The Daily - The State of the Midterms (and the Country)

Episode Date: October 15, 2018

As the Democrats fight to reclaim control of Congress, the House seems to be headed in one direction, the Senate in the other. With three weeks to go until Election Day, we look at the state of the 2018 midterms. Guest: Alexander Burns, who covers national politics for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily Show. Today. With the Democrats fighting to reclaim control of both the House and Senate, the House seems to be headed in one direction, the Senate in the other. Three weeks out from Election Day.

The state of the 2018 midterms. It's Monday, October 15th. November 6th, 2018 It's all up to you Our big question today is Ahead of the midterms, which party is more fired up Following the Kavanaugh confirmation battle The Democrats keep talking about a blue wave this year

What we see in the Democratic Party is two things Energy, and for the first time, there's money The so-called blue wave is going to disappear in the sand. A recent poll shows the Democrats' enthusiasm advantage has nearly disappeared. And I think you're going to see, if anything, more of a red wave by the time we get to November than a blue wave. They keep talking about this blue wave. Their blue wave is really sputtering pretty badly. The red wave is happening. Their blue wave is really sputtering pretty badly.

The red wave is happening. Alex Burns, let's start with the House of Representatives. How many seats would Democrats need to win to take back the House? So a majority in the House is 218 seats. Democrats are 23 seats short of that goal. There are actually a couple vacant seats in the House right now that are just not occupied. But if you assume that those seats go to the party that they always go to, then Democrats need to pick up on top of that 23 seats that Republicans currently hold. And how many seats are actually in play in the midterms? In the big picture, you're looking at between 60 and 70 seats, which might not sound like a lot given that there are 435 members of Congress,

but it's way more seats than have actually been contested since 2010. Since 2010 when? When Republicans took control of the House of Representatives away from the Democrats in that massive red wave under Barack Obama's first midterms.

So 60 to 70 congressional races are actively competitive's first midterms. So 60 to 70 congressional races are actively competitive in the midterms. Democrats need to win just 23 of those. That seems quite plausible mathematically. It does. It means that they need to win about a third of the Republican held seats that are contested at this point. But it's probably not as easy as it sounds. Republicans have a lot of advantages in some of these states. Most of those 60 to 70 seats are seats that didn't vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016. They're seats that voted at least a little bit for President Trump, some of them a lot for President Trump. And so you're talking about Democrats needing to win pretty tough seats. So how many of these 60 or so seats then are really in play rather than theoretically in play for Democrats? Well, they're all in play to some degree or another.

But if we could do a little sort of back of the cocktail napkin math here, I think we could say that 15 of them are probably going to lean solidly to the Democrats right now. You'd bet on Democrats taking them over. And maybe 15 of them are real reaches for the Democrats. These are conservative seats where Democrats have maybe put up an interesting candidate. But at the end of the day, it's just really tough for them. I would look at sort of the middle 30 seats. These are the seats that are going to determine whether Democrats take the majority and whether they take the majority by one seat or 10 seats. So what's the story of these 30 seats?

Do they all have something in common that makes them most in play this year? So for the most part, you're looking at seats that are somewhat to the center right. You're not looking at places where the president is hated. You're looking at places where the president is sort of meh, that there are voters who like him. A lot of voters are indifferent. People kind of roll their eyes. There are suburbs sort of melting into rural areas. So think about places that are not a 15-minute drive from the downtown of a major city, but there may be a 45-minute drive. So literally where the red on the map and the blue begin to bleed into each other. That's exactly right.

And some of them are a little bit redder, some of them are a little bit bluer, but you're looking at places in sort of the outer suburbs of cities like Chicago or Charlotte, North Carolina, Raleigh, North Carolina, Richmond, Virginia, places that we don't really think of as liberal or conservative,

but they're to the conservative side of moderate. I would look especially at a couple clusters of house races around some of the biggest cities in the country. So you have a whole bunch of races right around Los Angeles, a whole bunch of races right around Philadelphia. These are places where Republicans are playing defense in areas that you sort of think of as your Romney Republican district and where the president is not popular, but neither are the Democrats, right? They're not liberal areas. So what Republicans are trying to do in these areas

is figure out their half a dozen seats around Los Angeles that they're defending. Can they save three or four? And what's significant, Alex, about these geographical clusters? What's happening there that puts them so at risk for Republicans? The seats that are really the knife's edge seats that we're talking about,

the ones that will determine whether Democrats gain 22 seats or 24 seats in the majority, you're mostly talking about districts full of affluent, college-educated, white professionals. And why are these the voters who may be decisive in these midterms rather than Latino voters or African-American voters? Well, I don't want to say that any group of voters does not have the potential to be decisive. But if you look at 2016 and you look at today, the group that has moved the most is white women and especially white women with college degrees. And if you're looking at the suburbs of Chicago or the suburbs of Philadelphia, those are the people who voted Republican in the past,

maybe voted for Trump in 2016, and have voted for Democrats pretty strongly since then. So basically, we are expecting to see a massive repudiation of Trump's party, and Trump himself, by moderate moderate college-educated white women in the midterms. And that could be decisive when it comes to the House. I would go as far as to say

if the House flips, that is likely to be why. If the House doesn't flip, it's going to be because Republicans held the line with a lot of voters who aren't college-educated white women. And many of these women live in the suburbs and hence live in the districts that are in play in these 30 races.

