The Daily Beast Podcast - Why Trump Would Easily Crush DeSantis in Battle Today

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

If former President Donald Trump were to go against popular Florida Governor Ron DeSantis today in the race for 2024, Trump would still knock DeSantis out despite the far-right Gov.’s rise in popularity in important states over the last year. That’s according to CNN political commentator and New York Daily News columnist S.E. Cupp, who joins host Andy Levy on this week’s episode of political podcast, The New Abnormal. Elsewhere on this-post election-themed podcast, guest host Sam Brodey, the Daily Beast’s congressional correspondent, reflects on how we underestimated what Democrats were working with regarding what really resonated with voters. Elsewhere on this-post election-themed podcast, guest host Sam Brodey, the Daily Beast’s congressional correspondent, reflects on how we underestimated what Democrats were working with regarding what really resonated with voters. Ari Berman, Mother Jones National Voting Rights correspondent and author of Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America, echoes those thoughts, reminding us that “this was the first time in US history that a constitutional right had been given and taken away.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. And I'm producer Jesse Kennett, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some great guest co-hosts, as well as some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try to make some sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. All right, you want election analysis?

We got election analysis today. First, we're joined by CNN commentator in New York Daily News columnist S.C.C. C.C.C. P. who will talk to us about what she saw with the Republican Party's failures on this midterm election. Then we're lucky enough to be joined by Mother Jones National Voting Rights correspondent and author of Give Us the Ballot, the Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America, R.A. Berman. And he'll talk to us about what he saw with the vote in the midterms. But first, we're joined by the Daily Beast congressional correspondent, Sam Brody.

Sam, thanks for being with us today to guest co-host. Yeah, I'm so happy to be here. So there was an election this week. Back check true. Yes, on a national level, it happened in all 50 states. Basically, what we saw is that the vaunted red wave never materialized. And it turned out to be overall a much better day for Democrats than a lot of people, including myself, thought it was going to be.

to be. And obviously, if that's true, it means it was a much worse day for Republicans. What's your takeaway from all of this? How did this happen? This is probably one of the weirdest elections that I've ever covered. And I think people who've been in the game for longer than I have would probably share that sentiment. It's just wild when something completely unexpected happens. And I had that feeling on Tuesday night, which I stayed up way too late, watching the returns and talking to people where just in district after district, state after state, Democrats were winning and holding on. And crazy stuff was happening like Lauren Bobert on the brink of losing like a safely Republican district. Governors races that like Democrats really had no business winning and people had written off like a year ago were easier and safe wins for the parties.

So like we can get into some of those examples. But I think, you know, at the top, why, why was this unexpected? what did people and myself included here get wrong in how we approach this, you know, ahead of the election, the conventional wisdom, right, was that voters are concerned about inflation, they're concerned about the economy, they're concerned about crime, and that the bump that Democrats had after the Dobbs decision and abortion had faded and that this wasn't really top of mind for voters. Broadly, there was some reporting in the final stretch of the race about how, you know, Democrats didn't really have a focused message. They were talking about

abortion. They were talking about the economy too. They were talking about health care. They were talking about January 6th and democracy and that it wasn't coherent. I think what the results showed us, you know, Democrats always say, you know, voters can focus on more than one thing at a time. I think voters prove that. And instead of having an unfocused message, what Democrats actually did was give themselves the ability to tailor a message to the state or district in which they were running and actually edge out the Republican focus on inflation and crime. and immigration and all that stuff. I think in House district after House district, whatever Democrats were kind of able to work with messaging-wise, one out from suburban Virginia to New Hampshire to really tough districts for Democrats in states like Michigan and Illinois and places like that. So that's the broad view. I think we underestimated how effective what Democrats were working with was in terms of having a few different things that really resonate with voters. And it turns out for a lot of people, abortion specifically was really, really, really salient and the polls did not reflect that. You know, I talked about this a little bit, you'll hear

coming up later on this episode with Ari Berman from Mother Jones, but I think a lot of people in the media, and I have to include myself in this, were thinking that possibly the abortion issue sort of peaked too soon and that, you know, in the immediate aftermath of the Dobbs decision, it seemed very motivating and it seemed like it was going to do a lot for Democrats. And then, Then I think, you know, there was this sense that maybe, as you pointed out, like crime and inflation had sort of surpassed that in voters' eyes. And I do think, and I am so happy to be wrong about this, that, you know, and in retrospect, I feel like I have to admit, again, I feel like a bit of an idiot because it's not like women only cared about abortion rights in the month

after Dobbs and then suddenly stopped caring about it. You know, it just felt like it wasn't front burner. And I think a lot of the blame for that does go to. the media. And again, I'm including myself in that. I think, as you said, the voters can hold more than one thing in their head and they can be worried about inflation and they can be worried about crime, whether or not it's a real thing that they should be worried about or not. But at the same point, they don't forget that voting for Republicans means taking away the right to choose. And so I think that was a bit of a failure on the media's part and a bit of a success on the voters part. So, yay, voters. I think it should be said, too, that you can't underestimate how deftly, I think, Democratic candidates messaged around this,

but they also got a lot of help because on the abortion issue, Republicans just like kept stepping on rakes and making this an issue in a way that was harmful to them when it didn't need to be the fact that Lindsay Graham is out there, you know, weeks before the election talking about a 15-week abortion ban, and that's what he's going to put forward if Republicans win the Senate. They absolutely didn't need to do that. And Republicans kept finding a way to put this back in as an issue. And I agree with you that, you know, we underestimated just how salient it was throughout the whole election for people. But Republicans kept putting it back out there. And I think at some of those key races that Democrats won, John Federman, for instance, in Pennsylvania, his team did a really solid

job, capitalizing on the fact that Dr. Oz had really never put forward a coherent stance on abortion, and what he would do on a national abortion ban, taking advantage of not just the issue and how people felt about it, but the fact that Republicans were on the defensive about it the whole time. That's going to be a dynamic that people will appreciate as a major factor in the election.

