Bill Kristol: A Blue Wave vs. the Toxic Red Tide

Hey, everybody. Just a real quick note. I pre-taped this upcoming pod with Bill and so, you know, assuming was a blowout LSU victory on Saturday night. That's why I didn't mention that because I don't know what has happened yet. I don't know what's happened in the world. So, you know, if we got the cheeseburger from heaven or whatever, I don't know about it. So it is a great show. We're talking a little bit about the midterms and it's a retrospective on 94 in 2006. I think that you're going to really enjoy it. Also, reminder, we got these events coming up, tickets are starting to go. So if you want to come join us at Lena, Columbia, Charlotte, the Borg.com/events. And one last thing, I'm after the pods over. Let me know you think about kind of the retrospective part of this. I have another little brainchild for something that I think you guys might like that is in a similar vein. And so I'm interested in your thoughts. So you can, if you didn't like it or who's boring or whatever, you can, you can let me know. So I appreciate you guys very much. Have a great Labor Day. Stick around for Bill Crystal. Hello and welcome to the Borg Daily. I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Monday. It's Labor Day. And I have for you, of course, at a large Bill Crystal. We have a very special episode. By popular demand, it's the Labor Day kickoff getting ready for the midterms. And Bill and I on several episodes have been discussing the 2006 wave year that led to the Democrats taking the House in the Senate, as well as some other midterms. And, and I've suggested kind of cheekily like maybe we should dedicate a full episode to that. And people are like, yes, please do. We want that. And so we're going to do it right now for Labor Day. It'll be a little holiday bonus. So that's on Good Bill. Sounds good. So in 2006, where you'll, which is the least modern history, then we'll go back to 1994, the ancient times before you were born and I can discuss what happened then. And then you also told me you wanted just a little bit on your first campaign, 1948. Thank you. I set you up. I set you up so well for that. I mentioned 1948 in Morning Shots this week. And that's why, too, is having a good time. Having a good time with that. I was not quite around yet. We also for the YouTube viewers and the support plus subscribers, we don't have a picture of me from 2000 sex and video bill from 1994. So you can go see what we looked like. We're both, we're both handsome. I never know. And before we do that, I thought it would be good. Just kind of set the table with a little bit of, you know, just pure politikians, some prognosticating looking ahead to this year's midterm. And then kind of we can talk about how like our various experiences in past midterm sort of inform these projections. So I don't know. We need to like a state by state. I'm kind of wondering what bill like your, your big picture of thoughts are as we sit here on Labor Day, for how the November election will go. And maybe specific states that are catching your eye. I thought it would be a big democratic year for quite a while. Based on nothing other than just the obvious facts. And then the main fact being that Donald Trump's approval rating has gone down steadily since he was inaugurated. And the approval rating when incumbent president is a good predictor of what happens in the midterm election, especially when his party controls both has no Congress. So it is a referendum on do you approve of what they've been doing for two years? And more importantly, probably do you want the Republican, especially when the Republican party in Congress is so attached to Trump? Do you want them to continue rubber stamping what he's been doing for the next two years? Or do you want a party to check him? That was very much my experience in 2018. The last Trump midterm. And so I've always assumed Democrats had a pretty good shot at a pretty good victory. And then as Trump got into the Iran war and decided to monkey around with tariffs some more. And inflation didn't go down. And he made generally seem disconnected from people's lives. And so forth. And gas prices went up by quite a lot. I thought a good year could become a very good year. And that's kind of for the Democrats. And that's kind of where I am. Yeah. So let's just do the House first. I'm I agree with you on all that on the big picture. I'm a little bit of two minds at the House and the Senate. And it's a little bit because of the playing field. I do think that the Democrats are going to see big gains among Latino voters. So, you know, in the parts of the country where there are a lot of Latinos, like Texas, we get that that is maybe relevant for the Senate. But I think that they're going to over perform there. There'll be a lot of Trump backsliding. And I think the prognostications are wrong. A lot about what's happening in South Texas, maybe even South Florida, some places like that. And so I expect the Democrats to even overperform in the House for that reason. And if you look at a lot of the projections right now, Nate Silver, the Democrats need to win four seats to get to 18. A lot of these projections have them only netting like eight seats or something. And ending like to 22. And the reason for that is to win the cheating that Republicans did. The gerrymandering did work a little bit. That's going to offset some of the gains. That's one. And another reason for that is just this kind of and you discuss this with, oh, shoot, it was a Doug Shone. It was on your-- Doug Saasick. Doug Saasick. Thank you. Doug Saasick on your crystal conversation. And just like the nature of this is very different than 06 and 94. And just how polarized we are. And there aren't as many districts in play. And there's been gerrymandering even before the cheating gerrymandering. There's regular old gerrymandering. And so I see that and I recognize it. But I just look at the map and some of these places that cook, for example, has as leaning towards Republicans in South Texas, as I mentioned, in Eastern North Carolina, in Colorado, in a couple of districts in Colorado, Florida. I think there would be a bunch of surprises. We'll get into why. So I think that the Democrats could net as many as like 16 seats and end up at 230, which would be less than still those other way of years. We're going to talk about that more than what is being projected. So that's kind of where I'm at the house. I'm less bullish on the Senate. We'll get to that in a second. But what's your review on that? Yeah, same on the house. I just think people are underestimating. They look at a district that's gone Republican in the last few years. It's a Republican now called Republican plus six. Maybe Republican plus eight because Trump might have been strong in 2024. And they underestimate that if a whole country moves, Trump won't buy a point in half, right? Let's say the generic ends up plus eight. That is the Democrats win the national house vote by eight, which seems reasonable. That's a nine-and-a-half point move. That means that a lot of districts that are Trump plus six, seven, eight are in play, right? In fact, not only in play, but you might even maybe should be almost favored to go democratic. So I tend to think also that people are being a little too, what's the word I'm looking for, deterministic from the past in this respect and not understanding that when you get to a wave, you know, districts topple that we're a little beyond the, you know, of course they can win this one because it's only plus two Republican or Republican is holding a seat that Harris actually won. There are some of those. So yeah, I'm sort of in the two. I've been saying just to be a little optimistic, just to make the numbers round, 235 to 200 in the house. Oh, well, the 235 making me seem cautious with my two. My job is to make you, my job is to make you seem prudent, you know, reasonable. I just like it's in these districts. I mean, I don't know. Anna pulling the loon isn't a close race in Florida. That's in the likely art category on Cook. The fifth Jeff Crank has been in this Colorado spring seat forever. There's a lot of like sprawl into Colorado springs and from the rest of Colorado, you know, it's like places like this start to fall. The mill seat, I've talked about a lot, Daytona Beach. I think that's potentially winnable. Democrats were strung in that they're bailed out. And so I just think that there are a lot of potentially getable dem seats in this kind of likely dem category. There is, there's the toss-up category, the lean category than the likely. I think there's a lot of potential dem seats to pick up there. So we're in