Have Republicans Already Blown the Midterms?

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Welcome to Pause Evenerica. I'm Dan Feigler. Today you can hear my conversation with Amy Walter, the publisher and editor-in-chief of the Cook Political Report. The midterms are now less than two weeks away, not on any of the perfect person to set the scene as we head into the final stretch.

We talk about the latest in the Senate races, the House map, whether Republicans redistricting can't get it worked, and voters' attitudes towards Trump, the economy, and the war in Iran. And so much more. We get to that conversation in a moment. But before we do, Kirk and Con is fast approaching.

The weekend after the midterms and February 5th through 7th, will be in DC for a weekend full of live shows, conversations, and so much more. If you're anyone working in politics or interested in politics, this is a can'tness event. We're breaking down what just happened in the midterms and setting the stage for what's to come in 2028. Head over to Kirk and Con.com to get your tickets now.

And while I have you, I want to make a pitch when the election happens, I'll help you understand what happened, why it happened, and what it means for 2028. I have a special pre-election discount for positive American listeners. Go to Kirk and Con slash yesterday, and get 20% off for an entire year. Okay, here's my conversation with Amy Walter.

Amy Walter, welcome back to Positive America. Okay, I'm very happy to be here. Two, a little more than two weeks ago before the election. Feels like we would never get here.

These are the longest two weeks we've had in a very long time. How are you feeling? I'm tired. Yeah.

And like every, I feel like every voter in a swing state who's saying, just let it end. Let's just let it be over. Right? As you very well know, the last two weeks of the campaign and probably the last five days are the absolute worst.

Because it's now everybody just hosting theories and conspiracies and conversations they had with some of they went to high school with, and what does this mean? And you know, we're not going to get any polling, I think that's going to make us change any of our theories of the case of this election between now and election day. We're really basically locked in and we got to wait for the results. Yeah, I'm counting on some more polls, I'll be honest.

I feel like Nick, Nick, I'm going to have more polls. I think we're going to get more polling. I'm just saying, I wouldn't expect that all of a sudden you're going to open up polls that show. Oh, wow, this is real.

Oh, someone says open to seven point lead now. That's right. So you wrote back a few weeks ago on October 7th that this political environment is as brutal Republicans, any you've seen at least 20 years, we're now a couple weeks or we can have after that. I assume that's as much to hold.

Why is this political environment so brutal Republicans? And then you remember this election quite well. Oh, I do. We're all coming back at this feels very 2006 deja vu because you have a president with an approval rating under 40%, which is where George W.

Bush was at this point in 2006 in unpopular war and corruption being sort of the center of the conversation in Washington back then it was Jack Abramoff now it is all the things there are also some sex scandals that were going on in 2006. We have that carry over in 2026, but really appealing among the American public about a deep frustration with the direction of the country, even deeper frustration in 2026 with the direction of the economy with inflation being a big factor. But what you're also seeing that reminds me of 2006 is the real energy and enthusiasm difference between Democrats and Republicans. For most of the Trump era, even when Democrats were more enthusiastic in 2018, Republicans didn't fall through the floor.

I mean, it helped that the Kavanaugh hearings came out a couple of weeks before the election. I think that helped to energize some of those less engaged Republican voters. So that was something of a boost. But I think even going into that election expectation was that there were going to be some places where because of how badly Trump was doing with independence and how motivated Democrats were those swing seats, those seats that Hillary Clinton won, those were going to be all but impossible for Republicans to hang on to.

But that how deep into the Trump seats they could go was limited by the fact that Republicans showed up this year. And I think this was the case in 2006. How deep Democrats go into Republican territory is really driven by the fact that independents are going to show up for Democrats. Democrats are going to show up for Democrats, but are Republicans going to sit home?

Or are they going to show up? And every indication we have right now is that they're not enthusiastic. They're frustrated with the president for a whole range of reasons, but mostly the cost of stuff and the war in Iran. And we've spent how much money has been spent in the last three weeks in these races, right?

Millions of dollars. Yeah. To try. Exactly.

And if you're in Alaska or Texas or Ohio or Iowa, your goal isn't to try to win for questionable independence. It's you are sending signals to your base about why it's important for you to turn out. And thus far, I mean, to me, what's the most telling in some of the polling we've seen recently is that opinions of the Democrats remain above water and opinions of the Republican candidates are below water, which says, boy, you've spent a lot of money and I don't know that you're getting what you thought you were going to get from all that. It is.

There's so much to unpack there. You know, it is 2006 is the most obvious historical analogy. I do think you look at a whole bunch of factors. This is a worse political environment for a while because 2006 was the you can argue maybe the Democrats were better positioned in 2006 than they are now just because of the brand at the time.

But either way, Trump is more unpopular than Bush by some measures. The economy is obviously much worse. You know, he's under 30, he's 30 points underwater on the economy, 50 points underwater on gas. And it's in some way.

Yeah. And gas being over $4 a gallon is, you know, that's a political killer. The, you know, so it could be, I would say these midterms are always hard to judge because we, the typical, you know, a little different, I think, but the typical person judges in terms of seats won, not house popular vote, which is what it really is because everyone's like, well, Obama lost seats seats. That must be the worst midterm ever.

But I'm only lost to talking about like six and a half points. It just happened to be the only seats in play. But on its face, this is a very, very bad matter of Republicans. And I do feel like they have fewer levers to pull than they did in 2006, in part because TV ads clearly matter less than they did back then.

