Chuck’s Commentary - Both Parties Showing Cracks After Government Shutdown + Top 5 Senate Seat Most Likely To Flip Parties

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of the Chuck Toodcast. They'd be probably the best way to understand the initial reaction by those that are running for office, those that are running in Democratic primaries, those that want to be leaders within the Democratic Party versus and why they have reacted the way they've reacted. Right. You use in some ways you are what's your electorate? You know, you tell me you're electorate, and no, I'll

tell you your position on this shutdown. Right, And if you're electorate, if it's an electorate where you're more worried about the general the swing voter, you were probably on the side of figuring out how to do a pause in the shutdown. And if you were somebody who's got to worry more about a primary voter, then you were going to be emphatic against cutting this deal. And I think the reaction is a reminder that this was not about healthcare right. This was about taking on, finally confronting

Trump on something right. And the party Democratic Party hadn't done any decent confrontation really. A few governors had in trying to fight back on national Guard efforts and things like that, but there hadn't been a real showdown between the party and Trump, and the shutdown provided that. And politically, in the last forty days, it energized the base of

the Democratic Party and they felt good about that energy, and it because the elections went well last week, it could it seemed to provide the confirmation you know, a sort of form of confirmation bias. Hey, this shutdown seems to be working. Look at how well our candidates did. Why give up this idea now when at the end of the day, you know, you know, things can turn

quickly if you're not careful. And already some pulling is surfaced about how as this shutdown was impacting more and more Americans, blame was starting to get shared more and more between both parties. Yes, Republicans were taking the runt of the blame yes, Mike Johnson and Donald Trump were actually making it easier for Democrats to politically when the

shutdown by their own maneuvers and their own decision making there.

But ultimately, as I've stated in a few other places that I've spoken in the last forty eight hours, there is a large chunk of voters in the middle who don't pay attention to day to day massinations, but that will pay attention when the proverbial government toilet is clogged, you know, and not being able to travel around Thanksgiving at a time when we have almost no choice but to use their airplanes in order to get where we want to get in a short weekend was a way

that you were suddenly going to start impacting people that don't normally pay attention to the day to day machinations, and that actually can become long term more politically damaging than anything you think is going for you in the short term. So that's my basic way to explain the situation we're in. Now. What's funny here is leave it to the Democrats that come across. As you know, they're essentially divided over tactics. They're not divided over any issue.

They all believe in this healthcare issue. They all believe Trump needs to be confronted. They all believe they've got to shift their messaging to cost of living issues. Right, So this is a party that is fighting over tactics. You know, do they have the right leaders? They probably don't.

Just changing leaders change the debate on tactics. I don't know if it really does, but I will say this, once you have lost the trust of the people you're trying to lead, you probably ought to leave, right, you know. And and the best thing for the party would be if Chuck Schumer went out on his own, not forcing more groups to come out calling for his resignation and all this stuff. But ultimately, I don't know if it changes.

You know, you're still going to have a leader that's got to be thinking about, Hey, there's the base wants one thing, but you still got to appeal to swing voters if you actually want to win enough seats to actually be in charge of governing something. So I think that tension would exist whether it was Schumer, whether Brian Schatz is there, whether it's Chris Murphy, whether it's Amy Klobashar,

whether it's Patty Murray. Right, we could come up you know, and I think if you know, this is one of those moments where if Schumer just decided in the next week to sort of, you know what, all right, you know, I'm not wanted here, I'll take a step back. My gut is Patty Murray would replace him because she'd be

seen as a quote unquote caretaker majority leader. She's at this point the senior most member of the Democratic Senate and nobody would cross her right and she really has the respect of sort of all wings of the party. I think she'd be seeing the original mom and tennis shoes, you know, as she ran as a sort of a

populist candidate of her day in nineteen ninety two when she first came on the national scene. I think she would be seen as somebody that would would be less of a public face for the party. And in some ways I think many Senators wouldn't mind that and would likely embrace that. But let's be realistic. You may not see any change in the short term. To me. You know, while it's easy to cover this tactical split inside the Democratic Party because it's sort of easy to do, it's

easy to create a cable news segment on it. It's easy to find people to criticize, you know, it's sort of an easy debate to have. It's not really that big of a divide because it's not over some sort of fundamental ideology ideological disagreement, you know, where for instance, like things with Mom Donnie, those are fundamental ideological disagreements about you know, how involved government should be in the economy.

That's that's a larger divide that I think doesn't really get dealt with in the Democratic Party until the presidential primaries take shape. But I tell you, even as everybody's focused on the dem divide here, don't take your eye off the ball of a growing Republican divide. I think that is coming. I think that right now, if you're a Republican elected official in Congress, you should You're trying to figure out what do I do when the leader

of the party is not accepting reality. And Donald Trump's inability to accept the reality that this economy sucks for a lot of his supporters is going to cause a much bigger problem for the Publican Party than anything the Democratic Party is going through at the moment, because ultimately, because they're in the minority and because they're in the opposition, you know, I mean, they're going to have a unity of message, They're going to have a unity of focus.

