What’s Up With the Midterms?
Mary Harris: One of the first things Amy Walter did when I got her on the phone was hear this big sigh. Amy is the publisher and editor in chief of the Cook Political Report. So election season is like rolling into finals week. If you’re her, she’s not sleeping much.
Speaker 2: I’m just going to be going and going and going nonstop. So it’s like that? Yeah, it’s. It’s good.
Mary Harris: You can hear in Amy’s voice. Good is not exactly the word she’s reaching for here. Eventually, she settled on another descriptor for this midterm moment.
Speaker 2: It feels very weird.
Mary Harris: How so? Like, how do you see that?
Speaker 2: The best description. I’ve heard of it. I talked to a Democratic strategist a couple of weeks ago and this person said, well, the way I see it for Democrats is that we’ve gone from hopeless to remarkably competitive.
Mary Harris: Amy thinks about elections, a little like weather, which makes Amy into a kind of meteorologist. Earlier in the year, she says, Dems were staring down a Category five mid-term blowout. But these days.
Speaker 2: Actually, we’re downgrading now to Category one or Category two.
Mary Harris: But it’s still a hurricane.
Speaker 2: But it’s still. Yes. Or maybe a tropical depression. Is Category one still a hurricane or is that considered a storm? I don’t know.
Mary Harris: The optimism that you’re sensing from Democrats? I can’t quite tell whether you’re saying. It’s the triumph of low expectations. Things are looking sunnier for Democrats for a lot of reasons. Joe Biden has managed to jam through some big legislation. Gas prices have come down a bit. And then there’s the big Supreme Court decision on abortion.
Speaker 2: If we’re going to just stick with the weather analogy, sometimes weather comes out of nowhere, right? Like, oh, my gosh, we had no idea that this tornado was coming. Oh, my gosh. We had no idea we were going to get 46 inches of rain. But sometimes it’s predicted, right? Everybody knew this abortion decision was coming. It was leaked weeks before the decision ultimately came out. And yet it’s Republicans who were really disorganized and how they were going to respond to it.
Mary Harris: Just to be clear, Amy and her colleagues are still projecting that Republicans will take back the House of Representatives. The GOP only needs to pick up five seats after all, but in the Senate.
Speaker 2: A slight breeze can literally flip this thing one way or the other.
Mary Harris: Today on the show, a complete weather report for the midterm elections. Which party needs to run to the store and buy bread and toilet paper and why? Amy’s got thoughts. I’m Mary Harris. You’re listening to What Next? Stick around.
Mary Harris: You’ve written that the project for Politicos this year is to puzzle out whether this year is 1998 or 2018. And I’m wondering if you can explain that, like what happened in those midterm years. And why is it an important indicator of where we might go this year?
Speaker 2: For years and years and years, the conventional wisdom about midterm elections is that it’s a referendum on the party that holds power. And it’s been more than 40 years. You have to go back to the Carter era since a party in power, a party that has the House, the Senate and the White House has come into an election, a midterm election with the trifecta and has left the midterm election with a trifecta. They’ve either lost the House, the Senate, or both. And the reason for that is that voters tend to see if it’s a referendum on the party in charge.
Speaker 2: What they what voters are saying to that party is you guys have failed in some way. And usually it’s that you’ve overreached. You’ve been pushing an agenda that we see as too far out of what we expected to see or what we’re comfortable with. A lot of times it’s that you’ve broke with the status quo and you’ve broke with the norm. And the job of a mid-term election is to provide a check on that.
Mary Harris: It’s a correction. Right.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Mary Harris: 1998 was a good year for the party in power, though. How did that work?
Speaker 2: Exactly. So what was the correction that year? Well, the correction that year was that it was the Republican Party which wasn’t in the White House but did have control of Congress. They were the ones effectively cast as overstepping, as overreaching. They were impeaching President Clinton at that time. And it was the first time since the 1930s that the party in the White House actually picked up seats in the House.