I mean, it's like that's to me is the big question of they spent all this money. As far as we know, and we're all trusting the polls, we'll talk about whether we can do that a little bit. But if you trust the polls, they have not moved. The Democrats are no less popular than they were before in a typical environment where you were spending hundreds of millions hours on an election.

You would see even if you, The negatives are moving. The negatives are moving. And I don't know what that's because, and obviously you're taking this, is it because the attacks are the wrong ones and it's mostly trans cultural attacks, anti-trans cultural stuff? Or is it that people you're trying to reach aren't seeing the ads because of how there's the C ads or people have just tuned out, they've already made the decision.

And none of this information is going to make a difference. I don't know what you're thinking. I know I was just asking someone this very same question. And it's probably like everything, a combination of everything you just laid out.

The first is I think Republicans came in as they saw the environment deteriorating. They were like, okay, this isn't great for us. But here are the things we have going for us. Socialism, look, tested in a poll.

Everybody hates socialism. So we're going to link everything to socialism. We still, even as we're underwater, this would be Republican saying this. Even if we're underwater on inflation and the economy, we are still above water on immigration, crime, taxes.

So let's just lean into those four things. We'll lean into immigration. If my opponent gets in, he's going to give real open borders, give all your money away to illegal immigrants. By the way, you'd also raise your taxes.

I cut your taxes. Remember with that, no tax on tips. Wasn't that great? And then finally, if you put Republicans in charge, all these crazy things are going to happen.

And it's not that voters don't care about those issues. But when you compare it to, wait a minute, it just cost me $100 to fill up my car. And you're telling me that I have to worry about these other things, no facts on tips. Like, that's fine.

I got, okay. And yeah, I'm really happy the president closed the border. And I don't want to give welfare to illegal. But that is not my priority today.

I need you, Republicans, to give me an answer for how you're going to get the cost down. Which is what the president told me he was going to do in 2024. He was going to lower costs. He wasn't going to get us into a forever war in the Middle East.

Those two promises have been broken. And I don't see you trying to fix it. Because the only way they would be able to fix it, Dan, is to come out and say, this one needs to end. I'm not going to vote to continue the war.

We got to get the straight open. And I'll do everything I can. When the president's right, I stick with him. But in this case, he's wrong.

But they can't. They're in a total bind there. The other thing, and I heard this from a Republican really early in the cycle. And when I wrote something about, are these socialism attacks going to work.

And this Republican said, I've been doing a lot of polling on this in the challenge. People don't really know what they think about socialism. It's still a concept in a way that, if you ask it in a poll, do you like socialism? People go, I don't know.

That sounds like it's kind of a bad word. I hear it in context. It seems like, or out of context, it seems like something negative. But then if you ask me to describe it, I don't exactly know what that means.

And so we've tested these messages. And I've seen them. Other people test them as well in polling. Somebody who's identified as MAGA versus somebody who's identified as a socialist.

And the MAGA label is more toxic than the socialist label, in part because people know what MAGA is. They're like, oh, I get that. I know what that is. Socialist.

I don't 100% know it's Bernie Sanders. But it just doesn't relate in the same way. And look, if Democrats get in charge, if there was a Democratic president who said, hi, I'm a socialist, and these are the five things we're doing, then yes, it couldn't be a bigger problem for Democrats to have to decide, am I going to associate with this candidate and their policies or not. But right now, it's just this big overarching term that is being thrown at people that is not resonating in the way that I think many Republicans, I hope, that would.

It doesn't probably help the Republicans case that the one of the two most prominent socialist and American politics is someone who Trump keeps falling over and inviting to the White House and how it is. It's not done. I mean, everyone remembers that even Democrats, like the folks at their way were in a panic, that if I'm not even became the mayor, he would be weapons because all these Democrats, it's like, you know, Mondani is in a single land anywhere. Yeah.

In part, because I think one, it's absurd to use the mayor of New York to run. Exactly. Associate with someone running the second street by, well, like that was never going to work in a scenario, but also Trump has buddyed up with them, and he's in a bunch of these things that are seeing very, you know, he's filling bottles and he's helping people get food. That's the thing.

Mom, Donnie had come in and, you know, with like- Fine, at least she ate. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

Crime goes out of control. All businesses leave New York City, right? Then yes, that would have been an more effective cudgel, but just the name, and even the AOC Bernie stuff. I mean, this is where the conversation about, you know, ideology, personality, and the environment, and partisanship, all kind of muddled together.

It's not as clear. You know, again, ask people, do you like socialism? Not really. Do you like Medicare for all?

Yeah, that sounds pretty good, right? Do you think that do you like capitalism? Yeah, sure. Do you think we should have more taxes on billionaires?

Yeah, yeah. I like that too, right? So people are a little bit all over the place when it comes to the things that Bernie Sanders is talking about, tax corporations and Medicare for all. He's not a toxic position today.

Yeah. So that also, I think, takes the sting out of the socialism attack. Yeah, it is. It's been, you know, I've been in these rooms.

I know how this goes where it's like every poll, every piece of research has, all people care about its costs. Like it's one, two, and three on everyone's agenda. Yeah. And so then you're like, well, we're going to test a bunch of our cost messages.

And then those aren't going to move voters. We're going to talk about something else. But the problem with that, that is a very understandable checkers move. But the problem is that if you, the main thing is always the main thing.