Yeah, that sounds absolutely right. It feels like a reversal of the usual situation where Democrats often, you know, seem like they're on the defensive about whatever issue it is in question and Republicans are constantly attacking. And I think you're right. This was one where it did feel like

the reverse was the case. And also, it does feel like they maybe learned that. And in the last couple weeks at least leading up to the election, I feel like they sort of stopped talking about abortion on the Republican side. Yeah, the ones running in competitive races themselves didn't want to talk about it the whole time. Right. But certainly you had, I'm sure, after the Lindsay Graham stuff, that national Republicans were like, we're just really not going to touch this at all. You know, someone like Herschel Walker, too, the Daily Beast reporting on his background, put abortion on the front burner. And it really actually, in a weird way, you ended up having a situation where in the home stretch of the election, Walker is actually having to shore up his bona fides

on the abortion issue to the base. And Warnock really pushed that certainly as much as Federman did. You know, Federman was able to exploit Oz's ambiguity. But I think Warnock really went all in on exploiting how Walker's pretty uncompromising, at least public position on abortion, you know, was not going to be popular with Georgia voters. Yeah, that sounds exactly right. I think another big thing was Gen Z kind of rock the house. And it's great that I used a completely Gen X term to Gen Z did. That X might be kind to that right now. It's giving Gen X. Gen Z was really rad. They got out there and they and they voted. And I think they, you know, they cemented themselves as sort of the second best generation after Gen X. And,

millennials continue to fall, as most people admit, millennials are, you know, the new boomers. Man, this is a whole, this is a whole, as a peak millennial, I, I know, I know. It's between me and my shrink, and I don't know why I'm doing this on the air. But no, I do think in all seriousness, Gen Z deserves a lot of credit. And in particular, Joe Biden sort of coming to his senses eventually and realizing that passing a student loan forgiveness thing was a win-win situation in terms of, of votes. So I think between that and a bunch of other things, Gen Z was highly motivated to get out there. And it looks like they came through, unless I'm reading, you know, polls wrong or whatever.

It does feel like the younger people got, the more they voted Democrat. Yeah. And you can't also undersell that Democrats' biggest legislative achievement of the year is probably the, like, biggest climate change bill that has ever been passed through Congress. It was crazy seeing, you know, I was on obviously serving Twitter way too much, but see, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, like kids in line to vote at like 2 a.m. still on election night. We'll see what the data bears out. There's already been some back and forth among the sort of eggheads on Twitter as to, was there sort of this youth groundswell of votes? Was there not? But I think it is already the narrative that it is. It's certainly supported by

anecdotal stuff and just exit polls and turnout. I think this is an important thing about the polling miss as well. Part of the reason why reporters like myself are critical. are aging poorly is because we've just been trained to expect that if polling misses, it's going to miss in a way that obscures Republican support, like what we saw with 2016 and 2020 and pollsters are bashing their heads against the wall being like, how can we get Trump voters? Trump voters aren't picking up the phone. And now it's just like, wait, you know who hates answering the phone even more than Trump voters? Is Gen Z people.

They don't know how to, like, have they made phone calls? calls ever. And so I'm super interested to see how that that plays out. And if if that was part of the polling miss, I just, it was absolutely shocking to me that the polling did not accurately reflect democratic support in this election. And there could be some super complicated reasons why that's the case. But I do wonder if it has to do with, you know, current polling systems not reaching Gen Z voters. That's a really, really good point. And sort of to go along with that, you know, a lot of people have been talking about the fact that there are all these sort of, I don't know if you want to call them Republican-run polls or just Republican-friendly polls, all these outlets. I mean, we've

had Rasmussen for years, but there are a bunch of other ones now. And they were sort of flooding the zone with favorable polls for Republicans leading up to the election. And you had some people taking them seriously, even as other people were saying, hold up now, these polls are not anywhere near accurate, but they sort of got figured into a lot of the poll aggregators. Yeah. As you were saying, usually when the polls are wrong, it's because they underestimated Republicans. But in this case, it may be that given that there were a bunch of polls that seemed tailored to overestimate Republicans that, you know, when you look at these aggregators now,

as everybody does, things looked a lot more favorable for Republicans than they really were. Yeah. I think the aggregators are a big part of this conversation. But even as somebody like myself, I was looking at so many, like individual, polls in the run-up to the election in places like Arizona, for instance, where recent polling misses have been really dramatic in the way that they haven't shown enough Republican support. So it's like, I'm looking at these polls showing Katie Hobbs and Kerry Lake and the governor's race in Arizona effectively tied. And folks are going, well, if they're tied in these polls,

then that must mean that Carrie Lake has a lead of, you know, three or four or more. Right. Actually, it turns out that they're basically tied. The polls in that sense were correct. So it's a total mindfuck, to be honest with you. The polling discourse can be a little tired, but given how sort of unprecedented this is, at least in the context of recent elections, I'm actually pretty excited to see what exactly was behind all this. Yeah, absolutely.

I'm sort of a two minds of the whole election in general, and I'm sort of having to stop myself from being the downer guy because I look at this and I'm like, I see Democrats celebrating and I'm like, well, wait a minute, it's still going to be a Republican House, which is going to be just all kinds of crazy for the next two years. There are other races where things didn't go so well for Democrats, and there's a lot of state races where things didn't go. And I think over 100 Republicans nationwide who are election result deniers got elected and stuff like that.

And it's my personality. So I'm sitting here going, oh, why are people celebrating? But I have to keep stopping and telling myself, no, you know what? People, like there should be some celebrating among Democrats. and on the left because a lot of bad things that could have happened didn't happen. And sometimes you have to be okay with the fact that, well, things weren't as bad as they could have been and that's a win. I'm sort of stopping myself and reminding myself that it's okay to see people on the left

being happy about the results on Tuesday. Yeah, I mean, I think that's right as a gut check because you have to go, okay, Dems are popping the champagne. They lost the house. A Republican House is going to get up to all kinds of shenanigans. with respect to oversight. Democrats aren't going to be able to pass their agenda anymore. This is not something we're celebrating. But the expectations game is so important. And we've spent two years being like there's going to be a red wave, Joe Biden is unpopular, all these factors that were leading people.

