. He has prepared it for it. It's such an easy issue for the Dems to scream and yell about Social Security. It's like their go-to issue was back then even more than it is now, you know,

protect the Social Security. They'll gamble it away in the stock market. He's just rewarding his rich stock market friends. The idea was not a crazy idea and you can make it case. It was actually a really good idea and would have been wonderful. It would have been a much better place if they would have signed it right now, but okay, whatever. Right.

I mean, our savings that are in. IRAs and 401 case probably ended up growing fast than Social Security, whatever. But anyway, but I think it just like this little like 2025-6. And it was also only, I think, like, 10% of your or 20% of going from memory. I don't remember. It was a good idea. The Democrats did an excellent job of attacking it. The Republicans weren't ready to defend it because no one had even talked about it.

It sort of got popped out of the Treasury Department. And I don't know, sometimes. February is like, and so I remember early on saying this is a political, it's going to damage them. And it had that same character, though, of, hey, we reelected you. We sort of thought you were better than the other. Kind of liked the direction you were going. more or less. They weren't thrilled everything.

But, you know, and we wanted you to kind of do more stuff along those lines, maybe. And it was just the surprise, the kind of willfulness of, I think, willfulness of it hurt. And as you say, that's a little more like Iran. It wasn't exactly that he promised not to do it. So in that respect, it's not quite like no more forever wars. But it's a little like just, what the hell?

Where'd that come from? So I think it did some damage. Maybe it's probably a Canada trade war. Right. Yeah, that's good. It didn't hurt Bush in the sense that people left him. But I think it prevented him from having any momentum. intimate the beginning of the second term. And the other part of just make what you make about

is a smaller part, what is about two-thirds usually is the turnout in and off midterm elections, about two-thirds, that of our presidential, sometimes even less, which does mean almost by definition that what the basis of each party think matter more, because that missing third is going to be less involved voters. Because if you can turn out 90% of your Republicans, like, or whatever, or Democrat, you're going to win. You're going to have a good year. Right, because it's, because you don't get all those other voters in the middle who are kind of diluting, as it were, the true believers. And so the best thing you can have going for you is you persuade some people.

That's good. Then you turn out your base big time. And then you depress the other, something the other party does, usually isn't something you do in the opposition, depresses its base. So in 26, just to bring it back to the president for one second, that would be as if people are infuriated by things Trump, Democrats are infuriated by a million things Trump has done and correctly. And they'll turn out.

There's some swingish voters who don't like particular policies. And he's gotten a little crazy. I can't, maybe you should check him. not support him. Gas rights is a economy. Yeah, that's good. And then some Republican voters who still will finally vote Republican in 2028, still think of themselves as a Republican, but just, you know, I don't know,

just stay home. So you get the Democratic turnout up and the Republican turnout down. If you can get that both of those happening at the same time in an electorate that's two-thirds of size of presidential electorate, that's where, again, that 2024 number plus 11 is a little misleading. But some of that plus 11 for Trump in Iowa, in Kansas, in Ohio are those, are voters who will not vote this time. Correct.

Yeah, I think it was, I apologize whoever it is, one of the data people I saw on social media, it was putting this out and they're like, well, what if the electorate in Iowa was actually only a plus five electives? That's the right way to put it. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah. It's like it's a plus 11 Trump state, but the term because of the depressed turnout and the

increase turnout on the Democratic side, then all of a sudden, you know, can you get enough independent voters to get there across the line? And I think that, you know, the Harriet Myers thing, which is why I wanted to talk about was part of that depressing the Republican. But he said not all of it. I think Iraq was part of that as well. Like we are seeing that this time on both sides. And to me, this is why I'm kind of even an 18, again,

because of the nature of the map and gerrymandering and how we're, you know, like a big part of the 18 gains for the Democrats, when 18 games were about this kind of realignment to the suburbs for the Democrats and places that, you know, Republicans used to do well because of Trump. And so they did better there. but like the Trump base was still pretty excited in 18. So I do think that was a little different.

So that's part of the reason I'm more bullish and think that Democrats are going to overperform their polls. So anything else there? And Katrina is something that everybody talks about when they kind of reflect back at that time. Obviously, of course, like your Norlands, of course. And, you know, such a traumatic and visual event. And, you know, then there's the W, the flyover and, you know, Kanye, saying W doesn't care about black people. And so, like, there's all this.

