i don't like violence anywhere and i certainly don't like it at the united states capitol. but the media obsession and tim ryan's obsession with this issue while people can't afford the cost of groceries, where his policies made it impassable for people to support their -- impossible for people to support their families, where we have a massive border security problem, where we know that big tech companies were actively being involved in the 2020 election in a way that hid hunter biden and joe biden's corruption. we can talk and think about a lot of different issues and i think the political medias -- media's obsession with january 6th suggestion they're not paying attention to the concerns of everyday voters in this state who are getting crushed by the policies that you supported. mr. ryan: you can walk and clue hew -- we are a very complicated democracy here, but we can walk and chew gum statement. if a group of people storm the capitol while we're trying to file the paperwork for an election and they're trying to prevent that from happening and they want to kill the vice

president, that needs to be looked into! like are we really -- you want to sweep it under the rug. i don't want to talk about this anymore than anybody else. i want to talk about jobs and wages and pensions. i want to talk about making sure that people have, you know, dignity, but my god, you got to look into it, j.d. you can't sweep it under the rug. and liz cheney is not a democrat. adam kinsinger is not a democrat. liz cheney's dad was dick cheney, vice president of the united states under george w. bush as a republican. this is a bipartisan effort. mr. steyer: thank you, congressman. we're going to move to the topic of gun control. mr. vance, as recently as 2018, you supported gun reform measures, including red flag laws aimed at taking groups from people likely to use them in violent crimes, such as domestic abusers. but your position has shifted and said you would not vote on what you call gun grabs. instead, you are focused on real solutions. what measures or real solutions would you support to reduce gun violence and mass shootings and would they include any restrictions on gun ownership

for anyone? mr. vance: let me be clear about what we mean by red flag laws. that's the big issue here. look, we have multiple examples, just in the last couple years, terribly tragic situations where a convicted felon has walk in, -- walked in, passed a background check, gotten a firearm and killed a lot of innocent people. that's obviously totally unacceptable. i'm a big pro second amendment guy. i know a lot of people who vied have rarely defended the none of second amendment. them think that convicted felons should be able to buy firearms and then kill a large number or small number of people. but here's the thing. two issues. one, the reason why we have skyrocketing gun violence in this country is because tim ryan and a lot of democrats decided to declare war on america's police. that's why from youngstown to cleveland, to columbus to cincinnati, we have really, really high rates of gun violence. we didn't have it two years ago. we didn't have it five years ago . and nothing changed in the gun haas. we need to get back to common sense law enforcement policies.

the second thing is we cannot -- we need to fix the system that's broken as opposed to layering a bunch of additional regulations on top of it. the thing that i don't like is when you create a new background check system with new sets of regulations that go after law-abiding citizens. when we know the current system is broken, why don't we fix it instead of creating a entirely -- creating an entirely new system. mr. steyer: congressman ryan, you said you support the second amendment, but with that right comes the responsibility to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. what specific limitations on gun ownership do you support and what do you see as going too far in limiting gun ownership? mr. ryan: yeah, here we are in ohio. one of the great days, at least once a year we try to get out and do some hunting with our oldest, mason. he's a much better shot than i am and he would gladly admit

that publicly, but it's one of the great days. you go up, you watch some football on sunday, get up early, go out hunting on monday. we have to preserve that culture here in ohio. it is really important for us to do that. but you can't watch the school shootings, you can't watch the level of violence that we have here, and not think we need background checks, right? we need to close the gun show loophole. we need to make sure these weapons of war are not readily available, like what happened in the one community where an 18-year-old, just a few days after his 18th birthday, he's able to, like, stumble into a gun shop and get a semi-automatic rifle and 1600 rounds of ammunition. if we train a soldier and they go out, they get 300 rounds. this is not right, and kids are scared to go to school. they're climbing under their desks. we see the crime in the cities. how do all these people get these unlawful guns? j.d. wants to ban the bureau of

alcohol, tobacco and phi arms. -- and firearms, the agency that helps us prevent gun crimes and helps to solve gun crimes. he wants to abolish the agency . and here is another example of how extreme j.d. is, right? he talked about the national abortion ban, we talked about he thinks that the election was stolen, which was one of the reasons trump agreed to support him. alex jones, a right-wing talk radio show with a huge following , said that the sandy hook murders of those young precious babies in connecticut, he said it was a hoax. and he went on and on and said it was a hoax. i've met these families from sandy hook. absolutely devastated. you lose a fourth grader to a madman. and this guy says it was a hoax. our guy j.d. says this is one of the most credible news sources in the whole country. and he just got convicted and he

just got sued to the tune of billions of dollars that he owes the families for putting them through this grief. and i just want people to know, it's like we're running for the united states senate. this is the highest office you can get in this country except for president. and he's running around backing these extremists. the most extreme people in the country, a guy who denied sandy hook. he's like, no, he's credible. mr. steyer: thank you, congressman. mr. vance: it's maddening. i've never said that, tim. he did not answer the question. he didn't give you a single example of something that would meaningfully reduce gun violence -- mr. ryan: is my microphone not working? mr. de souza: ohio has a law that allows teachers and other staff to carry guns on school property, after receiving only

24 hours of training. is that the answer to the growing epidemic of mass school shootings in america? mr. vance: of course not. we need many, many solutions to find the answer to these ridiculous school shootings. look, i have three kids a , 5-year-old, 2-year-old, and nine month old. and when i see these terrible school shootings, my heart breaks for these kids and the families. but that means that we need to do things that actually work here. i think allowing properly trained teachers to carry firearms can be part of the solution. i think increasing funding for school resource officers can be part of the solution. i think a very, very important part of the solution of reducing crime, both in our schools and in our streets, is making sure -- and it sounds crazy common sense -- but making sure that we lock up violent criminals. here's the thing about tim ryan. tim ryan, when he was running for president, of course, he was a different guy two years ago when i was running for

president. he supported ending cash bail . and we know just in this , community, a guy who was let out on nominal bail, who went and got a gun and went and murdered somebody in this community because we don't have the proper policies in place to ensure the violent criminals go off for a long time. that really is the thing that's changed in this country. it's changed on our streets. it's changed everywhere else. we need to not do radical things. tim calls me an extremist. ending cash bail is on the far left of his own party and it's the very sort of thing that makes our streets less safe. we need more cash bail for violent criminals. we need to make sure we're not letting these complete scum bags out of jail because tim ryan is desperate to be president. mr. steyer: thank you, mr. vance. congressman, your answer to the question? mr. ryan: yeah, my wife is a school teacher.

has been for 20 years. we had three kids go to public school. these school shootings scare parents to death and that's why the alex jones thing bothered me so much. i just believe in watching the videos of some of these schools that it is a very risky proposition to have a person that's a school teacher trained to shoot in that environment with all those kids running around. like, that somebody who needs to be very well trained and a lot of experience, quite frankly, whether you're a police officer or you have some military experience, and you happen to be at that tragic situation that's happening. so i just -- i just think it's very, very dangerous to think that you're going to have a school teacher shooting into a crowd of kids. and i get the sentiment, for sure, because it's scary. but the question is, in all of these instances, we tried to pass some reasonable gun safety

legislation that rob portman supported. it was a bipartisan effort, and j.d. vance opposed it. like this was not an extreme bill. this didn't close the gun show loophole, it didn't into into background checks, didn't go into the charleston loophole, didn't go into any of that stuff which i support, but he was against it. it's like, if you're not -- john -- john cornyn from texas is for this rob portman for this, , strong second amendment guys, but he was against it. we have to come together and you have to find points of agreement here. you're not always going to get your way and i'm going to go to the senate and represent republicans and democrats and independents. i am going to promise to find common sense solutions. mr. vance: can we just talk about the mental health side of this? just briefly. i imagine tim ryan probably agrees with me on this. very often behind these shootings is a clearly a person

-- is clearly a person who was mentally unwell not getting , treatment and not being order ed into the types of facilities that would prevent them from getting crime. rob portman, again endorsed me, has done a lot on the meat side -- a mental side of the equation. i think that's an important part of ensuring these school shootings -- mr. ryan: just quickly -- i'm not sure why rob portman endorsed you because you don't agree with any of the compromises he's been able to make in the last year and mental health issues happen around the globe. this is the only country where we have these kind of things happening. keep the guns out of criminals' hands and keep mental health -- mr. steyer: thank you, topic. -- next topic. ms. mccoy: in policing, mr. vance, you've argued in keeping qualified immunity for police in excessive force. but in light of ongoing instances, what measures would you support holding police accountable?