They may disagree on how to deal with Trump in

the moment, but they're not going to disagree on how to court the voters in twenty twenty six. That's a divide that I think that is not the case on the Republican side of the aisle. As this economy weakens for those without money and essentially with those about real savings. And that's what we're seeing here right This is a this is the very definition of a trickle down economy where Donald Trump is hoping that the bang, the stock market success is going to somehow trickle down and help

everybody else. There's not a lot of evidence that that ever works. You can just go back one hundred years and see how that worked out. The last time we sort of tried to put together an economy where government and big business fused itself together like it did in the in the early parts of the industrial and the

industrial age. That didn't end well. We got a great depression and then finally government decided, the people decided, hey, they wanted government, they wanted more guard rails on big business,

more guardrails on the economy than what we had at the time, and I have a feeling we're going to end up in a similar situation where we're going to have a downturn caused by what we're seeing, this fusion of big tech and government, and that is going to

awake awoke in a bunch of people who are going to want more guardrails put on our economy, necessarily leaving capitalism, but something more akin to what the two Roosevelts fought for, both Teddy and Franklin in their in their very different ways. But I did get a lot of questions on the shutdown, so I decided that before we get to the interview that I would answer all the shutdown related q and as in this part of the podcast, we'll have our individual will it then I'll do my top five list

this week. It's where the top five Senate seats most likely to flip. It's let's just say the top five has changed. Just like in college football, what the top five was at the beginning of October is a lot different than what the top five is at the beginning of November. So goes my list of top five most likely most vulnerable Senate seats in twenty twenty six. But before we get to all that, and I'll do some q and as on other topics that were not shutdown related.

So we'll begin with this. This comes from Tim, and he asks, I don't understand why the Democrats are being blamed for the shutdown. If the Speaker will not convene the House, how can the Dems vote against it? Also,

if the Republicans control the House, why can't they just vote to pass it? I think too many times that reporter. Too many times reporters assume that people know the cause of the most basic facts about an issue, or maybe this was reported the beginning of the shutdown, so they don't need to read it those facts. I think it has helpful to remind people periodically of those basic facts. Thanks Tim, Tim, you're absolutely right. This is a pet

peeve of mine. I talk about this two new journalists or those folks in journalism school where I remind people, because I learned this from interacting with viewers during my time at Meet the Press. Is how often a viewer, particularly a first generation American, would come up to me and say that they watched Meet the Press to sort

of understand how the American government works. And every time I would get a response like that, it would remind me that, hey, we're in the education business first, right, that's first and foremost what a journalist is. They're educating

the public, and we shouldn't forget that. And you know, I had a viewer one time, I think it was somebody on social media one time respond you know, somebody was lamenting the fact that people didn't know that there were nine members of the Supreme Court or how all that worked. Somebody said, how often do you put it in your stories? And I thought, you know, that person's right.

We sometimes don't reiterate basic facts about government because we go through this well, people already know that, or the people that are paying attention to this story are already going to know those things. And you're like, well, what about the Joe demage. You know, there was a great saying by Joe Demaggio. He used to say he played hard every game because he thought that there might be somebody in the stands who was coming to see him for the very first time. And guess what, there's somebody

reading your story. There's somebody listening to my podcast, there's somebody you know, reading your commentary for the very first time, and if they don't understand it, they're not going to read you again, right, or they may not be as they may not follow the topic you're trying to get them to follow because you didn't help them understand how it works. So I look, I believe in this. You know,

I look at my college football writers. They spend a lot of time explaining how the college football playoff works.

So college football fans all know how the college football playoff works. But it's not because they went out to look for it. It's because the new stories and the news commentators and ESPN in particular constantly wants to remind people how it works. Now they have an incentive, they're trying to make a bigger deal out of it. Well, we ought to take that same premise there. So you're asking why did the Democrats get why should the Democrats

get blaim to their shutdown? Well, it was technically Democrats that withheld just enough votes where the continuing Resolution to keep the government open couldn't pass the Senate. Now in the House, Mike Johnson got a party line vote and he passed the continuing Resolution in the House. So what they did is he passed that bill and then they want to This is a case where the House wanted to jam the Senate and they didn't want to. And

his thesis was, I'm not even going to come. I'm not going to convene the House until the Senate deals with the bill that we gave them, and we gave him a bill to keep the government open. It's up to them to get that bill passed. So this is the whole the House passed its version. So no, you're right, the House didn't didn't convene while the government was shut down. But what Johnson's thesis was they didn't need to because

there was no legislation. Now why else did he keep him out, Well because he didn't want his members, you know, board showing up on cable TV saying things that would cause them political pain, etc. Etc. But it was also a tactic, and this is something that happens. You know, there's always a joke in Congress that you know that the real divide in Congress is not Democrats versus Republicans,

it's the House versus the Senate. And so you know, the House was essentially jamming the Senate and jamming John Thune. So it's up to John Thune, who had fifty three Republican senators, actually fifty two because Rand Paul indicated he was going to vote against this deal, he had to go find eight Democrats. So in that sense, this is why in theory, because it needed sixty votes when Democrats

withheld their votes. Unless the Republicans are willing to get rid of the filibuster, which was something Donald Trump talked about, then the only way the government could get reopened is if eight Democrats joined fifty two Republicans to reopen the government. So I think what you're right about is every time that the story was reported that would not be explained at the top, And I think it's a bad habit

professional journalists, particularly Washington journalists, have come. I always say that a lot of times Washington reports for Washington or producers produce segments for producers. They don't think about sort of are we educating somebody who's tuning in for the very first time, And you know, in that sense, I think that's something that we all need to do better on. In this way, I love the podcast format where I can feel like I'm not I don't have some sort

of time constraint where I have to take a shortcut on something because the main thing I need to convey needs a certain amount of time to explain, and I don't want to take away from that by having to explain the basics and yet not explaining the basics all the time. Is what makes politics inaccessible to people. And I've always said my real goal, and I've had this goal ever since I entered journalism is and political journalism is.

