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Speaker 1: This episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to you by Chapter. Now, almost everything you hear about Medicare is somebody quietly trying to steer you somewhere. And you're skeptical of that, as you should be. I get it. I mean, there's a federal lawsuit going on right now over exactly this. Companies that branded themselves as unbiased while allegedly pointing people toward whatever would pay them the most as some sort of broker. So if your default is to distrust everyone in this space, honestly, I get it. I'm a bit distrustful these days myself. That's the whole reason I want to tell you about Chapter. They're independent Medicare advisors whose entire model is that their advisors are not paid to push any one plan. They're just trying to help. Yes, there's compensation that goes with it. but it's across the board is what they're trying to do. At the end of the day, they're advocating for you. They're not the insurance companies themselves. They're an actual person who actually goes through your doctors, your prescriptions, your needs, and then compares them to every single plan available to find the best one that will work for you and hopefully save you a couple dollars too. And here's the part that sets chapter apart. They don't disappear once you've been in They will keep advocating for you. They're kind of like almost like a concierge service. You're just there. I need help. You're like customer service. You know, the plan, you know, help me navigate this again. So you ever get hit with a wrongful medical bill, they'll help you fight it. They want to stay an advocate for you even after you've done this. So look, I get it. I think there's all sorts of space. You see a lot of people are throwing themselves in this healthcare space. What I like about these chapter folks, I've spent time with them. This is a very transparent organization. It is Medicare and all of its affiliated stuff can be very confusing. The whole point of this is to make this easier and less confusing. OK, so look, take the skepticism you already have in all of this, point it at your own plan for 20 minutes. It's free. There's no pressure. And then call chapter today at 980-734-4200. three, nine, eight, five. Hello there. Happy Thursday and welcome to the long weekend episode of the Chuck Todd cast. Something that I assume will be up for three days, three or four days while you guys get a chance to take a listen to it. I'm coming to you from the Island of Manhattan here in lovely New York city. As some of you Podcast listeners know I am going to be part of the next Predict conference. It is both Thursday and Friday. I'll be hosting some panels and helping to emcee the event at times. But it's about trying to deal with the prediction markets as a budding industry, not talk about individual ones, but sort of What is the good, the bad, the ugly? What should be done? What kind of regulation is necessary? What are some best use cases? And it really is trying to get all the proper folks in the room so that we can– just to sort of see the variety of ways that prediction markets work. have the chance to be useful in different ways. So to say that I'm going to be overwhelmed with numbers is an understatement and it kind of is a bit of a tease for this because I have spent the last 24 hours consumed with data. We have a brand new New York Times-Santa That I spent a couple hours in the crosstabs. I've got a lot that I want to share with you because I think there are a lot of tea leaves worth reading in this one sort of to set where we up to sort of set up where where things are with about 10 days to go before Election Day. Needless to say, there is there is no counter. There is no counter evidence that the wave is is somehow cresting. This sucker appears to still be building. It's getting bigger. The question is how big. Right. You've now got Republicans nervous about Mississippi Senate. You know, now they want to put some money in. First, Democrats are trying to expand the battlefield. And now there may be something happening here. But as my friend. buffalo springfield likes to say what it is ain't exactly clear um and that is for those of you that know me well know that i beat up that um song lyric quite a bit uh when i like to talk about uh the end game of a campaign season because that's what we all are you know we we can we we can see enough of the tea leaves to know something's happening here but we're at the point of the campaign is what it is ain't exactly clear That's why you got to stop. Hey, listen, what's that sound? Never mind. You don't want to hear me sing. That is not why you tune in or download that. If anything, I fear if I start singing, you may unsubscribe. But I've got a whole bunch of data to share. I had an interesting briefing from a super PAC spending a lot of money in Senate races that I think there's some interesting uh, things to share there. We've got an update on, on, um, this, uh, Ramaswamy, um, disaster, um, this horrendous, pretty much the lowest we are. I think this is the lowest point in campaign politics in a long time. Um, and I'll be honest, I'm going to spend a little few more minutes on it. If, if this tactic works, um, we're gonna regret this collectively as a society, as campaign, you know, I know you think, geez, can it get any lower in politics? Well, the answer is apparently yes, it can. And at some point we need to stop digging. And if we can't stop digging on exploiting childhood trauma, then I understand why people wanna give up on campaigns and democracy and stop. I mean, The low quality candidates that are being allowed into the system. Look, anybody can run. It is our job as voters to make sure the scumbags don't get power. And when you're exploiting childhood trauma to win an election, that is the low of lows. You are unworthy of a lot of things. elective office is just one of the things that you're unworthy of, but certainly to be a representative of any group of people. I got to think there's that, that I certainly hope enough people feel shame that what Ramaswami is doing is, um, is punished because if it's not there, you know, I know we keep saying this boy, you know, They keep moving the sucker, right? The famous Bill Hurt line and network, you know, where's the line? This crosses the line. He says, wow, they keep moving the sucker. And I know Donald Trump has introduced a whole nother level of garbage into our political ecosystem, into the rhetoric. Yes, social media is unfiltered. The garbage that Elon Musk has created and allowed to happen, right? There's no doubt there are plenty of bad actors out here. But to think that these people, Ramaswamy's campaign focus group, this message tested it, knowing full well what the real story was, that Amy Acton was sexually abused as a 10, 11 and 12 year old. And they choose to exploit the issue and then be dishonest about it with one of her, one of the people who put her through this trauma. Yes, it happens to be her birth mother. But what mother allows this to happen to their own child? And what campaign thinks it's worth using and exploiting? So needless to say, I got a little bit more to say on that. And then finally, I got four things. I'm gonna leave you with four things that I believe if I knew the answer to it right now, I'd be much more sure of exactly where I think the selection cycle is headed on that front. And then it's hard to top last week in college football. But since, you know, the team that I have dragged all of you into caring about on this podcast, my beloved University of Miami Hurricanes, they're now number one. And just remember, just like this podcast, you were here when? Before anybody thought it was cool to see if Miami could come back. Before anybody thought it was cool to get into this podcast space. And you're helping us become one of the top-rated, if not top-rated, political analysis podcasts that exist. And you've gotten to follow me while we've watched the Miami Hurricanes rise to the place that I used to think was their proper place in the polls. Sitting up there at number one with the rest of the country being and moaning about Miami, whether it's their schedule, their conference, their whatever. All I know is that come on the field, some of these teams that complain usually have a hard time dealing with them. But I am also self-aware that Miami backed into that number one ranking. And I certainly am not interested in seeing Miami sitting up in the number one spot until after they've won something, not before. But let's get to the topic for why you come here more often than not. I know some of you come here for the football, but most of you are coming in here for the politics and makes try to do our best to make sense at all sense of what we're all seeing. As you know, there are certain polls that I think are garbage. You know, you're never going to see by. the way, this podcast was never going to quote whatever the hell that polling firm was, because I don't quote anonymous polling firms that I never hear of that suddenly pop up somewhere. You know, I still won't, you know, cite a Trafalgar poll. I think it's kind of their methodology is kind of sketchy to me. So I didn't you know, I was never sharing whatever this Westfield or Westerfield. But I'll tell you something about this fake polling. You know, I'd like to see them investigated. I don't know if they committed a crime, if they technically committed a crime. Right. It is not a crime to lie. It is not a crime to do those things. But the manipulative I certainly would like to see a little bit more information about what motivated these folks to. To say that I don't take their press release at face value, which was, oh, we were just conducting an experiment, something's fishier there. So I think there needs to be a real investigation. I think a local law enforcement agency has every right, right? They have admitted they intentionally defrauded the public. I'm not sure, right? I'm not, you know, the First Amendment's a pretty strong thing here. But you know what? I want to make them go to court to try to prevent us from finding out. what was happening and what was motivating. So I'm so offended by what they did that I'd like to see some sort of either consumer investigation opened up by a consumer arm, perhaps a state attorney general's office, because this is defrauding the customer, defrauding consumers. And in the case, maybe Molly McMorrow, who believes that her Super PAC fundraising dried up based on this fake poll that they released in Michigan, perhaps she can engage in some civil litigation simply so that we can get some depositions, right? Simply to basically get discovery. There's something fishier about this company than them just conducting an experiment. I don't buy it. It's more than just conducting an experiment. They had a motivation. They had an agenda. And it wasn't just to see if they could infiltrate the public square with fake poll numbers. They were manipulating a result and trying to manipulate something here. So I think we need more information. I just think it's worthy of real investigation on this front. And I think, again, it's people were defrauded. And like I said, the person that may have the best case to file a lawsuit against this entity, whoever and whatever they are, is probably Mallory McMorrow, the former Senate candidate there in Michigan. Okay, so where are we? We're two weeks away. We're less than two weeks away from election day. As I said, we got that big times Siena poll. And I think we are getting more and more evidence, right? I told you the other day, my three scenarios, blue mirage, blue wave, blue tsunami, that blue mirage is really no longer the case here. I think what we're looking at here is the blue wave is forming. And the question is, is the bottom going to fall out? When you look at this Times poll and you get into the numbers, they have the generic ballot at the Democrats up plus 11. It's a big number. Now, is it pot? And if it was that much, this would be bigger than what 2006 was. And we'd be approaching something closer to 1994, um, than anything else. Um, that's a big deal. All right, let's dig into the times, uh, CNN poll. And I'm going to be looking, I've got, I did a whole bunch of notes and screenshots on a separate device here. So I may be looking off camera every once in a while, um, as I read, um, Read my notes here. But let me first do which party has the advantage on which issue here, because what was amazing is that the Democrats basically have a clean sweep right now when it comes to asking voters which party do they trust to handle to do a better job handling the following issue. So on health care. Democrats had a 20-point advantage, 57-37. Cost of living, 15-point advantage, 55-40. I'm going in order of the Democratic advantages now. So their biggest advantage was on the issue of healthcare. And as I've told you, the healthcare issue now is no longer about access. The primary concern about healthcare is cost and affordability. So Healthcare is also an affordability issue, but it is number one by 20 points for Democrats handling that. Cost of living, Democrats up by 15 points on that. Gas prices, Democrats up by 14 points. So you can say first three issues are affordability issues, right? Healthcare, cost of living, gas prices. Fourth biggest advantage? The Times put it as foreign wars. Obviously, that's Iran and Ukraine, 10-point advantage for the Democrats. Generic economy, which party do you trust? Democrats by eight points on this one. Here's one. How about immigration? Democrats up by four points on immigration. And this goes to the pattern we've been seeing for the last two years, which was Republicans started with an advantage on immigration. For the longest time, it was the only issue that Donald Trump was right side up on. But the aggressive enforcement has turned off a whole bunch of folks, never mind the labor problems that it's created in the agricultural community, which has upset quite a few people, particularly in the Midwest and the Plain States. And now you've got the Democrats with a narrow, it's a four-point advantage, but it's a narrowed advantage. Corruption. Democrats up by 11 points. Who can deal with corruption better? Democrats by 11 points. And on artificial intelligence, it's Democrats by 11 points. So there is not a single issue that voters are concerned about where they view the Republican Party as the more viable party to handle that, that that party can handle it better than the Democratic Party. What this is really about is that this is Donald Trump, right? And this is ultimately the real problem Republican candidates have all across the country is that most voters, when they're asked this question, are thinking about, well, do I trust Donald Trump with this? And if the answer is no, then they pick the Democrats. Think about it this way, right? Imagine if you were answering, asking the question, do you trust Donald Trump to handle healthcare? And the no would probably be at 57% and the yes would be at 37%, right? That is essentially the base. If you ask, do you trust Donald Trump to be able to handle cost of living? And I told you it was 40, 55. You probably say, oh, that's a little high. That's more people than I would have expected. But you see the point here, right, which is Donald Trump's because he took charge. You know, he created this cost of living issues with his tariffs, the war in Iran, the aggressive immigration enforcement. Right. This is this is not they're punishing the Republican Party. But it's really. about punishing Trump because it's on all of these issues that it's really about Donald Trump, right? The corruption issue. This is Donald Trump's Washington. This episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to you by CalSheet. It's an exchange where you can trade on what you actually think is going to happen. Sports, politics, culture, whatever's on your mind. And guess what? What do we do here? We do politics. And I give you a lot of information and a lot of you already have an idea of what you think is going to happen. Well, how confident are you? Well, let's look at the race for control of the Senate. And there's some interesting ways you can trade the battle for the Senate. How many seats will Democrats hold after the midterms? The market is pretty bullish on Team Blue. Above 52 is trading at 37 cents on the dollar. 52, right on the nose, is trading at 23 cents, 51 at 11 cents, and 50 at 14 cents. Everything below 50 is trading essentially under a dime on this one. And I have to say, I'll just be honest, I think it's way too bullish. I think 52 is the ceiling. Here's what, let me give you a path to 52. And then I want you to ask yourself the realistic. So how do you get to 52, right? So they're sitting at 47. So North Carolina is 48. Ohio would be 49. Texas would be 50. Alaska would be 51. Now you've got Maine and Michigan. Now Michigan, if they lose, then it's subtract one, right? It's already at, Michigan's part of the 47. They lose Michigan, then you're down to 50. You win Maine, you're back to 51. So then how do you get to 52? OK, if you win both Maine and Michigan, you get to 52. Now you're saying, is it Iowa, Kansas? It's interesting that the market is much more bullish on Democrats netting six seats or more than the market itself. Bottom line is a lot of different ways you can trade the Senate market. So take a look. So here's what you need to know about Kalshi. You're going up against other traders directly. There is no House election. setting the odds. I basically gave you some odds, but that's me, right? There's no house setting the odds. This is the market speaking. This is people putting their opinions on the line. You can trade $ 25 a using the code Chuck Todd, all one word, and they'll throw in another 25 bucks instantly. So please remember to trade responsibly. Donald Trump's Washington has become more pay to play than ever. I mean, this latest story about the Venezuelan banker hiring Helena, Alina Haba, who I think is now just got married to some Turkish billionaire, some exorbitant legal fees of some 50 million dollars over four or five years and was also this guy could secure a pardon. Somehow she claims, well, it wasn't about, you know, she didn't get paid to secure a pardon. Yeah. Did she just get paid because she had a she had she had a nice lawyer face or was her connection to Donald Trump and his legal team an important part of that? Point is, is that If that was the first example we had seen of somebody hiring somebody close to the president in order to secure a pardon, you'd say, oh, maybe it's a one-off. These are weekly stories. I mean, we know this. I mean, there is, there almost is a, my guess is it's kind of like a takeout menu. All right. Do you want a commutation? Do you want a full pardon? Or what are you looking for here? Do you want to just get out early? You know, here's the price. You know, here's the price list. And you do this, this, and this. It's certainly a whole bunch of people in Trump's orbit want people to believe that if you pay them, they can get you in with the president or they can somehow get you that pardon. But it's just they're doing it in plain sight. And it's not as if this stuff's been hard to track down. And in some ways, Trump's so brazen about it, he advertises in some ways that he's doing this. I mean, look at him on the trail. If you vote for Roger Marshall in this election, I'll be sure and do this subsidy that bails people out. But if you don't, I'm not going to do it. So he advertises the idea that he's for sale, that everything he wants is a transaction. If he's trying to make the voting aspect of transaction, like the result, if I get the right result, I'll reward everybody. But if I get the wrong result, I will punish everybody. It's amazing that he's doing this and people up there are just clapping away. Sure, that's a great idea. Keep punishing us if you don't like the results of an election. It's one of these things you said, I can't believe. that the American president continues to behave this way. It's just astonishing. Anyway, all right, I wanna spend a few minutes, as I said, that was the top lines, that was on the issues and you can see it's there. Now I wanna get into a little bit more of the poll itself and the things that I highlighted that was interesting. So later in this podcast, I'm gonna talk about four things that if I knew the answer to, I'd have a better idea of just how good or bad this night is for Democrats. Turnout among voters under 30. The New York Times-Santa Paul only has 10% of the electorate under 30. If the under 30 vote is 10% of the electorate, Democrats are going to have a disastrous night. Now, in the last four cycles, since 2018, it's been 13%. 15 percent, 12 percent. I think it was 13 percent in in 2024. If it gets 13, 14 or 15 percent of the electorate is voters under 30, Democrats are going to have a huge night. And the person who probably needs more voters under 30 than anybody else, because voters under 30 are supporting Democrats in some of the largest spreads we've seen among any age group. But when you ask the question of how likely are you to vote, voters under 30 are the least certain that they're going to vote in these midterms. In fact, when you, when you see it by age group, right, overall in the New York times, Santa pole, half of all likely voters said they were all, they were almost certain they were going to vote. And another 30% said they were very likely, right? So you had 80% calling. So very likely. And then, um, Another five called themselves somewhat likely, 2% said not very likely, and 2% said not at all. And 10% claimed they voted already. But among voters under 30, only 37% said they were almost certain to vote. Among millennials, 30 to 45, 45% called themselves almost certain. Among voters, my generation, Gen X, 45 to 64, that was the most certain. That was the age group that was the most certain to vote, 54%. This is the age group that is the most supportive of Donald Trump and Republicans, and they're the most certain to vote. 65 plus on the almost certain side was 51%. So that was, if I were to actually point out like what was the best piece of news in this time, Sienna poll, I think I gave it to you, which was, well, at least the age cohort that is normally the most supportive of Donald Trump and the Republican Party namely Gen X, the Gen X generation, well, they're more certain to vote than anybody else. But it's kind of a, I'm not sure I would hang my hat on that one. Now, Time Santa does a couple things with the generic ballot. They actually did a generic governor ballot, they did a generic Senate ballot, and they did a generic House ballot. But here's what they did when they asked the question. is they would name the candidates on the ballot for every congressional district, every Senate race, and every Gov race. So while they reported the number as sort of generic, Democrat and Republican, these were named candidates. And there'll be many people in the polling community believe, particularly this late in the cycle, that the name gives you a more, when you name the candidate for the voter, and this is not, these days, you know exactly who you're calling, what district they're in, and all of this stuff. It gives you probably a more accurate picture. So this is why the Democrats have an 11-point advantage on this Times-Siena poll. Remember what I told you about what Nate Cohn, who runs the New York Times-Siena poll, is doing? He's trying very hard to make sure he's not missing the hard-to-get Trump voters. This is as much a forecast survey as it is a snapshot in time, right? He triple checks and puts all these little checks in there to try to keep, he does not want to see this times poll look way off based on the actual results. So that's why I have a lot of confidence in here. So I want to tell you about, so the generic bound being Dems, Dems leading by 11 points. This is, right, we've been at eight. Now this is higher than we've seen in other polls, but we're gonna start to see more likely voter models. This is a likely voter poll. This is, I said, named candidates, 11 points. If you're at D plus 11, Democrats are picking up 25 to 35 House seats. They're going to be at somewhere 235 total House seats to 245 if we're looking at a D plus 11. And they could get really close to 250 House seats if we're really sitting in a generic ballot with D plus 11. Now, let me tell you about their generic Senate ballot. Same thing. In the 35 states holding Senate races, they named the candidates. So the Democrats got 47%, Democratic Senate candidates, and Republican Senate candidates were at 43%. Now you think, hmm, Democrats only had a four-point advantage in these Senate races? Well, remember, this Senate map is very Republican-leaning. The 35 states, there's no California Senate race this year, there's no New York Senate race this year, for example. So I did my own math here, and the 35 states with Senate races In the presidential in 2024, Trump won the 35 states that are holding Senate races this midterm. He won it by seven points, 53-46. So Trump plus seven for the 35 states collectively, and it's now Democrats plus four. Now you might say to yourself, hmm, plus seven, plus four, wait a minute, that's 11. Oh, what was the generic ballot? 