the same page, even if not the same number on the house. Here's my nervousness about the Senate. We talk about this in a lot, so people who listen to the show should be pretty familiar with the playing field, but I'll just I'll just lay it out. Democrats need to pick up four to get to 51. And really, they need to pick up five because John Federman's been acting pretty squirrely. And I don't know if you it's kind of one of those. Dan, if you do, Dan, if you don't, if you're Chuck Schumer, if you have 51, it's like either you got to get passed everything by John Federman or John Federman switches parties and puts it back at 50/50. So you really want to try to get to 52, which means you got to win five. Yeah, net five. Yeah, net five. Okay, so that means you have to protect Georgia, that seems safe at this point. And you have to protect Michigan, which seems other people think is less safe than me. I think I think that's pretty safe at this point. Okay, then you go into the pickups. You've got North Carolina is the one that it seems like you're going to get that's one. You've got Maine, Susan Collins is tough. I think that Maine is going to be a flip this year, but that's not a guarantee. Then you got to get two more to get to four, three more of Ohio, Iowa, Texas, Alaska, three of those four are the best four. Then after that, you get into like Kansas, which you and I've talked about in Nebraska, it's an independent running Montana. It's an independent running Florida. Maybe, you know, the map is tight. And a lot of those places, you mentioned eight nine earlier, most of those places are 11 12 Trump states. See one by 11 or 12. I'm a little nervous that they end up running up into running a bunch of really close races. And a bunch of losing by three points, a lot of 51, 48 losses in those center races. If I sat here today and you forced me to choose to prognosticate, I do think that they get Ohio was shared brown. And I kind of look at Texas and Alaska. I think I don't think they're going to get Iowa. That would be, if you're just asking me today, look at Texas and Alaska. Those are pure coin flips. And, you know, just to be cheery, I'd say they go with the Democrats, but I think that they're, I think both of them right now are like really neck to neck. So it's kind of the state of play. You'd win both of them. If you if you did win, hold the same seats when North Carolina main Ohio, Alaska and Texas. access that does get you to 52 and a real majority that you can work with where, who is the next biggest trouble-making senator after Federman? There really aren't any. I guess that would be Peltola, probably. You have a pretty cohesive Senate conference where you're just dealing with Peltola, you know, working with Peltola. And who knows? In that case, maybe Murkowski dips, honestly. So I think that would become a state of play. What about you on the Senate? I basically agree. And, you know, obviously predicting races that are basically 50/50 just fools errands. I mean, there's some historical precedent, I guess you'd say, for when you get a wave, things tend to tip over to 51/49 in your direction. I mean, that seems like that's, can't mathematically or scientifically be determined that way. It just happens, feels that way, though, the car, you know, whatever, the weird dynamics of these races. They do tend to tip one way or the other for some reason. And so I kind of think that you could split those, the big four, two to two, which is sort of what you were suggesting might be the single most likely outcome, but they could also go 4/0 either way, honestly. But if the wave continues, this is where it's so important, what happens late and, you know, whatever that's over, aren't that important in the sense that I feel like we know 90%, 95% of what's going to happen already and I'm exaggerating a little bit here. We know a lot of what's going to happen in 2026. But that last delta, that last bit is awfully important if you're looking at four, but I would even say five, maybe six, very close. I mean, Kansas was closer than Iowa, I think in 2024 in the presidential. They have a Democratic governor. So like no one of Kansas is ever like, well, voted for a Democrat. That would be crazy. So I kind of think that I put that up with the same category as those other four and make it five, something I also, there'll be some surprise like the Democrats will lose the state they were supposed to win. Maybe Michigan in this case, but maybe Maine and then still get the majority because Kansas and somewhere else will come through. You know what I mean? That's sort of what happens in these in these years. If it's a dynamic wave like here, if it reverts a little bit, I think you said that's on the last podcast. I'm on the, does the wave continue a little bit in those last two months? Or does it refer to the, so what's the question we're looking for? It referred to the mean, you know, referred to in the last two months. And that, that makes all the difference. Does it go plus eight to kind of drift down to plus six? Or does it go up to plus nine? You know, that just makes a big, big difference in these close state center races. And that's a good transition to 2006, because I do think that the scale of that wave for the Democrats change based on what happened in October. And it went from what was going to be a really, really good year for the Democrats in Odell to kind of like this year to, to a bunch of seats falling. And producer Anzli just kind of pulled this for me. If you kind of look at going back to that cook political report, which I referenced and we love Amy Walter and everything that they're doing there is really great at leave and no sex, so it was Charlie Cook. You know, at the end, they looked at their own projections and saw like how many they got right and they got wrong. And in '06, we're a bunch in that kind of likely Republican category that we're surprising dropped at the end. It gets attributed to this October, you know, kind of momentum for the Democrats. So we'll get to what happened in October in a second. I just want to start on both years of the basic facts. So the Democrats in '06 gained 30 seats in the house, which is more than we're both projecting for this time, but for the reasons we laid out a lot, a lot because of gerrymandering, they gained six seats in the Senate. Right. Now there's no gerrymandering the Senate. So that's more of an apples to apples situation, right? Like if you match the '06 number, you should get about six, which is kind of what we're talking about. That would get you to 53 if you then that's really what you're saying is this sweep, maybe, of Iowa, Ohio, Alaska and Texas. Or maybe you went three of those and Kansas and then you get to six. So that was the 2006 year. Compared to this year in both cases, the presidential approval rating is above this current president's W on election day of '06 is at 38 in Gallup, which is above where Trump is right now is 38 56. So that's a say to play. I'll give you you guys some names and then we'll do a big picture to get your mind in the right time space in the Senate. Claire McCaskill, my MS now buddy, beat Jim talent. John Tester wins at your share. It has shared brown defeats Mike DeWine. So times of flat circle in Ohio, I don't know if the current governor shares back running. Sarah's friend Rick Santorum goes down to Bob Casey. This was a devastating one for me personally. Sheldon Whitehouse defeated Lincoln Chaffee. The running joke on that campaign that year because I was always like the house moderate and it was like we need to moderate more. We need to moderate more more. And they called me a Lincoln Chaffee Republican and a campaign that year. And then Jim Webb defeated George McCaca Allen in 2006. And I was set that year. I was working in Iowa. We will put this picture up. For Jeff Lambert, he was running an Iowa three, which is a Des Moines district, challenging a vulnerable incumbent Leonard Boswell. So there it is. Whoa, look how much hands I'm around looking. Man, thanks to our friends at one skin. My plan there, there was a political consultant that I knew. And it was just like, you should go to Iowa, you should meet the reporters. This was the first campaign where I got to do PR. I was before that. I was just kind of a little, little, little assistant, funky field person. And on to be a comms person to go to Iowa meet the reporters. And he's like, then whatever presidential campaign I end up running. He's in line to be a presidential campaign manager. I'll hire you to be the Iowa person. I was like, great. That's a great deal. And so he has looked like that was going to be George Allen. And then George Allen did a racial slur on the campaign trail. Kind of a weird one. McCock, it's not like a common racial slur. And that was enough to crush him different simpler times than 2006 to think that that would be like nowadays George Allen would go up with the Republican voters after doing that. But he goes down and then that consultant ends up working for McCain and dress history. End up working for McCain. So there is a six. Have you ever thought I should be doing something to protect myself from stalkers, scammers and hackers? I got stalkers, baby. Let me tell you about the stalkers that are out there. Some nice stalkers. And that's nice. I never had a stalker before. That's cool. But you got to, you got to be careful. You got to be careful. And the scammers, the fucking scam tech these days, crazy. So many of you are not sure what to do. Here's what you do. I feel worried about any of those things. You're going to www.JoinDeletbie.com/Bolwork EnterCodeBolwork. You'll get 20% off. Delete me. Delete me. 