The NPR Politics Podcast - NPR Politics Live From Charlotte: The Midterms Showdown

Episode Date: June 2, 2018

This is a special episode, recorded in front of a live audience at the McGlohon Theater at Spirit Square in Charlotte on Friday, June 1st. The cast breaks down everything you need to know heading into this year's midterm elections. This episode: Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, political reporter Asma Khalid, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, and political editor Domenico Montanaro. 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

This is Margaret, and I was the first person standing in line waiting to watch the NPR Politics podcast. This is Steve Sabreau. I can only imagine. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. This podcast was recorded at 8.15. That's 8.15 on June 1st. Okay, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast live from Charlotte. I'm Scott Detrow, I cover Congress. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent.

Domenica Montanaro, political editor. And I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. And we are here in Charlotte at the McGloin Theater at Spirit Square in front of a live audience. Everybody say hello. Hello! We are partnering with WFAE for our latest live show, and a huge thanks to them and for their support. Mara, we had promised you walk-on music beforehand.

It didn't happen, but I feel like that was still pretty good. That was pretty good. You know what my walk-on music was going to be? Bad to the bone. So we'll just, you just exude that. We're saving that for another show. So like I said,

we're going to talk a lot about the midterms. It's a big picture conversation. We are now seeing the field fill out. We're seeing week after week primaries happen. We know who the actual candidates are. So Domenico, when we're looking, when we're sitting there in the newsroom thinking through,

okay, what are the races we need to focus on, what's like the center of the bullseye of where this race is going to be fought out? Well, I've said before, but I, you know, I think the road to the majority runs through Bonafish Grills. You know, I mean, it's the... Good restaurant. It's, you know, and where do you find...

Or Cheesecake Factory is maybe. Suburbs! you know I mean it's the it's you know and where do you find yeah I mean you don't find these places in like cool hip cities right I mean they're on the outskirts of urban sprawl right I mean like where urban sprawl exists and where the people who live in those suburbs kind of wish they were going out for dinner in the city

but they're going to Bonefish Grill that's next month's live podcast sponsor, Bonefish Grill. Not speaking from personal experience here. You would love it there. We're going to go out to dinner there. But, you know, 6 o'clock with the kids, it's not a bad time. But, you know, the fact of the matter is the suburbs are really,

really important. I mean, there's a lot of these places, you know, where Hillary Clinton did very well. I mean, she won some two dozen districts in places where Republicans are in those seats currently. And those are the prime targets. I mean, Democrats need to net 23 seats to win back the House. They need to be able to win in those places that Hillary Clinton won. And Asma, a key voter in those districts is the type of voter that you spend a lot of time talking to, and we kind of shorthand them like the lukewarm Republicans. These are districts that vote for Republicans most years, but they voted for Hillary Clinton for president and sent a Republican to Congress. I want your Marco Rubio, John Kasich Republicans.

So the question is, how are they feeling? Are they still dissatisfied? I mean, it's one thing to not like the president of the party that you belong to. And it's another thing to go ahead and vote for the other party, especially in our tribal world of politics. I can tell you the sort of synopsis that I heard from Cobb County, which is a suburb area around Atlanta. Hillary Clinton did win Cobb County. And then I'd be curious to hear from you real quick also, because Scott, I know you've been in some of those places as well. So my quick take is that I do not hear any sense of buyer's remorse among these Republicans. I'm at a mix.

So I would say some of these folks did vote for the president, somewhat reluctantly. Some of them got on board with him fully. And a couple of them did not vote for the president at all. But when you talk to them about their local races, they are energized and excited because they see those people. These are your establishment Republicans. In this case, at least, if we're talking specifically about Cobb County, it's a really energized Republican party. You go to the GOP breakfast, you know, you get a good hundred plus

people there on a Saturday morning. So I have not seen a sense, at least in this particular county, I should say, where people felt in any sense that they were shifting away and moving towards the Democratic Party. So the flip side, which we didn't fully plan out, but we have, is that, I mean, I feel like I've gotten a lot of different evidence from strategists I've talked to, from the Democratic campaigns I've talked to, in that they don't necessarily feel like they need the John Kasich, Marco Rubio, Republican voter to vote for them. They just need enough of them to not bother voting because, you know, American presidential election turnout is still like

pathetically low compared to a lot of other Western countries. But the gap between the presidential turnout and the midterm turnout is so much that it's just a question of who's energized, who is actually taking the time to vote. And on all counts, on state House special elections, on all the House special elections we've seen, there is a clear trend line of Democrats being more enthusiastic, showing up, knocking on doors. And a lot of those Democrats not only sat out the last four midterms, but many of them sat out 2016 in states that were decided by a narrow margin,

