The Dispatch Podcast - 2022 and the Upcoming Midterms

Episode Date: January 7, 2022

On today’s podcast, Chris Stirewalt fills in for Steve and Sarah and has a discussion with Josh Kraushaar of National Journal. They talk about the teacher strike in Chicago, which leads to a broader discussion of Biden and the Democratic Party’s unwillingness to challenge the extremes of the party. Plus, they discuss the upcoming midterms and the projected Republican landslide that could be the party’s largest majority since the 1920s.   Show Notes: -Josh’s Interview with Jared Polis -Josh’s article about Democrats/Joe Biden pandering to extremes of the party -Poll on how two-thirds of Republicans believe the election was stolen -David Shor on how the progressives have “hijacked” the Democratic Party -Josh’s podcast Against the Grain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, I'm Chris Steyerwalt and welcome to the Dispatch podcast from the Dispatch and Dispatch Media. Bad news for you. Steve and Sarah were not able to be here this week. They were snowed in with the abominable snowman far from reach of Zoom. So too bad for you. The good news is that joining us this week is my friend and really one of the smartest and most insightful political analysts of our time. Josh Crosshauer, he is. of National Journal. He has is against the grain podcast. He is definitely worth listening to.

We're going to brush over the January 6th stuff, the midterms. We're going to do some fearless forecasting. We're going to talk about all of those things. It is most definitely worth listening to. So please enjoy. Josh, my friend, thank you for doing this. Welcome, welcome. It's great to be on the Dispatch podcast. Great to be back with you, Chris, on any media platform. Any medium.

And we'll take what we can get. It's a crunchy, freezy, snowy day here in our nation's capital. So good to be zooming with you. You are the best. at um you have a gimlet eye you're able to crack through a lot of the encrusted ice of conventional wisdom and thinking uh you call it against the grain but it is a gimlet eye it is you can you can pierce through one of the things that you have pierced through to see is that joe biden has still some pretty unique opportunities to reframe the political

debate and remake his future, but he does not seem to be willing to avail himself of these chances to find a, if you'll pardon the term, a third way. I watched this week in utter amazement as the schoolteachers in the University of the city of Chicago went out on strike. And as of this recording, at least, not Biden, not anybody that I have really noticed not in a big national way has condemned what these teachers are doing to the students of Chicago to go on strike right now over Amicron. How should they and why aren't they? Well, first of all, thanks for that, that nice introduction, Chris. The spin does stop with the against the grain column, so to speak. Patented, you're taking that back from O'Reilly. I understand. Sorry, Bill. No, I mean,

you bring up a really important point. And it's part of a pattern that I, you know, in my reporting and my analysis, it's been consistent over the first year of Joe Biden's presidency, which is he's been in the middle. He's been seen as this kind of a moderate, minded guy. He has the ability to kind of fit, fit the center of the party. But he is unwilling or unable to challenge the most strident extremes within the party. You can look at, you know, build back better when the White House was clearly unwilling to challenge Primalogaiapal and members of the squad in order to get the infrastructure

bill passed at a timely manner. That was clearly, what was taking months and months to get infrastructure passed was that they were, you know, showing far too much deference to the squad or even just more broadly to the progressives in the party. You know, Biden had the opportunity at the beginning of his presidency to have a paired back stimulus, emergency COVID measure, get some Republicans on board, get the moderates, show that he's at least living up to that inauguration promise of, you know, working together with Republicans. And instead he goes max, 1.9 trillion, does it on a partisan basis, poisons the well, gets done and, you know, potentially is causing some of this inflation that we're seeing now. You know, and then, you know, most recently on COVID, and this is

one of the, this kind of relates to education in the schools. You know, the Omicron, thankfully, is clearly widespread, not as serious, thankfully. And a lot of, certainly Republicans are already there. And even some notable Democrats, New York City Mayor Eric Adams. I interviewed Governor Polis, Jared Polis, in Colorado during the holiday, who was basically taking a position, get vaccinated, get on with your life. Let's not do these mask mandates and regulations. Let's just get back to normal.