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So you can't do that. It's got to be easy. Get to leave me. It's easy. Then once you do it, they're checking. They're keeping it updated. They're making sure you're good. So sign up with me. Take a 12 year date and keep your private life private by signing up for DeleteMe. Now to special discount for our listeners, get 20% off your DeleteMe plan. When you go to joinDeleteMe.com/Borke and use promo code "Borke Checkout." The only way to get 20% off is to go to www.JoinDeleteMe.com/Borke and enter code "Borke Checkout." That's www.JoinDeleteMe.com/Borke code "Borke." Before I go through the full timeline, what are your big picture memories of OSX? I lived there. I knew George Allen some and thought well of him. It was a good governor and his father had been a great residence coach, obviously. A very affable guy and a very good politician. Jim Webb, I respect it. I knew him slightly too. He had been Reagan's Secretary of the Navy, I think, and then a quick protest over something. It was kind of an arasable old-fashioned democratic hawk sort of and kind of a populist. He wrote, like, do you write, like, Erotica? Do you see the Erotica guy, Cameron, which was exactly like that? He was a history of like the Irish, the Scottish Irish in America fighting something. I don't know. He was like an amateur historian. He was a smart guy. I think he's still there. Yes. Jim Webb did write Erotica. Okay. I don't know if that helped. So George Allen was, I'm going to say, I don't know what, mid-50. I mean, the height of his career had been governor, then-Senator, as you say, a lot of the smart money was on him for president, possibly, in O.A. Cheney was V.P. He wasn't going to invent a succeed wish. Obviously, so wide open race on the Republican side, as Senator for Swingish State, more Republican than the Democratic unlike Navigate, but, you know, sort of a representative state. And everyone liked Allen. And then Webb ran a pretty good campaign, but I remember thinking in the summer, what if this could be close? I mean, I want to zoom down a little bit easily. So Webb was kind of an odd candidate. It was like the attractive 38-year-old Talariko against the corrupt past, and this was- that one liked George Allen, and he hadn't defended anyone much. And then the wave happened. That was part of it, I think. I think Virginia is a state because it's got a lot of- so it's North of Virginia, very susceptible to waves, as it was later on, in 2018 and so forth. You know, it's kind of a lot of upper and middle class, two-dinted politics voters who were, like, more- had maybe voted for Bush in '04, had voted Republican at the Senate level, and thought, oh, man, this has gone really badly. So that helped. But then he did have the slur, which was crazy. So, do you remember the story? Of course, yeah. This young guy was a tracker. He went to- he was from Northern Virginia. He went to the same high school. So I went to T.J. He's a little older. He graduated and was 22 years old, I think. And Aaron, he seemed to get along fine, actually. But then he was bothering Allen. Trackers, you or the guys who go around everywhere and try to record everything and find you and catch you in some stuff up. Yeah. Look at the camera. And this is pre-i phone, but they got the little camera and all this. And Alan Sotomayor, I can't wait to do something like, oh, come on, Makaka again. We got Makaka over here. Yeah. You got little Makaka over here. I mean, I think it's plausible. We didn't even know kind of what it meant. Like someone said, his mother had used this term about Indian, Indian Americans, or Indian Indian. You know, people from the South Asia. I don't know. Anyway, it became a big thing. And it kind of then, he handled it very badly. That's my man memory. I've explained it. This is always the case, often the case with these things, right? And then the wave just kind of carried web onto a victory. But I remember around now saying to someone, I guess, web will be fine, right? And this person who was older had been around for 94 and for a couple of other digital elections, Reagan, 80, I suppose, said to me, I don't know, Bill, you know, on a wave. The stuff that looks shaky on Labor Day goes down. You know, that's sort of what it means to have a wave. And so that's my memory of the Virginia situation. I'm going to give it the time. It's just the house, people. Anyway, just because it's kind of fun to go back and oh, sex. So here are some of the Democratic winners that beat Republican incumbents, Gabby Giffords, B. Jim Colby, Republican that year. Another race that I had a friend working on in Colorado 7, Ed Pearl Mudder, B. Bob Bow Price, the start of Denver suburbs going blue. I've talked a lot about this race, Iowa 2. I was working in Iowa 3, which was the big race I already spent money. Nobody spent money on Iowa 2. Dave Lobsack was a professor in Iowa. It's literally is not, I should have went to see where it wasn't cooked. It had to have been like not lean or likely, but solid Republican, it was a solid Republican gym leach. It'd been there 100 years, moderate Republican, popular. He loses today, Lobsack, Minnesota one. You know who won that one in 2006? Tim Waltz. Tim Waltz. Oh, yeah. Goods and Abit's Gill, good necked. And Jill Brande is that year fun for football fans, he's Schuller, wins in the little North Carolina 11 district, which is the same one. I think the Democrats could surprise him again this time. Okay. Here's the timeline, about 6.05. And I think this is part of what prompted this is we love to just kind of, our memories were different. I'm like, why did Bush get so impopulated on this period of what happened. So I'm going to run to the timeline. We can kind of go through our memories of it. He's real like to get him in January. And things looking kind of good in Iraq. Actually, they hold their first parliamentary elections. I think that's the blue thumb election. Yeah, right. That's January, a purple thumb sorry as January of '05. But then like pretty much immediately after the counter the insurgency intensifies some IEDs, suicide bombings, then you get to August of '05. And this is the last month where a majority of Americans approve of Bush and the polls. And this is like mostly Iraq stuff, Sydney she in like her big protest starts then August of '05. And then August 29th, Hurricane Katrina, which is like now, basically a year ago, the same time. Obviously, everybody knows I was there. My sleeper event of this time is October three, the Harriet Myers nomination. Everyone looks to Katrina because it was like where he got such bad PR like in the media. And I do think that like, you know, whatever, there's some swing voter types that I don't think there are a lot of Republican voters. Like I'm bailing on Bush over his handling of Katrina. That doesn't feel right. To me, there's some, you know, some of this kind of proto populist right isolationist right when I'm happy with the war. And the Myers thing, he gets just flayed and could go to you and conservative media over this. You know, and I think this is where you start to get maybe the Myers parallels like the Epstein files in a way and just in a weird way because like it upsets the base, right? And this for the base now is starting to get frustrated, followed the first year. Okay. John Murtha then first calls for withdrawal in November, a Scooter Libby indictments. And now you get into some some controversies there that is that's October. And then the Abramoff lobbying scandal is December. So oh, five was a rough year. Lots happening there for Bush. Not a ton then in '06 happening. I mean, Iraq keeps getting worse as approval ratings keep going