I don't know. Maybe I'm, this is counter conventional wisdom. But I think that that ended up actually mattering less than the economic stuff, the Abraham off and, and page scandals and then Myers. But where are you on that? And people have the sense that the Iraq War wasn't being fought well, whatever the justification, the moral case for it almost might have been. I think Katrina made it more plausible to say they're kind of,

The Bush sold himself competence, toughness, but also competence, but not just toughness, kind of competence. Condolees and rise. Serious people, Colin Powell. It was, you know, grown-ups administration. And suddenly, like, geez, the Iraq war, they didn't, Powell leaves, of course, after the first term. And suddenly the grown-ups, a little less grown-ups in charge. And then Katrina, total, just screw up just in terms of execution, obviously, as well as the way they talked about it and handled it. Without Iraq, Katrina wouldn't have made as much difference.

and without Katrina, Rock would have maybe, but they felt they came together in a pretty bad way. And then the scandals, you don't really want incompetence and some bad policies and scandals all happening at the same time. Yeah.

And you're right on Social Security. I overlooked that. I think that was another key inflection point. November 8, Rome, Selder'sines. Is that kind of a relic of an older time where somebody has to fall on the sword? Or do we possibly get a Hegesath resignation this November? I remember that at the time

I was very anti-Rumsfeld. I'd called on it to be fired after the victory in November 04, because I thought he had mismanaged to rock and he could get a fresh start and fed things from getting worse. They kept Rumsfeld and Casey. Things got worse over the next two years. I think Bush planned to fire him for months, but just felt you somehow couldn't do it until after the election.

I don't to this day understand why he thought. That was a mistake. Wouldn't it be better to do in September? I mean, I don't know. But somehow it was like some weird, I don't know. You can't do it. Or honestly, after the Mark Foley scandal, in retrospect, gosh, we need to get Rove on here,

or something. Was there a meeting, you know, to do this? Was there a meeting about that? It's like, wouldn't firing Rumsfeld be a better news story than talking about, you know, Congressman Diddell and teens? Seems like it. I'll say in slight defensive Bush, which I'm done quite a while, but I have the sense, and I mean, I saw Bush

a few times in those, and that's second term of those. First time, I never saw him because I was a McCain guy, but second term, he, I was a supporter of the war, so I got, I got in occasionally for these smallish meetings with, you know, people like me, magazine editor types, think tanks, types. And he really did care about the troops. He just cared about their morale. And I remember one point having a weird argument with him. I'm not sure it was at Rundsalt exactly, but it was something about

acknowledging they had made mistakes in the first three years of the war in terms of the strategy. And he said, I can't do that. It'll make people feel like their loved ones died in vain somehow. And I just need to suck it up. And I'll take the hit. I understand people think I was wrong. But I just, I can't say to people. It was kind of weird. I don't know. think he's right psychologically exactly but on the other hand i i sort of respected he he thought a lot about that and so i think maybe he thought just dumping rumsfeld where it would have looked like he was doing it to help in the midterms was not appropriate yeah yeah he should have done it he should he should have done it he was kind of like an honor and principal guy whatever you think about him

and is almost like he did like that stuff did matter to him interesting okay uh well there's 2006 god willing i mean a 30 seat house game that would be the dream but that's even better than you or I. It's a little better than my projection. We have to have a 240, 2.42, something like that. That'd be exciting. Yeah. Okay.

Let's move to 1994. This is the classic year people talk about when they talk about waves. I was in short pants back then. I was just after my last Democratic vote that I had done before Trump came around, which was actually, this not true. My last Democratic votes were 92 in the school election. I voted for Bill Clinton and bet my grandmother, $1,000. on it and was very proud when she sent me the dollar.

Then I started to get red-pilled there later in the middle school. And then I did vote against our own lieutenant governor candidate in a 2004 race that I was interning on because he was such a dick. But that's neither here or not there. Those are my two other Democratic votes. 94. I really found out that I don't remember. I didn't remember anything.

But I was totally wrong about a lot of stuff. So we'll see if other people agree. I knew the gist about the fact that it was a big wave. 54 house seats gained. new house majority was 230 to 204 then so that Republicans are coming out of a big hole I should have mentioned this in 06 because this is what happens in wave years and neither year did an incumbent of the party that was doing the waving loose you know so no Republicans lost in the House or Senate 94 or in 2006 because of the redistricting mid cycle this time like

there will be some exceptions this time but to me that is again where I kind of fall on Michigan, Georgia, Asa. It's just like when you're in a wave, you know, the people that are in incumbents or the incumbent party usually stays through. So, 54 House seats gained for Republicans, defeated 34 Democratic incumbents.