Speaker 2: And this is what Democrats are. They’re trying to sort of replay this in a certain way this year, which is to say we may be the party in charge, but we’re not the people overreaching. It’s Republicans who are the extremist. We’re passing legislation that’s really popular. We’re capping the cost of insulin. We’re here lowering the price of prescription drugs. We’re making sure to invest in infrastructure. Republicans are out here not only fighting against all of those popular things, but now they’re pushing abortion bans. And they’re they’re wrapping their arms around Donald Trump and many of his really dangerous ideas, especially about the 2020 election.
Mary Harris: But, of course, in their head is the memory of 2018, which was a really bad year for the party in power. Trump was in office and Democrats gained seats.
Speaker 2: And Democrats gained seats. Now, the other thing about 2018 that feels very familiar to this moment is that both parties had really strong turnout. Again, another reason why the party in power loses seats is that their side doesn’t turn out.
Mary Harris: They’re little lazy, right?
Speaker 2: Sort of a malaise. So there’s a drop off in interest. But in 2018, Donald Trump helped to motivate his base. And we had record turnout. But it wasn’t enough to prevent Republicans from losing the House. The reason I pick that year is that both sides are in agreement here that we’re going to see really high turnout, especially in these competitive races in these states where we have governors and Senate races, and that both sides are going to turn out their voters. The question then becomes, where do those swing voters, those voters who don’t really identify as partisans or their soft partisans, where did they go in the last four elections? They have been the deciding factor.
Mary Harris: Right? Because this year it feels like Democrats have been able to energize their base because this abortion decision came out and it feels like folks are folks want to represent for their feelings on that issue. You’re seeing more and more women registering to vote, for instance. So, okay, check. We have an energized base. We just need to turn them out as much as possible. But do we know where those swing voters are right now?
Speaker 2: We really don’t. They’ve been very undecided. Now, again, this is not surprising. We’re still two months out from the election.
Speaker 2: And I know for people who are involved in politics, the idea that somebody could not be paying attention to politics is crazy, right? Why aren’t you thinking about this 24 hours a day like I am? But they are, right. And it’s a little bit like how I pay attention to NFL football, like. I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know who’s in first or whatever. But, you know, the closer we get to the Super Bowl, the more attention that I pay. Right.
Mary Harris: Yeah. So call me in October. So the independent voters are feeling.
Speaker 2: Call me in October is what a lot of them are saying. Right. And it’s pretty clear what the strategies of both parties are. And if you watch as many campaign ads as I do, it’s crystal clear, which is Republicans want to make this all about Joe Biden and the economy. And they are also throwing a sprinkling in issues like crime and immigration. So this is Biden is a failure on all of these issues. If you want to be a check on that, you can’t let him continue to have all this power by having control of Congress. Give it to the Republicans will be the moderating force here. Right. For Democrats, their message is pretty clear. Republicans are extremists. They’re going to take away your right to choose. This election is existential to that and to the idea of like just basic guardrails of democracy.
Mary Harris: It’s interesting because I’m hearing so much about culture war issues like trans kids in school, like the migrant plane to Martha’s Vineyard. But are Republican candidates running on that stuff? Or is it just ambient noise? I’m hearing from people who are maybe not running this year but are running in 2024.
Speaker 2: Right. So this is what’s really important to appreciate about this year is for Republicans to win control of the Senate. They’ve got to win in these swing areas. They can’t just run up the score in red states or win enough of the red areas to to win control of the Senate. And so you’re not hearing as much about those kind of issues that animate the base and that you’ll hear on Fox or in other places, as you would if, say, we were battling for the Senate and in some of those more red states. Instead, it’s Republicans. They’re actually having to play defense in some of those states on those culture issues like abortion.
Speaker 2: And look, there is a reason that many Republicans, many that I spoke with privately who were furious about Lindsey Graham’s decision to introduce legislation that would basically be a national 15 week abortion law. They were furious for three reasons. One, it put the issue of abortion in the spotlight, which the Democrats definitely benefit when abortions in the spotlight. They’re considered more trustworthy on that issue by significant margins among voters.
