The NPR Politics Podcast - Midterm Update: Trump Pivots To Immigration; Where The Parties Put Their Money

Episode Date: October 30, 2018

With a week left till the midterm elections President Trump is focusing on hardline immigration policies that helped him win in 2016. And Republicans shift the focus of their spending efforts in the final days. This episode: political reporter Asma Khalid, Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, Congressional reporter Kelsey Snell, White House correspondent Scott Horsley, and political editor Scott Horsley. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi! This is Rob, Sam, Hosa, Louis, Murad, Benj, Yuti, Laura, Tara, Halimat, Hazem, Lucia, Diane, Megan, William, Eddie, Mariana. From the Rosenwald Rare Books Room of the Library of Congress, where we're meeting after a year of research in libraries and archives in Mexico, Indonesia, Mongolia, China, Pakistan, the U.S., Japan, Britain, Cambodia, Nigeria, Italy. Taiwan. Peru. Guatemala. India. Spain. Macedonia. You're listening to the NPR Politics Podcast, which was recorded at 2.56 p.m. on Tuesday, October 30th. Keep in mind that things may have changed by the time you hear it. All right, here's the show. That was, I think, the most earnest timestamp we've ever had.

I love it. I love it. We were all in a snarky mood. That timestamp was a good reset. I loved it. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. President Trump wants to eliminate birthright citizenship. It was always told to me that you needed a constitutional amendment. Force one. You don't.

You don't. Well, maybe you do, and we'll get to that in a minute. But one thing the president actually did do was send troops to the border in response to a migrant caravan. I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Kelsey Snell.

I also cover Congress. And I'm Scott Horsley. I cover the White House. All right. So we are exactly one week away from Election Day. And this is an election that Donald Trump has really wanted to make about immigration, I would argue, for months at this point. So, Scott Horsley, why don't you start? We know that there are over 5,000 troops that are being deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border in response to the coming caravan.

What exactly can these troops do? The troops are going to be playing a support role. They're not going to be arresting would-be border crossers, but they will be supporting the Border Patrol agents who do that work, basically just beefing up what the Border Patrol can already do. And this is not the only time we've heard about immigration. This week from the president, he brought up immigration again in an interview with Axios, where he said that he wants to end birthright citizenship. You can definitely do it with an act of Congress, but now they're saying I can do it just with an executive order. Now, how ridiculous,

we're the only country in the world where a person comes in, has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years with all of those benefits. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. And it has to end. Scott Horsley, what is birthright citizenship? Well, it's the notion that anyone who is born in the United States automatically becomes a citizen of the United States. The president is wrong when he says we're the only country that observes birthright citizenship. Actually, Canada, Mexico, about 30 other countries, most of the Western Hemisphere practice this. It's enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. And I'm not sure who the they

is that's telling the president he can change this by executive order. But it is very much, as Jonathan Swan suggests in that interview clip, in dispute. So, I mean, can a president really take it away then if something is enshrined in the Constitution? As you mentioned, Scott, it's part of the 14th Amendment. It's an amendment that was passed after the Civil War, one of these Reconstruction Act amendments. It's something that we have had for, at this point, more than a century and a half.

Can you just take it away through an executive order? Well, I think it's important here to note that the House Speaker Paul Ryan was out in Kentucky today campaigning, and he did an interview today in Kentucky. And he says, I'm a believer in following the plain text of the Constitution. And I think in this case, the 14th Amendment is pretty clear. And that would involve a very, very lengthy constitutional process. And what he presumably means there is that, yes, Congress could take action, or you would have to get the states to vote. To ratify.

Yeah, you would have to ratify a change to the Constitution, which is an extremely high bar. The plain text of the 14th Amendment is, all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens. Now, if there's any dispute at all, it's about that little phrase, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens. Now, if there's any dispute at all, it's about that little phrase, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. The Supreme Court weighed in on this more than a century ago and said, no, it covers everybody except the kids of diplomats and the kids of foreign invaders. But the president's on pretty thin ice here.