I love politics, and my job is to explain it in such a way that it's more accessible to people. You know, there was another person who used to go out of his way to talk about the Gang of five hundred and made politics inaccessible and would claim that politics was an exclusive club and only those in the

know understood it. Yeah, there's people that want politics to be that way, so that way they are not subject to what the actual democracy wants, small d democracy wants, And so in that sense, I may populous when it comes to information, and I think we need to make politics more accessible, more understandable, so more people understand how much it's impacting their lives. I hope that helped you as to understand why in this case democrats had skin

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cell phone. And remember all law firms are not the same, So check out Morgan and Morgan. Their fee is free unless they win all right. Next question comes from Brian in New England. Right, So, I can't help but notice all of the liberal political commentators seem to think they have lost the shutdown fight. Likewise, all of the conservative political commentators believe they somehow won the shutdown fight, assuming

no last minute silliness by Senator Ran Paul. Yet all of the more moderate political commentators seemed to paint a vastly different picture as to who won and lost, and most seem to think Democrats got most out of the shutdown. So this brings up a good question, how do you win a shutdown fight? How do you know who won the shutdown fight? Can you even win a shutdown fight? Or is it really just a lose lose lose for everyone involved? Or at the end of the day, is

who won or lost a shutdown? All just vibes and fuzzy feelings? Anyway? To me, it kind of feels like the old whose line is at any Way? TV? Show? Everything is made up and the points don't seem to matter. Well, look this is you know, if you really want to wind me up, The entire shutdown process is a manufactured political circus. The idea that the that the most important

government on the face of the earth has a has a bug in it that allows for parts of the government to just simply shut down when there is a political dispute over funding levels. Is got to be one

of the dumber things anybody does. The idea that you know, I just think that the legal interpretations and I went through this for those of you that wanted to go off, you know, I am, but let me just tell you, I am furious that there is not a single effing member of Congress in the center of the House that is rallying around the idea that we need to prevent

shutdowns from ever happening again. It is absurd that we are hiring people to be air traffic controllers and part of the process is, hey, you know, every couple of years there's going to be a political fight and you're not going to get paid for about a month or two. Are you okay with that? What kind of circus are we running here? I mean, that's just you know, deciding to run to intentionally create a shit show government. It's stupid,

it's unnecessary, and it shouldn't be. It's dumb, it's it's and it all the only people that benefit from a shutdown are elected officials who are trying to make a name for themselves. You ask who wins in a shutdown, Individuals win, No party wins. Nobody likes the result of the shutdown at the end of the day, everybody collectively hates the process of it, right, But the winners are individuals. You know, Ted Cruz, you know. So take the twenty

thirteen shutdown. Republicans quote unquote are seen as having lost that shutdown, right because politically they did. If it wasn't for the shutdown, Republicans would have won a governor seat in Virginia that year, and instead Democrats won the governor seat. So you could look at just sort of the tactics and say, up, Republicans lost, and Ted Cruise was unpavable. Yet Ted Cruz built a political following. Ted Cruz was trying to run for president in twenty sixteen and build

a national following. So it worked for Ted Cruz. And that's who these shutdowns are for. They're for partisan actors, pure and simple, to try to make a name for themselves. That's so the only people that have ever come out quote unquote ahead. Right. It becomes about who can raise the most money off of the silliness of the shutdown.

And I'm sorry, I just think the idea that it's a practice that is somehow allowed and the only the only reason to have it is to figure out a way to bring more at time tention to a funding dispute. Guess what, perhaps we shouldn't put three hundred and fifty million people in the crosshairs of a political disagreement over

funding levels. That seems like a waste of a superpower's time. It actually makes us more vulnerable as a nation on national security. It is certainly a huge sign of weakness. And again there's you know, so a responsible democracy and a responsible government wouldn't put put us in a situation where we can just easily have a couple of people decide that the government is just going to close its doors.

And then, of course we've exempted so many aspects of the shutdown that if the initial idea of the shutdown was to you know, it was going to be so painful that everybody wouldn't want it to be be for more than a day or two. But when you take away you know, when you decide, well, social security isn't going to be a part of it, and we'll exempt military pay, and we'll exempt this, and we'll exempt that.

