2022 Midterms: A Mixed Bag

the mid terms was a little underwhelming. However, we we also still don't have the full picture. We're still awaiting results in the House. We're still awaiting results in the Senate, so we don't know what the makeup of the House and the Senate is actually going to be yet. So I think it's unfair to fully write the story when it hasn't hasn't concluded, right, I mean, you can't really reflect on the midterm elections until we have the full results.

But we're going to try to go through where things stand now and what you should know about it and perhaps some of the reasons why Republicans didn't have the red wave that so many people, like myself, we're expecting before we do that. I just want to give something that I've realized in working in politics for a long time, because before I got into media, I was a campaign person. I was a political person. I worked on Capitol Hill for a few different members of Congress. I worked at

the NRCC in the historic election. I've worked on campaigns. I was a communications director in one of the top Senate campaigns in the country in Wisconsin during the election. I've worked on primary races. I was a vice president of a polling firm for a period of time. I've worked as part of consulting teams on top Senate races

as well. So I've done a lot of this right, and so what I'm giving my perspective when I'm trying to dig in and get a fuller picture, it's not just based off of, you know, just throwing stuff against the wall and saying what sticks. It's basing it off of a lot of what I've learned, a lot of

what I've seen. And I'm also talking to people who work on campaign committees, who work on these races, who are are pulling and looking at numbers in real Time, so I sort of collectively put that all together and trying to look at what the electorate's going to look like, what an election is going to look like. But before we feel too beaten down about the state of things,

I always go back to Time magazine. And I don't know if you guys remember, but Time put a cover of the you know, the g B elephant and said endangered species. And this was May eighteen, two thousand nine. And and and what did Republicans do that mid term cycle? I know I was at the NBCC at the time. We picked up sixty three seats in the House and six in the Senate. So you know, elections can be swing e They're all over the place. They changed from

election to elections. So what happened this election cycle does not define what's going to happen in But that does not mean we should not try to learn lessons from it and and try to get an idea of what happened. So for starters, what I want to start out with is, it's infuriating that we don't have the results of the election right, and mail and ballots are are really the result of that. And what's wild is if you go

back to presidential elections of the past. The Associated Press was able to call the two thousand twelve presidential race for Barack Obama at eleven thirty eight pm Eastern on Election Night. The AP called the election for Donald Trump at twenty nine am Eastern time the next day after the election. But in two thousand twenty two, with all the mail and ballots, the AP didn't call the race until eleven twenty six a m. Eastern on November seven,

four days after election day. And now as we are awaiting finalized results in states like Arizona and Nevada for the Senate races, they're saying we might not know the final conclusions until next week. Now does that give you a great deal of confidence and our elections? I mean, particularly when you're looking at Arizona, where Katie Hobbs, the Democrat Canada in the gubernatorial race, is the secretary of State. And it also just raises questions because Democrats really try

to set the groundwork for this. Remember that Joe Biden's speech that he gave in prime time before the midterm election where he said this, listen, in many states, don't start counting those ballots after the polls closing no member eight. That means in some cases we want to know the winner of the election for a few days until a few days after the election, takes time to count all legitimate ballots. So obviously laying the groundwork there on Twitter

also pushed this propaganda. It's welcome message before the election said it takes time to count all of the votes. We know that the media went in and reinforced this idea as well. And look, I mean the use of mail and ballots and absentee ballots has grown exponentially since covid Right, Democrats really used covid U virus, which is about as deadly as the flu, to completely change the name of the game when it comes to elections, and

they smartly did that. Right, We were idiots for not fighting it harder, for not pushing back, and and now you know we're ruining that day. I mean, you look at the use of mail and ballots and absolute ballots has grown exponentially from in two thousand four, which was

a presidential election to presidential election. And then you'll get states like Nevada where we're still looking to see what the outcome of the Senate race there under Democrat control in two thousand twenty one, they passed a B three one, which requires county clerks to mail all active registered voters a ballot at least fourteen days before an election, making the state one of eight to offer universal mail and ballots. And I know that everyone tries to tell us there's