We should maybe interject a little Surgeon General warning. It's very possible this purported executive order is never going to materialize. This may very well be the kind of vaporware that we've heard from the president on other subjects. It's very much designed to gin up enthusiasm among the GOP base. One of the things that we were talking about all last week when the news was dominated by attempted bombings and then that terrible shooting in Pittsburgh, where President Trump is right now as we tape this, is that President Trump was pretty clearly frustrated that those bombings were dominating the news. He put out that tweet where he put bombs in quotes,

saying that he was upset that this was the conversation. President Trump, as you mentioned, Asma, wanted to talk about immigration over and over and over again. He kept returning to it in recent weeks in the campaign trail. This is a card that he can play to to shift attention for a moment, at least back to his hard line immigration message, which he thinks will work well in exciting Republican voters. And we should point out that, I mean, the reason he thinks it will work well is that it did work well for him in 2016. If you look at the exit polls amongst voters who actually thought that immigration was an important issue, they tended to trend way more Republican than Democratic. And, you know, look, birthright citizenship is actually something that came up. I remember during the Republican primary in 2016, Donald Trump talked about it first, but then we shortly thereafter had Bobby Jindal. I think it was Rand Paul came up in the primary. They were all talking about it first, but then we shortly thereafter had Bobby Jindal. I think it was Rand Paul.

Came up in the primary. Ben Carson. They were all talking about it. And then was never heard of again for almost two years until here we are a week out from the midterm elections. And suddenly it surfaces again, probably to go back under a rock until the president again needs to gin up enthusiasm. It's a double edged sword, though. We have a Republican congressman from the suburbs of Philadelphia, Ryan Costello. Now, he's retiring this year, but he's calling this political malpractice on the part of the president because in the most competitive House races, where there tend to be a lot of immigrants, this could really backfire on the

GOP and the president's party, even as it works to his benefit in some of those more rural red states where the Senate contest is being thought out. That's a really, really good point, because I think this issue really does divide the Republican Party in a pretty serious way. And if you're the president thinking about trying to turn out Republican base voters, and if you're thinking that the base is going to carry an election, that is far more likely to happen at a statewide level. So like in a Senate race. But when it comes to congressional races, these are much more narrow groups of people.

And for the most part, the battleground, as we've talked about a million times in this podcast, the battleground for the House is happening in the suburbs and just outside of the suburbs. And those are places where you have much more moderate Republican voters and your Trump style base just isn't as dominant. Right. Throw the immigrants out is not the message that's going to get you college educated suburban women voters. it as his priority to some degree, because this isn't the first time we're hearing him speak in sort of strong, passionate terms around immigration, right? I feel like this is just the latest iteration of him trying to see which cultural message might stick. I mean, he's been warning us about a caravan that is coming from Central America to the U.S.-Mexico border. He's announced that there will be 5,000 troops sent to the border. I mean, it's sort of the list goes on and on. He's warned us about many other potential things that he's sort of saying to his base could happen in the realm of immigration. Well, if you think about his focus

on the Senate, it makes a lot of sense, right? He has been told throughout the almost two years of his presidency that the thing that is standing in the way of him getting everything that he wants is a 60 vote threshold in the Senate. And he sees the Senate as a place that approves the personnel that he wants, that gets the Supreme Court justices through. So his focus on the Senate is fairly logical when you're thinking about what the president's goals are. Maybe he's putting his eggs in the Senate basket and more or less surrendering the GOP majority in the House, or maybe that's just the only mode he has. So I want to ask, you know, Kelsey, you as well as Scott Detrow, because both of you have been out recently to states where immigration is really important to parts of the electorate. Kelsey, you were just in Florida. And Scott, I know you have been in Nevada. So talk to me a