mr. vance: look, i think there are measures right now in place to hold police accountable and i've talked to a number of the membership of the fraternal order of police, who endorsed me, and they will tell you there are a lot of things that are in place to make sure bad cops aren't able to continue to what they do and the good cops want the bad cops out of the police chief. i think we have proper protections right now to ensure that the police officers who aren't doing their job aren't able to continue on the force. here's the important thing here. because of what happened two years ago and because of the summer of rioting and looting that cost tens of billions of dollars of damage and, of course, 26 people, a lot of them police officers, lost their lives, the effort that tim ryan supported to strip the police of qualified immunity is why we have the violent crime on our streets right now. talk to a police officer and they will tell you they're terrified of doing their job because of what tim ryan did. talk to the youngstown chief of

police, who wrote you a letter a couple years ago and called you a traitor for what you did to the police in this community and the police all over the state. the problem that we had after 2020 is we were so worried about the rare bad cop that we completely turned the federal government loose on our law enforcement and the consequences is there are streets and that people do not feel safe to walk down. not just true in youngstown, true all over the state. ms. mccoy: and congressman ryan, you were criticized for the letter he mentioned from young's police chief, a letter to -- youngstown's police chief a , letter to attorney general william barr that you signed on june 23rd of 2020, that described police brutality and violence as being the leading cause of death among young men, particularly young black men, three times more likely to be killed by police than their white peers. do you believe law enforcement protocols need to be redefined in america? mr. ryan: i think we need a national discussion. this is clearly a problem. we do have police officers who don't like their job anymore, we

have people who don't want to go into law enforcement, and that's a real problem. we need more cops, we need better paid cops, and we have to get rid of the bad cops. we also have to understand there's a complicated relationship between the law enforcement and primarily the black community, which means we've got to have a national discussion about this because there are bad cops that do bad things. and i just think that we need to provide the kind of leadership that is needed to start the healing process, so we can take the temperature down. now, i've brought back $500 million to ohio for law enforcement. staffing, technology, even here in youngstown, right down the street, shot spotters. i got an earmark for them years ago, so they can identify gunshots in the city and immediately find where it is. those are the kind of investments that we need to make. i also, again, put money into the rescue package to make sure that local governments and state governments have money for law enforcement.

governor dewine is going around the state passing out that federal money, which i agree with, but it's federal money. i also have a bill, and this is what i hope is the model moving forward, i have a bill that is a police immersion training bill, that has the support of both the fop and the naacp. i want to be someone who tries to solve problems. i don't want to keep fighting for another 10 years about criminal justice reform or immigration or any of these polarizing issues. i want us to come together as americans and have some common sense solutions. and so i will use my position in the senate to sit down with both the naacp, the urban league, and the fop, and say how can we start working this out? how can we start building trust again? not someone who wants to throw jet fuel on the issue. mr. vance: this is a consistent theme of the debate and certainly of the entire campaign. tim ryan says he believes in reasonable solutions. tim, what were you doing on those reasonable solutions in

your 20 years in washington, d.c.? what were you doing at the moment that the lawless people were attacking our police officers? you were joining in and making our streets less safe. the critical issue here is that tim ryan keeps on saying he's reasonable. he keeps saying that he's a moderate. keeps saying that he believes in things that 90% of ohio believes, but when he gets to washington, he votes exactly the opposite way. i went to yankee kitchen for dinner about two hours ago, some -- so many people came up to me, some of them democrats, and they said tim ryan has been in office for 20 years and he hasn't done his damn job. that's a direct quote from a union steel worker who you represent. if you were half as good of a legislator as you pretend to be, youngstown wouldn't have lost 50,000 jobs and those steelworkers would not be coming up to me telling me you failed them. mr. steyer: thank you. we need to move on. mr. de souza: immigration remains one of the most explosive issues confronting the

nation, and an idea that is igniting the passions of some americans is called the great replacement theory. the theory says whites are in danger of being replaced by nonwhites as a majority if the flow of non-white immigrations isn't stopped. mr. vance, you have warned of an immigrant invasion, according to a wire story from last may. who are these invaders and how are they coming into this country? mr. vance: well, the primary way they're coming into the country is through tim ryan and joe biden's wide open southern border to the tune of half a -- to the tune of about two look, not democratic voters and democratic people, but the democratic leadership, the people he answered to in washington, d.c., they're very explicit about that. they say they want more and more

immigration because if that happens, they'll ensure that republicans are never able to win another national election. it's not whites or nonwhites. there are white immigrants and nonwhite immigrants in this country who have enriched in country in an incredible way. i'm married to one, the daughter of south asian immigrants, and my wife has been unbelievably blessed and enrich because she decided to say yes i asked her to marry me, but she came in -- or i should say her family came in legally. they followed the laws therefore -- of this country and the things i worry about with all of this illegal floition is if you want to start a relationship with this country, we're all common citizens, we're on a great big american family. we look after each other. whether you came one generation ago or ten generations ago, we're all part of the same family. but your introduction to this country should not be breaking its laws. you should come in through the proper channels and again, every time he's got an opportunity, he's going to talk about how he disagree with his party on boater.

go ahead, tim, but you voted for amnesty and voted against border wall funding. moderator: what is your opinion of the great replacement theory, congressman? rep. ryan: i think it's nonsense, it's grounded in some of the most racially divisive writings in the history of the world, and this is who he's running around with, talking about replacement theory. there's no big grand conspiracy. this is a country who's been enriched by immigrants from all quarters of the world. there's no -- and the problem -- mr. vance: it's shameful for you to say that given my family. rep. ryan: and the danger -- my turn, pal, my turn. mr. vance: oh, buddy, you said rep. ryan: this great replacement theory was the motivator for the shooting in buffalo where that shooter had all the replacement theory writings that j.d. agrees with and some sicko got the information, again, those extremists he runs around with, marjorie taylor greene, ted

cruz, all these guys, they just want to stoke this racial violence. we're tired of it, j.d. this kid goes to a grocery store in buffalo where black people shop and shooting them up. no. we want to move on from that. everyone is exhausted. that's what i keep saying, i want to represent the exhausted majority. people that are tired of this stuff. democrats, republicans, and independents. moderator: thanks, congressman. rep. ryan: we have a -- hold on, j.d. mr. vance: this is disgusting. here's what happened when the media and people like tim ryan accuse me of engaging the great replacement theory. rep. ryan: you were peddling it. mr. vance: i'll tell you what happens. my own children, my biracial children get tacked by scum bags tonight and in person because you are so desperate for political four that you'll accuse me, the father of three beautiful biracial babies of engaging in racism.

we are sick of it. you can believe in a border without being a racist. you can believe in the country without being a racist and this just shows how desperate this guy is for political power. i know you've been in office for 20 years, tim, and i know it's a sweet gig, but you're so desperate not to have a real job that you'll slander me and my family. it's disgrateful. moderator: thank you, mr. vance. rep. ryan: hold on, derek. i think i struck a nerve with this guy. mr. vance: you absolutely struck a nerve. mr. vance: you strike a nerve with normal people talking about my family. rep. ryan: i would never talk about your family that way, j.d., i wasn't raised that. don't try to spin this because you don't want to talk about the fact that you're with the extremists and that belief which is grounded going back decades led to some crazy dude getting a gun and going to a black grocery store. mr. vance: it's disgusting and

i've never endorsed it. rep. ryan: you talk about it and you're running around with popular joer taylor greene. mr. vance: to believe in a border, tim ryan thinks you endorse the great replacement theory? that's unbelievable. you join nancy pelosi and chuck schumer calling your own people racist for daring to believe in a border wall. this is the game he plays. rep. ryan: i know better, j.d. moderator: thank you, candidates. it's now time for closing statements. we've run out of time. mr. vance, we'll start with you. you have two minutes. mr. vance: great. first of all, thank you guys for watching us. i know the guardians or the indians or whatever we're calling them these days are playing game 235 of the alds and we're rooting for them and i appreciate you guys spending a hour with us and caring about this country to invest in this race and invest your time. my simple argument is this. tim ryan had his chance. he's been in office for 20 years, he passed five pieces of legislation, three of those pieces of legislation were renaming post offices in the

youngstown area. whenever i'm up here in the mahoning valley, i'm constantly approached by people who tell me that tim ryan has failed them and tim ryan has failed to do his job. i think it's really simple here. we need to go in a different direction in this country and i make a few commitments to you about what you and your families deserve. number one, i think your family deserves to go to the grocery store and not have it break the bank, not have it ruin your bank account because you want to buy a nice meal for your kids to have on a friday night. number two, i think you deserve a country with a border and you deserve leadership who don't call you racist for thinking you should deserve a country with a border. i believe you should be able to walk down your streets in safety. i believe you should be able to take your children downtown for dinner without being mugged or without being carjacked. i believe in ohio's energy sector and a guy who thinks that we should ban gas powered cars as bernie sanderses and tim ryan argued a couple years ago doesn't deserve to represent this great state and its people.