Then it becomes easier to do the political theater. So I have to say, I, as a as a voter who would like to have less dysfunction in our politics, am sorry that there's not a single elected member of Congress, Democrat or Republican currently advocating a no shutdowns bill. They've existed in the past, where are they now? Where are

they today? Instead, everybody wants to perform for the frickin' basis of each party because of how stupidly we've gerrymandered everything and our partisan primaries, all of those things, right, we have, all of our incentive structures are for politicians to only pay attention to the base. And it's just so the people that hate this shutdown stuff the most

are the ones that aren't partisan activists. And it doesn't seem like there's a single person in Congress that represents the constituency that just doesn't want the goddamn toilet clogged purposely, and instead this is what we have. So I don't know if I answer your question right, I don't think anybody won the shutdown fight. And if you're wondering to me.

You know, it is one of those where the only time anybody gains from it is if they're trying to if it's somebody individually trying to build their own following for some sort of national political purpose, you know. And the best example of that Ted Cruise twenty thirteen, a shutdown that was seen as a loser but actually gave Ted Cruz a constituency. All right, next question comes from Kenny from Long Islanding Rights. My question for you is

about the deal that seems to have been struck. It seems to me that the Democrats traded their leverage for a campaign at the Republicans will not have to take the tough vote, but will inevitably vote down the Obamacare subsidies. And that's about it. It snap resumes, payments resumed, no one gets fired. But all that is the standard course of events for the end of a shutdown. The only thing Senator Schumer seems to have extracted here is a tough vote.

Am I reading this correctly? If so so, why on earth would he have fought this hard and held out this lung, only to give up and walk away with nothing to show for it. Lastly, I agree and disagree with your assessment about President Trump entering this lame duck era. I agree that's the biggest takeaway for the shutdown resolution. To me, though, it's not because of the defiance. It's because they negotiated a solution without him in the Senate.

At least the President disengaged and made it easy for this to play out, but ultimately Senator thuonstruck the deal. I love the new format and I feel as though I'm learning so much more about the inside game when it comes to politics. Thank you for the scoop, all right, Kenny. I appreciate the construction constructive critique there on that front. It's interesting. I guess I could word it, you know, and again I would word it differently. I don't think

there's a cave here. I think there is. I think

Warnock said it. He said, if you're going to say that the Democratic Party seems to care about those on snap benefits more than the Republican Party cares about then I think he said, guilty is charged, right, that that's not a And I think if you're you know, again, a better leader and a better communicator would not have would not have signaled that this is over, would signal that, you know what, I think we've We've gotten more people

aware of this healthcare issue. We're sorry that the President wants to irresponsibly punish people that have nothing and weaponize the FAA and all of this, and so we're not going to let them do that. So we're going to take a pause in this over the next two months. We're going to make sure people can travel for the holidays. And come January, there's another vote to reopen the government and there's Obamacare subsidies. Okay, so I don't think they

gave away any leverage. I think they still have leverage in January to essentially shut down government again if they want to, if these Obamacare subsidies don't get passed for a year. I I think that there's going to be a majority of the US House that votes for these Obamacare subsidies. Not a majority of Republicans, but a majority of the House. I think you will see somewhere between

thirty and forty Republicans who do this. I think you will see ten to fifteen Senate Republicans wanting to be for this. So I think it's going to happen. I think the results of the I mean, I think the biggest impact on the healthcare subsidies was the twenty five election results. The fact that it was a romp, the fact that cost the living issues and Democrats didn't even have the healthcare issue yet and it was working for them. We already know how well healthcare works as an opposition

issue when you're messing with it. We just saw it in twenty eighteen that benefited the Democrats and back in twenty ten when it benefited the Republicans. Anytime you mess with the status quo of healthcare, the party messing with the status quo gets punished. And in this case that's going to be now Publicans. And so I guess I don't accept the premise that they got rid of any

of their leverage. And I think this is why I could argue, this is why Schumer should go, because he's a terrible communicator and he couldn't communicate that they won. They won if you want him, you know, and he's trying now, but he just doesn't have credibility with anybody anymore. Right. It's like like I said, I keep comparing Schumer to Pete Carroll and Bill Belichick. They used to have credibility with the players they coached. Now they don't anymore. That happens.

It happens in every walk of life. It happens to political leaders all the time. There's a moment when they have uber leverage over the entire party, and there's moments where nobody will listen to them. George W. Bush had so much influence over his party for a period of time until he had no influence over his party for a period of time. Right, it is political capital is elusive. When you have it, you better spend it because if

you try to save it, it'll disappear. So I guess I'm not I think they could have communicated this in such a way where they could have been seen as the adult in the room and not giving up their fight on healthcare because technically they've given themselves opportunities before the State of the Union in February to make this a showdown vote one more time. All right, last question comes from David Crowder, and then we'll get to the

interview with Joe Willett. I like your work in thoughtfulness, Thank you saw your podcast is sam First Info in j Jones came out in mid October Virginia begins early voting mid September. You get my point. Second, the shutdown argument pre pandemic. Some twelve millions participated in the bill, their subsidies remain with premium increases. It's not a big deal. The big deal is the twelve million who enrolled post pandemic, who did not qualify financially for pre pandemic for subsidies,

they lose the subsidies. Is that disconnect worth shutting down the government? I don't know. Seems like some form of the subsidy could be agreed upon. Finally, the tax breaks that were scheduled to expire were extended. The differences the subsidies weren't scheduled to expire. It's all crap, David. You've

