WEBVTT - Midterm Elections Preview: What to Expect and What’s at Stake 0:00:05.040 --> 0:00:14.360 Hey, Brian, Hi Katie, Brian, that song is for you 0:00:14.760 --> 0:00:18.160 because it's a wonderful day here at the pod because 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:21.200 the mid term elections are right around the corner on Tuesday, 0:00:21.320 --> 0:00:25.000 November six and it's all about the mid terms today 0:00:25.239 --> 0:00:28.280 on our podcast. Brian and I couldn't be more excited. 0:00:28.280 --> 0:00:31.120 I'm like a kidna candy store, Katie. Most polls, as 0:00:31.160 --> 0:00:33.519 you know, are favoring Democrats to take control of the 0:00:33.560 --> 0:00:36.920 House and the Republicans will likely keep control of the Senate. 0:00:37.200 --> 0:00:40.280 But then again, after two thousand sixteen, who really knows, 0:00:40.440 --> 0:00:44.280 right nobody, Well, if that does happen, Katie, if the 0:00:44.280 --> 0:00:46.920 projections are right, it would really change the balance of 0:00:46.960 --> 0:00:49.519 power in this country. And on the off chance that 0:00:49.520 --> 0:00:52.560 the Democrats take the House and the Senate, well things 0:00:52.560 --> 0:00:55.320 will look a lot different for President Trump and for 0:00:55.360 --> 0:00:58.760 American politics. We've been hearing so much about the mid 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:01.720 terms in the news the days, it's sometimes hard to 0:01:01.720 --> 0:01:05.679 cut through the opinions and memes and downright vitriol to 0:01:05.720 --> 0:01:09.280 actually understand what's happening in all these races. So today 0:01:09.600 --> 0:01:12.600 we've invited Claire Malone, a senior political writer at five 0:01:12.680 --> 0:01:14.960 thirty eight, to give us a picture of where all 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:17.680 these races stand and which ones we should pay attention 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:20.959 to on Tuesday, and also to give us her view 0:01:21.040 --> 0:01:23.360 on the big picture, Brian kind of what are the 0:01:23.440 --> 0:01:26.080 stakes of this election? And then we're going to talk 0:01:26.120 --> 0:01:28.920 to a wonderful author, Michael Lewis. He has a new 0:01:28.959 --> 0:01:31.680 book out called The Fifth Risk, which is actually very 0:01:31.720 --> 0:01:34.679 relevant to the election next week. Michael Lewis, of course 0:01:34.720 --> 0:01:37.440 wrote The Big Short, he wrote Moneyball, and now for 0:01:37.520 --> 0:01:40.800 The Fifth Risk, he spent months talking to former and 0:01:40.840 --> 0:01:44.280 current employees of the federal government and he believes that 0:01:44.360 --> 0:01:48.800 the Trump administration is wreaking havoc from within. In his view, 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:53.280 either political hacks are in charge or appointees more concerned 0:01:53.560 --> 0:01:58.080 about self interests than the public interests. We've got a 0:01:58.080 --> 0:02:01.160 lot to cover today. So oh wait a second, Brian, 0:02:01.320 --> 0:02:03.440 are you hearing that or is it just in my head? 0:02:03.880 --> 0:02:07.040 It's just in your head. No, I'm actually hearing that. 0:02:07.040 --> 0:02:09.440 That's right, it's our new theme music. We've given our 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:13.359 show sound a bit of a facelift. No funny remarks here, 0:02:13.520 --> 0:02:15.720 by the way, you should say to the tabloid reporters, 0:02:15.760 --> 0:02:18.839 that's the only facelift that's happened around here. But I'm 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:20.880 pumpch and we want to say a big thank you 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:24.800 to Jared Arnold, who composed the new music for us. Yeah. 