my argument here is i want you to have a better life. and i think you're not going to get a better high of from federal leadership until we take this country in a different direction. joe biden has had his chance. did the policies work? nancy pelosi had her chance. did the policies work? tim ryan has had his chance for 20 years and i think we need to take this country and this state in a different direction. but to get there, to do anything worth doing, i need your help and i need your support and i'd be honored to have it. god bless you guys and have a good night. moderator: thank you very much, mr. vance. congressman ryan, two minutes. rep. ryan: we see a lot of important things happen on tv that are culture, culturally related, and people ask me all the time, why do you talk about jobs all the time? i said let me tell you about my grandfather. he's a steel worker in niles, ohio, for 40 years. he worked 40 hours a week five days a week.

and he was able, because he had a good job, he was able to give back. he was the lead usher at 10:45 mass at our lady of mount carmel church. he ran the beer tent at the summer festival because he had a good job and he was able to give back and participate in the civic life of our community because he had a good job. he said you always got to vote for the school vis -- levies, police and fire, mental health levies because that build and strong community. that's why we've got to get these good-paying jobs back at ultima, the electric vehicles, the two natural gas power plants, a billion dollars apiece, all the stuff we've been doing downtown in youngstown. these communities were boarded up 20 years ago. we worked hard, democrats, republicans, independents, to bring economic development back here, and it's a shame that someone running for senate wants to come to youngstown and trash all the hard work that we've done together over the last 20 years.

and we've got to do the kind of things that my grandfather did: give back, serve, but it starts with a good-paying job. rebuilding the great american middle class. getting rid of these bad trade deals, cutting taxes for workers, making sure we dominate the industries of the future, manufacturing of cars and trucks and electric vehicles and tractors and batteries. going all in on natural gas so that we can make sure we reduce costs for manufacturers here. we've got a bright future. i've been here my whole life. i never left. i didn't abandon this place and go for higher -- greener pastures in san francisco and then come back and want to parachute in with $55 million of out of state money from the biggest corporations in the entire country. the ones that ship the jobs overseas. i'm here, i'm going to stay here. i appreciate your vote. go to timforoh.com and chip in a few bucks because we're getting our money from the people and i'll be your senator when i get there.

moderator: mr. vance, mother nature must have wanted to see the debate. the game is delayed, hasn't started yet. this concludes tonight's coverage of the u.s. senate debate. we want to thank the candidates for being here and thank you to everyone who tuned in for that very special night. we want to thank the staff at stambaugh auditorium for all the hard work to put this together. tune in tonight for 21 news at 11:00, we'll have a complete recap.

c-span thanks these organizations for sharing their campaign 2022 debate. key elements of the democratic process in the spirit of public service. c-span, your unfiltered view of politics. >> our campaign 2022 coverage continues sunday on c-span1 former president donald trump campaigninin florida for republican candidates, live at 5:00. president biden i westminster you new york, that gets underway at 6:00 p.m.. a reminder at these campaign events are available to watch on the go with a ee seat and now video app or online at c-span.org. >> tuesday, election day.

starting at 8:00 eastern, watch live election night coverage to see which party will control congress. here the results as they happen from house, senate, and governor races from around the country. victory and concession speeches from the candidates, on c-span, c-span now, and on c-span.org/campaign 2022. >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more. putting sparklight. including sparklight. >> at sparklight, it is our home too. we are all facing our greatest challenge. that is why sparklight is working around the clock to keep you connected. >> sparklight supports c-span as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy.

>> now more on the 2022 midterm elections and issues most important to voters. from the american enterprise institute, this is an hour and a half. political and policy consequences if republicans win the house and/or the senate. ,

>> we have with us one of the founders of election watch. maybe some of you have been here to every session as well. we will look for some of you after the fact. i will turn it to chris, and we will get going. just a couple of pieces of business here. we are going to have some presentations as we always do on the big picture things, the house, the senate, governors, other things. we are going to turn to your questions. for those in the room, we will take your questions in the microphone. for those of you from afar, we have a couple of ways you can pose questions. one is through emailing, nate dodge moore at adi.org. or at twitter with the #ai election watch. i will turn to chris and we will begin.

>> of course, never tweet, as we know. for your own sake. we do look forward to having her questions. you are extraordinarily lucky humans, because i was thinking about this today. i do not think that you could have gotten a better group of political experts then this lovely bunch of people. and, in a period where heartaches are all around us, you are in for something good today. the reason you are in for something good is because these people are thoughtful, smart, patriotic, they don't take any cheap shots, and they are funny. anderson, founding partner at echelon insights. through her work at a salon, she regularly advises government leaders on pulling and messaging strategy and has become one of the foremost experts on the millennial generation.

her book is available in hardcover and e-book. kristen is the host of serious xm, the trend line. she is an on-air political contributor, and has previously been a contributor at fox news and abc news. you are a spring 2020 two fellow at georgetown university's institute for public service. serve as a resident. in 2013, she was named one of times 30 under 30 changing the world. >> i am no longer under 30. [laughter] >> sean is a nonresident fellow at the american enterprise institute where he works on elections, american political trends, voting patterns, demographics. he is also the senior elections analyst for politics. before becoming a full-time political analyst, he practiced

law for eight years. he represented clients in a variety of settings. he has a law degree and a masters degree in political science from duke, and he is currently pursuing a phd in political science at the ohio state university. when it comes to tracking this stuff, no one is better. norm orenstein is a senior fellow emeritus at the american enterprise institute where he has been studying politics, elections, and the u.s. congress, for more than four decades. previously served as founder of the election reform project. he has been involved in political reform for decades. he is also played a part in creating the congressional office of compliance. he was elected fellow of the national academy of the arts and sciences in 2004. you have read him everywhere. he is also a contributing editor

for the atlantic and the new york times best-selling author, pretty cool. here is what we're going to do. we are going to share with you the little specialties that we have prepared, the chefs specials. we will have a free-flowing conversation up here. we are going to start with kristin, who will tell us what the heck is going on. >> we are headed into a midterm where history tells us republicans ought to have a great night. if you go back decades, if you are the party that is out of power, traditionally headed into this midterm, you are poised to pick up seats. voters get agitated, the grass is always greener. whoever is in charge, they are doing a garbage dump, let us bring in the others. republics -- republicans have a lot of historical wind at their back, they also have an economy that is fueling an environment for voters to want change. inflation being as high as it

is, cost of living is a major issue. in addition to anxiety about what is happening to my 401(k), that is hitting people in the pocketbooks and making them take another look at the party that is not currently in power. something that i think in this election is a little bit different, that doesn't just make it a huge slam dunk for republicans is the fact that normally, the right track and wrong track numbers would be a metric that would tell us republicans would have a great night. when you ask voters do you think the country is on the right track or the wrong track, they typically say wrong track. or are saying wrong track then we have seen in about a decade. early in the summer, it got a little better. the barometer would suggest the party out of power having a huge night. the difference is that you have a lot of people who are a democrat who are nevertheless saying, i think things are on the wrong track.

