15-MIN MIDTERM REVIEW: WTH Happened!? with Jessica Yellin

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Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things.

We are here today by Popular Demand with Jessica Yalen, who we all heard from yesterday, who was telling us what was at stake in midterm elections.

And we begged her to come back and tell us what the hell happened in midterm elections yesterday.

So thank you, Jessica, for making the time to be here with us.

Thank you for asking and for the work you did.

I got so many messages from folks saying they went out to vote because of what they heard on this podcast.

So yay.

Yay, yay, indeed.

Okay.

So we're doing the top takeaways

of

what the heck happened yesterday.

What's your biggest takeaway?

Women and young people turned out.

Abortion drove voters despite all the pundits saying it wouldn't, despite prognosticators saying Democrats had miscalculated.

Election deniers

mostly lost.

There were some that prevailed, but Americans voted for democracy, for abortion rights.

They cared cared about inflation, not crime so much based on what we know.

And they sent a message to both parties that they want sane politics that reflect the issues they care about and not extremist messaging.

One more related to that that I was thinking about is that it seems like one of the main things that is happening here that is kind of tea leaves for the next election in the presidential election is that

Trump, his endorsement of Dr.

Oz

did not carry weight.

Dr.

Oz lost.

Bobert, one of his biggest fanatics and Calvarado.

Wow.

I know.

Is she definitely going to lose?

The last I saw, it was very, very close.

As we're talking, it's very, very close, but it seems inevitable that she will.

God.

So his key endorsement, this is an indictment in many ways of the association.

Yeah.

in many cases, his candidates lost.

It was not just Dr.

Oz.

It was also,

we saw it in Wisconsin and in Michigan, where election deniers, people who, you know, your key, the key qualification to get Trump support is to deny the results of the 2020 election, where election deniers failed.

We are also seeing Arizona is very close as we're talking, but a Trump endorsed candidate seems poised to lose there.

And so he did not fare fare well.

And the Republican Party will have a lot of complaints about him

right now, but he still remains the most powerful person in the party.

Okay.

So as I was thinking through this election, I was thinking, does this mean that Republicans will have to decide going into 2024 whether they will cut him off?

Or when we look at DeSantis in Florida.

He won even in historically Democratic parts.

I just wondered if that kind of tilts the scales a little bit as we go into 2024.

So the way to think about it is Donald Trump was the everything.

He was all powerful.

You had to kiss the ring.

You couldn't disagree with him and survive.

His power is now diminished, but not gone.

And so what you're going to see is a real battle inside the party between the forces that think he's bad for the party and for the future and though, not, you know, on the politics, just strategically, and those who are still on the the bandwagon/slash afraid of him.

I think the House will probably be won narrowly by Republicans, and the person who runs the House will still have to mostly do Trump's agenda, but has a little more leeway.

At the same time, somebody like Ron DeSantis in Florida, who won big and was poised to challenge Trump, will certainly challenge Trump now and will likely have a lot of former Trump supporters supporting him.

So, let's go through your key takeaways.

The red wave that they were predicting to happen did not.

What we were talking about yesterday, how

historically, you know, Obama lost 63 seats in the House, Clinton lost 54, Trump lost 40 in the midterms.

What is it looking like now

Democrats are going to lose?

And what is it looking like?

It's going to end up the balance of power in the House.

So we don't know, but we think that

Republicans will almost certainly take control of the House.

But with such a small margin, when we spoke, we talked about there's a big difference if Republicans win by more than 10 seats or fewer.

And it looks like they are likely to end up at 10 or fewer.

Even if it's like 12, that's a huge difference from 20, 30, somewhere predicting 40.

And they just don't have what we call a mandate in that.

with so small a margin.

And just to give you a sense of what it means is if you're in charge of running this house as a Republican, every person has much more power when just a few voting against you could make your agenda die.

So that means you have to take care of the centrists and make sure they feel good, but also take care of the radical extremists and make sure they feel good.

How do you do that?

It's hurting cats.