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:27.400 I really like it. It's it's sounding, it's sounding kind 0:02:27.400 --> 0:02:29.560 of groovy. What do you think? Well, I try to 0:02:29.639 --> 0:02:32.160 avoid using the word groovy. I haven't used that since, 0:02:33.440 --> 0:02:36.160 but I would give it a ninety eight for dancing. Anyway, 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:39.160 enough about our new music, Let's get to our conversation 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:42.520 with Claire Malone from five thirty eight. We began by 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:46.079 asking her what's really at stake in next week selections 0:02:55.840 --> 0:02:58.680 for people who aren't like us, who haven't been glued 0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:01.639 to their seats paying attention to every healthy people, Yeah, 0:03:01.760 --> 0:03:04.520 normal people. In other words, what is its stake for 0:03:04.600 --> 0:03:09.320 these elections? Well, uh, midterm elections are pretty much always 0:03:09.360 --> 0:03:11.920 a reaction to the party who's in power, and the 0:03:12.000 --> 0:03:15.440 Republicans have a lot of control over the government. So 0:03:15.760 --> 0:03:17.880 they have the White House, they have the House of Representatives, 0:03:17.880 --> 0:03:20.080 and they have the Senate. And I think is is 0:03:20.120 --> 0:03:23.240 probably no surprise to anyone in America. Um, we're in 0:03:23.280 --> 0:03:27.480 a highly polarized partisan period of American life, and we 0:03:27.600 --> 0:03:31.240 have a president who has played into that quite a bit. 0:03:31.320 --> 0:03:33.280 And so, UM, I think when we talk about the 0:03:33.320 --> 0:03:36.280 stakes of this election, we are talking about, for getting 0:03:36.360 --> 0:03:39.080 nitty gritty, you know, the possibility that, you know, if 0:03:39.120 --> 0:03:43.600 Democrats theoretically retained control of both houses of Congress, they 0:03:43.640 --> 0:03:46.840 could potentially impeach the president or you know, try to 0:03:46.880 --> 0:03:49.040 remove him from office. So that's I think the if 0:03:49.040 --> 0:03:51.480 you're going for the thirty thousand foot up view of things, 0:03:51.560 --> 0:03:54.400 that's what's at stake. We're talking about all House seats, 0:03:54.520 --> 0:04:00.760 thirty three Senate seats, thirty six governorships, state legislatures, basically 0:04:00.880 --> 0:04:04.200 a lot of a lot of bots. Yes, I'm glad 0:04:04.240 --> 0:04:07.280 you brought up state legislatures, and there's also attorney general's racist. 0:04:07.360 --> 0:04:09.240 There's a lot of state level seats that are at 0:04:09.240 --> 0:04:11.480 play here that we don't talk as much about. Um. 0:04:11.520 --> 0:04:13.720 But right now, it's looking like the Democrats have a 0:04:13.760 --> 0:04:17.080 pretty good chance of taking back back the House of Representatives. 0:04:17.400 --> 0:04:20.240 So we have a forecasting model and we give them about, 0:04:20.440 --> 0:04:22.960 let's say, an eight percent shot of taking back the 0:04:23.000 --> 0:04:25.920 House of Representatives. The Senate is kind of flipped where 0:04:25.920 --> 0:04:29.800 the Democrats have about only chance of taking the Senate. 0:04:30.000 --> 0:04:31.360 And I think you can kind of if you want 0:04:31.400 --> 0:04:33.960 to look back two years to the split that we 0:04:33.960 --> 0:04:36.680 saw in the popular vote and the electoral college, they're 0:04:36.680 --> 0:04:38.360 sort of mirror in the patterns that we're seeing in 0:04:38.360 --> 0:04:41.000 the House of Representatives in the Senate. So the House 0:04:41.000 --> 0:04:43.960 of Representatives that's parallel is the popular vote, which the 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:47.280 Democrat Hillary Clinton one by three million, and then you've 0:04:47.320 --> 0:04:50.280 got the Senate, which we can compare to the electoral college. 0:04:50.279 --> 0:04:52.680 And and it's interesting because the Senate sort of plays 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:57.120 to Republicans advantages in these rural states where votes are 0:04:57.160 --> 0:05:00.200 I guess more effectively economically distributed. We talk a about 0:05:00.240 --> 0:05:02.840 that where people aren't clustering in certain places. Yeah, we will. 0:05:02.880 --> 0:05:04.960 You just explain that a little bit for people. Give 0:05:05.040 --> 0:05:08.679 us a quick civics lesson if you could clear on 0:05:08.680 --> 0:05:11.920 on Gerrymanderin and sort of why the Senate is so 0:05:12.000 --> 0:05:14.719 different than House races. Yeah, well, I think we always 0:05:14.720 --> 0:05:16.960 want to start and talk about the way that Americans 0:05:16.960 --> 0:05:21.479 have self sorted. Um, so Democrats have tended to in 0:05:21.520 --> 0:05:24.359 the past few election cycles, past couple of decades, be 0:05:24.520 --> 0:05:28.239 in big cities or in suburban areas surrounding big cities. 