Mondaire Jones, Dan Nathan & Rick Klein

unexpected outcomes. But first we have the host of the podcast Okay Computer on the tape and market Watch, who all is a squawk Box contributor, Dan Nathan. Welcome to Fast Politics, Dan Nathan, Molly John Fast, Thanks for having me back. Well, it's always a delight and there's so

much to talk about. And first I think we should talk about even though the mid terms are a couple of weeks in the rear view, we are still in this interesting period when a lot of people thought Americans would vote on the economy or their you know, their fantasy of the economy or whatever that was. They didn't And I'm curious to know are you surprised? And furthermore,

what is happening right now with the economy. Yeah, so interestingly enough, I mean, I think that there was so much concern over the prices of just kind of goods and services and just the increase kind of year over year, right, So that would be the term inflation that a lot of Americans have been feeling, you know, in the aftermath

I guess of the pandemic. And if you think about UM, a lot of what our government did, whether it be UM, Congress, the White House, the US Federal Reserve during the pandemic is they kind of flooded the zone with monetary and fiscal stimulus. They wanted to make sure companies didn't go out of business so they could keep people employed, and they wanted to make sure that households were okay, right, And so they got through the pandemic for the most

art I think, pretty decently. But then we kind of hit the kind of pedal to the metal again last year with some more fiscal stimulus, and that really caused an increase in UM inflationary pressures. But that was also caused by China zero COVID policy, by broken supply chains,

and then obviously the war UM in Europe. So I guess, you know, when we have this kind of numbers, we had forty year high readings and inflation, I think a lot of people thinking about how mid term elections usually go right for a first term president, do you have

about economy? It's usually lights out right, And I think that was kind of overtaking a lot of the kind of you know, thoughts about you know, what's going to dominate at least voters interest, and so in the aftermath, I think what's really important to kind of recognize the fact is that, yes, we have forty year high inflation readings. I think everybody economists and I think just a lot of market strategists and people who just kind of follow

this stuff politically. Also, we're pretty safe to kind of guess that inflation readings were going to peak sometime soon, right, And so here we are. That's what we're seeing, um right now. And so I guess the point is is that this could actually set up really nicely Molly, if you think about it, if all of these rate increases to battle inflation. Right, So we've had mortgage prices go up, um,

and that could be a near term phenomenon. The economy could be setting up Okay, if we get through let's say, the second half of into four for this incumbent president and because this this kind of red wave never materialized here, so again, the economy might be doing okay, or at least a lot better than I think a lot of politicians or voters thought as they headed into the midterm.

Part of that is anxiety. It's I want to say, it's like Carter anxiety right the seventies world period with a lot of inflation, and you know, it ended up

ending the Carter presidency. And I feel like every time people talk about inflation, or at least me in my mind, I go right back to Carter and I feel like that angs it kind of permeated the narrative to a certain extent totally because we had this oil crisis right there was so much focus on oil because that's the thing that most um, you know, individual consumers, they feel the pinchet. But I also say, this is really important part of this is that you know, we had unemployment

down to three and a half percent. This was before the pandemic, and where is it unemployment right now? It's only at three point seven percent. It just picked up a little bit. So after we saw unemployment shoot up during the pandemic, it came right back down to those

pre pandemic levels. So I guess the good news for the economy is that we had a pretty decent savings rate for consumers, so their balance sheets were in good order coming out of the pandemic, and we didn't see unemployment, you know, shoot up very dramatically right now, and that's kind of the last piece of the puzzle that the US FED is kind of focused on as they think about their battle with inflation. They've raised interest rates dramatically,

so FED fund futures. This is the interest rate, the short term interest rate that the US Federal Reserve controls. They've raised it basically three percent over the last four meetings, is the fastest increase ever. And that's why you've seen mortgage rates go up pretty dramatically. But you've also seen a lot of housing data come in, so they wanted to cool off some of these asset bubbles a little bit.

And I guess the silver lining is if they can do this without the like, without unemployment going up meaningfully, then that would be again a good situation for the economy. As we get into let's say the backside of the one thing I think is probably a near certainty there

will be a recession. But I guess the point is that that happens at some point at least the things that I look at this stuff through the lens of the markets, they will have already discounted that at some point, right So we could be in a recession right now and not know it, and by the time we realize that we could be out of it correct and then also if we're able to do that in a manner

where unemployment doesn't go up meaningfully. But I guess the next part of this, you know equation is is that notion of stagflation you just mentioned Carter in the late seventies and what that did for his presidency. Stagflation is a situation where prices of goods and services have gone up.