Speaker 2: The second is that all of their candidates, especially their federal candidates, were finding ways to sort of massage their position on abortion by saying, oh, well, well, well, well, this isn’t a federal issue, it’s the states issue. Now you have Lindsey Graham saying, oh, no, it’s a national issue. So that put them on the defensive again. And the third is that he did it on the same day that the inflation numbers came out showing that inflation really hasn’t gotten any better at all.
Mary Harris: So he really took that talking point away from Republicans totally.
Speaker 2: And still, they’re right. People are still feeling inflation is just that. It was an it was an uncle.
Mary Harris: You know, you found something interesting that what you called mare voters like voters who are different than independents, I think, but they have kind of like block feelings about Joe Biden. They’re still trending towards Democrats. When you ask them, I wonder what you make of that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it’s a really good question and it’s definitely one of those head scratchers. But if you think about let’s go all the way back in time to 2020 and that election, you know, you had a lot of people who turned out and voted for Joe Biden. You weren’t voting for Joe Biden because they loved him but because they couldn’t stand Donald Trump right now. Fast forward to today. Those I think many of those voters are the ones who are probably feeling not great about Joe Biden.
Speaker 2: Right. They either feel like, well, I voted for him and he went to liberal or I voted for him. I thought I was going to get somebody different and he turned out to be this or he’s doing a bad job on the economy. And you also had those voters who remember a lot of those voters in 2020 who voted for him as an anti-Trump vote weren’t just like so-called suburban swing voters, but they were also younger voters. Right. Who wanted to see a much more progressive candidate.
Speaker 2: So here’s why this matters. In our recent elections, it’s been a pretty consistent trend. 90% of voters who approve of the job of presidents doing vote for the candidate of his party, 90% of the people who disapprove vote for the other the other party. But what if, instead of 90% of those voters voting for the other party, it’s just 80% in a close race. When margins are so tight, that matters a ton.
Mary Harris: After the break, Amy goes state by state to explain how this weird midterm season is playing out on the ground.
Mary Harris: I asked Amy Walter to examine the midterm dynamics in a handful of races. Now that those elusive independent voters are starting to pay attention. And she told me that if she had to pick just three states to pay attention to on election night, especially when it comes to control of the Senate, Pennsylvania would be right on top of that list. So we started there. Pennsylvania is where TV surgeon Dr. Oz is running for Senate as a Republican. And Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman is running for Senate as a Democrat. Over the summer, Fetterman became known for aggressively trolling us online, especially over the fact that, as has been living not in Pennsylvania, but in New Jersey for much of the last three decades.
Speaker 3: Out there to honor Dr. Oz deep New Jersey roots. We thought it’d be a great idea to start a petition and help him reach his dream of being inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame. Help us recognize his Jersey pride.
Speaker 2: It’s been spicy, actually, from day one, really, mostly on the on the Republican side, because this was a competitive and really bruising Republican primary. Remember, you have Donald Trump coming out pretty early for his friend Dr. Oz.
Speaker 3: The way I endorsed another person today, Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania.
Mary Harris: Dr. Oz. And this is to replace a Republican senator, longtime Republican senator. So a Republican seat.
Speaker 2: A Republican seat. And we know how Trump feels about, you know, people who’ve been on TV, especially those who have their own TV show, reality star sort of situation.
Mary Harris: He loves them.
Speaker 3: It’s like a poll. You know, when you’re in television for 18 years, that’s like a poll. That means people like you. But he’s a.
Speaker 2: He’s so he endorses us. Even though a ton of Republicans, conservative activists tell him, you know, this guy, I just think you’re making the wrong choice, man. Meanwhile, the Democratic primary is kind of sleepy and Fetterman wind’s going away.
Mary Harris: And John Fetterman is a character, too.
Speaker 2: Right? He’s, like, 17 feet tall. He’s a huge dude with tattoos. He dresses like my 15 year old, which is the uniform of sweatshirts and and gym.
Mary Harris: Shorts and most notably progressive. Like he’s endorsed Bernie Sanders in the past.
