The Daily - What Happened in the Midterm Elections

Episode Date: November 7, 2018

The results are in: Democrats gained control of the House, even as Republicans strengthened their hold in the Senate. What does this mean for the next two years? Guest: Alexander Burns, who covers national politics for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

Good morning, everybody. Polls are open. Millions of Americans now casting their ballots. It is Election Day 2018. Thanks for being here. I'm Patricia Mazzei. It's 9.30 a.m. I'm in Tallahassee. Hi, it's Richard Fawcett from The New York Times. I'm standing here in Atlanta. Hi, I'm Lisa Lair. I'm in Scottsdale, Arizona. Center in Caldwell, New Jersey. At the South of Modesto. In Bethlehem, Georgia.

El Paso, Texas. In Topeka, Kansas. It's raining really hard. It's 10 o'clock in the morning. We're going to see if we can find some voters. Pardon me, ma'am. I'm a reporter from the New York Times. Do you have a second to talk by any chance?

What was the most important thing that brought you out here today to vote on a rainy day? For a change. To make a change in me. I like the direction that our country's going in right now. I'm not happy with the way the country's going. So I just wanted to kind of keep the momentum going and I'd like to make some changes. Hopefully I can help. I refuse to vote for anybody that's associated with Nancy Pelosi. Turning the house is very important to me. I don't like liberals yelling at people anymore. Okay.

In a way I voted out of fear because I'm afraid of what will happen if we go even further. Very good. Well, I appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Enjoy your day. You too. Kate, do you have one second? I'm just updating some...

We're about to get results. It's like one minute to seven, so come back in five minutes as I just prepare. Thank you. All right, set the scene. Okay. We're in the third floor of the Times newsroom, and this place is pretty electric at the moment.

That's why I'm nervous I chew gum. Hang on. Happy Election Day. It doesn't happen enough to have you up here. I know, it's fun. What are you doing tonight? I'm on the misinformation on the internet beat. Probably around 200, 250 people here.

I'm going to be looking at the Midwest, whether the coalition that Trump put together in 2016 can hang together for other Republicans. And what's interesting for me personally is that all these colleagues of mine that we've had on The Daily over the last six months talking about the midterms,

they are here in this room. So my question tonight is, will Democrats make big gains in the governor's race? Well, I'm thinking a lot about the future of the Democratic Party. Like Kevin Roos, who's literally just walking by,

like Jonathan Martin. Can a Democratic candidate with a really compelling biography win a congressional district that has urban, Democratic-leaning voters and more conservative rural voters? Alex Burns, Kate Zernike. The question is, like, how many of this surging number of women who came out to run, how many of them are going to win? They're all here.

And for now, we're just kind of in a waiting scene, Rudd. We're all here. And for now, we're just kind of in wait and see mode. I'm Michael Barbaro, and this is The Daily for Wednesday, November 7th. 7 p.m. Eastern in a few minutes. All polling places close in Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Vermont, and Virginia. We're about to get a much better sense of whether Democrats are on a path to retake the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate. We do have our first flip of the night from red to blue. We've got Barbara Comstock,

Republican member of Congress, losing her seat in Virginia to Democrat Jennifer Wexton. One of the big questions that's materializing here tonight is whether or not, you know, there might be a pretty big red brick wall happening in a number of places. With 90 percent of the vote counted, Republicans are hanging on there as well. So you're seeing some bright spots for the GOP. We've got some more calls in House races. spots for the GOP. Then you see some spots. We've got some more calls in House races. In New Jersey, the Democratic candidate, Mikey Sherrill, is the winner. And in New York, Max Rose, the Democrat, will be the next representative.

How far out are we from any kind of chamber calls? We are getting close. We're saying that the Republicans are on track right now to holding the Senate. and the Democrats are making steady gains on the House. I mean, it's literally like they've won seven seats. Now they've won eight. Now they've won nine. Now they've won ten. They were coming at about a three-minute clip just then. It is 10 p.m. on the East Coast. Polls have now closed in 44 of the 50 states. Sharice Davids will win in Kansas.