the reason why they think that are the opposite of the reasons why a republican might say things are on the wrong track. you have a lot of discontent. there is going to be a real pressure on commentators like us to come up with a single unified theory of what is happening. is it inflation? is it abortion? is it immigration and crime? is it candidate polity? i would encourage all of you to resist the temptation to think that it all comes down to one issue. it is the economy, stupid. you can borrow from james in the early 90's. you can generally apply that here. i think it is about the insecurity. americans feeling like economically, they aren't sure what things look like. they aren't sure how much it will cost to fill up the gas tank. they aren't sure what their 401(k) will look like. they want stability and security, economically. in terms of physical security, they are concerned about rising

crime, concerned about the border. concerned about foreign affairs, generally, but worries about, what if vladimir putin wakes up on the wrong side of the bed? what happens if china decides that they really would like to bring taiwan back? what if all of things start happening that suddenly leads to physical insecurity the >> and then you have anxiety about our democracy itself. to what extent are we so divided? it is one of the only thing i see them poles that everyone agrees on, we are divided. people are concerned that our democracy may be fraying, and they worry that their rights might be at stake, whether it is roe v. wade or ability to live out their religious views, and so on. that sense of anxiety is economic, physical, and anxiety about institutions. it is leading voters to feel

unsettled, insecure, and that is part of why we expect voter turn out to be absolutely skyhigh in this midterm election. >> let me ask you about that. in the beginning, it seemed there was a consensus in the data that said republican intensity was beyond democratic intensity. it seems like democrats caught up. where do we think we are on the intensity got right now? >> i still think republicans have a tiny advantage, but it is not nearly the kind of advantage you would act in a big wave election year. i don't believe the democrats feel complacent. i believe they feel under threat and like their vote counts. i do think a big? is going to be for the younger voters. younger voters, there is some day and i am seeing that suggests they are not likely to turn out interest as great of numbers as they did in the 2018 midterm, or at least as a

proportion of the electorate may not be as influential. that would be bad news for democrats. however, at the same time, you are seeing younger voters more tuned in, they now have -- whether it is through social media, more pervasive in their life. the extent to which democrats can hold together their coalition is a big? . >> abortion is a motivator here, it seemed like maybe that was overstated. i can't quite tell, there is some contradictory evidence here. do we know about -- it is women, independent women, who is being driven by this issue and how much are they being driven? >> that is a big driver of younger voters. it has faded this issue out of the headlines, part of the reason why you may be seeing that. i also think, the narrative

around dobbs house completely change the election. it may have been a little overstated. i think another thing that has helped if you have not had a rash of republican candidate really stepping in on this issue. i believe that last night and the pennsylvania senate debate, you had a dr.'s and his opponent around the issue of abortion that is likely to be on the airwaves. i will allow my other panelists to dig deeper. i don't think republicans are out of the woods. i do think they have blunted some of the damage. >> my friend and colleague john is going to walk us through the house. you don't have to go to vegas to bout the line on the number in the house. >> biggest would not be a crazy place to think about some of the races. kristen did a good job laying out some of the big picture issues in terms of how big a

wave this is going to be. a few things historically about what the house might look like, and then delve into some more specifics. first, the midterm election does go against the presidents party, a very strong trend. only three times since the civil war has the presidents party against the. those three times has been when the president has been dramatically popular, nearly 65% job approval ratings for both bill clinton, george w. bush in 2002, franklin roosevelt in 1934. those are the only cases where you actually gain seats with a party in the white house. other institutions, the senate, not following quite as strongly. the big point is, the president in the white house is usually not good for the party running for the house. as things are worse, as the

president's job approval rating is lower, things are even worse. by that measure, all along for the last year and a half, we should be looking at what is a very good republican year. joe biden's numbers are still not pretty good. the low point for joe biden was really kind of in the late spring where it dropped even further. in the 30's? a little bit of a bounce back. things are still not that great. there are contradictory trends that we saw in the summer, abortion, special elections, people looked out the generic ballot a bit. maybe not as good for republicans. i think you started to see -- while those may still be factors, you started to see a return to the fundamentals. the number of seats that we are talking about that republicans are going to gain, the

forecasters are upping those. we are moving seats into the republican column. the place where money is being spent is on races that henry olson, have been in seats that are pretty democratic. i know that we saw today, in the last couple days, a number of democrats giving money to julia brownley. that is a district where joe biden won by 20 points. i think she is probably going to lose, but where you start to realize people are worried about these outliers, sean patrick maloney, katie porter, people like that. those are little less democratic. the 12th, 13 point biden districts, that we move back a little bit. maybe not back fully to where the worst of the worst case scenario for democrats, but certainly, i think we move back towards the fundamentals. i am a little more bullish then republicans then some of the forecasters.

i think a 15 seat loss for democrats would be a good day for them. i think that they should be happy if they only lose 15 and therefore lose the house. i think republicans are more likely to be in the 20's, a really great republican night might start to flirt with 30. i think generally speaking, we will see something more fundamental than we saw back over the summer, where we were thinking that the fundamentals were looking one way, but these other factors were looking the other. a few things about where the seats are, what the house might look like in terms of the range of outcomes, first, states where republicans could gain more than one seat, states where it is possible, especially if they do better, new york, pennsylvania, florida, michigan, california, nevada, oregon, virginia, ohio, plenty of other seats with one

seat that they might be able to take. i know, being a new englander, we have no republicans represented in the house today. there are actually four seats, one in each of the four states, maine, new hampshire, rhode island, and connecticut, they may not although republican, but they are being contested. i think you probably will see a republican at least in new england. then think about where some of the more, where democrats are able to win on from territory, and where republicans are likely to win on biden territory. i mentioned to julia brownley, probably not going to happen, the outlier. certainly, republicans with david and rhode island, which is a plus 14 seat. they might be able to win there. those are seats that are pretty democratic. democrats may hold onto their most republican seat.

in part, that is because of the electoral system. the top four systems that they have. jared golden might hold on. matt cartwright, trump seat. they all could lose. some of them may hold on. for the most part, those are the only seats in trumped territory. democrats have a chance to win. so, if we thought about the gop winning all of the seats not go up to about a biden plus seven, that would be two and a half point swing to the republican side, versus neutral. that would be a 235 or so gain, result form, 235 to 200. could be higher or lower, but that gives you some indication of the types of seats we are

looking at that will be in play. finally, a few thoughts about women, african-americans, and hispanics in the house. today, we have one to three women in the house. -- 123 women. on the democratic side, i think that is probably going to be about the same, it could go down, but likely to increase. republicans are likely -- they could be up to 43 republican women in the house. that would be a very good night. african-americans are 56, where all but two are democratic. on the democratic side, we are likely to see a little bit of a increase, and the republican side, an interesting story, we are very likely to see at least four republicans, house members, african-americans come up to seven.

that is the highest number of african-american republicans in the house. then finally, hispanics, i think we will see the largest increase come about as a large, growing demographic. there are 40 hispanic members in congress today. i think we will be close to 50 at the end of the day. 29 of them are democrats. there will be more democratic hispanic members. a minimum of 30, maybe up to 37. the current 11 on the republican side are also very likely to increase, up to 16. you will see changes, we changes will be more to the republican side, but these other changes, as well. >> how much did the reverse coattails of joe biden, as republican -- as you listen to republicans talk, and they are thinking about those wonderful years like 2010, 53 seats, they had in mind at the beginning, part of the reason that those

numbers don't seem to be in reach is that in 2020, republicans did better than expected and won back in some seats that they had lost in 2018. when we look at the universe of seats that are really in play, what are we talking about? 30, 35? >> the fact that republicans are in sitting distance, that is already a very high mark. some of the seats are already taken. i think we are probably talking about a universe of 45 or 50 seats. some of those are outlined. they are mostly on the democratic side. there certainly are a few places where republicans are struggling to hold on. perhaps in ohio. i think it is a smaller playing field, and the realignment that we had, it took a long time, but

very conservative democrats holding republican seats, which were some of those seats they lost in 2010 and 2014. those are in there either. i think the playing field is smaller, but it is pretty decent for republicans. >> i think that is a very right analysis. a very smart man and you want to listen to him. i will make you listen to me talk to gubernatorial elections now. you got a free lunch out of it come about how it goes. i love gubernatorial elections, it is my favorite, because they are one of the weirdest -- the last weird things in politics. the governor of maryland, is one of the most popular governors in the country, he is a republican in a very blue state. same goes for the governor of massachusetts. the governor of kansas, is a democrat, she is not favored to

win, but she is in a tossup race. people are still able to defeat toxic partisanship on the gubernatorial level. sometimes it is because, as a west virginian, the governor from the other party goes to prison or something and then you need somebody from the other party. there is often a necessity of in case of emergency, break glass and release the opposition party. it is, i think, something that should be -- i don't want to encourage anybody to do anything, but that should be admired. but americans still have the ability to do this. let's just quickly go through the races where -- and because of what kristen talked about with turnout, because of -- you pick them. it is a long way for me to get out of taking responsibility for

the following forecast. basically, these states, arizona, arkansas, nevada, oregon, and wisconsin, these look like tossup races. it will depend on how it goes. i think it is a good example of a state where you have a strong connection between the governorship and a senate race, tony evers and wisconsin would really have liked it if mandela barnes, these senate candidate, was more competitive. that would really be helping him. instead, it is working the opposite direction. there is this linkage. sean will break this down for us. if you look at pennsylvania and georgia, here are states where republicans in georgia is going to absolutely stop, it looks like, his democratic challenger. the republican senate candidate is struggling.