They can come off their highs, which I expect that to happen with this situation, but you have lower growth, right, and so if you have higher prices and lower growth, it makes for a really, like the name says, just a stagnant environment. So um, again, it's not like we're gonna come out of this pandemic and we're gonna have this rip oring economy which a lot of people thought

we were gonna have. We might go back to the pre pandemic growth GDP growth domestic the product was averaging about two point two percent, which is not great, it's not bad or whatever, but it was also in and around where inflation wasn't about two percent, and so at the end of the day, we just might be in an economy that saddled with a lot of debt that was there to help, um, you know, kind of make sure we could stay afloat during the pandemic. Then we

had inflationary pressures on the way out of it. That seems very likely if you put so much you know, capital to a problem like this, you're gonna have an increase in prices. So, you know, we juste is not going to be a great year for the economy. It's not probably gonna be a great year for markets, but it could also be a really good digestion year considering the prior three years that we've been in with also

the dismantling of some major forces. If you think about this whole deglobalization and our reliance on cheap foreign labor and supply chains oriented around China, that's coming apart right now, and that's also inflationary well. And also it's going to be less bad than we thought it would be, which

I think is the important data point. Right. But you know, the US government, the US consumer, US manufacturing, we made a deal with if you can call it, the devil you know, forty fifty years ago about focused on cheap labor, about jobs that supposedly Americans did want to do. And what did that do well? That we got cheaper goods, right, And so that's something that's been going on um for a long time now. If you think about it's not just supply chains, but it's also energy as as a

point of national security. I think that's something that we're going to come out of this period and think, you know, you know, maybe that's right. And I will tell you this. You probably haven't heard me compliment um the prior president too much. I mean, I don't think the way in which they put the trade war in place with China. I didn't like how they did that, okay, but I think they were right on a lot of issues there,

you know. And I think that if you just think about the Biden administration, they have not kind of backed off a lot of those tariffs that we've had and some of the issues that we've had, they've been much tougher. I know that you spent some time talking about this in your podcast, but the export band of advanced chips, you know, from the US to China. I mean that was like a major, major shot across the bottle, right. And also they're bringing manufacturing back to the United States

right there, building the you know, factories they're encouraging. So the Chips Act was a great example. I mean, this is fifty plus billion dollars. You know, a lot of people think it was corporate welfare. They wanted to incentivize US chip makers to kind of make those factories here, employee workers here. Again, the problem is is that if you make iPhones that already cost about a thousand dollars to consumers, you make them here and you reorient your

supply chains here. Okay, in the West, those iPhones they're gonna be a lot more expensive. And then the last part of this whole inflation piece is that once wages start to go up, which is really what's happened here over because we have a shortage right now and obviously there's a huge immigration issue. So we have a shortage of workers, and if we have a shortage of skilled workers, I mean demand for them is going to go up

and then those wages are gonna stick. And that's a really difficult scenario for corporation, especially US multinationals who have actually gotten really used to cheap foreign labor. Matt green Field, my long surferings past, was talking about in an inverse yield curve and I pretended I know, I knew what he was talking about. Pain. Yeah, So so we just talked about how quickly the US Federal Reserve is raising interest rates. And one of the things they're trying to

do there is kind of tamped down asset bubble. So if rates are higher, the cost of money is higher, and therefore, you know, valuations on assets should be lower in that scenario. So they were unusually low to battle the pandemic, right we just talked about, so they've raised them kind of quickly. So if you look at inverted yield curve, really what it's signaling is the two year US Treasury yield is above the tenure yield, and that shouldn't be Shorter term money should not have a higher

interest rate than longer term money. Just just think about it. Really simply, ten years is a lot more time for things that you're wrong and maybe you don't pay that um that debt instrument back two years is a shorter period of time. But the two year is reflecting what the Federal Reserve has done and what they're saying about how they're going to battle inflation. And therefore the ten year yield is more reflective of potential growth in the

in the future. So the two ten spread that's inverted to the tune of the two year treasury yield being higher than the ten is saying stag inflation. And I know that may seem like a lot maybe that kind of puts together the conversation and we just had. But basically, lower long term growth is what the two ten spread inverted means. And the two year being higher right now is just suggesting that, um, you know, the FET is

going to stay the course on higher interest rates. And I guess the point that also makes is that inverted yield curve like this, to Matt's point, has almost every single time that's happened resulted in a recession, or excuse me, put differently, every recession that we have had in the last call it sixty years or show has been preceded by a two ten yield curve inverting. Right. That was when we were talking about whether or not there was going to be a recession. He said, well, the yield

curve is inverted. And I wanted to ask him but lost interest. But I'm glad you answered that question and now our listeners can know all about the inverseil curve. Let's talk about my favorite subject, and it's actually quickly not becoming my favorite subject. To the death of Twitter. I never thought he would go through with it. Now he's gone through with it. Now he seems I mean, he seems like he's just desperate to destroy it unless you can explain to me, I mean, explain to me

what's happening here. Well, it's from my point of view, I mean, I think he the guy tried to fix the Ukraine. Um, you know, warred in Russia. He's not a political science He scientists. He claims that, you know, he's a rocket scientist. He's not one of that. He's not that either, right, So here he is now, you know, he's like you've been following all this stuff about all this coding and stuff. He's not. He's not a he's not a computer scientist. Yeah, it's just really kind of funny, right.

I think he really thinks he's got a god complex. I really think he thinks he can fix this thing. I think the most important thing is that Jack Dorsey, who was the founder of this company, two time CEO, who was CEO a little more than a year ago, Okay, before he gave up the reins of that, he was running this company into the ground, being the CEO of two companies, Square which was one of them, and then

Twitter was the other. So so this company monetizes their user base at at a much you know, worse rate to some of their competitors and social media, they're audience or the users are growing much slower. Okay, that was the case. So he thought he could come in here and get rid of all these bots that he thinks is this massive problem here um and and making just a better places, this kind of what digital town squarely calls,

um you know what would be great for humanity. But in doing so, he's really and again I know you're following this because I'm following you on Twitter, which is kind of metic here. I mean, he really is putting this platform on the brank. I know a lot of really smart people who like to sound smart on Twitter say it's much harder, you know, to have something like this.