She's the Democratic candidate. Let's go to Minnesota. It's a significant moment that Democrats are anxious, of course, to become the majority. It is entirely possible that the Democrats will regain control of the House today, but I have to What's the takeaway? So it's 11 o'clock, and I would say that it looks like the Democrats are going to take the House, and that victory is really led by women. A big pickup for Republicans in the state of North Dakota. CNN can project that Kevin Cramer, the Republican candidate, defeating incumbent Heidi Heitkamp, who... Also, Republicans gaining another seat in Missouri. Josh Hawley defeating incumbent Democrat Senator Claire McCaskill.

NBC now projecting that Ted Cruz will be reelected. I got to ask you... And Braun in Indiana defeats Donnelly. So that's 51. It's looking, practically speaking, like the Senate will remain Republican. I think so. Our own needle is showing 95% chance of the Senate remaining Republican. Hey, Alex, what's our midnight update? Where do things stand? They're calling races, like, what's our midnight update? Where do things stand?

They're calling races, like, constantly now, so I've got to get back to the story that we're working on. All right, so we'll talk to you in an hour or two. Okay. We'll be right back. All right, Alex, it's 1 a.m. on Wednesday morning, November 7th. We're among the last people here in the newsroom. The headline this morning is that things pretty much went the way on Wednesday morning, November 7th. We're among the last people here in the newsroom.

The headline this morning is that things pretty much went the way that we expected them to go, the way you predicted that they would go. Democrats took the House. Republicans kept the Senate and grew their majority in the Senate. But let's talk about what happened inside of that and what it means. At the highest level,

what is the story of last night in your mind? Well, the headline from last night is the era of divided government is upon us, that unified Republican control of the federal government is over. You know, beneath that, in terms of what we learned about the country, the divide between urban and suburban America on the one side and rural America on the other side is wider than we've seen it. rural America on the other side is wider than we've seen it. And was that a driving force behind why one of these chambers went to Democrats, the other stayed Republican? I would say it is the defining force in why we saw these split decisions that in the Senate, Republicans got to compete in very rural states for the most part, very conservative states for the most part, where Democrats had kind of outlived their welcome.

And in the House, that's where big metro areas where the president is really unpopular really got to have their say. Let me start with the Senate. What happened? Why did Republicans not just hold on, but gain a pretty significant number of seats? The basic story there is that Republicans and the president consolidated the rural conservative coalition that they built in 2016. And for senators like Claire McCaskill in Missouri,

Joe Donnelly in Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota, it just was too much to overcome to ask voters for a second or third time, will you go against your own partisan instincts, your own ideological instincts, and vote for me because of matters of character, matters of personality? All of those Democrats in these red states lost. That's right. And I'm curious if the decisive change is that we now have a Republican president in Donald Trump because they won before in these same states. Well, they won before, but we've seen a steady deterioration of the Democratic Party basically everywhere in rural America, some exceptions in the Southwest. But for the most part, in rural states and districts, Democrats are just not competitive. So a state like Missouri, which in 2008 very nearly voted for Barack Obama, in the 10 years since then, that state has only gotten more culturally conservative with time.

And the National Democratic Party has moved away from a state like that. So the gap has gotten a lot bigger and it was just unsustainable. It got more conservative and the party got more liberal. That's right. And politics just generally has become overwhelmingly nationalized. That there are virtually no federal races that are fought on narrow local concerns. People aren't thinking about, you know, what is my senator delivering for my state? They're thinking about the huge national issues that they see playing out in the news every day.

And yesterday you warned us that when it came to these vulnerable Democrats, voting against Kavanaugh might prove decisive. Did that end up happening? It certainly didn't help that every Senate Democrat who was in one of these states and voted against Kavanaugh either lost or had a very, very close shave. And the one rural red state Democrat who very conspicuously survived on this map was Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who was the only Democrat to vote in favor of the Kavanaugh nomination. If the Supreme Court became a proxy for voters in these states about which side are you on, Manchin was the only one who passed that test for them. So what message does

