The Dispatch Podcast - The Science of Politics

Episode Date: October 23, 2020

Is the presidential race where the polls say it is? What might pollsters be missing this election cycle? Is there a scenario in which Biden wins the electoral college handedly and Republicans somehow hold the Senate? Polls suggest that Republican senators’ reelection odds aren’t looking too sunny in Maine, Colorado, and Arizona. But what about Republican Senator Thom Tillis in North Carolina? “Everything comes down to whether a late breaking sex scandal in North Carolina can preserve a seat that Republicans a few weeks ago thought was lost,” says Josh Kraushaar, National Journal’s senior national political columnist, on today’s episode. “Ultimately, they’re hoping on a Democratic blunder on the last month of the campaign to save the Senate.” Join Sarah, Steve and Josh for a conversation about prospective voter turnout, party infighting on both sides of the aisle, and the senators who are distancing themselves from Trump to save the Senate. Show Notes: -The Economist’s presidential election forecast, “Republicans learn the benefits of diversity … the hard way” by Josh Kraushaar in National Journal, “McCarthy locking up support despite fears of GOP losses” by Melanie Zanona and John Bresnahan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to our special Friday Dispatch podcast. I'm your host Sarah Isker, joined by Steve Hayes. This podcast is brought to you by the dispatch.com. And speaking of the dispatch.com, we have a big post-election event plan, November 9th and 10th. You can go to what's next event.com and check it out. Tickets are $100 and they include a new complimentary subscription to the dispatch. So far, we've got folks like Congresswoman Liz Cheney, Senator Benson, Sass, Senator Tim Scott, we'll be talking about what that election actually means, the future of the Republican Party, Congress under a Trump or Biden administration, and foreign policy, the economy, COVID, all of it. So we hope you join us. That's what's next event.com, November 9th and 10th. All right, today we have very special guest, Josh Kroshauer. Josh is the National Journal's Daily Senior National Political Columnist. He pends the weekly against the grain column.

And he's super fun and friendly, and we love talking to Josh. Let's dive right in. Josh, welcome to the pod. Biggest takeaway from the debate last night. Biggest takeaway is that the race hasn't changed. much at all. But look, that is the performance from President Trump. I mean, it was, you know, it was about as good as you'll get from the president. And would, would that type of performance have made a difference if it had been his first debate performance? Yeah, I mean, look,

the Republicans across the board from the president's own staff to Senate and House Republican operatives saw their numbers collapse in the aftermath of the first debate. In fact, that was one of the bigger set of movements this entire year. So yeah, I mean, they would have liked to have seen that version of President Trump in the first debate. Now, I don't think it would have made the difference between, you know, President Trump making this a close race and where the race stands right now. But look, that degree of discipline we don't often see from the president. And I imagine there was a little bit of prep, a little bit of training to get him not to interrupt, not to scream. And then the mute, maybe the threat of a mute button maybe did have an impact after

all. I did see one funny thing on Twitter where because he was muted, he would be tweeting out his interruptions. I thought that was a good, good idea. Steve, come on in. Josh, do you buy that this race is sort of where the polls suggested is? Do you think that we're basically right? I mean, if you looked at the race starting in January, if you look at the polling, then, it's been pretty stable with Joe Biden having had, you know, roughly a six-point lead nationally. That lead grew a little bit. And here we are less than two weeks out. And things look pretty much the same. Is that is that right? Should we believe that the race is that stable? And does that mean that it's effectively over? It is, it has been stable. In fact, Trump's job approval ratings throughout his presidency have been remarkably stable. They don't go below 40%.

They don't go much above 45, 46%. So, you know, you're not going to see these wild swings in what's going on in the presidential race just because almost half the country isn't going to be voting for Trump under any circumstance. Now, the one caveat to that is, you know, a point or two in job approval for president Trump is like a 10-point jump for a lot of other traditional presidents. And, you know, the chances of Republicans holding the Senate, if Trump is at 43, 44, 45%, the higher it gets to 45, Republicans have a fighting chance to keep their majority. When you see a performance like we did in that first debate in Cleveland, all of a sudden

Republicans were worried about holding seats in Kansas and Texas and South Carolina, Lindsey Graham's seat. So, you know, I think the best case for the president is for him to be within striking distance in those bellwether states, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida. And, you know, there were moments over the summer where he was tied ahead in some or, you know, in at least a few of those big battleground states. But what a lot of Republicans are seeing right now is they just want to stop the bleeding. They're at risk. of getting blown out, Trump is at risk of facing a landslide election, that landslide defeat, and they just want to get him back in the game, give Republicans a chance to cut their losses

in the House, perhaps hold the Senate. What would be the first thing you're looking for on election night that will make you go, uh-oh, the polls were not right? Well, look, Florida, the vote counting in a lot of states is going to be all over the map. So we're not going to be seeing Pennsylvania results, Wisconsin results until late. if not after election night. Florida and North Carolina, on the other hand, are going to probably be coming in pretty early.