down a little bit. Gas prices are rising a little bit to me. There's the gas price issue. It's a parallel to this issue. And then really, you know, kind of nothing of note as far as like scandals or whatever until October until a month out and Bush's numbers are low. But they really the bottom falls out October late September, October 1st, where the Mark Folly page scandal happens. Mark Folly was sending inappropriate texts to young male pages. He resigns. House Republican leadership had covered it up. One of the House Republican leaders that covered it up, pedophile Danny Hastert didn't know that at the time. Republican circle, the wagons around him. I remember this ruined the last month of the campaign for my candidate, Jeff Lemberty. It's like every interview, you know, what do you think about this? Like we do go to a local news interview. We'd want to talk about whatever, you know, national security and the clip that they'd show in the local news is whatever his response to was to Mark Folly, you know, sending messages to teenagers. So deaths in a rock go up that month and then maybe a final two days, Saddam is convicted and sent us to death two days before the midterm. So I've forgotten this. A final breath of optimism, maybe, but now November 7th was the bloc and then, and then November 8th, Roamstelder signs. So note what is not there is much economy talk. Gas prices were up a little bit and you pointed that to the war so it's a little bit of a parallel to now, but inflation was 2.5% in '06, like math, I mean, standard, what you're looking for, unemployment rate was low, economy's pretty good in 2006. So this is a lot of foreign policy, scandal, disappointing the base, you know, wanting to have a check, looking like things are out of control. That's kind of my overview, but what jumped out to you in that timeline? No, that sounds absolutely right and I've forgotten some of those things. As you spoke, I was thinking to myself, the economy wasn't that bad, no 506, and so all the talk about it's all kitchen table, you know, it's all businesses. I don't know. Yes, sort of. Somewhat, it wasn't great as I recall. We didn't know '07, '08 was coming, right? I don't think people felt that way, didn't feel ominous or anything. The only two tiny points I'd make is Harry and Maya, I think, it had a slight, this is not crazy. It's a little bit like Trump with the ballroom or something like that in the sense that it was Bush indulging his personal, like she was his counsel from back in Texas, and then he made a White House counsel and she didn't have the normal qualifications for Supreme Court justice, I mean. And so it's a little bit like Trump just, you know, feeling, I'm not going to just go with the kind of normal practices of the president, I'm going to put my personal friend in there. I may be exaggerating that, I don't know how much it hurt anyway, but it feels a little bit. Just a quick comment, Maya. I just want to expand on the Epstein thing. For me, it's like obviously poor Harry and Maya, it's just still alive, so I'm not like comparing you to it. To me, it's like. To me, it's like. Minterms are different than presidential and several effects, but one of them is like, turnout is important in both, but turnout really matters, like turnout is a little bit more important. And so depressing your base matters, and I do think it did, it happens that you're coming off of the first summer, it's the fall of the first year, like there are other things to be worried about. And it's like what we wanted you to follow, like one of the things we cared about being the Republican-based megabase this time is like to deal with this Epstein issue. Like you said, you were going to do it, we wanted you to do it. And I think that the Republican base at that time in Essex was like, we want good Supreme Court justices, like this is our stand-in for social issues, like we care about the court, you ran on the court, ran on anti-game marriage stuff, whatever. And it's like, okay, we wanted you to do, we don't want another shooter, like this was a big thing then. And it's like, okay, and now you're just like, oh, you're going to give it to your friend. And that's something that's horrifying with these young women. But like, in just the way of kind of letting down of something that they expected. >> No, I think that's well. That's a good point. I think it's, I mean, he began, people began this the second term by saying, let's privatize social security. Now, there's an idea, it's perfectly reasonable, respectable, I don't know if it's reasonable to that. No. And the think tanks loved it, the sort of things he had not mentioned it to my knowledge during the entire campaign. And it had this weird, and I remember saying, I will say to him- >> That's kind of like the Iran War, apparently. >> One of the few things, it is. One of the few things I got right, early on in Fox, I was on the Fox Sunday roundtable, which every week then, and I said, February, this is going to fail. I mean, he has not, the country is not ready for this, he has prepared it for it. It's such an easy issue for the Dems to scream and yell about social security. It's like they're, they go to issue was back then even more than it is now, you know? Protect the social security, they'll gamble it away in the stock market. He's just rewarding his rich stock market friends. The idea was not a crazy idea, and you can make it- >> Well, it's actually a really good idea, and it would have been wonderful. >> Well, in a much better place if they had assigned it right now. But okay, whatever. >> Right. I mean, we're all our savings that are in our IRAs, and for one case probably ended up growing fast on social security, whatever. But anyway, and I think it's just like this little like 20%- >> And it was also only- >> I think like 10% of your- >> Right. >> Or 20% of your guy from memory. >> It was a good idea. >> The demo gets to an excellent job of attacking it. The Republicans weren't ready to defend it, because then what I didn't even talked about, it sort of got popped out of the Treasury Department, and I don't know, sometime, February, or something. And so I remember early on saying this is a political damage, and it had that same character though of, hey, we re-elected you. We sort of thought you were better than the other, it kind of likes the direction you were going more or less. They weren't thrilled with everything, but, you know, and we wanted you to kind of do more stuff along those lines, maybe. And it was just the surprise, the kind of willfulness of, I think, willfulness of it hurt. And as you said, it's a little more like a run. It wasn't exactly that Pete promised not to do it, so that was like, it's not quite like no more forever wars. But it's a little like just what the hell, where'd that come from? So I think it did some damage- >> It looked like it did hurt. >> Right. Yeah, that's good. I mean, it pushed in a sense that people left him, but I think it prevented him from having any momentum at the beginning of the second term. And the other part just make what you make about this. is a smaller pie. What is what? Two-thirds usually is to turn out in an off midterm elections, but two-thirds that of our presidential sometimes even less, which does mean almost by definition that what the basis of each party think matter more, because that missing third is going to be less involved voters. Because if you can turn out 90% of your of our Republicans like or or wherever your Democrat, you're going to win. You're going to have a good year. Right. Because it's because you don't give it up. You don't get all those other voters in the middle who are kind of diluting as it were the true believers. And so the best thing you can have going for you is you persuade some people. That's good. Then you turn out your base big time and then you depress the other something the other party does as usually isn't something you do in the opposition depresses its base. So in 26, just to bring it back to the president for one second that would be if people are furiated by things, Democrats are furiated by a million things Trump has done and correctly. And they'll turn out. There's some swingish voters who don't like particular policies. And then he's got a little crazier. I can't maybe you should check him, not support him. Yeah. That's right. This is a con. Yeah. That's good. And then some Republican voters who still will probably vote Republican in 2028 still think of themselves as a Republican, but just you know, I don't know. Just stay home. So you get the Democratic turnout up and the Republican turnout down. If you can get that both of those happening at the same time in a electorate