These these systems are much more resilient. So if you even get rid of thousands of people on a employee base, it won't matter because this thing has been built for all these years. Um, I don't know the things that you're focused on, trust and safety and all those other issues about disinformation and battling those sorts of things. You think that people are really important to those processes, right,

and so all of those people are gone. Most of the people what it sounds like, who had real important jobs there about the direction of the platform are all gone there. You know, maybe there's some hardcore libertarian browe tech people who are sticking around because they're just like always been Elon fans. But but again, I just don't think it's the sort of place that people are gonna go on to go work. And I think what's really clear is that advertisers right now don't want to be there.

And this is a company that's reliant on big advertisers. You know, it's very different over at Facebook or Meta they have like lots of small medium businesses that are local. Twitter relies on large companies to advertise. And then you also saw over the weekend that CBS News, so they're gonna stop tweeting, you know, just think about that, right, Think about you. You take your a million followers, right, and you all the content that you're putting out there

throughout the day. Let's say it goes somewhere else. And maybe that's this post thing. I've seen you and Kara switch your tweet about. I just signed up for it. I'm gonna follow you first thing tomorrow. But there could be an alternative. And again, I don't think he wants to kill it now. I do think though, that he has a situation where and you and I've talked about this before. I mean, he bought this thing for forty

four billion dollars. He got a bunch of banks to give him nearly thirteen billion dollars in debt, right and that debt is training at like sixty cents on the dollar right now. They haven't even been able to place it. He also has been selling his test Less stock to fund the purchase. He's also probably pledged a lot of test Less stock okay to kind of be part of

the equity. He also had a lot of other equity people come into it who held equity in the public company rolled it into the private But there's a scenario where you know, he probably paid um, you know, twenty five billion more than it's worth and um, you know, So he's got a scenario where it's not a great financial setup, Like it will really be hard for him to make money anytime soon in the next three to five years on this thing, which is usually what you

would hope to do if you were going to take a public company private. You're gonna lever it up with debt, You're gonna cut costs, and you're gonna try to get faster growth and then rebring it back to the public markets at a higher valuation to make money on that. It seems very unlikely he's gonna be able to do that. It seems to me like even if he just has thirty and billion dollars of his personal wealth in it, that seems like a lot of money. But maybe I'm stupid.

Can he just afford to do this? Well, it sounds like he's got a lot more than than thirteen billions, So if he paid forty four billion, he's got thirteen billion in debt on it. Okay, that that that basically you know he's on the hook for he owns it, right and then you know, so then all the equity he has been selling stock in Teslas share, So think about where he gets his money, right, So he was like, he's supposedly the richest man in the world. Um, a lot of his wealth has been tied up in Tesla,

which a publicly traded stock. It has a six billion dollar market cap, which is one of the largest market cap companies in the US, just to be really clear, but it's also down fifty percent from where it was trading a year ago, all right, And he also has a lot of his wealth tied up in SpaceX that's the rocket company, right, But that is a private company,

so he doesn't have liquidity there. So if he wants to go out and spend millions or billions, he's as he either has to sell stock in those companies or pledge shares of that okay, to to basically get the money to do things. But the Teslas stock goes much lower than the value of the of his assets goes much lower, So he's really tied to the markets. He's

really levered here. And just you know, if you think about everything that's going on right now, when you have interest rates go up as quickly as they've had, why

has crypto and bitcoin all this stuff just created? Why How are we starting to see some of this corporate mouthfeasans this stuff where people weren't I'm sure, I'm sure Back Reenfield spent a lot of time talking about, you know, this FTX situation in the crypto world right right now, there was no really good due diligence done on a lot of stuff, and the cult of personality of some of these founders, people like Elon, people like this SPF and f t X, people like this woman homes from

their knows where you have really smart people just throwing money at them and not asking the hard questions. In periods like this, you know what I mean, This is when you see a lot of the frauds, the phonies, and and you know, you see it exposed. And I think we're seeing that. There's a lot of people who think that Ellen, while he's not a fraud like some of these other financial frauds, his company is very overvalued. Well,

they think, well, the company has ever valued. And the reason in which people are willing to value the company Tesla in particular, is because they think he's the smartest guy in the world and he's going to do something fabulous. And he's already done something fabulous. Okay, he's moved the electric vehicle business, and I don't compliment them too frequently. You know, he's moved all of these incumbents, whether it be Detroit, whether it be the Germans, whether it be

the Japanese or the Koreans, they've moved them. He's moved them to a place where they probably wouldn't have been on their own, moving cars to you know, to be you know, fully electric fleets at some point. I don't a lot of these guys say by you know, twenty thirty or something like that. So he's done that. But does this company deserve to have a six und a billion dollar market cap because I don't really think so.

At the end of the day, it's just going to be a car company when every other company is just making electric vehicles. Yeah, that's what I think too, Dan Nathan, please come back. I will, Thanks, Mom, I appreciate you having me. Congressman made Jones represents New York sevent Congressional District. Welcome too Fast Politics, Congressman Mondair, It's good to be back.

