In the News: Elections

N. Rodgers: Hey Aughie. J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia, how are you? N. Rodgers: I'm good. How are you? J. Aughenbaugh: Well, I'm good in part because we're doing in the news shoty. N. Rodgers: In the news. J. Aughenbaugh: I like to call them shorties. N. Rodgers: I like to call them in the newses. J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, maybe it's because it reminds me of military planes. They call them sorties. The British would go ahead and call them. N. Rodgers: Then have a sortie when they're all going out and fighting. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. But nevertheless, listeners of this particular podcast episode in the news is about the recently completed midterm elections here in the United States. N. Rodgers: Aha, you said a word and I'm going to take umbrage with it. J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, no. N. Rodgers: Which is completed. Because I do not believe they have been completed. I think what Aughie meant to say was mostly completed, like being loosely dead from the prince's pride, he's only mostly dead. I think they're mostly completed. J. Aughenbaugh: Well, the voters did their job. What has not been completed. N. Rodgers: Is the count. J. Aughenbaugh: Is the count. As Nia points out, there are some midterm election results that have not been made official or final because election officials in various states and jurisdictions are still counting the votes. This reflects the fact that in the United States, we have a wide array of methods for people to cast their ballots. Some states actually allow you, to for instance mail your vote the day of the election, which meant that depending on how good the postal service is in a particular jurisdiction, election officials may not have received the results until. N. Rodgers: 3, 4, 5, 6 days later. J. Aughenbaugh: Days later. N. Rodgers: Yeah, because it had to be by midnight when the poll closed on the day of the elections, which actually the post offices not open that late anyway so it would have been closed for business on election day, but yeah. Then in some it's so tight they are recounting because the numbers are so close percentage-wise that it's a statistical error, they have to try to figure out what to do if there's a tie or what to do if there's that kind of thing. J. Aughenbaugh: Well, then you also have the other issue which we discussed in a previous podcast episode. Many states and local government jurisdictions just don't have enough money to hire all the staff that they need to count all the ballots, so it takes them a while. N. Rodgers: Well, and also Georgia, you lunatics we're looking at you because if nobody gets a 50 percent threshold, they go to a runoff and that doesn't happen till December. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: The Senate isn't decided yet, right? Or is it decided? Wait, no, it is decided. J. Aughenbaugh: It is decided. Okay, let's start with the United States Senate. N. Rodgers: Okay, we're going to start with the Senate. Yeh, Senate. J. Aughenbaugh: In November or the for the midterms this year, and again, I'm going to take listeners back, 1/3 of the Senate every two years is up for election. The way they basically break it down, this year there were 35 seats that were up for election. In part that reflects the fact that the aforementioned Georgia Senate seat, this was the completion of a previously vacant Senate seat. Warnock got to serve for a couple of years, but now this is for the full six-year term. 1/3 of the seats were contested. Prior to the election, the seats in the United States Senate were split 50-50. There were 50 in the Democratic group or caucus. That's how political scientists refer to it, comprised of 48 Democrats plus 2 independencts, Bernie Sanders and Angus King who caucus with the Democrats. Then there were 50 Republicans. Effectively, control of the Senate was democratic because the vice president Nia, is? N. Rodgers: Kamala Harris, who is a Democrat. J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Now of these 35 seats that were up for election, 21 were held by Republican senators. The Republican Party had more seats to defend. N. Rodgers: We're not going to go into the details of money that get spent on these things, but we're talking millions and millions of dollars sloshing around in the election. If you have 21 seats versus 14 seats, you have to spend a lot more money trying to defend those seats. Mitch McConnell was pouring money into Senate seats. J. Aughenbaugh: In some of those 21 seats, Nia were in states that Joe Biden actually won in 2020. N. Rodgers: Which made them contested. That's what we call contested. Is when there's a possibility that the sea could change positions from Democrat to Republican or Republican to Democrat as opposed to uncontested sits which are in safe districts. J. Aughenbaugh: Or safe states. N. Rodgers: Or safe states. Well, actually Alabama did leave up and have a Democrat. I was about to say Alabama is not going to have a Democrat, but they did. J. Aughenbaugh: For instance, Mississippi. It's going to be a while before Mississippian are going to see a Democratic senator. Likewise, California. If you're a Republican, chances are you're not going to see a member of your party represent that state in the United States Senate anytime soon. N. Rodgers: Contested states. What we either think of as red or blue. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: It's the purples that are in question. J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. The red represents the Republican Party, blue represents the Democratic Party. As of the day and time that we are recording this podcast episode, it's already been announced that after the voting, the Democratic Party will have at least 50 seats in the next United States Senate. They actually. N. Rodgers: Picked one up. J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. They picked up the state of Pennsylvania. They picked up the state of Pennsylvania. N. Rodgers: Which was the Mehmet Oz John Fetterman race and Fetterman won that to fill those seats for the retiring Republican Senator, Pat Toomey. At best, the Democratic Party, depending on the Georgia runoff election, the first week of December, we'll have 51. At worse, it will remain 50, 50. Because if Herschel Walker wins, the Republicans would have flipped Georgia. For all that money, Nia to your point, all the millions of dollars that were spent. N. Rodgers: They ended up right back where they were. That's their best-case scenario. J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, that's the best-case scenario. N. Rodgers: They still end up right back where they were. That's Mitch McConnell's best-case scenario to pour money into those elections, only to find himself exactly back where he was the day before the election when it was 50-50 with a tiebreaker of a Democratic vice president. But if the Democrats win it then they have a very slim majority. J. Aughenbaugh: We're going to talk about the implications once we get through each of the institution's elections. N. Rodgers: Then the House. J. Aughenbaugh: The Senate is one House of the United States Congress. The second is the House of Representatives. Every two years Nia, all 435 seats are contested. N. Rodgers: I don't understand people who say we need term limits. You get a term limit every two years you get a term limit. You could wipe that out and start completely over. We could not send even one incumbent back the Congress and it would just be like a giant free-for-all where people try to figure out what that means. J. Aughenbaugh: Well, and if anything, you could complain. Americans have too many opportunities to engage in term limits. I mean, because let's face it. Listeners, Nia and I live in the Commonwealth of Virginia, the state of Virginia. We basically vote every year in this state. Presidential election. N. Rodgers: There's an off-election. There's the midterm, there's the off-election, there's the gap. J. Aughenbaugh: We have statewide elections. We vote every year here in Virginia. N. Rodgers: We just happily go to the polls every. J. Aughenbaugh: Four hundred and thirty-five seats. N. Rodgers: November. J. Aughenbaugh: Before the election, the Democratic party had an eight-seat advantage. Basically, the Republicans had to flip five seats to regain control of the house. As of late last week, and we're recording this November 21st, the Republican party actually has reached majority status. They have 218 out of 235. The Democratic party, it's been announced as 212, which means correct my math. There were five seats that were still not called by state election officials. N. Rodgers: At least a couple of those will go, Republican, at least a couple of those will go, Democrat. We're not going to see a change even if Democrats won all five, they still would not be the majority. J. Aughenbaugh: That is correct. N. Rodgers: We now have a change in the House of Representatives. J. Aughenbaugh: Representatives. N. Rodgers: Which has gone from Democrat control to Republican control. Bless his heart, Kevin McCarthy is going to have to solve that problem just like Nancy Pelosi had to solve that problem for the last few years. He's going to find out just like she found out, that their parties are made of cats. J. Aughenbaugh: Hold on. N. Rodgers: Trying to get cats into bags. J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, Nia wants to go right for the implications. N. Rodgers: I do. I'm sorry. J. Aughenbaugh: Hold on. To your point. Nia, what we have is the two chambers of our federal government's legislative body are divided, controls divided. N. Rodgers: House, Republican, Senate, Democrat. J. Aughenbaugh: Democrat. But even within the chambers, you're talking about narrow margins. Listeners, if you want a really good example of how divided Americans are politically right now. N. Rodgers: The numbers, you can't get any more divided than these numbers. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Just by just focusing on the sheer aggregate numbers. Political scientists are just like, wow. Yes. N. Rodgers: Half plus one that's what's in the house, half plus one that's what's in the Senate. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. [inaudible] N. Rodgers: Like literally it is the least possible margin that you could have. How are we doing in the governors? J. Aughenbaugh: Also, this November, 36 out of 50 governor's seats were being contested. Of those 36, 20 had been controlled by the Republicans, 16 had been controlled by the Democratic Party. Prior to this election of those 50, Democrats had control of 22, Republicans had control of 28. Again, we're talking about governor positions. These are the chief executive officers of the states. They are the state equivalents of presidents They have usually in most states, quite a bit of authority to implement legislation. N. Rodgers: They have a veto power within their states. Because we allow that for state, governors can veto state legislatures. J. Aughenbaugh: Not only legislations but budgets. I mean, presidents would love to have that power. When Congress gave the President that power during the Clinton administration, the Supreme Court said it was unconstitutional. Governors are pretty important at the state level. After these elections, Nia, Democrats picked up two governor's seats, which meant that republicans lost two. Again, you're talking about a really close division. N. Rodgers: It is half plus one. J. Aughenbaugh: One. N. Rodgers: Twenty-four Democrats, 26 Republican. The country is literally half plus one in everything. J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, one of the themes of this podcast episode, a divided country or you can go with half plus one. This is a different plus one, by the way. N. Rodgers: That means that what we will have will be divided government continuing forward in the same way that we have had partisan divided government. There will be very few issues where anybody will have a clear win. It will be, yeah you won but you won by two votes or evoked or whatever. Now, that being said, it does mean there is a possibility of what they call peeling off various members to get support for certain things. We do know that's happened in the past and it will continue to happen with some legislation. Some legislation will pass because members of the other party will get in line with it because they agree with it or whatever. J. Aughenbaugh: That doesn't happen as much as it used to Nia, and that's one of the unfortunate things with how polarized the country is. Because you now have this phenomenon to where if you actually are a member of the Senate and you peel off and vote for the opposition parties bill. J. Aughenbaugh: You have this phenomenon to where you might actually get primaried in your next election. N. Rodgers: On your own side. Whatever it is, they're more Republican or more Democrat than you are or so they claim. J. Aughenbaugh: It sends a pretty clear message. N. Rodgers: We don't want you moderates around here. J. Aughenbaugh: You better march and walk-step with the rest of the party, we're going to come after you. N. Rodgers: Or else. House implications, as I said, Kevin McCarthy is now going to be hurting a similar type of different group of cats than Nancy Pelosi did for years. I'm sure there's a part of her that wants to hand him the gavel and say, okay, it's your turn. You get to see how this works, you think it's so easy, good luck. J. Aughenbaugh: Have fun with this, Kevin. Listeners, Nia is referencing the outgoing speaker of the house who was Nancy Pelosi, and she just completed her second term, and she was a first female speaker of the House of Representatives. But she's acknowledged publicly that her second term as Speaker was much more difficult than her first simply because her party, N. Rodgers: Was polarized. J. Aughenbaugh: Likewise, Kevin McCarthy. N. Rodgers: He's got to manage what we think of as "normal Republicans," mainstream, men and women who've been around forever. He's got to manage them. But he also has to manage, J. Aughenbaugh: Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert. N. Rodgers: The more fringes end of his caucus in a similar way that Nancy Pelosi had. J. Aughenbaugh: He had to manage AOC on the far left side, and somebody like Abigail Spanberger, who is a more moderate Democrat. N. Rodgers: What do you think they'll do legislation wise? What do you think their first priority is? J. Aughenbaugh: I think they're going to set up a number of investigations of the Biden administration. This is the Republican party with a few notable exceptions, did not think the House of Representatives should have set up a committee to review what happened on January 6th in the Capitol. They are still upset that the House drew up articles of impeachment three different times with Donald Trump, so they're going to go after the Democrats' president. They're going to spend a lot of time doing that. N. Rodgers: Hunter Biden needs to have all his docs in a row. J. Aughenbaugh: I think Hunter Biden better go ahead and retain a really good law firm in Washington DC. Listeners, we're talking about President Biden's son, Hunter Biden. N. Rodgers: Coming directly after Joe Biden will be more complicated. But Hunter Biden has opened himself up, he's had some problematic behaviors. J. Aughenbaugh: Through allegations that he drew upon his dad's name to set up business contacts and work overseas. N. Rodgers: They'll investigate him for that. J. Aughenbaugh: The other thing that you're going to see here, and again, this goes back to our theme of divided government, any legislation that gets through the United States Senate when it is proposed in the House won't go anywhere. I see this next session of Congress producing very little or next to no meaningful public policy for the country. N. Rodgers: Wasn't there a Congress called the do nothing Congress, or the no nothing? J. Aughenbaugh: That was the do nothing party. Nevertheless, we've had various presidents who have accused Congress of being populated with do nothings. Harry Truman said that, for instance, about a Congress which interestingly enough, was controlled by his own party. N. Rodgers: Well, and a thing to keep in mind here going forward is that the more that Congress does not act, the more the President will act, either through executive order or through, J. Aughenbaugh: Agency regulations. N. Rodgers: All that it does is push that to a different part of government. J. Aughenbaugh: That was the next implication I was going to make. N. Rodgers: Sorry. J. Aughenbaugh: That's all right, it's a really good point. This is something that we've discussed on this podcast a number of times. If you want to understand why so many modern presidents, but particularly recent presidents, Obama, Trump, Biden, have seemingly tended to govern by pen and phone, executive orders, agency regulations, it's because the Congress is so divided. You're a president, and at most, you have eight years. N. Rodgers: You went into that job for the purpose of getting stuff done, you honestly believe that there are things you need to do. If there are going to be recalcitrant, then you just pull out your executive order pen and start signing pieces of paper. J. Aughenbaugh: Which then leads to another, if you will, institutional behavior that we've seen with some regularity, which is when President Biden does that, it will get challenged in federal court, and recently federal judges are skeptical of the executive branch initiating significant policy change without congressional authority. It is a vicious cycle, which could all get addressed if you actually had members of Congress who are willing to sacrifice perhaps their political careers by cooperating with people across the partisan, the metaphorical partisan aisle. N. Rodgers: Which is what Liz Cheney did. J. Aughenbaugh: I'm not projecting that, because she got primaried out of the Republican Party. N. Rodgers: Never forget that an elected official's prime driver is to be re-elected. That's their prime driver, they'll do that before they eat, before they sleep, before they drink, before they reproduce everything else. J. Aughenbaugh: Because if they like the job, they will do what most of us who like their jobs. N. Rodgers: Anything to keep it. J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. We will do those things necessary to keep it. In terms of the Senate, even if the Democrats, if Senator Warnock wins the runoff in Georgia, it's going to be a narrow majority. Unless the Democrats get rid of the filibuster for all legislation, whose world are we going to be living in in regards to the United States Senate, Nia? N. Rodgers: Well, see, I think you think it's mentioned in cinema. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: But I'm going to push back on that a little bit, and say that if Warnock wins, it releases some of that pressure. J. Aughenbaugh: It's one vote. N. Rodgers: It's one vote, but [inaudible] has run the Senate now for the last little while. I think his time maybe short. J. Aughenbaugh: You can go ahead and hope. N. Rodgers: I got feelings on that. J. Aughenbaugh: The other thing you're going to see the Senate actually do, because the filibuster has been removed for judicial and executive branch nominations, is the Biden administration, particularly with judicial nominations, is just going to forward a whole bunch of judicial nominations to fill vacancies. This may end up being Joe Biden's legacy, even if he only serves one term, because the filibuster doesn't exist for any judicial nominations, that may be his only legacy. Now, let's move on to the states. With the governorships and state legislative seats controlled more by the Democrats, but overall, the Republican Party still has a narrow control in the number of states, but also the number of state legislative seats. What I predict is going to happen is, we're going to have even more very pitched controversial policy debates at the state level. N. Rodgers: The Supremes would love that, because they think all of that belongs to the state level, anyway. J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. N. Rodgers: That's the more local the politics the better. J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. N. Rodgers: They will be booting things back to the states, instead of making those decisions, probably. They will be any cases that make their way to the Supremes, it will be like, no, you all have to solve it, because this is a state issue. J. Aughenbaugh: I think what you're really going to see a continuance of, Nia, is either we don't get significant policy either at the federal or state level to resolve some of our more intractable public policy problems, or we get short-term solutions. As one party, for instance, controls a state, they enact a policy, but if the next party comes in, they will go ahead and retract the policy. You'll have these huge swings in public policy. N. Rodgers: That'll make it super easy on the citizens. Nia: Is this legal? I don't know if it was legal yesterday, but I don't know if it's legal today. That's really for us who vote in yearly elections, our elections are going to swing even more dramatically. Aughie: Yeah. As long-term listeners of this podcast know, when you get that oscillation in public policy, it usually does not yield positive results, because you don't get the change. Nia: Nothing is permanent. Aughie: Because you don't know what's working or what's not working, because most public policies usually take multiple years to make a difference in addressing the problem. Nia: Give me some math. Aughie: Let's talk about some excellent poll data. Nia, which gender voted most for the Democratic Party? Nia: Women. Aughie: Yeah, and which gender voted most for the Republicans? Nia: Men. Aughie: Men. Sixty percent of all Caucasians voted for the Republican Party, 80 percent of African Americans voted for Democratic Party candidates, 60 percent of Latinos and Asian Americans voted Democratic. By the way, that's probably the most notable change. Nia: Is that lower? Aughie: That is lower than in previous elections. Nia: Yeah. Democrats have a problem with their minority voters slipping away. Aughie: Yeah. Particularly those two sub-populations. Nia: Yeah, they should think about that. Aughie: Yes. Nia, 18-29 year-olds voted for which political party? Nia: For Democrats? Aughie: Yes they did. Now things get a little bit more closely divided, 30-44 year-olds, 52 percent of them voted Democratic, so you get it gets a little bit closer. All other age groups, so basically 45 until the dead, 55 percent of them voted Republican. Nia: But again, 55, 45, we're talking about very divided. Aughie: Yes. By the way, I'm continuing a trend, only 13 percent of midterm voters were under the age of 30. Yes. Nia: Hey young people, you all need to get out and vote. I don't care who you vote for, you just need to vote. That's the way you earn your right to complain. Aughie: Yes, because listeners Nia and I both were raised in families where the mantra was, if you don't vote, you cannot complain. By the way, my family, they were a little bit more profane with that. A couple of stats you might be interested in. Again, this is a really good example of how divided this country is. Less than three percent of self-identified party loyalties loyal list cross party lines and independence were almost just as divided. People aren't crossing party lines. Nia: I'm not surprised by that. I'm not surprised that given the partisanship and the divide in this country that we really aren't coming down 50:50, we're pretty close. Aughie: Yeah, we are, one of the big recent shifts and this has been pretty much in the last 10-12 years, is the shift in the political parties on the category of education. Nearly 54 percent of all college graduates voted Democrat. Conversely, nearly 55 percent of non-college graduates voted Republican. As recently as 2008, those percentages were flipped. Nia: Interesting. Aughie: The Democratic Party is becoming the party of graduates, where the Republican Party is appealing more to non-college graduates. You really see this 2016 