And if you're off the main thing, you look like you're just reinforcing the critique that you don't care about cost because anytime you turn on the TV, all you see is Republicans and Republicans are talking about something other than costs. adr.com. I wanted to, as we think about this environment. There's been this debate kind of kicked off by your colleague, Charlie Cook, about whether this is a Blue wave or a Red Undertoe.

And what he means by that, by Charlie's definition, a Blue Wave is, you know, is a validation of democratic politician. Democratic ideas, the Democratic Party, a Red Undertoe is an election that is a rejection of Republicans. How do you, like what's your take on that idea? Cause that's sort of been this, like that's become in the pre-emptive, fashionable debate with the Democratic Party about what all this means, and I'm gonna ask you a little bit more about that later.

Charlie's term of red undertow is being used is become part of the conversation. Curious what's your take on that? What's your take on that? Yeah, so we both know that every midterm election is a referendum on the party in power, and it's not a referendum on the party that wins.

You can be super popular as a Democrat in this environment and win, you can be kind of unpopular and win. It's not about you, right? And it's not about your ideas, and it's not about all that. This is definitely, it's always a backlash to whoever's in power.

So that's true. To me, what I took from that analogy, is look, here's the blue wave. The blue wave is the Democratic enthusiasm, which has been there, right? Since 2025, we saw the governor's race as we've seen in special elections, we've seen at primaries, added to that blue wave are independence, which we haven't talked about yet, but man, even in 2006, I can't remember what Democrats won, independents won, maybe it was 20.

It might have been a little bit, maybe it was in the teens, but they're leading right now by like 23 points, a generic Democrat with independence. Trump's approval rating with independence is 26%. I mean, if you're sitting in a swing district, you cannot win as a Republican in the president's at 26% with independence, that's just deadly, right? So that's the blue wave is Democrats' enthusiasm, really angry independence, but what could make this wave go into territory where it doesn't belong, i.e.

Trump plus 10, 12, 13 districts and states, is the undertow our Republicans weren't showing up. And that Democrats' wave is dependent on a whole bunch of Republicans staying home, even in places where they have such a decided advantage, like Alaska and Texas. And that, I feel like, is the difference between Democrats having a good night, a great night, or like a historic night is the undertow piece. The other thing that I do think is important to appreciate about where Democrats go on this.

And somebody else wrote about this, I can't remember where I saw this, but the gap between Democrats' approval rating and their lead on the generic ballot, your net approval rating, like let's say the net approval rating for Democrats were five and they were leading on the generic ballot by eight. Okay, so that's a three point difference. But what we're seeing now that is, could be historic is how unpopular Democrats are, but how big their lead in the generic ballot is, right? So that there is, usually you're not supposed to work together, you're not supposed to be this unpopular, but have this big of a lead.

Some of that unpopularity though, as we know, it comes from Democrats themselves, right? Like Democrats don't like their own party for various reasons, but they're gonna turn out and they're voting for Democrats. I think the challenge for the Democratic leadership, going into 2027 with the Democratic House, and maybe the Democratic House and Senate, is the expectations of the base now are so different from where they were in 2018, or even 2006, this is more, they want more than just putting a check on Trump, they want a real change to the system, and they want something more substantive than just, you know, we're kind of moving around the edges. So I think that's gonna be the more challenging dynamic going into 2027 than whether Democrats are liked by the broader public.

Yeah, it's also interesting because the reason the red undertow matter so much is here is because the map is so much the map is taking place in red America, even the vast majority of swing districts are in districts that you were won by even a little bit. And then the Senate, like if this was a Senate map where we were, it looked a little bit more like 2006 or some of us were running someone, or even what could be the 2028 map where we're trying to win, more swing states and more blue states, then we would be less than 10. Exactly. It was a totally different, exactly.

You don't need, I've been saying that for a long time. If the Senate map ran through like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, like that's a no brainer for what happens, but that's not where it's going. And I also make the comparison. So when Democrats lost those 60 seats in 2010, there were 60 districts that Democrats held in 2010, that Obama either lost or won by less than five.

60, there were 37 of those in 2018, Republicans held Hillary Clinton seats or Trump won by less than five. They're basically now a little over a dozen of those. So if you were picking up more than, if the net, when Democrats are the bigger the gains in the house, they are coming from places that Trump won by six, seven, 10 points. And even on the Senate side, in 2006, you had John Tester win in Montana State that Bush had carried by 20 points, but every other state Democrats flipped, Bush had won by single digits.

So this would be really, you know, something we haven't seen before, which is a party flipping, the wind control Democrats have to do this, which is to flip two double digit seats in a time where as you rightly pointed out, we're even more partisan and more dug into partisanship. So. Yeah, those states, you know, 20 years ago, had, it was very common to have a Democratic senator of, and all these, and all these 20 seats. And Republican, you know, the Jews and Collins will be a snow in places like Maine, we're in a different world now.

The other interesting thing here is, you know, people are, I was at a fundraiser the other night for Canada, I won't name, and I had a bunch of former Obama's and Democratic staffers there were the Bay Area Daspora, and we were talking, and these are all hardened political professionals with many commensative though, everyone afraid to believe the polls, right? Everyone very nervous about the polls. Yeah. The, what I, like, understandably so, after 2016 and 2020, people very nervous about the Democrats in particular were very worried about getting their hearts broken, very sensitive group.