11. You gotta feel pretty good if you're Nate Cohen, that your generic congressional ballot and your generic Senate ballot essentially matched at 11 point. There's an 11 point swing from Trump plus seven in these 35 Senate seats to now D plus four. Now, if you take those numbers at heart, what it probably means is that Democrats come up short in Kansas, short in Mississippi, Short in South Carolina, but at a 11-point swing, that's Ohio, that's Texas, that's Maine, that's North Carolina, that's potentially Alaska, which sits in the 13 range, and it potentially is Iowa. And what did we see today? We saw some new Senate polls out of the Cook Report in Ohio, Texas, and Iowa that, to me, provided good news for Democrats in two of the states. And on paper, it was good news in Iowa, but I'd be a little nervous. And why do I say that? One thing to keep track of in these good Senate polls, right? And there's only a handful that I buy. Cook Report is one of them. AARP is one. You'll see some time, Sienna. As I told you, the Fox News Senate polls are very good. I would trust those as well. Start to look at what the Democratic candidate is getting in the poll, because in many of these red states, the number they're going to get, they're only going to probably get anywhere from 20 percent or fewer of the undecideds, because most of the undecideds in these red states are Republicans. Now, they could end up not voting. They could end up holding their nose and going at the Republicans. They could vote third party. Right. We don't quite sure. And maybe some of them will swing over. Well, in these numbers, which I think was important to note in these numbers, Sherrod Brown got to forty nine. Tallarico got to forty nine. And it really, you know, you saw in my ratings yesterday, my confidence level that both of those states are moving in the Democrats' direction. It's only going up. And frankly, the whole Ramaswamy disaster, I think, only cements what's happening in Ohio. I think now Ohio, the question now is, does what Ramaswamy did create an even bigger sort of state-based blue wave that trickles down the ballot, has legislative? I mean, I think the damage he's doing here is that bad. in the state of Ohio, but we'll, we'll get to there. But in Iowa, Turk was sitting at 46. And while that, that allowed him to lead in this poll against Hinson, boy, that registration advantage that Republicans have in Iowa, you know, do I think he would get another two points from 46 to 48 if taking the Cook Report poll at face value? I do. I don't know if 48 is a winning number. Right. That's going to be the real question. I think it's true of Nebraska. It's true of Kansas. It's probably true of Mississippi. It's true of Iowa. I think if Democrats can make 48 or 49 a winning number, they can win some of those states. If they have to get to 50, I don't see it. What they really need is some of these third party candidates to sort of become the safe haven for Republicans who want to send a message without voting for a Democrat. But I think it's certainly... What you're seeing in this Time Siena poll, what we saw in this Cook Report polls, it's you're seeing these polls match a little bit. Another thing that caught my eye in the Time Siena poll was their party ID question. And I'm fascinated by this because of what we're watching. As many of you know, I, you know. I think we need to sort of bust up the two parties here. I think they're sort of too big. The duopoly sort of, I think, certainly is something that a growing number of voters would prefer not to be a member of either party, right? We're up to 45%, according to Gallup, of Americans who choose not to register in either party and want to call themselves independent or be in no party. Well, I wanted to share with you sort of the party I.D., breakdowns by age group and by ethnicity, because how people describe their party at the moment will give you a clue of probably where they're leaning and where they're voting, right? So for instance, among voters under 30, the self-ID, the number of voters under 30 that consider themselves Republican is just 15%. Let me repeat. 15%, 44% of voters under 30 call themselves Democrats. 33% of voters under 30 call themselves independents. And right now we know independents, that Democrats are winning independents by double digits, close to 20 points, depending on the poll you read. But only 15% of voters under 30 call themselves Republicans. So we do know that if there is a huge turnout, if turnout surges among voters under 30, That's how this become goes from wave to tsunami. Now, just for comparative sakes, among millennials, Republicans are also in third place among millennials. This is where I think that, you know, this is a part of, I think, a long term problem the Republican Party has is Donald Trump has really alienated the Republican Party from voters under the age of 50. Because let me read you these numbers of millennials, which in this age group is age 30 to 44. 36% of millennials call themselves Democrats. 34% of millennials call themselves independent. And only 24% of millennials call themselves Republican. So you can see it's been this sort of, you know, and millennials, that's your, you know, their first adult president is Obama. So maybe you can chalk that up to Obama a little bit. But with Gen Z, their first adult president is Trump. And all it's done is turn them off of the Republican Party. How the Republican Party treated Obama, I think, has turned off a chunk of millennials. But those are not figures that a major party wants to see among younger voters. And because, you know, you lose them when they're young. And, you know, it is funny about when people pick a party, they rarely leave it right away. It takes a while before you can get somebody to leave their party once they've made a choice in their 20s and 30s, for what it's worth. Among Gen X, my generation, 45 to 64, the Republican Party is the number one party. 37% of Gen X identifies as Republican. 30% identify as independent. And 29%. Identify as Democrat. That's how bad the brand problem has gotten. The Democrats brand problem is with obviously younger voters who would prefer to be independent, but also older voters who have decided it isn't the Democratic Party of their youth. And you really see this in the in the Gen X section. Now, among 65 plus. Democrats bounce back 37 percent. Republicans are still the number one party among 65 plus 37 percent. Democrats right behind them at 36 percent. And among voters over 65, just 23 percent call themselves independent. But the fact that older voters are dead even and the only advantage that Republicans have right now in the age groups is among Gen X. It's the smallest of the four generations. So and the advantage isn't so big that it's enough to be decisive. So you can see. And that's why I thought this age group breakdown here by party was yet another tea leaf worth reading. This episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to you by Quince. You know, the best pieces in your closet are the ones you can count on, whether you're heading to work, going out or keeping things a bit casual. And this time of year, Quince makes finding something great for everyone else just as easy. The holiday season is coming. That's right. It's we're under 90 days, folks. It's where I'm shopping for myself and everyone else on my list because I know Quince delivers. Nobody's ever disappointed in stuff they get from Quince. Why? 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They're kind of khaki, but they're kind of not, they're just easy to wear. I'm wearing a pair of those shorts right now as I'm taping this podcast. So when it comes to gifting, Quince is a lot more than clothing too, by the way, they've got fine jewelry, leather bags, hotel quality bedding, chef grade cookware. People love a nice piece of you know, equipment to play with in the kitchen these days. Five-star luggage, plenty of ways to find something special for everyone on your list. So give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. You get free shipping on your order, 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, please let them know it was the Chuck Todd cast. It's the best way to support the show and the best way to make sure you're getting every discount. Republicans also have a Latino problem and they have an Asian American problem. Among Hispanics, 48 percent call themselves Democrats, 25 percent call themselves independents, and only 22 percent call themselves Republicans. And among Asian Americans, it's a small subsample, but 41 percent call themselves Democrats, 38% call themselves independents, and only 17% call themselves Republican. That is such a disaster, particularly on the Asian front, because in the 90s, the second wave of of Asians coming into the electorate, particularly in California, a lot of the sort of second generation Asian candidates were on the Republican side of the aisle. Republicans did really well with basically first gen Asian immigrants and their families. And, you know, whether it was, you know, Obama in a positive way, winning over the Southeast Asian vote in particular, you know, his living in Indonesia gave him, this Asian Pacific identity of sorts growing up in Hawaii, living in Indonesia. So he did, he did organize, um, the, the Asian community, uh, and all the different, um, subcategory, you know, different, different subcategories within the Asian community that I think it, it certainly got stickier for Democrats in general, but this is, you know, when you think about the faster growing population, um, demographics in our country, whether by age or by ethnicity, the Republicans are in third place behind Democrats and independents here. And I do think that that's telling, at least with this midterm election. Oh, one other point about this time, Sienna Poll, just to give you a sense of how different this electorate is. And again, I told you how hard Nate Cohn works to try to get an idea. His projection is that this will be an electorate that would have been, that if this were the electorate in 2024, Kamala Harris would have won by three points. So that's how much more democratic this electorate appears to become, to be. Yes, we're you know, and that is indicative of this D plus 11 congressional ballot. That's indicative of the 11 point swing we went from on the Senate states were Trump plus seven and now D plus four. So it is worth noting that this is that that is a pretty interesting development on that front. A few other things that I want to get to on the question of the state of the nation's economy. How would you rate economic conditions today? You got four choices in this poll. Excellent, good, only fair, poor. Well, 51% of likely voters call the economic conditions in America today poor. So I was curious to see which groups were over 51% in poor. Well, among 18 to 29-year-olds, 68% called economic conditions poor. Among millennials, 59% called economic conditions poor. Among African-Americans, 80% called economic conditions poor. Among Hispanics, 61% called economic conditions poor. What's interesting is white voters who went to college, 50% think this economy is poor. Non-white voters who went to college, 62% think these economic conditions are poor. And non-white, non-college educated voters, 67% think this economy is poor. The only A group of voters who do not who were not over 50 percent in rating these economic conditions as poor were white non-college. So basically Trump's base, 42 percent. You know, it wasn't exactly a great number, but it was the only category of note that was under 50 percent. You saw those groups that I'm talking again. If this is the motivator to vote, these aren't swing voters for this midterm. They already know which way they're gonna vote on this front. I was telling you about the differences between the two parties. Well, they also did Trump's job rating on various issues. And just to run through it real quick, on the economy, approve, disapprove, 35% approve, 64% disapprove. On immigration, 42% approve, 57% disapprove. So his disapproval rating on immigration is higher than the advantage Democrats have on the issue itself. So that just tells you how disappointed voters are with Trump. On tariffs, 61% disapprove of his tariff. Handling of tariffs, 36% approve. Cost of living, under 30, 29% approve of his handling of the cost of living, 69% disapprove. On the war in Iran, it's 33% approve, 65% disapprove. Gas prices, 24% approve, 73% disapprove. I mean, this is why you look at this poll, you look at the potential for the bottom to fall out, and it may be falling out as we speak. As I said, they're having to send money to Mississippi. They, the national Republicans, put some money in the open House seat in Wyoming. Let me repeat, the national Republican Party put money into the open seat in Wyoming. Cynthia Lummis is going to be the next senator from Wyoming. But that's how concerned they are. Now, are Democrats going to win the Wyoming at-large seat? No, they're not going to win the... But the fact is, my guess is all these polls... Sit here and especially in an open seat where you can get concerned that the undecided vote is more willing to give the other party a chance when they really don't know anything about the Republican nominee on their side. But just these you can see these polls are just devastating. So it is. There was not other than certainty to vote. It is about the only good news I could find in here at all. I'll give you one other piece of good news if you're on the Republican side of things. In general, would you say you are satisfied or dissatisfied with the Democratic Party? 28% called themselves satisfied. 70% called themselves dissatisfied. Now, ask the same question of the Republican Party. 36% called themselves satisfied. 63% dissatisfied. So you could say that Democrats are more unpopular. The Democratic Party is more unpopular than the Republican Party. But what's interesting here on this dissatisfaction scale is part of the problem for Democrats is millennials and Gen Z are among the most negative about the Democratic Party. And they're the ones that are going to vote in the biggest numbers for the Democrats compared to the Republicans. So they're not big fans. They're even more, you know, they're not popular, but the Republicans are less likely to say they're dissatisfied with the Republican Party. Democrats are not afraid to say they're dissatisfied. with their own party at this front. So the point is you can't, as I said here, it is hard to find a poll number in here that is somehow putting them in a good race. Now, I wanted to give you one other tea leaf to consume here. So Trump's job approval rating in this poll was 34% overall. To put that in context, They did a very helpful chart of job approval ratings going back to Harry Truman. If Donald Trump's 34% would put him, if this is what his election day job rating is come the midterms, this would make him the second most unpopular president going into a midterm since World War II. The most was Harry Truman in 1946. His job approval rating, you know, back then we just had Gallup, was at 33%. So Donald Trump is right there at 34%. Guess who's right comes next after Trump? George W. Bush in that 2006 midterm where Democrats won both the House and the Senate. He was sitting at 37 percent on Election Day. So the three lowest presidential job approval ratings going into a midterm since World War Two. Harry Truman, 33 percent. Donald Trump's second term, 34 percent. George W. Bush's second term, 37 percent. Harry Truman in 1950 was the only other president below 40% at 39%. By the way, in case you're wondering, the best job rating any president has had going into a midterm since World War II was Bill Clinton, 66% in the impeachment midterm of 1998. Reagan in 86 was sitting at 63%, and his side still lost the Senate, but they didn't lose too many House seats on there. George W. Bush had 62% in the 02s. Midterms, Dwight Eisenhower, his first midterm was sitting at 61 percent. JFK, his first midterm at 61 percent. Now, those those were the midterms where the presidential party did better than expected. But the point is, is that when you look at every single marker when it comes to assessing a midterm election, presidential job approval, you know, that has to be at or near a record low for a president for the out party to catch a wave. Well, he's in wave territory. Right. The generic ballot wave territory. The differences between the two parties, wave territory, right? There is nothing in here. And there's, look, I'm not going to lie to you. There's a part of me going, wait a minute. If everything's pointing in one direction, what are we missing? What I am open-minded to a counterfactual here. Yes, I know it's harder to get Republicans in these polls, but I also know a lot more of the good pollsters are doing better at figuring that out, doing better at waiting up. I think the possibility that we're overrating Republican chances is as good. The assumption is that the polling error is only going to go in the direction that benefits the Republicans. But we've now had 10 years of fear in the polling community that the error is gonna be in that direction. And so there's been nothing but work done by a lot of academics and a lot of smart pollsters trying to fix that. Is it possible? You know, there's always a point where you've overdone it, where you've overcorrected. And I think it's as likely, I don't wanna say more likely, I think it's as likely that we've overcorrected as it is that there's going to be a significant look. The Senate races are in some pretty red states. So Democrats could have a big night and still come up short in your Mississippis, in your Kansas, in your South Carolinas. But at this point, if this is the electorate that we're staring at, the time CNN has done, the Democrats are going to win the House and the Senate. It's not just going to be a it's not going to be a mirage. If this is the electorate, they're going to win both pure and simple. Let's dig into the Senate a little bit. I think, like I said, those Cook report numbers indicate to me they've got Tallarico with a five point lead. It's look, it's pretty clear Republicans had decided to bail on Paxton and they got away with it because Elon Musk was willing to write a single check. to sort of backstop and what the Republicans can, can work on other ones. But Tallarico is polling at 49%. Paxton was only sitting at 44. You know, I, you know, if this is actually the spread, if he's opening up a lead, Tallarico really is opening up a lead. You know, can you imagine if we're able to call Tallarico before 10 o'clock at night? You know, it's something, one of the warnings I want to tie, and I'm going to get deeper into this in a couple of podcasts, you know, as we get closer to election day, but, I think it's very likely between on the East Coast, between 8 and 11. We don't have many races called because, remember, the Democratic vote is in a lot of urban areas. Urban areas take longer to count. There's more ballots. There's more voters. It's just going to take longer. You know, if Democrats are winning these red states, you're not going to be able to know that these are callable races until you're getting to 80 or 90 percent on that front. But the big news is that the Democrats have decided to send a little bit of money to Mississippi. And we've seen other individual campaigns send money to Mississippi. Kamala Harris has been campaigning there. Look, Mississippi is what we call in the campaign business a cheap date. And so a million, you know, throwing in a A couple million dollars in Mississippi can actually go a long way. If you just threw an extra $ 2 million in Texas, you wouldn't notice it, right? Or even through the $ 2 million if you wanted to, you know, throw a Hail Mary in Florida or something like that. So the Mississippi development is interesting because now you've got Republicans truly are nervous about it. And when you look at the two Senate candidates, it's like the Kansas situation, right? Kansas has two Republican senators, Jerry Moran, Roger Marshall. Jerry Moran has been in Kansas politics a long time, is known to have great constituency service, is really well-liked among his colleagues, is just not somebody that's going to get caught napping. Roger Marshall, on the other hand, still kind of new to politics, kind of went from one career, jumped in. I have told you before, he strikes me as not really liking people all the time, which makes me wonder why did he get into the politics business? And it does look like he got caught napping a little bit. Well, the Mississippi Senate pairs are similar. Roger Wicker, man, he's been in Mississippi politics a long time. He was in the Congress. And then, you know, he's sort of in he's well known for having great constituency service in that state. He's well respected by his colleagues. He's been