like North Carolina. Well, you know, the curse of the Democratic Party is for some reason they can only get their voters out every four years instead of every two. The Republicans show up every election. But as Scott said, in the special elections and the races we've seen so far, they seem to be exorcising that curse. In other words, Democrats are turning out. Republicans are turning out too. It's just the Democrats are turning out more and they're

overperforming their past turnout performances from past midterms. And that's what the Democrats are counting on. Because when you look at one thing about presidential approval, I just wanted to add, when you look at the numbers of people who strongly disapprove of Trump versus the people who strongly approve of Trump. The strong disapprove is about twice as much. That's a sign of Democratic enthusiasm. And there's one very specific reason for this. It's women.

I mean, Democratic women, you know, when people talk about the year of thearies, Democratic women have won a good number of these seats. I mean, some 40 percent of the of the primaries have been won by women. That's unprecedented. And it doesn't happen. It's not happening on the Republican side. And you are seeing a record number of women running for the House. I believe there's over 300 women who are running for seats in the House. That is still a very small number compared to the number of men that are running for those seats. But it's an uptick. And to your point, Domenico, I will wholeheartedly agree that we've seen a lot of energy, specifically among women. I think the one sort of contrarian point I guess I have is,

you know, to echo a bit of what you were saying, Mara, is that Democratic voters historically, they don't turn out in these elections. And so, you know, if you look at, again, historical voting patterns, right, they just haven't shown up. And if you want to guess who's a non-voter, they're more likely to be Hispanic, they're more likely to be African-American. If you want to guess who's a habitual voter, they tend to be a suburban college-educated white person. But there's a lot of wild cards this year. For instance, the Parkland school shooting. There is now a huge move to register high school students. They are the least likely to show up. Newly minted 18-year-old voters, but we're seeing

registration among that age group going up. Will they show up in November? We'll find that out. And today we got more metrics suggesting an increasingly strengthening economy. We have the lowest unemployment rate since 2000. We have 223,000 new jobs. If the economy is turned around in the way, by all indications, it looks like it's doing, doesn't that pretend a good year for the party in power? Why are Republicans looking at big losses if things are going so well? I mean, I would make the argument that it's twofold. So one is I actually was speaking with a Republican pollster recently who made the argument that, yes, the economy looks good. So you have 3.8% unemployment, which really is somewhat unprecedented in modern

history. That's only been the case, I think, prior to 2000. You'd have to go back to like the 1960s. But we've had extreme wage stagnation. So you talk to people, and often they're feeling like they're one or two months away from a disaster. And I would argue that many folks say that just sort of colloquially, regardless of where they're at on the income ladder. And so that's one point, is that people have not felt those gains, in part because of wage stagnation. The other thing, though, to me is really fascinating. That is that as much as the economy is doing well, and that sort of translates perhaps in a presidential year, you don't actually see that translating in midterm years.

It's less of a factor. It is. It's very much less of a factor. I was speaking with a professor down at Emory University in Atlanta. His name is Alan Abramowitz. And he basically looked at every election cycle, I believe going back to World War II. And he charted a few different measures to see how, like what was a good predictor of who would win, which party would win the midterms. And he said that the economy was actually not very helpful as a predictor at all. There were other things like the generic ballot, which we should probably explain real quick.

Which has to do with which party do you prefer to control Congress? Sort of just generically. Who would you vote for, the generic Democrat or the generic Republican? Yeah. And so he said that's actually a much more helpful factor to see which party will likely win more seats in the House. And then the other factor he mentioned is the approval rating of the president. Well, and that's a big question. Usually a president's approval rating tracks with the economy. The economy is really doing well.