It's working for him. But, you know, Biden, again, on an issue where he could, benefiting himself politically is unwilling to challenge this left flank that, you know, in this case, it's the, you know, parts of the public health bureaucracy, some some progressives on Twitter that would go crazy if he started to go in that direction. So you talk about the schools, that's the most like obvious play where you have. Yeah, as Glenn Yonkin. You ask Glenn Yonkin. You have everyone from Nicole Hannah Jones to, you know, Rich Lowry saying this is crazy. The Chicago teachers union is going way too far in shutting down schools for hundreds of thousands of kids in

Chicago. And yet the most Biden or Jen Saki or anyone in this administration education secretary can do is be like, you know, we support schools being open. Yeah, it'll be nice to have schools open. Our administration supports that. Well, that's not enough. Like the playbook for Biden always should have been, I am at least challenging the far left, at least showing I'm not one of those guys.

and he has been instead appeasing that that flank. I was struck on January 6th. Biden's speech, I thought, was especially grating on a Biden curve, quite good, right? It was forceful but also inclusive. He was not demonizing Republicans in general. He was hard on Trump, but had grace notes in there. I thought that on a Biden scale, that was a solid A of a Biden kind of speech. And then I noted Kamala Harris was the opposite.

And she was dower and dark and it was wrong. Like her political instincts were wrong. I assume, and this may be cynicism on my part, but I see a lot of this through the prism of 2024. Joe Biden sounded like a guy who wanted to run, right? And that his opposition to Donald Trump is the animating. thing in this last chapter of his political life. Being against Donald Trump really does seem to animate him. Harris, though, what's her problem? Is she, I guess maybe the simple answer is

she who considered herself once a darling of the left or a woman of the left doesn't feel that she is on solid footing with those kinds of voters going into 2024. Is that right? Well, look, as far as the January 6th speeches went, it looked like Biden outsourced the most partisan stuff to the vice president. Okay. So you think it could have been by design like, you take this, I'll take the, I'll be the good cop, you be the bad cop.

I mean, I think that's, I don't know if it's smart politics. I think that's what Harris wants to be. She, you know, her MO, whether you think it's right, I think it's wrong, but her MO has been as vice president to play to the left, to win over the left to try to take the lead on the voting rights. you know, activism to take the lead on where progressives are. She's done a, you know, I think a very uneven at best job of handling those things in her portfolio, but that has been where she seems more comfortable. So they, it did seem like the White House pawned off that to her.

I mean, you know, a lot of attention is being paid to her comparison of January 6th to 9-11 and as usual, Josh, you are, as usual, Josh, you are more generous of spirit than I am. I'm over here being, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm being small. You're being, you're being, uh, large-hearted. Well, you know, I should, I probably need to be because I've been pretty tough on the vice president, um, in my columns, but, um, in my Twitter feed, but, uh, well, she does stink at being vice president. There is no question that she is bad at this, right? I don't think anybody, I don't even, I don't even, I think her strongest supporter would say that she has missed. Now, they might say it's Joe Biden's fault. They might say

that it's unfair. They might say that it is racism and sexism, but no one would say that she's killing it, right? Well, look, and I think if I was advising her and they never would hire me, probably, but, you know, I tell her to take, you know, get to the middle of trying to position yourself for 2024 by, you know, joining the San Francisco mayor, London breed, a progressive Democrat, and calling out the extremism on law and order issues and crime in San Francisco, in the Bay Area, some of these DAs that have alienated even the Democrats. in these very liberal cities. That's a way to show that you're different.

And look, she was a prosecutor. That was sort of the rub on her in a Democratic primary. It does seem like her true sentiments are with the left, though, not, and that was maybe more political back then when she had to deal with a different political environment back in 2010. I would think, if I am Donald Trump, Kamala Harris is the Democratic nominee I would most want to face. in 2024, right? You've got some of the, you got a woman identified with the left. You have

allegations of misconduct. You have the kind of the Hillary Clinton package is really intact with Kamala Harris. Is that right? Do you think that's true? Yeah, I mean, I always say look at the back of a politician's baseball card, their one loss record, their stats, their performance on the job. That pretty much can predict the future. And with Harris, you know, we've talked about this a long time ago, but like she barely won in California for her state AG race in one of the bluest states in the country. It was a really close race. She didn't even run against a Republican in her Senate race. Like she ran against another Democrat and even had some bad press during that race as easy as it was. And then, you know, obviously she didn't even make it to Iowa in the presidential