That's right. Alex, how are Republicans trying to protect these 30 seats? They're trying to do a couple things at once, and sometimes it's sort of an internally contradictory strategy. The main thing they're trying to do is just disqualify Democrats, that they're trying to go into these suburban communities, talk to white women, talk to white men as well, and say, if you don't like the president, you know, fine. But here are some things to be scared about about the Democrat. The liberal resistance is demanding open borders. They want to eliminate the law enforcement agency that enforces our immigration laws,

opening America's doors to more crime and drugs. Nancy Pelosi is speaker, which is why Pelosi supporting liberal activist Xochitl Torres-Small. Pelosi knows she'll be a foot soldier for the radical left's agenda. These are voters in these districts who might like a Democrat like a Joe Biden or even a Barack Obama, but they're not going to care for Bernie Sanders, right? They're not going to care for abolishing ICE or certain kinds of rhetoric around national security or policing. These are ritzy white suburbs, right? And a lot of the stereotypes that people think of tend to apply in these places. You've heard Antonio Delgado's extreme and offensive raps. And a lot of the stereotypes that people think of tend to apply in these places.

You've heard Antonio Delgado's extreme and offensive raps. Now Delgado admits he'd bring the same ideals to Congress, saying, listen to the content of the lyrics. My mission is clear. Profanity, misogyny, disturbingly radical. They're going on TV with these searing personal attack ads looking at people's business records. In one case, a candidate's background as a rapper, in another, a candidate's involvement in a school that was allegedly tied to some terrorist activity. Spanberger doesn't want us to know that she taught at an Islamic school nicknamed Terror High,

a terrorist breeding ground. It's just one of the most brutally personal negative campaigns I've ever seen in a midterm election. A Palestinian Mexican millennial Democrat named Ammar Kampanajar doesn't get his support from the people of San Diego. The other side of it is that you see Republicans trying to put issues out there that get their own base excited. So even in suburban districts, there are many voters who are enthusiastic about President Trump in 2016, and many of them are less energized right now than the Democrats. So what Republicans are trying to do at the same time as they talk to moderates and say you can't trust the Democrats, they're the party of Pelosi. They're the party of Antifa. They're the party of Abolish ICE. They're also trying to talk to their own voters and remind them of the things that the president has done that they like.

Conservative grit means getting the job done. I'm Troy Balderson. I'll end sanctuary cities to stop illegals from taking our jobs, fight alongside Trump to implement his agenda, and use conservative grit to build the darn wall. There's not really a great precedent for getting voters to show up just to say, you know, good job, I appreciate it. So what you see Republicans doing in this case, and Democrats did a little bit of this eight years ago, is trying to hammer home to the president's core supporters what a threat the opposition party is to him personally. It's not just about policy. It's if you elect the opposition party,

they will try to impeach me. They will investigate me. They will end me as a really functioning government leader. So the strategy is not, please thank me. It's know that if the House has lost the Democrats, it will destroy me. It saved me. So this sounds to me, Alex, harder for the Republicans than lost the Democrats, it will destroy me. It saved me. Hmm.

So this sounds to me, Alex, harder for the Republicans than for the Democrats. Is there a realistic version of this where the Democrats don't take back the House, despite needing just a third of the seats that you identify as somehow in play? Sure. It's definitely harder for Republicans right now than it is for Democrats, but you can see a scenario where Republicans hold the House. And that probably involves conservative voters getting much more mobilized over the next month. You've started to see a little bit of that after the Kavanaugh fight, where conservative voters come home and start showing up the way liberal voters are showing up, close the enthusiasm gap. And then the president really kind of stays on message up to a point.