little bit about what you've heard in terms of actually how some of this rhetoric, say, from the president is actually affecting voters at this point. I think Florida might be a little bit of an anomaly in this situation where you the area that I was in was just south of Miami. And it's represented by a Republican, Carlos Curbelo. And you have a lot of Republicans there. But a lot of them are Republicans who are also immigrants or Republicans who are farmers who rely on immigrant labor. And these are some groups of people that really split with the president on this. And their concern is more about passing laws that fix the immigration system. And when they say fix, they mean allow more immigrants in, particularly skilled workers. But when I was

up in New Jersey, I heard so much about the caravan and people worried about the caravan, Republican voters who were really focused. That seems to have gotten through the noise to people. So interesting, given that New Jersey is quite far from the U.S.-Mexico border. Yeah, I was surprised at how many people really did bring that up. And, you know, it's one of the things, we're stuck in Washington, we get a sense of how much something is breaking through, but it's not until you get out there and talk to people. And when it came up in person after person after person, it seems to really be sticking. When I was in Nevada, you saw the flip side of this where Democrats view this as a base issue. A big chunk of Latino voters in Nevada and Democrats need them to show up and vote.

So you saw candidates like Jackie Rosen for Senate, but House candidates as well, gubernatorial candidates talking a lot about this, reminding voters about Trump's decision to try and cancel the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to roll back protected status for people in countries that has been on the books for a long time. Several other anti-immigrant policies the Trump White House has pushed saying you need to vote. And there's an interesting broader argument that I've heard in places like Nevada, but also places like Georgia, where I was this past weekend, where Democrats have taken a step back and are trying to frame this election as a

referendum on American values, saying to voters, what do you want this country to be about? What kind of country do you think this is? What kind of country do you want to show up and support? And making it a broad referendum on all these divisive things that President Trump has done in his two years in office. To some degree, what you're describing, I'll agree. I've heard that. I heard it down from Democrats in Florida as well. But it reminds me of kind of the closing argument that Hillary Clinton made in 2016, which you could argue just did not actually turn out to be very successful for Democrats. Well, she's not on the ballot this time. Fair point. She's not. And I

think when you talk about President Trump is replaying his 2016 tactics, you have to think about the fact that Hillary Clinton is not on the ballot and you have a lot of fresher candidates, a lot of first time candidates who voters might be a lot more inclined to support or cross an aisle for than they would somebody who'd been on their TV screens for 30 years. Also, you have President Trump with a record now. Before, he was a person who had a lot of promises. And we heard from voters all the time, right, that were saying that, well, we take him seriously, but not literally. Or we think of we don't know how he's going to we have to give him a chance. Well, they've given him a chance. And now this is an opportunity for voters to express whether or not they're happy with what he did. All right. Well, I am sure that immigration is not entirely going to disappear between now and Election Day. So we'll probably have more to talk about this. But Scott Horsley, we're going to let you go for now. I know you've got a jet, but thank you very much. Great to be with you. Bye, other Scott.

And Kelsey and Scott Detro, stick around because we're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, we're going to look at where Democrats and Republicans are focusing their money and their efforts in the final days before the election. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Grow with Google. Digital skills are becoming more and more important in today's economy. That's why Grow with Google is providing free online training and tools to help Americans learn the skills they need to succeed. Learn more about Grow with Google and get started by visiting google.com slash grow. More than 20 years. That's how long Olympic gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar abused the girls and women who came to see him

for treatment. Believed, a new podcast from Michigan Radio and NPR, digs into how he got away with it for so long. And we're back. And we've got Domenico Montanaro here with us. Hey, Domenico. Hey there, Asma. All right. So let us start this conversation just talking about money because money is always important. And it's certainly very important when it comes to elections, how the political parties are spending all of this cash that they have in the final days of the election. So, Domenico, let's just start with a quick kind of recap of who has spent the most money. Well, first of all, let's start with sort of overall how much money

is expected to be spent in this election, because it's a huge, huge number. There's more than five billion dollars expected to be spent. The Center for Responsive Politics has forecast. And that is an unprecedented number for a midterm election. It's a whopping sum, like it's just huge. And a lot of that money is going to Democratic candidates. Frankly, there's so much energy on the Democratic side with small donors that you're seeing candidates raise unbelievable amounts of money. For example, more than 60 Democratic House candidates raised a million dollars or more in just the third quarter, which is unprecedented. The thing that got the most attention was the Democrat running for Senate in Texas, Beto O'Rourke, raising something like $30 million in one quarter.