that's two-thirds of size of presidential electorate, that's where again that 2024 number plus 11 is a little misleading. But some of that plus 11 for Trump in Iowa in Kansas in Ohio are those are voters who will not vote this time. Correct. So yeah, I think it was, I apologize to over it, is one of the data people I saw on social media was putting this out and they're like, well, what if what if the electorate in Iowa is actually only a plus five elect? That's the right way to put it. Yeah. I mean, right. Yeah. It's like it fits a plus 11 Trump state, but the term because of the depressed turnout and the increase in the Democratic side, then I'll sudden, you know, can you get enough independent voters to get there across the line? And I think that, you know, the Harriet Myers thing, which is why I wanted to talk about it, was part of that depressing. The Republican way said that all of it, I think Iraq was part of that as well. Like we are seeing that this time on both on both sides. And to me, this is why I'm kind of even in 18 again, because of the nature of the map and Jerry meandering and how we're, you know, like a big part of the 18 gains for the Democrats, when 18 gains were about this kind of realignment to the suburbs for the Democrats and places that, you know, you were probably going to just do well because of Trump. And so they did better there, but like the Trump base was still pretty excited in 18. So I do think that was a little different. So that's probably just why I'm more bullish and think that Democrats are going to overperform their polls. So anything else there in Katrina is something that everybody talks about when they kind of reflect back at that time. Obviously, I mean, of course, like here, New Orleans, of course. And, and, you know, such such a traumatic and visual event. And, you know, then there's the W the fly over and, you know, Kanye saying W doesn't care about black people. And so like there's all this. I don't know. I'm maybe I'm, this is counter-conventional wisdom. But I think that that ended up actually mattering less than the economic stuff, the scant, the Abramoff and, and, and page scandals. And then Myers. But where are you on that? People have the sense that the Iraq war wasn't being fought well, whatever the justification, the moral case for almost might have been. I think Katrina made it more plausible to say they're kind of, you know, they, the push sold themselves, it's toughness, but also commitment. But not just toughness, kind of confidence, condolence, arise, serious people calling power. It was, you know, grown-ups administration. And suddenly, like, she's the Iraq war, they didn't power leaves, of course, after the first term. And suddenly the grown-ups, little less grown-ups in charge. And then Katrina, total just screw up just in terms of execution, obviously, as well as they talked about and handled it. Without a rock, Katrina makes, wouldn't have made as much difference. And without Katrina, rock would have, maybe, but they, they felt they came together in a pretty bad way. And then the scandals came, you don't really want incompetence and some bad policies and scandals all happening at the same time. Yeah. And you're right on such a security. I, I, I overlooked that. I think that was another key inflection point. November 8th, Rome's Cell Designs. Do, is that, is that kind of a relic of an older time, where somebody has to fall on the sword, or, is that, oh, do we possibly get a hexade resignation this November? I remember that at the time. I was very anti-Romso, that cold London to be fired. After the victory in November 04, because I thought he had mismanaged Iraq, and it could get a fresh chart and fed things from getting worse. They kept Romsfeld and Casey, things got worse over the next few years. I think Bush planned to fire him for months, but just felt you somehow couldn't do it until after the election. I don't, to this day, I understand why he thought that that was a mistake. What did the better to do in September? I mean, I don't know what, but somehow it was like some weird. I don't know. You can't do it. Or honestly, after the Mark Foley scandal in retrospect, gosh, we need to get robe on here or something. Was there a meeting, you know, to do this? Was there a meeting about that? It's like, it wouldn't, wouldn't firing Romsfeld be a better news story than talking about, you know, Congressman Ditto and teens? Things like it. I'll say in slight defensive Bush, which I'm done quite a while, but I have the sense, and I, I mean, I saw Bush a few times in those, and that said, in terms of this, he, first time I never saw him because I was a McCain guy, but second term, he, I was a supporter of the war, so I got, I got an indication for these swallish meetings with, you know, people like me, magazine editor types, think tanks types. And he, he really did care about the troops, he's cared about their morale. And I think one, I remember one point having a weird argument with him where I think it, I'm not sure it was Romsfeld exactly, but it was something about acknowledging they made mistakes in the first three years of the war in terms of strategy. And he said, I, I can't do that. It'll make people feel like they're, they're loved ones to die in vain somehow. And I, I just need to suck it up. And I'll take the hit. I understand people think I was wrong, but I just, I can't say to people. I was a kind of weird, I don't think he's right psychologically, exactly, but on the other hand, I sort of respected, he, he thought a lot about that. And so I think maybe he thought just dumping Romsfeld where it would have looked like he was doing it to help in the midterms was not mean political. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He should have done it. He was kind of like an honor and principle guy, whatever you think about him. And there's almost six like he did, like that stuff did matter to him. Interesting. Okay. Well, there's 2006. God willing. I mean, a 30-seat house game. That would be the dream. But that's even better than your eye. It's a little better than my projection. I have a 240, 240, 240, something like that. That'd be exciting. Yeah. Okay. Let's move to 1994. This is the classic year people talk about when they talk about waves. I was in short pants back then. I was just after my last Democratic vote that I had done before Trump came around, which was actually that's not true. My last Democratic votes were 92 in the school election. I voted for Bill Clinton and bet my grandmother $1 on it. It was very proud when she sent me the dollar. Then I started to get red pills there later in the middle school. And then I did vote against our own lieutenant governor candidate in the 2004 race that I was in turning on because he was such a dick. But that's neither here nor there. Those are my two other Democratic votes. 94. I really found out that I didn't remember anything. And I was told later on about a lot of stuff. So we'll see if other people agree. I knew the gist about the fact that it was a big wave. 54 house scenes, seats gained. New house majority was 230 to 204 then. So that Republicans were coming out of a big hole. I should have mentioned this in '06 because this is what I was in wave years. In neither year did an incumbent of the party that was doing the waving lose. So no Republicans lost in the House or Senate 94 or in 2006. Because of the redistricting mid-cycle this time, like there will be some exceptions this time. But to me, that is again where I kind of fall on Michigan, Georgia, Assad. It's just like when you're in a wave, you know, the people that are in incumbents are the incumbent party usually stays through. So 54 house seats gained for Republicans defeated 34 Democratic incumbents that gained eight Senate seats. The new Senate majority was 5248. The total house popular vote. This shows you how different things are. It was only 53% in favor of Republicans. Isn't that amazing? This year of the Democrats only got 53%. I mean, they'd be squeaking out of five vote majority probably. Those are kind of the facts. I mean, the most interesting anecdotes, like the two things I knew about 94 were big waves and contracts with America. And the contract with America was unveiled. Everyone listening to this to gas bill might know. So I'm not going to quiz him. When do you think it was? The answer? September 27th, 1994. Not three. The contract for the America came out like right now, like three weeks before the election, which goes to show the Democrats could still do sometimes. And maybe this is a little bit of, I don't know. My, my view just learning that now is I look at it and it just made me completely change