We're so happy to have you for any number of reasons, but the first of which is, so, do you want to tell listeners for the people who are not like extreme congressional junkies, what the midterms have brought to you. The midterms have resulted in the salvaging of our democracy at least for a few more years. Yes, that is the good news. But in New York it's been kind of what we say on this podcast, because we can curse a ship show. Oh I'm so glad, I concurse

New York's ree district. Thing has been a disaster, and no one wants to take responsibility for the margin that Republicans, the Anti Democratic Party, the Anti Democracy Party has in the House of Representatives can be explained by the number of seats that flipped Republican in the state of New York because of a gerrymander that was struck down by

the New York Court of Appeals. We had an independent reditioning commission here that could have handled things far better than what the Democratic legislature did, and of course, the fact that the lines had to change at all was the result of Andrew Cuomo, a deal he cut in twenty twelve when many of us were still in high school. I mean, not May and maybe not you, but many

other men. You know. Anyway, so go on, yes, well, Andrew Cuomo is the reason why we even had to lose a congressional seat in the state of New York, because we only lost it by eighty nine folks who simply did not complete the census. And that was can be explained by the fact that he did not disperse many millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars for purposes of census collection. So there's a lot of blame

to go around. So anyway, what happened with the redistricting was Sean Patrick Maloney, who was the chair of the D Triple C right, yes, um, he decided he would take what was half of your district and run there. He lost. The district that he ran in is a

district that I currently represent seventy percent of. And I had a choice, as you know, Molly, I could have run against the chair of the D. Trip will see the the guy whose primary job responsibility it is to help us keep our majority in the House and and defeat fadgism in this country. And I never imagined that after taking one for the team, that the gentleman from New York's eighteenth Congressional district would lose in New York seventeenth, a district that I would have won. Um, so you

can imagine how I feel right now. But you know, the good news is we did keep the center. Wait, how do you feel right now? Because I'm thinking about it and I was thinking how what I feel? I don't know. How do you feel? Do you feel like vindicated or do you just feel devastated? No, vindicated feels petty, right.

I never imagined, after having been a leading, highly effective member in the United States Congress for the past two years, that I would wake up one morning and because of the incompetence of so many people, there's a lot of blame to go around be made, uh, to you know, make this impossible choice and not be allowed to continue serving the community that raised me and that I have

been delivering for. And so I'm just sad, frankly by the outcome and by the knowledge that Democrats would have the majority in the House of Representatives, and we would still be able to pass legislation for the next two years were it not for the former governor of the State of New York, leaders and the state legislature, the chair of the D Triple c and some other federal legislators who coordinated with the Chair of the D Triple City in terms of pushing a blatantly illegal partisan jerrymander

that was ultimately struck down by the Court of Appeals. I would have much preferred the maps that were drawn by the Independent Redistricting Commission. It certainly would have avoided the impossible choice that I had to make. So let's talk about ja Jacobs. J Jacobs is the chair of the Democratic Party of the State of New York. Talk to me about J Jacobs. I don't know the guy. He's the chair of the New York State Democratic Party. He runs summer camps. Yes what he that's I think

that's what he's busy doing. Okay, yes, well, much has been made of his failure of leadership when it comes to not investing in an infrastructure that could have helped Democrats hold onto and win seats in those seats that were flipped. I mean four seats went were flipped to Republican this cycle in the state of New York that could have been avoided, which is, by the way, will probably be the difference between a Democratic Congress and Republican Congress.

Kathy Hokel performed much worse than she should have. I mean, she lost in you know, my hometown county of Rockland, which is a county that Joe Biden won and that I won quite handily in two thousand twenty. You know, one wonders why, given this track record, which by the way, extends well beyond what just happened this cycle, that someone would be allowed to continue in this role. Right I've

worked in corporate America, I've worked in government. It is extraordinary because, as State Senator zonn orm I re mentioned to political a few weeks ago, by what metric are we just success? Certainly not in terms of electoral victories, certainly, not in terms of fundraising, certainly, not in terms of infrastructure, certainly, not in terms of cultivating a new generation. That is really where a lot of the energy and the party

is right now. Because what we've got is not just Mr Jacobs, Because I really do think that focusing on him has distracted from a broader reckoning throughout the leadership of the party that needs to take place. It is certainly the case that many of these people are more hostile to progressive than they are focused on defeating Republicans. Yeah, that's a really good point. We're in this position. What can people in New York do? Is there a way

to sort of unravel this disaster in New York. And it's funny because the two states where Democrats did the worst, our New York State, which has a very problematic Democratic Party, and Florida, which has almost no Democratic party structure infrastructure. First, I hope that there is an opportunity for the independent Redistricting Commission to which job and redrawing the assembly maps. The court has ordered that the assembly maps in the state,

but we've redrawn. I continue to believe in this independent reditioning commission rather than what we saw take place in the state legislature this year, which got struck down by the Court of Appeals. There also has to be new leadership at the at the level of party chair in New York State. And again I regret that, you know, people feel personally attacked, but what this is really about is making sure that we have competency going into two thousand twenty four. I also think that the leader needs

to be someone who brings people together. We have a beautifully diverse Democratic Party, uh and that includes ideologically. There are plenty of folks who could bring people together. We've We've got a big tent. And I understand that what works up state doesn't always work in Brooklyn, for example. I know that well. But the fact is we have to create room for the talent that tends to be younger and oftentimes, though not always, is progressive in this party.