summarized the poor legislative process quite well, right. You know the fact that we have such a dysfunctional way that we make laws now, and we have such distrust of the two parties that they there's always a weird poison pills in different ways. Right. The subsidies they can't you know, did Democrats want those subsidies in perpetuity? They did? Could they not get enough votes to get them without putting some sort of time stamp on it. They couldn't. Ditto

with the with the tax cut, right, they couldn't. Trump couldn't get it permanent, so instead he had an expiration date on it, hoping that the expiration would serve as a fear of a tax hike and then that somehow would get people to renew them. The Bush tax cuts

worked this way, right, these ten year increments. We do this sort of funny business accounting when it comes to the impact on the deficit, with these funny numbers with the Congressional Budget Office and these estimates that are all that are all just sort of make assumptions that nobody can assume when it comes to the actual state of the economy. But we make these deficit projections in such a way that it encourages these sort of false expiration dates. Right,

some will have them, some will don't. They're usually time to make it politically difficult to somehow not extend the deadline, whether it's on a tax rate or whether it's on

a subsidy or whatever it is. So this goes to the this is what you get when you don't have a functioning committee process in Congress and not to get really dorky here, But essentially when we totally polarized the US Houses, which which really began sort of late eighties, early nineties, right, and you know, there's those in the right blame Jim Right and the Democrats, those in the left blame Nut Gingrids and the Republicans. I think I

think sort of there was. There was certainly power plays that Jim Right made that New Gingridge then emulated and took to took to an took even further that ultimately destroyed the committee process and the destruction of the congressional committee process both in the House and the Senate, is why we get such poorly written legislation which used so I think eloquently pointed out with the way you worded your question, the fact that the question was a bit confusing.

I don't put on you, I put on Congress because this is how they legislate now, with these sort of weird expiration dates. It's all designed to create sort of political poison, almost almost like these these sort of delayed bombs that suddenly explode and you have no choice but to continue a policy that maybe you were never in favor of. You know, Obama didn't want to Obama ran

on getting rid of the Bush tax cuts. Turns out he couldn't get rid of them because of what kind of impact it would have had on a number of people seeing their tax bills go up, and he didn't want to politically put himself in that situation. He had made a pledge not to raise taxes on anybody over I think it was four hundred thousand dollars. So that's

the new line that they drew on that. So ultimately, you know, someday we're going to have a Speaker of the House and a Senate Majority leader that actually wants to make the legislative branch greade again. But until that time comes, we're going to continue to have this poor, horribly dysfunctional legislative process that we've now seen that for many of you, feels like the normal way Congress works,

because trust me, this was not the intent. How Congresses worked the last thirty years is not the way that Congress was intended to work in the previous two hundred and twenty days. This episode of the Chuck Podcast is brought to you by Wildgrain. Wildgrain is the first bake from Frozen subscription box for our teasonal breads, seasonal pastries, and fresh pastas, plus all items conveniently bake in twenty

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get the discount. I'm telling you it's excellent, excellent, Brett. It is that time I said every month I would update my top five, top five, top top just a reminder in October and the way I do this and my ranks have been doing this since I wrote a column called on the Trail back during my National Journal dot com outline days, which was I like to order. These races are most likely to flip parties, so not in the toss up lean R lean D category, but

most likely to flip to least likely to flip. Obviously, by keeping it to five, you know all of them are going to be somewhat competitive races that crack the top five. So to remind you, the last time my top five was North Carolina one, Georgia two, Michigan three, Main four, New Hampshire five. So the idea was I had. The assumption was the open seat in North Carolina with a big recruit there. North Carolina, Georgia's the Democratic health seat of John Ossoff. Michigan, of course, the open seat

Gary Peters Democrat is vacating. Maine is Susan Collins, New

Hampshire is the Gene Shheen seat that she is vacating, a Democratic seat there. So look my new top five. In some ways, number one hasn't changed. The most likely seat to flip is North Carolina. It is an open seat. It is the one open seat, you know, one of two open seats in the big seven battleground states. Right, The big seven battleground states are Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada in sort of the sun belt, and Wisconsin, Michigan,

and Pennsylvania. And so when you look at the competitive Senate map these days, there's actually, you know, the last two cycles, they all seven of those states. I think two cycles in a we either had seven for seven or six of the seven with Senate seats this time, right, we'd have nothing in Arizona, nothing in Nevada. There's one seat in Georgia, one seat in North Carolina, nothing in Pennsylvania, nothing in Wisconsin, and one seat in Michigan. So it

is the presidential battlegrounds. This happens to be the one cycle where we have the fewest amount of Senate seats in the presidential battlegrounds. But I think you still have to put you know, I think what I learned from the twenty twenty five elections, and again history being a guide. Every time we've seen a route like this by one party, we have seen that continue in the following even numbered year.