presidential election of Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump. Most important issues to Democratic voters and these weren't even close; abortion and gun control. Most important issues to Republican voters, and again these were the top three, and then all other issues really fell off; immigration, inflation, and crime. Nia: That actually is pretty consistent from previous elections. Those tend to be the dividing issues for those groups anyway. Before we wrap up, can I just make one little tiny comment which I have observed now after having listened to all of this? Aughie: Yes. Nia: Anybody who's declaring a run for the presidency right now is bananas. Why would you want to try to work with this level of division? Really all that is, is just one giant headache after another, after another. I know that at the time of recording, Donald Trump has declared. I think more or less Joe Biden has declared, I don't know vaguely. But either one of those people are like, you could just be retired. Why would you want to deal with such divided government? Aughie: Think about this Nia. Let's say Joe Biden runs for re-election in 2024 and he gets re-elected. Then he goes ahead and says, let's say Mitch McConnell is still around, "I want to work with Mitch McConnell in the Senate and Kevin McCarthy in the House and come up with a proposal to deal with climate change or immigration". Now first of all, the Republicans wouldn't trust such overtures, but people in his own party would basically go ahead and want to have his scalp on social media. Nia: No side is going to be on your side. Aughie: Who thinks that that would be a good way to go ahead and spend. Basically you just turned 80, so he'll be 82. Nia: Your mid-80s, really is that what you want to do? Donald Trump, that would be his 80s as well although early 80s, I think. Aughie: Early 80s, but this is the way you want to go ahead and spend. Nia: Just retire, oh my goodness. Leave this to people who, well, I don't know. Actually, I don't know who you'd leave this to, because at this point, I would leave this literally to my worst enemy. Aughie: Sure. Nia: If I had a worst enemy which I really don't, I don't have good enemies because I'm not particularly exciting enough to have good enemies. But if I had a good enemy, this is what I would do, I would make them President of United States. You know what, you can deal with that, you can deal with all this division and difficulty. Aughie: Nia, I have students who said, "Professor Aughenbaugh, wouldn't you love to be President of United States?" Nia: Under no circumstances. Aughie: In general, my answer is no. But after the 2022 midterm elections, my answer is an emphatic, are you crazy? Nia: Five hundred and thirty five nutcases, no, thanks. I'm good I don't want to try this. Aughie: I'd like to get stuff done. Nia: I shouldn't say they're nutcases, they're not. Aughie: They're not necessarily nutcases. Nia: Many of them are well-meaning. Aughie: But I like to get stuff done. Nia: I'm goal-oriented. I would really struggled right now to be President of the United States. Aughie: These are not conditions that lead to the compromise you need to get stuff done in the American democratic regime, they're just not. For folks like you or me Nia we're like, here's my to-do list. Did I get this stuff done? That'd be driven bonkers. Nia: I'd have them list. This is how it would go and I know we need to wrap up. This is me as president. I come in and I sit down at my big desk in the Oval Office. I open the drawer and I pull out the list of things to do today. I look down the list and there's 30 things on the list. I would have to go can't do that one, can't do that. Then I would say, hi and I would take the list, I put it back into drawer and I'd go over and lay down on one of the couches and take a nap. Because what would be the point? I appreciate their willingness to serve and their desire to serve. But that part of me wants to say, my dudes, you, this is just a mess. Neither one of those is a particularly uniting figure. Aughie: No. Nia: I'm not trying to be argue with either gentlemen, but so far, there has not been a uniter that has declared. Now, if we get one, that might be interesting, but I don't know if there's even a uniter who could do that at this point. Aughie: Yeah, and again, some of this is on the voters. We keep on re-elected people who, I'm not going to work across the aisle. Well, that's what you want and that's getting me re-elected. Nia: That's on us, so we got to stop doing that. We got to force these people. We've got to bend these people to our will. Aughie: I was hoping to be able to go ahead and have more positive things to say about the midterms. But at last many of my fears were born out and that's where we are. Nia: Well, thanks for the In The News and I'll talk to you soon. Aughie: Bye, Nia.