Full Transcript for US Midterm Special: Amelia Lester On The Blue Wave

put forward legislation. They can now make life harder for Trump in pursuing his agenda. 00:02:53 Speaker 2: It doesn't actually change, though, Trump's position. He's still the president. He still has the power that that office gives him. What will he do from now? 00:03:02 Speaker 1: Yeah, so Trump last night was pretty upset. He seemed tired and emotional. He at first said that he was not going to work with Democrats at all. But then I guess he thought better of it, in part, I think, because the election victory by the Democrats was just so huge and undeniable. So he has now said that he's willing to strike some deals. Keep in mind, this is very different to what happened when Joe Biden won in 2020. That election was really close. It took days for the election results to come in. It's probably part of why Trump felt emboldened to question the results and why January 6th happened. That was the insurrection at the Capitol. This time, the results, as one Republican operative accidentally put it on TV. 00:03:44 Speaker 3: Last night, too big to rig. 00:03:47 Speaker 1: So Trump, I think, has decided that he just has to go along with the election results. And his powers at home will be more limited as a result of this. In the foreign policy realm, he can still do a lot of stuff. So let's break down a little bit about what that means, if that sounds okay. Yeah, I would absolutely love that. So in foreign policy, obviously the Iran war is the big question that people have. We're not going to suddenly see petrol prices go down. There was some intelligence just before the election that Trump wanted to renew his military strikes on Iran, maybe even bomb civilian infrastructure. And there's no reason why he can't actually do that if he wants to, even now that the Congress is controlled by the Democrats. We have to hope, I think anyone who wants cheaper petrol has to hope that the Democrats will at least be able to make it harder for Trump to spend money on that war because they will control the purse. They can also just make it more difficult for him to. 00:04:44 Speaker 3: Wage that war. 00:04:45 Speaker 1: They can pull his operatives and his advisors in front of Congress for hearings, but they can't stop the war itself. On Russia and Ukraine, Trump's in very much peacemaking mode. He wants the Ukrainian president to basically concede a bunch of territory to Vladimir Putin. I imagine he will continue to want to do that. And again, there's not much that a democratic Congress can do on that front. But it's interesting to note that when it comes to foreign policy, Trump's partner in a lot of his Iran actions has been Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. Now, of course, Israel's elections just happened. 00:05:21 Speaker 3: A lot closer than this one. A lot closer. 00:05:23 Speaker 1: And it's very unclear what's going to happen there and whether Netanyahu is going to be able to form a unity government there. So without Netanyahu by his side, I think Trump might feel less inclined. 00:05:36 Speaker 3: To go big on Iran. 00:05:39 Speaker 4: Okay. 00:05:39 Speaker 2: And then domestically, what are we expecting him to try and do? 00:05:42 Speaker 1: So domestically, I think this is where you're really going to feel the Democratic vibe shift in Washington. They've already said they're going to hold hearings and investigations into issues of corruption in the Trump administration. Trump has made billions of dollars since he's been in office. They want to wind back some of his more draconian immigration reforms, the ICE raids and so on. They can have a tangible impact on that. And I think the really big issue on which Democrats will want to make their mark is AI. This was very much an AI election. I was astonished to read that a majority of voters said that AI was very important as an issue for them in their voting. So I think Trump has been very inclined to let the AI companies do whatever they want and build data centers and not regulate AI. I think the Democrats are going to try and rein in some of that growth from the AI companies and put some guardrails around that technology. Because I wasn't on the ticket, we couldn't get enough people out to vote. If I was on the ticket, we would have won in a landslide. 00:06:43 Speaker 2: Trump, before the election, was asking voters to vote as if he was on the ballot. Then after the election, he said, we would have won if I was on the ballot. It would have been a clear victory. It obviously hasn't been a clear victory. How are you understanding this? Was this a vote against Trump or was this a vote for particularly good Democratic candidates in some seats? 00:07:03 Speaker 3: It's a good question. J.D. 00:07:04 Speaker 1: Vance, the vice president, went on a very long rant on X, formerly Twitter, today about how he puts the blame of this election result almost entirely on the Iran war. So I think that's him setting up his presidential run by saying, I am the Trump inheritor, except for the fact that I don't want to start more foreign wars. But I think what we can say for sure is that there has been a vibe shift. A lot of the people who voted for Trump in 2024 abandoned him. And that's why we saw the results that we did. To run through a few of those groups, young men swung 40% to the left. So the whole idea of the manosphere and men 18 to 24 being radicalized online, I guess they're de-radicalizing now. $ 500 million U.S. bought Elon Musk nothing. He's poured money into this campaign, particularly in Texas. Texas went blue. A couple of other groups to watch the new Christian left. We're seeing the emergence of a vocal and political Christian coalition on the left. And that is what boosted James Tallarico's vote in Texas. Hispanics abandoned Trump in huge numbers, particularly in Texas and Kansas. They were probably disgusted by the heavy-handed tactics used by the Trump administration on immigration. And finally, moderate Republicans are finally