They gained eight Senate seats. The new Senate majority was 52-48. The total House popular vote, this shows you how different things are. It was only 53% in favor of Republicans. Isn't that amazing? This year, if the Democrats only got 53%, I mean, they'd be squeaking out a

five vote majority probably. Those are kind of the facts. I mean, the most interesting anecdotes, like the two things I knew about 94 were Big Wave and Contract with America. And the contract with America was unveiled. Everyone listening to this to guess, Bill might know. So I'm not going to quiz him.

When do you think it was? The answer? September 27th, 1994. Not three. The contract for the America came out, like right now, like three weeks before the election, which goes to show you the Democrats could still do something. And maybe this is a little bit of, I don't know,

my view just learning that now, as I look at it, and it just made me completely changed my whole thinking about Gingrich and the strategy. And it was just like Gingrich might have just like jumped in front of a parade. Totally. It was already happening. So anyway, Bill, take the floor. I think it was good because it gave Republicans a chance to say,

we're not just running against Clinton. We have a positive agenda. The agenda itself was mostly silly, if you look at the 10 points. And a lot of it was very few minor and some procedural stuff and whatever, term limits, stuff that wasn't going to happen, you know. And a couple of semi-serious things, including, I think, reducing the, you know, rate of growth of Medicare or something,

which got them in such trouble a year later when they actually got in the fight with Clinton. So that was sort of not as important. It was helpful at the embassy allowed all these can be. Wow, there's a lot of stupid stuff in here. You're right. Yeah, no, totally. The number of House committees. Right.

It was really, I remember looking at it at the time, I had nothing to do with it. And I knew nude. I was pretty involved in some of the fighting in 94. I'd been fighting against Clinton. But yeah, I remember thinking, oh, come on. But it did help a little rhetorical. I'm sorry, I have to read all of them. I have to read all of them.

It helped by like half a point. It was not important. It would have had. There would have been a wave anyway in 94. But go ahead and read it. Please, let's because, again, I don't, my memory, this was totally wrong. Okay.

Eight major reforms. It's like, it's literally nothing. Require all laws that apply to the rest of the country, also apply to Congress. I don't even know what that's... What is that even reference? It's like banking privileges and some better health care plans, that kind of thing, you know.

Okay. Select a major independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress for waste, fraud, and abuse. Great. Cut the number of House committees. Limit the terms of all committee chairs. Ban the casting of proxy voting in committee. Require committee meetings to be open to the public.

Require a three-fifths majority to pass a tax increase. Guarantee an honest accounting of the federal budget by implementing zero baseline. budgeting. There's the Fiscal Responsibility Act. This is balanced budget, truth and sentencing. So there are additional other $500 per child tax credit. So there are some job and wages stuff. But no, that was just the congressional accountability point of it. And then a citizen legislature act, which is the term limits you referenced. I mean, they were trying to capitalize. And they did on the anti-incumbent anti. There were some congressional scandals, some of them real, some of them slightly fake. I mean, I don't know. They had some like, bank they could use. It was just a banking thing. They weren't like ripping off the taxpayer,

but they got a little bit, I don't know, it was nice. They got cheated. If you had to the little congressional bank, you got, I don't know what, you could float your check for a week or something. It wasn't like dealing with your local branch bank where they were not so nice to you. Anyway, there were these minor scandals, the pretty minor retrospect that happened. Jim Wright had been forced out as earlier as speaker. I mean, there was, the Democrats were vaguely tainted with congressional scandals, having been there forever, Ross Sinkowski, Wright, committee chairs who had been and there were no terminal and signed for committee chairs.

They'd been there for 10, 20 years. They'd been in Congress, 30, 40 years. So I think that was the part of it you read, the congressional accountability is really pretty small ball, but it captured a little bit. They ran, I'd say this is one analogy. So they did run against the status quo

in a pretty big way. Now, how could they do that? So let me just go back to 94 for one second, if you want. I mean, it's just, it was different from 2006, or for that matter, 2010 or 2018, which were sort of waves

in many ways, if you want, within the context of the modern series. The Democrats had controlled the House for 40 years. They had controlled the Senate for 34 of the preceding 40 years, except for that six-year stretch in the first six years of Reagan. Congress was Democratic. I came to Washington in 85. That was how it was. Republicans had won the presidency.