There has to be room for everybody if we are to defend and strengthen our democracy, protect fundamental rights, and build an economy that works for everybody. But that means winning elections. It does not mean Eric Adams validating the hysteria over crime that exists. I live in the Hudson Valley right so, Rockland County is the third safest county in the entire United States. According to the US News, Westchester is the fourth safest county in the entire United

States of America. You would never know it based on the campaigns that Hudson Valley Republicans are running. By the way. Platinum, I think is number twelve, twelfth safest county in the entire United States. So we can talk about the problem of crime, which is a problem, without being reactionary and validating the misinformation and disinformation that we see Republicans pushing. Unfortunately, we don't see that from Eric Adams and others who

are afraid to lead on this subject. So talk to me about this lame duck because there's an opportunity to do a bunch of really important things in the lame duck. Talk to me about what you think will happen in order to prevent the government from shutting down or to make that less likely. And Congress, which will take shape in early January next year, we've got to raise the

debt ceiling. We cannot continue to allow Republicans who are not interested in and I don't think of government they wanted to right which they luckily they don't, from taking the government hostage. And so we can do that through reconciliation, which is a process that may be familiar to folks. That's how we were going to pass Build Back Better through the Senate. It's it's how we pass the Inflation

Reduction Act. This year in August that historic legislation to lower costs for our seniors on Medicare and to invest in climate action. And we still got an opportunity to do that, and there's an appetite to do that, so I hope that we take care of that. There's also a lot of discussion about things that we can include in the n d a A, which is something we pass on a on an annual basis. Can we put voting rights in there? Can we put Supreme Court reforms

in there? Like ethics reforms. That's what I'm pushing for right now. Right, No, that makes sense. Where are you on this leadership election? Talked to me. I get to sit in the chair and just observe so so many of these races I have already been decided as of you know, a few hours ago, deals were being struck. I think Nancy Pelosi and I know that there are some leftists who are who are going to be upset

with me. Is the most effective Speaker of the House in modern history and quite possibly in the history of this country. I say that as someone who has had a very good seat at the table as the youngest member of House leadership and has seen how she has pushed through the president's broadly popular economic agenda and has done battle with some of the most conservative obstructionist voices

in the Democratic Party. It is interesting to me that so many folks on Twitter are and have been calling for her to step down and to turn things over over to a new generation. I wonder how those people will feel if her successor is not as accommodating of progressive voices as she has been. That's a really interesting point. That is the thing we saw a lot was that, you know, she tried very hard to bring people together from different parts of the Democratic Party. That's exactly right.

And it's been tough, and it's been frustrating. And I had not agreed with every decision policy wise and tactically that the Speaker has made. But I have seen her push for broad reforms in the child care space and in other spaces. When we had that major debate over built Back Better and the bipartisan in for extra bill

almost a year ago to the day. You know, she also when Rob Emmanuel, the former chief of staff for Barack Obama, you know, was trying to move on from or or or pivot away from Obamacare, and then tried to water it down. I mean, she was the one who pushed for an aggressive piece of legislation that would really expand healthcare to tens of millions of people in this country. I'm a student of history, so I'm aware of these things even before having served in Congress for myself,

and I encourage people to educate themselves. That's a really good point, you know. I'm sure you've read that article about her whipping votes and having the person's cousin called them and the ed secretary. You know that's a certain kind of I mean, I don't know, there's a certain thing about her, Molly that isn't that's nothing. I read that too, and I'm like that that's the best story you've got. Really, you saw, You've seen more persuasive persuading

from Nancy Pelosi. Please share. I would just say that the Speaker knows where all the bodies are buried, right, and she's got she's got relationships with so many members of our caucus spanning decades, and so what Tom Parry Yellow was described in that article as having experienced was one of the more muted persuasion. That's amazing. Thank you so much for joining us man, dare I just build water all over my desk, as I often do during this podcast. But you were great and I really appreciate

you coming on. Thanks for having me on. Rick Klein is ABC news is political director. Welcome to Fast Politics, Rick Clyde, thanks for having me. Excited to be here. We're thrilled to have you. The thing I really want to talk about, which I feel like we haven't talked about it enough, if that makes any sense, is are you were you shocked by those midterm results? No? I was surprised, I would say, not shocked. One reason I wasn't shocked is that only was actually kind of right

this time. And okay, so talk about that, Mark, Yeah, So, I mean we we did pulling it at ABC News with the Washington Post showed it to be I think a one point edge for Republicans on the generic ballot, leaned heavily into state polling, and you know, the out of partners at five thirty eight. We're doing a lot of work on this and they basically had it as a coin flip for the Senate with a lot of

coin flip races. Ultimately, Republicans did get a little bit of an edge in the generic ballot and a slight edge that puts them over the top to win the House, and then the Senate came down about what we thought. So there were individual results that certainly surprised me, maybe even shocked me. I was. I was extremely surprised that she saw Patrick Maloney lose in New York. I was very surprised, frankly that Catherine cortest Masto pulled it out