my whole thinking about Gingrich and the strategy. It was just like Gingrich might have just like jumped in front of a parade. Total is already happening. So anyway, Bill, take the floor. I think it was good because it gave for Republicans to say we're not just running against Clinton. We have a positive agenda. The agenda itself was mostly silly. If you look at the 10 points and a lot of it was very minor and it's procedural stuff and what I've termed and that stuff that wasn't going to happen. And you know, and a couple of semi-series things, including I think producing the, you know, greater growth of Medicare or something, which got them in such trouble a year later when they actually got in the fight with Clinton. So that was sort of a not as important. It was helpful at the end to allow all these candidates. Well, there's a lot of stupid stuff in here. You're right. Yeah. Not totally. A number of House committees. Right. It was really, I remember looking at it at the time, I had nothing to do with it. And I knew, knew that I was pretty involved in some of the fighting in '94. I'd been fighting against Clinton. But yeah, I remember thinking, oh, come on, but it did help a little rhetorical. I'm sorry. I have to read all of them. It helped by like half a point. It was not important. It would have, they wouldn't have been a wave anyway in '94, but go ahead and read it. Please, let's, because is that again, I don't, my memory, this was totally wrong. Okay, eight major reforms, it's like, it's literally nothing. Require all laws that apply to the rest of the country, also apply to Congress. I don't even know what that's, what does that even mean? - It's like banking privileges and some better healthcare plans, that kind of thing, you know. - Okay, select a major independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress for waste, fraud and abuse, great. Cut the number of house committees. Limit the terms of all committee chairs. Ban the casting of proxy voting in committee. Require committee meetings to be open to the public, require a three fifths majority to pass a tax increase. Guarantee an honest accounting of the federal budget by implementing zero baseline budgeting. There's the Fiscal Responsibility Act. This is balance budget, truth and sensing. So there are additional other, a $500 per child tax credit. So there are, you know, some job and wages stuff. No, that was just the congressional accountability point of it. And then a citizen legislature act. - Which is a term limit to your reference. - I mean, they were trying to capitalize and they did on the anti incumbent anti. There were some congressional scandals, some of them real, some of them slightly fake. I don't know, they had some like bank they could use. It was just a banking, they weren't like ripping off the taxpayer, but they got a little bit, I don't know, it was nice, they got cheated. If you got to the little congressional bank, you got, I don't know what, you could float your check for a week or something and it wasn't just like dealing with your local branch bank where they were not so nice to you. Anyway, there were these minor scandals, the pretty wider retrospect that happened. Jim Wright had been forced out as earlier as Speaker. I mean, there was, the Democrats were vaguely tainted with congressional scandals having been there forever. Austin Kowsky, right? Committee chairs who had been in, there were no term limit sent for committee chairs. They'd been there for 10, 20 years, they'd been in Congress 30, 40 years. So I think that was the, the part of it you read, the account of the congressional accountability is really pretty small ball. But it, it captured a little bit. They ran, I'd say this is one analogy. So they did run against the status quo in a pretty big way. Now, how could they do that? So let me just go back to 94 for one second if you want. I mean, it's just, it was different from 2006 or for that matter 2010 or 2018, which were sort of waves in many ways if you want within the context of the modern series. The Democrats had controlled the House for 40 years. They had controlled the Senate for 34 of the preceding 40 years except for that six-year stretch in the first six years of Reagan. Congress with Democratic, I came to Washington in '85. That was how it was. Republicans had won the presidency, Eisenhower eight years, then the Kennedy Johnson, Nixon eight years, then Carter four, then Bush, Reagan, Bush for 12 years. How did Reagan not take a House? He took the Senate, he took the Senate in '80. Yeah, the House was so, because those seven seats were still Democratic. That's one thing that happened in '94. 34, I believe Democratic and Congress lost. That's pretty amazing in '94. And about half of them were in southern seats, where they'd been there forever. And then finally, people just decided, "Well, I was very nice. You've done a great job bringing pork to this gesture for 25 years." But you know what? With someone who's actually a conservative like us and not part of this Hillary Clinton, healthcare, Bill Clinton, pro-God knows what you know. There was kind of a certain cultural caricature of the dams with Clinton, especially. And they really tried to cap us on that. So it was a big change in that respect. I mean, Congress, when I was studying politics, I mean, first got into it. The presidency was often Republican. The Congress was Democratic. And the House was really Democrat. It was the bulwark of old Democratic power, powerful committee chairs, Austin Kowski, and all these characters. And then obviously, and speakers and so forth. And when Newt started to say two years out, we can win the House. People just thought, "No, that's not going to happen." And one reason they thought that I said at least, there was no precursor to this. 1990 had been a mediocre year for Democrats. So that off year election, it didn't lose much. We didn't pick up much 92, two years before. Bush had gotten 38% of the vote. Bush had gotten 54% in '88. The Republican Party was an utter disarray. The incumbent Republican president had gone from 54% to 38%. That's partly a perot thing. But still, it's not really just mean that the House Republicans end up being Bush plus per aisle. Pretty close, yeah, pretty close. And yeah, then with a differential turnout sort of thing there too, yeah. So they expected it by September '94, but no one expected it in early '93. When Newt started to say this, people thought, "You're crazy." The House has been 40 years. That's two generations of political operatives cycling through. There were people in Washington who would come as very young people to work in the Hill or in the executive branch. And literally had never, of course, seen a Republican majority just seem to be incomprehensible. And even the Senate had only been that one six-year period. So I think this degree of surprise was at just novelty of what was happening. It really can't be overestimated. It just felt so different from these more modern swings, which once you have one of them, then you have another one, right, 2006, 2010. Okay, well, that's another just kind of counter-wave. It didn't feel like that. Clinton was in the low 40s. He wasn't that unpopular though. And then we weren't fighting some terrible war. There'd been some really minor scandals. I mean, well, white water was beginning to bubble up at all this. But it was funny how people turned against them though. I mean, how much they did. But having said that a lot of it was catching up to what had happened. I mean, it was like these districts had democratic incumbents who had been there a long time, Tom Foley, the speaker of the House who lost. I think maybe the only time, we're one of the very few times a speaker has lost a victim, one of his own seats, you know. Had a district in Eastern Washington, I believe, which was becoming quite conservative. It's not Seattle, you know? And he'd been there forever and they loved him. And he'd, you know, God knows a speaker or before that as a majority leader brought a ton of pork there and all. And it didn't matter. They wanted a sort of a Republican, you know. This was the end of old interest group pork barrel politics, I think, in some ways. In the beginning of modern ideological parties, ideological waves. And that respect, it really was a precursor of what we were going to see for better or worse, maybe mostly worse over the next three decades. So that's, so my memory is just what a surprise it was, not at the very end though. I think I was on set on, I don't know, some show. I think it was me to press maybe with Stephanopolis, who was then the White House spokesman. I was running this little project for the Republican