in pennsylvania, you have a basically the bottom has fallen out for the republican gubernatorial candidate. doug mastriano, he has been left for dead by his party. fun, the senate race is very competitive. how much ticket splitting can really go on for these gubernatorial races? how will these things be reconciled? will 7% of the electorate split? eight percent? those would be huge numbers. those are joe manchin kind of numbers. it is very rare. when you start looking at these gubernatorial elections, you can see there is this existing tension between the atmosphere and the personnel. who the candidates are and how that is going. arizona is a particularly interesting case about democrats effort to prop up people who supported trump's effort to steal a second term.

the, doug ducey, the term limited incumbent, is a normal republican. the republican trying to succeed him is loud. she is full on, all the way loud. the democrats nominated katie hobbs, who is these states secretary of state. she has turned out to be a real flop. what democrats in arizona thought was that she will be easier to beat because she is kooky. then they didn't pick a good candidate. she won't even debate carry. democrats in arizona are quite correctly anxious about what could happen in a swing state, electing a governor who enthusiastically [indiscernible]. she is, much like in pennsylvania, this is very concerning for democrats, it should be very concerning for republicans rated this is an

example of the backfire for the democrats overestimating how easily it would be to beat some of these people. arizona is still a really republican state. georgia is still a republican state. the defeat donald trump in this state was not indicative of change here. this wasn't a flip, this was movement. other ones, just to think about, oklahoma i think kevin will be fine, but it has gotten a little weird out there. his challenger is really impressive. joy hofmeister has really been on him about crime. this is another thing to remember. democrats only belatedly found out they could use crime as an issue to their advantage. she has really given him hell over the fact that -- she said we have a higher violent crime rate in oklahoma than they do in california and new york.

can you believe she would say that about oklahoma? fact-check, yeah. mostly true. entirely true. democrats only belatedly in these races found out. crime is an issue that works great for governors races. senate, a little more tenuous. making the connection between who your senator is and crime rates -- if you have an incumbent governor, democrats waited too long to say that. ron desantis looks like he is just going to lob charlie crist back to the stone age. that will cost democrats another $100 million or whatever. same in texas. new york. i don't know. i would have told you two months ago that there was no way that we seldom would be competitive with kathy.

as my colleagues have pointed out, the climate is turning a little more republican. he is an absolutely tireless campaigner. that will be one to watch, too. i can only promise you, at least one gubernatorial election this year will be bizarre. somebody will just win a race, and we will say, we won't even watching that one that is why i like to cover the governor stuff. >> i was going to ask you, you have hinted at it, you mentioned oklahoma, new york about what is your race outside of these tossup? what is another one that really comes on the board? >> i am not sure you're willing to go there with oklahoma, maybe new york. i will say, if we are doing that, i will say maine. maine is weird, maine is like the west virginia of new england.

page has a certain kind of appeal. another thing here is, the giving up part. the way that you have strange things happen is that one side or the other gives up. if democrats in pennsylvania give up, because of the senate race, that has down valid consequences. maine could be a place like that. who the heck knows. we definitely should talk about oregon. i want to get everybody's names mostly right. in oregon, we have term limited -- and she struggle at the beginning, but basically is finishing behind, kate brown. we have an independent named betsy johnson. i don't want to say that she is like the mad bomber of this race, she just doesn't care. everyone said, you would ruin the democrats chances, and you would let esteemed drazen --

christine drazan, the republican is going to get past tina kotek, who is the democrat. and you are creating this opportunity. she is a very liberal, unabashedly, i will put it this way. if you saw her, you would not think she was from a state other than oregon. i mean that with a lot of love. no one would be like, you are probably from south florida. she is definitely from oregon. the trail mix is real. people are responding to her message which is, we shouldn't have to put up with these blowdried politicians and, it looks like she is taking more from the d band they are. i don't know. i will be watching. >> as a french-canadian, i appreciate your reference. >> we are turning to sean, sean

will walk us through the senate races. >> it is always a homecoming coming back to aei. it can't be right i was a research assistant 25 years ago, that would mean that i only have two more months to get my 50 under 50, i don't think it will happen. seriously, further research, it takes like 30 seconds. you will never have a better place to be in your early 20's or early 30's in your life. it is just a fantastic opportunity to work with emc presentations by some of the country's best scholars, the institute, unlike some other places, rings and scholars from the other side of the spectrum. you can be introduced to people you never even considered. in 1998, i was a research assistant for an economist, i wanted to do a presentation on the 1998 election.

that was the first time that i ever gave an election talk. here i am. make the most of your time. i also have friends for life, people who i am still facebook friends with. it is a fantastic place to be. so, moving to the senate, the senate elections, i phrased them as the irresistible force meets the immovable object. the national environment, which we have talked about consistently, but the one thing that i have always used to reject elections has been presidential job approval. right now, joe biden's job approval is shaping up to be lower than either barack obama or donald trump. both of them famously got dumped. against that, it is the immovable object, which is that

these senate candidates on the republican side are terrible. they are probably the single worst collection of senate candidates for competitive races that i have encountered in my 25 years of following elections. it is not bad. for a good part of the summer, it actually looked like, contrary to my expectations, the immovable object would win out. over the last month, really, things are starting to shift back. i am kind of a republican, but i am not sure which races are going to come through. the battle for the senate really comes down to five senate seats that are at the core, and a senate seat on either side. probably, i think the best -- we start out with the 50-50 senate. republicans have an imagining about a senate race where adam

is the grandson of a nevada senator and son of a new mexico senator. he is a candidate who can appeal to both the trump wing and the establishment wing. that is why he is the candidate that is doing well. he is really able to put a foot in both camps. he has been leading his opponent, catherine cortez, first-term senator, pretty consistently, although narrowly in the polls. he could lose, if there is a poll era, he could easily lose. right now, he is the front runner for that state. what used to be my countervailing senate race was pennsylvania. on the car right over, i gave a lot of thought to how i was going to talk about that. it is a little tough. if you haven't heard about the

debate last night, john fetterman had a stroke in april. he disappeared from the campaign trail for about six months. this debate was kind of consider to be his opportunity to put concerns about his health at rest. he did not. his opening line was, good night, everyone. my first reaction was a chuckle, but it was like that for the rest. someone should have stopped him. it was just sad. on the other hand, dr. oz, yes, that dr. oz, all he had to do was stand back and forget federman was there and just kind of give some speeches and questions. there is the old joke, the differences between a surgeon and god, god understands he is

not a surgeon. oz decided he would go in for the kill. it was just bad. i think it was something that he had been bad on the assumption that federman was performing well. he just didn't have -- that is just not appropriate for what is going on right now. he also, this was alluded to earlier, he also had a line where he said he thought abortion -- this is like a parody of what pro-choicers say pro-lifers believe. he thought abortion should be a choice between a woman, her doctor, and local elected officials. needless to say, that is going to be like every commercial you see in pennsylvania for the next two weeks. i think enough undecided voters probably saw federman and

decided he is not up to the task so oz becomes the favorite. my one caveat is that, it was so bad, he was sympathetic. there was a real chance that republicans pick up -- aside from republicans pouncing the other media narrative, this is actually a chance where republicans really could overplay their hand. you have to be very careful how to handle this. i am not sure what will happen. that is still, in my mind, leads republicans up one. you have these other two senate ratios -- races, herschel walker did kind of the opposite i federman. he was saying things like the reason we have about air was in china took all our good air and sent their bad air over to us.

he was accused by his son of having paid for a girlfriends abortion, even though he was running as a pro-life candidate. he actually showed up for his debate and as low as expectations had been set, he exceeded them. he did have this weird thing where he pulled out a toy cop badge. i am not saying he performed spectacularly, expectations had been set so low for him, he exceeded them. he has been kind of writing his ship. when the abortion story broke, if you look at the trend lines, they go like this and then walker does this, but warnock doesn't do this. warnock keeps going right about here. now walker is coming back up. i don't think warnock picked up congress, which he probably needs.