What I found interesting is that in previous elections, even in 2020 when the polls look really good, there will be all these Republicans out there saying to people like you, to Politico, elsewhere, or releasing internal polls that show something very different, or saying like, laughing at Democrats or optimistic like in 2020 about Iowa, Alaska, South Carolina, Senate seats. You don't, you may hear something different, you talk about more people than us, than I do certainly, certainly more Republicans, but I, you don't really hear that this time. Like, and if you look at the spending patterns, Republicans don't believe it. No, you were, and I think that's, I think that's exactly right.

I mean, are there differences in the ways that the two parties see a handful of these states, especially ones that are further out of the margins? For sure. But you're not gonna hear Republicans say, no, I don't think Alaska is real, right? I don't think Ohio and Iowa are real.

I think what they are counting on, and what your friends fear, what Republicans are hoping what Democrats fear is, the polling, all of the polls are within the margin, right? So that's always dangerous. No, even for these polls where Democrats ahead, no one's at 50. And you start to think, okay, well, have Democrats basically, has the Democratic candidate peaked?

They've gotten all the available voters, and they're at 48%. That's where they're gonna end up, and that all the people who haven't been participating in the polls, again, it's not because these polls are biased or whatever, you can't find people who don't want to take a participate in giving their opinion. Many of those people are gonna be sort of disaffected Republicans. If they just decide on election day, like, screw it, I'm gonna go out, I'm gonna just suck it up and vote for the Republicans.

Because even though I'm mad at Trump and I'm mad about this war, it would be worse to have Democrats in control of the Senate. That's a, for today, that's a one thing I can control. I can't control Trump, I can't control this. And that, yeah, these races just kind of get there.

The other is, what are these undecided? So that's piece number one, is those Republicans who show up, who we aren't capturing in the polling, on either side. I mean, both sides will admit that's what we don't know. What we don't know.

To me, the other big question is, and I'm sitting here in Maine right now, and no one knows what's gonna happen up here. And this is the real interesting pension point and the different pension points. I look at a place like Maine, where if you just, all I told you, Dan was, Trump's reporting in the state is like 32%. And the generic is Dem plus like six or something like that.

And so they're like, we want a Democratic Senate and we don't like Trump. Well, then the Democrats should win, right? But there still are people holding on, the people who don't want Trump and they don't want a Republican Senate are still having reservations about Troy Jackson or have some affinity to Susan Collins, some similar thing happening in Michigan. Do those folks ultimately stay home?

Do they show up? That is a big, or do they all just break at once, right? That's what we, if we just assume that everything's partisan, which has been the theory of many Republicans from the beginning of the cycle, that at the end of the day, we're gonna do all this and everyone's just gonna throw their jersey on. And so the deep, deep red states will barely stay red, but we're gonna, the blue ones and the purple ones go, then, all right, what you end up with an outcome where Democrats could come up short, even though they came really close.

Yeah, I mean, that's the thing that if you, like are trying to put the whole PM aside for a second and like, you know, they're good. They all, you know, all the positive arguments. But we have, I would argue, it's certainly in the Senate races. In most cases, we have much, but they're not so much better candidates.

We have a little environment, I think they are running hands down better campaigns and how they're, they've used their money, we're raising money on the hard side. We're running, you know, we're sort of narrowing that money advantage by running more ads, we're doing all these things. But at the end of the day, you need almost every single thing to break your way, to win a Trump plus 11 state. And in the least linear time, Santa Paul's, in all of these states, all these red states from the Senate states, the majority of voters, or the plurality of voters at least want a Republican control of the Senate, right?

And so that's true in Ohio. Yeah, I mean, it's the hardest one, this is where it gets really complicated, because the hardest one is a Texas, I think is one of the, you're right, I can't remember down the Cianapoles. I think Ohio, that flipped. So Ohio is now more democratic than it was earlier.

So the Cianapoles in the summer certainly pointed that way. In June and July said, these Democrats are looking strong, but every one of these dark red states, Alaska, Ohio, Texas, Iowa, they prefer a generic Republican. But the Cianapoles that came out in September showed something a little bit different, which was, I remember you took, let's say Alaska goes from plus eight to plus two, right? Like, oh, well, that's winnable, but that's still also a Republican, right?

They generically, just in their DNA, want to see Republicans more than Democrats in charge of the Senate. And so, again, if you just looked at the generic and said, how many of these do Democrats win? You say, well, they want Democrats in Michigan, Ohio, Maine, maybe they're even, I can't remember where they're evenly divided in one of those states, but they're narrowly, Republicans are narrowly ahead in the other deep red states. Now, again, the generic doesn't really mean anything if what voters are seeing is, well, I'd really like a Republican Senate, but I just do not like that.

Right? And that's where the disconnect is real. And that's where the disconnect is real in Maine and Michigan, too, like I really want a Democratic Senate, but I don't know that I could go for it. I'll say it, I don't, right?

So that's why we love campaigns. Yeah, the polling error thing is interesting because everyone's worried about polling error. There can be zero polling error and Republicans can win three of those four seats we're talking about, get the Senate. Or, and there's also a possible, like I almost hesitate to say this, but it is also possible to polling error operates in the wrong direction.

Absolutely. And these all break, including like Kansas. Yes. You put Nebraska, right?

Like we have, we always know there's a surprise. Usually it's in the House, especially in the state and age that we don't get surprised in Senate races, but. No, six weeks. I think I was saying, I mean, maybe you weren't surprised, but the fact we.