pretty much more aggressive at pushing back on bad decisions by Hengsteth, pushing back on this idea that Putin is somehow anything other than a tyrant and a thug. But Sidney Hyde-Smith is just not a huge presence there. People forget in her first race, it wasn't a blowout. She didn't win by double digits. There's always been a high floor for Democrats in Mississippi. It's why I think it's a state that Democrats have missed out on organizing, probably should have organized a lot sooner. But it has a low ceiling, right? It is definitely, they need, I think, 48 or 49 percent has to be a winning number. But, you know, African-Americans are really upset about the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. We have seen turnout among African-Americans during the primaries was through the roof. You get a higher than expected turnout among African-Americans in Mississippi and you get an average to below average turnout among white Republicans. That's the recipe, folks. That's the recipe for failure. Mississippi being in play. It's also the recipe for South Carolina. But Donald Trump is is is he's, you know, making a couple of stops in South Carolina. I don't think they've decided to do to do that just yet. All right. Now I want to go to day two, I guess, of the fallout of this. And, you know, I've had a few people going, oh, you you really got angry about this Ramaswami ad. Look. I hope I've made something clear that I, I love politics. I love this democracy. I love our constitution. I'm not saying that just to sound like I'm a hokey, you know, wannabe government teacher, you know, first of all, I'd love to be, I enjoy teaching. And I adored my government teacher when I was in high school. And I genuinely do love our constitution. I genuinely do love politics and I love, public service. I think there's some nobility to it. Do I think there are massive egos in politics? I do. Do I think negative campaigns work? Alexander Hamilton created the New York Post to be a negative campaigner. So as long as we've had democracy, we've had negative campaigns. I'm not naive. But I want more good people to run for office. I think that we have... locked people out of politics by making it disgusting and awful, by deciding that if you choose to run, we're going to make you defend any vaguely bad decision or bad thing that's happened to you, whether you did it or somebody did it to you, and we're going to make sure we litigate it all. And you're basically going to, it's the, you know, one of the infamous dreams that, you know, therapists will say that people have is that You know, you have this dream where you're literally naked and you're like, what? I can't wear my clothes. I mean, I've I've had that. And it's the, you know, therapists all say, you know, when you when you worry about it, you know, you have this fear that somehow you've been it's it's you know, you it's fear of being exposed or whatever you want to however you want to read that. I'm sure a professional therapist will give me the give me the official information. official take on this in one of my Ask Chuck questions. But the way politics works now, it's almost as if you're saying, okay, I'm just going to, you know, I'm going to bear it all, warts and all, you know, here it is. And if that's the way we conduct politics, then only the shameless are going to run for office. Only the wannabe celebrities, the shitty influencers who just think politics is a way to make a buck. that I'm getting into politics to either become famous or make money. And Donald Trump has shown that you can basically be a failed celebrity in any other walk of life, but find success in politics. He also has shown that you can make money by, shoot, I mean, a lot of people get rich without even winning an election in politics. Can I introduce you to somebody like Alan Keyes? You can Google him or chat GPT to find out what it is. But this is a guy who was basically a professional candidate for a long time, ran for president multiple times, was the fill-in Senate candidate in Illinois against Barack Obama, I guess most infamously in 2004. And for a brief period of time, had a show on MSNBC called Alan Keyes is Making Sense. I never did appear on it. for what it's worth. The point is, is that if we don't want politics to just simply be taken up by the grifters and the assholes, then we've really got to condemn tactics like this one. All right. Because it's not just the advertisement itself, right? It's the calculation behind this ad. And then you're watching how JD Vance is responding to it. What's amazing is that the Ramaswamy campaign, they message tested this ad. My friends at the hotline, one of their reporters, got a hold of the screenshot, basically a polling firm on behalf of the Ramaswamy campaign, contacted people and saying, hey, do you mind taking a survey? And as part of the survey was to watch this ad with Amy Acton's estranged mother, the mother who stayed married to the man who sexually assaulted Amy Acton when she was 12 years old. Just remember, all of these facts were known by the Ramaswamy campaign. and they aired this ad anyway. Then they put $ 4 million behind it. So they message tested it. Now they wanna put more money behind it. Now the Acton campaign is out with a response ad. It features her brother who noted that it's just, it's painful that they had to do the ad, but you know what's, look, Acton's been running a very smart campaign from the beginning. The fact that they knew that Ramaswami was capable of doing this and they were sort of had a plan ready to go. I mean, it tells you they were being smart and it tells you they knew exactly who Ramaswami was. By the way, Nikki Haley, she's not laughing at this. She's just reminding people. I tried to tell you this guy was a bad guy, that this was a bad guy. What really bothers me is that This isn't his decision alone. There's a whole bunch of people he's paying who hope to have a future in campaign politics after this failed campaign ends in disaster on the launch pad. And I'll tell you this, you have Ramaswamy on your resume, you're going to have a hard time getting a job. This is the single, I think, most embarrassing, most disgusting and despicable decision a major campaign has done. Again, They exploited the trauma of somebody's childhood trauma. That's what they did. And it wasn't just any trauma. It's sexual assault. I thought this was the party that cared a lot about what Jeffrey Epstein did, was worried about the trafficking of young people and all of these things. I'm old enough to remember when JD Vance cared about these things. Now, what does JD Vance do? J.D. Vance didn't simply decline to criticize the ad. He went after other Republicans who were criticizing it. By the way, John Husted was asked about it. And he was asked about it after Vance goes to the state and basically embraces this strategy by Ramaswamy. And Husted simply said, I wouldn't have done this ad. Of course, anything more and he starts a fight. I mean, I sort of at this point, I'm sorry he's not speaking out more about it. But politically, I understand the vice grip he feels like he's in. But Vance criticized Republicans who decided to criticize. So if a Republican thought that they were disgusted by this decision, Vance thinks that was weak. Vance said he was disgusted by Republicans who were complaining about the ad rather than focusing on winning the election. Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing to J.D. Vance. Now, his message was, well, politics is a tough business. Republicans should stop whining and go in. All right. All right, Mr. Vice President. What's interesting here is Vance is not, in his own bizarre way, he's not defending the factual merits of the act. He's not explaining why Acton's mother's account should be believed over Acton's or why this particular family dispute is relevant to who should govern Ohio. He's defending the willingness to use the tactic. And he's suggesting that Republicans who object to it are somehow insufficiently committed to winning. This is the Republican Party that Donald Trump and J.D. Vance believe exists. This is insulting to other Republicans. If you've got a moral compass, J.D. Vance doesn't want you as a member of the Republican Party. That's the message he just sent. Because once winning becomes the answer to every single objection, what exactly is left that a candidate shouldn't do? What's out of bounds? If this is not out of bounds, then what is out of bounds? I mean, look, I don't believe this is good politics. I think this is going... This is taking a bad situation of Republicans and making it worse. And they are creating, I'm not, I think the backlash from this is going to go way down the ballot. And maybe in some ways, this is, it was a moment like this that people needed to realize, oh my God, what the hell have we greenlit with the Trump era? For years, we've watched Republican politicians defend conduct they would have condemned had it come from a Democrat. And it's usually on the grounds of, well, the alternative would be worse. And now we're applying that same logic to campaign tactics. Vance is not making the case that this is appropriate or fair. He's just saying, well, everything is fair if it's about winning. So, I... Look, I guess Vance is making the case that he wants to be Trump's heir apparent. He's like, no, no, no, no. I'll go as low and as disgusting as Trump will in order to win over the MAGA constituency. But think about what he, think about the contempt Vance has for his own supporters. He thinks they think this is a good thing. The author of Hillbilly Elegy. I'm curious what the author, J.D. Vance, the guy who wrote Hillbilly Elegy, I'm curious what he would think of Amy Acton's story. The guy I met in 2016, who was the author of Hillbilly Elegy, I think would have a lot of empathy for Amy Acton. The guy who's become Donald Trump's vice president and who suddenly wants the job himself has decided all's fair. And we wonder why we have no moral compass when it comes to our foreign policy. Right? Everything is transactional. No moral compass when it comes to what we're doing with AI. But look, I think Ohio is giving us a preview of a fight Republicans are going to end up having after this election. If Ramaswamy loses, I think this, look, it's clear he didn't think he could win any other way. So he decided to throw this Hail Mary. So I hope if he loses, Republicans conclude that it went too far and that the tactics backfired and that voters were looking for something that weren't going to reward this. But what if Vance's answer is, no, we just weren't aggressive enough. Republicans needed to fight harder. And the problem was the party's unwillingness to fully embrace the approach Vance is defending. We know that's going to be Trump's excuse. He's going to say that Republicans were too weak. They didn't get behind Paxton. Again, Trump and Vance are basically criticizing any Republican who has a moral compass or an ethical bone in their body. Because this is immoral and it's unethical. Bottom line. It's why I think this, look, I don't know whether I would lump this in with the corruption message per se, right? But it's corruption, it's character, right? Look, we know what's driving this election is the fact that Trump's policies have made life harder on anybody who doesn't have money in the stock market. Right? That's a fact. That's the big driver of this election. But the difference between Democrats having a good night and winning a tsunami is going to be this character and corruption stuff. Be it this disgusting, horrendous thing Ramaswamy did. Look, I think this is disqualifying, period. Disqualifying from doing business. I wouldn't do business with a guy. And again, I can't believe there hasn't been resignations from his campaign. There are going to be people, if you stick with that campaign, you put that on your resume, you're not getting hired by any mainstream Republican if he loses as badly as I think he's going to lose on this. It's something folks need to keep in mind. And what's interesting is the timing of this, right? We're getting a few more... corruption stories. We're seeing corruption. Again, as I reminded you the other day, the corruption in 06, corruption was this cherry on top, as Chris and I were discussing on Super Tuesday for the Democratic wave. This character assassination that Ramaswamy is attempting on Amy Acton coupled with a more pay to play schemes and what we've seen with Putin and Zelensky and Elon Musk. And it's just been, it's, it's, it's not that voters are voting on Putin or foreign policy, but they're voting on the idea that it's unelected corrupt billionaire friends of the president get to make these decisions and not you and I and everyday people. All right. Uh, before we get to my interview with Bill Cohen, uh, and again, a fascinating, um, sort of journey through the world of private equity, these media conglomerates and where things are going. I want to get it, what I wrote in my sub stack this week, which is for those of you also, you get it on Newsphere. But anyway, so I wrote a column this week about four pieces of information that I'd most like to have before election day, right? And the premise is pretty simple. Rather than I didn't want to spend another column trying to predict what's going to happen on November 3rd. But instead, I wanted to focus on here's what I don't know yet. And if we knew the answer, I'd be able to give you a better projection. All right, now I just want to give you a brief, quick little rundown of the column I wrote this week. I hope you will take a look at the whole thing. I hope you subscribe either to my work on Newsphere. There's a lot of great contributors. It is worth the price every month there. Obviously, my Substack is also free. You can get that there as well. But either way, please take a– I hope you get a chance to read the whole thing. But basically what I wrote is a column about four pieces of information that if I had it now, I'd have a better idea of what was going to happen on Election Day. I don't need to continue to paint the picture of just how much that this landscape is deteriorating for the Republicans. But it's the– but let me give you some specifics here of– What I most would like to know at the moment. First question happens to be about those are about voters who somewhat disapprove of Donald Trump's job as president. The somewhat job approvers. It's somewhere depending, you know, the four part. We learned this quite well during the 2022 midterms. The four part job approval question with president is a really good one. You know, do you strongly approve, somewhat approve, somewhat disapprove, strongly disapprove? We know with Trump, the strongly disapproved is over 50%. But for his disapproval, the 60s is another anywhere from about 10 to 14%, depending on the poll, of the electorate who only somewhat disapproves of Trump. And who are these people? These are, you know, this is a group that the somewhat job disapprovers of Joe Biden ended up still voting for. narrowly voting for more Democratic candidates in 2022, right? Among the generic ballot, among those that somewhat disapproved of the job Joe Biden was doing, Democrats won those voters 49-45 in 2022. Well, according to polling right now, among the somewhat job disapprovers, Republicans are still winning those voters by 20 points. Now, in 2018, Trump got walloped among all disapprovers. But right now, those that are calling themselves somewhat disapprovers of Trump's job, they're pretty rank and file Republicans. And right now, they're still sticking with the Republican candidate. Republicans are winning this group of voters by 15 to 20 points. If you see this get to only a single digit lead for Republicans among those, this will tell you that you actually have Republicans that are leaving Trump and voting Democratic. Democratic, right? In bigger numbers than just two, three, or four points. So, you know, what percentage of those that somewhat disapprove of Trump's job are not going to vote Republican, right? You tell me that answer, I'll tell you how big this wave is. The second unknown, it's something I touched on earlier in this broadcast, it's younger voters. What will be the percentage of this electorate will be voters under the age of 30? In 2018, It was 13% of the electorate. In 2022, it was 12%. Obviously, Democrats did better in 18 than they did in 22. Well, the percentage of the electorate among young voters was slightly higher. 2020, the percentage of the electorate was 17% of voters under 30. 2024, it was 14%. Democrats win a presidential election when 17% of the electorate is under the age of 30. They lose a presidential electorate when 14% of the electorate is under the age of 30. Not saying that that is the only reason they went from winning to losing in 20 to 24, but you get my point. Anything that sits at, frankly, 14 or above, and you're looking at a pretty, as we know, a pretty big night on that front. So how's Gen Z going to vote? The third unknown is Latino voters. How decisive will Latino voters be for Democrats? it was one of the biggest stories in 2024 was Trump's improvement with Latino voters, many of whom were frustrated with inflation, the cost of living, and frankly, I think, thought the Democrats culturally were moving too far to the left. But now we're seeing those voters come back towards the Democrats. Almost all of it has to do with the economy, but another part of it has to do with immigration enforcement. Because there's a difference between many Latino voters supported stronger border security, but they didn't support tactics that this administration is employing in communities around the country that seem to target people simply how they look or whether their last name ends in C. And how big is that shift? It's one thing for that shift to be big on the congressional level. But if this shift is decisive up and down the ballot, well, then that's when you know Texas or Florida governor comes into play, right? If Democrats win Florida and or Texas governor, it'll be because there was a massive shift of Latino voters from the Republicans to the Democrats. Right now, we see more of that shift in Senate races than we are seeing. And believe it or not, Tallarico has been doing better with Latino voters than the Latino nominee, Latina nominee for governor. I think that number is going to grow. I think now that more Latinos believe she can win, you'll start to see that number. We had a little bit of that with Barack Obama early. Black voters weren't all, didn't jump quickly on board. Obama was just, well, can he win? And then when it looked like he could win and he was going to get support from the white community, then all of a sudden his support among African-Americans grew exponentially. I think that possibility for Gina Enosa is there. And then the fourth unknown is whether the Democratic brand is going to be a problem that prevents certain Democrats from getting across the finish line. I think, look, I think if Gina Hinojosa comes up short, if David Jolly comes up short, I think we'll say it's a brand issue more than anything else. I think if Annie Andrews, you know, Darlene Graham is very vulnerable, but the Democratic brand is just in tatters in a place like South Carolina. If the Democratic brand were slightly better, I think we'd be talking about South Carolina the way we're talking about Kansas and Iowa when it comes to that. Now, she could still win because many of these Democrats have gone out of their way to basically distance themselves from the stereotype of the National Party. Annie Andrews is a great example. She she went to candidate the camera wearing her white coat. She's a medical doctor to say, I have never done any gender transition surgeries and nor would I ever do something like that. And I believe in fairness and women's sports. And she would direct on that issue. Josh Turek went direct to camera on that issue. You've seen Tallarico do this. You've seen Gina Yiannou say we are not relitigating some of the culture wars in the legislature if she gets elected. You've seen Adam Hamilton say similar things. So it's possible that the candidates overcome the brand because they've gone out of their way to say, hey, I have my own brand. I'm not going to be defined by the National Democratic Party. So those are the ingredients there. This is what goes from wave to tsunami, right? Do Latino voters shift Democratic up and down the ballot? Do young voters turn out in a substantial way that's greater than what we saw in 18 or 22? Do the people who somewhat disapprove of Trump's job, which are more likely to be the Republican and independent, Republican-leaning independents, do they punish Republicans for their disappointment in Trump and essentially abandon their party for a cycle, right? This is why it is hard to forecast something bigger than just sort of a generic sort of check on the party in power type of election. So if I knew those four things, I think I'd have a better off feeling comfortable saying one way, being more definitive, feeling, yes, this is an 06 wave, or yes, this is a 1994-like tsunami. As Chuck... All right, let's do a little Ask Chuck. This is where I guess I start doing my Trump dance. I know some of you don't want me to do that. Oh, I got a Go Tigers. Oh, it's not a Go Tigers. It's a Mizzou Tigers. So I can't do my Ed Ogeron here. Anyway, Shane here, still proudly hailing from Missouri's original and controversial 5th Congressional District. With the mess surrounding our congressional map, you mentioned the upcoming election could potentially be thrown out and or ruled void. But what would that actually mean for voters? Would we have to hold another primary in a special election or would the process look different? Seems like following Texas's approach a few years back could have saved everyone a lot of headaches. Yes. On another note, I knew Ole Miss would be tough for Mizzou, but that loss really stung. Thankfully, we got a bye week to recover before Arkansas go Tigers M-I-Z. Listen. Missouri needs to win a road game, right? I mean, we've seen that. What is it? It's a, man, I'm sure, and I know you've seen it. It's like one in 18 against ranked teams on the road or something like that. All right, now to the serious part of your question. Like I said, gotta win a road game. Come on, Mizzou. And I have family who went to Mizzou, multiple family members. So they're part of my larger orbit of schools I would like to see succeed. So just know, that, uh, this is, this is criticism that comes from a, from a, from a loving place. Um, but as for what you're talking about, look, it will be a revote of some sort, right? And, and I look, all of this depends. It would be up to a voter to sue. It could be up to a candidate to sue. It's not clear who would have standing. Um, a voter would have standing, you know, but a candidate would have standing because the primary was a different, um, congressional, literally different math than what was used for the general. You know the Texas model, it sounds like, which was when they went through this before, they essentially