primary when she was considered one of the... After a rock'em-sockham, great start, big rally, all of the Obama, or many of the Obama people lining up behind her, her turning into the sort of soft frontrunner. The Harris's Obama parallelism was so strong and everywhere in the press, she got all this favorable coverage and she still sucked. Well, and that's the problem with identity politics because politicians are a lot more, that's part of it, but there's a lot more to a politician than just, surface characteristics. And I think people made that comparison and realized that it wasn't a

really effective comparison because she doesn't have Obama's political skills. She doesn't have because good politicians like Obama get it. They understand where the voters are. They understand where the middle of the road is. If they want to govern in a direction, they still need to be conscious about where the voters are. And they speak in a way that can get their agenda done, but by doing both things. And Harris never had that. I mean, the whole, and we could go, I don't want to go too much into her presidential campaign, but just the fact that she didn't have an answer on health care or she didn't have a follow-through on an attack. She had several answers on health care.

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some of the seats from 2018 and 2020. Their surprise performance in 2020 picking up seats, they were, it was sort of cash for clunkers. They were cashing in some seats that they were probably going to get back in 2022 anyway. But even accounting for that, there's still 30 or so seats that look pretty good for Republicans just looking at national numbers. The Senate, obviously is a much lower correlation between the midterm curse and control of the Senate, though I will point out every Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson has had at least the net loss of one Senate seat in their first midterm. So, and that would be enough to give the Senate to Republicans.

Let's game it out. Well, first of all, do you think my assessment is correct? please say yes. I mean, broadly speaking, sure. We still have to wait for somebody in the House. We have to wait for some of these maps to come through. Totally, totally. New York floor.

So that aside, here's a stat for you because I think a lot of people get lost in the numbers. You mentioned about 30, 31 seats, and I think it's a very reasonable guess. If Republicans, I think, win 36, 37 seats, they will have more House seats than at any time since the late 1920s. That is not just a good year, because people, they're different baselines, obviously, at different points. and, you know, cycles, that would be like an all-time high if the number got to the mid-30s. So that's how close, that's how good the environment is for Republicans right now. I do agree with you. I have a hard time thinking that the economy, the COVID situation is going to dramatically change by the time November gets around.

Perceptions tend to get baked in the spring and summer of the election year. So, yeah, I think, you know, my number would probably, maybe I did 25 to 30 would be my ballpark right now. But I think, yeah, I think this could be like a historically good year for Republicans. But it also might not. The Republicans have substantial liabilities. They have Donald Trump running around like a gorilla, balking people on the head and doing that stuff. I'm sure that if Kevin McCarthy could just put all of his craziest members into suspended animation for the next six, eight months, and say, there is no Marjorie Taylor Green. There is no Matt Gates. Don't worry about that.

If he could shut Ted Cruz up, who's going around talking about impeaching Biden, if those things. So the Republicans could certainly a trit their advantage and the economy could get better, right? And I think we are certainly on track for Americans learning to ignore coronavirus. I think we are, we are, the, umacron variant has made it possible for Americans to increasingly say, I don't care what the CDC says, we're going, I'm going to work, I'm going about my life, like I'm doing it. The low, the lower mortality rates make that possible in a way that wasn't true with Delta and the, and the OG. Here's my premise. If Republicans have the kind of historic year that you described, 35, 36 seats.