We were surprised by which one. Web, I think. I think we were all surprised, because it was just so funny to think about. Like you guys were worried, you thought that you couldn't flip Virginia.

It was very different in 2006. Yeah. I mean, it's so hard. It's like, this is you and I've been in the game for a long time now, but like at the time, you had a guy who was not a very good candidate, like on the stump, but obviously she went out very, very powerful candidate on paper, being a guy who was the leading contender to be the redex Republican nominee at the time in Georgia Allen, a former NFL player.

That's right. And because that was the one that put him over the top. Yeah. Yeah.

Very, very popular. But I think, but I think there is the polls, like people forget this, because it's funny, Democrats only care about the poll errors happening when they go against us. Yes. And the polls were quite wrong in 2025.

They underestimated Democrats. Yeah. They underestimated Republican turnout. Yeah.

Yeah. Especially in New Jersey. Yeah. They knew Jersey.

And that could happen again, because of the statistical tools being used to jam these Trump voters into the polls to have accurate representation, because you're trying to, you know, you're trying to model these off the 2024 results when that coalition maybe has collapsed. So we don't actually know. We don't really know. And we are right.

I mean, polls are, it's an art and a science. You're making assumptions about an electorate that may not, it will come close to that, but you just move a couple of these demographic groups a few points, either way. And there's, you know, 5,000 votes and 10,000 votes in their election. I think it was, I can't remember who it was in your time, so you had the tool that you could use in 2024, where you move things by, you know, move the Latino by a couple points in terms of turnout and vote choice and get entirely different results.

Let's talk about Trump for a second here, because obviously the subject of all this is Trump's very unpopular. He's the one who people believe raise their costs. He started the war, everyone hates. In a typical midterm with an unpopular incumbent, whether it be Joe Biden in 2022, the George, Barack George W Bush in 2006, Obama in 2010, the incumbent president kind of hangs out in the White House and doesn't really tries to do back out.

Trump's doing the opposite, he's campaigning, he's doing rallies every day. He's headed to Georgia right now, he's recording this, he's gonna be in Kansas, Michigan, Ohio, a bunch of other places for the election. I'm trying to imagine what the strategic upside of that is for these Republicans, you have thoughts on that? I don't see much upside at a time where, you know, when he's on the, when he's in people's consciousness, it only reminds people of him, right?

If you are a Republican in one of these red states, what he's gonna get your voters to the polls is not, oh, that's right, I need to do this for the president. It is, oh, that's right. If I vote for, if I don't show up, Democrats are gonna be in charge and then bad things are gonna happen again. So that, I quote the echelon poll that they did for Puck recently a lot, because I think this tells also the story of where the Republican voter is today.

You know, back in January of 2025, there was something like 60% of Republicans identified as a Trump Republican and now it's like 34% identifies Trump Republican. So when Trump says pretend I'm on the ballot, vote like, you know, this is about the MAGA movement. Well, 34% of Republicans are like, okay, great, that speaks to me, but the other whatever percent are saying, well, no, that's, that doesn't resonate with me, right? That's not what's gonna motivate me to get to the polls.

And, you know, not to be a knock on your old boss, but I remember in 2014, you know, here was Obama went, he did go on the trail in many places to say like, this is, you're doing this for me, right? Like help, when you vote for these guys, you're helping my agenda, let's do this. It's just a, it's hard, it is hard to get people who are already feeling pretty disconnected from politics to make a connection with some House for Senate candidate that a president who you're kind of right now disappointed in or at the very least feeling like, I'm not, I don't feel great about think the way things are going in the country that that's gonna be somehow motivating for them. So look, I think the reality, and we've seen this for the last two years, but especially in this last year, that the reigning theory of the case in the Trump world is let Trump be Trump, right?

There is no telling him like, this isn't really the strategy, we gotta kind of hear let's go do this, but we should probably not say that, please don't say this, but do say this, so that's part number one, part number two, I think he loves proving people wrong. You guys keep saying we're gonna lose, you guys keep saying that I'm a drag on the party, that this is so unpopular, that there, the MAGA isn't, you know, has lost its way, I'm gonna prove all of you wrong because I always do prove you wrong, you laughed at me in 2016, you laughed at me in 2022, laughed at me in 2024, and I come back every single time. That is kind of what it feels like, right? I'm gonna do this for that reason, and so whether it's strategic, it's clearly not.

Yeah, I could, I could retcon as a strategic argument for why he's helpful in Alaska and Iowa and Kansas in particular, these are states who want my double digits, we know the undecided voters there are like 91%, Trump voters or whatever. I think someone who's approved for the Democratic War Republicans, which is 20 points lower now than it was in 24 or even 2018, it's probably not the draw he used to be, but you can do that, what I can't, what you can't tell me is that him going to Michigan is helpful, as they raise 20 points under water. And we're the best thing for Mike Rogers, who would possibly be as to make this campaign all about a duel. Yeah, and then all about a duel.

Yeah, and then if Trump shows off, that makes it very hard. And Trump, these guys are in such a prison because Mike Rogers can't not go. That's right. So he's gotta go.

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Let's, I'm gonna pivot to the house here because we talk about the Senate maybe a little bit later, but we talk about the Senate on the podcast all the time, like everyone else represents these Senate, with the Senate we're talking about again, we don't talk enough about the specifics of the battle in the house. Today on Friday morning, Cook Political Report moved 11 more races in the democratic direction. I was struck by two of these in particular. The first is Florida 25, which is the district that represented by Democrat Joe and Moskowitz, the Republicans redrew to try to make it a pickup.