were able to do it in time so that the November election was everybody on the same ballot, sort of an all-party primary. And if nobody got 50%, the top two met in a runoff in December. So look, and by the way, that election schedule was dictated by a federal judge. It was not something that was done by the state of Texas. A federal judge said, this is how you're going to do it. So it would take, my guess is if this happens, it will be a literally court-ordered election and a court-ordered process of how said election was going. The best precedent we have to look back on to potentially use as a model is that Texas precedent from the mid-' 90s. But to have it, it's possible to try to avoid this mess because it, that they will go with, you know, where the, where the courts might not, um, it'll be interesting to see who would have standing to file a suit on this, whether it's a, a candidate who lost in a, in the other primary, didn't get a chance to run on this one. I mean, just look at your fifth congressional district, who would have, you know, who would have run and who wouldn't have run depending on right where, where things were. So, um, But I do think that that suit would have to be filed before certification for what it's worth on that front. All right. Next question comes from Reggie. And he says, hey, going back to your NBC days, you've always been great at identifying key counties to watch on election night. So which bellwether counties are on your radar this year? Is it Austin, City Slicker in Texas, House District 48, and Texas' 27th Congressional District? I'm particularly curious about rural farming counties across West Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa. where even narrowing Trump's previous three to one or four to one margin to two to one could signal serious trouble for Republicans. Are you watching places like Midland, Lubbock, Amarillo, Dodge City for signs of a shift towards purple? Historically, do major electoral waves affect federal and statewide races equally? Or can the impact be concentrated at one level? Thanks for the great program. Well, look, you are. Yes. And in fact, that I'm going to have in the next. What do I have? How many more episodes? of the Todd cast and super Tuesday. I think I'm going to have at least four more. Look, Chris and I are going to do an interesting voters guide. I'm going to do a viewer's guide a week from now going into election election day so that you have that sort of, sort of how to watch the night hour by hour. But next Wednesday, I do plan to get deeper into counties, but you know, this is the first competitive election in Texas that we knew was going to happen in advance, right? The Beto election, Ted Cruz, the fact that that ended up close, nobody believed it was close. And, you know, many of us didn't, you know, but ultimately you're correct in what you're identifying that it isn't necessarily swing counties, but they're, look, I'm fascinated. North Texas is what I'm obsessed with. Part of it is I spend more time in North Texas because my son goes to school in Dallas, but Tarrant County in particular, right? We've been watching this county slowly move from red to purple. Um, what happens in Tarrant County? Right. Uh, I, that's, I do think margins though will matter, right? Tarrant could be swinging. Tarrant could be one where I think Biden carried Tarrant, uh, in 2020. Um, if he didn't, he came awfully close, but those, you know, that's one quickie, you know, I could tell you, but it's more about margins, right? What's the margin in Harris? What's the margin of Bayer? What's the margin in Travis? And then going, you know, it's also the raw turnout, right? Paxton could have a four or five to one advantage in some of these counties, but if turnout is down 10%, well, suddenly that's a hollow, right? Those are hollow advantages too. So, right, there's different ways to look at it. It's not just what are the margins in these rural areas? What is the raw turnout in these rural areas? And then obviously it's all the South Texas counties, right? All of those counties that swung towards Trump, not all of them ended up being carried by Trump, but they certainly swung towards him. What is the snapback and how big is the snapback? So, look, I'm giving you that general overview, but there's basically five or six watch counties that I have in all of these key Senate races, Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, Texas. And you have reminded me that I need I that is we are going to have that is going to be part of the particularly the Wednesday, next Wednesday's episode of the Todd cast, we will spend a lot of time on essentially the, the six States, because I would, you know, one of the things I didn't, one of the things that's clear to me right now is Senate Democrats do not believe that they're not, they're not counting on winning Kansas. They're not counting on winning Nebraska. They're not counting on winning South Carolina, the path, to the Senate majority goes through six states, I think, as far as Senate Democrats are concerned. Maine and Michigan on one side, two states that they're even or maybe slightly behind in. And then North Carolina, Ohio, Alaska, Iowa, Texas. So seven, excuse me. So it's seven states that the assumption is that's where the Senate is going to be decided. Now, If Kansas ends up flipping, South Carolina ends up flipping, that's how Democrats go from 51 Senate seats to 52, 53, 54. But that gets into the tsunami territory, right? That gets into Republicans actually leaving the party and voting for Democrats. That's what it takes for them to win in South Carolina, win in Nebraska, and win in Kansas. Another question. from Missouri's Fifth District. We have Shane, who was earlier, right? Well, now I got Matt writing in from Missouri's Fifth. Man, we are killing it in the Kansas City market. See, this is what happened. I visit Kansas City, and we just add more and more great listeners and viewers. So anyway, Matt in Missouri's Fifth writes, hey, I avoid social media religiously, so I've missed the YMCA speculation and Trump's newfound admiration for the male physique. But hearing you and Chris discuss how Pete Hegseth always seems to get the benefit of the doubt reminded me of Trump's treatment of Vladimir Putin. As ridiculous as it sounds, could Trump's Russia-friendly foreign policy simply come down to a man crush? Those shirtless horseback photos certainly made an impression. And speaking of your October 19th episode, you asked how much Trump cares about the future of the Republican Party, but perhaps the bigger question is, how much does he care about the future of the United States? Ouch. Look, Donald Trump cares about Donald Trump. And Donald Trump's success can come at the expense of anybody, as long as it comes with Donald Trump's success. And in fact, when he would say, you know, you know, if I win, the country wins, right? That's his mindset. So in his own way, you know, if he's doing well, then he thinks the country's doing well. I am convinced why he doesn't fully appreciate this affordability issue is because he does not interact with anybody that has a mortgage or has to have a mortgage. He might have a staffer or two that has a mortgage, but I don't think he considers them peers. When he thinks about the peers, the people he hangs out with, I think he's incredibly out of touch. Look, I think you're– my guess is Putin's too short for Trump on this front. But honestly, it is the– I probably get more questions now about this than anything else in my– from friends and family, right, is Trump. What is going on? Is grandpa coming out of the closet? It's the is sort of like, I don't know. None of us know. But if you wanted to read the tea leaves of of Trump, right, you YMCA, he brags about that. You know, he knows that it's the gay anthem. He's always been he's always been a gay friendly candidate or boss or however you want to do it. I mean, you know, he doesn't he's not been a hypocrite on these issues. In fact, there was a time it was, you know, his being friendly to the gay community, being all that was seen as proof that he was some liberal back in the day. Look, I think this is a guy in his 80s who no longer has a filter. And I think it means that grandma and grandpa say the damnedest things. And you're like, whoa, I didn't know that. Well. You know, now you do type of thing. It's, look, so many things in the Trump era are predictable. It's kind of nice to have something unpredictable happen in the Trump era lately. And this certainly was a plot twist that nobody saw coming here. Are we in the penultimate episode of the Trump era, right? So in theory, this is the type of, the type of plot twist you get right in the second to last episode. Right. If we, if we, if we assume this is these two, this is the penultimate. And then we, then we get the end state and the last episode for the last two years. Anyway. All right. I got Jonathan W. North Hampton, Massachusetts, the second district there in Massachusetts, in the Bay state. He goes, Hey, I just heard that the Republican lieutenant governor nominee in Massachusetts, a new Bedford city councilor, who ran unopposed, suspended his campaign after reportedly being arrested following a drunk driving crash over the weekend. What does Massachusetts law say about replacing a nominee who withdraws this close to election day? Does a Republican gubernatorial nominee get to choose a replacement, or is there another process? Just curious. Jonathan W., Well, Jonathan, well, look, he can drop out, but there's no right. They're still elected together as a ticket. Obviously, they're not going to win, but he can get out of the race, but they can't take his name off the ballot. Had it happened sooner before the printing of ballots, the party could have put on a replacement. But, you know, had he won, maybe he declines the oath and then there's something else. But the bottom line is his name has to stay on the ballot. They cannot take his name off the ballot. It is too late to do a replacement, any of that business. So obviously, if there's a victory, then then there's then there's a scenario here. But me thinks Maura Healey and her lieutenant governor are going to are going to end up victorious here. And we won't have to figure figure this out post Election Day. But bottom line is, it is if you're at a certain point once they printed the ballots. I can think of a few circumstances where literally you'd see a sticker over somebody's name, you know, if a court ordered a person's name off the ballot. But that usually only happens after ballot printing if, you know, if there was somebody that was on there that shouldn't have been on there or something like that. All right. Nate in Pennsylvania's 3rd District comes in with the last question of the show. Nate here from Pennsylvania 3, longtime listener and aspiring First Time Question Club member. Well, welcome. You made it. Good job, Nate. If Democrats win the Senate this year, do you think eliminating the filibuster is inevitable, especially with Manchin and Sinema no longer around to oppose it? Did any current or incoming Democratic senators stand in the way? And how would eliminating it shape Trump's final two years and beyond? Also, love the college football talk. The Matt Campbell era hasn't started quite as well as we'd hoped. but we're still dreaming of another 87 festival moment. Thank you. And we are. Yeah, really? You want to bring up that Penn State moment? You know, if Vinny Chester Brady hands the ball off to Alonzo Highsmith, instead of trying to throw the ball there, Miami wins that game on the last play. Anyway. To say that– you know, it's funny. Miami's won five national titles, and the two games that I think about the most in Miami is the two losses. The Terry Porter flag that was thrown against Ohio State in the 2000– two season, 2003 Fiesta Bowl and the 87, right? The, the unofficial first BCS national title game. I say unofficial because there was no BCS then, but the Fiesta Bowl all on their own decided to offer Miami and Penn State a chance to play for the national title. And really what both Miami and Penn State did was made the Fiesta Bowl a major bowl. They weren't always, they weren't considered a major bowl until they pulled that off. Um, So it's one of those that I think is, I mean, it's historically relevant. I think Vinny is still throwing interceptions from that game. But those two titles, it's probably the way Pats fans feel about the two Eli Manning losses, right? I think about those two losses because arguably the two of the greatest collections of talent Miami ever had that didn't win titles is that 86 Miami team, which was better than the 87 team that did win a title. And the O2 team was as good as the O1 team, you know, with maybe the exception we didn't have Andre Johnson and we didn't have Ed Reed on the O2 team. We only had Sean Taylor on the O2 team. Anyway, about the filibuster, I'm not convinced it goes. Because guess what? There's a lot of Democratic senators who've been in the minority who were probably happy that the filibuster was still there. So, you know, one of the things that I've learned over the years in the Senate with this filibuster issue is that just when you think you've got the vote, somebody new has decided maybe there's something to this filibuster. Do I think they may change some of the rules of the filibuster and how you do? Yes, I do. Maybe forcing a little bit more talking, forcing, you know, creating a different time limit or something like that. I could see some changes. And remember— this is a, just a, this is just a rules that the, that the Senate will vote on when there is a new Senate and, and they do these things. So, but I am not, um, I am not convinced that the filibuster is, is definitely gone here. Um, cause if there was no filibuster, there might've been a safe act. And I wonder how Democrats would have felt about that. So, um, I'm still a skeptic. I'm trying to think. Let's say they win 52 Senate seats. Is there 51 votes for ending the filibuster in that new Senate? Is Maria Cantwell going to be against the filibuster? Is Patty Murray? Is Alyssa Slotkin? Sherrod Brown? I don't know. Adam Hamilton? We don't know, right? Who are the new senators going to be? Are they going to be anti-filibuster? Josh Turek? Everybody's so sure, right? And there's really no need to get rid of it in the last two years of Trump. And I don't know why you would do that, tempt fate on that. So, you know, like I said, I could see some changes to the filibuster happening before I see a total elimination. Look, you know, and you've heard me rant about this. I don't think the filibuster is the problem. I think what has destroyed, what the U.S. Senate has done is destroyed is when they got rid of the filibuster for judicial nominees. That has destroyed the credibility of the judiciary branch. We now have red and blue robes because of that decision. So I'm somebody who thinks that– What was done with the judiciary has only made us more polarized and has only made us more distrustful of the judiciary. We'd be a lot better off if it took 60 or, frankly, 75 votes. It should be 60 votes to confirm federal judges and circuit judges, and I think it should be 75 votes to confirm a Supreme Court justice. And I promise you, you're going to get Supreme Court justices who are not politicians. And isn't that what we actually want? It's what Alexander Hamilton wanted. It was the argument he made in Federalist, I believe, in 78. All right, with that... Let's talk a little college football. Look, I don't know if we can top what happened last week, but here's what I do know. Whenever you think, oh, this is not going to be that good of a week, that's the week even more crazy stuff happens. But I'll start with my Hurricanes. First of all, I'll give you a little bit of, I know some of you want to keep track of my comings and goings when it comes to college football. So last week, We saw one of our children in Miami and saw the Miami-Florida State game. Well, this week, we're going to go to Dallas and see our other child at an SMU game. And SMU is playing Cal. Now, unfortunately, the good folks at the Four Letter Network have decided that all SMU games apparently have to be at noon Eastern, 11 a.m. Central time. Well, guess when the Miami-Pitt game is? The Miami-Pitt game is at noon Eastern as well. Pitt travels to Miami. Pat Narduzzi has already been whining and complaining that Miami has a bigger budget for players than he does. He is a serial complainer. Look, you're a really good coach. You've put together a good program. Why don't you just strap it up and, you know, say what you have to say on the field and don't behave the way you're behaving. I mean, I just, it's a bad look, the whining and complaining. Oh, people try to sign our quarterback. Well, go raise more money. None of this is illegal. It is all legal. Don't complain that it's not. But anyway, the point being is I'm going to be live watching SMU and Cal, and I'm going to be doing this while I perhaps have one ear. I don't know if I'm... I'm about to confess something that my son might not be realizing. So my son's high school football games were at noon quite a bit. And when he was playing high school football, Miami always ended up in the noon slot because they were not the number one team in the ACC, which... you know, on any given week. So they were rarely getting the, the three 30 or the seven 30 games. They're now getting a lot more of the three 30 and the seven 30 games, but Pitt's not a big draw this week. So I think that they gave us the new game, which frankly is a bigger, the irony is that I think it's harder to play Miami when the sun is out at in Miami than it is when the sun is down humidity, all that stuff, especially for these boys up North. But man, I've got, I literally going to have one eye on the Miami Pitt game. I'm going to be watching SMU Cal and it could be a shootout or something like that. So anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing my son. I'm looking forward to seeing SMU beat Cal. Cal's been a real disappointment. I thought they were going to be a real sleeper, a sleeper team in the ACC this year, and they were not. I think they've messed up the quarterback that we all now refer to as initials because none of us want to mispronounce his name. But other games, look, I think the biggest game of the week is Ole Miss-Texas. And it really is a playoff game, I think here, probably more so for Texas, believe it or not. I mean, yes, Texas has a great win against Ohio State, but now they've got two losses. They really shouldn't have won that Ohio State game, right? That was kind of Ryan Day turtled the team. And that's why Texas and if Ole Miss, you know, Ole Miss only has one loss. We kind of forgot about Ole Miss, right? They beat LSU. Then they go and get swamp stomped by the Gators in Gainesville. And then we kind of sort of, you know, the Ole Miss story is kind of quietly going, well, they're still 5-1. They still got Trinidad Chambliss. I don't know how Texas keeps up with Ole Miss. Ole Miss has proven they can score on anybody. I know Texas has a great defense, but I promise you, I think Ole Miss will score more than 24 points against Texas. And if Ole Miss scores 24 points, can Texas keep up? Either way, Game of the day and most important one for SEC playoff implications, it's the primetime game. It's easily the best game of the night and the one that I think will have the most impact on what we're talking about. A few other games on my radar. Indiana goes to Michigan, right? This is a chance we're now not going to have. Indiana's got to face C.J. Carr's little brother, who is another grandchild of Lloyd Carr. He is, I guess, the new quarterback, the starting quarterback at Michigan, which means Bryce Underwood is going to go into the portal. Where does Bryce Underwood go? One of my favorite college football gambling podcasts speculates it's going to be Florida State. That'd be interesting if they end up with him. I'll be curious of that. But either way, Indiana at Michigan. Is there a little bit of a hangover for Indiana? I know Indiana lost by literally a foot, less than a foot on a foot, if you can do that with that. Indiana's not going to score a lot of points. Michigan's not going to score a lot of points. It's going to be kind of a messy game, I'm guessing, sloppy game. I don't know. I mean, I wouldn't want to have to go to Michigan after losing a heartbreaker at home to Ohio State. So I think it's a big game for Indiana here to sort of make sure they don't let Ohio State beat them twice. LSU goes to Auburn. I think Auburn, right? That's a tough one. You pull the upset and then you go home to face LSU. I worry. I'm always– I got a lot of family members. Pro Auburn. I want to be pro Auburn. I'm a little nervous about this one. I don't feel good about it. Sorry, guys. I just don't. On that one, just because it feels like LSU, they're in, they can't lose mode. They can't lose. And, you know, Kiffin with his back against the wall. It's not always a team I want to be on the other side of. And then the other big sort of letdown spot is BYU after their big win over Notre Dame has to go to Orlando. So they go from Elevation, and cool air to sea level and humid air, although not as humid as it normally is. It is October, so it's starting to turn a little bit there in Orlando. We've seen these teams, they pull a big upset, and then literally the next week lay an egg. We've seen it all over the SEC, who's to say this doesn't happen to a Big 12 team as well. And in fact, Keep an eye on Tennessee having to travel to South Carolina. They got their big win over Alabama. They really celebrated that big win over Alabama. And now they got to go into Columbia, South Carolina. I know what my Vegas friends would be doing on this one. That's for sure. And then after that, I can't tell you that I've got, you know, I may have some interesting financial plays in some of these things. And I will be watching at Clemson hosting Virginia Tech here. I'm just curious of which Clemson team shows up. I think Tech can beat them handily. They have the capability. But it's big game James, right? So who knows on this front? I just don't know if I buy that Clemson can keep up on that front. Uh, and all right. I think that's what I got. I think that's the best Houston, Utah. It's another rank on rank, uh, rank match up there. Um, it's probably a more important game for Houston because Utah has got an opportunity to play BYU and they can make a college football playoff statement by defeating BYU, even if they lose this game. But man, Utah is a tough place to play a tough place to play. Houston's on the road, but this is a pretty important game of the big 12. Um, and my own, My own producer's a big Utah Ute. So, you know, I give, I'm going to, A, I got to give some respect and B, they deserve, they have earned, earned this respect. And then I'll be keeping a small eye on USC traveling to Wisconsin. This is two time zones, not three. Can USC win a ball game when they travel multiple time zones? Well, they can win. The question is, can they ever cover a spread when they go more than two time zones on this front? But Look, USC is going to be hosting Ohio State without Julian saying in a couple of weeks. So if they play their cards right, don't lose any games before then, then suddenly USC might be able to play their way back in to the college football playoff conversation. So there you have it. I'm going to be having literally an air pod. ear in one game, my eyes and half of my attention live and in person watching Kevin Jennings, I hope, tear the Cal secondary apart. And I look forward to seeing, most importantly, I look forward to seeing my son. after having a great weekend with my daughter last weekend. So with that, enjoy the weekend. Appreciate everything that everybody's been doing to support all of my efforts here on this podcast. Some other places we've really seen the increased interest, increased traffic, and it's all thanks to you. So thank you very much. And until we upload again.