So I'm going to be looking closely at Florida. Trump can't win re-election if he doesn't win Florida. And Republicans have shown quite a bit of resilience, not just the president in 2016, but Senator Scott, Governor DeSantis in the 2018 elections, if Florida looks close or if Trump looks like he actually may have an advantage, we're going to be in for a long night, maybe a long week. But I think it's very possible that we could see a collapse with Trump's standing with seniors.

It'll show up in Florida, and we'll be ready to call the race pretty early if Florida ends up in Joe Biden's column. So I think Florida, I mean, we all remember Tim Russert with the Whiteboard, Florida, Florida, Florida. I actually think as far as predicting who's going to win the race, given how early Florida is likely going to report, I would say Florida is the state to watch. And Bill Steppian, Trump's campaign manager, has tried to make the case to reporters that they, They don't need Florida. There's a path without Florida. You're not buying that. No, I mean, not just Florida has 29 electoral votes.

So it just is such a huge electoral prize, number one. But it also contains demographic groups that should be in President Trump's corner if he's going to have a good night. Seniors, he's been making inroads with Cuban Americans, other Hispanic Americans in Florida. So if he can't win Florida, I mean, he's not going to win. Arizona. He's not going to win Pennsylvania. He's not going to win Wisconsin. It's a, it's not just a bellwether, but it's an early warning sign of where this race is headed. And we've, we've seen some indications that he's made, made strides with Hispanic voters

in, in Florida, not just Cubans or beyond Cubans. Is there, can he make enough progress with Hispanic voters to offset the kinds of losses he might be seeing if polls are accurate among seniors? Yeah. I mean, if he, if, if, if senior, end up saying, yeah, you know, I think he's a little crazy and he hasn't handled the pandemic all that well, but I still agree with him on a lot of the policy. And I watch the debate and that's the kind of Trump that I voted for in 2016. You know, maybe he cuts down his margins and does better with groups, namely Hispanics in Florida that he struggled with in 2016. So yeah, I mean, you could see it's all a margin game. And if he can cut down his losses, maybe narrowly win seniors in Florida and do better than expected among Hispanics, sure. I mean, there's a pathway to victory. Florida, by the way, the polling was, of all the states that were polling was off, 2018 polling in Florida was way off. I mean, I don't think there was a single poll in the final few months that showed

Ron DeSantis winning over Andrew Gillum and likewise, Scott over Nelson. So I would caution, I mean, the one thing I would caution, and, you know, I'm offering a pretty bullish pro-Biden forecast, but, you know, the polling, you know, I don't think the polling was as bad as people make it out to be in 2016. I think a lot of it was how people analyzed the polls and didn't look at that Midwestern blue wall breaking. But it has been really tough for pollsters to measure turnout levels and enthusiasm

among blue-collar white voters. And that's going to have implications across the board. Now, when you're down by, you know, eight points in Wisconsin, six points in Pennsylvania, I don't think that's enough to make up that gap. But that's the one word of caution that I would say, which is, you know, Florida, polling was off a lot of, because a lot of that conservative vote, the enthusiasm from that conservative base wasn't measured in a lot of the polling in 2018 and 2016.

Speaking of which, we're looking at potentially not just record turnout, but like, whoa, record turnout. Record turnout, underlying, bolded, et cetera, echelon insights, our friend, Kristen Soltess Anderson, and she's estimating turnout will be 157 million people. That's 20 million more than 2016. A, do you think that that sort of enthusiasm turnout level benefits more Joe Biden or Donald Trump? And B, do you think the polls are adequately able to take into account 20 million extra people joining the electorate? You know, it's a little too early to say. My gut would say high turnout favors Democrats just because, you know,

you know, their big problem in 2016 was not engaging African-American voters in Michigan and in the Midwest in Pennsylvania. They need turnout among younger voters among non-white voters. And there are signs in the early vote that they're gaining that enthusiasm. And those are also all the groups that are the lowest probability voters, you know, when I've talked about vote scoring before, there's people who are going to vote no matter what in every election and you want to hit those low-hanging fruit. But sort of the way to win an election is to get to that higher fruit, your lowest probability voters

who don't turn out for every election just because that's the type of citizens they are. And so when you see high turnout, it means both sides, or at least one side, is really getting some of that high fruit. Well, and that's totally right, Sarah. And I would caution, though,

that my colleague, Dave Wasserman at the Cook Report, has calculated that a lot of the non-voters, a lot of the folks who don't show up usually, are actually working-class Republican vote, like the Republican voters in the Midwest in particular. So if we, you know, I always am skeptical. I know a lot of people are trying to crunch these early vote numbers in Texas and Georgia and a lot of these big battleground states.