Whoever has the White House, that party tends to lose the midterms. I don't know why. Maybe it's complacency. Maybe you all fight so hard for the presidency and, you know, you win and you're a little complacent. But I mean, that was two years ago. So I just said, why? And Republicans can reach some of these suburban voters and sort of plead with them to remember that in their hearts, they're Republicans all along. Do you expect Brett Kavanaugh to factor into the House races in a meaningful way? And what would that look like in these suburban districts? I'm going to give you a little bit of a weaselly answer in that I think

he will matter, and I think it's hard to say how. You probably will have conservative voters who are more tuned in now than they were a month ago because they got engaged and angry about the Supreme Court fight. You probably also are going to have those moderate white women who we've been talking about. It's not going to do them any favors with the Republican Party to have watched that fight unfold. So I think the outcome in the House is ambiguous. It is much, much clearer in the Senate, and the story there is almost exactly the opposite of what we're seeing in the House. We'll be right back. Okay, so same question, Alex.

This time for the Senate. How many seats would the Democrats need to win to take back the Senate? They need to gain two seats to take control of the chamber. It's 51-49 now. A tie is broken by the vice president. So if Democrats gain one seat, Republicans still have control of the chamber. It's 51-49 now. A tie is broken by the vice president. So if Democrats gain one seat, Republicans still have control. Only two.

They only have to win two seats. They need to gain two seats. So they need to win two seats Republicans hold and not lose any of their own. Okay. So how many races are there in the Senate where either a Democrat could take a seat from a Republican or a Republican could take a seat from a Democrat?

There are 10 races that we're watching really closely right now. Most of them are in seats currently held by Democrats. So it's really the mirror image of the House. Democrats are mostly on defense. There are six seats Democrats are defending where they're really at serious risk. Almost all of them are in states where President Trump won by a huge margin in 2016. So you're talking about senators like Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota, Claire McCaskill in Missouri, Joe Donnelly in Indiana. These are people who are populist Democrats who are just

running up a really big hill in Trump country right now. Is there any shared story to what puts these three Democrats in danger in those three states you mentioned? popular in these places. They're, by and large, people who've been strong supporters of the Affordable Care Act back when it was unpopular of the Iran deal of cap and trade. And they're people who have recently voted against the Kavanaugh nomination. How are these three Democrats fighting for their seats, given the voting record you just described? What's the case that they're making to their Trump-supporting voters in these states. Many of them are trying to align themselves with the president on a couple key issues, like trade. I know how hard North Dakotans work. That's why I fought to open up foreign markets for North Dakota oil and to roll back EPA

rules that hurt our farmers. I'm Heidi Heitkamp, and I approve this message. You have Midwestern Democrats, not just in Indiana, but also in safer states for Democrats like Wisconsin and Ohio, really sort of cheering the president on as he confronts trading partners that Americans see as victimizing them economically. You see them trying to go after their Republican opponents as elitists and as hypocrites. I'm Joe Donnelly, and I approve this message. So Mike Braun, a CEO paying himself millions by importing cheap foreign auto parts from countries like Mexico and China. In

Indiana, Joe Donnelly has been attacking his Republican challenger for some of his international business deals and for the kinds of health insurance he gave his workers in the private sector, saying, you know, Mike Braun is saying one thing as a Senate candidate, but look at what he did as a businessman. Millionaire Mike Braun selling Indiana out. In Missouri, Claire McCaskill, this is maybe the purest form of democratic populism. She is just ruthlessly attacking her opponent for being this sort of well-groomed Ivy League gentleman who isn't a fighter for Missouri the way she says she is. the Ivy League gentleman who isn't a fighter for Missouri the way she says she is. Josh Hawley, he supported the tax plan giving 83% of the benefits to the richest Americans and corporations. But it's really unclear right now whether that's going to be enough for Democrats to hold on in these states.

So if all or most of the Democrats who you mentioned lose their seat in the midterms, lose their seat in the midterms. Is the story basically that being a Democratic senator in a red state is becoming nearly impossible? It really could be. If those Democrats get wiped out, almost every one of them is a really skilled politician. You can't point to those people and say they're running bad campaigns or they're just lousy at politics. They're by and large really gifted, and they have mostly made the choices you would want a red state Democrat to make if you wanted them to get reelected. So if Claire McCaskill can't get reelected in Missouri, it's fair to ask who can. So how about these other four races?

These are races where the Republican seat is at risk, right? That's right. four races. These are races where the Republican seat is at risk, right? That's right. The four races where Democrats are on offense are mostly in diverse states in the Southwest, from Nevada through Arizona down to Texas, where they're trying to mobilize Latino voters and women and suburban voters, like the ones we talked about in the House, to take over seats that Republicans currently hold. We all have reasons to fix our health care system, but Republicans in Congress keep voting to repeal Obamacare. Instead of fixing it, they would end protections for pre-existing conditions.

And I would say two of them are races where Republicans are very, very clearly in danger. And those are the races in Nevada and Arizona. In Nevada, you've got Senator Dean Heller running for reelection in a state that did not vote for Trump, where it is really tough for Republicans to win statewide elections, and where he has a record now on health care, especially, that is shadowing him in that campaign. Dean Heller broke his promise and voted for repeal. A deciding vote. Mr. Heller.