future, but I'd become sort of prominent as a critic of Clinton and a Republican strategist, you know? It's great how you could be a Republican. I had one like one failed Senate campaign, it'd been quills. Chief of staff at a presidential campaign, we got poverty, but I nonetheless got to call myself a Republican strategist and get that guy around on TV. And as a Republican strategist, I said, we're going to win both houses. And everyone just like Stephanopolis, so of course, even said that wouldn't happen because he was a Republican Clinton. But actually the people there, I guess it was Rossert, probably we're like, oh, come on, Bill, I mean, really, I mean, maybe take up seats. Sure, but win both houses, yeah. That's something we, it's hard to recapture the degree of, of surprise and kind of novelty about what was happening. - Interesting. There, again, not a economically challenging time, good economy. And 934, you mentioned a couple of the scandals. I mean, some of these Clinton, you know, the white water, you mentioned the cattle futures. Like that stuff was being investigated, it was in the news. But like, you know, I mean, nothing at all like this. I mean, the thing that people point to is the failed healthcare plan. So I think you're kind of looking at two things, really. One, in that sense, it's like Bill, it's a feeling that the administration was not competent. Maybe that's the Katrina parallel, but I just was like, they're not going about their business well. And then I do think that there's this kind of demographic, like, you know, these sort of populists, right? People are aligning with Republicans and then some of the racist, so they're, you know, white people are aligning with the Republicans. But talk about, you're involved in the healthcare stuff. Like, what was, was this just kind of like a big government? Little government was, is this a feeling that Bill betrayed his voters? Because they thought he was going to focus on other stuff, he ended up focusing on this. Like, how do you judge that? - I mean, I think a little about it. I think it was a big government thing. It was, I mean, Hillary's plan, I was pretty big critic of it, but it was a pretty big overhaul of the system. It wasn't really like Obamacare, which, you know, at the end of the day was insurers for 30 million people who couldn't otherwise buy it on individual markets. It was a complicated plan. It was a big deal, Obamacare. But, Hillary's thing really was embracing, pushing people into HMOs. Again, I can't remember honestly the details, but it was a bigger overhaul. It was huge hoopla. Hillary, big speech around Labor Day, year before in '93. Hillary Clinton testified to Congress as the first lady. It put his wife in charge of the task force to devise this. It all had a slate, you know. - She's more polarizing than Hillary's much more polarizing than that. - Some of this is misogyny, but also just like culturally, he's governor of Arkansas. You know, she comes off as very liberal and like putting that up. First, as a policy thing is like more of a signal that like, no, this is not a DLC governor of Arkansas. - Right, and she was more liberal and it was the inside baseball, his wife in charge. And moderates who had voted for Clinton, which they were, you know, some obviously, some bush voters, mediators who had deserted Bush, not all, somewhat the pro, but somewhat the Clinton. They thought welfare reform, that was the kind of signature DLC moderate democratic. We're willing to take on the welfare state and we're going to reform welfare and you know, it'd be a little tougher on welfare. Such a big issue, Reagan used hammer Democrats over it. And putting healthcare ahead of welfare was as became symbolically very important as he's gone to the left. He's betrayed his moderates supporters. And there's some truth to that as an ally. - And that case kind of in a weird way, that is depressing the democratic vote. But not in the way we were talking about in '06 and this year, because it's not depressing the base vote, right? 'Cause they were presumably mostly for that. But it's depressing this kind of other part of the coalition, the Southern Democrats, the more populous to Democrats, you know, that were, that were, that were thinking, thinking it was gonna be something different. - Yes, I think that's right. And then the healthcare proposal was sort of funny because in, I don't know, they thought they could get Bob Dole and moderate establishment of Republicans on board. Those people had often been in favor of reforming healthcare in that direction as Romney was later on, right? And with Obama, you know, sort of precursor of Obamacare. And there was a lot of talk about compromise and I was running this little project for the future and I advised them not to compromise. The healthcare system was not that broken. There was no healthcare crisis. That was a memo that I wrote and we sort of argued to Republicans that she was just hanged up. And that was a contrary interview, I will say. And most people with you get killed if you just tell us to do nothing. You can't do nothing. There's a healthcare problem. Republicans have lost the 1991 Special Senate election in Pennsylvania over healthcare. That was Carval's first great upset victory against Thornburg. And so Clinton talked a lot about it in '92. This wasn't a case, it wasn't a case where he was doing something he hadn't. He said he wouldn't do, but it's the big government character and the Hillary character of it, I think. And so whatever the Democrats ended up going in the do nothing, just say no position on healthcare. And the one inside I had was if you ask people in poll, this is the thing about polling and shows why people shouldn't take posters, shouldn't take one polling result to care too seriously or too literally. Two thirds, three quarters of Americans wanted healthcare overhaul. Two three quarters of Americans were unhappy with the healthcare system. Three quarters of Americans had gripes with the insurance companies. Or you can name it with whatever the cost, obviously. So to say two thirds of or three quarters of Americans like their own health insurance, that's because they mostly work for businesses and corporations that provided decent health insurance. And so they didn't have to see there's any great need if you were working for General Electric or Coca-Cola, you know, your health insurance is adequate. You're a big university, big state government. And so what, and I sort of had the insight that the Republicans should put on that second half, that second poll result. He's endangering your health insurance that you're satisfied with. And there's a way, as we've seen this in a lot of public policy areas, both from the right and the left, right? The status quo is easier to defend than to say. Let's risk everything by overturning, overturning the whole thing. And you know, maybe you won't get insurance for your employer, but we got a better idea in mind. It's done up by this fancy think tank. And Hillary Clinton's got an old worked out field. We were able to caricature it, honestly, in that way, pretty successfully, I think. - Well, we talked about the October surprise in '06 in 1994, Clinton tried to drop an October surprise to protect himself, but I don't know that it landed. Let's watch. - When we started, they said it was secretive. - No, that's not true. We met with him in advance. We even offered to work with him on drafting a bill. We were told, no, you go ahead and put your bill in, then we'll put our bill in, and then we'll work. They announced an approach where more than half the Republican senators supported universal coverage. The bill never came. But the time came to talk about the bill. There were zero senators from the Republican party on that. So, and by the way, then they released the memo of their strategist, Bill Crystal. He wasn't even ashamed to release the memo and say, you must not cooperate on healthcare, because if the middle class ever gets security about healthcare, they'll probably support the Democrats again. Whereas if we keep 'em all torn up and upset and angry, we can either keep 'em home or get 'em to vote for us. So, I want, let me just say this, I want more than anything to have a bipartisan effort. - He wouldn't do. He also has a different clip I saw just the text of, where he tried to go after you in the final days because you came out against farm subsidies, which is, you know, anti-farmer welfare bill that was acceptable. - That was on the tarmac in Iowa five days out. I remember like, it was kind of a side. And this is pre-cable really. I mean, this is Larry King. CNN was the one cable network. I was like the one political show basically that anyone watched. Yeah, and then that was two days before election day, I think, where he says, kind of amazing. Yeah, I'm their top political shadow. I was running this little 12, 14 person, you know, a little so quasi-think tank there, project for the public in the future. I was not really the top Republican strategist, but it was nice that President Clinton-- - Well, I know we're talking, New College, yeah. - Yeah, that's true. No, I was involved. But anyway, that was a funny moment. But so the dynamics were pretty different, honestly. I think in all these different respects, the historical character at 40 years in the house, the novel, the fact that a lot of it was history catching up to the Southern Democrats, the fact that Clinton hadn't done, it was more that they had tried to do something that scared people, and that we were honestly helped scare people about. That's all what did him in. So I do think in this respect, the double back. I think 2006 is more of a similar situation. 94 was kind of a, 94 was the end of an era. It was an important election, just a little different from a kind of a normal reaction against the incumbent president. And incidentally, as 94 also shows something that 06 doesn't, which is it's not always a precursor of what happens next. If you're a Democrat and you look at 06, and you think this is gonna be like 06, what's the good news? The next, they win the presidential election by seven or eight points two years later. So hey, it's great, double header to 06 and 08. You pick up a lot more seats. 94 was great. And then Clinton probably won re-election by seven or eight points was something in '96. So kind of a good cautionary tale there that you can do well in a midterm. - Yeah, it is, 06 is also more comparable even though this is done subsequent terms. You know, the second midterm, 06 versus the first one in '94. There's a difference in the dynamics between the second midterm and the first. I don't know. To me, I have the 94 lesson is, and some of this is just things outside of strategist hands, right, like it's just the kind of changing tectonic plates of politics and trends and media and it's global, a lot of stuff that's happening here is having another country. But like, if you look at that number that, you know, the Democrats had before in '92 that included these other parts of a country. Like, if they want to get to a place where like they're really advancing like permanent policy changes and big policy changes, it's like people that want progressives that want big policy changes should want this the most, right? Is like, there has to be a way to reconnect with these, you know, parts of the country that they've lost. Like, they had managed this coalition from like FDR through LBJ, like all the way through Tip O'Neill, like all the way to Bill Clinton's first term and finally, like, but it's fucking a half century, right? Where it's very different ideological and demographics of people in the coalition and at the sorting of the parties that started '94 has been very bad for the Democrats and it might be feel unfair and asymmetric and I hear JBL whining about it already, but like, if the Democrats want a governing majority, like, they do need like a more diverse coalition, like they had before '94. - And, you know, then they lost the House of '94, they lost, they stayed lost for 12 years, people, you know, and then they got it back by doing exactly what you just said, right? - From a manual recruited a lot of candidates for the House and then some Senate candidates appeared on their own who disordered from the sociological test. - Test for the Democrats, the two people running in '06 and winning and Democrats and then they held those seats and increased them in '08 with Obama, which is a little more complicated, but they had the advantage of a massive financial crisis, obviously. - Even Tim Walls, right? Like, think about the different kind of race that Tim Walls runs and it has six from how he runs his commos VP. And he runs as a very moderate kind of rural farmer teacher guy. That's Minnesota one, but you know, look, they went in Kentucky that year. I already mentioned Heath Shuler, Redneck kind of football player winning in North Carolina to Texas seats. They beat, oh, well, you'd mentioned how fully lost, delay lost in that '06 year in Texas, to a guy named Nick Lampson. That's a good Jeopardy trivia question. I would have never been able to pull that. But, you know, three Indiana seats. So like, that's the way back. - Okay, what do we forget? 1948, any 1948? - I just mentioned that in "Warning Shows" because I was trying to make the point that Mike Johnson such a wet noodle. As we said in "The Headland of the Peace" and he said a couple of idiotic things about how, we don't really have a view on anything. You know, if Peter, I trust Peter, I trust the Secretary of War. I trust Trump. I'm not gonna, I don't know anything about the Iran war, why I'm just Secretary of the House. And I do think they should pummel the Republicans. I'm trying to think, what's the Truman Pummel, the Republican Congress, the 80th Congress, as the "Do Nothing Congress." He was in combat pressure, run a free election. The "Do Nothing Congress" had failed to pass any legislation that he wanted, including on health care, incidentally, and other things. And he famously hit them as the "Do Nothing Congress" and one of the famous comeback victory, obviously, against Tom Dewey in 1948. And the Democrats, this was a different era, right, with more party switching and less, you know, with less followers, Democrats picked up 75 seats in 1948 in the House and took the Senate. And so that was a wave with Truman beating Dewey in a combat presence. It doesn't really, it's a presidential year, so it doesn't quite compare what we've been talking about. So what's the equivalent of the "Do Nothing Congress"? I mean, the Republican Congress now is kind of more like a rubber stamp Congress, I guess, and maybe it's a better term, so we'll get to come. - So "Rubber Stamp" and "Do Nothing"? All right. - Well, that's a big hit. - Two weeks, there's another two weeks on vacation. - Very good point. - Who gets this much of vacation? Speaking about health care, you know, to make health care an issue, all these guys get a free health care without working. I mean, it's a kind of health care system, see-on. We don't even know what's happening with them. They're not even working. It's crazy how little that they've worked. - I do think calling it a, yeah, "Rubber Stamp" and "Do Nothing Congress" that's now been set up in a way for the Democratic challengers. They should run it and they got to run against Trump, but they also have to run against the Republican Congress as a debling Trump and is doing nothing to check Trump and will check Trump and also making it worse in some ways because they said, depending on which members of Congress, I wanted to find a quote of Truman using "Do Nothing Congress." I came across just this thumbs-by. You used it all the time, of course, so you just get a thumbs-by. speech he gave somewhere. And in the stuff of speech, the two issues on which he most complains that the Republican Congress did nothing are health care and housing prices. Isn't that amazing? Health care. And so, and he also throws in inflation actually. So I feel like the Democrats, they're looking around for the message. They always have the inter-analyst internal, you know, hand-ringing about the message. They should go read Harry Truman's speeches from 1948. They're excellent. They're economically populist. He's big on the people versus the corporations and versus the elites and versus the big shots. But Truman also, of course, was a cold warrior and a middle American guy. He wasn't some lefty kind of cult, you know, on cultural stuff. So I feel like they should run his Harry Truman for the next two months. That's a great place to leave it. Bill Crystal, appreciate you. I hope everybody enjoyed a little holiday pod content. And we'll be back tomorrow. We got a double header. We got another guy tomorrow that is very keen on this. And this kind of, he's tired of us talking about the Democrats like getting the 52 Senate seats. He's like, why not 60? Why not 58? So we'll talk to him about how the Democrats get that done tomorrow. And we got one of my buddies coming on the show. It's going to be a good one. Bill Crystal, thanks so much for that. We'll see you next week. Great. Thanks. The boy daily is brought to you. Thanks for the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Anzaly Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DeCicco and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.