My experience with that is that everyone's predictions in the last few elections on the early vote have been way, way, way off. And it's because it's really hard to understand whether you're just extrapolating election day votes. I mean, in a pandemic, a lot more people are voting early. a lot more people, you know, for health reasons, want to cast their ballot before Election Day. And there's just been a lot more attention. Early vote. Early vote. You can early vote. So it's in people's faces. So I think we're going to have really high turnout, record turnout, perhaps. But it's hard to tell where, it's hard to read what it means for Election Day, because it could be that a lot of people who just normally vote on election day are voting early.

And we saw that in 2016, the early vote numbers on, from the early vote in North Carolina and Florida were looking very, very, very favorable for Hillary Clinton. And then we realized they just cannibalized the Democratic vote and all of the election day vote was Republican. And it ended up, you know, giving Trump, you know, the surprising victories in those two states. Is there a scenario where Joe Biden wins in a manner consistent with the polling that we're seeing now? Let's just assign him the states where he's leading, assign Trump the states where he's leading and call it the election. And that's a pretty healthy Joe Biden victory, if that were the result. Is there a scenario if we have a presidential result that's anything like that where Republicans keep the Senate?

Yeah. If you see, if you believe the polls, if you have a somewhat cautious anticipation of where things are headed, you know, Republicans have a chance to hold the Senate, though I would say their odds are well below 50-50. The, a lot of the Senate races aren't taking place in, in presidential battlegrounds. Colorado is a state that Republicans have all but conceded for a gardener's seat. You've got Susan Collins in Maine. That was the bellwether. That was the seat that everyone was going to look at to figure out which party would hold the majority.

And even Susan Collins' campaign, you know, I just talked to some top-level folks there last week. And, you know, they're not particularly optimistic about how things are headed. And that's putting it mildly. Arizona is a battleground, but Martha McSally has been consistently running well behind President Trump in a state that Joe Biden looks like he'll carry. So that's, you know, you could have a best case scenario for President Trump. You know, it's a close race, but those three seats still are going to look awfully tenuous. And then everything comes down to, you know, whether a late-breaking sex scandal in North Carolina

can preserve a seat that Republicans a few weeks ago thought was lost. Tom Hill is the seat in North Carolina. I actually think that that is a real race. I think it's closer than some of the polls suggest. But ultimately, that they're hoping on a Democratic blunder at the last month of a campaign to save the Senate. So I think the Senate is in rough shape. But because of some of these individual circumstances, the individual candidates, you know, you could see Republicans holding 51 seats. I can't see any more than that.

So if it's a massive Biden landslide, he went. This is the proverbial blue wave. What seats might we be talking about on election night that we haven't spent enough time talking about in these weeks and months before the election? Number one, Montana. That race hasn't really gotten a whole lot of attention. It should. The president's numbers in Montana have taken a nosedive.

He's going to win Montana, but not by the margins. He won in 2016. And Democrats probably have one of their best candidates in the country and the current governor, who's still quite popular. So, I mean, I was talking to Republicans last month who thought the partisanship of Montana would probably be enough to help Senator Steve Daines win and win enough of a margin, not to sweat it. When Trump collapsed after his first debate, that was when there was a little bit of panic because Trump's margin was narrower and all of a sudden there were enough split-ticket voters to give Bullock a real fighting. chance. So Montana is one of those races, I think. If it's a really good night for Democrats, it's definitely possible Montana could flip. I also think Texas is one of these. There's always an expensive district or state where parties, you know, it's not in either party's interest to say

we're going to play in Texas because you don't know how Texas is going to shape up until late in the election process. But you have at least a half dozen house races where Democrats are spending big money. You have an outside group now pledging $20 plus million dollars against John Cornyn in the Senate race. And you have the Democratic candidate belatedly raising a lot of money to make that race a real one. I still think Cornyn is the favorite. And I think the comments that Biden made about the energy industry helped corn in quite a bit in the final stretch. But if there's a surprise that if there's a huge blue wave, I think Texas is both in play at the presidential level. And Cornyn can't take his

race for granted either. When you're looking at the Senate races, which candidates are doing interesting things either to embrace Trump or distance themselves for Trump that could distinguish them from a wave election? Well, the interesting thing is that no one on their paid advertising, like no one's air in an ad in the Senate races, even in the bluer states, saying, look, I have my disagreements with Trump. We agree on policy. I disagree with this. You know, I want to be a check on a Democratic administration. You're not seeing that in paid advertisements. You see Ben Sasse make his comments to a town hall.