And the second district in Montana were Sam Forsdag, the smoke jumper is running. What's going on here? Yeah, I mean, they're two very different states. Yeah, yes, yes.

I would say Joe Moskowitz and Sam Forsdag are very different candidates. Yes, people don't know what's going on here. One's jumped on airplanes. Yeah, one's a smoke jumper.

Yes. I don't think maybe he would do it. I don't know. I haven't asked him.

He might do it if there was a TV camera there. Yes. So, so I think there are so many, I love the house because there's so many different storylines. Right.

And so one storyline on election night is gonna be, how did this whole redistricting thing work out? And Florida and Texas obviously will take center stage. And as you know, the Texas and Florida maps were redrawn, basically with the theory that the Republicans would do as well with Latinos as they did, as Trump did and as Republicans did in 2024, which is clearly not working out. And if you look, for example, at those Texas seats, I think three of them, Trump won by double digits, but Biden had carried those, right?

So if we just, just by going back to not even the greatest that Democrats have ever done, but just go back to the 2020 number, those seats are now no longer look safe. The Florida 25 is another good example of that. That was a district that Biden won, even though I think it's a Trump eight or nine, something like that district. Moscow, it's obviously is a very aggressive candidate, has raised a ton of money.

And the same thing with, you have like the, we have it in lean right now, but Maria Salazar down in South Florida, that was a district Trump barely won in 2020. What about 15, I think, in 2024? Yes. In the new version, yes.

Yeah. And the 22nd, which we have as a toss up another one that, this is that district that goes all the way across South Florida, like from the east to the west coast. And that's another one that Trump carried by double digits, but Obama won. So those are, again, it's not a dummy manor, because a dummy manor is, oh, you made some, you made a Republican less safe by trying to drought a Democrat.

In this case, it's just that they're not gonna make the games that they thought they would. Montana is as much about, you know, this is, there's this other group of states, Montana, we have Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Iowa, places that had been drifting to the right in 2024, and even to a certain extent in 2020. But if you go back, not that long ago, to the Obama era, or if you go back even further to the Clinton era, these are the kind of districts that Democrats were winning. Now, Montana's changed a lot since then, obviously, and this is a more democratic part of the state anyway.

But I think what you're seeing in somebody like Forstag is he's a really strong, you know, as a great appeal because of his story as being a smoke jumper and like this blue collar guy. And that the, that these are the kinds of voters in these sort of ancestrally democratic areas that for them voting for a Democrat, they've moved off from them culturally, but not necessarily economically. I would say North Carolina 11 fits into that category too. That's the old Heath Schuler district.

If you remember that Western North Carolina, where there's a Heath Schuler-like Democrat running there. Is that Jamie Ager seat? That's Jamie Ager seat. So you've got, and then the Iowa districts, that's what they said.

They do swing a lot in swing years, but if Democrats sweep all of those Iowa districts, which at one time a Democrat did hold all three of those districts, the ones that Democrats never win are the one for this West, that's the most rural. But you know, that's kind of going back to where Democrats had been with a lot of these sort of working-class white voters, also McComb County. There's a very competitive race there as well. So if it's a good night for Democrats, they win in all the places where because of the Hispanic shift and because of independence cratering, they pick up the Florida's, or they hold the Florida's and the Texas and the swing seats in Arizona, and Pennsylvania, New Jersey.

If it's a good, like a great night, that's when you start knocking off the seats in the more traditionally blue collar, working-class areas that had shifted. Scranton is another one where there's a great race there. That's a great, great, great. Here's a top-class Democrat candidate.

Yeah, so that would be a really, really good night. And then an absolute whooping of a night for Democrats would be that they're now moving into territory that, again, these were seats that flipped in 2006, but we don't think of as competitive now, they moved so far to the right since then. But in Kentucky, the Lexington, Kentucky District, which was redrawn to be even more Republican, and then Minnesota won, the home of, then Congressman Waltz won in 2006. That was an upset race.

Huge upset, huge upset. It was a huge upset. So that's when you start getting into like tsunami territory. I wanna flag the Kentucky one just for our audience because Kentucky's polls closed first.

And so if you're looking for a canary in the coal mine in either direction, how things come in and that Kentucky six race, we're gonna have a very good can in Zech Dumbo. We'll begin to tell you a little bit, I think, about what kind of night it's gonna look like. I think that's right. And so right now, for example, we have that in lean Republican.

And if the Republican does end up winning here, what that would suggest is, okay, the battlefield now is much narrower, right? There could be some surprises over here on the further edges in the deeper red states, but that for the most part, the battle is going to be taking place in, you know, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Texas. And thankfully, a lot of those races will come in pretty early too, hopefully Texas comes in. They count pretty quickly.

Florida counts pretty quickly. Very fast, yeah. We like to do Ohio's good. Ohio's good.

Virginia is another good place to watch on election night. The district that almost always flips in a way, it is the second district, which right now is Elaine Luria running to get her seat back from Jen Kagan's, the Congresswoman there. If Democrats flip the first district, that is now getting into like, oh, wow, this is a very, very good night for Democrats. If Tom Perriello comes back, another last one that passed, the 2008 passed, but not 2006, but if he wins that area, it's now more rural district, but around Charlottesville, well, now that's a, now Katie Bar the Door kind of election.