that race is probably going to a runoff, almost certainly. and so, we will have a better sense for how that goes. how that race goes in a runoff is dependent on how republicans have done in the senate races elsewhere. we can discuss that in q&a. that leaves arizona where republicans nominated peter teal and invested heavily in blake masters. after he won the nomination, he said, congratulations and walked away, leaving masters unfunded. the establishment hates him, he is not raising any money from normal sources. as gravity has taken over, not race is close within a couple points. the funders have finally said, we have to support this guy. we can't just toss away a senate seat. my basic thought is that republicans are probably going

to win arizona, and then one of those other states, probably pennsylvania. the two seats briefly on the periphery is wisconsin, ron johnson is not a good fit for the swing state of pennsylvania, but he has now been pretty consistently up on the polls by a few points on mandela barnes. three points now, on average. for a republican incumbent running in a year where there is an unpopular democratic president, that probably gets him off the finish line. he is not resting easy right now. the other race, speaking of candidates that democrats have helped nominate, new hampshire -- i am blinking on -- dan? john. thank you. he has some out their theories about vaccines, not just

election stuff but vaccines and the whole nine yards. democrats, it did look like it would go to the state senate president, it was morally normal republican. then the closing week, the democrats dumped $2 million on the state senate president had. they won the nomination i have a point. the last two polls have had the incumbent democrat up one point and up three points. part of me i think it is, i can't accept the fact that he might win that senate race. i am probably wrongly putting it on the periphery when it might be more of a true tossup. if current trends continue, all trends continue until they don't come out if these trends continue, he would have a very good chance of winning. >> about ticket splitting. talk about the interrelation in the two weirdest senate races.

you have governors of the opposite party, gubernatorial candidates that are performing quite well. and, the delta between the gubernatorial candidate brian kemp, and josh shapiro and herschel walker and john fetterman. how does not get reconciled? >> in previous years, i would say they are not correlated. because governors are special. vermont has a republican governor. increasingly, things have converged. one thing that is interesting is that stacey abrams and warnock aren't that far apart. kemp and walker were substantially apart, which tells me, this is kind of my theory of how this plays out, those undecided republicans thought say, i don't know if i can vote for this guy. which is why i have kind of

think we have seen this tightening. when you have a president with 40% strongest approval, there is a good chance the undecided voters disapprove of the president. i actually kind of think that in georgia, -- how many kemp warnock voters are they going to be? how many shapiro's voters are there out there? this increasingly polarized environment, you have to think everything will converge. >> and a ton of under votes. >> i think there will be some of those republicans will say, i don't have to actually pull the lever for warnock, i think you will see a fair amount of that. >> we can't let you out of here without talking about ohio. you didn't put it on your list, i think i might understand why. also, a very big delta between

the governor's race, j.d. vance might win by a smaller amount. what is your thoughts? >> i always think state polling is random. even if you get a couple elections in a row where they .1 way -- ohio polling has been atrocious for a decade. it is really bad. even in 2018, there wasn't a single pole in the last two weeks that was won by six points. the end contrary case is that ryan comes from youngstown, which is the swing. of the state. he might over perform. at the end of the day, the fact that he -- ryan is at 44 and vance is not 46 or 47, i think this is a classic race probably

ends up ryan get a point or two. vance wins by six or eight points. >> we have talked about that, that was the worst primary of my lifetime. the ads, j.d. vance -- josh mandel who was the quintessential establishment canada who decided he was going to be trumping, he was just terrible at it. he burned money that's one point, he had a video where he was talking about bitcoin and he lit a $10 bill on fire on twitter. that was a doozy. >> mike gibbons challenge someone to a fight on the debate stage. it was real. >> ok.

now, i think we have an idea about which way the wind is blowing. norm ornstein knows a lot about what happens when you have changes, when stuff goes on. and know he is going to give us the lay of the land. if things were to go past the four of us have concurred, what is going happen? >> thanks, chris. this is the 40th year that we have done this, i was president after creation. we have a creator here, but is kyle bowman. [applause] he really started election watch before anyone else was doing anything like it. also, john mentioned research assistants, one of our very own, andrew, is sitting here. andrew helped a lot with election watch when he was here.

without, a couple of just comments as we move along. out of black salt, -- adam, housing other characteristic. 18 members of his family said they would vote for his opponent. you lose your own family, that doesn't mean that you are going to lose your state. i would also keep isla. 89-year-old chuck grassley is the republican candidate. he was out campaigning yesterday in a nursing home. i asked a resident, do you know who i am? but she said, if you ask at the front of us, they will tell you. [laughter] and north carolina. if, in fact, our panelists are wrong and the trend swirls a little bit, we may see a couple of upsets in the senate. it is not entirely clear. i would also add that the

polling is just terrible. you cannot trust polling. response rates are down to an almost trace element level. this is not science anymore, cooks trying to get the right mix of people. we also have some holes that are just horrible, and media are doing a terrible job of sorting out the ones to pay attention to, and the ones that you don't. there are some pollsters out there that rigged the results early on so they can get included in the composite numbers, and then try and adjust towards the end so that when they are rated, they come out ok. we don't know a lot about where we are. we also know there has been a surge of early voting. all of that taken into account, it is hard to imagine the circumstance where democrats hold onto the house and the senate is in the balance.

let's talk a little bit about the consequences. here again, i fall the media, because it is all horse race, all about john fetterman stroke and not about what these elections actually mean. there is very little about what the candidates are saying or what they stand for. one thing we know is, as fivethirtyeight.com has pointed out, at least 126 republican candidate for the house with a 95% plus chance of winning. our election desires. almost 300 republican candidates for the house, the senate, governorships, the attorney and secretary of state, a substantial majority of all those candidates are election deniers. that doesn't just mean they are narrowly focused on whether 2020 was won by joe biden or donald trump, it is a template for a

kind of radical populist attitude. that means the republican majority in the house is going to have a substantial majority of its own members who fit into that category. that means that when we look at what will be divided government, almost certainly -- we will talk about the senate any minute. it means we are headed for an extremely difficult time. we can look at an analogy. the analogy is, the 2011 congress coming in after the disastrous 2010 election for democrats, the tea party surged. we know that tea party surge was encouraged by the three republican leaders at the time who called themselves the young guns. paul ryan, kevin mccarthy, eric cantor. we know that they planned a confrontation with barack obama.

demands. we came dangerously close to going into default. if it were not for -- that was egged on by kevin mccarthy and eric cantor. if it were not for john boehner and mitch mcconnell, who saw -- i think in boehner's case that this would be a disaster for the country, in mcconnell's case, a disaster for the republicans who were trying to recapture a majority in the senate, pulled us back from the brink. we came close to breaching the debt ceiling. interest rates went up and was estimated by economic consultants a few years later, it probably cost an extra $18 billion to the federal government because of just simply the threat of that happening. the biggest question mark we have heading into next year is, will we get a repeat of that? i would say, we will get a repeat except we will come closer to the abyss.

back then, the tea party group, that populist, conservative group coming in, was a driving force in the republican majority. but, not the majority of the majority. we did not have a freedom caucus at that point. we had the republican study committee, created in 1973 to try and move the party in a conservative direction. 2015 in the middle of that revolution, we got the freedom caucus. the right wing republican study committee was not right-wing enough. now, we have another group that says the freedom caucus is not right-wing enough. i would wager to you that the freedom caucus, or its equivalents, will have a majority of the majority. a substantial majority of the majority.

back after we came back from the break, jason chapin's, tea party person in the house said, we would have pushed this over the cliff. they did not. this time, they might. one of the big questions we will see in the lame-duck session after the ducks have settled from the selection is whether the two parties, and in particular, mitch mcconnell who understands the consequences of this, will work with democrats to try and get a fix to the debt ceiling. we are the only significant nation that has a requirement that you increase the debt ceiling every time you come close to where it is. if not, we could be headed for extraordinarily difficult times. let me say in addition, we are going to have divided government. we will probably have divided government. i think it is more likely than not, sean aside, that democrats seek out a narrow majority. let's stipulate that for the moment. you cannot plummet legislation by yourself.