in Nevada because she had been down. But John Rosten, I know, I should have learned the lessons. So so, you know, way back in, way back in two when everyone thought that Harry Reid was was definitely gonna lose, I remember making a bet with my friend John Berman as part of our digital coverage. I just said, I'm gonna go with Ralston. I don't care what anyone else says. And he was one of the only people that said that Reid would hang on, and he did. So I

should have learned that lesson. People got it right. It just you know, in the aggregate, I think that we we were expecting something different for a couple of reasons. One is inflation. Yeah, every historical indicator for president's first midterm with inflation double digits, with the president approval rating in the high thirties, lower forties. It's a wipeout. And the other thing, frankly, is I don't think we fully believe the polls because we knew that they had been

wrong before. So I think in our heads, even if it wasn't explicit, I think in our heads, we saw forty eight in the race and thought, okay, tie goes to the runner. You know, Republicans are gonna win that by a couple of points. And we thought that across the board. And so again that's that's why, you know, surprised but not shocked. I think we were pretty honest with our audience about the fact that this was a very close race and it could go either way, and

there were extraordinary forces in both sides. It wasn't just inflation and the president's first midterm. You had Rovy Wade being overturned. You had the insurrection and democracy being on the ballot, and all of those things factored in different ways in different places. I wonder how much the lesson is. Like, so we're talking about John Rawlstad. I think his paper

is called The New Nevada Independent. Yeah, that's right, Independent. Yeah, I want to talk about Nevada, because Nevada, we had actually Cortez Masto on this podcast, and everyone I know, and remember I know many more Democrats than Republicans, was like, she is not going to win, and I want to talk about that because Roasted said she's gonna win. And then when the votes came in, he said, people are not voting in person. These numbers are just have to be wrong. There has to be a huge number of

mail ins. And again all of us were like, well, maybe there is, maybe there isn't. And what I think is interesting is like, in the end, it were it was a couple of unions, right, who pushed her over the top, right, the food worker yeah, and the red machine. Right, it was you know, from the grave, Harry Reid's machine is still operational, and they put together away to win elections.

And they took advantage of the fact that you can bank a lot of votes before election day and focus your organizing on election day on the most smaller, smaller universe, I think Republicans. I talked to a bunch of Republicans and the run up to the election who were very heavy in their expectations. I asked one prominent Republican. I said, what's your fear not what could go along? And he said, well, our voters have to vote on election day. We think

they're gonna, but they have to. And the Democrats have long since adopted the strategy of of trying to bank as maybe votes as possible and to organize. And I think that's in the Vada and elsewhere. Bank what you can get it done and then focus on the rest. And Republicans have they have been doing that really up until Trump and Trump I think trashing the idea of really voting has set them back pretty considerably in terms

of that organizing. Yeah, I want to talk about that too, because that is such an interesting situation and it has so it is so continually backfired for Trump. So Trump only believed in the same day voting. He had this sort of anti voting bent in a way, right like mail and voting in sped You know, got to make sure don't trust the system. But I do think ultimately like this message don't trust the system, it leads people to not trust the system. The problem is if you

don't trust the system, you don't vote. Yeah, and that we saw it directly in Georgia and the runoffs early last year. And I think in this case, you had a lot of states that have even before COVID made it a lot easier to vote early vote that since he there's other ways to do it. We had long since been just a purely election day society, you know.

I think it was something like a third of the vote was early even before COVID, And then COVID accelerated a lot of those trends, and states changed their laws and made available other options. And people want to vote

when it's convenient to vote. And if you're banking everything on you know, I'm old enough to remember when you know that the seventy two hour program that the Republicans had in two thousand four, which was all about getting people out on election day, and Karl Rove had this system and he was able to get it done and get George W. Bush over the top with people voting

on election day. That's great for its time, but the laws have moved on, people's customs have moved on, and lots of states there's a huge amount of the vote that happens early. Take Arizona, nine or so of the vote they're going into election that we expected it to be early or mail in or some version of of absentee, and you had a can that didn't carry Lake, who was trashing the idea of of early voting, even though she said, you know, vote however you want. She said

that she wants to have an election day society. They were banking on people to vote on election day, and they did, and that's one reason it took so long, but not enough for them, didn't, right, I know that was and now you have carry Lake going. These people had to wait for hours and hours on election day.

But why you know, right exactly? I mean, I think, I think, and you're seeing it in some of the statements that Republicans are putting out after the fact, the ones who are losing, including Blake Masters in Arizona saying, you know, we've got to wake up to the way that the system is built. Either change the system or catch up to the way that people are living their lives and are actually voting right now. And you know what, in Florida, Rhonda Santis banked a huge amount of early vote.

He didn't care about the Trump trashing of it. They banked it and they you could see it in the numbers early on that it was going to be a blowout, and in fact it was. There are ways to do this, it's just Trump has made it hard. Yeah, Blake Masters is terrifying racist, and I think the reason why he didn't win was he was a terrible candidate. I don't know. I just think with Blake Masters, like he had had

all these ads that were like him shooting guns. I don't know that that is a relatable swing state message, like you know, civil war. And I think what I thought was so interesting about Blake Masters. And I say this as someone who was married to a VC so even though we're on the East Coast, I have lived in a world where I've always thought of technology as

like a thing that we'll solve our problems. But what I saw with Blake Masters was this is a person with a you know, some of these Silicon Valley people have very dark visions for this country. We live in a fifty fifty country and a lot of fifty fifty states, and there's a lot of voters that just vote Team Read or Team Blue, and they look beyond the individual candidates and do that now at the margins, it makes a difference, and that's where I think. Look, Arizona I

think was a winnable race for Republicans at the Senate level. Man, I think Georgia was definitely a winnable race for Republicans at the at level. Look at how many people voted for their candidate for governor. At the same time, I'm not convinced that voters simply rejected the Republican candidates. In some part they did, but I think also the tactics of getting people to vote early and getting people to engage in this election had to happen as well. People.