It's gonna be interesting because it may not be uniform across the country. 100% because it's usually not. And there's a couple of factors here, and you wrote an excellent column about this just the other day about how different pressure the Trump coalition worked, but you could, we could lose Kentucky and lose some of these more white districts that are Trump, you know, Trump 10, Trump 12, Trump 15, but when Trump 15, 20 districts that are mostly Latino, right? Yeah.

And you can see, and then you look at a race like Alabama too, which is the redrawn district that currently has Democrat Schumari figures in it. Trump came in there recently. And that, but because of what could be a sky-high turnout among black voters after the collage decision, so you could have some of these districts in the South with large black votes, districts in the Sun Belt with large Latino votes that can shift and then maybe more suburban districts, you know, it's all gonna be very interesting. It can be very lumpy, exactly.

I think people here wave and they assume that everything goes and it's like, it's more like a tornado, you know, how a tornado can come through neighborhood and like skip over an entire block, but then it takes out an entire neighborhood over here. And so look, you know, Iowa, every one of those seats is competitive. And so that's what's nice about that state is that it can tell us, it's literally, you can go like, is this a category one, two, or three storm? Based on, you know, the first going, the third going, and then I think a category three storm would be that the second goes as well.

So they sweep the whole state, which is I think what happened in 2006, so like all of Iowa went in 2006, but some of the districts we thought were gonna be definitely flipping, like suburban Philadelphia and suburban New York did not. So you can't look at this list and go, oh my gosh, if Democrats don't win this seat, then that means they're gonna lose. Or if Republicans don't win this, then it's gonna be a 50 seat gain. It's like, you gotta just like, look at it, as you said, look at it as, you know, the distinct regions and appreciating that it may be better in one place and not as good in another.

And another, this is like, I gotta look at that in terms of like voter demographics, but there is this regional question in the Midwest, particularly the Farm Belt about whether Trump's policies on tariffs, diesel prices have put up with a particular problem there, which is one of the reasons why, you know, Democrats are so competitive in Iowa and Kansas. Like I can understand why Democrats are competitive in Ohio and in Alaska, in Texas, because we have great candidates, you know, Sherrod Brown-Mertle told I have one statewide, they have brands independent of the Democratic Party, which is helpful in a rent state, Tallarico is, you know, obviously very talented, can Paxton is a different kind of candidate than that? He brings him back, I guess, with him, but in like Iowa, which works, you know, obviously has a very powerful story, but what's happening in Iowa is made that competitive. What's happening in Kansas has potentially made that competitive, so that also is another, there's a geographic thing.

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There is this question, I think, that does worry a lot of Democrats, which is when you look at the polling, you see overperformance in red areas, right? Like, they're in the Senate Senate side, and you see underperformance relative to the political environment in blue areas. In particular, like we talked about Maine, and that can be Susan Collins specific, right, that's after your selections. You look at Michigan, which could be, you know, Abdul Al-Sayed specific, if I'm not, I think it's a little more complicated than that, but then you look at Minnesota, right, which is, you know, I think like three points in the three, you know, around three or four points in the next over polling average right now.

That's a state that should be, if you just leave the political environment, it's a state that Democrats should be winning by 10. Do you have any thoughts, you know, and you see this in New York too, that you know, the generic ballot, and some of these, the the sort of the dissonance between, or the underperformance in blue states, the cycle for Democrats? Yeah, I think that there are probably a couple of things going on here. The first is that in this really polarized moment, Democrats just are not, there's a state like Michigan, a state like Minnesota, New York, Maine, there's not a lot of elasticity.

It says polarized as it's ever gonna get, right? And so there's not much movement, and a good year or a bad year, you're just literally moving on the margins. A state like Ohio or Alaska or Texas is moving as much as it is, because this is where the polarization is not sticking. And some of that is because a polarization of places like Texas was built on some strength, less strength with Latinos, same with Florida, and that these Republicans who voted for Trump, we're gonna continue to show up and continue to show allegiance to the Republican Party.

And if they are staying home, and they're no longer part of the electorate, then the electorate gets to be much more Democrat, look, less Republican than it did in 2024. So I think that there is just that much more movement in some of those states. And that's why from the very beginning, our question has always been, but just how far can you stretch that band, right? And if you're Democrats, it's like, okay, you can get to 48% of the vote.

You can get to 49%. Can you really get to 50? I also think, you know, there are gonna be so many hot takes after this election. But one thing I think you will hear from the left of the party, if Elsayed and Flanagan and Jackson win is, see, you guys, we're all worried, we're gonna lose these blue states, because our candidates were too far to the left, and they can win anywhere, and you guys just bad, wet and panicked.

I do think you're gonna hear pushback from centrists in the party. Number one, if any of them lose, they will be serious, pushback. But even if they win, to look at the margin that they carried, right? Especially compared to the gubernatorial race.

The other thing I'll say about Minnesota that I didn't really appreciate when I went and I was poking around in the states, looking the same way you did about, when this is a lot closer, you know, one Republicans really do have a stronger candidate there, and I think if this were a different year, and they had the money to put in, they would, so the fact, you know, your follow the money dictum is a really important one here in Minnesota that they have not invested. They're spending more in Kansas and Nebraska, and spending zero in Minnesota. So that kind of tells you where things are going. But I will say that the amount of money that's getting spent against Amy Klobuchar and the governor's race is significant.

