>> buckeye broadband suprts c-span along with these other television proders giving you a front row seat to democracy. ♪ >> c-span's washington journal. every day we take your calls live on the air and we discussed policy issues that impact you. increasing threats against u.s. lawmakers and calls for more security. also, university of wisconsin political science professor. watch washington journal wednesday morning or on c-span now. it joined the discussion with your phone calls, facebook

comments. host: also of the national journal, campaign 2022 and the political news of the day. charlie, good morning. guest: good morning. i'm excited. we are almost there. host: we spent our first hour talking about crime. what happened with -- what everybody -- what is on everybody's mind is what is happening with nancy pelosi's husband. >> we are seeing more extreme rhetoric. there's no restraint anymore. people will say anything, and

the discourse is going to a coarser, sort of more harsh place. there used to be some restraint people would have about how ugly they would attack an opponent and now the shackles have sort of come off. i'm not one of these people who has already -- always run my hands, --wrung my hands. host: we seen a change in how people are campaigning. we have seen the harsher words being used in campaigns. have we seen a change in how people are voting because of this? guest: we've seen the parties change. a lack of diversity. what's happened is anybody with any conservative dna at all

moved into the republican party. the liberal dna moved into the democratic party. centrists pulled back and don't vote in primaries is they used to. a lot of people in the middle don't feel like they have a political home. >> does that mean the people in the middle aren't voting? or they make up their mind at the last second. >> i think they are not voting primaries and what you see is more and more ideological people getting very -- getting nominated. some of it is the rise of talk radio, social media, gerrymandering. a combination of things that

remove the moderating influences in each party. host: i'm going to ask you to look into a crystal ball and ask you with all of this polarization, where does this leave the political process? guest: more of the same. it getting worse. and each party decides they want to take their parties back over again and start running for office, working in campaigns, giving money. until that happens, you are going to continue to go off the deep end. host: ok. well i hope you're wrong. guest: trust me, i hope i do too. host: this is the first midterm in president biden's presidential term. is this a different midterm in any way? the political wisdom says that

the president's party loses seats in the first midterm after the president is elected. what do we see coming up? guest: it was shaping up to be a classic midterm. 37 out of 39 midterms. -- midterms since the civil war. it was like normal, normal and then in august on -- august and september it was like this is it normal. sometime earlier this month, it sort of went back to normal. so now it looks like a classic midterm with the white house getting hit. midterms, it's like time for a change. stay the course but time for a change. people can decide if we want to continue where we are or go for

something fundamentally different. two months ago, it looks like it was going to be a choice. they had issues and -- issues with president biden and democrats, but they were also talking about the -- thinking about the republican party, abortion, president trump. so it was a legitimate choice, but then the economy will be back in and we went back into a normal election. host: i was just about to ask, what was the turning point? guest: i think that the things that boosted democrats start is when it started going, which was you saw gasoline drop. you saw democrats and then they

got key pieces of legislation through in june. president trump becoming more visible in the whole merrill lago thing. it took the election to a different --mar-a-log. that's not good for party in power. high unemployment. mortgage rates doubling. you don't have these things happen and be in a good place if you are the party in power. host: we are going to open up our regular lines. republicans, you can call in at 202-748-8001. it democrats, your number is 202-748-8000.

independent, you can call 202-748-8002. keep in mind, you can always text us at 202-748-8003. we are always on social media at twitter http://twitter.com/cspanwj and facebook facebook.com/cspan. so charlie, who do you see taking control in the house of representatives after these midterm elections. guest: i would be astonished if republicans didn't take control. i think it will probably be at least 15 or 20 seat net gain. i think it's going up to a bigger number. not 40 to 70 that newt gingrich was talking about. it will be a good-sized number. it is behaving normally now. it was just this two-month periods of time.

host: what about the senate? guest: i think the senate is going to be a very, very close call. a half-dozen races that are extremely close, but i think the odds of democrats holding on are slipping away. it could happen, but we had a lot of surprise elections the last few years. in this environment, if democrats hold onto anything they will have the abortion issue, donald trump and republican primary voters dominating -- nominating some exotic and potentially probable limit -- problematic people. no matter how good a night they have, i think they're going to be leaving some seats on the table because there are some key races where they nominated people who were just, let's just say sub optimal. a pups -- a placebo might win,

but they may have nominated a sub placebo kind of candidate. host: what races should we be watching to see who's going to be in control? guest: i would look at four. arizona, nevada, -- no, nevada and georgia on the democratic side. it's a vania and ohio on the republican side. whoever wins -- pennsylvania and ohio on the republican side. those are the four i'm paying most attention to. host: as we close in, have you seen races like these turn in the last 10 days? guest: we've seen general movement back toward republicans and just a pain -- a point or

two or three shifting over. as we move from being a choice being in referendum mode. host: have there been any major changes in the political foot race? guest: i don't own it or run anymore, but i think david wasserman has done 15 or 20 changes in the last few weeks. i note jessica taylor just moved , she moved, where did she just move today's ago? see, one of the things i have in my mind, sometimes i have moments like, and my mind i think ohio is a top. host: whether you have in your mind? guest: i think democrats need to

push federman out. the thing is, i think each party, ok this is a little snarky. people asked me who i think is 21 pennsylvania. mike -- who is going to win pennsylvania. had democrats -- had republicans nominated mccormick, i think the party would be much better off. host: what you think about georgia question mark -- gorgeous? >> you can watch more of this at c-span.org. we take you live to las vegas where barack obama is campaigning for the midterm election. right now, it is the governor speaking to thow