WTH: Elections 2022 (and 2024)

Predictions from Karl Rove

The inimitable Karl Rove joined the pod this week to talk about the upcoming midterms. Three takeaways:

1. The red tsunami is going to be a smaller wave because of Donald Trump.

2. The abortion rights-driven “pink wave” is not a serious thing (sorry Nancy).

3. It’s touch and go for a GOP senate, begging the question, how many senate majorities can Trump lose for the Republicans before he pays a price?

This is going to be a good midterm for the party out of the White House because all midterm elections (barring two, FDR and W) are good for the party out of power. But with the President’s popularity at historical lows, it should be… what would Obama say?… oh yeah, a shellacking. It won’t be because in Ohio, Arizona, New Hampshire and Georgia, Donald Trump threw his substantial weight behind lousy candidates. Lousy, lousy, lousy.

Here’s the issue: The United States now has $31 TRILLION in debt. A border crisis. A crime wave. Crushing inflation. A deepening recession. This isn’t about some petty fight with MAGA or extraMAGA or superMAGA (c’mon man, give it a rest), it’s about stopping a more radical agenda and setting the country on a road to recovery. And a former emperor president entirely focused on the lie that he won the 2020 election is trying to screw up serious efforts to fix the country’s real, current problems.

Meanwhile, over on the other side of the aisle, real American suffering is taking second place to abortion hysteria and climate alarmism. Sure, there’s a constituency for that, but didn’t Trump teach the Democratic Party that playing solely to the base doesn’t win elections?

It’s a circus, and we — Democrats, Republicans, all of us — deserve better. If we don’t get it, well, shame on us.

HIGHLIGHTS

Predictions?

Rove: Well, we're going to have a red wave but you passed over one important thing, particularly when it comes to the House of Representatives and that is that we got a head start on the red wave in 2020. We lose the White House, but we pick up 14 seats in the House and find ourselves at 213 and the Democrats at 222. A shift of five seats gives us the House. The average since 1934 is 28 seats. My gut tells me because of the head start and because we have a few knucklehead candidates, we're going to likely be in the 20 to 25, which is going to be more than adequate.

Senate?

Rove: The challenge for the Republicans is that they're 21 of them up and only 14 Democrats. Now, granted a bunch of the Republicans are in places like Oklahoma, Utah where the Republican party label is very strong, but still it divides the resources up. We're also, this is a weird anomaly, because if you look at it the Republican seats that are up this time around include two seats — one open in Pennsylvania and one in Wisconsin that were in states that Joe Biden won. None of the Democratic seats up this year, the 14, are in states that Trump won.

I feel very good about Florida. I feel pretty good about North Carolina, but there's no Democrat in a Trump state. In order to beat the Democrats and take the Senate, they're going to have to win in states that Joe Biden won. The good news is there are a couple of states, Nevada under 2%, 2.4; Arizona, Georgia, we're less than a percentage point. If the Republicans get a two and half percent swing, they win Nevada, they win Georgia, and they could win Arizona. Now that's independent of candidate quality, which is a big consideration. You see that in the polling data. Adam Laxalt is our best shot for a pickup, even though this was a state that was won by Biden by about 2.3 something percent in the last. There have been six polls in September, he leads in five and is tied in one.

Bottom line?

Rove: So my gut tells me at the end of the day you've got 50/50 Senate, you've got 51/49 Republican, 51/49 Dem. I think it ends up being 51/49 R. But it may not be decided, and this is the crummy part, until December 6th, because Georgia has this requirement that you have to get 50% of the vote. There are three candidates, a Libertarian's in the race, and the race has been within the margin of error for months, one way or the other.

What about JD Vance in Ohio?

Rove: Let's be honest, he may turn in to being an exemplary senator, but he's not a particularly good candidate. And full disclosure, I'm a volunteer advisor to a group that I helped form with Ed Gillespie 12 years ago, American Crossroad Senate Leadership Fund, Vance is going to win because Trump won Ohio by bigger a margin than he won Texas. The Republicans, as you say, are cruising to reelection in the governor's race in the statewide contest. They're likely to pick up a congressional seat or two, and the American Crossroad Senate Leadership Fund is spending 35 million in the state of Ohio to help advance JD Vance.

35 MILLION for JD Vance?

Rove: … don't get me talking about it because I'm not a happy camper about it. And it's a solvable problem, but solving the problem, it means the application of large sums of money […] and he was endorsed by Trump, but has yet to have any financial backing from the Trump Super PAC, and is not a particularly effective fundraiser. And so we've got to spend the money. But it is a sign of, you'd like to have that money playing someplace else on the board, at Colorado or Washington State or New Hampshire, or Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, the ones that we're close, but we're having to spend money there.

Vance says Ukraine is a waste of time…?

Rove: [H]e complained that I'd written a lot about him in my Wall Street Journal column. Actually, I wrote two sentences about him. One sentence was the exact quote that he made about he didn't care about Ukraine. And the next sentence I drew from news reports that his campaign staff was trying to clean up the remark because of the 80,000 Ukrainian Americans in the Cleveland area. And he took offense by my drawing and attention to it.