Eisenhower eight years, then the Kennedy Johnson, Nixon eight years, then Carter, then Bush, Reagan Bush for 12 years. How did Reagan not take a house? He took the Senate. He took the Senate in 80. Yeah. The House was so because. Those southern seats were still Democratic.

That's one thing that happened in 94. 34, I believe, Democratic incumbent's lost. That's pretty amazing in 94. And about half of them were in southern seats where they'd been there forever. And then finally, people just decided, well, that was very nice. You've done a great job bringing fork to this district for 25 years. But you know what? With someone who's actually a conservative like us and not part of this Hillary Clinton,

health care, Bill Clinton, pro-God-nose. You know what I mean? There was kind of a certain cultural caricature of the Dems with Clinton, especially. And the new really tried to capitalize on that. So it was a big change in that respect. I mean, when I was studying politics and they first got into it, the presidency was often Republican. Congress was Democratic.

And the House was really Democrat. It was the bulwark of, you know, old Democratic power, powerful committee chairs, Rosten Kowski, and all these characters. And then obviously, in speakers and so forth. And when Newt started to say two years out, you know, we can win the House, people just thought, No, that's not going to happen.

And one reason they thought that incidentally is there was no real precursor to this. 1990 had been a mediocre year for Democrats for Republicans, that off-year election. They didn't lose much or they didn't pick up much. 92, two years before, Bush had gotten 38 percent of the vote. Bush had gotten 54 percent in 88. The Republican Party was an utter disarray. You know, the incumbent Republican president had gone from 54 to 38 percent. That's partly a Perot thing.

But still, it lost. But that really just mean that the House Republicans end up being Bush plus for Perrault vote. But like... Pretty close. Yeah, yeah, pretty close. And yeah, then with a differential turnout sort of thing there too, yeah. So they expected it by September 94, but no one expected it in early 93. When dude started to say this, people thought, you're crazy, the House has been 40 years.

That's two generations of political operatives cycling through. There were people in Washington who had come as very young people to work in the Hill or in the executive branch and literally had never, of course, senior Republican majority. It just seemed incomprehensible. And even the Senate had only been that one six year, period. So I think this degree of surprise and of just novelty of what was happening really can't be overestimated. It just felt so different from these more modern swings,

which once you have one of them, then you have another one, right? 2006, 2010, okay, well, that's another just kind of counterwave. It didn't feel like that. Clinton was in the low 40s. He wasn't that unpopular, though. And then we weren't fighting some terrible war. There had been some really minor scandals. I mean, well, Whitewater was beginning to bubble up and all this.

But I don't know. It was funny how people turned against them, though. I mean, how much they did. But having said that, a lot of it was catching up to what had happened. I mean, it was like these districts had Democratic incumbents who had been there a long time. Tom Foley, the Speaker of the House who lost, I think maybe the only time or one of the very few times a speaker has lost to his own seat, you know, had a district in eastern Washington, I believe, which was becoming quite conservative. It's not Seattle, you know, it's like, and he'd been there forever and they loved him. and he, you know, God knows a speaker or before that, his majority leader,

he brought a ton of pork there and all. And it didn't matter. They wanted a sort of a Republican, you know. This was the end of old interest group pork barrel politics, I think, in some ways, and the beginning of modern ideological parties, ideological waves. In that respect, it really was a precursor of what we were going to see for better or worse, maybe mostly worse, over the next three decades. So that's, so my memory is just what a surprise it was, not at the very end, though I think I was

on, I don't know, some show. I think it was Meet the Press, maybe, or with Stephanopoulos, who was then the White House spokesman and I was running this little project for the Republican future, but I had become sort of prominent as a critic of Clinton and a Republican strategist. You know, it's great how you could become a Republican. I had one failed Senate campaign had been

Quill's chief of staff in a presidential campaign we got clobbered in, but I nonetheless got to call myself a Republican strategist and getting that guy around on TV. And as a Republican strategist, I said, Republicans are going to win both houses. And everyone just like Stephanoplas, so of course, he said that wouldn't

happened because he was working for Clinton. But actually, the people there, and I guess it was Russ, probably were like, come on, Bill. I mean, really? I mean, maybe take up seats, sure, but win both houses. That's something, it's hard to recapture the degree of surprise and kind of novelty about what was

happening. Interesting there, again, not a economically challenging time. Good economy in 93-94. You mentioned a couple of the scandals. I mean, some of these Clinton you know, the white water.