all this send to the Democrats? Well, the message for Democrats is that if they're going to build a Senate majority, a durable Senate majority, they're going to need to figure out a way to compete in rural America. You know, in the 2020 elections, it's a very different map of Senate races, and Democrats have, you know, opportunities to compete in much more urban and diverse states, you know, like Colorado and North Carolina. These are not the same kind of places that they got clobbered this week. But the Senate as an institution favors rural states, and if Democrats can't figure out how to win there, that is going to be a persistent long-term problem. Is there anything else we should be talking about or thinking about when it comes

to what happened in the Senate last night? You know, I think a lot of people were looking at the Texas Senate race as the place that could potentially surprise. It was a close election, an impressively close election for Beto O'Rourke. He lost to Ted Cruz by a low single digit, which is, you know, an amazing achievement for a Democrat in Texas. It doesn't get you to victory yet. And I do think that one of the lessons when you look at these changing Sunbelt states like Texas, like Georgia, like Florida, you see signs that the population is moving towards Democrats,

just not fast enough for the party right now. Mm-hmm. And what about the House? What is the story there this morning? The House is overwhelmingly about the suburbs. Democrats captured a majority even before we got to the West Coast. And listeners will remember

that we have spent a lot of time thinking about California and its pivotal role in control for the House of Representatives. And Democrats are going to gain significant seats there, but this thing was cooked before we ever reached the Pacific time zone. It's just a mark of how profound the Republicans' problems are in these moderate Romney Republican suburbs where very, very few candidates made it out alive.

And you call them Romney Republican suburbs because they're the kind of suburbs who traditionally vote for a moderate-seeming Republican candidate like Mitt Romney. They literally voted for Mitt Romney, right? That, you know, it used to be that if you're a Republican running in a place like Pennsylvania or running in a place like Michigan, you were counting on the affluent communities outside cities like Detroit and Philadelphia and Pittsburgh to give you a shot statewide. Republicans running in those areas this week just got wiped out for the most part. There are a couple survivors, but very, very few exceptions. Which is a really big deal because much of America is suburban. Right. And a growing share of America is suburban. So, you know, in some ways you can look at the

Senate and the House as a contrast of, you know, rural on the one side, suburban and urban on the other side. There's also a big gap between the parts of America that are growing and the parts of America that are shrinking in terms of population. So if I'm a Republican, I'm looking at these House races and looking at these Senate races and thinking this strategy of polarization may have worked in the Senate this time. It's probably not sustainable over the medium term. And what if you're a Democrat? What are you thinking about the outcome, especially in the suburbs? You know, many of the candidates who won, these are people who ran as fairly moderate Democrats. They were not out there for the most part campaigning on issues like single-payer health care, certainly not

campaigning on abolish ICE. These are candidates who are campaigning on clean government and incremental improvements to the health care system. And if you're a Democrat preparing to lead the House and looking towards the 2020 election. This is a huge sign that moderate voters are the cornerstone of your national success. Not the left, not liberal Democratic. You absolutely have to have energized liberal voters in order to win these seats as a Democrat. a Democrat. But we saw pretty consistently that candidates who were counting on transforming the electorate with bold liberal rhetoric just didn't quite get all the way there. And that's not just true in the House. You know, the Beto O'Rourke campaign is an example of that. The governor's

races in Georgia and Florida were examples of that, that the theory that candidates like Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum would mobilize this powerful new liberal generation of voters to change these states fundamentally. You saw some evidence that they made progress, but it didn't get them to victory. So by and large, the Democrats who won in the House tonight, and there were many of them, were moderate Democrats. They were certainly to the left of center, but they are relatively moderate. And they're people who can talk to former Republicans or even current Republicans

and kind of speak their language. And to that point, it felt like in the House, Democrats embraced this very diverse set of candidates, far more women, far more candidates of color. But the party seemed to make a decision to let those identities kind of speak for themselves rather than become central as a message to these campaigns. Did that end up being effective,

to run a diverse set of candidates but not make their diversity the message of the campaigns? It absolutely did. And if you look at how Democrats approach these races, it is sort of 180 degrees from how we saw the Hillary Clinton campaign run in 2016 when we heard so much about this soaring rhetoric about what kind of country do we want to be and our values and diversity. You didn't hear a lot from congressional candidates about that this time. Even though they were diverse. They were diverse.