no concerns with mail abouts. This is what the media wants to say. But the reality is it just touches more hands than if you just go in and you make your vote. That's just the reality. Remember when former Attorney General Bill Barr had this to say in September on CNN Listen, which is the Bipartisan Commission chaired by Jimmy Carter and James Baker, said back in two thousand nine that mail in voting is fraud with the risk

of fraud and coercions. And until this improved it, let me talk please uh And since this, since that time, there's been in the newspapers, in networks, academic studies saying it is open to fraud and coercion. The only time the narrative changed is after this administration came in. But elections that have been held with mail have found substantial fraud and coercion. For example, we indicted someone in Texas ballots collected, and I'm not concluding that the election was stolen.

I have no evidence of that. But what I do think is it it undermines and it erodes confidence in the election when it takes this long to get the results. And also Democrats are so concerned about democracy, why would they not want to boost confidence in elections? And we know that it can be done to get the results accurately and in a timely manner, because Florida has done it. You know, Florida's the third most populous state. They were able to give us results on election night my home

state of Florida where I live now. You know, Florida is a population of twenty two million people and they were able to get it done. So what excuse do some of these other states have with much lesser populations and not being able to produce the results of the election. So this is something that needs to change. But we also have to be honest with ourselves, and we can't change it unless we win in some of these states

and then go in and change the election laws. And unfortunately, to win in some of these states, we have to play the game. And the problem right now is Democrat has spent four weeks turning out the early vote with mail and ballots, of encouraging early voting, and Republicans really try to rely on one day on election day. You can't win under that scenario. You've got to encourage or like even in Florida, I remember Governor to Santass team were pushing the early vote. I even went out and

early voted in Florida. Although Florida has tightened its election laws, so it looks a lot different here than it does in other states in terms of election to integrity. But point being is that we have to play the game that's in front of us, right. I know we want to change the game. I believe in changing the game. I just pointed out my concerns with mail and ballots. But until that happens, you have to play the game.

And the sad thing is you had a heck of a lot of Pennsylvanians who voted early before even watching that debate when Fetterman completely fell apart on stage against Dr Oz And that's not right, that's not fair. But the reality is the reality, and so Republicans need to play smarter in this new era of politics. Where the name of the game has changed, and if we want to change it, as I do, got to win to do that, and then how are you going to win?

You gotta play the game that's in front of you, and then you can change the dynamics for more integrity once you win, quick break more inwo mid terms. The second part of it is okay, A lot of us, like myself included, thought that this would be a bigger election for Republicans, thought it would be a wave. I still stand by that the dynamics were set up for

a wave election. We just didn't get it done. I was pointing out earlier the reasons why I thought it would be a wave election, and those things still stand. I mean, you look at the history of past elections since World War Two, the party out of power has picked up a net of twenty eight seats and forty three seats when a president's approval rating was below fifty. We have a president with an approval rating at this is a midterm election. History would demonstrate that this should

have been big electoral gains in the House. Another thing to look at regarding the House and the electorate. With the Houses, we only needed to net five seats to win the majority. There were less seats in play than maybe some prior midterm election cycles, meaning the margins were already tight in the House. There was less fertile ground, so we were never going to have a sixty and you know, a net sixty three night like we did

in the mid term elections. But we should have picked up more seats than what we are potentially on track too picked up. That's also a fact. Another reason I was looking and thinking that it was going to be a big wave election. It was the environmental factors, right.

I just mentioned a president with a forty two percent approval rating, the fact that we have forty year high inflation, record high gas prices, All of these dynamics in play environmental factors that would prove positive to Republicans, particularly since Republicans have always done better and did do better on those who thought the inflation was the number one issue,

which it was according to exit polling. I was also looking at where Democrats were spending time in the final days, and you had the Democrat Governors Association creating an independent Expenditure Committee in New York to boost Kathy Hokel, a state where Democrats out number of Republicans two to one.