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:32.320 And the reason why that why Republicans have um an 0:05:32.360 --> 0:05:34.760 advantage in the electoral College and in the Senate map 0:05:35.120 --> 0:05:37.840 is that their votes are in there all over, even 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:41.799 in small states. So, uh, they might win a bunch 0:05:41.839 --> 0:05:44.839 of small counties in North Dakota and that counts for 0:05:44.880 --> 0:05:46.800 a lot. A Senate seat in North Dakota is worth 0:05:46.839 --> 0:05:50.039 just as much as a Senate seat in California. And 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:53.760 the appeal right now of Republicans seems to be being 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:57.960 received better by people in these x urban or you know, 0:05:58.400 --> 0:06:01.920 rural rural places, and that's a problem obviously the Democrats 0:06:01.960 --> 0:06:03.440 are trying to kind of claw their way back on. 0:06:03.760 --> 0:06:05.799 So if you want to think about it in terms 0:06:05.800 --> 0:06:09.040 of waves, people have talked about this election potentially being 0:06:09.040 --> 0:06:12.279 a wave election for the Democrats. There are a couple 0:06:12.320 --> 0:06:15.279 of sea walls that the Republicans have built up to 0:06:15.360 --> 0:06:19.839 protect themselves from these waves. One is just because of 0:06:19.839 --> 0:06:22.040 the way the House seats are drawn and in some 0:06:22.080 --> 0:06:27.080 cases jerrymander to benefit one party. The Democrats have to 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:30.480 win the House popular vote by about six points, which 0:06:30.520 --> 0:06:33.640 is like a near landslide margin in order to win 0:06:33.760 --> 0:06:36.640 control of the House. And in the Senate, it's not 0:06:36.720 --> 0:06:40.800 jerrymandered because the state borders are what they've always been, 0:06:40.920 --> 0:06:44.279 But North Dakota has two Senate seats, Wyoming has two 0:06:44.320 --> 0:06:47.320 Senate seats, etcetera. And California has two Senate seats, and 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:50.080 so there's a there's a bit of a bias there 0:06:50.080 --> 0:06:52.920 as well. But didn't things start to change a bit 0:06:53.040 --> 0:06:55.240 even just a couple of weeks ago for the Democrats? 0:06:55.240 --> 0:06:58.400 And why well, things have sort of as the as 0:06:58.440 --> 0:07:00.680 the last month of a campaign kind of comes in, 0:07:00.839 --> 0:07:04.800 you start to see basically partisanship kick in um so 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:06.800 on the House side of things that that got kind 0:07:06.800 --> 0:07:09.040 of a little bit better for for Democrats, and it 0:07:09.080 --> 0:07:10.640 got a little bit worse for them in the Senate, 0:07:10.640 --> 0:07:14.280 where you saw states like Nevada, states like Tennessee where 0:07:14.320 --> 0:07:17.880 you have a pretty centrist Democrat, Phil Brettison, who's the 0:07:17.920 --> 0:07:20.640 former governor of Tennessee, running for a Senate seat, and 0:07:20.680 --> 0:07:22.760 he was a pretty popular guy and that race was 0:07:22.800 --> 0:07:26.640 pretty close. But you're starting to see voters sort of 0:07:26.720 --> 0:07:28.920 kick in and say, well, I kind of like the 0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:31.600 guy from the opposite party, but I'm gonna put on 0:07:31.640 --> 0:07:33.760 my team jersey and wear it and vote for that 0:07:33.760 --> 0:07:35.640 person in election day. And that's sort of what's showing 0:07:35.680 --> 0:07:37.920 up in polls. So you are seeing a little bit 0:07:37.920 --> 0:07:41.320 of a return to what we generally expect. If it's 0:07:41.320 --> 0:07:43.800 a red state, you're probably going to think that, Well, 0:07:44.120 --> 0:07:46.520 a lot of those undecided voters that were getting pulled 0:07:46.520 --> 0:07:49.360 in late September, they might be returning home and saying, well, 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:51.200 I'm gonna vote for my party, even