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The whole point of this is to make this easier and less confusing. OK, so look, take the skepticism you already have in all of this, point it at your own plan for 20 minutes. It's free. There's no pressure. And then call chapter today at 980-734-4200. three, nine, eight, five. Hello there. Happy Thursday and welcome to the long weekend episode of the Chuck Todd cast. Something that I assume will be up for three days, three or four days while you guys get a chance to take a listen to it. I'm coming to you from the Island of Manhattan here in lovely New York city. As some of you Podcast listeners know I am going to be part of the next Predict conference. It is both Thursday and Friday. I'll be hosting some panels and helping to emcee the event at times. But it's about trying to deal with the prediction markets as a budding industry, not talk about individual ones, but sort of What is the good, the bad, the ugly? What should be done? What kind of regulation is necessary? What are some best use cases? And it really is trying to get all the proper folks in the room so that we can– just to sort of see the variety of ways that prediction markets work. have the chance to be useful in different ways. So to say that I'm going to be overwhelmed with numbers is an understatement and it kind of is a bit of a tease for this because I have spent the last 24 hours consumed with data. We have a brand new New York Times-Santa That I spent a couple hours in the crosstabs. I've got a lot that I want to share with you because I think there are a lot of tea leaves worth reading in this one sort of to set where we up to sort of set up where where things are with about 10 days to go before Election Day. Needless to say, there is there is no counter. There is no counter evidence that the wave is is somehow cresting. This sucker appears to still be building. It's getting bigger. The question is how big. Right. You've now got Republicans nervous about Mississippi Senate. You know, now they want to put some money in. First, Democrats are trying to expand the battlefield. And now there may be something happening here. But as my friend. buffalo springfield likes to say what it is ain't exactly clear um and that is for those of you that know me well know that i beat up that um song lyric quite a bit uh when i like to talk about uh the end game of a campaign season because that's what we all are you know we we can we we can see enough of the tea leaves to know something's happening here but we're at the point of the campaign is what it is ain't exactly clear That's why you got to stop. Hey, listen, what's that sound? Never mind. You don't want to hear me sing. That is not why you tune in or download that. If anything, I fear if I start singing, you may unsubscribe. But I've got a whole bunch of data to share. I had an interesting briefing from a super PAC spending a lot of money in Senate races that I think there's some interesting uh, things to share there. We've got an update on, on, um, this, uh, Ramaswamy, um, disaster, um, this horrendous, pretty much the lowest we are. I think this is the lowest point in campaign politics in a long time. Um, and I'll be honest, I'm going to spend a little few more minutes on it. If, if this tactic works, um, we're gonna regret this collectively as a society, as campaign, you know, I know you think, geez, can it get any lower in politics? Well, the answer is apparently yes, it can. And at some point we need to stop digging. And if we can't stop digging on exploiting childhood trauma, then I understand why people wanna give up on campaigns and democracy and stop. I mean, The low quality candidates that are being allowed into the system. Look, anybody can run. It is our job as voters to make sure the scumbags don't get power. And when you're exploiting childhood trauma to win an election, that is the low of lows. You are unworthy of a lot of things. elective office is just one of the things that you're unworthy of, but certainly to be a representative of any group of people. I got to think there's that, that I certainly hope enough people feel shame that what Ramaswami is doing is, um, is punished because if it's not there, you know, I know we keep saying this boy, you know, They keep moving the sucker, right? The famous Bill Hurt line and network, you know, where's the line? This crosses the line. He says, wow, they keep moving the sucker. And I know Donald Trump has introduced a whole nother level of garbage into our political ecosystem, into the rhetoric. Yes, social media is unfiltered. The garbage that Elon Musk has created and allowed to happen, right? There's no doubt there are plenty of bad actors out here. But to think that these people, Ramaswamy's campaign focus group, this message tested it, knowing full well what the real story was, that Amy Acton was sexually abused as a 10, 11 and 12 year old. And they choose to exploit the issue and then be dishonest about it with one of her, one of the people who put her through this trauma. Yes, it happens to be her birth mother. But what mother allows this to happen to their own child? And what campaign thinks it's worth using and exploiting? So needless to say, I got a little bit more to say on that. And then finally, I got four things. I'm gonna leave you with four things that I believe if I knew the answer to it right now, I'd be much more sure of exactly where I think the selection cycle is headed on that front. And then it's hard to top last week in college football. But since, you know, the team that I have dragged all of you into caring about on this podcast, my beloved University of Miami Hurricanes, they're now number one. And just remember, just like this podcast, you were here when? Before anybody thought it was cool to see if Miami could come back. Before anybody thought it was cool to get into this podcast space. And you're helping us become one of the top-rated, if not top-rated, political analysis podcasts that exist. And you've gotten to follow me while we've watched the Miami Hurricanes rise to the place that I used to think was their proper place in the polls. Sitting up there at number one with the rest of the country being and moaning about Miami, whether it's their schedule, their conference, their whatever. All I know is that come on the field, some of these teams that complain usually have a hard time dealing with them. But I am also self-aware that Miami backed into that number one ranking. And I certainly am not interested in seeing Miami sitting up in the number one spot until after they've won something, not before. But let's get to the topic for why you come here more often than not. I know some of you come here for the football, but most of you are coming in here for the politics and makes try to do our best to make sense at all sense of what we're all seeing. As you know, there are certain polls that I think are garbage. You know, you're never going to see by. the way, this podcast was never going to quote whatever the hell that polling firm was, because I don't quote anonymous polling firms that I never hear of that suddenly pop up somewhere. You know, I still won't, you know, cite a Trafalgar poll. I think it's kind of their methodology is kind of sketchy to me. So I didn't you know, I was never sharing whatever this Westfield or Westerfield. But I'll tell you something about this fake polling. You know, I'd like to see them investigated. I don't know if they committed a crime, if they technically committed a crime. Right. It is not a crime to lie. It is not a crime to do those things. But the manipulative I certainly would like to see a little bit more information about what motivated these folks to. To say that I don't take their press release at face value, which was, oh, we were just conducting an experiment, something's fishier there. So I think there needs to be a real investigation. I think a local law enforcement agency has every right, right? They have admitted they intentionally defrauded the public. I'm not sure, right? I'm not, you know, the First Amendment's a pretty strong thing here. But you know what? I want to make them go to court to try to prevent us from finding out. what was happening and what was motivating. So I'm so offended by what they did that I'd like to see some sort of either consumer investigation opened up by a consumer arm, perhaps a state attorney general's office, because this is defrauding the customer, defrauding consumers. And in the case, maybe Molly McMorrow, who believes that her Super PAC fundraising dried up based on this fake poll that they released in Michigan, perhaps she can engage in some civil litigation simply so that we can get some depositions, right? Simply to basically get discovery. There's something fishier about this company than them just conducting an experiment. I don't buy it. It's more than just conducting an experiment. They had a motivation. They had an agenda. And it wasn't just to see if they could infiltrate the public square with fake poll numbers. They were manipulating a result and trying to manipulate something here. So I think we need more information. I just think it's worthy of real investigation on this front. And I think, again, it's people were defrauded. And like I said, the person that may have the best case to file a lawsuit against this entity, whoever and whatever they are, is probably Mallory McMorrow, the former Senate candidate there in Michigan. Okay, so where are we? We're two weeks away. We're less than two weeks away from election day. As I said, we got that big times Siena poll. And I think we are getting more and more evidence, right? I told you the other day, my three scenarios, blue mirage, blue wave, blue tsunami, that blue mirage is really no longer the case here. I think what we're looking at here is the blue wave is forming. And the question is, is the bottom going to fall out? When you look at this Times poll and you get into the numbers, they have the generic ballot at the Democrats up plus 11. It's a big number. Now, is it pot? And if it was that much, this would be bigger than what 2006 was. And we'd be approaching something closer to 1994, um, than anything else. Um, that's a big deal. All right, let's dig into the times, uh, CNN poll. And I'm going to be looking, I've got, I did a whole bunch of notes and screenshots on a separate device here. So I may be looking off camera every once in a while, um, as I read, um, Read my notes here. But let me first do which party has the advantage on which issue here, because what was amazing is that the Democrats basically have a clean sweep right now when it comes to asking voters which party do they trust to handle to do a better job handling the following issue. So on health care. Democrats had a 20-point advantage, 57-37. Cost of living, 15-point advantage, 55-40. I'm going in order of the Democratic advantages now. So their biggest advantage was on the issue of healthcare. And as I've told you, the healthcare issue now is no longer about access. The primary concern about healthcare is cost and affordability. So Healthcare is also an affordability issue, but it is number one by 20 points for Democrats handling that. Cost of living, Democrats up by 15 points on that. Gas prices, Democrats up by 14 points. So you can say first three issues are affordability issues, right? Healthcare, cost of living, gas prices. Fourth biggest advantage? The Times put it as foreign wars. Obviously, that's Iran and Ukraine, 10-point advantage for the Democrats. Generic economy, which party do you trust? Democrats by eight points on this one. Here's one. How about immigration? Democrats up by four points on immigration. And this goes to the pattern we've been seeing for the last two years, which was Republicans started with an advantage on immigration. For the longest time, it was the only issue that Donald Trump was right side up on. But the aggressive enforcement has turned off a whole bunch of folks, never mind the labor problems that it's created in the agricultural community, which has upset quite a few people, particularly in the Midwest and the Plain States. And now you've got the Democrats with a narrow, it's a four-point advantage, but it's a narrowed advantage. Corruption. Democrats up by 11 points. Who can deal with corruption better? Democrats by 11 points. And on artificial intelligence, it's Democrats by 11 points. So there is not a single issue that voters are concerned about where they view the Republican Party as the more viable party to handle that, that that party can handle it better than the Democratic Party. What this is really about is that this is Donald Trump, right? And this is ultimately the real problem Republican candidates have all across the country is that most voters, when they're asked this question, are thinking about, well, do I trust Donald Trump with this? And if the answer is no, then they pick the Democrats. Think about it this way, right? Imagine if you were answering, asking the question, do you trust Donald Trump to handle healthcare? And the no would probably be at 57% and the yes would be at 37%, right? That is essentially the base. If you ask, do you trust Donald Trump to be able to handle cost of living? And I told you it was 40, 55. You probably say, oh, that's a little high. That's more people than I would have expected. But you see the point here, right, which is Donald Trump's because he took charge. You know, he created this cost of living issues with his tariffs, the war in Iran, the aggressive immigration enforcement. Right. This is this is not they're punishing the Republican Party. But it's really. about punishing Trump because it's on all of these issues that it's really about Donald Trump, right? The corruption issue. This is Donald Trump's Washington. This episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to you by CalSheet. It's an exchange where you can trade on what you actually think is going to happen. Sports, politics, culture, whatever's on your mind. And guess what? What do we do here? We do politics. And I give you a lot of information and a lot of you already have an idea of what you think is going to happen. Well, how confident are you? Well, let's look at the race for control of the Senate. And there's some interesting ways you can trade the battle for the Senate. How many seats will Democrats hold after the midterms? The market is pretty bullish on Team Blue. Above 52 is trading at 37 cents on the dollar. 52, right on the nose, is trading at 23 cents, 51 at 11 cents, and 50 at 14 cents. Everything below 50 is trading essentially under a dime on this one. And I have to say, I'll just be honest, I think it's way too bullish. I think 52 is the ceiling. Here's what, let me give you a path to 52. And then I want you to ask yourself the realistic. So how do you get to 52, right? So they're sitting at 47. So North Carolina is 48. Ohio would be 49. Texas would be 50. Alaska would be 51. Now you've got Maine and Michigan. Now Michigan, if they lose, then it's subtract one, right? It's already at, Michigan's part of the 47. They lose Michigan, then you're down to 50. You win Maine, you're back to 51. So then how do you get to 52? OK, if you win both Maine and Michigan, you get to 52. Now you're saying, is it Iowa, Kansas? It's interesting that the market is much more bullish on Democrats netting six seats or more than the market itself. Bottom line is a lot of different ways you can trade the Senate market. So take a look. So here's what you need to know about Kalshi. You're going up against other traders directly. There is no House election. setting the odds. I basically gave you some odds, but that's me, right? There's no house setting the odds. This is the market speaking. This is people putting their opinions on the line. You can trade $ 25 a using the code Chuck Todd, all one word, and they'll throw in another 25 bucks instantly. So please remember to trade responsibly. Donald Trump's Washington has become more pay to play than ever. I mean, this latest story about the Venezuelan banker hiring Helena, Alina Haba, who I think is now just got married to some Turkish billionaire, some exorbitant legal fees of some 50 million dollars over four or five years and was also this guy could secure a pardon. Somehow she claims, well, it wasn't about, you know, she didn't get paid to secure a pardon. Yeah. Did she just get paid because she had a she had she had a nice lawyer face or was her connection to Donald Trump and his legal team an important part of that? Point is, is that If that was the first example we had seen of somebody hiring somebody close to the president in order to secure a pardon, you'd say, oh, maybe it's a one-off. These are weekly stories. I mean, we know this. I mean, there is, there almost is a, my guess is it's kind of like a takeout menu. All right. Do you want a commutation? Do you want a full pardon? Or what are you looking for here? Do you want to just get out early? You know, here's the price. You know, here's the price list. And you do this, this, and this. It's certainly a whole bunch of people in Trump's orbit want people to believe that if you pay them, they can get you in with the president or they can somehow get you that pardon. But it's just they're doing it in plain sight. And it's not as if this stuff's been hard to track down. And in some ways, Trump's so brazen about it, he advertises in some ways that he's doing this. I mean, look at him on the trail. If you vote for Roger Marshall in this election, I'll be sure and do this subsidy that bails people out. But if you don't, I'm not going to do it. So he advertises the idea that he's for sale, that everything he wants is a transaction. If he's trying to make the voting aspect of transaction, like the result, if I get the right result, I'll reward everybody. But if I get the wrong result, I will punish everybody. It's amazing that he's doing this and people up there are just clapping away. Sure, that's a great idea. Keep punishing us if you don't like the results of an election. It's one of these things you said, I can't believe. that the American president continues to behave this way. It's just astonishing. Anyway, all right, I wanna spend a few minutes, as I said, that was the top lines, that was on the issues and you can see it's there. Now I wanna get into a little bit more of the poll itself and the things that I highlighted that was interesting. So later in this podcast, I'm gonna talk about four things that if I knew the answer to, I'd have a better idea of just how good or bad this night is for Democrats. Turnout among voters under 30. The New York Times-Santa Paul only has 10% of the electorate under 30. If the under 30 vote is 10% of the electorate, Democrats are going to have a disastrous night. Now, in the last four cycles, since 2018, it's been 13%. 15 percent, 12 percent. I think it was 13 percent in in 2024. If it gets 13, 14 or 15 percent of the electorate is voters under 30, Democrats are going to have a huge night. And the person who probably needs more voters under 30 than anybody else, because voters under 30 are supporting Democrats in some of the largest spreads we've seen among any age group. But when you ask the question of how likely are you to vote, voters under 30 are the least certain that they're going to vote in these midterms. In fact, when you, when you see it by age group, right, overall in the New York times, Santa pole, half of all likely voters said they were all, they were almost certain they were going to vote. And another 30% said they were very likely, right? So you had 80% calling. So very likely. And then, um, Another five called themselves somewhat likely, 2% said not very likely, and 2% said not at all. And 10% claimed they voted already. But among voters under 30, only 37% said they were almost certain to vote. Among millennials, 30 to 45, 45% called themselves almost certain. Among voters, my generation, Gen X, 45 to 64, that was the most certain. That was the age group that was the most certain to vote, 54%. This is the age group that is the most supportive of Donald Trump and Republicans, and they're the most certain to vote. 65 plus on the almost certain side was 51%. So that was, if I were to actually point out like what was the best piece of news in this time, Sienna poll, I think I gave it to you, which was, well, at least the age cohort that is normally the most supportive of Donald Trump and the Republican Party namely Gen X, the Gen X generation, well, they're more certain to vote than anybody else. But it's kind of a, I'm not sure I would hang my hat on that one. Now, Time Santa does a couple things with the generic ballot. They actually did a generic governor ballot, they did a generic Senate ballot, and they did a generic House ballot. But here's what they did when they asked the question. is they would name the candidates on the ballot for every congressional district, every Senate race, and every Gov race. So while they reported the number as sort of generic, Democrat and Republican, these were named candidates. And there'll be many people in the polling community believe, particularly this late in the cycle, that the name gives you a more, when you name the candidate for the voter, and this is not, these days, you know exactly who you're calling, what district they're in, and all of this stuff. It gives you probably a more accurate picture. So this is why the Democrats have an 11-point advantage on this Times-Siena poll. Remember what I told you about what Nate Cohn, who runs the New York Times-Siena poll, is doing? He's trying very hard to make sure he's not missing the hard-to-get Trump voters. This is as much a forecast survey as it is a snapshot in time, right? He triple checks and puts all these little checks in there to try to keep, he does not want to see this times poll look way off based on the actual results. So that's why I have a lot of confidence in here. So I want to tell you about, so the generic bound being Dems, Dems leading by 11 points. This is, right, we've been at eight. Now this is higher than we've seen in other polls, but we're gonna start to see more likely voter models. This is a likely voter poll. This is, I said, named candidates, 11 points. If you're at D plus 11, Democrats are picking up 25 to 35 House seats. They're going to be at somewhere 235 total House seats to 245 if we're looking at a D plus 11. And they could get really close to 250 House seats if we're really sitting in a generic ballot with D plus 11. Now, let me tell you about their generic Senate ballot. Same thing. In the 35 states holding Senate races, they named the candidates. So the Democrats got 47%, Democratic Senate candidates, and Republican Senate candidates were at 43%. Now you think, hmm, Democrats only had a four-point advantage in these Senate races? Well, remember, this Senate map is very Republican-leaning. The 35 states, there's no California Senate race this year, there's no New York Senate race this year, for example. So I did my own math here, and the 35 states with Senate races In the presidential in 2024, Trump won the 35 states that are holding Senate races this midterm. He won it by seven points, 53-46. So Trump plus seven for the 35 states collectively, and it's now Democrats plus four. Now you might say to yourself, hmm, plus seven, plus four, wait a minute, that's 11. Oh, what was the generic ballot? 