Why isn't Donald Trump's approval rating higher? It's historically low. So two theories. One is he is benefiting from the economy. Without this great economy, his approval rating would be in the 30s. Or because he's such a unique figure, he just is divorced from the normal rules of political gravity. Yeah, I mean, President Trump is clearly benefiting from some of the peace and prosperity that we're talking about. I mean, back in December, his approval rating was averaging about 37% in the Real Clear Politics average, and now it's around 42% or so. So the presidential approval rating at 42% is a terrible approval rating historically for how presidents wind up doing in midterms. The thing that you have to realize with this is that presidential approval ratings, when they're lower, generally they lose

more seats. Their party loses more seats in midterms. Bill Clinton, for example, when his approval rating was up over 60%, Democrats did fairly well while controlling Congress. When you look at George W. Bush, however, and his approval rating was at 39% in 2006, Republicans wound up losing the House to Democrats. You look at Barack Obama's approval rating when it was at 45%, Democrats wound up losing 63 seats in 2010. Now, does that mean that President Trump, whose approval rating is 42%, is going to lose more seats or as many seats as Democrats did in 2010? Probably not because of some of the structural advantages that Republicans have. You think about how some of these districts were redrawn in 2011. You know, the strong economy, the fact that Democrats are clustered in cities and that it's pretty easy to draw districts around those Democrats because of that.

But at the same time, there's no real aberration away from the idea that if you have a pretty low approval rating, you're going to lose seats. And even as President Trump has ticked up, and that's been something we've talked about a lot, when it comes down to it, it's still way lower than almost any other president at this point in their presidency. And I think so. Yeah. Oh, so I was just gonna mention one quick thing about the economy, because you mentioned that. So the year that Alan Abramowitz, the professor at Emory, singled out for me as kind of the historical parallel, he said was 1966. You had President Johnson in office. Sure, the president was enormously unpopular, and the Vietnam War was going on. But he said the economy was actually doing quite well. And he did not have, as you can see, actually, the president's party did not do very well that year. What we're doing is we're looking at all of these indicators that have suggested the size of a incumbent

party's losses. When you have the White House and both houses of Congress and your president is below 45 percent, generally that adds up to you're going to lose big. Are they going to lose the 23 seats the Democrats would need in the House to take control? Unclear. So there's all sorts of indicators that we look at, and we are not quite sure which one is going to be the operative one. So we could talk about this for a while. I guess we talk about it like three times a week for the span of a year. But we have only talked about half of the congressional elections. There's the whole Senate to talk about as well. We're going to shift gears and talk about the Senate.

It's not good for Democrats. No, it's terrible. No, it's bad for them because of the numbers flat out and the geography. So, you know, there are 26 Democrats that are defending seats this year, only nine Republicans overall. And when you look at the battleground, where the states states are being fought a lot of them are in places that Trump Won by 20 points or more in some cases some places are deep red states But more it's not like this map is bad for Democrats because Democrats did anything wrong. In fact, it's the opposite, right? They happen to win elections in a few states that were surprising for them to win in six years ago

When all of these guys were elected, those were the years when the Tea Party was running amok in the Republican primaries, and Mitch McConnell hadn't yet quite figured out how to bring them to heel. So you had a lot of people like Christine O'Donnell, you know, I am not a witch, remember her? You know, people who were too extreme, they would win the primary, but they were too extreme to win a general election. So you got a lot of Democrats in states like Indiana and Missouri, places where Democrats theoretically shouldn't win. McConnell's team believes that between the last three election cycles that they lost probably five Republican Senate seats because of the Tea Party.

And they're hoping to get them back based on this really good map. But I will say this. When I talk to Democrats, when I say, what's the definition of success in the Senate this year? They say, just holding our own. In other words, if they could get the status quo, 51 Republicans, 49 Democrats, after November, they would consider that beyond their wildest dreams. They could pick up some, lose some.

But if they end up net, net, net the same, they'll be thrilled. Asma, one thing I learned sitting next to you is that there are no Indianans. They're, they're Hoosiers because you are one. So, I mean, explain to us how much of anomaly it was for a Democrat to be representing Indiana to begin with and what the challenges a Democrat like Joe Donnelly and some of these other, you know, the John Testers of the world face in this climate. I mean, I think that Indiana will be one of those races where I would say it would be extremely hard pressed for Joe Donnelly or any Democrat to win election again. So when Mara talks about maintaining the status quo, you could also make the case that that would mean picking up a Senate seat somewhere else and forfeiting or losing some of these states that

they already hold like Indiana. So just to give you a bit of perspective, Indiana is a state that in 2016, Donald Trump won every single county in this state but four. That is a lot of counties. And, you know, it historically hasn't always been that way. There have been Democratic senators in the past, but it just shows you the sort of overall tilt that you've had in many Midwestern states, I would argue, towards the Republican Party. We saw something, I think, akin to that, you know, beginning in Ohio, though Ohio, I think, the senator there, Sherrod Brown, is quite popular as a Democrat. And Domenico, at the same time, Republicans are feeling more defensive than usual in a few of these states. I mean, President Trump went to Tennessee this week to campaign because a whole mix of factors had led to Democrats to feel like

even with this uphill climb, they might be able to snag a surprise seat in Tennessee, especially, you know, six months after they won a Senate seat in Alabama. Right. And they have a fairly popular person running in that seat who cuts a sort of moderate image, which is another discussion and internal fight that Democrats are having among themselves. Should you put forward the kinds of candidates who, you know, Rahm Emanuel, who ran the House committee to help elect those Democrats in 2006, believe that you needed to put forward these more moderate, more centrist Democrats to win in places where there are more Republicans and more independents? And is the party comfortable with that? Because the energy right now,

when you look at all the polling, is on the most left part of the spectrum. For the most part, the answer to that question is they're pragmatic. They want to find, Democrats want candidates that fit their districts. And it means if you're in California, maybe you do want someone from the left. But if you're in the heartland, you want somebody who can reflect the district or the state. And for the most part, if you look at Virginia, Ralph Northam, Doug Jones in Alabama, which was a stunning upset, Connor Lamb in the 18th District of Pennsylvania, certainly Phil Bredesen in Tennessee. They are all candidates who fit their states or districts.

I'm glad everybody came out tonight, and I'm glad that everybody listens to the podcast on a regular basis. But Mara, I'm wondering... Our plan to start right away. But Mara, I'm wondering, what is the value of all this conversation on June 1st when it comes down to it? Like, how much can change between now and the election and how worthless is a lot of this analysis at this point, given, not worthless,

but given that there's incredibly high value? Not worthless at all. First of all, you know, polling... Let me ask it this way. When does it start to lock in? When can it not really shift away? incredibly high value. Not worth this at all. First of all, you know, polling... Let me ask it this way. When does it start to lock in? When can it not really shift away?

What people believe is that the generic ballot, which people are fixated on as a kind of barometer of... Sounds like you're not. I'm not fixated on now, but I'm going to be fixated on it after Labor Day.

Oh, okay. So that's when you guys should turn into raving political junkies on the generic ballot. But there's all sorts of other things to watch for. What's the economy going to look like this summer?

Will the wild card of a trade war take its toll? Will there be other external events, like a hurricane or more shootings? So there are a lot of things to watch for. But I think that we know what the landscape is. We know what history tells us. And we're watching, and candidates matter, and we're watching a lot of these individual races. And Asma, one trend that we keep seeing every Tuesday is that despite the fact that the national headlines moved on from it after the latest repeal effort failed. Week after week, voters are going and Googling health care, and they're telling pollsters health care is their top issue. And Democrats feel really good about that, which is such a contrast from when these guys were all running six years ago,

and they were running away from Obamacare because a lot of voters didn't like it. Now Democrats say, we would love to talk about Obamacare over and over again and talk about health care in general, because you know what? That's on you, Republicans. Yeah, that's the argument that they're making. I do think it is a somewhat complicated argument for voters to always say health care equals Democrats. Like, I think that's what the Democratic operatives will say. But then you sort of push them and get a sense of, well, how are you coming to that conclusion? And they believe that because Republicans did try to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and portions of it actually were repealed. Like the mandate.

Correct. That they feel that they can now associate your rising premiums with the Republican Party. But to your point, Scott, it is amazing. Week after week, if you look at Google Trends, every single primary we have seen, health care, Medicare, Medicaid is at the top of the list above everything else. The two issues that stick out from each side, one is health care, the other is tax cuts. Republicans still haven't quite figured out how to message on tax cuts. It's still sort of a meh issue when you look at it in the polls. Good idea, bad idea, Do I feel it? Do I

not? A significant, a substantive chunk of voters have their taxes actually go up. It's complicated. There's the argument that even if you got a tax cut, somebody else got a much bigger tax cut and the corporation got a much bigger tax cut. Yeah. You know, and healthcare, I mean, you guys are right about the Google trends. It's also shows up in polling, right? I mean, one of the polls that we did, and we looked at just like, what are your top issues? I was stunned to see that health care was like, far and away, you know, more than double what everybody else talked about for something that needs to be dealt with immediately, right? It just, it surpassed everything else. And this was the single biggest failure of the Republican Congress, that they couldn't repeal it and replace it with something better, as Donald Trump promised.

Wait till October when everybody gets their letters saying what their premiums are going to go up to. And that is the Democratic argument, that that's going to happen. Now, you do wonder, though, how much of the election is sort of locked in and baked in by that point. But, you know, it's talk about an October surprise. Yeah. And I remember being on the campaign trail with Donald Trump in October, right when those premiums went up. And, you know, he was talking about that way more than he was talking about the FBI and the crowds were responding. Last thing on all of this, both the House and the Senate, what's one big thing that each of you is looking for, thinking about, paying attention to, to give you a sense of which way the big picture is going here?

Can I go first? Yes, of course. So I am very interested in every primary looking at the raw turnout numbers. It is not like an apples to apples argument, but one real quick example was the primary in Georgia very recently. So there's been a lot of talk about can a Democratic governor win in Georgia. What we saw in the primary was that actually there were more Republicans who came out to vote, but not by huge margins. I think there was about like 50,000 more Republicans than Democrats. In 2014, there were about 200,000 more Republicans who

actually voted than the Democrat for governor. So anyhow, long story short, I think the numbers we're seeing in primaries is a good clue to possibly the way we'll see things turn out in November. Yeah, I'm watching for what the Republicans finally settle on as a message. Now we're in this primary season, so you're hearing a lot about immigration because that's the kind of message that works with the Republican base. You hear Donald Trump talking about it

all the time in his rallies. Is that going to be the kind of thing that Republicans will think will energize their base in a general election, or will they go back to trying to sell the tax cuts, which they've had a hard time doing? You know, the thing is, we they've had a hard time doing? You know, the thing is, we talked about President Trump's numbers ticking up because of peace and prosperity.

I mean, I think that those are the two things that are going to be the sort of hinge for him that hold him in place where he is or the bottom falls out. You know, does the economy start to change? Does it reverse position? Does unemployment tick up? And how do independents respond to what happens over the next several months, whether it's the president's unpredictability or economic measures and stability? And who do they wind up trusting more? Alright, well the show is almost done but before we do the final credits, a very important piece of business I forgot before. Shout out to Sandy Schuster and Rich Dutcher. Rich, happy birthday

to you from Kelsey. She sent us an email a couple weeks ago asking us to wish you a happy birthday. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Let's close this show. That is the show for tonight. Thank you, Charlotte. We loved coming here to the beautiful LaGrange Theater.

Thanks to our partner, WFAE. You can support this podcast by supporting them, your local public radio station. Thanks so much to our sponsor, The League. And we couldn't have done it without Allie Prescott, Jessica Goldstein, Andrew Hayden, Cy Sykes, and the NPR events team. The visuals behind us are made by the talented Renee Klar

with help from Mina Tavakoli. This show and the podcast are produced by Barton Girdwood and Barbara Sprunt. The show tonight was engineered by Andy Huther. Our editors are Beth Donovan, Shirley Henry, and Mathani Maturi. And most of all, thank you to the audience tonight and to everybody listening. Thank you all for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

I'm Scott Detrow. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Mara Eliason, national political correspondent. I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. And I'm a solid political reporter. Hey, it's Scott again. So at the end of the show, we asked everybody in the audience to tell us what they can't let go this week. It was a lot of fun.

Here's some of what the people in Charlotte had to say. Hi, my name is David Miller, and what I can't let go of is that we had a Star Wars movie come out in the past week, and I haven't heard Tamara Keith's take on it. And I'll tell you what, I just had my first child in the past three months, and I know it's a lot to take care of, but I still want

to hear what Tam has to say. I grew up in Gwinnett County, Georgia, and they just elected the first black woman as a judge there. And so on the heels of the woman that they've nominated for the Democratic candidate of governor, I'm like, go Georgia. Hi, my name is Leah, and what I can't let go of is Bobby Kennedy's dog Freckles. And I just watched a documentary about Bobby Kennedy's 68 run for president

and some of the other supporters that were maligning him for bringing his dog Freckles on the campaign trail. So I can't let go of Freckles. Yesterday, Marla Elyson said, quote, yo mama wears army boots. And I think that's the funniest thing in the world. My name is Luke Direction, and I can't let go of Mark Hamill dragging Donald Trump and saying it's Memorial Day not me-morial day. Hi my name is Ryan and I'm from Jacksonville Florida so what I can't let go is all the beautiful mountains in North Carolina. My can't let go this week is how all my friends back in Canada are freaking out about these tariffs the

United States everyone in Canada it's a top news story. Trudeau's going to get back at Trump. And America's like, Kim Kardashian came to the White House this week. My name's Steve Monahan from Greensboro, North Carolina. What I can't let go is that I just got to see all my favorite political heroes here in Charlotte, North Carolina, and I just really appreciate them all. It's taken time to come out and hang out with us, and it's really a blessing.