You had the Clintons spending time there, Joe Biden spending time they're all out for HOCO, which led me to believe that if they're spending time in a state like that, what does that mean for the rest of the country. We had Joe Biden also spending time in a state like Oregon, a deep blue state. And you had the first lady spending time in Virginia's tenth congressional district for Jennifer Wexton, which is a Biden plus nineteen district. She spent time there on mid term the day before the

midterm election. So a lot of that concluded me to believe that Democrats were playing defense to a certain degree. And then you also had the polling and passed elections which underestimated support for Republicans. You know, this happened in a lot of states, in a lot of areas in the two thousand, eighteen and twenty ten elections. And if you look at the twenty elections, national polls were the

most inaccurate they've been in forty years. State polls most inaccurate in twenty years, and and looking at that, national polls overestimated support for Biden by an average of three point nine percent. State poll were similarly skewed towards the Democrats towards Joe Biden, with a two favorable snapshot of him by four point three percent. So I thought, here we are again, where the polls are not picking up what is actually happening and what has all the makings

and the fundamentals for a big way of election. So I still stand by that all those factors were true. We had a ripe environment for a way of election, but it didn't materialize. So you might ask me, well, Lisa, why didn't it materialize. Here's what I've concluded in conversations with people also looking at exit polling and trying to get a bigger picture of why we didn't quite have the night that a lot of us, including myself. I'm admitting I thought it was gonna be a bigger night

than it did. I don't think I was wrong to have thought that, but I did miss some things that ended up happening in the midterm elections which I wasn't expecting.

Right again, we have to learn from these things. We have to look at what happened and and and try to look at what do we need to do different heading into again, what happened this election cycle doesn't define as I pointed out with Time magazine saying that Republican Party was extinct in nineteen or two thousand nine and the Republicans went on to have a massive midterm election in So you have to take everything with a grain assault. So, as I was talking about, the conditions for a wave

were there, but we didn't execute. So why not you know what happened where it was a breakdown? I mean, if if you think about midterm elections are normally a referendum on the president the party in charge. Presidential elections are these choice elections where you're really choosing between these two people. But in order to win a midterm election, you need a couple of things. You've got to motivate your base more than the other side, and you've got

to win independence. And if you look at exit polling, we didn't do that. Democrats were motivated to turn out in a large part because of doubs, because of the issue of abortion, which we see an exit pulling actually ended up being second most important issue in national exit polls.

The Democrat base they were motivated. We should have been more motivated, So they gave them an issue, a reason to turn out, and we didn't went over independence, And I think to some degree that also speaks of what kind of society we're living in where the desire to murder a child supersedes you know, being murdered in a street with crime. But you know, that's where we are

as a country. It's pretty wild. And you know, there's been a lot of finger pointing at Trump this election cycle, so I want to get into that a little bit as well. So I think some of it's fair in terms of, you know, their candidate quality argument that's out there. I mean, you look at someone like Doug Mastriano. He he did get crushed in the Pennsylvania gubernatorial race. I mean that's just a fact. He shouldn't have lost by that much in Pennsylvania and Dr Oz losed by much less.

But I think Mastriano really hurt him. I'm not even an OS fan, but that is just what the number show. And you look at Don Bullock in New Hampshire, he lost significantly as well, like that race should have been competitive, is in So some of that is true in terms of you know, the candidate selection and sure, yeah, voters have to go out and select these candidates. But you know, if Trump hadn't endorsed them, would they have been elected?

I don't know, Probably not right. And then you know he also had about a hundred million in the bank and didn't use that to boost some of these candidates, and you know throughout the general elections. I mean, I think those criticisms are are somewhat fair. I mean, we got to look at this and look at it truthfully. And then too, you know, as I was mentioning, in

the midterm election, it's tend to be a referendum. I do think Trump having a big role in this election and also looking ahead at and talking about presidential election maybe made it more of a choice election where it's not just a referendum, it's about and a whole another aspect of it. So I think the water's got a little muddied with the abortion aspect. And then you know, Trump having a big presence in the midterm elections as well.

I mean, we know that he motivates the Republican base, but we also know that he turns off some independence and that you know, Democrats hate him, and when you have to turn your base out more that does have an impact. That's not, you know, be mean towards Trump. It's just to actually try to really look at this and dig in and figure out what happened. But if we're going to take him at Trump, which a lot of people are, you gotta look at the bigger picture too.