I am looking for the time. I mean, twenty thirteen is one of the few exceptions where Democrats did well in the off off year, but that did not translate to twenty fourteen, which was not a good year for Democrats in there. And again, right, there's a reason twenty thirteen is the exception to every single one of these trend lines we've been talking about with New Jersey and Virginia, et cetera. And you know, certain things I think that

I took away from the off off years. One, Democrats are ready to vote, and you know, the sheer, raw number of votes that the Democratic candidate got in New Jersey versus the Republican candidate continues to blow me away. And I think it's the single most important statistic that you need to understand coming out of these off off year elections. Right, Jack Chitarelli, the Republican nominee for governor, actually got one hundred thousand more votes than he received

in twenty twenty one. In twenty twenty one, that vote total was good enough to only lose by three percentage points. In twenty twenty five, where he got more votes, he loses by thirteen percentage points. The Democratic candidate Mikey Cheryl got four hundred thousand more votes than Phil Murphy got in twenty twenty one. Okay, that tells you a whole bunch of Democrats who didn't bother to show up in

twenty one decided to show up in twenty five. I don't think I had anything to do with Mikey Cheryl in jec Cheddarelly, and everything to do with the larger national environment. By the way, we got that result on Tuesday. If you recall the NBC News poll that came out two days earlier that I am a big believer of because I trust those two pollsters. They had a generic ballot lead for the Democrats of eight points. It was the largest lead that Democrats had going back to twenty seventeen.

Twenty eighteen cycle another pretty good cycle for Democrats. So I throw all that in there in that my new top five list is skewed a bit towards the Democrats. So number one hasn't changed. That's North Carolina. It's not going to change. But my number two has. I had Georgia's the second most vulnerable seat. After seeing what we saw with those Public Service Commission races where there was no money spent and Democrats just generically won by a lot,

you've got a growing divisive Republican primary. I highlighted an add a couple of podcasts ago where Derek Dooley, the son of Vince Dooley, the former football coach of the Bulldogs, that the super pack of Brian Kemp, the sitting governor, was running an ad that sort of lumped in the two Republican congressmen in the primary and asof as all responsible for the shutdown. So you now know what kind of campaign Dooley is going to run as the outsider

the anti Washington crowd. I think it's a smart place to position himself at this point though, if Dooley is the nominee, I think Osof's in bigger trouble. But if

Dooley is not the nominee, and so far he's still the third place candidate, I think Osoff is a bit safer than I preps. Look, he's still in the top five, but he is not number two most vulnerable. I think now you have to put in the second most vulnerable, Susan Collins. I do move Susan Collins up into the

second slot there. I think when you see what the Democratic turnouts was in the Northeast in general, you see the fact that in some ways the strength of the oyster farmer Graham Platner, the fact that his support is holding and it's not hurting the Democrats. The fact that Jay Jones got through what he got through in Virginia, I think is only going to serve to reassure Platner on there. The anti Schumer vibe, the anti establishment vibe, seems to be much stronger than the anti character vibe

inside the Democratic Party right now. And you know Collins is going to be defending a bunch of status quo stuff. It is, you know, do I think if Janet Mills

is the Democratic nominee. Collins has a better chance of winning, I do believe it or not, but I still think it's going to be it's going to be a hard time being an incumbent Republican running in twenty twenty six with this likely economy that we're staring at and the way Donald Trump is positioning the party's brand right, And while Susan Collins is never going to be mistaken for a Trump Republican, she's still going to have to carry around some of that baggage, some of that baggage on tariffs,

some of that baggage on HEALTHCA. I mean, she's probably going to be the loan Republican, you know, one of now she won't be the loan Republicans. She's going to be one of the lead Republicans trying to get these Obamacare subsidies extended, because if they do not get extended, she's done. She's completely done. Which is why I am bullish that you will see a one year extension at

a minimum of these Obamacare subsidies, because I think there is no senator that would be more vulnerable to a decision not to do that than Susan Collins. So number one is North Carolina. Number two is main Number three, I am going to put Georgia. I still think that there is certainly, you know, it is it is a even state. We've still not seen, you know, a demo until the PS elections. We hadn't see a Democrat win a down ballot statewide contest in Georgia going back more

than ten years. But the entire political environment in Georgia, I mean, if Georgia is indeed you know, I've been vacillating. Was Georgia and anti Trump state or is Georgia simply a swing state that demographics have been shifting over time. And I think there's now more and more evidence that this is a This is a realignment in Georgia. This is the growth of the Atlanta suburbs, this is all

of those things that this is less about. And it may be what we're seeing in the Atlanta metro areas what we saw in Northern Virginia that went from being an important pocket of voters for Virginia Democrats to becoming the most dominant feature of the state and of the politics of the state. And I think we're starting to starting to see more and more of that in Georgia,

but I'm still going to put it. I'm still going to put it right now in the third slot because because of the fact that this time Osoff isn't going to have be running with Rafael Warnock or a presidential campaign, right, he's got to do this entire turnout operation on his

on his own there, So North Carolina one Main three, Georgia Main two, Georgia three, number four on the less, I'm gonna put Michigan, so it drops down a slot because I've jumped started Maine there. And look, I do think Mike Rogers is he went down a weird road. He decided to claim that somehow the twenty twenty four election was rigged, that it or he's implying he's opening the door to some conspiracy theories as to why he