11. You gotta feel pretty good if you're Nate Cohen, that your generic congressional ballot and your generic Senate ballot essentially matched at 11 point. There's an 11 point swing from Trump plus seven in these 35 Senate seats to now D plus four. Now, if you take those numbers at heart, what it probably means is that Democrats come up short in Kansas, short in Mississippi, Short in South Carolina, but at a 11-point swing, that's Ohio, that's Texas, that's Maine, that's North Carolina, that's potentially Alaska, which sits in the 13 range, and it potentially is Iowa. And what did we see today? We saw some new Senate polls out of the Cook Report in Ohio, Texas, and Iowa that, to me, provided good news for Democrats in two of the states. And on paper, it was good news in Iowa, but I'd be a little nervous. And why do I say that? One thing to keep track of in these good Senate polls, right? And there's only a handful that I buy. Cook Report is one of them. AARP is one. You'll see some time, Sienna. As I told you, the Fox News Senate polls are very good. I would trust those as well. Start to look at what the Democratic candidate is getting in the poll, because in many of these red states, the number they're going to get, they're only going to probably get anywhere from 20 percent or fewer of the undecideds, because most of the undecideds in these red states are Republicans. Now, they could end up not voting. They could end up holding their nose and going at the Republicans. They could vote third party. Right. We don't quite sure. And maybe some of them will swing over. Well, in these numbers, which I think was important to note in these numbers, Sherrod Brown got to forty nine. Tallarico got to forty nine. And it really, you know, you saw in my ratings yesterday, my confidence level that both of those states are moving in the Democrats' direction. It's only going up. And frankly, the whole Ramaswamy disaster, I think, only cements what's happening in Ohio. I think now Ohio, the question now is, does what Ramaswamy did create an even bigger sort of state-based blue wave that trickles down the ballot, has legislative? I mean, I think the damage he's doing here is that bad. in the state of Ohio, but we'll, we'll get to there. But in Iowa, Turk was sitting at 46. And while that, that allowed him to lead in this poll against Hinson, boy, that registration advantage that Republicans have in Iowa, you know, do I think he would get another two points from 46 to 48 if taking the Cook Report poll at face value? I do. I don't know if 48 is a winning number. Right. That's going to be the real question. I think it's true of Nebraska. It's true of Kansas. It's probably true of Mississippi. It's true of Iowa. I think if Democrats can make 48 or 49 a winning number, they can win some of those states. If they have to get to 50, I don't see it. What they really need is some of these third party candidates to sort of become the safe haven for Republicans who want to send a message without voting for a Democrat. But I think it's certainly... What you're seeing in this Time Siena poll, what we saw in this Cook Report polls, it's you're seeing these polls match a little bit. Another thing that caught my eye in the Time Siena poll was their party ID question. And I'm fascinated by this because of what we're watching. As many of you know, I, you know. I think we need to sort of bust up the two parties here. I think they're sort of too big. The duopoly sort of, I think, certainly is something that a growing number of voters would prefer not to be a member of either party, right? We're up to 45%, according to Gallup, of Americans who choose not to register in either party and want to call themselves independent or be in no party. Well, I wanted to share with you sort of the party I.D., breakdowns by age group and by ethnicity, because how people describe their party at the moment will give you a clue of probably where they're leaning and where they're voting, right? So for instance, among voters under 30, the self-ID, the number of voters under 30 that consider themselves Republican is just 15%. Let me repeat. 15%, 44% of voters under 30 call themselves Democrats. 33% of voters under 30 call themselves independents. And right now we know independents, that Democrats are winning independents by double digits, close to 20 points, depending on the poll you read. But only 15% of voters under 30 call themselves Republicans. So we do know that if there is a huge turnout, if turnout surges among voters under 30, That's how this become goes from wave to tsunami. Now, just for comparative sakes, among millennials, Republicans are also in third place among millennials. This is where I think that, you know, this is a part of, I think, a long term problem the Republican Party has is Donald Trump has really alienated the Republican Party from voters under the age of 50. Because let me read you these numbers of millennials, which in this age group is age 30 to 44. 36% of millennials call themselves Democrats. 34% of millennials call themselves independent. And only 24% of millennials call themselves Republican. So you can see it's been this sort of, you know, and millennials, that's your, you know, their first adult president is Obama. So maybe you can chalk that up to Obama a little bit. But with Gen Z, their first adult president is Trump. And all it's done is turn them off of the Republican Party. How the Republican Party treated Obama, I think, has turned off a chunk of millennials. But those are not figures that a major party wants to see among younger voters. And because, you know, you lose them when they're young. And, you know, it is funny about when people pick a party, they rarely leave it right away. It takes a while before you can get somebody to leave their party once they've made a choice in their 20s and 30s, for what it's worth. Among Gen X, my generation, 45 to 64, the Republican Party is the number one party. 37% of Gen X identifies as Republican. 30% identify as independent. And 29%. Identify as Democrat. That's how bad the brand problem has gotten. The Democrats brand problem is with obviously younger voters who would prefer to be independent, but also older voters who have decided it isn't the Democratic Party of their youth. And you really see this in the in the Gen X section. Now, among 65 plus. Democrats bounce back 37 percent. Republicans are still the number one party among 65 plus 37 percent. Democrats right behind them at 36 percent. And among voters over 65, just 23 percent call themselves independent. But the fact that older voters are dead even and the only advantage that Republicans have right now in the age groups is among Gen X. It's the smallest of the four generations. So and the advantage isn't so big that it's enough to be decisive. So you can see. And that's why I thought this age group breakdown here by party was yet another tea leaf worth reading. This episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to you by Quince. You know, the best pieces in your closet are the ones you can count on, whether you're heading to work, going out or keeping things a bit casual. And this time of year, Quince makes finding something great for everyone else just as easy. The holiday season is coming. That's right. It's we're under 90 days, folks. It's where I'm shopping for myself and everyone else on my list because I know Quince delivers. Nobody's ever disappointed in stuff they get from Quince. Why? 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They're kind of khaki, but they're kind of not, they're just easy to wear. I'm wearing a pair of those shorts right now as I'm taping this podcast. So when it comes to gifting, Quince is a lot more than clothing too, by the way, they've got fine jewelry, leather bags, hotel quality bedding, chef grade cookware. People love a nice piece of you know, equipment to play with in the kitchen these days. Five-star luggage, plenty of ways to find something special for everyone on your list. So give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. You get free shipping on your order, 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, please let them know it was the Chuck Todd cast. It's the best way to support the show and the best way to make sure you're getting every discount. Republicans also have a Latino problem and they have an Asian American problem. Among Hispanics, 48 percent call themselves Democrats, 25 percent call themselves independents, and only 22 percent call themselves Republicans. And among Asian Americans, it's a small subsample, but 41 percent call themselves Democrats, 38% call themselves independents, and only 17% call themselves Republican. That is such a disaster, particularly on the Asian front, because in the 90s, the second wave of of Asians coming into the electorate, particularly in California, a lot of the sort of second generation Asian candidates were on the Republican side of the aisle. Republicans did really well with basically first gen Asian immigrants and their families. And, you know, whether it was, you know, Obama in a positive way, winning over the Southeast Asian vote in particular, you know, his living in Indonesia gave him, this Asian Pacific identity of sorts growing up in Hawaii, living in Indonesia. So he did, he did organize, um, the, the Asian community, uh, and all the different, um, subcategory, you know, different, different subcategories within the Asian community that I think it, it certainly got stickier for Democrats in general, but this is, you know, when you think about the faster growing population, um, demographics in our country, whether by age or by ethnicity, the Republicans are in third place behind Democrats and independents here. And I do think that that's telling, at least with this midterm election. Oh, one other point about this time, Sienna Poll, just to give you a sense of how different this electorate is. And again, I told you how hard Nate Cohn works to try to get an idea. His projection is that this will be an electorate that would have been, that if this were the electorate in 2024, Kamala Harris would have won by three points. So that's how much more democratic this electorate appears to become, to be. Yes, we're you know, and that is indicative of this D plus 11 congressional ballot. That's indicative of the 11 point swing we went from on the Senate states were Trump plus seven and now D plus four. So it is worth noting that this is that that is a pretty interesting development on that front. A few other things that I want to get to on the question of the state of the nation's economy. How would you rate economic conditions today? You got four choices in this poll. Excellent, good, only fair, poor. Well, 51% of likely voters call the economic conditions in America today poor. So I was curious to see which groups were over 51% in poor. Well, among 18 to 29-year-olds, 68% called economic conditions poor. Among millennials, 59% called economic conditions poor. Among African-Americans, 80% called economic conditions poor. Among Hispanics, 61% called economic conditions poor. What's interesting is white voters who went to college, 50% think this economy is poor. Non-white voters who went to college, 62% think these economic conditions are poor. And non-white, non-college educated voters, 67% think this economy is poor. The only A group of voters who do not who were not over 50 percent in rating these economic conditions as poor were white non-college. So basically Trump's base, 42 percent. You know, it wasn't exactly a great number, but it was the only category of note that was under 50 percent. You saw those groups that I'm talking again. If this is the motivator to vote, these aren't swing voters for this midterm. They already know which way they're gonna vote on this front. I was telling you about the differences between the two parties. Well, they also did Trump's job rating on various issues. And just to run through it real quick, on the economy, approve, disapprove, 35% approve, 64% disapprove. On immigration, 42% approve, 57% disapprove. So his disapproval rating on immigration is higher than the advantage Democrats have on the issue itself. So that just tells you how disappointed voters are with Trump. On tariffs, 61% disapprove of his tariff. Handling of tariffs, 36% approve. Cost of living, under 30, 29% approve of his handling of the cost of living, 69% disapprove. On the war in Iran, it's 33% approve, 65% disapprove. Gas prices, 24% approve, 73% disapprove. I mean, this is why you look at this poll, you look at the potential for the bottom to fall out, and it may be falling out as we speak. As I said, they're having to send money to Mississippi. They, the national Republicans, put some money in the open House seat in Wyoming. Let me repeat, the national Republican Party put money into the open seat in Wyoming. Cynthia Lummis is going to be the next senator from Wyoming. But that's how concerned they are. Now, are Democrats going to win the Wyoming at-large seat? No, they're not going to win the... But the fact is, my guess is all these polls... Sit here and especially in an open seat where you can get concerned that the undecided vote is more willing to give the other party a chance when they really don't know anything about the Republican nominee on their side. But just these you can see these polls are just devastating. So it is. There was not other than certainty to vote. It is about the only good news I could find in here at all. I'll give you one other piece of good news if you're on the Republican side of things. In general, would you say you are satisfied or dissatisfied with the Democratic Party? 28% called themselves satisfied. 70% called themselves dissatisfied. Now, ask the same question of the Republican Party. 36% called themselves satisfied. 63% dissatisfied. So you could say that Democrats are more unpopular. The Democratic Party is more unpopular than the Republican Party. But what's interesting here on this dissatisfaction scale is part of the problem for Democrats is millennials and Gen Z are among the most negative about the Democratic Party. And they're the ones that are going to vote in the biggest numbers for the Democrats compared to the Republicans. So they're not big fans. They're even more, you know, they're not popular, but the Republicans are less likely to say they're dissatisfied with the Republican Party. Democrats are not afraid to say they're dissatisfied. with their own party at this front. So the point is you can't, as I said here, it is hard to find a poll number in here that is somehow putting them in a good race. Now, I wanted to give you one other tea leaf to consume here. So Trump's job approval rating in this poll was 34% overall. To put that in context, They did a very helpful chart of job approval ratings going back to Harry Truman. If Donald Trump's 34% would put him, if this is what his election day job rating is come the midterms, this would make him the second most unpopular president going into a midterm since World War II. The most was Harry Truman in 1946. His job approval rating, you know, back then we just had Gallup, was at 33%. So Donald Trump is right there at 34%. Guess who's right comes next after Trump? George W. Bush in that 2006 midterm where Democrats won both the House and the Senate. He was sitting at 37 percent on Election Day. So the three lowest presidential job approval ratings going into a midterm since World War Two. Harry Truman, 33 percent. Donald Trump's second term, 34 percent. George W. Bush's second term, 37 percent. Harry Truman in 1950 was the only other president below 40% at 39%. By the way, in case you're wondering, the best job rating any president has had going into a midterm since World War II was Bill Clinton, 66% in the impeachment midterm of 1998. Reagan in 86 was sitting at 63%, and his side still lost the Senate, but they didn't lose too many House seats on there. George W. Bush had 62% in the 02s. Midterms, Dwight Eisenhower, his first midterm was sitting at 61 percent. JFK, his first midterm at 61 percent. Now, those those were the midterms where the presidential party did better than expected. But the point is, is that when you look at every single marker when it comes to assessing a midterm election, presidential job approval, you know, that has to be at or near a record low for a president for the out party to catch a wave. Well, he's in wave territory. Right. The generic ballot wave territory. The differences between the two parties, wave territory, right? There is nothing in here. And there's, look, I'm not going to lie to you. There's a part of me going, wait a minute. If everything's pointing in one direction, what are we missing? What I am open-minded to a counterfactual here. Yes, I know it's harder to get Republicans in these polls, but I also know a lot more of the good pollsters are doing better at figuring that out, doing better at waiting up. I think the possibility that we're overrating Republican chances is as good. The assumption is that the polling error is only going to go in the direction that benefits the Republicans. But we've now had 10 years of fear in the polling community that the error is gonna be in that direction. And so there's been nothing but work done by a lot of academics and a lot of smart pollsters trying to fix that. Is it possible? You know, there's always a point where you've overdone it, where you've overcorrected. And I think it's as likely, I don't wanna say more likely, I think it's as likely that we've overcorrected as it is that there's going to be a significant look. The Senate races are in some pretty red states. So Democrats could have a big night and still come up short in your Mississippis, in your Kansas, in your South Carolinas. But at this point, if this is the electorate that we're staring at, the time CNN has done, the Democrats are going to win the House and the Senate. It's not just going to be a it's not going to be a mirage. If this is the electorate, they're going to win both pure and simple. Let's dig into the Senate a little bit. I think, like I said, those Cook report numbers indicate to me they've got Tallarico with a five point lead. It's look, it's pretty clear Republicans had decided to bail on Paxton and they got away with it because Elon Musk was willing to write a single check. to sort of backstop and what the Republicans can, can work on other ones. But Tallarico is polling at 49%. Paxton was only sitting at 44. You know, I, you know, if this is actually the spread, if he's opening up a lead, Tallarico really is opening up a lead. You know, can you imagine if we're able to call Tallarico before 10 o'clock at night? You know, it's something, one of the warnings I want to tie, and I'm going to get deeper into this in a couple of podcasts, you know, as we get closer to election day, but, I think it's very likely between on the East Coast, between 8 and 11. We don't have many races called because, remember, the Democratic vote is in a lot of urban areas. Urban areas take longer to count. There's more ballots. There's more voters. It's just going to take longer. You know, if Democrats are winning these red states, you're not going to be able to know that these are callable races until you're getting to 80 or 90 percent on that front. But the big news is that the Democrats have decided to send a little bit of money to Mississippi. And we've seen other individual campaigns send money to Mississippi. Kamala Harris has been campaigning there. Look, Mississippi is what we call in the campaign business a cheap date. And so a million, you know, throwing in a A couple million dollars in Mississippi can actually go a long way. If you just threw an extra $ 2 million in Texas, you wouldn't notice it, right? Or even through the $ 2 million if you wanted to, you know, throw a Hail Mary in Florida or something like that. So the Mississippi development is interesting because now you've got Republicans truly are nervous about it. And when you look at the two Senate candidates, it's like the Kansas situation, right? Kansas has two Republican senators, Jerry Moran, Roger Marshall. Jerry Moran has been in Kansas politics a long time, is known to have great constituency service, is really well-liked among his colleagues, is just not somebody that's going to get caught napping. Roger Marshall, on the other hand, still kind of new to politics, kind of went from one career, jumped in. I have told you before, he strikes me as not really liking people all the time, which makes me wonder why did he get into the politics business? And it does look like he got caught napping a little bit. Well, the Mississippi Senate pairs are similar. Roger Wicker, man, he's been in Mississippi politics a long time. He was in the Congress. And then, you know, he's sort of in he's well known for having great constituency service in that state. He's well respected by his colleagues. He's been pretty much more aggressive at pushing back on bad decisions by Hengsteth, pushing back on this idea that Putin is somehow anything other than a tyrant and a thug. But Sidney Hyde-Smith is just not a huge presence there. People forget in her first race, it wasn't a blowout. She didn't win by double digits. There's always been a high floor for Democrats in Mississippi. It's why I think it's a state that Democrats have missed out on organizing, probably should have organized a lot sooner. But it has a low ceiling, right? It is definitely, they need, I think, 48 or 49 percent has to be a winning number. But, you know, African-Americans are really upset about the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. We have seen turnout among African-Americans during the primaries was through the roof. You get a higher than expected turnout among African-Americans in Mississippi and you get an average to below average turnout among white Republicans. That's the recipe, folks. That's