And we're likely to see that the Marjorie Taylor Greens of the House, there's going to be many more of them, and they're going to be emboldened to make leadership do extremist things that will alienate the centrists and make it extremely hard for them to govern.

Got it.

Reproductive rights, we talked about as usual, everyone underestimated women and our commitment to our bodily autonomy.

So we saw what?

It was California, Michigan, and Vermont all passed constitutional protections of bodily autonomy?

Yes.

And then Kentucky defeated an effort to

an abortion restriction and becomes the first state that has an abortion ban in place to where voters then voted on the question and said, no, we don't want your ban.

Take it away.

We'll still see some court challenges and we'll see what happens, but that's a case of Kentucky voters saying, we want abortion rights against a legislature and a history that said you won't get them.

Awesome.

So bodily autonomy undefeated in midterms.

You talked about the young people, women.

Was this just huge voter turnout yesterday?

What we do know based on composition of some exits and some

data is that young people people did turn out in numbers that they don't usually turn out in in midterms.

They usually sit home for midterms.

And so did women.

And the other thing I'm finding out from my friend Lauren Leader, who runs a great group called All In Together, gets women engaged in politics,

is that in particular, it was young women.

So Gen Z women registered because of Dobbs and voted on abortion and are a force in our politics now and going forward, saying,

you need to hear our issues.

And there's now just starting to be a push inside the Democratic Party to push Democrats to take seriously issues like child care and child leave for more parental leave, stuff that had been stripped out of earlier versions of bills because that was the giveaway to win a compromise.

And these young voters who are women and voting on women-focused issues are going to create the pressure, is the assumption, to put our issues back in the agenda.

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Speaking of pressure, as of right this moment, in terms of races that have been called, the Senate is sitting at 48, 48, as we speak.

48, 48.

So there are, that means four have yet to be called.

Arizona, Georgia, Alaska, Nevada.

But we know Alaska is going to go Republican.

Yes.

And we know Georgia is going to go to a runoff.

Yes.

So that happens on December 6th.

Here are the dynamics at play.

Arizona looks likely to go Democrat and Nevada, I haven't checked for an hour, but it was toss-up-y.

And so if Democrats win both of those, they win control of the Senate.

And the Georgia election is sort of gravy for them or, you know, helps Republicans with the margins.

So you're watching really, because here's what the insiders are doing.

They assume Arizona is going Democrat.

They assume Alaska is going Republican.

Georgia, we can't know for a few weeks.

All eyes are on Nevada.

So what you're watching for control of the Senate is Nevada.

Nevada officials are saying it could take a few days to know.

But we could know if Democrats win that, they win control of the Senate.

And we would know that as soon as Nevada is called.

And even if Republicans

win Nevada, then...

If Democrats win Georgia, they will be exactly where they started before this election because Kamala Harris will break the 50-50 tie.

Correct.

So we could end up in a scenario just like in 2020, where we don't know balance of power in the Senate until there's a late runoff election in Georgia, which remember people poured hundreds of millions of dollars into that race, which determined the balance of power.

Okay.

And speaking of that, so right now, in that race between Warnock and Walker in Georgia, there was a 2% vote going to the independent.

Where will those independents most likely go?

I mean, that's the $100 million question.

Okay.

So you don't know the answer?

I don't know the answer.

Conventional wisdom is that

in a runoff, Warnock has the edge

because

the Herschel Walker doesn't hold up that well under intense scrutiny with more focus.

Warnock's abilities at communication will trump

Walkers.

And so we don't know.

If Democrats win Nevada, the assumption is Walker's support will disappear.

Because if Republicans aren't relying on that for a win, he doesn't naturally have tons of support.

He's got the support of Republicans because they want the power in the Senate.

Without him making that deciding, being that deciding factor, it'll go away.

But we really don't know.

It's going to be a nail biter if it's all coming down to Georgia.

Got it.

Feels very deja vu.

Deja vu.

All over Georgia.

All over Georgia.