lost in twenty twenty four. Boy, that's a long way away from the Mike Rogers I first started covering when he was in Congress. It's going to come as a surprise, given that he doesn't really have any serious primary opposition. The fact that he's going down this sort of Trump grievance road on his twenty four election is a bit of a head scratcher doesn't seem as if he needs to be catering to that primary voter that enthusiastically. So perhaps he really believes this, Perhaps he's going down this

rabbit hole. I don't think that's good politics for him, but you know, he's still The reason I still give him and why I think Michigan could be very competitive is We're going to have a very messy Democratic primary. Who knows who gets elected. Is that the super progressive that gets elected is that the outsider, and lsied is the progressive. McMorrow is the sort of outsider. Stevens is the establishment candidate. They've all scrambled to be anti Schumer now,

even Stevens on that front. So that primary could get messy, and it's an August primary, and it means that rogers Is should be in a strong position. But I am I do think that's a loser to go down the conspiracy road in a swing state like Michigan. And then I'm putting a new seat at number five. I had New Hampshire in the top five before. No longer am I putting New Hampshire there because I think the political environment indicates that it's more likely another Republican health seat

is going to fall before a Democratic health seat. And look, I think Johnson new is a much stronger candidate that Scott Brown potentially in an open seat. But if the

wind is blowing left, New Hampshire goes with the wind right, you know, you can still get elected as a Republican in New Hampshire, which it needs to be in a either even or good Republican year. I don't know if this is a winnable race for any Republican Chris or

Johnson unhu. If the wind is blowing as strongly for the Democrats in twenty six as it was blowing for the Democrats in New Jersey and in Virginia in twenty five, I can just tell you thatw it the odds are, it's going to look more more like a blue state in an environment like this than it will a swing state. So my new number five is Shared Brown and Ohio.

John Houston is the appointed elected senator there. He's been doing quite well in some of his union endorsements and getting a few union endorsements at Shared Brown, and when he was an incumbent senator would get. But if you just shift, if you believe the electorate in general is just going to be five points better across the board for Democrats, like it was in Virginia. That basically makes

Ohio a coin flip. And what we learned about Shared Brown in twenty four is he can run three to five points ahead of the Democratic of the generic Democratic number. He can't run eight or nine points ahead of a Democratic presidential candidate. He's running in a midterm year. He has had more success running in midterm years and he has in presidential years. And he did win once in a presidential year in twenty twelve, but he had that Obama had a lot of wind at his back, and

that was quite helpful to him. In twenty eighteen, he was able to win in a Trump year thanks to a combination of a week Republican opponent, but also just again it was a good Democratic year. So at this point I put Ohio there. And this means three of

the five in my five most vulnerable are Republican held seats. So if Democrats sweep the five hold for Georgian Michigan and flip North Carolina, Maine in New Hampshire, they are only one seat away from the majority. That's where this top five list sits right now. That's this is why if you want to mess around on the political betting markets, one of the best early bets to make right now because it's a sheriff stock, and then you could sell

that share before the results actually happen. Because if Democrats succeed in good candidate recruits in Alaska, a good candidate in Kansas, you may see them get six or seven Republican held seats in the competitive category. Will they win them all? No, But if they can put Texas, Iowa, Alaska, Kansas, Nebraska, they can put three of those five in play. In addition to the three that I think they already now have a either even or slightly better chance at flipping,

you suddenly have a path to the Senate majority. There

you go. The top five list this week North Carolina, Maine, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio the five Senate states most likely to flip this month. As far as the Chuck Podcast is concerned, having good

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slash chuck. So again, that's Ethos dot com slash chuck. Application times may vary, and the rates themselves may vary as well, but trust me, life insurance is something you should really think about it, especially if you've got a growing family. All right, let's take a couple more questions ask Chuck. None of these will be shut down related. This one comes from a third generation Navy vet, John B. From Saint Louis, and he writes, Hey, thanks for responding

to my question about the atomic bowl. All right, so it's a not a first time long time, but at least a second time long time. I'm a World War Two and Cold War history buff, and I think it's crucial to keep conversations about those times alive in our modern discourse. We live in the shadow of those events. I'm wondering how America might have been different during the past fifty years if we had not ended the draft falling Vietnam. I think we could expand that to include

national service in general. Thoughts, John, you are scratching an itch that I'm constantly dealing with I think, you know, I think not having national service. I think national service could be a huge advancement of trying to depolarize America, right, geting, getting people, getting American citizens to believe that they have to that part of your citizenship is to give a little bit to this country and service. And it doesn't have to be in the military. It can be a

variety of ways you can you can give. It could be working, you know, in home health care for an

elderly parent without a close knit family. It could be cleaning up rivers and streams. It could be teaching in underserved communities that need more school teachers. It could simply be two to ring, or it could be military service. I think anything. It's why I think that in general,

you know, I'm speaking on Veterans Day here. In general, I'm a big advocate of bringing as many veterans as you can into the into the workforce, into any sort of culture, because most military veterans, the experience of being in the military exposed them to people that grew up differently than them, people that worshiped different faiths than they did, but they all learned how to have a common mission

and buy in some ways wearing the same uniform. They realize when you wear the same uniform, you bleed the same red blood. That hey, they're really the differences really are all surface. They're not they're not very deep at all. So not to sort of try to like, you know, but for the good old days kind of mindset. I'm a I'm a huge advocate of National service, and I think it could be a again, you know, you know,