You see, you know, Tom Tillis made an interview in the last couple weeks where he alluded to a check on a possible Biden presidency. You heard Susan Collins, you know, is uncomfortable when you bring up Trump in her debates. But you haven't seen paid advertising distancing or attacking Trump because Republicans still need Trump voters. That would be still politically suicidal. So, you know, this is the challenge, the dilemma for Republicans. Martha McSally is, to me, the textbook example of someone who just played her hand poorly in a state that actually has a lot of persuadable, moderate Republican voters. she tied herself to the base from the get-go. She, you know, embraced the president,

campaigned with him, even attacked a CNN reporter to show her conservative bona fides last year. And now, in the final month of the campaign, she was at her first debate, and she was asked whether she was proud of her support for President Trump, and she refused to answer the question.

Well, I mean, you should have said that from the get-go, because if you're bailing on Trump, even subtly in the final stretch, that's not going to help any, Republican politically. And now Republicans are realizing that it's almost impossible to thread that needle of being an independent voice while also not alienated and ticking off Republican voters. I would expect that as we see these elections close in the last 10, 11 days, we're likely to see Republicans not only not move away from President Trump in their paid advertising.

as so I think you're right on that, but in fact embrace him more tightly, in part because we've seen such a big democratic turnout in these early votes. I mean, that is one place where I think the early votes can matter. If you're a Republican consultant or a Republican admaker and you're trying to figure out where you put very limited resources on your ad buys, at this point,

you can't afford to, even if you're a candidate, would rather have a little distance from Trump, you're not at this point appealing to persuadable voters. You're making a pitch to the base voters and you want to get them out to support your candidate. So I would expect that we'll see even more red meat as the election closes, which isn't always the way that things go.

Yeah, and the thinking all along is that if you break from the president, you're toast. You're hoping against hope that Martha McSally can ride Trump's coattails in Arizona. He, you know, the thinking was that Trump can win Arizona. It's a winnable state. We don't want to screw anything up. So we're just going to keep our fingers crossed and hope the president can carry along other

Republican senators. When Trump hit rock bottom after the first debate, all of a sudden, there was total panic because Trump was dragging those same senators down with him. And like even Lindsey Graham, for example, who I think he'll do fine. I think he'll win reelection in South Carolina. But it's a, you know, very well-funded, talented opponent. and at his debate and in his campaign ads, he was talking about his relationship with Nikki Haley.

He was talking about how he worked so closely with Senator Tim Scott. So even Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, I think smartly was trying to find a way not to talk about Trump, but subtly signal he's not 100% part of the Trump party, even though his record would suggest otherwise in the last four years. Let's talk, let's assume Steve's hypothetical, that the polls are all correct and that Biden wins the states that are in his column right now and Trump wins the states that are in his column right now, which would be a huge electoral victory

for Joe Biden. Is that a mandate for Joe Biden's agenda or the Democratic agenda, including if they win the Senate and so have unified government, or is actually a larger margin worse for the mandate because it will show such an anti-Trump vote and not just a pro-Biden vote? That's a great question, Sarah. It's the question that Joe Biden's campaign and if he wins, his administration is going to have to deal with from day one. And it's almost a blessing and a curse to win big. If you have Senate seats and you win 54 Senate seats, for example, all of a sudden you have political capital and you have the power, the senators, to perhaps pass very progressive legislation, but that temptation can also sap your political capital very quickly.

So I always like to say, like, the leader of the party sets the tone and really controls the politics in Washington. And it's going to be fascinating to see how if Biden wins, how his administration operates, because he's not going to have an easy time balancing between his own party's left wing and his pragmatic instincts. You know, the energy issue was a great example last night at the debate where, you know, we saw this with court packing too, but the energy issue when Joe Biden said last night that he supported, you know, the next 15 to 30 years phasing out oil, that is not a position, even though he's had that for several weeks. It's not a position that you want to advertise politically because there are at least, you know, 15 to 20 House Democrat or Democratic candidates that are in energy producing districts. They were trying to expand that House majority in states like Texas. Alaska is a battleground this year.

You know, even New Mexico, there's a huge race in New Mexico that Democrats are defending. So you already saw within minutes of the debate ending, I think at least two or three House Democrats and Democratic candidates criticized Biden for that position. You also have, you know, Senate candidates in Texas and Alaska. I know those are reached states for the Democrats. But if you want to build that big, broad majority and have a big tent, you know, you can't totally ignore the views of those candidates that are in more conservative states that are very winnable for Democrats this year. So that's a sample of the dilemma that Biden's going to face, that where does he want to spend his political capital? And I think, like you said from the outset, there's going to be a temptation. If he wins the Senate, not just with a bare majority, but if he gets 52, 53 Senate seats, the Democrats do.

You know, there's going to be a big temptation for the progressives in the party to go full bore and to do everything they can to get what they want. So the economist, I want to just flip this now. The economist has, it's forecast, I think it's at this point something like 93% likelihood that Donald Trump is not reelected, that Joe Biden is elected, 7% Donald Trump. I don't know what the what the 538 forecast is right now. It's not that, but it's not off. I mean, all of the forecasting, most of the people who look at this, the Republican and Democratic strategists I talk to, everybody thinks Joe Biden is likely to win.