even if you have both houses of congress. you have to overcome presidential vetoes if you are trying to implement policy change. it is not clear what policies would be on the table for that. what you can do if you have the legislative branch is use two powers to assert your authority. one is the investigative power. we already know what is on the agenda. it will be investigations of afghanistan, hunter biden, large numbers of both of those. of the border. it will be investigations leading towards the impeachment of at least merrick garland and alejandro mallorca's and others. we will see a lot of investigations that have been promised by jim jordan, who will chair the judiciary committee. and kevin mccarthy himself has

said he wants to give marjorie taylor greene a prominent position on the government oversight reform committee, which itself is a major investigative outlet. the second is the power of the purse. using that leverage, the debt ceiling and spending itself, we already know in the works is an attempt to cut back on or cut out aid to ukraine. we also know that both the debt ceiling and the appropriations are going to be used as leverage probably to try and force resignations of some cabinet members. also to try and bring about fundamental change in medicare and medicaid. kevin mccarthy has said that using the debt ceiling to try and dramatically change medicare, medicaid and social security. these are going to be nonnegotiable items. we are likely to see government shutdowns at least for period of time, targeted appropriations. it will not be every

appropriation. but, and an enormously contentious time. it may be some things below the surface that will get done. but, in more than 50 years of being immersed in this process, i have not seen a dynamic as potentially disruptive as this one to governance in the broadest sense at the federal level. if republicans take majority in the senate, they have an additional power. that is the power of confirmation. we know that there will be no more judges during the final two years of joe biden's term. and we know we are likely to see significant disruptions in the administration itself. what happens in every administration, after two years, you see a lot of turnover. cabinet members -- some cabinet

people, and a lot of others leave. they leave before the end of the term, sometimes they are just tired. other times, they are looking for the next opportunity and one will leave before the end of the term. normally, what you hope will happen if you are a president is you will have filled all the lower ranks. the third, the fourth, the fifth level. the deputy assistant secretaries. so when the assistant secretaries and under secretaries or cabinet officials and agency heads leave, you have people confirmed and in place where you can move them up. even if they are not confirmed for their new position under the vacancies act, you can move them as acting people. a lot of those positions have not been filled in the biden administration. some of them at the lower levels will leave. that will mean if they do not get confirmed or the people coming and do not get confirmed with any timeliness that they can be dragged out or blocked

entirely, you can have a hollowed out administration. where you have a congress and a president that cannot work together to get legislation work, you use executive action. it is going to be harder to use executive action if you cannot have your own people in place to actually administer those jobs. what will that do to the electorate is one of the most interesting questions we have. i think one of the reasons we have seen this populace of not just emerge but persist through bad times and good times is that since that government isn't working. one of the consequences of this is two generations of younger voters do not think much of democracy. we know that we are getting close to a majority of people if polls are to be viewed as accurate who think a strong leader who is unelected would be

better than a weak leader who is elected. we are moving closer to a point where the dysfunction of government is going to make autocracy seem more attractive. the consequences for this are not just about what happens in the next year or two. but, much more broadly for what kind of a republic, if any, we will have looking ahead towards 2024 or 2025. i just come back as chris was talking about governors, if some of these elections denying governors. if some of these gubernatorial candidates win, keep your eye on the supreme court and the independent legislators doctrines and cases moving forward. the case for the 2024 election becomes crucial as well. >> one follow-up, you talked about what congress might do, we had clinton and 94 and barack

obama in -- who lost their majorities and i would say they took different stances. clinton's opinion was more conciliatory and barack obama continued with his stance over all. what do you think joe's stance will be? what is his legislative program going to look like with a partially republican congress? >> there won't be a legislative program basically. biden is a 36 year veteran of the senate still basically believes in the legislative process. as you've seen over the last few months, he recognizes it's not what it was. i suspect he will be more

combative in his public approach and he will try as best as he can use that executive authority. one of the other factors to keep in mind as we now have a supreme court that has changed its fundamental view of executive power. perhaps because there is an executive they are not as happy with stuff we are very close to having the supreme court reject the chevron doctrine. that was one of the things that antonin scalia a with most ardent about. if agencies follow the administrative procedure act and make an honest effort with ambiguities in the law to carry out their constitutional functions of faithfully administering the law,, it has to be very specific in the legislation and we saw that in the case of the epa. congress came back and basically gave the epa back authority to

deal with clean air. even over the last 20 years where it's been more difficult to do things and they are more ambiguous you could build a coalition to make it work, along with the reality that things happen, you don't know what will occur. we had the cdc curtailed when it comes to its authority to do with public health with the pandemic. there may be a different kind of pandemic or a chemical attack that comes along that is not specifically covered in the law and we may see the court say you can't act under those circumstances. there will be more challenges to executive authority if you find that congress and the president cannot work together in the

federal government may become less and less functional from a low functionality otherwise. if somehow democrats manage to win both houses, we would see reconciliation where you can overcome a filibuster. if they got a few more senate seats and held the house, the likelihood which is infinitesimal, we might see changes in the filibuster rule where more be done but we are far off from any of those options and i think biden will try to take this to the country and as to how the country asked all of that, it's an unknown. >> we will get to questions momentarily. if you are watching at home and have questions, you can send your emailed to us. i like to enough that you can say you can go on twitter with the#election watchadi. the new york times poll that was

out at the beginning of this week said that 80% of americans, including all per lyrical persuasions if left unchecked would destroy the country. you laid out how republicans could destroy republicans. i promise you republicans are sincere when they say they think democrats are trying to destroy the republic. they point to a lot of cultural issues and economic issues and they are sincere. i know you are sincere. what do we do to come back from a place where 46% of the country thinks another 46% of the country is not just wrong but evil and is not just incorrect trying to destroy the country?

how do we as citizens, i was going to say intellectuals but how can we come back from this and not persist in this acrid space? >> you are right about where the space is. it's the cancer of tribalism. we don't simply have polarization. we've been talking about the quality of candidates and the quality of candidates does not matter anymore because you were looking at whether you will give comfort to the enemy by choosing someone who is a better candidate over someone who is utterly unqualified for a position or incapable of serving but he's one of your own. we've lost a lot of the acuity you would hope to find in elections and we are seeing primary elections that are decided not on the basis of who is the best person to serve in office but over how much they carry the tribal armament forward.

it's very hard to get out of that and it's hard to get out of it because it's a cultural problem even more than a structural problem. changing culture is extremely difficult. i will also tell you that if we didn't have any of this, i could be up here saying we've got a serious problem of legitimacy going forward because our constitutional structures are getting skewed in a way that moves us further from voters choosing representatives who actually represent them step number i use over and over again as we are almost at a point were 70% of americans will live in 15 of our states and 50% and 80 -- in eight states. that means 30% of americans will all accept these senators. we talk about the house and it's interesting that nobody mentioned redistricting or gerrymandering. because of both natural geographical patterns and the

way in which redistricting is taking place, we are increasingly skewed in the house. you have elections in which a majority of americans vote one way but the legislatures don't show up that way and in the states, it's even more skewed. in wisconsin you could have exceed percent of voters voting one way and the legislature from the other party. if voters go to the polls over and over and see that what they are voting for doesn't come out, you will have a crisis of legitimacy in the same is true with the electoral college. if you put all of that together with the tribalism where looks like government cannot do anything that is resolving problems that face the country, where do you go? i think what we have to do is focus first on people who would be happy to move us away from a republic and toward an autocracy and try to isolate them from the process.

then we've got to try to do what we can to nominate and elect people who will work to solve problems and not to just act in a fashion that's all about lowering the place of so we can ultimately prevail. this will not be easy for dish or a short-term problem. it's the biggest challenge we've had since the 1850's or 1860's. >> i heard they were not great. it's question time so let's start with somebody online stuff do we have anybody on the machine? >> yes, someone online says that early voting used to be huge. it used to be the democrats used to benefit so what has changed?