if I'm not 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:53.560 loving what the president is doing. And I wanted to 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:56.000 ask you about early voting because someone told me over 0:07:56.040 --> 0:07:58.920 the weekend that early voting wasn't looking great in terms 0:07:59.000 --> 0:08:04.480 of turnout for Latino voters and millennials. Is somebody just 0:08:04.560 --> 0:08:08.640 saying that to me without any any real knowledge helped 0:08:08.680 --> 0:08:11.080 me out here. So we have kind of a five 0:08:11.120 --> 0:08:13.400 thirty eight line where we say early voting there isn't 0:08:13.400 --> 0:08:15.200 actually any real proof that it gives us a lot 0:08:15.200 --> 0:08:19.280 of information about, you know, who's going to win an election, Democratic, Republican, 0:08:19.320 --> 0:08:21.120 because it doesn't. You know, all you know is the 0:08:21.120 --> 0:08:23.320 early voters. You can tell what their party registration is, 0:08:23.480 --> 0:08:24.960 we don't know who they voted for, and a lot 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:27.720 of times, as we saw in where a lot of 0:08:27.760 --> 0:08:31.120 Democrats voted for Trump, people cross party lines. But I 0:08:31.160 --> 0:08:34.640 do think that we are probably going to see. I mean, unfortunately, 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:38.800 certain demographics in this country haven't been reached by the 0:08:38.800 --> 0:08:42.240 political community. The outreach community. Latinos, I think, are one 0:08:42.360 --> 0:08:45.600 that Democrats had hoped in to really turn out and 0:08:45.600 --> 0:08:49.720 say the Southwest, and even with Trump's inflammatory rhetoric, they 0:08:49.760 --> 0:08:51.880 really didn't turn out. And I think that's sort of 0:08:51.880 --> 0:08:55.320 what people are thinking might happen this year. Although I 0:08:55.320 --> 0:08:58.240 will say in general it is predicted to be a 0:08:58.320 --> 0:09:01.360 high turnout election on both sides, Democrat and Republican. What 0:09:01.440 --> 0:09:04.360 about millennials. It seems to me that young people are 0:09:04.440 --> 0:09:08.600 so energized, at least from everything I see in my 0:09:08.760 --> 0:09:12.120 social media feed, which maybe I'm not getting a completely 0:09:12.960 --> 0:09:16.480 clear perspective. But what about those numbers. I don't think 0:09:16.520 --> 0:09:18.560 we really know um and I think we kind of 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:20.400 have to rely this is the five eight thing. We 0:09:20.480 --> 0:09:23.000 kind of have to rely on historical trends, and generally 0:09:23.040 --> 0:09:26.760 younger voters aren't a constituency that you can necessarily count 0:09:26.800 --> 0:09:29.440 on to turn out in elections. I will say, going 0:09:29.480 --> 0:09:31.600 back again, I'm not going to make any predictions because 0:09:31.600 --> 0:09:33.400 it is going to be a high turnout election. That's 0:09:33.400 --> 0:09:36.160 what's being sort of forecasted from these polls where they 0:09:36.240 --> 0:09:39.120 you sort of posters ask about your enthusiasm to vote, 0:09:39.280 --> 0:09:42.640 and the enthusiasm to vote is extremely high, so perhaps 0:09:42.640 --> 0:09:45.599 we will see higher numbers of millennials voting. Are you 0:09:45.640 --> 0:09:48.240 a little gunshy because of two thousand sixteen over there 0:09:48.240 --> 0:09:52.080 at eight? No, I think, I mean, I think, I 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:54.120 will say I think. The one thing that is annoying 0:09:54.160 --> 0:09:56.640 to interview people from the site is that we always 0:09:56.679 --> 0:09:58.640 kind of do this thing well where we'll say, well, 0:09:58.679 --> 0:10:01.520 we can't predict it, because but I will say that 0:10:01.559 --> 0:10:03.880 we did rethink some of the ways that we present 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:07.560 our probabilities for people. Is kind of a big with Claire. 