You mentioned the cattle futures. Like that stuff was being investigated. It was in the news. But like, you know, I mean, nothing at all like this. I mean, the thing that people point to is the failed healthcare plan. So I think you're kind of looking at two things, really. One, in that sense, it's like Bill, it's a feeling that the administration was not competent. Maybe that's the Katrina parallel.

But it's just more like, they're not going about their business well. And then I do think that there's this kind of demographic. like, you know, these sort of populist, right people are aligning with the Republicans and then some of the racist, you know, white people are aligning with the Republicans. But talk about you were involved in the health care stuff. Like, what was, was this just kind of like a big government? Little government was this, is this a feeling that Bill betrayed his voters because they thought he was going to focus on other stuff. He ends up focusing on this. Like, how do you, how do you judge that? I mean, I think a little of both. I think it was a big government thing. It was, I mean, Hillary's plan,

I was a pretty big critic of it, but it was a pretty big overhaul of the system. It wasn't really like Obamacare, which at the end of the day was insurance for 30 million people who couldn't otherwise buy it on individual markets. It was a complicated play. It was a big deal, Obamacare. But Hillary's thing really was embracing, pushing people into HMOs. Again, I can't remember honestly the details, but it was a bigger overhaul. It was huge hoopla.

Hillary, big speech around Labor Day a year before in 93, Hillary Clinton testifying to Congress is the first lady. He'd put his wife in charge of the task force to devise this. It all had a slight, you know. She's more polarizing than him. She's much more polarizing than him. Some of this is misogyny, but also just like culturally, he is governor of Arkansas. You know, she comes off as very liberal. And like putting that up first as a policy thing is like more of a signal that like, no, this is not a DLC governor of Arkansas. She was more liberal. And it was the inside baseball, his wife in charge. And And for moderates who had voted for Clinton, which there were, you know,

some Bush voters from 88 who had deserted Bush, not all, somewhat to pro, but somewhat to Clinton, they thought welfare reform. That was the kind of signature DLC, moderate Democratic. We're willing to take on the welfare state and we're going to reform welfare. And, you know, it'd be a little tougher on welfare. Such a big issue, Reagan used to hammer Democrats over it. And putting health care head of welfare was this became symbolically very important as he's gone to the left. He's betrayed his moderate supporters. And there's some truth to that,

incidentally. And that case, kind of in a weird way, that is depressing the Democratic vote, but not in the way we were talking about in 06. And this year, because it's not depressing the base vote, right? Because they were presumably mostly for that, but it's depressing this kind of other part of the coalition, the Southern Democrats, the rural, the more populous to Democrats, you know, that we're thinking it was going to be something different. Yes, I think that's right. And then the health care proposal was sort of funny, because in, I don't know, they thought they could get Bob Dole and moderate establishment Republicans on board. Those people had often been in favor of reforming health care in that direction, as Romney was later on, right?

And with Obama, you know, sort of precursor of Obamacare. Right, sure. And there was a lot of talk about compromise. And I was running this little project for the future. And I advised them not to compromise. The health care system was not that broken. There was no health care crisis. That was a memo that I wrote.

And we sort of argued to Republicans that should just hanged off. And that was a contrarian for you. say. And most people with you, you get killed if you just don't do nothing. You can't do nothing. There's a health care problem. Republicans have lost the 1991 special Senate election in Pennsylvania over health care. That was Carville's first great upset victory against Thornburg. And so Clinton talked a lot about it in 92. This wasn't a case. It wasn't the case where he was doing something he said he wouldn't do, but the big government character of it and the Hillary character of it, I think. And so whatever the Democrats ended up going in the do nothing, just say,

position on health care. The one insight I had was if you ask people in poll, this is interesting about polling and it shows why people shouldn't take posters, shouldn't take one polling result too seriously or too, literally. Two-thirds, three-quarters of Americans wanted health care overall. Three-quarters of Americans were unhappy with the health care system. Three-quarters of Americans

had gripes with the insurance companies, or you name it with whatever, the cost, obviously. To say, two-thirds of or three-quarters of Americans like their own health insurance. That's because they mostly work for businesses and corporations that provided decent health insurance. And so they didn't have to see there's any great need if you were working for General Electric or Coca-Cola, your health insurance is adequate.