This is a self evident statement, but people have to vote for any of that stuff that you just said to matter, right, even if someone is an awful human being in every conceivable way, election day and and it's run up has to feature people actually voting against that person for that person to lose. That's how the system works.

And that's that's where the tactics I think are. You know, Republicans are now fighting with the hand tied behind their backs if they're not able to encourage people to vote early, because it just plane works as a as an organizing strategy, and you go into election day with with less less ground to make up. And I and we can rerun the election a million times and come up with different,

different outcomes. But even if everything you say about Blake Masters is true, voters had to actually do something about it, and they do it by voting, and they're vote in different ways than they used to and Donald Trump's vision of the world than they right now, right, I mean, I guess, I don't know. I still think like if you run someone who's not terribly creepy, people will vote

for them. There was a fundamental disconnect there. I want to get into this idea of what the House looks like now because we have this really, I mean, historically, this is the narrowest house margin in modern political history, yes, or now likely to be. I mean, you know, we we have it at to eighteen to to twenty range from the majority and the Democrats just you know, they're out going Congress was thirteen, so it's not going to be that much different from that. But but it's gonna

be pretty pretty garny close. And for you know, party coming in and for all of the expectations you know, as you know, politics is often a game of expectations, and they really fell short on the expectations piece of it. And we know the nature of what this majority is. And we know that that Kevin McCarthy is the presumptive leader, who doesn't even have the votes as of now to get to become the House Speaker, and he's going to have, you know, so little margin for maneuvering that he could

be potentially ousted anytime. So a Democrats said to me the other day, you know, it might be that becoming the Republican House Speakers like being a British Prime minister these days, revolving door is going to start. It's gonna start swinging. That would be really really fun. Think about what a two twenty or two nineteen majority means. I mean, members of Congress find other jobs, they pass away like it's possible that sometime in the next Congress the power

control shifts. As crazy as that is, And actually Jesse and I were talking about this, every special election could shift the power of the House. Yeah, that's why, I mean, they're going to do everything they can to convince people not to not to leave. I think that's actually one reason that Pelosi, Horrier and Library are all sticking around.

They don't want to give Recarthia extra votes. Right, It's it is that close but how McCarthy governs in that I mean, being in the minority, you can do a lot just with investigations and with you know, just being what the other guys aren't. But ultimately he's going to have to get teen votes for things, and sometimes that's gonna be things that not everyone likes on the Republican side.

And that's gonna be where you see the real power of a small band, which could be the moderate side, it could be the Maga side, it could be any any group of Republicans who feel emboldened. And Kevin McCarthy, you know, he's got a reputation. I've done it for a long time. He's he kind of likes being everyone's friend, and this is not a job where you make friends. Asked Nancy Pelosi about that. I'm going to add in

my own partisanship here. He's also an abject moron, so that could be problematic for him, but I guess he does. But I know people like him speaking of people who people don't like. Representative Andy Biggs this morning at gets on Twitter. I've seen enough I can of vote for Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker. I do not believe he will get to to e T and I refuse to assist him in this effort to get those votes discuss. I don't believe him. Matt Gates is saying the same things.

I've seen things like this playoff before, and Nancy Pelosi had to herself piece together the votes after some self election cycles. Ultimately, if the alternative is making a making hockeym Jeffreys Speaker of the House, then then they're gonna vote for Kevin McCarthy. There's gonna be deals cut, there's gonna be people that hold their nose, there'll be people voting present. So I mean, there's all kinds of like side things that can happen to make it work. But

I I just don't see a viable alternative. And Andie Biggs, who just tried to be that alternative, you know, a couple dozen votes, you know, and I think ultimately he'll get there. It's gonna be messy, it's gonna be ugly, and he may lose it. I think he gets there. And I think the Bigges and the Gates is of the woman. Ultimately, you know, if they don't vote for him, they know that voting against him isn't gonna stop him from becoming speaker because there really is no alternative. And