>> it's not true that low turnout benefit republicans. we had evidence that says that is not so. anyway, why don't you field this one. >> i would encourage everyone to exercise great caution reading anything into early voting data that is coming in because it is true that perhaps a decade ago, early voting or mail-in voting was perhaps split between the parties during the 2020 election and then we saw republicans, the idea of mail-in voting in early voting was poisoned on that side it's entirely possible it's coming back. we don't yet know so i would encourage everybody -- people don't say republicans are doing well because all of these red precincts. take all of that with an enormous grain of salt. >> the presidential election of 2016, 40% of the votes were cast early and then it went to 60% the next cycle.

we don't know what percentage will be early voting. we have permanent shifts in pandemic voting. get a hunch and bet a bunch. >> people showing up early might not show up later so it says nothing about the overall turnout and doesn't say anything about the differentials. i agree, with caution. >> early voting is dictated by the latest democratic leaders. these are the jokes. lunch and a show, not bad. who has a good question in the room? >> this young lady right here. >> hi, i'm interested in why you all think democrats have lost their game since the summer.

is it an unpopular president or did democrats misplayed the politics of dobbs and the economy? what would you have told them to do? >> i am not inviting thedccc. is that the fundamental and inflation and the economy or did democrats actually mess up and choose the wrong message? i think it can be a little bit of both. this will always be a challenging year for democrats and they got very much in their anger about the dobbs decision and it felt like they could -- they had been dealt an incredible political hand.

there are questions of if that peaked too early and was the anger around that decision, has it cooled off a bit? there was a chance that some of the states passing laws that would have gone one direction or the other and candidates putting their foot in the mouth on the issue could have kept alive perhaps more than it has so far. i think by going all in that this is the thing that will save us the election meant missing out on opportunities like chris mentioned earlier, to go on the offense with crime or mental justice. there were opportunities that may have been missed in the sense that dobbs just opened this opportunity that would allow them to defy gravity. they may have gone too far there and as gravity reasserts itself, it's hard to come out with this. maybe it's a message on inflation but it might be too late in the game. >> i think a lot of what happened was the democrats were

angry about joe biden. they thought he had not been progressive enough and there was a lot of biden complaints within the democratic party which is why you saw the college, the student loan forgiveness and you saw the speech in philadelphia at frankenstein's castle. this is why you saw all that stuff because he was trying to get democrats to reengage. what do you think? i don't think -- i think those democrats were always going to come home and be democrats. they were saying they would sit out or they were undecided but those were democratic votes in the end. >> part of this is a question of enthusiasm. we can look back and if i had been joe biden with gas prices sparking, i would have hauled in the top executives from the oil

companies and beat them over the head about excess profits and show your fighting. i think that's one of the reasons why ron desantis is doing as well as he isn't -- is in florida despite a lot of things that should not be working to his advantage because people think he's tough and he's later step that's how you get your enthusiasm levels up. in the end, we don't know but we may look back and say this is keeping us strong in the kansas referendum was striking. we are living in a world where issues last for five or 10 minutes unless they come right back in front of you on a radar screen. the inflation issue because of gas and food prices, if your family because paycheck to paycheck, you see this every week or every day. to really destructive thing for a party to have to deal with

most of i come back to the crime issue and i think chris is right, democrats could have used this issue to their advantage and they ignored it. this is something where you can use to say you are tougher on crime but then you they put republicans more on the defense. where democrats were doing better, we were going to see a lot of the republicans move back. >> we were trying to fit things into a narrative and the special election probably is another place we got off on that. they all have peculiar characteristics but they were held at the same time as the primaries. it's a different set of people so we started to add up a bunch of things.

there was all this good democratic news against the fundamentals but it wasn't always as good as we thought back in july and august. >> are you suggesting a political analyst would over interpret data? >> never. >> we would never do that. let's do another one before we go online. >> [indiscernible] parental authority in public schools is a major issue going forward. a year later, to what extent if

any is this an issue? >> i think we can still call this a pandemic election step when we so the education scores in every state got shelved, this is a pandemic election in ways we are probably not thinking about. >> terry mcauliffe gave one of the worst answers to a question for a high-level candidate. was it a debate or an event? he said something to the effect that parents shouldn't say with their kids. even when you look at virginia, there has been a parental -- journalists need a story. in northern virginia was to concentrate on that fight in loudoun county.

if it really were a parental right election, you would expect big republican games in the last go round and that's not what you saw. you look at the swing on the county level and it was former trust estate. in areas where parental rights have a lot of issues joe biden's job approval is just starting to nosedive. you had that afghanistan withdrawal and inflation was certain starting to take upward. youngkin was an attractive candidate stuff he was a good republican candidate. i don't think that was that kind

of election come i think it was put a brake on democrats. >> we cannot underestimate the importance of covid fatigue on mood or that election. the school closings were disruptive for people in the society. if you are a family with two parents working in one of them cannot work for two years because there is no place to take the kids, that's a horrible thing to have happen. if you don't have two parents working but you got six people in a two-bedroom apartment, that's not any fun either. it takes a long time to come out of this and i think democrats made a huge mistake because it looked like they basically were not empathetic at all to what was happening to families out there. they said the science tells us to do this and we will just do this and that was a big backlash. we may go back into a three-way

crisis with flu and the respiratory issue and the next strain of covid but even if we come out of it, the residue of that is still there and it's a very sour one for people. >> you are all sunshine and rainbows. let's take another one from the folks watching, what do we got? >> gary wants to know more about the utah senate race. why hasn't romney endorsed? >> mike lee defeated the incumbent senator who was a very conservative republican. i can't remember if it was a balanced budget. they get to start thinking about

the voting booth and what power they want controlling the senate. utah is still a very republican state. i think it will be a close race then you would expect. people will likely decide for the republican. as far as the mitt romney component, i'm sure mitt romney finds it hilarious that this guy who used to torch him, how dare you not endorse?

the advantage of being a quarter billionaire is not caring. he's been diligent here of ron. -- he's been just diligent here, right here. >> do you get the sense that there is a silent majority out there in the privacy of the voting booth may in fact reject the doctrine? >> i didn't hear the last part. >> i guess the democratic anti-dobbs. >> in kansas there were 220,000 voters that didn't vote on anything except the referendum.

what's going on? >> i am skeptical there is a big group out there. on the very high side for historically, there is not a lot of people out there that are not coming to the polls. more people are coming to the polls then we expect. i guess i am broadly a believer to the extent that there might be something out there that is moving and we see the movement in republican direction. maybe because it's an election where the president of the democratic party is not doing so well i don't see a big silent majority with dobbs. >> there are three different

ways you can wind up with a silent group of voters. one they are just not being contacted. you had problems like that in 2012. if you did not have a landline phone, you are not being called. the second ways they are contacting people but some people don't want to take the little -- take the poll at all. but maybe some people are just not comfortable at all and they say they are undecided but they are not. the problem the polling world is facing is it's not clear how you would solve each of those problems which one may be more in play. in 2020, you had polls in states like texas which were off.

donald trump wasn't going to lose texas with a whole city would post a why were we missing top voters in texas and not just arizona stop why would you be missing trump voters in florida but not missing them in georgia? that's one of the big challenges we as an industry are facing is it's entirely possible that holes are missing groups of people systematically but the pattern is not clear and you don't have a clear pattern of what's wrong, there is no clear way to fix it. >> the governor's race is the one affected by social issues. oz is the media guy. you are ok saying oz.

>> doug could win the pennsylvania governorship and democrats who spent more money on his candidacy then he did should be ashamed of themselves for doing that stuff it was reckless and i use that advisedly, just patriotic, it was a rotten thing to do stop -- dis-patriotic, it was a rotten thing to do. >> the discussion about the democrats about strategic choices they could've made, the rise of crime, though sort of things. i've talked to democratic organizers but i get no sense that organizers have any idea how far they are to the left on the political mainstream. also that their views and what

the right thing, what's unquestionably the right views are is unshakable. it seems that if the leadership of the democrats had not gone the way you are suggesting, people wouldn't have come out to kansas. the sort of worst-case scenario question is are democrats are now trapped in that situation where they are simply now increasingly up party of college educators. >> one of the consequences of siloed media and people able to create their own media ecosystems they live in is that they are unaware of how crazy they sounds to other people. the people of pennsylvania who

were voting for doug mastroiano, they assumed other people thought like them. they hadn't met anybody who doesn't think the election wasn't stolen and north korean zodiac boats were dropping ballots. just like how democrats blew it in 2021. instead of talking about how great it would be to pass infrastructure legislation and help terry mcauliffe when in virginia, they were ashamed of it because of their base. i think this is a media function. i will stop talking now. >> with thank you for coming today. it's not the end of election watch. we have a postelection event as always we hope you are there but we would like to thank everybody. >> thank you all for tuning into this election watch and janice

-- join us again thursday, november 10 where you will also get a free lunch and we will also have postelection analysis another wonderful set of panelists. before we wrap up and say goodbye, how about a round the applause for our panelists? [applause]thanks. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2022]