Is isolationism part of the next GOP majority?

Rove: I do worry about this strain in our party and this sort of the conservative commentary community about Ukraine, the idea that this has no implications, that outcome of this contest has no implications for the interest of the United States and the security of the United States. They're kidding themselves. It is vital for anyone who cares in a prosperous, secure, and free world in which America's influence for the good is felt, and where we have allies and friends in Europe, not a Soviet or Russian dominated Europe, we ought to care about what happens in Ukraine. The whole idea that a rogue regime can sort of decide which part of its neighbors it wants to digest is anathema to our interests and our security.

Is Mehmet Oz another Trump dud?

Rove: [L]et me dissent on one candidate that was on your laundry list. Mehmet Oz was endorsed by Trump, but he has shown that he's more of a traditional Republican in his campaign activity. And I think he has run, particularly in the last couple of months, a very good campaign and has closed this race, cut Fetterman's lead significantly, and has made this an almost within the margin of error race and clearly has some momentum. And he done so by accentuating the extreme views of Fetterman and becoming ... He is a television figure, but he has become a more adroit hands on campaigner

What the hell is Trump thinking?

Rove: I have no idea why the former president thought it was a great strategy to throw his endorsement out in highly contentious races and to conduct a year and a half long process by which people came kiss his robe and kneel below him and offer their obedience to him. It was humiliating for these candidates. And it also put the former president in a place that he shouldn't be.

Think about this. He's endorsed candidates for the Secretary of State of Nevada and Arizona and Michigan and the Attorney General in Michigan, all because they basically deny the outcome of the 2020 election. He's endorsed people like JR Majewski in Ohio, a Congressional candidate whose only claim to fame was that he had taken his gigantic front yard in a semi-rural part of Northwest Ohio and turned it into a gigantic Trump display for the 2020 election. And now it turns out that he has lied, not once, but twice, about his military service, and the NRCC has taken down its million dollar TV buy on his behalf.

Will Trump ever be punished for his terrible choices?

Rove: I think at the end of the election, people are going to start toting this up and saying well, okay, I see where he endorsed a large number of Republican members of Congress who were in safe races. But that doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is that he intruded into the Senate race in Arizona and made a big deal of Blake Masters and he endorsed the candidate, the election who were running for Secretary of State in all these places, and we came up short.

And this governor's race, this important contest, this Congressional race, this Senate race, Trump put a candidate whom we can now look in retrospect and say, was subpar. And do we really want that leadership for the future? I think it's all part and parcel of a series of steps that he has taken to have the adverse impact on him, where it's going to basically act as a corrosive on his hold in the Republican party. Saw a poll the other day, 47%, I think it was, of Republicans want him to be the nominee. That's a good number, bigger than anybody else, but it's 20 points below where he was not too long ago.

Go on…?

Rove: We know some things. If the Republican Senate candidate in Arizona was Doug Ducey, we would be on our way to a sweep in Arizona. Very popular governor. And why didn't he run? Because Trump made it clear he would not endorse him. What about if Chris Sununu were our candidate New Hampshire? That would be in the bag. The Democrat, Maggie Hassan, won by 1,000 votes the last time around, the most popular political figure in the state is Chris Sununu, why didn't he run? Well because Trump would endorse him and he thought about how bad it would be to be serving in the Senate even if he won.

And heck, if Trump had said, you know what, I'm, I'm going to intrude into the race in New Hampshire and endorse the guy that Sununu endorsed, Senate president Chuck Morse, the polls were showing that Morse, even before the primary, was in a neck and neck race with Hassan. But Trump couldn't do that because Chuck Morse was too close to Chris Sununu. So look, we've already seen the effect of this. And then look, the fact is he intruded into the Ohio primary. It is the reason JD Vance won. And does anybody think that we would've been worse off with other more energetic candidates whose only shortcoming was they didn't win the blessing of Donald J. Trump? I mean, yes.

Are new revelations going to hurt Herschel Walker?

Rove: Well, yes. How much we don't know and we're in one of these tribal moments. So for everybody who says, "My opponent or the guy I don't like is a bad person and the guy that you like is a good person." We're so tribal that it's like very little changes. The question is how much of this enormous reservoir of good will that Herschel Walker has among people in Georgia remains? And how much it will be dented by this accusation? And how does he respond?

So Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer say there’s a pink wave coming…?

Rove: The special election in New York occurred in a district that no longer exists. It was to fill a vacancy. And the new boundaries are enforced for the November election. But if you look at the boundaries of the New York 19 as they existed on that day, there are 38,000 more enrolled Democrats than there are Republicans in the district. And on that day, virtually all of the 19th had primaries for the new districts in that area for the US Congress between Democrats, not Republicans. So it was held on primary election day. And there was, and it's particularly in Ulster County, which is the biggest county in the district, a heavily Democrat county, that county was split, I believe, between two congressional districts. So you start with the territory where there are 38,000 more Democrats and Republicans. You layer on top of that two democratic primaries. And are you surprised that the Democrat wins by 2000 votes? It should have been more.