Mr. Heller. Aye. That is a complete 180. He decided not to cross Trump. The plan Dean Heller voted to advance would let the insurance industry charge people over 50, up to five times more than younger people. And then Arizona is a state that has changed a lot, similar to Nevada, but a little bit redder, where you have a vacancy or an open seat because Jeff Flake is retiring. And you have two women running against each other, Kyrsten Sinema on the Democratic side, Martha McSally on the Republican side.

And it's a really, really interesting test of just how purple Arizona has become. The two other seats are longer shots for Democrats. They're essentially red states where Democrats hope that just a distinctively appealing candidate can make something happen. One of those is in Tennessee, the open seat where Bob Corker is retiring, where Democrats recruited the popular former governor, Phil Bredesen, to run against Marsha Blackburn on the Republican side. And then there's Texas, which that's probably the most closely watched long shot race in the country where Ted Cruz is running for reelection against Beto O'Rourke. The Texas and Tennessee races are really a lot more like the races where the Democrats are on defense. These are races that are tests of whether really any Democrat can win that statewide race, because if Phil Bredesen can't win in Tennessee, probably no Democrat can win in Tennessee.

So let's say that, Alex, all your instincts and leanings and prognostications here are correct. We have six Democrats who are definitely in danger, four Republicans who are in danger, but really only two in a serious way. Meaning when you count all those up, Democrats could lose six seats and only gain four, likely fewer. So the Republicans not only hold on to the Senate, they actually gain seats in the Senate. That is entirely possible. At the end of the day, it is probably more likely that Republicans gain seats in the Senate than that Democrats take a majority in the Senate. Got it. And what should we take away from all of this?

That the Democrats look very likely to take back the House and the Republicans look likely to hold or even gain a greater majority in the Senate. What does that tell us about our country in this moment and about how Congress represents this country in this moment? Well, it tells us that the Senate is much more representative of smaller, more rural states, and the House is more representative of the more densely populated areas in the country. And at least for right now, at least in the Trump era, those are communities that are practically living on different planets politically. If we're at a place where you could have a pretty solid national tide one way or another, a tide strong enough to put Democrats in control of the House, and it not only doesn't

touch the Senate, but actually the Senate goes the other way, that just speaks to the enormous division in American experiences between the two parts of the country that these chambers represent really differently. Does it say something as well about whether or not those chambers well represent the country? Well, it says something about how they're designed to represent the country, that the Senate is not supposed to be representative of the population. It's supposed to give smaller, less populous states a stronger hand in Washington so that they agree to participate in a federal government and don't just get sort of rolled over

by big cities like New York and Chicago and Los Angeles. And it's a source of enormous concern to Democrats right now about their political future, that if they can't win these rural states that are just not demographically representative of the country as a whole and certainly not representative of the Democratic coalition, what does that mean for them as a party in 2020, in 22, for the foreseeable future? Because the Gulf is only going to get bigger. And what I think it means, correct me if I'm wrong, is that Democrats represent more of America, but they represent less of American government. It is the electoral college on steroids, right? That Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, Donald Trump won the presidency. You are likely to have Democrats make very, very strong gains in the House or even take control of the House, and they are probably

not going to see anything like those kinds of strong gains on the Senate level. And it's because the Senate's not supposed to work that way, the same way the Electoral College is not supposed to work that way. It feels like the experience of the Kavanaugh nomination is that the Senate is not as representative of the United States at this moment, but it's the Senate that is decisive in these monumental decisions, like who's on the Supreme Court, like whether or not Brett Kavanaugh should be a justice. That's right. You could be looking at some really, really serious turbulence in the years ahead if Democrats find themselves very consistently winning the popular vote in national elections,

winning control of the House, winning important governorships, and yet they can't really take control of government because the Senate is the way it is. Alex, thank you very much. Thank you. Tomorrow, my colleague Sabrina Tavernisi will be hosting as we begin a two-part look at the state of the Democratic Party in Missouri, where Senator Claire McCaskill's seat is at risk.

Here's what else you need to know today. The Times reports that the disappearance of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is opening a rift between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, which have sought to work closely together on military and economic issues. There's a lot at stake, and maybe especially so because this man was a reporter. There's something, you'll be surprised to hear me say that, there's something really terrible and disgusting about that if that were the case.

So we're going to have to see. In a 60 Minutes interview aired on Sunday, President Trump threatened Saudi Arabia if the kingdom is found responsible for killing Khashoggi. We're going to get to the bottom of it, and there will be severe punishment. In response, the Saudi foreign ministry said in a statement, quote, the kingdom sustains its total Arabia is targeted with punitive action, it will respond with, quote, greater action. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.