If he doesn't win, and we're having this conversation in two weeks, what's just happened? Well, number one, the polling industry is going out of business. It's done, right? I mean, we're not just talking about, like, I actually think that Trump's margins or Biden's margins are going to be a little narrower than what we're seeing in the polls. But, you know, you look at the Wisconsin polls, the Michigan polls, the Pennsylvania polls, you know, Biden is up by an average of about six to ten points, right? So that's not just a small number. That would be a seismic collapse of where we're polling is and, you know, it would totally put people like me out of business and certainly the pollsters because, you know, This is shaping up to be a possible landslide election.

I didn't anticipate Trump's victory, per se, but I could see the trends of blue-collar voters in the Midwest moving in Trump's direction in the final weeks of the campaign. Republicans were actually, I got a call from a top House Republican official, worried that they weren't hitting their numbers in the suburbs, that they were underperforming in the Midwest. So there were warning signs in the final weeks of 2016 that I wrote about.

And, you know, I'm hearing the opposite this time around. I'm hearing those same congressional Republican operatives, seeing Biden expanding his lead, seeing candidates they thought could win, starting to lose ground, and they've never been able to catch up. So, I mean, you know, I mean, it's the position I was in four years ago wasn't that I thought Trump was going to win, but I could see it being a close election where we'd be up and counting votes late in the Midwest. You know, I just don't see that this time around, not just based on the public polling, but based on where parties are spending money, where their internal polls are, where the fundamentals of this race stand.

So, I mean, if Trump was able to come from behind and win, it would be an even bigger shock than what happened in 2016. If Joe Biden wins by a small margin and the polls were wrong, will anyone care? Like, the polls were wrong, but the outcome was right? Are we just sort of fine with that? We should care. I mean, it's not, I mean, look, I, there,

what keeps me up is that there is a scenario where the margins are a lot closer in the Midwest, in, in some of these, in Arizona, and some of these close battleground states, maybe seniors come home to the president like, like they did in 2016. It's just that the margins are just so, I mean, they are, they are more consistent than they are bigger. And then the fundamentals are different. Trump was the insurgent candidate in 2016.

He's the incumbent. running on a record in the middle of a pandemic, which majority of voters, including some Republicans, don't think he's handled well. Assume for a second that it's close. Where does the Republican Party move after a close loss? I think everyone sort of has a sense,

like if it's some blowout, they abandoned Trump, oh, you know, our bad, terrible experiment, we'll go, you know, we'll start talking about limited spending again or something. But what if it's a relatively close loss, two and a half point loss, let's say? it's a good question and that's i mean that that really is the the 64 000 question of

what does the republican look like in a post-trump era if he loses and it may make a difference the you know depending on what the margin is you know if he loses closely but it's not uh if we're not up into you know or we're not spending a week counting votes if it's if it's close but decisive um you know i i still think that the political incentives in the long term are going to force Republicans to reckon with what message they want to utilize, to win back the presidency, to win back potentially the Senate. I wrote a column last week. I find this actually to be a very overlooked statistic. 90% of Republicans in the House right now are white men. About 90% of their top opportunities in the House, including in very conservative districts,

are women or non-white candidates. Yeah, it was a fascinating calm. It was very, very interesting. Tell us what you think that means. Well, I talked to Republican strategists who acknowledge that even in conservative districts, even in areas that, like President Trump, running with the same,

I mean, being a, you know, running a borish campaign, you know, dealing with, embracing conspiracy theories like QAnon, that is a huge political problem. I mean, it's not just, It's not just, I mean, if that's the future of the Republican Party, they're not going to win anywhere, right? Except in Georgia, right?

I mean, if you look at the Georgia Senate election, the Luffler-Collins election, it's like they're, they've spent the past week trying to out conspiracy one another. Like the, the endorsement from Marjorie Taylor Green, then for Kelly Leffler, then Doug Collins gets Mike Flynn to endorse him and does a, a poster, a mailing with all of the Russia gate figures. I mean, that's the one place it seems to be. I would, that race is weird because it's essentially a primary. Right. So, and that's the problem, Steve. That's the problem that incentives in primaries, even in bluish states and districts are still,

like in Virginia, where, you know, where I'm from, our Republican Party used to be, the party of, you know, Tom Davis and Bob McDonnell, and even losing, even after suffering some embarrassing defeats, we're the party of what, Corey Stewart and, you know, and you look at some of the statements coming out of the state party. It's become Trumpified as more and more moderate voters and mainstream voters leave the Republican Party. So it's a challenge, but, you know, even, even that, I mean, I think they're going to change their message for the runoff in January. But the bigger problem is that even if that's the political dynamic in a primary, you're still going to lose valuable support, if that's your message in many, many states, many districts across the country in general elections. And at some point, I think the rubber is going to, I mean, you can't, you're not, there's no, there's no, there's not going to be support for being a fringe minority party.