And I should say, people in both parties to expect that Republicans were going to pick up 20, 30 seats in the House and like three or four Senate seats. And when that's in the bloodstream and that's what's being talked about every day, and that is the sort of parameters of the midterm election. The fact that it is an outlier in Democrats' direction, and yes, it doesn't mean that they kept the House, though that is, as we speak right now, still in play, which is insane. When you take into account those expectations, it's a pretty shocking win for Democrats. And I think as you look outside of Congress, too, I mean, Democrats are going to come very close to sweeping the most competitive governor's races. They're holding governorships in places like can't.

They flipped the Michigan state legislature for the first time in decades. They were not supposed to flip the Minnesota state legislature, and they did. It came from out of nowhere. Did so in Pennsylvania. These things have real impact. And I think that has been an undercover story and will get more attention probably in the weeks and months to come, which is that Democrats, the knock on them has always been. They don't give a shit about state level elections.

Right. Right. And there is such disinvestment in them. And they've come back in a big way. And the playbooks that have been at use in Pennsylvania and Michigan on the state level, I think Democrats are going to study those incredibly closely and try to apply some of those lessons. And I think just one more thing to maybe contextualize some of the Democratic celebrating, with the exception of Kerry Lake, whose race has not been called yet.

Right. The most kind of MAGA election denier candidates running for top state offices like governor and secretary of state are all going to lose. Right. No, that's huge. That can't be undersold. That is just unbelievably huge. I was reading some pieces, even at the local, at the very local level, there's some really

good news on, like, school board elections. I've been really, really worried about a lot of the school board stuff that's going on in the country. Some of it is going on under the radar. Some of it has, you know, it's bubbled up. But in places like Texas and a couple other places, there were people running for school boards who were just like the most horrible people in the world. And in a lot of places, they got spanked.

And that was kind of nice to see because I really, really did not expect that. And one of my biggest fears coming out of this election was that, regardless of what happened on the national or the higher state level, that it was going to be at the local level, that it was going to be stuff that, to me, signaled a really grim future. And it looks like maybe that didn't happen. Yeah, that's a really good point. I would, love to go into some of those receipts and see. It was a big storyline in this election cycle, the school boards. And the fact that, you know, a sort of conservative way of didn't material. realize there is notable too. And, you know, they used to say, of course, we beat this dead horse that all

politics is local. Now it's, now it's the reverse. And so if there's a tide that's helping Democrats on the federal level, you know, you're going to largely see that happen on on the local level, too, with some notable exceptions. And I should say, too, I think one point that's, that's worth mentioning is like, it's wild to think that, you know, we're splitting hairs here with like individual seats maybe determining whether Dems lose the House majority or not. But New York's, redistricting situation, this could be like the decisive blow that takes away House control for Democrats. And in some ways, they've got like themselves to blame a little bit too. Obviously, it's complicated. And Cuomo, a Democrat, I guess it should be said, has a lot of, you know,

responsibility here. But these are kind of fundamentals, right? You know, redistricting happens once every 10 years. Right. You've got to deal with it when it happens. And if you, if you come out on the wrong end of that, that process in certain states in the wrong way, you could lose the house. And there's other dynamics in New York too that are probably worth mentioning. But those redistricting fights can be ongoing. And the fact that you could basically, if Dems do end up losing the House majority, that you can basically just point to New York and Florida's redistricting is what did it. I mean, that was pretty unthinkable a few months ago.

Sam, thanks so much for being with us. You've got a really good piece up at The Daily Beast about how Georgia's voting law may have a huge impact in the runoff race between Walker and Warnock. so I encourage people to go check it out. Sam, thanks again. Yeah, thanks for having me. Joining me now is CNN commentator and New York Daily News columnist Sarah Elizabeth Cupp. S.E., thanks for being here. Why would you do me so dirty?

I don't know. Do you want me to redo it? No, that's fine. It's not a secret. I thought it was time the people knew. That's fine. That's fine. I'm an open book. So there was an election on Tuesday. You may have read about it. What?

As of now, this is early Thursday afternoon, it looks like the GOP is going to take the House by some narrow margin, and we kind of have no idea who's going to end up in control of the Senate. I think it's going to be close either way. The overall bottom line is that the Republican red wave never materialized. The Democrats did better than was generally expected. So, Essie, what do you attribute this to? And does your latest column, the midterms biggest loser Donald Trump, answer my question? Yeah. Why don't you do some research? You'll know how I feel before you ask me. No, I'm kidding. Yeah. I'm not alone. That was, you know, I think the major takeaway. And now if you just look at the rash of headlines, people think, and people on the right include think Trump should go away. I called it a Trumpster fire. Also sure I'm not the only one. But yeah, look, all of the momentum was with Republicans, the historical momentum, you know, how usually the party in power is punished.

that was all with Republicans. Then you had Joe Biden's low approval numbers. Then you had, you know, a flagging economy. All of that was supposed to mean a red wave. And the fact that the wave never manifested and Democrats actually did better, it's hard to search for a reason other than Donald Trump is a major drag on the Republican Party. And I've been saying that for years and it became evident when he lost the House Senate and the White House for Republicans over, you know, a mere four years.

But maybe now finally, Republicans will realize that everything this guy touches turns to garbage eventually. I don't know. We'll see if they all get amnesia, you know, like next week. Yeah. And I definitely want to get to that in a second because that's a great question. Yeah. I do want to touch on though, everything you just said seems to apply not only, obviously, but particularly it seemed like it was true when it came to governorships. So Mastriano in Pennsylvania, who was Trumpy, you had Baldock in New Hampshire. And in both of those cases, and others, it felt like if the Republicans had just nominated someone not Trumpy, they probably would have won or at least would have had a very good chance of winning.