0:10:08.080 --> 0:10:10.120 Well we are we will say that we were the 0:10:10.200 --> 0:10:16.040 least wrong of anyone congratulation. We should fact check that, 0:10:16.160 --> 0:10:18.920 and we should actually also explain to our listeners what 0:10:19.080 --> 0:10:22.720 these forecasts really means. So two years ago, five thirty 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:25.680 eight said Hillary Clinton had a seventy one percent chance 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:30.160 to win the presidency. Now that was notably lower than 0:10:30.240 --> 0:10:33.840 some of the others. The New York Times said, Huffington 0:10:33.920 --> 0:10:37.599 Post really went out there and said, but how do 0:10:37.720 --> 0:10:42.439 these models work and how do they differ? Yeah? Sure, so, um, 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:44.600 the way that the five thirty model works is that 0:10:44.679 --> 0:10:48.600 we take all of the public polling that's available and 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:51.959 we put it together, and we waited based on how 0:10:52.000 --> 0:10:54.720 good we think the polster is, so better posters get 0:10:54.760 --> 0:10:58.000 a heavier weight in the model. So we take polls 0:10:58.080 --> 0:11:00.560 and so that's that's the poll component. Well, also add 0:11:00.600 --> 0:11:03.200 in whether or not their incumbent. That helps a person 0:11:03.240 --> 0:11:05.760 if they're an incumbent and they're running. We take into 0:11:05.760 --> 0:11:10.760 account how partisan a state is. We take into account fundraising, 0:11:10.760 --> 0:11:13.360 how much a candidate has raised. We smush all those 0:11:13.400 --> 0:11:15.240 things together in a model. And Um, what I always 0:11:15.240 --> 0:11:19.240 like to point out is was a really interesting election. Yes, 0:11:19.360 --> 0:11:22.400 we were, and all of the other models were off. 0:11:22.720 --> 0:11:25.160 And what was the reason why polls were so off 0:11:25.760 --> 0:11:29.240 in the election is that, if you'll remember, Donald Trump 0:11:29.320 --> 0:11:33.360 had huge media reach, he had name recognition, and he 0:11:33.480 --> 0:11:35.319 motivated a lot of people who had fallen off the 0:11:35.360 --> 0:11:37.480 voter rolls to come out and vote, and so polls 0:11:37.520 --> 0:11:40.040 missed a lot of those people. And so we did 0:11:40.120 --> 0:11:44.160 have a polling problem in And um, yeah, I think 0:11:44.160 --> 0:11:45.679 there's a lot of you know, a lot of us 0:11:45.679 --> 0:11:49.880 ineen who are trying to make people basically more I 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:52.400 guess literate readers of polls and to know we're not 0:11:52.559 --> 0:11:54.360 pulling us out of nowhere. And we also want you 0:11:54.400 --> 0:11:56.840 to know that there is a possibility that this is wrong. 0:11:56.880 --> 0:11:59.000 This is how probabilities work. So but it is I 0:11:59.000 --> 0:12:01.000 think it's a learning process for for all of us 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:05.320 to make people better news consumers more. Literally, what you 0:12:05.400 --> 0:12:08.000 meant two years ago was if you were to run 0:12:08.120 --> 0:12:11.160 this election with all the information and data we have 0:12:11.400 --> 0:12:15.480 ten times, seven out of ten times Hillary Clinton would 0:12:15.480 --> 0:12:18.199 win and three out of ten times Donald Trump would win. 0:12:18.920 --> 0:12:23.079 And so it's not like your quote wrong when you 0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:25.920 say seventy one percent chance to win and she loses. 0:12:26.559 --> 0:12:29.360 It's that this was one of those events where it 0:12:29.520 --> 0:12:33.080 was more likely than not that she would win, but 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:35.800 she actually didn't. Yeah, And that's and so this year 0:12:35.840 --> 0:12:39.520 in our model, we've tried to switch it from making 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:41.680 the big bold number instead of it having b oh, 0:12:41.760 --> 0:12:44.680 it's an eight percent chance, you know, we'll try to say, oh, 0:12:44.679 --> 0:12:46.600 it's a two and six chance, or it's a three 0:12:46.640 --> 0:12:49.360 and ten chance that this person will win, just to 0:12:49.400 --> 0:12:51.440 give people because I think that when we talk about 0:12:51.440 --> 0:12:54.079 gambling odds, that's kind of the vernacular that we use 0:12:54.120 --> 0:12:56.000 and so we want to try to make it clearer 0:12:56.040 --> 0:12:58.480 to people what we're saying. When we do that, Let's 0:12:58.480 --> 0:13:01.280 talk about recent events layer, because it has been a 0:13:01.440 --> 0:13:04.200 insane news cycle. As you know, we had the Brett 0:13:04.280 --> 0:13:08.200 Kavanaugh hearings. We have the pipe bombs that were sent 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:12.520 to a number of Democratic officials, philanthropist George Soros CNN, 0:13:13.160 --> 0:13:17.679 and now most recently, the massacre at that synagogue in Pittsburgh. 