You're going to need to build support to try to get back power. And I also think that being in the minority, often, you know, we saw what happened in 2010 in the run-up to the midterms 10 years ago. You know, there were so many essays and articles about the Republican Party being extinct and the Tea Party driving the Republican Party off the cliff. Back then it was, you remember Sharon Engel and Christine O'Donnell, I'm not a witch. I mean, that, I don't know if there's a fundamental difference between those candidates and some of the crazy, the Marjorie Taylor Green. that we're seeing now. But Republicans won 63 House seats in 2010. They lost a few Senate races because of the crazies, but they still gained a bunch of Senate seats, too. So, you know, I'm more sanguine. I think being in the opposition, it helps Republicans. And I think if they

listen to the right leadership and it's going to be a nasty civil war that's taking place in the next few years that they lose power. But I think I'm a little more sanguine. I'm a little more bullish that Republicans, being in the minority, being the opposition, will help them get back some. Can I go one level, what level deeper on that right then? You mentioned the post election potential for civil war and the right leadership. There's an interesting political article earlier this week about the likelihood that Kevin McCarthy will remain Republican leader after the election, almost regardless. I mean, I think they had a caveat, well, if Republicans lose more than 15 seats, McCarthy

might sort of have a challenger, but basically it's all but over with, and McCarthy's got this issue in. It was very interesting to me is if you go back to October of 2015, when Kevin McCarthy was going to be Speaker of the House, there was a very similar article where he said, I've got the votes. This is a done deal. This is happening. And then three days later, he bowed out because he didn't have the votes. What's going on there? And what do you think about the likelihood that Kevin McCarthy will remain the Republican leader if Republicans have a bad result? So, as you know, Steve, I'm a big sports fan. I watch a lot of football, baseball. You know, the great thing about

sports is that, you know, bad teams fire their coaches, bad teams shake up leadership. You know, it's actually the best meritocracy left in America, sports, sports. You don't see that in a lot of other areas of American life, especially politics, right? Especially, you know, leadership in Congress. You know, look, Kevin McCarthy, if things prevail as they look, if things, you know, turn out as they look right now, you know, Republicans would, you know, lose the house and then lose an even bigger minority, being a bigger minority than anyone ever expected that in terms. 2021. I've got to think there's going to be internal political pressure on McCarthy, just if that ends up being the reality, if they lose House seats after already suffering and embarrassing Shalacking in 2018. You know, even more, I mean, that same article in Politico

suggested that even the committee, National Republican Congressional Committee chairman, Tom Emmer, who's the guy who hires staff, who decides where the money spent, who presides over the races for the House Republicans, I mean, if they lose more seats and he's kept as Committee, Chairman, I just have a hard time believing that. You know, I think there's going to be pressure on leadership. I think there's an interesting, this is now we are, this is turning into a hopeless DC Insider show and apologies for our listeners who didn't want to go there. Having said that, going deeper.

Yeah, but I think there's some, I mean, Tom Emmer, who runs the National Republican Congressional Committee has had an unenviable job of trying to raise and allocate money. to help Republicans win House races around the country in a bad political environment. And at the same time, you know, Kevin McCarthy has been helping to raise money and push money toward President Trump, which I think has made Emmer's job more difficult. And I think that could be a factor in these post-election discussions if Republicans don't do well. Well, and coming full circle to where we started the conversation, at least Stefanik is another contender for the committee chairman.

at the campaign committee. You know, she's made a big, big push to try to recruit more women, increase the diversity within the Republican caucus. She's also been sort of a shapeshifter herself as a moderate when she was first elected and now being a loyal Trump ally in these final months of the, you know, the final stage of the Trump administration. You know, I think Republicans would be nuts not to have someone like that in leadership, given their issues that we've just been talking about with diversity, with, you know,

only having 13 women in their whole conference of 200, you know. So, I mean, I just think there obviously are internal politics that are separate from the external politics. But, you know, Stefanic would make a lot of sense, yet there are these like, you know, Republicans can often, you know, they'd always miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. And I wouldn't be surprised if that happens again. There's a theory in microbiology, for instance, but really just science in general, the Red Queen theory in which basically a parasite and host will always reach equilibrium and evolve to be sort of their most competitive selves. And if one gets an advantage, the other one will evolve to meet that advantage. And that's really how our two-party system has worked now

for decades since the sort of initial realignment back in 1860. And yet, I think we're about to see potentially a huge Democratic win and, you know, leap forward on that treadmill, if you will. Why is it the case that we then don't see a Democratic Party or no one thinks that we'll see a Democratic Party say, great, we're going to keep the Republicans out and just permanently take this part of the electorate by actually moving closer to the center and like holding them Heisman style out to the far fringe of the right where that's the only place they can win votes. And instead there's this assumption that when they win this big majority,