done with MAGA. My proof for that is that in the state of Maine, which has been held by a moderate Republican, Susan Collins, for 30 years, she was kicked out. 00:08:31 Speaker 4: Thank you. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Blanca. And thank you all for being here. We just took back Texas. 00:08:51 Speaker 2: All right. 00:08:52 Speaker 3: So in Michigan, we've got Abdul El-Sayed. 00:08:54 Speaker 2: He won making history as the first Muslim ever elected to the Senate. We've got James Tallarico in Texas. Then we've got a half Aussie making waves in Georgia. 00:09:03 Speaker 3: Very exciting. Could you talk me through, I guess, some of. 00:09:06 Speaker 2: These key races and what they tell us about the 2028 presidential race? 00:09:11 Speaker 1: Yeah, so a few historic things happened. In Kansas, Democrats haven't won a Senate seat there since 1932. The only time in recent history that it has voted for a Democrat in a presidential election was in 2008 when Obama won a landslide against John McCain. Kansas now has a Democratic senator, boosted in large part, as I mentioned, by Hispanic voters. In Texas, which has been a safe red Republican seat for decades, James Tallarico, a Democrat, won a Senate seat. Some other big upsets by the Democrats, South Carolina hasn't had a Democratic senator in a long time. And the vote to really watch now, which is still happening, is in Mississippi. That's a deep red state in the deep South. And there's dozens of votes separating the Democratic challenger and the Republican incumbent. And if the Democratic challenger wins, He will be the first Democrat in the Senate from Mississippi and Florida. 00:10:05 Speaker 4: 40 years. 00:10:06 Speaker 1: In the House, the Democrats won 24 competitive House seats, Republicans won none. This brings me to the final, perhaps most momentous matchup of the night in terms of the 2028 presidential election. which is that in Georgia, John Ossoff won within an hour of voting closing, whereas when he's a Democratic senator in 2024, that count took days. So it's a sign of how much ground he's made in Georgia, which again, until very recently, was a Republican safe state. 00:10:40 Speaker 3: In sweeping and decisive victories. 00:10:46 Speaker 4: The American people have rebuked the depravity, corruption and incompetence of the failed lame duck President Donald J. Trump. 00:10:57 Speaker 1: I said on Out Loud and I continue to say that I think he will be the Democratic nominee for president in 2028. And I think if the Democrats don't screw it up, which historically is a bit of a dubious proposition, I think he has every chance of becoming president. He is half Australian. His mother moved to the U.S. 00:11:14 Speaker 3: When she was 23. 00:11:16 Speaker 1: And he is kind of the big hope of the Democratic Party going into 2028. 00:11:21 Speaker 3: And he's incredibly young. 00:11:22 Speaker 2: He looks so different to what we've seen on the ballot. 00:11:25 Speaker 3: I think he's 39. 00:11:25 Speaker 1: All right. 00:11:27 Speaker 3: So big win for the Democrats. 00:11:29 Speaker 2: They're all obviously celebrating, but it does turn to what happens next. That's some of the candidates. Can they ride this wave all the way through to a presidential win? And when Trump is really not on the ballot, he's no longer in the picture for that. 00:11:45 Speaker 3: What do they campaign on? 00:11:46 Speaker 2: How do they win? 00:11:47 Speaker 1: Such a good question. And I don't think that they have the answers yet. I think the next two years in American politics do not think that because this election was clear cut, that the next two years are going to be smooth. I think that these next two years could be among the rockiest that the United States has seen in recent history, because now you have a clash set up between this Democratic Congress and this so-called lame duck president, meaning a Republican president who is losing his power in the party, but still wants to make his mark and leave a lasting legacy. So it's a real clash and the Democrats have to prove that they can get things done, which won't be easy because there's a Republican in the White House and the judiciary, which is the third branch of government, along with the executive and the Congress, the judiciary is still controlled very much by Republican interests too. Plus there's economic headwinds. Petrol prices are going to continue to rise and the AI economy that the whole US stock market is predicated on right now is going to continue hollowing out. So I think we're in for a rocky ride. And then just finally, obviously, a question about Australia. What does that mean for Australia? And I remember vividly seeing a smiling selfie with Albanese and Trump very recently. 00:13:02 Speaker 3: Are we going to be seeing. 00:13:04 Speaker 2: World leaders and maybe Albanese himself start to distance themselves somewhat from the sitting president? 00:13:10 Speaker 3: That's a good question too. 00:13:11 Speaker 1: I think it's in Australia's interest for the United States to be a functioning democracy. And going into this election, people were really concerned that there was going to be mischief and that there was going to be civil unrest. What's actually remarkable about this election, which we haven't touched on yet, is that the election went so smoothly. Republicans conceded the races where they lost. the president told Fox News, of course, I'm going to accept these results. Why wouldn't I? I am absolutely willing to accept those results. And so it's in Australia's interest that our longtime ally remains a functioning democracy and doesn't descend into violence, authoritarianism and chaos. So first of all, I take this as a win for Australia. I think Europe is going to try and assert itself a little bit more against Trump these days. But we're seeing all around the world, countries are just making their own deals, making their own trade deals separate from the United States. There's going to continue to be a lot of political turmoil there. And Australia, for instance, has grown a lot closer to Japan over the last two years because we're looking for partners in our region increasingly. Yeah, so we'll continue to see more of that regional-based partnerships, I think. 00:14:22 Speaker 3: Amelia, thank you so much for joining us on The Quickie. Thank you. 00:14:26 Speaker 2: And thanks for listening today. For more news like this, please click follow on The Quickie wherever you get your podcasts and please leave a rating and a review. It helps other people find us. 00:14:41 Speaker 1: Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which we have recorded this podcast.