And we can't talk about Georgia without just giving all of the flowers to Stacey Abrams, who

lost her election against Kemp, but

she was really in many ways what delivered the Senate and the presidency last time around by registering and getting all of those voters activated in Georgia.

And let me say one more thing.

Stacey Abrams is an astonishing talent at organizing.

In the case of Kemp, one thing to keep in mind is he upheld election law and he won while breaking with Trump, which is an interesting signal about the Republican Party that Republican voters were willing to reelect him, even though he was not a Trump candidate, even though he had actually rejected the fundamental central premise of Trumpism, which is election denial.

Yes.

Yes.

What did we see in Texas and Florida?

What is that telling you?

I mean, we heard a lot from folks yesterday,

women specifically very upset in Texas and very upset in Florida.

Are you seeing, are you extrapolating anything from those races?

I always, I was a local reporter in Florida for the early part of my career.

I feel like I understand the state to some extent.

And, you know, I have the view that Democrats just sort of gave up on Florida, that they could have been contenders and they just decided decided it's too expensive, it's too hard, we're going to focus elsewhere.

But whoever is to blame or for whatever reason it happened, it is now a red state.

It, you know,

Republicans registered nine new voters for every one new voter Democrats registered in the last cycle.

That is an enduring majority that can last for a decade.

Democrats have also been very bad about engaging Hispanic voters in Florida prior to the moment of the election.

In other words, build a relationship before you need them, people.

And they don't.

So Florida is pretty much lost to Democrats, it seems.

You never know, weird things happen.

And it's going to be a huge base for the man who's most likely to challenge Donald Trump for the 2024 nomination, Ron DeSantis, the governor there, who won by a whopping 20 points.

And that's really meaningful because it says he has figured out how to deliver votes and that he has strong, strong support.

And that makes him a very fierce contender to challenge Trump for the nomination.

Right.

And is also willing to do

the circus type acts that Trump does, like sending immigrants to

totally.

I mean, he's considered like the same Trump.

You know, he that's, that's generous.

The thing, the thing about him that's complicated and we confusing, I mean, many, many things are, but he's not charismatic at all, like zero.

So I don't, you know, his whole thing would have to be like the brown bag candidate.

Like, I don't do the things people do to charm you.

I don't know.

Can you win like that?

Right.

But he's definitely going to be the guy that Republicans who want to win will look to if they, because they think Trump, Trump's not going to win is, you know, the emerging view among Republican donors.

So donors are likely to flock to DeSantis now.

We'll see what happens.

Trump is still strong.

Got it.

So we will end with exciting firsts.

Mara Healy, the first

openly lesbian woman to be a governor in Massachusetts.

I think she's a female governor of Massachusetts.

I think she's the first openly lesbian woman to be governor in America and the first female governor of Massachusetts.

The

first state in U.S.

history to elect a transgender man to state legislature in New Hampshire, the James Rosners, and our first Gen Z member of the House, Maxwell Frost in Florida.

Totally.

Right.

Yeah.

We always say like, let's watch when the, I hate to use this phrase, but the school shooting generation goes to Congress, people who grew up with school shooter drills, will they make gun issues a top, top priority?

And I bet we'll see that.

I sure do.

Also,

Maryland's first black governor and the third black governor ever elected.

Yes.

Wow.

And Sarah Huckabee Sanders becomes the first woman elected governor of Arkansas.

She She sure did.

Sure did.

So there's that.

But these are facts.

No, we need to celebrate all the firsts.

That is for sure.

Okay, beautiful.

Well, that was a big one.

I feel other last takeaway is polls appear to continue to show themselves to be horseshit.

And people who vote continue to.

be the ones who control the outcome.

So yay for all the voters.

Thank you, everyone.

And thank you, Jessica Yellen.

You're wonderful.

Thank you so much for what you do and for energizing so many people with like both substance and heart.

It's a really great model for the world.

Thank you.

All right.

Go help everyone else.

Okay.

I'll talk to you later.

Thank you.

Thank you.

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