0:13:18.000 --> 0:13:22.920 How do you measure the impact those events have on voters? Yeah, 0:13:23.240 --> 0:13:25.760 I guess I'll start with Kavanaugh, since it's a bit 0:13:25.840 --> 0:13:30.720 easier to parse the Kavanaugh hearing. Certainly senators who are 0:13:30.800 --> 0:13:33.600 voting on the Kavanaugh hearing, some of them in red states. 0:13:33.640 --> 0:13:37.400 Those red state Democrats had to make tough choices that 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:39.679 I think probably for some of them, let's say Heidi 0:13:39.760 --> 0:13:43.080 hide Camp in North Dakota, probably endangered their their chances 0:13:43.160 --> 0:13:45.560 on the on the Senate map um and she's someone 0:13:45.559 --> 0:13:48.880 who's a pretty moderate Democrat. You know, she's from a 0:13:48.920 --> 0:13:51.280 state that really likes Trump, and she's one of those 0:13:51.280 --> 0:13:53.640 people that's really been trying to sort of say, run 0:13:53.640 --> 0:13:56.920 a campaign that says, listen, I'm first and foremost in 0:13:57.000 --> 0:14:00.240 North Dakotin. I'm not here for Pelosian schumers, a da 0:14:00.360 --> 0:14:01.720 right as a kind of a response to a lot 0:14:01.760 --> 0:14:04.920 of Republican tack ads that try to tie red state 0:14:04.960 --> 0:14:08.600 Democrats to unpopular figures um. And so Heidi hide Camp 0:14:08.920 --> 0:14:11.680 was sort of chugging along in a re election effort 0:14:11.679 --> 0:14:13.440 that was, you know, it's a hard state to win. 0:14:13.960 --> 0:14:17.360 And when the Kavanaugh vote came up, I think she 0:14:17.400 --> 0:14:18.840 would be open and saying it was a sort of 0:14:18.840 --> 0:14:21.080 a wrenching decision for her to have to make, because 0:14:21.480 --> 0:14:24.440 on the one hand, I think she's a woman who 0:14:24.840 --> 0:14:26.880 was not in favor of this guy who had been 0:14:26.880 --> 0:14:30.160 accused of um of sexual assault. And on the other hand, 0:14:30.400 --> 0:14:31.880 I think she knew it was a little bit of 0:14:31.880 --> 0:14:34.960 a you know, it was gonna it was gonna really 0:14:35.000 --> 0:14:37.320 diminished the chances that she would be able to win 0:14:37.520 --> 0:14:40.240 her race in that state, and she made the choice. 0:14:40.280 --> 0:14:43.280 She voted against Kavanaugh, and it has unleashed, you know, 0:14:43.320 --> 0:14:46.720 a string of basically attacks against her that says, listen, 0:14:46.760 --> 0:14:50.000 this this person is not who you are North Dakota. 0:14:50.120 --> 0:14:52.600 So do you all measure For example, you know, I 0:14:52.600 --> 0:14:54.920 I spent the weekend in Virginia with my daughter and 0:14:54.920 --> 0:14:56.400 we spent the night with a friend of mine from 0:14:56.480 --> 0:14:59.320 high school and we were talking about the Kavanaugh hearings 0:14:59.480 --> 0:15:02.680 and she was troubled by the way he was treated 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:08.440 and felt, you know, sympathetic to his outrage when he testified. 0:15:08.480 --> 0:15:10.720 And I said, hey, you're one of those white suburban 0:15:10.760 --> 0:15:15.400 women growing up, you know, in Arlington, Virginia, and that's 0:15:15.440 --> 0:15:20.760 where we were. Who is you know, supporting perhaps Republican 0:15:20.840 --> 0:15:24.240 candidates because of what happened to Brett Kavanaugh? Do you 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:28.320 are you able to to get that specific in terms 0:15:28.360 --> 0:15:31.560 of how you're looking at at segments of the electorate, 0:15:31.880 --> 0:15:34.560 so that doesn't go into the model per se, but 0:15:34.880 --> 0:15:36.520 you you've hit that nail on the head when you 0:15:36.640 --> 0:15:39.960 when you bring up demographics that we watch as ones 0:15:40.000 --> 0:15:44.000 that are shifting post So if we take I'm gonna 0:15:44.080 --> 0:15:46.360 I'm gonna make a wild guest that your your friend 0:15:46.400 --> 0:15:49.720 might be college educated, she might be white, and those people, 0:15:49.800 --> 0:15:52.760 white college educated women are kind of the new swing voters. 