the recipe for failure. Mississippi being in play. It's also the recipe for South Carolina. But Donald Trump is is is he's, you know, making a couple of stops in South Carolina. I don't think they've decided to do to do that just yet. All right. Now I want to go to day two, I guess, of the fallout of this. And, you know, I've had a few people going, oh, you you really got angry about this Ramaswami ad. Look. I hope I've made something clear that I, I love politics. I love this democracy. I love our constitution. I'm not saying that just to sound like I'm a hokey, you know, wannabe government teacher, you know, first of all, I'd love to be, I enjoy teaching. And I adored my government teacher when I was in high school. And I genuinely do love our constitution. I genuinely do love politics and I love, public service. I think there's some nobility to it. Do I think there are massive egos in politics? I do. Do I think negative campaigns work? Alexander Hamilton created the New York Post to be a negative campaigner. So as long as we've had democracy, we've had negative campaigns. I'm not naive. But I want more good people to run for office. I think that we have... locked people out of politics by making it disgusting and awful, by deciding that if you choose to run, we're going to make you defend any vaguely bad decision or bad thing that's happened to you, whether you did it or somebody did it to you, and we're going to make sure we litigate it all. And you're basically going to, it's the, you know, one of the infamous dreams that, you know, therapists will say that people have is that You know, you have this dream where you're literally naked and you're like, what? I can't wear my clothes. I mean, I've I've had that. And it's the, you know, therapists all say, you know, when you when you worry about it, you know, you have this fear that somehow you've been it's it's you know, you it's fear of being exposed or whatever you want to however you want to read that. I'm sure a professional therapist will give me the give me the official information. official take on this in one of my Ask Chuck questions. But the way politics works now, it's almost as if you're saying, okay, I'm just going to, you know, I'm going to bear it all, warts and all, you know, here it is. And if that's the way we conduct politics, then only the shameless are going to run for office. Only the wannabe celebrities, the shitty influencers who just think politics is a way to make a buck. that I'm getting into politics to either become famous or make money. And Donald Trump has shown that you can basically be a failed celebrity in any other walk of life, but find success in politics. He also has shown that you can make money by, shoot, I mean, a lot of people get rich without even winning an election in politics. Can I introduce you to somebody like Alan Keyes? You can Google him or chat GPT to find out what it is. But this is a guy who was basically a professional candidate for a long time, ran for president multiple times, was the fill-in Senate candidate in Illinois against Barack Obama, I guess most infamously in 2004. And for a brief period of time, had a show on MSNBC called Alan Keyes is Making Sense. I never did appear on it. for what it's worth. The point is, is that if we don't want politics to just simply be taken up by the grifters and the assholes, then we've really got to condemn tactics like this one. All right. Because it's not just the advertisement itself, right? It's the calculation behind this ad. And then you're watching how JD Vance is responding to it. What's amazing is that the Ramaswamy campaign, they message tested this ad. My friends at the hotline, one of their reporters, got a hold of the screenshot, basically a polling firm on behalf of the Ramaswamy campaign, contacted people and saying, hey, do you mind taking a survey? And as part of the survey was to watch this ad with Amy Acton's estranged mother, the mother who stayed married to the man who sexually assaulted Amy Acton when she was 12 years old. Just remember, all of these facts were known by the Ramaswamy campaign. and they aired this ad anyway. Then they put $ 4 million behind it. So they message tested it. Now they wanna put more money behind it. Now the Acton campaign is out with a response ad. It features her brother who noted that it's just, it's painful that they had to do the ad, but you know what's, look, Acton's been running a very smart campaign from the beginning. The fact that they knew that Ramaswami was capable of doing this and they were sort of had a plan ready to go. I mean, it tells you they were being smart and it tells you they knew exactly who Ramaswami was. By the way, Nikki Haley, she's not laughing at this. She's just reminding people. I tried to tell you this guy was a bad guy, that this was a bad guy. What really bothers me is that This isn't his decision alone. There's a whole bunch of people he's paying who hope to have a future in campaign politics after this failed campaign ends in disaster on the launch pad. And I'll tell you this, you have Ramaswamy on your resume, you're going to have a hard time getting a job. This is the single, I think, most embarrassing, most disgusting and despicable decision a major campaign has done. Again, They exploited the trauma of somebody's childhood trauma. That's what they did. And it wasn't just any trauma. It's sexual assault. I thought this was the party that cared a lot about what Jeffrey Epstein did, was worried about the trafficking of young people and all of these things. I'm old enough to remember when JD Vance cared about these things. Now, what does JD Vance do? J.D. Vance didn't simply decline to criticize the ad. He went after other Republicans who were criticizing it. By the way, John Husted was asked about it. And he was asked about it after Vance goes to the state and basically embraces this strategy by Ramaswamy. And Husted simply said, I wouldn't have done this ad. Of course, anything more and he starts a fight. I mean, I sort of at this point, I'm sorry he's not speaking out more about it. But politically, I understand the vice grip he feels like he's in. But Vance criticized Republicans who decided to criticize. So if a Republican thought that they were disgusted by this decision, Vance thinks that was weak. Vance said he was disgusted by Republicans who were complaining about the ad rather than focusing on winning the election. Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing to J.D. Vance. Now, his message was, well, politics is a tough business. Republicans should stop whining and go in. All right. All right, Mr. Vice President. What's interesting here is Vance is not, in his own bizarre way, he's not defending the factual merits of the act. He's not explaining why Acton's mother's account should be believed over Acton's or why this particular family dispute is relevant to who should govern Ohio. He's defending the willingness to use the tactic. And he's suggesting that Republicans who object to it are somehow insufficiently committed to winning. This is the Republican Party that Donald Trump and J.D. Vance believe exists. This is insulting to other Republicans. If you've got a moral compass, J.D. Vance doesn't want you as a member of the Republican Party. That's the message he just sent. Because once winning becomes the answer to every single objection, what exactly is left that a candidate shouldn't do? What's out of bounds? If this is not out of bounds, then what is out of bounds? I mean, look, I don't believe this is good politics. I think this is going... This is taking a bad situation of Republicans and making it worse. And they are creating, I'm not, I think the backlash from this is going to go way down the ballot. And maybe in some ways, this is, it was a moment like this that people needed to realize, oh my God, what the hell have we greenlit with the Trump era? For years, we've watched Republican politicians defend conduct they would have condemned had it come from a Democrat. And it's usually on the grounds of, well, the alternative would be worse. And now we're applying that same logic to campaign tactics. Vance is not making the case that this is appropriate or fair. He's just saying, well, everything is fair if it's about winning. So, I... Look, I guess Vance is making the case that he wants to be Trump's heir apparent. He's like, no, no, no, no. I'll go as low and as disgusting as Trump will in order to win over the MAGA constituency. But think about what he, think about the contempt Vance has for his own supporters. He thinks they think this is a good thing. The author of Hillbilly Elegy. I'm curious what the author, J.D. Vance, the guy who wrote Hillbilly Elegy, I'm curious what he would think of Amy Acton's story. The guy I met in 2016, who was the author of Hillbilly Elegy, I think would have a lot of empathy for Amy Acton. The guy who's become Donald Trump's vice president and who suddenly wants the job himself has decided all's fair. And we wonder why we have no moral compass when it comes to our foreign policy. Right? Everything is transactional. No moral compass when it comes to what we're doing with AI. But look, I think Ohio is giving us a preview of a fight Republicans are going to end up having after this election. If Ramaswamy loses, I think this, look, it's clear he didn't think he could win any other way. So he decided to throw this Hail Mary. So I hope if he loses, Republicans conclude that it went too far and that the tactics backfired and that voters were looking for something that weren't going to reward this. But what if Vance's answer is, no, we just weren't aggressive enough. Republicans needed to fight harder. And the problem was the party's unwillingness to fully embrace the approach Vance is defending. We know that's going to be Trump's excuse. He's going to say that Republicans were too weak. They didn't get behind Paxton. Again, Trump and Vance are basically criticizing any Republican who has a moral compass or an ethical bone in their body. Because this is immoral and it's unethical. Bottom line. It's why I think this, look, I don't know whether I would lump this in with the corruption message per se, right? But it's corruption, it's character, right? Look, we know what's driving this election is the fact that Trump's policies have made life harder on anybody who doesn't have money in the stock market. Right? That's a fact. That's the big driver of this election. But the difference between Democrats having a good night and winning a tsunami is going to be this character and corruption stuff. Be it this disgusting, horrendous thing Ramaswamy did. Look, I think this is disqualifying, period. Disqualifying from doing business. I wouldn't do business with a guy. And again, I can't believe there hasn't been resignations from his campaign. There are going to be people, if you stick with that campaign, you put that on your resume, you're not getting hired by any mainstream Republican if he loses as badly as I think he's going to lose on this. It's something folks need to keep in mind. And what's interesting is the timing of this, right? We're getting a few more... corruption stories. We're seeing corruption. Again, as I reminded you the other day, the corruption in 06, corruption was this cherry on top, as Chris and I were discussing on Super Tuesday for the Democratic wave. This character assassination that Ramaswamy is attempting on Amy Acton coupled with a more pay to play schemes and what we've seen with Putin and Zelensky and Elon Musk. And it's just been, it's, it's, it's not that voters are voting on Putin or foreign policy, but they're voting on the idea that it's unelected corrupt billionaire friends of the president get to make these decisions and not you and I and everyday people. All right. Uh, before we get to my interview with Bill Cohen, uh, and again, a fascinating, um, sort of journey through the world of private equity, these media conglomerates and where things are going. I want to get it, what I wrote in my sub stack this week, which is for those of you also, you get it on Newsphere. But anyway, so I wrote a column this week about four pieces of information that I'd most like to have before election day, right? And the premise is pretty simple. Rather than I didn't want to spend another column trying to predict what's going to happen on November 3rd. But instead, I wanted to focus on here's what I don't know yet. And if we knew the answer, I'd be able to give you a better projection. All right, now I just want to give you a brief, quick little rundown of the column I wrote this week. I hope you will take a look at the whole thing. I hope you subscribe either to my work on Newsphere. There's a lot of great contributors. It is worth the price every month there. Obviously, my Substack is also free. You can get that there as well. But either way, please take a– I hope you get a chance to read the whole thing. But basically what I wrote is a column about four pieces of information that if I had it now, I'd have a better idea of what was going to happen on Election Day. I don't need to continue to paint the picture of just how much that this landscape is deteriorating for the Republicans. But it's the– but let me give you some specifics here of– What I most would like to know at the moment. First question happens to be about those are about voters who somewhat disapprove of Donald Trump's job as president. The somewhat job approvers. It's somewhere depending, you know, the four part. We learned this quite well during the 2022 midterms. The four part job approval question with president is a really good one. You know, do you strongly approve, somewhat approve, somewhat disapprove, strongly disapprove? We know with Trump, the strongly disapproved is over 50%. But for his disapproval, the 60s is another anywhere from about 10 to 14%, depending on the poll, of the electorate who only somewhat disapproves of Trump. And who are these people? These are, you know, this is a group that the somewhat job disapprovers of Joe Biden ended up still voting for. narrowly voting for more Democratic candidates in 2022, right? Among the generic ballot, among those that somewhat disapproved of the job Joe Biden was doing, Democrats won those voters 49-45 in 2022. Well, according to polling right now, among the somewhat job disapprovers, Republicans are still winning those voters by 20 points. Now, in 2018, Trump got walloped among all disapprovers. But right now, those that are calling themselves somewhat disapprovers of Trump's job, they're pretty rank and file Republicans. And right now, they're still sticking with the Republican candidate. Republicans are winning this group of voters by 15 to 20 points. If you see this get to only a single digit lead for Republicans among those, this will tell you that you actually have Republicans that are leaving Trump and voting Democratic. Democratic, right? In bigger numbers than just two, three, or four points. So, you know, what percentage of those that somewhat disapprove of Trump's job are not going to vote Republican, right? You tell me that answer, I'll tell you how big this wave is. The second unknown, it's something I touched on earlier in this broadcast, it's younger voters. What will be the percentage of this electorate will be voters under the age of 30? In 2018, It was 13% of the electorate. In 2022, it was 12%. Obviously, Democrats did better in 18 than they did in 22. Well, the percentage of the electorate among young voters was slightly higher. 2020, the percentage of the electorate was 17% of voters under 30. 2024, it was 14%. Democrats win a presidential election when 17% of the electorate is under the age of 30. They lose a presidential electorate when 14% of the electorate is under the age of 30. Not saying that that is the only reason they went from winning to losing in 20 to 24, but you get my point. Anything that sits at, frankly, 14 or above, and you're looking at a pretty, as we know, a pretty big night on that front. So how's Gen Z going to vote? The third unknown is Latino voters. How decisive will Latino voters be for Democrats? it was one of the biggest stories in 2024 was Trump's improvement with Latino voters, many of whom were frustrated with inflation, the cost of living, and frankly, I think, thought the Democrats culturally were moving too far to the left. But now we're seeing those voters come back towards the Democrats. Almost all of it has to do with the economy, but another part of it has to do with immigration enforcement. Because there's a difference between many Latino voters supported stronger border security, but they didn't support tactics that this administration is employing in communities around the country that seem to target people simply how they look or whether their last name ends in C. And how big is that shift? It's one thing for that shift to be big on the congressional level. But if this shift is decisive up and down the ballot, well, then that's when you know Texas or Florida governor comes into play, right? If Democrats win Florida and or Texas governor, it'll be because there was a massive shift of Latino voters from the Republicans to the Democrats. Right now, we see more of that shift in Senate races than we are seeing. And believe it or not, Tallarico has been doing better with Latino voters than the Latino nominee, Latina nominee for governor. I think that number is going to grow. I think now that more Latinos believe she can win, you'll start to see that number. We had a little bit of that with Barack Obama early. Black voters weren't all, didn't jump quickly on board. Obama was just, well, can he win? And then when it looked like he could win and he was going to get support from the white community, then all of a sudden his support among African-Americans grew exponentially. I think that possibility for Gina Enosa is there. And then the fourth unknown is whether the Democratic brand is going to be a problem that prevents certain Democrats from getting across the finish line. I think, look, I think if Gina Hinojosa comes up short, if David Jolly comes up short, I think we'll say it's a brand issue more than anything else. I think if Annie Andrews, you know, Darlene Graham is very vulnerable, but the Democratic brand is just in tatters in a place like South Carolina. If the Democratic brand were slightly better, I think we'd be talking about South Carolina the way we're talking about Kansas and Iowa when it comes to that. Now, she could still win because many of these Democrats have gone out of their way to basically distance themselves from the stereotype of the National Party. Annie Andrews is a great example. She she went to candidate the camera wearing her white coat. She's a medical doctor to say, I have never done any gender transition surgeries and nor would I ever do something like that. And I believe in fairness and women's sports. And she would direct on that issue. Josh Turek went direct to camera on that issue. You've seen Tallarico do this. You've seen Gina Yiannou say we are not relitigating some of the culture wars in the legislature if she gets elected. You've seen Adam Hamilton say similar things. So it's possible that the candidates overcome the brand because they've gone out of their way to say, hey, I have my own brand. I'm not going to be defined by the National Democratic Party. So those are the ingredients there. This is what goes from wave to tsunami, right? Do Latino voters shift Democratic up and down the ballot? Do young voters turn out in a substantial way that's greater than what we saw in 18 or 22? Do the people who somewhat disapprove of Trump's job, which are more likely to be the Republican and independent, Republican-leaning independents, do they punish Republicans for their disappointment in Trump and essentially abandon their party for a cycle, right? This is why it is hard to forecast something bigger than just sort of a generic sort of check on the party in power type of election. So if I knew those four things, I think I'd have a better off feeling comfortable saying one way, being more definitive, feeling, yes, this is an 06 wave, or yes, this is a 1994-like tsunami. As Chuck... All right, let's do a little Ask Chuck. This is where I guess I start doing my Trump dance. I know some of you don't want me to do that. Oh, I got a Go Tigers. Oh, it's not a Go Tigers. It's a Mizzou Tigers. So I can't do my Ed Ogeron here. Anyway, Shane here, still proudly hailing from Missouri's original and controversial 5th Congressional District. With the mess surrounding our congressional map, you mentioned the upcoming election could potentially be thrown out and or ruled void. But what would that actually mean for voters? Would we have to hold another primary in a special election or would the process look different? Seems like following Texas's approach a few years back could have saved everyone a lot of headaches. Yes. On another note, I knew Ole Miss would be tough for Mizzou, but that loss really stung. Thankfully, we got a bye week to recover before Arkansas go Tigers M-I-Z. Listen. Missouri needs to win a road game, right? I mean, we've seen that. What is it? It's a, man, I'm sure, and I know you've seen it. It's like one in 18 against ranked teams on the road or something like that. All right, now to the serious part of your question. Like I said, gotta win a road game. Come on, Mizzou. And I have family who went to Mizzou, multiple family members. So they're part of my larger orbit of schools I would like to see succeed. So just know, that, uh, this is, this is criticism that comes from a, from a, from a loving place. Um, but as for what you're talking about, look, it will be a revote of some sort, right? And, and I look, all of this depends. It would be up to a voter to sue. It could be up to a candidate to sue. It's not clear who would have standing. Um, a voter would have standing, you know, but a candidate would have standing because the primary was a different, um, congressional, literally different math than what was used for the general. You know the Texas model, it sounds like, which was when they went through this before, they essentially were able to do it in time so that the November election was everybody on the same ballot, sort of an all-party primary. And if nobody got 50%, the top two met in a runoff in December. So look, and by the way, that election schedule was dictated by a federal judge. It was not something that was done by the state of Texas. A federal judge said, this is how you're going to do it. So it would take, my guess is if this happens, it will be a literally court-ordered election and a court-ordered process of how said election was going. The best precedent we have to look back on to potentially use as a model is that Texas precedent from the mid-' 90s. But to have it, it's possible to try to avoid this mess because it, that they will go with, you know, where the, where the courts might not, um, it'll be interesting to see who would have standing to file a suit on this, whether it's a, a candidate who lost in a, in the other primary, didn't get a chance to run on this one. I