I don't say that lightly. It's not just that there isn't another person out there. The way the mechanics work is the Democrats put up a candidate, the Republicans put up a candidate, and one of them is going to get a majority, and you want your team to win. Ultimately, they'd rather have McCarthy than than Jeffreys hundred day out of a hundred. Right, no, no, no question. I don't know if you have this, but everyone I know, straight journalist, opinion journalists, we all are having a lot of sort

of Donald Trump is back anxiety. Yeah. I think a lot of Republicans are having it. I think a lot of Democrats are having it. You know, there's a feeling we shouldn't talk about him because that will make him come true. There's a feeling that and you know he lies a lot, so you don't want to promote the lies. Is there a path to stopping this person from becoming, you know, the European nominee? Because I don't see a world where there is. I think a lot of things

have to happen. And if you remember how he became nominee, the first time. You'll remember how messy it was, and it was a function of the fact that there were twenty different Republicans running and they were all, you know, cannablyzing each other's votes, and he was winning with small amounts. I don't think he definitely loses. I also don't think he definitely wins. I think the path runs through the Republican primaries first and foremost, because right, but the primaries

are already easier now. They're more consolidated, so they're easier now to explain to me. Well, yes, there's some things that make it easier to start running away with it early on if you start listening some early victories. But there's so much of that's happen for then. I mean,

this is what I thought about his announcement. I mean, we are literally two years away from the election, like we're gonna go through a whole other Thanksgiving and Christmas and still no one will have voted next year, and so there's a lot of baseball tweve And the big difference, you know, between this cycle and the last is that you know, we've been there and done that. On Donald Trump, he isn't the flashy new thing, and there are really

appealing to Republicans other candidates out there. He's not going to be alone in this primary. I'm convinced that. So let's just game this out for a minute, because I agree he's not going to be alone in this primary. Which is why I think he might win this primary. Because he has this relationship with his base, right, like it. Don't like it. He's like the grateful dad. Right. People go to his concerts, they wear T shirts, they drive. I mean, it may still be the same two thousand

people going to each one, but they go. So here's my question for you. This guy has the die hard base, right. So say you have Mike pens right, and you have Mike Pompeio, and you have Ted Cruz, and you have Marco, and you have this one, you have that one. Doesn't Donald Trump? Then even isn't he even more likely to

win the primary? Of that depends on what the whole, what the home makeup of it is, And I think, yeah, it's if it's like twenty candidates again, and he's got his his band of of supporters or the party, then then yeah, I think he's in a really good spot. But like you know, I'm not a music guy. So I'm probably gonna get this analogy wrong. But like grateful Dud fans also like Dave Matthews band, right, Like, there's there's other, there's other there's other music that might they

might want to groove to at some point. I don't think that that will be perceived as some disloyalty to Trump. We've talked to a lot of Trump supporters at rallies and around the country say I love the guy, but he's just too polarizing, or he's just two out there in the January six was too much, whatever, the thing that's abridged too far. The people at his rallies are the people those rallies, and I think you're right they run through fire for him. But man, we talked to them.

They like Rhonda Santis a lot too, you know, and and they could be talked into liking a lot of other people if there is a robust primary debate so all of us. I'm not saying he can't win. We can, but I'm not saying he definitely will. I I don't think we can look to the last cycle to be instructive in any way, shape or form, just because it's gonna be different. The issues will be different, the stakes will feel different, the pacing of the campaign will be different.

There's no modern precedent for a former president coming back and trying to do this. The only even go back to Teddy Roosevelt, and he ended up starting his own party as a result of it. And we can't look at any piece of history to be instructive on this, I think, including Trump's history. So I you know, I think for liberals or even Republicans who are alarmed by Donald Trump, I say, then you know you're gonna have

your workout out for you. But I don't think there's any inevitability around him, which, again, like a month or two ago, might have been different. I think if this was a better election cycle for him or his candidates, maybe that would have been different. If it was a worse election cycle for Rhonda Santis, maybe that would be different. There will be other Rhonda Santis is over the over the next you know, six to twelve months there that are going to emerge and it's going to be a battle.

And by the way, if he loses the battle, I don't know many Republicans who think he's just gonna, you know, quietly concede and fade away and endorse the new nominee. I mean, that could be a real disaster for Republicans if he if he loses and doesn't accept it and tries to burn the party down on his way out. He was close to vaulting the party after January six, and if he loses this time, or I mean may have done it if he lost the primer, and so I think there's a lot that has to get figured

out before we're talking about him as a nominee. Thank you so much. That was great, Rick, Thank you, You're welcome, my pleasure. Molly John Fast Jesse Cannon didn't take long for Kevin McCarthy to be influenced by the MTG wing of the party. I thought, for a second, when it took Republicans so long to win the House, I think there's still at like to eighteen. Maybe there's one more race being called. You know, they have the House by

historically slim margin. I thought perhaps that might cause Republicans to not act in the completely demented fashion I knew they would, but humiliates for them, I mean, you got it. You know, it's the Marjorie Taylor Green caucus now and the MAGA Caucus controls what poor dumb Mike Kevin a

k A Kevin McCarthy MTG is pulling the strings. And the first string she's going to Paul is, according to young Kevin, he's going to remove some of the friends of this show, members of Congress who are friends of the show from their committees, including Eric swaltwell as well as Adam Schiff and Ilhan Omar. So he's already doesn't even have the gabble yet, not till January, but already

he's planning ways to behave badly and stunts. MAGA is all about stunts, and Kevin will be performing lots of stunts. And don't you think this is all about trying to make it look like his party isn't as bad as it is that when we threw MTG out. He's now trying to pretend that somehow these Congress people are equivalent to it. Yeah, of course that's the whole idea. And he's trying to make a false equivalency and say that Adam Scheff is the same as Marjorie Taylor Green and

we all know that there is literally no parity. And so for that, the simple, simple soon to be Speaker of the House, though for how long no one knows. Kevin McCarthy gets a hearty fuck you. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening. E