You're a big university, big state government. And I sort of had the insight that the Republicans should brought on that second poll result. He's endangering your health insurance that you're satisfied with. And there's a way, as we've seen this in a lot of public policy areas, both from the right and the left, right? The status quo is easier to defend than to say, let's risk everything by overturn overturning the whole thing. And maybe you won't get insurance

for your employer. But we got a better idea in mind this done up by this fancy think tank and Hillary Clinton's got it all worked out for you. And we were able to caricature it, honestly, in that way, pretty successfully, I think. Well, we talked about the October surprise in 2006. And in 1994, Clinton tried to drop an October surprise

to protect himself, but I don't know that it landed. Let's watch. When we started the healthcare debate, they said it was secretive. That's not true. We met with them in advance. We even offered to work with them on drafting a big. bill, we were told, no, you go ahead and put your bill in, then we'll put our bill in, and then we'll work.

They announced an approach where more than half the Republican senators supported universal coverage. The bill never came, but the time came to talk about the bill. There were zero senators from the Republican Party on that. So, and by the way, then they released the memo of their strategist, Bill Crystal, who wasn't even ashamed to release the memo and say, you must not cooperate on health care. because if the middle class ever gets security about health care, they'll probably support the Democrats again. Whereas if we keep them all torn up and upset and angry,

we can either keep them home or get them to vote for us. So I want, let me just say this, I want more than anything to have a bipartisan effort. He blamed you. He also, there's a different clip I saw just the text of where he tried to go after you in the final days because you came out against farm subsidies, which is, you know, anti-farm.

farmer welfare, Bill. That's acceptable. That was on the tarmac in Iowa five days out. I remember like why it was kind of a side. And this is pre-Cable, really. I mean, this was Larry King. CNN was the one cable network. That was like the one political show basically that anyone watch. Yeah. And then that was two days before election day, I think, where he says kind of amazing.

Yeah, I'm their top political strategy. I was running this little 12, 14 person, you know, a little sort of quasi think tank there, project for the Republican future. I was not really the top Republican strategist, but it was nice that President Clinton thought I was. But you knew we're talking. called you? Yeah, that's true. No, I was involved. But anyway, that was a funny, a funny moment. But so the dynamics were pretty different, honestly, I think in all these different respects, the historical character at 40 years in the house, the novelty, the fact that a lot of it was

history catching up to the Southern Democrats, the fact that Clinton hadn't done, it was more that they had tried to do something that scared people and that we were honestly helped to scare people about. That's all what did him in. So I do think in this respect, to double back, I think 2006 is more of a similar situation. Ninety-four was kind of a, 94 was the end of an era. It was an important election, just a little different from a kind of a normal reaction against the incumbent president. And incidentally, as 94 also shows something that 06 doesn't, which is it doesn't, it's not always a precursor of what happens next. If you're a Democrat and you look at 06 and you think that this is going to be like 06, you know, what's the good news? The next, they win the presidential election by 7 or 8 points two years later. So, hey, it's great. Double header to 06 and 08 to pick up a lot more seats. 94 was great and then Clinton probably won re-election by seven or eight points or something in 96.

So kind of a good cautionary tale there that you can do well in a midterm. Yeah, it is. It also, 06 is also more comparable even though this is non-subsequent terms, you know, the second midterm in 06 versus the first one in 94. There's a very, there's difference in the dynamics

between the second midterm and the first. I don't know. To me, the 94 lesson is, and some of this is just things, side of strategist hands, right? Like, it's just the kind of changing tectonic plates of politics and trends and media and it's global. It's a lot of stuff that's happening here is happening in other countries. But, like, if you look at that number that, you know, the Democrats had before in 92

that included these other parts of a country, like, if they want to get to a vote, you know, a place where, like, they're, they're really. advancing permanent policy changes, the big policy changes. It's like people that want, progressives that want big policy changes should want this the most, right? It's like, there has to be a way to reconnect with these, you know, parts of the country that they've lost.

Like, they had managed this coalition from like FDR through LBJ, like all the way through Tip O'Neill, like all the way to Bill Clinton's first term. And it finally collat, like, but it's fucking a half century, right? where it's very different ideological and demographics of people in the coalition. And at the sorting of the parties that started 94 has been very bad for the Democrats. And it might feel unfair and asymmetric. And I hear JVL whining about it already.