Life is pretty good for the GOP because most of the members who come in will be from moderate districts. They'll be from swing districts. By definition, when you get a bunch of new members, you're going to get people who are from places that are swing. And people who represent swing districts tend to be more moderate. It is just the way it is. So if Kevin McCarthy gets reinforcements,

from the suburbs of Southern California, Texas, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and gets these folks to come in, that helps him out substantially. There's another scenario, which is the Republicans get 12 seats or 15 seats. And in that case, do we see Kevin McCarthy captive to the Freedom Caucus? So to your last question, yeah, that's the worst case scenario for Kevin McCarthy, because not only does he have a narrow majority, but he's facing the same. situation Pelosi's facing now and that he's held hostage. He's going to probably get the votes for Speaker in that scenario, but he'll be held hostage to the most crazy radical wins of the

freedom. And more specifically, like just the seven or eight members who are just out there and saying things that are just nonsensical on a daily basis. You know, just to think go one step back, you know, the midterm election is to me a clash between whether Republicans can get past Trumpism, and I shouldn't say Trumpism. It's just, just the worst of, the most, you know, the denial of election results, the past, the craziness. Can they get candidates? Can they move beyond that? Can they kind of tiptoe around that enough to win in a good environment for the party? Or are the Democrats also captured by their left flank? There are, you know, people aren't paying a lot of attention to this, but in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, they've got the opposite. I mean, they have the same issue that Republicans do, where they have, you know, in Pennsylvania, you've got Conor Lamb, who I think is a very good candidate, you know, swing state, congressman, center left, battle tested. But he's losing in the polls to a very left-wing, Bernie, kind of an interesting lieutenant governor in John Federman. That's a race where the Democratic nominee could decide who wins that thing. Wisconsin is a race that doesn't get a lot of attention

for the Senate. Everyone talks about Ron Johnson, and it sounds like he's going to run again for another term. We'll see. But, you know, Mandela Barnes is, is the frontrunner there, the lieutenant governor as well, and he's on record as saying a lot of things that are far to the left and where your average swing voter is in Wisconsin, in this political environment especially. So, you know, there's a lot of that. And I must admit, I'm kind of befuddled.

Like, yes, the economy could get better. Yes, COVID, we could go back to normal by the time November rolls around. I am befuddled that Senate Majority Leader Schumer, you know, it's kind of like the Kenny Rogers song, The Gambler. He doesn't know when to hold him, and he doesn't know what to fold them. And he's pushing through voting rights, which is a niche issue for a bunch of activists and people who watch too much cable news. And he's pushing, you know, BBB when Manchin keeps telling him in an episode of Groundhog Day for the last few months, it's like,

we're going to do, there's encouraging signs that Joe Manchin's going to vote for a paired back version of BBB. And then Joe Manchin is interviewed. He's like, no, I'm not going to do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why don't you want to, I mean, I don't understand why Democrats don't want to move on and focus on getting past COVID, focusing on what voters they care about. Is this a phenomenon? And I think this is, at least partly to blame in both parts, And you're right. They differ in intensity. I think the crazy caucus is bigger inside the Republican Party, but the pressures are similar in both parties. I think one of the factors here is the over interpretation of the power and salience of radical voters by leaders in both parties,

right. Chuck Schumer acts like he is about to get primaried by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at any moment. Chuck Schumer acts like he is just terribly, terribly vulnerable. You know, we watched Mitch McConnell go through how many cycles in a row, at least three cycles in a row. This is the year. Mitch McConnell is going down in Kentucky. He got primaried. He got whatever. He did not act like Schumer's acting now, which is terrifying. Chuck Schumer acts totally terrified. Nancy Pelosi definitely has some problems with dealing with the captivity with the left,

but at least she scares them a little bit. At least there is a thought on the squad and others like, this lady might make it stick. She plays hardball. Tommy Delisandra's daughter definitely knows how to make it stick when she says she's going to get you. Is this Twitter's fault? Is this the fault? What causes this this over interpret? Why are Kevin McCarthy and Chuck Schumer

acting like the craziest people in America are running their parties? Well, it's a great question. That is sort of the fundamental question of our politics. Now, I've argued that, like, Republicans actually do have something of a crazy base. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're voters. Like, if you look at the polls, you know, 70% of Republican voters think, you know, there was hanky-panky in the last election, right? So, like, that is the challenge Republicans face. Like, they're trying to, you know, more conversations I have with Republican operatives are like, yeah, we need to figure out a way to tiptoe around that 70 percent and kind of find some middle ground to do what Glenn Young can did or to do what even some of the

other candidates are where they're saying nice things about Trump, but they're moving away from the craziest stuff. But that overdid window keeps on getting crazier and crazier. So I don't know if it's really working. On the Democratic side, what befuddles me, as someone who's kind of, of watching politics like sports and you're not wondering, you're wondering what the coach is doing.