$33 million in one quarter. That's running for president money, not running for Senate money. And a lot of these House candidates have been raising the type of money you see for a Senate campaign. Absolutely. You're seeing that all over the place, in fact. And this, you think, just suggests sort of an enthusiasm, particularly on the Democratic side at this point? Well, you know, it's one measure of enthusiasm, certainly, that if you're willing to open up your wallets and give to a candidate, then that's a big deal. Now, one advantage that

Republicans have is they are winning on outside spending. Those super PACs and outside groups are giving Republicans an advantage and really giving them a lot of air cover, whether it be in these House districts or in Senate districts. Because another fact I want to let you know about in the Senate races, Democrats are outspending Republicans and have outraised Republicans in 10 of the 12 most competitive races so far. And the only two are Florida and New Jersey. And what do those races have in common? Very wealthy Republican candidates who have poured tons of their own money into the race. Even candidates who are trailing, like Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota. She is, at this point, probably viewed as the Democratic incumbent most

in danger of losing her seat. She raised, I'm forgetting the exact number, but it was definitely tens of millions of dollars in the days after she announced that she was not going to vote for Brett Kavanaugh. Just a flood of money coming in to help her campaign, even as she faces a very uphill fight at this point. She's raised three times as much money as her Republican opponent, Congressman Kevin Cramer. At the same time, it's also North Dakota. There's only so much money you can spend on the air in North Dakota. So talk to me about Republican candidates a little bit, right? Because we have talked, I think, so far more about the Democratic candidates. I'm curious, can you quantify for me how much we're talking about when it comes to Republican candidates?

Because you said a lot of the money is coming from outside groups. Well, Democrats have outraised Republicans $490 million to $353 million through three quarters. So still a lot of money going to Republicans, but not as much as Democrats, obviously. We should keep in mind that 2016 was the first cycle where there was a serious conversation about, is this the death of the TV ad in political campaigns? I mean, famously, Donald Trump waited until incredibly late in the general election to even begin airing TV ads. This had been happening more and more for several cycles, but 2016 was the first time that we saw social media advertising, digital advertising, being just as important to so many campaigns as television advertising. And especially if you're in a house race, you can get up more quickly. You can target it to specific voters. You can be more nimble with it.

And if you have a ton of money coming in at the end, you can use it for Facebook and Twitter and everything else advertising in a way that sometimes it's harder to book that TV time. So, Domenico, I want you to give us a picture at this point, because we are one week away from the election on where we are seeing. Let's start with the Republicans first, where we are seeing them spend their money at this point. And have we noticed any shifts in where that money is being spent? Well, look, you got to look at the House, because the House is really where this race is being won or lost as far as Democrats thinking they can take back at least one chamber, right?

Because the Senate looks more like it's trending Republican and likely to stay that way because of the landscape that favors them. But when I talked to campaign officials today, they acknowledged that some of these resources are having to be diverted from a lot of these top tier races in those suburban, high educated, wealthier suburbs. Give us a couple examples, like which types of places. So places outside of Washington, D.C., like the 10th congressional district for Barbara Comstock, or outside of the Denver suburbs where Mike Kaufman, the Republican, is running in the 6th congressional district, like outside of Kansas City, for example,