I mean, the Republican Party at large really failed to do what they were supposed to do. I mean, you gotta look at Kevin McCarthy, you gotta look at the committee chairman, and Ronald McDaniel at the r n C, or Tom Emer at the nr c C or Rick Scott at the NSC as well, because they didn't do what they're supposed to do either. So I mean, if you're gonna do a pox on Trump's house, it's really

got to be everyone you look at. Mitch McConnell probably deserves a significant share of the blame because he canceled ten million in TV ads for Blake Masters in Arizona while spending millions in Alaska. When you're gonna have a Republican candidate end up winning in Alaska regardless, you're always going to have a Republican out of that race, So why not spend the money on races that would define the balance of power. So I think Mitch McConnell deserves

a significant, you know, part of the blame. But you know, the bottom line is everyone's sort of trying to decide in real time what these election and mean, and what the midterms elections mean when we still don't know what the final resorts are, right Like, we're still waiting for house races. We're still waiting to figure out what's going to happen in the Senate. We also have the runoff in December with Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker as well.

So we're really trying to write a story that is, you know, still somewhat unwritten as we sort of await some of these details and the outcomes of some of these elections. I do want to end with this in the sense of, Okay, yeah, we're all disappointed, right we were expecting a bigger election, and you know, I admitted I really thought it was going to be bigger. I mean, I think I had justifications for thinking that, but it

didn't end up the way I believed. I'm going to take ownership of that, but there were some bright spots as well. I think some of those bright spots is the fact that Joe Biden is going to remain in office. Right it looked like they were trying to kick him to the curb. You can't do that based off of this election outcome. So Joe Biden will likely be the candidate in a damaged candidate. You know, approval ratings at fort and the economy is probably going to get worse sadly,

gas prices, all these things. Things are still going to hang over him heading into election. Republicans will also end up probably winning the popular vote as well. A really really bright spot in the state of Florida with Governor Ron De Sante's I mean, he beat Charlie crist by twenty points. That's insane. That's the biggest margin in any Florida gubernator race in forty years. I mean, that's literally insane. Florida was previously a competitive state. Now it's a red state.

He won sixty two of the state's sixty seven counties. That's crazy. He won the heavily Hispanic Miami Diade county. That's the first up governor candidate to do it in twenty years. And what I think he did even more importantly is that with this midterm election. Yeah, there was a lot to vote against with Democrats, but Governor de

Santas gave Floridians something to vote for. I mean, he led with freedom, He kept Florida open, He fought the opposition on that, he took on corporations with Disney, if he fought indoctrination in schools. Even if you look at his response to Hurricane Ian, it was flawless, so much so that even Joe Biden gave him props. And you know, the bottom line is that Rep. Bookends are still going to be better off than they were before this election in terms of you know, we will gain seats in

the House. We'll see what happens in the Senate. So not the outcome that we wanted, but we got to look to the future, and you look to the future and Democrats also have a terrible Senate map in so we'll probably increase our margins that cycle. Next cycle, they're defending twice as many seats as US and including nine really really competitive Senate seats as well. Was the selection

what we wanted? No, we still don't have the final results, so I think we kind of need to hold out see what the full picture looks like at the end of all of this, but we also have a lot to look forward to. I do think that could go our away, and I do believe that the issues that remain in the country and the country falling apart. I mean, we can't just give up. We can't just stop fighting.

We can't just seed the country to these people. We've got, you know, big, big problems, and it's going to take real leadership. And we've realized that we do have real leaders in this country as well. It's gonna be okay. But what we'll keep following us as we move forward and you know, we get more information, but you know, don't give up. The fight continues and it's all going to be okay. Y that was my election recap. I

hope you enjoyed it. We're obviously going to cover this issue more as we move forward, as we learn more as well. I want to thank John Cassio for putting the show together. I want to thank you guys at home for listening as always every Monday and Thursday, but you can listen throughout the week The Truth of Lisa Booth and feel free to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Love reading You reviews. Love seeing your ratings as well, so thanks so much for listening