Speaker 2: He’s super progressive, but he’s not leaning into that. What he’s leaning into is exactly what you pointed out.
Speaker 3: People have been trying to label me my entire life. I do not look like a typical politician. I don’t even look like a typical person. John Fetterman.
Speaker 2: Knows. He looks like if you just saw him on TV, you didn’t hear any of the words that were coming from his mouth. You’d say, Oh, I bet that’s a Trump guy. And he comes from the western part of the state, not the suburbs. He’s not SHISHY. He’s not one of these limousine liberal types. He’s like, walked the walk, talked the talk. But you’re right, he’s incredibly liberal. And what Republicans were hoping to do is to spend much of the summer pointing that out. This guy says he’s a typical Pennsylvanian, but actually he’s way out of the mainstream. He endorsed Bernie Sanders. He supports the Green New Deal.
Mary Harris: But then he had a stroke. How did that change things?
Speaker 2: It did and it didn’t. The interesting thing is, even he has a stroke not long after the primary. He’s off the campaign trail. But the focus really is still on Fetterman positively, partly because he still has a very robust social media presence and partly because it does nothing over the summer. Right. There’s a huge vacuum to be filled. And as let’s veterans campaign fill in, but now it’s getting close to October and veterans health is still somewhat questionable. He is still having some trouble and he talks about it openly with language processing. He’s trying to, you know, do more public events, but he’s only agreed to one debate.
Mary Harris: And that was after a lot of negotiation.
Speaker 2: And a lot of back and forth. Exactly. But I think the bigger challenge here, as each candidate is trying to present the other one as the phony. And Fetterman had been doing a very good job of that for much of the spring and summer, helped by Republicans in the primary who are saying that about us. Now, as we turn to the fall. The attention is going out. Well, is Fetterman really the guy who’s not who he says he is? And can he physically do this job?
Mary Harris: While the race between John Fetterman and Dr. Oz will at least partially test how powerful Donald Trump’s endorsement still is, Amy is also following a pretty different race in Colorado. That’s where incumbent Democrat Michael Bennet is facing a surprisingly strong challenge from a candidate who is actively distancing himself from the former president. I say this challenge is surprisingly strong because many analysts have come to think of Colorado as being a blue state, even though it’s only had two Democrats in the Senate for a couple of years.
Speaker 2: The incumbent, Michael Bennet, he’s he’s never won by particularly large margins. Now, he won in 2010, which was a really bad year for Democrats against a candidate who he was able to paint as being far too extreme. But in his 2016 race, he won. But but just under or just at 50%, right. He’s never won by big margins. So he doesn’t have sort of, you know, deep, deep base there to start with, the candidate that Republicans nominated, Joe O’Dea, is that outsider business candidate. You would put him into the category of the kind of traditional Republican candidate we might have seen ten or 20 years ago. Right. I’m a businessman. Aren’t lower taxes? I want to shake up Washington.
Mary Harris: Like a mitt Romney.
Speaker 2: There we go. It fits in that Colorado mold of like look. I’m not going to get into your business. You don’t get into my business. Right.
Mary Harris: So does this guy have a shot? The Republican.
Speaker 2: So I do think he has a shot. Now, I think it was especially when the president’s numbers were a little bit lower when we were, you know, before we have Roe v Wade on the front burner. But I do think it’s a really good test for, as you pointed out, in Pennsylvania, like the MAGA kind of candidates, can they win? And then we’re going to have a test of whether somebody who runs as the non MAGA in a non MAGA state, is that enough? Or have voters really they’re not making any distinctions now. Right. That that we are so polarized that even a candidate who presents him or herself as being a quote unquote different kind of Republican can’t escape the sort of Trump label.
Mary Harris: Another race on Amy’s mind is Georgia’s gubernatorial contest. While it won’t impact party control in Washington, it is a rematch. Democratic voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams is taking on Republican Governor Brian Kemp. But while Democrats seem to have the wind at their backs in other states, things look a little different here. This is in spite of the fact that Dems owe a lot to Georgia voters. It was Georgia that flipped the Senate blue, of course, and the state also helped kick Trump out of the White House. The question is, what are they going to do this year?