mean, just look at your fifth congressional district, who would have, you know, who would have run and who wouldn't have run depending on right where, where things were. So, um, But I do think that that suit would have to be filed before certification for what it's worth on that front. All right. Next question comes from Reggie. And he says, hey, going back to your NBC days, you've always been great at identifying key counties to watch on election night. So which bellwether counties are on your radar this year? Is it Austin, City Slicker in Texas, House District 48, and Texas' 27th Congressional District? I'm particularly curious about rural farming counties across West Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa. where even narrowing Trump's previous three to one or four to one margin to two to one could signal serious trouble for Republicans. Are you watching places like Midland, Lubbock, Amarillo, Dodge City for signs of a shift towards purple? Historically, do major electoral waves affect federal and statewide races equally? Or can the impact be concentrated at one level? Thanks for the great program. Well, look, you are. Yes. And in fact, that I'm going to have in the next. What do I have? How many more episodes? of the Todd cast and super Tuesday. I think I'm going to have at least four more. Look, Chris and I are going to do an interesting voters guide. I'm going to do a viewer's guide a week from now going into election election day so that you have that sort of, sort of how to watch the night hour by hour. But next Wednesday, I do plan to get deeper into counties, but you know, this is the first competitive election in Texas that we knew was going to happen in advance, right? The Beto election, Ted Cruz, the fact that that ended up close, nobody believed it was close. And, you know, many of us didn't, you know, but ultimately you're correct in what you're identifying that it isn't necessarily swing counties, but they're, look, I'm fascinated. North Texas is what I'm obsessed with. Part of it is I spend more time in North Texas because my son goes to school in Dallas, but Tarrant County in particular, right? We've been watching this county slowly move from red to purple. Um, what happens in Tarrant County? Right. Uh, I, that's, I do think margins though will matter, right? Tarrant could be swinging. Tarrant could be one where I think Biden carried Tarrant, uh, in 2020. Um, if he didn't, he came awfully close, but those, you know, that's one quickie, you know, I could tell you, but it's more about margins, right? What's the margin in Harris? What's the margin of Bayer? What's the margin in Travis? And then going, you know, it's also the raw turnout, right? Paxton could have a four or five to one advantage in some of these counties, but if turnout is down 10%, well, suddenly that's a hollow, right? Those are hollow advantages too. So, right, there's different ways to look at it. It's not just what are the margins in these rural areas? What is the raw turnout in these rural areas? And then obviously it's all the South Texas counties, right? All of those counties that swung towards Trump, not all of them ended up being carried by Trump, but they certainly swung towards him. What is the snapback and how big is the snapback? So, look, I'm giving you that general overview, but there's basically five or six watch counties that I have in all of these key Senate races, Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, Texas. And you have reminded me that I need I that is we are going to have that is going to be part of the particularly the Wednesday, next Wednesday's episode of the Todd cast, we will spend a lot of time on essentially the, the six States, because I would, you know, one of the things I didn't, one of the things that's clear to me right now is Senate Democrats do not believe that they're not, they're not counting on winning Kansas. They're not counting on winning Nebraska. They're not counting on winning South Carolina, the path, to the Senate majority goes through six states, I think, as far as Senate Democrats are concerned. Maine and Michigan on one side, two states that they're even or maybe slightly behind in. And then North Carolina, Ohio, Alaska, Iowa, Texas. So seven, excuse me. So it's seven states that the assumption is that's where the Senate is going to be decided. Now, If Kansas ends up flipping, South Carolina ends up flipping, that's how Democrats go from 51 Senate seats to 52, 53, 54. But that gets into the tsunami territory, right? That gets into Republicans actually leaving the party and voting for Democrats. That's what it takes for them to win in South Carolina, win in Nebraska, and win in Kansas. Another question. from Missouri's Fifth District. We have Shane, who was earlier, right? Well, now I got Matt writing in from Missouri's Fifth. Man, we are killing it in the Kansas City market. See, this is what happened. I visit Kansas City, and we just add more and more great listeners and viewers. So anyway, Matt in Missouri's Fifth writes, hey, I avoid social media religiously, so I've missed the YMCA speculation and Trump's newfound admiration for the male physique. But hearing you and Chris discuss how Pete Hegseth always seems to get the benefit of the doubt reminded me of Trump's treatment of Vladimir Putin. As ridiculous as it sounds, could Trump's Russia-friendly foreign policy simply come down to a man crush? Those shirtless horseback photos certainly made an impression. And speaking of your October 19th episode, you asked how much Trump cares about the future of the Republican Party, but perhaps the bigger question is, how much does he care about the future of the United States? Ouch. Look, Donald Trump cares about Donald Trump. And Donald Trump's success can come at the expense of anybody, as long as it comes with Donald Trump's success. And in fact, when he would say, you know, you know, if I win, the country wins, right? That's his mindset. So in his own way, you know, if he's doing well, then he thinks the country's doing well. I am convinced why he doesn't fully appreciate this affordability issue is because he does not interact with anybody that has a mortgage or has to have a mortgage. He might have a staffer or two that has a mortgage, but I don't think he considers them peers. When he thinks about the peers, the people he hangs out with, I think he's incredibly out of touch. Look, I think you're– my guess is Putin's too short for Trump on this front. But honestly, it is the– I probably get more questions now about this than anything else in my– from friends and family, right, is Trump. What is going on? Is grandpa coming out of the closet? It's the is sort of like, I don't know. None of us know. But if you wanted to read the tea leaves of of Trump, right, you YMCA, he brags about that. You know, he knows that it's the gay anthem. He's always been he's always been a gay friendly candidate or boss or however you want to do it. I mean, you know, he doesn't he's not been a hypocrite on these issues. In fact, there was a time it was, you know, his being friendly to the gay community, being all that was seen as proof that he was some liberal back in the day. Look, I think this is a guy in his 80s who no longer has a filter. And I think it means that grandma and grandpa say the damnedest things. And you're like, whoa, I didn't know that. Well. You know, now you do type of thing. It's, look, so many things in the Trump era are predictable. It's kind of nice to have something unpredictable happen in the Trump era lately. And this certainly was a plot twist that nobody saw coming here. Are we in the penultimate episode of the Trump era, right? So in theory, this is the type of, the type of plot twist you get right in the second to last episode. Right. If we, if we, if we assume this is these two, this is the penultimate. And then we, then we get the end state and the last episode for the last two years. Anyway. All right. I got Jonathan W. North Hampton, Massachusetts, the second district there in Massachusetts, in the Bay state. He goes, Hey, I just heard that the Republican lieutenant governor nominee in Massachusetts, a new Bedford city councilor, who ran unopposed, suspended his campaign after reportedly being arrested following a drunk driving crash over the weekend. What does Massachusetts law say about replacing a nominee who withdraws this close to election day? Does a Republican gubernatorial nominee get to choose a replacement, or is there another process? Just curious. Jonathan W., Well, Jonathan, well, look, he can drop out, but there's no right. They're still elected together as a ticket. Obviously, they're not going to win, but he can get out of the race, but they can't take his name off the ballot. Had it happened sooner before the printing of ballots, the party could have put on a replacement. But, you know, had he won, maybe he declines the oath and then there's something else. But the bottom line is his name has to stay on the ballot. They cannot take his name off the ballot. It is too late to do a replacement, any of that business. So obviously, if there's a victory, then then there's then there's a scenario here. But me thinks Maura Healey and her lieutenant governor are going to are going to end up victorious here. And we won't have to figure figure this out post Election Day. But bottom line is, it is if you're at a certain point once they printed the ballots. I can think of a few circumstances where literally you'd see a sticker over somebody's name, you know, if a court ordered a person's name off the ballot. But that usually only happens after ballot printing if, you know, if there was somebody that was on there that shouldn't have been on there or something like that. All right. Nate in Pennsylvania's 3rd District comes in with the last question of the show. Nate here from Pennsylvania 3, longtime listener and aspiring First Time Question Club member. Well, welcome. You made it. Good job, Nate. If Democrats win the Senate this year, do you think eliminating the filibuster is inevitable, especially with Manchin and Sinema no longer around to oppose it? Did any current or incoming Democratic senators stand in the way? And how would eliminating it shape Trump's final two years and beyond? Also, love the college football talk. The Matt Campbell era hasn't started quite as well as we'd hoped. but we're still dreaming of another 87 festival moment. Thank you. And we are. Yeah, really? You want to bring up that Penn State moment? You know, if Vinny Chester Brady hands the ball off to Alonzo Highsmith, instead of trying to throw the ball there, Miami wins that game on the last play. Anyway. To say that– you know, it's funny. Miami's won five national titles, and the two games that I think about the most in Miami is the two losses. The Terry Porter flag that was thrown against Ohio State in the 2000– two season, 2003 Fiesta Bowl and the 87, right? The, the unofficial first BCS national title game. I say unofficial because there was no BCS then, but the Fiesta Bowl all on their own decided to offer Miami and Penn State a chance to play for the national title. And really what both Miami and Penn State did was made the Fiesta Bowl a major bowl. They weren't always, they weren't considered a major bowl until they pulled that off. Um, So it's one of those that I think is, I mean, it's historically relevant. I think Vinny is still throwing interceptions from that game. But those two titles, it's probably the way Pats fans feel about the two Eli Manning losses, right? I think about those two losses because arguably the two of the greatest collections of talent Miami ever had that didn't win titles is that 86 Miami team, which was better than the 87 team that did win a title. And the O2 team was as good as the O1 team, you know, with maybe the exception we didn't have Andre Johnson and we didn't have Ed Reed on the O2 team. We only had Sean Taylor on the O2 team. Anyway, about the filibuster, I'm not convinced it goes. Because guess what? There's a lot of Democratic senators who've been in the minority who were probably happy that the filibuster was still there. So, you know, one of the things that I've learned over the years in the Senate with this filibuster issue is that just when you think you've got the vote, somebody new has decided maybe there's something to this filibuster. Do I think they may change some of the rules of the filibuster and how you do? Yes, I do. Maybe forcing a little bit more talking, forcing, you know, creating a different time limit or something like that. I could see some changes. And remember— this is a, just a, this is just a rules that the, that the Senate will vote on when there is a new Senate and, and they do these things. So, but I am not, um, I am not convinced that the filibuster is, is definitely gone here. Um, cause if there was no filibuster, there might've been a safe act. And I wonder how Democrats would have felt about that. So, um, I'm still a skeptic. I'm trying to think. Let's say they win 52 Senate seats. Is there 51 votes for ending the filibuster in that new Senate? Is Maria Cantwell going to be against the filibuster? Is Patty Murray? Is Alyssa Slotkin? Sherrod Brown? I don't know. Adam Hamilton? We don't know, right? Who are the new senators going to be? Are they going to be anti-filibuster? Josh Turek? Everybody's so sure, right? And there's really no need to get rid of it in the last two years of Trump. And I don't know why you would do that, tempt fate on that. So, you know, like I said, I could see some changes to the filibuster happening before I see a total elimination. Look, you know, and you've heard me rant about this. I don't think the filibuster is the problem. I think what has destroyed, what the U.S. Senate has done is destroyed is when they got rid of the filibuster for judicial nominees. That has destroyed the credibility of the judiciary branch. We now have red and blue robes because of that decision. So I'm somebody who thinks that– What was done with the judiciary has only made us more polarized and has only made us more distrustful of the judiciary. We'd be a lot better off if it took 60 or, frankly, 75 votes. It should be 60 votes to confirm federal judges and circuit judges, and I think it should be 75 votes to confirm a Supreme Court justice. And I promise you, you're going to get Supreme Court justices who are not politicians. And isn't that what we actually want? It's what Alexander Hamilton wanted. It was the argument he made in Federalist, I believe, in 78. All right, with that... Let's talk a little college football. Look, I don't know if we can top what happened last week, but here's what I do know. Whenever you think, oh, this is not going to be that good of a week, that's the week even more crazy stuff happens. But I'll start with my Hurricanes. First of all, I'll give you a little bit of, I know some of you want to keep track of my comings and goings when it comes to college football. So last week, We saw one of our children in Miami and saw the Miami-Florida State game. Well, this week, we're going to go to Dallas and see our other child at an SMU game. And SMU is playing Cal. Now, unfortunately, the good folks at the Four Letter Network have decided that all SMU games apparently have to be at noon Eastern, 11 a.m. Central time. Well, guess when the Miami-Pitt game is? The Miami-Pitt game is at noon Eastern as well. Pitt travels to Miami. Pat Narduzzi has already been whining and complaining that Miami has a bigger budget for players than he does. He is a serial complainer. Look, you're a really good coach. You've put together a good program. Why don't you just strap it up and, you know, say what you have to say on the field and don't behave the way you're behaving. I mean, I just, it's a bad look, the whining and complaining. Oh, people try to sign our quarterback. Well, go raise more money. None of this is illegal. It is all legal. Don't complain that it's not. But anyway, the point being is I'm going to be live watching SMU and Cal, and I'm going to be doing this while I perhaps have one ear. I don't know if I'm... I'm about to confess something that my son might not be realizing. So my son's high school football games were at noon quite a bit. And when he was playing high school football, Miami always ended up in the noon slot because they were not the number one team in the ACC, which... you know, on any given week. So they were rarely getting the, the three 30 or the seven 30 games. They're now getting a lot more of the three 30 and the seven 30 games, but Pitt's not a big draw this week. So I think that they gave us the new game, which frankly is a bigger, the irony is that I think it's harder to play Miami when the sun is out at in Miami than it is when the sun is down humidity, all that stuff, especially for these boys up North. But man, I've got, I literally going to have one eye on the Miami Pitt game. I'm going to be watching SMU Cal and it could be a shootout or something like that. So anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing my son. I'm looking forward to seeing SMU beat Cal. Cal's been a real disappointment. I thought they were going to be a real sleeper, a sleeper team in the ACC this year, and they were not. I think they've messed up the quarterback that we all now refer to as initials because none of us want to mispronounce his name. But other games, look, I think the biggest game of the week is Ole Miss-Texas. And it really is a playoff game, I think here, probably more so for Texas, believe it or not. I mean, yes, Texas has a great win against Ohio State, but now they've got two losses. They really shouldn't have won that Ohio State game, right? That was kind of Ryan Day turtled the team. And that's why Texas and if Ole Miss, you know, Ole Miss only has one loss. We kind of forgot about Ole Miss, right? They beat LSU. Then they go and get swamp stomped by the Gators in Gainesville. And then we kind of sort of, you know, the Ole Miss story is kind of quietly going, well, they're still 5-1. They still got Trinidad Chambliss. I don't know how Texas keeps up with Ole Miss. Ole Miss has proven they can score on anybody. I know Texas has a great defense, but I promise you, I think Ole Miss will score more than 24 points against Texas. And if Ole Miss scores 24 points, can Texas keep up? Either way, Game of the day and most important one for SEC playoff implications, it's the primetime game. It's easily the best game of the night and the one that I think will have the most impact on what we're talking about. A few other games on my radar. Indiana goes to Michigan, right? This is a chance we're now not going to have. Indiana's got to face C.J. Carr's little brother, who is another grandchild of Lloyd Carr. He is, I guess, the new quarterback, the starting quarterback at Michigan, which means Bryce Underwood is going to go into the portal. Where does Bryce Underwood go? One of my favorite college football gambling podcasts speculates it's going to be Florida State. That'd be interesting if they end up with him. I'll be curious of that. But either way, Indiana at Michigan. Is there a little bit of a hangover for Indiana? I know Indiana lost by literally a foot, less than a foot on a foot, if you can do that with that. Indiana's not going to score a lot of points. Michigan's not going to score a lot of points. It's going to be kind of a messy game, I'm guessing, sloppy game. I don't know. I mean, I wouldn't want to have to go to Michigan after losing a heartbreaker at home to Ohio State. So I think it's a big game for Indiana here to sort of make sure they don't let Ohio State beat them twice. LSU goes to Auburn. I think Auburn, right? That's a tough one. You pull the upset and then you go home to face LSU. I worry. I'm always– I got a lot of family members. Pro Auburn. I want to be pro Auburn. I'm a little nervous about this one. I don't feel good about it. Sorry, guys. I just don't. On that one, just because it feels like LSU, they're in, they can't lose mode. They can't lose. And, you know, Kiffin with his back against the wall. It's not always a team I want to be on the other side of. And then the other big sort of letdown spot is BYU after their big win over Notre Dame has to go to Orlando. So they go from Elevation, and cool air to sea level and humid air, although not as humid as it normally is. It is October, so it's starting to turn a little bit there in Orlando. We've seen these teams, they pull a big upset, and then literally the next week lay an egg. We've seen it all over the SEC, who's to say this doesn't happen to a Big 12 team as well. And in fact, Keep an eye on Tennessee having to travel to South Carolina. They got their big win over Alabama. They really celebrated that big win over Alabama. And now they got to go into Columbia, South Carolina. I know what my Vegas friends would be doing on this one. That's for sure. And then after that, I can't tell you that I've got, you know, I may have some interesting financial plays in some of these things. And I will be watching at Clemson hosting Virginia Tech here. I'm just curious of which Clemson team shows up. I think Tech can beat them handily. They have the capability. But it's big game James, right? So who knows on this front? I just don't know if I buy that Clemson can keep up on that front. Uh, and all right. I think that's what I got. I think that's the best Houston, Utah. It's another rank on rank, uh, rank match up there. Um, it's probably a more important game for Houston because Utah has got an opportunity to play BYU and they can make a college football playoff statement by defeating BYU, even if they lose this game. But man, Utah is a tough place to play a tough place to play. Houston's on the road, but this is a pretty important game of the big 12. Um, and my own, My own producer's a big Utah Ute. So, you know, I give, I'm going to, A, I got to give some respect and B, they deserve, they have earned, earned this respect. And then I'll be keeping a small eye on USC traveling to Wisconsin. This is two time zones, not three. Can USC win a ball game when they travel multiple time zones? Well, they can win. The question is, can they ever cover a spread when they go more than two time zones on this front? But Look, USC is going to be hosting Ohio State without Julian saying in a couple of weeks. So if they play their cards right, don't lose any games before then, then suddenly USC might be able to play their way back in to the college football playoff conversation. So there you have it. I'm going to be having literally an air pod. ear in one game, my eyes and half of my attention live and in person watching Kevin Jennings, I hope, tear the Cal secondary apart. And I look forward to seeing, most importantly, I look forward to seeing my son. after having a great weekend with my daughter last weekend. So with that, enjoy the weekend. Appreciate everything that everybody's been doing to support all of my efforts here on this podcast. Some other places we've really seen the increased interest, increased traffic, and it's all thanks to you. So thank you very much. And until we upload again.