And the wager that Democrats made was we don't need to talk about Trump. He's going to do that for us. And if you're a woman or an African-American or an African-American woman running for Congress and you're appearing in television ads, it is manifestly clear to the voters who support your seeking that you represent diversity and change. Isn't one interpretation of last night that Democrats have quite a bit to be concerned about going into 2020, the next presidential campaign, because they are effectively winning at local levels, these congressional races, but they are losing a pretty significant number of statewide races, some governor's races,

but especially Senate races, and especially in swing states, Ohio and Florida come to mind, where presidential races can be determined. This is a very, very mixed picture for Democrats heading into 2020. There is clearly ample political opportunity for them to take on President Trump. And they did win important statewide races in presidential swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. But if any Democrats were going into election day thinking that voters were going to send a message that President Trump was on his last legs and he'd be a pushover in 2020, that's not what we saw. We saw a real tenacity in his coalition in places like Ohio and Florida, which are much more relevant to a presidential race than most of the Senate

states we've been talking about. So what do you think Democrats are saying to each other this morning about 2020? What they are saying to each other is they are going to need to play their cards really, really well to take on Trump. They're going to need to be really careful about the fights they pick with him from the majority in the House. And I suspect that you're going to see somewhat greater skepticism about some of the more bluntly left-wing candidates who are preparing to run for president because that theory of the case really did not deliver victory to the party this week. Right. Everything you're describing suggests that the most successful path for Democrats right now is a form of moderation. And the Democratic Party is still very much seeming to be arguing about whether or not it wants to put forward a truly liberal presidential candidate or whether

it can put forward a moderate. You know, there's something of an irony in the lesson we're drawing from this election, which is that for Democrats to win tough races, they nominate candidates who embody change, embody diversity, and can reach out to moderates and sound very reasonable to people in the political center. And that's, in a lot of ways, the lesson Democrats learned from Barack Obama 10 years ago. It's just a lesson that's no longer universally accepted in the Democratic base. So finally, in terms of what this actually means for governance right now in the coming months, what's the significance of Republicans gaining seats in the Senate while Democrats have control of the House? The biggest good news for Democrats is they now have the power to investigate the president. They are going to be able to issue subpoenas all the time to members of his administration. They don't have to count on the special counsel to carry out all kinds of corruption investigations.

Best news for Republicans is by strengthening their Senate majority, they will have an easier time confirming judges, which they've made very clear is their biggest priority. which they've made very clear is their biggest priority. So we may be looking at two years in which a Congress we already regard as pretty dysfunctional doesn't really function much in the legislative sense. It functions as an investigatory body in the House and a judge-minting machine in the Senate, and that's how Congress will work. I think that's extremely well put.

Thank you, Alex. Thank you. God bless Texas! Texas! Tonight is a victory for all the men and women in this room and all the men and women in this room and all the men and women across this state that poured your hearts, your passion, your time, your energy to rising to defend Texas.

The people of Missouri allowed me, beginning when I was 28 years old, to serve the public, to serve them, to be a public servant. And for decades, I have been blessed to get up every day. It has been such an honor. And this state drives me crazy, but I love every corner of it. I really do. I tell you what, I think the entire country has heard Tennessee loud and clear. I want to say a special thank you to the President and to the Vice President for the support.

The interest in this campaign, their support. I've already talked to Vice President Pence and Mrs. Pence, and they are really excited. They're excited for our family. They're excited for our state. They're excited for our country. It's about our voices. Say our voices. Our voices.

It's about our votes. Say our votes. Our votes. It's about our time. Say our time. Our time. Our voices. Our voices. Our votes. Our votes. It's about our time. Say our time. Our time. Our voices.

Our voices. Our votes. Our votes. Our time. Our time. Because we are for the nation. As-salamu alaykum. Al-hamdulillah.

Al-hamdulillah. Al-hamdulillah. Al-hamdulillah. Thank you all for being here with us. What an amazing journey this has been. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all for being here with us. What an amazing journey this has been. I stand here before you tonight as your Congresswoman-elect with many firsts behind my name. My name is the first woman of color to represent our state in Congress. The first woman to wear a hijab. The first refugee ever elected to Congress. That's it for The Daily.

I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow. And one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress.