We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - 15-MIN MIDTERM REVIEW: WTH Happened!? with Jessica Yellin

Episode Date: November 10, 2022

By popular demand, Jessica Yellin, founder of News Not Noise, returns to update us on the top takeaways from the midterm election yesterday.  About Jessica:  Jessica Yellin is the founder of News Not Noise, a Webby Award winning independent digital media brand dedicated to giving the audience information, not a panic attack. She is the former chief White House correspondent for CNN and an Emmy, Peabody and Gracie Award winning political correspondent for ABC, MSNBC and CNN. Her first novel, SAVAGE NEWS is available from HarperCollins. You can find the News Not Noise Letter on Bulletin and the News Not Noise podcast wherever you get your podcasts.  TW: @JessicaYellin IG: @jessicayellin To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. We are here today by popular demand with Jessica Yalen, who we all heard from yesterday who was telling us what was at stake in midterm elections. And we beg to come back and tell us what the hell happened in midterm elections yesterday. So thank you, Jessica, for making the time to be here with us. Thank you for asking. And for the work you did, I got so many messages from folks saying they went out to vote because of what they heard on this podcast. So yay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Indeed. Okay. So we're doing the top takeaways of what the heck happened yesterday. What's your biggest takeaway? Women and young people turned out abortion drove voters despite all the pundits saying it wouldn't, despite prognosticators saying Democrats had miscalculated. Election deniers mostly lost.

There were some that prevailed, but Americans voted for democracy, for abortion rights. They cared about inflation, not crime so much based on what we know. And they sent a message to both parties that they want sane politics that reflect the issues they care about and not extremist messaging. One more related to that that I was thinking about is that it seems like one of the main things that is happening here that is kind of tea leaves for the next election. And the presidential election is that Trump, his endorsement of Dr.

Oz did not carry weight. Dr. Oz lost. Bobert, one of his biggest fanatics and calories in the world. Wow. I know. Is she definitely going to lose? I still as I thought was very, very close. As we're talking, it's very, very close, but it seems inevitable that she will. God, so his key endorsement,

this is an indictment in many ways of the association. Yeah, in many cases, his candidates lost. It was not just Dr. Oz, it was also, we saw it in Wisconsin and in Michigan where election deniers, people who, you know, the key qualification to get Trump's support is to deny the results of the 2020 election. Where election deniers failed. We are also seeing Arizona is very close as we're talking, but a Trump endorsed candidate, it seems poised to lose there. And so he did not farewell. And the Republican party will have a lot of complaints about him.

Right now, but he still remains the most powerful person in the part. Okay. So as I was thinking through this election, I was thinking, does this mean that Republicans will have to decide going into 2024, whether they will cut him off. Or when we look at DeSantis in Florida, he won even in historically democratic parts. I just wondered if that kind of tilts the scales a little bit as we go into 2024. So the way to think about it is Donald Trump was the everything. He was all powerful. You had to kiss the ring. You couldn't disagree with him and survive. His power is now diminished, but not gone. And so what you're

going to see is a real battle inside the party between the forces that think he's bad for the party and for the future and the, not, you know, on the politics just strategically. And those who are still in the bandwagon slash afraid of him, I think the House will probably be won narrowly by Republicans and the person who runs the House will still have to mostly do Trump's agenda, but has a little more leeway. At the same time, somebody like Ron DeSantis and Florida, who won big and was poised to challenge Trump will certainly challenge Trump now and will likely have a lot of former Trump supporters supporting him. So, let's go through your key takeaways.

The red wave that they were predicting to happen did not. We were talking about yesterday how historically, you know, Obama lost 63 seats in the house, couldn't last 54, Trump lost 40 in the midterms. What is it looking like now, Democrats are going to lose, and what is it looking like? It's going to end up the balance of power in the house. So we don't know, but we think that Republicans will almost certainly take control of the house. But with such a small margin, when we spoke, we talked about there's a big difference if Republicans win by more than 10 seats or fewer.

And it looks like they are likely to end up at 10 or fewer. Even if it's like 12, that's a huge difference from 20, 30, somewhat predicting 40. And they just don't have what we call a mandate in that with so small a margin. And just to give you a sense of what it means is if you're in charge of running this house as a Republican, every person has much more power when just a few voting against you could make your agenda die. So that means you have to take care of the centrist and make sure they feel good, but also

take care of the radical extremists and make sure they feel good. How do you do that? It's hurting cats. And we're likely to see that the marjorie-tailor greens of the house, there's going to be many more of them, and they're going to be emboldened to make leadership do extremist things that will alienate the centrist and make it extremely hard for them to govern. Got it. Reproductive rights we talked about as usual, everyone underestimated women and our commitment

to our bodily autonomy. So we saw what? It was California, Michigan, and Vermont all passed constitutional protections of bodily autonomy. Yes, and then Kentucky defeated an effort to an abortion restriction and becomes the first state that has a abortion ban in place to where voters then voted on the question and said no, we don't want your ban taken away. We'll still see some court challenges and we'll see what happens, but that's a case of Kentucky voters saying we want abortion rights against legislature in a history that said you won't

get them. Awesome. So bodily autonomy undefeated in midterms. You talked about the young people, women, was this just huge voter turnout yesterday? What we do know based on composition of some exits and some, you know, data is that young people did turn out in numbers that they don't usually turn out in in midterms. They usually sit home for midterms and so did women. And the other thing I'm finding out from my friend Lauren leader who runs a great group called All in Together gets women engaged in politics, is

that in particular it was young women. So Gen Z women registered because of dobs and voted on abortion and are a force in our politics now and going forward saying you need to hear our issues. And there's now just starting to be a push inside the Democratic party to push Democrats to take seriously issues like child care and child leave for more parental leave. Stuff that had been stripped out of earlier versions of bills because that was the giveaway to win a compromise. And these young voters who are women and voting on women-focused issues are going to create the pressure as the assumption to put our issues back in the agenda.

Speaking of pressure, as of right this moment in terms of races that have been called, the Senate is sitting at 48, 48 as we speak. 48, 48. So there are, that means four have yet to be called Arizona, Georgia, Alaska, Nevada. But we know Alaska is going to go Republican. Yes. And we know Georgia is going to go to a runoff. Yes. So that happens on December 6th. Here are the dynamics at play. Arizona looks likely to go Democrat. And Nevada, I haven't checked for an hour, but it was toss-upy. And so if Democrats win both of those, they win control of the Senate. And the Georgia election is sort of gravy for them, or helps Republicans with the margins.

So you're watching really, because here's what the insiders are doing. They assume Arizona's going Democrat. They assume Alaska's going Republican. They assume Alaska's going Republican. Georgia, we can't know for a few weeks. All eyes are on Nevada. So what you're watching for control of the Senate is Nevada. Nevada officials are saying it could take a few days to know. But we could know if Democrats win that, they win control of the Senate and we would know that they win control of the Senate and we would know that as soon as Nevada is called. And even if Republicans win Nevada, then if Democrats win Georgia, they will be exactly where they started before the election because Kamala Harris will break the 50-50 tie.

Correct. So we could end up in a scenario just like in 2020, where we don't know balance of power in the Senate until there's a late runoff election in Georgia, which you remember people poured hundreds of millions of dollars into that race, which determine the balance of power. Okay. And speaking of that, so right now in that race between Warnock and Walker in Georgia, there was a 2% vote going to the independent. Where will those independence most likely go? I mean, that's the $100 million question. So you don't know the answer?

I don't know the answer. The conventional wisdom is that in a runoff W knock has the edge because the Herschel Walker doesn't hold up that well-ent� scrutiny with more focus. It'll war knocks abilities at communication will trump walkers. And so we don't know if, right, if Democrats win Nevada, the assumption is walkers support will disappear because if Republicans aren't relying on that for a win, he doesn't naturally have tons of support. Right. He's got the support of Republicans because they want the power in the Senate without him making that deciding being that deciding factor. It'll go away. But we really don't know it's going to be a nail-biter if it's all coming down to Georgia.

Got it. Feels very deja vu. deja vu. All over again. All over again. And we can't talk about Georgia without just giving all of the flowers to Stacey Abrams who lost her election against lost her election against camp, but she was really in many ways what delivered the Senate and the presidency last time around by registering and getting all of those voters activated in Georgia. And let me say one more thing.

St.T. Abrams is an astonishing talent at organizing. In the case of camp, one thing to keep in mind is he upheld election law. And he won while breaking with Trump, which is an interesting signal about the Republican party that Republican voters were willing to reelect him, even though he was not a Trump candidate, even though he had actually rejected the fundamental central premise of Trumpism, which is election denial. Yes. Yes. What did we see in Texas and Florida? rejected the fundamental central premise of Trumpism, which is election denial. Yes. Yes. What did we see in Texas and Florida? What is that telling you? I mean, we heard a lot from folks yesterday. Women specifically very upset in Texas and very upset in Florida. Are you

seeing? Are you extrapolating anything from those races? I always, I was a local reporter in Florida for the early part of my career. I feel like I understand the state to some extent. And, you know, I have the view that Democrats just sort of gave up on Florida, that they could have been contenders and they just decided it's too expensive, it's too hard. We're going to focus elsewhere. But whoever is to blame or what, for whatever reason it happened, it is now a red state. It, you know, Republicans registered nine new voters for every one new voter, Democrats registered in the last cycle. That is an enduring majority that can last for a decade. Democrats have also been very bad about engaging Hispanic voters in Florida prior to the moment of the

election. In other words, build a relationship before you need them people and they don't. So Florida is pretty much lost to Democrats. It seems you never know where things happen. And it's going to be a huge base for the man who's most likely to challenge Donald Trump for the man who's most likely to challenge Donald Trump for the 2024 nomination, Rhonda Santas, the governor there, who won by a whopping 20 points. And that's really meaningful because it says he has figured out how to deliver votes and that he has strong, strong support.

And that makes him a very fierce contender to challenge Trump for the nomination. Right. And it's also willing to do the circus type acts that Trump does, like sending immigrants to totally know. I mean, he's considered like the same Trump, you know, he. That's that's generous. The thing, the thing about him that's complicated and we're confusing. I mean, many, many things are, but's not charismatic, at all, like zero. So I don't, you know, his whole thing would have to be like the brown bad candidate. Like I don't do the things people do to charm you. I don't know. Can you win like that? Right. But he's definitely going to be the guy that Republicans who want to win will look to if they because they think Trump Trump's not going to win. Is, you know, the emerging view among Republican donors. So donors are likely to flock to

DeSantis now. We'll see what happens. Trump is still strong. Got it. So we will end with exciting firsts. Mara Healy, the first openly lesbian woman to be a governor and for the female governor of Massachusetts. I think she's the first openly lesbian woman to be governor in America. And the first female governor of Massachusetts. The first state in US history to elect a transgender man to state legislature and New Hampshire, the James Roseners, and our first Gen Z member of the house, Maxwell Frost in Florida. Totally. Totally.

Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally.

Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally.�.�. Totally.�.�.�.�.�.�.�.�.�. school shooter drills, will they make gun issues a top, top priority? And I bet we'll see that. I sure do. Also, Maryland's first black governor and the third black governor ever

elected. Yes. And Sarah Huckabee Sanders becomes the first woman elected governor of Arkansas. She sure did. So there's that. But these are. No, we need to celebrate all the first. That is for sure. Okay, beautiful. Well, that was a big one. I feel other last takeaway is polls appear to continue to show themselves to be more shit. And people who vote continue to be the ones who control the outcome. So yay for all the voters.

Thank you, everyone, and thank you Jessica Yellen. You're wonderful. Thank you so much for what you do and for energizing so many people with both substance and heart. It's a really great model for the world. Thank you. All right, go help everyone else.

I'll talk to you later. Thank you. Thank you. All right, go help everyone else. I'll talk to you later. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We can do hard things, is produced in partnership with Kaden's 13 Studios. Be sure to rate, review, and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts,

especially be sure to rate and review the podcast if you really liked it. If you didn't, don't worry about it. It's fine.