they'll actually move to the left because they can do these things when in fact that's what gives them the opening, the Republicans the opening to take back some of their fallen electorate. So biology was my worst subject in school. But, but, but I think you make a really, really important point. And I'm going to switch it to physics because this is a point I make a lot. of times about our politics. For every political action, there's a reaction in the other direction. And a lot of people blame Trump for all of our political problems. But I wrote about this years ago,

but Obama, when he was president, enjoyed kind of baiting the right, enjoyed trolling the right, taking positions that were liberal, but then making them out to be more mainstream, and then enjoying as the Republicans kind of went further and further to the Tea Party, went further and further to the right. And use that to his advantage, you know, including in that 2012 election. And Trump sort of has done the same thing, except it's on steroids. It's never giving anything to the other side and trying to gaslight and troll them to, to their, to make them even more extreme. So now you basically have two parties that are playing to their extremes. I think the biggest, you know, I think this is actually an encouraging sign. The fact that Joe Biden

won the nomination for the Democrats is running on this platform of normalcy, of, you know, working together with Republicans and Democrats. You may think that's bunk. You may think that's just rhetoric. But I think Biden fundamentally is a different type of politician than we've seen in quite some time. And I think if he does win the presidency, you know, everything flows from the president. And you're right. Like he could, you know, see that having big majorities in Washington could, you know, play his hand in a more progressive direction. But he also could kind of use that to his advantage. He'll have a lot of political capital to spend and he'll try to get Republicans to work on deals relating to the stimulus spending, health care expansion.

in a crisis. I mean, there are opportunities for him to kind of reset this crazy that's been taking place in Washington for some time. And if that's the case, I think, I think, I mean, I think he holds a lot of the keys to the, I think he could enshrine a pretty permanent, or I shouldn't say permanent, but a longer term Democratic majority if he decides not to go full, you know, full left in his first four years in office. Yeah, I mean, Steve, I think the Democrats have an opportunity to relegate Republicans into sort of a permanent minority status, maybe almost a loyal opposition status for decade or more. Yeah, well, you use biology and Josh use physics. Let me use chemistry. No, I know so little about chemistry. I can't even make a joke about chemistry. That was not my

best subject. Yeah, I think, I mean, this will be, if Biden wins, this will be one of the most interesting things to explore. You look at the themes that he's sounded to close the election. You know, he is borrowing Barack Obama's 2004 convention speech, no red America, no blue America, we're all the United States of America. I'm going to be president for everyone. The closing question from Chris Welker of NBC that the debate on Thursday night was, what will you say in your inaugural address to the people who didn't vote for you. And Trump gave, you know, stream of consciousness kind of rambling answer, which he sort of ended up being angry at Democrats. Biden gives this answer that is reminiscent of Barack Obama. I think, Sarah, you're right. I think there's a huge

opportunity for Biden and for Democrats to position themselves as the sane party by pushing away or rejecting the impulses to go super far left. And I think if you look at the way that Biden has talked about these things, he's given sort of mixed signals about what he might do. On the one hand, he's made very clear that he beat Bernie Sanders, that he didn't run on Medicare for all, that he hasn't embraced some of the far-left policy agenda items of those in his party. the other hand, the Joe Biden, who's running as a moderate in the modern Democratic Party,

is really pretty far left on policy. You look at his spending programs, you look at what he's talking about with respect to taxes, you know, sort of half embrace of a Green New Deal or parts of a Green New Deal. He's embraced a lot of things that even as a moderate in the current Democratic party, I think, make him pretty far left looking back historically over the last four or five decades. I don't know if he can pull that off, portray himself as a moderate and govern as a liberal, but I don't think that he will have, people forget that Barack Obama, when Barack Obama won, Republicans were afraid to criticize him at all. I remember writing a piece about this for the weekly standard. Obama comes into office and immediately gets to work on this stimulus bill. And remember,

originally he invited Republicans to participate. He said, give me your ideas. I'm open to your ideas. Come and talk to me. We'll help. And it turned out that he didn't really want to do that. Nancy Pelosi basically was given the keys to the project and took over and made it kind of a wish list for lefty Democratic constituencies. And Obama went along. Obama went along and was sort of the main salesman on this. You talked to Republican leaders at the time. They did not want to criticize Barack Obama. I remember there was, it was either a press conference for me. It was an interview I did with Mitch McConnell.

And I kept trying to bait him to say Barack Obama's name to criticize. And he wouldn't criticize Obama. He would say Democrats in Washington or Nancy Pelosi or whomever. They didn't want to criticize Barack Obama. Joe Biden is not going to enjoy that. I don't think he has the kind of magnetic personality and the charisma that Obama had. So if he comes in, I think, Sarah, your earlier point that people will say, look, this was basically an anti-Trump vote. You don't have the kind of mandate you do.