0:15:53.040 --> 0:15:56.560 They used to vote Republican pretty steadily, and now I 0:15:56.600 --> 0:15:59.760 think post Trump, there maybe in the middle like true 0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:04.000 into Pennant voters or their trending Democratic. So we I 0:16:04.040 --> 0:16:07.640 think we'll be watching for women in general and how 0:16:07.640 --> 0:16:10.480 they vote on election day, but college educated white women 0:16:10.560 --> 0:16:14.240 in particular, because their constituency that was traditional Republican that 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:17.320 more and more seemed to moving over to the Democratic 0:16:17.360 --> 0:16:20.200 side of things. Well, this was a reality check for me, though, 0:16:20.360 --> 0:16:24.200 because I think that there are a lot of women 0:16:24.320 --> 0:16:29.760 who sympathized with him and Brian. I'm curious in Los Angeles, 0:16:29.880 --> 0:16:33.640 you know that hotbed of conservativism, if you've run against 0:16:33.760 --> 0:16:38.440 run up against um women who share my friend's point 0:16:38.440 --> 0:16:41.280 of view. I actually had a conversation with one woman 0:16:41.320 --> 0:16:45.240 I know who wouldn't tell me what her personal views are, 0:16:45.280 --> 0:16:48.640 but said that she was convinced that other women would 0:16:48.680 --> 0:16:52.760 sympathize with Kavanaugh because we've all seen women who make 0:16:52.840 --> 0:16:56.600 false allegations to get something, and it was hard for 0:16:56.640 --> 0:17:00.000 me to imagine what Dr Ford would get in this situation. 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:02.280 And I mean, last time I checked, she wasn't even 0:17:02.320 --> 0:17:05.200 allowed to or able to go back to her own home. 0:17:05.359 --> 0:17:09.280 But I think we've seen in the data that the 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:14.680 Kavanaugh hearings energized a lot of Republican voters who might 0:17:14.720 --> 0:17:18.600 not have voted or and motivated some right leaning independent 0:17:18.680 --> 0:17:23.080 voters to stick with the Republicans. Yeah, I think that's 0:17:23.119 --> 0:17:27.600 fair because women, these these you know, college educated white 0:17:27.600 --> 0:17:31.400 women were probably already a more activated constituency to begin with. 0:17:31.520 --> 0:17:35.520 So the perceived mistreatment of Kavanaugh, I think, yeah, that 0:17:35.640 --> 0:17:38.760 certainly has played a factor. Now we kind of have 0:17:38.840 --> 0:17:42.840 the X factor of these really terrible events of the 0:17:42.880 --> 0:17:47.680 past week basically, and I we're not quite sure how 0:17:47.680 --> 0:17:49.560 these are going to affect things. I mean, you know, 0:17:49.600 --> 0:17:52.680 potentially they could have an effect on Trump's approval rating, 0:17:52.800 --> 0:17:55.200 and that is often a sign of how people might 0:17:55.280 --> 0:17:58.679 vote in their congressional races. But it's just you know, 0:17:58.760 --> 0:18:00.479 I don't mean this is sound flip, but model does 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:03.080 not take into account I hate crimes. You know how 0:18:03.080 --> 0:18:07.040 that factors into American elections, And unfortunately that's something that's 0:18:07.040 --> 0:18:09.359 happening right now. And doesn't that also, Claire, take a 0:18:09.400 --> 0:18:12.280 while to seep into the public consciousness and to be 0:18:12.520 --> 0:18:15.600 reflected in polling data. It does take a little while 0:18:15.640 --> 0:18:17.760 to seep in. So we're recording this the week before 0:18:17.760 --> 0:18:20.960 the election. I'm guessing that pollsters will be putting out 0:18:21.080 --> 0:18:24.600 polls into the field. They probably started last week after 0:18:24.760 --> 0:18:27.920 the bombings, and so we might see some some data 0:18:27.960 --> 0:18:31.240 on how people are perceiving those events visa VI the election. 