Kansas City, Kansas, where you have Kevin Yoder, a Republican who seems to be down a lot within the internal polling that a lot of the campaign committees have seen. And they need to at this point figure out where they're going to most sort of move their resources. And what one person told me was that the firewall has shifted. It's shifted from there to other districts that are a little further out that you wouldn't have expected to see Republicans having to spend money in places like South Carolina's first congressional district, for example, not the kind of place, usually a pretty pro Republican place. Not that that means the Democrat is likely to win there, but that Republicans are having to spend money there to save some of these folks. So why are they moving the money away from some of these places? Well, because when you get towards the end of a campaign, you just have to decide where you have

your best opportunities. And I talked to a lot of Democrats and Republicans who said, we talked already about these outside groups and how much they're spending. There's a hope, particularly among Republicans, as they move out of districts, that these outside groups who have lots of money will move in. But the ads that they move in have largely, as we've talked about before, been more about Nancy Pelosi, and they've been more about some really divisive, negative, really rough ads that are actually turning off a lot of voters that I've talked to. And they actually pay more for ads. Campaigns get a discount and can actually buy more for their money. And if people follow real estate and you're looking for houses,

you understand suburbs versus exurbs. The suburbs are right outside the city and the exurbs are just outside the suburbs and there's a little bit cheaper housing. It's like the faraway suburbs. Super commuters. Right. Yeah, super commuters. Right. These are super commuters, right? These are people who decided, you know, maybe I don't make as much money, but I really want a big house still. And they've sort of have some expansion into areas that might have previously been rural and now are being developed.

That's where a lot of the races now are that Republicans are trying to firm up those districts. Huh. That's interesting. And so presumably the demographics of the people living in those districts are also different. It sounds like you're saying they're more favorable to the Republican Party. These are districts that presumably Republicans ought to win. Yes. Generally, these are districts that Republicans do win. And that's what's been surprising for a lot of people. So, Scott, I'm curious, you know, when you look at Democrats,

do you have a sense of where they're really focusing their money at at this point with just a week left before Election Day? Everywhere. Everywhere. There. Yes. And I think there's this weird tension going on because on one hand, the polls remain incredibly close in a lot of these races, even these races that Republicans are pulling back on, as Domenico was just saying. On the other hand, Democrats see the trends moving in their directions. They feel like the independent voters are breaking for them. They're seeing some evidence that their base is energized and showing up to vote. And they feel like, and especially given all the money that they have, they're able to start spending money in more Republican-friendly districts, if anything,

to put the Republicans on defense and focus and force them to spend the money on their turf. So it's really aggressive movement from Democrats at this point to try and expand the map. And Domenico, as we've been talking about, it's hard to rationalize or it's hard to square that with the incredibly tight polls that we're seeing in all these races. But that's what Democrats have been saying all along. One of Nancy Pelosi's favorite phrases all year is that if a wave comes, it'll be tiny droplets of rain that put Democrats over the top in each of these districts. And that's for a lot of factors, among them, the fact that Republicans in a lot of key states were the ones who drew the district lines in 2011 and 2012 that set up these Republican

leaning districts. Redistricting is a huge key point here because Democrats are playing mostly on all of these places, for the most part, on Republican to Republican-leaning areas. And because of that, it's insulated some of these candidates to a significant degree. And it's one of the caveats that Democrats talk about. They said, look, in past wave years, those places that are most likely to flip, suddenly you start to see an opening up of a much wider margin than what you're seeing right now.

And the polls now, you're saying, are still really tight. They're still very tight, even at the places that are most likely to flip. You have a very wide field right now, but it might be a little bit of an inch deep kind of thing. Mile wide, inch deep are some of these races.

Well, all right. That is a wrap for today. We'll be back as soon as there is more political news that you need to know about. And don't forget, you can subscribe to our weekly newsletter. It breaks down all of the big themes of the week and you can find our best digital stories on there. Subscribe to the NPR Politics newsletter at npr.org slash politics newsletter. I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. I'm Scott Detrow, I cover Congress. I'm Kelsey Snell, I also cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.