I think it's up to like $14 million or something, all of it on the Somali welfare fraud scandal, and obviously, Penny Flynn again, the nominee for the Senate was the lieutenant governor, so she can be attached to that scandal. But by Republicans, but Amy Klobuchar obviously was in Senate. She's not, she's a member of the Democratic Party, but not was not involved with that scandal. But even so, when I watch Klobuchar's ads, she has to like defend against that a lot.

I think one of her first ads, she came out and said, we're gonna, you know, clean house, and make sure we get to the bottom, there's not gonna be any more fraud. So there's clearly, there's a lot of, there's a lot more going on in Minnesota than just, oh, the national environment, national environment, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, and that is another headwind against Democrats, it's not going on in other places. Right, and the subject of all this is, is that in this sort of factional fight in the Democratic Party is that Jackson, I'll say, and Flynn again, were the more progressive, more liberal candidates who won the primary, this is a test of the, of more, you know, Bernie, you know, Bernie endorsed, you know, progressive, for our left hand, whatever you say, in, you know, battleground states or important states or whatever else. I think the hard part about that argument is in, Maine, I'm not sure anyone knows that Trey Jackson is very liberal.

I don't know, he says he might be know what's on about him anyway. He is campaigning this week with Bernie. Yeah, and he does, he does, he is not sort of that, anyway, sort of, his, you know, his type of all his ads, his solidarity. But the bigger issue there is Susan Collins, like that's, that's fair.

And then I think Peggy Flynn again, well, how much people know about how liberal she is or not, I don't know what I mentioned, the probably do, because that wasn't relatively contested, primary, particularly on issues of Israel, with APAC money, et cetera. But her, the bigger issue there is being the lieutenant governor to an unpopular, Democrat, Democrat. Yeah, my other sort of theory on some of these blue states, and this is less relevant to Maine, I think, but is, we are in a change anti-enconment environment, and these are states that have had Democratic governors, like Minnesota Democratic governor for everyone. And she gets coming at the end of two terms, because Democrats have been in charge there for a while, so there's less of that.

But you make the most important point of all, and this which is, it's pure math. There are just, if your numbers go up when people leave the Republicans, there aren't that many people to leave the Republicans, they're more than either Republicans, if it's a Trump plus 10 state, if it's a Trump plus 0.5 state or whatever it is in Michigan, or a Trump minus eight state, like it is in Maine. So, So there's just so much more, you're not gonna win by, you know, even in the best Democratic year, you're not gonna win by 25 points. Yeah, that's right.

So just so far, you can, we've polarized, people are locked in, and then the swings will be still within that margin. Yeah. So, not you about Kansas, and then I'll let you go here. Kansas is not really the toss up, do I have that right by you guys?

Yeah, yeah. That's a state that Trump on my 16 points has elected Democratic senators, since Herbert Hoover was president, 94 years. What's going on there? Yeah, what's going on there is I think the confluence of factors that makes this unique, and this is how, in order to flip a state like this, you have to have everything go right, right?

It has to be serendipity. And so, the things that they are going right for them Democrats do is, as we just discussed, the challenge for a state that is a farm economy, when fertilizer, diesel, the tariffs, are all taking a toll. And then, of course, just on inflation is taking a toll on everybody, whether you're related to the farm economy or not, so you get that. Then you have a really strong Democratic nominee who is very talented, but also is very difficult to paint as a typical Democrat.

And the fact that he doesn't come from politics, I think is another asset, right? He started a mega church in Kansas City. He is still a pastor there. So, this is somebody who, when you look at him and know his background, you don't go, oh, this is just kind of a typical Democrat, or this guy just spent 25 years in the legislature.

We know what he's gonna do when he goes to Washington. So, you have that going for you. And then finally, you have to have a very weak Republican candidate. And Roger Marshall, I think I came into this thinking, like, okay, he hasn't really had a race before, and is he gonna be prepared for this?

And there are always the talk about how he doesn't live there. He's gonna talk about his residency. But I think that the hits just keep coming, right? And the piece that came out in the New York Times about suing his patients, I think that one, just really, because again, it combines all of those things.

It's not just, oh my God, I can't believe this guy's stewed and arrested women who had just given birth, but we're at a time where we're talking about cost of living and affordability issues and people feeling so stretched. And this is a guy who's doing this, right? So, it's not just that, this we're just about like, where's his residency? Does he really live here?

I don't know that that would be enough to get people to go on with a fire. But all of that together is what has set this moment up. And you write it would be really, it is funny how Kansas, even though the states are browned in, those other firm states were electing Democrats through the Obama era, right? In South Dakota and North Dakota and Nebraska.

And so, I don't think we should say, well, it's been a hundred years, so I guess that means they will never elect a Democrat. But it is, the fact that Kansas and Nebraska, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, all are feeling this, right? They're all moving in a similar way, moving away from Trump is, I think, a lot about where we sit in the political environment. And then Marshall and the Democrat, Adam Hamilton, sort of seals the, makes this, he offers a permission structure that I think another Democrat might not.

Amy Walter, it is always so much fun to talk to you. This was a good luck over these next two weeks. You too. I'll be hydrated.

Everything you write in post is essential reading for anyone who's a true political junkie. We'll be looking for your analysis on election night and beyond. See you soon. Thanks to Amy Walter.

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