And in both cases, they lost bigly, as we like to say. Yeah, I mean, Pennsylvania is swinging. New Hampshire can be swinging. So I guess they were thinking, look, let's shoot our shot and see if we can get someone real Trumpy elected in a place like Pennsylvania or New Hampshire. What I can't explain is going to states like Massachusetts in Maryland, which are not swinging. states that had very popular Republican governors cut of a very different cloth from Trump, right? Larry Hogan, Charlie Baker. I mean, they're Democrats, Republicans, but Republicans nonetheless, and they both served two terms that were real popular. You would think Republicans would like,

take the blueprint. Let's do that again. And instead, Republicans literally condemned Larry Hogan. He wasn't Trumpy enough. And Charlie Baker's a flaming liberal. And so they ran. the Trumpiest candidates for governor there with like knowing there was no shot. Why do you want to just give up those seats and those opportunities? And to me, I've been saying it comes down to the fact I don't think winning is the important thing to Republicans anymore. It stopped being important maybe after 2016 when the culture wars and owning the libs. That became the most important thing.

Maybe now, maybe now, Republicans will think about winning again, which I think is the point of politics, right? to win so you can govern, right? It's not just to like whatever, whatever it is they're doing. Historically, I'm a bit of a history buff, and historically, that is correct. Yes, yes. I'll fact check you, but I believe you. Okay. You write that one of the things you wrote in your piece was that Trump is a divider and not a multiplier, and he is quite literally a loser. First of all, I worry this might hurt your relationships with the MAGA folks. So be careful there. But in all seriousness, as you pointed out earlier, we're now starting to see a lot of recriminations among repulsions.

A lot of why would Trump do this, whether it's get behind bad candidates or focus fire on Ronda Santis. And all of this seems to be coming from people who apparently made it to adulthood without reading The Scorpion and the Frog. So I don't quite understand it. But as you said before, you said, we'll see if this sort of sticks. Do you think it will? Because I'm a little more skeptical, I think, than a lot of people, because I'm looking at it, you know, and thinking there were so many other times they had the chance to get away from Trump, maybe after January 6th, for example. And they, in some way, managed to not. So is this the time? I don't think so. Listen, it's stunning to look at the headlines. Coming from, you know,

the New York Post, Fox News, Ben Shapiro, Washington Examiner, folks on the right, folks, by the way, who enabled him, but folks on the right are saying, it's time to go away. I'm telling you, they will just be labeled establishment progressives pretty soon by MAGA World because the power isn't in right-wing media. The power isn't in Republicans in Congress. The power isn't in people like Joe Scarborough and even, you know, Georgia, lieutenant governor, Jeff Duncan. It's not in those people. The power is in Trump and his voters. And anyone who's not Trump is the problem. Trump is the solution to every question. And I don't see that changing. The problem is. never just been disavowing Trump. The problem's been, are Republicans willing to lose his voters?

And Republicans in leadership and Congress have not been willing to say to like the QAnon crowd, you just stay home, we don't want your votes. Or, you know, other conspiracy theorists or anti-Semitic members of Congress and voters, the proud boys, the white nationalists. Republicans haven't said, you're not part of our party. We don't want to own you. We don't want to claim you. Instead, they courted them. They allowed them. They ignored them. And in many cases, they said they were very fine people. So until Republicans, it's not just swatting at Trump. It's saying he don't want his voters anymore. I don't think anyone in Republican leadership is willing to do that. So he will call his way back. He will find a way to swat all of this down.

Republicans will forget about it. That's my prediction. I hope I'm wrong. Believe me, this is prediction I really hope I'm wrong about. But we've seen this movie and like you said, if the insurrection wasn't enough to snap the party back to its conservative roots and reality and decency, I don't think this is going to do it either. Well, it's funny, right before we started this interview, I jotted down a note because it had struck my mind. And I just wrote down, I wrote Trump versus Trumpism. What I meant by that was pretty much exactly what you said. Like, it feels to me like even if Trump himself is not the nominee, I don't feel like Trumpism is going away anytime soon in the Republican Party. That's right.

I mean, it's really unique. You know, I've been describing the Republican Party more like a cult than a political movement. Right, of course, yeah. But listen, usually when the figurehead of the cult dies or goes away, the call then. Nexium, Jonestown, Kresh. I don't think that's really happened here. Donald Trump hasn't died, but he is out of office. And he might go to jail. And he's done a lot of bad things to his own voters, in fact. And Trumpism is surviving. I think for exactly the reasons I just

said that Republicans don't have the courage to disavow the voters, the people who are still adhering to Trumpism. It's because this is their own fault. They allowed the party to condense and condense and condense. It got smaller. They didn't care because it got more loyal. And they still had enough voters to maybe eke out a win. I don't think they have enough voters to eke out a win if it keeps getting smaller and smaller. They've already thrown the good conservatives out. So this is who they have left. They really have to start over. And that's a big project when I hope that they seriously consider undertaking. But until they disavout the voters, and I don't mean every voter who's ever voted for Trump or Republican. Of course. Obviously. But I mean exactly who I talked about. The unsavory aspects that have infiltrated

the Republican Party that should never have had a place in the party to begin with, but crept in and then like the gates were open to them. Dare I say the deplorables? I mean, it's not wrong. Look, Politics 101. Don't shit on voters. However, I think she could have been more clever about that. But listen, I don't think it's controversial. Had she said, conspiracy theorists and anti-Semites and racists who are in the party are deplorables. Right. Well, that's not controversial. She called a lot of them deplorables.

Right. And that wasn't smart. But it shouldn't be courageous to call that stuff out. That should never have been brought in. Completely agree. Another reason I'm a little skeptical of this is it's sort of hard to see the Marjorie Taylor Greens, the Matt Gates of the world, suddenly dropping Trump. although people like that are narcissistic assholes.

So I suppose if they think it'll benefit them, sure, they might do it. But they have sort of attached themselves to him specifically for so long that it just seems I'm skeptical that like sort of on a dime they will turn. That's such an interesting point. Yeah. I mean, we did see Marjorie Taylor Green was out defending Trump. Like stop blaming Trump. He's being persecuted.

Right. The election. So that's right in line with what you're saying. I don't know. because ultimately they just want to be famous and, you know, they don't want to govern. So if the center of gravity shifts, I don't know. Maybe they would consider sort of leaving that behind. I just don't think the center of gravity is going to shift.