Speaker 2: This is a race, actually, that expectations of it earlier in the cycle have been upended. Many of us, including those of us over at the Cook Political Report, said, well, Brian Kemp is going to have a really tough primary because he angered Donald Trump. He refused to not certify the election. You know, Donald Trump asked him not to certify. Brian Kemp said, I’m going to do that. He’s certified the election. And so Donald Trump comes after him, endorses former Senator David Perdue, Republican, to challenge him in the primary. And it was going to all be really a litmus test about your fealty to Donald Trump. Well, Brian Kemp wipes the floor with David Perdue. I mean, wins overwhelmingly, wasn’t even close.
Mary Harris: And this was like an early sign of potential weakness in Trump’s endorsements, right?
Speaker 2: It is. And it’s he is also the rare politician who has figured out how to do the dance with Donald Trump, which is you can stand up to Donald Trump without being an anti-Trump or without getting in fights with him. He says, I stood on principle. I stood and did the right thing because guess what? We did the audit. We you know, we followed the rules. We followed the law. Joe Biden won our state. I certified the election. And now I’m going to go on and govern as a conservative. He’s not a moderate. The Georgia legislature passed an abortion ban. They passed less restrictive gun laws as well in that state. So he’s doing that. The state is also doing well economically. So, yes, conservatives may be upset that he is not on Team Trump when it comes to election denial, but he’s doing all the other right things and the economy’s doing well in the state.
Speaker 2: And more important, I think, for those swing voters, especially those suburban voters who showed up and voted maybe for Stacey Abrams in 2018, definitely for Joe Biden in 2020. The fact that he won so decisively over the Trump candidate said to them, okay, well, he’s not really one of those crazies. He’s not Donald Trump. And I think that has really hurt. ABRAMS Because if you’re going to make the case that he’s really out of step, that he’s a real extremist, the fact that he beat back Donald Trump makes that a harder argument.
Mary Harris: Looking at all these races together, we sort of talked about how this is a weird midterm season. And I guess what I take away is that the weirdness is so deeply connected to how close the voting is. In a lot of places, the margin is so narrow that once you get there, like all of your mirrors, start kind of going wild. Is that how you see it, too?
Speaker 2: I think that’s a really good way to think about this, which is no party can be able to say that they’re going to have a mandate. Right. That you know, Democratic candidates in 2020. Right. Joe Biden wins by 7 million votes. Democrats have control of the House and the Senate, but they did so at least at the Electoral College level. Biden wins by about 40,000 votes, spread over three states. The Senate was that was very narrow margin. The House was a very narrow margin.
Speaker 2: So every race now becomes not a repudiation of the other side. Instead, every election now becomes who can get an extra 2000, 10,000 votes, and where are we going to get them from? And when there’s 10,000 or 2000 votes separating winners from losers, we could come back when all is said and done and point to 15 things that were the deciding factor. Right. How did so and so win this race? It was abortion. It was inflation. It was his gaffe on the campaign trail. It was Donald Trump saying this. It was Joe Biden doing that.
Mary Harris: A slight breeze in the weather system.
Speaker 2: There we go. We’re back to the weather.
Mary Harris: Back to the weather. Amy Walter, I’m really grateful for your insight. Oh, I’m really.
Speaker 2: This was really fun. I’m really glad that you asked me. Married?
Mary Harris: Amy Walter is the publisher and editor in chief of the Cook Political Report. And that’s our show. If you’re a fan of what we’re doing here, what next? The best way to support our work is to join Slate. Plus, going over to slate.com, such what next? Plus and sign up. What next is produced by Elena Schwartz, Mary Wilson, Carmel Delshad and Madeline Ducharme. We are getting a ton of support right now from Anna Phillips and Jared Downing. We are led by Alicia montgomery and Joanne Levine. And I’m Mary Harris. I’ll be back in the feed tomorrow. Catch you then.