I think that'll make it harder for Biden to both run to the left and try to implement his agenda while at the same time reaching out for Republicans. I would just add, I think, Steve, I agree 100% with what you just said. I would say that if Biden is elected, you circle the Midwest. And those are folks who don't love Biden, but have grown dissatisfied with Trump. They've gone back and forth in these last few elections. You know, I think Biden has an opportunity, if only because he would be taking office in the middle of a crisis. And I think there is a hunger for help.

If we don't see a pre, a lame duck stimulus that's passed, I mean, there's an opportunity for him to own that in the first months of his administration. And I think his core issue of health care, I mean, that's a much more pronounced issue that has more support, I think, that it did when Obama tried to... And Republicans have left them a massive opening on it. I mean, Republicans have to... Yeah. So I think, and I think the two challenges for Biden, the culture wars, I mean, if you look

at the polling of these Midwestern swing voters, they are very culturally traditionalists. They hate political correctness. A lot of the excesses on the left would be toxic if Biden kind of goes along that path. You know, there are a lot of different ways that could happen. And also the energy, the energies, the, you know, environmentalism versus energy. The Midwest was a, when Democrats passed cap and trade in 2010, it was the Midwest where there was a huge revolt politically. That's, that fueled the losses in that midterm election. So I think Biden has an opening on sort of the core issues that really most Americans care about,

but there's so many traps that that are, that the left is laying for him. And I didn't even mention the Supreme Court packing, which he, I think he punted a little bit this week, trying to have a commission and stuff. But, you know, there are a lot of things that if he gets distracted, from the main challenges that I think most of the country wants them to deal with, that's where the problems would start. All right, Josh, thank you so much for joining us, but I do have one important last question for you. As you said, you're a big sports fan, and we've had kind of a weird sports year.

Maybe most upsetting to me we didn't have the Olympics. What is the sport that is not one of our big three quasi-four, if you include hockey, that you wish were in that pantheon of things that All-American sort of watched in a water cooler style. Wow, that's a great question. How about tennis? Really?

Is that count? Yeah, I mean, I, that is the one sport where when you have Wimbledon and you have, I will definitely like tune in just, just to get a break from. But, you know, I am like a big four type of, I mean, I will watch nonstop. I don't watch much Netflix.

I don't watch much, you know, that many movies these days. It's literally like, you know, basketball, baseball. I mean, it's been a smorgas sport of sports these last couple months because they've all been sandwiched together. Do you wish you had a red zone for another sport? Well, I do have the, and the football red zone is invaluable. Of course. You know, it's weird. I'm a huge baseball fan.

And they have something called strike zone. It's like on my, they don't, they only have it like twice a week. So they basically do what red zone does. And it's actually really, really useful, but it's only on like once or twice a week and I could use it. I mean, you know, it would be something that they should expand. But no, I mean, politics and sports are my like to, I mean, when I need a break from everything that's going on with the day job and with what's going on in the presidential race, I mean, watching the World Series this week is going to be a good thing to go to. Steve, what's your sport that you wish everyone else were as into as you? Badminton.

No. No, you're right. Can you imagine a red zone for badminton? I mean, that would be pretty great. I mean, look, I grew up playing soccer. I remain a pretty big soccer fan. I still follow it to the extent that I can, the La Liga, which is the top league in Spain. I have a team there, Athletico Madrid.

We got smoked in the Champions League yesterday, so it's a little bit of a sad day for me. So probably that. I also think volleyball. I played competitive volleyball growing up. And it's such a fun sport. to watch in such a fun sport to play, whether you're talking about on the beach or

traditional with the six people on a team, it's great. I would love to see more competitive volleyball. I'd go and watch, you know, if there were a professional volleyball league, I would have season tickets to whatever team was in my area. Despite having no interest

in car racing whatsoever, I think that short track speed skating could be a great American sport for us to all get into because it has sort of the violence of some of the other sports that we like and the quickness and I don't know like I'm I'm an original Apollo Ono fan so that's I think that's what I would pick your curling guy is going to be very upset oh I mean I think everyone already is watching curling so that's like the big four right we were you know it's baseball football basketball and curling okay good point sorry Phil

Coach Phil is the best. Yeah, Josh? Don't sleep on ping pong if you've seen Forrest Gump and table tennis. Yeah, that's skill. That's skill. True. Well, thank you listeners for joining us today. Thank you, Josh, for coming on over.

And Josh said he had some foxes in his backyard making a run for it while we were on the pod. So hopefully all as well. Wow, that's good Fox News. Yeah. And I'm doing Fox in 20 minutes. maybe that's an omen. But, um, all right,

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