whether it's a way to pay for college. There's all sorts of ways that you create sort of for every year of national you know, maybe everybody has to do one, and every extra year you give you get that much more off of your tuition. But I think there's a lot of ways, you know, or to trade school, whatever you wanted to do it. Anything that we could do to sort of get Americans from different walks of life to have to have to give back for a period

of time only strengthens the fabric of this country. So I'm a huge advocate, all right. Next question comes from Chase little rock hocketsas and response to your question about staying on the thirteenth floor in game day. If a black cat crossed my path while I walked under a ladder, on the way out of my thirteenth floor hotel room in Fayetteville. I wouldn't have bat it an eye. This razorback football season has already used up every ounce of

luck in the entire state. Bobby Petrino's come back to or hit all the wrong notes, and honestly, Fayeville needs a total do over, new coach, new schemes. I knew everything. So at the college football job market heating up, which openings do you think are the most tempting and who's got the chops or luck to fill them? Go hogs eventually? Well, look, you know, Florida is always the the It's one of those that you think it should be a bigger power than it is. Irony is that the history of Florida

football is actually quite mediocre. Right. They've really only had two brief periods of success, one with Steve Spurrier, one with Urban Meyer and Tim Tebow which really probably have to talk more to Tim Tebow than urban Meyer, and they've been mediocre report and every other you know, at any other period. In theory, it should be a great job to have. In theory, it should be a place that you could become a powerhouse. It seems to be a cesspool of micromanagers. Right. It's kind of like you

know what Auburn is. It's like, you know, it has all the ingredients, but it's impossible to succeed because the boosters are always going to get in your way. It just trusts me from experienced mind me so on paper, it's Florida, but you know, I'm a huge I think Arkansas is a hidden I think Faetteville is a is a is a hidden gem in the South. I think it's one of the it's you know, it's it's going

to be the next Austin or Nashville. I think it's a great place to live. I think that somebody's going to crack that code. And when you have Tyson Chicken money and Walmart money, the the you know, if the if the university athletic program will invest in football, Arkansas could be a great job. It is not clear they want to invest in football as much as they do basketball and baseball. That seems to be the be the

biggest problem there. I do think the Penn State job is actually quite appealing to because there's such a loyal fan base. You I actually think even though Franklin you know, think about how long he survived without succeeding at the tippy tippy top, which means fan base has actually a lot more patience than it gets credit for. So that would be a good one that I think you could see quick success at and sustained success that and be

in a community that would be pretty comforting. I mean you could turn you could definitely turn Happy Valley into Tuscaloosa and have a Nick Saban like run there. And that's probably the way I look at it. Where could you have a Nick Saban like run where you might go a decade and just be so dominant. I think fills a place to do that. Think I think a

Happy Valley is a place to do that. I'm less convinced you can do that in Gainesville, and I don't you know, I think history shows you it's pretty difficult to do. And I don't know if Virginia Tech can be on that highest level right now. I don't know if they have the financial backing to do that on that front. All right, I'm gonna take one more question here. This comes from john S and Millie Waukee. Of course, everything I've learned about socialist mayors came from Wayne's World

the movie and Alice Cooper. But I digress. Diehard listener here, just finish your podcast with rich Tawe. Fascinating. You answered my past question about voters in Ozaki and Sheboygan County's voting anti woman richest focus group confirmed my hunch some voters dislike Trump, but voter form anyway likely because of Harris. Have your thoughts on this changed at all, even if the polling doesn't pick it up. Look, I think it's pretty clear there was a group of voters that, you know,

that Harris couldn't appeal to. That I guess what you're you know the better the question is that Joe Biden did appeal to in twenty twenty. Yes, but I also think it's pretty clear. You know, I think it's a fair question about about whether it is heart. You know, I think I think race is less of an issue. I think gender was more of an issue. But it's hard to disaggregate it because you had a poor economic environment. She was defending the history of sitting vice presidents trying

to succeed unpopular presidents is pretty stark, right. You know, Hubert Humphrey couldn't win with LBJ. But he came awfully close, and neither could she. So it is I think it's hard to find isolate the specific voter itself. You hear it in there, but you'd have a better argument if she lost with a better economic record. And I think that that's, you know, it is. I still think there's a little bit of choose your own adventure on this

that you can. You certainly hear it in there, and you certainly hear it in the focus groups, and Rich sort of described it. It is a hurdle, but I don't think it's a brick wall. And but it becomes a brick wall if you know, there's like this massive economic downturn, right if if a whole bunch of other stuff are going, it's sort of it is a factor, not the factor on this front. So I think that that.

I mean, if we were seeing women struggle to win governorships in these swing states, I'd be I would be more persuaded. But you know, we look a look at the state of Michigan. It's elected, you know, to two term women governors in the last twenty years, in Jennifer Granholme and Gretchen Wetmer, but they didn't support Kamala Harris was that, you know, so I think that that it. I think you can't dismiss it as a factor, but I will. I am still going to dismiss it as

the factor, if that's fair, all right. So I'm going to leave that there because guess what. I'll be back in twenty four hours with another episode of the Check podcast until we upload again.