There’s also the Kansas abortion vote…

Rove: Kansas, I love this thing. Kansas, we look at this gigantic turnout on abortion and this is a sign that the Democrats are going to win. Well then why are there 400 some odd thousand Republicans who vote on that day and 200 and some odd thousand Democrats who vote that day? What happened is that the measure was so extreme that a lot of suburban Republicans in Johnson County, west of Kansas City and in the other states centers, Topeka and Wichita said, "I can't go for the extreme measure. I want something in which there are a chance for exceptions and so forth."

So Roe v Wade/Dobbs matters?

Rove: This is entirely a misread. Now is abortion an issue? Yes. If you say to people, what are the important issues, here's a big laundry list. Like I saw one poll where they had high 80% said cost of living, inflation is an issue. And 50 some odd percent said, abortion is an issue. So the Republican agenda; economy, inflation, crime, that gets about two-thirds of the voters say that one of those issues is the most important issue. And just over a third say that abortion or climate is the most important issue.

Well, the only argument you can make that says that it [matters], is that we do have candidates for the Senate like Blake Masters who say no exceptions, no abortion. And my view on this issue is all people are looking for is amount, is a certain amount of empathy and realism, because we're a conflicted nation on this issue. Two-thirds of the American people did not want Roe v. Wade overturned. About the same number do not want abortions in the second trimester, and 80% in one poll don't want them in the third trimester.

If the pro-life movement, if six months ago before Dobbs, you could say, "We are all going to have a law similar to Mississippi or France, limiting abortions in the first 14 weeks and exceptions for rape and incest and life in the mother." You can have that, we would've gone for in a nanosecond. But now that we have Roe v Wade overturned, then it's now suddenly a part of the pro-life movement is like, "Okay, well we got that. So no abortions, no exceptions." And to the vast majority of people, including a lot of pro-life people, that's just a step too far.

Is a GOP Congress going to help Joe Biden (by making a contrast)?

Rove: Well look, I don't think that strengthens Joe Biden, no matter what the outcome is. People have already made up their minds. I saw one poll of Democrats who said, "Do you want Joe Biden to be the nominee of 24?" It's 24%, or 25. In another poll, it was 26. Look, people have made up their minds. And I think the country is going to be desirous of a new younger generation of leadership, more in tune with the future. We're not going to be in a place where it's going to be Biden.

Elections 2024?

Rove: I think it's going to be a wide open process on the Democratic side. And it could be on our side as well, but I don't know. All I know is that I just feel that the country is... I run into too many as I travel who just sort of shake their head and say, "Really, the best we could do is to..." One guy was 82, and one guy who's 78, "Is that the best we can do?"

I'm not certain if Trump does get in, he's going to face a serious contest. And there are going to be a lot of people who treat him with kid gloves in a way by saying, "You know what? Appreciate the many things that he did well, but we need to elect a president who can serve two terms and we need to nominate somebody who can win. And the best way to win is to not make this race about the past, but to make it about the future."

Full transcript here.

SHOWNOTES

• How Big Will the GOP House Majority Be After the Midterms? (Karl Rove, WSJ, September 28th, 2022)

• Rove expecting smaller midterm swing to GOP than House average (The Hill, September 29, 2022)

• Karl Rove: Texas Abortion Law 'Too Extremist,' Creates 'Problem' for GOP (Newsweek, September 25, 2022)

• The Coming Power Shift (Axios, October 1, 2022)

• Americans worries midterms could bring divided government, gridlock (Ipsos, October 1, 2022)

• A partisan Supreme Court is 2022’s other incumbent (Washington Post, October 2, 2022)

• The GOP Cavalry Arrives -- Continetti (The Washington Free Beacon, September 30, 2022)

• 60 Percent Of Americans Will Have An Election Denier On The Ballot This Fall (FiveThirtyEight, October 2, 2022)

• Ballot initiatives to watch (Axios, October 1, 2022)

• Is the Democratic Midterm Surge Overrated? Why Republicans Can Still Win the House and Senate - by Ross Douthat, Kristen Soltis Anderson and Erick Erickson (NYT, September 7, 2022)

• Be Skeptical of the Democratic Comeback in the 2022 Midterms (WSJ, August 31, 2022)

• ‘Pink Wave’ Poised to Upend Republican Midterm Prospects (US News, September 23, 2022)

• A new reminder that candidate quality matters (Washington Post, September 30, 2022)

• 5 Reasons For Democrats To Still Be Concerned About The Midterms (FiveThirtyEight, September 30, 2022)

• Do Democrats And Republicans Agree On Anything About Climate Change And Immigration? (FiveThirtyEight, September 29, 2022)

• Voter Registration Shows Democrats’ Peril (WSJ, August 31, 2022)