0:18:31.520 --> 0:18:35.600 Trump's comments in the wake of the synagogue shooting were 0:18:36.320 --> 0:18:39.680 I found them totally odd, um, And I'm not sure 0:18:39.680 --> 0:18:41.640 how how people will react to that. But you're right, 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:44.680 it does take a little bit of time for these 0:18:44.680 --> 0:18:47.199 things to seep in, and um, you know, the election 0:18:47.240 --> 0:18:49.280 is a week away, so we might end up seeing 0:18:49.320 --> 0:18:53.359 some of those results. Frankly, the day of aren't politics local? 0:18:53.400 --> 0:18:56.120 I mean, do they really? Is it really a direct 0:18:57.119 --> 0:19:00.360 reaction to the presidency? In other words, if I live 0:19:00.400 --> 0:19:03.280 in a state, couldn't I say, I don't really like 0:19:03.400 --> 0:19:06.200 Donald Trump, but I do like that, you know, my senator. 0:19:07.240 --> 0:19:10.240 That happens less and less. We call it ticket splitting, um, 0:19:10.320 --> 0:19:13.560 And because Americans are so much more partisan, we see 0:19:13.560 --> 0:19:16.200 a lot more people just voting straight down the ticket, 0:19:16.240 --> 0:19:19.440 Republican or Democratic. There is the old truism, right that 0:19:19.480 --> 0:19:21.800 all politics is local, but I think more and more 0:19:21.840 --> 0:19:26.040 it's become nationalized, in part because this was happening pre Trump. 0:19:26.080 --> 0:19:28.399 But I do think Trump is a He has a 0:19:28.440 --> 0:19:30.960 talent for driving new cycles, and I think that that 0:19:31.080 --> 0:19:34.159 is something that that propelled him into office and continues 0:19:34.200 --> 0:19:38.560 to dominate our politics new cycle. Overwhelmingly, we've become much 0:19:38.600 --> 0:19:42.120 more like a parliamentary system where people aren't paying attention 0:19:42.160 --> 0:19:45.840 as they used to a generation ago, to local factors, 0:19:45.920 --> 0:19:49.720 local candidates. They're really just voting for what team they 0:19:49.760 --> 0:19:52.679 want and charge in Washington, particularly in these House and 0:19:52.760 --> 0:19:56.040 Senate races, I want to ask you about one candidate 0:19:56.080 --> 0:19:59.480 in particular who's been perhaps the star of this cycle, 0:19:59.640 --> 0:20:02.760 better or Rourke. In Texas, he has just a one 0:20:02.760 --> 0:20:05.679 in five chance to win. I haven't seen a single 0:20:05.760 --> 0:20:08.520 poll with him in the lead. He's usually mid to 0:20:09.119 --> 0:20:15.240 high single digits behind. Have journalists given voters a false 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:19.240 sense of his chances, and especially donors who poured more 0:20:19.240 --> 0:20:24.000 than seventy million dollars into his campaign. Yeah, So I 0:20:24.040 --> 0:20:27.080 wrote a piece about Beatto about a month ago that 0:20:27.160 --> 0:20:29.439 was a little bit premised off this Brian and in 0:20:29.480 --> 0:20:31.960 my lead was basically the number of times he's been 0:20:31.960 --> 0:20:34.480 compared to a Kennedy And I think it was a 0:20:34.560 --> 0:20:37.080 hilarious piece. Everybody should read it, by the way, But 0:20:37.200 --> 0:20:39.840 I think that there's something real there, which is the 0:20:39.840 --> 0:20:42.719 midterm elections are I guess, distinctly unsexy as far as 0:20:42.760 --> 0:20:45.160 there's tons of races, there's not one, one or two 0:20:45.200 --> 0:20:48.680 candidates that you could follow along with. And O'Rourke is young, 0:20:48.840 --> 0:20:51.120 He's a Democrat making a play in Texas, so there's 0:20:51.119 --> 0:20:54.520 sort of a substantive political story there. But I do 0:20:54.600 --> 0:20:58.639 think he is a telegenic person running against Ted Cruz, 0:20:58.720 --> 0:21:03.760 the Republican incumbent, who is not a particularly beloved figure 0:21:03.880 --> 0:21:07.399 even by Republicans. Lindsay Graham had a great line that 0:21:07.560 --> 0:21:09.080 you know, you could you could shoot him on the 0:21:09.080 --> 0:21:11.160 floor of the Senate and none of his colleagues would 0:21:11.600 --> 0:21:14.240 would convict the person who shot him. So he's it's 0:21:14.320 --> 0:21:17.240 it's a he's not a popular guy, let's say. But 0:21:17.359 --> 0:21:21.080 I think that the media has a little bit hyped 0:21:21.160 --> 0:21:24.800