You know, you're wondering what the calls are, why these calls are being made the way they are because the Democratic Party has a moderate, you know, pragmatic faction. It's a majority of the party in some states. It is,

it is not like the Republican Party where they need a cowtab to the crazies. But their problem is sort of a, it's like a, a fun house mirror problem where, you're right, Twitter makes it seem like these very left activists have a lot more sway than they actually do. And I think there's also a donor problem.

Like the don't we've been seeing. There was a great piece of the New York Times this week by Tom Edsel about the amount of money that foundations are literally like creating, creating bureaucracies of left-wing operatives that are forcing the party to take these really, really out of the mainstream positions on issues like crime, on issues like education. And this is the phenomenon that the former Democratic data guy whose name I'm blanking on right now. David Shore, David Shore. This is the David Shore problem that he identified that he said was the issue. We need to wrap up here. But my, I guess my question for you is this. How concerned are you about the actual execution, not the outcome, but the actual

execution of the midterm elections. I have some concerns, right? So I have some concerns that there is a bipartisan, that because of a bipartisan belief that our system is irreparably broken or that there are these, that democracy is in danger at every turn, that we could see some cracks emerge this fall as we try to count votes and try to get the election undertaken. how concerned should people be about that part? Look, if there's a, I mean, look, what scares me the most is that you just hear state legislators on the right that are basically, you know, trying to say things and do things that are factually not true and they're, you know, these, these managers aren't going anywhere.

So I'm maybe not quite as concerned as you are because I think there's a lot of time. I don't know how concerned I am. I'm asking you to tell me whether or not to be concerned. Yeah, I mean, look, I'm more concerned about 2024 more than the midterms. ultimately, like we saw in 2020, other than Trump, all the Republicans and Democrats pretty much conceded their races, and even the close ones, there was a consensus there. So I think this is a Trump issue and a Trump-I issue, but I don't think it really makes up that big a share of, you know, candidates and people on the ground in these big races.

You know, like, and I think the bigger problem, this is, I think the bigger problem, for Democrats is that the way the environment is looking right now, they're not going to be close races. You know, like, they're going to need to, you know, this isn't going to be, we're not going to be counting, you know, House seats or we're not going to be counting, you know, ballots in a close race that determines the House majority. It's probably going to be decided by a much more decisive margin.

So, you know, just the way things are looking environmentally, probably means we're going to escape a lot of these issues, at least for the time being. There's your headline. Josh does not care about the health of democracy, he turns a blind eye to the existential threat to the American Republic. All right, fine, I guess so. It would be that way, Josh.

I mean, I'm in like the middle ground of saying, like, there's a real problem that needs to be addressed. And, you know, I think that there's a bipartisan, you know, what's encouraging is you have a bipartisan group of senators. I don't know if this is going to go anywhere. But they're actually dealing with two things that are really important when it comes to the credibility of the sacredness of our democracy. They're trying to basically prevent these rogue state. legislators from essentially usurping when it comes to, you know, trying to usurp the actual results from the electoral vote count act people. Yeah. And there's also the, and there's also the issue of, you know, the one proposal that's kind of interesting that I've heard is that you may have

to have more than just one senator and one representative declare an objection to create a whole level of chaos in Congress, which is what happened in 2020. So I hope those measures really get bipartisan and support. I hope Democrats come to the table and say, it may not be everything we want, but these are some important significant measures that could go a long way. And I hope Republicans realize that you can challenge, you know, you don't need to make this all about Trump, but you can actually do some low-level reforms that can mean a whole lot. As you've all been said the other day, if you can't come up with an election reform package that can get Mitt Romney's vote, are you really trying? Are you really trying? Josh, you're always trying to do good work

for your readers and listeners to your great podcast. If I were on Twitter, I would recommend Hotline Josh to all, but find and consume Josh Crosshauer wherever you can because he is smart, excellent, patriotic, and perspicacious. Definitely do that. Thanks, brother, for being with us. Thanks, good. With Amex Platinum, Access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lot. lifetime. That's the powerful

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