I don't think it's going to be a problem that they'll have to confront in the next two years anyway. But it's interesting. That's interesting. Yeah, I think you're probably right about that. So it does seem like a lot of the Trumpers, at least as you pointed out, all the people who suddenly are like, you know, Trump needs to go. and he's not run in 2024. It feels like a lot of them might be shifting over to DeSantis after his big win in Florida.

Obviously, I hate doing the whole its 2024 campaign season now. But would you consider him sort of the unofficial frontrunner right now? I think Trump is still the frontrunner. Okay. Like I said, I think some of this is going to deflate. Right. You know, the anti-Trump hysteria is going to deflate a bit. But, I mean, Ron DeSantis has been going up in polls.

in important states for a year now, because I've been watching his popularity rise. But when you look at head-to-head matchups, theoretical matchups, Trump still crushes him in a lot of the polls. He might be too smart because what Trump is so good at are these blunt attacks, you know, that get right to the heart, like little Marco, right? I mean, that's not smart. It's not clever. It's not interesting. It's really lazy. But it was effective. Right. And I don't think we should underestimate how effective Trump will be if he fully turns on Ron DeSantis.

He hasn't fully turned yet. He's sort of threatening to, though, right? Yes, exactly. And that's a little something. But if he fully turns on Ron DeSantis, I'm not sure the cult of DeSantis is strong enough to fend off Trump. I'm not sure. I'm just not sure. I've never seen anything like Trump in the way he can completely, you know, decapitate up.

political rival. Yeah, this is starting to feel like it's going to be like the papists versus the Church of England type situation where it's just you have like which religion ends up winning. Well, and it's nuclear too because in the end it weakens them both. And also like these are very close religions. Like these are strains of a very similar religion. Right. They're not all that different.

So it's really, I don't know, it's going to be interesting and also garbage to watch. But I think that's where we're headed inevitably. I don't think Ron DeSantis is going to back down from 2024. I think he feels like this is his time. And I think Trump is running. So that'll be interesting. Something you just said struck me. You said the two churches are very similar.

So you are very famously an anti-Trumper and have been from day one, day zero, actually, probably. Do you feel the same way about DeSantis? Is DeSantis someone who could bring you back to the Republican Party? Or are you just like, no? No. No, he's total repellent for me as well. Okay.

And I think had Trumpism not occurred, he might be governing very differently. I mean, he leaned into the wokeism and the cultural wars. Yes. And that's obviously made him very popular, you know, in Florida. So I think he could definitely be the president of Florida, and they all love him. He's not getting me. And I'm not sure he appeals to most other, never Trumpers like me, because he's taking some of the worst parts of Trump, the laziest parts of Trump, and really leaning into them

in ways that I think are bad for the party and continuing, continuing. Trumpism, not severing from it. I don't know. Just as a conservative, I like to look at these things as like just from a purely conservative point of view, I don't think it's conservative to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on an election task force to root out non-existent fraud. Right. I don't think that's conservative. I don't think that's fiscally responsible. I don't think that's limited government. I don't think stunts like picking up migrants in Texas and dropping them off in Martha's Vineyard in Nantucket. Like, I don't think that's conservative. I think it's stupid. Yeah. So that's the stuff that's never going to get me back on board because it's not

conservative. So I'll get back into the Republican Party when conservatism becomes important again. So never. Right. Probably. Yeah, probably. So do you think this is now shifting to sort of like a tactical type thing? Do you think Kevin McCarthy becomes Speaker of the House? Yeah, but like briefly. Oh, interesting. Yeah. It's going to be harder for him to survive being speaker than it is to become. speaker is what I think because I think he'll get it, but it's such a carnivorous place. And, you know, I watched it happen to Bainer from some of the same guys that are still there, right? Like the Freedom Caucus, the Jim Jordans. Right. And then we watched it happen to Paul Ryan. And Kevin McCarthy's so weak, he won't be able to navigate this very well. And he won't be able to

tell people shut up and, you know, go back to your office and do your work and I'm in charge here. So I think he's going to bite off a lot more than he can chew, and he is not ready for the snake pit he's going to be in if he becomes Speaker of the House. That's really interesting. For some reason, I hadn't even considered the possibility that he sort of does get elected because it's sort of like, well, it's his turn. We'll give it to him. But then within a couple months, it's just all the resentment starts bubbling up. And, you know, the first time things don't go the way that Jim Jordan wants them to or whatever. Or Marjorie Taylor Green. Yeah. Yeah. That's some excellent analysis there, Essie.

So lastly, before I let you go, can you explain to me Herschel Walker getting into a runoff? Can you explain to me 49% of the Georgia voters thinking that he belongs in the Senate? I can't. I mean, for so many reasons you're asking the wrong person. I know. For all the reasons he's unappealing to me, right? Like, I don't love the celebrity turned politician. You know, I think politicians should be a little smart.

just a little, just a little, know some basic things. Political candidates should come with, like, ideas and solutions to problems. I think character is important, and being a hypocrite should be disqualifying. Lying is disqualifying for me, although it's hard to find. You are so old-fashioned. I know. I'm just, I'm a Puritan. So, no, there's nothing about Herschel Walker.

Also, I think the way he uses religion is really gross, too. Yeah. So none of that appeals to me. None of it appeals to me. And I'm not a Georgia voter, nor am I a Georgia Republican voter. So I don't understand it. I will say I did watch a full interview he did at a church in Georgia, maybe six months ago for like shits and gigs. And I was impressed. I think I wrote about it because when he's not at a pulpit talking off the cuff, when he's just sitting down, in this case with a pastor, and talking about his life, he's charming. He seems authentic.

I get how if that's all you saw, you'd be really impressed by him. You'd admire him. You'd want to go where he was going. We've seen so much other stuff that it's hard for me to like, you know, I know too much. But I mean, he's not without talent, but the talent should be like,

go open a Chevy dealership, you know, like for used chevies or like go, you know, be like, inspirational speaker. Open a church. I think he's got some talents for that. Being in the United States Senate, I don't think is where he belongs. Yesy, thank you so much for joining us this morning. And I really, really appreciate it as always. Yeah, my pleasure. I think we've got so much to talk about over the next two years, obviously. But I mean, this election's still going. So it's really still interesting to talk about it. Thanks for having me on. Joining me now is Mother Jones National Voting Rights Correspondent and author of Give Us the Ballot,

the Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America. Ari, thank you so much. Hey, Andy, good to talk to you. Thank you. So I'll start as general as possible. There was no red wave on Tuesday. GLP did worse than expected slash feared. The Democrats did better than expected slash feared. What's your biggest takeaway, like your number one? Well, the number one thing I was concerned about was would people who don't believe in free and fair elections take over the election system in a lot of really key battleground states? And so far that hasn't happened. So that is by far my biggest takeaway and by far my biggest relief. I was also watching the whole process of voting during early voting and during the run up to election day. Would people have problems voting? Would there be challenges at the polls? Would there be challenges over vote counting? So far, that hasn't happened either. So in a year that looked very apocalyptic for democracy, the results seemed surprisingly good so far. Let's talk about one of the aspects of that for a second.

We heard a lot in the run-up to the election. There was a lot of fear of, you know, armed, quote-unquote, poll watchers and stuff like that. And it seemed to mostly not materialize, which obviously is fantastic. Like, I don't want to sound like I'm upset that these predictions didn't come true. But I guess the question is, were these fears overblown or was it one of those cases where, you know, maybe alerting people to this stuff made it not happen? I think maybe both. I also think that Republicans used a lot of really apocalyptic rhetoric about what they were planning to do, how they were planning to monitor the polls. So that made a lot of people really nervous when Steve Bannon is saying that we're systematically taking over the election system and the people that tried to overturn the Capitol are now volunteering to be poll workers. I mean, that's very very concerning. So I think there was a lot of reasons to be concerned.

I never thought there were going to be major confrontations just because there are checks and balances built into the system. If people start doing things that are illegal, they're going to get thrown out of poll stations. They're going to get thrown out of voting centers. And I also know that counting votes is actually really boring. And that once people became poll workers, they were going to realize that there's no deep state conspiracy

for Hugo Chavez to manipulate the voting. machines is just like average people doubting ballots. And actually it's really, really boring to stand around for days on end and do this. And it's incredibly vital. I mean, we need people to do this kind of work. It very much is just the basic administrative infrastructure of democracy. It's not a sexy thing. And I think all these people got super jazzed up and they were going to see some massive conspiracy. And lo and behold, they were let in the room and it was just a bunch of elderly ladies counting votes like always happens. Yeah, I think some people were expecting to see like actual mules, like the animal.

And like carrying just the satchels filled with votes or something, I don't know. The other thing we sort of haven't seen is a lot of contesting the results, at least not as of yet. It's Thursday afternoon as we record this. And that was obviously another huge fear. But, you know, there was a lot of talk in the run up, again, in the run up the election, you had Tucker Carlson and a lot of people talking about how if Oz didn't win in Pennsylvania, it was proof that everything was rigged.

and they sort of haven't followed through on that, which again is a good thing. But did you, I sort of expected there to be a lot more of that. Yeah, I think people have just really limited patience for that after Trump. I think election officials did a really good job explaining the process. This time, Republicans were able to change the laws in their favor in a bunch of key states. So they really didn't have anything to complain about in a lot of places. They also were able to get favorable court rulings on mail voting in places like Pennsylvania. So I think the landscape already was taking place under a set of conditions that were favorable for them as a party post-2020, but also the races really weren't that close. So there really wasn't that much to contest. We'll see what happens. The closest races now are taking place in two places, Arizona and Nevada, where there's election deniers on the ballot. So we'll see about this. But I think in general, there's very little patience for this. And I think that a lot of Republican leaders looked really bad in 2020, waiting so long to affirm the validity of the votes. And I'm not saying Mitch McCaw.

all of those guys wouldn't do it again because I think they're acting based on politics, not principle. But I mean, the further we go from the 2020 election, the crazier, the behavior, not just of Trump, but all the people that enabled him look. And I think that there was just going to be very, very little patience for that kind of denialism this year, particularly because there was so much scrutiny on it, it kind of surprised everyone when Trump did it in 2020, but now everyone's prepared for people to just be sore losers. And then they just don't want to hear it on both sides. They just don't want to hear it. Unless there's an actual close election, they just want to move on to the next step.

Yeah. And of course, I'm not counting the Mike Liddles and the people like that who are still going about their business saying that all these elections were stolen. I don't count those people. It's also a midterm. Trump isn't on the ballot. Right. It's like there's different dynamics that just because it didn't happen in 2022, I don't think we should assume that's not going to happen in 2024. Oh, absolutely.

And as you point out, we have yet to see what happens with Carrie Lake in Arizona and, Was it Laxalt in Nevada? Yeah. Who knows? So if you're the Democratic Party, if you're the DNC, the D-NC, the D-SCC, what lessons do you take from these midterms? The lessons that I took were that people were very concerned about their democracy being taken away and their rights being taken away and that Democrats won because of those issues, not in spite of them. People were saying, well, Democrats should address inflation and the economy. Well, I mean, like, they should have definitely obviously talked about those issues, but there's really nothing Biden can do about inflation.

It's a huge global problem. So even if he had talked about inflation every day of the week, I'm not sure really what he could have done tangibly about it. Could they have talked about their economic policies more effectively? Sure, that Democrats always need to be able to talk about their economic policies more effectively. But this idea that a lot of pundits said that democracy was a side issue or abortion was a side issue.

These were things that people really cared about, particularly that a lot of Democrats cared about. These were issues that led them to vote, that led them to volunteer. And there was a feeling that if democracy didn't survive in 2022, if some of these election and Iers won, free and fair elections could have been irrevocably changed in some of these states. So that was a really pressing concern on people's mind. It wasn't something that could just wait until the next election. It was a concern they had right now. Same with reproductive rights. I mean, this was the first time in U.S. history that a constitutional right had been given and taken away.

So the idea that you should just ignore that because voters are concerned about other issues, You obviously have to address the issues that voters were concerned about, but you also have to address the issues that exist right now. And I think that the results are bearing out that people were very, very concerned about their rights being taken away. And I think that's what allowed Democrats to save themselves in what was otherwise a very uncomfortable and difficult environment for the party. Well, I also think it's, you know, the media just sort of has a short attention span. So people were really stoked about the abortion issue right after the Supreme Court ruling. And there were, obviously, there was a lot of coverage of it. And then that's,

sort of went away, and I think people in the media have this view that, well, we're sort of on to the next one, so everyone else in the country must be too. But I'm sure that, you know, women didn't suddenly forget. That's the whole thing. It didn't go away. That's what they don't realize. I mean, people in, for example, Wisconsin, the state I spent a lot of time with, they have an 1849 abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest on the books because of the Dobbs decision. The issue has not gone away in Wisconsin. It's front and center on people's minds. It's Every single day, women are reminded that they don't have rights that they had just a few months ago. A situation where you literally had an all-male legislature ban abortion one year after Wisconsin became a state and 70 years before women got the right to vote.

And that's now in effect because of the Supreme Court. So it was not an abstract issue to voters there, particularly women voters there. And that was something that motivated people in a lot of places. It clearly motivated people in Michigan where that was on the ballot. It clearly motivated people in Pennsylvania where that's a very big issue. I mean, abortion is pretty much an unsettled issue in most states in the country right now, unless you're a safely red or a safely blue state. So pretty much in every swing state, it's an unsettled issue.

And so it very much was on people's minds. And I think the media thought it was a sexy story in June. Then they thought it was a boring story in October. But for voters, it never became any less important. Yeah, absolutely. And this sort of touches on another thing, sort of a bugaboo of, mind. It's like a near constant refrain from the Democratic establishment, and I'll include a number of opinion journalists in that, that if something goes bad for the Dems, it's Progressive's fault.

And we were hearing a lot of that in the run-up to the election, whether it was about things like, you know, stop talking about transgender rights. Oh, student loan forgiveness is too big. The program is too big. It needs to be more means tested or it needs to be lesser. I feel like some maya copas or owed. I don't feel like they'll ever materialize, but I do feel like they're Yeah, I mean, I don't really think those issues really matter that much in the end. I mean, it was a very unfavorable economic climate. So some people lost because of that. Again, I'm not really sure what the Democrats could have done about this. This is a situation that's plagued every single incumbent party in every country in the world that's held elections recently. So how is the U.S. supposed to distinguish itself from England and France and all the other places where inflation's running rampant? I think Democrats could have talked more about their economic accomplishments. If you looked at polling, the most popular policy for the public was having the price of prescription drugs be lowered. Well, that's what Democrats did in the Inflation Reduction Act, and nobody knew about it. So could Democrats have talked about their agenda more effectively? Absolutely, they could have. But at the same time, I don't think a lot of these other issues

really hurt the party. The only thing I would say where they probably need to have a rethink is on how they talk about crime and public safety, because it was amazing to see Republicans that supported an insurrection where police officers were killed and beaten, suddenly because, become the pro-police party. And certainly in swing districts, you weren't hearing Democrats say defund the police. And I think that really hurt Democrats in some key places, like in Wisconsin when I was out there. They were ad after, after ad, accusing Mandela Barnes, of course, who was black, saying that he wanted to fund the police. He didn't want to. But I think there's some issues where the progressives may have hurt the party. But I think in general, it didn't really hurt the party. If anything, a lot of the quote-unquote progressive positions were ones that rallied people to get to the polls.

So I just want to move on. You wrote, actually, you've been writing a bunch of fascinating pieces at Mother Jones about the issue of gerrymandering. And I think your most recent one is about the election. You write, a democracy crisis was averted, but gerrymandering could still save the GOP. And in this, you basically say that among all the good in Tuesday, there's still a lot of very worrying issues that could affect American democracy. And in particular, you point to what you call extreme gerrymandering.

How do you define that? Just places where the maps are so skee. in one direction or another for a partisan purpose. Okay. And so some examples of this. I know you mentioned that you've been dealing with Wisconsin a lot. Is Wisconsin the worst example of this? I think it's the worst example right now. You had a situation where the governor in Wisconsin Democrat, Tony Evers, won by 3.5 points, which is a landslide by Wisconsin standards. But Republicans won 67% of seats in the state Senate and 64% in the state house, meaning they

almost had a two-third super majority in both chambers because of the maps they drew in 2021. So that's just astonishing that you can have a Democratic governor get elected pretty comfortably in a swing state. All the other statewide races be extremely close, decided by one or two points. But the legislative races are being decided by 20 points. I mean, it just doesn't make any sense rationally. And it's not because the candidates are so good in the legislature and so bad statewide. It's because they've completely rigged the system. And I think that that's something that we saw very clearly this election. Compare Wisconsin to Michigan.

Michigan was a place where because of a ballot initiative passed by voters in 2018, there was a Citizens Commission that drew the districts instead of state legislatures for 2020. And what happened is they had fair maps in place for the first time. And that created many more competitive seats and allowed Democrats to retake both chambers. And now Michigan has a trifecta for the first time since 1984. That doesn't mean when you draw fair districts that Democrats are always going to win, but it gives both parties an ability to compete fairly. And that's what Wisconsin hasn't had for basically two decades. Same situation in a lot of places.

And also, it was a problem in the U.S. House as well, because you had a situation where Republicans very effectively gerrymandered, a number of states, including Florida. By calculations I've seen, they picked up six open seats that they gerrymandered, but they only needed five to retake the House. There was also Supreme Court decisions that reinstated racially gerrymandered maps where there was going to be more majority black districts that would have voted Democratic in Alabama and Louisiana. Those were not in place for 2022. So, I mean, that's eight seats right there that went Republican because of gerrymandering, which isn't to say that Democrats didn't gerrymander too, although in the state where they wanted to gerrymender the most, New York, it backfired spectacularly because the maps were struck down. And the new maps, which I think were as unfair as the old maps, gave Republicans a much better change. chance to win. But in any case, I just think that this is such a big problem in American elections that doesn't get discussed nearly enough, that so many places, the outcomes are predetermined,

or the results don't match with the statewide races because of the way that districts are drawn. Yeah, it really is incredible. And you point out that in a couple of states, I think it's Ohio and North Carolina, the Republicans have taken control of the state Supreme Courts in those states, and that could lead to this extreme gerrymandering in those states. Yeah, it almost certainly will, because those were places where there was either a Democratic majority or a moderate Republican majority that sided with the Democrats, so that a gerrymandered maps in both of those places were challenged in the last redistricting cycle last year. Now, they already have huge majority, so it's kind of insane to begin with. I mean, there's already basically a two-thirds supermajority in Ohio and a near two-thirds super majority in North Carolina,

but they're going to try to gerrymender the House districts as well. So you have to imagine that's going to try to give them even more seats than they otherwise would have. because of gerrymandering. And in general, a lot of these local state issues are so important. I mean, people really don't pay attention to state Supreme Court races, state legislative races. To me, these are so incredibly important. They have so much power. The state legislatures have so much power to decide how the districts look, how voting laws look, things like that. And then the state Supreme Courts often are the last place to weigh in on these things, because the U.S. Supreme Court has said very explicitly, we are not going to hear partisan gerrymandering cases.

meaning that the state Supreme Courts are going to hear these things. So in Ohio, in North Carolina, and Wisconsin, it's likely going to be the state Supreme Court, not the U.S. Supreme Court, deciding these issues in the years to come. So what's the way out of this? It sounds like it's almost like a perpetual motion machine or like it's, you know, A happens, which leads to B, which leads to C, which leads to D. And there's sort of no way out of that loop. Well, I think that it was a huge mistake that Democrats made not passing a ban on partisan gerrymandering with the freedom to vote. Act last year. I know they tried. Obviously, it was blocked by Joe Manchin and Kiercet Cinema, but I think we're going to live with the ramifications of Democrats not doing anything about this problem for a long time to come. And if by some miracle, they are able to retake the House and somehow get 51 votes in the Senate and flip one other senator, maybe it's still possible. It seems extremely unlikely, but I mean, that's very much a Hail Mary scenario. I think that

basically you have to think about how to unwind the system. In Michigan, they were able to pass a valid initiative that unwound gerrymandering and that allowed a lot more competitive races. Not every state's going to have those kind of initiatives, but what we've seen is where there's been opportunities for direct democracy. Outcomes turn out a lot differently. We saw a bunch of states, for example, pass protections on abortion rights that wouldn't have passed otherwise to the normal chambers of those legislatures. So I think there's issues in which a majority of Americans favor things if you try to take them out of just a straight D-verse R or certainly a heavily jerrymated context. And that's something that I think Democrats should try to do more of going

forward. See, this is why you're the national voting rights correspondent. Thank you. I try to try to pay attention to the voting as much as I can. Thank you so much for joining us. This was illuminating and also a little scary. Thanks a lot, Andy. That seems to be my specialty. So just imagine how much worse it could have been. Yep. Thank you. Yeah. No, absolutely. Jesse Cannon. Andy Levy.

So we're going to do, I guess, sort of a joint fuck that guy for today. We're teeming it like the wrestlers say, because we're both angry. Yes, we're going to focus on something that's a little close to home for both of us, but that has very large national repercussions. And that is the fact that Republicans did really well in New York State on Election Day. There are a bunch of reasons for this, but it all goes back to, the person I want to make fuck that guy for this episode. And that is disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo.

There are a bunch of reasons for this, but mainly it has to do with the fact that he appointed four judges to the Court of Appeals, which in New York is the highest court. The Supreme Court is below the Court of Appeals in New York. And he appointed these four judges. They have 14-year terms. in addition to making other decisions that are generally horrible, they threw out the state's redrawn district maps and led to a fucked up situation here in New York where we had to vote different times in the primaries. The primaries had to be split. They also left us, instead of throwing things back to the maps that used to be, they took the gerrymandering power away from the legislature completely and appointed a special master. and he drew these new maps that somehow ended up very favorable to Republicans and absolutely cost

the Democrats seats in Congress to the point where there are people saying that, you know, assuming the Republicans have a majority in the House of Representatives, which it looks like a near certainty they will, that a lot of that can be attributed to how well they did in New York. I think one of the things you bring up that's like really good, though, is that like this is the thing that Democrats have to get straight now in this new world we're in, which is that this guy always put his brand and his presidential aspirations before party and everything else. And you can't do that in this era when Republicans are bringing a K-47s of weapons to a gunfight when it comes to the rules we're going to play by when it comes to voting and how votes get tallied. When they filed this lawsuit to get this redistricting, Cuomo had put in this structure in place because he always wanted to seem like he was making deals because he thought that was his angle.

to the presidency, whether it was doing the IDC onto this, he thought saying, I'm a centrist who can compromise, would get him into the White House. And now here we are. It's fucking the whole party because he put his brand before it. And what we're also seeing is that his sycophants in the state party also did a really bad job running this race. You can lay blame to him in all sorts of places. Yeah. And AOC tweeted about this, and she's been very vocal about this.

And she is 100% correct. She tweeted New York State Democratic Party leadership, which was gutted under Cuomo and stuffed with lobbyists and works to boost the GOP and failed to pass a basic state ballot measure to protect New York redistricting must be accountable. And she is calling on the New York State Democratic Party president Jay Jacobs to resign. And as she points out, she was saying this as long ago as a year ago. And she is absolutely correct. It is an absolute disgrace what they have done to the Democratic Party in this. state. It is just unbelievable how badly Cuomo fucked this state and fuck the Democratic Party. And people need to remember that when he inevitably decides to run for office again because he

is such a goddamn narcissist that I find it highly unlikely that he can just sit on the sidelines for the rest of his life. And he is an absolute disgrace and he belongs nowhere near the levers of power and he completely fucked us and I'll stop now. If we were FCC regulated, I'd be in jail. Hope you enjoyed checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. See you next time. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at thedailybeast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed

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