But like if the Democrats want a governing majority, like they do need like a more diverse coalition like they had before 94. And then they lost the House in 94, they lost it, the state lost for 12 years. And then they got it back by doing exactly what you just said, right? Rahm Emanuel recruited a lot of candidates for the House and then some Senate candidates appeared on their own, who desorted from the sociological, test, Tester, McCaskillian, think of these people running in 2006 and winning.

And the Democrats, and then they held those seats and increased them in 2008 with Obama, which was a little more complicated, but there they had the advantage of a massive financial. questions, obviously. Even Tim Walts, right? Like, think of the different kind of race that Tim Walz runs than in 06 from how he runs his Commonwealth's VP, and he runs as a very moderate

kind of rural farmer, teacher guy. That's Minnesota 1, but look, they went in Kentucky that year. I already mentioned Heath Schuller, Redneck kind of football player winning in North Carolina to Texas seats. Well, you had mentioned how

fully lost, delay lost in that 06 year in Texas, to a guy named Nick Lampson. That's a good Jeopardy trivia question. I would have never been able to pull that. But, you know, three Indiana seats. So, like, that's the way back.

Okay. What do we forget? 1948? Any 1948 last week? I just mentioned that in Morning Shotspice. I was trying to make the point that Mike Johnson is such a wet noodle, as we said in the headline of the piece, and said a couple of idiotic things about how we don't really have a view on anything.

You know, I trust Pete Hacks. I trust the Secretary of War. I trust Trump. I'm not going to. I don't know anything about the Iran War. I'm just like Speaker of the House. And I do think they should pummel the Republicans. I was trying to think what's the Truman pummeled the Republican Congress,

the 80th Congress, as the do nothing Congress. He was an incumbent president running for your election. The do nothing Congress had failed to pass any legislation that he wanted, including on health care, incidentally and other things. And he famously hit them as the do nothing Congress. And one of famous comeback victory, obviously, against Tom Dewey in 1948. And the Democrats, this was a different era, right, with more party switching and less, you know,

less polarized. Democrats picked up 75 seats in 1948 in the House and took the Senate. And so that was a wave with Truman beating Dewey, an incumbent president. So it doesn't really, it's presidential years. It doesn't quite compare what we've been talking about. So what's the equivalent of the Do Nothing Congress? I mean, the Republican Congress now is kind of more like a rubber stamp Congress, I guess. And maybe this is a better term. Someone could think up. It's a rubber stamp and do nothing. Well, that's another two weeks. It's another two weeks on vacation. Very good point. Who gets this much of vacation? Speaking about health care, you want to make

health care an issue. All these guys get a free health care without working. I mentioned Connell, what can the health care system see on back at home? We don't even know what's happening with them. They're not even working. It's crazy. How little do they've worked. I do think calling it a, yeah, rubber stamp and do nothing Congress, that's not been set up in a way for the Democratic challengers. They should run it. They got to run against Trump, but they also have to run against the Republican Congress as enabling Trump and is doing nothing to check Trump and will check Trump and also making it worse in some ways. It's depending on which members of Congress. I wanted to find a quote of Truman using doing nothing

Congress came across just this stump speed. You used it all the time, of course. So you just get a stump speech he gave somewhere. And in the stump speech, the two issues on which he most complains that the Republican Congress did nothing are health care and housing. Housing prices. Isn't that amazing? And he also throws in inflation, actually.

So I feel like Democrats, they're looking around for the message. They always have the inter-andless internal hand-wringing about the message. They should go read Harry Truman's speeches from 1948. They're excellent. They're economically populist. He's big on the people versus the corporations and versus the elites and versus the big shots. But Truman also, of course, was a cold warrior and a middle American guy. He wasn't some lefty kind of cultural stuff.

So I feel like they should run as Harry Truman for the next two months. That's a great place to leave it. Bill Crystal, appreciate you. I hope everybody enjoyed a little holiday pod content. And we'll be back tomorrow. We've got a double header. We've got another guy tomorrow that is very keen. on this kind of he's tired of this talk about the Democrats like getting to 52 Senate seats.

He's like, why not 60? Why not 58? So we'll talk to him about how the Democrats get that done tomorrow. And we got one of my buddies coming on the show. It's going to be a good one. Bill Crystal, thanks so much, brother. We'll see you next week. Great.

Thanks. The Bullwork Daily is brought to you thanks for the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DeChico, and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.